City Commission Meetings - Regular Meeting

This is a reading. Are we voting? Yes, this is final. Yes.

The idea of one sounds good, but there are a lot of easy yeses in there. And I'm concerned that if somebody doesn't like one of the issues and they don't know, we don't get the easy yeses. And that directs me back to the three questions. And not that you're trying to set that up, but you're setting up that if the easy ones pass, we can change. If the hard ones don't, and I say easy, adding the pronoun she, because he was the only one that was in there. I mean, that's an easy one. Updating the rules and regs to go with today's environment. Those are easy yeses. But we want to change when we hav

I'll second that for a question. If we go with that, does that mean the way that the questions are written today, that's what we're approving? Yes.

And remember, what's going to suck up on the air is the property tax, though. So we have to make sure that we're in different areas all over the place bringing the information because they've got more money than we need to put all that information out there.

Yes, sir. Thank you. I have some concerns that we've asked staff, I feel like given pretty clear direction, to go back and make some modifications. And what we got back, there's some major changes that we never talked about. And it took that long to read all the changes. really what we're talking about is we want to make it easy for people to get a permit. And I believe that the current version is exactly the opposite. And so what I'd like to do is we had some success with our charter review and our parks committee is what if we gave it we had an appointment put that back with 60 days we come

I feel like we write these trying to protect the city against problems. And that creates a lot of angst out there of trying to come in and work with us. There's going to be a problem. I don't know what it is, but we can't think of them all. But let's not put it in the program up front. So that would be my thought. And this is not about staff did something wrong. This is about there's a lot of people input. And what we found out is if we take us out of the deal, it just seems to gel a little bit more and have a better discussion.

Could we vote on that separate, Nevin, and say we went on that particular case because if this isn't in place, they shouldn't be penalized for the ask that they made, in my opinion.

Okay, but this is, we're not changing the charter. This is all the information.

So I'll second that so I can ask this question. So let's say that we did create a committee. If we adopt this ordinance, all those things are in place. Can that change in the ordinance in that committee?

But, Josh, you're saying that the handbook that it references is the existing one, not the one we're talking about? That's correct.

When you say the fees can change, because the fees in the existing handbook are more expensive than the one in this one.

My thought would be people on the committee that actually are outside of City Hall, invent planners, having some staff input as well. But let's let the public tell us what works best and can we find a common ground. They've told us what works. What's the public need? And that way we make an appointment and they're off and running and they meet and come back and it takes all of us out of the needle. I agree. I like taking us out of the needle.

I mean, I already have my nomination. We can go have a nomination right now. That's a mean turkey trot. So do we have a motion? You want to put a motion?

For clarity, the mines are attached as a lien, so you're going to know about it when you buy the house. The money is a direct cost out of the city to improve that site. It might be unsafe structure. It might be there's a rule that's being broken, and that person has not paid it.

So thank you for what y'all do. And the reason the bar is set high is that man sitting back there makes sure it happens and it rises. It makes sure that the guys he hires, they're trained well, they're working hard. People were in a little fender bender last night, and this was not in the city, it was in the county. The fire department showed up first. There were six firemen slash paramedics and one cop. And so they get there, they get there quick, and they triage what needs to happen. And so thank you for your work.

Thank you. If I may. I'd like to address what somebody said. Oh, Ms. Williams, Ms. Lewis-Williams. With respect to unsolicited offers, there has been a document drafted about the process of taking one in and how to work through it. That was last year, I believe. We continued to work through trying to, different presentations, trying to drill down to how to get to what we thought might work. The document that, and so what that's done is bring us to today, and the document that I'm about to talk about, I'm going to offer up 12 lots, city lots, put them out there. I've got a plan for that. Everyb

And what I'm going to ask is, I asked Sheila to give me 12 lots. Now I left one off, I'm sorry folks. It's good that I can tighten this and put it together. And so what I'd like to do is put it out, 12 lots, and have three different ways to buy it, give me the options, but only builders can buy it. Because you have to build on it. We're not buying and sitting. Yes, it's a goal to get on the tax roll, But the bigger goal is to put a family in a home. So the three ways that I have it is you can buy it direct, you can buy it market rate, finance the money, we move on. You can go build what you wa

