##VIDEO ID:S4Y-XQwoZSg## I now call to order the regular session meeting of the Board of Commissioners of the City of Tarpon Springs on Tuesday, September 17th, 2024 at 6:00 pm. City clerk roll call please. Vice Mayor Coleus here. Commissioner Eisner here. Commissioner Juliana's here. Commissioner DiDonato. Here Tonight's invocation will be given by Reverend Father Athanasios Haros, cathedral dean at Saint Nicholas. Greek Orthodox Cathedral here in Tarpon Springs. Please stand and remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. In the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit. Let us pray to the Lord. Lord have mercy. Oh Lord, our God, you created us and brought us into this life, and have said that apart from me, you can do nothing. In faith we embrace these words as we gather this evening and entreat your blessing upon your servants. Look with mercy upon the Board of Commissioners of Tarpon Springs. Grant unto them the grace to know and to do your will. Let them serve all the citizens with truth and righteousness. Inspire them with the courage to make and uphold the laws for this glorious city, and for the good of all who reside therein. Give to our city officials the spirit of wisdom, patience, love, and understanding that they may discern the truth and impartially administer. Keep them safe and healthy in mind and body, so that they may fulfill their responsibility. For to all the civil grant to all the civil authorities and residents of Tarpon Springs, as well as those who labor for the city, the power to make this government continue to work so that all may prosper and live together in peace. For you are the King of peace, and to you we send up glory to the father, and to the son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever, and to the ages of ages. Amen I pledge allegiance to the flag of United States of America, to the who stands one nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. And now we will be doing a proclamation for Hispanic Heritage Month. The Aguirre family, please come up. In here to accept the award or the proclamation. We have Juan Aguirre, owner of Don Taco Mexican restaurant wife Lisa. Daughters Maria and Annarella. Son Allen. Parents, Mr. Philippe Aguirre and Maria Aguirre. And sisters, Monica and Maria Aguirre. And before I start, I want to make sure you guys check out the Don Taco, Mexican restaurant. That's been here for several years now. I personally like the Carnita tacos and the beef empanadas. You can definitely see them on first Friday as well as their store and go pick some up. And they actually have a new location that's going to be opening up fairly soon. That's right across the street from their original location. So here we go. The city of Tarpon Springs, Florida proclamation. Whereas National Hispanic Heritage Month, known as Mestiza Herencia Hispana, is celebrated nationwide from September 15th through October 15th each year. And whereas Hispanic explorers, pioneers, and settlers established missions and settlements that became some of America's most important urban and cultural centers. And whereas Hispanic academics, scientists and entrepreneurs have greatly enhanced our way of life and the fields of science, technology, politics, the arts, philanthropy, and other important areas and continue to meet new challenges and responsibilities with dignity and a creative spirit. And Whereas, Hispanic Americans throughout the nation, because of their energetic commitment to hard work and determination to participate fully in the American Dream, provide strength and inspiration to us all. And whereas the city of Tarpon Springs acknowledges the Hispanic heritage and the indelible place it holds in the heart and soul of our nation and National Hispanic Heritage Month reminds us that the American identity is a fabric of diverse traditions and stories woven together. Now, therefore, I, Panagiotis Kougias, by virtue of the authority vested in me as acting mayor of the City of Tarpon Springs, Florida, do hereby proclaim September 15th through October 15th as Hispanic Heritage Month. Here you go, the Aguirre family. Here you go, sir. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Would you like to say a few words? Yes, please, I also good evening, everybody. Thank you. Thank you for giving this, beautiful present to our family. And, we'll be here in this community for 21 years already, and, I hope so. It's a beautiful community, we like to stay forever. Thank you so much again. Thank you, sir. Thank yo, thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's right. That's a way better. Thank you. I'll get it. Thank you. Sorry. Thank you. We will now go to the special presentations. Item two Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, presenting the item will be Courtney Wright, senior planner, Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council. Hello Put the presentation on. We'll have staff come over and help you. Thank you. I think I don't want to mention. Mark, is it on here? It should be. Not on. This. On. Yeah. It's not. Rene's here. Y'all. Fine It's. Didn't get loaded into th, the agenda. Not in the folder. It's inside the. Well. Thank you. Okay, so you can just scroll this. Got it? Yeah. All right. Thanks. The pointer does work. So if you need anything. Okay. Thank you. Hi. Good evening everyone. Thank you for helping me do that. My name is Courtney Wright. I'm the senior planner with the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, I'm here to talk about the new government liaison program that we have. I am the government liaison for the city of Tarpon Springs. So I'll tell you a little bit more about the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council and the services we offer, and about a project that I'm currently working on. So I just want to thank, Commissioner Koulianos for his leadership. We have been able to do a lot of great things. I've been able to come to the city. He showed me the city hall, met with the planning department, sustainability folks. I actually just did a couple weeks ago. Went to your reverse osmosis plant and saw some of your solar. So that was really interesting. We did it with all of the Pinellas County sustainability and Resiliency Network. So it's really cool seeing a lot of the stuff that you're doing. And it's related to a lot of what I'm doing at the regional Planning Council. So thank you for your hospitality. So the mission of the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council is to serve our citizens and member governments by providing a forum to foster communication, coordination and collaboration and identifying and addressing needs regionally. So we are one of ten region planning regional planning councils in the state of Florida, where Special District of the, of government. So we are state represented, we're state, the state has, has said that we are a special district government, so we are one of ten across the state of Florida, and these are our now officers. We will have a new slate of officers coming in in December. But these are our current ones. So we're across six counties. So we represent from citrus County all the way to Manatee County. And we now have 23 municipalities that are on our board. We just added to this past year. And also representatives from the Florida Department of Transportation, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and the Southwest Florida Water Management District. So really, our focus areas as planning council is economic development, emergency preparedness, environmental planning, planning technologies. And really our biggest focus is resiliency planning in the region. So what we do is regional government liaison program. Like I am here. And then the planning, support and technical services that we provide and also regional convening. So we have committees and initiatives that we work at a regional scale across those six counties. And 32 municipalities. So a little bit about the government liaison program, we're really trying to grow partnerships with our member governments, one thing that we have done is started working with Madeira Beach on some planning, and it's great because it's something that we haven't been able to do yet. So we're really connecting with our, with our governments and helping them with things that they need. We're also getting a deeper understanding of what each community and local government is, the processes and what their special needs are, their specific needs are, and we're really gaining a regional knowledge for this, environmentally and growth management and other issues that are becoming priorities in our area. And we've also been able to go to different community events and be able to understand each community, its unique characteristics. Along the way. So some of the planning, support and technical services that we do at the council is, training, capacity building, scenario planning, greenhouse gas analysis, hazard vulnerability assessments and local mitigation just for a couple, we use some different technical tools, one thing that's really great is that we're always trying to find what's next, the next best thing, so we're always trying to grow how we can help our region. Overall. And what is going to be the next best technology or anything like that to help help our member governments. And one thing that we always like to tell our member governments is that as a public agency, you can directly contract with us on different projects. So there's no need for public procurement. So if it's a cost effectiveness or source of funding, is limited, we're willing to work with you guys on helping in any projects that you need, so I want to highlight one specific project that I'm working on. Here are some of the projects. We do a lot of great things at the Planning Council, and one that I work on currently is called Clean Air at Tampa Bay. It's our first regional climate action plan. I know that you guys are starting to work on your climate action plan at the city. I've been able to talk with Holly, your new sustainability coordinator, and she's actually in the picture on this slide. She was at my last meeting, but this is the first regional greenhouse gas climate action plan that we have as the region. So it's setting priorities, it's a community wide climate action plan. So we're setting priorities. We have greenhouse gas inventory implementation ready projects projections and looking at low income and disadvantaged communities and how we can best put projects in those areas to help those people in need. So it's a really focus on the Tampa Saint Petersburg, Clearwater Metropolitan Statistical Area. So that's Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco and Hernando. So just those four counties. But we're looking at a regional approach to reduce emissions. And through projects, programs and policies, we're currently working on the next, kind of thing for it. EPA funded us. It's a four year project, and our next climate action plan, our biggest one will be, published in 2025, December 1st of 2025. Oops. I keep going the wrong way, so some of our committees that we do is are now called the agencies on Bay and Coastal Management, where we have extended it down to Sarasota County, the Tampa Bay, the Tampa Bay Regional Resiliency Coalition, which is where I work, and directly stormwater Community Committee and local emergency planning Committee committee as well. So our next meeting will be in on October 14th, and I'm sure I will see you there because you're always there. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me. I can always connect you with anybody. Thank you, Miss Wright, for the presentation. Are there any questions or comments from the Commission? Commissioner Koulianos. Hi, Courtney. Hi Thanks for coming and doing this demonstration for us, now, we invited Courtney to come, she brought Cara. Cara? What's her last name? Cara wood. Sarah. Yeah. Cara. She came. They came for. They came to see our sustainability plan, Holly and Tommy gave them a presentation. And then on top of that, we took them down to the docks and got them something to eat, because now this is this is, bribery at its best. Because the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, gives out an award for the best sustainability plan in the Tampa Bay area, and we want to win it. So anybody else who wants to come for Greek food? We take them down and feed them and show them our plan, because the plan is great and I hope you liked it. And anything you can do to help us, win that award, we want it. I'll. I'll talk to Wren. She's in the. She does all the word stuff, but I'll see what I can do. Give us a good word. Thank you. Hey. Thanks for thanks for coming tonight, Commissioner Eisner. Thank you, who funds this? The planning council? Yes, so our member governments pay dues. So every year, from our counties and cities, they pay into this. So they give us dues and we provide them services for that, so, yeah, that's how it is funded. Would you say this is predominantly sustainability? So we focus a lot on resiliency, but sustainability is becoming kind of a big thing that we're doing as well. Because we got this funding from the EPA to do this regional climate action plan, we also have our regional resiliency Action Plan, which identifies a lot of sustainability in it. But having this regional, you know, climate action plan that we're doing is looking at it from this large scale and not only helping all the populations, but also helping municipalities figure out, like where, where can we get funding? That's one of the big things that we want to do with this is how can we get funding to do these large scale projects, or like to get individual funding to your area? And that's going to be one of our bigger things. And when we're doing this comprehensive climate action plan that's due next year, that's exactly one of the things we have to do is find other funding sources and how to leverage those. And, you know, really about working with the governments in our in this MSA, which is one of you guys, to find ways to reduce our emissions. Well while I was in Florida, League of Cities, there's quite a few not for profit, grant writers who are happy to work with you. And give you get funds. So I'm, I brought it with me this time, and I'm going to be turning it over to our city manager to give him some more work to do, because he said he's got very little to do these days. So I am I'm going to turn that over. There is 2 or 3 different organizations that are happy to help. So you don't only deal with the air quality, you deal with water and flooding as well, or so that's a little bit. One of the things with our resiliency Coalition, again, it's like one of our like many things that we're doing, we're actually working with the city of Saint Pete right now on a resiliency plan for their area, especially in their high flood areas like Shoreacres. You know, we saw all that flooding that just happened recently with the storms and just like, you know, sunny day flooding, so those are some of the things that we're looking at. But we also do some regional assessments on that to, we have some different studies in GIS tools that we've been using to look at flooding. Well, thank you. Thank you for what you do. We really appreciate we need that more than ever. You know, with climate change and, where we're headed, you know, it's the water is getting higher and we have having more and more problems. So thank you. Appreciate what you do. Thank you. I would just like to thank you too for the service that you provide, it's much, much needed. And welcome to Tarpon. Anytime Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Wright, for the presentation. It's nice to see the Regional Planning Council working, coming to see our small town and our unique situation. What we have with sustainability and the plan that we have, to work on an action plan moving forward and, that that came up recently in these last 5 or 6 years or so and so this community and city staff are very proud of it. And working with the planning Council, looking to do some great things. So we appreciate the presentation. Thank you ma'am. Yeah Thank you. I'm excited to work with you guys and your new sustainability coordinator. She's great. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Item two for item three is special presentations building department welcome box for new homeowners, Mr. Dave Gilson, building department director, will be giving the presentation. Okay. Good evening. Commissioners. Vice mayor, before the meeting, I placed a box like this in front of each of you as an example of what we're going to be sending out the plan is when we, release the SEO for a new home approximately two weeks afterwards, we're going to mail this box so you can open it up and go through it if you have, if you desire. I'm going to start with the history. So as you may know, we have a promotional budget. Historically, that promotional budget has been under utilized, mainly because it's very difficult to promote a building department, normally promotion is, you know, given in the region to spend money with us instead of someone else. That doesn't really apply to us. New services and new things we offer rather than our competitors. That really doesn't apply to us. So we went the opposite direction and we started listening to what people were asking over and over and over again. So at the beginning of the year, we went 100% digital. So all of our plans, everything that comes into our office is digital. Now So what we've done is, implement. Find it in there. You'll find this is a thumb drive. So when the house is complete on that thumb drive, we're going to put a complete set of the plans for that house on the thumb drive. A survey, of a certificate. If they have one, because most of our city or half of our city would require one or a lot of our city and a copy of the SEO that comes from, it seems as though within six months of a new house being built, they're back in. They want to build a fence or a pool or a patio or a screened porch. So now they'll have most of the information they would normally have to pay for. Again right at their fingertips, Miss Brewer in our office created this pamphle. It's a pretty nice job, too. I'm very pleased with that, inside that pamphlet, some of the things that the city offers to our residents, it has the contact numbers of the different departments, information on flood zones, FEMA or CSR or, excuse me, our CRS program, public services, city parks and the amenities at each city park, the library, Tarpon Arts connec, Tarpon citizen advisory boards, emergency management, Tree City USA and sustainability. And what we've done is we've included QR, QR codes for each one of those pages. So if you look at the pages, there's a QR code that goes directly to the site. Our portion of the website for that particular department. So instead of having to go to our website and find it, it will take them directly to that. We've also included a refrigerator magnet with all the pertinent phone numbers on the back page is a QR code. We sometimes in days of old, someone created a Google review page for the building department. We found it and we found it about a year ago, and at the time, our, I think we had 2.2 stars. And since we found it, we've actively worked on that. We've sent we've sent it out in our emails, give people a chance to give us some feedback. We're up into the mid fours now in a year, so I'm pretty pleased with that too. So what we've done is we've included that so they can give us, a Google review and give us some feedback, give us an opportunity to improve even more, when the process started, we reached out to the different departments for their input. And once again, I was very pleased. The feedback and the input I got from all the other departments was extremely positive. Much more than I anticipated, to be honest with you. They all wanted to be part of it. So even though this started out as a promotional item for the building departmen, organically it has turned into a jump start package for the new homeowners because everybody is in this box now, all of our departments are in this box. So in short, in a weird way, the entire staff's fingerprints are on that box. So hopefully we'll get some good feedback from the residents. And, if you look at the box, it's intentionally large because I want more stuff to go in it. So as time goes on, when we get that feedback, hopefully the departments will be giving us more things and we'll eventually have to get bigger boxes. Do you have any questions? I'll do my best. Thank you for the presentation, Mr. Gilson. Any comments or questions from the Commission? Commissioner Eisner? Thank you, well, not so much about this. This is, always an excellent thing, it it's a box of warmth for a newcomer that comes in and this way, we won't have to see all those posts on, you know, tarpon happenings. Where can I find this? Where can I find that? How do I get this? And then we have to listen to 15 sarcastic comments. So right here you'll have yours all in one fell swoop. But more than that, I wanted to share with you that, this this may be a backward compliment, but it's still a compliment. Your complaint calls have died down, and that's a good thing. Yes it is. You know, when you when you just started, there was a lot of calls, at least, that I got. I can't speak for the other commissioners, but things have, you know, smoothed out a lot. So I do want to thank you for that, and this is just a blessing. You know, I know a lot of towns do carry, you know, things like this to get you acclimated to the town. And I think this is a great idea. So thank you for you and whoever else thought that up, it's just great. Appreciate it. I appreciate you letting me know about the complaints we have actively worked on that. I mean, the entire staff has actively worked on that. So it's nice to see we're getting some good feedback. I mean, you may have messed up. Mine has a cake in it, you know, but, I believe it was referenced earlier. I believe it's a bribe. Gotcha. Thank you. Appreciate you. Did Thank you, Commissioner Quellinus. No, I wish the sorry. I wish the residents could see all the stuff that's in this box. This is really great. I mean, there's stickers and all kinds of information about the city and just amazing. So this is great. This your idea? It's our idea. All right. Okay Yeah. That's a great idea. Awesome You know what? The contents of the box are effectively the promotional items for all the different departments. No. That's wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Donato. All right, Mr. Echo, thank you very much. I think it's really a good idea. The more that we get information out there and show them how to find it, I think that's a provides a good service. So really appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Gilson, for the presentatio. I just think it's a great thing the building department's done. You know, it helps improving community engagement and hospitality, they've made some great strides recently in going all digital, which, they've done a great job in doing that and connecting with the residents. And, you know, it's just great public relations. And I also want to thank you, Mr. Gilson. You've done a great job since coming on board, and we really appreciate everything you do as well as staff. And you know, anytime I can get through the front door, I go through the building department real fast, but I make sure I go quick because I believe it's Tracy Tracy, right? Yeah. She won't let me in too long. She wants me out, but in all in good spirits. Absolutely. So just thank you all for everything you do and this box towards the new homeowners. All right. Thank you sir. Good evening. All right. Agenda item four is special presentation. Water and sewer update infrastructure and emerging regulations. And we have Tommy Tiger Public services director. Vice mayor. Pool. Yes. Members of the board. Thank you for having me tonight, Thomas Tiger, the public services director for the city, which in our city includes water and sewer utilities. So tonight we're going to have a quick update on a few emerging things and things that we're working on in water and sewer utilities. So and particularly focused on, again, infrastructure and some of the emerging regulations and things that we're starting to observe and respond to as a utility, we wanted to give you a quick overview of some of the strengths and challenges that we're facing. It's important when we see challenges to also recognize all the good work that we've done in the past with the utility. We've always over the last 20 years, kind of up until the late 20 tens, we were really focused heavily on water supply issues and developing the Ro plant and responding to regional water supply shortages in the northern Tampa Bay region, and so we were heavily focused on reclaimed water, building the reverse osmosis facility, providing a high level of treatment through the reverse osmosis plant conservation and things like that. And so we've already achieved a lot of those things. We've also achieved advanced wastewater treatment at our wastewater plant. We're getting nutrient removal. So we're very ahead of the game on water quality issues. And we've also got really good emergency response plans. We've done a fairly good job of restoring service as rapidly as possible. When we do have hurricanes and other sorts of emergencies, we feel like that's really one of our strong suits. But there's really three key areas that all utilities are facing challenges in nowadays. One is finding funding for aging infrastructure. We all sort of inherit a utility just like we inherit a city from the previous generation, and it's our job to fix it up and maintain it. Staffing and workforce issues in a very competitive hiring environment. The challenge for all employers, but particularly in the water sector. And lastly, emerging regulations, which is really unique to water. And there's been a plethora of rulemaking at the state and federal level that all utilities are responding to. And we wanted to touch base on that today, speaking to infrastructure issues, we've had a bit of a sea change in the last five, six years. So we're heavily focused on water supply issues and water quantity. And now we're starting to shift gears that we've completed our build out for our master plan for reclaimed water. We've developed the water the water plant. And now we're shifting to focus on our buried assets. And so we've got a few things that we're focused on. One big goal is going to be continuing to build out the wellfield at the Ro plant, we've got some major, work that we're planned on the water distribution pipes. That's going to be a generational effort over the next 30 years, coming up over the next five, ten years and then again, the 2030s, we're going to be doing 40 and 50 year life cycle rehabs on our existing wastewater treatment facility, because it was built in 1985. So we want to turn that from a 50 year facility into a 75 year facility and protect the city's investment. And we're also going to be refocusing again on, pipelining and maintaining our lift stations and making sure that we're preventing SOS and protecting public health. And water quality, through our sewer system. Last year, we switched to a 20 year CIP. This is the first time we've kind of shifted gears to look at this long of a planning window to try and focus on long term goals. So here's some of the key goals for the citizens and for the public that we want people to know that we're working on. So from 2027 to 2056, we've dedicated funding to replace all the aging cast iron and galvanized water mains in the city that's budgeted into the CIP. And we're going to be continuing to monitor progress on that. We also want to fully fund the wastewater plants 40 and 50 year rehabs. We want to accelerate the lift station rehab schedule. We want to focus on lighting 70% of our legacy clay sewer lines by 2043. That's a that's a 20 year plan. And also shifting funding to be more proactive about identifying priority projects and shift from a little bit of a more reactive maintenance pattern to a little bit more of a proactive maintenance pattern. These are our levels of funding over the next ten years. These were incorporated into our rate analysis last year, and the long and short of it you can see here in 2027, in particular, we've had a couple of catch up years and we've been focusing on completing and executing legacy projects over the last few years that have, you know, we've had a little bit of cost inflation and construction sector. So we're catching up on those projects, getting the funding in place and then shifting gears to focus on new priorities as we wrap those up over the next few years, water distribution has been, it's a common touch point for us. We do map and we respond when we do have water quality complaints, but we want people to understand the order of the magnitude of what we're working with here. So we've got about 182 miles of water mains in our city, and about 50 ish of them are sort of legacy pipe that we're working on replacing. And you can see here we've got about 40 some miles of older cast iron pipe and about 15 miles of galvanized pipe. These are the sort of things you get rusty water issues if you open a fire hydrant and things like that. So again, we've got a plan for that. That's a 30 year program that we're going to be initiating starting in 2027. Once we get the funding and the financial situation healthy for the utility again. But we've been chipping away at that. So you can see here we've highlighted three areas where we've already executed projects in the last two years. We've replaced the legacy galvanized main on MLK. We've redone the entire neighborhood up there on the north end of the south shore of the Anclote River. And we've also replaced the water main right here on Gross Avenue behind us. And this is one quick example. You can see here this, this is a Sanborn map. These are really neat. Legacy maps from the Sanborn Survey Company from the early 1900s. And you can see highlighted in blue. That's Gross Avenue. That's right outside of City Hall. And it identifies a six inch cast iron water main from 1919. And here in this photo you can see that same water main. And there it is. It was still in service up until a couple