Town Commission - Regular Meeting

All right today is Thursday August 20th 1122 AM starting and take the role please.

Yes, mayor, you're dancing present as may have been murky present commission at the money here coming to the city here commissioner one got. May you have a quorum.

Thank you chief if you lead us please the pledge of allegiance. Thank you. All right, moving on to item 2A, resolutions and proclamations. Consideration of a resolution canceling the special election schedule for November 3rd, 2026 on Charter Amendment Resolution Number 20263518 and 20263519. Madam Clerk, if you'll read the title of the resolution into the record, please. Yes, Mayor.

Item 2A, a resolution of the Town Commission of the Town of Surfside, Florida, presenting Resolution Number 2026-3518 and Resolution Number 2026-3519, and withdrawing the resolutions providing for charter amendments for the ballot on the November 3rd, 2026 special election, canceling the Town's November 3rd, 2026 special election call for in the resolutions providing for support Provided for notification and transmitted to the Miami-Dade County Supervisory of Elections. Provided for authorization implementation. Provided for an effective date. Item 2A.

All right. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Sorry, Madam Attorney, if you'll introduce the item.

Hi. Good morning, everybody. My partner, Steve, is online. And Steve, can you hear us?

Yes. Can you hear me?

We can hear you. And we can see you as well.

Great. Perfect. Lily, would you like me to kind of lead off?

Yes, if you would. Thank you.

