Town Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay. You met him right at the party. That's it? I'm good.

You know, let's see. I'm really happy you're here.

Don't feel you need to stay any longer than you can or comfortably.

Good to start. All right. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Today is Thursday, August 27, 1013 a.m., calling today's meeting into order. Madam Clerk, if you'll take the roll, please.

Thank you. Chief, if you'll lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, please.

The Pledge of Allegiance is a flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. Moving on to Item 2A. Ordinance is received.

Yeah, again, I just briefly want to voice my concern about this legislative technique of having the special meetings during the morning. And I want to say a couple things. I raised this point on August 6th, but I think there's two new things I wanted to add to the story. A point that's often been made by the defenders of these special meetings And I want to just say for the record, I oppose doing major legislation at this hour on a weekday when residents have difficulty attending. A point that's been made is that, look, people do show up. And I want to say something about that. Yeah, people ar

Yeah, so I just want to echo the words of Commissioner Vildosta. It's not easy to be here in the morning. I appreciate that you found the time to come to show up and give us your opinions. We got emails, we got phone calls, and we like it that way. But I really hope that in the future we don't do this unless there is really a compelling reason. So.

I hear all of that, and I also recognize that evenings are, after we've all worked a full day and have families, but yet we devote the time to do it, and we each make time. I was on travel, and I joined one of these special meetings that were scheduled, you know, pretty short notice, but we were noticed, and I joined from Switzerland and participated, and so... You know, we make the time for things that are important to us to the best of our ability. It doesn't mean that we won't miss a meeting. You know, every so often we're human. This is a volunteer involvement. The $1 a year gets used up b

Good morning. And I completely agree with Commissioner Weingart. It's not always easy, but we make it happen. And once in a blue moon, it's OK to miss it. I mean, we're all humans. We have a tight schedule. We're here for the residents. We're trying to make our best. And actually, morning time, I see there's more people coming. And our minds are more fresh to work. Sometimes we do it morning, sometimes evening. But we're here for you guys. Thank you so much. And I really wanted to make a point to thank the commission members to change the date for the September meeting. Thank you so much for a

Thank you, Vice Mayor. I guess I do want to echo and expand on what you said. I think there's more people in this room this morning than there were at the 7 p.m. regular meeting last month. You know, today's schedule, just to give you guys a little information on at least what my day looks like, all right? I've been in here since 9 this morning. There's a special meeting in the morning. There's a budget workshop. And then I have the planning and zoning that I'm liaison to. So I'm not going to be leaving until 9 o'clock at night. This is the job we signed up for. It's, to Commissioner Weingart'

Thank you so much madam attorney Madam clerk if you'll read the title of the ordinance to the record, please

All right, thank you. Mr. Attorney, if you want to give a quick intro and then we'll get a motion and then move on to public comment and commission debate.

All right, so just very briefly, this item changes our code back to what it was prior to the changes that were made in the last commission. Correct. This doesn't really address or remove The public's right to speak. We've addressed some of these things and hopefully we can get some clarity up here by the town attorney. But for now, the consensus among the commission was to put the rules back to the way it was, to allow the chair to run the meeting as intended and as written by our charter. So if we can get, but at the same time, I think there's some ambiguity and I think residents deserve some

I'll make a motion to pass 2A as written.

So we have a motion on the table. Let's go through public comment first. We have Salida Kranzer. I'm gonna keep this to two minutes because we have so many comments that this is an hour and a half of public comment as is.

Thank you, Mrs. Krenzer. Michael Kerouken.

Thank you, Mr. Kerrikan. Ms. Salzauer, two minutes, please.

Is there anybody else that wants to get it up before we close public comment on this item that didn't submit a card yet? All right. Seeing none, we'll close public comment and go to the commission discussion.

