Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Today is Tuesday, July 7, 2026 at 6.02 p.m. We're going to call this meeting to order. Ms. Wright, can I get a roll call, please?

Mayor Goodman?

I'm here.

Council President Hines.

Here.

Vice President Jones. Here. Council Member Cox. Here. Council Member Martin.

Here.

Council Member Church.

Here.

Interim City Manager Wright. I'm here. Attorney Kirsten Ballou. Here. And all other staff. Here. Thank you.

Of course. Thank you. At this time we have the opening prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag by Mayor Charles Goodman.

Thank you, Madam President. Join me if you choose. Lord, we come to you tonight, a gathering of your people. And Lord, I just ask you to be with each one of these people who have taken the time out of their life to attend the government, which is the only way that a government can be of the people and by the people. Lord, I ask you to be with our police department as they go out there and try to protect us and they serve our community. And I ask you to be with the fire department who risk their lives trying to service our community. And Lord, I ask you to be with this council to help them to see what they need to do and what they want to do and help them and guide them to have the wisdom that you will grant them. And Lord, I know that we as people are imperfect. And if not for your guidance, we would make a mess of everything. So I thank you for your guidance, and I thank you for guiding these counselors, and I thank you for guiding the people of Williston, which are a fine place to live. And Lord, I ask you to be with our military and the politicians that run this country to help lead and guide them in everything they do. I ask this in your name. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you very much.

I'm not I don't number one additions deletions changes and approval of the agenda.

Madam president. That's right matter president. I need to add an item one ad employee of the month. And for item 5 H. We need to table that, please. It's asked to be tabled. And also item I.

You said 5. Was that A and? I thought she said H. 5H as in Harry.

The ordinance on the public hearing, table that. And item 5I. We're going to remove that from the agenda.

Additions to the agenda that have been requested are to add employee of the month underneath item number one. To remove item number H under public participation, it's going to be tabled. And then item number I is also going to be removed at this time. Can I get them?

Oh, yes, ma'am. I would like to make a request if possible. I would like to remove item J from the agenda, and I would like to explain my reasonings and have it tabled to a further meeting.

Item what now?

J, the final item on the agenda. Okay. And if I may, I would like to explain why I would like this tabled to another meeting. Okay.

Okay. Can we not go to it and talk about it there?

Nope. I'm sorry.

Okay. We've all debated here.

no direction well let me preface this by saying that this is not about mr brevard at all um this is not about miss latricia or miss jones who spoke to miss brevard mr brevard and brought this onto the agenda but this is about a bigger picture of how we do make big decisions like this no direction was given to any council member or staff member to go out and recruit negotiate or prepare a contract for an interim city manager this council has not gotten together and discussed any of the key important decisions that we need to make before going out and seeking a full-term city manager or a long-term interim city manager. We haven't discussed whether we want a long-term interim city manager or a short-term interim city manager. We haven't discussed whether we should actually look for a long-term city manager, not interim city manager. We haven't discussed the direction that we would like to ask that city manager to go or what their salary should be. We haven't discussed whether Latricia should stay on as interim city manager if she's willing. We have not, as a council, discussed any of that. Because these issues were not discussed in the full council, it now appears that this contract was negotiated by one council member, and I'm not singling out Ms. Jones, but just because it's on the agenda with her name attached to it. Not true. It is on the agenda with her name attached to it. And this could be any of us. Like I said, I'm talking about big picture here. And it was negotiated by what appears to be one council member without the input of any other council members. And that's not a good look. Those optics are pretty bad. It creates the appearance of backdoor negotiations, which we don't need to have here at the City of Williston. On two separate occasions, the Mayor and I have both asked for a special meeting to be called to discuss the issues that I just mentioned. We have not had a special meeting. Nobody else on the Council has come together. It takes three of us to request a special meeting. Despite that, a contract has now been put on this agenda for Council action. And again, the optics aren't good. It suggests, and I'm not saying this is the intent by any stretch, but the appearances that that special meeting where we would have discussed this and come to a consensus about the direction that we thought we should go for this city regarding our city manager, it appears now that that meeting has been avoided so that a preferred candidate can be brought and selected without full council discussion. Not only that, but this contract and this item was added to the agenda very last minute, an agenda that was posted to, at least to me, at 7.30 on Saturday night on a holiday weekend. To the best of my knowledge, and maybe somebody can confirm this, it's never been put on the public website. So, regarding public trust, no resident was able to reach anybody at the City Hall yesterday to ask any questions. I wasn't able to reach anybody at the City Hall yesterday to ask any questions, and the first time I knew about this was on the agenda that was sent 7.30 Saturday night, holiday weekend, City Hall closed on Monday. That's not how we earn the public's trust. The timing creates the impression that this process was designed to avoid the difficult questions about who should be our next city manager. And again, those are not good optics. Lastly, now unfortunately, there is the appearance of, and again I'm going to clarify, the appearance of a conflict of interest because now there is a negotiated contract negotiated by a council member or a staff member And there is a pay raise, a significant pay raise, a $24,000 pay raise from the last city manager. Now my understanding is some of those numbers have changed, but the contract that was put in this agenda for us to read over and approve or not approve had a $24,000 increase in salary from our last city manager. That's our last city manager, not Mr. Brevard, but a $24,000 difference in terms of our budget. So at this point in time, if the next city manager acts in any way, shape, or form that appears to favor the council person who put it on the agenda and brought it to us. And again, I'm not saying Mrs. Jones personally, but it could be any of us that did this, that acted this way. Put this on the contract, put this contract on the agenda, and then our future city manager then does anything that appears to be in favor of Mrs. Jones' opinions or her position. then how do we not say that that isn't a conflict of interest, that that is not quid pro quo, that that is not favoritism? It's just, again, not a good look. And I know that there was absolutely no ill intent about the way this was handled. I think, in fact, the opposite. I think this was all done with people's best interest. They were trying to do what was in the best interest of the city. My objection is the way that this was gone about. And I think that we owe it to the residents to do this better. I think that we should not do this in such a way that exposes the city to questions about impropriety and backdoor deals. And I really think that we need to have a special meeting and we need to come to a consensus as a council about the direction that we would like to head regarding our interim city manager. And I am more than happy to discuss Mr. Brevard or the increase in salary or another person or what we want to do. I'm happy to discuss it. We have not had that conversation yet. We need to have that. We need to have a special meeting. We need to do this so the residents can hear a consensus from us and know that we are heading in the right direction that all of us want to go. So we don't end up with what happened where we have a city manager, a city manager, a city manager, a city manager. So respectfully, I would like to remove this and table it until we have had that opportunity to have that conversation.

Thank you.

So Kirsten, you're ready. how because this is a full-blown discussion it's trying to be and it's at the end of our meeting that's why i asked her so um should we move forward should we what is your recommendation is because we haven't even gotten into our meeting discuss something

So at the, I think, and I, at the beginning, I'm not sure if I caught, was that a motion and then an explanation of your motion? You have a motion on the floor, so if there is a second to that motion, then the second would be heard and then there would be discussion on that. It is a change to the agenda, so that would be appropriate at this time to move forward with.

Okay. So we have a motion. Do I have a second?

I second.

We'll have a motion and a second. I move to vote.

Oh, wait a minute. Oh, discussion. Okay. Okay, let's have a discussion. I've been accused of all this stuff.

I don't think she was really accusing you. Oh, yes, she was.

But, okay. I heard it.

Okay, so Ms. Jones, we'll start with you.

We're going to start at the very beginning and how this contract became established. how this item became on this contract that's all I asked for was that the item not the contract don't I didn't see the contract till you did on Saturday night I saw the change when I got here today I was called to the mayor's office I got a phone call from the mayor I want to say maybe Monday of last, not last week, the week before, not this past week, the week before. The mayor told me that he was very upset with the city council, essentially, that we were not doing our job, essentially. Correct me if I'm wrong. And that he was going to take some action of his own and wanted me to know about it, that he was going to. And after discussion with the mayor, and I was also aware that he'd had a lengthy discussion with Ms. Wright before he called me, I asked him if he would wait until tonight so that we could discuss his concerns and take some action that would essentially make him feel better about what was happening. So that's why this is here, because he essentially gave me and us essentially, an ultimatum. I don't know if that's too strong a word to use. I think it was pretty much that. He had some actions he wanted us to take, and he wanted us to take them yesterday. And he gave me until today to get them before you, because obviously I can't do anything. I'm one vote. I can't do anything without you. And I can't discuss it with you. unless I'm here. So the next council meeting is tonight. I asked him if he would please hold up with his concerns and give me time to put something before you. My intention, I went straight after talking to him to Latricia, to the interim city manager, asked her to put it on the agenda so that we could discuss it. So we could discuss how we were going to proceed with coming up with a new city manager. immediately which is essentially what he wanted us to do he wants he but he believes um and help me if i'm wrong he believes me he believes that we are taking advantage of and burdening both our interim city manager and our consulting chief chief of police who's acting to help her and i in talking with latricia she does she does feel burdened at this point she believes that it's more than she could do and do her other job as she wants to do it so what i asked her to do i i went to her i asked her to put it on the agenda under my name didn't say anything about a contract I also went to Kim. I asked Kim to get me a copy of what we paid the last city manager because I didn't know exactly what the dollar amount was. And that was all I did. I did have some further conversations. I don't think I had a further conversation with the mayor, but I did have a further conversation with Ms. Latricia. uh in the fact that the mayor wanted us to act as soon as possible to take the burden off of both of them so that we could go forward we did discuss the fact that mr bagard could do that very easily that he could simply walk back in and have knowledge of the projects that were going on of the staff of things that were here and he would have he wouldn't need any training and we know who he is and what he is and he's not a blind option that we have that we don't know what they're going to do and with the mayor's insistence that we proceed and we proceed quickly it was all about finding someone who could take it over and take it over now not after we had a workshop, not after we did this, not after we did that. But it has always been the intent to have the workshop. Ms. Latricia has a date that she's ready to give us for that workshop so that we could have discussions, so we could post the job, so that we could post the qualifications. That's another thing I asked him to give me was the qualifications so that we could look at what the qualifications were so we would be ready to post it. Because we can't post it until we agree with what the qualifications are. so my and what the mayor said was you know how to proceed with this i know you know how to proceed with this so i tried to do the best i could do and bringing it before you with some information that you could act upon now when the agenda came out i saw the agenda i saw the contract that you saw as well i had some issues with the contract when i saw it i had two or three issues i had issues with the amount of the original and you haven't even seen those things i had a the original retirement amount i had issues with the original vacation time i had issues with the original salary and tonight not me because i haven't talked to him about these items and you can confirm it with both of them if you'd like to those things as you see i've actually gone through it and circled some things that are different now than they were the last time i saw it which was from this the saturday agenda and it was my intention to present it to you to see if you were willing to relieve them of what they miss Latricia of being the interim city manager and place it in Terry's very capable hands until we could proceed and have plenty of time to do what we need to do which is post it first workshop it to see what it is we want to offer who and what we want the qualifications to be then to post it then to actually find accept applications of course and then interview people i mean that's not a quick process and i can tell you the mayor is not going to sit there for another three months or four months and wait for us to do those things and i don't think mr tricia is either i think she's ready to be relieved and that's all i got to say about it i guess unless you have questions and i'll be glad to answer them mr cox

I agree a lot with what Deborah said. I think it's a smart move for us to bring Mr. Brevard in because he does know a system, our employees, we have the budget coming up this way here. We can get, he can get us through the budget and, um, Everything else as far as. So we can proceed to fire. Sorry. To find somebody. We have to get it right. And it's. I've been through sitting. To hire a manager. And it takes a while. It's just not. Like your typical retail manager. Employee comes in. You interview them. Next person comes in. Interview them. And they're all like.

interviews in some cases it's different my question is you said you had a special you asked about a special meeting I never heard of a special meeting being planned exactly that was my point at the last June meeting I requested publicly if we could schedule a special meeting to discuss the direction that we want to go regarding either interim short-term interim long-term or or hiring a city manager that would be here for an extended period, you know, lengthy, hopefully more than that. So yeah, I did, in public, request that we have a special, we schedule a special meeting. But again, three people have to agree to do that. And nobody else did.

Well, I still... favor the idea of mr brevard like i said he knows the employees he has all that he can help us to find a manager um you know so but i agree with a lot with what this never said was i asked what i thought about it i thought it was a good idea from the beginning to do that i've even talked to some residents well, customers, who have asked how things were going with it. And I've told them, I said, well, this is, you know, something that we're toying with. They like it. He's great with our citizens. If they come in and have a complaint, he can sit down, talk with them.

