metropolitan transportation planning organization for december 16th at one o'clock to order and i would like very much do we have a roll roll call everyone i think everyone is here no no anything close who what do you mean not even from the city that's right we don't have a lot i just was looking at the empty chairs and madam chair um mrs certain is not going to attend today um all right do we have enough people that we can do you have do you have here yes do you have the number if you do you have the names there in front of you i'm looking for him from me and quickly to call everybody's name okay um i do not any agenda at this time can you do sure yeah that's fine that's enough if you could call him out that would be helpful yes here here here here here here here here she went to get a drink i don't think linda's gonna i don't think they've assigned a new person that i know of linda's gonna linda's gonna keep doing it okay great okay all right thank you i'm sure i move approval of the agenda all right thank you i would have a move a motion to approve in a second um do you all have those names that okay the second you have the second presia second thank you okay uh any questions concerns i think we were going to move the agenda item of election of officers second and start the interviews first i'll modify my motion to move on the agenda that to uh election of officers yes thank you the secondaries all right thank you all right any further concerns questions from the audience all in favor say aye aye like sign opposed all right that motion passes unanimously we have an agenda ready to go and um approval of the minutes if you had a chance to look at those minutes guys we need to get that done too all right then thank you very much so we are ready for action items which we are going to invite mr jim denneen is that right that's right all right we want to introduce mr denneen hi jim if you can hear us um you can go ahead and unmute yourself and introduce yourself and the process good afternoon board how are you good afternoon and welcome thank you uh um i'm jim denneen with mgt i work for them after i'll leave in the public sector after 45 years of handling just about every job you can conceive of um one second please we have a technical issue i thought i was turning up the volume on him because i can't hear him but is there any way to see jim or is he are we on a zoom jim can we see you they can see you guys i put my picture through okay if you it'd be kind of nice to see your face your voice is very yeah i can i can i can see you guys and i can see my own face in the camera which means something's not picking up on your camera on our end all right well um josh if you can hear if you might be able to turn up the volume for mr denneen no if you can open the zoom so we can and then we could i don't think oh that's not gonna work okay all right mr denneen we won't delay you anymore we just are trying to get the volume up so we can hear you big and loud well no problem but i got all dressed up for nothing now now come on i'm wearing a nice shirt tie and everything all right here we go um hey thanks for the opportunity with i'm with mgt to help you uh fill this really important position um for the mtpo um we're excited to get the job uh i feel like my bart and my firm believes i have a lot of experience to try and find you somebody uh this can be a difficult job to fill um we started work on the recruitment actually september 11th is when we started uh we went through all the details worked that got the brochure done got all the job announcements done and posted the job from october 20th through november 14th now during that period of time and at this point i have to tell you one of your board members called me just to see a little bit of background on the process so what i'm going to explain to you now is exactly what i told him and which all he wanted to know is you know kind of what we used in this process how we got there so that i'm going to explain to you what i explained to him which is um we received we put very tough criteria you i know you've had a problem in the past skin people but you really want to make sure it's not just a person it has to be the right person uh can you see me now now i can yes sir i don't see you guys and you do i don't see you guys now what and you look very nice we we appreciate oh oh i don't okay you you see me now i can i i can't see you okay can you can you still see me yes sir we can or not okay i don't know why i can't see you guys i lost your picture um all right where was i okay uh we received uh nine resumes part of that is sometimes we get a bigger pool but in your case what we did was we're very specific to get somebody with the right qualifications because there's innocence trying to bring somebody down to find out this isn't going to work uh we looked at you how to have all the specific skills that you're going to need to do this job which is the real easy stuff to find out the education they have the background the experience that that's a little bit easier but but try to understand the larger scope for example do they understand the difference between urban and rural planning especially now that they're going county-wide uh how much experience they have with capital projects they really got to understand uh not a passing instance interest but they have to really understand the subject they have to have worked with federal state agencies know how to get grants they also have to work in and also municipalities but they have to understand the relationship because without all those partners you don't go anywhere it's hard to get any done and it's hard to get any money to do the job you need to do um they have to know how to work with every kind of department whether it's streets a waste collection parks uh that's really important here's another big thing especially with gainesville being there you're very multi uh multimodal in fact one of my candidates talked about micro multimodal which uh which is really interesting comment her hadn't heard before which has to do with all types of transportation and like my one son actually rides a one wheel i mean there's so many different types of transportation that you have to understand all that big part of this job you got to understand how to communicate and that you're gonna have to work with the board you gotta you gotta make the board feel comfortable you gotta be able to explain things in terms that people can understand them bring new board members up to speed um you have to be able to work with people that have different views and different perspectives on some of the outlying counties uh in terms of what their needs are uh you gotta be able to get input from citizen groups and you gotta be able to make them feel like they're at the table you gotta be able to talk to engineers you gotta be able to talk to subcontractors you gotta know what you're talking about um the big thing that i think that we do that a lot of a lot of eight well there aren't as many of us that do this work anymore but one of the things we're kind of a holder where we believe in a whole personal contact in terms of how we talk to our candidate one-on-one one of our big claims of fame is if you can't if the client if the candidate doesn't meets the client's needs in terms of cultural fit and chemistry i don't care how good it is it never lasts so that's another big issue myself i have had an advantage in doing all these other jobs and i work with a lot of other recruiters but at one time for quite a few years i was also the director of the salt waste district with 22 different members throughout the whole the whole county so understanding how to work for a board that large i have a kind of a new unique perspective on that now we got the nine candidates of the nine candidates i had four of the of the eight i'll pull well four of the seven held two to the side four of them that were better qualified than the other three we got the subcommittee together and that was on let's see it was on the 20th i believe and we reviewed the candidates okay and of the candidates that we had that were the best qualified or better qualified of the seven the board or the subcommittee decided to forward four of them through for your consideration um during that since that period we've had two people drop out and for different reasons uh one who was a very good fit you know it's like here's what happens if you wait long enough and also they their employer finds out they're leaving that they've had opportunities sometimes that people give them a better job where they're at so we lost two candidates so that brought us down to two uh during this time it came to my attention through another source that of the nine people uh two of them i discounted uh one run didn't meet the criteria one of them was i thought had had the potential but there were so many holes in the resume that didn't it didn't lead me to believe that they had as much experience as some of the other people well i was led to believe this person may have better experience than their resume uh indicates unfortunately that's not common thing all the time but i do run across it every once in a while so i took it upon myself to interview this candidate and because that's all i hadn't done before he was a candidate of interest and i interviewed him he came across extremely well and it's a i think a case of where his resume doesn't do him any justice i talked to him about that he really does need to change it because he has a lot more experience because when i looked all the years he had and where he was at he has a lot of experience and um and so i brought that back to the subcommittee's attention and asked them to reconsider looking at this can't this uh potential candidate to bring him forward to the board because i definitely think he would have been in the better qualified uh they all agreed and uh i like i said interviewed him december 11th subcommittee took a look at the criteria looked at my recommendation he also was now put in your list so uh we are because at the end there we had one more person drop out so we actually end up now with two um let's see here's the criteria these people got evaluated on so these two people you're gonna you're gonna talk to they're both very qualified candidates mr denise yes are you available for a question right now yes and hey i can see you now could i get anyone who wants to speak please pull whatever nearest microphone um close to them thank you very much ken cornell can you hear me yes um so just to to verify what you just said you you of the four you got it down to two you then re-interviewed one of the two that was not on the short list and put them right to the subcommittee who at the subcommittee did you meet with um alison i have to tell you was alison heather alison you'd have to tell them where the rest were um madam chair it was the screening committee that comprised um miss heather akpan jeff hayes jesus gomez and myself alison the screening committee i'm sorry not the subcommittee okay we we are meeting all these candidates on the subcommittee at the same time that everyone else is we didn't really have any thank you no i'm sorry okay i used the wrong term sorry that's okay so jim so jim then you said um that the screening committee uh identified two of the four but then you re-interviewed the one and that brought it to three or were there only two it was going to be three and then the day before the the the had this interview i had another person drop out okay so then so you had three and then you had another dropout so that led us down to the two that we have today and of the one that you um re-interviewed is that mr pedron or miss whitfield and ron okay thank you thank you madam chair thank you i would like to add i can say unequivocally the two candidates you have okay because i would never suggest somebody that i do not believe can do the job you have two people that are very qualified to do this job this job is not an easy job to fill you're requiring a lot it and knowing what i know it's going to take a lot for somebody with the right chemistry the right overall view the understanding of of how this all works to make this make you happy um and i do think there are there are there are challenges in today's society florida was easier to get people at one time to move to uh house prices insurance and all that's changed political climate's changed unfortunately the state's getting to be known for uh disposable public managers because we've seen what some cities are doing letting people go right and left that it's getting harder to recruit people also you're at the lower lower end of uh really a starting salary for this job so all those things being considered you're down to two people that absolutely have the qualifications and the knowledge and the background to be able to do this job now and i also think both of them have good chemistry uh good uh under cultural understanding and good really good fit nothing supplants the in-person interviews you're going to do because this is your opportunity to ask those piece of people questions i always recommend to when you interview people that you sequester each one while you're not talking to them and re-sequester them after you interviewed them because one of the things that comes up and sometimes uh interviewing committees don't realize this after you've interviewed people sometimes either they're close or even if they're not close a lot of times people want to call pack people back to maybe for a question they hadn't asked or something that came up in the interviews they want to ask and if you've sequestered them they haven't heard each other it's easy to bring somebody back and qualify or quantify a question or clarify it all right the criteria though i looked at for example on all the candidates and especially these two was they had the degrees both got bas both got masters um the whole idea of a university town which is important you know pedron they're both good good plus but tread rooms off the chart i mean he went to school at uf he really has and was a founding member of this whole bicycle committee they have um directing a new agency i thought both candidates are great complete completing the uh 20-year plan they both understood he had done a lot of research on it and i think had a real good feel uh communicating with the board giving them updates being able to keep them informed i think both candidates are very good uh let's see understanding developing service contracts and understanding them i think they're both very good uh directing staff i think they'll both be good at that managing a budget both very good very good a lot of budget skills uh getting public input this is part of the whole cultural thing and and chemistry very very good i think uh doing presentations which is going to be key this job both of them are very good uh understanding the tech side of these issues both of them are good i think they have a good handle on that understanding the county-wide focus both of these candidates jumped out and really have a sensitivity for that overall project management very good chemistry i think is very good in both cases and uh the salary they're both good on they have no baggage which is somewhat unusual in today's world um and i know that both candidates i feel very comfortable they're far from the job uh should take the job and be very happy they're both very interested in the job and like i said they know that they both agree that the salary is is acceptable okay any questions from i have to take any other questions yes okay commissioner cornell thank you madam chair jim um one question you just kind of breeze through at the very very end um if depending on how this goes today if offered the job um do you anticipate that either one would not take the job no not at all okay thank you okay any other questions from the board okay commissioner book yeah thank you mr denine ed book uh the salary that was listed by the two candidates one listed 140 000 and one listed 150 000 on their application i just wonder if there's any discrepancy or could clear that up i think that sometimes they fill that format before they completely talk to me and um i verify that both of them in writing that they on my notes that they're absolutely 140 is the salary i will tell you that both candidates which i think is an expectation at this level are expecting that there would be some negotiations about things like vacation sick leave you know anything like that that can also enhance uh with their compensation thank you thank you so they but they both agreed to 140 and i told them there wouldn't be any negotiations on that okay anything anything else from this board and what did we are we we ready now okay heather thank you does everyone have their questions oh let me introduce myself heather assistant county manager does anyone have their questions okay send those around we we emailed them to you but that's no problem we brought you copies so there are 13 behavioral based questions which you all chose the last time um i suggest a round robin or pick which one you have a lot of passion around asking um put your name by it so you know it's you again the guidelines are you ask all the candidates those questions now again if there are when looking at the resume or something they say in the interview sparks another question that's specific to them that's fine okay but if you're going to ask a general question that's not on there like what is your vision for alachua county in 2027 then you do need to ask them both that because that's a general question so behavioral based questions yes if something is sparked by some of their responses or their application or resume that's fine also we have it scheduled for an hour and you can set it up any way you like if you want to you know throw in those questions you all can decide that does everyone have their packet okay number one is a nook so we have that as candidate one but the new candidate michael patrone is candidate two they are both here yes commissioner thank you oh yes excuse me thank you ma'am chair um heather uh have have the interviewees or the applicants um seen these behavior questions no they haven't okay so they're expecting a one hour open dialogue with the board yes they don't they don't know what's really going to and neither one's watching or they are no they are here but they are sequestered and i mean it is a public meeting so we can't tell them not to come in but we have encouraged them to okay not attend after the one hour then are they expecting that we will be making a decision no they're not no what is their expectation we will get back to them when you have a when you have an answer so no we did that this board's expectation that we're going to try to make a decision today is that am i am i the only one that feels that way 100 oh okay okay we aren't going to keep them here though because we don't know how long that's going to take so we are going to send them one is from out of town or both from our town we're going to send them back to wherever and then whomever you determine should be the one who negotiates with them along with someone in hr if you like then we can call them and make the offer brian and adrian and james yeah i did have a question i wanted to ask both candidates as well okay what's the question which one are you looking everybody it's one created yeah as a new designated transportation management area the mtpo is directly accountable for federal planning funds and performance-based reporting first can you describe your hands-on experience managing federal transportation funds and insurance compliance with federal requirements and then the second part secondly how have you implemented multimodal transportation priorities through capital programming or project selection and how do you measure success which number is that he's making it as a new one you're making it up i see i'm sorry and it's very good that's good well then that's good yeah yeah i guess my question is like what i'm sorry james nick didn't sorry do you have another package because i grabbed the wrong one there you go i've still got a jack butler oh well that much yeah is that right do you have any other this uh nope this this just got updated yesterday so you might still have jack in there but he's out and michael patrone is in there does everyone have the one with michael the drone yeah hi michael okay all right good if not i can certainly make copies another one i need a new one look okay i'll have someone make i'll have someone i do i i guess i i guess that i thought that we were all submitting the questions that we were interested in asking that were behavioral based but that there would also be technical questions and i don't see any technical questions on this so i guess like your quest to your point right like that's one technical question but i guess having i don't know if maybe we could start with them just giving an overview of their technical qualifications and um because i think understanding that experience is really key to this job and i know that some of these behavioral basically hopefully they would use those technical examples from this is a two-part technical question so let's keep broken up too because just one about federal funds and other ones about yeah i kind of expect to answer some of these questions in a technical way though i mean these questions could lead to how did you know how did you solve the problems strategically i think all of those could be answered in a technical yeah okay well do you want to start with his question then is that will that lead or no yeah i mean we should start with giving them an opportunity to introduce themselves and tell them why they want the job exactly no exactly we should definitely have some time for them to ask questions yeah after after we're going to get from the very end yeah then we're not going to get through 13 questions in an hour so we should probably decide which one really we'll pick you pick thank you mr mayor so fundamental question why gainesville alochua county i expect them both to be able to answer that with some degree of confidence as long as you ask it to both that should be fun yeah yeah sorry are you are you volunteering for that question i'm happy to but i don't i mean just as long as it gets asked that's all right and also do we make sure i don't mess this up but um i think there's a gap in one of their um one of the resumes here and do we know what that is 19 to 23. i do not jim my but you can ask that's about their resume on the resume you can ask you can ask that okay sure uh padrone padrone has a gap from 19 to 23 uh i mean from no he doesn't no senior program yeah that's the other one i may have misunderstood one of these yeah and if there's anything yeah that's a good point there's anything you need to clarify on it you can certainly ask the candidates if you guys want to select a question specifically that you would like to ask so that no one else jumps in with that one just go around the table yeah just go around the table just okay would you pick a pick a pick one of these pick one a question that you you could ask um commissioner flexibility number six okay that goes along with um we wanted to ask them if they took the position how long would it take for them to relocate um so that some of the okay number six okay i'll do ten okay i'll do the question i brought forward okay good all right how about you ryan you got one and you got one too like you're gonna do two okay ryan did you pick a good one no i will i i i agree i think that these are not particularly technical questions and so i guess at the reading over these i guess i'd like to ask how do you foresee how do you how do you envision the way an mtpo can and should interact with the surrounding community okay so a more specific mtpo style question all right and adrian you've got your set james do you have anything so it was three still available yep yep all right i'll take eleven you've got ten how about you commissioner did you pick one or do you have already got a question can i hear mr hey santos can you tell us your question again sure as a newly designated transportation management area the mtpo is directly accountable for federal planning funds certifications certifications performance-based reporting first can you describe your hands-on experience managing federal transportation funds and ensuring ensuring compliance with federal requirements and then there was another second part to the question but second how have you implemented multimodal transportation priorities through capital programming or project selection and how do you measure success i wanted to maybe ask specifically about state transportation departments okay so just as as simple it'll probably just be tell us your experience or that if that if that becomes too much that's why it's just a shorter question of your experience um working with state transportation okay remember if you're going to ask it please write it down so you can ask both candidates yeah i just thank you madam chair i just said one kind so adrian's there two they're good questions but it's three questions that you're actually asking there and it's we have two parts on one and one part on the second thing my only suggestion might be break them into two questions because it's a tremendous amount of information for a candidate to thing and it's probably two separate questions um and give them the opportunity to to kind of understand that question if you want to get a better answer yeah just a thought i feel the same big words anna did you have one of these or something i guess i'll do number four but i guess i would like to ask them to to focus it specifically on areas of transportation planning like their ability to do strategic planning and goal setting okay and ed you've got two mr mayor did you did you have a specific question of your own question oh that's right that's right all right all right questions are you all set are you going to ask do you prefer gainesville or o'clock county hey hey hey are you are we going to ask the other questions inside the city right i just feel like a lot of these are really important that's good they are kind of repeats it's what i have instead of smart can we reword it because of the answers to the free zones and we just change it for the next one good afternoon welcome welcome to alachua county game sales alachua county we're glad to see you here thank you it's good to be here i have a little voice you know i i don't know if we're we're city and committee uh city and county commissioners here as a gathering and we also have municipality from outside we also have