North Port commission: No attorney general opinion on retreat held outside the sunshine

NORTH PORT – The North Port City Commission will decide how to conduct team-building retreats in a future meeting or workshop, after it opted against asking the office of Attorney General Ashley Moody for a legal opinion on how state open meeting laws should apply to such meetings.

City Commissioner Debbie McDowell asked her fellow board members to approve a motion directing City Attorney Amber Slayton to ask the attorney general to interpret state law in respect to the commission's retreat on April 20 that was not open to the public. City employees had real-time access to the proceedings via a private YouTube webcast.

Her motion died for lack of a second.

Related: Did North Port City Commission retreat violate state Sunshine Law?

McDowell questioned the legality of the closed session May 9, though her main concern was criticism she received at that meeting for her management style as a commissioner.

At that time, McDowell said she would file a complaint about a potential violation with the Florida Commission on Ethics, but later learned that the appropriate move was to ask for an attorney general opinion.

She called the attorney general's office but was informed that the query must come from the entire board.

Vice Mayor Barbara Langdon had a solution for future retreats – advertise them and host them publicly.

“We have already spent, as a body, way too much time talking about this retreat,” Langdon said. “I think the most transparent way of handling this moving forward is that we treat a retreat like any other commission meeting.”

Langdon later said that she was open to it, if her fellow board members preferred to make a determination of how to proceed, especially since the commission is considering another retreat in December – when at least one, if not two new members will be on the board.

In contrast Jill Luke was the staunchest proponent of establishing protocols for future retreats in-house.

“Why would we go to an outside entity when we haven’t even discussed or handled it in-house?” Luke said.

Commissioner Alice White noted that “we weren’t there to discuss anything that we were voting on,” then added that the retreat – facilitated by Doug Thomas, a vice president with Strategic Government Resources – was a place where the board members could get to know each other.

City officials have stressed that the commissioners did not touch on specific voting issues though at one point Thomas put up a slide listing what commissioners had told him in one-on-one meetings were accomplishments they wanted to see as their legacy for the city.

The list included a variety of unmet goals, such as preservation of Warm Mineral Springs and development of the adjacent 60-acre park and extension of water and sewer to the Interstate 75 interchanges with Sumter and Toledo Blade boulevards.

That alone was enough for Michael Barfield, a Sarasota paralegal who is also director of public access for the Florida Center for Government Accountability, to say the retreat should have been an open meeting under state open government laws.

Earlier:North Port commission wants to place Price Boulevard funding on November ballot

Virginia Hamrick, staff attorney for the First Amendment Foundation, said that since it included discussion between city commissioners on how they transact business and get along the meeting should have been open to the public. 

Slayton noted that the state law clearly states that when two or more commissioners meet and they discuss an item that may someday come to a vote, it should be a public meeting.

In contrast, she said if the commission wanted to go to an obstacle course and have team building exercises but not discuss city business, that would not require notice as a public meeting.

In other action 

Also on Tuesday, the North Port City Commission: 

• Approved the second reading of an ordinance creating a referendum for the Nov. 8 ballot asking city voters to approve the sale of up to $80 million in bonds to widen Price Boulevard from two to four lanes between Toledo Blade and Sumter Boulevards. The bonds would be financed by revenue from the renewal of the countywide 1% local option sales tax, which is also on the November ballot. 

• Approved the second reading of an ordinance placing a referendum on the Nov. 8 ballot asking city voters to approve allowing the city manager to sign all contracts and enter into certain contracts without commission approval. 

• Approved a resolution setting up a joint meeting with the Charlotte County Commission on July 14, in Port Charlotte. Topics include location of an I-75 interchange, water quality and a roundabout at Hillsborough Boulevard. If the Charlotte commission has an interest, the two boards may also talk about the widening of South River Road. 

Earle Kimel primarily covers south Sarasota County for the Herald-Tribune and can be reached at earle.kimel@heraldtribune.com. Support local journalism with a digital subscription to the Herald-Tribune.