Good. Good morning, everyone. Sorry I'm not with you. I, this item that we're discussing and that is on the agenda, the resolution, is a resolution which retracts or rescinds a election that was scheduled because at the time there was an understanding that an amendment that had been made to the charter was at least a majority of you determined that it was something that was so critical and severe and limited the powers of the commission that you wanted to go back and at least i think the majority of you i don't remember exactly the vote and try to remove that those sections from the charter And so because of deadlines and everything else, you decided that the best way to do that was to place it before the voters for a rescission. At the time, we told you that we were looking at the underlying validity of those ballot amendments of those actual amendments that were made to see whether the rescinding vote would be necessary. So we have spent a substantial amount of time, more than I frankly ever expected, trying to delve into the vote, the measure, and its validity. And what I've determined and opined in a memorandum that I sent to you was that what the voters actually voted on was ineffective and a nullity. That they voted on a change to the charter that was never approved by the commission. And that happened because there were changes between the adoption of the resolution by the prior commission and the item going out to the election supervisor that were made by the attorney at the time to the actual legislation. which is quite different from what was actually voted upon by the council. And I think that they were, I don't think necessarily it was intentional in terms of trying to mislead anybody or do anything. But in fact, there were significant changes to the resolution that was passed by the commission, which in my memo I call the adopted resolution, and what was sent out to the election supervisor and which was put before the voters. So it's our opinion that the item that was sent to the elections department and voted on by the voters was a nullity. It was as though it never actually occurred because what they were voting on was never approved by the commission. So the solution is not to hold an election on an item that, in our opinion, was never approved to begin with. And that sounds awkward because people went to the polling booth. They voted. They voted on what was presented to them. But what was presented to the voters was not what the commission actually approved to go to the voters. So that's at the core of the problem with these two amendments. The people voted on something different than what the commission wanted them to vote on, and the legislation that was passed. Because someone intervened between the vote of the commission and the vote of the electors and changed the entire document, critical parts of the document. I'm not casting any ill intent on it, but it was changed. In fact, I think that the intention was to fix mistakes that the attorney found after the commission voted on the item. I believe that the intention was a good intention, which was they recognized that there were problems in what the commission did in its original adopted resolution, and they attempted to fix them. But you can't go back and fix a final adopted resolution by a government unless you go back to the government and ask them to make those changes. Okay, so that's what happened. Now in my memo, you can see, I hope you have it. What I did just so you could see it clearly is I actually redlined the changes that were made by the attorney. If you look at page, starting at the bottom of page two and on page three, You could see in the red line and cross through areas, those were the things that the attorney did to the legislation after it was adopted. Just by way of example, if you look at the captions, forget about the actual text change for the moment. If you look at the captions, they're totally different. They change words from, for example, expenditures to use of tariff funds. In number two, you could see most of the caption is completely removed. It completely changed the caption entirely. And understand that that may seem like an insignificant thing. It's not. The caption is a part of the ballot that is extremely important. We just litigated this on a statewide basis on behalf of the Florida municipalities, challenging the governor and legislatures tax uh proposal the constitutional proposal and and we prevailed in that case recently uh statewide on uh on an issue on on a caption issue just like this where the caption um was improper so it's not just a a little it's just not just a little thing caption is an important part of it The most important part of what was changed, though, is the actual text amendment, the actual amendment that the voters were approving. If you look at the middle of the page where I have it redlined, you'll see that the language that the voters were approving was completely changed by the attorney. That's what the voters were voting on. And that's not, the red shows what she changed. That is not what the commission approved. They never approved any of that language. And that's the most critical language because that is actually, the voters don't vote on a question. They're asked a question, but the question then leads you to what is the actual amendment that we're approving? And what they approved was significantly different from what the commission put before them. They actually voted on the attorney's version as opposed to the commission's version. Okay? So what I wanted to share with you is that When we did the first proposal to have an election, there was a reservation which I had put forward, which was to say, listen, I'm not sure that we're actually going to need this, because I need to go back and look at the validity of the underlying questions that you're looking to rescind. Voting to rescind something that never actually legally occurred is not the solution here. The vote is to have them rescind something that never technically and legally actually happened. It doesn't solve your problem. Rescinding something that was a nullity from the beginning doesn't accomplish the purpose here. I'm not saying that – so there is a solution. There is a way, I think, to solve this problem, but an election is not the right way to do it. is all I'm suggesting and recommending here, that going through an election does not solve this. It may raise political issues. It may make people feel happy. I don't know what it may do, but it's not going to solve the underlying problem. So the election is not the remedy to solving this problem. Going back and having the voters take out what they put in, which was never supposed to be there to begin with, is not the solution. So my recommendation is that you cancel it. That's not to say that we have a final resolution to the problem. It's simply that the vote is not going to solve the problem. It may actually make things more confusing than they are already, because now you're going to have, you still don't have a resolution to the underlying problem that's out there. Okay, so I'm open to questions, but what I'm trying to get across to you is that at the end of the day, voting to rescind something is not solving the problem. I'm recommending that you not do that. There is a solution to this problem. It may involve a judicial declaration, but it's not holding another election. So I'm here for questions. I know that I got some emails early this morning from Gerardo and Andrea. I know that they had some questions.

Before we get to that, I'm going to just, again, put a motion on the table. So I guess I'll request a motion to approve the resolution as presented, and we'll take it from there.

This is David here. I'll make a motion to take consideration of the resolution canceling the special election. This is item 2A, special election scheduled for November 3rd, 2026, on Charter Amendment Resolution Number 20263518 and 20263519. Is there a second? Second.

All right, so before we get into Commission discussion questions, I'm just going to go through public comment. Ms. Alida Krasner. Krasner. Thank you, Mrs. Love.

Yes, sir.

I am Krasner. Here.

But you need to reset that, please.

All right, name and address of the record, please.

