At this time, we're going to go ahead and get started with the city commission workshop scheduled for Monday, August 11th, 2025. If I can please have the city clerk call the roll. Here. Here. Vice Mayor Harriet. Mayor Villa. Here. Okay. Just wanted to make sure. At this time, if we can please stand for the pledge, and I'm going to ask Commissioner Lully to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. This time, we're going to go into discussion items 4A, discussion for ordinance number 28-2025, lobbyist registration, lobbying disclosures, and payment of fees. If I can please have the city attorney lead us in the discussion. You thought you were going to get away from not speaking. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, we are here tonight to discuss on this item a proposed lobbyist registration ordinance. So, this came about as a request by consensus from the city commission. It was noticed for a first reading and requested to be brought to a workshop for further discussion. What this piece of code, this ordinance, intends to do is create transparency for the community in regards to decision-making and what input lobbyists have on the various decision-makers throughout the city, including the city commission and other administrative final decision-makers, like your city manager, your planning director, your building official, et cetera. So, what an important thing that I think we should all be on the same page about as we start is the definition of a lobbyist. So, as we've defined it under this code, which pulls from statute, is that a lobbyist is any person who engages in lobbying, which is a communication, written or oral, or any meeting or discussion with any member of the city commission, staff decision-maker, or board member, wherein there is communicated, disclosed, or discussed any matter, which is or may be pending before the city commission, staff decision-maker, or respective board, in order to influence the action or inaction of the city commission, staff decision-maker, or respective board. This definition includes appearances before city commission and boards, but does not include the act of filing in application on behalf of or as authorized agent for another. Just for the record, I don't mean to interrupt you, Vice Mayor Harriott has the right. So, a lobbyist is a person who engages in that conduct for compensation and for, one, an entity other than his or her employer, or, two, for any entity, including his or her employer, if a principal function of his or her position is lobbying or governmental relations. So, that's just kind of the definition that we're working with as far as lobbying and lobbyists. This ordinance goes on to require that any lobbyist register and pay a fee to the city, that lobbyists do an annual filing, that commissioners and staff decision-makers keep records on a quarterly basis of communications with lobbyists, and that there are penalties for failure to file the lobbyists for their failure to register, that they could be subject to a fine of $50 per day, and that a lobbyist may be publicly reprimanded by the commission and or banned from lobbying if the violation is particularly egregious. All right. Before we go into the commission, is there any public comment? No. All right. Anybody? Commissioner Caldwell, go ahead. You were on the board. Let me get you back on. Go ahead. Does the term under the definition include consultants? So, if you are a consultant who is speaking with a decision-maker or a city commissioner in an attempt to change or to cause a certain decision by the decision-maker or by the commission, yes. This would not include, I don't know, like an engineering consultant who they're presenting just data. They're not attempting to influence a decision. They've just provided their report as part of an application. So, really, it applies to lobbyists. If a person calling themselves a consultant is in practice a lobbyist, yes, it would apply. Would we include that term under that definition as consultant? The reason I'm saying it is because that project that they were building on Normandy, they had a professional come in. He said that he was their consultant. I'm unfamiliar with the specifics of that project. I would say the definition of lobbyist as written here would encompass a consultant who is conducting lobbying activities. We can certainly tweak that to be, you know, a person including a consultant. Okay. That's it. Thank you. I've got to turn on my mic. Commissioner Lully. Thank you, Mayor. My initial thoughts on this are that I don't know that it has enough teeth as what I would like to say if we're going to go through this process and put something in place. I would like to see more burden placed on the actual elected officials or our appointed officials or whoever this would apply to. Because at the end of the day, I think what we're trying to prevent is undue influence on the official. So I would like to see a little bit more burden placed on the individual. You know, like, for example, we have to all file financial filings every year with the state. So, you know, that's a pretty strict guideline. If you don't do that, you can get an ethics violation. You can get – you can't file to run again. So I would like to see a little bit more teeth there. I think that I try to – you know, we did this back when we were talking about the animal welfare items and we found something in Palm Beach County. This is before you were here, Zach. I think Lee County has a good example of an ordinance. I'd like to see ours look a little bit more similar to that. It is more layered than what we've proposed here. But, again, I think it has more of the punch that we're looking for if we're going to go through this exercise. So those are my initial thoughts. I would like there to definitely be penalties for any – just similar to how there is for the filings of the state, penalties for the elected officials if they don't file these things. Because I didn't see that in here. And I think finally that I'll say for now and before I hear from the rest of the commission. And I would like to – and I think Commissioner Caldwell was getting at a really great point. I would like to see – make sure that this applies to anyone who's associated with the project, regardless of their title. If you have an application before this city and you are taking any sort of money, even if you're not classified as the government affairs person or anything like that, I really think that that should be something that has to be reported. So whether or not you're calling yourself the consultant or the attorney or anyone who is working on behalf of the developer or other party who's trying to do business in our city. So those are my initial thoughts. Thank you. Commissioner Avila-Vasquez. Thank you, Mayor. So I'm a – I'll be honest with you. I'm very confused on this here. I would like a little bit more in-depth explanation of exactly what is it we are trying to do. You know, the only lobbyist definition information that I'm aware of is our lobbyist Georgia, who lobbies for the city of Deltona. I don't know – I'm sort of confused here. You know, a person who comes in with a project, a development project – sorry. And then another person who's involved in projects in the city, are they considered lobbyists as well? I mean, I'm just – I'm just confused. Which lobbyists are we looking at? Certainly, Commissioner. Commissioner, so this ordinance is not intended to regulate the lobbyists that we as a city hire to go out and lobby on our behalf at the state level or federal level. This is intended to provide transparency regarding individuals that want to lobby the commission, want to lobby you, want to lobby your colleagues, want to lobby your city manager. Quick point of order. I just want to recognize Commissioner Howington's here. So what you're saying is somebody who – a developer or somebody who wants to meet with us on a certain project that they would like to bring to the city? Is that what you're talking about? Yes, ma'am. They would be required to – under this ordinance, if it's a decision that would come before you, it would need to – that individual would need to register as a lobbyist and would need to perform the disclosures, as well as you would also have to keep a log of that meeting, just stating that you met and what date. And reason for this is? So the reason why lobbyist registration is considered good public policy in other regions is that it creates transparency. So it allows the public to see who is talking with their elected officials and who is potentially influencing the decisions that they make and also, in theory, cuts down on backdoor dealings because everything has to be recorded and disclosed through this process. That is exactly the definition I was looking for, because a lot of people were asking me, what the hell is this about? So that – thank you. It was very short, but it was to the point as to what this is all about. So it's just to make sure that nobody's being paid under the table, sort of. Correct. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Herriot. Thank you, Mayor. I think this is something that this commission has needed for a little while, and this city as a whole is needed for a little while. Contrary to some of the other thoughts, I don't agree that this onus needs to be put on the elected official. I'm not a big fan of the ordinance that Lee County has. I think the onus needs to be squarely on the lobbyists. I agree with Commissioner Vasquez. I think that your suggestions for the definition of lobbyists are spot on. I'd like to see under section – I just had it – under section I, the following person shall be required to register but will be exempt from paying the registration fee. I don't know that they should necessarily even be required to register. I mean, we've got law enforcement personnel conducting an active investigation. I think that's – there's no reason for them to register. An elected official or a government employee acting in his official capacity, no need to register there. Employees or representatives of any federal, state, county, municipal, or independent authority, so a quasi-government agency, no need to register there. Persons or representatives of organizations contacted by the city commission member. If it's specific to a project, then I can see that making sense. But I'd really like to see this – the onus be squarely on the lobbyists. I'm not interested in creating an ordinance that's going to be set up for any gotcha moments for any commissioners. I think this is absolutely appropriate to stop. It's a must to stop. If only it's the – if only we're stopping just the perception of outside influence, it's that perception that has kind of drawn this commission down. And then certainly if there are any inappropriate lobbying activities, then that absolutely needs to stop. But the onus needs to really, really squarely be on the lobbyists. And I'd like to see some – if there's a way for us to put some teeth into the projects that they're lobbying on behalf so that there could be a fine or penalty levied against the project applicant if they're doing business on behalf of that applicant. Then, you know, some of these other – what's the word I'm looking for? Some of these other penalties are great, but they don't come with a lot of teeth in terms of, you know, a $50 fine per day is great, but what are we going to do if they don't want to pay it? But if we can put that – attach that to the project and the applicant that's submitting the project, I think that'd be great. Otherwise, thank you very much for putting this together and for Commissioner Howington for bringing this forth. This is something this commission's needed for a while. Commissioner Howington. Thank you, Mayor. So, actually, I believe the mayor actually brought this one up, so I'll give credit where credit's due. I actually – I love the idea. I think it is something that we need. But as I was going through it, I did have some concerns. Number one, I want to make sure that principals can be considered lobbyists in this scenario as well as their attorneys because I didn't specifically see that called out. Additionally, let's see. Sorry, I made these notes quite a while ago, so I have to kind of go back and revisit some of them. The fee that we're charging of $500. The state's only charging $50 plus $25 for each additional client. So, $500 seems excessive with an extra $105 per additional client. So, it just seems excessive when we start comparing what the state's doing versus what we're doing for lobbyists. Let's see. We're also, I think, calling out indirect and direct ownership. So, let's take Dutch Brothers into consideration because I think we were all reached out to by Dutch Brothers, and they attempted to lobby us, correct? Dutch Brothers is publicly traded. Using the words direct and indirect means that we would have to list every single owner that is a shareholder in Dutch Brothers Coffee. That would reach out to every mutual fund holder, anything. So, this is a bit excessive. I think if we stick with the principal and the main ownership and the main contractors would be much more efficient because coming from Verizon, I can tell you they have over a billion shares out there. And so, for them to have to list every 5%, 10% owner would be unreasonable. And given that we actually have a tower coming up with Verizon that I think we've had an application in on, to expect that of a company like that would never happen. And I don't mean to interrupt, but the – if you could please point me to that area of the code because I'm – It's where – indirectly, let's see. Okay, yeah, right here. It is on 3, 3G. If the lobbyist represents a corporation, partnership, or trust, the name and business address of the chief officer, partner, or beneficiary of the corporation, partnership, or trust in the names and addresses of all persons holding, directly or indirectly, at least 5% ownership interest in said corporation. You said 3G? Maybe. Oh, no, this is the one I just got out of my packet. It is under – it's Exhibit A, Section 2-391, Number 3-G. Oh, okay. Thank you. Oh, sorry, D. Let me – understood. We can adjust that language. Yeah, because, I mean, if Verizon came in here to do their tower and if they wanted to meet with each one of us, they would never get past the list of shareholders. And the feed of the city would, I'm sure, be considered excessive. Then to Commissioner Lully's point, I have a problem with expecting lobbyists to keep track of logs because the way to get around that is that one of us just has to reach out to that lobbyist. As long as one of us makes that first call, then it doesn't have to be tracked. That's a problem because if the city manager reaches out to somebody and contacts them first, it doesn't have to be tracked. But if the lobbyist contacts him first, it has to be tracked. Same thing with if somebody were to contact me, they have to track it. If I call them first, it doesn't have to be tracked. If we're not going to do that, then what is the point? So, you know, that's where I think it kind of comes in with that it seems to be a lack of teeth just because there's a giant loophole that needs to be closed if we're going to do this. And so that's my concern. Hold on. Are you done, Commissioner? Well, let's find that section. I think it's under lobbying logs, 2-392. It's somewhere back in this section. Are you maybe looking at the section just prior, 2-391, sub I, where we talked about those individuals that would be required to register but would be exempt from the fee? Because that's where I have persons or representatives of organizations contacted by the city commission member when such contact is initiated by the member? Yeah, that would be. Okay. That's when it's initiated by the member. So the intent of that was for the registration purpose, the payment of the fee purposes only, but the vice mayor just suggested removing that altogether. So that's a great point that Commissioner Howington brings up for that one. And there's no intent from my comments to provide any loopholes. So if we allow that to stay in, I've got no problems with it. It's mostly the one through four that I kind of raised an eyebrow to. And I just want to make sure that it's kind of even across the board. Yeah. So that, because there's no point in keeping logs if we don't have a complete log. No, no, you're fine. Well, and you know, some of these questions came up because at one point I met with the West Volusia Realtors Association and they actually asked the question because it was right after this had come out and they said, so we're sitting here meeting with you and we're talking about something. Would we have to pay $500 just to get in the door? And so that was a big concern from the West Volusia Realtors Association. Yeah. So I think there's a difference between lobbying activity versus meeting with constituents, certainly. The difference would be, is that organization, right, are they for compensation meeting with you to influence your decision or are they meeting with you to potentially influence your decision but not for compensation? That is, lobbying is, a lobbyist is a, is an individual who engages in lobbying activity, right, trying to influence the decision for compensation. Hold up. Let's, let's give everybody time. Let Commissioner Howington finish, then we got Commissioner Santiago. I'll come back to you, Vice Mayor. See, I think that's where it gets kind of convoluted because in that instance, I mean, the people I met with were being paid to advocate on behalf of the Realtors Association and they were lobbying for a specific vote. So in that case, I would think yes, but I don't think that that would be fair because that's not much outside of what we do on a daily basis. So I think we just kind of need to think that through, but that's all I have. Thank you. Commissioner Santiago, then Vice Mayor Ariat. Thank you, Mayor. Okay. Got a few items here. I was going to, let's see, in regards to the 525, I don't know if that was just something that we came up with or if other cities are doing the same thing, but I thought it was a little bit excessive, but I don't know if it's, like I said, something that other cities are also doing. In regards to the elected officials doing a list of people, here's the thing. So you go out to different events, Rotary, festivals, events. So if somebody talks to you about a project, possible project, does that mean I have to do a log? Is that what you were coming? Okay. I think that's ridiculous. Do you know how many people we all speak to on a different, every day? And if somebody mentions a business, you want us to log it. It's a waste of time. I think the lobbyist information, this is for lobbyist registration. If they're going to lobby someone and make money out of it, not for us to do a log of every time we speak to somebody about anywhere. You could be putting gas in the car or going to the supermarket, and if somebody mentions a project, you have to run and fill out a log. I think that's ridiculous. And I think it's a big mistake because somebody may come up and say, hey, listen, you didn't put that on your log, and I spoke to you about this. It just opens up a big mistake. I don't just don't. I'm against that. And there's a legislative model out there