Town Commission - Regular Meeting

All right, everybody could take a seat and we'll uh get started. Whoever's sitting can sit. Great. Okay, everyone. Hey, uh welcome to the February 10th, 2026 Town of Oakland meeting. Everybody, please stand for the pledge. Remain standing. you.

Good evening, Kathy. Hey, good evening. Commissioner Keller here. Vice Mayor Satderfield here. Mayor Taylor here. Commissioner McMullen. And Commissioner Ramos is absent. Commissioner McMullen. All right. So, uh, we have several present or one presentation. I will turn it over to, uh, our police chief to, uh, take over this part of the program.

Good evening, commissioners and Mr. Mayor. Thank you for your time. We have arrived once again at our quarterly awards recognition uh for the commission meeting here on February 10th. I think that's the day. Uh here's how we'll do this. I'll talk back here. Uh for each award, there's several awards here. for each award. Um I'll call the officers that are receiving uh recognition and then if you would just come up here I'll read a little bit about the award, give you your um certificate and then we'll move on to the next. So for the first one, if I could have officer David Hall come up here.

We're clapping and we don't even know what he did. Wow. Okay. So, in November of 2025, u Officer Hall responded to a case where a family called about their son who had gone missing uh was a little embarrassed because he was possibly catfished over the internet. And um

so throughout the the the call, they ended up locating the son. And then two weeks later, um, Officer Hall decided to follow up with the son, make sure everything was okay, provide some mentoring, um, and some guidance as far as, you know, sometimes things happen and we get taken advantage of, and tried to give him some good advice to keep the keep his spirits, get his spirits back up. And uh what this is is an example of the community policing that makes Oakland Police Department so good is that we're willing to take time out of our calls for service or our day to go mentor people or give them any kind of positive discussion or advice that they may need to help them move forward in life. And that's what Officer Hall did. By no means was it necessary. It was totally out of his own valition. He he chose to go there and make contact with this child. That's one of the elements that that makes Oakland such a great town is that officers not only have time to do that, but they take advantage of those opport So for his um willingness to stay involved with a child who was going through some problems, Officer David Hall has been given the award of I think it was accommodation. Is that right? Commenation. Let me find it because they are all stacked. Thank you. We got lots of them here. Probably should have put these in order. Here we go. There it is. Okay. Next, if I could have Shawn Doer, Corporal Shawn Doer and Officer Jason Hayes.

On November 22nd of 2025, um, Officer Hayes and Corporal Doer both responded to, uh, a call in Oakland where some parents notified us that their son not only wanted to, uh, not he wanted to stop living, but he wanted the Oakland Police Department to take his life. Uh, officers Hayes and Corporal Doure responded to this scene. the child, the he's not a child. The the young man was had already been located but was still in the presence of firearm. They were able to talk with him, deescalate the situation, get him to separate himself from the firearm and subsequently secure him to get him delivered to facility to get mental health, mental health assistance without any hands-on, no use of force, anything like that. He has a previous dealing with the Oakland Police Department, specifically with Corporal Doure, and he his request was he was going to have Corporal Doer kill him and commit suicide by cop due to their actions and their their calm demeanor and their willingness to deescalate this situation, which could have turned very bad. Um, officers, Officer Hayes and Corporal Doer are are also given not only the lovely ribbon, but are also presented award. Good. Thank you. All right. Now, we have two awards, one person. Rihanna Fernandez, if you could please come up here.

these. So, the first one on December 6, 2025 at 11:30 p.m., um, Officer Fernandez was dispatched to a battery in progress in the vicinity of 16001 West Colonial Drive. The caller reported that a male was beating a female. The incident continued to evolve in the jurisdiction of the Claremont Police Department. Claremont Police officers located the alleged suspect and victim on a dirt road next to a field. Police Officer Fernandez responded to the area to interview the victim. The victim was extremely hysterical, couldn't formulate sentences or recall the incident. The victim continued to cry as she was sitting in a grassy area. Police Officer Fernandez walked over to the female victim and immediately sat down on the ground in front of the female victim. Officer Fernandez grabbed and held the female's hands, maintaining eye contact with the victim and holding her hands. Officer Fernandez was able to calm the victim down, allowing her to recall some of the incident. If it wasn't for the actions of officer Fernandez, it would likely be the victim would have been too hysterical to recall the incident. Due to these circumstances, uh, and officers officer Fernandez caring nature, she is awarded the Oakland Police Department's award of commendation.

