Meeting to order at four o'clock Roll call please miss Bonnie Chairwoman Jameson I'm here miss McDavid miss Penny here mr. Ward here mr. Rashi dot Okay, did everybody have a chance to read the minutes from February 25th Yeah, is there a motion to approve? Second. Second. Please. Okay. Roll call. Chairwoman Jameson? Yes. Ms. McDavid? Yes. Ms. Penny? Yes. Mr. Ward? Mr. Ridat? Yes. All right. New business. And Kevin, with that, I will turn it over to you for the review of the applicant pool and the selection of the semi-finalist. Right, thank you so much. I appreciate everyone getting together today. We set aside two hours for today's meeting. There's a lot to get through. Hopefully we can do it efficiently. There's a couple of things I want to go over before we get started and that is the confidentiality standards that we're using with the applicants at this point and what that means in terms of the state of Florida's Sunshine Records. Then we're going to go through the applicants in three different tiers. The first one are folks that I didn't think were qualified enough to move forward as semi-finalists. We'll go through them very briefly. They're in alphabetical order by their first name, so there's no actual rhyme or reason to why they're in the order they're in. It's just a convenience for us. Then we'll get into a second level where people have good experience, but perhaps not as much as what we'd like to see for this job or perhaps not exactly what we were looking for. And then the last part will be the top-tier candidate that I'm recommending that you use SME finalists as we move forward. We did have 45 applicants. One of them dropped out because they got another job in Texas as a matter of fact. I have 45 applicants. One of them is dropped out because they got another job in Texas as a matter of fact. I have 11 people that I think are worth looking at as my second tier and 13 in the top tier. So we were hoping to find about 15 people to put it through a semi finalist so we're in pretty good shape on that. What I want to do in this meeting is agree on who those folks are going to be. So as we go through the second level ones, I want to take note of people that you are interested in and want to learn more about, and then we'll look at the finalists, and then we'll go back to the final tier, and then we'll go back to that second tier and see who we want to pull forward to join the folks that we decide to move forward with. And that way we'll have an opportunity to see everybody before make the final decision. We did have this open for 33 days. We had ads in all of the major local government, listservs and services that do this kind of advertising. We did LinkedIn and in fact we did email blast to all of our subscribers for the job alert which was over 5,000 people. We did national ad placements and Florida wide ad placements for specific organizations like the Florida City County Managers Association that have a lot of folks who would be interested in this kind of job. And then myself and Doug Thomas did outreach to folks who we knew in the community who might either be interested themselves. And I spoke to a number of good candidates, not all of them applied unfortunately. But whether they were interested themselves or if they knew somebody who was an up-and-comer that we should be looking at for this. And so we had a fairly good turnout and a lot of good candidates are in the list. I think you'll be pleased with the quality of the candidates that we did got. 18 of those applications were from people who live in Florida and have worked in Florida. Several were from out of state. You'll see some of those folks worked in Florida and moved elsewhere and are looking to move back. And then we got a smattering of people from across the United States who applied. The applicant pool is mostly male, 43 of the people that applied were male and three were female, and mostly white, non-Hispanic in the mix. So I already talked a little bit about what the different tears are that I'm using, the different levels. But I want to make it clear that this is based merely on what they have provided in terms of a resume and cover letter. This does not look at their personality, their leadership style, anything like that. As we get into the semifinalists, once we've decided who we're gonna move forward on that, we'll have a lot more opportunity to learn more about them and to look at their backgrounds a lot more closely. And we'll do social media searches and historical searches on them to see what their reputation is out in the community. All right, so the very first level of applicants are the ones that I did not think met the qualifications that we're looking for. And what we said was is that we want somebody with local government experience. We want people who have worked in local government. We think this is incredibly important, especially for edge water, as whoever comes in here is going to have to hit the ground running. They're going to have to have experience with how to do municipal management. They're going to have to have experience with working with the public. They're going to have to have experience working with the board. Almost two and a half dozen of the folks who applied had good strong backgrounds in local government, but you'll see a lot of the folks that are on this first list really don't. We did not require a degree, although we said we would prefer somebody with a bachelor's or a master's degree, but we did say that we wanted someone who had at least five years experience as a chief administrative officer. That's a city manager, city administrator, town village manager, county manager, something like that. We wanted someone who had experience at the highest level so that they would come in with those leadership skills already developed. So, you'll see our first set of folks here are professors or work in private industry. One of them, Chuck Martin, who's on this page, works for Sims Crane and he seems to have a lot of experience working in the crane industry. The reason I'm singling him out though is because I believe he also lives either in or around the edgewater and is familiar with the area and may know some of the folks on the board. In fact, whenever I know that somebody is local, I'll try to point that out to you so that you're aware of that. And you may have