City Council - Regular Meeting

We're getting ready. All right, we're getting ready to get started. You all want to take your seats?

All right. Uh, good evening. We're going to call this regularly scheduled city council meeting to order. Um the first order of business would be we will stand for a moment of silence and then we'll have the pledge of allegiance led by Vice Mayor McPartland.

Thank you. I allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right. Uh, thank you so much for that, Madame Clerk. Roll call. Mayor Jones here. Vice Mayor McPartland here. Council member Nun here. Council member Matthews present and council member Dodd here.

All right. Um um next item we have a an agenda modification. I believe you all have it up here. We're going to move that to 12F if there's no issues with that. Are there any other modifications? All right. All right. Thank you. Next, we will have a proclamation. Our next item. All right. Uh, this is a proclamation for National Child Abuse Prevention Month. And there's two ladies. If you all would come up, I believe it's um Jessica and Michelle. Would you please come forward? All right. Uh, thank you all so much for that. This is a proclamation for National Child Abuse Prevention Month, April 2026. Whereas the city of Sebastian is committed to protecting our most vulnerable and ensuring our children grow up safe, healthy, educated, and prepared to reach their full potential. And whereas children raised in safe, stable, and nurturing environments are more likely to enjoy good physical and mental health, succeed academically and socially, and achieve economic prosperity. And whereas effective child abuse prevention activities succeed because of the partnerships created between child welfare professionals, education, health, community and faith-based organizations, businesses, law enforcement agencies, and of course families. And whereas the city of Sebastian acknowledges that we must make every effort to promote programs and activities that create strong and thriving children and families. prevention remains the best defense for our children. Now, therefore, I Fred Jones, mayor of the city of Sebastian, do hereby proclaim the month of April as

National Child Abuse Prevention Month in Sebastian and urge all of our citizens to dedicate ourselves to improving the quality of life for all of our children and families. Do you know how to do that? All right. You want to take a picture while we wait for that? All right. Good.

What's that behind you, Fred? I don't want to step on anybody. Okay, there we go. Right here. We just want to say thank you so much for doing this. It's very much appreciated and just a reminder that strong families come from strong communities and we do not operate in silos. So, thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Barbara. All right. Uh, next we have uh the brief announcements. Um, Council Member Nun, would you mind reading those?

Yes, Mayor. Uh, brief announcements. It's uh Friday, April 24th, we have the Chamber of Commerce concert in the Park at 5:30 p.m. featuring the Sebastian River High School band. Don't want to miss that one. Friday, May 8th, Chamber of Commerce concert in the Park at 5:30 as well featuring Jules Rio. Saturday, May 9th, the Craft Club of Sebastian Sebastian in Riverview Park from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Thank you. All right. Uh thank you so much for that. Our next item is item seven. Um, that's public input and this is uh input uh talking about anything that's not on the current agenda. Do we have anyone who wish to speak? No one in the audience. Do we have anyone on Zoom?

No one has raised their hand at this time. All right. Uh, thank you so much. Uh, public input is closed. Council, next item is the consent agenda. What's your pleasure? M. Mayor, I move approval of consent agenda items A, B, and C. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda. Um, any further discussion, Madame Clerk? Vice Mayor McPartland? Yes. Council member Nun, yes. Council member Matthews, yes. Council member Dodd, yes. And Mayor Jones, yes. Motion carries. All right. Uh, thank you. Uh, any committee reports?

Nope. Um, so we're going to have item 9A is a considered parks and recreation board appointment. Um, item A and I believe we have Miss Drumheller wishing to retain that seat. Yes. I I recommend approval. I don't know what we need if we need a motion. Yeah. Second. All right. So, we have a motion and a second. Um, is there anyone from the public who would like to speak on this? Anyone on Zoom? No one has raised their hand. All right. Hearing none. Madame clerk, do we need to call or just a consensus is good for you? Consensus is good for me. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Okay. All right. Good. Our next item is item 9B. Um consider planning zoning commission appointment. Uh Mr. Carter would like to maintain his seat. That's up. Correct. Yes. M Miss M. Mayor, I move approval for appointing Mr. Carter for additional term. Second. All right. Um, any discussion? Anybody from the public would like to speak on this? Anyone on Zoom? Not at this time, Madam Clerk. I think we have a consensus. Correct. Mr. Mr. Stokes. Yes. Yes.

All right. Thank you, sir. All right. Um, our next item is item 10 A. This is a public hearing, legislative public hearing. I'm going to go ahead and open this hearing now. Um, Mr. Attorney, Mr. Stokes. Uh,

thank you. This is ordinance number 0-26-02, an ordinance of the city of Sebastian, Florida, amending land development code. Article 4, land use compatibility table, inserting PUB mixed juice classification. Article five, zoning districts regulations to incorporate a new section 54-2-5.17 to be known as mixeduse PUD zoning district and amending article 20 to incorporate a new section 54-4-20.8 eight to be known as master plans providing for severability and repeal of laws in conflict here with providing for codification providing for scriveners errors and providing for an effective date.

All right. Uh thank you so much for that. Um Miss Bernard

good evening. Um what you have before you tonight was an application that was received um in regards to implementing a new zoning classification called PUD mixed use. Um the applicant has requested three different items to be modified in our code. One is to have it woven into the table where land um to show the difference between uh land use classifications and current zoning to see where those two would align. The second is to actually implement a new zoning classification called PUB mixed use. And the third is to give um the city a a way to navigate and have on our regulations how to um receive and process master plans for master plan communities which the code is currently silent on. And with that I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have. In addition, the applicant is also here and has a brief presentation um in regards to this application.

All right. Um thank you so much for that. Um applicant, you want to come forward? Oh, good evening. Uh Ken Tuma with Urban Design Studio Planning and Landscape Architecture Firm here today on behalf of Graves Brothers. Mr. Bass is running a few minutes late. Uh he will be here shortly. Uh I have our team here also to answer any questions you may have. But again, here this evening on behalf of Graves Brothers and the purpose of this this evening is to implement the annexation agreement that this council put forth on the Graves Brothers project several years ago. And the request that is in front of you is a request to add that zoning category that Miss Bennard discussed called a PUDMU or mixed use and then to allow for a master plan and design guidelines. I'm going to walk you through a series of slides. Hopefully, it'll be fairly short this evening. um allow me to get started with the slide series. So the the purpose as I said it's a couple seconds ago is really to implement the annexation agreement. The annexation agreement requests a PUDMU. The way your code works it has very specific PUDS. There's a PUDR, a PUDI and a PUDC, but there's not a combined one for mixed use. Um we worked with your staff. Initially we had come in with 400 acres as a minimum. your staff suggested and we modified the text amendment to go to a 100 acres which allows it to be applicable to other properties within the city. So this is the actual language from the development agreement. I took a couple snippets of it throughout the uh throughout the uh agreement. The first one, number two, it says, "Development of the real property shall be master planned through a mixeduse PUD. Shall be planned as a mixeduse PUD." And the code doesn't have that mixeduse PUD in it. And it needs to be a minimum of 400 acres. The second

