Town Council - workshop

Good morning, everyone. We're going to call this meeting to order. Today is Thursday, August 2nd, 2026. It is 9 a.m. All council members are present, including town attorney, deputy town attorney, town manager, or town clerk. Did I say town manager? If I didn't, I said it twice. If you please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Before we move on to the first item, the town manager has a few things he'd like to say.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good morning. Following the questions raised at Monday's council meeting about the town's ad valorem collection rate, staff conducted a thorough review of the FY26 and proposed FY27 budgets over the past days. I want to share what we found, including a few errors and the steps we're taking to correct them. On the ad valorem collection rate, The figure discussed Monday was roughly 86% collected was inaccurate. Staff traced this to a payment from earlier this fiscal year that had been miscoded to the wrong function code prior to current staff's arrival. Once corrected, the staff's ad valorem collection rate is 98.93%, consistent with prior years. This was a reclassification of an existing payment, not a change in overall revenue collected. On the budget version posted on the town's website, we found that the FY26 budget document posted publicly was, in fact, the wrong version. It reflected figures as presented at the final budget meeting rather than the millage rate council actually adopted. The adopted corrected budget millage is $4,628,362. which is what's reflected in the town's financial system and in the proposed fiscal year 27 budget. We are correcting the posted document and will review our process for publishing final adopted budgets to prevent this from happening again. On the town's millage methodology, the town's calculations comply with Florida Statute 200.065 , which requires taxing authorities to use no less than 95% of certified taxable value. The town has been budgeting using 96% in compliance with and slightly above the statutory floor. On debt service, the debt service figure was not double counted. It appears twice in the budget document because the presentation shows figures first by fund, then by department. Once a transfer out of the general fund and one as a payment made from the debt service fund. Both entries represent the same dollar amount, not separate expenses. On the Bay Oaks general fund total discrepancies, These were traced to a pivot table in our roll-up presentation tabs that had not refreshed after a new expense line was added. This is a real error and we're already reviewing and updating the linkages between our pivot tables and the master budget document to prevent reoccurrence. Going forward, I've instructed new processes to ensure budget to actuals reports are generated and reviewed consistently so that council staff and the public have reliable up-to-date financial information throughout the year, not just at budget adoption. We take the accuracy of this budget seriously, and I appreciate council's direction to dig into these questions this week. Staff will continue this line by line review as we move into the fiscal year 27 budget process. Thank you.

Thank you, Will. Anybody have any questions before we move on? All right. First item on our discussion list is the short-term rentalscape system demonstration. Come on up. Make sure your microphone's on.

Hi, good morning. My name is Candy Marler. Perfect. And I am the head of client success at Decker Technologies. Also joining me today is Dr. Eric Brandenburg. He is our senior director of client experience. So a couple things that I want to go over today is how the Deckard Products or Rentalscape has helped your community development division of the town identify and monitor the short-term rental properties that folks have here in the town and the growth that we've had over the past 17 months, where you were and where you are today, and the progress. So I will share my PowerPoint with you now. And please feel free to jump in if you have any questions as I go through this. So the Rentalscape update for today, our platform is meant to be for identifying all of the short-term rental properties that are in the town. So our system has patent technology that allows us to scrape a lot of the big platforms like Airbnb, VRBO, Booking.com, Vacasa, you name it. We're able to identify these listings that folks are advertising on and match that back to a parcel number or a strap number, where we have the listing to parcel association. And then we're able to display that into the Rentalscape platform, which I'll show you a little bit later. The next thing with our product is registering and licensing these products or excuse me, these properties. So the purpose of rental scape is to identify these properties and then once they have been identified, if they have not registered, then we are able to send a compliance notice to them and notifying that they're operating a short term rental property but don't have a registration or a license with the town. We're able to monitor and respond where we track license status, we monitor their activities, so over the past 12 months, how much they've generated in revenues on these platforms, and also help with resident complaints. So if there's a complaint on a short-term rental property, that is funneled back into the Rentalscape platform. The last thing is to enforce and collect. So our system is able to flag unlicensed activity where it automates a warning letter or a compliance letter that is sent to the short-term rental property owner, notifying them that they have that short-term rental property that's not registered. Over the past 17 months, through our identification and monitoring platform and our registration system, we have been able to successfully register over 900 properties for the town. That has generated $346,000 in revenue from those registrations. So you can see a breakdown from 2025. It was generating 153,000 and then in 2026 so far year to date has been around 192,000. So this is some screenshots here from our Rentalscape platform. So this is the system that your community development division uses. This is to identify those short-term rental properties in the town. We have them plotted on a live map. So any new property or new listing that becomes available, our system will detect that and plot it on the map for your staff to view those. Over here on the left-hand side, you can see a full map of Fort Myers Beach and all of the properties that we've identified. So there's over 3,300 properties that we've identified so far. This consists of active and inactive short-term rental properties. The reason that we monitor the inactive properties is because there will be a chance that it will change ownership. Those properties may lay dormant right now, but in the next year they may start operating again under new ownership. There's over 14,000 listings out there. And this is across many different platforms. So we monitor these on a consistent basis to track their activities, how many bookings are they having each year, the number of bedrooms on a property, the occupants. All of this data is presented in the Rentalscape platform that the Community Development Division uses. So the goal that we always try to achieve with our clients is helping to close the compliance gap. And really, this is a huge component for the community development division, where when we started working with the town, it was at 17% compliance. Now, as of today, we're at 45%, with a steady increase in registering short-term rental property owners. What has been the most effective in increasing this compliance gap is notifying those folks through the outreach letter campaign. Of the 45%, these are operating short-term rental properties that hold a valid license and registration. The STR revenue compliance when we started with the town was at 24%. As of today, we are now at 62%. What that means is of the STR properties throughout the town, 62% of those licensed properties are now generating revenue that are licensed as well. So these are some of your larger operators that have now reached compliance, which is a really, really big accomplishment. All right, so giving residents a direct line for enforcement, or to enforcement, excuse me. The complaint portal is an additional product that the town has from Deckard, which is a 24-7 hotline number for the community to be able to report complaints on a short-term rental property. as well as an online complaint form. So what this is doing is allowing the residents to communicate back to the town when they feel that there is an issue or a problem. So right now we've been able to log 81 complaints on short-term rental properties. 85% of those have come through our complaint portal. We've received quite a few in the past couple of weeks, or the town has received quite a few of those, so some of those are still open and being reviewed right now by your staff. But one thing I wanted to point out is how we're able to show a pattern of where these complaints are coming from and in what area of your town. So the Fairview Isle neighborhood accounts for repeated complaints across four separate addresses on Fairview Boulevard and also one on Seahorse Lane that has drawn six separate complaints. So this isn't good, really useful information for your town to understand, you know, what's happening in the community, how, you know, these illegal properties, you know, what they're doing and this is helping to stay on track with your enforcement.

Katie, quick question on that. Are you able to determine if that is a weekly, monthly street where you're seeing the most repeated violations? Is there a way for Rentalscape to track that based on the town's map, or is it just an area?

So this is on the actual Seahorse Lane. Are you asking for if it's one individual property or multiple?

No, what I'm asking is to most people that aren't in the business, Seahorse Lane is Seahorse Lane. We don't know if that's a weekly street or if that's a monthly rental street. Oh, I understand what you're saying. So it would be interesting to see if it's possible. I'm sure staff has an ability, but if there's a way through your, and maybe it does it, I don't know, but.

It does. So when these complaints come in, they are tied back to that specific property address. So whatever property or STR property that someone is filing a complaint on, it does go back to that property. So we're able to see if this is a weekly or a monthly rental based on the activity that they have on Airbnb, VRBO. How often are they having folks there as far as vacation renters?

Go ahead. I think perhaps what you may be stating, if I'm understanding you correctly, is we designate a property as legally able to rent weekly or legally able to rent monthly. You're talking about the front end, right? What is that property allowed to do? Or are you grandfathered? Perhaps you're grandfathered in. Oh, okay. Now, I think what you're saying is what is the actual activity? He's looking for, if I understand, where you are out of alignment.

The category. Are you seeing more violations or complaints in a weekly zone, or are you seeing more in a monthly zone? You'd have to come up, Doctor. You'd have to come up.

Yeah, and can they track that?

I mean, I'm sure staff can do it, but it'd be interesting to know if this software has the ability to be able to do that. So when you present a report, we're seeing the most complaints in a monthly street or zone versus a weekly. Correct, right.

I was just told that they don't currently have it zoned inside of Rental Escape. Give us your name, sir, just for the record.

Eric Brandenburg.

Thank you, sir. They don't currently have it zoned inside of Rental Escape as of weekly or monthly. If we had those shape files, if we had those zones, we can easily add that, and then that way you can dissect the data that way as well. It's something very easily to track. Once we have the zones, we can put it in there, and then you can filter however you want it.

Okay. Frankie, it looks like he's jumping up to say something.

Good morning. Frankie Carpaccio community development. Um, we can take the information that's provided from Decker technologies and with the staff that we have and the map we have, we can get you that information. No, I understand.

Can we give, if we have the information and they say they can actually do it for us, if it alleviates work for staff to be able to let them automatically do it, then you get the report. that can come back to council, say we're seeing the most violations. Correct.

For right now, the way it's set up, we can take that report in. We can make that initial map, give it back to Deckard. They can spread it out across the entire town. So if we're having all these incidences in Fairview Lane or Fairview Isles, we can denote that area, find out, one, if it is a weekly or a monthly, get that back to Deckard, and that would help them create their weekly and monthly map so we can facilitate that report back to you. We're kind of in the infinite stage of that right now.

But we already have, there's got to be a map available, I would assume, to know, I mean, a realtor has to be able to tell a potential property owner if you're going to do this as a rental, you're on a weekly street or a monthly street. Yes, sir. If we have that map available, why wouldn't we just give it to them and let them input it into their software?

We are in the process of doing that, sir. Okay. Yeah.

I know it's been a work in progress.

Seahorse is actually monthly, but there's one house. that's grandfathered on that street.

And that's what you're saying. Put that data in there. It's in there. It's validated in the beginning. And then you're just analyzing it as people rent or.

Well, and I think it helps our staff be able to, when they do get a complaint, for instance, if this one house is one that's getting a complaint, they can say this is a grandfathered house. This is the map. This is why they're allowed to do it. I just think it would help staff be able to communicate that to anybody that's complaining. Because unless you know what you're looking at, you wouldn't know this one property on Seahorse.

I have a grandfathered house as well.

Correct, Mr. Mayor. And what I'd like to do is help us on the proactive side of enforcement as well, as I've asked staff to work with you on. on getting that information into the system so that when Rentalscape does its scrapes and its scours, it can pick up on whether or not something's being advertised weekly when it's a monthly home. So then that'll go from what you're describing here. When it picks up on that, it'll go to the enforcement side, get over to code enforcement. I'd love to see that next level.

Yeah, and that's something we can absolutely do. So we can create custom violations. If that's a violation you want to look at, hey, I've got a weekly property advertising monthly or vice versa, we can configure that in there. And then you have a list every month of your violations, of all your properties that has violations, and that could be one of your violations. Like, here's everyone that's advertising on the wrong cadence. Thank you. Yes, sir.

I'd actually like to see it go a step further. I mean, if we can even get it through this program, for instance, this one house on Seahorse, by address, if a customer can go look, if I'm going to look at a house to buy for rental property, maybe my realtor is being honest, maybe they're not. I've heard from many people who have bought a house, thought they were on a weekly street, they were on a monthly street. If this program can offer a solution for a potential homeowner, to go and look at it and verify that, yes, this truly is on a weekly street or it's not before they make the big purchase to buy that home. I think it could be a proactive tool, to your point, versus just a reactive.

So we have another product that we offer communities called a public portal. So it basically shows this map here, and it plots all your zones. It plots all your licensed properties. So if someone's looking to buy, and it's a licensed short-term rental, it'll show them exactly. They can zoom in. They can see exactly what zone it's in, what they can do, what they can't do. And that's something that's open to the public, that's public-facing. where they can go and see all the licensed property for your area that you're presenting to the public, including those zones as part of that as well.

Any other questions? All right, so one other piece of enforcement that we're able to track is right now there's currently just shy over 300 properties that are still unregistered but are operating as a short-term rental. So 62% of those that are still unregistered but are actively advertising as a short-term rental are have received our outreach notices and letters, whether it's the first warning or the second warning, but they're still operating and they haven't registered yet. So this is information that staff is able to use to know who they need to target, who they need to, you know, as far as the local law allows for citations, fines, magistrate, what have you. There's 116 other properties, so 38% of the overall unlicensed or unregistered active short-term rental properties that are new that we've just identified. So these will be in our next targeted outreach to notify these folks that they are operating but they don't have a license or a registration yet with the town. So just some discussion and next steps, just to kind of recap what we've covered today. So we were able to demonstrate a platform overview and business review where we started at 180 properties that were registered. And over the past 17 months, we've been able to help staff generate over 900 registered properties, which has resulted in $346,000 roughly in fees. what staff and council can now view with using Rentalscape and seeing all of the short-term rental properties that are in your town and how they are operating. And I'll also give you another demonstration a little bit further into the platform that staff actually uses. How Rentalscape has identified and helped close the compliance gap on the SDR compliance from 17% to now 45%. How the complaint portal connects residents' concerns to enforcement and where the data suggests the town's enforcement's effort will be the most impact. Before I jump into showing you the actual platform that staff uses, does anyone have any other questions?

Yes. How are opt-outs excluded from this?

Excluded in what way?

From registration or anything like that, because they will advertise.

They do advertise, and the registration is only for the strap number of the building, not each individual unit.

But there are condos that opt out of this process. How are they excluded from this, being tracked?

They're not excluded. They're still short-term.

So that's not work worth doing, really. Somebody, they should be excluded if they're running it themselves.

So regardless of, an opt out property allows anybody in that condo to go with a single strap number through the HOA and do it for a, a fee that would, a normal residence would, would do. Yeah. So instead of charging each individual condos, we're just charging the, the, the building itself for that one fee. Now all those, all those people still have to abide by that governance of the HOA. Yes. So what it does is it takes them, it relieves us of the responsibility of enforcement that relies on the HOA. But whether you want to rent out your apartment or not, that's up to you. If you are renting it out and you're not in your condo's opt-out protocol, we're gonna get you. We're gonna be able to flag it and we're gonna say that you're not renting properly. If you're an opted-out building, you have to go through the HOA and follow that procedure. You can't just be rogue and say, I'm not gonna go with this group, I'm gonna go alone without registering. So you would have to register. Either way, opt-out condo, you're under that guise. So the building can have 50 units that are renting. We charge them for one fee. Right. And that still shows up on our count as an opted-out property.

So, Frankie, is what you're saying basically in an opt-out building, we'll just say that that building chooses they want to allow to rent monthly? and someone doesn't like that, and they're a single unit, they're renting or advertising that they're doing it weekly. Or daily. Or daily, this system will pick that up.

This system does pick it up, yes. And they will be notified, and we reach out to the HOA first for enforcement. Okay. If we don't see that, then we follow through with Phil and his bunch with code enforcement.

Okay, that's good.

Thank you. Yeah.

Let me stop sharing for just a moment.

Katie, I have a question for you. Rebecca here. Who owns the data that you're collecting? Does the town own the data or does Rentalscape? Let's say at the end of the contract or even during the contract. Who owns the data you collect?

That's a great question. I'll defer to Dr. Eric on that one.

You'll always...

We scrape it for you, but you'll always own the data. Okay. So in the day when we're done, all the licenses data that we collect for you is yours.

Okay. And at any time, if we wanted to export some of that data for compliance records, there's an export tool? There is. There's a download tool. Available that we can just download as our proof for code compliance?

Yes, ma'am. You can do a raw download and filter it however you want.

Perfect. Thanks.

