City Commission - workshop

Okay, Madam Vice Mayor, it is 5.04 and we are live.

All right, great. Thank you. Welcome to the City of Lake Worth Beach special meeting of Tuesday, August 25th. May I have the roll call, please?

Yes, you may. It's actually a workshop. Mayor Betty Resch is absent. Vice Mayor Mimi May? Present. Commissioner Sarah Maliga? Present. Present. Commissioner Christopher McVoy.

Here.

Commissioner Anthony Sigrich.

Present.

All right. Thank you. Mr. McVoy is going to do the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, thank you. And we are going to be discussing the CARE-ATC. And Lauren Sladen, our Director of Human Resources, will be giving the presentation.

I think so. Okay, can you hear me? Okay, I actually will not be doing the presentation. I'll be introducing our representative from the Gehring Group, Sean, who I've worked with for years and years, and he's going to give you a quick overview. And then actually, we had the people from Care ATC. OK, this is this is something that I told you guys about, I think, before. And I think it's really good opportunity to kind of help all of our employees and their dependents. And one of the things that, you know, and one of the one of the things that you can't keep, you know, can't change is the fact that health care is going to get more and more expensive. It just is. But this is one of the ways that when when for the city, hopefully, you know, giving us an opportunity to like not keep our keep our I guess keep our rates from going exponentially high. And Sean was sharing with me earlier that some of the other cities that he's working with are having really crazy, crazy increases this year, like 20, 40%. So thank you, Gehrings, for keeping our claims down and keeping our rates down and working with us. Our wellness initiatives have really made a big impact. So Unique is not here, but I think we can honor her and just say thank you for everything that she does. So without too much ado, I'm going to introduce Sean.

Before you do, can I just ask a question? Absolutely.

What is your goal and your ask of us? My goal and my ask of you is to approve this program so that we can offer it to our employees.

Okay, but that's not tonight. We're not doing that tonight, are we? Yes. Do you want us to agree this evening to do it or not today?

Yes, because this is part of the budget process, but because it's such a complicated and it's such an expensive project, I want you guys to have all the information that you needed before you made a decision.

Is Yannick going to join us at some point and let us know the fiscal impact?

Yes.

Perfect. Does anybody else have any questions before we start? Okay. Mr. Manager.

Yes. I'm sorry.

Could you speak into your mic, Mr. City Manager?

I apologize for that. What we'll do is at the end of the night when we discuss it, we can either give staff direction and we can go back and either put it in the budget or tell us to go get more information and then we can present it to you all on Friday during your meeting. So however you want to work it, but just let you know.

So we have a literally way we don't need to stop, discuss and decide before 6 o'clock.

So we can just make a decision and we can go back and look at the budget and determine how we want to proceed and present it to you on Friday. It makes it easy for you. But if you want to make it tonight, that's fine.

Okay. Well, let's just see how it goes. Mr. Segrist.

Thank you. It says finalist presentation. So we interviewed multiple firms for this.

Sean will go over that process. So all this was run by our benefits broker. And so I'm going to let Sean Fleming from the Gehring Group take over and he can answer all those questions for you. He's a pro. All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor, Commissioners. Sean Fleming, Senior Benefits Consultant with the Gehring Group. So excellent question, Commissioner. So I'll take a step back a little bit. So just to give you guys an idea, we work with about 200 government entities across the state of Florida. Of those 200 government entities, Your HR director shared a number of them obviously are struggling with healthcare costs. I think as everyone knows, you don't need to spend too much time talking about how much healthcare has gone up. We all know it's going up. And I think candidly, most of us would agree we have a little bit of a broken system. So one of the things that we've done with about 40 of our clients is looked at. And the first thing I'll say is it's not a cookie cutter approach. Couldn't get that out tonight, but not a cookie cutter approach in that one size doesn't necessarily fit all. But what about 40 of our clients have done in one manner or another is utilized or employed an onsite or near site health center. And very candidly, typically, to really do that successfully and have it make an impact, you generally need 800 to 1,000 employees. As you know, the city doesn't have that many. The reason you need that large employee count is there's typically a pretty substantial upfront investment to get a center up and running, hire doctors, hire nurse practitioners, hire staff, build a lab, do all of those things. But what Cary ATC, so we went through, we reached out to a number of entities and said, this is something that we're potentially interested for the city of Lake Worth. But candidly, we know that we will never get a return on investment if we have to build and launch a health center, do all of these things. So we went out to a bunch of different companies in the market and said, what can we do creatively where we can bring this benefit potentially to the city? without all of the costs that you would normally need to to launch a center and so from a finalist and and talking about carry tc what carry tc is going to talk about tonight is what we found with them is they have the potential ability for the city to give you a little bit of of the best of both worlds um so not the upfront cost that a lot of other clients would have to do to launch their own center a way to share which they'll talk about more at a significantly lower entry point in that cost but still a way to give the employees all of the benefits of that like access to care no copay if they use the health center you know prescriptions dispensed all the thing that those bigger centers have without the city having the upfront cost so for tonight um i will be here and happy to answer any questions but what i wanted to do was let carry tc kind of explain who they are how they work um and what the structure they have already operating um nearby is and what that could potential off potentially offer to the employees um and you know have them go through some of the stuff i think they'll go through quicker so we have time to talk about and then i'm going to come back up and with any of the team that you would want to kind of join and answer questions so um with that i'm going to introduce uh gabe kramer from carry tc okay thank you hi gabe welcome

good evening oh i'm sorry i have to make sure i look i don't want to say i'm sorry go ahead our vice mayor is helping out so we've got to be nice and help her out um just a quick question for you my recollection is that through probably in part your services or your the group services you've helped uh keep some of those drastically increasing causes down I'm just curious, how did you manage, if you're at liberty to say, which I don't know, how did you manage to keep ours down when other places didn't manage? Excellent. I know that we're very nice and things like that.

We never get sick.

And I suspect our wellness program plays a role in that, but I don't know.

Yeah. So it's a combination of things, candidly. So the biggest driver of your health care costs when Lauren talked about groups getting higher increases are your claims experience. Employees go to the doctor or hospital. The more of those you have, the more of an increase they want. So going back a number of years now, putting in things like the wellness program, doing things like dependent audits, you know, making sure people aren't on the plan that shouldn't be, somebody's not covering their neighbor or something like that, a number of other things. What all those things over the last five to seven years have led to is lower claims costs, which then in turn leads to better renewals. And excellent question because I would say, that's retroactively looking we're also thinking about how do we keep that going going forward and we think this potentially plays in nice segue too yep so thank you thank you

Thank you, Sean. Gabe Kramer, VP of Business Development with CareETC. And I think your question is really poignant. The cities and municipalities that we work with, this is a natural progression into how can we take savings to the next level? Because as you'll learn through some of these slides that we'll go through, our sole purpose is to divert care away from high-cost, expensive hospital systems and make sure that we're managing chronic conditions in a really meaningful way. So we'll get kind of into that if you want to jump to the next slide. You can go to the next one. And I'll try to be mindful of the time this evening. But CareATC is a national company. We have health centers across about 30 states. We do provide virtual care in all 50 states. About 50% of the clients that we work with throughout the nation are public sector. So we have a really good experience on how to engage with members, how do we get them into our clinics so that we can start managing those conditions and providing care and services.

You can go to the next one.

In the state of Florida, that kind of rings true as well. About 70% of our clients that we work with are municipalities, city, state, government. if you're looking on the bottom right hand side, you can kind of see those teal dots. And that's why I think Sean really brought us to the table for you guys is we have six what we would call shared site locations in Southeast Florida, two of which we'll kind of get into are really near to you guys, Boynton Beach and Wellington. But once again, just our footprint in the state of Florida really provides for, I think, a positive experience, both from a patient care perspective, but also when you think about the logistics of a health center and providing coverage and making sure that we never close the health center down and that your members will always have access. The amount of staff that we have in the state helps support that.

Go ahead. One more.

So we took your census file and said, hey, we're When we look at where everybody lives, where makes the most sense to have clinics? Maybe if we had to open one or where we currently have the two. And as I pointed out, Boynton Beach and Wellington are really the two that make the most sense to have access to. What we say in the onsite space is if somebody lives within 10 miles, we know that they'll access the clinic. They'll go there for the prescriptions. They'll go there for the care versus an urgent care ER. And we can see that within these two locations, about 259 of your members live within that 10 mile radius. And keep in mind, we do provide virtual care at the centers as well. One other thing that I'll mention is that we do have shared sites throughout the nation in different pockets of the country. If you elect to add your members to these shared sites, they have access to those shared sites throughout the country as well. So if they're traveling for vacation and they happen to be where our shared sites are located in Texas or otherwise, they can access those sites as well.

Go ahead.

From an organizational perspective, we do provide the kind of partnership site that Sean mentioned where you build your own clinic and kind of have that upfront capital expense. But as we're looking at the city, it really makes sense to utilize those near site options and that virtual as well. I think it's the lowest cost entry point that you can have with really the biggest bang for the buck.

But we can go to the next one.

I mentioned that we provide virtual primary care. So if a member... can't get from their work to the center within that 10 mile radius, they can schedule online through our portal or through our mobile app and jump right on a call with the provider and have a visit and have a prescription called into their local pharmacy or pick one up or have one mail ordered to them. In addition to that, we do provide 24-7 coverage as well. So if the clinic closes at 5 o'clock and you got a sick two-year-old or an employee sick at 1 o'clock in the morning and they're like, gosh, I don't want to go to the ER, what do I do? They can call our urgent care after hours number and have access to coverage. an actual provider that will take care of them over the phone if they need to triage them and send them to the er they will but if we can prevent that and manage that care and then get a prescription to them first thing in the morning then we'll do that as well right so from a services perspective you might be saying well what you know what do we get if we access this this this clinic. I would tell you that if you think of traditional primary care, so our core services are preventive care, urgent and acute care. Chronic condition management certainly is a big part of what we do. It's really at the core of what we do. And then we also provide labs and vaccines on site as well. And then pharmacy solutions. So dispensing on site or that mail order if you wanted to take part in that. Those are our core services. We do have kind of ancillary services that you could add on. If you said, hey, you know, we're looking at our claims data and we really feel like musculoskeletal is up there or behavioral health. What can you guys do? We could add a provider that's specific to the city that no one else has access to. That's just for you guys. Or we could add a nutritionist or a dietician. It really would be based on the data for you guys and all your claims data to determine what makes the most sense to add. So you have those as options as well. and then certainly occupational health is another part of what we can do whether it's first injury or doing screenings we do firefighter physicals police physicals things like that as well The other question you might have is, how do we know that this is any different than somebody going to an urgent care and they're not going to have access? They're going to have to wait for a long time to get in. What I would tell you is that our average, what we call third next available, which is a national benchmark of access to medical facilities is 1.3 days. And what that means is the third next available appointment not the first one or the second one but the third next available is within 1.3 days so your members would have access to this clinic typically same day next day so that really provides some really good access especially with the decrease in primary care access that we see across the nation okay go ahead go ahead Um, so, so none of this matters if we can't report on it. And if we don't provide solid account management in collaboration with John and the Garen group. So we have a, what we call a triad of leadership, um, both that support our clinical team, as well as the operations of health center. But there's also a day-to-day person that would work with your HR department benefits department to say, Hey, here's what we're seeing in the clinic. Here's what the utilization is. Here's what the volume is. Here's all the chronic conditions that we're managing. And here's all the opportunities, which is really. kind of the meat of what we wanna do when we have people accessing our clinic is to say, hey, it's great that we're engaging with 50% of the population and managing hypertension, diabetes, and asthma, but what can we do to kind of take it to the next level, engage with the other 50% of the population that may be dealing with a chronic condition? So that client success manager would work hand in hand with your benefits department to determine how do we really navigate those waters and make sure that we're engaging in a meaningful way. So from an implementation perspective, this is really more illustrative than anything. You know, with a shared site, we actually can spin it up really quickly within 30 days if we had to, because the clinic is already there, the staff is already there. It's really just a matter of setting up the eligibility file and knowing what kind of access you want to have in services and then kind of rolling with that. But we wanted to kind of give you an idea of what a typical timeline looks like.

Okay. Keep going.

As I mentioned, from a technology perspective, I would say one of the benefits of CarryTC is that outside of our EMR, our technology is proprietary. So when you talk about, you know, hey, we're having an issue with the mobile app or we want to make a change to that, we can make that change in-house. We don't have to wait for a third-party vendor to do that. Same with our portal. If there's some bugs in the system or something's not working right, we troubleshoot that internally for you guys to make sure that we can clean that up. I mentioned high risk before. So whether we're doing occupational health, acute care, somebody's coming in for a vaccine or some prescriptions, at the heart of what we want to do is start looking at chronic conditions. And I think that gets to what Sean was mentioning before in managing your claim spend. If we manage these chronic conditions effectively, that'll continue that downward trend of your medical spend. So it's a big part of our purpose and why we're there. And that shows in our claims data, I'd say. When we look across our book of business at about 117,000 members that accessed our clinics, we said, hey, of those that are using the clinic versus those that aren't, what did we see from a spend perspective? And those that were engaged, meaning they've had one provider visit, not a nurse visit or a coaching visit, an actual provider visit where they received care, the spend annually was $6,800. And then those that weren't engaging were at 16,000. So again, just kind of attributes more of that claim kind of cost control from a carry TC perspective.

All right. Next slide.

So from a cost review here, we're looking at an estimated access a year one from a fixed fee perspective at just that 260,000. And then we pass through things like dispensing, medications, labs, and things like that. So the estimate on that based on what we think engagement would be, would be at 335,000 annually. And I think we have the ROI in here too, if you wanna jump. Maybe the next slide.

We don't have an ROI.

Sean, do you know where the ROI would be? So I can speak to it and we can certainly share it with you guys. So we did an ROI analysis and said, hey, if we're engaged with, I believe it was 25% of the population. So we like to estimate low because we don't want to over promise 25% of the population year one, 30% in year two, and then 35% in year three, maybe within 5%, if I'm recalling correctly. We know in year one, we would be at about a 1.3 ROI. So that's looking at the cost, the $335,000 compared to what we think we would save you in claims, productivity loss, dispense medications, those kind of things. When we look at over a five-year period, the total ROI was 1.6. So we're pretty confident, again, with a low estimate that we would be able to achieve that ROI through the shared site access for your members.

What was the first year? I'm sorry, I don't remember.

1.3. Thank you. And I think we can share that with you guys. If you have it, Sean, I don't know if you have it with you. And those, the claim savings is based specifically on your claims data. We don't have any algorithms or numbers that we're just kind of plugging in on our own. We're really looking at your claim spend and what the Delta is from a 6% trend line.

So you're looking at what we have historically, what medical care our employees have historically used compared to what they could get at the clinic and then the amount of savings.

Yes, ma'am. So one of the pieces of it would be if somebody came in for an urgent care visit and it's a CPT code of a 99213 and that costs $130 in the community. And then if we take over that care and control the cost of that, we're kind of passing that savings on to you guys. as sean said there's there's no co-pays for the clinic the medications are at no cost when somebody comes in for lab work those are passed directly through the so the benefit to the members that they're essentially receiving care at no cost does it increase the cost per member or yeah i mean i i i don't have a dependent on anything i barely pay anything for health insurance will that increase per member

so the or is the city covering this that's what i want to know as far as what they pay out of their paycheck in that regard yeah so right now so i think excellent question to dive into yeah to dive into it a little bit um the most common setup we see is the city essentially pays this on behalf of the members they don't necessarily add it into the medical rate okay um that's the most common setup um there are some entities that have done things like they'll charge a copay at the facility but typically less than the medical plan to incentivize them so maybe they'll do something like a nominal five dollar copay um so there's different ways you could set that up um the norm i would say about 80 to 90 of our clients they don't charge the employee anything for the visit or add to the cost for the administrative. And the goal and the reasoning really with that is we want to remove as many barriers to entry as we can to get people to go. And what Gabe has really given is you know largely what i would call kind of the hard dollar return on investment right so we've given them and we've looked at jointly a bunch of data from your medical plan and said here's where people are going and here's what it costs the one thing i would say you really can't capture in there is let's take someone that is pre-diabetic and doesn't know it because they don't go to the doctor because it's too hard to find a doctor. They don't go get their labs. They don't take maybe a medication when they should be. And then that person progresses to it's too late to intervene with any of those things. And now they have a hospitalization and all those things. How much does that long term save the plan? I believe all those savings exist, so I'm just going to tell you my thoughts on that. I believe they all exist and I think they're real and very tangible, but I also don't like standing up here in front of you and try and tell you, we're going to prevent all these things from happening and here's how much it's going to save you. Because a year down the road, it's very hard for me to prove a heart attack didn't happen. So try and stick a little bit more to the things that largely we can quantify. But I think those things add to the savings beyond that.

Thank you. Okay. Let's just go down the line. Oh, well, let's just go down the line. Everybody wants a voice. Let's just remember it's 530. I don't really want a voice. I just have a couple of questions going on.

have a couple of questions wait hold on because sarah's going to go first go down the line sarah what are the hours of the two that are closest to us hours of operation um so eight to five eight to five typically um if we were to look at um expanding hours that's a possibility too we have some clinics that are open uh with an early day and with one late day we would just have that conversation

Mostly we talked about when it was presented to us that staff doesn't want to take time off work to go to the clinic. And most of our staff works eight to five. So the difference between them having to jog to Boynton or go over here to Dr. G's, and I think they're open until like nine or later. I just want to know, like, what is the likelihood of that happening?

so excellent question and let me again back to my you know not cookie cutter everybody does it a little different but what i will tell you a large number of our clients do and they've done it different ways and some of them started and then they've tweaked um but the best example is like i have a county and what they do is they have eight hours of clinic sick time per year that people can use so they don't have to use their regular sick time so benefit is they get those hours so they're extra incentivized to use the city's clinic where we know they're going to get better care all those things you don't have to do that but that's one way that typically they address that potential challenge is, you know, I have some that have started with unlimited and then candidly, typically anytime you do unlimited, right, it becomes a free for all. So most of them have gone down to kind of like a separate in the payroll system, a separate bank of hours so that, you know, if you think about eight hours, that should be plenty for you throughout the year. You can get in and out to the cities. You'll have no copay. You get the sex time. You don't have to use your other sick time.

Thank you for that.

Yeah. And I would, I would just add to that too. I would say that the other draw for the clinic outside of just the convenience of being able to go with no cost is the experience that your members have is much different than what they experience in the community. So waiting an hour to be seen for five minutes and then seeing a different provider every time you go in is not what happens at carry TC. So typically it's you wait five minutes and our minimum length of appointment is about 30 minutes.

And the providers are the same all the time. All the time. Don't just go there for training.

No, no, no. They're assigned to that clinic. And that member will, if they establish that as their primary care, they won't want to go anywhere else because it's unlike anything they've experienced before. Very, very much is like a white glove service.

