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here. And um we we're expecting Freddy, but I don't know what >> There he is. >> My head hurts. >> No, my brain hurts. >> Oh, okay. Yeah, my brain my brain really hurts. I got back from Ireland last

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night. >> We were there for a wedding. >> Ireland. I saw your pictures. If you don't if you've never been partaking or have taken part in an Irish wedding, it's just not a wedding. It goes for days. The party Oh, Lord have mercy. I

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think they all left at like while they were at the hotel, they left the bar at 5 a.m. We left the bar at 2:45 a.m. And then it continued the next day to in a different location. It was insane. the Irish from the Scottish.

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>> They know how to drink. I last year and I'm going to Scotland in September. So Yeah, we're live order. Thanks for warning us. Tracy, do you want to call? >> Will. Yep. I would like to call this

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meeting to order, please. Roll call. Or actually stand for the pledge of allegiance, clerks. Pledge 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

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for all. >> Person Tracy Raffleitz here. Vice Chair Jennifer Stevens >> present. >> Committee member Lisa Murray. Committee member Frederick who >> here. >> Committee member Samuel Herity is absent.

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David Delena, board liaison >> here >> is present via Zoom. Thank you. Um and then we also have town attorney Jeffrey Curts with us. And then board clerk cross sales here. >> Approval of the minutes. Make a motion to approve the minutes

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from uh June 1st, 2026. >> Yep. I second that. >> All in favor? >> I >> I >> Do we have any additions, deletions, or modifications to the agenda?

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>> Not from staff. May I say something before we go on to the agenda? >> If you can also speak closer to the mic for the record. Thank you. >> Um I would like to just say something for public record. Um I don't know if that's allowed at this point or at the

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end prior to the agenda. >> I know you guys have um like your committee member comments in here, but if it's for the agenda, you can say it now. >> Okay. >> Okay. Go ahead and say it. So um we met on the first And I just want to go on record by

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saying that um we had did a we asked on the first to get um permission for black on and um it took 28 days to receive that right before our meeting. Um I just feel personally that that's a little

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unacceptable. I just want to go on record with that. I I don't hate I hate being that person, but it's really hard to come to a meeting prepared and all of a sudden, bam, I have um credentials, but I can't I don't even have time to look at anything. And you

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the town is asking us to still move forward on this procurement policy when I really can't even look at the numbers. The only numbers that I can personally look at is what's on the town council page. Um which they're not even up to date. So I just

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feel like it's unacceptable and I don't know what happened in the past. I am new uh one month. Um but moving forward I would like to request ample time to review these things and to um receive these documents in a timely manner. Thank you.

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I'd actually like to say something before we start tonight as well. Just to kind of welcome Mr. Who was not here with us our very first meeting. We don't need to do anything with him because he was already he's >> Yeah. Okay. Perfect. >> Before we get started tonight, I think our committee may need an unofficial

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motto. We have questions. Lots of questions. Because facts don't have feelings. And our taxpayers deserve answers. Our curiosity is not criticism. It's governance. That's exactly what we're here to do. Ask thoughtful questions, review the

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facts, and provide town council with sound financial recommendations. With that, let's get to work. >> No, I don't have any public comment cards. >> All right. Last time that we were here on 61, we were discussing the procurement policy. This is a

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continuation of that. How do we want to do that today? >> Um, just a suggestion. Um Sam sent an email. I guess we could read that so we could

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get his comments. It was one item. Um if you want I can read it. Go ahead. Okay. Um he said, "Looks like procurement policy is the only agenda item I've looked through and my only real comment is about the limits for various approvals, though I think they

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look fine overall." That was Sam's comment. So >> we did discuss that last time as well. Mhm. And it just wasn't answered. >> Right. >> Mr. Who, did you get the procurement policy? Did you have any questions on it?

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>> No. >> No questions. Um, so our job as a fact committee is to determine the procurement policy. Town council has asked us to look at it and make recommendations. Um, it's clear it protects the tax dollar. It protects the taxpayers's

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dollars. It provides adequate oversight, promotes transparency and whether we have re recommendations for the council. Um council asks the committee to review the procurement policy and provide recommendations. To me, that means our responsibility isn't just to edit the language. It's also to consider whether

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the policy provides the right level of transparency, oversight, and accountability to ensure it works. In practice, policies establish expectations. Internal controls and reporting demonstrate compliance. from looking at the procurement policy

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if we want to go one by one and ask some questions or we want to go looking at it. Um Jeff, do you have any recommendations? Do we go one by one? >> I think that's going to be good. I agree. I think we take whatever you any

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of us maybe found are the issues that are just like the red flag type issues or maybe there's some like I found a few internal I don't want to call them inconsistencies but there are where things get are a little vague maybe that we could try to clarify and straighten some things out.

