Council - Regular Meeting

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Good evening. Today is Tuesday, July 21st, 2026 at 6.03 p.m. We're going to call to order city council meeting. Roll call, Ms. Wright.

Mayor Goodman. I am here. President Hines. Here. Vice President Jones. Here. Council Member Cox. Here. Council Member Martin.

Here.

Council Member Church.

Here.

Attorney Kirsten Ballou. Here. Interim City Manager Latricia Wright. I am here and all other staff. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll have an opening prayer and pledge of allegiance to the flag by Mayor Charles Goodman.

Please join me if you choose. lord we come here tonight to do the business of our city and lord we know that you and you alone can guide us in the right direction And we ask you for those guidances. Lord, I ask you to be with each one of these council members as they make decisions that affect the lives of all the residents. I ask you for the audience's patience. And we thank you, Lord, for their willingness to actually be here and be part of their government. Lord, we ask you now to be with us as we go forward, and I ask you to keep a special hedge of protection around our police officers and our fire department. Lord, each day they risk their lives to serve our city. I ask all this in your name. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you very much.

Item number one.

Item number one, additions, deletions, changes, and approval of the agenda.

Madam President, can I just add under item five, new business, can we make a introduction presentation by Dawn Ramdas?

Excuse me, say that again.

Under five, a?

Introduction?

Mm-hmm.

And moving one up, is that what you're doing? Yes.

No, just we're adding this on. It's making it 5A. And we're going to move 5A down to B and so forth.

Introduction of what?

Don Ramdas. Anything else? No, ma'am.

Move approval of the agenda with those changes. I second.

I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Move to vote. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All those opposed, say nay. Motion passes 5-0. I remember to public participation. This would be the first of two opportunities to speak about anything that is not on the agenda. You have five minutes. Please state your name and where you're from. Yeah.

Thank you. Jacqueline Abner. Just coming back and doing a couple of reviews on some events that are happening with the Things Can Be Easily and Be Good Committee. I listen online and I hear great things happening. I hear some other things happening, but I look at all the positive things that continue to happen in the world. So I just want to say I am out there listening. I'm not physically here, but I'm back now. So I hear great things about the park. We have an upcoming movie night that's coming up in October. So I'm working with Miss Vicki and Miss Latricia on that. So I will be getting the flyer and bringing that to committee when that's all put into place. I'm continuing and hope to work with Mr. Mike Rose on the youth, the young pioneers that I came to a while back. I do have... I guess pictures I'm putting together for some of them. Taylin Seabrooks and Quenya Mitchell were the first two that I brought to the council. They're doing great things in the community. I did put a silo framing together for Taylin Seabrooks, so he continues to do great things with the rodeoing. So I was able to put this together and hopefully we'll get some of these pictures displayed in City Hall. Again, when young Mitchell had his camp, so that's recently, continue to do great things in the community as young pioneers. And I'm continuing to look throughout Williston and our schools with our children. They will eventually be the ones to take the reins unless there's older people, and they'll take it and run with it. So we're hoping to get them prepared to do this for Williston. Softball program, that continues to go. They recently had a game here at the Little League field, but we're hoping to get the fields cleared so that they're able to do it at the park. Jermaine pits continues coach there planning to bring the walking program back at these William Park or where was availability for us to do the walking program planning on bringing that back. We're going to miss the may Jonathan and a couple of others if the OT on safety of school starting I've been really concerned that come before about the speeding on 27 coming into Wilson. People not recognizing that I live on their falls and people pass me going 60 miles per hour. So these are things I've said before, but I've also continue to work with the people that are working with me on those. So, made again, Jonathan, if the OT on trying to get something to slow traffic down there. so that there's not a bus hit in the back. And Mike knows about it as well. We don't want to have a tragedy of a school bus trying to pick up kids in that area or going across the railroad track or turning off or just turning off dead frogs getting hit in the back. One of the new things we have is the beautifying the I'm not sure. On 27, there's an entryway past BP. There's a forefork in there. We're beautifying that DOT. FDOT has helped me with putting wildflowers in there. So we're asking the crew that's mowing not to mow those up. Those really are not just weeds. They're wildflowers. There's signs there. We're hoping to watch that beautify there, beautify that little section right in the 27 there in BP. The newest thing I'm coming and asking permission from one of the citizens, a horseshoe, there's a group of young men that play horseshoes and they're trying to find out if there's a location that when they have events at the park that they're able to have horseshoes or be able to do horseshoes at the park. They don't want to get in any one space if there's a softball game or football or anything like that. They just wanted me to find out and get guidance on where, if they were allowed to do horseshoes out there doing events. I think that's mainly, like I said, my little list. I've been continuing to work with everyone. I'm glad to be back. And everyone here knows I will go to the people that I need to go to to follow the rules to get things done. Canese William Park, I'm overjoyed. My dad, I know he's smiling out on me for all the continued growth there. So I ask you to just continue doing that, and I thank everyone. Thank you.

No questions.

Ms. Applin, when was movie night? Did you say when that was going to be?

And you will be here for me and you had it there.

Come back to the mic, Ms. Applin.

Yes, on the 31st, it was here the past two years at the pavilion over here. It will be there again. Desmond Holmes is the movie person. We're hoping to make him the portable theater that brings theater back to Williston. He's great. If you've never been to a silent movie, it is something that you would definitely enjoy with the headphones. I think it will be on the 31st. I'll get the flyers out. I think that's mainly it. Thank you.

Any other questions? Thank you, ma'am. Anyone else? Seeing none, we will move forward. All right, item number three, consent agenda, July 16, 2026, council minutes, and July 7, 2026, council minutes. Any discussion?

I move we approve the council minutes from June 16 and July 7. I have a motion.

Have a second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, move to vote. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All those opposed, say nay. Motion passes 5-0. Item number four is going to be updates. We will start with our city attorney. Do you have anything for us, ma'am? Ms. Wright, our interim manager and city clerk. Thank you.

I have just a couple of updates. I did have your preliminary budgets on your desk, but I had to remove them, and I will have them for you tomorrow. There were some changes that Stephen needed to make at the last minute. So you will have those tomorrow so everybody can review. And don't forget that the first budget workshop is Monday, July 27th at 5.30.

Thank you.

The second update, there was some traffic pattern changes. at Northwest Sixth Street and Northwest First Avenue. That's right behind the new Wawa. It was a two-way stop, but now it's a four-way stop. So if you're traveling that road, please be mindful of the changes. And the last update I have is I met with Mike Miller, Nate Roberts, and this has been an ongoing project, I think, when Chief Rose was here. We are moving forward with the surplusing of the items at the sewer plant. Next meeting I will be bringing back a resolution for you all to approve, so that way we can go ahead and start surplusing these items. And the items that are no longer needed by the city, we will be disposing of those items. So hopefully our goal is to have it all cleaned up and ready to go. Well, all cleaned up by September the 1st. And those are the updates that I have.

Thank you, ma'am. You're welcome. Any comments from anyone? Chief Rose.

As you all are aware, I lost a good major and a good friend to retirement, Major Matt Fortney. retired, moving on to a different part of his life, and we wish him nothing but the best. He has served the city and the citizens of Williston for over two decades, and he did it with pride, honor, and dignity, and we're so proud that he spent so many years here at our police department, and we just want to give him a good salute off. If you watch Facebook, you've seen this final radio transmission, not final call, final radio transmission. And those are the hardest things to do when you're ending your career in law enforcement. It's just tough to know that that's the last time you're going to pick up that radio and make a transmission. So he was pretty tore up about it, but he held it together and we're so proud of him and we're so thankful for his service. We have a new hire. His name is Trevor. I didn't bring him in tonight. I'll bring him in in the next meeting and introduce him to you all. He's a young man. How old is he? About 20? 29 years old. We have We have done a tremendous job of getting younger police officers here, which speaks volumes because normally they want to go to bigger agencies. But we are starting to attract a lot of younger police officers here at Williston. I'm very proud of that because that gives us that longevity. you know of uh build them and mold them as long as we long as we can keep them you know they can stay here and uh and learn more about our city and grow here so i'm super super excited about that last but not least um about Almost a year ago, we put in a bid for a speed trailer that the city of Dunellum was getting rid of because they closed down their police department, of course. We lost that bid, but I'm proud to say that we re-bid it. at an even lower price, and we won the bid. So we're super excited to get that tool back at the police department. We had it before they was letting us use it, and we had great results out of it, slowed people down in areas where we were having traffic complaints. So we're super excited to have that back, but now it belongs to us. So other than that, that's all I got. Thank you. Thank you, Chief.