Look, so here's just a very big picture starting point. When people email me and I write them back, I always thank them for their comment. When I see residents at the meetings, I thank them for coming. The majority of this commission, I think, is not receptive to free speech. And the proof of that, I've seen it. It happened at the August 6th meeting. There was an item where Commissioner Trevani opted not to speak, and the mayor thanked him for not speaking. That happened to me once in his previous term, too, where I had put in a card to speak, and I opted not to, and he thanked me for not spea

Thank you, Commissioner. Again, if you're going to spend half your time cursing out the commission, that's on you. So we can either discuss the item. I haven't cursed anyone. We can either discuss the item or you can make a political grandstanding up here, but that's your choice. And so we're going to go around. I curse no one.

So I just want to look at this from a practical standpoint. We've been meeting for maybe six months now, and this ordinance was in place. What's interesting is that usually you don't have a lot of people attending the meetings when it's ordinary business, and therefore the inefficiency that we get out of The ordinance, the way it stands now, I think is quite frankly minimal. We may have, I don't know, 20 more minutes or 30 more minutes that are going to be added or have been added to our meetings because people come up and speak. I don't know if it makes sense to get rid of that time because w

If I may. Thank you, Commissioner Trevani, for your very level-headed, thought-out points on it. I agree with you. It's frustrating at times that things take time. You want to effect change. That's why you're up here. You devote a tremendous amount of your time to it. And as we see it, we're simply reverting to what was here. So I don't see a need to COMPLICATE IT FURTHER WHEN IT ALREADY IS CHALLENGING. THERE ARE SO MANY CHECKS AND BALANCES IN PLACE. OUR TOWN CHARTER WAS IN LINE WITH BEST PRACTICES THERE. SO AS IT WAS, IT WAS DIFFICULT TO GET THINGS DONE, BUT THAT'S GOVERNMENT BECAUSE WE NEED

All right. So again, I agree with everybody. They get up here and say this is not emergency. It's not urgent. And I agree with you. We've been in office five months, and we're addressing this now. This wasn't a first week item. It wasn't a first month item. So when is the opportune time, right? We're five months into our term, and now we're addressing it. So I agree with you. It's not an emergency. But at a certain point, we have to get things done. We have watched, and to Mr. Pino's point, there's a lot of important things to do. We have watched the same items cycle through every agenda for t

Okay. I appreciate the feedback and I'm comfortable with that.

Can I ask one more question? I just need to make sure if it's accepted. Okay, yeah, yeah, sure. All right.

Yeah, so I was going to ask, can we at least keep the nines, maybe also the first ordinance in there? And I'm saying this because you've seen that. I mean, we've all seen that. When we go and we talk about... You said the nines? Yeah, on the agenda, you know, the items under the discussion items so that people have the residents have the right to speak on the discussion items. I'm saying this because when we talk about all these initiatives, I find it beneficial to hear from some of the residents who have a different perspective. And usually, at that time, there's maybe four people left. So it

find a balance. So I want to address that because that seems to be a miscommunication either internally or at least the information that I've gotten when this thing came forward. 702c specifically says public discussion on agenda item, right? That's where this belongs. 702b is public hearings. A public hearing is defined as a quasi-judicial, It has to do with second reading ordinances, zoning. This language does not belong in 702 . 702 says, when a town commission considers an agenda item, input from the member of the public shall be limited to no more than three minutes. That's already giving

But right now, I think that, because I'm trying to reconcile the email that we got from Steve with what you're saying.

So I can answer because Steve was referring to state law. There's state, there's county, right? There's different requirements. The state requires mandates for hearings, for second reading ordinances. The county has another law about the right to be heard, which we address within our thing. And then there's the town law. So I mean, I'm scared if I ask Steve to explain it, we'll be here for the rest of the day as well. But that's it.

I guess my question is very specific. So when we get to the discussion items and So as a standard, they will need to be addressed during good and welfare. No. No. So every, right, because that's, I guess, what the town authority. Remember, good and welfare is for everything not on the agenda. Not on the agenda. Now, do I enforce that? No, but that's what our code says. All right. So then residents are still able to come and with every discussion item, speak their mind and give us their comments.