Okay, thank you, Mrs. Locke, godless dancer. On August 13th, I issued a formal litigation hold for the June 4th and July 4th CCTV logs. and submitted mathematical proof of unsigned timesheets. I am publicly demanding to know if the town clerk has complied with the law and locked down those video servers. The administration intentionally concealed the 30-day ultimate deletion loop from me for months allowed material evidence on facility abuses to be destroyed. in bad faith. While the State of Florida Health Department validated my complaints by stepping in this week, this commission called an 1115 a.m. meeting to hide behind procedural streaks, evade public referendums, and escape accountability. Your own town attorney's memo admits that after the fact, unauthorized changes were made to resolution 20-25-34-35 behind closed doors without commission vote. Now you are attempting to completely rescind and cancel the upcoming November election tracts laid out of Resolution 2026-3518 and 2026-3519. documents that this mayor, this clerk, and this attorney personally signed, sealed, and certified on May 12th, Exhibit 8, on page 35, shows your true intent to strike through and completely destroy the 60% public referendum safeguard in taxpayers' funds. You told the public that subsection 17 was paralyzed the Collins Avenue water main project. Yet, today you are abandoning the very project and stripping residents of their own voting rights just to cover up your own administrative blunders. You cannot just use my midday procedures tricks to escape overnight. Why did this administration attempt to falsify a case close status? on a severe public biohazard.

Thank you, Mrs. Kretzer. Michael Kerouken, three minutes, please. Are you going to speak?

I didn't hear you call my name, sorry. No worries. Michael Kerouken, 9365 Abbott. Hopefully all of you had a chance to read my email from early this morning. So I'm not going to get into the details of it. Hopefully it speaks for itself. Canceling it, I actually am okay with canceling it because then the limitations stand, at least until the town attorney can pursue what he thinks is the proper remedy, which I think is a little bit of a high bar because my understanding is courts are not so quick to overturn items that have already been voted on. But be that as it may, the questions that I think that you should ask the town attorney uh i enumerated in my email and i'd like to repeat them now is how the conclusion that the ballot language was never quote never even discussed or voted on close quote can be reconciled with the official minutes and meeting video and i say that because the at the time and if you look at the video i encourage you to do that they approved language that was repeated by the town manager at the time and also recorded in the minutes that pretty much match the final ballot question. So you need to ask the town attorney how he can reconcile that based on the content of his memo. The other question that I have is, what specific words appearing in the November 2025 ballot were not approved? by the Commission during the August 20th meeting. Because as you can hear, they were doing a lot of wordsmithing at the time. It was very painful to watch. But the bottom line is that they approved and reflected in the minutes what was in the ballot question and what the voters approve. Now, again, please correct me if I'm wrong. The last item was a really minor point, was why the isolated use of less in paragraph 17, as you'll see highlighted in one of the PDFs, when more or exceeding appears throughout the rest of the document and record, should not be considered the a scriveness error that the town attorney says does not exist. I think that actually would be classified as a scriveness error. So bottom line is nullifying an election is not an easy task, it's gonna be something that you should take into consideration very carefully. But if you do decide to pass this resolution, keep in mind that the good news is that the, and to other speakers, that the limitations and restrictions stand, at least until some judicial ruling occurs. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Corcoran.

All right, anybody else wanna speak before we close public comment? Seeing none we'll close and move on to Commission debate if anybody has any questions for the town attorney

I have a question for the town attorney before comment. Is Mr. Helfman there? Yeah. So when we last spoke about this on the dais, and you talked about the possible invalidity of the two amendments, as I recall, you made a different argument. You made a substantive legal argument that said that these amendments conflicted with something in state law that required us to go through a budgetary process. And that was a... The concern back then was substantial, and it had to do with the content of the charter amendments and not their procedure. I noticed that that argument isn't being made anywhere in your memo, and the procedural argument here is one that we haven't heard before. So I'm just curious what the status was of that other legal argument that you floated at the meeting here and why you chose not to proceed with that one.

Sure. Before we can get to, when I initially looked at this, I was focused on the language changes and whether they were contrary to law, which would have precluded the commission and the voters' ability to pass measures like this. When I looked at this more carefully from the beginning, I found a more fundamental error, which is in this memo. And you really don't ever need to get to the legality, constitutionality of the actual substance of the change. because when you approach the procedure, which I know you're hyper focused on usually, you find that the procedure was so flawed that you really don't need to examine or go deeply into the legality of the actual change. And so we did not pursue that. I still believe there's an issue there and had this measure been properly enacted, that might well have been the focus of the memorandum. But there's no need to discuss that or evaluate that because it's a neat theoretical discussion about whether the textual change actually would have violated substantive provisions of law. But we did not pursue that angle once we did all of our diligence.

