City Council - Regular Meeting

Janine Polk.

Greg Julian.

Janice Denton. Melissa Lockhart. And we will have a roll call. Excuse me, invocations. Sorry, sir.

Good morning. I have two prayers for you this morning. As I was looking over my prayer, I have a 250th anniversary prayer for us as a nation.

And I says, I lift out city council.

So let's pray for City Council first. Heavenly Father, we bring the City Council of Punta Gorda before you, and we pray that the decisions they make be pleasing to you and the people of Punta Gorda, to every family that's represented here today. We pray for each and every one of them. Lord, be with each and every one of them. Heavenly Father, creator of heaven and earth. We thank you that you hear our prayers and you answer us. In four days we will celebrate the birth of our 250 year anniversary of our nation. We thank you for that and we pray that you put a hedge of protection around our nation for that day. Father, we thank you for our veterans who have made the sacrifice to defend our nation in war and in peace. These men and women have given of themselves for the protection of our people and the freedoms that we enjoy.

Lord, be with our active military.

We pray that you put a hedge of protection around them as only you can. Two hundred and fifty years ago, 56 ordinary Americans, ordinary men, gathered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, They were farmers. They were merchants. They were lawyers. They were chaplains. They were shopkeepers. They all had the same dream, to be a free nation, to be one nation under God. By signing their names to the Declaration of Independence, they were signing their own death warrants. I'm sure they had a Bible in hand, and someone read Joshua 1.9. Have I not commanded you to be strong and of good courage? Do not be afraid or dismayed, for the Lord is with you wherever you go. Lord, America is full of defining moments, moments of revolution, moments of resolve, sacrifice, moments of triumph. Lord, together we forged the freest and most prosperous nation in human history. Let us never forget. It is in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, we pray.

Amen. And what an appropriate time to ask all our veterans to please stand and be recognized. Thank you for your service and our freedom. Do you have any announcements today?

Yes, I do. Go ahead. I'd like to give a shout out to Chief Smith and Officer Dunham. Monday, a week ago, through their quick action, saved multiple lives. I received a phone call from a distraught resident, and I immediately called Chief Smith, and she sprung into action and got Officer Dunham to the scene. There were a couple other residents there that helped. They lifted the grate off of a storm drain. One guy, Brian, jumped down in there and handed out five baby ducklings. My mother was very, very pleased, and they waddled off together.

Anybody else? Can't top that one. Our next meeting is actually next week here, but we also have the historic board preservation. So we also have July 7th as the historic board preservation meeting that will be here. And that'll be at five o'clock in the evening.

Yes.

And this one then Wednesday will be at 9 a.m. Everybody approve the agenda?

Yes.

Yes. Okay. Next we have proclamation and then we're going to have a service award. And Dr. Riker will be accepting this proclamation on behalf of the city. And this is for Independence Day. Whereas 250 years ago, brave patriots declared America's independence and ignited the torch of liberty that continues to shine brightly in the hearts of Americans everywhere, including here in our resilient waterfront community. And whereas since its founding in 1884 along the beautiful Peace River in Charlotte Harbor, the city of Punta Gorda has reflected an enduring American spirit, growing from a frontier railroad town into a vibrant and welcoming community that honors its rich history while embracing in the future. And whereas Punta Gorda proudly contributes to our nation's defense through the training of military air crews at its World War II airfield and continues to stand in gratitude besides the generations of veterans and active duty service members who have protected our freedoms. And whereas through times of prosperity, hardship, and devastation, the people of Punta Gorda have continually demonstrated strength, resilience, compassion, and determination, rebuilding together each time stronger and with unwavering community spirit. And whereas our beautiful harbor walk, parks, historic landmarks, waterfront views, and close-knit neighborhoods serve as a daily reminder of the blessings of liberty, the importance of service, and enduring values that unites us as Americans. And whereas the celebration of Independence Day offers an opportunity for all citizens to reflect upon the sacrifices made for our freedoms and to come together in gratitude, unity, patriotism, and hope for future generations. Now, therefore, the City Council of the City of Punta Gorda, Florida, does hereby proclaim the 4th of July 2026 as Independence Day in the City of Punta Gorda and encourages all residents and visitors to celebrate with the patriotic pride, gratitude and unity as we honor our nation's history, the freedoms we cherish and the enduring spirit of the American people. may the fireworks over the peace river light both our skies and our hearts as we welcome america's 250th birthday and look forward together towards an even brighter future passed and duly adopted this first day of july 2026.

on behalf of the city of punta gorda thank you mayor and city council for this meaningful proclamation as we celebrate america's 250th birthday we are reminded that the freedoms we enjoy today are secured through the courage sacrifice and service of the generations that came before us here in punta gorda we honor that legacy by continuing to serve one another with resilience compassion and a sense of responsibility may this independence day inspire us all to reflect on our shared history celebrate our community and look with hope towards the next 250 years yes next we have a service award ashley if you come up here five years may seem like a short time on paper but when you think about the impact one person can have in five years it can be extraordinary today we have the privilege of recognizing someone who has made a lasting difference in our organization and in our community ashley omolansky From the very beginning of her career with the City of Punta Gorda, Ashley has approached every responsibility with professionalism, dedication, and an unwavering commitment to serving others. She first built a reputation for excellence in code compliance, where she became known for her organization, attention to detail, and her ability to build strong relationships with both residents and colleagues. Those qualities made her a natural fit for the role of executive assistant to the city manager, where she continues to be one of the most dependable and trusted members of our team. Anyone who's worked with Ashley knows she has an incredible gift for bringing people together. She has a warm and engaging leadership style that makes everyone feel welcome. Whether she's coordinating a meeting, greeting a resident, assisting city council, or helping staff navigate a busy day, Ashley has a way of making people feel heard, respected, and valued. She reminds us that leadership isn't always about standing at the front of the room. Sometimes it's about loudly making everyone else around you better. of course many people in our community know ashley for another reason her ask ashley video series has become a favorite among our residents what started as a simple way to connect with the community has become one of the city's most recognizable communication tools people look forward to seeing ashley because she explains things with authenticity enthusiasm and a genuine desire to help she has helped made local government more approachable more transparent and a little more fun As impressive as Ashley's professional accomplishments are, what truly defines her as a person is who she is outside of City Hall. Anyone who knows Ashley knows her greatest title isn't executive assistant, it's mom. Her daughter Gianna is the center of her world. Ashley's love, pride, and devotion to Gianna shines through in every conversation. She reminds us that while careers are important, family is what gives our work meaning. That same appreciation for family extends to the people who shaped her into the remarkable woman she is today. Her mom and dad instilled the values of kindness, hard work, and integrity that Ashley demonstrates every single day, and her sister Taylor has been a source of encouragement, friendship, and support through her journey. It's clear that Ashley's strength comes not only from her own character, but from the incredible family standing beside her. Ashley, thank you for everything you've contributed over these five years. Thank you for your professionalism, your positivity, your creativity, and most of all, your heart. Thank you for being someone that residents can trust, someone your coworkers can rely on, and someone who makes the City Hall a better place simply by you being here. Congratulations on this well-deserved milestone. We are grateful for your service, proud of everything you've accomplished, and excited to see all the future holds for you. Please join me in congratulating Ashley Amelanski on five years of outstanding service to the city.

That was awesome. Okay, next is gonna be for a board or committee. Those wishing to introduce themselves as nominees for a board or committee may do so at this time. Those who choose to speak must state their name for the record. And this is for a board or committee. Second for a board or committee. One more time, board or committee. Okay, we're gonna go ahead and move on. Next, this is regular public public input. Anyone wishing to address the council on any matter must state their name for the record. Each person will be allowed to speak for up to a maximum of three minutes. Please just try to talk into the microphone. It's tough when you look away people can't hear especially people are listening in. Can't believe it's July 1.

Good morning, everybody. My name is Samuel Turpening, and I am speaking directly to item 6D regarding the reengagement of Weiss-Sorota. When this council votes to expend taxpayer funds to bring back a general municipal firm to handle specialized land use liabilities under the Burt Harris Property Rights Protection Act, it represents an explicit admission of operational failure. A dangerous pattern has been established by council members Greg Julian and Melissa Lockhart. They routinely push through complex regulatory changes, bypass our land development regulations with total impunity and rely on generalized legal opinions to tell them exactly what they want to hear. When citizens stand at this microphone and warn them that their actions are exposing our property owners to catastrophic financial liability, the response from this council is a complete dismissive brush off because they think they know the law better than anyone else. As a seasoned attorney like Mike Polk correctly pointed out, the right from this podium law is highly specialized. If you take a catastrophic land use crisis and depend on a general municipal firm like Weiss Sirota, the very firm whose flawed legal advice opened the city up to severe Burt Harris lawsuits in the first place, instead of hiring a top tier specialized land use litigator like Bill Moore of the Moore Bowman firm, whom this community actually needs, you guarantee the worst possible financial outcome for our taxpayers. Yet instead of correcting this administrative arrogance, I am seeing this exact same pattern of ignoring statutory compliance repeat itself on an inter-jurisdictional level. Right now, Charlotte County taxpayers are facing a massive contract dispute with the Animal Welfare League. exposing the fact that the city of punnock order has been placing a 30 percent animal control service load onto county property owners without contributing a single dime to the county budget to make matters worse council member melissa lockhart sits as a board president of that very contractor creating a direct material conflict of interest under state ethics frameworks When a citizen exposes these financial discrepancies, the response from a public official isn't transparency. Instead, administrative credentials are weaponized on public community platforms to censor the whistleblower. This is a direct First Amendment civil rights violation under the United States Supreme Court standard and linked versus freed. reengaging general ledger council to clean up specialized burt harris messes that they are not equipped to handle while city officials continue to operate with total impunity is an absolute waste of our public purse true physical health means this body must stop hiding behind rubber stamp legal opinions enforce the law and protect our taxpayers from external liabilities and actively work to lower property taxes for every constituent in the city thank you

I'm going to speak up. Sam, I understand that, you know, you have the right to speak, but we're trying to say ideas, not actually call out people's names if we can. Thank you.

