Good evening and welcome to the town committ public hearing budget meeting on Thursday, September 4th, 2025 at 5:01 p.m. Please silence cell phones or electronic devices. I have a roll call, please.
Present. Commissioner Peters, present. Vice Mayor Stern, present. And Mayor Moore and Commissioner uh Goldberg is absent today. Thank you. And Town Manager Laby present. Town Attorney Rubin.
And may we all rise, please, for the pledge. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all. Are there any additions uh or changes to the agenda? Hearing none, is there a motion to approve the agenda? I'll make a motion to approve the agenda as is. Do I have a second, please? Second. Thank you. All in favor say yes. Yes.
Yes. Any oppose? No. Okay. Thank you. Presentations. First fiscal year 2026 updated operating budget presentation. Please refer this item to David Delina, finance director.
Uh the first reading resolution number 2025-22. A resolute that. Hold that. He's going to do the presentation. Yes, please do that and then we have the second one answer. Okay, the presentation. I want to redo it. Oh, no worries. First,
goodbye. Yep, we got it. Yeah. Yes. You want to do the presentation for Yes. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's where Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Gotcha, David. All right. Thank you. Uh so, let's fast
forward this. So, this is for uh uh you know what? I'll use my keyboard, I guess. Uh let's see. Okay. Maybe not. Okay, there we go. All right. So, uh again, uh just to uh recap, let
me minimize this uh so it's not in the way. Uh just to recap, you know, we're maintaining the town's millillage at 3.5875. uh this recognizes the 6.7% increase in our property values. Some of the changes that we made that and that you'll see is
that what we decided to do uh almost to parallel with the uh success of building the fire station is some of the projects that we we wanted to work on the million plus dollar projects that we wanted to work on. uh we would budget those and
then uh show you that we're pulling it from reserves or drawing it from reserves. That is still the case. It's just that what we're going to do is when these budgets come out of engineering and design and various uh procurement
policies and we have contracts. at that moment in time in the future, we will come to the board with a budget amendment and we will be able to pull all these funds from our reserves that we've accumulated. So, so, so for example, none of the projects have have
have slipped. It's just some of the projects that you'll see later on. Uh, what we decided to do is we decided to uh pull them and uh fund them as budget amendments in future board meetings. Uh some of the other changes that we had,
if you recall, uh we had uh uh the governor didn't sign off on the F FRS retirement rates. We finally got those rates. So, we had a little bit of an increase there, but we were able to budget uh we budgeted sufficiently enough in our first round that we were
able to cover those increases as well as we budgeted enough in the first round to cover health insurance uh and and that estimated cost. And uh thankfully to the town, you know, uh staff uh you know, the uh health insurance uh is still
being funded by the town and it's very gracious to to all employees. So, thank you. Uh but we'll go through quickly. You know, these are are the accomplishments that that obviously you've already done. Uh our strategic plans and initiatives. You'll see the PD
marine dock facility, right? Those are one of the things that we had budgeted in 2026. It's not going away. It's just that when it gets to be closer to shovel ready, then what happens is we will then bring a budget amendment at that time
and we will just pull the money from the excess reserves. Okay? And same thing with the old fire station, right? our our our priority. Nothing has changed with the water and sewer projects and the other projects, just those big
projects that that take a little bit more uh runway space, have you to land or to take off, uh we need a little bit more time. So, uh those uh again, these are the rates. They haven't changed since your June uh preliminary budget
hearing and uh and haven't changed in three years. Yeah. Since 2022. Right. Right. Exactly. And and again our goal based on because remember this time next year we'll do another fiveyear forecast, right, of where we think the town is going to be.
And uh so so we'll continue that that that plan. Uh this right here, you've seen this. This is what makes up our millillage. All right. We've seen this. We've seen that we we've kept it steady. These right here are the different components that make up the millillage.