Thank you. And what about pediatrics and prenatal care?

So two and up, we can provide acute care services. We do think that mostly the vaccine part of the pediatric care is really meant to be with a pediatrician. That's the right place for that care. But if they have urgent care issues, we can see two and up.

Two and up. But what about prenatal?

no no okay thank you that's all my question okay thank you mr mcvoy yeah i have a couple um first one comment that you wouldn't know necessarily because i suspect you're not right around here you might be somewhere else in the state wellington to me and i suspect to a lot of people in lake worth might as well be naples because the traffic to get east west

I can't tell you when the last time I went to Wellington, whereas I'll go down to Miami sometimes.

I mean, I have different reasons to go. But I think a lot of people, the Wellington Clinic, you won't see anybody show up there. yeah i think i think when we looked at the heat mapping it was who lives within a certain mile radius there will except they're not going to if you're eight to five that's not going to help them because they're at work they'll get there at six leaving here if they leave here at five probably close to six before they get there and you're closed so i would add to that commissioner is just think about the dependence as well the what the dependence

So your employees, but if their spouse lives halfway between here and there and the kids get out of school, it does open that up. I agree with you. I know that drive feels like going to Miami. But when you think about, and that's why we did that heat mapping, because it's it's not going to help your employees that are here during the day but it may help well where's the point in one yeah yeah there's a bit of a height too yeah better at least it's east um i didn't look where i'm it's right off now it's basically right off 95 right on the uh other kind of side of that street where lowe's is so pretty quick pretty quick drive that one

That one will get more use.

And I would add that both would provide the virtual care aspect as well. So if somebody were to establish care and they know that that's their primary care.

There's lots of different virtual care. And I don't. It depends on, I mean, I think the idea and the idea of trying to provide more benefits.

I'm sorry, could you speak into your mic, Commissioner?

Thank you. The idea and the idea of trying to provide more benefits to employees is great. I'm all for that. And, you know, it seems like a pretty intelligent way to try to lower costs. I'm just trying to get to the... Is this, are people gonna use it? And I think a key piece, what you said, you'll be seeing the same doctor. What's your turnover of medical staff? Is it pretty low?

It is low. I think the number was above 90% for providers this past year.

90% non. Correct. Right. Correct.

That will help. Yeah. And just to add to that, you go from having providers that are working in an environment that is really about volume, seeing 30 patients a day in a primary care office to seeing about 10 to 15 patients a day. So really, it is a huge difference. And life of work balance is really

yeah no that's good and so it's good if you you're able to attract good people and keep them sure which is an issue we think about around here um will you have x-ray machines there no but we do have contracted rates um in in the area with um x-ray facilities that are low-cost high high outcome facilities that we can bring to the table as well What about, you mentioned preventative care. We have a lot of employees work outside. What about doing dermatology, the standard inspection?

Yeah, we can do skin screenings. We can even come to health fair events and help support those events to provide screenings. And one of the things that we like to say is we meet the patient where they are. So if you have those tough departments like facilities or transportation that don't like to go to the doctor, well, we'll go to those facilities and have time spent there with them as well on site.

So you could, you could moldily do those six months screenings or whatever. That's right. And people could just do that there. That's right. Well, I'm going to quit paying my 70 copay and do it with you guys. But I had a couple more. I would, I would think a lot if we were to sign on, I would think about, is there a way to extend the hours? I don't think the eight o'clock in the morning is going to be that big a deal, but the later.

Yeah, one of the things we do beforehand or can do is a culture fit. And we can send surveys out to your members to say, hey, when do you want to access care the most? And then we can make adjustments based on that. We'd hate to say, yeah, we're going to do three early days and then your members never want to use it. So we do that culture fit assessment beforehand.

proactive I think this was something that Cigna did uh which I have through the city I believe um they had somebody they were contract with somebody would call up and kind of be your health coach mostly to kick your butt if you're being diabetic or if you're not doing enough exercise or whatever and they would bug you I think I scared him off at some point but um that was very helpful is that something that your preventative part would do to develop a relationship wouldn't necessarily have to be the the primary doctor it could be you know could be a variety of people but in terms of their training but in terms of really staying on people yeah I mean I suspect I'm different than some but I'm probably not that different than many with a little bit of a hey you need to you scared him off I just haven't seen them in a while. It was quite effective. And I thought it was a really positive preventive thing. You know, they can work on nutrition. They can work on exercise. Did you really sign up for the gym? Did you go to the gym? Right. Et cetera. And that seems like things that would, in terms of what you said, the hard return on investment, this would be in the non-hard, but potentially very major health benefits and benefits.

cost ones yeah and it is something that we do i would say that from our perspective we're in the relationship business so it's not just a transactional experience that patients come in and have it really is about building that relationship and having that provider and that clinical team know those patients and it does involve follow-ups there's things built in within our emr to indicate to the provider hey this person hasn't followed up or we haven't closed out this referral yet We sent them information on health coaching. Let's follow up with them after three months, six months. There's messages.

Do you coach out of that clinic, the health coaching, or do you contract that out?

Yeah, it's typically done out of the clinic. I would say that the one part that isn't done out of the clinic is if we send a referral out and some information comes back or we need to get additional information, then there's a team at Care ATC that reaches out to that member to say, hey,

know we haven't did you go to get you know did you see that specialist how can we help you support that um and is the model or the intended model that a fair number of employees might make your physician their primary physician

Yes. I mean, what we would say is if somebody has a primary care physician in the community, that's a good relationship and long lasting. Great. We can support that. We can actually see people in between those visits and make sure they're taking the right meds and there's no conflicts in what they're being prescribed and that kind of stuff. But more often than not, if we get somebody in the clinic, they want that person to be the primary care. I'm telling you, it's the patient experiences, unlike anything they're going to see out in town.

So that seems like a pretty big benefit.

It really is. And that's why we say from an engagement perspective, the only way the ROI works is if we're engaging with those larger percentages of your population. It can be great if we get above that 50% mark and keep it growing. But even at 25%, you're going to see that ROI in place.

would think that there were let's uh chris i hate to cut you off but we're at 5 40. do you have questions more questions no i'm just going to say in terms of of whether we should approve this and and you know because there's an expense to the city for it i would guess that word of mouth that if you have that experience with the position then people start switching making that their primary position oh yeah that's going to spread Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

So let's see what Anthony's questions are, Mr. Segrich, and then we'll see if you have any more you can chirp in. But let's keep going and make sure everybody gets a chance.

Thank you. I'll try to keep this kind of direct and pointed. Was there an official competitive bid process? And if so, who are the other vendors?

So there was not an official competitive bid process. We went to about- That's fine.

Yeah. So no competitive bid process. Do you have a vendor comparison matrix for us?

So when we went out, we did a request for information from our office and looking at the models, no one else had a center nearby where we felt it made any sense to bring it to us. Okay.

And I know a lot of times, advisor groups and so on receive financial benefit from products and services that they bring to us. Do you receive any financial benefit from this?

No, sir. We do not receive any payment. What is the length of the contract?

Three years with two one-year renewals.

Okay.

Specifically, how does it reduce cost? The specific, I'll jump in here from the health insurance side first. The way that the costs are reduced is essentially by moving those services out of the health plan, out of the health systems at a higher cost into the health center at a lower cost. To what Gabe said, the one caveat with that is people have to go in order for that to work.

So is it the case that Cigna would no longer be paying for these visits or Cigna would be paying a lower cost?

Cigna would no longer be paying for the visits, which would reduce the claims experience, which would then- So basically the city's fronting 350,000 or so dollars.

Our people are using this and those do not become Cigna claims. So the theory is that our policy premium does not go up.

Yes, sir.

Is that correct? Would it be the case that our policy premium would go down? Because right now I believe it's 1.7 we pay in insurance or something. I'm not sure. How much savings on our policy premium are you anticipating?

So that was the ROI that was up.

And the ROI, 1.3 in year one, based on the engagement that we talked about.

So our overall medical premiums would go down by 1.3?

uh that was the roi the number actually was i think 300 was the roi dollars do you have it up i don't know if it could be split up again 335 times 1.3 yep anticipated reduction anticipated reduction in our signal costs yes sir that the city pays or that individuals pay So ultimately there's a total bill to Cigna and then the city divides and figures out how much the employees pay. So ultimately that reduces, that potentially reduces both based on employees pay kind of a set percentage.

okay um so we as the city we we don't self-insure our medical to my knowledge we don't self-insure our workers comp separate do we self-insure our workers come yeah okay so we we pay out of pocket for our workers comp claims yes yeah Okay, that's fine. No, that that seems to be the area of most potential savings, I would think, you know, somebody goes and hurts their ankle on the job, they would go to this clinic, and we would not have to pay

No. Through workers' comp, we have certain contracted vendors through our workers' comp. So our risk adjusters work with these guys. If we decide that we like Care ATC, we can expand their services. This is just a trial basis to work on regular employees. The risk is managed separately through a different insurance company and through our TPA and all that stuff. So right now, we're not looking at that. We're just testing it to see if it works.

Got it. So we wouldn't have the direct pay savings. Not on the workers' comp. Purely be premium savings.

Premium savings and cost of service.

Yes. Cost of service signifies one way or the other. Right. That's a fair assessment. Okay, so is it fair to say that not having a copay and not really paying for prescription is the biggest draw to this? It's huge. That's giant. Sure. On average, how many visits do we have per employee per year?

I have no idea because that's confidential under HIPAA. I don't know who goes to the doctor for what or when. I have no idea. That's confidential information.

So the reason why I asked that, let's say your average employee goes and visits the doctor four times a year, which depending on age bracket, I could consider either heavy or not, even if you do it five or six times a year. if the city were to choose just to pay their companies a little fun together we're talking 70 to 100 000 a year um so for for me it's hard to justify the roi on it because we're coming out of pocket as a city, 300 and some odd thousand dollars. I'm not so sure if we don't have those numbers that we're spending 300 and some odd thousand dollars on COVID or on medical, the RX that we would be seeing that level. I mean, that would be the employee savings, which doesn't save the city money. It's a great benefit for our employees. I understand that and would drive them there. But I'm having trouble reconciling this turning into, do we know our total premium number? 4.8 million. 4.8 million. So we'd be looking at hoping for a 10% savings in our premium.

But keep in mind, it is not necessarily that our premiums are going to go down. They may not go up as exponentially high as some of the other premiums. Because a lot of these, especially these new exciting drugs, one catastrophic illness can kill us. So that's what we're trying to look at. We're just trying to reduce. I mean, literally. And yeah, sorry.

So let's take that scenario. Let's say we do have, tragically, several catastrophic illnesses, and they go and utilize your services. Are you taking care of catastrophic?

So not typically. We try to prevent them. So the goal would be to prevent the catastrophic.

The goal is a lot of people are afraid to go to the doctor or can't afford to go to the doctor. So if they go to the doctor and hopefully catch it ahead of time, then we don't have as many catastrophic claims.

And the fear of going to the doctor is largely driven by that copay.

It is.

Right. So I don't know. In my opinion, with the lack of an official competitive bid process, I would ask procurement whether we can even engage into a contract like this.

Well, actually, we have discussed with procurement. I believe Valentina is here. And of course I would not suggest that we do anything illegal.

I'm not saying that.

Valentina Sesteta, Assistant Finance Director. So we have multiple options. We could piggyback on the contract, which our code allows us to do that. So we have looked at, it's been now some time, and we can look at the Boynton Agreement, for example, that was the one of the modules, models that we looked at. That would be one option. The other option is that you do have a right to choose this if you want to. Going for a competitive process, we usually rely on the caring group to do this on our side. So our third party providers does what they're good at, choosing our medical providers. We do not go out to bid for the insurance. They do that on our behalf. That is part of their services. Okay.

So it sounds like it is a viable option for us on the legal standpoint. That's good to know. Where I'm kind of at it with it is, I tend to think the Commodity Commission in Malaga is rather poignant. Dr. G's is right here. But there are a lot closer places. Wellington and Boynton Beach to me are further away. we implemented some sort of program of helping with upfront co-pays or with Rx, it could probably be done a heck of a lot cheaper.

Yeah, but then they would have to ask us for, tell us where they're going, ask us for money. Each individual, that would be, that could be a little bit violation of HIPAA.

Generally what we would do, yeah. And also generally what we do is that's something that we'd negotiate in our policy renewal. So it's not something that you generally just say, here's 70s, whatever, because it's different co-pays for different things. It's different co-pays for different medicines, different co-pays for different kinds of specialists. None of our business.

We could subsidize it with Cigna.

It's something that we would negotiate with Cigna in our renewal.

Right. So Cigna, we're going to pay you an extra hundreds of thousands of dollars, and you lower the co-pays.

Yeah, I don't know what the impact would be. Sean, what would you think the impact would be if we got rid of our co-pays on negotiating on our renewal?

Probably somewhere 6% to 9% guessing, but I would have to look at that.

All right. Are you finished with questions? I just had one question that wasn't asked yet. I don't remember what it is, so I think I'm okay with it right now. Oh, no, I know what it was. So when you were showing the slide where you had the different modules, where's that slide? Where did it go? Here it is. So this one. So these optional, optional, optional, optional, we would not get for the $334,000.

Correct. And what we typically do if you wanted to add any of the services on there is we would look at what volume you typically see. And then if it's something we can't absorb with our current staffing levels, then it would be included. But if it was something much higher, then we would let you know what the cost would be for that.

Okay. The other question I have is, do all of the, so you said we were talking about the hours and well, what if, I mean, obviously Boynton and Wellington are okay with eight to five. Well, what if we wanted 10 to six or 10 to seven and they didn't because there's three cities going in on one care site? How do the decisions get made?

Right. So it's a conversation. Right. So we would look at what hours you would look at and then we would have conversations with those clients as well to say, hey, does this make sense?

Right.

I'm not on the operations side, but I would say we probably did an analysis with them to say, when do your members need to access the clinic? And the virtual care must have been able to be enough to cover when they needed access.

Right. And the virtual care has no copay either?

No.

Do you guys know what our virtual care copay is?

Okay. $70.

$70? Wow. That's a lot.

Just to talk to them. Versus zero.

Versus zero.

Right.

Yeah, that is a lot. I think that in itself is a decision.

Yeah. And again, I would... Huh?

The city's just paying. It's not like the money goes away. The city's paying for it up front.

Right. But it's not like we are creating millionaires here. If we can save them some money, that would be very beneficial. We're talking about paycheck to paycheck with families that we... employ support and want to make sure that they're as healthy as they can be in my and I believe that's the goal yeah um okay we've got two more lights and it's it's 553 so let's cruise on through over

I just think that I'm not just thinking of the employees. I'm thinking about the family, people who have two and three and four children and a spouse at home. That adds up. And kids get sick a lot. They're walking cesspools of germs. So I'm just being honest. They are sickly on a regular basis, especially when they're young or they're involved in schools and stuff. I would love to have something else to... move us along on how do we become a better employer and when people think of being employed at the city lakewood beach we take your health serious we take your mental health serious and our our hr department's done a great job with that with all of our outreach and the dermatology and the mammogram and all the mammal van and all of that but i would like some more information i do support a program like this i don't know if this is exactly it only because the hours are a big deterrent for me i I'm surprised I didn't bankrupt the city last year. The mental health isn't included. That's what I said. Mental health, I think, is just as important, if not more important in today's day and age. So I would like to look at what the cost would be to have that included. But I do want to continue this conversation, not obviously at six minutes to six, but I think that we need more information. I do support a program like this for employees.

Great. And also just to address the issue of the mental health, we have expanded. We are looking at switching our EAP provider and our mental health care provider. So they'll be giving 10 free sessions to our employees and their dependents. So. What's that? So we're handing the mental health separately and that will be those will be 10 free sessions for the employees. And, you know, then if they need more, even if they don't have health care through us. No, they have to be, actually the EAP, they don't have to be on our healthcare. Okay, thank you.

All right. And I would add from a mental health perspective that while we're not providing the counseling services that are listed on there as an option, our providers are doing depression and anxiety screenings, PHQ-9 and PHQ-2 screenings. And then they work with your EAP to refer out if they need to, but they're doing a lot of counseling on their own as a primary care provider, more than most.

Okay, Mr. McVoy.

No, he has less than that. We need a comfort break. I do support the concept. Also, I, too, have the concern about the hours, especially because Boynton is a little bit of a hike and Wellington is more. So I would be open to some adjustment on that. My impression, I hear my colleagues' concern about bidding process. How long has the Gearing Group been involved with the city? At least 10 years, 15 years?

I don't know the exact count, but definitely the last, I would say, seven to eight renewals.

I think it's quite a while. i i think let's see i i've been here 10. and i think it was before that uh they were here and then they they came back so i think since they've been here at least eight or nine years since i've come back yeah and and my impression um is that they're pretty good at looking out for our interests and have been pretty successful with helping us with the rates um

I would actually go as far as I think they're the best locally. The Gehrings have an excellent reputation. Kurt Gehring is the best in the business and just their ethics and their quality of their work product. I can't say enough about the Gehrings. And I think other cities, if you asked around, would say the same.

That's kind of my impression also, although it's not my immediate area, but over the years, that's been my impression. And I think if they have vetted and said, well, look, you know, there might be another competitor who provides something similar, but their offices are in Tampa. Well, that's not terribly helpful. And if ours, because of our employee size, not being the 800-1000, we're not going to be able to absorb the startup costs of you know if you could boot out dr g's and put it right there i think you'd in like flint but um i think what what we potentially we would get be getting out of this is not so much the co-pays or the the free prescription so and that's important and that's part of getting people in it's the building of relationship with the staff and more time for the staff because it's a different model than than some of the other things that to me would be the big benefits and i agree with the analysis that although you don't want to over promise beyond the hard costs it is pretty reasonable to assume that if this thing gets going it works which it seems likely but

uh could we arrange a way to visit the clinic in boynton i think that would be helpful yeah that's a good idea i think that there's the less tangible returns the other thing i would say too is that if and when you know we get to a point of contracting hours of the clinic or something that's contracted so that's a conversation we would have with you guys and if if we you know obviously would look to come to an agreement on what those would make the most sense for your members as well

So I'll just real quick, I know you have two minutes. Thank you for the opportunity to present this as a concept. We've heard a lot of the feedback and we'll work with the staff to definitely work on some of those tweaks. I don't know if you guys want to close with anything, but I'm a time person. So I just wanted to say thank you and thank you for the great discussion. And we'll take some of that back and see where we can make some adjustments.

Excellent. And then when you guys do come back, Lauren, would you make sure that some of the data Points are there those that commissioner Segrich asked for. Okay. All right. Thank you. Motion to adjourn. Is this a workshop? We don't need a motion. Do we?

We do not need a motion.

