City Council - Regular Meeting

scheduled actually it's an oddly scheduled City Council regular session of the City of Lake City September 10th 2026 if you will please stand for the pledge and invocation Lord, Heavenly Father, thank you for another beautiful day in downtown Lake City. Lord, please put your hands on this council and help us to make good decisions for the constituents of Lake City today and in the future. In your name I pray. Amen.

All right. Ms. Sykes, will you please call the roll?

All right. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the Lake City Council has opened its public meeting. And since 1968, the city code has prohibited any person from making personal, impertinent, or slanderous remarks or becoming boisterous while addressing the city council. Yelling or making audible comments from the audience constitutes boisterous conduct. Such conduct will not be tolerated. There is only one approved manner of addressing the city council, and that is to be recognized and then speak from the podium. Failure to abide by the rules of decorum will result in removal from the meeting.

We'll now move on to approval of the agenda. Mr. Mayor, move to approve the agenda.

We have a motion and a second. Thank you both. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, like son? All right. The agenda is approved. We don't have any proclamations, awards, or recognitions tonight, so we will move on to public participation. We have a couple people signed up, and we will begin with Mr. Sylvester Warren.

Thank you, Ms. Sykes. Up next, we have Ms. Layla Williams.

That's a good question. Mr. Rosenthal, you want to address that?

Thank you, Ms. Williams. All right. That closes public comment. We don't have anybody else that submitted anything. I'm looking around the room. So we will now close public participation, and we will move on to city clerk to announce the results from the primary election held on August 18, 2026. I'll turn it over to you, Ms. Sykes.

That leads us into item number two, which is City Council Resolution number 2026.

Okay. Sorry about that. Mr. Mayor, I move to accept the results.

All right. We have a motion and a second to accept the results on item number one. Do we have any further comment and questions? Hearing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, like sign. All right. We'll move on to item number two, City Council Resolution number 2026-105. Mr. Martin, will you please read that by title?

Thank you, Mr. Martin. We don't have anybody signed up to speak to item number two, so we'll move straight into council questions, comments, or I'll entertain a motion to adopt city council resolution number 2026-105.

Mr. Mayor, I would like to approve resolution number 2026-105. Thank you, Mr. Jernigan.

Second. And a second. We have a motion and a second. Thank you both. Any further discussion questions?

I would like to make a comment. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I would like to say at this time, first of all, congratulations to Ms. Jones. And second of all... I'm elated, and I've learned a lot behind this dais, but I just want you all to know I'm not gonna disappear. I'll serve more on the other side of the dais, put a pin in that, because I enjoy serving people. That's what I have done, that's what I'll continue to do. Teaching, educating, serving, and I'll look forward to still working with this council and also administration.

Those are fantastic words and true spirit of America. Thank you, Ms. Young. Appreciate you. All right, so we have a motion and a second. We've had comments. Ms. Sykes, will you please call the roll?

Yes. All right, now we'll move on to item number three, City Council Resolution number 2026-106.

Yes, sir Make sure you say mr. Norby Ross in that junior He's a junior He is not a junior

All right. Thank you, Mr. Jernigan. We don't have anybody signed up to speak to this from the public, so I'll take council comments, questions, or entertain a motion.

Mr. Mayor, with that being said, I want to approve city council resolution number 2026-106. We have a motion and a second. Thank you both.

Do we have any further questions or comments?

Yes, I do. I just want to congratulate all of the candidates that ran for this position. It is a life-changing experience to serve a community such as Lake City, Florida. So congratulations to everybody that ran Be Faithful Coker, Danny Carlucci, and of course, with Rossinette being the winner. Just want to congratulate everybody. It's going to be a life changing experience for you to be behind this dice. So tune in and enjoy the ride. I really had a very, very good moment with the city. I served my country, I served my state for 38 and a half years, I served my city for four years. There's no

Yes. All right. That concludes that portion of the meeting. So we will now move into the open public hearing on proposed fire protection assessment rates. And I will actually... We don't have anybody signed up for public comment on this item, so we'll move in directly into reading of the resolution, Mr. Martin, City Council Resolution Number 2026-095.