Uh the next page is you guys have seen this slide here and you live this slide. You see the increase in property values. You see the change in property values over time. And now you see where we're at today. We are coming off slowly. Uh
it's not a 90°ree drop off a cliff, but it's looks like a nice landing spot at at property growth being a little bit more uh reasonable in nature, but really getting out of the the double digits there. And that's what that's showing there. Uh next, our general fund, you
know, and and that that that over 74% of the money that comes in from the general fund is property taxes, right? And uh and that's just what this chart is is is saying. Uh and you can see all the other forms of money that comes in either from
the state of Florida or various franchise fees or what have you that makes up the general fund revenues. Okay. And so when we look at them, this right here, what we're looking at here is from 2024 actual 2025 budget, where
we are already uh through the month of July and our estimate for 2025 as well as now our proposed budget. And you can see things uh things fluctuate like for example uh grants you know you can see
there that we're not last year we had to use up the final amount of ARPA funds. That's why you see grant dollars drop off there. We had to use them up last year. We were successful at doing that and we're in compliance with that. And
so now you can see this year in 2026 budget we're not expecting any more ARPA funds. So, so that's why that one there is negative. But you know the other thing too to draw your attention from, we're not pulling from our reserves. So you see appropriation from reserves, right? That's zero. Okay? So we're not
we're not pulling money from our our reserves or our savings account uh for this budget and it's well balanced. And again the reason for that because our initial budget proposal did show dollars coming out of the reserves but we are
having to hold back on that until we see contracts on projects and which we will adjust with a budget amendment. Yes. So then we'll come and say we need X dollars from reserves to complete this project and this project rather than showing in the budget now because the timing uh marine docking facility will
be next fiscal year not this fiscal year. So there's a little bit of timing issues y uh with that. It it just makes it a little bit more cleaner on a on a budget standpoint. Uh so here you can see, you know, how the dollars are are allocated. You know, uh now what you're looking at is the general fund expenditures. You can see
now this is uh this includes all of your departments in the general fund and and you can see that we adjusted the cost of living adjustment. We've we've accounted for the the change in health insurance. We've now updated the data for uh
retirement costs. Uh and uh and so yeah, and so and then you can also see the the change there, the the one drop off there. Uh you can see under capital outlay, again, the projects aren't going away. We're just not budgeting them. We're going to use the reserves that
drop to the bottom line, i.e. retained earnings. Uh we're going to use those reserves in the future when we bring you budget amendments for these projects. Uh this right here, if you recall, the general fund has a bunch of little departments, right? And so these right
here are all your departments. Uh you can see that the the reason why public works is less is because we had we had budgeted to start the uh old fire station, right, as capital projects, right? And so we're now again we're we're going to push that a little bit
forward until we get contracts and procurement and final designs. And so we're just uh that's one of the biggest changes there. Uh but you can see overall your your fund the general fund in in in nature you know is going to
grow about 4%. So that that seems very very reasonable. uh your fund balance. Uh this is where uh your strength is, right? Uh this is your ability to really
uh uh have zero or near zero, especially in the general fund, near zero uh interest expense, right? You know, uh and so you can see here that your fund balance is extremely strong. Uh, we can decide. We don't have to decide now, but
we can decide anytime in the future how much we want to send to fire rescue. I I put an estimate in there of an additional 500,000. We had 250 in there. And remember, our goal was to uh fund for those larger capital expenditures
that come with our own fire department for new fire trucks and fire apparatuses. So, with that, um, on the 18th meeting, our next public hearing meeting, if this stuff generally looks good, and I'll get a head nod from y'all
today, um, I'm going to bring an amendment to the fund balance policy to adjust for now and in for future years. The current fund balance policy language really speaks to the implementation of the fire department. So, I'm going to
change that to a fire department syncing fund. We'll set it at 750 and then in the future through a resolution you can add more or take it away as needed to fund uh fire rescue purchases usually for apparatus is what a syncing fund is
or bunker gear or some other type of oneoff item that seems to be quite large. So yeah, Marshall, so we're really saying we're comfortable with our operational cash flow and the and our reserves right now and there's nothing right now that could
actually change that that we know of. I mean, a hurricane could change anything. Yeah. Outside of that, everything is anything that's generally within our control. We all know control is an illusion, but everything that we have the ability to manage, um, Got it. We're in good spot. And if David had his
little you little Yes. Which one do you want to go back? No, just this slide. Do you have your later pointer? Oh, yes. Point at the fund balance go up appropriation to reserve, right? That number that's from this year. We're anticipating we're going to have a
million five drop out because we didn't do one of those major projects this year and then next year as it's proposed another million falls out. So we have $2.5 million over this year and next year if we don't do any projects
would fall out into uh the reserves, but we anticipate coming back to you and say now we need x amount of these dollars and please let us use that and things of that nature. But when we bring a budget amendment to you, we're going to tell you here's the expenditure and then you're going to say
well where are you going to get the money from? Right? And I'm going to say oh we're pulling it from our excess reserves, our retained earnings like a company would would accumulate. We're not going to a bank to bring money in. That's our funds. Get it? So, uh, so, um, anyway, so very well positioned.
