We have enough here.
Good morning. The clerk's office has received notification that Stephanie Daniels and Iris Escara will be absent from today's meeting. Senator Alexis Calatayud. Mayor Joshua Diegues. Eric Eikenberg.
Here.
Robert Henry Fernandez.
Here.
Rafael Granado.
Here.
Jose Jimenez. Mayor Steven Lossner.
Here.
Commissioner Dennis Moss. Here. Mayor Andre Pierre. Mayor Crystal Wager. Rebecca Wakefield.
Here.
Vice Chairman Michael Redondo.
Here.
Chairman Dennis Kerbell.
Here.
Nine members present. We have a quorum.
Thank you. Okay, let's call this meeting to order. And first we will do the Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Vice Chair, if you'll do the honors. Okay. Good morning, everybody, and thank you to everyone who is in attendance in the board and in the audience. At this point, we'll open the reasonable opportunity for the public to be heard. Is there anyone who wishes to speak on any item?
Hi. Good morning. Chad Friedman. Offices at 2800 Ponce de Leon Boulevard. I'm here on behalf of the League of Cities. I know you guys know. You've been very gracious over the past couple of months that we talk. I have two comments on both the items on the agenda. I don't know if you want to let me speak at that time, or I can speak now. Just let me know.
You know what? Why don't you hold it? Because I'm going to introduce some changes to the item, to the board. You're talking about the annexation item?
As well as Article 7 also, which I haven't seen was proposed, but the League of Cities does have a proposal also on that.
Okay, why don't you come back up when we take those up? Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak?
Good morning. Diana Artega from the Property Appraisers Office. I also had some feedback on the Boundary Commission item, but I can wait until that item is called up as well.
Okay. Yeah, I'll do that after I introduce the changes.
Thank you.
Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Seeing no one else come forward, reasonable opportunity is closed. So we'll move into the continuation of our prior discussion items. First, on the Boundary Commission item, you have distributed a revised version that incorporates Mr. Jimenez's language, which we had approved at the last meeting. It has a slight tweak mainly for grammar and where it would go in the item, but otherwise I think it's substantively the same in terms of the survey for the 250 or less resident electors. Let me just go over briefly, and then if I miss something, perhaps the attorney can weigh in and explain any changes that I missed. I retooled it a bit after getting additional information about the actual practice of the two different types of processes, annexation and incorporation being very different. And given that on the annexation side, as I understand it, at the time that the applications come forward, they already have a lot more information in them because the cities are required to have already provided a consent. And as a practical matter, there isn't and really hasn't been a petition process for an annexation because essentially the system is not set up to force a municipality to take on an annexation. So since the application process already has kind of baked into it, the municipal governing body's approval and then consents of the owners, I didn't need to kind of lump together the petition process for annexations with the petition process for incorporations, which is a very different setup in terms of how it actually plays out. So the way it would work is we did change the consents for an annexation to at least 10% of the electors and 10% of non-residential property, the owners of 10% of non-residential property, and gave an allowance for the county commission to create additional standards. Right now, the commission requires 20% signatures of property owners or of electors. So this has a minimum, this sets it as a minimum. They can keep the 20%, but they'll still have to get signatures from non-residential property owners. And then added in Mr. Jimenez's language, which would be before the commission makes a decision, it'll have to also review the survey if there's 250 or less resident electors. The definition of non-residential property will, there's a provision at the end of this that allows the county commission to define it, just because we went back and forth and it's a little too prescriptive to put it in the charter exactly how. It's more, the concept would be a piece of property that does not have any electors on it. So theoretically, for example, a vacant residential parcel, since there's no one living there and they can't vote, that would be captured under non-residential property. But the idea of this is let the county commission sort it out through an ordinance as to how they're going to define how to