And ladies and gentlemen, we're excited that there's so many people here tonight. If you are here in to speak on. Non-agenda items regarding the city commissioner. The item has. the current interim city manager city manager i meant the interim city manager has decided not to put his name in so um if you're here to speak about that um you don't need to uh but you are more than welcome to thank you let's look at this well i know that's why my lord it's your job it's my job i got it i got it no i got it words you are the vice public yes says crunch

english is a very weird language it has crazy spelling so yes i do no no no it's not it we're very lucky you learned organically spanish is totally public hearing a short-term rentals right you can say you can say write it

All right, so STR comes after that. Then Cooper. Then Signed Spaces. And 9th Avenue. All right. Melissa, are you there?

Yes, I am here, Madam Vice Mayor.

Okay, I didn't know. I had already asked you to start the meeting, but maybe you didn't hear me.

I'm sorry. I was in the restroom. I apologize.

No worries. Everybody has to use the restroom. So yeah, we're ready to go.

It is 6-11 and we are live streaming.

excellent thank you uh welcome everybody to the city of lake worth beach regular commission meeting on august 25th 2026 um we're going to have the moment of silence or the invocation by vice mayor vice mayor that's me sorry uh by sarah maliga our commissioner of district one and then the pledge of allegiance by commissioner anthony segrich

Thank you all for indulging. We're going to have a little lesson on grace tonight. Giving grace is the act of extending unconditional acceptance, kindness, and forgiveness to someone often when they may not seem to deserve it. Core meaning, giving grace involves offering compassion, understanding, and forgiveness voluntarily and without an obligation. It is rooted in the idea of seeing beyond a person's faults and recognizing their humanity and potential, allowing them a chance to improve or heal without holding past mistakes against them. Grace can be expressed through patience, empathy, acts of kindness, and it does not mean condoning harmful behavior or ignoring personal boundaries. And the reason I bring this forward is there is somebody who sits up on this commission that I've extended grace to multiple times for unbecoming, inappropriate, unprofessional behavior of a public official while on city business. I have extended grace to the same individual when they've not been on a pre-agenda meeting by sending them a courtesy text message. I have extended them grace when they've been late for a meeting. And never once has any of this been called to light because I don't believe in that. I'm still not going to do it. But what I will say is I will not ever stand up here and tolerate anyone calling out any of our staff, belittling the people who represent this city, who the residents stand behind, who work countless hours until 11 o'clock midnight in this city so that the residents can have the best experience that they can have. There is no reason to slander or to grossly humiliate anyone via text message, via email, or via social media. I will not stand up here and tolerate it. The person who I'm speaking of, I'm sure knows what I'm talking about. But when this person was elected, made a very large mistake that some people had to call me down over because I thought it was completely inappropriate. And to say the least, should have called for action to be done. So I just want us all to be graceful and knowing that we're not perfect. We as electeds do the best that we can do up here to serve everybody, not just a select few. But it is not our jobs. to call out staff and humiliate them. You wanna know why we have turnover? Because this city hall, this city has become so unfun to work in that staff doesn't wanna be here. Why should they take time from their families until 11 o'clock at night or be here at eight o'clock in the morning for our events when they're not appreciated, when they're humiliated and I'm not gonna tolerate it. So let us continue to go in grace for one another and for our city.

It's reason to be. To be. To be. To be. To be.

all right thank you um speaking of grace this is my first time running the meeting um i've run a lot of the free agenda meetings but not the actual meeting so just remember to be nice to me tonight guys um what do we have first we have any additions deletions or reordering i don't have anything madam vice mayor thank you seeing none we will continue with the agenda as it is and we're going to start with mr liberty or somebody that not mr liberty i think brian's here not mr liberty mr brian he's going to give us the electric utility update followed by the water utility update by this baker all right so i'm not going to be up here like ed and go on for 45 minutes i know you guys

but I'll do the short version, hit on a couple of points, and then let's see if any questions. So interesting, last month in July- Brian, introduce yourself. Oh, I'm sorry. Brian King, Assistant Director, Electric Generation and T&T Operations.

Thank you.

So interesting information that we're getting from July. Our peak load in July was 101 megawatts, just over 101.2. And that was a decrease of about 3% over July of 2025. A decrease in our peak load. But if you look at the delivered kilowatts um july 2026 versus july 2025 um it increased by five percent over five percent five point fifty percent so our our peak demand went down um but the delivery kilowatts um went up by five percent um and year to date we're up uh physical year to date we're up three and a half percent over same time period in 2025. So what does that mean? It could be time of day usage where our peak is normally between five or six. Maybe people are moving, maybe they're charging their cars later during the overnight or something. So that could explain why the peak demand is lower, yet the delivered kilowatts are still are still higher. and while it's still in august we don't have all the august numbers yet we did hit 105.1 the other day and that is a wreck it's a new record for lakewood beach so um it's been hot it's been hot yeah um so that just points to the utility the utility is growing the business the business is growing but it's interesting because if you go back um you know about nine years ago um Brett KenCairn, This this wouldn't be possible this hundred five megawatts wouldn't be possible with our with our single timeline our distribution and substations they were outdated they were disrepair. Brett KenCairn, And we would be struggling to say least to keep up with this demand this this meeting would would be very different if it was nine years but i'm pumped. But, you know, the infrastructure upgrades, the second tie line, the technology upgrades that we've done, the upgrades to the substations, the substation equipment, the conversion from 4KV to 26, all of these investments in the system and now allows us to grow and meet this customer demand, this peak, new record peak for Lake Worth Beach. So that just goes to show, you know, what this commission, what previous commissions, what, um, uh, all of these, uh, dedicated electric utility workers, all my coworkers, uh, and under, you know, obviously edge direction that we've really transformed this utility over the last 10 years. You can see it, um, with the fact that we hit these new peaks and we're still chugging along. You know it doesn't mean we're done there's still plenty of work to do to continue hard in the system and to ensure customer reliability so we're just going to continue to move forward and keep improving that system. um so that segs me segues me into this next topic here the underground bore across the intercoast okay so that is that project has kicked off you will see equipment down there there's staging equipment we have fenced it all off there's no access to anybody outside of the workers there you'll start seeing pipes materials equipment um and once they start drilling which scheduled for the 26th 27th look back at my colleague there for confirmation

um yeah it should last about 47 days that's the schedule 47 days so figure early to mid-october um that project 47 days monday through friday eight to five correct okay i don't know if it's eight to five i don't think yeah okay i just didn't know if it'd be weekends too is there any way to get any of that parking space back on the weekends to bring closer the thing and then put it back

I do not believe that would be possible. Okay.

I just thought I would ask.

Great question. Okay. So now let's move on to PCA. Okay. Unfortunately, the PCA lost some ground again this month. So it came in at about a negative $213,000. And so why is that? Why are we losing on this PCA? So most of this is attributed to gas costs. When we did the PCA adjustment, which took place March 1st, we calculated those numbers in January. We gotta bring it to you in January, at the end of January meeting, and it went into effect March 1st. So the projections for delivered gas in January when we did it was $3.81. actual delivered gas for July came in $4 at 79 cents. That's the average. And it got as high as $5.56 on a couple of days. So had gas remained originally, as we projected, at $3.81, the PCA would have seen an increase of over 200,000. But with gas going up, being over $4, almost $5, the PCA came in negative. And it's it's not the gas that's causing the higher pricing it's the transportation it's moving it and getting it down to South Florida is the cost that's where the lion's share of these excess costs are coming from it's not necessarily the gas is still trading it what we projected it would be at the hub in January it's the transportation to get it down here piping moving through Florida South Florida it's just constrained it's just constraints and it's there But there is some good news on the other side of that. Just last month in July, the Florida Energy Pathway was announced. That is a new gas pipeline that would open up gas transportation specifically in South Florida. It's a 97 mile pipe, 24 inch diameter that would move an additional 250 million standard cubic feet per day of natural gas. So that project was just announced. It's expected to be in service in 2030. Oh, my God. But that would really...

Right around the corner.

Yeah, right around the corner. But that would relieve gas pricing transportation costs. So what does that do for us, DCI? As you know, we do have that seasonal capacity that we do market. We have capacity on the FGT line. We have it from, it's seasonal, May through October, and we bundle and sell that, the capacity and the gas under contract. So while the PCA is underperforming because of the gas costs, the bundle capacity in gas is overperforming, or it's bringing in higher revenues than we originally expected. So I don't want to speak for Ed, but there's been some discussions about possibly bringing some of that revenue over the PCA to relieve some of that PCA expenses. As mentioned by Ed at the last meeting, we're also looking at moving some of our supplemental megawatts from the PCA into base, which would help lower some of the swings that we see in the PCA. We're waiting for our cost of service study to be completed, and then we'll take a look at, hey, can we move some of these As Ed mentioned, the 11 megawatts from Stan. Can we take some of those 11 megawatts, which were in PCA, which are now supplemental, and move them over to base? So we're going to have those discussions.

Do you have a question? Go ahead.

Thank you, Brian. You had just mentioned the new gas line that's coming in. Does that have to do with, I know there's another gas line that's coming in in the middle of Florida for a possible, dare I say, data center. Does that have anything to do with that?

No, that's not really.

So they're going to have their own separate gas lines. That's not going to be ones that we're going to tie into.

I don't know off the top of my head, but I can do some research and find out. Okay, thank you. This Florida Energy Pathway, I'm really interested.

Okay. If you could find out, because I do know that they just approved one to go through the middle of Florida for data centers. Okay, yep. I'm pretty sure that they're using it just for data centers, but if you could find out. I will find out. Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead.

Okay. So that's kind of, that's cool. I want to hit on those topics, let you know about our, our peak, let you know that the boring project has kicked off and then obviously discuss the PCA. So, um, I'll keep it short and sweet and I'll reserve, I'll give them my time back.

All right. Sounds good. Seeing no lights. Thank you very much. And then Mrs. Baker, I know I yield my time to the, the Senator of the great state of, of water.

Hello. Hello. Von Baker, Water Utilities. I'm actually going to be sitting over here today because there's something that I want to show you on the computer after I get my update. So to start, I'm going to give a brief overview of some really exciting news that I shared in the pre-agenda meeting, but I figured I would just share it again here publicly. And that is that the very... high priority project that we have going on with the sub-regional sewer system on south palm land south lakeside um we have had a a break in the case so to speak where in the midst of the study it was discovered that there is essentially you know compacted grit and debris in the bottom of that pipe that is occupying about a quarter of the capacity so it it's not cheap but we do have an opportunity to immediately take action on this clean those pipes Um, the schedule estimated is going to be 15 days, so hopefully it will, you know, it will be overnight work and hopefully it will not be too disturbing. Um, I think they'd be okay with that. I would agree. I would hope so. Um, but, and, and ultimately I would like to say that the, the operation would only be in front of any one person's house for one night because they're, they're moving along the path of the pipe. Um, If we are able to restore that 25-ish percent capacity to those pipes, I think that it would immediately alleviate some of the issues that the residents have brought to us and hopefully give us you know like i said just some some respite while we pursue this longer term capital improvement project which is still underway the study is just on pause because the flow monitoring devices that they were trying to install in the manholes were unable to be installed because of this um so i i think that's very good news do you need to bring something in front of us to get it to happen i am bringing it on september 15th that was the soonest possible agenda um so please look out for that i've already written the staff report i've been negotiating the proposal and we should have um i let them know the deadline so we should have everything ready to go on monday for the agenda review okay so september 15th okay thank you The second thing that I would like to discuss tonight on August 12th, I attended the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council training on extreme rainfall modeling. So actually, I know, Commissioner, that you were attending a meeting on Friday. So this was my first experience with that organization. And I am glad I went to the training because it was in Stuart and I was really, really busy and I almost didn't go. But I went to this presentation and it was all about their modeling efforts, extreme rainfall. So in 2022, the Rebuild Florida program, which I guess was funding allocated after Hurricane Irma, gave the CDBG MIT the mitigation grant to the East Central Regional Planning Council. I'm going to be reading a lot because there's a lot of words that I can't memorize here about one and a half million dollars to do this extreme rainfall modeling project in collaboration with the other Florida regional planning councils. So what was unique about this model that they did and they went through all of the methodology and all of the technical it it's pretty insane. I mean, you think what will a million and a half dollars pay for in terms of hydraulic modeling but this was this was really crazy um so this model combined not only the you know physical flood depths physical characteristics um modeling future rainfall and intensity and the critical assets as defined by the dep which think public safety health care government operations evacuation routes It also incorporated a social vulnerability index in which they included, but is obviously not limited to, there was much more than this, the percentage of unemployment and poverty, the percentage of renters in an area, percentage of subsidized housing in an area. percentage of people with disabilities in an area, percentage of females in an area, incorporating all of these different factors into what they called the social vulnerability index. So in conjunction with the actual rainfall modeling of how would it impact buildings, critical assets, infrastructure, they incorporated this social vulnerability index to identify the highest risk areas that are going to be the most sensitive to flood hazards. and out of the four counties in our region the treasure coast region they identified seven very small areas as priority areas and lake worth beach is one of them so There are pros and cons. The cons obviously being we are at high risk. The pros being this is something that I very much intend to try to leverage for funding opportunities. So, yeah. in this presentation that they gave and and the training essentially they have tools that you can that anybody can access online um but what was a little bit disheartening is out of the seven areas they selected two to do conceptual designs for and these were beautiful plans like storm water parks and like you know linear um storm water flows through neighborhoods and We. I mean, personally, I think we were not chosen because it would be difficult because we have so many challenging factors that these other communities did not have. We are coastal. We not only have the rainfall, but we have the title influence. We have. barely any vacant land so a lot of these ideas to make you know gorgeous beautified stormwater parks are not ideal for our area um we have historic neighborhoods at very low elevations some more than likely lower than the sea level at this point in time at least during high tides and then obviously our aging stormwater infrastructure So what I would like to show you, and I'm a bit nervous to do this without help from IT because I don't want to mess up. But the website is perilofblood.org. Peril, P-E-R-I-L. Do you want? Oh, here comes Julie. Okay, good.

Thank you.

I don't want to mess up the Zoom. I just need a browser window. Yes. Of flood.

P-E-R-I-L. Of flood.org.

There it is, the first one. so this website that they have created from all of oh sorry okay Does this mask work? Okay, so I was just going to kind of navigate the website a little bit with you guys, because I think it's something you would all be interested in checking out. They have created this website statewide. And it includes resources about flooding as well as maps that are interactive with their modeling results. So what I would like to show you tonight just for the sake of presentation. If it will let me Maybe it's not going to let me. I was on the website on my computer in my office earlier, so I don't think it would be blocked. But anyways, you know.

Vaughn, do you want me to try from my computer and I could share my screen? Yeah, that would be great. So you said it's peril, P-E-R-I-L, of... Flood.org.

And then we're able to load the homepage, but when I click on the interactive web tool, it's not pulling up.

Okay. So I, oh, here, let's see. Interactive web tool. Yeah, I just have a white screen.

Interesting.

Here, let's. Oh, wait. Oh, there it is taking a minute to load.

Yeah, we got it.

Okay.

We have it on our computer too. Or if you want to drive, all I really wanted to show was that you can zoom into Lake Worth beach. Oh, it is back to us. Thank you. So as you can see, we have the treasure coast area. There are the seven very tiny areas. And if we come in here, we are in Lake Worth Beach. These hexagons were created to identify quarter mile. It's not technically a radius, but quarter mile areas. to be able to show you know where the highest risk happens and we have a couple of the the very red ones here and also listed or symbolized on this map are critical facilities our health care facilities our water facilities um so it i mean it's Such an impressive undertaking that they did, but I figured I would just let you guys know that this website is here. It includes resources and I plan to have a meeting with the team that presented this along with. um if they are available to join me hopefully the director of community sustainability and the director of public works because this will very likely not be just a stormwater infrastructure effort it will be of course community-wide effort um to to meet with this team and pick their brain about next steps and how we can pursue funding opportunities with their designation excellent uh questions uh commissioner malika were you first

Yes. I just have a question. Can you tell us who did get chosen and was it in our area? So you mean for the rest of these priority areas? Yeah. You said there were two that were chosen. We did not get chosen for the wonderful robotics that they created that we don't get to...

one was called i want to say like oh this one at gifford that was one of the ones that they created a conceptual plan for the other one was called i want to say more haven in fort pierce um i'm not sure if i'm zooming in on the right area more haven in fort pierce west coast okay so yes

Thank you, Mr. McCoy.

Thank you. And you mentioned that some of those places that had these really nice looking plans had stormwater flowways and stormwater essentially recharge areas. And we can't do that because we don't have open space. We don't have swales along roads and things. what we do have is the space on individual lots and i guess i'm looking for a little bit of feedback on when we set requirements of how much impervious space on each lot is allowed or how pervious that material needs to be we are particularly that's particularly important in our community because we don't have those other spaces non-lot spaces And I think that's something that I would, I've mentioned this before, I would like to see some education that when we put requirements on homeowners that have a lot, it's not just because we're trying to be annoying as a city, it's because this has a direct impact both on storm water in our runoff and also on our water supply because you want to be recharging it you want to be recharging it as cleanly as possible so it's it's it's particular because we were built out early and we just don't have much open space um we have a little bit of long bout well but that's about it and it's unfortunate because it's not something where we can go back and retrofit these things that require you know land it requires space yes so and and yes i was up at the treasure coast at their beautiful building i'm

oh my uh training that i went to was the stewart library which is also a beautiful building has a wonderful maker space um yeah but they remembered that you came and were appreciative that you did well it was funny because i went to introduce myself after the presentation because i want to make this connection and have a meeting and i was wearing my lake worth beach water utility shirt and she looked at me and she goes oh it's you oh that's great all right thank you um mr zagarich go ahead

Thank you very much. Definitely very interesting data and interesting stuff there. And hopefully we'll be able to secure some funding because of that. I wanted to thank you for the diligent work from the South Park neighborhood perspective. I see a couple of members in the crowd, and I'm sure they are happy to hear that. At least in the interim, we have something that could generate some relief and 25% is no small number.

No, it's not. I really, really hope that it will alleviate some of the issues.

Because they are in the crowd, and I know each time I ask the same question, but it's important, I feel, for them to hear the ongoing thoughts on the schedule. For the more permanent fix, what is our rough timeline for that?

Now, unfortunately, we're on hold because we can't continue the study until this cleaning is done. If you all approve this project at the September 15th meeting, the cleaning is expected to begin within two weeks of our notice to proceed, which I would give the day after. So that takes us into October and then the cleaning is expected to take, like I said, 15 days. Hopefully it can be limited to that. So, you know, I would say that the study can come back on track. in late October, November, if everything goes exactly according to plan. Once the study is complete, I now anticipate that it's very likely we will have this project designed in fiscal year 27, but constructed in fiscal year 28. however i think that this delay is really fortunate because of the reason for it being a like i said very very hopeful immediate alleviation of these problems that's fantastic thank you um melissa yes madam vice mayor is there any way to push this to the first

I'm sorry, push what?

Vaughn's ask regarding the cleaning out of the pipes.

I don't have the final backup documents yet because I sent revisions to the proposal today.