Uh, discretionary sales tax. You guys heard this. It's going away, right? And so, we we knew this going into it. Uh, we knew that, uh, so right now we're we're we're budgeting for for some for some of these projects down here on the
lower right. uh we have the police department and public works, crosswalks, things like that. We're going to start to use up those funds because the faucet that fills that fund is going to be shut off at at at
B at December 31st and then in the future we we won't be a we won't be getting any more, but we'll be able to draw down and that's what we're doing, right? Uh but but you guys knew that. Uh so that's the discretionary fund and the reason why it's a separate fund is
because it's restricted and so we that that's why we keep it in in a separate fund. So uh here's your building department. Building department uh continues to be strong. Um and uh we continue to benefit from uh from
everything that's that's happening. Uh they continue to meet or exceed our budget estimates. Um and and again, you know, we're we're we're pulling money in this one. See, appropriation from reserves. So, what that means is from
reserves, I'm pulling money in because we're going to try to do some capital projects using this fund's dollars. And so, but again, they continue to do well and uh we're always pleased about that. There there have been no changes as far as rates and so forth that was discussed
earlier. Everything is maintained the way it was discussed. Yeah, you'll have a rate fee uh resolution on the 18th whereby Jeff is uh has proposed and you all seem comfortable with that 12% fee reduction in the the fee structure. So that comes on the 18th.
Good. Right. Right. Yep. And so again, here are the uh uh expenditures of that fund. You can see that one of the one of the largest is uh you know uh capital outlay and and we'll show you what that is, but but look at the dollar. This right here is their their that
department. You know, the dollar how it or the $100 is how it's split up is is very reasonable. You know, you got 30 31 32% of of your labor costs, right? You have you have operating costs here. You got capital outlay and then you got transfers out. Uh we did increase that
in this year because uh you know uh the general fund has to manage uh a lot more building activity. Uh and so as that fund continues to grow, we keep looking at how much they have to send over to the general fund. And this is all
normal. This is all we're trying to do is we're trying to allocate their approionate share of the general fund and their expenditures. So and matter of fact, that number there gets audited every year. We present that to the auditors and our method of allocating
the expenditures. And so that's what that is. Uh but you can see here that the very bottom line is uh that four plus million that they have $4.1 million that they have in uh
estimated fund balance is is why we have to start lowering. And again, similar to the general fund, you'll see dollars falling to reserves this year in the amount of 543,000. most of that was to be uh allocated or
70 65% of it supposed to be allocated to a capital project. This year that didn't happen. So when we bring those budget amendments back, they'll be bifurcated, meaning it'll be large chunk general fund, a little bit of building to execute the projects that we had
planned this year that we won't get till next year. So right, we'll walk you through the budget amendments every time we bring it up and kind of remind you how how we're doing it. those dollars that we're going to reach back for dropped out in this current fiscal year into the bank account, if you will. Yep. For which we get to earn uh interest on.