Hold on a second. We're going to see if we're still live or not. The TV might have just been a surge, but the light says we're still on, but I don't know if we're still on a live feed or not. Well, last time they said we didn't actually go out, so I want to just make sure before we take a break.

Just to follow up on the data.

Hold on a second. We just have to make sure the public is hearing what you're saying. Yes, sir. We're still live. We're still live? Okay. Go ahead, sir.

Whenever we have a... a contract that's terminated, we're required to maintain it for two years and then we delete it. So you still have two years post contract that we will maintain that data securely and then it's deleted.

okay and it can easily be downloaded at any time into a comma separated file or an xls absolutely at any time or any one particular item maybe to support a code thank you that's my question i guess i don't this is probably not the right time to bring it up but will maybe you want because people watching out there i i'm sure saying how are we paying for this how much is this costing the town taxpayers to pay for this you want to touch on that or frankie

Yeah, I don't have those numbers with me right now. I can get them, and we'll answer that before we're done.

Well, no, I guess my point was this isn't coming out of the general fund. No. This is being paid for by the fees that are collected through the show. Correct, correct.

That's what I was trying to get at. Sorry, I understand. Yes, it does come at a cost, but it is funded through the registrations and the code enforcement fees associated with it.

I just wanted to make sure people that were watching that they understand that when you talk about potentially adding another part of a service that you have, it would come through these fees that are collected, not through the general fund.

It would not come at an additional cost to the taxpayer. It would be general fund.

Will, would you say to date it has paid for itself with the kind of revenue we brought, or do you even have an idea? I mean, these are the kind of tools that pay for themselves, and then it's a profit after that.

It would be a fair statement to say that, Councilor Lenk. It has paid for itself, and the more that it's coming online, the more that we're doing, as Candy was talking about, it's continuing to do so, yes, definitely.

Thank you. Okay, so what I would like to share with you now is the actual system that staff is using. So this is only proprietary to staff. This is not something that's available to the public. So I'd like to share with you how they use that every day. Okay, so I'll zoom in on this a little bit, but what I wanted to show you is the map. This is a live map where it's plotted with all of the short-term rental properties that we've identified that are operating within the town of Fort Myers Beach. As I zoom in, you can see that there's a large cluster of properties. As I zoom in, these are geolocated to where they actually are. Okay, so there's a lot of different colors that are represented on the map here. The blue dots that you see reference licensed short-term rental properties. The red dots are unlicensed. It's very visible to the town staff where those properties are that are advertising that do not have a registration. The yellow dots that you see on the map, these are unidentified live listings. So as part of our methodology with our web scrapers is we're always going to find new listings that folks are advertising. They pop up overnight all the time. So those will flag on the map as a yellow dot initially, and then once our staff goes through, we have machine learning that is able to locate where those properties are, and then we have human intelligence that will also follow a validation period of QC to ensure that that listing is associated with the correct parcel number or strap number. The gray dots represent, it's kind of a catch-all. It's short-term real listings that may not be live right now, but our system continuously monitors those. Sometimes we see seasonal properties. Maybe they only turn their listings on during the summer months, or maybe not during the summer months. But our machine learning systems constantly are monitoring those behaviors. There's long-term rental properties that may be advertising or long-term rental listings that they may be advertising. So this will flag that for the staff if that is something that goes against code or someone cannot operate a long-term rental property in a certain zone or district throughout the town, those are flagged in our system. Anything that kind of falls outside of a single family home or a multifamily home is considered other. So that falls into the gray dot category. Hotels, campgrounds, things like that would be considered an other property. As we were talking about with the shape files and zoning layers that we can add to the map, we will be able to, so we already have the zoning layer for the town specifically, but then we can go a little bit deeper into adding those overlays of those zoning districts for those properties that are either weekly or monthly or vice versa, grandfathered properties, things like that. So that way town can isolate those properties.

Katie, quick question. So you said you're tracking it by strap number. So say a property has one strap number but has three units. Can the system or does the system, so say I'm a homeowner that has one strap number that has three legal units within the town. They choose to rent one yearly, they choose to rent one monthly, and they choose to rent one weekly. Can your system pick that up or is it just specific to the strap number as a whole?

So I would say both. So we're able to find those listings. Once we've identified which unit it is associated with, then we create a separate property card, if you will. So each individual unit would have its own listings attached to it. It's still tied back to that one specific strap number. But they're individualized in the system. So we can show each unit and how they're advertising.

I'm actually looking at one right now, Mr. Mayor, that's behind a property that we have. It's a single strap, but it's six units behind it, and each of them is listed.

And the system picks that up and determines, based on their listings, if they're doing it weekly, monthly, or annually.

That's correct. And I can show you, actually.

While you're pulling that up, Katie, I would ask, do we know, does that property have to register as one with one fee or six as six fees?

It's listed as six licensed short-term rentals. You have to. Each door is $300.

Great. Thanks.

So I'll show this first one here that's on the list. This is a property card. So we have a property card for each property or each unit that is advertised here in the town. So we can see this property here. They already have a registration or a license number. They have 19 listings that are associated with this unit, which means that they are advertising on Mr. B&B, VRBO, Airbnb, and Booking.com. Now, a lot of times we see that they are only using advertisements during certain months of the year or certain weeks. They have keywords in it. They're trying to target a specific audience, so that's why you'll see that some properties have so many different listings. They'll be live, like this Mr. B&B listing is live right now, and this VRBO listing is not live right now. So we're able to notify how many bedrooms are on the property or in this unit. We're also able to show the booking activity over the past 12 months on this property. So if this was a monthly rental, but we can clearly see that they're advertising and have received bookings on a weekly basis, this would be something that town would know. this information is presented to them right away. So they would know that this property needs to be investigated or enforcement needs to get involved. We're able to show some aggregate statistics on the property as well based on the booking platform data that we see of how much revenue that the property has generated in the last 12 months as well as the number of nights that have been booked and the occupancy, if they're reaching the occupancy each week. And just to show, we can look back over the past 12 months to see all of the history as far as their bookings. And you can see that there's some blocked days. So one of the things that we're able to do is determine, based on looking at the calendar data for Airbnb, VRBO, and Booking.com, those are your three major market shareholders in the town as far as what folks are using to advertise. We're able to look at those calendars of when those days are available and when those days are not available. And then we can decide based on some transactional history and other validation points if that day was blocked by the host or if that received a financial transaction of when that was an actual point of stay or, excuse me, a point of booking or not. So we're able to determine which is which there.

Another quick question for you. So you said this is what the staff is able to see, not the general public. Yes. If I'm a registered owner of a property, is there a way for me to have access to my property, not everybody's property, but my property to see that my short-term rental company that I've hired, because we all know in every business there's people that don't always follow the rules, that... Is there a way for a registered homeowner of a property to be able to look at their property and see what this calendar looks like in real time?

No. This is just proprietary to the town.

Something to work on.

I think that would be a great service for folks like Scott or others.

We have that data. We know if it's owner-occupied, if there's maintenance stays. Sometimes we'll block it. We can't get it cleaned in time, so we'll block the following day. No revenue is generated. It's usually maintenance day or a lot of times, especially this time of year, we have owner's debt.

Owners are there, families.

Owner's block or owner's family.

And that part I completely understand. What I'm getting at is I've had customers, I've had people reach out and say, hey, I think that my short-term rental company is doing something that I have no way to be able to see unless I go to every platform to see if my property is blocked off or not. And again, I think it goes to... Scott is saying they have the data, but I have to rely on the data of a short-term rental company versus actual statistics of, is my short-term rental really blocking stuff off and taking cash under the table? How much that happens, I don't know, but I have had people reach out and say that they have concerns that that's what's happening. Now, that's an issue with them, not the town, but I was just wondering if your service could provide them an avenue to go.

Typically, most of the professional management companies have Guesty or software that if it's booked on VRBO, it'll block on Airbnb. So Airbnb, it doesn't look like it's booked. You have no idea, but it comes back to VRBO. I mean, most of us use... About eight different platforms. But we have one central system where to prevent double bookings.

Correct.

And you don't have to go into each one. It's just one click and everything's blocked. Yeah.

We've got another product that we acquired a company called All The Rooms a little over a year ago that had similar data that they sold to developers, investors, where they can analyze properties and what they've been doing on the market and stuff like that. We acquired that and it's owned like tourism developments and stuff like that. We still have that type of product that we sell or can offer that shows that particular level of detail. The actual property cards that she's showing you is just inside of RuneScape. If a homeowner or like a property management company wants a really in-depth like this.

So are you pulling it from price labs or are you pulling it from key data?

No, we scrape our own data. Scrape your own data. Yes, sir. All right.

Okay, that concludes my presentation for today, but I'm happy to take any additional questions.

Any questions? Katie?

Nothing. Scott? Could you email us your slide presentation?

Yes, I can.

That'd be great. Thank you. Rebecca?

Yeah, so I'm wondering, is there a dashboard in your system for staff or what reports will they get? Is it something that will push reports out to them or does staff have to go in and say, let me look at the data? You know, what kind of analytic reports are you giving to the town, the staff who follow this?

Yes, thank you. So there are some system canned reports that is generated to staff currently. This shows a payment report, so the revenues that they're generating from registrations, as well as a registration report to show all of the data and details of those that are registering. Within Rentalscape, they're able to export as much or as little information through what we call our list view. And they can run specific reports on licensed properties, unlicensed properties, or just a general all unlicensed properties where they're active and inactive. So they have the download button over here. And this is customizable, so they can set filters to the columns or data that they want to export. In addition to these analytics within Rentalscape of what the town staff has the capability to export, we have another dashboard which is called our business intelligence tools. Within this data, we're able to, on the back end through Deckard, or something that I would be able to do specifically for town, is run additional layers of data for you. So this would show as far as into your STR supply and demand to show you what those analytics look like, how many properties are out there versus how many people are wanting to rent the overall compliant nights of STR property. So there's a lot of useful data here as well that can be generated for the town.

My next question, Katie, would be do we have to always come back to you to create different views? I think of them as views or reports. Or can a user who gets comfortable with your application create their own custom views and save them and just refresh them when they want the information?

Currently in Rentalscape, they have the ability to run those at their discretion. The filtering do not save. So fortunately, each time that they want to run that same report, they would just have to apply those same filters for the views. This business intelligence tools, this will be available to the town where they don't have to come to me to run these reports. This is still in a beta view right now, so we're still testing this. This will be free to the town, these analytics and being able to generate and run these reports. So they'll be able to, once I give them the training on how to use it and how to do the exports, they can do that on their own at their discretion.

And in the meantime, you had said that you can export the data at any time into a comma-separated file. So we could pull that into our own dashboard tour, access whatever, and create our own standard reports.

Absolutely.

Okay, thank you.

Very welcome. That's it.

Council McLean.

So I'm actually on the site right now as a resident. And I guess I'd just like to explain to our residents how they can use what is on their view in order to determine whether or not a property is registered and is there a way to further delineate Has it been grandfathered or not? And I don't believe that capability is available right now.

It is not. So, as Dr. Eric mentioned earlier, we do have an add-on product to Renoscape, which is called the public portal, where it would give those capabilities to your general public and that knowledge.

Okay.

And that's not something that the town currently has.

Okay. Thank you. The classification of the gray properties, the ones that appear to have had some activity in the past but are not currently active, can you just refresh for me what criteria you use, how far does it go back, or just how you determine that?

Absolutely. Thank you for that question. We're able to look back over the past five years. So of any property that's ever operated as a short-term rental or held a listing somewhere on a platform. So that stays in our system and it is monitored. If for some reason that listing becomes active again, then we're able to notify. Our system will immediately trigger a notice to be sent to that property if they are still unregistered. So they may lay dormant for a period of time, but those listings will, you know, at some point may potentially come back online again through change of ownership or just the owner deciding to start renting again. The other category is for anything that falls outside of a single-family home or a multifamily home. So hotel establishments, bed and breakfast, cabins, campers, those are other types of establishments that would fall under that other category or those gray dots.

Got it. Thank you. One caveat to that is one thing that we're learning, and it's in this area as well, is the violators are getting smarter. So what they'll do is they understand how some of these systems like ours work. And they'll advertise just long enough to get a booking, and then they'll take the advertisement down. Because they understand that our system catches when it's live. But we keep it as historical. So what we've been doing is running a different algorithm to catch these on and off again to give to code enforcement. Because they're realistic. They're still advertising nonstop. They're just doing it and kind of on and off, on and off. And it's still defeating the purpose of the... your ordinance. They're still violating your ordinance. They're just trying to trick it and say, well, I'm not live. And so we also offer anyone that you need to, for code enforcement, you need to take to court, we create you a defendable file for you, and it includes the entire history of that entire property that they can take with them. To my knowledge, since I've been here, we haven't had anybody actually, once we show them the evidence, they usually just settle because we catch them. It's irrefutable. Right.

They know they did it.

That's really helpful. Thank you.

Are you able to catch property owners who are not advertising on a site that we all know of, the VRBOs, but maybe they have their own website? I used to do that myself. I didn't go through a platform. I had my own pages.

Yeah, so if it's a software that has a username or password, those we're not able to access. Some of the smaller platforms we are able to access. If those are brought to our attention from town staff, that is something that can be added to our web scrapers. We have found some smaller rental agencies for the town specifically that we're monitoring. Great.

Well, I shouldn't seem shocked that cheaters are going to find a way to cheat, right? But one of the things that I think is interesting about this is it One, it pays for itself, right? Yes, sir. So I have a couple different questions. One, Scott, this is your business. I'm curious as to how short-term rentals are taking, short-term rental management companies are taking this software. They like it. They hate it. Obviously, the ones that are cheating probably can't stand it. But I'm curious to find out if you're in this world, that's your job. I'm curious what your community is saying about this rentalscape.

I think it's great. I mean, you know, the biggest thing, what we're trying to do with getting these properties registered is the biggest component of that is that they have the fire inspection. Correct. So, you know, best practices, if you're renting a home, if you've got it you've got to be fire compliant you just have to i think the biggest complaint that we have is that every year when we go to re-register we have to get another form notarized it would it just would be so much easier especially if we have clients that are canadian or german or they're just not here they can't get something notarized it'd just be a lot easier If we have that, you know, if you could do the auto signature instead of getting the paper notarized, and we've talked about this, but that would really streamline. We'd get more applications done faster, but it's just chasing paperwork around. It's just...

Is this an uploaded document that you have to do through the system? So we do save those documents. Unless it's a requirement by code that that has to be uploaded at the time of renewal every year, we do save those documents historically in the system. So in essence, you wouldn't have to do that each year at renewal unless it's required by code.

And on our side, Georgina, Assistant Community Development Director, and Melissa, who's in charge of the SDR program here for the town, have been working and trying to get that so when we get to that registration phase coming up here late fall, early winter, we can present that to Rentalscape and work on a system.

That would really streamline things. Now we've got 900 registered properties, so you're going to have 900 people renewing. Correct. And if it was just... A LOT EASIER IF THE OWNERSHIP HASN'T CHANGED, THE MANAGEMENT COMPANY HASN'T CHANGED. IF NOTHING HAS CHANGED, IT WOULD BE SO MUCH EASIER WITH, HEY, WE HAVE THAT ON FILE. ABSOLUTELY.

AND WE CAN SET THAT. SO AT THE TIME OF RENEWAL ON THAT LICENSE, ALL OF THAT DATA WOULD BE THERE. So you wouldn't have to make any changes unless ownership has changed to update this.

We get if the ownership changes.

And the document as well. As long as that document has been previously uploaded during the application process, then it wouldn't require to – we can set it to not require it to be uploaded again. That would be fantastic.

And from a revenue standpoint for the town – The quicker, easier way to do it will get the money faster. So I think for the renewal purposes, this fall or early winter, we should really look into that, Frankie.

Yeah, we currently are, sir.

