Town Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. The time is now 7 p.m., and I'll call to order the town council... meeting of Thursday, August 6th. We're going to begin with an invocation followed by a moment of silence and then a pledge of allegiance of all those that are able. Please join me in standing.

Let us pray. Almighty God, our hearts are full of gratitude for the countless ways you have watched over us. Help us face each day with grateful hearts, patient spirits, and kind words, and grant us wisdom and courage to make decisions that reflect the values and hopes of our community. In all that we do, may grace and peace be with us all. Amen. We will now pause for a moment of silence.

Please join me in a pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

May we have a roll call, please? Mayor Koretsky? Here.

Vice Mayor Choi? Here. Counselor Delaney?

Here.

Counselor Geisinger?

Here.

Counselor Sundstrom? Here. Town Manager Kitzero?

Here.

Town Attorney Baird?

Here.

Okay, we begin the night. We have three presentations. I want to welcome our State Senator, Gail Harrell, who will be giving a legislative update. Welcome.

Thank you so very much for having me here today. It is such a delight to be here before the Town Council, and I just appreciate you all so very much, and I was just over in my office, and I just want to say thank you for providing me with a location here so that I have the ability to meet locally with people. It makes it a whole lot easier. I know the chief of police drove all the way up to us to steward this afternoon, experiencing us one traffic. And I so appreciate that. It's a, this is having an office here is I appreciate so much, but to kind of give you a little lay of the land on what happened this year, it was a very long session. We've had four special sessions and it was, uh, Complicated year. It's my 24th session. I served in the House for a total of 16 years, two eight-year stints, and now I just finished my eighth year. I have two more years after this because of the way redistricting falls. But I have to say this was a very unique session. Let's put it that way. It was very long, very complicated, but at the end of the day, I think we accomplished a great deal and you have before you a legislative update. I'm not going to go through the whole thing for you, but please take a look at it. And if anyone in the audience there out in the back, if you'd like to get one so that you can, can take a look at it. And it was a very successful year in all, I think. We did very well locally with some money coming back to the community. And the budget was a tough budget year because we're looking at the future. And we wanted to make sure we have the reserves in place to deal with what we are very concerned about in the way of a recession coming. So we wanted to make sure we have reserves in place. to deal with whatever happens in the state of Florida. So our budget was slightly less than last year's budget. We kind of came down a bit, and it was $114.5 billion. By the time the governor finished with his vetoes, it was more like $113 billion. So just a little under a billion dollars in vetoes. But I think we really were very fortunate from our local level to be able to get some good things in the budget. And I do, uh, I'm happy to provide you with a list. And I think in talking, uh, with the mayor, I may have missed one on my list, but I'll go through what I, what I have thus far on my list of things that we got, we did get in the budget. Uh, we got Jupiter almost placed drainage and water quality improvements for $169 million, a thousand dollars. Jupiter Seminole Basin water quality improvements, and that's part of Loxahatchee Improvement District, and that was for $241,000, a little bit over that. The alternative A1A, Sawfish Bay outfall improvements, that was $125,000. But the A1A beachfront drainage improvements were $100,000. The Jupiter Athletic Field repairs and restoration, $700,000. The high-speed rail safety fencing, $50,000. And then the Tony Pena and Central Boulevard intersection improvements for $350,000. So that is a total of $1,735,894. We had... I only have one veto, but I believe, Mr. Mayor, you had another veto that I don't have on my list.

It was on the parks.

See, I don't have that. I've got the Indian Town signal, road signal for $90,000. That was vetoed. But I would check on the parks.

But the parks we had is vetoed.

The $700,000 for parks were vetoed.

I did not know that. Well, we'll be back next year. We'll see what we can do. I didn't realize that got vetoed. But I have to say that, all in all, it was a very good year. And legislatively, the various bills, and you'll see in my update, the various bills that I was able to pass, and this is not all of them. It's part, it's kind of a composition of the bills that we were able to get passed this year. And it was one of the ones that I really want to impress on you and ask you to be really mindful in moving forward in what you do. This is a real issue when we talk about cyber security. I've been involved in health IT for 30 years and I understand the implications of cyber security. We see it in the health industry. We've had hospitals closed down. We've had all kinds of problems. But local communities are now being hugely impacted. with a variety of attacks on your systems, your IT systems. We had a local incident that got me very involved in it from the security, from the local perspective, and that was when our Martin County tax collector's office got hacked last year. And you think about what your tax collector does. She has records on everything in your county, every piece of property, the amount of money that is brought in, driver's licenses. They all get uploaded into the state database. So that's a means for hacking into our state systems. So I wanted to really make sure we had a process in place for our local governments to get some resources to help you do the infrastructure, buy the commodities and have the training that you need. We had started several years ago, and I was instrumental in some of that, to really start funding some local projects. and starting a cybersecurity fund so the counties and cities could get some money. But it was not in statute and it wasn't codified. And it could come and go depending on the whim of the legislature and the amount of money you put into it. So I felt it was absolutely necessary that we make this, we put it in statute, and we start the local government cybersecurity initiative and fund it. funding mechanism. So now there is a funding mechanism in place, and this last year we put $15 million into it. So you can go for a grant, but importantly, if you don't get a grant or you don't go for a grant, you will be able to buy the products, the commodities and the services through the state at the discounts that the state negotiates. So it will help you even if you don't get a grant. And the grant does not have to have matching dollars to it. It's a direct grant. We're going to make a priority for our communities that are underserved and are fiscally constrained. So they will come first, but any county or city that would like to access this ability to buy directly through the state. You will be buying from a vendor, but it's through the state with a state discount. And also then there will be assistance in training. One of the most important things is training your employees to make sure that they are doing what they need to do and they're verifying what they're doing. And you have authentication as well as authorization for them to have access to to whatever your systems are. I think that's going to make a big difference. We have had just the other day of another big attack. and coming from Iran, so on water systems, on local water systems. So counties and cities are now very vulnerable, and we want to make sure that you have the resources and the knowledge base, that your employees have the knowledge base as well, to be able to not become a victim of these attacks. Other things that we dealt with this last year is one thing that I am so excited about. And I wanted to just let you know that the Jetsons are coming to Florida. Anybody remember the Jetsons? Oh, yeah. Okay, we are now going to have, and it's already underway, we're going to be the leader, I hope, I believe, in the country on advanced air mobility. And we have electrical, vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, the Jetsons. And the legislation I did, I did legislation last year and this year is a continuation of what we are doing at the state level to make sure that Florida becomes the leader in advanced air mobility. And we're going to allow vertiports to become part of our airport system. and have access to dollars through the grant funding and also federal funding that allows for infrastructure for vertiports to be built at airports. So I think this is a step in the right direction. And we already have manufacturers very interested and are coming to Florida. So this is going to be part of our economic growth, but also part of mobility. And I can see us going from Jupiter down to Miami in your Jetson mobile. So it's going to be very exciting. I've got a lot of other things. Another thing that impacts local communities I did want to talk about, just a little bit about, especially with your new fire department, is the bill we passed on PFAS and making sure that PFAS, that per and polyfluoroalkyl substances that are used in firefighting. And these are what we call forever chemicals. They don't go away, and they're very toxic. We've had the incidence of cancer among our firefighters has risen significantly in the last 30 years as we've used PFAS. And what we're doing is putting in place a graduated elimination of PFAS. and also a monitoring of it in our water. Again, this comes right out of local community because we had a problem in the city of Stewart where they had PFAS getting into the water system, draining down through the airport. So we're putting in a graduated elimination of it over the next few years into the total elimination, except in specific absolute emergencies and military situations. So the details are all there. I don't want to take more time. Oh, one other thing I do want to mention is the water body designation. We did designate part of Jupiter Sound as the Andrew Red Harris Spoil Island. And I think that's, again, recognizing a local person who gave his life trying to save a friend. So we wanted to make that local designation. And there's also money going into that as well for that restoration of the Spoil Island. So I'll open it up for questions. And I don't want to take too much of your time because I know you do have some other presenters today.