But we do not attack council members directly. I have a constitutional right to speak my mind.

Sam, okay, thank you.

Hi, Jeff Lustig. I'm just going to talk about what's going on in the county with their health care. The new GLP-1 drugs that are out that the employees are getting a chance to use, there's only one problem with that. There are 1,550 employees, and 400 of them are on these GLP drugs. Now, you want to try to guess how much it costs per person to be on these GLP-1 drugs? $8,000 a person. This is pharmaceutical companies taking advantage of small counties. And I don't know what your health care is, but they got blindsided by this fact. And it's something to look into. Five medicines contribute most of their pharmaceutical costs. And you can find out what they are from the chairman and whatnot. So be aware, they were totally blindsided and so $3 million in total added cost to their pharmaceutical . Now these drugs do work. I lost 45 pounds on it and it really saved my life because I was having problems getting out of bed with Parkinson's and whatnot. But you can negotiate better or you can give the person a health care fund and you can fund that and they can go in a private area and pick those up. It's just something to know about for the future.

Thank you.

Mike Polk. Point of clarification, Weiss Sirota did not represent the city when the LDRs were initially enacted. I don't know if any attorney actually reviewed the LDRs when they were sent to the state. Weiss Sirota is a firm that we hired to help rescind LDRs, okay, and they are experts in Burt Harris claims. The city needs to hire a law firm with a background of Burt Harris litigation to deal with the existing lawsuit we have, as well as a city marketplace co-violation issue. It would also be prudent to have them review the vested rights determination procedures and any future LDR revisions. If we had consulted a similar attorney, the city would not have had their LDRs repealed and would not be facing the present litigation. Given the role of prior approvals in establishing landowner expectations, local governments have to be cautious in increasing density or allowable uses as not to expose themselves to potential litigation. Just increasing density to try to induce development was a huge mistake. You can't force development. And all that happened was the city marketplace raised their price 50% from $8 million to $12 million. The opposition has hired one of the top human domain attorneys in the state. I strongly suggest you hire a firm that has successfully defended a Burt Harris claim to represent the city. I suggest the city is proactive and hire the firm of Weiss, Sirota, Helfman, Cole, and Berman, who we previously hired in overturning the LDRs. Thank you. Thank you.

Well, good morning City Council and everybody in the chamber today. Boy, Carlo, what a beautiful, beautiful what you said this morning. Thank you. I just came back from doing a little vacation, but I'm also able to do some field work. Have any of you ever been in the Miami River? on the shipping lane with all the ships, the cruise ships and everything, Fisher Island, most expensive homes in Florida. Senator Ben Albritton, I hope you're watching and listening. And President Trump, I hope you are watching and listening, sir, because whatever our government officials are doing down in Miami for the water, and I will be looking into it. It is a shame what is happening in our backyard. I saw what really healthy seagrass looked like. It was beautiful. I had nurse sharks swimming in three feet of water with me. I mean, five, six footers. That, I like that. I like sharks swimming with me. I've swam with 15, 25 foot great whites off the California coast.

It's exciting.

Our Peace River is dying. Charlotte Harbor is dying. And I've spent eight years, so according to city manager, five years of service is outstanding. I don't know what eight years of being the citizen waters are fighting for our waters is, and all for free, for God, for the children, for the elders. And I gotta tell you, I wanna see something happen on this board. I have an idea which council members I can go to for help on this issue and we're going to get on it. Now another issue is freedom of speech in this room. You guys want to put your name on a board and I put them in front of my house, I'll be using your name here. I don't give a what anyone has to say. My grandfather is in Column K in Arlington National Cemetery. My family, the Ritchie bloodline, was in this continent before this place was founded. God bless everybody.

Thank you, Tim.

I only needed to pull it down three inches the Gary Butler candidate for City Council District 4 thank you for the opportunity to share some thoughts I do have an idea I'd like to discuss the property tax amendment. I've managed multiple crisis opportunities throughout my career and I've learned there are some crisis you can control and some you cannot. and we cannot control the amendment Tallahassee has put forth. However, you can control how we prepare and educate our residents ahead of time. I do see the amendment as a crisis, given the potential impact it will have on the general fund If approved by the voters on November 3rd, this could lead to a potential 20% reduction in property tax revenue that goes into the general fund. assuming that the current budgeted income of approximately $16,500,000 remains the same. Potentially, you are looking at a negative impact of anywhere between $2.5 and $3 million over the two budgeted cycles, which will begin next year on October 2027. This on top of the 10% current budget reduction. Now we can't tell people how to vote, but there is a responsibility to educate and prepare them so they can make a better informed voting decision. Here is what I suggest you might do. Immediately draw up a comprehensive communication plan using the channels that you have as a city. That includes the basic information regarding the proposed amendment. Information including which homeowners this is targeted at, homestead versus non-homestead, and what property taxes this covers, city taxes versus school taxes. I would also include how this amendment now changes the current distribution of property tax dollars into the general fund and how they now have to be applied. I would also include an update on how the city is managing this directive and what steps it has taken so far. There already exists in the city a growing amount of misinformation and clearly a lack of understanding of the city budget and its various funds. Getting good factual information out to your constituents will definitely help address the current misinformation, wrong assumptions, and will provide a good demonstration of transparency. Thank you for your consideration.

Anyone else?

Good morning. Good morning, everybody. Sean McLaughlin, Punta Gorda Chamber of Commerce. Let's see. Good morning, Mayor, City Council, citizens. Thank you guys all for having us today. As our nation prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary, and the Army just celebrated its 251st birthday, I wanted to say that a strong nation isn't built only on the strength of its military. It's built on strong communities. strong families, thriving businesses, honest leadership, and citizens who care enough to leave things better than they found them. That's the America our founders envisioned 250 years ago. That's the America our Army has sacrificed to protect for 251 years. And that's the America we have a responsibility to continue building right here in Punta Gorda. So as we celebrate these historic anniversaries, let's remember that patriotism isn't only measured by what we're willing to fight for, it's measured by what we're willing to build, a future that our children will be proud to inherit. Because when my daughter asked me what we defended, I hope the answer is simple. We defended a nation and a community worth living in. For this, we will defend. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Second time? Okay. We're going to go ahead and move on. We have nothing on public hearing or ordinances and resolutions. Does anybody want to pull anything on the consent agenda? If not, I'll move to approve consent. Second. I'll second. We have a motion and several seconds to approve the consent agenda. All in favor? Aye. Opposed?

Motion carries.

Regular agenda, the first one is 6A, agreement award to APTIM Environmental Infrastructure and LLC of Boca Raton.

Good morning. excuse me good morning anhyna procurement for the record the city is partnering partnering with chnap for this project they will be completing the design portion and facilitating that portion of the the project This is a pilot project intended to enhance the natural habitat, improve water quality, and provide increased coastal resilience in the region through conceptual design and construction of the first man-made living shoreline in Charlotte Harbor. The city is utilizing grant funds from the state of Florida to put in place monitoring and then the construction of the project. Procurement released a request for proposal for this project. We notified 2,179 vendors, specifically engineers and firms that would engage in this process. 48 viewed the solicitation and we received one response. Procurement did perform due diligence by researching companies, spoke with nine additional firms, courtesy copies of the solicitation were emailed to those firms, and the bid was extended for sufficient time for them to respond. Upon the opening, the city still only received one response. We also put together a due diligence letter and submitted that to the granting agency to ensure that they would be, the due diligence was sufficient on the city's portion. They confirmed with the department, urban design spoke with them and they confirmed that we adhere to all the regulatory state statute and policies. The evaluation committee was then conformed and they reviewed the proposal and they deemed the firm qualified to move into negotiations. Procurement and the department negotiated a savings because it did come in over budget. We negotiated savings of $30,500 approximately and the total cost will be $172,333.78. Staff is recommending approval of this

to aptim any questions for ann i do want to say i appreciate all the work and it's so nice to see that we're trying to do something to protect our environment so thank you so much for all that work do you have a motion move to approve 6a i second we have motion a second on the floor all in favor aye opposed motion carries thank you Tim wait Tim Tim Tim I'm sorry can you say that at the end of the meeting because you have to go up here and it wasn't public I'm sorry thank you okay next is nomination of Gilchrist park to the national register of historic places

Good morning. Adriana Gerke, Planner 1. So this item before you is at the request of the Historic Preservation Advisory Board. An HPAB member prepared a draft nomination application requesting that Gilchrist Park be nominated to the National Register of Historic Places. The board requested that the city manager sign the application and is also requesting an update at the joint meeting on July 7. National Register designation is primarily honorary and recognizes the park's historic significance because the park would become a designated historic property under the city's historic preservation regulations. Certain future alterations could require review through the certificate of appropriateness process. The, so for future considerations, the Historic Preservation Advisory Board has expressed interest in becoming a decision-making board. If council were to approve that change in the future, certificates of appropriateness requiring HPAB review would become public hearings that would require legal advertisement and review during a scheduled HPAB meeting. And that could, extend project review timelines. Are there any questions?

Yeah, Melissa. Couple concerns that some people had emailed me about is, If this becomes historic, what would we have to do? Let's say if we wanted to add pickleball courts or if we wanted a pavilion got knocked down or the bow club, things like that. Would that be harder to then have to change that footprint if this was deemed historic? That's probably the biggest concern.

To my knowledge, it wouldn't be harder. You have the potential extended timeline of the certificate of appropriateness. As of right now, it would be considered an administrative review, so it would just go through staff. But with the future of the Historic Preservation Advisory Board wanting to be a decision-making board, it could extend it a little bit longer.

Well, and the extensions, that's not a big concern. Just making sure it could still happen. Those projects could still happen. That was their biggest question. That's fine. Thank you.

Any other questions? So the main reason is because we might be more eligible for funding and grants? Is that the main reason? I mean, why do we do this? Tell me.

I believe the Historic Advisory Board wanted just the National Register of Historic Places wanted that designation. The grant funding is an upside of that, but more just for the historical significance.

