Partial Transcript from the 10/16 Commission Meeting:
October 16, 2025On the variance request for an after-the-fact variance for additional height to provide access to an observation deck on Coury Drive which "has reached its top level as per the permitted plans." That is already an "approved," four story building:
12:41
FOSTER: "I'm gonna talk about this because this goes back to something we're going to address here shortly. And this is mistakes from previous administrations and previous building officials and code enforcement."This, I read all the transcripts, all the letters and all the emails, all the documents on this, and this individual not only was directed, was approved to do this, this individual was actually directed to do this based on the elevation changes that they were told to use by our building official. So, there's nobody that did this but ourselves. Our own building official caused this to happen. I want to make that clear. I'm not gonna make citizens around here suffer for stuff we should have done right. I'm done with my first part of my little bandwagon I'm going to get on. Tony."
LORENO: "Yeah, I agree with you 100% on this. Mr. Perez did everything right. He, we have a trail of back and forth with him and the building department to make sure the height was correct.
"To give you some insight on this, Key Colony Beach, our LDRs, we go by the crown of the road. So basically, there is Base Flood Elevation at the crown of the road. The crown of the road that we use in our city to go maximum height of 40 feet is strictly in place to keep everything nice and level.
"FEMA has a Base Flood Elevation and they were incorectly told to use that as their Base Flood Elevation. There's about a five or six feet difference. So, Mr. Perez did everything right. When he got to that story where he's just doing a simple observation deck, it put him way above our maximum height. And just to also note, we have a couple of other homes in our city that have elevators that go to the roof that also exceed that height."
FOSTER: "Is there anybody here to testify to this?"
PEREZ: "Lenny Leggett and Karl Bursa. My architect had conversations with them prior to submitting the plans and so did I and everything was approved and we thought it was fine until it was brought up."
FOSTER: "I read the transmissions. It's actually a little uglier than that. And the building official that did find it is our current building official, not the previous. Trying to help you out a little with this one. Tony. What do you say."
LORENO: "I think it should absolutely be approved. It was no fault of the homeowner. It would create incredible hardship. It's not a third level. It's strictly an observation deck so it's not a full roofline and also here, we have a couple of other homes in Key Colony, actually one on 150 12th Street, that has an elevator that is actually at height or higher than Mr. Perez' house. It's hard to see by the way the house is laid out but it's also at that height."
FOSTER: "It doesn't make everything right and we're not going to make this a habit but when I read what was done, not only was it directed, it was actually changed to go and have him build it from that elevation. I really had a hard time with that one."
Formal variance questions omitted from transcript.
Passed unanimously.
1:10:54
The commission asked for public input on Daryl Rice Management's proposal for the golf course.DOUG LIPKE "thought the public was to address why this was in the public interest. I've been playing this golf course for 50 years. It was a dog track back then but we enjoyed it. Daryl has been involved for 17 years and he has consistently improved the condition of that special golf course each year... It's in the condition it can be enjoyed by the public and that is in the best interest of the public. It's absolutely a wonderful gem of Key Colony Beach. I read Daryl's proposal and I understand it is compliant with the procedure you're using to go forward.
"The contract in its current condition is for a two-year period which is wonderful because Daryl wants to retire after two years so it gives the city an opportunity to have Daryl continue to improve the course and manage it. Daryl has committed that in the second year he would continue and work with you guys train or work with the transition team which is the best option to continue the improvement of the course and then give the city an opportunity to move forward with the transition. The only thing I didn't see in this lease was to make this more of a joint venture where the lease would provide a commitment by the city to provide funds for additional improvements. I think you should move forward to determine that it is in the public interest."
CINDY CATTO: "I think I'm calling from the farthest away. I'm somewhere in the ocean between Japan and South Korea. To show you how important this is, I'm up at midnight to say let's move forward. It's in the best interest to accept Daryl's proposed contract. I believe you received a letter from the secretary of the ladies league. Rather than receiving 34 letters, I thought you might appreciate one. We want to get started and we need to know we have something we can get started with so I'm asking you to please expedite this matter."
1:24:23
DIEHL recommended combining the Recreation and Beautification Committees:HARDING: "The first thing I thought of is displacing five or six people who love to give input to the city. That's the negative of doing that [combining the Rec and Beautification Committees]. I think for staff time, the thing a lot of us don't think about is, Do we have to meet every month? Commissioners can attend but they don't have to attend, right? So we could go to every six weeks if it's a staff time thing to save some money and allow them to do other work. I think we're very lucky to have a lot of volunteers. Now that they can all do their meetings by Zoom, there should not be a quorum issue, right? Especially over the summer. I think I'd keep what's in place and I think the only thing for staff time we'd want to do it less frequently, every five weeks, every six weeks."