knowledge about these folks and you may have reasons to want to consider them. I did not propose to move him forward because he has no local government experience at all. You'll see Mr. Johnson has been a city council member and mayor. That's not exactly the same type of role as the city manager. And so I did not consider that direct experience, although they do have local government experience. Oh, I went backwards. They were sorry about that. The next couple, we have someone who works in Social Security. That person has also been an elected official. We have someone who works for a glass company. Mr. John has many, many years as an attorney but no experience in local government. We have a fire chief from the local area, South Daytona, and then an assistant city manager in Paris, Kentucky. While an assistant city manager might be somebody we would consider as a second tier normally, he's only been doing it for about a year or so and I felt that more experience would be necessary in order to make him qualified to be considered. The next group we've got a grants administrator a street maintenance management manager financial management principal for Blue Origin. Someone who's a president of civil infrastructure corporation and Miami and then someone who works for the state of Mississippi. And lastly, we've got some folks who have worked in Florida for the city of Buckeur, but as a recreation service of Superintended. We've got Mr. Stanley who has done some interesting work in Washington, DC, but at the federal level and in private industry. We have someone who's got extensive experience and finance and health industry and then someone who works for Dunham's sporting goods and West Virginia. So those were the folks that while they applied, I don't believe have any of the qualifications that would make them worth considering for this position. Does anybody have any question about my logic on that or any of the particular names that popped up? I think that's just pretty good sound common sense of filtering out the 45 names so Yeah, and any of these I've got all the resumes either on my computer or laying in front of me here So I can look up particular information about anyone plus I have a number of notes I made on everyone off to the site here as well so I can answer questions and dig in whenever you want to. So if anybody on the committee has a question or is interested, don't hesitate to interrupt me and ask. All right, so the very first one, and again, these are an alphabetical order by their first name. There's no other logic to it. Mr. Edwards currently works for the City of New Smyrna Beach as Director of CRA and Economic Development and has had work in local government in various areas. All in Florida, he worked for the City of Telehassy for some time. And yes sir. That information is in correct. He's no longer working for the city. Oh, you know I said that but, but right here on the page, it says he worked there until 2024. So I'm a spoke. He said, cut out, he said, I just want to make sure that this is. Thank you for catching that for me. On the next one on the list is Mr. Robbins, who has a councilman for Volusia County. I has been for the past three to four years and also has been in private industry. You'll note that he's had a long time a history with Daytona Beach as a police officer, so he has familiarity with local government. While he has not been in a leadership role in local government, I recognize that being in Valuesa County at a very high level, you want to consider his application because of those reasons. So I have him in my second tier as someone worth considering for that reason. Mr. Elliott has had various positions with the city of Adrian Michigan. Its population is a little bit smaller, but similar to yours. He has been the administrator for the last five years up until February of this year. I do not have a reason why any of these people left their positions at this point. That would be a question that I would ask somebody if we decided to move them forward. He also has a JD, has been an attorney. He's been a planner. He's worked in the planning field and he has a master's degree in public administration which is a considerable amount of effort to get for folks who are in our field. Mr. Pogue has been the director of civic engagement for the City of Miami Gardens for quite some time, nine years and has an extensive background in educational. He's got a PhD in organizational leadership up a master's degree in public management, and his bachelor's degree was even in political science. Sorry about that type over there. This is a kind of a different one here. Mr. Sohaney is recently left the Navy. He was the CEO of two major naval air stations, one in Pearl Harbor and the other in Key West, both of which dealt with a lot of infrastructure and construction projects having to do with seas. So he was building ports and facilities that supported naval ships, which I thought was an interesting connection to what you all do. CEOs for these large naval bases can have up to 15 to 20,000 people living on them. And in a lot of ways are similar to running a city, although different in many other ways. because of the structure of the military. They report usually to a senior officer who has a regional responsibility. So not quite the same as reporting to a board, but a lot of similarities in the daily operations. And it's often you find very strong leadership skills from folks with prior military experience. Mr. Rosare is the city manager for Beckley West Virginia up until last February. He's been a deputy city manager in Arizona. I like it when people have been in more than one state if they haven't been in Florida because that shows that they can make that transition and learn how to work in a different area. Both of the cities are much smaller than Edgewater. You can see one is 17,000 and one is 3000. He's also an attorney and has been a county attorney in Arizona in the past. He has a master's degree in public administration and was also a GIS CAD technician for some years for Provo Utah. Peggy Castano worked for the city of Lauderdale Lakes. They have a population of 36,000. They're down in Broward County. She's been an assistant city manager, so I'm not a chief administrative officer. Hence, that's why she didn't make it into the top tier. But she's been