##VIDEO ID:u9BAaX1gNlE## e e e e e I'm going to call this meeting regular meeting of the steart city commission for 14 October to order sorry we're a little bit late but nonetheless we will begin so roll call please Madam clerk mayor Rich here commissioner Clark here commissioner Collins here commissioner goobi here and commissioner Reed here so this afternoon the invitation will be provided by Bishop Edward skba of Stewart Alliance Church will you also Police Department police department I'm sorry chap thank you I'm just reading what it says would you please and will you read us in the Pledge of Allegiance afterwards thank you yes thank you Mr Mayor for allowing me to come up and provide the invocation for inviting the presence of the Lord into this Gathering as of last Friday afternoon until Saturday afternoon was yam kipor for our Jewish neighbors and Friends uh a day of atonement and I think this entire country is in the place where we need atonement right now in 2 Chronicles 7:14 it says if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray seek my face turn from their Wicked Ways then will I hear from heaven and will I heal their land and I think we need to pray that right now we also need to pray for the lives that were lost during the recent storm innocent lives that were just taken out of nowhere and remember that each one of us is subjected to that let's have a moment of silence for them please Eternal rest Grant unto them oh Lord light Perpetual shine upon them as we come before you father we say baruk Hashem Adonai eloho blessed are you the name of the Lord Our God blessed are you Lord we acknowledge your power over this Earth and we thank you that you allow us these gatherings that you raise up leaders that can keep us going in a righteous direction that this country needs so badly right now I ask your blessing on each one of these count CC IL members on the mayor on the staff and on all of the citizens of Stewart that you help us gather together and decide on the things that are important to you and to your people father keep us in the center of your will bless this great City bless this County bless our people all around and especially bless those who are hit so hard by this storm be with them bring peace and comfort to them we thank you for your presence Lord we acknowledge it we glorify you in your precious name and For Your Glory do we pray amen please join me now in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you please be seated proclamations so we will begin actually Mr baggot are you capable of reading these I am capable thank you asking could you please read the first one National disability employment awareness awareness uh month October 2024 whereas October 2024 marks the 79th anniversary of national disability employment awareness month with the purpose of to educate the public about disability employment issues and celebrate the contributions of America's workers with disabilities and whereas the history of national disability employment awareness months month dates to 1945 when Congress enacted a law declaring the first week in October each year National employ the physically handicapped week in 1962 the word physically was removed to acknowledge the employment needs and contributions of individuals with all types of disabilities and whereas helping people succeed is celebrating 60 years of service to the community they have highly skilled therapists who provide specialized outpatient mental health counseling for children and adults through its services and initiatives hundreds of the most vulnerable local children families and adults have been able to transform their lives through education counseling training and employment and whereas workplaces welcoming of the talents of all people including people with disabilities are a critical part of our efforts to build an inclusive community and strong economy and activities during this month will reinforce the value and talent people with disabilities add to our workplaces and communities commitment to inclusive community that increases access and opportunities to all including individuals with disabilities now therefore I Campbell Rich mayor of the city of Stewart do hereby Proclaim October 2024 as National disability employment aware awareness month so it says on here the recipient and I just attended her farewell party but Susie Hutchinson are you acting in your am Meritus role as a matter of fact I am I will tell tell you since you brought it up that today a brand new CEO was hired for helping people succeed her name is Cara stemson and you'll be meeting her she starts on the 12th they don't get rid of me till the end of the year but shall I speak or did you oh you can go ahead okay um so I will see you all some some of you I unfortunately haven't met yet but you will probably see me and Cara in the very near future and we're here to talk about the fact that people with disabilities make some of the best employees you will ever ever find we work well with the city of Stewart and are really proud of the uh relationship that we do have we found during the pandemic there was a new uh look at people with disabilities because it's been so hard to find employees and people were willing to look at a new group of employees and I would encourage all of you to continue to do that and to encourage others to I could tell you 50 stories that'll bring both tears and yay to you because of the fact that not only are we helping people become a part of not a part from their Community we're helping them work side by side with everyone else that's all people with disabilities wanted was to grow up and have the same thing that everybody else did they're also they're not on government benefits after that I'm not going to tell you the government spends it any better but that our folks become you know taxpayers one of our big mots is we create taxpayers so I thank you for your help I thank you for the proclamation and I really encourage you to become a part of the family that looks at everyone in the community not just your group so thank you very very much and thank you for coming to my party good food Mr bagot Breast Cancer Awareness Month October 2024 whereas breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women in in the United States impacting countless families and communities early detection through regular screenings and mammograms can significantly increase the chances of successful treatment and whereas raising awareness about breast cancer can Empower individuals to take charge of seek information and engage in conversations about prevention and treatment op options and whereas numerous organizations and advocates uh work Tire tirelessly to support those affected by breast cancer provide education and promote research for a cure and whereas citizens of Stewart are encouraged to honor The Bravery of those battling breast cancer and to support the survivors and families affected by this disease We join together as a community to promote education awareness and compassion for those impacted by breast cancer now therefore I Campbell Rich mayor of the city of Stewart to hereby Pro claim October 2024 as Breast Cancer Awareness Month it says here Chief tanelli will be receiving this TI thank you Commissioners mayor staff for this uh Proclamation on behalf of American Cancer Society Miss Ellen frogner is here or not I don't see her so I will will be accepting this um breast cancer awareness uh I'm sure that can look around the room somebody knows somebody who know somebody who had this diagnosis some have Lo lost the battle some have won it so with that being said I have several members in my inner Community my friends and family who have suffered and lost the battle um I want to make you aware that there is a walk on octob oober 26th at flaglor Park at 8:00 a.m. hosted by American Cancer Society and it's strides it's the strides against uh breast cancer so I do appreciate the city um identifying this Proclamation and on behalf of American Cancer Society I thank you [Applause] we knew [Music] bagot Florida city government week October 21st through the 27th 2024 whereas city government is the government closest to the most citizens in the one with the most direct daily impact upon its residents municipal government provides services and programs that enhance the quality of life for residents making their City their home and whereas city government is administered for and by its citizens and is dependent upon public commitment to an understanding of its many responsibilities city government officials and employees share the responsibility to pass along the understanding of public services and their benefits and whereas Florida city government week offers an important opportunity for elected officials and City staff to spread the word to all citizens of Florida that they can shape and influence this branch of government and whereas the Florida League of cities and its member cities of which Stuart is a member have joined together to teach citizens about municipal government through a variety of activities now therefore I Campbell Rich mayor of the city of Stewart to hereby Proclaim October 21st through October 27th 2024 for as Florida city city government week and receiving this Proclamation is none other than our own city clerk Mary [Applause] kindall thank you I just want to say on behalf of everyone with the city all staff we really appreciate the recognition for Florida city government week we celebrate it every October um and uh we appreciate the recognition thank you so much and finally Mr [Applause] baggot 24th annual Bible reading Marathon November 4th through the 8th 2024 whereas the Bible is a fundamental part of the American Heritage and is the basis of our inalienable rights and it serves as the foundations of our laws our national character and our system of values and whereas president ulyses S Grant stated hold fast to the Bible as the sheet anchor of your Liberties and President Abraham Lincoln called the Bible the best gift God has given to man and historians credit George President George Washington with identifying the United States say one nation under God and whereas the year 1990 was proclaimed by a joint Congressional resolution and presidential Proclamation as the international year of Bible reading and Bible reading week has been celebrated annually thereafter and whereas the Bible is the foundation for many blessings that we enjoy in the United States of America now therefore I Campbell Rich mayor of the city of Stewart do hereby Proclaim November 4th through the 2024 as the 24th annual Bible reading marathon and receiving this Proclamation this evening our pastors Eddie and Joanne Rodriguez step into Grace and New Life Ministries Dr Julie Dr Julie what Dr Julie okay I've been here years okay like I gotta make sure that Bible gets ready okay okay um I'm allowed to to do a little presentation and I'm going to speed you certainly are so Julie bornon Port solo that's now on the map good evening Commissioners thank you for the 24th Bible reading week Proclamation the marathon began 24 years ago after 911 2001 when our church was directed to read the Bible to protect us from terrorist attacks 911 was sudden and unexpected bringing people back to churches and to the Bible the foundation of our nation's Constitution government and education many presidents like you heard understand that without the morals and ethics taught in the Bible our nation's self-government would fail today Bible truths and God's Authority are under extreme attack nationally lawlessness is replacing our constitutional Authority and spiritually liberal rewrites and copyright limitations of the Bible undermine our foundational doctrines throughout the Bible God's love is freely available to all those who will accept it the entire Bible is a record of the extremes God has gone to in order to allow us to avoid the destiny of our fallen edenic state yet what is our human response to God's appeal no God I don't want to love you I'll do it my way when humans fail to respond God has three Alternatives can he indulge it allowing human ellion to go on can he Force us to obey ref removing our free will that leaves God's only real Choice the only way is to withdraw himself whether we realize it or not the existence of God is necessary for our continued existence just as an orchestra with many talented musicians requires a conductor our existence depends on God the Bible says in Colossians 1:16 all things are created by Him and for him all things are held together what would it be like if God left us alone we know about physical death the body dies separated from the soul but there is a spiritual death when the Soul by choice is separated from God ultimately it's our choice it is is up to us to choose everlasting life or Everlasting death which is spiritual separation from God forever it is final we ourselves choose to accept or refuse God's love mercy and forgiveness do we have the ability to even imagine what Everlasting death without God really involves I don't think so the real you is not the finite body God wants you to know you are Eternal whether you are saved or not or believe in Satan or not the important question is where are you going to spend the rest of your life in the presence of God or force him to withdraw himself we all physically die spiritual death is a choice so make sure of your destiny father God provided his son Jesus Christ to redeem us from the darkness of this world his gift of eternal life is free just believe and renew your citizen in heaven but to help choose life God provided two gifts to resist evil his written word the Bible preserved over 2,000 years and through the deaths of many Martyrs and the Holy Spirit who withholds evil on the earth and leads us into all truth please consider signing up to read the Bible 15 minutes this year thank you um good evening mayor councel keep it brief uh we just want to thank you that this 24th annual Bible reading Marathon it is the longest running Bible reading marathon in our country and it's held in the city of Stewart and so we thank thank you so much for your support for the proclamation I think um the ones that have come before us that have established it as Julie was one of the forerunners um to establish this and just let you know um anyone is everyone is welcome you can come out it's from November 4th through the 8th um we have the board up there you can give me a call at 561- 67469 and to sign up for it's 365 15minute time slots and people are so dedicated in the community to to come around the clock to keep the Bible being read around the clock for 5 days and it is a time when the community comes together in hope there's connection there's business owners families children it's just a wonderful week to come out to the Bandshell so we really do want to invite everyone out because there's such a love there a love of the community our relationship is to be with God but also our relationship with one another and so I just invite everyone to come out and share in this time participate um come out read it's um quite an experience and there's so many blessings that go forth um for each individual and for our community and our nation thank you and just for clarification I think many people know what this is but you guys go from Genesis one all the way to Revelation through a King James Bible with all different people different walks of life different positions in the city and around from their own voice reading that out on PA speakers it's a very unique and special thing you guys have been doing for a long time also Dr Collins people can call in if they're homebound if they're overseas we get calls from different states we get military calls in so let people know that they can call in and arrange a calling time and we put it over the loudspeaker it's simple but powerful thank you guys and I just want to say real quick if I can everything my wife said there you go smart man but I just I want to really just piggyback what you said we've had law enforcement out we've had doctors nurses teachers um everyone everyone in the city of uh Stuart and even from afar we've had people from Fort Lauderdale people from Orlando people calling from Canada California for 15minute reading slots the kids across the street at the elementary school they stop in the morning before they go to school and listen and some after school will come out and listen again and just have fun with chalk out there it's all removable it's not permanent and then some even will even enjoy reading so I don't want to encourage you I'd like to invite you to come out even if you don't want to read just sit and enjoy and and Watch God's word be proclaimed over our our nation so thank you thank you Mr Mayor I think I've been there every year Dr Julie and you've opened yeah and so um Pastor Hilton and his wife um Jean just want to thank them for being the four she will be here she'll be here from Tass thank you she'll be staying with us for a very low price thank [Applause] you that's why I was checking it [Music] thanks [Music] joh all right we have three presentations this evening the first is from someone who's been in our community for a long time and that this is an Environ uh a presentation by James Stucky regarding our water our River Mr Stucky thank you the Bible reading will do us a lot of good because our River needs all the prayer it can get and we got the uh I hope that the people at home can see the the presentation because I put a few things together I apologize I do have a very soft voice so I'm trying to speak right into the [Music] microphone Mr Mayor Commissioners city manager City attorney my name is Max ducky I was fortunate enough to move to Stuart Florida in 1956 and in those days us one was two lanes we had one Roosevelt bridge and we approached from the north because we came from South Carolina and we walked AC we drove across that bridge and I kid you not there was elbow to Elbow fisherman up to their knees in Croaker and red snapper and drum and any kind of beautiful fish you could imagine and I thought I had died and went to heaven to come in the steuart um since then the corpe of Engineers has turned Leo Kobi into a point source of pollution of the St Lucy River this St Lucy Canal is also a point source of pollution into the St Lucy River and now we learn that the c44 reservoir which was supposed to help the problem is also a point source of pollution for the St Lucy River these charges of muddy water from the reservoir started the day after mayor Rich told us we should wait and see how lome is going to be we didn't have to wait too long it did not stop that and none of us expected that Reservoir to be a source of more pollution and mud into the river so we have learned over the years that digging more holes to store the water is not a good solution since they can never treat the water in these holes sufficiently to actually send the water South as they have stated meaning the core the South floor Water Management District and all the people who are Upstream from us who are dumping the pollution into our water they have stated their goal is to send it South but because of their blad bad Plumbing um design we get it we get the mud and we've been getting it for over 90 years I observed about five years of loom talks in requests for comments and all of the people from Stewart who commented including our Congressman Brian Mass demand zero discharges zero discharges not reduced discharges we got what we have always received for over 90 years more lip service the core says loome could reduce the discharges as much as 37% since 90 years of pollution is accumulated on the bottom of the St Lucy just a reduction does not make it better maybe the river dies more slowly but that is just just lip service too 37% of what will there be 37% less discharge events or will be there just as many events and maybe 37% less volume of Muddy Water the polluted polluted water will still be discharged and as we have learned the last 30 years which I wish we had realized earlier every time they discharge it is worth than the last discharge because they stir it all up that's on the bottom already surrounding the city of Stewart 10 to 12 ft deep the river cannot recover and be restored until 100% of the discharges are stopped forever and that will be the new Environmental Protection officer's only job where they put this polluted water is not part of our argument the city of Stewart only has one point of view you and that is stop sending the polluted water here ever again now though Loom is just lip service having a dedicated environmental attorney on staff whose only job is to stop those discharges will allow him to actually use Loom as a reason to give the core and everybody else holy hell pardon me for the nice Christians we have here here um every time they contemplate a discharge into our area into our River so Loom has some standards that if we have somebody speaking for the city of Stewart with the authority to speak for the city of Stewart we can make Stewart a such a thorn in the side of these people who have destroyed and killed our river that maybe they will skip us because they know that we will not sit by and just let the status quo continue we were called steuart on the St Lucy right now many sincerely concerned citizens of Stewart are promoting or protesting a bright Line Station those promoting it hope the station could Revitalize the downtown area by attracting visitors to the shops and restaurants that is certainly a worthy goal and I hope that the best decision is made by all the people in charge however I do have a proposal that has great promise to restore and Revitalize Stewart and as a bonus make it a unique place to visit again I mean again cuz it is not the steward that we want it to be in a recent press release issued by the city of Stewart Stewart was named the best coastal town in the whole country ahead of the likes of Kate May New Jersey and Newport Rhode Island and those are pretty impressive towns and just recently in the last week I read that we've been voted the best uh town to retire in so I am sure the well-intentioned promoters of these Awards and who appli for this honor fail to mention that we are completely surrounded by a poison River I mean is poison it is toxic I'm sure that was not in the application the press release concern contains these lines about Stuart Florida Stuart was officially named the salefish capital of the world in 1957 due to the location attracting Sports fish men for decades who came to the area to enjoy the offshore sailfish action and the mild climate climate and waterways that is not a misstatement of fact because it was written in the past tense I've been fortunate to live in Stewart since 1956 I finally recall going with my dad to the Stewart hotel which was located at the South End of the Roosevelt bridge where they had an all night coffee shop catering to the fisherman on on the bridge there were fishermen there from all over the country 247 they stayed at the steuart hotel the Commodore Hotel or the Pelican Hotel and they stayed there off and on all year all season to come to Stewart and patronize our stores and fish I just want to clean up the river they came to the river for fishing I just want to clean up the river for the future of the children of Stewart I had such a magical childhood playing swimming and fishing in this River and now it is a black toxic mess I cannot even stand the look at it it is disgusting and we know what caused it and it wasn't the septic tanks it was the St Lucy Canal where they jet billions of gallons of mud and toxic materials every time they open those locks it has to stop our river is dead now we often see signs warning to avoid contact with the water Orca has found disturbing amounts of toxins in the fish and I feel so sorry for our local people who fish here for food no official statement has been made that the fish are unsafe but I sure wouldn't eat one I wouldn't even touch this water and that's disgusting now visitors are not going to come and stay in this toxic environment very long it is we we attract them here but when they find out what we've going got going on all the way around us in that River a lot of them are not going to stay here now the bright line can station can lure them in sufficient numbers to accomplish for Su sustain health for our beloved downtown it may not do that because once they get here and see what the problem is they'll leave again on bright line but a clean River could do it could you turn the page now this is a page out of the uh s out of the fishing guide for Stuart the Stewart Chamber of Commerce had the above message printed on envelopes to mail promotional brochures in the late 1920s and it said come here Florida's most beautiful stream meeting our St Lucy River we have good water and plenty of good fish so I mean the Chamber of Commerce promoted the fishing few uh Turn the Page there should be a page before that there should be a page before that that's the next one maybe it got skipped out it doesn't matter go ahead go ahead to that one okay um steuart Heritage Museum has fishing guides dating back to the 1920s you should all everybody listening to me tonight should go to Stuart Heritage Museum and make a donation and look at these fishing guides um fishing was everything scroll it down just a little bit what I want you to scroll it no down not not up I want you to see that in uh the 1950s we were water skiing in this River we were swimming in this River we had a water skiing team and the picture on the bottom shows all the fish that were being caught there nobody's water skiing in that River now that river is dangerous to touch the next page these are a group of old postcards I have I collect old Stewart postcards these show the top and shows 1956 Frasier Creek and the bottom and then Willie Garry's and this one at the bottom look at the heading the city of Stewart Florida's finest fishing ain't there anymore and why strictly because the core of engineers has killed our River and made our River toxic I've got these now the city of Stewart I found this nice thing it's always up there in the city manager's office the city of Stewart has bent over backwards to do everything that it knows how to do to stop pollutants going into our River but it is totally uneffective as long as those discharges continue they cannot continue next page okay this is my salute to Charles Dickens I guess we're not going to be able to get the whole thing uh go go up what we've just seen is the Stuart Sailfish ghost of Chris of Stuart past all the beautiful fishing the Clean Water the water skiing that is the ghost of steuart pass now go down to the next one the other way other other way other way this is this is the sailfish ghost of Stuart present now go the next page we've seen how nice it was in the past this is steuart present keep going up know it's up report fish with sores and lesions in 1998 keep moving up high bacteria avoid contact with the water those signs are up way too often this is Stuart present it is not steuart on the St Lucy right now it is Stuart on in a polluted river that should be avoided at all costs next page that's just the bottom of the sign it's not paging out as well as okay this is Stuart present stop it right there because we we can't for some reason we can't get the whole thing on this this is what our St lcy river is like now instead of being a clear a clear River full of fish and seagrass and manatees and porposes it is a septic tank for Lake Uchi discharges nothing more than that the c44 canal is nothing more than a sewer pipe and it is just totally unconscionable the cor of Engineers and their predecessors has taken the miracle of the Everglades which was a pure unending source of fresh water from the headwaters up there around Mickey Mouse all the way down to Florida Bay with an endless supply of water and ecosystem and fish and birds and they've turned it into a toilet that flushes into our St Lucy River this cannot be allowed to stand now I want to say that the reever everl glaze res restoration process is not something that I'm saying that Stewart is going to be involved in it is too complicated and the the Upstream politicians and the Upstream organizations that are trying to restore the Everglades by putting in a lot more bad Plumbing Stuart cannot be concerned with that Stuart can only be concerned with stopping the discharges into the St Lucy River we have adjacent land and citizens living adjacent to that poison River and our only goal is to stop them from putting the garbage in the river and I I will say that if we stop them if we stop them then that will force those Upstream to find ways to improve the Everglades because they cannot keep using Stewart as The Dumping Ground for all their mistakes for their bad Plumbing everything the core does makes it worse digging those holes south of the south of the lake does nothing to send water South they have never ever been able to meet the standards for discharging The Waters from those storm treatment areas south to the Everglades in fact in fact those storm treatment areas don't even take Lake water those storm treatment areas only take run off from the from the agricultural areas so they don't even help us and this so-called Reservoir that the Everglades Foundation calls the crown jewel of Everglades restoration is another really bad design and it will not solve the problem it may hold 9 to 12 days of discharges but most of our discharges run on and on for months so so if we stop if the city of Stewart stops the core from using us as their overflow valve they will have to do a better job of dispersing this stuff now the next page wish we got him right side up okay sami's our little logo of Stuart and uh Samy is Sami is being visited by his brother Spike here and I I view of Sami is sort of swimming around Stewart going oh the water looks kind of kind of dirty uh maybe we should have another Art Festival oh let's have another Street Festival oh and the spike comes to town and says hey Samy what the hell happened here you gotta fix this we need to be less like Sammy and more like Spike now because we do not have the ability to keep having this happen we need to hire Spike to be our environment Al Protection Officer and insist that he only work to stop these discharges into the river and then once they're permanently stopped require the river to be cleaned out and restored so that it can go back to being Steward on the St Lucy our greatest asset has become our greatest liability and we cannot ignore it any longer there's it will be a long fight this is not just a lawsuit we don't want to just hire a law firm to hire a lawsuit file a lawsuit this is a lifetime battle to protect the river and even you know the mikasuki have mikasuki have that injunction that prevents the untreated water to go south because it would destroy the Everglades we have the same right to not have polluted water and we should we should enforce that right since the federal government and the state government are the perpetrators of what is going on the city government is the only ones that can stand up and protect the citizens of Stewart we're we don't want to see Stewart ghost of of of the future where the sailfish is dead because the stuff they're putting in that River and the stuff that's in layers and layers of sediments that are already in that River the green algae is not the problem the green algae is just one little symptom of the problem whatever was causing the fish leion in 1998 that wasn't green algae that was another toxin all of the all of the insecticides and nonsense that they used for the last 90 years are layered up in that junk on the bottom so once and there's no reason to do anything about it until the discharges are stopped but then the job's not over once they're stopped we got to get them to clean all this out of the river and restore the river it's not going to happen in my lifetime but maybe we can get it started started the Clean Water Act Federal Clean Water Act was enacted in 1972 And um let's see this go to here's is that the next page okay just to for proof of my 90 years of uh of complaining about this Mark Perry gave me this it's a letter that Martin County wrote to the Board of Trustees of the internal Improvement fund which they were apparently in charge of the the canal back then saying you're killing our fish stop the discharges this has been going on for 90 years and we're still right where we always were the river is being killed so the federal Clean Water Act is just one one thing that the federal government has done that could be used as a as a strategy to stop the discharges it is not by any means the only one and the EPA and the D have totally gutted it by creating arbitrary rules that allows them to not treat these discharges as discharges regulated by these Clean Water Act let me just in 19 this is the Clean Water Act it is the national goal that the discharge of pollutants into navigable Waters be eliminated eliminated by 1985 and it is the national goal that whenever attainable an interim goal of water quality which provides for the protection and propagation of fish shellfish and Wildlife and provides recreation in and on the water be achieved by July 1st 1983 and it is the national policy that the discharge of toxic pollutants in toxic amounts be prohibited needless to say our own government has wholesale violation of this act now they've created all kinds of rules that they say allow them to do that but I say it's time to stop stop doing this and overturn their rules and don't accept this anymore the U the Clean Water Act made it unlawful to discharge any pollutant from a point source of pollution let's see you might want to move on to the summary of The Clean Water Act there it is and a point source of solution are we on the next page next page please Point sources are discrete conveyances such as pipes or man-made ditches the St lcy Canal is nothing but a man-made ditch that's all it is I mean it's a sewer pipe just happens to be a ditch but they specifically prohibited it um and the purpose of it is to maintain our oceans watersheds and Aquatic ecosystems to protect human health support economic and recreational activities and provide healthy habitat for fish plants and Wildlife you think they're doing that in our St Lucy River you think they're doing any of that no they're not next page okay this is one um suggestion I had is our environmental attorney if we hire one needs to have the power to act it cannot he he or she cannot be micromanaged by the commission he should act very much like the city manager does go out and plan the business of cleaning up the river and then come back to the city with suggestions of what he has discovered the first year or two is not going to be racing in the court the first year of two is going to be determining the extent of the damage that we have out there and then the thing about it is all of the damage is admitted by the core they've admitted it I'll get to that in a minute um since our government has the duty and the police power to protect the health and property values of its citizens our city government is the only entity which can stop this because our federal and state government has refused to stop it they just they are I I don't I hesitate to say they're sold out but that's just the way politics work we are very small demographic we have no political clout the only way that the city of Stewart can protect itself and save itself is to take legal action in all the administration um of the agencies that are violating the act and get ready to to enforce it in court um we we need to have an unre we need our environmental attorney needs to start an un unrelenting demand through its own Environmental Protection office and he's to spend full time doing this and file it in every state and federal agency that has any jurisdiction over this problem and the way to do a charter amendment I don't know if you know some of you do that the reason you can't sell our waterfront property is because I did a charter Amendment back in 200 10 or 11 I can't remember catap development was going to build four-story condos in Flagler Park it's what they wanted to do and we actually had a commission that acted like they were going to vote to allow it so 82% of the city said no don't sell our public Waterfront we love our River well now we want to go back to the voters and say we love our Waterfront but it our our water is dead the fish aren't there the water is toxic now we want our our city to have a full-time attorney working only for the city not for the county not for the state not for some big Law Firm that is so politically conflicted with all the people it has to to please but just for the city of Stuart and the people of steuart this person with with the type of person that we need is someone that is an environmental Warrior not someone that's just wants a bureaucratic job working for the city he needs to I would propos that we recruit them from one of the more more aggressive environmental organizations that are that are on the Forefront of fighting for overall Environmental Protection for someone and those people have been working for nothing or very little because they believe in the they believe in the cause cause of clean water and clean air I think we we can find someone like that and I I will volunteer to work with a group appointed by this commission and work tirelessly to find the right people to bring to apply and bring them before you to to take care of it now I've written some detail into the charter Amendment um to it's just exactly at the city manager's um part it just tells you what the powers are the for the environmental attorney to enforce and clean up the river I won't read those in detail because I know we have a lack of time after and what I've attached to the Charter Amendment is the uh the current city Charter just to show you show you where uh where the charter Amendment would go in next page now for a charter Charter amendment to be enacted um the city commission would have to enact it in two separate readings and then it would have to be approved by a refer by a referendum a special election by the um by the by the electors and I got the I got Vicky Davis to give us the price a special election for just the city of Stewart cost in the neighborhood of about $155,000 and that could and that could be spent out of the city budget that's already there for the environmental attorney I do not think I do not think that we need to wait for the charter amendment to start recruiting the environmental attorney because if we get the right person it'll may take a while to find the right person but if we get the right person then they can certainly go out and Lobby to and help with getting the charter Amendment passed and possibly getting their input into uh exactly how they want to set up their op off operations so uh now Loom I watched that whole loome process and we had lots of people from Stewart and we had Ben Hogarth who was like our head guy going over there and he was happy happy we got him down to 37% and but he said we knew he knew that was just the beginning that that was hopefully slow things down till we can we can do it better this is the next step where we can do it better now lome loome reminded me of Neville Chamberlain lobbying Hitler not to bomb London because Neville was over there was over there um trying to get him to stop bobbing London at the same time um London they were building more bombs than getting ready to bomb lond l so we cannot wait any longer we cannot wait for more negotiations for 90 years the river will not last that long river is dead now the river is disgusting now I mean people that haven't been here long enough to see the degrad degradation maybe not realize how bad it is but it is it is compared to the way it was when I moved here it is it is horrible now in in conclusion for the the city of Stewart to lose this fight want to get to the page that says save our St lcy it's further down oh there it is um for the city of Stewart to lose this fight and and this is where I'm going to refer to the uh River Coalition lawsuit that they did file which really did a lot of good um where the city of Stuart to lose this fight the state and federal courts and the agencies which are supposed to enforce the Federal Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act and all the other public health and anti-pollution laws have to say unequivocally yes we have destroyed the St lcy River and made it frequently unsafe for human contact but we're not going to do anything about it and we're going to keep doing it that is exactly what the Corp of Engineers said in the rivers Coalition lawsuit which was filed in 2006 as reported in the opinion of the federal court of claims on January 29th 2010 on page 16 I'll just hop over to that it says the course says this is the core says uh that the volume and permanence of the discharges in the St Lucy River have been apparent for decades this is the core yeah we did it and we don't we don't care and and the government concedes that the core has no plans to change its operations of Lake OVI to stop the destructive releases of polluted water into the St Lucy that's the core I mean we don't have to prove that they're doing that they're admitting that they're doing that most of these most of what the rivers Coalition suit did was establish all the facts that one should have to establish to to win a better styled lawsuit um this is just guess defendant every time I say defendant it's the core responds that the ultimate extent of the damage cause by its discharges into the St Lucy River was foreseeable far more than six years before the present lawsuit that's one of the reasons it got thrown out because the statute of limitations for what they alleged was six years um in fact defendant claims that all of the environmental impacts now alleged by plaintiffs have existed since at least the 50s and were widely reported in contemporaneous contemporaneous newspaper articles government reports other publicly thing so in other words course said we've been doing this forever we're going to keep doing it your River's your River's dead so what we need to be able to dump this water somewhere because we designed a really bad plumbing system so you're hey guess what you got no political clout you're it we're going to dump it on you now the difference between the clo hatchee and the St louy river is that the cl Hatchy was always connected to the lake Oobi and always Reed fresh water from Lake okachobee the St Lucy Canal was never I mean St Lucy River was never connected to Lake okachobee except by all these little canals draining into it so it it it should never have done it in the first place and it needs to stop um going back to I'm all this done only an experienced environmental litigation attorney working only for the city and not with any other group or even with Martin County can create the best strategies to stop the perpetrators from saying what they have been saying for over 90 years such attorney's only only full-time job should be to do everything necessary to stop all discharges from the St Lucy Canal permanently and require a core to clean out the mess they put in our River and restore it to the pristine shape that we deserve in the city in order for steuart to fail the people who are supposed to be protecting us must continue to say yes we have destroyed the St Lucy River and made it frequently unsafe for human contact but we are not going to do anything about it and we are going to keep doing it and every time okay every time one of these people says that our environmental attorney can say okay we're gonna we're going to call the media and say okay um Rick Scott said we're going to do that we're GNA keep discharge it there's nothing you can do about it whoever it is I don't care if who it is when they say you cannot we're going to keep discharging into the river that we're going to name names we're g to have press conferences we're going to take this right out into the public so that we don't just quietly succumb to what we've succumbed to for the last 90 years really should this situation stand if our laws mean anything it is pure evil perpetrated by our own government and the city can really stop it I'll take questions thank you Mr [Applause] sty any questions or comments Mr Mayor I have a comment first I want to say thank you to attorney Stucky um I hope that everyone here realizes how important this is we can do all the dress ups of Stewart we can make them the best small town and the most coastal town in every magazine across the country but if we don't save that River we do not have a town I hope you all understand that no one's going to want to come here I don't care if they come here by train car bus whatever they're not going to want to come here where there's polluted Waters and all of these signs around and at some point they can see the algae sitting there and people can't fish they can't swim there are people in million dooll homes sitting that they can't sit on their back deck because of the smell of the algae so I'm just saying this is so important and I know that this community can do this this community rallied for Jonathan Dickinson this community is rallying for the bright Line Station this is the most important thing you need to rally for and I'm hoping that you will all do that and then I'd like to ask the city manager what would be the next steps for us to to move forward to be able to start this process for the environmental attorney and take attorney stucky's offer of being able to help vet that person I will work for free I'm not into this for the money um well it's it depends on the process it depends on the process you want to take as as uh Mr Stucky had pointed out um it doesn't necessarily mean you need to hire the Environmental Lawyer next month what you need to do is identify the job description and the locations to where you want to draw from the attorney um I could put an agenda item together for you guys to decide if you wanted to go out to um you know hire a a head hunter to go out and look for a particular type of person I would like to be your head hunter again this you can't vote on it here like you did this is in due process it's great but we still need a workshop you'd still need an agenda item regardless of who the Head Hunter is but if Mr Stucky had the person you wouldn't need the workshop you wouldn't need