Wednesday April 1st we are together for a first time in a while for transportation surtax appointing authority meeting we have two new faces actually Nate were you at the last meeting okay and so long me to remember but happy to see you again so if our two newer members could please just introduce themselves to the
group good afternoon Lorette Jean assistant county administrator Steve
Ulmer the director of School of Environmental Coastal and Ocean Sustainability replacing the Center for Environmental Studies appointment at and
I'm at Florida Atlantic University thank you both great to have you here we've got a relatively brief agenda but we do have some important items to discuss I want to make sure everyone has a chance to do just that so the first the first order of discussion is the administrative code 34.3 a all of that was provided in the backup material and there was a March 26 county commission agenda item on it which I do not know the update to so it was not able to attend that meeting it was passed on the consent agenda okay great thank you so and effect was your an
effective date immediately or yes the item that went before the board on the 26th list because the appointing authority in the past had adopted both as policy for the board itself as well as it was included in the Broward County administrative code that all seven members of the appointing authority must be present in order to conduct business because there is a vacancy that cannot be filled on the appointing authority county administration map administration county attorney's office place an item on the agenda to have that section of the administrative code waived for purposes of the this hearing um and again the reason behind that is that one of the categories for members of the appointing authority is a representative of the Broward County Council of Chambers of Commerce which was uh administratively dissolved about two years ago um and as we attempted to try to reach some of the folks that were still showing up on sunbiz wasn't able to get any feedback about whether they were reinstating um so for in order for this board to come together to conduct business we sought the waiver of the code so that you could be meeting here today actually have something other than a workshop right uh so that and in addition to that the there was a part b to that item which is directing the county attorney's office to uh in consultation and working with county administration to come up with changes to the ordinance that creates the different categories for the appointing authority to address that situation with the broward town council chambers as well as um a tweaked the provision relating to the florida planet university representative because that particular school was subsumed with another uh school at the university so there are some tweaks that need to be in connection with uh our ordinance and all of that was uh okay great does anybody have any questions from that yeah two questions uh was the uh position that the relating relating to the schools or to the uh chamber was that the appointment for which dan lindblade dan lindblade's seat yes okay all right and then to the ordinance only uh the first part of that ordinance only applies for purposes of today's meeting well what what the the rule or policy um regarding all seven members being present to conduct business is not in the ordinance it's in the administrative code county commissioners has the ability okay but that's only for today that is for purposes of today's meeting um if it needs to be done again why don't we make that a permanent thing so that we're not having to make you go through hoops nate when you i mean well yeah if we can meet with six why not us meet with six we ought to have at least a minimum of something or five but it seems crazy to me that if we have another issue that may surface in the future or name change or why not just permanently allow that that way you're not having to put stuff on the agenda and we're having to move meetings so that you can get through i mean i appreciate you doing that but it seems like a lot of unnecessary work if we can just change the code or the ordinance to say five out of seven to meet well and again or majority that that was a policy decision of the appointing authority at its inception uh in terms of meeting with all whatever you all would like to do we are going back into the ordinance we certainly can go back into the administrative code as well um that's just the will of this board although i would say that because uh that item potentially changing your admin code to deal with quorum issues is not on today's agenda um that's not something that you all would be able to formally vote on but if we're just having a discussion on the topic yeah there seems to be some general not consensus but unless somebody wants to tell me otherwise i'm more than happy to go in to uh make modifications well let me just give a little bit
of the history and the why and i think that's important so when we were getting started we just we didn't know what was going to be what right so how often were we going to have to appoint people the idea was we really wanted everybody to hear everything about all of the applicants which i think was the right intention since then we have not had very many openings and so i would be open to something like six or something that makes sense given how frequently or more accurately infrequently we are meeting to appoint people but the intent in the beginning was everyone should hear everything for all of the applications so you could hear the discussion and so i think that was the right intent at the time yeah
