Charter Review Committee - Regular Meeting

e system these are directional mics you have to talk right into it and you'll be able to tell when you're talking into it so we'll start again I'm Elise Huey interm Town manager and town clerk I am Stephanie v Town attorney Wade Vos with the town attorney's office Kevin Cox Sal marula Kirk guys yo matley Andrea Honeycut Chris Holly with the Florida League of cities Tom harmer with the Florida City County Management Association so I guess that is your call to order in your introductions um so we can go right into the presentation today um well thank you Elise all right so first of all who am I why am I here as I said my name is Chris Holly I'm the director of member services and

training for the Florida League of cities and I have been with the league for seven years uh prior to that I worked for leyon County for 10 in the Office of Management and budget tour development um County Administration I actually had the opportunity when I was a young intern to serve as staff on our Charter review for leyon County when I was there which my father ironically enough served on um but I've just seen this uh for a while and I really appreciate the work that you all have been selected to do um we can talk about who the league is and who um represents cities Statewide so the Florida League of cities has been around for a 100 years we are the association for all of the cities in the state of Florida so if you weren't aware there are 411 and not just your obviously Orlando's Jacksonville's Miami but we are predominantly made up of medium to small cities of Oakland so we have offices in Tallahassee and in Orlando about a 100 staff in Tallahassee and the same in Orlando and the mission of the league is to advocate for local decision- making which is exactly what you are tasked here to do is to make sure that your city can still act responsibly and respond to the needs of the community and so we battle against the state legislature to do that every single year um I think last year um you may even know there were 500 or so bills that were filed that impacted cities in in one shape or another um not all great um they they try to streamline or limit the powers of the cities have to decide you know I think the state believes that they might be able to do things better or that for business purposes maybe one size works but I can tell you if you were to adopt a law for the City of Miami it would

impact them very differently than it would the town of Oakland so we that's our main goal uh now why are you here uh you have been selected obviously to serve on this Charter Review Committee uh it's a very important uh position and here you can see the language of what you have been tasked to do so every 10 years uh the commission your commission your town of Oakland commission shall appoint and fund a charter committee your committee consists of five individuals and each commission member shall make one appointment now you are on time if the committee you have to understand determines that an amendment or revision is needed in your Charter you are required to submit them to the same commission no later than October 1st of the year following its appointment would be this year um alternative proposals may be submitted uh but and you can talk about this language I believe later the commission will then submit suggest amendments and revisions for the qualified electors of your community and that I believe will take place in March of 26 so as you're going through this exercise know that you have time parameters in place and staff and your Council will make sure that you abide by those to get your work done so now let's talk about charters in Florida so really what my goal here this afternoon is to give you kind of the municipal perspective across the state you should know that there is there is no same Charter there are no two charters that are the same however there's language that you can borrow from other Charters if you see that there's an end goal that you're looking to accomplish um that's why the league is here um in in this presentation we'll go through maybe some potential cities

that you may want to consider comparing yourself with um but there are so many unique um parameters for for cities when it relates to like the services they provide the size of their City number of uh citizens that reside in it so those are just important considerations to keep in mind what is your Charter if you weren't familiar it is your city's Constitution and so when you're considering the language that is within it um it explains the vision and the miss the mission and the structure um it also goes into your legislative body and how those Representatives will be elected and the chain of command so not only the legislative body but your administrative body with your city manager town clerk um all of that is important now if you get into more detail of the operations or changes those are typically handled in ordinance and so not necessarily in a charter a good Charter a a charter that works effectively is something that is typically 8 to 10 pages now I know yours is a little bit longer than that but for perspective and the reason being is if your city needed to make a change to the way that it operated you only have every 10 years to go through your Charter if you speak to it in your Charter now if you leave it a little more Broad and then you go to a council meeting and you have an ordinance that addresses that that can be brought up read twice and amended appropriately and so you keep that out of mind it's the it's the skeleton of your city is your Charter and the bones of how you operate so Charter review committees um some are given specific

parameters and things to address some will go through individual topics some go line by line and that honestly will be for your committee to talk through and your staff and legal counsel to recommend um I've already kind of covered that some are created by ordinance and in the committee itself um the committee is usually tasked as I mentioned before with time specific reviews and so you have until March 26th is when the ballot will be if you have recommended changes to the language and anything that is changed has to go to your community the last bullet there that talks about the role of the citizens in this process to me the best governments are those that hear from the people and so there are ways that you can open up for um input now as you're working through issues maybe you structure that in a way that here are five things that we've identified in our Charter that we're kind of chewing on as a collective and we want to get some input from the community and that's something that staff can kind of help you guys with but it's important because you think you all will discuss these you can hear from your community you can hear from staff and you can hear from the commission of Oakland itself they can as a collective they hear some areas that maybe there's some ambiguity with the way something is worded or there's an issue that's come up in our city that we think could be addressed there's potential ways that you can just make it better the good thing for you all is yours was amended and reviewed 10 years ago in 2015 I can tell you there are some cities who have gone through Charter review processes and they haven't touched their Charter for 50 or 60 years you know they may still reference we see some nods or stwn

carriages or railroad concerns um they may reference specific state law that isn't even in practice anymore so just know that you all are in a very good position you don't have to go through it and just totally revamp the charter um but I think after kind of Tom and I and we've talked with Elise a little bit there are some areas that you guys could could tighten up some things make some clarification points and so that's what you all will be tasked to do so let's talk about what um the construct of your typical Charter so it begins with a preamble um and then the boundaries of your Charter it will discuss the legislative body so your elected officials um it can go into some details there about their term um meaning how long they're in elected office whether there's twoyear terms or fouryear terms or if there's no term um predominantly for cities in the state of Florida they don't have term limits um sometimes smaller communities have a hard time um getting quality um consistent representation and so there's a fear there if the citizens are still getting the services that they have requested and they're being provided efficiently that we're okay with the ership that's in place um but that's something for you guys to consider there are also Parts in there about um how that electorate is constructed you can have um elections throughout the entire Community you could have single member districts so each member would have a particular part of the community that they represent um you could have a split you could have two that are Citywide three that are by District um and all of that are just you kind of weigh the pros and cons and make making sure that your legislative body represents the community the right way uh your form of