So what I'm trying to do, and I'll be bringing this forward, is to have a standing meeting, essentially move the nines off of the Tuesday meeting, right? Because we're never getting to it and we're getting to them at 11 o'clock at night. Move them off, have a separate standing meeting. So it's not a special meeting sporadically, but The residents know that, let's say Tuesday is the regular meeting, ordinances, resolutions, following Thursday is the 9th. We can start a little earlier, we can have a full discussion, make sure that public input is done, and this way the town staff has enough time

So when we set up that meeting, then we can go item by item and residents can give us their time. Yeah.

If I have 60 comments on one item, we may have to. Right. Listen, it. But you need to be able to play it by ear. Right. That's the that's the job. And that's the role that I'm in.

Mr. Mayor, may I respond to one point you said? And I want to first say thank you for. the changed and eliminating impertinent. I think that's an important step forward. I think that word shouldn't be in there. I just wanna say though, you actually misstated the definition of slander. And I think that kind of makes my point. Slander in the law has a mens rea requirement, that is to say an intentionality requirement. So just accusing somebody of corruption without evidence, which is what you gave as a definition of slander, is not slander. It has to be either knowingly false or have a reckless

So I hear you, but this is not a court of law, right? If I find somebody slanderous, they don't get fined for millions of dollars. If you get up here and you're going to say time after time that I accepted money from Dubai, that's slander because you don't have any evidence of that. And if you're going to repeat that message over and over and everybody starts hearing that, that's problematic. So unless you're going to get up here, if you're going to get up here and make accusations against anyone sitting up here, you need to back that up. And that's pretty simple. I'm not penalizing you for th

I would consider asking the attorneys about this. There are First Amendment issues involved here, and people can make accusations in public fora without evidence. I think that is actually within the scope of First Amendment criticism of the government. And I think this is the danger, is that we're silencing people potentially for legitimate criticisms. I think that's what makes me concerned.

So again, I can have the attorneys address that. This forum over here is not a complete First Amendment. There is a limited right to speak. And the town attorney, we have gone through this before. You can't get up and scream fire in a thing. You can't get up. There are rules and regulations in this room. And for us to enforce that is not a First Amendment violation. I've had multiple ethics complaints of people complaining that I didn't like what they had to say. And all I had to do was point at our laws and say, here's the books. And okay, so Madam Clerk, let's call the roll, please.

It was adopted by the motion maker in the second.

So did you just ask the town attorney to look also into the word slanders to see if there's any conflicts with the First Amendment or any of that? I'm not taking that.

Again, it's existed in our books. And for some reason, it was fine forever. What law school did you go to? It's a good thing we sit up here with a town attorney who can advise us as we go through these meetings.

Yeah, because this is kind of important. Can they give us an opinion on that? Let me ask you, if I take out the word slanderous, are you going to vote yes on this item? And provided that we have that conversation on that, like a separate meeting where people can speak on this. The motion has been made.

We're calling the roll. So I'm just asking you because I know you're trying to fit. Are you going to say yes if we take out slanderous?

Listen, I'm going to say yes if we also have the, which is not part of the motion, I understand that, but you said that, so I want to make sure that we do that at some point where we have a conversation, like a separate meeting on the 9th where people can have this ability to speak on every item. Can we do that?

Well, I mean, I proposed it. If you guys, there's no motion required, but if you guys are okay with that, we can, I'm thinking the Thursday after the Tuesday works. If that works for everyone, you guys want to take a look at your calendar quickly, but The point is to have something standing, right? I think it's to have something on the calendar that residents know is there every month.

Yeah, then I would vote yes. Yeah, yeah, I'm taking out slanders, and I would vote yes.

Again, I sat here for two years with two people getting up month after month saying that I went to Dubai and took money, and that became the truth. So that's not acceptable. Okay, so are you, you just asked me.

