City Commission Meetings - Regular Meeting

I'm calling to order the City Commission meeting for June 23rd at 4.30 p.m. We are going to start out with an opening prayer by Reverend Dr. Gregory Thomas, pastor of Greater Bethel AME Church, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance led by Commissioner Brian Granger. Please stand.

Good afternoon. Let us pray. Most gracious and eternal God, It's on this day that we come giving you praise, giving you honor, giving you glory. We thank you for this time. We thank you for this meeting. And as we gather together to study the plan that was already in process of the meeting of the minds, we ask right now that you touch every mind, every heart, every soul, that whatever this meeting is going to be, the decisions that's going to be made, we ask right now that you intervene and let it be the way that you have already ordained it to be. And we know that when it's in your hands, everything will be all right. We ask you to bless us, continue to keep us, continue to hold us in the arms of your bosom. This we ask in the matchless name of your darling son, our elder brother, Jesus the Christ. And every heart of God said amen, amen, and amen.

Please call the roll.

Mayor Branch.

Present.

Commissioner Street is not here this evening. Commissioner Hughes.

Here.

Commissioner Lucas. Yes, here. Commissioner Granger.

Present.

Mayor, you have a quorum.

Thank you. Any additions, deletions, or modifications from today's agenda?

Yes, Mr. Mayor, commissioners. We got one from staff under city manager. First item, would like to discuss the Destination Panama City snorkeling reef and the city providing some direct support for that.

You're looking to add that?

I would like to add that under city manager. First one.

13A? I'm sure, yes. 13A1.

All right, on motion that we approve 13A1 for discussion of the DPC.

Second.

Any discussion? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes? Yes. Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Commissioner Granger? Yes. Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 4-0.

Any announcements? No more? All right. With summer in full swing, Panama City is bustling with events, activities, and projects, making this the perfect time to stay informed. Sign up for city alerts to receive updates straight to your inbox or phone. From road closures and project updates to boil water notices and more, we'll keep you informed year-round. Scan the QR code on the screen or visit PanamaCity.gov to sign up today. The city will host a community meeting tomorrow, Wednesday evening, June 24th, beginning at 5.30 p.m. at the MLK Junior Rec Center, a MLK Corridor Development Community Meeting. City representatives, along with Ward 2 Commissioner Janice Lucas, will gather input from residents regarding the MLK corridor development. This meeting is a continuation of the session held in May. However, the primary focus this time is to receive feedback directly from those who live and work within the MLK corridor community. There are two more pre-budget planning and priorities workshops happening soon. The first one will be Monday, June 29th, and the second will take place on Thursday, July 9th. These pre-budget workshops give the commission and city staff an opportunity to meet early in the fiscal year 2027 budget process to discuss direction and priorities. Both meetings will be held at 4.30 p.m. in Room 10 at City Hall and also livestreamed on our website. July is shaping up to be a busy month in the city. Please reference the city calendar on our website at panamacity.gov for information about upcoming public meetings so you can stay informed and involved in our evolving city. We're halfway through the summer, and the fun continues at the MLK Junior Rec Center. Registration is open for all of the summer 2026 camps, programs, and special events, with scholarships available for many programs. Scan the QR code on the screen or visit panamacity.gov to register and view the full summer lineup. Join the city on July 2nd at the Garden Club for a free community event celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States and showcasing the proposed Memorial Trail project at Bay Memorial Park. Attendees can explore project plans, learn about the trail's key features, and meet representatives from partner organizations involved in its development. Enjoy free food, music, games, and trivia as we come together to celebrate America and imagine the future of our community spaces. The event begins at 4.30 p.m. All city offices will be closed beginning at 2 p.m. on Thursday, July 2nd, and all day on Friday, July 3rd, in observance of Independence Day. Garbage collection services and trash collection services will not take place on Friday, July 3rd. Regular business hours will resume on Monday morning, July 6th. Celebrate America's 250th year at the July 4th Salute to Freedom Festival on July 4th, beginning at 4 p.m. at the downtown Panama City Marina. There will be patriotic festivities, family-friendly activities, and a breathtaking fireworks display. This family-friendly event is free and open to the public. To learn more, visit panamacity.gov or destinationpanamacity.com. Again, all of this information can be found on our website at panamocity.gov.

Mr. Mayor? Yes, we missed the approval of the minutes, so can I get a motion to accept the meeting minutes? So moved. Second. Thank you, Commissioner Hughes, for catching that. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes?

Mm-hmm.

Commissioner Lucas? Yes.

With a mouthful of water.

Commissioner Granger?

Yes.

Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 4-0.

Good catch, Commissioner Hughes. Moving into quasi-judicial hearings. During quasi-judicial proceedings, the Commission will hear evidence and render a decision regarding the matter presented based on the evidence received. The parties before the Commission and the public are entitled to present evidence, such as documents and witnesses, etc., and cross-examine witnesses. All parties and witnesses will be under oath and the entire proceedings recorded. The Commission is not bound by the strict rules of evidence and may consider any evidence which it deems relevant and trustworthy. Any member of the Commission may ask questions of the parties or the witnesses. Since quasi-judicial proceedings are legal in nature, everyone is expected to adhere to proper courtroom decorum and etiquette. Any comments or objections should be directed to the Mayor. The burden of proof in a quasi-judicial proceeding rests with the applicant. Therefore, the applicant has the opportunity to address the Commission last after all public participation and before the Commission deliberates and votes.

At this time, for item 6A through 6C, I will swear the staff who will remain under oath during the entire proceeding. Also, if there are any additional parties that intend to speak, if they could stand and be sworn at the same time. If later you feel like you would like to speak during the public hearing, that is fine. And we will swear you when you come up. But if you could stand and be sworn for those that intend to speak. Please stand and raise your right hand. Do you swear and affirm that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Yes. Thank you. At the appropriate time, if there are any ex parte communications that would bear on your decisions, I would ask you to disclose those so inquiry could be made, if necessary, by one of the parties. Thank you, Mr. Manager.

Item 6A is the second and final of two public hearings on Ordinance 3303.1, an ordinance amending the future land use map of the City to reflect the land use designation of general commercial use for a property located at Grace Avenue with parcel ID 14327-000-000. As background information, the applicant has requested a future land use change to general commercial and a rezoning to General Commercial 2 or GC2. This item was previously reviewed by the Planning Board on May 11th of this year. The Planning Board recommended approval unanimously, but the condition that the owner consider the effect of their commercial uses on the neighborhood and any restrictions that the Commission can place on the property. Staff concurred with this recommendation and vote by the Planning Board. The following documents are enclosed in your packet. Ordinance 3303.1, the staff analysis, report, recommendation, and public comments, the adopted map series, including aerial, future land use, and zoning maps, as well as the survey. Staff recommendation to the Director of Development Services is that the City Commission conduct the second and final public hearing and then approve the ordinance. Mr. Mayor?

Yes, this is a public hearing. If you wish to speak about item 6A, please come forward. If anyone wants to speak about item 6A, please come forward. Seeing no public comments, I'm closing public comments. I will entertain a motion to accept.

So moved.

Second. Any discussion? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes? Yes. Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Commissioner Granger? Yes. Mayor Branch?

Yes.

Motion passes 4-0.

Commission has adopted ordinance 3303.1, an ordinance amending the comprehensive plan future land use map of the city to reflect a land use designation of general commercial for a parcel of land located at Grace Avenue, Panama City, Florida, providing for repealer, severability, and effective date.

Item 6B is the second and final of two public hearings on Ordinance 3303.2, an ordinance amending the zoning map of the city to reflect the zoning designation of GC2 for a property located at Grace Avenue, Parcel ID 14327-000-000. This is the same address as the prior item. Staff recommendation through the Director of Development Services that the Commission conduct the second and final public hearing and approve the ordinance. Mr. Mayor?

Yes, this is the public hearing. If you wish to speak about item 6B, please come forward. Yes, sir.

Hey, my name is Frankie Pinto, address 801 West 13th Street. I appreciate the opportunity to address the mayor and the city commissioners. There's been a recent update at the Planning Commission at 1.30 today concerning the topic I'm going to be addressing. They just passed their ordinance for the six-month AI Data Center moratorium with an option for a six-month extension.

We're on item 6B, which is the first of two public hearings for rezoning.

Huh, Harvey?

We're on item 6B. Oh, B? I thought you said C. No. 6B.

Oh, B. Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry. Yeah, and our planning board didn't meet today for the record. Okay. So I'm not sure.

Planning commission.

Not ours.

Anyone else want to discuss 6B specifically? Anyone here for 6B? Seeing no public comments, I'm closing public comments. I will entertain a motion. I move. Do I have a second?

Second.

Any discussion? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes? Yes. Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Commissioner Granger?

Yes.

Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 4-0.

Commission has adopted Ordinance 3303.2, an ordinance zoning a parcel of land located at Grace Avenue, Panama City, Florida, having approximately .482 acres, General Commercial 2, providing for severability and providing for an effective date.

Item 6C is the second and final of two public hearings on Ordinance 3304, an ordinance amending the zoning map of the City to reflect the zoning designation of Neighborhood General or NG for a property located at Magnolia Avenue, Parcel ID 18067-000-000. As background information, the applicant has requested rezoning to Neighborhood General. This item was previously reviewed by the Planning Board on May 11th of 2026. The Planning Board recommended approval unanimously. Staff concurs. The following documents are enclosed. Ordinance number 3304, the staff analysis report and recommendation, the adopted map series including aerial future land use and zoning maps, and the survey. Staff recommendation from the Director of Development Services is that the Commission conduct the second final public hearing and approve the ordinance. Mr. Mayor?

This is a public hearing. If you wish to speak about item 6C, please come forward. Anyone on comments related to 6C? Seeing none, I'm closing public comments and I entertain a motion. So moved. Second. Any discussion? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes?

Yes.

Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Commissioner Granger?

Yes.

Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 4-0.

The Commission has adopted Ordinance 6C. It's an ordinance zoning a parcel of land located at Magnolia Avenue, Panama City, Florida, having approximately .707 acres, neighborhood general, providing for severability and providing for an effective date.

We are now in audience participation. You have three minutes to discuss anything on the agenda for the rest of the day. As a reminder, we have town halls on Saturday where we have open discussions and we're happy to talk about data centers or anything you'd like to discuss. There is no agenda for those town halls, but in these meetings, we keep everything to the agenda. So if you have any commentary on the rest of the agenda, now would be the time to come forward and discuss it. Anyone want to discuss the rest of the agenda? Yes, ma'am. I knew you were going to come on down. Good afternoon or evening. Good afternoon.

How's everyone today?

Doing great.

I know it's hot out there. It's only 120 degrees. It is hot.

I may not come back out of my house until September. Anyway, Brenda Lewis-Williams, 2748 Oak Hammock Drive. I have a couple of questions about some things. Discussion of this collaboration with and potential consolidation of services provided, item 9A. There needs to be, and this is under the mayor's report, We need more information about what you're talking about because we don't know what you're talking about until you present it at the meeting, which does not allow us to research what you're talking about or not talking about. Commissioner Hughes, under Commissioner Reports, is going to discuss listing and selling of city-owned property. I recognize this is legal, so I have no contention with that. After I did my research, as well as commission fees, what I have contention with is whether you're going to cap the commission fees to the realtor. That's my concern. Depending upon the dollar amount of the property, you're talking about a very significant commission fee. Those money should go into our already weak coffer of the city as opposed to somebody else's pocket. 13D, is this a change order? Is it worded such that you don't see it as a change order? No. Okay. One of the things I've discovered about Burke in their practices, doesn't matter whether you all agree with me or not, there's an old saying in the community, you nickel and dime me to death. Burke change orders Panama City to debt. Now, if this is used as a guise for another change order, I don't know, because we can disguise stuff with language when we get ready to. But I think that these need to be investigated a little bit further and see what they're doing. I know Mr. Jones gave a report on what some monies were being reapportioned to, reallocated to, but this sounds like a change order to me.

Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Public comments for the rest of the agenda? Seeing none, I am closing public comments. Moving to the consent agenda, which is items 8A through 8I. Do I have a motion to accept 8A through 8I?

I motion to approve.

Second?

RET Technologies Inc. for transitioning from the software.

Which item is that?

That's 8D. And we're doing the national background check as well. How many volunteers have we had come forward for the parks? I read my mind. Come on down.

Keith Meyer, Director of Parks and Recreation. We've had over 60 volunteers through the program since we implemented it about two months ago. Some of those we've done the background checks through our HR department, but that's just not a the proper way to do it, so we're doing the NCSI as our .

Do we pay for those background checks? We do. That's good news, 60 people, I like that.

And all those wouldn't go through the background check. Some of those would be for beautification projects where we don't need a background check. The ones that we background check would be specifically those that would be working with children or vulnerable adults. And those right now are about 10 to 15.

So you've had 60 volunteers in total, roughly, and about 10 to 15 of them are working with children, and so therefore they need a background check, or they've already had one. Correct. You're just looking for a faster way to execute. Yes.