that many, many cities already have. Why don't we follow the legislature model that they have? I'm sure this is probably part of it. Did we look into it? It did. Okay. Then that's where all my comments. But having the city commission log everything, I just am against it. Thank you. All right. I got a couple of things. So I agree with Commissioner Vila-Vasquez. The definitions need to be very clear and precise, so we're not. We want this to be effective. We just don't want to create a law that we can't enforce, right? I agree that with Commissioner Howington, maybe the fee's a little excessive. I agree with the vice mayor. There's a list of people here that really, you know, we speak to law enforcement, even on things. You know, I get complaints sometimes from deputies or firefighters, we don't have enough space. We have a little small subsession, whatever it is, right? I think those are, we're taking it maybe to a little bit of an extreme. Are those mentioned inside the state model? Or where was that part taken from? So we looked at ordinances from across the state. I would honestly have to go back and check which ordinance or which model we pulled that from. I've heard all of your comments. I see no problem with removing those items. And listen, we're not. You guys are doing a great job. We're not beating up on you. We're trying to figure out as a commission how to make this effective. And I think I'm going to have to agree, this burden should be put on the lobbyists, right? If they're getting paid by the developer, whoever it is, we already make logs when we do our quasi-judicial. We have to report whoever it is that we're speaking to, we have to report it. We have to disclose it. But to Commissioner Caldwell's point, I believe with one of the projects that came in, right, without getting into too many specifics, I didn't know if they had a lobbyist or not. And I got kind of concerned because, you know, people come up to you, they ask you questions, you try to do your best to answer. Well, now I need to know if this person is talking to me because they're trying to lobby on behalf of a company, of a business, whatever it is. Because we don't have to register to a point where we have to get, like, all the stockholders and all that information. But it would be nice to know that if a business, the principal is developer XYZ, and John Smith is a lobbyist or is lobbying on their behalf, whether they're, let's say, a commissioner in Lake County or in city, but they're working as a commissioner, they should be able to register as well. But to put the burden on the commission who's already doing the quasi-judicial conversations, I think that's a little excessive. Commissioner Avila Vasquez, you're on. Thank you, Mayor. I just have a question. One question. How important is this to us? I mean, what are we going to benefit from this other than have a list of who spoke to who about what? I mean, I think that that is certainly a, that's really a question for each of your colleagues as far as what is the value that each of you all see in it. I would say from a public policy perspective, it is certainly a best practice as far as transparency. You know, as I mentioned earlier, it helps the public know who is attempting to influence their elected officials and the administrative staff. That are final decision makers. And I guess I don't mean to take this time from you, but on the question of the lobbying contact logs, I've heard kind of two different opinions from, from the body. Would you all want to make it a, an obligation for both lobbyists and commissioners or just for lobbyists, but not for. Commissioners. All right. We can go down the, we can go. Can I finish? Yeah. Let her finish and then we'll go back to that. Yes. I'll, I'll put it here. Go ahead, Commissioner. So, because the thing is that we all know, everybody knows that when there's a project on the table, we all get emails from the developers or somebody who would like to sit and speak with us about the project. And we know what the meeting is about, right? They want to convince us to vote yes on their project. And it's up to us to accept that meeting or not. So, um, I, I don't really want to be responsible to have a log, turning a log every week or every month of who I met or who I didn't meet as to why, what project. I can't even remember what I did yesterday. Um, I mean, that's just my opinion. I, I, this is all news to me about how, you know, how many other cities do this? Is it a large number of cities that does this? Are we the only ones not doing this? This is the first time this has come to us here in the city of Deltona. There are a good number of cities and counties throughout the state that have lobbyist registration ordinances. Um, it is, I think, certainly more common in South Florida, um, which has somewhat of a reputation a little bit more for, for this type of activity and the, the potential for corruption that goes along with it. Um, but there are, you wouldn't be the only in, in Central Florida. Um, there is, Orange County has an, an ordinance, um, I believe Lake County as well. Um, Commissioner Howington mentioned Lee County as a model. Um, so there's. Tampa, Hillsboro. Hillsboro County. Yeah, there's, you'd be, uh, certainly among friends. Thank you. Commissioner Caldwell. And then Vice Mayor. Yeah, to, uh, the Mayor's point there and the Harriet removing Section I, um, I would assume that would have removed. Any employees or representatives of any federal, state, county, municipality, or independent authority, um, from having to pay? Is that? Yes. Because, you know, they could be here representing their interest in the city from other municipalities. And I would prefer to have them registered. Yeah, I mean, the, that section was listing individuals or categories of individuals that would still need to register. But would not have to pay. Um, so we can either leave, we can have two options, right? Is you exempt those individuals from both registration and payment? Mm-hmm. Um, leave them here, require registration, but exempt them from payment, or require registration and payment. I'm leaning towards that way. Thank you. Vice Mayor Harriet. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, Commissioner Caldwell. Well, absolutely agree. If they're not, if they're not, uh, representing their, the governmental agency that they work for, then 100% should be, uh, registered and, and pay a fee. Um, but I, I don't necessarily know, uh, that if, you know, say the Army Corps of Engineers is coming in to do a stormwater project or assist the county or city in a stormwater project, um, that that would be overburdensome to just the productivity of a stormwater project. Now, if, um, they, they have any other function outside of that official capacity, then certainly should not just register, but pay. Uh, there, by no means is this intended to provide a loophole at all. Same with the other items. Just, just for clarification, and you still have your time, Vice Mayor, can we just make sure your definition means as long as, if they're an elected official and not acting in their official capacity, then they would have to register and pay. Yeah. Um, I think that's where we're all trying to get to. Does that accomplish what you're, uh, initially I was, but then there's also, um. So you just want to find, tweaked a little bit is what you're saying. Yeah, I think we could, you know, they're really the ones that I, I think should be eliminated would be four, one, um, I think number two also, uh, spec, it does specify in the business of their government or authority. Um, three also specifies connection with his job responsibilities. Um, so. I don't, I don't think the intent of this ordinance is to stop any of us from communicating with our residents at the gas station or whatever, but to stop any monetary gain from anybody approaching us trying to sell a project. Absolutely. I think is the whole intention of this. A hundred percent. And I, and I support that wholeheartedly. Um, commissioner Vasquez to your, your point, um, about whether this is needed or necessary. I think there's a perception from our public that thinks that we're not being transparent and that there's a lot of outside influence into the decisions that we as a governing body make. Um, I think, I think this would, would go a long way to ease that, um, kind of that thought or that hesitation from the public, uh, and just make sure that, that there's a level of comfort, additional level of comfort from the public that our decisions are our own. And if there is any outside influence or lobbying activities, then it's going to be documented. Um, also to your point, I could not agree with you more that, uh, I talk to my neighbors almost every day. I hear from my neighbors almost every day at Publix, at the gas station, walking the dogs around the neighborhood. If we had, if I had to keep a log of everybody that I talked to about, you know, specific projects, good gosh, that's going to just, that just gets overburdensome. I'll, I'll tell you, I'll just say it, you know, that's, uh, and I don't think that the intent of this policy is to be overly burdensome on, on us. It's just to provide that level of transparency, um, to our residents that, you know, these are the decisions or these are the, the things that are going into our decisions. So thank you, mayor. Commissioner Howington. So I think there might be some definitions that might need to be pulled out. Cause like you said, Army Corps of Engineers, if they come in to help us with a project, I wouldn't necessarily think they're lobbying. They're helping us. Same as like Pegasus Engineering would help us on a project. So