you you you you you you My name is Susan Boyer. I am the facilitator for the charter review committee as we move forward. So I'm going to call the very first meeting of the charter review committee to order. Madam Clerk will you call the roll please? Colleague Rashida. Yes. Mark Billings. Here. Parmar Wilson. Here. Steve Fuseler. Here. Farley Parmarne. Here. Daniel Rooker. Here. Judy Ryker. Here. Spencer Hathaway. Here. Mike Isent. Diana Poole and Steven Snively have excused absences. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you. I can't wait for the next session. I can't wait for the next session. I can't wait for the next session. I can't wait for the next session. I can't wait for the next session. I can't wait for the next session. I can't wait for the next session. I can't wait for the next session. I can't wait for the next session. I can't wait for manager here in the state of Florida. And Colledin knows that long, long, long time ago, I worked in the city of Port Orange. So I am familiar with the East Coast over here and this part of New Suburna Beach. I love the way that downtown looks. It looks really nice. It was exciting to drive through it and see how it's changed. So my background is in local government. I was working for the Institute of Government here for quite some time and then I ran an organization called the Florida Benchmarking Consortium where we did process improvement in data collection for local governments. So a lot of the things that you'll be talking about as we go through this are things I'm quite familiar with I am currently doing this kind of work and I'm working with a couple of other cities as well as they do their charter review So that's the Tencent review of who I am and what I do so I'm very familiar with local government so with that Maybe for my purposes because I don't know all of you, I know City staff does, but maybe we could go down the road, and you could give me a little bit of each one of your backgrounds. Mike on, can you hear me? I don't know, say it again. Can you hear me? Can you hear me, okay? Hi, it's a pleasure meeting you you. I'm Mark Billings and the Executive Director of the Southeast Volusia Habitat for Humanity Affiliate and currently serve as the Chairman of the Southeast Volusia Chamber of Commerce Board and delighted to be asked to serve on this committee. Great, thank you, Mike. Steve Fuchsialli, live here in New Smirna Beach. I own a few businesses in the New Smirna area. Do real estate and real estate development. Thank you. My name is Spencer Hathaway. I'm an assistant state attorney at the 7th Secretary's Office. My name is Rector Rector Rector. My name is Rector Rector Rector. My name is Rector Rector. I've been here with all my beautiful people. Thanks, Patrick. Hi everybody, my name is Farley Palmer. I'm an early 1980s Volusia resident. I'm a Smurner Beach since 2004. I own a company here in the Smurner Beach and I am also very happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, Susan Judy Riker. I'm retired. I was in the title insurance business here for over 20 years. I'm served on city commission, served on Volusia League of cities as the president and really happy to serve. Thank you. Great. Thank you. I'm Kyle at Reshadant. I have worked for the city for 35 years. I retired at the end of August and I'm happy to be here. My name is Deanne Rokier. I've lived in this murder for eight years. I work for a major food packaging company where I hold the role of Vice President of Global Business Development. So really, really glad to be here. Paul Marwalsen, I've been a resident for 20 years. I'm retired Army officer and detective lieutenant and a police department. Okay, great. Well, thank you all very much. Thank you all for volunteering to volunteer and Sir, thank you very much. So as we get started So tonight is kind of an organizational meeting force. We're're going to go through sunshine law, some protocols and kind of how these meetings are going to run as we move forward. And to do part of that, we've asked the city attorney to join us tonight. And the first thing we're going to talk about is the sunshine law. Very important that everybody understands how that works. I know some of you serve on committees and such now, so you probably already know, but we want to be sure everybody is on the same page when it comes to the sunshine law. Let's go. Carrie Avalone, City Attorney. So a lot of you in this room I know, no sunshine, like the back of your hand, so I'll be brief but direct. So there's a constitutional right in Florida for government in the sunshine. So we have to assure that those rights are upheld by having these public meetings. So in order to have a public meeting, you have to have it noticed, open to the public, and minutes must be taken. of the things about the public meetings is, if two or more of the board, two or more members of the board talk, that constitutes a meeting. Unless that's been noticed, open to the public, minutes taken, it's a violation of the law. In the back of its tab I believe, I've got some slides in there. They've got the penalties in there, but this is, there have been, I don't know that people understand the gravity of it until they see articles of where things have gone wrong. So it can go wrong, it does go wrong. And I'm here to make sure that you all avoid that. So to our more members, you are free to socialize. If you see somebody out, you're not forbidden to talk to them. But if you're gonna talk about anything that might come before this board, which you guys have the subject, it's the charter, don't do it. You have to wait for a public meeting. The other thing is you can't use a third party to get around it. So if a member of the public says, oh, hey, I'll get you a message to whoever, you know, that's a violation too. It doesn't have to be just in-person communication, it could be through text message, email, those would all constitute violations of the Sunshine Law. So touching on public records, anything you, any type of medium does a matter of text, email, some other form that I can't think of. If the message is intended to communicate, perpetuate, formalize knowledge, it's a public record. So if you all get an email sent to your personal email, go ahead and send it to the clerk because those are public records. It's clerk at cityofnsb.com, correct? So any communications you receive regarding your appointment to this board and maybe citizens reaching out to you saying, hey, can you touch upon this, touch upon that? Go ahead and forward those to the city clerk so they become part of the public record that we can you know if there's a public record request we can download them off the server and that way you guys don't have to worry about managing those records yourself yeah we get text messages. Any comments? Screen shot it and e-mail it to the city clerk. That's short and sweet. There's more details in the PowerPoint. There's a little cheat sheet that's pretty handy. But if you guys have any questions, let me know. That's all I got. Oh wow. I like that. That's the shortest version I can tell first. Thank you. That was great. All right. The next item we have is to test my ability to use the PowerPoint. We're going to talk a little about you you you you I'm going to have a few minutes before I go to the committee. I'm going to have a few minutes before I go to the committee. I'm going to have a few minutes before I go to the committee. I'm going to have a few minutes before I go to the committee. Mira, the vision and mission and structure of the municipality. And you're going to have representatives that are elected to represent you. That authority is the commission and you all know who they are and how that works. Details are by ordinance and these are ordinances are the laws of the local government and the policies of the local government. So usually a charter is not thick like this. It's usually just, you know, a dozen pages give or take. It's not a huge document, not meant to be a huge document. Oops. So the Charter Review Committee, some, everybody's creates their charter reviews a little bit differently. As you can see there, some are created in the charter. Others are done as you all are. They're appointed. Some are created by ordinance. Request the city council. There are a number of different formats in way charter review committees are created. But most importantly, the committee is usually tasked with a time specific review. They are assisted by their internal council to bring back recommendations to the council for any of the possible changes that they are going to recommend to the local charter. So it's a very limited scope of work. You're not writing ordinances, you're not writing resolutions. You are looking looking at the charter and changes to that charter, which the language usually gets drafted by the city attorney. And then we brought back for your review and then you would be able to pass it on to the elected body for their ultimate action and decision. And then the council may choose to place items directly on the ballot based upon recommendations of their local, their internal legal council and of this committee. So the role of the citizen in this process though is still crucial. You all are representing the citizens of New Samirna Beach. And you know, they have still have the ability to weigh in. They have several opportunities. So again again once these things come in front of the elected body they again have the opportunity to weigh in on whether they like it or not and if it makes it to the ballot again they have a third way to weigh in they can vote for it or not vote for it. So some common elements within the charter really There's about six common elements. It's the preamble. It states the boundaries of the local government. It dictates what kind of legislative body you have. It's the form of government with the council manager form of government being the most common especially here in the state of Florida. It is also the kind of government you have here in New Sumerna Beach. You have charter officers those are defined and it's the physical and fiduciary authority and responsibilities are outlined and then there's an amendment process. So those are all pretty standard and we will be looking at all of those things to some degree. Comparable, so if we look at comparable charter characteristics, legislative wise. Size of council and commissions is generally five, which is exactly what you have here in New Samirna. Some have seven and some have six, where a mayor is a non-voting member. So those are much less common. Really the seven members you see usually in