Chief Stegall?

Well, first update is I probably should have wore some sunglasses. There's a glare coming back here in my face today. I'm not sure what it's coming off of. Anyway. Today, Chief Willis and I met with Levy County, and they were going through a preliminary budget meeting over there. And we requested a $30,000 increase to the amount we get from them. And I'm not going to say it's guaranteed, but it's pretty close to being guaranteed. We've about got that worked out. So we would receive a $30,000 increase from them. Another part of that is they want to go as soon as we can get through this budget. process with them they want to go into immediate negotiations working out a a fair and equitable way to fund all municipal fire departments they want to come up with some funding formula they're going to be looking at types of equipment responses personnel how many personnel you have how many personnel you have responding you know things that would count toward in in that wouldn't and just giving you examples would be a crash truck or a ladder truck, a spare fire engine, a tanker, brush trucks. Those are the things they're looking to see. Things that you could use other, you know, in other parts of the community. To give you an example, like if they had a major fire, our ladder truck would respond to anything at Bronson in the jail or the courthouse or something like that. That would be something that would count in toward that formula. And so they're going to be wanting to do that starting right out of the block. As soon as we get a set price for this, we're going to move to the next phase even before this budget is finalized. And I just wanted to make sure that y'all knew about that. I'm trying to keep everybody abreast of what we're talking with over there. And if you have any questions at any time, please feel free to ask.

Thank you, sir. Any questions? Ben.

Not a whole lot going on at the airport right now. Well, that's not true. There's always something going on. I'm just a little more humble. But I'm going to be working with Kirsten and the city manager here in the next few weeks to come about bringing four or five items to you guys between land leases and a couple of other things. We've got some good momentum on some stuff, so we're going to try to capitalize on it. Just giving you a heads up.

All right. Thank you. Ms. Kim? Nothing. Okay. All right. Any updates from the council?

I'm sorry, Madam President, before you go. Aaron, could we have you give an update from today, please, sir?

Let's see.

Hello. Check, check, check. One, two. Come on. It's one of these.

Yes, they mess with it all the time. We're still fighting a few glitches with the software. Some more ADTRAN updates for the routers. It's just not working like they're supposed to, but we're muddling through it. Currently today we're like 104 customers on, 66 residences, 38 commercial. We've got 40 that are signed up waiting to make appointments for installation. We're still going through the pre registration list. We're about halfway through the pre registration list at this point.

Can you get them update about you at the RV part?

We met with Teresa this morning and she's gonna get with her people and gonna start in small groups trying to get them signed up, you know, 1520 at a time. So we don't get in a dated by 350 at once.

I have a quick question. Thank you for the Facebook post. And just to clarify, you do not want the residents to call and sign up at this point?

Well, not at this point because they're just going to have to wait in line, so it will be a while before we get to them because we're trying to get through the preregistration list first.

So they don't even want to sign up, give them their email or anything like that?

Well, they can, but they might be two months out, three months out, and it's just going to make them mad because we haven't got to them fast enough. So once we get through the list and we get all the kinks worked out of the software, then we'll be ready to go mainstream, and then we can rock with it.

Okay, so they should look out for like a post at some point that says... We're sending out emails to everybody on that list in small groups.

And then once we get through that list and through the pre-registrations of people that's been waiting for a year or two years, then we'll obviously make Facebook posts and website posts and it'll get out pretty quick.

Okay, so people who are not on the pre-registration list should just wait and there will be a post?

Yes, that's what we're asking is they just kind of wait until we get to them because we're just trying to knock out their people that's been faithful and waiting so long.

Okay, thank you. Any other questions for him? All right.

Ms. Jones. Thank you. I know we've had this conversation before, but I'm going to ask it again. If people are on your list and You know they're on your list. You're pulling them, what, 20 or 30 at a time, 60 at a time?

Well, it depends. I think the first batch I did was 25. I think the next batch, because we got kind of limited response making appointments, the next batch I think went out was like 30, and then I think the next was like 35, and I think the last one was actually 50. So, like I said, we're about halfway through that list at this point.

Okay, and so how does somebody know where they are on the list?

Well, they'd have to call and ask. We sorted the list by date. So it's just, you know, we started, I think, in 2024. So like I said, we're about halfway through that list. I think we're about somewhere around September 25, I think is where we're at right now.

And we're not doing a section at a time anymore. We kind of threw that out the window.

No, we couldn't do a section at a time because the way they did not build this appropriately, there was no way to do a section of town at a time.

So that went out the window.

Yeah.

All right. So the people who know they're on the list, if they want to know where they are, they need to call?

They can just call and have Alex look it up or somebody look it up and tell them where they're at.

So they need to call Alex. Perfect. Thank you.

Any other questions for Aaron? No. Any questions? Thank you, Aaron. Any updates from the council? I'm going to Mr. Walt Nichols, if you'll come and give us an update real quick, please.

Thank you. Walt Nichol with Wright Pierce. I just want to give you a little bit of an update what's going on on Southwest 1st Avenue. We were asked by staff to look into a drainage problem that was there and it's just across from the hospital diagonal from Tractor Supply and there's a new Mexican restaurant going in there. They've been calling the city quite a bit about an inlet that's been flooding. It's been a chronic problem for a long time and so we dug into it with help of city staff and things like that. We did find The culprit was the development of the tractor supply in that area. And so we requested a meeting with the Southwest Florida Water Management District since they approved all those plans at the time. And we took two months to get this meeting. We had the meeting last week Thursday with them. They heard our case, our point of view, where we thought the problem was, and were asking for relief to get it fixed. and they came back and they're gonna be sending the meeting minutes, should be any day, but in that they said there is, they had to research it, but there's a complaint mechanism that they have with the water management district that they're gonna send the city the instructions and then they're gonna want you to file the formal complaint and then their compliance and investigative teams can look into it further. We're trying to get it rectified by the people who caused the problem. and it wasn't caused by the city and we don't want the city to be expending your money to fix this problem but that's the next step so that you're going to be getting an email possibly to the city manager we can assist in that but i just want to let you know it's coming whether we need council's approval to submit that complaint then as we do this we should come back to you possibly at the next meeting but i just want to inform you that that that's where that's at and i know the The restaurant owner's been calling the city quite a bit. I've been getting calls, I think, that when Chief was involved, when nutrition's been involved, and others, and they want something done, that's what's happening right now. It's not something that can get fixed, I'll tell you, in a couple months. This is going to drag out a bit, but we're trying to get it fixed without a cost to the city, and just wanted to update you on that. So there is a process in play that we can file the official complaint to get it resolved.

Thank you. Counsel, have any questions?

Two questions. Question number one, the complaint gets filed to Swift Mud, right? Yes. Okay, just verifying that in my brain. The other one is the inlet is on the opposite side of the street of them?

Yes, it's right in the apron to the... Across the street, though, so it's not in their front parking lot. No, it's in the city right away, in the driveway.

I know, but on their side? Yes. Okay, I'm just trying to figure out where it is. Thank you.

Mr. Walt, the only thing that I could see up there was when they cleared all the trees. Because that was all wooded for the longest time.

What we found, the inlet was connected to a 36-inch storm sewer pipe that ran west to east along Northwest 1st Avenue and then turned north on 3rd Street. And that was crushed and removed because they put in their own drainage system in that development, stormwater ponds and piping, and they removed it. But what their plans didn't show was that inlet was connected to it. And it wasn't shown in their drawings. Had they looked at the DOT drainage maps, they would have seen that that area contributed to it. They didn't show it in the drawings. They ignored it. Staff has verified that that pipe was crushed at that point, about 70 feet over, so it's connected and then it goes to nothing. And it was damaged during that construction. And they said, no, it wasn't a problem, it caused a problem. And we would like them to rectify it. So that is the issue. It was connected prior to tractor supply development and it has nowhere to go now. So that's the situation that we have found.

Okay.

Thank you. Any other questions for Mr. Nichols? Thank you, sir. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Madam President. Chief Rose, I just want you to know that I feel really bad for you losing your second-in-command. The fire department's about to lose its first-in-command. And the fire chief has told me that his last day is going to be December 31st. And I have requested him to send me his letter so that it's not questionable, so that everybody understands we have to deal with the situation. I am trying to do it without getting my fire department so angry they want to take me out and burn me at the stake, but we're going to continue to move forward. I don't know everything that's going to happen because, frankly, You have one of the most confusing departments that is probably known to man. And I have been visiting them and trying to understand what they're doing. And then I will see what I can do to improve it or make it worse. But I'm working on it. I've got a lot of work ahead of me, but I wanted everybody to be aware. I feel really sorry for the police department, but my fire department is in trouble too. Thank you very much.