Thank you, Mr. Martin. Again, we don't have anybody signed up from the public to speak to this item. So we'll move straight into questions, comments, or if anyone would like to make a motion to adopt city council resolution number 2026-095. I'll make one comment before anybody does that. Just for the clarity of the public, we're not making any changes to this. It has not gone up. It has not gone down. This is the same fire assessment rate as 2025.

Mr. Mayor, move to approve City Council Resolution 2026-095. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Thank you. I think we had three seconds on that, so thanks, everybody on the diaspora. Does anybody have any further questions or comments on this item? Hearing none, Ms. Sykes, will you please call the roll?

Yes. All right, now it's a little more structured as we move into the open tentative hearing of the fiscal year 2026-2027 budget. Our next item of business is to consider this budget and the millage rate for the city of Lake City. First issue to be discussed is the tentative millage. This is item number five, and I will turn it over to you, Ms. Angie.

First, I'll ask Mr. Martin to read city council resolution number 2026-096, and if anybody is interested, please indicate.

Thank you very much, Mr. Martin. Now I'll look to the audience. I don't see anybody moving to the podium, so we will close public comment on this item. Do any council members have any comments regarding the proposed tentative millage? I'll only say that it's the rollback rate. Again, we're going down in property taxes assessed per household, which is a good thing for the year of 2026-2027. So that's my only comment. If we don't have any other comments, I will entertain a vote or motion from any council members who wish to set the tentative millage rate at 4.7824.

Mr. Mayor, I would like to approve resolution number 2026-096 at 4.824 to 4.7824. Yeah, I got it wrote down a little bit backwards.

Perfect. Thank you very much, Mr. Jernigan. We have a motion and a second. Thank you both. Do we have any other questions or comments? Hearing none, Ms. Sykes, will you please call the roll on this item?

All right. The second issue to be discussed is the tentative budget. Ms. Angie, can you please proceed from here?

Thank you very much. Mr. Martin, will you please read this resolution by title? Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

We'll now move into public comment. Does anybody have any comments that they would like to step up and make? All right. I will now close public comment. We'll go to council comments or questions. Anybody from the dais?

Mr. Mayor, move to approve city council resolution 2026-097.

We have a motion and a second. I'll make a quick comment before we take this vote. Two years ago, we had a budget of $77, $78 million. This budget is roughly $19 million more than that. $16.5 million of that are grants from the state and federal government. We also have transfers in expenditures to buy the water plant and fix things like Wind Lake and fix up Five Points, which is the majority of that difference in budget. So this is, while it could look wildly different, it is actually lower in operations, including those things, than we were two years ago. I just want to point that out. I thi

Yes. All right. That concludes our millage rate and budget hearings. We will now move on to our next order of business. which is our consent agenda. A motion and a second to approve the consent agenda. Do we have any further questions or comments? Hearing none, Ms. Sykes, please call the roll.

Yes. All right. No presentations tonight. So we will move straight into new business in our ordinances and that begins item number 13 City Council ordinance number 2026 dash 2366 on first reading Mr. Martin, will you please read this by title?

I'll now ask Mr. Angelo and our consultant to come up and say a couple words on this.

Any questions? I have one. Please repeat, if you don't mind, that there's no raising taxes on our constituents or our citizens in the city of Lake City. Can you repeat that?

Of course. Any other questions, comments?

Mr. Mayor, move to approve City Council Ordinance 2026-2366.

All right. Any further questions, comments at the dais? Hearing none, Ms. Sykes, will you please call the roll?

All right, moving on to city council ordinance number 2026-2384. Mr. Martin, will you please read this one by title?

To kick it off, I will say, yes, sir, Mr. Martin.

