City Council - Regular Meeting

I only get to do it a few more times. All right, Madam Clerk, let's go ahead and call to order and do a roll call, please.

Mr. Engelke. Here. Mrs. Frank. Here. Mr. Howard.

Here.

Mr. Smith. Here. Mr. Weed.

Here.

Vice Mayor Bolt. Here. Mayor Pechota.

I'm here. We will stand for the invocation and today if Mr. Humes, could you lead us in the pledge when we get to that point? Sure.

Thank you.

Our Father, we thank you for another full day of opportunity as well as responsibility. It is with gratefulness that we accept the task before us. We ask you to bestow your blessings on all who live in, work for, or visit our beautiful city. Amen.

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

All right, we've got a fun morning. So we will get started with swearing-ins. We're going to bring down Police Officer Mary Wood and the Chief, and we'll swear you in.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So we're going to have a couple of swearing-ins today. And first, we start out with taking the oath of office. Captain White, why don't you come on down as well? The oath of office is, of course, a promise to the community taken publicly to uphold the Constitution and uphold the laws of the state of florida and of course to serve the community with integrity and then we're going to have a pinning of the badge and that typically that's kind of like a welcoming to the profession but in this case it's a continuation of the profession for both of these individuals and also it's a reminder every time you look at your badge you remember who pinned it on and then the promise that you made today and we include family members in this process because of course no officer serves alone their family is always with them they were with the officer in the field and of course the family has the officer in their heart as they're serving through all the good times and the bad times so it's very important and special moment for all of us it's mary have you come up to the center I, Mary Wood, do solemnly swear that I will support, protect, and defend the Constitution and the Government of the United States and of the State of Florida, that I am duly qualified to hold my position under the Constitution of the State, and that I will well and faithfully

And I will will and faithfully perform the duties of police officer on which I am now about to enter. So help me God. Go ahead.

And I'd just like to add that Mary's been serving the Venice Police Department for several years as a criminalistic specialist, responding to crime scenes, conducting investigations, taking care of property and evidence, and of course, many other things. So it's good to have her back out on the road. She must have got the itch to get out there again, and we're glad to have her. So again, thank you very much. I might not bring down Tim Short and his family. And so Tim's being sworn in as a reserve officer today, which is a position we haven't had at the Venice Police Department since I've been here, and probably for a very, very long time. So Tim serves full time as our training manager, comes to us with a lot of years of experience, not only as a law enforcement officer in general, but also as a command officer. So I certainly value his experience and expertise. And if you don't know, a reserve officer essentially means volunteering of time. So he's going to, in addition to his full-time duty, occasionally throw on that uniform and be able to assist, maybe a holiday parade and things like that. So we're very grateful to have him. And now we'll do the swearing in.

Hi, Tim Short.

Do solemnly swear. Do solemnly swear.

Do solemnly swear. And I will support, protect, and defend the Constitution and government of the United States and of the state of Florida. That I am duly qualified to hold my position under the Constitution of the state.

And that I will well and faithfully perform the duties of a reserve police officer on which I am now about of which I am now about to enter.

So help me God.

Congratulations.

Thank you. Actually, I'm done. That's right.

Nobody's watching, it's okay. Congratulations, thank you all.

All right, if I can get the city manager to join me up front, Mr. Javier Vargas, if you'd come down.

All right.

Good morning, everyone. It is fantastic to be here and to look out over this crowd of our utility supporters here as we celebrate a storied career, nine years at the City of Venice as our utilities director. And it is my honor this morning to be able to recognize Mr. Javier Vargas on his retirement and an amazing nine years with the city of Venice. So Javier, it's difficult after all we've been through, good times and hard times to put it all into words in just a few minutes, but I'll do my best here. And we are certainly wishing you the best in your retirement. I've had the opportunity to work alongside Javier for these past nine years. as many of you have in this room, in a few different roles. And I can tell you, you know, if I had to summarize Javier's leadership style in just a couple quick words, I would say he really understood and believed in the importance of infrastructure. And he, more importantly, understood the value of people. And so starting with infrastructure, Javier has taken this department in this city to a new level when it comes to the maintenance, upkeep and proactive planning for our utilities department. Javier really understood that that strong infrastructure is tied directly to our public health and safety of our residents. And I think that's so important. He's done an aggressive capital campaign over these nine years, the most aggressive our utilities department has ever done. which has resulted in some incredible improvements to our system. We're not going to have time to list everything you and your team have accomplished today, but I do want to highlight a couple of really amazing accomplishments. Javier and his team have worked to replace old cast iron and asbestos lines throughout the city, lines that probably are 100 years old. We could celebrate the centennial with them. They are now out of service and moved to the front of properties where they're safer and easier to access. He restored our leaky old clay sewer lines throughout the city, reducing infiltration and inflow that creates better environmental conditions and more efficiency for our plants. He's done significant upgrades to our potable water plant and our wastewater treatment plant throughout the years, not only for efficiency purposes, but to make sure we have the capacity to serve the demands of this city into the future. He and his team converted almost all of our old septic systems throughout the city onto central sewer for protection of the environment. He also ensured the protection of our residents by installing a second force main underneath I-75 and, just recently, a second force main under the Intracoastal Waterway. Javier also had the challenge of dealing with some very aggressive growth in our northeast quadrant. And that's really tough from an infrastructure standpoint. But through some great strategic planning and working with the private sector, we've been able to provide water and sewer to that area of the city into the future. He also led the installation of a new potable water booster station to be sure that we have clean drinking water for that side of the city into the future. I also want to note that these accomplishments were only made possible through Javier's great strategic visioning and setting a fair and reasonable utility rate into the future. He also aggressively pursued outside funding, which is so important. Millions of dollars of state, federal, and bond funding has come through his department, which is real savings for our residents. So, you know, Javier, your commitment to these pipes and pumps and treatment plants, it's a whole lot more than that. It's really about the residents that we serve, keeping them safe and providing them the service that they deserve every day. But getting to the more important piece, Javier really valued and invested in his people. And I think that's demonstrated here today. He built a department where employees know that they're valued, that family comes first, There's trust, integrity, and respect. He created a culture that emphasizes teamwork and professionalism, and he supported all of our other departments. Utilities really touches every single department, and Javier was always available to help, whether it was a question from city council, a resident, or another department director. He really never lost sight of who we serve here in the community. It's our citizens. And he encouraged a culture of high, exceptional level customer service in every interaction that you all have out in the field. And he understood that our Venice residents depend on us for their health and their safety every single day. Javier, building a culture like this takes a lot of time, a lot of intentionality. I'm sure it's hard to pass it along, but I appreciate everything that you've done. And this legacy that you've laid is now in the hands of your successor back there, Mr. Rob Langenauer. So no pressure, Rob. Don't screw this up. It's really our honor, though, to recognize you today, to thank you for your service, and to wish you just the happiest, fun-filled, adventure-filled retirement, enjoying the three things you care about the most, which is your family, traveling the world, and rooting for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Congratulations, Javier, on your retirement, and thank you for your service.

Well James, thank you so much for your very kind words. I would like to take this opportunity to thank a lot of people. THAT HELPED ME THROUGH MY CAREER WITH THE CITY OF VENICE. FIRST OF ALL, MR. MAYOR, THESE PREVIOUS COUNCILS, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT. WITHOUT YOUR SUPPORT, WE HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO DO WHAT WE HAVE DONE IN THE LAST NINE YEARS. SO THANK YOU FOR THAT. The group of directors, the director's team, thank you guys for everything that you did. Thank you for your help, for your support. It was really easy to work with you for the nine and a half years that I've been here. There's some other special people that I would like to thank. First of all, Mr. Len Brumble, the former assistant city manager. He spoke very highly of the city of Venice, and that's what piqued my interest to apply and get this job. Another special person is our new Assistant City Manager, Mr. Omenheiser. Thank you, sir, and the last four or five months that you have been here, you have made a difference, and we thank you for that. Another special person is Mr. Ed Lavalle. He's not here today, but Ed. Thank you for making me feel comfortable since the first minute I stepped in your office. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your guidance and your leadership. You are a leader of leaders. To my family at home, you know, they put up with my staff for years and years. And for my special family here at work, has been a pleasure, guys, to work with you. I couldn't ask anything else from you. Every time I called, you answered. Thank you for allowing me to be part of the team and part of the family. Thank you very much.

All right, and if I could get Bill Haberther, if you could come forward.

If I could invite up Harry Klinkhammer and John Watson as well, come on up guys. from historical resources. I'll walk to the other side.

Give it a minute.

We'll do our photos first here. Give them a chance to clear out.

All right, we'll get started here. Well, it is our honor to welcome you this morning to Council Chambers, and it's really your presentation, but I just want to say on behalf of the city how thankful we are for this partnership. Venice Area Historical Society has been a great partner to the city for many years, and we had the honor this past year of celebrating our centennial together with an incredible gala over at the Venice Community Center. And it was actually Frank Wright at the time who I reached out to and asked to lead the charge on an exciting project which you all went above and beyond on. And I won't steal your thunder there, Bill, but I just wanted to say thank you. And we really appreciate this recognition today. Thank you.

Thank you, James. Good morning, everyone. I'd just like to introduce Bethany Berman and Gina Hilligross, two members of the Board of Directors and myself. Really, it was that invitation that allowed us, again, to work with the Venice Museum and Archives, and specifically John Watson and Harry Klinkhammer, to gather about a dozen historical images to present at the dinner. And the goal was it was going to be a fundraiser for the Historical Society. But after the success of that event, we really wanted to give back and we wanted to show that, you know, it's important to recognize other organizations, not just the Historical Society, and really be collaborative. So the board unanimously decided to donate the proceeds back from that fundraiser to the archives, and specifically we wanted it to go to the digitization of the newspapers that John is the curator of. So with that, if we could present a $5,000 check to that effort, to the city of Venice specifically for that project. So John, thank you very much, and you can't cash this one, so I'm gonna give you that one instead. All right, but thank you again for all your help. It really is an incredible asset to the community, and if you've ever gone on the website and just started looking through those historical documents and photographs, don't do it at 10 o'clock at night, because you'll be up for hours and hours and hours. Thank you again. We really appreciate it. And while I have the microphone, you know, I'm not giving it up. We also had, a couple of years ago, the Historical Society put together a program called Certificate of Distinction. And it was really to honor those businesses, organizations, and entities that are celebrating milestones. So obviously we know that the city has celebrated its centennial this year. The Depot is celebrating its centennial in March of 2027, so look for a big celebration there. But we just wanted to take this opportunity, Mr. Mayor, Mr. City Manager, to present you with a Certificate of Distinction for the Centennial of the City of Venice. So congratulations. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, sir. Thank you. One more time, please.

Okay, with that, we'll come back at, let's do 940. Okay, we are back and we're on to audience participation which will be limited to one hour. Speakers are not to address council members individually. Any person making personal, impertinent or slanderous remarks or who becomes disorderly may be barred from the meeting. This is an opportunity to provide the city council with your comments. City council will not respond to any questions or comments during this time period per the city code. A member of city staff will follow up with you if it's appropriate. Any documents shown during audience participation or part of the meeting must be given to the clerk for the record. All right, Madam Clerk, our first speaker.

Our first speaker is Steve Carr. He has five minutes.

Okay. Mr. Carr, good morning and welcome, sir.

Do you want to move that microphone in front of your face?

Good job.

Good morning, Mr. Mayor and city councilors. My name is Steve Carr. I'm the chairperson of the Central Venice Coalition. I'm here today to follow up and finish my comments from last week. I ran out of time, hopefully not today. But it's there regarding the maintenance of Curry Creek, the section that flows through the Sawgrass community. And over the past quite a few months, there's been two issues that have been constantly brought to us in terms of preventing, let's say, municipal maintenance of that area. We think we've addressed both of them, or tried to address both of them, and today is a summary review of that. The first issue was that the Sagres HOA in the plat has indicated that under the private section that the Sagres HOA is responsible for that particular maintenance of the crick. However, Let me just make sure we go here. However, also in that, on the second page of the plat is a public statement which indicates that the city of Venice is responsible for public drainage easements. And when you look at the plat in a different page, I believe it's page nine. And Curry Creek itself is labeled as public drainage easement and public maintenance easement. So given that it's listed in the private area of the Platte and also in the public area of the Platte, it seems to us that there is a discrepancy there between the two. You can't be both at the same time. Upon further investigation of the Platte, it's clear that Blackburn Canal is also labeled the same as Curry Creek. It's a public drainage easement. public maintenance easement. So we know that historically the city of Venice has maintained the section of Blackburn Canal. So it's reasonable, we believe, to conclude that an error was made at the time the plat was developed in the private section where Curry Creek should have been included in the public section, not in the private section. It should be maintained similar to Blackburn Canal. The second issue has always been whether a municipality can go into private property or use public funds to address private property issues. And in the city of Venice floodplain management, There are two goals or references to this topic. The first one is most beneficial and cost effective approach to reduce damage due to flood is to prevent or reduce the risk before the event happens. In other words, to be proactive in terms of dealing with possible flooding issues and mitigate those issues before the flood. the second one is that it is possible to utilizing a public funding is allowed for projects on private property where the benefits to the community exceed the cost of the project and in this case we do think that that may be the case because uh and needed and it is relevant because curry creek is not just uh the main but it's the only storm water drainage channel carrying mayaka river water and overflow storm water away from the central venice area and some of the northeast venice area communities and businesses its maintenance is of critical importance to all the property owners the areas the roads all along the long path of curry creek it is overall a community at large concern The potential for damage of flooding from a severe storm or storm surge could be massive and certainly the cost to provide proactive maintenance in the first place would be substantially less than the cost for cleanup repairs or replacement of damaged property and structures. Is the potential for massive damage real? Is it a distinct possibility? Well, we can just look close to home, look at the Golden Beach area from past storms, look also at the Philippi Creek area up in Sarasota. It can happen. And given the severe weather that has happened and is now happening in the country, it's reasonable to conclude that damaging storms will continue to take place. So I'm not here today to speak on just behalf of Sawgrass. I'm here because central Venice and some of northeast Venice need a clear, free-flowing, unobstructed Curry Creek for drainage and especially stormwater removal. While the city can't guarantee that certain actions will prevent flooding Curry Creek, you can take action to create conditions that will ensure the flow of water is uninterrupted and moving away as best as possible from property homes and businesses. City administration also has the information that we've provided to council. I know they're working currently on considering options for resolution to the situation. It's our request that city council encourage city administration to address the problem with a reasonable, proactive, cost-effective resolution such as maintaining Curry Creek in the same manner as Blackburn Canal. Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

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

The next speaker is Gregory Pernaud. He has two minutes.

Okay. Good morning, Sir, and welcome. You were close on that.

Pernot. Pernot?

Oh, Pernot, okay. Thank you for letting me know.

Well, my name is Gregory Pernot, and I'm an area resident. I'm not a city resident. And I'd like to bring attention to the flock camera problem we have associated, or problems associated with these flock cameras that I've seen recently put up. So over the past week, I observed several new camera installations around Venice. And as a resident, I wanted to understand the legal authority of how they were placed. There was a July 2nd article written by the American Civil Liberties Union that as it may but documenting instances which flock safety allegedly made false or misleading statements to sell their product to city councils police departments and other groups and it's very well documented in many cases in this article and um i kind of like to make sure or at least understand that venice uh is using some independent evaluations rather than listening to just perhaps the flock safety. And I would respectfully ask the council to publish perhaps in plain language several things. The legal authority for these installations, where the cameras are located, as you know, to the extent permitted by law, and how long the collected data is retained. which agencies may access or receive that information, and what auditing exists to prevent misuse. What evidence demonstrates that these systems improve public safety here in Venice? There's been many places around the country where they've claimed that, oh, the crime went down 9%, well, the national crime's been down 10%. So, I mean, it's not always a clear-cut situation that they do improve safety. Citizens should understand how the... Thank you for your comment, sir.

Okay. Appreciate your time. Madam Clerk, any other speakers?

That was it.

Okay. All right. With that, we will move on to the consent section of the agenda. All matters listed under the consent section are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion unless an item is removed by a council member. There will be no separate discussion of these items. If discussion is desired by a council member, the item or items will be considered and voted upon at the end of the consent section. Is there any member of council that'd like to pull anything from the consent section? Mayor, I do. Mr. Smith?

I'd like to pull item 26-0683 from the consent section.

All right, 26-0683. Any other items by any other council member? All right, with that, I'll entertain a motion for the item that's left.

Mr. Mayor.

Mr. Vice Mayor.

I move to approve items on the consent section with the exception of 26-0683. Second.

Seconded by Mr. Howard. All in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Passes unanimously. We will move on to item number 26-0683. Mr. Smith.

Thank you, Mayor. This sounds like an unimportant item, simply an amendment to a lease. But I view it as our response to community concerns about airport operations. And I wanted to give our staff the chance to announce it and take a bow. Hopefully Mr. Dumas or Mr. Clinch could address that.

Well, I'll just give a brief summary on what's in there, and thank you for your comments. So this was based on the meeting that our airport director, Mr. Dumas, myself, our assistant city attorney, and our assistant city manager had with Skyport Aviation, in which we talked about the community concerns. We shared with them the real challenges that have been created by some of their operating procedures. and they voluntarily agreed to enter into this lease amendment to address two specific items. The first being a requirement to have operating GPUs on site to offer them to aircraft that are idling longer than 15 minutes. and to have trained personnel available to do so. And then the second item in the lease amendment is to adjust their fuel flowage fee based on a market appraisal effective November 1st of this year. So we are appreciative of their willingness to make these adjustments. I think it does show that they are listening and want to be good partners with the city and the surrounding community into the future. Thank you.

All right, with that, I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Mayor.

Mr. Smith. I would move to approve the Third Amendment to the Restated Lease Agreement with Skyport Holdings, Venice, LLC.

Second.

Seconded by Mr. Howard. All in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Passes unanimously. On to public hearings. We've got the Property Purchase and Sale Agreement 26-0684. And this is a public hearing. Public hearing is now open. This is to consider the purchase of a property located at 234 Grove Street, parcel ID number 0408-08-0044 from Warfield Grove LLC for purchase price of $245,000. Madam Clerk, have we received any written communication?

No.

Okay. And if Mr. City Manager, you'd like to introduce the topic briefly.

Thank you, Mayor. This is a parcel that's directly adjacent to the parcel that was donated to the city this past December. So we are in ownership of that piece, and this is the contiguous piece that would connect to create the corridor for the future John Nolan Street, which is going to be talked about in the seaboard presentation later this afternoon. We work directly with the owner to negotiate the purchase price. It is, as I explained in the memo, a little bit convoluted, mainly because we set the purchase price based on the appraisal of both properties, which is slightly higher than the individual appraisal that's in your packet. Um, so it will require a, a super majority vote today for approval. Just want to point that out. Um, we believe it is a, a very strategic purchase in terms of, uh, getting the, uh, future seaboard master plan implemented. And we appreciate the owner's willingness to donate the other piece to us. Thank you.

Any questions from council for the city manager? Okay. Seeing none. Madam clerk, do you have anybody signed up to speak on this item?

No.

With that, the public hearing is now closed. And I'll entertain a motion.

Mr. Mayor.

Mr. Howard.

I move to approve item 26-0684.

Seconded by Vice Mayor Bolt. Any council discussion? 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. Madam Clerk, you can tally and display the vote. Passes unanimously. Now onto ordinances first reading, ordinance number 2026-22. Public hearing is now open. And Madam Clerk, if you can read this ordinance by title only when you're ready, please.

An ordinance of the city of Venice, Florida amending the code of ordinances chapter 87 land development code by amending section 2.4.3 residential uses adding section 6.11 certified recovery residences and amending section 9.1 defined terms pursuant to text amendment petition number 26-22 AM to establish procedures for the review and approval of recovery residences and a process for request for reasonable accommodations from land use regulations, providing for repeal of all ordinances in conflict herewith, providing for severability, and providing an effective date.

And Madam Clerk, have we received any written communication?

No.

Okay, is there a staff presentation? All right.

Good morning. For the record, Nicole Tremblay, Senior Planner for the City of Venice. So this text amendment comes from the recent legislative session. This is something that's required of municipalities to adopt for certified recovery residences to make room for them in our code and to provide for reasonable accommodations. we will be establishing the procedure to review these to accept them to provide a determination and then if there are any reasonable accommodations requested how we would process those and if necessary even revoke them typically the reasonable accommodations we would expect to see would not be things that are regulated by the zoning code they'd be more applicable to Americans with Disabilities Act or the Fair Housing Act but there may be something in our zoning code that they need relief from and in that case we would have a procedure to do that so basically what we've needed to do to adjust our code to be compliant with this state law is to add recovery residences to our definition of group living as we feel this is a form of group living we removed an exclusion in the group living definition for halfway houses or social services halfway houses kind of an out-of-date term but this is a social service that would be provided there so we didn't want to exclude that And then we added a new section, 6.11, about recovery residences. So that includes everything they would need to have in their application, how they would ask for an accommodation and the timeframes and deadlines for when we would process those things and what kind of decision they would get back. And then finally, we've added some definitions to Section 9, our definition section, to make clear what we mean by these things, and these definitions are consistent with the Florida statutes. I can bring up the straight through underlying text. If you all have any specific questions about it, I'd be happy to answer those, but it really just reflects those things that I mentioned, adding to the definition, application process and contents, and then the findings for the reasonable accommodation.

Any questions from council? Thank you very much for the presentation. All right, Madam Clerk, do you have anybody signed up to speak?

No.

With that, I'll close the public hearing and I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Engelke.

I move that Ordinance Number 202622 be approved on the first reading and scheduled for final reading.

Seconded by Vice Mayor Bolt. Any council discussion? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, if you'll ready us for an electronic vote. Council members, when your lights are flashing, you may go ahead and indicate your vote. Madam Clerk, you can tally and display. Passes unanimously. All right, on to ordinance number 2026-23. Public hearing is now open. And Madam Clerk, when you're ready, you can go ahead and read this ordinance by title only, please.

An ordinance of the City of NS Florida amending the code of ordinances chapter 87 land development code by amending section 1.9.3 specific application requirements amending and renumbering section 1.10 preliminary plaque quasi judicial application amending section 3.11 building height section 3.12 block configuration requirements section 3.14 building placement requirements 3.19 accessory uses and structures section 3.5.2 except exempt signs section 3.6.1 off street parking tables 3.6.1 and 3.6.6 parking requirements by use section 3.6.5 design standards section 3.8.1 purposes and applicability section 3.8.3 fences and walls material and design standards section 3.8.4 height of fences and walls section 7.8.1 certificate of architectural compliance section 7.10.9 fences and walls and section 9.1 defined terms pursuant to text amendment petition number 25-12 am to resolve issues discovered through the implementation of the Land Development Code, providing for repeal of all ordinances in conflict herewith, providing for severability, and providing an effective date.

And Madam Clerk, do you have any written communication?

No.