Yeah, so I have a question, which is a clarification, I guess. So one of the things that were highlighted by Mr. Karke's email this morning were connected to the actual conversation over the language that is highlighted in red in your memo. So my question is, I couldn't find the document, the original document, basically the one that you put your red marks on, the one that you redlined. So can you just clarify that for me?

Yes. Michael... Michael is absolutely correct that the changes that the commission made on the dais to the ballot question are accurate. Understand there's different components of the resolution. The resolution, which is the legislation in its entirety, include a caption. okay, a ballot question, and then the actual amendment to the charter. There's three critical components to the election process and the ballot measure, okay, in its entirety. What the commission did was they discussed the question. There was extensive conversation, as Michael and others have indicated, on the ballot question. They were unhappy with the ballot question. They thought it was misleading. They wanted it to be clarified. They changed the use of terms from expenditure to use of funds in the question because they felt that that was very important and they're correct. They mean something entirely different. They were hyper-focused on one piece of the resolution. What they failed to do was to pay attention to the other pieces of the resolution and discuss them or take any action with regard to those other issues. They didn't touch the captions. They didn't touch the exhibit, which is the actual, which is what the voters voted on. The voters don't vote on a question. The voters vote on an amendment to the charter. So while the question may be the question that the commission wanted posed to the voters, the commission never went back at that time and conformed the actual amendment to the question. They just fixed the question, OK? So on the evening of whatever it was that they approved this thing, it was on the 20th, August 20th, they passed the resolution. It was done. It was over with. It was completed. In fact, the resolution says that this shall become effective immediately upon its adoption. So they passed a resolution. They changed the question in the resolution. Okay, so that's correct. What they didn't do is make all the other changes that were necessary. Okay, they didn't make all the changes. So what the lawyer did is they realized, oh my God, we forgot to change all this other stuff. We hyper fixated on the question, but we never fixed the rest of the resolution. We never fixed the actual text that the voters were approving. So they went back after the fact and started to substitute pages in a rush to get this out to the elections department. And if you follow this, and it took me a long time to see what was going on here, back and forth between the manager and the lawyer and the clerk. And when you figure it all out, what you realize is that they figured out that it was all screwed up. And they had to fix it. But you can't go back and make these kind of changes in your office after the resolution's been adopted. So that's the problem. Michael's correct that one change they did. And I didn't talk about that in this memo. In fact, I acknowledge that they did make the change properly, where I say that after a detailed discussion of the two ballot questions, Resolution number was passed and adopted and became immediately effective with specific changes to the ballot questions only as directed by the commission. So that's where I completely disagree with Michael. Michael's wonderful, and I appreciate his help from time to time. But Michael's totally wrong here. They never discussed these changes that the lawyer went back and made. And had they, then the lawyer wouldn't have had to have changed them. There would be no need to start substituting and shuffling around in an urgent way trying to get this stuff fixed. And the one issue that he talked about, which is the more and less issue, That's reflective of after the fact changes, because they also realized that when they were doing this, they actually made a further mistake. They didn't fix everything correctly. So what the voters voted on is different language than they even put in. So this thing was a cluster. And it reflects on something more important, which is when the council votes on something, it is very important that you vote on, when you're voting on legislation in particular, you need to be extremely careful. In this instance, it was very important. This is an issue going to the voters. This is a ballot measure. You're asking the voters to come out and do something very important. When you're sitting there and you're acting on this stuff, you need to be extremely careful. You can't just fix one part of something. and then go back and administratively, after the fact, fix all the substantive provisions within the resolution that are actually being voted upon by the voters. So this is a mess. I'm acknowledging that this is a mess. This thing never should have gone out this way. What was approved on the night of that meeting by the commission did not go to the voters. What went out to the voters is the lawyer's version of it. And the lawyer doesn't have the power, as much as we may think they do, to start changing legislation. And when I say there's no Scrivener error, I think it's important. There are no Scrivener errors. This is not a Scrivener error issue. There was not a single Scrivener error in the adopted resolution when that resolution was adopted. There were no Scrivener errors. She didn't need to correct any Scrivener errors. There were none. She went back and did wholesale changes. She didn't fix a Scrivener error. She actually wholesale went back through this thing to fix a mistake. So that's where we are. I'm sorry to go on and on, but I think it's important. Commissioner Trevani, you raised this, and I wanted you to have a clear understanding of what happened.

