Good morning.

I'd like to call this special meeting of the February tenth city commission to order.

And first we will have the invocation by the city auditor and clerk Bruce.

I think it's a flag of the United States of America.

Thank you.

Are there any changes to the order of the day?

No, Mayor.

Okay, may I have approval of the agenda?

Move to approve.

Second.

Moved by the Vice Mayor, seconded by Commissioner Batte.

We're gonna do this vote.

Yes, this is working today.

Commissioner Alper, could you hit your button for me one more time?

Hitch a button for me again.

I don't know if you hit it or not.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The vote is unanimous.

Thank you very much.

And the uh agenda is accepted.

Um at this point, I'm going to ask the clerk to recite the pledge of public conduct.

Thank you, Mayor.

We may disagree, but we will be respectful to one another.

We will direct all comments to issues.

We will not engage in personal attacks.

Okay, thank you.

And now we will uh have uh comments by the public and the per uh we only have one person at this point who's requested to speak.

Martin Hyde, would you join us?

Um, Martin, do you need to overhead?

Not for this one.

Okay.

Uh that'll be fun, but no, you uh you stay there.

This is my better slide anyway.

So that is my better side.

So uh I uh remain Martin Hyde.

I uh still don't live in the city looking after my mother there.

Um I'm here with uh my friend here uh to talk briefly about the 7.1 million dollar land purchase you made 20 months ago, which has cost this city five hundred thousand dollars in lost interest income, which is building at twenty-five thousand dollars per month.

You purchased uh this uh land with a uh business plan, which you may recall I described at the time as a financial suicide note.

Here we are today with a uh financial chalk line around the remains of 7.1 million dollars in taxpayers' money.

The uh foundation money that was earnestly guaranteed and promised, hasn't materialized, neither has a plan or a design.

Panic stations, thrashing around in the uh financial quicksand, hastening the uh demise instead of cutting your losses.

We are now told that the city is reviewing an unsolicited bid from a company who's never built a high rise, who want a further seven million dollars from the city, and to keep all the rental income for 30 years to save those of you that aren't financially literate.

That's effectively 72 million dollars out of taxpayers' pockets over 30 years.

Their resume includes conversion of a motel on 41 into so-called efficiencies with no kitchens.

And uh I thought therefore I I I'd bring this as a reminder, please accept it uh as camel mascot uh with my compliments to represent the proverbial horse designed by committee, uh, which deal clearly is simply put.

It's time to get out of the development business and to get back into the business of city governance.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Hyde.

Uh the next item on our agenda, and actually our main item is um the discussion of city manager semi-finalist candidates, and I will call upon City Auditor and Clerk Griggs, City Attorney Polzak, and Lauren Huttmacher from Sumter Local Government to make a presentation.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, just for the record, um, we are here today as we are in phase two.

That was approved at the January 13th, 2026 City Commission meeting to move forward with phase two semifinals interviews and evaluations.

Um we are at that point in the process, and we will um we want to Mr.

Um Warren to present his presentation.

And just to clarify, yeah, we've just uh Warren will be presenting about essentially the completion of phase two, and then today will be pre-designed phase three where you'll be making your uh selection of finalists.

Thank you.

Mr.

Huttmacher.

All right, thank you very much uh to the staff and to the commission.

Uh appreciate the opportunity to be here today.

Um so I think it was summarized very well, but but in short, um y'all had selected I think 42 folks to be able to uh move forward at semifinalists at our last meeting.

Uh we conducted all those video interviews, passed those along to you for review, um, and then produced a uh candidate review that included uh which all had asked for, which is our microphone.

Oh, just closer.

Yeah, or you think could you chair up a little bit?

Yeah, maybe there you go.

Much better.

All right.

Um so the uh we produced a report that includes uh each of the candidates that we uh interviewed, uh the notes from the interviewer on those candidates, and we we keep those in two categories, sort of uh sort of a uh things we really like and things that concern us about the candidates.

Uh and then we also did uh some open source searching on each of the candidates to identify uh any articles of interest um that we felt like the commission would want to know at this stage in the process uh to be able to make a decision.

And so the goal for today uh is to pick six candidates uh to invite to Sarasota uh for in-person interviews, and we'll go over at the end of this uh discussion after we pick the finalists, we can go over the uh the plan that we have for uh the two-day process uh for your finalist interviews.

And so uh we've had some you know questions about sort of how do you get from 38 to 6, and I think that's a huge challenge in that you know, as we went through the interviews, um, and and so I'm sorry, let me back up a little bit.

Four candidates did withdraw from the time that y'all were selected to the point where we were finished with the interviews.

Either they had gotten other jobs or decided they were no longer interested in the process or um they didn't want to do the video.

So that's how we got to 38 um candidates.

And and what we did uh from there on our end is we made recommendations on six finalists moving forward, but I want to make sure and make very clear that the selection of the finalists is the choice of the commission, not of our firm.

Um so this is a starting point potentially for discussions, but if y'all want to go with six different people or a mix of thereof, that is up to y'all.

I think the challenge, you know, just sort of how do we accomplish that today is is a good question that was asked.

And so my recommendation is either to start with our recommendations and see if they if your y'alls differ as you went through the materials and kind of see if there's a consensus, and if not, we've got a method we can use you know, where we ask y'all to you know produce today, you know, here's my ranking, and then we can kind of score everything and see if we can come to consensus that way if we're not able to kind of come the conventional way.

So that would be uh kind of the stories.

How I wanted to also kind of put out there, sorry, how did we get to the six?

Because I think it was hugely challenging for us from the standpoint of I think there was a lot of really good candidates as we went through the interview and video process, and so we had we had difficult time selecting that.

And so we had five members of our team that ultimately conducted the interviews.

Um I've seen almost every one of the videos uh before we made the final recommendations uh on the candidates, but I'd asked each of our folks to submit, you know, here's our my top three going through that.

And then we focused in on those 15 candidates and tried to get down for six.

That's how we did it on our end.

And some of it is just subjective in that the team that was doing the interviews you know is almost solely uh former city managers that are familiar with the process that we've gone through here and and really tried to kind of bridge that gap between you know here's what looks good in a resume, here's what the profile in the city has created, and what we think is the best fit uh for the city from a leadership style standpoint experience and um that's how we got to that.

Uh so I don't claim that our six are the perfect six candidates.

We struggled um to really get to that number, uh, but I feel very good about the candidates that we've recommended.

I think your city manager is in there somewhere.

So hand it over to y'all to kind of ask questions and uh deliberate.

Okay, thank you.

Before we get to questions, we have another speaker who has a request to speak card.

Uh Mr.

Hyde, would you like to return for your comment on this stage of the agenda?

Sure.

I think he'll I think he's gonna need the yeah, I might need the uh projective of this.

Thanks.

Well, here we are again.

So here you all are.

Sixteen months since you last had a uh permanent city manager looking down to whittle uh a list of applicants to uh take on the role.

My question is why would you hire one when the last permanent manager is still acting as unofficial and unpaid city manager?

Unpaid, that is if you don't cost count the uh cost of millions of dollars lost on land deals, etc.

advocated by him.

Now, to evidence this, we're gonna put up on the OMO momentarily, texts between several of you, emails between several of you, touching on pretty much every conversation that's ever in here.

Because he's not covered by sunshine.

So for those that uh that like to uh to see these things, let's start at uh at the beginning.

Uh this one suggesting that uh the former city attorney was uh throwing the uh former city manager under the bus.

This is after he left the job, of course.

Um this one is uh talking about a coffee date and uh opining or questioning uh what's gonna be in the uh city uh state of the city speech.

Um this one is uh it's difficult to see.

Um there's nothing.

And let's get to the next one.

There's further texts where the uh current interim city manager was recommended by the former city manager to you all.

And and it does beg the question is the tail, even after it's been chopped off, still wagging the dog?

And the answer is empirically yes.

And something that I've talked to you all about is stop this Kenny Rogers duet love affair that you have with a former city manager, and start doing what I presume you all wanted to do, which is to set policy and to have a city manager implement it.

The key quality that you need, other than somebody you could actually add up, is very simple.

You need an honest person.

Honest person.

That's what you need.

Someone that will do your bidding, not somebody that will pull you by the nose into rotten deals and potentially ruin the remainder of your term.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Hyde.

And now, Mr.

Hyde Marker, we do have questions.

Um Commissioner Ahern Koch is first up.

Thank you.

Um I really wanted to thank you, Mr.

Hetmacher, for the interviews that your firm did.

I was not sure how that was going to go.

Um at first I was a little bothered by the uh fact that the all the questions weren't the same, but as they went through, it seemed like they were tailored for the the candidate and trying to pull out uh and and assessing on some of their answers.

So I thought, you know, I thought that that those uh interviews were very, very helpful.

Um I wanted to thank you for that.

Um these sort of summaries that you have here.

Are these your observations or are these um what you pulled from their interviews to to give us?

The summaries of the pros and cons are from the interviewers.

Um after they completed the interviews, we asked them to just create a couple of bullet points on both pros and I I don't like pros and cons necessarily, but yeah, things I like, things that concern me, just to be able to um you know have a little bit of uh context from their conclusion from the interview.

So it's really just a quick um response to the interview.

Okay.

I didn't know if there was a list of positive attributes that you were were checked off for all of them and and uh drawbacks.

Um, you know, if they didn't have any city manager experience or I don't know what it was.

Um because I noticed some of them that some of the drawbacks weren't multiple people had, but but were mentioned in some and not mentioned in the others and yes, because it was five different people that were putting those together, and that was their sort of immediate reaction to the interview after they completed it.

Okay.

And this uh the the magic number of getting the list down to six, as last time I expressed some reservation of going from this 36 or 40 what the number was very quickly down to six.

It was bothersome to to me then, and um happily it's difficult.

Uh I'm I'm thrilled to say that it's difficult to whittle it down.

Uh I'm I was not sure that that was going to be the case, but I am relieved and I agree with you that we are there are some excellent candidates.

So I'm having a difficult time whittling it down to the six.

And um I was curious about the rhyme of the reason, why we didn't agree to I mean you know, that was a number that was given.

What's the rhyme or reason for six?

And commissioners, do we have to stay at six?

Could it be eight?

Could it be ten?

I that's a question for you.

Okay.

And so I think we had to come up with a number, so there is no magic to six.

Great.

Um part of it is you know, you want the the days that you have with the candidates to be um meaningful.

And so obviously if you have too many candidates, you won't get as much value from talking with each person because it's going to be more time limited.

Um and so that's reason to get down to a small number.

And then also, you know, in this field, a lot of these folks are let's say some of them are looking for jobs, some of them aren't necessarily looking for other jobs.

And so the more time that goes by, the more risk that you have of a good candidate that you like, being offered something else, and then knowing that, hey, Sarasota is my maybe my first choice, but they're not going to decide for a month on one of ten.

I'm just gonna take the other job because that's less of a risk profile than waiting, you know, and not getting this one.

What if we stayed in the same timeline, but we extended that list from six to ten or twelve or something like that?

And uh I think the downside to it is that you know you wouldn't have as much time with each candidate because there would be too many folks here.

Um but other than that, uh there's nothing there's any other good reason not to do it.

Oh, can I can I make a comment too, if you don't mind, mayor?

Also to I I'm not saying it's a pro or con, I'm just putting it out there.

It does cost money, so you're gonna have more than a certain amount.

And if you're gonna bring those people in, that's gonna cost us more money.

I just want to put that out there too.

Do we know how much it's going to cost?

Well, it's at the city's expense.

So it's travel expenses are at the city's expense.

So I just want to put that out there too.

Like no do whatever the commission desires.

I just want to make sure you're aware that six is gonna cost more than less than ten or twelve.

All right.

Um is there an interim step that we could take between now and uh when we're planning on bringing people in where we could maybe one-on-one do interviews with them if we wanted to.

Uh you talking about virtually or where it doesn't cost money.

Yeah, I mean it's certainly possible.

Okay.

Because I found those interviews really really good, really invaluable between what was on paper and what was submitted, and then hearing somebody else talk to them one-on-one.

I mean, you know, we could probably get through a 20-minute interview each of us uh with them and then do something like that.

I'm just throwing this out there because again, happily I had a hard time um whittling this down.

And um Mr Mr.

Bullock, um as far as the timing goes, um would you share with us uh the interim appointment that you've done or haven't done or where you are with this?

Well, only the commission can appoint uh uh an interim.

Um you could do it today and tell me to leave.

Um you wouldn't have suggested.

But um you know I'll be here till March 6, uh assuming you go along with that, and then um you it would be up to the commission to appoint an interim.

If the commission wants my recommendation, I would make that if requested at whatever point in time you want me to do it.

Could you make that now?

Just let us know.

Or you know, mayor.

Sure.

I'd sort of like to keep that until the end of the discussion today.

Doing that now sort of complicates and convolutes at least my thinking on the city manager.

Okay.

We're working on narrowing down at this point, so it could be later.

And you still have we weren't timing.

Well, I didn't anticipate timing because I feel like this is gonna be just a screen.

Well but if you like me to time I mean at least maybe for the first go round so everybody does get their time.

Okay.

And just to add if I may to that discussion that the process as you guys have approved it, the the five-phase process um is a good process.

And all three of us, uh Warren Chill and myself, you know, uh do feel it will get you to where you need to go in time if unless you change it, which you have a reverse to do.

So can I just ask um the process you we have outlined will get us a city manager, hopefully before well, so if you made your final select selection today, and then as phase four indicates, then there's the two-day on-site which breaks that down, and then phase five contemplates the the final selection, which we've reserved uh February 27th for that date special meeting.

So in theory, you could come back on the 27th and choose a a select make a selection, and then we could execute that offer.

Um that would all be done a week in advance of the ICM's departure.

Well, there was another step in there after we choose somebody, Sumter was going to do a background check, and then the candidate would have to decide whether or not they're going to accept the offer.

So I don't see that that can all take place in one week, and if they're still employed, give whatever notice.

So we yeah, are gonna have some time without Mr.

Bullock as interim, I believe.

Maybe a question of weeks probably, but not hours.

I guess my my point in correct mayor, but my point was you could you could make the decision in in theory by the time uh the ICM is departed.

But nobody in the chair.

I mean it would depend on how quickly the background's completed, what the person's start date availability is, that kind of thing.

Well, I think it's prudent that we have somebody or we just make Mr.

Bullock stay.

Yeah.

Well that's so we can discuss the interim after we come up with our Okay, but we do have that padding.

Right?

We do have the interim as a buffer, so to speak.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I just, you know, we want to do this process, we want to go through this process in the proper way.

We want to cross our T's and dot our I's and we don't want to be rushed and make a decision just because we have a deadline and we don't have a backup plan.

I want to make sure we have a backup plan so that if we choose to to pause and say, wait a minute, let's think about this, let's add another step, let's do something that we we are not under the gun to to react and be reactive.

We are doing this methodically and carefully because we've invested too much into this at this point to rush it at the end.

And I just wanted to make sure that we do have an actual plan and a backup plan.

You feel confident that we do?

I do.

I think your your backup plan, as you kind of stated it is you can appoint a replacement interim if that is.

Okay.

Um so uh for the other commissioners, um I don't know.

I would love I can't wait to hear what your thoughts are on this this list and where you where you came out.

Um do we hang on to our lists for now?

Yeah, well because I think we need to make some decisions about our lists before we hand them in.

Okay.

Uh are you still have questions?

I'm I think I'm good for the moment.

Um so we will switch over to the vice mayor.

Thank you very much.

Um Mr.

Hopmacker, thank you and your team for the good and hard work that you did uh to this point.

I know it'll continue.

Thank you.

So on my part, um as I listen to the interviews.

I ranked uh the candidates in group one, two, or three.

My group one, two, or three.

I'm pleased to announce that three out of the six on your list were in my group one, and three out of the six were in my group two.

Since that's the case, I'm happy to accept this group of six, because I know one of them from my group one will prevail.

Um so that's all I have to say now.

I wanted you to know my process, and as we go through discussion of the candidates further, I'd be happy to speak um in more detail about candidates.

Thank you.

Commissioner Alpert.

Okay.

Well, my process was to either give them a uh just a note.

Couldn't even listen to the end of their interview, or a one star or a two star.

So um so I'm I'm prepared to narrow it down to the six, four of the people on um Sumter's recommendation list were either a one star or a two star on my list.

Two people are a definite no for me.

Um, but I'm prepared to um narrow it down to six.

Uh one for me was a three star, which was not on on your list.

Um so um I'm okay.

I mean, I just took the knowing we had to narrow it down, I took because I had more one and two stars than six, um, but then took the best, went with the two stars, and then um the the best of the one star.

So that and that was my process in doing it.

Okay, Commissioner Batti.

Uh uh thank you very much, Ms.

Mike.

Yeah.

Uh yeah.

I just want to say uh thank you very much.

I think you all did a a great job in your search um, you know, looking at all the the interviews.

Uh um I appreciate your style, you know, get drawing out the answers that you were looking for.

Um to be honest with you, all the candidates, you know, you know, I was you know thoroughly impressed with um, particularly their backgrounds, you know, a lot of them, you know, uh international and and and so on.

Um in various backgrounds.

You know, I I literally came down to like eight to ten.

You know, I I I didn't get down to six, you know.

Um it was uh arduous, you know, kind of difficult process.

Um I didn't go through the two star, three star, you know process or what have you.

Um I just you know went by you know my gut and went by what I was listening to and and the resumes and and so on.

But uh that's where I am, you know, got down to like I said, uh about ten, you know, uh uh I believe, or whatever, you know.

It's kind of kind of tough to go from from you know that number all the way down to six.

You know, I I just for my for me I found it a bit tough to get there when I so I I do have some questions for you, Warren.