OK, fantastic. And the way we've solved this with other locations is right before they check out, there's a list of block that you've got to acknowledge this, acknowledge that. We usually add something in there saying, hey, I acknowledge that nothing's changed. My file's still current. And that way, we can switch the documents page where they're supposed to upload. That particular document could be optional. If nothing's changed, you don't have to upload another one. Just at the very end of it, as you're signing out, you click on that nothing's changed. I acknowledge nothing's changed. Or I acknowledge if it has changed, I did upload a new document. That would be fantastic. That would be huge. Yeah, that would be huge.

Because it's not like your system's not going to catch it. If you're with Sea Gypsy and you go with another company, your system's going to flag it anyway. Yeah, they know. You're going to know. They know. Yeah.

So many of those things are captured in the certification last page. You sign that off, you attest it to that.

So it takes me to my next question. Speaking of the fire district, does the fire department, is this stuff accessible by the fire department? Obviously, they have to go through a fire inspection to be able to do this. Do they have access to this data, or do we share this data with them, especially the ones that are not licensed and that are operating outside? Because the fire department, I've got to believe, has more enforcement. probably tools when it comes to life safety than we do.

I do not believe they have access to this. Currently they do not. Or maybe they don't want it. They sign off on the registration.

And do they require any kind of notarized forms to be in this? I mean, we could talk about our end.

To be honest with you, Mr. Mayor, I don't know what the fire district requires on their end.

They do not. Nothing is notarized. Okay. Okay. And kudos to Chief Worth, because they had just one inspector, and we're trying to get everybody at the same time trying to get these houses registered, and they added another person. And the window from when you make an appointment to when the actual inspection was, was, gosh, what, six weeks? And now they've got it down to just a couple weeks. So they're really... They're doing a tremendous job working in conjunction with the town to get these properties certified and registered.

That may be an opportunity for an agreement between us that we could share some of their data for a small fee and they don't have to buy it, but we export certain data and they know where to go to the problems.

If they don't need it, I don't know if they could...

Well, if there are properties that aren't in compliance and we know of them and are renting, I would think as a fire district would probably say those would be the ones I'd want to check.

We're still having a few trip-ups, especially with the condos. Some of the condos might have multiple buildings and one of the buildings still isn't done, so to speak. So we're having a problem. getting the other ones registered because the entire strap doesn't have the sign off because there's multiple buildings. I think we're working through that. We've identified most of those. I think your product's great. We want to be compliant, at least the larger companies do. It's the guys that Like you said, our advertising dummy addresses, we see it all the time, especially when we're about to buy a product. You can't figure out. I don't know why somebody would spend all that time for $300. I don't get it.

One other thing that I wanted to share with you is some additional business intelligence tools that is coming and will be available for the town. This is something that Panama City Beach has developed. really been focused in on here lately, and that is forward-looking data. So what we're able to do is present to you through our algorithm of looking ahead into the future for events, summertime, vacations, how many people will you have in your community so that you know if you need to have fire, more staff or people on call or overtime hours for your fire, EMS and police. And so this is part of the business intelligence tools that will be available for staff for forward-looking data. you mean candy forward-looking data based on number of like rentals like you would see a surge in a particular activity like that okay correct thank you and you can look at excuse me mr mayor you can look at this per day uh going into the future so for panama city we were able to look at the fourth of july the upcoming fourth of july weekend for them and they noticed that over 80 percent of their properties had received bookings for the fourth of july So they were prepared for an influx of people coming to the city at that time.

The question I have is for the people that are maybe watching out there. If they're going to get, let's say they're in noncompliance, you obviously generate the letter and you send it out on behalf of the town. With a lot of people that are getting very good at faking things, how do they know that this is actually legitimate? Well, they should know because they know they haven't registered or they're in noncompliance. Sure. Does it, people, does it, it doesn't, my understanding is it doesn't come, it doesn't say rentalscape. It comes as a Fort Myers Beach code violation. So it looks just like ours.

The town presented us or shared with us a formal letterhead of the town with signatures. And so when we send that, it does not mention Deckard or rentalscape. It appears as though it is coming directly from the town. It has the seal and the legal requirements for the town.

And it has the contact information on there, Mr. Mayor, so that's their fallback. They contact the town, contact Melissa, contact whoever, and then she gives them the verification that, yes, it's authentic. Here are your steps to come into compliance.

Very good. The last thing I have is more for Nancy. Because this is a essentially short-term rental pays for all this stuff, whether it's the employee that operates it or the software that we're getting, if there are 900 properties but there's potentially 3,300 properties, assuming they were all registered, at the current fees, there's potentially a surplus in that fund. Is there a state statute that requires that that has to stay within that fund like a gas tax? Yes. Or can it be applied to other areas?

Yes. I think Will and Tracy and Becky and I, we had that conversation about that.

So it is specific. You can't, you cannot, right.

Cause I think right now there may be a surplus of funds. And the question is how can they best use that? Um, through the, you know, uh, the provision of services to the town, but it, it is restricted to that because it is a fee. It is not a tax. Otherwise it could be characterized as a tax, which would be unlawful because we're not authorized by the state to charge a tax.

Could it be an additional code enforcement person's salary could fall within those legal requirements?

Yes, but that person would be assigned specifically to monitoring and enforcing the code as to short-term rentals.

Okay, or for so many hours, maybe 20 hours a week or…

Yes. And just so you know, we're already, Tracy and Will and I, we're already thinking about the notarization issue and how we might have some options of how to best address that.

Okay.

So, and I, and I like all the information that you've provided. I do work with code quite a bit here and in other communities and The file that you provide to the magistrate or to the code enforcement board really becomes the key part of the case as to the accuracy of it and the process of how the information was gathered. So I'm really happy with what I'm hearing from a code perspective. Great. Thank you for that.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to the more add-ons you have, if it better serves the town.

Absolutely.

Both short-term rental companies, neighbors, and homeowners. Absolutely. I'm all for it. Thanks, Katie. Thanks, Dr. Eric.

Thank you.

Our next item is Proposed Advisory Committee's Policies and Procedures Manuals. Mr. McLean, is that you? You're going to start this, or who's going to?

It'll be, yes, Councilor McLean and Lizette.

Yeah, um... I guess just to kick it off, this was an issue that was identified by Chris King as the chair of the Anchorage Advisory Committee that there was a gap in direction to each of the advisory committees as far as kind of their roles, responsibilities, but also, you know, kind of the restrictions that would be placed upon them. We had previously, the towns had created a operations manual or a policies and procedures manual for the LPA because there are, you know, significant more restrictions to the LPA. However, sunshine still applies. There are a lot of other things that apply to the other advisory committees that some people were not aware of the various requirements for them. So in working with primarily Zet, but also with Amy and the rest of the clerk and the DEPUTY TOWN MANAGER AS WELL AS LEGAL. WE WENT THROUGH MULTIPLE ITERATIONS. STARTED REALLY WITH CHRIS'S DOCUMENT, WHICH WAS BASED UPON THE EXISTING LPA MANUAL, AND THEN KIND OF DID SOME REVISIONS IN ORDER TO MAKE SURE THAT IT WAS MORE APPROPRIATE FOR THE OTHER ADVISORY COUNCILS. AND THE RESULTING MULTIPLE ITERATIONS OF THAT ARE THE DOCUMENT THAT YOU SEE HERE.

Good morning, Council. Lizette Roman, Town Clerk, Administrative Coordinator for the record. It is our pleasure to present this draft book manual for all of you. Yes, as Councilor McLean has indicated, manual started back in March and it included the collaboration of all of us in the clerk's office as well as our town attorney and all the information that we received from Chris King and yourself. So we are here to listen to your discussion and receive any feedback that you may have.

Councilor Kahneman.

I guess I'm...

I'm sure this is the first time you've seen it.

Probably not the first time I've seen it, but I've definitely heard about it a lot. On this, it says, you know, you have highlighted areas here. The policies and procedures manual can be viewed here with a highlight, but it goes to nowhere. Section 34-113 of the Town of Fort Myers Beach Code is a highlight, which I assume could go somewhere, but it doesn't.

Those links will all be activated once the document is finalized.

The online document?

Correct.

OK, thank you.

Scott?

Yeah, the only thing that stuck out to me was the absence, whether it's excused or unexcused. So it's on page 8, how it says if it's over 10 days, that's excused. If it's under 10 days, Uh, it requires a vote by the advisory committee to determine whether the absence will be recorded in the minutes as excused or unexcused. We don't do that. None of the committees do that. And I mean, some, sometimes this stuff happens, somebody gets sick, somebody, you know, we just needed a starting point.

We're up to your suggestions. We're just trying to get it standardized across the board so every committee is running off the same book.

Okay.

I get that, but it seems... What we find is last minute says, oh, I'm not going to be there. Send me a Zoom link. Well, we're trying to be a little bit more prepared for that. Okay.

One of the other things that we saw, Scott, was people... choosing to participate remotely more often than what we think this should be. If you're committed to volunteering your time, energy, and effort to a committee, you should participate as much as possible, at least in person. And so we were trying to put some guardrails around incentivizing behavior to come in and actually putting in some consequences if it was something that became problematic.

So are you saying then, John, that if you're doing it by Zoom, then that's looked upon as an absence or no?

No, excuse me. It's not necessarily an absence. Excuse me. But That's one of the behaviors that we're trying to promote, if you will, is less of that and more of in-person. It's still participating. That's just one issue of it. The other is if somebody chooses to miss a bunch of meetings in a row, even if they have excused absences, are they committed to the committee? Right. I get that.

Would it make more sense then to attach it to a date, whether it's 10 days, 14 days, if you aren't going to be able to participate in the meeting and request to do it by Zoom? There's a date as to when you can get that Zoom link out to help staff to be able to do it. Because sometimes with these, there's not a quorum. And you don't know that quorum until four or five days before the meeting. So this 10-day thing would be kind of out.

Right, and we're finding that more and more that it's crazy popular to go by Zoom anymore because it's more convenient for everyone, especially during season. Sure. But we have regulations on us that say we have to have physical quorum here sitting at this dais before we can allow. I mean, we have it during your meetings too. We have to have physical quorum here before we can allow the virtual attendance, and we're finding more and more that everyone wants to appear virtually. Mm-hmm.

So maybe wordsmithing this to attack the issue more than necessarily the absence? Because to me it sounds like the absence isn't necessarily the issue more than it is people just not wanting to come in here physically to do it. So how can we wordsmith that to make it?

Well, they're related, right? That's the problem is we need to have people that have the ability to participate, but there is a requirement for physical participation.

Right, and we fully understand emergencies and you can't make it so we're I'm out of town because of some reason but I can still participate. We fully understand that. We're just trying to set that.

Well, much like there's language about if you miss three meetings as absences, maybe if you continuously do Zoom meetings, that works the other way.

The three meetings comes from the ordinance itself.

Right, but what I'm saying is maybe you can use that same type of verbiage to say if you're choosing to do three or four Zoom meetings in a row, no matter how this is written, that would constitute that you really not want to participate, but you're not doing what needs to be done.

Or maybe one unexcused absence, if you want to go in that direction. Yeah, I mean, whatever. Three Zooms equals one unexcused.

However.

Whatever you guys want. We will create, I think, Amy, a separate section on remote participation in the table of contents so we can directly address the issue.

Can't give Scott any ideas. He'll be zooming in every meeting. Where's Scott? He's at the golf course.

Well, Nancy, you do have on page seven, you have attendance. So perhaps it gets covered under there.

We can. Yeah. We can. Whatever, you know, council would prefer.

So, Mr. Mayor, what do you think? Three? You have a max of three Zoom meetings a year? Four? Three?

Well, I don't know. I mean, circumstances can change, and these are voluntary committees, right? Right. So, you know, I think more boarding along consecutive meetings versus... If someone's going to be gone for three months, do we want them to participate via Zoom for three months? I don't know that you necessarily need to say you only get three Zoom meetings a year and that's it because things can happen, right?

I'm just thinking out loud because some of the committees that Some of the members are snowbirds, so they're only here six months of the year.

And usually those meetings end up not having a quorum anyway, even via Zoom. I mean, people, you know, I can't be on the Zoom call or I can't be here, or you don't have enough people physically in here to have a meeting because everybody's going to be on Zoom. Those will be canceled meetings anyway. Right.

Well, so one of the things I summarized this book, which by the way, I love this. And thank you to Chris King as well, who started this all off. So I summarized it into a quick guide for myself because when I joined council, I had so many documents sent to me that I had to summarize them because I couldn't remember it all. So when I look at my summary of attendance that came out of this manual, one of the things it's saying is that at least 10 days before the meeting, You have to notify someone if you're not going to be there. Now, that may be a long time. Maybe we can shorten that up. But we want to remember that some of those members of committees, they fly here for a meeting only to get here and find out it's been canceled. So I think by having something in writing that says, you know, just like our council meeting, you approve them to be absent. You have a period of time so Amy knows if we're going to have a quorum or not. The people who are flying in know if you're going to have a quorum or not. Not that it's just the day before you say, oh, can I zoom in? So it's in this manual now at 10 days. Do you think that's too much or can you live with five?

No, because at seven days we publish an agenda. That's what we start for. So that's where the 10 days come from. So it's really not that long, much further than, you know, the meeting is next Thursday. Today we would be posting that agenda. Right.

yeah and the point of that is to make sure that you don't you're able to tell people don't fly in for it because we're not going to have it right we don't have a quorum absolutely so it seems like um it's important it's a little more lax than our council meetings but it's important to make sure we're following the rules much of this document too um

it's actually included in our ordinances right right it's just that it wasn't gathered in one place for somebody to be able to go to a booklet and say These are all the rules I'm supposed to follow. It was jump, like it always is. I think this is fantastic. It is, yeah.

It's just easier to consume. It is. What we were finding is there was a lot of what-ifs that were being questioned to us, and we're like, well, let's, if we compile it all into one manual, we'll hopefully have answered those what-ifs. Right.

Yeah, I think it's spectacular. You guys did a great job.

Yeah, I love it. This is the kind of stuff I live for.

In fact, Scott's the only one picking it apart.

And just so, while we're talking about this, Nancy just brought this up, the ad hoc school charter application committees would follow this book also.

I think it's great. You guys did a great job. It took a long time and a lot of work. Would you be interested in seeing this? Sure.

so i don't want to introduce anything new this is my cheat sheet when i was reviewing this if anyone else would like to see it it was just my summary of that book um that was like a quick guide for a new member you give them the full monte and then you know it's just a quick reference if anyone else would like to see a copy i would make sure the clerk can see because

If somebody wants to request it, now they can.

It's not a formal document, but it is my work product.

I think it would be very helpful for orientation, especially as we have these new ad hoc committee for the charter school coming on board. That will be very helpful. Thank you.

Yeah, and I think, Lizette, if you'd like to talk a little bit about the way you're rolling this out to the committees. And one of the things that I noticed, and I know we spoke about it, is we've got some pretty good input in the back as far as roles and responsibilities for the audit committee and, of course, for Anchorage, where this started from. But what I think we'd like to do is have CELCAB, BORCAB, kind of work within one of their sessions to kind of create a little bit more meat on what they perceive their purview is. Because right now what we have in here is just the excerpt that comes right out of the ordinance, whereas I think when you ask any of those committee members, they've got a pretty clear idea of the types of things that they're interested in and they're going to give direction on.

Yeah. And on the backside of this handout, I also summarized what you guys did for the roles and responsibilities at the highest level. That would be a starting point. You know, as a new liaison sitting on a new committee, that was some of my questions. You know, what do I do? What don't I do? You know, where are the guardrails for me? as well as probably a new committee member wants to know what are my goals.

So the intention for implementation is going to be to receive your feedback from today's discussion. And as you have commented, add the remote participation under page seven. Are we in agreeance of keeping the 10 days for the notification of absences to the clerk's office? Or do we need to change that?