I was asking for information, yeah, I'm curious. All right, so can we take it out and then I will vote yes. We do that? I'll leave it up to the motion makers. Motion maker? So at least we have a little consensus we can.

I think it's important that the quorum be sustained there, and that the public recognized that, to the mayor's point, that if you say a false accusation enough times, that's what people know. And they have yet to produce any proof of these things. And there have been attempts on myself already. And you could scrub. licensing 14 states with the FBI for my security firm. So you could have fun doing that all day long because I keep a squeaky clean life there. But those that have made those attempts can know that I will handle them very, very seriously, and my attorneys will take that very serious

So are we taking that out or no? The worst line. Sorry, it's just to verify. Because that depends if I'm going to vote yes or no. Maybe we should ask the attorney's opinion before.

Yeah, I would like to know the attorney's opinion on this.

Well, I think the question was, does it open us to liability if somebody determines up here that what the speaker is saying is slanderous, and they send them out, right?

All right, thank you for that clarity. With that, I see no reason why anyone should have an issue with there being a rule not to slander anyone up here. I think that's part of maintaining decorum and in the effort of finding balance and working together here, I listened to the request to strike impertinent and that will remain. However, I'm not gonna change my motion to remove slanders.

All right, so following up to what the town attorney was saying, I could vote yes if we can have this step two that is just described and maybe instruct the town attorney to work on that and clarify so that we also take a look at the discussion items and make sure that people have the right to speak on those. then I will vote yes.

All right. We forgot we're in the middle of calling the roll, yeah.

With the comment that I just made, which I don't know how, I mean, this instruction would be part of the... Well, after the motion, I'll quickly instruct them, yeah.

Okay, so we're amending the motion to have a discussion following the vote?

Not a discussion, I guess, to amend the motion to also just instruct the town attorneys to come back with some framework for our meetings.

As the vice mayor, as the second, do you agree to those changes to the motion?

I just want to say, you know, I'm grateful to my fellow commissioners. I think we had some better dialogue on this than we've had on some other items, and I appreciate that. I appreciate the change with impertinent. Some of the other issues are still deal breakers for me, slanderous, and also the override mechanism that's being taken out at lines 131 and 32. So for those reasons, I vote no, but I think we got to something better.

Thank you. All right, moving on to item 2B, rescission modification of ordinance 2025-1795, replacing section 2-26, chapter 2, article 2, reserve of section 2-26, commissioner usage of offices in town hall. Madam Clerk, if we read the title of the ordinance into the record, please.

Thank you. Can we get a motion to adopt the ordinance? So moved. Is there a second?

All right. Let's open it up to public comment. Bruno Lopez. You're passing. All right. Well, there'll be a chance at the end. Don't worry. George Coussos to be.

Thank you, Mrs. President. Ms. Salazar, two minutes, please.

It already beeped. This is Louisa Agressi.

All right. Thank you, Louisa. This is the last card I have, but Bruno, last chance on this item. Yes, I'm double checking. So there's no hard feelings. If there's anyone else that wanted to speak on this item. All right. Seeing none, we'll close public comment and go to commission discussion. Anybody want to start or should we just vote on it?

I'll just share what I shared in our first reading on this. And I've taken some time to speak to elected officials from other jurisdictions on the item. Surfside was a small town. If you look at the budget over the last decade, it's increased significantly for the right reasons. It's grown significantly. It's vibrant. There's a lot going on. There's a lot more tax dollars coming in. There's a lot more to be managed. And perhaps when it was just a small little village, there was less work to get done. But it's very happening. There's a lot going on. And when elected officials represent the town

So, yeah, I'd like to respond to that and also just to say what this law is about. I was one of the sponsors of it in the past commission, and I think I can clarify here and speak to Commissioner Weingart's concern. This isn't about having a meeting space in town hall. If you go back and you look at the minutes of the discussion that passed this, we had extensive conversation about how can we have space for meetings. And there was a discussion that you make a reservation with Ms. Gonzalez, you can have either the Manny Crawford room or the small room off the town manager's office. They're alwa