of months ago. It was still doing its job. And but you know, it was time for it to go. And so we replaced it. And there you can see we've got a brand new water main in place. And you can see right next to each other, we've got 100 year old pipe being replaced with a brand new service, a brand new water main to improve service and fire flow and all sorts of things. So we are making progress, some of the key projects we have ongoing, we're staying focused on cybersecurity. That's a $1.4 million Arpa funded project that's on schedule and under budget, we're working on pursuing grant funding, and we're through 60% design for a major electrical rehab for the wastewater treatment facility. That will be a life cycle extension. And it'll also enhance the resiliency of the facility in the event of hurricanes, in a major way, we're working on some other things. Aeration improvements, replacing a water main on the L 19 bridge and updating our water supply plan, shifting gears a little bit from aging infrastructure, from infrastructure issues. We're focusing also on emerging regulations and water quality, the two things we're going to talk about today, one of them is the EPA's lead and copper rule. You might have heard a little bit about this in the news, this is a long running rulemaking effort. You might hear things about like Flint, Michigan and things like that, and I want to I want to rest assured we are not in that situation. We are not Flint, Michigan. We are staying ahead on our water quality issues. But EPA's efforts focus on locating legacy lead pipes, improving tap water, sampling out in the distribution system, not just at the water plants, and also achieving lead pipe removal nationwide 100% within the next ten years. And so we're going to be we've been working on that very diligently over the last year. So we have completed our EPA and Fdep required service line inventory. We've inspected almost 8000 water service lines on the customer side, upstream of the water meter and also on the city side down, you know, downstream of the well from the water main to the meter is the anyway, we've inspected both sides of the meter. So, the really good news here is that after 7800 inspections and record review for all of the newer properties, we have identified zero lead service lines throughout the city, which is exceptional, staff conducted over 7000 inspections, and we had a very tight deadline based on rulemaking from, from EPA and the DEP. And we were able to achieve this. We've been talking with DEP, and we're going to be probably one of about 10% of statewide utilities that has already completed all of our inspections by the regulatory deadline coming in October. And here's a little snapshot of what this looked like. This is a map of every service line in the city. This one's a little bit older. And you can see as we went through we mapped every single service line and physically inspected all the ones that were constructed prior to 1989, when before they put the lead ban in place in the National Plumbing Code and, went through line by line, meter by meter, inspecting these services to make sure that they're meeting the new rules, so what does this mean, one thing that we're working on is EPA requires us to notify our customers about the status of this. So we'll be sending out some informational, communications, about, and we're also going to be publishing a website where you can go in and look up, your, your water service. And here's a little snapshot of what our future, web based portal will look like for all of our customers. You can go and put in your address and click on your house and see. Okay, well, there's no lead in in originally we were anticipating this being a little bit more interesting, but because we found no lead and no problematic pipe materials, you're going to click and it's going to say non lead. And you can go on to your life feeling confident. If anyone has any questions about these sorts of issues or water quality, we do encourage folks to contact our row facility directly. We've got the contact information right there. And if you have after hours questions, we also have a on our website, a, after hours callback number, moving forward from lead and copper issues, people might have heard about PFAS, and we particularly wanted to update the board on this because they've received communications on this issue. So, this has been another topic that people have seen a little bit in the news. There's been documentaries on Netflix, and so the number one question we get is what is PFAS? PFAS is a group of per and polyfluoroalkyl substances. But ultimately it's basically like waterproofing. So it goes into things like Scotchgard and fire retardant foams and things that you would put on your sneakers or your shirts to make them stain resistant. And it's used in cosmetics. It's used in a wide variety of products, but they're very persistent in the environment. And they've gotten this moniker of forever chemicals. These were previously unregulated from a water quality perspective by the EPA, but regulations are currently being developed by the EPA and passed down through the states. So there's two main things that we're addressing as a utility on this issue. One is the new emerging EPA rules to make sure that our water is safe and that we're complying with all our regulatory requirements. And two, there's been a lot of ongoing litigation with the manufacturers about this, this litigation against the manufacturers, particularly GM and DuPont, has resulted in over $11 billion in nationwide settlements through a class action suit, which were just finalized in spring of 2024, from a regulatory perspective, what does this mean for utilities for treating these these chemicals? So these standards were published in March of 2023. Utilities have been required to do some preliminary sampling and see what's going on in their system. And some utilities will have to respond if they detect PFAS in their finished drinking water. Some utilities will have to implement new treatment technologies like reverse osmosis or activated carbon, and some other utilities in particularly impacted areas might require new water sources altogether, here's a little bit of a timeline of what we're looking at. These rules were just announced, and we've completed our PFAS sampling. And the good news is, is that our Ro plant provides treatment for PFAS. So there's no PFAS coming through our our distribution system from the reverse osmosis drinking water plant, we do want to be 100% transparent. And we have sampled some of the other wells around the area, and we have detected very low levels of PFAS, which is very common in this part of Florida, in other legacy wells throughout the city. So the city might need to implement some projects to address those long term. But currently, all of our water is coming through our Ro plant and there is no PFAS going out into the finished drinking water system. And we're also working with our engineers and consultants to make sure that we're staying ahead of this long term and making the investments we need in our water supply capacity. On a litigation perspective, many of our board members might have been contacted by different attorneys offering to help us through this, this issue, many of these were looking to market to us on a percent of award basis. We did our homework, and we were able to find a lower cost alternative to get the legal counsel we needed to participate and try and make the city financially whole for any long term regulatory costs these new rules might have. So we retain specialized legal counsel through the Florida Rural Water Association Legal Assistance Program, our legal costs for this whole effort are going to cost less than $20,000, which is an exceptional value. We think, and, and we're getting nationwide experts to assist the city. Our goal is to maximize the city's financial award through these class action suits, to make the city financially whole, and also to help get ahead on future water quality issues within our within our utility, we've already submitted we we've asked the board to authorize the city manager to participate in these class action settlements. We've submitted our settlement documents, and we're waiting for response back from the class counsel. But we're anticipating a fairly healthy award, financially likely at least several hundred thousand dollars. But that's still pending review from the class counsel. So the most important question that I'm sure most folks think when they hear about all these things is, is our water safe? And the answer is yes, our water is safe and it gets safer every year. So our water is extremely, highly, highly regulated by the national EPA. And the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for over 90 different contaminants that are regulated through the primary drinking water standards. Tarpon Springs water drinking water meets or exceeds all EPA and Fdep primary drinking water standards, which is really exceptional news. And that's the target we strive for. Additionally, if you have questions about these sorts of issues, the city publishes as required by the EPA, an annual consumer confidence report, and that's available on the city website. If anyone has any questions or wants to know more about our drinking water, you can scan that QR code. It'll take you to our annual report. We mail these out to the customers once a year, and you can learn exactly what's in your water and how we take care of it. Let's see. And over time, you know, as EPA, you know, addresses new emerging issues in the state of the science advances. They promulgate new rules, and we work to address them. And that's why we say that our water gets safer every year, because every few years EPA comes out with new rules. We go out and test, we make sure that we're compliant, and we make sure that we're getting rid of all the things in the water that the EPA, based on the best available science, says shouldn't be in there, and with that, we've got one more cool old Sanborn map of the sponge docks from 1919, and I'd be happy to answer any questions on regulatory and infrastructure issues. Thank you, Mr. Kiger, Commissioner Eisner, thank you. I have a couple of questions. I know we test for the PFAS. What do we do with people that have. Well water that's not getting water from us? Yes. So that is an emerging issue, if folks have, we've got to have a little bit more in depth presentation if people want to look on Thursday at the sustainability Committee, we want to be cognizant of everyone's time here. But EPA does have great resources for what to do. If you have a private well, there's in-home treatment systems. And on that presentation, if anyone wants to look on Thursday, it's on our civic, website, agenda management software, it's got links to manufacturers from the National Science Foundation about where you can provide in-house treatment. If you live outside of our service area, will we be able to contact each and every person? Because what I don't want to do is I don't want to contact the landlord and the landlord, not contact the end user. The tenant, because it's the tenant who's going to drink it, not the landlord. And we, I know we've had issues with this in the past where the landlord gets notified, but the tenant doesn't. And what I don't want is I don't want the tenant to turn around and say, the city didn't inform me. The city didn't make us aware. And I want to make sure that we cover all of our tracks on these kind of things, especially with PFAS. Sure, because you are you're not testing everybody's water. You're testing the water that the Ro plant does. Correct you currently were testing water at the finished water from the reverse osmosis facility, right. Okay So that's that's a big thing that I wanted to do. I know that I did run the numbers and, at minimum, within the next number of years, we're going to be at 35 million, but at a high end, we're going to be at 100. And I went through the numbers on, you know, the 2 to 7 year. Oh, and I also went on the numbers to the 50 years and I came up with $147 million. And that is a lot of money at a city that makes that that takes it 85 million. Is there? I mean, just to put the numbers up, which I appreciate that you shared that with us, but is that a feasible number to do those levels of CIP funding are currently included in our financial management plan developed by Stantec, and our current rate model. So yes. Okay. And the only other thing, the only other question I had is you had all the different, types of pipes that are out there. So I did research every single pipe and know which ones should be. You have like a procedure for which ones should be replaced before the others. We typically focus, it's a multi-pronged, you know, strategy. So there's areas that we want to improve, like fire flow at fire hydrants. We might prioritize those areas. We try and prioritize areas with higher density of water quality calls. But in general, we try and focus on getting the galvanized pipe first, because the nature of galvanized pipe just like a galvanized nail, it's covered in zinc. And when all the zinc is gone, it starts to degrade very rapidly. Cast iron actually tends to be a little bit longer lived than galvanized than galvanized pipe. So we're going to be heavily focused on the galvanized pipe over the next few years. But they're all old, yes. But the galvanized pipe seems to be aging kind of the most rapidly. I know it's the most pressing, but that's old. The cast is old, you know, so, I mean, they all need to be. And that's. I think it was the cast that had the 40 miles of pipe or something like that, or, so that was a real, you know, that's why we're getting the complaints for all the water. I mean, that's just the way it is, you know? So I'd like to see it all on PVC or PVC or something like that. And I know you can't just dig up everything and try to redo it, so, but I'm glad to see that you're doing this because I've spoken to you enough to know you know what you're doing, and I'll watch you like a hawk. I'm just kidding. Thank you for what you do. I appreciate you, Tommy. Thank you, Commissioner Collins. Tommy, thank you so much for, for this report. And you know, nothing is probably more important that we provide a service than to have clean water coming out of our our taps. So you know, this is something for us to have this kind of results in our water quality is, you know, is a testament to obviously, your department, this didn't happen in the last six months. This is an ongoing, diligent thing that, that obviously starts with our city manager for all he's done to make sure that we have safe, clean water and I just want to commend you and obviously, the city manager and your department and your staff. So please give them our thanks. Okay. Thank yo, Commissioner DiDonato. I would echo the efforts that your department is making and in particular the mapping because I can remember that we used to depend on one individual in his mind remembering where pipes were because we didn't know. And but now we're, we're we do and we've got a plan to replace and it's good. I know it takes a lot of work, but we thank you for your efforts. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kiger, for the presentation, nice to see those capital improvement projects that were all listed with from the lift stations and just the water distribution. We had a brief talk about replacing, you know, the pipes and as we hear stuff from residents at times, but as we saw in the budget, we're starting to put a little bit over a million dollars each year. And trying to replace these pipes. This is a couple decade year process, though, correct? Yes. This is very much a balancing act. So many other utilities go through and do these like sort of legacy pipe renewal projects. And it's really about like what's, there's some very hard constraints. You want to make sure that you're trying to get all of that galvanized pipe out before all the zinc is gone. It starts degrading, but you also have to be cognizant about financial feasibility as well. So it's definitely a balancing act. And we kind of landed on a 30 year window to really accelerate into. And we're feeling fairly comfortable with that. But but that overall project over 30 years can roughly range. Can you give us a general number, the current estimates, depending on how you look at it, if you look at it in current dollars or if you escalate them over time and add them up, that's, that's going to be roughly like a probably 70 to $100 million investment over time. And the only reason why I bring that up is our budget this year is about $72 million. So when you put that in perspective, this is a long term project that ties in with sustainability and our action plan. And working with these agencies. So city staff is getting there. But there is a methodical process through it all too. So thank you for the presentation. Thank you. All right. We will now go to public comments on the special presentation of the three and the proclamation. Good evening, Peter Lacus, 514 Ashland Avenue. You just saw two examples of the hard work that our employees do day in and day out. They get unnoticed until eventually you get your presentation. For them to come up with this in a long range plan, that's perfect. If you look at 100 million over 30 years, that's 3.3 million a year. You look at that in a percentage of your 75 million. You're looking at maybe 2% of your budget. So yes, it's a lot. But over time you can afford it. So kudos for staff to bring this up. And as far as the box for the new homeowners, I'm not clear if it's someone who just built a new home or they just moved into a home, because then there's also renters. And I know some people in my neighborhood when they moved in, they did their utilities online. So I would like to recommend, if there's not information in the box that when people sign up for utilities online, they get a recycling bin, dropped off, notices as to when yard waste is picked up or when the recycling. Because one of the things I've seen going around town, sometimes you see someone move in and it's a Monday or Sunday and they got all the boxes outside. Trash guys, come on Monday. It's not recycling day. They throw it away. So I just would recommend that. And lastly, I have to commend our parks and public Services department. Back around. Oh, I don't know, around August 25th or something. I'm trying to remember the date. I have a big grand oak tree. Ma least 48in cross. No storm, no wind, no rain. All of a sudden some limbs collapse. It's around midnight. Give or take. And sure enough, Duke was called. But city crew came out. Came out about 12, 1230. And boy did those guys bust their butt. Big chainsaws. I mean, I had a branch about this big around. Two in the morning cutting branches and then the other guy, I think his name was either Sir, I understand your comments, but they're not related towards the special presentation or the well it relates to. I'd like to commend city staff for all their hard work that they do for us, that we don't see unless someone brings it to the attention. Thank you. Thank you sir. Are there any other public comments on the presentations and proclamations? Yes, sir. David Ballard Geddis Jr live on Georgia Avenue in Palm Harbor. I am grateful tonight to see the presentation, regarding the infrastructure, the water infrastructure replacement in Tarpon Springs, I believe that you are setting an example for the rest of the nation to follow, I'm grateful for that. My question to the man presenting tonight would be in regards to the direct injecting of reclaimed water in local areas, as to how that injecting of reclaimed water with the sharp and the tap program, primarily promoted through Tampa Bay water and its affiliates. How that water supply could eventually affect the groundwater supply here in Tarpon Springs and should that be a concern of the future? Thank you. Thank you sir. Are there any other public comments on the proclamation and special presentations? I t are there any zoom comments and we do not have anyone in attendance at this time. Thank you, we will now be going to public comments, we will not be going to public comments, public comments on the items that will not be discussed this evening. There are any public comments. Please state your name and address for the record, and you will be given four minutes to speak. Good evening Anita. Pros 901 Bayshore Drive. This is a problem that is a big problem in Tarpon and we've I remember Mr. Alderman many years ago used to come and talk about it. We're losing our road and property around the bayou where the church of the Bayou is land and drive with the high tides. And we've had a lot of rain, but it's coming. You can see the debris that the tides bring up into the road. It goes some places. It goes across the street, and the concern is, to me, the edge is eroding away and I don't know how long it's been with Mr. Alderman going to the county. I would like our acting mayor and our city manager to call Dave Edwards, who's our county commissioner. He's very kind to Tarpon. He's worked hard for Tarpon Springs and tell him what the problem is that maybe the county, because that is a county road, can come and look at it because it's dangerous now. And the school busses go that way. We go that way to go home and it floods terribly even in the intersections. And, it's been ignored for a long time. But the day has come that we need to look at it and see if they'll come over and come back and give us a presentation. Also, the bridge at the yacht club, both approaches, you can see the metal braces now because the pavement is gone. And that's not good. I'm always afraid the bridge is going to collapse, because if you go under it with the boat, I'm sure Mr. Eisner has been under that bridge. You can see the rust and the eating away of that bridge. And I don't know what the status is on that bridge. Now, with putting the new one in, but they do need to make repairs because one side is like a big pothole and you can see all the metal. We have to take care of this because we live there. We have to go across those bridges and it's a little scary, but the but the road in front of the church of the Bayou, where the Burris home is land and drive further out. It's eroding away all the way to the edge, almost of the road. So if we can call the county, please ask them to come up and give us a report on it, because it's going to be hard work and a lot of work and a big expense to take care of. Thank you. Mr. We'll have the city manager and myself reach out to the county representative. Are there any other public comments? Greetings. My name is Gina Beatrice. I live at 124 Athens Street. So I'm here because last week I felt there was. It was just unnecessary turmoil between the board and the one thing I believe in is. Oh, and I apologize in advance if I offend any of you, but it is what it is at this point. Politics. Just make sure you address me when talking about any individual. You have to address the chair when you're speaking with someone. I believe a true leader brings people together. Now, last week what I noticed is a lot of nitpicking a lot of, you know, always questioning things among each other. And I felt like a lot of it was very unnecessary. And it wasn't even to the point, to the point of the matter. And I was kind of disturbed by it because, you know, it was very interesting when it came to selecting the new mayor and selecting the new commissioner. And I observed because I noticed that Mr. Eisner had a, a fan email come in and Mr. Giuliani's had a, a fan phone call come in. And it was interesting how all that came in that specific day. Well, I'm here to be Mr. Vice Mayor's fan, because let me tell you, born and raised in Tarpon Springs, Mr. Kulas has gone through many struggles in life and everything, and he stood standing proud and representing his city. And no matter what, last week, he stood his ground. No matter of the phone call, no matter of anything. Now he expressed his interest in being mayor. It would only be a few months and not one commissioner showed any kind of support. Now shame on you guys. The board that shows no support for your own people, but instead you want to bring in some Tom, Dick and Harry from outside to put in for like three months. That's where it all begins. It begins within you guys. It's begin. It begins within supporting each other. Now, I do feel Mr. Kulas would be the best Mr. Donato, you expressed no interest, Mr. Eisner. You expressed no interest. I didn't hear you last week saying anything. Mr. Giuliani's, your phone call expressed an interest. So with that, said, Mr. Giuliani, I do not feel you would be the right one right now to be appointed because you weren't elected in the first place. You were given this position. So you do have your opportunity in March to run for mayor. And that would be good for you to state. What will you do for our city? Where do you stand with everything going on? Not just for the Greek people who are black community, for our Hispanic community, for our seniors. Right now, we need to look at immediate right now, what we have. We have a few months. We want to push everything up to move this man out of here for what? He's your for you right now, doing the job. But we want we didn't support him at all last week when he was showing an interest. We were trying to make plans to get him out. And then what? I hear is Mr. DiDonato. Oh, I hear Mr. DiDonato. I wrote five pages, but I can't go through this. Mr. DiDonato, somebody said, can calm the board down. Mr. Donato was not elected to be a babysitter. He was elected to run the city. And your time is up. Mr. gross. Next speaker, please. Thank you. David Ballard, get his junior Georgia Avenue in Palm Harbor. The political climate is changing. A watershed moment in history is upon us as predicted in the Declaration of Independence. I suspect this nation is soon to go through a convulsion. Constitutionally So in the self-evident face of regional adversity, capable men will be required in order to maintain the integrity within and clear throughout government. As the county government is soon to be dissolved, men of fine standing, practical, sensible, resourcefu, legitimate, sound, fair thinking, men of discernment will be required. Men establishing the here and now, capable of maintaining the integrity. The health and safety and protection of future generations. Men who can engineer infrastructure that is easy to maintain and replace when needed. Men who are willing to design, develop and build society correctly for the well-being of all humanity. Men of morals respectful of the graces of what Almighty God has freely provided us. We need leaders, both men and women, who are resourceful and respectful for the need for a healthy ecosystem, allowing room for God's graces in all creation will be required of all of our leaders as the as devolved upon the worthy leaders of this task. In dismissal of the pretentious, candid leaders of the past, there shall be a focus on eco structure, recycling efficiencies and zero waste. Efforts will be required. Being thoughtful and respectful of the indigenous plants animals giving rise to the indigenous people who have strong leadership qualities shall be a prominent role of government. The need for humanity to be mindful regarding the vital needs for our healthy, clean living water learning how to enrich the land and the world with their actions is essential. Society must have representatives who are withstanding of this wisdom, rather than that of the need for personal power and individual prestige. I am grateful to have stood before many of politicians in my years of ranting. My unique posture gives me a plateau in perspective, seen only by few. Our former mayor of Tarpon Springs, Kosta Vatikiotis, is among one of the most dignified politicians I have ever had the honor of standing before. I am grateful the integrity and sensibility of his bearings give respect to his chairmanship. The privilege of voyaging aboard a vessel under his command is a blessing. He and the example he has set, the grace upon which he has held his command, deserves to be respected and honored. This is not an opportunity for mutiny, dissent, or rebellion. Thank yo. Thank you sir. Relax. 514 Ashland Avenue. All right, James three taming the tongue. Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly when we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us. We can turn the whole animal or take ships as an example, although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder. Wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person and sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire. By hell with the tongue we praise our Lord and father, and with it we curse men who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth comes praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both freshwater and salt water flow from the same spring? My brother? Can a fig tree bear olives or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water. Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from heaven, but is earthl, unspiritual of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder, and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure. Then peace loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, and partial and sincere peacemakers who sow in peace, raise a harvest of righteousness. So look upon yourselves as the lady mentioned from the last meeting, about some of the things you all spoke about, not only during the city manager thing and then, you didn't let us have public comments during that. I had to say something when we were talking about Paul, so I didn't know some of the rules were shortcutted. And we start in the meeting today at 6:00. I don't know, I thought I didn't know those rules had passed too, but maybe a little behind on that. But I did want to follow up on with former mayor Protus mentioned about, two things along the Whitcomb Bayou. Can we get an update on the progress of what had happened at a seminar, maybe about a year and a half ago, where we were proposed all these different types of things with walls and uplifting the roads. So are we any further along on that? And then also, as she mentioned about the Becket Bridge, I know we've been doing stuff with our side, but where is the county? Because I know we rushed to finish the roundabout so that would be done in time for them to go to do brick bridge, Becket Bridge. So if we can get any kind of updates on that, that would be most helpfu. And, God bless you all. Thank you. Are there any other public comments? It are there any zoom comments? And we do not have anyone in attendance at this time. Thank you. We will now be moving on to the consent agenda. Item five Special Events item five A Sunset Beach movie night, Halloween theme five be trick or treat Halloween Bash five see taste of Tarpon five D holiday movie in the Park. Item six. Attorney fees six. A Dickman law firm invoices four five, seven four through 45886. Be. Eunice salesman. Jensen PA invoices 83092 and 83093. Item six C Johnson, Jackson P, LLC. Invoices 13448 and 13594. Item seven Award file number 240144. Dash c dash p h. Lighting repairs, maintenance and installation of street lighting utilizing the Florida Department of Transportation contract number E51C4. Item eight increase File number 200095. Dash p Dash a m Audit Services. External item nine approve Florida Department of Environmental Protection Grant agreement. Amendment two to plan nine three. Item ten Award File number 250012. Dash n dash a s single source purchase of rugged machine to machine M to M GPS routers maintenance service and parts. Item 11 ratify. Increase to file number 240003. Dash c Dash a s Motorola Radio equipment maintenance and support utilizing State of Florida alternate contract. Source number 43190000. Dash 22-NASPO. Dash a, c, s and item 12 satisfaction release of liens. Commissioners. Are there any items that you would like to pull? Thanks Sir. All. All six. Okay Do commissioners want to pull any other agenda item? Okay, we will now go to public comments on consent agenda items five a, b, c, d seven through 12. It are there any zoom comments? And we do not have anyone in attendance at this time. Okay, back to the commission. The chair will entertain a motion to approve consent agenda items five A through D and items seven through 12. So moved. Second, thank you. If there are no further commissioner comments, roll call please. Mr. D excuse me, Commissioner D Donato. Yes, Commissioner. Koulianos. Yes. Commissioner. Eisner. Yes. Vice mayor coleus. Yes, we will now go to consent agenda item six, Commissioner Eisner, thank you, acting mayor, thank you. Sir. You know, a comment, a comment was made that, there was a lot of nitpicky, and it's not always nitpicky. It's if there's if there's a difference of opinion, it needs to be spoken about. That's what we're here for. We have five different people. We have five different opinions. I pulled number six because the people that have known what I've done since I became a commissioner is I've always spoken and kept eyes on the attorney fees. Every single month I keep tabs. I. You're forgiven, I keep tabs of the fees. So on August 20th, a fellow commissioner on the other side of the dais spoke and said that we were, bringing up very heavy duty fees due to litigation. And, unfortunately, I was the next day in Texas. I didn't get to pull the records, but it didn't seem to feel that it was the correct, comment. So I did pull all of the attorney fees, and I just wanted to clarify what was what is our legitimate fees and what, you know, what we're paying. So in 22, we spent $254,000 on attorney fees in 23, we spent $227,000 on attorney fees. And this year we're at 205. So the comment was made that we had spent 400, some odd thousand dollars, but that was only including the $160,000 special counsel fees, which was not, that was a an agreement from every one of the board members up here. And I believe, the commissioner was a commissioner elect at the time, and he did not oppose that as well. So I can't really count that $160,000 as, you know, litigation. It was an investigative type of purchase, that we all agreed to get to the bottom of, the situation, because we did have over 300 people here that were not happy about what went on. But the bottom line is we came to an agreement. We found out there was no, illegal anything. And I would spend that $160,000 again to make sure that that the residents know that nothing was done. Illegally. There was a couple of extra dollars done in the, with the labor attorney, but that's never a big deal. But I just wanted you to know that if anything, our law fees have gone down, not up. So. And I have the paperwork if anybody wants to see it. I did pull all of the information, and, that's what I wanted to say. And then I am ready to, my comment wasn't about the current fees. Thank you. Commissioner, are there any other commissioner comments? And we're going to do these one by one, correct. On a motion. All right. The chair will entertain a motion to approve. Consent agenda item six A, B and C. So move. Second, if there are no further comments or discussion. Roll call please. Commissioner Donato. Yes, Commissioner. Koulianos. Yes. Commissioner. Eisner. Yes. Vice mayor. Coleus. Yes. We have approximately 13 minutes before we could possibly go into item 13, special consent agenda item. Yes. Okay. So we're going to special consent agenda item 13. Approve change order number one to bid number 230200. Dash p Dash j l Pine Street and Gross Avenue. Drainage and roadway improvements. Part two. And to present this item we will have Bob Robertson, Bob Robertson Project Administration Director. Thank you. Thank you, vice mayor, commissioners. Yes. Bob Robertson, project administration department director for this item. Staff is requesting board approval for a change order to project number 62305. That's the Pine Street and Gross Avenue drainage and roadway improvements project. This change order will increase the contract value from 4.6 million to 4.89 million. That's an increase of $286,767, or about 6%, to be funded by stormwater, water and sewer funding sources. The purpose of this change order request is to cover the additional cost of unanticipated rework that we're facing from the previous contractor that abandoned the project. Examples include excavation and replacement of previously installed large stormwater infrastructure, replacement of additional water and sewer pipes, an example of which Tommy showed you before, and additional concrete and roadway stabilization work, construction work is steadily progressing on the project. It's about 65% complete, and it's scheduled for completion by next summer. The contractor is currently on track to meet that schedule, and this change order does not include a request for additional time. So that pretty much sums summarizes it. That concludes my staff report, Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Robinson. Are there any public comments on this item? It are there any zoom comments? Hearing none. The chair will entertain a motion to approve item 13. Approve change order number one to bid number 230200. Dash b dash j l Pine Street and Gross Avenue. Drainage and roadway improvements. Part two. Who moved second? Okay and now we have, Commissioner Eisner has some comments. Discussion. Thank you, I just wanted to reiterate that I had a conversation with Bob Robertson, it's an expensive addition, and, but there was no choice on this. When you have a contractor who decides to just pick up and leave, and then you have another contractor, that comes in to take over, and you have to negotiate with a bond company. We took hits on pretty much everything. And, is much of the money this is to spend. I'm glad that we have this new contractor who did an A great a great job on the other two projects that we've had. And they've gone back to check on what was originally done and had to do some redo work. So when you're dealing with a project of this magnitude, believe me, when I tell you I had to take a number of deep swallows to look at $286,000, but I understand, what went on, how it went on. And sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and move forward, I was glad I had a good conversation with Bob. Also, he's mentioned to me this was the first time he's ever had a contract to walk on him. Correct? Correct. And it's never a fun thing. We may all have had a contractor who portrayed something, and we got a bad birthday cake. So, you know, it happens, this one was a biggie. And I just want to thank you because I know this was a tough one. I know it was a tough one for Mark to our city manager. We have a lot of issues, you know, with people having dust, dirt, you know, shaking of buildings and everything else. It's been a fiasco. So I do feel comfortable that Keystone excavators are in there doing what they're doing and they're moving along nicely. So hopefully this thing can get put to bed and, move on to the next one. So thank you for what you've done. Thank you. Thank you Commissioner Collins. Commissioner Okay, Bob, thank you. And your staff for bringing this forward. We understand the situation we're in, and I feel for those residents on that street. And, you know, there's two options. Either we don't do anything and potentially something can happen. A pause or something, or we can give these people the change order request they need and get this project done. So we need to look out for those residents in the area and continue to move this project along so we can complete it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Robinson. There is a, there was a motion on the floor. It is seconded. If there's no further discussions, roll call please. Mr. Donato. Yes, Commissioner. Collins. Yes, Commissioner. Eisner. Yes, vice mayor coleus. Yes Okay. We will now go to item 14. Ratify selection of George F young Inc and Colliers Engineering and Design Inc for request for qualifications, RFQ number 240066-S-JL Survey Services and we will have miss Janina Lewis, Procurement Services Director with the presentation. I think Bob's going to do this, Bob okay. Yeah I'll take it. Both of them are. But he can make it fast. Yeah. Quick staff report, thank you, so for this item, we're asking the board to award continuing services contracts to Colliers Engineering and Design and George Young Incorporated. These two firms were selected through a competitive process to provide survey services to the city, such as boundary topographical bathymetric surveys and other related services, the need for these services can be variable or intermittent, so we set up an upper limit that we ask the board to establish for us. We're asking for the board to authorize setting the annual spending limit at $50,000 maximum per year as an aggregate combined limit for us to use for both firms, this $50,000 limit request is a reduction from previous survey services contract. Annual limit of 150,000 per year. This is based on our previous usage levels. So we took a look at the numbers and adjusted it accordingly. And that concludes the staff report. Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Robinson. Are there any public comments on this item? It are there any zoom comments online. And we do not have anyone in attendance at this time. The chair will entertain a motion to approve item 14 ratify selection of George F young Inc and Colliers Engineering and Design Inc for request of construction. All right. So we have so moved and we have a second with Commissioner Eisner. Is there any further discussions on this item? City clerk roll call, please, Mr. Donato? Yes, Commissioner. Collins. Yes, Commissioner. Eisner. Yes, vice mayor coleus. Yes. Thank you. Item 15. Ratify. Ratify. Selection of WSP USA, Inc and Water Science Associates. Apex companies LLC for request for qualifications RFQ number 240116-S, Dash J l hydrogeological services. And we will have Tommy Kiger, Public Services Director. Next two items in pretty fast. So Tommy, thank you. This is very, Thomas Kiger, public services director, today we're requesting that the board approve our contract for five years for our Hydrogeologic services. These are professional engineering and professional geologic services that we used to support a variety of program, including well field development, annual environmental reporting, and other essential functions in the water utility and other areas of the city. Thank you. Okay. Are there any public comments on this item? It are there any zoom comments online? And we do not have anyone in attendance at this time? Thank you, the chair will entertain a motion to approve agenda item 15. Ratify selection of WSP USA, Inc. and Water Science Associates. So move second. If there are no further discussion, city clerk roll call, please. Mr. Donato. Yes, Mr. Collins? Yes, Commissioner Eisner. Yes, vice mayor. Yes I think we can get this next one into I agree. Okay Agenda item 16 Award file number 240161 dash. B dash a s water aeration basin. Floating mixer. Blower. Equipment control panels and mooring accessories. And we will have Tommy Kiger public services director for the presentation. Or we can wait till after the break and bring it back for you. Go ahead. This is fine. Thank you. Thomas Kiger, public services director, this is our next procurement item, we're requesting approval to purchase, aeration equipment for the wastewater plant. This is an important part of the 40 year life cycle rehab for the wastewater plant. And there's a lot of, benefits for treatment, future capacity and also for the public. Okay. Are there any public comments on this item? It are there any zoom comments online? And we do not have anyone in attendance at this time. Thank you. The chair will entertain a motion to approve agenda item 16 Award file number 240161-B-AS wastewater aeration basin. Floating mixer. Lower equipment control panels and mooring accessories. So moved second. Okay. And we have some comments. We have a commissioner comment from Commissioner Eisner. I just wanted to share this. I read through your backup, and I just found it to be a very interesting, tool with a interesting output. So that's all I wanted to share. I just thought it was like, wow, this is a really interesting product. That's what I wanted to share with you. But thank you. Thank you. Okay. If there are no further commissioner comments, city clerk roll call, please. Mr. Donato. Yes, Commissioner. Persis. Yes, Commissioner. Eisner. Yes. Vice mayor Coolio'. Yes, we will now wait for about a minute before we go into our ordinance and resolutions. And we start with our ordinance and resolutions. The public hearings at 7:30 p.m. and first item will be agenda item 22. That is application 24-49 of last appeal of HPB decision. Application 2422 for property located at 20 Dash 26 Hibiscus Street and we will have Rene Vincent Planning and Zoning Director, coming up first, and this is a quasi judicial process. So the city attorney is going to read the title and then go from there. Yes sir. Thank you, vice Mayor. As you said, this is a quasi judicial proceeding. There's also a resolution associated with this. I believe we probably should read that in to the record as well, resolution 2024, Dash 27, a resolution of the city of Tarpon Springs, Florida, approving application. 2449 appealing unanimous decision of the Heritage Preservation Board to deny after the fact excuse me certificate of approval for the replacement of storefronts at 20, 22, 24 and 26 Hibiscus Street and National Register of Historic District and Local Historic District. Contributing structure providing for a certificate of approval. Providing for conditions, and providing for an effective date. Okay Yes. This is a quasi judicial proceeding. What's before you is from your code. The appeal process from your Heritage Preservation Board is directly to the board of Commissioners. You are to conduct a public hearing, and your job is to approve approve a conditions or deny, but before we get started with this, let me read through the quasi judicial process. This is a quasi judicial proceeding where the board acts in a quasi judicial rather than a legislative capacity at a quasi judicial hearing. It is not the board's function to make law, but rather to apply law that has already been established in a quasi judicial hearing. The board is required by law to make findings of fact based upon the evidence presented at the hearing, and apply those findings of facts to previously established criteria contained in the code in order to make a legal decision regarding the application before it. The board may consider evidence at the hearing that the law considers competent, substantial, and relevant to the issue. If the competent, substantial, relevant evidence at the hearing demonstrates that the applicant has met the criteria established in the Code of Ordinance, and the board is required by law to find in favor of the applicant. By the same token, if the competent, substantial evidence at the hearing demonstrates that the applicant has failed to meet the criteria established in the code, the board is required to find against the applicant, there are two critical things that you must do here. One is to for the board members to disclose any ex parte communications and then after that, I will swear in any witnesses that are going to testify before you. So first and foremost, if anyone has had any ex parte communication, the way that you cure that under state law is just to explain. You've talked to somebody, you've gone to the site, you've whatever you've done outside of this realm to, to prevent any prejudice, so I did get to see the Planning and Zoning Board meeting, and I also received an outside source say, again, historic preservation, yes. Yes. You said plan zoning. I'm sorry. That's all right. I want to be clear. Let me correct that. It was the HPB that I got to watch. I'm sorry, I get to watch the planning and zoning, too. They get confusing, and I also did get outside, source from a resident that had some quotations in it that, if it's okay to read, I will, and I'll ask the attorney as it comes up. If it isn't, I won't. I mean, if this if this is just information that you want to disclose, that you've received communication from a residence, you know, I would say that, you just established, I mean, it's a public record. Just state the name of the individual that you received this from and then put it into the public record. When it comes time to deliberate, which will be then if there's something germane to that that you want to talk about, at least you've given notice to the parties who are ones, the applicant ones the city that you have this. Well, it was given to me, the resident is not comfortable to speak about it, so I am okay. It was given to me. Okay. That's all. All right. Anybody else? And I also have to disclose I was actually by the bakery, and I ran into Mrs. Pavlos and I asked her, you know, the I saw that item was coming up, but it got deferred. She explained that the contractor was out of town for that week. And so at some point it was going to come up in the future. Okay. Thank you. Just a point of clarification. In the past, I don't know if it's something that's changed, but if we watch what's a video of a meeting, we're at our home. That's I mean, I saw most of the planning and zoning committee as well. Okay. It's not really some expert. Right. Well, it's information that that you will that you have and that isn't, that isn't something that you're getting here in this hearing. So if you if you have any additional knowledge which you may have gained from that hearing, it's better to disclose it. So the applicant has the knowledge of knowing that meeting. So okay. Okay, no further. We're going to have Miss Rene Vincent, planning and Zoning director, with a staff presentation. Oh, you got to swear in. I'm going to swear every anybody who wants to speak here tonight. Please stand and raise your right hand, please, if you can all right. Do you swear or affirm that the testimony that you are about to give in this proceeding is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do all right. Great. We're ready to go, Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you. City attorney, I'm going to ask Principal Planner Caroline Lanford to do the presentation on this. She staffs the historic preservation Board, and she's much more familiar with the details. So I think it'll be better for her to give the presentation. Since she was the one that presented it to Heritage Preservation Board. Sure Evening. Caroline Lanford, principal planner, so this first slide is just showing you the location of the subject propert, the next slide is showing you the location of the subject property within the National Register and Local historic District, we're discussing the request for and after the fact certificate of approval for the replacement of the storefront facades at 20 through 26 Hibiscus Street, this slide is just showing you the location, kind of the zoning context, which the area is in the special area plan. The slide is from the current Florida master site file for the buildings. This picture was taken in around 2009, and I think this is probably the first time you're going to be seeing Sanborn maps twice in one evening, and I think Mr. Krieger's use of it really showed how our past informs our present and future, as you can see from the 1913 Sanborn, the first three structures, which are now 20, 22, 2024 and 2026, were extant. And then in 1919. Sanborn, you are seeing what is now 20 hibiscus was also there. And you can also see from the Sanborn that these buildings held the Tarpon Springs news. So they have some some significance to our our town's history. This is just a blow up showing you the key of the Sanborn map, which illustrates that, you can see the metal cornice was, extant in 1919. It was a brick building with a composite roof, and it had a wood frame awning structure on the outside, this slide is the elevation that was presented with the March 20th, 23 application for a certificate of approval. And I just wanted to give you some, some background on kind of the timeline of what happened with this case. So in late November of 2022, the applicant applied for a renovation remodel permit for removing and replacing stucco, planning and zoning. And the building department approved that, at the same time, we notified the applicant that they were going to be doing anything more than repairing and replacing stucco, that they need to go to the Heritage Preservation Board and apply for a certificate of approval, we received that application to remove the storefront door and fix glass and then reframe all of the storefronts at a 90 degree angle, similar to what was done at 101 East Tarpon Avenue, that staff had previously denied. But the heritage Preservation Board approved in December. We conducted a site review, and we noticed that work had begun. But the storefronts were covered up. So, we did not did not appear altered at that time, also shortly thereafter, the property owner, contacted planning and zoning department, to inform that the work had revealed the original facade under the stucco and wanted she wanted to revise the application to change the project, to renovate and preserve the original facade structure, and then later on in January, after they had gotten into some more work, the property owner notified PNC that they'd like to revise the project to just replace the storefronts rather than restore them, in March of 2023, HPB issued a conditional approval for the storefront replacement. The TRC approved the project as presented in July, and then in October of 2023, the it was discovered that the work that was being done was was not within the conditions set forth in the certificate of approval, and the applicant was notified that they could either alter construction to conform with the CCA, or present a modified project to the HPB. And this is what we have today. And just so that we're all on the same terms here, up at the top that that metal bar we're calling that the storefront cornice. That's what it's typically called when you're discussing, turn of the century, early 20th century storefronts, the transom lights above the door. We've got display windows and entrance doors. It's, the Florida master site file notes that this storefront, 20 hibiscus, was intact when it was surveyed in 2009. Not sure if these were the original doors, but if they're not original, they're original. They're similar to what would be would have been there when originally constructed, and then over to the side here we see the mullion or structural support. That's the, the, the vertical, structural supports for the storefront. And then at the bottom, they're supporting that is the apron or bulkhead. So the differences that we see from what's existing today, which is over on your left and what existed in the past, so this was the unaltered storefront at 2022 hibiscus. You'll note that it's been replaced with a single door. The recessed entry has been reduced. The signs were not included in the original application, these additional windows have been added that were not in the application. And then these widened and new mullions have been added, this is showing a similar property on Tarpon Avenue where you can see kind of the similar construction of what would have been there when the buildings were originally constructed and has a similar, storefront cornice up at the top, followed by transom windows and then your storefront windows and the recessed alcove entryway. And this this was restored in 2015, and these are the standards of review that we use to determine whether a certificate of approval will be issued, the ones highlighted here are what are most relevant to this case. And I'm just going to go through them as quickly, so the first one is related to the height and width of any new construction. And so our standard is that it should be consistent with other adjacent contributing structures and with structures of similar character. And architectural style throughout the district. So the storefronts were demolished and the height and width of those existing facade features has been significantly altered, the next one is the windows, doors and entries, obviously the entries, windows and doors have been replaced with a contemporary storefront, and it's no longer conveying its historical association. And the replacements were not based on any duplication of original architectural components, the next one is the relationship of the structure within, the district and kind of the relationship with the building to the street and streetscapes and street views, so the relationship of the structure has significantly adversely affected the active pedestrian experience along Hibiscus Street. Historically, these recessed storefronts acted as kind of a transitional space between the public realm and the business, both bringing the merchandise out to the street and drawing the pedestrian into the business and that relationship has been destroyed, the next is, building and massing, and there has been a small alteration to the building's massing with the reduction of the alcove space at 2022. Number seven is that distinctive architectural features should be repaired rather than replaced. Obviously these have been destroyed. And, original architectural details have been obscured, with number eight, the previously altered storefronts could be considered to have, significance in their own right, while they weren't original to the property, they still conveyed a connection with the historic character of the structure. And then finally, our adherence with the Secretary of Interior guidelines, all of these are relevant but most relevant, was that the historic character of the property should be retained and preserved, the deteriorated historic features should be repaired rather than replaced. And new additions, alterations should not destroy historic materials, features, and spatial relationships that characterize the property in addition, the new storefronts utilize reflective glass, and this is in direct conflict with chapter 43B of the Smart Code, which requires the use of clear glass and also is inconsistent with, the Land development Code and the Comprehensive Plan, so with that, I recommended denial for the HPV application, and at their regular meeting of June 3rd, 2024, with four members present, it was unanimously denied. And with that, I can take any questions. Questions from the commission? Yes, Commissioner Eisner. So what I've seen and I've been writing this down as you've been going, on the criteria, they failed. Number one, number two, number three, number five, and number seven, that would be. So we have our standards for review. So I've got one, two, three, five, seven, eight, nine and ten. Miss. Somehow What happened to four, they they they did not do anything to the roof. So So could you explain the protocol when there's a change to be done? What is the protocol that they should have done? I think always when you get into a project, the actual construction of it, things may change. So, if the applicant had noticed that something wasn't going to be feasible or wasn't going to work out, they should have come to the building official. They should have come to us and said that we could have taken them back in front of Heritage Preservation Board and tried to work something out. How many times do you have somebody come before you and say, we have some changes, and we'd like you to take a look at it, versus how many times do they take it upon themselves to make the changes? And then you come back and go, surprise! I can't, I can't really speak to that. I think it would be it depends on the applicant. Do you have people that make changes and they just do it on their own, I mean, we have applications where people were applicants say we need to make a change. And I say, okay, well, we need to go back in front of the heritage Preservation Board. Right. But my question is, do you have people who decide to make the changes on their own without letting you know? Yes. And what happens this, I mean, it's, It would move to code enforcement would be. Wouldn't it be code enforcement? If so, that's one avenue. I mean, honestly, 99% of the time this can get resolved in front of the Historic Preservation Board, this is an instance that has not. And they are electing their option to appeal that decision to you. So, most of the time it gets resolved. It hasn't been this time. No disrespect. I knew the answer to that question, I'm asking these questions for a reason. And, because there's a lot of things here that went, went astray. So