government is something and I I believe we'll actually go into that a little bit later um you can have a ma strong mayor form of government where that individual functions kind of both as an administrator and a legislative representative um you can have a weak mayor and you can have what you currently have which is the predominant um structure in Florida which is a council or commission city manager you have a professional manager that runs the operations of the city and reports directly to that elected body um you also have these roles as I talked about the city manager what are called Charter officers defined in your Charter so whether you have a clerk city manager um sometimes a finance officer can be uh defined in there but all of those are laid out and then the roles of those individuals you have a question okay if it's bad I can speak no I'm just kidding um but so and and actually Tom and I were having a conversation earlier about um his review of the charter and having somebody like Tom I have to give a lot of credit to so he's already made the presentation to your city commission about the charter process um he has been through a number of Charter reviews both at the city and county level um and that's something that so the Florida League of cities as our association Tom represents the Florida city and county management association so all of your CEOs basically from across the state and Tom is a very trusted um and respected manager in retirement serves as what's called a senior adviser and so it's

really on a volunteer basis helps local governments on a variety of issues and I know um I wasn't in my current position to make the presentation in in December but Lynn my predecessor was retiring and so she couldn't be here so Tom was um gracious enough to make that presentation but his review there may be areas in the the fiscal and fiduciary authorities and responsibilities there may be ways to to make Oakland put Oakland in a better position to respond to unique circumstances let me just put it that way so you guys will have those options um as well as the amendment process um how do you change your Charter that's laid out in your Charter okay so some of this I was just kind of at a high level going through but to give you some perspective on a Statewide basis the sizes of councils vary um five being the most common some have seven some have six where the mayor is a non voting obviously you would rather have an odd number so you don't get voting ties I will say I think the city of Jacksonville which I had to make a presentation last year has like 18 I do not s 17 I don't suggest that um it's an interesting Dynamic there um but but five tends to be a good number for folks uh the length of terms as I said you could have two or four year terms and that's fairly uh spread evenly across the state and a small percentage is is has a three-year term and they just felt like four was too many and two was too few so to each their own and I also mentioned the type of election per Council seat so you have the ability to have at large or single member districts and you can actually have as I said a mix of both of those you also have the ability to determine how you select your mayor so that individual can be elected by the community at large it can rotate or it can be elected from within the council

so those are all options that are available to you in your Charter is it 19 okay and then is that without the mayor is it 19 with the mayor I think you think I thought it was 18 with the mayor but regardless yeah so the forms of government and I touched on this briefly and you have this presentation and if you ever have questions the league is to be resource for your city um going through this process your staff and your Council will be your resources but we will be here behind them help support if you have questions about how other cities compare um but it's just just know that you're not out here on your own so the council week mayor uh originally was brought over from England we have a handful uh that operate this way um even fewer operate in the council strong mayor those are typically larger cities uh but the predominant Min form is the council manager or commission manager and then the hybrid is something that honestly we just can't figure out a way to to categorize them they've got a unique structure and and it works for them your Charter offices and departments um like I said and you actually lay some of these out some cities establish their departments within their Charter so I know I believe you have your police department and a handful of others that are that are structured in your Charter um if you're looking to expand those you have abil ability to do so in your Charter but that's just something that you guys will kind of chew on as a group as you walk through what's already currently in place but just know that those are it's it's common you know for those to be designated within your Charter let's talk about how Oakland compares to to other cities uh your population um using population sorry from 4,000 to

6,900 uh with Oakland there are seven municipalities and the reason we did that is Oakland kind of fits right in the middle uh the comparisons that we made were geograph geographically based all interior cities none of those are are coastal and seven all seven are uh Suburban so you should know that your comparison cities are Council manager um or commission sorry are Council manager not commission manager none of which are Council strong mayor or Council weak so you are consistent with other cities that are structured your way and also the number of elected seats you all seven have five elected seats none of them either have six or seven so this is kind of the breakdown you'll see Oakland right there in the Middle with a population of 5400 and we took those just above and below you to show you that um the way that you are stru Ed legislatively with five elected officials is consistent your form of government is consistent um but if you're you know so interested we can also look at outside of this what what the other cities harison cities do another point I'll make about comparing yourself to another city is it's not always just by population you know there's a lot of unique ways that services are provided that I think allows you to you'll never have a perfect Apples to Apples or orange oranges oranges comparison but if you look at how a city that's similarly laid out to you is providing utility service the number of employees they have where they're located the league has a lot of that information so if you guys are interested in that like I said happy to provide

it so the best practices in Charter reviews obviously you would like to appoint representative citizens and so has your commission here uh you will hold several public forums for discussion um an important distinction that I wanted to make here is and I think it's already been laid out to you but you operate under the Sunshine Law so outside of this public meeting none of you are able to communicate about the business here um between yourselves this is an important function of local government in Florida we think think it's I mean obvious it's very important for our members but now that you have been selected to do the work of your elected body you now fall under the sunshine laws as well so we would highly recommend you follow those and the um advice from your Council you will use the agenda uh or sorry you will use your website for your agenda in the minutes of the meeting and this is important to engage your citizens you want them to know when you're discussing what issues as it Rel reles to your Charter um hopefully you get some some better attendance than you've got today but I know you can still have folks attend virtually and then submit their feedback to staff and so that's a way you just want to make sure that you're not doing this in the dark and that people understand um what's going on uh if a referendum is scheduled we recommend that you develop a frequently asked questions um document to put on your website I know so my wife is a teacher she's been for 12 years and she's still sort of understands what cities do um but it's not normal for folks to understand the government language you know that can be difficult and so especially even a language in Charter documents so breaking that down and hopefully into summary or easy to understand language so that your citizens can understand it is important especially if it means something to you

