City Council - workshop

Good morning, and welcome to our city council workshop this Monday, 05/18/2026 at 09:00AM. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Councilwoman Morgan? Yes, ma'am. Councilman Pickett?

Yes, ma'am.

Mayor Martin? Here, ma'am. Councilman Bana?

Yes, ma'am.

Vice Mayor Carvalho?

Here,

ma'am. Please stand for the pledge.

By the allegiance to the flag

of The United States

Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Would anyone like to speak to the council of public to be heard? Seeing no one, I'll close public to be heard. Moving on to item five, resolutions 5A, resolution 26 R36.

A resolution of the City Of Port St. Lucie, Florida approving the second amendment to the agreement for construction of parks and recreation facilities for regional park and park impact fee credits, providing for conflict, providing for severability, and providing an effective date.

Thank you. Council?

Motion to approve Resolution 26 R36.

I have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Moving on to item six, new business, 6A, City Manager's Annual Review. Good morning, Mr. Cabrera.

Good morning, Mayor of City Council, Natalie Cabrera from Human Resources for the Record. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to recap the City Manager's annual performance review agenda item. Mr. Morejo was hired as the City Manager on 02/18/2023, and pursuant to his employment agreement, he may receive an annual evaluation at the winter workshop or any other meeting council determines. As part of the review, the city council has the authority to provide Mr.

Morejo a merit salary increase as a benefit which is available to all other city employees as set forth in the city's rules and regulations. Attached in the agenda for council's perusal was a salary study of comparable city manager salaries, Mr. Morejo's employment agreement, first amendment to the agreement, the city manager's annual report and self assessment, and a proposed second amendment to the agreement. At this time, I'd like to briefly summarize Mr. Morejo's significant accomplishments towards the city's strategic plan, and I kept it to three bullets.

Mr. Morejo has demonstrated a strong leadership during rapid growth by maintaining fiscal responsibility, improving city services and delivering major infrastructure, public safety and parks projects. He has advanced economic development and innovation through transformative initiatives such as Southern Grove, NaturallyPSL, strategic planning, and nationally recognized community engagement efforts. And lastly, through his leadership, has elevated Port Stephenson's reputation locally and nationally through award winning performance, strong partnerships, effective grant funding efforts, and transparent collaboration with residents and city council. At this time, staff recommends that council discuss the city manager's performance.

Thank you. Any questions for Natalie? Comments? Questions?

Anyone? Anyone? Vice Mayor, go ahead.

You know, it's been a It's been a pleasure working with Mr. Morejo over the last few years. The city has continued to strive for excellence, but more importantly, Mr. Morejo understands the mission of the council, which is to serve at the not just the pleasure of the Council, but at the strategic plan that we adopt as a collective body. And he continues to go beyond and exceed expectations in project management as well as project completion.

We're going to have, obviously, as we move forward and projections show that with the economy continuing to change, that there is going to be some changes throughout city as well as the organization. And I've already seen Mr. Morejo display his efforts in how to continue to keep the organization agile by looking at where the cost savings are as well as where we can basically further hone in what's needed, what staffing is needed, what projects are truly needed moving forward. And he's done an excellent job forecasting that for the future. It's an absolute honor to work with this team, but it's great to work with fantastic staff.

I know we're going to talk about the city attorney soon, but I think I feel we have a really good duo when it comes to the two positions that this council is responsible for, which is the city attorney and the city manager. And they work extremely well together. We're an all American city. We continue to see as the city changes. Both work very well together to meet the demands of what the residents want.

I look forward to continuing to work with Mr. Morejo. And I have no issue with the amendment as provided. Think I'm assuming, Mr. Morejo, there's cost savings involved with the amendment because currently what you're asking for is a car allowance, but that car allowance is being flipped to an actual vehicle. So is there cost savings with that? I guess that's my only question for you.

Yes, ma'am, there is.

Okay.

Looking forward to the summer workshop. I'm sure we're going to press hard, right, mayor, on getting as much as possible back to the taxpayers that we serve. But I look forward to serving you in the years to come. Thank you. Any comments?

Want to advise Mary brought some very good points. I feel the same thing. I feel the same exact same way about Ms. Morello. He's always been a true professional.

He's been a good friend to me for a number of years, but most importantly, he's been a true professional. And he truly cares about this city. And I know, given the budget constraints that we have, there's been a lot of work put in by him and the staff to make sure that they come back with a balanced budget and meet our expectations. And I know that that's very challenging given the current situation that we have as far as prices always going up with our in our projects. The other thing about public safety, he's very committed to public safety.

And it goes it just shows that everything that he does for our city shows that he's a true professional, he really cares about this city. And I have no problems with the contract that Natalie has put forward to approve. Thank you.