doing work in and around construction management and community outreach. She has the PIO that reports directly to her and she has a lot of interesting background that's relevant to the things that are going on in Edgewater. She does have a master's degree in public administration. Pete Walsh is someone who has been in and out of local government. He spent a lot of time working on master's degree. I think he actually has more than one master's degree. One is in public administration, but I believe he also has another master's degree. His background is mostly in economic and redevelopment type activities and you'll see he's worked in both Texas, Nevada and in Ohio. Scott Randall was the interim city manager for Centralia Illinois. The population is 12,000 there. He did that for only a few months less than a year in total. But he's also had experience in working in community master associations, which are different, but in a lot of ways from running a city because they don't have things like utilities or police forces or things like that. But has a lot of the same community outreach and interactions with residents that you would see at a city manager level. And he has a bachelor's degree in political science. Steve Kelly has experienced as a director of community development. He's doing that in Maryland right now. A county judge executive is the same as the chief administrative officer. It's a special title that happens in many of the states that are structured a little bit differently. Kentucky is one of those that's a commonwealth rather than a state. And so they usually have courts instead of commissions or councils. And so the executive is a judge, which is just a title. It really has nothing to do with their background. He is not a lawyer. He does have a master's degree in business administering. And then our last one is Tim Day. He's been a special taxing district manager for InfraMark. They run a number of districts out in Texas and other areas. He was the interim city manager in bowling Green, Florida, which is a very small town. He has experiences town manager at Melbourne Beach and Greenville, Florida. All of these are very small towns. You can see that Greenville only has a thousand residents for example, and he does have a master's degree in business administration as well. But I chose him for the second tier because all of the communities were very small, and his tenure was very short in all of them as well. Two years or less. Any questions on those folks? Okay, like I said, we'll come back and look at them again at the end once we've gotten through our main candidates here. So the first one I want to talk about is Blaine Oborn. He's currently working as a consultant. He had worked for the City of Ocarbor, Washington with a population of 24,000 up until 2024. And prior to that, he was in Wisconsin where he worked for Lake Geneva and Rhinelander. Both smaller cities, you can see eight and 9,000 population, and he held those positions for three to four years. He does have a master's degree in public policy and administration. So he's got more than five years experience as a chief administrative officer and he does have a master's degree. Brian Bender is the city manager of Willitz, California. The population there is 5,000, so it's relatively small town. Same with Dear Lodge, Montana, 3,000. He has held those positions for four years or so. He has a background in planning. He worked at Dear Lodge before becoming the city administrator as their planning director and he has a master's degree in regional planning. Brian Balthus, city manager of Claremont, Florida up until 2024. There are 43,000 so a little bit larger than Edgewater. And then he worked for Aquarth, Georgia, population 22,000. As you can see, for quite some time, was the city manager there over 20 years. He does have a master's degree in public administration. Chase Wagner, interesting current job. He's doing some work for a family market, but he was the city administrator in Platt's Bird, Missouri up until 2024, a small town 2000. He was a former fire and EMS chief in Kansas, working Arizona as a city manager and director of public safety. And a lot of organizations, that's an overlapping role. In this particular case, they're sequential. So he worked for part of that time as city manager and part of that time as director of public safety. Again, very small town population of 3000. He was in Vendelium, Missouri, population 3000 for one year. And then has various other appointments in Kansas as well. He does have a master's degree in business administration. And like I mentioned before, if we decide to move forward with some of these folks, what we'll do is we'll ask them questions about why they left the positions or why they chose to do the types of work that they were doing. Dale Walker has been working for Genesis mortgage professionals after leaving Crescent City, Florida in 2023. That's another small town here in Florida, 2000 population, where he was an assistant city manager and finance director. But before that, he was at the city of Lake Butler as a city manager for five years. Again, another very small town. But then he was county manager for Macon Bitt County in Georgia for six years and they're a lot larger. I actually looked up with the population once. Let me see if I can grab that real quick. The population is 200,000 in Macon and 165,000 for the county. Dana Schoening, city manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma, a smaller town population 8,000. Form of our assistant city manager and director of planning and Operations for Sweetwater Texas, which has a population of 10,000. She was there for three years or he was there. I actually don't know the gender of this person, so sorry if I misgendered them. Before that, they worked for Wichita Falls, Texas, which has a population of 103,000, Abelene, 129,, and Duncan Oklahoma with 23,000, all as director of over-community development or planning. They have a master's degree in environmental science and policy and a master's degree in public administration, so strong educational background there. Jeff Cantrell was the city manager of Hutchinson, Kansas, which has a population of 40,000. Shanyu, Kansas, which has a population of 8,000. Luuburg, Kansas, 5,000, and has a master's degree in public administration. I thought the