City Commission Meetings - Regular Meeting

I tend to lean towards one, however. The he is the only pronoun in the current charter. So we have to update things like that. And I'm afraid that that's an easy win. And I'm afraid if you dump it all together and somebody doesn't like one piece and we vote no on that, then we lose the easy wins. And that's why I'm kind of drawn towards three. But Josh pointed out something that is my major concern is no matter what, we're always going to be last on the ballot because we're going to be in a national election or a state election and or both. And two, in this particular case, Most of the people

We've never had a holiday. Yeah, we really haven't done it. We don't allow it. But here's my problem. We're turning it on and making it very expensive and very intense. And it's like we're treating it so different and putting a lot of rules on it. And to me, that's the wrong intent. And I expressed this yesterday with staff. So to Bill's point, if the holiday is on a Friday, the way that it's written, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday are all into that time. But if you're having an event on any other time, it's that one day. So I think it ought to be one day. We're

Bill's paying $60,000 a year for COPS for the farmer's market. That's a lot of money. They do a great job. They do a wonderful job. But $60,000 a year for the same spot on Harrison Avenue every Saturday, that's a lot of money. I think we can do better than that.

So what about the other $80 an hour? Where's that going?

but nobody ever says to me, that $6.75 fee is expensive. And they say, my God, is that it's so expensive, I can't even do no, I can't get a permit because it's too expensive because of the police.

I would, Chief can provide us a, here's a list of people that are off duty. Let me hire them straight up. Why do I have to use ODM is my question. There's something about that that's driving the price up. Yes, sir.

Here's what that said to me yesterday. It's a great idea, but it's set up as usual for Panama City to make money. That's how it's read. That's how it's perceived when it's read on the document, and it's about Panama City making money. And that's a problem for me.

That may be a proper way to say it, but when it's read by three different people and they all have the same feeling... That seems to be a theme these days.

But volunteer to be paid. If you tell him to come in, that's one thing. If Robbie Hughes asks him to come in, that's another.

And because of that, this maximum pay that we're requiring?

It says three days after on Thanksgiving.

The number one problem with our document and with our permit, we're talking about. We just happen to be doing it over one specific item because that's what brought it to light. This is the first reading. Exactly. While we're on the first reading, if I may, Brandon sent over to us some comments. July the 4th, for example, they have their events has July the 4th on Beach Drive. When this document says you can only have one event, per um holiday well let's say that janice and i sneak in and throw in a july 4th uh permit and we beat cove events that's to me that's not fair because they've been doi

And I think it's wonderful. There were three things happening on Harrison Avenue at one time downtown a couple weeks ago. That's great. But when you have in writing that it can happen where it cannot happen, that's the scary part for the public. On a case-by-case basis or approved by the commission or something to those words, now you've got somebody that says, wait a minute, what happens if we've got a different commission than a Wolfpack? Right now we all think it's a good idea.

We didn't know what the numbers were at the time.

Totally. So we want to create... What does that look like, a food truck inspection? What are we looking for?

How long do you do on camera? Because I bet we can get a video of you talking about inviting the food truck people to come see you at that station. But let's put you on video. Christian, can you do that? Yeah. Yeah, that's fine.

Do you have any feedback? What do you want to say? We have to go through two readings because I bet we can get three votes up here for GC1 on both of them and move that forward.

But the planning board doesn't count as a public hearing and this be a public hearing? I know, but could this be the second public hearing? My question is, can we use this as a second public hearing and vote on it? Or do we have to notice that it's going from GC2 to GC1? And because it's down zoning, that's not a material change upward. So it should not hurt the public.

I was trying to get you home. I have to come back here.

Any discussion? Yes. With all due respect, the public has had an opportunity, right? They've had a letter, they've had a sign, they've had a planning board meeting, and now they've had this first reading. I would respectfully disagree with the commissioner that we need to give them more time. Is anybody here that lives in this neighborhood right now? Again, and that's not a slam on the public. The public has to participate. And we're giving them that chance. You know what you're supposed to do. You're downgrading and making it better in zoning, not upgrading. So you're, in my opinion, If I cou

We can approve in two weeks, but we're going to make it be four is what we're doing. We can do it in two. We're going to make it be four.

