It's time I'll call to order the special work session of the Clearwater City Council for July 16, 2026. And we'll move to item 2.1 of the agenda. Good morning. Mayor, Council, Tiffany Macris, Human Resources Director. So this morning before you will be the four finalists as the candidates for city attorney. They are each standing by in the next room in the conference room. So each this morning is prepared to give you a five-minute presentation on how they would see their first year as the new city attorney, at which point once they're done with their presentation, the floor is open for any follow-up questions you may have. And one question I have for you is would you prefer to see them in alphabetical order this morning? I think that would be fine. Okay. And so with that, I would be happy to play escort to go get them and bring them in and out and just let me know whenever you're ready. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. It's your time, I think, to just make a presentation to us. Okay. And then we'll see if the council has any questions for you. SGR just mentioned that you wanted about five minutes on the first year. Yes. The first 30 days are going to be intense assessment of the city attorney's office, all its staff individually, as well as make contact and develop trust with the CM, the ACMs, and all the department heads and figure out exactly what's the most effective way of delivering legal services to the city. Days 30 to 90, we're going to be going into a little more detail, starting an audit legally of the city, starting a review of the charter, ordinances, policies, procedures, rules, to see where there may be any landmines. Where there aren't any landmines, we leave it alone, unless it's wordsmithing. I've yet to see land use ordinances that couldn't be tightened up with a little better English. The balance of the year is going to be looking forward to projects like downtown and any long-term goals that may be before the commission, council. And that's it in the sum. All right. Any questions from the council? Thank you. John, nice to see you. Thank you for joining us again. Enjoyed our conversation yesterday. Apparently, we had so much fun. You're back for more. Glutton for punishment. I like to hear it. Oh, and so you know, I went through security, so I'm safe. For now. Very important. John, when you and I spoke a little bit yesterday, we talked a little bit about the importance of culture and internal culture, not just throughout city staff but city attorney's office. You highlighted, important to you, three words, mission first, people second, and self third. Can you share with the rest of us a little bit deeper about that? Well, as they say in the separate habits of highly effective people, you know, you've got to bring first things first. First thing is making sure that, in this case, my mission. Well, perhaps it might be a little bit. I don't believe I shared it with everyone, but if I can just take a few moments in case I missed a couple of you on the mission statement that I had drafted tentatively. You'll find it when you need it. Oh, there we are. Goodness, I've got so many notes here. Hold on. Well, we'll rattle it off roughly from memory. But the mission of the city attorney's office, the purpose of a mission statement is often misunderstood, and it's a gap filler. It's a brief guide to the conduct and the general objectives that you want your people to operate under. If I'm not available or they don't want to bother me every five minutes, it's going to tell them what to do. And in essence, the mission statement I have for us is to better the governance of the city through sound legal advice, through following the law, through following ethics, through non-discrimination by label. And that way we know where we're going. That part I do. We still have to establish values and vision statements that the staff can buy into in the city attorney's office. Thank you. I'm done, sir. Thank you. Any other questions? I have one. And, you know, from your experience, you've had a lot of experience in private practice and serving municipalities out of your private practice and then doing other things. How do you feel that that would be valuable to you in serving as our city attorney, that private practice experience? People don't think of public employees that are lawyers as bureaucrats, but they are. I take an entirely different view of things while at the same time having dealt with and studied bureaucracies. But I'm going to be looking to operate in a different fashion. In the corporate world, nowadays, we have the concept of legal operations, where you're going to run it like a business. You're going to return value. And that would be the primary difference here, in addition to having an independent eye from being outside of being a regular employee of a city recently. And that private practice also is, mine is very broad. And we call it city attorney, but some cities in this state call it general counsel, and it's a general counsel position, which means you've got to know a little bit about everything. If you don't know a field, at least on the surface, you can't begin to advise. If you know the procedures and the methodologies used, whether in a particular discipline or a particular field of law, you can develop the answers. But you need that framework. And I think that broad framework I have, and to try and bring business sense to the city attorney's office. Everyone goes, well, it's costing us money. It's a bit of overhead. If the city attorney's office is run correctly, it brings value to the city, value in terms of reputation, value in terms of saving funds. And the other question is, I mean, it's been in the news frequently that all municipalities in Florida are under budget pressure currently. And how would you, you already alluded to a little bit that you do analysis of the legal department on the front end, but how would you approach helping us, helping the entire city operate our legal department cost-effectively and efficiently? And what kinds of things would you look at to do that? Well, on a day-to-day basis, unless it's a rather minor issue, I would be training my staff in root cause analysis. And it could be something as simple as the Japanese 5Ys. You keep asking why this happened, and if that happened, why, and why, and get to the root of the problem. And provide that information to the CM and to the council so that we have, in essence, in the legal aspect, a center for lessons learned. And people talk about institutional knowledge, well, that's the old concept. Now it's knowledge management, and we build up a body of that. So if some of my staff leave, a Russian satellite crashes and kills me, and I can't perform anymore, we move on. So that's one of the things, just on a day-to-day basis. In terms of department heads and this council, I would probably, on a quarterly basis, meet with you and ask you two questions. Number one, what are your top three priorities? And for each of those priorities, what are your top five tasks? I take those 15 data points, go home, and think about it, and say, where are there obstacles that I can clear ahead of time? I'm sure you've all experienced when you have a project, and it's building momentum, and then