Okay, and do we have a staff presentation?

okay thank you again for the record nicole trembley senior planner for the city of venice usually the easiest way is to just go through the list and the reasons and then if you have specific questions want to see details of the strike through language i can pull that up as we go or at the end so starting with section one there are different types of environmental requirements plans to be submitted based on the size of the property and what might have been there before so we just wanted to be more clear about that in this submittal requirements for a site plan and for a plat and this kind of lines up with the decision criteria wording change that you all saw recently as well For 1.10.1, we had to do a final plat change recently based on state law, and we accidentally dropped the .1 from the end of the section, so we're just adding that back. Then for Section 3, previously, so it references compatibility standards for a height exception. There are no height exception compatibility standards. When the code was being drafted, there were some different types of calculations and standards that were included, but throughout different iterations of the code, those went away. It was never adopted with those, and then this reference was just left in. No one really noticed that it was referring to nothing, so we're taking that out. cul-de-sac design right now there's no opportunity to have a design alternative for a cul-de-sac it has to be a circle but recently projects have been asking for a t-shaped turnaround because they have space constraints and that's what they need to be able to make their project work these have been acceptable to the fire marshal and we don't have a particular planning reason why we can't allow those so if they're okay with the fire marshal we feel they should be allowed to ask for it at least through the design alternative process for corner and through lots right now it says that front yard should be on a lesser street type really that should be driveways the front yard doesn't really matter what street type it's on it matters when you're pulling out into the driveway you want to be on the less busy street type For front yards and driveways, another one. Right now the code says that the entrance and the driveway have to be in the front yard, and there's really no reason for that. This applies not just to new development, but to existing properties, so it causes a lot of problems when people wanna make changes to their property and they don't already have it set up that way. We're removing a reference to variances for pools and front yards. You would still have to get a variance if you wanna pool in a front yard, it's kind of implicit that anything you can't meet, you would have to get a variance for, so there was no reason to mention it specifically here. Allowing three flagpoles per property. We've gotten several requests recently to have multiple flagpoles. And again, we don't have a planning principle that says they shouldn't be allowed to have that. So if that's what the demand is, we think that's fine to allow. Allowing non-advertising signs on private property. This is a common type of sign that we just didn't have in our code. This would be something like, no trespassing two-hour parking something that's just informational allowing temporary signs up to 90 days this is a new one since planning commission that I think came out of some discussion with the city directors this would allow for political campaign signs to be up throughout the campaign season limiting temporary sign placement to once per six months. Right now you can have 30 consecutive days, and it's kind of a loophole. You could just put it up for 30, take it down for one, put it up for 30, take it down for one. So this limits that, so once per six months. There were some incorrect references to alternative parking provisions and parking requirements by use, so we fixed those. We're adding rates, including minimums and maximums for bicycle parking and multifamily commercial and office development. So this would be primarily for new development. This kind of aligns with a lot of our comprehensive plan strategies about providing alternative modes of transportation, taking trips off the road, doing things to enhance environmental quality. So this is one way that we can encourage by requiring more bicycle parking, we can encourage that multimodal transportation. And then once we've got the minimums and maximums for the parking, we also need the design standards to make sure that they're usable, that they're safe for the riders, safe for pedestrians, they're visible so that they'll be used, and that they're secure from theft and sheltered from weather where appropriate. for fences we've got several changes um one is to allow design alternatives for height in residential districts we had this just in our historic and architecture code but really it should apply to any fence in a residential district if you wish to ask for a design alternative for fence height you could do that anywhere not just in architectural control districts We are adding a change to allow additional materials for safety purposes. So there are some uses, utilities, government uses, storage of large equipment that might need extra security. And right now there's no ability to have for example, barbed wire around a secured facility. We're adding that option. Allowing a design alternative to request no wildlife break, also for the type of property where security may be critical. If you are forced to allow a wildlife break, of course, then your security is no longer really there. This next change goes with all that, still allowing the three-strand barbed wire in certain situations. There's just a few different areas of the code where it talks about what you can do with your fences. So we had to make several changes there. Again, allowing the design alternative for fence height above six, but no higher than eight, which is what we had in the historic code. And we're just moving it over here to be more generalized. So that's all for section three. Section seven, removing the expiration date for certificates of architectural compliance. These had a pretty short date. Right now it's only one year and sometimes a property might get a CAC from the Historic and Architectural Board but then they need to go through site plan with Planning Commission. So by the time that year is up, they haven't even gotten site plan approval and that's really not their fault. They may have been working through the process and it just took longer than that. so unless they really need unless they've really changed something major we don't feel they need to expire in that short of a time frame and then removing the design alternative for fence height because we replaced it with the changes in section three And then for Section 9, we had some corrections. All the commercial use definitions had to be renumbered. Some of you may remember we used to split up retail by size, 65,000 square feet or larger, and then smaller. But that was removed, and then the definitions were never changed to reflect that. we added some things to the bicycle parking to Define long-term short-term and the size of a space and then Littoral Zone we added to implement the structures over water permits more effectively We took out some things, most of these have to do with definitions that are only used in Chapter 88, which we don't deal with in Planning and Zoning Department. So those are in Chapter 88, building has those, and we don't need them in this section. We also took out halfway house, because as you saw, we just removed the only instance of that with the certified recovery residences tax amendment. And then that retail sales and service single user, 65,000 or larger. and then finally there is a regulation we needed to add to the mechanical equipment definition to say that it cannot be permitted in front yards and that will help our permit reviewers it was never intended to be in front yards but they didn't really have anything to fall back on so that will give them that um does anyone have questions about the actual strike through underlying text that you would like to see or any of these reasons mr smith

Thank you, Mayor. First, congratulations on another deep dive into the code. It's quite a bit of work and we appreciate it. There are two things I wanted to ask about. The first is the section on temporary signs and exemption for political signs. We're giving 90 days for political signs. I remember the conversation we had here a couple of years ago about that. And I was concerned that I could only have up a political sign for 30 days when they usually run through the length of the campaign, which goes from mid-August until November 1 or November 3. But my recollection is that the city attorney told us we could not allow political signs to be treated differently than any other signs, and that they would have to follow this 30-day rule. So did something change? You said the Planning Commission challenged it, but I mean,

No, I think it was the city directors that just brought up the concern. So if you look at the text, it's just general standards for temporary signs. They shall meet the following criteria, displayed a maximum of 90 days. So that's not calling out political signs separately, which I think is probably what you heard from the city attorney. You can't dictate what the sign says, how it's treated based on the content. But if it's temporary, any temporary sign can be up for 90 days with this, and the primary use would probably be political.

So we remain consistent, but now instead of 30 days, all these signs can go for 90 days. That's correct, yes. All right, I like that.

Hold on one second. Madam Attorney, did you have anything to add?

No, Nicole covered it, thank you.

Just want to make sure we're not speaking for her since she's present. All right, go ahead.

Okay. And I know I was asked about that just recently by one of the current candidates in the information we give out. It says it's 30 days, so I'm sure the clerk's already all over that.

I'm all over it. All right. Thank you for that.

The other thing that caught my eye, and I'd just like you to help me better understand it, is the section, I can give you the number, but you find it faster than I can, talking about height exceptions.

and that they are not part of the review for compatibility.

And that didn't sound right to me. I'm sure you're saying it's not in that other section of the code, and I'm sure you're accurate in that, but height is an important part of compatibility to me. If I'm in the neighborhood and you're building something and I have to make a finding whether it's compatible, I mean, I want to know height. And so it sounded like you said height is not a factor in considering the compatibility of a project with its neighbors. So can you help me with that?

So the land use compatibility analysis that's required to be submitted with many petition types is still required for a height exception. So it is still part of the review criteria, you can still consider it in your decision, you can use those to make an approval or denial, all those, things do still apply. There was, in section four specifically, it's really just about the buffer types, perimeter buffers, and then maybe some special considerations, which you can also still use where they apply. And granting of height exceptions is listed there. So the special considerations where you could lower density intensity, building setbacks, setbacks, tiers, all those things, you still have those. The reference we're removing was to, I believe it was an actual table. I'm trying to remember, this was like in earlier drafts of the code before its adoption. There was a table with like a calculation for how many step backs you have to have per stories and the feed and like the length of the property and things like that. So we don't have that in section four, so there's nothing to reference there, but you still have the land use compatibility analysis, 1.2.C8 that comes with the application, and then all these special considerations in section four to base your decision on when you're reviewing a height exception.

Okay, thank you for that.

Sure.

So my question was gonna be reference the certificate of architectural compliance. Were you saying that we're not gonna have an expiration date at all?

Yes, that's what we've proposed, that unless they make a major change, then they would not need to go back. But it's up to council if you feel that's appropriate.

My biggest concern with that is if the standards should change and they have a complete blanket of 10, 15 years, not giving them a three-year or a five-year kind of time limit on that, leaves us in a position, I think, where it's indefinite. So if we change the rules and they still have that open certificate, then technically they comply. So what are your thoughts on doing something like three or five years and then they would have to come back?

Yeah, I don't think we would have a problem with that. Just making it a longer time frame rather than the one year. That would be fine.

Okay. Because I totally agree that if it's our control, we shouldn't penalize them for that. But we've seen some of these projects, they lag on for a long time and it's not our fault. So I'd like to still have a time limit on there for somebody to keep motivated.

Yeah, I think that would work just fine.

Does staff have a preference three over five?

I don't think so. Three. Okay.

All right. Three years is what I would propose then. Okay. Okay. Any other questions? All right.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time and your presentation. Very informative. Madam Clerk, do you have anybody signed up to speak?

No.

With that, I'll close the public hearing. And I'll move that ordinance number 2026-23 be approved on first reading and scheduled for final reading with the change of the certificate of architectural compliance being three years expiration date. Seconded by Vice Mayor Bolt. Any council discussion? All right, then with that, Madam Clerk, if you're ready for an electronic vote. Council members, when your lights are flashing, you can indicate your vote. And you can tally and display the vote. Passes unanimously. And let's go to ordinances final reading, ordinance number 2026-07. Public hearing is now open. Madam Clerk, when you're ready, you can go ahead and read this ordinance by title only, please.

An ordinance of the City of Venice, Florida, amending the Code of Ordinances, Chapter 88, Building Regulations, Section 6, Floodplain Management, by amending Section 6.2, Applicability, Section 6.3, Duties and Powers of the Floodplain Administrator, Section 6.6, Inspections, Section 6.9.2, Definitions, Section 6.10, Flood-Resistant Development, Replacing in its entirety section 6.11 administrative amendments to the Florida building code, building and deleting sections 6.12 technical amendments to the Florida building code, building, existing building and residential to ensure consistency with state and federal law. Providing for repeal of all ordinances in conflict herewith, providing for severability and providing an effective date.

And have we received any written communications since the last hearing? No. Okay. Is there an update from staff since the last hearing? There's not an update? Okay. Then with that, let's go ahead and, Madam Clerk, do you have any public comment?

No.

Any questions of counsel before I close the hearing? Okay, then I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing and entertain a motion.

Mr. Mayor.

Mr. Vice Mayor. I move that Ordinance 2026-07 be approved and adopted.

I'll second.

Seconded by Mr. Engelke. Any council discussion? 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. Madam Clerk, you can tally and display. Passes unanimously. On to ordinance number 2026-20. Public hearing is now open. Madam Clerk, if you can read this ordinance by title only when you're ready, please.

An ordinance of the City of Ennis, Florida, amending the Code of Ordinances, Chapter 88, Building Regulations, amending section 3.4, unsafe structures in its entirety, providing for appeal of all ordinances in conflict herewith, providing for severability, and providing an effective date.

Any communication since last hearing?

No.

All right. And is there an update from staff? Okay. Any questions from council before I move forward? Okay. Then Madam Clerk, do you have anybody signed up to speak? No. Public hearing is now closed. I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Howard? Move Ordinance 2026-20 be approved and adopted. Second. Seconded by Ms. Frank. Any council discussion? Seeing none, 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 Madam Clerk, you can tally and display. Passes unanimously. On to ordinance number 2026-21. Public hearing is now open. Madam Clerk, when you are ready, you can read this ordinance by title only, please.

An ordinance amending city of Venice ordinance number 2025 dash 32 as previously amended, which adopted the official budget of the city of Venice, Florida for the fiscal year beginning October 1st 2025 and ending September 30th 2026 by increasing the total revenue by 255,000 and total expenditures by 255,000 and providing an effective date.

Any written communications since last hearing? No. Any update from staff since last hearing? All right. Public comment, Madam Clerk? Anybody signed up?

No.

Public hearing is now closed. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Vice Mayor.

I move that Ordinance Number 2026-21 be approved and adopted.

Second by Mr. Weed. Any council discussion? Seeing none, 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. We'll move on to new business resolutions. Resolution number 2026-14. And Madam Clerk, when you are ready, you may go ahead and read this one by title only as well.

A resolution of the City of Venice, Florida accepting utilities and improvements from MHC Bay Indies LLC and accepting a one-year developer's maintenance bond and bill of sale and providing an effective date.

And do you have anybody signed up to speak for this one? No. Okay. I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Ingleke.

I move that resolution number 2026-14 be approved and adopted.

Seconded by Vice Mayor Bolt. Any council discussion? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, if you'll make us ready for an electronic vote. Council members, when your lights are flashing, you may indicate your vote. And Madam Clerk, you can tally and display. Passes unanimously. I wanna go ahead and take a break. We will come back at 10.35, and while we're breaking, if Mr. Frank would come up and get ready for the presentation, we'll be back at 10.35. okay so just to bring everybody up to speed real quick we're going to have some adjustments to the schedule for today we will do the presentation on the seaboard phase one technical plan and then after that's over we will shift the executive session up somewhere in the 11 o'clock 11 30 area and then we'll break for lunch and then come back to meet with the jones solutions group regarding the Police Department staffing study. So I just want to make everybody aware there are going to be some shifts to the schedule today, but moving right along. So without further ado, Mr. Frank, consultant with Dover, Cole and Partners on the Seaboard phase one technical plan. If you'd like to do some introductions, go right ahead.

Good afternoon, or morning, City Council. For the record, Roger Clark, Planning and Zoning Director. It's an exciting day here today. We're fortunate to have Josh Frank from Dover Coal and Partners, who you all are familiar with. Their company did our master plan for the seaboard area, and they've been working along with staff for the last several months on the technical plan for what we've kind of called phase one which is uh mainly focused on the property that is owned by the city in the seaboard area and i think that they have come up with a really a really good plan as to how this could develop and how it could move forward we're pretty excited about this area we've had a little bit of delay over there as far as But it looks like things are going to be moving forward here hopefully in the next 30 or so days to start some demolition in that area. So things are moving quickly. Very exciting. And with that, I will turn it over to Josh. I will say that at the end of this presentation, there are some considerations for you. that we feel could potentially be priorities for the plan. So if you were to approve the plan today and adopt it, some of those you might wanna look at and see if any of those you would wanna include with any motion. With that, I'll turn it over to Josh to present the plan to you.

Thank you, Roger, and thank you, Council, for having us again. This is probably, I think, maybe the third or fourth time we've gotten to present to you, and so we're always excited to come down to Venice and talk about John Nolan and the Seaboard District. Just to recap a little bit on last week's episode, we have been working since December, a little bit past our initial timeline for this project, and are essentially wrapping up the majority of the work that you'll see in the coming slides. That doesn't mean we're at the end of the contract. We have some time left. available for additional services should they become necessary. You'll see that down at the bottom in terms of revisions and development application review. So we're right at about the end of task three point six to three point seven. also just to you know refresh your memory when we first looked at the seaboard master plan we looked at all of seaboard including some areas around it so the full before and after looked at parts of venice avenue on the other side by the park we looked all the way down towards the the city limits towards the east and towards the south and then also started to think about the waterfront and how that plays a role with the urban forest and seaboard you know overall development the phase one focus area is really that as Roger mentioned intersection between you know the city owned property and seaboard Avenue and the new John Nolan Street which y'all approved the second parcel that would extend John Nolan Street earlier in the agenda, which is amazing, by the way. It doesn't always happen this quickly or this easily, so it's really fantastic that that has become available. so you know victor dover one of our founding principles often says we are in the before and after business we often draw and visualize change before it occurs so we can get that feedback immediately and so for us The way we think about this project is not as simple as most redevelopment projects where you sort of wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. We talked in the previous Seaboard Master Plan about the Hippocratic Oath of planning in this area is do no harm, right? This is a healthy business district and also has such great potential at the same time. So we wanna only add to Seaboard over time, not take away. That also will help create a sense of identity. So when we put graphics like this together, we start to think about the change over time. So obviously this is the existing conditions. We're looking at Seaboard Avenue running across the screen from left to right, the Intracoastal Waterway here and the foreground. So first thing I want to highlight is the city-owned property, which now includes both those red boxes. So our illustrators had a little forethought there. We took a guess and got it right that you would approve it today. But nonetheless, the city-owned property around Seaboard is super important and also is incredibly strategically assembled. So the first step we would recommend as part of this plan is including the new Nolan Street, which maybe for now only extends from Seaboard to Warfield. That does a couple things. One is it creates a lot of new edges for your property. Edges are where the value is created for redevelopment. It's where addresses are made. It's where storefronts can be located. It's where utilities can be managed. It's where ingress and egress can be managed. And so the more streets we have, the more edges we make, the more valuable the property becomes and the more leverage you have to use it to achieve your goals. So we think Nolan Street has the potential, by the way, of being the best new street in Southwest Florida, if not the entire state, if done well. And that's appropriate for perhaps the father of urban design in John Nolan. So we think really honoring that is a big thing to do. So that is sort of further enhanced, and this may change slower on your screens than mine, so forgive me, but with a new intersection at Seaboard. And so that allows us an opportunity to create a place not just for a crossing, but also for really making some of those important addresses as part of this redevelopment. So this is, I'll pause here and say one of, many different redevelopment scenarios that may happen in the you know, the multiverse of redevelopment. It assumes a few things that I'll talk about later on and what we can adjust those if necessary. But this is just one sort of hypothetical scenario. And in this scenario, the redevelopment is focused at the intersection of Seaboard and Nolan. And that's really important because one, you have full control over at least two sides or two and a half sides of that intersection. So you're creating your own sort of place in that regard, but also it takes away some of the unknowns that may exist with the marina and the shoreline that happens with the Army Corps eventually. That's a much potentially longer term decision that I don't think you necessarily want to put all your eggs into in terms of that basket. So an initial phase on one side of that intersection with seaboard and then hopefully soon thereafter completing that intersection with both sides. that can then continue with more redevelopment along the new Nolan Street. So you can really see, rather than sort of putting all of the energy onto Seaboard, you can actually take that investment of Nolan Street and capitalize it very quickly and really make a very sizable impact. This is, again, a development scenario that Could happen all at once, could happen in micro phases, so just keep that in mind. There are a few opportunities to sort of complete that on the Warfield side that eventually should you decide to extend Nolan Street all the way to Grove, you could essentially repeat that pattern and create more value at the intersection of Warfield and Nolan. and have essentially a very minimal redevelopment footprint in terms of existing businesses being displaced or existing buildings being torn down. So this is really filling up some of that elbow room and also creating more usable space by having Nolan Street. That's the really fundamental part of this plan. Then in the fullness of time, perhaps there's a market-driven reason or the Army Corps process works its way through to where the marina and the urban forest become something that is easily implementable or unlocked sooner than later. And so that's something that your first phases can really leverage into bringing online. From there, extending the Nolan Street to the waterfront via a public pedestrian promenade allows us to line existing buildings, allows us to bring some of that public-private partnership redevelopment onto that premier waterfront space, and really use the most value that you have in that land in as smart a way as you possibly can. finishing that edge along the urban forest. This is the most urban part of the urban forest that has a promenade, has a mix of uses, has residential as well as storefront. And then eventually there can be additional public projects like coming in and adding street trees to the rest of the Seaboard District for the first time, adding sidewalks, redeveloping the main blocks along Seaboard, in a way that reserves not just a parking lot day one, but also a future parking garage should it become necessary. And then that pattern can simply repeat up and down Seaboard and eventually we would love to see some of that move towards Venice Ave and complete other parts of the Seaboard master plan. So this is really that first spark that can ignite the rest of the redevelopment scenarios with the last slide being a continuation of that extension to the public realm along Spur Street. So this becomes the signature waterfront spot in this half of Seaboard. Now there's a few technical things that we think ought to be considered. One of the things that came up in the original master plan process was a lot of uncertainty around what the future holds for property owners in seaboard district we think it's really possibly advantageous to adopt a new seaboard code a new seaboard zoning district excuse me called seaboard core which essentially has much more mixed-use incentives and is much more I would say predictable for the folks who are in that core area than the rest of the seaboard improvement district which can grandfather in some of the industrial uses can be more lenient and continue to you know move at a market driven pace not necessarily a public private partnership driven pace. So that's one suggested revision. Another is looking at your code and starting to identify other really important primary streets within the district overall. So today it's just 41 and Seaboard. We think that not only the new Nolan Street but also Warfield, uh and Grove are also really important not just for with inside the district but to get to it from some of the neighborhoods surrounding it in fact we had in the original plan some intersection recommendations having new signalized crossings on Venice Ave on Grove and Warfield and as well on 41. So those are a few small tweaks. I want to go through as quickly as I can some of what we would expect to see out of this phase one in terms of how it might look and feel in a unit mix. So, for example, this is a perfect example quasi-industrial sort of maker space, you know, craft-oriented place that is really well suited for a couple different residential types. So row houses, for example, live-work units are something that are really great. It's an old thing found new again where the butcher lives above the butcher shop, that kind of thing. and also other forms of missing middle housing. That also translates to commercial space types, so adaptive reuse, traditional storefront retail, and so that's sort of the nuts and bolts of what is considered in this phase one. And just to give you some examples, you know, live work units, I mentioned are sort of really flexible in the work from home economy that we've got at the moment, but also create lights that are on at the ground floor during, you know, slower times. It's you've got the lawyer who's got their law firm on the ground floor and they're working there during the day. It doesn't have to have a cash register in it. It can be something that has a sign and looks like it's part of a historic fabric. There's a lot of really good examples. There's a project that we designed in Atlanta called Glenwood Park. Some of those live work units can be really posh. In fact, this is the lawyer's office on the corner. But two doors down is the piano teacher for the neighborhood. And so all the kids go and take their piano lessons in her ground floor, essentially studio, which is pretty neat. It makes a thriving neighborhood scene. That also extends to row houses. So those are something that we don't see a lot of historically in Florida. You know, our sort of industrial housing was usually casitas, something smaller, or, you know, single family homes built in the 40s and 50s. Row houses are a classic staple of some of the working class blue collar neighborhoods around the country. And we think Seaboard should have some. They're very simple to build also, by the way. and can be very affordable. So I want to talk briefly about street design. Seaboard, as a 70-foot right-of-way, we see that as, again, being a premier walkable, bikeable street. In fact, I think I've mentioned before to you that the southern side of Seaboard is actually uninterrupted by street intersections. three-way intersections along the the eastern curb line of seaboard that makes for like a world-class cycling condition uh for seaboard to be maybe one of the best bike streets in florida so um that's awesome we think that should be something that should take it be taken advantage of introducing street trees and sidewalks for the first time in seaboard's history introducing on-street parking in a formalized way that can also serve for stormwater needs. And so Seaboard has the ability to do a lot with as much space as you have in it. 70 foot's a little bit of a weird right-of-way number. For a typical street, it's usually about 60 to 65. John Nolan was kind of smart in leaving a little bit of elbow room, and I think we can really take advantage of that. And I'll talk a little bit, I think I've showed this before, just to give you a sense. Architecturally, we feel very strongly that this is not like the historic Venice Ave, this is not the northern Italian style architecture. Seaboard should have its own flavor, and the flavor should really be a little bit of everything, a little bit of industrial, a little bit of modern, always following the sort of basic principles of getting the building up to the street and up to the sidewalk and having a good ground floor, good signage, good awnings, good windows and proportions, things like that, but not necessarily so prescriptive that it has to be the same color of paint or the same roof materials or things like that. So having a little bit of an eclectic flair is something that could be really great for Seaport. um let's talk a little bit about nolan street and what that looks like again i said this has the chance to be one of the best streets in all of florida and i stand by that we are really excited by the idea of making a purposefully narrow purposefully slow and incredibly beautiful street that is nolan street it is the main connection to the waterfront and the plan so it ought to be the kind of place where you know you can shut down a block and have a block party or you know it's funny but in boston if you've ever been to commonwealth avenue it's so beautiful there are weddings that take place on the street and in this median of commonwealth in the park it should be a street that's worthy of that sort of beloved status So at 57 foot right of way, there's a couple different sections to show you what that looks like. And then from the ground, again, we see this as being a really great place for a sprinkling of small businesses and restaurants and small breweries, but also residential stoops and porches and awnings and balconies and things like that. So this is our latest rendering to show you what that might look like. And then again, terminating towards the, in the distance here, if you can see my cursor, towards the plaza that gets you towards the waterfront. And I've joked, I told we'll have a statue of Roger on horseback, sort of in the middle of that. So that way you can see it from afar. don't hold me to that so just very quickly to show you that we aren't just making this up we work about half the time for the public and then half the time for private developers and so we have a really keen sense of what is working in the market right now what doesn't and so we are always counting and sort of putting real numbers to this as we draw this should mention we never work for public and private at the same place at the same time So, for example, this first block, we've made some assumptions around square footage, around parking. Same with the second block, which is the bigger of the two south of Nolan, with that parking reserve that could eventually become a structured parking garage should it be necessary. And then block three, which gets into some of the more larger square footage commercial uses. And so just to summarize all of that, you'll see some of the numbers along the bottom. I will mention that this is a maybe midline assumption around non-residential square footage, We're sort of in the great American retail apocalypse at the moment, so non-residential commercial units are really tricky to figure out right now. But what we know is you should at least think about having some at the intersection of Seaboard to hold that intersection to make it active and vibrant, potentially at the intersection at Warfield and then along the waterfront. So it's much more difficult to bring that back into a building than it is if you start thinking about it from day one. And last but not least, just to show some of the quality of what we think this place could be, we had another rendering made about a week or so ago, just to show how incredible not just the redevelopment potential could be, but the public realm potential could be. This is a place where, you know, the urban forest has the rookery island, has the swing barge, has the sort of urban promenade, but also the marina, the ability to have a softer edge and improve water quality to see birds, you know, migrating to and through the area, but also to be that special place where when the Venice High School baseball team wins the state championship, you know, this is where the celebration is held and the parade is held and fireworks can happen from here and you maybe, you know, open the open the bridge up and light it up and do all kinds of amazing things so this becomes a really special civic place as well so the last slide is our summary of what we're calling our key project principles this is what roger mentioned as some of the things that we see as fundamental to achieving what the visuals are are showing um so nolan street number one you know making that uh investment in order to maximize the value of the property Making sure that all the all the parking is screened and that this is a place that feels pedestrian from day one. Seaboard Avenue from Camion to Spur is the part of Seaboard that should really be redesigned first. It's that important. Allowing and encouraging a wider variety of housing types and sizes. That strategic ground floor retail activation at those intersections. Coordinating still with the WCIND and the Army Corps for the marina. Starting that conversation now. It's like the planting a tree. The best time to plant a tree was yesterday. So having that conversation, keeping that moving is good because sometimes that can be a cumbersome process. Not necessarily leaning into the VHP architectural style. Having a small tweak to the code in order to make that more seamless. And then expanding and enhancing the urban forests waterfront segment, including that rookery island, and making that a really incredible jewel within the emerald necklace. So with that, I will take any and all questions you have. I think I stayed under 30 minutes.