that you're going to make a change make sure they know why we also recommend that you consider partnering with other Civic organizations um it's not just staff if there are rotaries or other groups in here if there's Community um groups we recommend you individually or through staff make sure that they know that these meetings are taking place couple other just best practices for Charter reviews um so the the powers and authority of your Charter um can be granted to more than one entity um it can be confusing language I talked to that before um make sure that the elections section um is clear that usually relates to um qualification language so if your Council if you lose an elected individual um reappointing that person make sure that that process is clear um but also write you can you can write too much into a charter so you want to allow yourself um enough language that it can be interpreted by staff but that you're not handcuffing yourself to processes that put yourself in bad situations but you have quality Council that I think will guide you in making sure that that language is is appropriate so the trends in Florida um really since the 1950s there has been this trend to move towards the the commission or Council manager form of government you just see the professionalization of local government and when you look at the efficiency and having professional staff run the operations of the city um there has been this trend you also see a trend to review charters in 10 to 15 year periods you guys are right on

schedule with that you know don't feel like some will try to amend their Charter and they want to do it every three or four years and don't really recommend doing that um not a lot really changes in that time frame um but I and I know your city we were speaking before is growing quickly um 10 years seems to be kind of The Sweet Spot if you're wondering how other cities function their Charter reviews so some questions for you all to consider from the 2021 nth edition of the model City Charter is the charter reflective of your current population you know we talked about that when you're considering the representation of the elected body and will it continue to be that over the next 10 years if you look at how your population is growing and and how the election the electorate is selected is the council representative of that population both residents and businesses just the if you're looking at population numbers itself does the charter address responsible professionalism and does it do it adequately as the city provided opportunities for citizens to participate in the process and is the city engaging in civic education about the charter itself the website is is a good example so making sure that these things are top of Mind as you're going through your your review I mentioned that model City Charter uh I think when you go through a process like this you want to know where can I educate myself to make sure that I'm doing this as effectively as possible you've been selected for a reason um understand that each of you is passionate here and the elected individual that selected you has done that because of your expertise uh the model city chter is a place where you can go to get highlevel examples really if you're looking to identify language I don't suggest going that route just

because it doesn't take into effect Florida law um I think your um your Council and your staff will help direct you on that you also have the national league of cities so that's an area or sorry an organization that is larger than the Florida League of cities um but you can use their questions as well I would recommend not their language there is a website that's called municode.com library and that curates a host of uh legal documents ordinances Charters and codes from cities and counties across the state that's a place I think if you were really to search for language or or example that could be that useful but I say the Florida League of cities you know we've been around for 100 years and we have a staff um to support the needs of our cities so if there are questions that you relay through um your staff they can come to us to help make peer recommendations or support them specific examples so we've already started to look at where you might be able to turn for answers and the City of Venice did their Charter review process in 2021 and this is just a good example of what a charter review process can look like and so you'll see that that a scope of review is determined you go through the appointment process for committee members which has already taken place here uh those individuals are appointed staff can compiles suggested revisions from the council from Charter offices and maybe even Department directors so that may be a function moving forward uh these articles are presented the committee determines the meeting frequency uh estimated completion so you back into your work from the ballot date and I know your staff will help you all

do that so what you will be doing today is working through the selection of your chair who will take lead and run point for your Charter committee you'll be working to select your timelines and me dates um and then staff will bring back to you with councel kind of the organizational structure for how you will take small bites out of this elephant as work through the do you also have here an example resolution um the city of Mount Dora Wildwood and Venice are all examples of resolutions um that we suggest just as for comparison purposes the establishment of your Charter review and then finally there's a good example of a timeline and again the importance of the timeline is that this committee Works in a way that allows you to get feedback for the community but you don't feel rushed and you're allowed to answer questions and get the responses back to the community before this goes on the ballot you don't want to turn this all in at the 12th hour or sorry the 23rd hour and then it's rushed it's just for everyone's purposes it's it's better to back into that timeline so recommended next steps and this is is pulled from the presentation that Tom made to your your commission earlier your town has already passed a resolution that's established this process uh the appointments have been made we are here sitting in your initial meeting so from now the next steps will be for the committee to report back to the commission and the commission action on placing any proposed changes on that March 2026 ballot just that you know

what you're you're working towards and with that I hope you have a little bit better understanding of what you've been tasked with and that you know that you have the support of council and staff the Florida League of cities and the Florida city and county management Association so that I hope you don't feel overwhelmed um and that you know that there's a wealth of information and experience to help support you guys and working through this I just really appreciate the opportunity to be here I appreciate the work that you guys are going to do and what it means to the citizens of your city thank you all very much happy to answer any questions some of the stuff you said so you want to take it so so Bieber the University of Florida does projections each year um I think they have five and 10e projections but I mean covid changed the growth of the state so knowing what could happen I think you can get a rough idea but I mean we have a thousand people moving to the State of Florida a day that means anything to you but

it's you want to take it yeah I think on full buildout we're projected to be between 8 and 10,000 people double sorry in your experience more minutes m it's very simple elections that's that is the true check and balance if if you know there are some cities that have a hard time getting folks running for office I said there are those that don't have that problem and consistently get newly elected officials that come through and so I've had you know there's some individuals that feel strongly that regardless we want term limits to be in place I think there's handful that have even as short as like four years something like that which can present challenges because if you think about your typical budget cycle you're closing out the year before you're developing the one you're in and you're projecting the one for the next year get somebody in office they barely get through one of those Cycles before you have a new person that

you have to educate on that whole process they're pros and cons but yeah the true balances in election I was going to say also something that might be worth looking at if you're considering term limits and I'm sure Elise has information how many contested elections have there been in the last 10 years 20 years um some data that might help but my experience is that people don't come to meetings unless there's something that was seen in our athetic said it yet I think we can still do things better just because uh size doesn't mean I do can't had a city dissolve because they couldn't get individuals to serve that's me your worst case scenario they went door too couldn't get anyone to step up trying to think if there's any additional information I could share but the the city that I most recently retired from is the manager um actually has term limits and it's the town of Lomo Key island Office Sarasota Bay and about 7,000 population and in the charter review process that we went through they went through U their terminal was um six years they could do