it we could just he could give us the name right now I mean I don't know if he's how much talk to one person that came from a environmental professor at at Florida State but I don't want to be in a hurry I want to I want to put it out there in all the environmental Publications possibly in the Wall Street Journal and uh describe exactly the type of person we want and I'm telling you the people that out there fighting for the environment they're not in it for the money they need a living wage and that's about it and they'll be only working for the city of Stewart they won't be working for some Upstream politician or some polluter so what you want to do is create the job description once you've created the job description you need to decide if it's going to be by Charter Amendment or by Charter Amendment later you could hire the person without a charter Amendment if you wanted to get them started Ed and then have an election and do a charter Amendment later to have them essentially I put the job description in the charter Amendment so those are the elements of of the work we would expect the environmental attorney to do if it became a charter Amendment then it would become a directive as part of his environment as Charter officer directive but the the uh job description is right there in the charter Amendment right just like you I don't she was asking me which ways to do it I honestly you could just do the charter Amendment put have the election well it wouldn't hurt to do that if we uh if we did it that way and and also as part of the motion started the process for hiring the attorney right too because if we're because it'll take several months to get the charter Amendment on an election I I know we can't get it this year Vicki said it would have to be after after January but I I think that you might have had one or other Charter Amendment you wanted to talk about we might could get them two on the same election for the price of one but um the job description is in the charter amendment I wrote in your materials and that's their job that's that's the job and then then uh all I need to do is be given some kind of authority to start recruiting people because we may who knows where we're going to get these people Collins yes so I I would move that we start the process proc since we have it budgeted that environmental attorney we start that process um not wait for a referendum because that does take time but we can move um with a you know referendum either next year on the normal election cycle but starting that process now since it is budgeted for even with what you have already I'm sure you can work with our city manager and help dial in this this uh job function and then like when we hired Mr baggot we we put together uh a focus group which I think you should certainly be a part of that also included Ryan and there was there there was a group of people but um we've got a lot of environmental people in our community that could you may have some other names that we might have in that group yep so that would be my motion if there's a second I'll second that motion what is your motion precisely that we initiate that process now that the attorney uh position is budgeted for that we formally start that process of hiring that person we not be in a rush like Max said uh but that as a part of that process like when we hired Mr bagot that we put that group together to start hashing that out B basically Raz through Mike and some of the information from Matt create that job description and then we start receiving applications and then that group sort of vets out those applications would what it what should happen is I should put on the agenda agenda item to have the commission officially adopt a job description and give direction to staff if you want them to start outside of the charter now the distinction being is starting outside of the charter you could the commission could appoint itself as the um review panel for lack of a better description um but you also need to have criteria for the review panel similar to the criteria of the um volunteer board you have so then let me amend my motion to have an upcoming agenda item where we work out those details I can put it on the October 28th do you feel like you have yeah are you willing to second that motion that amended I wasn't sure he was finished yet yes I am seconding that emotion motion motion yeah we can sing next that's a good song so we have a motion to put on to create an agenda item on a forthcoming meeting to more uh precisely Define the parameters of a charter position um I would just like to thank you for your amending amending your motion because it seems odd to me to say we're going to have a referendum we're going to allow the citizens to express their opinion but we're really not going to wait to hear from you so this is a I think a much more sensible way to proceed do you have any comments commissioner Reed yeah mayor rich I know uh lee City attorney I I believe he's looked uh they maybe contacted a little bit here and there as far as Mac is is there any kind of road map or timeline for a resolution on potentially how long it could take or how for the for the Char for the end for the end result for what we're looking for I guess it's we're never going to be at the end result this is going to be a permanent job because we've got 90 years of Destruction to undo and then the way legal injunctions work is once you finally manage to get you may not get it all in one court order you may get it incrementally over several years the beauty of doing it this way as opposed to going and hiring outside council is that all it is is a salary for the attorney and his possibly a paralal his equipment so the first thing he's going to do is Define the problem because he may may he probably doesn't live here I wish we had someone that was qualified that lived here but I don't think there is maybe one will appear but Define the problem and develop all of the various strategies that have a chance of succeeding and that we're probably talking a year or two there before we do it but the first thing he's going to do as part of that process is engage every agency and every governmental um subdivision that has a piece of this problem and the last time I counted there was something like 46 different pieces of people have some part of this problem uh that that they have a control over so uh the first thing to do is to introduce the person and let he or she develop the best possible strategy to prevent to the commission we probably we probably won't be able to stop the discharges for five to 10 years if we are lucky but what we can do what we can do is make in incremental progress all the way along and hopefully we can shame the people that have been creating this problem so badly that we can not even have to have a knockdown drag out suit but we can have what the what the mikasuki ended up with which is a uh a consent order for the stoppage of the stop there's two parts stoppage of the discharges and then the cleanup and it's going to you'll be an old man before we're through Mr Reed okay that makes sense and then by having the charter Amendment if the board did change then potentially 5 years down the road or whatever it would have to be another Charter amendment to get rid of that responsibility roles for this environmental attorney basically and frankly when this starts when this starts working as well as I expected to I mean don't look at this as an expense I've talked to so many people that will help the city fund this whole process we've got so many good scientists that will give their time for the expert testimony this will be a money maker for the city not an expense people will will donate part of the job description is for the attorney to to go after grants and uh donations to help with the process and when when the river cleaned up we'll have we'll have more money than we know what to do with because all the people are already here and they'll tell all their friends to come again I'm sad I am sad I I loved it growing up here but now when people call me and say I really want to move to Steward I have to tell them if you can move anywhere else in Florida I would go there because this river is dangerous do you have any questions so this would be for Mike then so how we um when we had our budget workshops and we put in 300,000 for environmental attorney that could potentially change so if it was in the charter Amendment it would always be budgeted for the city or not necessarily well you'd still have to budget it every year okay because being in the do they have a car are there litigation costs is there support staff is their research is there outdoor outside Consultants are there experts is they have staff you know there's a lot more than just the salary all right thank you it'd be part of a budget every year but that's the the bigger concern is the hiring of the position and defining the role okay thanks Mike that's all may one last thing to say and I promise not to burst into song because I can't sing but I just want to say one thing attorney Stucky from today on I want you not to be sad because the bowl is the bow is finally rolling and we're moving forward so I want you to be happy y well it's all better to be doing something positive than to Fring over the negative yeah we just definitely want to do something for the river but all the details with this um person being you know this one person who you first said they didn't they wouldn't have contact with other people then you're saying that they need to engage which we know that's important and I think we need input I think Eve samples has been here before and the water people and I think just getting some input from them as to experts and different things like that and coming up with this uh description there's so many things with this Charter and the salary and how things goes through that whenever we set that for a discussion I think most of the things that I've noted here um will you know we'll discuss them at the time one of our biggest hurdles was whether or not we'd have the money but we've kind of agreed that we' we're having this in our budget so we're working towards that and we know that it's going to take some time and it's been quite some time I remember when the core of engineers came when I was mayor back in 2013 I had created a poem for them about Stuart on the St Lucy and you know the charm and beauty is still there but we there's a lot of work that we need to do to clean up but I think that effort needs to really uh like we if we give this charge to our staff to come back to us with something let's get you know that discussion done with the details when staff does their work and comes back this is a presentation today we have several more to go through that's right so is no I agree with commissioner Clark do you have additional comments yeah uh there's nothing more people important to the citizens of Steward and the quality of our River and we should examine the best options available to accomplish that uh we do have Gil smart right here with votat we do have Eve sample with ever GLA we have Mark Perry uh fos right out there on the Indian River who will be hosting the 40th Everglades conference and these are people who incredibly qualified who have worked incredibly hard for so many decades uh to achieve success with uh improving the water quality and I'd like you to come and make presentation Mr Stucky to The Rivers coalition maybe the Indian River Coalition and you know let's get this out here and understand the true you know this is not a this is a lot of money we're adding to the city budget another lawyer which you know maybe that's a good idea um but it's not only the cost of the position and perhaps uh what do they call it um you know an aid but it you've outlined extensive litigation efforts and what is the cost of that litigation and is an in-house guy the best or maybe are there people out there are there right that the only way it's going to be affordable thank you Mr suaki we'll be moving on we'll discuss it so next is a cyber we have to vote we have to vote on that we have a motion in a second we have a motion in a second but it's it's a motion in a second just to bring back an agenda yeah just to bring back an agenda item all in favor all in favor I I think the the mood of the board was okay cyber security awareness thank you [Applause] [Laughter] [Music] okay Mr Mayor Commissioners hello my name is Darren Duke for the record I am the director of Technology services department and to uplift this crowd I'm going to talk about cyber security because that's going to be a crowd pleaser right now um I do have some good news though it's only five slides the bad news is I'm going to talk for an hour on each slide uh that's a joke for those who don't know me um so so what what is what is cyber security awareness month well it was it was started in uh 2004 by the department of Home Aline security to actually help not just governments but also individuals understand right we we live in Two Worlds now we live in the physical world we live in the digital world and the dangers uh uh and sharks that live in the digital world that's what this was created for uh this does Mark the 20th anniversary it's it's not new um It's relatively new to the city uh we didn't really do anything for cyber security month until I started in The Last 5 Years uh it is observed every October hence this presentation and every every year they have a theme and the theme this year is secure our world um and the three pillars of that are use strong passwords I would actually say that's wrong I would say use strong unique passwords um for example if Netflix gets hacked and someone gets your password I just go to your bank and try that same email address and password I can probably get into Amazon or Netflix or somewhere else where I can buy something so use strong unique passwords enable multiactor authentication so what is multiactor authentication that is something I have so if you think about your password your password is something you know and the reason you know it is it's probably on a p on a Post-It note on your computer um multiactor authentication is something you have like your cell phone is usually where it comes so you get a code because you only have the only person in the planet but has your cell phone as you the only place that code can come is to you so that's why you should really enable multiactor authentication anywhere you can if it if you can do it and then be cautious of fishing campaigns um still today and I'm I'm going to talk about some statistics in a few minutes still today 90% of our attacks in the city come from emails um some are obvious to spot uh usually if it sounds too good to be true it is um obviously with the uh the Advent of of artificial intelligence the the the typos that you would see from non-native English speakers is is getting harder to spot um so we we you know anti- fishing fishing campaigns are getting harder and harder to spot so but again if it's if it sounds too good to be true it usually is so what does the city of Stewart have invested in this well um in April of 2019 the city was a victim of a ransomware attack it was it was pretty well publicized at the time and I want to point out neither Mr Mortel was city manager nor was ivit director uh just putting that out there so people know um but you know we we are fully aware of the need for employee training and and the precautions needed because of this a lot of employees I I think my quick math said 50% of the employees we have today were around when that attack happened in 2019 uh we still have one commissioner in in uh Ula clar who was who was around when it happened so we still have some intellectual Capital about how bad it became our phone system was unusable we couldn't run per roll we couldn't do permits the the devastation was pretty dire for for the city and it took six to eight weeks to recover and we're still seeing issues even in 2022 from it and the last time we we saw something really big from the original hack in 2019 was to do with the recent P4 oros uh lawsuit where we went and found some files back from early on 2018 2017 that were infected and we we we actually had to say to the as part of a lawsuit that you know these are the files that we have to provide you by law but we strongly suggest you don't open them because they might be Ransom wir that's that's how deep it was um no Ransom was ever paid for by the city uh that that was misreported in several instances that we paid a ransom the city never did and eventually most data and systems were recovered um as I mentioned earlier email is still the primary Vector of attack so the the city have we have about 350 370 employees at any given time give or take those employees routinely receive 1.2 million emails a year that's the ones that are legitimate that's the ones where the email address is spelled correctly or the user still is here or we or the user hasn't retired so that's 1.2 million emails sent annually out of those only 90,000 the block that's actually quite a small number I was expecting it to be more when I went looking um but it's because we have so many layers of security that when it gets to the point where it's going to be delivered to one of the employees of our commissioners we block about 90,000 a year um the last number of always interested in the 600 blocked by what's something is called Advanced fret protection so what this does is when you get a Word document there could be code in that word document that is going to install ransomware or any type of malware a credit card stealer on your machine um what Advanced our Advanced fet Protection Systems do is they actually open that word document of that Excel spreadsheet of that PDF on the cloud as if you were double click on it to see what it does so even with all of our onion SK of of security we still have about 600 a year that if we didn't have advanced protection would get through to an an employee or a commissioner or a board member and if they opened it it would start all the process of again so that's an interesting statistic that 600 still would get through if we if we didn't do really good stuff um and then I I decid to do some statistics from what do we stop and this is always a moving Target and this is only from one of our locations so one of our locations per year stops 780,000 that's a seven and8 and four zeros 780,000 Network intrusions a year just think about that that that's if if that was dollars I would not be here um that's it's it's a large large number to stop and it works out about 2,000 a day and if you think about that how how does somebody ever look at 2,000 Network intrusions a day when I have a team team of five the answer is we don't we put a lot of trust in the technology and the systems we have to protect us from that but still today you know that's just one of the systems we have over 10 so you could theoretically extrapolate this out to be close to 8 million intrusions a year that we block from from all all over the world um so that's where the city of Stewart stands now what what about what about else so so this is an interesting stat I pulled this just before I came here in the last 30 days so we have about 350 to 370 employees routinely we have probably 500 to 650 devices Citywide that's computers mobile phones printers air conditioners cameras with Ticky pick so we have you know probably about you know on a given day probably 800 devices are probably hours in the last 30 days we have seen 2,357 different devices on the city's networks um most of them are coming from from w so when when people come and actually connect to a Wi-Fi that's how we see all of these devices um the Wi-Fi is not connected to our M Network so you can't get anywhere once you get in but it is an interesting stat that you know three fifths of the devices that we see ever attached to our Network are actually not our own devices and we put prevention in in in place to do that so where does Florida stand in this uh I've actually got to give Florida the state itself um some some Kudos of late um because they are now embracing cyber security uh there's a a slew of local uh cyber security government acts I've listed several here that you can read on your own if you really have trouble sleeping this will fix it um it one of them requires you know local governments to adopt the cyber security standard and also mandates that all employees uh of the city have to go through um cyber security training um either annually or or when we we deem necessary and so that that's really good to see that the state is starting to to do this um one of the biggest benefits though is the public record exemptions so when I started here in 2019 Florida was somewhat famous in the United States for the amount of cyber security instances they would have cities schools counties Sheriff's Office we're getting ransomware left right and center the fact is Florida wasn't any worse than any other state I'd lived in and worked in it just had to it just had to admit it when it was asked because of the public records uh rules at the time said if you are asked you have to tell them yes you've been Ransom we than what you did um now the public records and are in there to to to avoid us giving information to the nation state hackers the careers that the North Korea is the irans of a world and that that's a big step forward so I've got to give Florida it its due it's it's done a lot in the last five years um oh that's not I'm going do and then WR way uh and then finally the state has provided us grants in the last two years we have been a lucky recipient of of a a rather substantial Grant in it dollars not not in City dollars um but has allowed us to to procure some products that has really helped us level up our our security posture we are a lot better off because of the grants that the state has has given us than before and and I I would strongly um like to thank the state for doing that and it's an annual procurement for the state so every year it has to be re reauthorized by them so it is an annual thing where we we keep our fingers crossed and hope we get it again um more details so uh Misty the our communications director um just last week of a week before of a newsletter on October 1st the city newsletter has has some really good 10 steps of for everyday use not just for government employees but for everybody on the planet if you follow these 10 steps you're going to be better off a 99.99% of the planet and a lot safer online um also cesa who uh really of a cyber and infrastructure security agency they're the the federal agency that that dictates how we have to um secure our critical infrastructure which includes our water plant we are we do have critical infrastructure um they also have some some guidelines for cyber security month and then know before who are a famous um cyber security awareness training company they actually have a very good resource kit um that's it's free to download that tells you all about how to do good cyber security so uh I as I said it was going to be quick and I said it was only five five slides do I get a peras because of this please no so if anybody has any questions I'll I'll do my best to answer them uh do thank you Darren do we have any questions of Darren no I'm just were you g to say something Mr I was just gonna say I've actually seen Darren's operation and the employees over there and it's amazing what goes on over at the IT department I have too it's really amazing yeah and I'm just concerned of course that when you mention all of those devices and everything that includes our water system and we have to worry about outside interference and issues with our water system so that so important that we have good qualified staff and we're so thankful to Mr Woodside and his staff and all the people who really make sure of course you make sure that the all the elect whatever the Cyber works but so important it's it's a team sport it's it's not just me it's not much of my department it's every single employee uh you know at the end of the day the best defense from Attack is the mark one human eyeball is if you see something say something and all of our employees know that if something looks suspicious just tell us that there's there's no there's no judgment there's no shame there's no nothing right I would rather you tell us and we say no it's it's legitimate someone really does want to give you a million dollars that's never a true email by the way um or or to say you know you sto one we' actually had a few employees over the last at least one employee in the last six months stopped probably close to a half a million to a million dollar fraud attempt by actually notifying us and that's all to do with the training it's all to do with cyber security awareness and thank you for the training notes I know I get hundreds of them but um yeah if we do open an email that's messed up then it causes the system to go down and I do remember when you know we had the problem Darren I just have one kind I have a I have a friend who works for the uh FBI in cyber and it's it's unbelievable the quantity of attacks y um my question is is it a draw with AI does AI help you more effectively fend off these attacks but it probably lets them be more effective in their attacks as well well it it right now it's probably 50/50 as you said it's a draw um what we get from spotting it they get from Faking it right and you at the end of the day you know the verbiage was always the way to spot it the bad language the words that I've Sy not the way a native English speaker would send something that that's AI is really helping with that because AI can speak any language it wants in wa half a second um so it's still the mark one human eyeball is I'm I'm am I expecting this email for missp person I'm doc your sign doc your signs all over the place right now are probably one of our biggest risks because they look legitimate oh I've got to sign this document you don't know why but you do so you try and click on it and before you do it you're off and that's that's where they're getting they can make it look really real really quick is with AI oh no there's a bad one uh with Xfinity going out right now saying your automatic payment failed it's it's identical to there okay thank you Darren moving on appreciate it zoning in progress the D present I believe Mr [Applause] Mor um so I was going to do a uh history of kind of the dwani uh result or the dwani code that we ended up with I'm going to just briefly talk about how um in the uh mid 1980s several things were happening in Stewart first um The jensa Beach Mall was be being built by the DeBartolo group secondly fot was planning a major widening of US1 and thirdly Martin County was building a brand new courthouse and constitutional offices system in downtown Stewart and the the commission at the time got together and hired dwani to design a plan that would um maintain Stuart for what they planned was at least 50 years and the fot plan was for the bridge to remove the drawbridge and build a six Lane widened US1 right through town and uh kind of obliterate um the corner top corner of downtown Stewart in addition to that in the Martin County Courthouse was going to have a parking lot where um the Gazebo Park is now which was going to be um all asphalt and as a result they um hired the dwne plan and they came in and the intention was not to um take away anything from anybody but it was to preserve the city of Stewart and if I attached the dwani plan to the code and to uh create a green necklace uh necklace as well as a green center in there and the parks around the we've since got grants on going all the way down to Flagler Park and going around the Sunset Bay Marina as well as the Gazebo Park was part of it but rather than going into the great detail of it tonight the real import the matter was that had come up at at one of the meetings in the past as it related to the zoning in progress um and I know that we're already at 5:30 so we've got a long agenda um I was just going to go through that and then ask the commission to schedule a workshop for the SK for the uh zoning in progress itself and as it relates to the zoning in progress did you want um me to hire a moderator and have it be like a a a planning workshop or you more interested in just having staff walk right through the the code and go through it so that's the fastest and easiest way and um you guys tell me my recommendation would obviously be a um half a day or a full day workshop during the day one day that you guys set aside and tell us you know what works for you guys um this is open to the public obviously obviously it's a public meeting and we'll advertise it so the soonest we could probably have it is a week from now just because of advertising the the only thing on the agenda would be the zoning in progress which is obviously the Land Development regulations chapters 1- 12 um I'm looking at today's the 14th so if we look at next week is the 21st to the 26th I don't know if you want that week or you want to do the first week of November or the last week of October is Monday the 28th or Friday the 1st um for me I would say as soon as possible and maybe have Nina work with all of us to nail down today it's easier to just pick a time right now if we have the calendars do we have to decide right now I mean I can chase her to down I'll look at my calendar Wednesday the 23rd or Tuesday the 22nd of October yes sir okay um Tuesday 22 is good for me could have done this before the zip um anybody else is the Tuesday the 22nd work I'll I'll tentatively put it for Tuesday the 22nd and then I'll have uh Nina 22nd I have something yeah City that's not going to work 24th for me the magistrate hearing on Tuesday too yeah but I mean 24 every day that I is okay for you Thursday yeah I have an airport advisor meeting in the morning but if you want to do it in the afternoon from 1: to 4: which day I'm fine I have airport advisory meeting on the 24th Thursday the 24th okay I have yeah because I have I have Thursday said after one there's a can begin at one I know that's where we meet Mike but that's okay that's this is good um there's a river Coalition meeting at 11: you guys want to say 1:00 1:00 1:30 1:00 no they're they're done by one the pick it I don't care yeah one okay one o'clock um so um I will put that on the agenda we'll put together a special meeting I don't need a motion or anything we'll just um go from there thank you okay great thank you sorry for the short presentation but I fig get on with your lives fantastic okay that's it are you done I could go on all night but okay I'm I'm sorry I didn't mention this earlier so as far as public comment goes regarding agenda items you must have your green card in before we start discussion of it you cannot you cannot come uh to the El turn and then turn in your green card so we're going to have comments by the Commissioners and then by the the city man so if you do want to make a public comment on an item please get your green card in okay thank you comments by City commissioners commissioner Reed yes all right let's see first of all my heart goes out to everyone affected by the storms there were six victims in St Lucy County so I'd like to send my condolences to them on to City business I want to thank Captain ort 36 hours straight that wasn't an easy task from the police department side during the storm I also want to thank Nina as well as sus and our city clerk's office for being a huge support system for us as elected officials your hard work does not go unnoticed Mary our city clerk as well as our city manager for encouraging elected officials to sign up for a program called Institute for elected Municipal officers it was a two-day course that I took um it was over in Tampa and I signed up for it and it covered many bases for newly elected officials I would also encourage my fellow board members to ATT 10 of you have not done so it helps you tremendously in professional development to serve our constituents that gave us the honor and privilege to serve them also I want to move on to I didn't expect this addendum to beond the calendar last minute so I'd like to move on to transparency lack of transparency refers to situations where there was limited or inadequate disclosure or openness regarding information related to decision-making processes or actions taken by individuals or institutions whether you agree with me or not when I make a decision on an agenda item one thing is certain strive for is transparency I want to talk about the addendum that was added last minute regarding brightline and the interlocal agreement with Martin County I believe there is a lack of transparency when it comes to the public and local government whether that's from elected officials or staff I know not everyone will understand when we put out information at times but regardless it's something that should be done so we are transparent I am deeply concerned about the division within our community and I firmly believe that this situation could have been averted if the community had access to accurate information and a transparent decision-making process this is a matter that should concern each of us deeply transparency and government and the essential role of Florida's Sunshine laws is ensuring public Trust for decades Florida has prided itself on having some of the strongest open government laws in this country laws designed to give the public full access to the workings of their government these Sunshine laws are simple in their premise public business should be conducted in the open with clear opportunities for public input they are the Bedrock of accountability and trust between elected officials unelected staff and the people we serve the lack of public involvement on a proposed train station calls into question whether those principles are being honored even this meeting tonight was noticed after the original agenda was posted and most will not have the opportunity to even learn about it this was after a devastating hurricane where some of our neighbors sadly lost their lives as well as their homes and many others lost power in the area why the last minute rush when bright line has four years to build the station two more weeks would not make a difference but it will allow the public to weigh in and offer transparency to our constituents on the evening of my inauguration mayor Rich signed the bright line lease nonetheless during the commission's subsequent discussion regarding reconsideration and recision that evening neither the mayor the City attorney nor the city manager disclosed the fact that the lease had been executed it is imperative to understand why this information was not disclosed to both the public and the Commissioners furthermore the approval of the lease was voted upon without any commissioner having the opportunity to review it and it was not made available to the public prior to the vote nor was it shared during the meeting itself in March a media press conf confence was held indicating that the city had secured the station however the true cost of this acquisition was not disclosed to the public the agreement that was ultimately rescinded bored no resemblance to the proposal that was presented to you in December of 2023 it had been substantially altered without any public input or oversight while simultaneously allocating $45 million to a private company the lack of transparency in this process has been egregious and I won't tolerate it as a public servant I have zero Personal Agenda by sitting up here my election victory was secured through the diligent Act of door knocking over 3,000 doors in the city of Stewart alone and engaging in conversations with the people I serve that are in this room I heard your concerns and clearly and unequivocally as I stand before you tonight to f fill my promise to work on your behalf my commitment extends not only to those present here tonight but also to the 18,000 residents who are unable to attend I have pledged to protect against uncontrolled growth and Safeguard your hard-earned tax dollars this is not a rhetorical question what is the point of sunshine laws if unelected bureaucrats are controlling the conversation Behind Closed do with no updates to the public last week I attended a meeting with commissioner Harold Jenkins Sarah Woods Don Donaldson George stokus Ali Soul Ben pet Lee bagot and Michael Mortel I asked commissioner Collins Clark Joby and mayor Rich did any of you meet with bright line since the last commission meeting if not why was commissioner Jenkins and I the only ones to meet with bright line and the staff who is telling the other Commissioners about the meetings and what direction are they giving them I was told bright line would not be on this week's agenda agenda only to be surprised like many of you in this room with the posting of this addendum on Friday on December 12th 2023 assistant County Administrator George stokus stood before the BCC and stated clearly that the County's Financial exposure would range from 3 to 5 million and the cities would be 3 to 6 million the next thing the public knew was that we found ourselves with a deal that put Stuart on the line for 30 million while bright line was completely off the hook no updates or transparency in between who was in the secret meetings closed door meetings that agreed to this how and from who did the other Commissioners find out about the closed door dealings or did they know this is not just a question of dollar it's a question of Integrity if deals are being made behind closed doors far from public scrutiny what is left of the transparency we are supposed to uphold I am calling for a full disclosure of all meetings all discussions and all participants involved in this deal the public deserves to know why their leaders both elected and unelected are engaging in back room conversations about the future of our community last week Harold Jenkins demeanor suggested a dismissal of the Public's rightful role in these discussions and that's totally unacceptable he even tried to bully me into an agreement and treated me as a naive child I am not one how is this is this how government works I sure hope not you are our bosses in this room and we should not govern on personal agendas it is time we return to the principles of open government and transparent decision making as Florida Sunshine laws require if we are able to move forward on this project it must be with the full engagement and consent of the public not through secret deals and closed door agreements I urge my fellow Commissioners to support a workshop a public hearing on this matter where the community can be heard and where transparency can be restored regardless of the differing perspectives on the station I hope we unite and demand in full transparency from your elected and unelected government Representatives it's imperative that agreements made on behalf of public undergo public scrutiny and oversight not finished yet I am planning to table this agenda item in question after we discuss it with updated things between brightline and myself and some City staff moving forward to prevent this I would like to see us have agendas posted at least one week notice to the public and to us as elected officials in order to perform our job at the highest level for the public this would also would apply to addendums as well thank [Applause] you is is that is that your comment did you have a a motion I didn't make a motion to taing it because if we table it now it won't be discussed so I'd rather discuss it and then table it to a date certain to the end of the month so I have two weeks to do my due diligence because I have some questions that are still unanswered currently just want to hear thank you thank you Comm jobi do you have comments um well I agree with a lot of what Sean had said I'd certainly like to see agendas in advance um rather than two or three days before sometimes I'm sure you don't realize it but some of those items in the agenda we receive are sometimes 100 200 pages so you have maybe two days to look at over make a decision you really can't discuss it with your other Commissioners and so it's a daunting task and having more time to deal with it would be nice uh I want everyone to understand that it wasn't just the public who didn't receive we didn't the commission I don't know about the other Commissioners but I know I didn't receive anything until late Friday afternoon in regards to this addendum and also would like to see before making any decisions um something that would be the actual draft of what the new lease agreement would look like this addendum says that we're going to um approve the uh amended interlock but it doesn't say what the new lease would look like uh other than in a paragraph stating the overview of kind of a reader digest version of what they might like to be I'd like to see word for word item for item of what the new lease would be before we sign off on something like that and I think that the public should be aware of it also thank you commissioner Clark thank you thank you um commissioner Reed and goob um I I Echo your sentiments commissioner Reid on on transparency I I I'm I I like transparency and I also want to just say that with regard to the hurricane Milton did not disappoint I know that that has been tough thing because we thought that we weren't going to have anything here and then somehow we had the tornadoes especially in our South Stewart area and um a lot of the news keep referring to the as Stewart but we didn't have major damage in Stuart but for those who went through it and especially those who lost lives and so many people are suffering in the Tampa area and along waterways and rivers and we just want to recognize that we know that it's hurricane season and we just want to make sure that FEMA is there they've been out at IRSC they've been at the faar grounds uh I know that there have been groups who've been helping people especially in new Monro area in Port Salerno so please take advantage of anything that's um is that me that's um no okay sorry I'm supposed 5:30 or after 5 it's not 5 sorry it's 550 sorry I I set my clo for that time sorry so um so just take advantage of of anything that is available to prepare for the next storm and those of you who have the ability to help people there are people who don't have insurance there's been a lot of insurance fraud and repair fraud will go on so please make sure that you you truly help your neighbor one of the main things that I had on here was this thing that was added to the um addendum all of the things that commissioner Reed said um in a sense uh that's I agree with that the thing is that it was added at four for 400 p.m. and it was just said an addendum so it didn't really have a a change to the the order of the agenda items and I know that we have a whole Charter thing about the way that we do our agenda items and I was wondering when it would be inserted and where it would be inserted into the discussion because it's listed to start at the same time of course as the main agenda at 400 p.m. when we get to the approval of the agenda that's right if we agree we can so that was just one of my concerns I wanted after the consent I I just wanted to bring that up that that would be one of my my concerns that I had and um I just wanted to say that I really appreciate everything that our staff has done and the work that Darren is doing on cyber security is so important for our city and we appreciate that I know that our Police Department water department all of our departments appreciate that and uh the effort from Max stcky I know it's taken a long time and there are lots of things that need to be worked out and I still don't think that the city needs to be just a Lone Ranger in this because the county and others have done work but I really think that the city of Steward we are Steward on the St Lucy and we do need to spearhead and keep moving forward forward so I appreciate that thank you commissioner thank you commissioner CL commissioner Collins yes I'm I'm just thankful for the composition of this commission right now and the the quality of humans that are up here and um I would Echo commissioner Reed's comments as well I I would like to see at least a week you know of lead time potentially tacked on I know staff works hard to get these agendas out but if we could have more time to look through these um sort of a minimum number of days would be really nice so we can do our diligence and make the best decisions for you know the people who live here taxpayers but beyond that those were all my comments thank you commissioner Collins um boy this is a complaint I've had for a long time and it started on the LPA um actually the agendas are not that big CU we don't have development applications um anymore but on the LPA we'd have development applications and we get them just a few days before and one development would be five or 600 Pages uh extensively footnoted and you have to go through that in detail so I I Mike knows that I've spoken to him about it if it were possible I'm sure it would happen there're just our challenges that are there um but everyone would appreciate it if we had more time to look at that and then go out to our consentuous and talk to them about about the matters before us I did want to just speak to one item and I'll I'll be brief because I think it's one of the we I've been accused of a lot of things recently but um one of the most unfair criticisms and not levied specifically at me but really at people who have been here a long time and commissioner Clark and one of them is one of them and and Mr mortell is other and that that is that they are fiscally irresponsible and they are going to bond us into bankruptcy that just is not true and so I'm going to it's a good time to bring it up because we've just done the budget so I'm going to give you just a couple numbers and this is accounting so this is hard but one is the city's net worth everything I'm going to tell you by the way is on our City website because we have to provide it to the attorney general for the State of Florida plus we provide it to all the bonding agencies and it is it is a measure of the net worth of a government and signifies the government's ability to pay off existing long-term liabilities and you want this number to be higher and trending higher so 10 years ago this number was 7% the ratio of our the monies we have available to pay our debts okay versus our