Mr. Weed.

Well, a first bite, huh?

I've got several things I'd like to discuss. One thing I'm curious, because you're looking at putting a different zoning area in there. My first comment was it seems very small compared to the entire operation. Kind of wondering why it's not a larger area. And my second question along that is what is the height differential that you're proposing for that area compared to the current zoning in that area?

So first, in terms of the code, we started with as small and as minimal amount as we thought possible. So I'd say it's a conservative approach to thinking about rezoning. Anytime you want to rezone anything, it creates uncertainty. And so we're trying to minimize that as much as we can for the current property owners. The core area that you saw on that map, I think you are the majority property owner within that suggested rezoning. So it really impacts very few private parcels. But certainly could be expanded over time. And so the thought is to start small and grow if necessary. The full seaboard plan is maybe a lifetime's worth of redevelopment. We think in 100 year, 200 year increments sometimes in order to work backwards to the first five. So I think if all you accomplished was that small little bit of redevelopment, that would be a lot. So the second part of your question, in terms of height, what you see in all the drawings we've made follows your existing height requirements. The only exception would be for some of the architectural elements, and it's really only this building here in the right of the image. that has some sort of signature upper story or architectural identifier so you can see it all the way down Nolan Street and you can see it from across the water. And even as evidenced by this image, you probably could see it from the bridge. And so we think that should be a one-off, very special sort of wayfinding element that exceeds the height limit. But that would be approved by exception.

A big question I have as a boater, is I notice that you have put the bridge between the bayou and the Gulf, which means there's 30 boats that have to navigate that. Is there a reason that the bridge is on that side of the bayou rather than on the opposite side, which would allow free access to the Gulf for all those vessels?

So you mean the bridge for the Venice Avenue bridge?

No, no, the new bridge, the swing bridge that you proposed.

The swing bridge. So the swing bridge is bike-ped only. It's not vehicular. And it stays open to the channel most of the time. So really it's, and this is still to be vetted, this is an idea that came from the original charrette, is that it might be managed or manned in a way that the locks are managed or manned in the Thames area. in london for example where if a bike or a group of folks want to walk from one side of the intercoastal to the other they kind of hail the ferryman and the ferryman swings that bridge across allows for bikes and pads to cross but then it goes back to an open state that was actually a suggestion provided to us by the wcind as a way to create more connectivity across the Intracoastal for folks that aren't in a motor vehicle. So the full logistics of that would need to be worked out, but it could be a really special place that, It could be a signature-looking bridge. It could be the kind of thing that people flock to to take pictures on Instagram or just go to see it. It could be a really special thing. But it would default to being open. And I think if it works, that it could be repeated in other places that make more sense, either further towards the Gulf or even further south, potentially.

My main concern was the vessel traffic, just because where it's at, it impedes that. if it was on the flip side of the bayou, further south, whereas the other side of the dockage area, those vessels wouldn't have to deal with it. I just thought it was something we may want to look at, relocating that and relocating the island, just kind of mirror imaging it to allow that access.

Yeah, the original reason for the way it's shaped now is sort of twofold. One is the swing bridge is actually an extension of Nolan Street, so it aligns so you could walk all the way down and you could see it. that makes sense but also the right-of-way from the old rail line easement actually curves there and it actually is the widest at that point so that's the only place we think that we might be able to soften the edge of the intra-coastal while still preserving the army corps 100-foot setback which is for maintenance so this is the one shot and so could we shuffle it around and maybe add a second one or move it or think yeah i think there's some flexibility but That's why we have it the way we have it for now. And that's a good reminder for me to just mention that whatever gets built here will almost certainly not look exactly like the way we've drawn it. Our job is to try and get it so close to what we've heard in terms of public feedback and what you tell us as council to get it as close to correct and feeling right as we can. So we can start to use this as a way to guide that future redevelopment. But every developer is gonna have a different thought about how they use certain parts of it and the order and phasing and things like that. So anyway, yeah, thank you.

Okay, my third and final comment. I do disagree with the style standards you're looking at. I see what you're doing there, and I've seen it. I've seen it in Meisner Park in Boca Raton. I've seen it in Welland Park. I've seen it in the St. Pete Bay, and it looks to me like the first 25 years of 2000s. We have a very unique style here. I'm thinking that this area should be an extension of our downtown, an extension of the original Nolan area rather than creating this vanilla everybody else does it style. That bothers me. I think that we have a unique signature here in Venice. I think that we should honor that, that we should extend that and make it tie rather than looking like a unique item that was dropped in that is duplicated dozens of times throughout the state of Florida. So as an accountant looking at architecture, that does bother me because I want it to be unique. I want it to be, as a high school says, it's just different here. I like that taste. I like that flavor. I like that you are still in Venice. You have not now crossed to the newest and greatest that in a 100 years, I think it's going to matter. You know that it is continuous, that it is not something that is dated at 25 to 40 years span. Thank you. Thank you.

Ms. Frank.

Wonderful. Great job on your presentation. Maybe it was the initial seaboard master plan that you presented, but at one time there was a visual of an outdoor amphitheater in that space. Can you talk a little bit about what's transpired with that idea?

the I believe the original amphitheater was actually near deep the depot so I can maybe go back to the first line there might be a faster way to do this or a less dizzying way to do this but if I remember correctly we maybe a little hard to see, if you can see my cursor here, on the park, essentially. If we did have one in this area, it certainly could work. I would think that it would make sense to have it sort of more urban amphitheater not necessarily a half bowl or something that's into the landscape right so that may look a little bit different than you know what you might picture in your mind but certainly the plazas the public realm Nolan Street itself could all be flexible enough that it could serve for events nice thing about Nolan is it doesn't It doesn't go all the way through to 41, and so you actually have the ability to control it and close it down for festivals and events. But in terms of amphitheater proper, there's maybe not the space for that here, although we did draw one, I think, on the northern side, which could be really great, especially if in 50, 60 years when this is fully built out and we start thinking about the Venice Avenue side once the storm... water facilities move out out to wherever they're moving and that land becomes developable that we connect those two places and connect them via some of the best trails you know on this side of the state so wonderful thank you and then

maybe I'm shooting for the stars here, but it feels like given the current demand for marina space, boat storage, et cetera, that it'll be wonderful to have what looks like maybe 30 boats parked there. Is there any thought of asking the Army Corps and WCIND for more space there i know it's directly connected to what the city currently owns but i just wonder if we're potentially not asking for enough marina space there it's a great question um i would say uh the count of boats here is by no means

baked in uh we're not um by by experience like the most uh you know marina designers on on the world in the world so um if this fits 30 or if this fits 60 i can't say we could look into that but um i would also suggest that the this is maybe as as much of it as i think we could reasonably take up without um having it feel too big. And so I think there's a balance between preserving parts of the urban forest and the trail and the quality of what's there and also maximizing the efficiency of that right of way gap that's bigger there. I think we're sort of trying to keep it in that middle range where everybody can kind of win. you know, if there's a more efficient layout, or if there's more elbow room to the south that we didn't accommodate, or if the Army Corps and the WCIND are more willing, once they see the first phase get built, to say, oh, this is great, we actually can work with this, then sure, I think that that could be something that could be explored.

That's very helpful feedback because when we make proposals like this to the Army Corps, WCIND, and it's driven by maybe what's aesthetically pleasing versus just the market-driven approach of how much we can maximize. boat space there is pretty important to me. So maybe just in the staff conversation with those two entities, just making it clear that there's a desire from the city standpoint to maximize that space, should they be in agreement.

Yeah, appreciate that.

Mr. Howard? Thanks, Mayor. Great presentation, the passion that you deliver. I didn't even need to see slides. I could almost hit visual. Just listen to you speak about it. Thank you. It's very exciting. It's probably one of the most exciting things I've seen in the three and a half years I've been on council. This is really good stuff. I kind of side a little bit with my colleague as far as the architecture, the design, whether we stick Northern Italy, carrying the Venice Avenue feel along across the intercoastal. That kind of makes sense to me. Ms. Frank's comment about additional boating, yeah, that seems to be a challenge. I don't personally own a boat, but I like friends that own boats. And I wish them the best in finding space to park their boat. They invite me to go out on boats. I do have a question about, maybe this is more to Roger, so we have a lot of small businesses over there, as we all know, and their livelihood, they're not chains, they're blah, blah, blah. And I want to make sure that we're not, and I like the idea that this is kind of in the central of Seaboard, and the property that the city owns, and it's kind of encapsulated, if you will, in the center, and all of the businesses around it are still operating as usual. So what happens, hopefully I haven't lived long enough to see this, but as this grows or expands, because I see this catching on like wildfire, to be honest with you. It's just an amazing piece of property and the renditions, the renderings you've done here are just very exciting. But what do we do, maybe, Roger, with the existing business? Are they protected as What does that look and feel like if I have whatever my shop is there and all of a sudden all of this redevelopment is going on? What happens to those businesses?

Well, I think like Josh said from the beginning was do no harm. So we actually, we even met with many of the property owners over there after the master plan was developed. And because there was some concern that similar to what you're indicating. And that we indicated to them that that was our plan, do no harm here. So the zoning changed over there quite a long time ago with the 2022 code when we adopted that. That changed the zoning. We've been pretty liberal, I would say, on our interpretation about new businesses coming in there. um because we realized there was that that anxiety over there so we have been pretty liberal of allowing tenants to change but i think um the core areas is why we're kind of trying maybe to do some code changes in there to uh more require more of a strict compliance with the seaboard improvement district uses and those kind of things and the design that goes on in there and then allowing the rest of it to be there. We've told the business owners and the property owners that, you know, you can be here until the end of time. We're not pushing anybody out. We're not getting rid of anybody. I know there's been people that think, well, we're going to scrape the land and start over again. Well, that's not going to happen. We do realize there's a thriving economy over there, that there are several businesses. I think that several of those businesses would be able to stay even in the Seaboard Improvement District, and those are some of the uses that we're kind of going to look at as well as keeping them in here. But I think over the normal course of time, the market is going to decide as to what happens with those businesses and those properties, because you have to remember a lot of those business owners don't necessarily own the property. All right. So at some point, the property owners are gonna have to probably make a decision. And as you say, this may catch like wildfire, it may, it may not, not sure, but I think the market eventually is going to solve that issue.

And I'll just add, I zoomed in on one of the renderings to highlight, this is part of why the architectural language is the way it is in our drawings and we think should be more flexible, is because it creates a seamless and more cohesive environment for those existing industrial uses to feel like they're part of the neighborhood. So for example, on venice avenue historic district you wouldn't necessarily encourage a more industrial gang window roll-up door you know type of environment that maybe looks a little bit more you know metallic or has a you know darker color paint or has more of a mural on one facade that has less windows and maybe more of a mural on the side those are the sorts of more um handcrafted and more quasi-industrial. It's very similar like the Warehouse Arts District in St. Pete, for example, where those two things can work together. And that goes to use also. So as Roger was mentioning, being flexible with some of those industrial uses. It's totally legitimate and even maybe encouraged that some of those maker industrial uses are near folks who are living in a sort of live work or row house type of place where a couple blocks down somebody is fabricating steel architectural pieces or somebody is doing woodworking or the only person who knows how to fix pianos has got their gallery on the same street as somebody who's got a small boutique or a law firm or things like that. So thinking about how those industrial uses work with a street in the same neighborhood as people who are living is something that we think can drive the sense of place also. So for what it's worth, that's also been part of our thinking.

Yeah, let me add a little bit to that. I agree exactly with what Josh said as far as it being more of a seamless area. From the beginning, we did not put any architectural requirements in this area in the new code when we adopted that, and that was for a reason. There was always in the very beginning of this area talking about the redevelopment of this area, and you know it's been in a transition stage since 1999, so it's been a long time we've been working on this, but there was concern from the downtown about competition, and we always wanted to discourage that. We're not trying to compete. This area is not to compete with the downtown. It's going to be a different area. It's going to be unique. It's going to be its own little area you want the historic downtown yes this historic downtown is there you can go see that but we wanted this area to be unique and that's why we were looking at more of the maybe a contemporary industrial style of architecture but not the northern italian which just kind of blends it in with everything else in the city and some folks may think that's a good thing but from the very beginning we weren't requiring any architectural style in this area and i think that's a good point josh makes to kind of make it seamless with how it's going to evolve.

There's nothing wrong with Northern Italian, by the way. Love it. It's a great historic example. And if somebody wanted to have a building that met that in here, I don't think it would be prohibited either. So I think there's a healthy mix that could be available.

Thanks for that. Mr. Engelke?

Okay, hey, thanks. Great report, I love the concept, everything. Can you go back to the one photo, I have it marked here as your after photo. It had the, it's looking from, let's say, the high school cross. Yep. And with the marina in the front. Yeah, one of those, yeah. Okay, so a couple questions on this. Can you define or maybe kind of use your cursor and outline on this picture the city-owned properties?

Yeah, so essentially there is the nose of the street here at the intersection with Warfield. So it's essentially 50 or 60 feet wide. So if you noticed, Nolan Street's right-of-way is 57 feet, so it fits within that 60-foot right-of-way. So it's this little panhandle here, essentially to the alley here on this block to Seaboard, across to the side of this warehouse right here, across here, and then back up towards the panhandle of Nolan Street there. So it's a... Generally, it's a rectangle with an appendage that goes to Warfield, and then also the old concrete plant that is here in the foreground where the marina is adjacent to it.

Okay, so that's good information. So we look at the big part there being the old concrete plant with the marina across the street right now. It's not really owned by the city, correct? I can show you. Well, yeah, taking that city map and kind of superimposing. Okay, so yes, it is. Okay, got it. Okay and then going back to the zoning go back to one with the city on that we just looked at I'm sorry the after photo. Yeah, that one. Okay, so where on this would be the proposed zoning changes? Using your same cursor.

I'll go back and forth just to make sure I've got it exactly right. So the seaboard core would be the majority of the city-owned property, if not all of it. So everything on the east side of seaboard. And then the first... equal distance size parcels on the waterfront side. So it's essentially four sides of this intersection here. So we get like facing like. I didn't go to the University of Miami, but a lot of people in my office did, and every time we say like facing like, they think it's all about the U. so making sure that buildings are across from buildings that are similar is a key fundamental to sort of urban design principles so thinking of this general area as being the core uh if you will is is okay okay why wouldn't we add uh going from the core uh to the two buildings in front of the two other marina docks there because that's city owned as well correct Certainly could yes, but however this for the same reason The private parcels that are across the street on seaboard from them would not be and so what we're trying to avoid is having two dissimilar things across the street from one another so you know in this scenario this full build-out maybe there's a rezoning that happens to make sure those are up into the core district but for the purposes of being conservative in some of our estimates we've erred on just the minimum amount we think could work but you certainly could.

Yeah I think I'd be a little bit more aggressive just to make that because to me in between the two streets Spur and Nolan, you know, looking at it from the waterway or looking at it from, if you're walking down the path, I think I'd want a little bit more consistency. And that's fine, that's just my comments. And then I have to agree with Mr. Lloyd, or Mr. Wee, is... I don't think we need to redo the, we don't need to make it well in park and so forth. If we could be a little bit more aggressive on maybe figuring out how we can get it closer to what Venice, we think about Venice looking like. Because I do think in 100 years, it's gonna make a big difference. In 25 years, 10 years, it's gonna be glitzy and new, but then it's gonna look like everything else that we're competing with.

Understood. And I think the two final thoughts on that. One is that we heard from not just our focus group that we've met with, I think, throughout both projects, but also during the public charrette, there was very strong public sentiment that this would be very different architecturally. But having said that, Our stance is that the fundamentals matter more. So whether it's a northern Italian building or whether it's a Florida craftsman style architecture or whatever, as long as it's up against the sidewalk, has good proportions, good ground floor windows, transparency, those things, it will work and stand the test of time. So that's sort of where we're at.

So really we're just looking at maybe the paint and the type of exterior.

Materiality plays a big role in that.

Yes, so that may be something that we're not there yet. But in terms of the idea, I don't mind the row house concept and all that, but if we can make it look more like traditional Venice.

Sure. If you notice, all the buildings we've drawn in, all of these are very tan and white and simple. That's on purpose. We're not trying to prescribe, you know, one specific style or another. So, yeah. Yeah, of course.

Vice Mayor Bolt.

Thank you. Kudos. Well done. I really enjoyed saying this. You've talked about this quite a bit, but I want to get my two cents worth in. I've heard people say it should be like downtown. I've heard many people say it shouldn't be like downtown. Frankly, I think that from my perspective, downtown is old Venice, and that's the way it should be. This particular area, to me, is going to be driven by the market. The city has a great deal of money invested in the property that we own there, and this is a project that anyone that's been on council before will tell you, oh, we talked about that 30 years ago, and nothing happened. We are in a position today to make something happen. And I think that if we put too many restrictions on things, it will slow to a stop. What you guys are talking about, to me, makes perfect sense. It'll give the opportunity for existing property owners to meld into what we are going to build, what the city is going to invest in to get this thing started. So I am a big believer in letting the marketplace go ahead and grow the way it should. I think what will happen is that this will happen significantly faster if we don't tighten it up too much. Once the market takes hold, then what will happen is those property owners that have leases in there will suddenly look at it and go, well, this property is worth a lot of money right now. I either should get rid of my guy, help him move somewhere else, not to say get rid of him, help him move someplace else or dress this thing up to the point where it fits into the rest of the neighborhood. I think, you know, just my common sense approach to things is don't tighten it up so much that people will back off. If we want to develop our dream that's been going on for 30 plus years already, I think you keep it open. We've seen examples that you've given of areas that just move along nicely and are beautiful when they're done. So I really like it, and while I fully appreciate what my colleagues are saying about Northern Italian, et cetera, et cetera, I think this is an opportunity for us to move this thing forward quickly, or at least a lot quicker, if we keep it wide open. So thank you.

I think another advantage of that, Mr. Bolt, is adaptive reuse. And you saw an area that Josh indicated for adaptive reuse. And adaptive reuse can be more economical if you don't have to go to a whole new architectural style. So that can be a cost savings for a property owner as well.

Mr. Smith.

Thank you, Mayor. I want to second what the Vice Mayor said. I agree with him 100%. that we don't want to do something that's going to slow this down and we want this thing to go. And I've forever been saying let's get started, let's get it moving, let's let it happen. I do believe it'll spread like wildfire. When you keep saying we'll do no harm, we are going to change the entire area. the other folks who are neighbors to what we do are going to see a tremendous increase in the value of their property, and they're gonna make the choice to do something different with their property. We're not gonna force them to do anything. Is that accurate?

It is, however, I think the, this is not a 100% counterpoint to being so prescriptive that you choke off redevelopment, which is what you do not wanna do. But you do have to have some level of prescription so that everything that gets added, every property that gets rebuilt or every rehabilitation on an existing building only makes the district better over time. So that you're not seeing somebody come in off the coattails of phase one and build something that's inferior and is detracting from the quality that you're trying to build over the entire district. So there is a minimal amount of prescription that you do want to bake in, which is why I brought the summary slide back up to show these are some of the things that we know as fundamentals to making this work are things you may want to consider making more prescriptive than not. And so this is just a short list. There are probably many others. And I should mention you have a great foundation already with the code that's in place. So one of the things that's still remaining in our scope of services is to be available for additional services and we have time in our budget for development review. Should you receive a proposal within the duration of our contract, that we are available to make that, to be a partner in evaluating that and providing suggestions on how to match the overall vision, things like that. The answer would be yes, but with more prescription and more diligence around making sure that the fundamentals are still met so that everything added makes it better.

Great. Let me ask you this. We have set aside in our reserves, earmark, $3 million, if I'm correct, for additional work by the city in the seaboard area spend that money for me would you is it the trees is it is it on Nolan Street, I mean it's not I know it's not going to go real far, but where's that 3 million dollars going to go.

Well, not to be typecast, but I will lean towards John Nolan and say that there is maybe one thing that you as a city have the most control over, and that is streets. They are the first thing to get planned in a development or in redevelopment, and they are the last thing to change. Look no further than Seaboard. John Nolan drew those lines 100 some years ago, and they haven't moved since. So getting Nolan Street correct and getting making sure it is an exemplar across the state and by extension the first couple blocks of seaboard making sure that those are done as great as you possibly can get them done will only yield further benefits in the future because it'll it'll be really difficult to undo that change and also it'll leverage more value on the property that you own so you can also solve other problems with that whether it's trees and shade or sidewalks and accessibility or pipes and storm water there's a lot of things we can do to solve problems with the right-of-way that you own which is the number one property ownership of any city is the street right-of-ways so that would that would be my recommendation that I don't know hard to say we haven't done any cost estimating with this but you know the advantage to Nolan being fully within your property and not sort of reliant on other partners especially now with the two new parcels that you have is that there is a greater leverage for public-private partnership to help share some of those costs. So if that's baked into the plan in some form or fashion, the developer partner that you work with has to build it. It has to build it to the standards that you've set in place. You can work with them on helping to pay for it also.