And is this system also going to be used for if you're going to hire somebody at MLK, sir?

No.

They're working with children in general.

Those would still go through our normal background check process with our human resources department. This would just be specifically for background for volunteers and potentially contractors that might be working in our athletics department.

So help me connect the dots on why two different background systems. or checks instead of one system?

The process through that HR does is internal. And we have our PD department. And to ask them to do this volume would put an undue burden on them. So this would be a way for us to have that internalized.

I'm assuming it's because HR has an HRM software that they're already using that has many, many things tied to it. And when somebody becomes an employee of the city, they're able to go through a background check as part of that process. We could probably just check some box, and it just does all the things that it's supposed to do. To incorporate a volunteer who's not an employee of the city, I could see that would pose a challenge into an HRM system that's not set up for volunteers.

Any discussion, please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes? Yes. Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Commissioner Granger? Yes. Mayor Brant? Yes. Motion passes 4-0.

Thank you.

We are on the mayor's report. Awesome. Okay, so we had a workshop. And in workshops, we cannot vote. And staff asked us for, they were kind of looking for a direction in that meeting. And we couldn't because in a workshop, you can't vote. And so part of our jobs, I think, obviously, we know the public thinks that we walk into the department so we can go. no yellow paper, green paper. And we don't, we set policies and we set policies for what we believe and then staff takes those policies and implements those. And so I, you know, Jonathan and I discussed, you know, how do we actually bring some clarity for staff of the budgetary meeting? And we talked about a resolution. And as I talked to other cities around the county, they are in similar discussions. And they're framing their discussions solely around consolidation efforts. And in the meeting, we threw out a lot of ideas, a whole bunch of them. In fact, I even said, I want to hear all the things. And a lot of the items probably couldn't get done before the end of budget season. But what I'd like to have is a resolution so that staff knows the vision of the board and the tasks. And so that was my attempt. I'm not saying my resolution is perfect. I didn't want to focus solely on consolidation efforts. My resolution was, hey, if there are partners, if there are churches or military volunteers, I want to know our options. You know, we don't work in these departments. We don't know, you know, how to run these departments. And what I want to see and I think what the taxpayer is demanding at this point of us is to have these conversations. And you've seen that across Florida is citizens are demanding to have these conversations of how their money is spent. And so that's what I'm trying to do is have conversations of collaboration and give staff, you know, a vision for it.

Mr. Mayor, just as the first draft that's in here is actually from Lynn Haven. I know Ms. Lewis-Williams asked a question, but there were actually a couple of attachments with the agenda that kind of showed what you wanted to discuss. Correct.

One of them is Lynn Haven's. Chris Leifert took that over. And then the other one is a resolution that I'm not an attorney, but I just was thinking about all the different things. I want to just know what the opportunities are, and I'd hate to narrow staff down on saying this is the only thing we want to see when we just want to have a conversation. And how often I report back and how we carry the conversation forward, I don't know. But just trying to bring some clarity.

So, Mayor, I've given some thought to your resolution to the discussion at our workshop. It was then I proposed the idea of a summit or a place and a space where we can sit together and have these conversations. And I've shared with my colleagues this afternoon a proposal very draft name kind of government efficiency, regional collaboration and shared services, recommendation for a community and stakeholder summit. I think we can reach out to our colleagues Florida State University and Gulf Coast State College to work with us to facilitate such a day. My concern about sending staff to have the conversations and each of us having the conversations is that it's going to be a rather convoluted game of telephone because we won't all be having the same conversation at the same time. And with a summit we can have key people in community and all who want to sit and be a part of it to kind of look at this. There are these kinds of approaches that have been done in other cities in the county and what I was actively facilitating With Kettering Foundation, I was part of a city-states regional series of workshops like this for Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas region. And so I think there's value in doing an approach. And I've just given a rough draft of how we could frame that, but this is not anything specifically tied to the way it's outlined here. But I would like feedback from colleagues about the process and approach. to have the kinds of conversations that you're requesting.

Anyone else?

When you say consolidation, is that inside City Hall? Is that with other cities? Help me out on... We're trying to save money. So when I hear consolidation, I hear saving money. Is that all of us trying to buy equipment together, trying to buy? Yeah.

And that's what you're, I guess that's the question. The answer is, I don't really know. Cause I don't even know what all equipment we have. It's not like I have, I've not requested a list of every piece of equipment and I don't know what the County has either. And I think, and so the answer is, I don't know. And I think I share in commissioner Lucas's concern of like, We're all having different conversations at times, and we all come here with different information. And I mentioned that even in the meeting, I was like, well, maybe one of us goes to these meetings, but I think there's some initial homework that staff could do of checking with different cities going, Hey, what do you guys want? And others, if someone said, Hey man, we don't want to share whatever equipment is cool. Noted. Let's note that down. That's not a part of the conversation, but there might be some homework to be done before we have this level of discussion because we don't want people to show up empty handed where they're like, we're here, and we're like, what are you doing? And we're like, all right, cool. So I do agree that I don't want us to have little bits of information, but I also don't want to even know what the conversations are to be had. I've never done this before.

So Janice, does your summit include the colleges, but also other governments? Are we all trying to come to, is that how you're?

Well, to do something of this nature, we need someone to frame the process. So that's why I suggested our colleagues at the state college and university. And there are those who are well-versed in community to put some sort of a deliberative stakeholder summit together. But you can see on here, I've included that we need to have those other partners you've referenced, stakeholders at the table to have those discussions. And to your point, Mayor, preliminary work by staff. would certainly help draft and frame the topics of discussion such that maybe it's a survey that goes out and the other governing bodies say we would be interested in to narrow the conversation so we kind of come there knowing what everyone wants to talk about and we don't spend 30 minutes or an hour on something that we're not ever going to get to the same place with.

So, and part of this even is privatization. So this is opportunity for departments to say, gosh, we don't really want to do this service anymore. We want to see it privatized or maybe that's even, we could set even through policy to force staff anytime they bring us something to buy or to say, okay, wait, no, what is the privatization of this? And that's a forced process on every, every time they do something. So that kind of notes your kind of stance on things. This part of this conversation is a staging site for solid waste. That's going to require, you might find that all these other cities go, oh my gosh, we're so glad that someone is now talking about this and we all could save some money by not driving to steal. Well, the county says we got some land for it. Who's going to put in? So, you know, I don't know what the conversations are because we don't work in the day to day. Right. And so it's really hard for us to come in and say, you should do this when we don't know everything that they do.

So. So I would never be against either one of these efforts. I always want what is best, what is the best way for us to stretch the taxpayer dollar. I do think that it's a great idea to ask others, are you all interested in this? I think that's a good start. I think that's where we should start, is we should tell staff, hey, we don't exactly know what this is going to look like, but for an efficiency meeting, summit, whatever we want to call it, would you be willing to come and sit down with us and talk to us about potential gains. When I think through this, I think through You know, the cities exist, municipalities exist to provide services for those that live inside those municipalities. Because the county, while the county does a great job, the county can't be there everywhere at the same time, right? And so the idea is, is that we have a police force because we want faster service than the county could provide us. And they're not knocking the county by any means. And the same thing while we do fire. We do fire because we want faster fire service. We're willing to pay for that. And again, not knocking Bay County Fire, they do a great job, but they've got a pretty large geographic area to cover. And they're limited on resources just like we are. Anytime we can... ask another agency hey is there a way that we can partner and then we come out of that with a partnership or an efficiency is great as long as we are still providing services to those in the city otherwise why have a city if that makes sense so That's really all I have to say about it. But yeah, I think we should start with just asking the question, hey, do y'all want to do this? And if we get enough municipalities and the county wants to do it, then I think we should schedule it.

And I would say a letter from the mayor or a combined letter from the mayor or city manager with that request could be the first step and engage those who are interested in planning committee to just sit down and hammer out what we would do at a meeting.

And then we come back and have a full workshop meeting summit thing where we ask them all the questions and apprehensions.

And they ask us. Yeah.

And maybe even at some point very soon the public asks questions too because it's their services and their money and ours personally. Parliamentarian, what's the most efficient way to bring all this feedback forward? Is it a resolution? Is it a letter from the mayor authorized by the city commission? What is the best way to move forward with clarity?

The, uh, I think a letter would be appropriate, you know, uh, as far as this came up and this is what we're thinking about. I think it would be good, uh, that the letter come from the mayor, um, and two other mayors to the other mayors and the chairman and the county. Okay. And, and the, yes, yes. The chairman of the county commission. I think that would be appropriate. And then it might be helpful for us to sketch out a draft and then we, and when we circulate it, it would get it to all of you. If there's any, I don't anticipate there being an issue about trying to just succinctly talk through what we've talked about here, an invitation to an open forum, to have a dialogue about consolidation of services. This topic has come up from time to time over the years. Not so much consolidating from one city into another city, but just consolidating services. How can, how can cities work together to provide the same level of service at a cheaper cost? So it, I think that would be the most appropriate.

Should the letter have a timeline of like, hey, the next 30 days we want to have conversations so that we set the

the parameters of how we engage and how i don't think we would have to vote on it we always yeah somebody up here is a linguist i don't know who that might be but that might be that letter can get done and get signed and out so um sooner than later is the end end result to have a

meeting with all the parties or they get dot just get a response are you interested in pursuing something i think staff should have some basic conversations so that we know what questions to ask them before you know running staff should meet um and discuss things and then bring us back options that have done any of this before and so okay i want them to work efficiently and clearly and and i don't think they have to package anything up perfectly but it's sort of like hey here's and then we have an in-person workshop or something or a summit where we all ask more questions yeah i'm sorry as an idea just to to get something uh moving maybe it's a little summary of what was talked about

And then a note that that the city manager will be contacting their city manager to start a dialogue for next steps and then we'll report back to our respective city commissions. Is that an appropriate approach?

Perhaps I would add that to get the feedback on what topics we might have in our first summit meeting. Correct. And so my concern here is one that the message we send to our staff, the city of Panama City, is not one of fear. and to our citizens that we are opening this dialogue. And there's been, since I guess the dawn of time, but certainly in the city of Panama City, concerns that things get decided before they get to the dais and people are not engaged in a part of the process. When we say efficient government, our employees hear reduction in force. And so there is the natural concern, you know, and it does affect our ability to hire people. Why would I go and put in my application at City of Panama City when I hear them just saying they're getting ready to get rid of people? That could be the interpretation. And from some of the constituents I've heard for from that is the interpretation. And so my suggestion here is to Take it slow in terms of formulating what we're going to talk about, what is being considered, and know that it's a dialogue to get to

action, which I know you're very concerned. Totally. And, you know, consolidation doesn't mean just up towards the county. You know, even the city of the city of Tallahassee, they actually run the fire for the county. So sometimes counties consolidate into the city of the city. So it's a it's a conversation. It's a starting point. And so certainly I understand the apprehensions of staff. And so, you know, we want to move move clearly and effectively. Do you need a vote from us to authorize the letter? think it would be appropriate i would agree i would entertain a motion that the city manager uh writes a letter that we have previously discussed engaging other communities on topics of collaboration so with one correction i'd like to say that it comes from the mayor me too yeah but he's right he's right i'll sign it i'm going to give him carte blanche to write the letter So the city, the staff will draft a letter and let all of us look at it first. And I will sign it once everyone feels comfortable with it.

Let's keep in mind this conversation is around budgeting. Is that right? That's happening. So 30, 60 days. This week has to happen. We have to get it back. And I think that letter ought to discuss that we're working in times of the essence and that we are prepared to move as quickly as everybody else. Otherwise, we're going to have this conversation next year.

I agree. So should we put a we'd like to know just having some initial discussions with the next three weeks? Can the letter go out next week and have, say, the next three weeks have discussions?

We could have the letter out by the end of the week.

Okay. Is that sure? So moved. Yeah, yeah. Do I have a second? Yeah. Motion. You just said so. I moved. I'll second that. Okay. Any other discussion? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes? Yes. Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Commissioner Granger? Yes. Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 4-0.

Yes, sir. Commissioner Hughes, you are up. Item 10A.