item, it says the property shall be master plan. And as Miss Bernard indicated, your code is silent on a master plan. So, we're proposing the ability to have a master plan within the code. So the items uh that that Miss Bernard indicated are on the screen in front of you. We're requesting to modify three areas of the code. The first one is uh is 5424.2 which in essence is the chart to allow this to be applicable to different zoning districts in the city. And then the actual meat of it is in the PUBMU which is in.17 and then finally modifying article 20 to add for a master plan. So let me walk you through kind of like what this means. So basically on the screen in front of you there are really kind of three things that occur in this in this zoning request change. One is to allow for a master plan. The master plan on the screen in front of you. You are not approving anything tonight at all. That master plan is just there for looks. But the idea is to give predictability for now and in the future for both the residents who would live in that community, the residents who live here, the city council. You will be able to make direction for now and 20 years from now on these larger projects. Yes, it may change in the future, but all those changes have to come back to this board. On the right hand side is something called a design guidelines and that creates predictability within the project. Oops, I thought I printed a copy. There's a booklet of information about 10 pages or 12 pages and they're design guidelines and they implement the design characteristics for this particular community. So, kind of d diving into a little bit deeper. So on the master plan the requirements of the master plan what is a development plan how many units are being proposed generally where are they being uh generally where are they going residential non-residential so it sets the standards so you know and predictably what's going to happen in the future there's a phasing plan generally creates a phasing plan so you

get an idea of where the phases are going to go uh it indicates all the major circulation points where you get access ingress and egress the major your roadways through a project. Again, I'm talking about the Grace project, but this could be applicable to any project with over 100 acres. And then it identifies major storm water, civic civic facilities such as parks, school sites, and other items that may be needed. So, that's what the master plan does. It's some municipalities call it a bubble plan, but your staff working with us said, "We don't want a bubble plan. We want something more concrete." So, this is a master plan. It actually identifies densities and general concepts throughout the entire site. Now the question you may ask me a little later on will this change? All I can tell you is my experience and I've been doing this for a long time. Yes, it will change somewhere along the way on these larger projects. But all those changes will come back before you. And then the next item is a design guidelines. And I I particularly like design guidelines because they set a standard for a community that's a long-term standard. U those long-term standards are broken up in into different categories. Architectural standards. It's not going to say exactly this house has to look like this, but the idea is to keep it within a general range of architectural style for houses for uh for um the commercial projects that may come about or whatever projects may come about. So, it's within a within a general characteristic. So, it sets up kind of some guard rails. Site design requirements, design guidelines can include site design requirements. What are the streets going to look like? How's it going to fit? Uh where's what's the street furniture going to look like? landscape and streetscape very important part generally focusing on the external buffers how it impacts neighboring properties. Uh dimensional regulations how wide a lot how can a a commercial building can it be brought to a main street in a town center um and that's generally what the dimensional dimensional regulations are and then a use matrix. So your code has very

specific uses in it and this use matrix use matrix is built into design guidelines and typically particularly I know for a fact that the design guidelines that were coming forth in Graves brothers is actually less of the allowed uses that are allowed within the city code on our commercial and non-residential areas. So that's the intent of a design guideline. It kind of sets the rules of the road for you for the people for the residents. Everyone has a good idea of what's coming. It's a book. It's a packet of information that is becomes a portion of the project moving forward. And wherever the design guidelines are silent, the city code effectuates. So where are we in the process? So first thing the request this evening is to add this to your code and that is above this top line. But then going forward if a project comes before you and requests this mixeduse development, they have to request first to resone to a plan unit development mixeduse. The second part they would come as part of that they would come with a master plan. They would come with design guidelines and then they would go through the normal process. You would reszone the property and then after that they would come back in for each individual parcel in what uh what is known as a plan development approval. Some people call it a site plan would still also come back. Same process staff uh planning and zoning and then city commission or city council for the approval. And and that is my presentation for this evening. Happy to answer any questions you may have. Uh so in summary, we are we are implementing the annexation agreement and we uh and the framework and the ability to have master plan design guidelines. I didn't mention one thing that is in the text. These this process requires a town center on any project that comes through this which I think is great. It's going to create a great central community. And with that, happy to answer any questions you may have. We have a whole team assembled here also. Thank you, sir.

All right. Uh, thank you so much for that. Um, thank you, sir. All right. Um, staff, do you have um Hang on. We'll do the public now. Um, is there anyone from the public who would like to speak on this? Anyone on Zoom? Not at this time.

Okay. Thank you. Um, public input is closed. Um, staff, do you have a a final summation? So this is the first step and as as it was explained many steps moving forward right is to they're making a request for a new zoning classification and that would be the first step in moving this property forward and with that that's I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have. All right. Um thank you. We're going to go ahead and close this part of the hearing. Uh council do we have any questions or deliberations? Mr. None.

Mr. Mayor I'd like to ask a couple questions. Uh the one question I'd like to talk about the 400100 part. Um obviously what we're asking for is to change and add a land use to our uh to the city plan um to the comprehensive plan. So So how does that fit into our comprehensive plan? Is the is the 100 300 rated to Graves Brothers specifically that they were required to do 400 acres and they were they're asking for 100. Is that related to this or no? So, so the only change would be in the land development regulations. There's no change to the comprehensive plan. It's just showing where it will align in the comprehensive plan. Okay. So, that would change from 400 to 100 according to this information.

So, the annexation agreement is for 400 acres and that's where that 400 comes from and staff doing analysis. We thought, how do we make it align for other areas, potential areas in the community? And that's where we went back and forth and said a 100 acres might be more reasonable to meet needs of others in the future. Okay. Unknown unknown needs.

Understand? Um, one of my concerns I'm going to go ahead and share my concern. uh the 400 acres in the in the annexation plan because the original design of of what Graves Brothers I think was intended to be was there was going to be a large town center and then developments in around that town center. If you drop it to 100 acres with a town center, are you going to have uh 20 developments with their own town center, which means it won't provide the commercial that? So, so can I can I jump in here, Mr. Mayor? Yes, please.

So, um I just want to clarify this does not change the annexation agreement. They are still required to come in in 400 acre increments. Okay. this project. This project, what this addresses is any others, whether we currently have something that's 100 acres or whatnot, it just lowers that so that other properties would be eligible for this um PUD MU, right, at 100 acres or more. And that's up to you all what number you set it at. Staff had just lowered it to 100, but for specifically for the Graves Brothers annexation, it maintains 400 acres. So,

so that doesn't change. So that that brings my next question is if we're talking about adding a my confusion if we're talking about changing our land development code or comprehensive plan and adding why is Graves Brothers presenting that to us instead of us doing this ourselves if it's not really related to to their uh agreement. So they have made application to be um this is the next step as far as their annexation goes. So they've gone through annexation, they've got the agreement, all the things. The code currently does not have a mixeduse PUB zoning classification which is what was negot my understanding of what was negotiated on originally. Okay.

So that's why they're making application for this. Okay. I just I just want to understand and I think people listening need to understand how things are here, why they're here. So this is something. So they will still have to come back and request if that's what they want to go from 100 from 400 acres to 100 acres as part of this. They will still have to come back to change their annexation agreement and request that down the road. It's not going to be even if we say 100 as part of this, that isn't going to grandfather them into 100, is it? That's correct.

