City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, we are back. And now we will do the appellant's presentation. And we'll have 25 minutes for that. When you're ready. And then, Mr. Topian, I would just say, if you have anything you want to present on the overhead, it's probably best to sit at that seat. I don't. OK. I don't. Then you're fine. Good afternoon. Good afternoon.

I'd like to thank everybody on the council for hearing us today on some concerns we have with this proposed project. Again, my name is David Topey and I live at 825 Madrid Avenue on the property directly north of the proposed project. Just to give you a quick background on myself, I am a civil engineer. I've been in construction for over 42 years. I work for multiple development companies throughout the country doing their construction management, their onsite inspections, construction reviews, and constructability reviews. So I've been in this business for quite a while. I'm also, as you know and you mentioned earlier, I am also representing Mr. Eric Warble who is at 812 Ormond Street which is the property of about 30 feet away with the two setbacks from the proposed project. So Eric has given me authorization and given me some information that he would like me to present but it's basically consistent with everything that's going to be said throughout my presentation and at some point maybe I'll refer to his documents. So I'm writing to you today or talking to you today on behalf of the 13 plus properties that are directly affected with this project. I've had conversations with everyone on Ormond Street, some people on Apalachicola, and also Madrid Avenue. And while everyone that I have talked to that has signed the petition for this project, not in favor of exactly what's designed, everybody that I have talked to and that is here in the audience today understand that everything has been designed in accordance with the zoning requirements under the 60 foot height, two road cuts, six units or less. Everybody understands that. The problem with it is when we get into section four of the compatibility code, section four compatibility, no one, no one actually surrounding the building or four or five properties away agree that it is compatible with the neighborhood. so that being said there are a couple things i'd like to bring up and i don't know if the first one here is a concern for the council but it's something i want for the record um being in construction for so long this house was built in 1945 the existing property in all the documents that i've read um that were submitted for the site plan approval i didn't see anything in there pertaining to a pre-demolition survey of this building Pre-demolition surveys are typically done on properties built earlier than 1972, 1973 because of asbestos and lead paint. So my concern and the concern of our neighbors is once they start getting into demolition without this survey, is there asbestos and lead paint present? And if there is, when they start demolition, what mitigation measures are they going to put in place so everybody in the neighborhood doesn't have asbestos dust on their lawn furniture and their pools? So that's a major concern. I didn't know if this was the right place to bring it up, but I wanted to bring it up for the record anyway because I didn't see it. My next issue is we talked a lot about drainage. I still have several concerns about the drainage issues. I'm not questioning the validity of Craig's design. He's a professional engineer. He's a solid company. what i'm questioning is the methods and means that they got there everything that they have that they have looked at and put into a model a model spits out garbage in garbage out so to speak and projects different flow rates and things of that nature and we got into a lot of gpm and cfs and cfm and all these acronyms but at the end of the day there are still questions out there simply as is the system that was designed 25 year storm or 100 year i know sarasota county designs at 100 i know the city of venice does 25 there's a vast difference in the amount of water it's a huge question on on on what was really designed because it's conflicting so i i just have a question on that for for the record um I also don't quite understand in the stormwater design how they say that they're holding and detaining water on the property. They are. They are doing it in the underground detention on the north elevation between the proposed project and my property line. However, they're not holding it and transmitting it off-site. They're holding it and transmitting it to Che Vista's catch basin, which is on their property. It's going to be discharging water at the rate when it's full of about 350 gallons per minute continuously into a riprap swale to their catch basin and eventually getting to Roberts Bay. Existing conditions of the one single family house, they have 75 feet of a very pervious drainable soil. When it rains, I just don't understand how the number is less when they're gonna be point loading that catch basin after it comes through the detention, based on versus what's existing in the building at this point with the existing property. I don't see that type of water getting to that catch basin the way that the existing house is designed versus a 8,248 square foot building footprint that's going to be taking up all that pervious land and now detaining it underground for both yard drains and rainwater leaders on the north elevation. So those are some items that just perplex me. Maybe we get into a question period later, but I don't understand how that system is designed at 19,000 gallons, but during a rainstorm event that we've had with, we had Debbie on 8-5-24, we had Helena on 9-26-24, and we had Milton on 10-9-24. Serious rain events. Milton dropped an average of six inches per hour for five hours. Ian delivered 1.5 to 2.5 inches of rainwater, but in a 24 hour period, 18.25 inches of water fell with Milton. So if you take those numbers and you start doing the math, it's 50 to 60,000 gallons of water coming off that roof, going into that underground detention that holds 19,180 gallons of water. It's pervious beneath. My question again on the design is if the ground is supersaturated, which it is, and the groundwater table is two feet below that detention system that they're designing, which it's on paper being about two feet of freeboard, Where's the water going? It's going to blow out the yard drains. It's going to blow out the roof drains. It's going to flood Chavista's catch basin because Roberts Bay is already full. And it's going to start emanating up to the neighbors of my next door neighbor, Anna Dalton, who didn't make it here today, my property, Eric's property, and properties across the street possibly. So those are just some basic general questions that I have and what we're thinking about with real numbers. I understand the models. I understand the Manning formulas and everything that goes into this. But this is, I don't know if you're familiar with the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. It was a bridge in Washington State, a very respectable bridge. top-notch bridge engineers designed this this bridge four months later the bridge collapsed because the top-notch engineer didn't account for a 10 mile an hour wind against the fascia and the beams that supported that bridge and it it failed in four months in a little less than two hours i'm looking at this design of this catch basin and this drainage system for us um as our tacoma narrows and i'm looking to the city council to just ask them to go back and review this information and again everybody on the street knows and agrees with with the with the zoning we're not asking for the city council to to not approve the project we're in agreement that the project should be designed but it should be designed in concert with the fabric of the neighborhood with some respect for the surrounding neighbors on the north, south, east, and west, and for the street itself. During their presentation, they also mentioned, and I'll get into it with my compatibility here. Let me go into that right now, as a matter of fact. And I'm gonna read it so it's on the record. Section four, compatibility. I'm going to start midway of the section. Some elements affect compatibility is defined as the characteristics of different uses or activities or designs which allow them to be located near or adjacent to each other, which we have. Some elements affecting compatibility include the following, height, scale, mass, bulk, pedestrian and vehicular traffic, circulation, access and parking, and impacts of landscaping, lighting, noise, and odor, along with architecture. It is the purpose and the intent of this section to implement specific regulation to achieve compatibility considering the existing zoning, which we have issues with, but we understand they're both compliant, the context of the proposed development and the use compared to the zoning and uses of the surrounding properties. I guess what we need a definition on is what's surrounding. In the presentation, surrounding is the entire city of Venice. It's not Ormond Street that's 35 feet wide with single-family homes that are no more than 20 feet tall, eight units. It's not Venice Avenue. It's not Tamiami Trail. It's Ormond Street. It's a residential street that's perpendicular to the Esplanade. They compare this as compatibility to Chez Vista and the Gulf Twin Towers. Those two buildings are 260 feet away. They don't even implement, they're on the Esplanade. They're not on Ormond Street. This building has an Ormond Street address. The tallest building on Ormond Street is 24 feet tall based on Google search that I've done. So how, you know, my first issue with this compatibility is the current height of this six unit structure is 47 and a half feet. And I totally respect that they took it down from 60. But the lion's share of it is, When a maximum height on a street that it's adjacent to is less than 22 feet, why does this need to be 47 feet tall? This was a major thing when I was doing the petition and telling people about what was going on was the height of this building, along with the drainage, obviously. So we're looking to, again, we're just looking for a redesign, a re-look at this development to bring it down to something more compatible to the surrounding areas. And I'll give you an example. It's got a 10 foot first floor, it's got a 14 foot second floor, a 14 foot third floor, and then a 10 foot tall roof bringing you to 47 feet. as far as i know in real estate and building things we do things by the square foot so they're getting no more value for their dollar by going 14 feet tall instead of a square footage value to to sell or do whatever they're going to do with this property so a very simple solution i'm just putting it out there is a 10 foot first floor for the parking, a 10-foot second floor, a 9-foot third floor, and you've automatically taken 12 feet off of 47 feet and makes it so much more compatible with the surrounding neighbors, or even go a little bit less. But I just don't understand that design that's been portrayed by the architect as far as the interior heights of these floors. The second thing in this compatibility section of the building code from the city of Venice is scale. The proposed development on Ormond Street will have a floor footprint of 8,248 square feet. The largest house on Ormond Street is probably 2,300 square foot footprint. And then some of the existing homes are second floor, which add a little bit, let they get more because it's less. this building in in scale will dwarf anything on madrid avenue apalachicola and madrid and i can even go as far as heigl not comparing it to the esplanade the esplanade is a very busy street it's it's zoned the way it's owned that the buildings have been built there and there are buffers there that no one on ormond street or um madrid avenue can really even see um so we ask again for maybe some kind of downsizing of this the building right now is measuring about 159.85 feet long and 52.6 feet wide which is depth from south to north easily we could get a little bit more of a buffer if the building wasn't 50 feet deep maybe if it was 20 feet deep and i bring that back to the storage again of the underground detention system being undersized From what's happened so far in the design, they've taken this building and used every square foot of the setbacks, except for the south and north elevation because of the detention system. So they're boasting that they overdid the 30-foot design for the back, but the reason they did it instead of bringing it right to the 10-foot setback is because of the underground storage. Otherwise, the building would have been bigger and still been within code, but still not caring about the fabric or the neighborhood that they're building in. The mass of the building structure I already went through with the visual and the relationship and the negative impacts of the surrounding areas is huge. I'm not a real estate agent. I don't pretend to be one, but I'm guessing that the property values, because of this large structure looking down on everybody else, may have an impact on property value. But I'm not sure of that, so I just say that as my opinion. And again, with the additional size of the mass of this building, with the footprint, it's going to just exasperate the water flows off the roof into the underground detention and to the front of the properties where they're proposing to put it underground until it perks out, if it does, to Ormond Street and then makes its way down to the Esplanade. I think I've heard as far as the bulk of the structure, which is another point in the compatibility code as it relates to the framework. I'm understanding it's a block design, elevated slabs. I don't know for a fact whether there's deep foundations or not. I don't believe there are, but if they're drilling helical piles or if they're pounding steel H piles into the ground to support this building because of the water table that exists on that street being so low, or so high, I'm sorry, so high, How's that gonna affect the houses next door that were built in the 50s and 60s? Are they gonna do surveys on everybody's property to ensure that cracking and structural inefficiencies do not happen to the surrounding properties because they are so close? I mean, we're 15, we're 30 feet away to my fence line. I'm sorry, we're 15 feet from my fence line, 30 feet to my pool edge. Mr. Warble's house is 15 feet away and Che Vista is about 200 feet away. of their structure their garages are closer so i question that but i i think i think the soils came back where they didn't need that but i just say it as record just in case uh pedestrian vehicular traffic circulation access and parking we're going to see a 75 increase of the residents on ormond street when this project goes through 75 eight units to 14 units It's got to do something. It's got to do something to the vehicular traffic, whether there's two cars parking there, and like they mentioned, it doesn't account for guest parking, but what happens when the two cars are there in the driveway and then the guests park there and then the people going to the beach are there and there's no other parking around? And the street is already compromised for emergency vehicles and people walking because we're going to have a six foot sidewalk in the front, but it goes nowhere because it stops at 812 Ormond Street. It doesn't go all the way down to the end. So I think that there's an issue that we look to the council to look at for that. Again, not... denying the project just uh what was the word that was used earlier approved with conditions is all that the the neighbors are looking for we understand everybody's gonna if we can get a design that's that's fine for everybody the city makes out the developer makes out and the neighbors make out and that's a win-win for everybody that's all that the people are looking for and it's just really just a big slap in the face to us right now and everybody that I've talked to in the neighborhood that they're putting this building in that, honestly, portrays itself as a commercial office building. It doesn't serve the fabric of the neighborhood. It doesn't look anything like any of the properties there. We had a neighbor that built a house two doors down, did a beautiful job building a beautiful single family house on a lot that he's owned for 30 years. Didn't go over and above doing anything different, but he melded it into the fabric of Ormond Street and Madrid Avenue. So we're just asking for the city council to take a hard look at this and just ask for something to come back for a redesign that we can all agree on and everybody is happy at the end of the day. Landscaping, I sort of, I got to take a deep breath with the landscaping. I would like to know with the type one buffering that they're saying is over and above what they show, My understanding is the landscaping, the cocoa plants that they're putting in 65 of them instead of 50. God bless them. What size plants are they? My understanding is they're three gallon. I will tell you when I landscaped my house and went to MRT, I bought seven gallon to 10 gallon plants. Those plants sitting against a six foot fence, maybe in 180 years will grow to about five feet tall. so their buffer on the north side to my property with their magnolia trees that are one and a half inch caliber which is probably one of the smallest trees you can actually buy and have it live it's non-existent so they go over and above with their numbers but the numbers don't reflect the size of what they're putting in this buffer zone in my simple opinion to to um to help the neighbors on the north the east and the west should be a type five or six we shouldn't be looking at that building and what's going to happen when they put this building in their balconies are going to be looking down on people's backyards with no buffer whatsoever so um I would just like to see if there's something that can be done with some kind of more emphasis on landscaping to try and shadow and take away the hit of this massive structure on this property. But three and a half inch, three gallon size and one and a half inch caliber six foot trees, we won't see any kind of buffer or relief from that building for the next, in my lifetime anyway, and Lord knows how long that is. Lighting, there's gonna be lighting pollution. They haven't got that far with the design yet, but we have six balconies on the north elevation. People can put their lights up at the six-foot or the 12-foot patio doors, but then there can be string lights placed on the railings and such. Again, if the landscaping was done in concert with something that would buffer the neighbors, that may not be that big of an impact. I don't know what to say about the lighting because I haven't seen a foot candle or anything done, a design done on it yet, but it's something that we're all concerned about as neighbors. Noise, six families. Six families, maybe four people per family. My understanding is on a discussion I had with the developer that they're taking two of the units, so maybe only four are being sold. I don't know if that's still true, but that's what was back in 23 when we had a discussion. But obviously noise is gonna be an impact. Again, there's nothing I guess the council can do about that, but it's a concern of the neighbors increasing the amount of people in the neighborhood by 75%. There's gonna be noise. You also have something in your section about odor. Hopefully everybody that they sell to in the city of Venice, because it's such a beautiful community, they're gonna take care of their garbage and everything like that, but it was in your code so I mentioned it. So really, that's really what our concerns are at this point. They showed a lot of pictures of the Esplanade and such, but I didn't see a lot of pictures that were shown going to the east. And I believe the attorney or someone else mentioned that you have to look at all of it. Well, you do. I agree with that. But when you take a picture looking east on Ormond Street, you'll see that every single home is the same height. Every single home, maybe a foot or two difference at most. And then we're going to be looking at something 47 feet tall. We'll be looking up at a 45 degree angle of this building that there are so many different design alternatives where it can be met with six units, two road cuts and and what they need to get done for for making their money back on a property that they invested a lot of money and i get it i do it every day but you got to be respectful of the people in your neighborhood what you're building what does it look like and make sure that people looking across the street make sure people looking next door to it aren't looking up at a property that's just monstrous and and just It just doesn't belong in that size. So I'm just urging the city council to reconsider the proposed development plans and just require what they said earlier, approve with conditions where we come back and sit down and talk. i i would have no problem getting a core a correlation of our neighbors together if they come back with a redesign and say this is what we're looking at is this good i mean it's not our money i get it i i get it you know i'm i'm building this building and it's my money i get it but you're in it you're not by yourself in the middle of an oasis you have to consider other people and i do it as a developer when i go to other states we don't put six-story buildings in neighborhoods that don't fit we make sure that everything that we're building FACADE WISE AND HEIGHT WISE AND COMPATIBILITY WISE IS COMPATIBLE SO PEOPLE LIKE IT. AND EVERYBODY MAKES THEIR MONEY. um that's that's all i have at this point um i do have a lot of questions on on the drainage that i think i've mentioned um mr warble mentioned in a letter his his his under his concerns were also the complete lack of architectural and architectural scale compatibility and massive tree removal by the way great point the tree line in that tree canopy that the city of venice is so um uh on top of is going to be decimated when they're done with this with this project and then they're going to replace one and a half inch caliber magnolia trees mr warble is also concerned with the storm water management and the flood risks of his property the dangerous increase in density and traffic on the constrained street and insufficient landscaping and massive tree removal from the developed property So I yield the floor, I guess, at this point. I thank you all for your time and consideration to this, and if there's any questions, I'd be happy to answer anything I can. Any questions from the Council of the Appellant?