First of all, I want to thank you for being here, Senator Harrell. But I'm excited to see the governor has signed Senate Bill 340 and House Bill 303 that you put forward on human trafficking with nursing.

Yes, this is a area that has been underspoken for so many years.

And the legislature did start about seven years ago. But this attorney general is moving forward. It's critical. It is so critical to see you sponsoring this. I thank you. And we've got to broaden that base for early education, signs of what professionals have to look for. So thank you for that. And thank you for all your other bills. We appreciate it.

Thank you very much. That's a very important bill. we required actually for nurses to take continuing education in this years ago, but it was never taught in nursing schools. When you were getting your RN or your LPN licenses, It wasn't until you finished school and you were out practicing, and then every two years you have to have a certain number of continuing education credits. At that point, we had put it in. But nurses should know from the start the signs and symptoms to recognize, because they're the first ones, usually, to see something and recognize it and report it and help that individual. Thank you.

Senator Harrell, again, thank you for being with us tonight. I appreciate all your work and all these different issues and bills that you helped pass. The PFAS, so you're slowly going to ease that out of use over time, which I think is a great, great idea. They're very dangerous chemicals. And also the water board designations for the spoil islands. That's a great addition to our waterways. So I appreciate all the work you've done in representing Jupiter. Thank you so very much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Senator Harrell, for coming. I know this isn't your first time before us, and I am grateful for you and for all that you've done for us this session. I do have to say it's a surprise. I did not know that this was your 24th session, and so we are especially grateful just for the institutional knowledge and the history you have that you can compare this session to previous sessions, all that you bring to the role. I know Jupiter benefits from that and from you, so thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate that.

Counselor Geisinger?

Yeah, I'm finding my button here, so I usually have it off. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate you coming here tonight, Senator Harrell, and also, Corey, your efforts in supporting the naming of the spoil islands after Andrew and Harris. I know the Harris's. I've known them for 30 years, so this is a great tribute to Andrew, so I appreciate all you've done there. And also, thank you for supporting the bills that benefit Jupiter. I really appreciate it this year. Thank you.

Thank you. I so appreciate that. And I met with the Harris's right here in our office, right here in town hall, you know, and they came and talked to us. They really, it was so emotional and so moving to meet them and hear the whole story. It was, it was very important to me to pass that bill.

just a few uh comments again thank you very much for coming here uh we're most grateful that you sponsored all eight of our requests uh and we're delighted um and and that they made it in because you sponsored eight of them they made it in in the final budget that went to the governor and and um you know we were expecting line item vetoes and quite frankly delighted he only vetoed two of them but thank you very much i just want to share a couple of and you know i think certainly in in recent years uh we've been benefiting from much closer working uh with you and and house representatives um and uh we recognize how well when a session gets going it's rapid um and um it's tough to influence any change once the session is going So we'd like to be working with you before the session so at least you understand issues to this community. And I'm sure you're okay with that. I'm just basically trying to set the groundwork. That is our intention, right? We may have always done it, but even more so with some of the things we have facing us. Just want to share some information with you and you may be aware of it, but in the event you're not. we're delighted that we made a decision, three years ago, that is going to result in a $10 million reduction in our general fund and that's fire rescue savings. So to the degree that the legislature, you know, based on certainly some governor influence was all about trying to, you know, reduce property taxes. I just wanted to share when we've always done that, you know, where we could, and that's, That may be the best example in the state of a government able to do something like that. But we recognized looking forward, even if that Amendment 3 hadn't passed, that we've got to keep looking for those opportunities. So $10 million and ultimately it would be significantly more if we had stayed with the county. So just want to kind of brag about that and make sure you knew that. in case anybody asked you. And then just as we look forward, and this is just intended to be an awareness, but in recent years, we've been funding more things that would just, when you're at the lowest level of government, local government, you get these either, I'd say, unfunded mandates or you get just pass downs. And we've been using ad valorem taxes for that kind of thing. And so going forth, we may need to push more, push back more, and push for funding. And I just want to share. So when FDOT was doing the interchange modification at Indiantown, We had to encourage them to expand the scope to relieve some traffic congestion that, quite frankly, affects more people even outside of Jupiter coming into farms and whatever. We put up $4 million in, basically, ad valorem tax money to get that project done. I just want to kind of create that awareness so, you know... last year you were able to help us get a two and a half million dollars for a project i talked to you about just you know you're well aware of and we're delighted about that because it turned out we didn't have to uh match any of that we thought we were but oftentimes local governments that was the only option we had to move up a project sometime in our lifetime i mean i'm serious about that right so just kind of be aware of that and then we're now funding because we were kind of given no choice, but beach and dune renourishment as an example. I think that's something that maybe in future years the state can help us out because some years back no municipality had to put into that. It was primarily federal and state dollars.

Normally we put $50 million each year into beach renourishment. I think we did $60 million this year.

But what the county said was we had to start participating more. where they were going to ignore, you know, our sections of beaches. And so we've got now an interlocal we're obligated to. And where do those funds come from? They come from ad valorem taxes. I just want to share those are kind of projects. And then we've been blessed to that we haven't had hurricanes in a number of years. But when hurricanes hit, hurricane recovery comes from general funds. I think potentially I want the legislature to be reminded about that because, you know, you don't get those funds back for two or three years from the feds.

And it depends on how lucky you are to get it even in two or three years. I know that. Agreed. From experiences in Port St. Lucie, it was almost 10 years.

I know you're aware of that. I just thought I'd make this pitch, you know, because these are the kind of things that we're realizing life's going to be different if Amendment 3 is to pass. And as I told you before the meeting, I didn't want to get into talking about that, but I thought I'd talk about the things that, you know, we fund, you know, that... We're not going to be able to. And then is it not, is the public not going to get that benefit? You know, and again, because years ago, the state funded a state road or county funded a county road and local did local. And anymore nowadays, the only way you get something done locally is to help the state and the county. Just want to kind of, you know, paint that picture so you understand. I'm not suggesting you don't already.

Yeah.

You're here. Thank you. Just wanted to take that opportunity. And again, we're most grateful for your assistance and look forward to that for two more years.