you hit a roadblock, particularly those annoying legal roadblocks. Well, I want to try and anticipate that. Horizon scanning to me and environment scanning to me aren't just sterile concepts. I want to give something back to you that you can operationalize. In terms of the other aspects of legal operations, I'm going to be looking very closely at outside council costs. Here I'm shooting in the dark, but I'm just laying out the way I would run it. There has to be clearly established goals, strategy, a budget, and there has to be very close monitoring of attorney fee bills. I've, in the past, extensively litigated attorney fee issues before the court. And I would bring that knowledge to the city to keep those particular costs down. Another technique that I might use is, sometimes, instead of bringing them in to do the whole work, you bring them in simply to advise. I would much rather pay a senior partner $500, $600 an hour than $350 an hour for an associate that, many times, doesn't know any more than anybody in the city attorney's office. So there needs to be a balancing there. When we bring them in to advise, they'd be working with a particular assistant city attorney, so we would land up getting education, more bang for the buck that way. In terms of developing expertise or costs for the city attorney's office when some technical issues arise, if we have any moderately long term issues, then I would certainly go to some free assets. And we've got a lot of universities and colleges around us. There are a lot of people working on their master's thesis and their doctoral dissertation. Well, they're looking for data to help them. We've got a lot of data. And we can possibly use those folks. They get the laboratory, so to speak, and the data. We get their advice, and it's not simply somebody in an ivory tower alone. They have a committee of two or three professors that are going to review the methodology to see if it's correct. So becoming innovative and seeing what's out there, particularly in times of budget crunches. And I'm afraid to say I think they're going to buy those particular tax cuts. It's just a good thing you rely less on ad valorem taxes in a lot of municipalities. But we're still going to have to tighten our belt. And of course, I'm going to look at everything the city attorney's office does. How can we streamline work flows, both in the office as well as things outside of the office? Contracting for the city. Code enforcement. I'm a big systems and process management guy. And I'm going to be looking at all these flows and what's the most efficient. Now, please understand me. I'm not coming in as a bull in a China shop. We're not doing everything revolutionary. It's going to be incremental change. Let's try this. Does it work? Fine. If it doesn't work, we move on to the next alternative way to handle it. Thomas Edison said when somebody asked him, well, you said you've tried 10 years ago. 10,000 times and failed on inventing the light bulb. And he said no, I just found 10,000 things that didn't work. And so there's a value even in failure and the city attorney can't be afraid to innovate within the bounds of the law, within the bounds of practical business knowledge. Then again, I'm not so sure that a city attorney shouldn't, as I do, subscribe to Harvard Business Review, subscribe to MIT Sloan Management Review, and get cutting edge techniques and systems and ideas that are to be applied to the city. The city attorney's office should be run like an in-house corporation counsel's office that's high powered. Let's move over. All right. John, I enjoyed the time spent with you yesterday going over a bunch of questions. But I wanted to bring this up. How do you plan to communicate with the council and how often? That depends upon you. I expect to have frequent contact with you, not simply routinely scheduled meetings, probably at least once a week, of course. But if something pops up, I mean, you are the representatives of the people of this city. I know a heck of a lot, but the more I seem to learn, the more totally ignorant I feel. And I've only been on this earth for a few years. So drawing upon all of you, it's not simply being partners with the CM and the ACMs in running the city. It's also partners with you in terms of you express the political will of the people, and I want that input. Now, I'm not going to call you on every little thing, but I think you may find a lot of times when you're thinking of something, I've already thought of it, and I've picked up the phone. I prefer phone contact first, email second, texts. I just detest litigated those issues in public records. And at one point in time, just so you know, I stand up to everybody, and will stand up for you as a council. So about a dozen years ago, I invalidated the entire public records retention system in the state of Florida. I was defending a public official, and that was one of the issues. So if you can't win on the facts, you change the rules. And I break the law all the time by getting laws invalidated or trying to talk to public representatives and get the laws changed in that fashion. So those are some of the things that I would be doing. But it's going to be fairly consistent, except when I'm on vacation, and I may cut back a little bit. But I just came back from vacation a couple of days ago. I had to deal with several public officials that had questions. And I'm available all the time unless I'm, well, even if I'm in the gym. I've taken plenty of calls on the elliptical. So it'll be constant and continuous communication. But I like it verbally. It's more personal. Plus, you don't have the additional issues of public records retention and creating that. And I take it also because you can get a little more depth and understanding as opposed to just e-mails, which are okay. But texts, something's flying right out of your head, and it forces you not to pause a lot of times. And so from a human engineering point of view, that's why I don't like text, in addition to the problems with the records retention. Although, could I ask you a question? Do we have a bring-your-own-device policy in this city, or does the city provide phones? The city provides phones to the council. Okay, that's safe. Thank goodness. Okay. That answer it? Yes, thank you. We just get people to use those, to contact us on the OSMV. It's always an uphill battle, but we do the best we can. Well, it's always tying a rock to a string and tossing it through the window if necessary. Unfortunately, we need personal devices as well. Okay, any other questions? I was going to ask you to share your mission statement. I thought it was a great thing, but you beat me to it. I misplaced it. Hold on. It was so concise, so I just wanted you to share it today. But you beat me to it. Don't worry about it. Well, just, no, because I spent a lot of time on it, actually. I stuck it under here. It's all right. Oh, no, I found it. Oh, good. I had it labeled under, it's the culture, stupid. Okay. Which is, you know, taken from James Carville. I may not agree with him politically, but in terms of issue identification, culture is very, very important in the city attorney's office. But here was the mission statement. The mission of the city attorney's office is