a representative from the airport yes and uh so there's a wide range of folks here i don't know if it would help you to know who we are and what we do but it might might give you then you would know who your audience is i see some familiar faces i've been watching some of your past um meetings so yes smart introduce yourself and we'll go around the table very quickly my name is a notch woodfield uh easiest way to say it is take it up a notch so that's how i taught my kickboxing class is take it up a notch very nice very nice and we're going to introduce ourselves to you so you'll know who you're talking to okay brianie smith district commissioner from the city of gaysville adrian hayes santos um former city commissioner but our board authority member okay the jamesville of uh city commission and well would you all tell them too what your background is just very quickly uh just so that she knows who who we are brian and tell it you in terms of i know what your your official title is but what do you what's your background what is what do you do what are what are you interested in this community or what how have you built in this community like i'm a retired teacher so i'm a retired paralegal thanks thanks that helps i run a software company okay i'm working a commercial real estate and certified urban planner okay i'm an electrician and the president of electrician junior ken cornell serving third term county commission i'm a cpa and a real estate broker okay mary helen wheeler retired teacher chair of this mary alford uh also a county commissioner um environmental engineer casey willits uh city commissioner in gainesville and i'm a public worker and i'm a geography nerd uh and i'm president alaska county commissioner and uh educator administrator and local food nerd food and agriculture good morning ed book gainsville city commissioner and a police officer harvey ward i'm the mayor of gainesville i served two terms on the city commission prior to that and before that i was uh i spent a couple of decades in the non-profit community in gainesville okay thank you thank you okay now you have a better sense of who it is that you're talking to and we would like very much to know who you are okay so um a little bit of background about myself i am i came here to the united states when i was seven and a half years old my family and i fled the vietnam war um i'm a first generation here um happy wife and mother of two my youngest is graduating i have a gator right now um and my my youngest is graduating this year so um i graduated with my master's in urban and regional planning from the florida state university i'm not allowed to say that in front of my daughter so i have to say it here um so i graduated from florida state in 2000 and got my first planning job at jackson county um in 2000 june 2000 time frame and did that so jackson county we only had one director two planners and assistant director and we did everything so from code enforcement to policy development reviewing permits reviewing site plans doing instructions pretty much everything from soups to nuts did that for a year and change and then decided i might seek my phd at the same time my sister wanted to get married and i had to plan her wedding and do the phd and work at a new job as a senior planner for the city of tallahassee growth management department and realized i can't juggle all three so i decided the masters is high enough for me i'm good to go um spent a year and change at tallahassee's growth management department i loved it um again soups to nuts tallahassee being the the capital is separated into four quadrants the each team has a senior who is the civil engineer and we do everything residential commercial from pre-op to seal and as a senior planner i was responsible responsible for reviewing all the plans stamping them signing them going to inspections doing on-site decisions changing plans as needed presenting to the drc and things like that so i did tallahassee for a couple years and i decided you know i need to expand my growth so i went over to the state the florida department of community affairs i know for some communities that is a bad word dca dca when it had teeth i had the pleasure of working under four secretaries one of which was tom pellum who was the original author of the growth management legislation in 1975. it was a very enlightening experience and opportunity to work for mr pellum um very very strong um strong-minded man i did dca planning for seven years i started as a senior planner um going from tallahassee where it's site plans every week deadlines every week drc every week meetings constantly to go into the state where i get a meeting once a month and comp plans come in i'm going to lose my mind there's not enough to do so i started finding things for myself to do i read the statutes 163 from beginning to end um read 9j5 when that was a thing from beginning to end and then in 2003 water supply planning was coming online the pilot project for school concurrency planning was doing well so the legislation went in to do that so i um i've done water supply planning school concurrency planning a little bit of campus master planning military installation planning um so within three months i was promoted to a principal planner and um i moved from i started off in the tampa bay area hillsborough county manatee county where my counties um did that and then when i became a principal planner um i walked i moved over to the i guess the armpit of the state of florida so the east side the northeast side so walton county all the way to escambia county so all the big counties were mine walton county escambia county bay county um bay county is one of the first counties in the state that did the um sector planning um did that for a couple years and trained up new planners and then ultimately ended up and at east central florida regional planning council's geographic area which is central florida um seminal osceola and orange county all three of those counties were mine um consistently carry sixty percent of the workload there and i trained up a bunch of planners now who are chiefs and sustainability managers and like the city of tallhassee um a couple of my staff went over to georgia area um and then i decided oh my gosh i don't want to do comp planning anymore i want to do something else um it was also about that time where um we didn't really get to see and work with closely the people that we were helping to plan for um so getting out and getting approvals to travel to the jurisdictions that i was working for was like once in a birth of a smurf so it didn't happen very often and um i was reviewing i don't know how familiar you are with orange county but orange county has a very large large um area called innovation way and i was reviewing their um very large comp plan and i made a comment to the engineer who was actually the transportation engineer who was working for orange county to do their comp plan amendment and i'm like i just want to make buttons now i don't want to look at comp plans anymore i just want to push a button and i was ready to move on and i didn't know at the time that the gentleman that i was speaking to was actually one of the vice presidents um or i'm sorry the one of the principals and um so i guess the little birdie flew around and within three months i got a phone call from the one of the senior vice presidents with tinder oliver and they said we heard that you were looking so by this time um in the private sector they want people who know people and they want people who know people who know people because in the private world it's all about who you know and how many contracts you can win by getting your foot in the door so by that time i pretty much have worked with two-thirds of the state of florida from escambia county all the way south to hillsborough manatee area and um the 2011 community planning act was coming into play you know not knowing that all that was going to happen i was interested in doing something else and exploring my options and within three months i got an interview and tinder oliver recruited me to be their one of their project managers shortly after i started with tinder oliver is what was when the community planning act the 2011 version was enacted by legislation that pretty much took the fangs out of dca and some of the other agencies eliminated transportation concurrency eliminated financial feasibility requirements which was a very big thing um i still feel that that was an injustice to a lot of the small communities in the state of florida because there are big counties and big cities who can hold their own miami-dade orange county you know but palatka levy county charlotte county all those smaller counties really had to because they couldn't rely on big brother dca anymore they had to rely on the regional planning councils to do a lot of their planning and to be the ones that are the bad guys in the rooms they know your amendment doesn't make sense it's not conducive to the vision for the community you're exceeding the potential of your community to support that development via its infrastructure municipal services so that's just a sidebar i still think that 2011 legislation wasn't a good idea um and then i was in tinder oliver for about five years i've done my first job or first task with them was the district 5 fdot district 5 growth management task leader um so i kind of feel like i was wearing the white hat on the dark side so i was still you know representing a state agency and doing the good planning but i was working for a private sector so still doing community planning growth management legislation comp plan reviews looking at how projects or comp plan amendments impacted the state highway system as well as the state intermodal system and then so at that time it was still all about let's not cause roads to fail but then with the next community planning act it was in dense urban land areas and the whole wave of mobility planning i did a white paper for tinder oliver to educate district 5 counties on how to deal with that legislation that is like many other legislation unfunded so local governments have to either maintain concurrency or do mobility planning areas and then having to adopt a mobility plan and figure out on their own every jurisdiction from miami-dade to a small one figure out on their own how are you going to pay to manage infrastructure to continue to move people and goods in a way that is efficient in the long term without you know pretty much the obliterating the environment and neighborhoods so um i did a white paper on that i developed training materials for all the the dot um i set up community workshops um and d5 has like a handful of counties five counties total we went to all of the counties so that no county had to constantly drive down to orlando it doesn't seem fair to always have to drive down to orlando so we would have meetings in marion county um not marion county yes marion county all over um and then i also did corridor studies um i did some audits pedestrian safety audits but there was a a a tendency to downturn like you know whenever there's an up there's always a down and there was a down in my time with tinda oliver um my last couple years with them was mostly doing public participation um i was a my tinda oliver had acquired a company called hhi hhi mostly does um public involvement and um conservation parks and recreation development master planning for parks and recreation and my um supervisor at the time was she helped to win contracts she was always the sub with hhi that would help to win contracts for bigger transportation firms because she brought the public involvement aspect of it and i worked immediately with her directly with her on dot contracts that involved the public involvement component of it so i've written um pips public and participation plans public involvement plans um dot had at one point a very lengthy format and i thought this if i gave this document to my parents would they know what to do with it and i decided no they would not know what to do with it and i decided to write it myself so i wrote my own public involvement plan um streamed it down from about 20 something pages to about five pages with clear deadlines and clear points in the process whether you're looking at a pd and e um or you're just doing a regular corridor study uh transit corridor study whatever it is local governments but more importantly local residents um property owners knew when they would have the greatest bang for the buck as far as when they could get involved in the public involvement aspect because a lot of times people don't get involved they don't really know i don't want to say that they don't care they do care but they don't know when they should care the most because by the time they figure out what's going on the decisions have already been made the three alternatives already been prepared then now it's like oh here public involvement you get to pick the last one um but all of the legwork's already happened all of the community assessments have already happened so um then i um i was working a lot of hours in the private sector you know 60 hours is just common and my children were young and um i remember working in my den and my son and my daughter drew pictures of mommy working mommy's working my daughter had returned it was sad one day because i some of the one project i worked on as a quarter study that looked at transit from the volusia corridor from simile county all ages of volusia and a lot of the community meetings are at night i would go plan everything the night before go and put up all the signs directions getting people where they needed to go and tinder oliver likes to over promise and so dlt usually wants their report within 24 hours fine my prime wants it before them and so i would end the community meeting at eight go and collect all my signs go home sit in my den and write down all the summaries of the participation boards what people said comments that were taken down input from the stakeholders and i collapse it all summarize it and then i would go to bed at four and turn it in and after so many of those my kids were like mom i have to turn to my library book because you never have time to read with me and they were elementary school age and i decided that was enough and so i um started looking again um and i was in a it's a rack road um road advisory committee for an actual dlt project and one of the ladies that was in there represents orange county and she's like a notch are you you know we hear that you're looking again would you be interested in working for orange county i said you know that's not a bad idea i live in orange county why not work for the county that i live in so um then i became um i got on board with orange county as a senior planner um within a a month i was um yes i'm sorry i just gave you my whole dissertation okay i just heard 45 minutes of getting done but that's why no problem um and yeah the rest is i guess say history i just took opportunities to grow my profession um grow myself as a professional um but every chance i get i want to edify people and the reason why i became a planner in the first place which is to edify the public because they're the ones who i work for thank you for that thank you and thank you for watching our time because yes thank you when we started and i just realized heather didn't really remember i talk a lot especially when i'm nervous you've done a lot you've done a lot to share all right uh who wants to start with the question we've got some prepared yes we can go around the table i don't need to jump right in but since you were going in i can ask follow-up questions sorry we were briefed by hr about the variously can you please talk about your current role of the city of boko e since you um i i appreciate all the historic historical perspective but i'd like to hear kind of what your work is sure so i started with a coey as a zoning manager um so a coey small development services houses building and planning zoning and um i was a zoning manager for about a year three and a half years i recently was promoted to deputy director um i've been a deputy director for going on five months five or six months um we do everything from site plan reviews um i write the and i before i joined the city attorney which is a consulted out contract uh service they wrote the ordinances um when i came on board because in albedo i wrote all the ordinances and the ads and and everything so i it was just i just thought that that's what you're supposed to do so i write all the ordinances for complementments rezonings any legislation legislative mandates that come down um like the food trucks um tourism short-term rentals i wrote all those legislators legislative ordinances for the city um as a deputy i currently wear well in my current position i currently wear four hats because we don't have a director um and i don't have my my old self the zoning manager because that position had been reclassified to principal planner they don't want to they're still recruiting for our director um but they don't want to hire the principal as i heard in your previous meeting but until the director comes on board because they want the director to have a say in hiring the principal and then my urban designer slash city architect also took a teaching job so i'm pretty much doing the role of the deputy director who was the director and retired the my director who was not yet hired and my previous self and the urban designer so i pretty much am the only certified planner in the city right now um and i do all of the commercial reviews subdivisions i write all the codes i wrote um a little bit of backstory um we just updated our comp plan our 2045 comp plan i was the team leader for that we had terminated our consultant who was also helping us with our land development overhaul i didn't like how it was going the work that they were producing so i made a recommendation that the contract be terminated and the city manager agreed um so i'm also spearheading the update of the land development code with a staff of one planner and a concurrency coordinator and a development engineer i also do all the commercial permitting the commercial inspections for planning and i help my staff at the front counter on a daily basis question now do you want to start work there do you have one um yes ma'am flexibility how have you adjusted your style or approach when it wasn't meeting the objective objectives and or people weren't responding as needed my approach to the things weren't going according to plan or people aren't responding yes ma'am adjuster how did you adjust your style or approach when it wasn't meeting the objectives and or people weren't responding as needed um so my style is i'm very goal oriented i'm very product oriented slightly on the ocd side um once i start something i i just have to finish it um sometimes it it takes me all night but i just have to finish it um like when i was working on the comp plan update i was putting in extra 40 hours um most weeks because we had to get it done our our comp plan had already expired according to our legal team it doesn't expire but if the date says 2022 and we're now 2024 to me it's expired legally we can still enforce it but my style is i i like to do whatever needs to be done to get the project to through the finish line whether it's talking to everyone and finding out where are your weaknesses what do you need help with i tell my junior planner she's been with us a year now all the time don't sit in your cubicle by yourself struggling to figure it out you're wasting more time that way the work is not being efficiently done and i might lose you because you're you're feeling stuck so i believe in building the team and that team is my internal team as well as any stakeholder at the public who is involved in that process and i think people work better and they are more comfortable making decisions if they have as much information as possible so if to the extent that i can provide more guidance or information to help any team player or team member make a decision or work on their project i would do that yeah so on mtpo specifically how do you envision the way an mtpo can can and should work with the surrounding community and its municipalities okay um i am haven't been a planner now for 25 years i like to refer to myself as a dirt planner because i strongly strongly believe that how the ground moves impacts how people live and the ground moving by that i mean where roads are built dirt is turned where houses are built dirt is turned where trees are coming down dirt is turned where wetlands are being filled dirt is still being turned so how how we move the dirt affects immediately how people live and i i believe that the mtpo's responsibility is how do we get people safely to where they want to go within a reasonable time frame without having to sit through congestion um without having to feel unsafe but at the same time protecting our natural environment um and protecting our existing neighborhoods so i feel like the responsibility of the tpo is how do we get there and we need to get there through a community not total agreement because that's impossible but a general consensus because at the end of the day we have to identify what we as a community the county as a whole gainesville the small jurisdictions as a whole what do we value most where do we want to see growth not happen and let's figure out you know where do we want to see growth happen let's figure out how to connect the dots and get there um one of the things as an example that we wrote um or that i wrote into the the future language element and the mobility element in ocoee is the concept of the 15-minute city if we're driving in our cars it should not take more than 15 minutes to get to where you're going that is not the same thing as being unrealistic and having to sit at maybe two signals people don't understand the the concept between level of service and congestion are not the same things what we perceive as congestion is not the same thing as a failing level service orlando adopts a failing level service on purpose because they want people out of their cars and using alternative modes of travel but if your if your locations and your destination points are too far apart or it's unsafe to finish that last mile you're not going to get people out of their cars so the npo's responsibility is see where the dash the the hot spots are look at the movement organically through community assessments surveys observation and let's figure out how to make those connections work so that we're not duplicating services unnecessarily for joining us um it's a two-part question uh as a newly designated transportation management area the mtpo is directly accountable for federal planning funds certifications and performance-based reporting first can you describe your hands-on experience managing federal transportation funds and ensuring compliance with federal requirements and the second part is how have you implemented multi-modal transportation priorities through capital programming or project selection and how do you measure success okay that's a very good question so um my experience and mpos and tpos have been um not immediate so when i was at tinder oliver we were involved with helping the um volusia county and broward county empty mpos well volusia is tpo um whether it's tpo or mpo we were involved with helping prepare like the long-range plan the unified work plan the tip and things like that um i haven't personally worked in a role where i was making the decisions and the budgeting and the hiring and all that but fundamentally um i know i have a general concept of what's required um and i'm just going to speak honestly i've never worked for an mpo or tpo but i know myself and i know my propensity to learn i'm a very quick study um i will study and do whatever it takes to learn how to do it and do it well um so i've spent actually the last week reading about cfr 23 section 350 um just to try to learn i know that you guys adopted your 20 your 2050 lrtp not too long ago this year earlier this year august timeframe i haven't read the 255 pages but i sort of skimmed through it um so i don't know exactly all the details but i can commit that i will know the details if offered the opportunity um will often feel threatened by change can you tell me about a specific situation and actions that you took to smooth the process of change for others what actions were successful what weren't what would you do you said people are typically anticipate intimidated by i didn't hear the last change change there's a lot of that yes yes um you know change is an interesting thing because people either are afraid of it or they need it um my mom taught me that change is necessary because without change i.e movement water becomes stagnant life becomes stagnant i think the way to help people deal with change is to give them as much knowledge about what that change entails as possible um so let's say for example if well in my in my world they don't want a commercial product going near them but when you explain to them like hey you know now you have other opportunities or you a lot of people for example one of the main things about change for from a development perspective people think that when there's a new project that their property values go down when you look at the the research and the literature change development causes property values to go up but they don't understand that because they're afraid of of i actually had a project where they this community didn't even want a trail going next to it how do you not want a trail going next to you some communities advertise that as an amenity where some people like no we don't want them coming into our backyards so change i would explain to them as it's something that's inevitable change is going to happen um the beauty of public involvement is you can help to effectuate how that change happens and how all the parties even if they're on separate sides of the table can come together an example project when i was a chief planner in orange county and zoning there was a new subdivision that's going in right on the lake and the existing subdivision half million dollar homes did not want this project but now the million dollar homes have caused the half million dollar homes to significantly increase in value and now it's a destination for boat launches and everything else so but they hated the project i got them in the same room we talked about it well can you do this can you do this can you make it look this way can your entrance come from this side can you add instead of a big ugly brick wall