So that would be a no, but I wanted to at least ask. Thank you. If I was sitting on this side of the dice, that's what I would want. I know, I know. Okay, thanks for clarifying that. Anything else? That was all I had for you tonight.

Let's see if you have questions.

Any other questions? Nope. Thank you. all right so that brings us to um public participation of non-agenda items and the consent agenda and i just there was a couple who came in late not late but um after i had made a announcement before and uh I just want to let people know that if you are here to speak on behalf of the city manager hiring process regarding Mr. Perry, he has decided that he is not going to go forward with the city manager, permanent city manager position. So I'll say the name of the person to come speak. You come up, you say your name, you say your address, and then you have, what is it, three minutes or two minutes, Melissa?

Three minutes for public participation.

Thank you. Three minutes. So I'll give the name of the first person and then whoever's on deck. So the first person is Catherine Kohlmeier, followed by Ginny Powell.

I'm going to go first. Katherine may or may not follow me. OK. Jenny Powell, 224 North Palm Way. Last Wednesday in the PBSO presentation at the Municipal Institute, we learned that PBSO is starting up the Citizen Observer Patrol again, which I'm very happy to hear. And I made that known at the time. During the Q&A, I asked if we might be able to use the COP to supplement the park rangers, or even in lieu of the park rangers as a pilot program, because the duties are very similar. Two residents called out, it doesn't work, nobody wants to do it. Commissioner Maliga said the same thing at the last commission meeting or something similar. However, I talked to a participant at the Institute who was a COP member, and she said her experience is that it did work. So I suggest we delay Park Ranger's program and implement the COP program. It's a pilot Park Ranger program for two years. then evaluate how it's working and reconsider the Park Rangers program. I acknowledge that it's not easy to manage volunteers, so there needs to be a paid supervisor, but that's likely to cost the city a lot less than $1 million over two years for the Park Rangers program as it is right now. But if you truly believe the COP program won't work, tell PBSO now not to bother with it and to reduce the price of their contract based on how much that program is going to cost. On another topic, I find it appalling as our elected officials will not speak out on behalf of immigrants and the children of immigrants who make up about 50% of our residents. At the last commission meeting, Commissioner Malaga told a very heartfelt story.

I'm running the meeting tonight, so I get to make some rules. Please don't call out. This is a positive thing. I can't call out a positive thing? No, I don't want anyone to call out individual commissioners. If you have something to say, just say it.

A member of the commissioner told us a story about a Guatemalan child. She's godmother. That child was murdered in PBSO. pursued it and and got justice i mean if there is justice for a child being murdered they pursued it and and he was caught and it's i believe is serving time so I would hope that the PBSO and the commission would care about the health and safety of all children like that in our city, any children, all children, including the living citizen children of immigrants, and do something to respond to the cruelty and inhumanity of what is happening to their parents. I did initially was going to address Mayor Resch and Commissioner Maliga, but I will retract that. But there's a couple of commissioners who are not running for office. What have they got to lose? I call on you to use your bully pulpit to speak out about the injustice of what's happening to our immigrant neighbors and their children. Thank you.

Thank you. Ms. Kohlmeyer, you want to speak? After Ms. Kohlmeyer, I'll be Caroline Haynes.

Catherine Kohlmeyer, 503 First Avenue South. I have a question. If there's a factual thing that happened on record... Is it allowable to stop a member of the public making a public comment about that and quoting that person? Can we ask the attorney, is that actually within the rules governing these kinds of meetings that you can say you may not say, last week, Commissioner X said such and such when it's a matter of public record? Why would we not be allowed to do that?

Ms. Attorney, can you answer that question, please?

Hi. So there are obviously, I'm sorry, Elizabeth, we can't hear you. Our mics on. Can you hear me now?

Yes, that's better. Thank you.

Just need to be really super close. So there are some free speech issues related to government meetings. And as you all may recall, we went through some amendments recently to your rules of procedure that touched on some of those things and specifically calling out that your meetings are a limited public forum. So you do have rules that you are allowed to with hold people to you do have the focus of the meeting to be the business of the city. And people aren't allowed to just say whatever they want to there are rules. So you all have adopted some rules, I would want to look at those to see if how that touched on people speaking about individual commissioners, I believe that that was not specifically called out. Typically, if people are allowed to speak about to praise somebody in public, they can also condemn somebody in public. So there are, generally speaking, if you the rule is in the courts that you can praise and condemn an individual or the commission as a whole.

OK, go ahead. So a further question, is it appropriate for a mayor, vice mayor, commissioner to create a rule in the moment of the meeting without prior notice, without checking it first with the attorney, and without seeing if that rule is even allowable? I think I've made it clear my thoughts on this matter.

Caroline Haynes? Followed by Teresa DeVoe.

That was a question for the attorney as well. Is that even allowable to make a rule on the fly like this?

Thank you. Caroline, go ahead. I'm not going to ask the attorney that.

Caroline Haynes, 1232 South Palm Way. And the issue that I wanted to bring up is the sanitary sewer system in South Palm Park. So it wasn't clear to me that that was going to be brought up as an agenda item. So is it appropriate for me to bring this up as a non-agenda item? Yes, you can speak to that.

It wasn't an agenda item.

okay all right thank you um so my comments are going to be pretty much cut in half because a lot of my questions were addressed by um miss baker's um comments and so i appreciate this the work that the city has done to get to this point so i would like to encourage the city to approve the project to remove the you know in the material that's that that's the you know whatever it is that's in the sewer um so that being said um i would i've been trying to follow what's been going on with the sewer condition because the odors are really bad and y'all have heard a lot about that. But I haven't been able to find a report or anything like that that's described what's been going on, so maybe it's out there and I just haven't found it. Our neighborhood association president has been very good at updating us at our regular meetings, so I appreciate that. But I would just like to request that the city clarify the status of the investigation of the sanitary sewer system and what future efforts there may be to repair and replace the system. Removing the gunk will solve some of the problem, but it's my understanding that the system is aging or has already aged and is in need of repair. So I would like to know what is being done to investigate the rest of the entire system and what other maintenance and repair items are gonna be proposed to fix it. And what that timeline might be and where those fixes might be and the cost and the source of the fixes. and that I'll be aware of where is this information available on the city's website so we can stay informed on the progress. The other thing I wanted to mention is just I really appreciated Ms. Baker's report about the funding that may be available to help the city address flooding. And so I think that she should be, that department be encouraged to carry on with further studies in that regard. Thank you.

Thank you. Ms. DeVoe? Followed by Ranjin McLeod.

Hi, Theresa DeVoe, 1106 Palm Way.

Okay. So non-agenda items. Okay. Sorry, go ahead.

So I do appreciate the update from Ms. Baker.

We've.

Oh, I did. I guess they were talking. Theresa DeVoe, 1106 South Palmway, also on the sewer situation. I appreciate the update. It's been a lot of years coming that we even have Ms. Baker's attention to this is appreciated because it's been five or six years. But we cringe to think two more years. My grandchildren were here this past week and wanted to know why grandma's house was so stinky. Those are not the memories I want to make with my grandchildren. and i'm a little concerned if there's sand and debris or something in the sewer that has to be flushed out because it's supposed to be a contained system which i think leads to the fact that we know we have broken pipes it's leaking when we have bad storms sewage is coming up out of the manholes into our streets it's a health issue that needs to be addressed the other thing is waiting two years is there nothing we can do about the flow of lantana sewage down lakeside um i think we probably can all agree that that's when our problems began when lantana sewage they signed a contract with us we took it on i don't think anybody did their homework to even evaluate our gravity system that goes from a big pipe to the little pipe. Did nobody even check that out? And I know this is way before anybody, but somebody in this administration did not do their homework, signed contracts and created this problem. um that we're having to deal with now so i i don't know if there's any funds i know at a meeting somebody had mentioned before about trying to divert lantana a different direction at least until we can get our system fixed it would be a big improvement because I understand whatever we take from them now is nowhere near the volume that our contract agrees. So it's just going to be increasing with all of the construction that's coming from the South. Thank you. Thank you.

Randy, followed by Ruth. Hello.

Just give it to her. Ramsey McLeod, 24 South C Street. I want to reference the last commission meeting on August the 18th. I wanted to speak on a consent agenda item, but was called up to speak in the public participation of non-agenda items, which I find inappropriate. You have taken a subject heading and added it and its components to a non-agenda speaking category. In essence of what you have done is removed the time allotted for citizens to express their concerns. If I wanted to speak on a non-agenda item, I am allowed three minutes. But if I want to speak on an agenda item, I am only allowed two minutes. Lumping these two categories together does not give me five minutes. but rather a maximum of three minutes total to express my concerns about each topic. That is not fair to residents. Therefore, am I requesting that you return the consent agenda category back to its position on the agenda so it is listed just like public hearing, unfinished business, new business, et cetera. This will restore a resident's right to speak and have the full time allotted. In addition, I raised a serious concern about the addition of phraseology to the CDBG agreement between the county and the city. We apply for this grant every year because you consistently and constantly remind us how we don't have the money to do needed repair work on our own buildings. now this new clause advises that we may be required in the future to return any monies awarded to us however the staff did not address this change in their backup documents if we didn't have the money in the first place to do the repairs where are we going to get the money from to repay the county where are we going to get the current 317 thousand dollars from It has been a week and I'm still waiting on a response from staff. So it appears they wouldn't have been able to provide you an answer if you had asked the same question. So apparently all of you already know the answer because you seem to rubber stamp this change without asking a single question. So what is the answer? Residents have a right to know. Where will the money come from if we are required to pay back the CDBG grant money? In addition, going forward, I feel you should address the PBSO contract at a special meeting and not blow out a normal commission meeting agenda with one item that completely overtook the meeting.

Thank you. Rita, followed by Cheryl Raskin.

Good evening. 1301 12th Avenue South, Lake Bird. And I heard the announcements and things that you said, and we can't call by name and numbers and all this stuff, but I'm here because I want it on the record. And I am going to say that I appreciate Commissioner Malega's speech or presentation that she did tonight. because some things that she said, all of us need to take in account. And it really, some of the things she said really helped me in this moment because I came down here to say and call names, but I won't do that because of what she said tonight, but I am gonna say what I come to say. Lake Worth Beach City Commissioners, I wish to address the text sent by Commissioner regarding tonight's meeting. The decision for the next city manager should be decided by you all after you have vetted and interviewed all candidates who have applied. this decision should not be made after careful consideration and not in the arena of public opinion based on a commissioner's opinion alone mr perry did and is doing an excellent job as assistant city manager and continue to do so as an acting city manager If he choose to apply or choose to be considered or not, we did not lose a rock star of a candidate because he chose to remove himself from consideration. Did he give a reason for his withdrawal? That was the candidate that withdrew himself. It wasn't our commissioners or the city manager. How did you decide on only two candidates are worth choosing without following the selection process to completion? I and the citizens of Lake Worth Beach want a city manager who is capable, professional, and want the job. Your candidate has clearly shown he is a quitter and gave up without committing through the final process. Lastly, these types of personal attacks on city employees, which has already been stated, is beneath the position you hold. I'm sure you address your concern regarding Mr. Perry's performance with him before you start making your own personal opinions. If not, that should have been your first step, not inflating the public. And that's what that text did. It inflated the community, the city, and the residents. Commissioners, please let the selection process take its natural course and continue with the steps that is next. Don't take this on your personal opinion. Let's do the job and let's be fair and let's be professional and let's be kind to our residents who we voted for you to look out for us. not to embarrass us.

Thank you, Cheryl. Followed by Linda Brower.

Good evening, all. Cheryl Rashkin, 1302 South Palmway. I am also the president of South Palm Park Neighborhood Association. And I do wish to thank Ms. Vaughn addressing the issue having to do with the horrendous odors and backups that we continue to get in our homes finding out that there's really a reason for this is spectacular to us because we knew that there was a reason for it we just couldn't get anybody to agree to it so guess what when we have a backup in our house we call a plumber So when you have a backup going into other people's houses and we know it's coming from you and the sewers are backing up, you call a plumber. Nobody called a plumber. But now Ms. Vaughn is working forward to getting this forward. Granted, it'd be nice if you could put this on the first agenda in September. But I understand how that goes as having done agendas for a few years in my life. It's a royal thing. difficulty trying to move things around unless somebody says, well, I'll pull my item for another month. Yeah, right. But anyway, I want to thank you for that. But what I also want to say is we're going to be watching and we're going to be diligent in making sure that we can get some relief because I'll let you know that if there isn't any relief, poor Ms. Vaughn, her phone's going to be ringing off the hook and so are each one of yours. So just to let you know in advance, we're still out there, we're still watching and it affects more than 90% of the neighborhood. So just to make you aware, I want to thank you. So let's keep it up. Please, please, please. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Linda Brower, followed by Peggy Fincher.

I also want to thank. Name and name. I'm sorry. Linda Brower, 1100 South Lakeside Drive. I also am pleased to know that something's happening. I also want to caution that We keep doing studies, and we find a thing. Then we have to wait however long to fix the thing to see how it happens. But you all know what the issue is with our main pipes, and that's not really fixing it. I came home from a two-week vacation. I was out of town, Mike. Everything was set at like 80 degrees. My niece came for the weekend plus a couple of days, and the odor was so bad where she was staying that she left early. And one of the commissioners who happened to respond to me came in to smell it, wanted to invite others to come, but it had dissipated overnight. It's embarrassing and I'm angry. We're getting close to the holidays and every year for the last, what, two, maybe three years, I get this in my home when I have the family for Thanksgiving, for Christmas, and that's really unacceptable. I want you to understand that is it acceptable for us to have this in our homes? My last bill two weeks away I was gone two weeks, I paid $960. I pay, I keep up my home, I pay my taxes. I deserve to have plumbing that works, being able to flush my toilets when it rains and not have backing up and sewer problems. It's a health issue. The other thing I wanted to say was every time I have called the city and said, I have sewer issue smells in my home. They write up a little thing. I don't know if they keep it. But the next thing I know, the sewer issues are going down because, oh, we have to put more peroxide or whatever it is they do in the system. So now when it's really bad, we smell different smells, but we're still smelling smells. So it's not as that. smell but it's a more medicinal weird smell and it's still unhealthy it's very bad i know teresa came back from a vacation that she was gone for and she felt really good she came home sewers smells started again she started having headaches and all the things that she has at home please fix this i don't want to see oh we have 25 we have a break here so we're going to spend a whole year fixing this and then we're going to go do more studies and find another break and then we'll have another year of fixing that instead of addressing it you are hardening your electric you're spending a lot of money to harden the electric it's not broken we're broken We're broken now. We can't flush. We have these issues that are health issues. And it's being piecemeal address. You're fixing something that hasn't happened yet that might. We're broken now. Thank you.

Thank you.

That's time. She timed that well.

All right. Peggy Fisher, followed by Mr. DeVoe.

Peggy Fisher, 508 North A Street. I will admit that I took this off the door into the chamber that everyone coming in the door looks at. It's there for us to read. This is the Decorum for Citizen Participation, Rule 14 from the Rules of Procedure Resolution. Speakers will conduct themselves in a civil and respectful manner at all times. Speakers will address the chair. Speakers will state their name and address for the record at the beginning of their comments. Questions to commission members or staff will be facilitated by the chair. So as speakers, one, as citizens, we should be able to read what has been posted on the door for years. I think the speaker clerk probably tell you how long this latest laminated version has been up there. So I don't see that there were any special rules created other than the existing rules. um and i think it was a matter of trying to comply with the rules um and i thank you for doing that too often we don't comply with the rules here whether it's who gets to speak who doesn't get to speak as a person who provided the lights that you all now press on rather than having to wave pencils at each other um I don't know about throwing pencils, but I do think it's a little easier, although it's not always used. I do think one of the things that it says to preserve the intent of open government and maintain a positive environment for citizen input and commission decision making the following rules of decorum for public participation has been established. So this is a resolution. It is part of the conduct of our business. And so it's nothing that was done specifically at this time. I'll show it to the city attorney because I know she probably has it somewhere in her records. And then I'll put it back on the door. Although someone may have to put some more tape on it underneath. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. DeVoe. Followed by Francine O'Neill.

Hello.

Ed DeVos, 711 South Palmway.

Ed DeVos, 711 South Palmway. Ed DeVos, 711 South Palmway. It's hard following those four ladies over there from out of Palmway, especially my wife. All of them did an outstanding job. But, you know, I've been in underground business for 45 years. I've been in the underground business for 45 years. I've been in the underground business for 45 years. And you can do what you want. And the lady that spoke to the water department, I salute her. But however, you know, and I know what you're doing. far before your time, we're not supposed to be doing. We have a gravity sewer that runs from 15 to the lift station. And that's all it's supposed to do. What we're supposed to have is a force main. A force main pumps volume. You'll never smell it. Now, one other thing, health issues. It's true. What, uh, this, uh, Ron's, or Ken's wife said, Linda, my wife, we went out to Canada, came back. Now we have a problem in Canada. We've been mining this for over two years now. She has a legal problem with the sewer smell. She has health issues. That's one. I don't want to go any further than that because when you start talking health issues, people think that's a out of jail bill for you know other things but we have to do our job we have to do what's right and we have to generate capital to get our problem you get our problem to fix generating capital we got to stop looking for developers we got to look within ourselves the calories are not coming the county the federal government the state they're not coming here we're i'm telling you tonight as a businessman we got business people in this town can generate capital for this city by the drop of your hat. You have to believe in yourself. If you want something to get fixed, you have to generate the capital. Don't do studies. Generate the capital first. Don't go looking out for grants. Generate the capital. You have enough resources here to generate capital. You know what? All you guys seen, gone with the wind. And all you guys know, frankly, I don't give a damn, but you don't know the main line in the movie. The main lighting was with the lady who won the Academy Award, Hattie McDaniel. She said, not having is no excuse for not getting. And I'm gonna tell you here tonight, you really need to button up our pants, look the citizens in the eye. John F. Kennedy said the best, but he used county. Ask not what your city can do for you, but what you can do for your city. One other time, I'm gonna keep you.

Thank you, that's time.

George W. Bush at 9-11. Remember what he said? Serious times call for serious people. Thank you.

Thank you. Francine?

Good evening. Francine O'Neill, City of West Palm Beach. I'm not even at work right now.

Sorry.