something more like Orlando, a really, really big city. The more cities that are in our size grouping, five is very common as the most common. Length of terms. So we see two year terms and four year terms are most fairly evenly spread across our 411 jurisdictions. A smaller percentage use three year terms, three year terms get to be kind of odd when you try to handle them in elections. So most have two or four year terms. The type of election for council seats, again single member districts that can be elected elected at large and they can also see some councils have a mix of that large and single member districts. So those are the three most common selection from mayor. Three options, elected at large, elected from within the council or on a rotational basis. And I think here in Volusia County, you have all three of those happening, depending on the city that you look at. So, forms of municipal government in Florida. And this is just to give you all some background. You have a council week mayor. That is not very common. You have a council strong mayor. We have about 43 Florida cities across the state that have that form of government. We have the commission for a government where each elected official oversees some one or more departments. We now have only back when I was a city manager, we had more but now we're down to only two cities that have that form of government in the state of Florida. So council manager or commission manager for what government is our most common form of government here in the state of Florida. As you can see we have 285 Florida cities that have that for what government here in the state which is more than half of the local governments. And then there's we don't't have any, but there are across the country, some hybrid jurisdictions with the kind of mix and match commission council manager for the government, strong mayor. It's a little different in some of the other states. So by comparison, for New Sumerna Beach, using jurisdictions from Volusia County, New Sumernaah Beach there are four comparisons by population. If you're looking at cities whose populations are within the same range as Newsomernah, you would have DeBerry, DeLand, Edgewater, and Ormond Beach. Port Orange is much larger these days, even though they are close and next door to you, they are much larger jurisdiction at this point Geographically Here in Volusia County. It's a large mix of interior and coastal communities All of the jurisdictions in Volusia County are council manager commission manager for the government so The right now you have your elected seats are five so So scope of services, if any charter elements are compared, you would be able to look at some, maybe some of those other jurisdictions, how they're looking at those things. If you wanna look at somebody your size in your area. So best practices in charter reviews. Obviously we want to be sure that staff is working well with the committee. We want to all be sure that we give everybody a chance to express their opinions, share their ideas. We are allowed to disagree with people, but we want to do that respectfully and take it into consideration. We are not all going to agree on everything and we recognize that. This is, you know, we're going to be holding several public forums for discussion, you know, especially if a referendum gets scheduled if you all move forward with that. There'll be a lot of more discussion down the road. And you'll be able to use things like the website and different elements to whatever the commission decides to take forward or not take forward, all of that would be available for public review. Just gonna say, if a referendum were to be scheduled for anything that is brought forward to the commission, I'd recommend you think about maybe this would be for staff and all some facts and and answers to questions on the website people are always going to have questions we can't The local government can't say you need to vote this way or that way, but we can't answer questions to help people Understand what is being brought forward to them and why? so Those are just some elements that I think you want to keep in the back of your mind. And keeping in mind the powers that a charter has. It grants authority to more than one entity. Language can be confusing in election sections, usually in qualifications, so we want to be sure that that is always clear. And most of all, as we look at the language that is currently in the charter writing too much is one of the things that happens we get way too wordy and too many words get in the way so less is always better. So just something as we've learned over time. This is just some information on why we have charter's charter have been around since the 1950s. The council manager for the government is we've noted is really the most popular form of government. And one of the questions I often get asked is how often should we go between charter reviews? There is no required time frame. Often it's just left up to the discretion of the local council. Or if there's been a petition for something, what we see specifically is people go anywhere from 10 to 20 years. 20 years gets to be an awful long time. Sometimes you miss some loops because the laws changes. But 10 years know as often as far as we go I know this one you all did one not all that long ago but there are some things that need to be updated just because the world has changed and laws have changed so new cities usually do theirs after they've been in business for five years because there are things that were put into the charter to set them up and now they're moving forward and some things need to be changed so they have to do that review. This is just something you can come back and look at. Just questions to consider for yourselves as you're looking at the charter and we're having discussion. Really, you know, is, you know, you want to be sure that you're representing both your residents and your businesses. And does the, you know, has the city provided everything it needs to be provided. Keep it in mind that, as I said earlier, the charter is like the Constitution. It is a broad document. It doesn't hold the specifics. That's where your ordinances and resolutions come into play. That's the specifics. So just some resources that are out there. And this is in tab number three of your notebook, this PowerPoint. If you have any of your own questions, you're more than welcome to go and look it up through the Florida League of Cities, the Munich Code, there's some libraries out there, the National League of Cities. So there is other places to go for information that is of the neutral kind. Any questions as it relates to the review of the charter? Okay. Hearing none. Let's move on to municipal charters. Do you have anything you want to say about the municipal charters? Okay. Okay. So let me see what tab was that. This is the chart. Municipal charter is back there under tab 9. So this is from the National Civic League. Every so many years they update there in their 9th edition. This was done back in 2021. This is a model city charter. Again, this is not necessarily one size fits all, but if you're thinking maybe there is some particular topic, something that we talk about, that you would like to look at how others do it, you can start here with the model city charter. They have some good language, some good references, as well as we can look at anything in a neighboring jurisdiction. So this is just put in here as a reference document for you all commonly used when local governments are doing charter review. Any questions on the Model City Charter? All right. So the charter review process, the, um, so here's the tab. process. So I think what we're looking at there is so the charter review process we have several options on how we would like to handle this. We can go through the charter section by section. If there there are really no questions in it, we can move on. The City Attorney has also provided me with several sections that she knows. There are items that we do need to take a look at. For either they're out of date, they need to be tweaked for one reason or another. And we can go to those. Or if there are any particular sections, any one of you, is interested in looking at specifically. So we'll come back to how we're going to go through the charter and we'll have a bit of a discussion on that. After we get through some of this preliminary stuff, unless you all would like to talk about that now. Come on, I have one question. Sure. I've seen the last charter committee, some documents as far as what changes they propose and may, and that the accessible to everyone on this to see what was changed to where we are today. Sure, yes. If you let me know what it is, we can provide those to you. If there's like a specific one you want to see or you want to see all of them. Well, at least the last five years ago. So you'd like to see all of them that were done five years ago. Susan there's a YouTube video that goes through that 30 minutes worth, goes through every little change that was made. It's really going to watch it today. Oh for the charter here. No, yes of our charter. Of your charter. All the changes that were made from the original charter to the 2020. It was on YouTube? I saw it on YouTube, yeah. Okay. Well, my... I can send you the link to it. And you read it also, you could understand that what was on the YouTube is exactly what the document says. Yeah, absolutely. It was done by an organization that went through in actually several of the members of the Charter Reducumission interviewed for that video. Okay. You know, I also want to say this model city charter I like to read. So I actually read the whole thing yesterday, which is, it's really exciting. But no, there's a whole bunch of great stuff in here that I wouldn't have thought of. So I totally recommend reading this model city charter document. It's great. Yeah, it covers a lot of ground. A lot of stuff. Susan, I did read the model city charter as well. And I our charter and then I went back to the 20 it was a charter comparative table of ordinances and it was the 2020 ordinances that changed the charter from August 11, 2020. I found it in there and then it had like the preamble and then it had each, 1 to 1.0, 5. And it showed all of those had something done to them, apparently, from the 2020. But like you were all saying, I don't know what was done. So we're looking at it without knowing where it started and where we ended up in 2020. If that's what we're supposed to do, that's OK. But as you were saying, I don't know where we came from, prior to that, I just saw that these were the changes