Jeanine pulled for the record, so. You know, these parks were given to us to protect. And I'm shocked that this hasn't been, this wasn't done years ago when they were putting many homes on the historic registry. I believe the parks are as old as 1880-something when they were gifted to us. So, yes, they're for everyone to enjoy, but at the same time, you know, they're not for... they're not for cement to take over so i think it's something that we need to do and because it might make it a little more difficult that's okay it doesn't look like it's going to completely take away the opportunity of us say putting in our um whatever it is we want to do with the scout house that was there so um i say we move forward with it so you make a motion Sure, I'll make a motion that we approve six be the nomination of Gilchrist Park to the National Register of Historic Places.

Okay, we have a motion a second on the floor on favor. I pose motion carries. Thank you. Thank you for that information. next on the agenda is the approval of the word to jetpack equipment company llc of south carolina for the purchase of one 900 eco 12-yard combination sewer cleaner good morning anna heinen for the record absolutely thank you

Procurement received a request from the right-of-way division to purchase one Vactor truck for cleaning of stormwater pipes, swales and roadways. Procurement, this is a specialized vehicle, therefore procurement looked at the Florida Sheriff's Association contract, source well and other contracts to look at piggybacking opportunities for this type of equipment. Multiple manufacturers were considered from each of the contractors, from each of the contracts. The city received five proposals. Out of the five proposals, three of the proposals met the specifications that the department gave to procurement to review. There were certain specifications based on the activity that the equipment needs to perform. The total lump sum of the purchase is $653,300.50. That includes extended warranties for the engine after treatment and chassis. Estimated delivery date is 120 to 180 days. This did come under budget. The budget was 700,000. The department is here to give a little insight of what this equipment does for the city.

Dave Myers, right-of-way supervisor. This is a very key piece of equipment for us. As you know, when we had all that flooding events, this was a big help because all that mud and stuff went into our storm drains. With this, the one that we're looking at, we could avoid the stuff going down into our storm drains and we could clean up it on the roads rather than trying to clean it out of our pipes. So this is why we went with the jet-back equipment.

So we currently have something like this, don't we? Because I've seen it in action, it's awesome. You did it right after all the mud storms. So this is a little bit different though because it deals with the road as well?

Yes, because this is able to, it has a PTO. The best way to explain it is like a garbage truck, it has a PTO. You can drive slowly with the PTO on and still operate everything functions properly. You can do this with this truck as well.

Can you tell us novices what a PTO is?

It's the power takeoff unit, which is basically a hydraulic unit that operates all the hydraulic pumps and stuff that crushes your garbage. Well, with the vac truck, it allows it to suck and move down the road. So if we wanted to clean the sidewalks or the curbs and gutters, we could slowly go down and vacuum it all up, which is a big plus, I think, for us.

sounds good any other questions get a motion i'll move to approve good whatever number this is succeed six c second okay we have a motion a second on the floor all in favor aye opposed motion carries thank you next on the list 60 re-engaging with weiss sir serota healthman cole and beerman pl regarding land use actions

This was asked by council to be brought forward at the next meeting. Attorney Leskovich has reached out to the firm that we previously used. We have an idea of what the cost may be and I'll let Attorney Leskovich go ahead with that.

So as you guys are aware there is one lawsuit with 1,000 West Marion and well, actually two lawsuits. One is a Burt Harris claim and one is a petition for declaratory judgment and injunctive relief. They are basically the same lawsuit, same companies, just different lawsuits is what it is. The plaintiffs, 1000 West Marion, are represented by Icard Merrill at this point. There are petitions in court currently waiting to be scheduled for removal of I-Card Merrill because of conflicts of interest based on their prior representation of the city. Currently, the city is represented by, excuse me, currently the city is represented by Roper, Townsend, and Setfen, which are the insurance companies that the, or the insurance company that the city has that is dealing with both lawsuits at this point. Myself and HR have been in contact with the insurance company attorneys they have. So the case is kind of in a stands, both cases are in a standstill right now pending the outcome of the city's motion to dismiss for failure to state a cause of action. It's also in a standstill pending the outcome of removal of I-card Merrill from representing the plaintiffs because of their possible conflict of interest. So right now, it appears whether you guys want to re-engage Weiss, Sirota, Heffelman, Cole, and Bierman. Of course, as you're aware, last year you guys retained them for review and second opinion regarding the repeal of what was at that point the LDRs. If I'm not mistaken, their total bill came to about $15,000 over that 30-day period? That's correct. They charge roughly a minimum of $500 an hour. At least that's what it was then. They are unsure what it could cost on re-engaging for actual lawsuits itself, because they were retained last year for review of documentations. In their paperwork, their associates were paid anywhere between 250 and $400 an hour. Their paralegals were a little bit less. My suggestion to council is, although I'm not personally involved with the two lawsuits with 1000 West Marion, we've been in constant contact and Dr. Reichert and I are aware of what's going on with Roper, Townsend, and Sepfin with what they're doing in terms of how they're defending it so far. We've had multiple meetings with them for updates to keep us apprised of what's going on. At this juncture, I don't think re-engaging Weiss-Sorota is ripe at this point, at least until after the motions to dismiss and or motions for recusal or discharge of Icard Merrill goes through. In speaking with Weiss Sirota, a lawsuit like this from start to finish, depending on the outcome of the motion to dismiss, could end up costing well over six figures. So at this juncture, although it may be something more prone down the road, I would recommend you guys take a step back on it and at least let the motion to recuse and discharge of i-card merrill go through first so you're aware i-card merrill is indicating that mr levin had absolutely nothing to do with the ldrs that he did not review them he did not he was not advised on them uh he he has denied writing for an opinion to the Attorney General's office seeking guidance on whether the LDRs needed to be repealed or not. So all of that is included in their motion to recuse Icard Merrill. um you know as you're aware you know it's my professional opinion of 26 years i think icard merrill is going to be removed from the case which then could abate the matter even further down the road until the plaintiffs get gets new counsel because they would be required to do so But that's my recommendation, is at least wait until after the motion to recuse instead of bringing them on board right now. It appears that the motions that have been filed are very fine-tuned, they are pretty lengthy, and the city's just in a standstill right now, at least until those two motions are heard. I mean, it may be something that if the motions are denied, I'm sorry, it may be something if the motion to dismiss is denied, you may wanna go with someone else. But keep in mind that Roper, Townsend, and Setfin, they specialize in this as well. Right now, it's not costing the city money, except for what you pay in insurance premiums. to them they're currently representing it and uh it appears they're doing a pretty good job so far right that's at this point could be different in a month from now as well i agree it sounds premature to to engage another law firm at the taxpayer expense and like you say roper's doing a good job so do you have any you wanted to add

Courtney Buckles, risk coordinator, I did just want to reinforce that if we did replace current counsel with the outside law firm, the insurance will not cover said cost.

Well, there you go. Then I move to... Wait, wait, please stop.

I want to make sure, because based on my conversations, if the city were to not be successful in defending the action, the insurance company would still cover costs that would be pay and doable to the plaintiff, though.

Correct. I'm talking the cost for the actual firm and the attorneys and so forth, which, again, could hit six figures easily.

Great information.

Thank you.

In this case, it doesn't.

Wait. There's more?

Debbie Lux for the record. I'm listening to all this, but I still think we need to be proactive to say if by chance it doesn't work, maybe we should consider making sure that this comes back immediately for discussion again so that we don't have to say, hey, do we have a consensus to bring it back on? I mean, that it immediately comes back on. And I think that we need to state that right now it might not be the right time, especially with everything that we've just learned.

but if anything happens that we will put this on the agenda to go ahead and prove it and mary just so you're aware at least once a day i'm checking the clerk docket to see if the city is being sued or if there's something else going on and that's how we found out initially about the burt harris claim was they had filed it the city wasn't served it's just through cursory checks of the clerk database of what was going on um so i'm constantly keeping track of the court dockets both in federal court and state court thank you to see if there's stuff floating out there um i just don't think it as of today it's ripe to bring them on board but i do agree if we do find something out immediately then i it should be brought up very quickly at council no problem with that at all and you can make sure that that roper and townsend are not in that their interest isn't to settle correct okay yeah okay and they're in in one of the meetings we had with them it was made very clear and i'll be more politically correct with my language here today basically it was telling 1 000 west marion to go pack sand but i used some other words during the meeting as well it was made clear we are not interested in settling it was made clear that you know one we got to get icard merrill off it was made clear that the city has done nothing wrong you know as the case moves on we will continue to remind roper that that is our position thank you

Everybody satisfied with that?

Yep.

Yes. Great info. Thank you, Mr. Westwood.

I think you had consensus that it will come back on the agenda if it needs to do so as quickly as possible. And you're relieving me of the responsibility of asking you for consensus at a later date.