And we have one more for officer Fernandez. Um, on December 30th, Oakland Police Department responded to assist Winter Garden Police Department with with a careful search of a missing juvenile. The original information received was that a 17-year-old autistic male had left his home. Oakland officers were requested to assist in checking the area around the jurisdictional line. All Oakland officers on duty immediately began searching the West Colonial Drive area from Claremont Line into Wintergardens jurisdiction. When they determined uh oh, I'm sorry, determining determined to locate the juvenile, officer Fernandez began searching and alerting the business owners of every open establishment along West Colonial Drive. Officer Fernandez made her way to the shopping plaza located at 13770 West Colonial. As she entered the shopping plaza, she observed the missing juvenile inside the Italian Garden Restaurant. Upon making contact with the juvenile, Officer Fernandez attempted to alert other officers by using her departmentisssued radio. Officer Fernandez noticed her Department issue radio would not transmit out from inside the restaurant. She immediately attempted to use her cell phone to contact her sergeant. When attempting to call, she noticed her phone would not call out. With no other with no other options, Officer Fernandez had made uh the conscientious decision to activate her emergency button on her radio. Officer Fernandez knew that this would alert other units to her location. Upon arrival of her sergeant, Officer Fernandez had already built a rapport with the missing juvenile. Officer Fernandez had given the juvenile her cell phone so the so the juvenile could remain calm by watching Bugs Bunny happens to be she was watching it at the time as well. Uh for her awareness, creativity, and compassion with a runaway autistic juvenile officer, Fernandez is awarded Oakland Police Department's award of accommodation. Okay, this one is going to be pretty much

everybody else. Um, Officer F or Corporal Fischer, Corporal Edwards, U Ricks, Officer Ricks, everyone who did Shop with the Cop, please come up. Uh, Doure Gal, everyone. So, and I I wrote this one, so I should be able to breeze through it pretty quick. On December 17, 2025, the listed members of the Oakland Police Department participated in the shop with a cop event hosted at the Claremont Police or with the Claremont Police Department. These listed employees volunteered their time with with the Shop with the Cop event to allow children to shop with them using $100 gift cards provided through donations and fundraising. In prepar prep preparation for this event, Lieutenant Castro worked extremely hard to raise the funds necessary to allow a total of 23 children to receive these gift cards. Stacy Quinn and Kelly Sims greatly assisted in the preparation for this event by ensuring the proper tax exempt forms were fil were filed with Walmart and purchasing the gift cards needed for each child. In addition, they kept an accurate count of which children received their cards and maintained uh at the check-in table for each family, making sure that our children did not get confused with the children participating with Claremont PD. All officers listed before you or standing before you were instrumental in engaging with the assigned child and their family members. This event was a tremendous success due to the selflessness and willingness to help each member list uh by each member present. This event was one way in which the Oakland Police Department remains in a positive light with the citizens within the Oakland community. For this, all of the people standing here in front of you are awarded the Oakland Police Department's Community Service Award.

Astro

his officer of the year not stand right here. I don't know.

Okay, two more to go. Bear with me. During the fourth quarter of 2025, Lieutenant Renee Castro uh produced and uh put together the third annual 5K with the 50, complete with trophies, t-shirts, and some of the best medals on the circuit. This was a well- attended event with over 150 participants and multiple sponsors contributing thousands of dollars of revenue. revenue and which enabled Lieutenant Castro to fund this year's Shop with a Cop that you just heard about. Lieutenant Castro partnered with Claremont PD once again to utilize their Walmart and was able to provide Christmas for more families this year than ever. Without Lieutenant Castro's networking skills and these community events would would fall flat for sure. While both of these events fell in the fourth quarter, they are a yearround endeavors which require constant phone calls and personal visits to sponsors to ensure successful events. Lieutenant Castro's networking throughout the year has also provided for a donated wrap worth over $2,500. It was actually worth $4,000, which was put on the SRO car, which was shortly totaled thereafter. Lieutenant Castro was also able to seduce two patrol cars away from Claremont PD, which they donated to us free of charge. Uh, in an effort to beef up our fleet at the time of crisis, uh, brought on by high cost of repairs and two crashed vehicles. Uh this was instrumental in in keeping our fleet able to patrol the streets. While they have not been delivered, Lieutenant Castro has worked on an additional deal with Claremont PD for two more vehicles. I hope they know about that. Uh which couldn't come soon enough. Without the initiative of Lieutenant Castro to think outside the box and network with town businesses, politicians, and neighboring agencies, none of this would have been possible. Uh this nomination falls so short of what he does every day for everybody at this department. uh administratively he really he he runs the show from his desk. Uh I know we like to make fun of him a lot but u he does he is such a value to this police department and we thank him so much and