I really don't have much more to ask you. I mean, I do have the to ask the applicant, okay. Thank you for your report, Commissioner Collins. I'm just curious how how often are these kinds of constructions inspected? I mean, how did it get to this point without anybody from the city having, seeing that these alterations were being done in this manner, I, we are working with the building. The new building official has instituted some really good policies where we, the planning department, are getting out more often during inspections. Because of some things like this. So we review the application, I review the application for a certificate of approval when the building permit comes, application comes in, I review that and then before anything is finalized, we're now going to review it. That's it Commissioner, you know how how does this affect our designation for the historical district, so this building would likely now be considered contributing altered in our local historic district if it was to be resurveyed, it would no longer be contributing to the National Register of Historic District. As we chip away at that, as we reduce the number of buildings that are contributing to our National Register district, we may lose our National Register district. Okay, I want to focus on, Miss Langford, it was page. It's basically part of that Florida master file, which is what, page six, I believe. Shows the old the building and its old format. There we go. To me, that that's a picture that dates back to what it's probably original assumption of that building, so actually original. So this is from I believe, 2009. Okay Or I don't want to speak to that actually, for this particular site file, but it is post 1980 because we do know that the building was stuccoed over in the 80s. Okay. I just want to point out a couple of things. And I don't know, maybe it's just the angles I'm looking at, but it seems like that that storefront closest to the to the left of the page and several others don't have that canopy or that extra space, a canopy that was showed in one of the previous photos that you brought up. Correct. So during the 1980s, at some point during the 1980s, the storefronts at 26 and 24 were moved, were altered to that 90 degree angle, and the building was stuccoed over 2022, which was next to it remained in its original configuration. So that's what that looked like until very recently, the storefront at 2020 retained the alcove entryway, but it had been reframed in aluminum. Okay And, this picture, which is page ten, it's the elevation presented with March 20th, 23 application for the C8. Is that what their original picture was going to look like? Yes. So this was yeah. I just want to make sure I get this in the record. It's a little deeper in the backup and we can find the old presentation from this agenda meeting or this meeting. But essentially what happened, what we haven't conveyed, I think, is that this was the elevation that was approved. But there were conditions placed on it that you don't necessarily see. One was to retain that metal that cornice, and keep that. And then two of the storefronts, the 2022 and 2020 had to be architecturally, stylistically, the same, keeping the recess and the same types of storefront and double doors. So this is what they presented. But they got approved for this with conditions. So I did want to make sure you understood that. Okay And, I'm looking at the pictures and I understand it, but I'm also looking at we have our, our memo and the strategic c dash 1.1 market. And promote the rich cultural heritage resources and diversity, I'm having a hard time grasping that as a strategic plan point that's being used for this application in which some statements are stated, in which you know, the current situation in which it's built, it's been destroyed. So that's I'm trying to get this strategic plan that's on me, when we put the staff report together, there's a template in there and it calls for is there an associated strategic plan objective that may be considered? So we have we have those strategic plan objectives regarding protecting and promoting the historic character. In this instance I would say what has happened is not doing that. So does that clarify. But but it was called out as a as something for consideration. Okay. And that that's the one strategic plan that objective that we have that's listed for this application. Yeah I think I think the most relevant one. Okay, it's, I mean, I could have just as easily put not applicable for it. But since we have a strategic plan objective and it calls it in the template for this, for the board memos and civic clerk, I went ahead and just selected it and kept it and put it in there. It was not something presented to the Heritage Preservation Board. Okay. And so, I really want to get to the point of the consequences. What's if the board agrees with the applicant, then I don't believe there. You know, but if not, what is this, a situation where code enforcement can get involved and force them to make these changes because these are big, significant changes, these type of changes stop business for long periods of time. And so when I look at it, I just, I have some different viewpoints when it comes to the heritage and cultural preservation of buildings. And I think it's somewhat you know, we hear some more discussion here in the future, and I'd like to hear the applicant and their their reasoning behind it all, just to give us a better understanding. But, I do that. See that some of those portions of that building didn't have a recess. And I understand that the, you know, it's been brought out more, but to completely say it's destroyed the, the, the heritage aspect of it, I'm not sure I'm at this point agreeing with it, but those are my comments and questions. Commissioner Eisner has some more comments. When two frogs did their renovation, was it a very similar case? I don't believe I was here then, they they basically restored the existing storefront. They probably didn't even need a certificate of appropriateness to do what they did, but they maintained everything. What I'm saying is, was it a similar application to hibiscus when they opened up the front, they had the above windows. They had the recessed double doors because they were able to do it. I would say it was similar. Yes Okay. So my question is if somebody is able to do this and do it and you know, it doesn't look anywhere near as attractive as a modern hibiscus, and believe me, when I tell you, what I'm looking at on hibiscus, it looks gorgeous. The problem that I have is that's not what I'm here to judge. I'm here to judge whether they followed protocol and, because they signed up to follow protocol, but they didn't follow protocol yet. Two frogs did. So my hesitant is, if I were to approve this, and I'm not saying I am or I'm not, because I still need to hear their side. Then I feel like I am now, removing the HPV and Caroline from anything that goes forward because people could go out. They, you know, anybody else could do it. And then we're in a situation, you know, I sat for six and a half years on a board of adjustments. And I think, you know, that. And there were decisions I had to make, not because I liked the decision. I was restricted by the criteria. This is not a one item criteria that you could go I you know, they didn't do double doors, they did single doors. But I'm looking at. Eight things. So I'm really interested in hearing why eight things were done. I mean I could understand a Poco era. I can't understand 8 or 10. It's almost like I would have to vote for this with blinders on my eyes and say, okay, you just decided to, you know, take it down and believe me. And I read all the backups, so I know a lot of what I'm going to hear because I do know about the I-beam. I know, you know, I know all the other stuff that went with this. So I'm just flabbergasted right now. And I don't think there was a question anywhere in that. But I do want I do want to I do want to clarify and ask the city attorney, because I just want to talk about this. Now, if we can, what is the board's option here? Is this a straight up or down, or do they have the latitude to explore a middle ground? Three things approve, approve with conditions or deny okay. So I assume approve with conditions of middle ground okay. If you have any yes. If you have positive suggestions you could always offer them up later or now. Yeah. Once you get through everything. Yes Okay. Right now we're going to go to the applicant's presentation. Or does the applicant have any questions for staff? Mr. Lawson okay. These are questions for staff. Go ahead with your presentation, Mr. Lawson. Okay I should give you some background on myself first. I served in the Air Force for 20 years. I was a medic, and I went to war for this country. I've lived in Tarpon Springs since, 1989, I've been doing business with the, as a state certified building contractor here since 96. I have a degree in architect design, construction technology. I've worked on numerous homes and buildings in this area, that are historical at Hoffman's office, the chapel next to Saint Nicholas Greek Church, one of the many reasons I gotta. I gotta gather myself after all that. Anyway it's one of the reasons why I love Tarpon Springs. You know, it's just it's historical significance. And it's a cool little town, I think I want to, you know, I had prepared something so I wouldn't forget, you know, my thoughts. But after listening to everything, I want to make clear first, because what? When we talk about eight conditions, I have three. That's what I got. That's how I got my permit was with these three conditions. And I could hand them out to you what I received, if that would help. Or is that something I should do or. Let me have one of those. I guess attorneys. If you give them to chief, he'll pass them out to us. Thank you. It's in the backup. Makes it a little more. So it's a little more confusing to me. So initially, I was contracted to remove and replace the stucco on the building at 20 hibiscus. I obtained a permit for doing tha, the stucco was actually falling onto the sidewalk. It actually become like a life safety issue. Also, the water intruded to each one of those four units, but in doing so, we exposed some hidden awning style windows that that were above the storefront. All the glass was missing. The frames were dilapidated and the wood was rotten. We had to cover it up before we could meet with the Heritage Preservation Board for approval for the storefront, and what the owner wanted to do, and she did it. Her cost was the she wanted to put transom glass where those awning style windows were. The picture was shown here where the I-beam looks like it's right above the storefront. It's not, in fact, there. It's above that fixed glass. And if you you know, if you look back at that picture, there's like another one imposed over it and can we put that picture back on, pleas? I can explain better what I'm talking about. Yeah. Great So you see the steel I-beam okay. So what you see in front of that, first you see the scaffolding and you can see how the storefront that was there was imposed over it. And you see the you know, the, the wooden members in front of the steel beam, that's wood framing members that are actually holding up the parapet wall that sits above that beam. So that's in front of it, approximately three inches in front of it. Someone said something about two frogs. It's not apples to apples, two frogs. I-beam is set in maybe three quarters of an inch max and has eight foot overhang. It's not the same thing. This thing was covered up completely. It's recessed in. It has a framing wall holding up the brick above it. Without it, it would fail, so let me let me press on. I got a few things here I want to cover. So when we talk about altering the alcoves, there's a double door there. There is actually two double doors and two single doors on my conditions. They didn't. It didn't insinuate whether I could put 2 or 1. It just said, don't alter them. So it shows a picture of an old alcove with a double door. And next to it, it shows what we did with the alcove. It's a single door, but there's glass panels on either side, so it's essentially the same. It wasn't altered in dimensions, I should just press on. Just I'm listening to things and I'm like, thinking them. Take your time, sir. Yes, sir. So, like, I was saying, the owner wanted to, you know, get the fixed transom glass above the storefront, the existing storefronts were all different hodgepodge together. Two had alcoves, two did not. Two were at a 90 degree angle. One had aluminum, some there were. Some were just t-111. It was rotten and falling down. That particular picture there, you can push that untempered glass out just by leaning on it hard without a doubt it was unsafe. So anyway, I think the historical significance on some of that had already gone away. You know, that's in my opinion, it vanished a long time ago. So we, we, we provided the product approval codes and specs that we'd used on the front of the building to do backdrops and twisted orange. It was all the same. Specifications. We had a rendering that showed 90 degrees, but in the March 23rd, 2023 meeting, one of the members wanted to keep the alcoves, so we did. We had to change our drawing when we, you know, applied for our permit. A lot of things were mentioned that night about different conditions, you know, they talked about the banning up on the top of the parapet and that's, you know, that's a that's an important thing. I should go back on that. Yeah. There were a lot of things. There was like, that had to the alcoves. One gentleman really was pushing for that, one of the board members mentioned the steel I-beam, I remember she referred something to Caroline, and Caroline said, well, we're here for the storefront, and the city attorney, did not present. The one present now said, oh, you could make that, you could make that a an attachment. You know, even leaving the beam exposed at that point, we didn't know what we could do. You know, it was all covered up, and we were just going through the process, something else was said about the stucco or the stucco bands at the top where it meets the roof. So what I got in my letter was restore the cornice, maintain the alcoves, and obtain a permit within three years. And that's what I did. I went, you know, I had to like I said, I had to do a different rendering to show that the alcoves were staying. You know, we went back to work on the project. We had our glass contractor come out and measure for the alcoves and the cornice on the top, the banding on the top is exactly the way we found it. I measured it myself personally, and I you know, I was like, I'm I'm in accordance with everything. And sometime, near the end of the project, I think Pat McNeice called me and said, you, you have not restored the cornice as, as per one of our conditions. And I said, I said, no, I did it exactly the way it was. You know, the stucco bands protrude off the face of the wall near the roofline. They're identical to what we had before. Pat explained to me that, they're talking about the metal cornice, and I was like, metal cornice. You know, I'm not following you, she said. You know, it was actually it was confusing me. It threw me off. You know, my definition of cornice is, is anything that protrudes from the exterior of a building, like a crown or a dental molding or a ledge, something like that. Not something that's receded in three inches. So it was in my mind, I, you know, I thought I was doing everything right. The beam. I still feel there's no way you could leave that. I mean, if you were I mean, some engineer maybe could design something and make that work, but it's just a leaking sink when it's recessed in like that. It just couldn't be removed. It's supporting, like I said before, the brick parapet above, That's not that picture is misleading. That's what it is. So I just wanted to make everybody aware of that. Anyway, on on the 3rd of June, 2024, we came here to address the issue. About the beam is what I thought. And then there was numerous other things brought up. I don't know, I think, you know, folks making decisions on, on preserving, you know, historical design is a good thing. You know, I but I do believe you have to draw the line when it becomes structural integrity. You know, is compromised or the engineering, you know, has to be altered on the building. I just, you know, I just I keep coming back to my three conditions, and I. I think, You know, it just it just when I look at the conditions, it said cornice. You know, I didn't think that we were referring to the metal beam, I later found out, like I said, that. Yeah, there's something else to somebody on that board. Had actually visited the job site. I was out of town. She visited the job site. She stated that she had overheard a conversation of my employees, and they had said something like, derogatory about the steel I-beam, when actually, in fact, she was having a conversation with one of my employees and a business owner I had I didn't know at the time. I couldn't speak of it because I, you know, I didn't know what was said or who said what, but I assume that's why Pat was reached out to me right after that to let us know that we had apparently done something wrong. I just think it was, you know, an unfortunate misunderstanding and some of those other points that were brought up, they were brought up the last time, and I was like, oh my God, this. Yeah. I talked about the single door over the double door. Some had double, some had singles. You know, the there was something about the. The, the pressures. Okay. I know what it was. The spacing on the vertical mullions, they have to do with design pressure when they design something that's impact, they, they figure that out, you know, that's, that's beyond us, beyond me. As far as those placement because you can see like what you're looking at there. They can't just leave it. You know the impact resistant glass has a it's just design pressures as far as where they're going. It's going to be placed. Oh I know there was something else said about the signs on the facade. The signs were placed on the city, and after we redid the stucco, we simply replaced the signs back in their original spot. We didn't know that we shouldn't do that. We just assumed we should. I spoke about two frogs. I think that's about all I got. I feel like I'm rambling now, so, thank you for hearing me, if there's any. Hold on one second, Mr. Larson, we're going to have questions from the commissioners for you, sir. Okay. And Commissioner Eisner will be going first. Thank you, I have to tell you, it's beautiful. There's no doubt about it, but again, I have to share with you that that's not what I'm here for. Yeah. You made that. You made that clear. I know, I know, believe me, so I want to go backwards from. Because I wrote down some of the comments that you've made. Sure. So I want to explain certain things to you, you know, you made a comment about another board member that walked by, and are we here judging you and the project to here? Not for what the other judge judgment was said. So I don't consider that. I just wanted you to know that I don't care what was said. That is that is in that meeting. Right? We have to discuss in quasi judicial what's in this meeting, you said something about, drawing the line somewhere, and you just can't draw the line. I think that you were meaning it as like, you know, you were left with these problems or projects, and you just had to draw the line somewhere. Well, did you want to explain that when I, when I, it's like when I think about the steel beam, which is what they're calling the cornice, right, you you got I mean, I'm a construction guy, you know, I don't know all the rules and regulations about, you know, different boards. But I understand when something's holding something up and when it's attached to something. And if you just go and remove it so that for the sake of so we can see the, the beam, it anything's possible if you throw enough money at something, anything's possible. But the way that is, that would have to be a whole re-engineered building right there. The whole facade. Because something has to hold the brick up that holds. That's attached to the roof. So that's that's the respect I meant it in. Not that, you know, I know anything's possible. You know, it's just in my case, when I opened that up and I saw that, I'm like, well, and like I said, I didn't even. I didn't think it was an issue. Cornice, to me means something different than that. So were you were you done? I'm sorry. I think I'm okay. Yeah. So my comeback to that is. I'm a retired contractor myself. That's cool. And, what I when I find something that is not in the working plans or I have to, deal with a historical area, I have to always stop the job and get some. Get somebody in to approve, and you then have the right to explain to them you could this you can't do that. You could this. And they have to decide to give you the go ahead when you take it upon yourself to do the go ahead, you wind up in this. Here's the thing. Okay? I didn't think I was doing anything wrong. You know that does everyone understand the definition of cornice? Because that's it's if someone can correct me on that. I've, I've, I've been doing this my whole life. Right. Something that's recessed in a building is not called cornice. Well, if it was just that cornice, I'd understand on my letter, it was three things, right? It was cornice alcoves. Get a permit in three years. These other things I. Well, you had here, you were not supposed to use reflective glass. Were you aware of that? The product approval codes. I'm not the one. I'm not the one sitting back. You know, approving things. The front of the building has the same stuff. You know, that's not my job. It honestly isn't. I couldn't you know, whose job would that be? Well, I would imagine it would be, you know, the architect, the building, you know, examiner who's looking at the product approval codes, you also mentioned the would failed was was failing on the bricks, you said that the wood was holding up the bricks and wood is the wood. Members are. So why would you not then? Not bring them back in to show them that before you did something? No. If I cut that wood out in front and expose that beam, it wouldn't be anything supporting the bricks. But why didn't you bring that up to them? Because it was a non-issue to me. That, to me, is not cornice. I didn't think twice about it. I didn't, I just thought, well, it's not possible. And yeah, I'm not believe me, I'm not trying to be anything more than I can't. I can't hear somebody say, well, I didn't think that was something to me. It has to be something to you. You're working. Let me explain something. If that was if it was clearly indicated on that approval certification, then I would, I would have, you know, it's like I would have I would have had to stop the, you know, the wagon from rolling and say, hey, we're going to have to do something about this. Because just like if I decided not to put the alcoves in, I mean, you know what I mean, or say there was some reason I couldn't put the alcoves back the way they were. You know, that's to me would have been different. So after this, I will ask, the staff if these were the only three criteria because in here, that's what I got. I understand, but in here there was a lot more than that. I saw that, okay, but you're portraying it to us that this was all you received. That is exactly what I received. But there's more than that. And when you're doing contracting, you have to go by all the things, not the three things. You. You know, I'm just. I'm asking questions and making sure you understand why we're here, because my question is just everywhere. Says, why did you not contact, Caroline or the permit department and say, hey, this is what I'm up against, I have no way to figure this out except to go here or there or whatever you were deciding to do, and just get the stamp of approval rather than take it upon yourself to do it. And then we're at this point where you have now a finished product, and we have to decide what we do with this finished product. That's why the HPB said, you know, denial. And I'm not I'm not proud to do a denial, but, I got my own opinion on why they, you know, disapprove that again. But that's not for what's here. For what's here is I think it's relevant, though. I'm not judging you on that. I'm judging your job on this. You were though. You. I thought you just said you were. No no, I said that you had to bring it up to staff when there was a change. I am not discussing what went on in the in the last meeting. That would be illegal for me to discuss what went on in the last meeting. I'm talking to you. I'm asking you questions that are regarding, what's going on here? Yes I mean, there were eight criterias that you that that you missed. I don't believe so, but I can only go by the ones I had. Yeah. I don't know how to value when you say I don't believe so. If I ask Caroline, she says she does believe. So you say you don't believe so she. She runs on June, you know, and our meeting and I felt like, oh my God, I'm being attacked here. What is this? All I have is this you know, and I'm not trying to attack you. I'm just asking questions. No, I'm talking back to the previous meeting. Okay? You know, I was like, do I need an attorney? You know, the way I felt like when that was first displayed to me, I thought, oh, you know, I'm just trying to do the best I can. This, I mean, you get. I don't know what to say. I haven't been convinced on any of these things that I've asked, and I'm. Well, you made a point about the beam that I should have stopped and asked somebody, what's going on? Or what should I do? Yeah, that's a that's a beam is an important thing, you know, that. Yeah. It's a structural beam, right. You know, it's holding up the parapet wall is and sitting on top of structural columns. And you can't just move them around, but in the back to make them look like cornice. Let me just ask this question because I don't want to argue with you. I really don't, but I want to ask this question in the backup. There was a discussion about having the beam, whether it was going to be exposed, whether it was not going to be exposed, and there was all sorts of backup that if you do, you were going to expose it. You would have had to, sandblasted, which would have closed up the whole street. Let me finish my point. And so there were decisions to be made that was over your pay scale to decide. And what I'm saying is, if I walk in to a job and there's now I pick up carpet and there's an asbestos floor, I can't take it upon myself to say, oh, is it asbestos floor? I'm going to just pick it up. I have to now deal with that. So you decided that when you opened this up and there was, lead paint on this beam, you decided whatever, you decided to close it all up without getting Caroline and everybody else in line. That's all I'm saying. That's nothing to do with the meeting to the lead paint. That's not my area of expertise. I have no clue about that stuff, to be honest with you. But the building happens to be owned by a bridge painter, and that's what they do. And they have people that are certified that know more stuff about that than I do. And that's what they inform me on. I don't know how to nicely say this, but what you just said to me was you. Please, please keep your comments low. What you just said to me was, that's not in your wheelhouse. And you decided to do something that was not. You just said that to me. No what I said is there was there was a letter attached to my statement, right? Written by another individual who has qualifications to speak on that. Did he decide what to do? No. He was just stating something, you know, to the to the city. On why this happened. Because like, I said, when Pat said, hey, we're not talking about that cornice, we're talking about the steel I-beam. I'm like, oh, well, you know, you can't. I would say, wrap up our comments and questions on both sides, please. That way we can go to the next commission. Okay Well, the only thing I can say is if I open some up that had lead paint on it, and you did say it's not in your wheelhouse. It's not your expertise. I would have then, at least at minimum got Caroline involved, gotten the HPV involved, or called in this expert to decide what to do. That's all that that's what I did. I got the opinion from an expert on as far as the lead paint is concerned, who was the expert? Someone that works for Nikki fabulous. And the expert turned in the report to Caroline. Part of the letter he he stated, I appreciate you know your your comments. I don't want to argue with you. I don't want to argue with you either. I know I just do not. I don't act, I don't do this this way. But I understand you did. I understand, but I'll let it go. The next one is Commissioner Collins. Renee, can you go to, whoever wants to operate it, go to. Slide ten. I'm not sure which one I'm looking for. Keep going. Go on. Up, up. No, the one that has the elevation presented with March 2023. Okay Right there. Okay So was that was that what was presented to the city that that that's what it was going to look like. Is it okay if we deviate from the procedure though, because you're interviewing the attorney? Please advise. I'm sorry. It was my understanding the commissioner was. I'll ask the I'll ask the contractor. Is that what you presented to the city that you were going to do on the on the on the 23rd, on the March, meeting? Yes. Right But not to actually get the permit because the board's members wanted the alcoves to remain. So I had to do a different rendering. Okay. Do you have that rendering, so what was the difference between what was the difference between this picture here and what you, what you had presented to be approved? It reflected the alcoves, how they were, they were the doors were set back. Yes, sir. Okay. But they were the fronts. They were double doors. Well, one was a single door, and one was a double door. Well, there's four double doors up there. Well, yeah. And this in this rendering, there is. Okay, but what was, are you asking me what was actually there or what I, can I ask the city attorney? Can can we deviate? Can I ask how can we if the applicant is finished