dentist and it was 7% it is now 24% 10 years later that is a 3 142% Improvement and you do that by managing your revenue and also controlling your debt and this city it really is debt averse we do not borrow a great deal of money to fund our operations and the other indication of that is the pledged revenue coverage okay and this is mean this is an indicator of how much non-ad revenue we have to pay our debt service if we're relying on Ador Revenue we're going to come increase your millage because that's what this says so this says how much are how well are we managing our finances and what is our coverage there and it has gone from 164 so $64 per dollar of debt to 276 in 10 years that's a 68% Improvement these are people who are pinching their pennies and watching the dollars and deserve credit and not a very Mis misplaced criticism that they don't care about the financial soundness of our city and it's a really it's a job well done our millage is at five if you look at cities our size in terms of population in terms of Revenue in terms of indebtedness we're be we're below the median how long have we been at five Mr Morel since at least 2019 yeah I mean I I deal with I meet a lot of people from other municipalities and I can't believe how many of them are raising their millage especially in light of increased property values and if you don't believe me you can believe the rating agencies because they're the ones who tell they assess the financial soundness of all the municipalities across the countryes Moody and SNP we have the highest rating you can have for a city our side double A2 you can't do a better job than that so if somebody if you hear from the city that we can afford a project and that we're not going to have to go in debt to afford it you can believe it because they've been doing it successfully for at least the last 10 years so thank [Applause] you I will not Overlook you Mr city manager um first I'll respond to the agendas out a week in advance there's some State statutes as it relates to the timing of development approvals and um agendas but what's really more important about it is really who's on the agenda it's not it's not our agenda it's the Public's agenda it's not our business it's the Public's business very few items on our agenda are actually the city's item most of the items in our agenda are items that there's a an outside person or an outside party that is trying to transact something that wants to move forward quickly and doesn't want to wait another two weeks and if you don't make it to this agenda you don't do just to get to go Tuesday it's two weeks out and if you don't make it to that one it's not just that it's another two weeks out and it and it has a trickle effect because when you only have one LPA meeting a month if you have to have that out of a a week in advance and it's really only going to be five days but then that kicks them back a complete month back and then they fall into November but now it's Thanksgiving and since it's going to be six days before the first meeting in November and the second meeting November's Thanksgiving we're going to have to put you at Christmas and people get upset about that very quickly but we'll try this week in advance and see how it works um and then as it relates to transparency and hidden meanings the commission asked me to go out and try to negotiate a deal with brightland in the county as it related to this Railroad and I did and one of the things I did in negotiation was had Mr Reed meet with some people but as M as commissioner Reed points out quickly neither he nor I can can make an agreement we don't have the ability to do that it requires all five of the City commissioners to make that agreement and I can't tell bright line yes or no or indifferent and I can't tell the county yes or no are indifferent but in this particular instance we've been going back and forth on the same issues for some time and it just so happens that there is a grant that has to be filed for by December 16th if we want to qualify for it or put it off for another 20 months which would miss the opportunity there's also another entity that's anxiously negotiating with bright line to go to get the train to go there after the meeting with commissioner Reid it would have been my intention to wait till the 28th of October or even sometime in November too if it was the city's issue or the city's deal to decide but what I did after speaking to the county and speaking to brightline was said you know I don't have an agreement I don't have authority from my board bright Line's not making offers to me they're not calling me up every day saying hey we got a new plan for you Count's not making anything different the County's proposal is they're standing by their agreement so what I did is put it on tonight's agenda so that we could have one of those open transparent discussions and the commission could actually discuss and tell me what to tell bright line not anything different than that there is no agreement the reason that it's not attached is because there isn't an agreed agreement I don't have authority from the board to draft an agreement I'm not going to draft a 50-page document that only I read doesn't make any sense I need a consensus from the board I need to present something to Bright line I need an offer to give them and I need it before October 28th because in order for us to do it I need a consensus from the commission if they gave me the consensus tonight I could then draft the agreement make it to Bright line get it back here on the 28th maybe and then actually have it signed by us on the 28th so I could get it to the county by their first meeting in November but if I miss that one meeting it's too late because we'd miss the December Grant so I thought to myself well I know there's a hurricane and everything but all I want to do is put it on the agenda so we can have a public discussion and talk about it and that's what this was for so I'm not sure where to go for me I I too take the transparency very seriously and at no time was there any hidden meetings or any hidden agendas or any hidden discussions it would have been great if a hurricane hadn't come and on Wednesday when I talked to the County Administrator and told him we were getting the agenda out and said I think we're going to need to the 28th and he expressed a concern that the county really needs to know before in order to apply for the grants and do the things and they really need us to address it tonight I said well okay I'll try and get it done and of course we didn't even have electricity here on Friday so I apologize for it getting out late on Friday but we didn't have computers or servers or staff or a building or copy machines because a hurricane had come but I got it on the agenda and it and it was in time for us to have this discussion and clearly some people have come tonight no one's bound anything there's no agreement to vote uper or down it was more of a proposal and I'll go over it when we get to it um other things Derek Rado was fantastic and very much helpful so was our Public Safety both police and fire as well as uh all the staff and Public Works trying to get us back up and and going as you probably have seen them around we also had uh more more tornadoes in this hurricane than they had ever seen in any hurricane ever before um that's what they said at the meetings as long as you're mentioning and I I think we should thank fpnl because they got the city back up in 20 hours and I think people are aware that uh uh there's still a great many people who are disconnected so congratulations to that got on yesterday and then and our fire department ran more calls that uh the the afternoon before the storm they they it was nonstop and it was all over the county fortunately the city was spared um wow but they're working on it we also had uh seven or eight lift stations that needed to have generator generators running them but we had the generators and they ran uh well and everything stayed up obviously there's some sail Shades or sun shades that are still down and some trees and branches but they're all getting there very quickly and we should be um back up and running uh as soon as possible and I apologize and advance for those that are on the Sunday afternoon rocking Riverwalk that might have been a little toasty but we're doing our best to get this the shades back up as fast as we can and that's all I've got okay so approval of the agenda um and before we get to a motion could I just suggest that because the last time we had all these bright line people here we made them wait till the end it was 11:30 if we could move the addend addendum to the first is it after item 17 or it would be in front of 12 so after the after the consent calendar my uh my recommendation would only be I'm okay with that but as long as we moved to skate park in front of that because those people were um noticed first and then this bright line was addendum so I'd like to see it be skate park as 12 and then uh bright line is 13 addendum so 12 addendum 13 14 is that what you're saying I'm saying 12 would be skate park yeah and then the and then 134 on the regular order correct skate 12 skate park 13 would be the addendum so right now 12 is collaboration with FEMA so 12 would be skate park 13 would be can we have a motion then containing those items okay so commissioner Collins can you restate your motion it's actually commissioner Clark made it but the okay the motion would be to um approve the agenda in changing item number 14 to be number 12 wait where's this oh oh I'm sorry I got confused would be 12 you want to put the skate park first as number 12 and then the the addendum item as number 13 yes and then number 12 would now be number 14 number 13 would be now be number 15 wait a minute and then it would just change for the next three items I would second that Mary you're going to have to straighten that one out for me she has it Mary she has it so we have 18 items total okay skate park then the addendum then FEMA right got it 14 of be FEMA are you agreeing to that okay so all in favor of that I I so comments from the public on non-agenda items Mary do we have any it's uh yes we do uh Terry kov is the first one could you come forward state your name and address thank you Terry kogal 4004 Southeast Fairway East Stuart and good evening Commissioners Mr Mayor okay steart is under a lot of stress people's homes and lives were destroyed and and let yet our County Commissioners are attempting to rush through a multi-million dollar contract with brightline before their terms expire within a few short weeks the Commissioners are doing nothing but pressuring you to commit to a contract to be signed before the new Commissioners take their offices the current board is known to give all contractors whatever they ask for they are afraid of that the new Board of Commissioners decisions toos possibly Revis the present and practically same old contract offer from brightline that might benefit a small group of residents and businesses the new commissioner should be the board going forward with a potential contract that will bind both the city and the county for decades to come this lame duck board cannot morally push through a one-sided County and City pay for everything and bright line pay for practically nothing contract sorry and that's that and I would also like to um thank commissioner Clark for responding to my email I sent today oh thank you thank you just to remind you the bright line is on the agenda so even if you're called even if you're called and you want to speak to Bright line please save that sus do we have any other on non-agenda items we have Bonnie Moser that's bright line who was that Bonnie M Bonnie Moser L okay apparently that's her son oh ah M Moser good evening uh Commissioners Bonnie Moser 1121 Southeast 10th Street please excuse um my co-presenters lack of shoes he got Sandy on the playground um here you can see you go um I have a topic for you tonight that's actually pretty fitting based off the discussion we've already had um and based off discussion I just had with neighbors and community members and that is that people are often feeling like their voices are not heard or that their voices don't matter and so I wanted to talk to you all tonight about the concept of community outreach as an urban designer this is something that I do all over the country and um I want to give you just the quick rundown of the most effective way that I have found so that people feel heard and they were able to reach consensus um it's basically you take your groups and you get in you sit at tables in groups of maybe six to 10 people you get a big piece of paper and some markers and you write down these four questions and then those six to 10 people answer them I'm going to read them so everyone can hear them okay number one what do you like and wish to see preserved about your city he got shy number two what do you dislike and wish to see change changed number three what is missing that you would like to see created and number four what are the key values that you feel should shape the place street whatever the project is um and I want to just make one more comment oh sure thank you can you hold it so she can see it workshops don't just happen in meeting rooms like this they don't just happen at the Flagler they should be happening all over the community so that you can get um feedback from the widest amount of people and in my job I have done workshops um with church congregations at breweries playgrounds farmers markets community events and schools and I would love to see all the projects that we're talking about here in Stewart have the same thank you very much thank you Miss Moser and Son Su miss Robin Cartwright [Music] yes here good evening Miss ctri evening Commissioners um first of all I'd like to thank Mr Reid for his comments and uh I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak my thoughts are with everyone affected by Hurricane mton and the tornadoes that resulted and personally I think this meeting tonight should have been postponed by at least a week but out of respect for what happened but here we are so things I've requested an email and in public comment I'd like to discuss those with the commission I've asked the commission to make a statement that doxing and death threats are bad in the midst of the caner cpud hearing somebody made an inappropriate statement saying that a certain commissioner should be tarred and feathered the sheriff made a statement saying that it would not be tolerated there was an article in TC Palm about the statement yet some of us like myself have received doxing and death threats over our public opinions and the vitriol from some regarding bright line has gotten to this point as well doxing people and death threats are bad see how easy that was then there's the time that I and another Resident met with the former City attorney to discuss the concern about creating a committee to provide oversight specific to ethical behavior for those who don't know what I'm talking about the suggestion was that a three-person panel be made up of residents who would hear concerns from constituents and that panel could review and help suggest any next steps if any were needed I was advised it would be brought up for discussion as a commission item when it was not and made public a comment about it crickets tonight I'm going to ask for two more things um the first of which is that we pay a generous salary to the City attorney I'm going to ask that the city manager not provide legal analysis or opinion for any discussion items he is no longer the City attorney and it convolutes and conflates the context and capacity when somebody is providing it the City attorney is very capable of doing his job if a question is asked for a legal opinion that legal opinion should only come from the city attorney finally I'm going to ask the commission to consider a suggested time frame even if it can't always be met for all agenda items to be made available to the public items on the agenda such as the one you'll be discussing tonight for the interlocal agreement should be placed on the agenda well in advance of a meeting I previously asked the city about the time frame by which the agenda should be published and I was basically told that things need to be out in a quote unquote reasonable time frame the rush to push through some items is not only unfair to the public but to you the Commissioners who have to take a survey of your constituent so you know how to vote publishing an agenda item that deserves public input late on a Friday for a Monday meeting is not reasonable publishing an agenda item that deserves public input late on a Friday when some of us did not have power either after a hurricane for a Monday meeting is definitely not reasonable I would say it's unreasonable unfair and Unbecoming thank you thank you Miss cite Mr Robert Hamilton Robert Hamilton 1895 church is Stewart good evening everybody I'm here again to talk to you guys about the church and the issues that we've had I know that you guys are working on it uh one of the key problems I'm not understanding is when there's been this amount of code violations like the guy with the trust us he got in trouble they got cited all the code violations that went on on our property by Patriot respons group not one citation not one violation I question the building department he says it comes from above him I don't understand if we have codes and they're not being cited when someone violates that code and creates damage to our personal property I just do not understand why the city does not say you violated these codes you submitted wrong building plans you installed hurricane Clips without telling us all these code all these violation after violation not taken care of and I just I I really have it a difficult time understanding Mr mortell why when they're blatant what does patriot have over the city or what do Patriot have over somebody is the question why are they Above the Law above our codes the Florida statues but the trust guy which his trust has should have been wrapped up leaving him out in the rain that's kind of dumb but the reality of it is is why was Patriot never gone after especially when OG and I have supplied you guys with a tremendous amount of information and the only response I get and with all due respect was Jabs at ogga and I for Mr Mortel and then at the bottom of it he says oh I might be wrong I might have made a mistake but you took Jabs at me and at ogga we provided facts documents and we've never had a meeting with you or Mr baguette but again I'm going to go back to why is Patriot Response Group allowed to come in this community violate the codes and Florida Statutes and Mr Hatton isn't allowed to do his job that's a legitimate question we're still waiting you know there's you know there's 30 some, was the damage there and I want to thank Mr Rich for coming out and I I I appreciate that you saw it and he wasn't pleased and I appreciate the rest of you I know you got your hands full with a lot going on here but when business deals are being made bad or wrong advice is given to you it affects everybody in this room and if it was a Fortune 500 company that say you're fired with that do thank you thank you Mr Hamilton Miss Olga Hamilton good afternoon Olga Hamilton uh Southwest st11 Southwest Street Stuart Florida 1895 Church of Stuart buter mutilated church so in July 19 since July 19 I sent emails notifications I notified our building department that the cdbg contractor Patriot Response Group submitted wrong flaw plans forent plans because they added it extra 300 to our square feet to our dwelling with to Windows and Doors every contractor general contractor who is here here they know what does it mean when you alter the path of ESS and means of ESS these oversized windows were unnecessary every local contractor even Eastern uh Hur impact hurricane windows representative came and said it's unnecessary I had a conversation with the Florida building commission they guided me through the floor Florida courts I had conversation with the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity they were telling me what the city's role in the grant the same with the Department of Commerce Florida administrative Court heads all these rules regarding grants and how the city has to manage it despite who they hire as a management company all VI asking only re inspections based on the violations by Patriot Response Group cutting existing building walls with no structural plans removing structural elements leaving our building compromised structurally this is against Florida court on existing building Florida uh Department of Commerce they have rules on grants where it's written in the rule specifically for the cities to manage the grants that everything has to be done on the grant following the Florida building caught on existing buildings all I am asking s them for violations on roof I reported on roof back not just on the fraudulent roof reach V the reported in July that our fish and boxes on the roof was not attached properly yes we we we got lucky with our building and hurricane the truth did not take off but F de who now will uh fix the F thank you very much all we asking the city to act on law that's it thank you Mrs ham thank you miss Helen McBride Helen McBride from Flingo Avenue um I've been coming to the city store meetings over 40 years this is the first time I heard any mayor or person in charge telling the public you have to have the green card in before you can speak now open to the public yes you know you want to speak so you put in the green card but you're sitting here and as I say I know from my experience something comes up and the Commissioners are newer than I am and they don't know the history and how many times I know well you you know I keep coming I say I'm going to teach you history I don't think unless it's in the code are you saying that has a a member of this city a public person I can't speak because don't know item 14 it they come up and I don't know anything about item 14 I guess your Commissioners don't know too much too because they gave it to you Friday and now it's Monday and we're supposed to vote on it but I think you better check with your attorneys in that maybe it's legal that you can tell us the public that we can't get up in here and talk now I realize when it's something important like bright line or uh uh Costco when that we stay to 2:00 in the morning but back then our commissioners and you remember you you you were here we went we stayed here to two our commissioner stay at 2:00 in the morning I did too that was one meeting the other meeting was 1:00 in the morning 12:00 but the public has a right to speak when it concerns their City we trust you five but maybe you don't know how we feel if like dnie is on tonight well I didn't know what was going to come on I was here in the 80s and I sat through all the meetings at here at Flagler Center or that but no I I don't think you're right um Mr Mayor trying to tell us we can't talk on an agenda item thank you thank you Miss McBride Mr Frank mccristal Billy had a mistress down on a and 12th she was that little something that he did for himself his own little secret didn't hurt nobody come the afternoon you take her waiting waist deep in the Big Muddy waste deep in the Big Muddy you start out standing but end up crawling got in some trouble and needed a hand from a friend of mine this old friend he had a figure in mine it was nothing illegal just a little bit funny he said come on don't tell me that the rich don't know sooner or later it all comes down to money and your waist deep in the Big Muddy you start on higher ground but somehow end up crawling well I had a friend that said you watch what you do poison stank bites you and your poison too how beautiful the river flows and the birds they sing but you and I we're Messier things there ain't no one leaving this world buddy without their shirttail dirty or their hands a little bloody waste deep in the Big Muddy you start on higher ground but end up somehow crawling my prayers at night are that this newly elected commission ends up being probably the first Commission in the whole country that represents the people that got them in office I pray that every time you have a meeting with your betters and the people in the know that are going to try to influence you I hope you come out of those meetings with one feeling that was icky I feel like I need a shower that is my wish for this commission the stakes are high because everyone below you who's going to give you information is already bought and paid for by the big boys okay okay there's nothing new here it's been going on a while and I hope that you guys really are the first commission probably in the whole United States that stands up for the people that elected him thank [Applause] you that is all that was it okay thank you so let's move on to the consent calendar do I have a motion mom it this one oh I move approval of the consent agenda as publish items 8 through 11 okay is there a second I'm sorry could you just repeat that you she's just move approval of the consent agenda as okay as published items through second did you second Comm I did yes okay so we have a motion by commissioner Clark and the second by commissioner R for approval of the consent calendar as is can we do all in favor we have to roll call please oh roll call you commissioner Reed yes commissioner Collins yes mayor Rich yes commissioner goob yes and commissioner Clark yes so we're moving on to commission action so Mr bagot I believe I'm correct in asking you to read item 14 for our consideration is that correct Madam clerk yes resolution number 10622 a resolution of the city Commission of the city of Stewart Florida authorizing an amendment to the scope of work to the Engineering Services contract with Calvin GI gordono and Associates Inc to include the conceptual and and final design for a skate park into the overall guide Davis Community Park design of improvements providing an effective date and for other purposes good evening okay do we have a motion is there any presentation I have a presentation is there a presentation yes I'm right here um good evening panal Gandhi Savas C director for the record um I have a brief presentation on the original scope of work for the guy Davis Park improvements project and some of the factors that the board should consider um as you're discussing advancing the skate park um versus integrating the skate park into the overall Park design um so the original scope of work included multi-purpose Sports field restrooms upgraded children's play area with water features Fitness Loop uh Pavilions outdoor storage area which Shades structures for small and large performances uh flexible event lawn for Popup events like Green Market or food trucks U part parking lighting and Landscaping um this preliminary plan was presented to the city commission back in January 2022 and some of the comments that we heard at that meeting was uh we did have the skate park interest group group come out and express their interest to incorporate the skate park into the plan um there were other uh comments also as far as acknowledging the culture and Heritage of the community in the park uh additional restroom on the south side of the park improve the existing running track uh improved lighting ensure that the proposed stage has is ADA Compliant and provide activities for all age group so um the original scope of work uh didn't change but we did take direction from the commission at that time uh to incorporate approximately 12,400 foot for the skate park and the design and construction was pending of funding by the private group as agreed um and this kind of rolled into the phase two of the project along with the infrastructure for the second bathroom on the south side of the park uh Community Dog Park Lawn area for activities on nor Northern section of the park uh with some yard games um and linear Park to enjoy for all age group and some art elements to celebrate the history of East Stewart throughout the park again those were the comments that we received and we incorporated them as phase two um at the last City commission meeting uh the direction was to amend the scope of work to advance the skate park design and construction ahead of the other Park improvements um so I did reach out to the design team on the feasibility of fast-tracking the the skate park although they said it is feasible um they did raise some concerns um regarding um and and staff believes these are important factors that the board should consider when making a recommendation uh first that um the designated area for the skate park area contains uh several L pine trees uh these are specimen trees so trees so they have to be either protected or replaced uh they're not expected to be successful if they are replaced within the development site um the city's code requires uhu that any tree that we remove must be compensated by mitigation uh so we could run into some timing issue with the tree removal and replacement uh with like species within the development site um the other issues was um this could extend the time frame for fulfilling the mitigation requirements and we would require two separate permits uh for tree removal and mitigation initially for the skate park and then for the entire park um and then building uh the skate park simultaneously with the park will also offer some CA U cost savings uh through unified mobilization um bulk purchase of material such as planting irrigation uh cost for uh concrete Etc um so you know doing it as a together might be more advantageous uh versus doing it ahead of time um the design team also uh uh also working to optimize the parks drainage infrastructure to reduceed cost uh permiting the entire Park drainage system at once uh inclusing inclusive of the areas affected by the skate park would ensure a more cohesive and coste effective design uh constructing the skate park first may require a separate specific drainage solution which would then need to be integrated into the overall Parks design during permitting also if the skate park is constructed first we would have to do some post construction field survey of the newly installed improvements to integrate these into the existing plans um particularly concerning grading Ada access and drainage and this could um increase the cost for the overall project um so also if if the construction of skat Park occurs first the new skate park will be surrounded by uh proposed Park improvements and the contractor selected to do the overall Park improvements uh will have to screen off or fence off the entire park and they will also have to fence off the newly constructed skate park uh which could limit uh the usage of the of the skate park during the time when the overall uh Park improvements is occurring so we also looked at the Timeline uh if we were to do the skate park first versus integrating it with the project um incorporating the skat park into the overall design and Engineering Process um altogether it might push the timeline between 1 to three months out uh as we engage with the interest group and incorporate the skate park into the design and Engineering plans if the design is to build um the skate park first it could be constructed uh by Fall 2025 but again like as I mentioned uh there will be limited usage or possibly no access to the newly constructed skate park as shown in the orange line here for about um we expect that it would be constructed by Fall 2025 but then there will not be able to use it for almost 12 months after it's constructed because the the new contractor that's working on the overall Park improvements will have to fence it off uh for liability purposes um so we do have this in the budget uh it's a 7 million we the the C board approved $7 million for this project uh and that was heard at the last month um we anticipate to complete the design for the overall Park improvements by early 2025 and present the final design and cost to the board uh at that time the board will have an opportunity to look at all the different elements of the park and the cost and then decide what they want to keep and what they want to remove based on the avail ailable budget uh so tonight I'm looking for a motion to adopt a resolution authorizing the amendment to the scope of work to advance the skate park design and construction ahead of other Park improvements or make a motion to adopt a resolution authorizing the amendment to the scope of work to integrate skate park design and construction with the overall Park improvements okay um any any commissioners in order to to to to discuss this matter um I'd like to make a motion with regard to item number two uh and and my reason for saying that is that I I uh resolution number 106 2024 has the resolution been read before penal started yes it did you did Mr bagot Mr baggot read it yes yes yes okay and so um I just wanted to make so that's because I my reasoning for that is that uh exactly what penal has said I think integrating it versus advancing it will save us some money and some time and costs and E Stewart has been waiting a long time so you made a motion have made a motion there's no second but I want to make sure that I say something on the record just in case so um I I just think that um that's why I'm making my motion okay is there a second mayor Rich may I speak yes commissioner um so panol if if if it FASTT tracked it basically we' have a skate park but you wouldn't be able to access it right yeah so you know but we don't have a time frame on when guy Davis is even going to move forward so it's discuss it let's get a motion in a second so that motion did it die yet and I'll make a new motion I'm sorry Mr Mayor he's asking a question which didn't die yet I know but I'm just seeing if there is a second on that motion I don't think we have a second on that one well I think I'll let the Commissioners speak for themselves I feel like it should be up for discussion personally um I do too but that that's my opinion though because with that that motion uh commissioner Clark it would basically so to integrate the SK the skate park with the regular guy Davis right yes gotcha yes but then it's a up or down vote it's either we incorporated with the park or we and then we work on the we work on the implementation of it right that's what I think that's what we're trying to if this dies I'll move see no second yeah okay item 14 fails uh mayor yes commissioner I'd like to make a motion uh that we move forward and Advance the skate park separate from the overall Park plan and also secondarily that we're dedicating all of that $500,000 in grant money exclusively to this project this skate park project um separate from the larger uh guide Davis Park project if there's a second can we consider that at this time it would need a second okay I will second that motion I I would I would make sure that if the board was moving the direction that it would add a um catch all that's within the confines of the um allocation or the funding allocation I don't know the exact framing of what the state said I know that it was for outdoor recreation at the guy Davis Park and so I just want to make sure that if we don't we don't separate it completely from that we have to make sure it's within the confines of that funding should part of that motion be then if for some reason there is an issue that it would just come out of the larger funding for that we do have a motion in a second so now first we have to Mayor Rich I'm just telling you said the $500,000 the $500,000 that the state gave us has certain strings attached I just want to make sure that your motion includes that we follow whatever those strings are okay so we have to have public comment now we have public comment on this issue also I'd like to add that to my motion formally what Mike said we do have public and who was the second on that I had second and commissioner are you okay with that addition language I really get to the point where I'd like to discuss this okay we need to hear from the public first may I mayor Rich yes to me it just it it it wouldn't make sense I guess I'm just kind of trying to get clarification to FastTrack it because then they're going to come back in there for construction for guy Davis and potentially things could get damaged I mean there's so many variable after the public comment we'll talk about that discuss it is there do we have we do first one is Miss Alexis Stucky thank you commissioner Collins for um advancing that and and if we wait until the design is done and guy guy Davis Park is actually done there won't be a a skate park for many many years I know that guy Davis has been on the agenda before I think my husband actually bid um that project he's a local civil engineer and um it was postponed due to funding so thank you again for having us um and had taken the time to hear from the community about the guide Davis skate park as a uh they said my name is Alexis Stucky my husband and I have been residents of Martin County for over 24 years we were blessed to raise our sons here and we love the way that this community and the city supports youth of all ages specifically through Sports and Athletics my husband and I both served for many years in Martin County North Little League over a decade to be exact and were both heavily involved in the 10 Street baseball program in East Stewart I'm currently the director for FCA The Fellowship of Christian athletes you see um and I work with athletes across the county and as well as the nation we mentor and disciple coaches and athletes teaching them about who they are who God created them to be and how they can compete in a way that honors him on and off of the field rink Arena Etc our sons are now 2723 and they're what we call in FCA both traditional and non-traditional athletes meaning they played traditional sports like football baseball basketball soccer and Lacrosse um but they also skim boarded surfed and they skateboarded I was the mom who picked up all of the kids along with my friend Suzanne East who's here um and took all of the kids and drove them to every skate park across the state on school days and uh on non-school days I was very grateful when the skate park in Palm City was built and spent countless hours there with my kids their friends and other parents we made lifelong friendships there non-traditional sports are currently the fastest growing area in our ministry that we have in FCA with with surfing skateboarding Motocross equestrian and snowboarding becoming some of the top ones currently this community has always been very supportive and encouraging of the youth and the athletes and their activities here with a climate minus rain and now um lots of tornadoes where athletes can play sports 365 days a year unlike our friends up north is imperative that sports are represented in the non-traditional Sports area and that they have places and spaces to meet as well I can tell you as a mentor to many athletes that the perfect spot for a new skate park is in fact in the East Stewart community at guy Davis currently just in FCA we have mentors and discipleship character coaches doing FCA baseball lacrosse and as of this fall we just launched FCA soccer and they're all playing at guy Davis Park just imagine if there was a skate park there where families could have athletes in multiple Sports representing traditional and non-traditional Sports this would have been a game changer for me when I was a young mom sitting at countless practices throughout the week if I could have had a kid at baseball on one side and had a kid at skate park on the other side and this is just another space where we can do ministry and Mentor coaches and athletes there is a sense of urgency with our youth and it's very real they're seeking truth in a world that cannot I want to repeat that cannot offer it to them can I say one more thank you they need strong supportive mentors and members of the community like all of us to encourage and them and to provide them safe and accessible places for them to enjoy the sports and Community uh activities they love the skate park is an opportunity for FCA to have additional sports facilities our mission is to reach every coach and athlete every not not not just the one that are in our area and you can be part of that mission thanks Mr Jan show Mr Jordan show thank you um so I just um a couple things and and thank you guys for your time and thanks to panol um I know she was working over the weekend on this um but uh I was at that meeting on Friday talking to uh Calvin gordano and just to clarify they seem to say that we could have access to the skate park while it was under construction they just have to have a fence and they were concerned about the extra fence cost um so access is not going to be an issue um it's a hypothetical problem along with the other issues that uh Calvin G orano is is giving us I think it makes sense to build this as soon as possible I've given the city two options um which there's countless options for skate parks but I've given kind of a a really good option at $580,000 and then I've given the city another option at7 00,000 which panal should have sent to you guys um there were actually Four options for $580,000 so um we're ready to go the city is waiting there's plenty of people here to support it you have the community support this is going to be great because it's going to start the enthusiasm for the park you're going to have something already built that people are going to be excited about they're going to say wow I can't wait for the rest of this thing to be built um so so but beyond that we can't wait another year for these kids to have something to do you can look on on the news right now the logarithms on Tik Tock all the different things on the phone they're taking these kids down in 36 minutes so please consider the most timely quickest option I understand there's hypothetical cost but I want you to consider two extra years of having this consultant have his design expenses while he supervises this project if you separate it out you don't have that problem um but you guys are the Commissioners and and certainly you have to work through that um I'm just proud to live in this place where we get to talk about this I I I'm proud to just live in this community and I'm excited to see what you guys do next um so thank you so much I won't take up all your time thank you [Applause] Jordan Rock Olsen can you say that again please Brock Olsen I think he's coming just has a baby hello my name is Bron Olsen I live at 432 Southeast Parkway Drive in Stuart Florida this is my daughter anuka she might chime in um the skate Park's very important um my family and I used to live in Costa Rica as missionaries there and and there there was a concrete very well-built skate park similar to the one that is proposed to being built it was one of my favorite Parks it was a big Community Hub a great place for an opport or a great opportunity for community outreach and when I moved to Martin County there was not a skate park that was as good as that one and so when I saw the proposed drawings I was like oh my goodness we can finally have a skate park that is well that that I enjoy and the second one is uh skateboarding is similar to learning guitar when I was learning how to play guitar I would hear a song that I liked practice for multiple hours and then was able to play it well this taught me that with enough effort I'm able to do anything that I want to and skateboarding can offer the same scenario somebody could see a picture or a video of somebody doing something impressive on a skateboard them practice for a very long time and then also realize that they can learn how to do anything they want with enough effort so thank you guys thank [Applause] you Crums Benjamin Adams Stephen Cooper hold on here comes somebody Benjamin hello uh my name is Benjamin Adams um I'm a current law student over in St Petersburg but I grew up here in Stewart and I grew up skateboarding so it remains one of the things that I'm really in love with and I'm passionate about um but beyond anything like tricks or the Olympics or the punk music or any of that it's about building a community um I have made a lot of lifelong friends of all ages and all demographics from through skate parks because none of that none of that matters because we're all skateboarders um yeah so I really think it's a great way to build a community and I think the location is a really in need of a community building exercise thank you for listening thank you [Applause] Steven Cooper Brandon Cooper this is stepen Cooper no it's not Steve Cooper who is this what's your name sir who are you sir oh I'm step Cooper Sten there is there is some relationship there though in fact Brock and grandon and my great granddaughter uh 933 Southeast 6 Street zip 3499 94 East Stewart uh I have 22 grandchildren and most of them skate and I really would like the idea of them being able to stay in our community and skate and they that's that's pretty much it thank you thank you you Brandon Cooper that's goals right there those are goals 22 Grand all the same family hello uh Brandon Cooper 920 Southeast Flamingo Avenue 34996 uh thank you guys for listening to us uh on this matter um yeah so my my family moved here about 11 years ago we live off of uh 10th Street and uh run around the guy Davis Park kind of play around there and uh it just seems like a great location for this this skate park I've got two little ones we're also a foster family um attended by both of the uh skate park events and East Stewart it was great just seeing the community come out as people have said in the past meetings just the the unity different demographics the police there just the whole thing was just really cool to see everybody come together um so it's exciting to to see that that could be something that would be right there in that Park um you know Jordan is awesome guy you know to to have kind of championing this this project I think it's a real blessing for the city to have someone just really passionate about this also with a lot of mentors and others around them FCA just so many people that want to to give to pour into to these kids uh and just just love them um I think you know it's I don't know all the details of the big project with u the guy Davis Park but I I know someone was up here um the last meeting and he was saying oh if something