Thank you. And my door is always open. It's right here across the hallway, across the street. But, you know, I've had a lovely conversation this afternoon with the Chief of Police, with Chief Hennessey, very informative conversation on issues that I know you all are concerned about. And I am going to be looking from the state perspective, again, in partnership with you on the e-bike issue. I know that is a concern. I think that kind of legislation coming out of the cities or the counties, the counties looking at it as well, really needs to be addressed holistically at the state level. So we're going to be looking and working with you to see how we can put perhaps some standards in place or make sure that the education you are doing, I have to say that to me is key. We started that, we did essentially the same type of thing in requiring that young people who had no boating experience or anyone who was getting a boat or had wanted to operate a boat would be certified and have a boat certification. We did that about 10 years ago after we had so many accidents right here off of Jupiter, off of Stewart with boating accidents. So I think your example of what you're doing in education and the requirement for that certificate is very important. So I'll be looking for your advice and looking at your ordinance to see what you've done with that and perhaps do something at the state level. So that's kind of standard across the state. Another thing we're looking at is, I know the chief spoke with me today about the 911 consolidation. And that's another issue that I know that is near and dear to you all and to the local PDs. So we'll be looking at that and to see perhaps what happens with that moving forward. You know, I know there's been concern across the board on that one as well. So those are two issues that come right out of this community that I very much look forward to working with you so that we can at least put in place some parameters that would work for everybody. And that's my goal, is to work with everybody to make sure that we are at the state level, we're not putting those burdens on you, that you have your responsibilities and that we can help perhaps at some level work across the state. And because there are standards that need to be statewide. We don't want to go from Jupiter into Juneau and have a different e-bike regulation or whatever. Do I know where I am? Am I in Jupiter? Am I in Juno? Am I in Tequesta? You know, where am I on that e-bike? And also on the consolidation of 911, that's a whole conversation that needs to happen too. So I look forward to working with you, and thank you so much for all that you all do. I know it's a tough job at the local level, and I appreciate everything you do, and my door is always open. Thank you so very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, now we have another presentation. I want to welcome Gina Levins. I'm not sure I'm going to pronounce that right, but I know her well. Intake and Compliance Manager with the Palm Beach County Commission on Ethics who will be giving us an annual overview. Welcome.

Thank you. Most ethics missteps we see don't start with bad intent. They start with uncertainty. Good evening. Good evening. And thank you for having me. My name is Gina Levesque and I serve as your liaison to the Palm Beach County Commission on Ethics. And my role is then taking compliance manager today. I'd like to briefly focus on how ethics shows up in your daily responsibilities and how we can support you when questions arise. Before I do that, let me briefly explain who we are and what we do. The Commission on Ethics was established to promote integrity in public service, build public trust and ensure that private interests do not interfere with public duties. We provide oversight for more than 12,000 public officials, employees, advisory board members and certain vendors and lobbyists throughout Palm Beach County, including all 39 municipalities. Many of the matters we address involve well-attentioned employees navigating complex situations involving relationships outside employment, vendor interactions, or perceived conflicts of interest. And these are not always clear, and that's where we come in. Our role is not just enforcement, it's guidance. We are here as a resource to help you navigate those gray areas before they become problems Whether it's a quick question or formal advisory opinion, reaching out ahead of time can make all the difference. Advisory opinions in particular provide guidance based on your specific circumstances and when relied upon in good faith, they offer protection moving forward. If there's one takeaway I'd like to leave you with, it's this. If something causes you to pause, even briefly, That's the time to reach out. You don't need to be certain there's an issue. You don't need to know whether the code applies. If you're unsure, ask. You can find resources or contact us at palmbeachcountyethics.com or by calling 561-355-1915. Thank you again for your time. and for your continued commitment to public service because ethics isn't a moment. It's a mindset. That's all I have. If you have any questions, I'll happy to answer them.

We appreciate getting the updated information. I've got mine highlighted. Were there any changes from previous versions that you can draw to our attention?

There was some new guidelines regarding state law, and actually there was a new state law passed regarding to what our office can do. We can no longer file self-initiated complaints. But as far as the Code of Ethics goes, no, it was the Commission on Ethics ordinance that was changed.

Hasn't changed?

The Code of Ethics was not.

Right. Okay. Thank you. Any other?

Appreciate it. I assume this little goodie bag is less than $100?

Yes, sir.

All right. Thank you.

No, we appreciate your coming every year. I think it is important. I mean, we're also obligated, as you well know, to do training every year, but it's just good to keep it top of mind. So thank you.

Well, thank you for having me. I always enjoy coming. Thank you.

Next, we have a Jupiter Police Department update.