can you add maybe a farm style fencing with rails and plantings you know these are change happens more successfully if the change is negotiated wow so uh mistaking it up a notch whitfield you have a very impressive background and experience yeah adrian's got a great question he's an urban planner i mean it's kind of not even fair but uh i've really appreciated your answer so far my question is about adaptability um could you describe an environment or situation in which you've had to adapt to multiple changes how did you handle it and what was the most difficult or enjoyable part um that would be with my time at the city of olito the other old city in orange county um so when i first started i actually was recruited by olito um the lady that was the planning manager who was leaving because her husband took a job in jacksonville she called me when i was sitting at an lpa meeting and pretty much threatened my life if i didn't apply so i told her that i would i was sorry i couldn't do it at the moment because i was in a hearing um and i applied so my director that director at the time offered me either the planning and zoning division manager position or the development review manager position and i decided i decided i wanted to go towards planning because um to me policies really shape shape how growth have growth happens um about a maybe it's three or four weeks after i was hired um because they had been interviewing for the two positions the development review manager also started and he came from a small tip city in texas and um you know how sometimes people um can present well during an interview and i hope i'm not in that situation but they present well in an interview but when it's time to actually do the work roll up the sleeves and turn the pages he wasn't really he didn't know what he was doing um so he struggled and um he ended up being terminated his he didn't get his position what's the word um like um sort of like renewed but it was a six-month probation and he didn't get confirmed as the the sitting division manager and so him leaving uh going back up to texas and i was still relatively new five months into as a planning manager and he left and now i have projects are still coming in my director's usually on vacation um and i was not even off probation yet i was still i was expected to act as an acting director and so i pretty much had to do everything i did i managed his staff i managed my staff i kept the pre-op meetings going and you just got to do it you know that's that's nothing else i can say about that except that the work still has to be done the expectation from the applicants they don't care if you're short-staffed they don't care if somebody's sick they they care but they don't care because at the end of the day they still want their projects done they want their plans reviewed their permits issued their instructions done all that so are you having deja vu allison from the stories yeah allison's sort of shaking that's a great answer thank thank you you're welcome yes your offer i um i wanted to say uh when i read your cover letter something really jumped out at me you said i believe that the social physical and mental health are byproducts of our built environment absolutely and as i i as an environmental engineer i owned an architecture and engineering firm for many years that specialized in sustainability and that was exactly what we believed and i i just want to say i really appreciated you including that in your cover letter um uh my my question has nothing to do with that however um as an engineer and as a former project manager i know that you know this position is going to require that you deal with all the day-to-day stuff but you're also going to have to manage large projects how when your work team or your um work unit is giving a big project or an assignment what steps do you take to make sure a project is done on time you know given the fact that you've got all these other things going on what's what's your what's your method my method is let's identify the end goal first what is the project what is the expected outcome whether that expectation is set by the city commission the board whatever it is and then usually most local governments or most bodies have their meeting dates hearing dates published already for the calendar year so we look at the end goal and work backwards i usually start off with a team kickoff meeting to identify okay what are the the requirements what is the project supposed to deliver what are the small deliverables that we're going to have along the way how realistically can we get to those time frames and then who's going to do what um so even if multiple people are working on multiple tasks every task needs at least one key point of contact that person needs to be responsible for answering the questions that come up at the board meetings or at least sitting in the back like when we were doing the comp plan amendment i did all the presentations i found myself being becoming a little expert on utilities and manholes and you know things that a planner wouldn't normally get involved in but for me in order to present the whole the whole product i needed to know every little aspect of it and that's what i would look at in terms of building the team what skill sets are needed for that specific project assigning the little teams setting deadlines and deliverables for each of those and then assigning one specific person and then you know i like to look at everybody's schedules we all have you know for those of us who have children in school my desk calendar is filled with all the days that i need to be at a parent-teacher conference or you know like i just got a text message from my son while i was driving here and it says may 28 7 30 additions that translates to graduation may 28 7 30 at the additions arena so we all have those commitments um knowing what all those are respecting everybody's personal lives because reality is we don't work just because we are addicted to work we work because we work for our families and without them you know we life would be pretty boring so we have to respect everybody's personal lives and personal commitments and then build a schedule around that and of course emergencies happen but that was you know i believe in building up my team um and if any one of the team members falls short if there is an emergency it's if you build a good team you will want to help the other team members to get the project done um when i was working on again going back to the comp plan i was staying up to midnight you know i was staying at the office to eight and nine o'clock in the in the evening times literally sketching and and laying out um putting the rollout sheets onto the boards and next thing you know my my team members are staying with me you know we're ordering pizza we're having then we'll go out for drinks afterwards so nine o'clock again um but that's because it we're all in it together and i believe that if everybody is treated equally and everybody's opinion matters and is heard then and everybody's responsibilities to their families are respected then we all work better as a team thank you interesting sidebar i i experienced my first bosses day recently and the card that i received says um bosses um it's a bosses lead um leader or bosses lead leaders inspire so i thought i was pretty nice i feel like that's what the npo needs is a leader that inspires and i hope to be that excellent thank you miss moss how are we doing on time because my question is probably derivative and i know the mayor has an important we just go through all right what is your experience general or specific working with state departments of transportation um i've had the pleasure of working with district one district a little bit with district two and district five mostly um i help district three write or work on their work five-year work program as a consultant so i'm familiar well i was familiar things have changed once upon a time um like district five for example has a growth management coordinator with the changes in growth management i don't know if their positions have changed i know it used to be in like actual staff dot staff who were the growth management coordinators um three or four years ago it transitioned now dot hires consultants at one point um i think it was um gmb who acquired another company but they served as in-house consultants to district five a lot of the districts tend to do that now um my even my district growth branch reviewer when i was at the state and at tinder oliver she didn't actually do the reviews um she looked to consultants to do the reviews so that's generally a lot of the districts now have consultants that do a lot of the work and a lot of it um what the district staff do is contract management and project management all right well um you know this mpo's new ish i mean we've been in an mtpo for a while but the expansion is why you're here today um and so a big part of this job i think is going to be about strategic direction for this organization so i was hoping you could tell me about a time when you've had to develop or adjust uh strategic goals for a department or an organization um and um how what was the situation sort of what was your role in that and how did you see that through and what was the outcome um i hate to do this to you guys but it's the echoey envision 2045 plan so the the the 2002 plan was based on 1999-98 data very outdated your standard 163-3177-6abcdefg of the whole lineup very boring policies there wasn't a vision um and i knew that the city is in the cusp of change you know we had just gotten to 50 000 residents so projecting out a 20-year growth we're looking to grow to top 74 to 75 000 residents and the city is bound by um winter garden apopka parts of orlando and windermere so there is no room for growth plus the fact that we're also bound by a joint planning area boundary um which is something with orange county we it would take both the county and the city to agree in order for that jpa boundary to expand so growth however it happens whatever shape it takes has to happen within the existing boundary um and the only way to get there is to change the comp plan and change the vision and so um we did a complete redo of the actual comp plan itself came up with a vision statement i wrote the first one set it up on the um on the big screen and we all played with the language until it captured environmental transportation um community engagement parks all those things everything that would make a city sustainable economically socially environmentally in the long term was captured in our vision statement and so then we condensed our comp plan from this size to about this size um had massive support from the from the general public and i think that's you know i'm sidebar answering your question but i think the biggest thing is reacting to what the need is um so i know that you know the npl originally was just gainesville and now it's expanded to the county and other smaller cities um i think that even if it didn't happen like that the npl's responsibility still needs to fall on the entire county regardless of the jurisdictions that are in it because roads don't stop at the property lines or the jurisdictional jurisdictional limits traffic doesn't congestion doesn't just stop oh we're out of gainesville now we can speed up no that's that's not how it works so even if the mpo still stayed gainesville i think it's the responsibility of the mpo mtpo to look at how movement happens in the entire county thank you all right this next question is about developing partnerships so it's not always easy to work with other employees or departments to get things done tell me about a difficult partnership you've had at work and how you handled it okay um well i usually get along with everybody i try to um so i'm a big fan of accountability and honesty and integrity and reliability and it's not because it's on your vision statement i love the fact that it's on your vision statement but that's how i was raised my father was a buddhist monk for 10 years before he married my mother he was they were in an arranged marriage and fundamentally what he has just pretty much embedded in my soul is that you are your word and i you know shame on me for expecting people to do their jobs you know if you don't do your job and i bring that to your attention or i bring that to the supervisor's attention and you get mad at me no hurt lost at all because if you're not doing your job other people have to do your job for you you're bringing the team down and i believe in bringing the team up so if if i have to have those uncomfortable conversations with staff i'll do that if i have to bring two two staff people in the same room so we can talk through things i will do that um but at the end of the day if my staff needs help i will be there um but accountability is very important if i you know just to use you as an example if you guys are looking to allison to get a specific thing done and meet a deadline it wouldn't look good on her and it wouldn't look look good on the board for that item to not be done if there's a conflict or or a child is sick or there's a death in the family then the right thing to do would be to communicate that let's work out how to get the project going forward anyway so i think you know understanding that people have a reason why they come in um is is important um honestly the reason why i was very interested in this position is because of the change in the dynamics of the mpl tpl is because it's growing and it's it's like um like at that crucial point where this is a great opportunity for me to make a big difference because i do believe that dirt affects people's lives thank you mr mayor so uh simple question why gainesville and alachua county um besides the fact that my kid is here um i don't do the chomp when i go back home it's only here spread the word well my son wants to come here too um you know executive director positions don't open up very often that is the reality but the the true reality is that where i am now i've been at a collie now for four and a half years and um not to put not to air out dirty laundry but as i mentioned before accountability and ethics is everything for me in terms of doing my job it's very important and when i'm placed in a situation where i have to wear either my aicp hat or my deputy director hat because i need to make somebody happy i refuse to compromise and so that's the reason why the the work we're wearing poor hats it's not an issue it's being expected to compromise on my ethics that i just won't fold on and so that's when i started looking and i found this opportunity and it just aligns with the fact that my daughter's here i had planned on my husband and i had planned on helping her buy her first home here um you know it's she tells me all the time games feels dangerous i'm sorry but she has been in two bicycle accidents the first one she was on the bicycle lane there are two pedestrians in the lane and thankfully no cars are coming she tried to go around them a little bit but she didn't clear it nicked her handlebar she went flying she skidded she lost consciousness um some dental surgery later now she's recuperating with two new teeth and if there's an opportunity for me to help make an impactful difference in that then that's what i that's one of my main reasons when i saw like oh maybe this is destiny because i want to be able to make a difference here quite an answer do i have a minute to ask a quick question just very quickly very quick this is very quickly it's about your resume your bachelor's degree is in art yes it is so how did you make the transition from textiles and i know because this is my background too i picked up on it right away and then you transitioned into this work this very technical and highly demanding career yes so i still do the science i i make all of my daughters um her flower girl dress all four senior all four proms all four homecoming dresses um you know i was trying to work on make my first wedding dress but that don't that didn't pan out um i still do design i'm actually making my sister's sorority jacket right now for her christmas gift but it came about because um i had graduated my my bachelor's and i was a starving artist and i you know i wanted it to still be fun and so um one day i was in the bellamy building bellamy building on campus florida state's campus and i was in the elevator and i was looking through the bulletin as to what i could what is my next career what what i want to do next and i was fumbling through the pages i came across urban regional planning and i read the description like this is exactly me this is me this is what i want to do the reason for that is that there are elected officials there are lawyers you know there are advocates but then there are planners we're the ones who do the data collection who talk to the people we're the ones who actually write the policies elected officials nothing against anybody the majority of times they don't read the policies they just um mostly trust in their technical staff to make those decisions to write the policies to be legally defensible if someone were to sue and i thought that as a planner i actually have more um i can actually have a greater impact in how growth happens and how community can grow then if i were an elected official my my grandfather was an elected official in cambodia he was the governor in the province that we lived in and my dad still wants me to be an elected official and i am just not that way i just cannot i cannot do it i will never be an elected official i'll die on that sword um but i care about the people and the reason for that is that when we came here to the united states we were refugees we came here with five hundred dollars and a catholic sponsor landed in pensacola florida didn't know the language didn't know the culture didn't know how to get around um and it was a it was a huge barrier so i see that now as a planner now for 25 years those barriers still exist there are still people who don't know how to speak the language then who don't know that they need to bring their interpreter with them when they go to the counter for help and i want to be an advocate for change to help make a difference and to edify people um before those decisions happen so that's why thank you thank you it's the creative stuff you know that will help you too with right anything else how much time do we have for her to ask questions yeah yeah we have i just have a few do we have nothing yeah we have about 10 minutes before we start with that let's give her that mine's kind of quick um you spoke about workshops and um reaching the people the public involvement plan um were your workshops successful and kind of quickly could you give us an example of what you did to draw the the people in to be able to speak to them um so the best example that i can give in a very quick time is when i was my first job as a planner um i green as this folder coming out of planning school um i didn't know exactly how to do it but jackson county was the first county in the state of florida to do a rural visioning project and over time the decades the mayors of the small cities um they had developed a mistrust for big brother government and the way i got around that or not around that but the way i worked through that was i met with them on their turf i would go to their homes and get invited go sit around a campfire and talk about why the visioning for the county is important and why their participation as an elected official is important it goes back to the question on change change is going to happen you either need to be at the table to help guide that change or change is going to leave you behind and you're not going to be you're just going to deal with the waves that come after so um that's the best example all right what do you have to ask what would you like to know from us i guess my first question is where exactly is the mtpo housed do we even know that yet i mean i didn't know that the answer is it's an independent leaning organization right so it's it's going to be an independent organization of which the successful candidate will be the executive director and the county provides administrative support so right now we're providing hr and you know payroll and legal and all those sorts of things and i think ultimately it will be somewhat up to the ed to decide how much of that we stick with versus how much of that becomes more independent or contracted out allison where are you working and then in terms of physical building um so there's a staff services agreement between alachua county and the mtpo that stipulates what of those administrative services are provided and it also indicates that office space can be provided um in the preliminary because i was searching lately yeah preliminary phase the idea being that a director once ensconced and up to speed um would look for office space for him or herself it could be within a public office um locally or it could be um a third party building co-work space or something yeah i was gonna i was answering the question oh go ahead yeah it says in the um executive director says it says the executive director will be hiring fortified staff also to support outreach report planning and project management and um and that the functions as uh ms mosher um just to put a very fine point on it um the county annex building the growth management annex is just across the street and that's probably where office space would be set up in the immediate term okay what else um if offered how quickly i i so i did a little snooping i did watch a few of your previous meetings um they're good meetings i love the fact that you guys bring everything into the sunshine everything is like you know you spoke on just letting the board know or you know a member of the public's here i i love everything being in the sunshine that's how it should be everything should be plain language everybody should be able to understand it so i do like that um knowing that and knowing that you have been seeking an executive director for some time um how quickly would you be looking for that person to start last week as soon as it makes sense yes yes okay so we we have been in sort of a um uh we we have been doing this transition for a while now and so allison is a county employee who's currently taking up the roles of this prior to that we had a consultant through epdot that was doing it we would like to have someone in as they said a week ago but i mean if you need more flexibility with your current role i'm sure that's something that can be discussed and negotiated that if that's okay that's the direction you're looking well i actually was like spending my 30 minutes looking through my calendar so um being it because okoy doesn't have a director now um and there's a long story about why that is but the reason why i've hit my glass ceiling um and knowing that i pretty much run the office now um and christmas coming in i would like to at least give them a solid 10 working days so they'll be like mid january and then one week to move in but i've started to download the the 255 page 2050 plan is not very downloadable um but i would love to get a copy of that too to read but i can i don't have a problem with starting before i actually start because i like to know what i'm getting into before i actually get there because that's how i that's how i work i like to be as prepared as i can so um if offered you know i was looking at the january 12th 19th time period but i would be happy to take work home um so i know that the this is a restructuring and i know four to five staff i highlighted that section as well are the position descriptions already written for those staff or do i have an opportunity to modify it and what salaries or positions more the professional higher level technical staff um madam chair two of these support positions they have been drafted but they haven't been published yet um and so there would be um absolutely given the timeline opportunity for the new director to weigh in on you know the recruitment process the screening the interviews um we could potentially pump the brakes on publishing them as well um but they seem like pretty safe bets in terms of the types of support staff that are likely to be needed if i might add on to that yes sir um traditionally we we operated this mtpo out of regional planning council and that's where everything was housed physically and staff wise and this is a new day for for us and and this is where the it's exciting the chair was talking about comes in um we if you ask each one of us you know just 15 uh of us individually what uh what is this what is the mtpo going to be you'll get 15 different answers i think so we are hoping for whoever we bring on in this position to really take charge and and answer those questions for us and lead us in those directions yeah i i actually transportation is my favorite field in planning um because again it's it's very impactful for example if you're a senior citizen the worst thing you can do to a senior citizen is take away their car it's the safest thing probably but you're pretty much you know they're going downhill if they can't if they don't have that autonomy they can't still get to their doctor's appointments or like my dad my dad is 92 my mom is 88 i am their power of attorney i go to all their doctor's appointments and i medical questions all those things but he still has a honeydew list and he still drives within the safe one mile area that he has been driving in jacksonville for the past two decades he goes to this cvs for um her ibuprofen he goes to the walmart pharmacy for her her vitamins and she's a sort of a stick in the mud she wants it's got he takes the bottles and he goes and he gets the exact same bottle and he cannot come home with a different looking bottle um but to to take people's ability to move away is pretty much a death sentence especially for our seniors and it's even worse for any persons with disabilities i actually participated in um the blind experience in orlando where you're blindfolded and someone is leading you across all four approaches and not to be funny but it's eye-opening even though you're blindfolded because it's a totally different sensory experience and i think that being able to get um create an environment where everybody gets to move and they feel the way to do it safely and with dignity that is very crucial to the planning industry and it's not just about moving cars um or teaching drivers how to drive better make better choices behind the wheel but our pedestrians also need to know what their responsibilities are so just because the car is