I think it should mirror whatever we have Maybe, Amy, I think it should mirror whatever we have. If you're coming before council or LPA, you have so many days to have your documentation in. To keep it simple, keep that, what is it, two weeks?

Correct. For LPA and for town council, that deadline is 18 days prior to a meeting, just for the review process on it. But for the advisory committees, is it the... 10 days. So we're asking for a committee member to give us the, it's the same deadline as the liaisons that are creating the agenda too. Okay, I'm fine with it.

Okay, so we'll keep that as 10 days. An initiative that we're also doing is that we are providing at the next meeting's agenda a listing of the remainder meeting dates. So every committee member knows in advance what their meeting date will be all the way through December 2026 to kind of mirror your town council schedule that has been approved through December 2026. Perhaps that can facilitate, they can have it in a snapshot, one page. These are my meetings for the year, and if they need to plan travel, they can do that in advance. That's wonderful.

But those are subject to change depending on council.

Actually, we held a meeting yesterday, the three of us that talked about the calendar for 2027. So we always take into consideration that town council meetings take priority when it comes to scheduling advisory committee meetings. So that is coming down the pipe. But for the intentions of the manual, we will take your recommendations in the discussions today and bring it for final approval at the second meeting of August, your next meeting, town council meeting. And we will start attending the next monthly advisory committee meeting to talk about the manual and present it. There has been scheduling of the annual Sunshine Law meeting, and that is going to be October 6th. So we will be rolling that out here within the next 30 to 45 days.

very good another thing if you don't let me step in here real quick we are also working on implementing a schedule like a rotating schedule of each committee will report at a town council meeting under the advisory committee's uh reports section of the just so you we're trying to create that structure structure back between They are your committees. They're not our committees. They're not the liaisons committees. They're your committees. You've appointed these seven people to look at specific items for you. Um, we're trying to get that established, you know, that relationship established back the committees after the hurricane, they just kind of went to the wayside a little bit and we're trying to bring that back in again. We're also working on with your approval, if you like the idea or not, um, Again, maybe once yearly scheduled, however often you would like it, bringing in like at your MMPs, one to two, depending on the activity of accounts or advisory committee, bringing in like for little mini joint sessions. So they can tell you what they're working on, what they think they would like to work on. You give them clearer direction. We're just trying to make it so everyone knows what they're doing.

I think that's a great idea. I mean, we've done that with the Public Safety Committee, and it adds to their value and self-worth as well.

Right. We have a couple committees that at times found themselves floundering. They didn't know what they were supposed to be doing. So it's going to reestablish that again. If you want to do that yearly, more often, however you would like it, we would be happy to... Implement that schedule.

And in conjunction to what Amy has said, we are rolling out the integration of agendas right into Civic Clerk that will also facilitate the tracking of what's an old business and new business.

Hold on, let's just make sure we're still live. We're still live. Did yours go off? Is yours blue, no? Yeah. Must be on a different circuit. So good? All right, go ahead, sorry. Yeah, we're still live.

No, not a problem. So as I was saying, in combination of what Amy has said, shared with us, we are rolling the integration of agendas, writing to civic clerk for advisory committees. So they will be housed in the same software. All six of these committees are already established. plus the newly adopted ad hoc charter committees. This will allow us to provide better tracking of the items that council has asked direction for committees to work on. their recommendations. It's an excellent tracking software we can search historically and even for charter that we just concluded it will live in our files as a permanent record. That is actually being rolled out as we speak. During the summer we had training with our town staff liaisons in how to incorporate agenda items into the software, and those are already in our system for the month of August. Unfortunately, we did have to cancel audit committee meeting, and due to lack of physical quorum, we also had to cancel MRF. But we're very excited that we are going to start keeping track of this information in one centralized location.

Yeah, the other thing I'd point out is that it's not just about creating structure and giving guidance to how to operate the committees. It's also to provide some predictability of what the expectations are of them coming back. But in no ways would it preclude somebody having a request to come towards council if there's something that they'd like to report on, something pressing. That forum still exists. But I think to the comments of Amy previously, it's ensuring that there's better two-way communication between council and the committees. And I think that that's probably very helpful as we try and continue to move these things forward.

perfect thank you lizette thank you anything else looking forward may i add a few others i usually do amy in case anyone wants this i'll give you this for the record but some suggested alignment with our strategic plan in conjunction with the fact that we have committees who meet and Some of them have put their own strategic plans together that may or may not be in alignment with our strategic plans. That's frustrating for those folks. I don't think we want to squelch their creativity and all their ideas. But I came up with a few suggestions that I don't know if it belongs in the document or not, but for some consideration so that we make sure that we're always aligned with the strategic plan. If anybody wants those recommendations, I'm willing to share them. If not, that's fine as well. But I think it's really important to make sure, as John mentioned, that we don't have the gap, that we're all on the same page. And if there are changes to the strategic plan, we hear that or request to change it, we're hearing it from our committees through a formal process so that... We're all singing from the same hymnal.

I think it would be relevant to add somewhere in our manual, maybe at the beginning of the manual, our mission and our vision as part of the beginning of the book.

Yeah, I think that's an excellent idea to keep the strategic plan of the town in the forefront. The good news is some of the objectives and goals that are in the current strategic plan really talk about visibility and increasing revenue and visitors. So while each subcommittee may have their own strategies and goals and how to accomplish that, it all funnels to that same primary focus of the visibility and revenue sources.

So it was actually a deliverable that I would like to suggest is that each of the advisory committees prepare a brief annual work plan to identify the kind of things they plan to work on. Maybe it gets changed, but they kind of are thinking outside the box, and then we can see that and make sure that we're all aligned. What I seem to have heard from watching, I watch all these committee meetings, sometimes they're saying, I'm working on things that are not aligned, but I didn't realize they weren't aligned.

or vice versa. So what I hear you saying are those advisory committees that you all appointed members to as you create those sub-strategic plans for that committee to make sure they're in alignment with the vision of the council. And then those other meetings that you have

will be that time to communicate their direction and you all can provide that input and if they come up with new ideas i mean we don't think of everything right there's some great ideas floating out there because they are the experts and the interested parties in these areas we want to hear that stuff so that's a perfect way for the liaison to bring that back and say this wasn't in the strategic plan and we can discuss it maybe that adjusts our strategic plan because of some of these great ideas we hear but it just ensures that we aren't spending we don't have committees spending time on things that we would never implement for some reason that we may have known all along but we just weren't really communicating that yeah

And since you've given us that perfect segue starting next at your next meeting, there's already been some items created, but your blue sheets will be changing and they will point there is a an area that has now been added to your blue sheets that what part of your strategic plan is this addressing? Because you've broken your strategic plan into four areas. So it'll be one of those four areas. It might not have anything to do with the strategic plan. There is a not applicable or other category or something like that.

And someday it would be nice, too. We see all the resources and all the staff required to support those goals.

It helps with our budgeting as well. And what you were talking about, Rebecca, is that would be part of your joint sessions with the committees. Beautiful. You want one of those? OK, you got it. But that would be part of your joint sessions, that re-establishing of what are you working on. And at any time, and even in the manual, any committee can, amongst themselves, decide to come before you if they're not on that rotating schedule. They can come to every meeting if they want to give a report to you. We're not going to stop that.

You're not stopping that, right? Right. Great work, John. Amy, Lizette, Chris, anyone who worked on this. Thank you. I love this stuff.

Very good. All right. Our next item is the sea turtle conservation ordinance. Do you want me to start, or do you want to start?

Well, I can start a little bit, Mr. Meyer, if that's okay. Yeah, we decided or recommended that we bring this up to an LPA for discussion as a topic because I know, you know, M&P, sorry. M&P is the topic. Thank you. And there's a lot of... We hear a lot on the town staff side, a lot of questions when it comes to permitting, when it comes to the planning processes, and then when it comes back around to code enforcement. So an opportunity to address... some of those concerns that maybe also the council has received from the community or maybe some guidance from the council on areas for us to explore in the ordinance and enforcement of the ordinance. But also Chad is here to just ask specific questions, maybe to help educate on the reasons for some of the portions of our ordinance and the effectiveness of it. throughout Fort Myers Beach. So I'll now turn it over to you, Mr. Moore.

Yeah, so I wanted to talk about this because as we're rebuilding, the number one complaint I'm hearing right now in permitting is environmental. And it has nothing to do, you're one person, right? but it's the inconsistencies. And so when I started looking through the ordinance, the biggest thing that stood out to me was Section 32-102, applicability, how it's applied. That in itself contradicts itself, and it makes it very subjective. It says the provision of this article shall apply to all properties within the town that may produce artificial light directly, indirectly, or cumulatively visible from any portion of the beach, regardless of whether those properties are beachfront properties, and to all buildings and related infrastructure, including landscaping, as well as other activities may be advised as seat orders. I don't see it. We all understand the importance of it and why we have to do it, but how it's applied, it's not consistent. Now we're hearing, I've got approvals, whether it's commercial or it's residential. I got approved. I got an approved plan. I got an approved DO. I got approved. All this is approved. And now I'm going to try to close out. I'm being told, well, that's not the exact light that matched my plan because either it wasn't available or we didn't like what it looked like. It's still amber. It's still long wavelength. It meets all of that. But now I can't close on my house or I can't close on my building because it's not exactly what it was. And it's a house that has nothing to do with the beach. So for me, and I keep going back to when we met with Dr. Trindell, we were looking at the lights on Estero Boulevard. After three hours of meeting and adjusting heights and putting stuff forward and backwards at the very end of the day, she looks across the street and says, well, what if that 7-Eleven gets built back? And we said, well, what if it doesn't? Well, she said, at the end of the day, it's all subjective anyway. So if it's subjective, why are we requiring every single person on the island to do exactly what someone that has to be on the beach? My house, you couldn't see my lights from the beach. Unless you're in a helicopter, you're not seeing my house. Doesn't mean they shouldn't have to be hamburg or shielded. but why should a construction of a property be held up for something that can't be visible or subjective to you or me or someone else is driving down a gator on the beach? That's where I have an issue with the ordinance, not what it's intended to do, and if we want to rehash everything that's intended to do, we can, but it's how it's being applied that I have an issue with because maybe it's only me, but I'm sure my council members are hearing from business owners and people that want to build back that are saying, I can't get my project started because environmental is holding it up, whether... Chad doesn't have time to do it because he doesn't have help, or it's not meeting exactly, but my property is back here on the back bay. Or my house is on the back bay. It's nowhere near the beach. Why do I have to do the same exact thing? I guess what I'm trying to get at long-wittedly is saying what is approved should be approved. If for some reason you make a design change towards the end and it still meets the requirements of, but it may not be the exact fixture, why are we holding up people because it doesn't specifically match exactly what they had at the beginning? And I'm hearing that more and more more than anything with permitting. Again, Chad, this is not a reflection of you. It's a reflection of the ordinance that is in place that us and other councils have put here. You're only following what we put, right? You're only following the policy we put in place. Is now the time to look at maybe correcting some of these issues that I think personally are there in this ordinance. So with that, Chad, go ahead. I just wanted to give kind of an overview of why I thought this was important to talk about again. I don't know if my fellow council members have heard from any other residents or businesses that have had this issue, but I've certainly heard a lot.

I have as well. I'm not sure, Chad, if you... Want to give your presentation, and then we can ask questions? Or you want to just go straight to discussion?

So thank you for your feedback. Well, I think it's important to hear what challenges you're facing on your side. Sure. And I can address those. I can address that now if you'd like or we can get into it and discuss it as we go through the presentation and shed some light on how the code is applied. You have a, just because you have a rule it is going to apply to different properties differently because those properties are located in different proximities to the beach and a bayside property that is know as tall as ocean harbor is going to still be visible directly from the beach it may have uh or you know four-story house that has like a steeple that's lit up on the bay side that is visible from the beach is going to have a different applicability than a you know a ranch house that can does not necessarily need to do amber and can just follow the lighting standards and have that white light But if there's any other counselors that want to chime in before I start, or we can address these issues and get more into a discussion back and forth, or however you all want to do it.

I think you kind of made my point. It's very subjective, right?

Is it subjective, though?

If I read that, I would consider that a very subjective paragraph. You say it has to be, and then it says you may.

Well, that's probably the may part might be depending on where you are, right?

But why wouldn't we want to make that more definitive? If I'm building a house or building a building, if I'm a planner or I'm a builder, I want to be able to go to the code and understand exactly is this property going to be required to follow this or this? Or do I have to submit something and subjectively staff can say, nope, I don't think that's right. I can see maybe a corner of your building. If I stand on one foot and lean to the left into a 10 mile an hour wind, I can see it. And I'm not saying that happens, but the way this ordinance is written, it could be construed as subjective.

That's definitely not how we apply things. And the consistency is if you're directly or indirectly visible from the beach, you have to be long wavelength, uh, downward directed and shielded shielding that light source. If you're not directly or indirectly visible from the beach, then you just don't have to be cumulatively visible from the beach. And if you're not cumulatively visible from the beach, that means follow the lighting standards so that you're not throwing light up into the air, not causing glare, directional lighting, and that sort. So there is consistency there, but again, that consistency is going to have different strokes for different folks depending on the height of their building, the proximity to the beach, et cetera.

So Chad, if I may. So I think part of it is at least I know for me, is a lack of a clear understanding of what indirectly indirect lighting is and cumulative lighting is. And so we got even just, it was either this morning or last night, an email from a resident who was talking about how they their big front, but they had windows at the front that they had put in tinted glass and all the rest of it, and then had windows on the side that they didn't believe were going to be part of the original requirement. Is this the belt and suspenders? That's one part of it.

And then the understanding what shore perpendicular means?

Yeah, well, perpendicular to the beach is that that was one of the requirements. So I think it's like an understanding of, for example, I'll use my house. I'm four houses from the bay and I was rebuilding my pool and there was lighting standards that went in. I only have a pool that goes back on a canal and there are no lights except for the lights inside the pool. I know I'm not going to get inspected on that, but that was part of the review process at the front. And to me, it seemed A little bit.

I don't disagree and I used to just condition those, but you'll be amazed at some of the light shows you see coming out of pools these days. Just recently I had a house that was on the other side of Estero by maybe three lots. It was an absolute light show and it was bouncing off the two or three story house.

So that would be the indirect that you're speaking of, right? Yes, sir. So instead, even though you can't see the pool from the beach, you can actually see the reflection of the light from the pool on the building beside it.

Is that the... Yep, yep. And everything is probabilities. And maybe that causes a disorientation. Maybe a sea turtle never notices it. It's runaway lighting. And as soon as one person sees that I can have a laser show on the front of my house and everybody's going to want to rent there, maybe that laser show is never noticed. But I like that look. Let me do it. Let me do it. Let me do it. And all of a sudden, we're in Disneyland.

Well, I think landscaping lights is a perfect example. I mean, the properties look beautiful when they've got these palm trees all lit up and everything else. But the reality is that's not true.

Yep, yep. And I'll speak to landscaping whenever we talk about flagpoles as well. I think there's some.

Where I'm seeing a lot of frustration is I build a new home. I spend the money to get turtle-compliant glass put in. Or I build a business, and I get turtle-compliant glass. And now you're telling me I also have to put curtains up or blinds. And now you're telling me I have to tell which wall I put my TV on. To me, it goes too far down a rabbit hole. I mean, if I was building a business, and I spent all that money for glass and did all this, and then you tell me I can't have a TV on between certain hours, then why did I have to have the glass in the first place? I've got my phone up, and I can't read a menu, and I've got the light on. Is that a violation? We go too far into it, and I think that's where the frustration's coming in. I've spent the money on lights, I've spent the money on curtains because I'm required to, and now you're telling me I can't have my TV on the north wall because Six months out of the year, there may be a turtle that likes to watch CNN or Fox News. I mean, to me, it goes too far down a rabbit hole. And that's where I think we need to go through it. And we'll go through your presentation, and I'll save my frustrations until when they come up.

