I'll speak really slowly. Good evening everyone. Welcome to our special meeting for budget adoption. This meeting is called to order. Madam clerk, roll call. Council member Golding here. Council member Horn. Council member Jansen
here. Council member Sutton here. Council member Wagner here. Council member Wowers here. Mayor Hoffman here. We have a quorum. So, I'll begin um reading our statement that must be
read before the public hearing that Molly's really nervous I'm going to mess up. The first item to be discussed is the proposed millage rate. The budget for the city of Jacksonville Beach was prepared using the millage rate of 3.9947 mills. The rolled back rate is 3.8136 mills. The proposed millage rate of
3.9947 mills is 4.7% more than the rolled back rate. The second item to be discussed is the tenative operating budget. The tenative operating budget for fiscal year 2025 to 2026 is two 248,40,000
$40,185. I should have read that one through like Molly told me to. Okay, so now we'll hear from our CFO Ashley Gossit with her presentation of the budget. Good evening, Mayor Council Ashley Gossit, CFO.
So tonight we have the first of two required public hearings to adopt the military and annual budget. So the tenative budget before you tonight is for you cons for your consideration tonight is the product of almost nine months of hard work and effort on the
part of the staff and the city council. I'd like to take a quick minute to recap the timeline of events um in the development of the tenative budget. So we began budgeting in January um with the roll forward of the cash
flows at the conclusion of the prior year audit. And then in February and March, the departments and the city administration work on the five-year capital improvement plan. In April, we work on our service levels and the departments prepare their operating
budget requests. In May, we take those service levels to council for budget assumptions to make sure we're all on the same page, and then the city manager reviews the departmental operating budget requests. In June, we get our first round of numbers from the property appraiser to let us know what the
taxable values are going to be for the upcoming year. And then in July, we finalize the budget and uh send it out to council and post it on our website. And then the month of August, we held a series of four workshops to review all facets of the business plans for each
department. And now here we are in September for hearing one of two. So I want to uh touch on the budget highlights. Our millage rate is unchanged at 3.9947. The total all funds budget is around
$248 million which is 5.6 higher 5.6% higher than the current year. And the general fund budget is 6.1% higher than the current year at $33 million. Taxable property values have increased by 7.8% which is actually $400 million
of new property value in Jacksonville Beach. Of that about a fourth 108 million are new construction. And again the city maintains its debt-free status. So I want to call out changes from the budget workshops that we held. Uh it was
the consensus of council to move forward a project for um a study at the community service center for $50,000. So um this is what you're going to be voting on today includes that $50,000
change. So on the screen is the summary of all fund expenditures. And I wanted to take a minute and call out the different categories. When each department presented their budget to you, they went through the specific changes within their own uh department divisions. But
holistically, I wanted to talk about um first the personal services. Um this reflects the addition of the new positions to support the service level expectations. Um it includes about a $900,000 increase in the pension contribution for
both um police and general employees and the city portion of health, life, dental, and workers compens insurance is increased by about 400,000. So I want to note that this is a contract negotiation year and we're
conducting a pay study. So the payroll budget was prepared with the information we had at the time. Um, any changes to the employee pay will not be made until council ratifies contract changes and approves an amended pay plan. So, and
any dollar changes from what's in the original budget to what uh proposals may come for before council will be noted on those uh council agendas for formal approval. And in the operating expenses, I want to
call out that the 4.5 or $4.3 million in operating expense increase from last year, 2 million of that is internal service funds. And so, uh, you know, what is a payroll expense in the finance budget is an operating expense in the
beach's energy budget, for example. Um, also in operating expenses, the software subscriptions and license went up by about $460,000 this year and contract services across all department and divisions in aggregate went up about $900,000
and that's due largely to CPI escalators within each of those contracts. So looking at it a different way, this um chart shows the budget by the different fund types and you can see that the
total citywide budget 40% of that almost 41% of that is the electric fund. So I want to reiterate that our millage rate of 3.9947 uh remains below the state average. Um,