from the 2020 effort. Well, so the 2020 changes would be the most recent changes that have been made. However, it was stated, yes, is what we have now. So you just to be able to compare it to the previous one. Well maybe if that's important to us. Absolutely. I think it kind of sets the the basis of what decisions are made then and where we are today. Yeah. Some of those might have been really good decisions in some way so that might be important to see. I didn't know there was any changes. Pretty interesting. Yeah, that video really did go through a lot of the changes. So Susan, I will find that now. Let me make sure that you have a link to it. It's on the city's YouTube channel. Looks like I just found it. I do have 37 minutes long yet. It's pretty though. Can I just ask you guys to speak into the microphone so that it's ready to hear please. Thank you. Okay. Should I get my harmonica out? Certainly. Okay. So I want to be sure I understand what you all want to start with looking at what those changes were that were. So let me be a little more definitive. You want to know what all the changes were that were proposed or only the ones that actually got passed. I think I have it. They want the red line to show what changed in 2020. Okay. And actually I think both would be needed. What was recommended to be changed and then what was actually changed? So it was done as a complete overhaul. So it was one ballot question up or down. So they didn't pick and choose whereas depending on how this charter review board wants to operate you can do mix and match questions different questions so it was an all-in or nothing last time. And the all-in changes were then approved by the City Commission or approved by- So once you all come up with your report, that will go to the city commission for discussion. They'll give direction on how they want to move forward. Then they would have to be an ordinance, which is two readings, either with individual ballot questions, or depending on how far you all go, it could be one comprehensive vote as well. I think probably the direction, you know, the goal of 2020 was a complete overhaul. They wanted to check in after five years and say, oh, hey, how are these changes working? So it could be just individual questions depending on where you all take it. So and then after the ordinance adoption, it gets sent to the clerk in Dilland for publication on a ballot and then the voters vote and if it gets voted in those changes are made to the charter. 50% 51% So that's we'll be looking to you all for your input on whether you want a special election or if you want it just on the regular 26 ballot that's something for you all to discuss. I'm going to my only caution on that is just to keep in mind if you do a special election that cost you a lot more money. So if it's something that could wait. We do have the numbers. So essentially it's going to be a recommendation to the City Commission. They'll make the final decision. But we do have numbers from the supervisor of elections. So that's something the red line version is something we can bring back for your next packet so you all can see what it looks like. Okay. All right. I'm going to need an email out to us so we can review it at home and maybe. I'm going to access. Possibly. Can you speak into the microphone for your previous question? Yeah. Could that possibly possibly be emailed to us so we could all have time to look at that prior to? Yeah, I can send it to the city clerk and she can distribute it to the board list. And generally you'll see if you get an email from one of us, it should be blind copied to you all just so nobody accidentally hits reply all. So if it says dear may or dear charter review board members and you don't see any names that indicates you've been blind copied. All right so that I think that answers several questions for everybody there okay. Well it raises a question for me and that is we really won't understand which process you outlined until we see the material that was changed to see if we want to target those areas or go section by section. And that's fine. We can have that discussion next time. That's fine. I don't think just based on my conversations with staff and generically speaking, I don't think there's anything earth shaking that if it didn't hit the ballot this time, the world is going to stop. I think the more important thing is that you have the ability to do your thorough job in that timeframe that you've got and you all will be able to do that. I have another question. I looked at the schedule and it appears that on the schedule dates are through August and then that's the last date. So if we make it through and we come to a concise agreement of what we feel is important to change, These are time from the August state to do a special election. If we so decided, to not wait till 26. So the special election the timing would be determined by the supervisor of election so she needs a certain amount of days prior to publication but you know depending on if it's before the general election then absolutely there, there'd be time. Perfect. Can you ask the supervisor about the drop dead is to get? So the drop dead is gonna depend on, are you talking about for the 26th election? No, I'm talking about for this false election. So that'll be depending on, we'll just need to give her enough time. But yeah, I can ask what early time is. What early time is. Yeah. We'll find out what early time is. The supervisors lead time. If we wanted on the fall election for this year, she may say you have to have it by August 1st. Well, we might not know the answer by August 1st. So that definitely puts it to the next year if she says, you know, it's not till September well, maybe a different game. So we'll find out what. I not know the answer by August first, so that definitely puts it to the next year. If she says, you know, it's not till September, well, maybe a different game. So we'll find out what her dropped it is. There's nothing prohibiting us from finishing early before August and giving more time if we get through all of the... Correct. Okay. Yeah, we were all... That's where I was going to go. Yeah, you were very well could be done next week. No. That would have known that's not going to happen, OK? I just think that there's a duty if there's a timeline that we would be advantageing our city to get it in this year, to get it done early enough in order to get it to the appropriate departments for review so it could be on ballot this year, if that's the direction of the commission. I don't have any direction from the commission. I think they're waiting to see what direction you all are going to take. I'm going to restate it. If their direction, I heard you say that they will review this and decide whether there's a special election or next year, we should strive to get the material completed to them in time to make an informed decision as to how they want to proceed. Okay. Thank you. But if we could get a like a timetable for both the special election and the general election, including us finishing up having the language, and all taking it to the commission. I think it gives us an idea of how fast we need to go or how detailed we need to go and make sure that it gets to the point where if they decided to go to a special election, it's ready to go. Yeah, I think also in consideration, I think some of the things that are going to be discussed is impacting term dates and times. And if we can't get two readings and everything finished for the special election this year probably wouldn't take effect of the election in 2028 if we have to wait till the 26 ballot. ballot we were going to make impacts on turn length of terms and things like that. I think depending on how as worded, if it's, if it's, say it did not make this election, I'm only saying this because I'm dealing with this with another group right now and the supervisor, you know, if they were able to take it to the fall, you know, or you could take it, it would go into effect for 26. If you did it in 26, it would go into effect in 27. Which, yeah, I don't think we have any odd term elections here. So, 28 elections. Yeah, that's great. All right. Does that answer everybody's question on that particular item? Everybody. Okay. All right. Any other questions as it relates to? So I guess that really begs the question for tonight. You know, I think we can begin, do you all want to begin looking at things? Going through some of the elements of the charter topics, are there any topics that we, you know, we know we have a few items that we need to look at within the charter. Is there, does anybody have any strong opinion on how they want to begin this review? We just want to go through it. We don't have, I know you all have asked for what were the changes from last time. We don't, we obviously don't have that for this evening. Well, if you just start from the top, the preamble was all new language from 2020. There was no previous language that was tweaked. It was just, let's have a preamble. I'm sorry. Did you say that there are already some items already? I sent her a list of ones that I've heard in passing for various people. That's not you can still add whatever you want. So it's not an exclusive list. So I think maybe we start with the preamble. The preamble is all new. So that is what was passed and approved at the last vote so to speak. So let's give our VA a second to read the preamble and see if there's any heartburn with any of the language that is there. I'm going to put it encompasses the elements that you would want to see in a preamble. I think it's very nicely written. So I don't have any comments or recommendations for any changes to that preamble. I agree. I think it's extremely well written and encompasses what I would have expected for a preamble for our chartered have. All right, I'm just gonna say something that I can see one little hole in this. It's really well written, it really is. I actually like it very much, but it does mention preserving our natural resources, preserving and enhancing, I think might be be a war that could be added to this. Enhancing meaning adding more services, cleaning up areas that need to be cleaned up, providing conservation areas. I think that part of what we're already doing with New Spiriner would fit well into that. I think that would be something that we could use. Just a thought. So it would be preserving and enhancing our natural resources. That's good. Thank you. Any comments for anybody else on that. All right, so can I just so that we know that that's what we want to do and what will happen is each time that you all want to