Yes, I don't need to explain myself, but I will explain myself. The day that I came to meet, if I'm not wrong, at the beginning with Attorney Helfman, I was in Sandra's office. And I said, okay, I'll go to the conference. In the conference, there was the budget lady. In the other room, there was somebody else. And I said, there's nowhere to meet. I had to sit down in Sandra's office. She was on the phone, busy in her computer, but had to meet the attorney for, it was nothing, for three minutes. But in Sandra's office, why don't we have a designated office, a space? for the commission to meet.

May I answer that? I know others want to speak. That was the whole point of my remarks. It's not about having a meeting space for meeting with other people. That is already provided for. It's about having an office where you can go in, shut the door, and work on emails and stuff like that. It's permanently occupying an office, which is something that happened in the recent past that had never happened before. So it's not about getting a conference room. We already have a procedure for that. It's true that if there is a moment of heavy, heavy use, Manny Crawford may be booked, and the small roo

Yeah, but obviously there's no place to meet outside. I have to go into Sandra's office. The other day, I had to make a voice message for the video. I had nowhere to meet. I had nowhere to do it. I'm like, I'm going to go to the bathroom to do it. There is nowhere to do it because in every office, there's somebody. The conference is taken. I had to go into Genesis office. I said, I apologize, can you give me a minute so I can use your office? There is no office, there is no place to do town staff for us. Can we designate a room so we can do town staff for us?

please under the existing law we can i just want to say this is about something else this is about because there's going to be even less space if a commissioner takes a permanent office for themselves then there's less space for people to do extraordinary things like record a video and stuff like that repealing this and giving commissioners their own permanent offices reduces the amount of available space

All right, so I'm going to jump in, then we're going to finish this. First of all, there's four empty offices currently upstairs in Town Hall, just by the way. OK? There's one, two, three, four empty offices. So to pretend, and then the rest of the staff each have their own office. So pretend that there's some sort of crisis up here is, again, not, it's not being honest. For somebody, you keep saying the word permanent, and for somebody who's been hung up on the words like slanderous and impertinent, permanent is a very strong word. What is permanent? And it definitely doesn't mean what you're

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so a couple of thoughts here. On one side, I want to clarify that it's important that we separate the role that we have with the role that the town staff has. So in other words, it's like in a business, right? So the town manager is the CEO. We are the board. So it's important that we avoid... being in the way of the town business. What that means is that if I was the CEO of a company, I wouldn't want to have the board sit in my building or in my office that is that is something that uh is like you don't do but now i'm pragmatic by now you guys know that so i i wan

AGAIN, OUR CHARTER SPECIFICALLY SAYS THE TOWN COMMISSION IS NOT TO INTERFERE WITH THE TOWN ADMINISTRATION, WITH THE ADMINISTRATION OF THIS TOWN. WE HAVE LAWS. IF YOUR COMPLAINT IS, HEY, WE NEED TO ADD RULES BECAUSE WE THINK THAT THE ELECTED OFFICIALS ARE GOING TO BREAK THOSE LAWS, WELL, AGAIN, THERE'S STOPGAPS IN PLACE. THERE'S REGULATION. And those are enforceable. So I don't know what we're doing here. If you don't, you know, again, this is my leadership style. I should have that option. The next mayor that comes in should has his options. It shouldn't be defined by one person who already in

So I'm going to ask you to please refrain from making comments, refrain from laughing, refrain from yelling out. I know it doesn't get picked up on the mic at home, but we hear every time you scratch your nose, it's extremely distracting up here. So please just...

reserve your comments to public comment all right thank you i i would like to just make one quick point mr mayor the the restriction was not put in at the very end of the previous commission it was put in in the middle of it in 2025 and we lived with it too so it was um you know as i think with all the ethics laws that we passed including the one we're going to talk about in 2d we passed it and then we lived under it so it wasn't it wasn't meant to just to bind a future commission in some hypocritical way We lived under that, too. And I just want, for the record, that to be clear. I think that

All right, anything else? All right, Madam Clerk?