Good evening, Mayor, Town Council, and members of the public that are here with us and watching online from home. Before I start, I do just want to take a moment to thank Senator Harrell Deputy Chief Kimbark and I had the opportunity to go up and have a conversation with her today on some of the issues that we're dealing with here locally, and the fact that she was willing to take the time to listen to what our officers on the streets hear, what we see as an administration, and the town of Jupiter's perspective was very important. So I want to thank her for taking the time to do that. Before I move into the actual presentation, I do have at each one of your seats at the dais, you will find a copy of the newly released Jupiter Police Department annual report for 2025. This is something I thought was important to bring back. We used to have an annual report that went out every year. This annual report is designed to highlight a lot of the accomplishments of the staff of the police department. As you thumb through it, you'll see celebrations of retirements, promotions, awards that were given out, many of the initiatives that we undertook in 2025 you'll find in here, such as Barnacle Busters, our e-bike enforcement program, and many other things. This annual report will be available in digital copy on our website starting tomorrow as well as in print by request. So there's a copy of that at your seat for your review. As I start into the update, I got a number of things this time that are very important to us and we're very excited about. But I'm gonna start with some crime trends and just kinda look at where crime is in the town of Jupiter overall and how it's been trending over the last several years. You'll see from the chart here that overall crime is decreasing year over year since 2023, somewhat significantly, with a decrease in approximately 580 crimes. To highlight a couple of those things in the persons and property crimes, those are going to be your crimes against persons. That's going to include your batteries and your robberies and those types of things. Your property crimes will be your vehicle burglaries, your stolen vehicles. Fraud is included in that category. And just to highlight some of those, and when I look at stats, I don't just like to look at the numbers. I look at what's causing that number, what's driving that number difference. And one of the things I'd like to point out that were very significant is the drop in motor vehicle theft, the drop in cars being stolen from people's driveways and parking lots in Jupiter. Just to highlight some numbers from 2023, motor vehicle dropped from 65 in 23 to 36 in 24. down to 11 in 25. So going over a three year period from 65 stolen cars down to 11. We saw similar drops in vehicle burglaries from 169 to 75, down to 62. Now again, the back half of that, not just with the numbers drop, and now we got to figure out what's causing that number to drop, right. And I have some theories on why that may be. And there's a couple things. One, it's increased collaboration with other partners. crossing jurisdictional lines, being able to know that, hey, if a car goes into Palm Beach Gardens, we've developed the relationships to be able to continue and locate that vehicle, increasing the likelihood that people are going to be apprehended for that. We have task force members that operate throughout the county and can follow cars. I'll tell you, it's remarkable. If we do get a stolen car, that car is usually found in a 24 to 48 hour period. It's being located. So the propensity for folks to get caught has increased, I think. It's increased training tactics of our officers. Our training program has really come a long way in the last three years. So as we improve our techniques, it makes it more likely that people are going to be apprehended and it makes it less likely for them to choose Jupiter as their we'll call it a place of business. So that's just a little bit on the stats. So as we see, those stats have continued to fall. I do want to talk for a few minutes about another another thing we've noticed in crime trend. And that's financial fraud. Fraud nationwide, we're seeing exorbitant increases in fraud nationwide. I'm going to go through some of Jupiter's numbers here in a second, but I read an FBI article that indicated that there were $21 billion lost due to fraud in 2025. Over a third of that $21 billion was to people over the age of 60. That's $7.7 billion in just people over 60 years old. And that was a 37% increase over the year before. So that just shows nationwide, this isn't a Jupiter problem. This is a problem that's occurring nationwide. And agencies across the country, whether it be federal, state, county, local, are all trying to find ways to address it and ways to decrease it. Here in Jupiter, we did see 196 cases in 2024. That increased rapidly to 244 in 25. And I anticipate that will probably continue in attempts These fraud cases are very complex and they involve various types of schemes, right? From somebody calling you and saying your relative was arrested to saying you have a warrant out for your arrest or your taxes are not paid on time. There's a variety of things. They're using AI to do these fraud schemes, right? And once we get these and once you move from an in-person crime like a battery to the internet, apprehension and prosecution becomes very convoluted and difficult. We cross jurisdictional lines. These people are sometimes not even just not in Jupiter. They're not in Florida. They're not in the United States. They're in other countries. So as we look at how we can do this, maybe it becomes very difficult to apprehend criminals. So our thought was what can we do to, if that part's difficult, what else can we do? So what we've done is we've put an increased effort in prevention and recovery. Some of the efforts we've done to combat fraud, HOA and community presentations, and I'm going to show you, you'll see on this slide here, one example of a fraud flyer. All these flyers are created by the detectives in our detective bureau who are investigating these cases. So they take what they see in their cases, they put it out into flyer format or digital format so that everybody can see and try to prevent the next person from falling victim to what they're investigating. We do social media outreach and we place flyers on various ATMs, gift card areas and Bitcoin machines. And we'll talk a bit more about Bitcoin machines in a moment. But this is just, the next slide that I have here is, it just shows a couple more examples. They're very creative. They're trying to cover every avenue. Again, because as difficult as it is, as we try to get one step ahead of these thieves, we don't want to fall short of trying to stop it from happening in the first place. So if you look through those, it'll show some of the flyers that they've put out. So with that being said, I do want to just highlight a couple of investigative results that we've had over time. We had a wire fraud recently that originally theft was $500,000. Somebody had a wire fraud scheme. They fell victim to $500,000. Our detectives were able to locate $179,000 of that stolen money in Hong Kong. So we are using all of the tools that we have at our disposal That $179,000 is currently going through the legal process and is ready to be returned to the person that fell victim. So as you go down, courier scams, multiple in-progress attempts. People will call us and say, hey, somebody's calling me and they want me to meet them at the bank. Our advice to them is stop. Don't. So those are the preventions. We're able to prevent those from people taking the time to call us. And a lot of times that comes from the flyers that they see. Oh, I saw a flyer on that. Let me call the police and see if this is real. We've been able to stop several of those. Bitcoin. I'm going to be honest with you. I don't have Bitcoin. I don't know how to use Bitcoin. But fortunately for me, I got a staff that does know how to use it. We did have a Bitcoin case. We were able to recover $15,000 of Bitcoin and actually have that. That has already been returned to the victim. And then a flyer, I talked about the flyers we put out at the various ATMs. We had a resident call us and say she was about to fall victim to a Bitcoin scam until she saw detectives as its flyer that was on the Bitcoin. It stopped her from doing it. She called us, and that was one that we were able to prevent. So again, we're going to keep going through and trying to make sure we're putting all of our effort into tracking these frauds. I was explaining it to somebody the other day. It's kind of like running, you have a road in front of you and you know the road's gonna dead end about three quarters of the way down. We're running down the road anyway and then hopefully we can come and prevent somebody else from falling victim or be able to maybe recover some of those funds. We'll switch gears a little bit and talk about some of the things I talked to Senator Harrell about today. Just a little update on some of our e-bike incidents that we had in 2025. We had 11 e-bike crashes in 25. So far this year, we are up to nine. So we're a little ahead of pace on e-bike accidents. Fortunately, most of them have been minor. It is interesting if you look at the at-fault portion of it. Six of those accidents were the vehicle was at fault, not the e-bike rider. So as we focus on hazardous e-bike riding, six of those, the vehicle actually wound up being the one that didn't follow the traffic instructions or the traffic regulations. And there were two e-bikes at fault and one undetermined. We are continuing our enforcement campaign. So far to date, we've got 31 citations and 37 warnings. Along with that, with school starting next week, we have staff prepared and ready to be around the middle schools to continue that enforcement effort and make sure we're getting people back into the swing of proper e-bike riding as they start joining together with their friends. The next thing I want to talk about is probably the thing I'm most excited about tonight. As many of you are aware, last Thursday we released our online e-bike training program. The e-bike training program is at juplearn.com. That's J-U-P-learn.com. It's an online training course, and the purpose of it is we designed it for youth to teach them how to ride their e-bike safely. As you go through the course, as some of you have, it includes various safety topics like rules of the road, safe driving habits, the importance of wearing a helmet, and how to share the road with vehicles and pedestrians. I do want to take a moment and just kind of play just a clip of the welcome video, of the intro video of that course, so that the members of the public can see it. And I'll just let that play for a moment.

Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Jupiter Safe Rider course.

In this course, you'll learn the rules, safety tips, responsibilities that come with riding an e-bike, bicycle, or scooter here in Jupiter.

We'll cover things like how e-bikes work, the laws riders must follow, safe riding habits, but before you'll need to pass the safety test.

So make sure you watch each video carefully. Everything you'll be tested on is covered in these lessons.

Good luck, ride smart, and we'll see you out there.