to improve the quality of governance through trusted legal counsel, principled judgment, and unwavering fidelity to the public interest and the rule of law. Notice we're not going blah, blah, blah, nitpick, nitpick, nitpick, we're efficient, lawyer stuff. Now, this is something where they know what direction I want to take the office in, and in my absence, how they are to govern themselves. But in the end, my job is to help all of you, because as a charter officer, I'm also responsible to the people, even though I'm only appointed rather than elected. So hopefully that's giving you a little bit more insight into how I would be operating with you for the next few years. Vice Mayor. Yes, sir. Thank you, John. Thank you for being here again. It was good to get to know you a little bit yesterday. Just one question, and that is, what do you believe is the single most important responsibility of a city attorney, and how would that belief shape the advice you provide to this council? I believe in a governing body-centric city attorney's office. You're the focus, in the same way as when I'm in the courtroom in a jury trial. The witnesses come and go. The law comes and go. You've got the jury there, and you are, in essence, my jury. And so I'd be focused entirely on you. That is my number one mission. Some of you asked yesterday, well, what if there's some friction or whatever between the council and the CM? Well, she's employed by the city, too, directly by you. I'm directly by you. You come first. Simple as that. That's general order number one. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Well, thank you, John, for coming in today. I appreciate your- If I'm done, then by your leave, I'm going to take my four-hour trip back home. Okay. Look forward to your decision. Good to see you. Thank you very much, and it was a pleasure meeting all of you. Have a great day. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Yeah. At the beginning, it's your chance. You've got five minutes just to share with us whatever thoughts you would like to share with us. Sure. So, again, my name is Owen Kohler. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be here today. I enjoyed the interviews yesterday. I learned, even though we know each other, I learned some additional things about you, and I hope you learned some additional information about me. In terms of the first year in the office, I really want to focus on three things. One is provide stability at the city attorney's office. Two is to bring two new council members up to speed. And three is just to keep things moving along. Now, for the first one, in terms of stability, the city attorney's office, I think, for about 20 years, has been operating under about 11 employees. That's full-time positions. Six of those are attorneys. So you'd have one city attorney, and you'd have five other attorneys. Since, I think, October of last year, we have been having vacancies. We currently have two vacancies. And I think that's probably the most pressing need at the city attorney's office is to fill those vacancies. What I like to do is, when I hire, and we hired somebody earlier this year, is really do it by a group or a collaboration. I do seek input from the other attorneys. I listen to it. And it does change what I want to do. I think that's important because, you know, what I look for is not necessarily what's on a resume. I look for the fit, and I look for the fit within the office and the fit within the rest of the city. Now, the second thing I want to focus on is get two new council members up to speed. So there's going to be two that are going to be departing later this year, and we're going to have two ones that are going to come in later this year. That is going to be very important because the two new council members are going to need to learn potentially issues of state law, you know, Chapters 112, Chapter 119, Chapter 286, and others. They're also going to need to learn about the city charter, the city code of ordinances, and the development code. They're also going to be going to learn about just city policies and procedures and processes and just how council does meetings in Clearwater. They're also going to have to learn about just the big city council items, and that's going to be the third topic I want to focus on, and what I would do in the first year is keep things moving along. You know, what my goal would be is to provide a seamless transition for the new members to come on and also a seamless transition, if I'm selected, to go forward with everything that's planned. And there's a lot of major projects going on. There's the redevelopment of a spring training facility. There is construction downtown. There is a potential P3 project, and there's also a very important litigation matter involving the CRA. All of that is going to be coming due this year or within the next year. And certainly if I'm selected, I'm going to focus on those matters. The advantage I have is I've been here since 2018. I'm familiar with all the inferences of these matters, and those are the three things I would focus on in my first year. Thank you. Questions from the council? That's from Robert. Oh, and we spent some time yesterday, and I didn't ask you this question, okay? And I'm probably the only one up here that has seen you through two interim times as interim city attorney. And you didn't put your name in last time, but you're putting your name in this time. And I guess my question is so you're ready to do this as the city attorney now? Yeah, absolutely. So when I got hired in 2018, I was working for Pam Akin. She had been here for about 27 years. She had also been an attorney for the city of Tampa for seven years in the late 80s and the early 90s. You know, at that particular time, I was happy where I was at. I was also relatively new at Clearwater. I had been there for about three years. I liked my role as the lead assistant. But here we are today in 2026. I'm ready to go. I'm interested in going forward, and I think I would make a great selection. Thanks. Desmond Tasheda. So yesterday was more conversational, right? We already have a working relationship, so it wasn't formal at all. It was more of a discussion back and forth and sharing of ideas. So I kind of wanted to give you an opportunity today to answer an actual formal question, and that would be, as our city attorney, you often will advise counsel on matters involving influential organizations with significant public interest. How would you maintain independence while preserving productive professional relationships with all parties? Well, you know, in terms of providing advice, you know, what I have to do is I have to rely upon some type of legal authority. That would either be going back to the city charter, going to the code, going to court decisions, going to some type of statute. And certainly when I would explain a decision, that's what I need to do. It can't just be my opinion because that's what I think. It needs to be, well, this is what my legal opinion is, and here's why. And lay it out. I also think it's important to give a sufficient detail so somebody would understand exactly the rationale of what I'm trying to present and say. Menino? Thank you, Mayor. Owen, thank you for coming in