Um first of all, you did say that you viewed most of the interviews because my question was, did others on the team view the interviews that they did not do and contribute to comments, or are we really just seeing the attributes and possibly downsides as judged by the interviewer with no input from the others on the team?

It's a good question.

So uh the short answer is I'm the one that's seen almost all of them.

Uh I did ask each of the five folks to like rank their top three.

And so out of the some of them did, depending on people who dropped out or not, they you know, seven or eight interviews.

Um so I went off of that list.

So all of the six are contained within that top 15.

Um that's what I kind of focused on.

But it was the individual interviewer who mostly gave the judgment call.

It was not a team effort.

Right.

And if one of the interviewers happened to have interviewed the four best candidates, only three of them would be appearing on the list.

Potentially.

Okay.

Then the other question I had, did you consider any information other than what the candidate provided?

Yes.

What did you know?

And so we you know, we went off of the Yeah, I think in my evaluation um was combination of factors that not maybe all objective.

Um is you know the resume, second is the content of the interview, um, and third, you know, any other information we were able to source on the candidates that may have provided some color or context to their story.

Um and then some of it honestly is you know with 20-something years of city manager experience watching the video, I'll have a gut feel.

Okay.

But that was the ones that you were judging, what about the other members of your team?

Were they just going by what the candidates provided?

Well, they were required to create the open source searching.

We had each of the interviewers do that themselves and review all that prior to making the recommendation.

So I think they went through a similar process that I did in trying to look at the holistic candidate against the ideal candidate profile with whatever color or context we can get at this stage in the process, and then using their own experience to say, you know, that that person seems like they would be a good city manager for Sarasota.

Okay.

Because one of the things that I did notice is some of your team was less familiar with Sarasota's needs and profile than some of the others.

So you know, if you weren't weighing in their candidate attributes, maybe it would be a little bit misleading.

Yeah, no, I I own this process, so I gotta make sure that these are my recommendations.

Okay.

Um and then we were, I mean, what some of the commissioners indicated is uh today is that maybe we don't have enough information at this moment to make a final judgment on the six.

So my question is if we came up with, say, one question that we would want asked of a potential candidate, would that be something that your team could go and get the answer for you know within the next week, so that we could that could be an input to our decision of who we're going to actually pay to come to Sarasota.

Oh, of course, as I've stated before us is y'all's process, and so if that's what you want to do, we can certainly execute on that.

Okay.

And um the other question which we had asked is, and I don't think we've gotten an answer on what elements do you consider to be part of a background check, because one of the things that I think we wanted sooner rather than after we made our final selection was some checking of references or people who had worked with the candidate, because that would be really valuable to have today to know what the opinions of people who worked with or for or over these candidates.

Yeah, and I I think we talked about this last time, and the the elements to the background check would be the criminal background check, uh credit check, education verification uh references.

And so all that being said, uh the opinion I had previously, and I'll stick with it, is that um you know, for candidates that have current jobs, it's too much of a risk for them to be able to go through that.

There's there's one you know element to having your resume posted, um, but the to go through you know a more sophisticated background check at this stage in the game, I think is you're gonna hurt your candidate pool potentially because some people may drop out because they don't want to go through all that being one of ten or one of six.

Well, well, that's why I was asking what the specific items, because if you ask somebody from a city that the candidate previously worked at, what was your impression of that candidate when you were working with him or her?

I don't see that that would be you know something that would jeopardize their current.

Well, I would respectfully disagree in that I think it's a small world, and you know, once that starts that train starts going, you can't control you know who says what to who, and so you know, somebody then you know passes that.

Oh, I just got a call from a recruiter about this person, don't tell anybody, and then they go tell end up telling somebody who then goes and calls the mayor and go, did you know you're you know, say manager's finalist in Sarasota?

Um it can have a negative effect.

And so I get that you know ultimately you need to make a decision with full information, and I think that will happen.

Um it's just a matter of when that information comes to you and of what value you know you place onto it.

And so I would you know say to you that I think if you continue on the process that we've laid out of you know continuing to talk with uh um you know candidates in person, I think you'll get almost everything you need.

And then at that point we'll be verifying and checking to make sure that you've made a you know that the ultimate choice you make is a good one before you make the offer final.

So I have a lot of faith in that process to get you to the right place without any surprises and with with confidence.

Okay, because I'm also looking at our timetable.

If on February 27th, we choose somebody that we want to make an offer to.

Uh I'm going to assume that early the following week you will get the background check completed, but that gives us a question of days if the person does not pass the background check, what's going to happen with the other five people, and you know, will they have said forget it, we're not interested in being second choice.

That's a good question.

And so uh for clarification, what my expectation is is on the 24th is when y'all would make the call on the so it was the second day of those interviews, y'all would meet and then decide on who you want to make an offer to.

Um and so we would have you know start on the 25th immediately with that person doing the background.

The other thing that we will do ahead of time, which is with no risk to the city or the candidates, is once we get down to final six, eight, whatever it is that y'all choose today, we'll immediately do all the other phases of the background on all six.

And so there's no risk of doing a criminal check, a credit check, education verification, um, you know, on the candidates.

And so we'll do all that immediately.

So the only thing left will be to talk with folks that have worked with them or that they're in their in their world that we can get good information from to help y'all make a best decision.

So you will give us the information on all six.

Up to the not the reference checking, but everything else.

Okay, and and when would you be doing that?

As soon as y'all pick the six, we'll go ahead and get it.

You'll start doing that today.

Yes.

Okay.

Um so I okay, yeah, I I was just going to comment that it seemed to be, as Commissioner Ahern Koch said, there seemed to be some inconsistencies on the drawbacks depending on who the interviewer was.

So that threw me off, and I suspect may have thrown others off.

But uh I will turn now to Commissioner Alpert has some more questions.

Oh, wait.

Oh, no, I was just going to say it just it seems to me, yes, it is difficult to make a decision, but that's our job, is to make the hard decisions.

And um I think we ought to narrow it down to six today and continue with our process.

Because I think I think uh the interviews I think were very enlightening.

That you could tell a lot about uh a lot of the people from the interviews.

And so um I just think we should just go go about getting this uh narrowed down today.

Thank you.

Uh Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor.

I agree with Commissioner Alpert.

I know the process is ours, and we can change it at any time.

But we're into this.

We've evaluated all these candidates through a process that we recommended, and our three people said yes, that's a good process.

Uh let's go with it.

Let's narrow it down to six today.

To add one more question for each candidate, or the top six.

Why?

They're gonna be coming to town.

We can ask that question then.

And to increase the number we invite, why we've got the top ones that we will either choose the six that Sumter has recommended, or we won't.

We'll subtract some and add some others.

So let's get on with it.

Okay.

Commissioner Aaron Koch.

Thank you.

Um I think I'm gonna very respectfully disagree with some of the statements that were made.

Um the reason why is because of what Mr.

Hutmacher said last time.

Um the list was so broad because we were looking for the diamond in the rough.

And we are given their resume, their cover letter, and an interview that we didn't do.

An interview by different people with different questions, different times.

They were anywhere from 25 minutes to over an hour.

Um sometimes the questions were uh specifically to them, some that sometimes they were standard.

I do have to say that um when I was listening to the interviews and I was being pulled in and saying, great candidate, great candidate, I held my breath for the Google question.

If we Google you.

So I was, you know, I felt a little bit like, oh, please don't say yes.

And I think the more we get into this, the more we're going to understand exactly what we're looking for.

And I I had uh much like you did uh and Commissioner Alpert did, I had three tiers, tier one, tier two, and tier three.

Um and then I put the recommendations of Sumpner in there and asked for some other input from others.

And I have some that are on the list from Sumpner too, I think.

And uh definitely on that list is a no.

So um much like Commissioner Albert.

So I have a no list, a tier one, tier two, and tier three.

And um I think when I evaluate them in my tier one, tier two, and tier three, the more I would delve into it.

Sometimes I watch the interviews a second time, sometimes I would look at the resumes again, sometimes I would Google them myself.

Um I j it just kept coming back to me, the diamond in the rough.

Right.

Uh um I think I can safely say a lot of us are saying this person we find has to fill the shoes of Mr.

Bullock.

And I think a lot of us have had a good experience with Mr.

Bullock and look and regard him very highly.

And so those are big shoes to fill.

And for me, I think an extra effort is worth it.

If we I don't know if we had another for me, I would like the opportunity to talk to them.

You know, I have I think I have 11 here.

I would like the opportunity to spend five, ten minutes on the phone with each of these.

If we could narrow the list down, maybe even to eight or something, and take two or three days, make some phone calls.

Um I think that would go a long way to have our own.

That would be our first conversation with the 80 about people who applied, narrowing it down.

Um this is our process.

I think we we we should we should really be careful of the steps that we take.

And the background check piece of this, um I'm happy with the you know, verifying the degrees and verifying all of that.

That for me is a background check.

Um one of a couple of the candidates said when the Google question came up, or when some other questions came up, they acknowledge this is a public process.

I am a public figure.

I've this the meetings are public, the discussion is public, um, so let me be careful what I say, because this video is public.

So a lot of them know that and have acknowledged that.

So the delicate piece I I respect what you're saying, and I I will heed that, knowing that the other pieces of the background check are going to be looked into from whatever this list is.

Uh so I don't know what the next step is.

I would not be happy going with this list uh from Sumpner.

It's one point of view.

I do have two in common, but I also have others that I would love us to consider as the diamonds in the rough.

Okay.

Commissioner Batti.

Uh yeah.

Um, I kind of look at this as like almost college basketball.

You start out with like 64 teams and then get down to the championship.

You know, but hey, there's 64, then it gets to 32, and then I guess it's sweet 16, and you know, that's that's how that's how it goes.

Um reason why I I kind of you know go there like that is I use um the process that we went through for selecting the ad hoc committee for the downtown master plan, you know.

And I mean we s literally each of us interviewed like close to 40 people, like personally, you know, or whatever.

Um and and I know in this we didn't hire a search firm for that to sort of vet the you know these uh candidates and so on um for for for that process.

But you know, it does uh behoove us as a as a commission, you know, in getting this right in talking to you know at least a certain number of candidates and not just to me like six, you know, um to go from that number to you know all the way down to six.

I I myself just kind of found it a you know a little you know um tricky and that's why I got down to say ten uh or so.

Um but I mean if I if it's at the will of this body to to get there, then you know, again I'll make that decision to to do so.

But um I just found it tough and I uh I I wouldn't mind even when I was watching the videos or whatever, you know, I I was uh impressed by by a lot of them and wouldn't have mind asking them questions or or you know, just kind of having a face-to-face with them and talking to them and and and getting the getting a beat, getting a read on them just you know for for you know my you know my own uh benefit um because this is something that that uh that we have to get right.

And the the and the last thing that I would want to have happen is you know, to get someone in here, you know, somebody that we we we missed because we didn't, you know, have a conversation with them or did or didn't talk to or whatever.

And um uh and we get it wrong or whatever, because you know, to the commissioners point, you know, trying to fill the shoes of uh you know Mr.

Bullock, you know, is gonna you know be a difficult task.

Um I just think that uh I wouldn't mind talking to more than six people or whatever to get to to where we are when uh or where we need to be.

Um that's again that's just me.

What do I know?

Okay, um it's my turn.

I have a question first of all for Commissioner Ahern Koch.

Your idea for phone interviews, was that before we can narrow down to our finalists, or would you say, okay, we can narrow down to the finalist today, and then you'd like to have some phone interviews before they come down on the 23rd?

Uh I'm open either way.

Um, if we want to expand the list and make it our top ten and talk to those top ten and and narrow that down, that's fine.

If we want to just uh have a have a phone interview with our own top ten.

Okay.

And then I mean, either way it's fine.

Well, I guess the question is, are you agreeable to us actually narrowing down to the finalists today?

Like the top ten.

Well, we'll agree on the number.

Um, I I I could I I mean I have narrowed it down.

I have 11, sorry.

I have 11.

And I would like to talk to all 11 of them.

Can you zoom?

Yeah, it's zoom, absolutely, or phone or Zoom or whatever.

But I would also like your input on my eleven here, because you may have stuff to add and say yes, yes, sir.

That was my nine my next question.

So um, Mr.

Bullock, I'm estimating that for each one of the candidates that we bring down, we would be paying for three hotel nights in the high season and airfare, and that might be about two thousand dollars each.

Is that sound right to you?

Well, they'll come from different parts of the country.

So uh airfare will be whatever it is.

I mean, I you know, whether it's two thousand or three thousand or fifteen hundred, um, you know, it's going to vary significantly.

I have to talk I've done no estimate on on travel costs, but it'll be a few thousand per person.

Some will be closer, some further away.

Uh we'll probably put them all.

Those who need uh overnight accommodations, I'm sure Shayler will put them all up in the same hotel.

And uh you know, we'll feed them so though there will also be meal and you know, perhaps some other incidentals will have to travel around.

You know, so it'll be a few thousand per person.

And and let me, if I may go beyond the specific question.

My recommendation is don't let the cost of getting people here.

You you've got an important decision to make.

And while yes, there's a cost and we have to be cost conscious if we bring six or if we bring ten, I I wouldn't let that be the determining factor in who we talk to.

A consensus around the list that you think are the best.

And and in my world, a consensus, it's great if everyone agrees, but at its worst, it's the grudging willingness to go along.

Yeah.

And you know, the question may be can you get to that finalist list today?

And if you guys all agree on that, whatever number that is, then we could talk, confirming the process from there.

Yeah, and seeing what kind of commonality that you have may help drive that what that number is, so that if each person has a you know outlier, you may just agree that hey, that's my I'm the only one that likes that person for this role, so that I'll drop them.

Okay.

So is there any I'm gonna get a sense of the commission.

I think we we all say six is a good number, but how many up to ten would we be comfortable with, or are there some of some a majority that say, oh, we'll only want six.

So what is what is the sense?

Eleven.

I think six.

Well, I mean, and we'll let the vice mayor go next.

I think six.

Well, I mean look, I'll I'll explain why I think six.

Um bringing people to town for two days.

We have uh a tentative schedule set up that fits nicely for six people.

If we bring 15, 12, uh that lessens the amount of time we have with each of the people we brought to town, and does not do any of them justice.

Okay.

Commissioner Batti, your thought.

No.

Uh it it sounds like you just as soon pass this one by.

I actually I do have a suggestion.

Um if we were in jury duty, you know, we would probably have a straw poll of the jurors before we really get started on discussions, and that guides what we would be discussing.

My sense would be using our little sheet as a straw poll.

If there are individuals that four or five of us have listed, we almost don't have to discuss them because we have already pretty much agreed, but then that will leave the other ones that are on the list for us to discuss our impressions, pros and cons, and then after that discussion, maybe we do another straw poll to see where we stand.

And from that, we may end up saying there are seven people that we all like, or there are six people, there are eight people.

But if we do it that way, is is that sound reasonable?

That sounds reasonable to me, Mayor.

If only one person has a candidate on their list.

The person Well, but they would have a chance to explain.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, and Mayor, I think you I think you're on to it.

That the best way forward here is let's just see what we got, and then you can decide whether it's enough or not enough.

And then you can come up with other strategies.

But I have a feeling just from listening to y'all that there may be three or four immediately just consensus picks, and then you're really just dealing with you how to get to the right number.

So I I just get started, just jump into it.

And Commissioner Al oh you move to yours.

I I I agree with doing that way, because then if we had um eleven.

That doesn't mean it's the eleven that Commissioner Aaron Koch has on her list.

So, you know.

So I it's so it sounds like the consensus is we'll do the straw poll.

The question now is how many do each of us want to include on our list for the straw poll?

Are we gonna limit it to six or are we gonna go why don't we just talk about everybody?

Let's do that on our list.

Well, I mean I mean do the straw poll so we count out.

So if there are three people that get five votes, why it spend the time discussing them?

Right.

Yeah.

So so do you all want to start with the recommended six?

Do you want to just go each person and make their own list?

That we are going to have tallied up, right?

Okay.

I think we should start with the recommended list as well to just make it.

But we like them, they're on our list.

Ms.

Griggs?

Okay.

Let's let's get organized here.

So the consultant is asking us to go through his list.

You all are stating that you want to do through what you have.

To make it, in my impression, to make it clean, if you want to, one by one, go through who you have on your list.

If you don't want to go with what the consultant is recommending, go through your list, state the names that you have.

I will write them down.

I have it here.

I will write them down, and then we'll go from there if you have a consensus.

How many names are you on the name?

Going for?

Okay, or we can I'll take any suggestions.

I'm just trying to make it clean here.

Well, then you gotta need mine written already.

Okay, so then what you're gonna have to do is if you're gonna do that, then we need to take a quick recess.

I need to go through the sure.

Don't we have to read the names aloud?

No.

You know, for transparency's sake, you may want to verbally discuss the thing.

As I was trying to do it, okay.

So we can do that, and she can do a hash mark.

Yeah, that's fine.

And do you even want to do your hash marks up at the uh Elmo?

That might be.

So who wants to read their list first?

I'll go.

Okay.

This is what let's let's take our time to do it.

Do we get a chance to sell our choice?

How about we we read our lists first and then we see where we may not have to sell some of them, right?

Okay.

All right.

Uh my number one pick.

Top three stars.

Emily LeGrow.

Um, Troy Anderson.

Number three, Tim Gleason.

Hold on.

Tim what Gleason.

Okay.

Okay.

Number four, Harry Black.

Okay.

Number five, Peter Scolera.

Number six, Michael Jensik.

Mike.

Michael Jensik, J E N S-I-K.

And Peter what scalaris.

S-C-A-L-E-R-A.

Okay.

You only wanted to name six.

You didn't want to name any others?

Well, yeah, I have I have others.

I have uh also I love Steph and Menard.

Stefan?

Okay.

David Wolf W-U-L-F.