Okay. I just want to I just want clarification and clarity. Um I mean overall it sounds like a good idea. I understand creating um not creating a a land development specifically for one piece of property because that doesn't make a lot of sense. Uh we don't that's not typically how you do land development and and comprehensive plans for one piece of property. But if it does benefit the possibility of the rest of the city and those things. Okay. I think you've answered my questions. Thank you. All right. Um and thank you. Very good. Answer mine. Um anyone else? Commissioner Dodd.

Okay. Um, I I'll just say one thing about Grace Brothers. I'm going to separate my conversation about that because what they've done in their due diligence is they realized we didn't have we didn't have a classification that they're required to in the annexation agreement. And there I I would say that probably the city should have, would have, may have all those hindsight things that you can say have done something about that when we approve the annexation agreement. Um, those things don't always happen that way and I fully appreciate the fact that they had to come in and ask us to do that and I think our staff has worked real well with them and in trying to accomplish that. They're at a point in their in their development process where they need to make sure that they can live up to the annexation agreement and one of those things they couldn't live up to was this zoning classification.

Right

now I want to talk about the PUD MU as it relates to the city not to Grace Brothers. Okay. So to me, what we're doing here is we're developing a part of the land development code that applies citywide. Uh, and how it applies to the Graves Brothers property is a combination of the annexation agreement and when they come through with their guide with their design guides and how it matches and all that kind of stuff. That's a totally separate thing. And I'm very comfortable we're going to get some innovation innovative work out of those guys when it comes into us. And we're going to be kind of happy with what we get from them. So, um, I I kind of, you know, I'm and I want to talk I think Council Member Nun hit it on an important topic. I I don't believe that 100 acres is sufficient. Um, and I'll I'll talk about why I don't believe that in a second, but first, um, I I'm kind of confused and I had a conversation, I admit I had a conversation with our director a little while ago about this. I'm kind of confused as to why we are putting PUDMU within limited commercial, general commercial, river, river riverfront commercial because quite frankly I don't know of any commercial areas in the city right now today that would fit a 100, 200, 300 or 400 acre partial size that could be fit for a mixed use. Uh this is primarily something that's going to be applied to annex property in the future, assuming we continue to annex property in the future. And I would think personally um that we're not we have no reason as a city to annex property that is not a mixeduse piece of property. We don't we don't have any advantage to annex property that doesn't have some mixeduse capability to it. Um possibly possibly some advantage to that. So I kind of question those those categories. That's something the staff can talk about and in the second reading of this if they feel I I I understand that you didn't want to limit your you want to

put it produce a limit but if if we say that it's a 200 acre or 300 acre parial the whole Indian the whole riverfront mixed juice would have to convert to one big PUD MU and and that's not going to happen that's just not going to happen and and I don't know that we have a piece of commercial general or limited commercial property in the city right now that is even 100 acres except the airport. I really don't though we do that. So to me, and I I know I'm kind of nerdy when it comes to some of this stuff, but to me, if you have a law, and the law says a speed limit of 35, that's what it says. And you should make sure that that you can handle that. And so if we say that we're going to allow this in general commercial, then someone can come in later on and say, I want to do this in general commercial. So I that's just that's just a comment that I'm making on that. I'm not I'm not saying I want to change that. But let me talk about the size thing from my perspective that uh what we're saying in the very first in article five here. What we're saying point blank is that this is a this is a concept. This is for an innovative development concept that we want a PUD to be an innovative development concept. We want to protect the the natural features of a piece of property. We want to have abundant amenities for that piece of property that benefit the city as it goes through this process. So, we're saying if it's a PUBMU, we want it to be an innovative development project that that benefits the city uh that has abundant amenities when we go through that. And if we go back and we step through the the document, uh if we take a 100 acres and we just make a an engineering wag that 30% of that 100 acres is not developable. Period. 70%. So you got 70 acres out of 100 acres that you can do something

with. Okay. And if we look at this document and we talk about amenities uh in which the document references both public and private amenities and we make an assumption maybe 10% of that 70 acres will be applied to amenities. So that's 7 acres. So now we're down at 63 acres out of 100 and we're going to make those innovative and we're going to build a town center and we're going to do all these things in that 100 acres. Um we're also saying that that 100 acres has to con has to consist of 40% commercial. So if we take those 60 some acres that's 25 acres of commercial and 38 acres of residential in that 100 acres. I don't think that's sufficient to do an innovative design at all. And I I'm I think the 400 acre number is much more uh much more correct to provide the opportunity to have a big enough piece of property to do within that piece of property what I think of course I may not be here the first when the when the first design guide comes in but what I think we want to do in these PUDMUs which is innovation. We want concepts. We don't we don't want somebody to walk in and say and I I think I used this comment in an email I sent to our director. We don't want somebody to walk in and say I'm going to build a Dollar General at my entrance and that's our town center. Okay. We don't want that to happen. And and and we don't want to open ourselves up to where that can happen. Okay. So, um I personally think that 400 acres is more appropriate than to to what we want to do within this classification. We have other classifications for PUDS. You can do a PUD commercial or a PUD residential within a 100 acre piece of property and have a lot of opportunity as a developer to to tweak what you want to do within that and to work with the city on on what needs to be done. But we really want the mixed use to be something special. Um

we get I mean just just going back we got a piece of property that's that's that's 400 acres or 2,000 acres. You can do some really neat stuff on that. Yeah.

And quite frankly, Indian River County needs and wants some really neat stuff. Not another 100 acre 300 house gated community. That's not what Indian River County needs or what I don't think they really want. Isn't that so I would propose that we increase that number that's on page 36 of our packet under article number 10 in point A to 400 acres as opposed to 100 acre. That would be my proposal on that for that reason. So, and that's just me saying that. Okay. I also um I also wonder and I asked this question of our the director of development. uh we don't we don't have a a town center definition and I understand some flexibility needs there and I but I I just go back to my time on the plane zoning commission and this whole thing in the riverfront district about a fishing village concept and how big a battle it was because nobody knew what fishing village meant but everybody said you have to meet the fishing village concept. So people would bring site plans in here and the P&Z people would be screaming at them, what are you doing for a fishing village concept? And somebody say, "Well, fine. I'm going put a couple of post in the ground and run some some uh rope between them and now I've got hardcape. It's called fishing village." I think that at some point in time we might want to think and not as part of this document. We might want to think through a definition of what we would like to see within the conceptual bounds of a town center. What do we want that to look like? Okay. And maybe it's the kind of thing that you might do. Uh we might even do some examples like a charet type example of what we would like to see a town center look like. Work with some work with the property owner, work with the grace property people and talk about it something. But I would kind of like us to see have something because the minute that a piece that that a site plan or a

development plan comes before our P&Z and they're asked to evaluate it against these guidelines, they're going to ask that question. I I I spent years on the PNZ and as a chair, they're going to ask that question. I would have asked it is, you know, what do you want this town center to look like? Once again, is is a Dollar General in the corner a town center? No. is a parking lot with a park and a Dollar General and a um an auto parts store, a town center. Well, it might be in parts of Arkansas and West Virginia, but it really shouldn't be in Sebastian, you know. I've lived in both those places, so I can talk about them. Okay. So, okay. Um and that's those those are my com primary my comments. I I I do wonder and I did get lost in this because once we get into the plan unit development, master plan requirements, we kind of lose design guide and go into conceptual guide and other things. And I'm I'm thinking that the design guide I'm going to put some terminology here that you might fit. I'm thinking the design guide is kind of like our preliminary plat definition. Am I am I wrong in that? So my understanding of what the design guide would look like is for it would be sightsp specific. Yeah.