fact that they had stayed in these positions for a great deal of time was strong. I would have questions about why budgets in only lasted two years. Mr. Schubert is the city administrator for Crookston, Minnesota, small town in that state and has worked for Reddington Shores, Florida, which is actually in Pinellas County over near St. Petersburg. It's a small coastal community of about 2,000 folks and then Madison Lake Minnesota which is actually in Pinellas County over on your St. Petersburg is a small coastal community of about 2000 folks and then Madison Lake Minnesota which is a 1000 population. It was also a city council member in Groveland Florida. Their population is 24 thousand for about two years and as a master's degree in public administration. Joseph Ga is the city administrator for Washington Iowa 7000 was in Marshall, Ten Iowa with a population of 26,000 for a year. Aberdeen South Dakota for two or three years with a population of 28,000 tickets in North Dakota with a population of 25,000 for a couple of years. And then share to Iowa as well for four years. So as a master's dream parks and recreation management. and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of saw somebody with a strong construction background, I thought it might be important to highlight that because they've had experience with the development issues that you may be facing and may even understand it more from the point of view of the developers. He has a master's degree in public administration as well. Pat Omen is the Division Director of Community Development for Fairmont, Minnesota, population of 10,000, and was the county administrator for Becker County in Minnesota for three years. And I did write down the population there as well. Give me just a second. second. 35,000 for the entire county. As a Master's Green Business Administration and in manufacturing systems. Paul Stewart was the town manager of Oakland, Florida. The population 4,000 for a couple years. Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and other small town for six years. An Assistant City Manager and Stadley Beach. Their population is 11,000 for three years. He was in Dundee, Florida for a while, for four years with a population of 6,000, Auburndale. A little bit larger with population of 20,000 where he the Assistant City Manager and he has a Master's Degree and Public Administration. And then our last candidate Scott Moy was the County Manager for the Weare County Board of Commissioners in Georgia, population 37,000. He was city administrator for the City of Blackshear, Georgia, population 4,000, but he was there for almost nine years. And he's had various positions in Florida with the city of Fernandana Beach, which has a population of 14,000. He's a deputy city manager and also served as the interim city manager there and has a master's degree in public administration. All right, so those were the ones that I felt were worth bringing forward. Let's go through them again and if you have any questions or comments, what I want to know is is there any reason why you would not want to move this person forward and if as a group we decide we don't want to consider them I'll remove them from the list and then we'll go back and look at the second tier ones. So Kevin, I just have a question for you. Of these 13 candidates, have you spoken with any of them, or have you only done screening via their resumes and their applications? I have only done screening via their applications and resumes, except for the ones who have called me, and it's really just to really just to ask questions of me. They were asking about the community what you were looking for, what the issues are. They wanted a little bit more in-depth. I spoke to about 16 different people, several of which did not apply for the position, so only a handful of them that actually applied did I speak to, but I did not dig into their backgrounds at all yet. Once we've looked at these resumes and determined whether or not they're qualified, we'll go into more in-depth discussions with him and I will talk to everyone. Okay. Kevin, just to clarify, I have down 11 applicants for the finalist. He mentioned 13, so did I miss two? Yeah. There's 13. I got two. We're gonna go through them again. I counted 13, but I can make mistakes. Well, just another observation and comment, and that is that of the 13, I think just about every single one of them has a master's degree, which is levels of playing field on an education standpoint, and almost all of them have city manager or township managers or county administration experience. So that's, to some degree, levels the playing field. Although it's going to be varying degrees of how big and how the scope of those responsibilities based on the size of those cities or townships. So it'll be interesting to go through this next step that you're going to lead us through to filter out of these 13 people that have very common experiences and all have the same educational backgrounds, right? Which then once we filter that, then we can get into the other things about their personality, their integrity, their reputation, why do they leave, and all of those things, right? So, I think it's gonna be, it might be a little bit difficult to do this, but let's try and see if we can filter, because obviously we don't want to pursue 13 people simultaneously. We can go up to 15 to be within contract, so I wouldn't be shy about it if you said all 13 of them are worth talking to. One of the things we're going to do is we're going gonna talk at the end of this meeting about any questions you might wanna put in front of them for them to respond to. We're gonna do a written questionnaire to them. I have some questions that I commonly ask everybody, especially about their background and things that we might find to get them to get ahead of explaining what we're gonna find when we go out and do media searches on them. but also we're going to want to know specific things that you're facing that you want to know how they would respond to it or what their experience has been in recent years. when we go out and do media searches on them. But also, we're going to want to know specific things that you're facing that you want to know how they would respond to it or what their experience has been in responding to those things. And then, secondarily, they're