with his presentation and you want to ask questions of, the staff to clarify something, then? Sure. Keep in mind that what you're doing here today is a record that you know, the next step, if they wanted to appeal, would be to circuit Court, Appellate Division. And so everything is kind of on the record. We want to do everything right. So let me just stay with the contractor then. So you're saying that this rendering here, the door set back, three of them had double doors and one had single door. I believe two of them had double doors and two of them had single doors. Okay. Originally And, and if you look at this was the other than the recess, the two, two single doors, were the bricks, the brick columns, were they, read like that separating each unit? Yes, sir. Okay. They actually had stucco on them, but we removed that. All right. So now if I go to, two slides down. Look. Yeah let's. Yeah, let's go to, let's go to either 2 or 3 slides down. Okay. Let's go one more down okay. So there the columns, the brick columns are not separating each unit. There's actually two brick columns in between the two units in between in. So there's two brick columns on each side of the doors which is again different than the original rendering. I don't are there any double doors on any of these? They're all single doors. They're all single doors. But you presented two double doors and you said two and two single doors. What was there was two double doors and two single doors. But is that what you presented to be? To in your in your rendering to have it approved? Did you submit two double doors? I believe they were single doors is what I submitted when I read when we redid the, the artist's rendering. And the other thing too is, well, let me ask a question. Well, okay, let me just, just stick with the questions. So I would assume that the rendering that you submitted that was approved by staff, met the historical criteria. Now you've made some, obviously some changes to this. Again, the bricks on both sides of the door versus the bricks only separating the, the, the units, now we have a, I again, we have a misunderstanding about two double doors and one, two single doors. Or again, we have no double doors, they you were. You've, admitted that you were supposed to have them recessed. You didn't have them recessed. I got I I've got to go along with what Commissioner Eisner is saying. If you thought there was some structural reason why you wouldn't recess them, you had to put them out. What do you couldn't you have the doors? Did you check with the our engineers or our building department? What are you talking about? As far as recessed? Well, the doors I'm going back to what you were saying again, going back to the original rendering they had the doors had to be recessed back. No, the doors are the alcoves remain. The same. I didn't alter them. Okay. When I was talking about recessed was the eye beam was. If I go to if I go down one more, Go, go. Can you go turn somebody, Which direction? I'm sorry. Two go. Two down. This way. That one. Yeah. Okay. So I to me, that's recessed right there. Yes. It's not flush with the sidewalk. That's that's correct. Okay And were you supposed to keep it recessed and I did. Yes. There two of them that are. Yes We can drive out there and look at them. You maintain them recessed. So. Yes sir. I'm going to wait till, we're finished. And then I'm going to rendezvous back with, staff. So I'm done for now. Commissioner Donato, I would rather wait until we talk to staff again to. Okay, sir, Mr. Larson, I'm looking at this, application, and you you you brought up this, certificate of approval with these three conditions and, but yet staff has these other conditions that were brought in the backup. So I'm just trying to understand where the staff conditions brought to you after you had received this document. Yes I received that when I obtained the permit to do the storefront, I didn't hear about all this until June. That June 24, 2024. Can I ask you when this came about, the these findings was that staff that found him or how did weren't they been in some type of blueprint or records for the city? If you're asking my opinion, I think it had something to do with one of the members coming out and observing the project and felt we were doing something wrong. That's what I think. I don't, I don't know what else it would be. And that's when you were talking about earlier. You wanted to share your opinion. Just. Yeah And something along with the bricks, too. The bricks were, they were uncovered once we took some of the old storefront off some of the columns that weren't revealed to us because it was covered with t-111. And, you know, once we removed all that, we we're not going to take a column out. If it's there, it's there. So it appears like, other than my rendering, you have a couple extra columns, but I'm just I didn't see the point in removing something that was structural. So that's why it looks like there's more brick maybe than in the picture. So the way this building has been set up with the stucco and the windows, there's a creation with the stucco, with the extra windows up top, yeah, sir. Give an estimate, serious estimate. Somehow this board, you know, I don't know what direction they're you know, says we want you to remove it all and replace what type of cost is that? I don't really, I mean, that. To elaborate a little bit more on that. Like, as far as far as so that we could do what, like, what do you mean to remove the building. Well there's a couple options or directions that this commission could go. And potentially they may be even asking to make some changes. And that's why I'm looking at it to see what type of cost would that be? I mean, they look pretty significant the way the building is structured now. And, moving forward, I think we need a structural engineer to help us with that. I mean, I couldn't just spit on that. And you mentioned the other building, the other two businesses that face tarpon Avenue that are connected to the backdrops and Twisted Orange are all the same building, and they have the same storefront like is across the street as well. Okay. Did you get a chance to look at that Co hatch building as well? As the storefront of it and. No, I don't think so okay. And so. So again is there with these drawings and these, you know, blueprints that I believe the city may have for quite some time. Did they did they find these findings after it had all been exposed with like, the cornice and some other things? You know, I, I don't I can't really speak to that. It's like, I provided them with the product approval codes that we use for the storefront out front. They approved it, and the requirements that I recall was that, you know, my letter was that I had to leave the alcoves and leave the cornice the way it was. And that's the fact what I did. Okay. Thank you. Sir, I have no, no other comments or questions right now. And yes, so procedurally, if the, if the appellant is done with his presentation, you're done with asking questions and you'd want to open it up for the public hearing for public comment. And then at that point, we'll ask Mr. Benson to accept the right. And then at that point, then you can start during your deliberation, you can ask anybody any question that you want, like you can ask staff questions. You could ask the appellant questions. But, probably if you're finished, we can go ahead and take public comment. Sir, would you like to say anything else? I think I think I'm finished. Okay. Yes, sir. Yes To do a rebuttal. Yes, yes. You will. Yes May I speak? Well now we're going to go to public comments. So if anybody who's been sworn in would like to speak on the issue, please come forward. State your name and address and you'll be given four minutes to speak. I'm going to bring the microphone to you. Obviously You. Sorry, guys. Good evening. My name is Mickey Valveless. I am the owner and I'm also the applicant of our subject here tonight. I am the owner of 101 105, Tarpon Avenue and also Hibiscus Street. I bought the building in 2008. The building did not look like what it is today. Everything was covered, everything just didn't look right. Everything was falling apart. I totally understand, I am a partner with the Historic Preservation Board by buying these buildings, by having these buildings. And I do understand that everything has to stay strong and doable, especially when you're serving to the public. As you know, Tarpon Springs has many historic sites and buildings, and a lot of the buildings today, they may look okay outside, but inside they're not. They're all falling apart. I'm going to talk about them. I'm going to talk about my buildings. I took it upon myself to present the building stronger, to be able to serve our community. 101 and 105 was remodeled before hibiscus. The board approved it. They knew we were the owner. I was the owner of the building. I also mentioned that I wanted to bring that same look that's in the front, around on the side. We talked about the glass. We talked about, the code bringing the glass and the building up to code. The front of the building was just as bad as the back as the side building. Every time we would have rain and storms, I would say the last maybe six, seven years have been crazy storms that we never had before in Tarpon, the building when it wouldn't leak from the roof, it would leak from the side, from the storefronts, from the stucc. All the doors were ready to fal, pushing the glass, just touching the glass would make the whole wall fall by. That by the way, it was I was still continuing to rent the buildings out to commercial tenants, which it was not very safe. And every time they would do something to their building inside, I would have the problems with the outside of the building. When 101 and 105 got renovated, everything was going. I came to the position where now it was the time for hibiscus Street. Hibiscus Street again, stucco was falling, walls were falling, glass was as thin as it was. I couldn't understand how a big storm would still have this building standing. I couldn't get insurance for it. It wasn't up to code for anyone to insure the building, so I just had to take the losses. So whenever and at the same time, being a commercial, being in the business for a while because we own bridge painting companies, I just didn't feel that it was fair for me to rent to people and earn the monies that I would have earned as the rate that it's going today, I just felt that I have to earn what I give them. And this buildings were not strong enough to collect what the top rate is today. Plus the most beautiful street in Tarpon Springs is Hibiscus Street. When I purchased it, it was not with the beam. The we exposed the beam. After we decided to. I need to give you just ten more seconds to wrap up. I'm sorry. What I wanted to say is that when I first got the building, the building did not have a beam, did not have bricks, did not have anything. After we started removing the stucco, which was like not even an inch of a layer on it, it caused all the problems from the building. Then we noticed that the building had the bricks and the beam. We stopped the construction. We called. I called everyone and anyone. Guys, look what we have. Look what we found. It's a gem. It's a jewel. Help me to support it. Nobody cared. Nobody even tried to come by and see it. Ma'am, I have to stop you at this point. Thank you. Is there any other public comments on this item? Please. Hi, Nancy Larson, 20 Reed Street, Tarpon Springs. I just wanted to make clear that, first of all, this rendering here is not correct. That is a picture overlaid on another picture. That beam actually is above the glass. Fixed windows right now. And the beam, we had two separate permits. The permit for the replacing the stucco and the separate permit for the doors. So when we were pulling apart the stucco, I think what Mr. Eisner didn't understand. And thank you for your comments, but when we opened it up, we saw the beam. But he didn't know at the time that that's what they were talking about, because he thought it was cornice that they were talking about, which he kept in place. So he covered up the beam, and after that, the beam was already covered up and wasn't an issue because it was structural. And he wasn't going to move it. So he covered the beam beam up, and then they came back and said, hey, you weren't allowed to cover the beam. So we said, well, maybe we'll get some more cornice and stick it in the stucco and make it look good. But they said no, and they just denied the whole application. So this picture is incorrect. It doesn't show what it should show. And also on the product approval codes, the other issues with the glass and that the reason that you provide a product approval code to the city is so that they can look at the installation instructions, they can see exactly what you're putting in there, including the glass. And we provided those and they approved them. And that's what he built. And so it was all really just a big misunderstanding. And I'm sorry it happened, but it did. And to fix it, I'm sure it would be probably over $50,000 just to get the structural engineer out there. So that's all I have to say. Thanks. Anita. Pros. And I don't want to be sure. Dry mayor. Yeah this proves the point that I've been talking about our building department, our engineers, and the city has to take a good look at historic preservation. We need to be educated in this city. We need to ask Saint Augustine, Savannah, Charleston, what they do with their buildings. The old buildings, beach communities, historical ones throughout the state of Florida that get flooded and have the rains. Things are changing. But it proves to me tonight what I've been thinking all these years since we did the historic district and got it approved. We need to start educating our building inspectors, because I remember at one point, and I think Mr. Lucas can remember this, the Ferguson building, when they took out all the old windows and the old time glass that you can't get anymore. And I came up here, he said, I didn't even know we had a historic preservation board. He worked for the city. He's no longer here. We need education on this board, the city and the whole community so we can save what we've got. It's sad what's happened here. I remember Stevens ice cream shop in the building next to the alley. I remember the Cuban sandwich shop that was next to that. And the other building. When you went through the two doors, opened them up, was a seamstress. And years ago, that's what those businesses were. And it's changing. But we must educate ourselves. I don't know these people, but I have to say something about this gentleman. The older homes on Reed Street and the fruit section that he has worked on. He has stayed within the historic preservation on them. And I thank you. They look beautiful. They're a credit to the community. But tonight, whatever happened and I don't blame our building department, but our inspectors have to be educated and go out there all the time on these historic buildings. So we don't ruin them. And whatever you do, you got to look at the Ferguson building. What's going on uptow. They've taken advantage of us on a historic building, and it doesn't match what's on Main Street. So think about it. Are there any other public comments? It are there any zoom comments? Online has a comment on this item. Please raise your hand and you'll be allowed into the room. And we do have a raise hand. I'll allow the first person in. If you can unmute and state your name and address for the record. Nicholas Davis 1427. Mears Just a quick comment. It sounds like there is a been a bit of a misunderstanding here. I do think, though, that when you do purchase historic buildings that you do take, it does take a little bit more responsibility to know, the nuances and the requirements, so the with regard to that, I do think that there is some responsibility, but it sounds like there has been a lot of misunderstanding. It sounds like maybe there's been people in the city that have caused confusion, so I think that just all in all, I think that though we can find an amicable resolution here to where obviously we're not going to ask somebody to rip down and, you know, do especially somebody that's fixing up an area and putting money into our city and lifelong, you know, residents, we don't want to cause we don't want to make them have to spend $50,000. But at the same time, we do also want to deter, you know, further deviate deviations in the future. Thank you. Thank you. And we do not have any other raised hands at this time. Thank you. Commissioner Eisner. Your light was on first. Yes if I, if I could one second, just procedurally, I think you close the public hearing at this point, and then you would allow for staff to have a little time for rebuttal. I think there were some issues that they had. And then at that point, I think then you all can ask anybody any questions you want. The public hearing has been closed and now staff will come up for any rebuttals. So just a few things I want to hit on, you were asking, you know, is this all that you received? Which was the one page letter that's referring to an entire packet of information that was submitted, and there were product approval sheets and things in there that they did have double doors, I think the one thing that we've discovered most recently is I don't think there was any way to have caught the whole reflective glass issue, it wasn't in the product approvals, and we didn't, you know, it wasn't specifically stated out, but it you know, it doesn't comport with a couple of different things, the, the storefront. Let me go back the rendering. Okay So this was provided by the applicant. This was what went to the to the board in March. And, you know, the eye beam is shown here. And there was a lot of discussion by the board at that point in time. And the thing that they landed on was to preserve some historical element in this. And that's and they made the condition of approval of, of the cornice and what was talked about. And it was pointed out in the presentation and it's pointed out in the sanborn's of the metal cornice, it's called out there's a metal cornice. It was there, it would have been exposed. So I have no doubt that there are probably issues with what, you know, especially after the fact now, of what we're you know, what would get them completely into compliance with that approval, and that's where I think, you know, a middle ground is probably appropriate, these were approved with, you know, they they altered this for two recessed alcoves, and maintaining the, the basically the architectural style and dimensions, you know, that's that is, you know, that is of issue, you know, they chosen to use hurricane glass. That probably does require structurally some different dimensions of the you know, I'm not an architect or the framing and stuff. I, I, you know, I talk with the building official today, I said, can it be done? What how this was approved. And the answer was yes. Obviously there's a price tag. And I think that's information that we, we don't have. So, you know, just, just because, you know, the mullions, you know, that were discussed, those were indicated in the elevations. Not not as indicated in the elevations or the product sheets. What was actually built. So but the product sheets were submitted. The detail was there. It's in the it's in the backup, you know, and so I mean, just because some of the character was originally has already been lost by the previous alterations that have taken place. You know, it's not just a, you know, you can't really justify destroying the rest of it. So, I mean, I'll be candid, you know, I don't know what the absolute answer is here, I think if you, you know, if you watched the replay of the meetings and, and the discussion that took place, it was it was apparent that the metal cornice that was being talked about and what that was, it was in both presentations, it's pointed out in the presentation, I understand what they're saying about the this looking being misleading. They were trying to fit this on one slide. Yes. This is a different picture. So it's not really locationally there. It's farther up on the parapet wall. I understand what they're saying. There I just so I just wanted to get that information out there. Some of the discussion that, that I heard. So thank you, do we have any questions for, Miss Vincent's rebuttal? Yes, I do, please, Commissioner Eisner. So a comment when we asked the question of the applicant, there was a couple of different answers. There was one door, there were two doors. There was one door. There were two doors. I didn't really get a clear cut response. Whether there were 1 or 2. What was presented to the HPB board? Was it because I saw it was two doors on each one? Is that correct? I mean, I see you shaking your head up and down, so I'm presuming that was two doors on each. Yes. So we don't have that. We do not, I'm not you know, I watch a lot of the planning and zoning board. I watch the APB, and I'm not using, my, what I've seen to make my decision on this, but I've watched the situation where a particular house needed a roof, and they wanted this person to put a five year roof that was made. It was made to literally fall apart, and they didn't want to use a metal roof, even though nobody could see it. And it stuck with it, you know? And that's just how it works, what? I'm, I'm the part of this that sort of bothers me is that to not set precedents, you can't set precedents that I'm going to be asked to do A, B, C and then when nobody's looking and I'm not saying that's what happened. We do a, b, c, d, e and we go, well look, it's done already. So in my opinion this should go back to the code violation boar, to decide what they feel, maybe it's a financial punishment. I don't know. You know, I know what it's like to have to tear this apart and to redo it, but you just can't give a gold star to somebody who just decided to do whatever they wanted, and, you know, and just claim that it's. So my question, I don't think you're asking us to decide on that. Just you're asking us to decide on whether we approve or disapprove this. No All right. So the code, actually, I'll just read exactly what it says, at a public hearing, the board may affirm, modify, or reverse the decision of the Heritage Preservation Board. So what's before you right now is a resolution that was written in the affirmative. That basically that you would be, affirming the appeal and reversing the HPB. But what you can do is you can take the resolution that we read into the record, and you can, because there are some findings in there that staff went ahead and wrote up. And if you feel like there's something in the middle where there's possibly some historic merit that can be preserved, you could do it that way too. So you have that ability to, to basically overturn, Grant the appeal, but put conditions in it that, so it's not an all or nothing proposition, in other words. Well, I honestly don't know what conditions I could put on. I think it's going to have to be some suggestion from staff. Something that I do want to make sure people understand. So as they talk through, I mean, I think this is the this was like the one remaining original, close to original door and storefront. The others had been changed historically through time. The remaining architectural elements that were that would be significant, you know, would be the brick, the metal core and the metal cornice, you know, the parapet and things like that. There's some other pictures floating around that would that you could see the entire what? All the brick was exposed. You would get a better idea. The point all of that is underneath what's been done. The remaining historical elements. So they're they're they're entombed. If you want to use a word like that, it could be restored in the future. If somebody decides they want to alter this building or spend the money to do it. So I do want to make sure that you understand that I don't know if it helps you reach a decision, but they didn't tear the stuff out. They just went over top of it. So there is an opportunity in the future if this is approved as it is and you let this go, that it probably will lose its historical significance. And so that's a ding on the city and the National Register. But it could be restored back, I would say probably enough to where you may be able to regain that historical significance, I just think that is kind of that I don't know if that helps you in making a decision or not, but I think it's a it's something for consideration. So I remember prior to coach coming into play, there was I don't remember what it was beforehand. And they removed the windows in the upper deck and they replaced it with Plexiglas, and they came before whatever board it was. And they said, well, we did that because we didn't want people to fall out and kill themselves onto the street of Tarpon Avenue. Okay. But it had no mullion in between. So one of the solving things that I remember happened was they they fabricated one. They glued it across. It looked exactly like all the others. I can't see anything that they could do to this building to make it look anything like what it was. So that's why on that particular point and you can't just sit there and say and plea, you know, and I don't mean this. I'm not cursing anybody, but you can't plead stupidity. You can't sit there and say, I didn't know. You have to always come back. And I'm a little bit offended that there are people saying that the staff didn't know they need to be better trained. You knew Caroline knew and everybody knew. It's whether they decided to listen. Not that you didn't know. So I will apologize for the comment that you didn't know because you did, and so did Caroline. That was just a ridiculous thing to throw it back in your lap. And that's where I'm going to defend you, this was all done. Not with one criteria that we didn't hit. This was almost all the criteria we didn't hit. So I don't know how to solve it, but I can't support it. Commissioner Collin. Okay, so I Renee, I think you answered most of the questions as far as the doors and what was actually submitted to the city. You know, it's I'm equally as frustrated, from from a standpoint of esthetics. I mean, it's it looks like a nicely done building, but again, now we have this historic issue. So what do you think would be the minimum? Adjustments or minimum criteria that you would want to see that would make this as close as possible to, meeting some of the historical requirements. So I'm going to defer to the, to the discussion that the HPB took place. And they, that that that metal cornice was specifically talked about to maintain that, that to, to have that be maintained in order to not lose the and hopefully in order to not lose the historical designation of the building, I am not a historic preservation expert, so I, you know, I, I'm going to I would if I have to go back and I think that and then the you know the storefronts I mean getting to the double doors, you know, I can they alter those? I don't know that at this point. Those are all new. You know, even though even if you make them look like the right architecturally, like what was there before, the dimensions are different, again, how significant is that? I mean, that it's all new. So whatever you do, there is going to be new that. But that cornice to at least following the discussion of the historic of the historical Preservation Board was a really a defining piece of this. Okay. So how how deep, behind the stucco is the corner. I don't know that. Now you're into something that's, you know, I can't answer. And if you I mean, we may be at a point of where there needs to be additional information brought back. I don't know, I mean, you know, I don't know how deep that is, but it was clearly, according to the Sanborn Maps, it was it was there and it was it was visible. I'll say that it was it was noted that that it was there. And you can see the same thing in two frogs. How it got into this configuration that it's in, I don't know. Well, I think that, you know, we obviously can't we don't have a time machine to go back and go back to before this. All this work was done, if the if the cornice was an issue, an important issue of the HPB and, and staff, to maintain some historical, integrity of that building, then then that would be a criteria for me that we address somehow address getting that cornice back, on the in some form or fashion. I mean, even I don't know if, like, what Commissioner Eisner recommended even a some kind of a facade that even replicated that. What the cornice was. If, in fact, you can't go that deep behind the stucco because you'd have if you if you do that, you're going to be going down in under. Right. So the cornice would be you'd have to cut back in the stucco and then expose the cornice. Now the cornice could be behind, all the, the brick as well, which could be you know, I don't know if that's some kind of a issue or not, but I think it's worth exploring that at least at minimum, if that was the criteria that was important, that something be maintained, I, I see enough responsibility on first of all, I agree with Commissioner Eisner on that. The contractor had some responsibility when he was making changes that were different than the plans to have you know, approach the city before actually, physically doing them. But it's done. So I think we need to find something that I don't want to, you know, I don't this isn't about punishing anybody. This is about maintaining some integrity, on this process. So that's something I'd want to see if that was that important to the HPB, it should be important to us as well. So that's all I have to say on that, Commissioner DiNardo. I'm concerned with. The HPB losing our designation that that is a concern for me. But I don't think I have the information and I don't know if the city does, whether or not we would actually lose it. But you do think that that building would likely lose it? The individual building would would probably on a resurvey would would lose. It's we can locally, we can still designate it as contributing. So that anything that happens in the future has to come back to the HPB. But on the national, at the national level, it would lose its it would most likely lose its, its