I ALSO WANT TO EXPRESS THE IMPORTANCE OF NOLAN STREET. IT'S INTERESTING TO ME, AND I'VE SAID THIS AT PLANNING COMMISSION THAT IT MAY HAVE BEEN DIVINE INTERVENTION, I DON'T KNOW, BUT THE FACT THAT DURING OUR CENTENNIAL, THAT THOSE TWO PROPERTIES THAT CAME AVAILABLE TO US, ONE BY DONATION AND ONE THAT YOU JUST APPROVED TO PURCHASE, Line up exactly with where Nolan street is I just think that. Maybe it's part of the centennial and part of the order that we have going on right now, but it's just amazing the way the way that worked out I think Nolan street is is a high priority for this area.

Well, I'm a huge fan of what you've done OK and every way. And a huge advocate of getting started you've got us started this You know, this started and fell away 15 years ago and 30 years ago. This time it cannot fall away. So we bought the extra piece of land today. Uh, are we ready? We have $3 million set aside. Are we ready to do Nolan street starting this fall?

I THINK WE'VE GOT SOME PRELIMINARY THINGS TO DO. WE'RE JUST GETTING STARTED ON THIS. WE KNOW THERE'S PROBABLY GOING TO BE SOME TYPE OF PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP IN SOME OF THE DEVELOPMENT THAT OCCURS OVER HERE, BUT WE STILL HAVE AREAS TO TAKE CARE OF, LIKE THE DEMO OF THE BUILDINGS AND GOING THROUGH THE ENVIRONMENTAL situations with the soil over there. So we're kind of at the early stages. So I don't know that we're quite ready to jump right into something like that. But I think I would hope that that would be probably the first thing that we would look at doing when we get to that point.

Okay, but that street's not where the environmental issues are or anything, is it? Or is it? Well, part of it, yes.

It goes right through the former public works area. One of the buildings is right in line with it, which lined up right with those other two properties. So, yeah, that will be involved as well.

All right. And my last question, in the past iterations of this, There has been some involvement of the county and some difficulty in the involvement with the county, I know what you have shown us is all city limited property. They engaged already about the rest of the seaboard that is not in the city.

The county is definitely aware of what we're trying to accomplish there. If you're talking about the areas farther to the south, we haven't really thought a whole lot about that at this point. We've got multiple agencies that we're going to be dealing with, one being the county, one being obviously the urban forest, WCIND, the core. We've got multiple agencies that we're going to have to deal with. That's another thing that we we'll need to look into and we'll take some time. I can say that we have met with the Corps at least through a virtual meeting about the marina and possibly the swing bridge and they didn't really throw up any red flags, which was good. Not to say it's not gonna be a difficult process, which I'm sure it will be whenever you're dealing with federal government, but hopefully that will work out. But obviously we will cooperate with any agency that we need to to accomplish this, the county being one of them.

possibly the school district as well because they're on the other side of the intercoastal and if we're going to be connecting to that area that could you know could raise concerns on their on their side so there's multiple agencies that we're going to have to get with and cooperate with and the the folks who did your mobility plan at kimley horn are friends of ours and so we've coordinated with them so that for example our recommendations about improvements to venice ave were contemplated and i think included in some of your mobility plan documentation as well so

um that that's another uh county uh level piece of coordination is what happens to the north as well with the street there so all right well thank you for all of that information and thank you for your work and please don't let anything stop us from getting started we can't solve all the problems before we start take first step thank you

So I have a few comments, and I don't want this to come across as I'm not happy with the work that's been done, but I agreed with some of the things that Mr. Weed said, and I think the best way I can put it is initially, and I think Ms. Frank had pointed out to this, is initially we had seen this very preliminary conceptual plan of kind of an amphitheater, and When I look at this, it just lacks the uniqueness that is Venice. That's, I think, what some of us are reaching for is Venice is a very unique place. I mean, we have this drag strip, so to speak, of what used to be an army air base. You know, we've got a lot of history here. And I kind of laugh when I listen to a lot of the Italian talk and I think back to Lord Heiglhaus and how this, I mean, the tarpon fishing tournaments that used to happen here and a lot of the old Florida things that used to happen here. I don't think we're going to be able to create something so unique as is Venice, but I also agree that I don't want to see this just become the next Waterford Town Center of Orange County or the next Welland Park of Northport. I absolutely agree that I want this to be something, when I look at it, I see a marina. And I love the idea, right? It's a fantastic idea, but it's just not that unique feature that I was really looking for that would draw specific people to this area. That's not saying we shouldn't do the marina, but I just don't see that focal other than I'm seeing, I'm excited about restaurants, I'm excited about, you know, people having the convenience of their home over their business. Those are exciting things, but they're not something you can't go somewhere else and get. So I just want to make sure that what we're doing, I mean, the Rookery is a great piece of this, you know, the urban forest is something that we already have that's unique. Tying in the train depot, that's a piece of our history. Those are things that I'm happy we're doing, but I still lack the uniqueness that is Venice to me. I also look at the heights and I understand we have to be open to things that are new and exciting, but it's absolutely different from what people told us they wanted Venice to be, which is quaint, charming, and all that kind of stuff. I appreciate the history in that our downtown merchants don't want it to be a competitive space, and those are very important things that we need to consider. I also look at this and I think, well, this has been going on since 1999, and this council, at least in my tenure, has probably been the most progressive with some of the changes, I mean, Loretta Heigl House has done. Again, I'll say it again, I remember driving down Venice Avenue when I was 16 years old, seeing the thermometer not budging because we were still trying to raise money. So, I mean, there's some very great things that have happened. The purchases of these properties, I mean, more change has happened in the past seven years than we've seen in a long time. And I'm proud of that. But at the same time, we got to temper how quickly this was supposed to be a, oh, in 20 years we're going to see, you know, and kind of like you said, you know, we're planning for 100, you know. So I just, I want to be careful what we do because the other thing that's looming for me is here we are again in the summer when a lot of people are away. And I don't want it to be we did the charrettes and we got everybody involved, but now all of a sudden we're gonna make a decision today that nobody's here for. So I think that there's still people in this community that haven't even seen the original design and work that you guys did. So I wanna make sure that we continue the community involvement process as we move forward. One of the big exciting things I wanted to hear today is, We can sit here and talk about it. I think the Nolan Street, all of those things are great. There's definitely some stuff that needs to be done first. But I want to hear from Roger, what exactly are you looking for today? What do you want to accomplish? If you had your way, what would you ask the council to give you permission to do today?

change my clothes and start digging up the soil over there and building stuff. No, it's extremely exciting. I appreciate that question. I think for me, Nolan Street is the priority for this area, absolutely. I am more prone to agree with what the folks said during the charrette as far as the architectural style goes. I mean we've been dealing with Northern Italian for years and at some points Northern Italian was tried there was a significant attempt to put it over the entire city back in the day 10-15 years ago Planning Commission seemed every time they approved something there was a stipulation that it had to be Northern Italian and we I think we've kind of northern Italian out I would say at this point for myself. I would like to see this as more of a seamless style that Josh talked about and more fitting in with the history of that area and what John Nolan saw for that area and it has been our industrial area and that's why I see it more of an industrial focus or something. So what I'm looking for today is your acceptance of this technical plan You know, it doesn't only have to deal with the buildings that were built. It has to deal with the parcelization of the properties that we are creating now that we put Nolan Street in. So it deals with the ground level stuff. It has the zoning in it, creating that core as well, which I think is very important. So some of those aspects I'd certainly like you to indicate that you are in favor of. And then any of these items on the list that we've shown you, especially Nolan Street and the other ones, I think the intersections kind of go along with that new street and the seaboard area. So seaboards, that area of seaboard, the Nolan Street, those intersections, which I think are very important, and then the architectural style, you know what I think. I'm going to have to leave that one up to you.

so i think for me like i don't want to put the cart before the horse here so i want us to continue i want us to continue smartly i think my my vision was remediating demolishing uh rezoning code looking at code so i those are all things that i was thinking we were probably going to have the conversation about um i don't disagree with mr smith that i'd love to see us get moving on on the streets that's always been a conversation we've had i just i want to see some of this they're very basic and primitive stuff done while we're continuing to educate the community on what's about to happen. So I think that's my next big thing is I would encourage staff, not necessarily the consultant, due to time and money, but going to the Citizens Advisory Board and presenting to them as well so that they can just see it. Every venue we can utilize, maybe having another community, not Charette, but workshop or something just to give people one more chance when we come back for break. We're about to get into the crazy political season, but I want to make sure that everybody has the chance to have seen what's about to happen so that it's very transparent because this is a huge change for our community. And it has been going on for a long time. So I don't want us to have six people smiling and we did great, but then we come into the fall and the spring and what do you mean you guys did all this? So that's just a big concern I have. And we're always going to have that concern when it comes to doing things like this in the summer. That said, I'm absolutely in favor of you starting to draft code and bringing it back to us so that we can look at what this is gonna look like on paper. It'll become much more real when we start to see those things. I think that everything you've done as far as the core, it's a great idea. It's city-owned property. I mean, all of what you're doing makes absolute sense. I just want us to make sure that we keep the pace appropriate so that we're not making some very finite decisions without the transparency that our residents deserve. So does that kind of fall in line or are you looking for, yes, we allocate $10 million to starting Nolan, you're gonna be out there with a shovel tomorrow digging up the streets. I mean, I just wanna make sure I'm clear on this timeline.

I think we can, I mean, we have a short time left with the consultants at this point. We have some code changes that we're going to be looking through, some materials that they're preparing as well to promote this area, and then also they can be involved in up to three development reviews that we have that we could receive. Um, but I don't have them for a whole lot longer. We can certainly, uh, um, you know, start some type of a campaign with the public to, uh, put information out. I know I just got an email from Brianne this morning to put together a fact sheet for the seaboard master plan. And we certainly can do all that. Um, so if that, if that's council's desire at this point and I'll, I did ask for some extra money in the budget but I didn't get it so that would have given us a little more ability to keep these guys on board for a longer stint of time to see if we get a proposal comes in and you know to know how that impacts the area can be difficult they have the expertise and the insight and they've done this a million times so it'd be nice to have them available but I won't at this point but we can certainly start and kind of slow it down and do some type of a public campaign and get some information out there if that's the desire of Council

Yeah, and I think just reaching out to our specific groups as well. I mean, Thrives and, you know, Venice Area Historic and Heritage and all these different groups. I mean, unfortunately, right now I'm hearing more about a possible 14-story, you know, development downtown than I am. I think it got overshadowed. You know, I don't think people actually saw what we were going to be doing today, and I haven't heard any feedback on this. And again, maybe it's people out of town. Maybe it's something's distracting them. I don't know, but... I typically would get way more communication before I come into a meeting like today, and that just tells me that we're not quite there with the people yet. So I don't want to make any big, huge decisions today. And I think we're coming into a unique political season where, like you said, Things are a lot tighter now than they've ever been and they're gonna be a little bit more tighter. So we need to make sure that every decision is tactical now moving forward because we don't have the funds to spare. So with that, there's two council members that want a second bite of the apple and then the city manager has his click. So let's hear what the city manager has to say first.

I clicked one before your fellow council members, so I'm happy to wait to the end. I want to make sure I summarize your direction at the end.

Gotcha. Okay. All right. So, Madam Clerk, you can reorder him to last, and then we'll start with Mr. Weed.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Yeah, I missed him before. This is a great presentation. I'm very excited about this project. The only thing I will say on the design, and I'm not saying that we have to mimic the design, but history is a great teacher. And one only has to go to our downtown to find out what happens when we don't have architectural standards. We have a post office. We have a Verizon building. We've been dealing with those things for probably 50 years. They're ugly. They're awful. That's what happens when you don't have any guidelines. And I don't want that to happen again. I want to move forward in excellence in the future. that being said i love the plan we know as we've been stated today we've been throwing this around for 27 years i would like to see roger through this meeting that was my first question was what the mayor asked you know what is the motion we want how do we keep this moving forward and not just talking about it for another 20 years and uh those those are my opinions i want to make sure that we're moving forward that we are getting this thing rolling um but i would like to see some kind of standards. It doesn't have to match what's on the island exactly, but some kind of control so we don't end up with a new post office, we don't end up with a new Verizon building staring us in the face for the next 50 years. Thank you.

Mr. Engelke?

Okay, thanks. I think of the seven or eight or nine things that you had in one of your last slides, the one where I kind of came into, okay, thank you, no Venice historical precedents, architectural style. Do we have to keep that in there for right now? Standards and all that kind of stuff. I want to keep this thing moving. I share the enthusiasm of my co-counsel here. Can we kind of maybe pull that out for a while? And let's go with Nolan Street. Let's take the steps necessary for Nolan Street. Let's take the steps necessary to get the rezoning. Let's take the steps necessary short of defining exactly what those buildings are gonna look like. Because by and large, that's facade or paint or whatever. We wanna have this as a concept. Let's not get stuck in, you know, I want it green, oh, I want it orange, you know, type of thing. So that would be my suggestion, because I, too, want to keep this thing moving. I think we're in a great spot. I think you guys have done great work. I know Roger has been struggling on this thing for years, predates me by a long shot. He grew up here. You know, so... I don't want to be the guy who slows it down, but looking at these things, if we can maybe take out the VHP thing for now, if it's doable, to keep everything else moving. Thank you.

All right, and then Mr. Smith.

Can I just say, you mentioned that WCIND is the one that came up with the idea for the Marina and the Swing Bridge. Shot we we should put that at the forefront. Well, we've got them all they're supporting it because that could have been the thing that never happens and and so if there's any initial work that can be done to get the permit to you know do the marina or whatever that we can expedite that along with Nolan street, I think that would be very wise.

And becomes a very valuable negotiating tactic for whatever public-private partnership you end up developing. So it's pre-permitted with the Army Corps. That's a pretty big deal. Pretty valuable chip to have.

All right. And now Mr. City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor. Great feedback today. Thank you all. And I wanted to kind of summarize what I've heard, which is we have some general consensus on this phase of the technical plan. understanding that the architectural standards are something we're going to have to revisit which is totally appropriate if that is your direction you'd like for staff to pursue community engagement through the season to be sure that we understand where this plan is heading and then on the kind of physical improvement side we will be moving forward with getting this property ready for the potential partnership in the future. And I think that's really important is recognizing we can't do this on our own. So the next steps are going to be making this property marketable and pursuing those partnerships, whatever form they may take in the future. So does that summarize the direction that you wanted to give us today?

I'm probably going to make a motion to that extent, excluding the build Nolan Street in this particular motion, not against Mr. Smith, just I don't think we're quite ready for that yet, but my motion will say something to that effect, yes.

Okay, so just to clarify, that would give us plenty of marching orders and we'll be able to move forward.

We'll see how it goes and we'll see what kind of shrieks I get from the attorney. Madam Clerk, do you have anybody signed up to speak?

Nope.

Okay, so with that, I would make a motion to direct staff to engage the public with the new technical plan as they see fit to prepare the parcels as appropriate, whether it include in demolition and marketability. Is there a third point to that one? That cover cover. So so pursuing the demolition and marketability the prop parcels and coming back to the council with a proposed code for the core zoning of the seaboard including mayor you want include architectural standards in that. I would say proposed. nothing that we would be married to, but something that we could see. So, best way I can say it is proposed. All right, so is that a clear motion, Madam Clerk?

Yes.

Okay.

Mayor, did you want it to include in preparing to go forward with Nolan Street and trying to get the preliminary approvals for the marina?

With what I gave you, would that encompass, since we have to rehab part of the property, would that encompass the prep work for the Nolan Street so that way when we are ready to execute building that road, do you have what you need to at least get us started?

I do. And the environmental remediation does need to happen first. We have that direction. And the other thing I would offer just from a staff perspective is we don't want to build the road without our partner. We really need to make sure the partner's in place before we start physically constraining the site.

So that's kind of where I was going is I want them to do what they can to get it ready so that we're ready to build, but not necessarily say build the road today. Is that okay with you?

That is fine with me, and I appreciate the motion. I'd like to be the one to second it. Hold on one second.

Let me just add one piece to it. So the other piece I'll add to the motion is having the preliminary discussions with WCIND to get us ready for that phase of the ICW.

That's what I was going to ask for, Mayor, and I would like to second your motion.

Madam Clerk, was that clear as mud or you got, you feel good with that?

I got it.

Okay. All right, so seconded by Mr. Smith and let's go to council discussion. I've already got Mr. Weed. Yeah, Mr. Mann, thank you.

I just wonder if we could get the clerk to read back the motion so we all know exactly what's in there because there's a lot thrown into that bucket. It's a lot of stuff.

Okay. It's a direction to staff to engage the public with the new technical plan. to prepare the parcel for demo and marketability, to bring back to council the proposed code for the seaboard core, including proposed architectural standards, and to engage in preliminary discussions with WCIND, the marina and the swing bridge, correct?

I mean, it sounds almost like I said it myself.

I know it, right? Amazing.

Does that answer your question? Yes, sir, thank you.

I just wanted clarification.

Was that a test?

You passed.

Mr. Engelke?

Yeah, thanks. I just am concerned about how detailed are you looking to have the architectural code presented? You know, I almost heard you were coming back with this is what we're going to propose as opposed to several ideas. alternative ideas.

So I think just so Roger hears my intent behind that was to give them the flexibility based on what we just discussed up here because there's there's we definitely need architectural standards and there's let's be careful with how much architectural standards so letting him as the as the professional he is make something out of that and then bring it back to us so that we can tear it apart. That's ultimately what I expect us to do. And I can't wait for that. I think he's excited for that process. But but I mean, that gives the intent was to give counsel another view at this so that we can now look at the draft and say, well, I really don't want to get that tight or or yeah, that's that's probably tight enough, you know.

OK, I appreciate your clarification. I understand the clarification and I'm OK with the clarification.

Thank God.

Therefore, the motion.

no no others no other members of council looking to speak so then we'll um move to the electronic vote madam clerk if you'll ready us for that electron um i'd love miss frank to be here hold on can we do a quick technical break for two minutes just so that she can be here for the vote yeah let me clear this sorry so we'll come back at 11 58 um and and finish the vote Okay, we are back. And we are at the electronic vote for 26-0685. Madam Clerk, if you'll make us ready. Madam Clerk, if you could reread the motion for Ms. Frank real quick.

Just a moment. Let me clear this again here. Sorry. I listened to it. You got it? Okay. She listened to it. She's comfortable moving forward. Okay, very good. I'm going to reset. There you go.

All right.

For real.

And tally and display. All right, passes unanimously. So with that, we are gonna move into executive session and we will return after executive session approximately one o'clock for the presentation by the Staffing Study.

I think it's scheduled for two.

I think we have them moved up to one o'clock. So they're here at one now instead of two. Okay. So we'll try to be quick in the executive session, grab some food real quick and. They who? Are you a part of the meeting now? Yes. Yes, for the audience, yes, the police department has let them know that they're on at 1 o'clock. All right. With that, we're in executive session. and we're back we are on 26-0662 and this is going to be dr marshall jones jones solutions group and dr brandon may assistant professor of forensic psychology florida institute of technology on the venice police department staffing study a few gentlemen want to come forward And I think where we had left this last time was, you know, we needed some more time to kind of process the data and maybe dive into it again to kind of figure out what we can do as solutions moving forward in a short and long-term vision. But I'll let you guys, if you want to start us off and we'll see what kind of questions council has.

Absolutely. Good afternoon. So we have taken the recommendations and kind of dissected that down just a little bit further and if it's the council's pleasure will go through one at a time that way we can stop and there's any questions we're glad to to feel those and we've got back up with the chief if you have a question that we may not be able to answer. So update says the report. The agency and the city looked at some of our recommendations in between recommendation implementation some aspects emerge into those I wanted to make a note of was the city finance and advisers actually a cost associated with the reorg recommendation estimated around 34,000 just want to make sure we updated that and then in our original report. We looked at there being for corporals and the chief and the agency have looked at that and the Marine unit would still maintain a corporal. So that was from four to five and that would be the two substantive changes from our original report. The first one I wanted to talk about is the reorg. And that's kind of a holistic approach. One of the comments that we made last time was an observation that in that mid-manager that specifically the lieutenant ranks was a little heavy for the agency and there were some glaring spots where that was obvious. Also, the lieutenant sergeant model with the officers, it didn't offer an opportunity that if the lieutenant and the sergeant were both there that that added call takers. So looking at that, adding the corporals with the corporal sergeant, having two lieutenant watch commanders that floated A and B, and then the two lieutenants that would be then freed up out of patrol, one elevated to a deputy chief position and the other going to a professional standards lieutenant. So those recommendations really were dependent and somewhat nuanced, tied to one another. So to do that, for instance, in consideration of maybe not doing a deputy chief position, it just wouldn't be efficient. So a few of the buttons, or a few of the bullets I wanted to talk about, it is sworn, remains sworn count neutral, the estimated 34,000, and then against the 77 allocated positions, buys an executive second in command and a standby supervisory tier for every squad. With the deputy chief position, everything that, from our qualitative discussions, there was a very strong observation that the patrol captain who also serves those functions of a deputy chief, that there's a lot of strain on that position. The agency had a deputy chief position some years back and that was dissolved in a budget crunch. And with the 33% quality policing type of agency that Venice PD is, that necessitates having a little bit more command and control there. The other nice thing between these changes when you're looking at corporal sergeants and lieutenants and then the changes, The numbers that Dr. May and I have suggested between now and 3035, your span of control is already, in essence, built. So you can backfill those officers without having to look at any anticipated, at least at this point in time, we don't obviously have a crystal ball, but you've got that span of control already accounted for. The current patrol captain absorbing the second command duties, and it's an overly broad span of control, And then five of the eight peer agencies we looked at have a single second in command and several are smaller than Venice. In looking at a question of could we make reorg changes without there being a deputy chief position and at the end of the day it's honestly just inefficient. You would end up finding yourself at a plus one lieutenant and you still have that captain strain. And it just, from our observation and our work and best practices, that wouldn't make a lot of sense pragmatically. And then the two bad outcomes would be the unused third patrol lieutenant or second in command problem left unresolved. And then the peer practice, single second in command is prevailing practice, as mentioned, the five of the eight peers. And the two that don't approve to Gordon Stewart they run genuinely co equal captains their beach in Saint Augustine serve similar a permanent populations than Venice yet maintain a single designated executive. So before we go to recommendation to. Are there any questions that we may be able to to answer or things we can clarify and our recommendation of the reorganization.

So the only thing I thought was a little confusing was you had mentioned the past change, and I know the department used to have a chief, deputy chief, and a captain, and it looks like they went to a chief, two captains. What would the difference look like if you went back to the old system and had a chief, deputy chief, and one captain instead of two captains?

I want to defer to the chief on some of that historical, but I'll say this. Whether it's a deputy chief and a captain, or it's one or the other, the strain on that single position would remain the same as filling the patrol commander and the deputy chief's functions. In one position, where the type of policing Venice does, the strain of that single position, regardless of whether it's the deputy chief or the captain, would remain. Chief?

I'll just step to the mic.

Yeah, I mean, he's exactly right. We're just trying not to have somebody doing two jobs, essentially. And either way, the old version or our current version creates that scenario, and that's not working. So that's why we're trying to address that. That's kind of the short answer.

Yeah. Mr. Smith?

My questions were more for the chief than the study. I appreciate the study, tremendous amount of information for the very first time. And I just want to ask the chief, the statement made in the study was structural and process changes, essentially no cost, efficiency before sufficiency altogether, it's not a menu. Do you accept that? The whole thing, in terms of those early recommendations, that they lay out as a take it or leave it, don't change it.