David Freeman.

Chris Hobby.

Say that again.

Chris Hobby.

Okay.

And Carl Gefkin.

G-E-F-K-E-N.

Great.

Carl Gepkin.

Okay.

All right.

Uh Commissioner Hancock.

Okay.

Um mine are Kamar Brown.

Harry Black.

Robin Gomez.

Michael Jensik.

Michael Jinsi.

Mm-hmm.

Evan Kimball.

Christopher Rodriguez.

Randy Robertson.

Troy Anderson.

Okay, hold on.

Randy What?

Robertson.

Chris Rodriguez.

Chris Rodriguez.

Chris Rodriguez.

Randy Robertson.

Okay.

Troy Anderson.

Okay.

Peter or Petra Scalera.

Stephen Menard.

Emily LeGro.

And 11 is David Freeman.

So much the same.

I mean, there are some commonalities there, a lot of commonalities.

I think I'm getting her list again.

Commissioner Batti, your list.

Pretty much got all of them.

Let me see.

I have uh call Gapkin.

This is like, you know, no particular order or whatever, but call Gapman.

Chris Hobby.

Christopher Rodriguez.

Okay, hold on.

Hobby.

Christopher Rodriguez.

Freeman.

Robert Fowler.

Who?

Robert?

Fowler.

Uh-huh.

Thomas Thomas.

Harry Black.

Hold on.

Slow down.

Okay, sorry.

I'm sorry.

Could you could you start all over with your list?

I could not get into my computer when I want to be able to write it down.

You ready?

Ready, Commissioner?

No, she's not.

Oh, you're not ready yet?

Sorry, go ahead.

Okay, yeah.

Call Gapkin.

Christopher Hobby.

Christopher Rodriguez.

Carrie Freeling.

Oh, Freiling.

Robert Fowler.

Thomas Thomas.

Harry Black.

Steve McLaughlin.

Tony Palermo.

And Emily McGraw.

Okay.

We ready for the vice mayor's list?

Yeah.

I was looking at that.

Ms.

Griggs.

Okay.

Thank you.

Harry Black.

Randy Robertson.

Tim Gleason.

Kamar Brown.

Robert Fowler.

Carrie Fryling.

Tariq Romani.

Okay, and Tariq Romani.

I'm only going to have one new name for you to add.

That's good news.

Okay.

Number one who so far seems unanimous is Harry Black.

Okay.

Uh Kamar Brown.

Carrie Frying.

Chris Rodriguez.

You all like I am like Carrie Fryling.

Okay.

The new name did you get Chris Rodriguez yet?

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

The new name is Lynn Boswell.

Okay.

Now there'd be time to write it down.

Okay.

Carl Gefkin.

Tariq Romani.

Okay.

David Freeman.

Tim Gleason.

Okay.

And Peter Scolera.

Oh, lots of commonality.

So it's interesting to me that we have five individuals that three of us have named and one individual that five of us have named, and probably more that if you have that count, I well, I'll be able to do that.

Can I please get like a little bit of a recess to clean up my list?

Make sure I have everything and make sure I have it right.

So yeah, do you do we want to take a five minute break or something?

Take a ten minute break and tally.

Okay, we're taking a ten minute break.

We'll be back at eleven fifteen.

Thank you.

The this special city commission meeting is back in session.

We just received the tally of the straw vote.

And we have one person who was named by all five of us, and we have eight people who were named by three of us.

And then there were quite a few other people who were named by one or two individuals.

Oh, okay.

Real quick.

Did I miss that?

Michael Jenzik is listed twice because I he was on my list and it was on Commissioner Albert's list.

So he has two.

Okay.

So cross one of him out and put a two.

Yeah.

Okay.

Sorry about that.

Anybody see anything else that they've I'm just checking it now.

Alpert.

You know, and I guess we'll we'll go through and advocate, but I think there was there was one that just got two of us that I really think we should have a second look at, and I think that was Troy Anderson.

I thought he was a top, you know, three-star candidate as well.

So I was surprised that you know, and it was recommended by he was one of the ones recommended by Sumter as well.

So I I think he's worth a second look.

That's that's my only comment.

Okay.

Um what is the okay?

I I'm I'm thinking that what we're going to be doing from this point is to be assembling a list that we will ultimately vote on.

And I'm thinking that maybe we should just put Harry Black on that list.

Yeah.

We don't need to discuss him.

I would agree with that.

I would agree.

Okay.

Unanimous.

And in discussing, remember that probably every single one of these people is watching.

So we're going to be careful about what we say.

So I was going to suggest that we first discuss the eight people that got three votes, and then after we get through that, then we can address Commissioner Albert's concern about specific individuals that only got two votes.

And I also have a little problem with the sequence of the stuff in the Sumter book is not in alphabetical order or anything else.

So I was going to suggest it's like paging through the book, and the first one that we come to that had three votes is the one we would start discussing first.

Does that make sense?

So may I just say something more?

Sure.

So I think we um did a great job.

So from the 436 or 41, we've narrowed it down to 24, I think.

Um which is a great it's a great start.

Okay.

So I'm scanning through.

Tim Gleason is the first one that I've come to that had I mean in the book that I can't that's got a three.

So I'm gonna suggest that somebody who voted for him, give their reasons, and then somebody who left him off, maybe give their concerns, and then we go back to respond to those concerns.

Does that make sense?

I'd be happy to speak to Tim Gleason mayor.

Okay.

I thought his FEMA experience was a huge asset and would be an asset for us.

Um I thought the size of the communities that he's managed would be good for us.

Um for me personally, his reference to being data-driven was important to help us make decisions and monitor progress toward decisions that we've made.

And he reminded me of somebody I worked with in the past.

And I really like that guy.

And I liked that he said I'm a kind of guy who finds the silver lining and things.

Commissioner Ahern Koch, you had reservations about Mr.

Gleason.

No, I did not actually.

He was on my tier two.

And when I had to sort of narrow my tier one and tier two down, he's there, but he's a I just, you know, I when I put took it down to 11.

But no, I mean I I'm not going to I I felt very strongly have to put him.

So on my tier one and tier two, I had six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.

So I had seventeen out of the 36.

He was one of the 17.

Okay.

So it sounds like one of my comments on some of the others.

Looks good, but I've got others that I like better.

Uh I don't know if I'm gonna say I like it uh better.

It's very difficult to rank them.

Um yeah, so yeah, if we if we can do 17, I'll do 17.

So uh Commissioner Bachini, any comments about Tim Gleason?

Because you did not um I'm I'm trying to who he is, and uh he was the one who had lots of FEMA experience.

He was city manager and um long time city manager, and now he's the in Davenport, Iowa.

Okay, interim city manager FEMA experience that he uh I can call up his resume.

Okay, because uh I'm getting him confused with someone that in a national experience, but it wasn't it they didn't call it FEMA, or something like that.

Um Steven Minard had the international experience that that was similar to FEMA, but but they didn't call it USAID USAID and moving all over the world.

Uh Decatur, Illinois uh previously twice as the city manager, population 70,000, 522, and then Bloomington uh for six years at population 79,000.

And and if I if I'm not mistaken, I think I remember Mr.

Gleason speaking about Iowa, but was he somewhere else aside from Iowa?

Uh yeah, Illinois.

Okay.

And um yeah, yeah.

And then he was also worked for the state of Illinois.

Yeah, so I so it's not you know, I I don't have any, you know, um anything you know, one way uh or the other regarding you know Mr.

Gleason.

Okay.

So the next one I So let's before we move forward, are we keeping him on the list move forward?

I don't know.

We don't know yet.

Okay, you guys want to okay?

Yeah, we don't yeah, we don't we don't know yet.

He was my tier um he was a one, not a not a two for me.

I think Troy Anderson was better.

Okay.

Okay, so you're he's he was not in your top top tier.

So that's worth noting.

Okay.

Um I'm trying to scan through to see who's next in the book that's on our three vote lists, and I've come to Peter Scolera, I think, is the next one in the book that's on our list of three.

Um so the people who said yes to Peter Scolera were Commissioner Ahern Codge, Commissioner Alpert, and myself.

So do either of you want to say something about Peter Scolera.

You go ahead.

No, he was not he also, you know.

I I uh gave him a second look because he was on Sumter's list, but he had not been on my on my list before that.

And and uh I'll confess I initially put him on the bottom of my list, but when he was on Sumter's list, I gave him a second look and moved him up.

Um what about you two?

You did not list him.

Yeah, I I didn't I didn't list him.

I do recall um you know, seeing his video, but nothing that really stood out for me that put him on my list.

So there was something.

First of all, I thought he gave all the right answers.

But I was looking for fit and I didn't feel the fit.

And so he was in my group two and remains there.

Okay.

And Commissioner Aaron Koch, did you find your notes?

Yeah, I'm looking for them now.

I I remember his interview being very impressed with his interview, and the way he spoke through his interview and his experience as well, uh was you know very impressive to me.

So he was on my tier, my tier two.

So I I'm assuming that we have as we're going through this, we're each making some notes as to whether or not we're going to want to move those person that person forward.

Um looking for Carl Gefkin is the next one I found in the book, who is our number three.

And uh the people who said yes on Gefkin were uh Commissioner Alpert, uh Commissioner Batti, and myself.

So Commissioner Alpert, did you want to say anything about Carl Gefkin?

Well, you know, it certainly sounded like he knew the role of city manager, and um, you know, like said all the right things and seemed to be uh you know a visionary in terms of you know what a city needs and moving a city forward.

So I I thought he was pretty good.

I know he was fired supposedly for an open mic comment that he says he did not uh was not him.

Um you know, so probably was you know wasn't necessarily him.

So you know you can't always can't always go by um something like that.

But the other thing is it was just an inappropriate open mic comment.

It was like they're lying.

How many times have we thought that to ourselves?

Um you know it but it if it you know he says the video shows it wasn't him speaking, and so maybe uh maybe the person who was speaking just let him take the fall.

I don't know.

Yeah, but uh other than that, um he looked he looked good.

Uh Commissioner Ahern Koch, your reservations?

Uh well, no, I mean I thought his experience was great.

Um I noted that he, you know, City of New York with a hundred billion dollar budget.

Um that you know experience in health department working in New York City, a lot of impressive experience.

Um you know, I I uh I didn't uh take that comment, you know, the Google when it got to the Google part there, the Google question.

I didn't take that um too too seriously.

Uh just um no, I mean uh a lot of experience and and I admired him, you know, and and what he had to add.

I just couldn't include everybody.

Um Vice Mayor, do you want to sure?

Um Mr.

Gefkin.

Um he had a lot and varied experience.

Um I like that he said he works to unite diverse stakeholders.

Um I just as Commissioner A.

Heron Koch said, I just couldn't include everybody, and he didn't fit into my group one.

Um Commissioner Batti.

You know what, Mayor?

Um I know I have him, but a lot of these people I just don't have my notes on them or whatever, and why they did or why they didn't, you know, resonate with me for whatever reason.

Um I've been trying to remember, remember, you know, his video or what have you.

I'll get him.

Yeah, Mr.

Gefkin was actually in the middle of my tier two.

I was really excited about his I quote I wrote down a quote, we're in this together.

So it's community, all of us working together.

He leads from alongside.

And he's um my concern was he didn't understand possibly the difference between Sarasota County and the city of Sarasota because he referenced growth and development in Lakewood Ranch.

And he saw some of that as a task ahead of us.

So that was the pluses and the minuses.

So yeah, that did that did bother me.

Yeah.

So okay.

Umar Brown.

Um the supporters of Kamar Brown were Commissioner Aaron Koch, uh the vice mayor, and myself.

Uh Vice Mayor, would you like to say something about Commissioner?

Um I moved her up once I saw the list from Sumter.

Um I thought she was very articulate.

Um she talked about uh in her cover letter, uh strategic planning and her knowledge and involvement in technology.

Um she clearly had studied the city of Sarasota, made reference to our performing arts centered journey.

Um again, um as I watched the interview, I was trying to see the fit for our city.

And I didn't quite, and so that's why she was in group two for me.

But I moved her up to group one.

Yeah.

Um I think Commissioner Alfred was was um I mean, yeah.

Commissioner Albert, did you want to say something about that?

Yeah, that was uh a definite no for me.

I I couldn't even get through the video.

So that was one of uh you know, even though I I even tried to take a second look, and I was like, no.

And and just to let you know, I had her down because she was so long-winded, both on her resume and it was over an hour-long interview, so I quit after 35 minutes, and then I saw the recommendation from Sumter, and I zipped to the 40-minute part point in her interview, and all of a sudden she became relevant and and you know, the things that I really wanted to hear.

So very long-winded.

If we if she came to Sarasota, we need to teach her to be a little bit more succinct.

But yeah, uh, I understand your concerns.

Uh Commissioner Aaron Koch.

Uh my experience was a little different.

I mean, I saw that the video was, and I noted on all of them uh that you know who it was the interview and the time of the video because it was difficult to compare somebody who had a 20-minute or an 18-minute video with somebody who had a one-hour, one minute and 14-second video.

Um, and I thought, wow, this is gonna be long.

And she grabbed me immediately.

I was so impressed with her experience, 18 years, uh overseeing eleven departments.

She has dealt with the state level.

She referenced bills, she referenced the state, very specific things happening to the city with the property taxes, with the preemptions.

She talked about her experience in residential versus commercial versus redevelopment.

Um she talked about TDRs and specific programs.

I was pulled in by all of the examples she gave.

She would talk about her experience and then she would give an example of practically how that was applied in her experience and in her city.

Um, she she talked about uh business community, economic development, staff, um, you know, showing up to do the hard work.

Um she talked a lot about budgeting and and uh for me, all of the bases.

She knows sunshine law, she knows coastal, she knows hurricanes, and experience in all of these things, management.

Um she had all of the the the you know, at the very beginning when we started this process and I made my list and I gave everybody grades and I had my things.

She hit them all.

FEMA, everything.

Everything, everything, everything.

Her experience, her ability to communicate.

Um I think it was long because she was unlike me, not speaking a million miles a second.

Very methodical, well thought out, answers that she gave, um, and backed them all up with facts, with details, and with examples, which is exactly what I wanted to hear.

She just gave me exactly what I wanted to hear, and I was so impressed.

She she actually was my number one candidate.

So I will advocate heavily that she stays.

Commissioner Batti, did you want to say anything?

Yeah, although I didn't have her on my list.

This she from North Miami Beach is that?

Yeah, from Homestead.

Yeah, I was I was impressed with her video.

Um, and I didn't really take it so much as her being long-winded, you know, as it was her just I mean, you know, her resume, you know, speaks for itself, and she was speaking to you know her experience and and and to you to your point, you know, uh Commissioner, you know, had in you know, eleven different departments.

I mean, she had she had a wealth of experience, you know, and and she's worked in an uh not just that municipality but in the and a couple of others.

Um so she's she's moved around a little bit, but um I was impressed with how she you know she articulated her experience and and and what she would bring to the city of Sarasota.

I mean she's right there in in Homestead and North North Miami Beach or what have you.

I know some people from Methano the uh the former uh uh deputy city manager and the and city manager from from uh North Miami Beach.

But uh yeah, so I I I didn't put her you know on my list, but I would have no issue, you know, if if she were to stay.

Can I can I just add one other thing?

She was one of a few that the really, you know, I mean, we are talking about uh how we're dealing with you know what's going on at the Tallahassee in the state level.

And she was one of a just a few candidates who took that into consideration, which in our world is huge, right?

What happens in Tallahassee impacts us tremendously, and she was one of a few who referenced it that gets it and knows that we have to stay on top of it.

So very impressed.

So I was looking as you were speaking to see, gee, I thought you did not vote for her.

Would you want to change at this point?

I would have to do that.

Oh, sorry.

I would have no issue with that, Mayor.

So theoretically, you would want to support her after this discussion, so we could put her down as four vo four in the straw poll for her.

I mean, you know, to the commissioner's point, I mean, she in her capacity of where she is right now.

I mean, she almost does, I mean, she she does the work of city manager as along with what uh um our director of governmental affairs does as well, particularly like going up to Tallahassee knowing what's going on up there, um, and and bringing that information you know back to her her current municipality.

And and and one more important thing, she also was one of the a few who referenced SHIP and affordable housing and that whole conversation about how you know when you're doing the affordable housing, you have to cobble together.

It's a bunch of pieces of the puzzle.

And she referenced each piece of that puzzle that has to come together to make a project like that happen.

He changed his vote.

She's got four votes basically.

I'm just doubting it.

I'm just saying.

Yeah, no, and and you know, and I just want to say, you know, they're long that, you know, people uh these people are this is their career, and you know, they're applying for a job, you know, in in the city.

Um they're gonna be a bit long-winded in terms of explaining the experience and and so on, you know.

So I get it.

Okay, the next one I see in the book is David Freeman and Commissioner Ahern Koch, Commissioner Alpert, and I supported him.

So Commissioner Albert, did you want to say something about him?

Commissioner A.

Sh.

Let me get to his scary.

Yes.

Um did you want to say something?

No.

He was good, but he wasn't in the uh top six in my hand.

He was like number seven.

And and I'll be honest, I I'll be listening to hear what Commissioner Ahern Koch says, but I was wishy-washy on him.

So at this point, unless Commissioner Ahern Koch says something earth-shaking, I would remove my vote from him to bring him down to two.

So let me hear from Commissioner Aaron Cox.

So recalling and looking at my notes, he had talked about 34 years of experience with the city, three cities all on the water.

So again, being on the water, having that experience.

That's some solid amount of stay time.

And that really impressed me.

He also seemed to have a good knowledge of all aspects of cities, budget, his budgeting uh experience was really solid.

I think that is very important.

His Google question, he said he has no problems with that.

He noticed that two cities hired him back twice.