If there's an interest meter ticket, charge them, not me.

No, it was a one-car funeral. You gave me too much credit on the two-car funeral.

I think what I really liked about his presentation, plus the air for it and how he has that process, I think I would be very much interested in hiring him for that. Hiring somebody for yet another process to follow when we can't even follow the ones that we try to put in is hard for me to get on board with.

We're going to talk about that again today here on the smart thing. Exactly. I get to have some fun with the mayor. I'm not with tonight, so.

You could have a final title suit from here until the end of time on most of that stuff. And the problem is, the time, it's the cost that goes along with it. Because it's a lawsuit in Florida and its state. And so it takes time.

Well, because they're private properties. So the city doesn't have the title problems. The owners of the problems. But we're going to pay to help clear those title issues. No, no. They're going to do that.

Because they start cutting the things that we disagreed with. Out of the box, it was a bloodbath. We were going to lose people, we were going to lose services. So what Josh is saying is... know that you've got to cut. Revenue should not be in the conversation. Expenses should lead the conversation. That's kind of where I'm at. And let's just cut that. Never mind what we're bringing in. We don't know it. So if we know we've got a $4.5 million problem, let's go find that. And that then sets us up for, all right, we've cut it. Y'all cut it out.

Statutorily, I've got to have insurance. That doesn't mean I've got to have double. That's my concern if we have too much.

That's a good question. I would say that for me, coming to the commission, we talk about getting surprised. And what I've learned is we create a budget and there's money in that department and they can move that money as they choose, but it's not what they budgeted for when we were talking about budgeting. And so I think for a more line item budget, which is very possible, we can put it in line items and vote it that way and it's not moving unless they bring it to us. But they bring us budget resolutions that are spending inside the departments that's what josh is talking about except we know

How about we focus on expenses and have them come back and say, y'all go across your, whatever that is, easily across each department, four and a half million, let's say it's 10%, come back and give us 10%. And start with the fluff and then go to hard. We did that exercise. But they haven't done it. That's why we're having this conversation.

And so $1.5 million is not a lot of money out of $153 million. It's 3% of the overall budget.

If they're at 2.4 and that's 4.5, how about 3.5? There's got to be a number to reach towards Knoxville. Yes.

But I'm not even, I think we're so far from that, it's not even funny.

But what y'all brought us so far, I can't get behind because what's been presented to us, presentations are great. It's the numbers. Those numbers are not going to add up to a budget that we're going to agree with.

How much do you think it's going to be right now, just off the top of your head? How much is what? The budget.

You just answered a problem that the city had.

people who want to pick a ball or yeah i would encourage you look at the hours when it's you all of that can happen with us running it my fear is this is a community center and you put somebody else in there running it and believe me i'm not about panama city running things y'all know that okay but this is an opportunity where they're doing a good job and You take community out when you put some money in.

So I was at a meeting last night at Cherry Street talking about road closures. And I said, we need feedback. But because this is a new thing, there's going to be some things that go wrong or things that we need tweaking. And we need feedback. Positive feedback is good, too. We also accept that. I think the feedback that I'm getting is the kids are loving it. We've got a full staff. We're trying to figure out how to operate something that a commission voted to that had no money behind it to operate it. And we're going to have to dig ourselves out of that hole. And to me, partnering with somebod

But that can also be looked at the same way from your presentation on Boys and Girls Club. It has been said, to me, it feels like you're pushing Boys and Girls Club over others.

I'll have a second. Why is staff not taking position on it?

I'd like there to be some consistency on staff giving us direction or not.

And the fairness of getting rid of them.