Yes, and as he's described, they're all connected. We're trying to move a lot And we're kind of in a fortunate position where we have this lieutenant position that we can convert to a deputy chief, so it keeps it fairly inexpensive. I mean, we're adding a deputy chief position without increasing the budget, which is unique. Typically, you don't have that opportunity. Typically, you're looking at a situation where I just don't have enough command staff and now I have to add one and go ask for this big position. So that's what's unique about this, but all those positions are intertwined. We want to have those corporal positions so we can have the command and control at the line division level, but we also need to have people that can do their jobs appropriately at the command level as well and we're trying to address all those at once and that's why I say it's unique that you can do all this for the cost that it is.

I had another question for the chief. I don't want to get ahead of where you want us to be in this process. Okay. There's an extensive amount of discussion in the report about the cost of time going up to the jail. Sure. And at some point there it says is key finding and we need to compute the cost of no jail time, all that kind of thing. Are you capable of doing that separate from this study? Is that fair?

Well, it's all intertwined in this study. I guess I'm not sure of the question.

OK let me ask that the current jails under crisis. I am on the representing us on the criminal justice advisory council sure they talk about a 9 700 million dollar. New jail to relieve the structural pressure there and. We're going to meet with the county commission. Soon. And should we be lobbying them that part of that relief for that jail should be re opening a South County jail I assume we would have North ports support for that they must have the same exact headache that we've got is that something you like us to see like us to to advocate for.

Absolutely I I mean I I think it would actually be beneficial for the sheriff and the sheriff has to say that as well, but they have quite a few deputies that work on. work down in Englewood, Northport, Venice area. So certainly Venice and Northport probably have the greatest interest. But, yeah, if they can find space, whether it be at the renovated courthouse in South County or another location, or even if they were able to move a facility somehow to I-75, any of those options would be very helpful.

I mean, they're so overcrowded that they're talking about, you know, scrapping it and building a whole new thing. It seems like they can't. address the issue by having a southern facility. I hope that's part of the conversation. But you would have us advocate for that when we meet with county commissioners.

Absolutely.

Okay, thank you.

All right.

Yes.

Continue forward.

I feel like we're wrestling and we're tagging off. You've got to be the pitch man. You have the accent. So our second recommendation is professional standards lieutenant. Reassign one of those patrol lieutenants to a dedicated professional standards lieutenant. It consolidates internal affairs accreditation, policy training oversight, and accountable home for backgrounds and recruiting support. In the current situation, patrol lieutenants do internal affairs with other patrol units, and that That creates a challenge, especially a leadership challenge, along with some accreditation issues. It also makes it very difficult to keep up training for internal affairs investigation. That's a key part of good standards, but it's also part of accreditation. I would say one of the strongest aspects of professional standards, Lieutenant, is these are a multitude of hats that are shared in different places. And even with the current recruiting retention issues, having somebody that's accountable and responsible for not only a recruiting plan but retention efforts, I think will pay a lot of dividends, and it's a great place for one of those two lieutenants to move into. Any questions or thoughts on the professional standards, the lieutenant recommendation? The corporal tier, we've talked about that. My entire team and I, when we got here, we were thrilled to see that there was a master patrol officer position because I think that's a very important aspect. But having a lieutenant and a sergeant with the squads, we saw an obvious heavy at the top. So, for instance, if the sergeant and the lieutenant were both there, you'd have two supervisors and three officers. By having it a lieutenant that covers both day and night shift side A and side B, that gives them some strategic opportunities to be there when they're needed the most. But the other nice thing that that does is you have a sergeant and corporal. When a sergeant's there, that corporal gets assigned a call. So instead of having a two-three, now you'll have a supervisor and four. So being able to assign that. One of the things that we often see is, especially in agencies where dispatch is done through the county or through a consolidated dispatch, is that supervisors are cataloged and not assigned calls. And I spoke with the chief and we looked through that. The nice thing is those units, they'll be assigned a zone. So even though they're a corporal, when they're not acting, they'll be able to offer some relief in those situations. It'll fill that gap. And another interesting thing in talking with the agency throughout the agency in our discussions was Law enforcement today, folks are getting promoted to line supervisor and mid-manager faster and faster in their careers. There's a lot of reasons for that. We have a lot of mid-career folks that leave law enforcement in general. Some may leave and go to different agencies, but there's also an ebb and a flow since the 1970s in policing where you have a lot of retirements and then you have a lot of hiring. We happen to be in one of those places. corporal layer, especially that it's an appointed position, it gives the agency and officers an opportunity to test out the supervision. You get the training, you get the development, and then when now you're promoting a permanent rank of a sergeant, folks have had the opportunity to say, well, one, do I like having the responsibility of being a supervisor? But it also gives the agency the opportunity to look at that fit and to do that development. Any thoughts or questions related to the corporal tier recommendation? We've spoken about this. This is the side A, side B lieutenant for the lieutenants. Right now each shift, all four shifts have a lieutenant. And in Dr. May's deep dive in looking at when the calls for service are the heaviest, early in the morning, Late into the evening and into the early morning, there's not a huge need. Having a lieutenant that's responsible for both days and night, it gives more continuity of communication. That lieutenant and agencies where this model works, they may need to come in and do a command meeting and they may spend more time in the morning into the early afternoon, a lot of them. will split, for lack of a better word, split the baby. They'll come in a little bit late in the day shift and stay in a little bit into the evening shift. Or let's say there's a supervisor who may be out. There's nothing says that lieutenant can't slide in and fill that sergeant's position and have that function as well. But it makes a lot of sense, especially with the size and the scope of the agency and that quality policing effort and level of service that the agency's been providing for years. Any questions on the AB lieutenant split?

No?

So, recommendation of special operations, currently special operations rests in patrol, where you have patrol, you have two sides in patrol and special ops. One of the issues that has been brought up throughout the ranks in the agency is as the agency is short right now, folks that are in special ops have been reassigned to backfill the road to maintain that three minimum. but there's also been, not only in Special Operations, but in the Detective Bureau, positions that have been held intentionally vacant as the staffing levels rise. That does have a side effect sometimes with retention when that happens for a long period of time, but looking at sharing the load amongst the captains, moving Special Ops away from patrol, it does two things. It gives that span of control more of an equitable distribution, and it also gives some checks and balances, for lack of a better word, where if patrol needs to reallocate some staff from special operations, you've got two captains working in conjunction, and it's not as easy to rob Peter to pay Paul when you've got different folks with different responsibilities, making sure those various responsibilities get equal consideration and equal justification, if that makes sense. Any questions or discussion on special operations move? Recruiting and retention, this goes back to that professional standards, Lieutenant. Clear responsibility of recruiting and retention housed under professional standards. Currently the department has no formal role for that as well as the message and candidate pipeline. It was very interesting in our study that usually when we speak to agencies and to officers, even when their pay is not relatively low, you hear more pay, more pay, more pay. Fortunately, that really wasn't a big issue in comparing apples to oranges with other agencies. What it boiled down to when we started asking more questions is one of the really interesting things with Venice is the opportunity for officers to do the off-duty details. You all are very rich with those opportunities. The officers that need to earn that extra money They have that opportunity and they feel it. One potential future threat that we've shared with the agency is the younger officers tend not to do that. So as the line officers age, get more maturity, down the road that may be a different issue to address is that generational preference. But I think that's a unique thing that is a recruiting opportunity. I'm going to balance that with the threat of being an FRS. I don't think the other municipalities in the region are the challenge. I think it's as the sheriff's office raises more and more on their salary, that is your biggest competitor because your folks can just pick up all their time and their retirement and go to a sheriff's office. The nice thing is, in your region, your pay is fairly well considered to a lot of agencies, especially if you look at East Coast sheriff's offices, and not necessarily South, but Central and North Florida, you're doing well, but that's also the opportunity where you have sheriff's offices who are struggling with pay. So having a recruiting and a retention plan that builds on the strengths that you have is something that this lieutenant would certainly, I think, pay some dividends on. And then Venice has lost experienced mid-career officers generally at the five to eight year mark. And while that's not uncommon today with the generational challenges, Venice has suffered from that fairly heavily in having a retention plan, doing stay studies, doing more engagement, and trying to get to where You don't have so many vacancies that these specialty units that folks spend years wanting to get to, the longer that they have to come back and pull patrol duty to meet minimum staffing, that strain can show up in retention. Any questions on the recruiting and retention discussion or recommendation? They're going to save them for you, Brandon.

Hold on one second. Mr. Howard? Thanks, Mayor. This part about losing It's my understanding we don't have a bad attrition or a loss rate or turnover rate. I misunderstand that, Chief or City Manager. The statement says that mid-career officers generally at five to eight year leave the department, but I didn't hear that we have that issue going on here.

Can you speak to the numbers? Yes, we can. Brandon, you want to talk to some of those numbers?

Yeah, so one thing we observed in the data was over the last year or two, and I've had to get the exact dates, was a fairly high attrition rate. Now, I can't recall all of the details as to why. I think one of those was a result of some investigation or administrative function. Others have left for other agencies, and then it's just a general retirement rate as well. In terms of the five to eight year mark, part of that's accountable nationwide, so it's not specific to Venice, it's more specific to policing in general. So if we look at attrition rates across the board and we use that comparable city thing as well, we tend to see the same thing. So you have new officers coming in after the academy, spending five, six, seven years, and then moving to either another agency or more typically moving towards things like private work. So we sort of saw that in the last year or two in some of the data, and I think the number was 10 sworn that had left, but I'd have to confirm on the report.

I know there were two cases that I specifically remember where officers left to follow their spouse for a better job, and that's very common. I will say this, one of the things that I appreciate about the agency, they will let folks go if they're not meeting standards. And when an agency's short, to have the courage to let folks go when they're not meeting standards rather than carry them along, I think says a lot to policing. And one of the questions we universally ask the line level folks is, would you rather work with somebody who's maybe not the best officer, or would you rather work short? And to the man and woman, they said they'd rather work short. And I think that's a hard decision to make. when you're down some and the recruiting environment is difficult. But I think to Dr. May's point, none of these really rose to the level of anything other than there are folks who will leave for a certain amount of money. And in our studies, folks who are not unhappy at a 5% pay raise, they won't leave. When they can earn 7% or 8%, they're going to think about it. When it gets above a 10% pay raise to leave, that becomes a business decision that they make even if they know they may not be as happy. I think that's why when having conversations about who your financial competitors are, it's not the local municipal agencies, it's the sheriff's offices who may get above a 10% pay raise.

Did I answer your question, sir? Yeah, yeah, it did. It did. We're just, we, a little conflicting information when we're dealing locally with our HR department and talking various labor type statistics, if you will, that weren't aligning with what the bullet points that I was seeing there. So I appreciate that. Vice Mayor Boat?

I think the, you know, the thing that's interesting that you're bringing up at this point, when I hear about people leaving, particularly the police force, when you know you're short-handed, you worry about burnout. But you're not saying anything about burnout.

Oh, there's burnout.

And some will leave because of burnout. I mean, they get tired of the hours. And I wrote it with a young guy one time, and he burned out. And talking to his wife, he said, I can't take this overtime this weekend, even though they want me to. So that obviously comes into play as well.

And we're going to talk a little bit more about the mandatory overtime, but here's what I observed that spoke a lot to me. And I have a background in law enforcement. It's been a minute since I worked a shift 20 years ago. But when we were talking with the officers, especially about the jail issue, and they know that if they make an arrest that they're going to be away for at least three hours, and the comments about It's not that we're not going to arrest people, but a lot of the proactive policing, if they know that they're going to have to be away and it's going to leave them with two people, and Dr. May is going to talk a little bit about the number of officers it's taking today that's a little bit higher than in the past, they're so concerned with one another, which also speaks to, while there's burnout, there's a lot of camaraderie and pride in the agency. Because I talk to the officers, because some of that burnout, especially in March, with all those extra duty details, is they will step up and they'll work them when no one else will because they don't want to lose the opportunity. The other thing that was interesting is they didn't want the sheriff's office to come in and work them, not because they didn't want to share, it was because the quality of interaction that they have with their community meant more to them and they didn't want somebody that wasn't part of the community coming in and maybe messing up that community aspect. The burnout is real, but I think the strength of the culture and the camaraderie helps with that. I will tell you, Mr. Smith, that being able to return to where they can make an arrest and it be a reasonable amount of time within an hour to do something more locally, that would have consequences that would domino throughout the agency.

If I can add one brief point as well, there's some pretty big studies that have looked at burnout across agencies in the United States. And one of their key findings was burnout exists between 74 and 92% of all personnel, which is a pretty large rate. What we see with the generational issues is that is much higher and proportionate to those new in agency versus those experienced. So what that study suggested is up to 70% of staff in the first five years will leave as a result of burnout. As Dr. Jones said, burnout is a real thing. It is something we observe across agencies. It's not specific to Venice, and more so in the younger generations coming in. So if we can mitigate against that early, the hope is that it's not as strong as it would be if we just left as is.

Mr. City Manager?

I was just going to clarify for Council Member Howard's question. From an HR perspective, it is a pretty small number that leaves only for financial reasons, but there's The data shows there's a retention issue due to various other reasons that I think they've focused on here. So that's probably the explanation for the discrepancy.

And one final clarifying point on this, it's part of our sort of sub-recommendations within that is the take-home vehicle radius. We made the recommendation to extend that. That came from the qualitative data. So when we spoke to sworn staff, one of their points was we'd like an extended take-home radius policy. I don't think we have anything else to add on that.

And the context of that was one of the best programs in an agency can deploy when it comes to recruiting people is an employee referral program, employee referral system. Because from a chief standpoint, it's common that senior officers will walk down the hall and catch a chief and say, where are we getting these idiots today? Because it's just different. But when the employees, not only the sworn, but anyone, a lot of them, it's anybody in the city, they identify folks who are good candidates, and when we talk to them about the employee referral system, they thought it was great, but what they also spoke to when we asked what are the challenges is the limit of 20 miles when it comes to the ability to recruit folks, especially like, for instance, you all pay a lot more than Charlotte County. And for somebody who's in the FRS in Charlotte County that could then get a take-home vehicle to mitigate some of that, that is definitely a recruiting strategy and advantage. I think in conversations with folks, that 20-mile radius only really impacted one person, and it wasn't necessarily them speaking for themselves, more as speaking about what could improve the recruiting for the agency, and that was certainly one of them. When I look across the state at these things, they have been expanding, and something that I was shocked with, last year, Tallahassee Police Department, facing the same challenge in recruiting, they extended their radius outside the city that included South Georgia. which I had never heard of before is I have a thousand questions about liability and other things, but they worked that out. And the cost of living, the further north in the panhandle into South Georgia you go and it's, talking to Chief Revel, they've had dividends from that. Recommendation on administrative systems. There seems to be a disconnect in the payroll scheduling and finance systems. And it was interesting. We would visit. We met both day shifts and both night shifts. We would go. We'd talk to the squad, and then we would sit down with the lieutenants and the sergeants. And on two particular occasions, we were talking to the lieutenants about, tell us about your time and these different things. And a couple of them were really frustrated. One of it is they have to go in and they have to manually change the time card because it gets submitted and then the mandatory overtime and other things happen, but they're working in two systems that don't speak to one another. And it went a little bit in kind of asking more questions. It's a little bit more than just the inconvenience of touching two systems. It's just ineffective in the amount of time it takes if somebody gets mandatory overtime, especially if I'm a lieutenant And Brandon works for me, but Brandon worked on the other side to do the overtime between me, my counterpart, another lieutenant, and Brandon. We've got to figure out how to get into that system and adjust those time cards. So part of the challenge is as fast as technology is growing, some systems, they just fall out of sync because of time and effort. But from our understanding, there is one of the time programs that does have does have that module. So it sounded to us as though there was an opportunity there to take a look at those and see where some of those efficiencies on the administrative side could happen.

All right, your time is up. Thank you for your presence. No, I'm kidding.

Keep going. Another challenge that the agency spoke to us about is sometimes they'll have anticipated retirements or anticipated folks are going to leave, somebody gives notice or another thing. is being able to work with HR to get those postings out sooner than later, rather than waiting for that position to be actually vacated. A lot of agencies, especially when they have retirements, will go ahead and start actively looking to find those positions. Sometimes it takes weeks and weeks to get three possible candidates, and by the time you do a background, you may be lucky to have one left. So expediting those processes. What I can tell you, looking at basically the current state and the best practices in police recruiting is the faster that you can engage, and the faster that you can get them to a conditional offer of employment, the better chance you have to get them. Because the folks, the ones coming out of the academy, for instance, they want to go to where they can get a home and get a job and get to the academy, and the folks with experience, There's a lot of folks in your agency that came from other places. They attest often that the grass isn't always greener, but they're happy to be here. It's even more important to those that are coming from other parts of Florida, from out of state, that we can expedite those hirings. And another recommendation might be that look at there may be windows of opportunity to even overhire in some cases because if a good candidate comes along, the last thing you want to do is lose them because our process takes a little bit too long. The other part with the administrative systems is mandatory overtime. And there's a running list of, okay, somebody caught out sick. We got to get folks in for overtime. Well, that list works blind to the list for the details. And what those who work at details a lot that really experience the burnout, while they want to make sure that the agency fills those details, is if those systems could speak to one another, because there's certain folks, and it's usually the folks who've been around a little bit longer, the older generation, they'll work the details, but then when they automatically then, they stepped up here, and now this system's blind, and if they're at the top of the list, well, I got two or three days off, I worked a detail, I worked a detail, and now I've got mandatory overtime. there might be a more fair way to spread the extra work and overtime around. Any specific questions or comments on the administrative systems?

So we had worked on this as part of our negotiation process, I believe it was last year, it might have been the year before, to try to streamline the process in which we schedule details, pay details, all that kind of stuff, and we were going to bring it under the administration. I think we ran into some financial constraints. Maybe it was even technology constraints. I don't really remember exactly what the rationale was. In your assessment, you're still advocating that we continue to pursue that process. Is that what I'm understanding? Yes, sir. Okay. Even though we might have thought we resolved it, it's not resolved.

I think you've got two systems that independently are functioning okay. It's when you're considering that both systems are drawing from the same pool of people that we're overtaxing those willing to step up and work on one side and at the detriment of getting extra pulled on the other side.

Do you, when you do these analysis, do you look at the, I mean, do you look at the cost associated with this as far as a cost benefit analysis for us as an organization? You know, if money was the issue that we couldn't do this, is there a middle ground solution?

I'll say this. Mandatory overtime and the amount of extra duty details that you have are unique. That said, I know there are many vendors that do the off-duty detail stuff and it's usually at no cost to an agency. What I don't know is if those also include overtime management. So they may have to work independently I don't know the tech answer, but I think the issue is you got mom and dad asking the same kids to do the same work.

Do any of the reorg changes that you've suggested help us with this problem or no?

Directly no, but having that additional lieutenant and then having a deputy chief in addition to the captain would certainly give somebody of rank enough bandwidth to really thoroughly investigate that.

Okay. Mr. Engelke?

yeah thank you um sorry i missed last month's presentation was away but i did watch it and i did read it and i found to be very very comprehensive one of the things that just came up in this it's similar to the tech issue but i think the mayor was talking about overtime what i'm looking at is a payroll issue you know a lot of steps in there um ONE OF THE RECOMMENDATIONS IS I THINK TO IMPROVE THE PAYROLL SYSTEM BUT HOW IS THAT GOING TO IMPACT THE CITY PAYROLL ISSUE BECAUSE WE HAVE A SIMILAR ISSUE OVERALL WITH THE CITY. COULD THE TWO OF THEM BE MARRIED OR CAN WE SAVE some administrative time, maybe even a whole body. Not only are we gonna make it better in terms of less errors, but can we, the cost benefit type of thing. Can you talk about that a little bit in terms of, again, the payroll record keeping system, not necessarily the allocation of who's doing the overtime, but the whole HR part of that. Thank you.

So I think oftentimes, what happens when you look at the systems. You certainly would want these common factors that work across all departments in the city to be on the same page. But I think a lot of times what happens if you're not specific and consider your public safety that work 24-7 versus the 9-5, sometimes those nuances, they can get lost. So looking at those systems or if you have an existing system that may need to be updated with a module, But I think that the loss in time is, you know, it's kind of that death by a thousand cuts type of a thing where if I've just got one or two officers a couple times during that second week after the time cards have been put in, no big deal. But when it's a multiple time thing and it involves email communications and breakdown in chains where do you have two different systems with the same data, I think that's where the analysis could certainly benefit everybody.

OK, thank you, thank you, Mister weed. No, thank you very much. 2 is just the 1st one is going back a little bit has been an analysis of or recommendation on the expanding the radius of the take home car we do any kind of analysis on what might be recommended in expanding that would be acceptable would be the cost of that.

We haven't looked at the cost what we did make a recommendation was is looking in the lens of recruiting where a reasonable recruiting and a reasonable drive would be. Our recommendation to the chief was a county away, to go down to Charlotte County, go east of county, and go north of county, because where your draw is, to capitalize on being FRS, a lot of times you'll leave folks to go to a sheriff's office because they have FRS. There's a lot of deputies that have been stuck in jails on broken promises of give me two years and you can go to patrol that are leaving for other agencies, and that is a specific target, and you've had some success with that, but there's opportunities there in recruiting folks who are already vested in a retirement program that getting out of a jail, and with all due respect to our sheriffs, they have recruiting retention issues too, but a broken promise will get a deputy looking for a municipal agency pretty quickly.

Because you you are actually a proposing rather than a mileage limitation, a geographic County. Yes, OK and yeah like to known as city manager finance will be able to run those numbers for us, I think be very hopeful for us to know what the cost of adding that benefit would be. The 2nd is the the payroll system arcade payroll system and this is the 3rd time I've seen has come up in different departments. I mean last time I knew and it's not true of the the Public Works was still using paper time cards. Finance has two payroll employees that do nothing but reconcile time cards and time sheets. Now I'm hearing that the police department's payroll system is archaic. We have, as I understand it, one full IT person dedicated to the police department. We've got approximately 14 IT people. We've got finance with two people doing nothing. It seems to me that we, and I think it's addressed more to the city managers than to you, that we need to take a dive into the payroll system. It seems like we are seeing this hit in many different departments. I think it's time to take a good look. Most police departments have to be dealing with what we're dealing with. I can't believe there's not a module out there to address that. I can't believe there's not a module that we can adapt that would get rid of our use of paper time cards and a 1950 cell time clocks that are one of our biggest departments. So that's more directed at the other city manager overseeing those departments than just the recommendation. Thank you.

Number 8, communications and technology. Separate communications function from the technology function and add a dedicated technology position. All day today, essential department technology, including records, radios, body-worn cameras, license plate reader systems, etc., depend on a single position. And with technology increasing as rapidly as it is, each new system adds to the same workflow. Here's the challenge. Technology has to work in your public safety operations. It's even more critical that you've got your dispatch and a central dispatch rather than here. So you can't even fall back on a plan B with cell phones or other things. One of the issues that came up, which we'll speak a little bit about, is you've got the co-response between fire and police, which is great, But even the fire department said there are times where we know we don't need that response, but they're not on the same radio systems. So those are unique challenges, or when a radio goes down, a body-worn camera, and you are one UFO abduction or vacation or somebody quitting away from one single point of failure. And when we've talked about this, yes, but the city will provide backup to IT, which is wonderful, but the city IT folks work Monday through Friday 9 to 5, as they should. So when you have all of this stuff resting on one position, as long as everything's perfect and the poor person doesn't take vacation, it's great. But as anybody that's worked with these radios and these body worn cameras and these other emerging technologies will tell you, that is a real challenge in the public sector to keep folks with the demand in the private sector. So looking for some redundancies just to make sure that one big uh-oh doesn't create additional problems, that was an area where we recommend taking a look and maybe even being creative in how the city and the police and fire work together, but finding a way that that thread isn't as glaring. Any questions on the technology?