we wouldn't need them to register as a lobbyist, I wouldn't think. That's why I was kind of going back to the principal and their attorneys or potentially anybody that they've hired to specifically lobby us on a specific project or topic that they want to get passed within the chambers here when we're meeting. And not down to the level of Joe at the gas station talking to us saying, Hey, I heard you guys are talking about doing this and I think it's a great idea or I think it's a bad idea. That's not the intent. I wouldn't think. Correct. And the, again, the definition of lobbyist included in this ordinance is any person who engages in lobbying as defined in this ordinance for compensation. So Joe at the gas station, if he's just coming to tell you his opinion, great. If it's a quasi judicial matter, you should still log it. But if, I don't know, ABC Corporation paid Joe at the gas station and said, Go find them at the gas station. That's where they make their best decisions. I mean, he would, right? I, Joe would have to register and you would have to log. I talked to Joe at the gas station and he told me vote yes on ABC Corporation. Thank you. So I think the only direction really, city manager, I think you wanted to say something and after that we'll go back to the question. Yes. A lot of times after these meetings, I get together with our attorneys and we discuss what was actually said. So for clarity, when we say principals, someone owns a lot. They come and just say, Hey, I want to build something. They now have to file that they're a lobbyist. I know we know it when we see it, what a lobbyist is, gets up. The attorney says, I'm representing so-and-so lobbyist, but anybody that owns land, that's the principle. I just want to clarify if you're talking about, or any developer, he owns 200 acres. One person comes in, is he a lobbyist or is he just the owner of that land? We know a lobbyist when we see it. He's representing himself. I think for clarity, right? When a landowner's coming to us, we still have to, we have to disclose it in our quasi-judicials, right? I think what we're trying to get to is, I'm not, I'm just going to pick on you because you're a big boy. You can take it. Commissioner Caldwell doesn't want to be sitting at Dunkin' Donuts. I don't know if he drinks that or not. I don't want people to tag him on Facebook, but he's drinking coffee at Dunkin' Donuts and commissioner, or I'll say owner of Starbucks, Lully, goes and hires Harriet from ABC Consulting and he tells him, don't tell him you're a lobbyist, but tell him all these reasons why he should stop going there and build that Starbucks on Cortland Boulevard and make sure he starts drinking coffee at Cortland. So he, he now has to figure out, well, do I need to log that in there? Cause I don't know if that guy was a lobbyist or not. And, and did he get paid for it? He doesn't want to, we don't want to be, and I'm speaking generalities, but we don't want to be blindsided by, by something like that. Cause if the owner of the land's coming to me, I already know what he wants. He wants me to approve his stuff, right? Or her stuff. What we're trying to figure out is, is there additional people attached to the project disguised as something else, right? Elected official, gas attendant, coffee brewer, whatever that is lobbying on that behalf in order to, to accomplish us to maybe rethink our strategy after we've, I mean, I'm sure all the other commissioners along with myself, we go through this, we get our agendas, we go through it, we, we study it and we formulate our discussions, our decisions on what's best for the, for, for the city. But now we got two, three lobbyists talking to us, they're getting paid or, or maybe they have an interest through stock or whatever. We need to know that they're lobbyists and they should register. If I could use a quick example, Synergy. I think we all know, I've never met with him personally, but I know all the commission has, if he came by himself as himself, only as himself, is he a lobbyist? People have spoken for him at the microphone. So we know clearly he's got some helpers out there, but if he is a developer came 100% as himself, that we say, can't speak to you as a developer or anyone else that owns land in the city, you must fill out these forms, pay $500, and then we'll speak with you because you are a principal. You are now considered a lobbyist. I'll let the rest talk. I know. Yeah. But for myself, I will tell you, I think that's silly. They're already paying property taxes at some point. What I'm looking for specifically when I brought this up is outside influences on our commission, not necessarily a landowner, but whoever they're hiring to try to convince us that's, that's, and then you can go down, Commissioner Caldwell, I know you're on the board. With monetary gain, or if he's a landowner, individual landowner with monetary gain, pushing a project that might come on his property, obviously he's a lobbyist. Yeah, but I don't think we should have property owners register. That's what he's trying to get to. I think their attorneys or their lobbyists should register because they're getting paid for that. But the property owners, the landowners are already paying through their property taxes. I mean, all of us sitting here, we, it'd be silly for us to not think that they want us to not vote for their items. So, Vice Mary Harriet, I think Commissioner Howington, I think Commissioner Aguila Vasquez. Yeah, I just wanted to respond to the city manager's question. In that example, I don't think the landowner should be required to register and pay. It's obvious that he's got monetary gain from his project. He's the applicant. He's, he wouldn't be doing it if he wasn't, if there wasn't monetary gain for it. Now, if he had paid somebody to talk to any of us or, you know, as long as he's there, I don't see an issue with it. But if his, if he had paid his attorney to reach out to us individually, absolutely, he's paid. And I think that it's defined in here that if they're doing it, they're doing it for monetary gain, his attorney would then be doing the lobbying activity on behalf of the applicant for monetary gain for a specific outcome. So, yeah, the individual applicant, no. But if the, if he's paying somebody to try to change my decision, then I think everybody in the community should know about it. Commissioner Howington and Commissioner Aguila Vasquez. Thank you. So, I would like to designate a difference between a landowner and a developer because you could have somebody who owns an infill lot and might come talk to one of us about building a house on their infill lot. They're not lobbying for monetary gain. They're lobbying to build on their property. If, if somebody is coming in to build 500 apartments, they're not going to live in all 500 of those apartments. That's truly for monetary gain. And that is where the applicant is making a profit off of lobbying us. They're trying to convince us to do something. And a lot of times there might even be a rezone that they need. And so if there's a rezone, why would we say just because it's the person themselves coming in versus them paying somebody? We have lots of developers who act on their own basis or on their own behalf here. So they would never have to log it, report it, or anything just because they own $20 million worth of land here in the city. And they came here in person. So in thinking about your comment, so the way we have defined lobbyists right now include is, right? Any person who shall engage in lobbying is defined herein for compensation for an entity other than his employer or for an entity including his or her employer. If a principal function of his or her position is lobbying or government relations. So an individual employed by a developer who their job is to come and make you all try and make a decision would be required under this. Whereas I think a principal would be, right, is the firm itself. Right. Which that was my first ask. Yeah. The first thing that I asked for was, I think the principal should be included. So I guess somewhat of the question then is how we parse that because you may have an infill lot that is owned by a corporation where the owner of the lot is one person they made an LLC and they are coming in and want to lobby on behalf of their own individual infill lot. They are the principal. How is that different or is that different from a corporation where a corporation likely has staff that has a primary function of lobbying or government relations and you also have the corporation itself, the people who draw the plans and those sorts of things. I think that's where monetary gain comes in. All right. Let's all just make sure we, because we have Commissioner Vila-Vasquez still waiting to speak. So Commissioner Hamilton. So I would like to see principals included because there's a lot of property in this community that are owned by people who would come in and speak to us individually and that I would have a concern with if we just leave that open. Thank you. Commissioner Vila-Vasquez and then Commissioner Carwell. Thank you, Mayor. So, you know, along the lines of Commissioner Dorey, I mean, it is a little bit confusing because a lot owned by an individual can come and speak to us, right, because they still need to be approved to build. But it's an owner who is going to build for his own personal use. So how do you compare that to what you said, a lot owned by an LLC who's going to build a house to sell for profit? How do you, you know what I'm saying? It's a lot of confusion here because if an individual comes here and they want to build something, it's different than a person who