Yeah, no, thank you. I think it's a good clarification. It'd be great if we could add that original resolution to this whole conversation, because that's probably the document that we don't have here.

You have in front of you all the very, very, very critical components of it. The clerk can give you the original resolution. It was what was on the agenda that night. Exactly, yeah. That's what passed with a change to the ballot questions. OK, that's what happened on that night. And that when you raise your hand, that's what you voted on. You didn't vote and then tell the lawyer to go back and fix all the mistakes that they made.

I think Commissioner Trevani is asking if we could just add that document to the minutes after today's meeting.

Yeah, Mayor, if I may. We have it with us. This is the agenda item, the resolution as it was placed in the agenda on August 20th. I'm happy to share and pass it down.

Thank you. And if you compare that to what was sent out to the Elections Department, you'll see that it's entirely different. And nobody has the power but you or the prior commission to make those changes, whether they're small or big. It doesn't really matter. I know that, Gerardo, you asked me this morning in an email about the issue of substantive material. It really doesn't make a difference. I did include that, and I understand your concern about a circular argument. I get it. That's not really relevant to this conversation. You can't make changes whether they're material or not. They were changes, and in this instance, they are material changes. She changed words like expenditure to use of town funds. That was critically important to the commission. They actually, that was very important and material to the commission. They spent a lot of time talking about that as part of the ballot question.

Can I ask you just a question about The version of events here, and I want to make sure I understand the attorney's argument. I read your memo carefully, but I didn't have time to rewatch all of the video. But what I'm confused about is that I do remember talking about the emergency exception that was added. I remember the use of town funds language coming up in our meeting. I remember the budgeted ad valorem language being discussed at the meeting. So is your argument that there was some procedural failing at the meeting that we somehow didn't vote that into the text because these words you know i they i don't think they were created by the town attorney and the manager subsequent to the meeting i think all of these items were discussed at the meeting and i i'm just wondering if didn't we you're correct and so let me okay and one other question then is there something wrong and if we have the meeting we have the text we discuss changes to it we send the attorney with the general gist of the changes and then the attorney writes it down is that procedurally defective in your view because i i do remember discussing these items i i don't see it as something that came after the commission meeting i remember it during

Yes, you're correct. And I'm sorry, I spent a lot of time on this, but I obviously didn't get my point across. The resolution contains multiple sections, OK? You all were totally focused on the question within the resolution. You spent a lot of time talking about what question are we going to ask the voters.

Right.

Okay. And you, and there was a verbatim word by word motion that the lawyer manager worked on it there. You guys discussed it. You got into the details of every word. Okay. And you then move the entire resolution with the changes to the question. OK? So that's not an issue. Those changes were made. What you didn't do is go back and take charge of and deal with other sections of the resolution, which are probably more important than the question. OK? You spent at least an hour discussing the question. OK, so now we fixed the question. Now what is the actual text that we want the people to vote on? OK? And you never did that. The text, which is exhibit A, which is what the people are voting on, they're not voting on a question. The question doesn't show up in your charter after the vote. The text change does. And so that's what you're voting on. When you're an elector and you go into the voting booth, you're not voting on the question. You're passing the question. But what you need to look at when you're a voter is the question's just a short summary of what is being proposed. You could be changing the entire code in one or two questions. which says, are you in favor of approving changes to the municipal code, for example, that are attached to Exhibit A? You have to read Exhibit A. The voters aren't. That question isn't in your charter right now. What is in there is the text, which never got changed. And so she went in to try to fix the mistake. They should have had you at the meeting fix the critical parts of the legislation, which was the actual thing that the voters were approving. And so she went back and modified it all extensively. That's what the redlining shows. This isn't one word where there was a Scrivener error. These are actual substantive provisions that were modified after the fact. Now, I'm not saying that – I understand what she was trying to do. She was trying to fix a mistake. But you can't fix a mistake that way, not on an adopted resolution. You have to come back and amend the resolution.