I just want you to clarify what you said in the very beginning because I might have misheard you, but are you saying that us having the consolidated dispatch is good or not good?

Well, I don't know if it's good or not good. What I'm saying is when an agency, a city has its own dispatch and you have radio problems, it's more organic to that organization. So dispatchers can go cell phone to cell phone or other Plan Bs. When you have decentralized dispatch, it works when everything's working, but when it doesn't work, some of those historic, organic, hey, we got a workaround for this, aren't as readily available.

Does that make sense? It does, and so were you saying that In essence, if we, an example of if we had our own dispatch system center, you wouldn't have some of those ticking time bomb where this is the single point of failure in causing people to be fed up with their job, is that?

No, we really want to, looking at whether having your own dispatch center, but it's the personnel within the police department that specifically have both communications, being radios and those systems, and all the other technology, that that position has a lot, and there's so many different points of failure that not only is it a lot for that one individual, but that one individual rests a major single point of failure for the operations.

Gotcha. Okay.

I can add a little bit more context as I spoke to this individual. One of the things we're seeing in policing generally is an increase in technology. And most of you are probably aware of that. AI is just around the corner for many agencies. It's already here in the majority. And these technologies are evolving every few months. It's no longer a matter of waiting a few years before we get the new body-worn camera. It really is every couple of months we get a new technology. Policing is moving more towards a tech-facilitated industry where you have drones as first responders, for example, and I know BPD are looking at drones as one of those. Without the personnel to maintain and deal with problems of those technologies, as well as the training required to manage those technologies, which in itself takes time, that becomes a bigger problem. So if we look at, for example, one of my specialties is AI, If we look at the technology of AI and they don't go on, say, the conferences or the training events, they're gonna be six, seven, eight months out of date of a training and they cannot fix that problem. If you're dealing with technology which is writing your police reports, for example, which is an AI technology without that training and support, then you're gonna be in a bit of a problem. So we need to ensure that individuals are trained and that they have the resilience needed for when they're not there, not available, or when there's multiple problems across multiple technologies. So body-worn to report writing, to drones, to radios, it's a pretty wide net. And right now from our analyses, one person covers the majority of that with some people that sit within a supporting role but are not trained sufficiently enough to deal with the majority of those problems.

Okay. Okay.

All right. And this is where I get to hand it off to Dr. May.

And I get all the questions. As a reminder, because there's a few fancy words like the Wilson and Wise analyses, I just want to reorientate you to what that means. Now, this was done by one of the colleagues that supported us in this project, Jeremy Wilson. And what they recommend is essentially three types of policing. One is a calls for service orientated. That's what we refer to as the 66%. level of policing, so 66% of the time allocated is for calls for service. So someone dials 911, most of their time is responding to those calls. The 50%, and what our models are based on is that 50% balance threshold, is 50% is devoted to community level policing, so that's going out and servicing the community as is what they need, versus 50% calls for service. Again, 911 calls, they're responding to those. Where VPD operates is predominantly the community-orientated policing model, which is the 33%. Actually, you're slightly below that. You're around 28%. So the majority of the time spent in policing in Venice is for community-level activities. Those are your vacation checks, your community checks, your security checks, things that just show good proactive-level policing. So when we start looking at the models, we present two different alternatives. We throw out the 66% because it doesn't quite make sense to adopt that because you've never really been there and no one really wants to have a predominant service of just 911 calls. We do the 50% primarily because of cost savings because you can operate effectively at that and you're still getting the level of service expected. And then we also propose the 33% which is where you operate right now. What we see on both the 50% and the 33% is you're well below capacity for both of those. So what that means is to meet the minimum threshold at the 50%, right now you need a sworn count of 40 patrol officers. So that's not 40 sworn, that's just 40 patrol. we come to that based on what's called the shift relief factor so that takes into account a few things number of training hours um allowances for vacation and those sorts of things we put that into the computation and that gives us on average a year what your shift relief factor is when we looked at that across years your mode to the most common shift relief factor was 2.51 The simple way to understand that is that every single officer you have for patrol, you times that number by 2.51. That gives you the amount of people required on the roster in order to then allow for that. So that is things like vacation training being unavailable for meeting minimum standards. That is what that shift relief factor presents. What we saw across that then is you are under-resourced. You don't have enough patrol officers. What we're seeing generally across BPD is a three to one ratio, so you have three patrol officers for every shift with one supervisor. You'll see a little bit later, but just to give you a little bit of insight as to what I'll talk about in a moment, is the number of officers required for some calls. One thing we looked at after our previous conversation was the number of officers required for things like suspicious calls and domestics. Those calls require on average 2.4 officers, so it's better to round up than round down, so assume three officers per domestic call. If you have three patrol officers, a patrolling VPD at any given point, or a Venice at any given point, and you get a domestic call, your three officers are now out of service for whatever length of time is required to deal with that call. If you have a domestic call which requires three officers, but you have one or two officers dealing with, say, a jail run, which takes an average 40 minutes per travel time, then three to four hours at the jail, assuming they're not gonna go for any healthcare, again, you don't have enough officers to respond to that. So if you have a shooting, a critical incident, you are one major incident away from being either understaffed or having no staff to respond to that without county support.

Real quick, let me interrupt you real quick. When you say health care, I just want you to elaborate on that a little bit more because it sounds like they might be getting a Band-Aid versus spending six hours at the hospital.

No, so if they are, and you can probably comment on that.

I'll take this one. This is universal in policing regardless of state or location. Officer makes an arrest and they go to the county jail. The jails are today not only fighting for staff, but often they don't have the resources to have their own medical. So if there's any complaint or issue that the arrestee makes, they're going to say, you have to go get medical clearance. So I've arrested them, I've driven to the jail, and now the jail, when they finally see them, is saying, now you've got to go to the hospital. Now I take them to the hospital, and I go through that rigmarole, and then I bring them back to the jail and wait another 15, 20, 30 minutes to get them seen again. And by the time you do that, that three hours round trip in the best of situations with nobody being injured, now you're looking at four, four and a half hours.

So ultimately, if you arrest me and I say I have chest pain, whether I have it or not, I say it, you have to take me to the hospital and then we have to wait for me to be medically cleared before I can go up to the jail and then spend three or four hours up at the jail. Correct. Right. So you could be looking at up to eight hours versus four hours. Correct. Yes, sir.

So what we recommend based on that is adopting the one shift relief factor that we put out, which accounts for those potential incidents where you may have one or two officers out for whatever reason, whether it be a jail run or a medical care visit. The other thing that it allows is things like traffic. And we put in, if you can think back to the model that we presented where we have a mid-shift, the majority of the time spent responding to calls is between noon and 2 p.m. You get an influx of accidents around the rush hour traffic, so around 5 p.m., but you get these really sort of deep pockets of requests for calls. So the midship is meant to account for that, including a specific traffic detail, which accounts for things like traffic incidents, because again, they take a few officers. So the idea would be spreading officers across the different zones, and we have seven zones, in order to account for an increased number of calls. Now, if we go back to some of the data we had in terms of responses, what you may remember is that the response locally, so around the police department and downtown, was relatively quick. Around three minutes on average, I can't recall the exact number. Where we started to see more strain was as you go more towards the east of the city was when you're seeing more development. So the response to there was around eight minutes. Now, that was based up to 2024. We ran the analyses for 25 as well. That hasn't changed, so it's still staying at around eight minutes. We're not seeing in that data an increased calls for service. We're not seeing more domestics, for example. But we are still seeing a big strain in response times and the types of crimes that we're seeing. So we are still seeing domestics. We're seeing traffic incidents. We're seeing more violence. I think we've seen a firearm incident recently in that region. So the demographic, the types of crimes are starting to change just based on the data we have. They're just not significant at this point. Now, this is an area where it's still growing, from my understanding. So projecting out to 2024, we may see an increase in, say, more violent crime, more domestic crime, and we need to account for that. If we're sending officers from, say, the island down to East Venice with a new development, that takes on what, average eight to 10 minutes to travel. If we can spread that because we have more officers, that just makes it more viable and a better response time, and keeping within that scope of community-level policing.

I'm going to interrupt you again just because I feel like these numbers are very important. When you're talking about the response time, which priority of calls are we talking about? So are we talking lights and sirens response or are we talking just to go to a non-emergency response call?

Yeah, no, lights and sirens. So priority one and priority two, lights and sirens. So that's an immediate call for assistance.

So I'm going as quick as I possibly can and I'm still not getting there for eight to ten minutes.

Yeah, so that is purely based on the lights and sirens, eight to ten. Well, 8.51 I think the number was or roughly around that. So over eight minutes anyway. Any questions or discussion points around that?

Anything else from any council members? One thing I'm gonna talk about at some point, I don't know which part of our presentation is, one thought I had when I looked at your overall numbers was, You have a recommendation for two traffic officers in there. I felt like that was the smallest piece of the pie that we could resolve as quickly as possible. Would you think that that would help with some of this that we're talking about right now as far as response times? Because I know that it identifies these guys as more nine to five kind of guys, but... based on what you're talking about in general, would that be some relief to this response time issue and the northeast side call volume that we're seeing?

I think because of the volume of traffic related and this doesn't even account for when one of the bridges is up or down or broken, the disruption that that has. But if you have dedicated traffic to take those issues, that leaves the rest of the officers available. And then when you have a real critical incident or critical call, you've got the traffic units to come and help out. I think strategically getting to where you've got a balanced load across the city where you have one or two in the east and you've got a couple on the island and folks who can help out in between, you're really going to cut down that call for service time. The other thing that often gets missed is traffic crash is a time-consuming thing. You get there whatever time it takes to get there. In the best case you're going to an officer change but you've got the way for and sometimes wait for the tow truck and those types of things. So having dedicated traffic officers to handle that really relieves that I think wherever you are able to add officers that are available any given time and I think one of the things that is as a strength that doctor may and I are happy to present is looking at a 24 hour cycle and filling those heavy times I think is A lot of agencies will do eight or ten mornings and nights. You are in a strategic position where with that lieutenant, you can have a mid-shift and maintain continuity of command.

My other question for you on this topic is, at what point does our mutual aid kick in so you get to this eight and a half minute response time for a priority call? At what time would the county get called in to assist as far as GPS and if they're closer and whatever the standards of our mutual aid agreement is?

Chief?

Well, I guess first, law enforcement does operate differently than the fire EMS side. They're very more into whatever the closest unit is, doesn't matter, that's who responds. That's not necessarily the case in law enforcement. Municipalities handle their municipalities. Sheriff handles their space. It's only if you make a specific request to each other that then you respond. So sometimes that happens quickly. Sometimes it does not. Sometimes there's assistance available. Sometimes it's not because they have their own calls for service as well.

So I guess to clarify on that one, if a unit is out near Casperson Beach, let's say Brohard area, and there's a gunshot or something like that, let's just use the GSW as an example. So is it on our officer, on our supervisor? Who's it on to say are their county units closer?

It's on the supervisor. I mean, the reality of it is if it's a major incident, everybody just starts to go if you're in the area and they wait for permissions later. Um, cause we're all there to help each other, but it's on the supervisor to make that request.

Okay. So, so basically I think that answers the question is that mutual aid kicks in when they, when they hear when any deputy is listening to the radio and they hear a severity of a call, they will respond if they hear the severity is high enough.

but our supervisors should trigger them to respond as well that's correct and we do the same for them right okay uh mr smith thank you mayor the mayor measure mutual aid and i i don't recall a real accounting of that in the report and if you can enlighten me on it how much mutual aid we provide how much mutual aid is provided to us i did notice the one number I noted that page 108, does that report more than 108 pages? It said 3.1% of all calls are to Walmart, which is outside the city limits. And we're getting our own Walmart, so maybe we can send the 3.1% calls there instead. But what is it that would take 3% of all of our business

Walmart outside the city limits shoplift I mean that that is a question that we have been trying to dissect since we uncovered in the CAD data. We're not sure if it's if CAD is capturing it in properly chief do you know if there's streets surrounding that Walmart.

I just don't think that's an accurate collection because we're not responding there that often. I'm not sure why that's in there, to be honest with you. But something's triggering that address in the CAD system, which is outside of our control. I just don't know. We haven't been able to figure out what's triggering it.

Could that be something as simple as when they had the shooting down there that an officer just happened to be nearby and responded? I mean, would that be captured in CAD that way?

It is. It's just 3% of all calls.

Chief, we're going to get you a wireless mic because we're televising this and you're not.

I want to make sure we can hear you abroad, sir.

Right. So we're going to bring it out for you. If you would just hold off for a mic. They're going to get a wireless. You can come.

So I guess just just to Mr. Smith's point, though, while we're waiting for that is I would just say that it's probably important that we do validate some of that information so we can figure out some of I mean, for the transparency purpose. That's why we're here today is to make sure that everybody understands, you know, this situation. So I think it's important that we do uncover 3.1% of the calls being in a place that's not anywhere close to the city.

We had that conversation in detail. We presented the preliminary findings to the chief and the captains, and one of the first questions they had to us is, why is Walmart in there? We don't have a Walmart. So we went back to clarify the data, and I clarified it two, three, four times, and we could not find a reason as to why it appeared so much. But the CAD data specifically gives that address that amount of times, which was surprising to us when we found out you didn't have a Walmart in your district.

We'll be happy to work with staff to continue to track that down.

Yeah, and you had those other remarkable numbers like your one motel, 14% of the calls, and one school with 700 calls and all of that. Have we been able to confirm that those numbers are real? And then is there a plan to address those specific bizarre numbers?

I will say that those numbers are as real as CAD has recorded them. Those numbers align perfectly with what we hear when we talk to the patrol officers on where are the hot spots and where are your calls. As far as a plan to address them, I would give that to the chief.

Yeah, I mean, I believe that. Can you hear me okay? I believe that is accurate. I think that Walmart calls were the only anomaly that I could find in that. And I don't know why I think and I don't know if you covered when I was putting the mic on but what that does tell me is that Walmart does generate calls for service even for neighboring agencies. So we have potentially that coming. So that's something we just need to think about and consider for future growth. But we do have a high volume of calls in that Motel 6 area.

Do we have a plan to change that? It seems like it would be a significant improvement to your ability to cover other calls.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think purchasing it is an option, but at the end of the day, when you have basically a lower-cost hotel in your community, I guess it brings folks that might commit criminal activities. And so it's not something that can easily change other than we can respond to it, we can monitor it, we can do surveillance, things like that, which helps. But I can't say that it would ever go away as long as it exists. Does that make sense? Because the people that are coming in and out of there change

every few days. Okay, how about the false alarm ones? Do we charge people for false alarms or whatever that was?

Well, you all have helped me with that recently because we had an update to our alarm ordinance about a year ago. And so from what I know is that number has decreased, or at least now we have the ability to address it with fines through civil process and our special magistrate, which we didn't have when this data was being collected. So we were already working on that. Um, I guess I didn't maybe didn't realize even how dramatic it was. Do you see it in a report? But we knew it was an issue and we have addressed it. Great. Thank you.

Chief for transparency. When I looked at the CAD data, the 2025 made available to us that the calls to Motel six have dropped. It's still significantly hard in the majority of comparators, but but it has dropped.

Mr Engelke

okay thanks this is uh kind of echoing on um mr smith's comments there seems to be four or five areas that have a preponderance a higher percentage of calls uh the motel being one of them a couple areas maybe on pine brook domestics um and then also down by the public's here which is a a public space yeah is there anything i realize we're talking about staffing but i think indirectly it could lead to a staffing issue. Is there anything, it's beyond the scope, but I think it's something, if you have any input, you've already kind of, the chief has already talked about it a little bit, the motel, but is there anything else we can do to cut down a significant percentage? Let's say vacation checks, you realize you don't know what you're gonna be finding there. Is there a way to maybe allocate or rank based on AI coming in or whatever, where the number of calls are going down or we send a different type of unit there.

I mean I know there's a lot and I've had conversations very recently with the chief like at the public with those traffic crashes he he is aware that the the county is looking at because you're you're kind of stuck when they're not your roads. So some of that is environmental design issues. I know that with the the motel in question there was a very some privacy fences put up and I'll make this comment just as a as a as a best practice SME When you have a hotspot where you've got a lot of low-level crime, where when you have enough time for officers to be proactive in the types of crimes that typically happen at these types of locations, those are those discretionary actions that if you have time to make the arrest, you're then thinking, okay, I'm not going to be out four and a half hours and leave me down to two. So the officers, when they're using that discretionary time on where they're going to go, I think that can impact how much proactive policing has happened in an area like that. The other part of it is with the growth, and we all know in Florida sometimes it takes a decade for the roads to catch up, but looking at some of those issues, working with the state on the timing of lights, the traffic lights and different things, but I think that's just, at that public, everything that we've discussed with the agency is a design issue. When you talk about the vacation rentals, one of our recommendations is to do a feasibility study of doing a senior or a community volunteer program. Most agencies that do that, they'll take older police cars, they'll have them with yellow lights, they're marked with volunteer, but that gives an additional presence that things like parking lot crashes. things like the vacation checks, where you have volunteers who can do that, it relieves sworn folks. The other thing it does, it becomes a very good force multiplier when you need traffic control points. If you've got to redirect traffic, training some volunteers who can do that. The nice thing is with your volume of work that would fit with that would be a day shift where it's daylight, you've got some senior volunteers that you can train, and I think there's an opportunity there

to have a force multiplier to some degree in some of those areas one thing i would add and this is an extension to the report we do not notice in the report without a scope for this particular study is the use of technology i know the chief is very keen on getting drones as a first responder a study released last week by dr carl mclean noted that the officer response dropped by 40 when he used drones as a first responder particularly for low-level crime is also a great deterrent for Areas where crime is a particular hotspot, particularly things like thefts and violent-based crimes, so looking at technology as a mitigator to that I think is one area that you probably should look toward. That said, there is only one study available. If that is something that you do look toward, one of my recommendations would be to do an analysis on that and whether or not it does indeed save time for officers.

Ms. Frank?

Yeah, related to that kind of demand-driven workforce deployment today, this morning we saw a reserve officer sworn in, and our chief, I believe, joked that we'd bring him in for really those high-need times, like the holiday parade. Is it part of your recommendation? That's new to me since I've been here for four years. Is that part of your recommendation as well, to lean into that type of extra support?

I think any time that you have whether they're retired officers or officers who want to do part-time, it's a double-sided coin. If you have folks that are dedicated, especially if they're part-time reserves and they can backfill some of those, the extra duty, and maybe make a little extra money doing so. I know an agency I work with in Central Florida were struggling mightily to fill their off-duty details. And in working with them, we looked at the number of reserve officers who wanted to keep their certification alive, and then they started backfilling those positions. Because the nice thing with that is, They're of the generation who wants to do those things. Do I choose to go put on a purple vest at Bass Pro or can I go work a few details? I think between reserves, retired reserves, part-time positions have not been something that we've used in Florida for a long, long time. but there could be opportunity there, and then the senior volunteer positions. I think whatever resource you have in the community to tap, there's certainly opportunity costs there. The other part of that is each of those, especially senior volunteer programs, the success on those rests with finding somebody that's dedicated in that volunteer group to be the functional leader and working with the agency. The strength of those is how much resource dedication and buy-in you get when working with the agency. Having that professional standards, Lieutenant, working with some of those. I mentioned the felonious fishermen with some of the homeowners associations. The other side of that is you've got homeowners associations where those might be right locations to find folks who are interested in volunteering.

Did I answer your question, ma'am? So I've just got a quick comment, and then we'll take a break. Go ahead, Mr.

I was just going to say, as far as the volunteers, obviously you saw this morning, I'm open to all those options. I just caution that none of those will address the immediate need, but they will hopefully offset the long term. And so that's going to be my job and my commitment to do everything I can through technology, resources, volunteers, whatever it is, to help reduce that long-term number. I can't do anything about the short term. We are where we are. So I just wanted to add that.

The only comment I wanted to make is you kind of brought up the drone as first responders program and I had made some comments last meeting about us looking at expanding this study into the fire side of things and that's exactly part of what I was talking about when I talked about shared use of services is that that's not just a police specific program. That'll actually help us across the entire public safety network and I think that You guys have shed some light on we need to be looking at public safety comprehensively, not just at PD specifically. And I'm glad that we've opened this door because this is something that everybody needs to see what's going on and how good, bad, or indifferent it is. But we are going to be having some discussions here later this afternoon about looking at our fireside as well, and I'm glad you brought that point up. With that, I'm going to go ahead and give us a 10-minute break. So we'll come back at 2.25 and continue forward. Okay, we are back, and we will continue with where Dr. May left off, when Dr. May comes back in.

Do what now?

Do what now?

While I wait for my esteemed colleague to return. I think we do have a little bit of some of the mystery at least solved on the walmart issue okay. Captain white dug into the numbers a little bit and realized at that the months where those are most heaviest that that's the shop with the cop time. The shop with a cop. So officers are they're calling out when they're there in the community service function and that's where those that's very good thing we're we're still going to look and and they can take a little deeper but that the light bulb went off a little bit with that one okay.

Mystery salt. So if you'll take us from where we left off.

Yeah, so if we just go back a slide, I just want to sort of address the elephant in the room. I know we spoke about this briefly last time, but the jump from 24 to 40 offices and then continuing at pace from there is a pretty big jump. That is not to suggest that VP do do that in a year, that is sort of looking out towards the next 10 years, ideally meeting that minimum 50% standard. So getting to a point where you have 50% of the time to response for calls, 50% in terms of community level policing, and that will require that 2.51. Again, that's increasing dependent on the population. Now, when I first looked at that, again, just for transparency, The CAD data locally gives a completely different story in individual zones compared to the bigger picture when you look across zones. My original argument to the team, and I'm sure Dr. Jones can clarify this as well, was VPD is acting in a capacity which doesn't necessarily support the narrative of more officers but then we start looking out across zones and we take zone seven and zone five the response to um attend those priority one two you know blue light calls was taking a lot longer than we expected and then the straining officers as they're going out started to tell a different story so you sort of get two pictures from this one you get the cad data locally which says you're very quick you're very active and i'm i think someone on the the Membership here mentioned this last time, but we're operating pretty well. We are responding to calls pretty quickly. We are doing the things like security checks. We are doing the proactive things. But then you start to look at the strain, the burnout. You start looking at the response to Zone 7. You start looking at the time to the jail. You then start to see a completely different picture. So it flips in on its head. So when we take it in totality, we see that narrative that we are very much understaffed and we need a lot more officers to meet that. That said, it is not our recommendation to recruit 16 people overnight. The idea would be from 24 to 40 to meet that balance right now, and if you go back to where we were in 2006, 2008, you had more officers then than you do now. So the idea would be slowly meeting that standard over a period of time where the budget would allow for. Our biggest point around this is where you put those officers, depending on how many can fit in whatever budget year. The most calls for service operate between that noon and 2 p.m. spot, so anywhere where you can fit officers during the weekday in that midday shift where officers are operating under more strain. So that would be the recommendation if you are tight on budget and what you can afford based on two, three, four officers, that would be where I would suggest you put that bulk. So if it's traffic, for example, when they're on that nine to five shift or whatever we recommended, That is where I think there's a quick win is get say traffic on that operates within the time frame where there is a lot of requirements for calls for service and it deals with things like traffic incidents where we get a fair amount of time associated to those. So that's sort of the elephant in the room. I know we addressed that last time and we get it's a big call to get to that 40 but that's where we are.

so one thing i want to say on that is so to to kind of fact check our our progress moving forward we wouldn't need to call a consultant in to make sure that that's working we could have our our team basically pull the statistics and see that our our demand is being met more efficiently okay correct all right mr smith you did uh in the report talk

Like add six, add six, add six.