Yes. Thank you, Mayor. So in our quest to... to take this land that we have and do something with it. We have a disposition plan with Panama City that Sheila Ware uses in the housing department. And that plan really is designed for affordable housing and the management of getting there, but not necessarily the disposition of these lots. And so when I originally did this, and I volunteered to do this, this is round three, and I'll keep doing it as long as I can, but I think we're getting closer. I've tried to take this and listen to the commission on we need to not make it as cumbersome, make it easy for the citizen, but make it more driven about disposition rather than management. But management has to be part of the deal because we still have the affordable housing component that needs to be part of this. So what I've put before you guys is purely for reading, okay? And there's nothing set up here. There's nothing set here that says this is right or wrong. You're going to get an email on all this. It is a way to start with the purpose of we need a process. And shortly after our later agenda, we're going to talk about Third Street. Third Street's in Millville. It's one lot. We spent 30 minutes the other day talking about a $25,000 lot, and we didn't get anywhere. And if I may for a second, in my world, when I sell a house, 13 people go to work. And if those 13 people don't have the same process and the same plan, we're never gonna get the buyer and the seller to the end, okay? And I would hate for the city, this commission, the staff, and the citizens to have to try to muddle through what is now, after I've taken all the lots out that we can't sell, it's around 180 lots, to try to do those on a case-by-case basis, because I think everybody in this room would be dead by the time we got it done. But more importantly, it would be less of a transparent way to do this process. It would be a harder and more arduous process for the staff and the citizen. My goal is to create a plan that gets the commission out of this, and we don't have to vote on every deal that happens. There's no reason for that. It slows it down. So what I've done is I've created this in a purpose or principles, a method of which we get rid of. So we want to be predictable. We want to be transparent. We want to be consistent and market-oriented. But most importantly, we want to be efficient. Time is money. And when people come before us or go before the planning board most of the time, there's an interest meter ticking. And it's our job, I believe, as a city, as a staff, as the departments, to help facilitate that process to move along as quickly as possible, as efficiently as possible, so that that interest meter is not hurting that person a lot. If we keep that thought in mind, every person that comes before us is a customer. They're a citizen, but they're a customer first as well. So we want to be efficient with them. Property categories. Residential infill. Those would be, in my opinion, Market rate sales. Housing and opportunity sites. Those are going to be your workforce programs. Those are going to be your affordable housing. Commercial and mixed use, just what it means. And then strategic sites. And I'll give you an example of a strategic site here in a minute, and it's the Harmon Avenue tab when we look at the sites here in a second. But here are the categories. Typical use, preferred disposition plan. So infill, market sale, or builder partnership. Currently, we have four builders that have been building in Glenwood on their own dime with no help from the city, no help from anybody, and they've been taking all the risk. To me, a builder partnership could start with... Those guys probably get some preferential treatment up front because they've been taking the risk. And it's not fair for me to come in as a builder and be able to get some help from the city and come in and start building next door to you and have less risk. So I just throw that out there just as a thought. Housing opportunity sites, partnerships, and the assistance program. This is where affordability comes, and the affordable housing and SHIP come into play. And that can happen there or on commercial sites. That can also happen. And then finally, there's the strategic sites I'll get to, and that's one in Millville that we can talk about. Market sale and disposition plan, residential commercial. Builder partnerships we can do. Ground leases we haven't talked about. But when you have a ground lease, you can create property taxes. We can still control the site, but at the same time, not control it, we still own the site, but we also get property taxes off of it. We don't control it, but we own the site still. Now, this is my bigger shift here, guys, the builder-lender partnership. Right now, we are very much centered on, we qualify, we run it, we manage it, and we tell everybody, How it's going to go. What I'd like to do is get the lenders involved and the builders involved earlier, and Sheila and her group become a manager of the money, an overseer of the project, because I suspect, I hope, as many people have called me about these lots, once we have it in place, the buyers are going to start coming in as well, and we're going to be a little inundated. But by getting the local lenders in up front, and Sheila and I have talked about maybe a preferred lender list, having credit counseling up front, speeding the process up. That way everybody knows up front where they're going from the lending side. At the end of it, I want to encourage private investment. There's a lot of people out there, and I know this from just talking about this now, a lot of people want to help and spend their dollars to build these sites, expand the housing and redevelopment, and then return underutilized property to productive use. Not every site is affordable. Not every site is for a house. Not every site is mixed use. So what I've done is categorized. Can we go to the spreadsheet, please? What I've done is separate them out by zoning. I will follow my store and say I missed on this new zoning that we have. Purple, 69. Yellow, 15. You'll see these in a second. I've categorized them in green, but they're all by zoning or use. Let's go to the next tab, please. Right there. These are, can you scroll it up, please? Oh, it is up. These are all of what the city owns that can't be sold. It's retention ponds, parking lots, wells, things of that nature. Now, there are some retention areas that we can actually sell. Kind of pretty. Not going to get into that right now. Bad idea. But notice there are, well, I can't get it to move. There's 68 of those. We're going to take those out and not consider those. Next one, please. Harmon. This is a strategic site. The corner of Harmon and 6th Street, across from Allen's family's car wash. That's a development site, folks. If you sold one of those lots, that whole development opportunity is then messed up. So I've pulled all that out because we can market that. We can find a partnership. We can do something there. All of that goes away, but it's all in one thing. That's a master plan community for you. All right, next one. Detached single family. This is the Croc 7. These are all the residential lots that the city has in various places. There's some of it here is Horizon, and that's all one subdivision. So rather than me say, these are all good for affordable, and these are good for market rate. I left it open, but I'd like for y'all to look through it and say, all right, let's pick some market rate. Let's pick some affordable. But the lion's share of this needs to be affordable, in my opinion, because we're taking the other big pieces and making the market rate, which is gonna bring in some bigger dollars involving bigger projects. MLK. The next one, please. Panama City owns more land on MLK from 231 to 6th Street than anybody else. That has to change. And because Commissioner Lucas has been so diligent in getting, and the mayor as well, getting MLK talked about in the corner or back in the conversation, And we also have the corner of 15th and MLK as that development site. I took all that out and put it in one tab as well. Let's focus all of our attention on that in one area. It can be different things, but there's no point in trying to say, well, what are we going to do over here? That's all one area that we can come up with ideas. Millville, same way. Can you go to that one? This is another strategic site. 309 Elm Avenue is a three acre site, but it has lots all around it. That's another site that if you sell one, it can mess up the whole thing, but if you sell it all together, you've got a great development site that could be market rate and affordable. There's a lot that could happen there. Okay, so again, All just grouped this way, not for any other reason than zoning first and project second. And then large sites. The last one, because I forgot to delete the red tab. These are sites that are the College Avenue, the one that keeps showing up on the agenda. That's a big site. East Avenue was a big site that we bought. These are sites that can or cannot be busted up. They can be partnerships. We can do ground leases. these are all wide open for ideas but at the same time they i think if we're going to do some quick market rate sales this is where you do it and i'll give you an example the 805 east this uh east history uh east avenue when the lady medicine unsolicited offer from what we paid for the property ma'am you can you can take that out of the equation and it's i think it's down on 805 northeast avenue right there number 11. You can put some money in the bank right now. But this would be an area if you want to do some quick sales, I think you pick on these because you can get some bigger numbers, some market rate numbers, and fund our program easier right now. So what I'd like to do, and this will be up for the public to look at and go through, what I'd like for y'all to do is review it. It'll be sent to y'all this afternoon because third grade level here, it takes them a minute to get all this done. And y'all just talk about it and maybe we talk about it in the next virtual meeting or in the next commission meeting. But without this, without having a plan, without classifying the lots, without saying we want to do this, It's been my experience. We're going to end up right where we are right now. And I just think, I really, really, and I even said to the staff yesterday, I would be of the opinion that if the commission couldn't get together on adopting a process, then we table it until a commission that can, because it's going to be that much of a disaster. Look at what one lot did to us at the last meeting. so um it's there for the reading and the question from the taking in the next one feel free to email them ask but um i just i submit to you this but i think it's closer than what we've been on this disposition based on the last conversation we had i love it a lot of homework i appreciate it um i don't i think it's great um i would say that we should be thinking about the letters of intent that we have um and how we

handle those and we want to probably go after low-hanging fruit in general and all these properties and not the most complex ones or you know so and that's all just me wanting to see progress in general and so yeah i think this is great i mean first we've seen of it and we need to digest it and i'm sure right right and again this was only for giving it to you guys today and kind of go over it so i give you a 30 foot thousand view and then y'all come back and ask questions i love it

Any questions? So the way I see this is this is a store of wealth. It's a what? Store of wealth. So ways that you can hold assets, ways you can hold money, if you will, valuable assets. A lot of places, a lot of people use land. And that's what I see every time I see a list of properties that the city owns, is this is a store of wealth. And a lot of times, people like to beat us up for not having as much reserves as they think we should have. And you see that list, and you realize that we've got quite a bit of wealth stored up. What I don't want to do is just sell all of it. And now we've just converted all that land into U.S. dollars, which we're going to have to do something with. And I know Commissioner Street, he doesn't want any of it, and I don't want any of it to go into operational budget. It needs to go into reserves or it needs to go into another store of wealth. While I'm not opposed to selling property here and there, I also don't want to necessarily just jettison this store of wealth in favor of another one. So with that being said, vacant land sits there and doesn't do a whole lot for us. I realize that. We are not a commercial property business. What I would like is ground leases where we can. Obviously, that's not the one solution for everything, but where we can, ground leases make way more sense to me because it is that store of wealth now earning profit for our citizens.

Excuse me, when you say ground leases, is that how we talk about community land trusts or those?

No, just leasing the dirt for 100 years.

Yeah, ground lease would be similar to what is how the arena, the hotel and the restaurant.

We would never not own the property.

Yeah, or the city still owns the property. We're just getting a premium off of the amount of money that they're making there. and you get property taxes and you get property taxes so um i love ground leases for that that's a um you know if if any of us owned this individually we would likely turn it into like a triple in or we would you know turn it into something where we would earn money off of it maybe sell some but not necessarily sell all And that's where I would like to see us move more towards, instead of just sell, sell, sell, more, hey, let's work with somebody. Maybe we can get affordable housing under a ground lease where we actually make money off of an affordable housing arrangement. That has happened. Cities have done that. It may not be a lot, but it'd be better than what we're getting now. And it would pay dividends into the future. So a lot of times we look at this and we look at, OK, well, this piece of property might be worth, I don't know, $150,000. And we sold it today, and we got $150,000. Well, in five years, that $150,000 isn't going to go as far, right? So by holding onto it, by receiving payments from a ground lease, especially if we build in increases into that ground lease, then we can protect the citizen dollar for 100 years, 99 years or so. So anyway, that's just my two cents on it. That's where I kind of stand with this stuff.

As you all know, I'm quite concerned that we put a dent in those more than 3,000 affordable housing unit, that delta we have of need in our city, in the city of Panama City. And this is one way that we can do that. Community Land Trust, we've talked about as a way of doing that. And I don't know if you've thought about the Community Land Trust with our NSP properties. They're already rentals. If we were to get that process going, It's similar to a grand lease in that the city would own the land or the community land trust would do that. I think that's worth exploring because that builds in affordability and perpetuity because we know the land value, thus cost, is going to continue to rise and we might solve it today and 20 years there's still an affordability crisis because of the land values have gone up. Um, so am concerned and concerned about making sure we do that. I appreciate you're taking this task on and making this understandable in a way that we can, we can move forward to it. I do strongly believe we need a disposition policy, a process, that is easily explained. Everyone can read it, see it, understand it. On the unsolicited proposals, we got a chart showing that some go back three or four years. And I think this, we need to give real thought to clearing the slate in a way that says, you know, Some of this is null and void because we haven't acted on it. And how we move forward in a way that everyone has an opportunity, particularly now that the list is out. People have been asking for this. What is it that we all need? People have ideas and thoughts. And then lastly, I just want to say that we have cultivated some small scale developers who are very much interested in this as well. And I think there are some builders in the Millville Glenwood area that might be off your radar because they're smaller than the 10, 20 homes that a builder may have done.

So thank you all for all those comments because I chose to go with ground lease in this idea versus community land trust. Because it serves the same purpose of ownership, but it takes out the need for a non-profit extra staff on a ground lease. Somebody's paying a lease payment, and we're taking in accounts receivable. You're serving the same purpose there. One thing that I keep running into when it comes to affordable and rental. We, I think would have to own the rental because it's hard for me to say, Brian, I want you to go out. I'm going to give you this dirt and you go out and build a rental property, but you can't raise the rents for 10 years, but your mortgage now it's going to be X. That to me, that's a showstopper. It's not fair. The city owns that we tell ourselves that. So that's a hard one for me. And I think community land trust, they kind of live in that. We're going to be there. So I chose Groundlings for that reason. That doesn't mean it's right or wrong, it's just I wanted to keep the same ownership idea as an option in there. So thanks for jumping on that. And there's just less to do with Groundlings, I think, in terms of operation. And I told Janice, I sent it, and I'll say it again, and I drove it two days ago just to make sure. 11th Street, 6th Street, MLK, and East Avenue, that's your boundary lines. There's more new homes being built in that area of Glenwood than there are than any other area of Panama City that is already an established area than any other place in Panama City. That's awesome. And guess what? We can have even a bigger effect. We can change the landscape in the center part of Panama City if we do this right. i mean it really really because there's so much in millville and and glenwood and going back to the to the west that 11th street we really can and it's just a really cool opportunity to have so i appreciate y'all talking about this and thinking about it

So let's move to 11, but I want to quickly say that we should be thinking about giving our feedback to staff, but also pushing forward with some small incremental policy very, very soon. It might not be for everything, but think about the easiest thing that we can start, like, movement on.

Maybe prioritizing these groups.

Yeah, maybe prioritize. Exactly. And so think about that, Robbie. All right. Awesome presentation.