Mr. Weed?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. A lot of numbers being thrown out there. I want to take you all the way back to your storm analysis. Mm-hmm. On that. What was the square footage you used as a runoff into the back lot you mentioned the this square footage runoff from the building. What number was that.

I've calculated the roof storm water runoff, which would go into the roof drains.

And how many square feet was that roof runoff?

I came out with 5,777 square feet.

And the footprint of the building is approximately 8,000 square feet?

The footprint of the building, the way I've calculated it, is 8,245 square feet. Okay.

That's one of the clarifications. Thank you.

Okay.

Mr. Smith?

Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Toby, it interested me that you said you've been talking with these folks since 2023.

Yes.

And in that time, and you're asking us to have some stipulations on the approval, what types of concessions have you been asking for and what has been the... level of a real discussion about some of them.

Okay. In those discussions, we had a meeting with the architect and the developers at my residence. and i have to check back i might have been off on 2020 it might have been 2024 so we're in 26. if it was definitely in january i'd have to check back on that but that being said um we sat down and i basically looked at the project as it was designed from the architect i got some drawings and was immediately concerned with the building height immediately concerned with balconies looking on to anna's property my property and my next door neighbor um adrian and connie's property and we had those discussions. At that time, I think the building was maybe at 55 or 60 feet, so they've taken it down a bit from that. We also had discussions about the compatibility, the size of it, the design. These were all also brought up during the two Zoom meetings that we had online at 5 o'clock on whatever nights they were, two separate ones, November and September, I believe. And the public that was on that call also said, we're concerned about the building height in conjunction with the neighborhood and the overall size of it and the design. Nobody at that time brought up anything. Everybody's concerned about the six units, fine, but we all, like I've said five times, we all understand they're within code for that. So we're not arguing that point. We're not arguing to make it three units on a half an acre site, which would be way better, but we understand that we can't do it. So those were some of the initial comments and landscaping. We did talk about landscaping, that it was going to be beautifully landscaped and you're not going to see anything and we can do this and that to make it work. Very general 50,000 foot level review and talk. But I wanted to get a sense from that meeting, looking from my personal backyard to where this is going 30 feet away from my fence, what can we do here to make it so everybody's happy you know and in that case it was just myself talking with them so i was very selfish that day i want to make myself happy but i realize i'm not going to get everything i want but i think there's a lot of room to make some concessions here again so they make their money on their resale the city gets their money on the tax base and every neighbor not just me in this case is way more happy with what's being built there thank you

Any other questions from council? Okay, the applicant, do you have any questions?

Hi.

Mariah Miller, for the record. Good afternoon. So just a couple questions. First, we'll pick up where you just left off. So you guys did have a meeting with the applicant. We did. And they did give concessions on the height.

They did.

They also removed a rooftop pool that you didn't like there.

I knew nothing about a pool.

There was a rooftop pool, and they agreed to remove it because you guys didn't want that there.

I was told it was a rooftop terrace, not a pool.

They removed that as well. The rooftop terrace, yeah. The landscaping was touched on, but nothing was discussed in depth about what would be there?

Nothing in depth, just that you'll never even see this type thing. It'll be beautiful. You'll be so happy with it.

Are you quoting from a year you don't remember?

No, I'm quoting based on what we talked about. It's not hearsay.

That's okay. Anyway, they're high concession. There was also concession on the amount of driveways from six to two. Correct.

Um, that wasn't brought up by us at the, at that point in time, it was brought up in a planning and zoning review where they were going to have six road cuts or six driveways and city zoning said, no, no, no, you get two. So that was not brought up by, by any of the public that I dealt with.

But overall, there was meetings in the neighborhood workshops. The applicant made changes. So we've had discussions.

But I would ask you to outline what those changes are besides the roof coming down. What else was done? Did they take away the balcony?

They took away the rooftop terrace. And that's the discussions that were had. Stormwater had not came up, your concerns.

Stormwater definitely came up. Stormwater definitely came up.

You actually just said that it didn't in your testimony as well. no i said storm storm water definitely came up in the plant in the zoning the zoom calls that's not what we're talking about what are we talking about you're meeting with the app oh i'm sorry no no we weren't that in depth at my point okay i'm so sorry i'm so sorry yep um all right we'll move on to um you said that you're not a pe but like you said you have lots of experience with the civil engineers would you agree that in the development of a site development plan by a pe they're reviewing lots of data historical data

the area and they're running cad reports and everything before they can even put something together to submit to the city i can't answer that because i've dealt with civil engineers that don't do that and we can go back back and forth all the time about the correct numbers would you agree that that's the way it should be done then i would agree that's the way it should be done okay that's what we did here so you didn't have can that be proven that you did it that way because there's there are things in this report that are conflicting can you just answer my questions please thank you

So you didn't have access to all of that data when you were making the assumptions that you're saying today?

I said that, I did not. Okay. Because I don't know if that's the actual report that I was reading that was submitted for the review.

Like we cleared up earlier, just so you are aware, there were multiple reports submitted to get to the underground retention. I just want to make sure you do understand that part.

I want to make sure that it's understood also that I can only read what I was submitted that was given to the council and the city for review. If there are other things done, I can't comment on that because I didn't see it. They should have been public knowledge, but I can't make it public. I can't look at it publicly if it's not there.

Excuse me, can you please just answer the question? yeah sure so i got i got the answer you don't know all right let's talk about ormond street this is in the record but i'll put up here after i show it to him to you guys You would agree that this is our property and this is a view on Ormond Street? And this is a view on Ormond Street? All right, I'm just gonna put this up here for them to see. So just so, this is a view on Ormond Street and there's a view on Ormond Street. This is actually, this bottom picture here, this is a view on Ormond Street directly across, standing on our property of this building. Where's that one?

Yeah, just a little bit.

Thank you. Same with these two. This is looking down Ormond Street. It says Ormond Street.

Well, I know it says it, but let me see.

All right.

Yeah.

And this is a view down Ormond Street.

Oh, I see it now. Okay, I was looking for the aqua color. No, just on the corner there. Again, all looking west.

So you can see that on Ormond Street, there are...

views of higher buildings but those buildings are not located on Ormond Street they're on the Esplanade why aren't there any pictures showing it to the west to the to the east of that we are at West the first time right no no no to the east there are two-story homes around the corner there there's a two-story home right next door but it's only 20 feet tall 22 feet tall there are but they're not 47 feet tall that's the point 47 feet allowed so I just have one more question here

Let's see here. So since you are in, again, you are in this engineering field, you do know that the standard to design, and I want to clear up your question too, it is designed for 100-year.

Oh, sorry. That's okay. You can answer the question.

Okay. It is designed for 100-year. So you know that the standard for designing this one, he followed the 100-year storm.

I didn't know that until today. Okay. Because it's in two different spots with two different bits of information.

Now you do know. Thank you.

Madam Attorney, does he redirect himself?

He can, given the situation, yes.

Okay, so you've got two minutes if you want to quote unquote redirect yourself. So if there's anything you need to clarify based on what was just asked.

No, thank you for that opportunity. I basically said everything on my docket. Again, as the neighbors, I can't comment on stormwater design reading the information if I don't have the most current one, which is why I asked the question when I started if June 25th of 2025 was the most recent one. So that's the one I had to review to give my presentation here today and ask questions on. I don't agree with the stormwater runoff. I don't agree with the what's going to happen in the future and who's going to be responsible for um when things start flooding because of this issue that's come up um again i'm just asking for and we're asking as our as residents to just make sure that a year and a half from now when we have another milton alina and um and ian come through that we don't all suffer water damage and and who do we go to to to help remedy that because the insurance companies aren't doing it I don't believe the developer will help anybody on. So we're all concerned about some of the numbers that were placed into the model and spit out, but didn't take account actual conditions that are on site right now. So I thank you all for your time and I've got nothing else.

Thank you. Thank you. Uh, we'll move on to the, uh, public comment portion. How many speakers do we have signed up?

Yes, we have five individuals. All right. The first, do you need to make any statement? No.

No, that's okay. Okay. We'll go ahead with it.

The first speaker is Steve Rust. He has five minutes.

Five minutes, okay. All right, so you have five minutes. Either mic is fine, whichever one you want to use.

Whichever one you like.

My name is Steve Rost, and I live at 817 Madrid Avenue. And I don't think I'm an affected property. I'll find out when the next big storm comes, and maybe someone can tell me who I should call if things get bad in my backyard from the runoff. But I think you all need a break. You've been here for a long time, so I want to take you on a little trip for a picture that didn't show here today. So we're going to walk from my house, two houses down, to the Topians. going to walk around the side we'll see a beautiful pool that david had built beautiful backyard and we're going to stand on the north side of the pool we'll look south And we're seeing a six-foot fence. And it's not much of a view. There's not a whole lot. There are some taller buildings in the distance. But then I'd like you to take and use your imagination. I guess we are right now. But use your imagination and put a 50-foot wall with balcony, balcony, balcony, balcony, 12 balconies staring down right into your backyard. into this pool area. I don't know about you, I wouldn't wanna buy that house if that was, if the six units were already there. But I do know that you can say goodbye to privacy. I know that's not something that's in the code. And what's not also not in the code is to consider what's already existing in an immediate proximity. to a proposed building. So that kind of is the crux of my concerns, also the runoff because they had that one map, a blue map with yellow ziggy lines.

Was that the runoff? That was the proposed runoff, the land flow of water?

Oh, I'm sorry. Was it the runoff of the overland flow with the yellow squiggly lines? Because if that's what it was, it's all coming my way to heading north and east. portion of the property.

Talk into the microphone. We can't ask questions of anyone else.

All right. To the northeast property, because if it is, it's all headed my way. And I'd be concerned to see what would happen in a major storm. So far, we've weathered all of them without any incident. So to this point, I'd have to say after the three we've had just in the last several years, Everything's been fine the way it's been. But, you know, when you look over that fence and you see the house that's there, the roof line that's there right now, which I think, you know, I think about how nicely Venice is planned. You know, Dave complimented you. We all love Venice very much. And I think John Nolan had the right idea when he laid out those little plots on it. There's two maps out in the lobby here, I think, of what he had in mind. And I have one of those little plots, and so does Dave. But I don't know. I just don't think this size building was designed for these neighborhoods. And the other pictures that we're missing was looking east on Ormond, because it was all small, all single family homes. and this doesn't really fit into that same narrative in my opinion so and i know all the zoning stuff has been met the code's been met so um um so i know from that perspective um we've got nothing to stand on there but i do think that what's what's there now needs to be considered that's all okay thank you for your time thank you for your comments adam clerk next speaker the next speaker is glenn spinelli

Say it one more time.

Glenn Spinelli.

Glenn Spinelli. Five minutes? Yes. Okay.

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Glenn Spinelli. I am the president of Che Vista. the one who will get all the rainwater overflow if and when it ever happens. I represent the 30 homeowners in Chez Vista. I've got a big problem with the stormwater management. It's very nice that they're putting in the retention area underground. Unfortunately, when we do get a large rainstorm, which I live on the Esplanade, I watch the Esplanade flood just on a regular rainstorm, not a 100-year or 25-year storm. When that water flows, it gets deep. We right now don't have a problem. The drainage is natural. It goes over the land, over trees. And we don't have a problem. We have a drain located behind our garage, which is 4.6 feet above sea level. I think that's what it is. But what the engineer said who designed this system said the water will gently flow down some rocks. onto your property and find its way into this storm drain unless the water is backing up from down the road a little bit because there's a valve that I didn't know was in there so the water could back up at that point and then where is it going to go? It's going to go onto our property which we have an outer garage. I'm worried about the structural integrity of the foundation. Like I said, right now we have no problem. There is no easement. There is no agreement between us and the developer whatsoever. They approached me once. They sent me a letter saying we want to connect a pipe into that. If you don't let us do it, we're just going to drain the water onto your property because we have the right to do that. That's what they claimed to me in a letter to me. which I ignored because I figured we'd come to this and have some sort of an agreement. I'm fine with that we put in our own water retention area. We have two ponds in front of our building which take all the water and don't just drop it into the esplanade. I want them to be able to take their water, Hold on to it and move it somewhere else, not just say, oh, when it overflows, we're just going to drain it onto your property, which the property will, if their property is flooded, guess what? Ours is going to be flooding also. So this is something I would really like you to take account on and get them to redesign this so they can pump the water forward. I don't care where they put it, but they shouldn't be able to just dump it onto our property. 70% of that property right now is just grass and sand and trees. So you're going to take that and put a big structure there with asphalt and you're going to trap that water and divert it when it overflows onto our property. No, I'm not an engineer. I can't calculate 300 gallons per minute. That's a lot. If it's only 200 gallons a minute, that's a lot. If I moved next door to any one of you and drained my water onto your property, you wouldn't be happy either. So that's all I really think I have to say. No, I would like to make one. I live in a condo, and there is some compatibility to that. The one thing that no one really showed, hopefully you i thought that there was a thing here i live on the fourth floor i don't know if you can see this that's what it looks like over the top of that building their building is right here do you see any 56 foot or 46 foot buildings anywhere in i can see all the way to oh sorry i can see all the way to the um to the bridge and there are no large structures If you look on the Esplanade, there are, but this is not on the Esplanade. So that was a picture that somehow wasn't shown to all of you. It shows you the big buildings on the Esplanade. That's the property right there that will be torn down, and this is everything that you can see around that. Now, I've got pictures galore, but I was only making my comments, so I just wanted to make sure that that goes on the record. What they showed you was not correct. it was but they missed the part where it's not compatible with the neighborhood thank you thank you for your comments madam clerk next speaker the next speaker is burt matthews five minutes five minutes

Hello, my name is Bert Matthews and my wife and I are the owners of 809 Ormond Street directly across from the property we're discussing her family's on that property for more than 50 years. And we've seen a lot of change, but we've also seen the fabric of this neighborhood remain consistent. I have four major areas of concern. The traffic compatibility stormwater and landscaping you've heard all 4 of those probably ad nauseum. 1st Ormond Street is a very narrow street. It's also the parking lot for visitors to Chauncey Howard Park as the only place they have to park and when they do they block up the street. With this, it's gonna make it even a smaller place for them to access. Especially on weekends and holidays, you can barely get down the street. In the case of an emergency, you wouldn't be able to access it at all. We need to be able to take into account, and it would be our request that you help us find some way to be able to deal with that. Number two, the property is not compatible with Ormond Street. It'll loom right over the top of us. There are many ways to design six units to be able to work with this and for them to be able to accomplish what they need. But if there was a way that we could work to scale, that would be great. You've heard again about stormwater. As it rises, it's coming up Ormond Street and got a great deal of concern about that. And finally, the amount of landscaping that we have today is going to be replaced, as Dave talked about, with substantially less. To me, what would be really good is that The developer has ways that they can mitigate a lot of these particular issues and ones that the neighbors have concerns with. There are ways that they can increase the landscaping density. There are ways that they can deal with storm water by being able to take and trap more on site. There are ways that they can deal with scale and still accomplish all of the things that they've asked about. What we're asking is to work with the developer to come to some of these conditions to be able to deliver what is compatible with the neighborhood, make them a profit, and for them to be able to do what they need to do in bringing six units. We hope that you'll give consideration to that. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comments. Madam Clerk, next speaker.

The next speaker is Darryl Bobby.

Good afternoon, guys.

My name is Darryl Bobby. I live at 813 Ormond Street, directly across the street from the property. My background is Basically, I put out fires. I do loss mitigation for property projects. Pretty much what we're facing here. Our role is, if it can, you plan for it. David brought up the backflow valve. For me, that's the biggest problem I have. If I can ask for the assistance of the attorney, if I can ask for the assistance of the

Uh, the attorney, you can't, you just, you can comment, but that's all you can do.