could just be done before I'm in the ground that'd be great and so it's like you know it' be nice if this maybe we start with the skate park just get that going and delays with the other stuff you know probably happen but it'd be nice to just expedite this so um yeah just uh that's what I'm here to support thanks a lot KY Olen SP I'm sorry I'm about to not say this right Paul guus makabe sorry hello my name is Paul gias moabe Live on Southeast St Joseph Street um sorry I forgot I headed in my notes um I volunteered at JD Parker and Stuart Middle for the past 10 11 years I've coached baseball at selfish and Guy Davis Fields I've sat at guy Davis Fields uh during my kids lacrosse practices and games for six years or so this is the type of alternative Sports option our city needs um seeing all those kids develop and watch them kind of just some of them a good portion of them be like I'm not part of this regular Sports Group um including my own kids um the the Clos to skate park is not easily accessible for a large section of our city and this location would I be ideal to fill this need growing up in the 80s we were told skaters would be the end of our society I think we've already noticed that that is not the case anymore um and those old stereotypes have been dismissed I only wish my knees were good enough to enjoy that skate park um the last meeting I did hear some questions about mentors and I'm happy to see FCA was here um but that kind of seems like putting the cart before the horse uh the timing and the um finances need to be approved first once that's approved I've known Jordan for 20 years and he doesn't sit down on anything he once that part is secure you're going to have all the rest of those answers in a prompt manner so thank you very much Matt [Music] price my name is Matt price I'm 11 at 525 Southwest Harbor Street in Stuart outside of City Limits I do Pastor a fairly large uh Church in the city limits and I have a a daughter and uh and granddaughter right there on East 10th Street so I got to be a part of the the uh most recent event um at the the church there off tarpam and uh was really really encouraged by what I saw and and I I don't skate I'm I'm a surfer I prefer to fall on water but um it was really cool to see the community come together dads and moms and little ones all colors all kinds of people being together and and obviously that can happen uh around a lot of things um but but in and in terms of mentoring like you don't want to get involved in having to administrate and orchestrate all the details of of of the potential uses of it but you can create environments that are conducive to things and that's what this could be I I I would just obviously everybody's speaking is's going to speak in favor of it but um I would encourage not to put it on the back burner or integrate it for for a couple reasons one if the if the grant money is there and it can be used then then use it on something uh that where it doesn't have to deal there projects always have delays um we have a 20 acre campus uh in in stward at the end of Aster Lane and recently you know went through a whole PUD process with the city and building a a multiphase uh buildings and man one delay after another after another and and the other thing we found is that just about every time where we said well let's hold off on this and and let's do it to because we you know it's more efficient in the time you're waiting you know material costs go up construction costs go up and that's something that you know things don't normally go down even even if we get inflation under control um I I think it would be a great thing to go ahead and let's get this thing started and the idea that it you're going to build it and it's going to be inaccessible uh is is laughable frankly you want to make it accessible you can make it accessible they've got a fence it for liability reasons but uh liability is is what you go to when you are looking for a reason not to do something um we we all have to be responsible like I said we've got a playground people come on our campus they can fall they can sue us you know we live in that Society it's going to happen no matter what but you can make it safe and uh I'd encourage you to do that Pastor Vincent pul Gail Goldie Master P Jordan's Pastor good evening Commissioners Gail Goldie 1153 Northwest 12th Terrace and Stewart I was going to bring my skates I was going to skate up here but I don't have a skate key oh this is the skate boards we're talking about so I just want to say that I think that this is a wonderful idea and I think the timing is now it's not two years from now this skate park will put uh the children in a good place it will teach them competitiveness it will build their character it's very very good I know I don't have to convince anybody about the benefits of the skate park but what I'd like to try and do is to get the commission to understand that it is a sense of urgency we need to do it now not two years from now the children are hooked on to these cell phones and games and all of that there's a time and place for that but there's a time for them to be outside and playing and there's nothing wrong with the skate park and to have it separated out of the guy Davis for now and then bring the guy Davis in later when that is all ironed out I think that would be a wonderful idea please consider putting the skate park to the front of this thank you Mr Jimmy Smith he left pretty good met another steeve Cooper boy that's got me off I'll track there that was pretty cool um hey my name is Jimmy Smith Hey listen I thank you all you for giv the opportunity to speak to you for 13 years for 13 years uh we've been waiting to get something done over there in the Stewart at that Park I'm quite sure this escate boy I all for it 100% we can get something going and not only that this the water splash that we the people over there be looking for like they have on Indian River Drive over there for the kids we've been waiting for the get rid of the sand from our kids playground they they come home they head full of sand we've been waiting on this get rid of the sand up Spurs and the grass that's over there they've been waiting that the families over there been waiting for years and NCB we've been coming and we we we know we have a great team here you are a great team of commissioner and we can get this done the skate park can be the jump off side for for everything East to it you can have a lot of family saying Lord thank you we got something going and you can do it tonight you can make that decision and we can get this thing going and I I can see some people saying Thank You Lord there's some hope in still then instead people saying they are tired of hearing these meetings after meeting and nothing get done over there and I can believe in my heart look at up here you guys going to get a lot of things done over there and today is a start that they can look at tonight on that news on this on this channel and say that oh my God they made a decision to build something to build something and I got my faith together we do this together and rise and you can see how much you're going to do for those kids we can get those kids involved and we don't have to lose our children over there there's so many kids I I know I'm going speak on something else because I'm looking at what we losing we losing over there 100% our kids and it does with the the uh Park that we did over at the church you know how many kids of black and brown and white kids and Spanish kids was playing together they didn't see no race they didn't went arguing they was just loving each other hugging each other and man I was just sitting back and said God ain't you good and we can do that we can bring break break down these barriers about race and cev and belief and all that today let's break those barriers let's show this whole place everybody that looking at hey today we are Americans no matter what you believe or how you see it we can love each other so I support it and I know that the nwcp and you are being watched all across the nation today on the decision you're making from the NWC from National to State and I let everybody else with love let's do it thank you mayor that is all okay discussion ah discussion Mr Mayor commissioner goob okay first I want to say I'm absolutely for the skate park my issue tonight is really more technical issues number one this is the first I'm hearing that it's kind of either tied into being done or being or or additional cost or being done with the park in total so that number one I have an issue with it's just coming to light now and I don't understand why the other is reell it might just have been an oversight but I understand from the audience that there was more than one quote for the skate park in my packet there was only the highest quote at 800,000 those are just uh concept and proposal provided by Jordan we would have to do a whole RFP process in order to get the the quotes those are just what was my understand Jordan that the quotes were there they he just sent that to me today this after this morning okay and those are just those are not the right numbers those are just the numbers that he presented we would have to do our own process to get the get quotes right so other than so these are the only right numbers this $790,000 for this skate park there are no right there number we don't have the actual cost for the project that should have even been in the packet it could have just said there really are no solid numbers number two M Mr Mayor I have a question for the city manager certainly okay you made mention that the grant money was tied I I didn't understand is it all tied into us doing it all tonight or can we just do the park the skate park Park so there's the guy Davis Park has been going on for nine years or whatever last year one of the allocations we got from the state we've gotten others but we got a $500,000 allocation when that check was presented commissioner Collins that night said he wanted to bring the skateboard park forward and put that check toward the skateboard park instead of globally toward the guy Davis he wanted to accelerate the skateboard park that what kind of initiated this momentum I was just saying in his motion he said he wanted to separate the skateboard park from the guy Davis and have the $500,000 we used to do the skateboard park and I was saying wait wait wait I just want to make sure that it's no that it's the location is going to be at that location so it's going to stay as part of the guy Davis and if we use the $500,000 it will be making sure that whatever strings are attached from the state as it relates to that funding that they provided us that we don't deviate from that I don't believe there's anything I don't think doing the skateboard park deviates from it in any way okay that's that's all I really wanted to know make sure that we didn't because when you read this stuff rather than seeing it in person if you say separated from guy Davis someone might read that later and think oh well now they took that grant money and they did something completely separate or somewhere different from guy Davis and I just want to make sure that it's not a matter of wording of how we word the motion to go forward with the park the skate park skate park and and that would be the only on the agenda okay that was my issue and for what it's worth in last year's budget or or one of the workshops we did on guy Davis we had already amended the guy Davis Park design to include an area that the skate park would be in anyway so we now it's just a matter of taking that area and actually designing the bowls and the ramps that would go with it okay those those were my two concerns commissioner Reed any comments questions no yeah so I'm all for the skate park I'm just trying to understand it fully it's basically in a way separating it from guy Davis of some sort because it's priority advancing however you want to describe it that's basically what it's doing advancing taking it away from God Davis it's it's a high priority it's a high priority um my question is are there any c savings doing it all atus just doing this I mean looking from a fiscal responsibility by sitting here I didn't know if there's any cost savings I would imagine there is doing it all at once I think P addressed that is that correct did you answer Mr and as far as accessing um the skate park there would need to be a fence around the skate park or right so skate park will be constructed first right and then when we have the second contractor go to do the overall Park improvements which could be you know right after we finish the skate park so they'll have to fence off the entire park you know for uh to secure the site and they'll want to secure the the skate park because of liability issue because they don't want the other contractor coming out and you know having a finger pointing at each other as far as whose fault it was when they go into construction so they'll want to fence that off too and at that time there could be limited or no access to skate park and this is based I don't have experience in this and this is based on our consultant's experience so basically we'd have a skate park that you couldn't use potentially while guy Davis is being is is that's a that's a bridge you can cross just there's there's going to be lots of issues we could have another hurricane it could rain a lot I mean there's all sorts of different things that could take place under the construction the real is just simply to putting it as the first Improvement to the guy Davis Park okay and then have the budget after after the first 500,000 if we can do it because I'm sure that we'll need more than 500,000 so we'll have to make sure that next year's budget we have that's already budgeted in we already have we budgeted 7 million for 25 in the we just need to make sure that we're going to add more to to make sure that the skate park yeah I know but just we just have to lay it out that's all so the 500,000 might not cover the entire cost for the skate park so it's not a budget amendment but we will need to pull some money out of the actual L out the 6.5 million that's budgeted for the guy Davis Park so panal when is the plan to begin construction of the overall guy Davis um according to our schedule here we expect to complete the designed by early 2025 and we would start construction by calendar year 2025 2025 which is just few months from now um so we would start construction by mid 2025 we could be done if we do the fast tracking of skate park we could be done by Fall 2025 when people are say waiting two years they're not understanding the timeline that's in place hold on for clarification CL you just uh constru two things she said that the skate park could be done by Fall 2025 not the overall Park no I said the skate park could be done by fall when does the guy Davis the overall Park would be done by 2026 end of 2026 but it would begin it would begin mid 2025 it's about 15 to 18 months construction it's a matter of just waiting a few months here yeah not two years okay commissioner Collins any comments yes so I I do appreciate you p and you're you know measured you know I know this is a little bit of a grenade in your overall plan so I appreciate your flexibility I you know I see the damaging to the skate park and closing it down as a it's a little bit of um neuroticism about I easily feel like we could fence this off just like the existing structures that are in that Park are not going to be damaged you know we're going to be improving and marrying into what's existing there the skate Park's going to be the same and it's right there on the edge uh what we're talking about on 14th Street it's not buried in the middle of the park somewhere it's very accessible right there so it really shouldn't be an issue I want to see this happen as soon as possible and so do a ton of people there there's so much excitement about this more than any other element in this park that I have seen I know everybody's excited about the larger overall Park but I think we should get behind this momentum and follow it like Jimmy said you know this very well could carry the rest of the park um in terms of the trees we can figure the trees out we can move trees around you know it should it shouldn't be a problem um oh sh I know I'm just I'm going through my yeah we're in it um already Motion in a second well I know I know and we can limit the time that it it would be closed so that there's a lot of access so to clarify I want to make sure that we're dedicating that $500,000 assuming it is able to be dedicated towards this uh towards this specific project not the overall guide Davis project within the agenda item it looked more like we were accepting incorporating that 500 to be spread across so I want to make sure I I I believe I was clear on that initial motion but that that 500 ,000 would be dedicated exclusively to the skate park so we can get going with it um not separating it out from the larger plan but effective immediately after this vote that we would begin the design and then construction phase on the skate park and not have this married to the larger um guy Davis Park not phase one or phase two but skate park would be the phase one um and I just hope that there's no apprehension that guide Davis won't happen you know that if the skate park happens I think that there may be some of that going on and very likely we're going to have a half cent sales tax coming in and we're going to have a lot of money to be able to dedicate to our Parks including guy Davis so you know I think we should be excited about this I don't think there should be any apprehension here the public is going to be stoked there's going to be so much energy um around doing this that we should just jump on it we should go for it effective immediately start the skate park and dedicate that 500,000 that's all very rich M commissioner Reed yeah I just I'm sorry commissioner Clark has not had an opportunity to speak I thought I saw the floor from the beginning but I I thought I spoke oh well yeah so I I you know I my son is a skateboarder and I he's gone to Jensen Beach Park and I know the importance of having this with the Community I didn't get to come out to pastor pok's church when they had that but I just want to make sure that you mentioned about transparency and I know that a lot of people some people from E here I think Mr Smith spoke and Mr poke Pastor poke was here I thought I saw Pastor James here I don't know if he's here on this item but I want to make sure that if we want to push us ahead that we don't have a backlash from people in E Stewart saying that you know we've been waiting for all one little thing to get started at the park and now somebody else wants something started and that was picked as the first item so that is my only caution about saying integrate it make sure that we go through with it it's not going to be that long of a deal it's going to happen in 25 26 with everything is going to happen so let's just make sure that everybody knows it's not necessarily like you're pushing one thing over the other the whole park is going to get worked on and we need to make sure that we don't have any problems with our grant Administration issues and that the money that we're getting from the state that it can be used for that and we don't promise Jordan and his group something else and a key thing that I know Pinal hasn't spoken up about but I've heard her say it but I haven't heard her speak up about it is that from when this thing started and maybe Mr sh can talk about it I thought that we were going to get a group like a friends of the skate park to come up with some funding and when we got this 500,000 all of a sudden that's the seed money as well as the total money and it is not so we need to figure that out yes we do have additional funding and we do have a budget item but I think it needs to be clear if we're going to still have that partnership with the community in terms of funding I know Miss Alexis and others are very good at fundraising and I thought that we were going to have some fundraising to help uh do the part maybe people are going to do naming and they will try to help with getting some of the refined things in the park um in that skate park some of the the the the the gro the boards on whatever is happening in the park done by certain way but I'm not sure maybe they're going to put their money towards these mentors and towards skateboards for students I'm not sure but I just know that it was mentioned that there was going to be some private funding and some private partnership so I want to um make sure that that's covered um that's it right just clarify was was there originally a promise made by this group well it was just mentioned at the meeting that they would raise money for the skate park and that's how we incorporated it into the park uh design um but from what I understand they weren't able to raise the money and they want the city's City to um pay for the for the skate park so they I had to renig on that promise okay but that's they shouldn't have had to it should have been included from the beginning the offer was made to the commission just like the rest of the park okay um I hear you commissioner Reed do you have additional comments yeah as far as any funds I don't know if anyone's reached out to any uh skateboard organizations maybe Tony Hawk I don't know if there's anything like that for like design of skate parks funds available I don't know if that was something like I said my biggest thing is from a cost perspective trying to I guess wrap my head around it and I haven't had a chance to talk with staff as well to to fully understand it but it's no no thank you sir no thank you so some of its design from what I understand panol right so the guy Davis guy Davis section and the skate park section skate park is going to have to be treated like its own parcel and we're going to have to address the tree the existing trees that are there uh replacing those trees as part of mitigation requirement by the code uh we're going to have to address the drainage uh as a standalone um development um there's also going to be additional cost because now we're not doing it as a whole project it's a little bit more to uh to buy additional items like concrete and things like that so it'll cost us a little bit more um so there will be a little bit more cost um but are you able to go back to the original uh timeline are you able to explain the one yeah yeah this this slide um are you able to explain the the timeline again right so if we build a skate park first um the design will start immediately and then we can expect to go to construction by um Mid 2025 uh construction for the skate park will be about few months and none of this has been designed yet correct none of it on the enti started talking to Jordan and his group um so we are looking at some preliminary design with his group um so that could be constructed by fall 2025 which is shown in the construction line item um shown at uh completed by uh October I mean regardless it's all going to be completed by 2026 right I just you know I understand designing it all and then maybe building the skate park first they could do unless someone correct me if I'm wrong but you could design the entire thing and then build the skate park first to me that personally that make sense exactly uh that would be phase one and then the rest could be phase two because one we don't know what it's going to cost um yes this could be a priority for the skate park right so if we have to get rid of one amenity on the entire site once it goes out for bidding you know we can address it at that time but at least it's all designed right and we can pick and choose and make the skate park a priority I mean I'm all for that personally um I know it's tough I know some people in the crowd will think I'm against it um I actually support it um I've spoke with some people um that sent phone numbers and it's just from a financial perspective it it makes sense if we're pouring concrete you're going to get a much better price you know pouring hundreds of yards of concrete versus one skate park um cost savings wise I I don't know I don't know if you get a better deal by buying more concrete I would imagine if you're buying a 10,000 yards of concrete versus 100 yards you're you might get a better price right you know I haven't bought that much concrete before so because you have to consider there's concrete for we allow commissioner Reed to finish his comments yeah um I think that's it unless one of my board members want to comment on uh anything that I pointed out but yes I think from a financial perspective it does make sense to design the entire thing and then make the skate park the priority because otherwise we're sending staff in a different direction to go design just the skate park build the skate park and then design the rest of guy Davis and send that out for RFP and then build that and then potentially you might not be able to access it you may be able to access it I don't think anyone really knows in here I mean there's not even going to be a sidewalk leading to the skate park it's just going to be Bare Grass around it anyway in in my opinion um that's all thanks thank you commissioner go yes um and and I don't do construction but I've seen Construction done and I think the goal here was to FastTrack the skate park so if you start to incorporate all the other pieces the skate park is actually not going to be fast-tracked what's going to happen is they'll be trying to build out everything to you know maintain some sort of cost savings and I don't think the cost savings has got to be that that you know that part is not going to be extensive if you want to Fast Track the skate park and you want to have it then they need to focus on that if they start focusing on the whole park then that's what's going to happen and nothing will be finished until the end of 2026 I just feel if we do them as a fast track on the skate park and then we don't even know that at the midpoint of 2025 they're going to be even ready to start the rest of the park it that could be something that would go into 2026 mayor Collins and also this I know we're talking about cost savings but whoever builds this is going to be somebody who builds this kind of a thing so it's not like all this concrete's going to get laid and that's just going to get thrown together this is going to be a specialized thing so it really shouldn't be an issue whether it's now or in the future and my concern is it's been nine years and we're not we haven't done anything to be able to get something going now and have people excited about it I think um C can you really say there's going to be cost savings when that's going to be something that's right there anyway and is going to specialize be built I I don't know man you know to get it going get the excitement um get it built sooner I think we should move in that direction would you like to hear from this gentleman yes and I would love to hear Jordan Forbes the reason I cut you off is because Mr Reed was asking a question of all specifically that had nothing to do with what promises were or were not made to the city prior yes sir um so what I promised the city is I would try to raise money um so what I did was I created a 501c3 it's called East Stewart skate park I created a board um we have board members we have minutes um and um we created this not for profit in order to raise money I went all over town went to other um organizations such as Rotary Club private donors had about a bazillion lunches and the thing that I was told is wow that is a great idea the community really needs that but our donations are going to other organizations that don't have just a reg you know that aren't serving some regular government function like building a park there are all sorts of not for-profits around here that need philanthropy to survive they're CEOs of these different organizations United Way so I found that I'm just taking a piece of a giant pie and I even spoke to TC Palm you know spoke to them in the beginning told them what we're doing and and will Greenley the reporter says why isn't the city paying for this and I said I don't know but I don't know how to make the city pay for something I know how to talk to people so maybe I can convince some people that this is a good idea and they should put some money towards it let me tell you something else that happened I had two more kids so my full-time job as raising money for the city I I wish I had it but I don't you know I I'm I hear the Environmental Lawyer POS there should be a position for a lawyer to raise money for the skate park at $300,000 a year I'd take it but that would defeat the purpose it would wouldn't it because that's that's how much money we're talking about and you know $300,000 a year that's what it takes to pay for salefish ball fields to be maintained so that's why we are where we are and I'm just appreciating this process and I understand panol has a role here um and she's been given a lot of conflicting tasks but I see an opportunity for us to shoot straight to something that benefits you something concrete not a hypothetical not hypothetical cost because the concrete is specialized you're not going to get a bulk you know parking lot concrete is not the same as skate park concrete you know the concrete in your house is different from other you know it's asphalt and and these are things I've had to learn by talking to these individuals who specialize in this industry you know than sir thank you I just wanted that was helpful thank you appreciate it thank you Jordan um we all done yes I'm done yeah nobody doesn't want this no nobody as someone who spent 33 years developing one of the most valuable recreational resources in Martin County I understand how important this is to families and children and I saw the and continue to see to this day the impact that a really a a great recreational resource can have but uh I think commissioner Clark makes a very good point I have been involved in these workshops for years and share the frustration people have had uh in these delays and I too worry about the resentment of going to say well all of a sudden these people show up and they and boom here this gets done um and I and I just don't think we need to be that impatient to say that these additional costs are hypothetical I don't think that's correct um you know you're dealing with drainage systems that are going to have to be redesigned if you look on this uh post construction a survey of the newly installed improvements would be necessary to integrate these with the existing plans concer particularly concerning grading Ada any permits or agreements secured to facilitate the skate park construction must be incorporated it just is adding a level of complexity and cost that is unnecessary it's going to get built it's finally going to get built it's budgeted it's in our budget for next year um and I want to piggyback on your enthusiasm and your impatience to make sure it does get done next year so I do not see the need to FasTrack this just for a few more months and run into problems that we can't anticipate at this point so seeing no addition may may I um May I yes um this is for panol um if we move forward with track one vers track two I mean how many months are we talking about saving by doing the skate park first and and I understand people are all for the skat park being first but designing the skate park I think without the entire site together you know like mayor rich said I mean civil engineering comes into play I'm not sure how that works for drain drainage storm water management just any of that stuff that's just my thought process on it I mean realistically how many months of savings are we actually getting because how many months okay so design is it could just be extend one to three months if we want to one to three months for the design we've already started talking to them so it could be less than three months for sure um and then as far as construction obviously the timeline is going to be different for construction because if you just do the skate park it's going to be done within few months after the Design's completed the construction for the overall Park is going to take about 18 months so that's the difference is the construction but the design you're looking at maybe one to three months that we could get it done so so we're looking at one to three months extra for the entire park and then they would start on the skate park first anyway yes we could I mean to me that that that would make more sense it's integrated forward if it was integrated I mean realistically and and like I said I fully support it I know some people in the crowd are here in full support of it and they want it to start like right now and design it but it makes more sense to design the entire park for storm water management the civil engineering you're going to know everything that's going there yes we can pull back amenities but make the skate park the priority to be built first and realistically we're only saving 3 months just to move forward by doing the skate park first it just doesn't make sense to me unless I can get some clarification from commissioner well well no if we're talking for the design so 18 months obviously is from start to finish to where it's turn key seed right if we design it and it's it's obviously being worked on right now with the design process right we're already 60% design complet so we're 60% done so we're basically going to go change direction to go design just the skate park and I don't know to me it makes sense to design the whole project and then I mean if you want to modify the motion maybe to do the skate park first but wait for the entire thing to be designed we have a motion I just I fully support it at that point to me it just doesn't make sense to have we have to vote we have I understand but I'm not finished um to me it makes more sense to design the whole park like I said and then make the skate park the priority and people will be able to UTI utilize the skate park potentially because what would be the difference um between doing it that way versus the motion that's on the floor um I mean if commissioner call how would you make the skate park the priority if it's a part of the larger Park plan that so as long as we can address the tree replacement and um store water as a overall the whole park project and if there's some I items that are still kind of pending like fpnl polls that are there and that's kind of delaying the project uh we could have least the whole design done in terms of trees and and um and storm water but it can't get built all of those other things and then we can do the phase one as the skate part for construction but that's basically what I'm advocating for now that's what I'm that's what the motion and I I totally respect it um it just it seems like you're averse to it though well it makes sense to design the whole project for development and then put the skate park as the priority once it's designed right go right into tand with the people designing the skate park anyway so it be fast track and they can work around it basically you're saving three months by doing the skate park first no because hold on the the overall hang tight like she's mentioning FPL there's going to be larger issues with the park that will constrain the ability to actually build a skate park the skat Park can't get built until all that planning makes sense you're talking like utilities being moved overhead utilities potential okay the point is not to brow beat your other commissioner we've had we've had discussion I'm having a healthy discussion though I really am I'm trying to have a healthy discussion with my fellow board members and be very respectful my time on the floor I wasn't finished originally when I was speaking by the way um I'll bring that up in commissioner comment at the next meeting about that how we can fix that um but yeah that's that's where I stand on supporting the project I'm all for it I'm all for guy Davis Park for anyone questioning it um I'm familiar with the neighborhood um but that's how I would like to see it done personally so do you see an issue with the current with the current motion on the floor I do because it's put in the priority to go design the skate park and develop the skate park instantly which I support developing the skate park first but it makes sense from an elected you know position basically to design the whole park you don't even have to send the rest out for RFP right away focus on the skate park then but at least it's designed you make it a priority you're you're literally saving three months but look at it from a cost saving perspective too you might save money when you say uh when you say three months again you have design for the design but for it to actually exist would be another 18 months well no pathetically we don't even know if it's 18 months it could take 5 years to get this built we have no idea and skate park we don't know it's been years I mean what's another three months but you never know what you run into where if this gets FASTT tracked and happening now may dur just let's at least have one at a time and in the meantime she can be designing have them working around it it can be the design phase that's happening progressively can be um this is happening now but they can be planning for it in the design okay I'm just more yeah I'm more concerned for storm water management we already have flooding issues I mean imagine if this got designed do you see an issue with that well I mean it could potentially I mean unless you have surveys done and everything I don't know what's been done we have the surveys done and we could actually if we design it together the storm water could be addressed all together versus trying to develop it if the plan was already to have a skat park there why is it an issue to do it first why would be create a drainage issue to just have it be now unless it wasn't was it not that was not going to be part of the overall design those trees all that would have had to it be addressed separately even though that was in that it was just allocated space and they would be able to tie into the existing drainage that we're going to put in for the overall Park but the trees all that would be addressed separately but the drainage is an issue not an issue it's the trees the trees Tre yeah the trees is an issue because those are not the drainage well the drainage is also an issue because if you do the overall Park first we can address the drainage for the skate park but if you do the skate park first then it it creates an issue for addressing the drainage alone for the skate park issue it would tie into the overall drainage right versus having it be self-contained right so it just it would just be a difference of of how you engineered the drainage for that particular thing could be done doesn't have to lean on the overall project overall guy Davis drainage correct it would have to yeah we would have to depend on the overall design for the drainage okay I'm calling for a vote are you mayor Rich yes commissioner Reed are you willing to amend your motion commission it's not my motion it's I know I just want to be recognized I was being respectful that's all what's what's the amendment I'm looking for us to design the entire park and and realistically it's only adding 3 months according to panol now what panol could do every commission meeting you could keep us updated throughout the process and you know make sure there's accountability there by going after whoever's designing it Calvin Jano and Associates so you could get updates from them um and you've spoken to them and they say it only adds three months that's their estimate time their estimate time so I was just seeing if you were willing to I understand people have priorities and stuff up here and we're five different individuals but it's just that we're saying we're prioritizing the skate park but we're not we're just ining it into the overall plan but there's no way to prioritize a skate park what're what we're doing is we're having a discussion on the motion and there's been a second that either commissioner Reed is for or he is not for he has asked you to make an amendment can I talk yes I don't need you to clarify what our discussion is for us having a healthy conversation I feel it's healthy but the nature of of what you're asking the amendment to be doesn't achieve what I believe what you're trying to achieve uh it's not it's not prioritizing the skate park it's including it into the overall plan there is no way to prioritize a skate park once it's included it's included it gets built with the rest of the park but we can make a you can modify your motion to make the skate park be built first that's what I already motioned design the enti but design the entire park is what I'm saying it's going to be happening at the same time because she's three months away from design being complete on the whole park what I am motioning is exactly what you're asking for the park is going to be designed at the same time that this is happening we're just FASTT tracking and doing the skate park now correct and then we have to tie the skate park as soon as I make that motion amended and I include the skate park and the overall plan now it just becomes the overall Park it's not prioritized anymore it's a part of the overall plan correct correct it is part of the overall plan get built when the whole park gets built in sometime not willing to we're still talking yeah uh excuse me commissioner Collins he asked if you will amend your motion will you amend your motion he was still talking it's still negotiating yeah I'm just like I said the the skate Park's going to get built first right there's no denying that no it may not well if you make your motion to to do that and say hey we want to design the entire park but when it comes time for construction that skate Park's getting done in the first quarter of next year that's what this is that's my motion but you want to design just the skate park the the the other the park is getting designed at the same time already it's in the next three months they're going to be done with the overall Park and it's going to be happening simultaneously but the skate park will get done first okay you understand so you're telling me the skat Park and the overall Park's going to be designed at the same time and it's done TurnKey but the skat Park will get built now because she's already got that that she's 3 months away from designing the whole park no it can't be built now it can't be built now it's not designed yet the park is is going to be getting designed at the same time and but it will start construction if it's we're just two one or 3 months away for the for the whole design to be completed what happen is the skate park gets built now the overall Park is done in two years we can't we can't build the skate park now it hasn't even been designed yet right so we we will be done with the maybe I'm not understanding it but let me clarify let me clarify clarify skate park goes through design for the next couple months at the same time so is the overall Park okay they're both going through design if you marry the skate park to the overall project it gets completed sometime in 26 if you fast track it and you have it get built now while this whole larger thing is getting built this is already built is that true panel no in 25 we said it was done by mid 25 fall 25 is that we can get the design for the overall Park in by early 2025 that'll include the skate park correct that'll include the skate park but it won't be built until we go off RFP phase one skate park and then we could do the overall Park improvements she should have no problem integrating the drainage and all of the design of the skat park with the overall plan it should be no issue really right but that's the delay one to three months because if we're going to integrate it that's the delay one to three mons you this skate park gets built in Fall 25 versus sometime in 26 fall 26 or later who knows when I wish we had a civil engineer here they the question thing I'm calling for a vote um I'm calling for a vote you've all had more than enough time that's that's where I stand on it um I mean you can maybe modify the motion there's no modification of it bring it up on we vot on the motion before us we've got to move on just to find out for the engineering yeah I would just ask that we state or put the the motion on the record again just so it's clear it's been while can you state it Madam clerk I have to move forward and Advance the skate park and dedicate the $500,000 to the skate park in guy Davis okay okay and it was seconded by it was motioned by commissioner Collins and seconded by commissioner giobi okay roll call please commissioner Collins yes commissioner Reed it just doesn't make sense to design a skape it doesn't make sense to design just the skate park without designing the rest of the park with it that's not the motion that's okay he said did you hear his he said no okay mayor no no commissioner Clark yes commissioner giobi yes oh so we are fast [Applause] TR say 500,000 job all right so now we're moving on to the addendum correct Mr bagot will you read absolutely Mr Mayor will you read the addendum for our consideration please sure resolution number 41-22 why don't we allow okay oh some individuals do you want to take a break mayor I'm I need to take a break Mr take a 10-minute recess we I hope sorry 7:43 how many minutes what 10 minute recess 7:53 7:53 than 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 so Mr baget will you please read the agenda item for our consideration please absolutely resolution number 41-22 a resolution of the city Commission of the city of Stewart Florida authorizing the mayor to sign an amended interlocal agreement with Martin County providing the responsibilities of the parties in the construction of a passenger rail station on Flagler Avenue providing an effective date in for other purposes okay before we entertain a motion and a second on this item because it was mentioned I just want to point out that a motion to table is not amendable or debatable so if a motion to table is made we have to vote on that and if it would successful then the item would be moved forward to a date certain and there would be no public discussion or discussion amongst ourselves regarding that item so just if that is