e e e e e do we have okay we live we will be starting momentarily wait for [Music] D Wai for like her and cats good morning morning good morning [Laughter] sunshine and Chris are we also stream streaming morning thank you oh no thank you I don't see it on face back yeah as well it should [Laughter] be all right let me get deps here um you can bring the first one's going to be Chuck Anderson um like his crispy treats how you doing good how are you know I don't like this 73 you have company and Chris will we be streaming on Facebook as well okay it's just fun to watch I bet especially for somebody like right it's very liberating when you're reti the uh five and a half years of my Circ reminder we are okay guys ready was all right good morning sorry for the delay everyone we will um call our meeting to order this is the Board of Commissioners for Treasure Island special meeting on Thursday June 20th 2024 um with the primary objective of interviewing and selecting a new city manager um so to get us all started if you can please stand and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the republ which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right roll call please commissioner Toth here vice mayor doctor here commissioner minning here commissioner dicki here mayor Payne here thank you thank you all right um we'll start with public comments for non-agenda items do we have any public comments this morning all right hearing none we'll move into our items of business and as I mentioned our primary objective today and our only item of business is selection of the city manager um so I will turn it over to Doug Thomas from sgr to get us started great thank you well good morning everyone I know it's been a long day yesterday and got your fresh and added again this morning as well um as the mayor's indicated uh what we've gone through is a day of preparations with the candidates with your staff and with your community and with each of you during commission 101 meetings with each of the candidates um this morning what I'd like to do is before our first candidate starts at 8:30 is uh basically get you prepared for the interview process today uh and any questions or any issues you might have so you've received a variety of background material from sgr over the last well last week and then additionally reference material and other comments that I sent out to everyone last night um um what I was looking for this morning was to get a sense of giving you a variety of prepared suggested prepared questions um and ask for you to identify your kind of top 15 or 20 questions to get a sense of where there's some similarities and where there may be some differences to go forward so I've gotten all U commissioner are you are you going to do I have any from you or you going to be able to or are we just going to go with what we got at this point we'll work through it um just go with what you have okay gotcha that's fine all right I just didn't know if I was going to add any more or not in the process so what I've done is kind of tally uh if you give me one second I'll get a sense of where I know uh at least three or more of you have identified some questions and then we'll at least identify how many that is and then we're going to have to work down because a number of you just as I was starting to capture that this morning a number of you uh there were only two of you that picked some questions so we're going to have to kind of talk through you know where we're at my goal was to have you have in the bank somewhere between 10 to 15 questions um that you're probably going to ask all the candidates and then I also want to ask ask you after we've gotten a sense of where this this tally process works out you may have developed some other questions that I didn't suggest and I'd like to kind of hear what those are we can make sure that we their Wordsmith so that they're appropriately put in order and then we'll figure out where that fits relative to the uh the 10 or 15 that we're trying to get identified so if you just give me one second to to do a quick tally on where we where we have some unanimity here let's see here for okay um so in a based on a quick Tally what I've got is 15 questions where two or more of you have identified that you are expressing an interest in that so what I'm going to do is I'm going to reference well you have I think there are two questions or three or more so I'm sure you would definitely want to ask that so if you go to your sheet um question number 12 is received three votes from you so I'm sure you're going to want to ask that one and [Music] also there was one board that had three I take it back that was the only one that had three everything else I've got that have at least two of so let me give you the ones that received two questions and then we can figure out um because a couple of those are in the same category you may want to shift some of those around but at least the ones that are in consideration uh question number two which is probably a good introductory question anyways as the candidate comes in so if you're comfortable I would suggest you go ahead and use that um I'm just going to run through the rest of these quickly so you can tick them off and then we can talk through them question number four question number 14 number 26 number 42 number 53 number 60 65 71 79 85 93 94 and 96 so let's just kind of go through the sections to make sure you're comfortable that we've got everything covered that you'd like to ask uh obviously we talked about number two being a good opening question is everybody comfortable with that just as the candada comes in and gives a chance to explain their interest in the position um number four going to background let me let me just ask you to pause for a minute number two I think everybody's pretty much covered covered that uh at least I I pretty much heard every one of the candidates talk about why they're interested in that okay and that can take quite a quite a long lengthy time to answer that so if the other Commissioners and the mayor are comfortable with skipping that question I I think we've heard heard enough from the candidates about that one that's your call we come up we can come up with a different introductory question to your point commissioner absolutely okay commissioner doctor's fine with that commissioner Toth are you okay with that approach okay so as an alternative what I suggest is all the candidates have now been in town for a couple days um maybe the question is hey you've been in town for a couple days tell us about you know your thoughts your impressions just something of that nature because then it's something that isn't necessarily prepared uh they've had a chance to kind of reflect as I mentioned they're they're checking you out as much as you're checking them out so that may be a better question to address so why don't we just say you know please tell us you now that you've been in town for two two a couple days uh tell us about your thoughts and Impressions about what you've seen and heard about Treasure Island very good make sense that's all right okay so we're going to do thoughts impressions okay um all right so the next one in the next category under homework was question number four this is about their background work that they've done uh in advance comfortable with that sure okay and then under the Judgment section question number 12 gets to their style of decision making okay three of you had identified that so I assumed that was of interest to a majority of you mhm can you let us know also if there are any kind of clusters of that's right yeah as I go ones that we all checked off in the same section that we might have have not selected a fin there might not have been a final sure um let me do this first so I can go through the NS that I had two and then I'll go back and say are there any categories we've missed because a number of these each one of you like in one Cate or several categories one of you selected one question in each one but they weren't the same question so let's kind of see where we land if there's other ones that maybe had two or more that we wanted to eliminate um okay so the next one uh that had a couple votes was customer service number 14 yeah good with that um next one down under interpersonal skills was 26 engagement Community stakeholders next category was under the professionalism category question number 53 42 did I miss 42 I'm sorry I thank you commissioner uh you're right 42 under U just building trust and trust with co-workers and staff yeah I think that's a really important one good [Music] okay all right then the next one was question 53 about remaining calm under pressure with everything coming at youh good with that all right uh next one under managing people uh question number 60 how they use their staff okay okay consent there good um next one is under Economic Development number 65 having them kind of explain some development projects what they've done to bring those through to completion you know that one is going to that one is going to be one that could be very uh time consuming when you ask for three major development projects you participated in uh and seeing them through complet I me that could go on and on and on I don't know if there's a way to ask the same question maybe a single sure what do we say a not a notable development project as opposed to three just say please identify a notable one you know significant one in their mind I had selected 67 and 70 because they kind of got a little bit more it's still on the development front but I think something that we could certainly improve on is having specific relationships with people that are interested in developing so I thought that those two got at more so the one onone reach Outreach aspect of that so those are the two in that section that I I had picked to your point uh mayor that one Economic Development and growth management is one where um there was one at least one of you identified each question section then two of you identified the 65 so if there's a desire of the group group because there apparently was some interest in Economic Development by this group is there uh a question that we want to use between 66 and 70 or a morph of several of those questions that you might want to get at because that that's certainly in the same category where there was a lot of interest I'd be interested in number 70 70 yeah yeah i' roll 70 70 work for you okay all right so we'll add that one so we're going to switch that one all the question out of that category will be number 70 so do you still want to do 65 and 70 as I said there was a lot of interest you only use one question just do 70 okay so we're not going to do 65 then okay all right um uh Public Safety um the one for 71 couple of you identified than probably relevant operation given your unique nature here um next one was under adaptability under question number 79 of juggling multiple projects good with that y okay um under board skills number 85 helping a divided governing body achieve a result uh and then under the personal characteristics you had question Number 96 kind of Mak off hours and dynamics of the job 93 that was you that was 93 I missed 93 yep I'm sorry you're right okay um oh I you know what I was referencing that but I called the wrong number my my bad 93 about the voicemails and then uh 94 being the multiple bosses yeah both those good question and then um the last one that had a couple votes was um question 96 about kind of their legacy and their previous position make sense okay all right so let's go back and look at the categories that maybe didn't get represented but had at least some votes in them see if there's anything there we want to swap out um so we don't have anything in and we don't need each of these categories I'm just suggesting how many categories are there um I apologize mayor I don't have that off top of my head we just kind of put a spattering of those there um so there's nothing under change management that each there was uh a vote for 16 and 17 um so you can determine if that's something you want to address or not as I said I'm not forcing categories so can't definitely can't you're not going to get to all them I just yeah just where I'm going to tell you that where there at least was some trust we can talk through it and then if we want to suggest was the first one um so the first one was in change management both 16 and 17 received a vote and where do we stand right now with you're about 15 but we may be swapping some of these out if there's something that you think here that that you really had maybe missed that you'd like to address okay um so um that was a category that had a couple votes in it um next category was in motivation um 21 and 23 both had a vote setting goals and achieving goals we do have the next category [Music] represented um other the diversity category 27 and 30 both received a vote I'm just kind of throwing them out if there's a a strong desire or lobbying by any of you to advance any these so so we'll pick them up if not we'll move on um under problem solving 32 and 34 both received a vote about style in the leadership category 37 and 39 both received a vote I I was the one I voted on 37 and I thought i' you know I'd like to said know that our new city manager would be open to constructive feedback uh and I can't imagine anybody saying no that I'm not open to it uh but I would like to hear people respond to that okay if if possible if we can work that in all right consensus to see if we can do like 39 as well I wasn't the one that circled that one but um I think that's kind of telling I feel like there might be overlap with that and another question let's see if we can get 37 I as I'm going through these mayor I'll see if there's a way calm Under Pressure kind of gets to that um so if you'd if you'd rather use if you like this question rather than the Under Pressure question we could certainly swap those too I think I'm good we can you can keep going okay all right 30 let's come back 37 okay Circle 37 we like to see if we can add that into the mix here then okay all right um the next one that received several questions we don't have any in is under Capital project management 46 47 and 48 both all received one vote okay let's definitely pick one of those then is there a sense of preference between those three and incorporate with that I circled 46 but I could go with any of those like 48 we got a lot of projects that we need to get on track any other thoughts I had circled 47 but I but I I like 48 as well so if if we were going to pick one there I I could go with that as well do that all right try to work 48 into it yeah 48 short sweeten to the point we've got okay um under we talked about Economic Development we already added an extra one there public safety we added um next category where a couple couple questions got uh ticked are under teamwork 7475 feel strongly about either one of those you said 74 and 75 74 and 75 each one received one vote I like 75 better I do too so we do 75 as a possible okay okay all right got next categories um those are the ones that I saw so we added three that did that had that had qu at least some some interest at least in the category the other ones we've all got at least a question in as I recall so that gets us to We haded Three that gets us to 18 questions um I'm okay with that um some of these candidates are going to be quicker than others um you may you know be able to work through it of them there'll be quick responses to um commissioner you're concerned you're they're not going so you're going to get around 15 without a problem uh in in an hour so the way that the way this will work is you've got your schedule for 90 minutes you don't have to take the full 90 if the candidate has resolved all your questions and answer them that's fine but what that does is gives you 60 minutes for the traditional Q&A window um we've asked them to do a 10-minute highle PowerPoint on challenges and opportunities um and so that gets you to 70 minutes and that gives you 20 minutes for some Q&A we always like to ask the candidate to give you a response to be able to ask you some questions as a board as well uh towards the end of the interview so that 90 minutes will feel comfortable it won't feel rushed but some candidates will not need the whole 90 minutes um it all depends on how quickly or verose they may be on a given an answer or if they get caught up on it so um my goal is to make sure you got enough there so that you're you know if you run if you run ahead and there some more you want to learn you've already got some prioritized question questions uh to go forward so I you know if as I say I normally try to get you to between 15 and 20 questions so you're you're at 18 now so I think you're in pretty good shape if you're good with that okay so the other question I want to ask is is there are there things that maybe didn't come up here because all of you may have jotted down some other questions that may be either unique to a given candidate or something that maybe we just didn't suggest as a proposed question that that you'd like to offer so let's kind of talk through those and see where how many of those if any are and then we can figure out you know how that fits into your list I didn't have any I it was very comprehensive but yeah I had put together discussion questions okay that I used in the interviews yesterday okay and they're more specific to the city as opposed to their past gotcha to to Treasure Island you're saying understood okay I'm happy to share these but okay are you um um I can do it either way are you are you comfortable that you got that out of each of the do you ask the same questions to all the candidates in your one-on ones or is that something that are there any of those that you think would be helpful for your colleagues to also hear responses to well what you've asked on most of these questions is tell us about M um what you've done in the past or how you would handle this situation sure and what I did and what I asked is give give um the John's Pass area the development tell us what would you do how would you handle it uh and and like the golf course is another one and tell us some easy questions yeah but but I mean these are real all these are going to come in front of the the next city manager and I'm more interested in how they'd handle that than what they've done in the past okay so okay so the the and that's appropriate because they they've done some research they know the issues that are plan the one thing I would caution you is that they're not going to be in possession of all the information necessarily that you are so just recognizing that yeah that's fine okay but I'm interested in who did yeah okay so um let's talk about so are there are there do any of the so so some of those May relate to Economic Development or project management or something but do it relate specifically to something you that's in play here yep so let me suggest this that because not knowing what your list is but do they generally do they generally touch upon the some of the categories we've already uh We've identified in yeah we might be able to add on add them add some more details to the question and say like our Economic Development one is please provide some examples of how you have targeted developers and businesses to drive Economic Development and how would you envision doing that in some of our areas that are in need of Economic Development here in Treasure Island like downtown John's Pass club that that's how I would suggest we do it and that could be a followup after they make maybe identified something if you want to have them elaborate on or spe a particular project here um I think that's the best way to incorporate that and I think given the nature these are all significant you know obviously projects that you've got in play so I think there'll be an opportunity to do a follow up on that one commissioner if that works okay okay are there other um you need it no okay are those the main things so we have those development opportunities but any other I like the situational um here I'll pass in the in the category down categories of leadership and teamwork we really kind of bypassed that and did not uh have anything there and I I really do believe that you know since this person's going to be the CEO of the city that we need to have uh something about leadership okay sure uh and teamwork for our own internal staff to understand understand you know what kind of manager you're going to be what you know you know what policies do you follow something along the disciplines and everything else that's going to be there I think it is important that our staff who has met with the with each of the candidates as well you know understands you know kind of what the uh the style if nothing else is uh so leading uh or leaving off all the leadership and teamwork questions probably isn't the best thing to do I think at least one question in there about style or about you know performance how do you evaluate performance needs to be there so commissioner on that category are you on the leadership starting with question number 36 is that the CATE that the one or is okay gotcha so we did we we did add 37 um okay 38 really gets to kind of managing people that might have different thoughts and opinions within the team is that does that get to where you're at 37 is more of a individual type thing right um 38 does kind of broaden it to uh the the group that is being managed so I know