Red pill or the blue pill? Alright, so we're gonna be talking about protecting our nesting sea turtles and hatchlings and trying to maintain our community quality of life and public health and safety through our lighting standards. We have Why does our outdoor lighting policy matter as a town? I don't advocate darkness I know that you know turtles like it dark is the slogan you see a lot, but I don't advocate that our code is is about telling people the proper light so that they can have those lights on all night for safety, for quality of life, and it not impact the sea turtles or minimize the impacts of the sea turtles and their hatchlings. We have public health and safety considerations just with the lighting standards. We don't want glare into our right of way. It's distracting whenever driving down the road and you have a big spotlight in the road. It's just a balance of having it not too bright, not too dark, and having a good nighttime visual environment for our residents and visitors. Also, spotlights coming from either street lights or floodlights from a neighbor can affect your quality of life. Sleeping, a spotlight in a window, it's distracting. It's not the best thing. So lighting does matter, and it does affect us as humans as well as the sea turtles. So our sea turtles are basically natural light detectors. We can have a sea of amber light. It can be 99% amber lights and one flood light or one window open and they will all go towards that one light. It is definitely a challenge, and that's a challenge we've been battling with since Hurricane Ian. We're not alone. It's a challenge with all of our hurricane impacted communities up and down the coast with record disorientation. So although we're made to feel special, we're not special in that regard. It is a challenge with all of the open space, lack of vegetation, and lack of structures that once blocked those lights. So we have two codes that govern our outdoor lighting for the most part. Lighting standards code is basically a classic dark skies code. We want to curtail and reverse the degradation of the nighttime visual environment. Not a lot of floodlights pointing at people, at properties, at roads. And it also serves to conserve energy and resources and, again, maintain our nighttime safety. It applies to all luminaires, all new luminaires, which we have a lot of after Hurricane Ian. Anything under 15 feet is a hard argument to convince me that it's not a new luminaire after Hurricane Ian. Sea turtle conservation code is more focused on preventing degradation of that sea turtle nesting habitat. And while we are mostly focused on the beachfront properties, we will have, it does apply to all properties. And it says that any property whose light is directly, indirectly, or cumulatively visible from the beach can affect that sea turtle nesting habitat.

Chad, real quick, you can go back to that. That is our land development code, correct?

So the lighting standards code is in our LDC land development code. And the sea turtle conservation code was actually pulled out of the LDC whenever we revised it in 2020. And so that is in our just the code.

Code of ordinances. And what are they based on? What state statute, what, et cetera?

Help me out, Ms. Nancy. State statute allows us as a town to regulate this lighting. So the lighting standards code is based on a dark skies philosophy, and it comes from Lee County whenever we made cityhood, I imagine. So it's nothing new, per se, and hasn't been revised at least since I've been here. The sea turtle conservation code is based on the state model ordinance. We were first in best dressed in adopting the state model ordinance whenever it came out in 2019, 2020. And it largely mirrors that state model ordinance that FWC and FWP put forth back then.

Chad, so that's not us saying they allow us. If I understand you correctly, are you saying we are mandated to follow those rules? Those are state rules?

Yeah, everybody complains that the state preempts us, uh, from making our own rules a lot of times. And, uh, you know, for whatever reason, the state wants to put the onus on us to regulate this one.

So from them, right. So it's not a decision for us to have it in our ordinance or not. That's what I'm trying to understand.

I think he's saying the reverse, right? That we still have home rule authority to have the ordinance.

Right. But the state is not overriding, and they're giving us a model ordinance, but they're saying don't cause take. Adopt your ordinance to not cause take. Here's a good way to do it.

So it should be consistent with the guidance that the state has given us, but we do have some discretion on how we draft our ordinance.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. Okay. Thanks. I needed that clarified.

Does that answer your question, Mr. Will?

Yeah, that's where I was going. Thank you.

So when is the lighting review required? Anytime there's development or a building permit, our sea turtle lighting ordinance requires us to review it. All of the structures that are waterward of the 1991 triple CL Coastal Construction Control Line will get a review per sea turtle ordinance. And all of the commercial and multifamily properties island wide are mandated to get a review and an inspection. Previous staff, my predecessors, and whenever I came on, policy was not to review anything that was not in those two categories. So single family homes that were landward of the triple CL, I typically just conditioned them to please follow the ordinance, please follow lighting standards code, please follow sea turtle code, and left it on that. Since Hurricane Ian, we have been seeing runaway lighting. You know, two, three, four, et cetera, houses up Bayside of Estero Boulevard, and we're seeing bright lights visible from the beach that are causing issues with disorientations over the past couple seasons. So staff has started reviewing all single-family homes Basically, any single-family home or any electrical permit that is submitted or has exterior lighting in their scope, be it a pool or a single-family residence, we are reviewing that. That doesn't necessarily mean that they need to have amber lighting. It depends on the proximity. It depends on the proximity to, say, if their pool is next to a tall building. I'll pick on Ocean Harbor. They have a pool. They're on the bay side. You would say, Chad, why are you asking them to have an amber light in their pool? But if they turn on their pool and all that deck lighting, that tower is a beacon onto the beach, even though it's Bayside. and it will cause issues and has caused issues. So we did start reviewing all lighting, and if it's not directly or indirectly visible from the beach, then the directive is just follow the lighting standards code, where it has to be full cutoff, fully shielded, recessed lighting, or meet one of the exceptions in the lighting standards for, say, like a floodlight that needs a sensor, or if it's unshielded, it has to be under a certain number of lumens, and those kind of criteria that I think we all agree that it's just good, being a good neighbor lighting-wise.

Well, and maybe that's where the issue lies, right? So because there's a few bad actors on the island that decide that they're going to do things that creates dark skies or creates ambient light up in the sky, everybody should be scrutinized because people don't do what they're supposed to do.

But it's not just a few, Mayor. It's dozens.

I'm not saying it isn't. But is it safe to say not everyone is doing it? Right? I mean, it's...

So a lot of new houses with a lot of white lights that are high up, visible from the beach.

So what I'm saying is, why can't we put it in the land development code through the ordinance to say, Again, I'm trying to help you and staff out as much as I'm trying to help other people that are building these buildings. Why can't we make it more definitive that this is what you're going to be required to do? Instead of being subjective about this light or that light, just this is the light that you can use. It has to be shielded. I mean, all of the stuff that we talk about through here, but what sounds to me is happening is I'm going to condition it, but I'm not going to review it, is what you said. Well, that was previous practice. So now we are reviewing everything. Okay. Well, good. I mean, that's a step in the right direction because now if you're at least reviewing it.

But that's the slowdown, right?

Well, I'm hearing the slowdown is at the end. Once the review has been done and has been passed and you've received your DO and you've received your building permit, now before you can get your occupancy or you can get your TCO or your CO, now the goalposts have moved. I will forward you. We've been on emails where this has been an issue. We know that there's properties on this island where what has been approved at the beginning through the review process has changed at the end for whatever reason, whether they changed a fixture but it meets the same requirements and it holds up closing on a property or it holds up the business being able to break ground. Perfect example. with the town manager, people that are trying to build across from the old town hall property. They're being held up because they're garage doors that face the north. We need to give them every speck on the planet for a garage door that faces north that has nothing to do with ambient light to the beach. Now, if we're approving the light inside through the review process, Why does the garage door matter? Why are we holding up progress over a garage door when we've approved the lighting inside the building? That's the issues that I'm hearing that people are having a problem with. Where is that fine line of subjectiveness end? And where does it begin? Do you see what I'm trying to say? If you're approving all the lighting standards, why does it matter for a garage door that doesn't face anywhere? If the lights meet the specification, then there's going to be no ambient light that's coming through that garage door. Why should that matter in a lighting review?

So that's why we, and we'll get into that. So garage door, if you're going to be operating a business, that garage door is probably going to be open usually when that business is operating. And you're going to have interior lights that are full spectrum and say facing north. We have an S-shaped island that north will still be visible down the beach. I have, for instance, Diamond Head. I was picking on Neil the other day. Diamond Head has a TV on the street side facing north. It was a bright source of light right in front of a nest. Am I saying that that bright light is definitely going to cause a disorientation? Maybe not, but there's a high probability that that That TV screen that is, I mean, TVs are very much blue light. The Turtles are orders of magnitude more sensitive.

I'm 100% not disagreeing with you, Chad, but how does that have anything to do with, to what you just said, if my garage doors are going to be open during my business, why should the spec of the garage door matter? If during the business these lights are on and at night they're not and the garage door is closed.

Well, the garage door would be probably, I mean, again, business hours, it's open at night. You know, give me an operational plan that says that that garage door is going to be closed at night. And if it's not closed at night, then you have full-spectrum light that is visible from the beach.

Then why are we reviewing the lights inside? I mean, if the lights inside have to be compliant with the ordinance, why are we reviewing the lights inside if the garage door is the ultimate definitive thing that sets it apart? We're going to get to it. That's where the frustrations come in.

Sure. Yep, we're going to get to these issues for sure. I hear what you're saying. And by the way, FWC also regards lights that are behind roll-up style garage doors that are going to be open during operational hours at night as exterior lights, even though they're under roof.

In our review process and when I'm coming in for a DO, whether I'm commercial or residential, does it say anywhere in there that I'm going to have to show you the specs and how they relate to turtle compliance when it comes to doors, windows, garage doors? Is all that covered? So if I come in and I'm going to build a house that's going to have glass garage doors on it, does it tell me that I'm going to have to provide you the specs and how they relate to turtle compliancy?

Along with the lights? So we jumped from commercial to a house. I think we're, you know, we don't usually have houses with garage style doors on facing the beach or shore perpendicular to the beach. But if we have a business that has garage style doors such as Margaritaville, garage style doors, that are facing the beach or, for instance, a food truck park that's going to have a garage style door that's facing north that is still very much visible from the beach, then those under roof lights are regarded as exterior. Yes, sir.

OK. Continue on. We're saying the same thing, I think.

OK. And then so existing lighting, our code in the LDC, everything needs to come into compliance by 2010. You know, existing artificial lighting shall not be indirectly, directly, cumulatively visible from any portion of the beach. And if any light fixture changes, please come and talk to us before you spend a whole lot of money on lights that may not be compliant. We try to make it as streamlined as possible with just a relatively cheap trade permit. Submit a lighting plan with the manufacturer specs for each fixture and light source. We'll review it and make sure that it's compliant before you spend four or five plus figures on lighting. So FWC's goals real quick, so keep it low, mount it as low as possible. FWC doesn't approve exterior lights on beachfront properties that are on the second, third, et cetera floor, anything that's above the first habitable floor. So I guess that might be the third level, fourth level. FWC does not approve exterior lights. And again, they prefer bollards over poles and all that kind of stuff that seems pretty straightforward. In addition, lowest possible brightness to achieve the foot candles that you might need for health and safety, stairway requirements, 10-foot candles on commercial buildings, et cetera.

Is that just commercial, Chad, or is that residential as well?

I believe it's commercial and multifamily. Okay. I don't pretend to be an expert in that life, health, and safety code, but I believe it's 10-foot candles for commercial and multifamily, and then one-foot candle for egress. But I think single-family homes, not necessarily. It's just like the doors and the stairway landings have to have a light, but not necessarily a foot candle minimum.

Okay, thanks.

So keep it shielded. We don't want to see that light source directly visible. And long wavelengths, so amber, red. Look for that manufacturer spec of 560 nanometers or greater. That means it's a proper long wavelength. Not all yellow, orange, red bulbs are necessarily compliant. We don't authorize films and party bulbs and that kind of thing. And then the statement about even amber, turtles are not blind to amber and red lights, they're just less sensitive. But I think our luminance standards take care of that with their maximum criteria. And just some quick notes on other things that FWC looks at. For instance, you know, whenever they're doing step lights, you know, on the ground floor, it might be 24 inches, whereas on the, you know, next level, only 12 inches because it's higher up. So whenever you're dealing with more elevation... on the third floor unless you have like a really long can to shield it. Because of the elevation and the angle down to the beach, it's very difficult to shield a light that's 20, 30 plus feet up in the air. Okay. Now the issues. So defining Exterior lighting. We do not have a clear definition of exterior lights in our code. So we have a lot of fixtures that are under roof or under an overhang with no enclosed walls, windows, doors, resulting in non-long wavelengths of full white spectrum light being visible from the beach. And this is a big issue for our restaurants. People want to see that their tomatoes are red, their spinach is green, and their meat is brown. And it's tough to do that. I would argue that it's like a warm candlelit dinner, but not as romantic as I am. They want to see the color of their food. So how do we get past this? You know, again, this is consistent with FWC. If you have lights that are under roof but nothing enclosing it, nothing shielding it, we are regarding that as exterior and reviewing it accordingly. And we have a lot of projects that are coming down, you know, Salty Crab, the Cottage, the Goods Store. A lot of these guys, they have this, you know, it's a, you know, balcony or under roof lighting so you can have that outdoor dining experience. but they want to be able to see their food. So how do we get past this? Another related issue is the request for dual lighting schemes, much like when we were talking about our street lights. We want to have amber during sea turtle season and white during non-sea turtle season. The code does not allow for that. It says these lights shall be this, period. There's no wavering on that if it's directly or indirectly visible. If it's not directly or indirectly visible, as long as you're meeting those lighting standards with the multicolor lights, then have at it.

I'm glad you brought that up because it's always been a point of contention for me. We have technology out there that allows colors to change to pretty much whatever you want. Now, whether there's... specific manufacturers that allow you to dim it to an amber or you change the color temperature to an amber that meets the 560 requirement. I don't know, I'm not a lighting expert. Outside of turtle season, when we have our busiest season, the fact that in our code it doesn't allow a property owner to change their lights, to me, is a policy decision that we can make. I don't think there's anything in state statute that keeps us from doing that. It's not going to affect the turtles. Now, after busy season, you go back to turtles. I understand the issue that they won't change it back. That's where education and code enforcement comes in, right? But right now we're restricting a property owner. from allowing them to provide the best service to their customers or a resident to provide the most safety to their family through a code because we don't allow that change. Those are the types of things that I think we need to discuss and put in place to allow a property owner to be able to do that, as long as you're being compliant during turtle season, whether it's shielded, whether it's down lights, whatever it may be in a soffit. That is a thing that I think we're missing in our ordinance.

Right. And it's a challenge. And I will say that those that have, um, proposed this and say that they're going to do it, you know, I haven't seen it yet. I have not seen that, you know, that discipline to say we're in sea turtle season. I'm in the compliant mode now. Um, so it is tough. Um, I understand what you're saying in a, in a perfect world, but you know, if it's not idiot proof, You're going to have some condo commando that flips a switch.

That's the problem.

The proper lighting is idiot proof because it can be on all night and it will not cause an issue.

until they put a TV up on the north wall. Now it becomes an issue, right? So it's not idiot proof. My point is you've got to allow some flexibility in here.

Sure.

Because what this ordinance is doing is tempting people to go against the ordinance because they want to do what they want to do. They've met all the requirements. But outside of turtle season, they can't do it because this ordinance doesn't allow them to do it. You're going to have knuckleheads that do knucklehead things. Nobody's arguing that, but we have to provide some flexibility to people when they're building their businesses or they're building their homes. And those that are causing your job to be harder, then that's what code enforcement is. But maybe I'm the only one that sees this, or maybe I'm the only one.

No, I don't disagree with you. I'm just giving you the consequences of if we go down this path, it strains enforcement. It's impossible to keep up with, and people say they're going to do things, and they don't follow, and you can say, well, that's just an enforcement matter. I mean, I'm getting, there was one day I got 33 emails, complaints, and that was just one day. It is impossible to keep up with, and it affects our permitting speed. Again, I said at the beginning, you're only one person, right? There's only so many things that one person can do. The joke is we're never done at work. We just go home for the day, right?