Thank you. All right, on to new business. Item A, introduction of Don Remlis.

Wow. It's good to be back. My first introduction, first of all, my name is Don Ramdis. I'm with the company Baxter & Woodman.

I had requested

Just an opportunity to say hi to you folks. I was involved in the City of Williston back in 1992 when I first worked with the city on their airport improvements and I continued on for 28 years till 2020 and I ran into some of the council members at the League of Cities last year and so forth, and it sparked back the memories of Williston. I wanted to try to help as best as I can in continuing all the positiveness that I see around the city and so forth. I had contacted City Clerk Latricia and spoke that there was an interest from, I've got to keep the person's name confidential, of a person interested in developing a hotel, a brand-name hotel, in the area. Thanks to Latricia and Laura. Appreciate it, Laura. And some of the help from the city. We were able to provide some information, general stats on the city in terms of traffic cones, potential sites, and so forth. That group is in receipt of it. This group has done several hotels in tongues similar in Perry, different in Suwannee County, Live Oak area. And so forth. So they're reputable. Again, you probably figure out who I'm talking about, but we'll just keep it. So I just wanted to, again. To show my interest and the company's interest, you have a great consultant in Wright Pierce. We are also a civil engineering firm. Baxter & Woodman, we were started back in 1946. We're 80 years old. We have six offices in Florida. In the Northeast, we're in Jacksonville, Fernandina Beach, Green Cove Springs, St. Augustine, Orlando and West Palm Beach. We work with municipalities similar to yours in terms of grants, utilities, stormwater and sewer. Predominantly our office in the St. Augustine Green Cove Springs does a lot of land development work and we get the exposure. to groups and so forth. I was also talking to Benton about a potential lead for the airport to develop a campus on the airport, not an educational campus, but more of an aeronautical campus on the airport. So we're trying to bring that experience in and help you again. We're doing it not for compensation purposes, but to help the city grow. Hopefully later on as the city grows and maybe looking for additional consulting services, we obviously would be interested in being an additional consultant to the city. But I wanted the opportunity to say hi again and say hi to everyone and the future is bright out there and congrats on all the positiveness of which the city is going. Are there any questions? Pretty much. I can't answer any questions in terms of the confidentiality of the hotel developer. But the plan is once they make their decision, they will request a formal presentation. What was the date? When did you last work for the city? As a consultant. I was back just for COVID. 2020 was the last. 2020. I was with Passeroro Associates. You're a current airport consultant. Thank you so much for your time.

Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you for coming.

Item B, discussion with possible action presentation, a certificate from Florida Rural Water Association, completion of wastewater system operation apprentice to Joshua Fordham, and certificate of appreciation to Jim Mutz, Catherine Van Zantz, PR with Florida Rural Water Association.

Thank you. I'm Catherine Van Zandt with Florida Rural Water Association. We are a nonprofit association, and we help utilities, municipalities, with everything that has to do with your utility operations, water and wastewater operations. So we have what we call circuit riders, field people that come around to your plants, free of charge offer. have decades of experience, so they offer help with anything that you're having there. We help with finding funding sources for utilities free of charge. whole array we are the leaders when you have hurricane coming through in providing hurricane restoration to get water service back on and we have warehouses full of equipment to come and bring in to you for emergency response so we're just a nonprofit that helps with your utilities in any way you can need it One of the things we do is we also offer training and we have a registered apprenticeship program. It's registered with the U.S. Department of Labor and the Florida Department of Education. with all the qualifications that all apprenticeships have, just like you think of as electrical apprentices. So when someone goes through this apprenticeship program, it's the only one in Florida for treatment plan operators. They come out as a nationally recognized journeyman that has completed a full apprenticeship program. And one of your staff has done that now. You have two other staff, Jason Fox is here, that are going through the program also right now. Joshua did an exemplary job throughout the apprenticeship. It's a two-year program. He even was deployed while he was doing the apprenticeship, so he lost that time, came back, and made up that time, and still actually even surprised me, because I was prepared to give him extra time to help him, and I didn't end up needing to. Uh, in the process, he became your, um, a, a licensed operator for you. So he, what he provided you with a person on staff. Now that's a licensed operator, which you didn't have before. And so this is opportunity to congratulate Joshua and present them with the certificate from the Florida department of education, which is also does this on behalf of the U S department of lawyer of, of labor. certifying that he has completed the apprenticeship as a wastewater systems operator under Florida Rural Water Association. Together with that, For him to get through the apprenticeship, it's required that he has a mentor. And Jim Mutz provided mentorship while Joshua was going through it for technical information needed out at the plant. And we have a certificate of appreciation here for Jim also. It says, this certificate expresses sincere appreciation to Jim Mutz, for serving as a mentor for the Florida Rural Water Association Apprenticeship Program, improving operational knowledge of wastewater utilities by providing thoughtful supervision and coaching to future leaders in the wastewater utilities field. And through that, you now have on staff a future leader, a current leader in the wastewater utilities field. So this is my, we're bringing this appreciation.

And I just want to say that Jim Mutz has been with us for a long, long time.

Congratulations.

Congratulations, Josh.

All right discussion with possible action directive and priorities for terrible bar while acting as part-time interim city manager council members mark.

I'll keep this very short and sweet. I just thought that since we, Terry's here for a limited amount of time, presumably, obviously, we might have a hard time finding a city manager, but if there, and we don't have to discuss this tonight, but obviously it's the only place that I can converse with you guys about this. If we thought that it would be advantageous for us to come up with maybe some things that we feel would be a priority for him to address in the window of time. Not that he obviously could not sort it out on his own, but if there were things that we felt as a council we were unified in having him focus on during the time that he is here. So I didn't know if we wanted to kind of revisit this in a couple weeks after everybody's had a chance to think on it and see if we want to give him any directives or priorities or not.

I'll keep mine short as well, I promise. I think that's a great idea, and it's not in the sense of micromanaging. It's more in the sense of our specific situation and our specific moment, and looking at part-time and for possibly a short time, I think it's a good idea to at least give a direction of what we're hoping for. So I think this is a really good idea, and I look forward to it.

Ms. Jones? Yes.

I think not so much a directive, but a priority. The directive, I don't think we need to be giving him directives. I know he does report to us, but he's a city manager. He's supposed to be telling us what we need to be doing. Unless it's policy, which we give to him, of course. But I believe that the directive is not a problem at all to give him our priorities. think the directives he we don't need to be telling him what to do but for priorities we definitely and we probably all have different priorities but we put them all together it's probably not that much different right that's that was my sense and if we all came up with three or four um and gave those to miss latricia at the next meeting maybe she could bring that list to us yeah mr cox i agree i think one of the big priorities will be just to

rebuilt staff leaders so yeah but he he knows that yeah and i think to just just so you guys know one of the reasons that i felt like this was good to how i mean obviously we will each meet with you know assuming terry signs the contract and becomes our interim city manager we will eat eat meet with him and express this, but I think also for the residents, for them to see what we are looking for so that they don't necessarily feel like this is sort of no man's land happening over the next four months. We know that we will be in good hands, but I think to make it just a little bit more public, a little bit more transparent about what we are hoping to accomplish in the next four months prior to hiring a long-term city manager.

So are you wanting to have a meeting?

separate meeting from no I was just thinking we could at a future meeting have this on the agenda again with time for us to sort of prepare our thoughts and obviously Terry has not signed the contract yet so we can't really you know throwing stuff at him today but maybe at the next meeting we could have this on the agenda and we could can you know converse about it as a council okay so the consensus would be

Also too is ask him what after a couple weeks what he thinks his priorities might be totally different than ours and some we might not have thought about.

Thank you ma'am. You're welcome. Alright so would our consensus be that we're going to send some information to Miss Latricia over the next few days and have her put something together and send it out to everybody that we can view and think about and then discuss at the next meeting when she puts it on the agenda.

Yeah.

Is that good? Does everybody agree?

Yes. Thank you. Okay.

All right our next item which will be item number D discussion with possible action the floor Department of emergency management is accepting notice of interest forms grant applications for both flood mitigation assistance FMA and building resilience and infrastructure communities be our I see brick programs, Walt Nichols right Pierce.