get signatures from people that don't otherwise have a vote. So the boundary commission was moved to an independent section at the end because I had originally put it in the annexation provision. And since it just, it seemed to make more sense to have it kind of as a standalone provision. The, on incorporations, the timing of the boundary commission review would be after the petition is approved for form and sufficiency by either the clerk or the, or the budget department, whichever one we, whichever one we hit set it at. It didn't change that. And so the boundary commission will, rather than make a decision on the petition, it would be that they make a recommendation on the petition to the county commission. And then the county commission timelines remain as they are now. So, um, uh, so that, uh, it was just the timing and the role that I had changed. And then for the boundary commission itself, um, what they'd be reviewing is rather than have it every five years, um, and have kind of one review, I broke it up into every three years. And so members of the boundary commission will sit for a six year term so they can theoretically see two cycles. Within those cycles, it'll be, um, whatever annexations, um, have been, whatever annexation applications have gone through the process through the county commission to be forwarded for review. The county commission still has discretion on the front end and the back end. Uh, the commission can still decide we're not even going to consider this. So, uh, on annexations, um, and so we're not going to put everybody through the effort. But once the commission, um, doesn't, or has, has allowed it to move forward, then the boundary commission would review, review would occur. And the boundary commission would also review, um, in incorporations in kind of whatever state they're at and may make recommendations to the, uh, incorporation committee as to what are the boundaries and whether, you know, what, what properties it makes sense to do. But since the incorporation is, um, a more, it could be a more, uh, elongated process with, um, more time to collect, uh, information by the incorporation committee. It's, um, the boundary commission review is more of a, we're looking at annexations and we're going to see the incorporations that are kind of out there, uh, at whatever stage so that we're aware of the different, um, the, the different boundary changes that are being considered, uh, by the public so we can look at it all at once. And they'll be able to see, all right, incorporation's being considered in this area. It's, it may not be at the stage for a full review, but these annexations are ready to be examined. We're going to look at everything together and see how they potentially play off each other to make, uh, still the concept is a single comprehensive review and recommendation to the board of county commissioners as to whatever is in the queue, um, every three years. Um, and, uh, the composition of the board remains 15 members. Um, one thing that I did change was in terms of who can be appointed. I had borrowed maybe too much limitation from the salary commission. Um, I think, uh, I think given the, the charge here, which is a little bit broader, um, and a little, I think a little bit less sensitive than the commission salary. Um, the, the retooled appointments are, uh, I struck, uh, that lobbyists could not be on there only because given the size of this board, the num, the pool that you want to be able to draw from, I think you don't want to, you don't want to restrict it that much. The board, if the county commission wants to restrict it later, they can. Um, but the, um, but the charter, I think it shouldn't. Limit it because it's, I mean, it's a big board, um, in contrast to the salary commission. And the other thing was to parallel, um, the prohibition on, um, county employees or county officials or, uh, uh, or relatives, the same restriction on city, uh, employees or, uh, or city officials. Um, because the whole point of this is on, on both sides of the equation, the entity may have, um, may have an interest. So, um, so those were the, those are the major changes. It's still, uh, I think the concept is still one board that reviews everything collectively on a cycle to see everything that's out there and makes a recommendation on the kind of comprehensive set. Um, Mr. Attorney, did I miss anything in the changes?
I believe you captured the changes, Mr. Chair.
Okay. Thank you. All right. So that's, that's the revised, um, version. And let me, before we, before we discuss, let me hear, I don't know, uh, Mr. Friedman, if you want to weigh in on that and I'm sorry, you're, and from the property appraiser, your name. Oh, yes. Sorry. Thank you. I missed it. Why don't you come forward? Mr. Friedman.