That says something as well about somebody in their work ethic, their ability to work for city leave, and then for them to leave with such a good reputation that you're asked back twice by two separate cities.

I mean, there was a lot there that that um that I felt very positive about him.

The one thing that left me just a little bit um one comment he made that I sort of tilted my head to the side was when he said um mentioned something about having five years left and wanting to finish his five years here.

I wish he hadn't said that.

It wasn't so bad that it wasn't so bad that it made me not include him, obviously.

Uh and if we interview him and you know think that he's a great candidate, maybe we can change his mind, is my hope.

Um so that's why I gave I it discounted a little bit that comment, but other than that, I thought he was a very strong candidate.

Vice Mayor, do you want to say something about Mr.

Freeman?

Um I thought he was a strong candidate.

Um he was articulate, uh sincere, uh he's a success agent, wants everyone to succeed.

I thought that uh he went off track a little bit in some of his answers.

But I do that too, so I forgive him.

Um again, I didn't put him in my group one just because I I was looking for the fit um that you can't get in the written uh resumes and curriculum vitas, and I did just didn't see it enough to put him in group one.

Okay.

Commissioner Batti, do you want to say anything?

Uh yeah, I mean I I I I do recall him being like one of the first whatever one of the things, you know, to your point, uh Commissioner that now that you just mentioned it, I remember him saying, you know, like my last five years or whatever, I have five years left.

Um, you know, and I wanted whatever um kind of you know stood out to me, but I mean not that I made like a big issue of it, but I I do you know recall recall him mentioning that.

Uh but you know, again, you know, he was you know, just like most of them, he was very very articulate um in uh explaining you know his uh experience, you know, where he's been and and so on.

So he's I thought he was a strong candidate, but not enough for me to put you know on my list or whatever.

But I wouldn't have no problem if it's I am going to remove him from my list, and that brings him down to people supporting him.

So okay, next on the list.

Do you know can you say why you're gonna remove him?

Um you don't want to say that's okay.

We don't have to.

I mean actually it was things that were already said.

I thought he was well-rounded, he worked in the waterfront cities, but he was never a city manager.

He is no city manager experience, and I believe that we really want somebody who is more well-rounded.

So anyway, okay, um next one.

Uh Carrie Freeland.

Was Carrie Freeling on the list?

Yeah, Carrie Freeling.

Yes, she had three.

Is she Fryling or Freeling?

I'm not sure.

Oh.

We'll find out.

Yeah.

Whatever you all call her as a last name, that's what she'll go.

So uh Commissioner Batty, the Vice Mayor, and I supported her.

So Vice Mayor, do you want to say something about my notes here?

And I thought there was a fit.

Some comments she made.

She takes pride with her hires.

She had a nice sense of humor.

She was articulate.

That was important to me.

She had a maturity and a vision.

And I just felt strongly about her.

Commissioner Alpert.

I did not see a fit at all and feel very strongly the other way.

I'm not gonna give my I I don't think I want to publicly give my reasons.

Okay.

Am I correct?

No, that was uh Lynn Boswell.

Oh, that was Lynn Boswell, okay.

Um but I do remember, you know, just looking at her face.

You know, like I said, I don't have to have notes on uh exposure.

But but I was impressed with with her enough that I put her on my list, but I don't have the notes in front of me.

So maybe look up the um uh the candidate interview link, and if you go maybe to the video, it'll rem you know jog your memory.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so I rem I remember listening to her, you know, being impressed with her or whatever that, and that's why I put her down.

But um like I said, you you hear me, I'm like constantly confusing other people with uh with with others and so on.

Yeah.

But I but I do her talking about you know visit in Sarasota if I can remember having family death.

Does she does she have family like in Tampa or something like that?

Yeah, uh in the area.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Um so uh and I see Commissioner Commissioner Ahern Codge did not, so I'm sure you have some reasons you want to well, you know, I I have to say that I was impressed with um her um experience, so directly related to us.

She has a lot of planning experience, economic development experience, urban planning experience.

She um has experience with golf course courses, parks, um museums, stormwater management, wetlands, uh prairies.

Um so there were a lot of areas that I thought that where she was a good fit.

Uh maybe I think that some of the the um the areas where uh I was you know needing more was um in her actual management, and so um, you know, I I I don't I didn't find anything bad about her.

I just she just didn't hit the level of um you know being one of the top tier yeah it was you know it was very difficult but I you know I uh she she spoke very well um she has she does have experience um yeah so the did anybody who wanted to speak on her tweak on her okay Emily LeGros I will speak to her okay great yeah I I I mean I thought she was uh absolutely fantastic she um all of her answers were really good she's bright and she took a uh you know even though she's just been a city manager for a small community what I was impressed by that she took a small community and where people were ashamed to be from and turned it around to people were really proud to say they were from that community because she helped transform it and by data-driven information and I you know and I I just thought that was really impressive um of course you know I could identify a little bit she went to law school later in life so you know that uh uh appealed to me and I just thought she was she was articulate understood the issues understood the role of a city manager and I think um you know and she's youthful and I think um sh you know she it definitely worth uh moving along to the next to next level I think she'd be okay um who else was I know I supported her okay uh Commissioner um Vice Mayor you were not in favor of her if you want to um so I don't have all my notes I don't have all my notes here but I didn't think uh I thought that her

Okay.

Um who else was I know I supported her.

Okay.

Uh Commissioner um Vice Mayor you were not in favor of her if you want to um so I don't have all my notes I don't have all my notes here but I didn't think uh I thought that her experience was in small too small of communities.

And um that I'll come back mayor and speak to it.

I need to find some notes.

Okay.

Uh Commissioner Aaron Cod Yes so um her experiences with the small village and what um made me get past that were a couple of things and Commissioner Alfred referenced it about the the town where she comes from where everybody refers to themselves as poor, dumb and dirty.

And that comment really um you know was was a meaningful story.

I don't know if she's told it 50 times but you know it it hit home for me that she went into a town and they said we don't have any expectations of you because all we are here is poor, dumb and dirty.

And she hated them referring to themselves that way.

And she said about um through you know they're a small town and with big problems.

And she had to cobble together again being creative with funding sources, being creative with the community themselves, being creative with community organizations and groups and specific leaders to do with a small budget to cobble together solutions for this town.

That creativity on that small level helped me get to raising her up to hopefully that can scale up to a a city our size.

I I you know there were there were uh some moments when I felt that um if you can project on that small level to our city that strength and that confidence that she brought um that would be a really positive thing.

I I do have to acknowledge that it is a small village and a small town and she doesn't have a whole lot of experience but her um her commitment and her emotion to it all um not emotion that's the wrong word her commitment and her dedication uh were impactful well I would agree she exuded personality um but the city the village that she managed had fewer than two thousand people which is smaller than many of our neighborhoods so the problems and issues and budget for that matter of the city of Sarasota I think is so outside her experience that we would be shooting ourselves in the foot to consider hiring her.

I think she would be excellent in another smaller city and move up over time to someplace like Sarasota but I think it's premature at this point but I agree her personality was spectacular and being uh and impressed by as you said her personality recall her talking about going um back to school to become a lawyer you know um and being a small business owner if if if I can recall like maybe own in a restaurant.

Yeah um and uh her hospitality background and she she sort of uh correlated that to you know her position and in uh and how that you know being in hospitality and you know uh working in uh municipal government kind of you know uh relates to one another um and I agree with her having the hospitality background myself um and having to be a problem solver and in you know um in rely on critical thinking skills and and and so on so um and multitasking and and everything so I I uh she she resonated with me in in that regard I mean I can understand you know everyone having a a bit of uh reservation that will regarding you know the small village that that she uh she managed um and you know that population um but you know I I didn't sort of give that you know too much weight you know or validity for me just uh in terms of her having to deal with people and and uh in being in being the city manager dealing with big problems as as the commissioner said in that small place like that and in being in district one like like you know as I am um and you know living in district one

um in having to be a problem solver and in you know um and rely on critical thinking skills and and and so on so um and multitasking and and everything so i i uh she she resonated with me in in that regard I mean I can understand you know everyone having a a bit of uh reservation as well regarding you know the small bills that that she uh she managed um and you know that population um but you know I I didn't sort of give that you know too much weight you know or validity for me just uh in terms of her having to deal with people and and uh in being in being the city manager dealing with big problems as as the commissioner said in that small place like that and and being in district one like like you know as I am um and you know living in district one dealing with with areas like Newtown where you know she made a statement about what being poor and dirty or whatever and dirty um to uplift people you know and and and and empower them or what have you you know I thought that was uh uh a powerful you know um so that that uh resonated with me got it so anybody else want to speak about Emily LeGroux okay move on to Chris Rodriguez um and Chris was Commissioner Ahern Koch uh Commissioner Batti and I supported uh Chris Rodriguez so Commissioner Ahern Kotch would you like to speak about him?

Yeah I was very impressed uh with him and his experience and his background um you know the for me one of the most important uh challenges we are it's right in front of us is budgeting budgeting budgeting budgeting making sure that you know we have our our budget in order and and he has a lot of budget experience um he has a lot of operational experience he has a lot of experience dealing with similar things that we have uh in front of us that we are going to be challenged which especially dealing with other agencies again the state um working with the county uh working with other agencies he's got this very strong there and um his ma his management skills his management style um uh I was left um wondering you know is he overqualified um and I believe that question was asked in there how would you actually scale down your experience I believe you were the interviewer and you know he gave a very good answer to that and um yeah I I was impressed with his experience so uh umbert would yeah I'll speak to I liked him a lot too and only um he was one of my one star people that um and I only had two that were two stars so he would have been uh in my top six that um I was very impressed with him as well I only didn't include him on my list because I tried to to narrow it down um after I saw Sumter's recommendations and and gave some people a second look but um I would be happy to add him uh and make it a make it full four okay so and I will speak to him as well okay um I would be happy to add him and make it five okay so wow so Commissioner Alpert and the vice mayor changed their votes on added their votes to Chris Rodriguez and he is now a five so we have two fives and a four.

Mayor in that add if you don't mind sure um looking at the list that was the last one they had a three um if you tally up everything that you all have you have a total of eight that are three in a total two could we put that list yeah yeah you've yeah I think y'all knock Freeman down to a two.

Right.

Yeah and and I knocked that two people down.

I knocked well yeah that that's taking three men upon I can read it off this question Emily Le Gros Tim Gleason Harry Black Peter Scatera Carl Gefkin, Kamaro Brown, Chris Rodriguez, and Carrie Freeling.

Can you do that one more time?

Sure.

Emily Le Gros, Tim Gleason, Harry Black, Peter Scutera, Carl Gefkin, Kamaro Brown, Chris Rodriguez, and Carrie Freeling all had at least three of your all's votes.

All had at least three of your all's votes.

Three plus ten.

Two of them had all five.

And one had four.

So do we want to invite eight?

Can we talk about some of the other twos there?

Yeah, I'd like to I'd still like to have somebody take a second look.

Yeah, that's I'd like to advocate.

Yes.

So Commissioner Alpert had requested that first.

Yes.

Yeah, I I I really would like you to take a second look at uh Troy Anderson.

Okay, we got a fresh one.

Um he had a lot of experience.

He presented well, he was well spoken.

He's got a master's in public administration.

He's a uh member of ICMA and looking, he's working on getting his certification there.

Um he had worked in Branson, Missouri, which is also a tourist town.

He's now in in Wichita, Kansas.

He has strong planning and economic development background.

Um I particularly like that he's a fan of Stephen Covey, and he even talked about some of the the principles, which is, you know, uh if if any of you have read Stephen Covey, um it's um what is it, the seven conference of finance and and they're all quite good.

He was very well spoken, as I said, presented well, and I think he's definitely worth uh a second look to and and recommended by Sumter as a a good candidate.

He's you know, he's certainly and articulate and very calm, which was uh if you don't mind, um Lori did me a favor and kind of tallied up what we just talked about, so I want to pass it on.

I just want to put a record as they were.

So go ahead, sorry, keep going.

Will you finish because I was gonna ask the vice mayor for her comments on uh Troy Anderson next.

Um I have comments.

I have his video um here if you want to look at that or I have comments as well.

Yeah, well, I she was uh negative and I you were so that's why I'm going back.

I wasn't negative on him.

But he just wasn't in my top group.

Um I thought had unique set of experiences that he brought forward to us.

Uh I'm he lik I like that he likes cross-training.

Um I don't mean in the gym.

Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly.

I do not mean in the gym.

Although I like cross-training too in the gym.

Um mayor, if you don't mind I'm gonna interrupt.

I just because I was passing, I just want to make sure I'm on track.

Are we still talking about Troy Anderson?

Yes, okay.

Okay, yes, thank you.

Um I was quite impressed when asked of his professional journey related to Sarasota.

Uh he brought up growth.

Uh that his back background fits, balancing growth with residents who reside here full time.

Um he brought up affordable housing.

Not only affordable housing, but housing that's affordable, and I really like that uh difference that he brought up.

And he brought up diversifying the economy.

So I didn't put him in my group one just because I couldn't put everybody in group one.

Would you reconsider a vote now to take him up to put him in the three categories?

Uh let me see who remains and I'll see.

Because I would I could take I would take my vote and away from some of these people.

Yes.

So um for me did she.

Well, let's speak to finish discussing him to let her decide.

Okay.

Okay.

Um, you know, uh i in those requirements that I, again, referencing in the beginning when I was so aspirational that everybody was going to know Sarasota and have coastal experience and know Florida and Sunshine Laws.

He fits some of those categories.

He grew up on Siesta Key.

Um he spent some time here on this coast.

Um he has experience, so he understands Sarasota.

Troy Anderson?

Oh, wait, nope, sorry, I'm talking about Tony Palermo.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, Troy Anderson.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Because we we have Tony Palermo that we are going to talk about too, right?

Well, yeah, Troy.

Okay.

Yeah.

So let me look at my notes here on Troy.

So I had him down with lots of economic development and planning experience.

And AICP planner.

He did identify a lot of the balance in our challenges, you know, between tourism and growth and and and uh sustainability with the growth that we're experiencing.

And he did talk about uh housing affordability and affordable housing not being the same thing.

Um and the cross-training.

Yeah, I wrote down a lot of the same same good things that you all wrote down.

I was yes, I was very impressed by him.

Um talked about a parking plan, which you know, our parking department could use some more planning.

Um and so yeah.

Okay.

I was very negative because I didn't see the fit.

Um I saw him as seeing Sarasota as a suburb of Tampa and the influence of being a suburb of Tampa.

Um I do not see tourism as our primary industry.

I see um we've got seasonal residents who own here and come six months of the year or four months of the year, being more of a driver of the economy than people who come for a week or two at the time.

And the Branson example, I think, you know, that was pure tourism.

So I didn't really feel that he had a good grasp of Sarasota and its needs.

Um so and and then the other thing, I didn't really hear his why, why the job, and I didn't get a sense that he had a passion for coming here.

What I heard him say was that he's qualified.

And I think we want somebody with passion.

Um so that was why I had him in my third tier.

So Mayor?

Sure.

Um of the questions was uh explain a situation where you made a recommendation and the commission or council voted otherwise, and you had to implement it.

And his answer was related to the parking situation, where he recommended something other than what the commission wanted.

And he said, I really enjoyed the process.

So even though he had to implement something different from what he wanted, he enjoyed the process.

His response to why Sarasota was I see it as the next step in my career.

And he's excited about the things we have going on.

Oh, and and he said that we have exciting things going on here in Sarasota.

So are you changing your vote?

I am not.

Okay.

I would if we eliminated somebody else already on the list.

I I will take away my vote for Peter Scolera and Carl Gefkin.

To add him.

I will add Troy Anderson to mine.

Okay.

So wow, okay, I can't keep track of you guys.

Okay, yeah, I mean it's let's get this.

So uh the vice mayor is adding her vote to Troy Anderson, and he becomes a three.

And uh Commissioner Alpert is removing her vote from Carl Gether.

Carl Gelf.

He becomes a two.

And who else did you say?

That's it.

That's it.

Yeah, but I only have to remove one.

I'll Okay.

I'm trying to find Scolera on my list.

Oh there he is.

Oh but she didn't change it.

She's not.

Oh, she's leaving Scolera.

Yes.

So she removed just um Gafkin.

Gavkin.

Okay.

So we're removing Gaffkin to two, taking him down to two, and then adding a vote to Mr.

Anderson to make him three.

Yes.

Is that correct?

Yeah.

Well it keeps us with an eight with three plus votes.

And uh when she's ready, Commissioner A.

Hearn Koch wanted to talk about Tony Palermo.

Um I was just gonna you know I had no problem with uh Tony, I mean uh Troy Anderson as well when I said he's from Wichita, Kansas, right?

That guy?

I yeah.

Um and I think he mentioned I mean he seemed like he wore a number of hats like fire marshal and uh or something like that, or he worked with fire marshal or whatever.

Um I'm just trying to replay these things in my mind.

And uh one of his strong suits was uh economic development.

Yeah if if I can't do that.

Yeah, that's right.

Um so you're gonna add a vote for him?

Uh yeah, I have to for display Anderson.

Okay, Commissioner Batti, that brings Troy Anderson up to four.

To four.

Oh we're gonna need a new one of these, please.

Well, I'm scribbling everywhere here.

I know.

So just to be clear, just to be clear.

Troy, Mr.

Troy Anderson has four, and we are removing Carl Gefkin because he is only with two vote votes now.

Correct?

Correct.

Okay.

Okay.

And Commissioner Hayhern Koch, did you want to say something about Tony Palermo?

Well, Tony Palermo, he only has one one, and uh the only reason why he's not on my top, he was in my top 17, but not my top eleven.

Um and he has one vote, I believe, from Commission Kyle uh Commissioner Petit.

Correct?

Yes.