And so an overarching right. So you're going to have the master plan and then the design guide is going to be specific for that development over a period of maybe 30 years. Okay. All right. So when we move into the master plan approval process, we're going to expect the master plan to mirror what was in the design guide. Even though we don't say in here that it has to do that.

That is correct. Okay. And then there's one place in here where the word will is and or may where it says in in item number G on 33 of your packet, item number G, it says the design guide may include the below elements as well as those determined to be appropriate by the city. The city that's kind of like, you know, this sign says don't do this the management. But um so during the review of the PUD uh as well as kind of means in addition to okay I think that should say must include the design guide must include these things and I don't know that that does change the meaning of that but it does tie the design guide down to having to have the the the density issues the the floor area ratio issues and so forth within it instead of it may include that. And I'm just thinking of I don't see these these guys are not bad actors. They're not going to give us a hard time. But I'm just thinking of potential bad actors that come in and say, "Well, here's my three-page drawing." And and that's my design guide, you know. And you said I may put it in there. I don't want to put it in there. Okay.

Can can you expl say again where exactly it says that? Okay. on page 33 of the of our packet in item number G which is the bottom item uh in the paragraph dimensional regulations and it says a mixed juice PUD shall include design guidelines established during specific things and then density intensity and other size and dimension requirements for the sight specific development period. Next sentence the designed guidelines may include and I'm saying this you say must include or shall include shall include It doesn't change what you guys are planning on doing. It just changes that what we would have to use in the future for for that kind of stuff. So,

thank you. All right. Uh, thank you so much, sir. Um, anyone else?

I do want to add one thing to something I said and Mr. Dodd made me think of it. I was up in South Carolina and we were looking at property and there was this 193 acre piece of property that we looked at and now I'm comparing 100 acres to that piece of property I looked at. And while it was probably a goodiz piece of property to put a nice development on, I don't see that piece of property I looked at as something that would have a I'm going to call it a valuable town center. I I agree. Um, you know, uh, and this is not a kick on Felsmere, but if you drive into Felsmere now, they have an auto parts store and a Dollar General and a and a restaurant and a car wash. I I I while that may be their town center for the most part because that's what they have and they're still building up what they're going to put there. I don't know if I envision that as what I see a town center as either. And and that's one thing I liked about the 400 acres. Back to that point, uh I I envision them bringing a Best Buy, not a Best Buy, but you understand what I'm saying. A real town center to the area. Uh something that actually brings commercial business jobs to our area and and three people to Dollar General kind of situation. Not kicking on Dollar General because we have a lot of them. Um, but but that I don't envision that as what I envisioned as commercial either or a town center. So I I like the idea and I highly recommend that as well that we we define town center and what we think it means. I don't think 100 acres is enough to do that. Me personally looking at a piece of property, understanding in my head what that size piece of property actually looks like empty, I I just don't think it's big enough.

Would you consider 200 acres? I'd looked at a 200 acre piece as well. across the street. And um it it would be it would be better. I think you could put a lot more on that than you could. Um I three to four I think would be more better. More better. That's not more better. But uh I 200 would definitely be my minimum. Yeah, I'm thinking that's minimum for me too. U Mr. Benton, you have something sir.

Mr. Mayor, I just ask that before we go to a motion, we get a little bit of clarification on the acreage because then I have a couple other questions that pertain to that that I would like to get some direction on so we can make sure we bring back bring back a complete document for the second reading. So, just want to make sure we have I have an opportunity to ask some questions before we uh go to a motion. Okay. So, so with this 100 acres, what was the uh what was the potential commercial part of that? Was there a percentage of that that was intended to be possible commercial?

We wanted to not make it sight specific. So, just we there was not an overall intent other than that seems like a good place, a starting place. Okay. For uh potential future development. Okay. M yeah it says in here 40%. 40%. Where where does it say that? That I missed it. It's commercial. It's on page 33 um in the D section, I believe. Yeah. Okay. Non Okay. Well, non-residential uses. Okay. So,

okay. That that qualifies as open space as well as uh non other non-residential commercial things. Okay. But but 30% is not open space anyways on a piece of property, right? So does that mean 10% is allowed for I mean you hear what I'm saying, right? Isn't 30% kind of the number that's got to be open space anyways that's unbuildable on a piece of property. Yeah. So does that mean that leaves 10% kind of well required? Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think council member Dodd's breakdown was pretty realistic, right, with how he kind of broke it down to how it would be the final numbers.

Um, so I think probably the first decision we need to come to as a consensus from council on what the acreage is, what you all would like to see as far as acreage. Um, I know that the applicant came at 400. Staff worked with them and and we suggested the 100 because we were trying to stay away from sight specific acreage for this because quite honestly, we wanted to allow it to be an opportunity for any future large parcels. Um, however, I, you know, looking at it and and hearing the explanation, I agree 100's probably a little too not enough, but I think we need to kind of have some direction on that and because then there's other areas within the document that I think we need to address as well.

Well, I can tell you I'm comfortable with 200 or more, not 100. So, I'm more inclined with the with the 400 for it to be innovative. Otherwise, it could be I visited Stonehenge last week. It could be a pile of rocks. That's your town center, right? I don't know if that's going to work like that. But 400 sounds to be the the best number in order for it to be innovative because that's what we want it to be. I I know this is not related, but Alex, the piece of property over next to the library where the the coffee shop is in pending going, how big is that piece of property roughly? Do you know off the top of your head? I want to say I think it's like 10 acres.

Yeah. See, I now look at that. I don't think it's that big. It's probably more like two. I was going to say three three to five at max, but just trying to get an idea in my head of of of 10 acres. I I don't think 10 acres is enough for a town center. So, if that's if that's with the hundred. So, I'm I'm still more three to four. We'll see. What do y'all think? Uh four. Okay. So, I tell you what we How about um You said four. You're four. You're four. I can go with four. I'll stick with four.

Okay. That's we'll go with four. Are you you all? Okay. All right. So So now just to kind of round that that out on the 400, I have a few questions. So on page 33, item C, um about halfway down, it states for mixeduse PUDs larger than 100 total acres, a master plan may be provided. I think we need to reward that and state it to say for mixed use. Uh quite honestly I would just say for mixeduse PUDs a must master plan shall be provided. Yes. Yes. And eliminate. So for mixeduse PUDs strike larger than 100 total acres.