um mr chair i absolutely agree with you um and another question are how many members
are on this particular board is it there are seven members seven um and again most of these members are um coming from an organization so the individual who may be sitting here on any given day got it for a meeting is may be different yeah but it's the underlying agency who has representation
yeah and really again just for discussion purposes yes i don't know why we wouldn't consider having the majority of the seven be necessary to conduct business maybe if you wanted something more we may have a majority plus one but whatever i just think we should do something i agree with jack to your point
sydney i i i'm thinking like this is kind of a super majority five out of seven to make sure we represent and reflect you know a major portion of the body that we comprise when we put this together we made sure we had representation from all these different areas i think kind of a super majority of five out of seven would be that we're pretty fair to everybody yep so and again
unless there's uh uh others that feel uh differently with regards to that since an administrative code uh change can be promulgated um by staff um unless there's other thoughts on the topic uh more than happy to talk with county administration and potentially bring an item when we're changing the ordinance also modifying your administrative code section to uh adjust the quorum requirements do you have
any comments for it no yeah i agree um with that my comments has to do with the ordinance as it relates to the oversight board members specifically so i don't want to segue into that until yep mr chair
just one last question please um to uh gretchen was that the reason why we had difficulty getting everyone on the calendar for the last i'm thinking two three months yeah we should resolve it yeah the
scheduling piece just gets harder and harder right if you know six months in advance you're going to meet that's one thing but if we have an opening and then all of a sudden we've got to meet in six weeks or eight weeks schedules being what they are it becomes harder we have a consensus on
five other seven um yep there's not been uh yeah nothing is requested yeah no no i've just listened to everything that everybody has said and i'll work with county administration on amendment to uh the
admin yeah because i think the group's intent is to get the most qualified applicants seated as quickly as possible right so i mean i think that's the most important thing so we can't meet because of our schedules that's not really what we're trying to do yeah but it looks like we weren't meeting because we
didn't have that one person that was absolutely yeah yeah yeah did you have a question or
just chit-chatting in terms of there's a there's a provision in your code um regarding the categories where it is um the in certain circumstances it is the uh a representative from an organization or a delegue from from an organization so uh using uh mr seiler as a example he is the representative of the broward league of cities the broward league of cities can change its representative on the appointing authority for every meeting not that they should i'm just saying they can't they can we'll get mary lou on the phone um others where it is not an organization for example the president of a particular school at florida atlantic university um it is that person or a designee so i i i we may make some tweaks to that language as well to also provide the flexibility um to make sure that if the board if this appointing authority needs to meet it has the ability to do so um in an expedited fashion since its primary role is ensuring that the oversight board is has all of its members yeah i think that
a lot of nodding yes so i think that makes sense um okay any other discussion on that issue i used to be able to see this so clearly now i need to go i need my readers ages catching up you used to bring us chocolate too yeah times have changed jack um okay so we have a an opening in the accounting category which is a new opening this was when we scheduled this meeting this issue of an opening was not um was not current and so uh shay smith was the uh position holder for accounting and the accounting firm that he works with was acquired and the new firm has a policy that excludes the ability to do this so regretfully he's no longer able to serve so we thank shay for his uh for his service so we will need to schedule a meeting for getting applicants in that category and also appointing somebody in that category so would you like us to try to pull out calendars now okay let's start with october just kidding
so mr chair and members we have four dates that we're proposing that are on the screen and in your binders if you could take a look at those and let me know if any of those work uh we'll start there
i was joking by saying october but end of september is there a reason i mean we're looking at september could we i think we have to advertise find somebody and have a period of
time that it has to be advertised and and we are in the process of amending the ordinance that might have an impact on the qualifications related to that specific category so we'd like that to occur before we advertise so we don't have to do it twice so september what's that a wednesday we're talking about the same time 1 30 that would it can be for september 23rd this 1 30 works for me yeah so for september 23rd wednesday it has to be in the afternoon the others have more flexibility
i can do the 23rd at 1 30. yep 23rd at 1 30. yep okay okay be happy to have you back and gretchen
there's i'm just kind of there's no way that we can do this sooner than september i mean because the