So one thing I want to point out that's really important to us is those two officers that were in that video. This isn't a canned video we bought from a company somewhere else. Those are our officers. Those are officers that are out there that are teaching e-bike safety, that are enforcing e-bike safety. So it was important to us. And as you go through the program, you'll see these videos are shot at various locations around the town, from just outside our skate park to our town hall campus. So we're very proud of the composition and how it turned out. There's a couple things I do want to point out about it that kind of stand out from some other programs that I've seen. Again, we released this program to the public on July 30th, last Thursday. The thing that's unique about our program is there's no limit to the number of participants. I've seen some where you have to register and we've got three seats left or four seats left. This is open to the entire public. It is entirely free of charge. I don't want anybody paying to take a course that's going to impact their safety. And it is regardless of residency. So while we do this and we're the Jupiter community and we're looking out for the Jupiter community, we also realize that there's kids from Palm Beach Gardens, Juneau Beach, to Cuesta and even further. You can go to Orlando or Jacksonville. This is open for everybody who wants to learn how to ride e-bike safely. We are collaborating as we start to roll this program out. We're working with the Palm Beach County School District and the school police as we get ready to ramp up back to school. These materials and the information about this program will be pushed off to staff members at the school. We'll have participation at parent-teacher conferences to be able to get this information in the hands of the parents. And school police are very familiar with the program and will be assisting in handing this out as they see violations on their various campuses across town. We've collaborated with local bike shops, many of whom have volunteered to not only have the flyers handy in their stores, but to actually hand them out with the purchase of a new e-bike. So as a new e-bike gets purchased, a copy of the flyer will be delivered. We're going to be working with homeowners associations and then town staff to make sure we identify all of the town opportunities, all of our various events as we go through the fall that we can incorporate and have a presence. Because again, the more people that take this, the more likely we are to prevent a tragedy or a serious incident down the road. And just final note on the e-bike program, we did plan just to try to kick this thing off and maximize participation. Anybody who completes the program who is 18 years of age or under you complete the program between July 30th and September 15th that will enter you into a raffle for one of five gift cards five Amazon gift cards so it gives some some incentive for folks to want to participate and we do we do encourage as we as kids take this course we want to encourage parents also to take the course with them sit alongside with them and know what know what they're learning so that you know what you should be enforcing at home and know what safe riding is so we're very excited to be able to announce that course and and looking forward to see what kind of participation we see from that. Again, I just want to give a current staffing report on the police department just so you know where we sit with staffing. The police department is currently staffed at 98% of our allotted positions. We've been fortunate to be able to bring officers not just from the academy, but seasoned officers from other places that have decided to come here and join our family, and they see what we do here, and most of them have been very impressed so far. We do have six officers in training. They're scheduled to complete their FTO training by the end of this year and be full-bore Jupiter police officers. On the civilian side of the house, we did fill four non-sworn positions that were recently filled to our records section and our evidence section to bring both of those to full staffing levels, including bolstering our evidence staff to be able to handle the influx of in-car dash cam video that were recently installed in the vehicles. Lastly on staffing, I do want to recognize some of our staff for their quarterly awards. Officer of the quarter for this quarter was Officer Julia Kane. Our investigator of the quarter was Detective Daniel Bigtree. And our civilian employee of the quarter was administrative assistant Alicia Fedak. So those are just some accomplishments for some of our staff. And while I'm on staffing real quick, I just want to take a moment to say like this e-bike program that I put together, yeah, you see our officers on the screen. But it was a full team effort across, like from the information systems team to the community relations. Marlee Novak was instrumental in making sure these videos turned out with the high quality that they did. So I want to take some time and thank them for not only that, but also for the beautiful annual report you have sitting in front of you. So we realize we may have the information, but we rely on those others to put this stuff together. The last slide I have here is something that some of you have already seen, but I'm really proud of it. I'm really excited about it. Um, as I, you know, since I've been, I've been sitting in the chief seat now for approximately seven months. And one of the things I wanted to make sure we had as a visual representation of what Jupiter is. So I've taken the initiative to modify our police car and our police car design. And that is a picture of our new, uh, Jupiter police car. Uh, we currently have three of these stripes. We're working on another five. next week, and then we're going to get started on the remainder of our fleet. So as you see those rolling around town, know that's your new Jupiter police car, and we're excited to get them out there. I'd be happy to take any questions from anybody that asks any tonight.

Any questions? I just wanted to make a comment back on the e-bike media communications. It has been phenomenal. I really believe every day this week, if not three, four times a day, the television is picking up and talking about what Jupiter is doing, the education, the safety. Again, commending our public relations, your team. Thank you. You're setting the benchmark, and hopefully our neighbors and other municipalities are going to see it and jump on board. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, I've seen that also. The media's really picked up on what you folks are doing, and you really are setting the benchmark on the e-bike safety. And I appreciate, you've been on seven months now? Yes. You're doing a fantastic job. Thank you. Keep up the great work. Appreciate that. Councillor Sundstrom?

Chief, I really want to thank you for the e-bike training. I did take the training. I was able to pass. It was a little difficult. There was someone in a bow tie, which I loved. But I am grateful. It was easy to access. I tried registering for other programs, and I wasn't able to register because I didn't qualify, or I would have to register and then wait for a link with other programs. Some require payment, so you're right on all those accounts. I think what was so easy about this is I was able to register and immediately take the tests and watch the videos, and I could finish it all in one go. which I think is important because sometimes you don't always come back to it if you register for something. So I think it's great. I shared it with the League of Cities, so I know other municipalities are excited about this and are going to share it with their residents. I think what you've done is excellent. I'm so glad it doesn't have boundaries. This doesn't have boundaries. We talked about that with Palm Beach Gardens, Tequesta, all the different things. So thank you again for all that you've done. One question, though, I had to ask. Sure. You were talking about some, you know, we see trends for property crimes, person crimes going down, but we see frauds and other types of crimes going up, and these trends come and go. But how are we equipping ourselves as a force to deal with these trends? Does it change, like, how we staff? It probably certainly, you know, how we train, and you talked a little bit about that. But are we working with IT? Are we working holistically as a town to really combat? And I heard Senator Harrell talking about cyber threats as well. So we are the victims potentially too. So I just wanted to kind of ask how the force is responding to this new trend and how it can equip itself. Are there more resources that you're looking at to be more efficient in combating it or... you know, anything like that?

Sure. Yeah. I mean, from a staffing level, um, I look at this, this is a, this is a technique improvement thing that we're working with. Um, I don't know that it's adding folks or, or making, um, more people available. It's more what, what tactics do we need to understand? What, what systems do we need to understand? What, what are the, what are the technologies that these folks are using? It used to be a time when somebody would call you on the phone and we could find out exactly who that person is by their phone number. The advent of voice over IP phone numbers and Google voice numbers has made that relatively impossible, especially with companies not being willing to cooperate. One of the ways we're kind of tackling that is I'm making sure that we get detectives out to the courses and get them in front of other agencies to see what they're seeing, understand what vendors are out there, what Like Bitcoin, I mentioned Bitcoin, one of the things. One of our detectives, Luca Jurak, has been through an extensive Bitcoin train. He's really dove into the Bitcoin world. And as things like that are new that come up, we kind of assign somebody and say, you're the person on this. And not that you're the only one, but you're going to go out and you're going to learn about that and you're going to bring it back to everybody else. And that trickles down. So the detectives who know how to investigate them can then go tell the road patrol officers hey, these are the things we need you to gather for us to make our investigation successful. So it's more technique-driven and training-driven than actually adding force. If we're having a lot of crimes all over the city, I need more bodies to cover those. That's not what we're seeing here. What we're seeing is a change in criminal methodology, and we're just trying to adapt to that and make sure we're giving the detectives the tools to be able to do it. And then once we put those in place, you start seeing the results that you see here.

Wonderful. Thank you.

Yeah, Chief, thank you for your update. It's always very informative and to the point. I'm happy to hear that you want to include the parents in the e-bike safe training course. I think it's important for the parents to understand what the kids understand when they take this course. I mean, that way they're both on the same page when it comes to e-bike safety. So I applaud you and your staff for putting together this course. It's very good. I do have one edit to make to your certificate I'll share with you later, but other than that, I'm good. Thank you. Perfect. Excellent.

Couple items, number one, great presentation. Thank you for the update. With regard to fraud investigations, can you at least just briefly talk about jurisdiction? Because fraud is so widespread and maybe it's even involved on jurisdiction. But I think as I spoke to you, my daughter had been a victim of fraud that was in progress. This is several years back. And where her credit card was stolen was relative to whose jurisdiction it was in. despite the fact everything else was online. So can you just talk to that? Because obviously you can't, you know, whatever number you just said, $31 billion or whatever it was nationally, you know, people can't come to Jupiter for all of that. So where is the balance of what Jupiter can, in fact, do from a jurisdictional standpoint?