commissioner Dicky you are advocating 37 so I'll I'll let you guys kind of talk through this if you or as I say um about 20 is the most you're going to get you're at 18 you can add it if you want and and you can decipher as we get closer to the timing if you got time to ask both of those questions or if you're going to prioritize between the two well let's pick one from that area I know we had 39 was a another selection how you handle people once again it's I'm good with any of these it focuses more on an individual I would like to see the communication and style and how it uh pertains to the entire staff the organization so if you wanted to add um um is there one of the communication ones because yeah those are all really pointed at individuals and not as as staff me get to communication see if we can reward something for you if that gets to what you're looking for commissioner teamw work uh communication is on what page here yeah it may be that uh if we go to teamwork uh number 7475 we have 75 on the list right I thought we had we do have 75 on the list okay so you okay with 75 just leaving that one supposed to adding and this 62 which is involving subordinates in planning decision making facilitating and process Improvement yeah and that's one that I had marked that more than but 62 I performance feedback I have one yeah I can tell you that I do know CU I the um question number 60 was asked of the candidates yesterday during the staff meetings or the staff interactions um that was stff so if you wanted to ask a different question from them um you know of that category um that could get you to 62 or that was 62 or 64 were both identified as at least one one one of you had had had selected in that category switching I I circled 60 originally but I'm fine with anything in that category if we want to switch it 62 yeah I had 62 yeah I had 60 62 and 64 all being selected was 60 having two votes the other two receiving one vote so it's really your call which one so 62 instead of 60 I I had the 60 62 but I think that 62 probably I'm going to kill myself let's suggest this if you go with 62 let's make this a two-parter and this way we can pick up uh commissioner um Dicky's comment we talked about performance feedback why don't we say let's ask the first part of that tell you how you've dealt with performance or how you've dealt with constructive feedback and then second of all the second part of that question should be how have you dealt with performance or how do you deal with your staff the question of 62 basically and how you how you measure their performance and address that that makes sense so the first part of 6 2 is going to be um how the candidate is dealt with constructive feedback and then after they've answered that then the 62 the question is stated would be the the second part of the question that make sense sure are we keeping 60 or scratching yeah I mean 60 talks about uh how you handle subordinates facilitating process Improvement it's a lot of feedback type stuff is is going to come out of it but uh I do like 60 as well and you had 60 if we could take 60 and kind of ask 60 and maybe follow up with the 62 as the second part if they don't uh address it um if we delete the other yes cuz 60 was already part of our our list so if we if we ask 60 and then we eliminate the one specifically just on on the candidate constructive feedback and mor it into 62 you'll still be okay in your numbers okay okay so we're going to go ahead and we're going to we're going to keep 60 and we're going to add 62 as a two-parter now right yeah okay all right are you going to kind of consolidate these and while the first person's speaking or I can get with your staff typically what we do Bayer is I'm going to reread these numbers and to so that you can you've got you get a list if you want to just circle them that's normally how we do it as opposed to having to get another set of of questions to you before the first first candidate goes forward but maybe we can do is in the meantime as the first can is going I can work with Jessica and we can see if we can get these brought down we can eliminate the other ones who asked the questions so that that I was going to let me let me just go through the questions first make sure everybody's got the right the the questions so the ones we've landed now on are question number two question number four number 12 number 14 26 um 37 we're we're striking because we're we're going to add that into later Point okay so the next one after that then is number 42 39 Oh I didn't have 39 I'm sorry I didn't have that one marked I only had one vote on that one we had talked about 37 and 39 but didn't ever really come back to them that's yeah I'm sorry I thought we landed on 37 my apologies if I missed that um let's go if you want to add 39 I think I think we're okay in numbers way we've done this in my head but we'll double check these but let's go ahead and add 39 so 37 39 um 42 48 53 um I think we we did we leave 60 on the asking subordinates okay 60 okay 62 was added and that's the constructive feedback that's the first part of the constructive feedback and then the second piece is the question of 62 that the one we're merging right there's one that's a two-parter um number 65 and that's now changed to name a notable major development project not projects I thought we were going to do 70 instead of that yeah did to and add on the notable or oh you want to merge 70 and reference our development opportunities here in Treasure Island and how they Envision handling them all right so let's do this then if you wanted to I think we can get it to rephrase that then on 70 let's talk about some examples how they targeted it and then the second part of that is talk us through the project that that Su that you successfully landed and and the steps you went through to make that work in other words carrying it from how I've targeted the development and then what I did after they've expressed interest and we brought it into fruition in a community I think what commissioner minning was suggesting was adding on so we want to know how they targeted developers in the past they'll talk about their past experience there but then how would you apply a similar philosophy to our unique development opportunities here in Treasure Island including downtown John's Pass and the yach club okay so if we do it there so we would um so that does that mean you're not going to ask 65 then corre okay so we're going to scratch 65 and then we're going to go 70 which is going to be the first part of that question is stated and then the followup is talk us talk to us about some of these projects how walk us through that philosophy and your style as it relates to St John's Pass OR Redevelopment your downtown whatever the case would be okay all right gotcha all right so we still got so 70 is in 70 65 is out um 711 75 79 85 93 94 and 96 right [Music] 11 14 15 16 so I've got 19 if my my math adds up right so I think we're in good shape all right so what we'll do um for at least for your first candidate because we won't have time to do this for for um for Chuck as he comes in but I'll work with Jessica and we'll get you a clean set of questions with only the ones that you've identified and I'll work out the the wording that we've talked through here that be great um all right so in response to your other question mayor what we typically do uh if you're comfortable with this approach bring the candidate in um I suggest you might you know obviously welcome them uh thank them for their participation um then you can move into um the very first question if you want to just give them a chance to kind of get settled into this into the seat and that's the question about you've been here for a couple days First Reactions Impressions things of that nature just to kind of get situated we normally recommend you move from there directly into the PowerPoint presentation because some of the questions that they uh that you may be asking may be in or they may be touching upon in their PowerPoint so it's a lot easier to kind of do that earlier and then they can refer back to it if if need be as opposed to hey do you want me to talk about that now or do you want me to talk about it during your presentation so my recommendation is after you asked the initial question allow the candidate to do their PowerPoint um they've all been instructed this is anticipated to be no more than a 10-minute presentation um as such then I'm going to ask you not to ask any questions when they're doing the presentation otherwise it throws the whole timing off when they're done with the presentation then um you're welcome to address any question of what they've just said because you haven't seen that part yet that's the one piece you've yet to see um and then after that then I would suggest you just go through a rotation of questions just go back and forth just work your way down the list so that you kind of know where you're at in the process and I'll make sure all the candidates know we have around 18 or 20 questions that are likely to be asked what I'll try to do is play clock keeper for you um so so we're scheduled for 90 minutes so at about 45 minutes in inclusive of the 10-minute PowerPoint I'll just say hey we're about halfway there um if we get to about an hour I'll also give a heads up if I get a natural break to give you an idea that we're about an hour into this session and then certainly if we get to the point where there's still 15 minutes left I'll try to say hey can you make this last question we'd like to allow the candidate to ask you some questions as a panel and I try to provide them about 15 minutes I may not need all those breaks depending on how quickly the candada goes but I'll just try to make sure that you don't have to worry about managing the clock I'll do that for you that make sense sure so we'll be taking alternating asking the question I suggest it's it's a long day if only one person is asking the question this way you're all kind of into it we've agreed mayor since we've agreed on the questions I'm fine with Doug asking the questions uh because he'll ask him consistently and then we don't have to figure out okay who's going to ask you know which questions am I'm going to do the odd ones you're going to do the even ones that kind of stuff I I you know I'm fine with you asking those questions since we've agreed collectively what uh what those are if if you're it it's really your call I just all I can tell you is it's a long day if you're all just sitting there receiving as opposed to getting into it but you know I'll follow your lead whichever way the preference of the commission is I think it would be helpful to have them like actually the wording worked out if we're going to ask them so that we're consistent in how we ask them we only have a couple that were kind of that we had made changes to so I can ask those if okay want to like Star those and then the ones that we don't have any other ones we alternate through how about how about we do this I do think it's we're the ones interviewing them Doug is interviewing them so I'd prefer for us to ask the questions um all that's that's fine I just if we if we think we could work through candidate number one I can make sure the wording is together I just won't have it given the timing since we've added some things here I'm going to need a little time to pound those out and get what Jessica to get the print out so if you can kind of get through question if you're stuck on a given area and you want me to address it that we've morphed it I'm more than glad I'm going to be in the room I can certainly address that for you if you want some assistance on it but the only two that we've kind of changed the wording on are number two and 70 I believe right thought we scratched too yeah changed to what are your thoughts and Impressions after visiting for a few days yeah and I think the way you you stated that that would be fine but we did 62 didn't we didn't we do that a flipflop so walk through let's walk through that okay so question number 62 what we're doing if you took if you if you want to take the wording of question number 37 um and then after you've asked 37 you're going to then roll into yeah 62 so you can use the exact wording you're just making two questions but you're putting them together yeah I have 60 and 62 starred as ones we were going to ask and then we were going to cons thought I thought we my my notes had me striking 60 and we were now combining the two questions into 62 I'm misunderstood what you were trying to get there you I tell you what you still as I said if you have 20 Questions you're okay okay if you want to leave 60 alone we can leave 60 that'll get you to 20 CU you're at 19 questions so okay so you want to now leave 60 in leave in and then 62 is the combined questions so tell us about a time when someone gave you constructive feedback Y and then a time that you've provided feed back to feed back to someone else okay that make sense okay and we are now and we are going to leave 60 in is what I'm thinking I'm hearing you say mayor right yeah okay all right you're still you're still in your 20 Questions you're in good shape okay all right I will ask that one so I'll ask 62 and number two and otherwise we'll alternate okay does that make sense start here and we'll go down that way and come back sound good all right does everyone have a everyone have them all start the ones that we were asking and as I I'll work with Jessica we'll get you a clean setting that way you don't have extraneous questions on it Doug early on uh when we first sat down you asked if we had any individual questions uh that we wanted to ask that weren't on here and I do have some personalized ones on each of the candidates okay uh that I that I held that didn't talk to him and ask him those questions yesterday because I wanted to uh save them for that but I have one or two individualized questions that aren't on that were you were we going to work those in or let's um not knowing the nature of those I assume it's about something in their background or there something their or is it about kind of perspective what's kind of the nature of the question something in their background uh like like on uh Anderson it's a he had mentioned that he was working on project management certification and I just wanted to know if he completed that got that certification just I I would suggest um some of that may come forward in the in the nature of the conversations in terms of development or something and not knowing which ones you got but if if you need a followup and you want to ask something in particular I suggest just weaving into a follow-up question um based on something that not knowing what all youve got but there's likely a window just in the nature of the things we're talked about you're probably going to be able to to elaborate on something like that that make sense CL I'm good with that thank you okay all right all right um are you prepared for any other questions before we get started uh as I can get Chuck ready and the only other piece I've got for it is do we have a clicker for the uh candidates so that they they're likely to stand during their PowerPoint presentations that's what most candidates feel more comfortable out than sitting um I just want to make sure they're set but if you give me a chance I'll go out and get Chuck unless there's any other questions you want me to address before we get started so they'll do the PowerPoint and then we go into the questions yes yeah okay opening question from the mayor reaction 24 you know been here a couple days PowerPoint and then work your way through your and during The Question Answer they can be seated yeah yeah I'll yeah typically they can sit down it's a long time to standing for 90 minutes yeah so although we forced them through that for a couple hours last night so okay you good yeah all right let me go ahead and get cheuck all set here then and then they're doing their 10-minute presentation no no just your first question about 2 you've been here for a couple days then they do then we do the rest of the EnV questions yep okay yep that'll work okay e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e thoughts and impressions are on Treasure Island Impressions um if you can turn the degree temperature of the water up a little bit I'd appreciate that for the swims that would be most welcome yeah um thank you mayor I appreciate the opportunity for the question and Commissioners I um my my first impressions have been nothing but impressive so far you know between City staff meeting with the Commissioners and the mayor and the warmth and the greetings from the people at at the bmar from the people I've talked to on the streets um the young man that I talked to in Publix the other day for about 10 minutes just to get a feel for who he is and how long he's been here I mean it there's some good people here good and it's a great Community you know I'm impressed with the operations that are going on with City staff the things that they're doing that they've done and that they're undertaking and I've had nothing but professional interactions with with them so it's been nothing but positive so far there has not been any negative whatsoever yeah I I do love the community I got out again this morning I got a little walk on the beach I didn't take a swim yet though today I'm going to jump in later but perfect but it's good thank you all right thank you very much well just for the Public's benefit who may be um here in the audience or watching online uh the first part of our candidates um presentation is going to be a a presentation on their kind of draft first year plan of what they would do as city manager if selected so I will turn it over to you and it's a 10-minute presentation thank you mayor Payne and Commissioners good morning mayor Payne Commissioners City staff and community members my name is Chuck Anderson and I would like to present to you the first year plan challenges and opportunities I have my slides broken down into time frames some key goals and also some actions and what I would like to start with is just to say that you will not see everything in this slide deck or have read in my first year plan that is is encompassing in a firste plan I would probably need six to eight hours to talk about every component that could go into a first year plan so what I'd like to do is just talk about the most prevalent things that are most important but let you know that I'm not leaving things out intentionally or that things will be overlooked I would focus on three pillars the commission the community and the city staff I would need to as part of my key goals understand the city's current state its key issues and the stakeholder expectations and how do you do that that's the action part you know I would meet with the city commission I would prefer to do it initially in an open session and I would like you to identify your priorities as you would see for me if I was selected as your city managers EXC me as your city manager you know I'd like to meet with the department heads as a group first and then establish one-on-one meeting meetings with them and Community leaders individuals who are in the community who have concerns about the community who want to help the community be better and move forward you know those are the people that I want to meet with you know for example I'd like to meet with the uh the Chamber of Commerce president or CEO you know for example school superintendent in the area yeah individuals like that individuals who will have an influence with our community and people who are concerned about the community today's June 20th so there's two things that are prevalent on my mind hurricane season and budget season we're in the middle of both of those and so those are at the Forefront I need to understand the city's Emergency Management posture our hurricane preparedness make sure I understand the comprehensive emergency management plan the city Charter and I'm also going to be taking a look at the city's Financial Health when the manager does come in you'll be close to almost the new fiscal year which starts in one October but having an understanding about the revenues and the expenses and the CIP is very important I'd also start immersions where I would get out to the locations where the people operate and where they work from you know make sure I'm walking around in the city hall to see how people are operating and what they're doing and to find out the status of projects there's a number of projects that are under being undergone right now and also that are on the docket for coming up shortly in the future you've got the the master transfer station you've got um the public safety complex the Public Works complex you know you've got the living Shoreline piece and the golf course and those are just a few off the top of my head you know and the last item under actions there is to initiate and build engagement you know I want to participate in the local events that go on to to get to know the community and to understand the community attend Civic events community group meetings and do a little bit of management by walking around and that's that bottom line there that mbwa what I don't have on there but I would like to include is it's also important for the city manager city manager to establish a good work life balance you know the city manager in their role it it's not a 100 yard dash it's a marathon so you want to make sure that you're pacing yourself through