Alright, I'm gonna call this uh Tuesday, September 9th, 2025, special city commission meeting to order, and I'm gonna call upon the city auditor and clerk for an invocation.

Please standily father, we affirm our faith in thee.

We seek your divine strength, wisdom, and guidance in the deliberations that affect the lives of each of the citizens of our community.

In our name we pray, amen.

I like allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic of which we're God's liberty and justice at all.

All right, and are there any changes to the order of the day?

No, mayor.

All right.

Um please read the pledge of public conduct.

Thank you.

We may disagree what we we will be respectful to one another.

We will direct all comments to issues, we will not engage in personal attacks.

Okay, we have one person signed up to speak.

Uh Martin Hyde.

Well, good morning.

I uh just wanted to follow up with uh last time.

So Charles Ponzi ran an investment scheme, which relied on two things.

One was finding new investors to pay the old ones, and the second was knowing that uh many people will suspend their judgment concerning things being too good to be true if that's what they want to believe.

In short, the Ponzi scheme requires lazy, willing participants who are prepared to believe that money grows on trees.

The last two city managers and the subsequent two interim managers since have kept the city of Sarasota's Ponzi scheme alive by virtue of higher property values and new development covering the new investment aspect, and more worryingly by keeping material facts from you about the sustainability of your budget.

This year, city staff, no other way to say it, deliberately excluded your single biggest obligation.

Fully 70% of the general fund is wages.

You should have known that.

They certainly did.

The blustering response to Commissioner Koch by Interim Manager Baluk, when she dared to ask what the cost of raises might be was embarrassing.

They had nine months to calculate the impact of a cost of living raise based on the payroll total, which I obtained from a record request.

It took me less than 30 seconds, once I had the payroll totals to calculate that the cost of a 4% raise will create a close to three million dollar black hole in the budget that you just passed.

You are now faced with having to spend reserves meant for emergencies and disasters when the only emergency and disaster is the lack of candor from those preparing the budget.

The old question of what did you know and when did you know it applies here?

I'll give you the commission of the benefit of the doubt and assume you were unaware of the deliberate obfuscation, but you do know now, and it's time to ask them the same question.

Based on the fact that they had this data all along, the answer should be obvious, as should your obligation to make sure it never happens again.

Hanging heads in shame isn't enough.

Heads need to roll.

The question of whether it's staff for obfuscation or commissioners for incompetence at the ballot box is up to you.

Thank you.

All right.

Let's see.

All right, our next and really only agenda item is the presentation, the discussion regarding the executive search firm for the city manager search.

And I'm gonna call upon City Auditor and Clerk Griggs and City Attorney Polzak to make the presentation.

Good morning.

Thank you, Commissioners.

And um so everybody could be aware we are having some technical difficulties, so please be patient with us on this.

Um we thank everybody for being here.

Um each search firm has been invited to give a pre a brief presentation followed by questions and answers session from the city commission.

The schedule for presentation session interviews will be as followed.

Um, our brief little introduction here.

Um 10 to 1015.

MGT will be from 1015 to 1115 a.m.

Sumter will be from 1115 a.m.

to 1215 p.m.

Um Slavinov, we all know has uh withdrawn their proposal, so we just have the two um search firms this morning, and then we hope to deliberate and be out of here at a good time.

So additionally, um some commissioners have submitted questions and they were given to the search firms to have in your presentations.

So hopefully that is what we will hear about today, and you all will have the time to answer or ask the questions that you want to ask as well.

So on that note, I'll yeah.

Well, well, Sunchill.

We look forward to just proceeding with these interviews and getting you involved.

All right.

Um, do you have any questions about the procedure today, what we're doing?

Not for the uh search funds.

Excuse me.