Yes. Sounds good. Awesome. Thank you.

project updates okay permit software the evaluation committee ranked firms and shortlisted seven firms to provide demonstrations scheduled for july 14th 15th and 16th so as you can see we did have a lot of responses to that solicitation and we are happy about that the procurement action plan purchase order should be issued very shortly we are just awaiting the certificate of insurance but we actually have all of the contract pieces already done The FEMA grant manager is in evaluation. The references and licenses have been verified, so that continues down that path. The Boca Grande drainage construction is out to bid. That closes on July 24th. Engineering library is in evaluation. That again is a very time-consuming, long-term project, but should have great results for us when it is completed. the public safety assessment we are negotiating with the top right firm public safety fence is out to bid well field improvements and our plant improvements are out to bid the pedestrian crosswalk improvements are in evaluation and then just a side note on that there were some requests from city council members and members of the community to look at safety along the west marion corridor and olympia corridor that staff is undertaking so public works will be taking some action to Look at the hawk signalized Intersections and anything else we can do to enhance pedestrian safety in those areas that is outside the scope of the pedestrian crosswalk improvements, but both and are happening is what I wanted to let you know and The AMI draft solicitation document is back with utilities, and I did want to let everyone know that we did receive the million dollar legislative appropriation for those AMI meters, so we are very grateful to Vanessa Oliver, to Senator Albritton, and to Governor Walker. Governor DeSantis for signing that. A little flashback to Wisconsin years ago, I guess. But we're very thankful to our legislative partners for having sponsored that and to our lobbying firms that helped us achieve that and to all of you that wrote letters, went to Tallahassee, did all the things we need to do to be able to bring taxpayer dollars back home to Punta Gorda where we can use them effectively. And that was all I had for project updates.

awesome next is 6f council policies review operations finance and aesthetics

good afternoon city council city clerk sarah welch for the record today we have the last of the existing policies for review these ones focus on operations finance and aesthetic our purpose is still to modernize the policies that we have remove obsolete requirements and to strengthen the framework for civility and public engagement So after today's review, we don't have that much left to do. The July break will be good for us to be able to get started on actually compiling everything we've done so far. Some policies may have been superseded as the finance department developed a separate set of financial policies that are readopted with the budget each year. So as a general note, staff recommends moving finance related policies to the set that the finance department maintains to make sure that they're always up to date. So our first policy for today is policy 00-001 employee compensation. This was established following a comprehensive classification study by Derrick Associates to ensure a realistic and affordable citywide pay plan. Council reaffirmed in 2002 that the city manager should make annual adjustments to pay ranges. Council may wish to consider if the interval should be adjusted to better reflect modern labor market volatility. So at this time, if you would like to have some discussion of the policy, I'm here to take notes. Anyone? Guess not. So consensus is to keep it as is? Yes. Okay. Next up we have policy 01-01 investments. This was adopted back in September 5th of 2001. The policy was updated to ensure municipal funds were being managed in accordance with evolving Florida statutes governing local government investments. There is a Florida Statutes 218.415 that does indicate such policies shall be structured to place the highest priority on the safety of principal and liquidity of funds. The optimization of investment returns shall be secondary to the requirements for safety and liquidity. Each unit of local government shall adopt policies that are commensurate with nature and size of the public funds within its custody. and there is an accompanying resolution that aligns with this requirement. Are there any desired changes for this policy or shall we leave it as is and shift it into the finance section? All right. Next up, we have a policy on outside counsel policy 02-01. This was adopted back in December 4 of 2002. It was triggered by concerns over legal billing from a labor attorney firm, but the formal written policy was never fully drafted. In 2007, counsel determined the policy was not necessary at the time and placed it in abeyance. At this time, I think it would be appropriate for council to decide whether to formally repeal this policy or reactivate it with modern administrative standards if legal billing oversight is a current priority. I know that currently we do have regular reports that are made to council that do already address some of the concerns that the prior council had had that established this.

Debbie likes for the record. Yeah, this one was completely confusing because it almost sounded like staff had to give, you know, any kind of contracting out there. So, oh, I am adopting a baby. Do I have to go to, you know, city because it says everything, or it just didn't make sense how this was written, so.

And I think perhaps that's part of why it was never fully drafted.

Yeah, it's just, it's so vague that I personally think that this needs to just be deleted. I say get rid of it, it doesn't make sense.

Consensus to go ahead and repeal this one? Yes. Thank you. Next up we have Policy 05-03, Council Chambers Rental Agreement. This was adopted back on April 6th of 2005. It was created in response to a shortage of public meeting space and multiple requests from priority fit groups like Team Punta Gorda following hurricane damage to other local facilities. The $25 per hour rate likely no longer covers the burdened labor cost of the required city employees to manage this. So council may wish to update this fee. Rachel, are you in the audience? She left, okay. I'm not certain if this one is already covered in the event manual or if we would need to include it in the event manual once that is revised. So there's also the question of does council want to entertain continuing to offer out council chambers for rental when not in use? So what would council like to do?

We rent this building, and now that we'll be in the council chambers, I mean, would this suffice for most people? Probably.

That would be my opinion, yes, that you would have then this building available for that public use, baby showers, things that it used to be used for, and then you'd have the council chambers would just be for city council and boards and committee meetings.

Yeah, I think that's, because we have electronics there, we're gonna have, you know, stuff there that could get messed up, so I think we should just get rid of this.

but also the $25 an hour fee has to be reevaluated even for this place, of course, for cleaning.

I'm not certain what the cost is for this building. This was specific to the council chambers, which previously was over in the other building.

I say get rid of it. Yeah. Agreed.

all right excellent consensus to repeal is noted for that next up we have a policy regarding foreclosures adopted on november 18 1992 this delegated to the legal department to streamline the collection process for code enforcement and public safety costs council should confirm this delegation remains consistent with current legal appetites for property seizure and modern collection practices Also, lot mowing is now part of tax bills. So lot mowing liens are no longer issued. Tax sales would be the avenue to recover funds for that now.

So if it makes it faster, I have no problem with it.

Good. Everybody? Yeah. Do you have any concerns, Stephen?

I have no concerns, no.

Okay, so consensus to go ahead and let the demolition liens remain and then to remove the reference to the lot mowing liens that are outdated? Correct. Yes. Okay, thank you. Hold on, Kristen's coming up to clarify something. I may have misspoken.

And then Sarah, I have one more comment on it too then.

Kristen Simeone, finance director. I do wanna make sure we're talking about, we probably have some older lot mowing liens before it went on the tax bill. So we would keep those as part of our city normal procedures there. Okay, thank you.

And keep in mind as well the city has a lot of liens on properties outside of lot mowing and demolition. When I received the memo of the aggregate number it's well over six figures how much is floating out there. So if we're limiting just to demolition liens and lot mowing liens then it's suggesting that we'd have to come back to you to file a foreclosure on code enforcement lien that's been, could be $40,000. So just bringing that to your attention as well. There's a lot more out there than just demolition liens and lot mowing liens as well.

So you're suggesting we add any liens onto this that might be?

I'm not suggesting it. I mean it may not be a bad idea to do that. You know, maybe set an amount over how much the lien must be that authorizes us to do it. Right, the easiest. But there's a lot of money sitting out there.

Stephen, is there a general anticipated amount of legal costs that would go into a foreclosure proceeding? Or is it very dependent on the particulars of the property?

It's all dependent. It's all dependent. I mean, there's the filing fee of roughly $400 if a party challenges it. I mean, the process could take six months. I mean, legal fees are generally, even in a real property residential foreclosure, what I have seen is legal fees range around $1,500 to $2,000. I mean, there's not a whole lot that goes into it because it's here's the lien. They didn't pay it. we want to foreclose on it normally it ends up in a summary judgment where the court just grants it or something is worked out with the homeowner or the property owner sounds like a dollar figure would be the easiest which would cover any entity yeah i think as long as it brings revenue in that it's not costing us more just to do it i think that's appropriate what do you think a good dollar figure would be i mean you've got there's a lot of lanes that are sitting over $5,000, $10,000 that are floating out there. I mean, there's a lot that are $19 and, you know, $30. Well, of course, you're not going to want to file something on that right away. But something where there's, you know, $10,000 or more, you know, the city's going to end up netting money on that, quite a bit of money.

So you think a threshold of $5,000, throwing it out there?

I'd say a threshold of $10,000 to start to make sure that there's going to be net revenue coming back. Sounds good to me. are we able or are we being proactive on these liens or we just wait well right now on any property lien we have to come to you guys for permission so in the list I have and Rachel and I have gone through it it's 30 40 pages long that go back you know a decade of liens that are floating now there's a you know i'd say about 60 to 70 percent of them are less than a thousand dollars those ones are a little bit different but the ones that are five ten twenty thirty thousand dollars floating out there let's do it i mean it would end up costing the city around 2500 to go after ten thousand Sometimes you can turn around and say, look, give us 7,500 or give us 8,000. We'll discharge the remaining balance, but at least there's net revenue coming in.

These liens would have to be taken care of if the person sells their home. That's correct. So that's probably the easiest way to collect, but we could be more proactive, you're saying?

Could be more proactive, yeah. No, I'm not saying we're gonna go foreclosure filing happy on things.

No, that's not at all.

I mean, it would be on a case-by-case basis that Dr. Reichert and or I you know, and whoever we consult with the lead is appropriate to go after. But I know there's one lead sitting out there for almost $60,000. Wow.

And is there a statute of limitation on those collections?

No. Once you file it or do you have to have a time to file it though, right? You have to have a time to file it. Right.

I think the $10,000 number makes sense.

yeah so consensus to add that to this yes yes yep so would uh we'd like to replace the current language about demolition lanes and lot mowing lanes to make it into ten thousand dollars i would suggest it and adding a third component to it okay and or yeah the demolition liens a lot mowing liens or any lien that the city has in excess of ten thousand dollars

All right. Next up we have policy 95-01 about murals. This was adopted February 1, 1995. It was modeled after successful revitalization efforts in Chimayness, Canada. This program was designed to be privately funded but municipal regulated to ensure artistic quality and historic relevance. The revitalization community and the community redevelopment agency no longer exist. So council may want to consider if board or council review is still necessary or if some oversight can be delegated to staff or HPAB.

I know Kelly from the mural sent me some notes. And she did say that HPAB bylaws state that they have to present new murals to them and they provide recommendation to council. So it is kind of covered there. And then her other notes were yes, obviously get rid of the other two. But she said that she's never seen where the mural were, where these different boards approved it, they just recommended it to come to city council. So I think that just kind of needs to be tweaked, all that verbiage.

So it's consensus for it to first be reviewed by HPAB and then come to council for final decision still?

Yep. Sounds good.

Next up we have a policy 97-01 regarding vacating streets. This was adopted January 15th of 1997. It simplified the process upon the recommendation of the city attorney to eliminate the redundancy of adopting resolutions of intent followed by action ordinances. This policy is procedural. Council should verify that current notice requirements for such solutions remain sufficient for your desired level of public transparency.

like to say a few things on this if i don't if you don't mind i'm um so vacating a right-of-way basically takes away the public's legal interests in that strip of land okay and typically it goes to or reverts to property interest to adjacent owners so i'm a little bit concerned Because as property values go up, we've done it, we've given right-of-ways away, basically signing them away without an ordinance. I think an ordinance needs to be in place so that the people can say, hey, wait a minute, I use that. I'm just a little concerned about us okaying these rights-of-way giveaways through resolution instead of through an ordinance.

something to discuss that's a very valid point so bring it back to making an ordinance yes because the public should be notified and then afforded the opportunity to speak on it so if we do that we would advertise it in the newspaper the cost would probably be between 100 to 200 dollars per ad so it would only require one ad assuming that everything proceeded according to the published public hearing schedule

And I did a deep dive into this and this is very rare that municipalities give away property and they don't go through an ordinance. It's very rare that that happens. So I just think it's maybe something we need to look into.