these things but you're also setting the right example because if staff sees you working 68 hours a week they'll think that that's the normal pace and what you want to do is set the right example so people understand that you have to achieve a good work life balance sometimes that you'll work more hours than you think you have to but there's other times when you can actually throttle back a little bit because because achieving that balance is important when I move into the 60-day realm you want to have a deeper understanding of them or excuse me I would like to have a deeper understanding of the municipal operations formulate the short-term strategies but also take another more thorough look at the major projects you know the projects are held up by timelines and financially and to get a good understanding of where we are with that project components is very important the project I mentioned projects I mentioned before plus other s you know it's important to understand where we are arpa for example if you're going to use those Federal monies they have to be expended by 31 December of this year so we want to make sure we're not going to lose any of that grant money or federal money that we have achieved I'm also going to begin initial stages of some strategic planning you know we have a comprehensive plan that was done last year so I'm sure Land Development code updates will need to be done and so I want to take a look at what we're doing from aligning the goals with the comprehensive plan you know going to continue to take a look at the city's Financial Health and continue to build upon that internal and external engagement as I move into the 90-day realm you know you're going to take a look and I'm going to take a look pardon me on implementing the initial improvements there's some things that you can see that might be easy wins to do and to implement you know as you're assessing within the first 60 to 90 days and from when you hit the ground you taking a look at how operations are going and some things might just need a simple little tweak it seems like most things would be running well already but there's nothing wrong with taking a look at them taking a look and see if they can be improved upon I'd like to facilitate a team building event with the department heads and it would be an off-site team building event everything I've looked at so far and what I've seemed to see you've got a great department head team it's how do I integrate into that team if I'm selected as the manager and I'd like to do that as an offsite you know you take a look at your manual key manuals and policies to see if they need to be updated or changed and I'd like to engage the commission and ask them about do you do in celebrations for incorporation dates treasure ISM was incorporated May 5th 1955 it'll be 70 years next may you know is that something that you celebrate or do you do that in 25 year increments and you know in my first 90 days that's something that I would approach the commission on and ask them I'm going to continue the public engagement and host town halls and we can even take the town halls or forums and focus on particular subjects Elevate TI the city's budget Economic Development you know we can pick subjects and have Town Halls to reach out to the community when I moved into the first 180 days I expand on the leadership role that I have and the dve driving the project Milestones you know take a look at the metrics that we're measuring within the city this isn't going to be the beginning of when I'm going to start looking at the metrics but maybe it's a time when I'm going to start evaluating how we're doing it measuring and what we're measuring you know you're taking a look at are they key are they the right metrics and are we using the right tools to report them and what are the those metrics saying we're going to close out hurricane season and we'll have that 30 November time frame in there but and what's important is you want to capture your Lessons Learned you know hopefully there's no lessons that need to be captured this year but if there are we want to make sure that we document them from a historical preference so that people have an idea of what had happened and so you have them for going on future use and future hurricane Seasons I will have already have touched based with the Florida county City City management association because we'll have the legislature meeting the following March and there could be pending litigation or pending items that do come up that could affect the city so what are those items you know those are the things that I want to know and again this wouldn't be I would wait till the 180 day to do the daytime frame to do this but that is something that would be done I'd like to give the commission a six-month how's it going report things that I looked at what I wanted to do from when I arrived here you know and then my status on how it's been what I've accomplished or what I've not been able to accomplish take a look at promoting or initiating professional development opportunities for staff firsttime supervisors how to have difficult conversations performance evaluations you know how do you train your replacement so you have succession planning in place second Bullet From The Bottom is one of the goals that you have in your strategic plan about environmental stewardship and sustainability you know it's important for this community to be able to track that and we want to take a look and provide an update to the commission on where we are having to do with our environmental stewardship and our initiatives and finally I think we will have a city of Treasure Island employee of the a year they need to be recognized and that needs to be celebrated you know there's one person I think that's selected from all the staff and they are recognized as that person and it's appropriate to make sure that the community knows who they are remaining six months I Look to solidify long-term strategies that we put into place take a look at the key initiatives and make sure we're making sustained progress on those initiatives I'd like to engage the commission on strategic planning your plan is complete in 2025 if everything is completed does commission want to have an addendum to the plan do they want to do a whole new planning session and start a whole new strategic plan if so that's something that we would need to have a discussion on I'm going to continue to engage and increase and maintain stakeholder collaboration and promote a culture of continuous impr Improvement and Innovation with City staff in conclusion I would just like to say flexibility is key to a firste plan because you can't anticipate everything you can have a plan and you can put it in place but something could affect it a day later an hour later you know my presentation I sent it off to Doug 15 minutes later I thought of something I wish I included you know you can just adapt it just like that you can't anticipate everything and when I transitioned from Colorado to Montana you know I went from a public works director to a deputy city manager and I went from a a smaller Community to a semi large small or excuse me larger community of about 60,000 people it was a a different Dynamic from one Community to the next and you and I had to prepare myself and I did my research to make sure that I understood what was going to be some of my challenges when I went to Montana you know and I prepared by looking at their doc documents their briefings their budgets presentations watching meetings and such and and I bring that up because when I looked at the uh position here at Treasure Island I I know that there is a a desire to have a manager with some Coastal management experience and I don't have Coastal management experience in my background but what I do have in my background is I've evacuated from hurricanes and typhoons before when I lived in Florida up in Fort Walton Beach and when I lived in Guam when I lived in Hampton Roads Virginia Hurricane Irene hit in 2011 and we had coastal flooding and storm surge like I had never seen and I was working in an EOC and in an EOC Capac emergency Operation Center capacity so I have those experiences but I don't have that direct coastal manager experience that was referred to in in the brochure if I was hired as their next city manager I do have a commitment that I would like to state that I would lead Treasure Island through its opportunities and challenges I would regularly review City operations show appreciation and be recognizable to City staff and also to the community I'd like the community to know who the city manager is I want to collaborate collaborate collaborate and communicate communicate communicate I think those are six seeds that are very prevalent and very important for a city manager to be successful so I'd like to say thank you mayor Payne Commissioners at City staff and this has been a great experience up to this point and I'm sure it will be good after this I just want to say I appreciate the time I appreciate the effort and the hosting that the community has done for me I appreciated last night meeting community members and getting to know them will be my goal thanks perfect thank you very much well done all right well we will move into our um some we have some interview questions prepared you're welcome to yeah take a seat thank you it's a long time to be standing up um so we're going to we have some preset questions that we're going to ask all the candidates and we're going to rotate through the commission to ask those so you don't have to hear my voice all morning um so we'll start um and vice mayor doctor can ask our first question it's clear that I'm sorry it's clear that uh that you've done a lot of research uh on the city and on the position uh so in doing your homework for these sessions what have you learned about the city of Treasure Island its organization and were their answer prizes it was I found most interesting how Treasure Island it came to be um you know when somebody or excuse me a couple of gentlemen and and I don't recall their names and putting some treasure in the beach and a Gentleman who built it built the first hotel here I think was Coney Island and what did they say he purchased the land for maybe a dollar and a quarter per Acres or something along those line but but and it makes me think like wow you know to have the forethought of something like that that long ago would be amazing you know what I've found so far with Treasure Island is just you've got a very well run organization from what I see from a from a city manager perspective you know the the Departments and the collaborativeness between them it is very good you know they respect each other they work well together um after talking to the Commissioners yesterday and walking around the community and going to certain locations you know and talking to committee or excuse me um community members last night you know there there's some things there that you know I think people would like to see and you know I had a few individuals approach me and having to to want to talk Economic Development and they were talking about a few items that they thought that you know opportunities for the city and opportunities to the city maybe to do public private partnership U where the city could work reach out maybe extend an offer to you know see how we can enhance what we have and develop some of those areas for example uh is it John's Pass OR Clock Tower you know those areas right there th those are ripe for development you know and just how do we get the right development in there you know I think that would be key I there are some uh amazing places along the beach here and you've got a beautiful beach front and the hotels and and the Condominiums are you know first rate the people seem to be First Rate and they're enjoyed continually so how do you enhance those things while taking a look at the opportunities and challenges that are ahead you know whether it comes to you know parking you know or taking a look from parking Economic Development initiatives being run for having to to do with the elevation of the sea level you know there's a lot of things that can be undertaken to help and assist the city thank you okay all righty um as you were doing your homework for these sessions what have you learned about the city of Treasure Island that's the one we just I'm sorry my bad sorry it's our first ear it's still coffee yet I think I need more coffee do you tend to make decisions quickly and instinctively or more slowly and methodically tell us about a time when your method did not achieve the results you expected and what happened no I do not make decisions uh if you know right off kneecap event I'll come up with what I think might be a viable solution and think a problem through a little bit before I come to a decision I do like to solicit input on decisions because I'll be the first person to say I'm not the smartest person in the room you know and I often use people as sounding boards to find out perspective IV that I may not have considered um when I'm approached with a problem what I like to do is I think I'll formulate it through my head and I think I have a a solution for it but I'll then engage people that I consider you know trusted advisers or people that who I think are very good at you know thought Solutions and and work with them and talk to them and bounce things off them because I would like them to constructively criticize what I'm thinking just to create a better answer and a better solution um when you mentioned one time when I was trying to undergoing an initi and it didn't go through when I was stationed or excuse me when I lived in Steamboat Springs Colorado I had hired an airport manager and the airport manager was uh a very difficult position it was a general aviation airport it was called Bob Adams and it was a small staff of about five people and the individual had come in and uh he had minimal experience and and so I was working with the individual you know almost on a weekly basis as we were talking and you know having our weekly meetings and and and it came up that he wasn't passing on information to his staff and so I started digging into that a little bit and I found out that two of the staff members had not been able to you know reenroll how they wanted to reenroll for um their medical benefits and so I went and talked to the staff members and they said that know they didn't know that it was an open period for that and I know I had passed that on in a couple of the staff meetings that I had had so I started digging in more with the with the airport manager and uh come to find out that he really was just holding all the information back and not passing anything onto his staff and so I tried to talk to him a little bit about that and you know talk to him about building a team and he wasn't very open to hearing what I had to say so um instead of going into engaging with him I I grabbed a book called The Five dysfunctions of a team and I gave him a copy of the book and I told him by the next week he needed to read the first three chapters and we were going to come back and talk about them and he he said so you're giving me a homework assignment and I said yes and he's like well I what if I don't do it and I said that would be your choice I'm recommending that you do it I'm trying to help you work through this you know the importance of a team you know can't be understated and having your people trust you and and allow you to communicate with them is Paramount and quite honestly it's in your job description so if you're not ready to do it's in your job description we'll just have to have a further discussion and will involve HR unfortunately I worked with the individual for about another month and it it was hit or miss on being able to read the chapters and have good discussions after that and unfortunately I had to let him go but when I did let him go I immediately hired a uh it was a female Coast Guard pilot who is still there today and is probably the most one of the most phenomenal leaders I've ever met before and she jumped into that position and she wor the first thing she did was get with the folks and say what do I need to do how do I need to talk to you and and it works and and I still stay in touch with her and she's doing very well but thank you for asking the question thank you uh tell us about the most difficult citizen encounter that you've experienced and how you handled it I haven't had many citizen encounters I'm only kid I've had a few and normally they have but when my boss is away and so I'm sitting in as a city manager and that's usually when everybody wants to I don't want to say come out of the woodwork but yeah that's when everybody's going to come out and you know they think that there's you know time and opportunity we have a gentleman um in our community that uh is a continual um a a continual attendee at our city commission meetings um and he's not a positive contributor to the uh to the meetings he's quite disruptive um and it's it's good I don't go into names or anything like that but but what he does is he continually comes in and almost to the point of where there's a a beratement a little bit that's directed toward the commission but occasion onto staff and when it happened one time in a commission meeting I just addressed the gentleman and said if we could step outside we could have a discussion about that but I'm not going to sit here and let you berate City staff that is unacceptable you know and so the mayor and I went outside and had a discussion with the individual the mayor asked me if I had it I did he left went back inside and continued the meeting but um the encounter with the citizen it was a a growing frustration not at the city overall but more at the legal system because he had had an unfortunate accident where he lost a limb and it he was not happy with what had happened from the legal system and he just used the the city commission meetings to get out there and talk to Citizens about being smart about the uh about how to defend yourself in the public you know how to make sure that um you're not taken advantage of and you know it was uncomfortable because it was probably a 15 or 20 minute discussion and it was it it got animated not from my side but from his because I think he was pretty upset something had recently happened and I think it had to do with um a member of his family and so so that's probably the toughest engagement that I've had with the citizen thank you thank you I'm next good morning good morning tell us about how you have engaged with Community stakeholders in your current and your previous post Community stakeholders got it you know when you say stakeholders you know there's you know when you look at a definition of a stakeholder it can be anybody who's affected or is is responsible in the spectrum of something you're trying to do do you know it could be somebody that is a fellow that you're looking to work with to implement something um it could be you could have a change in your Billing System for your water your water rates and you know a stakeholder is going to be somebody who's on the recipient of the bill or it could be the company that is helping to implement that um how I find the best way to work with stakeholders is kind of to to have a an open hand approach of can we sit down and have a conversation I engage with stakeholders basically in any form when I got to Great Falls in the deputy city manager position and when I was in Steamboat Springs and before that in my military career I kind of had what was called an open door policy you know the open door policy was like if you needed something that we needed to talk about you know please come see me but at the same time I also reach out to people such as our previous the commission I work for and work with now um and City staff is I asked them how they' like to be communicated with you know not everybody has the same communication methods some people like emails some people like texts other people prefer face Toof face so when you say stakeholders I work with our downtown Redevelopment group you know and there's a monthly meeting that they have attend the monthly meetings um during Co it was dialing in through in teams meetings or Zoom meetings with them so how I engage with folks is it's it doesn't matter how the engagement is done as long as the engagement is being completed you know because you want to work with stakeholders to figure out what is the best mutual proposition that can be reached for the betterment of the community thank you all right how have you handled people who are difficult to get along with and describe a situation in which you were effective in getting a difficult person to cooperate explain what you did that made the difference thank you for the question you when I when I think about a difficult person and a situation and how I handled it you know I had mentioned the a the airport manager that I had in Steamboat Springs previously but another item that comes to mind is uh when I was in the military I had a uh a civilan who was uh who worked with our command team and they were working with us on trying to understand how we were going to be implementing what was called Joint basing so what joint basing is is we were taking two separate military installations and forming their support structure into to be supported by one base so we were taking an Air Force base and an army base and two different cultures and two different thought