So I think that, um, from the league perspective, the three years is better than the five, which I think was the previous, um, proposal. Uh, as far as the moratorium, we still believe that there should be, it should be clear in the charter that there should be an opening that, um, these applications can be filed because if there is always a moratorium in place, then it seems to frustrate the intent of the board, um, that's
being created here. Actually, I'm glad you mentioned that because I did, that was the one change I forgot to capture. We did expressly address moratoria in the new item. In F. In F, which, uh, which, uh, continues the BCC's authority to enact moratoria, but it does give the boundary commission the ability to, um, review things that may be in the queue where there's a moratorium on one,
but not the other. Yeah. Our preference, um, on behalf of the league was that there would be an application period similar to, I think you were trying to model this a little bit over, out of the UDB type of cycle, that there would be an application period set forth so that, um, there would be this expectation that at least every three years, um, there could be an opportunity for an annexation, a window of opportunity that you can apply, um, as opposed to the, I guess, the deadlines being set by the commission, which I think it provides for now. So that was the request on, on that, on the, um, the bifurcation of the incorporation and the annexation, um, my first look at it, I think that makes sense. Um, the 10% of the non-residential versus residential, I have some thoughts on it, but I'll reserve and I'll talk with the league about that. But, um, but really today the charge that they asked me to come forward with is just to make it clear, uh, there would be a window of opportunity, um, and that moratorium wouldn't just always be in place, uh, on these annexations, um, and even in corporations.
Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Uh, in terms of going back to the league and coming back with comments, just so you know, we only have one meeting left after this. I'm well aware. Yeah. So if not, you'll have to take it up with the County commission. If this ends up going forward.
Thank you. All right. Thank you. Ms. Ortega. And congratulations on nearing the end of this long journey, all the hard work you guys have put in and traveling all over the County, um, to make this happen. Um, so our feedback was only from, um, an implementation perspective. Um, so it wasn't clear to me from the legislation. I've shared this feedback with the County Attorney's Office already. Um, as far as the process is concerned, whether the, um, commission would be relying on the surveyors employed by the County, we think that is incredibly important. Um, and also to involve the property appraiser's office from a technical perspective. There are unfortunately many situations where we have boundary lines cutting through folios. And so at that point, our tax roll team is left with the question of which millage do we apply to this property that's split between boundaries. So again, um, as you work on the legislation and make some final tweaks, uh, please take that into consideration to please involve the surveyors that are employed by the County and count on the property appraiser's office to provide the folios, um, that are within the proposed geographic area that's looking to be incorporated.
Thank you for your comments. We appreciate that. Um, sorry. Yeah. Commissioner Moss.
Ma'am, uh, what is the process today to deal with that situation in the property appraiser's
office? Right. So, um, I can tell you from an implementation perspective, oftentimes we get this legislation and we're given, um, you know, the GIS coordinates, the maps, um, and we're found with that predicament, right? Where our tax roll team has to decide or oftentimes apply two millages to the same property. Um, this happens with special taxing districts. It can happen with new municipalities or new areas that are incorporated. That's why it's, it's so important, um, to rely on the professionals that are employed by the County that are professional surveyors, um, to ensure that that doesn't happen to properties in the future.
Well, do we rely on, uh, the surveyors today? Um, Michael, I don't know if you want to speak
to that. That would be a question for staff in terms of, I believe OMB can answer that because there's nothing in the charter that requires it. Um, there's language that we could include to address those issues, but we can see if it's already being done administratively.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, George Fernandez, Office of Management and Budget. And yes, we do work with a public works department that does the plotting. So they always look at those folios, but we have had instances as Dan mentioned before that we've worked with the property appraiser to figure out the exact boundaries. And I remember our particular case, the four city annexation, which you remember quite well. Um, some of those lines cut across properties and it was just, uh, it took us months to figure that one out. But, um, at the end of the day, it didn't happen. So we weren't able to do the final legal description.
But today you would work with the professionals, the surveyors.
Absolutely, sir. I would not even try to draw that map.
Thank you.