Thank you. Yes, Walt Nichol with Bright-Pierce. About two years ago, we applied for grants through this very program. The city advanced forward a little bit on that. It looked like you were going to be eligible for at least one of the grants. Then the program was canceled. And it is back up again. They had some caveats earlier, but now it's open again for submissions. And so we got the notice, and we just want to present to you, two years ago, we applied for two projects. Under the BRIC, the BRIC program, we applied for Northwest 7th Street across from Countryland Estates. And in that, and we presented to you, we had two projects. two solutions. One is more of a regional, larger fix for that entire area. It would involve some substantial stormwater piping that would take runoff basically from Noble Road, convey it down into the quarry retention area that's to the west. And that was the big grant ask. And that was approximately about a million dollars for design and construction to do all that work. and then we had in the meantime we had a what we call the interim fix, which is a smaller design in case you didn't get that grant to get some immediate relief in that area. The city hired us to do that. We were about 80, 90% done with that when we heard this program was coming back to life. Back, I remember, Chief, if you remember, you were interim manager. We put that on hold because if this grant program would become open again and you were successful, It would really undo everything that we're doing in an interim. So let's not spend money on that. This program is open again. Let's submit. And so we'd like to resubmit the Northwest 7th Street grant application again. We'll do some updates and things like that. But we were a pretty favorable position the last time before it got canceled. So I think we got a very good chance of doing that again. So we'd like to do that. The deadline is September 1st. So we have some time. But we definitely like your approval and direction to do that. The second program, under the same program, but this one's the flood mitigation assistance, we did apply for Northwest's fifth place to do some fixes and a grant there. That one back then two years ago was a long shot and the conditions haven't changed. It's still a long shot. It's really benefiting one resident and asking about an $800,000 grant application. We can apply to that again. I think I'd like some direction from the city attorney before we would actually submit that just due to the current ongoing situation over there, whether it's prudent or not. It is a long shot, but there is an opportunity. We've got the paperwork. We can update it and resubmit it and things like that. But we'd like your direction for this program to resubmit these two applications at this time.

Any questions from council?

So you just need consensus from us tonight?

Yeah, it's not, you're not signing any contract, but we'd like to let you know when there's grant applications. I mean, I think sometimes you do a vote, or you give direction, but you're not committing anything by submitting to these. There's no, and again, these, when we do grant applications that involve just the design, and these are primarily designed, we don't charge you for them. We do them You know, we get our benefit when the work comes in, you get the grant and we do the engineering. When their construction asks, like we've asked for $20 million grant applications for construction, those take a little bit more and you usually pay us then under our miscellaneous services, but these are going to be under a marketing charge. We've already done a lot of the work two years ago, but we just want to let you know that you're applying, so you're not in the dark on these things. Perfect.

Sounds great.

Questions? You have been voting on these.

Oh, we have? Mm-hmm. Okay. So there's nothing we need to do?

So you want us to vote that we apply?

Yes, that's how we've been doing it recently. I think that there was several that have gone that way.

So it's the Florida Department of Emergency Management, flood mitigation assistance, and building resilience infrastructure through the BREAK program. Yes. I would so move that we move forward to submit an application for those two projects.

I'll second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion from the public? Any discussion from the council? Seeing none, I move to vote. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All those opposed, say nay. Motion passes 5-0.

Thank you.

All right. So resolution 2026 dash 44 resolution of the City Council of the City of Williston approving amendment number one for the Canoes Williams Park design service from Wright Pierce authorizing appropriate parties to execute such amendment on behalf of the City of Williston and providing an effective date, Walt Nichols, Wright Pierce.

Thank you. We're asking for an amendment to our services for the work that we have been doing at Cornelius Williams Park for the design. This contract, our agreement, is over three years old. We did a master plan for it, kind of a quick master plan for that. Um, that was approved and then we did design permitting through permitting for the water management district. Um, went through all the designs been done for a year and a half. Um, it got put on hold longer than that and almost 2 years for the rezoning with the county. And it's been sitting there. We've been doing quarterly reports, still doing meetings along the way, trying to assist where we could with the rezoning. The site was finally rezoned in June of this year through the county. And now we can update the plans again. But in the meantime, our DOT permit is expired. The plans need to be rescheduled. reshuffled and different phases done to meet the budget and we did all that and we're putting in effect where it's out for bid right now for the first we're doing part C doing these out of order to match your budget but we have it you know you know with a two-year delay and permits expiring they all need to be redone putting this back out for bid again so we had some additional services that were asking for for compensation for we are We'll say we're doing the bidding now. The project was put out for bid Tuesday, yesterday. And so we'll be opening bids in August and getting construction of the first phase must be complete by December 31st. We've got a very tight construction schedule right now. So we are expediting everything on this process right now and moving forward with it because we don't want you to lose the grant that you have. And so anyway, but we did with a with a two-year delay we had in expired permits We had you know, we're asking for additional compensation to cover that Any questions from I was just gonna say we can't quit Sam.

We're almost there Anyone else

I'm just curious of the process. Is there normally like an itemized something that's submitted to us to review before or do we look at that afterwards just as a general question when these things happen?

Ms. Jones, go ahead.

As payment is requested, they give us a list of the things that have been done.

And then we would review that now as we're voting or?

We would review it as they present it to us. And that's why it says up to because it may or may not get to the Yeah, we bill.

On this one, it's hourly rate. Some are called lump sum. We bill you a percentage. Okay, we're 30% down. We send you a 30% bill, 50%, 60%. These we bill you our actual time.

Right, and it applies as it goes.

Yeah, and then we invoice the city on a monthly basis, and it gets paid. Those invoices don't ever come back to council once you authorize this. That's done by staff.

Okay, thank you. So my question is, this would all happen inside of this fiscal year. Correct? Or are we splitting this amount over?

Get into the no, it's really going beyond because it's December 31st, right? Yeah. Yeah.

So so we would need to find some portion of it inside of our current budget and some portion of it going forward.

Yeah. I don't want to speak for you. Good point.

Good evening council. We're hoping that all or most of this is going to be refunded by the grant. We just don't have those numbers for you today. Wright Pierce asked us to be on an agenda a couple weeks ago. It didn't get on. So they are kind of not getting paid right now to work on Cornelius Williams, and they're working really hard. But I can get some numbers to Stephen for what we've already paid out and what we still have available in the budget. But we're also working with the DOS, the Department of State, To tweak the budget because there's no way this project is going to go for half a million dollars We know that we can't do this project for a half a million dollars So we're going to do sections of it and by doing that we can tweak the budget a little bit and we can maybe get some more Engineering fees in there since they had to do multiple permitting So most or all of this is going to be refunded. I just can't tell you the exact number and I Hate I hate that he's up here without an exact number, but I wasn't prepared

And we, we don't know the exact number till we get the 1st bit the bids in. So it's offered bid right now. I believe it's August 11th is the bid opening. And so then you're going to have our hard number for that and we've reached out to several contractors. Got 3 people that are very interested in it and they've already gotten the plans and it was just advertised yesterday. So if we get, we get a couple of bids and we always let. anybody we know beyond it's on central bidding right now but we also call contractors send them the invitation to bid hey this is out there the more bidders we get the better price you're going to get but we have three firms right now that that are interested they do say they want to submit a bid so that is going on so yeah you'll know your full budget and how it aligns with the grant once we get the bid in But we're going full speed ahead. Yes, we're in it. We can't turn back now. We're not going to turn back and let you lose this grant. We're doing the work right now, and a good bit of it has been done the past two weeks. We've been really working hard to get this thing out on the street for a bit. We want to make sure you don't lose that grant.

Any other questions? Can I get a motion?

I move we approve Resolution 2026-44. That's all I need to say. Right?

I have a motion. I have 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. All right, item F, discussion with possible action, city manager agreement for Terry Brevard, seat of attorney Kirsten Ballou.

So this is the agreement that we discussed, I will say at length, last meeting, last couple of meetings. I made the amendments that you all requested to the agreement and sort of clarified language in the event that there were discrepancies between paragraph A and paragraph B. I made sure that those were resolved. I'm happy to answer any questions you all have, but hopefully this is familiar, at least in generalities to everyone.

Any questions from the council?

Nope.

Mr. Bart, do you have anything to say?

No, ma'am. I'm good. I look forward to coming back and serving. If it's the pleasure of the council tonight to bring me back, I'll be starting tomorrow morning.

Thank you. Any questions for Mr. Brevard from the council?