ordinance changes and the admin i mean primarily the ordinance changes do you need to come back to the county commission and then they have a public hearing and two two hearings and then the board goes on break for the summer we just didn't think it was possible because we also have a an oversight board budget meeting in august so if you all would like to try to do it before that we certainly can i we were just trying to be cautious so that we wouldn't have to have you you know block up time or come when
we really didn't have a good slate of candidates maybe we can hold the 23rd and if there is a way to accelerate the timeline we can just socialize that date in advance and say hey everything's approved ready to go what have you let's meet in june you know or whatever yeah that works but at least we know this will be the outside date and if i could just request that i'll hold it but we just send an invite
calendar invite once we know thank you roy did you want to look at some dates in june just to see if
i just picked june arbitrarily i mean i we have a clock right we know it has to be advertised for a certain number of days and we have to get it reviewed and approved i don't know how long you know what's
the shortest possible date given all the constraints right so at the moment we're putting items on i think for now we're up to the first first may meeting of the board of county commissioner so i should be able to know within the next week or so whether i expect that we'll be able to have the admin code the code changes ready to go for that meeting so if it was if it was the first may meeting for the initial hearing or excuse me it'll be yeah set for public hearing and then a public hearing for the second may then having the appointing authority in uh june well again no they'd have to advert they'd have to advertise it and the meeting would wind up potentially being i don't know what everybody's schedule is for that um i'll either i'm going to either make myself available if that's where where we land or have somebody else from my office uh cover the meeting the way so earliest i could imagine would be july um and i should know that within the next seven to ten days max why don't you circulate some
days we'll see if we can because i just think the sooner the better i'm kind of in agreement
move it up move it up yeah yeah yes and mr chair the uh what's our advertising date is it 30 days in
advance what's the record so what we typically try to do is as soon as we find out that we have a vacancy we're required to start advertising um but as i said because there might be a change to the qualifications for this particular category we're trying not to do that because then we might have to ask people to resubmit um so as soon as we have clarity on what the qualifications for this category are going to be we'll start the process we'll notify all of you so that you're aware and you can help us like we always do get the word out to anyone that might be um interested in serving in that particular accounting category and then as soon as we have an adequate slate of candidates that have been reviewed and are considered qualified by the attorney's office then we go ahead and we
set the meeting with you all okay thank you very much any other questions or discussion around that so item three on discussion independent transportation surtax oversight board qualifications and categories defined in article 5 section 31 and a half dash 75a the broward county code of ordinances is there anything else we need to discuss around that is that where you wanted to weigh in a little bit laura
yes i apologize i my eyes must be deceiving me as well because i didn't we can share some readers in some of our conversations it's come to my attention that uh the qualification criteria for the various roles on the oversight board varies there's some inconsistencies and since a county attorney is going to be working making some updates on the ordinance as it relates to the third amendment ila and some other changes i figured it would be a great opportunity monica and i i should say we figured it'd be a great opportunity to revisit all of the qualifications of the oversight board members to ensure there's some consistency one example that we found was that there is no criteria at least no flexibility with some of the roles as it relates to allowing other like career experience in lieu of certain certification or educational requirements whereas other roles allows for those and florida statutes allows for in lieu of the county board of county commissioners have accepted that as part of our hiring process so why wouldn't we allow that with our oversight board members so just thought it would be a great opportunity for us to revisit that so other comments or
questions i think the idea is you might have somebody who's not a professional engineer but has got lots of engineering experience as an example and so they would not be qualified and i don't know if this is the right example but just as an example because they don't have a pe after their name but have the relevant work experience so the idea here is to relook at all of those things so that we have the most possible qualified applicants and not exclude anybody who might be a perfect fit but does not have the appropriate credential or designation that is currently called out is that right nate uh yes in in large