Thank you, Mr. Martin. That's all I was going to say was no change in utilities, no change in water sewer for constituents in the city of Lake City or our customers. That being said, does anybody else have any questions or comments? I'll entertain a motion to adopt City Council Ordinance Number 2026-2384.

Four, I'm sorry, 84. And a second by you, Mr. Carter. Thank you both. Any further questions or comments? Ms. Sykes, will you please call the roll?

Mr. Angelo, you have a presentation on this annexation?

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Angelo. We don't have anybody signed up for public comment on this item, so we'll move to the dais. This is for layman in layman's terms. This is the field across from the ring court entrance just north of the sun stop at 75 and 47. Does anybody have any questions, comments? Or would like to make a motion to adopt city council ordinance number 2026-2385.

Thank you both. Any further questions, comments? Hearing none, Ms. Sykes, will you please call the roll?

All right, now we'll move into resolutions, and we're going to begin those with City Council Resolution No. 2026-102, and this is the collective bargaining for the FOP agreement. Mr. Martin, will you please read this one by title?

Fantastic. Thank you, Mr. Martin. We don't have anybody signed up for public comment on this item, so we will move straight to questions, comments on the dais.

Mr. Mayor, move to approve Council Resolution 2026-102. Second.

A motion and a second. Thank you both. Any further questions, comments? Hearing none, Ms. Sykes, will you please call the roll?

yes um all right now on to item number 17 city council resolution number 2026-103 this is a resolution for the collective bargaining for the firefighters local number 2288 mr martin will you please read this by title thank you mr mayor council members you have before you resolution number 2026103

We don't have anybody signed up to speak to this from the public, so we'll move straight to council questions or comments. Or if anybody would like to make a motion to approve city council resolution number 2026-103.

May I make a motion to approve resolution 2026-103? Second.

Thank you both. Any further questions or comments? Ms. Hikeslee, please call the roll.

Yes. All right. Now we're on to number 18, which is City Council Resolution number 2026-104. And this is to reappoint Ms. Brenda Douglas back to the PNZ board.

thank you mr martin um we don't have anybody signed up to speak to this from the public and i don't see anybody uh motioning to do so so we'll move to council questions comments mr mayor move to approve resolution 2026-104 and i thank miss douglas for serving on that board

We have a motion. Second. And a second. Thank you both. Do we have any further questions or comments from the dais? Hearing none, Ms. Sykes, would you please call the roll?

Yes. Now we're moving on to item 19, city council resolution number 2026-123. This is an FAA grant to reconstruct several taxi lanes at the airport.

Thank you, Mr. Martin. We don't have anybody from the public that is signed up to speak to this item, so we will move into questions, comments from the dais.

All right, we have a motion and a second to approve City Council Resolution number 2026-123. I don't see any questions or comments further, so Ms. Sykes, will you please call the roll?

Yes. All right, that concludes all of our resolutions. So we will now move on to other items. And for discussion, we have a discussion of the youth recreation committee, which we talked about during budget. So I will, we have some items in the packet and I would, what's the best way to kick this off?

Go ahead. If I may, if we would take youth off because it's not just youth recreation committee. because it's actually seniors, youth, Families, we want it to be a community, not just youth recreation. And that may not be a big deal to some, but I think it's necessary that we point that out. And I do appreciate this being on the agenda today. I really do. And one of the requests I've asked that those items which were proposed by myself, I would like to have those items set in place. and hopefully running by my departure of this seat. That means a lot to me, and I certainly appreciate it. And t

So the establishment of the committee itself, I think, is the establishment and how we want it to look, right? What we want it to do, how we want it to look, and how we want it to function. So the discussion as a whole, and I think part of, you know, you had a good kickoff for discussion on removing, making it more than youth, right? Making it more of a community recreation system. So what we want it, what we want to do is have a broad discussion of one, the operation of this committee, what we want it to do, how we want it to operate to how we want this committee to be composed, um, So we've

So function, composition, and charge. Yes. Okay. Very good. Yes, ma'am.