I agree 100%.

This will just get us, by doing that, it will help us get through the budget and then look at doing the, get us through the budget and then what we need to put together for start hiring. Because I will tell you, I am not impressed with what we have to hire with for a city manager. Not impressed with the questions that we ask. things like that. So we've got to start, in my opinion, and my recommendation is we have to start from the beginning and restructure that whole thing. We don't need to have a thing on our neck, on our shoulders, telling us we need to have this or I'm going to do this. We don't need that. The original agreement with Mike coming in, Chief Rose coming in, was to be here for a while. So we could get things calmed down, stuff like that. Three weeks later, four weeks later, we had to boycott that because the mayor wanted police chief rules back over there. All right, so now we come back to something else, round three. About three weeks later, he's got to go back. He wants Mike back over there. This will solve all of our issues for right now. while we are working towards doing that so anything else

Thank you. First, I just want to say I totally respect wanting to make sure that this issue be discussed right away. It was my understanding as well at the last June meeting that we had requested and I thought that was all that was needed to get one on the books was one of us to request. We need to go ahead and set this meeting in place so we can get started on our portion of getting a new city manager. I also respect trying to hurry up and get one, but at the same time, I share the same concerns that Meredith does when it comes to appearing like we're skipping steps, appearing like we're not on the same board, council and mayor alike. Now, to reference a November, I believe, 6, 2024 meeting, we were in this same position before when Terry was retiring. We were looking at the same issue, what we can and what we cannot offer. It was before we'd had a chance to review budget, everything, and it was handled very differently. from reviewing the information from that meeting mr cox had said that if we go and hire another city interim right this moment it skips the steps of the new council members being able to be a part of a hiring process of a city council of a city manager i would be not offered that opportunity in this round And I and I also recall that darkness had brought up the fact that if we just hire someone right out the gate instead of following our normal process, then it also skips the opportunity to find a potential perfect candidate that's out there. I'm not even sure how many people have already submitted their resume for this upcoming position. Now, it was also my understanding that ever since Sue departed, The process of hiring a new city manager started right away with Latricia and with Chief Rolls. They both came in together. They worked together on restructuring, figuring out all of our issues, figuring out how we can fix them, and then moving forward. And it was very positive moving forward. But I also understand the mayor's concern. He wanted to make sure that his chief was brought back and that his payment that was whatever was discussed, because I'm unaware of that as well, that it not come from the police budget, that it come from the city budget, because he was performing city duties. that was something else we never got a chance to discuss was was their written contract for latricia's term or for chief rolls term whenever they both stepped into that position so i never looked at it like it was a burden to our city clerk and our chief because they were willing and wanting to do this together and even after our chief went back to being full-time police chief he still offered his consulting services so again miss latricia wright is still not doing it by herself so we already put things in motion to work together it was my understanding we were in the process of receiving a date for our meeting so we can follow our normal process show the residents and show the city we're not doing the good old boy system we're not doing back door deals we're not speaking when we're not here we're following a process we're wanting to make sure we get it right this time so we're not right back here such as we were november 2024. Because we were discussing the exact same things. And it's nothing to do with Mr. Brevard. Like you said, he has familiarities. And that would be very beneficial. But at the same time, we don't want to just skip steps or appearing to skip steps. So with that in mind, that's why I voted to also table, follow our normal process, review all the information with Terry in mind, and go from there. Because what we've been doing for the past few months is working. It is working. And people are excited, not just city employees, not just city administration, not just council members, but also residents. They are happy. They are finally reaching out with positive stories and excited to see what we're going to bring to the table. And I want to give them that. I feel like if we just jumped to a quick decision now, it would get us a quick fix. But in a year's term from now, when this contract is up, we're right back here. We're right back here again. And that concerns me. So that's my say. Continue.

Thank you, Ms. Jones.

It still doesn't fix the immediate problem. And it's simply a matter of changing one interim city manager to another interim city manager. And if you want it to say up to one year, it can certainly say that. But it's going to take three or four months, at the minimum, to find somebody. And I'm hearing, I'm not just hearing it from the mayor. I'm hearing it from Latricia. She doesn't want to do this anymore. I mean, she will tell you. She's the one who put this together, not me. I mean, I know you think it was me, but it was not.

I don't. I just believe that we should follow the process that we've already set into motion with that information in mind.

It takes months.

And we haven't reviewed the budget come November, so who knows what we can offer somebody.

If you would vote not to table this and let me present the contract, you will see that the amount is half of what it started out. that you read in the packet because it's been reconsidered. And he's the one who reconsidered it. He's been very fair with us.

I do understand that, and I appreciate that.

He's doing us a favor, not because he wants to necessarily make himself vulnerable to all of this. He wants to help us. And it's simply going from one interim city manager to another interim city manager until we find the person we want.

I do respect that, and that's the other concern as well. In how many months we've had how many different interim city managers and how that will make us appear to look as if we may not be taking it serious or we may not be trying to find someone who's actually going to last longer than a few months.

All right, I give up. It's the mayor's turn. Okay, so we're going to let Ms. Latricia speak.

okay this all came about because i have voiced my concern to each and every one of you that being interim city manager and plus still being city clerk because no one wants to step into the clerk's position at this present time because they said it's too much work for little pay and so i myself because i love the city so much i am drowning I do not want to see what Mike and the previous ones have done go to waste. I don't want to see us fall by the wayside. I always tell you guys, I am very proud of this city, and I want Williston to be known worldwide, not for anything bad, but for the good. And right now, I am drowning. And I've mentioned this before. i need help and i cannot do this on my own and i would not be in this position and watch the city go down trying to do two jobs knowing that i cannot do it so i reached out to terry mr everett did not i reached out to terry and i put that contract and maybe i should not have i now i realize i should not have put that contract on the agenda because i wanted y'all to go ahead and discuss about getting an interim city manager, and I thought Terry would be the best because he did a very good job while he was city manager. And I figured if you guys would go ahead and review it and talk about it and agree upon getting Terry back as interim city manager, we could go ahead and present him with a contract because we already have it. Then I wouldn't have to be sitting over here worrying about If I'm going to get this right, get that right, or did I miss something on this, did I miss something on the city clerk part, am I doing what I need to be doing to make this place a better place?

Thank you, Ms. Wright. Mayor, did you have something, or can we move forward? Can you speak fairly quickly, please?

Thank you. What did you say? Can you speak fairly quickly? After this long tail, now you want to tell me to cut it short? It is a long tail. It's not going to happen.

Okay, you don't have to have an attitude, okay? Yes, ma'am.

You asked me to keep it short, and I'm telling you, Madam President, it's not going to happen.

And that's fine.

Okay, thank you.

Just watch tones.

Okay. This came about, I think Councilor Jones is correct, because I went and made the decision that I could not see this council acting. had asked this council that I would call a special meeting and as I have told other people it was like a graveyard not one council member spoke up oh that's a good idea nobody said anything so that fell aside next thing I hear the city clerk tries to have a workshop. I don't know what happened to that workshop, but clearly it never happened. So I had tried talking during the meetings. I had tried to convince the council that they needed to do. Does anybody in this chamber know when our past full city manager was actually fired? date yeah yes Kim thank you Kim that was April 7th April May June July that's four months that's not a couple of weeks as councillor Cox tried to display it i have waited four months for this council and at this time i went to the proper authorities and i said okay just tell me has the job even been posted in the past when i asked that question they said oh no we have to wait because the city is a mess and we don't want a new manager to come in when the city is a mess and i said That's what a manager does. He comes in and fixes things. You're not going to get a pristine environment for a manager. The manager manages. That is what his job is. So I have, in my opinion, Madam President, I have been very patient. And when I decided that I was going to write I called a TV20 reporter, and that TV20 reporter said, that's fine, but you need to send this to TV20 so all reporters get it. Before I did that, I wanted to at least, because I believe in fair and honest, I wanted at least to talk to a council member. All these other members have full-time jobs. The vice president gets off around noon or a little after. So I called her and I said, look, you're the only council president. I'm ready to mail this, email this right now because I have watched The clerk deteriorated. I have watched the chief of police attempting to do what I considered impossible. And then the attorney tells him he's got to resign from my police department in order to help the city. It was ridiculous. It was doable if this council had simply posted the job. I offered to schedule a meeting so they could discuss it and simply post the job. As of four months have passed, nobody has posted the job. Nobody on this council, because they can't talk to each other outside of a meeting, nobody on this council can even discuss it. And when offered the opportunity, nobody i understand counselor meredith that you felt gee where is everybody welcome to my club okay so i am not and it was inferred to me that if i do this it will hurt the city and to that i answered this will not injure the city this will injure the council And the council has been derelict in doing their job. They have come up with every excuse in the world. They should have had plenty of time. In four months, you could have had 15 conversations. But nobody did. And I agree with Councillor Martin that, frankly, I happen to know Mr. Brevard. And I happen to know that he is an honorable man. And I happen to know all of the things that everybody would say about him. And I have no problem with him being the city manager. I have a problem with process. And the process, once again, just like when we fired, when you, the council, fired the former city manager, that was done... not on the agenda another discussion on announcements you started talking and the next thing i know you're telling her she's fired wow wow that is not the way to conduct business in a city in my humble opinion i kept it to myself i said nothing but now it has become such a problem that I felt compelled and the only reason I was going to TV 20 was I felt there was no other way that I could get this council to do its charter responsibility which is the post and add for a city manager and begin the process I'm not I'm not saying you gotta post it and hire him next week Counselor Jones, you implied that I said I wanted it now. What I was very clear in that letter was I want to see the council doing its job. I want to see a manager post in the website where other managers could see it, and then you would have an opportunity to look at other managers. You've had four months. You've done nothing. So I did. Some might call it threat. I did not. I felt that the only way, since I had been rebuffed every time I brought it up, the only way I could get this council to set up was to notify the press of what I saw going on and let people decide for themselves. My opinion is those two people sitting over there have been exemplary. My opinion, Mr. Brevard would be a great city manager.

But there is a process.

And we can't just drop it because, oh, the mayor wants it done right now. That's not my fault you haven't done nothing for four months. I have nothing else to say. Thank you, Madam President, for giving me an opportunity. Any further discussion?

Let me just add on. I have a letter here from the chief of police. It says, this letter is to inform the mayor, the council, that as of today, July 7th, I will be removing myself from the duties of assisting the interim city manager on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I would like to thank the council and the mayor for the opportunity and the trust in me to help in this role. The experience I gained in this short time will help me be a better chief of police. But I must give the police department my full attention to ensure the department continues to move forward in the right direction. Chief Mike Rose. And I just want to say, like him, I also want to see the city move in the right direction.

any further discussion i just want to have the opportunity to present this contract to the council for you to make a decision on a contract not on an agenda whether we changed the agenda item on the agenda and if we sorry go ahead if we advertise and people go online and they look

let me look at their council meetings and see how they are and they see this we ain't going to get anybody it looks better if we're together it's it's a simple thing didn't realize that this was going to be a big kerfuffle This is to get it going, start the process of moving forward. We can still have the special meetings, but it's to start moving forward.

And the point is, too, that we cannot post anything without a job description, and we haven't decided on that job description. That's something we need to do.

That is exactly my point, Ms. Jones. That is the point that I think was missed. That is exactly my point. We are not in consensus at this point in time. So we are not together, to Mr. Cox's point. And I agree. We should be on the same page. That is why I'm asking not to table this in order to post the job description, but to table this so we can have a special meeting and decide, do we want an interim city manager, short-term or long-term? do we want to look at hiring and a city manager and you know all of the things i'm not going to go through it again everybody's heard it i would just i am available tomorrow night for a special meeting and i would be happy to discuss mr brevard at that point in time as interim city manager but first we have to decide the direction that we want the city to go as a full council not one person not the mayor not the mayor is advising one person as a full council we need to decide the direction that we want to go with the city and then we review the candidates and our options and move forward i also think mr brevard is incredibly honorable and i got along fabulously with him and i would love to consider him once we've determined the direction we want the city to go, and once we're all on the same page about the direction that we're going, or as close to as we possibly can. This is not healthy, and this did. It came about because we skipped the process, and we didn't take the right steps.

Thank you. All right, so we have a motion, and we have a second. Ms. Jones, we have a motion, and we have a second. Are we ready to vote?

do they get to on the adoption of the agenda is considered a ministerial act and does not require public comment okay that's what i thought you can speak when at public participation on it if you like we have a motion and we have a second i move to vote

All those in favor, say aye.