coming you shouldn't stick your foot on the road and expect to have right away okay thank you thank you very much you're welcome thank you so much for your time thank you thank you we're gonna go back to back right yep oh i think someone said that but just um a few things as we told the candidates we're gonna hold them here in case you have any follow-ups but if you don't we we want to let them go and our next candidate actually is flying out tonight so he needs to be out by five which i'm sure we can do but just keep that in mind okay and they do know the structure of the interview so they know how this is going to work so we're going to get him yeah he's here he was sitting no no he wasn't in here he's out he's okay way over there yeah we're given an option yeah we're he's over there staring at the wall okay we need a minute yes yes so they can see who we are some of our panelists left so we'll give you a we'll give you a map oh yes yes yes okay okay certainly we'll be done yeah we can start the other round the table this way the end for the questions somebody said no i think we should do it or whatever it worked okay yeah i thought it worked fine because some of the questions were mixed between technical you know yeah yeah and i thought i thought the mayor's question was a fine ending question i thought it was it is it is a good ending yeah it's a good ending yeah i thought i thought it was a good question to answer the bear's question is a great question to answer yeah yeah yeah the nice transition good that way i was really a big jump though when i first saw that change you know that i was floored you know from coming from textiles and clothing design well i was an english major before i was an engineering major i don't know but somehow it's it's going from a right grade to a left frame real quick you know it's pretty six i think the best technical people has a causing six three it's just right by the labor yeah it's just we don't always know it right and uh we're solid a guys anyway start introducing ourselves and then have him introduce himself we did just tell her we wouldn't start without her but this is scary stuff i've never had the interview we just told her we wouldn't start without her oh my gosh really yeah this is the way we can do it i had two i had a two-day interview process with a presentation i was like i'm gonna present in all day and then i don't remember i didn't even call me almost 30 years welcome come have a seat join us welcome back welcome home thank you thank you hi what we're going to do is introduce ourselves around the table so you know who it is you're talking to all right great and we have various backgrounds too and maybe there's somebody here you can relate to really quickly uh based on that background okay all right okay and we're going to start with the commissioner from waldo hi good afternoon and it's commissioner monique taylor from the big beautiful small city of waldo and you were a paralegal too i retired paralegal yes i was in fort larodale for a while before i moved back home and so now i am here serving with the mtpo board helping my beautiful small city out awesome i'm a brian so i'm a city commissioner in the city of gatesville i run a software company and i'm a bike computer here awesome adrian santos i'm the airport authorities member i'm a former city commissioner and i work in commercial real estate and a certified urban planner my name is james engel i'm a gainesville city commissioner electrician by trade and i'm a president electrician union ken cornell i'm county commissioner serving my third term cpa and a real estate broker and i'm mary helen wheeler of latchwood county commissioner a retired teacher i'm mary alford i'm a latchwood county commissioner i'm also an environmental engineer and i owned architecture engineering firm for a number of years that specialized in sustainability great casey will it's gainesville city commissioner i'm a public worker and a geography nerd i'm a physio electric county commissioner i'm an educator and administrator with a focus on food and agriculture good afternoon my name is ed book i'm a gainesville city commissioner and a police officer my name is harvey ward i'm the mayor of gainesville i served two terms as city commissioner prior to this and prior to that spent a couple of decades in the non-profit sector here in gainesville great awesome awesome interim director he's very glad to see you here uh nice to meet everyone um well first i i don't even know which person you were referring to having a a similar background because i feel like they were all over all around the table i i picked out things that i i relate to with everyone so um my background is uh i grew up in in south florida and i i moved to gainesville in 2005 to go to school here i got my undergrad degree in political science and uh spent time in gainesville in the transportation advocacy world worked with a bunch of friends to start up a community bicycle program which has transformed i think over the years but maybe still exists in some form uh these days um i spent some time uh in my last year and a half here um 2009 i think into 2010 as a member of the county bicycle and pedestrian advisory board um doing that i learned you know some of the the dynamics of um where the transportation advocacy that i was coming from um met the structures the bureaucracy the uh organizations that actually affect change and are the decision makers and so i knew i wanted to uh continue on that route and so i went to grad school in um new york to get a degree in in city planning and i stayed um and i've uh i've been in new york for the last 15 years and working at the department of transportation up there the city department of transportation um since 2014 and uh throughout that time um progressively more responsible roles starting with uh some focused project design um and moving towards more uh capital program management and um um then i mean the reason i'm here today is my uh my wife and i are looking to leave new york city and so we're considering um other places to uh to move to and we we have a community here in gainesville we have a lot of friends uh still here and i've um been very interested in following uh how the city is uh the county have changed over the the last 15 years since i i last lived here um and very excited about the the transition that the mtpo is going through becoming a tma and seeing the kind of potential that that holds uh for you know just more and better things for transportation uh in the county we have some questions for you that we'd like to ask and then we're going to give you time to ask us questions great all right okay we also know you've got a time schedule too that you have i have a 6 40 flight so it's it's i think we have plenty of time well we've got a great airport here that's right we'll take care of you that's right good afternoon again um and thank you for coming to back to gainesville to visit us for this position flexibility have you adjusted your style or approach when it wasn't meeting the objectives and or people weren't responsible at responding as needed be specific please and i have a two-part as well um the second one is workshops um sure you want to take the first one um have i responded when situations aren't aren't meeting my um expectation or the or the need um i think uh there's probably as many ways to handle um you know challenging situations as there are situations themselves and i i think i've tended to um respond with my own flexibility and you know being uh working with what you've got working with the people that you need to collaborate with and um meeting them on their terms and or at least halfway um i think it's worked uh i can think of challenges that i've had with um with projects you know implementing projects in in various communities in uh new york city where there is um maybe a strong constituency that may oppose the work and we have to come to common ground um and i think that comes from you get there through through listening and and uh actually um responding and incorporating feedback so i i uh i think that is kind of how i approach it is uh through communication through dialogue and workshops um you were here in gainsville before as you said you went to school here and you uh helped founded the bicycle uh program with workshops how did you go about with workshops and can you give an example of how you were did you get the word out to the people how did you gather them together um that that program that organization um we i i had actually been working in a bike shop as just a bike mechanic during um during my years uh in school and so i the the program that i led at the um community bicycle uh organization was the earn a bike program where we brought in individuals to uh disassemble and then reconstruct um discarded or donated bikes and uh that was that was teaching skills and also you know it was a recycling program in a way or a reuse program rather um but how did we get the word out we tapped into the wide network of uh existing community groups from um churches to the farmers market to other non-profits um in the area that that uh had existing networks um and so we we grew from there um by doing that thank you um actually i had a follow-up similar to the one that i asked from before sorry going off the script here but can you talk a little bit about your current role with the new york city transportation department because i'd be be curious what you're currently working on there and sort of your role and you're coming up through yeah um i i'm currently the uh assistant director in our um cycling and mobility planning group within the division of transportation planning and management so a lot of big organization very complex very hierarchical and subdivided in so many ways but um what i do in that role is uh there's three major components that that i'm responsible for the first is um managing uh our inventory of um existing bike infrastructure in the city so it's a it's a database uh of existing structure existing infrastructure as well as a database of all of the um many hundreds of projects that are happening in the city at any time that impact the bike network so when there's a private development coming online and they add a nice waterfront path along um you know the back side of the property we track that whole thing through design and construction to make sure that uh it is integrated into the the network and all of our other planning exercises as they um proceed the next part is um i manage a portfolio of capital projects uh that are street reconstruction projects i'm not building bridges uh in in this role but um they that is uh several dozen projects i think i i added them all up and they're all the funding behind all of them is over a billion maybe towards a billion and a half dollars which you know capital dollars in new york city don't translate one to one with capital dollars elsewhere i acknowledge that unfortunately unfortunately unfortunately but they they impact tremendous populations and and i think are i'm very proud of uh the work we've done to develop that program um and the final thing i i manage is the uh sort of external project review and and coordination on behalf of um my planning unit to like i was saying the with the projects we track we also just review everything that is happening in the city that that affects the right of way whether it's a project within our own um dot program or other you know sewer water main infrastructure projects parks projects uh state authorities or port authority projects that that all um are happening at any given moment we see how they may impact our work program and work with those uh bodies to make them better or see if we can leverage those investments to advance uh our transportation planning management division goals or the agency's goals so that's that's really exciting we get you know everything from a small housing development where they want a new curb cut in front of their uh building to have access to a driveway to um these mega casino projects that are completely transforming um huge swathes of the city and drawing in billions of dollars themselves for um development and uh economic programs and of course public space and transportation improvements thank you um and then on to my more formal question um how do you it is a good uh jumping off point um how do you envision the way that an mtpo like this one or your tpo in new york how can you see an mtpo can and should interact with the surrounding community oh i think it should be very um interactive i think uh i think the my understanding is the purpose of the mtpo is to um not just uh integrate all of the other other for the the constituent municipalities and um coordinate with the the state and the federal bodies but to uh do so in a way that um gives the the board and the the overall transportation program in the county a lot of um uh trust from the from the citizens that it's uh serving so without being integrated and and interacting with the uh the community and the stakeholders and all of the various organizations or elected uh officials outside of this room i think um you don't you're not able to get that credibility and then the uh and and you know following that the trust uh from the citizens thank you thank you for joining us today uh two-part question uh as a newly designated transportation management area the mtpo is directly accountable for federal planning funds certifications and performance-based reporting first can you describe your hands-on experience managing federal transportation funds and ensuring compliance with federal requirements and the second part how have you implemented multimodal transportation priorities through capital programming or project project selection and how do you measure success so the first question is um my hands-on experience with the uh the federal funding um agencies and programs the meeting there yeah and the second was um the multimodal projects i'm sorry yes yeah how do you how your experience implementing multimodal transportation projects through uh capital programming or project selection and then how do you venture success right okay uh the first one first um i've since starting at new york city dot been involved in um a number of grant applications we have a grant management unit that is that kind of coordinates all of these efforts and new york city being the the you know large uh and you know busy let's call it a very it's a very busy program for for all this stuff we go after every single grant that's available we we don't need we we have something we can kind of tailor towards everything so um when i first started it was the big one that i worked on uh when i was in our um in our capital and budget division was tiger grant um and and that was uh i don't remember the exact dollar number but we got um a tremendous amount of capital funds to kickstart uh a number of programs um and uh the ones that well i guess i don't need to go too down far down that single grant um but that was the fha fhwa and i worked on um fta grants that um supported uh adding benches along our bus routes that kind of thing um later like there were there are many others uh you know each year that we would apply for but the ones that i was then most involved in um in the past few years have been um our uh we have a kind of a recurring cmac uh fund that's the um the air quality um funding source which supports a lot of our work but we have this we had a specific uh program where we would get um kind of yearly renewals to this but we had to update um all of the design approval stuff so i i ended up actually being the one who wrote that whole uh design approval document which um is actually the new york state standard for it but it it was in service of making letting the state know that we were compliant with all of the federal requirements so it's you know it's got the uh the chapter on um all of the you know endangered species act impacts and you have to show how all of your work is uh not impacting or if it is you know detailing that um to uh the landmarks component and historic preservation component to um you know of course all of the other uh safety and um contract details that are that are built into that approval document so i i was very i was very involved in that one um on the the approval and administration and compliance side of it um in other uh recent efforts we've um we went for the the raise grant which uh in effect has replaced the tiger grant in you know since the i guess that was in the in the biden administration as part of the um the build initiative so and with that one we were not going after a construction grant we were going after a planning grant and we got um we actually won seven and a quarter million in planning funds which is which was which is huge those are not capital dollars that um you know get sort of uh converted directly into infrastructure those are things that sort of grew our our whole program's ability to um plan for years or decades of of work uh that grant was focused on our greenway program um and so it the funding was spent or is is programmed for um building like part of it is building a demand model so we can see how much different projects actually may affect the um the the mode shift or the mode share um on places where we don't have actual data on every single segment of every street we can we can build we is being used to build a model that will be able to get us data um through you know what is pretty uh unique in new york city's uh the assumptions the assumptions that you can make about um how much the the modes are going to shift or or the volumes are going to increase or decrease uh is pretty unique to to new york city so we couldn't we couldn't use something off the shelf for that uh type of exercise um the rest of the money was going towards implementation plans i think we have uh five implementation plans which are a million dollars each um that outline a corridor that is somewhere between seven and 15 miles or 20 miles long i think the longest one is um and and those are a kind of soup to nuts planning process with um workshops um you know where we do all the route alternatives and um ultimately come to a uh recommended um not just a route for for a greenway but a discrete uh set of projects that can be funded and and prioritized um in you know future budgets um and we found that these types of what we call implementation plans those those types of plans are so effective in in advancing it it's not just a plan that is uh a hope and a dream it's and sits on a shelf it's something that is actionable um you know roadmap towards uh bringing all of those plans and ideas to fruition so that's some of the the grant funding um stuff um i didn't what the second question was um yeah oh yeah multimodal property multimodal transportation priorities through capital programming and project selection and how do you measure success right right so we um we we prioritize our capital projects based on a number of our um agency goals and and um you know the mayor's office sets some agendas or initiatives that that we also respond to but um um we also have a huge in-house uh operational program that can do kind of quick fix quick build projects um and that's tremendous but they require a ton of upkeep they're not as effective as as the capital investments um and they're not as durable right they you have to basically reinstall them every time every every couple of years that you know or on an ongoing basis the the capital stuff is really transformative so we we prioritize our projects especially the um uh the the bicycle and pedestrian and transit projects the you know those are we really focus in on the ones that there's no operational version of it you have to change curb lines and move underground infrastructure um and there there's just there's no there's no sort of a quick fix solution so those kind of percolate to the top we prioritize them also of course based on um not just normal benefit cost analysis or even um like uh the safety and uh other kind of typical measurements we we also have um a method of of looking at prior investment um to see where we have we have areas of the city that have historically been under invested in and so we are able to kind of elevate some of the projects that that work towards improving the equity uh of all of our investments so those um those priority geographies that we have those different communities um that we that we identify for priority investment are not simply the ones we haven't um uh made as much investment in the past or simply the ones that kind of hit all of our other kind of strategic goals it's the intersection of those things um with multimodal stuff in particular i think there's there's also a special um network consideration that when you're when you're building stuff only based on um the sort of characteristics of the the project itself you may not be able to see the whole forest uh for the trees there and understanding how making a small improvement here sort of adds value to you know the the neighborhoods on either side of it it's really hard to quantify that and it's really hard to um to exactly predict the future in those ways but when when it happens and uh you see the outcomes afterwards and to get at your the part of the question the measures of success um you it it becomes apparent what kind of projects serve that sort of network improvement purpose and so um of course we measure success not just by reducing uh crashes on a corridor um sometimes that metric by itself is not even very effective if you if you have uh one let's say one pedestrian injury on a on a segment but there's only 10 pedestrians walking down that segment in the past you build some some nice new infrastructure there you might have 50 pedestrians walking down that sidewalk but now you may have three injuries it looks like you went from one to three but really the risk has gone down um so teasing out that that sort of uh effect is is also part of the analysis and um and then uh one of our like i said one of our major goals is mode shift getting um people to have the full range of options um for getting from point a to point b and not to be completely dependent on uh private vehicles very or or or transit even you know those um having options is is ultimately the the key thing so when we see mode shift we know people are now exercising more options uh that are available to them thank you i think it's a good question following up the uh talking about transformational projects and making those types of shifts um people often feel threatened by change tell me about a specific situation and actions that you took to smooth the process of change for others successful which were not what would you do differently people are threatened by change sometimes yeah um okay yeah yeah with reason um i i would start out to say that there's that people are justified in feeling sort of entitled to the streets that they that they uh live on as well as like travel on every day you can't leave your house without um you know being in the in the public uh sphere that is the streets um so and and we own them all collectively right these are these are the public streets are ours uh to enjoy and to facilitate everything else we do so i i i think it's fair that people are can be conservative about seeing those things change um that being said it's often a minority of of individuals that that are opposed to something and feel that they're being um you know plowed over by uh other interests that maybe they don't relate to so um thinking about some projects that uh that i've worked on um in new york city one of the the major entitlements that people feel about about the the the streets is uh related to parking right we have we have limited space and so people when they respond a lot to their ability to um park freely on public streets and they don't believe we've never heard of such a thing never i'm sure yeah um so that's that's a that's a big one and when we do projects we reorganize the streets right we we add turn lanes to simplify things or organize things or organize things we had uh bike lanes or or pedestrian uh sidewalk extensions and these things often um you know come with a trade-off with uh with other uses on the street historically like parking or over capacity roads that people love to speed down and um and they see sort of any any change as uh as guaranteed guarantee for um for chaos so uh or i don't know apply your your uh favorite um you know anxiety about about change to that but i feel like i've heard i've heard them all and um and they their change doesn't always turn uh turn out to be like a perfect result right away so what we make sure we do is is acknowledge and and and catalog those uh those concerns um and we have a pretty robust process of um monitoring and coming back to things and continuing to tweak it until it works and people see that we do that and so they they know that there's um that there's that that's not just lip service that we will actually like not just do a project and walk away and and you know say oh just figure it out we will continue to make adjustments until we get it right um that's that's an advantage of having an operational arm in our agency where we can do that sort of reorganization in temporary materials make the tweaks in temporary materials and then once we know it works then you advance uh the sort of capital permanent version of it um and uh yeah i think i think we've we've um we've dealt with uh areas where they see change as a threat because it represents gentrification they're like oh the bike lanes coming to my neighborhood that means i'm going to get priced out of here in a couple years um in the other in the other direction we there are communities where they say oh the the the bike lane represents um somebody that's making uh food deliveries and and uh those uh individuals are not as uh welcomed in different communities and so they you kind of can see it be going either direction the bike lanes are the same in in either thing what it means what it means to the the community that is um sort of uh apprehensive about it can be completely different very good um so i'm on on adaptability that's my question about adaptability before i get to that real quick in your in your letter you said during my undergraduate year in gainesville i founded a grassroot transportation organization that grew from a community need into a sustainable entity serving cyclists in lots of county is that that earn a bike program yes yeah what's the sustainable entity what's the entity oh now yeah oh um i forgetting the name is escaping me it was the it was the gainesville