Thank you. We are on 11A.

Yes, thank you.

11A is the notice of vacancy on the Municipal Police Officers Pension Fund Board. The Municipal Police Officers Pension Fund Board has one vacancy. The previous board member has resigned and the term ends October 12, 2027. The Police Pension Fund Board is responsible for the investment and reinvestment of the assets of the fund, for determining all claims for retirement benefits, for exercising the sole and exclusive administration of and the proper operation of the plan. The trustees of the board perform such actuarial and accounting functions as are required by law and fulfill all other such duties as may be required by law. The board meets in regularly scheduled quarterly sessions on the first Thursday in the months of March, June, September, and December during the year. The meetings are held on the first Thursday of the respective months. The Panama City Municipal Police Officers Pension Fund Board is a five-member board. The City Commission appoints two members that must reside in the city. The Panama City Police Department elects two members. And then the board then appoints the fifth member. The commission confirms the fifth member. Members serve for four-year terms. The board is not subject to term limitations. And the applications are available at the city's website at www.panamacity.gov. And that's just a notice. We have not received any applications.

Please apply. You noted that there were different appointees. The applicant that's open, I'm sorry if I missed it, which category?

It would be the one that the commission appoints. Okay, thank you. Is that correct? Okay, just want to make sure.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Item 11B is consideration of approval of Resolution 2026-06-23.4, the First Amendment to the Capital Improvement Revenue Refunding Note Series 2025, known as the note. As background information, on December 1st, 2025, the City Commission approved the use of the note to fund the first 50 slips at the PC Downtown Arena. at an approximate cost of $5 million. Previously, the City Commission approved the use of the note to fund the bulkhead repairs at the St. Andrews Marina. Since that time, the cost estimate has been revised from $12.9 million to roughly $17 million. The bank has approved the use of the funds in an amount not to exceed $23 million. Since the funds are non-reimbursable, an amendment to the note is necessary to allow for the use of the loan proceeds. Staff recommends approval of resolution 2026-06-23.4 and the first amendment to the note and substantially the form attached.

I will entertain a motion. A motion to approve. Second. Second. Any discussion? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes?

Yes.

Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Commissioner Granger? Yes. Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes four to zero.

Commission has adopted resolution number 20260623.4, a resolution of the City Commission of the City of Panama City authorizing the execution and delivery of the form of attached First Amendment to amended and restated loan agreement between the City and Truist Commercial Equity Inc. as purchaser of the City's capital improvement revenue note series 2025, providing for repeal of inconsistent provisions, providing for severability, and providing for an effective date. Okay. I'll spend just a little time setting the background for this, but before you is I think six documents. But one is this is approval of the cost plus contract. that was attached to the lease agreement two years ago. This is the lease agreement had attached to it a cost plus contract that wasn't completed, wasn't filled in completely. And it said when the time came, it would be filled in and then approved. So the first item in your agenda pack is a memo from Clint Murphy, public works director on cost control safeguards for upland reconstruction of St. Andrews Marina. Also, he attached what he had prepared on February 2nd of this year, revised estimate of cost. I have my letter dated June 15th and I attached a previous letter I wrote on the same topic of February 2nd. There is the completed cost plus contract that is online, that was attached to the agenda online. There is the completed general conditions. The general conditions are a part of the cost plus contract. Yesterday, and I'll talk about this, I did send you an email early in the evening with five changes that were requested by the Gormans and I will go over those five briefly. The last item, we did receive an email from Commissioner Street later this morning and that has been sent to you and I believe you have a copy of that email. in front of you, but also I forgot to pass this out, but this is what you received on your email last night with the five changes. So with that background, I'll go ahead and talk about what's before you. Now the cost plus contract was discussed and approved in concept or the form in May of 2024 when the commission approved the long-term ground lease between St. Andrew Marina Partners, SAMP, for the construction and operation of the wet slips in the marina. Attached to that was the form cost plus contract. They agreed, the city and SAMHP both agreed in May of 24 that the bulkheads that were built around 1960 needed to be rebuilt. It was due to damages from Hurricane Michael and natural occurrences of erosion and corrosion The city agreed that the city had the responsibility to pay for the cost, that that was not something that the lessee would pay for. The lessee would pay to build the wet slips, but the city would pay to rebuild the the bulkhead that went around the L-shaped uplands area. And the parties agreed that there was a report that there was seven years of useful life. So they agreed that it would be done, completed by the end of 2031. Also the parties agreed that it made sense for the lessee and the Gormans who are part owners of the lessee group it made sense for them to do that work since they were also doing the wet slips and are qualified for that work. There was a control estimate that was placed two years ago in the contract, and that was before the project had been designed. And the city's consultant gave an opinion that it would cost at least $12.9 million to put in a bulkhead with a useful life of around 50 years. Both parties desired SAMHP to self-perform and since it was unknown when the work would be done, just sometime before 2031, and what the final design scope and cost would be, the parties agreed that a cost plus contract where the county, the city paid the actual cost plus a 20% contractor fee for overhead and profit would be appropriate. In the lease, it says that the city, when the city is reasonably satisfied with the design plans, permits, scope of work, and price, then it would be time to commit its work pursuant to the cost plus contractor. RJ Gorman Contracting is the contractor, and also SAMHP and the city are parties to this agreement. And RJ Gorman has submitted design plans, evidence of permits, scope of work, and then also we believe a price. The design plans are attached to the cost plus contract. The scope of work is to build what's designed. The permit is an extension of the existing permit or an exemption and it's because the new wall will be within 18 inches of the existing wall and it will then be filled with some type of cement substance and that exemption is for 18 months. It will need to be extended or a new permit obtained at the end of construction. The price is equal to the ultimate cost of work and the cost, the price is primarily derived from competitive solicitations. So the city staff is reviewed and is satisfied with design plans, with the permits and the scope of work. The permit is an exemption as I just mentioned. The staff is also satisfied with the price for the bulkhead project because the procurement process included in the cost plus contract is very similar to the city's purchasing manual. As an example, the city obviously does not do many cost plus contracts. It's used to doing lump sum contracts where the lowest responsive bidder is awarded the contract at one point in time and then payments are progress payments based upon completion of work. That is what's customary. But the way that the commissioners can be comfortable with the price of that lump sum price is that we went through the procurement process in our purchasing manual. There was advertising. Bidders were sought. responsive bidders came in with performance bonds and the end result is that the price, because of the procurement process, we believe is reasonable and it would be the lowest. So that is the same logic as far as coming up with the price pursuant to this cost plus contract. This cost plus contract requires that there are four elements of cost. First is that all subcontractors will be, there'll be invitation for bids. if they will be solicited by the city. The bid package will be prepared by the Gormans, provided to the city. The Gormans, the city advertising will seek out the lowest responsive bidder. The ultimate decision of who is hired does reside with the Gormans because that subcontractor works for the Gormans and not for the city. However, they have agreed that that ultimate decision will be based on the lowest responsive price. If for some reason we disagree with it, then we argue about it. That we say, well, you had somebody lower and they may say, oh, but they don't know how to build or we've had bad history. But we work it out. And so we would have a discussion about it. But the Gormans, they're their subcontractors. And it's unusual for the city to be hiring subcontractors for the contract. But at the same time, it is a very transparent public process. The bids come to the city. The city sees who bids. There'll be a specific place and time. And then the bids are handed to Gorman. Also, the other big element is materials, probably the largest element of this contract, and the sheet pilings. And there, we are following a process in our purchasing manual where you get quotes. And the quotes will be solicited by the city. And the Gorman's will say, well, you need to get quotes from company or vendor X, Y, and Z. We may have our own vendors we want to get quotes from. We advertise it, and then we come back, and if the quote meets the specifications, in other words, the steel is what the steel is supposed to be as designed, then it would go to the lowest cost. And that would, and it's a very, once again, the quotes are received by the city, not by the Gormans. They're then handed over. And that is a direct purchase. So there the city actually buys the materials because of sales tax savings on it. The third element in the major price in there is labor. and the labor cost around 20% or so of the contract. But the labor is based upon a state, the governments have agreed that, well, the contract requires that we pay the actual cost for the labor. And then they have further agreed that there is this index that's one of the last exhibits to the cost plus contract that they will not, that whatever the actual cost is, it will not exceed 110% of the positions that are in there and the classifications. of what's listed as far as an hourly rate. So we don't pay those rates. The rates we pay are actual, but the actual won't exceed those numbers that are in there. So that are in there in the So you have, we have subcontracts, we have materials, we have labor, and then the other one is rental rates. On the rental rates, there's a reference to a blue book. And the blue book is something that is used industry-wide as far as when you self-perform, because the contractor has purchased equipment it is entitled as part of its compensation package to be paid as if it is renting the equipment from itself. And so that is, they agreed that they would be paid 100% of the cost of that equipment rental and that's in there. There were some other provisions. added that where the city has control, I mean, the city will have somebody watching all this. This is a labor-intensive effort on the part of the city. And that if, for example, they decide to store all their equipment at St. Andrew's Marina, the city would object and say, hey, you're not using it. you hadn't used it in three months, you need to move it off and please don't bill us for rental of that equipment. But that's not the rate, that's just making sure that there's judicious use of the equipment. So we believe that with these controls that the competitive pricing will result from following this procurement process. The one mention is that there is a control estimate that was in the 2024 lease agreement form contract and then 2026. That control estimate is $14,673,805. It's the same one that was discussed. In February, it does not include the contractor's fees, so the total amount would be $17,608,000. That control estimate is primarily useful for sizing the payment and performance bond and the amount of insurance and also as a guide and monitoring the progress of the work. But it's not a guaranteed not to exceed number. Hopefully the number will be less, but the number may be more. It'll be what it actually is because as Mr. Murphy pointed out in his memo, when you have a lump sum bidder, they have to price everything on the day that the bid is submitted. And so if steel happens to be high, then they're going to have We're going to pay for high steel regardless of what happens in the market. But if steel drops, then the contractor loses. This way you can time purchases to follow your needs and hopefully also get the best competitive advantage. So that really covers the contract. And then I did send you, Mr. Joseph Pasaretti is the attorney for the Gormans. He's with the Gray Robinson firm out of Pensacola. He's been very good to work with. He's still worried about a few things. And so he said, look, we really would like clarification on these five points. And those five points are the ones that I sent to you. And I can briefly, very briefly, go over those. And one is a general condition, and this was really an oversight on my part, that we have in our contracts that we don't, that we take the risk of things that are unknown, unseen, that are concealed in the ground. And this is a dirt project. It's right next door to, and because with all the tiebacks, the entire L dock will be torn up. And so if there are unknown conditions that they can't reasonably see, that they would have an adjustment. Since it's cost plus, if it's reasonable what they're doing, they're going to get an increase in cost anyway, but it may impact the time. So I felt that was a good clarification, recommend it. Also, there's a general condition 3.18.3. It just clarifies that the contractor is required to indemnify and hold the city harmless to the fullest extent by law. That's a good provision for the city. pointing out that there's a reference now to the statute and the statute does have some limitations, but that's a limitation that goes across the board to all public construction contracts. I believe it applies whether you reference it or not, so I have no problem in referencing it. General Condition 9.5 is a clear statement that if a portion of your invoice is disputed, that the city is obligated to pay the undisputed amount. That's already provided in Florida law under the Payment Act, Florida Statute 218.735. have no problem including that as a statement. So if there's a $100,000 invoice and 10,000 is in dispute, you go ahead and pay the 90 and then you work out the 10. Another is the general conditions, 14.4.4, and that says if the city were to delete or what's called de-scope a portion of the work, then the contractor's entitled to an equitable adjustment to the contract's sum and time. And then, but whatever that adjustment is, it won't be more than 20% of the cost of work that was deleted or de-scoped. And so an example is that for whatever reason, and I'll go over, I really can't think of a reason, the city said, look, we're not going to do this portion of the work or we're going to give it to somebody else and it's $5 million worth of work that is no longer going to be done by the Gormans. And the city makes that decision, totally, totally up to you. Then the city, Gorman's would say, oh, okay, well, under our contract, we get an equitable adjustment and we think, they may say, we think what's fair is that that $5 million, we would still earn the contractor fee on it. That's not an automatic that they would get the contractor fee on it. But what is known is it won't be more than the contractor fee on that $5 million. And so you think about, well, the city wants to hire Gorman to construct the entire bulkhead. The city has agreed to have it all built by 2031. So I can't think of a situation where we would not, where we would want to delete some of the work. One question may be, well, what if they're not doing a good job? Well, if they're not doing a good job, they're in breach of the contract. And this does not apply. You deal with them under the damages and under breaches and all. But it's totally within the city's control. But it is something that the Gorman's the Gorman's asked for, and I felt like it was consistent. In a lump sum contract, as an example, if the city ordered a lump sum contract for $5 million and after $1 million worth of work had been done, we just said, you're doing a great job, but for whatever reason we don't want to proceed, then the damages would be for lost profit and overhead. So it's a similar concept. Finally, the last thing I'll bring out is in the cost plus contract itself, section 14.4.4, if the city chooses not to pay the contract, an undisputed invoice. So this is an invoice that the city recognizes is owed The work has been done and is due. Then after 15 days notice the contractor can suspend work. That's pretty obvious, but they wanted to say it and so I had no problem in saying it that if we don't pay, And we don't dispute it. We say, yeah, we owe it. We're just not going to pay it? Well, yeah, they can suspend work until we resolve it. So that goes over those five elements, all that I recommend. I also recommend the cost plus contract. Mr. Murphy talked about it. I do have the email from Commissioner Street. He had some questions. I talked to him for about an hour this morning, went over everything. He wrote the email after we talked, and so I didn't resolve all of his questions. As every commissioner, he has good points. So I'm happy to talk about them or just the pleasure of the commission. And the Gormans, I did send the email to the Gormans and so they have it. So if there's any light that they can share on some of the questions. I know a lot of them had to do with rental of equipment and rates and all. So be happy to, it's your pleasure.