Aye. This is for the table. The table.

This is on the adoption of the agenda with that edit. Just to clarify, the motion was adopt the agenda removing that item from the agenda and all the other edits that we had talked about, correct? Is that your motion? Adding employee of the month. Yes. Okay. Yes. So it's adoption of the agenda with the edits proposed by Latricia and the edit proposed by Council Member Burr-Martin.

So we have a motion to adopt the agenda with the changes that have been discussed. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Nay. Motion passes three to two. All right. So the next thing we'll have is Employee of the Month by Kim Troy.

Good evening. Good evening. For employee of the month, I kind of want to give a back story for this individual. This individual used to be an inmate supervisor and kind of unseen unheard. He interviewed for a position. He was offered a position. It was not what he actually wanted, what he originally interviewed for, but he went ahead and he took it. Since he has become part of the water department, there has been nothing but praise about this individual. Everybody says he's doing excellent. When you walk by, if your hands are full, he asks you if you need help. He has truly shown who he really is. He's no longer unseen, unheard. He, I mean, he shows up every day. He says good morning. He is an awesome employee now that we have kind of peeled back the onion layers on him. He is one of our He's turned out to be one of our greatest employees, in my personal opinion, and I am the one who nominated him. Due to Friday, I had another fellow employee come to my office and mention that this employee had their hands full and people were walking by other employees, and this employee is the only one who stopped and asked the individual if they would like some help. So with all of that being said, our employee of the month for July is going to be Devin Hindenling.

No, you don't want to speak.

Congratulations.

All right, we're going to start with public participation. This will be your first of two times that you will have in order to speak on anything that is not on the agenda.

and madam president just to clarify for the members of the public because the item that we were just discussing is no longer on the agenda this is an appropriate time to comment on that to clarify for the members of the public thank you you will have five minutes to speak please state your name and where you're from

How the government works and, you know, it makes you proud to see that. And you should applaud yourself for it. I will tell you the questions about, you know, me as being the city manager. I appreciate all the accolades you've given me, the honorable mention.

Thank you, sir.

The honorable mention and all that stuff. And it's good to hear. I enjoy my time here. but I just want to make sure that, you know, that y'all understand that, you know, the intention was to come here and help out, and that's all it was. And so, you know, I will, and I'm going to leave because, you know, I don't want to be just impolite and leave, and then y'all think that I'm mad or something like that. I'm not, but I'm just going to go home early. But I will say this, is that the one thing that I heard that Mr. Fuller said, And I strongly recommend this, that when y'all go to look for a city manager, and not an interim, a full-time one, or whatever you end up with, you really have to look at that salary and price it up there to where you're going to attract a qualified candidate. And it's not going to be cheap, okay? The salary obviously that we're requesting was the same thing Chief Rolls was being paid was no more, no less when he was doing the job. Um, but, but I will leave you with this. Um, like I said, the comment that, that I heard Mr. Fuller hit home when I heard it, we recommended it last time. Um, and we chose a different path and, and I would strongly encourage y'all when you do decide what you want to do. Give that a lot of consideration. So you will attract a candidate here that wants to be here for 5 or 6 years. 1 of your best men you got here is sitting over there in that chair and he's done an excellent job both the police department and he would do an excellent job here as a city manager. And I understand that's not his route. But, you know, you need to look for the qualities of people like him when you go look for your next person with the right amount of money and get the right person this time, you know. And that's really all I have. And I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity. Mr. Merritt, thank you for the comments that you made. And like I said, this is government. We do it every day. And so, you know, don't have any hard feelings. You know, be proud that you're here and you can do it. So thank you. And I'm going to leave. Thank you, Terry.

Is there anyone else?

My name is Dan Kaufman. I reside at 32 Northwest 4th Street. I'm still having trouble with the last thing, which was on the bottom of the agenda, which was to table a conversation, which then turned in from a conversation into another almost half an hour to 45 minutes of bickering over who's right, who's wrong, and what has happened. I have to agree with the mayor 100% on this one. I mean, this thing is... This thing is nothing more than been kicking the can down the road for as long as I've been here, and I've been coming to these meetings now just under a year. I pay attention. I watch what you do. I have my good comments. I have my questions. But this thing here, I'm still trying to figure out how you took a motion to approve something whenever the whole thing was, whether it was to be tabled or not. Not to put a process forward. This is the mistakes that all of us public get so irritated about. You said that they were allowed to do that. OK, that's fine and dandy. But the thing of it is, there's a protocol. And I haven't seen protocols really being done. As a matter of fact, I haven't even seen them change the information board in the front of the building. There's still stuff on there from April. I mean, when you stop and think about this, where does the public fall into this? I'm looking at an agenda, and on the agenda, it didn't start at the top. It got hung up on the last item. And now we went to another item, which we still haven't even got. So I'm looking at probably another two hours to sit here for you to get through this agenda, maybe even longer, which tonight, unfortunately, I don't have the time, probably in your best interest. This is just kicking the can down the road. Mr. Rawls, When he came in, I was here for that. He was the one that sat there and told you all, I'll do this, but I'm going back. I want to go back to my department. Then all of a sudden, the next meeting, which was two weeks later, we're talking about him. Oh, well, we're going to keep him. Then I saw him come out of his chair and his hat go spin around twice because he wasn't going to have that. We've done the same thing to Ms. Wright. He steps down, wants to go back. They honored it. He went back. She ended up stepping up for an interim. And I have to say, the man is absolutely right. This thing has been going and going and going and going. Even your previous actual manager, city manager, you fired her. The thing of it is, all the signs was there that you needed to probably change her before you ever got around to it, which was months and months after maybe the third vacation to another foreign country or another island. I mean, you know, what happened to all that time where you can't have a meeting, you can't get the council together to have a special meeting, and half the special meetings, it turned out, there would be nothing more than, if you really want to know the truth, backdoor conversations and closed-door conversations because they have to happen during a business week. And it seems like you can't discuss anything without violating the sunshine. And if you don't have these meetings, you don't schedule these meetings, you don't advertise these meetings, and you don't put anything on a bulletin board out there, bottom line is, it's not working. And with that said, there's probably a half a dozen other things that I'd like to get into. But it looks like, well, Ollie, here's another fine mess you got us into. Thank you.

I'm Joel Penny. I live at 43 Northwest 4th Street. So before we even hired the manager from Bronson, we had a little issue with the city council giving directions to staff and everything else. I'm going to be with her on her Why is one person making decisions for the city of Williston?

Councilman Markson.

Councilman Markson. I agree with her. But I want to know why is one person making decisions for the city of Williston?

Who's making it?

I'm sorry. Council, it is Ms. Jones. This is his time to speak.

Let him speak. Every time we've had any issue, there has always been something has to do with Ms. Deborah Jones in it. She's always put her two cents into something. And I'm not attacking her. I'm just telling the truth. I'd really like to see something done to her, reprimanded or something, because... I don't really appreciate how she just makes decisions like this is her business or her job. It's not. It's everybody's job. Y'all have to make a decision together. I mean, like even when y'all fired the city manager, there was no protocol, no measures or anything. Even when y'all are hiring Mr. Terry, he does a good job. I've known him for a long time. But there's no protocol. And you keep saying that we're going to fix everything. And every time we get a city manager, it gets handed down to another city manager, to another city manager, to another city manager, to another city manager. I think the issue is we need to all be together. I mean, and not one person make the decision. And I really think y'all need to bring up and recommend her.

Because I don't think she's doing her job right.

Anyone else?

Oh, Ms. Jones, you can make a comment. Mr. Panning.

Your time is now up, sir.

Actually, my time is still going. It is not going. I had three and a half minutes.

All right. Robert Langan, 500 Northwest Fifth Avenue. And I'm going to say good, bad, or otherwise, I agree with the mayor. I was in this meeting two weeks ago. Council members were wanting to put this motion to find somebody new. After the budget in November, Ms. Martin and... Shanna wanted to do it right now. Start looking. It was voted down. You all look like a real dog and pony show. I have seen, let me tell you, I have seen hometown cooking in different towns. I saw a commissioner's meeting go in with three votes for a new fire chief. They went behind closed doors, came back out, tabled it. Next week had another meeting. Somebody wasn't even on the agenda was elected unanimously. You all have got to clean your act up. And I put it on the board in general. I'm not going to single anybody out. But we all know that there was a motion last week, two weeks ago, not to follow up on this until after the budget and into November.

You may. thank you for all your comments and that's what we're trying to do and as you know as a council board they're going to be different people with different perspectives and different opinions on things and that's why we're here together that that's our job we're not always going to agree and we're not always going to look like unison but that is a part of the process and we are trying to get better i know i'm very new to this so And my intention is to that way we learn how we can work better together using the time that we have available, which are these meetings, learn the process that I now know that we need three people in order to request a special meeting and request that right away. I do have a full time job and children and everything, but I put this at top priority. I myself and I'm sure the rest of the council members would agree if someone says, hey, let's meet tomorrow, we will all be here because it is very important to us and we do appreciate the comments.

Thank you any other comments.

How's it going? Matt Williams. I live at 48 Northeast 1st Avenue. Give everyone here a breath of fresh air. I'm not going to talk about any of that stuff. The new parking lot is fantastic. It looks great. The problem is, is the initial plans had the dumpsters and I know chief roles and I had a lot of conversations about this. Actually, my mother spoke with the mayor. Whoever decided to put it there, I don't know if she had already gotten fired or not, but we need to move that. I just had a newborn baby. She's right here. For one, safety. There are a lot of people come by there all the time dumping stuff in there. I work a lot, and I don't want my wife at home alone at night with someone coming by, not to mention that they can't even get a truck into it to do it, and not to mention every time that they've They're the three dumpsters over there now. Every time they dump them, all that garbage goes into my front yard. And then I have my wife yelling at me. asked me why I didn't put the garbage there, right? So I would prefer if we can make something to where we can move that, because it's very simple. There's plenty of room to do it. Whoever came up with this plan, again, I don't know if they had gotten fired already or not, but they need to. The mayor requested us to be the squeaky wheel, and I'm going to be a squeaky wheel. I'm going to come to all these meetings until that dumpster gets moved. So I know there's plenty of space out there to do it. It's beautiful. It's really needed. I'm glad they did it. But we need to rethink about how we did that because it's, one, I don't want to look at it from my front, from my couch. I can see it. I'm not trying to look at that. And two, more importantly, it's the safety of my family. So, again, if we could have someone look into that and move those dumpsters, I would very much so appreciate it. And I will be here every single day, every meeting until they get me. I'll move them, too, if you want. I really will. Give me a slide, Cameron. Them boys will be gone. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else?

My name is Perry Greenspan, and I live at 562 Southeast 3rd Street. I don't know how this goes or how important it should be to come here. I don't think what I'm bringing should come here, but this is where I was told to come. And it's in reference to code enforcement, dog catcher, whatever you want to call what my problems are. And it has to do with animals. There's so many people in this town that don't respect The animal laws. Now, I have an animal. Whether it's a dog or a chicken or whatever it is, it shouldn't matter. If I had a horse and I live here in town, I would think that someone here would have a problem with me having a horse on my half an acre of land. I deal with roosters. Not just one across the street. Everybody has roosters. I deal with a dog that's loose all the time from a neighbor. I've called code enforcement about it. I've met with code enforcement about it at least five or six or seven times. I've called the police multiple times. And I don't even know if this is the venue it should come to. But... the last week when i called the dispatcher they suggested that i bring it here in front of the city council he said code enforcement very nice woman doesn't have the ability or the uh isn't authorized to do uh fines or anything. She can't even write a citation. And I was just amazed to hear that. So we have someone in code enforcement that sees problems going on. What they told me at the police station was her hands are tied. So if you can't get a citation sent to somebody and you can't bust somebody's stones and give them fines, there's one thing that motivates at least me, and that's money. If I got a citation for something, let's say a horse in my yard, I wouldn't just ignore it. I mean, eventually I'd have to pay them. I've pointed out some stuff that's been built on to my neighbor's house that doesn't need code at all. It's styrofoam. It's a room made of styrofoam. And I pointed that out to the code enforcement woman, and she said she would look it up and see what the... how that has to go with permits and all that stuff. And broken down fence, you know, we're coming into hurricane season.

I don't think it's okay for people to have stuff that can just blow all over the neighborhood.