ideologies and processes and figuring out through a series of actions and plans which service could provide um that support to both bases for the most economical means so as we were doing this we were working with individuals from Fort usus the army base and from Langley Air Force Base and we were bringing them together there was an individual who's a civilian that I was working with and I say civilian as a civil service he worked for the federal government he was a what they call a GS and the individual was adamant um an adamant proponent of the um the one service being able to provide service as in branch of military service being able to provide the service they were providing in the most economical means and unfortunately he didn't have good data or good information and it in a few of the meetings that we had he got up and was publicly displaying his displeasure with how everything was not being done according to um the most economical means and that the Air Force was trying to take over the Army and so it got it it dissolved or devolved from a conversation where we're supposedly mutually working together to where we had an individual starting accusing people of one service or another where there's people in the room who were on both services and we started to divide the room you so I confronted the individual and said that you know we needed to take a break um my boss and I took the individual outside we took a 10-minute break in the middle of the meeting and we brought them outside and we talked to the individual and just explained to them about the process and the procedures you go through to determine the economical benefit you know you in the business plan in the analysis that each side was supposed to provide the one that he had provided was not accurate and we were able to point out in his in his methodology where he was wrong so we didn't want to do it in front of everybody else but we did it in a one-on-one setting and it and it took them about 10 minutes to calm down and we finally got back into the room and and we were able to proceed with what we were doing and and in the end fast tracking you know we were ined we ended up doing the Joint Base about 3 months early saved about 15 or 17 million but that one episode sticks out in my head because that gentleman was just he just would not did not want to hear anything and even after showing him the facts and pointing the items out to him in his methodology you know he still was hesitant to understand and to agree but in the end he did and it did work out okay thank you I'm not sure how much responsibility you have currently for for capital projects but we're I'm going to ask you a capital projects question okay um tell us about the steps that you have taken to get a capital project back on track when it was at risk of not being completed on uh on time so I have a little story if I could uh entertain you with that so in the community of Great Falls we had an nitorum and our Natatorium was our only indoor swimming facility um it was built over a uh I'm trying to think of the right word here it's not it's not a creek it's um well it was built over running water in in in aquafer and occasionally the aquafer would change places and and move and it upset the concrete and the foundation within the natatorium so we we occasionally had leakage into the natatorium and so we didn't have money within the capital Improvement budget to actually fix it so we just kind of you know had it along and kept it going because it was our only facility um eventually about 6 months after I had gotten to Great Falls the facade on the front of the building fell off you know so if you can picture about a 10 by 30 foot piece of just bricks just falling off the front of the building and and that's when we just said okay we can't let people in here anymore so we had to condem condemn the building you know that that hurt for a lot of reasons because it was the only indoor swimming facility and children used it for for swimming lessons over the winter and it was the only place for the swim team to practice the high school did have a um a swimming pool but it wasn't always available so what we did was uh I I worked with a few of our departments and we pursued getting a Department of Defense Grant from for from them for $10 million to build a new Aquatics and recreation facility we have a recreation center within our town that's probably 50 years old we haven't had the the money to really keep the upkeep on it or anything and we haven't had any Capital Improvements done to it so it's just been deteriorating deteriorating over time and so that that was becoming an isore so we pursued the dod Grant in order to um to build a new Aquatic Center and what we did at the same time was we moved the recreation center from where it is currently and we combined that to an Aquatics and Recreation Center after we applied for the grant we went to back to the public and to the commission and said we wanted to use Park maintenance District money in order to fund our match money for the grant which was $10 million ourselves so the community came up with $10 million and the Department of Defense came up with $10 million so when we did that um we put out an RFP and we got an RFP back for it to be built and then covid hit and so what happened when Co hit we had gotten the RFP in but Supply chains just kind of froze and the project was at a stall State um the contractor that did pick up the project project um we actually had worked with him and worked with him not only to for Manpower but to solicit supplies and equipment and parts that we needed to start the inground construction because we had a timeline with the Department of Defense that we needed to break ground within 90 days and make our first Improvement and if we didn't make our first Improvement then we couldn't keep the Grant and so we worked and devised a way to extend a water line over to the project area um and and it took a little bit of work I worked with the public works director very intimately to make sure that you know we were extending the waterline it was appropriate it met the requirements of the grant we were checking with the federal agencies um the Department of Defense that it would meet our intent for the 90day requirement to break ground and to start performing on on the facility you know that would meet the grant requirement and so we had stalled for a bit because of covid but we did figure out a way to bring the project back online and June 28th of this year which is within our timeline to open before July we are having our ribbon cutting on that project and it's a $22 million facility it's got an eight Lane lap pool it's got an aquatic side for children an indoor slide I and it's got Recreation all all types of recreation for adults and youth and we open up before the end of the month and that getting the project back on track and working with the Departments and being led from the park and wreck department to keep that project on track after was just it was enjoyable to see that through I can't wait to see the ribbon cutting great thank you thanks I'm on 53 right here okay remain remaining calm under extreme pressure is a difficult skill for many people tell us about a situation where you were able to do so I'm sitting here right now and my toes are going a mile a minute because I'm trying to whittle off the excess energy yeah remaining calm Under Pressure wow that's a great question um in in my uh former career when I was in the military I uh had deployed to the Philippines or actually okay I was I went to the Philippines because while there was operations going on in the Middle East over at um in sections of the Middle East there's also operations that were going on um in the Pacific Peninsula uh the Philippines being an area where there was um insurgence who were um acting out um and against certain religious groups and the unit that I was attached to at the time was uh was tasked to deploy some forces to an ongoing operation um and when I hit the ground down there and it you know we we went in by airplane to a private airf field um but when I got there an individual um approached the gate and pulled out a 9 millimeter gun and started shooting at people and so at first I didn't understand what was going on and then I was like oh my gunfire you know we got to take cover and took cover and and thank goodness the people I were with were much more experienced than I was you know at dealing with those types of situations they had been specifically trained for that you know where I wasn't I was a communication guy I was an IT guy radio guy and you know these were you know special forces in greenbury gentlemen that I was working with and you know trying to assess the situation and listen to what they were telling me and keep composure you know was pretty difficult initially and you know we didn't have that happen again there at that location but on another deployment that had happened at a front gate um again at a different location in the Middle East you know a few years apart from that and but what had happened previously had kicked back in and and I just remember some of the words that the gentleman told me and gave me the guidance as this was going on so thank you for the question thank you I think this is one of those combined questions I'll give it I'll give it my best shot I'm you're good a 60 okay uh as it is shock tell tell us how you've involved subordinates in planning decision making facilitating and process Improvement and and if you could give a specific example please sure K so when I was in Steamboat Springs Colorado um and and I apologize I might have told one of the Commissioners this story already um what I had been involved in so I was the Public Works director there and I oversaw the city Engineers office office and the engineers and there was a section of our our Main Street downtown was at State Highway us40 and one block over from our main street of us40 was Yampa Street and Yampa Street was adjacent to the Yampa river which was one of the you know the treasured prizes within Steamboat Springs Colorado and and it's used for world class trout fishing um kaying Recreation so but the community is very sensitive to any impact on water quality um and and as is all of Colorado but it's very particular there in that stretch around Steamboat Springs because of the fishing capability but also because of the recreation that can be had so there was an old plan that had come up for revitalizing Yampa Street and Yampa Street was um kind of a mix of established older businesses that you know didn't always have wasn't always open every single day day but it had been community members that had been part of the community for their entire lives and so they had been there for years and years and years and there was a growing requirement and desire to develop that area to enhance it so I worked with um the city engineer his name was Ben Bell and Ben and I um worked with Kelly Heeney who was our water resource manager and we started doing Outreach with some of the development groups uh Developers in particular and the business owners down on Yampa street because we talked to them and showed them the vision that had been um come up with previously and we had updated on turning Yampa Street into a destination area you know us 40 was very crowded there was no room for any more growth there so we had to start looking to the ancillary streets to where we could grow and there was a growing desire for new restaurants and new businesses uh breweries and other and other items such as that and so we went down and we met with the the business owners that were there down along ampa Street and and we talked to them and showed them what the vision could be and and there was hesitancy with the individuals because they've lived there their entire lives you know they've run their businesses for 30 years or had something handed down from you know one generation to the next and they thought when you heard about updating and you know changing it it was to abolish and get rid of them and it wasn't it was more like how do we talk to you about integrating what you have into what we can do in the future and if there's opportunity you know maybe you could do something to enhance your business and it'll make it better yeah so we had worked together and Ben Ben and I and Kelly and we met probably in the course of about a year and a half with different groups of developers with Business Leaders um we worked with the city manager and they put up the fire station that was down on Yampa Street they wanted to consolidate and move to a different area and to have a public safety building and so they were looking to sell the fire station and we got an individual who was with Kona Brewing or previously with Kona Brewing to come down and he opened up a brewery down on Yampa Street and that jump started the the cascading effect of people going out and wanting to bring businesses down there the city participated by building a prominade having water access but making sure we worked with the state to make sure the water access was safe and it was regulated we had a small Amphitheater that was there and we started attracting restaurants and I think I was able to be part of it but I was working with a team of folks that I had worked with in the engineering department and in the planning department in finance with our finance director and some other subordinates you know to figure out how we could make some of these things happen you know using some of the sales tax money and the revenue that we had received incentivized some of that development down on Yampa Street okay thank you all right um so you I'm going to take the next one you already talked to us about a situation where you had to give some difficult feedback to one of your um subordinates or director reports but can you um give us a example of a time when you were given constructive feedback and how you resp responded to that situation I can um many years ago early on in uh my Air Force career I was um I was not always the most Stellar Airman I was a young Youth and as a young youth um I was stationed overseas in England and I was um with with a crowd of friends that uh we were out regularly in the evening and what had happened was is I had a u had the occasion of being late to work for about three days in a row and um what had happened was I had a a supervisor whose name was Tech Sergeant Doug Casey and I can still remember this to this day and you know I I came into work and I had gone to bed late that night um I had probably stayed out too late um enjoyed myself too much that evening and uh when I went into work I wasn't in the um the best working condition I was not entirely coherent you know this this was many many moments ago when I was a single young man and I need to make sure I caveat that in there and and so my boss Doug um took me outside and said I need to talk to you in the hallway and so he brought me outside and he said you stink like beer you stink like beer your eyes are bloodshot and he shoved me up against the wall and he said this is your only pass don't ever do this again he said you can have a great career you're a smart kid don't be stupid with yourself and um I listened I I listened to his advice um you know unfortunately I don't stay in touch with Doug he had passed away a few years ago but it was early on it was it was my first Duty station and you know I I remember that to this day I can still remember where we were in the hallway up against the wall it was his left arm underneath my chin and uh you know and he just he told me and gave me some good advice about don't waste your time this is an opportunity for you and take advantage of the opportun and don't be stupid you know be young but be responsible yeah great thank you we'll go back to you commissioner think we can all chuckle with that one um please provide some examples I think that's what we're on yeah please provide some examp examples of how you have targeted developers and businesses to drive Economic Development and I'm going to tack on a little bit to that and if you could please go into a little bit of how you would utilize those strategies um with our unique development opportunities here in Treasure Island including our downtown area John's Pass the club some of the places that you've already identified and I know you talked about Yampa Street already so I know that that's your kind really good development experience but if you can dive in specifically on how you like targeted those developers and businesses and really form those connections that would be great okay I could just slide in you're at about 45 minutes let you know you're about halfway in thank you for the question you know targeting Vel opers um and I'll go back to Steamboat Springs and I I won't go right into the ampest stre but I will follow up with that at the end often times you'll find in Municipal operations that developers are leery of you know making the investment primarily because of the infrastructure costs you know the infrastructure is can be quite expensive when you talk about putting in roads um you know Street widths sewer water storm water water the requirements that go with that so being able to you know take an area and provide some of those infrastructure improvements and use a targeted development methodology you know that is very assist full when in Steamboat Springs Colorado I came in um to an initiative that was had been started but not completed and what it was was it was roadway improvements there was an area that was being looked at for development for single family homes which is something that there's not enough of within Steamboat Springs Colorado um and back in the time in in 2012 2013 you know there were a number of developers who wanted to have access to properties so that they could go in there and build subdivisions but the cost of the infrastructure was too great so in steambow Springs what we did is we had a CIP first type methodology when we went to our annual budget so it's a sales tax driven um economy there primarily you still do do there's small property taxes now there wasn't property taxes previously within the city level at this um at the state there was but not at the city level which there are now so we we survived on sales tax so we would take that CIP first and take the first million dollars that we had in revenue and that went into the CIP projects so I worked with the engineers to develop a plan to Target development to this particular area where they could build subdivisions and we put the infrastructure in there we we collaborated with some of the local construction companies and we talked to them about doing roadway improvements and agreements with individuals that would come in there and eventually after they would build the subdivision some of the costs would be passed on to the homeowner so there was a reimbursement Clause that went back to the city and a reimbursement Clause that went back to the uh the contractor or excuse me the developer that did the subdivision you know when we when you're migrating over to Yampa Street when you were asking in particular about how did we target um those individuals yeah quite honestly a lot of it happened through Ben Bell Ben who was the city engineer was born and raised there and he knew the community and I was somewhat newer to the community because I hadn't been involved I had been through Steamboat before but had hadn't lived there like Ben had and Ben and the planning director Tyler and I were able to figure out who the key players were in Yampa Street and who were the hesitant folks Who would thought with the right incentive that we could get them to develop down there along Yampa Street you know and when the city started doing some improvements like we we built the prominade and we put in permanent lighting over head for the nighttime activities um we put in you know bike paths and you know dedicated lanes and and the ability to close the area off so you could have you know five and six blocks of Street parties or farmers markets um we put the city making the investment first showing the developers you know that we were committed to making this happen you know and we would show them everything from this is what our plans were this is what we were looking to implement you know we took input from them you know again I said before that not the smartest guy in the room and and we understood that you know people may have a vision on how they would like to see things and I'd rather come to an agreement with somebody on a shared Vision than just go in and do what you think is right because if you can make both parties happy you know you're going to win in the end you know here in the community in Treasure Island you know when you talk about um The Clock Tower and John's Pass I I think it's part of reaching out to the owners of those areas which I I think that the city is in the potentially in the process of you know and figuring out you know what is it going to take to you know bring them to the table to have a have a good understanding of what they're looking for I heard a little bit of discussion about uh they were just looking for the city to vacate it right away you know and but without providing any substance on what they're looking to do but just having them understand we're we're not looking to say no to this it's just help us to get to yes you know and how do you do that describe what you're looking to do here because there may be a way for the