Is it something, Sarah, that this can be broken into two parts by renaming or closing streets can be done by resolution? but if we're taking away a right, because this currently is combined, streets and right-of-ways, maybe going to your part, the right-of-way component is done by ordinance, a renaming of a street, or closing a street is done by resolution.

So it's the desire that vacations and closings would, or just the vacations would be done by ordinance of right-of-ways or streets? Yes.

I would say definitely.

So the current process involves a resolution of intent first that's adopted and then later on there is a resolution that actually affects the vacation. So if we switch to a public hearing process, do we want to retain the initial resolution that says that council is going to consider vacation before we proceed to the public hearing?

I think that would be a good idea. That would probably be a good idea.

Okay, and just since Rachel isn't here too, I would want to double check with her to make sure that she doesn't have any concerns that may affect how that should play out. So assuming that she doesn't, we'll proceed with making the changes that council desires to have vacations proceed according to an ordinance and to also still include a resolution of intent.

That sounds good. Perfect. Thank you. Greg? Yes. Okay.

So then for the other items, the renaming of streets, and did you want to include, I'm sorry, did you wanna include the closures in the ordinance or in the resolution process? Resolution. Resolution, okay, so for the closures and renaming, those would proceed according to the current resolution path. All right, thank you very much for the direction on that one. Next up, we have policy 98-02, event signs. This was adopted March 4th, 1998. It originally required council approval, but was moved to administrative staff handling in 2007 to streamline the process for event signage, particularly for off premises directional event signs. Is there any desire to amend this in any fashion or we'll just leave it as is?

i think this just needs to be deleted only because it's on the weekends and we don't have code enforcement on the weekends so we're doing it and there's nobody out there even to say hey you're not in compliance that's my thought it's not monitored so i think it does provide a guideline it's a little bit of a threat it provides a guideline but i can tell you that even with guidelines you see that people are still placing signs wherever they are and there's no code enforcement to even monitor it so

And this really does concern event signage specifically. So when they're doing their DRC applications, they would be required to provide that sample of the off-premises directional event signs that they plan on using. That way staff can review it. And I believe they even have to indicate where they are going to be placing the signs. So it helps staff, you know, be able to advise them, you know, you need to keep it clear of the right-of-way, that kind of thing.

I keep it as is.

Yeah, I think you're... That's fine. Yes. All right.

Okay. And then next up we have Policy 99-01, Community Interest Funding. This was adopted January 6 of 1999. This was created to provide a consistent framework for organizations like CARE and the Cooper Street Center to request financial support from the city. I know that there has been discussion of providing funds to non-profits so council may wish to refresh the evaluation criteria to ensure it still reflects current community priorities or just say we would rather repeal this entirely.

And keep in mind as well, legislation was just passed and signed by the governor that the cities and counties can't provide funding to certain nonprofit organizations now. So this may need to be reviewed on what the guidelines are if certain organizations qualify or don't qualify.

So is this something we can come back to?

i believe so yes i believe the new law goes into effect i believe january one okay as opposed to today which is fine because i know that we seem to at the budget we keep on arguing whether we're going to give to non-profits or not and it's always been kind of a contentious thing here so i guess we're going to just keep this here for right now then

but we'll be presenting the changes before we actually draft a resolution to readopt the council's policies according to the direction that have been provided throughout this process. So when we come back with everything that you've requested changed, would you like to continue the discussion of whether or not you would want to keep this or remove it?

I think this is very important because I know that I've heard in the past and forgive me if I'm, I'm thinking this wrong, but I've heard that we shouldn't be delegating to nonprofits, you know, saying that we represent the city, you know, where if an individual wants to donate to that nonprofit, they have the ability to, I know that was an argument that was stated. So this does need to come forward so that we can have a discussion. Do we want to do this or don't we want to do this?

Would you like us to schedule an agenda item specifically for this one in August when we return from break?

Well, we know more about the law. Yeah, we need to review the law first.

Yeah, I'll pull that up. I can send you guys something as well initially. Okay. And then get with Dr. Reichert and Sarah about getting it on an agenda then as well. That would be great.

All right. Next up, we have policy 99-02, sale of surplus property. This was adopted April 21st of 1999. This replaced a more cumbersome 1984 policy that required referendums for small property sales. The $10,000 threshold has likely been outpaced by property value inflation. Council may want to increase this limit to allow for more efficient disposal of minor surplus parcels.

I think at the pre agenda, we were talking about in a procurement if we were going to remove this, and I'm sorry, weren't you saying something?

Ann Heinen, Procurement. For the record, our procurement policy does cover the disposal of obsolete and surplus property. And basically, what the procurement policy does provide is in line with state statute. State statute has 15,000, and that applies to county and state The local municipalities are under home rule. So our procurement policy says that we have the power to sell or dispose of the property by public auction, competitive sealed bidding, trade-in or other appropriate methods. So by having this in the policy, it gives us the flexibility of that timeframe to decide the appropriate method for disposal. So I think if we do include any amounts, it's going to be obsolete what happens in the market so removing that amount and in my opinion would give us the flexibility of disposing of what needs to be disposed of then also council can give us direction if there's a specialized property that they like to see go in a specific direction how much surplus property is there very little

So again, do you recommend removing this? I recommend removing it, yes.

Thank you. There you go.

Consensus to remove?

That's fine. Yep.

Okay. Yep. Thank you.

That's it then? Yep, that's it. So we've gone through all of the sets that we had scheduled. Does council have any additional policies they would like to present in the future? Would members like to have an opportunity to suggest additional policies?

well i'd like to have a discussion about the concerns that a few neighbors have mentioned regarding solicitation kind of has to do with signage and people knocking on doors and it's not allowed but it still happens a lot i don't think it's part of this but i'd like to have i don't know what we can do if anything

it's very annoying certainly when residents experience that if they get a flyer say somebody leaves literature behind a lot of times they do that give code enforcement a call and we will have someone contact that company and let them know that that's not allowed in the community even though there are signs that indicate that some people sometimes people just don't know that solicitation isn't allowed and we do everything we can to reach out to the company that's doing it and get them to stop think we had this discussion but when they put signs on corners saying window washing or whatever are those allowed to be there they are not and those also can be reported to code enforcement if you get an address for us we get somebody out there and get it removed then they make contact with the person if it has a phone number on it of course they'll make contact and advise that that is not allowed as well

So I wanna go back to the event signs, sorry. I just wanna look at those real quick because I see event signs that go up four or five days before and some of them are attached to FDOT signs. So could we put something in this event signs that says applicants must remove or are allowed to put up signs at a certain time? Or is that getting too strict?

i think it's actually included it is included yes yes it is i i think people just these are people not following rules and those are those situations where it's going on an f dot sign or something like that um that that certainly is not permitted so okay it's a case of needing to call code enforcement okay but you see even banners that are tied to trees and everything as well i mean you are seeing all of that out here and i don't know if we need to have code enforcement look at that but certainly residents city council anyone who has a concern reach out to city staff and we will get it looked into right away

all right so we will bring back the uh one item for further discussion we'll return with an overall summary of the changes that council has desired and then once we get final approval on that we'll prepare a resolution for adoption and then we'll continue to review these annually going forward to keep them up to date thank you thank you thank you sir

so i guess with that we're going to go ahead and close our regular agenda do you want to take a 10 minute break really quick and then we'll reopen it as uh bernster isles canal maintenance assessment district We're opening up to Fernstar Isle Canal Maintenance Assessment District.

moving on to 7a resolution of the city council of the city of punta gorda florida adopting a tentative levy of annual special assessment for the burnt store isles canal maintenance assessment district for fiscal year 2026 to 2027 setting a date time and place of public hearing to consider final adoption of the assessment and providing an effective date

Thank you. Kristen Simeone, finance director. This resolution authorizes the property appraiser to send out notices to the property owners reflecting the tentative special assessment and to notify property owners of the date, time and place of the public hearing to set the final special assessment. The tentative annual assessment for the BSI Canal Maintenance Advisory District is $1,035 per single family residence, which represents a $25 increase from the prior year. For all other properties, the assessment is 10.8 cents per square foot of land lying less than 120 lineal feet from the seawall. A public hearing to consider the final adoption of the special assessment will be held on September 9, 2026 at 5.01 p.m. in the City Council Chambers at 326 West Marion Avenue, Punta Gorda, Florida.

Discussion?

I have nothing.

Move to approve 7A. Second. We have a motion and a second to approve 7A. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. We're going to go ahead and close BSI, and we're going to open Punta Gorda Isles Canal Maintenance Assessment District.

8A, a resolution of the city council of the city of Punta Gorda, Florida, adopting a tentative levy of annual special assessment for the Punta Gorda Isles Canal Maintenance Assessment District for fiscal year 2026 through 2027. setting a date, time, and place of public hearing to consider the final adoption of the assessment and providing an effective date.

Thank you. Again, Kristen Simeone, Finance Director. And this resolution authorizes the property appraiser to send out the notices to the property owners reflecting the tentative special assessment and to notify the property owners of the date, time, and place of the public hearings to set the final special assessment. The tentative annual special assessment for PGI, Canal Maintenance Assessment District, is $1,500 per single family lot, which represents an increase of $150 from the prior year. For all other properties, the assessment is 15.6 cents per square foot of land lying less than 120 lineal feet from the seawall. A public budget hearing to consider final adoption of the special assessment will be held on September 9, 2026, at 5.01 PM in City Council Chambers, 326 West Marion Avenue, Punta Gorda, Florida.