Her one picture shows a shot straight down my driveway from the center of the road to my sliding door. There's 14 inches over 150 yards. Where's all that water going? I'm trapped in a block wall. I got nowhere to go. Okay. I develop property in seven, eight, nine different states. I understand the profitability model that they're using. I have issues with the stormwater. That's my biggest problem. I'm a mason by trade. You can't stop water. You can only change where it goes. Right now, it's a funnel into my front yard and into my living room. I'm asking them to just look at it. Please, it's just out of control as far as what's gonna happen. I guess the best way to put it is my insurance agent said, find out where to send the bill. Because he's not gonna cover it. When you put us in that situation between the builder and you guys, we have nowhere to go except to ask for help. And I'd much rather avoid it, thanks.

Thank you for your comments. Madam Clerk, next speaker.

By the name of Gary Newman, I think he's exited. Is that correct?

Say the name one more time.

Gary Newman.

Gary Luman. No? Okay.

All right. Thank you. That would be the last one.

All right. Then we'll move to closing statements by staff. Is there a closing statement from staff? No, okay. Closing statement by the applicant? Closing statement, you'll have up to 10 minutes.

Yeah, that's it. Apologies, that's incorrect.

My sheet doesn't say that, but that's okay. We're just testing you. Thank you. We will go to closing statement by appellant.

so you'll yep if you're still the appellant i at this point i'm i'm not even sure anymore you'll have 10 minutes thank you i won't need 10 minutes again i want to thank everybody for your time today and again like everybody's very eloquently said today in our on our on our conversations we're we're just looking for the city council's help to help us come to a resolution for the neighbors the developer and the city that's amenable to everybody that nobody's disrespected and we come out with a project that everybody's happy with i do want to say one other thing that i did forget if i can in my talk during my renovation of my property I could not get my certificate of compliance from the city of Venice until I had the stormwater engineer come out and verify that every one of my perimeter lines on my house were funneling to my property and out to Madrid Avenue. Now, that was an engineering feat by itself because I'm basically flat. But it was something that we had to comply with and prove to him that we did that. so it perplexes me to to again going back to the storm water design why it's okay to detain water on 816 ormond and dump it onto che vista's property they are detaining it but they're but they're still putting it directly onto che vistas property by a 15 inch rcp pipe in a retaining wall so that being said i think we've covered everything i again i do appreciate all of your time and your expertise and thank you thank you for the comments okay um now the applicant 10 minutes

Hello, everybody. Mariah Miller, for the record. I do just want to start out and say I spoke with the applicant. He is willing to look into the types of landscaping trees and things that go into the buffer and will consider, you know, the lighting on the balconies when doing the construction plans and site design. So put that out there for the record. I do want to go over that the bestest and demo survey also not required until construction. So it will if it's required, it will be done. And of course, anything that has to be mitigated through the construction phase, the applicant will comply with those regulations as well. The applicant is not responsible for the beach goer parking that's happening on Ormond Street. They are providing enough parking, the maximum amount allowed for their property. The traffic and landscaping have been reviewed by the city and their experts and deemed compatible for this property. It's only 150 feet from the Esplanade. And that the storm water, will be contained within the property as you know that's per the regulations travesta is designed to take on the flows historically and that's also according to regulations and is allowed the city engineers have looked at this our expert engineer you know designed this it's all been approved and like mr topan mentioned they have to get a co and they're going to have to get more approvals to get that as well when it comes for construction so just something for that to be considered as well on how the stormwater design is efficient and it's for the 100 year plan.

Let's see one other thing.

So again, we do comply with the code. The code's there for a reason. The applicant designed it according to the code. As expected, the affected parties did not show legitimate public purpose to deny this, but the applicant has, again, provided competent substantial evidence that their application complies with all aspects of the code, including compatibility. And if there's anything else that you would like to add.

Yeah, the storm water, just want to, you know, there was a lot of discussion about what's going to happen when you get back-to-back storms or EN this and that. It's not just our site that gets water. It's every site. And all that water, you know, there could be some discussion that we will be flooded. You know, this site would be flooded by an adjacent site. But I can tell you that the elevations, the existing elevations and the way it's proposed, that everything's draining to that structure that we are draining to and it's at 4.6. If you look at finished floor elevations, I don't know all of them, but I know that what we're proposing, there's elevations of 10 and 9 and 8. It's going to make its way down through the stormwater system overflow towards Esplanade, not like upland on Ormond Street. It's going to float in the other direction. So I think a lot of those are unfounded. You know, a lot of those, the discussion about we are going to flood the neighbors because again, we have designed the system in accordance with state and local regulations and actually beyond. So I just want to make that clear.

And what other thing to again, you know the height is a lot what's is lower than what's allowed under the code that can did take in the neighbors concerns and did make adjustments. During this process. And they're you know doing what again with the city intense its own for multifamily me medium density residential. It's infill development so I think that's a responsible way to develop this property there are multifamily across the street and through the surrounding area so with that we respectfully request approval of the sign development plan thank you all right public hearing is now closed and all understand a motion mr. mayor mr. vice mayor

Based on the evidence in the record, I move that site and development plan petition 25-45 SP be approved and adopted.

I will second that motion.

Seconded by Mr. Weed. Any discussion? Mr. Bolt, you're first based on our code.

Thank you. I mostly wanted to put that out there just so we could talk about it a little bit. You know, I really appreciate what the neighbors are talking about, and, you know, I think the stormwater thing, what I recall, it's going to run downhill, and one's going to affect the other, which is going to affect the other, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm less concerned about that than, but, you know, I live on Laguna, so. I understand your problem. There's been concessions in height. There's been a few other concessions. I don't think you're necessarily asking for anything that's not completely out of the question. I would say that if I were in your place, I'd probably ask for a lot of the same things. Unfortunately, when the land development code is written, it's not written with, well, let's look at exceptions for this and exist and this and this and this. And so that puts us in a terrible box. And I'm sure you've heard this before. You probably heard this at the Planning Commission. I think this might be one that I missed because I was out of the country. But the reality is that, you know, there's parameters. And you have acknowledged that this project fits in the parameters. I personally, you know, I hope that they will follow through as far as the more trees and bushes and the like to... and something taller because I believe that's very much warranted because you're going so much higher than what exists to the east. But you can't just talk about what exists to the east. You have to talk about what exists to the west as well and the north and the south. And so therefore, you know, I hope that you can continue to discuss this and, you know, add a little bit to it, hopefully make it a little bit better. It's a change in the neighborhood. It's a change that's totally legal based on our own land development rules. It's totally legal. We sort of have to go along with it because it is, but this is where we get to referee and say, would you please, but we're not in a position to put stipulations on it at this point in my opinion. It'd be nice in some respects, but I just don't think we're at that place. I just wanted to make everyone understand that we get it. We hear these kind of things all the time. I shouldn't say this, but there's something that we refer to as NIMBY, not in my backyard, and it's a real thing. Whether the dump is expanding or whether they're putting an apartment behind you, it's a real thing. You know, we have to deal with it on a regular basis, and it's not easy. So, thank you.

Mr. Smith?

Thank you, Mayor. I have to disagree, Mr. Vice Mayor, about whether we're in a position to insist on some stipulations. And I'm going to need those stipulations for me to vote to approve this. that this project is not compatible with the neighbors, certainly not compatible with the single family neighbors to the north, to the east, and to the south. It's certainly not the fabric of that neighborhood, which is beautiful. I'm sad that our code allows, as a transition, Is it 12? Is it six units on a half an acre? 12 units on an acre? And as a step down. And I want to credit the neighbors and Mr. Topian for acknowledging that that's what the code allows and that they're not going to argue they can't have it.

But I'm worried about the adequacy of the buffering

And I think that's where we can insist on more because it's not compatible because they'll have to look up at these balconies because it's going to dwarf the neighbors. And we have that ability on this council to say now go back and give them some more buffering. And that's what I want to see happen. I also personally need assurances that Even though it may not be the applicant's responsibility, I need assurances that this troublesome corner at Esplanade and Laguna and Tarpon Center Drive, that the problematic drainage there that we have seen for the last couple of years has been addressed. I mean, I waded through that area to help deliver some things to people down there after recent storms. I mean, knee-deep water. And we can't just have that as a spillover zone. That water during those big storms was across Laguna and halfway up the parking lot of that condominium at the corner of Laguna across from the Freedom Boat Club. I mean literally climbing up there threatening the first floor units that are well elevated above Laguna. And so I just need my own assurances that that is not going to be a problem, that that problem has been addressed. But mostly I want us to just say no, let's go back and talk about those trees those bushes I love the detail there of three gallon versus seven gallon plants I can't speak in those terms you know the saplings versus something a little bigger more substantial that might block people's views and I think that that's what should be necessary when you intrude into a neighborhood with a structure like this that is going to overwhelm the neighborhood so I want to congratulate all the parties for their civility I really appreciate that it didn't become hostile. We've had meetings here before where people are at each other's throats and that hasn't been here. And I compliment Ms. Miller and her presentation. I compliment Ms. Miller for her statement that she's talked now with the applicant and they might be open to some concessions on light and landscaping. Well, rather than just say, okay, good, great. thanks that you'll think about that let's require that they come back and show us that they're going to do that. So I would I would have to have those kinds of concessions or stipulations or delay for me to support this thank you.

Anyone else. With that then we will move to the electronic vote madam clerk if you make us ready for the electronic vote council members when your lights are flashing you can indicate your vote. No, it's the previous screen. See, I'm not sleeping. I see I'm flashing, all right. Okay, you can tally and display. And it passes five to one.

With that, we'll take a 13 minute break.

We'll be back at 3.40. Okay, we are back and we are on to presentations with action continued 26-0663. If I can get my presenters to come forward and Mr. Clinch, if you'd like to kick us off.

Thank you, Mayor. We'll be a little untraditional here. I'll be giving part of the presentation for you this afternoon, and I'll be joined by our Assistant City Attorney here, David Jackson. And then in the back here, we have our team from CMT, who will be speaking about the environmental component. So Mr. Jackson can pull up the presentation for us. We'll dive right in. Excellent. All right, so we have a lot to cover here today. These are four separate items that are in response to the council direction that came out of the May 12th Venice Airport discussion. And we've been busy. We had 60 days, and we are back here to report on all four of these items today. So starting out, we'll go through just general updates on airport projects that are related to the community and that the community is very interested in. uh number two we'll talk about the legal review of the fbo lease and the discussions that we held regarding their ground operations item three was the direction to evaluate the airport minimum standards and so we'll give an update on that and finally we will bring up cmt to talk about their proposal for additional environmental review of the airport and surrounding properties So starting out with some general airport updates on projects and initiatives of community concern. I hope that this will mostly be good news today, and we can share some of the progress that has been taking place on and around the airport. So starting out, we have our airport fact sheet, which we talked about on May 12th. It is now finished, incorporating the comments that came out of that meeting. It's in the back. Roger Omenheiser is Vanna Whiting it there for us. It is also available online and at City Hall and at the airport. Great document, very thorough, two pages. Definitely encourage folks to take a look at it. Second item I want to update everyone on is, although Mr. Dumas, our airport director, is still recovering, he is actively working remotely and has been providing answers to a lot of the letters and questions that are coming in. And that's so important. We talked about it a little bit last Thursday. He certainly is the aviation expert. And it's a complex, complicated topic. And there's a lot of misinformation out there. So it's great that he's providing that information for the public. Um, The master plan public meetings are going to be picking back up in the fall. This is a great opportunity because we've got all the resources in one place, and that includes the community members, great attendance at our last meeting, I'm sure you all remember, and that will be picking back up. We've also got a team of experts. This next meeting that will be taking place this fall will be a workshop style, which means there will be multiple stations, and the Recondo team is going to be bringing their environmental folks, their noise folks they're planning folks, they're gonna have a whole team of experts to help the public understand and get feedback from them on the next steps. I just want to encourage the public who are here and who are listening, the master plan is really the best and the most appropriate way to share your input with the airport and to get information that's accurate on how this airport master plan is going and what the future looks like. All right, so diving in, our airport community outreach manager, as you know, and we talked about a little bit last week, David Cirillo has retired from the city and we appreciate his service, but we are actively recruiting for a new airport community outreach manager. They'll be conducting interviews this week, actually. We made some tweaks to the job description during this transition to make it even more, just to optimize the role for what we need. Noise abatement is the number one primary function of this role and it's in the job description I think about eight different times. We are not calling it a noise abatement officer because that would be far too limiting for what they're going to be doing because they're gonna continue to do a whole lot of community outreach, which is really critical and didn't used to happen nearly to the level that it does today. And that's a huge thing. So they will continue to promote the Fly Friendly program. They're gonna continue to gather, respond to concerns about noise issues and follow up directly with the pilots. They're also going to monitor, maintain, update the airport's website, social media, newsletters. Engaging with the community is critical, and we're doing it at a very high level today. Just some general examples of things, and I would say 90% of these never happened two years ago. So our airport day now has happened two years in a row. student government day summer concerts hanger activities youth outreach introductory flights airport tours engagement with the high school engagement with the chamber of commerce just you know this is not everything that's happening over there but i think it's important to note the current airport administration and the team that's been built over there uh is community centered and they are reaching out and engaging with the community more than ever before. And that's going to be my directive to them as we move forward. I think it's it's critical as the airport continues to change. Right. As it continues to stay active, which it is, it's been very popular. We've got to continue to work with the community to do anything that is in our power to reduce the impact on them. All right. The Fly Friendly Program heard a lot of input from the community, and really a lot of these initiatives, I should pause here, came directly from the community, either through discussions that I've had or the airport director have had, or through the citizens advisory panel at the master plan process itself. So we are listening, and these are the projects that are in motion right now. So the Fly Friendly program does need a facelift, needs to be rebranded, needs to be a little bit more explicit in what pilots need to do. The master plan consultant is actually digging into that as part of their scope of work. and our new community outreach manager, this will be part of their job description when they come on board, will be updating the Fly Friendly program, refreshing it, and pushing it out to our pilots. Now, gotta understand, this is still not mandating flight behavior. This is all still voluntary. We can try to influence it through all of the methods that we have, but this is not mandating any particular flight patterns, which we are not authorized to do. Moving on the the Pappy Lights. So these are for runway 523, which is our calm wind noise abatement runway. Very important project. I've had to learn a lot about what Pappy Lights are. But they were not working post-hurricane, and our team went out and got a contractor to repair and replace them. They are fully operational now, with the exception that we're waiting for the FAA to commission them. So they have to do a flight to commission them. Unfortunately, until that happens, they're not able to, Tampa Approach is not able to line up jet aircraft on that runway. So what does that mean? That means that at night the jet traffic you're probably experiencing on runway 1331 will be diverted over to 523 once those PAPIs are commissioned. We keep pushing the FAA to make that happen. It's sometimes challenging working with the federal government as we know on many different projects. They have a little bit different responsiveness than we do and we understand that. But we're hoping that's gonna happen within the next few weeks. I will point out that 523, our noise abatement runway right now, already handles two-thirds of our traffic. So that's a great thing. Two-thirds of the traffic at the airport is happening on that runway. This is just going to increase that percentage and with the noisiest of the type of aircrafts. So this is a great thing for the community. Moving on, probably the most significant opportunity when it comes to noise abatement and having some control over what happens in our airspace will be the remote tower. And I appreciate the community's willingness to learn about what this really would mean for them. I would say the feedback we're getting is very different today than it was a couple of years ago when we had the initial discussion about a tower. You know, today as it stands, we have zero control once those wheels leave the runway. And that's tough for people to wrap their head around. Once the remote tower is in place, we will now have some control, right? It'll be FAA control, but we certainly will be able to work with those individuals on noise abatement procedures. And when the winds are calm, they'll direct aircraft to use the calm runway. That doesn't always happen today. We know it doesn't. One other thing I want to point out is that FDOT and the FAA have both indicated that Venice Airport is a very high priority for the remote tower, meaning we have it in our CIP I think for five years out right now. It may happen sooner than that. If everything goes as planned, it may happen sooner. We're going to be applying for a grant through the state of Florida. that potentially could fund 100% of the remote tower. So we're taking the steps necessary to make sure this is implemented. And some other good news, as we're currently starting construction on our new administration building, one of the biggest questions we got from the state is, where are we going to house the monitoring, the control equipment for this remote tower? And it's competitive around the state because there's only so many facilities that can house it. So we are working right now to potentially house the monitoring within the new administration building. Why is that such a big deal? Well, it means that the FAA control or contract staff will actually be at Venice Airport, which gives us the opportunity to establish a relationship with them and help to share the community's concerns when it comes to noise and noise abatement. So I look at that as a very, very positive thing. None of this is set in stone. It could all change, but those are the initiatives that we're working on and we're doing it for the right reasons because we have the opportunity to have a greater voice in what happens in the sky. All right, moving on to landing fees, landing fees. So this is, again, something that came directly from the community. Why don't we charge landing fees? The FAA does allow landing fees on general aviation airports. The standard is charging them on non-based itinerant aircraft only. So aircraft that aren't based at Venice Aircraft or Venice Airport, excuse me. We're working with a vendor, Vector Airport Systems, and we're working with our aviation attorney, CJ Wilson Law. They are both working on what it would take to implement landing fees. Couple important things on landing fees is it's very important we all recognize this has nothing to do with discouraging or encouraging activity at the airport. This has everything to do with making sure the users of the airport are helping to fund the operation of the airport. that the maintenance of the runways and the impacts from the repeated uses are being fairly allocated and that those uses can help fund that maintenance activity. Will it result in some changes in operations? Maybe, right? And that's something you can interpret on your own, but that is not our intent. It can never be our intent to try to encourage or discourage operations at the airport. This will require some city ordinances in the future, so you'll certainly know when we get further along with this process. I want to talk a little bit about buffering along Airport Avenue. Again, another idea that came directly from the community. Great idea came out of the CAT meetings and we I met myself with the master plan team and they're looking into this before the next meetings to try to identify, you know, some strategic locations that would make a big difference for the community. Important to note on several of these projects though, the FAA and FDOT will not financially contribute. These are airport funded only. And that becomes a challenge. We don't generate as we talked about last time. Most of our funding comes from grants for the airport, about 90% of it. So we don't have a lot of discretionary revenue at the airport. So we have to be very careful with how we use that. And another good reason to set ourselves up financially so we do have some more discretionary ability. These are great projects. There's no one on our team, staff team, that wouldn't say it would be really nice to be able to add some additional buffering. So we just need to make sure we set ourselves up financially to be able to do that. So our teams are already working towards that. And the last big project I wanna just make everybody aware of is called an ANOM system, Airport Noise and Operations Management System. I will not claim to be the expert in this, but Nick has given me his tutelage on it. It is a software system which includes some monitoring devices that essentially automates your noise management and can help you to track and give better accountability to the way pilots are behaving out there. It's an investment. Again, it's not gonna be funded by the FAA or FDOT, but it is something that we are looking into, and with available discretionary funds, it's something we could pursue. All right, so we talked a lot about projects we're working on. I want to be clear here, we are building a community-oriented airport team. They know that. Sometimes that's challenging for airport staff because they have different priorities in the community at times. Our priorities are always going to be safety first, period, financial sustainability second, and working with the community is going to come third. It has to for the interest of the airport and the safety of everybody around it. But the concerns of the community are very, very important. And that has been my message to our staff. And I think you've seen that in the way that they're responding to the community over the last year. We will continue to have a dedicated staff position to both noise and outreach. That position, while we're on our third iteration, I hope the next individual will stay longer, has been a huge success, in my opinion, because it's created a position that really is focused on the community and their experience with the airport. Like I said, sometimes we do have different priorities, but I would argue there's a lot of common ground, a lot of common ground between our airport staff and the surrounding community. And that's where I, as a city manager, am gonna continue to focus our conversation. All right. So just as important as talking about what we are working on is talking about what we're not working on. And this is really about kind of separating fact from fiction a little bit here today. We are not actively working on a part 139 compliance. And you've heard a lot of a lot about that from the community. And I understand the concern. There is commercial operations popping up all over the place in Florida. Naples is dealing with it right now. It is a real concern from the community. So it's important that they know the things we are working on that are safety related are not related to a part 139. We share the same concerns when it comes to commercial service. This board's made it very clear what their position is. And so we will actively work towards anything that will make that more difficult to achieve in the future without sacrificing safety. We are not building and not planning a T word. I'm not even gonna say the word after May 12th. But we are actively building our airport administration building. In fact, we have the contract issued. It is now under budget, thanks to the work of our airport team. And we had our pre-construction meeting last week. So you should see activity within the next 30 days out there, which is great. and it's sorely needed of course we are not actively working on any expansion of the runways that was made very clear in the master plan conversations but i just want to say it again publicly that is not part of the plan at any time in the future this might be the most important point of my entire presentation the city is not actively increasing or decreasing operations nor have we had any control over that in the past this is a difficult Concept to understand but the city does not play that role We are charged as the sponsor of a federally obligated airport in managing the operations that occur but those operations just like a roadway or an interstate in our that runs through our city and Those operations are dictated by the market, by the free market. So that has to do with demographics, aviation popularity, the economy. These factors that are wholly out of our hands are what control those operations. And they've gone up significantly, just like traffic's gone up significantly on a lot of our roadways. The airport's part of the US transportation system. It is categorized as a regional facility, a reliever airport. So the activity that happens there likely will continue to grow into the future, and that's what our master plan is projecting. That growth is solely dependent, though, on the popularity of Southwest Florida, the economy, and the growth or shrinking of aviation demand over the future. Our job, though, is to make sure the airport is set up and planned to provide safe and efficient operations for whatever those operations, aviation activities end up being. All right, and last here, things we're not working on is any additional delay of the master plan. So we have listened to the community. They were very explicit about not wanting to hold meetings over the summer. Kind of light attendance today. It totally makes sense. We've been working with our FAA sponsors who are funding almost a million dollars of our master plan to make sure the schedule works for them. But our plan is to pick it up in the fall, likely late October, early November, and then we are going to have to finish this master plan. And that's probably one of my other biggest messages today. We cannot delay the master plan any further because we have grant assurances and a grant timeline that we have committed to. These grants are essentially a contract that we've signed with the federal government. So we're going to have some robust community outreach outreach this fall. It's going to be great feedback and that's going to go into the plan and then we'll be bringing it back to you all for acceptance. All right. So with that, I'm gonna pass it over to David Jackson, who's gonna talk a little bit about the work we did with the FBO at your direction.