Um, I, I think to that point, by the way, and specifically with reference to non-residential property, it, it requires the department of planning, um, to do the, uh, surveying. And of course, there's the role for the department of budget, um, to review, uh, petitions. So I think there's an administrative role. I don't know that we need to be as prescriptive, um, in the charter. I think, uh, the commission can, can adopt, uh, procedures to, uh, to implement that sort of idea. But it's, I mean, it's, it's an important concept, um, just a matter of how prescriptive we need to be here. So, uh, thank you. Any other questions? Um, and then just, uh, to respond to Mr. Friedman's and then I'll open it up for, for board discussion. The, um, the, I understand the desire to have a cycle and an application window, but, um, this is an inherently, uh, political process. It's not like a land use where there's a property rights component to it. And so, uh, also cognizant of commissioner Moss's, um, axiom that we shouldn't forward things that have no chance of passing. I didn't want to unnecessarily, um, restrict the board's discretion. I just wanted to funnel it into one body that would have a comprehensive review of multiple things at once to at least make it, um, less, uh, ad hoc or to remove some of the potential ad hocishness from the, uh, from the process now. So that's, uh, it is intentionally not constraining and providing an entitlement to be reviewed. Uh, and with that, I'll open it up to my colleagues. Ms. Wakefield.
I just had a minor point, uh, a question really, uh, in section a for the boundary commission. My question is the way that you wrote the, the membership. Um, is it flexible enough to allow the County commission to appoint different members because you're going to have moments where you have a change of commissioner in a district? They may or may not want the flexibility to change their board appointment in between the six year cycle. So I don't know if that is too prescriptive, if it's loose enough to allow them to do that. That's my only question.
I, I think, and I'll, I'll defer to the, the attorney. My, my thought was that it would still, they'll need to be some implementing, implementing legislation and it would fall into the board's standard, uh, rules and procedures for, uh, for board appointments where, um, you know, your term ends when you're appointing commissioner ends, but you can hold over until appointment is done, but I didn't want to put that in the charter. I think, and, um, Mr. Valdez, correct me if I'm wrong. I think the ability to do that is captured by the last line in a, which says the board of county commissioners may by ordinance prescribe such other duties or procedures relating to the boundary commission, except as otherwise provided. That's correct.
Commissioner Moss. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, could you describe what happens, uh, on the off cycles in between the three year cycles that basically, uh, the, uh, the boundary commission would be reviewing? Is there a process for any applications to move forward or, or if the commission wants
those to move forward or what would happen? So there, there is a way for the commission to accelerate applications for boundary commission review by a two thirds vote. Um, so at least the, the board, if they really want it, um, there is a way to get it through the, through the process and perhaps it, it'll have, you know, a partial review because they'll have seen what other things are out there, but aren't fully baked, um, at the time. But, um, uh, other than that, um, I think, uh, there, uh, we would just be relying on the three year cycle and it's, it doesn't stall other people's activities because there, there's information gathering the incorporation committee on the incorporation side still has work to do. Um, and, uh, on the annexation side, there may be, you know, information gathering that still has to be done as they're kind of going back and forth with, uh, with staff. Um, but that's, uh, I think that that's kind of my view of how it would work. I don't know. Did I capture, did I capture it? Yes, Mr. Chair. In, in the original conception, since the, the petition, there was, there were two, there were two points, I think for petition review than the boundary commission had more to do maybe in the interim, but, um, we'll kind of see how it plays out and the board can give them other things to do as well, because they have the authority to recommend changes on their own. Mayor Lesnar. Thank you. And to preface this by,
I was able to, I was on watching the meeting after about the first 10 or 15 minutes and you got the feel for some of the conversation and in light of the fact of some of the concerns our colleagues raised at prior meetings about non-resident property owners not being permitted to vote for part of the process. And I think that's what you mean here when you talk about non-residential property. That's correct. Okay. So for clarification and not to over lawyer it, as some of us do some time, would it be more concise if we called it non-resident owned rather than non-residential? And in a plain meaning, non-residential means any use other than residential versus non-resident
owned. I, we, we went back and forth. I'm trying to come up with other ways to describe it. And I think the idea, I think that might be almost too prescriptive because there are still, if you own like say an apartment complex, but there are still voters that live there. I think that's a different category because the folks that live there will have a say. And so the board can, the board would be able to, I think, prescribe additional procedures if they want to hear from, say, the owners of rental property or, you know, they could do something if they want based on the number of registered electors. But it was too hard to parse that for this body. But that was a consideration. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Anyone else? Okay, seeing none, I'll pass the gavel to the Vice Chair. And I'll make the motion to approve the revised version of the boundary commission item, including Mr. Jimenez's language.