SO I'M GOING TO STOP THE SO I'M GOING TO STOP THE CONVERSATION BECAUSE WE KEEP CONVERSATION BECAUSE WE KEEP REPEATING OURSELVES AT THIS REPEATING OURSELVES AT THIS POINT. POINT. I THINK IT'S PRETTY CLEAR AND I I THINK IT'S PRETTY CLEAR AND I THINK WE CAN PUT THIS ITEM TO REST. THINK WE CAN PUT THIS ITEM TO REST. SO, MADAM CLERK, IF YOU'LL CALL SO, MADAM CLERK, IF YOU'LL CALL THE ROLE, PLEASE.

THE ROLE, PLEASE. SORRY, MR. MAYOR, THOSE SORRY, MR. MAYOR, THOSE WERE THE QUESTIONS TO THE ATTORNEY. WERE THE QUESTIONS TO THE ATTORNEY. I DIDN'T GET TO ACTUALLY SAY MY I DIDN'T GET TO ACTUALLY SAY MY

Okay, but you also have to understand that our time up here is limited. Your ability to keep a question going for an hour is limited. You had, what, two, three bites at the apple already? It's been clarified.

I haven't had a chance to speak, if I may.

That's all that's been happening up here.

These were questions to the attorney. No, no. You said, do we have any questions for the attorney? I asked a question. He asked a question.

All right, so please have your three minutes, and then we're going to vote. Okay.

And again, this is for the benefit of our commission. The vice mayor seemed frustrated, but we're rowing in the same direction here. I just want everyone to be clear for the record. If you look at page 14 of the agenda, you can see very clearly, I didn't support these amendments. I voted against them because I thought they would limit the ability of the commission to spend money. If you look at the video at 1 hour 57 minutes, I make this case very clearly. The reason why is because I support the water main project and want to fund it. I also support full funding of the full memorial plan, which we had to value engineer because of these questions which I opposed. So I want to make that all clear. I am confused here about three points. And I do think this should go to the voters now for a different reason. That's a matter of principle. As a factual matter, my understanding is that we gave general direction to the attorney, and she may have then, as Mr. Helfman says, changed the text of the charter amendment. We may have just discussed the question, but I feel that that was what we approved. And when I look at the language of subsection 16 and 17 on page 6 of the agenda packet, that's what I recall approving. So as a factual matter, I'm a little bit confused. Secondly, I do think, and this is what the attorney alluded to, that there's been an insufficient legal argument here by the attorneys. This is kind of like first year law school legal analysis stuff. The operative legal standard is substantial or material change from the case Newmont versus State. And what you have to do when you make a legal argument like this is apply that standard to the facts. There's no application of the standard to the facts. You have to say, oh, in this other case, This change was deemed to be material or substantial. In this case, this other change was not deemed to be material or substantial. This is what happened in Surfside. This is why it resembles this case rather than that case. They didn't do any of that work here. They just repeat. If you look at the last paragraph, the moreover paragraph on page seven, they just repeat the assertion that it's material or substantial. With all due respect to the attorneys, this is like B minus first year law school stuff. You have to do the analysis and then apply it to the facts. And there isn't that analysis here of the facts. So I would just ask for more legal argument. Finally, I would say the two remedies here, assuming everything the attorney says is correct, and I don't immediately question it. I just want to hear more. The remedies are not mutually exclusive. we can go to the voters and we can pursue the judicial declaration of nullity. And I think that when the majority of voters of Surfside have said that they approve of this, it is not proper for us to take that away without going back to the voters. They deserve a voice on this. So I don't see a reason not to go ahead with the election because The remedies aren't mutually exclusive. And I didn't hear from the attorney, either in the memo or today in the discussion, any reason why we shouldn't have the election. So that's my argument.