owns, because we do, we meet with owners of lots or we meet with the owners of acres of land that are going to build two, three hundred houses for profit. We have met, I've met with somebody who has a lot and wants to build a house to sell it or somebody who wants to build a house to live in it. So how do you identify those three different scenarios? So I will give you all the credit for this idea if you like it because it happened while you were speaking, is we could require that a principal register but waive the fee for a principal. So that would require, that would lump in everyone, right, and would still require a large corporation that is going to have staff that their primary duty is lobbying, still require the payment of a fee for those large corporations but would allow, you know, Joe Smith, a landowner who wants to come in and speak to you about their individual lot, to still come in and do that without an additional financial burden. If you don't like it, then it was my idea. Thank you, ma'am. That's it for me. Commissioner Caldwell and then Vice Mayor Harriet. Couldn't we define it as a principal other than single-family unit or single-family dwelling other than owner-occupied? We've got to be careful we're not caught in the middle of a lawsuit after that. I will give some thought on how we can parse this out because I understand the goal and certainly we can work on and how to make it happen legally. Thank you, Mayor. Vice Mayor Harriet. Not to beat the dead horse but also. A lot of the infill lots that are being built upon, do they require to come before the city? Most of them will not unless there is a variance required, a major variance. For the variance, it wouldn't come for, like they're already pretty much, they were almost all zoned or platted with the correct zoning for a single-family lot. I mean, I know that there's three of them within 100 yards of my house and the one immediately next door didn't have to come to the city. And then the other two, when they were sold to D.R. Horton, where permits were pulled and they didn't have to come to the city to pull permits. But also to the same point, they were purchased by a corporation, by D.R. Horton, they weren't purchased by individuals trying to build a house. So I just wanted to define what we were talking about and the fact that a lot of these infill lots, I don't believe, have to come to the city commission for any votes. They're already zoned single-family. All right. So we can move on. I guess the only lacking question we have here is, do we want just to have the lobbyists or lobbyists plus commissioners? Is that correct, Zach? Bless you. Yes. As far as the lobbying contact logs, do you want that to be on commissioners and lobbyists, just lobbyists, or just commissioners? So we can do it very easy. If you want just lobbyists, raise your hand. And then if it depends on how that goes, if you want lobbyists and commissioners, we'll go there. So we'll start with just lobbyists. Raise your hands. Four. Just to put it out there, lobbyists and commissioners, raise your hand. Okay. So four to three. So we're going with just lobbyists. Anything else, Zach? The fee, I've heard that $5.25 is too high, so we can adjust that. Do we agree as a commission that that's too high? You can just scream it out if you want to. Go ahead, Commissioner Howington. I didn't notice you were on the board. That amount's too high. I think we should match the state at the $50 with the $25 for additional. I'm going to agree with Commissioner Howington on that. I mean, if it's good for the state and they deal with more, I'm going to go with that as well. Commissioner Howington? Vice Mayor Harriet? I actually don't have a problem with the high fee, as long as we're not going to get into any legal trouble with it being overly burdensome or anything of that sort. But honestly, I kind of like the fee being high. It kind of dissuade some of the lobbying from happening. Commissioner Avila Vasquez? I agree it's too high, but I have a question going back to the previous vote. This is not the final vote, right? This is just something that we're discussing. It's going to come up. Up to the commission. Yeah, you all will get two times, right? So going back to the commission versus commissioners and lobbyists, even if the commissioners don't log it, the lobbyist still has to log it and who they met with, right? Correct. So it doesn't really matter if commissioners don't log it because it'll still be on record that they met with Zach. Yes, correct. All right. Thank you. Commissioner Caldwell, and then I'll do a quick vote on the fee thing. Same style. Right there. I think the line is appropriate. Do we know what other surrounding communities are charging? We did a survey of the various ordinances that we modeled this off of. $525 was not the highest fee, but it's probably somewhere in the middle to top, probably middle to the top 75%. Average or above average? Yeah. I think I agree with that. All right. Let's do a very similar thing. If you're okay with the fee being at $525, raise your hand. Three. Okay. If you think the fee should be smaller, raise your hand. They both failed. I think what we can do. Truly with Commissioner Vasquez on this one, I'm indifferent. I think it'd be great if there was overwhelming support to keep it high. Same here. I don't care. Either way. I'm truly indifferent on it. At the end of the day, I'll be honest with you, the few lobbyists that I know of that are active in the city, $525 would not be a burden to them, just to be clear. If we start getting excessive with the definition and depending on who we're requiring to pay that fee, then that might change. But as what we've talked about so far, I don't think, but truly indifferent. Commissioner Lilley. Real quick, just because I do have to leave to handle a family matter, nothing bad. I think maybe a good idea would be when we bring this back to the commission meeting, maybe you have a couple options for the, and we can see which one we think fits and give the commission time to consider each one. Thank you. All right. Is there anything else, Zach, so we can move to the next? That is it. Thank you very much. Okay. So do you want me to disclose your number so the lobbyists can go in? It's a joke. Never mind. All right. We're going to go to section A, B as in boy, discussion regarding the city commission operating guidelines and meeting rules and procedures, and who wants to take this, city manager or city attorney? You're both looking at each other. Go ahead, city attorney. Oh. Well, we usually let them a little bit, and then we'll go right to public comment after that before the commission speaks. All right. Before you commission is your current policies that some of them, as you see on the back page, date back to the beginning of, I guess, dirt, when dirt was first made. But a few things have been changed over the years. So upon my arrival, that was one thing the clerk and I got together and said maybe there's ways to sharpen it up, as you discussed during your travel policy. There was a lot of extra pages and fluff in there that you reduced. We also looked to reduce your process. We offered it back in January, February or so, and then it was tabled for a discussion on a workshop. So basically before you is your current policies. If there's any changes that you guys would like to make, it was staff initiated by us to request for you to look at your changes. But if the commission's choice is not to change anything, then it stays as is your current policies. But it's up to you if you'd like to make any adjustments to it. Thank you. Any public comment? City clerk? Tim. Tim Blodgett, please. City clerk, if you can just leave your microphone up. Yes, sir. Is it working? Okay. I read over the policy. It looks pretty good as is. The only problem that I have is under a manner of addressing the commission under letter H. Okay, letter H, having been here and watched you guys for almost three years now, this is loaded with personal bias. There's only one thing in here. First of all, this section seems to deal with the First Amendment. And the only thing in here which will stand up in court of First Amendment is that you shouldn't be threatening. It's not allowed. It's not protected speech to threaten anybody for any reason whatsoever. The rest of it, it's like abusive language. Sorry, that's protected speech. Offensive language. Props. What's the matter? You guys didn't like when Brandy came in in a clown costume? Anyway, so I'm not one to reinvent the wheel, which is what this kind of looks like. So I looked at something that I thought you should have been basing this on. I found something in Wikipedia. And what it says is the First Amendment protects most forms of speech, but some categories are not protected and can be restricted by the government. These include obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement to violence, fighting words, true threats, speech integral to criminal conduct, and child pornography. I don't see anything about child pornography in here. I don't see anything about a lot of stuff that should have been in here. Thank you, sir. Kathy Bryan, please. Kathy Bryan, Daltona. I watched your town hall, Mayor, and you were talking about increasing the workshop to four minutes. I like that. But decreasing regular minutes to two minutes. I disagree. Three minutes, no less. I don't have the advantage of having whatever Mr. Tim had up here. I also would rather have public comment after commission comment so that we can kind of get a feel for what you guys are thinking and comment on that. Because sometimes you guys start talking and I say, oh, but wait. You've