Francine O'Neill, 423 Griswold Drive, Lake Worth Beach, Florida. I'm not here to complain tonight. I'm here to pay a compliment. Um, Mr. Perry has demonstrated his commitment to the city and the resident through his experience, knowledge, professionalism, and dedication to public service. He understands the city's operation and the needs of the community, making him a valuable asset to the city. One quality that I particularly, um, I particularly appreciated Mr. Perry willingness to come out into our community. and attend community meetings. His presence allows residents to see the city leadership is willing to listen, engage, and hear directly from the people it serves. Being accessible residents and participating in community conversation demonstrate the level of commitment that should be valued and continue. At a time when consistency, experience and effective leadership is important and turnover is at an all time high. I believe retaining Mr. Perry provides the city with stability and he has invested his time and energy into serving the community and has developed valuable knowledge about the city needs and challenges I just want to say thank you for coming to our Osborne community four times a year, every quarterly and participating, not only you, but we do also have commissioners that I can't say their names that also show up and be present. So they know exactly what's going on in our community and they are here to help us when we need them. Thank you. Thank you. And I should,

and that brings us to the end of public participation what do you think um let's see all right we're at approval of the minutes motion to approve by maliga second uh hold on and uh cigarette just number two all in favor any opposed passes for nothing uh consent agenda

Motion to approve.

Second. Okay, so we have our first motion is McVoy. The second is Maliga. All in favor? Aye. Both pass for zero. So now we are on public hearings. Let me open up my book. So we have Public hearing A, and I think this is the one where you need to actually read it, right? I have to read all the ordinances. Codification and all that other stuff.

This is ordinance 2026-09, an ordinance of the City of Lake Brook Beach, Florida, amending chapter 23 land development regulations, article 1 general provisions, division 2 definitions. section 23.1 dash definitions amending and adding definitions article 3 zoning districts division 1 generally section 23.3-6 use tables amending the use tables for various zoning districts and article 3 zoning districts section 23.3-9 mh7 mobile home residential, paragraphs A and B, section 23.3-10, MF20, multifamily and two-family residential, paragraph B2E, section 23.3-11, MF30, medium density multifamily residential, paragraph B2K, Section 23.3-12 MF40 High Density Multifamily Residential Paragraph B2K Subsection 23.3-13A MUE Mixed Use East Subsection 23.3-16A MUFH Mixed Use Federal Highway Subsection 23.3-17A, MUDH, Mixed-Use Dixie Highway. Subsection 23.3-18A, MU, that should be W, Mixed-Use West. And Article 4, Development Standards, Subsection 23.4-25B, Micro-Units, to amend language for consistency in providing for severability, complex codification, and effective data.

All right. Thank you. Do we have a... Hold on. Do we have a presentation?

We have a short presentation, a short presentation.

Okay, so we'll do the presentation, then we'll do the the public comment, and then we'll comment. But I do believe we need to have a motion for discussion. There's nobody gonna second. Okay, motion and a second for discussion. So that would be you, William.

For the record, William Waters, Community Sustainability Director. And I have to honestly admit, I never thought we'd get to this point where we're hopefully gonna have a final decision on vacation rentals, because this has been an issue that's been facing the Community Sustainability Department in the city since my arrival almost 16 years ago.

Sarah, you were the second, right? I guess.

So as the city attorney read the title, this is an amendment to the land development regulations, which is Chapter 23, to facilitate the allowance of vacation rentals within the city of Lake Worth Beach. Though we had set out to have an ordinance that wasn't as complicated as this, we did run into some issues that staff and legal felt were appropriate to address clarity, consistency, some contradictions within the code itself. And so it does appear to be a lot, but effectively all this does, it does not change any use of any property except to allow short-term rentals in residential dwelling units. There's a lot of language here, and we'll go through a little bit of it. But we are now bringing into consistency with the state the definition of transient lodging, which is 30 days or less at the state. It has been 60 with us. We're providing definitions for vacation rentals and a variety of other terms within the definition section of Chapter 23, which is in, I believe, Article 2. And the proposed regulations, which I'm sure there are lots of people who are not happy with them, but the state has preempted us from adopting any kind of regulations that dictate how many, how they operate. uh when they can be let out how long they can be let out vacation rentals in the city effectively if you have a residential rental it can be either a residential rental or it can be a vacation rental we do need to let us know we do not have the ability to adopt any additional regulations um governing vacation rentals that we have not adopted to govern single family or dwelling unit um a leasing so We now have a term proposed for vacation rentals, a consistent definition for transient public lodging. And then the permitted use table, which has been provided to you, does have a lot of areas that have an underline. either a P or a C or things like that. I've spent some time talking to some of the commissioners that all of our mixed use districts refer to an actual residential district multifamily for regulations that govern the residential use within that district. As an example, downtown, mixed use refers you to multifamily 40, which allows certain uses that are in the table under multifamily 40. And for consistency and for clarity, we've now added those uses to the multifamily. I mean, from the multifamily districts to the mixed use districts. That isn't absolutely required for us to do, but it does help. And we're trying from your direction to be as business friendly as possible. So you can look at the use table and not have to refer to the actual zoning district itself to know what residential district uses and regulations fall within that mixed use district. One thing I do want to bring to your attention, the last line on the second page of the permitted use table in reference to bed and breakfast inns should be deleted. Our code stipulates two ways to have, it's not lined, it's the permitted use table.

No, back here on the table itself.

The table itself.

Bed and breakfast inns, it's the last one under printing services.

Correct. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. That whole line needs to be deleted because under our code and the development standards, bed and breakfast can only happen as a conditional use or an administrative use. And the classification of bed and breakfast under 7,500 square feet also by definition includes bed and breakfast less than 2,500 square feet. So I like that line and all the little P's that are underlined need to be removed as part of whatever motion you make this evening. So at the Planet and Zoning Board, they made a recommendation to support this, but also ask us to provide a clear definition for manufactured housing, which is included in the definition section of the ordinance that you have before you. And the Historic Resource Preservation Board also provided a unanimous recommendation for approval to adopt this ordinance. And so your motion is provided there to either move or disapprove the ordinance as it's laid out, hopefully including the suggestion from myself that that line in reference to bed and breakfast be deleted. And then I'm here to answer any questions that you might have, or I'll try to answer them.

Okay. We're going to go with this public comment first. So David Sims, you're up first, followed by Catherine Kohlmeyer. Yes. Just one second, David.

I just wanted to make a disclosure. I do operate a vacation rental, but I represent less than 1% of the vacation rentals within the city. I only have one. I just want to double check with the city attorney that this is not an ethics conflict.

With those facts, there would be no voting conflict of interest.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Anthony. Go ahead, Mr. Simms. It's not on.

David Sims, 715 North L Street. As we all know, because of the legislation passed in the state, we cannot make any more regulations ourselves in our city for short-term rentals or any kind of local zoning. If we get rid of the minimum of 30 days for short-term rentals, we will never be able to put it back. This is the only thing we have. We should be able to have some say as a community and some input into how our city is, how the neighborhoods are concerning the density of short-term rentals. The density of short-term rentals does have an effect on things in the city. It impacts the character of neighborhoods. Also, a lot of additional short-term rentals will take away properties that can be rental housing or homes that residents can own. So I would really oppose any changes to the LDRs. Absolutely. I mean, once we get rid of this, you know, Florida law prevents us from doing anything. I mean, we're grandfathers in. We should hold on to it. Don't change the LDRs.

Thank you. Catherine Kohlmeyer, followed by Jenny Powell.

Catherine Kohlmeyer, 503 1st Avenue South. I'm a little bit surprised that the attorney said there is no conflict of interest regarding, I'm going to name the commissioner because the attorney said earlier, despite Mayor May's rule, instituted this evening of not naming anybody, um, but you can praise and condemn, um, a commissioner. I'm neither praising nor condemning. I'm just saying that, um, commissioner Malega some time ago wanted to commissioner McVoy to recuse himself because he earned $92 from a local business owner on a certain matter. And that went to an ethics committee. That was just kind of comical, really. But tonight, I think it is a more serious, more... The financial interest in an Airbnb is a little bit different than earning $92 in a whole year. Anyway, this... shows that the inconsistency in the way this commission approaches different issues when it's different people involved. So I would have thought Commissioner Segwitch might recuse himself. However, that's not happening. The backup characterizes this change as housekeeping so that the city is consistent with state law. As has been stated, the state law does allow the city's restriction to be grandfathered in. So the city is compliant with state law as its restriction was in place before June 1st, 2011. So not housekeeping then, an actual significant and material change. Leaving the city with absolutely no control over short-term rentals. The backup also states, and I quote, the city has determined this change is in the best interest of the public health, safety, and general welfare of the city. I'm not sure how the city can assert this when short-term rentals in residential neighborhoods threaten the very fabric of our communities. And this is documented. It's a global situation all throughout the UK and in many cities. So order dash, I say. Thank you.

Oh, my gosh. Okay, Miss Powell, followed by Reese is not here, but she wrote something, so I'll read it. So, Ramsey, you will be the next speaker.

Jenny Powell, 224 North Palmway. Some of this repeats what Catherine said. I think call this a housekeeping amendment is just ridiculous. This has been an issue, as William said, as long as he's been here, the issue of short-term rentals. We are grandfathered, as all of you know, and for all the time that you have complained about home rule and that we don't have any. This is one place where that applies because we have an ordinance that allows us to have this prohibition. So getting rid of this gives all the power to the state. And to believe that we have to come into compliance with state law is also ridiculous. We don't. Our ordinance is grandfathered. Again, repeating, Commissioner Segrich stands to personally gain from this. And I believe you do need to recuse yourself in spite of what the attorney says. Communities worldwide are reconsidering their short-term rental policies because of neighborhood disruption and over-tourism. The city of Miami Beach... has an ordinance that prohibits short-term rentals of less than six months and one day in all single-family homes and in many multifamily buildings in certain zoning districts. Don't open the door to even more widespread short-term rentals that many residents do not want and are already adversely impacting our neighborhoods. If you vote yes, we run the risk of changing the character of our neighborhoods forever. There is no turning back on this. Vote no to protect our residential neighborhoods. Thank you.

Thank you. Teresa DeVos says, I don't mind short-term rentals, but I think there should be a limit by block, neighborhood, or distance. Good neighbors, good neighborhoods. And I think we all kind of agree with that, but unfortunately, we can't do that.

I have some real concerns about the inclusion of accessory dwelling units as being available to rent out as vacation units in the past these units didn't have a kitchen requirement but now they do how are owners supposed to update these structures to now be in compliance it sounds like it will be expensive to do so Are you supplying a definition of what composes a kitchen? Does a sink and a hot plate constitute a kitchen? Hello? Constitute a kitchen? Line 76 through 79, dwelling multi or multifamily. Why has the requirement for a kitchen being removed? I am concerned that multiple individuals will be in a dwelling or dwelling in a place that they cannot prepare meals for themselves or their children. I believe if you are going to have multiple families dwelling in a structure, a kitchen should be a main component of that dwelling. lines 359 to 362, micro unit size and use restrictions. The only difference I can tell between a micro unit and an ADU is that you spelled out the square footage range and that the micro unit is required to be metered separately from the primary dwelling unit on the same lot. Does this mean that ADUs don't have an electricity requirement? Also, Since Commissioner Segrist has already identified himself as a vacation rental owner, I feel he should remove himself as I see it as a conflict of interest. He stood with a group of vacation rental owners supporting their request for no restrictions on Airbnbs. Also, he continues to gain direct income from the property he rents out. This, I see, is not being transparent or making decisions in the best interest of all residents in our city.

Thank you. Before, actually, you know what, Mr. Volker, you're up next. So why don't you go and then William, will you address some of the items that clarify some of that? Because I know that a lot of the questions that you had, we had on Friday. So if you could reiterate the answers to them. And Mr. Volker, go ahead.

Thank you. Good evening, commissioners. I'm Dan Volker, 421 South Lakeside Drive. I'm actually in favor of short-term rentals, but it's a market that's got two different sides that no one's really talked about so far. So I do think that Lake Worth should welcome legitimate certified recovery residences. However, I don't think we can tolerate in Lake Worth um the unlicensed uncertified boarding operations that you know ran as profit mills in the past we don't need national statistics we've got our own record in 2016 this city led the county in overdose deaths 75 people a 56 increase in one year while the county's sober homes task force was arresting operators for patient brokering kickbacks even negligent homicide Their business model wasn't housing neighbors. It was warehousing billable bodies where every relapse was revenue. And it clustered here in our affordable housing stock. This city responded in 2020 by strengthening the chronic nuisance ordinance. Tonight, I'm asking you to finish the job, require certification, enforce occupancy and fire codes aggressively, and direct staff to compile police and EMS calls for service by address, because that data, not emotion, is what makes enforcement stick. now contrast this with other use of homes in lake worth legal short-term rentals vacation rental brings in a visitor who spends money on lake avenue at our beach and our restaurants and pays 12 and a half percent in taxes doing it those bed tax dollars fund the county's tourism marketing machine and the cities that grow logic inventory are the cities that discover the palm beaches promotes that's downtown revenue beachfront revenue and suddenly we have city services that we can actually afford A rogue boarding house extracts from a neighborhood. It drags a struggling block down and generates police calls while the profits leave town. A legal vacation rental does the opposite. It forces the owner to invest in the property, brings in a visitor who spends money downtown at our beach, and pays 12.5% in taxes that fund the county's tourism marketing effort, marketing that promotes the city with rooms to fill.

Thank you. Mr. Waters, almost called it Williams,

get called mr williams a lot or mr a lot of things um i'm sorry madam vice mayor do you want me to read the public comments i have yes but not yet i want william to go i haven't forgotten thank you ladies i'd like you to look at lines 89-93 which provide the definition of a dwelling unit which is a self-contained, independent living space that provides, at a minimum, permanent provisions for sleeping, eating, cooking facilities, including a range, and sanitation designed and used exclusively or occupied as separate living quarters by a single family. Any dwelling unit may be a vacation rental. The other times that dwelling occurs in those changes are when it's referring to a building. what a building or a structure okay a dwelling is a place where people live a dwelling multiple or multi-family is a building that has dwellings of three or more a single family dwelling is where one family would live a dwelling on two families were two if you go to the micro unit definition which we've been trying to clear up and also make it more user-friendly, a micro unit on line 39, a small dwelling unit. And a dwelling unit is defined, as I read earlier, as a self-contained living facility that has all these other pieces, including a kitchen and a range. And it provides how large a micro unit can be and the types of bedrooms. There's also a separate section of the code under development standards that describes how you get a dwelling unit, a micro unit, You cannot have less than 10. It's a conditional land use. There has to be shared common area element both interior and exterior and a number of other things. A micro unit in our code should not be misconstrued or misinterpreted to be a tiny house we written a proposed tiny house development ordinance and that kind of died on the vine it's still there i think i think i wrote it in 2019 it could be brought back but a tiny house community or tiny house is not a micro unit So what's the difference between a micro unit and a boarding house room? Now, a boarding house is a whole different animal altogether. And we've allowed boarding houses in the city since it seems like the beginning of time. It was in our use table back when I got here. And a boarding house is effectively a series of sleeping rooms that are held out for lease. And you must provide accommodations and food. The best example of a boarding house, I think, is in It's a Wonderful Life. A hostel is sort of like a yes. We don't have any in the city, but unfortunately, because of the preemption from the state, we can't delete it. hold keep our fingers crossed maybe we can come back and visit that in October of 27. um but in that and the boarding house also is conditional when use as I recall which must go before a board and through a public hearing to be approved so because boarding houses are currently allowed in some of those multi-family districts which stipulate how you do residential uses in the mixed-use districts by consequence we've added those um letters in the permitted use table. And as I mentioned earlier, you don't necessarily need to add those. If we deleted them and did not include them tonight, it would not have an effective change. It would not change what our current code is in relation to those or what is proposed to be under this.

Okay, thank you. Melissa, you want to read your comments? How many are there?

uh i didn't count because i will also be reading comments that were submitted last week for this item that we didn't get to so i will be setting a 30 minute timer okay um because i only read for 30 minutes okay go ahead all right so the first comment is from dory stiebolt 411 north ocean breeze I have personal experience with Airbnbs. Sadly, last year, our long-term neighbor who had lived in Lake Worth since the 70s and served as a police officer with the Lake Worth Police Department died. An investor bought his house, flipped it, and then started renting it as a short-term rental. We have a great block, we watch out for each other, we help each other, and we socialize with each other. The short-term rental house has negatively impacted our quality of life. I no longer have a neighbor next door, but instead have a commercial enterprise. The home was reported for unpermitted work by another neighbor. That issue remains open with an open lien against the property. Meanwhile, the investor rents out the home despite not having a business license and with complete disregard to the neighborhood. In the past 120 days, the investor has hosted three different kids' birthday parties. I thought adults were annoying, but try listening to 25 five-year-olds screaming their heads off at 11 p.m. Since it's a party house, there are 10 or 15 cars parked all over the place. They put the trash out on the wrong day, too. I wouldn't be against Airbnbs if the city could manage and regulate them, but that power has been taken away by the state. Those of us who bought homes for quiet enjoyment in residential zoned areas should be protected by this commission from unregulated commercial hotels. Our current grandfathered in ordinance is the only thing holding back the floodwaters of short term rentals. We would be utterly foolish to give up that protection. I only have one Airbnb on my block and it has negatively impacted my quality of life and has negatively changed the culture and nature of our block. Once our ordinance is gone, we will likely have tons more Airbnbs, and what was a neighborhood will disappear. Greg Richter, 1202 South Palmway. Dear Mayor and City Commissioners, I'm writing to you about tonight's public hearing regarding vacation rentals, transient public lodging, residential uses, and associated definitions. While I appreciated the City Commission efforts to put to rest this issue, Staff has gone completely off the rails and in many cases rewriting our LDRs. There are too many issues with the way this is written. I would like to see you reject this tonight and have a workshop with staff on this matter. We do need to have a comprehensive plan and legalize the short-term rentals we have here in Lake Worth Beach, but this is not the answer. Richard Mahler, 1767 15th Avenue North. I support the proposed LDR amendments to remove the city's outdated minimum rental duration requirement and bring our regulations into compliance with current Florida law. I believe this change should be followed by a comprehensive vacation rental registration program. The city should know where these properties are, who is responsible for them, and whether they are meeting applicable safety, parking, occupancy, trash, and other local requirements. Other Florida municipalities have already established similar programs. Hallandale Beach requires annual vacation rental registration, inspections, parking and safety requirements, occupancy standards, responsible party information and enforcement. Miami Gardens also requires annual registration inspections, proof of state licensing, emergency contact information and compliance with applicable codes. I believe Lake Worth Beach can take a similar approach, allow what state law requires while establishing a strong registration and accountability system that protects neighboring residents and gives the city the tools necessary to address legitimate code and quality of life concerns. I support the LDR amendment. with the expectation that the city follow it with a comprehensive vacation rental registration ordinance. Catherine Kohlmeier, I don't remember, did she speak about this?

Yes, she did.