Self-sustain. And so that's part of my thinking. There's some requirements in here on the builder. You're going to get your own loan. You're going to build the house. You're going to start within a year. And that runs across all three opportunities. Buyer requirements, you've got to get qualified. I've talked to lenders. They come in, we get the lenders involved. If you're going to go through SHIP, and SHIP would go through the housing department. Now, if you're buying in a CRA, I've put a limit in here that in getting a discount, or we put a lot in the deal, you can't go get a CRA permit, dem

But it keeps you from buying all the cherries. You buy one, and then you buy another cherry. And that way everybody's treated fairly. as we're not stuck in trouble now. And so that's just an idea.

So with the Harmon and Six property, we put it out there with inviting people to make an offer with no qualification. On this, we put it out with here are the 12 lots. Here's the location. Here's your legal description. Builders can purchase. If you pick lot one, you've got to pick lot six. You get two. That way we get six different people building. We're trying to let that work. There may be more than one event, but then that's great. We will take who's bidding on lot one and lot six and getting the best one. Not necessarily low bid, just best deal, okay?

Price and terms. So I don't know what terms are right now. I'm going to create some terms, but they're going to tell me, if they get a discount, they're going to tell me, us, what they need the discount for. What is that doing, okay?

So what did y'all do when you put Harmon and Six out there?

A notice of disposition. Here are the lots. They're out there for 30 days. Here's how you proceed. You put the contracts that they can use, make it land, because that's what they are. They use that. Or you have to come and meet somebody, write the offer, I don't know. And builders, and you can pick two and show them what the matrix is, and they have to qualify. Meaning the builder has to show that they can do, to Alan's point, that they can get the money, that they're licensed, and that's in the program.

And tune them. to your question earlier about unsolicited. What this does is it doesn't require us to send it back out for other people to make that an opportunity to make a proposal. It's there for everybody.

If this works, I got another 10 ready to go.

And by giving them the option, we're testing the market. So I have a question, Janice. Remember I told you all that my informal survey of Glenwood, there's more new construction happening in that block than I gave than anywhere else in any other Panama City neighborhood. That's the attraction for me in picking these because you're piggybacking on something that's already successful. Glenwood is selling more new construction homes than Kings Point, than Forest Park, than anywhere. And they're doing it

Okay. If it's... Well, it says in here, if you go market rate, there's no criteria. You build what you want to. That's what these guys have been doing already. If you go get some help, there's some that's going to come back to us money-wise to the city. But are you asking criteria of what they can build?

Okay, I'll give you an example. If I'm buying your house, or if I'm listing your house and I got two offers, one's full price cash, closing 75 days. It's about what, your question. The other is $10,000 off and closing 15 days. Which one's a better deal? Sure. It depends on your motivation, but most people are going to pull the one that comes sooner.

Okay, but that deal is not... That's about... what's presented to us. So today, I can't set criteria on what somebody's gonna, I'm trying to give, get us out of the way, is what I'm trying to do, is get the city out of the way, and let the public tell us how they intend to use it. We do not have to take any offers. That's the other part about this, is I think that giving them that option, that's what I've been hearing from people is, city, stop putting all these rules and regs in there, let us tell you. We work together.

I have another question. Right now. Go ahead.

I don't, well, this is a specific test of a path of how how we might be able to work with this. SPART is designed, I think, based on what I read, has some rules in it that are helping inside a CRA only. And this may help SPART modify or this may modify. The answer to your question is I don't know if it helps or it hurts, but I have a question. There's four people, five people building right now in low to moderate Glenwood. All I'm doing is giving more options in this plan from a city perspective rather than having to buy a lot here, a lot there. They get to go pick them. They know where they a

No, sir. Why not? Only two. Because I don't want you, the builder, to be able to come in, and to Janice's point, you're not going to change the landscape and what it looks like. How do you see it?