make a change. I'm going to ask you to put it in a motion format and then I will be able able to send it to the city attorney. And at the next meeting, we'll bring it back in the format. It would be on the ballot and then we'll vote again on it. As we do those things. I have a question. If we're going to add a word or change a word or move things around, we decide this is going to be an issue by issue ballot. Is this going to be a 19 page ballot to add a word on page one? That a word on page two? That a word on page three? It could be if you do words at a time, yeah. Okay. I mean that will be, I think, you know, we can bring, we can do it several different ways. However you want to do it, you know, we can bring these back as a group of items that you want to change and then decide, you know, one word maybe isn't worth it to put it on the ballot. We have other issues we would rather, you know, the electorate. Generically, I hate to say this, their attention span isn't very long to read through page after page, like you have referenced. So, you know, we may want to reconsider while the word may be important. We have a whole set of issues. We're looking at what's really important. What are they gonna pass? What do you wanna take forward and how you wanna do it it when considering conservation stuff Preservation in enhancement are two terms. They're normally used together So it just seems like a natural thing for this for the preamble especially It's not just one word if it's an a preamble it means a lot So it doesn't need a lot of discussion I think Well protecting and enhancing is in line three For the purpose of protecting and enhancing the health, safety, environment, and general welfare of the people, I understand what you're saying, and I'm not disagreeing with that, but I don't want to see a 40-page ballot for this. Spencer, I missed that. It's already in there, you're correct. No worries. It's okay. But who I could add, a comment here. So wait, hold on, I'm confused. So are you saying you're okay because it's up there? Enhancing the environment has already mentioned in the third sense and the first paragraph. That's correct. So you're okay. Yeah, I'm fine with that. I just saw that hole there and I thought it could be filled but it's already stated there. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay, great. Thank you. I'm sorry fact that Charter's Give broad guidance. But I think you have to be very careful With the wording that you put in a preamble. It doesn't expand beyond the overall concepts of the city. Some of the words that are in this thing I think need to be looked at when we get to, I'm talking about the preamble, when we get to the sections in the charter. Because what happened the last time and what you have in this current one is you have some statements put in here that got very big portions of the last charter review. And some of those portions in that charter review don't, um, they're overreach for lack of a better word. And many people in this community are not at that state of their lives, whether looking for more government as opposed to less government. So I think we have to be careful with what we do. It's easy to look at this and they're very nice words, and they present a beautiful picture. But you have to look at what the results of that picture become when they get specified in the charter and then ultimately end up in an ordinance. Any comments? Any further comments? You know, the charter tend to be an overview for the regulation is such. It shouldn't be very specific. So when you look at this section in particular, I mean you have the land development regulation that it goes into details in terms of the conservation and natural resources and environmental protection. But you cannot go on intersection and try to be very specific and detailed. I mean, it would be 200 pages. And she mentioned in the early on that most of the charters like there tend to 12 pages. You know, my suggestion is I think, I think every one of us have read the charter. And if you have any specific areas where you wanted us to look at or discuss, I think we needed the next meeting to bring it up and then this way we have a list of it. I think it makes it easier. Because this been quite of time at the last time they reviewed it, and they want it to just about every section. So hopefully at the next meeting we see the red line, and you could compare them. And I see some areas that I think we just need to look at because there wouldn't any changes in them at the last time they did the review or the changes in them amendments. So that would be my suggestion. I would agree with that. I think streamlining it knowing what to look at. I'm not eager to for us to wrap it up, but I want to go to my colleague, the gentleman to the left, made a point of if we don't get this this year then you eventually it impacts four or five years out from now. So if we know exactly where to focus and can work on those areas and get it submitted earlier, I think that's better for our city. I don't know if I'd share that point of view, but that's where I stand. And the last charter review committee, did it an outstanding job in terms of looking at the entire charter that are making these revisions that they would need at the time? So I think seeing them and seeing where we're at, if all of them have worked, didn't work, need some changes. And I think the focus would be much better to go into some of these sections, they're just the standard sections. So I think, in the charters that I look at, your all looks pretty good. I mean, it's really in very good shape. Some things have, you know, there's still tie-in horses up at the sidewalk. So, you know, some things are really old, but yours is quite current. I think it's been written very well. I think maybe for tonight, one of the things that we can do is I do have several items from the city attorney sections that we need to look at. So we're here tonight. I think let's start with those and what I would ask you all is within the next five, six days if you have specific areas that you would like us to look at. If you would email me that or email the city clerk and let her compile them and she can share them with me. Then we'll begin to tackle those down the road. But we have, you know, we're here tonight. We have roughly an hour left and I think we can look at a couple of the items I have from the city attorney that we need to look at. And just to clarify when she says from the city attorney, these are not my generated ideas. These are things I've heard. She should clarify that. I have a clarification. Were you looking for a motion and a second to approve the preambo as it's written tonight after our discussion or did you want? I don't think we need anything on that now because he withdrew, he didn't want to change it. It taken care of so he withdrew what he had put out there So I think we're fine. Yeah, I think that's a good idea I think we should at least look at what our city attorney has heard that we at least focus on those tonight Right, I mean we've got an hour we can look at those they may be the some of the exact things that you all would have brought up anyway. So we might as well keep going. Sure. So the first thing is in section 2.02, which is on page 4. This has to do with the composition of term of office, specifically the term of mayor. So I'll give everybody a minute to read that section. And maybe for we have a few people in the audience, I'll read, you want me read the paragraph so everybody knows what you're looking at. The City Commission shall consist of four commissioners and a mayor. The mayor shall be a member of the City Commission. The mayor shall serve a term of two years. There shall be an election for mayor every two years beginning with the general election to be held in November 2012. There shall be one commissioner from each zone within the city. Each commissioner shall serve a term of four years. Commissioners from zones one and two shall be elected every four years beginning with the general election to be held in November 2014. Commissioners from zone three and four shall be elected every four years beginning with the general election to be held in November of 2014. Commissioners from zone three and four, shall be elected every four years, beginning with the general election to be held in November 2012. The mayor and each commissioner shall be elected by a majority vote, excuse me, by a majority of those qualified electors voting in a citywide election. No vote shall be counted for mayor or commissioner except those cast by the duly qualified electors under the laws of the state of Florida. So really what I think we're being asked to look at is that the mayor shall serve a term of two years. There shall be an election for mayor every two years beginning with the general election to be held in November of 2012. I think what we're being asked to look at is, is the term of two years appropriate for the mayor? And that's one of the items that I have on my list. You know, working with all these mayors that I worked with in having, you know, the two years, it didn't seem like it was enough time for the mayor to, I guess, accomplish goals that they have. So I'm talking about between the two years and four years. I think the city fathers at the time when they had it the two years just in case of they had some of you who people don't want so they want them to be safe for four years. But I think in for the mayor to be effective I think the four years would be probably I would say the years that I would like to see in the chart for the mayor. Coming from a long line of former mayor I can tell you that also with the recent charter amendment about there being a requirement the primary run and then you run in the general as well you are constantly running for reelection. Staying with the House representatives in Congress I think one of the biggest criticisms of the United States Congress is you're constantly running for reelection. I can tell you from historical purposes having grown up with it that the theory behind the two-year term was that every two years the citizens could vote out a majority of the commission, all three, the majority of the the city board could be voted out. But I do agree that it's almost almost impossible for a mayor to develop any kind of following any kind of real difficult decision making without constantly having to worry about elections and only worry about elections and not make very difficult decisions. So I certainly understand the desire to change. I understand history why it is the way it is. But I think I would agree Mr. Roussadat that