Amen. And get romantic. But that 33 was from one person, correct?

It was. It was.

Who has a, well, I'll stop there.

Sure.

Well, are they legitimate? I mean, maybe it's someone who is tasked to do that. No, they're legitimate.

And that's the point. Whenever I'm enforcing something to somebody, they'll say, well, look at them, look at them, look at them. And I say, well, listen, I got 80 letters out right now. We know that there's multiple violations out there. I mean, there are legitimate complaints, but... I guess my point in saying that is I'm illustrating the strain to code enforcement to try and keep up with that adequately while doing other tasks. So once we go down that road, if we're going to allow that, then resourcing the enforcement side is going to become another topic. And then also along these lines, so TV screens, menu screens, our code doesn't have a TV explicitly in the light source even though it is, so making that explicitly defined as artificial light source in our sea turtle conservation code and explicitly requiring TV locations and orientations in our Sea turtle conservation code would be recommended. TVs are the worst light source, whether they're direct or indirect. Last night I was at an establishment and looking at all the lights and just for fun, did the spectrometer just to see what the TV looked like compared to long wavelength and even full spectrum. And TVs definitely have the highest peak on the blue wavelength, which is what they're most sensitive to. So TVs are an issue and probably the worst like.

Where did you take that reading? Was it at the TV? Was it through the turtle from the glass?

Where was it? Yeah, it's just at the TV. You have to, any reading you do.

What was the reading from the beach?

I mean, you could see those TVs, but you're not going to, whenever you take a reading, you're going to get the entire ambient light. So if I take it from the beach, I'm taking all the light, not just that TV. Does that make sense?

That's my point.

I'm not sure I understand the point.

That's my point. It's like noise ordinance. If I stand 1,000 feet away from it and take a reading, you're picking up all the ambient noise. How do you know specifically it's coming from that one spot?

Well, your eyes. Your visual is always the best tool. And that's what they teach you whenever you do the sea turtle lighting webinars. Your eyes are your best tool to see what the issues are. And what I say to everybody is, first I'm looking at the screamers. And TVs are screamers. And so whenever I look out, the brightest thing I'm seeing is a TV. So let's get rid of the screamers, and then we'll start seeing the talkers. And then there's going to be some whispers after you get everything cleared. But you can tell which lights are problematic and which aren't.

Chad, I have a question for you to the mayor's point. So you asked the question, where were you putting the meter, by the TV or out in the Gulf, on the beach? Is it the same or not as sound? So if I'm at an establishment and I'm hearing a sound, but if I go to the beach, I may not hear it as loud. Are you saying to me that because I can see that light from the beach, it's not about how loud it is, it's the fact that it's visible to the beach, and that causes a problem?

It's both. It's going to be brightness and it's going to be wavelength. The brighter it is, the bluer it is, the higher probability you're going to cause an issue for the sea turtles. The less bright it is, the long wavelength, they're less sensitive to it by orders of magnitude, the less probability. It's about minimizing the impact. I mean, we're never going to have no impact on the beach. We're just, we're not that beach. We have people here, we have It's going to always be a balance, but it's about minimizing that impact. So it's a spectrum. It's not a black and white thing. Does that answer your question?

It does. Because I was at the beach the other night just to understand this a little better and looking at the fact that we're a crescent-shaped beach. For some reason, bad analogy, but the light bulb went off. So somebody that's living on either end who has something in their front yard that I could actually see. on the beach that I never would have thought of because I'm thinking, hey, I'm on the Gulf, but it's the front of my house. Why should I care? Or the side of my house or that I can see down the coast. So it's seeing the light as well as how intense it is when you're near the light.

Yep. Sorry. I'm understanding. Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry. I forgot. If I'm not switching the things I'm trying to do, too, and I'm not remembering to switch it on both. Yeah. So screens. So we have exterior lighting definition challenges. We have trying to facilitate businesses to make money and give a good experience with dual lighting schemes. And we also have TVs. You know, we have the beach there at night, you know, kind of a sports bar, you know, et cetera. Again, trying to facilitate restaurants to, and businesses to, you know, make, make, make a good living. So how do we, how do we get past this? So operational plans may be a possible solution. You know, just like any, any differences of opinions, different needs and wants from different, it's gonna be, it's gonna be a compromise, it's gonna be a challenge. I'm not saying it's the solution, but we have a good test case with Margaritaville. They are a bit of an exception in the triple CL permitting process because of their size. They also were required to have an environmental resource permit for their stormwater, which gave FWC a different permitting bite at the apple and allowed FWC with a triple CL permit, FDEP, looks at it, you pass, and then they forget about it. Or not forget about it, but they don't have any more regulatory. Once they sign off on it, that permit's closed. They don't have any more regulatory. Whereas with an environmental resource permit, they can set conditions in perpetuity, much like we do with a development order. So FWC's approved plan has a special condition which addresses screens, TVs. Let's put them, when are they operating, when are they not operating? And that is not consistent, right? The TVs that are right next to the beach, don't face them towards the beach, put shrouds on them. The TVs that are facing away from the beach, turn them off at 9 or 10 o'clock, depending on the distance. So putting time constraints on those light sources in the operational plan explicitly. And, you know, if we have TVs that are facing the beach in addition to being turned off, put a shroud on them just in case somebody hits a remote whenever they're leaving for the night or whatever. Have that fail-safe plan that we know this TV, if it's on, it's right on the beach. It's going to cause an issue, so let's put an opaque shroud on it so we know it's not going to cause an issue at night. We have the garage-style doors. So Margaritaville's mandated to close those garage-style doors at 11 o'clock. Not that much is happening there after 11, but in sea turtle season, maybe it's a late night. And so they closed that. And then they were also required in this operational plan to have a 12% visual transmittance so that if there are lights for cleaning and other things that happen in a bar after it's closed, that those full-spectrum lights that are associated with that activity are mitigated with a 12% VLT, so pretty dark tint to prevent impact out on the beach. And again, whenever they review the Margaritaville, all those lights that are in the La Di Da bar were mandated to be amber. So it's a very warm, lit environment. Do they get complaints? Yes, they do get complaints that it's not lit enough. But it is, you know, whenever those garage doors are open or if you have a completely open air type setup, those under roof lights are in practicality exterior. There's nothing shielding them and there's no difference from them being on the side of the building versus under that roof if they're visible from the beach.

So do you think in your experience in dealing with these businesses and homeowners, if they had the ability outside of turtle season when our busiest time of the year is when we have the most people, they can control their lighting the way that they want to control it to provide the best experience for their guests. Do you think that that would reduce the amount of complaints they get?

Outside of sea turtle season?

Outside of sea turtle season, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the technology is there. We talked to some pretty savvy business owners. They're setting up a server so that it's controlling it. And I mean, computers are subject to their operators, and mistakes can happen, and whatever. But can it be done? Sure. Will human error happen? Sure. But I think it's worth having a conversation about. But again, the proof is in the pudding. And if you're saying you're going to have this dual lighting scheme and I'm going to be compliant during sea turtle season, please show me. And I'm struggling to see it today. Any other questions on operational plans?

So just to be clear, currently what the mayor asked is not currently available based on what we have. They do a plan, or are you saying it is with the right operational plan?

No, it's not. It's not authorizable at this stage. We don't. The only lighting that we approve, if you're directly or indirectly, only exterior lighting that we approve is directly or indirectly visible from the beach is long wavelength, downward directed and shielded from the beach.

Okay. This is where I support you, Mayor, is that we can't go to a dual lighting system because it's not idiot proof, but yet nothing up there is idiot proof either, but that's acceptable. Put a shroud over it. What if I forget when I'm buried to leave? You got humans involved.

And I agree. I mean, TVs are not a long wavelength light source, right? So why would they even allow it? And, you know, I just said to myself, listen, if FWC who's in charge of the wildlife is saying this is a good model.

FWC is the same folks that use the auto glass to get them up with their window tents for buildings. I'm not, I don't have a lot of faith in FWC.

Right. Okay.

So there's a human element there, too.

Sure. I guess my point is that we are trying to work with them in this DO process. 7-Eleven gave us an operational plan that was comprehensive.

Which 7-Eleven?

Both of them so far. Now there's three.

One of them is like a police song, Roxanne, you don't have to put out the red light tonight. Right.

So that one, we didn't have an operational plan for that one. They went all long wavelength lights. But the 3000 block and the one next to Wasting Away in Margaritaville both have operational plans to address mostly the worry over there is interior lights and turning off those interior lights or minimizing shielding those interior lights at night after business hours. Any other questions on operational plans? So another big issue, interior lights. They're a significant source of light pollution, especially in our condos and high rises, as well as houses. We have a lot of rentals, and people get on vacation mode, vacation brain, and head out for happy hour when it's daylight. Sorry. head out for happy hour whenever it's daylight and come back home and realize they left all the lights on, all the windows open kind of thing. So it happens. I understand the frustration with the belt and suspenders argument. Why are you requiring me to have window coverings if I already have the state mandate at 45%? So window tinting, it does not necessarily It mitigates the light. It does not stop all of the light. 45% of the sun is still a pretty bright light. And you have some pretty bright lights that are 5,000K or a TV that is 5,000K putting out a lot of blue light that is visible from the beach and has a high probability of causing a disorientation. So if we our intent is to try and minimize the probability of causing disorientations, then that's why whenever you were on council two or three years ago, y'all voted for adding those window coverings in addition to the tenting.

Except for the person that put that in there. The counselor that interjected that into the ordinance voted against it.

Sure. So that is in the books and that is why we're requiring it and the reason why is because a percentage of a really bright light can still cause disorientation of sea turtles and the In my mind, the only surefire way that you would stop interior light from becoming an issue would be if everybody had automatic blackout shades. Am I saying that that's what y'all are going to do? I don't think that that is going to happen. But automated blackout shades that come down at 9 o'clock would be pretty much the only fail-safe way to stop interior light from being visible from the beach.

But how many more layers? I mean, using that picture, I'm assuming that's a house that's on the beach.

Yes.

So I'm guessing it probably has the curtains that's required. I'm guessing it probably has the 45% tint that's required.

Right.

From that picture, I can't tell if it's a light or if it's a TV mounted facing north versus south towards the beach.

These are all lights that are facing the beach. And it's actually a house that's under construction, which is another point. You know, whenever houses are under construction, you know, this caused a disorientation. This house caused a disorientation. I spoke with a very, you know, reputable and always very easy to work with, good to work with builder and said, hey, you know, in a response, how can we make this happen? Can we, you know, Subcontractors we all know some contractors they come in they do their job. There's trash everywhere There's whatever all they care about is making sure they connect to the wire that they're gonna get paid for and they're out So they're going to leave lights on During that construction process and we have a lot more construction that's going to be happening You know Maybe we mandate that they put brown paper up on the windows after they install them so that if somebody leaves the lights on while that house is under construction, it doesn't cause an issue. So that's another reason why I put this house up there, because this house was actually, this isn't, vacation brain. This is subcontractor brain happening. So again, this isn't the first and it probably won't be the last. So maybe we have some sort of mandate with houses on the beach whenever they are constructing and they've installed. Once they electrify that house, all the windows need to be blacked out with brown paper or whatever's easiest. So after, you know, we had a pretty controversial, we followed state modeling ordinance 15% and had some back and forth and revised our ordinance to go back to 45%. FWC has since done a study looking at what the effects of visual light transmittance are on sea turtle hatchlings, you know, scientific method. looking at where does a significant difference in disorientation occur as visual light transmittance goes from 45 to 30 to 20 or whatever the different treatments were. And they noticed that attraction fell roughly 18 to 22 percent and hatchlings responded nearly the same between 50 and 30%, so there wasn't a whole lot of difference between 15 and 30%. And so therefore they said, you know, because we see a significant difference once we go under 30% visual light transmittance, that is our recommendation based on this study.

When was that study completed and published?

2025, last year.

Well, I'm not sure that that's correct, because the folks I work with that were with the glass industry worked with FWC on this. And as of December, it still hadn't been finalized. It was still 45%, and they still hadn't completed that study.

This one's published, I believe it's in the Nature Journal, Nature Conservation. I can get you the article. Please. Yes, sir.

Thank you. I seem to remember you talked about the meeting when this was discussed and stated the 45% window tint. There was a lot of discussion about why it was needed. I don't think you were on the council at the time.

No, but that's the issue that I got involved in.

Yeah. But it was, well, because of TVs, right? If they have a TV and the curtains. So there was a lot of talk about, at least my recollection, there was a lot of talk about this will eliminate the issue of televisions or someone forgetting to leave a bathroom light on because they don't want their kid, they don't have a nightlight. They want to have a bathroom light on. And we were assured that doing this would be the best way to do it, having the 45% tint, making all new construction go to it, having the curtains. And now we're piling on again. Now we're saying, nope, your TV. God forbid you leave your bathroom door open for your five-year-old to find the bathroom in the middle of the night because that light might not be compliant. Or your old person. Or your own self, right? As you get older. But that's the concern. And again, we can go through every single thing and talk about it, but we have to be able to stop piling on at some point. At some point... there's nothing idiot proof and we just keep adding more and more and more stuff to these people and they're getting frustrated and they're pushing back and they're pushing back hard and our job is to bring that to staff and say this is what we're hearing but so far all i'm hearing is too bad you're an idiot and this is why we have to tell you how to manage your property and i don't think that is a good message to be sending either I think having discussions and opening it up to allow people to be adults and take care of their property, and if you're being a bad actor, then you pay the consequences. Maybe your consequences are higher than what they are now. We have that discussion. I don't know. But to penalize every single new construction anywhere on the island, to not allow flexibility, to me is a disservice to the people of this island.

My observation has been whenever I condition it and ask them to be adults and read the code and follow it, more often than not, or I shouldn't say more often than not, there have been a number on the order of dozens of examples that are not even complying with the lighting standards code, much less the sea turtle conservation code.

And now they're being cited?

Yeah, we have 80-some-odd warning letters out, yes, sir.

And of the ones that are being cited, have they corrected the actions and have they become repeat offenders?

I don't have the resources to do analytics at present. I mean, right now I'm on warning letters. If I had the resources to already been issuing NOVs and NOHs, that would have happened. But having said that, most people, whenever they get that letter, even though it's educational, it does motivate them to come into compliance. Unfortunately, it's usually I'll turn off the light rather than get into compliance properly with your lighting plan that was approved by staff. And then again, if it's just a light switch away or a connection away from being turned back on, inevitably, either that season or the next season, it'll be the same conversation.

Similar to the short-term rentals, then, isn't there something we could do to track that as far as, Frank, I'm looking at you, I guess, as far as software or something?

Absolutely. I mean, we have all the code cases. There's a history of it. You know, we're in a unique situation with Hurricane Ian, Hurricane Adalia, Haleen, Milton, et cetera, that we have been trying to work with property owners and get them to build back properly so that we don't have the issues. But yes, we are able to track it. Do I have numbers and the resources to do the quantitative analysis and look at things? No, sir. But could it be done? Absolutely. And then also, so flagpoles. So Sea Turtle Conservation Code says all outdoor lighting shall be downward directed. you know, long wavelengths shielded from the beach. I get questions about, you know, can we put it on top of it, but you don't really get very many amber lights, you know, that are going to be shielded to illuminate a flag. It's not, and, you know, FWC, you know, frowns upon just like tree strap lights that are up there being shined down on, so you know, putting a white light on top is not necessarily better. So then how do we, you know, how do we illuminate the flag for those that want to, you know, comply with, you know, best practices for raising the flag? And I think there's some opportunities to maybe we're limiting the lumens. Maybe we're limiting the Kelvin so it's more of a 2700 or 3000 Kelvin rather than a 5000 Kelvin light just to reduce that blue light that's in there. Enforcement on flag lighting is always tough. It's not something I like doing, but I think if we can give some guidance and make sure that the up lights are shielded and pointed away from the beach, And allow for that explicitly because right now people ask me and I'm like, you know, can we do it? It's not really authorizable by code. And those lights can cause issues if they're not shielded. You know, if you just have a an unshielded white light on the ground, just the dynamics of the beach being lower and it being on the ground, you can sometimes see those flags. Or like this, this is the old Wyndham where I would get complaints that it's visible from the CWA and causing issues with hatchlings orienting towards that flag that's lit. That was never popular with Mr. John.