Okay. A master plan shall um so that's number one. Location and size. The subject property. It was a scribers there. It should shouldn't have said a minimum of 50. It should have said a minimum of 100. But we will change that to a minimum of 400 acres. Do I have a consensus on uh council member Dodd on item G changing may to shall? Yes. On page 33. Okay. And then it was page um 36 item A purpose and applicability. We will change 100 to 400. right

in that location as well. Right. I mean, as things go, uh, if someone had a 300 acre piece of property they wanted to do this with, they could always come and ask for an exception or variance related to it. So, they're always there's a case by case that always can be built for somebody down the road. Uh, that's what that that's what this whole process is designed for. But, I think having good standards to start out with is is imperative. So, I think this is a good standard. And then as far as the table on page 31, 31, were these um suggested by the applicant to enter it into these categories or was this sta was this Alex? Was that

staff or the applicant? We went back and forth and so this is what we finally agreed upon. Okay. Does the applicant have a preference? Can I mean with that discussion are you fine with us eliminating it out of li not to say council we have a consensus yet but li eliminating it from limited commercial and general commercial and riverfront mixed use. So uh council can we get a consensus on that? I just want to make sure we get clear direction on all of these items that were discussed. Okay. Um, you're talking about taking out on page 31, limited commercial and general commercial near the top of 31, right? And riverfront mixed use.

Riverfront. Okay. Um, I I I don't have a problem with that. No. Okay. So, we will do that as well. Th those are all the questions I had, Mr. Mayor. All right. Uh, thank you so much. Um I have one more one more question if I may sir. Yes sir.

Uh on uh 37 of the package has an expiration clause in there. Um here to for we have not put expiration clauses on like site plans and stuff and that's always kind of been an issue I think for me personally but and it says that they have to provide a uh at least one site plan within 3 years of approval. Does that establish a three-year date if it's not executed on that that that the uh the class that that that it's no longer approved? Is it is that basically do that?

So my understanding of the way it would work and and Ken might speak to this uh a little bit better is that um right now we actually do a site plan is valid for one year from approval from PNC. So we actually already have that established in our code. So, this would just be for a three-year period um that they would have to have something submitted and approved um by a PNZ and city council.

Okay. All right. So, there really isn't any time frame we could establish a PUD MU for a piece of property and there really I mean I'm I'm like Chester's Gap for example. Chester's Gap's been a PUD for a long long long time. They've been going through all kinds of girrations on what to do with it. And I I can see where if we put a time frame on it, we could stop them the we could take away their ability to be flexible and do that. So, I guess it's good idea not to do that. Okay. All right. Thank you, sir.

All right. That's it. Um, do we have anything else from council staff? Anything else? All right. I'm ready to entertain a motion. Mr. Mr. Mayor, I move approval of ordinance 0-26-02 with the recommended changes discussed. I'll second that. Do we have a motion and a second? Any other discussion? Madame clerk, council member dog. Yes, sir. One second. Um um also and set second reading for May. May hold on. What date did we advertise? May 13th and set the second reading for May 13th in your motion.

You want amend your motion? Amend the motion. You amend your second. I'll amend my second. All right, Madam Clerk. Council member Dodd? Yes. Mayor Jones? Yes. Vice Mayor McPartland? Yes. Council member Nun? Yes. Council member Matthews? Yes. Motion carries.

All right. Um, thank you so much. Uh, no unfinished business. under new business. Um 12A, consideration of resolution 26R26-12. Uh Mr. Benton or what do we have? Oh, Barb. Hi. Hello. Uh the resolution that you have in front of you tonight is regarding the uh city of Sebastian Broadcast web facilities usage policy that's it's a revision of a resolution that we've had in place since 2006 and has been revised over the years. Uh we're just revising the resolution to update it to new processes, allowing us to do more things with the city website that our old policy was not currently supposed to be allowing us to do and giving us flexibility to be able to move forward.

All right. Uh thank you so much for that. Um any questions of staff? Any any anything else? Is there anyone from the public would like to speak on this? Anyone on Zoom? No one has raised their hand. All right. Thank you. Public input is closed. Council, what are we going to do? Mr. Mayor, I move approval of resolution number R-26-12. Second. So, we have a motion and a second. Any other discussion? I just think we need to remind the that this this document probably sets a standard guide for for the future documents. Very well done. Oh, yes.

Very well done. Easy to read. I like all the way it's broken down and it references state statutes and so very good. Anything else? Um, Madame Clerk, Mayor Jones, yes. Vice Mayor McPartland, yes. Council member Nun, yes. Council member Matthews, yes. Council member Dodd, yes. Motion carries. All right. Uh, next item is item 12B. Barbara,

this resolution is an accompaniment to the last resolution that you just passed. Um, we were supposed to establish a fee guidelines for the council chambers usage for other government agencies because there's been some interest in the past and we were supposed to do that at the last revision and stuff happened and it didn't get done. So, we're addressing it through this resolution to put it out and make it the resolution it was supposed to be. All right. Um, thank you. Um, Mr. Benton, I don't Oh, no. Miss Matthew.

All right. The only thing that I um saw on this was on page uh 53 and down where it says section 24 the last sentence. That needs to be we needed to either choose the 10 or the 20. You have 10 and then 20. And I believe we were going with the 20 because of the time frame of making sure we could get it in a meeting. So that's the only piece that I needed to see.

Yes. And Mr. Mayor, I will take responsibility for that. I changed it from 10 to 20 and didn't change the word. I only changed the number. Um, but yes, the reason for that change from 10 to 20 was this is there. They have to submit a request to staff and if they only give us 10 days before their event for a fee waiver, we may not have a council meeting in 10 days. So, 20 days, we should typically have a council meeting that falls within that and we can get their fee waiver processed through you all in a timely manner. All right. Um, thank you so much for that, sir. Is there anyone from the public who would like to speak on this? Anyone on Zoom? Not at this time. All right. Thank you. Public input is closed. Council,

Mr. Mayor, um, I have a couple of questions if I can. You know, normally I do that. Zoom. This doesn't reference uh if someone uses the chambers and would like to have the Zoom feed set up, which means we have a staff person that sits in the back and handles that Zoom feed. Uh and so from a fee point of view, I would think we need to want make some reference to that. Either that they may do it themselves or something. I mean, and I don't know whether that's an issue with you or not. Um, I also kind of question the full service tier one. Maybe there's a per hour rate that we need to think about there because we have to have staff here and if a meeting runs, you know, first of all, they have to come in and set the room up, get the mic set up, get everything set up, and then they have to be and I don't believe you have just one person back there. You end up having to have two people back there. $300 is almost insufficient to pay the cost of those two people for an hour when we think about it. And if you include their setup, the city's kind of losing money on that. So to me, it might be appropriate to think about that do that being based on an hourly rate. Uh maybe those are some discussions that can take place. Uh I I wouldn't want to approve this document and have to come back and change it later. Maybe we want to table it. So you can discuss that. I don't know that. Brian, you might have some feeling about that.

Yeah. So, Mr. Mayor, if I may. Yes.