Yeah, good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, City Council. I'm gonna just give a brief overview of the FBO lease. Start off with a quick little history on this lease. Back in 2015, the city entered into a restated lease agreement with Tri-State Aviation Group of Florida which authorized the lessee to provide aviation fuel sales and related services serving as a fixed-base operator. In September of 2023, the lease was assigned to the current lessee, Skyport Holdings Venice LLC. About that same time, effective October 1st of 2023, the city and Skyport Holdings Venice amended the lease to extend the initial lease term by five years to December 31, 2050, plus a 10-year renewal option. In exchange for that, provided a rent increase from about 2.5 cents per square foot to about a little over 3.5 cents per square foot, or about $4,500 per month. In addition, the fuel flowage fees under the lease were increased at that time from 5 cents per gallon to 8 cents per gallon. So as requested by the council, the airport director and myself conducted a thorough review of the existing lease and the current airport minimum standards. And our conclusion was that Skyport Holdings Venice is conducting their business at the airport in compliance with both the terms and conditions of the lease and the current airport minimum standards. As will be discussed here in a little bit, the airport minimum standards are being reviewed and revised and there'll be some added specificity about ground operations in those new minimum standards once they come before you again for approval in probably a few months. However, given the recent comments and concerns by city council and members of the public, A group of us from the city, myself, airport management, city manager, and the assistant city manager, we met with Skyport Holdings representatives on June 9th out at their facility in an effort to proactively address some of these concerns. It was a very productive meeting where we discussed their ground operations, certain things that skyport is currently doing and things they are planning to do in the future and the city manager will provide you a little more detail on that in a moment so it helps provide some further assurance that the meeting we presented skyport holdings with a proposed lease amendment that takes certain ground operations requirements that are in the draft revised minimum standards. Again, those won't be effective until a few months down the road when the minimum standards get approved. But what we are looking to do is make those requirements applicable to Skyport's operations now, when the amendment gets approved. So again, to the extent, what this provides more specifically is to the extent Skyport is handling turbine powered aircraft, they must maintain or have immediate access to compatible GPUs or ground power units with trained personnel available. Again, for turbine-powered aircraft on the ramp longer than 15 minutes, Skyport shall offer ground power in lieu of extended engine or auxiliary power units operation. Again, as required by the FAA, this does not restrict aeronautical access. It doesn't override pilot authority or require the use of the GPU when safety or operational conditions make it impracticable. In addition, the proposed language in the lease amendment will provide Skyport with ample time to fully comply with the updated minimum standards once they are eventually approved by the FAA and city council. In addition, we proposed one other thing in the amendment regarding the timeline for adjusting the fuel flowage fees based on a market rate analysis. Currently, the lease provides that the adjustment will occur in November of 2036. However, under the proposed amendment, we are bumping that first adjustment up to this coming November in 2026, with future adjustments occurring every five years. Skyport Holdings Venice has reviewed the draft amendment and has indicated it is in agreement with what was presented, and we anticipate getting that executed amendment back from them and hopefully bringing that to you at your next meeting. And now I'll kick it back to the city manager to talk about their ground operations.

Thank you, David. So some other Good news that came out of the meeting there. Two hangers are almost complete. They'll be finished. They're telling us August, September, and both of those hangers are going to have each one to ground power units that are hardwired into the power grid. And I learned a lot of the meeting myself. The difference there being right now they have one portable diesel unit that does not actually produce enough power for a larger aircraft to run both the air conditioning and the electronics at the same time. So you find a lot of pilots are forced to or choose to use their APU, their generator on the aircraft for extended periods of time while they're calculating their flight logistics. Having four now ground power wired in units, they'll be able to hopefully vastly reduce the amount of idling that's happening out there. The other good item with getting these hangars completed is they've been able to shift their ramp staging further east, away from the residential area. So during construction, and this, as we made very clear to them, was why there were so many concerns from the community, they had shifted those ramp staging operations further west to be out of the way of the construction. And actually in this photo, you can see they've already shifted much of those operations back to the east. So certainly not gonna solve every issue that's out there, but I think we made some meaningful progress and I appreciate that they're proactively moving forward with the amendment. The third item we're gonna talk about today is the update of the commercial minimum standards and airport rules and regs. So these standards that we're using out there right now were updated back in 2019. And based on the review of our aviation attorney, Wilson, we have definitely identified some gaps, both with the compliance. There's really limited enforcement in the rules today. There's not any of this GPU language at all. There's some risk management issues, and then there's very loose commercial standards when it comes to operators out there. So C.J. Wilson Law is drafting the updated rules and regs They are essentially done at this point. They're gonna include the GPU language we just talked about for everyone who's operating on the airfield with those jet-style aircrafts. There's gonna be more explicit safety expectations, improved risk management, clear standards for enforcement, and stronger administrative processes and controls. So next steps with that is with the draft essentially complete this month, it will be submitted to FAA for compliance review. Again, we get to write these rules, we get to enforce these rules, but the FAA gets to approve them. And if there's something in there that violates an FAA rule, they will let us know. We'll be bringing it back for council approval after that, and there will be some ordinance updates that are required for the enforcement component. All right, and that brings us to our final final report here today, which is the environmental review of the airport and surrounding property. So as CMT comes up, I'll talk just a little bit about why we why we went with them. This was at Nick Dumas' suggestion. We heard from Recondo, our master plan team, about environmental. You've heard from myself and our airport staff about the environmental rules and regs. We wanted to bring in someone who is not connected with the master plan at all. This is a new company, an objective opinion, but they do aviation work throughout the nation. They've got a vast amount of experience and they have worked with Venice Airport on stormwater items in the past. So they're familiar with with the Venice Airport. So we're going to hear today from, let's see, David Long, Greg Heaton and Dr. Robert Gross. Turn it over to you, gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you, James. Appreciate that.

Mayor, council, thank you for having us here today. We appreciate it. And I'm Greg Heaton with Crawford Murphy & Tilley. I serve as a vice president and the head of our Florida aviation practice. And I've been involved in aviation consulting for 40 years plus and have led a great many planning, environmental, engineering, design, and related programs. With me to the far right in just a moment, I'll make a few more remarks and turn over, but Dave Long. Dave is a pilot, a veteran, and a seasoned airport accredited official. Prior to joining CM&T a number of years back, Dave worked as an airport executive, most recently in his career at the Kansas City Department of Airports, so both a city-run facility that had both a commercial service and a general aviation facility under his command. And Dr. Gross is an aviation expert in related in air quality analysis and air quality emissions, and so we thought we'd address a little bit of what we were asked to prepare for you all. Let me start with, we're not here to talk about the master plan, and as James mentioned, we are not part of that process, but we thought it'd be pertinent that before we dive into the proposal comments, that we talk a little bit about the purpose of the master plan. Again, our firm serving hundreds and hundreds of airports and having completed many of those ourselves. It's important that we set that stage that the master plan really creates a roadmap. That's the way I was looked at. It's really a roadmap for the future, but it's not a commitment that you run down that road. It sets forth the plan, but it takes a look at the potential growth in activity, or just a change in activity. As mentioned earlier in some of the remarks, an airport might be increasing in operations, it might be decreasing, a whole number of factors, but a master plan looks at that and tries to anticipate. Probably one of the biggest changes, I say this with a smile, but not because it's been a good part of my career. It's often been said, I can't prove whether it's true or hearsay, but that the aviation industry is the second most regulated industry in the country behind the nuclear industry. But I can attest to how many rules and regulations we have, and it's not uncommon for a master plan to be done simply because all the changes in regulations and the need to update the look-see at how that future development has to be done in order to comply with those regulations. So a master plan continues by making development decisions, best ways that facilities or infrastructure might meet the needs of that demand, positions it for funding, as was discussed, a great deal of the grant funding, which, by the way, is a user-funded system. The Airport Improvement Program out there is a tax that we all pay when we fly somewhere or we buy parts or materials. But that is being poured back into that national airspace sort of system. But most importantly, a master plan does allow, and it always warms my heart to hear, the community involvement, the neighbors, because that is exactly what's there to be as an asset for a community. It is an economic development engine, but it's important that all the perspectives, all the desires and goals are brought forth in that process. But the bottom line, again, that the master plan does not commit the city or an airport to projects, and that's important because the parts of it that do get evaluated, and let me touch on As you all know, there's an environmental overview in the part of a master plan. It's separated. It can be a thing, not unlike the T word, as I understand if I'm coming up to speed, where you can use a phrase like an environmental assessment or an environmental overview, and it can mean two different things to two different people. In our world environmental overview the importance of that and you see here a number of the categories But there's there's well over 30 categories that get looked at again by regulation That is the FAS orders and advisory circulars carrying out the National Environmental Policy Act Congress writes a law a whole lot of people sit around try to figure out what exactly that law meant or was meant to be write out an order and In my world, it's like, okay, we're still confused, and they might write an advisory circuit, do this. But it looks at all these, and here today, of course, we're here just to talk about really air quality and water quality. But that environmental overview, because there's not a specific action or because there's not something being committed to in a master plan, it really just gets encapsulated in that overview versus, say, an assessment or an environmental impact statement for larger related things. But that overview is doing essentially the same thing, saying, hey, what are all the rules and regulations and requirements from a federal, state, local? Let's make sure we're aware of them. So as you plan, We don't want to paint ourselves in a corner. We don't want to do something that violates the rule, and we certainly don't want to build something that is going to cause a problem in any or all of these areas. So, Dave, if you will, the next slide. All of those areas, and here's just a sample. I mean, this is just a start of the many laws and rules and regulations, but they are looked at in that environmental overview process as a first step, saying, when we get down the road and because they have a life. These laws and rules can change sometimes and so that's the subtle difference between doing some things, things that get done in an overview during a master plan and then coming to it later when some actual proposed development is upon us. But with that, let me turn it over to Dave and have him talk a little bit about some of the things we are doing and what we propose based on your question to us, thank you.