we're very close to our neighbors. Um, and we have been, uh, consistently lower than state average for as long as I've been here. So, again, where your property tax goes, um, I think every property owner should have received their trim notice in that
it kind of broke out the, um, different taxing authorities, but here's the median home valued at $322,000. They're going to pay $1,90 to the city of Jacksonville Beach. That equates to
like a little more than $90 a month. So, our general fund revenues after some discussion with council, we redid this chart to break out adorum taxes from other taxes. And you can see that adalorum make up 57% of the general fund
revenues. And for our general fund expenditures, again, you can see that public safety um is more than half of the general fund budget. And so I'll stop there and um answer any questions council might have. And we've got all of the departments here. Um if
there's any specific questions, can you go back to the community services building? Yeah. Oops. Too far. So the um discussion that we had at that workshop was that since we had received
funding from the city of Jacksonville, we had some capital funding set aside for the lifeguard station that we wouldn't be using. So it shouldn't have been a net addition to the budget. It should have just been a swap. Does it need to be done this way? And did we leave the lifeguard station in
there even though we won't necessarily need it this year? So we can do it either way. I'm sorry if we misunderstood. We took that specific project and just pulled it forward. Um, we did get the million-dollar grant from Jacksonville, which will be on the next council agenda to approve the interlocal
agreement so we can begin working on that. The money that was to be used for lifeguard, we just wanted to leave in that reserve and then once we finish this project, just come back and pick that money up later instead of moving it from one reserve account to another. Okay.
But we can handle it either way. Well, I mean, if it works for you with the budget, it just it when I brought it up, it wasn't intended to be a net increase. It was intended to be flat because we wouldn't need that money this year for the lifeguard station. Yeah. Ostensibly. So, if it works for you
guys, it's fine with me. But that just wasn't my intention or the I don't think the intention of that discussion for so for simplicity I might ask that we leave it at the the amount that it's at right now because we've got everything queued up and balanced just
right. Um but noted. Thank you. Any other questions for Ashley at this point? Mr. Roberts. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, good evening, Miss Gosset. Nice to see you. Um, just help me to understand what I'm looking at
here. So, under expenditures, our expenditures are going to be like $248 million. Yes, sir. Okay. And what and are are our revenues going to be $222 million? Yes, sir. So, we'll be running a deficit of about
25 million. It I would not call it a deficit. We are debtree. that we use pay as you go to fund our capital projects. And so some years our revenues are going to exceed our expenses and some years our expenses are going to exceed our revenues. This
is one of those years that we're drawing down from our both our water sewer fund and our um general copper projects to perform the projects that we've been saving for in prior years. Okay. So we have a savings account. Yes, sir.
Okay. I wasn't aware of that. Um, thank you. That's it for questions on the board if you want to proceed. Um, that's all we have. I guess back to you for the public hearing.
Okay, we'll now open the floor for our public comment if anyone would like to approach the deis and speak on the budget before we take our first round of votes. Seeing none, public hearing is closed. Can I have a motion? I move we adopt the proposed millage
rate of for operating purposes of 3.9947 for fiscal year 2025 and 2026. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Madam clerk, roll call. Council member Golding. Yes. Council member Horn.
Council member Jansen. Yes. Council member Sutton. Yes. Council member Wagner, yes. Council member Wowers, no. Mayor Hoffman, yes. Motion carries. Item two, I move we adopt the tenative operating
budget for fiscal year 2025 2026 of 248,40,185. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Madam clerk, roll call. Council member Jansen. Yes. Council member Sutton. Yes. Council member Wagner,
yes. Council member Wowers, no. Council member Golding, yes. Mayor Hoffman, yes. Motion carries. So, this is our first budget hearing. We will reconvene um for our second budget hearing on
Monday, September 15th at 5:30. Anything else to add at this point? Everybody good? All right. Thank you to the department heads and your teams for putting your um budgets together and presenting them so thoroughly to us. this makes this process really smooth and gives us a lot of opportunity to ask
and have our questions answered um throughout the nine months and the rest of the year. So, we really appreciate that and um I encourage the council if you have any other uh questions that can be answered by Ashley and her team. Um
you have another almost two weeks to be able to do that before we have our second hearing. Um seeing no other business, can I have a motion to adjurnn? I move to adjurnn. Second motion a second. All in favor signify by saying I.