three twoyear terms in the charter review process the public didn't want to see them change the six years maximum but the charter change that occurred was going from a two-year to threeyear term there was some push to go to four but public only supported going to two three years but they have a history of term limits and they also struggle with they have a lot of uncontested um elections it's also the town of lumo doesn't compensate Commissioners at all this is zero and that went before the public in multiple Charter amendments and was not approved by the public um and so there's not a line of people lined up to run and and they struggle with that to this day for background on that too if that's something that the committee decides to weigh in on the league has salary information for elected officials across the state so if that's something if you you're looking at comparisons for anything like that doesn't necessarily have to be in a charter though that could be in an ordinance so that if it some point there needs to be a change or there's a request to make a change um do you hamstring yourself to only being able to make that change every 10 years you walk away just to highlight the whole nature of the charter to me he mentioned it's the Constitution and it's on purpose difficult to amend a lot of things the Commissioners do as normal routine business whether they pass a resolution or they adopt an ordinance and maybe that ordinance takes a couple of you know a first reading a second reading a public hearing kind of approach they can't the commission can't change Charter themselves they have to go to the voters and ask for it so it's you know CI permanent if you will and

that's for purpose you want to put really important things in there like former government like the the responsibility and roles of the mayor and the manager and all those things so they can't be just easily and change depending on so it is an important super important base document for the town 36 p I have not you can you read through a it's like you can tell that things have happened because there's a lot of detail that's why Chris said all the charters are different in the state you know you got 411 different Charters 67 different charters of counties and it's just because things have come up in those communities and and it was a decision to put that ingrain that into the charter so maybe it wouldn't happen again or to clarify how it should happen and therefore you get all these different kind of Lang sets of language uh and articles in Charters um that are very locally specific it doesn't make them right or wrong it's just things that evolve over

time I think I'd like to make the point too that that you don't necessarily have to wait for 10 years if something comes up um if you tie it into an election you can do that I think what our Charter says it's a minimum 10 years that you review it but I think that's the reason you'll see a CO does it almost every other every two years because they're tying it into an election that's coming up right um so that's something that you could do it would be hard to get through the process that quickly um every two years but you know if something extraordinary came up and you would have to evaluate that I believe it would could be done in a in a more reasonable manner I think that's a good point because it's common for cities that have an issue they want to address between the 10 or 15E cycle which been their Charter to establish a charter review process or the commission themselves like Alo ke we we did a 10-year review um but then also there's something up that the commission wanted to put on the ballot and they were able to do that directly without a charter Review Committee and so they just have to time it back the Constitution whose rle I would say you're you're I'm looking across the aisle there that they're going to help you with language on the ballot and and and kind of a prove that language that would go before the voters and so they would be there to provide advice and interpretation on on the implementation or how it's applied yeah and and to the question of it as a constitution who interprets it when it's in the charter and you're moving forward and so on it's the town attorney's office in the first instance if it comes to anything fun and interesting I suppose a judge eventually in the first instance it's the to

it would depend where you uh it depends what nature of dispute you get in but most likely in Florida be a circuit court but in the end 99% of the time decisions on the application of Charter an ordinance or what have you it's not going to get to it's going to be done within the town and actually committee members um I was debating whether to uh to bring up just a couple thoughts on next steps or overview of the charter review process but figured it's all right bring up a couple thoughts to add on Chris just gave you an outstanding overview of how the um Charter review process works kind of some of the moving parts and so on want to give you all just some practical thoughts uh for now and and moving into additional meetings just to give you all a little bit of my background whenever in our office any of our local governments get involved gets involved in any sort of Charter Amendment or Charter review I get tagged in for a little bit I've served as general Council for eight different County Charter review Commissions in five different counties I did here in Orange County three times 11 12 156 and just got done here in 23 and 24 yes that did include all those wild Charter amendments went on in 24 just their attorney but uh a lot of different interesting things went on this time around also did in panel Bard Clay County and elant County and have done it for innumerable cities all over the state both the cities where City attorney like uh Coco Beach uh Brooksville little town of Pearson actually years ago you mentioned uh not reviewing your Charter in a while they hadn't reviewed there since 1928 and we were pulling out uh there

was a dollar tax per male per tax on men only $1 each to uh build the roads Good Times uh as well as all sorts of different Arcana that was uh we were taking a lot of that fun stuff out but uh you've got a pretty good product uh when it comes to seeing things that make sense or don't make sense you may have a lot of amendments to add new moving parts and so on there are a couple things I would offer to you that uh as you look through it uh there are some things I think would be very useful even if you're not going to move uh change any of the big moving Parts there's some things that could be uh cleaned up a bit for some clarity to the point about um some matters relating to elections and so on City attorneys and town attorneys like to identify things in Charters that where in an oddball case some you know some result is going to obtain that people don't anticipate or don't like or it's not clear what the answer is we don't like those to be there because it's ultimately us who's having to tell you what it is and nobody likes those answers so we like to sort those things out so we've got a couple that we've put together as you go through the thought I would give you as you proceed forward and this will move into your discussion on next steps after you select a chair and a vice chair is uh there are multiple different ways you can proceed in your work some folks they want to sit with the charter they want to start on SE c one or article one and they want to go through line by line and so on there's nothing inherently wrong with that okay but what I would offer to you as a big overarching concept when it comes to Charters and Charter review there is no profit in going through and trying to change

happy all right A lot of times folks are getting in there like uh let's just rewrite that paragraph to make it kind of say the same thing but I'm not sure how it's different whatever every single change I would offer to you every single change you want to make in this uh Charter is either going to be you want to clean up or clarify something you're really not changing anything you're just kind of sorting something out or you have a very clear idea of some discrete change you want to make to the way Oakland government works and then we figure out the wording to implement that you don't want to it's it's a very useful tool as Chris said to take a look at other Charters and see what other Charters have great idea for inspiration of oh this is the way they do things there and so on but you don't ever want to uh have the tail wagging the dog of well I've got my very particular language and that's what we're going to do start with a concept say this is what we want to accomp and we want to make sure we get very clear language so just some some general thoughts there uh you can go line by line or what have you but at just as often after a review of the charter everyone having read it and saying hey what's this about or I don't understand what this means or this seems contradictory or what have you it usually is uh more profitable for your time and Effectiveness and Clarity for the voters to zero in on these are the types of things we're looking to change if any if there's some additional thing you want to add on or additional thing you want to change or whatever zero in on top of as opposed to just going line by line and rewriting each sentence the way you would write just some