Yeah, I appreciate all the hard work that went into this agreement. It's super clear, and there's situational awareness and all of it. The question I had was related to Josh's. Whenever we're required to do CEI, I had someone on Facebook ask me that, and I wanted to answer that. And then if we do it in-house, how comparable is that service?

That is a city manager question, and I will be glad for him to deal with it, but we're not legally required because we do have some CEI folks that work on, you know, that help us. But I'll let Mr. Hayes talk about that.

Yeah, so a lot of the CEI that you guys regularly approve, Mr. Mayor, Commissioners, it's a grant requirement, whether it's SRF or HMGP or CDBGDR. But to Mr. Zimmerman's point, we're not utilizing any grants for this. So we have flexibility. I 100% agree that we need to have CEI in this. either a city official or an outside official on behalf of the city regularly engaged, you know, watching such a complex. And you guys see, Mr. Zimmerman asked if we had a picture. I mean, the condition of the current, you know, kind of the foundation and the bulkheads. In fact, Donald, I think there's a second picture you can switch to as well. We agree with that. I know Mr. Murphy has been involved with several marinas around the world before, prior to coming to the city. Obviously, that's a heavy lift, so I don't know if it's maybe a team effort. We will still have senior city staff involved to some level of project management, like we would with any project, but bringing in some outside CEI. happy to consider that. It just would cost us additional money. But I want to do what's best for this project and for, you know, the future of this marina.

Chair Greg Musil And if we hired a CEI outside group, what would that cost? Chair Greg Musil I'm sorry, what, sir? Chair Greg Musil If we hired an outside group, what would that cost to do CEI for us?

I would say several hundred thousand dollars. There's a CEI contract coming up later in this agreement.

Before Mr. Murphy addresses the board, let me just say this real quick.

This has a lot of similarities to a FEMA project in the sense that And a FEMA consultant helps you make sure that you follow your procurement rules that are also satisfied FEMA's procurement rules. Here, it's our job as staff. You know, we don't, when they give a lump sum, we don't really care how they procure their stuff. We do now. And so you need somebody, and Mr. Murphy came with a consulting firm, that's how he got here after Hurricane Michael, who did that type of work. Also, so we need that, and then we also need the typical engineering work to make sure that the product, and it's your bulkhead that's being built out there, is done well, and hopefully will be there for another 60 years, and we can all go to the ribbon cutting of its 60th anniversary. But And of course, Mr. Murphy's got experience with that.

Yes. So Mr. City Manager, I understand you say we have the CEI experience in-house.

I personally believe that Mr. Murphy is capable of this. However, he also has a department to run. That's why I think maybe supplementing it, keeping those costs as low as possible, but I don't know that it's in the best interest of the city to have a director level position spending 30 to 40 hours a week hanging out at the marina either. There's a lot of different considerations.

Our only option in-house would be the director.

In my personal opinion, and Mr. Murphy can correct me if I'm wrong, but given his experience in the background, specifically around marinas, I'm not aware of any other CEI staff that have marina experience.

Darren has marina experience. He was involved in the downtown. Oh, the downtown, yeah.

That was before I got here.

Clint Murphy, you're Director of Public Works. So going back to the cost question on CEI, typically we see on the SRF projects, which are reimbursed, about $100 to $120 an hour is a typical rate for CEI. If you add that up, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks, you're looking at a quarter million dollars a year for that position. If you hire it out, we do have capable, we would have to talk with Stacy, who kind of runs that area, to make sure we have the bandwidth to be able to do that. Certainly, I want to spend a lot of time there. I live right next door, so that's going to be my first stop in the morning on the way in. So we're going to take a really close eye on it. Jared's even suggested I put a camera out on the balcony to keep a real close tab on the Gorman's over there. So we'll see.

Yes, yeah, so yeah, but there is a significant cost associated with hiring outside sea guy But the price tag of this project is pretty high so in comparison is just on the cost the city will be using loan proceeds and then I Mentioned in my letter didn't mention in my lengthy presentation both our financial consultant Joel Tyndall at Hilltop securities as well as our bank and I believe that we'll be able to, don't see any issue with us getting long-term debt, like 40 years, the lifetime of the bulkhead. And that cost for CEI and for other soft costs will get rolled into, you'd use loan proceeds and it would get rolled into the final financing.

So one of the concerns, additional concerns I have is the time. We've got a July 31st deadline. How long would it take for us to bring on the CEI and work with Director Murphy to get that piece in place?

Well, we would need to go through a competitive selection process if it's an outside engineering firm, and that would take 30 to 45 days. But the CEI is important. but, and they will, I'm sure, get to work immediately, but getting to work is more paperwork initially. So I think if we get somebody hired, if that's the pleasure of the commission, get them hired in the next 30 to 45 days, that would be fine time to be involved in the process.

If we were doing a whole contract with no procurement by the city, we wouldn't have a CEI, right? you you would have a cei to make sure it's built correctly you wouldn't that's easy to drive down and see it's coming out but the reason i ask is how much time if we put have we created more by having the city involved doing the procurement process all of it coming to the city then going to i mean have we created more time

Yes.

This is why we can't be in partnerships. We can't get out of our own way.

Commissioner Hughes, this is also federal procurement requirements, and I believe that's what Mr. Zinn was trying to say. Why? We've chosen to do the procurement requirements. There is no federal money, so it doesn't apply. The reason that I believe... and I drove the discussion, Commissioner Hughes, with the Gorman group, is that for you to be comfortable that you'll end up ultimately with a reasonable price, you have to be comfortable with the procurement process. And to be comfortable with the procurement process, you've got to know what's going on and what better way than the bids come into the city. or the quotes come in to the city. And we did something similar to this with a $20 million triumph grant that was then utilized by the city for eastern shipbuilding. We put in the contract that everything that was there, we were soliciting general contractors to dredge and to build aluminum big buildings, but they had to follow the city's procurement process, and Eastern could have done it, but they ended up, I believe, saying, well, look, you guys know how to do it, you do it, you solicit for the bids, hand them to us, and then we'll go from there. So that is how you get comfortable, I believe, in that you're gonna get a reasonable price, is that you are heavily, heavily involved, in how things are, and yes, it is time intensive, more so than just getting a lump sum contract.

I would imagine a lump sum, there's still inspections of making sure the tiebacks are just the right sizes and all that.

We're going to pay for it in a lump sum, it's just going to be called a change order. Here you're just doing, you just know up front what the cost is. But it moves faster

when the private is involved versus us in my opinion so in some of this i think they're in charge of getting the the bid up the low bid number and then they bring it to us no we we always we everything comes to us and we give it to them gordon's are very concerned about the city slowing it down but you know they agreed to the process they agreed to the process because they want to get it done just like we want to get it done and i believe this commission will incentivize and encourage everyone to work uh expeditiously so if if they say hey we need to order this is a nine week out i think we need to be on board with that no i didn't get the email no we're not ready they're in charge and they say it has to happen

then we need to be okay with that, right? Not argue the fact that it's not nine weeks. They're running the project.

Yes.

And we're a partner, and we're the partner that's helping save money, that saves taxes, do the procurement. We need to work as quickly with the project, not as government works.

That's correct.

Can you help move that? Yes, absolutely.

One of the things I suggested to the city attorney was instead of doing formal bids, Because we are under a tight deadline. Our exemption expires in just a little over a year. We're not sure if we can extend that yet. That's a legal question. But if we have to move very quickly, then the formal bids will not work for us. We'll have to do quotes. So I believe you carved out an exception under kind of emergency. circumstances that we would go to quotes instead of bids. Thank you for reminding me.

There is a provision that there's exigent emergency situation that the city manager upon getting the opinion of the city clerk and the city attorney could go ahead and instead of doing a full-on bid go ahead and get quotes for subcontractors.

And I always listen to Nevin and Brandy, especially when they agree.

Can we start the project without a CEI? Getting mobilization going and all that? Okay. I think we're on the same page.

Yeah, so I'd like to move forward with the contract, but also in the next 30 days, two weeks, just get an overview of how we would do it in-house versus higher. And that way we can have another discussion to make sure we're being due diligence.

and mr mayor just for the benefit of the commission of the public i mean i had similar perspectives you know commissioner hughes and i back i was like cei but the problem is with these projects and even certain vertical projects you know your project manager doesn't always have to be on site and that's really mr murphy's role as the project manager but you know when you're like putting pipe in the ground and covering dirt i mean that stuff happens really fast and if you're not there to sign off on it And it is very strict with the SRF grants and with the CDBGDR and HMGP because we're signing off that, yes, this type of pipe or if you're putting things behind sheetrock and all that. So that's why you've got to have CEI kind of almost embedded in a project like this because so many things are quickly covered up with asphalt, concrete, buried in dirt, put behind walls. And so you've got to be able to sign off on it. So, you know, it's one of those things just in order to be able to verify. It's kind of trust but verify. So I had similar concerns when I first came to the city a few years ago, but I do see the value in CEI now just to keep everybody above approach.

Awesome. I will entertain a motion. Are we still discussing? You can't motion to discuss it unless you accept it. Do I have a motion?

The greater moment. Oh.

So Article 9 and 5, why did we depart from AIA language in this area for actual, why did we choose to go with actual and demonstrable loss?

Was that in the general condition? Oh, this is the new language? Yeah.

I mean, it's not highlighted, but it is part of that section. My concern with the change here is that the actual and demonstrable loss will be hard to prove or a very, very high bar to prove.

I'm sorry. Is it 3.7.4?

9.5.1.

9.5.1.

It's the very first sentence. I don't know why. I'm sure the Gorman's are going to do a great job. The contracts are meant for things when things go sideways, right? So that's really my concern with this is that we've kind of raised the bar for us holding them to the contract. And I don't understand why we would do that. Okay.

This relates to a decision not to pay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Which is ultimately the biggest lever we have, right? Right. Whoever's paying, the biggest lever is we're not paying for these reasons. And, I mean, what other lever would we have on a contract? So what we've done is we've made it harder for us to grab that lever and say, whoa, time out. Again, I think they're going to do a great job. This isn't about them. This is about contracts in general.

I guess the language that I was looking at is in that next paragraph, the owner shall timely pay all undisputed amounts included in the application for payment. any withholding shall be limited to the amount reasonably necessary to protect the owner from the specific matter giving rise to the withholding and in no event shall the owner withhold an entire application for pay due to a dispute affecting only a portion of the work. I believe that when there's a dispute, then there is a withholding of that disputed portion, if there is a portion that's undisputed, then there is a payment.

Well, yeah, I mean if it's undisputed, I don't see any reason why we wouldn't pay them. Right. But obviously this would be enacted when there is a dispute. And what I'm saying is, is that if there is a dispute, then we would have to show that we're not paying them due to actual and demonstrable loss directly attributed to their material failure to perform work in accordance with the contract documents. That's a fairly high bar. Ultimately, what I don't want to do is get into a situation where we can never prove that or we can never get to the point where that bar is reached, and so therefore we pay all. Again, I hope to never have to look at this again. I know you all don't want to have to look at it again either, but again, contracts are for when things go sideways. And as I read this, and I'm not an attorney, but I've slept in Holiday Inn,

Recently?

Yes. So if this did go sideways for any reason, we are stuck paying them unless we can point to an actual and demonstrable loss directly attributed to the contractor's material failure to perform the work in accordance with the contract documents.

I think it's exactly written right because we have to say why we're not doing it, and we ought to have a reason why. It shouldn't be hard. We ought to be able to say, I'm not paying you because you didn't do this.

No, no, no.

That's what it says. Their lack of work, their lack of performance, we're not going to pay them on that based on reasonable cost.

We have to tie their lack of performance to an actual demonstrable loss. Right. To a loss. So if they just decide to just stop working on it and we can't prove a loss, we still have to pay them. It...

If they decide to stop working on it, we have a July 31st deadline. Oh, understood. And we missed that. That's a loss.

Understood. I get it. I'm just saying is that this puts us in a it puts us in a position. It weakens our position is what I'm saying. It weakens the city's position to to to to solve any future issues. That's all I'm saying.

