Remarks by Bill Carlson
67 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 3
- Play at 35:45
“Yeah, first point of order, Mr. Chair. Especially on workshop days, could you please, and nobody's done this yet, but could you please enforce the rule that we have to be called on to speak and that we don't interrupt each other? Because we're going to have probably more back and forth later, but I want to make sure that we do it in an organized way. Because just like we can't hear, the public can't hear if we're talking over each other. So just for the public, this is the fees we're paying, not impact fees, right? We're not talking about impact fees here?”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 36:18
“This is just application fee. Okay. Just to clarify that. And the law says you can have a, you said, just to repeat what you said, you can have a certain fund on top of it. reserve fund on top but we can't charge is there a certain percentage that we besides the reserve fund is there certain a Percentage kind of markup that we can charge on top of what the actual cost is or it's just it's just we charge the actual cost plus Whatever the reserve fund is We can charge the actual cost of the department Plus if you have the ability if you have cushion from where your current reserve is to where…”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 37:07
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 37:58
“Can I ask you, I know your office gets a lot of complaints because there's so much growth in our area, and you've come before us several times to talk about how you're trying to address that. right now we're talking about cost recovery with the process you have and there's a lot of money there but is is there a higher level of service that we could offer if if if customers have to trade off between speed and and cost and it is there so on set aside the the the outside services is there a way that if somebody needs to do something urgently that they could pay more? Is there like an expedited…”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 39:37
“Are we recovering any of that cost in here?”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 39:46
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 41:30
“So the thing I would just encourage you all to do in working with the consultants is my colleague pointed out that our costs are lower than the county and other cities, which you have on this chart here. um it could be that we're just more efficient and and and that we don't spend as much but the other thing is that if there are expedited services or ways that we can improve customer service i would just ask you all i know you do this already but i would ask you all to take another look at it just to see that because real estate is so much of a big part of our economic engine in our area how…”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 42:49
“And can you just tell, I know the answer, but can you just for the public tell where that, who pays that?”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 43:04
“So I think the point is that what the public would like is for us to be fair. If somebody's using a service, we charge a fair amount for the service. We're not trying to make a profit. We're just trying to charge a fair amount for the service. What the public doesn't want is to subsidize somebody else's services. And so if we can help keep property taxes low, for example, by making sure we're covering somebody else's costs, if somebody's not using a cost, they'd like to not pay for it. They'd like to not subsidize somebody else's costs. So anyway, thank you. Councilman Miranda.”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 50:26
“Could I just add in a minute ago, we talked about a fire fires of our involvement. So if you look at this as a it's not an enterprise fund, but if but if you look at it as like a business within that, you also mentioned stormwater and some of the other departments. And if we should, we should maybe you're doing this already, but we should look at this as a larger service pool. And one of the ways to get our department cooperation is is financial incentives. And so if, for example, we're not doing any cost recovery at fire and they could, if they could, if there's, for example, I don't know…”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 56:07
“Can I just say one last thing? You mentioned a couple chain stores, and the chain stores employ locals, and that's great, and they use subcontractors, but we also have a lot of great independent entrepreneurs that we should support. Famous Tate is one of them, but there are a bunch of others, and it's fun going to a local store and seeing the flexibility they have in delivering things and getting them put in.”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:14:50
“I think as much as possible with all of these, we should, especially in the public hearing, show what the cost is. You said we're not going for full cost recovery. I think, except for maybe the folks who are using this, everybody else would not like to subsidize it. So if we can show what the actual cost is, that would be helpful to justify why we're doing it. Because we're not just trying to change rates just to try to get more money. We're trying to actually cover the cost because it's not fair to everybody else to subsidize things.”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:15:38
“Yeah, absolutely. So on that point also, Is there a cost recovery for the legal fees at all on these? Um, because if somebody, if somebody, um, asked for a, a review, then it's not just the, the, um, the clerk's office that looks at the legal departments looking at too, is there, I mean, what's the cost of that? It must, that must be really high.”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:33:27