Awesome. Thank you, Greg. CMT has already helped Venice on a number of projects to really strengthen its environmental compliance program by updating the airport stormwater pollution prevention plan, better known as the SWPPP, in accordance with the National Pollutant Discharge Illumination System, which is NPDES, and Florida regulatory requirements. And these are things that we've already done, right? So we've had boots on the ground, and those key efforts really included collecting and reviewing existing data, conducting site visits, documenting current conditions, and the like. And that revised SWPPP provides clear documentation of the outfalls, updated staff responsibilities, enhanced maintenance procedures, improved mapping and photographic records, And it's really a roadmap for your current NPDES permit expires in 2027. So it's really the first step to make sure that things are in line when you do go for your next permit process in 2027. And what we're preparing to do for you is on task one is currently assisting Venice with its 2026 storm water system operations maintenance certificate certification it and that's helping ensure continued compliance with state stormwater requirements so the effort includes reviewing existing documentation conducting a site visit to evaluate system conditions preparing the required certification documentation providing professional engineers stamp and seal of that certification. And upon completion, CMT will assemble and submit a complete certification package to support the airport's ongoing regulatory compliance obligations. And under task two of things that we're currently doing for you is that we're developing a comprehensive stormwater inspection and documentation program. that will meet the enhanced inspection and record keeping that is required that was established under the recently revised Florida stormwater legislation, better known in our business as Senate Bill 740. So this effort includes reviewing the regulations, doing a whole bunch of work, but in the end, that result will be a uh reusable editable tool that supports consistent inspections that currently is being enacted and improved documentation and then long-term regulatory compliance on that third item that we're tasked that we're currently doing is dealing with the voluntary stormwater runoff sampling plan now and that That runoff will go to the Deer Town Gauley outfall to establish baseline water quality conditions and demonstrate the airport's commitment to environmental stewardship and public transparency. Now the plan will identify a representative sampling location downstream of Venice stormwater discharges. And then we'll come up with a recommended routine sampling schedule and establish the appropriate water quality parameters for testing. In other words, what are you gonna test for along those things? And we'll also identify who in the area that is a certified environmental lab and provide a budgetary estimate and that to continue those ongoing sampling and testing into the future. While it's not required, it's not required by FDEP or your current NPDES permit, this proactive monitoring program will provide a baseline data to support the future environmental management efforts. And again, this is just a plan. What would we do if we're asked to do this? And those tasks, tasks one through two and three, have already been approved. We've already got boots on the ground going to be next week in order to start fulfilling these three tasks. And those cost was a total cost of 13, not to exceed $13,560. So in looking at things of what we can do for you, we're really looking at three things. And to be clear, CMT is not specifically recommending, quite frankly, that the city undertake any of the following efforts at this time. But these services are available should the city choose to pursue them and have that additional environmental monitoring or planning incentive. So the first thing really is that comprehensive airport regulatory compliance review. As you remember, Greg mentioned, there's dozens and dozens and dozens of rules and regulations, and the question is, does Venice follow all of those guidelines? We're calling that an audit of their programs. The second thing is really implementing. The first thing I told you, we come up with a plan to implement that sampling plan. This would actually be to enact it. Whenever we come up with that plan, we would enact that over the course of one year. and the third thing is really this air quality analysis and it really is broken down into and it can provide a comprehensive evaluation of air quality conditions associated with airport operations and these services spread the airport with additional tools to proactively maintain their environmental stewardship and really address that stakeholder concerns and it's really broken down into two tasks The first task is really about what's the inventory of what's being out there. And the second task is this air dispersion. And that is about as much as I know about this. And so we brought in the expert, Dr. Robert Gross, to kind of walk through you of what the air quality analysis can provide.

All right, thank you very much, Dave. All right, so I'll first discuss the airport emissions inventory task one. So CMT could develop a baseline airport emissions inventory for the airport, which would be in accordance with federal EPA guidance and FAA aviation emissions and air quality standards. The purpose of this would be to establish the existing emissions conditions, the air quality conditions, which would also help support future planning. If you establish your base, you can continue to do this year over year if you desire to and understand the trends of your emissions. So the analysis would quantify the key pollutants, the criteria air pollutants, which are carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, as well as its precursor pollutants, oxides of nitrogen, and volatile organic compounds. as well as particulate matter both with aerodynamic diameters of 10 and 2.5 micrometers and sulfur dioxide the sources we would investigate for the emissions inventory of course would include your aircraft the auxiliary power units which have been mentioned already ground support equipment as well as any motor vehicles and stationary sources The primary models and tools that we apply, which are regulated by the FAA and EPA, include the FAA's Aviation Environmental Design Tool, which is also used for noise analyses, as well as the EPA's Motor Vehicle Emissions Simulator moves. And for other sources, we could use EPA's databases, such as the AP42. So with that emissions inventory established, the second task would be the dispersion modeling component. So the big difference between emissions inventories and dispersion modeling is the emissions inventory will tell you how much of the pollutants are emitted into the atmosphere by the sources. The dispersion modeling will tell you where those pollutants go. So the baseline emissions inventory would feed into the dispersion modeling to assess the air quality conditions around the airport in the local vicinity. We would investigate the same criteria pollutants and again identify their concentrations, which again the big difference is being now what you're breathing in if you're in the location being investigated. So, similarly, we'd use ADT as well as dispersion modeling would be conducted with AirMod, which is the other EPA-approved methodology. And we would disperse these across a grid of receptors, virtual receptors, that would be expanded beyond the airport. It could be based on a couple of miles. And we would also identify specific locations that are considered sensitive throughout the study area. Those sensitive locations could be schools, parks, healthcare facilities, daycare centers, as determined by the land use data. So these results, the concentrations will be compared to the EPA's national air quality standards to understand if there are any impacts. And the last thing I wanted to mention about dispersion modeling and one of its big strengths over something like air quality monitoring would be that air quality monitors would be able to tell you what the concentrations are of pollutants in a given location at a time, but it would not tell you where the pollutants came from or what the sources specifically were. And that's what the strength of modeling can do. It can identify the sources and disperse them so you know exactly where they came from to understand what's contributing to the air quality in the local area. I'll turn it back to you, Dave.

Thanks, Robbie. I think we're out of time, so maybe Dave put the last slide up, but we can stop and field questions.

I think the last thing to go over, what does this cost, right? You know what I mean? So we're looking at the overview of the airport regulatory compliance requirements. You're at a not to exceed cost of $15,000. To implement the stormwater runoff sampling plan for one year, excluding what the lab would actually cost, is not to exceed $35,000. And in order to do task two, it's anywhere between 30 with a not to exceed number of 45,000, Cast to would be 65,000 up to 85,000 not succeed. But if you do the 2 concurrently task wanted test to it would not exceed a $100,000 but we're looking at estimated between 90 and 100,000 and again those in numbers are maximum if we go over that we eat it. But we will commit to do the project at that maximum number at any given time.

Thank you open up for questions there.

All right, any questions for staff or the consultant? Mr. Weed.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you for the presentation. I appreciate that. This question is really both directed to staff and to the consultants. The motion that I made that was approved at our meeting that led to the environmental side of this was that to direct the airport staff and the city staff as soon as administratively possible to develop parameters to perform an environmental review of the airport property in neighboring areas to include but not be limited to air quality, soil contamination, water quality and to pursue vendor quotes to perform such a study. I have heard about testing the outfall. I've heard about taking the Deer Gully. I've heard about checking what is currently in the air. What I've not heard about is a very strong concern of fear of our citizens on what is accumulating on the ground, on the roofs, on their pool decks. The essence of something in the air gives you a moment. What it does not tell you is that over 20 years, over 10 years, over a year, what is landing, what is accumulating on the ground is being added to runoff to the Gulf, runoff to our pools, our pets, our kids. So my question to you is, presented with this, if you were presented with this, why was the soil contamination on the airport property and the surrounding areas, much in what you're doing with the air testing, why was that not addressed?

good answer sorry i'm just looking at it all right thanks uh thank you councilman um i i think probably if anything if the staff asks us that perhaps we missed that uh happily it can be can be done uh not a problem uh it's very frequent uh lead is a concern obviously because avgas still operates while the industry is trying to respond to leaded and get to an unleaded fuel. It's still there today. We've been part of, and so we certainly can revise our thing and bring that back to the staff to include some sampling to that sort of thing. It's not often resulted, if ever, at your activity level, but to test it is certainly something that can be done to confirm whether it has caused those sort of concentrations or not. Absolutely. So my apologies if we've been asked and probably were and just missed it.

Yeah, this was brought up to us repeatedly as a concern by our citizens, and I think we need to address it. And as I found out through a personal situation I was involved in, something passing by does not necessarily deal with the accumulation. For sure. That's the concern here.

Very realistic. Obviously, we're all familiar with the highway system many years ago and much higher levels of things, but it has been done, and most recently up in Central Illinois did a couple, or Central Ohio did a couple analyses to confirm a very similar size, so to abate those concerns. Yes, sir, we will do that.

Perfect. So I'll just add, you know, Part of the air sampling and water quality will look at similar parameters that we found in the soil. So if we find some other items there, we can add additional soil sampling. But if it is the desire of council, we can add some soil sampling as well. I think the tricky part will be where do you perform the samples at, because it's one point. But that's something that CMT can look into if it is your desire.

I do have a follow-up question, if that would be allowed. And I was actually... Asked this during a break by a citizen. When we're doing the air quality, will there be consideration of seasonal? I mean, we are a seasonal community. We want to make sure, you know, if we test the air quality in the middle of July, that may not reflect what's out there in the middle of February.

Absolutely. So when we do our dispersion modeling, when we do our dispersion modeling task, we would do it on an annual basis. So we would capture every season, all the months, and we use meteorological data that represents the year or sometimes an average of three or five years. So we would capture the various seasonal activities or seasonal conditions in the area with the model.

And I think, Councilman, to your point, and I suppose the concerns of citizens, is that that would enable us to talk about when it hit peaks or valleys, right? I mean, so often it's easy to talk about averages, and everybody goes, well, yeah, but that's... Talk to me when it's the busy... Saturday afternoon in some instances, or it's the Monday morning and the corporate flights are leaving or whatever. That's the part I assume is the interest. The model will enable us to look at those sort of peak times as well and understand what are the worst single cases as well as averages so that you can make your decisions accordingly.

And as we know, weather also affects. You've got high humidity, high heat. All those things are going to come into play. So thank you. Appreciate that answer.

Vice Mayor Bolt. Thank you.

A few of the things that I was going to ask about have been addressed, but I do want to say that having come out of the chemical business for a lot of years, listening to you guys brings back some horrible memories. A very regulated industry as well. But I'm very impressed with what you guys have looked at and what you're proposing. I think that it will solve or at least answer a lot of the questions that are out there right now so i would be a big proponent of moving forward with this thank you thank you mr smith thank you yes i'm absolutely in favor of moving forward and i hope there'll be a consensus on that um but you know um i have a lot of questions but because uh

CMTs up here, maybe first we should ask questions we have of them. I wanted to stand up and applaud your presentation. I really am that impressed with it and that modesty of the cost of doing some major things for us. But I do want to ask, you talked a lot about testing Deer Town Gully and it's not like at one spot, you're going to identify one spot. Is that adequate? And aren't there other outfalls that go under Harbor Drive from the airport that possibly need to be tested to for the water that goes out there to the Gulf.

Yes and yes and yes. OK. So part of the implementing the you know one part is to create the plan. The other one is to implement the plan. Right. And so what we're currently looking at what would that plan be. So not only are we looking at the Deer Town Gully, but we're looking at other outfalls that make sense in order to do those sampling, come up with that cohesive plan to come back and say, OK, we're now we're going to implement that particular plan. So yes to all of your questions. Yeah.

And it's all covered in that cost?

It is, yes. It's interesting. It's good. Quite frankly, it's just time on the boots on the ground. Again, it's not the first time we've been here. It's not the first time that we've seen these outfalls. It's not the first time that we've seen some of the results associated with that. So, you know, we understand that time is money. Money is time. And it helps to have folks that are going to do this within the state of Florida. So they keep your costs low.

Great. Thank you. I'm assuming, and just assure me if you would, that the testing will be done in accordance with Department of Internal environmental protection, FL Pro methodology and all that type of thing? That's correct. And you'll be testing for total petroleum hydrocarbons?

I think that's part of the plan as far as what will those be, what we'll present. I'm certainly not the person that's going to do that, but that's part of the initial plan that's underway now. What are they going to look for? What are they going to determine would be necessary and all that kind of stuff? And we'll bring that back as a plan to implement moving forward. Spectacular.

And then if pollution is found, do we get a pollution discharge elimination system permit? Or what happens when you find pollution?

Well, again, this is all voluntary, right? So none of this is required in any permit that you have. But let's say we do find something and just fill in the blank whatever you want to fill it in well obviously i think we'll come back to this council and obviously to the city manager and the airport staff to say look there's an anomaly here let's figure out why and and the part of this and i think which is important to all of you to understand this is all transparent and it will be done over a particular period of time of one year so we don't think we'll come back and wait in a year to tell you the results of what we've gotten as we get them we'll do reports uh accordingly and provide that to the city manager in the airport accordingly great thank you you were very careful the way you said we're not recommending you do these things is that did you did you mean to say you're not urging us to do

Do it, you'll do it if we want you to do it, or are you trying to say we shouldn't do it?

I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, but this is above and beyond what is required under your permits at this point.

Right, and I'm just saying. We thought it was important that we were clear that the airport and the city is doing what's required, and we believe you're in compliance, and you do many things very well. Let's not say that there aren't concerns, and all those concerns are valid, and applaud you for looking into them on behalf of your citizens. We just didn't, and we're sitting here as the guys who would go do it, and... we tell you we always want to feel a little bad like we're not sitting here lobbying you to go oh yes you should do all this because uh we get paid to do it but for example the the airport doesn't use fertilizers pesticides they limit herbicides they're i think you right you're all very motivated to run a good ship. But yeah, absolutely, if something's found, I think every party is interested in eliminating it. This will be a bad issue, even on camera. But I'm old enough to remember, for those of you who fly, you'd go out and test your fuel in case the water settled in the bottom, and you'd turn and sprinkle that on the apron. Sorry for that public disclosure of my bad thing. That was a long time ago and now we've learned don't do that. You throw it back into, if it's good, into your plane or in a bucket and it's disposed of properly. But those were different times I think we all lived. So if those things are discovered, I think everybody is excited about going, why? Because no one wants those. And certainly you as ultimately the airport sponsor, there comes a liability trade. But more importantly is that the health and safety of everyone around.

I so appreciate your answer because I mean it gives you extra credibility. You're not here lobbying for us to do this. You have some work. You're saying you're willing to do it. And what we have is a situation where we need to rebuild the confidence of this community in our care at that airport. And so it's in that context that we're pushing for this it's to reassure the community that they're not you know affected with their health issues by this airport and so thank you very much for that.

So I do have one question as it relates to the soil sampling we were just talking about adding to the process I know you have to come back to staff with that estimate Could you give us some kind of an idea? Right now we're at $100,000. Are we talking another $50,000 to do that? Or is that a safe number to say $150,000? Yes, sir.

I think that's a fair estimate from prior stuff.

And then for the city manager, my question would be, would this come out of the enterprise fund for the airport?

That's correct, Mayor. And we might just want to clarify, I think we're already at $150,000 if you include all three items.

That is correct if you do the last task concurrently for the $100,000 plus the $35,000 plus the $15,000, correct?

Okay. So it would be in addition to the $150,000 that we're at right now.

So more like $200,000 is a safer number? Yeah, correct. Okay. And again, that would come out of the Enterprise Fund?

Yes, it will. And we haven't finalized the proposal, so we may be coming back with a budget amendment, but we'll work with finance on that if we get your approval today.

Okay. Any other questions from Council? I have questions, but not for CMT. So who do you have questions for?

Well, I guess for the city manager if he's the one who's been presenting the rest of the material, but. I'm happy to answer to the best of my ability, Councilman. Okay. First, Mayor, if I can. I, we, everybody on the council got a letter last night and for me it was a game changing letter because it asserted something that I had never heard before. And we've had a whole bunch of education from the public, from pilots, from Vassie, by the way, the V in Vassie does not stand for villain. Uh, and they are not the villain in all of this. And I wanted to say that and they have helped educate me. along with their members, and I just want to say that, because sometimes they get portrayed like a villain and all this. But anyway, in this letter, it was suggested, and I always try to check before I believe everything that gets sent to us, the explanation for the crisis that we're in, for the dissatisfaction of the community with jet traffic over Golden Beach and Gulf Shores. And it asserted that in 2024, without any discussion by our council or any awareness by our council, the situation changed in that the EPA published new climb headings off of runway 31. And in doing so, they changed the degree that jets should take from 305 degrees to 320 degrees. And what that meant was a change of directing jets on that runway to fly over Service Beach to the Gulf to a direction to fly over Gulf Shores and Golden Beach. I was stunned. at that suggestion, and then immediately thought of the domes there, and that that happened at that time, and that was never discussed with us, the building of those domes, and this as a potential result of all of that, right there at Service Beach. And so I asked this morning and I asked the city manager to educate us on whether that is true. And if so, it changes a lot of my thinking on what we need to be doing. Um, because it means the people aren't getting crankier. The situation has changed dramatically. Uh, so that all jet traffic on that runway is going over their houses when it didn't two years ago. True.