part we we have a change that we need to make to this ordinance anyway with one of the categories previously there had been an individual at one of the public institutions of higher education within broward county that had knowledge and experience in supplier relations and diversity those positions no longer exist um and so we obviously need to make a tweak in terms of in terms of that category since it does it no longer exists um you have uh you know several of the other categories don't have or require either licensure or a requirement for any particular number of years that they have been uh in in the field so again again you know that was the one that i just mentioned was subcategory or category nine we have a former city or county manager well there's no uh you know degree or licensure required for that so there wouldn't need to be a change there for that reason uh category seven is the the user of public transit again not anything in terms of that uh yet we have a professional in the field of environmental science that only requires a degree and practical experience in environmental science so that's not a specific licensure under a specific statute and a specific number of years it is a degree and a type of experience generally uh you know the architecture one as well as engineering um and also uh the professional in the field of accounting those have specific i'm sorry oh yeah i'm sorry architecture um engineering and accounting actually talk about either licensure or privilege to practice under a particular batch which obviously reduces your potential applicant pool now there was certainly a reason that these were done at the time this uh this way and um you know the board has given uh you know authority for us to make changes to the ordinance and this is a discussion item for you all in terms of looking at those things and seeing if there's anything that you think um should be changed uh that we may take into consideration when we're revising the ordinance and bringing something
so i'd be curious for for steven and laurette to kind of weigh in as newer members i think we probably have our view um but just what your thoughts are on experience in lieu of from my experience i find that
it number one it allows opportunity to open up the pool right um there are people that have had long 10 years of experience in the field and they may not be they may not have an active licensure or certification but that doesn't negate their first hand experience in the field and given the role and in seeing the conversations that have taken place with the oversight board and the role that they play i've personally just weighed their experience just as high if not higher than just having an active
licensure or certification that's where i okay thank you even i guess not knowing the the full scope of what's been happening i think probably minimal degree standards but something like architecture people will come in and out of licensure maybe they have 20 years of practice but they've stepped away they'd still be a great potential board member same with engineering i think those kind of situations where they they have professional experience and they have had licensure or they have the adequate degrees that would probably be a good case for me i guess the hard thing would be evaluate if it was too open evaluating the standard of practice like if if you didn't require a minimum set of engineering degree or minimum set of architectural degrees then it's it's on us to determine their expertise which would be pretty hard but maybe relaxing the licensure requirements could be could be a good way to go
about it and and just one other thing in terms of that and we're piggybacking on there we have a lot of currently holds or has held in the last three years a particular license under a particular statute so that also for example you could have somebody who um you know was a licensed was a professional engineer in the state of georgia for 30 years moves down to florida um and has been here for a decade and now seeks to do it but is retired or semi-retired or only maintain their license in a different state and works remotely and they would be ineligible so if you're contemplating i mean there's a there's a clean break that you could make which is just somebody who has or has held a license as a professional engineer or a professional building uh contractor or an architect or an accountant in florida or another state without requiring it to be within any particular number of years you open up the pool that way without as you indicated going so far that we now just have a pool of people who say i am experienced in accounting um and i have an accountant's degree but i've never been a cpa if that's still the
standard sydney um i don't have a uh hard time agreeing with opening up the pool i think it's probably good and ultimately that you know we are the backstop yeah so that's kind of where i'm at on
yeah and i'm a i'm a little i'm a little closer to where steve mentioned you know i don't mind loosening a little bit i'm concerned remember when we did this i remember this extremely well when we 2019 or whatever year we started putting this together we talked about this is a billion dollar oversight not a million dollar oversight it's a billion dollar oversight it's uh luckily and i commend county staff i think they've done an excellent job of over working with us and working with this oversight county attorney's office too but it just takes one bad cycle we've seen it in broward county whether it's a school board whether it's a hospital district takes one bad incident all of a sudden some members of the media are going to be saying wait a minute they appointed some person who lost their license who is now serving in a role with oversight and i'm not saying we can't try to filter that but it puts a lot on us we don't have some minimum threshold because all it takes is like i said one bad cycle one bad incident they're going to come and say well this oversight board that's responsible to make sure these transportation dollars are being spent wisely efficiently you know appointed a a former gc who lost his license he had a scandal we don't know that stuff so my only concern is i'd like to have some minimum threshold i don't mind loosening it up because i do think we want to make sure we have a good pool of candidates but i think we have to be careful look right now things are going really well very smoothly and everybody's happy to be associated with this but i'm telling you one bad incident or cycle we're all of a sudden going to be saying we appointed that person and we didn't know that the person was disbarred and is an engineer somewhere or license that's my reluctance yes do you