Um I did want to point out though, like I just said already.

He is he he grew up on Siesta Key.

He does have Sarasota experience.

Like he's got the sand between his toes and he understands uh Sarasota.

And I think that's kind of an invaluable I I can't believe we would have a candidate that doesn't know that is not from Sarasota.

I mean, that's just shocks me that we don't have one.

And so I would like you all to reconsider him.

He's he's um very smart.

Um really well spoken.

Uh he has GIS experience, so he is you know, he's on the the cutting edge of a lot of things.

Well, I wouldn't say GIS is cutting edge, but it's it's pretty cutting edge.

I mean it's good, it's you know, it's relatively new and and he he understands it all.

He has experience with, you know, again the affordable housing funding, how it all pieces it works together uh uh in that puzzle.

Um he has had a team and he's had to deal with you know over 70 staff members.

Um he seems to be very much um a not a micromanaging person, but you know, encouraging the team to go forward.

I I think he is deserves a second reconsideration because he does have that Sarasota experience and um he has a lot of potential.

Worthwhile talking to again.

No, yeah, no, I was gonna say, you know, um, you know, I liked his enthusiasm.

Um you know, kind of jumped off the you know uh at me.

Um just as you said, the fact that he lived, you know, grew up once he has the key.

I mean, I think that's a huge plus that we have somebody right here in our own backyard um that grew up and you know would would want to uh see Sarasota, you know, um continue to evolve and move forward.

So one one of the reasons why uh he he stood out to me.

Commissioner Alfort, and and I will change my road and I just did uh he was got one he was in my one star um kind of you know final picks and just again uh didn't include him because of um some of the picks from um from some Sumter.

So if I had to choose between, you know, if I'm gonna narrow it down, I would I would do Tony Palermo over Peter Sclera, so I'll change that.

Oh did you always already drop Peter Sclero?

No, we didn't but you know I don't you know I I don't know if you have to drop someone because I don't think I got eleven.

I voted for eleven people.

That doesn't seem very fair that you have to keep to six.

Yeah, but no, it was it was more that we're trying to narrow down rather than I mean if you want to, that's fine.

But right now we're we only have um Tony Polero has two.

Two, so three.

Three.

Okay, you okay.

So yeah, so if we I mean I'll just add you to eight.

That's not that's not I who are the yes votes for Tony Palermo?

I mean I'm you got in the gym.

Okay.

Yeah.

I'm just really surprised that someone who doesn't even have deputy city manager experience, he'd just been uh department director.

I mean, that would be like I could see looking around our staff, our senior staff and saying, hey, why don't you join the mix?

So I'm I'm reluctant to say, oh yeah, he lived on CSD key, he's been a director, let's invite him to be one of our finalists.

I think that's crazy.

However, we did have a department director serve as our interim city manager.

And we do have people in our city that are department directors that I would be consider that are extremely capable of rising up to.

I mean, that's what you do.

You get into the director level, and then you get promoted up from there, and a lot of them go from directors to city manager or deputy city manager.

And you know if this is his next step, it's not was not from our city up to the city manager, but it's still a a natural next step for him.

See, I I I don't see that uh I see him having to learn the job of city manager in addition to having to learn Sarasota.

Uh because quite frankly, if you're like me and you've talked to people who are Sarasota County residents, they have no concept of the city of Sarasota.

They don't even know that they don't live in the city of Sarasota.

So uh Vice Mayor.

Um regarding this candidate Tony Palermo, um there's a huge difference between making a current department head in our city, an interim city manager, then bringing somebody in from out of town, even though they were born on Siesta Key, to be a first-time city manager in a new city.

Okay.

So this person still has three, so we're gonna add them to the list.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

Are we three of the candidates talk about now?

Or is there a name left?

Because I've got a suggestion on how to get from here to there.

I've got some more candidates in my time.

We are at we haven't made any of the adjustment that brings us to nine versus the eight we had previously out of kind of a soft limit.

We went out one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think we should still continue continue to talk about the candidates on the list and the pros and the cons, and then we can see where we are.

Yeah, what my suggestion is once y'all get through that process of everybody being heard is to do kind of a rank voting, and that'll get you where you need to go at that point.

I would throw out all the three, four, or five at this point, once you've got your sort of semifinal list and then just rank vote them all, you know, take all ten, rank them one to ten and see where we go.

That'll that'll clear it up for coming five minutes.

So that's a good idea.

Rather than discuss every single candidate or even every single candidate that got a vote, um, I would suggest that we limit the discussion to individuals that commissioners are really passionate about.

I have a couple.

I have a couple that I I would like to to talk about.

Yeah, the uh Vice Mayor still has her name on the on the Nope.

I already said I get a button for um do we want to go with uh Commissioner Alfred?

Do you want to give us one of yours before I I've already done the one the two I'm really passing two Emily LeGro and Troy Anderson are my top two that I'm passionate about.

Well, no, I meant the people that are on the one or two votes that you want us to discuss.

You already gave us one, so okay.

Um Commissioner Ahern Koch.

Um yes, so I don't want to hear all seventeen, just I I have three that are twos.

Okay.

Um Michael Jenzik, Steven Minard, and Randy Robertson.

Um Commissioner Alfred was Michael Um Jensik and Steven Menard.

And then Randy Robertson was um Commissioner Ulrich.

Um, and let me just get to those.

Okay, see where they are.

Michael Jenzik.

Yes.

Okay.

I'm just asking.

Do you all want a lunch break or do you want to keep pushing?

I'm just asking.

Do you all want a lunch break?

Yeah, yeah.

Michael Jensen, is that the gentleman with the military?

Lots of military.

So we shall we take a lunch break, um and get back to one thirty.

Thank you, man.

Back.

We are resuming our special city commission meeting to narrow down our city manager candidate selection down to finalists.

And um we had a request from the vice mayor, if we would just confirm who is on the list right now.

As of right now, this is what we have Harry Black, Chris Rotriguez, Kamar Brown, Tim Gleason, Pila, Peter Sclera, Carrie Fry Fryleen, Emily LeGroy, Troy Anderson, Toling Pum Pump Palmero, Paul Mero.

Thank you very much.

Am I we did?

Yeah.

Those are all the candidates with at least three or more.

Yeah, at this point.

Um and we were talking about Michael Gensink before we went to the break.

Right, right.

Um so Commissioner Ahern Cotch, you wanted to I just wanted to um talk about three more candidates.

Michael Jensik, who is in my first tier.

Um picks.

Um he was um very impressive.

Uh he has an impressive background in the army and with public service.

One of the first things he said in his interview was the value of giving back.

Um he served uh working in both New York and Hawaii.

Uh he worked in the areas of public works, public affairs, um, police.

He has experience with hurricanes.

He's experienced that, which we know is invaluable.

Um, and he's managed large communities, seventy thousand people in budgets of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Um he's very well spoken, very calm, very even keeled.

He he just came across as a as a steady hand.

And so um, that's one of the reasons he made, you know, my um top tier list.

Um his interview was um direct, he answered the questions.

Uh the question about um which was my question that I submitted was the situation have you ever been in a situation where the commission recommended one direction and you recommended another?

Uh commission took a different direction and you recommended another.

Um, he handled that question perfectly.

And actually most of the candidates did.

Mr.

Huttmacker, I was, I don't know if that's your experience, but I thought all of the candid candidates all almost all of them completely acknowledged right away.

Look, I can make recommendations professionally, but the commission makes the policy and we do what they what what they vote for, what the body votes for, and I thought that was very impressive to hear that from a lot of the candidates.

Um yeah, I was just very impressed by him.

I thought he was the perfect fix.

Vice Mayor, I believe you did not vote for him.

Do you have anything to add?

I don't.

Um, I thought he was articulate and brings a lot to our table, but I'm looking at the list of candidates we have now, and I wouldn't add him as another person.

Commissioner Batti, do you have anything to add?

Okay.

Not really.

I didn't mean um I said I was impressed by his uh military background and um I think he was a military police, if I believe.

Um something about garrison process or something.

No, what what is that exactly?

You know.

If I I I remember you know hearing that like a number of times.

I talked about garrison and Garrison is sort of like a large military base.

So it's like a small city.

Okay.

Okay.

We don't have that here.

Yeah.

Unless you're going to pass a policy, ma'am.

I think that would be very interesting.

Yeah, so I was impressed with his uh military, you know, service and military background.

Um he spoke extensively about that and how uh helps um shape his uh governing you know of where he is or what have you.

So but did you were you impressed enough to add him to the list?

Uh no, I mean he he didn't make my list not because of anything in particular or whatever, it's just that chose other candidates or whatever.

Thank you.

Uh your next one.

How about Commissioner Alpert?

She's well she she's she voted for him.

So she won't make a difference.

Yes.

He he was on my first list of six.

It's listed twice, so shows my vote.

So I just wanted to see if she had anything to add to advocate for him.

Yeah.

Um he was on your first year.

He was on my first list of six.

Um yeah, I just thought he had uh a lot of experience and um the gravitas and uh you know would make a uh a good and thorough city manager.

So thank you.

You had Randy Robertson you wanted to talk about.

I had Randy Robertson as well.

Um he let me get to his um he applied the first go-around uh and then reapplied again.

Uh he's a member of the ICMA.

Um he uh dealt with a number of cities, but he was also in in Alaska, which also had their fair share of environmental and emergency challenges.

Um and so he's got experience there.

He also has experience with growth.

I was very impressed with him talking about active listening and how important listening is when you're a city manager.

Um sometimes the position you f you get put in as a city manager, you feel like you have to act and do more than listen.

And I really appreciate that approach of him talking up about being a very active um uh listener.

And so he's got a lot of experience, chief of staff, um city manager, uh dealing with you know emergencies, being in Alaska, and so I felt that he would bring a lot to the table and including experience with with what the city is going through right now.

Um I was very impressed with him as well.

Commissioner Alpert, you did not list him.

Um only because he was on my you know, one star ones that I had I had planned to list.

I was very impressed with him as well.

He's got a master's in public administration plus other multiple graduate degrees, which I thought was pretty impressive.

Um at Johns Hopkins, he had the opportunity to work on Harbor Place.

Um he's got a graduate degree in education and health care administration, went to the war college, went to Harvard for a program for senior government officials.

Um he's a member of ICMA, he has FEMA emergency management uh experience.

Uh uh he's been with the NSA, so I mean he he has a really really broad um background.

So I mean I I I I thought he was good, but in you know, trying to narrow down my list, I you know, went with uh some of the other people.

Okay, thank you.

Commissioner Vice Mayor.

Thank you.

Uh he was in my group one for all the reasons Commissioner Alpert just said.

Um I have nothing more to add.

I mean, my vote is yes for him now, so it wouldn't change the rankings in any way.

But I think he's a very strong candidate.

Um would encourage somebody to change their vote.

Yeah, I thought oh, I just didn't include him because there's trying to narrow it down.

Yeah.

I would change one of our looks like him.

I mean but that makes us tonight.

So but we can we can whittle we can talk about the totality of the list later, right?

I mean, oh no.

Again, you know, just you know, trying to recall.

I mean, I think you spoke a lot about uh where he is sea level rise, and we're talking about glaciers and and and so on.

And um and if I can recollect I may have had him in my first round the first time that we would we were you know um talking and speaking about this.

So I mean I would have no problem like you know putting him uh voting for him as well and whatnot.

So you know if that's the case, then I mean he would have like four, I think.

Four.

So that's so that would bring us up to another.

Well, right now he only has two.

Oh, he has two commissioner.

Commissioner Albert Chance.

So you you too with the add him without deleting anybody, so we now have ten people on the list.

Correct.

Okay, well, we'll whittle it down.

Okay, we do whittle it down.

So let's keep this in order.

So commit um, well, I would also like to speak over.

Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry about that.

I mean, he was I mean, most of the candidates were impressive.

He did not impress me as much as quite a few of the others did.

I was disappointed that he couldn't be bothered dressing for the interview.

Almost everybody else dressed for the interview.

So are we so little respect for us that he didn't dress?

The other thing, yes, he's got a lot of advanced degrees, but he was in the military, and I believe the military does give you opportunities to get advanced degrees.

So uh I would not say, oh yeah, he's got all this education.

He's and his background is urban planning, which is very nice, but I keep coming to the individuals who have focused on one or two areas.

When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

So that with somebody with limited experience, they're gonna be very useful in that area, but maybe not as concerned about the other issues that we need attention to.

Uh again, small municipality experience and then looking at the related articles.

He was last asked to leave in a couple of opportunities.

So that's why I would not add him to our top ten at this point.

So I'm I'm not gonna add him for myself, but I mean, obviously, you guys can switch your choices to add him.

Okay.

So Commissioner uh Betty?

Yeah, I have no problem.

Okay, so he's up at the fours.

Okay, so Commissioner Batti is committed to adding and then Commissioner Alpert.

Okay.

So that will give Mr.

Randy Roberson four.

Okay.

Okay.

Is um who is my last one?

It was uh Menard.

Stephen Menard.

Um let me get to him.

Uh again, very, very impressed.

Uh, my head was spinning uh during the interview.

Um he has a lot of international experience.

He's dealt with a lot of budgeting issues, um, and very high profile things.

He's dealt with a lot of um uh having to implement and uh do problem solving, team building.

He's worked a lot with coastal management.

Um he's uh worked a lot in infrastructure and sewer systems, program operations.

Uh he worked with NOAA.

Um he lives currently in St.

Augustine, so he's in Florida.

Um and he has uh he was very excited about um being here with um in Sarasota and uh bringing his skills to help us with our issues of growth.

He was a Peace Corps volunteer.

Um he got a master's degree in GIS, again, urban planning.

He's got a lot of experience with Greenways pathways.

He's a Fulbright scholar.

Um he's done a lot with coastal issues having to do with sea level rise and adaptation.

He gave some examples about using pervious uh materials and looking at the um sea level rise and and all of those issues and uh in the entire community as it develops, not just in certain areas.

I want to say um he's got a lot of experience because he was overseas a lot dealing with diversity, diversity of age, diversity of background, diversity of education, diversity of culture.

That is a lot.

That goes a long way when you walk in a room where you have diversity and somebody feels comfortable dealing with a variety of our community members on a very uh equal playing field when they're willing to listen and take everybody's um thoughts into consideration.

Um he's done a lot of emergency management work and um dealt with a lot of crisis situations, again, around the world on different stages.

Um and I I realize that there are things in place to make that implementation easier, but it's still experience in emergency management.

It's still experience in dealing with crises.

And I hope we don't have any, but should we, you know, he would be a a seasoned person to guide us and and and advise us in in that area.

So I felt very strongly about him as well.

And uh there you go.

Okay, uh Vice Mayor, you did not put him on your list.

Um I did not.

I thought he had very strong analytical skills, good management experience in a variety of sectors, but I didn't see him as the next city manager in Sarasota.

Thank you.

Commissioner Albert.

Um I loved him a lot.

Um and just was i it was breaking my heart because he obviously worked for USAID and lost his job doing it.

And um they lost a really good a really got look good person who I think is got a lot of potential.

Um, but I don't uh I I think he's overqualified.

It's uh you know he's got skills that I think are gonna take him very far, and I don't think this is the right position for him.

I thought I saw that you put you voted for him, I thought did I misread?

Yeah, you it says here you voted for him.

Yeah, I I liked him a lot.

Okay.

You know, if I had to narrow it down.

Um I did it was like you locked up the reluctantly.

I um said, okay.

And and um, you know, and and I think after all these experiences he's had, this is probably a little less not not enough of a challenge.

Sorry about that.

I know it's a challenge, but so and Commissioner Batti, you did not sub put him on your list.

Yeah, but no no you know reason except you know, we're just trying to narrow this down or whatever, but you know, I was impressed with uh with his you know wealth of experience and and I do recall him saying that he lives in St.

You know, St.

Augustine or what have you right here in Florida and working with Noah, he mentioned that quite a bit.

Yep.

Um but like I said, uh you know, one way or the other, no real reason why I did or I didn't put him on my list.

So we are not going to add him to our uh so we're at 10 right now.

Um and I think nine.

Oh no, we just added one five, six, seven, two, nine, ten.

So reason Carl Gefkin is crossed off, no?

He's got a few.

Yeah, he is off.

He's all so how many how many fours and how many fives.

Who else?

Okay, I'll go through the list of the things.

Go through the list again because I only have to.

And would you announce the number of tally each person?

Okay.

Five votes, Harry Black, Chris Rodriguez, four votes, Kamar Brown, Troy Anderson, Randy Roberson.

Three votes.

Robertson.

Robertson.

I'm sorry, Robertson, sorry.

We do have everybody town.

Sorry.

Three votes.

Tim Gleason, Peter Scalero, Carrie Freeling, Emily LaCroix, and Tony Tony Palermo.

Tony.

It's not our Palermo coming out our Palermo.

Okay.

Like the city.

Yeah.

So yeah, the Vice Mayor wanted to say something, and then after that, I was going to turn it over to Warren because he has some suggestions on next step.

How they're going to do that.

Right.

And this is in consideration of the next step too.

Remember, Commissioners, it takes four votes to hire.

So right now we have one, two, three, four, five candidates who have four or five votes.

That's all I'm going to say.

Okay.

But what I was going to tell Warren later, but I'll mention it now since uh the vice mayor brought it up.

Something to communicate to everybody who is on our finalist list when we get to it.

I think each of us has raised people up and and lowered them as we got new information during the process.

So just because somebody has five votes now or four votes now, once they come to Sarasota, we talk to them, they talk to staff, they talk to the community.

They may move on our list.

And I hope that you will communicate that to whoever are our finalists.

So I was going to say that once you all get to the finalist list, it's it's an unranked group.

So they come in and everybody's considered a candidate.

And the well is a good time for me to make my suggestion.

