Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Sunshine And Budget topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
City staff brief Satellite Beach Youth Council on Sunshine Law, meetings and the budget
Summary
City staff gave the new Satellite Beach Youth Council an orientation on parliamentary procedure and Florida's Sunshine Law and presented a budget overview, including where to find the CAFR and online budget documents.
Webb Pierce, identified in the meeting as the city clerk, opened the council's orientation with a primer on parliamentary procedure and the steps for making motions, seconding, discussing and voting.
Pierce emphasized orderly discussion and the chair's role in keeping meetings moving, and warned that communications about council business outside of a public meeting (including texts and emails) are restricted under Florida's Sunshine Law. He told members those communications and other records related to youth council business are public records and could be subject to public-records requests.
"No communication between board members on items under the board's purview are allowed," Pierce said, summarizing the law's limits on off-meeting coordination. He described civil penalties for violations and said the city treats public records seriously.
Britney Jumper, described in the meeting as the support services director and finance lead for the city, gave a high-level overview of the city's finances and said the city's comprehensive annual financial report (CAFR) and the new fiscal-year budget are available online. Jumper said the fiscal year runs Oct. 1 through Sept. 30 and the audit work was scheduled before Thanksgiving.
"The budget has seven main funds," Jumper said, and described the general fund and several other funds. She stated the overall budget figure and general-fund numbers (reported in the meeting as approximately $2,324,000,000 total and the general fund just over $13,000,000) and said about 60% of general-fund revenue comes from property taxes. The budget, Jumper said, includes 10 years of historical data and is intended to be publicly accessible.
City staff offered to resend the board handbook and other materials to members who requested them and said staff would be available for follow-up questions.
The council was told that staff can help with social-media technical setup and that social-media posts and pages tied to the council are captured as part of the city's public-records program.
The meeting moved on to officer elections after the briefings.