I guess this is how they do it in Williston. I came from Miami, and I know it's a junkyard down there, but if you call code enforcement about stuff that's going to fly around during hurricane season, they're going to do something about it. Any other thing about comparison, comparing Williston to, let's say, Miami? There's no comparison. We live in such a great town, in my opinion. Otherwise, I wouldn't live here. I came here because Williston's the best place I've ever been. And I've been everywhere, all over the United States, all over the country. This is it. We've got it going on. But it would be nice could write a citation instead of, I'll give the woman a call about the dog. Now this dog thing has been going on for over a year. Nothing's been done. I mean, the dog still runs. The lady, I can't even discuss it with her because we're going to end up in a problem.

Thank you for coming and sharing. Your time is up. Chief, do you have anything, any comments?

If you'll come see me, we can talk about it because I have no idea what you're talking about. I haven't heard anything about it. So you'll come see me. We can try to work something out. Yeah, we do have fines. And I just got back over there to the police department. So come back and see me and we'll get something done.

Thank you. Anyone else? Consent agenda will be on the next agenda. Now we'll have updates from staff. Ms. Wright, do you have anything?

As some of you all might know, the parking lot behind block 12 is now open. It's not completed, but it is open and it looks really nice. If you get a chance to stop by and look at it, please do. There's still a little bit more work that needs to be done, but it's there for everybody, anyone to park. My second thing that I want to give an update is I met with Ms. Shannon Williams last week and she did a very good job of letting the city know what was out there for its grants that are available. And I want to give her opportunity to speak and let us know, let the council know what we spoke about. I don't know if some of you all might remember her. We hired her back in February. I think it was February.

Good evening, everybody. Shannon Williams with Gateway Grant Writing and Administration. And Ms. Leticia did call me, and she punted some work to me. She had enough going on, and she was trying to remember everything. And so she asked me to come in and start handling the grants and making sure that they had updates on everything that was available for the town. I got to meet several people in and out of that meeting, some department heads. We talked about historical grant. It's historical grant season. We may miss it because they're due on the 10th, but we do have some projects that we're thinking about. We're thinking about restoring the historic school. So, and I understand there's a company that wants to come in. So we need to sit down and kind of talk with them and also talk with the attorney about how we can do that together for them. Historical grants also have a match. So we need to think about that. You can request up to like a million dollars, but they require a 25% match. But if you're a ready community, only 25% of that 25% needs to be in cash. So you can do some in-kind wiggling there. We talked about the library, the library roof possibly needing some replacement. The library grant is open also until the 10th. We may be able to get that one in by Friday if we had some permission or guidance from the board to move forward with that grant opportunity. We talked about utilities. We talked about needing to find funding for implementing the AMI metering system. I learned all about what that was. So a great, great utility, I forget his name, that I met on Tuesday. He was awesome. He taught me all about that. We talked about maybe also looking for some funding to continue the septic to sewer conversion projects and finding some affordable housing or rehab programs for the citizens. So I'm on that as well. We talked about having maybe a monthly grant meeting, coming down, meeting with whoever wants to talk about what citizens are bringing to you. Then I can do an update, have it in the agenda. So it's public record on what we talked about in our grant meetings. Any questions for me?

Where did you come from Florida?

I am 7th generation Columbia county. So I've always been invested in helping the rural towns not wanting to go to Jacksonville or anything like that. I think my biggest client might be orange park, but. I feel like we need quality service in small towns and we need people who understand that we want to stay small, but we want good stuff. That's my goal when I'm working with towns is to make sure that we're getting that same quality that the bigger cities are getting and we are still keeping our feel because people come here and they live here and they want to be in the rural areas, but they still want services. They still want a YMCA or a pool or something. That's my job to bring

what we need without bringing too many people if that makes sense i have noticed this from the florida league of mayors i'm on the board of directors the facts are that the larger communities get a lot more than the smaller communities because they have the ability to go after them that the smaller communities just frankly don't have. I wish you the best and I hope my hopes are raised already. Thank you.

Yeah, I'm at max capacity on who I'm accepting as clients because I like to do a quality job for the ones that I don't need 200 clients, I just need 10 good clients that are willing to answer my emails and work with me and we can get things done. All right. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Good to see you again. Oh, that's right.

Well, you know, and just I just want to tell everybody, I want to say thank you to everyone that participated in our 4th of July with July 30 event, even though we got rained out. I thank everyone for coming out. cutting watermelons, emceeing, and doing whatever they did, whatever part you took in it, I appreciate you very much. And I think the fireworks, even though it was raining, I think the fireworks were great.

So thank you to everyone.

As Ms. Wright said, in reference to the fireworks, as reported, we had no issues as far as crowd control or traffic. Everything seemed to flow well. Thanks to all the agencies that came over and helped us out. We can't do it without them. When they do something for you, you've got to give it back. We were sent out to different cities to assist them with their fireworks show and everything went well. Major Fortney is retiring as of July 17th. He will be retired after 25 plus years of dedicated service to the city of Wilson and the Wilson Police Department. We will miss him. He will always be welcome to the police department whenever he wants to come over and hang out. Kudos to Major Fortney for his early retirement. We are happy to see him go off and enjoy.

He will be missed.

As you know, for the fireworks, we got rained out. Some of my officers that worked the fireworks show that night after it was over and they were soaking wet, they still had to return to work. So me and my great mind on Saturday was at the Habitat Restore store in Ocala. One of the head persons at that Habitat of Humanity is one of my reserve officers. I walk in and there's two units of lockers. I said, wow, it would be nice if I could buy these lockers for the PD, put them in the PD, and have these available for our officers so when they go out and it rains, they can have extra pair of shoes and uniform or shirts. Such as Sunday, we had a couple officers get involved in an altercation, and they had bodyguards all over the place, having things to change in. So it would be great to have these lockers. So after speaking to management, tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock, Habitat of Humanity Restore is going to deliver those lockers to the police department as a donation to our officers. it goes to show i mean i'm so touched by these things when they happen because it just goes to show that our reach is beyond the city limits lines of willisville they're in ocala they're in gainville they're in all parts of the state i mean we get stuff donated from cities that are miles away from it's just heartwarming to know that Williston has that much respect around the state of Florida that people invest in us.

And it should say a lot for us as a city and a lot for us as our community.

Even though we got our faults and we got our problems, we're still Willis and Strong. So I appreciate Habitat for Humanity donating those lockers to our guys and girls. We're going to get them set up tomorrow. We're going to do a photo op. The mayor is going to help me come over and install them. The mayor is going to come over and help me install them. So once we get them installed, we will put some pictures out. So that's all I have. Thank you.

All right. Kim, do you have anything? Any other staff? All right. We're going to start the council. But before I let anybody speak, so Ms. Latricia, how long does it take and how much time do you have to give public notice to have a specialty?

Typically, if it's an emergency, sorry, I'm going to answer on your behalf.

I'm Latricia for a few minutes.

The minimum is 24 hours. The more notice you provide, the more it's considered to be reasonable. The only requirement is that notice be reasonable, and it will depend upon the circumstances. So the more notice you give, the better, but no less than 24 hours that I recommend.

Okay, thanks. I want everybody on the council to think about date so that before we end this meeting, we will have a date in mind and set in order to have our special meeting for. Mr. Trish, I heard you. I really, really did. So we're going to get that meeting said. And I know we did plan to have a meeting. You were trying to work it out. But then you also had other things that fell on your plate as well. So let's take care of that tonight and have that meeting. And then we will, in that meeting, we will talk about all those things we need to talk about related to the application for the contract that was on sale tonight and move forward from that.

Okay, what I was going to say is on my update, I forgot to let you all know what date I had chose. So if everybody could look at their calendars and see if July 22nd will work or do you want to meet before then?

We can discuss at the end if you want.

Okay, we'll discuss it at the end.

So everybody, you'll look at your calendar for a sooner date within the next week. That would be great. Anyone else on the council have anything? Do you have something? First of all, I want to thank

Patricia, Chief Rose, all the city workers, everybody who made 4th of July a success. It's not done by just one or two people. And this year, you know, we battled the heat and everything. But everybody hung in there and made it happen. The float, great job on the float. But it needs an overhaul. A lot of soft wood up on there where we could go and stand, but it's a lot of soft wood there.

One simple and fast.

I just wanted to give, of course, thanks. That was amazing. Both parades both cities, it was really nice we got a lot of really good feedback, I know that, while I was handing out watermelon there was so many families that were saying. We really appreciate you guys going above and beyond to do this just this or the families, I mean battling the heat not having to spend extra money having that available right there and seeing our faces, it was really nice to see that if. I wouldn't say reminded me, but it kind of rekindled that fire of why I wanted to do this in the first place is to help the very people that we were seeing that day. And I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who played a role in that. And a special thank you to Megan for also jumping in and helping out with the float and the coordination with everything. And, you know, go team because we survived the heat. And we were able to still put on the fireworks even though it was pouring raining and everything went perfect. Consider it.

before we before we move on I would like to say thanks to all the donors who donated the water the food that kept these guys and girls hydrated while they were out in that heat thanks to my administrative assistant Sabrina she had the food prepared for us her and her mom Vicky did a great job and it was just an awesome awesome time so I didn't want to go by without thanking those vendors for contributing to this event because without them, it would cost us a fortune to provide food and drinks for all of these officers that come from different cities to assist us. So I just wanted to put that out there.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

I'll just comment that the watermelons got my last 23 bags of ice out of ice this year. Completely ran out. They got the last 23 bags.

Thank you, Madam President. Just a couple of things. I'll try to be brief. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am. For the council members that did not have access to this letter, since the cat is out of the bag, I will be giving a copy of the letter to the city clerk, and I'm sure if she is willing, she will put it in your mailboxes and you can read it. I just was trying to do the right thing, and I was asked to delay it. and i didn't want to spread it around until this meeting now i am still prepared to send that and so i will give the city clerk a copy of it and she can distribute it to all the other council members thank you all right nothing else we will move forward

Item number five, new business. Item number eight, discussion with possible action, Florida Commercial Rural Infrastructure Fund, RAF grant. Jeff Hendry, Executive Director, Florida Institute of Development.

How are y'all?

Good.