And each time we add six, those are sworn patrol with no additional administration? Correct.

When you look at span of control, particularly at a line level supervisor to officer, the sweet spot is about six. In some agencies, like Venice, you've got it lower. It can go as high as eight to 10 and still be within that frame and scope of control. So the nice thing is you've got your infrastructure built with the reorg in particular to that span of control so you can add between now and 2035 outside of something new that may require an additional unit or something, but the span of control will scope those additional officers.

Okay, and I appreciate the way you're coaching it all when we can afford it, because it's a tough budget. I want to ask you this other thing. The chief already checked off for me on your idea that this is not a menu, that there's structural process changes, efficiency before sufficiency. What number recommendations does that cover? One to five, or does it keep going? What are the numbers of your recommendations that come under that description, which is essentially a low or no cost, I mean it's just so that the reward part right that would be all the way one through 6, 1, through 6, thank you.

Mister city manager.

Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to just expand on that. You know, we at this point have really identified a whole lot of very positive things about our department, as well as some recommendations for improvement. But the biggest recommendation, which you just highlighted, we're not going to have all the solutions today on how we're going to get there. And that's okay. For us, this has given us the target of where we want to be as a community, potentially. and we're to your point mayor we're not going to have to bring them in every time we we talk about it this is really going to give us that goal for the future and this absolutely will be one of our top probably the top strategic planning item that we talk about in our next strategic planning session after november when we have a more clear picture on our financial future and we work on understanding hey here's our deficiencies today because of growth and all these different reasons And here's where we want to be in the future. And how are we going to get there? I mean, that's the big question. So I just wanted to kind of recognize that those would be our marching orders for the future. Thank you.

And to clarify, Mayor, one of the points you mentioned, and I think is a valid point and one we probably should reiterate, is we do not have a crystal ball. We do not know where things are going with technology, for example, drones. We do not know if the population is indeed increasing to 45,000. So this is something that you would need to reassess ideally on a yearly basis to sort of reevaluate, reassess where you are staffing, the demands, the response times. So this is just a starting point, projecting out on what we think is going to happen based on the current data, and as you all know, data changes on a daily basis. So next year you may find that you haven't grown as much as you expected, or there's new technologies that are improving, or that you're operating at a point which is effective for what you need at that current point. So it's a reassessment, but right now this is projecting on where we think we may go.

I think another key highlight here is that this is an independent study that was done from nobody within our organization. We've had chiefs tell us before some of these deficiencies, but this is a third party coming in and telling us as a council independently what you guys think we need as professionals. I think that's important as well. you know that's why i wanted to highlight we don't need to call you guys every time this is this is just a verification of what we what we might have been told already you know so um now we know the extent and and i definitely appreciate the the depth of the work that you guys have done and the walmart caper has been solved so okay anything else um moving forward any other points I don't think so, I don't have anybody requesting to speak.

I think we covered that one already. Just one point on that I just want to cover. Okay. Sorry, next slide. So the next is investigations. So one thing we uncovered, one was two of the investigators have left, so you were short two investigators, two detectives. We made a recommendation of hiring two new detectives in addition to recruiting the two that are currently missing and doing that over a period of the next three to four years. So that's a new investigator in 2027 and another one come 2029. The reason we make that recommendation mainly is twofold. One is the types of crimes that you have, and they're pretty unique for the population you have in Venice. Gran Lasni being one of the biggest crime types, they're incredibly sophisticated crimes, they take a lot of investigations, the closeout rate takes a long time, and the outcome is usually pretty poor in terms of what the victim wants. If you're dealing with crimes that exist outside the US, so you get an email from someone very sophisticated, take someone's entire life savings, it's a lot of time, a lot of effort, very advanced cyber-type investigations, and it's not going to result typically in the money back for that particular victim. Because of that type of complexity, that is putting the caseload at a greater volume, comparative to, say, person-level crime, which is relatively quick to close out, With that, it's mindful that those types of cases will require a lower volume or lower case count per detective. There's been several studies on this, anything from being in Florida, and I think one of the latest studies is in New York, And what they show for high-level complexity crimes, like fraud, like advanced cybercrime, will often require between 11 and 12 cases per detective. Currently, your detectives are operating at over 20 cases, 21, 22 per officer at some points. So it's worth noting that we need to bring that down, given that the average, I think, is 154 days to close out one of those. That's not to say they're not doing other things. They are doing personal-level cases, so you can just imagine the volume that they have. The other point about the second point is the need to either at a civilian capacity or at a sworn capacity, provide the skills required to do those types of crimes. Now you have someone who was a financial expert, cyber expert for those, they are no longer in position, so it's worth considering whether or not you recruit at a civilian or you re-recruit at a sworn level, but that's a skill set that's gonna be required given the type of crime that we see in Venice. So that's what we saw there, so I'll open it up for discussion. Any questions?

doesn't look like. So I'll grab this one Brandon. So expand civilian staff we didn't have. We have the data. to look at that. A good example with the investigators is if you can get creative and find a specialist who can support some of these financial crimes, that's not a sworn position. Oftentimes, these will be folks who've retired. They may be a retired federal agent or retired law enforcement officer that doesn't want to continue as a sworn member, but then you've got somebody in that position, especially in a specialty, that that's going to be their position. The sworn folks are going to rotate. They're going to promote. You're going to have a little bit of inconsistency in that. That's an opportunity. We talked about the community volunteer program. There's a lot of best practices around the state. I will tell you, from being involved with those and looking at those, the key is finding some leadership within those volunteer groups. They're there. That's where you can build from your Citizen Police Academy. You all have one of the very successful Citizen Police Academy that I think could help fund that. Looking at the tasks that not necessarily require sworn officers, we talked about volunteers perhaps being able to help with some of the volunteer checks. I think it's important to recognize things like vacation checks, things like parking lot crashes, these are not required functions. These are things that you do through your police department because that's a level of service that the citizens of Venice have come to expect and you want to give them. That said, any amount of help in those capacities will be helpful along with the business checks and the other proactive things, but you have to, as you're devising those programs is look at the time of day and the time of service and what that would account for you can look at it this way I want you to be optimistic that it will cut into the officers requirements but also be realistic generally speaking a city this size is going to have one one car out with two volunteers during the day that's going to be able to respond and help with traffic control there may be a found bicycle a lot of them will you deploy pickup trucks be able to go to a parking lot crash some some will allow them to write if they go to school right parking tickets and then do some of those vacation checks so that's an added person to help offset some of that but it's not going to race race an entire need. The other the other thing that was noted is And it's interesting, with the advent of the social media and the body cams, police departments across the country are getting cold requests from folks who want body cam video because then they take it and they produce the best of the crazy person on the traffic stop videos, which means that your records folks have to go into these videos and make sure that they redact any information or any data that have to be redacted. And that is a time-consuming issue. Right now, by all our accounts, they're being able to handle that load, but that requirement is increasing. So being open to look at potential part-time positions to make sure that that ability to respond to those public records requests is done within that reasonable time is something to just put on your radar as something to be considerate of.

One point we did raise with that is this would be based on any analysis that you do in the future it was not part of the data that we had this came more qualitatively so that recommendation is that I think it's a really important one given the demand for that but it's something conditional on whatever your data would then support later.

Any questions on the expanded staff. We talked about there's that here's the numbers.

So we had data looking at directed patrol vacation watch this just gives you an oversight as to what your officers are doing in terms of vacation so over the period of 2020 to 2025 3 and a half thousands. I can't records were noted for vacation watch over 7,000 directed patrol. we've assumed I think conservatively they often take slightly longer than this at 15 minutes per check including travel that's 880 sworn officer hours just devoted to that which we could offset to someone who is more civilian or non sworn so they're spending a lot of time doing again proactive things but just for easy wins and for spreading officers out that may be a quick one with a very low or neutral cost benefit

So number 12 is the seasonal and events. This goes back to the conversation about the overtime and the extra duty and kind of matching those up. So we're not going back to the same well with the same people over and over again. But it's also very interesting that the season is also the peak time that most police departments do some of their mandatory training. So when it's not raining, that's advantageous to go to the range and do your firearms training. When it's not raining, going to the driving range and doing a lot of those things. And in talking with the agency, finding sweet spots where you're not having to cram those things in there and do it in the off-season. The indoor ranges in the area, most of the other agencies that control those are using those as well. So looking at... some strategy and if you get additional new events. It's is it have to be in that same peak window that the number of 60 events in March still is absolutely blows my mind on on managing that from across the board, but being mindful of some of those things in those overlapping additional requirements that the all your public safety folks have to attend to was just a recommendation to put on the board.

The other thing with this is the data that we presented is for permanent residents only. It does not include those snowbirds that come here for seasonal seasonal breaks. So the population of 45,000 is permanent. It is not including those that extend outside of that. The other thing we started to look at, we didn't have enough data to report on, of those individuals driving through Venice for reasons of work or just transiting through. It doesn't include that. One of the qualitative points we did have is that does cause some issue, particularly for traffic accidents. So it would be worthwhile at some point considering ways in which you may want to collect that data and seeing how that affects overall calls for service. So we tried to access that data. Captain White gave us a lot of support trying to get that it just wasn't dissectable for any analyses.

So on 13 is the community outreach and co-response. It's really interesting to understand your marine unit and the various funding sources for that. And then the co-response relationship to include the incident command and the requirement where you've got co-response of fire and police. And in talking with the fire department and the folks who are co-responding, some of those may not on surface make a lot of sense. But until either the police or fire get there, and I'll give you an example, an unattended death at an assisted living facility. Sometimes with your population, it's not a non-routine incident, but whether or not it's going to require an in-depth investigation or a detective, somebody has to get there. So trying to figure out Is there a way that the fire can let the police department cut them loose earlier one of those challenges is is the radio systems don't necessarily easily talk with one another the ones that are successful are those supervisors and managers who have the cell phones of their peers in the fire department and they can they can call one another so looking at at that and then on the incident command. Looking at ways to measure success in those outcomes.

anything to add there is the next slide so this just sort of shows where we are in terms of total calls one point and maybe on the next slide as well uh shows that co-response model again i mentioned this briefly so if you just go to next you'll see that so if we're looking at suspicious person calls and again it's not unheard of that you see those in in venice um the amount of uh Officer requirements and the calls for service with 2 or more offices is pretty extreme now when we start looking again Eastwards to the city and in zone 5 that is a fairly frequent thing so you're seeing 2, 3 or 4 officers responding to those calls. So it's just being mindful that we have a co-response model how many officers are required for that particular call. We don't have data to support at this point that you are seeing a different call type in Zone 7 as you're getting more development, more growth in that city. But just given our experience and anecdotal evidence that we have with that, when you have things like Walmarts and you get Home Depots and you get condos and apartments, you're likely to see a different type of demographic. You're also likely to see a different type of call response. They're more likely to be suspicious calls, domestic calls, violence calls. All of those require more officers. Again, the data at this point does not support that, so I'm speculating, but given the experience and the research that we've done before, that's what we're likely going to see in that region. So again, it's being mindful of that type of call we have. If you go back one slide, this goes in the 2025 data. This is not in the report. This is something that we've done after the fact because CAD changed when we had this data, and we didn't want to do an apple for oranges comparison. This is for January to May, so you see a general plateau of calls, so comparative to 2024 and 2025, it's increased slightly but only marginally, so it's sort of plateauing off. officer initiated calls are remaining fairly consistent so again it gives evidence that you're operating at a a community level practice rather than just a call for response and community checks remains one of the largest cad inputs that we have so it means your officers are being proactive they're doing the things they should be doing for the community they're not just responding to calls so again it supports that idea that you are operating or seek to operate at that 33 on that wilson and wise model

And last but not least on our recommendations actually before I get to that any questions on number 13. And last but not least our recommendation on the canine is really the agency needs to conduct a program assessment on the needs and desires of the community as it comes to how they want to continue and or expand that program.

Mr. Smith.

Can I can I force you to give us an opinion on that should we have one or not the report was some people want it some people don't want it. You might want it might not want it but tell us tell us how we should really look at that other than do we love dogs.

This is one of those. You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. If you needed a dog for officer or public safety and you didn't have a dog, you're damned. If you have a dog and you spend the resources and the time and you never see a use, then you're damned. So I guess you've got to pick which way you want to be damned. I will say that there are so many different approaches to canines. The most simplest is having canines and how that impacts your community relationships. not only in the community relationship, but with retention. Just like motorcycles and other aspects in law enforcement, there are folks that their passion in policing is to be a canine handler. That said, you've got search dogs, you've got drug dogs, you've got bite dogs, you've got some combinations therein, and I think this is why I think The police department really needs to look at, from its identity and how it's servicing, what makes the most sense for the police department. Did I answer your question?

As much as you're going to, yes. Thank you.

Anyone else?

Folks it it truly from our perspective this has been an interesting project. We went down some really interesting holes we discovered some very interesting things that we often don't get data. I will say that from you all to the other members of the city and the police department, everybody was very happy to have the conversations with us and I think that we have a lot of confidence in what we gathered there. apart from the the shop with the cop and the walmart question we're fairly confident that the data we got from cad from the sheriff's office is as good as that cad data is going to be i think one of the artifacts of moving dispatch to the sheriff's office is it forced the agency to be more precise when they call out or they log their service and i think that that actually gave us more robust data Then we often see when we go to an agency that does its own so we just want to thank you all for the welcome that we've had in the city.

Appreciate you guys for all the hard work you did and we'll let the chief wrap it up.

I appreciate that. You know I've had a chance to say. We're back. They've had a whole lot to say. And I wanted them to get everything they had to say out in front of you. But I do want to of course say thank you for this opportunity to have this staffing study. There's been a lot involved with it. I'm not going to say it was inexpensive, but with the work they did, I'd say we got a deal. They did a lot, and they never said no when I called them. So I also want to thank Dr. Jones and his team for all their efforts. And I think the study showed a lot of great things as far as the support that we received from this community, the support that we received from all of you. There's a lot of great things that we have as it relates to our equipment, our training. And so this isn't a question of, is the support there? We know that it's there. We're just making a correction on where we've fallen behind in some of the staffing. And so I appreciate all your attention and all your questions we have experienced today and in the previous session. I also would like to mention the officers. I know they've all been watching intently. You don't see them all, you don't hear them all. I do. I know what their questions are and I know they're paying attention and I know they appreciate that this has finally come to the forefront because this is something we've been talking about internally for quite a while. I know they're all very appreciative and are watching closely. Kind of builds on that camaraderie that we've talked about in that report. All this type of discussion and positive forward progress helps to build on that. And so what I'm looking for today, I kind of broke all this down into a few steps to make it a little simpler in my mind. The first step is what we talked about. is if we can get some approval to move forward with that organizational chart changes. We've done a lot within the department over the last year and a half to work up to this, but we kind of stalled when we got, because one, it's a big change. There's a lot involved. There is some financial implications that were mentioned. And so we're looking for your support so we can start that ASAP. That would be great. We're ready to go. Everything's in place. Just looking for the okay. And what that does is give us that kind of boost, that shot in the arm while we're waiting for the ability to add additional officers. It creates that structure we need so when we add those officers it's there and it's in place. It addresses some issues that we have relating to accountability of tasks, and it addresses the direction that you all have provided us to make sure that our operations are running as effectively and efficiently as possible. So that was the target, that was the goal, and I believe that's what we presented to you all. And then beyond that, Immediately, we'll take a look at all those steps that he talked about that do not have a fiscal impact and start working away and coming with plans to implement those things. That's stuff we can start to do right now. Of course, the next step, too, would be answering the question, is there anything we can do in fiscal year 27? That's something for you all to talk about. Obviously, anything that you can provide, whether it's a traffic officer or two, is beneficial and will give me the ability to then start backfilling some of those specialty units that I have to put on patrol to cover the minimum staffing. Anything in that area would be appreciated, but I can't just sit here and ask for it without understanding that the budgets is slim. I appreciate any effort to address that. Then the long-term, the third step would be the longer approach of looking at fiscal year 28 and hoping that you can just give us the consensus that you agree we need to move forward and let the city management finance myself present those plans to you and how that can happen I think some of that will be discussed later today as well so those are really the three steps that I'm looking for and I'll leave it to you for any other comments or questions before I step down you're stepping down away from the podium.

Any questions for the police chief?

Okay.

Thank you very much, sir. Appreciate your time.

Thank you.

All right. Madam Clerk, do you have anybody signed up to speak?

Nope.

Okay. So, looking at a motion. I would, I'll go ahead and make a motion so we can have some discussion. I would move to direct staff to adopt the new organizational chart and pursue hiring two new officers to fill the recommended traffic officer positions. Second. Seconded by Mr. Howard. All right, council discussion. So I'll start off. It's a huge pill to swallow when you look at a big study like this and what all the recommendations are and you can see we just went through so many points of areas we need to look at. One of the pieces of our discussion later when we get to the millage discussion is I asked last meeting and we approved having staff come back to us with a report on a study similar to this with the fire department and kind of a comprehensive analysis. And the reason why, and I kind of touched on this earlier, is because I think that if we work on all of this globally, we can actually save some money. by sharing some resources between departments. And the drone program is just one of, I'm sure, many that we'll find out. But making sure that we're transparent in how we're charging fees. We just talked about with police doing the false alarm reports and fees. I think a lot of those things are important. And we need to capture the waste of our resources if that's what's happening. But we also need to do things transparently. So I think that that's all very important. That said, I feel like this is the best band aid given our current fiscal situation and where we're headed. The best band aid that we can provide is these two particular positions. They'll already be taking peak hours. They're already going to be seasoned officers. You don't typically hire a traffic officer right off the street. It's somebody that's already been working in the agency. So it's going to be somebody who's familiar with our current situation. So I think that it's a good a good start to this process. The cost, I believe in Mr. City Manager or Chief, I guess you could come back up and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's roughly $220,000 per officer. So that's a huge deficit that we don't have that money just laying in the budget. I know we've got a little bit of money in there, $114,000 or something like that. So it'll require staff to give us some recommendations on how we're going to come up with that funding. And again, it'll probably be part of our discussion here in a little bit in the next topic. So that's kind of where I came up with that motion. So anyone else that wants to jump into discussion? Mr. Bolt?

Yeah, thank you. You know, when you mentioned the fire study last meeting, I cringed a little bit, and I think I actually said something about it. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, we have to step back. We're at a crossroads. No matter how you look at it, we're at a crossroads. Some things got away from us. We grew a little faster than we anticipated. And so for us to take a step back and look at police and fire safety, which is so vastly important to our community, and our community expects good service. we need to take a step back and look at what changes are going to happen over the next several years. And as the mayor said, how do these departments help each other, especially now that you're going to have one station sitting right next to the other station? There is some compatibility here that I could actually see, potentially. So I am an advocate of moving forward with that. I will say one thing. I think the one thing that the chief mentioned that you did not mention was moving forward with the other steps that have no financial implications, i.e., volunteerism, et cetera, et cetera. But I think we can take that for granted. I don't think we need to change the motion. So I think this is well put at this point, and we just have to figure out how we're going to pay for it. Okay. If we can do it.

Thank you. Anyone else. Mister Smith.

So you figure out how we pay for it.

Last week we said we were going to set a property tax millage rate of 3.8 4, 5, 0. And the way we will pay for it is by raising that. You know with a also I think that the recommendations one to 6 came with a $34,000 cost in addition to the whatever it is per officer of 220 So let's just say a little bit. And last week I talked about I could support a starting budget that was at least the rollback rate, but certainly not a tax increase. And with the statewide referendum potentially forcing us to lower the property taxes on the ballot in November, the governor, the legislature backing it with polls showing it, It's likely to pass at more than 60%. I think it's important that we keep with our austerity budget brought to us by our city manager, delay adding staff until we know if we face those constraints that are going to be placed on us by voters, potentially, maybe not. And maybe if we were going to add these, we could make it contingent on not facing that. And I know that the If the referendum passes, it doesn't affect the property taxes this year, but adding officers this year will affect what we're able to support next year with less income if that thing passes. Property taxes in Venice have risen from 10.6 million in 2016 to 31.4 million in 2025, largely because of the assessments going up assessments in the city of Venice rose from 3.6 billion to 8.3 billion. And so adjusting this rate that we discussed last week is a very significant thing to do on top of our history and in the face of a referendum in November. I want to read you one other thing and I'll rest. You've heard me say it before. I was intrigued by a statement from the Dade County tax collector who was elected who said, quote, I commend Governor Ron DeSantis, Speaker of the House Danny Perez and Senate President Ben Allbritton for putting this issue front and center. Floridians should be encouraged that their government is listening to their growing concerns about affordability and the rising cost of staying in their homes. As tax collector, I see firsthand the pressure that property taxes are placing on families, seniors, and small businesses. Residents are not an unlimited source of revenue for the government. And I want us all to be very, conscious of that uh before we increase this uh millage rate that we talked about last week and that's in our current budget and it was brought to us by our city manager 3.8 450 and of course we i believe before the day is out we need to set that number because it'll be the number that we advertise the number that will go out on mailings to every resident in the city and um I assume someone's gonna give me that new number if we approve this motion. Thank you.

Mr. Engelke?

Thank you. I think we're understaffed. I think the report came out clear that we're understaffed and we need to address the operations. And one of the easiest ways, quickest ways and most effective way would be hiring additional staff. Two seems to be the right idea for now. I think we're probably understaffed more than that. and the idea of fiscal conservatism, it too seems to be a good start. I'd like to kind of also, we're talking about the budget and the operations for 26-27, the upcoming year. Next year will be next year, and we're going to have to figure out next year. But one of the things that I've come to the conclusion, people come to the city of Venice because of our streets, our parks, our infrastructure, what we see every single day. That's why they come. But people stay here because they know they have a safe town. Our police, our fire, our first responders are there for them. So, you know, I think we'd be remiss if we didn't keep that in mind, people coming from our parks and streets and the atmosphere, and then they're staying because of our first responders. So I kind of disagree with my colleague here, but that's okay. We're still friends, I think. We are. And, you know, I think it's something that we have to do. We have to kind of catch up. And only to right now I think is a good starting point. Thanks.

All right. Anyone else? Okay, and Madam Clerk, if you'll make us ready for an electronic vote.

Are we going to get a number that will tell us what we're voting to change the millage rate to in order to do this?

So we're not on that item yet. Right now we're just on the police study item, which is 26-0662. We're going to have discussion on the next item after this one.

This will affect that number. I mean, that number is a function of this vote. Shouldn't we ask

for the number before we vote? What number are you looking for, the cost per officer?

No, the change that we have to make in the millage rate in order to afford this motion.

It's a fair question.

Which would include the cost of those officers and the cost of recommendations one to six, which is, I think, what you have called for.

We're not, this motion is not to do anything to the millage rate. This is just to look at the positions, you know, to give staff direction to look at those, adding those two positions. There's no discussion of the millage rate in here, but if you want to know that information, I'll gladly let staff answer that question.

I would like that.

Okay.

Thank you, Mayor. At this time, I would invite our finance director up, who has listened to the conversation and can give us that millage calculation.

And while we're waiting for that, Ms. Frank?

Yeah, I was just going to respond to my colleague, Mr. Smith. I understand the logic that we're requesting with this motion two more police officers. However, that is a small piece of our overall budget. So I understand your comments about how the millage could be adjusted based on this request, but we still have Millions of other dollars in the budget that could be tweaked to accommodate these two police officers while also holding the millage constant, if that makes sense. That's why I saw them as two separate issues.