Do we have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right, show the motion adopted. Thank you very much.
Thank you all. Okay, so that's the first item of business. Mr. Chair?
Yes. From a cleanup standpoint, at the last meeting, the board approved Mr. Jimenez's proposal as a standalone. He indicated at the end of that meeting that should the boundary commission item move forward with his proposal attached, he may not necessarily have a desire to see his proposal move forward individually as well. So I just was bringing that up as a conversation so that if you wanted to take any action now, this would be the time to do so.
Yeah, thank you for that. Mr. Jimenez, any thoughts? Any further thoughts on that? I'm good leaving it like this. Just send up one. Send up one? That's what I would, yeah. Okay. Anyone have a different feel for that? Anyone want to make a counter motion?
I mean, if they, and I'm sorry to interrupt, if it's in there, if they choose to split it off, we can leave it in. I get it because this is ambitious, and mine was a little, it was just a simple survey. So if they choose to do it, they can. But as long as it's in there as a recommendation, I'm happy. I don't think we need to bombard them with multiple suggestions.
Okay, so do you want to make a motion to, just so that the record's clear, that we're just sending one item up on annexation incorporation and it includes yours? So moved. Is there a second? Okay. Anyone wish to be recorded no? Motion passes. Okay. And Mr. Friedman, since we only have one other meeting, if the League of Cities has any additional comments, we would welcome them at the next meeting because we can still make changes. And I think it'll be easy enough to reflect it on the final report if we need to. But if not, after that, it'll be for the County Commission. Okay. Next item of business is Article 7. Is there any further input from staff? I think that was the outstanding item. Thank you. Welcome.
Hello. Good morning, everybody. Mr. Chair and members, I'm Christina White. I'm the Director of the Parks, Recreation, and Open Spaces Department. I want to thank you all for raising this very important issue and asking the department if we have any recommendations for making amendments. Certainly in these tough economic times with the budget being very tight for the department, particularly as it relates to capital, there's never been a more important time to think of creative options and involve our private partners in the way that would benefit our community. So we really took this opportunity to work with the county attorney's office and explore what are the options that are available right now under the charter and if we even need to make any sort of recommendation for amendment. And during those conversations, we were very happy to understand that we don't have any recommendations for you all. We have the ability right now in the charter as it exists today to partner with organizations, private businesses for sponsorship opportunities and also for naming rights. It's not something that the department necessarily explored very much before. With this interpretation that we received recently, that's something that we will start to do. As I mentioned with capital, there's ideas such as field renovations, basketball court, resurfacing, trail development. So the options are there. We just need to set up a framework and start to think about how we want to implement that. So we do not have, we don't need any amendments at this time to Article 7.
Okay, thank you for your input. And I assume your assessment included facilities that you might want to construct that might not fit, whether you had any facilities you wanted to construct that might not fit within the existing exceptions.
I believe so, right?
I believe that the discussion at the meeting from Mrs. Scara was about the funding opportunities that were maybe unavailable in light of potential budgetary changes that may happen to the Parks Department.
Okay, and I think that would include the, we want to build something that's going to make us additional revenue, but the charter wouldn't allow it. So, yeah, the revenue was the thrust of it. Yes. So, okay. Anyone have any questions for the Parks Director? Mr. Fischer?
Thank you. And I apologize that this may not be the right question for you, but I just, there is a particular park. If the county has a linear park and they want to enter into an exclusive lease with a religious institution, I want to know how that works. And that may be a question not for you, ma'am, and I apologize if I'm bringing it up at the wrong time. But, and it doesn't have to be answered right now. I know that this is kind of something I'm just bringing up. So, if you have an answer, great. If not, maybe by next meeting if we could get an answer.
Yeah, I mean, that seems nuanced. I'll be happy to get more information from you, and I'll talk to the county attorney's office and get you an answer.