FOSTER: "The only caution I have about your Zoom comment is, people that are reporting on conditions in the city, really kinda need to be in the city so I think we need to focus on that in the future. It's hard for somebody to comment on bocce courts when they're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. That's my only caution."
Rec Committee Chair Cynthia Catto attended the meeting via Zoom from the Pacific Ocean. Commissioner Colonell attended this meeting via Zoom from "somewhere near Amsterdam." And Mayor Foster has used Zoom to great advantage in these last months while also out of state to deal with a family crisis.
Several KCBers commented that that was a "lousy way to treat a dedicated volunteer."
1:37:22
On the proposed settlement of city lawsuits against Corso, Cox, and Tremblay, initiated by the actions of Lenny Leggett, Barry Goldman, et al:FOSTER: "This is the disappointing part about this job. I have to undo, we have to undo a wrong that was done and the more I thought about it and the more I read it and the more I talked to these people the madder I got. What has been done in the past, we can't undo everything. There's a lot of stuff I think was harmful. I think it was, I want to be careful of my words, not in the best interests of our citizens, and we are not going to go down that path. Not as long as I'm up here so I wanna do. I wanna make a right of something.
"This has to do with the consolidation of a potential settlement with Jody Cox, Kari Ann Tremblay, and Christopher Corso regarding a code enforcement order. I'm not going to get into any further discussion because it would just go down a wrong place.
"What I move is, I move to authorize the city attorney to negotiate a settlement for no money with one or more of the property owners with each party responsible for all of their own costs and expenses. And I apologize to them for that. It was wrong and that's just the way I feel about it. And all the fines and repair obligations to be waived and released and that the city administrator be authorized to execute the same on behalf of KCB. That's the motion."
DIFRANSICO: "I'll second that motion."
SMITS: "To make it bulletproof, maybe somebody other than the mayor make the motion and somebody other than the mayor second it."
HARDING: "I'll move."
DIFRANSICO: "I second."
FOSTER: "Again to the people who were involved in this, I apologize. Dark days."
Motion carried unanimously.
In citizens' comments:
2:16:11
CATTO: "Mr. Mayor, I find your comment about me today personally offensive and uncalled for. I've given hundreds of hours to the city of Key Colony Beach and no matter where I've been located I have kept up to date on all the Rec Committee activities."FOSTER: "I don't know what you find offensive and I don't think anyone on this side does so if that's the case, I guess that's the case."
2:10:53
Mayor Foster introduced a novel way to finance the city hall project.FOSTER: "I talked with our accountant and I was happy with the numbers that we have. Right now the building department looks like we're at $479,000. In the general account, we've got $2.2 million. Infrastructuer, you've got $2.1 million. Grant we've got $2.2 million. Line of credit, yes we need to go get one and I have a number in mind.
"What I'd like to see, when we build this [city hall] the way we're going to pay for that is we're going to we used to do this at work all the time we would sell the building and we would rent from ourselves. So, we could rent the stormwater account could pay for rent. The wastewater account could pay for rent. Tony's department could pay for rent. So we can do this, yes we can. We'll have that conversation."
SMITS: "I've done this for school buildings. It's called a 'certificate of participation.' It's a financial tool because you can't borrow money for longer than a year you have to do this kind of legal fiction but it is basically you sell and lease it back but the lease payment stream is what funds the loan. That's how you, I don't want to say circumvent, but that's how all governments get around public finance issues in a constitution that says you cannot borrow money for longer than a year. The remedy is that if you don't pay, they get your building."
FOSTER: "The other piece of it is we can use building funds to pay for his portion of it. We can use storm water funds to pay for their portion. We can use wastewater funds to pay for their portion. I need some people who know how this works. I've already done my homework on it and we just need to know how much is based on square footage what you think the employee takes up and you can use reception area. I think you understand where I'm headed."
SMITS: "You can operate from a position of how much you can get and then work backwards to how much allocation everybody needs. I would definitely encourage that part of it."
FOSTER: "Basically, we have about $8 million in our kitty if we look at it in that area but we still need to have a line of credit for construction to do this work and we do have to go out for bid for that."
SMITS: "Any source of revenue other than ad valorem taxes is fair game for paying debt."
HARDING: "By our ordinances and this was tried a few times in the past tax and fees--wastewater--those funds are separate from any other city funds. I think where Jen got a little confused, she thought the number was very large. When you do the wastewater for the new building, yeah, there will be some wastewater but it's not going to be much. We're going to connect the line out there and that's about it. I want to make sure there's no miscommunication there's funds in wastewater of about $2 million. Those funds are not available for city hall by our own ordinances."
FOSTER: "So, I don't want to solve it here. I'm just telling you what my idea is. That way, it also shows we're paying for the building ourselves. Just like when Mr. Turner took over, his salary was paid from different avenues."
Turner's salary and other administrator expenses were general fund expenditures.