Okay. Anyone else? Good, anyone? Okay. All right. So I echo comments of my colleagues here. I get the opportunity to work with Jesus very, very regularly. And he has done an amazing job at balancing all of the items in our strategic plan, making sure that things are getting done, keeping staff on track. And thank you very much for that, Mr. Morejo.

You're always looking for solutions. With all the challenges that have come up and continue to come up and will continue to come up, it's always about how do we get to yes, how do we find that solution. And that's something that I greatly appreciate very much. So I'm also in favor of the Second Amendment. So with that, is there a motion?

Motion to approve.

Second. Motion and second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay. Next, city attorney's annual review.

Thank you. Mr. Barrios was hired as a city attorney on 07/08/2024 and pursuant to his employment agreement, he may receive an annual valuation at the Winter Workshop or any other council meeting as determined by the City Council. As part of the review, the City Council has the authority to provide Mr. Barrios a merit salary increase as the benefit which is available to all other city employees as set forth in the city's rules and regulations. Attached in the agenda for council's perusal was a salary study of comparable city attorney salaries, Mr. Barrios employment agreement and first amendment to his employment agreement. At this time, staff recommends that counsel discuss the city attorney's performance.

Thank you. Comments, counsel? Go ahead. Go ahead, Dave.

One thing that I want to talk about with our previous city attorney, one thing that I was concerned with was I thought that we sent too many, we outsourced too many cases. And since Mr. Barrios has been in charge of the city attorney's office, I haven't heard some of the disparaging remarks about the city attorney's office being the black hole that it used to be. I haven't heard any disparaging remarks about nonsense that's went on in that office. Within that office, I think a lot of that settled down.

And I know that Mr. Barrios is handling a lot more cases inside his office that we used to outsource. And that comes out of savings to our taxpayers. So that's something I'm very thankful about. And most importantly, the case that we just the lawsuit that we just won with WazePro. Mr. Barrios handled that with true professionalism, and that I'm very thankful for. So whatever the council agrees, I'm right on board with Mr. Barrios. Thank you.

Julie? So I think of when the largest change came to the organization of the city attorney's office, which was back when Roger Orr, longtime city attorney, retired. And it happened too at the city manager's position when Don Cooper retired. When you had two longstanding members of the organization who basically ran the ship, there was a lot of turnover and a lot of change that occurred. And the question is, when is the ship going to get righted?

And I think for our city manager's department, was worth much Blackburn continued by Jesus. And it was a long time. We had a lot of different city attorneys come in. But mean, Mr. Barrios has literally done the impossible, and that is right the ship of the actual city attorney's office.

And that was a feat within itself. I feel, besides the successes of the office, I feel that the staff in there has never worked better together. It literally feels like it's not just a team, it's a family in there. I think that that comes directly from the city attorney who has made it a comfortable working environment, a team based environment, an environment where these cases that they work on collectively and the issues that come before them matter. But they don't do it in their own little office, even though some of them have departments that they are in charge of.

They actually really work collectively together really well. And so I think you're doing a fantastic job. Obviously, we have some really tough cases in front of us, and then we've had some tough cases behind us. I know that the previous city attorney did do a great job with setting up WazePro. We have to give credit where credit is due, but to bring it over the finish line and go through mediation and negotiations and come to the solution that was best for the residents, that was your office that did that. And so I can't say enough good things about what's happening with the city attorney. And then also, again, working with Mr. Morejo is key. That partnership, they serve very different roles. But if one office isn't working well with the other, you can really have a challenge.

You see that within other organizations throughout the state. So the fact that these two work well together, respect each other, but more importantly hold the line in the areas that they need to hold the line in to protect the city and its residents. Great job. I think he's asking or requesting about five additional days of leave. He has currently or is it ten? Let me look at your I think I have the amendment in front of me. And then you have currently just five, if I see that in your contract correctly.

I have no requests pending. I think that was last year's.

That was last year's? Okay. Is just oh, this is the First Amendment. There are no requests. There's no Second Amendment. Correct. Okay. So just roll with what you got. Okay. I'm good with that if that's what you're good with, sir. Any other comments?

Okay. So I'll go. I think Rich has done a really good job, definitely has righted the ship in the city attorney's office. I think that we and what is most important is that Rich and Jesus are working well together and there has been a lot of synergy there. And we know that we did not have that before and just how very important that is.

So I am very grateful for that and having the opportunity to work with Rich on a very regular basis when it comes to assessments, similarly to with Jesus, you know, constantly having meetings, constantly having conversations. And everything has been a great conversation. Everything has been going smoothly. And when I've had made comments about things that I need to see or would like to see differently, I see immediate differences in conversation and changes. So I'm very happy, very happy with Mr.

Barrios' service. All right. So I don't know that there's anything to vote on here since there's no requests. I think we're good. Thank you. All right. Right, counsel. There's nothing else on the agenda, so we'll adjourn.