Welcome. Yes, ma'am. I think that's the only thing we need is a start date. We just heard it. I mean, he says he's going to start tomorrow. We need a start date. That's the only blank in the place. Right. Mr. Letrician. Yes, ma'am.

I've been more than happy to put tomorrow's date as the start date can we make a bump for tonight I'll be here and observe the other way I'll stay off the payroll for tonight and so since I've been maxed to the maximum number of hours I want to make sure that the city gets every bit that they deserve and I will tell you this I don't plan on going to any conferences I'm going to devote my time for the city. And I know you're talking about limitations and focus and stuff like that. So my focus, I can assure you, is not going to be going to a conference to make me a much better city manager. So just know that I'll be devoted here in the city full time.

Thank you, sir. Ms. Jones.

I just want to thank Kirsten for getting this on our agenda. That was like a miracle, and it's perfect.

You're welcome.

Everything that we said.

You said you would do it.

I know.

Nothing I can't do.

Yeah, and it was in the packet. It wasn't handed out. That's wonderful.

So make a motion. I make a motion that Terry Brevard starts the city manager tomorrow.

If I can make a request to just approve the agreement with that start date.

Yeah. So make a motion that we approve the agreement that is put in our packet from last meeting. With the start date of tomorrow? Of start date tomorrow.

I have a motion.

I second.

I have a motion and a second. Any discussion from the council?

We're voting on the agreement language itself with the start date, correct? Yes, and hiring him. Oh, okay. I thought that was discussed at the last meeting, so thank you. All right, 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 very much. Congratulations, and welcome back.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you.

Item G, discussion with possible action, Williston City Manager description and job posting. City Attorney Kirsten Ballou.

Okay, so you have two items in your agenda packet. The first item is the job description and then the second item is the job posting. Both of them are 2026 at the top so that we don't have the issues that we had in our last discussion and our future discussions. I went through and made all of the, I think, all of the amendments that you all had talked about to the job description as well as to the job posting. So just as a reminder, the posting is just what we're going to put out, and then the job description will be attached to it. The only thing that's not included in here is that it's referenced on, I think it's page 41 of your packet, That the ICMA-CM local government management core competencies will be attached to the job description as an addendum. We didn't include that here because it's a little bit long. Thank you.

Any questions from the council?

On both documents or just one?

On both, but you can start with one. Which one do you want to start with? You have a question on, I'm like, which one are you looking at?

I'm perfectly fine with the Williston City Manager job description. Again, Kirsten has done a wonderful job of getting that in our packet to us as quickly as she could. I found a couple of what I, in the one pager, I found just a couple of little grammatical things. In the one, two, three, fourth paragraph, there's no Y on the word city. in the fourth line. I do see that. In the last paragraph, I believe there's a comma that shouldn't be there, but I'm not positive. Should there be a comma after exceptional interpersonal communication? Should that comma after interpersonal be there? Isn't it interpersonal communication?

I would say that that is an unnecessary comma.

And in the next to the last sentence, there's an H missing in the word while.

Got to turn my spell check on, huh?

Community stakeholders while fostering. Sorry, I'm just a proofreader, so that's all there is to it. And that's all I got. In context, I'm wonderful with it. Sorry. You're fine. You're fine. You didn't want them to go out that wasn't filmed, right? You're fine.

You're fine.

We'll fix that. Anything else from the council? Can I get a motion?

I move we approve the Williston City Manager. Did I get the right word? What do you call it? Welliston city manager job description 2026 as well as the job city manager job posting 2026 to be accompanied by the ICM a 14 points I have a motion and a second any for a discussion from the council When exactly are we looking to post tomorrow that was like I tell you get it posted as soon as possible Kim are you doing this

It's got a what? Go internal first. Is it five days? Internal five days?

Okay. This way here to give Mr. Brevard a chance he can look over it since everybody else is internal.

Okay. He gave you a thumbs up. All right. So it'll be internal five days and then it'll go be posted after that. Sounds great. All right. Any further 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. All right, now we'll do the open public hearing. First reading of Ordinance 2026. City Attorney Kirsten Ballou.

Okay, this is your 1st reading of ordinance 2026 dash 764 ordinance of the city council for the city of Williston, Florida, for the voluntary contracting or D annexation of the city boundary by annexing 20.23 acres more or less of real property generally located East of Northeast 185th Avenue and West of Northwest 70. 7th Street more particularly and legally described on exhibit a touch tier 2 and fully incorporated herein by this reference providing for the amendment of city boundaries to contract the subject properties from the city boundaries providing for appeal of prior and consistent ordinances and resolutions severability and an effective date this is a quasi judicial matter so we will start by swearing in anyone who intends to speak on this issue Anyone who intends to speak on this, if you'll please stand, raise your right hand.

Cookie and Larry, they need to stand up. Sorry.

All right, and I'll get each of your names for the record.

All right.

Do you all swear or affirm the testimony you gave will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do. Thank you. We'll have for each of the council members, I'll just go down the row and have you give me a yes or a no. The first item is, have you had any ex parte communications regarding this application? As a reminder, an ex parte communication is any site visit or discussion with anyone that has occurred outside of a public meeting. So any phone calls with developers, any discussions with citizens, anything like that. And I'll just go down the line.

No.

no no no no excellent i will hand it over for staff's presentation good evening again council i think somebody's broken into latricia's so tonight i'm presenting ordinance 20 26 7 64. Ms. Wright, may I do my presentation first? Thank you. It's okay. On April 23rd, 2026, she printed it out. An application for contraction of the city limits by removing a portion of parcel 0429100A00, also known as Stonehenge Farm South, located within the city limits, was submitted by EDA consultants on behalf of the property owner. The owner for the parcel requests to compress the city limits or de-annex this portion of the parcel for consistency for future development. This contraction would remove about 20.23 acres that are currently undeveloped pasture lands. The current land use and the future land use are both agricultural for the city of Williston. I'm not sure what they're going to be for Levy County. Current zoning is agricultural and no easements will be affected by this request, but we do have easements that go out there. So if anybody needs to look at those, we can bring those up for you. It is staff opinion that this request will not cause any harm or hardship to Willison or its citizens split government of this parcel. causes and will continue to cause conflict for the property owners. This request does not create enclaves and in fact, cleans up the city boundaries so that the city limit has a logical, logically ends at property lines. The contraction is consistent with Florida statutes and does not conflict with the city's comp plan. If you can go to the second page, we'll just make sure everybody knows what we're talking about. So the blue with all the houses, that's Country Lane Estates. So that's where you guys are. And this is the top of the city limits over on the northwest side. We've talked about this kind of a lot. In fact, Walt was just discussing that retention pond that you see there. That's the Seventh Avenue retention pond that we would like to be sending water to. So that's the area that we're talking about. If you look at this parcel, And you look at it on here, it's all in the county, but it's not all in the county. There's a line that goes down, and if you go to the next page, you can see it. Nobody really knows. Mr. Adam Hall was the planner for the city of Williston before I was, and he might know how this happens. Ms. Cookie might know how this happened, but I don't know how this happened. Because I don't think that anybody really knows how this happens. I think it was a clerical mistake is what it was. But if you look at it now, you see the public where the water retention pond is? Yes, that one. Next to that is a property owned by somebody. And then next to that, see the line that goes up? That's the city of Williston, but it's the parcel that we're discussing. So a little bit of it is in Levy County. And a little bit of it is in the city of Williston. The city of Williston is not collecting any taxes. I talked to Mr. Randy last week about it. They did collect taxes on it for a while, but he stopped doing that a few years ago. So this won't cause any monetary loss. Do you have any questions for me about this? Does everybody understand where we're talking? Mr. Mayor.

If you want to see it, look out my back door.

I don't want to tell everybody where you live, but yes, Mr. Goodman lives right there.

Someplace in that area. It is a logical thing for their property. It is an agricultural area that has, I thought for a long time we were going to get a development there. I was not happy, but what happened happened. And I personally, and I can speak for the other people that are backed up to that property, are all very thankful that they want to bring it back into their pasture as it appears it should have been. Thank you.

I have one question, if I may.

You may. And it's about this in the future. Should this piece of property ever get developed, know that the state has been pushing really hard for septic to sewer. And maybe Walt can answer this. How would, would there be any issues with us, you know, if it got re-annexed back into the city, would there be any issues with us then providing septic services?

