The St. Augustine City Commission will spend about fifteen minutes behind a closed door on Monday afternoon. A resident who wants to say something about that has to be in the room at three o’clock, because public comment comes before the door shuts and not after.

What they are closing it for is Case No. CA26-1218, Florida Carry, Inc. v. City of St. Augustine, Florida. The agenda calls it “the pending eminent domain matter.”

Eight people go in. Mayor Nancy Sikes-Kline, Vice-Mayor Barbara Blonder, Commissioner Cynthia Garris, Commissioner Jim Springfield and Commissioner Jon DePreter, with City Manager David Birchim, City Attorney Isabelle Lopez and a certified court reporter.

Nobody else.

Everything said in there is taken down, and every word of it becomes public when the case ends. That is not a courtesy. It is the price the statute charges for the door.

What the door costs the city to close

Section 286.011 of the Florida Statutes is the Sunshine Law. Subsection (8) is the attorney-client exception, and it is narrow. A board may meet in private with its own attorney about litigation it is already a party to, and only then, and only on five conditions.

The attorney has to say out loud, at a public meeting, that the board’s advice is wanted. The talk has to stay on settlement and on what the litigation is costing. A certified court reporter has to take down every word, the times the session opens and closes, everyone in the room and everyone who speaks, with no portion off the record. The public has to be told the time, the date and the names in advance. And the transcript becomes a public record when the case ends.

Read Monday’s notice against that list. Item 3 is the attorney asking. Item 3 confines it to settlement negotiations and litigation expenses. Item 3 names the court reporter. Item 4 recesses to the Alcazar conference room and estimates the length. Item 5 re-opens the meeting.

Five conditions, five lines on a one-page notice. The city has done this the way the statute is written, which is fine, and that is worth saying plainly because the closed door is the part a reader notices and the conditions are the part that makes it survivable.

There is a public half and it is first

Item 2 on that notice is public comment, three minutes per individual, before anybody recesses anywhere.

So the Alcazar Room at three o’clock Monday is open, and the fifteen minutes of it that are not open happen in a different room down the hall. Item 6 brings them back out for any matters to be decided in the public meeting. Then the Community Redevelopment Agency at half past three, then the regular commission meeting at five.

Check the hour before you go. On Oct. 16 the city’s calendar had this meeting at 2:30 and the redevelopment agency at three, with no agenda behind either, and both have since moved back half an hour. The five o’clock has not moved.

The case is a county record and the county charges a notary for it

What the notice does not carry is the lawsuit. No complaint, no summary, no statement of what the city is taking or what the plaintiff says about it.

That document is in the circuit court here, and the clerk’s online case search answers a browser with a 403 and one sentence: the requested resource requires authentication. Reading court documents in this county means printing the clerk’s registration agreement and signing it, and having it notarized as well if you are a party to the case or an attorney of record, because the clerk’s page says the identity of the person registering has to be verified.

So the pleadings in a case against this city are a public record that a resident cannot read tonight without a notary. The whole published description of it is four words on the city’s own agenda, and they are “pending eminent domain matter.”

Item 11 of Monday’s regular agenda is Items by City Attorney.

There is nothing under it.