If they stop work, we either haven't paid them or we've got a bigger problem than that. Just go back to the regular AIA standard. What is normally in the AIA? The language in yellow was added.

That's a good question. I'm just trying to get it all in context here. It states, the owner shall promptly provide written notice identifying the basis for withholding the estimated amount withhold. The lessee can recommend that SAMP The owner then says, okay, I'm going to withhold a portion. Then it says the owner will not withhold certification of payment based on disputed claims, pending change orders, design issues, differing interpretations or matter caused by the owner, consultant, separate government authorities, force majeure or other causes beyond the contractor's reasonable control. So if there's something that happened that is beyond the control of the contractor, that would not be a basis for withholding payment.

Yeah, I understand. Okay. But what if there's something in their control, but it doesn't necessarily rise to actual and demonstrable loss? Okay, where is that demonstrable loss? It's 951. Yeah, but where?

First sentence. Second line. Right in the middle.

But isn't this the same language that's in the A line?

Okay.

This... Because it's not highlighted.

Yeah, this... That's correct. I can explain it. Thank you. I can explain it. This contract was set up for an architect to be in the role of the lessee for some things. But we don't, but that is, SAMHP has assumed a little bit of that role. But this says that when it says lessee, you read, SAMHP may recommend withholding certification or payment only to the extent reasonably necessary to protect the owner from actual and demonstrative loss. Now, if it said architect like it used to say, we could look at the architect and say, well, thank you very much for your advice. This contract says we look at SAMP and thank you for helping. for your advice, but the real issue is the owner shall properly provide written notice for the basis for withholding and the basis could be is not limited to a demonstrable loss directly attributable to the material failure. that's more for the advice i i hear you i i think i can solve that with some words and i believe joe gorman's lawyer we can work that out and we solve the problem that we don't have that's going to that's going to slow us up Well, no, I believe that we could move ahead and approve it if you so want to. What do you recommend? I recommend we approve it. Okay. And I recommend I can tell you that your problem, I do not believe, applies.

I just don't want to be in a situation where the city just has to write a check. I understand. It goes sideways and we're still stuck having to write a check.

Yeah. It is a good read, and I believe it's a different role. That's what the architect would have said. Now it's lessee, but that's not going to be governing what the city withholds.

All right.

Yeah. You've identified a situation, and it falls on them if we end up there. So I agree. I appreciate you pointing that out.

Yeah. No, that's good. I mean, I'm not an attorney, but if you can't demonstrate it, then it's not demonstrable. So we're not talking about something in theory here. So it can be proven.

I think Nevin knows. Yeah.

But I'll go back. So when you approve it, if you could approve it and give me the latitude to work on that language.

A motion that we approve and give Nevin the latitude to work on that section of 9.5. We will give all the latitude.

Second.

Any discussion on the latitude?

Or the attitude. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes? Yes. Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Commissioner Granger? Yes. Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 4-0. And I will just add, we'll be bringing back a budget amendment to bring those funds into the budget from the loan for the SAMP agreement.

All right, City Manager. Five-minute recess. Roger. Oh. Do you like some?

All right, Mayor, Commissioners, item 13A-1 is the item that we added working with Destination Panama City. I believe you're all familiar with the snorkeling reef and that effort and that project. And the ask is just because the city of Panama City is technically the owner of the marina in that particular area right there. Just would request that y'all would grant me the authority to work with Ms. Vigil, the president and CEO of Destination Panama City, to work in regarding any permit needs and any potential waiver letters from the city so that she can move forward with this project. That's the request that we would ask of this commission.

I will entertain a motion. So moved. Second. Any discussion? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes. Okay. Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Commissioner Granger? Yes. Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes.

Zero. It's still a quorum. It's good. All right. Moving into item 13A. The original 13A is a memorandum and the item to discuss the results of the interview selections and discussion of the next steps for the city clerk treasurer position. You have a memorandum to me. would eventually copy with you guys from Ms. Lewis, who is our HR director, with the results of each of your selections. I will note that one of the folks did receive of being on a list of all five of y'all. So that's Ms. Weleski. And then we put everybody's selections in here. You can look at the mayor and all four commissioners. Her original memo from May 26th is y'all started the process. And then when we discussed this at a recent workshop, there was an email that she added as well. I forwarded that last week and we also added it to the agenda. So you have before you the list of candidates who appeared on three or more of the commissioner's listings. Mr. Anderson, Ms. Glaze, and Ms. Valesky. Again, Ms. Valesky was on all five of y'all. And as a reminder, the option that y'all selected, each of y'all does have a bonus pick if you so desire. And I would defer to Ms. Waldron if she would like to add anything to this introduction to this item. Ms. Waldron?

I have nothing to add.

Great.

Thank you.

Still wanted to give you that opportunity, ma'am.

Thank you.

So we're just wanting to know how y'all want to move forward. And Ms. Lewis is here if y'all want to get down in the weeds on next steps. Again, she's got three decades of experience recruiting at this level and is happy to provide her services and guidance and advice to the mayor and commissioners.

I think we should do option two.

At our last workshop, we talked about whether to proceed. And we were not in a position in a workshop to take any action on that. So I'd like us to start there. in light of the fact that the Charter Review Committee is bringing, possibly if we approve, a separation of this position, clerk-treasurer. So on the record, on the days, my concern is that we advertised for clerk-treasurer and we would be making a decision, potentially, on one part of the role and not the other if we think we're going to move forward with approving. And so that's a lot of hypothetical and that's not what we presented when we put out the RF or the request for it.

I think to the same point is we might come back to these applicants we've picked and go, surprise, you did a completely different job. And they go, I really wanted the clerk duties. Yes, ma'am, come on down.

Vicki Lewis, Human Resources Director. And so what I would encourage you is, to Commissioner Granger's point, I think we're just transparent. If these are the three candidates that you'd like to interview at this point in time, I could place a phone call. I could talk with them. And I could say, this is potentially what's going to happen. I think you really, when we advertised this and the direction that you gave us collectively was that the treasurer was a very important piece of this. And I think we certainly advertised it with that in mind. And so I do think at least a portion of these candidates, the treasurer was a heavy piece. Another option might be to consider additional applicants with that in mind, to Commissioner Lucas's point, with it in mind that maybe you need to focus more on the treasurer portion and less on the clerk. You could, as another alternative, because you don't have enough options, as another alternative, you could ask the city manager, the interim city clerk treasurer, myself, to give you recommendations of people that maybe have a little more the treasurer, a little less the clerk. Just options available. But I think the key is, if we're transparent, I think it's OK to move the cheese. Because the reality is that we expect all of our team to be a little bit flexible within the framework. And I think that the heavier lift is the finance, the investments, the accounting pieces. I think you would be very hard-pressed to hire someone with strong clerk and weak treasurer pieces and be happy. I think you could hire someone with strong treasury pieces and weaker clerk, and they could learn the clerk piece.

just my opinion is there an option where we are moving forward interviews of our selections here but going out with another treasurer focused job description potentially getting more or better people right that was my question is it fair to the people that have made that

Application, and then we change. Now I understand that point. And then two, yes, I'm wondering, there's 60 people in that, more than 60 now. Somebody in there probably has the skill set, but we didn't tell them really what we're looking for. I like her idea of at least asking, and to Commissioner Granger's point, let's be transparent with them. They may all, if we come up with, they may all say, no thanks, that's not what I was in for. That'd be some great direction from the applicant pool. We probably need to start over. I'd like to explore some of these that we put on there. I think there's some strong candidates. We're taking away, for me, we're taking the administrative part out. So if we know that there's somebody strong, you've looked at a lot of city clerk resumes. You have too. I never have. I'd be open for recommendations of, you guys didn't recommend this person, but if I were doing it, maybe so, here's why. It gives us more, maybe, opportunity to consider other people, and we're not looking at it that way. You say, we haven't done this. I haven't. Probably never going to do it again. So I'm going to rely on the staff a lot to give me some direction there.

I'm prepared if that's something you would like for me to make recommendations. I'm happy to recommend two or three more candidates for your consideration so you don't have to comb through all 60 again. I'm happy to do that, but that may not be your desire. But I'm happy to do that with a focus on the Treasury piece, Commissioner.

Mr. Mayor, one of my... insights from our discussion at the workshop was that we didn't all go in with the clerk-treasurer description. Some of us said, oh, this is going on, so I'm going to lean more And my choices on the treasurer, I'm going to lean more on my choices on the clerk. Whereas I was like, oh, we're probably going to need someone that will do both. Again, we're considering making a decision on a hypothetical. We could change. And so if we're going to bring people up to interview, I think we need to be on the same page as to what we're looking for. That's what I'd like to leave the dais understanding today, that we're all on the same page of what we're looking for.

If you aren't on the same page, I don't know how we could expect the candidate to anticipate. I would say in the job description, if you were to add additional duties, I think that would be concerning for a candidate by taking some away. That doesn't cause me as much concern, but I do concur. You have to be on the same page for what your desire is, ma'am.

The other thought is... Today, we have a system, a certain way of having clerk and treasurer. We don't know if that's going to pass on November. And that's a whole other conversation I think we need to have more than one up or down because that's something that could be separated out. But what if it didn't pass and we hired based on just a treasurer, I mean just a comptroller? Now we've got somebody hired and our position is the same.

Well, correct me, the clerk role can migrate to a deputy. role like the clerk actual role and then the like treasurer role would be the person we would hire so we're the charter change is really about moving the clerk officially under the right but we don't we don't necessarily we can still hire for a treasurer and still but that person would be in charge of the court and then so but they might not have that person yeah

So to your point, do we want to make a decision on a hypothetical, on a vote that we've got to still have in November that we don't know is going to happen, or do we want to hire somebody for what we need today and be transparent about what change might be coming?

And so what do we need today?

So I think that when you don't have... a good idea of what's coming and you don't know if the path is going to go right or left or right down the middle, then the best thing to do is to work with what you do know. And what we do know is that we're currently set up this way. That's why I like option two is because we can tell these folks, hey, we put this out there for a city clerk treasurer, but if this passes in November, then you're going to wind up being the CFO. Are you okay with that? Do you still want to interview? And if they do, then I think they should come. We should interview them. Because I know for me, I was very heavy on the finance side rather than the clerk side. So I didn't necessarily rack and stack based on whether or not they had clerk-specific experience. For me, it was more finance. It was more... Can you go talk to banks and get great rates for loans? Can you go talk to banks and get great rates for investments? Do you understand investments? That kind of thing. That was really what I was looking for. And as I understand it, these three candidates also are are pretty good in those areas as well so that's where i would suggest that we move forward with option two so we're hiring a treasurer a financial person and not a clerk because the job is half treasurer and half clerk and i think um i think that the the job could change in the future. But if that resolution fails, then we still have a clerk treasurer. We still have a clerk treasurer. So knowing that the position could change in the future and writing that into any acceptance contract, I think, is reasonable.

I'm fine with that. I'm also concerned that we're losing out on a candidate who might be a great treasurer, but has no desire to be a clerk.

And did not apply.

And did not apply, right. And so I agree, we have a lot of consensus built around a few people here. To me, going out to them, asking them if they're still addressing the job, even though it might change, makes total and complete sense, and I think that should be a part. But I'm wondering if we should continue with interviews, but still put out a job posting that says, treasurer focused role, who, who potentially wants that? Would we get different applicants or better applicants, whatever better means. Um, so yeah, I don't want to pause the, and we can't pause this whole process until November either.

Uh, we're going to need to be like, I will just mention that whenever we hired Ms. Smith five years ago, we did hire a recruiter to help us. And we originally went out looking for a clerk treasurer. Um, they do a brochure to recruit and advertise for the market, the position, and it was a clerk treasurer. We were not seeing very many applicants granted. This was during COVID and, you know, a different time period. We ultimately decided after six months to change, and we changed the job description to be a CFO position, even though that's not the title. We recruited for a chief financial officer, and that's how we ultimately hired Jan Smith. But that is something that we did do. back then. Now, we didn't get to the stage where we were getting ready to interview candidates. We just were not getting applications.

Is the job description that we used to hire Jan, is that now the same job description that we went out for on this one? No, sir.

We had that, but we didn't, I mean, we looked at that when we were crafting this one, but what you guys approved.

They all made edits to it as well.

I'm sorry, what did you say?

Y'all made edits to the job description that's coming out.

The one that you guys, y'all approved was pretty much new, a new job description.

So then how does this sound? How does this sound if we, and I'm looking to you, Vicki, for what you think about this. If we move forward with option two but we do not close out the requisition and we leave it open and maybe even modify it and change it to that, to the CFO position or establish a new requisition and just be very transparent with the folks that we're looking to bring in. Because I don't want to slow this process down either. I mean, everything happens here. Not as fast as I would like. And I think that we have some great candidates here. I really do. And I think that we may have somebody who could do a great job for us just on the CFO side. But at the same time, you know, we didn't advertise for a CFO. So maybe that's how we, if we find somebody in this first round, then great. And if we don't, then we have another round to go with.