That is, for the most part, accurate. I can't speak exactly to where the new heading is, but there were radar domes that were new obstructions that were constructed with no city approval required, because it was a federal project. And because of that, the Tampa approach did change the departure heading to avoid those. And as we talked about, safety is always going to take precedence. So they're going to adjust those paths based on new obstructions. I think it speaks to the importance of our noise abatement runway, the importance of the PAPI lights getting certified, and the direction that we've given our team in utilizing that fair winds runway in the future.

Okay. That was absolutely, I'm guessing for everybody else, that was the first time we've ever heard that. that this happened and this is why people I kept saying what is there that much more jet traffic why is everybody complaining all of a sudden and we told no it's only six percent of all the traffic is jets and then we say well are the people not obeying the fly friendly no no it's not no change there well here's the change this is the change that has 20-year residents pilots that live in those neighborhoods complaining that something's changed And so I think it's a stunner that that's the answer to what's been going on. And numerous pilots have suggested, not named two of them, because I think they wrote us great letters, or have talked to all of us. There's Greg Michael, who's a pilot, lived there over 20 years. been a pilot, I think he said, for 50 years, along with his brother. Gene Dillahunty, another longtime resident in that neighborhood there, was a pilot. I believe a member of VASI was going to work with VASI on trying to enforce the fly-friendly rules and identifying the people that violate it. And they have suggested, along with the people that have educated us, like Brett Spangler, that we can make ground rules. We can't make rules that affect people once they take off. But all of them have educated me to the fact that we could, of our own, dedicate a runway, whatever that one is, number five on it, as the jet runway. Now, obviously, if weather conditions require that they have another runway, And I'm told we could dedicate that runway for touch and goes. Those two things alone cost nothing, are apparently within our power, and would address in a great way the complaints that we're getting when if you use the other runway, they're now telling you to go over the houses. No-fry friendly. Fly unfriendly. And so I hope that before we're done here, we can say, let's do that. And am I right? We have that ability, power, authority to direct that this is the way we want our airport to operate.

I would recommend we don't take that action without consulting with our airport director. There are definitely some funding mechanisms tied to how we designate those runways. So right now we have the common runway noise abatement, which is five 23. We have our primary runway, which is 1331. They're designated that way for a reason so that we can take advantage of the funding that's available to keep those maintained and safe and operational without having to use other city funding sources. So I would certainly be open to have that conversation, but I would, I would suggest we wait until the expert is in the room so we can ask him those questions.

That's great. can i say i was congratulating cmt but i want to applaud your work and mr dumas's work on all of this i i think you've gone a tremendous distance toward uh satisfying trying to address the things that have been brought to us that we can do that are practical to be done and i'm just thrilled at the progress that i see in addressing this which i consider the biggest issue in the city This year and so I want to say specifically This little caveat when we say there's misinformation out there every PR course I ever took or taught If there's misinformation It's your fault Art your job is to get out the correct information and I respect that we're trying to do that but we can't just say hey they all have the wrong idea that's not it it's our job give them the right idea the fact sheet it's a good effort in that direction everything we do has to be to educate them and make sure there aren't people out there with the wrong information fair enough that's our goal every day okay right and I appreciate the efforts we're making there I want to thank you for elevating the noise abatement aspect of that dual job because my hope was in the beginning it would be a hundred percent that and it fell to lesser more community and less abatement and so I'm real I want to just praise you for that I want to praise you for the way we've done these meetings we had some early troubles people were complaining the rooms too small we cut it short not everybody got to talk and and then you moved it to a bigger building you've extended the time, you insisted everybody that's there will get a chance to speak before we leave. I think those are wonderful gestures on your part. And you pointed out the entire council is there listening because people were saying we want the council to listen. Well, we're listening and I'm proud of us for that. Let me ask this question of you. You talked a little about this tower and the management of it, I didn't quite understand it, in the administration building. And does that mean it wouldn't be being operated out of the FAA in Sarasota or the tower somewhere else? The actual people giving direction on where to go would be here?

That is where we are heading right now. It's still going to be virtual, still a remote tower, but the actual equipment, the monitoring equipment, would live in our own administration building.

Right. We've always talked about this is not a physical tower. It's just some cameras and, you know, these sent to people who would then give direction. So now the building would be here. It's still not going to be like the air traffic control tower you see at Punta Gorda or Tampa. It's more of a computer-based building. Is that the way to think of it?

Correct. It's a control room where they'd be monitoring the cameras. And again, this is not finalized yet, but we would actually welcome and encourage it to be right here in Venice. I think it would give us some advantages.

That was fascinating and new to me today. So we thank you for that update. Because we've been saying, I've been saying something else. Oh, no, no, no, it's just cameras and somebody up in Bradenton redirecting the traffic. So again, helping with no misinformation. We don't want that. Landing fees. So I appreciate what you said. Landing fees are for people that aren't based here. Very good. And will those landing fees also apply to the touch and go people who are not based here?

That is my understanding. If they're not based in Venice, then they would apply. We still have to work through that with the vendor, of course, and bring it back to you all for approval, but that is the approach.

Great. Thank you for the Skyport changes that we're trying to negotiate, the ground power units instead of auxiliary power units. And I want to also ask one more question or make one more statement. You talked about the buffering, and sadly the FAA won't help us by paying for it. We're already starting to count our pennies here. We're up to 200,000. But I personally am invested in that buffering. I hope the rest of the council will be as well. I don't know if you can get us an estimate of that as we go forward with our search for the money to do these things that are going to finally satisfy the neighbors that we are going to have an airport that's friends with its neighbors. So I hope you'll help me with that.

I thought you were saying you're personally investing.

I'm investing my energy, my words. And I do want to note, as we reviewed this the other day together, Mr. City Manager, the airport reserve is $5.7 million. $2.9 million of it's restricted, already committed. We have our own policy, which we have in all of our funds, that we reserve from our reserve four months to cover all of our bills, sort of like a kite, I guess. Make sure everything can be paid for and we won't run out of money. But there is still $900,000 in that fund that's unaccounted for and free for whatever we decide it needs to go to. And I think we can do all of this. that we've talked about from buffering to these environmental studies well within that margin, and I'm really excited that we can do everything. So, thank you.

Mr. Howard? I'm not sure how to top that, Ron. Good job.

Thank you.

James, just a big thank you. I added this airport agenda item and then asked for what I thought was a stretch for you to come back with staff and airport directors with an update. I was blown away by what you guys have done, have been able to accomplish. Looking at the lease with our FBO, everything's about market value right now. Everybody's talking about that all over the place, including us. The initial core complaints with the GPU air pollution as a result of APUs running excessive times on the ramp. The fact that Skyport is community focused and so willing to work with us, as David mentioned, that They're willing to sign up now. They don't need to wait. That's incredible work, great negotiations. The minimum standards, having, I call it teeth, no teeth in the contract and moving so that we have some enforceability or control over those things is... exactly where I hoped that we would go with that. Bringing in a third party consultant group that is obviously, I'm impressed, I was blown away with what you guys shared. You obviously do this for a living, right? And being not associated with the consulting group, and the consultants, they're not bad people, but I think the more, independent we can keep all of these especially as critical as it is that our airport become part of the community as it's been for since the early 40s is is it was just a great great move James to do that and I just really appreciate I think that we've we've definitely hit the the nail with the hammer, I think, with what we're hearing from our residents. And we're going just as fast as we can possibly go to address these issues. But I think the fact that the timeline even surprised me. Like, these guys are ready to put boots on the ground tomorrow. I'm not managing your operations, but I think that's what I heard. And this study going on for a year, it's not just a little snippet in time, it really gives us a base and then it gives us a monitoring capability to make sure that, you know, that we're delivering and we're not just a one-time Nellie here. We're doing it and we're going to keep doing it to make sure that we're maintaining those standards and that quality of life. and to your point yeah when you sump your fuel you don't throw it on the on the ramp anymore that was pretty funny and it did date you by saying that um all good things but it is ron said it builds credibility because you guys obviously know what you're talking about you're even making funnies about yourself about throwing ab gas on the on the ramp and that's a big no-no so just you know kudos james to you and and uh Nick, I don't know where you're at or what bed you're in. Well, get back to work for his participation while he's on his back and recovering. I wish him the best with that. And I'm really excited about everything that's going on right now.

So I would just ask Mr. City Manager, what do you need from us today as far as direction? I am curious to give you direction on coming back with information on Mr. Smith's suggestions as far as some of these ground procedure changes. what the impacts would be and what we're allowed to do and all that kind of stuff so I can definitely make a motion to that effect to give you the ability to go and research that but there's some financials that play here too and I'm curious what you need from us since we don't have a total number or a proposal.

I think if I can get either a vote or consensus to move forward with the proposal that's in front of you with the addition of the soil sampling not to exceed $200,000, then we can handle the financial side of finalizing that proposal. And then in terms of coming back with additional information, that's really at your discretion. We will be talking about that as part of the master plan process at length throughout the fall. So that's up to you if you'd like a separate presentation or not.

At this point, I wouldn't think it's necessary as long as you guys incorporate that information into your process. Happy to do that. Okay. So with that.

Excuse me, Mayor. Just prior to a motion, I do want you to know we have public comment as well.

I'm running this meeting. Thank you. So with that, as I was about to say, Mayor asked Clerk if there's anyone signed up to speak.

Yes, sir. We have three speakers. The first one is Madeline Zubik. She has five minutes.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council. Thank you, Mr. Smith, for your excellent questions. I really appreciate that. As you know, I previously addressed the issue of pollution in Deer Town Gully, which is located behind my house on the island. Following my remarks, I was contacted by the Sarasota County Watershed Department and subsequently corresponded with staff regarding the potential contamination in the gully. The department had planned to initiate comprehensive testing, including assessments for heavy metals and hydrocarbon fuels, among other cancer causing pollutants. However, I later received notification that the city and county had reached an agreement transferring ownership of the Gali to the city. I would like to request if Mr. Stephen Behrens, the stormwater engineering manager for the City, will now be able to conduct these tests for Deer Town Gully. In reviewing today's presentation by the City, it appears that the scope of the environmental testing may be limited. and does not address potential impacts on residential and recreational areas, local habitats, Deer Town Gully, or the Gulf. May I ask what specific testing protocols will be implemented? Will baseline sampling occur before airport construction? Will independent licensed laboratory conduct the testing? Will the results be made public? Will cumulative impacts be analyzed? Will alternatives that avoid loss of green space be evaluated? Why do these tests matter? Well, because airport expansion can increase flooding, pollute waterways, bays in the Gulf of Mexico. It could remove habitat. It could degrade air quality. It can increase noise. It could affect neighborhood quality of life. A thorough environmental assessment should identify these impacts and compare alternatives before decisions are made. Residents living near Venice Airport have noted a marked increase in noise levels and low flying jets over residential neighborhoods in recent years. The assertion that the airport was here first seems increasingly less relevant. If this argument is to be used, it is important to recognize that native species such as the gopher tortoise, Florida scrub jay, bald eagle, pelicans, and others were truly the first inhabitants. What measures is the city taking to protect these endangered species with the airport expansion? Research indicates that proximity to the expanding or two expanding airports can expose residents to airborne lead noise and other pollutants that may pose health risks. Air quality monitoring demonstrates that lead concentrations can be significant near runways with children at nearby schools and parks vulnerable. It sounds like this testing is included in your review. How about noise pollution? Aircraft noise, especially during nighttime hours, can disrupt sleep patterns and induce chronic stress responses, resulting in elevated cortisol levels, higher blood pressure, and increased risks of cardiovascular issues. Even moderate noise levels, 40 to 45 decibels, may cause measurable health effects. It sounds like this testing is also included in the review. How about air quality and ultrafine particles that I heard CMT talk about? These particles come from aircraft engines and they can emit ultrafine particles capable of penetrating deep into the lungs. and entering into the bloodstream, individuals residing within three miles of airports may be exposed to these particles, increasing their risk for asthma, COPD, and other respiratory conditions. With the proposed airport master plan expansion, these particles could affect air quality far beyond the immediate vicinity of the airport. It sounds like this testing is also included in the review, which I'm happy to hear. So in conclusion, over 80.

All right. Your time is up, Madam Clerk.

Next speaker, Chris Davis. Thank you. She has five minutes.

Miss Davis, welcome.

Hello, thank you, Mayor and Council. My name is Chris Davis. Again, I've been a resident for 33 years in Gulf Shores. I am hopeful about what I hear is going to take place because I do think finding any potential stormwater, air, or noise pollution that we can work on solving is going to be helpful. And I do think that the community has tried to take a very active role in the master plan and what goes on at the airport. And through that, I think we have also In some cases, Mr. Weed, apparently somebody has sent in information that explains why we have had all these aircraft over our homes that we didn't have before. Who knew that that radon construction was going to change things? I guess even the city council or the airport didn't know. I don't know. But that does seem, it does seem like people are asleep at the wheel a little bit if we're not checking these things when they're going up. I would like to say that I like the idea of what you're doing with the charging the fees for the itinerant pilots. I think that the noise monitoring and operation monitoring system could be very helpful. It could kind of match up some of the repeat offenders of aircraft noise and extra low flights that are coming over our home. and it would match it up with the complaints from the community. As I listen to what CMT is going to do, I'm a little, nah, I think that they're gonna find what they need to find to pass the airport. So I'm a little leery that they are going to really look for some of the issues that the community has brought to you. we don't live on the airport property we live outside the airport property so they won't be looking at all the environmental issues that we have brought to you and we have asked for an extensive environmental assessment outside of the airport but at least it's a start it's a start what can i say the fact that they're going to look at where the water leaves the airport i think is very important can you put this up please I know people have said, oh, dear town gully does not originate at our airport, but you can look at a aerial map or this is a topo map and you can see that.

And some of this may have been changed because I know they shifted shifted so we can see it on the screen.

Oh, I see. Okay. So some of this might have changed a little bit over here on the. What would be the eastern side I know the city has gone after a new stormwater permit over there they've created a pond that the two hangers are sending their water into but what has always been of concern to the citizens is these open ditches that you can see here that go that feed directly under Airport Avenue and into Deer Town Gully. And this is where they need to be taking samples of the soil and the water. And we all know that airport's been there, what, 90 years? You don't think there is some pollution coming off of the airport? Open ditches like what we have here and Mr. Clinch can probably tell us more since he was a stormwater engineer at one time, but they don't provide any kind of water quality. The water is just sent away downstream. We're not getting that clarity in the water before it enters Deer Town Gully. This is a key area that we need to look at. This gully goes into our neighborhood and we know it has issues. You know it has issues. We really would like to see this cleaned up. I know that you have also received letters from several neighborhood associations, not just Gulf Shores and Golden Beach, but there are other neighborhood associations that are affected by the traffic on the airport. And I certainly hope that you take a strong interest in what they're saying about the environmental assessment and understand that we don't live on the airport. It's been said that for the airport staff, I don't know, he listed one or two things, but the third thing that came into their priority list was the community. We don't see our homes as third priority. Thank you for your comments.

Madam Clerk, next speaker.

The last speaker is Peter Fazio. He has two minutes. Two. That's based on the address you provided. Is that accurate?