general um as a general overiew you told us what we can't do what other recommendations are we have level of privacy do we have this trying to understand what the rules are that your addresses as soon as you applied were already public um everything that we do I'm recording it right now this will go up on the website it's all public right um so people can come to you and talk about what's going on you can respond to them how you wish you can refer them to me you know so so that's completely up to you um I do want to say with the charter I think one thing we hadn't really gone over is that they did a complete rewrite 10 years ago um they actually put wording on the ballot that referred to the complete rewrite there wasn't specific amendments um I'm hoping this time that we have specific amendments that are on the ballot that that people can go one by one and choose what they would like or not like but that's kind of what was done the last time they went through this process is that how it works at the voting level which we have 10 different things looking at they can vote on three yes and seven of no yes that's normally how it works one are talking about one thing and over here they accept us they don't we're not going to let anything out I I would urge you in the strongest terms we're not goingon to let anything out of this committee that's going to conflict with each other or break each other you make each Charter Amendment independent of the others such that uh you don't put this one in and so if this one doesn't pass it breaks this one or anything that's part of the thinking that goes into it but to El's point in the strongest terms our office would also urge that it's much better

for the voters for them to when you've got a good document you're starting from for them to uh have a clear understanding of a discrete set of changing proposing there may be one of them we do this very often number of our cities and frankly Charter counties as well where it's truly a cleanup Amendment it's it's truly just there's some grammatical or there's this or that where it is not changing the legal effect substance of the document where it might be you put it you know on the ballot say hey we're doing these uh clerical changes and and all of this but that would be one each each item of substance I would offer to you it's best for the voters if it's its own distri is there a narrative that goes with the changes on the ballot change so they can understand I just about to say that intended this change for this reason wait it's is it 24 words it's 75 75 words 24 would be tough yes so there's a summary there they don't have to interpret the legal language in Charter but you actually give them some type of summary and I and I think I think Kurt that's where Chris's recommendation of us having an FAQ on the website where we go in to try to really simplify it and say what does this really mean to the voter and the FAQ is not restrict 75 FAQ is you do whatever you want so uh and and just so you all know the nuts and bolts of this as it kind of moves through the process when you start getting to the point where you're going to be formulating things into your individual ballot questions all right that's going to be part of the work of our office initially I say initially because what we find very often is uh we put together ballot language because we've written a lot of it on the about all of the state but that ballot language needs to crash

into folks who don't do it every day because man we will write things for Charter amendments we'll think it's just the best thing in the world and you guys will read this is we don't understand name and so we have to go back and rewrite it or you'll say let's change this to this and we'll say that's a great it so it's a collaborative process typically coming out of that that we'll put it together a lot of the time you guys will say oh that sounds great sometimes you'll say rip it apart and put but in 75 words or less it's supposed to be a summary of the chief purpose is the technical statutory language of the amendment unfortunate well fortunately or unfortunately what have you it cannot be persuasive or argumentative it cannot be we're doing this because it helps puppies and you know makes trees grow and all this great stuff you cannot do anything can do that in a in an FAQ what what the ballot question has to do is just give it to them straight this is what it does and then everything else on your website or what have you can say did this because we think it's good because it does this and so on now just so you all know legislature has put some restrictions on what you can do with that information we can no longer for example send out a mailer to all the residents of the Town saying uh you know vote Yes on item three or you know we did this because it's the best thing since whatever you can deal with that though FAQ on a website doesn't trigger any of that and it's a very effect I also have a couple notes it sounded like you were asking sort of general questions about conduct outside of meetings and stuff that you ought to be aware of um one thing to remember is that any emails that you send or receive about your work here on the charter Review Committee is a public record and so what that means is say your neighbor sends you an email and says you know hey I'd really like it if you would advocate for this kind of stuff to be put in the charter I just I think it's so important

for our town that is a public record because it's being sent to you in your official capacity as a member of this committee and so what I would suggest you do in that case is forward that email to Elise she will then have a copy uh and she can maintain it as the records custodian and it is is not your problem um anymore spell a a common uh conern if you get emails all right concerning your work on the charter Review Committee when it comes into your inbox it does not infect the rest of your inv does not make your emails with your daughter up at College uh you know all of a sudden public it's only that yeah unless she does email you about put something in the charter then it's going to be a public gr but um but it doesn't affect anything else it's just those matters and to satisfy your obligations on the easiest thing to do forward it to release and then you don't have to worry about the obligation to maintain it and deliver it I have another thing to build on what Wade just said the rule that Wade explained to you that it doesn't infect everything that is not true in the context of social media I will advise all of you and the strongest terms not to have any discussions about your work here with this committee on social media um there's a lot of case law that it's developed after you know president Trump's use of Twitter and all of that stuff their first amendment concern uh there are concerns with deleting comments with preserving them um it just opens a whole can of worms that you probably really don't want to be involved and this advice and I'm so sorry this advice unfortunately is different than advice we would have given in two week it it has evolved a lot and it might evolve again you know another year or two from now might be able to tell you ah do whatever you want but right now the safer thing is don't mix it all up on Facebook because on on these matters because if you do folks are going to be saying oh

did you see Trump got sued for this and this and that there's cases going both ways and it's just it's more mess than youi sorry about oh very good points because as I said You Now operate under the sunshine so to the point about social media too if one of you makes a comment on a social post and the other one goes in there doesn't even see that individual is on there and you chime in now you have a sunshine violation because you have joint the minds have met right on a topic so to your council's point I highly recommend just at bare minimum you risk being accused of the sunal correct just distance yourself at at all possible so the other do we have no not at all no it's all at your political discretion somebody in publ you can if you don't want to yeah recommend they come to the meeting if anyone like say you're in the grocery store and someone wants to approach you because they've watched a meeting or they know there's something coming up say great I appreciate your engagement our next meeting date you know is published come up here and piece but one other piece about the U Email exchange we've had I've seen this used as a helpful tool creating your own Gmail with a charter name in it at gmail or whatever that is so that if you do get that email you can just forward and copy that address so everything is always in that that new email if you want to give that to staff or that's how you want to communicate you have it all in one place and you that is just your Charter review email address someone forward you something you reply with that attached if you ever have to go in and do a search it's all in your that is what mind you I imagine a