But here's my problem. I've got a man sitting in the audience right now that sent us an unsolicited offer on two pieces. Nobody ever answered him. He's been building in that neighborhood just like Schwartz. And this is the unfair part about it because without a plan, you're picking winners and losers. And with a plan, we wouldn't be having this conversation. It would already be taken care of. I 100% support the idea. I do have to rib the mayor a little bit for a minute just because it's a process that he's trying to create. It's a process that I can't seem to get across the finish line. And I

I stole this idea from you, by the way. I picked 12 lots. Top six, bottom six. We don't put out an RFP, Builder Participation Package. We got these 12 lots. You write us an offer on, you can buy two of them. You have to be a builder. These are the lots. If you pick one, you can only get number six. If you pick two, you can only get number seven. The top six are the cherries. The bottom six are the cherries with the snake. So you don't get to buy all of the best lots. So there's 12 lots, and that's six builders. They tell us what they're going to do. They can go through. I've got three options.

Well, this is housing, but CRA, you're working through housing too, okay? You can do the same thing.

But I think we need to connect the dots from the man in the audience of why they get to buy tonight and we didn't even respond to him.

But it was sent to us and nothing happened with it.

No, because we can't get that. Well, yes.

So my world is a land disposition world. When I sell a house, 13 people go to work. Every one of those 13 people have to help follow the same process in order for that disposition to happen at closing.

So while, and you're right, two things. One, the proposal that Sheila originally brought us was very rigid, very, and we all agree, we need to unwind that. So I've been working on unwinding that. You guys said the other day at the meeting, I said, I brought you three ideas, and Alan said, but you haven't brought us a plan, you brought us ideas. And you're right, it's been about commercial and large and residential. This is residential. This is housing trust that I want to implement. And that's using NSV. You're really not going to like this idea, but I got it.

On this one, we can start now with $2 million and put it in play under this idea.

You start today. Well, the results are going to be over the next however many years it takes to sell those houses. But it funds, because you said sustainability, You're in 2 o'clock in the morning. I've got Josh on my mind because I'm thinking about sitting here in sustainability. That is not what I wanted, 2 o'clock in the morning. And I'm sitting there dreaming. And so my point is, this has what I think what you asked for. This is residential only, but it's 12 lots out of the many. And so it starts with a small number. It gives us an opportunity to see how that works. And right now it leaves

approve the sale and release of this this here and then um and then bring forward these items next meeting for discussion and hopefully some action for for equal fairness could can we wait on the approval today so that we everybody gets to vote on the next next meeting where they had to wait we went this guy can wait one more week or one more meeting is that cool

Just come back next week. He's got results. You probably will.

It's north of that. Cone is also on the other side of Massalina. Yeah. On Harmon. I mean, Cone and 2nd.

So their intent really is to leave the back open but close and ask for... from the south, from the north, close that up and keep access to the back of all the businesses that are on that side. So they still keep access.

A little history on the property. The city bought it to be a federal courthouse or tried to woo the federal courthouse there. What they didn't know at the time is that federal courthouses will not go in flood zones, no matter how high you offer to build it up. And so there you have a piece of property that's 60% in the flood zone. I will tell you that in my world, I did some homework, and I respect Don Giles tremendously, but respectfully disagree with his number here from 25. I wouldn't pay a million dollars for it, and I wouldn't ask you to pay a million dollars for it. So that does not mean

My experience is when you put into contracts time-specific completion dates, right now we're having trouble On the Martin Theater, somebody that's looking at it to manage it, we can't give them a date for completion. So it's hard for them to come in and say, how am I going to program and be ready for you? Here's one of those that, what if a pandemic happens again and it's on month 20 and we've got to be 36 months in, they've got to be done. So we have to have some caveat in there that there would be an agreement outside of this contract that says if it's within there that acts of God, things o

So the unfortunate part about an unsolicited offer and then turning it into an RFP, everybody knows what they got to be. And that's why I'm opposed to bringing unsolicited offers to the commission in an open forum like this without us even deciding. We wouldn't even have a conversation about selling it. But with that in mind, just like there needs to be some preference given to the people that are building in a neighborhood right now before the city starts giving deals, I think there needs to be some preference in those guys. Nobody in my lifetime has made an offer on this site. There needs to

No, I'm saying when it went away, once it went down, nobody's made an offer to bring it back.