city to partner whether through Grand opportunities or other you know to to partner to make whatever they're proposing to do that much better great thank you I'll let you go this is another one of those I'm not sure how much ability you've had to to experience this but what hands-on experience do you have or have you had with police and fire departments uh what was the biggest oversight issue if uh if I can ask is that on the receiving end from the police department or just be intera I'm joking I was I say it was a bad joke it was a bad joke um you know actually I work very closely with our police chief and our fire chief and I and I have here um in Great Falls Montana and also back in  Springs Colorado um they're Partners they're Partners as part of the management team at both locations um I've worked very well with our current and past Chief in uh great fall Montana um especially right now we're working through there's a we're having a recruitment issue where we're just not getting enough applicants for the police department you know the fire department they always have applicants you know amazingly there there's always now not as many as they used to get where they used to get you know maybe a 100 per position now they're maybe only getting 10 or 15 per position but the police department is going through a a difficult time with retaining their officers and attracting officers so I'm working with the the the police chief right now we developed and found a software that they want to use to communicate with applicants what we were finding before previously is like when an applicant would put in a package you know it's it's a long process in order to from initial contact in order to get them you know into an academy class position seat and it takes a lot of touch points in being able to communicate with them U they had a an an incident where an individual tried to call um the police department recruiter and to talk to them about position and it it's kind of a part-time job for the lieutenant and he's a recruiter but nobody answered him back because the lieutenant was on vacation and so he didn't hear back from anybody for about four or five days and when they finally did contact him back he had already been picked up by another uh agency so we had lost a person so I worked with the police chief and we found a software and and it's an app actually that we can use and he can use to stay in touch with his applicants um it's on their smartphone it gives them instant access to not only the recruiter but the recruiter designates three other people and the other three people if the recruiter is not around can respond back and answer the individual's question because we're finding the more constant contact and upto-date and responsiveness that we're providing is helping with attracting people to come in the fire department on the other hand you know it's a bunch of good folks there the uh I work with the police or excuse me with the fire chief we were finding and and it was to no surprise to anybody who's involved there that you know you're getting more emergency medical calls than you are for fire calls to the fire department you know there is um there is more need or more occasion of a need for a paramedic or an EMT versus a firefighter and I'm not saying anything negative about either side of it but you need the that firefighter paramedic now and that is more and more prevalent I know we have according to the data about 78 to 82% of all our calls are medically related so we didn't have enough paramedics within the fire department so I worked with the fire chief and we approached the uh the school president of greaty Falls College MSU which is a two-year um degree uh School in Great Falls and we asked them to develop a Paramedic program um what we did is we identified 10 individuals that were currently on staff and we figured out a way to adjust schedules and you know boost the overtime for the other individuals that are in the department so these nine or 10 folks could go out and could go to paramedic school there in the community as part of their duties at the end of the program you know we had 10 more paramedics um it's included now how many people can be paramedics in a collective bargaining agreement because we wrote it into the agreement to make sure that is it's an ongoing program because it's not something we want to start and then people retire or transfer somewhere else we also incentivize the people um by if they were allowed to go to The Paramedic program um if they were to leave after a year they were going to repay us 80% of what we committed to pay for them to be a paramedic after 2 years it was 60% so it was a a declining number but it was an incentive knowing that they could get paramedic trained and paramedic pay when they completed the program if they would participate but and I do work with our police chief and fire chief on a on a number of venues you know positive and on an occasion negative too great thank you righty tell us about a time when you were able to remain objective and open to another Viewpoint when you did not agree with it in my current organization um there's a gentleman who works in HR and uh he's a part-time employee with NH HR and uh he's a gift actually to our city he is a what you would call a training and development coordinator and so what this individual does is he figures out and keeps a pulse on the organization to see where what type of training is needed um and he provides training out to everyone across the city depending upon what the request is more more from the uh leadership management perspective so he he does a a first-time supervisor class um he does a difficult conversation Forum um we we've partnered together on how to do um evaluations and accountability of people so we were putting together a workshop between the two of us and you know looking at at trying to implement the workshop and part of what Mark had SE I used his name okay so part of what Mark had seen was that there was a great need in a department for um a specific type of training you know and so when we were talking about it I I I didn't think that they really needed the training as much and and so Mark and I were disagreeing and we were working at building the agenda and how we were going to perform and hold the class and you know what the requirements would be to get there and what we're looking for as the end product and you know we just we disagreed on it and you know through discussion you know I realized Mark had a a a better grasp on what was going on internally within the department a couple layers down not just at a supervisor level but a couple of people below the supervisor and there was some wants and needs that the people had had that they had expressed to him on a personal level that he was bringing into the conversation I wasn't aware of and and I wanted to take the training class in a different direction and he convinced me otherwise and and he was right in the end yeah and it worked out and to the benefit of the employees you know when when I didn't agree you know I didn't dig my heels in or anything like that you know I I challenge alled him on it and and I said well why convince me it doesn't mean I can't be convinced but you know help me get there and he did and he got me there so thank you CH as you as you know I'm sure the city manager is responsible for juggling numerous projects and initiatives simultaneously tell us about how you manage multiple projects and communicating progress updates to the appropriate people and the specific procedures you use to keep everyone AB breast of the project schedules okay if you want me to repeat any of that I will yeah if if you wouldn't mind yes thank you uh as you know uh the city manager is responsible for juggling numerous projects and initiatives simultaneously how do you manage multiple Pro projects and communicate progress update um and and you're right I think as a city manager and and I think in many positions within leadership you're tasked and asked to uh to juggle multiple items at once you and and me personally how I I look how I look at those things is if you're going to be a a city manager or you're going to be a department head or somebody who's going to be in charge you have to be fairly good at delegation you know you have to figure out how you can delegate items that can be accomplished by other people you know you if you try to do everything yourself I think you would completely fall behind and unfortunately you may fail in some Endeavors you know and and there's a reason that you work not on your own but with a team because you know teamwork is very very important you know and that and if that means delegating to your team on projects you know if you've got two or three things going on or or four or five or 10 you know you find the appropriate items that you can delegate to folks when you're delegating to people you're giving them the opportunity to learn the opportunity to be successful and the opportunity to grow but even when you delegate you still have to keep track of what's going on with that project because you want to make sure that if there's missteps and and they happen on occasion and that's okay people are allowed to make mistakes you know let the missteps happen but make sure you correct your course and make sure that you know you get back on track to where you need to be from the communication side I I know um I meet weekly with department heads currently in my position right now and then I've got um the department I'm over with my division heads and and so I I work communicating with them and we have a a weekly schedule that we go over you know hot items that are you know that we talked about last week something that popped up on the radar a little bit more of your long-term goals and we do that on a weekly basis I use that same methodology when I'm communicating on projects you know you know dependent upon the stage of where you are in the project initiating executing you know controlling it or closing you know using that same methodology I pull the pieces out of the projects that are going on and I do report that and and communicate that up to my boss who's the city manager and also to the city commission so primarily I'll do a lot of work via email on occasion if something pops up or a commissioner Pops in I'll give them an update and then follow it up in writing just so they have something in writing and just so there is a record of it you know and then I ask the people that I do delegate to you know to keep me appraised of things and while it's good to get stuff in verbal I do like follow up in writing because then it solidifies the action has been taken and and there's a good record for it thank you that's good thank you one more tell us how you may have or would help a divided governing body to achieve consensus on a politically divisive [Music] let's see and I I I don't want to start out with this but I and and I think I'll just say it but and it's the communication aspect and the collaboration piece you know often times you will find a governing body that you know there there's split decisions or dissension about an item that is that has come up and and commissioner if I'm reading what you were saying correctly you know how do you advise you know I would I would go back to my experience you know and and depending upon the subject that was coming up you know and ask the commission to look at it from both sides you know to say that okay there's a politically hot sensitive subject that you have here but I'd ask you to take a step back and I'd say taking a look at this from the other side or from a different lens you know what do you think would be best for the community in the end because you could be talking about a project having to do with development you could be talking about an initiative that maybe there has been a significant amount of staff time invested already and you're trying to decide whether to continue on with a project or not continue on with a project or you might have a a a group that is vocal with in your community and that community group is just you know I don't I'm not going to use the word pounding but they're incessant upon contributing their thoughts and and speaking up about how they feel on a subject and I I bring that back to that communication piece because having an understanding with a group whether they are pro or or against something is an understanding you want to have within your job jar when you're taking a look at something objectively you know and you're and in the end sometimes you know the commission does have to make a hard decision you know you're the elected body and then I'm not saying that this is you but you know at times where you will have to just you know step back and take a look at it and make a decision that just may not be entirely popular but if it's for the betterment of the community and it will advance and make things better then that's how I would advise the commission to do the right thing in the end just a few more um how do you feel about receiving voicemails and emails from the mayor and City commission after normal working hours are you ever off limits always off limits no never that's part about the j o um that just comes with being a city manager you know not a against emails texts um phone calls if it's important enough for you to want to pass something on it's important enough for me to listen and for me to know it and because you're taking the time to make sure I do know it you know and it could be somebody who is you know hey tomorrow could you check somebody illegally parked here and they're blocking this and we can't pick up at the sanitation or it could be something that's a much more critical issue that I need to know that night because tomorrow morning when I walk into it I'm going to walk into you know that issue right there and it's going to be facing me as soon as I get into the office so no I'm not against that at all I would just prefer to understand um your communication methods you know what do you prefer is it face Toof face email text or is it all of the above perfect thank you I think this one goes directly uh at the at the commission how do you effectively handle having so many bosses who may sometimes have differing goals goals and agendas you work with them you you work with bosses you know people are fortunate when they have one boss but you know sometimes it's not so fortunate you know when you have multiple bosses you know you get multiple perspectives you get M multiple ideals oftentimes you may just get one ideal or or you may get one path in Direction um it's okay to disagree you know in corporately among yourselves or or or to disagree with the city manager or the city manager to disagree it it needs to be done respectively from the city manager to the commission without a doubt that has to happen like that but but I think it's you know being able to reach out and have a discussion to have the Comfort level and trust that you know what what I'm working to do is the commission's direction on what you want done and but to also communicate perspectives if I hear that you know there's three members of the commission that want to do something and you know they want to make the right turn at the fork in the road and to want to make the left and you know it it it's my responsibility to be able to balance that piece out and to give the best best advice as possible to people who want to go right or want to go left okay thank you if you are appointed as Treasure Island successor city manager what would you like to be remembered for in your previous post I'll take an easy way out of it and use a blanket statement that I could walk away knowing that when I leave the place I'm leaving is in better shape than when I got there and and I know that I've worked very hard for the last seven and a half years with department heads staff on initiatives um whether it's our downtown group uh the Redevelopment in our downtown is light years ahead of where it was from 10 years ago you know there's more boutiques and shops opening up on our Main Street you know of that has that's been heavy lifting done from our planning and Community develop velopment department but also our finance department and working through incentives using Tiff districts um in order to encourage that you know changing some of um our verb our verbiage in tiffs and what tiffs can be used for you know and it's allowable under the municipal code up in Montana but you know changing so you can include life safety things in there so it opens up um the availability of funds that can be used um from local businesses for you know sprinkler systems facade and improvements Street enhancements you know things that they weren't able to achieve before and and there's been so much change in the downtown and knowing where it was seven and 10 years ago to where it is now you know is just so much better from the people's side I know I've worked to hire 10 or 11 directors new police chief new fire chief um and that's in the course of the seven years and and watching that team come together and knowing that it's it's a better team than when I arrived you know that brings a lot of satisfaction June 28th when we have that ribbon cutting I'm going to be jumping up and down you know because it'll be a an achievement that you know and and it's the community deserves it you know they deserve to have a a great worldclass facility or a first class facility like that and and it's something that they do deserve and so when we cut that ribbon on the 28th there there's going to be a lot of pleasure in that yeah and happiness you thank you all right one more that we missed along the way so coming into an organization that is already well established we have a great group of um department heads and directors can you tell us about a time when you new to new to a job or um if you don't have a specific experience just kind of tell us what steps would you take to build trust with your co-workers and staff so if can entertain a little story so when I arrived to Steamboat Springs col and I was appointed as a public works director it was an internal candidate who was the city engineer her name was Janet Ruby and Janet was the the Darkhorse who should have been the next public works director but what had happened was the city manager um against the advisement of his staff selected me because he didn't think that um was ready to do that position and he wanted to bring in somebody who had a different perspective um what that provided for me was a little bit of a challenge because as I was going through the interview process and after I learned and I got on the ground after and I met Janet during the interview process and she's a she's a great woman a great person and a phenomenal engineer um it provided a little bit of a challenge for me because it it wasn't um a very receiving department head team initially and I had to go through some some lengths and not not not bad lengths or anything like that but extra steps to try and assure the other department heads that I would work with them on whatever our goals and Mission was for the city and that although Janet was not selected that I still wanted and and appreciated having her on the staff Janet ended up up leaving about you know a month or two later so she she did depart and she went to another location but trying to integrate with that department head team was a little bit difficult at first um there was a few people that you it did it didn't bother them that J Janet didn't get picked but the majority of them they didn't hold a grudge or anything like that but they very much thought that uh Janet should have been selected and unfortunately about a month maybe two months after I was hired the city manager left also so that made it a little bit more difficult as um the deputy city manager was put into the city manager uh position on a temporary basis and the deputy city manager was uh had thought that Janet should have the job also and so um she was then the city manager and uh you know and I was the new Public Works director so integrating with the department heads and the man and my new supervisor um it took some effort but it was worthy effort to do because I wanted wanted to prove to them that I was a team player that I I wasn't the engineer that Janet was but I brought a perspective that I think that they would appreciate and I know years later that you know I heard back from them that they did appreciate you know they were happy that I was there and and it didn't take years to get there but you know they were happy that I was there and they appreciated everything that I did from a teamwork perspective in the leadership perspective great thank you all right that concludes our um questions we do want to leave a little bit of time for you we have about s minutes left um what's up timing worked out we actually started a little late so we're at about 13 an hour 13 and we so you've got about 15 17 minutes yet for questions as well as any closing comments if need be so okay sounds good so if you have any questions for us um we've asked you a lot but you've also probably have some questions that you may have about the the city that we can answer for you so if you have anything um Now's the Time okay um for the next city manager to be successful could you tell me three things that you think that you they should have for attributes I age take a go at it go ahead um open to input I'm sorry open to okay I would like to see just open channels of