Thank you.
For sure.
Anyone else? Okay. Well, thank you for your input and the thorough examination of the options. And I'm glad that the Parks Department feels comfortable with its revenue and programs going forward. So, thank you for being here. Okay, the last item, I think, do we have kind of a preview of the other changes as adopted?
I don't know if I recall the League of Cities had mentioned that they had comments on Article 7 that they had withheld. Oh, sorry. Yes. Given that opportunity. Thank you. Thank you.
Yes, I appreciate that. And just for the record, since there's not going to be an amendment put forth by your body, then we would withhold what we were suggesting. But I'll tell you what it was anyways. It was just simply that Article 7 applies in the incorporated and unincorporated areas. However, cities can opt out. And six cities opted out when it was put in, but the remainder of the cities did not. And we were just going to ask for an opportunity that if there was an amendment to Article 7, that the cities would have an opportunity to opt out again. That was all it was going to be. So, thank you.
Okay. That's not an independent request for us to add an opt-out when we weren't otherwise.
No, it sounded like from what your Commissioner Moss had said before and what you had mentioned, I don't think our singled-out provision would have much legs. So, I appreciate it.
Thank you for coming. Okay. Yeah. The last item under the discussion was the, I guess, kind of an overview of the recommended charter changes. Do we have something? Yeah, Mr. Chair.
So, we've been going back through the minutes and the meetings we'll be preparing and presenting a packet to you. And by the end of this week so that you can see all of the changes that have been made prior to the meeting, the next meeting for review. Just to kind of give you a list of what's going to be included in that packet to refresh the recollection of the members of this task force. We had essentially the technical changes that were recommended on the front end. We had the changes that were necessitated by Amendment 10 and the constitutional officers being established. We had Commissioner Moss's salary commission item. We had a term limits item that you had proposed, Mr. Chair, that had various amendments that were discussed on the record. There were a series of three amendments that were recommended by this board to be packaged as one dealing with public notices and allowing public notice to be done in the same way as state law allows, allowing for remote participation to the extent authorized under state law for meetings. And then a technical cleanup with the titles that you didn't have to read the full title that you could refer to a unique legislative number when announcing an item at the commission. There was also a proposal by Mayor Lossner relating to duration of district residency that you had to be a district resident for at least a year and a registered voter in the district. And there were provisions relating to vacancies and the filling of vacancies that we discussed extensively that was kind of broad scale changes. With that, there was an item relating to ineligibility of appointees to run for election when the position was open. There was the annexation item that was just passed by this task force and there was certain clean up that was discussed in sections 5.07 and 5.08. But those are basically a list of all the changes that we had discussed. In addition, there was Mr. Eikenberg's motion, which was not a change to the charter, but an affirmative recommendation by this board to not amend any provisions relating to the UDB.
And to confirm, the changes that the clerk had proposed at the last meeting, those are incorporated into the constitutional officer amendment? That is correct.
You'll see that in the, it'll be as amended by the clerk's proposed changes in the discussion that happened at the last meeting. Mr. Moss.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One issue that I brought up at the last meeting talking about preemption. I've had a, you know, discussion with the county attorney and based upon that discussion at this particular point in time, there isn't anything that, you know, I want to pursue, so to speak, that there are certain provisions that are in place at this particular point in time. And, um, maybe this will be a discussion for a, a future, uh, charter commission, uh, task force, but, uh, on that, uh, again, I just wanted to bring that out because I did bring it up in the last meeting. Uh, but at this particular point in time, I don't want to pursue anything.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Um, any other, uh, any other items for discussion? Uh, okay. Then, uh, can I get a, uh, a motion on the, uh, the minutes?
Anyone?
Is there a second? Anyone recorded? No. Okay. Seeing none, the minutes are adopted. Um, and that is everything on the agenda for this meeting. Our final meeting will be Tuesday, April 28th, in this chamber at 10 AM. And at that point, we will have a preview of the final report, right, to hopefully adopt. Um, okay. Well, thank you, everybody. Thank you.