something you want to do think going go ahead and start the presentation which is fairly limited okay um so over since August 26th I've been directed by the staff to um staff or I'm not staff by the commission to uh meet with both bright line and the county and try to renegotiate a new deal um as I pointed out earlier today I don't have any specific Authority from any commissioner as to any individual commissioner having authority to negotiate the deal one way or the other um commissioner Reed commented on the fact that he was invited to a meeting um that meeting was because I assumed that he had been uh meeting with bright line and had questions and uh people meet with different Commissioners all of the time um in any event um that meeting was not to settle any there was no document at the meeting there was nothing to sign off on but there was a discussion and in the discussion was the fact that there's a federal state partnership for state of good repair program that has a a due date of December 16th of 2024 and what I did is I said okay the commission's directed me to go back and renegotiate the deal first one thing is the City had said it was going to pay up to $30 million so to check that box I said okay let's have the city pay up to $20 million so that checks that box then the city's proposal originally had a parking garage in it and Facebook said that we were building the parking garage so that we could build lots of Apartments so then I thought well gosh you probably don't want to build lots of Apartments because everybody thinks that this is a ulterior hidden hidden plan so we started moving away from the parking garage and then at some point with bright line it looked like we might be able to build the whole thing without a parking garage so we took the parking garage out and then all of a sudden Facebook said that we had done a giant bait and switch and the parking garage was gone so I had another box I had to check in the um negotiation thing so I said okay we'll put a parking garage back in and this time it'll be two story parking garage so it'll be just enough of a parking garage to check the box for the people that say they're has to be a parking garage and just enough not a parking garage to check the box for the people that don't want a parking garage but it'll steep be right around the 200 parking spaces that was originally there but then I could check that box so then that's checked the county maintained throughout the entire thing that they were going to stand by their position they were going to put in the 15 million and would like to lease the property to the city and have the city enter into a long-term lease with bright line and have bright line operate and maintain the system system um and then commissioner Reed had made it fairly clear both publicly uh on the dis and in in meetings that he felt strongly about more stops which led to Mr Reed or commissioner Reed being um invited to this meeting with brightline because I don't know how many stops was more was it 1230 so I thought let's have commissioner Reid come to the meeting during the meeting commissioner Reid was discussing with bright line and the and the bright line um appeared to be reaching a consensus there was no pens out nobody was signing anything but it seemed to me in observing it that commissioner Reed was okay with it and that bright line was okay with it and that there would be eight stops instead of four now I had another box I could check because now the people on Facebook that said there were only going to be four stops so it wasn't worth it now we have another could check the box so I could move on and I said great that's that and the terms of the current grant that has to be drafted and submitted by December 16th is up to an 8020 Grant what does that mean well lots of Grants can be 5050 and lots of Grants could be 8020 and then the people that administer those grants don't necessarily give you the 80 so they want you to put in 20% and then they give you 80% of the Grant and sometimes they want you to put in 50% of the Grant and then they would give you 50% of the grant well in this particular Grant it's up to 80% of the grant so what I was proposing is to come here tonight and get the get the board to discuss and make the proposal coming from the board to the county and to Bright line saying the city's in for 10 million less than it was before so it's up to 20 million the county would still be in for 15 you add those two together that's 35 million but we would apply for this Grant and we'd like to apply for it as an 8020 Grant which means that we might get $48 million out of the 60 million cuz by adding the part garage and the track improvements it goes up from 50 million to 60 million but because the grants in play and because you can always if you don't get the grant you're not bound so if the grant gets denied come April you can go back to Bri and say sorry we didn't get the grant we're out so the proposal was dropping at $10 million right up front apply jointly with the county for the 8020 Grant and apply for 4 $8 million for a $60 million station brightland has to pay anything over the $60 million whatever that designed cost goes to or whatever ends up happening if we get the $48 million the county and the city are owed owe a total of 12 million that would be split equally the city would pay six and the county would pay six however part of The Proposal was also going to be that the city and county would join forces and go to the state this year and seek State allocations just like we got the for the $500,000 for guide Davis Park last year we've gotten more money than that for other projects in the past and if we're doing it together with the county we're hopeful that maybe we'll get a couple million dollars and we could drop that 12 down to 10 or nine then it would be 4.5 each we' end up getting a train station with eight stops a parking garage all the track improvements all the economic benefits of the valuation of the surrounding properties go up now I also know that there was some commission discussion at the last meetings about well how much did the boka Ron uh train station appraise for afterwards right now the parking lot's value is zero it it it doesn't generate any money it's a parking lot in its own by the county it has no tax benefit at all if in fact this parking lot gets an 8,000 sq ft Train Station built on it I suspect that it'll have a fairly low value that's not anywhere significant to some of the valuations of even some of the homes in our area so I've never really considered its tax effect to have any bearing whatsoever on the deal because the tax effect isn't on the station the tax effect is on the properties within 2500 square fet of the station that roughly half mile distance around it goes up considerably in value because the businesses do better people want to live by it where's where's Mr bagot he's talking I don't know missing people does it matter well is he indisposed okay um in any event um so the answer to that is the the value of the building number one if it's if there is taxes and assessments and there will be because we have a fire assessment that it wouldn't be exempt from Bright Lin's responsible to pay will it make the city any considerable amount of money I doubt it no matter what the tax effect is but I haven't checked with the property appraiser but it wasn't taken into consideration when putting the proposal together because it was the tax effect of the surrounding properties that actually was demonstrated this year because the CRA revenues went up over a million dollar from last year's announcement of end of this year it wasn't just because of bright line but there were people that bought property and uh downtown area and said to us that it was because of bright line um in any event what I'm asking the commission is we need to make the offer to them we they don't want I don't they don't want to make an offer to us and they're not going to bid against the deal they already had so the proposal that I was suggesting is that we drop our 30 to 20 the county stays at 15 we apply for the federal state partnership Grant by December 16th in our offer to Bright line we say that it's conditioned upon us getting the grant so if we don't get the grant we don't pay anything at we can back out and we're out now the question becomes if we do get the grant well again I don't know how much the GR will be but I suspect it will be something if it's the first 30 would be anything up to 30 would be split equally or would be equal with the county and then when it got to if it was anything owed more than 30 by us the city would pay the extra five which is the 20 and 15 proposal that I'm suggesting so if the grant PID 40% instead of 80% that means that it paid $24,000 and therefore there was $36,000 that was left left to be paid by us toward the station the number would be 35 so we wouldn't meet it and we wouldn't owe it we wouldn't have to do it unless bright line picked up the rest if it was somewhere in between that our agreement was we'd go up to 20 County with would go up to 15 again it's not a um a a binding proposal it's a I'm bringing something back for the commission that checks the boxes of the issues that were raised by the commission at the different meetings and the reason time is of the essence is because when I talk to the county and when I talk to Bright line I was hoping to wait until the 28th to be able to present this and have time to talk about it in Greater detail DET individually with everyone but because of the timing of the Grant and being able to get us to make the proposal to the county get the county and bright line to be able to accept the proposal and we can't make application for the grant unless we have a written agreement with bright line because you have to have a train station in order to qualify for the grant so we'd have to have an agreement with bright line to apply for the grant which we'd need before December 16th in order to apply for the grant and if we waited until October 28th the timing was such that it was highly unlikely that we could get the grant done however there was no secrets there was no hidden agenda this is the public setting where everybody likes the meetings to take place and we're here now so my request would be for the commission to give me some direction as it relates to the grant give me some direction as it relates to making a counter offer to Bright line um and uh essentially deliberate and give me a proposal to present to the uh County and to uh bright line based upon the parameters that I've uh proposed and obviously the reason that there's parameters at all is because I've been dealing with lots of people and talking to lots of people about the tolerance or what we can or can't do and I'm you know it it's hard to make everybody have an agreement so I've been trying to check as many of the boxes as I can to ultimately present to the commission for you guys to then decide if it's a feasible idea um to move forward the reason I brought it Forward was because number one it saved 10 million right off the top number two it doubled the number of stops and number three it had the parking garage uh number four this new Grant that's that's available December 16th is a pretty pretty interesting idea that could be um very beneficial to the to the parties involved and so that's all I've got commissioner Collins Mike where did this where did this agreement originate where did this come from there isn't an agreement there isn't one written this proposed uh approach to anre agreement what would you I would it came from me meeting with the City commissioners me meeting with the County Administration me meeting with bright line Representatives um the meeting with what what author what did we authorize you to come back with when we were up here that last time because you said we didn't give you any direction it said you directed me to meet with them to try and put back together another deal what did we authorize commissioner you said you had one question I do not need you to interrupt me I do not need you to interrupt me disc talking to I'm talking to my city manager and I don't want to I know I know that what did we authoriz was that the consensus of this the consensus of this Commission on that on that meeting was what for me to go negotiate another deal no the consensus of that commission from multiple Commissioners was in agreement with what I had said which was bright line is going to pay half the County's going to pay half and we're going to be in resp Mr Martell Mr Martell will you allow us to have a motion in a second prior to having discussion is there a motion for this I didn't want to make a motion till after we discuss them personally but as we've spoken in order to have discussion we need a motion and a second if I make a motion it's going to be postponed which is going to box out public comment well I then that's the choice going to be us debating you're making not hear from the public because I want to be able to talk about this without having to we don't have free ranging discussions we have discussions commissioner cins we talked about this already you agreed that that the ruling is correct I'm not asking you to vote for it I'm asking for a motion and a second so that we can hear from the public and then we can discuss it I mean this is this item has no recommended action this is a d and why can we not discuss it this has no recommended action this is not motion to approve on here well it is I me the addendum is a resolution resolution it's a resolution there's no recommended action this should be a D and D well the reason it's not a D and D is because I don't have a recommendation as far as what my recommended action is it's up to the board to make the policy but it's not a D and D because it's an action item it was set for the commission to take action I know that your position was motion to approve this is is not what we authorized you to bring back the consensus of this commission was not to bring back I think if we have a motion a second we can hear what the consensus of the Comm is I can tell you that I do not have the ability to bring back a bright line pays 50% of the the the station that that I mean it's never you mean you're not authorized to do that I don't not authorized I don't have the ability it will not happen there's I'm not you guys are free to make that motion right now and to the that's what we did last time and then this is a very different deal in front us you didn't you don't need me at all if you guys I I can tell you right now if you motion for bright line to pay 50% of the station they will respond just like they did on the May 4th letter to the county and say no thank you they've already done that they've done it public they've done it individually they've done it privately they've done it every time I've spoken to them they've done it every direction if you have no intention on paying your fair share go to for Piers if you don't want to be involv Collins may not address the individuals in the audience go to for beers we had an agreement for five years commissioner Collins we had an agreement for five years is there a motion there's not a motion on the county and the city pay for all of this and you guys are off the no is there a motion I'll make a motion to table it for the next city of now you going to let me finish now we can discuss it if there's a motion correct no I told you we can't discuss this at all we can we can discuss that's why I'm here is not amendable or debatable it is yes it is hold on he from your City attorney yes it is I I I want to discuss it so how we can can I can I can I suggest motion to um motion to Pro approve with certain conditions which would amend what has been proposed in or attached to the agenda item um you can make amendments to it is a motion to table amendable or debatable a motion to postpone will you allow him to a motion to postpone a motion to postpone would be to postpone you would discuss whether to postpone it to the next meeting but he made a motion to table but you wouldn't discuss the merits of the motion disc the post so how do we achieve discussing the agenda item now just make a motion you can make to appr motion to discuss it no you can you can make approve and then a second so you heard then we vote that's I want to do is here we we hear from the public mayor Rich yes may I uh lee bagot how do we get a discussion on this agenda item how do how do I achieve that as a board member thank you there's a proposed there's a proposed amended inter local agreement with terms and and a resolution that's attached to the agenda item if you don't like the way it's phrased you can do a motion to approve subject to this conditions or these amendments to what's uh attached to how do I achieve having a discussion on this agenda item that's without the conditions you're talking about basically just to have a healthy discussion am amongst four other board members and the public if they have comments on it how do I achieve that while I'm sitting here you don't if you're if you're going to motion to table it there's going to be no discussion on the merits of the agenda item brought before you it's going to be whether or not you're going to postpone it to another date certain or an indefinite date if you want it to be discussed you can do a motion for approval and a second and then you get it discussed but that doesn't mean you have to vote to approve it a second option which I've mentioned is you could do a motion to approve but hey I I don't like this term I want this term changed and then if that motion is seconded and it could be maybe terms that you like better than what's in here then that can be discussed if it's seconded so Lee so what I could do is I I could make a motion right and you can discuss it but you can also I could could I uh withdraw my motion then and then you can also make another motion to table it once we discussed it because that's what I'm trying to achieve by the way is have a healthy discussion you can make a motion to table at any time no he's saying a motion to approve so if you make if there's a motion in a second then we hear from the public discuss with us paying no money you could move forward but to have a discussion and ask bright line Representatives questions now we can't make a motion make a motion to approve the resolution with us 0 well I have other things in here I me whatever terms you want but at least you can move forward at least it's a motion on the floor to have the discussion Mr Mayor can sorry oh you're still speaking I'm I'm finished I just I want to have a discussion and I want to figure out how to achieve it okay um commissioner Mr Mayor yes with regard Mr Le M has Mr baget read yeah M Mr mortal made a presentation I wasn't sure if Mr baggot had read Mr baggot read it okay that's fine it's been a little while here with regard to resolution number 41 2024 I make a motion that we approve this um this this uh this item as presented uh including any changes that we may have during our discussion on this matter it's a little open-ended but okay is there a second let trying I'm passing the gavl to commissioner Collins and I second that [Applause] motion now you take over the agenda item as the presiding officer and um you can take public comment or you can deliberate among the board however you want to handle it go ahead that that's you you he know what I'm saying go ahead with your comments your discussion all right let's see let's go through my list um I want to make it very clear I'm not against bright line per se as much as the people in the are you going to let me speak thank you um I'm not against bright line per se I have a bunch of things I've actually been working on this for the last 45 days by the way and I believe I might be the only one that's called bright line more times than I can count I haven't gotten any of my own personal stuff done or my own professional stuff done by the way regardless of what people think in the crowd that are in attendance by the way um and I think we've worked diligently to get a better deal for the public as well um one thing I will say is I'm still trying to get contact information for the Florida Department of Revenue since they're the ones that will do the appraisal on this site by the way because it's a centrally assessed property so it wouldn't be done through Martin County property appraisers office I have had discussion with Jenny Fields multiple times about it over the last two weeks three weeks um she hasn't been able to get a hold of someone at the Florida Department of Revenue um so I can get questions answered um I did find a Florida State statue and they assess it based off of track miles I believe in the county that it's resides in I did send an email out this afternoon to the email address that Jenny Fields gave me so that's why I was looking for a healthy discussion and get it tabled to the end of the month once I had these questions answered I'm trying to do my due diligence throughout this entire process and I will say I'm the only elected official that asked that question and Jenny Field's office says she's had multiple phone calls over the last 30 days by the way about that since I made it um no other board members whether at the city or the county asked that question um also I wanted to get clarification on um when Tri Tri Rail was running experiments through the city of Stewart was this before or after the comp plan being amended to gauge interest in a train station and where was that study located at the city of Stewart it was never Tri Rail it was Amtrak um and Amtrak ran the the most recent addendum to the comp plan was in 2010 or it was 2011 based on the 2010 census and the year amendments but the Amtrak was either 2007 or 2008 however return of Passenger rail was in the comp plan from I know as far back as the 90s but the specific language of downtown was added to uh the comp plan in 2011 the Amtrak was to run a a line on the FEC from Miami to Jacksonville and then Amtrak had another Connection in Jacksonville that would go to Washington DC I believe is where it went from there do we know what year that was done 2007 or eight okay and we have that somewhere in the I do I mean we have a lot of stuff on it but we the the train station design that we did was in 2011 that was showed that site as a Transit Depot but that wasn't done when when Amtrak came through they literally just stopped right here in front of Second Street there was no station design done for it or it never got that far because in I think it was 2008 and then in 2009 the economy somebody flipped the light switch off and so it kind of just went away with the recession but um the 20101 was when the um City designed the transit center and the train station on that 2 Acre Site next to the courthouse and they also had designed a 48,000 ft building to be built next to the baseball fields because the city was trying to get um Martin County to keep the property appraiser and the tax collector downtown at the uh Courthouse complex and so that's where that design came from and it has been attached to the prior agenda items and I'm happy to provide it to you um and I have it available I'll email it to you tonight as a matter of fact but that design was um presented am I allowed to ask bright line any questions I think there's somebody here um so I I was look going through my notes as well and I know the city I don't have a say so in the county but the city I do I know originally the obligation was 30 million I know Mike had put it in here at 20 um I know Joe George stokus he presented at the county and with these grants it would reduce the cost $3 to6 million for the city and 3 to5 million for the County um would bright line be willing to reduce Us in that range between 3 to 6 million at say 5 million at the city's contribution because that was originally what was presented from the county to the public by the way yeah uh good afternoon or good evening Commissioners and my name is Brian cromberg senior vice president of Development and Construction for bright line um so yes F first of all thank you commissioner Reed for our on goinging discussions over the last month thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to come see what the stations in West Palm are like what they're like in bokeh ride the train really experience this this system it it means a lot to us that that you took the time to do that as it relates to reducing the commitment what what you guys have tonight is really an interlocal between the city and the county so as as bright line sure if if the city if the motion that you wanted to make tonight was to reduce it to 5 milli we would we would support that and we would just like we said before work with the city and the county to pursue a grant and do the best that we collectively can to to get a bright Line station here so short answer is yes we would so going from 30 million to five million at the city contribution you did a great job understand um also um Merry Christmas by the way to my fellow board members um was it 8 North and 8 southbound or was it eight total I because it's it's used very Loosely that term it really is so so the related to the train stops what we discussed was a the current commitment in our settlement agreement with Martin County is that we have a minimum of four total trains two Northbound and two southbound what what you had asked me and I I thought it was a good idea and we we agreed with is to test the system in the in the first three or four months running more trains to really determine what the demand would be so we would we would double what we previously had a minimum threshold for and we would start with eight total trains four North and four South really determined what the need is what hours uh the people and visitors of stor are coming to and we would adjust our service based on that we would still maintain that minimum four trains a day within our ultimate lease that hopefully we would enter into but at the initial onset we would increase the number of stops so that we can really understand demand now would bright line be willing to have this be discussed further on down the road in the lease like if the city felt differently than bright line like say 10 15 20 years from now and we disagree on it we know we have the minimum but is that something that can be modified or discussed at a later date because to me that would make sense if it's a true public private partnership yeah I think ultimately everything comes down think negotiations matter for sure to what the word say so I'm certainly open to to hearing what what your thoughts are on that okay I mean if there's something I know leaves the attorney I don't know um also I had another question this was something I thought of um to further protect my constituents that I represent on a deal like this is it possible to have something because I understand you're going to dictate ticket prices and I understand bright Line's business model throughout my due diligence process your goal and objective is Long Hall meaning you want to go from Miami to Orlando Jackson you know I mean the Long Haul and the city is a short stop as far as ticket prices I i' I'm just thinking of numbers right we're halfway between Orlando and Miami so if a ticket cost a 100 bucks to go from Miami to Orlando what if you charged us 90 just to get to Miami like if there was a percentage like we were half of what a ticket cost was between Miami and Orlando and the City of Stewart was half of that because we are in the middle right to me that's feasible and it also protects the constituents because I know ticket prices were a huge concern and I feel as if there might be a way to achieve that strategically between both of us if obviously if we're negotiating um I I definitely think there's something there sure so we're uh I I would say like all of our station first I'm on the Development and Construction side so I don't get into the operations and and there's a whole team of people that that set ticket prices what I would say though is is consistent throughout the company we want to price this and and Market it where people buy the tickets and ride the train so we're not going to we're not going to do something silly and put a price on it that prohibits people from actually taking the train so um again not my area expertise but we would we would do the right thing in terms of what what the appropriate ticket cost is just like we we've done at all the other stations correct but it would make sense to further protect the constituents so I mean it really would right if you had a ticket price that cost a 100 and you wanted to charge someone from the city to go to Orlando the same price that just would be you know what I mean yeah it was just a thought not not my area of expertise but it's something that can get clarified and that's where I was you know directing my fellow board members a lot of this stuff should be discussed City Manager could modify it my other board members could provide comment I mean look you just went from 30 million to 5 million by the way for the city of Stewart so that's you know that's huge um that's why it's a healthy discussion it was originally 30 going to five I mean come on um clarify yeah I have question can we ask for clarification yeah I'm finished for now I'll listen to my other board members um but I will say I don't plan on voting on it tonight I just wanted to get clarification on all this stuff um to me it makes sense like I said I still have my due diligence period I have questions that are still not answered that I've been working at since August 26th and in order to do my job I have to have all the resources and tools available to make a sound decision and I just wouldn't feel right doing that without having these things answered thank you so just for clarification with the 30 million to 5 million thing I don't know if you want to there's some confusion about what you're saying he's saying he's not voting on it tonight anyway so there isn't any 30 million to 5 million this is there's just discussion there's a statement he just the maybe restate that yeah so so in the original RFP the city was responsible for 30 million it was signed we rescinded it um but it was 30 million I believe in this packet it's mentioning 20 for the inter local agreement I believe and they're willing to do five in the in I don't think he's not saying no no no no the the specific question that I that I know what commissioner Reed is after is if the county maintains their five would bright line or 15 sorry would bright line be okay with the city putting in five and my answer was yes and and the reason it's yes is because as as Mr mortell mentioned you City County and bright line are going to pursue a fsp grant and needs to be submitted by either the city or the county as Mr mortell mentioned it's usually an 80/20 split on a project like this that's approximately let's say the grant went in for $60 million it would be 48 million Federal if you if you were successful in getting 80% and 12 million local match the local match would be um it would be 12 million total but again if you have the county at 15 and the city is at 5 you're at 20 which is in excess of the 12 million City and the county would then figure out a split net dollars yes yeah okay did that clarify it agree you understand yeah the city's obligation is capped at five the county I have no say so I have no get the Grant I believe right the 15 million yeah the county when negoti And discussing it with you as well in that secret meeting please Mike please come on come on I mean it wasn't a secret meeting is the point but that clearly bothers him I mean I'm sitting up here and I'm trying to be so respectful to everybody I I mean I'm not Mike Tyson but I could be the city the city has never tried to not be anything but transparent the reason for this meeting tonight was to get it in front of everybody so we could have have the discussion not to hide it and wait until the 28th of October and say it's too late this is the last minute you got to vote on it and so the discussion was that the county said and has said all along we're sticking with our original deal we're sticking with the the the inter local agreement the amended interlocal agreement that we didn't send them over that was them sending it them doing 15 they're not changing that so they haven't really switched around anything and so the question they had for us is is the city GNA make any offer to us at all and I said I I don't know I'll put it on the agenda and they asked me to put it on the agenda for tonight so I did okay so the county asked you to put it on yeah at the EOC Center when we when we were putting waiting for the storm to come in on Wednesday um commission Collins commissioner k i you know when you start giving directions to private businesses you need to tread very C carefully because that's not what governments want to do um I Mr Norberg I'm sorry could you I would assume that if you if there is demand you will have more stops absolutely that's right they are business the you know their costs are going to be incurred to create the station so the cost to them to make additional stops is negligible nominal so if we have the demand in our community which I think we will I'm sure they will be happy to add more stops and we the city does not want to get in the business of telling people how much they should charge to run their operations because that's a road you don't want to start down um and it's up to them to make their business successful not up to us and I I should say I mean commissioner Reed has been working with the staff and has been coming in regularly and meeting in City Hall and talking to us and um the meeting that we had with the county in bright line was really to get commissioner Reed in front of them to talk about the number of stops and to see if they could reach some consensus on and I got the impression and he's obviously s out of the room for a minute I got the impression that that there was some consensus by him on that issue I don't know about the rest of the details but on that alone it's progress going from four to eight is great but the the the the problem really is though the the timing of it is that if you miss that December Grant the the the opportunities become more limited well there'll be another Grant cycle next year we have four years it seems like a little bit of artificial urgency it was kind of a last minute thing with this grant not at all there's no doubt that it's kind of a last minute thing with the Grant and that it was brought to my attention within the last couple of weeks but there's also No Matter What by going this grant route it already delays the station from opening roughly 19 months from when it was originally going to open if we miss the dec December cycle and waited till the following December you'd be looking at another 12 so you'd be looking at 27 uh or wait 19+ 12 is uh 31 months out of the fiveyear um window and I don't know that bright line would stick around for that again we'd have to wait and see I don't want to let commissioner jobi speak but that was the direction from this commission that was one of the things that I had said is waiting for the new County Commission that will be in there in weeks uh to be able to weigh in on it and they they actually would be right because it would but I mean at the timing of it is right now we haven't they're not going to bring the offer to us we have to do an offer and bring it to them Ila would sit in front of the existing County Commission and be signed the Grant application would have to be in front of the new County Commission I would assume this I would get signed by I don't know well it would that's that's the rush okay again I I don't know if the County's already voted on the terms that they were sticking with or not they may have already voted on the 15 and it doesn't matter about the Ila or not because whether weing on it or not if the 15 is something they already voted on they may have already voted on it they're not subjecting or suggesting any change to their agenda or anything in my my consideration was more to get the information from you guys ah thank you okay first I want to say I cannot believe this is what we want transparency talking to you talking to Bright line talking among ourselves it has been a difficult night to get to this point and we need to do something about that because it we can't get anything done if we can't speak to each other that's number one number two I just want to clarify I read what you sent Mike and it said that we had a reduction from 20 uh from 30 million down to 10 million down to 20 million so it was for instead of the 30 million there was a reduction of 10 okay I I'm not a financial person but I do know basic math at the end of the day the last sentence says now it's going to cost us 60 million so I really don't understand where that that is what it says so the the station is going to cost 60 million The Proposal is that the most that the city would put in is 20 no matter what we would apply no the county puts in 15 we would apply for this grant the grant could be up to 48 right could be is the question if we don't get the grant the offer is that if we don't get the grant then the deal's off it doesn't say if we it says if we get the grant we could get the grant to 20% Which means then we're on the hook for 80% no 20 total of 20 that's what I that's what it said the most we would be on the hook for is 20 so that's our offer would be 20 that's where that 20 came from that was the cash okay so even if the grant only came in and gave us 20 if the grant gave $1 then the city was only paying 20 okay all right that wasn't clear there okay and then you made a statement about the the the city or you have well when you were discussing about the garage okay at some point I met with the the the wonderful people from Bright line also and and I read that two-page letter from March it was brightline who decided that we didn't need a garage and that that 30 million that used to be for the garage now the sentence changed to go to the station so it wasn't us who decided that a garage wasn't needed it was actually bright lines commissioner with all due respect we never made that determination I never I never said we were not doing a parking garage all all that all that was said was that we were going to we we can't start design on the project and until there's action by City And the county which we thought we had UL I understand that for the past is the past today in we've to clear to clarify things we have committed to building a two-story parking garage okay so we now have the garage so the 60 million includes the 15 does it it's the total amount for the city and the county the 60 is the total the county and the County's 15 the city is 20 35 is the total contribution from the city and the county okay the the station will cost 60 so we have to apply for this grant if we don't get the grant okay then we say deals off we find out in April and we say look it didn't work we shake hands and go separate ways and work out sorry we tried and it didn't work okay there's this mention too about the fact that uh there's um rail expenses it doesn't say timeline are we responsible for rail repair for 10 years they're they're responsible for the maintenance and operation of the station of the station well of all of we don't run the railroad tracks at all they they're responsible for the track one commissioner I I'll clarify if if it was confusing this is really only the capital cost that we're talking about the the future ongoing maintenance once that is um once the station is operational all the trains bright line maintains them all this station that we're talking about bright line maintains it all the track work bright line maintains that at no cost yes okay all right um I don't think there was anything else um that was it oh just in reference to the fact that we're at this deadline I I have to be honest we have County and City brilliant people and and and I've done some grant writing and and there isn't anything that says we couldn't get a grant done if in the middle of November we decided we're going to go forward and that Grant I'm sure that you've worked on some of those grants and some of them have already been done and you just pressed you submitted on the 15th of December I don't disagree at all except for when I was speaking to the county on Wednesday and they said to me that they wanted me to put it on the agenda and move forward because they didn't see me getting any additional information between Wednesday and the 28th of October and they said that you know time was not on their side they wanted as much time as they could have because if they honestly I think they think the city's not going to actually do anything I think the city wants to do something it has to be beneficial for us he has to be beneficial for everyone involved I get do information every day on this project yeah I mean but I mean I think that that could go on forever though we could could always corre I get it commissioner job are you I'm sorry I'm finished thank you so much y thank you commissioner is there other comments um there was there was one I was looking at in the mayor Rich may I actually oh commissioner Collins is running the meeting um oh sorry that's okay commissioner Collins thank you um with the lease terms I I've looked at that and I I didn't know nobody can foresee the future I guess right so there's there's a 40y year with a renewal option what if it was a 20-year term and three renew renewal options you're still going to achieve your 80 but at least we're not bound for 40 years per se and I'm not sure where you feel on that look if it's mutually we negotiate a deal and and you want to shorten the term of the lease like let's talk about it because this is negotiating and it's been very healthy and that's what I'm going for August 26 meeting we're all four if you want to do something like that and that's why I had that's why I wanted to discuss it by the way we we don't own the land not yet right but the the term of the the term of the lease was set by the county gotcha and so that would probably be something we'd want to take up with the county because what they were doing is transferring the land to us to enter into a lease to fulfill this right desire on their land correct because these grants these these grants especially for at the end of the lease it's going to revert back to the county so if you shorten it to 40 years it would revert back to the county at the end of 40 if there's no lease for passenger rail passenger rail ends in 40 years yeah I mean 40 80 yeah I give not sure why we would but but that's but the point of that is is that it goes the other way I also do have the minutes from the meeting and it which from the 23rd the commissioner's discussion included the bright line agreement emails to received upcoming Direction and parking city manager mortell reviewed the direction given from the board that he is to communicate with bright line that the city will pay for the parking necessary to comply with the RFP if Briel line pays half of the station and track work and I conveyed that to right line and they said no when when this RFP was sent out last December how did the board members vote on that RFP that was submitted to 41 41 gotcha okay um I think that's all I have for now that's why I was saying to I wanted a healthy discussion it go on the next one you know like I said I'm trying to do as much due diligence as possible I hope people in the crowd respect it I know some people don't like it or might not agree with it because they want something answered right now um I don't want to get into a discussion kind of like the whole skate park thing um trying to just go as fast as possible I guess I move very methodical and slow and I make sure I look up things I speak with staff Mike Lee just so I'm informed that's my job I want to be as good as possible while I'm representing you um I think it should be respected to some degree I understand people won't always agree with maybe the way I do things but at least I'm very transparent I have no problem answering phone calls if you shoot me an email make sure you include your phone number it's just the easiest way to get a hold of me I'm a phone call person not an emailer by the way um that's it for now I think until I get my questions answered um from the state plus I'll look at that one study that Mike had that was in the last agenda packet um and then you know something else um if if for say it did go through and we apply for the grant we wouldn't be designing the station before the grant was approved maybe someone can clarify that as well y so no so you nothing happens so in the in a month ago or when we had the lease we were going the day after we signed the lease to hire designers engineers and immediately go into design and and project development now if we if you and the county decide to pursue a grant we work like hell over the next 60 days to get this grant in which I I don't know people that are doing these in 30 days these these sometimes take many many months to do it's already tight if we started tomorrow um but we're happy to like start tomorrow if this continues to push it just makes it that much harder and a less compelling Grant application that that ultimately gets submitted one more question for but in terms of the design no nothing happens in terms of the design until there is a a grant in place and Grant agreement are signed with um with this grant um it might be for bright liner Mike um we would be applying so are we the one registering our organization in the federal government system or do we already have an account registered gotcha so that bypasses the month time frame because I'm looking at the time frame by the way it's the it's it's not the the the ID number we have a grant ID it's the actual drafting of the Grant and providing the details of the Grant and meeting all the criteria of the grant so we haven't submitted the application yet for this grant correct so we have that and then you receive a tracking number four to five months you work with f to complete the required document if you get the grant cor if you get it correct we can't apply for the grant without unless we have a train station because the grant is for a train station so we have to have a deal with a train oper Ator in place in order to apply for the grant because we