“Not a problem. One thing, and maybe this is for the consultant, but it would be helpful if you could go back to the last time these fees were increased and look at what the subsidy was each year by the general fund. It's probably... a very large number, but it would be helpful to show what the rest of the public, how much the rest of the public subsidized it. I don't know what the number is, so let's say it's $10 million since 2001. That's a lot of money that the rest of us subsidized when we didn't need these services. I think it would help to talk about it.”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:46:06
“I think that's a significant question because the last time or one of the times that we talked about this. It was tight. The administration slow walked it and at the end blamed us for deciding at the last minute when actually they had delayed it for months.”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:02:31
“Yeah, just on these two issues. To the last one, we had the situation, Station 24, what was it, 15 million that we allocated, and then we found out the next year that they just didn't spend it, and then they spent it on something else and didn't tell us that when we moved it, that we'd moved it to something else. We also have the example of Tampa Union Station, which was actually a CRA project, but they decided just not to do it because the city owns it. And it's been funded for six or seven years, and it took most of that time for them to even start. Same thing with Jackson House, where it…”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:11:46
“Yeah, and I think Councilmember Moran's point is good about who's going to review the IG. I think that the overriding issue, though, is in the first few points on this clandestine sheet, we're calling it, but it is who has control of the city attorney's office. Right now we have a city attorney who seems very even with all of us. But we've had city attorneys who don't act in the best interest of city council. Actually, it's one of the letterhead, Lisa.”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:12:20
“Yeah. And if we had control of the city attorney, if we had the right to fire the city attorney, and I think we should have the right to fire the mayor's senior staff, we should have fired the communication director and the political director already years ago. But I mean, there's just been too much political chaos in this city, and the taxpayers should not be paying for it. People on the outside want to do it, that's fine, but not people being paid. And I mean, an example in the city attorney's office, 2018, and we found this out by accident in like 2020, 2018, a city attorney wrote a…”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:17:41
“we put this on the ballot and the voters voted on it and now they're trying to change it back. And so this has already been decided.”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:17:55
“Can I just add one more? Yes, sir. To the point about the police chief also, that was put in there also intentionally because the last administration, I think this administration too, I can't remember exactly, had people as interim forever. Yep. And I think one of them was the CFO during the last administration. It was a great person, but they should have been appointed. And I actually talked to... Chief Owens and Bennett about making the interim chief permanent. He's got to know that whoever wins may pick somebody else, but for the sake of the community, I don't think we should have an…”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:31:11
“I was trying to find the exact language. I voted against taking away the residency requirement. I know the majority of you all voted for it. When it went to the ballot language, the way it was translated, the effect of it is that it asks the public, do you think that city council and the mayor should be required to be residents of the city? It was completely misleading. I only I noticed that by the time it was too late I went to the city attorney at the time and said this is biased. It shouldn't be allowed and The only remedy I had was to file an individual lawsuit to stop it, which I didn't…”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:42:00
“Yeah, I think whether it's by ordinance or resolution or by charter, I think it needs to be a formula so that future city councils don't have to vote on it again. I feel, and like Council Member Ertecht said, this is gonna affect the next city council, not us. I'm termed out. It's not going to affect me at all. By the way, the PACs that ran negative ads against me last time ran three ways of direct mail saying I had raised my salary, and I got elected by 60%, so it doesn't matter anyway. But I believe in good government, and if we were earning $52,000 or something like that before, that's not…”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:46:39
“very good only because i speak another language uh i saw councilman carlson first and i'll get back to you yeah the only thing is um if you i i would rather leave the full-time part-time thing out but if you um if if if it's in there it needs to be not not exclusive because”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:47:43
“And even if we change it to $100,000, any of the seven of us can earn easily double that in the private sector. So it's not that anybody's trying to make money off it or upgrade their job. Any of us could earn more than that.”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 3:11:11
“Yeah, I just wanted to add, if HR, the Ethics Commission, and the auditor and the city attorney all report to the mayor, then they all can be weaponized as they have been against city council. And so we have to change that. They should represent the city, not the mayor. The mayor needs to have control of administration But when HR refuses to do an investigation, when something is happening against city council or city council has made aware of something that the mayor's office is doing, then that's wrong. We need to make sure we have some controls. And I'll come back to that in a minute. I…”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026