Even as it is right now, it is in the MSD. So there are no issues with us providing those services if we so choose. There are options that you can go down. At this point, larger acreage is going to be a requirement for this because the minimum acreage in Levy County is 10. So they can't go below 10. If they decide to do a planned development and go lower acreage and they want to hook up to ours, water and sewer, that is definitely something that we can discuss in the future.

So this falls in the county into minimum lot size of 10 acres, is that what you're saying? Yes. Interesting.

Okay.

Yeah, but it is still in our MSD, our municipal services district. So that means we still have opportunities to extend out there. Now, the property owners would have to want it because they're also going to have to extend from their property lines. Did I answer that correctly?

No, ma'am.

Okay. Okay. I'm waiting for permission.

You have permission. Thank you. I happen to have been around this development for some time, and I can tell you that the city has sewer right behind my house ready to benefit this if in the future it is ever developed, and the city has... gas, fiber, and electricity on the other side of the property behind me, all going toward this development. So yes, in the future, the city could. You could get a developer in there, and well, as we have talked, Cookie and I could both die, and then you could get a developer in there and buy it all, and then we can't have any control over it.

but for now they want to make it back to their farm but the city is prepared if it is ever developed yes thank you you're welcome miss jones and the point being made that you've made that mr has made as well that if you want it to be smaller than 10 acres it needs to be in the city

It needs to be in the city or they need to do a rezoning for like a planned development or something.

So it would be beneficial if it was in the city. Can you show me where the easements are? You mentioned easements. Are they utility easements or road easements?

Do you guys remember about two years ago, we went through all this. Kirsten probably remembers very well behind Mr. Mark Pompeo's house. And we did those easements so that we could bring, you know, utilities over to this area. And then also we needed to do some property swaps. They're on this map, they're kind of hard to see. But do you see the green dots above the yellow? That's the access easements. So that will stay in the city limits. So they can still get access. Now the utility easements, they're kind of hard to see on here, but we do have them out there.

Madam President, if I may, there is a 30-foot wide easement on the north side of the property leading to this area.

I think that's, yeah, that's the access easement, right? Yeah, that's the green part. That's going to stay in the city, right?

That's going to stay in the city.

Yeah.

Any further questions?

Madam President, if I can just briefly, because I don't want it to be said that it wasn't discussed, there was a bill that was passed in this most recent legislative session, 1451, I believe it is, which regulates more strictly. municipality's ability to provide services outside of their municipal boundaries, so utility services outside of their municipal boundaries. It's not impossible, but it is more difficult, and you are not allowed to do the kind of surplus rate charging that you were previously permitted to do in the same way. So I do just want to flag that as a sort of difference in law that we haven't had before.

Thank you. If you're done with me, I'll let EDA come on up here and give their presentation.

Give me a second, Adam. I'm sorry.

Welcome.

Thank you. It's good to be back. Can you hear me? Yeah, for those who don't know, my name's Adam Hall with EDA Consultants now. But my first planning job out of planning school was City of Williston back about 15 pounds ago. 2010, 2015, Marcus Collins was the city manager at the time and hired me and I stayed here until Scott Littman, 2015. As a history, this was an issue back then, this line. And I've seen a couple of different maps where the line is in different places. But as Laura said, this is a logical, I think, decision and cleans up that boundary there. So thank you, Latricia. There you go. Thank you. Once again, Adam Hall, EDA Consultants. For the owner, Stonehenge Farm South, requesting de-annexation of a 20.23 acre portion of the larger parcel. I can go to the next slide.

Sure.

So yeah, as Laura pointed out, a majority of this parcel is in unincorporated Levy County. Only 17.7% of that parcel is inside city of Wilson currently. It's about 270 foot wide strip of land along the eastern boundary. If you go to the next slide, please. So you can see here on the right side where that line is, and like I said, it's about 270 feet wide. So that portion would be going from City of Williston to Levy County. Next slide, please. The teal shows the outline of the entire parcel, and as we said, quickly that little panhandle going to the east there, that would remain, but the pasture, along the wood line there would go to Levy County, unincorporated, and that's what it looks like. So no residents, it's ag, no development there. Next slide, please. So this is just another view looking south, and then looking from Northeast 185th where the property is mainly accessed from. Looking east, there's the tree line that the land is, the certain property is. Next slide, please. Another view, kind of looking south, that, I believe, stable, barn, is in the county currently. So that's about the biggest thing on that parcel. Next slide, please. So there is some statutory language that the D&A Commission has to comply with. There's some eligibility requirements in Section 171.052. It does meet those standards. The compactness is not really impacted by this. In fact, if anything, it makes it more compact by removing a westward jut from the city limits. creates no enclaves, doesn't strain any properties outside of city limits and create non-critical boundaries. It's logical. The ability to provide urban services does not impact. We talked just about that. Those utilities aren't going anywhere. If in the future the property does subdivide and wants to annex in, that will be a possibility. And Cookie can get up here and talk more about the intent of the owner, but currently there's no intent to develop any sort of density that require utilities. It's consistent with the comprehensive plans, and it applies with the statutory procedures outlined. Next slide, please. So our request tonight is to approve this ordinance. I don't have any questions. Agent for the property owner is also here, Cookie King. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Any questions from the council?

The intent for the property? No. I believe, and Cookie can clarify, but right now to do larger lots and either talking with adjacent property owners about buying those and incorporating them into their ag property or having some sort of standalone ag use, I think effectively nothing on the ground will really change with that land. It will probably remain pasture for quite a while. But the ownership may change a little bit.

Okay.

I'm Cookie King and I'm speaking on behalf of Marilyn Campbell, the Stonehenge Farm owner. After her husband passed, Mr. Campbell, you know, it's quite a large farm and she started... close to Mayor Goodman, some of those larger lots that were Oak Hammock. She said, let's get those sold. So those have been sold to people. And so this little strip, nobody knows. We've been to the county. We had a Zoom meeting. The county doesn't know. They seem to think it was an error somewhere along the way. But her reasoning, well, she said, well, I guess we could sell that pasture. And I said, now, if we sell that pasture, I can't control what somebody's going to do with that. And she was like, what do you mean? I said, somebody will come and pay the price you're asking and put houses on. And they have the ability to do that. And she said, well, that's not what I want. I want to keep it rural. And so we talked about what we could do. I don't think anything's going to happen right now. Her house is within view of this. This is her cow pasture and horse pasture, so she knew that she didn't want that. So if anything, they would go to 20-acre parcels, not tens. She didn't even want tens.

So that's her goal.

If she sells it, she was going to do it in 20s to keep people from doing small lots.

Thank you.

And so it would keep looking like it does now when people walk around the three-mile loop.

Any other questions from the council? All right.

It would be appropriate for the public to have an opportunity, and then we'll have applicant rebuttal and staff rebuttal.

Okay. Any questions from the public?

Okay, anything from staff and Laura, if you'll just put on the record regarding the notice provided.

In the paper, yeah, it was in the paper. Sorry I didn't attach that Nikki was supposed to get that for me, but it wasn't the paper, but this was not required to go to the. I'm surrounding property owners. So you did not get a letter this time. But um, this is up to you guys to do the right thing for the city limits. And this is a good time to do this because we're going to be upgrading your GIS maps in the next couple of weeks. So if you do this for July, August, and I can get that updated for you. And this can be gone, which I think we all would like. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Can I go to the council for

Motion or deliberation, I make a motion that we approve the 1st reading of ordinance 2026 dash 764.

I have a motion in a 2nd, any further discussion from council or a public. Seeing none, I move to vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Motion passes 5-0. Go to item number I, City Attorney.

Madam President, this is ordinance number 2026-765, an ordinance of the City Council for the City of Williston, Florida, amending Chapter 14 of the City Code of Ordinances regarding buildings and building regulations to provide for adding Section 14-2, entitled Knox Boxes, providing for definitions, providing for applicability, installation requirements, maintenance and updates, approval and control. Deadlines and enforcement and penalties, providing for severability, repealing all ordinances in conflict, and providing an effective date. This is not a quasi-judicial. This is just a legislative hearing, and I will turn it over to Danny, who knows much more about this than I do.

Thank you.

Mr. Wallace.