have nate or gretchen probably it's nate a level of due diligence that we could incorporate to kind of blunt some of those concerns you know was a general contractor but no longer has their license two scenarios one because they were tired two because they lost it right it was taken from them for any number of reasons those are very different scenarios but they're very i don't know how we would manage that
so we we certainly can include in the ordinance language that indicates that if the person in all of those categories that we just talked about from accounting to engineering construction uh and architecture um that they if they don't currently have a license they are both eligible to obtain a license and have not had their license previously revoked by the state of florida or or the state in which they were licensed now in terms of the due diligence component to that our office reviews these applicants for um to ensure that they don't have a conflict uh because of the firm that they work for also doing but we do not and i don't know if we would have the ability to vet uh the the attestation of every applicant for you know okay they you know they were licensed in 15 different states uh and you know they were suspended or revoked in one they're eligible to get a license in florida it becomes a lot of uh a lot of of sort of just fog from at least from our our review in our office i don't believe that there's other due diligence that takes place other than conflicts really right no chair please
any it and to jack's point it does mean that and i i'm also responding to staff that we have a more increased responsibility to look at what we're doing to trigger self-disclosure as much as we can in other words how we writing the application process to trigger those responses that would give us enough um and then um to me i think that becomes more important uh if we don't have um resources from staff to to do background more in-depth background discussion then at least we think about what can we do with our application process to have it again be some self-triggering disclosures other thoughts
how many openings are there right now for two and they are in the field of construction and accounting
both of which just happened just how accounting just happened and you're not considering that today the engineering or uh built or construction professional which is again one of those categories that requires the specific licensure uh and uh mr calloway's point in terms of um the application process we do have the ability to make we already have the applicants attesting to the fact that they don't have any that they and their company does not have any relationship with broward county there's certainly no reason that we can't include in the sworn attestation the fact that um you know that they either do have a active license identifying the state um and have not had their license previously revoked in any state if we were or suspended or right well the the question then becomes okay if somebody has been practicing i mean just looking at our our business we all know lawyers who've been practicing for 40 years that 25 years ago had a 30-day suspension and were automatically reinstated so i don't know whether or not suspension at any time for any period of time becomes too too much in terms of that particular issue it's ultimately a policy decision for the board of county commissioners and we're certainly seeking your your uh recommendations regarding that um revocation in terms of an attestation seems to be uh something that we can certainly have them be self-disclosing under penalty of perjury um and
what i'm hearing is we'd like to loosen it up a little but put a floor on the risk so if you can document that in a way given the discussion that supports that it sounds like you'd have the group saying yes let's let's do it that way so let's not dial up any risk for us as a collective and who we're
appointing but open up a little bit okay does that sound generally where we are so if if everybody was is generally comfortable with the concept that i had described earlier in terms of so that we're not disqualifying people who have had a lengthy tenure in a particular profession but have retired and we do have some individuals who have served on the oversight board who are who still have a license but otherwise meet the the concept of not actively practicing so if you if there's a general um thought that what i had discussed before opening it up to individuals who have had are eligible to to have one and um have never been uh had a license revoked we will work with county administration and staff to come up with specific language that sort of generally fits those parameters yes um sydney would you
just repeat that first element that you talking about a position that had been eliminated and i think it related to diversity yes because i had a thought on that but can can you read what that position was