today. I enjoyed our conversation. I definitely did learn some things about you I didn't know, and I thank you for sharing those. My first question to you was the first item that you covered, and it was why is stability in the city attorney's office important. So I thank you for touching on that. So I had to dig a little deeper for you and find another question. But what I do want to ask you is when you and I discussed a little bit about the team concept and it being one city and one team, we talked a little bit about collaboration and the importance of it. Can you talk a little bit about why collaboration is important? I think it's important for many different aspects. So the way that the city is structured is the city manager has the vast majority of the responsibilities of the city. She reports directly to the city council. Then we have the city attorney's office, and that reports also directly to city council. So certainly I think it's important to have a good relationship with the city manager and the city manager's office as well as the other departments. What I do when I give advice is it's advice. If somebody has some type of goal or some type of item, I will look at it from a legal standpoint, and there might be two or three or four different paths to take it. I will lay it out that way, and I will provide that particular advice. I also seek input from the people I'm talking to. So sometimes it may be something to where, well, the law or something is preventing you from doing this, but maybe you can do something else and provide some type of alternative. I don't necessarily like to give advice and say, well, this is just how it is because I'm the city attorney. I don't know if that's a good practice at all. It's more working with parties and coming with some type of mutual agreement or some mutual understanding. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Vice Mayor. Thank you. Oh, and thank you again for yesterday. I appreciate your participation in stepping up to the plate. Same question for you, as I'll probably have for all the candidates. What do you believe is the single most important responsibility of the city attorney, and how would that belief shape the advice you provide to this council? So, again, it is, you know, the city attorney reports to city council. So, by all means, and it's not just necessarily one particular council member, it's all five. So, it is to provide the legal advice to city council. It is, if we get, if I particular, if I get requests from city council, it is to look at that as a whole and make sure that council is aware of all the risks associated with matters. Make council is fully informed on all particular matters. And I think that's what would be the primary role. I just have a couple things. One, alluding to what was just said about collaboration, you know, you've been with the city a long time. You've been, so I think one of the advantages of that is, you know, shouldn't be any surprises at this point for you. You already know what the issues are. And at the same time, you've been here for a while. So, you know, as you pointed out, you're very comfortable working with not just folks in the city attorney's office but throughout the city. Do you see that as a challenge in remaining independent from the other, you know, the city manager side? No, I mean, not at all. And in the last, I think, since probably February, myself and the city manager and the city manager's office have, I think, a pretty good relationship. You know, I think sometimes the offices need to somewhat stay in their lane. So, for instance, I focus on the legal aspect, and the city manager would focus on goals and implementing things, and that's really how it is. And, you know, I would give her legal advice and her team legal advice and focus on that. But, no, I don't see any issues. I think the collaboration is good. I think you certainly need to have a city manager and a city attorney work together for common goals. But you acknowledged in our meeting that, you know, not just your predecessor in this position you're applying for, but his predecessor, two offices don't always agree and haven't, you know, for years and has remained independent for, you know, for good reason. There are some times where it's not just city managers, it's somewhere, a department or whatever, that they're just, the alignment just isn't the same. And you've observed that over the years. And you continue that tradition that we've had for years of having an independent office. Absolutely, yes. The second thing is, you know, we talked about, you know, and you alluded to it first about filling the staff. And it's well known that budget is a significant challenge for municipalities, county governments throughout the state of Florida right now with unknown revenues coming in or what may come in. So cost efficiency is important. And I think you've started talking about that. Can you explain just for the public and just for all of us just what things you would do to manage the costs that just are naturally incurred by the city attorney's office, including the way you said organizing the staff? Right. So, you know, there's six attorneys in the office, including the city attorney, and each one of them have really an area of responsibility. We have a litigation attorney. We have a police legal advisor who's sitting to the far left of you. There's somebody that does land use. There's also somebody that does labor and employment law, which was how I'm operating now. And then also somebody that's involved in public works, real estate construction, things like that. So, you know, I think the goal is to make sure that the office runs efficiently and to reduce outside counsel when possible. And certainly there are cases that come into the door that should, for the most part, be handled internally, such as car crashes, such as slip and falls on sidewalks, and certain 1983 actions in federal court involving false arrest or unlawful search or seizure or something like that. Those are the matters to handle internally. Now, in the last year, the city attorney's office has gone to the outside counsel budget probably a little bit more than normal, but I think that's just because of the circumstances. So I think a goal is to limit that. And one of the things that can be done is maybe add some more litigation experience in the office, which would reduce outside counsel. A couple other things would be just potentially add some more flexibility with the employees' schedules and work hours and things like that, which certainly I would look at in the future. Okay. Anything else? Well, thank you for coming in. Good morning. Good morning. How are you guys? Doing well. Good. Good to see you. So each candidate begins by just sharing. You've got five minutes to share with us whatever thoughts you want to share. Okay. Well, when I prepared for this hearing, thank you for inviting me into the city. I've really enjoyed our time meeting and talking together. You have a great city, and I'm hopeful that you will select me as your next city attorney. Should I become the city attorney, I just wanted to give you an idea, since we've already talked about my qualifications and my background, just what I would plan to do as the city