going to do a four-question interview on video so that you can get a feel for how they communicate and what they're like and start to get a feel for them. And any questions that you think are super important for us to address with all of them, we'll put forward into those four questions and get some feedback in that way too. Commonly, I ask them questions like, well, why edge water? What is it about this community that attracted you? Why do you want to apply there? What are you bringing to the table that will make a difference for edge water? Those kind of questions and see how they thank and talk. So that'll give you a lot more to work with. Yeah. And is it reasonable to think that you could do that on the scale of 10, 12, 13 people or not? Or are we trying to get this narrow down as much smaller manageable number? No, up to 15 is what we're shooting for. OK. I think we should recommend 15 for the City Council to look at. But Kevin, in terms of the questions, I think they need to be addressing the issue that Eduardo is facing today and face yesterday and be facing tomorrow. So that's the question that I would like to see, you know, the candidates answering. So like the one of the most important questions right now, it's stormwater on the flooding and development. So these are the two questions that I think that we need to concentrate on in terms of the applicants. Yeah. Or can I just add to that? I think also it would be nice to know for these candidates. What would experiences do they have with the five challenges and opportunities that have been outlined in the brochure? And what successes have they had in managing them? Because we could find a great candidate that has a great education. It has great applicable experience from being a city manager, a township manager, but has never had any of the challenges of those five challenges that were this city is facing. So I think it's important just to build off a year point. An important question for every one of these candidates is, tell us a little bit about the experience you've had with the five challenges and opportunities that the City of Edgwater Express. And you know what probably not every single candidate has extensive experience in all five of these things you know the growth and hurricane impact and storm water management and customer service and long-range planning but at least we'll get a sense for how applicable their resume is to the job at hand. That's exactly the kind of questions I want to ask and one of the things that I think that will be important for the city is their communication ability, their presence and that's why I like doing the video interviews in this this first round because before you bring somebody on site, I want you to have some confidence that they're the kind of person who can handle the interview process itself, let alone becoming the city manager. You made the point earlier that of the 13 folks, they're all pretty much similar. I agree with that and I'd rather not go through all of their names if it's just going to be a rehash of what we just did if everyone feels like as long as they met those qualifications of having the education in the background that we should consider them because the next round where we dig in a little bit too. Yeah. really gonna start to answer those questions. And so instead what I'll do is I'll jump back to the second tier folks and see if there's a couple more that we want to pull forward and include in this list. Great. So let me do that. You know, in the interest of time that really does make a big difference. Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the things, as we go through these names, one of the things that I think is important to look at is if they've jumped from job to job to job to job to job, that might send a signal on what's going on in their life or their career or how they're performing or whatever. And I think it's, if there's a candidate that checks most of the boxes, that might be another question which is, and just take, well, we were on Blaine a minute ago, but we'll go back to him. But you know, he jumped around every couple of years between jobs. And a great question is, tell me why you left each of those jobs. And because if you're bouncing around too much in your life and career, it's hard to establish that you've really accomplished anything, right? And we're looking for somebody that's gonna be here long term that's gonna have an impact and is gonna be able to lead and do all the things that we've been talking about. So as we look at these 11, let's also look at, you know, have they bounced around a lot and this is their next stepping stone for something else and that might potentially disqualify. If for those of you who don't work in local government, let me make two different comments. One is about how often city managers turn over and the other about the population sizes. There's a lot of long-term city managers out there who've been with their cities for, you know, 10, 15, 20 years. And even with that, the average tenure for city managers just a little over three years. That's what it was in the last research that was done on it, which means that a lot of folks turn over a lot more quickly. Now there could be a number of reasons for that. One of them is that there are changes on boards, often they want to bring in someone new because they feel the city manager more represents the past and they wanna bring in someone who's going to be their city manager and represents the future. There's also things that go wrong in the community and the city manager gets blamed for whether it's their fault or not. And then there are folks who are not competent and do not do a good job and get removed from being a city manager for that reason. It's hard to tell that looking at a resume and so we'll get that through the media searches Good point because You know the rule of thumb Yeah, it's getting shorter and shorter as time goes on and so But it's it's everything that he mentioned it's right on on. So the other comment I was going to make was about population size. There are thresholds that make a huge difference. When you get under 10,000 population, you're in a much smaller organization. You have to wear more hats as the city administrator, or city manager. You have a lot more hands-on responsibility for day-to-day management