little bit higher profile than this that's what a number of our members on the Orange County Charter not all a lot of them didn't but a number of them did um yeah if there's any thought of any volume of emails from the public it hasn't come up in this recent discussion but on the west coast of Florida there's been a lot of Investigations from certain um individuals about texting so not just emails but texting also is public record I haven't read as much in Central Florida but I can tell you in the Sarasota manate area there's been cities sued that have paid out one city over $800,000 because of texing and public record violations so and there's current issues going on with individuals are provide a lot of texting public record because of you know request being made by a certain law fir so just to clarify um if I have a verbal conversation I don't have to document have to send it I text or email somebody I should send it no is there what if it's with one of the commission is there any issues with that perfectly fine for you have for you to have conversations with so that's exactly right so yeah just to I'll give you the two minutes on the Sunshine Law we've been giving you a lot of very good parts on Sunshine Law governs discussions between two or more members of the same body on matters that may foreseeably come for that so the fact that it's a different body within the same government or different body different government or what have you that's not the T question is whether or not it's two members of the same

body other thing to keep keep in mind an old uh concept of the law you can't do indirectly you're not allowed to do directly all right can't use goet we call them conduits you can't go to member of the public and say hey go tell my buddy's on the charter review commission he votes for this I'll vote for this right you can't use a goet to commit a Sunshine Law so stay far away from that additionally if anyone from the public wants to come up to you and say Hey I was talking to you your uh fellow uh Charter Review Committee Member uh he was starting to tell me about what he thinks about this and that anytime anybody wants to instigate with you telling you about what other people on the committee think or say or anything like this say time out you know tell me about what you think or tell me about the weather of the Florida Gators but don't tell me about what other members of my committee think you want to talk about any of that come to me any discussion about matters of this between directly or indirectly members of this committee one of these meetings and if you have any questions about this stuff I would refrain from doing whatever it is that you have the question about and and you can always ask me you will have Stephanie's uh cell number pick up the phone he's not part of this committee so it's not yeah so this is what all of our elected officials are under constantly so they live under this that's F we should go on to our next agenda

item which is selection of chair and vice chair we can start with selection of the chair so somebody if somebody wants to make a recommendation and then you can vote on it basically run the meeting as I would speculate as a practical matter that coming out of any given meeting you'll have a little discussion about what's going to go on that next meeting agenda and so on so I doubt there'd be much lift in talking with the chair to develop a next agenda and kind of be developing it at the end of last meeting so chair and vice uh chair both I would speculate primary lift is going to be be the one doing a little bit more talking in given meeting as we'll be Shing the and then Vice chair serving that role and we will always help you Mo you want to you want to turn on your microphone while you I will volunteer if there are no other interest in serving as chair Le Oak Town Char RW commission just for the purpose of the record yeah a motion someone could just say you know she served as

shair it can just be it can just be by motion yeah since you have anybody else going for discussion seeing none all those in favor please signify by saying I you oppose nay congratulations volunteers for vice chair so I'll be the vice seconded discussion seeing none all those in favor say I nay congratulations you have a chair and vice chair not quite you want to turn it on even when you don't have it on yeah um there is one more uh item substance matters on your setting timelines and next steps believe Elis has put together a schedule of some future meetings I would suggest um just a couple minutes of discussion on initial thoughts if you all have had a chance to take a look at the charter already sub matters that uh you might want to take a look at so staff can get some good direction on where we're going to be working so next meetings are on your agenda at the bottom and I think I already sent everybody out calendar invitations for those um so like I said

we were going to try to knock out two in March two in April see how much we can get through and then determine after that um how we want to move forward but you guys have any um any suggestions on what we would like on the next agenda how you want to handle looking through the charter that this would be the time to have that disc Kevin sorry suggest the third just discussion not sure that our Charter any of the it me to be are you referring to you as far as running for for election any office yeah okay I was just kind of surprised at all issue so so the first set is really to make sure that the town attorneys are available um we can look at different times and dates after this first group of meetings and we definitely will want to have a few evening sessions to involve the public more um the public can also go just so that if you if you're not already aware they'll be able to go to the website tomorrow morning and that's why I ask you to talk into your microphone so that they can hear when they're reading watching the

recording um and then they can always reach out to me um by email with any comments or questions that they might have is there a format public to have we had any input yet things that like to see change in the charter from public I have not I've I've put it out there I think three times now meet your mayor and to the last two commission meetings I've handed out copies of the charter and told people if they had input to let me know I have not received anything um but again we'll put more information on our website after this meeting and and asked for that input again l remote um so does the same rule apply we have to have a quirm in the room okay so we would have to have three in the room physically present to be able to allow anybody else online and then the way that's STS they would have to make a motion to allow you to attend electronically um through extending waiting circumstances so if you're out of town for work traveling or something like that um those were would be the exceptions

yeah I think I think if you go through through and you see areas if you just let me know so that we can make sure that I'm compiling a list of things we want to make sure to touch on but how we may want to do it to be organized as maybe two articles at a time is go through two sections at a time and hit anything in there I think our one-offs are going to be you know if if we're districting right um when do we talk about that and then I guess my question Wade maybe you can answer is how do we interact how does this committee interact with the commission so we don't get too far along the road and then the the commission is like we don't want to we don't want to touch that so i' imagine after uh some initial discussions and flushing out I think it would probably be helpful uh to kind of have interim report back not even report just uh some communication maybe from the or other Committee Member coming to one of the Town commission meetings just giving a little report this is what we've been working on lately and getting and I think I heard during the presentation that you know feedback from the public and the commission and so maybe in our advertising of the meetings we solicit that those that input be provided to the board in advance so that there Community issues or commission things that would like toie we would receive them in addition I had mentioned that there were a couple things that we saw that a lot of them clean up other things that we would suggest areas to think about uh taking a peek at um I think if it's all right with the committee our