attorney going forward. I think the key is to observe everything initially within the city and identify potential changes going forward, determine what resources are needed to get the work done appropriately, what maybe needs to be readjusted, you know, things that don't need to be readjusted, things that need to be the same. I will focus on open communication within the departments, within the legal department itself, and then also open communication with staff to make sure that everybody has a direct line. And finally, most important, communication with the council so that you know what's going on. There's no surprises. We're all on the same page. And then over time, it's important to continually reevaluate. I like to reevaluate every day. I mean, I don't think you have to wait until the end of the year to reevaluate what's going on, what needs to be fixed. And then also you can determine what's working and find ways to keep things working that way. And finally, the last thing that I would do would be to continue training and make sure everybody's trained. I mean, we all know how much this local government has changed, even in last year. So training is very important. So that's a summary of what I would do in the beginning, and I'm happy to answer any questions that the council might have. That's one with Tashida. I enjoyed our time last. Yes, I did too. It was fun. Yeah. We're quite engaged. So I did have one question that I did not have time to ask you, and that is when local government is often asked to make very difficult decisions involving legal risk. And so how do you help elected officials understand those risks while still allowing important community projects to move forward? Yeah. So as city attorney, you're not going to have someone that's going to in any way try to tell you what to do. What I'm going to do is I'm going to give you legal advice, and then I'm going to give you the options. And what happens with those options is the risks and the benefits, so that you have all the information in your mind to make the appropriate decision. Romanino. Mayor, thank you. Andrew, welcome back. Hey, thanks. I as well enjoyed our time, not just a formal oral argument or discussion. We had a conversation, personal and professional. I enjoyed our time together. Yeah. One thing you and I discussed, and I recognized it in your temperament, is even keel we discussed. And why do you think that temperament is important in a city attorney's office? Well, I mean, I kind of view the city attorney as someone who's kind of like the base or the rock of the staff, someone that can come into a situation. There's lots of times when you have these frantic situations. The last thing you want is someone that's going to overreact. You need someone that's going to analyze it in a calm manner, determine what the next steps are to get the city through the process. And, you know, I'm not the kind of attorney that is going to be a flamboyant, aggressive attorney. I'm going to be who I am, which is someone who is calm with an even-keeled demeanor and enjoys working with people. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. That's my role, Britton. Good to see you again, Andrew. Good to see you. So you've had a lot of experience. You've got 20 years' experience as an attorney. Yeah. I'm 25 now. Come on. And county and city attorney, and representing many different municipalities. I guess I'm just going to ask this because you answered it yesterday, but I think it's a good one to have everybody here, is how do you intend to communicate with council and how often? Yeah, so communication, I think, is really important. With my staff, there will be a weekly staff meeting. With council, it's as much as they need it, but depending on their schedules, I'd like it to be weekly as well. And with the manager, also weekly. I think it's important to just, even if you don't have anything to talk about, you can sit in a room and kind of get to know each other a little bit. Yes, I've done this in my past jobs, and it's been very successful to create relationships, trust. And also, then there's never, you know, confusion. Or if there is confusion, it's only going to last a week because you're going to have that meeting. Thank you. Thanks, Mayor. Yes, thank you. Good to see you again. Good to see you. Thank you for your time. I appreciate you being here. Same question for you that I've asked the others, and that is, what do you believe is the single most important responsibility of a city attorney, and how would that belief shape your advice to this council? So I think the city attorney's role is not to be the city manager. It's not to be the city commission, city council. What the city attorney's role is is to provide legal advice, and by providing that legal advice, protect the city, the city as an entity, from harm or making a mistake. But in the end, it's providing the legal advice and providing the direction that the city council can go or the city manager can go. And then it's up to the policymakers and the manager to decide how to proceed. I'm never going to be the one that's going to tell any of you what to do, but I'm going to tell you if you do this, this is what's going to happen. And I think that's a role I'm very comfortable in. Well, I have two questions for you. One is, you know, you've had a lot of county government experience. You've been city attorney in another city in Iowa, but also you were Fishback Dominic, and you had a chance to work as really outside council for a number of cities. Yeah. How did that experience help you, or you feel like it would help you as being our city attorney, being outside council and representing a city from the outside? Yeah. So, yeah, I've been very fortunate to have a lot of experience with varied communities. I've worked in South Florida with Weissarota, and I've worked on the coast here with Person Cohen and Mooney, and I worked with Fishback Dominic, which is central Florida. You know, the amount of cities that I've been exposed to in different processes, in different counties, Miami-Dade County. You know, I've worked with the Keys. And so I've had a lot of experience, and I think the thing that really helps with that experience is I've been exposed to different things rather than just being pigeonholed into one position where you do the same thing every day in the same area every day. I've had to, I say I'm an inch deep and a mile long, I had to do almost everything at some point in my career. And the real benefit to this city is, I mean, local government, there's always something that no one's ever seen. Senate Bill 180 is something nobody had ever seen. But I've seen most of it, and it allows me to be creative. When we have a problem, I'm going to be able to come up with a solution that I can reach to that experience to come up with creative solutions to problems that maybe someone that hasn't been around the state, hasn't experienced all these different cities, wouldn't have that experience and that knowledge. And the other question I have for you is, you and I talked yesterday about the budget pressure that all municipal and county governments are under in the state of Florida right now. How would you approach keeping minimizing the cost of the law department