community bicycle project and we had a the bike the shop was called the kickstand that was like we were at the warehouse down on down on um on depot and it's helping me um okay awesome all right so here's my question i was just you had talked about that and i was wondering what that what that business was um okay describe an environment or a situation in which you've had to adapt to multiple changes how have you handled it well what was the most uh difficult or enjoyable part a situation where i've adapted to multiple changes um you live in new york city right that's right yeah uh yeah i think um you know it might be an easy answer uh to to pick uh the covet 19 pandemic as being like a rapid succession of or like a bunch of changes all all at once um people wanting to get outdoors people no longer commuting at the same patterns that they had um and uh changes in the workplace changes with um you know by 2021 we had a we had a new mayor with completely different priorities so we were seeing a lot of uh internal um changes as as well while we were responding to sort of uh global um changes and certainly uh different transportation patterns in the city um the way that we've uh or the way that that i've adapted to those um you know personally it i think uh have reflected the the way that i adapted um professionally and the way that our agency adapted professionally which is that um you you can you can take a a minute to breathe you can sort of see what uh what changes are actually going to be lasting permanent changes or or maybe which ones um will sort of swing swing right back you know when when things normalize again um so i think uh i guess to put that differently um not every major change requires an equal size or a proportionate uh reaction you can you can kind of give something time to see if it if it uh is as uh serious as um or as permanent uh as it might look at first so to use an example um we implemented a bunch of temporary projects and called them that we you know we we did not even use um lane markings we you know put cones out to demarcate public spaces when people were fully like cooped up at home and going stir crazy and uh though some of those things we were like okay this is not the right place for this isn't there's no longer a need and and so we were able to kind of um you know return those streets to uh their former configuration other ones we saw that they revealed this uh this actual permanent need that that stuck around um when a bunch of people stopped commuting uh to the office for a while many of them started biking or walking for recreation a lot more but when people started returning to the office after the cycling numbers didn't go back down to uh pre-pandemic numbers they they went back down a little bit but they actually were much more elevated than our curve would have predicted before the pandemic which meant that that that shock to the system um was a little bit of a opportunity for people to to um change some of their patterns and and find other things that they're comfortable uh doing not things but other other modes that they're comfortable um or even enjoy uh using instead of just the mass transit or or private cars and stuff like that did i miss any other part of the question okay hi i i appreciate your last answer as covid was actually a real opportunity for tactical urbanism right so yeah those kinds of those kinds of uh changes that we didn't really expect to make but just sort of uh developed and some of them stuck and some of them didn't we're experiencing some of that around here um so you're going to be you would be coming from an organization that is um you know there's a lot of support staff there's a lot of people and to a very tight organization that that we have here and so you know you would have a lot of day-to-day you know requirements and then you would have big projects to manage with respect to project management how um when you're when your work team which you would be putting together um is given a large project what um what steps would you take to get projects done what's your approach to project management and how would you make sure things arrive on time you know given all the day-to-day things that are also going to be in your face yeah um really important i think that's a really good like point to have a have a clear um approach to that and that you guys understand my approach to it it's not going to be as creative as or as insightful maybe as some of the the last couple answers i love a gantt chart yeah gotta start with the deadlines build your schedule based on the deliverables that you know and set up like regular check-ins with the staff i you know if you're not in communication with it you can't maybe you don't catch something that is lagging behind until it's too late and um and so i i think uh that's you know at a very high level that's my approach to it is like i'm a visual thinker i that's why i immediately said gantt charlix show me show me all this all the tasks that are here and what week or what year this needs to be delivered on what can we be working on in parallel what sort of uh what sort of tasks or deliverables are path dependent or you know critical path where you can't start the next one until you finish the previous one that's not all of them you can often do a bunch of things at the same time or while you're sending something out for review or approval or waiting for the next board meeting to to get it in front of you guys i think you can always kind of keep the ball moving because um as good as your gantt chart is or your schedule predicts uh the project will progress at there are going to be uh wrenches thrown in the gears and you're going to need to move things around so you need you need to be able to get ahead of that rather than um you know in a frenzy in reaction in response to that thank you as an engineer i appreciate the reference to gantt what does that mean does it stand for something i think somebody's name it is it's a gantt chart okay it's basically a project management chart okay yeah yeah you've seen them um well commissioner offer described organization as tight we hope it will be tight it is not yet really built um but uh what is your experience general or specific working with state departments of transportation uh limited to new york state um but pretty close with uh i work pretty closely with our state on um not just the grant stuff that i i discussed earlier they the state is the you know administrative entity that oversees all of the uh federal highways and and fta grants that come into our agency so we actually work much more closely on compliance with with our state partners but um uh then then we do with the the feds you know they're a little they're a little bit removed um however in the other direction the state owns uh tons of infrastructure themselves in new york city and i know the state has a lot of uh their road network coming through alachua county that is going to be uh you know always of interest uh to the board and kind of critical to the overall thinking of the the mtpo's own projects and agenda and everything those need to be um integrated of course so my experience with the state again is not just on the the grant administration and compliance side but we also uh work really closely on coordinating the projects that they're that they're um pursuing and advancing at any at any stage uh so i've i've uh worked with their with them on everything from um you know the scoping uh conceptual design work that they do our our agency is much better than this new york state at integrating with the the local communities and the stakeholders and everything so they really lean on us for that um they can be really clumsy about it and have um without our help would have some pretty um lacking you know projects or outcomes maybe and and so we we serve as like the local experts of course uh and figure out how to make their projects um integrated into not just our existing streets but our own work programs um and then yeah through constantly scoping uh outreach design concept um up through like the engineering review um we you know are given uh an opportunity to make comments and suggestions about it we can't really require the state uh to um meet every one of our recommendations but we can encourage them and and provide justifications for ways that we think uh their projects can be improved um once it's in construction we work with them on all of the uh management and protection of uh traffic the you know the the work zone programs making sure um that the city uh residents that are that are using the streets around their construction um projects are able to do so safely and and kind of move through a work zone um without being uh stranded or um you know jeopardizing some other way all right last a couple of my colleagues have mentioned you know this is sort of an organization in formation um being made up of you know what used to be something and what we hope will be something um and so a big part of this job it will be strategic thinking and strategic planning so i was hoping you could talk a little bit about your experience um developing or adjusting strategic goals for an organization and how you've accommodated that change towards the broader vision as a leader like what was the situation what was your role how did you yeah um let me think about that there's a couple uh a couple experiences or examples that come to mind when i when i first started in uh new york city dot in the the budget and capital um division we were we it was right at point of a new mayoral administration and um we had this huge exercise in identifying new strategic goals and um some of that came through the the mayor's office and and their initiative but instead of leaning completely on a on what is what was a strong but you know ultimately kind of a political agenda we we supported that uh strategic uh effort strategic planning effort with um a sort of a technocratic agency based um strategic goals uh exercise it was it was a survey we we surveyed all of our uh senior staff everyone from the commissioner down through directors and in all the different divisions and um basically figured out you know which of which of the goals here are uh you you know based on your understanding which are the most important ones to be prioritizing or investing in um and and then created a weighting system where we could measure every proposed project against this this like sort of weighted uh ranking of of um of our you know identified strategic goals and and generate a list that was really strong and justifiable or defensible i should say um you know why is this project at the top it's not just because uh someone asked us to or because we're get it there's a really squeaky wheel that keeps complaining about it it actually fits into like a thoughtful um prioritization scheme um and that was really helpful in getting getting things funded um so and it it insulated a little bit um insulated the process a little bit from uh you know political wins um more recently we've uh there's that was two mayors ago and now we have a new one uh coming in who has a very different vision of um governance and how the transportation system uh will be able to meet the needs and we've been in the in the process of of kind of refreshing that type of exercise and seeing like after we had a several years of um i think projects that were advanced based on their ability to uh skirt around political challenges now i think there's an appetite for for not letting that uh be the priority and and actually being able to advance um you know the best uh projects that we have um um so the program is really built around that um the strategic thinking that uh that we have to do in order to advance that is also based on where the funding is coming from and that's not just um in new york city we have a we have a strong mayor who controls the the basically the whole budget um but the our budget office loves to leverage capital or i'm sorry uh federal funding or other grant funding and so um as in the in the planning realm we understand that when we we have the kind of ability to go after grant funding and when you get a little bit uh we get a million dollars for a project um our budget office knows that like we can't leave that money on the table we've got a it's a it's a coupon you cannot afford not to clip and and you have to fund the rest of the project now now so it's like there that's also that comes uh into the like actual funding strategy quite a bit is is figuring out um what are the best ways to to leverage um money from outside of the city or the county in this case thanks a lot so interesting hearing that you served on the gainesville urban area bicycle advisory by kind of early on or start i served on the same thing oh yeah in the university and kind of get you know got some knowledge there all right so so this question is about developing partnerships it's not always easy to work with other employees or departments to get things done uh so tell me about a difficult partnership you've had at work and how you handled it a difficult partnership um at work we um there are certainly uh different interests and agendas and personalities that i work with within my agency um but i think the the you know i don't think what you're asking is so much about office politics as it is about interagency uh collaboration and and on on that front we have um have a lot of experience with uh working with the other what we call the other like capital agencies in the city which are uh the um department of design and construction is is actually the agency that builds all of the the capital work um that is developed by the department of transportation and our department of environmental protection the latter is our water utility so they are there are water and sewer utility um and so those agencies as well as um the economic development corporation in new york city it's a quasi-governmental um not not a public agency but not a private developer but they kind of are the development arm of the city they kind of have a jurist not jurisdiction but um they're they're often the the lead agency on waterfront development stuff that's their specialty they run the ferries they do a bunch of um huge uh housing uh development projects those all those agencies have very different um agendas and uh we have challenges working with um some of their um very sorry about that uh the the other the other agencies that we have you know we have different agendas we have different um we all work for the city the people of the city of new new york and understanding that uh i think it's it's important to kind of like be able to collaborate on on those grounds where sometimes our idea about a street reconstruction project might be very different than the way um department of environmental protection wants to pursue a project we want to see something redesigned they're focused on capturing storm water and and addressing uh flooding issues in a neighborhood um and what i've found is that when there when there are those conflicts and and challenges in in the original conception of a project and and this kind of fundamental difference about between the priorities of of our agency or our work and those of of a partner agency um that we're actually able to extract much better results when just dealing with the nitty-gritty at a kind of staff to staff level um that maybe the the money isn't there to completely transform the design but maybe you make it 10 percent better or 20 percent better and and you build from there um so i'm using that reference because a particular or i'm thinking of a particular project where that exact thing happened where our dep was uh they have what they call a cloud burst program which is basically sudden rain storms that create huge uh inundation in flooding in areas it's not just about the overall capacity of the sewer it's about how suddenly the water arrives um and they were designing a project that would rebuild an entire stretch of roadway and and add all of these green infrastructure components and it was really tremendous you know water management project um and we were like oh there's a there's a bike lane on there and we should we should improve that and and upgrade it from that that temporary and a quick build painted version to the capitally you know full fully uh manifested version of it that will last for decades um and we're not going to be rebuilding once once they do their project they're not going to rebuild the other one or they're not going to rebuild it again i'm sorry um anytime soon so it's if we don't do this now we're probably not going to come back to it so we worked with them for many months on improving the design and when it got to a point where um they were looking at some more of the subsurface stuff they're like oh this requires that we have to move all of these other utilities we have all of our all of our utilities are under every street there's no you know trench in the right of way so any anything like that um requires all this sort of underground uh utility redesign there wasn't the money to move all those utilities and after spending months and months on on the design we were like we had to give we had to give it up we couldn't uh we couldn't justify going back to get more money was going to take too long so um we had to abandon it and instead of abandoning it and getting zero we worked with them to make improvements that did not require all of that utility relocation so we didn't get the the perfect version but we got something that was still a measurable improvement from the existing and we were able to you know uh start with that and and hopefully build off of it in the future commissioners we've been given a 10-minute warning so go ahead mr mayor all right so uh wrap up i have a simple question that you alluded to earlier but why gainesville watchword county great question um i have the short answer is uh i have roots here and i care very much about uh the the city and the county and uh there's a a community of uh friends that i have that that have been here for decades some have even just returned after living uh in in other states for years um i so the personal you know connections are are really a tremendous um motivation for me to be interested in in this position um and i just also love i just love the city forget about the my friends here i love i love uh living in alachua county and um the what's the uh the motto it where culture meets nature or maybe it's the other way around nature and culture thank you um those two those two things like yeah that nail hit the nail on the head like i i'm in i'm a plant i'm a transportation planner i'm interested in you know all things that that uh that move people but um i also have uh a lot of appreciation for the way that the the city and the county um preserve the natural resources from whether it's you know natural springs or um the the trails and parks and everything even the street trees um to flatter everyone here i think south maine the looks incredible and like the whole depot park transformation i remember that was just in its infancy when i was leaving and i like watched everything kind of get approved and funded and then come back to visit and see how uh huge of a like transformation it really um has become and i'm just so excited to see that the that it's been progressing and you know it doesn't look like it did when i left 15 years ago but um it there are so many exciting things about um the change that uh you know really draw me back yeah thank you samir i just have a very quick one you don't have to spend a lot of time on it but it's about your resume how did a florida kid get to the pratt um just just kind of quick yeah the quick the quick answer is um i i really cherish my uh my personal relationships and my friends and i had a and i had a bunch of friends that were traveling moving to new york for uh after after graduating from uf and i was like oh i should look at schools there and and i i checked it out i uh met my wife at pratt and um she's also a planner more on the uh environmental uh side of things um and yeah that was it we'll gather more about that later because from going from a bicycle mechanic to the pratt like that and be able to afford like that's a big that's well that's a that's a different uh story i got you all right now what would you like to ask this board um i did write down a couple so let me refer to my questions where should i start with um so maybe um this is tell us more about how much you like south main street all right i know i know you're joking but like the thing that the thing that blows my mind about it was that you were able to do so much stuff without relocating the sewers and the water maze keeping the those the sort of like gutter trench thing right uh between the the pedestrian the planted landscape beautiful landscape pedestrian extensions or in the parking lane without having to move the catch basins and everything that's like some somehow we can't figure that out in new york city maybe you'll have a chance to work with gru on that sort of oh yeah um but yeah my questions uh i guess um you've answered a few of them already so let me go to one that uh is uh pointed i think um in the uh the long range transportation plan i understand that that it's expected that that is refreshed um now that this is a a tma i'm not sure about the exact requirements of a timeline but um that's a document that i think has the the cost feasible projects and it has the sort of aspirational ones outlined or you know proposed um maybe everyone has a different answer here but my my question that i want to ask is what are what what are some of the most like underappreciated projects in that aspirational bucket that that you really want to see um advanced for for for funded for funding um 15 different answers probably yeah but is there any consensus on it is there you know something uh everybody consensus around trying to maybe around around the university of florida and that's 13th street university state roads to your point earlier i mean that's where we have that's where 70 80 000 people a day go and um trying to deal with that and then the denser areas we're walking and pedestrian biking so i think that's probably the area that is as well we had a lot of deaths as well so i think that's probably one of the areas i think it's yeah biggest priority for the board i think well we have traffic coming in and out of the county too coming into gainesville to work so the those the developments that are happening you know on the edge of the county or on the other side of the county where people are coming in the traffic is oh yeah okay yeah i guess that's it's true it's sort of like how do we create like the connectivity in the city centers and in these sort of activity zones that really create multimodal transportation options and how do we figure out how to be a real regional transit agency to rural spaces that don't have that kind of connectivity like i think that's kind of the the million dollar question or the multi-million dollar question you know where we're like we have a lot of energy right here in this musical center but then we have all a lot of our employees and stuff are coming in from those outer areas so how do we do that well when we don't really have the population density in those outer areas to drive transit and it was only two and a half we the chair three years ago yeah it was only three years ago that we actually moved the mtpo from the urbanized center to the county well that's when we started yeah mary was the chair and that was kind of the big initiative and that so we changed from a gainesville mtpo to a county-wide and we're getting ready to four lane out the departure but but if you're looking for consensus it's it's the area around the university yeah that's the everyone agrees on that need yeah the whole complete streets idea yeah okay great that's really exciting um we're running short on time so i'm trying to pick my remaining question or questions at this time um from the board's perspective what does uh success look like for this position in a in a short kind of or let's say mid medium term six months period and then after a few years what do you kind of what do you hope um to have achieved with uh this new formation of the mtpo board well you are not sure okay is it you want to respond mr mayor no casey you casey wants i wanted i think we went a specific we specifically said what does success look like for and that may have been our first search and i can't remember if anybody has it written down or if that's part of that because we we kind of did have a very we wanted to make sure we laid out a vision of success and i want to make sure that that gets to the candidates and i don't remember whether we wrote that down i'm looking at ms moss can i give you my one yeah stand up the organization snap up the organization and get local control uh and and input from state and federal that's the that's the sixth month we were a little more specific about that once that came forward but yeah i mean basically what you're coming into is the uh the mtpo was under the north central florida regional planning council um we for working with the florida department of transportation and all of us we are all in agreement that that relationship needed to be severed and that we needed we wanted an independent as a larger mtpo and so basically we have been working for the last year or so on how do we make sure that the incoming executive director so whoever this person is coming in we've all been sort of laying the groundwork for that to occur um making sure that there's enough support there but not so much support that you feel constrained by decisions that were made prior to that person coming in so we have um so we have a staffing agreement with the county to make sure that at least that is in place so that you um so that there's you know backing for employees coming in and that there's staffing in there but it's flexible once that goes in there but whoever comes in needs to you know florida department of transportation has been working really closely with us they're very supportive of this transition but that relationship needs to get built the relationship with the city with the county with all with all of the staff members as well as just sort of the sort of the staffing up and the sort of getting that groundwork put into there and just to to make sure i understand that the the mtpo executive director and and their staff will be employees of the county correct no oh they're their employees that they're independent oh oh but they they they're an independent agency but they are