right so currently category nine for the oversight board is one president of a public institution of higher education with a geographic presence in broward county or such person's designee provided the designee has knowledge and experience in supplier relations and diversity there used to be positions that were fit within that that definition um vendor and supplier relations uh is certainly something that still exists and i think to some extent this was intended to both uh capture that concept as well as the oespd concept within broward county somebody that has experience with with those types of things um and uh we have the ability to just make a minor tweak to that so we are still dealing with somebody that has vendor relations experience um unless it's the president of the university that wishes to serve on the oversight board yeah and i know that
again you know politically and and and legally too there are some issues with the use of concepts like diversity uh and i get that i would still just suggest and i think you kind of picked up on it that there are still ways of describing what those needs are in a way that again gets at the primary intent of what the county is looking for for that position so i would certainly just recommend that we still
try to do that absolutely that that certainly is the intent we need to make sure obviously that we are within the bounds of a current florida law that has changed over the past two or three years in a whole variety of ways and uh while we're still capturing the elements of what that category and role was intended to deal with which is um ensuring that it is somebody from institution of higher learning appointed or designated by the president that has uh experience in vendor relations small business relations things of that nature we certainly have the ability to capture those things nate to sydney's
point though just because the federal government and state government wants to say we're not going to focus on still a county board absolutely sir but i think the city's point we ought to find ways to accomplish diversity without broadcasting well it's and i think because this is one of the things that you know it gets you frustrated when you're serving because i look at the way we have diversify i think we've done a really good job in this both at this level and at the surtax level at the transportation surtax and i don't want to lose that momentum because we're deleting a reference to the word diversity so i do hope whatever we do we capture the intent and i think it is our intent
to maintain diversity yeah and mr chair from my perspective again people use the same words but what it means for someone else is is different from what it means to us and so again i think that's where we can find out how to get to where we need to be because very good and again just to be clear
though the the statutory changes that i'm referring to are not merely with regards to the use of particular words but it is policies and concepts that local governments are prohibited from engaging in we'll make sure that we are keeping within the bounds of the law without gutting the underlying intention behind some of these provisions why you're the general counsel why they pay me the medium bucks
okay thank you great discussion i totally aligned with sydney's comments and jack thank you any other discussion around this do you have enough information from us to give direction to the next
steps absolutely we'll work with county administration on the updates to the ordinance to deal with both the issue of the professional licensure as well as that the university can okay absolutely thanks
louette for bringing it up okay uh moving on to the regular agenda we have a motion to approve the minutes of september 18 2024 it's been moved and seconded um thank you for including them in the backup does anyone have any questions or discussion corrections okay seeing none all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye aye any opposed same sign okay great thank you next is a motion to appoint uh also in the backup material you received the qualified applicant for the category of engineering or construction management as defined by article 5 section 31 and a half dash 75 a4 and the broward county code of ordinances so they're also in the folders in front of you the application for tracy kaplan maybe nate you can just help our new members or gretchen or whoever wants to do it just what the process is for somebody who says i want to be considered to them being presented to us just so you can become more familiar
so we have to follow what is in the administrative code which requires us to receive a resume and then i i think do we have it on one of these slides should i put it up okay so no the actual ordinance that the administrative let me just go back and see if we have included it uh yeah there it is so a the process for filling the vacancies on the oversight board requires us to publicly notice the vacancy and receive applications for the vacancy for a minimum of 15 calendar days i did have a document in your binder that showed you the process that was used and our team follows which was much much longer than 15 calendar days for the current vacancy we require a resume a certification of no conflict of interest which is notarized and then a personal statement that must include at a minimum the identification of the category that they wish to be considered for all their relevant experience whether they've ever previously been nominated by an appointing authority entity and if so which one and whether the applicant has been involved in the provision of transportation services or the construction of infrastructure such as roads bridges highways or rail those are the requirements after that he reviews them determines whether or not they meet the qualifications his team then lets us know and then at that point we prepare a packet so you'll notice that you have a packet for each applicant and whether they've been deemed qualified or unqualified and then we set the meeting did i miss anything