Well, I mean, if you look at that, the intent of uplighting, whether it's tree lighting or it's for a flag, is to illuminate the object itself. That, to me, doesn't look like it's protruding up into the air. It's highlighting exactly what it's intended to do. Is it visible from the beach? Sure. I'm assuming if someone has complaints, do they have data proving that that caused a disorientation?

I can ask. But again, it's bright blue light reflecting off the silver surface of the pole and the flag. I understand what you're saying. You all know how many times I'm driving down the beach and I see a light. I'm like, is that little step light you know, that little white light that's on that step right on the beach, is that really going to cause a sea turtle hatchling to go the wrong way? And unfortunately, and I, you know, I feel bad, and it's, yes, it did. You know, it's crazy. I mean, they're natural light detectors that just orient themselves. When you think of something that's orienting itself by starlight that's reflecting off of

water and how faint that is advocate using your scenario if i'm a homeowner who's using that property or it's my house if that light is not there is it possible that someone could fall down the stairs because it's not there it's possible does it mean it's going to happen

Maybe not. Again, but illuminate it with the proper lighting, and everybody's happy.

Yeah, I think there's guidelines out there, right? I mean, we're not advocating for not being safe. Right. I know you're not. And again, I never advocate for darkness. I think that the science is there to tell us how to do both, right?

Yes, ma'am.

Chad, I have a technical question. You mentioned taking the photometric... readings from the beach and it being you know very broad spectrum are there the equivalents equivalent instruments that can actually measure in a much more focused beam or is everything always ambient that's the way they measure them so what i use the spectrometer for is you want to see what the wavelength is of individual lights yeah right so you have to get right up on there i mean if you take amber if you take ambient light it's always going to be

full spectrum of what's out there. And it may not even detect, I mean this, if it's that far away it probably isn't even bright enough to actually detect it because that's not what that's for. But they do have light meters where you're basically just taking in the foot candles and seeing how bright it is out there. It's not necessarily saying that that's long wavelength, short wavelength, but it's just a luminance value. But the spectrometer is more to see what individual lights, are they compliant with our...

So you do that very close quarters, whereas the other is... Yeah, that way you're only taking that light.

Different tools for different outputs.

Yes.

I was hoping there was like a scope type instrument that you could actually focus in on.

I think he's saying it's your eyes.

Yeah, I mean, that's what they...

It's our eyes and the turtle's eyes, right?

That's what's taught is the eyes, and that's your best tool for recognizing problematic lights. So here's a house that is an example of follow sea turtle conservation code and technical lighting standards. And this is very visible from the beach. And just another example of how, unless you actually review every fixture and every light, they'll light it up however. So this light is not, Even if it was, even if you ignore the sea turtle lighting, it's not in compliance with the lighting standards code of downward directed, or sorry, fully shielded, full cut off, etc. In addition, it's four stories tall. You have four stories of lights. So, you know, do we... Is this a new build?

Is this an example of a new build? So, what you're saying is that they changed the lights after your review?

No. So, again... after Hurricane Ian. I mean, I've been here for seven years. Whenever, you know, we always reviewed houses. We always reviewed everything Waterwood of the triple CL and only commercial multifamily landward of Astero. So we wouldn't really, this is on the other side of Astero. Policy before was we weren't really reviewing it, but it is conditioned, hey, you still need to follow the code, and those codes are listed. You'll see an evolution of my conditions going from a few snippets to very detailed, this is what you have to do, comply with lighting standards, et cetera, in those reviews. But again, unless you're telling them, yes, this is OK, no, this is not, they'll just put the latest and greatest LED fixture that they like, and it'll be an issue.

I was just curious if this was a house that was built after Hurricane Ian? Yes. So it did go through your lighting review?

No, it did not have a, it was just a conditional, you know, get it going conditional review. So it's only in the last year or so that I've, you know, because of the, basically since we had, you know, what, 29 disorientations last year, that was the, we need to review everything because we're having a lot of light know we're having more issues on the bay side of the sterile boulevard than we are having on the beach side um but again i also illustrated this you know fwc does not allow exterior lights above the first habitable um floor so that's typically reserved for beach side um And again, everything is circumstantial. Somebody who has mangrove forest and a quarter mile of beach in front of them, if they have a wall sconce that's a deep can, that's going to still be shielded at that angle. Whereas if you have a short beach and that same wall sconce might not have the angle to do it, or if they have recessed ceiling lighting, it's definitely not going to be shielded. doing it. So maybe something explicitly limiting, you know, above which floors, similar to what FWC does for their triple CL reviews. But we're having a proliferation of soffit lighting and then with the, you know, rooftop floors and having those illuminated, we're just having, you know, string lights and other lighting issues that are high up and visible from the beach. And then also, again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some people just really like these really bright blue lights. They feel like it's somewhat of our demographic just being able to see well. They want full color, et cetera. 3000 Kelvin is not a yellow light by any means, but it is a bit warmer. But you can see as you go, those blue lights, if you look at that blue line, that's kind of what I saw with the TV, what you would see with the blue light. And then as you go down in Kelvins towards 3000 or 2700, you get more of that red profile that is a lot less blue light and heavier on the longer wavelengths. It's just something to think about. With the lighting standards and bayside properties, you don't necessarily need to have amber, but if we have more of the 2,700 and 3,000 K lights rather than the 5,000 K lights, the overall cumulative effect of lighting on the island would be less impact from sea turtle nesting habitat.

I think what's important about that is To your point, it's in the eye of the beholder, right? But when you talk about looking at food and you're talking about, you know, I want to see my apples red, that has nothing to do with the Kelvin temperature. That has to do with the CRI rating of the bulb or the fixture. Maybe that's something that, because if you want to see something, the higher the CRI rating, the higher the what? The CRI rating of a light actually brings out the colors more than the Kelvin temperature does.

Okay, you know more than me.

That's what I've been trying to tell everybody for the last seven years, but nobody wants to listen to me because I'm just a dope. But I've been in the lighting business for a long time. I know what I'm talking about. And I know the technology is out there to be able to do exactly what all of us want to do, protect the environment, but allow public safety as well. But nobody in the environmental world wants to seem to listen to it. Again, back to Dr. Turndell. When I said we could make these lights dimmable, she goes, we don't like to use unproven technology. The dimmer has been around since the 50s.

Right.

I guarantee you probably everybody in their house has a dimmer in their house. It's not new technology. It's the afraid, being afraid to use the new technology. I always get the answer, what if? What if? Imagine if every municipality made decisions on what ifs. Nothing would ever be done. And that's all I'm trying to get to. I don't want to make this about... I'm trying to say don't protect the turtles. What I'm trying to say is allow flexibility to people to be adults and use technology that's readily available to them to be able to do some of this. As we're continuing to go into the AI world, people are going to be able to just say a simple word, and it's going to do exactly what you want it to do. It'll set your CRI rate, and it's going to set your Kelvin temperature. And you can do it from your phone. You can open your garage door from Minnesota. The technology is there to use it. I just want to make this ordinance allow you the flexibility to be able to do it. Because I think once you do that, you will see more people come into compliance because they have the ability to do it much quicker. If you call someone, and I call Scott, hey, your tenants are in this building and they've got their lights on. Well, guess what? I can go to my phone and I can shut the curtains. I can do all of that. But we don't allow that with lighting. And that's what I'm trying to get to. Use the technology that's there to make your job easier and people that want to build beautiful houses or commercial properties to be able to use this technology outside of when the turtles are actually nesting. That's all I'm trying to get at. I'm not trying to change anything that you talked about today when it comes to coming into compliance with FWC. I'm just trying to say let's allow this ordinance to be the flexibility to be able to help you do your job. That's what I'm trying to get to.

I understand. So we also have these FPL regulated lights. And the technology there is they can basically have remote controls and turn them on, turn them off. And FPL is doing that. We have lights coming on and off all the time. Over at Mango, all of a sudden, it just came on in the middle of the season. Over next to Lonnie Kai that's lighting up an adjacent parking lot just came on. They just install it. The technology exists. But then those lights that are super bright, very high, all of a sudden came on without any kind of notice. So these pole lights are lighting private property. They're not street lights, per se. So we talked with Frankie, and Frankie broach the subject with FPL on you know if you're going to put in a pole light that is you know illuminating a private property that should be something that we're taking a look at and and and you know having a say in rather than it just coming you know just being installed and all these white lights that are next to beach accesses that have had the technology to be turned off remotely but it's somehow they're just coming on and nobody's paying attention to them Why can't they press that button to turn it off? So we're trying to get that with FPL to address these. The regulated lights is the class that they're in, as well as there are regulated lights on some of our side streets that are still white lights. The pipe dream of having all amber street lights right now is not happening because it's a different class of lights and they only did the unregulated. We still have the regulated hurdle to jump on those lights to get those converted to amber. And we're currently exploring that.

Well, again, it goes back to the subjectivity, right? I get people asking me all the time. You've got so many light poles down Astero Boulevard. Why do some have shielding and some don't? Well, if everybody's got to play by the same rules, why are the crosswalks not illuminated? They're much brighter lights that span that out much more, and they're not shielded, but every one the town's got. So not everybody's playing by the same rules. Even when you just drive down Astero Boulevard, you see it.

Correct, and that's being addressed by FWC with the county.

Oh, is it?

Yes, sir.

Oh, good. Okay.

So just some lighting resources for property owners. I just wanted to include this in here. That way people can see it. It is up on our website, fmbgov.com. And then there's my contact information again. you know, reach out, let me know what you're going to install before you install it, rather than spending a lot of money on things that are going to cause issues. So happy to address any questions or discuss any particular concerns.

Well, since we've got you on the spotlight.

Sure.

Oh, I didn't do that on purpose, I swear. I didn't do that on purpose. Obviously, we know you're one person, right? What as a council can we do to help you make your job easier to help either spread the word or help with code enforcement? What is it that we can do? Is it more people? Is it more software? What is it that we can do as a council to be able to help you do your job better?

I mean, I had a great intern. this summer. It worked out really well. She was instrumental in doing the paperwork that we needed for Sea Turtle stuff. I'm doing development review, permit review, inspections on the tail end, managing grants, managing projects, as well as code enforcement. you know, in addition to the resiliency, you know, vulnerability analysis and adaptation plan and helping out stormwater and I'm stretched pretty thin. So the more staff I had, I'm confident I can train young minds that want to know and want to have a similar role that I have to accomplish this. So I would take as much staff as you would budget me.

Well, what I'm getting at is all lighting fixtures have specs, right? And most lighting designers are going to highlight which light they're going to use, which specific light they're going to use. Would having an administrative or an intern person help you to be able to do that part of it? Because if I'm a homeowner and I'm coming in and I've got to wait two and a half months, because Chad's only one person, to get to the review of my permit to be able to move my house forward, would someone like that be able to say, OK, I've got the light? Or are we required? I don't even know if we require lighting designers to provide an exact specification of the light that they're going to use, highlight it in red or whatever, saying, this is the spec. Here's how it meets it. And it can match up to what you've already got in place. Yep, this matches it. Move on.

Yeah, I can train people for sure.

Mayor, I have some comments. Yeah, go ahead. So Albert Ambrose, who was the architect on my home, I met him early on, John, with you and through the Let's Go FMB, and he's been an integral part of our community. We all know Albert. He's also built a home here. He built my home. He reached out to me the other day knowing this was coming up on the agenda, and he said, Rebecca, I'm with you. We want to do this right from the beginning. And he made some very good recommendations that he asked that I share them. And so he said, as an architect, we can look to see what other communities are doing. A lot of it is education, but he agrees that let's do this on the front end. So some of the suggestions he had, he also sent me some links, uh, places that are doing this really well, like Santa bell, um, the sea turtle conservancy has brochures, some of the other coastal communities, and a lot of it is education upfront. So he said he would like to see us consider having, uh, maybe lunch and learn sessions. where we bring in some of the big architectural firms that we know are here. You know some of them. You know working with them. Some contractors, just the stakeholders, and do an education. He also recommended that we have brochures like this maybe on our website that simplify it. When I looked at the ordinance, so I just built a home. Albert did it. He said, you didn't have to go through these requirements. Then I talked to other people and they go, well, yeah, but your second and third story, that's kind of causing a problem. And to the mayor's point, I spent thousands of dollars putting light fixtures outside and inside only to find out that I could have made a better choice, but I didn't really know. So some of these brochures are so helpful because they tell a homeowner, I mean, some of them are just pictures. They are so simple to read that I think we can start with education, like you're saying. So people aren't spending money. You know, this is kind of what you can do, what you shouldn't do when you need a permit, when you need a review. to try to catch some of these right from the start. Maybe with everyone who comes in for a permit for a new build, maybe this is one of the things they go home with. Just a cheat sheet, not the legalese, but the cheat sheet to say, these are the things you consider. Albert was perfectly acceptable and amenable to saying, if I knew some of these things and it was really defined for me, we'd put it in the drawings. They'll try to cover it. So some things to consider, some educational tools for residents, as well as architects and builders, and some lunch and learns with some of the stakeholders, just to continue it on an ongoing basis to try to capture some of this stuff on the front end.

Yes, ma'am.

John, any comments?

Well, I think

Couple of things that I've heard on the resources is that you're now going out and doing the reviewing of all of the properties, even if they are landward of the CCL, residential, commercial, multifamily, all of them. I would think that that is requiring you to do reviews of a bunch of properties that probably have zero impact to, to the sea turtles, the actual problem.

I would disagree.

Who would disagree with that?

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Yeah, it's, you know, two, three, four lots back where you might say, you know, look how far back. I mean, I hear it all the time. And then, you know, you get a dozen 5,000K, 1,000 lumen lights that are shining down. And because of the elevation.

I guess that's the other side of it is everything that's going in is going in taller now. So it's more visible. It's going in higher.

Yep. And then, yeah, exactly.

And then you get third and fourth stories there.

So, I mean, I invite any of y'all, if y'all want to come out at night and look at lights, you know, it's a party. I was out till 1.30 last night, so it's a lot of fun.

It does change your perspective if you go out at night. I can see what you're saying.

And currently, the operational plans are not something that can be considered

So once Margaritaville and FWC said this is a way forward, I have been asking that of, you know, you have the cottage, you have the food truck park, you have Salty Crab, you have the 7-Elevens, a lot of businesses where With the you know aren't the good store where they have you know this open-air you know lights that are not going to be shielded, but will be very visible from the beach and so You know tell me how you're going to do that If you're going to have you know if you're going to make this open-air then as of right now I'm considering those open-air lights as exterior If I'm getting direction to say that these are not exterior, that's fine, but it's empirically proven that those will cause disorientations.

They do have an impact, yeah. Do sea turtles hatch in twilight, dusk, or is it typically, or any time it's dark?

I've heard that, and I apologize for not being real up-to-date on the biology, but what I've been told is that whenever the sun goes down, sand gets cooler, and as that cools down, that's the stimulus for them to start boiling up. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's still a spectrum of timing, and you can have... Yeah, I know, but you were talking earlier about probabilities and percentages, right?