You can pick one and six and you can pick five and six and twelve. I like it. I'm just trying to work through it. Five and ten, from there, you're only going to be able to have one of those deals. There's nothing guaranteeing me I'm going to get those.

Or we can put it as an RFP. It's going to be the same thing. Or you can make an unsolicited offer, and we have to send it out for everybody to do it. This way it allows everybody at one time to have the same opportunity.

If you haven't owned a house in three years, you're considered a first-time home buyer. There are amazing programs for financing with 5A credit scores. I did my research to figure out that Those that have the lower credit score can still get in. Everybody has to qualify whether you rent or you own. What the city has the ability to do on what we focused on was the affordability and owning the dirt when you put it in there, that hasn't seemed to catch traction. But guess what, they're building houses at market rate over there and they're selling right now. To me, there are more than, there are e

No we're not. This is negative change. That's what we've been through.

I'd rather leave them all there because I want to see what the market says to us. I understood that.

It is. If you're the builder, bring us an offer that says, I want you to give the dirt to me, that means that buyer's probably going to come through ship because it's going to require that you follow that qualification. The reason that those are slow is because there's a lot of government bureaucracy you've got to go through. That's wanting to make this. It takes that out. It moves it.

Here's a good idea. His has rules, more requirements than mine. Let's put them both out there in the same way. Not that we're trying to compete. How does the market react to me? We always come up with an idea, and then we just load it up with all these requirements, and then it's too hard.

But you got white and human building in Glenwood right now.

Everybody in this room will have an opportunity to buy some of these lots. That is not cronyism.

Yeah, ma'am. Yeah. If we put a value on there of $25,000 and somebody goes in and does a discount, we get 20% of that value. If the money was actually spent out of housing, like, say, for example, the 805 East Avenue that we were talking about, that came through Florida Housing Corporation. That has to go back through housing to Florida Housing Corporation or be used in that. These lots... I thought you said all of these were housing. They all go to housing, but not the price and the lot.

Right. What this is doing is it's also, I've got another idea.

And let's say the amount of money coming back equals the 20% on one of my examples. That can be the money that we get. We don't get that money and then 20%. We can recoup our money that we have in it And if it equals 20% or greater, under my example of what the city gets back at closing, That could mean that 20%.

I mean, that's going to save builders. Right, but we get those all the time. Let's see what comes in first to see how we move through stuff.

And it has to be a primary resident. Yes. We're not selling to investors. That's how you build the neighborhood, is you put primary resident people in homes

This has been available for them. Since Friday. So has all the other stuff that we voted on. But my concern is what is it that we need to put together? Is it the criteria that I'm confused. And I want to help. I want to do that. I'm just trying to figure out what it is.

This process, it goes out and does. We already did. and here's what we're offering, here are the rules, here's what we need to follow, and here's the contract you're gonna use. Submit it by X. It's that simple.

This isn't about just for the builders and panelists that are connected to the housing. This is for anybody that's a builder licensed in Florida. But the idea would be nice, and then it's local. Do we want to set up that you get a preference? I don't want a scoring thing. Is there preference given to people that are doing it now?

And what I intentionally did was leave out all of the rules that I just talked about on the special permit. I sent them something on the adopt-a-part. There's all these rules, and it gets bogged down in, I've got to follow this, this, and this. All the rules of contract law are already in place. All I'm asking somebody to do, and they solicit an offer, Pick two lots, send us an offer. No different than what we're going to talk about. All these unsolicited offers, they're doing the same thing except we've chosen the lots for them and said they could buy two only. And you've got to be a builder.

You're going to have six builders. If you knock it down to three, you're going to have three builders. So I'm trying to give the broadest scope of let's give three different ways to buy. You can't get all the cherries. You get one equals six. That way everybody knows they can go drive around and look at them. And you know that you're buying this lot and this lot.

Yes, ma'am. Now, if y'all want to reshuffle that, but changing the plan from one to one and one, that's a bad idea. Because everybody is being treated the same.

