Good afternoon, everyone.

Time's 1201.

Um, call this notice being order.

We're just gonna kind of dive right into introductions.

Please start.

Layas Fout with Smart Local 435 Sheet Motor Workers, and also the president of the North Florida Building Construction Trades Council.

Jimmy Peluso, City Council District

7.

Shannon McGillis off Office of General Counsel.

Excellent.

So uh obviously we we told other council members uh please swing by we had a pretty good coalition last time we were here, I thought, right?

We had we had a good bipartisan group.

Uh committee meeting just ended um not too long ago, and then we have another committee meeting at one.

So a few folks may trickle in, but I really wanted to kind of get just back to basics on what we we initially had a bill that I thought was in a pretty good spot, but then we

had a

legal oh look at that, you've got all sorts of stuff over there.

We had a uh we had some some legal issues because of a um uh the court case, right?

And do you mind kind of diving into that uh Miss McGills?

Thank you, Chair.

Um predominantly the it's the Florida statutes, it's section 255092 public works projects, including um as amended in 2025.

Um the court case was out of St.

Pete and it went to the um district court and um the appellate court, and what was most notable there is that the state of Florida filed an amicus brief, amicus amicus, you can go either way, but Mikus brief, um which is for briefs, it's actually quite brief.

It's only a few pages because it is pretty darn clear that Florida Statutes 2550992 prohibits the mandating of um having apprenticeships in the case was about apprenticeships and an and another uh form of staffing, but any effort for the Jacksonville for the city of Jacksonville to mandate apprenticeships within public works comments will violate 255 0992, and there's already uh case on it and a meek is brief floating.

Um if you want information on the St.

Pete case, I can give you those specifics or just send it to you.

But um ultimately the when it came back down from the um the DCA, the local court struck the provisions of the St.

Pete ordinance as null and void unconstitutional.

So, mandates you cannot mandate something.

I think we kind of knew okay, we're we're trying to model something here that's less about a mandate and more about um maybe a goal.

So Mike Gay had a bill um that was passed about a year or so ago.

Is that bill and that and that bill is for um uh uh it's for apprenticeships, trying to right?

It pro it provides it provides a procurement code update that says if you're gonna do procurement, right, for certain public works projects that it encourages local, a local business, right, within the five county area.

Um how is that affected by by this last bill?

Do we

know?

Um, I am here to speak on apprenticeships.

I cannot without further review look at any other provisions, but I'm here to speak on apprenticeships and the St.

Pete case is on apprenticeships.

So I guess my oh, did you want to jump in?

Go for

it.

Yeah, we're well aware of that.

The state is not gonna let you put any kind of requirements on anything, and we're well aware of that case there.

So this whole process, we knew that, and our is um our stance is if we can get aspirational goals.

You there's the city has goals when it comes to JCBs and stuff like that.

I don't know where this requirement came.

It's never been about a requirement, it's about a, you know, a goal.

So if the city is going to fund a project, I think the city has every right to ask for goals within a project.

And how I guess for the purposes of the reason why I even brought up the Mike Gay thing, the Mike Gay bill is that I would what if we added to that procurement code to have aspirational goals for our partnerships?

Do we think that that could be that that could thread the needle?

If an aspirational goal then affects the bid process, you run a foul of 2552 B, for actually to C.

You can you cannot prohibit a contractor subcontract, subcontractor, material supplier, etc from submitting a bid on the public works project.

So if you affect the bid based on an aspirational goal, that's that's a mandate.

So you can do incentives, you can do goals, but it cannot affect the ranking or the submission of the bid in the RFP process.

So you can do goals.

Sorry you see you said we could do incentives, you can do goals, but it just can't so like how does one have a goal that doesn't affect the bid process.

That is the um the hard part because you can have goals but how do you enforce your goals?

How are you incentivizing your goals if if enforcing your goal affects the bid process, that's a mandate that's not a goal.

Do you

have something?