If I may, once we determine the function, the purpose, once we determine the purpose, then we will have a better idea of what the committee should look like.

So we set aside some funds in conjunction with this committee at our previous meeting. I think that the basic function of the committee will be to review applications for those funds and offer suggestions to us, the board, on how we should spend those funds. someone applies for the funds, they go before the board, if it matches certain qualifications, which we will obviously determine. And I do think that we may need to have a workshop on this to really get into some... That's why I suggested before, because we're going to have to talk about what we want the funds for, how we want them divvied

My question, when it comes to the chairperson being on the council, and this is a question, would that in some way become conflict of interest when it's time to vote? Yes. I don't think so.

Well, I would say definitely not a... Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor. May I be recognized?

Let's see if Mr. Martin has an objective answer to that, and if not, then we'll go to subjective.

Well, my thought on that is if it's a majority recommendation, if it operates democratically, then the majority could be voting a different way than the chair of that board, but the recommendation is still made to this board, and then it has to be voted on again by this board. Does that make sense?

So, Mayor, and again, we haven't really said the purpose of the board. And I know Councilman Carter said the money, but it's greater than that. I mean, if you think about it, you would want this board to identify recreational needs. throughout the city, the community. So I think there are responsibilities that are great. Now it would come down to the funding, but there's some criterias that would need to be dealt with before. Because first of all, the operation, and we know we have proposed two entities. and working as one unit, if I can put it in that way. And I hear workshop, and I know that

Mr. Carter, just to clarify something I said before, because I agree with you that the role itself ought to lend itself to the people that are on this committee should feel that it is part of their responsibility to bring ideas to us. So it's not necessarily always a specific organization or specific thing. If they see multiple applications or if they talk to people and they experience a, this is something we need, then a representative of that committee can bring to the council Like, hey, I think we ought to do blank because it will serve blank. So to be clear, I agree that they should feel t

Well, let me give you my understanding of it, and you can— No, let the finance person talk. I mean, the minutes will state that we all came to a conclusion that we were going to put $140,000 in the pot and that it would be doled out by the Recreation Committee. So those organizations, those organizations.

I didn't think so either, but. We'll have to take a look at the minutes.

I'm not saying to keep it that way. I mean, whatever, because it was, that is budget, the way it was budgeted. And those funds were budgeted as to 72 Richardson and 72 Anna Meadows. That's what it was. But listen, listen, let me say this. That's why this committee is very important. Because it may be something that Richardson or nor Annie Meadows offer. And it may be something really great for the community. You know what I'm saying? So if that's the case, the programs have to match. Operational programs have to match before those funds are distributed to either, right? So I'm saying if Annie

Well, we're not voting tonight. So we were going to discuss next steps. If we had the discussion tonight on how to solidify it, we would come back with a resolution and vote on it at a future date. But I think we still had, did you?

We have to define what we're voting on first. Okay. Yeah. Mr. Carter.

Real quick, so where we got to in the last meeting, how we got to being a more amorphous sort of thing instead of a specific, specific thing was just for such an occasion as if, for instance, the Lifestyle Enrichment Center wanted to ask us for funding for a certain program for seniors or or something like that. The idea being that it became a general community fund that could help anyone in Lake City, not just specifically those two areas. So obviously, as we discussed before, when it comes to most of these things, those two areas tend to do the great majority of the things. So obviously, at

Mr. Martin, you had something. Then Angie, you have something. So, Mr. Martin, Angie. I think Ms. Young had her hand up first. Okay, Ms. Young.

If I can get us back to speed to why we're here in this part of the agenda. Perfect. That's what we need to get back to. So, we need to get back to how we're going to – set this committee. That's what we need to get to. So the funding will come after.

Function, charge, and composition. So a function sounds like to identify and support recreation and represent those ideas to the council. That's what the function sounds like. Mr. Carter, then Mr. Martin.