Any questions, comments? No.

Move to approve 8A. I'll second.

We have a motion and a second to approve. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. I just want to say, I was going to oppose this, but I know that we've got residents who have the opportunity on September 9th to talk, so... and will it be advertised well for the residents to show up we do put it in the paper and i know it's on the city's website and it can go in the weekly reports that are updated and things like that okay with that we'll go ahead and close the punta gorda house maintenance district and we will open the city of punta gorda lot mowing assessment 9a

a resolution of the city council of the city of punta gorda florida adopting a tentative levy of annual special assessment for the city of punta gorda lot mowing assessment district for fiscal year 2026 through 2027 setting a date time and place of public hearing to consider final adoption of assessment of the assessment and providing an effective date

Again, Kristen Simeone, finance director. And this proposed resolution sets the tentative levy of the mandatory lot mowing program at $285 and authorizes the property appraiser to include within the trim notice the tentative special assessment rate and the public hearing notice for the final special assessment. This tentative assessment is the same as the previous year. A public hearing to consider the final adoption of the special assessment will be held September 9, 2026 at 5.01 p.m. in the City Council Chambers 326 West Marion Avenue, Punta Gorda, Florida. Any questions or comments?

move to approve nine a second we have a motion a second to approve all in favor aye opposed motion carries thank you we'll go ahead and close the city of puente gordo lat moing and we'll reopen our regular agenda so next on the list is 10 a auditor selection committee

Good afternoon, no, still morning. Good morning again, City Clerk Sarah Welch. So we have on the agenda today an item to discuss establishing the auditor selection committee that state statute now requires. So the members help select the auditor that will conduct the annual financial audit required in state statute 218.39. It needs to be at least three members. One member must be a council member who will serve as the chair of the committee and city staff may only serve in advisory capacity to the committee. Sorry, let me scroll down. The procurement manager and or finance director will serve the committee in an advisory capacity specifically to ensure compliance with the city and state procurement policies and requirements and annual audit requirements. So Section 218.3913 Florida Statutes details the Auditor Selection Committee's duties. It first states that audit services are to be provided by a certified public accounting firm duly licensed under Chapter 473 and qualified to conduct audits in accordance with government auditing standards as adopted by the Florida Board of Accountancy. It also requires public announcements must include at a minimum a brief description of the audit and indicate how interested firms can apply for consideration. The procurement department provides info on the city's website about signing up to be an eligible vendor with the city and receive public notices regarding RFPs. Though this can also be announced at one of their meetings. statute also indicates the request for proposals shall include information on how proposals are to be evaluated and such other information as the committee deems necessary for the firm to prepare a proposal procurement includes all of this information in the solicitation packet that they upload to the city's e-procurement system The statute also states that if compensation is one of the factors established pursuant to paragraph A of that statute, it shall not be the sole or predominant factor used to evaluate proposals. And then finally, if less than three firms respond to the request for proposals, the committee shall recommend such firms as it deems to be the most highly qualified. The auditor selection committee essentially functions like an expanded evaluation and selection committee. Staff will provide information on the scope of requested service, relevant factors or criteria, weighting, and such. They can provide an example of the last scope that was used before this statute went into place that now requires a committee to help make the committee's job as easy as possible. So again, we need to determine exactly how many members we want to have on the committee, what qualifications the members should have, and consider the timeline as well. As Kristen has mentioned, the annual financial audit must be completed within nine months after the end of its fiscal year by an independent certified public accountant retained by the municipality and paid from its public funds. The desired timeframe for committee action is that a scope of work would be issued by August 1 with the solicitation then open for 21 days. The committee would then rank the proposals in early to mid-September and provide a recommendation to council in early October to ensure that the selected auditor has plenty of time to complete the audit. So first up, we do have, since the agenda has been published, you'll see in the July 8th agenda that we have two forms of the resolution, 143-member committee, 145-member committee. Does council want to decide how many members they would like to have serve? One thought was that if we have a five-member committee, then we would have one member who is serving from council and then perhaps the other four members could each select a person that meets whatever qualifications council decides on today to serve on the committee as well or we could go to just three members with one being a council member and then the other two selected by discussion among council members

This is a hard one.

It's sometimes hard to get people to serve, and we are in a bit of a timeline. So I wonder if we should start with three and then move to five if we want to later. I don't know, but these are qualified people. It might be a little bit tougher.

If council would prefer to do three, we do have that resolution prepared. So when you go to adopt, we would have you sign that version of the resolution.

I had three is probably good and if we find more interest we could always increase it to five but I think you know three established three

all likelihood there's a good chance we wouldn't be able to increase it just because a lot of the action will be taking place over to break but for this year three is all that's required per statute so that is definitely sufficient for meeting that requirement the next question would be what kind of qualifications you would desire for the members that you would bring

would say someone absolutely with a financial background so if that's a cpa or somebody who works in numbers definitely be beneficial if they've had government experience government experience yes

So we don't have to decide on the members today that can wait until July 8. So just keep that in mind while you're thinking about who you might want to bring forward at the next meeting, that it's a desire for them to preferably be a CPA with government experience.

And we say you said beneficial, I don't think it should be mandatory, because it's hard to find that kind of person. Business experience is very valuable, because we are really kind of like a business for the representing taxpayers. So

and then there's also the question a lot of our boards have a residency requirement the statute doesn't indicate there is any such requirement so you could also broaden the pool to people within the county as well if you desire if you've got people out there that you know have the kind of experience my ears went buggy just i don't know if i'm sorry there we go that's better isn't it could you state that again i'm so sorry yes the state statute doesn't require they be residents of the city so you could expand the pool to folks in the county too if there is someone who is a cpa with government experience that resides outside of the city that you would like to have on the committee we can always say no if we've got local you know putting order people but i think expanding it's not a bad idea i think we do preference for a city but open it up for the potential of somebody from the county all right so everybody be thinking on that between now and july 8th the resolution has spots for us to fill in the names of the individuals who end up being selected so we can take care of it at that time So as far as committee administration goes, the city clerk's office will oversee the auditor selection committee like any other limited purpose citizen advisory board. We will provide a condensed training covering general meeting procedures, sunshine law, public records law, and ethics. We will also oversee agenda publication. The finance and procurement departments will be present at committee meetings in an advisory capacity to answer content related questions on procurement processes. They will be responsible for training on and ensuring compliance with applicable city and state procurement policies and requirements. Finance staff can also provide education on government accounting and auditing practices as needed. And that concludes that presentation. Are there any questions?

Kristen, do you want to pipe in on anything that you think might be necessary since this

I think you covered it. I mean you do want someone with a financial background and having that governmental experience does help them understand how governmental accounting or a governmental audit is a little bit different than a regular business audit. We do have a lot of state statutes and federal guidelines that we have to adhere to and they check for those as well, so.

Thank you.

all right if there are no other questions i'll move on to our regular announcement of vacancies fantastic on the building board we do have the consumer advocate seat and the alternate seat we will bring forward both individuals for appointment once the resolution is finalized on the burnt store aisles canal advisory committee we have one alternate seat and on the code enforcement board we have one regular seat and two alternate seats would it be okay if i go ahead and make my announcements yes all right today is the day the business tax renewal period opened so all businesses that will continue to operate are required to renew their business tax receipt by september 30th of this year renewal notices are going out in batches based on classifications type if you are a business owner who has changed their email address since your last renewal please contact the city clerk's office at 941-575-3369 If you do not receive your renewal notice via email today, please call us because there's probably been a change in your email address you weren't even aware of. As for businesses which have closed or are closing prior to that date, please notify our office of the closure. And then we have excellent news regarding payments processed in our office, including business tax receipts. IT was able to get our credit processing system up and running. We'd like to give a big shout out to Brian, Alicia, and the whole IT team for all the hard work that went into making that happen. Awesome. So that's all, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Okay, the first thing I need to do is try and get consensus on hiring a special magistrate for the school's own camera cases. This is something we discussed previously. School will be starting before we know it, so I need council approval to move forward on that.

I agree. Yes. Sure.

Okay. Gotta need it. All right. Just a comment. We've had a lot of discussion about the Animal Welfare League, and I did want to make sure that council is aware, as well as our residents, that the city residents actually paid $30,815,751 the county's general fund every year I have asked Hector for a breakdown of what those funds actually are put towards he will be getting that to me in the near future but city residents do pay substantially into that county general fund as well as paying the city of Punta Gorda taxes and it is a substantial amount more that is paid to the county than what is paid into the city government here just wanted to make some clarification on that the numbers that were presented at the county board meeting would be about just a little less than three percent of the animals that are actually coming from that's the city three percent not thirty three the next um The next item I have, the Artisans Atelier. So I had gone back to them and my staff had gone back to them and asked for that CAM payment. They were amenable to paying CAM, but they asked to go on a month-by-month basis, so then they would be paying that 10% of their gross receipts plus CAM. The CAM itself would be $9,372 annually. Any thoughts on that? I think yeah I think month month and then maybe consider advertising it as a space then you know if there's any interest in it at least they still have that space that leaves flexibility for us and flexibility so who's responsible for keeping those spots filled that would be city staff okay and we do have on the next agenda we do have interest in the other space that we had open we'll have that contract in front of you on the next agenda

And how are the firemen doing?