contributing designation. So I mean, it I mean, candidly, it may not you know, we have a big historic district. I mean, yes. You know, so well aware of that. Yeah So, you know, it's right here in the middle. You know, all these are the various structures. So I mean, the, the this is the, this is the red is the national district. So, you know, if you continue to chip away and, you know, you start getting more buildings that are losing their significance, you know, I mean, we still have a very healthy, you know, inventory of contributing structures in the National Register. But over time, if you continue to lose these, you know, each individual structure, you're chipping away at it. Well, is this the tipping point? I don't know, that would be precedent setting. And it would in the future create problems. But I don't want to do that. However, I'm also concerned with the businesses that are actually there. No, no one's discussed that. And maybe it's not germane, but it is if that's your livelihood and there's just a lot of it's not a simple issu. And what I would like to suggest and I, Attorney Dickman, you need to tell me if I'm wrong. But you said we had three alternatives. I'd like to propose fourth. And that would be simply to give us a little time here to find out what what can be done to make it agreeable with the with the HP board, or if it will, if, if the applicant and the construction crew can can figure out a way to, to do that, then it should be done. Now as far as the, the, the black frame and the framing, I would imagine it has to be like that because it's a hurricane windows and they're, they're thicker, but I don't know that. But that's another thing we need to find out. So I think there's just information here that I don't have to make the intelligent decision. So right now it's either approve or deny. And I would have to deny it. Well, based on the fact that I don't want to lose our district one commissioner, one thing you could do if, in fact, what you wanted, like, let's hypothetically, was to gather more information on whether the cornice can be retrieved, basically uncovered. And what would that take? We don't have that information here. You're you can table this and continue it to another hearing and, ask staff to investigate that with a building official and with the and with the app the appellant and get that information because that might be it seems to me that that was from the testimony that I'm hearing, that the HPB focused a lot on that as a very important architectural feature that kept it in the historic realm. And if, in fact, that is something that is feasible and not, you know, extraordinarily cost prohibitive. I mean, I think that's information you can get and you can continue this if you wanted to, to a future meeting. And, and I think, in fairness, to make it make a yay or nay decision, we should have more information. I mean, there's so many ifs that have been brought up tonight. If there's a history of this kind of thing, that's a factor. I, I would suggest that we table it for 60 days. Is there a problem doing that, Renee? I don't have a problem with doing that at all, you know, we're certainly willing to work with, you know, we can maybe check with our Pinellas County counterparts and see if they have any additional resources that we can call on to, to, to help give us guidance. And, and, I it's it I don't think there's any harm in tabling it for or, you know, deferring the decision for 60 days to allow, you know, we may come back with nothing. I don't know, I'll be quite candid with you, but at least it's an opportunity to work through, another possible solution. So I don't want to have to go through all of this again. But I want to be fair at the same time. But I would say point blank that if, if, if we can't do that, then I'm going to vote to deny simply because I want to protect the district. But in fairness to the people who own the property and even more importantly, the people that are earning a living in that building, I would like to give a maybe a little more time to consider that. So I don't know how the rest of you feel, but, that's that's the way I lean. Commissioner, I'm gonna let you get a couple more comments in, and then I'd like to get my comments and then move towards a decision, I appreciate you giving us your insight, would Caroline like to step up to the plate because I, I it's not that I have more faith in Caroline than you, Renee, but I know that you deal with this all the time. Is there any way that you think this thing can be refigured redone? Re anything that would still remake it back into a historical building? If you ever ask an engineer that they will always say yes with enough money. Okay, so it could we could restore it back to looking like it did when it was originally. If we had enough money feasibly, I think there are probably alternatives that we need to at least explore and see what it would take to do that. Okay, fair answer, because I knew the answer that you'd give me. The other thing that I have is, as we all know, there's a Lexus is doing a project down the road from there. And I know that he is dealing with a lot of internal problems historic, stable and doing things. And what I do not want to do is set a precedence or precedent that, he looks back at this and says, well, let's just cover this over. Let's do this this way, that way, and I'll deal with the fight down the road, you know, I watched that happen, and I'm not saying that that's what happened here, but I've watched that happen in permits in my entire life. People doing things and just hoping they don't get caught. And, this is not one thing. This is a lot of things. So, you know, for me to evaluate this, it looks like there's so many things that I don't know what it would take to make it back. I don't want to lose that historical aspect of it. That's the start of the end. So I don't want to table it. I'm going to deny it. And that's just how I'm going to be. And if you want a table, that's up to you. Commissioner Koulianos city attorney, would it be a table or a deferral? It would be a continuance or a deferral, whatever however you want to phrase it. But to a date certain, so if you make a I make a motion. No, I'm not done talking yet. I haven't got my comments in, well, then that's where I'm at. I want to defer it for 60 days. Okay, so but that's not a motion, I think. I think what the vice mayor is indicating is that he he hasn't had his opportunity to comment on the. No. I I acknowledge that the vice mayor has should have his time so that but that's where I'm at all right. Please. If we could have, Miss Langford or Miss Vincent, I want to go back to this Florida master site file this old picture of 1990 and this black and white photo, this cornice that we keep talking about. How come we can't see it from right here, that's because in the 1980s, it was. The brick was stuccoed over. So it is underneath the stucco. So Okay, so that's an interesting point you brought up right there. And while it's been covered, but yet we have this HPB board and we have our, you know, they look over everything. What you're indicating is that once a, once the district was established and we have the HPB board and, once it was all established how the buildings were aren't considered their original forms. Correct. If they are in their original form, then yes. But in this case, no, it was not. It was not in its original form when it was first designated as contributing to the district. Okay. And so, I want to bring up two different items. There's two different nearby properties. One is obviously the Co hatch. And Commissioner Eisner had stated a few conditions to it as well. But the storefront, the metal, is it metal framing I believe for the windows. Is there a canopy put up yet or the actual extension of the building because of the floor area ratio that's allowed in the downtown district? Are I mean, are those all similar materials dating back to the original inception of that building, no, actually, that is an addition to the original property, which has been clearly differentiated from historic materials, which is okay under the Secretary's guidelines. So there are different materials, but it's we use materials that we can't really find the date back to that time to help construct or improve this historical building. And co hatch, for example. Correct me, I'm, so I think a lot of the historic materials that we use in the city of Tarpon Springs are masonry and wood, which are readily, readily available. Okay. So the, the, the cinder blocks and all that don't take effect to like, you know, how we expanded the Co hatch building or approved the expansion of it, it would actually be more correct when you're making an addition to a historic building to differentiate and make sure that it is obvious that that is not part of the historic building. It's separate from that. Okay. And the reason why I ask that, because I, you know, we look I drove past it. I saw the back end of the building, tell you the truth, it doesn't look like what I thought was presented to us. You know, a lot more modern on the back of that building and so forth. And so I want to bring that up with those, that building. I also want to bring up, It is 229 East Lemon Street. I believe they have some golf cart rentals there. And there's a, real estate office in that area. It's right by the corner of Ring and Lemon Street. Are you familiar with what I'm talking about? Mrs. Miss Vincent? Somewhat, ye. Isn't that building in the historical section of downtown? I believe it is. Now, correct me if I'm wrong. I do see that we that building had some windows in there. I don't know if they're original windows, but they also had some canopy like that modern canopy, aluminum style. That's like rectangles going above the storefronts and, and the walkways leading into i. I'm looking at the map right now. I'm not exactly sure which one of these buildings this is Lemon Street right here. This is where was where would be ring B? Ring is. Ring is right. Ring is right here. It's in the distric, there are two. These two structures are. This one is Noncontributing non historic. This one is contributing altered. So if it's one of these two structures they were already severely compromised I you know without going back and digging up a file on that. You know, I don't want to be I don't want to have conjecture about what happened there. Okay. I only mentioned that as we talk about precedent and in each situation in our community is different. I the prayer, the preservation Heritage Board, I understand their hard work and how they look at things, but I do think there's there needs to be some better communication or guidelines and understanding, planning as well as old structures and what's ever recorded into our, our city. But, you know, can you see why I would have an issue looking at this master site file? There's no cornice that's readily available, but yet they did the work to uncover it, got it exposed. And now that whole piece has to be restored. I find it hard because I wonder if, for example, if every piece inside coach was restored to its original intent, you know, and there's been a lot of work done in there. And so, I'm not trying to set precedent in this community. I want to be able, for us to move forward. I accept that there are some issues we need to address as a community. And I'd also like to ask city attorney at this time, is there a way we can set a condition for them to pay a fine of whatever amount within a certain amount of time, and move this forward? That was something that I was actually thinking about, and I'm not 100% sure. Maybe the city manager needs to help me with that, but it's my understanding that when you have to get after the fact building permits, you pay. Triple, triple, triple fees, right, I'm not 100% sure on that, but I think that when you when you pull after the fact permits you, you pay triple. So I don't know if that's I mean here, you know, I know that they have permits. They're probably finaled, but they didn't the reason they're here is because they didn't follow in addition to the building code, the Florida building code, they didn't follow what was required by the HPB. So maybe that's the route you go through the building official. But I don't know. I'm not a Florida building. I don't think so. But I, I don't think we use that route. But I'm not positive. So I, I wouldn't see the mechanism in that route. We'll redo it and just, just find them through their, but that's something I'd have to look at. Yeah. So as far as, like any other fine, fines are imposed through the Code Enforcement board and that's how, how that's done, you you could potentially affirm, let's think about this. Affirm the, or not affirm, but approve the appeal so that they go forward, but also refer it to the Code Enforcement Board for evaluation of some kind of, fine. But when they when they render a fine, they have to ultimately file a lien against the property. But typically you would have a code enforcement action and then you start a fine, and then the fine ends when the thing is in compliance. And so. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't see how we get there that way. I was actually thinking along those same lines because like in the environmental world, sometimes you can, you could pay into an environmental fund or into a wetland banks or something like that, because the, the problem has already occurred and it's difficult to go back. It's hard to unring the bell as they say. Okay. Well the way I see it, I'm not I'm not here to ask them to remove everything. Stop there. You know, all the businesses up front, there's an awesome business that's just recently moved there, and we need to try to make sure we don't detour anything. I mean, I see these windows. I see what we're looking at, it's not me going against the planning and zoning department because, you know, I have the utmost respect for you all. It's not going against the Heritage Preservation Board, but even Commissioner Eisner and I and I remember this one. So that's why I want to bring it to you. When we had the fruit bowl, there was a roof. And the roof needed to be replaced. And they wanted to put the, the metal shingles on, but they were told they have to go back to whatever the original form. You and I agreed to. The metal roof, which went against that heritage Preservation Board or that that historic perspective for a couple different reasons. And, you know, I don't see that as being a factor. Now, if they want to lose out on the historical perspective of their building, that's on them. And the way we got our town set up, we obviously need to come up with a way to, bring the situation more to light. But I don't like that, you know, there's no beam showing there. Then this this beam is produced, and we want to go back to its original form. There's some buildings in downtown we didn't go back to their original original forms like Kodak and the HPB board approved that. So there's a lot of you know, I has to be consistent with some of these boards. And so, I'm hoping we can. Deny the approval of the HPB board. That way we can let these people move forward. Correct. City attorney. So the resolution that's before you right now is written in the affirmative, meaning that you would you approve their application, which is reversing the decision of the HPV, is that that's correct. Right. That's. I'm sorry. I was reading something I wasn't the resolution that was prepared is prepared in the affirmative, in the affirmative that you would be voting. Yeah. If you vote yes for this resolution, then essentially you're overturning the decision of the HPV. Okay. And, you know, I'm also going to mention that that file with the two pictures merged together, I just I sort of didn't like it myself because I felt like there's a lot of different ways to get pictures in and show the full context of it all. And so, I wish we could have done a better job with that, but I'm not. I don't want to nitpick this business owner and we talk about the heritage preservation and all that. I mean, building looks sharp. It looks sharp the way it looks and if aluminum was used to create some of the windows instead of some of the old, you know, wood structures, I guess to me that's not going to destroy tarpon Springs. It's not. It's really not. And so there's another building. There's another open spot at the end that potentially could be rented out here in the near future. And so, I would like to approve their appeal, move this forward without having some detrimental impacts to the businesses around the area. And, some of that extra construction that's going to need to have because you're talking about resurfacing this piece, but yet somehow creating the stucco pattern behind it to have it elevated up front so it looks weird. I mean, basically those windows are going to get removed two or you're just going to I'm not sure how it looks the way it's all separated as of right now. So it's not that I'm going against the HPV board. It's not that I'm going against our city staff. I have the utmost respect for them, but I want to move this forward. I like for this to get approved and that way this business owner, any potential, tenants can move in and, get business prospering here in Tarpon Springs. And so that's where I'm at with this. I don't want it to go back to these other boards to review. We have the ultimate power on it. We do. And so if I could issue them a fine of $5,000 and paid within a year, I would do that. But that would be my goal. But I'm not sure what our resources are with it, and it looks like we can't do something like that. And so if I can please get the support of this board to approve this application and move forward, that's where we're at. Unless you all want to bring it back in 60 days, in which I think we've heard everything, I know where we're at now with this. So those are my comments. Now I'll go back to Commissioner Eisner. Commissioner DiDonato, and I'm sorry this took some time, but this is a it's a difficult item. And so we need to respect it. And our town and a lot of the organizations and boards that are part of it all. And so, Commissioner Eisner, you have a good memory. I just want to clarify your memory, though, the decision that we made, at the time was because there were 4 or 5 other metal roofs on that particular block that were done. Okay That's why we did it. That was reason one. Reason two, you don't want to mess with my memory, the other thing was it was advantageous for them to put a metal roof on there because at the time that they had these roofs, they were easily damaged in a hurricane. So it was it was a combination of reasons why I went ahead and said, that they should have this metal roof. And I used an example at the time was because when these houses were built in the fruit section, they didn't have air conditioning. Does that mean you don't put air conditioning in now? Because we have it. So that was my analogy to them, when metal roofs came out and they were better suited for protection of the home, that's why I went for that. It had nothing to do with this. This is a completely different analogy, I don't I'm also agree with you, that I don't want to tear this place apart. I think it looks beautiful. The parts that bother me is that we lose the historical. And that's. That can't be replenished unless somebody else comes in and changes it back the way it is. I can't approve somebody just deciding to take it upon themselves to do contracting work, and not clearing it with somebody, and I also, if there was a financial penalty that could be put on this so that we could move forward. So that to deter other contractors from saying, well, they got away with it and those are the sticklers that I have, it's believe me when I tell you, I think what you built was gorgeous. I really do. I, I love what the street looks like. It's just. Yeah. And, you know, I believe me. I heard everything that you said. I'm there all the time. I love the way it looks. It doesn't fit into the tarpon. Historical end of it. You know, I read in the, Facebook all the time. People just drive around our neighborhoods, you know, around Spring Street because they look at the houses and they look at the, the heritage of this town. That's why I moved here. I into the building. Yeah. I miss Miss Loveless. You can't talk right now, unfortunately. Believe me, I understand what you did and why you did it. You know, the people do things, and I just sit there and sometimes go, oh, my God, if you wanted to do something really nice, you had to do it in a place that's allowed to do that. This was not allowed. And that's why I have the issue. I just don't have an answer for what penalty we could put on this to satisfy others from not wanting to do it. Okay, so otherwise I have to go with. No. Miss Vincent, did you want to say something? No. We're gonna go back to commissioner. I'm. I want to throw this out for consideration, so in the resolution, there's a section of findings, no matter what we do, I do want to amend one of the. If we go a certain direction, I want to amend one of the findings, but, I think we if we put a condition, on this resolution that says the structure shall remain a contributing structure in the local historic district and future renovations may require exposing the original brick facade and metal cornice or and other significant architectural elements can we and Mr. Attorney, if we put that as a condition, can we require some sort of a covenant to be refiled so that if that building sold in the future, something on a on a title search will pop up? It says there's an issue with this building. And if you're going to do anything to it, you're going to be restoring it back. Frankly, that's a financial penalty, yes. So the that's something else I was thinking about as well is that, you know, you leave you leave because as you said, it's there. It's what did you say? Entombed. Entombed. Yeah. That in the event that in the future that if somebody does another remodel of the facade that they, and this, this resolution will go to the, to the state Historic Preservation Office. We have to provide all these any changes for certificates that every year. So by having that in there, it may give us a little bit of a, of a buffer on. Okay. Getting dinged because we lost the significance of a of a structure. Sounds like a great idea to me, Commissioner Donato, then I'll go back to Commissioner Collins. And if we can please move it forward at that. After that would be great. Well, I, I certainly would agree with what you said, mayor. I, I because it is a nice looking, refreshed building it my concern remains that if one tries it, two tries it, three tries it, then we lose the whole thing. That's what worries me. But if what you're saying is conditioned but is still, somebody drives by and say, well, that building's got like that, but we've got it documented at this point. And so I think, you know, and if we update the third finding, that the construction activities conducted at the National Register of Historic District and Local Historic District contributing structure may be reversed in the future. And And are there for found, therefore found consistent with the standards for review. I just want to get that in there that they didn't tear it apart and rebuild it. They covered it up is basically what I'm trying to document. And I think that will help us if we get into a bind with the state for some reason, you know, in the future about this particular structure, okay. Is that a motion you can help put together? Yeah. Let me, let me just clarify. So we're talking about section one findings. The third finding, you want it to say you want it to essentially read that, the construction activities, have may they may be reversed at the in the future and therefore are found, consistent with the basically we're just saying we're adding that into that whole clause there. I can give you the direct language, but that's what we're intending to do. Okay. And then and then the another section that would be conditions of approval as a condition of approval that this will remain a structure shall remain a contributing structure in the local historic district and future renovations may require exposing the original brick facade and metal cornice and other significant architectural elements remaining. Okay, so does that does that mean that they eventually will have to change it? Only if they want to do something to the building? Basically, it's going to stay just like this. And any future renovations, somebody's going to have to come back and address this issue might have might be them or it might be a future owner. That's why I wanted to also go into the future. And then you still got I want to put the yeah I want to put the. So to be clear that would that would require going back to the HPB. Correct. Like whoever. Correct. What if they said if you don't change it you're going to lose it. Then that's I mean that's a risk. I'm hoping that this this resolution, they will go along that this will go along and go to the state. So we're documenting that the, the significant the you know, the brick is still there. The cornice is still there. There's other architectural they're they're just behind stucco. So which to you know, the vice mayor's point, that's what it was in 1990 or whenever this was designated. So, we haven't completely lost it, so I think you can it at least I can't guarantee anything with this, but it's a buffer for us. I would like to see a restrictive a requirement for a restrictive covenant or something so that when property is bought and sold, that it might pop up in a title search, that this condition exists. I don't know how we do that. I'm going to need help with a vice chair. Yeah, please. I'll. I'll make that motion if I don't know how to say it, though. Take our time and I write it out. Okay So wal, say it and then I'm going to. So move it. So let me let me ask one quick question. So I want to make sure I know you can. You have the power to do this. But I would I would like to inquire with the appellant if they have any objection to that because then, you know, if they do object to it, their next step is to appeal to circuit court. But if they're okay with that, as a condition of, you know, kind of leaving things, the way they are, but, you know, the things that they're saying, if they say on the record that they're fine with that and that they'll approve a covenant running with the land, then this whole thing settled, we don't have to worry about them appealing. It in circuit court. Do can can someone who is speaking on behalf of the applicant, do you mind if we get that? I don't mind. Can somebody can somebody help her with the microphone, please? I'm sorry. I just want to handle this in this way. So, ma'am, do you understand what we're, what we're talking about? So your property would stay the same? Yes, except for, we would record a covenant that's in that would run with the land so that if there's a future buyer or it gets reconstructed, that it would still have to go back to the HPB and restored, I agree. Okay, great. Thank you. Question. Quick, go ahead. Sir. What happens if this if we lose if this building loses the historic. I mean we saw I don't I don't know Commissioner Eisner, but we saw that map. We see the heritage. The people of Tarpon Springs make, the heritage and the cult of perspective of this community. I understand, Vice Mayor. I think I still have the floor. Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. And again, it's no different than what is there on that screen right now. It's covered. It's covered now. It was covered then, so I'd like to go ahead and make you're going to have to help me. Right. So the motion will be to approve the resolution, but amending finding three. So that it indicates that it, that the construction shall be reversed in the future, maybe maybe maybe maybe reverse in the future. And then we're going to add another condition to this that says that the, there there will be a restrictive covenant running with the land, in favor of the city that says, essentially it's going to be in it'll be historic. The structure shall remain a contributing structure or shall shall remain designated as a contributing structure in the local historic district. And future renovations may require exposing the original brick facade, metal cornice, or other architectural elements remaining right so moved okay. Do I have a second? I I still am not convinced that we aren't creating a precedent and that it's not going to come back and get thrown in our face, and for that reason, I just can't second that motion. I want to second that motion because I want to make this work, but I also don't want future boards or this board to have to go through all this again, because we let it happen once. When you let it happen, once you're subjected to. So for that reason, I can't second that motion. I part of me, I'm torn on the issue, so I mean, you know, my comments are is I've seen the HPV board accept, you know, approve one thing and not approve another. And I'm, I don't understand some of their positions. So I mean we have a good chance to get the situation settled, move forward, let that understand that applicant know they can't even paint a wall or put, you know, change the flooring there if needed without going through this, you know, without coming back up. And so I think it's. As we talked about that, that the building has shown that piece is covered that cornice, that metal frame or whatever. And but you know, I see a lot of inconsistencies with the HPV board on some decision that doesn't necessarily mean they're there, it's just the way they look at things, at times. And so I'd like to move this forward and without causing tens of thousands of dollars stopping business and, running to a spot with this situation and, and maybe there's some ordinances or something that we can do to improve this stuff, but, you know. We didn't set any precedent that we, you know, a precedent we set with coach, all those buildings down there have a floor area ratio of 2.0. You know, that's a precedent we set that the way I look at it, that is not going to destroy the history of tarpon Springs, nor nor will it. I don't think, in affect the historical, you know, district as a whole, just those 100, you know, that 100ft of storefront. So can I make one more comment on my motion? Yes. Okay You know. Seconded Though, Commissioner DiDonato, you know, I, I understand what you're saying. It hasn't been seconded. So you'll need to make another motion. Well, no, I'm saying I'm hanging with my original motion. I'm I I'm still holding out for a second. I'm holding out for a second, can I speak on a non seconded motion? Can I continue on a second? I'm passing. I mean, the vice mayor kept speaking. I don't speak. Make your motion. I thought you can only I thought you have to pass the gavel at the beginning of a an item. You can't pass it at the end of an item. He's gonna have to if he's trying to second your motion, then I don't. I don't think the chair can second your motion. Okay but let me just. I want to I want to just clarify something, I understand that this hasn't, for whatever reason, whether the city you know, wasn't inspecting, as quickly as they should have, whether the builder took the contractor, took liberties that he shouldn't have taken. We're here now. I think part of our job is, you know, to look for solutions and compromises that work well for the city, I think that we're not going to be able to. I don't think it's reasonable for us to have them take everything out and rebuild this whole thing. I don't think so, I don't think a penalty solves the problem. That you're talking about, Commissioner, but I think the compromise that, our planning director came up with, really is a brilliant, compromise. And it allows for us to maintain integrity into the future. Again, the if the cornice was the main issue and it's covered like it was covered there in 1930 or whatever that picture was made. I think this is a fair, a fair motion. I think it's a fair compromise. I think that's part of our job is we have we also have to worry about commerce and there, you know, these are businesses that people, again, people are going to make a living in to get going and get to be able to do what they need to do. I think what you came up with, Renee, is, was brilliant. So anyways. Don't You can request it. Yeah. I don't even know that that's an option. No. Yeah. All right, so another issue that was brought up. You know, you are a short board here. It's 2 to 2. So it's going to require three votes to approve anything one way or the other. A tie vote fails, so I think it's important to notify the applicant that, you know, if they wanted to. I mean, it'd be up to you, but if they wanted to request a continuance until there's a fifth member here so that they would have a better chance, I don't know. I just wanted to make make that clear to them. I appreciate you making that suggestion. All right, Commissioner Eisner, please go ahead. So, I just have to differ with you, because my decision is not being made on what the HPB said. It's all on the facts of what we listened to between the staff and the applicant. So, you know, when you say that, I that's the only thing I differ with, and I differ with Commissioner Giuliani's, we don't have to. We're not here as an appeasing board. We are here as a decision making board, on the criteria. This is quasi judicial. It's not for us to be making law. It's to, abide by the law that's already written, would I be correct again, Mr. Attorney, this is a quasi judicial hearing. It is a quasi judicial hearing. You're correct about that. So the bottom line is we can't be here negotiating, this is not legislative. And that's what we're trying to do is, you know, make it a legislative thing. That's not i. So I think what they're I mean, you certainly have the ability to have conditions. I mentioned that that you can modify, things. It's not yes or no. There's a modification in there, so I think that the solution that, I mean, I'm relying on your experts over here, your professional staff that are saying that that that's something that they think would be satisfactory to them, but I procedurally, I think that's probably the best if you, if you wanted to go that route. I mean, I'm not advocating one thing or the other. I'm just trying to be a facilitator here and that if you wanted to change that resolution the way that it was suggested, I, with the applicants already putting on the record that they agree with that, I think you'd be okay with that. You would be legally fine. That being said, there still are four. There's only four of you here. So, I don't know how this is going to work out, to be honest. I'm going to let Commissioner Donato talk. There really isn't a second on it. So I'm kind of getting worried here that you. It's been on the table. Motion's been on the table for a long time and it hasn't been seconded. And there's been a lot of discussion about it. We're going to let Commissioner DiDonato speak one final time and just one more time. I'd like to suggest that we defer it. Simply because I want to be fair and with more information, I think it becomes a much easier decision for me anyway, because I. I want to help in this matter. I told you, I'm concerned about the businesses that are there. I'm concerned about the owner and their cost. But yet at the same time, we have a historic district and I want to protect it. So that's why I brought up the. This table was deferred for 60 days and give the applicant a chance to say, okay, here's what we can do. Or maybe the Historic Preservation Board can, can suggest some things that are doable that they can live with in that 60 days, if that doesn't happen, then I don't think we have a choice anymore. I because I, I it's unfortunate that like for example, when did the historic district for that area actually got its designation, that area because I know we had phase it was in the 80s, I believe, in the 80s. Okay Long before I was with that building, then had the same thing covered up then. Right. It did. But I'll say that it did. You know, it didn't. Then Then I start leaning over to our acting mayor when he's talking about it. You know, rights right and wrong is wrong. But yet at the same time, we've got to protect the district. So I'm. I guess I'm asking for you to help me here. And I think the only way we can do that is to get a little more information before we just say no. That's my that's my only other choice. So either I have more information or I say no and I don't want to do that. Right. So if you continue it for 60 days, at that point, you probably will have a full commission and that will give time for staff to and myself also legally to look at some options. You may you may actually have a solution that's even better. Just a note, the closest meeting to that would be November 19th. That's the 16th is about 60 days. So your your meeting would be the November 19th. So you might want to just say defer to the meeting as closest to 60 days. No it's got to be a date certain or else it's got to be or else it has to be. Re noticing is just a postcard. It's not a big deal. Okay. No big deal. It would be the night in November 19th would be the closest to 60 days. Okay. The chair will entertain a motion to defer into. Continue to continue. Application 2449 at the November 19th, 19th meeting. So moved. Second. All right. I just before you guys, I just want to be clear where we are in the quasi judicial proceedings is that you're at board deliberation. So you don't need to have, public open it up for public comment again and all that. You're you continue where you left off, okay? Okay, okay. And I just want to say, you know, thank you for the applicants for staff. I you know, I know this was a long situation. But I'm hoping we can move forward soon. And, and whoever that third vote is, and, you know, so I want to information will come forward and we'll go from there if we're continuing the hearing, does the fifth person coming on, can they participate? Well, they're going to have to let me let me get into that. Let me get sorry. I just want to make sure we got this covered. Well, it may be that they can watch the entire proceedings. Okay. And I know this. They can't vote. Oh, okay. Just when you don't have to. Look, can we make it real clear to what we're what we're asking? We're asking for what they can do to make it work. Basically Right. I think you're I want to make sure they understand what we're looking for, and they may not even be agreeable to that. I don't know, I'm just trying to find something to work. I mean, if it's denied, they always have the option to reapply to the to the Heritage Preservation Board with maybe some alternatives. And, you know, in the interim, you code enforcement action can take place. So now until they find a resolution of some kind that the that the board can and it may get appealed right back here again. But at least now okay, you've got a fine going. That is some sort. You know I there's I'm just I, I'm just I'm yeah I'm sensitive guys I understand the situation but we defer it. They're going to start getting code enforcement. They're going to get fines. You know however much they're going to be, they're going to end up coming to us. And, you know, at some point whether they're going to have to correct it or not, why wouldn't the code enforcement action be stayed while they're under appeal? I think they would. Yeah, we have enacted I don't see how that. Yeah, I think that maybe not. I think any, punitive code enforcement actions would be stayed. I would think, as long as they've got an active application that they're trying to pursue, they timely filed their appeal here to you. And, you know, so I was hoping we could get this figured out tonight. It's unfortunate because with the covenants, with everything that you even agreed upon, you're pretty much restricted to that property and not being able to do nothing else was whatever you have. So I'm frustrated we couldn't get past that. And so. Right now we have this motion. It's a second on the floor for November 19th. Is there any further discussion? Roll call please. Mr. Donato? Yes, Mr. Collins? Yes Commissioner Eisner. Yes, vice mayor. Yes This is this is why a lot of cities have direct appeal to court instead of to the to the second court. We've tried that a lot of times. And it hasn't worked in all these years. Yeah. Thank you all. In an awkward vice mayor. Yes, sir. Yes. We're going to take a ten minute break. The meeting will go into recess until 10:10 p.m. Are you asking anything of us? Meeting is out of recess and back in session at 10:10 p.m. We are now going to item 23, ordinance 2024-03, repealing the city's comprehensive Plan and its entirety, and adopting the 2040 Comprehensive Plan, including all elements, the Future Land Use Map and Map series, future Land Use categories and rules, tables and definitions. Application 24 Dash 36 Legislative Second Reading. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. I'm going to read the, ordinance into the record an ordinance of the City of Tarpon Springs, Florida, repealing the city's comprehensive plan in its entirety and adopting the 2045 Comprehensive Plan, including all elements of future land use map and map series, future land use categories and rules, and table. The definitions providing for supplemental reference documents not intended for adoption, including 2023 data and analysis implementation work plan, sustainability, crosswalk and community engagement. Summary report. Maintaining the repeal repealed Comprehensive Plan as a legacy reference document providing for another modification that may arise from review of this ordinance at the public hearing. Providing for corrections of scrivener's errors. Providing for transmittal to the state. Land planning Agency and reviewing agencies in accordance with the required requirements of law. Providing for severability and providing for an effective date. So this is your correct legislative item. This is a, an adoption hearing, under your state statutes, that if you, approve this and go forward after staff talks to you about it, that needs to be transmitted to the state within ten days. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Vincent will be giving the presentation, planning and zoning director. Thank you, I hope that you receive the email that I sent earlier today. So you've gotten a little bit of an advance look. And I do apologize that there were some changes thrown at you at this late date. We got a little bit blindsided on Friday of last week with the formal, report from the state that identified one additional concern or or objection, that needed to be addressed, we've since discussed the solution with, the agency and we have a viable set of changes here. So I'll just quickly run through, Florida Department of Equal Opportunity, requested changes, the planning horizon extended to 2045. So that we had a full 20 year planning horizon, so that changed the title. The data and analysis has been updated to reflect that. And at the end of the day, there's really no significant impacts to our original conclusions or outcome, they requested that the five year capital improvements schedule be adopted with the plan. So that has been added as a supplemental document to the capital improvements element. This next slide is detail is provides the detail on the objection that we only learned about on Friday. Essentially there was a new statute that went went into effect July 1st of 2024. So really nobody knows about this yet. That, does require us to address in our data and analysis. Septic to sewer conversions. And this ten year planning horizon. So, within the actual staff report, there's an attachment that provides the additional data and analysis that will be added to the data and analysis document, and then two new policies or one new policy, 1.5.3 will be added and 1.5.2 will be amended, and so I'll just read those into the record policy U, which is utilities element 1.5.2 will be amended to read as follows. Continue to evaluate funding options for implementation of septic to sewer projects outlined in the feasibility study for extended sewer service within the service area of Tarpon Springs here and adopted by reference by September 26th. The update the study to document completed projects and reevaluate the feasibility of extending sewer service to areas with more than one septic system per acre. And then we have a new policy, utilities 1.5.3, that reads continue in the Comprehensive Plan and Land Development Code to require new development and redevelopment, including site plan subdivisions, conditional uses, and changes in use to connect to the city's wastewater service as required by and pursuant to the terms of the Capital Improvements Element of this plan. So we will add those to the document. If you approve this tonight, we've already discussed this again with, fdep. And this was the guidance that we received from them. So we're we have, you know, their direction to address this. The other changes are some scrivener's errors, one mapping error that was corrected, the other agencies did not have any comments. And so, ordinance 2020 403 has been amended to reflect the reviewing agency comments. And those required changes. So with that, I'll stop and answer questions. Are there any questions for, Miss Vincent from the Commission? All right. This is the second reading. Chair will entertain a motion to oh, excuse me, are there any public comments on this item? It are there any zoom comments on this item? And we do have a raised hand and we will let them in at this time. Please. Also please unmute and you could begin speaking. Good evening. Peter lack is 514 Ashland Avenue. I just want to reiterate a little something of what I said at the last meeting with regards to this. On your definitions under 23 five, if you go to page 11 where it talks about preservation, use and recreation, open space, recreation, open space allows a lot more activity than preservation. And I'm going to reiterate that open space should be with preservation, and preservation should have some additions as far as trails, observation decks, observation towers and maybe rest areas. So that's part of when you preserve land. It's important for people to be able to get out to it. That's the problem with that 64 acres off of Carlton and just north of the West Klosterman Preserve area. It's preserved, but no one can go out and actually enjoy it. And again, just a reminder where it says recreation, open space. It says uses providing recreation facilities, sporting facilities such as parks, public recreation facilities, public beach water access, public private golf course or clubhouse, and then under definition for recreation facility, it says offering amusement, recreation, etc. such as outdoor swimming pools, skateboard parks, arenas, schools of dance, gymnastics, martial arts or athletic courts, skating rinks, batting cages, or other similar activities and establishments. So if you really want to protect open space, you need to separate it from recreation. Recreation is its own category, and open space should go with preservation and look at expanding some of the uses that can be done within preservation. Open space itself. Hopefully on the next revision we can maybe get that done. Thank you for your time. And thank you, Renee and Ali and Pat and everybody who's worked on this. I know you've put a lot of effort into it. So greatly appreciate what you've brought forward. Thank you. God bless. Thank you, back to back to the Commission for a motion. So mov. Don't we have to doesn't the chair have to say the motion at least, or the motion to approve the resolution? Yeah. Motion to approve ordinance 2024. Dash zero three. So moved second. Thank you. There's no further discussion. Roll call. Please. I just want to add that the legal advertisement requirements were met and the public hearing was called by virtue of the ordinance being published by title only in the Tampa Bay Times on June 2nd, 2024, and September 4th, 2024. Commissioner DiDonato. Yes, Commissioner. Persis Yes. Commissioner. Eisner. Yes. Vice mayor. Yes, we are now on to item 24. That's resolution 202437 authorizing increases in the golf course fees. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. Resolution of the Board of Commissioners of the City of Tarpon Springs, Florida, authorizing increases in the golf course fees and providing for an effective date hereof. Thank you. And we will be having, Mr. Howard with, the golf course as well as Mr. Kiger, public services director. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thomas Kiger, public services director. And, we'll try and keep this relatively quick, we are proposing today a resolution updating some of the rates and policies for Golf course, for the city municipal golf course, it's been two years since we brought this back, we've been continuing to evaluate our. You know, course conditions, play, try and set the course up for good financial future, and also continue to evaluate our long term costs and things like that. And the goals overall for this effort were to a, ensure the long term financial stability of the golf course and allow it to self-fund its future capital improvements, and also, we did have a pretty heavy focus on maintaining affordability. So, although this is a, you know, every two years update on the rates we did have some elements in there focusing on availability that we want to run by you, one thing that we did want to put out there early is that, you know, unfortunately nothing gets cheaper really in life nowadays. But Tarpon Springs is continuing to continue to have a very, good value for golf, we've had a really good couple of years. We're averaging over 65,000 rounds. And I do want to really acknowledge Howard Hunt, our golf course manager for the exceptional job he's done. We've had the three best years on record. And, you have to make hay while the sun shines. So we're taking this as an opportunity. We're having a golf boom, and we're getting in. We're out of debt for the first time in a long time, and this is an opportunity for us to continue to ensure the financial health of the course. Long term. Maybe, as you know, we get through a few more golf cycles up and down and also to reinvest in the course. So here we've got a quick rate comparison for you, showing the proposed summer rates compared to nearby, golf courses. And you can see here we've got the morning, midday, afternoon twilight rates. And you can see that even after we have these updates, Tarpon Springs is going to continue to have some of the lowest rack rates in the area, including comparisons to nearby municipal courses like mangrove Bay, which is owned by Saint Pete, Rocky Point, which is owned by the Tampa Sports Authority, which is essentially the city of Tampa. Course, and Rodriguez, which is managed by Foundation but owned by the city of Clearwater. And then you've also got some of the private courses there. So this is going to continue to be very good value. And provide opportunities for affordable golf, here's a quick summary of some of the, the rate updates from current, we are simplifying things a little bit, but we also had a few things in there that we wanted to highlight, particularly for the public to focus on affordability. So, we're going to be, holding the juniors rate steady. So we'll be one of the few places you can get, 18 holes as a junior to take your, your kids, for only 17 bucks, we're increasing the City of Tarpon Springs resident discount from $3 to $4. And we're also implementing a new, we league weekday rate for afternoons for, 18 holes, to provide additional opportunities for affordable league rates for community groups. And, just going back to the affordability thing, we in addition, there's always rates, but this is an all inclusive of what we do to make golf available to the public and to our residents, you can see here there's a wide variety of policies that a course can implement to help maintain affordability for the public, like having a resident discount or a juniors rate, or a nine hole rate, or an early bird rate. And many courses are going away from this, and some are going to like winter rates year round lately with the big golf boom. But we're going to continue to maintain these. And you can see that we're one of the few courses in the area, even compared to other municipal courses like Chichis and mangrove Bay and Rocky Point that have this variety of ways to help maintain affordable golf. So what does this mean? We are going to even though we're having to go up a little bit, we are going to continue to be one of the best values in golf. So let's say you want to take your daughter golfing this Saturday, for example. Like like I might like to do, if you want to go out there and you want the premium time on a Saturday morning, it's going to be 65 bucks. You can get a tee time with one junior the city discount if you're a resident and a cart 65 bucks, you're paying just over 30 bucks a round all in for two people, twilight rate if you want something more affordable and you've got a little bit of flexibility in your schedule, you can get out there with a Twilight tee time and one junior for 41 bucks, almost 20 bucks a round, which is very good value, which, you know, you compare that to some of the other courses for equivalents. And we're still we're still very equivalent. You might occasionally find a deal out there, but, that might be a little cheaper. But we're going to continue to be consistently one of the most accessible golf courses around. And you know, even comparing it a little bit cheaper than going to the movies nowadays, and again, this is really an opportunity to reinvest in success. This has been, a really great three year run for the course. We've been reinvesting and we're taking the profits that the course is generating. And putting them back into the into the course. We want to continue to maintain its long term health and, and also stay up to speed with other courses. Many other courses are putting in new greens, putting in new tee boxes, reinvesting in facilities, because they have a little bit extra revenue from the post-Covid golf boom. And we need to continue to maintain pace if we want to have a good, sustainable course long term. So we've completed the tee box renovations in August 2024. You can see there's tee box 11. You can see what it looked like in the middle of the winter. And that's from just a few weeks ago after they put down all the new sod and laser leveled and expanded the tee boxes. And this will also help to ensure the revenues are in place long term to support. Hopefully the new clubhouse, which we budgeted design work for this year coming up, and with that I would entertain any questions. And first we're going to go to public comments. Are there any public comments on this item? It are there any zoom comments and there are no raised hands at this time? Thank you. Back to the Commission for any questions for staff. Commissioner Eisner, Commissioner coleus, just two quick ones, so the rate increases, maintain pace with our whatever cost increases, we anticipate, right? Yes. The purpose of the rates. We looked at that. It's really three threefold, right. One, we're making money right now at 65,000 rounds. But we need to make sure that if we want to protect the financial health, not just of the course but of the city, that we have rates in place that we can continue to maintain, make sure that we're not losing money and that we're making a good margins if we have a little bit of drop off in play, which might be expected sometime over the next ten years. We're also putting aside the money to deal with, increases in operational costs, minimum wages going up. The cart rentals were just renewed for another five year lease. That went up a little bit and we're anticipating an increase in the course management answers yes, yes, ye. And then, the next thing is, and I think you demonstrated it, that, this increase, you don't anticipate anticipate it, deterring, any rounds of play, right? No. Okay That's it. Those are my only questions. Thank yo. Yeah. My only comments is, you know how much I support the golf course. I thank Mr. Howard for all the work he's done and improving it over these last few years. I haven't even golfed there in over two years. It feels like. And so those rates and there's another thing that the residents of Tarpon Springs will receive a discount if they're a resident and they get the, whatever, the regular rate is reduced by a little bit and they can actually stay under $50. And golf is expensive. So we understand that. We got a great course, and I'm hoping to see a, a clubhouse and maybe a liquor license in the future. So, with that said, the chair will entertain a motion to approve. Resolution 2024-337 authorizing increases in the golf course fees. So moved. So moved. Or is there any further discussion? I see Commissioner Collins. No. I'm sorry. Okay. I was I'll second or second. If there is no further comments. Roll call please. Mr. DiDonato. Yes, Commissioner. Kuleana. Yes, Commissioner Eisner. Yes, mayor. Kolya. Yes, we are now going back to special consent agenda item 17, which is internal audit of Public Services Utilities Division, reverse osmosis water treatment plant report number 8-2024. And we have Mr. Pulos. Our internal auditor, good afternoon, vice mayor and commissioners, excuse me here one second, I'll be real brief so we can we can all get out of here tonight. There wasn't any any, really any major findings I did, I presented, or I put on the agenda rather, audit number zero eight 2024, audit of the, reverse osmosis water treatment plant, part of the utilities department. The reason I chose the plan of all the of all the sub departments in the, in the utility department, was because of the cost of the plant. It was the largest, largest project the city's, the city has ever involved in is $45 million project, also, it's arguably the most important thing the city does is, is produce, produce water, and it's a highly regulated industry. So taking taking all that into account, I decided to look at that. And the other the other parts of utilities will be audited, you know, down the road as, as as, you know, the, you know, over time, you can't you can't look at you can't look at the entire utilities department, all in all, in one shot, so with that being said, I'll just go over the two findings, I looked at, blanket purchase orders from financial perspective, and I'll just I'll read the finding to you. The plant does not have written policies or procedures in place to manage blanket purchase orders, although it does have well-established practices in place that appear to be working well, which which is which is true. They they have a really good process for handling, blanket purchase orders or bpos. Usually that's something I always look at because those are those are high risk, high risk? Bpos. Or high risk for errors if too many people are, are expensing against them, or if they're not being monitored, you run the risk of, of going over. But they have a good process in place. It just there was just no policy to it. It just wasn't codified. And they've already worked on that. So that's kind of moot now, the second finding this one, this one's a little a little more a little more complicated, the plant does not have an agreement with Pinellas County to provide potable water through the legacy system, which is not consistent to what is stated in the emergency response plan and other documents, the EPA requires the EPA requires all public utilities to have what they call an emergency response plan, and in that, in, in the city's plan, and you don't you don't have to have a backup water source. But the city says, well, our backup water source in case of emergency is Pinellas County. Now, you all might remember the city used to purchase water from Pinellas County through, Tampa Bay water. But then we built the plant about ten years ago, the problem is we have the there's the city maintains the plant maintains the interconnects with Pinellas County. So yes, we can physically access the water. The problem is we don't have an agreement to access that water. So it's been done, you know, informally and in our department's defense, I called around to some other municipalities that are in the same situation where they used to use Dallas County, but now they have their own auto plant specifically designated in Oldsmar. And they're kind of in a similar situation. They they use Pinellas County as their backup, but they do it informally as well, but I know the city has been working with the with the with the county to shore up shore this up and, and come up with an agreement and, Dallas County as well is meeting with all the municipalities and, and like I said, it's been done informally throughout the county. This is more of a newer phenomenon. 