for the city of Clearwater and managing litigation and all that to try to keep the cost to the taxpayers as low as possible? So, once again, you know, it may be a challenging time coming before us, I think, for everybody in the state of Florida who's local government, including special districts and anybody that's relying on property tax. So I have two views on that. One, once again, there's a lot of financing mechanisms out there, and those should all be evaluated. I mean, there are a lot that maybe have fallen out of favor with local government, and maybe those are some that maybe we tap into. But also, more directly to your question, you know, you have to evaluate what is necessary in your department and in the city, and what maybe isn't necessary anymore when faced with a budget crunch, and do that in a fair way that benefits the citizens. Any other questions? Thank you, Mr. Meyer. Thank you all again. Good to see you. Thank you. I'll tell you a lot about it. We'll work on this process next time. Yeah, for sure. It's like you're coming into a wedding. What is your walkout song? What's your walkout song? Or walk-ins song. It's getting to the batter's box. Yeah, right. That's a lot by that. Nicole, why did you pick Taylor Swift? My name's Nicole. I like to party. Folks, we are live here, so just remind everybody that all is being heard. So just a reminder. Good morning, Mayor. Permission to approach the dais and just greet everybody? You may, yes. Thank you. Let me see you again. Good morning. Good morning, Mayor. All right. So each candidate has five minutes to share with us whatever you want to share, not just with us but with the public, about yourself. And this is your opportunity to do that before we have some questions for you. Very good. All right. Well, thank you very much for having me, Council, Madam Clerk, City Administration. My name is Camilo Soto. I am an attorney and an urban planner by both education and training. I have a history with Clearwater. I worked over 10 years with the city attorney's office. I worked with Pam Akin and Mr. Horn. Rest in peace, Mr. Horn. With respect to my history with Clearwater, I tended to focus a lot on the land use and zoning side of things. I collaborated with some amazing people as it relates to imagined Clearwater. It's amazing to see the implementation of that taking place today. I was also involved in the US-19 rezone. The Joint East Library that is now over on the SPC campus on Drew Street was also very involved in the Crabby Bills and, I guess, the original marina redevelopment. I understand that the marina is going to be redeveloped yet again. After leaving Clearwater, I worked in the private sector for some time, and I'm currently an assistant county attorney for Manatee County. The reason why I'm here, I think Clearwater is at a very key inflection point in the development of its city. It's not a knock, but the beach has been quite a focus for a long time, rightfully so. It's a very amazing tax revenue generator for property and hotel bed taxes, but it's great to see, imagine Clearwater, the US-19 redevelopment plans taking place in fruition. It's amazing to see cranes in downtown Clearwater. With respect to the US-19 area, I know there's a lot of excitement with the Phillies' potential redevelopment plan of their area where the threshers play. There's also a pending 25 acres that will become available under an RFN from Pinellas County. And I know there's an immense pride from this council as it relates to the Bay Care Area Sound Pavilion. What your choice is today, all the candidates that you've seen before you are all incredible candidates with incredible backgrounds. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here as finalists. But what distinguishes me from the candidates is that I have an urban planning background. I have a history with the city of Clearwater without necessarily being tied down to any particular issues. I've gone off and seen what the private sector is, what the public sector is in different areas. My skill set and lived experience, my lived experiences distinguishes me significantly. So I have an appreciation for what Clearwater is, and I look forward to being able to collaborate with this city council and future city councils in figuring out what it could be or how it could be done. With that said, I bring a lot to the table, I think, in my opinion. I'm bilingual as well, and I don't tend to use my Spanish as much as I wish I could in my professional life. But to the extent that, in some way, shape, or form, with the newest sister city, Ishmael Kilban, I could be associated in some way, shape, or form, or whether it's attracting maybe a more diverse set of investors and siphoning a little bit more off of Miami-Dade County. A lot of Latin American investors tend to gravitate towards that area and don't maybe realize the abundance of value and amazing things that are over on this side of the state. So, you know, to the extent that I can be of help on the legal side of that, I would love that. I have over 18 years of local government, Florida, legal experience. I'm very collaborative and independent. I think my track record shows that. And so your decision today, I think, based on what we've, I guess, had our one-on-ones, really is grounded on what seems to be a collective desire for a team approach or a team-oriented individual in this position, someone that is both independent and, again, a team player. It's going to be a pretty interesting line to straddle because, you know, the city attorney does represent the city council as a whole. And then it's the city of Clearwater as a whole, one Clearwater, that is the entity that's basically responsible for all these things. And someone with legal creativity. And so I think all those qualities are what I bring to the table. And public service to me is a very important calling, as it is to all of you in our one-on-ones. You always talked about the citizen taxpayers being at the front of mind. I agree with that. But I also enjoy local government work so much. There's never a dull moment. We touch upon every, whenever my kiddo asks me initially, what do we do as local government attorneys? I tell them, well, what we don't do is prosecute criminal cases, defend criminal cases, don't deal with family law and international law. But pretty much everything else is expected out of a city attorney. And so based on my experience, my track record, I've proven to be an independent, experienced attorney. And I'd like to be able to bring that culmination of qualities to the city of Clearwater to help in its next phase of development. And that is all. Okay, questions from the council. Thank you. Milo, nice to see you. Likewise, Councilman Menino. Thank you for joining us. Enjoyed our conversation yesterday. Learned a lot about you. And I appreciate your time. I commented to you that a couple things that I noticed within the first couple minutes, I'm sure nobody here would disagree, was your energy and positive demeanor. That's contagious. And I appreciate that. One of the things I noticed when you and I kind of closed the book and on the formal side before we just kind of diced back and forth completely random topics, you identified the word collaboration. I think you