miss one of the primary elements of the grant if we don't have a deal in place with bright line first so it's not like we get to apply for the grant in December without a deal with bright line and say well we might get a train station we have to have that in advance and done so in order to do it we have to formulate what we're willing to propose present that to the county and get them to agree with it then make revisions to the lease with bright line that has already been drafted and bring it back for us to vote on again to make sure that it gets done and then it goes forward to start doing that now with Thanksgiving one we we're like one meeting we could miss it again no I understand and I know there's a billion dollars in this grant right it's a billion correct huge there's Grant grants happen all the time I do understand that I just don't want to feel the the pressure per se right I just stepped into this role on August 26 I've been here for a month and a half and I feel as if I've achieved quite a bit actually um on it to fully understand it and to hopefully get things clarified um but yeah I do have unanswered questions still and I did get some of them answered some clarified um and I'm sure it helps staff and board members if they have any input besides what I've contributed I'd love to hear it okay thank you commissioner Collins this question is for Mike Mike Accord with this came the exhibits there's three Parcels of land yes and and could you just explain the parcels of land well if you look at the if you look at think of a aerially looking down on the space space there's actually three Parcels of land that make up the Square parking lot that's adjacent to the tracks on the west side of Flagler Avenue so all three Parcels equate to the 2.3 Acres that is currently a parking lot between the Flagler Railroad and Flagler Avenue across the street from the baseball fields okay so this would be the this includes the train station property which really currently is belongs to the county that's what those that's what that those three forces that's what that is it's the parking lot there the parking lot and the and the uh station well there's no it's currently a parking lot oh we're going to pave over it no it's already paid yeah commissioner Collins may I thank you may I um I'm sorry I was just going to say as well I mean whether there's a parking garage there or not or Surface level I was fine with either I mean obviously from an isore perspective I'd rather have surface level parking um and and speaking with staff as well it's it's hard to have a parking garage without having paid parking in Downtown um so thank you commissioner Rich mayor Rich yeah I would just like to say congratulations because it seems as city manager mortell said you accomplished what you wanted uh the city called negotiating I'm sorry did you want to finish your remarks our indebtedness the cost to the citizens of Stewarts is reduced by $10 million I don't care who's paying that $10 million that we don't have to be the only thing that's important to me is what the city owes um we are having now covered parking which you know I always wanted that so I'm very happy to see that we accomplished that um and there's uh we have the additional trips and I am very confident that if there's greater demand bright line will provide a greater number of stops and we have the contingency of the grants which is huge it protects us going forward I'm just reading here here's the city of Coco who received the award at the same time I we did they're looking at a total Station cost of $75 million it says there the city of Coco Got 5 million in Grants the Space Coast Transportation Planning organization got 15.5 million in Grants right line paid 3.2 million for land and the federal government is up to $49 million in federal funding so the federal government is anxious to provide grant money for exactly this type of project um this grant Mr Martell it like describes our project exactly that's I agree and so if we lose this opportunity I mean we could well have to admit at some point that for $6 million um so I say declare Victory like you should and let's move forward but I certainly hope we can hear from the public at some point this evening commissioner clerk um either Mr bagot or the clerk have you found any information from what Mr although I hear that he's not going to vote tonight um but for the motion that's there and for our ideas to to add to it is there anything else that's been added to no I I would think you would need to amend your motion because it was somewhat vague to have the discussion okay so I'm saying I want to do I want to make yes I want to make sure that although you know you're going to have your time to speak but have you heard anything at this point did you clarify the a trips yes they were that's in the agreement yeah and um the amount is going to be um based on the we could always modify the trips right we could renot renegotiate once it's done further down the road 10 years from now that could be in there to negotiate if right so just want to have something clear moving forward after my comments your comments commissioner Collins that we're making sure that we're adding relative information that can go back in an agreement if the ambiguity that remains outstanding is that commissioner Reed asked the representative from Bright line whether they would accept whether they would accept $5 million instead of 20 as our top number and of course it's not bright line that would be accepting that it would be the county so it doesn't really matter whether they would or wouldn't it's now kind of an open discussion as to whether the board is seeking to make the offer to the county at 5 million or whether they're making the offer at 20 okay was that all of your comments yeah okay so to come back to this I I appreciate Mike your clarification that this came from the county that does make more sense to me now because with the 2018 settlement agreement you have bright line paying for half of the station and track work and you have the county paying for half of the station and track work so basically uh any dollars that come from the city are going to help relieve the county with some of that but what is in front of us I know you're saying it's not an agreement but it is an amendment to the interlocal agreement for the mayor to be able to execute right this is not what we authorized you to bring back so I can understand that the county would offer this up because it's going to be a better deal for them at our expense um but this is not what we asked to be brought back and I can also sense this uh what I would call artificial urgency with a grant that I didn't even know existed until Friday but all of the sudden you know this is all going to fall apart if we don't do this um part of the direction that we gave was also to be patient and wait for the new commission to come in um so that they can be able to have a piece of this this is eerily similar to what happened with this commission before the two new Commissioners came in as well the meeting before they were to take their seats you had a signed agreement that they really could have no piece of so I think that that is and I think more I know that more people than me feel this way is that is betraying the voters I I can't think of another word than betrayal um it's a slap in the face to the people who voted for they did not like the direction and I'm sure Harold Jenkins and Doug Smith would really like to have this in front of them so that they could sign it and feel like they could right off into the sun Sunset but I don't think it's fair to e Vargas and Blake caps and I don't think it's fair to the people um who voted for them you know so when I said you know go to Fort Pierce right it's it's charged up language but I'm glad you're here because I want to actually talk to you you know I'm having to go through Mike you know I'd like I'm glad I can talk to your face what what is the issue with bright line paying half in up us upholding the settlement agreement from 2018 which whether it's a 2018 agreement whether it's the previous Ila or the RFP response that we sent in all showed bright line receiving its proportionate amount of Grants along with the county yeah so first off commissioner Collins um certainly didn't appreciate the comment that that you directed at me an hour ago um understand my frustration secondly we have reached out to you to meet just like we did with commissioner Reed goobie commissioner Clark and mayor Rich that's what I'm asking what is the issue withing the 18 settlement agreement more than the feelings the point these aren't feelings these are facts that we tried to meet with you I'm asking about the agreement not about meeting with me so I'll answer that now I needed to say what I said first so that the public and everyone else knows that we attempted to meet with you and I've talked with Ally I've not not met with any of you and we have been consistent over the last since December when we put out December of last year we have already invested over $230 million that facilitates Martin County and St tapping into this Transportation Network in addition we are on the hook as I mentioned again to commissioner giobi for all the future ongoing maintenance associated with that that is because it's your business what I'm asking is related to the agreement that we've had for five years with you guys it changed in March when you guys pave roads in front of companies and in front of buildings you're impr you're improving those businesses how is that any different because we had an agreement for five years that changed when you sent that letter to us saying that you wanted that to land which thankfully Mike didn't give you and secondarily that you wanted out of that 50% and I am confused why we are not upholding that deal and I know there's a lot of desire to have a station here no matter what but I believe that you guys should do should until you're end of the bargain so that we can move forward this is all so difficult because you guys changed the deal in March of this year commissioner you have an opportunity as commissioner Reed did to potentially get a bright line training station for $5 million stick to the stick to the focus I'm talking about me you could ask for zero commissioner Collins I mean I I'm I'm here and I'm not voting on it tonight either way unless it's tabled regardless the direction that this commission gave to engage with you guys to come back with a deal we very much were clear with what we wanted to see but my city manager is telling us that he cannot achieve that because of bright line and it's being punted to us with three days notice three days notice there's Mass confusion up here because he's telling us that you're not willing to do that so are you is bright line willing to fulfill that 2018 settlement agreement where you pay for half the station and track work the county pays for half the station and track work and we can focus on the parking which was the plan for 5 years until March I don't think there's any confusion up here I've answered every question I asked you just one right now and the answer is zero I'm not putting in we're not putting in any Capital towards this project commissioner so you have no skin in the game but you want us to carry that you see how that is that is not a public private partnership that is you guys having zero skin in the game and all the liability being on us and hopefully grants come through that is what changed further from the truth that is exactly what happened tell me the lie show me the lie zero skin in the game with the agreement related to 2018 settlement agreement I'm not talking about you overall operating your business I'm talking about the agreement we've had since 2018 commissioner this isn't productive so so you're not willing to put any capital in I said zero no I said no could have understand why I say go to Fort Pierce because if you're not willing to have a partnership with us then you're putting the liability on us and if we're not in a partnership go to Fort Pierce so and if you want to vote no for $6 million to have a bright Line station that is you're sitting up you have that much faith in those grants then you put skin in the game you guys uphold your end of the deal yeah I know you don't want to do you um we can move on to if there's no other comments public [Music] comment Mary Michelle snuff Tara Zen sorry everyone Hi um it's been a long night uh last time you guys all met uh I was up until 11 o'clock at home in my bed watching you um now I'm here I want to say I want to Express gratitude to Bright line for being here and hanging in there with us so on us um I want to express appreciation to commissioner Reid for taking the time to learn more about this and for meeting with us he came right over and um and when we wanted to talk to him about it so I'm really grateful that you're taking the time to to understand this um and I appreciate you having a growth mindset while you're looking at this and and open to to the discussion I've been here for 30 years I've seen tremendous growth in the time that I've lived here I've also seen countless dollars spent on lawsuits biting the growth I don't want that to happen here we have such a an opportunity we have a small window before it goes out the door um growth is coming whether we want it or not so let's do it smart ly and and pay attention we want benefits to our community benefits cost money it's an amenity it costs money it's it sounds like we're having we're getting a really good deal bright line spent a lot of money improving the tracks they're paying for the the train and I don't need to go in there's so many reasons why it's a positive uh Bonnie moer who spoke at the last meeting we were cheering her on and home her reasonings were amazing um the money is there it it's being replenished we see the rate at the that the city is making money and it's incredible um our County and city employees have worked so hard at this they're smart people they they know we have this comprehensive plan we need to follow the comprehensive plan and time is of the essence commissioner Reed please be the hero not voting tonight is like a vote against it because I'm afraid they're going to move on down please don't miss this opportunity Rick Olen Steven Vitali good evening commissioner stepen Vitali I'm the owner of the old Colorado win in Historic downtown Stewart I pray that God uh will uh give the gift of wisdom here tonight um to all to all of you that's what Solomon asked for he didn't ask for riches and money he asked for wisdom and he became the greatest leader in Biblical history and I just witnessed a commissioner exhibiting strong wisdom and if I'm I think what I witnessed was a negotiation for um the C this this to be the obligation for the city to be capped at $5 million if I'm if I'm not mistaken um you were all very bold you exhibited boldness and took a calculated risk last last few times in there's been um some good results from that but we're thinking about things like the the tax benefits from this one station well Mr mortell indicated the real issue with with the tax benefits is the raise and property values to the whole Community I think that that one issue um commissioner Reed um is not maybe as important as you think um and I think that it would be wise to uh take advantage of the opportunity you have right now the stars are all lined up we're talking about a $50 million grant that you're going to let pass and you want them to go to to Fort Pierce when when we've already paid federal taxes on that and that money is available and and you have to seize the moment you need to seize the moment in order to comply with our comprehensive plan that this town has worked for for 25 years and the leaders of this town have said they want that Joan Jefferson wrote a letter the the former mayor U Sandra thurlo the local historian the greatest philanthropist of this area um Knight Kiplinger are all in favor of this the whole business Community is in favor of this the wise thing to do right now is to seize the moment it's better to have a bird in the hand than two in the bush we have this wonderful man here right now taking his time to make a deal he just made a huge con session my suggestion is that commissioner commissioner Reid U make a motion to uh to go forward with this if it's capped at $5 million and let's get this done let's move on this is very important to our city and I thank you all for your time tonight and I'm confident that you'll do this tonight because they could go to Fort Pierce and if we lose that Grant you know it takes a long time to put grants together come on we we've got Thanksgiving coming up the County's got to do some work we need to move on this so that's my suggestion with all due respect and thank you all for your time tonight SOA Uli hi hi everyone uh my name is SOI I live in 41 Southwest seola Street I've been living here 30 years wonderful years my kids went to school here they grow up here my husband used to work in Miami he used to leave Monday at 5:00 go and work for 5 days come home Friday night around 8:00 for five years just because there were no train I mean if we had a train our life would be completely different for 5 years just think about how much money we could have saved he could come home have dinner with my kids come to their activities do homework with them just because he didn't want to drive four four hours in the traffic if he was lucky four hours now after my kids are grown up they have moved on but if when I look around the faces have changed we have a very young population in here we want to keep them here you have to make the life as comfortable as possible if they want to work in boka in Miami in Fort Lauderdale and leave here why not they go and work and bring the money here pay their taxes spend it here go to the restaurant do the shopping here why why I I just can't understand why you are not going to give them that opportunity let's bring the young people here if they want to work there let them work there work in Miami work in Fort Lauder there but come and leave here buy property here they pay their taxes I mean I've been coming here for the last four meetings I I have a feeling I don't it doesn't matter what I say some of you are not going to change your mind but please we don't want to look back and say oh my God we lost the opportunity even if you are not going to use that train your kids will we're going to all go old I mean I don't want to drive to Miami it is dangerous if the train is here why not have the other opportunity I mean give them options that's all I'm going to say thank you thank you Mark Miller good evening City commissioners Mr Mayor Mr mortell and Mr baggot Mark Miller of Palm City thank you for the opportunity to address you I'll make two points and try to make them brief I would encourage everyone after sitting here uh all night um in the room to strive to disagree without being disagreeable to the extent we have heard fresh accus of a lack of Integrity among elected officials City staff and colleagues I strongly counsel against that kind of baseless personal attack there's no place for it it's counterproductive to everything the commission is working on for the future of Stewart leaders need to trust each other and accusing others of a lack of Integrity breathes distrust respectfully to that end I point out that I attended the meeting where Mr mortell was given Direction by the commission and what he returned with seemed entirely consistent or seems entirely consistent with that direction if there was a misunderstanding of the direction it was certainly a good faith misunderstanding and I shared that misunderstanding presuming positive intentions is a good thing and you'll find things go better both for you and your own good faith policy intentions as well and for the city we love number two I continue to think the city should move forward with the bright Line station and thus should approve the plan Mr mortell proposed tonight thank you Susan Warner uh Susan Warner a resident of the city of Stewart I live off of Krueger Creek I speak to say don't let perfect be the enemy of the good it's a common phrase we here you all have done amazing things here tonight you took from 30 million to five I I agree with the suggest question make a motion to go back to the county with a 5 million contribution all the other concessions that are on the table this is a really good deal and I particularly want to call back to something commissioner Reed said at the beginning of the meeting which was we are your bosses and your bosses have been coming here for weeks including tonight and we are begging you to please make this deal this is a really good deal on the table if we delay any further we're going to possibly lose out on the grant we're going to lose out on the station and that's not good for the community your bosses are coming and asking you begging you please make this deal this is a good way if you give him direct if you give the city manager direction to go to this with the county doesn't mean when they come back with the lease in a couple weeks if they come back with an actual agreement that you all can vote on that you couldn't I suppose change your mind then but at least voting to move forward the resolution tonight perhaps with an amendment for the 5 million contribution keeps this moving forward keeps the dialogue going gets people to the table if we table it and don't vote on and or we you vote it down and it just goes back to nothing it's not going to move forward so please your constituents the voters voted today are asking you begging you please move forward with this please approve the resolution and let's keep moving towards getting us thank thank you Frank Crystal here uh what a night huh I mean the city city manager gave you something you didn't ask for I was here I heard what you asked for he didn't deliver that that's sad that's not good and uh Martin County wants this bad okay so and and bright line they do not want anywhere else they want Martin County for the same reason the wealthiest people in the world are all coming to Martin County this is their new playground okay so why not have a train station in Martin County but not in that location right there they will get it what's wrong with the fairgrounds all right so Martin County you know you want it have it if this goes in your step one is to recognize that bright Line This gillion dollar Corporation backed by the Saudis does not make their money running trains okay what's what's so funny people look just look it up all right they don't make their money by running trains they make their money with the transit oriented development okay around it so if by chance this does come to our little town instead of somewhere else in the county they're not going anywhere else they're staying here in Martin County okay they're they you just negotiated what from 30 to 5: they're going to do anything to stay here all right you got to get that through your heads all right so if it does go in that location step one for you will be how do we protect how do we protect all the land around there from from new uh codes new development and our Green Space there the ball fields now I'm not saying the baseball fields are going to survive forever but if they don't we need to keep that green somehow that's got to stay Green Space so your your backup position better be to tie up all the land around that train station because that's the plan that's how they make the money all right and again all the people that are going to influence you or try to influence you have already been influenced by the big boys all right we have elected officials and then we have the next layer of government that's really running the show in every city and every County in this nation all right and at a national level all right thank you Kenan boli Miss Goldie was it no no he's coming up just give him one second okay yeah okay thank [Music] you good evening Mr Mayor dear commissioners before I start my speech I want to thank you Mr Reed for having an open mind to really do all that good work and Mr Mortel thank you for very much for bringing this this great proposal from us the citizens of this County you know like what you have done so dear Commissioners I stand before you today with a sense of urgency and purpose the renegotiate agreement of Steward station is not just another item on the agenda it is critical turning point for our community this decision one that must be made today will shape the future of our city and decades to come if you don't believe me please go back to the history and see what the commissions they decided when Disney World wanted to put Disney World in Miami and they refused it and it went to Orlando and look at the growth in Orlando The Proposal on the table offers us eight essential daily stops ensuring consistent and reliable access to transportation and it does so with a financial commitment that is both prudent and manageable it is a commitment that our city can bear thanks to Grants that are pois to relieve much of the financial burden but make no mistake delaying or rejecting this agreement would be a grave mistake one that jeopardizes not just our transportation needs but the very growth and long-term sustainability of our city we are living in the challenging times economic recovery infrastructure improvements and the survival of local business are more crucial than ever before Stewart station isn't just a train stop it is a Lifeline it is connection to opportunity it is the heartbeat of our local business waiting to thrive the neighborhoods that we will see in increased accessibility and of Community Development that will flourish because of this singular decision the cost of doing nothing of inaction is simply too great we cannot afford to turn our back on the future of this city on the families businesses and workers who depend on it the decision is before you now not next week not next month I'm done today we'll decide and that decision will have lasting consequences so I implore you I implore you approve this agreement set up for our city for our future show the leadership that this moment demands and I'm talking about leadership Mr Collins our City's future hangs in the balance and your actions today will determine that path forward okay thank you for your time and your dedication to this critical issue thank you sir and by the way my name is koni I live 41 Southwest Seal and I'm the worst half of that wonderful lady who thank you Walter Lloyd [Music] evening Commissioners Walter Lloyd 150 Southwest Cabana Point um I've been coming to these meetings for years I am so thankful that we have a a group now that is doing diligence and representing the community I can't say thank you enough for that um the due diligence Mr Reed uh I I just I haven't ever seen anything like it I I really appreciate that my experience has been over those years that pretty much whatever the developer wanted they got maybe a few little fluffy things to kind of make it look like we were getting something um Mr Collins is absolutely right I was in all of the meetings in this issue he was he was clear and you can see it on the video it's all on video if you want to see it it's clear about what he asked as a Baseline Baseline was the 2018 agreement go to them ask them if they will go with that that's not what we got back right not at all um you've been standing true to your commitments to the community doing what you were supposed to do and I hope you will stay strong and continue to do it we have a constituency here that represents some of the community but definitely not the community at large and you're doing what you promised please we heard it tonight consider putting the emphasis on our water our water will bring far more business clean water will bring far more business and I understand the comprehensive plan contains our commitment to this but don't don't compromise yourselves in this regard emphasis on the water get that cleaned up and emphasis on sticking true to your commitments to the community at large thank [Applause] you Robert [Music] Hamilton Robert Hamilton 31 south was third the 1895 Church of Stewart first of all I want to thank everybody Mr Reed what you've done what you other Commissioners are doing here it is a breath of fresh air it's almost like you're an investigator and having understanding the grant situation because you know my situation something for you to think about you don't need to answer it what are you going to do when you hire the contractor and he messes it up are you going to site them with code violations or you going to give them a pass I take that a little personal because they've been given a pass but I want to leave you with this the town was founded 1914 the church we live in was built in 1895 and it says in the history of the church it said we put the church next to the railroad track we put the steeple High we painted the roof red so the people on Flagler train would know we were civil ized Community June 1895 so long before the town was ever Incorporated that was put there and they purposely wanted The Travelers on that train to know we're a good Community I believe we have a good Community here we have good people passionate on both sides I know what it's like to be hurt I don't want to see our community hurt I don't want to see our town hurt and I really really don't like seeing you all taking shots at each other I don't like that and then it instigates the people in the audience start shouting it's proper decorum in the chamber we have constitutionally protected speech but I don't hear hear anybody coming here using vulgar language so we just need to get along and work things out thank you very much for what you do for us [Applause] Paul Nunley sorry I was just going to listen I wasn't going to say anything tonight but I thought I just wanted to say a couple things Paul nley 7:15 Northwest Flagler right in the Harbridge um I appreciate everything that you you all being up there first of all I would you couldn't pay me enough money to be up there okay uh it's a tough job I've been here since 1979 9 talk about a skate park I used to ride my skateboard downtown when there was nothing there Houston's office stores where the building was there I went to a shet I think about 35 years ago uh right in this town and we talked one of the main folks was a train station in that shet that we talked about um I listened and I just want you to take note of that it's been part of this community since Flagler put his train through here it's important to me you talk about some people mention it's for the very wealthy it's not I take bright line all the time from West Palm to Miami it's because I enjoy not dealing with traffic or from West Palm I drive down there to take it to Orlando it would certainly I'm not the only one that feels that way it would be so nice to have a station right by my house in the town of Stewart right here it would it would be really special and something that that was brought up by city manager about the meeting that that had taken place in uh with the county that this grant if it if it does not get approved or we're not obligated so why not vote for it we're not obligated to anything but $5 million why would we pass up that doesn't matter what the settlement agreement the settlement agreement is just something that was put on paper and it it was something that can be changed it's not not written Stone that's not what settle settlement agreement is it's something to be discussed and changed and I just ask for your vote tonight as a citizen for a long time in Martin County to approve this moving forward thank you Judith Farley hi I'm Judith Farley um a resident of Stuart and a business owner as well um I've just come up to I guess my understanding and maybe I'm I'm incorrect but if you move to approve tonight does that mean all negotiations stop and you can never get more questions answered so what is the harm of moving to approve um I'm that's what I'm sitting there thinking about like I think to move to approve and get the ball rolling you can still get questions answered you can still I mean you all have done such a great job of negotiating and I appreciate that um I know I'm not supposed to direct things to certain Commissioners but Mr Reed I recognize your NE negotiating power again way too much credit up there I I love the fact that you went to those classes that um and learned how to you know be a commissioner and everything is it's pretty impressive um but I guess to say if you can really consider what it means to move to approve tonight I just think it doesn't mean negotiations stop it doesn't nothing's even written in stone we just if we can get the ball rolling and continue yes get your questions answered and along the way we're always going to have questions and we're going to have more meetings and we're going to be but if we could just get this ball rolling tonight and approve tonight and um I just I just thank you that's what I'm there a constituent sitting there are thinking why why let's just please get the ball rolling and um continue to ask questions and and continue to work with bright line and let's give our um constituents some hope that we've got something going and um this fear of losing the grants it's real and um I just think it's the responsible thing to do to just keep it going you've done such a great job thus far and I really thank you thank you all up there for all that you've done so that's it thank [Applause] thank Christopher vital okay so you didn't change good evening Christopher vital 213 Southeast Alamanda way here in Stewart I wasn't going to speak tonight but I just wanted to add support basically um for all the voices that have been um speaking up today to um first of all to say thank you to all the Commissioners for listening to us listening to all the voices for the past several weeks that have been discussing this and thank you for negotiating and being open to these new discussions um I also want to say congratulations you took a risk you um decided to renegotiate and you got a better deal um you got more stops you got a much lower cost um for Stuart so congratulations on on getting that and that's great so I think now I I just want to agree with what many of us have said that now is the time to move forward not to kill it to keep the ball rolling and to move to approve this this is a win for Stuart um brightland has compromised and made concessions um we were able to bring things down and the people of Stuart the people that you were uh elected to represent have overwhelmingly um shown that we want a station at the end of the day you know at the end of you know we we we nitpick all these little things all this and that but at the end of the day almost everybody has overwhelmingly shown that we all really want the station so please please please keep things moving to let that happen and not to I mean do you want to be remembered as the Commissioners that sat here twiddled your thumbs and let this opportunity fall through the cracks while everybody here was watching it and everybody here has been telling you week after week after a week or do you want to be remembered as the Commissioners who you renegotiated you got a better deal and you SE is the opportunity when it came to you those are the choices and I mean we've all spoken and I think it's pretty clear what the community feels and I just hope that you all will um have wisdom and um be prudent and um thank you very much I appreciate it commissioner Collins I have no more comments that's all that's it do we have other comments ments from Commissioners sorry no um my motion stands with the addition of the um is it up to 5K or still up to 20 with at least well 5K uh and then the eight stops as far as I know that whatever Mike had said we just need to give these directions to the county so my I don't only amend that to the to that um ceiling number that's okay based on how it's ex how we would come down to comments my turn your turn there I don't know if commissioner is amending her motion yeah I said yeah my motion stands with the amendment for the sealing of the 5K based Bas based on the I like 5,000 five yeah 5 five 5 million K 5,000 I know I know I know I know I had to sorry I apologize know what I mean I apologize sorry thank you um 5 million K five M5 million sorry $5 million million million million for out go ahead better up yep okay um when it comes to the grant process when was the first grant applied for for which station and what what year do we need that so we can clarify this for the public um the the first grant that we got was for the Boer Ron station in 2019 does that Grant still exist to this day it does it it does what when you when you say the grant the grand program that that particular Grant does it exist to this day not sure I follow the question progam the program it program the grant so it still exists is there a what was the next one then we'll go through the timeline thenes so correct I understand Grant cycle and I just want the public to be aware like there's constantly coming out with federal grants state grants for anybody that applies whether it's on a municip level or it's a nonprofit that applies for Grants there's always grants coming out so it's the whole time is of the essence thing obviously one was done in 2019 that program you said still exists it does yep and what is that called what's the program called I can I can tell that there currently exists is a there's a reach Grant a raise Grant there's a Chrissy Grant Chrissy's Consolidated rail infrastructure and safety um there's a mega Grant this is the federal state Grant most of them are annual Grant Cycles so the when we applied for the Mega Grant in August we got the results I believe in December and it's still what Grant are we talking about and for what the mega grant for the bridge okay and this was last F years ago years AG okay yeah but it's still not finalized just because of the details and things that that are necessary that Grant still exist to this day I don't know if there's Mega grants still available I haven't looked to see if there's still available grants but I don't know that that is the Chrissy Grant is a uh consolidated rail infrastructure safety uh grant that does exist on an annual basis but and what are the terms of that particular Grant well it has to do there's lots of different terms but we're looking into it as it related to possibly applying for um it's if infrastructure and this is federal or state it's Federal Federal okay um there are no state grants related to rail that I'm aware of other than the sis Grant which was a strategic Intermodal systems Grant but I don't think that that pens annually either the issue with the grants though is that although the Cycles do continue correct the timing of them does matter there's not this December Grant's the last Grant in 24 then if there's Chrissy grants that'll probably be due in August of 25 with results coming out in December of 25 with implementation in Spring of 26 or when I say implementation signing off on them and begin getting the the the NEPA investigations that are necessary because of federal money having the environmental impact studies but there's no doubt that there's correct I just infrastructure that's where I want the public to understand there's grants available all the time I mean you seem a lot more familiar with Grant processes you know for each station so you did one in 2019 that that was that was the only Federal grant that we received for a a train station in Aventura Miami day County saw the benefit of having a train station and what that would do for the City of Aventura in the Northeast Corridor in Miami Dade so Miami Dade invested uh $77 million in order to get the Aventura Station built so Miami paid for the station uh Miami day County Miami day County and then the next one bright line and uh bokeh and Miami Dade the aventuro one were the only two and they okay so they paid for those so there's three total is there any one that you did is there one you did a grant for besides the bokeh or no is that the only Federal grant that bright line has done that that's the only Federal grant for the station that we received yes and how much was received from that uh it was about $16.5 million out of a total price of what for the actual station track improvements the whole n yards about 55 million 55 million okay and the city there contributed about $10 million okay and do you guys own that station we we that too is on lease land similar to this one and we own the the building improvements at the end of the lease the land goes back to the city okay um I think that might have I I will also say you know when you when you do these grants a big component of the grants is support and the federal government is getting Grant applications from all over the country and when you have a a grant in a city that votes to resend a deal and then like keeps going in the direction that this seems like it might be heading when you're at the federal government looking at Grants and saying do I want to give the money to to this project here in Florida or a project in Texas you pick the state you pick the city local support is important and and being in partnership with the county and the city and bright line all together as one is really what enables these success uccessful Grant project so the the thought of going at this and having you know the county take take the major brunt of this and not do anything or with the city not doing anything it's certainly your prerogative as a board but um the most likely way to get a grant is with strong support and and absolutely in other grants that we've done like the boka station the federal government is looking at at the the agreements and the the support of of the municipality where the project is letters of support are are huge components and and how those decisions are made it would look really good for a grant application for you guys to have skin in the game too wouldn't you imagine along your line of thinking we already talked about this commissioner Collins I this might be a question towards Mike so looking at the the Grant in particular and it talks about eligible applicants which line item on this and I can shoot you an email real quick if you need it so you can see what I'm looking at maybe if you could tell me or I could State each line item for eligible applicants and you can I'm not sure so I'm I'm looking at the Grant and it says eligible applicants it says States including the District of Columbia so we'd be applying we are not a state okay so a group of states an interstate compact a public agency or public public chartered Authority established by one or more States a political subdivision of a state are a political agency or publicly chartered off political subdivision of a State political sub gotcha okay just wanted to clarify that too um I know where I stand and I've mentioned it I'd like it to be tabled with the stuff that I mentioned um I know some stuff has been mentioned from fellow board members um I see some people still ch shaking their heads I apologize if I upset you for anything um 25 million is huge by the way um but that's that's where I stand in order to support a motion as I sit here tonight thank you um sus I believe you have a total of the number of emails we've received and we have a we didn't we didn't get the update for today sir sorry to hear that um and just to be clear on page n Item B it says wait geez there it goes the city is aware that the county is also amending its 2018 settlement agreement with bright line the parties agree that the city is not a party to said settlement agreement the city was never part of that 2018 settlement agreement that was between the county and bright line and it did in fact say specifically that the county would pay 50% and it did in fact say specifically did not say specifically that bright line would pay half because they because they know that the various Arrangements agreements that can be reached to accomplish that funding are quite varied um as far as I can tell they are agreeing to pay half station's going to cost $60 million the county and the city are in for 30 now and obviously they're in for the other 30 so so they not but they're you're right they're counting on the grants just like we are and we can see the success the different municipalities have had in reaching these grants um let's keep this process moving forward here I I should mention um we would not be writing the Grant I don't know that we would have the skill set to to properly apply for a grant it we would be utilizing bright line and their grant writers to actually draft the grant for the uh success rate I guess for lack of a better description and if we're not successful for the grants we're not the contract is not binding upon us is that correct yes well it depends on what you guys offer but the my proposal was that you would put in there that if you didn't get the grant that the deal was a thank you we tried and go our separate ways but you guys obviously are free to make any proposal you you're couldn't that be a whole can of worms though where You' can't really hear you're I'm worried that that could be a whole can of worms it sounds nice that we could be able to get out but I had us up to 20 you guys tonight have put you up to five so you're putting in a total of $5 million if they don't get the grant you're only putting in five no matter what even if they do get the grant you're not paying for half you're only paying for five five even if they no matter what if they get the grant it's only going to give 48 out of the 60 so there's still 12 left if the city's in for five that means the County's in for seven but you're only in for five that's it comments I'm just looking for motion stands with the five specified any comments I I I personally don't support it until my questions are answered um and I've stated I I stated it in the beginning um I can restate them okay thank you did you have comments it's an amazing deal it's an amazing deal you don't have are you because I have no additional comments okay so to try to give more Direction because that the motion was quite vague we were no it's the it's the resolution but with whatever whatever is 5K five million I keep saying 5K so I wanted to give more maybe um specificity to what I would want to see you gave your thoughts I'd like to get mine