All right, any other comments before we?

I mean, we didn't talk about the next step, like what's gonna happen? How do we nullify this? Because to me, the issue is that it's, we went out to the voters, it is true. They voted on something which I think conceptually they kind of understood, and this is what they wanted. So now we're finding a problem. So it's very convoluted. So on one side, we have the residents who have expressed an opinion. So now we're trying to... not consider that because of a technical issue, which I totally understand, by the way. And I understand your argument also about what you guys went through with the property tax and how the state responded to that. So it's a very valid argument. But we also have to, as elected officials, take into account what people wanted and maybe have a chance of explaining why this doesn't work for us, because I don't support this either. I'm against having this limit. But like I said, I'm also worried about the living out the voters from this. So let's say that we consider two options. Option A would be we vote yes on this and then we nullify the whatever was was the outcome of that referendum. And my question is, how would we do that would be something that that. Happens at the commission level or just with the attorneys and option B, let's say that we because we're past the deadline anyway, so we're not even sure if maybe they count is going to accept our request.

Well, I just want to give some clarity, and I'm sorry for interrupting. The item, and I just want to check for myself, the item we're voting on today is to remove the ballot question, right? The issue of the legality of the question and do we still apply that law is something that we still have to deal with. But today, because of the deadline, we need to give Miami-Dade County an answer. Do we put this question on or not? So this is not going to, and Steve, please correct me if I'm wrong, this is not going to give or take away what was put in until there is another action on that. So today is just about removing the question because we find that there's a problem with that. Why bring it back to the voters for a question that may not have been valid? So, again, if it's found to be valid and there's a problem with it, we could still put it on next August, next November, whatever it is. There's still time to do that. It's not taking away the current law. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

Doesn't that limit, though, Mr. Mayor, our ability to then approve something like the Water Main Project in the meantime? Because we need to get either that judicial declaration. Like, isn't going to the voters potentially a faster route?

potentially, or it could completely stop those projects, right? Isn't that why you guys pulled it off in the first place?

Again, I oppose this.

No, no, no. When I said when your commission value engineered the memorial, it was for that exact purpose, which is if the voters voted no on it, you were completely screwed. You would never have been able to do the water main project. This town would never be able to build a memorial. So no, I don't think going to the voters right now on this, if that vote's no, it can have an adverse effect and completely mobilize this town. All right, so Madam Clerk, let's call the roll, please.

Yes, Mayor. Commissioner Travani?

Yes.

Commissioner Vildostegui?

No, I think we should consult the voters.

Commissioner Weingart?

Yes, and thank you, Council, for addressing the concerns that were brought to us via email, and I'll appreciate that and the diligence of your team.

Vice Mayor Bemarkey? Yes. Mayor Danziger?

Well, first of all, I just want to make a comment. I mean, Commissioner, you've stated at prior meetings that you were all about process and procedure. And the town attorney has sat here for 50 minutes and explained why this process and procedure wasn't due diligence. At the August 6th special meeting, you tried to delay the memorial, saying that, hey, we're going to be able to change this very soon as soon as the attorney comes forward. So you've kind of made statements that you're alluding to it. We spent the last 45 minutes talking about this and you're just gonna say no anyway. So I'd like to point that out. And with that, I'm gonna say yes.

Mayor, the motion carries.

Thank you. Motion to adjourn.

Thank you. Second.

Motion to adjourn. Second, all in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? All right.

Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. Bye Dave.

Thank you.