Good. My name is Jeff Hendry. I'm here in my capacity as the Executive Director for the North Florida Economic Development Partnership. That's a consortium of 15 rural counties in north central Florida. Our mission is pretty simple. We like to recruit business and industry for targeted industries into the region, into the rural counties. Of course, Levy County is part of that, as is all the municipalities within the county, including Williston. Uh, we do a lot of marketing visibility nationally and internationally for companies and trying to bring them and target them to come in. Um, but we also do a lot of technical assistance. And what I mean by that is we do a lot of grant writing as well, or we facilitate grant writers to work on your behalf. Um, we come in and work with councils on certain things, um, if they have a need. So, um, I'm here tonight to really seek your approval for, um, a grant to be able to submit, be submitted from the city of Williston requires y'all to be the applicant as a local government, um, for a rural infrastructure fund. grant. There's no matching requirement to it. So it's just a clean submittal. But I want to give you a little bit of background as to really and I think what we really do y'all justice you you've got a tremendous amount of momentum right now at your regional airport. Okay, I want to just share with you I work with 15 rural counties. Actually, I work with 31 rural counties around the state but in this capacity 15 you've probably got one of the top three to four literal assets in the entire rural community in the state of Florida in terms of the ability to recruit business and industry to come into that airport. It's one of the most undercapitalized, and that's not a criticism, that's just a fact. I've been working really closely with Benton for probably the last two years looking at trying to do a lot of evaluation associated with that airport. We've got a number of funding opportunities that we've been able to already secure. We just recently completed and I'll get to Latricia tomorrow morning so she can forward out to you a workforce study capacity as well as targeted industry study for that specific to that airport in terms of What kind of workforce is here to support business and industry at that airport? What are really the target industries that are a good match? for that particular airport in terms of the 45 mile radius. And just, you know, this would affect your local workforce, but it also looks at a 45 mile drive radius because at the end of the day, that's typically what a measure is in terms of people's willingness to commute for work back and forth. I tell people all the time, usually that's closer to about an hour and 15, hour and a half for rural community. But at the end of the day, that's how we kind of measured it because we're looking at pursuing other dollars on your behalf are in cooperation with y'all at the FAA, at Florida Commerce. This grant would basically be for between 2.5 and $3 million to improve the wastewater capacity out at the airport or what services the airport. And the reason why that's important, you have some good adequate capacity right now, but when you go in to start recruiting aviation type businesses, precision manufacturing, which are two of the really basic targeted targeted industries we'll be looking at for the airport. um you know there's going to be a need for improved wastewater capacity and it won't just benefit the airport um it will be kind of a cumulative impact on the city of williston's wastewater capacity and i will just share you that is um that's across the board and all the rural communities we serve that is the Probably the biggest barrier to economic development in the entire region is wastewater capacity. Water is not necessarily an issue. Potable water, you know, electricity and all the other type of telecommunications broadband has really been expanded to a great deal in our region. Natural gas. That's another thing that we'll be looking at as we go forward. But right now, this single grant is not going to fix all your problems for wastewater. And when I say problems, it's really about looking to the future about what kind of companies we could recruit to come into the airport to generate high wage, good jobs out there. And I want to reemphasize what I said earlier. What you have in that regional airport is a gym. It is not something that just shows up out of the sky anyway. As I said, it's one of our top three or four in the entire region. So we focused a lot with Benton over the last couple of years. We finally were able to secure some special funding from Florida Department of Commerce through CareerSource. And then the regional career source, Citrus Levy Marion, funded this project. So I'll send you, it's really, it's the draft final report that I'll get to Latricia to get sent out to y'all so y'all can read a lot of the information that's in there about what's validating the types of jobs that we can attract out at that airport. We've also been very successful in getting an Economic Development Administration grant, which is a federal grant Um, and which all approved a couple of year or a year and a half ago for us to submit on your behalf. Um, right now, as the federal government operates at the speed of Methuselah, sometimes, um, we're looking at about a five, another $500,000 grant to look at a complete evaluation of all the, the, uh, properties and sites that are out there, identify, um, infrastructure gaps where they may so that that's documented. So we can go after additional money again. The bottom line is we're trying to make that airport property and properties as site ready and as competitive as it can be because we really feel like we're in a great position to be able to go out and recruit business and industry. I'll close by saying that, again, the EDA money, the workforce study that we've just done, and a lot of references to this is stacking dollars. And we're leveraging each of these grants to go after additional grants. There might be a matching requirement at the federal level at times, and we can utilize some of these grants towards that match if it's state funded. Can't put federal dollars to federal dollars to match, but you can use state money to match in many cases. And so we're just trying to leverage every bit we can here. A lot of great interest. we've already had a number of companies talking to us um but again it's our job to go out and and make that airport as competitive as it can be from an infrastructure standpoint from a workforce standpoint. We've worked with all the institutions like the College of Central Florida, the Marion Technical College down in Ocala, which is starting an aviation mechanic program down there, which will be huge. We're looking at the Withlacoochee Technical College down in Citrus County. We're also working obviously with UF and some others from a high level engineering standpoint to be able to to demonstrate that you do have the workforce within a 45 mile radius to support a lot of the industries that we're going after. Aviation is in a huge trajectory, no pun intended, in terms of its potential to generate really great jobs out here. I don't want to embarrass him, but I will tell you, you got a treasure in Ben. And I ain't here to give him You know kudos for the sake of it, I work with a lot of airport directors around the state, many of them general aviation municipally based in on. You got a gentleman him and we've really appreciated working with him and i'll close, hopefully, that you guys will be encouraged to apply for this and I want to make one other reference but. You know, we were able to coordinate a tour of the highest levels of Florida commerce to come down. I mean, the deputy secretary, who's the chief administrative officer, the secretary of Department of Business and Professional Regulation, and a number of other high-level state people. And when I walked out of that tour, and I know Councilwoman Martin and the mayor were there and chief roles were there, you know, for them to greet them out at the newly constructed or recently constructed FBO out there. They were blown away. They said they could not believe that there's roughly between 12 to 1,500 buildable, developable acres two powerful runways from almost a seven thousand to almost a five thousand and you just need to know that those are really benchmarks in terms of the ability to land virtually any size plane so i can tell you two of the biggest targets we'll be going after when we get these sites this doesn't happen overnight this is a process uh you'll talk a little bit about that tonight this is a process that we're going to set that airport up for tremendous growth in the right way on the right with the right industries, a maintenance and repair and overhaul company that might be able to locate out there that can service planes. You're looking at anywhere from 100 to 250 jobs of really highly skilled wage jobs out there. And then you start looking at the drone manufacturing and drone testing type industries. And the reason why that's attractive is because you've got in these rural, a lot of these rural airports, you've got uncongested airspace. And so your ability to test those kinds of drones, the ability to land any size plane, and then that leads to the manufacturing side of it. So there is a method to this madness. um we've sequentially really started studying that airport generating these documents it helps us write additional grants and my friend over there you know this rural infrastructure grant has a life or a cycle due on july 13th so i can appreciate you know the rapid response but we're well positioned to be able to get this grant submitted or to give it to the city so that they can get it submitted if we can get your approval tonight. So I'll be glad to answer any questions you might have. And I hope you hear my passion. This airport doesn't come around every day. And it's one of the true gems in this region. I think it'd be a great job creator. Oh, I'm sorry. One other thing I wanted to also give Walt an opportunity. We had some conversations with his engineering firm as well as um people from our team um and there is uh you know there was a question about if we applied for this rural infrastructure fund And the city ended up applying for another rural infrastructure fund for a completely separate category. Planning is what Walt's going to be talking about, I think, at least a portion. In my view, with our team, those are two separate categories, and they're not going to be competitive in one and taken away from the other, in my humble opinion. It's been my experience for the last 17 years. I do think, you know, the other thing is Williston's airport and Williston in general has a lot of momentum going. So I would, if he's going to pursue that, I would encourage y'all to think about that. At some point, you definitely have to have your, you know, sign off or approval in order to submit this grant by July 13th. I'll let Walt speak to this issue.

Thank you, Mr. Hendry. Walt Nickel with Ray Pierce. Yeah, we had some overlapping, repeating questions. type grant applications and discussions happening here for this RIF grant. We had done some emails when the RIF grant opened up here just a couple weeks ago. Inquiring whether we wanted to submit again for the city so back in September, and I think you got a little bit of a memo that I put together that overlaps with this really this just. Happened recently, but last September we applied for a rural infrastructure fund grant for the your downtown main street plan that pro did. One of the components of that was the South Main Street needing stormwater improvements and upgrades so that can move forward. And last year we applied for that grant for the design planning grant. The city did not get that grant, unfortunately, but He sometimes have to apply several times, and so we when this opened up again we sent some emails inquiring hey would you like us to reapply for the riff grant for the South main street project. And then I returned from vacation Wednesday got a call from benton and Mr Henry we had a brief meeting actually a quick meeting but.

that day, probably about two hours, talking about this grant that they were going after for the airport.

My concern was that we would be, because the city would be competing with themselves. This grant program does have a strong, if you have economic benefits to the city, both of these projects have strong benefits. The downtown corridor, improving that and your vision for that would be a tremendous asset, economic benefit to the city. The airport expansion, tremendous economic to the city. And so in our discussions, we were afraid, are we competing? And do we need direction from council to go after one, either the downtown the airport or both. And in our meeting on Wednesday, we kind of thought it might compete. But Jeff is saying he believes that we can apply for both. The grant that he wanted to do for the airport is really an implementation. It's going to be both design and construction. Whereas here, we're asking for planning. It's just the design. And you're pretty confident that it wouldn't compete with one another.

okay if you'll come back to the bike so the reason they differentiate within the rural infrastructure fund they have three categories actually they have feasibility planning and study and that i think that's where walt's grant would come in and then they have construction literal construction of infrastructure design engineering design and construction so um therefore you see you know obviously construction um dollars are a lot higher they limit the the planning dollars to $300,000. The construction dollars aren't really limited, although you're talking about $27 million to go throughout 31 rural counties in the whole state of Florida. When you do the math, it's not a whole lot. But at the end of the day, we think our sweet spot for this, and quite frankly, Some conversations I've had with some folks that were blown away at the airport, we think our sweet spot could be, no guarantees, but could be about 2.5 to 3 million to get this wastewater project started and constructed. And as I said before, whether we get the RIF grant awarded or not at the state, when that Florida Jobs Growth Grant program opens up probably in the next month or two, we're gonna be putting in an additional grant presuming you guys would enable us to do that to again go after more infrastructure dollars for additional wastewater capacity as well as some maybe maybe looking at natural gas and looking at some road paving out there so anyways that's kind of where we're at so with that we you know

Given what we presented, we were asking, you know, your approval. I don't think it needs a resolution or a vote to resubmit the riff grant for the South Main Street project. So deadline is July 13th. The time is of the essence here. Um, we can do that. And then if you also. agreed to do for the airport we would have to be doing some assistance we worked out what the project would be and again this was done very quickly last week most likely we're looking at like a regional lift station at the airport that would service the airport The next item on your agenda is going to also be tied to this, and I'll address that a little bit later on the next item. But a regional lift station that can handle the airport in that area, it would have to then have a force main that would either discharge to West Noble Avenue or possibly directly to the Fugate lift station. But that's what we would need to do before as we put this grant together to put pricing and some concept plans together here in the next week. That is what we think is the best way for you to support the growth at the airport. So it's a pretty quick decision. We don't need to have that finalized with us, but we want to make sure you're asking for the right amount of money to support the grant request and what we're going to do. So given what has been presented today, we do agree we can apply for both of these and not hurt yourself and not compete against each other.

Thank you.

okay when he stops any discussion from anyone i just had a question walt have you studied the capacity of our sewer system because bringing all this extra it is something we have struggled i know you've enhanced it and you've done a number of things are we uh getting into a position where that we outgrow the capacity and have to have a whole new sewer system

That is why I don't know exactly where we would tie to, whether to the existing gravity at Noble or would it have to go all the way to the Fugate. And then item B on our discussion, the Springs grant, I will also talk about capacity.

Capacity. Thank you. That's my concern.

We have kind of overlapping but separate items. Yes. Capacity is a concern.

So we need two motions, one for Jeff and one for you.

Well, I think, however, we really just want your approval to apply for these grants by the deadline and doing two of them, yeah, two independently.

applications typically we have some kind of motion if we're going to approve a submittal rather than just the preparation so if we we can have one motion that encompasses both if you want to approve both that's acceptable any other discussion anybody else all right yeah i make a motion that we approve the submittal of the florida

Commerce Rural Infrastructure Fund grant.

I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion from council? Any discussion from the public? Seeing none, moved to vote. All those in favor say aye.

Aye. All those opposed say nay.

Motion passes five to zero.

Appreciate it and we'll keep you updated on where we are.

Thank you. All right, item number B, discussion of possible action reapply for the FDEP spring restoration grant and in areas two and three septic sewer and wastewater treatment plant upgrade, Walt Nickers, Wright Pierce.