The numbers work. The numbers are harder to make work. as you go up in price because of what it's going to cost for site work and for just foundation work to build. You're going to have to be elevated. You're going to have to bring in dirt. You're going to have a lot of money just in site work. So to your point, if you put in an RFE, here are the things that you're going to bid on. Never mind the price. You're going to tell us the price. But this person's doing all this. You've got to do all this. And when are you going to pay for it? I promise you, to make money, it's not going to be that muc

I like that idea. All right, how about this? How about let's, by next meeting, I'd like for the same terms, if somebody feels like they want to make an offer to us based on what these guys have offered, okay? Let's be an apples to apples. Feel free to make us an offer, but it's got to be higher than $350,000. Because if it's 250, we're not doing that. We're having this conversation about money. But don't give me a $500,000 deal and tell me to build three houses. Because it's not the same. We've got to be exactly the same.

All right. Two weeks. Come back at the next meeting if they're here. If somebody really wants to do it and they're paying attention, they don't need six months. They can do it in ten days. We can have us an offer. We can have it tomorrow. But I say by the time we come back, if there's anything here, it's something we can discuss. And we need to make a plan to either move on this one or discuss about this compared to others.

The big piece was purchased first, and then the lots were purchased second. Let me change my motion. I'd like a motion that we... Staff, let the public know that we're considering disposing of this site from an unsolicited offer. And over the next two weeks, if you'd like to make an offer on this site for anything you want to do, bring it to us. But it's got to be in time, in city manager's hands by Monday. What, Jonathan? July 20th. That's not two weeks. Yeah, that's one week. No, that's two weeks and we're going to talk about it. So it'll be on the next commission meeting is when I'd like for that to meet. So they have until July 20th to get it to us.

And this one right here, I'd like for it to come back with us so we can compare anything that comes to us. I'd like for that to come back as well.

Well, I was, but Nevin's idea, I think, is better. Don't encourage him, please. If we truly are considering getting rid of something, they brought that to us. Let's see what somebody else has. I bet you this is probably the best idea. But let's give somebody that opportunity. I like that.

They've committed. Well, yes. But right now we're not negotiating this deal right now. Okay. That's the thing, right? We're not negotiating this deal.

The motion is to keep this on the table, and in two weeks, in between now and two weeks, anybody that would like to make an offer on that site for anything that they're thinking about, have that to us so that we can consider it against this.

That is so easy. If somebody wants to write an offer on a house today, come see me. I'll write it today. I do not need 10 days to do that.

You keep forgetting. Somebody's bringing it. The private person's bringing it, not the government. So we have a motion on the table to have a second.

This is a public meeting. We're giving them the opportunity. The more time you give somebody, the longer they take to get it to you. If I give you two weeks, you got until day 14. Why don't I give you 10 days, and I'm going to save myself four.

Or you can also lose the people that are initiating the conversation. Well, I hope that's not what happens.

Again, all I have to work off of is how the one experience I went through, it showed up on the agenda. The then city manager, along with the current city attorney, told me they didn't want to know anything about it. They didn't tell the commission anything about it. And they said to the public, you have two weeks. If you want to make an offer on this lot, then we've got an unsolicited offer on it. Bring it to us. So that's happened before? My experience, and then I got run through the mud for five years by somebody on social media over that lot. And that's exactly how it was done, except it wa

So that's going to be at the first meeting in August. Correct. Is that right?

Just know that everybody on there, y'all don't have access. Okay. I got a motion and a second.

I second it. Any discussion related to that, those motions? It's a motion to make sure they have access. I'll second that.

Peter, I had had some conversations with these guys about getting with y'all about how that lays out. So anybody else that comes up, we'll do the same.

I'm trying to. And then she stopped. You're fine.