Thank you. I am to see rescission modification ordinance 2025 1789 amending chapter 34 and creating section 34 dash one sand removal or taking on the dinner beach. I'm not a clerk. If you read the title of the ordinance into the record place.

Thank you. Could we get a motion on the table to accept the ordinance?

Seconded. All right, public comment. Mrs. Krenzner, two minutes, please. .

All right, seeing none, we'll close public comment and commission discussion or comments. All right. Does everybody want to take it?

I'll step in. I think it's very important to address because this should not be misunderstood as not caring about safety. It's simply not putting in place a rule or law that is not enforceable. I was actually going to do a search with our wonderful law enforcement to see how many citations have been issued since this was put in place. But I think the burden on law enforcement is quite heavy already. So for them to start looking through a sandcastle or anything like that to see if someone's in violation is probably... overbearing, overreaching enough. So just for public record, everyone listeni

Look, on this topic, I think we all fundamentally want... On this topic, I think we all fundamentally want the same thing, especially where child safety is concerned. Commissioner Weingart raised a question just now about getting a records request of how many people have been fined. That is actually an important issue for just discussing what's at stake here. I'm quite confident that not a single person has ever been fined under this law. I was thinking about this when I read Commissioner Weingart's email in the summary of the special meeting a while back, and he said, however, fining people f

I'm trying to focus on the problem. I happen to believe that having an ordinance for this might not be the best way to solve the issue. Just because there's an ordinance which nobody goes out to enforce doesn't really help. So I wanted to look at this from another angle. What if we can repeal this ordinance but replace it with instructing Parks and Rec to look into an educational program where we were really able to start the conversation with residents about the dangers of, you know, digging holes without filling them and the issues that caused the death of this child a couple of years ago an

I support the education. I think something I expressed, I think it's a good way to spread awareness to this.

So thank you. I also support educating the community is the way to do. But again, I don't see it here in Sorset as a danger, because every morning, as I go to the beach sometimes, I see the trucks flattening the sand. Every morning, we have a flat sand, meaning there are no holes happening, like staying for days. There are no holes. And as parents, we need to be self-aware and educate our kids. When you go to the beach, you dig a hole, then try to flatten it and don't leave a hole, 100%. But again, every single day, thank God, I feel very honored to live here. This is a very safe neighborhood.

Sorry, that wasn't for you. All right, just very briefly. What problem were we trying to solve with this? Right? Like, I think there were three deaths a year from collapsing on the beach, most of those being commercial. You know, there was a problem. There were kids that dug a seven-foot hole and got buried in it. Unfortunately, terrible things happen in this world. That is not one of the ones that we start making ordinances for. Ordinances are not statements, and they're not educational tools. They're laws. And these laws criminalized regular, everyday beach activity that people do. It crimin

Question, so that would be able to, are you okay with instructing Parks and Rec maybe to look into an educational?

Again, I don't see it as a big problem, but I think to your point, whether it's a 18-foot hole, a one-foot hole, if somebody trips on it, it's a problem. Hey, guys, when you come back, we've educated them on so much, why not throw that in there? It is our beach, we want it to be nice. Of course, I would support that.

So question, can I make a, can we vote on this and then can I make a motion on, uh, on, on parks and rec or it would need to be an agenda item and, uh,

I would add to that is if you start making a motion for direction, I think it's clear we'll clarify to staff what we would like to see, but if we make a motion, we want an educational program. What's the timeline? What does the program look like? And by the way, if staff doesn't follow through, they could be written up. You're creating, again, if we're clear with staff, hey, this is an important issue, we'd like you to focus on some education, great, and we can follow up in a month or two, hey, why hasn't this happened yet? But if you start MAKING MOTIONS UP HERE IS A MAKING MOTIONS UP HERE IS

Remains as original and they'll be separate. Yeah, okay.