of the organization. The budgets are harder to manage. It's a much different experience than in a city the size of Vegewater where you have to be more of an administrator and leader and little less hands-on. Now, there are still things you should be hands-on with when you're the city manager of a larger city. But you have more delegation of duties in a larger city. And the same thing happens at about 60,000 and greater. You know, there's these tiers of the size of cities, and it often depends on whether not you're full service. Do you have a police and a fire department? Do you have utilities and things like that? So one of the things that we're going to want to look at as we dig into this is how complex was the organization they worked for regardless of the population size and what were their day-to-day duties. Let's look at their resumes and see what they spent their time doing. So I've pointed out when they're smaller cities that's not not necessarily a bad thing, but it is something to take into account. So I think that you see any candidate out of the second year that might, a possibility that might move into the final of the sale. Well, there is a couple that caught my eye. Let me look through them real quick and see if I can remember who they were. One was Mark, because of his experience in the Navy, was very significant, very large basis that he was responsible for. And he has many, many years of experience doing that. I liked that. I'm a veteran myself, so I have a little bit of prejudice around that. I like to look at folks who have had military experience, but he has not been in local government and there is a difference. But he was somebody that I thought was worth considering. And then the woman from Lauderdale Lakes, her resume is really good. She did a great job of outlining her duties and and making it aligned with what the city of Edgewater is actually dealing with. However, she has not been a city manager and does not have that five years experience that we were looking for. But those were two that kind of jumped out at me, but I will put up each person's name again so you can refresh your memory about them. Because I show one name on this second here. That is the county council, Danny Robinson. Yeah. You know, in Blucia County, I mean, he's been around for some time. He worked in Daytona. He worked in Belusia County, quite a bit of experience in local government and county. And at this point, in terms of the issues that the city of Edgwater has. A lot of collaboration, a lot of cooperation that it has to have with adjacent cities in the county, as well in terms of the funding, in terms of the solutions, and in terms of the options that we have. So I think he will be a strong candidate, at least to be given an interview with the council. That's just my opinion. Yeah, and Kevin, I'm here, the person that's in the former military, I think my experience is that oftentimes that experience brings a discipline and the knowledge of structure. And, you know, I'm not saying that our city is lacking that discipline and structure, but I think that that oftentimes can be a great attribute to bring to an organization from a leadership standpoint. On the other hand, in the military, things are pretty black and white also. And that can be good and that can be bad also. So I would say maybe that would be one that would be worth moving into the into the other group as well just to just to kind of get a better sense of that. I agree I had come down as one that I wanted to see move forward. You know Porto-Rumts had a former city manager who was a Navy officer. Yeah he did a good job. Well this guy was was that two big faces. I'm big. That's a lot of responsibility there. I also marked all three of those names. Danny, Mark and Peggy. So I think we all have kind of thought the same things. So the way I was going to do this was I was going to put up each name and ask if anybody wanted to put them on a list. See how many names that we come up with and then whittle that down from there. Does that sound like it would work for everyone? Yeah. So we first had Chris Edwards. Is there anyone who wanted to consider him further? And we've already said Danny is potential. All right, we'll go back. I was just going to say, given his local experience, he has a master's degree, he hasn't been an assistant manager. He doesn't have any city manager experience, but there is a difference in local knowledge between Danny and Chris, Chris's experience in knowledge here. Was that a suggestion that you had to refer to the discussion? Well, I was out of German. More of a possible discussion. Yeah. So, we want to add him to that. It's just to look more in depth. Well, I was in agreement with the three everybody agreed on. So if we want to keep it at 15, then one of the three would have to drop. Yep. Inclusive of the one you'll recommend, right? Because this would be four, right? Is this one of the three? This would make up four. Out of that group of 11? Let me just be candid. I have worked with Mr. Edwards. Very nice, man. I don't think he is really. He's really a city manager. Very nice, my honor. I don't think he has really to be an City Manager. Thank you. With the challenges that Ted Warot has, I think he is to have somebody who is in the position of the strong and the strong and the strong. And the question is, I think he has a future to be City Manager, but I don't think he has this one team to be a imagined, but I don't think there's one team. Should we just send that? If there's consensus around the three names, and I'll be glad to run through all of them again just if anybody wants me to, but with consensus around those three names, if we got to 16, that'd be okay. We can do 16. Okay. I had also marked Greg Elliott and James. What is it? Pog? Pog? Pog, yes. Pog. So this is Greg's background. He was city administrator up until February for five years, which is good. That's a good run. And then, let me find James. about Greg is that he's thin and Michigan. I mean, it looks like that's where he's extent to his knowledge is. There's a bit of a difference for state-long scene. There it is. So Greg has a as a master's and a JD. Let me double chuck that to make sure. I have this resume here. Yeah, it's Juris Doctor from Michigan State University. And you specialize in commercial transactions