I saw them over there working. I was over there yesterday and that space is really coming along that is gonna serve the community and serve our firefighters very well, having the space that they need to do the administrative functions and freeing up that much needed space over at the Public Safety Center for other activities. the guys are doing a great job in there the floors are in the walls are going up i can't say enough about the work that that they're doing and they're really helping to save taxpayer dollars by doing some of the work in-house so that's been fantastic it's wonderful a little update on the advent health parking variance that'll be heard on july 27th the reason that it couldn't move forward at the meeting was because it's very strict in the requirements for granting a variance that you can only do the minimum modification needed well the advent health didn't have that number of the minimum spaces that they needed at that meeting so that caused that to have to be continued. July 27th is pretty much the earliest date that it can be heard because it has to be advertised for two weeks. We don't have the paperwork back from Advent, but I did want to make sure that council and the public know that The developers also proposed updating the site plan to specify the spaces that are allowed by the current LDRs, that they would do that and construct that unless the variance is approved. This allows them to still move forward with the overall development while the variance is being finalized. So I think that's important information for all of you to have, important information for the community. Last Friday was a very important graduation. We had 50 middle schoolers that graduated from the Public Safety Youth Academy. I know some of you in the past have attended the graduation. It's a really fun ceremony that they do at the end and you really get to see the loving rivalry that we have between police and fire that's alive and well. I thank both of the chiefs and their staff members for making a lasting impression on the kids. We had parents thanking us afterwards. It's just a really great event. This Monday, we'll have our pre-agenda at 9 a.m. It's really important that all council members are there. If you can be, we are going to be, we're gonna walk through the budget presentations at that meeting. I think it's good for city council and residents to hear that information twice, so Kristen has graciously offered to give the full presentation, so just plan a little bit longer for that pre-agenda meeting on Monday. We'll also have a little bit of a discussion about the potential of implementing MSVUs, kristin was just at her state conference and of course everyone is concerned about property taxes and what property tax reform is going to mean and she was able to network with some of her peers and really come back with some best practices of what other municipalities are doing to be ready for it and we'll have that information as well i do want to mention too that as city staff we are not allowed to advocate one way or another on property tax reform so you probably won't see a lot of information coming from the city itself you as elected officials are able to have comments provide comments but city staff is not we can provide facts and we can give you information but we can't i couldn't bring the chief up here and say what would this do to your budget and have her give a plea that accurately represents that that could be construed by somebody as maybe advocating for or against it. So just wanted to get that on the record so that you all understand why we may not be saying as much as city staff as you would like us to say simply because we can't. If you were caught on the way in today, the Bearcat was here and the Fat Truck has been delivered. Again, those were appropriations from Tallahassee that we are very grateful for and I'm grateful to staff, especially procurement, for making sure that we could get that done in the year timeframe that we had and our PD staff that had reached out directly to Bearcat and helped keep things moving along. It really takes a team effort to get these kind of things to happen. um so appreciative that it that it did we'll be able to serve our residents very well now in the event of storms or other natural disasters that appears to be all i have for today thank you thank you awesome um quite a few things i'm going to first touch with what dr reichert said about property tax reform governor desantis came out yesterday and indicated

Although he will be voting for the tax reform, he will not be actively advocating for its passage because it was not the tax reform proposal that he made. It's currently polling at roughly 64%. We can trust polls as far as we can trust them, but I found it interesting that he indicated he would not be actively campaigning for its passage because it was different than what he wanted. uh there have been in the last month now several federal lawsuits dismissed against the city so that is good news for us um kristen are you still here right yet um i want to thank kristen and if i'm missing someone please let them know i didn't intentionally forget them kristen gary brian theresa samuel they worked their butts off for the last two months in getting documents together for the fema appeal arbitration everything was submitted on time i met with them they did all the work on it and everything was submitted on time so now we're just in a waiting process for that so thank you for and your team for it's already moving forward great yeah i think the deadline was what monday and we got everything in and everything is good to go moving forward hopefully we can receive some compensation for the denial of the seawall money um here recently we had a discussion and long discussion regarding the downtown farmers market i have met with the organizers of the market we've had great conversations with them we are in the process pursuant to your guys's consensus of drafting documentations that can protect the city We're hoping to have something formalized sometime by mid-August for the market to go. They had some great concerns and great ideas and so did staff as well. So that's moving along forward with whoever a vendor may be for a downtown market. The purchase of Fisherman's Village slash Fishville has been delayed. the buyers needed additional time for some due diligence it's my understanding it is set to close sometime in mid-august now as opposed to what was scheduled sometime in early part of july there is a shade meeting we scheduled for next wednesday it looks like the augur the july 8th meeting is going to be a Lengthier one to begin with. We scheduled, I think it was 8.30 we scheduled it. The purpose of that one is to apprise you guys of where we're at with our Jay Gorman lawsuit. I'm sorry. Is it July 7th?

That's a different one.

I had July 8th. Yeah, July 8th. The 7th is a different shade. Okay, I'm sorry, excuse me. Yeah, the 7th is the PBA. That's right, okay. July 8th, I think we put it on at 8.30 in the morning. I only needed about a half hour of time for that one. It was more to... apprise you of where we're at with rj gorman but just to give you an idea because it's public record anyways we have non-binding arbitration currently scheduled for july 15th At the non-binding arbitration, we can discuss whatever we need to, potential witnesses. But leading up to that, on July 6th, I have a meeting with the new attorneys for R.J. Gorman to discuss what will be a pre-non-binding arbitration discussion on July 8th. So if council meeting is running a little bit late on July 8th, I'll have to scoot out about 1.30 to get present for this non-binding arbitration. I wanted to give you an update with where we're at. We have mediation currently scheduled in R.J. Gorman for August 25th. I asked for that date because if I'm not mistaken, during the break period, there'll be a lot of movement in R.J. Gorman. During your break period, there'll be a lot of movement with that. We have a pre-agenda meeting, I believe, on that Monday, August 24th. I wanted to set the mediation on August 25th, and then I believe we have council meeting on August 26th. So there will be a second shade meeting somewhere in a week or two prior to the mediation date. At that meeting, I'll need more time because that's when decisions can be made. Naturally, we can't bind the city to anything without your guys' approval. So if we came to a settlement, it would be contingent upon council's approval. But it's to gather more information and have a more open discussion of possible settlement at mediation, whatever it may be. And I think that is all I have. Outside of that, I know Dallas is not here. Ashley does make great popcorn as well. So we can add that to her accolades. Legal department, everything that has been presented to us is being taken care of or has been reviewed and we're moving forward. Thank you.

Thank you. Shannon. I think that it might be cool if it was possible to have the Bearcat in a parade sometime, you know, because it's quite an acquisition and hopefully we never need to actually use it for floods. But I just it's an amazing vehicle. And so thank you for all the work. And Kristen, thank you for all your work on the FEMA pursuit of dollars. Appreciate it a lot.

already secured it in the drone show Melissa just before I forget because we will be on break I will not be able to attend the August 26 meeting so just be aware of that other than that I just want to say thank you for that factual information dr. Reichart regarding AWL that yes indeed it's about one to three percent of the animals that actually come from the city and actually we don't even utilize animal control our wonderful Police Department is usually is the one that is even taking those animals to the shelter. Another thing I wanted to say on the record is there's a lot of misinformation out there about whether I should be able to sit on a board. Gosh, if that was the case, none of us could sit on any board, right? It is absolutely not a conflict of interest. dedicate to you know animal welfare league it has nothing to do with anything else it's a non-paid position lots of us sit on different non-profit boards and i thank everybody for that but just want to get that on the record now if anything did come at awl that this board would have to hear then of course we would defer as any of us would on any board to the attorney as to whether you know somebody could or could not vote but that's all i had to say so thank you so much okay yeah i've got several things um so i'm pleased

for legislative funding for a couple of big projects. One is 160 million for the statewide flooding and sea level rise plan, and another 10 million for resilient Florida planning grants. And these planning grants are 100% state funded, so hopefully we'll be able to take advantage of that. And then on another note, from my trip to Washington, I think it was very productive. These are the things that we talked with the legislators about, and it really nicely, this is with the League of Cities, nicely aligned with the American Flood Coalition in terms of FEMA reform and streamlining. We asked for the legislators to support the action that's going through the House right now, and it will end up in the Senate to streamline FEMA. It will... speed up disaster recovery by requiring them to make payments within 120 days when the claim is filed unless they can prove fraud. And we also advocated for simplifying local government grants, the National Flood Insurance Program, which has been funded piecemeal over the years. We asked for them to fund it for a five-year period so we have more certainty and stability with that. Another big one that we talked about was PFAS. And we actually met with a panel of folks from the EPA who, and one of them was a graduate of Charlotte High School way back. She's a biologist now. But they have made, in EPA, they have made it a priority for the agency. They're focusing on gathering information for treatment. removal and destruction technologies to share with communities. They are structured now with this research arm that reports directly to the Office of Water. And they don't have a specific timeline, but they're actively working on formal communication regarding these research findings and technologies to provide to communities to help us with dealing with those. We advocated to the legislators to protect us from litigation. around pfas because we didn't create it we're just having to deal with it so i'm very pleased with that and the last one i'll address here is municipal municipal tax bonds that was uh already approved by the time we got there so we took that off the table they're going to maintain the tax exempt status for municipal bonds which is a very good thing for us and then the last thing i have is uh these are copies of article six of the land development regulation as i said last council meeting it's three pages long and there are three sentences and i highlighted them in the 2024 version that were added to deal with the modern version of the ldrs so i just wanted to clarify that and that's all i have greg what companies use b-fest

Pardon me? What companies use PFAS?

Well, the fire department, and it's in our wastewater. And so in utilities, we have to, there are going to be new legislation that we're going to have to treat that and eliminate it. Car washes? Possibly, yeah.

Thank you.

Melissa.

Janine, sir.

We're on opposite ends.

Okay, gotcha.