are you asking me to amend my motion when you say what you say okay sounds palatable um so when I look at the original Ila that's where I want to sit closer to versus the amended and now this amended to where like I mentioned earlier just for clarity just to be clear which original I uh the December 12 23 interlocal agreement regarding proposal um between Martin County and the City of Stewart so in that agreement you said it was only in the um settlement agreement but also in this agreement it references bright line and the county paying half explicitly whereas in the November 25th 2018 uh the county entered into a settlement agreement with brightline it references that agreement where they pay half um but also in section six so we're talking about grant money um it talks about the county and City agree to cooperate and um and applying for federal state or other grants to offset the cost of the project if the city and or County are successful in obtaining Any Grant funds for the project the funds will be distributed as follows as to the train station the cost of which is to be shared between the county and bright line on an equal basis so there's the understanding in that interlocal agreement that both of them are paying half just just to sort of rebut what you had said that it was only in the settlement agreement initially but this I said just to be clear the city was not part of the 2018 agreement okay you are correct in that the agreement the interlocal agreement it's hard to hear the interlocal agreement in December yes sir that the city sent to the county and bright line with that with those specific financial responsibilities had that element and was rejected by bright line so um when you're looking at the that Ila here where they are each paying half and then the city is specifically responsible for the parking in this First Agreement um the city was on the hook for the garage I personally don't think we need a garage there and when I talked to people they were more frustrated with the parking garage money going towards the station more than an actual garage there's actually could be quite a bit of surface parking and when the amended Ila came through that was apparent here what is it Oh I thought somebody had a question so now with that in light of that with this agreement in particular because I know you guys are going to be looking at this on your tablets uh when we get down to section four this is where it it gets a bit muddy in my opinion is uh the city of Stewart on four the city of Stewart shall commit up to 20 million we're saying now five um see so um the fund shall be used on the design and development of a train station so that's in line with what brightline had sent in March where they said we don't just want you to be city of Stewart using your funds for the garage we also want it to be available for this train station and then on the next item number five we redefine what train station means and so now it is the intention of the parties to this agreement that the train station is the entire project which Al also includes the track modifications for the station the two-story parking garage the actual station Landscaping other so it it uh it just allows you know 5 million or 20 million or 15 million or you know whatever that amount of money is from both parties I would like to get back to the original deal like I said tonight with Brian where what we're proposing to send to them and we may have consensus on this we we may be all over the place it sounds like but um in line with what I what our consensus was before this meeting our previous discussion about this bright line pays for half of the station and track work the county pays for half of the station and track work the city is on the the hook for the parking um not having skin in the game is not good in my opinion with a public private partnership and I do believe when we're talking about Grant um people weighing out the grants at seeing bright line be involved in that kind of an agreement would help our chances of getting that you know we're all assuming 80% is coming no matter what but I think it would help and then removing in number eight where we also include further talking about a garage and I'd like us to move more in the direction of the whatever the parking is necessary to meet the RFP um which was you know more more in the line of um the original Ila so commissioner Collins are you finished I mean my thoughts anyway yeah yeah whatever the just to give specific actionable you know so it's not vague so I I don't know if you guys are directing me to go back to Bright line but I can tell you that bright Line's not going to change on the 50% of the thing I'm happy to go back to them over and over I would say either way we should have another meeting where we're able to talk about commissioner Collins can I speak right now we have this meeting in particular created more confusion than the than what we were at previously purpose of this meeting was to tell you that there's no ability for me to get bright line to pay for half the station so then we should give that to them and then let them say no well make the prop that's great I totally agree I have no problem with that but my reason for bringing it Forward too is that we haven't gone home before 11:00 since this started we need what the reason why is we spend every meeting talking about brightline so then do we then then as a board do we want to try to find consensus around that because we're kind of all over the place we we have a pending motion we have a pending you got to vote on okay or have it amended um bright line actually put definitions in the lease that was signed and that was rescinded uh rail infrastructure the switches sidings turnouts crossovers ballast rail signals Communications and other rail infrastructure to be constructed by tenant in order to permit train to stop at the train station train station a tenant passenger train station located on the parcel which will be integrated into the system um and there's strategic ways like in in my thought process to have bright line do something I mean shoot you can uh offer $5 million in free tickets over the course of five years or 10 you know what I mean obviously it wouldn't be utilized all at once but you know those are just creative like negotiations and that's why we're here um and you know um but yeah I still stand on where I I am um until I get my things answered thanks Mr Mayor m you know to that we won't have anything to negotiate if we don't try to move [Applause] forward I still have my motion um what is it that you need to amend it to Mr Collins commissioner Collins yeah that's what I I was just reviewing was what I would like to see is more of a return to the original Ila where the county is paying for half of the train station and track work bright line is paying half for the train station and track work and then the city is responsible for the parking necessary to meet the criteria set forth in the RFP I thought that we had Mr Morel we we asked him to work on something the county is doing their part the County and bright line just wants to hear from us and I don't think we need to tell them just what we want just put our part in there and say that we want to move forward that's all we need it's just our part that's what I just said no you said the county you know what about the county paying half and all this stuff just just put what we're talking about well in the amended Ila that we're talking about approving tonight it gives specific terms around what you're describing and I'm saying different terms than what we're currently looking at voting at do you understand we're we're here we're trying to give some a some strategic general direction to go back and this is quite specific this is not General this is saying that well no not General but these the few steps that we've discussed in this resolution tonight plus what we've discussed and agreed to and then we they'll work on some more details I would not feel comfortable moving forward with something that looks like this no way absolutely not I mean I don't for me on this I'm going to be a no a twostory parking garage is going to C what would the cost of that be Mr mortell approximately we have to give some Credence to staff and to wisdom so in Practical terms you're looking at we we don't Mickey we don't not Mickey we don't um do things by um doing every minutia up here it's not minutia it's the terms of the agreement that we're at asking the mayor to sign and in Practical terms what I imagine this looking something more like is we're each paying a third you know the bright Line's going to be paying for half of that station and track work somewhere around more not less somewhere around 15 million the County's going to be somewhere around 15 million we're going to probably be somewhere around 15 million if it's a garage if we don't need a garage it's going to be less but that way everybody has skin in the game this current agreement and then when the grants come it will offset that but the the current agreement right now is all of the liability sits on the municipalities and bright line is paying nothing so no that's 100% what the deal is bright line is paying nothing they he told you from his lips zero Capital zero Capital everything is on us yeah right if we don't get the grant the Count's not going to we don't so I think that yeah well the if the motion it depends on whatever the motion is that the commission has but what I hear the commission saying is they will put $5 million toward the project yeah and then nothing else like no other terms let bright light agre go for Grant that's not that's not sounds nice tonight but that's not real but me that can be your motion well no we talked about prices as well they were we were open to discuss commissioner Collins has raised that he wants in that motion to be that the city pays 5 million toward it and bright line pays something toward it that's the distinction that's not the motion we have at the moment well I understand that's what I was asking to have what happens when this motion if it dies can someone else make a motion or does this agenda item just kick down the road once again make make another make Goa okay so if if bright line agreed to pay 10 million and we get our would you it sounds like you'd be happier if we were to pay 10 million I don't care I don't care about what somebody else pays I care what the city has to pay with all due respect you guys negotiated $30 million pay for the dumpsters or the station or the asold or sensibly now the whole the station is all of it and we are trying to come to an agreement as to how that will be paid for between the city the county by the way we live in the county too right um grants and bright line so I I don't understand that why we have to attach specific obligations to specific elements because that's the nature of this agreement is an agreement I'm you'd have to come to the podium okay so for Clarity on the motion that we're about to vote on so that we don't have chaos like the one time maybe Mary or susay would youy the motion stands right now it's actually you you're the chair right now but I can help cuz I it's pretty I think and and U Comm commissioner Clark just correct me I'm trying to help clarify it it seems to me that your motion was to approve the amended interlocal agreement that was attached to the agenda item as is except for paragraph D4 which says the city of Stewart shall commit up to 20 million your only amendment to this would be that the city shall commit up to five million is that correct with all the other terms the same you're fine with that was your motion yes okay and I don't think she's adding I'm sorry a very important element 5 million net right well so the paragraph so that's after the grants that's not 5 million that's 5 million net all right well I I think the the way the current interlocal agreement is drafted it says paragraph 4 or D4 is the city of Stewart shall commit up to 20 million so I I I think the motion as amended was the city of Stewart shall commit up to 5 million all other terms are the same in the amended in local agreement attached to the agenda item yes and we've had this agreement long enough I think Mr Collins was the one who brought it up and wanted to have it reconsidered and if we had all these small well not small they're all important points we they should have been brought up with staff and brought up so that we have them ready we had three days oh we've had this agreement before this has been on 3 days well we we know what we know what three days and I I didn't expect to come up you brought it up because you wanted changes and you know exactly what changes you wanted so I think anyway um thank you Mr baggot I hear you Mr Collins I hear you chair Collins I don't think her motion as amended was ever seconded so I I will disc the original motion but not the amend I did the original not been seconded for the her Amendment okay with the amendment okay and so there's no more I can go to vote okay again I'm gonna be a no on this guys but there's no other comments call the roll the call the roll commissioner Collins no mayor Rich yes commissioner clerk yes commissioner goob no and commissioner Reed no now can I make a motion yeah so I'd like I'd like like to make a motion no oh you can I'll take this I'd like to make a motion until I do my due diligence for it to come back at the next city commission meeting what is it the 20 what 28th so the 28th so for what to come [Music] back for the agenda item to come back based off what I stated I know it was the 5 million I know uh Brian was responding to the ticket prices um personally I would like to see this uh bake a little bit get the new Commissioners in the county in and then let's work with staff to to come up with a better agreement that we would send to Bright line and then let bright line make that decision I think we're doing a disservice to the community but I um that's if there's been a vote well you can make a motion we'll see if you get a second go ahead commissioner re I'd like to make a motion for it to come back on the 28th I'm waiting on some questions to be answered um I was trying to get commissioner Clark to amend her motion but I know she was done with that motion correct I know she wasn't willing but that's amended to I would like to see because then I have more time what is it that you want to come back on the 28th right that will change five million correct yeah it'd be it'd be listed at 5 million so that's done we had the 5 million correct but I'm waiting on questions to be answered like I said from the Florida Department of Revenue and I think there was something else I'd have to go through I have so many notes on this at this point meting in November defin as is the Florida Department Revenue as it as it relates to on how they're going to assess the value of the train station for tax purposes how Germaine is that um and then maybe we can have more discussion with brightline I can call them on this ticket prices the lease terms that they had mentioned there's little things like that that could go into the inter local agreement um that were discussed while you were at the podium right second the motion to bring it back on the 28 see the big deal if not not on the 28th can we really is there some when is it next County Commission meeting I mean I'll be willing to come back this Tuesday Wednesday Thursday uh of this week if we need to have another meeting because it does take up time with bright line if we if we want to today's the 14th if we want to do something on the 17th or even the 21st or the 22nd I'll be willing to do that just so that we can move ahead I think maybe the next County Commission meeting is a second why are we rushing to get this into the county before the new people come in I because I not I'm not worried about the new people I'm just worried about the time frame for Grants and Stu there going to be another Grant cycle it's going to be there's always grants we've discussed that let's I'm going to the bathroom okay could you state your motion so we just have it clearly so we can I'm going to revoke my motion okay all right so let's move on can I make a motion that we move it to a Time certain date please certainly you can well just for us to consider it and when it goes to the county wait a minute wait a minute so voted we can wait for the know what what you're motioning for the time certain on and just to bring back to reconsider this whole unless you voted the board voted no on the proposal for the 5 million and the proposal that I brought forward if the board wants to bring back another agenda item to make another offer to the county or bright line you're welcome to do so it's you know it'll it will consume another meeting right right that's what I'm saying we work internally and then bring forth something that's going to be not a fist fight up here then offer that to Bright line you're welcome to meet with so internal meeting figure out internally and then it'll make it to the agenda we can't figure brought internally under the sunshine we can't do that I working with but I I can tell I can tell you guys as as board members I'm not I brightlane does not see me as the authority of of a City Commissioner they know that requires your five votes or three of five votes but standing before you tonight they made it very clear that they are not going to tell me between now and October 28th that they're willing to pay for half of the station so if that's the issue that you want me to bring back on the 28th we're just going to fill the room on the 28th again and go home at midnight and they're still not going to agree to those terms I know that's not an agreeable term to them the if the commission is not willing to go forward unless bright line pays that half we can just not go forward and just tell the county we're out I would like you to spend I would like you to spend a little bit of time talking with them and seeing if just like our um consensus was at the last meeting when we talked about this before this grenade went off tonight if you can talk to them and see if we can get something closer to that that's that's what I was um mentioning last time what more do we want I I I don't I wish Mr re were here and if you can offer them that and they say no then that's on them um commissioner Reed if we could wait one minute for him to come back um was very um specific with them and with others as it relates to that um exact issue and it was very clear I mean I I I don't see a path to that um I'm happy to to it's just it's so strange to me the county is the county is has held tight to its its deal it has not wavered the the county on March March 25th said they didn't expect bright line to pay half the county has not wavered on its portion in this deal right right the city is being expected to pick up all of the slack that bright line gave to us in that March 4th letter by saying they don't want to pay half anymore the city has absorbed all of that liability we that's a nightmare the county didn't go up to 30 million you know like why is it that the city is having to eat all of that and we're just praying for grants they don't want to be on the hook for that money they're not 100% sure about grants they don't want Capital involved why are we it it what it comes down to is the county is contributing it's 15 and it's applying for the grant right the county is looking to the city to see if the city's going to participate with them the county knows that applying for the grant with the city will make it more likely to get the the the higher percentage of the grant but if we don't apply I think the county is applying without us so they'll go on without us anyway it doesn't matter one way or the other it's just is the city in or or not and the the question becomes from the County's perspective the county if they get the grant they don't care if bright line pays for half the station on March 25th when they wrote the letter to brightline they said we don't care if you pay for half the station we're doing it essentially with the city I think we should wait till the new commission's in I don't think we should be rushing this last minute so then that and and I think now that commissioner Reed's back one of the issues was do you think that I could go to Bright line and negotiate with them to get them to pay for have the station after being with me when we were meeting with brightland on the issue probably not probably not um I can't control what I will say is I can't control what the board of County Commission does I just I represent the city okay moving on commissioner we are on item 13 I believe Mr bagot is that correct excuse me mayor just for clarity we thought we had a motion on the floor to move to a Time certain but then it wasn't decided is that okay thank you do you want still want that do you still want he rescinded his commissioner commissioner Clark made it oh okay I put it that we should try to come back time certain and work on something more quickly can somebody second that so we can pick a time no I would rather hash out internally no they're not willing that's not okay thank you could you read item 13 for our consideration Please Mr bagot I think it's um or are we on FEMA no we're on 12 yeah we're on 12 which is now 14 14 it's the FEMA resolution number 83202 a resolution of the city Commission of the city of Stewart Florida authorizing the city of Stewart to enter a non-financial direct technical assistant agreement to collaborate with the Federal Emergency Management agency also known as FEMA under the building resilient infrastructure and communities also known as brick program providing an effective data in for other purposes uh I brought this um before which agenda item are we on oh we're on it was number 12 now it's 14 it's 14 now under commission action it is numbered item 12 okay thank you um we this uh at the last meeting uh failed for lack of a second but because it's a city agenda item it comes back until it gets three UPS or three downs I'm happy to go into more detail about it but it's essentially a uh FEMA program to provide a framework for us to work with FEMA to carry out the roles and responsibilities with respect to technical assistance under their building resilient infrastructure and communities program and it um doesn't give us any money but it has FEMA technical assistant working with the city and they go through um their you know flood planes and hurricane enforcements and uh resiliency related to storm surge and things of that nature um and you know you can read the list um under FEMA's responsibilities it's they'll it's about 12 things and essentially it's uh support the city in advancing decision-making processes that include representatives from all affected groups work together with the city and other partners to access best available science and knowledge about risk and climate change and help integrate into design considerations ensure a building resilient infrastructure data action plan and the overall delivery um with regard to um cultural norms traditions and acknowledges past and current disparities uh but essentially meaning that there's certain neighborhoods that have been neglected versus other neighborhoods and they help identify those um and then the city would invite vimma to work collaborate with the city engage in the development of a community needs assessment that will build an understanding of the city of Stewart's vision for resiliency and identify gaps in our current capacity such as needs related to flood planes uh storm water um other uh structural uh reports Etc uh formulate an an action plan Foster Community engagement to involve the stakeholders communicate the progress toward the implementation identify Partnerships provide feedback to FEMA share best practices and successes and prioritize committing Community time and resources to the process to the extent possible and then partner with FEMA for up to 36 months to identify the needs build these Partnerships and implement the risk reduction and climate adaptation actions is there a motion Mr chairman with regard to resolution number 83202 move approval second okay we have a motion by commissioner can I okay we'll discuss and a second by commissioner Reed is there any public comment I have none may what she I have none sorry read had some seeing none uh comments or questions by the commission I do first um I just want to State yeah like like Mike said it it says even if the city did not participate in this program the city is still responsible for doing all of this leg work basically and FEMA would be assisting and it's no financial obligation towards the city so it's simple I agree that's my understanding that's my interpret I mean it clearly says it um on the first summary so that's it commissioner go okay so when I did some research um there is no money from FEMA they basically come and they give um structural um and all of that type of information but they are um there are they're basically part of the homeland security system the Homeland Homeland Security they're part of the four justice 40 covered programs and they do flood mitigation and and building resist resilient infrastructure in communities that's the brick program but underlying is what they're basically saying is they recommend to the city that you need to redo that Waterway let's say and the city decides that they don't want to do that it interferes with the structure we're doing or whatever they basically kind of put you at the bottom of then any fem of money that might be available while they don't give you money you have to kind of go along with their guidelines to be able to get the money so you now have I mean from what I read you now have a situation where they've said okay we've advised you to do this you say you really don't want to do it it interferes with your comp plan or whatever but then if there was FEMA money available for that you'd kind of be at the bottom of the list it makes it sound like that wouldn't approve it if we weren't doing it we wouldn't matter if we were at the bottom of the list right like if we weren't if we didn't if it was something they told us to do let's say they said build a six- foot wall in front of city hall right here on the river and we said no that interferes with our Boardwalk we don't want to put a six- foot wall in front of the boardwalk and then next year they came out with grant money for a six- foot wall we'd be at the bottom of the list but we wouldn't care because we weren't building the six foot wall we wouldn't be applying for the money but more broadly for just general FEMA funds the only time that you qualify for FEMA funds is when you've had a disaster an emergency has been declared if you don't meet the FEMA flood zone requirements that they make us do every five years anyway then you don't qualify for it anyway have we done this before we've never well not that we've never qualified for the technical assistance before we do the flood plane update every four or five years we have to when they do it the county does all their new flood plane Maps we have to adopt it FEMA comes and does audits throughout the city and ident if I places and says you can't do this and can't do that and if you fail to comply with that audit they can't they won't sell they won't allow you to qualif to qualify for the um flood insurance program which is a national program at all and so maybe better not to have the audit so you well this isn't the audit the technical assistance the audit is comes no matter what we get the audit no matter what the AIT okay so they come and do the audit when they do the updated flood planes and I can look that up um but again it's you're it's a pleasure of the board just trying to understand it for me personally I don't want to sign the city up for something that might be you know liability I'm sorry Mr commission J were you done with your remarks yes I'm sorry yes I was done and we we may also be putting people at risk if we don't uh approve this and there' be insurance issues and other things down the line it's not costing us anything but it leaves the door open for us to have this collaborative effort as needed and I don't I we've just had a disaster and if we had another disaster that directly affected the city we'd have a at least we have an agreement and we're reaching something I know that they have their Federal obligations otherwise but still I think it's important to be a part of this brick program right but that doesn't stop female money in a disaster I know I know that said that commissioner Collins are you done sorry go ahead um so in on page um 271 it's page 26 of this agreement but 271 in our packet it references Authority and this was this was the only thing that made made me hesitant about it is if you look at section 203 of the Robert T Stafford disaster to relief and emergency assistant act that it U references in section 203 it references the uses of Technical and financial assistance right so in general it says Technical and financial assistance provided under the section shall be used right we like to see that shall be right they're going to definitely they have to right shall be used by States and local governments prbly to implement pre- disaster Hazard mitigation measures that are cost effective and are described and proposals approved by the president under this section awesome right that's what we're all excited so the so they're being paid those funds to give us the technical advice so the funding for them shall be used to meet with us to give us technical advice yes and but here's the next part that made me nervous so where are you commissioner C this is actually no this is the this is the act that references there I I printed up the page it's not in our packet but it says that's what they shall be used um technical assistance but in the next section in B it says may be used and there's a couple one two three the fourth one may be used to establish and Carry Out enforcement activities and implement the latest published editions of relevant consensus based codes specs specifications and standards that are that incorporate the latest hazard resistant designs and establish minimum acceptable criteria but that first part of that sentence I I um I'm a smaller government constitutional type guy so the federal government telling me they're going to establish and Carry Out enforcement activities to implement the latest uh consensus based codes makesense so in February 19th of 2020 FEMA made the county do the flood insurance evaluation and they had to update all their flood planes redraw the flood plane boundaries the floodways base flood elevations the non-encroachment zones the coastal flood Hazard areas and it describes you can go through it on their website it has the entire thing it's about 50 pages long and it goes through everything they did and so if they is that as a function of this that's a function of not this brick agreement that's a function of FEMA generally is going to do it whether we do brick or not going to use those funds and they are then going to enforce this flood requirement and if you violated their flood planes or you fa and failed to comply with it by building in areas that they say are prone to flood then they can say you don't qualify for flood insurance anymore because you're continuing to build in areas that continue to flood now the truth of it is is that Stuart's very lucky because we I know that we're in Florida and it seems low but Stewart itself is actually relatively High compared to north of our Shores and and Salo and the areas around us so in the storm we were up on a bluff compared to the rest and we're Sugar Sand but if you look around Martin County and they have an interactive flood map and it shows and for example the city of Stewart's comp plan and the Martin County comp plan prohibits anybody from putting pavement 25 ft from the edge of the median high water and the purpose for that is to allow the the estuaries or tributaries to absorb the water because where people put the cement in and put cement in the the the areas up to that it creates the inability for water to to run in and it can create flooding depending on the angles of those uh principal characteristics and so when in fact seaw walls are being done they have to be approved by the D which is part of the fem evaluation they have to be at the mean um high water mark they can't be more than 4T past it or 4T before it and if I look at like page 27 is the flood zone designations by community and if I go to page 27 it'll literally show me every single community in Martin County and what its flood planes zoning or designation is that is the enforcement and I you know I'm showing you the that's their enforcement procedures of what they're talking about is what those flood planes are and what it works thank you Mr Mayor so Mr mortal that hence the need for the technical assistance in order to comply or it what do you truly think we're getting out of this I think we're going to get people that simply assist us in preparing and building a like right now we have storm water issues all the time the list is longer than we could ever fund and there's always a neighborhood flooding and right now for example the Florida D requires that any new house be built 18 in above the crown of the road well the crown of the road is a certain elevation but every time every one of those houses builds at 18 inches above the crown of the road on stman now there's houses that were built in the 30s well every time it rains all the houses that were built in the 2000s are surrounding them and they shove all their water down on sment so a few years ago the city adopted a um amendment to our codes that required engineering that anytime someone's building a new single family home they have to demonstrate with a certified engineer that they're retaining their water on site and doing their own water retention like we do with commercial development so that they can't flood their neighbors and it just you know I anticipate that it'd be stuff like that and they'd probably go into Flagler Park and say this is a very lowline Park I wouldn't recommend you putting in a telescope or some kind of um you know Amphitheater here because it's going to be underwater because then when we get King tides in Flagler Park you get standing water from high tide I mean and again I honestly I don't I don't think it's going to be some kind of you know outlandish lists of stuff I think that it's going to probably give our staff some ability to have a better understanding of what they're looking at so that when we do fortunately this storm we didn't have any FEMA claim and we're not going to be making a FEMA claim at all but when we do make FEMA claims it's a very technical procedure where you have a lot of forms to fill out and a lot of paperwork and a lot of criteria in the past you know I can I know that the finance department dealt with it for literally for years after each storm with Audits and then they claw back because you filled out the forms wrong and they paid you money but then they've looked at it later and said nope you filled that out wrong so we want you to pay us back things like that which become complicated the thought is that if this provides us the ability to be better at understanding what they're looking for and what we need to do it will put us in a better position not only to be prepared for it but to also respond to it also uh Mr Mayor like to point out if I may that the the um says in the agreement that it's not intended to be legally binding and also it can be terminated by other party within 10 days written notice to the other and it's a threeyear agreement it can be up to three years let me you do it periodically or something it's saying until completion of the community brick DTA action plan not to exceed 36 months but either party May terminate this mou within 10 days written notice to the other so if you don't like something so if it gets weird you'll let us know well it's going to be community outreach there's going to be meetings and people coming forward and neighborhood like it'll pick different neighborhoods and have meetings and things like that there is what I expect okay I'm good okay I'm okay with it mayor Rich may I yes commissioner re I I will say on um looking it up on the website uh just to State it the board of County Commissioners doesn't meet the HMA requirements so they wouldn't be a part of it either but you can always get out like Lee said so thanks yeah I actually when we turned it down last time I was wondering if that was actually legal because we didn't get a second because we excuse me we we didn't get a second that's why I died okay because it seems like we're turning our backs on the you know safety of our residents and that's one of our very explicit responsibilities to keep our city safe and our residents safe safe and um you know how many thousand year storms do we have to witness I'm sure we all know people in Western North Carolina and that remarkable event look what's happened I know some of the uh elected officials over on the west coast and they how many times we have to hear we've never seen anything like this before and so the think of the lessons that FEMA is learning right now and their ability to share those with us to keep our home safer to make sure that we can buy flood insurance because if we don't follow their requirements we many homes will lose the ability to even purchase flood insurance so I it's not going to cost us anything we're going to take the advice if it works for us and ignore it if it doesn't but I have every confidence this will help us keep our city safer and drier and our residents as well so any additional comment no I'm good uh roll call please commissioner Clark yes commissioner or commissioner giobi yes commissioner Reid yes mayor Rich yes and commissioner Collins yes so listed on our agenda commission action 13 resolution number 102-12 a resolution of the city Commission of the city of Stewart Florida authorizing the city of Stewart to enter into a long-term lease agreement with Stewart Heritage Inc for the city-owned property known as the Stewart Feed Store located at 161 Southwest Flagler Avenue Stewart Florida providing an effective date and for other purposes um obviously U the the uh Museum was was been in in a lease agreement in excess of 10 years um and so we put it out for referendum to to vote to go beyond 10 years um overwhelmingly hardly I think 99% of the people voted in favor of entering into a long-term longer term lease with the U Museum um so it's come back before you I have uh drafted a proposed resolution and a proposed lease uh which would give another 10 years commencing on November 1st 2024 and that the least may be extended at the option of both parties in the future and then would it Go in front of another referendum or it's good to go now are we youve get the referendum passed you guys now can lease the property for more than 10 years to anybody actually I think the referendum was was for specifically to the museum steart Heritage but it's more than 10 years it doesn't say 11 it doesn't say 99 it's you you'd have the option at 10 years right to redo it mayor I'd like to move approval of resolution 102 2024 second we have a motion by commissioner Collins and a second by commissioner Clark uh is there any public comment on this issue I have one okay Gary Maxwell no one is not real controversial are you sure well we'll see we'll see you haven't voted yet uh first of all thank you very much commission for uh allowing us to be a part of this we've had a long uh I believe mutually beneficial relationship between the city and the museum I guess supposed to introduce myself any we know and ie especially want to thank the voters of Stuart who who overwhelmingly approved the idea of having a long-term lease with between the city and the museum I don't think it was 99% I think I heard 94 I'll take it that was just a rough estimate yeah pretty close um I I have been able to look over the draft of the uh lease and it's very much in line with what we were expecting uh I appreciate it not being market value uh uh if I had my brothers I'll tell you a 10year lease is just 10 years and unfortunately it goes by much quicker than we wanted to I'd rather see it at a 20-year lease with options for Renewal uh we're a volunteer organization getting our volunteers all together and getting out getting a referendum to the city of Steward uh is a challenge you don't have to do the referendum anymore well so says the legal opinions today I don't want to face it again I'm I don't have I don't think I've got more than 20 years left in me so if we could have it for 20 I'd be sure it's not my problem uh whatever we're we're very pleased to be a part of the city to contribute to the downtown Vibe and uh work closely with all our friends here at the city thank you thank you Helen McBride any Commissioners have any Oh I thought you were moving into position there Helen so butly I'm sitting voted Gloria thank you hello McBride of flamingo Avenue I personally would rather see a 50-year lease to the H well I'd like the 99y year lease but he he said he didn't want it but how about a 50-year leas to give them that the future generation I mean with renewal but you never know who's going to be here and uh we these the Heritage Society has worked so hard and those like glor and that the people who are born and raised and have done so much for this great City make it a good lease a 50-year lease with renewal give them that cushion it's not going to hurt you they bringing more people in town town they people can learn our history I know when my company comes they all go there they just can't get over the history of this wonderful City so let's make it a a 50e lease I'd say 99 but I'll go with 50 thank you make it 25 and Jimmy Smith I me they've been there 30 good morning I mean not good morning God almost so it's close to hello commission uh listen I agree I agree with that um that longterm lease I agree with that least because I I remember that Feast though in 1965 all this downtown where it was like but it's the only place that we shopped I remember that Feast though was the main place that where every might did they shopping for different things uh for the animals and all that I remember when Town shop I remember when uh Western Auto the only place we can buy a bicycle I can remember all the history that is brought down town of Stewart I know there are many more that have lived here but what a great thing with what they're doing for the history of that place I when we went in there uh I guess about a few months ago you had the uh uh open house there and you know you go around and look at all the history pictures and and you know I can go back when uh Jesse Jane games can come through here uh when uh the blast family had it out with the other games uh back in the day the black family is a lot of history here in M County if you can get some of the black family out of oown bush black that have a lot of history to bring back when the gains had it out with their family was a large family with the black on joria pelona there's so much that that players can offer the our our our kid that come along the Next Generation and I agree please help them help them out to keep their history here because there's so much that we living on right now that we don't even know what makes Martin kind a great place so I support that and I know that our community supported and I think y all doing a great job uh just look at each other and tell each other you love you and we'll be all right amen mayor Rich that's all I have made the motion oh um I think commissioner Clark made the motion I comms Collins made a motion um is there a discussion I was going to ask if he would amend it to the longer term what are you thinking 50 okay 50 I thought 50 was good not 100 but it's 50 30 50 more than 10 are you amending your motion commissioner Collins I'll amend my motion is there a second I'll second the mo second was sorry go ahead second by commissioner go can we confirm that it was the 50 years no commissioner CL commissioner CL because she had already second the first one I had forgotten sorry you better put some kind of plaque up for Helen that's all I'm saying something is is there any discussion on the motion and its Amendment you don't want to discuss it do you I'm sorry commissioner Collins can we the angel the angel of the Fe is there any discussion on the motion no Mike what's the longest lease we have with any well weti we have an 80-year lease with the land lease for where Zuul is and we had a 99e lease where the marina is but they're paying a little over $400,000 a year so that's a little different the we'll get 50 out of you guys the 50-year lease is you would want to make sure that there was a a and I'm not saying it a morals Clause but the one thing is when you have a dollar a year lease the operation right now is is top-notch and they're doing a great job now but if in fact it were to drop off and stop doing that great job the city would have no leverage because right1 a month it's a nonprofit board correct yeah so I I have been the recipient of short-term leases for a nonprofit too and even and we've been offered very long terms I agree with I I agree with the city manager that's just long as they continue to do a good job there's not they are not going to have a problem but you just don't know with nonprofit boards as long as you add some language to the lease that makes sure that the city has out if they're not operating it yes yeah I so I would I the requirement function as a museum I else right right yeah if you have a 50-year lease how would you update it I mean I just for example operating as a museum if it's open two days a year as a museum is it a museum right so I mean I think the City attorney can add some sufficent language you guys could do it tomorrow conditioned unsatisfactory language added by the City attorney to make sure that the city a function can I recommend that we ongoing historical Mr Bag can I recommend that we lessen 50 years and maybe have a renewal can we do four have term my concern is if you have a renewal at a certain date then we can update it like the insurance requirements of 3 million 50 years from now 3 million might be like a 100 bucks I I don't that's true we wouldn't have a way updating what's more appropriate we can we can revisit it say 20 years yeah I would say 20 years