Right.

And yeah, because yeah, this is the time for you to make your suggestion, but I was also going to recommend against doing a ranked vote by us because Florida government in the sunshine, that ranking will be displayed to all of the candidates.

So I think it would be better if we just did the hash marks again, and they'd see the number that supported them, but they wouldn't see ranking.

Okay.

And again, I think the goal is to unless y'all change the where the goalpost is, you know, to get to a certain number of candidates and six was what y'all had come to last time.

And so I'm fine with any method that gets us there.

And the um so the two options I see are um one would be just to explain my uh point is on the rank choice is just to be able to get to six.

It doesn't really matter at the end of the day who's first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth.

And I understand they will see that and they make make a judgment.

I'll explain to the candidates that you know everybody's got an equal shot coming in.

Um that's why you're invited to come in for the finals, and it's what you make of it when you get here.

Um but that I think will help um be able to get down to the six that are the highest choices of the commissioners here.

The other way to do it is to um you know look at frequency.

Um that is to just yes or no.

And uh I don't know that you'll get it may take multiple attempts to sort of get down to six.

And so the fastest way to do it would be, in my opinion, the rank choice of just saying here's your ten folks on this list.

Um, rank your top six out of those.

And then for the person who gets you put number one on the list, they get six points.

If they're second, you got five points, and then you just add up the total amount of points, and then whoever has the the top six vote getters.

I like the idea I don't like the numbers.

I would go more with the way that ranked choice voting goes, so that if you have ranked choice voting, you know, you count who was the number ones, and you know, you drop off the people who are eliminated rather than say how many points number one is worth and how many points number two is worth.

But uh Commissioner Haney.

Yeah, I I I'm not comfortable whittling it down to six at this point.

We have their cover letter, their resume, and your interview.

We've had no personal interaction with them.

This is not a slight on you.

Um this is a new this is a new process for us.

I would love the opportunity, very much appreciate the opportunity to talk to them.

Um there are ten of them here.

It's a simple phone call we could make for ten minutes or twelve, whatever you want your phone call to be.

Zoom.

Zoom.

Um and then we can you know you'll get a feeling when you have a one-on-one conversation.

We got closer with the video than we were with the resumes.

That made all the difference in the world.

We've not spoken to any of these people who are potential candidates for our city manager.

Ten is not a big number to manage.

I would propose that we introduce somewhere between now and keeping our timeline that we all have an opportunity to call the those people that we would like to have a conversation with and then call a meeting and then do our ranking after that.

I I can't rank them going off of that.

We've got two.

We've got two things here.

I'd like Warren to tell everyone what he said to me during the morning break about the number of um Yeah.

So again, I think what uh what I had mentioned to the mayor was that there's a downside to having to inviting more than I know it's not what you're suggesting and what you're saying, so I'll preface that.

Um what I was saying to the mayor is that I really would like for us to keep it to six on who you invite um to Sarasota for a couple of reasons.

One is that typically in these type of searches where you have uh maybe a lesser pool of candidates, and you don't have a lot of good choices, which y'all have a lot of good choices here.

Um, you know, there'll be three to four that maybe Max you bring into town for the final interviews.

Um so six is a little larger number anyway than that by con for context.

But anything more than six, um I think is the candidates will look at it as I'm you know, one of eight or one of ten to take a two-day disruption to their life to come down and dedicate the time and effort and the prep work that's that put into the interview, then you know, have all your stuff made public is a lot to ask of the candidates.

And so um when there's ten of them, I think you'll get a reaction from some of them just saying, uh you know, I'm not gonna bother coming down if I'm one of ten, you know, my chances are you know, it's a it's a more of a risk than when you come down, you're one of six.

You knew that going in, you know, because that's what y'all had talked about already as a number.

I think it's a reasonable, it's still a high number in my mind, but it's reasonable that somebody would say I'll take my chances if I'm one of six.

Um so it's a lot to ask of ten people to uh cover or eight or whatever the number is.

I know that's not what you were suggesting.

It's not.

You're talking about intermediate intermediary step, but that would be my opinion.

I think that y'all are gonna have to make the the tough choice at some point, whether today or whenever you choose, but you've got to get it down to six, and some of that's just gonna be those people that you like that you may not they may not make it because they're not as good as or not in your mind as good as someone else.

For the record, I'm okay with inviting six people here, but to get to those six today, right here today, I'm not comfortable with that.

Uh Commissioner Batti, I interrupt.

Oh no, no.

I'll I was uh thank you, Mayor.

I was going to suggest myself.

Um I think we did a great job narrowing it down from the what, 40 or so down to 10.

I do too.

And I have no problem if we just add a step, and that is to talk to these people via Zoom.

10, 15 minutes, you know, a person or whatever.

And then from there get to the six.

And and then make them make a move from from there.

You know, I um I mean I think we did a great job, we know, get into where we are right now.

You know, everyone, you know, seems like there's a consensus on the the people that we've chosen, you know, from uh five.

I mean we what what we have like uh yeah, we have two fives, no, uh two uh three fours, and then the rest rest threes and whatnot, you know, and we just you know go for the uh I I I just myself would just like to speak to these people.

Um ask them my own questions and and uh get a I just get a better sense and a better feel for them or um just talking to them myself.

Just as we did, as I said, with the process for the um downtown master plan.

Uh-oh, or what have you, you know.

So um, that was the think about what we did with with that.

We couldn't narrow it down to the five to seven that we end up with ended up with 13 people.

13 people.

So I think if we if we go with this 10, speak to them, whether they're down to six, then we can invite six, you know, to to to uh the city of Sarasota and go from there.

That's just my again, what I know.

Vice Mayor?

So I'm gonna repeat what I said earlier.

It takes four votes to hire.

Um and we have one, two, three, four, five candidates who have four or more votes.

Unless somebody who didn't vote for one of the candidates who currently has three votes, that person won't get hired.

So why don't we just go with the five candidates who have four or more votes?

Because people can change their mind.

We did that already today at this table.

And we can change our mind.

As you learn new information, we can change our mind.

Warren?

Yeah, trying really hard not to insert myself into y'all's discussions, but the I think the other thing, when y'all went through that process of windowing down, you know, some folks voted for 11 or 12 people, some you know went with the six.

And so I don't know that that's a real accurate process.

That's why I want to, if we took this list of ten and then redid the sort of voting sort of forcing scarcity, um, we'll give you a better idea of where you sit and the is there a large separation.

I think there will be a large separation between um you know the candidate pool when you get down to it.

I think there's some fringe folks potentially on there.

And going through that process as a group, y'all will be able to kind of see what the details are.

If you still decide, you know that somebody really you want to talk to them one more time before you can decide that's fine.

But I I think you probably can get there.

And Commissioner Albert.

Yeah.

Um, you know, I I wouldn't want to just go with uh who had got ha got four and five votes here because um I added votes just to add them to the list.

I would remove that if we were gonna go with that.

So I'd you know as as Warren said, I think um, some people we included or didn't include because we were trying to narrow it down.

So I I think to do the rank choice voting will help us to narrow it even further.

I don't feel like um necessarily uh a quick phone interview is going to um help me decide more than I did watching the videos.

Well, and I I have to say that I'm a little bit concerned with the interviewing by one or more commissioners at this point because I'm worried that the hot buttons that a particular commissioner expresses in the questions may mislead the candidates as to thinking those are the important things in the city where some of the others commissioners would be more interested in other things, because I to some extent I think I saw that maybe from the interviewers having influenced some of the candidates as to some things that really were not as important to Sarasota particularly.

I I have a question though, in terms of the say the the tally at this point.

Rather than ranked choice, if we each voted for six individuals, would that coalesce into probably what would be the top?

Or or do you really think it's critical to do the rank choice?

Um I d I don't know that I have a strong opinion on either one because I think the um what I'm trying to I just want to get to a point where as a group you've identified which of the six that you most want to talk to, and that's gonna require some hard choices to make.

Um so I think that approach would work to get to that end goal, I think, until I see how the numbers turn out.

You may have to redo it as a r as a ranking later if you don't get there.

So um Commissioner Ahiri Koch was first.

Yeah, could have a lot of ties.

Yeah.

So what is is is what is I'm trying to understand what the problem is in us taking a pause and giving us a couple days to have a phone conversation, zoom with these ten people.

If you want to do it, great.

If you don't want to do it, that's fine.

It what is the problem with I think Commissioner Betis feels comfortable with that, I feel comfortable with that.

I feel comfortable with that.

Um and going forward with that.

If you don't want to call, then don't call.

But can we give our list and have this whittling down to six after we make a phone call and try to still keep on our schedule?

I don't understand what the problem is with trying to make a phone call and talking to these people because again, I have a very hard time.

We've never spoken to these folks.

And we're trying to whittle them down to a random number of six.

Is there a problem with us having a phone call with that?

Whoever chooses to?

Let me if I may ask Warren, how difficult was it to schedule the interviews?

Because I gathered from at least one of the interviews that it kept moving around because of weather and and you know the duties of the city manager.

So you know, what's the best outcome?

We've got difficult calendars ourselves, just each of us individually getting on the calendars of each of the ten candidates, how you know what kind of time frame is your perception that that would take.

Um it would be hard to answer because I don't know on each of these particular candidates as to um yeah, I mean typically you don't jump at the chance to help their chances so that I don't think that would be a big problem.

The uh if you were to do it.

Um, I think setting a deadline of you know has to be done by you you have your chance between now and this deadline, and then that's it.

And that was going to be my suggestion.

If if you if as a commission you decide you want to talk about or talk to the candidates, we would need you all to commit to a time frame and get it done.

And that's you know, well, I I mean I have to say we got the videos ten days ago, which is fabulous.

It took me 36 hours at the very least to go through them in a short period of time.

I did it.

We all did it.

This is the most important decision we make.

Having a phone conversation here is gonna take four hours.

It's not that big of a deal.

Commissioner Ahern Koch, may I make a suggestion that you make a motion that we can discuss and vote on.

Yeah.

Uh I believe you wanted to make a motion that we postpone.

No, I don't I don't want to I I what I'm hoping is that we can have a couple days to have a phone call.

And for those of us that want to reach out personally and call these people, instead of making this widowing this down to six today, have do it in two days or five out of sex.

But I don't know the details of that and my thing is we do this all the time with our boards.

You know, we have we have phone calls where we meet with people, they come to office and and and speak to us about getting on being on our boards, and you know, the mayor mentioned something about like you know uh maybe speaking to a candidate and you know, each commissioner have a question that might kind of, you know, I don't know, what did you say, influence or or was it that or or something to that regard?

Um my apologies.

No, no, you were not device.

Um and I just don't see what the big deal is about just talking to somebody via Zoom and when that, you know, for like 10, 15 minutes.

You know, I mean, or whatever it is.

I mean even when I was watching the videos, you know, I was like this, oh man, I wish I I could talk to that person.

I wish I could ask them you know a question or a couple of questions or whatever.

Well, I'm listening to them speak, and I'm like this.

Well, you ain't gonna get that here, you know, or something like that, you know.

Uh uh or it's not like what you think.

You know, so I would like to have like a conversation with someone for at least 10, 15 minutes, you know, to to get to get a feel of who that person is, and you know, not just by piece of paper or watching them on a video with someone else conducting the the the interview.

That's that's that's all I'm saying, or whatever.

And I think this number of 10 is not, you know, I just don't see it being that that that much of an issue or whatever, you know.

And I don't think it moves the goalposts at at all.

Agreed.

Vice Mayor.

Thank you.

And so we've had a lot of discussion about this.

The only thing we haven't had is a motion that we can vote on and then take action.

Are you willing to make a motion?

No, I'm not.

So I guess I can try to craft a motion.

A motion that we um postpone winning this list of ten candidates down right today to a date not too far in the future.

Um giving us the opportunity to arrange, if we choose Zoom or telephone interviews with the 10 candidates if possible.

Keeping on our timeline.

So you've been waiting for a second.

Go ahead.

A second.

Okay.

Can I clarify something real quick?

So in your motion, you're stating to not change our schedule or a timeline or because we would have to push back the 23rd and 24th.

No, I don't think we need to do that.

Okay.

All right.

But but speak to it.

Well, I guess the I guess when in the discussion the questions can be answered.

But you are your motion is that we not choose the semifinalists today, that I mean that the finalists today, that time be given to for commissioners to have Zoom or phone conversations with the 10 that is still on the list, and then some date soon we will narrow down to the finalists that will be invited to come to Sarasota.

Is that your motion?

And we we still have a motion on the table, so I don't want to continue to kind of sidebar here.

Um but it was Ms.

Rivers just made a good suggestion.

If we can commit to getting these interviews done this week, we can we can add it to the agenda on Monday.

Yes.

Good idea.

Well can we have discussion on the motion?

Um discussion on the motion.

Is there any problem with if this motion passes some commissioners opting in to the phone or Zoom conversation with any or all of the remaining ten and other commissioners opting out?

I don't have an issue with that.

Okay.

Um I was asking Mr.

Hutmack.

Oh.

And the attorney.

I'll let Ward go on.

Yeah, so uh I think the issue is that as a commission, you're making a vote at some point of getting down to a certain number of folks you want to invite to come down here.

How you get to that decision is up to y'all how to do it.

So I don't think there's a I mean I'll defer to Joe, but I don't think there's necessarily a legal reason you can't, whatever it takes to get to that decision, you should do it.

And so if you know a majority of y'all feel like you can make the decision now, then you know you can.

And if you don't, then you need some extra steps to do so as a majority of y'all, then I don't see that as a um you know something you can't do.

I think it's unusual for sure.

Um and then I think the question I would ask yourselves is what are you gonna do with the information that you're able to gather with that?

And do you think that that necessarily may change somebody else's mind that right now does not want to interview that person?

I think that's just for y'all to discuss, but it's not necessarily a yeah, yes or no answer.

Thank you.

And Mr.

Polzak?

Yeah, you know, ideally everybody's making their decision from an equal position.

You know, having equally reviewed the the same information.

Um I don't know that it's a legal issue per se, but it you would have commissioners in different positions of information.

I don't know that's an ideal situation.

Speak to it.

Um I uh you I was gonna let uh make a I guess you're up on the list and then Commissioner Alpha.

Yes, you see.

Yeah, yeah, the second one.

Sure, I'll speak to it.

Um I would find this incredibly valuable in helping me form my decision.

Uh if I garnered anything, I would share it with you at the table like I do at any other meeting that if if we garner something, if we go to a neighborhood workshop or we read a any material that was submitted and we need to share it with the others, I would do that like I do always with anything if I learned anything that helped me form my decision, which I hope I will.

Um it's like anything where we are presented with a packet of information.

Um, to have access, and we all we all um interpret that access differently.

We all have access to the same thing.

We all have access to call them.

So it's not like some have access and some don't.

We all have access to call them.

What you choose to do with that information, whether you read your full thing or you don't, that's up to you.

That's up to the commissioners.

So the the point being, in my opinion, that making sure all commissioners have access to calling or zooming with these candidates, that puts us all in this a level playing field.

And I don't have an issue with with that at all.

If other commissioners don't choose to do it and their mind is made up, that's their prerogative.

Mine isn't.

And I put a lot of value in this interpersonal relationship, this conversation that I'm going to have with a potential future manager.

I put a lot on that.

How they talk to people and interact with them is incredibly valuable.

So I feel uncomfortable making this decision, this big of a decision without that opportunity.

And would appreciate supporting the mo the motion.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um let me get this straight.

So one of the issues, if I'm hearing correctly, is that if in our interview process, or we're speaking to each candidate individually, that somebody may come by more information than the rest of the commission.

Is that what I heard?

I don't have an I mean everybody has access to the same information.

Exactly.

I mean, you know, like I'm listening to uh you know one of the candidates talking, you know, when you asked them about what they would like to accomplish in their first 90 days or whatever.

And one of one of the gentlemen, you know, said uh that you know he's he's big on meeting with every employee of the city, you know, and w or what have you.

So just taking that into account, I don't understand why we can't meet with and speak and via Zoom with just 10 people or whatever.

When we went through the again, and I and I go back to this with the with the process of electing the ad hoc committee, you know, for the downtown master plan, which was which was crazy.

We each of us met with close to 40 people, you know what I mean, in in 109 individually, or what have you, to narrow that 40 down to 13.

It was it was not that you know big of an issue for us to just go ahead and do that, you know, um and move forward with it.

So I don't see why this should be an issue of just speaking the the 10 people that to narrow it down to to six and whatnot.

I mean that's and and I mean I don't understand how anybody would not want to speak to someone to you know I mean to get a uh a feel for that individual.

Because right now we have what, two fives, uh three fours and uh in the rest threes.

If you take that ten, you know what, some of those threes can move up, you know what I mean, and replace out of the fives or the fours, or uh, or whatever.

If you speak if you speak to them in uh in and have a a great interview with them or whatever, I mean we all could come away with the same, you know, person or whatever, and be like, hey man, that's that's our guy, or that's our woman, you know, or whatever.

And and all is well with the world.

So I just don't see what what the what why is that big of an issue and whatnot.

I mean, but uh I'll I'll go with whatever the the commission commissioner Albert.

Well my my feeling on the subject um again is I don't think it's um I don't think it's that useful.

Um we voted on a procedure and now we're changing our procedure.

But that being said, um if it is limited to this week and we narrow them on Monday, we don't have another meeting.

Um I will go along with it, although I I I just uh I don't I don't agree with it.

And I think it's a bad idea.

I think that probably three of us are have are ready to narrow down to six individuals.

I see that we have three choices.

One would be that today we narrow it down to six people, recognizing that in less than two weeks, they all will be here and we will interview them one-on-one in person.

The other option is to stick with the ten and in and invite all ten of them down in two weeks to talk to them one-on-one, or vote to support this motion, in which case I am really confident that the process will get delayed somewhat.