Yeah, I'll tell you from the initial standpoint, and then I'll give you an example in it. It's one of the criminal schemes that kind of best illustrates jurisdiction and how it can become a problem. If somebody comes into Jupiter and wants to report that they were a victim of fraud, particularly if it's, sometimes it's unknown. It's not known where their card got stolen, where their number got stolen. Nobody knows. We take that report every time. So there's not a thing of kicking it to somebody else and letting somebody else deal with it, right? We're going to find out where it is. If we can figure out where it started, we'll start working with that agency to to make sure that they're aware of it. But when you start talking jurisdiction for prosecution purposes and identifying who's responsible and trying to get to the ultimate goal of prosecuting the people that are doing this, I'll use a courier scam example. Say, for example, you get a phone call or a text message saying, hey, I'm so-and-so, you need to satisfy this warrant or you need to satisfy this loan. I need you to go to the bank and I need you to pull out $10,000 in cash. And I need you to meet me over here or, Hey, you have a warrant out for your arrest. You need to go, you can satisfy the warrant and we'll be done. You just go get $2,000 and meet me over here. Um, what happens is a lot of times they're hiring an Uber driver because there's a courier service through Uber, Lyft, one of the ride share services. And they'll say, well, Hey, meet, meet me here at this, at the corner of this, meet me at the Publix on chase in Chasewood. Well, who shows up there is an unsuspecting Uber driver who thinks they're just picking up a regular package. They don't know they're being part of a crime. So the Uber driver is an innocent player in this whole thing. And then what that Uber driver does, his end destination is in Miami or is in Orlando. So it's not as simple as us taking and we follow the Uber driver and see where they go. Well, oftentimes they take it down to Miami and they drop it off at a UPS box and they put it in the box. And then it gets taken from there and then sometimes it gets shipped overseas. So tracking these things becomes very, very difficult. And then even if you can get enough evidence and you are able to track one down, you're not tracking down the person that's running the organization. You're tracking down somebody who is either a courier or maybe doesn't even have the information that you would need to prosecute. So it becomes a little difficult and while we try to track down, that's why we kind of, I don't want to say shifted our focus, but put more emphasis on our victim is here in Jupiter, what can we do for the victim to make this right versus, you know, maybe I can't go get that guy. We'll do our darndest to go try to find him. But is there something we can do here in Jupiter to kind of minimize the impact?

Thank you. You know, I've been having a series, I don't know whether it's fraud, but I never fall for it, but I've had one related to Medicare coverage that I've learned that it's an AI person talking because they never listen to your response. They're trying to transfer you over. But it just boggles the mind how persistent they are. And you're not talking to a person. You're talking to an AI person. I'm convinced of that. So anyway. The second item I had just was, you know, it's kind of an E by accidents. You know, you shared the fact that it was really the automobile drivers that were mostly at fault. But what occurs to me about that is, first of all, firsthand, you know, I was 15. I got a motorcycle. Back then, you had to take the driver course first. So you know the rules of the road. Of course, you also learn pretty quickly on a motorcycle the size you could drive at 15 years old. nobody could see you. So you learn to drive defensively. And then I think if you go to adults, you have defensive driving. So someone skilled in defensive driving can avoid an accident that wouldn't have been their fault. And I'm not critiquing the judgment that adult drivers were at fault. They come darting out or whatever. A driver is supposed to expect that they have a right to come out. But I can see how, again, I don't know those cases. So we're probably not yet focusing on defensive driving because the first round of training is rules of the road. But ultimately, probably, we also need to teach defensive driving for them. They need to learn that.

Yeah, I think it's important to like to know it's a fair point. So as we talk about e-bike riders taking this course, if you don't have an e-bike, there's still value. There's still value in going through this program and understanding what we're telling e-bike riders. And it'll help you kind of understand what to expect to help you understand how fast they can go. And it helps you understand a lot of things. So even if you don't have an e-bike or have a child with an e-bike, There is still value and benefit in going through the course.

But it's probably, you know, future updates, it probably doesn't, you're first, I'm sure, focusing on the rules of the road on driving, but the next step would be to be a greater awareness that they would have on defensive driving to avoid, even though they may not have been involved, but they could avoid an accident.

Sure, yeah.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Just in closing real quick, because Counselor Sundstrom brought it up, I wanted to reference the bowtie. The man in the bowtie when you go through the training program is Officer Phil Gelina. He's one of our senior traffic officers. He's been in our traffic unit longer than I've been working for the police department. And he's also our e-bike aficionado. So as you go through there, just know that is Officer Gelina in the bowtie.

Thank you, sir, for making it such an enjoyable training.

Okay, moving on to citizen comments. Do we have citizen comments?

Yes, sir. We have one card. Linda Smith.

Hello, and thank you for letting me speak. I know this is a special meeting. Linda Smith, Jupiter, Florida, Sierra Club, Loxahatchee Group. I just wanted to try to follow up on the beach bash issue of the ordinances to restrict the actions on our beaches during turtle season. I do understand that there is a process, but I hope that that action is moving forward. Following up also on previous requests on more access for multifamily homes and commercial properties to be able to recycle easily. This is just the right thing to do. Palm Beach County is still proceeding with the $1.5 billion toxic waste incinerator. Within the past year, Palm Beach County Solid Waste Authority has reduced their projected size from four or 3000 tons per day to down to 2250 tons per day. That's a very substantial decrease. And how did they do it? They have arranged to remove much of our vegetative waste. Of course, the price of the incinerator has yet to go down. Imagine the decrease if multifamily and commercial properties had the ability to easily recycle like single family homes. And a brief aside, I don't think any rational person would consider burning trash as recycling. Recycling an aluminum can means taking it from an aluminum can and making it into another aluminum can or maybe an aluminum window frame or something else in those lines. Unfortunately, the state of Florida needs to revisit this during their next session. Jupiter is such a wonderful place to live, taking care of natural areas and living sea walls, all these wonderful things you folks do. I want to thank you, but I will continue to ask you to replace the vehicle fleet with EVs. Does a building inspector really need an SUV or a pickup truck? Do they drive more than 200 miles a day? The savings on fuel costs, maintenance and longevity of an electric motor versus a gas engine, a combustion engine will more than pay for the upcharge at the purchase. And it's just better for the environment and better for Jupiter. So I want to thank you. And I know you folks aren't allowed to say it, but I am. I want to vote no on amendment three. Thank you.

Thank you. That was it. Okay. Council, we have before us the minutes of the July 21st council meeting in July. 23rd workshop, and we also have on the dais some revisions to the July 23rd workshop. If there's no other corrections, I'll take a motion and a second to approve the minutes as revised.

Motion to approve the minutes as amended.

Second. Motion second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. Moving on to the consent agenda. Was there any member of the public who wished to pull the consent agenda item?

No, sir.

Any member on the dais?

No.

Seeing none, I'll take a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda.

So moved. Second.

Motion and a second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. Moving on to reports. Town Attorney.

Caught me off guard there, Mayor. I would like to know more about your motorcycle, though. Not necessarily now. I'm pleased to report that we finally... uh... reached an agreement with the county on there on the deed and return of station sixteen to the town it wasn't an easy process but in the end they capitulated to our request i have with me an escrow agreement which requires the mayor's signature, let me explain to you how the transfer of property is going to occur. Under the deed that was given to the county, it had two conditions. if the county stopped serving Jupiter Fire Rescue Services. And then the second one was that the town would pay the unamortized cost of the improvements at Station 16. So Mr. Reynolds and the county's finance department have agreed to that cost and the cost will be placed in an escrow account held by the clerk of courts. along with the deed. On October 1, when the town takes over service, it'll probably be, you know, once the business day begins, then the funds will be released from escrow to the county and the deed released to the town. So, we are not going to have to take some of the steps that we didn't want to take in terms of enforcing our entitlement to returning that property. Second thing I want to report, I'm sure that you all have already heard this, but it bears repeating. The property tax referendum judge ruled that the title of the ballot was clearly and conclusively defective. The result of that ruling is that the title has to be rewritten by the Attorney General. That process is a 10-day process, so the Attorney General has until August 13 to rewrite the ballot question. That ballot question, though, can be challenged again if it still remains a ballot question that is confusing or not consistent with law. And that's really all I have to report other than just picking up on the Jetsons and the JetMobile. I want to ride with Counselor Geisinger.