leaning for like admit just administrative stuff okay yeah there's an agency the mtpo contracts with the county to provide okay so it's services so hr finance and that's a decision that the executive director can decide to either keep or can bring that in-house or go to another contractor okay that's kind of up to them but it's an independent agency in a sense okay that's that's very interesting thank you commissioner look and then commissioner hannah i think i think i think they are more than me okay so basically i mean the short version is is establish the organizational identity and and part of that identity for the longer term needs to be making it accountable and transparent to each of the constituent groups that that have to work with it all of our constituent groups have to have an accountability and a transparency with it but your your first job is to establish it as as its own organization instead of just a thing that we do very non-transparently through the rpc okay thank you all right uh very similar to it with the mayor two of the uh short and medium goals we talked about standing it up starting working on actually obtaining a staff and then one that's been kind of a shortcoming for this very very bureaucratic type of entity is community outreach and engagement and get the pieces so we get full community support and at full means the entire latch county like our small municipalities and understand what they want and how they want to build our infrastructure for travel great i don't have anything to add um just one sort of nuts and bolts uh clarification fdot is also supported that i would stay on in a kind of assistant role um for about the six first six months um so till their fiscal year 27 because there's just a lot of ropes to learn in terms of all the different departments and functions within the county the state's on a july 1st of june 30th and then we're on a september 14th but just to clear thank you you'd be whoever is selected to be the executive director and be assistant in essence or there's a support um maybe my next question i could save for honey but um and i think uh just blurt it out real quick just blurt it well i was just wondering about the uh the you know the timeline for the hiring process but understanding that uh probably you know mid-january is before anybody can give notice blah blah holidays we want to make a decision probably today and then perhaps today is what i'll say perhaps and then um we understand we understand the time that's why we wanted to decision before holidays so people can spend holidays making plans sure okay that's a good is that about right yeah that sounds great that works we want to give us enough time to give notice but um but we want you here yeah okay thank you so much we're holding them here until you tell us me if you have any follow-ups and then we're going to let them go so do you have any follow-ups for either candidate you feel like something needs to be clarified i propose one follow-up if you go around this room we didn't get enough of the how many people have you managed yeah like because this is going to be management and i know if there's a couple other short questions i'd be willing but that's one that i i don't think we can leave i thought it was in the background it's a little confusing yeah like i think that's a good question because one of them said first first boss's day i'm like oh you know so both of them do that's fine is there is there anything else is there another like one important question before we do that yeah does anybody else have follow-up questions so we don't keep going the only question would be if you select the first one would he consider uh working for her as a second one i don't know if you want to ask that yeah does someone want to ask that question in particular who can word it because they may have like lower level management experience yeah how many people they've managed things like that what is your level of management experience and how many people in the next is really what you're asking it's a good question so that they are county and the answer is actually yes that's what they're killing employees by law because we're giving them our benefits and health care so when yes sounds really really good candidate one all right hi miss whitfield uh this is hopefully a simple question one that is a little lost but it's important regarding managing employees what has been your experience in in management of employees quantitatively yeah what has been your experience you know some sort of quantity quantity and time period um i was a manager of the planning and zoning division and olvido that had a staff of three the development review division had a staff of two and also the front counter staff at orange county as the chief zoning planner uh chief planner i had a staff of three eight um three arborist two planners and three what they call zvc's zoning development coordinators um currently as a deputy deputy director i have a staff of 14. i think that answers it's hard to glean that but thank you so much that's very easy thank you that's it thank you thank you so much so this is a pretty quick question um regarding managing employees what is your experience been managing employees particularly quantity of employees and perhaps a time period of managing them um i i think i started managing uh junior staff in around 20 20 19 um and have had that was a that were was when i was interim strategic initiatives manager is the that line on the resumes when i uh started having junior staff under me and then since then um the project managers that i have overseen i think are maybe around uh six or seven um different project managers at at any given point and a couple other um like gis specialists that aren't project managers but junior junior staff um and some of them have been direct reports some of them have been um like they report to me on half of their program and they report or workload and then report to somebody else on on some other part of their responsibility so um that's that's also been buried but basically all of the project managers that work on capital projects within our within our unit have uh reported to me for that okay that was the pretty simple wrap-up question thank you and that's the senior program manager role is as well as the assistant and assistant director yeah it's still it's um the responsibilities grew a little bit but um the work program was still um focused on on our capital program all right yeah thank you thank you thank you thank you so thank you madam chair i i i did a quick review of all the documents for for both of them that we have and this is not something that i would normally do but the thing that stood out to me is uh accounted about on um on miss whitfield's uh i counted uh the total references to transportation or some kind of transportation reference streets the word transportation phrases 16 instances really stood out to me that's why i counted them um and mr pijones it was 40. we're we're not hiring a broad planner we're hiring a transportation planner and i think that she's great she is is wonderful but she's not a transportation planner he's a transportation planner also south maine i'm just so thank you uh thank you chair um yeah i think uh um miss whitfield is a very good uh good communicator and um but i i kind of have the same thing of her experience looking at it it's land use and zoning planning or land use and zoning planning that's what it is which is not transportation planning and i noticed on the answers in answers his answers were all about transportation projects and being tied to that only a few of her her answers tied to actually a transportation process and uh and and such so that was kind of one of the things noticing is one really is much more of a transportation planner which then to go as a transportation agency and knowing how to work on these large complex kind of things and maybe moving forward and interagency i think both of them can do the job but that was just the same thing is one has transportation other one is just land use and which i think she has done some transportation stuff but much more on the other side thank you the bike stuff wasn't it i've been waving over here for a while i know and this is i've seen two or three hands too so i don't know if we just need it and you too okay mary go um i'm i'm a little bit in i i don't necessarily agree with that order of things because i believe that number one we need a good cultural fit and that i think that when you have good technical people the technical aspects of that uh will follow pretty quickly i when i interview people i i i um i have a method where i with each question i have a uh a yes no and a hell yes and a hell no and if anybody gets a hell no they're immediately off the list if anybody everybody needs to get a hell yes right and i had so many hell yeses with her right and i i i had she he had a lot of good answers really good thoughtful answers but i didn't have nearly as many hell yes answers and i feel like that cultural fit is just really important um and i i also think that her familiarity you know she has done transportation planning and her familiarity with the florida system i think is really important so anyway those are my thoughts who was next um so i um um i what i i noticed something i noticed about um mr padrone was he used a lot of we and miss whitfield use a lot of i which normally i like we when we're campaigning but in in in leadership and taking the responsibility i i really i picked up the eye out of miss whitfield um she does have some you know principal planner transportation planning division for a couple years um oddly enough some of us would agree some of us wish our transportation and zoning was actually planned together on a county regional amen right um so i i appreciate actually that ability to understand what development and whatnot will necessitate transportation though mr padrone obviously new york city like he he also understands the new commerce new people moving in um but he i but i doubt he has the rural and we are still outside of gainesville we're rural and so not that orange county is super rural but um miss whitfield had some experience in the panhandle and some other places i think it is in the end that isn't it is going to be important for us um so i'm i'm i'm on the fence that you know about where the best so i'm interested to hear um everybody else but the the to um commissioner alford's the the understanding the there's a bit of a cultural fit she a lot of what she said really really moved me about where everybody can move um you know when people should care the most in a process so she i think she really clued in on that same time uh mr padrone is actually a member of nacdo and we're talking about transportation planning so i'm i'm somewhere in the middle thank you uh yeah i guess i would say the same i mean i i'll say first i i also keyed on on the we and i oftentimes had we had more time you know i mean i've never been in an executive director interview that's taken only an hour i'm just going to tell you like ever in my life like i mean i'm used to interviews that take all day and there's like a presentation and there's stakeholders that give input and then you know so this for me is a very strange process like we're picking the leader of an organization and they get an hour interview and then we're picking it it's bizarre to me but given that that's the case um you know his wheeze felt to me like a lot of the things he was talking about aren't things he actually did they're things that his department was doing that he's a part of which i think is great he has the experience the transportation experience um that is is key to this job the understanding of like how do you plan right and he's in a really big city so he's also had that experience of like having to deal with things in some pretty complicated confines right some really challenging situations with a lot of politics um which i also really appreciate i think that right now when i look at the two candidates what i think about is that right you know if i was hiring the principal planner i would be hiring him but right now we're hiring the manager we're hiring the person who's going to run this whole organization who's got to manage all those planners who's got to manage all of us who's got to you know be kind of the the the puppet master the orchestrator right build the relationships with the ut build the relationships with the city build the relationships with us and manage all of that and i felt like her experience and her skill set lent itself better to that role than his experience did um and i felt like she i have really appreciated her answers around the ideas of equity the ideas that everybody needs to be a part of this process that you know she came here with nothing she understands what it's like to have to be in a community with not being able to navigate it i loved that she used her parents understand it as sort of the way in which she approaches like information because i think that's one of the things we've had is transparency issues um and he used a bunch of acronyms and things throughout his time talking with us that i was like i don't even know what he's talking about but okay i just sort of like nodded you know i was like sure um so i guess you know i i liked them both a lot and i i agree they could probably both do the job but i feel like from a maturity standpoint and an experience standpoint as the manager of an organization i think she has more of the skills out of the gate to be able to do that job well so i guess if i had to vote right now i would i would pick um a notch so um this is a tight one because these two are two different candidates with two different types of skill sets in the way that they interact with people i think breadth and scope of experience and managerial types of skill sets and abilities is in fact um kicking it up a notch i mean that's i think that's the case um as far as technical expertise in the area that we're trying to hire somebody an mtpo and stuff um it's the gentleman there's there's no doubt about that i think so it's really what we look for i think if we were looking to get up and running quicker it um it is probably our first candidate uh on the other hand she's highly opinionated about everybody she's ever worked with in every other capacity that's very concerning because you're in a bureaucratic state where you're working and reporting to many different people so that was worrying me a little bit all right she's going to have to immediately work within a team and report to the county while she stands up things in his case again his technical expertise is is there but he probably doesn't have the managerial capabilities to get up and running in six months as it would appear to me um and based on answers on the other hand he's very um capable of working in an environment where you're reporting both up and down and laterally uh the different things so it's a it's a so because they both have skills that can do the job how quickly they get up and running um probably is is is an edge to ours how uh collegial and outreach and stuff is probably an edge to um to our second candidate so i i'd just be interested in hearing the rest for our focus i'll actually be as wishy washy as i can be and say that we we can hire either of these candidates which is probably the best situation and then we're going to immediately want to have a conversation which may not go well with the other one to say are they still interested for maybe some of those other stuff that other staff position and they may say no but we should be thinking about how do we potentially get both of them on board that's right so i think one of the things we see here is is part of and this is okay there's nothing wrong with this it's natural is is a how the city um moves projects and the kinds of projects that we need as and the projects that the county needs i mean we talked about the area around uf you all talked about arteries into the city and those are very different ways of thinking about this and whoever we hire has to do both they will have to be comfortable with both um orange county is a big organization ocoee and uh and ovito or not i i think that i know that mr padrone has handled very clearly lots of that 360 degree gotta please a whole lot of people sorts of things i'm not sure of that in the last decade um with miss whitfield um i think either of them probably can do it um there's a there are risks with both of them neither of them have done this um that they've both plugged into organizations that already existed and that is not what is happening here this is a very different sort of thing there is a risk on both i'm not thrilled that we only have have these two um but i also don't want to want to drag this out for another year but but it is i mean there are i think that there is a a an organizational difference between the the way they approach it and the way that we approach you know some of us jumped right on um thoroughfares in and out of the city some of us jumped right on how safe people are around our major employer and well that's because you already said it had he had not already said that i think all of us would have said that no no no and i'm not yeah look so i mean us not not them uh us um we we approach things differently as two different organizations and we have to figure out how to how to work with that together at this table it's a that's a reality um obviously i i lead toward mr padrone for for those technical reasons um he's transportation player you know that that's that's what we're hiring yes they have to be a manager of other transportation managers but we're hiring transportation manager so that that makes it fairly clear to me but either of them i think can probably do the job both of them are at risk that they're neither of these are they're hitting it out of the park but both of them i think can do the work uh i i can count votes i i i get it but um but but i would lean toward mr padrone given the opportunity i like both of them and as you said excuse me with um commissioner alfred down there with guarding miss whitfield um she doesn't have all of the technical as we all say but she has everything else to me and she's one thing that i think that she has experience is she's dealt specifically here in florida so she knows rural areas she knows how to get between the city to the to the county and into the rural areas um her tallahassee contacts which was a big plus because she's already contacts with all those people up there in fdoc uh she's already learning the information that she needs to learn she's halfway um through that and another thing she's very proficient in english cambodian and spanish i didn't see any of that on his and as far as when we do the workshops to reaching out you already have your person there you don't have to hire an interpreter you don't have to do any of that she's she already has all of that um as far as her managing uh people i see that she has enough managerial uh experience dealing with people i just see that she'll be the better fit um again when she wants to or we ask or ask the question about the workshops she explained that she went out to the rural areas she sat down with the people you know and and she gave examples of how you can bring the people together to get the message out which is one of the issues that we're having here with the board of how you're going to get the message out to the people um he kind of explained it a little bit to me but not elaborated i guess kind of like she did and i just feel miss an awkward field would be the the better um person for the position now is there an assistant for the executive director we were all wondering if there's not two jobs yeah just hire her and then hire him as her assistant and then he can learn along the way a couple of them that's my thing i would vote for miss uh whitfield yeah i mean i i uh throughout this thought that it was a no-brainer for both of them at various times of the interview like it was uh i thought um the um uh the the thing i well thing i liked about michael if i look at both their experience and i think a lot of folks said a lot of things like a lot of maturity with mr nutch i mean and to be fair from my understanding of how this interview process went mr nutch had lots of time to kind of prepare for this and i don't know when when michael was told that he would be he was kind of a late addition to this is that yesterday so we had about 24 hours to confirm oh wow yeah okay so he had a little bit more time to so she had a lot of time here she went she watched our our videos maybe he he obviously came in saying how you know kind of came in a little more blind and that wasn't his fault that was um that that was his kind of placement into the process late in the game and so uh not to grade either of them on a curve or anything but he uh i mean because she came off like she knew what she was talking about she came off very much she had thought through each one like uh you know the various questions uh within each one of these things i'll say that for michael i mean i see him um consistently and he's been in one role but in that role people keep seeing something in him and they keep moving him up this very complicated organization that organization is the sort of centerpiece of transportation planning in the united states of america i mean it's a we all we all read what new york does and we all copy it everywhere else in the us both from the highways to the bicycle lanes to the you know transportation it is it is its own world but it's not that much its own world you know they they do a lot of similar things that the rest of us do figure out parking all those sort of things um so i know i mean he must have done he didn't go into a lot of detail on it but i'm sure he did this sort of community workshops that is that is a part of transportation planning you don't get a you don't get these big projects through even small projects through without very in-depth uh you know walking through it for in terms of what we do as an mtpo i mean it's um i mean a lot of it is that like the state or the uh fdot is going to continue to build they're going to try to continue to build high capacity roads through um you know into gamesville and outside of gamesville and it feels like some of our role is to is to do like what we did with newberry road which is how are we going to find and he talked a lot about this how are we going to find a way to uh you know get wins out of this so that we can find the right of way and it's not going to cost them a lot of money to get into that that doesn't mean and he has that experience and knows that because that's what he's done his career so i should certainly hire someone that is more of a transportation planner that can go to fdot with that you know and say this will not slow down traffic because we could do x instead of y or we could do y instead of z but it's um that is what the job is at the end of it is that is fdot's going to do what fdot's going to do unless our mtpo goes to them and says our community wants x fdot says well that's cute but we're not so sure about it and they say no it's not cute like x y and z are the reasons that that has to happen and i trust that michael will be able to do that with that said i mean so don't i mean feel i mean yeah she's got florida experience she has a lot more management experience i think she'd be able to hire for those roles but um and you know michael just seemed he seemed like he was still like he was still at a different point in his career right not in the point in his career where he was leading an organization necessarily that doesn't mean he can't go into it but he's relatively young um and so i i guess i'm in the same boat as everyone else um in terms of being somewhere in the middle of all of it but those are all my thoughts at the jump of it can i answer your question oh go ahead no just um just on the languages she has like she has limited proficiency in cambodian and spanish not full um that's i say i limited spanish proficiency proficiency um but uh um i don't know how efficient you are i'm not sure i'm not that that doesn't help okay i'm sorry i can get by i can get by i would be able to be careful um to that point you brought up about having to work with partners who don't want to do what you want to do and how do you get them five to ten percent better that is in essence our biggest issues it's how do we make these state roads that people are dying on archer road university all all these roads and how do you make them a little bit safer and get that little thing in there to make that change is a big our biggest issue we've had and how are we gonna we're not going to transform these roads and make them how we want them we have to take those little incremental wins so that's i forgot about them thank you chair mr angle it's okay i'll wait um so i mean that's just be the next revolution on the broken record but uh i will say a few things really stood out to me about some of them red flags some of the benefits to start with some of the red flags it does look like an awful lot of moving from job to job and spot to spot my personal record was 12 w2s in a year so i don't want to be two judges unfortunately you're not up for this um no i never got a call back so so i mean there is some time spent there and i don't mean that but i mean it does seem like this is not necessarily the person we would be looking at like this in the next 10 years it may be may not um there was a a little talk that always makes me nervous on the labor side of things about like hey we'll all hang out and work an extra 60 hours this week i know yeah to get the thing done but i think she did do a pretty good job of walking that back with me i will say she is not the transportation plan i experience you don't need or even necessarily want the best electrician on your crew the point of this job is standing up a crew getting this office going that seems to fall pretty strongly inside of her skill set not only of working at large digital organizations but small organizations you know we're looking at having eventually four people on staff a lot of administrative help from the county a pretty small organization being able to expect people to to wear enough hats and be able to handle all those things that come in with a small group of people seems to be something she's done in several places i also think that uh the contacts that she is going to have had after a long time in this florida system both working with the dot and with this variety of different uh government entities is probably