Well, I just have a question primarily for Mr. Martin. On committees like this, is there generally a set of bylaws? How do governments put into place all the different verbiage necessary to make the thing official? And if that's the case, have you already had the opportunity to seek out some frameworks that already exist in other communities? And if not, I think that's probably a good place to start when we're putting together information for the workshops.

So what are your thoughts, Mayor, on that before I ask this question?

So my thoughts are the city used to have a ton of committees, right? A ton of committees, a ton of councils. And they were dismantled during COVID, right? Am I right with that? That's my understanding. So I would wonder how we were doing that before. Were we doing that by resolution? I don't think it matters whether we do it by – I think resolution is fine. um resolution is fine i don't think that we need a first and second reading to create these committees um and then we we have an open solicitation for people to show their interest um and then we make a selection based on that interest does

Just a casual board. This is not going to be a board that we see in the city around all the time. This is a very unique committee. And one thing, I do believe that this needs to carry on for two years and us not have to look at it every year.

And that's even with the budgeting, like next budget. And we're doing it every year. Does that make sense? I don't think we have to look at this. You have to look at this every year. We need to determine how long the members will actually sit. I agree with that. And to piggyback off what Councilwoman Harris said, we're living in microwave time. era yeah busy busy busy so you got to think about quorum at least seven because your people just not may not show up and you don't want a waste wasted time set you see what i'm saying i agree um so then again um searching out through these applications

What the hell are we just saying? You said every two years, right? Yes, I said, look at it again, not every year, but maybe two years.

You ain't give them time to sit. We haven't learned the position.

I think it makes plenty of sense to make the term of the seat two years. That's pretty common. I think that's like our P&Z board and stuff like that, for instance. Is that four? Are those four? Whichever your choice, if we make the seat two years, three years, four years, I mean, we're still able, it's not like they're hidden away somewhere in a closet. I'm expecting us to get fairly regular reports from the committee, so we'll be able to maintain, and of course, we ought to also make sure that when we're putting together the verbiage here, we have the power to remove someone if they're not pa

I'm still recognized. But to be clear... You said that a moment ago, and it's not unfair. We all have, well, most of us have day jobs. I have a full-time day job. I believe Ms. Young also has a full-time day job. You do. The mayor does. Mr. Rickey, I think, is retired.

Okay, there you go. Well, either way, so to be clear, I don't think anyone in the city is under the mistaken assumption that we don't also have full-time jobs, children, lives, grandchildren, what have you. Yeah. So, no, I mean, that's not anyone who would criticize you for saying I don't have time to serve on that would not be being fair to you. But I think that someone from the board should do it. I mean, I'm happy to volunteer for the first time. I think that someone on our board should be a part of those meetings. And if you guys don't think they should be the chair of the meeting, again,

As far as the seats, there's actually – so in this dummy resolution, I'll call it that, on this item, there are seven seats established, two-year terms. The first ones would run through 2028, 2029, and 2030 in a staggered fashion so that you wouldn't have a full turnover of the board. I think that's a wise thing to do. a smart thing to do another thing that was included on here was that it would be the vice mayor position and the vice mayor's responsibility to oversee that board i think that that's also something um that that is i think that's the right thing to do um whoever the vice mayor is

be clear i just think uh i think this should not be a five o'clock before a six o'clock meeting workshop it should be a separate day okay we should be i mean we should be prepared to dig in it could take more than an hour to figure all this out it shouldn't take we've just spent about an hour well that's the point if we just spent 30 minutes talking about it we've gotten not very far we may need a couple of hours at least to do this mr rosenthal you've indicated that you'd like to say something

If you would like us to do that. Good notes taken. Good notes taken. I think that we should take the opportunity to do a workshop to take the bones from this conversation Again, to finalize the function of the board, the charge of the board in terms of accountability and overall function, and then the composition of the board. I think that we could do that in an hour, hour and a half. I think that it'll probably run over if we do it at 5 o'clock into a next meeting. And currently, and here's just an addendum to that as well, September 21st, our next meeting, we have a CRA meeting scheduled. pr

I don't know. That's a good question. Does anybody have a day of the week that's preferable to everybody else's?