Um, so just to kind of have a discussion on on that from from some direction from council. Um, I too think it is a low fee. However, it is governmental entities for one that are only allowed to use the facility. two, I think your additional fee comment kind of goes um in an area for an additional fee maybe if it's after hours. Otherwise, staff's already going to be here um and and we can facilitate having that meeting during the typical daytime. Um with a you know the normal fee, maybe add an after hour fee if it is after hours per hour. Um, and then in regards to Zoom, um, I think that that's something that would fall outside of our realm of responsibility, and that would be completely and totally the responsibility of the the entity using our our council chambers. Um, Barb, do you know of any that have used Zoom that is not just our city, anyone else that has used Zoom since we've allowed it?

Indian River Lagoon Council uses their own. Uh, we don't provide that service through Zoom. uh when we've had FOT here in the past, they have also brought their own through goto webinar and stuff. So, we'll accommodate that. I don't think we've had to address one on Zoom. They usually bring their own. Okay. Because they've got their own established platforms at that point.

I would prefer that we require it and we can go back and amend this resolution. We can require if they need Zoom capabilities, that's their responsibility, not the cities. We will not offer that um digital platform to them. Um, but like I said, if you all want to look at the fees, I would just we we have one historic client that meets here every quarter. Um, that I would consider. I don't want to price them out of using this facility. Um, I think they provide a really good service to this area and that's the Lagoon Council. um I don't want to price them out of it and then go looking elsewhere, but that's we also don't want to establish a a resolution based on one entity as well. So um just something to consider as we go through the discussion amongst you all.

Yeah, I mean we have a separate agreement with in River Lagoon Council that because we provide them office space and so forth. So I I agree with you that we don't want to we don't need to do anything in in fact the use of this chamber for their meetings might even be part of be part and parcel of that agreement that we have with them on the office space. So I wouldn't want to do something here to mess that up and I don't know do we have other people actually coming to us and wanting to use the chamber? Yes. Okay. Uh private entities or government entities? Government agencies. our broadcast policy that's been in place and the one that you just posted a revision to has always uh banned private entities from being able to use the J chambers because there's a lot that goes into this room.

Okay. So, in tier one it says um includes full technical support for the duration of the event. The full technical support does that encompass Zoom and all the other stuff? I think it's on the same line what we were just talking about, but it says full technical support. Full technical support means that we're you they're using the computers for like AV support, making sure the computers are working. The back room is also very technical in nature and it sometimes just like all technology decides that it doesn't want to play nicely and therefore we have people on hand that can troubleshoot those at at that time. So, we're talking about two people pretty much full-time de starting maybe 30 minutes or so before the meeting and running maybe 30 minutes or so after the conclusion of the meeting. That's correct. Is that correct?

As I as normally we try to staff three in all honesty just because then one can deal with the sound, the running around and stuff because if we just do two, we don't have enough people to be able to address out here. They can only address what's in the back. So, I mean that three three people, three full-time people for an hour is $300 won't pay that. Um, it doesn't mean we pay them all that money. It just means that $300 won't pay off for that. And I, you know, I have some sympathy for saying they're government entities, but the citizens of Sebastian pay these people to work for stuff for the citizens of Sebastian, not for somebody else. And so I think that we should make sure that we cover ourselves on this so we're at least a break even. And if it looks like that to hold the 1-hour meeting, we've got three full-time equivalent people that we're paying for two hours between the set up, tear down, run. What's that going to what's that cost us? You know, so um I see you guys talking down there. What's

so uh I mean it sounds like we're probably going to just have to bring this back with some stuff like we're talking about. I was just asking Jim if we can table this and we'll bring it back at either the next meeting or the meeting after within the next two meetings that'll come back to you all. Um is there any other things that we need to consider outside of a

hourly rate for each tier that adequately covers our expenses? Um, and then we can also address like the lagoon council, we can have that discussion as well. Um, but is there anything else that any council members were going to bring up that we need to consider? I I I noticed the full service talks about live broadcast streaming and recording. I think we should emphasize that does not include Zoom. I think uh it does not include interactive

broadcasting as it would be. I think that should be listed in here as a not included. Um I only thing I ask when you use the recording is where does our responsibility as a government entity fall in fall into that when we're recording another government entities uh where's our responsibility begin and end we when we're doing the full tier for the other uh entities that we've done in the past uh we bring we put it on our YouTube it's our property and they do with the recording as they wish. Okay Mr. Mayor, I move we table u the resolution R2613 until a date established by the city manager. Second. Yeah. All right. So, we have a motion and second. Any other discussion? No.

Um I think do we just need a consensus, Mr. Stokes, on this or or should we get a vote on that? I just do a voice vote. It doesn't have to be everybody in favor. I Anybody opposed? Thank you. Motion carries.

All right. Um thank you so much. Um we're going to move on to item 12 C. Um consideration of resolution number 2617. Good evening council. So before you uh you have resolution number 26-17 and that is to accept a three-year agreement with Granicus LLC for their short-term uh rental vacation software. and we're asking you to approve an amount of $32,35.35 and that is the total contract amount. So, we are doing this purchase through a piggyback and I have Mr. Esseline here in case you have any specific questions about what the software can do.

Uh, I don't have any questions. Anyone? No. Nope. Um, is is there anyone from the public who would like to speak on this? Seeing none, anyone on Zoom? No one has raised their hand. I'll make a motion to approve. Public input is closed. We have a motion. Second. And a second. Any other discussion? Hearing none, Madame Clerk. Council member Matthews, yes. Council member Dodd, yes. Mayor Jones, yes. Vice Mayor McParton, yes. Council member Nun, yes. Motion carries.

All right. Um, thank you so much. As Mr. Sable makes his way down. We're going to item 12 D delta, consideration of a new ground lease, a hanger pad G4. Mr. Sable,

thank you, Mr. Mayor, council members. Uh, this, uh, is a lease that is just for a ground parcel. Uh, back in, uh, 2021, finishing up in 2022, we prepared a site on the west side of the airport. uh it was built specifically to handle eight uh hangers of uh an approximate size of 60 by 60. Uh the city through a grant process built uh three hangers on those u uh a portion of those eight sites. We still have five remaining. uh because of some of the problems we had going through the process and trying to get uh what we felt were uh uh properly uh good pricing and value for the city, we've decided to take a look at opening up the remaining sites for private development. Uh Mr. Justin Taylor uh has been on the wait list along with some others that we're speaking with. He has an interest in pad G4, which is the fourth pad beside the three that we have in place already. uh he will be building a hanger to this uh same approximate size. Uh per the terms of the lease, it will be expected to uh resemble uh in color and general condition of what we have placed on there so that the site looks cohesive and um the general uh conditions of the lease, similar to anything else we're doing, it would be a 30-year lease with two possible 10-year extensions. Uh and at any time if that falls short or at the end of that term, this building hanger would revert to uh city ownership and then of course we would uh gain all the revenue from from whatever the uh the hanger would do. But this will bring uh uh some much needed storage options uh for the airport for aircraft. It also increases some of our uh uh retail for fuel and operations and the like. And we are asking uh for your approval for Mr. Taylor to proceed uh with this ground lease and build a hanger on the airport.