Good evening, counsel. The Knox box that we're talking about, is it working? Okay. Don't sound like it. The Knox box is being held up by... Hmm. Councilman Cox, we are asking that the City Council approve this ordinance on all construction, new construction, commercial construction, that these boxes be mandatory and put onto the buildings. What it holds is a key inside to that business. We already have about seven or eight businesses already that are have put these on. Most of the new commercial people, when they come in, they ask, where do you want it located? But we're also asking to where the businesses that are not going forward from this point, that we give them a year to be able to put them on. We don't want to, you know, go out there and tell everybody they have to put them on right away. A box will cost approximately $500. But this box, there's keys to it. One we keep in dispatch and the other is with chief officers. They will be in trucks that have lock boxes in them that will have key codes to it so we know exactly what time. what date, and who pulled the key out. And this all downloads into software back at the station once we get that software in. What this will save is if there's an alarm going off, and if it's a burglar alarm, fire alarm, or just general alarm, and we can't get a hold of anybody, we're able to go to this box, open it up, get the key, open the door, and go in. It saves the owner money in the long run, because if you have to take a door or a window out, that gets very expensive. And I just talked to one owner that's putting one on his building now, and he said the new door that he just put on was $3,500, and he'd prefer not to get it opened up. And I told him, you know, firefighters don't mind, you know, open them up, but this is going to be a an area to where if it's not an extreme emergency that we have to get in immediately, that we could get in, open the box, open the Knox box, insert the key, get into the building, and find out what the situation is inside until a key holder gets there or we resolve it ourselves. Any questions at this point? Right now, I can give you quite a few years back, the SDA church was the first one to put one in when they were building. They wanted to put one in, and they did. We have Aldi's, Wawa, Winn-Dixie, the metal shop down at the end of Main Street here, the old Dixie Lily, and the city annex is putting one in. So we'll be able to, you know, be able to gain entry and there's been no questions asked from the construction of these buildings. People wanting to put them in thing is we need to have an ordinance so we could continue to request this and uh, for all new construction coming in and not, not residential, just commercial. And so we could have it. It's recommended by the NFPA. This is a national, uh, codes that throughout from California you know from the east coast to the west coast that these are going in so and it's only that these boxes in the keys form are only specific to the city of Williston so if Marion County can't get into them Alachua County can't get into it's only the city of Williston.

Any questions?

I've seen these on buildings, commercials before with traveling around with my job. Never realized what they were for. And I went over and spent some time with Danny and he went through because I wanted to understand what it was about. And now I know what they were used for. I think it's great. Instead of them causing damage to a building, if it's just smoke, they can go get these and go on in.

Chief Rose.

So, Danny, I take it these are paid for by the owners?

They are paid for by the owners.

Okay. And these are for extreme emergencies, or is there some procedure we need to follow before we utilize that key?

Well, no. I mean, if there's an alarm going off at a business and we can't get a hold of the key holder, they're not there, we don't see fire, we don't see any break-in, but we need to get in there to see what's causing that alarm. It could be something going on inside that building. It keeps us from having to break windows, break doors open, you know, through forcible entry, and it allows us to get in there. So if it's a burglar alarm going on, you could get in there as a police officer and, you know, for your for your search, search of the building, to clear the building, to make sure that something hasn't happened.

All right, that's fine. I would just, I'll get with you later because I would like to have some kind of standing operation procedure that goes along with it so people don't just go, oh, alarm's going off, get the key, let's go in. Because we have to go to dispatch, get it, check it out of dispatch, and then come back and open it. I'll write my procedure on it. I just wanted to make sure.

Right, right. Thank you. Okay. And I will say this. This isn't no lightweight box. I mean, they've got some weight to them, so it's not like somebody can go and take a sledgehammer and want to knock it open or something to that effect. Do you want it?

Yes, ma'am. Is there a question for the lawyer? Is there any liability that this exposes us to? I assume that this is something that's been done in other cities. And has there ever been any issue of liability with these boxes?

I'm not aware of any. I'll start with my standard. Everything you do and don't do contains liability to some extent. I am familiar with several other cities who have done Knox box-related type things. ordinances and I'm not familiar with whether or not that's that's ever I don't believe that there's ever been any liability associated with them that I'm aware of great thank you I just have a general follow-up question is there any additional software required in order to kind of lose everything in or is this just done standard

The box itself is installed and it's key activated. We just open it with a key. The software and the lock boxes that will go into the fire apparatus that would respond, there's a software package that we have to purchase every year to continue on with it. But it allows us to put in every firefighter Everyone there, so whoever's on the engine or the rescue that's having to go in, they have to punch their code to get in. It will unlock and allow you to get the key out. And then a warning light will stay on until that key is put back. And then once the box is closed, it will clear it. And once we get back to the station, it will automatically download to the computer showing us times and everything else every you know i think that whole timeline and we we've had situations here where we've had people laying on the floor at their business the place is locked up and we've had to take out the front windows and climb through to get to them and this is just to you know keep from causing further damage and When all these was built, they asked me, do you mind if we put a second box on the back side and one on the front side? And same with Winn-Dixie. So we're moving right along with them. So they build these. the people that come in and build the commercial structures and everything, they're so used to having to install them from other cities that have the ordinances. They just ask, do you have an ordinance? I said, not at the moment, but we do request that you put one on. They go, no problem.

Okay, so do we have any idea what the software cost would be for us for maintaining the records and basically the program that controls our side of the law?

Well, the software package is $500 a year. for the size of our department. And then we have an initial cost of buying the boxes to put into the vehicles. And so that would be figured into this upcoming budget. Okay.

And you said that each individual firefighter police will have their own specific code so that you know exactly who went in?

That is correct. Well, dispatch, they will sign out the key. So your officer will sign the key out. Right. So, you know, for us at the fire department, it would be coded. But for you at dispatch, unless later on you want to go ahead and put these in your sergeant's vehicles, then you could go ahead and buy the same boxes that we're going to put in.

Any other questions? Any questions from the public? Attorney, can we now vote? Can I get a motion?

I make a motion that we approve the first reading of ordinance 2026-765. I'll second.

I have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. I did already. So I got to do it twice? I didn't hear you if you did it. Yeah, I did it.

What, the public?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. All right. So all those in favor, say aye. Aye. All those opposed, say nay. Motion passes five to zero. Thank you. Closing the public hearing. All right. At this time, we'll have item number six, the public participation. This will be the second opportunity for you to speak on anything that you would like. You have five minutes. Please state your name and where you're from.

i'm glad to see terry back i've had some working relationship with him all good now i hope you get your act together and get your city utilities manager somebody that can help terry because you're lacking that too that's the next step and that's Just about as important as Terry's. Not as important, but right up there amongst it. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Anyone else? All right. Item number seven, announcements.

Oh, did you have something?

Announcements. Do we have any announcements from the city attorney? Ms. Wright.

The first announcement I want to make is Saturday, August 1st, between 1 and 3, the city of Williston, along with what we saw, we're having our back-to-school bash where we be passing out backpacks. So if anyone has any kids and they need backpacks, your child has to be present in the car with you in order to get a backpack. And that's Saturday, August 1st, from 1 to 3. And the second thing I... Forgot to say on my first updates, we have already installed two lights over at the tennis courts. And within the next two weeks, there'll be two more lights installed at the tennis court and the pickleball court.

Awesome.

Wonderful.

also I want to thank Nate Roberts and Mike Miller for working with me this last week we've gone over several different items that I see need to be completed within the next 30 days I gave them and that is there's 24 generators that are located at the sewer plant Starting next week, they would be making pads for those generators to go on, and those generators would be located at all of the lift stations. So thank you guys for that. And the last thing is the breezeway over across the street. There was some liability issues there. The guys worked on it today, and that breezeway should be open by the weekend so people can go back and forth to the parking lot. Okay, Randy.

Chief Rose. Chief Stegall.

Yes, ma'am. Mr. Mayor. For the record, I want to clarify I have not submitted a letter of retirement, nor have I publicly announced my intention to retire effective December 31st of 2026. The only discussion regarding my future plans have been private and personal conversations. To say I was surprised by your public announcement would be an understatement. I remain fully committed to the citizens of the city of Williston. to serving them, and request that the public record reflect that, reflect my current employment status. When I decide to publicly announce it, then and only then will I give you a letter. Thank you.

Thank you, Chief Stegall. Anyone else back there in staff? You're good. Okay, all good. All right, anything from the council?

I have a question for Ms. Bright. Are you still taking donations for the school?

Yes, I am taking donations for the school. I am also taking donations for the Women's Club Health Department, Health and Wellness Department, a committee of underwear, socks, bars, deodorant for the kids that we will distribute at the middle school, elementary school, and high school.