Can I help write that? Yes. That'd be great. All I want is for the public to know, here's what we have, here's what we're offering, if you want to buy, here it is, that simple. Yeah. And Janice, I understand that you want the criteria, but it's the criteria that keeps people from participating. It's all these rules, and builders know how to build. All they want to do is get access to the lot, and then they're going to go to work. That's my only goal. I don't want to sell to investors. I don't want to sell to renters. All I want are nice homes that help the neighborhood, that have primary resid

It does. There's two options in there. The third one is all about affordability.

We have a motion and a second. What it does is it tests the market. We do not have to take any offers. If I take that out, now it's all about low to moderate income, and that may not be what sells. But it may be everything. But we don't have to take that. We don't. We don't. And I'm trying to section the market out and say, what's working best without us telling them what they have to do? And us telling the public what they have to do is just kind of a standard, and it just doesn't work that well. I'd rather get information from them that says, hey, guys, you're thinking right, or hey, man, po

You've got to close it a certain amount of time.

How much money are we talking about? How much money are we talking about, the interest savings that we're talking about?

But you're also still going to have a payment.

So we're going to cover that. So we're talking about a dip on top of what we were paying. That's the difference we're talking about.

I thought that was revenue. No, that's expenses.

So what would the reserve get each month under that item?

There's that plus the, you said the environmental fund.

It can cut expenses and have more revenue. We don't have to spend every dollar a day. Understood.

Well, to Josh's point, we're actually doing something good and paying down some debt. We're saving something. And we're turning around and spending that money when we can save it. There's a way to do that. We either talk about it now or at the budget meeting. But I tend to... to ride with you on this where let's talk about where that money is going to go now. So it's like a dead snowball. Because I'm not saying. That's what he's describing.

Over 12 months, how much money are we talking about spending that savings is? You said it's 1.2 total and 2 million over there. What's that interest number? that y'all are putting back into the budget? If it's $1,000, you're saving $500, you're putting $500 back in.

So let's divide that out, divided by two, 50 in the reserve and 50% in the general fund? Is that what you're saying?

Would you, if they came with that and it used, Some, but not all of it savings.

And Brian, I love your idea of having a requirement to save. I think that's great. It's the percentage that might, We're going to have to set on a certain number. I think all I've heard around here is like 16 or 13. And 13% of what? And in this particular case, are we only talking about what the interest savings are or a number overall of savings that we've got to have in there? I'm lost on where's that money coming from, the interest savings, or just in general we've got to have 20% in reserve? I'm saying in general.

They put in the budget before it closed last year in the $2.8 million sale, and I kind of lost my mind on that. because you're counting it before it's there. The same is applicable here, is using that. I do agree that that's something that ought to, that should come after whatever transaction, if that was going to happen. But we shouldn't have to sell something or do something in order each year to move forward. That's the planning is what we need to do better.

It is. But remember, there's CRA, there's housing, and there's Panama City. Anything that's Panama City, it can go straight into the reserve. CRA has its own set of rules.

Sixth and Harmon, whatever it sells for, goes straight into the reserves.

I'd like to take this interest savings that we're talking about and let's put that in a box outside of the budget right now, and let's take that out of filling in this box of income. And we'll see what the budget looks like. Brady said I had to make some more cuts. That's fine. And then we can backfill if we need to. Why do we want to use all of that to make it work when we can see what, from the staff's perspective, how they're seeing what it does?

budget discussion is going to, we'll find a home for it.

Those two, September, what happens in those? When do we hear, see the staff's total budget?

Like in the next? Well, it was going to be the next two weeks until we just . Yeah, they got it revised.

So we move those forward, get background checks, references, and then is somebody making a recommendation to us, or do we have that open discussion? I've never been to this.

Same meeting, but just one outside, I guess, is what Brian was saying.

So ground leasing. When you ground lease, we can get property taxes. for like up to a year trying to figure out what you're going to do. Any objection to having property taxes be a thing? If we're leasing it for a year?

You brought up a good point. The only way to get a mortgage on these properties is 99 years. And I don't know if that's a plan, if But that's the only way you'd have to be able to do that. But I don't think that's what Alan's proposal is. It's upfront. It's kind of investigate and then move into something long term. Is that correct?