got a lot of smart residents out here. I've said this before. I'll say it again. Sometimes we think of stuff that you guys don't. Or maybe we put that P in your brain. So I would rather speak after you guys speak. Clapping, really. Honestly, when people are clapping, they're telling you, okay, we approve. We like what this person said. We agree. We like what the commission just did. Give them three seconds of clapping. Move your superstars and your band concerts. Move those to six o'clock. Put public forum later. You guys have had people come in here. There wasn't that many speakers. They couldn't make it by six o'clock and they couldn't speak because their time was up. And that's not right. That's prejudicial. You say you're interested in what citizens have to say. You know, communication. And you talk about transparency and we think you're not transparent. The reason for that is lack of communication. Lack of feeling like whatever we say matters. Robert's rule of order are meant to be guidelines. They're not to be followed necessarily by the letter. It depends on the situation. Sometimes in the regular meeting, maybe commissioners are limited to speak two times for a certain amount of minutes. But maybe something comes up that needs more discussion. That needs to be allowed. Thank you. Thank you, too, Elizabeth. All right. We're not starting, I guess. So just a couple of things before I open it up to the rest of the commission. Obviously, we do care, and I'm going to speak for all of us because I'm assuming if you're a commissioner, you care about your residents. There are an enormous amount of ways to communicate with all of us. Some of us do town halls. Some of us don't. But all of us have a cell phone. All of us. I hear consistently. Commissioner Vila Vasquez and I don't always agree on stuff. But I know that she answers her constituents because sometimes they call me and they're like, you know, Maritza answered me before you did. I'm like, well, that's awesome. That's great, right? To her credit. Sometimes, you know, whatever the form is, we're open to communicate. You know, maybe you don't like the mayor. Maybe you like Commissioner Howington or Commissioner Quilt. Whatever the point is, find out who your commissioner is, and if you can't stand the mayor or your commissioner, there's other of us up here that is willing to talk to you. So you're right to the resident. There is a lack of communication, but there's ways for you to communicate. Email, phone, text message, town halls, open forum, and whatever. Yeah, the barista. The point of what I made in my town hall when I talked about maybe switching the time frames is as a commission, you know, these workshops are meant for us to talk, have more dialogue, be able to kind of get into the weeds of things. When we're going to a commission meeting, we should all already know how we're going to vote, not because we spoke to lobbyists or not, but because we did our homework, we spoke to enough of our constituents, and we're good to go. And then, you know, against popular belief and what people post on social media, I do allow clapping when it's appropriate. Somebody shows that we, you know, the school made something good, clap, that's great. But we're talking about serious stuff, and somebody makes comment, whether it's appropriate or not, about another commissioner or somebody in the audience, and somebody claps on it or boos or whatever. However, I always ask the person, why don't we try that in the court? You'll see how fast the judge will take you, and try to pull that in Tallahassee. I went to Tallahassee. They have a big sign, same thing over there. It's not that nobody's trying to restrict anybody's freedom of speech, but we're here to conduct business. If you want to petition your government for redress or grievance, it's great. That's what you do. But when you come to the podium and you start talking about things that have nothing to do just because you want to get your five minutes of fame, I'm sorry. That's unacceptable. So, city attorney, is this stuff enforceable, or are we violating the First Amendment? Thank you for the question, Mr. Mayor. We are not violating the First Amendment. A city commission meeting is a limited forum. So, a limited forum, when we talk about free speech, there are different types of forums, right? You have a traditional public forum where restriction on speech is at its minimum. When you say traditional public forum, this is exactly what you think about. It is the sidewalk. It is the public square. This is where governments have the least ability to regulate speech. You have a designated public forum, which is at times when the government opens public property for public expression, even if that area is not a traditional public forum, so that is, like, opening this room, is not at all times a public forum. You don't just get to come in here and say whatever you want any time of the day. It is only open during a certain time. A limited public forum is a type of designated public forum, and that is what a city commission meeting is. So, in a limited public forum, the government may limit access to the forum to certain classes or types of speech, which does not allow the commission to engage in viewpoint discrimination, right? So, you can say you can only speak if you are here to speak about matters that impact the city of Deltona. If you want to come in here and talk about aliens from Mars, unless those aliens from Mars are in Deltona, you don't get to talk about them. But you cannot say you can only come if you are going to say nice things about Deltona. You have to allow people to say nice things and critical things. So, basically, in sum, as a limited public forum, the government may restrict access to content-neutral conditions on time, place, and manner, which must be narrowly tailored to serve a government interest. So, that would be limiting to topics that are either the notice item on the agenda or topics that impact the city of Deltona and other similar rules that keep the decorum of the meeting and impact the safety of those that are in attendance. I just want to add, because I haven't seen anybody come up, but one of the things that I would like to see in our policies is some type of a clock where we can review this every three years, whatever it is, to make sure that we're staying up to date with not only state statutes, but, you know, cities grow, things change. Hopefully, city managers don't change, but I want to make sure that we're always up to date with our policies and procedures. On top of that, it would be nice that once somebody comes in as an elected official, I don't know if they can take a day or two where we have some of the staff kind of help them out with, hey, here's what's expected, here's the role. I mean, obviously, we should all know a lot of that, but when we get hired at a job, you know, they take us to some type of orientation, onboarding. I think that's very useful. Commissioner Howington? I was just going to point out that that is actually already in here for having training. We're supposed to get training upon being elected, and I know that didn't happen this year, but that would be nice. Or prior. Yeah, that would be nice to have going forward. And so it is already covered in here. You know, the policy as we currently have it, I think, is working. I think we need to be very careful with Robert's Rules of Orders because Robert's Rules of Order are actually for parliamentary procedure. And parliament is made up of 650 bodies. We have a body of seven. And so to limit down to speaking only twice and things like that, you know, we get into conversations where somebody might say something that might jog somebody else's memory, and then they need to respond. And so I would hate if we take a guideline that's applied to 650 members of a body and apply it to seven, and then we can't truly have a decent discussion because there's only seven of us. So just for your knowledge, so that's been in there for a while. That's one of the parts because as the person running the meeting, there's times that maybe should we apply it? Yeah, but I always allow everyone to continue talking out of respect because maybe you have something, right? So I just want to bring that to your attention. So it might be worth maybe just changing up the verbiage a little bit, potentially. I don't know. Mayor, you know, you're the one hurting cats, so. It's true. I would like to see us allow people to turn in slips to talk all the way up until, like, 6.20 or something. When people show up to the meeting at 6.10 and they want to speak and they just weren't here by 6 o'clock and they can't turn in that form, that does bother me. People have been turned away because they showed up at 6.15. No, I think the meeting's already adjourned when they showed up at 6.15. There was only one person that spoke. If there's public comments still going on, they still accept. We had people that walked up while people were still speaking. It's happened a couple times. It happened, one, with Mr. Sosa. And to be fair, I had already adjourned for or recessed the meeting until we started. As long as public comments are still going on, they can speak at that time, yes. And then I'm not a fan of reducing times below three minutes. I don't think that's necessary, but those are kind of my thoughts. Thank you. Commissioner Avila-Vasquez, then Vice Mayor Harriet, then Commissioner Santiago. Thank you, Mayor. So I don't know what policies everybody's looking at. I'm looking at the old policy. I would like to keep my old policies. They've worked so far. Maybe a little tweaking here and there. But everything in the old policy