and income taxation. I don't know if that experience and those skills as an attorney and doing the things is transferable over to our world. I don't know. It doesn't look like it from a resume standpoint. That's just my thought. The reason I didn't put him as my top tier is because I didn't think he'd be competitive with the folks that you do have. Okay, moving on. Who's your other name? James. Who's the other name? James. This one. James. Because he was in Miami Gardens from 2016 to present. And he, you know, Ph.D. in leadership, Master's degree, public management, bachelor's degree. It's not that varied compared to some of our others. Kevin, what is the office of civic engagement do in a city? Typically, and I cannot speak specifically for what Miami Gardens Gardens does so it might be more complex than this. Typically two things one of them is is kind of a community relations type role where they do. Yeah and then secondly like neighborhood services kind of thing. I don't reach to the community and things like that. All right, moving on. Yeah, I don't know if that translates, that experience translates into our world. I agree. We already talked about Mark, then there was Mike. Who has been in different states, but smaller communities. And you'll know that the timelines are very short. Yeah. This was the one I was thinking of, Kevin, where, you know, a year, a year, or two years, a year, or two years, a year or two years, in the last three roles. When you, I know you told me the average is three years, but there's something going on there. It's like three and a half years, almost four years. Yeah. No, you would expect to see three or four years on each of the minimum. Yeah. And it will cost. And it's, yeah, and it's, it's, I know that. And it's, those are three very different parts of the country, too. It's not like you was, you know, going to the city next door. This is moving from Washington to Arizona to West Virginia in a three year period. That would raise a flag in my mind. The box is actually on the community side. We need all our own civic satisfaction. That would raise a flag in my mind. We'll cost us actually $1 million to have and we all have some solutions to currently their ghost town. It's interesting. Peggy was the one I said hit on the best job of actually gearing or resume towards the job. A lot of times I know I've gotten just a basic resume that they send out to the different positions. They haven't taken in any time to like really customize it for your role and talk about how what they've done actually fits and she did. Of all the folks who applied, she was the one who did the best job of that in fact, which always catches my eye because that means they're paying attention They're interested in what your issues are and they're trying to position themselves to be Appropriate for what you're looking for She one of the three that we were thinking She is. Okay. Yeah. Pete, I think, has interesting background, but I don't I'm going to move on to. She is. Okay. Yeah. Pete, I think, has interesting background, but I don't think he has what we're looking for in terms of CAO experience. Being present in love your own firm is not the same thing as running an organization with a couple hundred employees. employees. Scott again very limited times in his different and his interim city manager role. So that's very little time as a chief administrative officer. And then we had Steve kind of an interesting role but a little bit different being a county judge and then lastly Tim being the interim city manager and town manager for some small towns here in Florida that caught my eye but again these are very very small towns and again very short tenure. Now when you're in the interim manager don't expect it to be more than a year, but if you're the town manager, I do. And that was it for those. So if that's okay with you, I'll move those three forward and we'll just do 16. I know the contract says 15, but one more won't hurt. And certainly it'll be interesting to hear from these folks. So which ones do we decide on Peggy Mark and Danny? Yeah, it was Danny. Danny Mark and Peggy. Mark and then Peggy. I think that gives you a very strong number of folks to look at and we'll start to get a real feel for who rises to the top as soon as we do this next set of research on them. Okay, and we need a motion to move this forward for this selection of semi-finalists, including the three that we have just added to the top tier list. I make the motion. A second. That's what I've recommended, plus the three that we just added, which is standing in the mark. Peggy. First, we have a second. Kimberly. Yep, boss. Second. Roll call, please. Chairwoman Jamison. Yes. Ms. McDavid. Yes. Ms. Penny. Yes. Mr. Ward. Yes. Mr. Rashidot. Yes. Okay. Before we adjourn, our next meeting is scheduled for when? And I have a question for Kevin. Let me find that for you. April 17th. of it. Yeah, April 17th at four. Yeah. Thank you. 17th. So, Kevin, will we clear on what questions we wanted to delve into with the 16 candidates? I know we asked them about the challenges and opportunities if they have any relative or pertinent experience in any of those five areas, right? That's right. And then do you have enough or would you recommend some other questions? I know you were looking at how well they can present themselves and communicate and their mannerisms and all that kind of stuff, which is going to tell the next part of the process and the story of these individuals. So I have a series of questions that I normally ask. Let me just quickly go through them and see if there's anything that's missing. The first one is explain why you left your last three positions. What would your supervisors or elected officials describe as your primary strengths and what would they say is your primary areas for improvements, same with your employees. Have them talk about their described approach to creating an organization that is passionate about customer service. How do they lead the organization on that? The philosophy and approach to building a strong team environment so they motivate employees. What do you think your greatest, most immediate challenge will be in the new role? What personal and professional expectations do you have going into this positions? Have a couple questions about their background investigations