But you have my support. All right, so let's call the roll, Madam Clerk.

Thank you. Moving on to item 2D, rescission modification ordinance 2024-1779, amending, wait, just to be clear, that was essentially the commission giving town staff direction to put a program together for safety, correct? Is it consensus? We don't need a, yeah, okay.

I just want to make sure that staff understood that there was direction to put a safety program in place. Yeah, that's, okay.

We didn't cover it again after the motion, but yeah, that's the consensus of the commission up here. All right. Okay, so amending Article 7 of the Town Code of Ethics. Madam Clerk, if you read the title of the resolution, ordinance, please.

Vice Mayor seconds. Opening up the public comment. Mrs. Kranzer, two minutes, please.

Thank you, Ms. Negresi. I've got no more speaker cards if there's anyone that wanted to speak on this. All right, seeing none. Commission, who would like to take it?

I'll hop in and just reiterate some of what I shared the first time around. And I just want to address a key piece they brought forward is on the surface, if you're not looking at it or looking into it, you know, you could say, oh, how are you removing some piece of ethics restrictions here or requirements? And then the idea of us being a light onto other towns. Again, I speak to other towns. There is a stigma about how things have operated here and what has transpired here over the last two years. And what I keep getting is I hope you guys could clear it up and clean it up. And it looks like

Thank you, Commissioner. All right. If you guys want to speak, now's the time.

So I got a couple of emails from people after I sent an email out yesterday in a blog post. And they said, why are you so worked up about this? It doesn't really matter. The vice mayor recently asked a question, too. Why be so negative? Why assume that people are going to do bad things? What's the big deal with ethics laws? The reason why I'm doing this, this is really at the core of why I'm here on a commission. Corruption is the even the suspicion of corruption is the single worst thing that can happen to a government. I had a friend who used to work at the organization Transparency Internat

So I think that one of the biggest issues that we have in Florida, well, in the whole world for that matter, is the citizens' distrust in the government in general, especially in local government. This is gonna be one of the major issues with the upcoming property tax ballot question, right? People look at the local government, and they see, for some reason, corruption. They see inefficiency. They see people that spend money left and right. And a lot of that is not true. However, it's something that people think. I would actually do the opposite thing. keep the law that we have now, the ordina

I just want to address one thing I'm thinking because a colleague, Giovanni, had mentioned one prior, I think it was a meeting, that a component, and again, I'm going to be very clear, this is in support of you. This is, God forbid, nothing accusatory because I have nothing to accuse you of because you're an awesome, upstanding member of society. But you mentioned there's a component to your job that has a sales element. So I just want to enlighten you on what I like the transparency. I like being a model to other governments. And I'll address the best practices part. I don't want to take too

No comment. All right, so I think because we're just repeating each other's talking points, this is not the first, this is, what, the third time we're having this conversation. You know, to address this and this trust, I know Mary Ann and George were at a condo event yesterday, and to quote the Congressman Moskowitz who got up, right, he's like, People distrust him as a congressman. People distrust politicians. They distrust their boards. It is, unfortunately, how it works. You have to work hard to gain that trust. But people are always questioning what the motive is. And I think until you sit

May I say something, Mr. Mayor? I want to respond to that. Because actually, I feel in some ways I've been affected by the reporting requirement more than anyone. I work as a private tutor, and I have clients in town where the entire engagement is like $200, and I report it. And I've had to then recuse myself willfully. I've talked with the town attorney with Ms. Arango about it, about a really small tutoring engagement, but it affected a decision, and I'm withdrawing. And I want you to know that. And it's on public record. You can see it. I just want to make a promise to all of you. Even if t

All right. So noted. Madam Clerk, let's call the roll, please.

Thank you. Meeting adjourned. Thank you all for coming. We'll see you back here in 55 minutes.

One o'clock. It's one o'clock, right? It's about 30. 30 minutes.