office is going to put together kind of a bu Point list just some of those things for you all to take a look at discuss yeah that's fine by me one of things that I I had with member they spent a lot of time that so I know this is an esoteric question I believe we're fairly close that is that an item that really I don't know like that'd be something I'd like to be happy to provide the information cities

and compation elected officials the commission or if there's mayor one thing I would throw out there too is that when we look at those numbers ter we gota be careful because Oakland's unique and that we have no base oral base to off one of the highest in the county right now so we add to that I was going to say I think if we're we're bringing up a lot of um issues that have to do with dollars and cents maybe getting Gabby the finance director uh to come to a few meetings and so that she can offer her opinion as to those ideas I think just deciding do we want to go through a couple sections or do we want to start tackling a couple topics is that's probably the next thing we need to determine so that we can provide the appropriate backup that think my recommendation would be to attack in so read on that AR in dispute so with that said wouldn't you want whatever recommendations you guys are make effects that yes and and we'd be glad to get

that I I typically do it by article yeah I I I was going to offer a thought sometimes breaking it up by article um kind of ties your hands to get at Big topics because sometimes things are going to spread across M it's very very common um you could certainly if you if you felt you wanted to do an article by article review in addition to a topical review folks have done both um you could have the article or have a couple articles you wouldn't want to do just article one for example it's pretty boring um you want to group at least um and uh and then in addition potentially have some topics it's just a just a thought because what I would offer to you there is no benefit to ourselves or the town to have a meeting where you show up and there's not much you're all getting to have good conversations I've seen a number of great Charter review processes that go through in an economic number of meetings because they zeroed in on the types of things they want to look at so I I that corre us a topic change you guys are coming to us is what we'd like to do at that the the ones staff would be uh coming to you or at least that our office would be coming to you be pretty discreet and we'd be coming to you with the proposed solution as well change this word to this word and this that and so on they little uh as opposed to Big conceptual change how the whole

world Works going from at large that's a topic of its own it will touch on multiple different places where you implement all that in the charter is not nearly as relevant to the bigger picture of hey do we like have all the uh you know all the elected officials elected by the whole body of citizens or do we want to the town up into two three or four different Wards or districts or what have do do that those those are kind of the discussions I would suggest have if you've got a list of things or term limits how would term limits work here what sort of ter limits we want to impose how do we think that would play out and discuss that take a look at other examples through uh orange seminal count and what I'm just kind of thinking here is coms about and District that to me almost feels like a double whammy you you District something and then you turn Li to that District you may not find anybody from District whatever number we call so maybe we look at concept first and then bance that out you what are we trying to do to get involved and through or we getting neighborhoods involved um I think I just think we hit them both the same time because again I go back to elections I've been here I've been part of Oakland for 20 years my wife Liv here before me and lot these people serve because nobody else would and you know we had the last election as contentious as it was there was a seat that was Unos and a lot of the stuff that we went through could have been solved if somebody had run for that position but it didn't because the guy that was in it was running for a position and then fell

behind it so just because you make people are gonna comply and it could put our town in trouble yeah I agree agree so I think there is want to that's the risk that we're GNA GNA Happ anyway those are I just want to touch on the districting because I think that's obviously an area you guys want to look into and just give you my experience two different governments where I was the manager of s County and longb P both had District elections but they were different I don't think there's a black and white District there's maybe two choices primarily in Sarasota County for instance they vote within the district for the individual that's running within that District in longbo key they have districts but it's still an at large election but they require people to live geographically within the district qualify to run and they still call it a district but everyone in the city or town votes for them even though they represent one two or three so there's at least two options how you look dist thanks my question

that absolutely what what you all are ultimately looking to do is determine if there are any Charter amendments that you would formulate the voters we think this is a good a it looking ises that make sense so so with the with the matter of um the spectrum of different ways that the town commission Thank you very much for teasing that out very important um you can end up with it's referred to variously as uh residency districts for example whole town would vote on each single election but uh say four of your Commissioners have to each has to live in its own commission or you could have would offer to you not to put fingers on the scales at all but you tend to see this in much larg areas um or districts where only the people in that area V in starting to get smaller and smaller voting but you know all these different permutations there the entire change

that you're making is what would be has to describe the change of where you are to but it does not to change how the town commission isle is not a rip up the rest of the doc just one conceptual part whether that's littered in between article three and article four and a little bit of article six or whatever it's one just on that subject what's the logistics behind it's a practical matter what uh the supervisor of election probably end up doing is uh for our one poll even in in countywide elections here how many yeah we just have one it's respitarian Church the supervisor election would probably set up that poing Precinct as four sub precincts and it this is not a negative statement it's just a fact it would be a complication there are all sorts of complications that happen it would um the supervisor election probably break it up into four sub precincts for the purposes of County Precinct or they might make it I doubt they would because the populations wouldn't justify it making it four precincts all held in the single polling there are ways to handle it the supervisor of elections can handle all the administrative and they would come in and they would show their

ID where they are register supervisors databas is going to be say oh they're in so there you could even have a unique scenario where they're voting for a commissioner in a particular district and they'll have the mayor at large like I mean there's there's Alternatives there but I think Tom was even saying they would when they came to vote they would have different ballots once you're registered for that there's ways to get it done if we were to dive into the topic of districts there would be no way until if this would even pass and then we get to the next election there would be no way to pull any data as to historically who would have voted what the voting turnout would be for any proposed District half your population in one District voting the others 10 people 10 people I would strongly urge and I will tell you I my office and I have been through a number of Charter reviews where they have looked at going to district and then also o representing boards handling redist we were General counsil to the pellis county red redistricting board so all of pelis County as its own unique overlapping set of districts it's it's wild um with a a mishmash of of two different types you have to uh live in the district and only the folks in that District vote on it and then other ones that are elected countywide but you have to live in one of two res one of three residen so very very complicated there but in the redistricting of all that they had to work through all this and you look at and by the way this would be