as useful in my experience when i go to tallahassee having a good logical argument about why a thing should happen is not necessarily as important as knowing the right people to talk to and having personal relationships built to host other things so i can see where having a crew of planners that can give you some good factual advice and having the the experience with working with those state agencies um may well turn into a lot of synergy so i would say in general um for looking for a manager to stand something up i'm probably leaning towards this one too okay what a great input from all of you one of the benefits of getting to go last is i get to kind of rethink my um well we want to go again my thoughts well you can go again if you want but first of all let me say i love michael i think he is unbelievable he's um obviously got great experience obviously wants to come back here i think for all the right reasons new york city's got eight and a half million people brooklyn's got 2.6 million people uh he comes from a place where he has a lot of support but also he is leading on he's on the leading edge of kind of next generation planning and i think he would he would be great um he would be absolutely great um miss whipfield comes from orange county a huge county from a county perspective at least from my perspective um and and in the state of florida we look at you know the miami days orange counties the brevards the the browards with the pinellases the hillsboroughs with regards to what are you all doing to stand to to kind of bring transportation to the next level in florida i really like that she's been there for 10 years and while she has different experiences there we heard as far as standing up managing people she's dealt with very large orange county departments very small two very small cities they're not small they're three times larger than our second largest city they're small for the city of gainesville but they're 50 000 people so she's got that experience that dot experience that i really like um i i like the the standpoint of i think she could uh while built while standing up the organization she would be doing the work and she's she's obviously been doing that and has done that her experience to me is uh not just professional but just her life experience um is unbelievable um and what mary said you said at the last person you know when you get a lot of hell yeses and you're listening that's an indicator and i got a lot of them with her um i i would love the opportunity to hire both of them but i think from that standpoint she she hands down from her experience from my perspective would be the choice and then hopefully we could recruit him if that's even possible probably not because he's probably making too much up in new york um i don't know too much up there too you know yeah it's a different yeah so it all depends on how badly does he want to get to florida um with regards to her being here for five years she seemed like the type of person and her answer with regards to how quickly uh that she would try to be trying to build um a like legacy for someone that could take her spot if she ever were to leave in five or ten years um but i and i think that you know the first couple people she hires would be those that that that opportunity so i think we we win with both but i think we we really really win with this with field and i would support hiring her i just would like to make a quick comment about the i versus we thing i heard that too but i heard about the number of hours she put towards these projects and realized that's what ocdc people do you know they don't you know they stay with it until they get it done regardless of who's there you know whether the team is behind her or not that she's going and um you know maybe that's what we need right now in terms of organizing ourselves because we're just learning together too we don't know this business we don't know how to set up one of these things either we'd be learning together and um it looks like from the professional things that she's listed here for knowledge skills i don't i'm not sure why we're saying that she's not a planner transportation and mobility pedestrian safety corridor studies community and strategic planning all of these things are the things that you know project management code development community engagement all of these things are what we're asking from somebody she's listed here as her skill set and i agree the fact that she's been in florida long enough to make contacts that's who we need right now is those contacts to help us build the program here that we want built um i just and i i really enjoy the young man oh my goodness the fact that he's local grown you know and gone out to take tackle this stuff in new york city is pretty impressive especially coming in from like program like he established you know that shows a really good heart um and commitment to the community so you know i really wish there was some way we could get him here you know and find a spot for him but i think in terms of what we're trying to actually build we need somebody who's going to stay up to one or two o'clock in the morning to make sure that we get all our bases covered until we get this thing you know we have a few people on our staff on our in our staff and on our board you know who are very um highly motivated to stay uh you know in tune reading all the stuff preparing the way she said she's prepared by watching us knowing who we are before we even she even gets here um you know i realize that uh that michael who didn't have the time to prepare but and yet he applied heather do they have any recommendations that came with them did they have any personal recommendations do we no the search firm i could have asked him but he did not share those no i i just didn't know if that was part of an application process if they see sometimes they send them but i we didn't receive any but i can find out okay okay i don't know that it's relevant to anybody else but i just thought it would be kind of important to if they did that it would be nice to hear some recommendations from somebody they actually worked with if it's possible hannah did you want to say something i guess i guess i i am interested to know how the person who's doing the job right now thinks the two candidates did thank you yeah that was exactly my question so i've been notified that i have a potential perception of a conflict of interest um mr padron is friends with my sister he's an acquaintance of mine um but you know i reviewed their applications and their candidacy from a transportation planning perspective and he is through and through a transportation planner i think she has a very light experience in transportation um and then without making a judgment i would just ask um which of the candidates do you think is tougher because i would say that transportation is a tough field um and you're going to encounter a lot of people who you know just try to throw the book at you and say it has to be this way um you're going to want somebody who understands the nuances and and pushes back and is able to you know take that on but do so gracefully and maintain relationships and all of that so it's quite a dance um well that that was one of the things that stuck in my mind when we were talking about the requirements for the job that we need somebody who's responsive to all but not beholden to any you know because we've got so many different things here well they are beholden to our interests right i mean that is i don't think that's a joke i don't think that's a joke i don't think that's a joke like we the mtpo fights for our local community it gets lots of interests so we got here that do not necessarily that might not that that have their own interests at hand and so it is something to be said for it would be yeah i agree i agree i and that's probably an overstatement but at the same time the toughness you're talking about is to be able to you know even to push back on us if we're not right because none of us are expert well not all of us are expert in this urban planner guy yeah yeah well that's what i say not all of us are though you know and sometimes we we make decisions about things based when we don't have a whole lot of information yes ma'am yes ma'am that was one of the things that stuck out as well if she had a problem on something as she said she would get them together she would talk and see what the issue was and try and figure it out and if she had to let someone know go or or tell them something hard she didn't have a problem with that she could switch hats and okay if you're you know you don't like it and you don't like me it's okay i did my job and we need to move on and to add to um regarding a planner for jackson county board of county commissioners she was a grassroots planner for the vision project florida's first rural vision and we know that we want a vision for our rural counties so she fits right in with that as well okay you'll take turns well no i that was exactly the right question is what do the people who actually are going to work day to day uh with someone thing because we are the we are the policy board and even though we said you know we we control millions of dollars in that way and said we're also going to have very limited contacts with these people on a day-to-day basis and so we need somebody who's going to be doing a good job day-to-day and then when they report back so um miss moss what was your answer to your own question there about the pushback yeah i think anyone who has big city experience is tough i think you have to be scrappy you have to work really hard um to get to where you are that's my that's a bias of my own having come from a big city yeah so the um the standing up probably to me when i weigh the the skill sets and especially here and so i wanted to hear the rest of the people is the ability to stand up us get us running even if the tenure may be a little shorter or preparing for succession planning probably weighs in to me at this point because we have because we've been working through this for really 24 months not 12 months but at least two years and um i would like to retain um the second candidate but um miss whitfield probably gets us up and running even if there might be some uh you know some conflict in doing so and hiring and things like that but again this is this is a this is a close one thank you madame um allison go ahead just um a quick piece of information the two positions we're hiring for one of them is called um just transportation planner so that's sort of entry level and the other position is called director of multimodal planning um and so that would be someone who's very focused on bicycle pedestrian um and vision zero or safe systems planning are the salaries well the salaries we said it right we said that yes but i don't remember what we locked in i mean it's considerably less um of course for both of those is that is that something we can adjust oh let's see hang on yeah i just wanted to say that um you know while i appreciate the toughness of a big city job any kind of political position and you know any kind of planning position is by definition political um in florida is hard right now and the different places that she's worked in orlando have very different political um persuaded persuasions yes that's the word and she's managed to navigate all of those different places which has to be hard and you have to be tough so i i i see them both as having that toughness that that is being needed and quite frankly i think that um i can't see one above the other and and i agree i think both of them could do the job but i really think that she's the right one for right now and um and i i agree with you ken i wish we could hire them both but it sounds like you may can maybe well and you know i'm not sure you know that he might not like getting that yeah that's a decision that whoever we hire should make that okay yeah right i'm sorry yeah that's true okay let's see adrian you were next and then mayor and then anna and kia thank you chair um i think one of those comes down yes it's a it's a manager but it's only it's not managing it is managing but it's not managing like it's managing five people but managing organization it's true but also i mean we that person also needs to be able to do transportation planning like we don't have the the capacity of organization to have a physician that's only a manager um but that person needs to be a transportation planner and then they have other transportation planners and that there we don't have there's not enough we don't have enough stuff for just a manager we need somebody who can do the job and manage and their executive director is the one who goes and but why do y'all think she can't do the job that's what i have i don't i don't think that she can't do the job i don't that's not what i'm saying i think both of them specific answer for that i okay but i think that he had he has transportation planning i mean that's hearing the and there is a lot of lingo and a lot of stuff you have to learn to be able to do that yeah for sure and hearing just every every answer he had was tied to a transportation that was not the case when um it was tied to a land use or a zoning change or approval of of these um so that is where i think that is i think an important thing if we can't just have a manager who doesn't i doesn't have the deep depth of experience in transportation planning we need a transportation planner who also can manage the whole entire ways thank you chair okay um mr mayor sure um so very specifically she she talked about lots of things and they were all very good things and her personal story is great he talked about transportation start to finish and that's what this is is a transportation gig and i will say once more neither of these i don't believe are out of the park guarantees of success i am disappointed that we did not have more people our our head hunter told us the reason we didn't have more people is because we we kept the salary range artificially low and we talked about that in the very beginning the first subcommittee meeting we talked about that and i think that's why we don't have more and better applications frankly there are people out there who have done exactly what we're asking for but we're not willing to pay for that we want somebody to take one for the team and stay up to one o'clock in the morning do we have for a little less money so it doesn't matter we we said this is what we were we set the range this is what we we worked through twice and we need to hire somebody but the reason we don't have better candidates is that we said from the very beginning no this we want to keep this low the subcommittee we said we wanted to go at the middle of the range and that's what we did so i don't know where you're getting that because i don't recall us ever saying we wanted to go low do you recall that i recall the first time i put the salary out i think it was lower than what it is point of clarification so the salary was originally presented as a range of 120 to 140 and then the search firm suggested that we actually don't do a range we just offer the ceiling that that'll get us more qualified candidates and it will eliminate some uncertainty in the back and forth between candidates and as far as i know there was only one candidate who um outright said the salary is not going to be sufficient right we we would have if we cast a broader net we'd have caught more fish that's always true yes it is um i know that that she's asking for 150 000 which is outside the range she stated um to the to the mr jim denean that she would be happy she would accept 140 yeah she's overqualified okay everybody else so i i guess i i what i wanted to say is that i think that we like i actually you know you all have made a lot of really good points and i hear what you're saying what you're saying what allison's saying about needing needing that transportation expertise and that sort of scrappiness to be able to navigate the transportation world i'll say with a notch that one the other the one thing i just to play devil's advocate so that i can like you know throw it out there is like the one thing that concerns me is her hopping jobs and i see that orange county hired her twice so she left and they were willing to hire her back which is always a telling thing and someone if organizations willing to hire you back after you've left um and everything that she's gone to seems to be hopping like you know raising the bar like she said she kind of hit a glass ceiling there like she's trying she was trying to climb um you know and and i do think the contacts and connections are important but you know you're right about the labor stuff and it came up for me too i was like that multiple times we're talking talking about working all hours of the night and expecting everyone to work that i mean while i think that that's shows a good work ethic it also shows that you're not necessarily either working smart enough or that you have unrealistic expectations of your you yourself and your team and like i what i don't want to get into is that we have somebody in this role that's a that's like driving folks to work more than they're being paid to work and that has higher expectations than we would want them to have in terms of what people should be giving to their job versus to their everyday lives so that that is a really good point that you brought up and i did notice it because it came up multiple times in the things that she said so i guess i'm just trying to give the counterpoints that i hear you all and i do see that both of these people could do the jobs i think if we want someone who's gonna stand it up quickly and have sort of a standard organization government looks like smells like walks like what we're used to seeing in florida and what we're used to seeing government look like it's probably her if we want someone who's going to be innovative and creative and kind of out of the box maybe and and it's gonna take him a while like i we didn't ask him about his hiring and firing but like i don't i wonder how many people he's actually hired and fired but like that's that's a really hard thing to do it's a really hard thing to do um and so you know i think i don't know what we didn't ask her that question either but i do think we probably would have a more like plug and play with a notch i think we would have a more creative innovative opportunity to look outside the box with with um michael and so i but i hear i mean i i have to say i know allison claims she has a conflict of interest i don't think she has a conflict of interest because you know we all know people and you know some of you probably know people that know her she travels around florida and she's in orange county i i think at the end of the day like what what you think really matters to me because you have to work with the people you're doing the job so you know what it takes to do the job um and i guess i i sort of hear you leaning towards michael as a candidate and i i guess you can't say that outright but that's what i hear from you um that you think he has the scrappiness and the transportation chops to be able to do the job and i guess i'm just and that kind of makes me a little wishy-washy on my vote for a notch can we have our i would like to hear from our transportation as well i kind of i kind of pick their brains in between but i haven't heard do any of you guys feel comfortable speaking on i'm the last part of the screening committee so you know they have to come up here okay when they have to come up here to capture it all right here people we want to hear from you so what's part of the screening committee am i talked to the ones that we threw these two or more um to me it was a courtesy interview to see they're qualified enough to to do the job so between the two you want to speed up the process and do trying to put the tpo together and look for chicken heart the the employees to do the job i mean to me to have a little more experience than the kid the kid is a good transportation planner probably but not a i don't seem to have the whole experience to you're going to take a while to do an excellent job but it's going to take a while personal yeah i mean i agree with that you know i i took the 60 hour thing actually the opposite of the way y'all took it because what i then heard her talk about was her parents and finding time and family balance and all of that stuff so i think that that may be um the way she was brought up um but i i feel like that that's the her her uh work-life balance is actually great from her answers and um and if not she'll very quickly learn in latro county that that's what we want and so i i i didn't take it i i heard the red flag but then i i heard her actually overcome it and it was like a one of those hell yeses a green flag at least for me with regards to the planner um this organization relies very very heavily on dot and what funds are available through dot and we need a person that is innovative and out of the box but we need a a person that can communicate with the state and the federal government about funds that are available and i believe she will have the opportunity to hire the expertise whatever it is that she doesn't have with this organization and if we need to adjust salaries so that she has that ability this board can make that decision so you know when when he asked the question what do you expect and i said stand up the organization you know hire people um get us listen to the local community and get us money and he looked back at me like you need all that in six months um no i don't need all that in six months but yeah that's what we need we need that and i feel like she has the best shot for this organization doing that um but i like him a lot i really do i just think that she's the right person at the right time right now so uh james oh um i was i was actually gonna um so we've all kind of kicked this around a little bit i was going to make a motion that we uh hire miss whitfield for this position second thanks for all the conversation i think if we were looking for a one-year person i would definitely go with miss whitfield right the stand up the worrying about like oh will someone only save for five years i think this organization perhaps was not served by the super long continuity with our relationship with with the rpc right the super long so i don't i don't worry about someone who's gonna be gone in five years because five years from now we will just kind of really fully fleshed out this organization and gotten you know on track and and i'm okay with that that handoff and so i think you know for that five year either of them if you're if we're really worried about the just the launching the one year i think kind of 100 miss whitfield but i am looking for we know that we actually do need to do the outside of the box because it is not merely the or this is the question are we talking about just from fdot is it is it volume of dollars in projects or is it the quality because we i think we've described a we don't control the volume very well like but we are one of our jobs at least our constituents one is to control the quality and i feel like he would get uh michael would i feel i feel he's a little more attuned to that um and the um the the toughness of when when when the rubber meets the road literally in transportation um about pushing past what i feel like zoning land use planners give give me at least my experience in the city more of the well this is just the way it has to be kind of mentality i love our planners but sometimes it's it's a little it feels a little formulaic and we know that we have to go outside of the box a little bit and that's through all of i've leaned more towards michael padrone because of that um and i i i'm if the one year versus the five year if we if it's that we really don't think he can stand it up one year then i can understand that but that's not my word my worry is in the five-year time period a do we establish the stand it up establish the whole culture everything we're doing and have pushed and worked with the state to work on the quality of the projects not necessarily just the mere volume um and i will say i think if he would have had a couple more days notice he would have known a little more that like almost every road we're talking about is a state he kind of made mention he's like oh you probably have state roads for mtpo we're almost talking exclusively about state roads um but anyways so i i lean now more towards uh mr pedron thank you okay mr mayor so i would just note that uh he he not only knew it took time to uh to know people necessarily but he knew the projects that we've worked on yeah here i think that matters but you know he's our home kid yeah yeah adrian i'm sorry go ahead yeah i'd like to put a substitute motion to hire um mr pedron so that goes first so substitute goes first and then that fails and you go back yes but there's i'm sure there's more discussion still right oh we also need public comment yes we do um it's gonna come down to you yeah very quickly the comment that i wanted to make too about the changing the jobs for her is that you all know as well as i do there are a lot of boards that are more difficult to work with than ours in this county we're we're pretty together and the city it's pretty together some of these other cities and counties may be harder to work with you know which would also allow someone to leave to go someplace else to work you know that that's an issue too so it's not necessarily you know jumping so much as it is moving moving that's all okay anyone from the community who would like to speak to the motion uh the second motion first you speak to both motions you speak to both motions come right on thank you uh i was very interested in this process because i worked oh khali lamb thought i was famous because i i worked briefly with the founding management of mtpo the regional planning council which is partly why i worked briefly in planning after having been the star student of my program studying planning i think there's one more planner in the group somebody's a planner urban planner okay so me and adrian can tell you that transportation planning here is nothing like transportation planning in new york it's solidly built up bound in crowded up that is nothing like our urban re-rural matrix for planning and yes he mentioned projects we we have i didn't hear the plural part i heard him mention mainstreet which you might have seen driving in and i was very unimpressed with his presentation to you his personal uh uh presentiment was not what i think will stand up to to talking with