said it today once. But you and I went back, and I think we counted six different times you used that word throughout all my silly questions for you. Can you dive a little deeper into why collaboration is so important to you? Well, I mean, I think as a city attorney, it is important because I want to be able to protect the city of Clearwater's interest as a whole. So the better the relationship that I have with city administration and the various department heads, I think gives us the best chance, the best opportunity to do all our respective jobs. Additionally, Clearwater was very, very fortuitous in the fact that Mr. Horn was city manager for 20-plus years, Ms. Aiken, 27. That level of continuity is established on collaboration. And so to the extent that I can even walk in those footsteps to any degree would be amazing. And so I think collaboration is key to an effective city attorney. Thank you. Thank you. It's nice to see you again today. Likewise. I know yesterday we spoke about a lot of things, but we didn't have the opportunity to delve in deeper into this particular subject. So Clearwater occasionally faces matters involving organizations, institutions, or stakeholders that generate intense public attention and strong community opinions. And as a future city attorney, how would you ensure that your legal advice remains objective, independent, and based solely on the law, regardless of the parties involved? Several times, I think, with all of you at some point, I did acknowledge my phrase, I leave the politicking to the politicians. I think that's very, very important in my role as a city attorney in order to maintain objectivity and consistency. I think it's important to be well-researched and know what the basis is for the legal opinion that I'm providing. My legal opinion will not and should not change based on the political winds of change or political winds that are whipping up in Clearwater. And so I think that maintaining that objectivity is key while also, obviously, managing and being creative where I can as a city attorney and bringing novel ideas that maybe other local governments are doing, not necessarily here in this country and maybe elsewhere. But I agree that objectivity and consistency and accuracy is prime importance. One last thing, City of Clearwater isn't the only locality that is dealing with a polemic, let's just say, institution or a corporation. In Manatee County, there exists Mosaic, Mosaic phosphate mining, extremely large operation. And there are folks in that community that intensely dislike what Mosaic does, no matter what it does. I've worked with my counterpart at Mosaic, or I've worked with, obviously, the county, county staff. And by virtue of my collaborative, objective, accuracy-minded approach to the law, we were able to put forward a master mining plan and a land use agreement that wound up dissolving a development of regional impact that Mosaic had. By virtue of that, we were able to kind of clean up a lot of things in that. And so I wouldn't have been able to do that, you know, absent being able to collaborate, being able to be independent, being able to maintain to what is legal and what isn't. And I know folks, you know, when they get angry, you know, to the extent that I can and I'm able to, I'll listen. But I won't let that sway, again, the politics to the politicians. That's my role, Brady. Camillo, good to see you back here again. You've had a lot of experience with Clearwater. You've been our assistant city attorney here for, what, a decade? A little over 10 years, yes, sir. Yeah. What do you see as our biggest challenge today? And you're talking about a legal challenge, potentially? Yeah. So I think of three big ones. I think one big one would be I know the downtown area has its own section in the land development code. I think that the downtown area would also benefit significantly from potentially a very collaboratively created master plan. I think that would allay a lot of concerns and basically hire the more collaborative that we can get with all stakeholders involved in downtown Clearwater, the better, to the extent that we can put a roadmap showing how downtown is going to develop with all these stakeholders, the better. Second, the other concern that I see is home rule has kind of been aggregated quite a bit from Tallahassee on down. And so SB 180 continues to be, I think, a very concerning, has a very significant chilling effect until it's fixed. I think that's concerning as well. And the pending potential of property tax cuts via Amendment 3 I think is also possibly problematic. But I think, as we tend to say in the local government world, we adapt and we go forward. Thank you. You're welcome. Nice, Mayor. Yes, thank you. Camilla, good morning. Good morning, Vice Mayor. Welcome back. Thank you. Same question that I've posed to everyone else. What do you believe is the single most important responsibility of the city attorney, and how would that belief shape the advice you provide to this council? The single. I think the single most important quality is being accurate legally and being able to distill the reason or the logic behind a legal opinion in as simplified a way as possible, whether that's to city employees, whether that's to city employees, administration, council, or even the citizens. I think that's a singularly important component to being a city attorney. I just have a couple things. I just have a couple things. One is, you know, you've had a little bit of private practice experience here recently. Is there anything that maybe being outside of local government working in private practice that has helped you or thinks, you know, helps you, would help you become a better city attorney for the city of Clearwater? I think in terms of things that could help me, I was exposed to a different style or a different area of the law that I had been exposed to previously. I did, for example, some construction law-related things, but mainly oriented towards bonding when I was here at the city of Clearwater. So I think I've expanded that breadth of knowledge of construction law, construction litigation, defending that. But I think from an overall perspective, there are things in terms of, I guess, measurements of efficiency that I think. I understand that maybe billables aren't the best way to measure how legally accurate someone is. I really enjoy being able to dig into research and really understand a good legal issue, and sometimes you butt up against the reality that we can't necessarily bill that to a client. So that was maybe a negative, but I think it's an incredibly important thing to be able to have that opportunity to research an issue. And then to the extent that I can bring some of that positivity and some of those things that we've done maybe at other local governments in terms of maybe cutting down, going more digital with a lot of the products that we use, not necessarily spending so much on textbooks that are potentially collecting dust somewhere on a shelf. A lot of things are digital now. So I think there's efficiencies of scale that could potentially be maybe applied here. Well, you've already started answering my second question, which was just with the budget pressures that all local governments are under