a Step Beyond uh what you all would be doing but what you all would be doing is teeing up a next set of steps for districting the town so this would not be a quick implementation to move to districting you have to you have to go through and so you all ought to take a peak if there is an interest potentially in going that direction you'll want to take a look at uh pass voter turnout to the extent we can get good information from supervisor's office uh voter turnout in different Geographic areas of town you're exactly right I will tell you you look at particularly small towns there will be you'll see a radical difference in voter turnouts based on different Geographic the way uh districting has to work in for whenever you are dividing up any local government for voting purposes is all of those districts are going to have to be roughly the same you're never going to get exact them they have to be roughly the same population not not not the same yet not the same number of Voters so you will end up with instances where because of certain socioeconomic or demographic situations you'll have a district where same population as this District but there are twice as many voters in District this district is this District those things compound say they compound when get into smaller blend out and going back to timeline I'm sorry the first of all all those details all

done but a timeline wise we'd have to vote on District through this Charter review march6 then they would see a committee and that would have to be voted on as approved by the the public districting or is that is that a more andion decision yeah districting uh districting would in county level it it's required in the Constitution at the municipal level it is by far the most typical that you would drawing of those Districts The Ultimate final decision would be by the government by so yeah I think it's a fair point uh as the member said that going towards a district model right is just kind of the start of the process once you kick that off uh it would kick off some sort of process whether it's a committee to to develop it or otherwise way to develop initial districts then those in every likelihood would not go into effect till for example the 2028 they would not go into effect six election set up I I was just going to make the point too with all the um development going on and the projected growth in population I think districting could be quite are the things

talking about how to build vacancies on the town commission that actually was going to be one of the the topics that I think our office is going to suggest you all take a look at we have no recommendation as to what it would be other than take a look at it and the reason why is consequence under our Charter is relatively unique they have 30 days to do it and if they don't the governor fills it that is an is that a state thing or is that we decided that we yeah no that is an abnormal thing all right the the language that follows in the charter that says if if all five of the town you know members of the Town Commission get in a bu bus accident and they all die you know it's filled by the governor and so on that is very typical all right that's that's for the Oddball circumstance but filling a singular vacancy there are a lot of different ways it's done in um in municipalities around the state but 30 days or the governor does it I would offer to you there there are better tools available to town so it's not being sent up to tell and that's great so the question is is that something we're going to get ah of time so we can think about questions we want to create or are you going to send that to us between now in the next meeting yes we are would offer as as someone else or actually sorry you suggested it when you read I think for example oo Charter you

can kind of see it jumping off the page they are responding to very particular issues which you do see that from time to time I would offer to you in the absence of reasonably foreseeably foreseeing you know circumstances that are being thought through there copying and pasting you know directly things that have kind of been Hodge podged over time not the best way it's usually better to look at the problem and figure out a more elegant solve and I'll just offer up that the answer to the question earlier was how do you what's the check in balance and none of that happened somebody had put their name in there collected so going I did have one last question um is this her seat she's the chair I'd be willing to I feel odd here right now so next meeting you take this one next time around I imagine there'll be a little rearranging yeah is that for the yeah that's where the mayor typic um so just um just for guidance for for staff um we're going to be we're going to be putting together a uh very little memo with some bullet points of some cleanup things and then some topics we suggest you take a peek at um in addition to that what got a list of of uh subject matter matters that came up in your discussions your districts term limits residency and debt limit um what uh what subject matter or subject

matters would you like uh turn on this next uh this next meeting the vacancies as well does get to bit based on my review seems two and articles five is election town I will share with you all the other matter of substance that think we were going to be suggesting you all at least take a PE is in Article Five that this is just something we all to think through it relates to process for I would offer to you there's been a trend in recent decades in municipalities away elections are expensive they're way more expensive than they were 25 years ago um after the America vat act and that

fun stuff and push door back in 2000 and so on so much more procedure to it quite frankly we have uh process in the charter right now specifies you have a runoff election days after the initial election that cannot send ballots and all 28 days is unaccomplished week so it would be first in any event um just a thought to consider have seen around the state moving towards a more e most votes wins who pays for those elections we or the county so it depends on if it's with the presidential preference primary like we looked out in 2024 we didn't have to pay um much at all in 2022 because it was with the gubernatorial election we had to pay about $8,000 that came out of the town's budget so if we have we in fact had we've had so few elections actually these last many years um looking back in the records you all your head when was the last time runoff election was actually triggered I don't think we've ever had one yeah I mean have three to get have to run off and then only if nobody gets over 50 I think before 2022 our last contested election was was like 2006 or something it was it was so many years before

we are tied to the primary election period is that the March time frame is that why we do it I mean that's that's how it's been done the supervisor of elections it's my understanding Orange County Supervisor of Elections is talking about potentially moving that to November but right now we're based on our Charter we go with March that is something we can that's something that can change yeah some some jurisdictions due November yeah your your uh the time of your elections is absolutely something you generally so if there was a thought for example to something that and if and if that's something you're thinking about it would be good to know so that we could talk to Orange County Supervisor of Elections there's a new supervisor and just get her feedback on that I would definitely want to add that to the agenda um mostly just because it's voter participation you don't see the turnouts in March everybody goes November and and when you have an off your primary ballot that you know that's pretty popular as well any additions to the recommendations that have already been made so that we can move forward that timeline for the next steps

and I offer Just one thought that I have actually seen as effective particularly at the beginning of Charter review processes as you develop some some uh points sometimes it can be effective to have of your your running list of items so long as it doesn't get too long available as items on your couple meetings so you can hit those topics and discuss them a little bit more the public can know hey we might be talking about this or you say ah I don't have much to say about this that doesn't mean the matter is disposed of but um that way as you're as you're doing that can get unwieldy if you end up with 20 things on it and say oh yeah we're covering all 20 at our next meeting but as you get this list here gives you how does the voting work amongst us is it are we all equal votes or is it a situation where sometimes like asse she's you'll be all equal yes what happens when we have okay next item on the agenda is public forum public comment um and move rejourn