OK, next is Andrew Cavanaugh, 1321 North L Street. Here is a list of recent headlines involving Airbnbs from two days ago argument during a gathering. At Lorain, Ohio, Airbnb escalates into gunfire, leaving two teens dead. From two days ago, two men are injured and shooting at Airbnb party near Newburgh. From four days ago, two teens arrested for July 4th shooting at Lehigh Acres, Florida, Airbnb party that injured four people. From August 10th, 2026, three shot during Airbnb party in Seattle. From August 7th, to 2026, a man is accused of being involved in an alleged targeted shooting near an Airbnb party in Lake Park, according to the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. From August 4th, 2026, a shot as chaos erupts during an unauthorized party at Garner Airbnb. From August 3rd, 2026, it began as a birthday celebration and pajama party for a group of teenagers, but ended in tragedy for two families, Monday morning when gunfire erupted at a short term rental home in Oak Park. From July 26, 2026, girls shot during an underage party at an Indianapolis short term rental. Police responded to another shooting at the same short term rental in December 2025. From July 26, 2026, one killed, two injured during a shooting at a North Charleston, South Carolina Airbnb rented by teens for a party. From July 24th, 2026, wealthy neighbors outraged after Airbnb party erupts in gunfire and wild video shows. From July 21st, 2026, bullets strike homes and cars after Airbnb party in Fountain Square. From July 18th, 2026, a shooting at a juvenile birthday party hosted at a Little Elm short-term rental. Property left a teenager injured, sparking police investigation and warnings over local ordinances. From July 15, 2026, gunfire erupted outside a short-term rental property over the weekend. Phoenix police arrested 20-year-old, but police are still searching for suspects in a second vehicle involved. Next is from Sienna Miller, 429 North north d street um i've lived in lake worth for 18 years and have watched as so many of my friends had to move in with their parents move away or buy a home elsewhere because they can't afford to live here short-term vacation rentals mean even less available and affordable housing for the actual residents who give this place the vibrancy we love vote no rachel kajewski 1518 north d street I am against this ordinance passing. We need access to more affordable housing for community members in our community, and short-term rentals like the ones in this ordinance make that more difficult. Nancy Udell, 1131 North Palmway. Dear Mayor and Commissioners, I know that this issue of short-term rentals has been a long-standing problem in the city. Since 2010, we have had a regulation on the books prohibiting rentals for fewer than 30 days. That prohibition has not been enforced by three successive commissions. And so we have been in the position of having a law on the books that this routinely disregarded. In 2022, Tallahassee passed a law prohibiting local laws from regulating short-term rentals, unless that local law had been on the books since before 2011. The exact wording of the Florida statute is a local law ordinance or regulation may not prohibit vacation rentals or regulate the duration or frequency of rental of vacation rentals. This paragraph does not apply to any local law ordinance or regulation adopted on or before June 1st, 2011. Since our law has been on the books since 2010, it is grandfathered It is grandfathered and is not prohibited by the Florida statute. The staff report mistakenly states that the purpose of these changes are housekeeping and to update related definitions and regulations for consistency with current Florida law. In fact, our current law is consistent with Florida law because it is grandfathered in. I believe it is important for the commission to acknowledge that this that it is by these changes eliminating this grandfathered provision and eliminating the ability of this commission and future commissions to regulate short term rentals. I'm not saying this is an easy issue, but I do think it's important to be transparent about what these changes do. Thank you. Jenna Cavalcanti, 21 Harvard Drive. I am a Lake Worth Beach resident, short-term rental host, advocate, and certified tourism ambassador. Over the past few years, I've had the opportunity to work collaboratively with the Village of Wellington, PBSO, code enforcement, hosts, and residents to address short-term rental concerns. That partnership has been incredibly effective with documented cases showing that different types of issues can be resolved promptly when we give everyone the right tools and open lines of communication. I would love to bring that experience home and serve as a bridge between our residents, host city officials, code enforcement and public safety. We don't have to choose sides with diplomacy, collaboration and a proactive approach. I believe we can find sensible solutions that protect our neighborhoods and strengthen the community we all share and love so deeply. I am at your disposal and be grateful for the opportunity to share what we have learned so far. Giovanna Dominguez Timor 301 8th Avenue North. During the past few years, the city has grown into a place where anyone can find an Airbnb even for a single night stay if the price is right. I know this for a fact. My daughter and her spouse were invited to this Moroccan-themed party house on Gulfview several years ago by a friend who rented it to celebrate his birthday for a single overnight stay at an exorbitant price. This particular house and another near it have multiple cars and visitors year-round, and when I walk our dog past it, the over-chlorinated pool odor is offensive. I cannot imagine living directly next to this place, nor can I imagine that this house is not known to this commission as an active short-term rental, as is another house, both of them deep inside Parrot Cove. There are others that are less obvious, but that can be easily found on Facebook or on other sites. It is imperative for this commission to look to the finest examples in order to create an ordinance that will enhance quality of life, not further deteriorate it. When we undertake any project in our own lives or teach our children, we lead them to the finest examples, not to the least or worst. You are tasked with the pursuit of excellence, for all residents, all of you should be working together toward improved quality of life. And not one of you who by his or her actions fails in this mission should vote on this issue. There should be no room inside our neighborhoods for short-term rentals, and there should be no loosening of restrictions, but instead a strengthening of them so that our residents' quality of life will not deteriorate further in the future. The greatest cities limit these short-term rentals to the fringes of their cities and to a minimum of 60 days. Sagrant should not be allowed to vote, and the rest of you should bind together in our behalf. Next is Michael Cuiva, 600 South Dixie Highway, apartment 131, West Palm Beach. I strongly support amending the land development regulations to allow short-term rentals without restrictions for frequency or duration. Short-term rental property owners have positive impact to the local economy and are required to maintain a high bar for property maintenance and their guests. any issues related relating to noise or parking can be dealt with using the same regulations and code enforcement as relates to any other residential dwelling as do many other local municipalities next is donna kerner 1012 north j street lardis statute 501. 032 generally limits a local government's ability to prohibit vacation rentals or regulate their duration. But there is a critical exception. Ordinances adopted on or before June 1, 2011 are grandfathered. That provision matters here because Lake Worth Beach's 60-day minimum rental requirement predates the 2011 state law and remains part of the city's existing code. I urge the commission to uphold and enforce the existing 60-day minimum for short-term rentals. The city has acknowledged that hundreds of properties are being marketed as vacation or short-term rentals, and that code compliance has received numerous complaints and opened numerous cases. This is not a hypothetical problem. It is happening in our neighborhoods. We should not allow residential neighborhoods to become a collection of revolving door hotel rooms. Our neighborhoods are homes, not hotels. Residents choose to live here because they value stable neighborhoods, neighbors who know one another, and a sense of community. Constantly changing short-term occupants brings noise, traffic, parking problems, parties, and disruption, and they fundamentally change the character and social fabric of our neighborhoods. The 60 day minimum is already on the books, it is grandfathered under state law and it reflects a legitimate effort to protect residential neighborhoods. I urge the Commission to not abandon this protection and force the law that is already in place and stand up for the residents and homeowners who call lake worth beach home i'm sorry I need a sip of water. Thomas Lemire, 216 Wellesley Drive. I'm in favor of allowing vacation rentals in Lake Worth Beach because they give property owners more freedom to use their homes responsibly and give visitors more affordable, flexible places to stay. Visitors who stay in vacation rentals spend money at our local restaurants, shops, bars, events, and service businesses, supporting the local economy rather than sending all lodging dollars elsewhere. I understand concerns about noise, parking, and irresponsible guests, but those problems should be addressed through clear rules and enforcement, not a complete ban. The city can require registration, a local contact person, occupancy and parking limits, noise standards, and serious penalties for repeat offenders. Banning vacation rentals does not necessarily stop them. It can simply make them harder to track and hold accountable, allowing them with reasonable rules gives the city more visibility, more control, and a way to protect neighborhoods while supporting homeowners, tourism, and local businesses. Helen Batances, 76 18th Avenue South. Hello, Mayor Betty and city commissioners. I've been a resident of Lake Worth Beach for five years. In 2014, I was diagnosed with severe osteoarthritis And within two years found myself permanently disabled and unable to continue to work, having struggled with being forced to live on a fixed income. I took a leap of faith in 2018 to offer a room for short term rental for a little extra income, this was the beginning of what would become a rewarding chapter of my life. I have been a short-term rental host now for eight years, and I've met so many people from around the world, and I've made some meaningful connections and friendships. Hosting is the one thing in my life right now that gives me joy and purpose. As a volunteer community leader for Airbnb, I also create opportunities for Palm Beach County hosts to gather together to have fun and give back to the communities where we live and run our short-term rental businesses. Over the last five years, we have fundraised for the band members of South grade elementary school buying new band shirts for the fourth grade band members, our hosts also took part in a coastal cleanup last summer in lake worth beach. These are the things I am most proud of as a resident and short term rental owner and lake worth beach lake worth beach is my community and short term rental hosts pay play an important role in the growth of lake worth beach. Next is Noel, no last name, 1134 19th Avenue North. I commenting on the vacation rental short term rental agenda item. The regulations around short term rentals in our city have been too lax for too long. At the last meeting, I heard Commissioner Segrich talk about cracking down on what he called illegal food carts, ignoring what seems like a radicalized slant against tamale vendors, given the demographic of who sells food from carts in our city. It seems hypocritical for the commissioner to want to enforce an ordinance that impacts the poorest vendors while prioritizing the comfort and profit of the richest. While food carts are not taking business away from other food vendors in the city who serve a completely different customer base, the operation of over 721 as per Airbnb, I'm sorry, AirDNA.co illegal hotels is certainly impacting Lake Worth's housing availability. Enough is enough. The last comment is Cassandra Hathaway, 914 North B Street. I'm writing in support of allowing short term vacation rentals in our city and formally codifying clear balance regulations so that the terms are permanent, predictable and fairly applied. I believe short term rentals, when properly regulated, can be a positive addition to our community. They bring economic activity, often result in well-maintained properties and give homeowners flexibility, which can be especially meaningful in today's economy. I would much rather see a responsibly managed short-term rental across the street from me than certain long-term rental solutions we currently experience. At the same time, I urge the Commission to include and enforce reasonable occupancy limits based on the size of the dwelling, such as the number of bedrooms or square footage. These limits should apply equally to both short-term and long-term rentals. Overcrowding and small units creates real quality of life issues for neighbors excessive vehicles blocking driveways litter noise and other disturbances that degrade the residential character of our streets. I find this more often in long term rentals However, I believe both should be reasonably regulated I personally observed a small one bedroom mother in law suite on my street. housing multiple 4 plus adults and 2 plus children, along with what appears to be an unpermitted daycare operation. Situations like this strain parking, sanitation, and neighborhood peace. Clear occupancy standards applied and enforced consistently across all rental types would help prevent these problems while still allowing legitimate short-term rentals to operate. Please approve a framework that permits short-term rentals, sets fair occupancy limits, and standards for all residential rentals, and includes meaningful enforcement. Thank you. That is actually the last comment I have this evening on any item.

Excellent. Thank you. We've been going for two hours. It is time for a comfort break. Thank you. You're welcome. We'll reconvene in five minutes, which means 10. That's good. madam vice mayor it is 8 12. are we ready to reconvene we are okay it is 8 12 and we reconvene thank you um we um uh sorry it was brought to my attention that we forgot to do roll call for this meeting we did it for the previous one but not for this one

Yeah, I noticed that. Okay.

Why don't we just do that real quick so that it's all on the record.

Okay. Mayor Betty Rush is absent. Vice Mayor Mimi May. Present. Commissioner Sarah Maliga. Present. Commissioner Christopher McCoy.

Here.

Commissioner Anthony Segrich.

Present. Thank you. So both of you had your lights on that I saw. Do you know who was first? Yeah. All right, Chris, go ahead.

Okay, I have a number of items, so bear with me because this is an important decision and one with potentially long-range consequences. My first one is a question for the attorney for clarification. I have received a campaign donation from a nonprofit which receives half of its revenue roughly two million dollar budget from airbnb do i need to recuse myself from this proceeding i will have to look at that and get back to you thanks for bringing it to my attention um well i think i think we need to know that because that applies to some of the members of this commission um so i do hope that we get an answer on that A second question for the attorney. It's my understanding that there are two ways that recusals can come about. One is if there is, off of a list of conflicts of interest, then you just sort of have to recuse yourself. The other is you can recuse yourself if there's a perception or you feel there's a perception of conflict of interest. Is that understanding correct?

Correct.

So while we all have an obligation in general to vote, that can be overridden by if somebody feels that they have a sufficient perception of conflict, they could choose to recuse themselves. Is that correct?

So, like you're saying, the state law and the county ordinances under ethics require that elected officials and other advisory board members recuse themselves under certain circumstances as a voting conflict of interest. There are other times where, for the appearance of a conflict, a voting member can recuse themselves, but it is not required.

Right. Okay. I just thought we should be aware of that. The backup uses the word housekeeping and in another location says align with state law. I seem to recall this commission at one point saying that they were very unhappy about the use of the term housekeeping. And while I don't know that I necessarily am unhappy about it in general, I do have a big objection to that being used on something that has really, you know, and I think it's been recognized in the comments, really far ranging, um, influence on the nature of our city. That's not just a housekeeping. Oh, we forgot to dot the I or cross the T or whatever. And we're going to do that now. Thank you. You know, help us out here. Um, I want a clear answer from either the attorney or Mr. Waters or both. Since the word align with state law was used, are we under any obligation to make, to pass this ordinance? Does the state in any way obligate us to do this? And I need, it's just a yes or no answer.

Either of you guys.

no okay so we have a no from william is that a no from the attorney as well that is no okay so for the public or the residents of our city this is a choice that your commission is making there is no obligation to meet any aligning with state law or anything else it is a choice be aware of that as people vote A question for Mr. Waters. Regardless of what we do with this, are people allowed to rent a room within their house? And is that in any way, has that been regulated? Was that always allowed? Well, I don't know, always, that's probably a big word. But with our prohibition regulations, that came about in 2010. And I seem to recall you mentioning that whatever we do with what we generally understand as short-term rentals, the ability to rent a room, as one of the commenters mentioned, that's made a big difference in our lives, that remains whatever we do with this. Is that not true?

as far as i'm aware and going back to the discussion that we had i think it was may 25 and then previously february of 24 renting out a room and choosing to have a roommate in your domicile is not regulated or prevented within our code

Right. And so the original idea of Airbnb, where you would have a house, you live in the house, and you got a spare room that you're not really using, renting that out to guests would fall under that and be allowed. Is that correct? way you've defined it i think so yes okay so that's another thing we need to keep in mind that if we keep our existing rules that ability to rent a room still from what i'm understanding is still remains you have that ability so if you want to do that sense of airbnb you still could um are hotels allowed in residential neighborhoods

Well, I do believe that a bed and breakfast falls under some of the hotel, motel regulations, and we do allow bed and breakfast in some districts within the city, including single family. But they have to think they have to be in a historic district.

OK, so but other than bed and breakfast, we do not allow hotels in residential districts. Is it fair to say that in the big picture of things, part of the purpose of zoning is a balance of protections that you want to allow new developments and new things to happen and give some permissions for that, but you also, not you personally, but zoning in general, wants to protect the existing owners in an area such that when they buy, they have a certain expectation of what they might have eventually as neighbors. So for instance, if I buy in a residential neighborhood, I have a reasonable expectation that I will not have a hotel next to me. I might have a bed and breakfast, but I won't have a hotel. Is that... a reasonable assessment of kind of part of the idea behind having zoning in the first place zoning planning ldrs etc that whole let's go back to the original intent of euclidean zoning which was all based on use

there are other types of zoning codes that have um matured or evolved over time since that time that don't necessarily regulate uh the use of property we look at it more from a performance standard or from a form-based code ours is a hybrid as it includes all three things but um the general provisions and i can't remember the actual quote i might have to look it up with um julian is that The zoning code is set up to ensure the protection of the public's general health, safety and welfare.

okay so but is is my assessment that part of the idea is to give somebody if they move into a certain zoning district some degree of certainty of what they may expect to have if i move into a residential neighborhood i have a reasonable expectation that i'm not going to have an industrial park right next to me that would be true yes yes um so Yeah, I do have some questions. So we've had a number of people over the years and including tonight who have said, look, I moved into a residential neighborhood because I wanted a quiet residential neighborhood and the enjoyment that might be expected of that. We have a had to have an air book since 2010. So anybody who moved in after that period of time had an expectation that they would not have a short term rental next to them. Correct.

at least by our code no separate issue what we do in terms of enforcement in terms of our code around 2010 the expectation likely was because we did not have any mention of other vacation or short-term rental and i don't believe yeah they did exist because we had them in miami when i was there yeah

so i feel and and we've all heard tonight about grandfathering and that and the idea of preemption from the state legislature versus home rule that we get to make our own i think everybody in this city with few exceptions sees some value in short-term rentals and would be thrilled with the idea if we said, well, let's assign certain areas. Maybe near the downtown, we allow a certain density. We define no more than X number per block or X number per side of the block or any number of those type of regulations. Those are strictly prohibited by the state law. Is that understanding correct? yes so the only ability that we have to regulate density of them distribution of them in the city quantity of them in the city is our current regulation and is it also correct that if we take that away we now have no ability to regulate any of those things and i i'm careful here with the words or maybe i intend to be i maybe wasn't We, of course, have the ability to have noise regulations. We can have parking regulations. We can have a number of things that don't relate to SDR, short-term rentals, but we cannot regulate the density of them, where they happen in the city, any of those things that a lot of people would support having them if we could do that.

That's correct.

So I think the statement that's been made by some of the speakers, I think several of them, if we in our wisdom up here choose to overturn what we are grandfathered in with, the prohibition of them, we lose all of that regulation. We lose the ability and we have essentially failed the people who moved into a residential neighborhood with the expectation that they would not have a commercial establishment next to them, like a short-term rental. We fail those people by removing the only protection that we have and the only protection that we ever can unless the state someday changes it, but that seems pretty unlikely. Thank you. So I'm not quite done.

Well, it's a pretty important issue and I don't see it. We've already discussed this in an entire workshop and already voted to go forward with it.

Well, I think the public needs to know what we're doing. I would like to hear from staff and it can be the attorney or it can be William Waters or anybody else who has an opinion on it or some knowledge. What is the basis for us declaring on paper, in writing, that if we get rid of our grandfathering, that this will improve the public health, safety, and welfare of our residents? What is the basis for making that statement? Because that was put in by staff. and so i expect that staff has some backup to back up that statement otherwise it is i believe the word i need a little help my english companion is here poppycock or or i don't know there's a word for it but she said Boulder Dash. We would go with that. So it's a strong statement to say that by passing this, we are improving the public health, safety and welfare. What is the basis? Who can give me some basis for it? Because otherwise it should never have been put in there. Okay, go ahead. You have the floor.

And I'm just going to let everybody know, I think what we'll do is everybody can have their time. Take your time, but know that we're each getting one bite from an apple.

I do want an answer to that.