Okay.

nothing else from the council yes miss meredith okay um i'll probably get crucified for this but i'm just gonna go for it maybe i and i'm sorry i'm a thorn in your side about the fiber but it's five million dollars on the line and i feel like it's my responsibility to be a thorn in the side Because we're already quite delayed and this is my concern right now is that I have a house that I owned and then I moved in with my husband so I've rented that house and I have a tenant moving in August 1st and she asked about fiber. And now I have to go to her and say well we have fiber but please don't call the city and ask about fiber because nobody up there wants to talk to you. And I just don't think that that is the way that we get people to sign up. There was a post on Facebook today that said, you know, somebody said, hey, what do people think about Starlink or Fiber or Internet in Williston? And when I looked at it, there were 27 responses and 25 of them said go with Starlink. And one person said, oh, I have Fiber. And the reply to that was, well, I don't think they're accepting new people or I don't think they have that up and running yet. And I just think we really need to rethink how we are handling our PR and how we are attracting customers. We need people to make this work. There is a very finite number that people that we have to have signed up in order for us to pay our debt down and make this right. And I'm just concerned that I now have to go to a tenant and say, I can't even tell you when you're going to get it. Please don't call the city hall. They don't want to talk to you. They're overwhelmed. I just think that's a terrible customer service, and I think we have been promised good customer service, and I have real concerns about that. So I would be curious to know my fellow council members' feedback on that, if they wish.

I'll let them call Alex. I was going to look up the number for Williston Fiber for you. It's a separate number. It's on the website, 529-6961.

6961. We've been told twice today, please don't call.

Do it anyway.

Yeah, no, I agree.

What else can you do? You've got to do it anyway. I mean, I've got...

I was curious, by whom?

I have three people in my neighborhood who... And another one that's across the neighborhood that say, I've been signed up forever. I can't... I don't know when it's coming. They can't give me any answers. So I know they're on the list. I just don't know where on the list they are. Well, that's not what I was told last week. Or the first of the week. By who? By you. When we were at dinner. Uh-huh. Whatever that first day was. Was that Tuesday? No, Wednesday. Wednesday at Matt's party. So now I will tell them to call Alex. And I appreciate the number. Because she can tell them where they are on the list. And hopefully the guys are working the list from top to bottom and not skipping people. Because I know that there are some people who work from home that have been signed up for a long year, year and a half. And they're still waiting. And what they have now is cutting in and out like crazy. And I can't tell them anything. They're the only ones that can tell them something. And if Alex is the person, that's who we're going to tell them to call. And if they're new, I don't know why we wouldn't be taking new people.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, my idea... was to go to every subdivision and hang a door hanger. And I thought we printed door hangers, but I don't know that they ever got put out. I saw them on a desk when Ms. Sue was here. I saw the actual mock-up. I don't know that they ever got printed. I don't know if anybody can tell me that or not, whether they actually got printed. I saw the mock-up sitting on the desk. But a door hanger to hang on every, and go to a subdivision and hang it on every door that we are now open for business. We know that there are certain areas of the city that Central Florida Electric, Central Florida Fiber, Fiber by Central Florida, whatever you want to call them, were targeting. And we actually gave them a permit for one area. They never pursued it, but they were very concentrated areas. That's why they wanted it. And those were the first neighborhoods I would have gone to to hang the door hang on, to let them know that we were here or even just coming. I don't know if we need to, and this is money, I know, but I don't know if we need to hire a contractor to go install them all at one time, or whether we just need to piecemeal them like we're doing now. But you're right, we can't make money until we get them installed. We can't make that minimum revenue that we have to pay back.

Can I add something to what you just said, Ms. Debra? Aaron, myself, and Stephen spoke today about contractors coming in. So we are working on that. It is in process.

That's good news. Thank you.

Now, I will tell you, the two gentlemen, Santos and... Uh-huh.

Tip.

What's his name? Tip.

Tip.

Do a very good job at doing the installs. I watched them, went out, spent a little while with them, and... They're very conscious about what they do. It's actually a pretty neat thing to watch when they have to splice things together and stuff. So if you can, go out and visit with them, and they'll explain what they're doing to you.

Santa. just wanted to kind of touch base on a portion of what Meredith had brought up and as far as getting the information to the residents a lot of people would look for a printout or something on their door but majority of everyone that that I that I just discuss things with the first thing they go and look at is the city website or the city's socials any kind of updates news anything of that nature I believe that is an area that we are under utilizing and And it's free. There's no cost to print. There's no cost of labor to go and put them on people's doors. Even if we do both, just getting the information out there, staying on top of the narrative, letting people know, hey, this is not a rumor. This is not a rumor. This is what we're doing. This is what we can advertise. Please contact this number if you are not sure where you're at with the line, so on and so forth. So that way we kind of negate all the possible misinformation that may be spreading. And like I said, it's a free service. So if we could utilize that, not just for the fiber updates, but for everything, for events, for social stuff, I think that'd be fantastic. I think that's definitely an avenue that we need to look into on top of because that is a question that even I am getting and I'm new, is what's going on with this because I'm just going to go with, you know, Verizon or T-Mobile that's $35 and I don't have to worry about it because waiting a year to, you know, it's a long time. They're looking forward to it, but it's not a service that they can count on at the moment. So that's something I would like us to get on top of as well.

Mike, excuse me, Chief Rose, you did say there were flyers somewhere. Door hangers. Door hangers.

I'd be glad to walk a neighborhood and put them on doors, whether it's my neighborhood or somebody else's.

But we need to contract it out.

If you want to come back to the mic or somebody give him a mic. I was talking about Aaron.

Obviously, I can feel the frustration in the council. And obviously, you know, you have constituents that are asking you every day, not only that, but your neighbors and everybody else. And, you know, I was hearing fiber started. As you know, as y'all know me from the past, except for council member church, there's an open door policy with me at all times. So, you know, give them my number. It's like I've always said, have them come to City Hall. And so I know they are strapped with getting the things up and running and doing all that stuff. I've kind of stayed involved in it most recently. But you can't be the stopping point. They have to come to City Hall and speak to somebody or at least get a phone call back so we can explain to them where they're at. And at least at that point, they'll understand, hey, okay, I get it. Spoke to the city manager. he understands and uh or if the trish is unlucky she'll get the phone call but uh that's what i would do um so if they try alex try to get a response they want you know it's like the the kind words the gentleman said here you know you he has come to city hall we have sat down and we have talked and we've had these discussions and not always did he always like the response but at least he knew we were working on it trying very hard to resolve the problem and i think that's what i would go That's what I would recommend as a non-member of the city council tonight. Tomorrow.

Absolutely.

Have a call soon, Maddie.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Brevard. Anything else from the council?

Oh, wait. You mean about that or something else?

Whatever.

Oh. Just two things. The Suwannee River League of Cities meeting on Thursday. This Thursday. I don't know who's going, but we probably should try to carpool or something. You're going to meet us there, right?

I won't carpool with you guys.

That's because you're going to be in Lake City already. It's in Lake City. We don't need to take four cars. We'll have to pay mileage for four cars. That's ridiculous. I'd say we'd be ready to ride together if we can at all. And also, I just want to announce that the Women's Club is sponsoring a Williston Candidates Forum for the county commissioners the county school board members the judges and the candidates and anybody else understand now we may have some people coming from the state as well august the 6th from 6 to 8 30 if you're interested in listening to your candidates it's really cool i highly recommend i actually had to participate but had i not even if i hadn't participated had to participate i would say that it was a really neat way to learn a lot about the people who are running for uh When Meredith ran, the time before, I think, it was the same time, because it was before we changed our elections. And she and Mr. Stark actually participated in the candidate forum. It was nerve-wracking. I would have been nerve-wracked if it had been me, believe me. But they both did great, as did everybody else. But it is a way. I've already watched a couple. They've been online. I watched the one from Chiefland already, and I watched the one from Bronson. And I had no clue who I was going to vote for because most of the people from the other side of the county. Because it's not our district's term. Is this one online?

No. Is this one online or is it present?

This one is not going to be online unless I can talk somebody into doing it. I don't know. Maybe.

And what time again and where is it?

Thursday, August the 6th from 6 to 8.30 at the Women's Club. That's all I have.

Who's going to do the MC part of it?

Latricia did it last time. I haven't asked her this time, but I probably will. She did an excellent job last time.

All right. Anyone else from the council? All right. See, as the mayor's gone, I think he has nothing. All right. Adjournment. I move we adjourn. Motion. Got a motion and a second. Any discussion from the public? Any discussion from the council? Seeing none, I move to vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Motion passes 5-0 at 7.56 p.m. What?

Not midnight?