is what the applicant was asking for if terms for 10 year terms I would amend my motion to 20 years there's no raising their rent or anything it's just going to renew it in 10 20 years long city managers second okay is it a roll call yes what was the motion to clarify 20 years Madam clerk could you state the motion 20 years a little loopy with renewal the latest motion was to amend for 20 years with language to um sorry I just had a blank with language to renew the in 20 years but no terms so just a single onee or one term of 20 years and then it says this may may be extended at the option of both parties is the way it's already phrased so we would not have to go back out to referendum that's generally how it is you get a term with a renewal how does the Heritage that'll give us an option to update it at 20 years right which is a long time so you got to make it 20 more years yeah I mean you can do 10 years with a renewal term as well so it's accomplishing the same thing I don't know how the City attorney go back referend Goa okay it wouldn't have to be a referendum though it just as long as it's the same entity correct the road please Madam to 10:30 commissioner go OB yes commissioner Clark yes commissioner Reed yes mayor Rich yes and commissioner Collins yes what was that that was was we did that one so listed as item 15 under commission action chill Mr bagot we read the item for our consideration please resolution number 112 d224 a resolution of the city Commission of the city of Stewart Florida authorizing budget amendment number two to the fiscal year 2025 budget appropriating and authorizing the expenditure of funds for emergency repairs for Chiller at Courthouse Commons providing an effective day in for other purposes I could I could bring the staff up here who what's it going to cost $77,000 um that's the amount we need $77,200 12 2024 thank second we have a motion by commissioner CS a second by commissioner Clark um is there any public comment I have none yes none I have none you have one or none I have not I have not sorry I'm a little any discussion by the Commissioners yes mayor I just have a question and it's for the city manager um isn't the purpose of an emergency fund I mean do we have to vote every time there's some emergency that needs to have it wasn't budgeted so if it's anytime it's over $50,000 I'd have to come to you anyway wasn't a budgeted amendment that answered my question thank you and uh roll call please mayor Rich yes commissioner Collins yes commissioner Clark yes commissioner goob yes commissioner Reed yes this is item 16 under ordinance second reading Mr bagot will you please read this item for our consideration ordinance number 2531 d224 an ordinance of the city Commission of the city of Stewart Florida amending and restating the city's Land Development code more specifically amending section 2.6.3 entitled reserved and inserting supplemental use standards for non-medical marijuana dispensaries amending the land use table in section 2.2.2 to include non-medical marijuana dispensary as an allow allowable use under certain conditions amending chapter 12 definitions for conforming terms providing for severability providing for conflicting Provisions providing for codification providing an effect effective date and for other purposes Lee has anything changed since first reading yes I think uh Mr uh Mr hog stay to provide us for an update can you hyperfocus on the changes absolutely U good evening Ben Hogarth again for the record I am going to skip about half the slides tonight in the interest of time uh most of this is a recap for the uh Public's benefit this is about Amendment Three passing um potentially in November um at the at the election there was concern that if um non-medical marijuana or recreational marijuana um passes um there won't be any zoning on the book so the commission uh several months ago um directed staff to bring forward a new zoning um in case it does so this is sort of a preliminary zoning but um this would go in place before of the ballot and if the ballot is adopted it would be in place uh ahead of time um so I'm going to skip uh the whole reason why we're doing this and go straight to at the beginning I've actually already placed sort of what the uh revisions have been uh We've removed noise lighting and odor regulations that were in the original draft um staff and discussing uh details realized that perhaps this is a little bit too much um too soon and the state's going to end up preempting us on a lot of regulations we already have noise or sound ordinance on the books anyway that that's applicable throughout the city there's sort of duplication here so that was removed um we grandfathered locations and I'm going to go into this in a little bit um there are six dispensaries that that are pre-existing in the city we've identified um so we just put in some grandfathering language in there to kind of protect them from any uh location or zoning changes that we've made uh parking standards have now been super simplified from what we had before to uh simply follow similar retail uses for the particular zoning hours of operations that we previously um had had put into draft um after discussion staff realized that perhaps this is again a little bit too far for now um just kind of keep it too consistent with other retail operations so we removed that that language uh and then also um Mr mortell the city manager had brought up a just a concern about a dual purpose of having two or is kind of in one even though both addressed um marijuana this relation to smoking in public parks perhaps was a little bit um too out of the scope of what we were dealing with with the zoning so we remove that for the time being but that is something the commission can uh perhaps consider in the future U for a separate ordinance um so what this does for again for the Public's benefit uh we're just updating supplemental use standards in chapter two of the Land Development code uh primarily we have a 2,000 foot gross floor area uh limit on the retail sales area in these dispensaries just again this is between this and the 6,000 foot uh gross floor area for the entire dispensary it's it's to and sure we don't have a a marijuana bies perhaps in in the city to kind of keep that under control just out of a concern that perhaps one day um we could have too big of a of a business but this is all stuff that the city commission um can certainly advise staff to revise if if there's any number here you would prefer to be different just kind of walking through the thought process as we went through and then uh also there was a concern that um if we revoked a dispensaries uh conditional use because they had their state license revoked for um you know just a reason maybe it was just forgot a an application date that that would be kind of unfair to put them through that whole process so we've given them now uh 180 days to kind of cure that problem again this is a number uh that that we can amend if the commission so desires parking uh has been super simplified as I said before it just now uh conforms to other retail uses similar to um trying to think maybe even a pain management clinic or or something else that's retail um Z so location zoning all of the locations that we originally put into the draft remain uh the locations in the city that this would be an allowable use for a non-medical marijuana dispensary is all of the business districts um cpud districts indust Ral um IP or Urban Highway and so just to kind of show the public um as best as we can what that looks like everywhere that there's a color shaded on this map here mostly along US1 in the US1 Corridor um some of the uh adjacent or or paralleling roads um and including far east of East Ocean um in the city and of course the blue area on this map details the the city limits uh everything on you one um that that falls within the zoning categories I've already mentioned uh would be an allowable use however uh there are additional restrictions on their location that we're going to talk about which is going to go into buffering in a second um so as far as distance requirements this is where the buffers come in uh you're going to see in the draft as as is revised today 500 ft um distances from uh schools and 500 ft from dispensary to dispensary uh the measurements are different uh 500 feet from schools would be linear you know as the crow flies as the saying 500 feet uh from dispensary to dispensary would be entrance to entrance uh and that's to kind of keep in line with the difference between the statutory language for schools and um the city's 500 ft on local code uh as far as location um I want to show and and uh development put this together that this shows in the green all the residential areas in the downtown in the red all of the locations that would be permissible under the previous zonings we talked about along the US1 Corridor and what you see here is kind of in the middle of the map the Big blank is the historic downtown area and really an extended area going into East Stewart um in the historic downtown area except for those Parcels that are directly AB buding um US1 and that was on purpose because originally commission uh intent and uh direction to staff was to try and uh Zone this in such a way that it it keeps most of the use to us one so existing dispensaries it's it's kind of hard to see on this map there are uh six total that we could identify there's one north of us uh North us one north of the bridge um there are two that are kind of uh onto the southern peripheries of of the city and then there's three that are sort of clustered on us one Al together the shortest distance between establishments currently uh measured was about 590 ft and I believe that was measured door too uh the longest distance between uh any two of these establishments was um about 3.69 miles uh there are three businesses in existence that are with that currently in operation that are with within 1,000 ft of one another so in our grandfathering language we were just making sure that they were kind of protected um from anything that we do in the future when we went to the local planning agency um initially we didn't have a lot lot of the buffer Maps um what we did hear for feedback from the LPA is this concern about um the activity being too close to schools they felt that 500 ft might be uh a little bit too short that being the the minimum distance uh for something like medical marijuana institutions from uh from schools and state language so they recommended to us to bump it up to 2500 ft and I'm going to talk about in a second when I show you on the map why that's a concern of Staff um not necessarily that 2500 ft is arbitrarily a bad number it just with a city this small it sort of cancels out um most of the city at that point it functionally you're going to see that in a moment um I just wanted to also clarify when we took this to uh quite a few weeks later we took this to the community redevelopment board um actually almost a month later and the crb uh had a lot more specific uh input and the consensus was was there was a lot more varied opinion on distances and buffers and and I'm going to go into something called an exclusion Zone we came up with uh and the crb was very specific about the exclusion Zone being uh potentially problematic um being too much of an overreach and I'm going to show what that looks like so when we first came up with the exclusion Zone staff's reasoning for this um was that if there should for any reason be a zoning change in the future if any commission at any point in time decides to change one of the urban districts to a business district for example or or something something else we we wanted to ensure that the intent of the commission to protect the historic area prevailed in the future you know just because zoning changed that suddenly now this use would be permissible we didn't want that to necessarily be the case we wanted to to to protect the intent so um we started with on the map on the left here which would be um Zone a in in the draft map that we have in in in the language currently this large area downtown uh that extends basically U between these two maps um two and and Beyond um Palm Beach Road and at our last Commission meeting um where we where we talked about this is the first hearing I I believe it was commissioner Collins who had requested that we extend this out um as far east along the Southeast Ocean Corridor to Monteray so that's what we did here in this draft exclusion Zone C again this map is so large we had to um bifurcate it uh into into three kind of sections uh it's a large area but it does cover the almost the entirety of of the downtown and near the Waterfront um all the way along East along East Ocean Boulevard to Monteray um the LPA was kind of okay with a with a larger exclusion Zone like that we had with A&B um crb when they saw them how big this map had become uh seemed to be a little bit concerned about it and so what staff did was to show a comparable on the size of how large this exclusion Zone has become on the left here you can see the the current as drafted exclusion Zone with all of the feedback we took between the LPA commissioner Collins's Edition to the east um this is how large this exclusion Zone would be and the exclusion Zone would essentially prohibit um any dispensaries within this area uh you know irrespective of the zoning changes in the future uh on the right what we did was we took the saturation District uh for alcohol use that's in the code of ordinances and we wanted to show what that looks like and the difference because the original intent of the commission when when they spoke to us um a few months ago and uh in some of the staff discussions since was to really protect the core Historic downtown and so staff's not saying it should be one map or another we needed to show an example for the decision tonight for the commission to provide this uh in feedback to us this is what the historic downtown saturation district is in code um and we've got an extensive area right now in draft comparable to this so that's something to consider at the end when we when we talk about um staff recommendations for buffer zones we need to give a perspective on on the difference in size between 500 feet and 2500t buffers so on the map on the left this is just what a 2500 buffer looks like from the um believe seven schools that we identified in the city area and you can see with a 2500t buffer uh most of the city just from these known schools and that's not necessarily including possible charter schools that we may have had difficulty identifying this is just from you know really wellknown easily identifiable schools in our system uh 25 200 FTS almost you know prohibiting the use throughout the entire city uh the map on the right shows three different sizes the 2500 being the the orange in the middle is the 500 feet um in the blue so you can see what a huge difference is in with the blue the pink is to show in ex example of what maybe a th000 ft would look like so you have something in between as a comparable and to Z to to zoom in to see what this actually looks like I I took U the one north of US1 here and you can see 500 ft um you know from the blue to the from the center to the to the to the pink where the pink starts that that would be 500 ft this red line the green line which would be the center to the end of the pink that's would be 1,000 ft buffers and then that 2500t buffer that the LPA had identified would be that orange area that whole radi and as you could see on this example you know from from the school if you do 2500 ft you're going all the way out and blanketing US1 um and you know whether that's the um you know the decision uh of the board or not um will be up for question tonight and that's really what staff is looking for for feedback is um what's the desire of the board there was just the staff concern that um you know we're kind of blanketing US1 and the crb told us that perhaps this is uh a little bit too much of an overreach so to conclude the staff recommendation of course is to adopt this ordinance uh 2531 20 2024 um with revisions to the text amendment to consider scaling down the exclusion Zone to the historic area which is that saturation District or removing entirely and that's based on feedback from the crb um consider setting buffer distances from schools to no more than 1,000 ft right now in the draft language it's 500 ft so 1,000 ft would be would be greater than what we have in the draft language we just are are simply saying we don't recommend going over that um and then the similar we we also don't think that setting buffer distances from dispensary to dispensary more than 1,000 ft would would be good either so um hopefully I didn't take too long in this item and I'm happy to answer any questions the commission may have so it goes down to Monteray so that means like we're Crush Market is they could have a dispensary or Cedar Point Plaza or yeah if they're if they're east of Monteray uh yes sir current in the current greens is is a dispensary yeah in case anybody's wondering the stuff they dispense is much stronger than marijuana okay well just the tourist beachgoers I'm sure they would appreciate the opportunity to take advantage of that so as long as it's not all of East Ocean Mr can I ask a question sir can you put back up the the last thing that you put up okay so those three red things in addition to um uh dropping out c not ex and then also when you say making the smaller um to the historic area show me the map that the crb was okay that so so originally um when Staff first were discussing what the commission meant back in in uh June I think it was when the commission first directed staff to look into this um really the intent was sort of this the saturation District um and maybe a little bit of an extension thereof you know down the peninsula and all that I just was using this as an example um what happened was in our last discussion you know it grew even with staff discussions internally it sort of grew as we as we thought about well do we go as far down as Palm Beach Road and what's what's really the core downtown area that we're trying to protect and so staff had those discussions but but the issue is that we're not the policy makers and we think it's really important um to hear from the commission and what you all think on you know what what are we trying to protect in perpetuity with this exclusion Zone mayor I'd like to move ordinance number 2531 2024 is there a second with and that's based off staff recommendation so it's not 25 100 it's a thousand it's I'll second yeah we have a motion by commissioner Collins and a second by commissioner Reed is there public comment I have one mayor Frank MC Bristol make it good so you can view weed as a moral dilemma which some people do or you can view it as wisdom you know what it is I mean let's get high so I don't think any anybody should be putting exclusion zones in our city it's like when you put an inclusion Zone somewhere then the possibility of it going somewhere else is greater and the exclusion Zone you're talking about is the one place where I mean when it the other what we talked about the crb board was just using the same rules you have for alcohol and the amount of space you need between establishments that sell alcohol all right because the downtown area is where people are going going to want to buy some weed I mean that's just that's the party place that's the place to be that's the tourist joint and again if you view it as a moral dilemma why are we going to burden the rest of the city with the possibility of it being near their places that they visit and and and live by giving this exclusion Zone to somebody downtown where hey we're we're Weed Free here sorry guys you know if you think it's a moral dilemma tough luck and it really is the place where if you if you went by the the alcohol rules the the the vendors downtown they're going to be jumping on okay being first in line for applying for the permits all right and you're literally if you went that right you would literally have to have a lottery okay rather than first come first serve okay so I I picture one at least one maybe two people establishments that are selling weed down there in the part of our city where everyone goes to party now you know this is just some common sense here okay and the consensus at the crb was yeah you know the what you you have in place for alcohol you know we're not going to stop this at this point and I don't think you you should pick either winners or losers because you got people think that we're losers because they don't they got an exclusion Zone and now our chances for having are greater or same way the other way around so exclusion zones no thank you very much mayor I have no more well good evening my only comment on this is I I don't know uh Ben if this is um everything that you're working on um I understand that um you know we have medical marijuana dispensaries where people need a card to go in there they will they will now be able to sell recreational marijuana in there so we have already all of the established dispensaries is that correct that will be this they will be six they'll be six currently okay but they'll be grandfathered in no matter what no matter where they are so corre they could medical marijuana could be here and then right next door could be or two doors away or whatever and it's my understanding also that the medical marijuana uh facilities or dispensaries have security they they have to they have to supply Security will that be a consideration for the recreational marijuana uh some spots have to have uh Security in the parking lots for liability purposes we don't have any regulations in the city related to medical marijuana well it's my understanding that any medical marijuana facility has to have and that's a that's a um that's more of a um like a you know regulation with um federal or state or whatever um if there if that's the case it would be preempting us anyway so we wouldn't it wouldn't matter what we said they'd still require it okay okay so I'm just thinking about the locations and the requirements of what I think before possibly before these uh zones and areas where they're going to be that we know exactly what will be required as far as you know the security and uh and such that's all so I mean I hope that you know that that's looked into maybe perhaps you've already discussed that the security secur security aspects or whatever okay thank you yes ma'am and and for the uh board's edification to that point um as Mr mortell said that the state's going to preempt us on most of those regulations and um it's sort of going to be turned key uh once the law does go into effect uh medical marijuana dispensaries will be able to start selling recreational and they have those uh uh measures in place already Mr Hogarth I would doubt any medical marijuana facilities would remain yeah they the do the doctor tax is going to go away so yeah mayor rich I have um Helen McBride who Helen McBride don't know is Helen McBride from Mingo Avenue I had first when when in crime March Charlie the chief of police Charlie White had committed burned some marijuana so we'd know what the odor was and then I was out to Denver after passed the marijuana law on that and uh we went out to eat lunch lunch or dinner whatever and we sat outside I said to Robin I can't I mean I can't stand smoking but I I can tolerate it but it was it was terrible and they passed it so it was legal and some doctors stopped their practice and they were just open up the stories to sell marijuana I was up at New York with my sisters at the Saratoga ver track and I went and I looked at my niece and I said you smell that she said yeah and Helen you know what it is yeah K said well what is that I can smell that I said that's high grade marijuana high grade yeah was it was it was really it had the nicest smell of I knew well I blame yeah is that what it is blame Charlie White he taught he this is what he taught us in crime watch uh but I don't want to see of in the are of the schools the churches or that you know or he's saying downtown well you come downtown you're we all want to sit on the outside restaurant and that are we going to have to smell someone else's marijuana you know but let's hope it don't pass and I have Robert Hamilton I just have a real quick question I wish to the understanding Robert Hamilton 31 Southwest Third Street I was the understanding that the legalized marijuana was going to have a lower THC content in it than the medical marijuana so kind of like beer you have wine beer hard liquor and that they're not going to be able to get the really you know the really strong stuff yeah I I it's almost a hypothetical and and I say that because so the Florida how would you tell if a police officer pulled somebody over and they had a butt in their hand would they say oh that looks like the good stuff or no that's I I don't think that's the I don't think that's the issue with it I think the issue I think the issue was that they were going to have a weaker strain that was going to be for the people that just want to use it recreationally just like if if I go to a doctor and you and I have pain and he says you know what I'm going to give you tyon all three and then he looks at me I go man I ain't taking that I need some bikes so you get the stronger drug I think for the people in the public what I read and that's why I'm asking you I I read that they were going to keep the lower THC level so you don't have some guy blasted out of his brain more more than likely that's correct um we've seen that in other states in in the way the the ballot initiative is written in Florida the Florida Department of Health will still control all licensing even once it goes to recreational and and how are you going to deal with the that one Circle you had overlapping uh I guess was North River Shores okay and how how does that impact the people on us one there to that Community up and yeah we haven't yeah we haven't I mean as far as staff we haven't heard any impacts or um we've had public hearings and we we we've sort of solicited feedback just you know trying to get some help in writing this and we haven't really heard any kind of criticism so it's been pretty quiet have you collaborated with other cities on it to see what they're doing yeah the one of the well not with other cities in Florida but we did look to other cities in other states it's really not a public comment thing too you're probably going to probably just okay good enough thank you you'll have a good evening thank you that is it mayor all right any discussion by the Commissioners I voted yes commissioner jobia silly question I don't smoke I don't mean marijuana I don't smoke cigarettes well I don't smoke anything but can you smoke downtown like can you sit out and smoke a cigarette downtown in a restaurant or there's no the the the Clean Indoor Air Act passed several years ago and prohibited smoking indoors where they serve food and then a few years ago A very wise Helen McBride came to a city commission meeting and said that they were smoking outside by the Riverwalk on Sundays so Paul nicoletti and I put up a sign that said no smoking with the exception of this Florida statute and if you looked up the Florida statute it said that the cities are not allowed to regulate smoking outside but the smoking dropped off by 99% so it seemed to work but then last year the Florida legislature passed a new government property law that allows governments to ban smoking in all on all government property so Parks and Recreation boardwalks Etc and that's what Mr Hogarth was referencing earlier tonight when when I saw that in the statute related to zoning I thought it was a dual purpose question and could be challenged on the way it was adopted because it wasn't because it was going to be banning smoking in Parks rather than the zoning of the sale right I'm just thinking where you know people sitting down on and we have a lot of outdoor seating downtown and you know all of a sudden I mean I don't think people would like even regular smoke in their face little the the states that have legalized marijuana including the medicinal marijuana in Florida where they actually sell smokable marijuana now it's it's still illegal to smoke it in public okay so then it would be that the state will regulate it the same way okay and the other thing is that um most of these are cash businesses um so that again comes the issue with safety because now have people who have money going into these dispensaries and at the end of the day the dispensaries have a lot of cash because they can't take credit cards it's still a federal offense to smoke marijuana even though states have approved it so the question is can I don't know if the city can say that so there there have been some uh Federal and and banking leniencies that have gone so that people can use their debit cards as cash now um that that's occurred so people aren't necessarily early on when 2016 17 when it first passed people were even having it delivered to their door because it was all pure cash business in hand so that that's been relaxed to make it a little bit more safer okay um just the the the security for a jewelry store they you know they have a million dollars worth of diamonds they provide security if a if a dispensary is going to have a cash business they're probably going to provide the adequate Security banks seem to provide security as well so we should probably let the market drive that rather other than us trying to regulate it because it'd be impossible for us to enforce any other comments no I'm good roll call please commissioner Reed yes commissioner Clark reluctant yes mayor Rich yes commissioner goob yes and commissioner col yes item 17 ordinance first reading will you please read that Mr bagot for our consideration ordinance number 2532 d224 in ordinance of the city Commission of the city of Stewart Florida amending the city City's official zoning map to rezone a 2.4 acre parcel located at 710 Southeast Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard being more described in exhibit a attached for major Amendment to the existing commercial plan unit development zoning designation to allow a vocational training facility only providing directions to the city clerk providing for repeal of all ordinances and conflict providing for an effective data and for other purposes this is first reading we don't have to vote on it we just correct bring it back cor yeah you could do a motion to move it to Second reading move that we take ordinance number 2532 2024 to Second reading is there a second second second we have a motion by commissioner Clark and a second by commissioner Collins is there any public comment on this I have one Mr James Christie 11:24 feel like I'm on the back of the bus again always had the last but um I want to make a few comments on this particular project I actually went out to project lift today in Palm City and there's no changes in my mind a great program uh great facility I was even more impressed Bob showed me around and it's it's a good program and it's good for the community but like I told Bob today I don't have a problem with Bob I got a problem with the way this was done uh um I'm looking at a news report today uh from WPTV about how this particular place was supposed to be a business incubator was stay at first and then all of a sudden that dropped off I don't know who took it off of what happened but now it's supposed to be just a Vocational Center the East store Grassroots is not against Bob we're not against that program it's a great program but we're against the way it was done this is a disturbing pattern that's going on regarding these Stewart it's disturbing one it seems like the commissioner commission the local plan agency crb board they make decisions and they don't include the community they sometimes weaponize notification and also public comment the public comment is to be stated to influence what you guys do or say and when you guys have meets or whatever if we for it you'll show us smiling and grinning and skinning if we're against it we don't hear a word from you guys you don't public you don't publicize the negativity or any opposition to what we don't want that's disturbing I heard so much about grant money oh I want to say money money the money it's flowing for bright line $228 million to put that Bridge across the water uh tons of money for organizations nonprofit whatever but when black folks come with plans oh you need money when we come with we don't have any money we have an idea oh you got to have a plans I just heard tonight that the skate park I saw what you guys say well y'all had to have money but for some reason that requirement disappeared and now oh we doing without money $500,000 and I got somebody on my street in my house and Stewart that got a $3,000 tax bill they can't play because they connected her repair to her house with her taxes I heard somebody the other day when we were I'm about to finish when we were discussing brightland I I stood up out there in that six and a half hour meeting and she said this is evil because these two commissioners had the AFF to to say no we don't want this right now and it wasn't malicious because you guys did your due diligence and you research but what's evil as what's happening to East St and I don't want to see it and the Grassroots were looking at everything Grant proposals what they were written for and what they were um what they're doing with them and everything else we looking at things we we look at everything and we we got our eyes thank you Mr Christie thank you Mr Bob zacho right thank you all it's almost uh Tuesday um but I uh Mr Christine and I did have some time together today over at project lift I do want to say say thank you to him and his wife for coming out and taking a tour we spent some time together had some really um and I and I think he would agree had some fruitful discussions about some direction and some partnership and to and to work out um some details and some commitment to that uh to make sure that uh we are um uh paying attention to what uh the community needs are and at the same time accommodating for uh project lifts unique uh uh programmatic uh components so um I'm just here publicly to say thank you to Mr Christie for coming out and doing that and taking the time I think he does have a much better understanding of the program and what we're what we're doing and uh certainly he asked some pretty great questions and my commitment back is really to use our expertise to to create programmatic opportunities uh that uh that make that make some sense as to what those needs are so thank you all uh especially this long night that you all have had tonight and I will leave it at that thank you Mr z Mr Jimmy Smith [Music] good morning again um thank you that's getting to be true uh y'all doing a good job um first of all I just wanted to say um uh take my head off to uh bball and a lot of the members I I brought them up we've been feeding over 3,000 people every day from the hurricane I left a whole 10 and something uh volunteers down there at my uh Ground Zero where we established feeding helping cuz I lost a lot of my family member lost their homes my sister and my aunties and all and lucky they didn't die uh but we have a large team down there we continue on with this but I I drug them up here because they understand the fact why they so important about the project live it's not about I understand that Mr uh Christie uh with the with the incubator situation there that got changed from uh who was going to leave that back then was uh in your River Community College so there's a lot of changes there are a lot of meetings people Miss but the pro the point about project lift why is so important to our community right now we don't have enough capacity to really support some of those things right now but what we are hurting at is the fact that we spent a lot of money to try to send our kids to college okay and most of our kids today is already in debt with college but what I like about that we have an organization that bringing College to our children that they can pay them at a fee to learn a trade that way we can hold on to those kids in our community being mechanics or being carpent being all those weathers and all that right now with the disaster we are liking people with that kind of talent to help rebuild back Martin County so I look at the good part about that with $15 an hour most of our young kids uh today do not their parents don't make enough money working two jobs to be able to help bu PA nice shoes I got grandkids in there they go to school and they always talking about how the kids laugh at each other because they don't have the same same quality that other children do but these children now can get a hold of saying hey I can get $15 an hour and I can learn how to have a trade then I can go to the store and I can purchase my shoes that my parents are working two jobs maybe can't help and I can look decent to going to school I I want to go to the movies I have my own money it's some much great that are bring to the community that way that these kids can have a trade they can have money that way when we do come to the point for a incubator they can be able to support the community matter of fact they can have the mindsets to build their own business so it's so much great and I can we can work with all that we all that going to come together like it used to be years ago when uh when when when that corner was uh developed back then we had Cherokee we lost over 100 families we had George tat we lost over 100 family so that don't have we don't have the the what they call Economic Development where money is circulating in our community three time before a lead that way everybody had a chance to get a bite that they can be able to sustain so with y'all tonight the decision tonight to help build this and man there's so much else that we can bring to the community it's going to give kids and our community and other people a way to see that we got a way out if they see it they believe they can be it thank you very much thank you Jimmy thank you any comments or is that it Tu that is all mayor any comments or questions from any of the commission I just have one from Bob you know I I love the program I've been heard you speak I just have the concern I've had all along is that the 14we program um for some of these young people um when they leave that 14we program some of them are are they able to get an apprenticeship somewhere but 14 weeks is not enough in some of those Industries to be able to make a sustainable living um well I mean you know as I you know toured Mr Christy around today there's three very distin distinct programs for very distinct categories right so you have your career Rising program that's you know for and I explained it to commissioner um Reed as well is that uh they get there at 9 o'clock in the morning they're typically teens that are 17 to 25 years old they've dropped out of school they go through their training it's typically a 14-week process that's modeled after cognitive behavioral therapy right that's why it's there right it's a cognitive behavior behavioral function after that they're offered unlimited after care which gives them the opportunity to continue on and stay in train there are there are additional components to it some uh some of our students are there for six months some of them are there for four months depending on kind of the the individualized treatment programming that we have together on it right it's not just about cognitive behavioral treatment it's about Job Readiness and employability are you ready are you ready to go do you have an employment lined up which is what we do with our job coaches and our job Readiness program we also have a full Apprentice program that's four years long right so that full full Apprentice program is an opportunity for teens and young adults who have gotten uh the employment process done with electric like for instance uh an electrical company like Arlington or striker or whatever they get employed and then they go into that program for four full years there's some robust programming that's related to this and I appreciate you taking the time to dig into it okay great thank you oh yeah I would b b when is your next graduation we just had one last week 40 48 teens I'm sorry I missed that I would definitely go to that because a lot of these kids are employed even before they finish they do it's a full graduation there are teens that uh didn't have opportuni they didn't graduate from the regular high schools we get they are getting high school diplomas it's a full graduation and they talk about where they're working where they're going next businesses what businesses they're starting so I I think it is a business incubator Mr Christie well well I don't want to I don't want to go there right it's that Mr chrisy and I are going to work on on programmatic components so that we can bring something forward that makes sense for what he he wants and what the community wants right if it's an addition of a program that's where my expertise can really come in and help on it and I told him before I told I we we talked about is I really want to make this something that's that that makes sense for what is in his um uh purview what's the dream what's it look like let's take it and put it into something that makes a lot of sense for the community I am all about that you guys know I love love this place and if there's something that we can do to make things better I'm in for that I'm always going to be in for that all right I was by the partially constructed facility in hop sound did it survive or it did it did I don't know if you saw the size of the steel on that thing so I'd be surprised if it came down but then again St Lucy County's um uh steel building got twisted up as well that was pretty nasty and I my hats off you know to the entire entire team out there in new Roan all over the place that's that's doing incredible things I know a lot of us have have been out there We've ran into each other doing that work so all right thank you thank you any other comments or questions no language that we need to put in before we bring it back no ma'am I think I have some I will say Mr Christie I appreciate your comments um you show up every meeting by the way um things that I've talked about with the applicant and stuff um zako um I think a lot of his things he's Bound by his grant funding process as well well and that's where he's limited on what he can provide with the program we've talked about that in great length um one condition I would like to see though is I'm not really sure what happens with the NAACP I know we've spoke maybe keeping a spot that they can utilize um also lease terms I know I think it was discussed at one meeting um also um as far as from a staff perspective the applicants only required to send out notifications to Residence within 300t but I know from the city they've sent it out to the entire Community try trying to get input I know I correct I I did go to one um and that's when I first met Mr zako and I was asking questions myself included I was hoping you know we'd get more Community involvement Community Support um and this might be for kimle horn I know it's a 12,000 ft building it was commercial there at one point I didn't know if there was room I know talking for NAACP if there was room to like carve out for one or two maybe units for commercial businesses of some sort I didn't know if that was even feasible in this process or if there was even room on a site plan I was just thinking for the future maybe that would appease anything um currently uh we are committed to doing uh 12,000 square foot building for job trading center so uh we could uh maybe give office space to NAACP um but we can't we can't change the use of the site it has to remain vocational school right so we can't do commercial or any other uses because that goes against the grant requirements you'd have to like subdivide it and just leave a yeah I get it okay and then um as far as the the IRSC um what happen with IRSC I know I wasn't here from the beginning and I don't know if project lift talks to IRSC for any future Endeavor um joint things you know moving forward I don't I don't know what's happened with that discussion if anyone knows change they just they just um decided that they didn't want to do the training program at in E Stewart did they have a reason why was there a letter that was sent to the city they were negotiating with the city there was somebody uh from IRSC negotiating with the city um with the city manager at that time David Das um but that person was fired since they when they found out that this person was actually negot negotiating with the city so there was some internal thing going on right the exact details no we don't know because the person that was negotiating with us got fired for the fact that he was negotiating with us because he had no direction to do that from the upper level and there was no nothing of anything no paper trail anywhere ultimately they found that project was a much better option that happened way later the open for me to thank you you don't need to vote just consense do we should we vote you have to motion to move it to Second okay there was a motion in a second already so we have a motion and a second um I'll second motion all in favor can we do that or do we need what day does it coming back Mr Mortel well if they can if they can get it turned around by Wednesday it'll be on the 28th so no no we have to go to the LPA that was cancelled last week and then it'll be after thattime mid November November yes it's the first and that doesn't mess with the grant at all I know that was talked about I believe of the grant deadline does that tight deadline what is the deadline so we know I have to close out the grant by by March 2026 approved then I have to go for RFP process and I'm going to try to expedite but I am nervous and is that for a CO March or is that just to start construction I have to close out the grant that means I have to submit all the reimbursements to the to the um State okay so we have time okay yeah okay thank you well thanks okay roll call please commissioner Clark yes commissioner giobi yes mayor Rich yes commissioner Collins yes and commissioner Reed yes see no other items for consideration meeting ad Jour you mayor for