I have two answers for you. On your question regarding campaign contributions, section 2-101 of the city code provides that any elected official in the city who is a current sitting member of the commission and has accepted an election campaign contribution in an amount that is more than $100 from an individual or business entity having an interest in a matter before the commission in which the commission will take action, must publicly disclose both verbally and in writing such contribution prior to any discussion or vote on the matter. The written disclosure must be submitted to the city clerk.

so in that case i i you do have to confess my statement was false i did not receive that but a member of this commission did receive from a non-profit which in turn received half of their funding from airbnb i don't know how far the layers go but the contribution was more than a hundred dollars so i would think that would need to be disclosed

And to answer your other question on the language in the ordinance, that is language that is more or less required by Florida law. When you're adopting ordinances, you have that the action that you're taking is in the best interest of the public health, safety and welfare. By adopting the ordinance, you are making that finding. If you decide not to adopt the ordinance, you have not made that finding. So it is one of those requirements of an ordinance adoption that you make that finding as part of your adoption.

So the burden, if I might clarify that as I understand it, the staff putting that in is simply following the custom of state law and whatnot. The burden of backing up that statement as being true is on us. Is that correct?

The burden of making that finding is on the commission.

Right. But when you make a finding, you don't say, well, I make a finding that gravity doesn't exist anymore. You need to have something a little bit behind it. And I'm understanding that the burden of that is on us. i do not find in any way shape or form that this is in the public health safety and welfare in the interest of those things so i do not agree with that finding i will look to my colleagues to hear what their basis is for making that finding thank you uh miss maliga

Thank you, Chair. So I do not own an Airbnb and I did not receive any contributions from my third party entity or whatever you said that has a connection. I do have a rental property. It is not an Airbnb and it is in Delray Beach. It's in a 55 and over community. It's not an Airbnb. So I have a couple of things. When we talked about this the first time, i championed for a third-party platform to do the research and to govern airbnbs through all the different platforms that they advertise on vrbo airbnb all the short-term rental platforms And there are multiple companies out there. I had met them again through the Florida League of Cities at one of the conferences. I've brought this up before. Director Waters is familiar with them. You put in all your codes, they scrub the rentals and make sure that they're licensed, that they're paying their taxes, that they're doing all the things they're supposed to do according to what you want them to do, right? It's 30, $40,000 a year. half the time from what this one lady told me at the entity she said she will come to another presentation here um you gain that back because they catch people doing code violations and they make sure that they send they notify you you send code out there and then code writes a violation against against the the property owner so that's one um number two the only other way i i would consider approving this as i brought it up at the pre-agenda meeting is commercialing um all of the utilities so other cities and i provided information to the um to the legal team other cities fort lauderdale boca raton used the terminology that triggers the license is either transient or if they're hotel then triggers the person in the business department to call utilities and say they are a transient housing they are a hotel whatever each city did their own thing with us it's going to be much easier because we have our own electric as well So these other cities did it on their water and their garbage pickup. They said, if you get a license and we approve it and it's transient lodging, they don't get residential rates. They get commercial rates. So it has been done. I could put conditions, I guess, as an approval that these are the two things that I would advocate for. Number one, we need oversight. Number two, I don't believe that it's our city's employees to do the oversight of LLCs and how they're running their businesses i do agree um that if you buy in a single residential family area hopefully you're living in single residential family but i have a two-bedroom house next to me that's got nine people living in it so i can't regulate that either i love my neighbors they throw great birthday parties um but other you know i always look at it too like there's really bad llcs in this city that put nine people in one bedroom i can't we can't govern them and micromanage them i'm not trying to micromanage airbnbs but i want them if they are here because we still don't have a big hotel yet um and we do need disposable income we do need boots on the ground we need to support our businesses i want to have the tools so we're not putting another burden on our staff in the code department or director waters department but if we can find the funding to hire a third party that works on behalf of the city of lakewood beach to make sure that these airbnbs and vrbo's are doing what they're supposed to be doing and the bad apples the license get pulled they report them to the clerk of courts, they report them to the tax bureau. If they find any that are homesteaded, they report that. So they do a deep dive for $30,000 or $40,000 a year to make sure it's being done right. So those are the two conditions that I would put on approving this that are, as I always say, non-negotiables for me, because this should not be on the backs of our residents. Again, these are businesses. They are writing off the utilities. This is not like me as a landlord where I've had the same woman living in our house for 25 years. She has her own utility. She pays her own water, her own garbage, her own electric. These are businesses. They turn over. It's an LLC. They should have the right insurance as well if they're having all these people in and out of their house, I would hope to God. But if you're having a business, it should be commercial rates all the way across the board. Those are my two conditions on voting and approval. And that's all I have.

Thank you, Mr. Segert.

Thank you very much. I will once again disclose that I operate a vacation rental, but I represent under 1% of the affected party. I did receive campaign contributions in excess of $100 from individuals or companies that either operate or facilitate short-term rentals. The total aggregate of that group is less than 1% of the affected party. I've also just submitted that in writing to the city clerk prior to the So I do have a number of things to say about the vacation rentals. I also feel that there is a second half to this ordinance that I would like to discuss, and that has to deal with the language surrounding micro units, group homes, and so forth. So I guess I'll start with vacation rentals and maybe we finish that up and then can come back to the other.

Well, go ahead.

Okay. So William, we have a grandfather clause, or the city is proposing that we have a grandfather clause that existed prior to June 1, 2011. Is it a clause that we can point to and read, or is it an interpretation of several different areas of our code?

It's been based on an interpretation of several areas of the code. Okay.

And so would it be a fair synopsis to say that that interpretation is our code by its construction is inclusionary, which means if it's not in our code, it is not allowed. There was no definition for short-term or vacation rental at that time.

So therefore, it's not allowed? Yes, because the previous code that was in effect until August of 2013 was also inclusionary, as well as the one that we have now.

And did that code have a use table?

No, it did not.

Okay. Did that code have a definition for resort rental, which pretty much mirrors our new definition for vacation rental?

as i recall i don't have it for me we did it there was a definition of resort housing in the definition section but that used to not appear as an approved use in any of the subcategories for like the 29 historic 29 zoning districts we had because it was all spelled out individually within each district okay um in our code at that time or even today are long-term rentals specifically called out and allowed no

So by that logic, are long-term rentals also prohibited?

I think that's governed under the business tax receipt ordinance that we have to... I might need some help from legal on this. You're entitled... We determined a while back ago that single-family residential did not fall into the transient lodging section. So if it leased it for more than that, it could be rented out.

Okay. And our definition in the 2011 code for transient public lodging, would that refer to single family residential or did it refer to hotel, motel, or similar buildings governed under Section 508?

I don't remember that specifically.

So I can read from it. Transient public lodging, a hotel, motel, motor lodge, tourist court, or similar building or grouper buildings in which sleeping accommodations and sanitary facilities are offered to the public and intended for rental for transients with a charge to stay less than 60 days and provide off-site permanent addresses. This type of lodging requires an onsite office supervised by a person in charge at all hours and licensed by the state of Florida. It is governed by chapter 509 of the Florida statutes and the operator of the business collects tourist development tax, also known as the bed tax, reference following ordinance, and is recognized as a hotel or a motel in the community in which it is situated or by the industry. And then it goes on for more hotel and motel. Does that sound like it pertains to single-family residential or residential uses?

No.

Okay. So our code in 2011 has a definition for resort housing. It has no other mention of vacation rentals, has no time limit specified in there on what delineates between a short-term or long-term rental. Is that correct?

I don't recall there being one.

Okay. So there's no time limit. So there was a court case on this exact topic. And this exact topic was settled by the Florida Supreme Court. And that court case found that the duration of the rental does not change its use, residential to commercial or so on. So the attorney general of the state of Florida also put out opinions that if that supposed grandfathered clause did not specify the duration or time of that limitation, which in our code it does not, That's not a valid grandfathered clause. So I do disagree with the premise that we have an active grandfathered clause, and there are many that do. I seriously doubt our claim will stand up to legal scrutiny or a court case. I do think that prohibiting them based on something that flimsy will result in financial losses for our city, could result in takings lawsuits, and it would probably be a pretty easy case to win. And I will return to the inclusionary stuff for my comments on the group homes. Basically, we're saying we have that grandfather clause because our code is inclusionary. If it's not there, it's not allowed. So we'll save that for later. I do agree with Commissioner Malaga. I believe we should utilize a third-party program to regulate and enforce our standards for short-term rentals, vacation rentals. The approximate cost there could be paid for by a registry. Many municipalities have implemented a short-term rental or vacation rental registry. I will be asking as part of my amended motion for us to direct staff to establish that and have fees for that. And we have several neighboring municipalities that have passed this type of ordinance and are successfully utilizing. I think Boynton Beach is one of them. I will also be asking staff to take a look at what Wellington was able to achieve in their partnership with PBSO in the enforcement of some of this stuff, because I feel that's important. Some of the other items for regulation, parking. I am not a fan of having cars all over the streets and any rental having over its fair share of parking. On M Street, where the vacation rental that I operate is, all of the street parking is taken up by rentals that do not have any off-street parking they sealed it off to create a bigger backyard they just closed the gate um so i am in favor of us enacting you know a solid parking plan um that can address this address parking for all rentals because a vacation rental is just as likely to have parking issues as a long term rental. And I would like to see us address that as a whole citywide noise and parties. Most of, if not all, of the vacation rental platforms have very strict no-party policies. People will be deplatformed and delisted, which will eliminate about 95% of their revenue. You really can't operate a vacation rental outside some of these platforms. The partnership at Wellington with PBSO is a great example of where that was used effectively. um and i personally helped several residents utilize the resident portals and pbso portal a law enforcement for those platforms to report party houses and many of them have been deplatformed which resulted in them either having to change hands to a better operator or being removed in its entirety the other thing is occupancy and density I am not for packing people in like rats into a short-term rental. And I think that is part of where the bad reputation comes from. If you have a three bedroom house, You shouldn't be having more than six or maybe seven people, certainly not more than six adults in that. The same holds true for a regular rental. In a three-bedroom house, you shouldn't have 10 adults renting that space. And unfortunately, we have that. um so i would like to address this problem for rentals in the city as a whole and that is going to empower us to be able to go ahead and take some of these actions um so i fully support commissioner malega's call for a third party software i believe we can fund that by immediately implementing some sort of a paid registry facing our our ordinance off other municipalities um in terms of treating um vacation rentals as commercial versus residential i believe unfortunately we would have to treat all residential rentals as commercial um and we can disagree on you know but i understand i i believe it would be challenged and it will lose um So now in terms of the rest of the ordinance, I wanted to touch on some very specific areas. Yes. So I am going to line 89 under dwelling unit. A self-contained independent living space that provides at a minimum permanent provisions for sleeping, eating, cooking facilities, including a range and sanitation. I understand that we start off with self-contained, and that can imply that the cooking facilities and sanitation facilities have to be within that unit. I would like to add one thing just to make it absolutely crystal clear so there cannot be any challenge. To the end of that, within the confines of the dwelling unit itself. And sanitation within the confines of the dwelling unit itself. I understand that's redundant, but I think it's vital to make it absolutely 100% crystal clear that we don't have a situation where we have a dwelling unit that has a shared door into a shared kitchen um or a shared bathroom um and i understand self-contained kind of alludes to that but let's make it crystal clear so they cannot make the ambiguity argument so that's one change um So on line 90, at the very end, after the word sanitation, within the confines of the dwelling unit.

Thank you.

Under microunit, just because that's on 139, I understand it says that it is a small dwelling unit. I would like to call out at the very after the last sentence that it has to adhere to the definition of dwelling unit. I understand it's redundant, but for the same reason, I want to make sure that we don't run into problems with micro units.

What if we just leave in a fully functioning kitchen and bathroom?

I'm okay with that as well.

i said what if what if we just left in with a fully functioning kitchen and bathroom instead of redlining it i i would be okay with that i make one suggestion so sort of um because what we've been trying to do with this is have things consistent among all definitions with a fully functional permanent kitchen and bathroom okay that's a fully functional permanent permanent because we use the words permanent the work the word permanent but dwelling units

can i just add to that as well is there any way we can add cannot be a standalone because i think that's the big concern is the micro units you said they have to have like ten there's nothing in here that says must have ten that's in the development standard for micro unit itself like you and i talked about then somebody would have to go back to know that that there's you can add that sentence um or not be standalone or minimum of 10 micro units per i don't know how you would

If you don't mind, I understand what you're saying. If you'll allow Elizabeth and I to noodle that and see which is the best way to add that sentence, we can add that.

Noodle away.

Okay. So next I'm moving to line 162.

I'm sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to give you a time check. We have three minutes and 26 seconds left.

Motion to extend past the 30-minute time limit.

All in favor?

Aye. If I might, just as a segue, if we get close to the deadline for our meeting to end, I have to have a decision from you on the Cooper management contract tonight, because work is scheduled for tomorrow to start, and if it's not approved, it cannot start for another three weeks.

I understand that.

This might be long.

I said only each person's getting one bite at the apple. So he's going, then me, and then we're going to make a decision. Where were you going next, Commissioner Sedgwick?

So I'm at line 162. Okay. where we were talking about residential uses and so thank you william for your detailed explanation um when i asked for um basically back up to where in our code are we including these other residential uses into let's use as an example the downtown mixed use district um the one thing with that is that that line of our code says that we may include or extend residential uses into this district it doesn't say we shall it doesn't say we have to it says we may and that gives us a choice we don't have to do it because it says we may that's an option um we implemented our use tables to further define what all of those uses are. And boarding house and rooming house and that, they're in our use tables and they're assigned to particular zoning districts. And in fact, they've been assigned to many of the multifamily districts, as well as many of the mixed use districts. And they've been excluded from others. So it's my contention that based on, if you think back to my first, how I started off my commentary, we said our grandfather clause is based on the fact that vacation rentals are not expressly allowed via the use tables. Well, these things were never expressly allowed either. And so it's my contention that they are not currently allowed in our downtown. They are not currently allowed in all of our mixed use districts. Now, we can disagree on that because ultimately it's up to William's department to make these determinations with legal, right? But what I don't want to do is go and blanket add these in. So I do not want to add a line 164 boarding house. I do not want to add on line 165 community residents, and I do not want to add recovery residents into our definition of residential uses, because I believe at some point we want to enact stronger regulations for these, and I do not want to open this area up. Okay?

Wait, so you want to take out what?

On line 164, I want to take out the word boarding house. On line 165, I want to take out community residents. And on line 165, I want to take out recovery residents.

okay in saying that um then um if so we are all on the same topic uh referring you back to the permitted use table um is everybody got that in front of them kind of easy there's the line three down from residential says boarding house based on what you've just proposed if the commission is supportive of that I would remove all the underlying C's from that line

Yes, I'm going to go through the full use table on that as well.

Okay.

I've got a lot of other changes on the use table.

I'm sure. I was just trying to do them based on the uses as we get to them so that they don't come up again. And then on the community residence one, all the underlined Cs would go away.

It would be the Ps for community residence.

there's different types of community residents yeah i was looking at community residence type two and then the other one those peas would be gone as well they're right under boarding house it's in the table the table

Well, it's based on the number of people there.

By the state, and we refer to that. And a boarding house does have a definition, but I don't believe we changed the definition of boarding house. And that was basically what we defined earlier. It's rooms for let that have shared common space. Meals are provided. It's a very old school use, and we've had it in our code for what seems like forever. But right now, I'm not aware that we have any boarding houses in the city. The one that we did have was converted to a community residence type three and is where the Lord's Place group home is on South J Street.

So on those use tables, the boarding house, removing the underlined C's, as Mr. Waters said, under community residence type one, removing the underlined P's, community residence type two, removing the underlined C's.

wait wait hold on so you're saying that the golden girls couldn't live there i know i do too like what if myself and like three of my friends we all are widowed at some point we want to move in together if you guys are all on one lease that's not a boarding house it's not a group home either Okay, so we would all be in the same house under the same lease. Then that differs.

However, you would need to apply for a reasonable accommodation because our code, which has a family unit defined as no more than three unrelated individuals. But the Golden Girls would actually qualify because mom and daughter.

Okay. So that, but that would be under so old now. I know, I know. Okay. So that, so that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about three or four individuals that don't know each other. Commercial operation, commercial operation. I see. Okay.

I just wanted to understand, um, on the next page, I still need some understanding before I'm agreeing to these changes that you're proposing.

Specifically on the use table?

Well, before that, in the definition, the residential uses, 165 and 164. I personally don't have any problem with keeping the boarding house thing. I don't know that they're very likely to come back as a use.

But given that there are... We're being asked to add it here. So it's not keeping it. It's just not adding it.

it's not there right now is it nowhere in our stuff I thought we allowed to build boarding houses in your permitted use table as a residential use and I believe we have a definition of a boarding house somewhere um I'm reluctant to remove it if there's no good reason to remove it um because I think under the current economic things and predicted ones

housing is a difficulty and oh sorry um housing is a challenge and affordable housing uh and that it doesn't seem like an unreasonable um well regardless of whether it's there or not you choose that it is allowed in a permitted use table now in certain residential multi-family districts so whether it stays there or not where it's allowed to happen now would not change

so what's the purpose of taking it out of the resident support so it's not taking it out it's just not adding it in well i don't want it to be added added in as a blanket residential use right now it's in specific zoning and i'm fine with that we can't change it um and i think it should remain in the specific zoning my feeling is by adding it to this definition it opens it up

and will inadvertently put it into other zonings where i believe that it is currently not allowed in other words you're proposing a spatially varied regulation of it like a lot of people would like for short-term rentals um but we can't do fair let me ask the question on the recovery residents uh maybe the same explanation if we do not put it in line 165 and that would apply to community residents too does that mean those are no longer allow or would not be allowed anywhere in the city either of those we don't currently have a use called recovery residences within our permitted use table

there is some state regulation and i'm going to need elizabeth's help on this that falls under far where you can file for a reasonable accommodation for say a multi-family property that effectively becomes a recovery residence and i don't know all the particulars in and out of that but we have signed and we requested probably 10 of them over the past couple years so and it's something that's regulated by the ada and reasonable accommodation not necessary that we specifically allow them anywhere you can apply for them and you have to meet certain standards under this far regulation from the state and the property meet that regulation and we look at it and they and there is a distance separation between them i believe um and that's the only way they can happen

The recovery residences are regulated in some manner under the state. There are requirements that you have a reasonable accommodation process for allowing those types of facilities within your jurisdiction. You all have adopted those requirements in accordance with the legislation, and the staff has processed those. The purpose of adding them to this definition is to identify that these are all residential uses. They are uses within your code that are treated as residential, not commercial, not industrial. And those are the areas within your zoning code that they would be found consistent with your comprehensive and in the LDRs. This is not to add them in any zoning district. It does not regulate them in any way. It is defining that and recognizing that those are residential uses. That's the purpose of adding them to the definition.

it seems to me like there was a reason to add these and i i hear commissioner sectors that he's not saying that it was in there they're underlined so they're being added but there was some logic to doing that it sounds like it doesn't really change what we can do and can't do in the city because that's covered elsewhere it just makes the definition kind of more consistent with the other stuff in the code it was intended to make the definition complete to recognize the the uses that are in the use table listed as residential uses and that uh it says nothing about where they can be correct okay this part doesn't what line 164 and the use table it does right right that's separate yeah but that's so i guess i would say i don't see a reason to not include those the community resident and the recovery residents um i don't see any harm in having them listed in line 165 so i guess i need an explanation before i agree to to that change okay anthony continue yep um just to touch on that i

I just take issue with adding them. If they're not needed, let's not add it. And I think it can open this up. So on the next page, extended stay lodging facility. First line. Again, remove the underlined Cs.