Probably will confuse some of the candidates because some of us will talk to them and some of us won't.

So I would if Commissioner Ahern Koch and Commissioner Batti can not narrow down to six today.

Can I mention something mayor?

Thank you, Mayor.

So, like right now, again, we have two fives, three fours, and then the rest threes.

So if we just did that, then why not just take the fives and the fours?

You know, I mean, the this is pretty much almost a consensus, and then just vote on the threes on who's going to be the sixth person on what not.

You know?

I mean this is like I mean, we've all pretty much voted for the same two people in the in the fives.

We've all pretty much voted for the same, you know, three people in the fours.

And then there are two of us that didn't vote for uh the rest of the threes.

I mean, I you know, if we if that's if that's the route that we're going to go where we got to get down to six.

I mean I just don't understand, you know, why even go through the whole process of even selecting all five of us for Mr.

Harry Black, all five of us for Mr.

Chris Rodriguez, four of us for Ms.

Kimar Brown and uh whatever uh Mr.

Troy Anderson and uh Mr.

Robert Mr.

Andrew Robinson for for the fours, and then we have you know the rest uh threes or what have you.

I mean I don't understand I don't understand.

So should we just go that route and just stick with the fours and the fives and then just vote?

Yes, that's the one.

That's a separate separate.

Yeah, I'll just say it right right now.

Let's make sure we're listening to more.

Well, um I mean I'm okay with the motion that we're we're talking about, but also the people that are saying they're not sure whether they're going to support it and so on.

So I'm just trying to get some understanding as Vice Mayor, but thank you.

Um I don't want it to be construed, and I want it on the record that I was inquiring about the process, not that any commissioner would end up having more or different information from any other commissioner.

I was inquiring about the process only.

Okay, um I want to speak to the motion one more time.

Well, Commissioner Alpert is next.

Um I you know, if we were gonna go with uh what Commissioner Batti is suggesting they take my vote away from one person.

I I think we should just do rank choice voting and today and see where it comes out.

But we we have a motion on the floor.

I know.

So as I said, that we had voted on our process and in looking at the process and realizing uh people are going to be coming in February 23rd and 24th to then wait till next Monday kind of makes it hard for them to you know to make the the plans to be gone.

So I think that that definitely is an issue for me.

So um, you know, in light of uh considering that I'm not gonna support it.

Um mayor uh we we need to get to a vote, but I think um we have five minutes.

He wanted to say something.

No, I'm good with the recording.

Okay, all right.

Commissioner Ahern Koch.

Yeah, um, I just wanted to say for your concerns, May, if we the motion passes, we can make these phone calls.

It will not take it would take three and a half hours.

Three and a half hours to talk to these people, and if we commit to making the choice on Monday, we still keep on our schedule.

Um it allows the ability for some of us to get more information on literally the most important decision we make.

Speaking to what Commissioner A.

Kotch said, we've already you've already published the agenda next Tuesday.

Would we be able to vote on the finalists on Tuesday?

Yes, we can do a change to order today and add it.

Okay, so it's not too late to do that.

And then yeah.

I I just have to agree with uh Commissioner Albert that asking, you know, keeping these people on hold for another week and letting them know on Tuesday, oh yes, and we need you first thing Monday morning to be here for interviews.

Um I think there's a risk that's in just on timing from that standpoint, like uh two of your candidates are that on this list now are finalists for another job, and that they're they're further along than we are, and so that you know makes me nervous because I just want y'all to have as many candidates as you can have too.

Okay, the another suggestion.

Well, let me let you all vote and I'll start with the question.

Yeah, I'll just discuss it.

I call the question.

Motion fails.

Motion fails, three to two.

With three opposed.

So um we are going to narrow it down today.

Um should and and you can give us your advice.

I'm confused as to whether or not we're going to do ranked choice of six people, ranked choice of ten people.

What is your suggestion?

I think the the two options to consider are one is we've got this list on the screen here, that of the ten folks, and then the two choices are you all either pick six of them or you rank order them six of them.

I think it would accomplish the same thing because you're we're requiring scarcity, either way, and that you can't vote for all ten.

And so as long as you're limited to picking six, your top six, it doesn't really matter to me what order it is.

I'd say go that strategy first.

If that doesn't yield the result, then you move on to a um you know ranking them by number so that you can get the separation you need to be able to get to six.

The other um I'll leave it at that.

Okay.

Mayor I have a motion.

Uh okay.

I move that we using the scoring sheet we have in front of us, each commissioner vote for a total of six applicants.

Second.

Without rank ordering the motion by the Vice Mayor, seconded by Commissioner Albert, that we choose six without ranked choice vote.

Oh, then I don't second that.

Oh.

I wanted the ranked choice.

Oh, she wanted the ranked choice.

And by ranked choice, let me just make sure, because there's a couple different elements to that.

And so what I would be suggesting is that you mark six candidates one through six, with one being the one that you like the best to next best until you get to six.

Um and then tally the scores from that as opposed to just a check mark for the case.

No, because otherwise we'll be back to where we are.

Okay.

Um can you give me five minutes?

I need to make some more copies then.

Okay.

Well, yeah.

Yeah, I was I was going to be said if anybody had an extra, then we could start voting while you're making copies.

Because I I think actually we can do it just verbally for transparency and somebody don't take.

Ah, okay.

I have one more.

And um I think um the motion I made didn't receive the second.

Right, it did not reach the second.

So we need a so I'm I move that uh we choose uh each commissioner vote for six candidates using rank choice voting in order to narrow the field.

I'll second.

Can you repeat that?

My apologies, I was talking to you.

I can repeat it for sure.

That um Commissioner Alpert moved and the Vice Mayor seconded that we each vote for six individuals in a ranked choice manner.

With the if um just to make real clarity says you do your scores, one being the top ranked person, two being the second rank and on and on and on.

Okay.

Can I make a friendly amendment?

Do we have a second first?

Oh, yeah, we have a second.

Okay, I was a friendly amendment.

Um could we do seven candidates instead of six?

No.

If we if we if it things don't narrow down after six, then we can discuss another way of but there will be the ranked choice voting comes to a solution.

Unless you have a tie.

Maybe.

Yeah.

I can't do that kind of math in my head right now, but that you might have a tie.

So um we uh copies.

I I wanted to make sure we work.

No.

Okay.

So we have a motion.

We have a motion to do ranked choice voting with six votes.

Um had enough discussion.

Okay, let's vote.

I oh no vote vote vote of buttons.

Commissioner Albert.

Oh.

I was voting.

Not voting.

And it pet motion passes four to one.

Thank you.

So we are voting ranked choice.

Uh I'm gonna pass out some more forms.

I'll want one just because I'll make a mistake on the one.

Thank you.

Oh, show.

Sorry, thank you very much.

Uh five minute recess for us to do our voting and thank you.

Thank you.

The special city commission meeting is back in session, and City Attorney Joe Polzak would like to make a comment.

Thank you, Mary.

Just for the record, uh, just to be clear, so what we're gonna do is each commissioner is gonna vote verbally on the record as we decide as far as a process, their rank order.

Sheila and I will compile that, put it up on the Elmo for public viewing, but all the voting will be occurring now individually on the record bit verbally.

Okay, thank you.

And whatever notes you made are just for that purpose, your vote will be reflected verbally.

And and would you like to call on the next person to vote, or do you want me to know you can't have at it?

Okay, I'm gonna do it alphabetical order, and I guess that's Commissioner Aher and Coach goes first.

Okay, so number one, uh Kamar Brown.

Number two, Harry Black.

Number three, Chris Rodriguez, number four, Troy Anderson, number five, Peter Sculera, and number six, Randy Robertson.

Okay.

Uh Commissioner Alper.

Okay.

Um is Emily LeGroux.

Oh, my thing.

Number two, Troy Anderson.

Number three, Tim Gleason.

Could you be a little louder?

Thank you.

Number three, Tim Gleason.

Did you get one and two?

Yes.

Okay, one is Emily LeCrow.

Two is Troy Anderson.

Okay.

Commissioner Batti.

That is uh Harry Black One.

Joy Anderson, four.

Um, Randy Robinson five.

And uh I have uh Emil uh LeGro six.

Um sorry, uh carrying it.

And uh Vice Mayor.

Thank you.

Harry Black, one Tim Gleason, two.

Chris Rodriguez, three.

And Tim Gleason, number six.

Okay.

Do we want to put that up a couple of reasons?

Okay.

I'm going to put this on that.

I just wanted to bring something, you know, because I had Chris Rodriguez on the list, but when during the five-minute break that we took, I looked at some of the related articles and took him out.

I don't know if you want to look at them and the domestic violence.

But I looked at them and uh discounted them.

Okay.

Um this is the list that I have as of right now.

Please verify that you are good with numbers I have for everyone.

Let's see.

Make sure she has what you voted.

Wait a minute.

I want to look at this.

If you can read my hand right.

Who was that?

Go ahead and over.

Oh, yeah.

Um sorry, Mayor Massby.

Massy.

Oh, yes.

I just wanted to ask uh Commissioner Albert, you know, what she was talking about.

You you said some articles for someone.

Where he was um accused of domestic violence.

And who is this?

Twice.

Chris Rodriguez.

Uh thank you.

And you said you discounted them, Mayor?

Yeah, the the first one was quite a few years ago, and it's unknown who called the police because both members of the couple said no, it's it's you know an argument.

Um then several years later, after they were no longer married, uh he came into her house.

But we don't know the story about it.

I mean, that would be something that the search firm normally would have found out, and they will be finding out now.

We did we did include that in the links to the stories that we asked about it during the interview as well, so it's on the video and in the links, so it's not an unknown issue.

Yeah.

And they were, you know, each of the candidates really did have something questionable.

Yeah.

So that's not true.

They didn't each have something.

Well, depending, I mean, depends on your frame of reference.

You know, being asked to leave your job multiple times.

Right, that's you know, but not everybody had stuff like that, is what I'm saying.

One person said.

My kids say I'm so boring.

Yeah.

There were never.

There were quite a few that had nothing in their history.

Okay, it's cold.

Yeah, no, it's getting a little bit more.

Sorry, we're tattling tallying, making sure we have it all right.

How about tally though?

The temperature up in here.

Take care of that.

Yes.

You all can do that remote, right?

He's doing it from his phone.

What do you have?

Do you have numbers?

Do you have to do that?

And here comes Lori with her numbers.

So for the record, we're just all scorekeeping and triple redundancy to make sure we're accurately.

Okay.

Okay, so this is the reading.

So I think at this point we're waiting to see between Tim Gleason, Peter Scalera, and Carrie Freeling.

Which two get kept?

Yeah.

Yes, I have the same thing.

But I haven't ordered them yet.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

So in this, the ranking is the number, and in the parentheses is the amount of points for each ranking.

Perfect.

Okay.

So shall I read read that off into the record on the record, or are you going to read it into the record?

I can't, it doesn't matter if you will I can.

Sure, if you want.

Um we can go through starting with Harry Black.

He received a total of 26 points.

If you would like for me to read the rankings, is up, you know, how would you like for me to do it?

You just want me to do total points, Mayor.

Just do total points.

Are you okay with just total points?

Well, is yeah, see, I I even started it.

I think it would be valuable to say how many people put that person on the list.

Oh, okay.

Oh, okay.

I didn't break it down.

Okay.

Okay.

Um so I uh you want me to read it.

Um Harry Black got five people listed him, and he had a total of twenty-six um ranked choice votes.

Chris Rodriguez was listed by four people, and he had a sixteen ranked choice votes.

Kamar Brown got listed by four people, and she had sixteen ranked choice votes.

Troy Anderson got listed by four people, and he had fourteen ranked choice votes.

Uh the next person is Tim Gleason, who got listed by three people, and he had 10 ranked choice votes, and Carrie Freeling got listed by three people with seven ranked choice votes.

Um that's your six.

And those those are do we need a motion to say to the six, just the six names?

Yeah.

A motion that these six individuals be move forward as our finalists.

So move.

Second.

Oh, second.

Move by the vice mayor, seconded by Commissioner Batti that those names, Harry Black, Chris Rodigas, Kamar Brown, Troy Anderson, Tim Gleason, and Carrie Freeling are the finalists for our uh city manager search.

And we will be inviting them down to Sarasota February 23rd and 24.

Correct.

Yay.

Okay.

All right.

Let's vote.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that was a motion.

Yeah, you want to discuss?

I'm sorry.

Motion on the floor.

Let's discuss.

Do we need to discuss?

Um as maker of the motion, I to me we've said it all.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh again.

You know, I wish we could have picked all 40.

But no.

But uh, but thank you.

Uh you know, Ms.

I can't put that for the first one.

Warren.

Thank you.

Thank you, Warren.

I think you did a great job of narrowing this down for us and uh helping us select you know our uh six finalists and uh thank the commission for for their work.

And I'll city all there and clerk and and city attorney for the work, extensive work that you all did to try and make this uh make this happen.

Like I said, this is a very important uh decision by the commission, you know, to select or narrow now.

Mr.

Bullock and whatnot, I believe it's size 13 or whatever.

Um again, uh I'm okay with what it is we've done here today.

Does anybody else want to speak to the motion?

So shall we I do, Mayor?

Oh um.

Reiterating um Commissioner Bipti's thanks to uh Mr.

Hutmacher and company and our auditor and clerk and city attorney for guiding us.

This really is a difficult decision.

And we all make decisions in different ways.

So uh it's very interesting to see the process how we all choose to make decisions.

There's no right way or wrong way, but we are moving forward.

Okay.

Anyone else?

Call the question?

Question.

Vote?

Vote.

And it is unanimous that those are our six finalists.

I need all your papers to apply.

I need all your papers or just the final of the tallies.

Well, okay, well, you want our names on them though.

Yeah.

We can get that at the end, though.

Keep going there at the meeting.

So I mean it's gonna be hard to figure out.

At the end of the meeting, we will give you.

And you just want this final thing?

Yes.

Okay.

You have one more issue to bring up for your funding.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um so one thing that we I don't well actually we're it's related to the process for the uh phase three.

Is that what we're getting into now?

I guess we're maybe gotten lost a little bit shuffle here.

Okay, so when uh let me pull that up.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I'll work on that.

I'll weave it into that.

I had to do this.

And then we have discussion with Ms.

Ola.

Yeah, we we still have we uh our regular agenda items.

Okay, so we're talking about the schedule for right.

I don't know what I gotta pull it up.

I just want to make sure I'm pulling it up here.

So four-page uh handout.

Yeah, that we essentially concluded phase three according to plan.

Yes.

Okay.

So uh for what I wanted just to show y'all, and this was put together with the uh um assistance of the uh city auditor and clerk and the city attorney and their team, and so uh we put together a plan for the uh finalist interview schedule uh for the 23rd and for the uh twenty-fourth, and so it starts on um I may have got my pages mixed up here so that you page bottom of page two, phase four.

Okay.

And I my pages are out of order, I'm sorry.

There we go.

That makes more sense now.

Okay.

So if the the dates that we had proposed were uh on Monday and Tuesday, which is February 23rd and 24th, um and day one just taking you through this, although I know y'all can read, uh 9 a.m.

to 3 p.m.

on that first day one-on-one commissioner interviews, um, up to one hour per interview.

Um then the uh from three to four uh leadership team session with the candidates.

Um I think would be a consolidation of all of the all the candidates would meet with the leadership team at once.

Okay.

Um then the uh 530 to 8 uh public open house.

And so I do I hate to do this because I know we had talked about this, but it didn't strike me, so I just want to mention it is that if we can figure out the schedule and this shouldn't impact the commissioners, we just gotta look at the logistics.

I'd like to have the candidates be able to meet with the leadership team maybe in a shorter segment, but one-on-one.

I mean what one candidate at a time.

So I'll see if we can work that out schedule wise.

Yeah, we'll have to talk about that.

So we can we can focus here on the stuff that impacts the commission and we'll see if we can work out something for that.

I don't know if we have time for the question.

Well, let me make a suggestion.

There are five commissioners and six candidates, so there's always going to be one candidate who is not meeting with an in with the commissioner for a one-on-one interview, so couldn't they meet with the leadership team at that point?

So that makes too much sense.

It will work out.

We'll work out the logistics.

So I'll focus in on the stuff that impacts y'all directly.

On the uh public open house.

Yeah, public open house.

For some reason that's not on my calendar, which night.

It would be the uh on the 23rd.

It's the first day.

So Monday, February 23rd from 5.30 to 8.

Um it may not be finished.

It's just in the um handout here, but not on your calendars because this hadn't been decided determined full fully yet.

Warren is an interruption.

Uh Commissioner Batti has a question.

Yeah, I apologize.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um you mentioned something about uh two of the candidates, you know, being further along in the process uh looking for other positions in other municipalities.

What happens?

Should they, you know, in the meantime, take those positions or drop out of this process?

And then now we're so let's say they're on this list, whatever.

Now we're nowhere.

And if you were number seven on our list and we were told you're not a finalist, and then a week from now you're told, oh yeah, you want to be a finalist?

So how would you react?

Well, yeah, it exactly.

So that's what I'm saying.

So out of the six, if two of them you know take jobs, you know, somewhere else.

Yeah, I mean, we've already made a decision in those old.

I know I just I do I do want to say though that several candidates referenced that.

When they were questioning asked about their hires, they said, oh, you know, I hired this person and then they ended up by taking another job.

So I didn't even intend to hire that one, but that one turned out to be my best hire.

So it happens.

And and and and Warren is going through his list, but I also wanted to add in your experience, how many finalists usually are finalists?

I've seen in other searches where you have three finals.

Yeah, three three is the more normal number when you look at it like nationally, but um so I think you'd be okay if there's some attrition to the list.