All right. U Thank you so much for that. Um you have anything else from staff on that? Anyone from the public would like to speak on this item? Seeing none. Anyone on Zoom? Not at this time. All right. Thank you. Public input is closed. Um council, you have any questions from Mr. Sabbo? Mr. Mayor, I move approval. Do have a motion by Mr. Dodd, second by Miss Matthews. Any other discussion? I do have one last question if I can.

So when they build this, obviously the color and the size and all of that is agreed upon. Is is the entire build approved by us and our is it improved by us as something we would build? I mean, in other words, are we getting total approval on what they build? Yes, we will ask them to come to us with their design and and site plan for our final approval to allow them to move forward. Okay. Uh the being a private uh owner developer, uh he's liable to go a little further than what we can. We basically were forced by cost restraints to strictly do a simple box building. Mr. Taylor's liable to be able to put an office inside and make uh uh make it more accommodating for storage and maybe a couple amenities that we didn't do in ours. however, will be with our approval and permitted as such.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Are there any more questions, Mr. Sabbo? Madame Clerk. Council member Dodd. Yes. Mayor Jones. Yes. Vice Mayor McPartland? Yes. Council member Nun? Yes. Council member Matthews? Yes. Motion carries. All right. Um, the next item on our agenda for tonight is consideration of selecting a city clerk applicants to interview. All right. Um, I I don't know how we should start this. Let's just say if any Mr. Benton

Yeah. I mean, I I'll just kind of start you off with your discussion. So we have presented seven applicants to you all um that a human resources director felt met the requirements for the position, the minimum requirements. Um so these seven have been presented to you all out of the 62 applications we received. We did provide all 62 applications in a binder in the clerk's office for review by all of council and the general public if they wish. Um, so if you all have anyone you'd like to add to the list for consideration, I would recommend we have that come first if anyone has anyone to add. If not, then you can kind of decide how many out of the seven you'd like to interview, which candidates you would like to interview, and then we need to set the date that we're going to go forward with interviews.

Right. Well, I have a three, maybe four. So, I'll just start with my list. Banning, um, Garcia, Johnson, and possibly Warren. What was your fourth one, Fred? Uh, Warren. Trenton Warren. Trent Warren. Yeah, that's a question mark, but some things. I had a fifth one I wanted to add Cory Sneed Sneeed to the list. I So, I had five that I wanted to interview. I I would like to hear from all five. first line. So those um four that I mentioned plus do we have anything different from anyone? I had only three. Okay.

So your list go Clark Garcia and Warren. Clark you added Garcia and Warren. Okay. Mayor, would you say yours again, please? Um, Banning, Garcia, Johnson, and possibly Warren. So, we've named everyone except for Samantha Aguular. Yes. And Cy. And Corey. Um, yeah, I didn't have Corey either. Council member Nun had Cory. I had Yeah. No, Corey. Um, he did. The only person that wasn't named was Samantha Aguular.

Yeah. So the med is definitely out and I I didn't have uh Sneeed. Did any of you have Sneeed? No. No. If nobody else has Sneeed, we can take them off the list. Sneeed is out. Go with the four. Yep. That leaves Oh, I'm sorry. Uh that leaves five with Patty Clark. Yeah. So Patty Clark was one person have Patty Clark right now. Did you say Sneeed was out? No, no, no. Well, I was the only one that chose Sneeed. No, I'd like I wanted You wanted Sneeed as well? I sent HR a list earlier. Okay. So, all right. So, that that's two for SNE then. All right. Well, that's a couple.

In fact, I I'm thinking now that maybe I'd like to just set up interviews for all seven because the only one that wasn't mentioned is Aguilar. I just loo relooked at her application and I think it might be appropriate to interview her also. All right. Well, I don't have a problem with that. I think we can interview all seven of them.

My my only issue with Miss Aguar Miss I'm going to call her Samantha butcher her name is is uh she offered no city council experience or no government experience at all. Right. She had a good resume overall. I mean, if we were looking for a a parillegal or something along those lines, I thought she fit very well. I just not having any clerk or government clerk experience to me just I don't know. I I just I can go along with that. I can too cuz I'm I'm good. I can go along with that. We can keep that one out then, right? Go with six.

All right. So, we have the six. Banning, Clark, Garcia, Johnson, Sneeed, and Warren. Okay. All right. So, we have the sixth or the sixth that we are going that you all are are going to interview. Um, we had mentioned a tenative date at the last meeting of next Wednesday, April 29th. Is that still available for everyone or would you like to choose a different date? And remember, you got six interviews, so it's going to be you're going to be here all day. Yeah. So, we had it set up for the 29th starting at 9:00 a.m. Correct. That's Yeah, the last meeting we had

that's still good for me. So, that's fine. Council member Dodd, any issue? Are we are we trying then to have a um I thought we set a special council meeting up for the Wait a minute. For the 27th. Did we not do that? No, it was the 29th. 29th. Okay. I think we had discussed the 27th. Somebody wasn't available. I need a secretary. I put it in myself and I've got on the 27th. I believe someone wasn't available on the 27th. But that wasn't interviews. That was decision. Correct. So, we're going to The plan would be to do interviews during the day and then a 5:00 special meeting. Right.

We weren't doing interviews at that meeting though. We were just doing this decision. I think we discussed not doing public interviews. Oh, correct. Correct. We're only doing individual interviews, right? And then a public meeting at five o'clock to make a decision. And that's on the 29th. I put that in my 29th. Yeah. Yeah. Um Okay. So, do we do we think we can do six interviews during the day and then be ready for a meeting at 5:00? It's just time. I think so. I know it's just time, but do we start at 3 in the morning or um I think we can do it. Yeah. be around Rob. We can get out of the way.

Yeah. I mean, we can probably accomplish like at any given time four to five interviews we can fit in city hall. We can probably Yeah. I mean, I would say we probably do five interviews at one, you know, at one time. So, all five of you would have a time slot and you go through six of those. Okay. Um, we'll just have to allocate different conference rooms and Okay. And then have a break for lunch. 30 minutes a piece. Uh, I think last time we did 45 just in case you all ran over at all with your 30 minute allocation, but we would time them every 45 minutes. I was going to say I think we're going to need 30 minutes. Okay. Okay. If you want to do you think about it. I mean that's five of us doing

and can we have maybe then between 3:30 and 5 where there's no nothing scheduled so that we can spend that time to try to coersse ourselves to think which way we want to go. So can we get it done by 3:30? Do you think can we take a 5m minute recess? We'll put together a quick schedule. It'll only take me 5 minutes. Okay. And then that way we at least have a know for sure that we can accomplish what you're requesting. How about if we just trust you? Okay. Perfect. We'll do it. Okay. We'll make it happen. I'll I'll take the 29th off. It'll make it easier for me that day. I I'll mark the whole day off. Okay. That'll work. We will do our best to get the interviews over early in the afternoon so that you have adequate time before the five o'clock meeting. Okay.