30 years ago, there were no plants. Everyone was buying water from Pinellas County. So now you have municipalities that are that are have built our plants and but still using the county as a backup. So I know the from what I've been told, the county is going around and they're they're shoring this up and, and, and they're going to, they're going to have more formal agreements. So, other than that, though, there was only there was only two findings. I'm not really I'll follow back up with this one. The first one, like I said, is already moot because they've already they've already they've already cured that that finding, other than that, overall, very well run department. I have to say, they're, it's, it's one of the most regulated departments I've looked at because you have, you know, the usual suspects, the EPA, the federal, state and local, agencies overseeing all public utilities. So you have the EPA, Fdep and Swiftmud, and I couldn't find any noncompliance issues at all. And they they they're subject to checklist audits, they have to provide water samples continuously, there's a lot that they have to do. And they were not one consent order or any, any anything negative over the almost ten years that, that, that the plant's been in existence. Also, I do want to say, in my career, I've as an internal auditor, you always get to see kind of behind the scenes and see how the sausage is made. And I, I've gotten to do a lot of cool things like that over my, over my career. And I have to say, the auto plant here is one of the nicest facilities I think I've, I've, I've ever been in. I mean, it is it is just well laid out. It's clean as you can imagine. I mean, you can almost eat off the floors. And the people working there are really, really serious about about about water and about about doing a good job. So it was, it was, it was, it was a breath of fresh air. It really was, and I I'd be remiss if I didn't say that because they were really transparent, really hard working folks. I really enjoyed working with them, so that's kind of kind of the, in a nutshell. You know, there's other observations, positive things, but I won't go into them tonight unless you unless you have some specific questions you'd like you'd like me to answer, are there any public comments on this item? It are there any zoom comments? And there are no raised hands at this time? Thank you. Back to the Commission for any questions or comments for Mr. Pulos. Commissioner Koulianos. Mr. Pulos, how are you? Good How are you, thank you for your thorough, your thorough audit, I think you answered one of my questions is how is staff to work with? And you said they were. Yeah Very transparent and very, cooperative. Yes, yes. I mean, every time we'd have a meeting, we'd set it for an hour. Next thing I know, three hours goes by. Yeah So. So this is a shining night for, our water department, isn't it? It is, it is, it is. I mean, we got the clean water report, now we got the very clean audit. So I just want to commend, everyone in in the department, Mr. Kiger, for leading the department. And and thank you for your thorough audit. Thank you. Perfect okay, Mr. Pulis, thank you for the audit. It's clear the findings were, you know, keep our reverse osmosis plant outstanding, in which everything you mentioned, we got great staff over there. I appreciate this report. And, just just thank you for what you do, there are no further. Commissioner comments. The chair will entertain a motion to approve, consent agenda item 17. Internal audit of public services utilities division, reverse osmosis water treatment plant, report number eight. Dash 2024. So moved. Second, there are no further commissioner comments. Roll call please. Commissioner DiDonato. Yes, Commissioner. Koulianos. Yes. Commissioner. Eisner. Yes. Vice mayor. Coleus. Yes Now. Agenda item 18 fiscal year 2025 internal audit plan. And we have Mr. Billy Pulos, internal auditor for the presentation. I thank you, Vice Mayor, I just have in front of you the fy 25 internal audit plan for approval. Which is three audits. One is a carryover from from this year at Public Works Sanitation Audit, which I'm currently working on now, the next one is public services golf course and procurement services, there's one, one thing I want to note, in FY 21, for FY 22, I did a citywide risk assessment is one of the first things I did when I, when I got here and some and that's what kind of feeds the audit plan. I basically ranked all the departments and then I just every year I go down the list and every time this year, every time about this time, every year, I think, well, should I do another risk assessment because risk assessments take a long time to do them properly. They think about as much time as an audit. And, I like to do them properly and, and interview all the directors, board members, everyone I can to get a, get a true sense of where the risks are in the city. So, I've been just kind of going down that list, and some audit shops will do one every year. Some will do them every two years. It all really depends how big the audit shop is. And the risk profile of the of the of the organization that you work in. And the risk profile here is pretty steady like in most cities and counties and local and state governments really doesn't change too too much, so what I wanted to say was I plan on doing unless you all want me to do one before then, do a risk assessment every five years, rather than every two or 3 or 4 years, that way I think the city is getting more bang for their buck. I think you'd probably, I imagine you'd rather have me doing audits than risk assessments because, you know, risk assessment, at the end of the day, they're nice to have and they're important, but they're still planning documents. So it's either fish or cut bait. And I'd rather I'd rather fish. So, I just I wanted to I wanted I wanted that to be clear in case, you know, you're wondering why I haven't done another risk assessment, but just so I can focus more on actually doing the audits rather than, you know, planning to do an audit? Sure, we're now going to go to public comments. Are there any public comments on this item? It are there any zoom comments and there are no raised hands at this time. Back to the commission for questions for Mr. Pulos seeing none, I have a couple comments. I want to thank you, Mr. Pulos. We talked about the last year you brought up the fiscal or the audit plan, and you had all the different, departments that were listed in priority. We actually bumped one up. I believe it's something I had mentioned in the streets. Yeah, I would think that we still have that list. Keep keep that as your prioritization and keep, assessing or auditing every different department that you have in that list already. And then at some point we'll have that risk assessment here in the next several years. So yep. That's, that's that's exactly what I'm doing. Yep. Absolutely perfect. Perfect. So, there are no comments. The chair will entertain a motion to approve agenda item 18 fiscal year 2025 internal audit plan. So moved. If there are no further comments or discussion, Miss Jacobs roll call, please. Commissioner Donato. Yes, Commissioner. Persis Yes. Commissioner. Eisner. Yes. Vice mayor. Cooljazz Yes. Thank you. Commissioners. Good evening. Thank you. We are going to agenda item 19 now. Public services, job descriptions, updates. And we have Mr. Kiger, public services director. Thank you, Thomas Kiger, public services director, we have, one more item for you tonight, we're proposing a minor changes to the job descriptions in the public. Certain job descriptions. And the public services department focused around the water conveyance staff. That's the folks that service the water pipes and the sewer pipes out throughout the city, as I mentioned earlier tonight, there's sort of three main challenges facing utilities, infrastructure, emerging regulations and, and, you know, sustainable workforce. And that's what this last this is about the sustainable workforce. So, we've evaluated our job descriptions. We're going to be making some minor changes to licensure and, job requirements, educational requirements, this is largely matching what we've been finding in the field and what we've been successful with, with recruiting, one thing we are noting is that we're removing references to, higher education requirements for the vocational skilled labor work for our essential workers in water conveyance, that's been problematic from an internet recruiting standpoint. And we want to make sure that we're creating more opportunities for growth and also targeting folks who might not be college bound and create some more opportunities for young folks to move into a good career in utilities and skilled labor here, in the in the city. And with that, I'll entertain any questions. Thank you, we're now going to go to public comments. Are there any public comments on this item? It are there any zoom comments online and there are no raised hands at this time. All right. Back to the commission to entertain a motion, the chair will entertain. The chair will entertain a motion to approve item 19, public services, job description updates. So move. Second. There are no further discussion, Miss Jacobs roll call, please. Mr. Donato. Yes Commissioner. Collins. Yes. Commissioner Eisner. Yes mayor. Coleus. Yes Item 20 is appointment to firefighters, pension board. And so, looking at this, we're going to we'll go and ask each commissioner who they appoint. If I believe there's two candidates. Yep. Commissioner Eisner, who would you consider appointing James Baldwin? Okay. Commissioner Koulianos, who would you consider appointing? Commissioner? Yes, Commissioner DiDonato, who would you consider appointing? Yes. I agree with the staff recommendation. Okay. There was no staff recommendation. Well, I mean, I see what you're saying. Okay? He's agreeing with what I said. Okay I'm going to support James Bolden. I did like his, pension experience as well as boards being on. And so, I'm going to consider him and it's his only interest. So it seems very eager to be part of it. Commissioner Koulianos, I concur, James Bolin okay, the unanimous. All right, then the chair will entertain a motion to appoint James Bolden to fill the vacancy on the fire pension board. This term will expire September 30th, 2026. So moved second. Okay, if there's no further discussion, roll call, please. Commissioner Donato. Yes Commissioner. Koulianos. Yes. Commissioner. Eisner. Yes, vice mayor. Yes, yes. Item 21. And final agenda item for the regular session. Meeting tonight is reappointment to Sustainability Committee. And I believe we only have one individual. Yeah, it's just a renewal. Yep. So with that said. Oh, are there any public comments on this item? Are there any zoom comments online and no raised hands at this time? Thank you. The chair will make a motion to reappoint Denise Menino to a one year term. This term would expire September 30th, 2025, so moved second. Okay, if there's no further comments, roll call please. Mr. Donato. Yes, Mr. Giuliani's. Yes. Commissioner Eisner, yes, vice mayor coleus. Yes This now concludes the regular session agenda. We are going to, staff and board comments. Staff, police chief young. No comment, sir. Okay. City attorney. No, sir. No comments. City manager. No. See you all tomorrow night. City clerk no comments. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner Eisner. Yes, I have something I wanted to say. Again, there was a comment made on the 20th, and I was, went away on the 21st, so I really didn't have a chance to respond or pull anything. Excuse me, but, Commissioner Koulianos had said that there was, get his exact wording, but I think it was comments have consequences. And he made the comment on the, he made it sound like I made a comment. And then we got hit with a lawsuit and we did not. What happened was, as I did pull the records, there was an interrogation made of Billy Poulos at the time, and Billy Poulos got a record request. I got a record request, and the mayor got a record request. So I'm thrilled that he feels it was all my fault. But any record request that comes into this board or into this city is not Mike Eisner's fault. But when you make a comment like that, I also know that there was a situation where we went for a past city manager and there, the city manager was attacked and he was attacked by Mr. Koulianos. And we did all get a, a record request. All of us. And I sent an apology and my words were this. My apologies for a disturbing night. I got back from John League. Did Commissioner Eisner, thank you for your email and your honesty on the dais. I can't say the same, but some of your fellow commissioners, the commissioner to your right, which was Commissioner Koulianos, was not truthful and defamed my character. His characterization of our interview conversation is very different than mine, to the point of outright lies. I've spent the majority of my life in public service, included 21 years in the Navy, over six years as a local accounting firm, auditing governments, and eight years at City of Sarasota. Your colleague conveniently left that service out of his 2.6 year calculation. I pride myself on being committed to the Navy principles of honor, courage and commitment. Integrity is my number one value. Tonight's belittling of my dedicated public service of almost 45 years is truly a low point in an otherwise exemplary career, and it reflects very poorly on your city. Deciding to uproot my family at the point in time and move to Tarpon Springs was not an easy decision, and one that I did not make lightly. I did countless hours of research and due diligence, only to be disparaged for wanting to be part of Tarpon Springs community and contribute to the betterment of your beautiful city. The commission opened up the position, invited me into the community to interview, and then proceed to publicly disparage me. We all know that public service is not for the faint of heart, but we do it because we're dedicated public servants. I wish you the best of luck in your future, city manager search. So my comment I would like to make is when a comment is made, you should have some facts behind it that it was something that I said. This here is something that Commissioner Kullens did say and we did get a public record request right after that. This is from Michelle Manousos. Please see the request below from Mr. John Ledge. I've requested emails from the city's database. This morning, but if you have any items listed that's not been forwarded to the city yet, please send me, to my attention. And it was all sent to Mayor Vatikiotis. Vice mayor Lunt, Commissioner. Eisner. Commissioner. Coleus. Commissioner Koulianos, and city manager licorice. So what I would appreciate is when a comment is made or a, a record request that I don't get my name pinned to it just because somebody has an opinion that I said something here. It was not just an opinion here. It was a ridicule of a guy who came here. And he should have it should have been answered as you're just not a fit for Tarpon Springs and the story instead I we all sat here, we all watched it. And what he's accusing me of on the 20th is exactly what he's guilty of. So I just don't appreciate comments that are made, loose lips, and I don't want to precipitate this. I don't want to do battle with John. I don't want to do battle with you. I don't want to do battle with anyone. But what I will do is nobody's going to say something that will put words in my mouth that I didn't say, anything that I say, I back, and I've been here on integrity and honesty, and that's what I'm going to continue. So if he has something that proves what I said caused it, I'm happy to hear it. This proved that what he said caused it. That's the end of my story. Okay, Commissioner Giuliani's comment. So, you know, I really wasn't going to talk about this, but. You know, Commissioner Eisner, once again goes in in a direction. So, the attorney fees, you mentioned the attorney fees. The attorney fees. Were given to me straight by Mr. Herring. My question to him is, how much have we spent on attorney fees or to law firms in the fiscal year? I didn't ask about litigation. I talked abou, attorney fees, and he gave me those numbers. So those were straight from him. You know, the John Legg thing, if you think that whole situation was well handled and I take I, I differ with you, that whole week was a, something I don't think we wanted to relive. And as a matter of fact, the you at the next, we had a small meeting thereafter, which you were. I guess you're frustration. And you tried to take it out on the city manager by, making a motion to, take away his cost of living increase. Okay, you did say you did say that some that you were told, that someone that, the former employee, which I'm not going to keep. I'm not going to say his name. The former employee must have paid somebody off to work from home. Who would he have paid off to? Work from home? The only person he would have paid off to work from home was the city manager. Do you besmirched the city manager as well? At the last. The shade meeting that we had, we are now going to we had after the shade meeting, we had a public, portion which we are now agreeing to have to pay $110,000 in, fees and costs, I, I can tell you that I had nothing to do with the fees and costs because I wasn't even sitting on the board when this all this issue came up. It was you. It was you. So now. So that 110,000, whether it gets paid in the this fiscal year or next fiscal year, it's you. Okay. So it's just the way it goes. A shade meeting. Now, I'm not talking about the shade meeting. I'm talking about after the meeting, we voted for $110,000 and okay, you know why? You know why we're paying the 110,000. So, we're going to, you know, this. You you, this whole, this whole two and a half years of, you picking and creating these issues, I, you know, I even said that the last at the last meeting that I didn't think you were a bad person because you were going on your little pity party about. Oh, well, you guys don't want me to be here, so I may not go back to this committee that you decided, that you were going to go back to. Okay. And I said it, and I meant it, and I I've always said, I think you're somebody that if I was stuck in Lakeland or something and I called, I think you're one of the kind of guys that would get in the car and come and help somebody. I know you are that way, but when you talk about loose lips, come on, buddy. So, I didn't want to go there, but you insisted on going down this memory lane, I think your the memories for you are going to be a lot tougher than than mine. So. And by the way, I am proud that I stood up for Mark licorice. This is, as a matter of fact, this is going to be his last. I guess his last official board of commissioner meeting of a regular session. Right Well, regular session. This is his last regular session. And I am proud that I've stood up for him, and didn't allow, and with my, my partner, Commissioner Coleus that we stood up for him when you guys were hell bent on getting him out to score whatever points you needed to score with whoever you were going to make favor with. But I'm proud to have served with you the time that I have. I always wished I could even serve more with you. It's been my honor. I think you are. You know, when you talk about who puts up with stuff two and a half years, this guy has put up with, a board that has been less than gracious to him. Okay, so I am again, thank you for the time we've spent together, I think you're one of the finest people that I've ever had the opportunity to work with. And you're a, you know, one of the criticisms you all along was, oh, he doesn't have a degree in this, and he didn't have a degree in that. But you're one of the most professional people I've ever worked with. And, it's been my honor, and I and I, I would go fight for him again. A thousand times. Okay There you go. Thank you, can I have a motion to extend the meeting to 11:10 p.m? Just in case. So, moved. Okay, Commissioner Donat, please. All right, I'll second it. But, you know, I don't want to know. All right? There's no further comments. Roll call. Please Yes. Yes yes, yes, we have to do that. Parking lot. Yes. Commissioner Donato, do you have any board comments, want to come back at him? Yes I do, I would echo the statements that Commissioner Koulianos made about, our city manager, I think I've had the privilege of knowing him probably longer than any anyone up here, I remember when he was running around playing left field for the softball team. I played on, I have a lot of respect for him. He's never been any anything but straightforward and honest to me. If he thought I was making a decision, he didn't think it was right. He would tell me. And he would also tell me if he thought I was doing the right thing, quite frankly, I respect that. Just overwhelmingly. And, I'm sad to see him go as well, certainly will fight for your integrity. I don't know very many people that could have kept a smile on their face. As long as you have the last couple of years, I commend you, sir. And I thank you for allowing me to serve with you. Thank you. Thank you. I want to go over first. Just the appeal. I was just hoping we could get that put behind us and not have that issue arise again. I know we have to handle the business of the day for the city of Tarpon Springs. And, you know, we have precedents that we want to be careful. We don't set, I just, you know, want to get businesses and business owners and property owners, try to get them their, their, their things and move forward as a community. But we definitely don't want to destroy the historical perspective of our community. But remember, we the people, we the culture, the heritage is what is what really make it, as far as, happy to see certain traditions come back, like the bonfire for homecoming week. The, it was a nice, magical weekend for them, for the kids as well as this week is rivalry week for East Lake High School. And, right now we're undefeated, going against them. But they're not. They're going to give up. They're going to give a good fight. So the game will be at East Lake High School, as far as for the appointment for October 1st, I'm hoping this board does consider me to fill out the term until March. I'm hoping that you all can see that I've been able to run the meetings, handle some of the bulk material, and potentially be a ceremonial figure till March. And so we'll just let you guys, think about it. We do have a few more weeks. And, Miss Jacobs, do we have any applicants right now for either the mayor or commission seats? I can't hear you, as of today at 5:00 pm, we have four applicants that have turned in their applications. Can you identify them, sure. We received. Do you want to know for what positions or just both? Please Yes, we received, one from, former commissioner Banther for mayor or commissioner. We received an application from former Mayor Chris Alahouzos for mayor position only. We have received an application from a Vasily commander for just commissioner and I believe the last person's name I want to say was Michael Dixon. I can't remember the first name, but just for Commissioner, who was the third person you stated the third person was a Vasily. Commanders They were a former commissioner. No, no, no, for the position, for the latter. Sorry, just for the position of commissioner, as far as, mayor Alahouzos issues with being out of, you know, the country, is that stuff been looked at or resolved at all or. I think we better get a memo to y'all about that, probably tomorrow or the next day. Okay. That's why I knew that would have been a concern. Okay An issue. So okay. So with that said, I'm hoping I do have that consideration from this board. Please consider it as, as far a, the city manager, Mark, Mark and I have known, you know, I had a lot of differences with a lot of people in this community. And, you know, when you're frustrated, you're frustrated. And so, you know, I took it upon myself to try to make my voice heard. But I'm telling you, Mark can't even agree. I don't think we even had one argument since we, you know, since we started working together, there's a mutual respect for one another, you know, it is bittersweet because man does know this town and has been there on certain issues that, look out for this community is there to look out for everyone. So I understand we do have some changes, you know, that the first time that city manager search went around, I. I don't want to speak on that too much. All I know is I feel a lot more comfortable with where we're heading into now, with the situation. We got the city manager on board for a few more months, works in any capacity we need. We have Paul Smith. That's going to be around for a few more months after that. Who knows what the you know, the future holds, but there are some leadership for the new city manager, we're going to come in and let them do their thing with the agenda items. Hopefully we don't have any too too much of crazy policies to help a smooth transition and get the individual in, we do have the October 1st swearing in, and so, I don't know what the agenda is going to be like on that on that meeting, but Mark and I have gotten along very well. I respect him a lot. He knows it, and so it's been a blessing and an honor to serve with him. And it's, it's, you know, I am a testament of people can, you know, you can have perceptions about people and whatnot. And when you get to work with people, man, you really, you know, you can really see things from a different perspective. And know that we're all working together for this community. So I thank you, Mr. Lucas, for everything. And I'm going to let Commissioner Eisner get his final comments in. And then we're going to adjourn the meeting right after. Because we have the CRA meeting, we have to start. Go ahead. Sir just in response, the comment that was made about my comment to Mark licorice, Mark and I get along very well and that we had a situation and it was a meaningless 5% increase. It was just a slap on the wrist. It was not a big deal, but I made sure that he knew that he had not told us that he was reading our emails. If you remember, and Mark and I have an agreement that we get along, we see eye to eye on almost everything. And if I have to, you know, I'm still his boss, just like you all are. And if I have to say something, I will be happy to say it. If you don't want to say it, that's your business. As far as you continuously talking about that, you're making me guilty for this, for this settlement just shows me how reckless you are with the words that come out of your mouth. All right? And there will be no further comments at this point. That concludes our regular session meeting. Meeting adjourned at 11:05 p.m. All right. No, no, we have the CRA meeting, it. Are you ready? Oka. I now call to order the special session agenda for the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Tarpon Springs on Wednesday, September 17th, 2024 at 11:05 p.m. City clerk roll call, please. Vice chair. Yes, Commissioner Eisner. Yes, Mr. Collins? Yes, Commissioner DiDonato here. Yes. Okay. Agenda item one. Approval of parking license agreement with Truist Bank. And we'll have, City manager. Yes, this is a great bucket list item because we have been working on this for a long time. Karen Lemons, Mr. Saltzman, six months, maybe eight, a long time working on this agreement, what had happened was there was someone who fell in the lot during an event, the bank got a lawsuit, so they were going to immediately shut off that parking lot from from after hours and weekends parking. As all of you know, probably more than the two lots we've got that is the most important lot for our businesses. You know, they walk across for ice cream. You know, it is an important lot to lose that to either a pay situation, and we have been dealing with a long time with the bank. They've been talking about going to pay thing into the bank, but we finally got an agreement and it's a good agreement comparable to what we pay for the other parking lots to secure that lot for the city. And insure them for that time, for after hours and weekend uses, and we're very happy on this last record that I'm able to bring that to you, because it's been a long, hard battle to get this and not lose this essential lot for the downtown. So bring forward is a consistent agreement with the price. So So, please approve that and we'll secure probably be at least go into effect October 1st. We still have to secure the insurance if you approve it. So we imagine this is the lease that will start October 1st, 2024 with your approval tonight. Okay, are there any public comments on this item? It are there any zoom comments online? There are no raised hands at this time. Thank you. The chair will entertain a motion to approve agenda item one approval of parking license agreement with Truist Bank. So move. Second. Commissioner Eisner, you have your light on. Yes, please. Is this, parking agreement for 24, over seven, seven days a week, or is this just on first Friday? After all, all times 24 over seven, not 24 over seven. There's no overnight parking lot into the lot, but it's for all after hours besides overnight parking. All weekends for all events, all days for you to go to currents, go to ice cream shop, walk downtown is all the time, not just for special events. So you removed my job of sitting there for eight hours in the hot sun. I took that job from you. Yes, I'm just kidding. Go ahead. Okay. If there are no further comments, roll call please. Mr. DiDonato. Yes, Commissioner. Collins. Yes, Commissioner Eisner. Yes Vice chair. Coleus. Yes. This concludes the special session agenda. We are going to staff comments. Police chief. No comments. City attorney, no comment. City manager. No to make the 1110. City clerk. No comment. Board comments. Commissioner Eisner, no. Commissioner Collins. Commissioner DiDonato. No comments for myself. That concludes a special session. Meeting. Meeting adjourned at 11:09 p.m. I made it before 1110. Thank you.