Mr. Mayor, Mondays and Thursdays are good days for me.

Mondays and Thursdays. I think that we could probably in two weeks have one in two weeks around the same time as our or the following week of our September 21st meeting, because we have two weeks in between there and October 5th. There will be two consecutive Mondays in between those.

Between our next one. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm adding time to the calendar.

Sorry about that. Mayor, I think he said something about a five-member committee. I think you were talking about seven. Seven-member, yeah.

Okay, I'll change that. Thank you. But this would be something that, so these recommendations, and it should be pretty structured for us to have our conversation around based on the bones that he picked up. so that we can hammer these items out in that workshop. Wham, bam.

I was actually, I was thinking that we had two Mondays in between our next meeting and October 5th. I was wrong. We have one. We could use the 28th, which is a Monday, September 28th. Yeah, there's no meeting that night. There's no currently scheduled meeting that night. So we'd only meet for this workshop.

Yeah, we're not. Tentatively the 28th at 530. Happy medium.

So, question, Mayor. Yes, ma'am. The seven members, that's not inclusive of the...

It would include the chair. It would be the vice, in my mind.

It would include. Unless we made him an ex officio. But we can discuss that in that workshop, too.

Because in the voting, in the meeting, is the council going to be a part of that voting?

Well, that's why we say if it's ex officio or not. We do need to hammer that out. I would say yes, but it needs to be a discussion to hammer out. So let's have that discussion tentatively September 28th at 5.30 p.m. Is that okay? Thank you. All right, very good.

Councilwoman Harris. All right. Well, that concludes that item. Our next item shouldn't be as full of discussion. So we're closed out with item number 21. Sorry, folks. Item number 20, we're moving on to item number 21, which is the fire pension board vacancy. Council appointed trustee to serve a two-year term. This was advertised. Ms. Sykes, did we get anybody that responded to these?

So this is, they must be city residents, they must serve a two year term, ideally they would be aggressively experienced with almost cpa level investment capability um i think it was david tell me what his name david uh cfo of first federal was the last had to step out of this this seat um so do we need to advertise it again or what do we need to do thoughts Yes, sir.

Mr. Mayor. If we don't have any applicants, well, quick question. Is the board capable of functioning with the number of people that are currently on it? Like, do they have a quorum? Or do they lack a quorum without this?

Then I would suggest that we advertise it again, but then I would also suggest that maybe the five of us, you know. Do some outreach. Find somebody, find some bodies to apply.

I've reached out to a handful of financial institutions this week to see, just based on this discussion, to see if there was anybody that was interested, local institutions. I mean, I've gotten a couple of tugs on the line, but we'll see how it pans out. All right. Anybody else have any discussion on this item? All right. Well, that's it for item number 21 then. We'll re-advertise it.

Do you want to do it now or do you want to do it as a future discussion item?

I like to say that sister. Councilwoman Harris, when you say transitional, kind of tell me, what is the time when you say transitional?

So this will be a city operation? Operated by a city? No.

Just one little thought. If there's an organization out there that we can give a house to that can put it to good use, I'm fine with the idea of giving it to them. Obviously, the county just gave it to us. Other than that, I would say we knock it down and put it back on the market. So somebody can build something new there. If it's an old dilapidated house full of asbestos, et cetera, et cetera. Well, it definitely seems like it's had some troubles. But the same thing when we talk about a housing authority, I have no interest in the city being anybody's landlords if we can help it. So I don't know that that – and in all fairness, that sounds like it could be what is called a conflict of interest.

We definitely need to be careful with that. Yeah.

Thank you. Mr. Martin, it's your turn. Comments? Departmental comments?