Just so you all know, to be clear, y'all did vote to close the recruiting, so it has been closed as of June 9th. June 9th.

I would say, if we're going to continue, that we use the CFO. Yeah. Interview these folks with the new position and see if they're interested.

Send them the new...

the new language are they going to get different language if we put it back out there we're going to change the language what we what i would recommend removing the clerk duties from the description that went out i would encourage usage of the job description that we built and just take out that clerk section as brandy mentioned change the title to a cfo or whatever title you would like it to be whether it's treasurer or chief financial officer and you or comptroller whichever one you would like And I would go ahead and interview these folks, leave the job out there. If you don't like any of these folks, we've lost nothing and we've gotten ahead of the eight ball a little bit. If you say this person's a rock star and you decide to hire them, we're not spending a ton of money on advertising. We can keep it very minimal, the amount of advertising we do, but at least we're live and at least we're out there. That's definitely an option.

Do you recommend that the requisition, the second requisition stay open during this process or do you recommend that it stay closed until we decide whether or not we're going to hire somebody out of this pool?

I firmly believe you could go either pathway because we're being transparent with these three when we call them based upon what I hear you saying so far. If we're transparent with them and we say, look, we advertise clerk-treasurer, we may only be looking for a treasurer, and we explain the process, and then we go ahead and leave it open, a lot of people apply for jobs and expect the job to stay open through the interview process. It's not uncommon to do that. So I don't think that hurts our applicant pool, nor the three candidates that you interviewed.

Can we update the language and send it to the candidates that we all chose? That way, you've got a bigger pool of people to say, yeah, what if one of the three says no, we've gone through the interview process, and then now we're down, or two of them say no, and it's not one that we wanted. So there's, what, 20? We've all come up with our own. If you identified all, if you talked to all of them, said here's what's coming, Are you still interested?

Well, how about this? How about if none of the candidates want to come, then we re-advertise out to the folks that we had chosen, regardless of how many votes they got. Okay. Or not votes, but... How many times they showed up on ours, right? So you saw all the candidates. Yes. You know the first culling, if you will, of the candidate pool. Yes.

It's on page two of the memo. It's itemized who voted for which candidate, sir.

Then I motion that we move forward with option two in addition of establishing a new requisition using the CFO order. specific financial only language that you already have and if the candidates do not want to come interview the three candidates you don't want to come interview for this position then we automatically push it out to the the rest of them that are on the sheet

One clarifying point. Are you saying that we use the job description you already approved and we just take out the clerk duties, Commissioner? Yes. That would be my recommendation. Yes. Okay.

And change the title to what do you want, CFO, what do you want? CFO. CFO. Change the job.

Because they've already agreed. They made their application based on the language that's in there minus the clerk. So they gave us a resume based on what, yeah, I get it.

Right. Okay.

We have a motion on the table? I just want to clarify the motion. This is because we have several options in the different memos. So you're referring, I just want to make sure, to option two in the email that Vicki sent last Thursday, which was to proceed as planned and interview the three selected and then be transparent with the candidates before interviews and let them know that we may be changing the role and removing the clerk duties.

Yes, that one. Okay. Okay, we have a motion on the table. Do we have a second? Second. Any discussion? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes? Yes. Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Commissioner Granger? Yes. Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 4-0.

If I may, one question. The commission does have the right to put any additional person in based on how you voted last time. Each commissioner had a one-time wild card or bonus pick. um i don't know your opinion brandy on is that something you want to avail yourselves of okay thank you yeah we got we got three to work with here let's see if there's any that you guys felt passionate about um there was that option there for you to add one of your other picks that maybe did not get two other votes

I thought the three were great. Thank you, sir.

And that's the June 15 memo, right?

Yep. The email that Vicki sent last Thursday, June 18th, it should be in your packet. Thank you. This is option two on how to move forward.

Yes, ma'am.

Those are the three. Yes. Moving on to 13B. All right.

Item 13B is consideration to approve budget amendment resolution 20260623.1 and H and H. Amendment Number 4, an increase of $1.279,947,00 to the existing subrecipient agreement between the Florida Division of Emergency Management Mitigation Bureau or FDEM, and the City of Panama City HMGP Millville Wastewater Treatment Plant Generator Project. On December 14, 2021, the Commission approved the grant agreement 80760 to replace the existing generator serving the Millville Wastewater Treatment Plant with a new standby power system to fully serve the plant. On June 24, 2025, roughly seven months later, the Commission went to contract for construction of the project. The City requested an increase to the budget and was approved on June 10, 2025. This amendment also increases the grant, the date grant agreement to March 31st of 2027. Staff recommendation through the disaster recovery project manager is that the commission approve the budget amendment resolution 20260623.1 and the signature of H0760 amendment number four. Mr. Mayor.

I will entertain a motion. So moved. Second. Any discussion? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes? Yes. Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Commissioner Granger?

Yes.

Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 4-0.

Commission has adopted Resolution 20260623.1, a resolution providing for the budgeting of capital funds.

And yes, for the public and media, the generator can be moved if we do ever relocate that wastewater treatment plant. Item 13C, consideration of approval of budget amendment resolution 20260623.2 and the purchase of forerunner storm water management module to aid staff in completing compliance activities for our municipal separate storm sewer system, which is MS4, permit utilizing our right-of-way permit funds. As background information, the city already utilizes forerunner for floodplain division use. In an internal review, we found that the stormwater management platform offered by 4Runner would reduce staff time in completing logging and reporting on compliance activities for our municipal separate storm sewer system permit from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. These activities include but are not limited to stormwater inspections of all active construction sites in the city, stormwater medallion placement, system inspection, and illicit discharge monitoring. All of these activities must be completed or the city is in violation of the permit. The software allows staff to utilize a consistent database that is integrated with our existing GIS system and allows for easy reporting to the permit agency. The software license is proposed to be paid for with the right-of-way permit funds. Staff recommendation through the Director of Public Works is that the Commission approve this request. And I do realize it's only $10,000, Mr. Mayor, Commissioners, but because there's a budget amendment resolution, that's why we had to bring it forward to you. Mr. Mayor?

I will entertain a motion to accept.

Motion to approve.

Second. Any discussion?

Yes. Say what now? This is not general fund, right? Well, we're moving the money to it in order to pay for it, but it's coming out of the right-of-way funds.

It is general fund, Commissioner, but it's not budgeted. It's money that we've received above what we expected, so we're bringing the money into the budget and budgeting to spend the dollars.

Okay, I'm tracking. That's actually a positive thing. I think people don't realize that even if we get extra money, we can't go and spend it without coming to you guys first because the budget's already approved.

That's how it sits in general fund unrestricted is what I've learned because that doesn't make sense to me. So I have a question for the computer guys. You can't walk through City Hall and an employee can't know if you've been in which department. because none of our system talks to each other. And the last. Right. So you want to have personal partners in the city? The cuts were at each department. There was a lot of software cuts, which I disagree with. I think efficiency comes through through that. I've talked to a couple of people about coming in and examining all of our software and then writing a program that covers everything.

And it can be done off of Salesforce. I'm sure they're loving that.

Well, I mean, I've had conversations about $750,000 to a million, which we're going to spend no problem. And it's mostly on licenses. From your perspective, is that a mountain that you just cannot ever get to?

I would avoid writing custom software like the plague. That's what I used to do and it is hard to quote and you spend a whole lot of money and things don't ever get implemented for various reasons and it is,

And the reason I asked that is our tax collector's office kind of did that. Now, on that scale is... We're having a hard time selling land. I get it. That's one of the reasons.

That's a pretty straightforward process too, right? Chuck built a dashboard, I think, using some API endpoints, which is much easier than, like, custom business software.

That's different. Using APIs, using... And so Cody and his team have been great. They've moved some stuff forward for us. When I first got into the city, I was like, why are we not able to, why are these systems not talking to each other? And I was told, well, it's because they can't. Right. And I'm, you know, whoa, Spidey sense went off. Like, whoa, time out. You know. Yes, they can. Most systems can talk to each other. Um, so anyway, uh, Cody came in and Cody was able to link up a lot of stuff. So he's, he's been able to find a lot. They do a great job. Yeah.

And this isn't about staff. This is about efficiency and about. Oh, understood. Yeah. And, and we made a change just in the, from the planning down to the water department. So now they know there's a, CEO that's been issued we've made some improvement but I bring that up only because this is the second piece of software that we voted on today and if we're improving software is there a is there something that this is where you guys should we take a look at what we have and We're trying to consolidate. I don't know what we're spending licensing each year, but we have different programs and everybody's going to have licenses.

Well, I think it would be fair for any department to reach out to other cities and say, hey, what have you done? Because they might have done some integrations. and to find some savings there. But I know dozens of people that write custom software do not recommend it. It is a black hole where you throw money into.

And then you're constantly paying that person or company to update it because nobody else. You're immediately locked into a service contract. And if they're the only ones that know it, they're going to charge whatever they want to charge. And if you don't like it, too bad.

There's no Florida building code for software. So you inherit these products where it's like, oh my god, what did this person do? It's a great business to be in.

There are companies who have developed monolithic type solutions with add-ons. You just add whatever module you want onto it. The problem is you kind of get locked into their product. And usually their module, it might not do, it might compete against other pieces of software that do the same thing. But there's pros and cons.

All right, moving on. We have a motion and a second. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes? Yes. Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Commissioner Granger?

Yes.

Mayor Branch?

Yes.

Motion passes. 4-0.

Resolution number 20, 260623.2 has been adopted, a resolution providing for the amendment of the approved fiscal year 2526 budget to utilize right-of-way permit fees for the purchase of forerunner stormwater management software module.

Item 13D is consideration to approve additional construction administration services for the Martin Theater in associated budget amendment resolution number 20260623.3 to DAG Architects in the amount of $50,000. As background information, the City Commission approved DAG Architects additional services proposal number 11 at the March 10th of 2026 City Commission meeting for $50,000 instead of the requested amount of $493,500. City staff was directed to submit requests for construction administration services every two months going forward. This is the third such request. The remaining amount of construction administration services for the current construction contract is $298,700 after this request. Staff recommendation to the City Manager's Office that the Commission approve the proposal for additional CA services and a budget amendment resolution 20260623.3 in the amount of $50,000, or if the Commission wanted to carry it out through the end of this calendar year, that would be the additional 298,700. There was a question earlier in the agenda as well. This is for DAG. This is not for BERC. Just clarifying. Mr. Mayor?

Just a slight clarification. If it's through the end of this calendar year, it's an additional $100,000.

That $298,700 is through the end of the contract term for construction right now. So that gets us to September of 2027.

I would love to see a motion through the end of the year. A motion that we approve through the end of the year.

Second. Any discussion?

That's a total for $150,000. Yes. Any discussion?

Let's make that. Can we clarify that to be $150,000 instead of, as you said, it's $150,000 to the end of the year? 13D is for $50,000. If you do that, that gets us July and August. Then I need four additional months for the end of the year. That's another $100,000 for a total of $150,000. Do we want to make the motion be $150,000?

That we will approve up to $150,000. I'll second that.

I'm sorry. $150,000. Those are the same. I think that's what Mr. Jones is saying. $150,000 is what gets you to December. So those are the same thing. Do I need to say December 2? No, you're good. Okay, thanks.

But Commissioner Lucas already seconded it. Are you good with your second? Yes.

Any discussion? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes? Yes. Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Commissioner Granger? Yes. Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 4-0. And we will update the budget resolution to reflect 150, but after .

Resolution number 20260623.3, a resolution providing for the budgeting of capital funds.

Item 13E is consideration for approval of proposals from Neighborhood Evolution for inclusion in the request for proposals concerning the properties located at 1300 Beck Avenue, 0.23 acres, and 1306 Beck Avenue, 0.83 acres. As background information, at the December 16, 2025, city commission meeting, the commission unanimously decided to request proposals from Neighborhood Evolution regarding the sale and development of two properties in St. Andrews. Again, 1300 Beck Avenue and 1306 as on your screen. Then on June 1st, 2026, during a virtual workshop, Neighborhood Evolution presented five proposals. These submissions are now available for the commission's review and selection for inclusion in an RFP. Staff request direction regarding the specific proposal the commission intends to include in the request for proposals for the properties located at 1300 Beck Avenue and 1306 Beck Avenue. Mr. Mayor, commissioners?

Yeah. This is multiple choice.

And I'm sorry to interrupt. If you remember, I do believe that neighborhood evolution kind of encouraged option two. Option two. Yep. Or sorry, scenario two. I'm calling it option, but it's scenario.

Or we can do the RFP with multiple options.

That's an option as well.

Was option two the fee sample where we can split it up into separate lots and have multiple owners?

Oh, I believe we had a multi-sided copier mix-up again, Ms. Waldron.

No, option two, or scenario two, it's... It's okay.

Mr. Schwartz has it on. Can you pull up scenario two, please, sir? I know it's going to have to be available online. It didn't make it into the binders.