Okay, so last year again, September, we applied I think for eight different grants for various things within the city. And several of the grants we applied for were the FDEP Springs Restoration Grant. we applied for three projects we applied for septic to sewer area one which was in the northeast quadrant of the city uh septic to sewer area two and three which was up here just north northwood uh subdivision area uh to use septic to sewer uh projects on that and then we applied for an upgrade to the wastewater treatment plant because of these septic to sewer plants because we would be out of capacity Our calculation showed we could do the area one septic to sewer with the current capacity that you have. You had sufficient capacity for that. But any other areas that we were going to add to that, we would need a substantial upgrade to the wastewater treatment plant. Now, there's a lot of grant programs out there through DEP for wastewater plants, but they typically don't pay for expansion of your plant. As you're growing, they're expecting your growth to pay for that. So that becomes a little bit difficult to find grants for you to upgrade your wastewater treatment plant. However, we are doing the septic to sewer grants because of what they call the BMAP, Basin Management Action Plan, that Williston is under, Levy County is under, you're all part of the Rainbow Springs BMAP. And that BMAP requires, mandates all the communities within there to have certain amounts of nitrogen reduction that goes into the groundwater the aquifers. City of Williston, you have a mandate by 2028 that you need to be reducing 5,579 pounds a year that currently goes into the aquifer and then that number increases more in 2033 and 2038. That's why we applied for the Area 1 septic to sewer. That's probably the best way for you to meet these goals. We told that to the DP. You did get the grant for the Area 1 to design the septic to sewer because we have to meet these numbers. That's the best way to do it. We want to reapply now for Areas 2 and 3 and ask for the wastewater treatment plant again. So we're just going to continue to ask. We got the first one of the three. Let's ask again. and it's really you need to show that you're one you're trying to find and trying to meet your mandate numbers and it's a good opportunity i think you have a good chance um whether we'll get two back-to-backs or we have to wait a year it might be but we we do need to apply so we're recommending that we reapply what we did um with that with the request the area two and three was a little bit of a bigger ask for the planning dollars Give us the opportunity to maybe tweak that and maybe ask for just a little bit less if that's going to improve our chances, but I think we should pretty much submit what we did last. For more septic to sewer and then also submit, we have to ask for the wastewater treatment plant upgrades to that that go hand in hand with all this, so we do want to do that it's going to increase our capacity. So that is one request we'd like you to do we want we want to submit areas two and three and the wastewater treatment plant. um. There's been a third project that we're recommending. that we consider is there's been discussions internally with staff for over a year now as we looked at the BMAP, but I don't think it's been officially presented to council in any way. But Levy County has similar, they're in the BMAP program, they have to meet these same types of requirements for nitrogen reduction. They have a very difficult time in doing that because they don't have wastewater treatment plants, they don't have utilities. And so that's going to be really hard to do that. But we've looked at the Highlands area, Wilson Highlands, that is out of the city. If Levy County could do a septic to sewer program out there, they could be a big chunk to meeting their bmap goals and mandates and requirements the city could be the provide the sanitary sewer service to that it's logical it makes sense i've had off discussions back when sue was here and staff about it they were in favor of looking into this i've had discussions with levy county mary ellen about this unofficial just hey these are ideas of something we can help marilyn's going to bring it to the the board of commissioners to talk about this about doing some type of joint agreement and joint application with the city of williston and i want to present that to you that i highly recommend that you have these discussions with levy county the benefit to levy county is they get their bmap requirements the benefit to williston is you pick up Users and revenue for your sanctuary sources. And because you're working in a regional project, you could do a joint application for septic to sewer and the increases that we need to the to the treatment system to the conveyance system to get the sewage to your treatment plant applying for a joint. application and grant for this. So we really highly recommend that. Now this grant program, the deadline for this is September 1. So we have some time. The Highlands project. This is more of a long range strategic type thing. If you don't apply for it this year, because there's a lot of moving parts here and agreements you need to do. It might be too early to do that. But I think you need to start this discussion and investigate it. And then next year, definitely you'd be in position i mean it's still going to be possible to do it this year but you've got to work with levy county they've got to talk about it and agree you have to talk about agree there's a lot of discussions that need to happen but we want to kind of help you facilitate this and we i think we can do that i think it's it would be good for williston it would be good for levy county of course there's always pros and cons with all that but we need to investigate all that so that's a third project um if it's possible i'm not asking that we submit now but i'm asking for you to have the discussions with levy county and whether you appoint a certain person to do that or you have staff do that um i don't really know how you would want to do that right pierce can assist we we know your system we know your utilities we can assist in those discussions with you you know when you need us to do but we really just want to advise you that this is something

it would be it would benefit both parties to do that and and i think it might be beneficial i noticed in your presentation that you're focusing on areas that have higher density and more people so we have currently have a almost 10 acre parcel that is in the county but it is one person. Is there any, there's no gain for that one person on 10 acres not to add to the nitrogen in our system?

When we do these applications, FDEP has some formulas and calculations that we need to do to show that you're, for the amount you can get removed for the cost to service that area. and that's why we focused on the areas we're focusing because they are denser you're going the numbers are going to be better you're going to have a better chance if we were to add a single user at 10 acres it would dilute the number thank you very much so but we do want to get the most bang for the buck in any way we can um so okay so you think at the highlands they would try to bring it back to the city yes not build their own package plant it's not that far away if you look at it larger cities you know you don't have wastewater treatment plants every four miles away it comes in the back of the airport yeah somewhere which which now brings three different moving parts right and and some other things together when we look at what the the sewer service that we would like to increase for the airport the highlands is just across the way so as we size that lift station in the next week or two we got to do some calculations and costs and things like that we may want to consider that as oversizing that

There's a lot of houses out there.

There's a lot of houses. So that could tie in. So you're asking for a RIF grant to improve the airport sewer system. We're asking for a Springs grant that could also help that. So you're asking money from two different pots and two different sources that really are going to help the same general region and have the same benefit. So these all tie together. They're independent. They're two different grants. But I think we need to... consider it. I mean, I'm not asking you today to consider where you wanted to provide service to the Highlands, this needs a lot of discussion. But as we have this opportunity now, and we're not designing it in a week, but we're at least asking for the money and trying to establish the right amount of money for this grant. Keep that in mind that it could also benefit the Highlands at the same time. So this is all moving together, unfortunately, your grant is due in a week that's faster this one we have it's a reoccurring grant we have until September or even maybe next year but it is I think it's very very important it's a benefit for both you know so summary we we'd like to your approval to resubmit areas two and three septic to sewer that we submitted last year resubmit that resubmit the wastewater treatment plant upgrades um for that and then ask you to consider considered discussions with levy county for the highlands

I would make a motion that we reapply for the Florida DEP Springs Restoration Grant in areas two and three for septic and sewer and the wastewater treatment grant upgrade.

I second.

I have a motion and a second. Any discussion from the council? Any discussion from the public? Yes, ma'am. If you'll come to the mic.

Hi.

And I was concerned about how far out is the sewer that's going to go out in the northeast section.

Mr. Walt, do you want to ask that? Did you hear the question?

The area of the sewer? so um it's basically from 9th street you have the 9th street lift station those areas from the railroad tracks to 9th street those are sewered are there now but from east of 9th street so 10th west to your city limit east to your city limits that area and then north to the city limits um would be is in the septic to sewer area so that right now is all on septic systems there so we would be designing and constructing all new sanitary sewers um the 9th street lift station has already been oversized the wet well we're supposed to be going to hopefully bid on that one very very soon but that's already been sized in anticipation of sewering that whole area it would need new pumps and things like that but the wet well itself is already sized for expansion on that and we are also looking there's been some discussions immediately north outside the city limits about possible development We would want to make sure that we're sizing things accordingly for that. But the new sewers are basically from, I think, I believe 10th Street East, yeah. And then all the way north.

Within the city limits.

Within the city limits.

I have one more question.

It's about Cornelius Park and the softball fields.

So you have to wait to public participation for that one. Thank you. Okay. All right. So we have a motion and a second move to vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Motion passes five to zero.

Thank you.

Thank you. The last thing was if we are interested in pursuing the Highland Septic Sewer Partnership. That was part of the motion, but I guess Walt needs to go back to him. Did I understand that correctly?

I thought he said he wanted us to think about it. Oh, okay. Mr. Walt, did you want us to give you an answer tonight about the last part? The Highlands portion? With the Highland, or because you said September just...

Yeah, advising you to have the discussions to start it. Mary Ellen mentioned she's presenting it to the Board of County Commissioners. They may say absolutely not, we're not even interested. But I think having... the discussion whether you appoint somebody or you make you know whether it be staff or a member of council works with levy county i'm just we're advising you about it right now okay um if it's possible to submit a grant before september then we'll have this discussion before that whether we want to do that or not it might be optimistic but it could it could happen so okay thank you all right item number c discussion with possible action

Budget calendar fiscal year 2027, Financial Director Steven Bloom. Is Steven on the line? You got him?

Yeah, I got him on the line. He can't get on the system, so I told him I would have him speak through the microphone. Steven, you there?

Yes, I am. Good afternoon. I have a very quick agenda item here. As you know, we are starting budget season. and I have put together a preliminary calendar for you with all of the key dates, including the first budget workshop. of tentative dates in there for some other workshops as well as if you notice the two September highlighted items in yellow are your first and second public hearing just as a reminder you cannot have a public hearing on the same date as the county or the school board that's why you'll notice that noted their dates as well on this calendar and again the first key one is the 27th that's when you'll get your first workshop And really after that, you can kind of adjust your workshops based on what you'd like to see. But I always like to put together kind of the preliminary roadmap so you can kind of see all the key dates. We also will be sprinkling in there your assessment. um hearing dates as well um which uh you know the you have a different party that handles that but that's also going to be an important part of the process but again i just wanted to roll this out here and and kind of get some feedback and go from there thank you

Those dates work for me.

Does anybody else have any issues with the dates?

I was going to say how you did it. My calendar is so crazy, but you picked dates I can actually come.

Ms. Cox?

I'll just have to ask for it. Tuesdays and Thursdays are my best, but this is a Monday, so I'll just leave work early.

Shanna? I can make it work. Ms. Meredith?

27th of July works great. I'm going to have to check on the two August dates that I will be at one of 26. I'll be sure. Okay.

So it sounds like those dates work so far. Steven.

Okay.

Anything else?

And nothing else at this point.

Like when are we going to get it?

Well, so far, just so everyone knows, all the department managers have their templates and have it for a little while. I'm going to be kind of gathering them all up tomorrow. I'll put together a preliminary, and once a city manager reviews it and approves it, then we can release it. So hopefully tentative no later than next week, the end of next week.

Awesome. Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Thank you. Sounds good. Thank you. All right. Item number D, Resolution 2026-40, a resolution of the City Council of the City of Williston, Florida, approving the 2027 Interlocal Municipal Election Agreement renewal between the City of Williston and Levy County Supervisor of Election, authorizing the appropriate parties to sign Documents required to execute such agreements on behalf of the City of Williston and provide an effective date. In discussion with possible action on runoff dates for 2027, Levy County Supervisor of Elections, Ms. Tammy Jones.

Good evening. I know we didn't have the opportunity to help with your election this year as you none was needed but we are offering our services again for 2027 as you can see. So it's just simply just renewing it. The one you did for 26 just moving forward with that same agreement. What's that?

Are the date changes?

That's a separate item of discussion, right, Latricia?

Yeah. Okay. Not listed separately.

The resolution itself doesn't change the date. It's just the agreement for the interlocal and then also part of the agenda item, but not the resolution. It's a discussion regarding the dates. Okay.

I move approval of Resolution 2026-40. Second.

I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Any discussion from the public? Seeing none, I move to vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Motion passes 5-0. So now we'll discuss the possible dates for runoff.

okay um yes i'm proposing a revision to the willis and runoff date it isn't often a city has a runoff however if a runoff was to be held after beginning to do the city elections i realized the time frame is not doable so um in our um in the ordinance number 2025 7-756 which was changed in the election code section 20-8 absentee ballots the city of the city clerk or the Levy County Supervisor elections at the request of the city clerk will be responsible for administering the absentee voting process as set forth and Florida statutes 101.62 so if you scroll down all the way to the last page You kind of see I did a little timeline that shows what it would look like if we had a May 25th election next year instead of a May 4th runoff election. Let's go down a little bit more like to the last page. If possible.

I think it's page 16. One more. I think it's page 16.

So you can see if the election is April 6th, we have to mail ballots out 45 days before an election for military and civilian overseas voters. So we're still cutting it close, giving us that seven week timeframe. Um, So I started realizing this after I started doing the elections. We agreed to do the general election, but what if more than two people run? The charter states there needs to be a runoff. So we actually almost had a runoff in English, where they had, if they have a tie vote, their charter says we have an election in two weeks. And I was like, there is no way we can do an election in two weeks. So I started looking at all the cities and I was like, none of these are doable, to be honest. I mean, back in the day when these runoffs were declared and the cities made these decisions, some of these statutes weren't as specific, the deadlines to mail ballots and all that. So really for our office to turn around an election we need that seven weeks to get ballot printing you know the equipment ready the poll worker training again so all the things that are needed and this is really just probably not going to happen where you have a runoff very much i mean it's hard enough to get people to want to run to have an election let alone have more than two people run in one seat it's the only time this is going to occur so the only thing that would would need to be done um if you look at section of the law 100.3605 paren 2 and maybe um the city attorney can address this i believe it can be changed through ordinance and the reason why is if you look at paragraph two i think it's on page up one page it'll be on page two of my stuff but i'm not sure what page so you go up to page 13 of your own 15 now just go down a little bit to the next page up a little bit you see where it says relevant Relevant statutory reference. So statute 100.3605 says, and I have it highlighted in yellow, a municipality may by ordinance change qualifying and election dates provided the transition of office is addressed and the changes do not conflict with the Florida election code. so i'm not an attorney but i think we can change the runoff election date because it doesn't specify what election date it's considering there just so we can comply with florida statutes 101.62 which is the vote by mail statute um and i know you're probably concerned like oh my goodness we're gonna drag this thing out longer and it's gonna take longer for people to take office um So right now it says the mayor and the council shall assume office the second Tuesday in May. We could add to that and say keep that there. But if the election for mayor or any council seat results in a runoff or if the elected individual is unable to be sworn in at the time specified, he or she shall take the oath of office and commence his or her duties at the next regular council meeting after becoming eligible and able to do so. So that for the people that are elected in the general election on april 6 they would still take office the second tuesday of may like you do now the only people that would the only seats that would be affected which is rare would be anybody that would go to a runoff so they would take their their seat would be delayed a little bit um to take office yes

Runoffs don't occur if any candidate gets the majority of the votes. Is that accurate?

