This was our second Thursday evening "regular" City Council meeting in a row. Normally, we meet on first and third Tuesdays but due to some very specific timelines for adopting budgets and setting millage rates, we needed to alter our meeting schedules this month. We'll go back to Tuesday evening meetings next month. I've selected a few items that I think you might want to hear more about. As usual, what follows comes from me alone and not on behalf of Mount Dora City Council.

Earlier in the summer, our City Attorney, Sherry Sutphen from the Roper Law Firm resigned after five years representing Mount Dora. She agreed to stay on until a suitable replacement firm could be selected but asked City Council to find another law firm as soon as practicable. We voted tonight to hire the firm of Shepard, Smith, Kohlmyer & Hand as our new City Attorney. Attorneys Andrew Hand and Patrick Brackins will serve as our primary legal council.

During our meeting two weeks ago we approved "first reading" resolutions to adopt our millage rate for FY 2023-24 and to approve the final 2023-24 city budget. Tonight we approved both of these items with "final readings" unanimously. The millage rate will remain steady at 5.9603 mills. Increasing property values will yield an additional $835,000 to offset inflationary effects. Our overall City budget for FY 23-24 will be $182,257,022.

Our quote for today comes from a Lakota Sioux tribe member who lived from 1850-1913. His name was Hollow Horn Bear. Hollow Horn Bear warned; "Someday the earth will weep, she will beg for her life, she will cry with tears of blood. You will make a choice, if you will help her or let her die, and when she dies you too will die."

Let's take his words to heart before it's too late.

Thank you for sharing my passion for our wonderful city!

By Dr. Marc Crail
Vice-mayor and District 4 Representative

By Dr. Marc Crail
Vice-Mayor and District 4 Representative

​What follows is a brief recap of Mount Dora City Council's Thursday, September 7th. meetings. There were actually 3 meetings, 2 CRA or Community Redevelopment Area meetings beginning at 6:00 followed by a marathon "regular" meeting that stretched until about 11:00 p.m. We don't normally hold regular meetings on Thursdays but the Monday Labor Day holiday and required budget timelines made it difficult to have everything ready for a Tuesday meeting. I've selected a few items to tell you about and hopefully, I can accomplish that task in far less that five hours. Please remember that I'm reporting only from my own perspective and not in any official City Council capacity.

The lone item on each of our CRA agendas was to adopt their respective budgets for the upcoming 2023-24 fiscal year in a timely manner. Apparently, neither CRA advisory board's most recent meetings  garnered a quorum so their membership hadn't formally voted to approve their proposed budgets. Several advisory board members understandably expressed that they hadn't had the opportunity to discuss these budgets prior to the City Council meeting. Since there are very specific budget adoption deadlines involved, a "work-around" was proposed to allow for the advisory boards to review the budgets during upcoming meetings (provided they have a quorum). Budgets can be amended on an as needed basis and line items can be changed so that should suffice.

Next came the "regular" City Council meeting.

As you may recall, our City Attorney, Sherry Sutphen from the Roper Law Firm chose to resign several weeks ago. She ultimately agreed to stay on during the interim while we completed the process of finding a new firm to serve as our City Attorney but she encouraged us to act quickly to find her replacement so that she could wrap up her responsibilities in Mount Dora.

Under the Action Items section of the agenda were public interviews with the two law firms that had responded to our advertised request for a new City Attorney firm to be followed by a discussion and a vote by Council members. Once a law firm had been selected, City Council would award the contract and authorize negotiations to complete a contract with the law firm that we had selected. Mayor Stile joined by council members Rolfson and Walker voted to pull these 2 items off the agenda with the rational that the time allowed for law firms to respond had been too short and that City Council was somehow abdicating it's very important responsibility to choose a new City Attorney firm. That motion failed by 3-4 vote.

The public interviews of the interested law firms proceeded. The contenders are; Shepard, Smith, Kohlmyer & Hand and Vose Law Firm. In my opinion, both law firms seemed to be interested, well qualified and highly experienced. During our City Council discussion following more than an hour of public presentations and Q&A, several Council members made comments to that affect.

Some Council members asked that the vote to select a new City Attorney firm be postponed so that they could check the firms' references and possibly meet with the attorneys for further, private conversations. That seemed to make sense so I proposed that we allow 2 weeks for that to occur and make our final decision during our upcoming September 21 meeting. That motion passed unanimously.

It was stated during our debate that it is important that we get a new attorney selected so that the important business of the City can continue without further delay. In my estimation, we are trying to find the balance between allowing adequate time to conduct our process and selecting the best candidate law firm for Mount Dora. Hopefully, when the dust settles, we will have done that.

We had further discussion and updates about the "Safe Place Initiative" I've told you about before. It's another example of trying our best to find a delicate balance on a sensitive and important matter. Opinions galore were expressed. My takeaway was that our Police chief is working to make the Safe Places Initiative as inclusive as possible. Council members' support for that approach seemed abundantly clear to me.

Another reason for holding this Council meeting on a Thursday was because Florida law requires a specific timeline for cities to wrap up their budget processes. We moved ahead with that process by adopting a $209 annual Fire Assessment Fee for next year, the same as this year.

We also adopted a resolution to continue with the same millage rate of 5.9603 for property taxes in FY 2023-24.  That rate is less that we had originally proposed but as you may recall, we had predicted that it would ultimately reduced. This is common practice. Because of rising property values, keeping the same millage rate will yield about $890,000 more that will help us deal with inflationary price increases facing the City.

The City budget will be about $132,000,000 for FY 2023-24.

Because of a dip in the cost of producing electricity from natural gas, those residents and businesses that are fortunate enough to be served by Mount Dora Electric will see a significant decrease in their electric power bills beginning next month. If you use 1,000 kWh per month, your bill from Mount Dora Electric will be about $119. If you're a SECO customer also using 1,000 kWh your bill is about $153 and if you're in Duke Energy's service your bill will be about $177.

 That's enough for now! Thanks for your continuing interest in what's going on in Mount Dora city government.

With the recent passing of Jimmy Buffett, I've selected a quote of his for you today. "Take it all in...it's as big as it seems. Count all of your blessings. Remember your dreams."

By Dr. Marc Crail
Vice-Mayor and District 4 Representative

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