So that's that's good. So Yep. Yep. And you can see there there the capital expenditures that you know the roof chillers uh entrance and and and various other other other capital expenditures. Probably some software in there that that they're updating. But uh
but again extremely healthy and um uh I think Jeff is doing an okay job. Uh the next one is the the water fund, right? The water fund. And uh the water fund as you know as discussed we we we knew that the rates were going up 5%.
Right? But but you know I I want you to understand that the water and sewer fund are also a success story because I want you to keep in mind that uh we the general fund used to subsidize right we used to have to send money over there to
make that thing whole. Okay. Uh and um and so through uh through the town's commitment to make sure that this enterprise fund, this and the sewer fund are able to stand on their own with rate increases and things like that based on
user fees, right? Uh uh you know, we were we were able we were able to do that. And so uh you know, one one of the one of the great things you can see at charges for service are predominantly the the source of revenue for this one. But uh but it's doing great. We assume
that. Now now you may say, "Well, you have a 5% increase, but why do you think uh revenues are going to go up 6.2?" Well, that's based on consumption, right? Because uh we're we're we're increasing the rates, but as you'll see in the next couple slides, people
continue to use more water, which which is a good thing. Uh and and here you go. You can see all the lines, all the trend lines are up and to the right, right? Some are a little bit more flatter than others, but uh overall what you're
looking at here is this is from 2022 through 2025. all the cycles. We have six cycles and you can see right you can see there and you can also see the seasonality right you know of what is uh Highland Beach uh
you can see and now oh by the way you're looking at gallons and the gallons you're looking at uh you got to put three zeros in front of that so that's how many gallons I mean we're talking hundreds of millions of gallons that that that our community uses and so when you translate that into what it looks
like revenue you can see right that compared to last year, you know what, we're we're going to be up about 11% on the water and about 13% on the irrigation. Now, part of that is because of rate increases. The other part of that is because increase in consumption,
right? And so, and so that's why we're comfortable with a reasonable 5% uh as as an inflationary hedge as well as some some projects that we have. But here you can see again the do the $100
bill there nice evenly spread out. We did increase the salaries. Uh we we did look at preliminary uh uh uh operating expenses. Uh some of our operating expenses dropped off a little bit, but
that's because of renewing permits and what have you, but all that's normal. We have level debt service. Matter of fact, when you talk about debt service, here you goes debt service. uh we knew that this system in the long run as we begin
to pay down debt right uh debt service tends to go down and you can see here that we are in the FY2526 cycle and you can see how much it dropped off and so the next the next uh the next drop in our debt service
doesn't happen until 2029 and so again every time we're able to drop off debt payments that just makes us stronger Right. Uh so this one here has uh the net position uh you know we're it's it's
decreasing a little bit because we're trying to get to those capital projects. Uh water and sewer is like owning a boat. Okay. But you're it's always going to be capital intensive. It's uh and so that's understandable. But we feel like
we have enough days cash on hand as well as the girth of the general fund that we can withstand any any type of uh storm or we could possibly do in the future if an emergency an inner fund loan. So uh we're not we're not concerned about this
too much. Next is a sewer fund. Uh the sewer fund again uh the main driver in the sewer fund this year is we're pulling money out of the funds reserves to do the sewer lining project. That's that's the
big takeaway here, you know, and so that's that's the goal. Uh that's why the that's why the expenditures have increased so much. Uh again, this one here anticipates a u a 5% increase in rates, not only base but consumption.