Mr. Jernigan. Again, you know, I just want to thank everybody for working hand and feet with me on my tour of duty here with the City of Lake City. Thank my wife for standing by me all the way through this thing. doing the things that she did. And I just, you know, I love this police department and this fire department. And, you know, I appreciate everything that they have done for the city, Lake City and Columbia County, to be honest with you. So I just want to keep that going. I don't know which one of you guys are going to do it, but uh always recognizing that that uh city and uh uh the cit

um but anyway that's it uh let's have a good good uh let's have a good time okay thank you mr jernigan oh i'm sorry yes vice marianna i've got so tickled i forgot to say there's one more very important thing that um that i really want to get um called out on this diet so we can get it closed out and everything. And that's the CRA residential. And we're gonna have it on the next agenda, hopefully. Okay, there we go.

All right, thank you, Vice Mayor Young. Councilman Carter.

Hello. All right. I've got a couple things. One long thing, one quick thing. Actually, the long thing doesn't necessarily have to be that long. And honestly, some of this is through lack of negligence, I think, on our part, though obviously we have a lot of things going on at any given time. But there is, and I think Mr. Thomason back there can probably agree with me, and Mr. Angelo definitely would if he were here, a pretty significant issue with an important aspect of our government and that being the attendance and function and use of our planning and zoning board. I previously served on th

And to be clear, I agree with you. I think we need to do some training. I don't necessarily think we need to give these folks like a degree in land use. Right. Obviously, this is a community volunteer board. But but honestly, just a little bit of guidance and a little bit of training can go a long way. Most of the stuff, if you know, if you have a general idea of what you're really supposed to be doing there, the LDR will teach you most of it. And hopefully people who serve on this board are opening that up also.

Yes, sir, Mr. President. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Scott.

Appreciate it. So that was my first thing. My second thing, that was the long thing, right? My second thing is just this. I know certain people are going to get tired of hearing it, but I'm just going to stick to it because it's how I feel. The Constitution of the United States does not give you rights. It protects them, and free people do not live in a surveillance state. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Kerner. Up next, we have Councilwoman Harris.

I hear you saying that we would love to do a bit more, so I'm just asking, what needs doing? What is the magistrate doing or not doing? Is there anything that we can do, Mr. Martin, about a magistrate doing or not doing something?

Am I hearing that we have set compliances, but no consequences for noncompliance?

It's a lengthy process. So whenever, like when a house is overgrown or something like that, if code enforcement goes out to it, they document it. They have to bring documentation to the magistrate. The magistrate meets once a month, right? And... may just tell those folks, hey, you need to knock those weeds down or in 30 days you're going to start getting a $50 fine a day. Well, those folks will knock the weeds down that time, but then not do anything about it for the next 100 days and it's grown back up. And by the time code enforcement's gotten back around, it's worse than it was the first t

Okay, so we're looking for something in the in-between.

We're looking for a magistrate. Oh, yeah.

So, because there's something I've been dealing with for, what, a year and a half that's at the magistrate's desk, it's got to be piled at high.

I think that we'd all be in agreement that that would be a good action. Thank you, Mr. Martin. Thank you, Ms. Harris.

It's almost half this little check we get.

but thank you so much thank you so much hey miss uh miss uh billy joe uh i heard you say something about mental health and yeah i heard the uh uh the city manager say something about eap do they have eap for uh for aa for alcohol anonymous because i think some people around here really needs that that the eap covers a lot of different facets it will it will cover um

Okay. My comments are last night a student from LCMS got critically injured playing at Memorial Stadium, so I just want to put my thoughts and prayers out to his family. I hope that he comes through and recovers. I know that he was lifelighted. So put your thoughts and prayers out to him. 9-11 is tomorrow. It's the 25th anniversary of probably one of the most pivotal moments in American history, if not the single most pivotal moment in American history since December 7, 1942. We... we've traveled a long distance in time uh since those planes hit the towers uh we as americans have um you know t