Nothing is... So we're looking to try and minimize the potential impact in, you know, if we've got hours of operation until 10 p.m. or something like that, then you've got from 10 right through the next morning. We've just taken a large percentage away from potential impact. So I'm going back to how do we make it work for businesses that doesn't put undue burden on them, but does allow for dark skies at night, but allows them to operate properly during the day. That's the balance that I'm thinking of. And when you start talking about hours of operation, and perhaps you've mentioned some things where at a certain time these TVs go off, or at a certain time these things happen. whether that people are in compliance or not, that's a different issue. It's giving people some flexibility. And I think to the mayor's point about some of the technology that we have, including simple timers, including variable bulbs that you can turn up and down whatever you want. I mean, they seem like as opposed to fully mandating the exact type of light that you have to use and et cetera, et cetera, it's the impact of the light that we're trying to manage, I think.

Yeah, you know, and I guess These are all good discussions, but the biggest complaint I get when it comes to lighting is how it holds up the entire process. Because it has to be reviewed environmentally just like it does for floodplain, building code, all that kind of stuff. And people can't get started on a project. And I don't know if this is a procedural thing or if it's a policy thing that we can attack. What the light is going to look like has nothing to do with how the foundation is going to be built.

And we've made exceptions for that before.

Allow them to start at risk. Because you're not going to be able to move in or use your building until you meet the requirements for environmental review, right?

And we've done TCOs.

But my point is, if I have a project that has been backed and forth three, four, five times with environmental review, again, you're only one person. You can only get to so many projects at a time, right? Every time it gets rejected, it goes back to the bottom of the pile and it starts all over again, right? Then they submit this, well, usually. Then it gets submitted and something else isn't right. Then it gets sent back. all of that could be going on while they're moving forward with a project. Like they, you could still build a building. You can still do foundations. You can still put a roof on it. You still put windows in it. You can still sheet rocket. You can do electrical. You can do all of that without having to know what specific light is going to be in this hole where this electrical wires.

And we have absolutely allowed for that before.

But is there a way to do that going forward until we work all work all through this?

I mean, talk to me and we, I discussed it with Frankie and we, we, we decided on how, you know, how we feel and what, and we condition that, you know, you can start, but, you know, you're not going to get a CO, we make it explicit, you're not going to get a CO until we have an improved lighting plan that reflects the as-built. So they're at risk.

Without a doubt. Without a doubt.

And we have allowed that.

Well, again, it goes back to subjectivity, right? If you and Frankie decide it's okay to go forward, is there a policy that we can put in place to allow? Maybe it's commercial. These houses aren't being built overnight, so it takes time to be able to. But a lot of people aren't going to start putting their resources out and scheduling concrete trucks and doing all that because they don't know when a final environmental review for lighting is going to be done. What I'm asking is there, and maybe this is a Nancy question, I don't know if there's policies or procedures that we could put in place to allow someone on a bigger development that's going to take two years to build or 18 months to start a project. I know we did it with the county, right? They were trying to get the park open, but it was being held up in lighting review. Well, we made an exception to allow them. Can we make the exception a rule? We definitely can. Once you reach a certain point, you have to meet environmental requirements, whatever those are. or you took a chance and you lost, right? Again, allowing the flexibility to someone that wants to invest in our community to be able to start the project because project costs keep going up.

And the way we're approaching any commercial development, let me just start there with commercial development. So if you have a large-scale development, we have initiated, going back to Council's recommendations two years ago, having pre-con meetings with these people. So right from the get-go, we're talking those steps. You're bringing us your renderings, you're bringing us your crude plans at that point. We're sitting down with our planning team, our zoning team, and we also tie in our environmental team. So you know right from the get-go what you can get and what you can't get right from the start as you go through that process. If you go down the DO road, you have multiple disciplines working at the same time, whether it be zoning, flood, whatever. We're not holding you up just because one person's not getting an answer, we're holding you up because the whole project can't move without an answer. So there is a difference. And lighting is not going to be that issue.

When we're talking environmental... That has not been my experience in the things that I've been looking up for people. What you just said has not been my experience in what I've found. And I could give you a list of places that I'm talking about. So it sounds good in theory, but that's not what's happening. At least it wasn't. What you were saying was happening for a while, but now it seems like it's going back to the old ways of where you submit something, we're rejecting it. for this. You submit, now I'm rejecting it for this. It seems, at least in what I've witnessed or what I've heard from people, is the full review isn't happening and sending it out as a package. We seem to have gotten away from that, at least in the environmental realm. And again, this is not a reflection on Chad. It's just a reflection on one person has a lot of work to do, in my opinion.

So let me tie that in, too. So Chad is not the only one that does environmental review. We're trying to rein that in and make him a key component in that. But our outside planning team is the one that does a lot of the large-scale review, the initial review on these projects. So when they get a key element out of that project that doesn't match for the environmental review, I'll use the county park system for an example, Lindhall Park. When they originally talked to us, we had our pre-con meeting. with their team, their project manager. This is what we want to do. This is what we're proposing to do. This is the construction company that we have on board. Well, then all the subs start getting in, the architects, the landscape architects, the lighting subcontractors. And one by one, they're putting layers on the overall plan. So you have a completed plan when you're done. Well, we went from 15 foot high lights in a parking lot down to bollards. And it's just like... To get there, they had to go back and forth, back and forth. We sent the letter saying, we need you to follow this. They sent back this. So it takes some time on some projects to get to that point. I'm not defending what you're bringing up, the issues or the people that you may know of having struggles. And please, by all means, let us know so we can correct that as we move through it. But some of these larger projects, we brought up the salty crab, for example. It's an awesome project. Can't wait to get there. Many of us have eaten there in the past. Can't wait to get the cheeseburger back, right? But when you're talking about having an open air area at top, even though it's under roof, trying to get the architect to understand it's still exterior lighting. And we have this discussion. If we had a policy where we could extrapolate things out to put into our reviews, a lot of that would be taken care of. And I guess that's what we're looking at is trying to revamp the policy so we can capture the little nuances and still try to find what Chad has to do every day and follow that line of being compliant or as close to compliance as we possibly can. We've come a long way in a short period of time since E until now. We heard it in Rentalscape. We're also hearing it on the environmental side too. These houses that are being built back, I'll try to transition into the residential part. Each month we probably are averaging close to three new homes being built on the island or applications to build a home on the island. at any given time. That gives us plenty of time as a review staff to grab that, give a really good thorough look over and put a lot of those people on the path to construction. So we have the tools in place. We have the people in place. The policy needs to be massaged a little bit to help not only staff but also on the other side, the residents and the commercial people. But a lot of the struggle that we have in the back and forth is just we're asking for this and we keep on getting this. You know, there's no account for that. And it's a telephone game, Mr. Mayor. I can be telling you what staff is doing, and you can be telling me what the complainant is doing. In reality, it's not. You know?

No, I agree with you. And before I bring up an issue to Will, who then passes it on to you guys, I usually try to do my homework and look it up and verify what I'm hearing. And sometimes it's their fault, and sometimes it's our fault. Sometimes it's both faults. But...

And Chad can tell you, I hate ping pong. And that's what I call ping pong. I hate it going back and forth. Either damn it, get the question answered for the person immediately, or explain it in a way that they can understand it immediately. Sometimes that can't be helped, right? It may take a couple times.

And I totally, Frankie, I don't mean to cut you off, but I totally understand what you're saying, but I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying. What I'm saying is all that back and forth ping pong can be happening while progress is still being made. Right now, we don't seem to have a definite path to have progress continue while the ping pong is going on. And that's what I'm trying to get at. Is there a policy? Is there something that we can do as a council policy-wise to put something in place to give you the ability to say, go ahead and start. We don't want to hold you up. We know concrete is going up. We know gas prices are going up. We know all that stuff is happening. But at a certain point, we have to come to an agreement. You're going to have to do it this way because that's what our code tells us we have to do. And they assume the risk now. Now when they call and say to all of us and say, they're holding me up because it's environmental and I can't get anybody to move because my garage doors don't meet code, but I can't get my DO because my garage doors haven't been approved, that's the stuff that I think we can control. And if they want to take the chance as a developer or a homeowner to move forward, thinking that they're going to get one by the staff, then that's on them. No longer is it an email from Dan or council members to Will saying, hey, this is what I found. Why is this taking so long to get approved?

And I do understand what you're saying. And a lot of this is on me as far as the slowness. And it relates back to what the town went through with FEMA. You know, we discovered through the FEMA CAV process that, yes, things were coming in, getting approved, and pushed back out that didn't make it right. So we are taking a closer look in a lot of different disciplines to make sure that we are doing everything right. That does slow up the process a little bit. Our outside planning team looking at projects, basically dealing with larger projects, that takes time because there you do have a disconnect between a discipline looking at the zoning and the flood part of it versus the environmental part of it. And then waiting, one person does not knowing what the other person is, We are making changes to that and trying to get a little bit more fluid dynamic moving into that. We're taking more control here with Jason Smalley, for example, driving a lot of those projects to make sure that we're in the loop and we can express that they get done quicker.

We've certainly unscrambled a lot of eggs here today, but I think there's enough direction hopefully to entice some conversations to see if there's something we can do better to help alleviate what Chad needs, what staff needs, and what our residents and builders need. And hopefully there's been enough discussion to be able to kick another can down the road.

On a side note, we have members from the community who did do everything right from the get-go and tried to do everything right from the get-go. And his example of trying to think forward and getting his project moving. But again, that kind of code an absence of direction is bogging down even that effort to be proactive. So yes, anything that we can do or you can do will help us greatly.

Scott, you got anything to add?

So I have a question about the compliance aspect. It seems that, Chad, and this is more directed to you, it just seems that you're shooting a shotgun everywhere. I mean, it's like you're running around the entire island. Would it be more prudent to focus on the beach first or a section of the beach to get that dark and then work your way down? Because it seems to me you're all over the place.

So a couple things happening this year. We had our beach renourishment, and we have a permit required condition to do a beach-wide survey twice this season. We did it in the beginning of the season. Then we're following it up. Just did the entire beach last night. market improvement, by the way. I mean, it's amazing, all the compliance. In my opinion, as far as amber lighting goes, it's never been better, but you always have those, you know, the one-offs here and the one-offs there that cause a disorientation, and that's all it takes, unfortunately. It's like, you can have 99% success, and that 1% is what causes those sea turtles to go the wrong way. So as far as it being beach-wide, we had to do that with our permit-mandated requirements.

That's fine, but now that that's over, can you start at the south end or wherever? I know Turtle Time has a location where it's relocating. maybe start and go each way where the relocation area is.

As we get later in the season, we kind of focus more like where the nests are and where they're going to be hatching soon and look at that. And you know, we have a lot of relocations from our sand project that are right here on the, you know, 5,800 5,900 block. Um, so we do focus on those lights a lot right there because there are, there's a concentration of nests right there. Um, And then as nests are hatching, Eve and Cindy are giving me heads up, hey, these establishments are issues. They're going to be issues. And I see those as well. And definitely focus on those, to your point.

OK. So you are doing that? Yeah. That's good.

I mean, if there's no nest on the 8,000 block, Number one, those guys, I mean, they've done a great job with their lighting and coming into compliance, so there's not a whole lot of issues over there anyway. But if there's no nest over there, I don't even like going over there because it's like you don't know when you're going to get dive bombed by all the black skimmers and the terns that are nesting over there.

With that hair, I see why.

But yes, we are, you know, we do try and be pragmatic and get after the areas that are going to make more of a difference and try and prevent those disorientations.

How many disorientations have we had this year so far?

We are at 13 out of 32 nests, so it's not good.

We got a call this morning, Chad, and it's up to 15. 15? Yeah. So 15 out of 32. From last night, yeah.

We had two just last night, and I was out all last night. So one is likely due to TVs. It's at a bar. And the other one is a window that may be left open. And then also they seem to, I'm going to have to, you know, some lights are reflecting off of Ocean Harbor that are causing them to just keep on going that way is the theory. So I'm going to try and play detective on that one.

OK. All right. Thank you. Is there a way you can email your presentation to us?

Yeah. Yeah. Amy, we have it in the presentations, and she can disseminate it.

Thank you. That's all I have, Dan.

Mr. King? Yeah. I think I first became aware of this about four years ago when I first met Chad when I was on our condo board trying to bring our condo into compliance. I think, if I recall correctly, you brought up the Sea Turtle Conservancy. They do grant-funded retrofits, and I know the lighting can get expensive. So I think I'd like us to at least maybe put out some way or on the website or something how it works with the Sea Turtle Conservancy. They'll come out and they'll do an initial survey. They'll do a lighting design. They'll do installation, a post-survey, and they, again, help with funding. I'm not sure if it would help on the bay side as much. I think it's more on the beach side, but I think that might be an avenue I'd like to see us at least promote or help.

I think we just got another sign up this past month over at Kia Stereo Shops. They're going to, I think, maybe take advantage of the Sea Turtle Conservancy over there. And dozens of properties have taken advantage of that. And I continue to promote it. And we can get it up in writing on the website as well.

Yeah, I know. Because I saw on social media, one of their residents talked about they have to rebuilding their house. They just didn't have any money to be able to do it properly. And if this is an avenue for them, I think that's worth promoting.

So thank you. You're welcome.

Thanks, Chad. Welcome anytime. Gender management. Mr. King, anything new you would like to add to that?

Nothing for me.

Scott? Are you sure?

You've only got a couple left. Positive?

You've got more than a couple.

He's trying to force you out the door.

No, no, I'm thinking. Did I miss public?

There's no public comment during M&P. Okay. We're available to talk to you afterwards if you'd like or if you need to talk to staff afterwards.

Okay, wonderful. Thank you.

No, I'm actually good. I think we've got a lot of stuff going on. Yeah. Let's stay focused. Perfect.

Management?

Yeah.

Yeah, so I just wanted to bring up that on the May 7th M&P meeting and the May 4th council meeting, I had brought up the interest in doing a public comment or, I'm sorry, public benefit discussion with the LPA and would like to bring that back up to get that on the schedule.

I see it's on here. It just hasn't got a specific date yet.

Oh, okay. Is that new? I didn't see it.

Perfect.

Yeah, it's kind of marked for the second regular meeting in September, but there's going to be a long meeting.

I think, Councilor Link, I remember you asked about a combined LPA town council meeting to discuss.

That was my preference, and I was up for discussion.

Right, it was your preference.

It's on agenda management. It is there.

I see it now. I'm just asking, does it make sense to have that meeting before or after the election? Or does it matter?

I don't know why it matters.

Or before or after budget. What's that? Or before or after budget. Probably after.

Oh, after. I mean, there's too many things on everyone's plate.

Do you want to have an M&T meeting in September, correct?

We don't. So right now, it's on the agenda management as the second regular meeting in September, which probably is not a reality.

Yeah, it doesn't need to be.

I think October would be more realistic, would be more, would be better.

Yeah, what are you thinking there?

Well, I'm just having flashbacks to 2017 when people on the island lost their mind about a discussion over the compensation of the then town manager that locked in the incoming council to five or six years as the outgoing council members. So the outgoing council members made a decision

Ah, I see what you're saying.

That locked in the incoming council that couldn't do anything pretty much for five years. So it just gives me flashbacks, and it makes me wonder if having a discussion in October, if it's a discussion, that that's fine. But if it's actual decision-making, does it make sense to wait until whatever the new council shakes out? I think December is fine.

It's just important to the public, and I think it should...

It'll be in Hawaii. No, I think it's extremely important to the customer.

So I don't want it to go too long, but I can understand. We should have the body that will most likely have to work it out be the body that discusses it.

I'm just wondering if you have the discussion and then you give direction to staff. Yeah, it's a whole other story. There's three seats open, right? So it's potential that the majority of council could change. Not saying it will. Thank you.

That's what experience on the dais helps. Thanks. Yep.

Anything else?

Thank you. No, thank you.

John? I'm fine, thank you. I do not have anything else either. There's nothing else? Move to adjourn. We are adjourned. Yes, our public comment. Any objection? All right, we are adjourned at 12.09.