has worked for the commissioners as well as for the residents. I have to say that when I was elected seven years ago, I did receive orientation training. I was trained by the lawyer and I was trained by the clerk. I have no idea whatever happened with that. It fell between the cracks. And I feel for new elected officials because you're just throwing in there with no guidance and nothing to guide you through. But I can tell you that back in the days when I was elected, there was orientation training. And I was offered training by each department as well. Again, limited public forum. You know, this is their city. I believe that they should be allowed to speak for whatever subject of doing public comments. You know, there shouldn't be any restriction as to what topic they should be discussing or coming up to speak about because that's the time for them to speak. So, again, I would like to keep the old policies. There are kind of, you know, it's a lot of pages, but it works. Thank you. Before we go to Vice Mayor, are you okay with some tweaking of it just so we can find a base common line? Hold on. I'll get to you. Yeah, very little tweaking. I mean, that does not affect the residents. Maybe things that will make things easier for us in a way, but not to take away from the residents. Vice Mayor Harriott. Thank you, Mayor. And going through this policy, there's a lot of redundancy. I mean, on the first page itself, it goes through everything on the first page, or I guess it's technically page two, is already defined in more or less the charter. There's a lot of stuff in here on page three that is defined in the charter and restricted by the charter. I think that this policy needs to pertain primarily to Section 2 regarding meetings, Section 3 regarding the agenda. Section 4 should be much more limited than it is. It's, I believe, already specified in the charter that it's the mayor, the vice mayor, and then the city clerk will facilitate selecting a chairman for the meeting if the vice mayor and the mayor aren't available. And that's mentioned, there's a whole section on that here, and it actually uses different verbiage in two different places within this policy. You know, there's motions and voting. I mean, that's, the first one is, it references the charter. There's just a lot of duplication within here, and I think that actually causes confusion within communication by having overly lengthy, repetitive documents like this. So I'm a big fan of cutting this down a lot. It appears that I'm in the minority on that thought, so I understand that. I would also probably be a fan and support a changing of the time, public comment time. I would love to see the amount of public input that we see at commission meetings at workshops. We get a lot of topics at workshops, which is, before we make the official vote, we, you know, now we have time to take the input from residents, get staff to confirm, deny, clarify, legal, to provide input on legal opinions regarding what would public comments, public ideas, all that kind of thing. So I don't want to, I think limiting public comment at workshops is, I think it's a little low. So regarding public comment at meetings, I know the public thinks that the large, the vocal opinion on Facebook is that it has to be four minutes. Four minutes is what everybody needs. If you just go back and look at public comment, there's really not a lot of public comment where there's actual public comment for more than two or three minutes. So I think a fair compromise would be three minutes across the board. Workshops, city commission meetings, it would, I think, help clarify a lot of the questions that we've ran into with, you know, people coming up and thinking that they have more time than they do, whether it's a presentation item or not a presentation item, a workshop or a meeting. And then there was confusion a couple meetings ago where someone thought that they would have more time, and they didn't. But if we just made it three minutes flat across the board, I think that's more than enough time. And then hopefully that elicits more involvement in our workshops. I think that that's something that I would really like to get us to. But overall, I think this policy is extremely duplicative. You know, half of these reference the charter or an ordinance or something else anyway. So that's where I'm at. Thanks, Mayor. Commissioner Santiago, then Commissioner Caldwell. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, and I agree with Vice Mayor Harriet. A lot of it, of the old one, it's like duplicate. I think what was confusing is that we should have taken the old one and done, like, strikethroughs in red so that we know what was being removed and added the new information in red. But other than that, I mean, yeah, I do find it very cumbersome. I do find it, it's duplicate, it's item that we don't really should have in the old one. We can certainly add what we have in the new one and just make it a little bit smaller. The four minutes and the three minutes and two minutes, I think you're right. I think three minutes is across the board is just perfectly fine. I know it was mentioned about the commission only speak twice. I honestly do believe that that was just for Vice Mayor, not for the rest of us. Sorry. But no, but if we do have more things to say, we shouldn't be limited to two times to speak. And I think the mayor, I'm sure, would give us that third time speaking. And in regards to the disorderly conduct at meetings that, hey, listen, one of the items, one of the things that I've heard a lot before I got here was that the commission, the act, how they acted, it was like a circus. I mean, I'm telling you what, it was out there, what was put out there. And this is a way to really, you know, we need to be professional. And we expect everyone to be professional. So I don't see anything wrong with trying to be professional. Other than that, I think it's a great start. It's eight pages, and I like it. Thank you. Commissioner Caldwell and Commissioner Villavascoz. I'm going to say that I like the way it's written. It has been. It's been working for us. I agree wholeheartedly with the three minutes across the board. And the speaking twice, I think we should raise that a little bit as we do have a lot of dialogue go back and forth. Not just for this commission, but for future commissions also. I think we should expand that a little bit. That's it. Thank you, Mayor. Commissioner Vazquez. Avila Vazquez. Thank you, Mayor. So I just want to go back to the Vice Mayor's comment about charter versus policy. There's two different policies. I mean, this is for the commission meeting, and then you have the charter. And obviously, a lot of policies refer back to the charter, and that's why you'll have some items in here that will quote things that says on the charter. This is about the meetings that we're having and how they should be conducted. And, again, I don't have a problem with them. And, you know, I've been a commission for seven years. I've been sitting here before. I've always acted professional. Even when I've been attacked, I've acted very professional. And I believe other commissioners who were prior sitting here would take it offensive also. I think we all act professional up here at the diocese, considering some of the things that we're attacked for. Even when I was called a cheap streetwalker, I held my seat. So for residents to say that we need to act a little bit more professional is to leave the bell. Just for clarification, I don't mean to take your time. I think she was referring to some of the residents specifically attacking the commission. No, she said commissioners should be acting more professional. But that's fine. And there's a lot of stuff in here, you know what, that we're even breaking the rules. Read it. Read stuff. We're not even supposed to be answering phones up here at the dais. And it's being done. We're not supposed to have phones up at the dais. And it's being done. Commissioners are taking phone calls. They're taking messages if you want to get that low, if you want to get that into this policy. And this is why I like this policy. There's a lot of stuff in here that's being broken, that's not being followed. I have my phone here. The mayor knows it because of my mom. So I like this policy. I really like it, and I like to keep it. Again, with a little tweaking here and there. I'll just add something, and then I'll go to vice mayor and then commissioner Santiago. Precisely for that, I have my phone here as well, because a lot of people know I had a break in my house not too long ago. But that should be something that should be excluded from the – I mean, taking calls and texting. I've seen it, not with this commission, but others. Texting those in the audience, I agree that should not be happening. But in case of an emergency, we should be able to take a call or obviously being respectful, going to the back like you've done in the past, like I've done, vice mayor, commissioner Lowe. So those are the tweaking that I think we're talking about that need to happen. Also, the three minutes across the board, if that means more time for my residents to speak at workshops, I'm all for it. I just – I mentioned at a town hall that I thought it was great to swap just because most of the things that come to our regular commission meetings should be coming to workshops anyways before that, unless it's like a quasi-judicial, then obviously it's not. But that's where we need to have so much engagement from our residents, letting them speak. And correct, I don't think nobody wants to remove their ability to – during public comment. They can say whatever they