Peter Fazio I'm a leaseholder at 520 East Airport Avenue I first arrived at the Venice airport probably in the early 90s so 30 some years ago I've seen a lot of change at the airport and I can honestly tell you I'm here right now to speak and tell you the airport has never been better the job our city administrators doing our airport manager the council, the ladies and gentlemen in front of us here today, never has the airport been any better. All the issues are being addressed. I'm sure there's no more problems you're going to find. The airport being, as I stated earlier, 90 years old, I've been there at least a third of it. I've heard stories about we never had noise. Well, they don't remember that it was a World War II training base. Most of the island was a World War II training base. Bombs were going off. Large airplanes were taking off. People moved in, we had growth, we had expansion. And a lot like people talk about a landfill, moving next to a landfill. I look at this where the landfill has now filled up, so the smell's gotten worse. When it was a cute little grassy area, it wasn't a big problem, but now the airport is getting busier due to population growth. Everybody's conforming with zoning, they're building close to the airport, but they don't like the noise, but the airport was there first. And you, ladies and gentlemen, need to be commended for taking the abuse you're doing, trying to just do what we're forced to do because the FAA has given us the whole island and said you have to now maintain it because it was federal property. Thank you for being such a good steward of our resources.

Thank you for your comments. Madam Clerk, any other speakers?

That's it.

Okay, with that, I will move to direct city staff to investigate. No, I'm sorry, we're not gonna do that one. We're saving that for the master plan. I'll move to direct city staff to move forward with the proposal in front of us, including the additions of the soil sampling, not to exceed $200,000. Second. Seconded by Vice Mayor Bolt. Any council discussion? Okay, seeing none. Madam Clerk, if you'll ready us for an electronic vote. Council members, when your lights are flashing, you can indicate your vote. And Madam Clerk, you can tally and display. Passes unanimously. We are at 5.16, so I need a vote of the council to proceed with the meeting till six o'clock so that we can get through the next and, I believe, last item, so. So moved, Mayor. All right, okay. Seconded by Vice Mayor Bolt. Any council discussion? All right, Madam Clerk, when you're ready, make us ready for an electronic vote. Council members, you can indicate your vote. Tally and display. Passes unanimously. Let's go ahead and take four minutes while we get set up for the presentation, and we'll come back at 5.20 to finish with the Venice Community Center proposal. If you guys would like, let's go ahead and get the show on the road, as they say. Do you mind popping out there real quick and just letting Mr. Smith know that we're starting?

Do you have the presentation ready?

You can blame me. Unless you feel Ricky needs to be here. Okay. Let's go ahead.

Right. Um, assistant director of public works, Ash castle for the record, Roger Roman Heiser, assistant city manager.

Okay. So, uh, good evening castle. The reason why we're here is because starting October 1st, the Venice Community Center will go from being run by Sarasota County to the City of Venice. Right now, Sarasota County is not scheduling or planning for anything beyond September 30th. So looking for an effective manager for the center, we put out an RFP, and VPAC-M, which is the Venice Institute for the Performing Arts Management, Inc., a local 501 nonprofit, won the opportunity to negotiate a management agreement with the city.

Oh, okay.

Ah, there we go. Okay, the agreement, it has a transition period, which I'll get into in more depth in the next slide. There we go. The management, it's a five-year contract. It is full turnkey management with city oversight only. It has two 24-month extensions as a possibility. The termination clause, 30 days with clause, 270 days without clause, initiated by either party. An important thing to note is that existing reservations, all first-year bookings will be maintained and supported so that local nonprofits will know that their event will be able to be held in the first year of this contract. Right now we have 131 reservation requests pending, and as I said before, no action is being taken on those reservations. Sarasota County only recording those on a website. So to ensure a successful day one launch, VPAC-M will have to have some work to do between now and October 1st. Some examples of the work needed to be done were implementing a reservation system, onboarding training, writing SOPs, setting up marketing, preparing vendors, getting reporting done, and beginning work on grant activity. The proposed cost for transition services, which will run from contract execution to September 30th is $70,000. So staffing and operations under this agreement. Interesting to note that VPAC-M plans to staff the center from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. So folks will be able to come in, make reservations, tour the facility. For a planned events and there will always be a manager on site and there each both city and the pack and we'll have a contact that will be available twenty four seven. Staffing will be scaled about you know per the needs of the event that will be a mix of employees apprentices volunteers and subcontractors. Most events will conclude by 10 p.m., but there is a stipulation, say, for a wedding that needs to go beyond 10 p.m. With city permission, we can go beyond 10 p.m. So we did put some rules in effect. Parking, there's not exclusive parking for event holders. Parking will remain open for the public. VPAC-M can request either the north or the south lot be used for their event. No drones unless the city agrees. There's a 30-day window ahead of time notice for drones, and they need to have all FAA permits in place to operate the drone. No fireworks, no combustibles, no pyrotechnics, any open flames. Signage, no permanent signs, but they can have temporary signs for their events. Outdoor music needs to be secured by 10 p.m. That's amplified music. Event hours, again, I said most events will be done by 10 p.m., and they have a code of conduct, which is the same code of conduct that we utilize in our special events. Protections, with respect to security, VPAC and will consult with VPD as far as security requirements for their events. They do evaluate their events, low, medium, and high threshold, you know, things based upon VIP attendance, is alcohol going to be served, what hours are these events having. So, again, they'll coordinate with VPD, but it's on the manager to arrange for security. insurance, general liability, business automotive liability, workers' compensation, liquor liability, cyber liability, those will be in place for this agreement, and there is a $100,000 performance bond that will be in place for this agreement. The manager is responsible for obtaining all licenses and permits. City access. We will have access for routine meetings. One example is like the Hurricane Expo. If we provide these dates in advance to the manager, they will reserve those days for the city as long as there's no expensive bills and whistles with lights and stuff like that. If it's just a regular presentation, regular audio visual, it's free free use for the city. As far as declared emergency with no notice, we can use the facility like for point of distribution for rally point for evacuation to evacuation center. We will have use of the facility if need be in a declared emergency.

And just to clarify one thing on the parking that was outlined in the RFP, the museum, since they are on that cultural campus, will have up to 15 designated spots for museum parking so their visitors are not impacted by the VCC management company. As far as the maintenance and reporting, what we will do is we will continue to operate it the way we have done in the past with the county. We will be responsible for all major repairs and capital improvements that are over $5,000 or if there is permitting required for that level of repair. The city will handle that just as we do now and we have accounted for that in operating budgets moving forward. The manager will be responsible for all routine maintenance in the building, janitorial services, small plumbing repairs, cleaning services. They'll be responsible for all of the utility bills and all of that. And we will do quarterly walkthroughs with the management company that we currently do now. And they will also be doing monthly walkthroughs on their own and providing us those inspection reports as well. So this way, if something does come up,

that we are not aware of in the quarterly time fashion we can take care of it in the monthly inspection report that they will provide to us so the financial structure of the agreement uh the management fee to vpac m is 280 000 it's proposed to be 280 000 annually paid quarterly the manager will establish two funds one is the working capital and subsidy fund that's operating funds plus a plus a reserve, a buffer for if they run at a deficit. I have a graphic on the next slide that will demonstrate how the money is gonna flow. The second fund is the capital improvement fund. That is for them to purchase capital improvements and the city will need to sign off on all capital improvements to be bought out of that fund. If there is a deficit, running the center up to the first twenty thousand dollars the working capital and subsidy fund will cover 100 of that if it's between twenty thousand dollars and a hundred thousand dollars there's a 25 capital fund split and a 75 city split and then anything over a hundred thousand dollars the city would cover 100 and that would be something along the lines of a protracted closure due to um say a hurricane The operating surplus funds are meant to be filled up to $100,000 unless there's donations or grants, and that would bring them above $100,000. Anything beyond $100,000, if both funds fill up to the tippy top, it's gonna be a 50-50 split between the city and VPAC. Again, because VPAC-M is a non-profit, those funds will be reinvested back into the center. The 50% for the city will be a credit towards the management fee for the next contract year.

And just for a little bit more clarification, I'm pretty sure Michael go into more detail. But the reason they are looking to start their own capital improvement fund is we've worked extensively with them. They understand that what is budgeted and approved by Council is the only capital improvement projects that we are able to complete unless it's an emergency repair. So they have some of their own capital improvement projects they want to fund and bring to the table themselves for approval.

So as I mentioned before, this graphic does a good job, in my opinion, of showing how the funds are going to flow. These are the manager's proforma calculations for the five years of this contract. I did point out that, hey, you are showing a slight deficit in the first year, and that's when VPAC-M offered to seed the working capital fund with $20,000 for the first year to limit any probability that we would have a deficit for their first year. The calculations will show that the working capital subsidy fund will fill up around year three and start to spill over into the capital improvement fund. And when both funds are topped out at $100,000, that's when they trickle over into a surplus that is shared 50-50 between BPAC-M and the city. So recommendations and conclusions. VPAC-M has been running the Performing Arts Center over by the high school for about 10 years. They run about 350 events a year. I think they bring a lot of expertise to our Venice Community Center. It is an agreement that balances community use with professional event center management, meaning that there are tiered costs for private events, for community events, and then non-profits. This agreement enables immediate confirmation of all reservations for the upcoming year. We have heard from a lot of event holders that they're concerned that they haven't been guaranteed their event starting after October 1st. This agreement will have VPAC-M ready to run events on day one, October 1. This agreement prefers community access while improving operational and revenue performance. And the staff recommends approval of the management agreement for the Venice Community Center. Thank you. And right now, I'm going to ask Mr. Michael Hartley, the board chair for VPAC-M, for his part of the presentation.

For the record, my name is Michael Hartley. I'm the co-founder and board president for the Venice Institute for Performing Arts Center Management. Mr. Mayor, Council, and staff, we are enormously enthusiastic to have this opportunity to talk to you today. I've been watching through the afternoon, and owing to the late hour, they've asked me to cut my three hour presentation down a little bit, so as much as possible. We will have as much time as you like for question and answer, and we'll take you through this pretty quickly. want to talk about who we are, what we hope to do. And I always like to start a project by thinking about the philosophy behind it. So I came up with two words to describe how we want to be as an organization on this project. And one is as a partner. We want to think of ourselves kind of as an extension of city staff working closely with in terms of communication so that there are no slips and that everybody's needs get met. The second word that I thought about when we want to describe how we want to be is stewards. And we saw ourselves very easily as becoming the steward of the facility. And that's easy to understand, but we also saw a secondary role for ourselves as a steward for the community as we look about what this facility means to the community and what it can mean in the future, which brings me to the second two words. What do we envision? And I came up with two words for that. One is activate. We want to activate the facility more fully. And you'll see some of our policies and strategies are designed to bring more users and to use some of the unused times. So the second is elevate. We want to think about what we can do to enhance and elevate the experience of users, both the promoters of an event and the people that are participating in the event. So if we'll go to the next slide, we'll take a look at who we are. We are a 501c3, founded about 10 years ago by my wife and I. And I had worked before with the school district. They asked me to help put together a management structure for the Performing Arts Center. And I'd been interested in that project for a dozen years before that through other organizations, performing arts organizations. And so I said I would do that and very quickly learned that there needed to be an apparatus dedicated to that use. And I looked at a lot of public in terms of city and school district projects that have built performing arts centers and found that a lot of them were on a slow slide to I wonder why we did this. And so it all had to do with how much you could do in the facility to get that return on investment. So looking at our track record, we've been managing the operations of a public facility that has very many similar characteristics in terms of challenges. So that's the productions. We have not only managed productions for many of the groups that operate there, renters, the Venice Symphony, the Venice Chorale, the Venice Concert Band, as well as all the school activities. We manage all those in terms of technical support. And we also serve as a production company, so we have produced our own, we call them fundraisers, because the money that we raise in those goes right back into the facility. So production company, we've done over 250 of our own productions to raise funds, which is a way that we can actually create demand for the facility. And we see that as being able to transfer that in terms of a capability to the Venice Community Center. We can create additional demand, particularly in off-peak seasons. You know, we've got a couple seasons that are well, well covered. We don't need to do a thing there. But you'll see later on, we've got some ideas on what we can do in the off-peak and the shoulder seasons. Another advantage in terms of workforce, and so we've got an existing executive management that we can recognize some synergy in applying their talents to managing a second facility as well as putting additional boots on the ground dedicated to the facility. But we also have done something that's very interesting in which we need to produce for VPAC, a scalable workforce, so we created an internship and an apprenticeship program. The apprenticeship program is one where we have students that are juniors or seniors at Venice High School, and it's a very competitive program to get into. And they learn technical skills, they learn business skills, front of house, back of house, everything that goes with running the facility or putting a show on the stage. And we have had a tremendous amount of success in that When a student graduates after two years of our program, and by the way, we pay them for every hour they're in the classroom or that they work. They start at $20 an hour. And if they move into leadership positions, they get paid more. But as soon as you have graduated high school, the union, International Association of Stage and Theatrical Employees, IATSE, offers them membership and they can go to work on Broadway, they could go to work at the Sphere in Las Vegas and we already have, how many have we had graduate from the program? I'm asking some of our, we've had over 100 apprentices graduate and several of those have gone on to university and some, one of whom is sitting out here has also now come back and is part of our executive staff. But we have them that are with national touring groups and This gives us the ability to scale. We're going to be doubling the size of our apprentice program with bringing on the community center. So workforce is a great advantage. Next slide, please. One of the things that also differentiates us in terms of workforce is that we have a very robust volunteer system. We have over 250 people from the area that, and you see the picture there in their uniforms. So we have black and kind of a Venice High School green scarves that we had custom made. Everybody wears a name badge. We're gonna be translating this also to the community center. We want everybody to know who's an employee, who's on the staff, whether you're paid or not paid, and that you look like you're a professional. So we're all going to be in that position. So the volunteer corps, they provide ushering services, front of house services, and each one of them receives crowd management and safety certifications. And we have that as an available amenity for event promoters. The apprentice program, I talked about the flexible staffing that the apprentice program and volunteers gives us allows us to not have to have a lot of overhead associated with the community center, but as needs arise, we can put a rather large workforce in place to handle a large conference or whatever the need might be. Next slide, please. So the vision is we're thinking of the Venice Community Center as the premier community-focused multi-venue. And it's a little bit different than the Performing Arts Center, but it has multiple purposes. You can have performances there, you can have theater there, you can have meetings there, you can have conferences there, you can have banquets there, etc., etc. But the biggest challenge that we found when we looked at the RFP and we tried to analyze what is the challenge to solve, it's that in the next slide, please. We have a lot of dead periods. I mean, there are times when there's just nothing going on there for a whole week. There are two periods during the year where there's very heavy usage and then it trails off. So we talk about shoulders, you know, you have a peak and you have shoulder on both sides and then you have a valley in the middle. So one of the things that we thought about is in our role as a production company and as a community partner, we thought about creating multi-day pop-up events for the low-use months. So for example, dinner theater would be an example. We could set up a dinner theater. We're working in conjunction with Venice Theater to do the production, and we would be working in conjunction with our food and beverage partners to provide table service. And those types of multi-day pop-up I'll call them dinner with entertainment. You can have jukebox oldies shows. We could have the Venice Symphony Swing Band, and we've been in talks with them setting up a dance floor. You can come in and do the jitterbug or whatever, but have some really, really excellent food and a really fine entertainment opportunity, and we could run those for a series of four or five days in the off season. That's just an example of our thinking in terms of how we can get to these slow periods. Next, please. So operation plan, the transition, we've already talked about that. Technology, we are going to be relying very heavily on technology because I'm going to talk about a multi-tiered fee structure. Right now, the community center has two fees, commercial and nonprofit. And we think that we can encourage use in the off-peak times. So that's both time of day. So 8 a.m. is not as popular as 2 o'clock. And the day of the week. You know, Wednesdays happen to be very popular, Fridays and Saturdays happen to be very popular, but some of the other days are not so popular. And then there are seasons of the year that are more popular than others. And so we thought, well, let's create a system that is an incentive where you can add discounts. So for example, if you wanted to have an earlier morning, you get a discount. If you wanted to have a Monday, you get a discount. if you were going to be a non-profit 501 type of non-profit because there are multiple types. We'll call them community non-profits which could be condo associations, homeowners associations, chamber of commerce, all kinds of groups that are non-profit but it's not a 501 where there's a public support test. We would give a deeper discount to our local non-profits as well as the community non-profit And if you were to sign up for multiple events in advance, you get another discount. So this way we're trying to encourage what I call the super users, people that are out there using it a lot who can do some advanced planning. You can get multiple discounts on discounts on discounts and get a very good rate. If you're a one time commercial user, you're gonna pay the rack rate. Next slide please. We're going to be looking at how we market this. And it's a rather complicated system to think about. So what we have done is in our employee group, we're going to have what we call event consultants. And they're going to help people decide what's best for their activity. And I've always been a, well, I'm an anti-proponent. It always aggravates me. when I go into someplace and I want to get something, and they say, what do you want? And I've said, well, I'm not sure what I can want, and I'm not even sure what I should want. I want that person on the other side then to help them identify what is the outcome that they're looking for, and then we'll, in a concierge way, partner them or pair them up with the right food beverage services, with the right amenities, with the right AV packages, and so that it all happens in one place. So that we can guide somebody to help them ask the questions they don't even know they should be asking. So this is also leading us to have to rely very heavily on technology. So we have contracted with a very sophisticated reservation system that will allow us to deal with these multiple rates, multiple discounts, and so that we can bring somebody through. Either they can buy it online or they can start a request online and then get paired up with a human in support. They can come onto the site and do it. They can do it all remotely and we can also do it by televideo. So we're going to be relying on technology quite a lot. Also in our marketing, we're going to be putting together an eight-channel marketing program that's going to be a combination of digital and print. And it is going to do something that I'm not sure happens just quite yet. I still think that the system that allows somebody to rent at the... at the facility is more find it and tell us what you want and we'll sign you up, whereas we want to promote outcomes and so that people can see here's what you can do here at the community center. We also plan to have an open house and invite nonprofits in the area so that they can understand what's there and how it can be done. The marketing structure, we plan on probably spending 500% more than the marketing budget currently for the community center. And that's all then to drive this idea of how do we activate or reactivate the unused portions of the facility and the unused times because once the time has come and gone, that inventory evaporates. So our idea is to, instead of looking at it as let's just go in and solve the deficit problem because it's running over a $300,000 deficit, how do you solve that by just doubling all the prices? We'll know that means all the demand would go away. So that's what led us to the idea of how do we then fill in the blank spots. The other thing that we've done on marketing and sales is we think that we can bring in regional conferences or off sites for businesses. And we did a market study of all the available rooms because it's very much driven by, if it's an overnight event, how much is available. And so we think that we can, depending on how much advanced planning you have, do between 500 and 700 people. in a conference, and we're going to be promoting to industry groups and to large corporations. If you want to do a corporate offsite, we can do everything from having your plenary sessions, have an entertainment component, have a banquet for everyone, breakout rooms, and as well as coordinating local transportation housing people in all the different hotels. So we've looked at what kind of capture rates we can do to gather those. Next please. This is I think one of our secret weapons is community involvement. We've already put together a focus on community team. We've contacted a number of nonprofits and leaders in the community, and we've asked them to work with us to help understand what could we do better to make the community center available to people, let people know what they could do there, how to do it. what needs are out there that we're not meeting. And we plan on convening this group at least twice a year just to listen. And it may be at the community center or we might have them be able to come in by video at the same time. We've talked about the discount tiers. We are also looking at providing a good set of instructions. We call it a welcome kit. So when you're going to be using the facilities, this is going to tell you here's what's going to happen and here's what your deal is and how the payments get made and what you need to do ahead of time to get set up and et cetera, et cetera. Next slide, please. We did some revenue trajectory work. Fiscal year 24 you see on here, that's the last year we had the financials for. And so that was the total revenue for that year. We think that we can by pushing people with this discount system to buy in some of the non-peak seasons or encouraging people to do many bookings in advance because you can qualify for an additional discount. that we can lift the occupancy from somewhere in the 13 to 15% range to 28% over five years. And that's, I was kind of shocked to look at, you know, how many rooms are empty at any given time. So we think that we can increase the revenue through this occupancy lift. And you've already heard a little bit about how we can then provide a discount on additional management fee years as a contracted public benefit. We can't call it profit sharing because then that could ruin our nonprofit status. But we've been very careful in the language in the contract so that you get the benefit, it's a contracted public benefit.