you did not you covered it all okay please go ahead given our conversation about the administrative code and direction given to general counsel to make some changes setting the minimum qualifications and so forth would it be terrible if i recommend that we hold off on making this decision until general counsel is able to come back with some of the code changes for our consideration no bad ideas and brainstorming so it would not be terrible
but i think um i mean i'm happy to have the group hear that how long has this opening been
it so it looks like it was advertised for november 11th was yeah i mean it was open for months i believe there were only two applicants that responded one of whom was deemed not qualified based on the licensure uh related issue that we discussed previously there is only one qualified applicant we have um and again ultimately just a it is a policy decision for this appointing authority as to whether or not to proceed or not proceed at this point we do have an april oversight board meeting we have another oversight board meeting um in the next quarter and the budget in august for the budget um so potentially we will be uh it if the board fills this position or the appointing authority fills this position today it is filled uh through the end of a term and if you elect to defer um and want to have the item i want to have the matter re-advertised once the ordinance is revised again whatever
whatever choice couple of clarifying questions and then i'd like to get everyone to weigh in if the role changes and somebody is qualified today and they're not qualified in the future would they not be reappointed meaning if we change the subject if you occasion criteria so if the
board of county commissioners completely changed a category um you know for example if the architecture one became a florist yes i pick something ridiculous intentionally uh and the person was not a florist they would uh no longer be qualified to serve um but the changes that we're talking about now are broad the base for those categories and not restricting i think the question though is if
there's someone sitting that doesn't have a license and we um and we broaden it it shouldn't have any
issue right um well no anybody who serves on the board now because what we're talking about is expanding out the pool um would suddenly not become uh as a result of these changes there's nothing that we would be doing that would be changing this and making somebody who's serving currently no longer qualified to serve since again what we're talking about is expanding not shifting or or in any way
narrowing uh those categories um if you were to expedite the changes we obviously work together to expedite the changes to the ordinance um that would result in perhaps what the incumbent missing maybe
one oversight board meeting but possibly two uh i saw sydney first and then jack quick question the term
for each appointed member to this oversight board remind me please four years jack we've had a
qualified applicant that has been waiting to serve to step forward i don't want to discourage one of the reasons some people don't apply is they feel like nobody's acting on their application you want to step up you want to serve nobody calls you i don't know how many women we have on the board too i think you have a qualified female candidate got a great resume worked in multiple states looking at her licenses and professional registration numbers in florida connecticut rhode island new york massachusetts virginia new jersey so and she's been a 30-year resident of florida apparently doing prize i i don't want to discourage someone that's stepping forward and i also like the fact it's qualified female and to keep that idea of diversity i'd like to appoint her sitting open since november we'll be coming up we come back in june we wait for the new probably july probably the new language maybe even september it's a year with a vacancy without a construction i i haven't spent any time talking to you and obviously we can't talk about this because of sunshine law but i was actually pleased that we had a female candidate step forward in this industry that's been traditionally dominated but yeah well and mr chair i'm sorry please
i agree with jack on that point but i would also add and this is probably as good a time as any to go back to our earlier conversations as we started with our responsibilities as the point and authority the importance of acting as quickly and being as timely as we can and so that's kind of what i'm seeing here in addition to the fact that you know again we've been trying to get this meeting done and it's taken several months because of a glitch in our administrative code and and our having to follow that code uh so i agree but i also think that it's important that we act quickly or as quickly as as we can and this is an applicant and a process that is uh it's been teed up and we're here today so i'm ready to vote on it steven any additional questions or comments i mean