That's correct, yes.

Thank you.

So two things have to happen. You have to have more than two people in the seat. And I think it happened in Williston. I'm pretty sure it may be your seat. Yeah. So if there's three people running, if somebody gets the majority, then there is no runoff. Right. So...

Meredith? With the, for example, sitting council person whose seat is being replaced by the people in the election, would they then have to remain or be allowed to remain in that seat, or would they vacate that seat on May 2nd, and then there would just be an empty seat?

It's really however you all want to do it. Yeah, I mean, this is just verbiage I came up, but you are true. It is correct, because the new person taking the seat So Cedar Key, I looked at theirs. I don't know if I have a copy of theirs with me. But theirs doesn't give a specific date you take office. It just says when you win the election, you would take office. They don't have the second Tuesday in May. so that is kind of a weird thing because you have these people went in on this date and then these one or two seats i'm sure it's across the board in any city that it's an issue when you have a runoff and you have a set date to take office so i don't really know what y'all want would want to do in this case or even if you want to do the runoff election extended i just wouldn't feel comfortable doing an election where i can't follow the law so

We're all looking at you.

There were a couple of questions there that I think I can probably provide some clarity on. First of all, I agree this change can be done via ordinance. It's what we did the last time we changed our election dates. Florida law explicitly provides for that kind of change. For exactly these reasons is that if you had to go to a special referendum vote every time you needed a change, your election dates they would be a nightmare um so that's that's the first question second question is agreed um as to it's sort of whatever you all uh believe is appropriate for your city so you could say that uh in the event that there's a runoff election then the seat remains filled with the existing individual until there is a resolution um you could adopt a a I'm trying to make sure that we don't go too far afield because we don't want to change a ton of things about our ordinance and our charter. But we can certainly shop the language to make sure that there's no issues. Ultimately, we're really not talking about an extended period of time. So even if you all decided that the seat would remain vacant, you're talking about maybe one or two meetings that the seat would remain vacant. It's probably the safest option so that we're not changing too much about your charter in an ordinance because we sort of want to limit that as much as humanly possible. But I can absolutely look into different language that you all might be interested in if you give me a sense of where you're leaning.

I say let them stay until they are replaced.

Okay. I would agree. Okay. I can work on something that looks like that.

And I would be happy to come back, you know, if you have any questions or, you know, I'm sure me and Ms. LaTresha talk all the time so we can discuss too. So I appreciate your consideration because we just want to make sure we're doing it right, you know. And luckily, we haven't run into a situation where we had to have a runoff, which would squeeze us into a situation where we couldn't meet the deadlines. So thank you for your consideration.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right.

Have a good night. So do you want to vote on the resolution now?

Yes, we would vote on the resolution. Absolutely.

Yeah, and then just come back with the language.

I'll come back with the language for the additional change.

All right. So it's going to be the same resolution?

no so the resolution that you have in front of you is for the interlocal agreement for um the supervisor of elections to run our elections right the discussion that we just had is do you also want me to bring back it was brought up hey i'm agreeing to help you run your elections i can't do it the way that you're talking about right it

That's what we're voting on, but it's not a resolution.

You're voting on the resolution, right? Unless we've already done that.

We voted on the resolution already. Oh, yeah, we did. Okay, we already voted. Okay, you're confusing me. That's why I'm like, wait, is it going to be the same resolution? I just didn't know if we needed another one. Right. Not until she brings it back.

It'll be an ordinance that will come back for that language. Right. The resolution is only on the interlabel. Okay. Okay.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you so much.

Yes, ma'am. All right, item E, Resolution 2026-41, a resolution of the City of Williston, Florida, related to the provision of fire services facilities and programs in the City of Williston, Florida, establishing the estimated assessment rate for fire service assessment for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2026, directing the preparation of an assessment role, authorizing a public hearing, and directing the provision of a notice

they're uh providing an effective date fire chief lamar stiegel yes ma'am what you have here before you tonight's resolution for the uh fire assessment if you look we actually have two there you you council instructed us to bring back two resolutions at two different numbers um the first one was rated out at a uh 40 percent of the 100 assessment that would be a rate per dwelling unit at 216 dollars per house um the other resolution and i'm going to go ahead and talk about it i guess i can do that um on number 42 put was at uh 37.20 that brings the per dwelling rate at 200 per home both of those are increases over what we currently assess what is the address Currently, we're assessing at $159 per unit. So what is the increase?

$57.

Yes, sir.

Thank you, mathematician, wherever you were.

It was me. All right. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Questions? Statements? This is what you asked for.

And to clarify, if I may, to clarify, this is the top end of what we would actually charge as a tax?

That is correct. If we decided to adopt $216, as we go through the budget process and we decided to reduce that, we can. Thank you. That would be as high as we could go. That's not saying we're going to do that. That's just as high as we could go.

And what was the ceiling that would break even per se? Was it 20? Was it 30?

I'm sorry.

Was it 30% that we talked about originally that we were saying?

37%.

It was 37?

Yes, ma'am. If everything went the direction we wanted it to go. I'm sorry. I'm sitting here. I'm halfway standing. My chair is steady going down here.

Uh-oh.

I've been fighting this chair the whole meeting.

Uh-oh.

Yeah, I feel like I'm shrinking. Neither are you. Any questions for, oh, sorry.

I just wanted to clarify, so just to reiterate, you would only adopt either 41 or 42. Correct.

How do we handle that from a motion perspective? Do we have to start with 41 that we don't adopt it?

Choose one.

Yeah, I would say choose the one that you want to adopt.

Yeah, if we choose the one that we want to adopt, then I would just have us do a motion to deny whatever other, if you decide that you don't want to do 41 because it comes first, a motion not to approve, and then we can move on to the next one.

discussion I just had a question did we ever hear back from the decision on the county of what they're able to reimburse I will have that information I believe it is the 21st as what what potential increase we're looking at that the last meeting it was a 7% increase which was like right at $30,000 from the county

just to make sure that my understanding is correct because i know that at the last meeting it was discussed that i believe 70 of our calls are usually for the county that that is correct so i wanted to make sure that the county was offering their due diligence of paying for a majority of those services so we're not just having to explain to our residents we're going to ask you to pay for services that are majority offered to the county just to make sure you're absolutely right and um

The, uh, the county in the last meeting, and I'm just telling, giving you information, I think I've covered some of it already. County in the last meeting stated that they wanted to make sure that, um, we were, we could do it cheaper than they could, you know, to give everybody a good deal. And I said, I would love to take what you call it costs the county to run a fire call because that the county would then owe us $1.2 million.

Exactly.

And they, you know, obviously they, they didn't want to discuss that very much longer. so you know we went back to negotiating out in every city every municipality is currently in negotiations with the county um i will say that i was approached by the municipal the other cities and asked to represent them as a group um and i that's that's a big ask

So when we come to the budget, once you get that decision, then that will play?

Yes, that would play into it. My advice, obviously, is going to be to adopt higher and go lower. That's my advice. You guys do what you want to do. We're going to do our best to make whatever your decision is to make it work out. But in putting it into a safe perspective, we don't know where we're going to be in a year. and um miss church made a great comment about in the last meeting and i know that she hates talking about raising money in any shape form or fashion but she made a great comment she said in the past and like in using utilities as an example we kicked the can down the road for many years and then we got hit with one giant increase and we don't want to go back down that path again so i appreciate that because

I wanted to make sure my understanding was correct and I appreciate the clarification that the number that we're discussing now is the highest that will go. And then after we get the information back from the county, and after we've had a chance to review the budget, we can figure out if we're going to be there or any of the lower areas. Um, I, I believe that that clarification needed to be not just for us, but also for the residents. They fully understand exactly what we're looking at.

That is you're 100% correct.

Thank you.

Can I get a motion on either resolution? Let's start with the one that we're not going to accept.

Do we know which one that is yet? I mean, I can tell you where I stand.

Make a motion. We'll see. I guess.

Okay. Well, I make a motion that we approve resolution 2026-42. Am I doing this right?

I have a motion. Do I have a second?

which is no oh I apologize that's the lower no I I got confused I started saying you're gonna stick with that I'm gonna second it no I rescind sorry thank you looking out for me um yeah so can I reiterate sorry I make a motion that we approve resolution 2026 dash 41 apologies have a motion to have a second

That's the highest one. I have a motion and a second in discussion from the council. Any discussion from the public. Seeing none I move to vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Nay.

Motion passes 3-2.

Can I get a motion? A motion on resolution 2026-42.

We, we can't adopt that 1 at this point, because you already adopted the other 1, so just move on, but can we just so we don't even though it's me.

Okay. All right, so we will go resolution 2026 dash 43 resolution of the city council, the city of Williston, Florida, authorizing the submission of an application. Of the Department of state. small matching grant for historical preservation and providing an effective date city plan on laura date laura jones good evening council hi good morning

JoAnne Hanrahan, feels like it we've been here a little bit will yeah so that we were talking to earlier with miss Williams, about the Department of State division of historical resources grant that is due on July 10. JoAnne Hanrahan, jb pro has already put together one for a historical. plan it's not a historical survey but a historical plan um so we can and i have the resolution here so we can go ahead and adopt that or we can discuss more with miss williams about another one of these that we would rather put in for so tell us about yours So this historical plan, this is where you will have an implementation plans for when you actually get your study done, you decide where your historical areas are, you decide what you're gonna do with them, how you're gonna implement that. We decided to skip the study because the CRA is very interested in funding the study next year if they have the money in their budget. This isn't going to come about until 2028, probably. So we figured we had a little bit of time for the CRA to go ahead and do a study. But this is independent from a study. You don't need to have this plan to have, you don't have to have a study to have this plan. So it is a small matching grant, but we're a ready community, so the match will be waived. It's a $50,000 grant. question go ahead question so is it like the establishment of a historical district it's the it's how to establish the historical districts okay so this stuff like the policies and procedures yes of how to proceed with that yes okay so that when we do get that study done whether it's this year or next year that it the study doesn't just sit on the on the um in the bookshelf so the study can actually be implemented this is you know miss christine dalton was here a couple weeks ago talking about historical surveys she's an historical expert she's going to be heading up this grant for the city of williston probably you guys have to um send it out to bid or whatever but she's one of the people that we we would probably ask to bid on that so when you say the joint meeting yes yes christine dalton

So when you say historical district, it has to be in the same location, same general area?

No.

Related for the grant or?

No, no, this is just a plan for what we're going to do.

So let's take a step back.

So the city of Williston has directed us, council has directed us to start to preserve our historical area. resources right buildings places people whatever we have going on here well we can't do that without a plan we can't do it without a study and then usually with the plan and the study you'll have a district and there can be multiple districts the whole city could be a district it could be a district of like industrial areas down where the peanuts are by the by the railroad tracks and then the banks you know how we have the banks here you know it could be different kinds of districts so that's what the plan is going to work on how to implement the study and then the districts and then what you're going to do with that information and like I said this isn't probably going to come about till about 2027 because by the time you put it in then they award it then they have their budget next year to see if they fund it so then we'll probably see it sometime next year around the end of budget season fall of 2027 and then you'll see it in 2028

Any other questions?

But there are other opportunities. I don't want Ms. Williams' opportunities to go, because she was discussing other opportunities for the same grant. So you want to come up and talk? Because we're all here for the good of the city.

I haven't talked to them about it.

She's already doing a lot of work on this. And I think it's important that we just move forward with what you've done already. And the plan is always important to go ahead and implement because when we're applying for the million dollar grants, they don't want to know that we just pulled something out of the hat. They want to know that we had a plan and we had, so because they see people come back without a plan, needing phase one money, phase two money, phase three money, because there was no plan. So I think it's important that we do take this step. Moving forward, of course, I'm here to support any of the other historical projects that we have, but I think this is very important that we to move forward with this. And like she said, there's no match. And it's only going to benefit us in the future. They've already done what the comp plans have planned and everything. We're still working on the comp plan. That'll be done at the end of this week. So all this kind of builds together. Yeah.