All right. And we what we'll probably do is go 30 minutes and just give you like a 10-minute time frame. So it' be 9:00, your next one will start at 9:40 and then after that you would go 1020. You know, kind of those ranges there to get them get them in. Oh yeah. I think I'm going to have to step out one during the day there. And if any of you have conflicts, let us know because then we can work the schedule around that. Yeah. Yeah. So I I won't start till about 10 something myself because I'm I have a doctor's appointment that morning. So 9:30. So if you have something specific for you, please get with me in the morning. I'll send it up.

Um so that I can make sure we get the schedule laid out and then we'll contact the candidates. Well, I'll Cindy can contact them tomorrow morning. Go ahead and give them a heads up and then that way we can work the schedule out tomorrow. Yeah, I'll be fine. Okay. All right. All right. Um, we're going to we're going to go ahead and move on to item 12F. Mr. Benton.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, item 12F, this is the request from staff to walk on the agenda tonight. Um, I've had individual conversations with each of you on this item. Um, we're requesting consideration of a purchase order for Ovation Construction Company LLC in the amount of $91,9947 for 50% design plans for the for a building department expansion. Um, and to provide authorization to the city manager or uh to execute the purchase order. Um, as has been discussed, you know, looking back at legislation from last year and and also, well, let me start off first in our most recent audit document, um, you know, the one thing that we got hit on from the audit was we had too much money and excess funds in the building department. So, it's a good problem to have. However, this is the third year in a row that we've had too much excess um, in the building department. So now it kind of triggers a different element of having to go to the state and alert them that we have these funds. These funds can only be used for four specific uh methods at the current time. Either used to rebate and reduce rates is one method. It can be used for technological and software hardware upgrades to facilitate the building department. Um as you all have seen, we've added two new softwares just this past year. that neither one of those required us to go into reserve for um so we have adequate funding for that. So we don't really need that. I mean we have pretty much the technological advances that we need in the department. We've increased um allowing building permits to be done electronically over the phone. We can do um some inspections. So all of that is already happening. So that's option number two. Um the third way that we can utilize funds in the building department

currently is to uh build a building structure that to facilitate enforcement of the building code. Um and we currently do have offices at the end down here. Um and then obviously the operational element of the building department as well uh plays into that with um all of those items for the audit. Senate Bill 180 last year was passed in 2025 legislative session. That bill requires us to identify a location that we can function the um building department out of should our existing offices become incapacitated. So our idea for this project we had we had taken in budget out in three years to do an off to do an expansion of the building department. However, due to a potential Senate bill that could uh come into play, um we we really need to look at doing this now. And with Senate Bill 180 requiring us to have a location that is technically a hardened structure that we could function out of during and post storm with the building department, um this expansion would take place. What we're proposing is to have an expansion on the west side of the courtyard directly in front of the current building department that would house four offices and a conference room that would the conference room would be a hardened structure. So, it would be encapsulated with concrete. Um, and it would meet all the building code requirements for C category 5. All that impact windows, everything that would function as an EOC uh setting for city hall during the storm and immediately after we could transition to the building department if necessary, if the rest of the building uh was damaged in order to be in compliance with Senate Bill 180. Um, so with that, we are requesting approval. This would come out of building department reserves uh to do these 50% plans. We will then hope to bring um a full design build contract uh

for your consideration back in the second meeting in June for your consideration to potentially move this project forward. If the decision is made or if the costs are too high that we do not want to move this project forward, we would have 50% plans of a building structure that could be utilized during a future date um if necessary. So, we are available for any questions. Uh, Jessica has been involved from procurement and Wayne, they have been awesome with getting this thing moving really quickly and and getting it to you all in a a timely manner.

All right. Uh, thank you so much for that. Do anyone have any questions for Mr. Benton through my in-depth conversations with him? I I'm okay with moving forward with this. I'll second if that was a motion. Okay. Yes. Motion and we don't have any choice. Senate Bill 180 requires that we have a facility like this. We're going to have to build it no matter what. And we have the reserves right now in our building department that pretty soon a piece of legislation is going to force us to use it for something else. And anybody that says refund it then fine. 6 months from now we have to spend part of our our general fund reserves to build a building to satisfy Senate Bill 180. So this is a very good move I think.

Yeah. Very good. All right. Um any and as we discussed Mr. been this design could be used for not just here but possibly another site.

Yes. So, uh you and I had the discussion this afternoon. um we're planning to have a discussion with the um the the company that we're using for this design. So that the 50% plans as I mentioned elevations and some of those you know storm water and things are going to be spite sight specific but if you know the structure the hardened structure could be potentially used in a different location. There would just be some civil uh engineering that would be none for would be needed for a different location if that was the decision that was made in the future. But the structure portion of the design would be adequate to pick up and move anywhere um within as our discussion was had. All right. Um

I do have a question though for Mr. Mayor if I may. This isn't going to trigger anything that requires that we do ADA enhancements to the building or anything like that. This is kind of maybe pointing to the attorney. I'm going to have Mr. Ezelan come up and try to provide an answer. I I just thought about that that somebody comes in now and says, "Oh, you got to upgrade your whole building because you've done so much certain size change to it." I don't anticipate that at all. Okay.

Um well, we had planned assisted addition off the building department that's there now to actually be just creating a corridor and uh rearranging some doors, but it would just be like a just a continuation of what we have now. until No, that doesn't trigger any accessibility requirements. All right, good. Thanks, Wayne. All right. Um, thank you. Um, did we ask for public input? I think so. Is there anyone from the public who would like to speak on this? Anyone on Zoom? No one has raised their hand at this time. All right. Thank you so much. Public input is closed. Um, do we have the motion? Uh, yes. And a second. And do we have Madame Clerk? Council member Dodd. Yes. Mayor Jones,

yes. Vice Mayor McPartland, yes. Council member Nun, yes. Council member Matthews, yes. Motion carries. All right. Um, thank you so much. Our next item is city attorney matters. Mr. Stokes, I have nothing for you tonight, sir. Thank you so much, sir. Uh, Mr. Benton, do you have anything? I have nothing for tonight. Oh my god. Oh boy. He must be hungry. He must be hungry. Mr. Mayor, I do have something. I'm sorry. give us something to do. Um, Madame Clerk, I have nothing tonight either, sir. All right. Thank you so much. Um, city council matters. Um, Mayor Jones, nothing. Nothing.

Miss Matthews, Mr. Dodd. Aldi's grand opening is tomorrow, 8:30 a.m. If you're one of the first 200 people that at 8 am. So, if you're one of the first 200 people that shows up, they'll probably give you a can of green beans, but they're going to they're going to do something for you in the form of a gift thing. But, so for those people who are excited about that German grocery store being here, it's going to be here starting tomorrow morning at 8:00. Yeah. I I'm sorry I'll miss it. I'm have ethics that train. I'm going to think right now so I'll miss it but college all day from Can I just ask who is planning to attend? I'll be there. Chris will be there. All right. Councilman none. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for representing us down there, Chris. Yes, sir. All right. Um, Mr. Nun, I'll be there. Okay, that's all I have. Okay, Vice Mayor McCartland, I'm glad to be here, but I'd still rather be on the boat. But there you go. All right. Uh thank you so much. This meeting is adjourned.