i think they're a strong applicant so i'm in general agreement that we if we have a strong applicant with the right licensure that we should probably discuss and potentially act on them there's a few components in the application i want clarification with with you all specifically about submitting a submitting a potential conflicting proposal and then it withdrawing um it's not it's on it's in their bylines did that come up
that they had submitted a yeah so generally if they've been brought to us they're qualified okay so if if it was their proactive comment that was i read it too and i was a little confused but we should have the confidence in staff saying they're qualified yeah to a point and then it's up
to us to a point okay how i guess my follow-up question on that is clearly this person is active in the local region and submitting submitting grants that might fall might give them a conflict of interest and they're a president of an engineering firm it looks like that might be submitting applicants by them representing themselves on the board if is that them basically agreeing that they're not going to submit for these these okay or or they would have to resign okay yes thanks that's that was actively
and i think each year they reattest exactly okay so um do you have other comments i just want to echo
i agree with the sentiments of the board of members um that this candidate's obviously well qualified i looked at it differently because i it led me to wonder well if we were to relax and make the requirements consistent as we with the other uh roles on the oversight board what potential other candidates could have come forward so what uh what other candidates have we lost as a result of the requirements being so stringent is how i viewed it but i also respect the the need to act in a timely manner and completely agree uh she's qualified candidate okay my my thoughts go ahead gretchen if we
want to speak to the candidate and not wanting to select the candidate i think it's okay to have that conversation but i'm aligned with timing it's already been open for a while she's qualified she's interested i wouldn't want to have that slow down the process um given to what sydney echoed which we said earlier our task get the get the group up and running it would be almost a full year maybe another six months after that before she's up to speed and now you're talking with all the construction that's happening in the projects not having a construction or engineer professional on the oversight board for a year and a half it doesn't feel great so that's that's my view on it now so from a process standpoint i think we should move forward and vote um if somebody has and i haven't heard any but if somebody has specific concerns about the applicant then you know you can raise that as well gretchen on it i just wanted to
let you know mr chair that um mr pinzone was disconnected from the zoom but that he did email to indicate that he was wanting to be seen as supportive of the action items so i just wanted to let you know that i didn't
even know he was on so that it's on the record okay great thank you so we have a um motion to appoint item here we've had a lot of discussion okay thank you jack seconded um by sydney thank you is there any further discussion okay all those in favor of appointing tracy kaplan to the independent surtax oversight board board excuse me please signify by saying aye aye any opposed aye oh hello felipe thank you i'm here thank you good to see you um okay she is approved thank you for the thoughtful discussion next item is a motion to reappoint um you'll see i think we would do the slate or that should they be done individually you have the ability to do it all in in in one motion okay question yeah well i'm going to make a comment really quick i wanted to make before the last vote but it's still appropriate we have never had hundreds of applicants for these oversight board positions so yes um so for somebody to you know say i'm not going to do this chunk of business which is a very big chunk of their business potentially you know i think is is really important for us to just keep in mind even by loosening this i do not think we're going to end up getting dozens or scores of potential applicants um okay so jack had a question we're on the motion to reappoint section of the agenda jack my only question is just i guess
to the three of you all is there any there have been any issues with attendance participation from any of the six that are asking to be reappointed they've all been diligent and consistently being in attendance and because it's i i i know several of them personally and i think they're great appointments and i'm pleased to hear they're working out so well uh how we're keeping phil allen out of playing pickleball
we they they only meet once every few months yeah that's not i'll move i'll move to reappoint the
whole slate no issues with any of them okay some commitment motion to reappoint the entire slate
as presented in the agenda and backup sydney with the second background thank you we'll give it to them right all right thank you sydney um any discussion or questions seeing none okay all those in favor of the motion please signify by saying aye any opposed same sign okay seeing none it is unanimous and they all are reappointed and we thank them all for their many hours of service and in many cases many years of service any non-agenda items gretchen that we need to go over from staff side okay from from the group any general discussion comments or questions i just thank you to the two new numbers stepping up and we appreciate it general counsel comments nice to see you all again same board coordinator comments good okay well unless anybody has anything else hearing none seeing none felipe nice nice to see you we are adjourned 2 31. thank you all very much for your service thank you