now in the state of Florida. And you mentioned a couple just now. But are there any other ideas that you have for how you might approach organizing the legal department, managing litigation and claims in a way that would keep the cost of the legal services that the law department provides to our city? Keeping that cost down as low as possible for taxpayers? Sure. Well, Mayor, I think the very first thing that I would do is I'd sit down with the city attorney staff and kind of figure out what everyone's strengths and weaknesses are and figure out what things we could do to maybe put, you know, folks with various strengths in the positions to be as efficient as possible in completing their tasks. And then kind of longer term, just seeing where in the budget, I would obviously collaborate with all of the staff to see where we can find efficiencies of scale. Are there areas where we don't necessarily use or can be an alternative, less expensive option or area to explore? Like I just mentioned the books and digitization. AI, I think, is another area that is quite exciting. It's a tool. It shouldn't be the sole basis for any legal practitioner to use, but it should be one of many tools in a toolbox. My experience with AI, the way I use it, it's a really incredible jump-off point. Maybe the implementation of AI, if it isn't already implemented in some way, shape, or form, could bring some efficiencies of scale to the way the legal department operates. And then finally, I think it's important to check with the department heads, the various department heads, to see what could be changed or what they like about the current operation of the city attorney's office and see where we can maybe improve in other areas that they call out. So I think being new and coming with fresh eyes, I think, will give an opportunity to whoever's in this position, even Mr. Kohler, to basically do that. Okay. Any other questions from the council? Well, thank you for coming in and speaking with us today. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you all. Thank you. Okay. Well, with that, we've heard from all four candidates, and we've had their opportunity to answer our questions. So tonight, it is 11.1 on the agenda. The agenda item is discuss city attorney candidates and next steps. So we can certainly talk about it if you want to at this time, but we do have it as the last agenda item of the agenda items for business on tonight's agenda to discuss and give our own thoughts and collect those then. But also now, if any of us want to talk about the candidates, we can do that. We can't hear, but it is on tonight's agenda for us to talk about it. Personally, I have some thoughts I'd like to gather and some things that I'll discuss today. I'll take a closer look at these candidates that presented today, but others may discuss it if you want to. So, Council Member Albrighton? Yeah, and we can save it for tonight, but I just wanted to make a comment on the job that they did. They gave us some great candidates. I mean, each one of these had strengths in their own way, and I really appreciate them coming in. And it's always hard, and I just want to say this for the record, when there's somebody from the city running with everybody else for everybody to come. And I know it's difficult for them, you know, to know that there's somebody that can have more of an advantage. But I really appreciated all of them, Jono, Andrew, and Camillo, all to come in to speak and enjoy that. And we can talk about our thoughts on each one of them tonight. That would be fine. And we're going to have public comment as well? Yes. If there's a motion to be made before the motion. Because we're getting a correction. Okay. Very good. Yeah. Council Member Nino? Mayor, thank you. Yeah, I agree. I'll save individual comments for this evening, but just kind of briefly, just wanted to touch on the process that we went through. Appreciate all the work staff did facilitating this. Appreciate yesterday and how it was managed and everyone was efficiently escorted around and knocking on doors to lead the little ducklings everywhere they needed to be. So thank you for that. Appreciate the consultant in the process and agree with Council Member wholeheartedly. They did give us a lot of information and every bit of information we needed from videos to questionnaires to resumes to backgrounds to the opportunities to spend an hour with each individual, which seemed like at first was going to be a long time. But before I know it, I was getting the five-minute knock on the door and time was up. And I greatly appreciate that. As far as the candidates, they definitely put good candidates in front of us. We saw that today. Really enjoyed our time yesterday and today to hear a little bit more from them on a personal level, but all, without a doubt, experienced, professional, knowledgeable, all with no questions, are able to be successful, whether in the city of Clearwater or wherever they continue to serve. There is one thing I was slightly disappointed about, and I don't believe the consultant made the decision. I think the dais made that decision. But I think we had an opportunity to recognize the importance of culture and to identify that we recognize the value of development and growth internally with our staff. And I think leaving Mr. Midich off of a top five, I think it was a mistake. He was definitely, whether he was below five or not, to have somebody in-house and to give him that opportunity to be a part of the process, to learn, to experience, and give him that personal growth and development I thought should have happened. And I was disappointed that it didn't. I know he took it well and took it in stride and continues to do a great job. But overall, I appreciate everybody in the process we went through and look forward to making a decision and find that stability that we've discussed so much in the city attorney's office. Thank you. I think we've moved into item three, which is perfectly fine because that was the next agenda item. But this is council comments, so anyone else have something to share? I just wanted to concur with a lot of what has been said. I'm very impressed with the candidates and the whole process. It was new to me, and I thought it was a very good process, and I appreciate all the candidates that came forward. We'll move to item four, closing comments by mayor. And again, to echo what's already been said, thank you, Tiffany, for helping us and working with the consultant to steer these through. I agree that we really had five candidates that I thought were outstanding to be presented, and then one was true. But the four that I spoke with and I think were outstanding candidates. And certainly we recognize that when you have an internal candidate, it does make it harder to get folks to step forward. But I thought even despite that, we had four really good candidates that presented to us. So I look forward to discussing those with the rest of the council tonight. And then giving our staff direction on the next steps and what we want to do with regard to replacing our city attorney. So with that, we will adjourn. I move to item five, and that is to adjourn the special work session of Clearwater City Council for July 16, 2026. Thank you.