Next slide, please.

This is a demonstration of the variable pricing strategy.

This just takes the ABCD plus the stage.

That's basically the ballroom, you know, where you have the dividable room. So if you had that whole room, we applied different pricing strategies to it. And you'll see there are three bars. The green one to the right would be according to the current rate card. And you'll see that the first one and the second one are the same because they only have the one tier. And so that's the same. Then the one in blue is if you are taking advantage of all the discounts. So you can see then we have significantly been able to reduce the cost to a nonprofit And we've been able to reduce the cost to a commercial user and to the nonprofit community user.

If they're a constant user and they get to take advantage of all the discounts.

If you didn't get to take advantage of all the discounts, then you've got the orange bar. And you can see then that if you were a one-time user, you'd be paying rack rate, which is slightly more in the middle tier. It's still less in the nonprofit. That's in the 501c3 nonprofit status. And even greater if you are a one-time commercial user. So again, the commercial users, I call them the super users, we think that we can get them to commit to a lot of dates and even pay a little bit less than they're paying now. And the one-time user that comes in is going to be paying the full rack rate. Next slide, please. We've talked about the $280,000 a year management fee, the 50-50 allocation, the tiered subsidies. So let's go to the next slide. We have talked about the investment that we plan to make back into the building. There are several things, and we've been talking with staff about some of the ideas of improvement. We think that we can refresh the lobby. We would like to go to a lot more digital signage. We're designing a digital information kiosk. so somebody can come in and learn about what's going on in Venice and on the cultural campus. We're also very keen on branding that all together so that people think of the campus as a place where there's the library and the art center and the old Betsy Museum and the historical archives and the community center and even expanding it to include Blalock Park. We think that there's a lot of activity that we can do that combines outdoor activity with indoor activity using the pavilion gazebo over there. And I know that city staff has some really great plans in terms of on street parking and perhaps routing crosswalks across. So we want to think in terms of all of that together as a city amenity. Next please. And that's the end of it. So that's cut down from the three hours to what did we do? 12 minutes.

Any questions from council members? We'll start with Mr. Smith.

More than a question, I just want to tell you how impressed I am with you and how proud I will be if we partner with you. BPAC has such a positive community standing already. The ideas you have put out there make a song come into my head, which is the words of which are, I'm so excited I just can't hide it. And it's like this fabulous, you're gonna turn this into a real community center, because it hasn't really been one. And those shoulder ideas, all that. And I congratulate the staff for working with you and coming up with this whole thing. And... The marketing budget of 500%, that's just stunning. It's going to be something that the community loves. They already love you, now help them love us too, okay? So thank you so much for that.

We are enormously excited about the opportunity. Mr. Weed?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. A few different things on this person will think you said before that there would be required city approval all past 10PM I'm just curious what would be the mechanism for that that the vet coordinator city or who would be handling now.

So if the manager needs to go past 10 p.m. for, say, a wedding or something like that, they just need to provide us advance notice that they intend to go beyond 10 p.m., and it would probably be, you know, either probably public works that would receive communication from the manager, and we'd socialize that here amongst city staff and give a yes or no, depending upon the details of the event.

I thank you on this one is that routine city meetings would be included. And then you stated on routines. I'm just kind of curious. Would that was his routine. I'm in more of the airport 5 year plan meetings. It's the word routine is kind of threw me off because routine sounds like a regular schedule thing. We have a lot of special exceptions. This would just be typical city requests. I guess maybe instead of routine.

Well, we know a lot of the events that we have ahead of time that we expect to hold at the BCC, so I don't think it would be a huge lift for staff to provide a list in advance notice to the manager so that they would block those dates off for city use. We just have to know enough in advance to not then give that date to someone else.

we are tremendously encouraging that type of meeting or if you want to have public involvement that's exactly what we see for the community center so we want as much of that to happen as possible another question i had um i know you talked a lot about the facility i'm curious about the parking areas and the yard care who would be taking care of that

So the parking area is, again, no exclusive use of the parking area for event holders. And we can rope up to 15 parking spots for use for the museum. The event holder can request to use either the north lot or the south lot, but not both at the same time.

But if you're talking about maintenance, paving restriping the bumpers and so forth in the contract were bifurcated they would take care of those things as well as the landscaping although we would go out every day and do the janitorial type things cleaning up the debris and so forth so public works would be taking over the yard care as a neighbor i will echo your response i am enormously excited about that and i know that ricky is too now that's great I can just tell you they are very, very pleased to be able to, you know, we've kind of taken the old Betsy Museum and said, that's the standard. You know, because to have a premier event, that's another thing that we talked about a lot from day one. We, in fact, did some digital renderings of, you know, how nice it would look. And we've actually made some suggestions that some of the grass maybe doesn't need to be there. It could be a xeriscape. project for example like we did at the Arboretum where people could sponsor plants have an information kiosk you know and this is what your yard could look like with zero maintenance because you know we know with grass you just got to keep pouring water on it and so we think that there are some ideas about making it really look cool and sustainable and that was one of the ideas as well as we've we've looked at one of the areas where grass is having a hard time growing We're going to suggest putting in a concrete pad and some steel anchoring to work with the VABBI art project. So it would be a place where you could have a large scale piece of art out in front of the facility that was nice up lighting, that was on a rotation. I've actually been working with that project as well, looking at cities that have traveling art that spends a year in a city and then it moves on. I think there are some things that we can do that will reduce the maintenance cost as well as elevate the appearance. And we are all going to be working toward that because we want to have more premier events.

It's hard to have a premier event when your guests are stepping over dead plants and wandering through sand spurs. I'm very excited about that.

I've given the example, the building looks really nice. The inside looks nice. I said it's like having a new suit but dirty shoes.

Thank you. Ms. Frank?

Thank you. I am just thrilled with the agreement that's in front of us today. I think back to 10 years ago before y'all took over the Performing Arts Center at the high school. And while it was satisfactory and doing all of the basic things it needed to do, to use the word that was just highlighted, y'all elevated it in the past decade to be a premier destination for events. And so I can only dream about 10 years from now what the community center will look like under y'all's hard work. So I'm grateful for that. one quick point of clarification in the city's presentation it said the manager will provide quarterly financial reports to the city but then in the manager's presentation it says monthly financials with budget versus actual can you commit to absolutely you know it is our commitment

monthly reports, not only of financial, but some additional breakdown. Who's been using it? What types of groups have been using it? At what time of day have they been using it? As well as, I think you heard before, the walkthrough. We have a long checklist that you're going to go through and take a look at things. We, in fact, hired a company to do an evaluation of the physical plant just so that we knew exactly what we would be contending with. But we're going to... I have a real... hot button about things that are broken or smudged or in any way defaced. We really want to move toward when you have an experience there, you're not going to be able to talk about the things that were not nice. You're only going to be talking about the things that were really nice.

And one other clarification, you know, historically there's been a lot of food and beverage vendors who've gone in and out based on who rented the space. What do you see moving forward when it comes to food and beverage vendors?

Great question. That's one of the areas that I felt most strongly about. In our proposal, we talked about a curated food and beverage program where we have already been interviewing and really focused on local companies looking at what their menus are and talking to them about what their biggest challenges were. One of the things that they absolutely love to do is to cater a job. What they hate to do is to talk to somebody who wants to have something but they don't know what. and you gotta find a time to meet with the owner or the catering manager, and that's always a hassle. We wanna bring all that down so that we know all their menus, all their costs, and match the best with the event, what you're looking for in terms of your successful outcome. And so that our event concierge is gonna take over and take that off the plate of those, other food and beverage suppliers. And we want to work with a lot of them. And so we've been in talks with many companies and many more to go. And if we can bring that into, onto our side of the equation, we think it solves a problem for them. And it makes it so that the person that's sponsoring the event gets exactly what they want. We also have some ideas that we want to talk to event sponsors. For example, having let's say you're going to do a concert, you could have a food and beverage area in the back with reserved tables that would have wait service. And we think that the food and beverage operations there, as I look at them, they've never been looked at as a way to generate revenue. They've really just been kind of looked at as a way to provide something for the people that are there. We're going to make sure that Every food and beverage operation supplies some money that sticks onto the community center. So there's gonna be more of it, and we're gonna be producing, as I said before, dinner with entertainment. And that money is gonna stick on the community center, since we don't have shareholders or anybody that we have to pay.

Great, thank you.

Mr. Weed?

Second bite of the apple. I wonder if you could do me a favor. We have seven people in here been incredibly patient today and I would just love to meet them and find out their involvement is if you would be allowed would allow that.

I would love that they have been so patient and we've been sitting here since one o'clock and we have members of our board if you'd stand please the members of the board. Peter Fazio, my wife and co-founder Bonnie Hartley, Joy Satterly, and Bea Holt. And all of our board members are community. And then we have staff members, John DeVrie, who has now joined us as director of development. and Eli and Aaron, who have just been with us since pretty much almost the beginning. And Eli is the one, he raised his hand earlier, was an apprentice. We also give fellowship awards to the top apprentices so that they can continue their education. He got the award, went to university, came back. And he's a lifelong Venice native. and is part of our community outreach. Erin is in the direction of our educational programs, and she has done a phenomenal job with our apprentices, getting people certifications. And we have just an incredible apprentice core. And I can't say enough about the team that we've assembled.

No, you've got to turn your microphone on and then you can.

Mayor, I would move to approve the agreement with the Venice Institute for Performing Arts Center Management for management of the Venice Community Center and authorize you to execute the agreement.

For the record, before I acknowledge Vice Mayor Bolt's second, I'm going to acknowledge there's no audience participation, Madam Clerk.

That's not correct. Mr. Fazio had signed up for this topic as well. All right. Fantastic.

So we have a motion properly seconded by Vice Mayor Bolt. So we'll move to council discussion. Is there any discussion? Okay. Madam Clerk, if you'll make us ready for an electronic vote. Council members, when your lights are flashing, you can indicate your vote. And you can tally and display. Passes unanimously. All right. We are on to Charter Officer Reports. We'll start with Madam Attorney.

I think I'll spare you today.

Madam Clerk.

No report.

Mr. City Manager.

The only thing I'll say is we're going to come back to you with the workshop date. So we'll work on that and the clerk will be in touch with you on dates. We're looking at potentially July 17th.

Okay, I was going to do that. So we're not there yet?

I haven't finalized it with the chief, but the 17th is the date that we were leaning towards.

I was left with either July 14th in the regular council meeting in addition to that or July 17th at...

9 a.m. Do you want to try to call them while I go through the rest of the reports.

That'd be great.

Okay. All right. Thank you. We'll go on to Councilmember Smith.

Very quickly. Mayor, I'm not sure we have acknowledged from this position yet the loss of former City Councilmember Ernie Zavodnik, West Virginia boy, one degrees from Notre Dame, Notre Dame Law School, moved here in 2003, served on the Venice City Council. He and his wife Helen, four boys, they're in our thoughts. They're having a memorial for him on July 20th at Epiphany Cathedral. He left us at age 87, but Ernie Zavodnik.

Can you give me the date again?

July 20th at Epiphany Cathedral is the memorial. 20th.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you for that, Council Member Smith. Mr. Weed. Nothing. Council Member Frank.

To clarify, the additional budget workshop, I mean, the additional workshop that you're speaking of, I thought that was scheduled on July 8th with the budget workshop. This is a new date?

So we had discussed July 8th, but I think the consultant wasn't available. Oh, okay. So that's why we had to do a different date. Got it. And we're gonna wait until the end of the reports to get the final drum roll on whether or not we have that date.

Got it.

Okay.

Let's go with Councilmember Howard. Nothing to report. And Vice Mayor Vol.

Nothing for you today.

And I will ask City Manager Clinch, do we have an answer on the date?

All I have at this point, I haven't been able to get ahold of the chief. I tried 911, but he didn't pick up, but no. All I have at this point is that the consultant would be available on the 17th or the following week, the 20th, the 21st or the 22nd.

I would lean away from when we already have a council scheduled break. So let's let you guys communicate independently with council once we know about the 14th. And if that is an option, then great. And if not, then we'll just default to the 17th.

Sure. Is that your preference then would be the 14th and then the 17th as a backup?

When you look at the agenda for that day, I looked at it with the clerk, and it looks like we have a very, I would say, knock on wood, brief morning, then an executive session, so the afternoon should be available. I would suggest we do a half day whenever we did it, so I would think that would be enough, unless there's somebody on council that disagrees.

That sounds great.

OK. So my goal would be to stay all in that day and get it done. But obviously, if the consultant can't be here, then we would yield to the 17th, I think is what you said.

That's perfect. OK. We'll get back to you.

OK. And then I yield on my report. So we'll move to audience participation.

There are no further speakers.

Wonderful. Then we are adjourned at 613.