due to that Lieutenant Renee Castro has been awarded Oakland Police Department's officer of the fourth quarter. Okay. So the last award is something that is not a nomination per se. It's not something that we write down and um you know talk about specific incidents and things like this. So basically and this I'm not telling the commissioners or the mayor anything they don't know, but I want to tell the audience something that they may not know. If you haven't run across Shawn Doer, uh, you're dealing with somebody who truly cares, somebody who always has a smile on their face, somebody who's willing to do everything above and beyond, no matter what it is. Um, and somebody who's willing to get yelled at by me on a regular basis, and he he smiles. Um, I don't yell, but uh, he's, those of you that have seen the the award ceremonies throughout the year of 2025 has seen Corporal Doer get recognized. At the beginning of 2025, he was an officer. He had been promoted to corporal. He continues to make achievements. He continues to make connections in the community and he continues to grow not only as a police officer, but as a first-line supervisor. So, I think the awards committee, which I do not sit on, but I believe it was a unanimous decision uh that Shawn Doer be awarded the officer of the year for 2025. Thank you for your time. Yes, you got it. You got it.

Rihanna, you have another one here. Walk this way. Y'all got to come up. Anybody in a uniform, come up. I know he did.

Louis, he came to your house. And you're still here. Thank you guys.

All right. Give them a couple minutes to get out. All right, we'll give them a few minutes to get out and then we'll uh finish business. No, sir. No, no, that's my

All right. All right. That was good. Good job. It's great, man. And chief, I would like to say that you luck people in the world. You guys are you lead them and they wouldn't do it without you, but each and every one of them just continue to and who know that type of drama went on here.

Crazy. That's what I was going to say and I I wanted to say it before they all left, but you know, obviously we heard some stories of, you know, some individuals in crisis and those can be handled a lot of different ways and have a lot of different outcomes. And I'm I could not be more proud in this moment that our police department dealt with these folks with compassion and were able to deescalate situations that could have gone a lot of different ways than they did. So again, I know that's your leadership, Chief, but obviously we we have such great individuals on our police department, and I couldn't be more grateful for that.

Well said. Thank you. Second that. Yeah. Well said. Good job. All right. So, we're going to move on to the consent agenda uh tonight. And on the consent agenda, we have the approval from the January 27th, 2026 town commission meeting. Approval to cancel the March 10th, 2026 town commission regular meeting due to the election. Approval to dispose of townowned assets and approval of the 2026 2027 Oakland Avenue charter school year calendar. Wow. Already next year. So any questions or comments on the consent agenda? Hearing none. I'll entertain a motion agenda. Second second. All in favor?

I. All right. Moving on. Public forum. So this is tonight. If anybody has anything you want to talk about that's not on tonight's agenda. Anyone? Any takers? Yes. Oh, yeah. We got two. Okay. Yeah. Go ahead. Name and address, please.

Hi, my name is Noren Dwarkin. I'm the editor-inchief of Box Populi. I just wanted to remind folks that we are hosting a candidates forum for the March 10th election. Uh it's a virtual forum. you can uh sign up for it. Uh actually the town was very kind. There are slips over there on the table where you can uh pick up and get the information. This will be held uh 7 o'clock. It's a zoom forum and uh it will be moderated by Steve Port hosted by Box Populi with uh Commissioner McMullen and the uh challenger uh Ann Folton. So, um, some people were telling me that they were having some trouble getting, um, online to register. So, you may, uh, have to copy the link and then, uh, post it in your browser. Uh, we are, uh, we're insisting that people register so that we can, you know, kind of control the the crowd. um just to make sure that we've got you know everybody who should be there you know we don't have you know outside agitators come coming into the the forum. So um if you are having trouble registering please just you know uh email me and I'll walk you through it. So it's nor winter garden.com happy to walk you through it. I w somebody else here.

Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. I just have a question, Norin. You will there be the full um unedited video of the session available on y'all's website or something where if we can't attend? Yes, absolutely. So, we're going to record it. Um so, if you can't watch it live at 7 o'clock, we will have a recording um and we will post it just as soon as possible. Um we'll have it on our YouTube. We don't post it on Facebook. We'll have it on our YouTube. We'll have a link immediately. Thanks. Thank you. Okay. Was there someone else? Anyone else? Lou, did you have something? Sorry.

Smith, 316 North Tub Street in Oakland. Uh, the last meeting I was at, uh, some people brought to my attention, there's some gypsies in the Oakland area and, uh, I found their encampment. They're all they're in Winter Garden. They're over by the uh Tucker Farms and they're they're I happened to see it at the quarter mile going on the turnpike. Some blue tarps. So I went there today and did a little recon and got by where they were. Uh you can't get to them from the turnpike. I looked through there the fence there, but they had a car back there and I think the only way they can get there is Tucker Farms and on the dog trail or something, but that's probably the only way they can get there. And uh I don't know what I want to do about it. I just I kind of feel like I'm going to leave them alone because they they haven't bothered me. So the only thing that an offer doer came to the house today and he said that uh you know the only way to really do anything might be to tell Winter Garden enforcement and I don't feel like doing that. I the there's there's kids involved and everything and I don't want to uproot them. So for me it's like unless they break a break a law I'm I'm done. I don't want to deal with them, you know, I'm going to leave them alone. So, thank you.