state level people of dot or policy people in tallahassee uh the other candidate was uh was great at extemporaneous presentation which you might notice i admire that and um she was almost glib so and that's going to be an important talent in getting people in staff in dealing with other agencies and dealing with the outlying cities and state structure and as far as her working too hard and pushing workers she talked about working so many hours then she turned around and talked about extreme sensitivity to the personal lives of her of her crew so i i think she totally balanced that um i think you need to select the first candidate because of her presentation talents because of her uh her talent with people and as far as her jumping around like you said orange county hired her back they realized oh damn we let a gym go and got her back so her jumping around probably represented her knowing when she saw a door closed that shouldn't be and she went where she could get to an open door again she knew how to raise herself up despite in a in a inappropriate barriers so you know that that kind of grounding and understanding of systems is what you need to set this up not just and you know i i've the mayor down there is going to know she has somebody who's going to come out and connect with her people directly you know that the problem the county commissioners you know the issues you've had with outlying towns and what they think of y'all sometimes so you need somebody that's going to reach out like that okay thank you holly anybody else for the community hi anything else from this board before we vote on this replacement motion the replacement motion is to uh to um hire mr padrone all right all right so we need to do a roll call probably yeah okay all right alice okay can you thank you whitfield no no you said no no this is i or they i'm padrone i'll say no oh that's right padrone okay nay sorry thank you all nay nay nay nay aye you're an aye you're you're for you're for michael to hire mr oh no no no no nay i'm looking at whitfield i'm thinking i guess because i want her they're watching after us all right three eight fails now it goes to the original motion all right all right then um but yeah three eight that fails so we'll go with the first motion i don't think you have to call roll on this one though okay well yeah well we'll see it might be good on this one yeah good to have everybody for the record for the record real quick okay that's all right thank you for doing that that's good all right all right all right all right all right all right hi hi unanimous thank you it is unanimous that we have a higher to or someone to discuss a higher with yes yes mr mayor i've had somebody waiting on me since four yes so i'm not leaving just for fun no and thank you so much real quick can i can i move that if this fails that we move to hire michael i was just going to do that second yes yes i have a motion in a second to hire michael if this fails and the negotiations fail yeah right i second yes i think it's just yes okay so everybody yes it's unanimous right okay you know mr mayor if you lose you may use leave you may end up being chair of this board when you leave right that's how we do it that's right that's why we do it no no no casey's back casey your vice madam chair hold on let's close this i i want to make sure we're clear about the negotiations is um commissioner eastman doing that yes i can move eastman to the negotiations okay are you are you okay there's less to negotiate we have the salary set correct we do but we have some other things so we can talk about that so i just i mean well if it's the county is going to be supporting whatever the extras are should it be a county person just or does it matter because it's really up to the the mcbo board anyway that's true we're paying for it so yeah you've done a good job just negotiate you guys money it's fine yeah are you comfortable doing it again brian yeah i'm fine yeah okay so move brian yes okay um i think having the the recruiting firm as well having that as a resource for um um commissioner eastman as well just and yeah brian they've been talking to him a long time okay good yeah and our county assuming it doesn't cost us anymore but it should be part of the service we need to get this over the line okay you have unanimous support you know there was no motion no i wasn't but does it need to be a motion for him to do it or it's this is just part of he's been a part of the team unanimous thank you thank you are we are you through with us now heather okay thank you thank you for helping us she's like but i'm not heather heather how how how do you will how do you respond to our to our other uh candidate i mean do you do that do we if the fails we'll be back to you we can do it a couple ways we'll we we told them we would get back to them now if they could have seen it but we um we'll negotiate with your primary choice and if that doesn't work we'll negotiate with the other okay but they're they're you know they're both really good candidates yeah no we were both yeah all impressed all impressed we want them both maybe they would split the salary and come together right you know just saying no no no okay all right good job you guys i mean i do have a question i mean i guess they want we want to let them hire their team though right i mean that's really the ultimate yeah good job hard hard stuff okay the next order of business then is is our election yes yes sir so madam chair it's been a it's been a tradition of this uh mtpo that it alternates between county and the city i believe casey is the vice chair now i think you would make an excellent chair i would move casey as our chair um vice chair then would have to go i would suggest be a county and then and then and then the third position is the representative of the mtpo and that typically moves no that's the mpo ac it was me so that would be a city person so cal and is there also a treasurer because usually it's like like the the third the third the treasurer or the secretary whatever what's the position we got to nominate um mayor ward for since he left that's that's the vice chair that's the question no it's not vice chair the vice chair is a county person oh the county because he's city so um he's not going to go to the meetings we really need somebody that'll go to the meetings yeah yeah i don't believe that we need to appoint a chair this evening so sorry to let you down in terms we don't need to appoint a chair sorry um treasurer okay but we need a vice chair and a chair yeah okay so who wants to be the vice chair on the county you want to do it again i'll do it again yeah i would okay i would move um casey as chair mary as the vice chair okay okay all right all right we have a slate okay yeah i think that it's okay i'm on only two committees slated next year for this in anticipation of this no but this is serendipitous is what i'll say oh and so no it'll line up i think it'll line up just fine okay good and i am happy to keep this tradition going for this year i will say that we have uh three more members that have joined that are non-city or county and if it may not be fair in the future to lock them out of the chair and vice chair i don't know what a fair way to do it outside of what we are currently doing so i don't call you guys are comfortable with that right now but i do think in the future though like there needs to be another not a city county board anymore that's true that's true um i i actually would like to to nominate in my place because taylor is vice chair well she's only going to be on for a year um so the the positions are only for one year oh i thought they were for two years and uh but it's okay yeah all right never mind sorry you escaped that you escaped what's how long is your appointment agent um you know what i run how long are you on the how long are you on the commission i'll be good all right that that would be you want to do it you want to be vice chair okay you be vice awesome everybody else is okay with that yes i'd be okay with that because you're chair of north florida right well i'm but vice chair is pretty yeah but i won't be next year with all men my motion casey and then vice chair uh hey santos all right all right all right uh thank you well all in favor say aye i'd like to sign opposed all right that motion passes unanimously we're set for another year what about the uh the the florida metropolitan the organization that meets down mpoac yeah the mpoac meets quarterly and we need representatives for those as well and those appointments are for three years oh they are for three so are we still on that then because i'm was going down or online well i've been asked by the new executive director of mpoac um to provide the names of our representatives and so if i remember right these are on thursday so the date the exact dates are here because i knew there was a potential conflict categorically with city commissioners because of planning commission right and their afternoon meetings sorry mr cornell i would move mary because she was going to be the vice chair can you do that mary i can do that i think these are not this they used to be on the same dates as the regional planning council but they're not anymore so you'd be the primary representatives and especially with a new executive director and it would be useful for us to have the connections to other mpo uh to especially with the new new person that may not necessarily have that mtpo type of experience that would be helpful i think so we probably should have traveling with her there's not a lot to actually uh it looks like both the um two the 4 30 and 7 30 are both actually not so two out of the city commissioners we actually need us we actually need an alternate i would be happy to be an alternate okay move james as an alternate all right second all right motion and second for james to go down there and smooch with the mpoac i do like a schmooch now you can go down the night before and party with them actually i assume there's some like expense reporters there is there is they won't who spend the night and then hang out with them is that in orlando it will be the next meeting is some orlando usually look at that yay no they need to know who you are anyway that's good all right anything else nothing else yeah no they have more uh i thought we already voted for you all to do that no all right all in favor say aye aye james yes more things okay go for it um so next on the agenda um upcoming meetings of interest tomorrow we have sort of an off schedule but because of the holidays and because of needing to have um certain things approved in time by the board and then before that the tac and cac so tomorrow we have the technical advisory committee that's the staff committee and then the citizens weighing in on performance measures for the mtpo and also this middle of a transportation alternatives application those will be then going um to this board on the 5th of january so it's a little bit of a weird schedule but that's just how it falls with the holidays this year um and then the last uh i snuck in a director comments item um so i just wanted to um let me get this verbiage right because it includes something from the attorney um so i think you all are aware that we have some outstanding um financial issues uh with the north central florida regional planning council so we are um still awaiting full documentation um of the financials and also some cash held um so the north central florida regional planning council at as of last week has become cooperative and given us some of what we need um but i've been asked um for authorization to pursue legal action to resolve the issue if necessary um so that i don't have to come back and request that authorization from this board and if i can note that if if you do have to pursue legal um i will be part of that legal action as chair of the regional planning i would like you can move at it and ask them to get us all the information allow authorization of legal action against the north central florida regional planning council if necessary thank you thank you all any further discussion do you know how much money that is um not fully because we don't have the full record so um i'm hopeful and optimistic i was planning on actually attending the meeting in lake city last week um but then in the 11th hour um some documents um and information came our way um so we're hoping that we can be very explicit in what we need and get that without result you know resorting to legal action so that's our hope it's been the whole time um we're just trying to use whatever levers are available and i just to shout out uh you guys uh i guess the clerk's finance department um for just doing a tremendous job and really staying on the case on this um i know this was a lot to ask for everyone involved and so uh yeah just to share a little bit so um todd hutchison with the clerk of the court does as i understand it impeccable work and he has sort of spotless audits and we really want him to be able to continue to help with the mtpo if he can't get um the information he needs like to him it doesn't really matter what the cash held is he just needs an accurate understanding so that if he is audited he doesn't feel at risk um yeah if you see todd thank you so having having todd there will help our incoming executive director have a very good finance team behind them so whatever we can do to get them to make sure that we get this information anything you can do from the regional oh i've been working on that information believe me it's very helpful i know brian but i mean to that point the clerk does career source library governing board children's helps with children's trust this board um and the county has funded another fte in mid-year for the clerk because of all of that and so if that's what they need then we gotta so thank you for making who's going to those meetings now that for a regional and who's mary i know she is but uh there are other i've attended for three years yeah and then you're you're on the board again yeah you mary and um okay okay actually super interesting meeting last week yeah it was a good one good good thank you yeah mary's a great chair i'm sure she is no i'm sure she is okay um any public comment we're all in favor i like sign a post all right that motion passes allison you've done an amazing job you really have my great grandpa used to say thanks with damn poor pay but we appreciate you yeah okay thank you all congrats any anyone else have comments from the board any comments if do we need any other do we need any advocacy to the north florida regional planning council you know is a elected it's full of elected people and they vote as an entire planning council do we need any advocacy to them to just say from either cities all of our cities airport all of us that make up mtpo is there any point in that i know i know that staff has i know i have on my calendar for january 22nd the next meeting if we don't have everything that i will be could we authorize a chair letter if necessary um to uh uh from casey to casey to mary yeah right something that goes in the point is putting it in the hands the information in the hands of every single voting member of the rpc whether that's we email them but i just sometimes i think the entire no no i i'm going to jump in and give a slightly more pointed opinion i when i was on the rpc in 2024 twice i brought up in public comment or you know member comment that was never dealt with and i asked whether their executive committee had been preparing the entire organization for mtpo leaving and hundreds of thousands of revenue leaving the planning commission and i got like crickets right there was nothing to say yes the exact is it called the executive committee yep yes executive committee has been working out this planning this out and so sometimes i fear that not all the information is hitting all of those members i think some of those members even though i mentioned i mentioned well in advance we're getting close we're getting close we're getting we're probably going to be no longer using your service and it is hundreds of thousands of dollars of of a contract contractual service it just like nobody and never heard anything and so i i kind of want to get this information in the hands of because it's like it's like 30 or 40 people make sure it's in their hands so that if they need to put any pressure or if it's just it's all going to get done by then it's great i just i offer that up as well we'll have a meeting on july on january 3rd if we don't have it by the 3rd let's do the chair letter because then that'll be to the planning council by the end of the month remains remains okay adrian yeah coming just for the chair of north florida people who are on that committee you guys should probably do an audit because if they're not able to provide oh i'm with you on that i mean that's the reason why they're not providing the funds they've known for a year they've known for a year this has happened yeah and and they don't have the the he's like i have to finish my yearly book so we know it's like what yeah yeah i'm with you no i'm with you just for your right did you have something else right no no okay well i guess i was going to say that the only way that we learned about anything going on with the north central florida regional planning council here is because of a letter from the florida department of transportation highlighting these things and so i think as board members we can see pretty more than most people that sometimes having an outside entity sending some information can i get a motion second and vote yes yes um you already made the motion didn't you i don't i i don't think anyone made a motion i'd like to move that we send a shares letter to the north central florida regional planning council giving information about the funds and asking for a full accounting and cash flow okay of cash and cash all right all right all right second motion from brian commissioner alford commissioner alford is there further discussion about this oh mary all right all in favor say hi all right that's funny passes unanimously no me i don't mind i know you're doing good you're doing good um is that all you need from us at this time yeah all right good job thank you anything else from uh anna i have something it's not it's not necessarily mtpo specific as it's not it but it's county roads i met with the constituent today um and it is outer lying so 235a 235 441 distribution center tearing up the roads we all know the problem he has taken it upon himself to do this pretty in-depth analysis it was actually pretty interesting anyway long story short i don't know where we are with the no through trucks on 235a like down to 235 and around but they're not only tearing up the road but they're tearing up the corner because that turn is too difficult for the trucks to make and we could know through truck them because they can go up 235 to 441 and go anywhere they want to go so we could just sort of basically make it it like they can't go the other way right so they can't use the small county roads they have to go up to the major highway to 441 um and it's not longer and it's not harder for them it's actually easier for them and shorter so it's a win-win for everybody to change yeah you got to get so we need that we need a distribution center to put it in their nav systems right to the routing systems and things like that but i just wanted to bring it up here so that our team could maybe reach out to their distribution center routers and talk with ramona about it and see if it's a possibility it seems i don't know why and maybe it's already been done and it's just they aren't listening but i just wanted to bring it up here because i was surprised by his analysis and how easy it seemed to be so and why it hasn't been done already that gets a lot of attention that place we talk about it a lot well in it one direction the direction that we don't want them to go it goes by like 148 residential homes and the other direction it goes by almost none goes by eight so it's just it's like it seems like a no-brainer but for some reason we haven't done it yet so if we could have somebody look into that yes ma'am um and following up behind commissioner prezia that's a problem that we're having in waldo as well exactly what you're talking about with um the cut where you can cut with the post offices and then going straight up to um 301 and merging off with 2400 301 that's an issue that we have because sometimes the big trucks do not need to turn off like there's no traffic at the stop sign so why are you diverting going that way just holding up traffic or whatever and then they turn short they tear down the stop sign you guys have to come back and and put it up and uh yeah that's an issue that we have because another one of the council members had um citizens that were reaching out to them as well and then when the big trucks turn the same thing they're creating holes as soon as you turn they're just eating up the asphalt just shredding it just shredding it and um every now and then i go into my hysterics and i call aso and have them come to waldo and try and do something with the traffic but that's a really big issue that we have turning down our our side street so if you guys could help us do something about that one minute county road the next minute it's a state road so we don't know whom the road belongs to but we need help um with that in waldo and thank you our lights are operating again on the side where um you can turn straight to go up to the city hall but we had a really big crash um that happened right as you're coming into waldo uh by the event hall i believe miss um char was here talking about it um that's a a really big issue where we kind of wanted the red light there they haven't um started the lights blinking as of yet they just poured the cement down to finish up the little holes that were there but uh yeah that that's a still a really big problem is there yes yes and and i've also gotten a lot of data through from levy county people who the truck traffic that's going from bronson to archer too you all got emails about that i think that they were they were out there all day collecting data counting trucks and what kind of trucks that go in which direction and all that so that helps too anything anybody that you all can get you know doing those kinds of counts out there and also um a citizen out in brook of florida which is on the side that alachua county and mr phillips they're having an issue i believe it's county road 218 um they go out and they pave the road and not pave the road they go out and they they straighten the road up they take the grader and they grade the road however when the grader finishes it's kind of like if you know what a road board is like it has those ridges in the road like a tractor went down it and you can't if you know anything about country roads you cannot go down that road slow when they have those rivets in the road you have to ride to keep your car yeah you have to i didn't know if anyone knew that was to keep your car from uh being torn up so the gentleman sent me an email i will forward it on again to whomever it needs to be forwarded on to but he says that by the rivets in the road um it's torn up his truck on the inside his dashboard he's had to fix several uh issues on his truck and other residents are around no no this is in alachua county broker okay so yes ma'am that's an issue that we're having and that's basically i have a lot of um things to send of to allison and i guess the new executive director with 1475 and different issues that i've been riding around seeing on our rural roads and making open when you turn off of um i believe that's 441 you make that turn to go to uh i'm learning the roads i'm a country girl so i'll say turn here turn there but uh as soon as you turn off of 441 and you make that right hand turn to get on that stretch where you can hit 75 that road is terrible it's been terrible since i've been a little girl and i'm in the 50s now so yeah um and still doing writing i have pictures and everything so i'll send you my little clips if i so i've been doing my due diligence writing the rural areas two quick questions allison when is our uh rural um rep turnover when is the and it's we go alphabetically right we started with waldo and next up is archer i guess do you know believe we settled on two years alatwa alatwa okay i think we settled on two years so that's next year okay and then when does the new when does the new officers when when does casey chair the next meeting um the the first one january 3rd yeah okay so this is your last meeting i just want to say you've done an awesome job of getting us to where we are you got us a new hired person so thank you well thank you very much thanks congratulations you don't have to do it anymore oh man if it was like going through covid you know we're trying to carry trying to get that done yeah yeah well thank you all very much it's been great learning and you all been very patient and tolerant and i appreciate that yes casey thank you madam so wait councilman taylor will you be with us for another year is it a two-year term or you with you until i believe the end of this year the end of next year in the next year just just double checking okay well then i'm going to give you some flowers early but thank you for being present aware always advocating prepared and to help set that as kind of a a standard for all of the other cities that we'll be cycling in i'm glad i thought we only had it for one year mike wait wait wait wait you know no because um we'd have to go find someone else but thank you and i think i think those other cities should use as an example of like and like real example like you get a vote we just we just we're offering in a position elective to an executive director so um but thank you early um and then other people hopefully we'll you know archer will we'll take a lot of your lead there's a lot to next sorry a lot to next we'll thank you commissioner will it's and also to add i enjoyed working with commissioner wheeler thank you so much she's always in waldo she has um a grandchild that plays on the uh softball team so plays over there she's there all the time you guys can visit waldo we don't have a police department anymore i was there last week so just like a party panel all right and allison thank you for fixing the sidewalk for the women with their dog the blind woman that was having yeah she's thrilled thank you for getting that done all right is there anything else this kumaya moment happy holidays yes at the holidays all right well this meeting is adjourned