four years would probably be more appropriate for me. And I'm going to join in with that too and I think what happens when you're always running, always running, always running is that your decisions tend to reflect how you want to win that election and I think that's a real danger there. I would tend to agree. I think the four-year term makes sense and I like to compare us into the House of Representatives. I always wondered because the soons they get elected to trying to run again and they don't pay enough attention to what they're doing. So I think the four years is good. I think it makes sense and I think it gives them here to either become stable what he wants or make a decision. He doesn't want to run right now. I can imagine being in that situation myself that if I had developed a relationship with city staff, et cetera, with the community after it would take two years to do that. So I agree with what Cullid said. I support that as well. Other than the time constraints, the financial strain of running every two years, that's a big ask, especially what salaries are commissioners and may or may. I'll support it as well as stated for in addition to the time piece, the finances, I can only imagine it be a distraction because you're focused on being reelected and you should be focused on governing the city and the other electeds are four years and lining it up for a four year term would seem to make sense to me as well. All right. Just a final piece from my perspective on that as I think unfortunately in the history of the city, a lot of times the mayor may receive unfair criticism and unfair election results simply because the city's citizens are unhappy with the direction of the city's going. And oftentimes the mayor is obviously the most visible person on that. He's also an assistant or she has a standup for election every two years. So something that could be totally outside of the mayor's control may result the mayor being thrown out unfairly simply because he's the one that's most visible and he's the one that's up for election most most often. So I would say, can we have, I would like to see if I motion yeah if we could somebody would make the motion that we changed the section to leave four years. I'll make that motion for mayor for a four year term. Second. Yeah, I just wanted to say, you know, we're one hour into the discussion and this is one of the really big important topics I think of the whole try to review. So I'm a little uncomfortable making a decision or even voting on that decision right now, given the fact that we're just here sitting together to discuss. That's a pretty strong statement to make so early on. Well, I think though, by doing this, what will happen is we'll have the city attorney will bring us back the language so we can look at the amendment. You'll get to look at them again. I mean, this is just so we know what we want to do. This is one of the items we want to look at going forward and it gives us a chance to write it up so you will see it in ballot format, so to speak. So the decision will be that you'd want to move forward with drafting something that we'll talk a lot again later on. Not that you're making a decision to move forward with changing the term from two years to four years. Just so that I understand that. The motion maker has to answer that question. I'd say the motion would be for a four-year term of for mayor. So the motion is to decide tonight to change the terms from two years to four years. Correct. Okay. We have a second. We did. We had a second. I did. So we have a motion in a second to change this section to to state it will be for a four-year term. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Should you come along? No. Oh, aye. Let's. Roll call vote. Roll call vote. Okay. So this is, Sue, then just make sure I understand this. Fun, fun decision. This will change the city term. Is that right? No. No. This is just to revisit it. present. I'm sorry, I misunderstood what you said when you started it. Well, the commission gets to the side and the citizens get to the side. I understand that. So we're right. So this motion would be for this committee to decide we recommend changing the position. I'm just sure. And I think this committee is far too new to make that kind of a decision one hour into the first meeting. So that would be my opinion for discussion. And there are reasons why the two-year term has put forward, right? There's a reason that is at two years so that you can determine, is the mayor doing the right job? How are you comfortable with that position? So there are reasons for that being there. And I agree with you, though, and I said that to our part. The only thing is you look at the mayor is really a commissioner. Sure. So the commissioners are four years. So what's the difference between the mayor and the commissioners? If this was a strong mayor form of government, then I would agree with you. And that's why I have, you know, and I said city fathers have put it there for a purpose. But if the mayor is like a commission, there's the only thing he'd be presented over the city commission. It's really a ceremonial position more than anything else. So you actually have a motion and a second on the floor. So I think we need to vote. Could you, unless we have any other questions? Madam Clerk. Member Billings. Four. Member Hathaway. Yes. Member Eisen. Yes. Member Palmer. Yes. Member Roqueer. Yes. No. Roqueer. Roqueer. Member Rashida. Yes. Member Wilson. Palmer Wilson. You didn't call Riker. I'll come in here when I'm here. Yes. And member Riker. Yes. You make one more. I'm sorry. Member Feeslier. Yes. But before we move on, I just want to, I mean, this is a concern for me. So we need to know the process. So if we discuss an item and then we vote on it, but then you have a member who doesn't feel comfortable. So I'm not sure I just want to ask Dan if how much time do you think you need to look at an item in order for you to make a decision. So this makes me more comfortable, because I don't wanna have somebody on the committee that feels like that this is not the right thing to do so. Sure, and thank you for giving me that opportunity. There's a number of options that we can do here, and we're only looking at two years versus four years. We could look at two years for the first time, then followed by four years, so that you're not in that cycle of time. There's a lot of ways to look at this. And I think that the mayor position is a lot more than just a ceremonial role. Right? It's the face of the commission, and it has a very powerful role in what happens in city government. So, you know, I'm not comfortable with it being a change from a two year to four year term. and I'm especially not comfortable with that being changed one hour into the commission sitting down or this committee sitting down for the first time. So what I'm saying is I mean and that's what I need to understand is that this like how how how long you know this cost the item I mean this item was discussed on the dials that I just I want to make sure that every member of the committee that at least have a chance to look at it and give their opinion and then make sure that everybody in agreement will not. But, Caldwell, are you suggesting that as we just came up with a possible change that we put that, try and click out to say this, put that on the table and then come back the next meeting and vote. Is that what you're saying? No, you're still. I don't think we're gonna bring back anything different. So I guess you do have two more opportunities of to discuss this. One, the language will come back for you all to look at what the ballot language will look like and then again at the end, the overall report of what you're recommending to the elected body to the council is you're all going to have final approval of that. I mean one more time that would be one of the items included so I mean you have opportunity to change your minds if you wanted to. The reason I bring that up is, and I do support this change, but we have some people missing tonight for whatever reason, and that's going to happen, I'm sure. But we have an agenda, and I don't see anything on the agenda that discussed Making changes or coming to I took the agenda as more of a organizational informational general discussion kind of of Process so that if I was a citizen out there and I read that agenda I might might not be considering that we would be making these kinds of decisions tonight. I'll just all set out for discussion. One proposal would be you make the motion for us to bring back revised language, and then you all vote at it at the next meeting where it's now been published in an agenda. And then that way the public could come give you their input as well. Does that work for everyone? I think that's good there, Theo. I think that would be better. So process question since we voted. Do we need to vote to cancel that and then re-enter a motion or because we called the vote on what was originally presented and then we had further discussion after the vote. I think we can bring it back. I mean, we can bring it back for them to look at the language. I mean, they voted on what they want the language to say. We'll bring it back. Right. We'll just have one another additional vote at the next meeting. So. That's good. Then maybe what we need to do. And again I defer to the city attorney here. But maybe we would need to do in this session just like we did. Instead of taking a vote to pass it, we take a vote for consensus. And the consensus says we'd like to see this change, we verbalized it in general language, and then at the next meeting you bring back the revision, and then we vote formally on the revision. That would do two things. I think that would allow us to have some more time to talk to people outside, to find out general impressions from citizens, what their out-of-years are. Secondly, it would allow time for anybody who wanted to come in here and speak publicly about what we were going to take up at the next session. So I would offer that for consideration. I think that would be fine. I mean that gives us the ability to keep moving forward at looking at some additional items this evening and then have the attorney bring it, give us the language to bring back for you all to look at formally vote on. Yeah, I would agree with Mr. Wilson and to be honest, this is the first time that he actually read this part of the charter. That's why I'm so uncomfortable making decisions tonight. So I think it better use the time or a use the time could be first to look at those areas that the city attorney mentioned. You know we're of importance to the community that she's heard from. Correct. And then you know get familiar with the document and come back the next time to better debate and discuss these kind of topics. Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Okay. The next one is 2.1. Okay, so that's how we'll handle some more additional items going forward. That's fine. If that's a consensus, all the heads are moving Okay. All right so the next item is section 2.11 city commission compensation. Which is on page 8. 8. Yes. And for the purposes of the people in the audience would you all like me to read it so everybody knows what it says? Okay. The mayor shall be considered a member. Oops, I'm reading the wrong one. 2.11. 2.11 I went right down to the bottom of the page. The City Commission shall determine the annual salary of the mayor and commissioners by ordinance. Mr. Rush, if I'm wrong, or Madam City Attorney, last time I recall that the ordinance that sets the salaries is 50% of what the county chairman and the county council makes. Is that right? That's right. And I think for informational purposes, that's somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 a year the county council. I think they have they have increased their salaries at the county so that's. And there's proposed legislation this year that is going to make changing the compensation of a commission. It would have to be done by referendum. So we may want to look at this now rather than if that passes we're gonna be here again anyway. Great. Is there a way that we could obtain information possibly the city clerk of, I know we talked about, there's four cities in Valescia County, but prop, I think for figured out compensation, I think we would need to expand and look at other cities on the east coast. It doesn't necessarily have to be Volusia, but population I think is a good indicator. I think we're about 33,000 people. What is Stuart doing? What is Fort Pierce doing? What is St. Augustine doing? I think we you know, this is, we're in a premium city and I think to attract a talent that we want to continue to, the letter of city grow, I think that we need to make sure it's a fair compensation. So what you're asking for is a survey, really, this is okay. For city commissioners and mayor. Yeah. And I think primarily it should be on the East Coast. I mean we're located on the east coast and you know Florida is a very long state. So I think it would be, but who of us to just look geographically. I mean, obviously we could maybe like or dislike, we could be a steward in 10 years from now. So, and maybe this, try to review, doesn't get looked at again for 10 years. I think we should look expand other than just the four cities. It's just a recommendation. Would you put that as a charter or would that be in the ordinance? So as of right now, it's determined by ordinance. However, we are facing a situation where proposed legislation would say it has to be set by referendum. If the legislation were to pass effective date would likely be July 1st or October 1st. So if it's set for October 1st, whatever decision we make would probably not make it on the ballot either way. But if it does become effective July 1st and potentially we maybe want to put a pin in this until we determine what the legislature does. Commissioner, charter review board will. You all make that decision. I mean the legislature is going to, they're in session now so we'll know what, if this bill is going to pass before probably the next meeting frankly. But we may not want to make a decision on this until we get some direction from the legislature. So legislature make an effective July 1 and has to go to referendum. I guess we can still have some input on what that's going to look like. If it's effective in October 1, we won't. If it doesn't pass at all, then it's back to us anyway. But the legislature's in session now and they will be We have a gavilled out of session before we're done, so we'll know what that passes are not. So my recommendation would be we just wait until we figure out if we're going to spend our tires on this for no reason and be preempted by the legislature. And can you explain that legislation that's in process again just really quickly? So it says that right now we set a compensation by ordinance. What this charter does is it just simply says, here's how you set it. What the proposal or the things I've heard about is putting the content in the charter. So what's going on with the proposed legislation is exactly that. That if you are going to change the compensation, you wouldn't be able to do it by ordinance anymore. You would have to put it in the charter and be subject to a vote of the electorate. So if we changed the charter, trying to deal with that, and then the legislation passes, would that override the charter. Okay. So we can come back to that one at a later date and it sounds like there's consensus. Okay. And it looks like it's in committee right now. So we should know something pretty quick, I imagine. I'm just doing it. Do you have something based on that? How would you, and I think I understand what we're trying to do here, but how would you write that so that you didn't have to come back to the charter to change it every time? I mean, I'm thinking of my brain. Ben Schmarking, I'm thinking, you know, highest paid mayor and highest paid commission and mayor and Volusia County wording like that. I recall years ago, on the law enforcement side, at one point, the San Francisco Police department Was the highest paid police department in California by state law So that anytime somebody L.A. Would raise the salary San Francisco got an automatic boost above that So I guess you have to think of some wording like that that would that would try it try it to the county Saturday adjustments. Yeah, I think that was the thought process behind that. That no commission would ever have to vote on giving themselves a pay raise if the county council did it. The same commission would get one. I think that was the theory behind that. Not that I know the guy that was part of that, but that was the thought. If the county council raises their salaries, the city commission gets a boost too. Do we know when the last time the anchor salaries was increased for commissioners in there? I believe it's been 50% probably, until you might remember when? I don't think it's gone up for 12 years, right? Yeah, probably. And you know the responsibilities for the commissioners have really changed quite a bit. I mean, they spent, it's a full time job for them, really is. And I think this is, this item is really needed in order to have qualified applicants that they fund. because, they spend a lot of time, with their constituents, meetings, attending events and so forth. And I can tell you having just run for the position, that campaign was a full-time job. And I had a full-time job as I was campaigning full-time. And having lived with somebody that served on the commission and as a mayor for a long time, when you break down the hours that are spent preparing for the meetings, let alone the meetings themselves, let alone community events, or low-fielding calls from constituents, if you break that down, they're making less minimum wage. I mean, there's no question about that. and 100% you're going to get what you pay for and representation. Nobody's going to get rich doing, and nobody does this to get rich. But if you want folks that are gonna sacrifice what is ultimately all of their free time, then they should be just a compensated for that. I don't know what that looks like yet, and I know that's what the discussion's gonna be, but I 100%, 100% agree that that needs to be reviewed. It's been based on what you were telling me about the legislature. If that is passed, how will that be determined? How will the- My interpretation of the city, the attorney can chime in as it looks like if they say it has to be done by referendum, we can still make the recommendation what we think it should be as long as the citizens get to vote on it. I think the goal is that the commission, various commissions, county, city and otherwise can't just vote themselves a pay raise. The citizens have to agree. Which is what I think we're talking about anyway. We're asking citizens to make a decision on a referendum that we're going to recommend. Based on our recommendation. Based on our recommendation, correct? Self-sermonant, they try to get themselves. That's obviously why we're here. The theory being I think from Senator Grooters' response is that no citizenry will ever vote to increase it themselves. That's obviously what we're here The theory being I think from Senator Grooters, the sponsors that no citizenry will ever vote to increase the salary So then the consensus is that we just go ahead and we wait till we have a little bit more information on this one So it's out there. We'll come back to it, but hopefully The next 60 days we have a little more information on where it sits. All right. Let's take one more. Let's look at Section 3.05. Which one? 3.05. It's at the bottom of page 9. Itination and election when primary election necessary time. So, it's, eliminate the general election for a candidate who wins in the primary, basically, is what the question is. I hate to be talking the whole time, but I feel like this one might apply to me as well. having just been involved in this situation, the citizen spoke in a resounding manner back in 2022. This to me, I think, was one of the biggest mistakes that the charter review committee made previously, and not to be critical. I know this is not an easy gig, but when the citizens speak, and 51% of the citizens pick somebody in the primary, that person should be the winner. And it had been that way forever, up until this was changed. And the last two elections I think the citizens demonstrated that when they overwhelmingly elected the mayor, both elections, 2022 and 2024, and ultimately what we had was general election in both situations. Well, the first one was kind of my fault, but the second one was unnecessary and expensive for no reason. And I fully agree with that. I agree completely with that. And I think the first time Judy and I ran, it was the other way around. If it was if he had 50 plus one, it was over. And that made more sense than anything else. Of course, if it's only two people, it's going to go to the general. Well, when you get three, it makes sense to do that. I agree. So do you want them to do a vote? Do you want it by consensus? I think we'll do the same thing. We're all bringing back language and you all will vote on it at the next meeting. And I'll just say to throw