All right, Missenny, you can come up.

mayor while she's getting uh ready up there based on your motion we'd be looking at the two additional traffic officers and the costs associated with the org chart change which was i think around 34 000. that was the motion yes not anything related to millage or taxes okay go ahead miss any

Okay, so I'll just, Linda Seny speaking, finance director. So the org change costs is, and keep in mind these are at their current pay rates, and then it carries over to the following year. So anytime you add a position, it carries over to the following year and keeps adding on. So at the current pay rate, the total cost of the org changes are $43,145. So to hire an officer at, and we're looking at the step six because they want to hire people with experience. The last time we hired, we've hired four people at step six. So if you take one officer, it's $212,000. So if you take two officers, it's $423,000 for two officers. That would be the total cost and that includes, that's the general fund portion. So that includes their personnel and their operating costs and recurring costs. That's for one fiscal year. Then also within that is police vehicles. The police vehicles will be purchased with the police impact fee funds, but the operating costs going forward come out of the general fund for the vehicle. So part of the vehicle, when I say the recurring cost for police operating includes the operating and maintenance of the vehicles that you purchase. So it's just the initial purchase that can come from the police impact fees. But the maintaining and operations goes forward, comes out of the general fund.

Mr. Smith, did that answer your question?

It does. Yeah.

And what does 467,000 from general fund represent in the way of a millage change? If we were to just keep everything the same but add $467,000 to our budget?

Correct. So I'm going to pull this up so I can see it. So if we add one officer, the millage needed would be .0288. If you're looking at increasing the millage or just taking that out of the current reserves. So if you add two officers, the millage is .058. So if you take two officers and you add it to the current 3.845, that gets you to 3.9026, which is slightly less than the rollback rate of the 3.9261. Thank you.

Okay.

So now I think we're ready for an electronic vote. Madam Clerk, if you'll make us ready for that. All right, you can tally and display. Passes six to one. All right, we'll take a break and then we'll come back for the last item on the agenda, which is 26-0681. Back at three. You good? Yes. Yes? No, good. Okay, we're back and we're on to 26-0681. This is to set the dates for the public hearing. Hearings on millage and budget for 5.01 p.m. on Tuesday, September 8th, 2026 and Tuesday, September 22nd, 2026 and set the preliminary operating millage rate at 3.8450 and the debt service millage rate at 0.3451 for fiscal year ending 2027. And I believe we have some other discussion in here as it relates to staff reporting back on some things from last meeting related to the public safety study and stuff like that. So I will go ahead and turn it over to the city manager if he'd like to introduce what we're going to be talking about, and then staff can come up and present.

Thank you, Mayor. At our last budget workshop, when we discussed this topic, you had requested we bring back numbers on the police officer costs, which we just talked about. But we certainly have those available if there's any additional discussion. And also, we talked a little bit about the fire side. And we've met internally several times since then. And I, from a staff perspective, totally agree. Public safety is connected. These two departments make up more than half of our general fund. So it is extremely significant, especially in light of all the property tax discussions that are coming up. So I'd invite up our fire chief, Frank Giddens, and Linda Sinney, our finance director, to talk a little bit more about that cost, which they have in front of you. As they're coming up, I'll just let you know our perspective on this, and I talked a little bit last time about the financial implications from FHIR, but the staffing study for FHIR, we're not gonna make a lot of grounds with that study if we don't have a way to fund it. So we've really bundled those together, and that's what they're gonna speak about today in both the FHIR staffing organizational and efficiency study and looking at a FHIR assessment fee study. And this is something that you all charged us with as strategic planning. If there's any way to take some of our large expenditures out of the general fund, we need to start looking into that. So this is really the first step in that, and I would propose that those two really go hand in hand so we can look at an opportunity to get a fee out of the general fund and into a more self-supporting model. So with that, I will pass it off to Chief Giddens and Mrs. Cine.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council, thank you, City Manager. Yeah, so we can start off, we'll start with Linda and let her go over just a couple of the numbers and then of course we can dive deeper into any questions you have.

Okay, for the assessment fee study and the staffing study, we estimate it'll be about $120,000 to do the both of them studies. One of the things I was going to stress about for a fire assessment fee, one of the reasons of doing that would be for, it can help provide the city of Venice a more diversified revenue base for the city's governmental activities, especially with the uncertainty of property taxes. And it's a dedicated revenue stream that's specific for the fire department's operating expenses. It can only be used for the fire department if it's a fire assessment fee. It's not used for EMS, it's just for the fire department. And it's a way to bring extra revenue into the general fund if we go with a fire assessment fee, which then frees up general fund dollars for other departments and or police activities. And it's a revenue source that is less vulnerable to the fluctuations in the economy, because it's a fee that would be every year, so it's less vulnerable, and then based on the city's property taxes, the uncertainty of that. So this would be an additional revenue source. So that would be the reasons of why we'd want to do a fire assessment fee. And the surrounding areas around us, pretty much they all have a fire assessment fee.

She's correct. Just some things I'd like to add. So if you're not familiar necessarily with a fire assessment study does, as Linda said, it does perform a community risk assessment as a comprehensive data driven evaluation. that and it kind of runs a fine tooth comb through our department and it helps to expose different resources response capabilities funding options and really expose any specific risks in the community so in short it ensures the longevity of the service the fire department provides to our citizens.

OK ready for questions I'm ready OK we'll start with Mister Smith.

And understand what what I just heard you asking us to fund a study. And we don't know yet. How much that would bring into the budget and would bring it in whatever brings in would bring it in in the next. current budget year?

It would bring it in hopefully during fiscal 28. There's a process that we have to go through for a fire assessment fee. First, we'd have to get a consultant to come up with the fee and the analysis, which is a study or a fire assessment fee study to come up with the analysis. Then there's certain processes that we have to do for the city to put that into place. You have to do an ordinance, adopt it, and then it comes into place for fiscal 28's budget, hopefully.

I'm all for that study, but I just wanted to be clear, it won't affect revenues this year, or we were just talking to police, we were talking about this year's budget. This won't generate any revenue to help offset any of that.

The only thing we're asking for this year's budget fiscal 27 will be the cost of doing the study and the assessment fee. But the revenue generated would be hopefully for fiscal 28, not fiscal 27.

And what was that cost?

Between about $120,000 to do a fire assessment fee with the cost study.

Thank you. With the staffing study as well?

Yes, with the staffing study, yes.

It would basically be a comprehensive analysis of the department. Of the whole department. Including resources, staffing, and different options.

Next on my list is Engelke.

Thanks. We just went through the police study. We learned a lot. I think we learned a lot about the staff. We also learned about other ways of approaching things, which was unforeseen benefit. And you go over the $120,000 to get the study, to maybe do a fire assessment fee, and the unintended benefits that we're getting from, I think it speaks for itself. So I think it's, one of those things. And just to confirm, it would be $120,000 in the fiscal year beginning October 1st, 26, and we're not gonna be hiring Probably not, because it's going to take a while based on what you said. If we're going to be hiring or changing something, that's not going to happen until at least the 27-28 budget. So for the 26-27 budget, we're just looking at $120,000-ish. Is that correct? Correct.

Mr. Howard? Thanks, Mayor. The fire assessment, at least in my experience is pretty common. Most places I've lived, I've seen that in my tax bill. I think it does provide, it's very transparent because you know exactly where the money's going to the fire department. And I think what little bit I know about the process, it evaluates your rates based on the risk of maybe not just fire, but fire per dwelling. So that would be what age, construction, that type of stuff. That's how the study is done or the assessment's done.

Correct so the objective of the assessment alone is to collect accurate data to support a decision the Council would eventually have to make whether to implement the assessment or not it. It provides support for capital staffing and what it does really is it's based on a floor statute that guides its calculation which would provide the The ability to meet 2 criteria specific each vacant parcel and or parcel with a structure on it has to have and receive a special benefit from the fire department. Most of that being preservation of their property. and then it would then have to meet the second criteria of a fair apportionment apportionment which would be a cost calculated fairly assigned based again on the burden of the demand that is being asked of the fire department but essentially it is on the square footage and the um of the vacant lot or the lot with the structure on it thank you mr weed

Thank you Mister mayor. Who stated that the our surrounding areas all have a fire. So obviously research was done to find that out. In asking that question whether or not they had an assessment fear not was there any inquiry as to the annual budget of the annual revenues brought in from that assessment. Do we know what the city of Sarasota North Port. Arcadia whatever what their

What kind of scale of number we're looking for for assessment. Sure and that's so you are correct in that Sarasota County North port they have and have had since had an assessment in place. City of Venice does not but to to give a number. I think it would be safer and just again to make sure that we have accurate information. That's where having the consultant come in the subject matter expert who can can give those projections. I would hate to give it I would hate to put out any number there just so that we don't. One we don't hang our hat on that number whether it comes in higher or lower.

Now is curious of magnitude, I mean as of you know that does the city of Sarasota collect a $1,000,000 a year half million 100,000 10,000 I don't know if there was any indication of the magnitude of this crisis is 120,000 a 10 year payback or 6 month payback.

I know that with with Sarasota County and even with Northport a lot of it again is based on your square footage would be kind of hard to compare city of Venice necessarily to just just a square footage alone with Sarasota County in the parcels and structure that they have what I can say is that the city of venice and the council of course would have the ability to set their their number based on what the average is including what Sarasota and Northport both collect and then of course you know that's again where the assessment would come in handy just so that you guys would have accurate information so that you could make a a fair decision.

Miss Frank.

Thank you, yes, I understand the request from the mayor to complete the study as a way to seek you know more diverse revenue streams to fund fire. There's nothing more important to me and local government and properly funding our public safety. So I hear that desire loud and clear. I did just pull this from the city of Lakeland presentation that they gave to their city commission. They reported that only 30% of the 400 municipalities in Florida currently administer a fire assessment fee. So maybe it's not, the overwhelming majority, but it still is obviously a tool that municipalities like ourselves can use. So I'm all ears on what the study will yield us. I just don't wanna put the cart before the horse and I don't want our taxpayers who are watching at home to interpret this endorsement of a study that it's absolutely gonna be enacted in that they will be paying more than they have in previous years due to a new fee quite yet. So, thank you.

Mr. Smith.

Thank you, Mayor. Two questions really. First, how is the fee collected? Is it on the property tax bill or do we send them a separate bill? How does that occur?

We prefer that it's on the property tax bill, but there's certain steps that we have to go through. It's called the uniform collection method if we put it on the tax bill, which from a finance standpoint, that's what I would prefer because then it's collected on the tax bill. And in order to do that, we would have to have resolution adopted by March 1st I'm not sure that we would make that March 1st at this point in time so the other option then if you don't get it on the tax bill is this is and this has happened people have done that before in the past where for the first year you can do direct build meaning we the city would have to direct bill every property owner and hope that they pay the collection rate sometimes would be less than if it's on the tax bill and then the following year because then depending on the timing of it because then we have to get permission from the property tax collector that we want to collect on the bill. We have to resolution and notify them. Then the second year it could go on the tax bill. I don't know that we would make it the first year to get on the tax bill because city council would have to adopt a resolution by March 1st to say we want to put it on the tax bill. And I don't think that that would happen, that we would have the all your discussions to say by March 1st we for sure want to put it on the tax bill and that you would approve that. So if it's like, let's just say it's next summer sometime, and we say we want to be effective for October fiscal 28, then that first year we, the city, would probably do direct billing. Then after that, we would work with the tax collector to get it on the tax bill the following year. So there's a whole process we have to go through, and there's a lot of legal things that we have to work through if we move forward with a fire assessment fee.

Great. And if I can ask also, we talked recently about the possibility of higher ambulance fees. I think, Chief, you said Sarasota-Longbow Key at least charge higher ambulance fees than we do. And I know this is Fire assessment, not ambulance, but should we be studying that at the same time? That we're looking at fire assessment fees?

Well, we adopted our current resolution for the EMS for that it increases by the CPI every year. But no matter what kind of a dollar amount you want to put up, there's allowable amounts that insurance will pay. So there's allowable, so you could say put a higher dollar amount, but the insurance and Medicare will only pay the allowable amount. Correct. We are already at those amounts.

All right. Before folks get their second bite of the apple, I have a couple. So first and foremost, I think it's important that everybody understands that we're just funding a study, and primarily we're going to be getting some staffing data out of this as well that goes towards what we were just doing with police. So I think that there's a bigger picture to what we're doing. We're not approving a fee. We're not doing any of that. I would say some of the benefits of looking at a fee is that people will actually see where their money is coming and going. So I think that's important, too, that there's transparency in what we're doing and that if you want to charge people for fire service, they should see what that amount is and where they're paying that to. My big question to you, Ms. Senney, was gonna be the $120,000 estimated amount, that comes out of the general fund at the one time, it's not a recurring charge, correct? Correct, correct.

It comes from the general fund. We would put it to the fire department's budget as professional services, but as general fund, correct.

And then can we explore grant funding to cover that cost?

I'm sorry, what was that?

Can we explore grant funding to cover the cost?

No, there's no grant funding to do studies.

So we've looked into that?

No, we haven't, but I just know there's no grant funding to do studies.

All right, Mr. Engelke?

Okay, thanks. Again, I'm going to restate, I think it's a great deal. And I also think it's a defensive move. Should something happen in November, We're going to be scrambling. At least we'll be moving the ball ahead. So in the event that we have to scramble, we have the tools ready to go. So another reason for my support of this.

All right. I saw a couple names come on and come off. So everybody good? Any other discussion? Okay. All right that talks about the fire piece of this. Miss any what's what's next on the discussion as it relates to the millage.

Miss Frank hold on one second miss Frank I have a motion when you're ready there's still further staff presentation on you know there was the more staff presentation.

No, really just questions. As you identified, the fire piece is something we would bring back with your consensus as it's unrelated to the millage. It would come from the general fund reserves, but we need to just continue the millage discussion.

Would we want that in two separate motions?

Yes, two separate motions, because to approve the study, then that would come back when I do the memo in August to say these are the changes from when we had the proposed budget. That would be included in there. That's separate than your millage.

Okay. Let me start with that motion then so I move to direct staff to pursue a staffing and assessment study for the fire service specifically out of public safety. Second Mr. Ingleke any council discussion on that particular topic. OK then madam clerk if you're ready us for an electronic vote. Council members when you're ready you can indicate your vote as soon as it's flashing. All right. Madam Clerk, tally and display. Passes unanimously. Okay. Now, Ms. Frankie said you had a motion on millage.

Yes. I move to set the dates for the public hearings on millage and budget for 5.01 p.m. on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, and Tuesday, September 22, 2026. and set the preliminary operating millage rate at 3.8450 and the debt service millage rate at .3451 for fiscal year ending 2027.

And I'll second that. All right, now council discussion. Madam Clerk, can you switch my screen over to? Okay, anybody want to speak on this? All right, we will start with Mr. Bolt.

Thank you. I know that we are, there's a couple things going on right now. Number one, we're trying to protect our citizens from any kind of tax increases. Fully appreciate that gung-ho right behind it. At the same time, we're trying to finance two police officers and potentially a fire study. I remember from our discussion last week, I guess it was last week, Wednesday, a comment which I kind of misunderstood, but I just clarified with Ms. Senney. If we were to go to the rollback rate of 3.9261, It would not cost our citizens a penny because that's based on the valuations that are out there. So they would see no additional charges on their tax bill. And at the same time, it would drop about $560,000 to the bottom line that we could use to fund the several things that we just agreed to. So I would ask my colleagues to think about that as a means by which to basically solve two problems with one stone, so to speak. We don't raise taxes, but we get what we need, desperately need, for the police department and a study started for the fire department that would essentially, potentially, give us a new stream of revenue. So, thank you.

Mr. Engelke? Thank you.

Yeah, thanks. I'd have to vote no on the proposed motion for many of the reasons that my colleague, Mr. Bolt, suggested. It's not really, our dollars still gonna be the same. It's not a tax payment increase or decrease if we keep the millage rate the same year over year. And we just kind of approved, if my math is correct, if we go with the fire department, I'm sorry, the police department, we're at 3.9026. I'm gonna advocate to maintain the 3.9261. And then we had the fire study, which was $120,000. I did not do the math on that, but I think we're pretty close to the rollback millage rate of 3.9261. We may be a couple tenths or a hundredths off. I'm not sure. But more importantly, if we do something other than 3.9261, We can't do anything next month. We have two meetings coming up in September on the 8th and the 22nd. And if nothing else, we're giving a little wiggle room here in the event that something should change. All we have to do is vote to say, hey, we want 3.9261. And then if we want to, in September, we could take it down. In September, we certainly cannot go up unless we have a super majority. I'm not sure about the calculations there and the necessary things. but we're taking away any wiggle room. And so I have to strongly advise to say anything less than 3.9261 is not in the best interest of the citizens of Venice.

Mr. Wheat?

I'd just like to state a clarification. My colleague, which I highly respect, said that going to the rollback rate would not cost our citizens a penny. I think it needs to be clear that the taxes would not be any more than last year, but the proposed budget and the proposed mill to 3.850 is a savings for our citizens. So the difference between the rollback rate and that lower savings does cost our citizens a substantial amount of money. It's not more than it was last year, but it is, it is It is real money. We're talking about over half a million dollars of extra collections. Going to the rollback rate, to give us wiggle room so we have ability, if we choose to, to adjust our budget, I understand, but I just want to make sure that this is real cost. This is really affecting our citizens, and we need to be very careful with our stewardship of all that money.

Ms. Frank?

Yeah, I was going to clarify, and Mr. Wee did an excellent job communicating what I was trying to emphasize here. Collecting $500,000 more out of the taxpayer's wallet and putting it in the government coffers is indeed And so again, I understand the public safety needs that are in front of us. I voted in favor of those requests. So it does not come down to the city's support of public safety. However, I'm elected here by the taxpayers. And if we increase the millage rate this year, it's near impossible in years following to bring that back down. Those of you who have been up here for four years remember the huge lift it was to provide our residents relief in previous years, and that was accomplished by a millage rate reduction. And so if we are now in favor of increasing the millage to accomplish the rollback rate, I cannot vote in favor of that today.

Mr. Smith?

Last week, I praised our city manager, our city finance director, and every single one of our department heads for bringing us what I called an austerity budget that actually called for rolling back the taxes for the first time in 15 years. I'm not interested in giving us wiggle room. And if we give ourselves enough wiggle room, the voters might just take it away as they see us just show no shame in terms of what we're willing to tax them for. If we want to do these things that we saw today that attracted us, like honey for a bear, then we need to cut somewhere else. And we can do that. And I'll help do it. while voting to maintain this budget number, which is a tax cut, which was brought to us and endorsed by the entire city staff. So I'm proud of them, and I want to be proud of us by honoring that number. I'm gonna vote for this motion. I thank Ms. Frank for it. And to vote otherwise is to say that we're deaf to the mood of the state, the governor, the legislature, the Senate, the House, the polls, all which say they want relief. This is the relief. This is the vote. Vote for the relief. or vote against it.

Thank you. So the reason I so adamantly seconded this motion is because we have done phenomenal work and continue to do phenomenal work working for the taxpayer. That's who put us up here. That's who we work for. And making sure that they keep every cent of their money is what we should be doing. So I'll never be in favor of going back up with this. As long as I sit here, I think that if we need the money, we'll find the money. We did have some discussion over these positions. The goal was to pursue adding the positions. It wasn't a definitive that if the city manager can't find the money that he's got to go fire anybody. It was to give them the flexibility to find the funding for those positions. The sky is not falling. I think we stay consistent with where we're at and hold the line on the 3.8450 millage rate. I'm absolutely in support of that. Mr. Vice Mayor, for your second bite of the apple.

Yeah, thank you. I respect everything you guys are saying. I just find it very difficult from a common sense standpoint. We have basically before us a zero growth budget, and I know that the city manager was very, very adamant with each department saying, you know, zero, you get nothing. You know, we've got to really keep it tight. So we kept it really tight, and then we sit here and say, hey, we got two new positions, and we're going to fund this study and that study and the next study. I do not understand from a common sense standpoint where is this half a million dollars supposed to come from. So that is my only comment. This is a situation whereby, and I agree with what Mr. Wheat said, it's not like it's not coming out of the tax credit money, but the fact of the matter is that it would not look different on their tax bill from last year to this year, therefore, It is what it is. So to me, it seemed like a really good way of financing the things that we would like to do. But if that's not the view of the rest of you, then that's the way it is. Thank you.

And Mr. Engelke for your second bite of the apple.

Yeah, thanks. It comes down to the staff did a tremendous job of holding the budgets down and came in with, you know, 3.845. That's a great, great job. But we today just added, you know, about 400, 530, $40,000 to what they did. And they came in and they did what we asked them to do. Come in with a zero, you know, increased budget. And we just put on additional requirements. So I think it's a little disingenuous if we were to say, nice job. Here's some more expenses. Have fun. Go at it, guys. So that's kind of where I am. And we do have the opportunity, again, it's September twice to reconfirm something different than a 3.845 or the no motion for it but 3.9261. Thanks.

And then I'll just go one last time and say we've already identified some funds that were in excess. It was $114,000. So I don't think that it's fair to say the money is not there. It just needs to be allocated. All right, with that, 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 Madam Clerk, you can tally and display the vote. It passes five to two. All right, we are on to charter officer reports. Madam Attorney.

I hope everyone has a nice break. I did just earlier today send out the legislative updates for this past session, so you'll have those in your inbox. Thank you.

Madam Clerk.

For those of you who are running in the next election, just a reminder, during the summer, August 10th is the start of qualifying week at noon. So do not forget that date. August 10th, yeah. No, it's August 10th. But you're going to come see me before that. And then your next meeting is August 25th?

Mr. City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor. Just following up on the last item, we will bring back our best analysis at the 25th on what those changes would look like for your consideration. And it may come down to making some priority decisions, which we will happily present to you and we'll walk through that process. I want to highlight a big thank you to our team and this council for helping to support and participate in our Fourth of July festivities. Weekend before last was something unique to our community. We haven't done since the 70s. We were a little nervous what the turnout was going to be, and it ended up being, you know, seven or eight thousand people that came out. It was really incredible. It was a little warm, but we had plenty of watermelon and water to go around. And so I just can't say enough for our team throughout multiple departments that came together to both plan and execute that. So thank you for your support to make it happen. It was really, really fantastic. And the last thing I have is on Monday, the Venice Theater has reached out to do a hardhat tour for city staff or council. So I will send you an email with some information on that, but it'll be next Monday at 11 o'clock if anyone's interested in seeing the behind-the-scenes construction of the new theater. That's it. Thank you.

Mr. Weed. Nothing, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Smith.

Thank you, Mayor. Mr. City Manager, I want to congratulate you, too, on that July 4th event and all the work that everybody put into it. It was the happiest day I have experienced in the city. Everybody was happy. Never seen anything like it. Not even a holiday parade.

Nothing matched this day.

It was spectacular. And we're not even done celebrating the centennial. So that's great. I have two things I'd like the city manager to address for us. I'm sorry, Mr. Steve Carr, who came back a second time to finish his presentation on Curry Creek. I was very impressed with that. I thought it was insightful, important, and calls on us to do something. And I'd like the city manager to tell us what he can about that ongoing issue. And just so I can tell you the second question rather than come back later. I wonder if you could also update us on what's going on with Laurel Road and the bidding process and the widening of Laurel Road. Thank you.

Mr. Engelke.

Thanks.

I just want to concur the prior comments on... You can put them on the agenda, but it's not appropriate to be asking him questions to address right now without the information in front of him.

Can you turn your mic on?

Turn your microphone on.

I don't understand why I've always asked during my time if the city manager could answer a question.

I mean, you can ask him all the questions you want. Usually at the dais, that's not the appropriate time to be asking the city manager questions. You can put it on the agenda for discussion. You can ask him in his office, but to come out here on the dais, we would need to have it on the agenda.

It sounds like a new rule to me.

Okay.

I'm just asking for an update on an ongoing piece of his business, especially one that's been discussed at two consecutive meetings, but if that's what we're going to do, then that's what we'll do, I guess.

Yeah, I had to have them come back with information today, you know, after we all had to vote on it. Same process.