Just on those two items, number one, we're grateful, Mr. Baird, that you were persistent on getting the Abacoa Station deed handled in the proper manner. And I'm going to just attribute and keep us informed um to just uh they may have done things differently in other situations but you know you were right and we appreciate your um getting that done correctly um i want to emphasize also i'm grateful to our chief financial officer scott reynolds because i know he was all over for two and a half years making sure that there was clarity on the unamortized amount on station. So I appreciate his leadership to get us to that point. And then, Just a clarification. So on the ballot question, so, you know, assume it gets rewritten and it gets voted on, but, and it was misleading and I appreciate the judge's ruling, but what's in the legislation is what really becomes law, correct? so uh despite what the ballot language says you know many of us still have concerns about the language so uh but that that is what it is um and we had asked uh i'm going to ask for this to be distributed but we had asked uh you know um mr atwater to uh to get clarifications on three questions that I asked when he visited on July 21st. And he did respond back today. And I want to ask that it be shared with all of council and Mr. Baird. It was interesting because he wind up getting response back from the committee that was kind of handling that. And just kind of in summary, you know, anyway, I'd rather have you take a look at what they're saying, but I think clearly the door is open for further legislation to further define things based on what the legislature themselves was interpreting. Something like, for example, I'll just use one example in there, but like infrastructure, you know, so staff was thinking that a definition may need to be created if the amendment passes, which means, gee, the amendment passes and then they change what it is, right? It's kind of scary, but I'll just leave it at that. But Mr. Kichero asked for that to be kind of shared. And as we continue on, we just need to be aware of that what's in the legislation is what is really being ultimately voted on. And therefore, we need to educate that in addition to. Anyway, thank you very much. Mr. Kichero?

Thank you, Mayor. Just a few things. First of all, if you haven't heard, we reached another milestone for Jupiter Fire Rescue Department as we took delivery of our new ladder truck. It arrived here in town last Tuesday and really quite a remarkable piece of equipment. It's very significant because now we have on hand all of our operational equipment for the firefighting side of the house. And if you remember, that was one of the contentious issues that we kept hearing about is that we wouldn't get our equipment in addition to our staffing. And we're in the final stages of having our rescue vehicles showing up. They'll be here very shortly. They're in various stages of being wrapped and that kind of stuff. So that was a big day. And just as we keep track, we're less than 60 days away from becoming operational. And Jupiter Fire Rescue has been working really hard. And I can't say enough about the integration of our police and fire department on so many different levels. And as a matter of fact, last evening, as part of JFRD training, the firefighters want to ride along with the police officers so they can get a feel for the town, what we do, communications, those kind of things. And just really every day is just remarkable. I'm truly excited about what the future is here for public safety in our town. And so kudos to all of those folks involved. I also wanted to bring up the fact that most of you know, all of you will know, that we wound up having to postpone the National Night Out Parade because of inclement weather. That is scheduled now for October 13th. and you'll be getting information coming out to you from Chief Hennessey on that event. As you know, Monday, August 10th, is the first day of school. As a follow-up to my initial comments, Jupiter Police Department and Jupiter Fire Rescue Department have been working together to make sure that we have as much as we can, a very safe and secure school year for our students and families. As a matter of fact, there's a number of things that the police department's doing in addition to education, high visibility patrols. The chief hosted his annual school principals meeting this past week, well-attended, a lot of key stakeholders involved. And Fire Rescue was there as well. And so a great time to exchange information and get ready for the upcoming school year and sharpen the saw on the things we need to do to be better even than we were last year. Also, Monday, Tuesday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, Jupiter Police Department and Jupiter Fire Rescue Department conducted joint active shooter training at one of our schools. And so that we can sharpen the saw again on the integration of services. Because as you all know, hopefully we'll never we never need it. But if we ever do time is not our friend. And the quicker we can respond will determine the number of lives lost or saved. So very grateful for that training. I did get a report from Deputy Chief Kim Bark, who has pretty high standards that the fire rescue guys stayed in the game. So that was pretty good. And then the last thing, if you weren't around town last week, we had the last day of summer camp for the kids. they bring the you know the fire guys over everybody loves firemen and uh and so they bring the fire guys over and they got the hoses and the big fire hydrant and you know and happen to be standing out there on the street and the door opened up and you can hear the kids come out and then all of a sudden you hear them go fire trucks oh my god and they go running out we spray them full of water and The biggest kid of all, of the whole thing, I wish you could have seen it, was Deputy Chief Andrew Arminas on top of the truck with the hose pointing at me. He was just laughing up the storm. I'm thinking he should have been at summer camp. Yeah, yeah. So, Mayor, that's my report, and kudos to all the folks that have been working so hard to get ready for this school year and will be in the arena with our students. So thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. Councilor Gossinger?

I too want to thank you, Mr. Baird. Great job in resolving that issue with the Palm Beach County relative to the deed for Station 16. That came to a faster resolution than I thought it would, so thank you for all your efforts making that happen. And relative to the town manager, I had a couple questions to ask, but it's not fair to ask you. I'm going to go ahead and document some of these. They're dealing with how do we interface to water utilities with our programmable logic controllers. for our water system from cyber attacks. So what I'll do is I'll document those questions and send them in to you and Amanda. So rather than putting you on the spot to try and answer them tonight, they're pretty detailed.

Well, I could give you the technical pieces, but I will tell you, you should already not be surprised at this. Amanda has already been way in front of this and she has enough written that will answer you. Maybe we should just send you, I'll send to council what she has written.

Okay.

And then you can see what questions you have after that. I know he has been on this from the very beginning. And the short, the short summary of it is our water system is safe, our utilities safe. And and we don't use a lot of the technology that's vulnerable now at that level.

Yeah, if you'd send it out, I'd appreciate it. I know the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency puts out recommendations now to all the municipalities for safeguarding their water systems. So I'd like to hear what we're doing. If you don't mind, if you could send that out, that'd be appreciated. We'll send it to you. All right. Thank you.

On that one, just to have it confirmed, too, my understanding, you know, as a longtime FPL employee, I'm well aware how the federal government had mandated cybersecurity for all electrical systems and, my understanding, also water systems. So the town has, over the years, you know, implemented – as part of a federal requirement, to avoid just what happened on the west coast of Florida here, as some of us had heard reported, where, let's just say, some other countries were trying to do mischief. So that doesn't mean that occasionally they don't get through but there has been for many years on the water utility side that obligation that you know they've been working on i had asked the question about that just forward to the town manager i still nonetheless want to confirm that we hadn't been you know subject to that i know that everything that's possible is being done but i just want to share that um counselor sunstrom

I just want to quickly thank our Jupiter Police Department again for the very thorough presentation. And I look forward to reading the full annual report. Thank you for bringing this back. I do think it'll be a very interesting read for us and for our residents. And I also want to thank the town attorney for his persistence and dedication to protecting our rights and standing up for, you know, our rights. But also that update on the Amendment 3 especially. That was a really big development. What I'm hearing is that they are working on the rewrite and they haven't appealed it. They are going to move forward with rewriting the amendment. But even that could be challenged. So I'm curious to see if they're going to make the deadline because somewhere there's a Jupiter resident in Indonesia that needs his or her ballot and it will take several weeks to get there. And so what happens is the supervisor of elections has to print all of these ballots quite early for the November election. And so that language would need to be done in early or mid-September in order to reach overseas voters, military voters, all sorts of voters all over the place. So it'll be curious to see if we run out the clock on this cycle, even, or if they make it. But the judge challenged the amendment title and the summary. It has to clearly explain what the amendment does. I think that's going to be quite a challenge with where it is right now. So I would stay tuned to see if they even make the deadline. But very interesting development for sure.