communication and enhan communication well clearly and we've talked about this already but handling multiple projects simultaneously and keeping them on track and on schedule the juggling right could I ask you what you um see on a timeline on what you think the next city manager when they would possibly be appointed to their position or could you talk to that a little bit um well do you want to do you have an attribute or maybe we can each give one you asked for three but maybe we'll just give you five yeah I'll take five yeah I think that um you know what we're looking at right now here is a opportunity for redel velopment there's very large swats of property that uh that don't have anything on them today or they're well underutilized and I think that uh although we've worked hard I mean as commission and as the city managers and everybody else to uh to get something put together you know I I I basically yesterday I think I said when when we talked a little bit about this that what we need to do is if I could do it get the two parties into the room at lock the door and don't unlock the door kick the key out you know and uh and and figure out how you're going to be able to negotiate what is a good deal for the city and a good deal for the property owner so I think that a lot of it is negotiation skills and uh and being able to uh to understand what other people are saying but to stand firm on what needs to be done yeah and mine piggybacks right off of that I think when it comes to that and a lot of other tasks around the city whether be capital projects or um anything else Community initiatives initiative to actually get the job done and persistence so in particular with a a development um situation taking the initiative to make those personal connections and as the leader of our organization making sure that we are consistently communicating with them and not just relying on people coming to us and being reactive we need to be proactive and take that initiative thank you yeah as far as timeline um we'll be making that making our decision here today at the end of our meeting um so I would assume we will and that might be a more procedural question for Doug or Gary but we'll right after we make the selection I believe the commission will be appointing one of us to kind of handle the contractual negoti iations but I mean Gary's here in term I know he only wanted to be here a few months he he's done his duty as city manager so I think the the sooner the better for us um so as soon as the candidate is able to um that'll be part of the negotiation um and we will yeah we'd love to have it as fast as possible that answer the question you did thank you very much so if I individually if you could um take one person an FTE where would you put that FTE in which department and why that's a good question okay um I'll start I I think um adding um an FTE to public relations would probably behoove everybody all the way around that can interact Communications from the city manager's office to us to our constituents to keep us all there's a lot to do with overall picture but then the close um one toone basis of a step in between would be very helpful I don't know how popular this will be but uh I would say uh code enforcement um and I think that basically code enforcement begins with the city you know I think that uh you know when you take a look around we see a lot of uh open property that's uh ready for redevelopment but weeds are growing trash is picking you know trash is gets out there we have a lot of good folks that are picking it all up on a daily basis but uh we need to um show our you know when I go back to co this is probably about it in 2020 people just stopped doing maintenance at least that's my opinion and today's idea of maintenance is basically you know you either painted something or you mowed something and that's kind of the idea of Maintenance and I think that um it's it's all the way around it's it's everybody you know that uh that isn't doing enough to make the city and keep the city as beautiful as it can possibly be so you know if I take a look at it I think I'd say give us a code enforcement and another code enforcement person I think the ones that are there they they're doing a great job but they're overworked and uh and I think that if we're going to make us a first class city or a better than the first class City you know is basically to make sure that everybody is doing their part whether it be the businesses the residents or the city itself thank you other one yeah I would would add somebody to permitting Community Development of Permitting when the uh terrain modification module uh when all the components of that get passed uh I think it's going to open a Floodgate into uh people wanting to uh finally put the finishing touches on their projects and apply to the city for permits so that's that's where I'd put the person sounds like we're going to need more than one ft here but uh uh I would put the FTE with the police department and have that FTE DED dedicated specifically for Beach Patrol uh in particular on on the weekends and the holidays and stuff uh uh we we do the the police department does does as good a job as they can with the staff they have uh but but if we were able to dedicate somebody specifically for Beach uh Patrol uh I think there'd be big benefits uh derived from that thank you for me it's definitely somebody in our community development department and it's kind of a tie between um I think someone else for code enforcement we have a big issue with short-term rentals and there's some state issues there that go along with that and what we can and can't do but in an Ideal World being able to have an FTE designated to tracking those short-term rentals creating a proog program um helping them be in compliance and making sure that we don't have um people breaking our rules and then also um the one that commissioner minning identified just someone in generic in that department to help with um just customer service and being really focusing on how do we work with people as we have a lot of things that are probably going to be coming in a lot of seaw walls being done as we um change some of our ordinances um having somebody that can really help the the customer with walking through all that thank you yeah good question being a new city manager in Treasure Island and and not having the background and experience here for the local community or or a greater Community can you tell me or or provide some input if you were to make a suggestion who would you recommend that the next city manager reach out to not so much internally here within the city but externally as in for to develop a partnership whether it's a certain entity with uh within the county with it's in a sister city or something along those lines is there any recommendations that you would make and I would just ask if one each please anyone um City Managers Association uh would be a good place to start and um oh yeah might also take advantage of reaching out to um specifically to the Mayors in our adjacent communities although maybe currently this not a great idea in maybe sorry I didn't mean to be derogatory in that but um there are uh what nine Coastal communities um and reach out to the mayors of those on a one-on-one basis and and uh get get a feeling for what they how they manage there's a new this is not the the only person I would recommend but there's a new city manager who's out from out of state from California just been hired in St Pete Beach uh and she's just started so she might be a good person for somebody coming in two or three months from now uh to to to reach out to to see what you know what uh what she's done to expedite her learning process about the state and and the local issues uh but I would agree with commissioner menning on on uh getting in contact with the local well not the local but the city managers associations and stuff like that here we have 24 municipalities in pelis County so most of them have city managers so they definitely they have a really good I don't know that they have anything formal but they have really good relationships just the in penis County so forming some relationships with them and creating those bonds would be good yeah we have uh two chamber of commer that uh that basically take care of uh the beaches and and our local community I think that uh both of those would be the a great place to start especially because we're talking a lot about businesses we're talking about Redevelopment we're talking about bringing in the right businesses and I think that uh that both the two leaders of those organizations uh are great resources and uh can bring a lot of life in if we allow them to do so commissioner if I could follow up on that I thought I thought there's a chamber of commerce for timb for Treasure Island is it Madera Beach yeah is there the other one is the Tampa Bay beaches Chamber of Commerce thank you it's the Tampa Bay beaches their headquarters is in St Pete Beach but they represent all of the um beaches and then we have a more narrowly focused one for Treasure Island and Madar Beach thanks kind of a unique situation well since we've covered the Mayors I would consider off also including the County Commissioners and we're very fortunate to have one of the County Commissioners that's a resident of Treasure Island so sh that person could really provide a unique in Insight on fundings that might be available and different things that's been coming down the pipe through the county too for us I got two we have um at the County as well um Kelly Levy is in charge of I believe Public Works um but she's really the main contact person on beach nourishment um and that's a really big problem that we're facing and an ongoing thing that we're fighting for um so having a good relationship with her and being able to press them at the county um and then also forward penalises our local Mo and Whit Blandon there is a a fantastic Resource as well said fory pelis Thank you and I know I've already spoke but I I will add since I've had a little more time to think about it uh the three previous city managers I'm sure would uh welcome uh you to reach out to them and and get their input because uh they they gave a lot of their heart and soul to this city and I'm sure they'd like to like to see it uh continue to progress in in the way that it has I'd probably ask to put them on retainer if we [Laughter] could all right anything else no I I'm done thank thank you very much all right any other final questions from the commission that we might have missed no I'd just say I think that everybody would agree thank you very much for uh taking the time um to come join us and to uh spend time with us telling us about yourself thank you commissioner and and I'd like to take the opportunity if I may for a moment mayor just to show my appreciation you know it's it's not easy for a community to go through a change and when you're changing in your leadership you know it's a major undertaking and it's risky and you're you're very fortunate to have Gary who can fill the gaps you know but you are looking for a next city manager and and I think that there's four highly qualified candidates that are here I I think I think you're you're in a very good position because you have four qualified people to choose from you're not stuck with one loan candidate standing and that's all you've got you know but I do appreciate the time and the effort that went into the recruitment here you have got a phenomenal staff um when I when I talked to Tia up this stairs this morning because I got here at 8:00 or 5 to 8 and I thought it was at 8:00 and I was freaking out and she told me relax it's 8:30 I mean she had that same calm customer demeanor just I it's prevalent throughout the organization and you get that from good leadership from the city manager level and you get that from good department head level leadership and the way that the department heads work together I picked up on yesterday as I sat through the panels they're very comfortable with each other you know they're very good with with each other and it would be an honor to try and integrate and to work with them because it would be a pleasure to try and move Treasure Island in the direction it wants to go uh to help it achieve what it wants to achieve what it desires to achieve or maybe things that you may not even desire yet but want to do in the future and I would love to be part of that so and I I want to say thank you to the community at the end you know last night people who will provide perspective you know when we came out with zoom meetings because of covid people didn't have to show up anymore at commission meetings because they could just dial on in so the people who participate and they come in person you know they need an extra thank you because it takes an effort to do that very good thank you all right thank you very much we appreciate it thank you Chu thank you because trucks departing do we want to reconvene yes uh we built in a uh 15 minute if you want to make that 10 to try to pick up some time that's fine as well I'm showing 10 after so if you want to go 20 after sounds good great thank you e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e have an opportunity to respond to your opening question he knows the game plan from there and we'll go from there so mayor I'll turn it over to you James you're welcome thanks all right welcome back to our um special City commission meeting we're here with our second candidate James Slayton um um and just to get started um you've had the opportunity to see Treasure Island firsthand for a few days so can you um tell us about your initial thoughts and first impressions and then we'll let you get into your presentation sure so I love it even more I much more of a community feel being here and talking to the residents um I recognize there's more opportunity than what I had realized before and um I'm I'm ready to to get started thanks perfect thank you so now we'll move into um a presentation time for you you'll have 10 minutes to present on your like first year game plan um so I see you have your presentation already ready and queued up so we'll we'll turn it over to you all right thank you mayor so I've uh I'm going to present some challenges and opportunities um I'll be prepared to advance all of these initiatives within the first year they're all big ticket items none of them will be complete in the first year we may have elements of each one complete um but the these are all long-term uh Big Ticket items so challenges um here we go diversifying revenue streams Economic Development downtown Redevelopment Transportation mobility and then our parks and uh Open Spaces here in Treasure Island diversifying revenue streams um this should also say maximizing existing revenue streams um and we'll do that through potentially expanding the city's economic base pursuing opportunities for tax increment Revenue sources um review of existing impact fees or creation of new ones um aggressively pursuing grants um I work with a grant consultant now and so we've have created a multi-year grant strategy and I know what's in our CIP we we look at the grant opportunities available and match them up with our CIP in advance we also we also respond to new grant opportunities but I have a dedicated Grant consultant that does that um and then review of all of the city's business units that already generate revenue and that could be anything from parking to even planning fees review of those business units and then determining if the funds in the gener in the revenue created are adequate economic development I could not find where the city had a comprehensive Economic Development strategic plan um if not um the city should have one the Florida commerce is funding um Economic Development strategic plans right now so I've just completed one at zero cost to the city they're also funding Economic Development related projects so I'm working with them on construction of a new internal Road uh inside our airport um I did not see where the city offered any um economic incentive programs it's just something to consider there are lots of options out there um and those range from tax abatement to impact fee mitigation and if you have any um one of the things we'll talk about while the next uh bullet there's a community redevelopment agency and So within that you can even offer tax increment rebates if the city council so chose to um downtown Redevelopment I feel like is an absolute something your citizens want um every citizen I spoke to I believe it's an absolute must here in Treasure Island um so the process really starts with a vis visioning effort with a robust public engagement next conceptual design what is a and we're talking about Hardscape improvements here conceptual design then engineering design and construction and then finally the focus will be activation getting more people into your downtown and and spending money um there's a lot of Redevelopment that I think needs to occur um but um I think uh the the natural first place to start is that pirate Square 107th and 108th Avenues um so the municipal service complex I I believe is a I I know that some of those buildings are still occupied providing Public Services however it's a great opportunity in my view um for redevelopment that's a natural gateway to me to get the um boating community connected to your down town I think you know voters have discretionary income um I just happen to be a boter and I I like to go visit Town Stewart has done a great job with this Stewart Florida um they're downtown's about a block away they've got public boat docks and the boers can come dock spend the day shopping and dining in the downtown area um so I think that's that's a great opportunity um that you know some of the ideas or um consolidating that parking to a garage structure maybe looking at a public private partnership for maybe even a multi-use parking structure with either uh you know parking um and um residential and Retail um and then Street skate design um you when you're building a downtown you want people to number one feel comfortable and safe you want it to look beautiful what you're really doing is creating outdoor rooms where people come it's a destination and they want to stay there shop go from business to business um so um we're talking about you know design bringing the the buildings you know closer to the road wide sidewalks for outdoor dining narrow travel Lanes that's not going to work as well on 107th but certainly 108th is a prime candidate for that so you got traffic calming um and enhanced uh pedestrian improvements Street trees Landscaping that type of thing so you can you can bring the Waterfront into the downtown and Visually it'll all be branded and it'll look like you're in a downtown this uh picture here this is example everything I just described so this is Project I have going on in downtown like Wales that I'm rebuilding right now so all this concept I'm talk about I just want to give you an idea what what that looks like in real life you'll see a lot of Street trees Bach Tower Gardens is in link wal so we're creating a city and a garden so we're planting thousands of Street trees all over U the entire city um and we're installing rain Gardens we got grants now this is multi-million dollar project but we got several hundred, in Grants um from D because we're installing these rain Gardens that will then filter the uh the water runoff um so kind kind of the one of the biggest opportunities I think you have here in Treasure Island is the establishment of a community redevelopment agency and so I'm going to just in a quick summary what that is it's a special taxing district that will will enable the city to be able to capture some of the um Ador tax revenue that should be going to pelis County and then some of the cities and redirect them into a trust fund so you can use that trust fund to fund your Capital construction projects and if you stack those with with uh grants um you can get quite a bit done it's going to take some time to build up that trust fund um because it's it's it's funded by the increment uh and the increase in the um the property values um but as soon as you establish that CRA area it's going to open up some mechanisms there's some legislation available for you to be able to add incentives like tax increment um rebates to businesses so even before you have that trust fund There's an opportunity to provide incentives to businesses um there are there are firms out there that will help you with both The Hardscape design and the activation piece of it so they'll help you create a business plan so there's RMA is a company here in Florida do Partners um that could be pursued um so it's kind of TurnKey um and I put business retention there um a lot of times what happens when you're really successful um in in building a downtown destination the rents go up and then a lot of your smaller Mom and Pops then um it becomes a problem right so you start to gentrify them so then you know one of the opportunities is well do we want to add you know provide subsidies for any of those types of business to make sure we keep them around a little bit longer uh parks and Open Spaces I me there's I know you have so your staff's done a really good job I have not reviewed um the parks and rck master plan be half one that already that's a great first step um so take this with a grain of salt but you have limited Green Space uh here in the island and so number one every