I do have one more question. In earlier proposal, we talked about not being able to get a benefit from a in the lot proposal and also into the demo plan of CRA. I just think that if you're going to get it, you should be able to get one break, not two. And these are in CRAs. Is that something that is built in or not? I don't know. They need that help.

Replanting MLK. We own the majority of the dirt. How hard is it to re-flat? The vacant dirt. The vacant dirt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the vacant dirt and improved, and everybody has to agree, right?

Okay. And there really are, I mean, there's some lots in MLK that you've got to move on to the next lot to change your mind. It's so small. So what I'm thinking is the owner of that lot, they didn't do that to themselves. And we have the ability to maybe give some dirt that way, different, and you change the lines and make that lot buildable and usable. That's a way to automatically change things. But we have to remember something.

Or we can consider that this is on here because we never responded to him. No, we didn't. His original one, we didn't. And the reason this is because there was one at the last meeting that was going to run through, and I thought it was fair that he have a shot at this. Now, if we want to consider... undoing that or and and treating this as an unsolicited offer i'd be open to that discussion but i at least want to acknowledge that it's here because he submitted an unsolicited offer and was not it was not acknowledged by us and that's and that's why i wanted it on here yeah what you'll see is th

I think that both of the ideas, the 12 lot and the spark, that's going to give us some direction on how to process, which Tom Jansen, we might get it. and we'll have that plan. I think we need to experience that.

Why? It's in the CRAs. It's not a CRA parcel, though.

General. It was? General fund. Only share?

I was about to ask the same thing. Do we have to vote on this at a CRA meeting, or can we do it here?

So there was a letter that we received from the Florida housing corporation that identified five lots that came through the ship and HHRP, um, in the 2020 and 2021 buying of dirt, uh, talking to the housing. Corporation the city had three years to develop it or to sell it and they have not and so we in the letter it identifies one of these and I bring this to your attention because of general reserve funds and The total is one point two nine nine million dollars that we know Voter housing corporation now these five lots or we can sell them. Okay 309 L 805 Northeast Avenue, 1321 Gulf, 1120 MLK,

Staff has that letter. We might have that letter. No, sir. And so this money, this letter is specific about where it goes, who it's paid back to. So the agenda item is wrong because it goes back to the reserve, but it shouldn't say that. So my question to Jonathan is, why don't we have the letter?

Jonathan, the letter that you received from the Florida Housing Corporation through Sheila.

Yeah, because Jared Whitten got it for me out of his office. It's a letter from the Florida Housing Corporation that I asked for. And it specifically says what we have to do with these properties. And that has not been considered in this agenda item because we don't have it. And I'm very concerned about that. Yeah. So .

And all I'm saying is this money needs to go back to housing for this letter and not to general fund.

What if we got a, if Mrs. Franklin's husband told us what it would cost, and we could, to your point, credits, and because they're paying cash, you can do that in a credit. It's a great idea. And you can do that. It just shows on the closing statement. Those could be listed. Can I say something? Yes, sir, please. Oh, yes, sir, come on forward. I didn't know you were here. Good evening. Good evening. And it is indeed.

Just to grind. As a clarification question, they made an unsolicited offer. It didn't really go anywhere. We brought it back. We know that we have to sell this. We're now under the gun on that. It's the only piece of property that I've been able to look at of these five that we're going to get back what we paid for. Thank you for that, sir. I would recommend that we sell it because we've approved other things tonight on a solicitive basis, and they have a plan for it.

Two years after we bought it, there was a quick claim deed taking that piece out. uh apparently we're supposed to buy three acres and we bought five and um it was it was a scrivener's error i'm told uh and and you know legal strip your legal strip says what you buy and so i think that was what i was understanding yes ma'am she will wear housing community services

Yep. It does. I mean, I drove all over the lot. Yeah, it does. Any other discussion? Please call the roll.

That's not against y'all. That's against the RFP, by the way. Motion to adjourn.