I just want to, I went to an issues forum meeting today. The topic in recent meetings had been the Palm Beach County transportation plan. I just want to give an update on that. You know, I had in many, many months back, I had made sure that was on all of our radar screens because that was an important topic. effort that was coming to when it was originally planned was going to come to some kind of conclusion and we wanted to make sure we were properly addressed. I want to share that I had because of my membership on the Palm Beach County Metropolitan Planning Agency, I'd emphasized on behalf of myself and the staff that some of our inputs hadn't been included. Pleased to say that we had a conference call a couple days ago and staff has since submitted. What's really important is that the menu, if you will, of everything that we thought we needed to do has, it's my understanding it is going to be updated they get they did get that in um so that's that was important but i just want to share i now understand and none of us should be surprised but i was a question and it was confirmed today uh because we hear about an august meeting you know the county commission well it's really going to be i'll call it a soft landing I say that because when this thing kicked off, first of all, there was no referendum statewide on Amendment 3. Number two, the original plan, the county commission was expected to go to a transportation tax fund. in November of 26. So with the kind of the delayed in completing it, which really wasn't a delay, it was an impossible task to get done. And then with Amendment 3, it now looks like it was, I asked a question and it was said on the record today that The funding asked to the public is now scheduled to be 2028. So I'm just emphasizing and to the degree that, you know, the circumstances, what it is with referendum, the referendum in the statewide in 26 and the fact that we've missed the boat to be able to put it on in November 26, it's really going to be a soft landing. Because without funding, you can't get into any kind of collaborations about what is in the plan. You know, we were told at the very beginning that there would be something for everybody, if you will remember. And that was their goal, because if they're going to put it to a vote, they'd like to have all municipalities, you know, supporting it. But nonetheless, this was just, you know, I myself was wondering what was going to happen. And so it makes sense, quote unquote, I'm just sharing it here. It's almost a stand down. Staff has done a great job. You know, John Sickler, his staff, and George, our engineering public works director, CJ, have been all over that through the process. We're well represented with the list of projects that would benefit Jupiter, you know, more than could possibly be funded. But that's as far as we can go with it. So I just want to kind of share that so that you're aware of that. There can be no conclusion on the county commission when there's no funding. so a lot of things can happen in two years so it'll and then the entirety of the issues forum in ipark 2 um you know which our planning director was involved with i understand that that is under um redefinition and i i think our town and city managers are kind of talking about that right mr kittsrell So it may take on, they may call it IPART whatever 2A or whatever, but the issues for them as I've been the representative on for some time now, I think, you know, is somewhat going to be sunsetted depending upon what, as I understand it, the you know our leaders uh over you know managers over our respective governments are going to kind of define what's what's next right is that you want to speak to that or you don't know there's still a lot to be determined on that yet mayor so i'm hesitant to speak no understand i'm not trying to but i just wanted to kind of create that awareness so uh know particularly for uh my counselor sunstrom who's involved in league items just knowing that and of course as we concluded and we still are going to have a few more meetings potentially like we'll get together after the county commission decides whatever but um there really has it really has been a step up in collaborations you know between uh municipalities in the county and so we all like to see that go forth but again I think there's going to be the leaders that we have are going to direct to if it's going to take on any different shape or whatever so both Mr. Kitchero and I could keep you posted on what I hear but others might hear by other sources so that's all I had.

Just a couple things. I was happy to see on the consent that the interlocal agreement between Palm Beach County and Jupiter for mutual use of the athletic facilities is back in order. That's been, hasn't been an issue for almost about two years, so that's a great use of the facilities for the kids, and had with the meeting with the town manager this morning i saw a picture or a rendering of the new ladder truck and the graphics look fantastic and that's just great to see that got in here so it's one of the last pieces of the puzzle so i hope you guys fire department hope you guys are getting ready to go so getting close thank you that's it thank you um again i want to thank senator harrell for her presentation it's always great getting updates i say one-on-one

because she's here and you see her passion. And the fact that she's here on our campus, open door all the time. And also to thank Ms. Lebec for her ethics update. It's always just a reminder. Somewhere our town manager forgot to mention the fire department, our new fire rescue, have created our first explorer post. And they have given the... 1074. And I'm going to put you on the spot because I'd like you to share why they chose 1074.

I really don't want to talk about it. Well, actually, we were at Connect with Council the other morning and Deputy Chief Arminas came up and said, hey, what was your badge number? I go, my badge number. And he goes, he says, yeah, what was your badge number? I go, my police badge number? He said, yeah. I said, well, what do you need that for? I'm thinking, did I write him a ticket or something? And so he said, no. He goes, what is it? I said, 1074. And he said, that's going to be the number for our Explorer post. So what a kind gesture. Very, very grateful.

I think it's an honor to you and the respect. Kudos. You did a great job. I want to piggyback with our police department on the active shooter training. We all talked about this during campaigns, during any conversation we had to make our residents understand We don't ever want that to happen, but you're already ahead of the game by training together. And thank you so much because it can happen anywhere. We do not want it to happen, but you all are on the same page with it. So thank you again. Counselor Dan and I were at the Charter Neighborhood meeting last night, and I really appreciate going. I appreciate the residents coming to talk with the staff. We had our police, we had our fire, we had our general staff there. And the positivity that comes, and you know, it does take a little effort to do multiple neighborhoods quarterly, but it is so appreciated. And I know personally, meeting one-on-one again in a smaller environment is very positive. It was great. Thank you. And let me just see. I'm excited that our attorney has taken reins with our town manager on the deed for Station 16. Thank you. I know that was not It shouldn't have even gotten that way, but it did, and you handled it beautifully. Thank you. And again, back to Amendment 3. Who knows where that's going to go? We're just going to have to wait, put a pause on whatever we have to, and move forward. But thank you all. Thank you for the update on transportation, because somewhere things are going to have to... Things will change. So, again, thank you to our first responders, our fire, our police. Thank you all very much. Thank you.

thank you especially vice mayor for bringing up uh... appropriately apologize for not having brought it up but i'm glad you did on ten seventy four that's not just a kind gesture that's an appropriate uh... and i think uh... our fire department for having recognized that and have done that because we wouldn't have a fire department without Mr. Kittsrow's leadership. We all know that. We wouldn't be saving $10 million in ad valorem taxes this year without his leadership. I know we talked about that in his annual performance review, but no comment. I just wanted to make sure it was not a kind gesture.

Thank you very much for doing... Just to piggyback on that, and I should have said this, the Explorer Post with the police and the fire or any organization are our future leaders. And hopefully you all are going to be bringing us staff, five, ten years, whatever it takes. But you are the mentors to our future. So thank you.

Thank you. Time is now 8.30, and I'll adjourn the meeting.