every Park should be beautiful um and then secondarily um you know you should serve as many residents with a parcel of land as you you possibly can because it's such a scarce resource here um so I picked the community center Park um not everything has to be a multi-million dollar project you can take a park like this and and simply just just construct walking Loop Trails Street trees update the site Furnishings um Landscaping screening the parking uh with Landscaping to buffer it and they've done a great job of this uh in Asheville actually next to the river they've got Waterfront Park and it's just trees and walking trails and the families the place is just crowded every single day um so that's just a simple um that that's a fairly lowcost uh enhancement you can make to make this park a little bit more functional while keeping it passive and green and then finally and you've done this so again good job staff Transportation Mobility I know you have a Mobility plan I also have not reviewed all of those elements but I've been here um to Treasure Island and walked I came you know a few weeks back and just and just kind of walked around um there there could and should be some improvements um focused on toward moving human beings around not vehicles and you'll do that through you know construction of multimodal Trails um there there are Grant resour out there as well so the recreational Trails program at the state level the coordinator just happens to be from Lake Wales so I I've got one uh Trail off just completed construction on um connecting our Lakefront to our downtown um using Grant funds and then I've got uh two more they're in design engineering right now both with RTP funds um and so the Mobility plan you're going to focus on public parking even Transit um and I know that you are all already doing that and then it provides the basis and opportunity to create uh either a Mobility fee or multimodal impact fee to help funds with the transportation improvements I know there's not a lot of new construction going on so that may take some time um to to acove those impact fees but it certainly uh create that opportunity for you that's all I have thank you all right thank you very much um so we will move into our kind of question and answer interview portion you're welcome to sit or stand whatever you want we have a lot of questions I'll Stand thank you all right um so to just get us started in doing your homework for these sessions um what have you learned about the city of Treasure Island and its organization that has surprised you how Progressive this the city's been and the staff I mean it really has surprised me the level in which the the city um has been proactive and and and trying to move the city forward all right do you tend to make uh decisions quickly and instinctively or more slowly and methodically tell us about a time that uh you used your method and did not achieve the results you expected and what happened so I'll I'll do both um but I'll tell you I I like to get input from a lot of sources before I don't mind making the decision um but I like to get a lot of different perspective right so I'm I'm going to have blind spots um things that I'm not going to see that others will right primarily staff elected officials even the public um so I like to get perspective on a major decision um there have been times where we we've made a decision um we we we had an issue uh with um mobile car washing businesses in Lake Wales and they weren't regulated and we created okay let's create let's create an ordinance and let's regulate this right and uh and we did we just went and we did it got it executed implemented and it didn't go over well so we had not engaged those businesses and uh what happened was the through the um regulation of the ordinance it would have and would cause hardship to them right so we tend to over regulate a lot and in predicting perceived problems in government and so we actually we went back and uh we actually pulled the the local businesses together and said okay this is what we're really trying to accomplish how can you help us get it accomplished um through your feedback so that we're not causing you undo harm and then uh so we moved a little too quickly I think on that and then we came back and using their feedback and drafted the and redrafted the ordinance right tell us about the most difficult citizen encounter you have experienced how did you handle it most difficult citizen encounter um so excuse this will probably all right I'm going to use this one now it'll probably be an answer for another question later but uh so I had about 150 of them it at one time right it's probably the biggest mistake that i' made um at least since I've been city manager and um I I had 150 people really really mad at me and the staff and uh man they they made us look really bad I was embarrassed and that that involved a long range planning process that had not um I had not engaged them the public early on and I and I mean from the outset right so so even from Project kickoff you've got to bring folks in and say okay this is what we're thinking about doing what how do you think we ought to get started what direction do you think we should go in and I had not done that so um by the time we had our first public workshop and we you know we thought 30 people were going to show up and give us some feedback and had about 150 and and they they were mad I mean they were yelling mad so what did I do about it okay so what did I learn um engage engage a public as early as possible and so what we did was uh I put a pause um and then we we we started all over again we we really started back from the beginning and we engaged the public and so that the outcome of that became Our Lake Wells envisioned long range plan and we we won several awards for that because of our level of community engagement thank you answer that question and also covered our our SEC our next question so I'm going to skip uh skip down to uh to another question here how have you handled people who are difficult to get along with describe a situation which you were effective in getting a difficult person to cooperate explain what you did to make the difference um so I always try to understand where they're coming number one right so I always trying to put myself in their shoes why are they being difficult a lot of times if we're trying to get to the same place if they're a good person and we're we're trying to get to the to the same outcome then differences in personality none of that really matters um and the other thing that I'll say is um bring them in make them part of the decision-making process right right so co-opt him bring him in and a lot of times that goes a long way in solving the problems thank you another one for you all right tell us about a time you were new to a job maybe this is going to go way back uh what steps did you take to build trust and uh with your co-workers and staff um I I mean look I just uh you you'll never see me deviate from who I am you'll never see me say something inconsistent with who you who you think I am um I try to lead by example and I'm consistent who I am and I do what I say I'm going to do and I think once people see see that then they they begin to uh it builds confidence and Trust okay thank you I want to dig in a little bit further on that question because and we had a good conversation about this yesterday and our one onone interview but having been with the same organization for so long which is very admirable you may not have had experience like this coming into a brand new team of to people that you do not know at all how do you plan maybe not based on past experience but how do you plan on coming in with a very established team that all know each other that function very well together how do you plan on coming in what will be your approach to earn their trust and um collaboration with them well again it's I'll tell you this about trust for for me as a person I I just inherently I I trust people I give trust um until there there's a reason not to and again I think people will see that and I'm never going to everything's transparent it's out in the open I do exactly what I say I'm going to do um and I think I will my my my entire job really is about supporting the staff supporting the staff creating environment in which they can Thrive and I think what once they see that and and understand that I do it and I mean it right so how do I make them better better than me know more than I do um and then I focus on their development um I it it will build trust um you can go with the next one since I kind of elaborated there tell us about the steps you've taken to get a capital project back on track when it was at risk of being of not being completed on time and give us an example well one of the things that we make sure we do is in our contract Provisions right so in our contract Provisions you know will the projects got to be done within a certain timeline and you put those Provisions in there in which they'll they'll be penalized and pay fees back to the city if the Project's not completed by a certain timeline so that I mean that's that's one of the methods um that tends to work out pretty well the other thing is depending what the project is right um particular with engineering firms they seem to take a long time um so uh you threaten to fire them right I me I mean you do if you've got it within your uh they'll they'll get it together um if you've got Provisions with your contract that you can terminate for on performance um that that tends to help as well and then you've got to you just got to be on top of the projects right so you got to be measuring monitoring and meeting discuss in this Capital project on a regular basis do you have an example of that happening where you might have had a capital project that was running behind that you had to get back on track so um I'm going to say no not within any I'll say undesirable tolerances right I mean sometimes things happen and there's not a whole lot you can do about it until you get working and understanding um you know what what's underground sometimes they just happen and um and it tends to extend the timelines of the projects but um you know we we've been pretty good about I I probably have $40 million in Cal projects each year and everything seems to be moving pretty well talk remaining calm under extreme pressure is a difficult skill for many people tell us about a situation where you were able to do this every first and third Tuesday of the [Laughter] month nice to the same good I was sincere that's my I know can you tell us about a specific situation that you had to deal with staying staying calm uh yeah I I have a lot so uh we have a lot of growth L way a lot of growth right so um we have over 40 um separate development projects some of them really large scale um in Lake Wales and we got a lot of people that that aren't interested and so U they uh they don't like it our commissioners prove it um they're pretty PR growth responsible but PR growth um and they will U uh accuse the staff of you know working behind the scenes you know with with developers or uh you know we we're working through an economic development incentive right now so um we're increasing and improving one of our development programs related to impact fees and uh they will uh put out misinformation uh online about you know what it really means um they'll show up the commission meetings and intentionally put out misinformation you know we we have a large economic development project going on in Lake Wales and it took us over a year it was a year of delays so we've got um manufacturing facility um Advanced raining systems constructing a $260 million facility and uh they're one they largest recycl of Plastics in the entire nation and uh there there were pictures painted you know of the company poisoning poisoning people and you know pictures of smoke stacks uh uh there're zero emissions kind by the way but so nuclear Smoke Stacks uh being brought to commission meetings and so those are a couple of examples but I have several more okay thank you thank you James tell us how you have involved subordinates in planning decision making facilitating and process Improvement and uh please give us a specific example um so I I collaborate with staff often again you know I get multiple perspectives before we make it we make an important decision but um it relates to uh planning and process Improvement um so we we created an internal Consulting team uh in Lake whales so I've got about three lean Sig Sigma Green belts um run around uh City Hall so their internal Consulting team and they'll do things we'll meet with departments and look at ways to increase um efficiency and remove waste um and we we've even created a Performance Management dashboard um that's posted on our City's website um because we're having a lot of problems I should have mentioned this during my presentation as it related to uh permitting building permits and otherwise um but we track customer satisfaction turnaround times um and we post information our public dashboard on our website but we had an internal team um that we formed it was it was we did it collaboratively we put a we put a pretty good system in place okay tell us about a time when someone gave you constructive feedback how did you respond what did you do with the information and this is a second part of that what approach have you taken to provide performance feedback to staff just a flip-flop of that number one you got it number two you're giving it to staff tell us about the most difficult feedback session you have had how you planned um how you plan for it um I I don't mind feedback at all I I want to be the best at what I do um and if there's something that I don't see I don't mind somebody pointing out to me at all I learned from just about every person that that I interact with so I don't I don't take any offense to that um what whatsoever um probably most difficult feedback um I think I got from was from you know my my predecessor and uh that that really had to do with probably moving too fast you know moving too fast on trying to get things accomplished um that that was kind of hard for me to hear because I was I was proud of it I'm like man I'm the one that takes the initiative and gets gets this work done so that that that kind of hurt me a little bit um but uh you know I did take his advice and we kind of slowed slowed down and um got a better got a better products you know In The End by by including and involving more folks um and then um was there another part of that question yeah Fe back I try to do it real time every single day right so um I try not to wait for annual performance evaluation so um if I if I um need to give someone feedback I try to do it right then in the moment if I can right we're within 24 hours or so um and you that's typically just verbally right so I'll give feedback but typically it's it's always in a um a constructive manner right it's not if there's just something individual could have done to improve um you know even just a little bit I I'll give them feedback in in real time that's the best way to get any kind of results out of anyone thank you sir do you have a specific example of like a really hard conversation that you've had to had had to have with an employee um to give that kind of a constructive feedback and how'd it go yeah uh I have a few um so might as well talk about my police chief um but who by the way has been a friend of mine for 20 years uh and still is um you know that whole situation was uh there were some internal and external politics um involved in that in that situation by the way um just because someone did a public records request and sends it to the news media doesn't mean it's news um but we had some difficult conversations and we and we've had a few um o over the last few years um you know we were the first um police Poli Department in the county to implement you know body cameras um you know we brought in the Center for Public Safety Management to come in and look at do an operational analysis uh of law enforcement and make sure that we're adhering to best best practices um so we've had a lot of conversation about police operations and specifically uh community policing and engagement and ways to improve upon that okay um moving into a question more about Economic Development um can you provide some examples of how you have specifically targeted developers or businesses to drive Economic Development and tell us how you would use this approach in Treasure Island to help us um pursue more development in our key areas like downtown John's Pass and uh the former Yacht Club so um depends what type of business we're talking about so we created a restaurant incentive program right it w with with our downtown in our historic Northwest neighborhood um so we created a restaurant and Center programs we've awarded eight grants of which four are open so we've got four new restaurants in our downtown um Lake Wales um we've also we have a shortage of building inventory um in Lake Wales so we are missing a lot of leads coming in from the central Florida Development Council um because we don't have buildings to move into so speed to Market is is like kind of number one it's number one in Florida like businesses moving in um to the area don't want a green field site and then construct it's three years down the road before they can they can get going and so they they need buildings that are ready to move into so we create I created recently an economic development center program based it's uh it's an impact fee mitigation program proportionate to the amount of square feet for um uh spec buildings to be constructed um within Lake whales so we are actually working with our first developers right now that are utilizing that program to build some spec buildings in our industrial park to move businesses into nice you've touched Bas a little bit on on this next question as well but uh what hands-on experience have you had with working with the police and fire departments what's been the biggest oversight issue you faced and how did you resolve it and what are the lessons learned from that experience uh I've been work well you know I started in field so I I've been working with um Public Safety for for a long time um and that includes you know we had own dispatch in so that that includes uh even um setting up our our computer Ed dispatching system for for both fire and police right um and uh so I've been working with them for a long long time um but in terms of oversight so I'll tell you uh I mentioned some of the items so in terms of you know ways to improve bringing in cpsm um initiating uh body C body warn camera program getting the department credentialed creating a community liais on officer that engages with the public um and even create reestablishing a community relations kind of advisory committee um so those are um ways that items we've implemented to uh help improve the the department great thank you tell us about a time when you were able to remain objective and open to another view Point even when you did not agree with it I I'm just I'm always objective I I always I only want things to be the best I I don't care who has the best idea or who it come from doesn't matter I I don't care if I like the person or if I don't like them I always try to take you know personalities out the situation and anything that that any idea that I can take to improve a process or project or program um I I'm I'm always going to be open to thank you James as you as you well know the city manager is responsible for juggling numerous projects and initiatives simultaneously tell us about how you manage multiple projects and communicating progress updates to the appropriate people um so the short short answer is um so we we use Smart sheets um it's project management program and software Citywide um so we use that to help keep our projects on track um and to inform so you know it you can put your project updates in there everybody can see them you know through the program and we publish a lot of that information on our City's website through our our public facing dashboards we also have bi-weekly Capital project meetings where we're going over every single Capital project to determine where it's at uh in the process and is it on budget is it on are there any issues and um is it going to meet the timeline so we we you know we do that every other week okay thank you yeah go ahead and I'll go ahead and take your drink and then I'll okay thank you finish up here okay tell us how you may have or would help a divided governing body achieve consensus on a politically divisive issue well if if uh James comes in it's your your city manager the first thing we're going to do it's it's been a while I think it looks like maybe late 2019 maybe early 2020 um was the last time maybe there's been a statistically valid um CommunityWide survey so I I would want to do that um almost immediately to gauge um the citizen perception of how the government's operating and to determine what their priorities are we'll use that um the city commission as the basis to create some strategic priorities you'll we'll literally have a retreat and then you're going to agree upon what the Strategic priorities are from from those strategic priorities we will establish you know an action plan to get those accomplished um so we're going to reference that so if you got a politically divided issue we're going to go back to what your adopted agreed upon priorities