A couple of things. First of all, the park is looking beautiful. When I say the park, I mean Gilchrist Park. Mike and I have been working walking at night because it's so nice and cool. The lighting is there. It's beautiful. You can see I did notice quite a few pickleballers trying to play well into dark. And I kind of don't understand why there is no lighting when there's lighting everywhere in the park and it's something that I want to look into there were young kids of course it's you know it's it's too hot to be playing at six and seven o'clock they want to play at eight nine ten o'clock and they're out there playing and there's no lighting so something I would like to bring up at some point Also I would like to say that I was at the Cooper Street Rec Center the other day and I noticed and one of the gentlemen came up to me and said, there are no lights that work here at night, none. So I'm wondering why there's so much lighting in one park and there's absolutely no lighting in the other. And they do have lights, I believe, that are there. I'm assuming that because of Ian, they said since Ian, the lights have not been working on those basketball courts since Ian. So I'm hoping that we can do something to put lighting back there. And the gentleman there said, we love to play basketball at night, and we can't. It's pitch black here. Again, their lighting around the perimeter isn't anything near what we have over at Gilchrist Park, too. So let's think about that and work on that. The other thing is I'm getting a lot of feedback on Marion and Olympia, and it's my district, District 1, and the speeders. And I know that we, I feel like we might need to do some kind of traffic calming or something at some point, because it's getting really bad. And we invite people to walk. in our district in my district in particular because all the parks there are there um and so i'm just a little concerned that that people are still really speeding quite a bit um people turning in front of other people people turning the wrong way we have that a lot um so July 30th, I will be in Orlando for the MPO board quarterly meeting. We each take a turn, each of us on the MPO board. So I'm excited to go. And I will come back with some information. And other than that, thank you for bringing up the hospital because I was going to bring that up. I'm a little concerned that we have not taken care of this expeditiously. I feel like we need to get moving on this. I'm hoping we don't leave on vacation and then later come back, but it sounds to me like they're working on it. So great, thank you for bringing that up. And that should do it.

Awesome. I do have to say that people have to understand that we have a lot of staff here that work numerous hours well up beyond i mean kristen for an example working weekends and everything trying to get our reports done and there's so much behind the scenes stuff that gets done especially looking at property taxes at looking at our finances so much of this that the public doesn't see. So it's kind of disheartening to hear when people say that we're not doing anything because I know that there's been a lot of work into it. So I just had to to say that thank you so much for each and every one of you work so hard for it. And the only other thing I wanted to say was happy Fourth of July. I know the morning at Gaines Park I believe that there's going to be some really neat things happening over there so that's that 9 a.m. anybody else besides the fireworks both at Lashley and and at Fisherman's Village but everybody have a safe 4th and enjoy your time oh and tomorrow Veterans Clinic Our Veterans Housing is having an open house. Veterans Village, thank you, is having an open house. So that starts at 10 a.m. tomorrow, which would be really great. And we will open it up for public input.

Joe Como, and this isn't the first time I've had this pitch, liens. So the code board, whenever we find a prima facie case exists and initiate code action and tell somebody, give them, okay, you got 60 days to fix this. Part of the process of the staff bringing it to the board involves costs. So part of that is a finding of you will pay court costs by such and such a date. As you mentioned earlier, those are usually like $12.37, $14, whatever it costs for postage, et cetera. But that automatically creates a lien, and that has to be paid before... the offense is cleared. So they can go ahead and mow their lawn, fix their roof, whatever, but they gotta pay that. Now, if they don't do that, it then goes to a penalty phase. And again, you can incur court costs in the penalty phase, but then a fine can also be, given of up to $250 a day. And I'm sure our attorney has seen us do it. We have imposed fines of well over $10,000 on people, because $250 a day, and they're 180 days out of compliance, bills up pretty quickly. And those liens sit out there and have to be cleaned. Now, a couple of times they've had to go to foreclosure and everything, but there's a lot of loose change floating around that out there in the way of, liens created by code enforcement action that, at least from my perspective, you don't see a lot of active collection efforts going on. And if it goes to a second offense, it can go up to $500 a day. So there's a lot of fine action being Occurring out there that could reap the city considerable revenue if it were a little bit more actively Enforced and collected so that's just a little bit about the means. Thank you.

Thank you

Good morning again, everybody. My name is Samuel Turpening, and I'm here today as a resident and as a strict constitutionalist. First of all, I'd like to let everybody know that my numbers regarding the Animal Welfare League came directly from their own county meeting so that we have that on record. as well as they came from the Agricultural Department and the Consumer Affairs Department of the State of Florida, just so it's on record. For the news reporters in the background, please make sure that you get my name spelled right this time. It is Samuel Terpenning. It is spelled T-E-R. P-E-N-I-N-G. I am dedicating my public comment time today to place a formal reminder on the Parliament city record regarding the supreme law of the land, specifically the landmark United States Supreme Court precedent New York Times company versus Sullivan 376 U.S. 254. in that historic unanimous ruling, the highest court in our nation explicitly defined the mandatory boundaries of free speech in an American public forum. The Supreme Court declared that our constitutional guarantee of free expression was designed to ensure that debate on public issues remains uninhibited, robust, and wide open. Furthermore, the United States Supreme Court explicitly ruled that protected public speech may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantary sharp attacks on government and public officials. Let me be entirely clear for the record, raising one's voice to overcome unlawful interruptions, confronting public hypocrisy, or using traditional political critiques to challenge official actions is the exact definition of robust, protected speech under federal law. It is not a crime, it is not a violation of decorum, and it is not a threat. Constitutionally speaking, a threat requires a direct statement of intent to commit physical violence or harm against an individual. Fabricating a security narrative to escape a citizen's public critique, running to the media outlet to print unverified personal slurs, or utilizing digital moderation privileges to orchestrate an unconstitutional platform lockout does not change the law. It merely creates a paper trail of official misconduct. Standard state metrics reflect, and thank you for admitting that I gave you the information, standard state metrics reflect that based on our population, our true municipal footprint for the Animal Welfare League is a baseline of only 3.5 animals per day. That's one animal every three days, perhaps. They also says, the county says that we use the animal control to pick up those animals. They said that on public record, so let that be clear as well. The official municipal video and audio archives stand as a permanent truth of these proceedings. The public body today and its legal staff has been put on warning.

Well, good afternoon, everybody, again. You know, CNEP, that's just, it's been a waste of money. When they did my seawall, they put a bunch of rocks there. You know how long ago that was? You know what type of living shoreline it created? None. Do you know why? because we have up to 27 million gallons daily of blended acidic wastewater being discharged from Mosaic Bartow South Gypstack outfall D002 into an unnamed ditch, then it goes into Six Mile Creek, and then it's discharged into the Peace River. I wanna know, was Mosaic discussed up in D.C.? Did you tell them our river's dying? I want to tell all of you right now, I made a post the other day, I've helped each one of you. I mean, and I'm still helping each one of you. There's only one person on this dais I will never help. Ever. This harbor and river is the number one asset, and from now on, Anybody going to DC or Tallahassee, I want mosaic number one on your topic list with them. You get their ass down here. You know how many times they gave the finger to the commissioners in Charlotte? I wanted them in the chamber, and they wiggle their way out. You know how they do that? By donations. And buying the police department with a mosaic backyard garden or the sheriff department. These son of a bitches are ruining our river. And nobody wants to do a goddamn thing about it. I'm fucking had it. I just came back from Miami. You would think that that place was a nightmare.

No. No.

It makes our home look like a shit hole. I don't wanna hear about the and Dow Corning, DuPont, they're the ones from PFAS. I'm telling you, and who is the idiot who wants to start a block party in our city? What idiot wants to have a go-kart race in our city? And lastly, anybody ever says on Facebook that I don't love animals? Let me tell you something, I've been fighting for animals my whole life. I don't see any of you fighting for the animals in the river or our harbor or our Charlotte sanctuary or estuary. You know, I've been really nice. Thanks to Captain Chris Whitten. Maximum pressure, thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Tara Zages and I'm the Executive Director for the Animal Welfare League. I don't have enough time this morning to address all the negative comments made on behalf of the Animal Welfare League, nor do I care to, honestly. I don't think AWL should be a topic of conversation here today. We're in the final negotiation stages with the county, not the city. We've been a topic of conversation here, and for that, on behalf of the organization, I apologize. However, I do think that there are some numbers that I need to share with you just so that you have the proper information. In 2025, animal control for the county brought in 1,119 animals directly by their trucks. 971 animals were brought in by the citizens as strays. If those citizens did not bring in those animals, animal control would be brought to their homes and brought in by animal control officers. 342 animals were brought to our doors as owner surrenders, meaning they were discarded by their owners, bringing the total number to 2,432 animals that the Animal Welfare League cared for as if they were their own. Over the course of that time, 14 animals, just 14, were brought in by the fine members of the Punta Gorda Police Department. That equates to .58%. Just 14. Not 30%, like it's stated. Just 14. .58%. So if we're gonna get on social media, if we're gonna stand in front of microphones, if we're gonna spew hate, please get your facts straight. Thank you.

Sorry, I got to lower this a little bit. I'm kind of short. Hi, my name is Julie McCormack. I'm a resident here in Punta Gorda, and I'm running for the Florida House of Representatives against Vanessa Oliver. Now, hearing everything here today, there's a lot of concerns. There's a lot of things that need to change in Punta Gorda, in Charlotte County. We need to improve our infrastructure. We don't need to see another Ian. My family was right out there in the streets helping clean it up after Ian. I have the baby. I was out at the farm with her, keeping her safe. But every single day, I'd FaceTime with Cody, and he'd be covered head to toe in mud, especially from the knees down. He's six foot five, so that's about, let's see, three and a half feet of mud that they were clearing out every single day, helping people out of their homes, helping fix this city. We need improved infrastructure. We need a lot more money from Tallahassee to come here. We need to be able to see clean water and more water available for our residents as well. that being said we also need full transparency here in charlotte county and in punta gorda i'm a big fan of line by line audits so whatever accusations there are out there whatever proofs people have for their defenses or offenses we need to be able to see the truth clearly transparently and we need to know exactly what our tax dollars are being spent on that way We know, you know, the public knows everything totally transparently. We need to work together as a community, stop the fighting so much and the aggression so much and be civil with each other and work together so that way we can actually achieve what we need to see. have any questions for me my phone number my email my website is public information i'll be happy to give each of you a card so you can all contact me is that okay all right thank you thank you

Anybody else wishing to speak?

I just would like for us to announce, are sparklers or anything allowed? Are we still under a burn ban?

The county's meeting tomorrow.

yes the county is meeting tomorrow regarding their burn ban as of right now private fireworks are not allowed in the city limits of punta gorda the public shows are allowed to go on if there's any change in that we'll be communicating that via our website social media media releases those types of things but as of right now it's just left to the professional shows okay great thank you great question to ask

Anybody else? If not meeting is adjourned. Thank you.