Um ultimately, again, not complicate things, but y'all are meeting again next Monday, and if we come back to y'all and say, you know, all six Tuesday, you know, all six dropped out, you'll have a chance to add people back.

That'll be a good thing.

If you want to add somebody, you know that certainly y'all can do that if there's a majority, but we're not planning for it.

We're hoping all six, you know.

And I think they're all be excited to come here.

I didn't sense at all that anybody was sort of half in.

I think they're they're all in the search.

And you had a question at this stage of the discussion?

I do on during the public open house, 5 30 to 8 p.m.

on day one.

Could we give them a maximum number of minutes, like two candidates per f provide brief introductions up to X number of minutes?

We were going to do that anyway.

Oh, we were going to limit the presentation where they introduce themselves and then break out into the individual um session for the public to the trapdoor.

We don't want to make it too long either.

Right.

Yeah.

This is during the week.

People go to bed.

Um then after that attendees transition to breakout stations for smaller group engagement.

There'll be somebody there in the room moderating in case that's necessary.

Yeah, we're we have a whole lot of people helping with it.

Good.

I don't want to go into this without that.

Okay.

Okay.

Turn it back to Warren.

Okay.

Yeah, both excellent suggestions.

And it's we are going to have a person, there'll be a person with basically the candidate all through wherever they go and and all that to make sure that they are not left alone or you know, they get where they need to go, and um, and we'll have them in each of the breakout rooms for that event.

Um and I think two minutes is more than fair amount of time talk.

It's actually a long time.

Um then we'll have some event some informal mingling time on that.

Um then the what we're suggesting to y'all is that if the commission you know does attend the event, which is optional if y'all want to or not, um it would make sense for y'all to be there.

They remain separated to avoid is that we're gonna I guess for the sunshine laws, keep y'all separated from each other.

Please.

But we'll all be there to um we know what to do when uh so then on day two we're gonna do a a tour with all the candidates.

I'm fine with that, whether they'll all be together because that's it would be inefficient to do it differently.

Um and then we'll we'll coordinate what route and stuff like that, but we want them to see everything that we can get on for two hours so they have a full view of what's going on with the uh with the city.

Um then we've got the uh special call meeting for the finalist interviews, so the commission interviews each finalist as a group um up to one hour per finalist, meaning remains open-ended.

Um then so at the end of that uh you know, period where y'all have talked with each of them as a group, what we're recommending is just to do a feedback loop at the end of that um with the commission.

Um if there are um anyone else you want to invite to the feedback loop that makes sense for y'all, then you can do that at that time.

Um but ultimately it's a commission decision.

Um so I've seen it before where you know the chance to pause it.

The leader someone from the leadership team may, you know, want to weigh in on you know what they learned when they met with the group or something like that.

But I think we can we can also funnel some of that feedback back to y'all.

And also, mayor, just to note that you know, after this day, the day of the 24th, and after you all have your special meeting with the finalist, and you you know, kind of do loop around, discuss everything.

Our goal is to give you all a couple days and have a special meeting on Friday, the 27 to hopefully come to some sort of and so that's one of the questions that we have for y'all is that so there's sort of two two schools of thought with it.

One is on the at the conclusion of the uh meeting that y'all have with all the you do your interviews with every one of the candidates as a group.

Um a lot of times council is ready to go or commission's ready to go at that point and you all want to make a decision right then and there.

And then basically what you would do is just you know name a finalist and authorize the background check on the so the offer would be contingent on the background check, and then we would start with that one candidate.

If y'all decide, you know, this is a lot, it's kind of like in some cases when you go see ten houses in a day and you forget which one's which and you need some time to sort of process it, you can do that, and then the you'll have another meeting scheduled in case you need it for that purpose.

But I think in my experience, a lot of times y'all just decide right after that last interview, you're ready to make a decision.

Uh Commissioner Alpert.

Yeah, my my question is I wasn't quite understanding on day two uh February 24th, where it has from 11 to be determined.

Uh special city commission meeting finalist interviews, commission to interview with each finalist in a duly notice public meeting up to one hour per finalist.

So we'll be in an open meeting like this and each questioning one finalist at a time.

So they'll come in one and then the next and the next and the next.

Okay.

On that.

The uh clarification on the only challenge with it, and there's no way around it because it's Florida is the um, I well, I guess the qu the question I would have is just is it necessary is a question of necessary and also appropriate, but is it necessary to stream the interviews?

Yes.

But but they can be in a room where there's no you know you're told put your phone down.

Well, we we would hold them in room one twelve.

Like the the ones that are waiting, they will wait in a different role until their turn and they come in, they they're interviewed.

Well, is do you feel like that's the other one?

Well, we might be able to do the um we'll we'll figure out the schedule on where to put them on that.

But if I was just curious if it's possible not to stream it because you know one person watches the other person's interview, they're gonna have an advantage.

We'll get a lot of public.

Yeah, but I I would think there's some way to ask them to leave your phone at the door.

Well, I think we'll just I I just shame them and just say it's very poor taste if you do that.

And please don't maybe do.

You can always ask them if they watch the other interviews.

Be a test of character.

Um and and I did have well, I guess Commissioner Alpert asked my question on that.

Um, but I did have a concern, and I guess this is a follow-up on to my my belief is the reason to wait until Friday for the meeting to make the decision among ourselves is we're gonna get emails from the public with expressing their opinions, and it would not be right for us to move forward and make an offer before hearing public comments because we gave them an opportunity Monday night, so we ought to at least listen to what they have to say.

That's what I do.

Very good point.

Let's say it's an option for y'all.

I just seem to go both ways, and this is whatever y'all feel most comfortable with.

I guess my question I had, I guess is maybe for Sheila.

Um Monday evening, the public open house is at 5 30, and the leadership team session ends at 4.

What are we going to do about dinner for the candidates?

We already have something planned.

We could have food at the um public open house.

Okay.

So we already have planned out.

Commissioner.

Vice Mayor.

Thank you.

Um regarding day two, the 11 a.m.

special city commission meeting, interviews with each candidate.

Will commissioners have an assigned or chosen question that they ask the same question to each candidate.

How do we structure and provide guidance for the questions that are asked?

It's an excellent question.

And so what my recommendation will be, and Joe may disagree with me on this, but I would like to provide y'all with a question bank that's your security blanket, so that if you need questions, you know we have them for you to be able to go through.

And if you want to ask your own questions, you can.

And the the guidance is along as you can ask any question you want to any candidate, doesn't need to be the same in my opinion, as long as you don't ask any illegal questions.

And so asking them, you know, what church they want to join or um how old they are, or they're thinking of getting pregnant, those kind of things are you know, examples of things you can't ask.

But other than that, as long as it's a legal question, I don't have any um problem with it, you know, being open-ended on y'all's end, because I think there's certain candidates you're gonna want to ask certain questions to, and other ones that you want to ask different questions to, and I think that's fair.

Okay.

And they could also be related to their particular resume as well as instead of you know, if you want to be an animal, which animal would you want to be and why kind of questions.

Uh I don't know if y'all have an issue with that or not.

But I think it's just best practice questions that you're as a resource.

So we'll provide you with a bank so that you can use those if you want to, but if you have your own questions that you've developed, I have no problem with doing it.

Because again, the the point of the interview process is for y'all to determine through this two-day process who you think is the best fit for Sarasota.

And y'all are the just elected decision makers that need to make that decision.

So however you want to come to that decision, as long as it's not illegal, you should do that.

Commissioner Alfred.

Um I wouldn't be in favor of asking you know them all the same question because they're different.

They're different candidates.

Um you need to make sure that you know you want to ask that candidate what you want to know about them.

You know, so I think that would be um, you know, because I I I will say one of the problems I had with the video interviews was um I did think they asked all the same question, and sometimes I thought the interviewer, it wasn't you, Warren.

You were one of the you you were did a good interview.

I felt like um they didn't even listen to the answer of the person.

You know, it was like they just answered that question.

I was screaming at the interviewers because I thought it was just really not well done.

I'm sorry about that.

Well, yeah.

Thank you for that.

Uh Kathy is still on the board.

Okay.

Okay.

Um, yeah, I'd have one last thing I want to address with y'all is that it would be, I think, wholly appropriate and a good investment if when we make the invitations to the candidates that we allow them to bring a spouse, partner, whatever to the interview week week the two days that we're going to do this.

Um there is a little bit of an additional cost because they would need uh you know travel also.

But I think that what you want to occur is that the people are serious about the job.

They will bring a decision maker help I don't know how to phrase it, but somebody's a family decision.

It's a family decision, however their family is constructed, and that they should have the opportunity to go around and you know, we'll provide them with some resources of you know, here's some things to see when you're not you know in the mix of the interview process.

Here's a you know, list of realtors if you wanted to, you know, start to get an idea of what the housing market looks like.

We want to make it such that they're making an informed decision and that we don't get to the end of the process and they bail on you because they hadn't thought through housing or you know, they they made a decision on their own but didn't check with the rest of their family.

And so this is a I think a good opportunity.

I've done this before as a candidate, and um, you know, we're bringing my wife really helped because it's a family decision as to whether you're going to relocate to an area.

So I think it's an important investment on y'all's end.

Commissioner Harker?

Um yeah, I have a question about that.

Uh I I think it's a I think it's uh a valid point that it is a family decision.

I I don't know, is it the city's responsibility to be paying for it?

That's where I have a hang up on that.

I would say, you know, it's certainly a choice of judgment for y'all.

It would be it's it's a usual thing that's sort of expected on the candidate side that when that the city, if they make the invitation, is willing to pay for that at marginal cost associated with it.

Um we hope that the candidates you know use good judgment and how they um you know choose to, you know, meals or this and that, but um you know, then we would handle it by reimbursement if they do something silly.

May I ask if we've done that in the past?

This is my first city manager, so I am not aware of that.

I have no idea we have to look through.

And the last city manager was okay in the city.

Yeah.

Um I don't know.

I mean, we did the search with Tom Barrowin.

Um Bartalotta.

Um Tom Barwin, were you here when Tom Barwin was picked?

Um I wasn't here when he was picked, but I was, you know, I was here when he was city manager.

Yeah, me too, but I wasn't here when he was picked.

But I'm just curious if the city did that with Tom Barwin or with Bartalotta or with any of the others.

Um they didn't.

So I think it's something that should be done because I think the spouse is a big um a big part of the decision.

And you know, I remember when my first husband got recruited to work for a bank here in Sarasota, and we're living in Rockford, Illinois, and the bank brought both of us down for the entire weekend to talk with all the different people to see the area.

You know, it was a huge thing.

And I remember my ex-husman was like, I don't know if I want to take the job and I'm like, and I was the one that said, you're taking the job.

So I think that's a I think that's a good idea.

So I really think it's important for the spouse to be included.

And I I think that's a good point, but a bank is a profit organization and we're a city and a government organization, and I'm not so sure those what that's what we should be doing.

I'm not sure.

I don't know.

I'm just putting it out there that you know we we have to be careful with every penny we spend.

And I don't know if it's typical protocol for the city to do that.

I just don't know.

I'm I'm asking the question if we could look into it and see if it's a product part of the protocol or not.

And so I'm gonna ask Mr.

Hutmacher, is it common practice?

Municipality.

But for municipalities to invite potential city managers and their spouse.

I think if in a place where you're requiring residency, it is.

I guess the point.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I actually was going to add if Sarasota wasn't Sarasota and it was the armpit of the nation, we might not want the spouse.

But in the case of bringing the spouse here, the spouse was saying, we are moving to Sarasota do your utmost of this session.

Could do you think we could get I could get just some information on that personally?

I can find out the place.

The other commissioner don't want it, that's fine, but I would just like to know what we've done in the past, if the city has paid for that or not.

Okay.

Well, uh don't we need to make a decision about insight doesn't I guess I mean I think I think we did we just wasted over half a million dollars on a drawing for the Bobby Jones Clubhouse.

So I'm you know I think this is making a this is peanuts compared to that.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, I all right.

I I move that we um you know pay for the spouse to be able to come with the applicant uh for the job.

May I also mayor if you don't mind I mean Commissioner Thark, may I also add that you include an act to approve the proposed schedule as is with some suggested changes that we just talked about?

No?

You want to separate it?

Yeah, because I am Yeah, I'm okay with the schedule.

I'm uh I don't have any information to base the decision spending money.

No problem.

So I I don't have any backup material on the cost.

I don't know if it's part of our protocol.

I just don't know.

No, no problem.

So Commissioner Alpert moved that we the city pay for the spouse to accompany the finalist.

We are searching for a second.

I'll say that.

Okay.

And did we mean partner?

Oh partner.

Thank you, partner.

Yeah, of course.

Significant other or whatever.

Plus one.

Move by the Commissioner Albert, seconded by Commissioner Batti to for the city to pay for the finalists plus one when they come to Sarasota on the 23rd, 24th.

Any discussion?

Make her the motion.

No, I said what I was just gonna say we put them up in the two seconds.

Okay, motion passes four to one.

Thank you.

So did you finish the discussion of the schedule that we need to approve?

Yes.

Okay.

And just to note on that, Mayor, if I could.

Um phase five, then would the motion be phase five occur on uh February 27th?

Which is the special meeting.

Correct.

Right.

Okay.

So uh And to include the change to where um the mayor suggested to have um one-on-one sessions with the leadership and the candidate.

Maybe you brought that up, Mayor.

Right.

While while the while the candidates are meeting with the commissioners and the extra candidate can meet with the leadership.

Uh so we need a motion regarding approval of phase uh four and phase five.

Move approval of phases four and five with the changes that have been discussed during the meeting today.

Second.

Motion by the vice mayor, seconded by Commissioner Batti to approve phases four and five with the uh change discussed on page on phase four.

Um call the question, any discussion?

Call the question.

Okay.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you very much.

Um we have anything more that we need from Warren today?

Thank you all very much.

Look forward to seeing you on the 23rd.

War is trying to get out of here.

Once you strike goals, just get out.

Stop thinking.

And and I get I gather you are going to contact the um finalists and let them know.

We'll take care of all the logistics and then we'll work with the staff on the final final schedule the all the details to make sure everything goes perfectly smoothly on the 23rd and 24th.

So excited about it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Warren.

So do you two have anything to add before we move to the next agenda item?

No?

Okay.

So the final agenda item is the other matters and comments.

I would just say I think on behalf of Shayla and Warren too.

Kudos to the Commission.

You guys uh it was a difficult task today, and um I think you did a great job of following the process and completing a very difficult decision.

So thank you.

Thank you.

The Vice Mayor is very thank you, Warren.

Thank you, very much.

The Vice Mayor is very eager for her comment at the end.

Oh no, I don't have a comment.

Okay.

I was anxious to give Mr.

Bullock the opportunity to say what we stopped him from saying at the beginning of the meeting.

I'll try to remember what it was.

No, I'm kidding.

Hours ago.

Thank you.

The question was a recommendation that I would have for the commission uh for the interim um uh city manager between the time that I leave on March 6th until the new manager can start.

And after talking and discussing it with um everyone, including Pat and others, I'm going to recommend Jennifer Jorgensen to uh take that position and she's willing to do it.

And um I can if the commission is generally in agreement with that, I will spend the next month with her and Pat dumping as much information as I can uh on her and Pat will uh you know help to do that.

He you know, he he would remain in his current position.

Um and that that'll be really important because since I got here I've included him as the continuity on a whole range of issues.

So um that was that's my recommendation.

The ears were burning.

Wow, it is a burning.

Speaking of devil.

Yeah, oh careful don't say that.

No, she's wearing red.

She's wearing red.

Okay, yeah.

I mean okay, angels, angels, ages, angels, angels.

Angels, my bad.

So do we need a motion?

Yes.

Do we need discussion at this point?

Discussion motions.

I'll do a motion and then we can discuss it.

Um I move approval of appointing Jennifer Jorgensen as the interim city manager wants uh Mr.

Bullock uh leaves us on March 6th.

Racing for a second, I I believe the uh Commissioner Batchy seconded the motion.

Also, too, does that include um working with the city attorney to put together a contract?

There needs to be a contract.

So I guess so.

Yes, yes, that includes that.

Okay.

So I'm I'm not gonna repeat the motion.

So but the motion by Commissioner Alpert, seconded by Commissioner Batti.

Tied but I thought it was the Vice Mayor.

Um do we want discussion or do we want to simply vote?

Let's vote.

Okay.

So she can see it.

You see it all the way in the cold state.

And the motion is passes unanimously.

There you go.

Okay, congratulations.

I don't know if that's uh okay.

Um do we want to spend some more time today and do uh usual end of the meeting uh comments or can we say that for Tuesday?

Yeah.

But uh mayor, you're 15 minutes late for your appointment with me, Miss Greggs.

Do we have that in today?

Yeah, I I I hate to end on this hour, though, but uh um I just would like the commission to uh acknowledge um the passing of uh Miss Cindy Um Schostel of Carl Schaus' wife.

Oh what have you um yeah she was a great woman and uh and she was definitely a full participant in you know the going zone of the city you know her her her uh husband Carl is as well.

So uh deepest in uh most profound condolences go to go out to he and his family um at this time in thoughts and prayers.

May I add that she had a really uh valiant struggle.

Yes.

And she fought very hard and she uh fought for many more years than was predicted that she would be with us.

Yes.

And that was a family effort and it was a community effort, and there were so many people in in her community um and friends that supported the entire family, and so Carl should know that um we love and support him.

Yeah, and we're very proud of the efforts that she made um to to to be a part of um our world for so very long and our I'm sure our hearts all go out to him.

And she will be missed.

Thank you.

And before I adjourn, did you get the tally sh tally sheets from everybody?

Yes.

A couple more, but I have three right now.

Okay.

So you'll remind me whatever you need from.

And I will adjourn the meeting.