are and use that as the basis for decision making um and we're going to talk about it you you all going to discuss it um and then we're going to put it to that what specific steps would you take to achieve consensus well I'm G to I mean personally I'm going to try to get get we're going to have a staff recommendation on what whatever the item is first of all so it's going to be thoroughly it's going to be thoroughly researched we're going to provide a recommendation and um we're going to keep you pointed to the uh what those strategic priorities are okay let me give you an example if I may um staff provides a recommendation to the commission the commission reviews it and we're satisfied with that then we look out on the audience at a commission meeting there's 100 people in here who have the opposite opinion how do you manage getting consensus here consensus on the commission if the commission agrees and there's 100 people here um we we we may if it's that important you got 100 people we may need to take a pause and determine if if it's the right thing I don't want to do that in real time so um I I don't know that I talked about this with you with with you all uh but for reasons just like this um in between our C City commission meetings I I have standing work sessions with our commissioners off often times so I I don't want Commissioners to have to vote on important controversial topics or complex um agenda items that they may not fully understand yet and feel the pressure to have to vote I have to think about things typically for a few days and and then I'll even have even you know more questions the only time Commissioners really get to talk or during the the city commission meetings um so so um in between our the week prior to our city commission meetings um I have work sessions um with just myself and and the City commissioners to talk about those potentially controversial items the first thing we do is we go over the agenda items um and that gives the commission opportunity to have that discussion in an open meeting um it gives the city commission the time to discuss ask questions give staff the time to make any corrections prior to the or even do some more research prior to to the um actual vote taking place at the following at the subsequent week's um City commission meeting um and it's also a venue for the City commissioners to just talk and and talk through those items typically what happens is have to be published in advance so they're published on Tuesday we have a work sessions on Wednesday that gives the city commission a lot of opportunity and the public to already see he the items here the city commission dialogue before you ever have to vote on it so you've got all the way up till the following week's Comm commission meeting um to learn how the you know the public feels about it and if at the end of the day um you know it could be that based on the feedback based on discussion you heard from the other Commissioners maybe now is not the time to do the thing and so it doesn't go on the agenda is that helpful yeah thank you all right how do you feel about receiving voicemails and emails from the mayor and City commission after normal working hours are there any off liit times for you from the no I will tell you because we we communicate so much and during the work sessions we talk about that big ticket stuff there's always going to be a lot more Comm there's a lot more early on but as we tend to move forward make progress communicating every single week so you know my commission I we meet we have four meetings plus our CR meetings we're meeting five five times a month um the the weekend after hours calls unless there's something important or emergency tend to slow down um little stuff there's a street light out at you know the tennis courts or whatever um that's I don't care about that send it I do I I've been the same place for 20 years in various positions everybody in town that's my as my phone number um so uh I I'm used to it uh I'll tell you if I'm out on the boat probably I won't be able to get get to it right away but um yeah I'm accessible and available to the city commission 24 hours a day okay I joked earlier that this was probably one that involves the the commission but it also could be residents as well and it's how do you effectively handle having so many bosses who may sometimes have differing goals and agendas so I have one boss the city commission and so I act on the consensus of the board um and we you all will establish those priorities you're going to establish priorities and adopt them so there shouldn't be a lot of deviations you know from one one commissioner uh I would think to another as relates to the big ticket items um and so if there's something that needs we'll say a request that insignificant items there's a pothole here you know those type of things we're just going to go take care of if there's something that's of consequence or substantial the the commissioner would like for the staff to do that really needs to be discussed with the commission so we'll have that discussion during a work session if you were to implement something like that we'll have that discussion as a group and then we'll take that consensus and then it might action will be based off what that consensus is um the second thing is um I will um it's just who I am I I build real relationships with people so it's important to have true relationships with every single City Commissioner and every every single City Commissioner is treated with the same exact same amount of reverence and respect thank you righty should you be appointed as treasur Island successor city manager what would you like to be remembered for in your previous post in my previous post from where you're coming from oh man it's kind a tough one isn't it no no it's not it's not tough uh actually go look it up they wrot an article there's an article about this morning in the paper um that's an emotional question I'm sure I I think people will tell you that uh I changed the trajectory of the entire Community forever people's lives are better they've got more money in their pockets we've incre the area median income we've increased our property values their parts are better people have places um we're bringing in jobs places to work placees for people to eat um I've got an underserved community that I'm building houses in um I've got a major pedestrian Improvement project uh just sign a contract this week um you know we'll have folks that that'll be able to push their babies on a sidewalk and not the middle of the road um I I think just overall I would say that um the people that live there their lives have been forever changed and improved and not only them the generations that come behind them good answer thank you um does the commission have any followup questions to anything that we've asked we have quite a bit of time left with this candidate so any followup I have I have a question uh and I and you and I touched on this briefly during our discussion yesterday but what makes you nervous or apprehensive about the about moving here and taking on this job nothing yeah I think that was the same answer you had yesterday too yeah that's good okay thank you else no I'm good thank you I'd like I know I asked you to kind of elaborate on it but I think this is really important so I want to take some even some more time with coming into the staff like can you really dive into like just some practical examples of how you would work with and come to learn from people that we have on staff here currently like a game plan for the first 30 days like what specifically are you going to do with our directors and our staff to really learn about the inner workings of our city as it is so I'll be meeting with folks oneone you probably every day and having discussions um I'll review the staff resumés um we will probably do um some sort of Personality assessment SD they have a great uh input output processing template that um I'm not going to say it's a personality test but it let's let's call it that and then we'll map the staff and determine what everyone's personality types are like and then how we all fit together and more importantly how I fit with them so we can understand how each other thinks and operates I'll do that very early on if you were to become the city manager yes sir um I would hope and you can follow up with but but I would hope that uh you would uh build a unbelievable relationship with the staff that we have I mean uh everybody here has worked hard um everybody has made it better I've been on the commission going on four years now and uh the changes that we have seen in our fire department our Police Department our Public Works our Parks and Recreation unbelievable I mean the uh the amount of energy that we have that's in this room right now uh is unbelievable and uh and you know we're trying to do a lot of things that other communities haven't even thought about and uh and and one of those is you know talking about the uh what we're going to do with flooding and everything else and Elevate TI and so we have a lot of like I said the energy is is unbelievable and I I would hope that you would harness that and uh I think that in harnessing that energy it it probably is um really keeping in touch with the the directors of the all the departments on a almost daily basis and and not a hindrance of any fore to the the directors but just uh getting to know the city and getting to know everything about uh our way of life here you know we call it paradise and uh and we enjoy that so that's exactly how I operate can you elaborate on you mentioned uh that Lake Wales has a CRA um and you mentioned that that would be part of your plan or a potential opportunity for us here can you expand on that for those of us up here that might not be familiar with a CRA and based on your knowledge Treasure Island and the I know there's a lot of restrictions on where you can have a CRA is that something that you think um we'd be able to qualify for here in Treasure Island absolutely I do so the first thing you have to perform a finding of necessity right to establishing um bringing a firm they they'll do a study and then there's a lot of qu it's it's not that difficult there's a lot of criteria within the statute um and um Pres describing how to form a c so we' bring in a firm we take our finding of necessity then we begin to coordinate with pel County penel county is a little bit different um they've got some a pretty strict set of their own criteria on how they um award um tax increment their their funds going toward tax increment Revenue I've looked at it it's it's so it can be done it is being done um and so it just depends on what comes out that finding of necessity if it's only we're not talking about slum and blight but only um for Economic Development purposes um I think from what I remember you know pist they only give up to 5% or 50% of the tax increment Revenue you know statutorily we we could potentially get up to 95% of of that uh Tiff um but potentially up to 50% can you elaborate on tax and increment Revenue to tiffs that I we've heard that mentioned a lot but I don't think it's something that we're familiar with so how do you how do utilize that and what's the benefit of do yeah so so what would happen is if you establish let's say a CRA area with boundaries so the properties within that area um so if it if it were to occur in 2024 for example that becomes the base year in terms of value so everything prior to that base year um all all the taxes and and we're talking about the ADV valorum um just get handled like they always have but every year after that um for the duration of time that you have um that CRA area the tax is over and above and we're talking about value um as a value increases stats of tax increment those funds go into the trust fund so you collect both the city and the counties ad vorum they go into that trust fund um that trust fund um you can only spend they're really flexible C are funny they're really flexible on how you can spend the dollars but they just have to be in your plan so you have to adopt a CRA plan and within that plan you'll have things like your your business strategies or incentives or streetcape projects for example um so as long as they're within your plan you can spend your tax increment Revenue um on those types of programs and activities we're funding our downtown construction through our C now we've had a CRA for a long time um and so those values those values are pretty high so we're generating some income we're doing a lot of construction it's working the values are um increasing we've doubled it actually over the last three years so we've gone from generating just over 2 million a year to just over 4 million a year in tax and Revenue um and we've also pledged that against some debt to fund our construction that we're also supplementing with other Grant uh Grant sources but so it's going to take some time because of that base year to increase the values enough um it'll it'll take some time to build up that trust fund but there there are some it'll also open up some tools on the toolkit by just having the CRA and that those are things like and I'll go back to just ta increment rebates for example if you want to incentivize the business bus you can rebate that Tiff Revenue back to them each year as an incentive to come into your town or stay in your town for that matter one uh after you taken a period of time um to get to know City staff uh what is your or how would you approach um communicating uh with City staff down the road do you have weekly meetings monthly meetings one on ones how do you how would you do it uh both it would be both um so we we i' meet with people oneone on a regular basis matter of fact I'll be I'll probably droing UPS because I'll be going by going by their offices visiting them um so much so I deal with people 101 will have group meetings um and those can be you know either standing staff meetings on a weekly basis or bi-weekly basis or monthly um and so I we have so much growth I have long-range planning meetings so bring in those key infrastructure departments and you know even quarterly um you know we're looking at L whes and making plans 10 20 years you know down the road um so we have uh I I'll bring in these separate uh you know City departments and U we'll we'll we'll meet on you know specific projects I mean just right we we meet a lot okay thank you yeah it'll be a lot of face tof face engagement for sure okay I'd like to piggyback on that if I can um also encouraging staff development and attrition Planning and Building up through the ranks do you plan on incorporating that if you were selected yeah so we'll um we do a professional development plan for everyone I want everyone to be the best at what they do right so I I I wrote this somewhere and truthfully my Approach uh I didn't I didn't come up with this right kind kind of concept but really it's a autonomy master and purpose so those are the those are the keys to um employee motivation it really seems to work um to let people do the things that they're they're passionate about um while supporting them to master whatever their craft is supporting their their Continuing Education and Training and really championing it and incentivizing those types of things um and so that that is my Approach yes ma'am thank you and sometimes it works too well I've got sometimes it works too well I'll tell you I've lost some folks over the last few years that have um that I hated to see go but they they moved on to um you know bigger cities and I've got one assistant city manager running around the area right now that started with me five years ago Superstar um so sometimes retention you can create the best environmental World um for people and they they can be happy and grow and prosper but you know sometimes uh you can't hold on to them all it's true all right anything else I'm good all right um so now we want to just give you some time if you have any questions for us that you want clarification on um the city what our objectives are any anything that you have for the commission yeah so uh um you can ask us one onone or each of us to give an answer no no let's let's do this all right so we've had so much fun uh with with your question today so uh how about each of you describe for me three words what you want treasure Ireland to be in 10 years three words or less who wants to go first so that was kind you don't have to do that just give you so I thought about this last night um so you don't you don't have to but U I'll I'll give it I'll give it I think I think uh I think most of the people I talk to want uh Treasure Island to to remain as close to what it is right now to be of paradise I can tell what we don't want and I know this is a lot more three words what we don't want is to be uh the next Clear Water Beach we don't want to be built up overbuilt we don't want to be the next St Pete Beach uh we do want Redevelopment uh responsible Redevelopment but we don't want overdevelopment thank you sir all right um my three would be vibrant welcoming and safe okay I would agree uh you know I think that this is one of the safest communities that I know of and uh everybody that's why our residents you know uh are are here so safe is is one of the big issues you know we do call it paradise and that's because it's a a beautiful setting uh and we want to continue to see that and we also want it to be a community that is familyfriendly and continually red developing the businesses you know the the restaurants and you know all of the shops and everything else you know over time you know we're going to see some come and some go but we want to see that Redevelopment on an active basis you know to take a look at how much property we have that is just empty for a small community is a shame and and that's why you know that we are really interested in the Redevelopment and you know the uh a lot of the things you brought this morning uh in your presentation we want to continue to grow but we want to do it you know at a a legit I'm going to call legitimate Pace um and um and be able to work with all of the businesses that are potentially looking I know that we talked a little bit about that you've heard and about some developers that don't necessarily want to come to Treasure Island because they they don't see it as business friendly um I'm not sure why that is but I think that we need to uh continue to open our doors uh to the businesses and try to bring in the development because if you're if you stop doing Redevelopment you die so you're going to have to move forward can I take more than three words do whatever you want sure I would think it it would be a place where our residents uh are proud to live Proud To Live that's you got three okay congratulations you're there yeah we got room to we got room to go so my three um would be thriving enjoyable and unified and just to expand on that I think enjoyable for All Families our residents and our visitors that's a big Balancing Act to to get to be an enjoyable place for both of the those con or contingencies to be a great residential place but also be a great place for people to visit um don't often go hand inand but they certainly can and I think we have a great we're poised to be able to do that and unified we have so much going on on the horizon we have so much potential um but there's also a lot of potential for disagreement and dis unification that we need to make sure that we avoid so being careful as we tread down this path of progressiveness and um creating a new identity for ourselves we need to make sure that we remain unified as a as a commission and as a as a community but that was I mean the main reason I ran for mayor was I grew up here and I want to make sure that Treasure Island continues to be a great place to raise a family to live um for our for our residents I mean that's our primary objective and should be the most important thing is that people enjoy living here and the development goes into that I mean we have a lot of um opportunity and our residents need great places to go to eat and shop and be able to live in the city that they call home and not have to go somewhere else to get the services and go somewhere else to eat for dinner um we want to keep everyone here and keep everyone happy and thriving as Treasure Island well thank you all um I've thoroughly enjoyed this uh last two days and um just learning a lot more about the island and and the folks that live here um got your work cut out for you it's a very important decision whatever decision you make you're all going to make the right decision um you've got a great Community you got great residents and you have great staff so I think you're going to be in good shape so pleasure to meet you all and thanks for your time thank you thanks James so at this time I think we're ready to break for an early lunch or maybe a little recess before lunch might be served at 11:45 um yeah uh we've I've got the next candidate queued up I told him that we might be starting at noon versus 12:15 if you wanted to take a half an hour lunch uh I've been told from Jessica lunch is being brought into the the lobby now so um it's your call if you want to take the full 45 if you want to regroup it no I think if we can start back up at noon that would be good is that good with it or do we want to take yeah no that's good okay all right are we doing lunch here or weing um all right we'll adjourn the meeting for now thank you everyone e for