And um you can see here this right here is their trend line. Their trend line again is also up and to the right. Uh on the top right you're looking at gallons in in thousands of gallons and the bottom left you're looking at the
revenue. Okay. Now sometimes it flattens out like that because as you're aware uh the the residents are are capped at 20,000 gallons, right? So there's a cap. So, we can't uh so if you use, let's say
you use 25,000 gallons of water, right? We're only going to bill you 20,000 gallons of sewer. Uh because we understand, and that's industry normal, by the way. We understand that not all of the water that you use is going to run through the sewer system and that
we're going to get charged on it. So, that that's normal. But, uh again, very healthy. It's they're standing on their own and uh we are we're definitely pleased with that. And uh this right here is their expenditures. As you can see, the biggest one is capital
expenditures, right? The the capital expenditures. That's that's that's really what's going to going to push that. Uh we have we have operating uh expenditures uh through uh through the the city. They treat our sewer. We still
have uh I think six lift stations, right? you've got to pump it to get it to their interconnect, right? And then they have a meter on their end and they and they charge us. So, it's a good partnership. Uh, and it and it works out well. Uh, I mean, excuse me, the the metering
for charge. Where's the metering take place? Is it comes down through Del Rey at the end or when it leaves our town? There's one station right at basically right at the border with the town and there's a big meter in there, a larger vault and then it converts it to a low
pressure and pushes it through down there. Yep. Yep. But let me tell you something. You're going to get a benefit once you finish the sewer lining, right? You're going to get you're you're going to see this this this change. That's where I'm coming. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So So anyway, so
here you can see, you know, we're we're working on lift stations. the sewer lining project is this year. Uh you can see that you know uh operating days cash even without that is still in the 151 days 149 days and uh we're still moving
forward uh with that project. So that's definitely included in this budget. And uh so finally this right here what you're looking at here is the sources of all your revenue by fund right and then
we have what we call the uses. So that's why that's why it's important that's how governments what we look at sources and uses of funds. And so here you can see it's well balanced by fund. It is balanced and the total expenditure and
uses total up to be the $32,241,42. Now the interesting thing about a budget is we can't go above that by fund without coming to you first. So that's where the budget amendment in the process happens. So uh there's a
great thing there. But if you have questions, uh the dollars didn't change, just the methodology of how we're going to handle future capital projects as so on certain projects. Thank you. Does the commission have any further questions?
No. Okay. Excuse me. Um hello. Open up for public hearing. Is there any questions? Hearing hearing no public comments, we'll now close the public hearing for this item. Do I need to read the
resolution? Sure. Okay. Resolution number 2025-022, a resolution of the town commission of the town of Highland Beach, Florida, approving a final millage rate of 3.4159 4159 Mills for the town's general
operating funds for the fiscal year beginning October 1st, 2025 and ending September 30th, 2026, providing for the final millage rate of 3.4159 4159 mills is 7.12000%
greater than the computed roll back rate of 3.1889 mills providing for cerability conflicts and an effective date. Could I have a motion to approve the resolution? We'll make a motion to
approve resolution number 2025-022, adoption of millage rate uh for 2025 2026. Second. I have a roll call, please. Commissioner Peters, yes.
Commissioner Chinowski, yes. And Vice Mayor Stern, yes. Motion carries. Thank you. Excuse me. The next item is resolution number 2025-023. A resolution of the town commission the town of Highland Beach, Florida
approving approving a final budget for fiscal year beginning October 1st, 2025 and ending September 30th, 2026. determining and fixing the amounts necessary to carry on the government of the town for the insure ensuing year
providing the salarability conflicts and an effective date. Is there any comments David additional comments on this? No sir. Okay then any commission comments or questions? No. No
hearing none. Any public comments? Hearing none. I ask for a motion to approve resolution number 2025-023. I make a motion to approve the resolution number 2025-023 adoption of the 2025 2026 budget.
Uh may I have a roll call, please? I second that. Second. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Peters. Yes. Commissioner Chinowski. Yes. And Vice Mayor Stern? Yes. Motion carries. Thank you. Is there any town U manager report? Uh I think we covered most of it uh as
to what we'll see at the 18th meeting. You'll see the fee schedule. Um the you'll see the PBA contract for resetting the three-year contract that was approved 11 nothing yesterday. Um you will also be presented uh with an
interlocal agreement with the town of Manalapan for code enforcement. We're going to send our guy over there uh for about what eight hours, four hours. eight hours a week they'll pay us rate plus. So, uh it all works out and that'll come to you along with the two final resolutions closing out the the
fiscal year. Thank you. Y uh the next commission meeting will be September 18th, 2025 at 501 um town commission second public hearing, the budget meeting. Hearing
that, um, call for an adjournment at 5:30.