want. I think what we're all saying is that let's keep it respectful, professional. And look, I'm going to – I'll take responsibility. In the very beginning, I probably allowed more than what I should have trying to balance am I violating the First Amendment? And my – and to your point, the day that that person said what he said about you, I was the one that motioned him to get kicked out. And the amount of – the text messages are still there. You should read them. I mean, everything from – and people think it's funny, by the way. Oh, look, the Castro Cuban guy. You know, I have two daughters. I get it. I don't want them to be called that. And by the way, for the people that keep joking around with that, my grandfather, who's passed away, was in prison for over 10 years for being a political prisoner in Cuba. So it's the silliness, the stupidity. We can get so much – there's people in this audience right now who don't agree with me on a lot of stuff. But we can sit down and we can talk about stuff. And we can work through it. And that's, I think, what we need to do is get back a lot to that. So I take responsibility for, in the beginning, not putting more order and decorum on that aspect. I now have understood how we can maneuver it where if somebody makes a curse or whatever, you know, we're not kindergartens. Say what you want. That's fine. I'll let stuff like that sometimes slide. But when you're calling somebody a streetwalker, when you're calling derogatory terms, whatever the case may be, those are your opinions. How is that you petitioning your government for grievances? It isn't. If you want to say Deltona sucks, that's a matter of your opinion. That's great. You can say that, right? You can be critical of the city. But to sit here and just go into the personal attacks, it just – it's not what we need to do. So Vice Mayor Harriet. Thank you, Mayor. To Commissioner Villal-Vasquez's point, I've got a lot of stuff going on medical-wise at home as well, hopefully all good news. But still stuff that requires me to be attentive to family. The cell phone communication, I understand the intent to limit – to prevent the communication between the public and the commission during a meeting. That's all, you know, self-policing stuff. That's stuff that – we're all professionals up here. We understand the intent of that. We understand the purpose and how destructive that can be. And quite frankly, most of the time, the public that wants to communicate during a meeting, they're also the ones that are going to be the first to turn their backs on us and post those comments or those text messages on Facebook. So it's – that's all self-policing. I think that's one of the parts of this policy that is a little bit overly burdensome. And quite frankly, there's no teeth in it to hold anybody accountable for doing it either. And quite frankly, I don't know about you, but if somebody wanted to try to hold me accountable for communicating, you know, health issues with my family during a commission meeting, then come at me. I don't know what else to say, but that's all – when it comes down to it, we're here to do the business of the city. We're here to hear our residents. I don't think cell phone communication during a public meeting, you know, as long as it's not unprofessional and crosses, you know, ethical lines, then why are we trying to fix it? I mean, my employer doesn't, you know, walk around all day and, you know, take my cell phone off my desk or tell me that I have to leave it at the door. I mean, that's – we're professionals. We know how to conduct ourselves. Before I go to the city attorney, can I at least get from the commission, are we – is the majority okay with the three minutes across the board? Yeah. Okay. Go ahead, city attorney. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just because there's been now a bit of discussion regarding the electronic communications during a public meeting, I just want to flag that the Sunshine Law already speaks to that and addresses, you know, communications during a public meeting and when it is inappropriate, if it is an attempt to circumvent the provisions of the Sunshine Law, certainly your personal text messages of, hey, dinner's ready, or do you want pizza later, that is not an attempt to circumvent Sunshine. Why are you looking at me when you're saying that? I'm asking if you want to get pizza later. So there's certainly law, case law on point, that we could reference in your policy just to make sure that it's clear the intent of that language. Is there a way we can remove some of the redundancy without it affecting it where commissioner – the commission would still be happy, but it's not like we're changing all of the – we're tweaking it so we're not being redundant in the policies? Yes, and I'd be happy to work with the manager on that to make sure that you all have a – still a clear guide here that isn't just restating an existing policy that is housed somewhere else. Certainly, I think working with the manager, we could accomplish that for you. Commissioner Carwell? When that's brought back to us, could that include red lines, strikers, things like that? I think Mertz has asked for that several times. City manager? Yeah, we tried to red line your original plans, but it was just – it was too much. To answer your question earlier, if we just look at your current plans and just go through it, we could certainly red line it. But making any drastic changes, you'd have to start from scratch is what happened there. But we'll be able to red line the current plans. I think the only other thing, can we make sure – and I'll go right to the vice mayor after – but can we make sure, like what Commissioner Avila Vasquez said, she went through the onboarding and orientation. I don't care who dropped the ball, right? It's in the past. Can we make sure that moving forward, that gets done? I know we have superstar attorneys that will make sure that that gets done. And I just – I hate to see us go through this lingo continuously. The only other thing I'd ask the commission, if they're okay with it, can we at least put a timer on here so we can revisit this every three years or whatever the will of – is everybody okay with that? Every year. Two, three years. Okay. Zach, just, I guess, bring us something that – options, I guess, two, three years, whatever. Whatever the commission feels like doing. Vice mayor Harriet, then – oh, hold on, city attorney. I was just going to say yes, understood. Vice mayor. Thank you, mayor, again. I'm trying to hit four times on this topic. This is your fifth time. Shucks. I'm an overachiever. Also, on the cell phone point, two things. When I said come at me, I meant call me on my cell phone. Second of all, there are a lot of times where the agenda items reference an address or a commissioner references an email that we received or a document or something else or a news article or something that they saw or heard or whatnot. And so there's a lot of times where it's research and relative and related to that agenda item also. So just another reason to take it out. And maybe just an idea on where that ball got dropped. It might have been somewhere in between the first and the seventh city manager between the time Maritza was elected and where we're at today. Commissioner Howington. To your point, I believe there is a section in here that allows us to research using our phones while we're in the meeting, as long as it's used for the purpose that you just mentioned, to look things up and things like that. I just wanted to mention that. Commissioner Vasquez, and then if nobody else has anything, we'll move on. Yes. To your point, Commissioner Doran, yes, it is in the policies, but the city also made available some information in the back that you can go back and research anything in the city. Joyce, do you remember? We actually provided you guys, there's three iPads that are up there specifically for the research purposes so that you wouldn't use your cell phone. That was part of why we created the iPads for that reason. And there was, you know, other documentation that was provided. Right. So I don't know if they're still back there, but they've always been available for us. Commissioner Howington. So I'd like to make a request because I know that I've seen Vice Mayor looking at various things online and part of the not having the training, I'm afraid if I try to go look at the things the way he is, I'm going to get stuck and won't be able to get back to the agenda. So if somebody could possibly show us how to do that without getting stuck during the meetings and causing a problem. It's a totally different iPad. It's not connected to Granicus. There are three iPads for the seven of you to use. You don't have to touch the iPads that we have in front of you. They're separate. Well, if somebody can show me how, that would be wonderful. Thank you so much. And train you to do that as well. Just for clarification to the city clerk, I use the iPad I have here all the time, and it works perfectly fine. So just, oops. All right. Do you have any questions, city manager or city attorney? No? You guys have an idea? No, we're good. Thank you. All right. Go ahead. Doc, did you ever get your answer to the question about a single person versus a group of business owners? I think we have versions of it that Zach and I will bring back to the commission to discuss. Yes. Yes. Yeah, I think we'll, at first reading, I think there'll be some options on that. Thank you. All right. So you guys have some direction. At this time, we're going to go ahead and move to city manager comments. We're good for the night, mayor. Thank you. No. Meetings adjourned.