It's like the second to the last page. It's just backwards.

Oh, it's backwards?

It goes from five...

Sorry. If you start flipping from the back of the packet...

Right, it's...

And we have the Neighborhood Evolution's recommendation is scenario two.

That was the one that, and someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that's what they said on the virtual workshop that they'd like the option two. Mr. Self is in here, but I'm pretty sure they said scenario two.

Yes.

They felt was the best option to maximize this. If you look the way they, can you scroll down a little bit more, please, Mr. Schwartz? Right there. So you can see how they used the flood line to maximize commercial up against back, and then the rear would be the residential, so.

And this is multiple owners, not just one person coming in. I like their recommendation.

And again, we'd go for an RFP, and that's why I have to come back to you guys once we recommend accepting it or not. Motion to move forward with scenario two with an RFP going up.

I'd like to second that with let's let them help us write the RFP. Okay.

Who, Neighborhood Evolution? Oh, 100%.

They know what needs to be said out there. I'd rather them write it for us.

Oh, that's part of our agreement with them. Absolutely, they'll be involved with it 100%. Okay. Yeah.

I have a question. I believe we did talk about affordable housing. Does this scenario include that one of them did? Or is this a fair market?

I believe this one is going to be market.

These are all basically owner-occupied.

Yeah.

Fair market rate. Excuse me. One through three are under-occupied. Four, five, six, seven are?

That's the residential. Four, five, six, seven. And that's what I'm asking about. Is that market value or affordable housing?

My understanding was that this was market value. Let's go to market value.

I think what they were doing was setting it up so that the developer could come in and do a development but sell for market rate so that their risk is

rewarded on the back side but they're doing it differently you're a small developer and i think that's where they were saying that that's why it needed to be market right there i love that potential we have seven new property owners in town that are learning about development and uh that's what i like remind me what the two little little bitty out parcels are

Are you talking about the green, just open?

That was scenario three, not scenario two. And scenario two basically has ‑‑ scenario two basically says, like, hey, here's the floodplain. Let's stay out of the floodplain potentially because of the cost of insurance. That's right. That's why I look back. And lack of dirt. And lack of dirt. You don't have to pay for so much dirt to come in there. Agreed. All right. We have a motion and a second on the table. Any other discussion? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes? Yes. Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Commissioner Granger?

Yes.

Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 4-0.

Item 13F is consideration of the disposition of the vacant property at 2215, thank you Mr. Schwartz, of the property at 2215 East 3rd Street, parcel ID 22545-000-000. As background information at the May 26, 2026 City Commission meeting regarding the sale of the property at 2215 East 3rd Street, the Commission approved reimbursing the Housing and Community Services Department $100 for purchasing 2215 East 3rd Street, same parcel number, out of the city's general fund. They also requested staff to create a standard listing agreement and to promote cottage court development on the .73 acre property. The listing agreement is attached. Staff requests commission guidance on whether to use a request for proposal process or a direct sale process for the parcel and to indicate any preferred incentives to be offered to bring about and promote the Cottage Court development. Mr. Mayor?

Yes. This was just discussed.

So the question I have is whether the RFP process would allow us more control over getting what we want. We want cottage court buildings there. If we just go out on the open market and sell it, how can we hold the buyer?

It absolutely would give us more in the driver's seat, ma'am.

Remember when you were straight. value changes too. But I got a couple of questions. One, the listing agreement, staff has, this is a limited service listing agreement, not an exclusive, and we'd be the only person that I know in Bend County using that. So I want to provide staff with the exclusive right of sale so we are protected and whoever we're having a continuing contract works for us, personally. Second is, if we i think i know that the city has or their housing has forty thousand dollars in this site is this a site that we have to get forty thousand back out of to put back into over there that's a question that i know because one of the things something about a dollar which i don't understand a hundred dollars a hundred dollars um but i think that money ought to come back here and so i asked you about that there's a forty thousand dollars that we have in that that's news to me where's the Oh, then I'm off on that, my bad.

Never mind. But I still disagree with... I was about to request this be tabled if that was the case.

Okay. But I still disagree with that. I think cottage courts are a great idea. But I think they ought to be in an area that is not with single family. And my concern is... And on me, I didn't pay enough attention on this new zoning. It's allowed. So we're not doing something that's not allowed. But here's what happens. The public doesn't know about it until it happens to them. And that's tough. And so that's my only concern. But this is a great example. We still don't know how we're going to get rid of this. And it's really a $30,000, $40,000 lot, but we spent 30 minutes on it in the ONA. This is why the presentation, the process is so important. But I just would recommend that we change the listing agreement, and Nevin has them all, but I will make sure that y'all have a copy of vacant land, commercial, residential listing agreements, as well as the contracts that I'm going to ask the city to use, and I'm going to send

version of the cottage thing, if somebody were to, if we were to do this for sale and somebody were to buy it, they could just do that if they wanted to. We'd have to approve it because it's in our zoning and land use.

I was just saying that I disagree with that. Maybe we can't stop it. That's why I said in zone they can do it. It's an unfortunate thing.

No, I mean, it isn't because literally you can take the block right there just to the right of it and just literally drop it on the exact same, and that is, a cottage court is just literally what you're seeing over there plotted into one parcel.

Right, but those are all separate houses.

But that's what a cottage court can be, duplexes, triplexes, or a single family. I mean, it's simply that they're not all parceled out. You could actually parcel out and sell them in condo, but... The point is it's a greater density on a lot, so we'll get more of a tax base than if we put a single family home on it. That's the point. It's not whether it's cottagecore or whatever, but density is what I seek. It's also a new product for our town, I think, and people would be really excited about it because it fits neighborhoods. It's not like a four-story building in your backyard. It's what fits the neighborhood.

A question that Mrs. Lewis brought up was capping the commission. I would say that across the board we just charge 6% to be done. And that's a negotiable item folks. We don't have to pay it. The buyer can pay it. Somebody can pay it. But if we put that out there, in the last discussion we had on this, and I've already talked to them, they had a sliding scale commission thing. We don't need to do that with tax dollars. I'm not a fan of it anyway. But I think we need to say anything that we need any agreement We have just across more than six percent would be the top no matter if it's commercial residential.

I Think and this this actual lot has potential even to put in the front of it a commercial unit you can do a barbershop or even an office office for like a Real estate agent, you know something that doesn't need a lot of parking and that's how you really blend in that, you know, third Street's a little Main Street and So that's how you blend in these sort of uses without it being disruptive to neighborhoods. So I'd love to see an RFP go out. And I agree that if we are looking for people, if we're restricting somebody, they potentially might see less of a value in the property and they can make a different offer. And I'm not looking for like 100% coverage on the property. I just want to see more than one house sitting there. And I want to see some creativity and I want to see as a new precedence of creativity of local small-scale developers. So I'd love to see us move forward. I'd love to see us use that new listing agreement that you have. It makes total sense to me. And I would agree even that I think that real estate agents are providing a service and we shouldn't be, I mean, everyone has to make money whether you're building bulkheads or you're a real estate agent. And if you're providing a service, we should be paying people adequately and thoroughly. So I'm not up for like, trying to negotiate those down, especially on something like this.

Mr. Mayor, Commissioner, so I think if we go the RFP route, the whole listing agreement's a moot point. And this is kind of a question more for, I think, Ms. Waldron and Mr. Zimmerman. But I thought the commissioner already approved the contracts, and we've already used it. Please correct me if I'm wrong. We've not used this listing agreement. I'm being told we did.

For the three realtors, I believe we already approved the contracts for the three continuing services for the realtors.

We'll vote on that next meeting.

Here's the deal. All it is is it's a representation thing.

Would you rather be fully represented or partially? That's an easy question to answer.

I don't know the answer to that.

And the realtors won't have a problem with it. Okay. Actually, it'll be better for us.

It sounds like we're going to have to vote on it, so just get on the agenda.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I was going to say. Awesome.

So a motion that we put this out to RFP for cottage homes.

Do I have a second?

Second.

And the question, this again is market value, not affordable housing.

No, cottage homes are affordable housing.

They can be.

I mean, I guess they don't have to be, but I mean, I think that's going to be.

I think that's up for the developer to present to us. If they want to bring that in and say, hey, I'm more willing to do this than that, I think that's further creativity. I'd like that to be a part of the RFP as an option.

That's an option.

Yeah. Yeah.

These RFPs, if you break, you can't go sideways on it because it disqualifies you.

Would you like us to draft the RFP and bring it back before the commission for approval before we send it out? Yes.

And then Commissioner Hughes, for this, this listing agreement will not be used at this time. Yes. But let's, let's do, let's bring back. Yes.

And you can bring back. All right. Thank you. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes? Yes. Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Commissioner Granger? Yes. Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes 4-0.

Item 13G is consideration of approval for award of bid PC26-011, Pretty Bayou Improvements Phase 3, an authorization to execute the contract to 850 Construction Services in the amount of $1,194,839.37. Back in information, the Pretty Bayou Water and Wastewater Improvements Phase 3 Infrastructure Improvement Project consists of replacement and rehabilitation of water and wastewater lines, pavement, curb, and sidewalks. The limits of the project are Queen Circle, Foxworth Drive, and Longleaf Road. On April 1st of this year, sealed bids were received at the City of Panama City City Hall and opened for the reference project. The bids were open at the presence of bidders' representatives and city staff. Eight bids total were received, as shown in the included detailed certified bid tabulation. As anticipated, all eight bids exceeded the available project budget. To keep the project within the remaining available grant funding, the scope was reduced by removing a portion of the proposed linear footage of pipe, along with associated fittings and I'm not even going to try. Extra things with pipe. Following this exercise, 850 Construction LLC remained the lowest bidder. Staff recommendation through the Director of Public Works is that the Commission approve this bid award, PC26-0112, 850 Construction LLC.

I will entertain a motion. Second. Second. Any discussions? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes? Yes. Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Commissioner Granger?

Yes.

Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes four to zero.

And this pretty much will wrap up the Kings Point-Purdy Bayou Septic to Sewer, at least the first round, over a number of years, all through state appropriations. All right. Item 13H is consideration of rejection of the bid submission provided by Pearl Entertainment and Productions LLC for request for proposals PC26-028 for the management and operations of the Martin Theater and approval to reissue the RFP. As background information, on June 1st of this year, the City received only one proposal in response to the RFP for management and operations of the Martin Theater. The submission, provided by Pro Entertainment and Productions, LLC, was acknowledged by purchasing staff, confirming receipt of a single response. Industry standards and best practices for public procurement, especially for high visibility, high value cultural facility operations, generally anticipate multiple competitive responses to ensure the city can evaluate a range of qualifications, program models, financial approaches, and operational philosophies. A single response limits the city's ability to compare proposals, assess market pricing, and ensure the selected operator offers the most advantageous proposal for the community. Given the Martin Theater's importance as a cultural and economic civic asset and the substantial investment made toward its renovation, It is critical that the city conduct a process that demonstrates transparency, competitiveness, and due diligence. A resolicitation of the RFP will allow the city to increase competition and fairness, encourage broader participation, strengthen the evaluation process, ensure alignment with community expectations, and mitigate our risk. Reissuing the RFP does not reflect negatively on the sole respondent. Rather, it reflects the city's responsibility to secure the most competitive, transparent, and well-supported outcome for a venue of this scale and importance. Staff recommends that the city revise and reissue the RFP and reopen the solicitation period. Mr. Mayor?

I will entertain a motion. I'll make a motion that we reject the bid and create a new RFP that is centered around economic impact And the city will make money after that, not the city make money and then economic impact. That would be my motion. That's the problem. The RFP, in my opinion, the scoring was wrong in this. And there were people that did not make, we even got a letter from somebody, an email that said why they didn't make one. The scoring was cost prohibitive in running it for the risk that we were asking them to take. conversations so I like for us to let's think about we have this shiny new object what what can you do for us to make it work and who are you what are your qualifications what do you what what do you really do rather than these are the things we need you to fit in this box some of them are going to be in the box but not all of them so the motion is to accept is to reject the bid and Put out a new RFP that is more centered around economic impact and partnership.

Let's have staff bring that back to us. Okay. Sounds good. Can we do that?

Yes, sir. So they're going to bring back an RFP? Yeah. Got it.

Mr. Mayor, I would be remiss if I did not express the city's sincere appreciation to Pearl Entertainment and Productions for responding to our RFP. We do. We very much appreciate it.

Okay. So we have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes?

Yes.

Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Commissioner Granger?

Yes.

Mayor Branch?

Yes.

Motion passes four to zero.

Motion to adjourn.

Second.

Any discussion?

Wow.

Any discussion? Maybe. Any discussion?

None.

Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hughes? Commissioner Lucas? Yes. Commissioner Granger?

Yes.

Mayor Branch? Yes. Motion passes four to zero. And real quick, on 13H, I don't think we have a second. Doreen and I do not have a second. Yeah, you did. Commissioner Hughes motioned, but... I seconded. You did? Yes.

He did.

Okay, thank you. Sorry. Thank you.

Thank you.