Can I just ask, Ms. Williams, when we spoke about the historical grant, didn't you say there was two?

This is one of the two. They have the special category grant that you can ask for up to a million dollars for that does have a match. It's very confusing because the small matching doesn't have a match, but they call it small matching. The special category is the larger one where you get that construction done and everything, engineering, construction, all of that.

Thank you.

So if Miss Williams and I work together, we could probably get you there. This is sort of like what Walt was talking about earlier. These are all different steps to get you somewhere. If we went after the million dollar grant, we may or may not win it because we don't have a plan. You know, we don't know, we don't, I mean, we could tell them something, but what did we really get there? But this way we get the plan, we get the survey, we get the districts, then we go after the individual projects.

And I would say the other one that we were thinking about, it actually had to do with the gym at the old vocational school, at Williston Vocational School, because the new owners expressed interest in preserving that and the historical character of it, because we told them that it was historical and that it was important to the community. So that's why we brought it up to Ms. Williams to begin with.

Yeah. But we haven't actually talked with them. We won't be able to do it for this cycle, but it does give us a lot of time to work with them. It does. Work with the attorney, figure out what kind of, you know, those type of agreements we might need because this is city funding going to private business. You know, so there's some things.

Well, my thought, too, was that they could pay the match.

right you know that we got the grant they could pay the match that was our thought when we discussed it earlier we have to give them some time to maybe think about exactly fifty thousand dollars yes ma'am within the year they should be able to say yeah we got it or we need help and they'll decide if that is a direction that you think that property owner wants to go in um for them to work with an engineer architect and to get plans before they put in for the grant or at least a concept because I'm not sure that we could do that by Friday no no I don't they're definitely not ready that's what I'll say I think we need to go with yours yeah they're competitive grants every little category has a point you know points that we need to maximize on it having a concept is always you know very close to that you know shovel ready project that they're always looking for

the rest of their project is not historical it was just the gym just the gym okay it was just it was just the gym because that's where the history is so if it pleases the council we're ready to submit the um small matching grant for historical preservation plan which will be

I want to get in tomorrow if I could get it signed tonight because I don't I don't like waiting till the last minute with these computer programs. I get really nervous because they don't always work at the last minute.

I would move approval of Resolution 2026-43 for submission of the application for the Department of Small Small State Small Matching Grant.

I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion from the council? Any discussion from the public. Seeing none, I move to vote. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed say nay. Motion passes 5-0. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Item number six, public participation. This is the second time that you'll have to speak on anything. Please state your name and where you're from. And then we'll move on to item number 7 announcements. Any announcements from city clerk? Inter manager.

I guess we can talk about that July. We will.

At the end. I mean when everybody gets back around. When I go through everybody again and get back to council. We'll talk about it then. So you have nothing else? Mr. Rowe, I mean Chief Rowe. Chief Stegall. Benton's good. And Kim's done. You're good. All right. All right. So now we're back at the council. Anything from the council before we start talking about that date?

I have just a quick thing, which is that some friends and my husband were sorely disappointed because they went to play pickleball the other night and the courts were full, which is really good. Oh, of people? Of people, yeah. There were a bunch, I believe Benton possibly, it was the group of young people that came in and asked for it to be repainted, possibly. But yeah, they want more pickleball courts, please. Nice. Okay.

Ms. Debra? On that same note, I'm disappointed that they took the lights down.

Who took them down?

Because there were lights on that field, on those courts, and people could play after dusk. And yes, somebody said that none of our parks are supposed to be open after dusk. I was going to ask. But they've had lights for 50 years. When there were tennis courts, they had lights. They recently took the lights down. So I would just, I'm very disappointed in that. Who is they?

Who took the lights down? Do we know who took the lights down? I assume the city took the lights down, but I don't know who, who.

Yes, they're gone. They're gone. Let's put it that way. And they told me they weren't planning to put them back up.

Do you know anything about what Ms. Debra's speaking about, Nate?

As old as those lights were, they probably couldn't find them anymore.

Well, they just need to change fixtures, not take them down altogether.

I mean, I can't speak for that part. So what can we do to get the lights back up?

Let's put it that way. I realize that's not on the agenda, but please think about it.

Right now I've got locates in and all new poles should be there by the end of next week. I'm so excited. And then lights are been ordered and should be coming in soon. I just got to figure out how to get power back around all of them without overhead. Perfect. That's where I'm at with it.

Thank you.

Nice to hear.

Any other comments? I have a question, and I don't know who to address it at because I don't know where we are. But on not the last meeting, but the last meeting that I was at, I asked about the sidewalk out by the old middle school. And we were trying to figure out who owned it and what we were doing with it because there had been a barrier there on the sidewalk blocking it. So who and no one ever came back and gave me an answer.

So at that meeting I was not in the position I am in at the moment but I can get you an answer for that by the next one.

OK. Do you know what area I'm talking about.

Yes ma'am.

OK. Thank you.

I'm still there.

I didn't write about it today.

I didn't either. Is he supposed to be working.

Thank you. All right. If nothing else, then we will. Oh.

I'm sorry.

She was like, no.

I know BJ's not here, but I wanted to tell y'all that the roasted animal shelter won the first place for the float. So y'all, please give her kudos for that. She was so excited. Nice, nice, nice. And I have a few comments about fourth of july that happened at the pavilion that i will discuss later with the city manager that happened when lightning struck the pavilion because it did because all the lights went out i don't know if y'all realize that or not all the lights went out and all the sound equipment ran out um and then probably 15 minutes later it came on was that during the storm it was Simultaneously to Cody and Kurt showing up to see if they could help us, it miraculously came back on. But by then, the entire band had packed up their car, and there was not even a microphone to make an announcement on. I was not real happy with that. Well, it struck that pavilion, I have no doubt. It scared me to death, I can tell you. yeah and then it got better after that so that was good um my only other i have a question for kirsten if that's okay sure um can you help me with the update on the block 12 peso properties so we have been obviously there's been a

a lot going on in block 12. Part of what we have discovered is that through the process with block 12, it came to our attention that we might want to do an updated title search on those peso properties before we start our foreclosure, just to make sure that there are no outstanding liens or fines or mortgages or anything like that and so we just recently got those back they look relatively okay there are one or two things that you know we may we may want to address differently but we're in the process of drafting the complaints so that we can move forward with the foreclosure process now that we feel more comfortable that we're not getting ourselves we're not biting off more than we can chew that's wonderful because they are the whole end down here is completely dilapidated right

And I would just say that the people that I know of that I've been talking to that were from the hospitals, the only reason I was talking to them originally, that were interested in those properties are no longer interested because of the shape they're in. So that's why I would like to proceed with that as soon as we can.

Yeah, there have been some discussions, obviously, throughout the period of time that these have been in code enforcement that a developer may be interested. If that's the case, it certainly is cheaper for the city and faster for the city if Mr. Peso and a developer work together and then the property gets cleaned up. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened. A couple of things have fallen through. So we're moving forward with the foreclosure process now that we have those updated title searches.

And this particular developer I was talking to was working with Mr. Peso. No, he was not coming to us to see if he could get it from us, but he was working with Mr. Pesso and has decided that it's not going to work out. I'd like to move forward with it because it's just getting worse by the minute. All right, that's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Mr. Mayor?

No?

All right, so now we will revert back to the dates for the special session. Are there any dates of next week that anybody's available? Wait, are there any dates of this?

Next Tuesday.

Next Tuesday is not good for me. Not good for you. What about Friday? This Friday?

This Friday.

Friday works. Is anybody available this Friday?

Friday works for me. Tuesday is the only day I'm not available.

Okay.

Friday the 10th.

Friday the 10th. This Friday.

I'll just flag that I will be in a municipal attorney's conference, but feel free to have the meeting, and I can be available via phone if you all need anything.

Okay. Thank you. So what will be an alternate date? When will you be back?

What time on Friday?

I'd rather not do it on a Friday if we can't, don't have to. Well, I'm usually off on Fridays, so I try to get days I'm off. But what other?

We'll be gone Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then we'll be back starting next week.

So who said they weren't available on Monday? You're not Monday. What about Wednesday? I'm not Tuesday either.

Monday works for me, just Tuesday doesn't.

Monday works for you? Somebody said Monday doesn't.

I don't think anybody said. No, not that I heard.

Mondays.

Are not good for Mike.

Not good. So Wednesday?

Wednesday's good for me. Because I'm not available and she's not available.

Can I jump in and ask... We have a little flexibility on time. Would that make a difference for people? Later would definitely be much better. I would be a lot more available if we could not be at 6.

What time did you get off, Mike?

7.

7. So if we did 7.15? How about 7.30?

I'll be here at 7. I'll just check out.

Microphones, please.

Are you talking about Tuesday? Are you talking about Tuesday? Monday. Oh, Monday.

Monday for Mike.

Okay. Monday what date?

The 13th? Thank you. But I also, it could be much more available other nights if it was later. I have more availability.

Does anybody know if Monday is CRA night? Yes, it is. I think it is. It's at 530. And we could just meet in a different room.

Or they could meet in a different room. But they'll be done if we're doing it at 7. Yeah.

If you started at 7, typically, your CRA meetings would not go that long.

And you're going to be here anyway for CRA. I will be here anyway. That would be great.

And just to clarify, this is a meeting that it's a requirement for us to have a reasonable amount of time for the public to be aware so that way they can attend, correct? Correct. Yes, so they have almost so the timing would definitely help later works usually better for the residents. So they don't have to also take time off from work. So I think that's a huge plus. Um, as far as reasonable amount of time, I think that's looking at Monday as of right now, later in the evening, probably fitting both of those requirements.

I would agree.

Okay, so what I'm hearing is Monday the 13th at 7 15.

7 p.m., I think he said. Yeah, 7 is fine. I'll just scoot out a little earlier. 7.15. So we're going to do 7.15.

Okay, I won't be difficult. Y'all decide.

7 o'clock, that's fine.

I've changed it already. Okay, she said 7.15. I'll fix it back. Which is it? Which is it? 7? 7.15 is different.

7.15, so y'all can make sure everybody's here. 7.15.

Thank you. sure I'm an early start well you can't if you have time so 715 The 13th.

And just to clarify, we're wanting this to be a special meeting, not a workshop.

Special meeting. Okay. And we need stuff from Kim. We need the old... Is she still here? No, but Latricia can tell her. We need the old job description. What else do we need? Just tell her. Old job description, how much the old pay was. Correct.

Starting and ending, would that be helpful as well, just so we can...

mean she jotted it down before she left oh thank you we need info and the requirements did somebody say that i missed it requirements are good okay what requirements and if the the previous notice that we used that we posted online for people if we could have the previous one that would help a lot This last time we talked about the city itself and, you know, we described the city and what we were looking for. And then we posted the job description behind it.

I think they've already got a couple applications. I know I handed one.

I know they've got one because I got one. I think we all got it. Or at least most of us did. I don't know about a second one, but I do know about that one. Doesn't matter.

We just need to have a meeting. Because whatever applications we got are going to be included with the rest of them that we get.

And the one I got wasn't on an application. It was just a resume.

So do we want to look at other agencies, maybe possibly comparable to our size as to what they're paying?

I think so as well in order to have, you know, an incentive for us to, you know, find quality people.

So a survey of like, it's hard because we have so many services that they don't have.

Right.

Like we have a police department, we have a fire department, we have an airport. No, nobody else does that's our size. Very few. I mean, there might be somebody like maybe Brooksville's bigger.

we have to look at one that's a little bit larger than us but have those same things so we'll have to take that into consideration too is we have more than other municipalities so the cities that are a little bigger we'll have to But I can tell you, watching Fox News out of Orlando, there's a lot of cities that are hurting when city managers are finding them.

In our area, there's a lot, too.

Palatka signed a one-year agreement for somebody to be a temporary...

Isn't it Lake City that's had like two or three just very recently? So we're not the only one.

Right. So just know that we're going to discuss that, and then we're also going to discuss the other.

Yeah, whatever you think of that you need, just let Latricia know. Maybe they'll dig it up for us for the meeting.

And just remember, when you're looking at your cities, we're unique because the police and fire falls under the mayor, not under the city manager.

Good point. Yeah, just the budget. Just a budget manager. Was it very true?

All right. Okay. Any more announcements? None. Number eight adjournment. Can I get a motion? We adjourn. Second. I have a motion and a second and discussion from the council and discussion from the public. Seeing none. We move to vote. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All those opposed, say nay. Motion passes 5-0. We are adjourned at 8.52 p.m.