and what we're going to find. I will ask them to describe their current compensation package so that if they become finalists, we know where they were most recently at. And then I also want to ask them what questions they have for us so that we can anticipate what kind of questions are going to come in the final interviews. Kevin, could we add some of these challenges for example the flooding, the development, economic development, if you could add that to the list, I think that would be important. And I would also add a question about managing rapid growth. That's a good one, yeah. Yeah, I mean, could you just hit on all five of the challenges and opportunities? Off the page, what is that page six? I mean, those are the five, again, challenges and opportunities. It would be nice to know from each of these candidates what experiences and accomplishments they might have in each other areas. Because there could be a couple of them that lived through a couple of those things and was successful at navigating through that, and it would be good to know that. Because some of these aren't, all these aren't going to go away. So finding somebody that maybe has had a couple of them was successful dealing with that and leading their cities through that would be Kevin were you going to be asking them for their first hundred day plan or something like that? That'll happen when we get down to the finalists. Oh, okay. Well, then my other question for them is, you know, have they ever created, well, strategic plans always good, but I mean, I was going to say have they ever created an economic driver for a community like an industrial park or like I don't know an industrial park. Economic development. Okay any economic development initiatives that would you know be economic drivers and producers for the community. That's kind of covered in the first one. Managing rapid growth. They said, yeah, we manage rapid growth. What kind of growth was it? Was it commercial growth? What I'll do is I will consolidate the questions about their leadership skills, how they would describe them or how they would say others would describe them. And instead focus more on questions around those five different areas. What I might do is make one question for each of the areas that are distinct and then ask them to give examples of when they've done it in the past and what successes that they've had, the accomplishments that they've had, because I really feel like that's going to get to the meat of what you're looking for. Great. Great. And then I have one other question and that's on the tier three and then the three that we added. Can we get copies of the screens that you just had up with the bullet information on each of them, with their names, just to be going through as there a chance that we can do that? Is there an issue with confidentiality with that? Well, so we're in Florida. So like I said, public records law means that this is all public record. I did not provide it so that I did not create a new record that you would have to turn over if someone said, hey, I want all emails related to this search. But if that's something you're requesting, I'll be happy to send the PowerPoint presentation to you. And like I said, if somebody puts in a public records request and says I want the PowerPoint presentation, then your records manager will ask me for it and I will send it to them. So it and read through it. I mean, this is something that stands out in the back of the guide. I think you're going to get a lot more information through this next round. With this, you're just looking at a resume. And it was rather brief. Yeah. We're going to send you the full resumes and applications and all our research on the next round. It'll be a package that you got before the meeting so that you can read through it and make notes and have it spend. The next round. I'm looking at the bullets because I know I can't. This was just to kind of level set us with. But if you follow the same process that they had in New Swarm Mountain, it was very extensive. OK. So what you do is you're going to get a full package of each candidate and then the videos. So now you will not only see what's on the paper, but you actually see that I did it speaking about the issues about the questions So gives you quite a bit of Freely That's one the fifteen And then and then the council is gonna based on that they're gonna select down to five or six or three Whatever they want to do that the final an entry. So you're going to get some extensive background. Okay and in that packet that comes more than likely have the bullet points like on this one where we can know the communities that they were in. Yes. Because I would like to go personally back and just kind of look at those communities and see what kind of things they have for issues. Yeah you, you'll be able to, you know, I mean, it's right now. It's the depends are so comfortable. Well, I don't want to be sitting here. Not here, but. Kevin, will we get that package in advance? Or will you present it at our next meeting? I will send it in advance of that meeting so that we can discuss it at the meeting, because what I want this committee to do is make a recommendation to the board who the final should be. And how many days in advance of the meeting were you sent? We usually send it out a week in advance, but I think because of the time of the month we're at, we're looking at April 10th. So that's seven days, so yes. Will that give you enough time? You good with that, generally? Yeah, definitely. Just a side note, the information that was on the slides today will be the cover sheet for each one of the candidates so you'll have those ball points. Good. Thank you Kevin. Kevin good work. You're welcome. I'm excited. I think we've got some good candidates here. Yeah I'm actually pleasantly surprised at the number of candidates and the calibre of the candidates at least on the initial good I'm looking forward to the 10th well I know but we get to start with the pack you know you get to start looking at videos on the top yeah thank you You're welcome. Appreciate all you're doing for edge water. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, sir. You're welcome. Appreciate all you're doing for Edgewater. And with that, is there a motion to adjourn? All right. See you on April 17. Bye, guys. Bye. Bye.