Where are you?

On the second page of the use tables.

Oh, well, we were not looking at that page.

Sorry.

It's OK.

The very first line, removing extended stay lodging facility, the underlined C's from that.

Why are the seeds underlined and some aren't?

Because some are there and some are being added.

The ones that are not underlined are already there. The ones that are underlined are being proposed to be added and the ones that are crossed out are being proposed to be removed. And so based on Mr. Sedgwick's logic, which I don't disagree with, we would go down the line under medium intensity and remove all those underlying seeds with extended stay facility. yes um so those are the the particular um and then don't forget i asked you to like remove the bed and breakfast under 2500 which is the very last line on the permitting use table that yes i just scratched it out great so any are you saying just take away all the underlying c's

Well, no, it's not just the Cs. It was for those specific items. Boarding house, community residence, community residence type two, extended stay lodging facilities.

And just the underlying ones.

Yeah. Okay. I am actually okay with leaving the low density bed and breakfasts.

Well, then we have to change it on the portion of our code. The development, because if it's by right, which is what this says, you can have a bed and breakfast at a house at 2,500 square feet or less, and there are no restrictions.

Okay. So we'll follow your advice, and I would also say to strike that for now. The last piece is as of July 1st of this year, the state statute that preempted us from being able to regulate the duration and frequency of certified recovery residences has expired. So as part of this, I would also like to give direction to staff to look into implementing regulations for the duration and frequency of certified recovery residences.

you say frequency what i understand that's what i'm saying you're just giving direction to staff

What do you mean by frequent? Duration and frequency is how often. So you can rent it out for six months, twice a year, or you can rent it out for one month with a maximum of five turnovers. That's for duration and frequency. Or you can rent it out for seven days with a maximum of 100 turnovers.

So the frequency is how many people? Certified recovery residences.

One of our biggest issues in Lake Worth Beach is that we have recovery organizations or businesses that lease out entire apartment complexes and house their people there and then take them some other place for all their treatment. And because they do not exceed three unrelated members in the unit, and they're not considered recovery residents. They're considered a group residential rental. We've had a couple of them, unfortunately, on South Federal Highway in the Commissioner Sedgwick District, and it has been almost impossible to have that dealt with in a manner that would make the residents there feel more comfortable. and we've been looking at it for a while but they're when they're rented like that and they're not officially falling under any kind of state regulation as a recovery residence or something of that nature it's effectively like any other typical apartment rental it just so happens that people that live there have issues and they stay there but with between their services but with with occupancy and density regulations we we could affect the can't prohibit them but we can affect the overall impact so we don't end up with four or five people in a room we do have um occupancy limits in our minimum housing code and several other areas every case that we have brought over the years it's been maybe eight or nine of them they've been almost impossible to approve before the special magistrate because as soon as someone leaves you're in compliance

So those were all of my items that you wanted to go.

Thanks.

Okay.

Can I get a little bit of clarity on the use table, what the changes Commissioner Segridge is asking for?

He wants us to take away all of the underlying C's and P's. The P's too, right? Yes, exactly. The single family would stay, I think.

No, those are already there. Well, there's some underlying P's under residential.

Right, in downtown.

there's something for downtown they're underlying pieces little stars by them you know that's fine yeah no the the changes were specifically boarding house community residences type one community residence type two extended state lodging facility under light use extended state lodging facility under medium intensity i wanted to remove all of the newly added allowances. So whether it's an underline C or an underline P, as well as following Mr. Waters recommendation of removing the last line from the use table, which is the bed and breakfast in under the low intensity.

All right. Thank you. Okay. So let's go back to the short-term rentals for a second.

Can we

Well, I do like the idea of the third party. I think that that's worth the investment. But when you have that situation, does the third party deal with all the issues that people were complaining about, the trash, the parking, the code violations?

From the woman that I spoke to, there's a... Like a little, leave your comment through their portal where you can issue the complaint because then they will share that with our code division.

they and some of them actually have provide evidence um that can be used to justify or support the co-compliance case um that's brought about okay director said he's familiar with a couple of them we've been approached by them ever since you all brought this up in may of 2020 of 2025 um by entities that would like to provide some sort of um you know service like this right and so likely we will have

We put it out for bid with Valentina.

Or Valentina and I can look and see which ones are already under... a contract on their municipalities and see if they cover all that we need in those contracts. But if they don't. And if they don't, then we'll do an RFP.

Right. So when people were talking about things that we can do, could we necessitate somebody to have a 24-7 local responsible party?

well we require that already for residential rentals and so the as i tried to explain to somebody today um under the novel what system we have now yeah in our business tax receipt it falls under miscellaneous because we don't have a single family resident that was me use yeah i knew it was somebody i wasn't dreaming and so under the miscellaneous notes it says what type of single family residential rental it would be long term short term whatever And those are required to have a responsible party under our business license regulations in Chapter 14.

Okay. Okay. And it would be good to know that they are, you know, I remember that, but I wasn't sure if it was for this too. So that's good. The noise rules with real consequence. So if PBSO is called and they come, And they do their little meter and it's above the meter. Then how do they shut the parties down? I guess you don't know that, but can they shut the parties down?

Yes, they can serve a party that is there a person with a citation. i will encourage you um and elizabeth is probably going to kill me um i don't necessarily like the inconsistencies with our noise ordinance and it does present some loopholes for pbso that we've gotten some major complaints about so we want to look at that at a later date at a workshop oh yeah you just gave yourself more work elizabeth more work it's been on the list for a while yeah okay um

then usually the platforms monitor the parties and the events and if they're having parties and events, the only thing really you can do is the noise ordinance.

the noise and then um issues that related like trash out in the wrong day but yeah that can be cited but as soon as you pick it up it's it's complied um Mr Sedgwick and I have conversed about I think Miss Malega and I have and I know that Miss McLeod and I have um our parking regulations within the city are difficult because most properties that are residential rentals have limited on-site parking

Well, that was my question. So if I rented, let's say I bought a house and I rented out the house and it was a three-bedroom house. In my lease, I might say you can have three cars because there's three bedrooms. Can short-term rentals do the same thing? I know they don't, but can they?

Well, if it's coming from the person who's monitoring or managing or coordinating the residential rental, but it can't come from us. But it can't come from the city. Not unless you had it for all residential rentals, regardless of their type. And if you had an onsite requirement for the parking, i would venture to guess that 35 to 40 percent of the residential rentals in the city do not have on-site parking for anything and so if you required it those could no longer be residential rentals okay um breast sanitation regional occupancy uh I did look up Hollandale's registration program, which does seem to be a little bit counter to the state preemption, but they may not have, or they may be just expanded. They're treating a little different than just a residential rental, which based on what I understand, and I think Elizabeth will confirm that, that we have to treat the residential rental requirements essentially the same. Hollandale's does require an annual inspection and some other things, and that was just passed in 2023.

um i i have to spend some more time with that but we've been told that we really can't do that for single-family residential properties that are rentals so i don't know how they have extrapolated that out to short-term rentals yeah and i think that the it's really a matter of the enforcement of this because my other the flip side is let's say that we even though we've already voted not to do this but let's say that we voted to um to say, you know what? No, we don't want any short-term rentals. 60 days is the shortest we want to go. How do we enforce that anyway? I know we haven't. If we chose to do that, we would have to enforce it.

And what we have done, and this was in preparation for, I forget how many workshops we've had on this issue, was that we went and we have a staff person that's been pulling from information how many rentals there are in the city. And at one point, there was as many as 500. But when you put in Lake Worth, you get an area that's bigger than that. And I think it was in the 350s. Right. But a lot of our residential short-term rentals are not short-term rentals all year round. We have a lot of people who live in the city part-time and then rent their units as short-term rentals when they're not here. And that does include some properties that are... Can you rent a homesteaded property? Well, I think that's where the property tax people, Dorothy Jacks, is that who that is? Is going after those people because they effectively will lose some portion, if not all of their... Homestead. Homestead.

Right. As they should. I mean, that kind of... Okay. So, Ms. Maligi, you are... You're saying that we have to do the third party and commercial rates. Okay. McVoy doesn't want anything. You want all of it. Just kind of summarizing this. Okay. Are we ready to make a decision?

Well, I was going to amend my motion.

Okay.

Go ahead. So I would like to amend my motion to approve ordinance 2026-09. with the following changes. Adopting the modifications to the definition of dwelling unit from line 89. Adopting the modifications to the definition of micro unit from line 139. Adopting the modification for residential uses from line 162. Okay.

And the table?

On the use tables, removing the additions of either the underline C or underline P were the following uses. Boarding house, community residences type one, community residents type two. The extended stay lodging facility and medium intensity extended stay lodging facility, as well as the last line of the proposed changes for bed and breakfast inns.

I also suggest you to remove the underlying C's for the independent senior living in the ones that are listed there. Okay.

Removing for independent senior living?

The underlining C's.

Okay. Then giving direction to staff to also come back and have a registration program implemented for these. Giving direction to staff to look for a third party management partner for this. and because there is some disagreement about whether we can charge commercial utility rates i would give direction to the city attorney to request an attorney general opinion on that matter and then take action i don't need to hold on hold on well i'm the seconder seconder okay the person who seconded i don't need an attorney general's opinion we have staff

We have legal and we have surrounding cities that are already doing it. So I would rely on our wonderful legal team who has nothing to do and bringing back the examples that I had emailed in the cities that are currently doing it with water rates and finding the mechanism in which we need to trigger that commercial rate.

Would you be willing to section off that part for a later separate discussion and vote?

I know that we proposed that the second reading of this ordinance be September 15th. Whether we can have that all definitively covered by the time that you want the packet to go out, may I suggest that the second reading not be the 15th, but it be the first meeting in October?

Not the third meeting in September?

Well, I hate to kill the utility board meetings because there are going to be some second readings that are going to, from other items that are coming forward, that are going to make that, I think that agenda pretty heavy.

Okay. And you all don't actually have to schedule the second hearing tonight. It can be just noticed when it's ready. Okay. Oh, we can do this.

Okay, great. Okay. Is something like deciding on the commercial utility rate item something we could do at the second reading after you've conducted your research?

yes that would be it just the rates aren't something that would be in this ordinance so you wouldn't be amending this ordinance so it would be a separate item but it would be brought forward at the same is it not um an ordinance that would need to be changed for oh the elect utility is not in the code of ordinances so sorry it would be a resolution yeah

However, you have to make it a condition of my, of me voting as a, as a yay on this, because if it's not part of the motion and part of the decision-making, then I'm a net, I will be a nay.

So Sarah, you're saying that if there is a separate meter for the rental, if it's used for a short-term rental, then they have to do commercial rates.

If they have a license and they're on a VRBO or they're on an Airbnb and they have a license that says that they're a short-term rental or they're a transient lodging, whatever that license is that they have to get and it's triggered, I don't care how many meters they have. They need to pay commercial rates.

So if it's somebody who rents their house for three months out of the year when they're not here, they're paying commercial the whole year.

That's the decision they make.

Okay, I'm just clarifying because you remember we talked about that. How would you know?

What about normal rentals? They're a business as well?

Normal, but those people have the utilities and the person who lives in the house, just like mine. You have a one-year lease. You have one person there. They are paying their utilities. They are responsible for the utilities. Unless it's through an HOA. They have their own electric, their own cable, their own, and I don't use that as a tax write-off.

Is that, but we discussed for a while now, does that run afoul that we have to treat all residential rentals the same?

I would told Commissioner Malega that well, we have not. We just heard about this Friday. We have not had a chance to research, so that it it's on the list. We can bring that back. But I I can't say whether or not that's what I want to do any number of these things that you are adding on it other than what's in this ordinance. All the rest of this will have to be well, and unfortunately this isn't the first time.

This is probably the fourth time that i've brought this up during workshops.

on this exact conversation i have been very very firm in saying that i want them to pay commercial rates and if it's not allowable by law if it's not are you are you a no vote okay so does that mean that's my amended motion okay if the motion um did you do you second his amended motion I don't think he included I'm not including he's not including it I'm not then I withdraw myself okay is there a second okay their motion doesn't pass does anybody else want to make a motion

I can make them. Can we bring this back at a date certain once you do your research for us to vote on? Yes. So that's what I would do. I don't want to use the word table, but I would say that we bring continue the public hearing, continue public hearing until we get an answer on the utilities.

But we do have to pick a date certain for that date and time certain, and we'd have to bring it back. And if we don't have all your answers, then continue it again.

Okay, no, I think that's important to go find out.

I think that's important to find out as well as the third party. Then you can come back with real information on the dollar figure, what that could potentially cost us.

And so if we're going to do that, we need to put that into the October 6th. That's fine. October 6th. You think that's enough time?

I'll make a motion to bring this back October 6th with more information in regards to the third party and if and how we can charge commercial rates for water, electric and utility.

And keep in mind, it'll come back as a first reading.

Yeah, no, for sure. Oh, stop it, Christopher. Does anybody second Sarah's motion?

I second Sarah's.

Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any against? Nay. Nay. Three to one. All right. Next item.

I need Julian back if he's still.

Julian, if you're around, can you come back? So this is tabled to October 5th, 6th. Tabled to 10, 6. And then, so this motion failed. So Malika 1, 42, 3 to 1, Anthony. Okay. Okay. All right, so the next one we're going to talk about is the change order with Cooper Management Consulting for renovations at 1900 2nd Avenue North for the Community Sustainability Department. I do have a public comment, so let's just start there so I don't forget to do it, and then we can go into yours. So, Ramsey, come on up.

James McLeod, 24 South C Street. I reviewed all the backup documents except for the change order PDF, as I could not enlarge it enough to read it. It just moved off my screen. However, in reviewing all the documents that I was able to read, I had no problem with the information Mr. Waters has provided in such detail. Unfortunately, I'm not surprised that these issues occurred based on our history of being very poor caretakers of the buildings we own or operate out of. We are now in a position to have to correct and bring up to code decades of neglected care or shoddy workmanship. I fully support his request for the additional contingency funding and deadline extension. It is time we start investing in our own assets and bring this city's departments into a position of being able to function in the 21st century. Thank you.

Okay. Does anybody want to make a motion?

motion to approve is there going to be a well there was me a presentation but i i'm afraid screw it up if i try to like set it up and um but it was pictures of showing what the conditions are so the public could see thank you all of you came and um did a tour it has been a little bit more demolition since you were there okay um we have a big hole in the building we're missing a wall there's some things have to be changed uh the extent No, that was what we've been moving toward. So our original completion date was January. Yes. Sorry, I guess I'm tired. It's been a while. It has. So we ran out of our $100,000 contingency.

Yes.

And what we're asking for tonight is some of the contingency items to be approved as change orders. There's additional time needed, and I provided in the staff report why our timeframe didn't quite work out the greatest as we had proposed. There's a whole myriad of issues that came up. related to delays in getting our temporary location situated, to conflicts between the as-built drawings and what was in the drawings that we were able to see, what we determined when we did some demolition exploratory work in December, conflicts again, because it appears the building has had modifications done to it, with or without a permit. And so we judiciously approved as many items as we could. And the ones that are in the back backup that are in blue are the ones that would be proposed to be change orders. There is a request in here to do a credit, to not do the paver system on the one story portion of our addition, which was looked at as being sort of an outdoor break area for staff. If we have money in the future, we could always come back and easily add that back to the project at a future date. I am also asking for your approval to add another $50,000 to the contingency in case anything else pops up. And we do have one structural issue that we got a little more demolition done. There are a couple of columns in unfortunate places where a parcel column needs to move over like just three feet. um and it was not in conflict with our proposal um but we just uncovered that last week so um i can try to answer any questions you might have these are some current pictures we are on schedule uh planning and zoning is in the process of moving back in their spaces they've been clean they will be operating as it was intended um under our original plan um we did have to move them out for some repair work that had to be done in their area before we could move forward with this project We have had coordination meetings with the other project in 1900, which is the new roof. So the new roof contractor, which is not part of this, and our contractor are conversing. They're coming up with the details of how to tie those two together and at what point. And then the new deadline is being moved out, 122 days, but Cooper has reiterated on numerous occasions, they will try to get us back in as soon as absolutely possible. And if that 122 days is not needed, we get a credit back for whatever days they did not take to complete our project.

Okay.

We are attempting to do our very best to have staff back in the project or back in the site by the end of March and then spend about a month or more completing all the little odds and ends that usually arise once you get back in the space.

Okay. And I see Mr. McVoy's light on. Before that, I just want to remind you guys to be lenient now when people come to you guys, when they have 100-year-old houses, they move a wall and find unpermitted work. Be nice to them.

There are some things under the stage change on the floor statutes I will all go into, but there is some leniency that has been built in. But if it's a life safety issue, we have to address it, even if it will come up. Of course. And it appears that most we're finding is a life safety issue. Yes, of course.

No, I'm not saying you don't do it. I'm just saying be nice to the people when that happens to them. Okay. Mr. McVoy, then Ms. Maliga, then Mr. Segrich. And remember, again, let's try to get one bite of the apple. We don't need to, you know, have one.

And it's fairly short.

I'm sorry, Sarah, one bite of the plum.

Whatever. Whatever you want to eat. When I toured it, and thank you for the tour to be a little bit more informed on the progress. One of the things that concerned me a little bit is it seemed like a number of the offices would be in rooms that wouldn't have windows to the outside. And I know that we've had discussions recently about how do we keep employees happy? How do we retain employees? How do we attract employees? I'm guessing that rooms without windows isn't high on that list. For that reason, the proposal to have an outdoor space on top of the single floor portion of it seemed to me like a really smart investment, and I would do it from the get-go with some sort of shade abilities. so that at least those employees that spend a lot of time with no window can take a little break and eat a nestle's crunch or whatever out there or read a book or whatever that's why i've got shade on there so i would encourage us to be proactive on that one

or at least provide some guarantee that we will do it in very short time and find a few pennies to pay for it well duty you're bringing that up with with me when i we were giving the tour we did speak to um finance there is enough money to cover that in from the same sources providing the additional money for the project and i think valentine is here um if you need to have specificity on that but the other 22 000 and 22 cents is available if you would like to put that into the how many employees would be able to go out there every single one of them including um electric okay i'm just asking because i know it's upstairs and the majority of the employees are downstairs well they can go upstairs to go on break and we would invite because we use it we use a communal break room now that's on the electric side anybody at 1900 as an employee would be welcome to use the terrace if they'd like no no we've got to charge electric rent