Thanks, Luke. And I will say that that we are aware of the last week's or last meeting. So, we are watching that and keeping an eye out. Okay. Thanks. Anyone else? Okay, we'll close the public forum and uh Elise,

good evening. I just want to go over a couple things. Um, on January 28th, Mayor Taylor, Commissioner Rick Mullen, our lobbyist, and myself were in Tallahassee, and we spoke to several of our representatives. Um, we spoke to somebody with the appropriation staff um about our $1.5 million appropriations request. And we also talked a little bit about property tax um implications and what that meant to the town of Oakland should any of the reforms pass just to provide them additional information um so that they they would be knowledgeable about small jurisdictions and and what might happen if any of those were to go through. I thought it was a good trip. Um, and I thought we did a good job educating people on our request as well as the property tax issue. Um, we'll have so February 24th at 6:30 p.m. before the commission meeting. We'll have an educational session open to the public to educate everybody on the charter amendments. If you have questions on what the charter amendments are, what they mean um before you go to the ballots to vote on March 10th, you can come and and um Garrett's going to be here from from our attorney's office and Kathy and I'll be here if you have any questions to try to answer those for you. Um our Black History tribute is up right now. It'll be on display through March 27th and we're hosting an artist reception on February 19th from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. at the Arts and Heritage Center. So, that's going to be that's going to be neat. Um, and then the only other thing is tickets are now on sale for the March 7th pores at the preserve at the Oakland Nature Preserve and you can register for that on the Oakland Nature Preserve website.

I have Okay. Uh, Jonel Yes, thank you. Um, so really not too much to report from public works. Um, just continuing the transition with Mike being gone and me being in place. Um, just to give everybody an update, we are doing we have a sanitary survey coming up on Tuesday from the state or probably next commission meeting. I'll let you guys know how that goes. Thanks, Chief. I think I've said enough tonight. I would agree. I would agree. All right, we'll bring it back to the table. Uh, oh, Kathy, sorry, Kathy. Sorry.

Um, if you want a vote by mail ballot for the election, um, that deadline is coming up on February 26. You need to visit the supervisor of elections website. Um, to register to get your vote by mail, vote by mail ballot. Um, all of the vote by mail ballots, um, they were, um, hang on a minute here. Well, they expired after the last election, so if you don't go and register, you're not going to get it in the mail. They did expire. Good. Thank you. Right, Commissioner McMullen. Oh, I don't I have anything? Yes, sir.

I just wanted to say that I thought we had an amazing Heritage Day. Um, the weather was chilly and I stayed a little too long and had to walk home in really cold weather.

Um, but I thought it was really well attended and I just want to thank the town staff for doing a great job as usual for pulling that because it really takes a village to make that event happen. Everybody, public works helps and Ed helps and obviously the town staff that are responsible for those events. But um I talked to Lynn and Megan and really the attendance was common to what we typically get though comparable. So I was really impressed with as cool as it was but it was a great day and um always good to see our fellow openers out and about you.

Thing I want to talk about is Black History Month to Welch was born and raised here 18 years. There's a little tribute to Willie there. So monumental town of Oakman Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Uh just to reiterate what Elise had said about the charter uh amendments and that meeting. So if you get a chance, please come kind of educational to talk about that uh and and see what what that that's happening there. And also Pors Preserve, it's a great event. If you if you have been or have never been, uh it's a great night at the nature preserve. It helps benefit the nature preserve, too. So, if you have nothing going on Saturday night on the 7th, I think it is March 7th. Uh go out there. I think there are still tickets. It's a limited amount of tickets. They put it to like 121 tickets. So, there's several tickets, I think, still out there to go.

Yeah, there's 125 tickets. You have to be 21 and over. Um, I'm gonna be pouring alcohol, so that might be fun to watch. Um, and drinking. Yeah. So, 10 minutes before it ends, go get a drink from be a good one. So, so come out. Yeah. Register. Like you said, it's limited to 125 guests. You get a you get some beer, food, beer, and wine. And then you get to walk down the boardwalk. hopefully see some fireflies, hear some crickets and frogs and all sorts of fun things. So, um it should be a great night.

Yeah, absolutely. All right. And uh let's see. Was there anything else? Tallahassee, you covered it. And Heritage Day, you covered it. So, great. So, I think we're good. Joseph, all hearts are satisfied. Let's adjourn to 7:31 p.m.