it a real quick comment. And thank you for coming back to vote on the say it and Spencer. I think you did a great job in what you did three years ago, I guess, or two and a half years ago. I think that was very smart at your part and good for the whole city. My concern or question here is the people that vote in the primaries, it's a much different subset than the people who vote in the general election. Right, you get a much higher turnout in the general election and you tend to get people in the primaries, it's a much different subset than the people who vote in the general election. Right, you get a much higher turnout in the general election and you tend to get people in the primaries that have more time available and it's a different subset of the population. So I'm just concerned about making a decision for that office based only on the primary results. So that's something I'd like to think about and talk about more in the future. And I think that's an excellent comment. I think part of the argument and favor of the primary vote is your super voters vote in the primary. So you're you're getting people that are reading the paper every day. The ones are doing all the research. So I think that's the that is the general question is what are we what are we looking for? We want the folks that are making that effort to vote in every election. The ones that are definitely making the take in the time to do it. Or is it one of those where it's just where we're going to pick the guys? Yes, exactly. So I'd be concerned. making that that effort to vote in every election the ones that are definitely making the take taking the time to do it or Is it one of those where it's just we're gonna pick the guy exactly so I'd be concerned about the super voters making that decision and not having the majority of the population actually be involved And you know we get we get tremendous voter turnout here for the general election and a minuscule voter voter turnout for the primary That's true. All right. So we have consensus to bring turn out for the primary. That's true. All right, so we have consensus to bring that back for further discussion and review some language and see attorney will draft something for us. Yes. We'll look at. Okay. All right. Let's, well, I think we still have time to do one more. So let's look at 4.04, which is on page 14. This has to do with the City Clerk, make non-charter officer and the City Clerk a manager, a employee of the City Manager. Do any other cities have the city clerk under the city manager? The majority of cities have the clerk as a manager employee. Okay, I didn't know that. And her being her or he being under the under the per view of the city manager that would not change the duties the duties would still always be the same. Would you have department it makes basically makes them a department head. You know basically it puts them. They're in charge of the clerk's office. So they're department head because you usually usually have the clerk and deputy clerk or some some structural like that? Would that get and I'm just asking questions because I looked at the custodian of the city records gives notice of the commission meetings to the public keeps minutes of the proceedings and other duties assigned by the commission as well as served as an election official. So you don't think that serving as an election official as an administrative position would get in the way, would not be independent. Just for, that's just a question. That was the same question I was going to ask as well. So the clerk still has ethical duties under her certifications and those things. So in terms of, I think that's what you're getting at is their true independence in that office. It works for other cities. I know that there have been difficulties in the past several years with dealing with issues when they come up. So that was the motivation for this. And this is not a surprise to our current city clerk. So feel free to talk about this and debate it about. So, but could it possibly, but is it likely? I don't think so. I don't think so. You've got two of us who've done it for a long time and I've never seen it be a conflict. I have every city I have ever worked in or worked for. The city clerk has been like a department head. They've been, you know, not a charter officer. It has never posed a problem in those areas. I think for streetlining the process, I think, having the city clerk under the city manager, I think it makes the process more seamless. Not only that, but I think it's because the city manager and the city clerk, they're responsible for that agenda. So from my experience, I think the city clerk should be under the city manager. The volume since you were a city manager and assistant city manager. It's just like the city attorney. They are three people who work together all the time. They should be working for the same boss. I mean, they bring a lot of stuff together. They should be working together. I think the oversight that the city manager would bring if that position were under city manager as opposed to being under commission would be valuable to the commission, to the city, to the operation of the city as well. Having served on city commission and worked with a very good city clerk, Johnny, but we weren't here all the time. We had other jobs. We were the commission that worked. We weren't retired. We had a lot of workers on our commission full time. So we weren't here all the time. So we only could catch him when we could catch him, when it was good for our schedule and his schedule. So I think, and I don't know how I would have been able to give any the value of oversight to the city clerk at that time, given my other responsibilities that the city manager would have been able to give at that time, which she would have been able to give quite a bit more. So I would like to bring it back. I think it's a good change. And if you say that other cities are doing it and it's working effectively and that's in our preamble effective efficient. Let's get effective and efficient. I would support it also. I think the city manager and the city attorney are much more of an advisory role, if you will, or is on roll with the city commission. Whereas the city clerk is really providing services in the bulk of the services or to the public. Public records request, organizing meetings like this, things of that. And Chair does a heck of a good job of that. But I think it's, her job is less advisory. And I think that's why we have the City Manager and the City Attorney has charter be as opposed to staff it's more of a staff position so the consensus so what I'm hearing from the whoops I'm sorry what I'm hearing from the consensus is that you would again on this same item on this item 4.04 city clerk You'd like us to bring back some proposed new language in there and making the city clerk be under the city manager All right, thank you. So we have about 30 minutes left. Maybe we'll take a break right here. This is a good place to stop potentially. And let's talk about maybe some of the items that you all would like to see brought up For our next meeting that will allow the city attorney and I to get some information together So we'll have a little more structure for our meeting next time So Who wants to go first? Do we want to just go down if there's any particular item you would like to be sure we bring some additional information back on? You want to think about it for a second? I think most of you have read the charter. So you know what it says. You probably looked at the model. I know some of you read the bottle city charter. Anything that sparked your interest that you would like to have us take a look at. We can just go down the line if you want. If you want it, do you have anything that you? Nothing other than what we previously discussed to see. Okay. I'm not sure we'll have more to discuss next. Go around. We've been off quite a bit tonight. All right. I agree. OK. We've had some pretty significant things happen since 2020. When it comes to storm, extreme weather events here in New Smonna, and I think that section 6.01 might be something we could go through and look at to see whether that could be enhanced. This is the environmental stewardship. Yes. Six point zero. You know, I think that the previous group did a really good job with this. I really do. And I've read through it and threw it, but I think that there are some specific things that could be. Change, I'm not really ready to present them tonight, but there are some things that could be added to this, I think that might be something that could protect the citizens down the road and protect the city. But I'll be more prepared next time to be able to present something on that stuff to you. Okay. We can at least put 6.01 on there for discussion. Sure, I'm sure other people have lots of things to say about that as well. It's a big issue, especially in a coastal city here. I'd like us at some point to take a look at Article 6 sustainability sustainability again. And as I stated earlier, some of the wording in that is far too general and far too open. And if we're going to address those areas, not saying any or they're not appropriate, but I think we need to look at the wording a little better because I think unfortunately it will lead to more government legislation And I don't think that's what the citizens are looking for In which section are you referring to? Huh? I refer to the same section section. Section six. Yes, I'm.00. I'm not opposed to some things in there, but I just think the wording itself. And I think as an example. Susan, article 6 and just in general. In general, OK. We've been going through a huge review of chapter 50, which carries, I'm probably getting tired of hearing that term, but that whole chapter 50 is a result of a section in this sustainability. And I think that what happened with that and how that ended up being originally written is not the direction that the public has wanted as evidenced by recent activity which after 50. I agree with Farley and Palmer about section six. Number one because of the flooding but also before I even dug into the chapter 50, when I was reading about the historic preservation, the one that just popped out at me, you know, just like, wait a minute, and I put a little star by, was creating an expanding upon local historic districts. I mean, is that something, is that something we really are supposed to do? I mean, because you've got it covered to update regulations pertaining to them, develop guidelines to get their exemptions, and facilitate them and getting grants. So we've got it covered, but to actually say we're going to create and expand more historic districts. Do we want to do that? And then I started to dig into Section Chapter 50 and it's like, oh my gosh, you know, that was how many pages, all these red lines, it just developed. And that should stay in the ordinance if that's where that's going to stay. Not here. Not here. So that's the only thing that jumped out at me and it just jumped out. All right. Collie, anything else? I think you touched on some of the main items that I have on my list and I'm sure that I will, as I go along, I think I would have some more. But I think you touched just on about every one item that I had. I'm good right now, Susan. Thank you. OK. I think that's everybody's had a chance to add. If anybody thinks of anything else that you would like to add for possible review for next time? Please let. I'm going to so that we all stay coordinated. I'm going to ask you to send it to Sharon and then that way she can let the city attorney and I know and we'll be able to keep everybody else equally informed. That would be great. To have one point of contact. Do we want to do that last one? I think you should just do Article 6 as a whole. That's in there. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Is there anything else anybody would like to bring up this evening? I'm going to ask to be excused for next meeting because I have a prior engagement. I'm jacked to that. The way the meeting is not next week is it? Next meeting. We're next meeting. So we can't go get a glass of wine and talk about this stuff. Is that what we're saying? Hopefully you remember the introduction. No, it's not over. We're getting things together. Any other comments from you all? We're all good. We know we're headed. Okay. Yes, we will be happy to take public comment. But are you going to establish the date's Susan first? What? It's in your packet. Okay. It's the last page. April 15, May 6, May 20, June 3rd, June 17th July 1, July 15, August 5, August 19th. The charter review is scheduled to meet the opposite of commission days. So the first and third went Tuesday opportunity to meet the opportunity to meet the opportunity to meet the opportunity to meet the opportunity to meet the opportunity to meet the opportunity to meet the opportunity in my organizational board meeting. I expect me to be there. Okay. Where did you leave it? This was in the packet. It's here in San Delga yesterday. It should be in the agenda packet. That was emailed to everyone. It was in the agenda packet. Yeah. what are you looking for? The dates? The date for the meeting. It's in the packet. It's on tab. Right in front of tab two. So it's in tab one. It's the right behind tab one. The meeting. Whoops. No, they're not. That's the wrong piece of paper. I just saw it. No, it just was through. It's definitely the agenda packing online on the city website. It's the last page on the 127 page agenda. I know I see you after I have it. We can pass it out again next week. We'll add it in in January next week. I know I saw it. Can we go ahead with citizen comments? Yes, go ahead. We can have a stand-up hold on. Go ahead. Joe, do we have three, three, two, one, East LaConda, Circle, and Vettation Bay. There's some rebates. I'm going to start from the bottom of the boil list. One of them is you did talk a bit about the impact of some of the state legislation that would be considered in terms of whether it all would be in the LDR or whether it's going to be in the charter. I think that what's happening up there is much broader than that. Secondly, has to do with lessons learned. There was a committee five years ago that we all went through and sat and doing the same deliberations that you are. I think it would be helpful to get, understand some lessons learned from them about what their thoughts and their processes were. And the issues that they addressed. The last one is a big one for me and others, I think. I'm going to offer a challenge to the form of government that we have in New Sumerna Beats. I'm not a political scientist. I'm an engineer. But I've witnessed over the last several years the development of a community called Venetian Bay. In short, both personally and in this chamber, the City Commission admitted that they blew it. It looks nothing like what we as residents bought in that community. and there is something wrong either with the form of government or its process, because there was no monitoring, there was no response to the citizens to be. And we think that there ought to be something in the charter that addresses that. Or you're going to miss what's happening out there. And I guess that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Just a minute. Seven o'clock in the South. Kippit Street. Some of you know me. Some of you see me here before. I want to thank you all for being here tonight, because it's a tough job you got here. You got four meetings to go through to August to get through a charter as nine articles in it, and you barely got two articles a one hour. So you got a tough job ahead of you. So may I recommend to you the following? As I said, here's to this here. I recommend that the next review of the charter done in five years, but you break it up. You have nine articles, you have four articles. After the ten years, the other four articles. That way it gets reviewed in 10 years basically. But you break it up. Suggestion. The primaries is interesting to see here that come up there because I saw when it started being kind of up as well through the meetings here or the commission's meetings here. And what I when I recommend like I think Mr. Dukes said here, that in the primaries folks come out. We have, I mean in the general elections, they come out. We have primaries in August. What happens in August here? Eric Haynes, what sort of visits are gone? Because they hate to wait the summers here. They go back to Michigan. They go back to other places there. And they come back to other places they're there and they come back vote in November. So, I want to keep that. I personally believe that should be kept the way it is. And if you're running for office, it's not for money. All right? Yeah, the pay is not great. We know that. It's a job you wanted. You chose this. So, it's like, oh, I got a big deal. You did this. you wanted this job, whether you're a mayor or a commissioner. All right, so, it might save it or it's suck it up. What I'd be a mayor or a commissioner. So in my saving words suck it up. Wanna be a mayor? This is the way it's gonna be. If I ever ran for office, my paycheck will go to a charity. I would do it for money, first of all. That's a bet, you can bet on that. Another thing was, what is the, we should have in the charter, The benefits on that whatever it is the benefits of annex to the property. What is the benefit to the city to annex this property? Did that property owner try to go to the county to get a rezoning said no, then it comes over here to get an annex for that purpose? What was the needed for that to be done? Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's, we don't know that. Just probably, and next year, it's mainly on a quasi-judicial hearing, or sometimes mainly a hearing that I see here. And now, talking about the city clerk, put him under the city manager's office. Why was the city clerk put in that job at the first place? Apparently, this charter, people five years ago, felt important to put separate the three members onto the staff here. So why now say because we had an issue with the last one here? Why put it when I put the city manager for everybody to city attorney to the whole staff in here under the city manager? Why change one? Why not all of them? So thank you for your time tonight and I back again. Thank you Good evening Randy Herman 108 Esther Street As the previous people have said thank you very much for being on this Difficult and challenging committee and it's a robust group with a lot of different levels of experience so I think it will bode well for you. I want to go back to the consultants earlier comments about the charter is about vision, mission and structure. And one of the things that I'm concerned about is what is the structure of our city. When I first got involved in the city about 15 years ago, it was defined as 24 neighborhoods. And the iteration and the work that was done on that through different committees and particularly with the planning department was based on those 24 neighborhoods. Now I don't think that's actually effective. And when we had our census review, we did a shifting around and we now have, of course, the four districts, but different on arrangement. But we also have, I think, a divide that is very fast coming and that is all the development west of 95. And I think we're close to being a tale of two cities. So I think it would be really important for you all to discuss and how does that reflected in our charter because I think that needs to be clarified. Are we just districts? Are we neighborhoods? Are we the river? Are we the island? I think those things are very important. And I say that because I'm seeing the demise of central beach. And there was a lot of time put into central beach to keep a balance between residential and commercial and it's gone. It is finished. It is commercial. And I live there, I live right in the center. And I think the mention of historic in the preamble wasn't there before. And it was there put in because we are losing a lot of what small amount of historic buildings we have left. And that may be the will of the people. We don't need historic. We'll just take everything down and start new. But I think with the huge pressure, like with the Deering Park coming, you know, very huge, almost another total city coming, it raises some huge issues, I think, about how we vision what we are, what our boundaries are, and how we can best work. So I hope you can involve that in your discussion. And the last thing I really appreciate you, not voting tonight, I think it was far too soon to do that. I really appreciate you putting your issues forward and then bringing them back for discussion and then voting. I think it would be too soon and too premature. In particular, some people missing tonight. So I wish you all well and I'm moving forward and looking forward to the next meeting. Thank you. Thanks for anything. All right. Anything else to come before? Any final comments from the committee? No further comments from the public? Then I'm going to say that we are adjourned and it's 7.45. Thank you all very much. We'll see you in a couple of weeks. You have any questions? Please remember to give your questions to the city clerk.