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>> Okay, I'm okay with that because I have lots of questions too. I'm sure you have questions >> um comments. Mr. Who do you have any questions or comments on the procurement policy at all? The way it's written now, it it seems like it the way it's written now, it seems like

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it's, you know, it's covering all the bases. You need to have checks and balances that >> no one person can just go hog wild and buy whatever they want. >> Okay. Did you have any We can start with you if you would like if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or

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anything and we'll just go down and I'll go last. >> No, I'm I'm good. I'm good with it. Okay, Jennifer, Stephen, Jennifer, or Lisa, which one you want to go? You go ahead, Lisa. Okay, we might have more. Um, so in response to Mr. Who's um

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statement is, and again, I brought it up um and we we really didn't I'm thought we were going to have some answers for us so I could move forward with this, but um yes, they people can't go hog wild in procurement. However, they can

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up to $24,999 at multiple times in intervals, which does kind of concern me. Um, and we we did discuss this. So, there is a broad area that $24,000 is a lot of money times how many times. Um, and that is

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still a concern for me. Also a concern is um, you know, the fair and open competition process. We discussed the process of evaluation. These three quotes. Um, let me go back to that page.

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I have it highlighted performance. Um, because it brings me to those exemptions and we seem to have a lot of exemptions. >> Um, and maybe it has worked in the past. Again,

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I wanted to really look at Blackbond and see where our money was going and and get a better grasp of it, but I really couldn't because I had just gotten the documents. But I mean, I'm looking at sections and subsections. We have 25 exceptions with subsections. And I think

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that's very broad um and could lead to frivolous spending. Again, I'm not saying that's happening. I just can't see it. um some preferences. Again, we're looking at fair and open competition. I'm a woman, but speaking from you,

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we're giving minorities and women preferences when they may or may not be the best option. Again, I I question that. I don't know what what we've had. Um it doesn't say it on the website. Um

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and um when we talk about our working budget and we're talking about the limits um we're putting that right now on the town manager um solely and I my recommendation would be to have other

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someone else jumping in. I also find that I don't see anywhere in here that our town attorney Mr. Curts is reviewing all the contracts. I don't know that Mr. parts if that if you are or not. But I think that would have um to have a pair

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of legal eyes on the contracts because there's a lot of legal ease many instances that well the town charter requires that the lawyer review every contract. So I don't know if that's is that actually happening >> when you look and we've discussed this

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with um when you were on the charter review committ. Okay. Technically, every time somebody makes a purchase, um, it's a contract. So, if somebody utilizes a

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credit card, um, to make a purchase, that's a contract. No, I do not review every single credit card um, that comes forward. If there is >> take out those like the credit card and the kind of the ones that we were trying to get out of,

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>> right? But yeah, so um all all contracts um to my Yeah, I I review almost all contracts or at least the form of the contract has been approved by my office.

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>> Yeah, I understand like you know someone's going to buy some paper or whatever for the office. I can understand that. Yes, it's all contractual under some way, shape, or form. But when we're looking at hiring someone, we have bids and we go into a contract. So, you're you're reviewing

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all these contracts. >> Yes, I would review all those. But what you have to remember, too, is review for legal sufficiency has nothing to do with the business deal and whether it is a good deal or a good price. I do not review for from that perspective. Um

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uh the that is the town management's responsibility um to determine those things. Um and there's not cart blanch to purchase anything.

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>> It has to be within the the budget and for the budgetary purposes. >> Right. But as we discovered last time, I think when we talked about this, there's no then true check and balance to make sure that that budget item tied into,

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>> you know, that contract tied into an exact budget item. There was no there's no no line item in the budget when you're entering in that expense to say that $20,000 expense goes to um you know, budget item X, Y, or Z. Well, it

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it does in the sense that any any expenditures that we have >> um are supposed to um be coded to a particular GL uh a line item account. >> They weren't actually that wasn't actually happening. Am I wrong?

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>> It was verifying it that it's actually happening. That's the check and balances I think that we're all confused about is okay, yes, they have a policy, a contract policy, but who is the one that's going back and saying, it was your contract review. Somebody's coming back and saying, oh, did you review it?

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Did you go through this checklist? And then how many departments are actually looking at contracts? Is it just one person between the town attorney and the town who how many departments? Well, it depends on the dollar. >> It depends on the type of contract and

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which department is involved. >> Every department that is responsible for its own procurement. >> How many departments are there? >> There is the clerk's depart the um town clerk um there's community standards um

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and there's public works and there is the legal department. Did I miss anybody? Yeah, there's 10 there's 10 >> building and townation. >> Yeah, there's 10 departments in the general fund and then you have the

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separate uh road and drainage that's its own fund and uh then you have the CIP fund. >> Okay, so this policy tells staff what they're supposed to do, but it doesn't tell anyone how council or fact knows

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it's actually happening. So if you're looking at these contracts, how does anybody else council fact know that it's actually happening according to the contract? Is there checks and balances? I think is what they're trying to get to. What are the checks and balances that are making sure that it's done

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correctly? >> You mean the initial procurement or the payment pursuant to the contract? >> All of it. All of it. >> Okay. >> The whole process. >> Well, the the whole process um typically would involve >> Well, we know what the process is. we're

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trying to find out is >> how do we know that the process has been followed? Is there a standard operating procedure that you hand to or you know somebody hands to the staff the you know head of public works that says >> department heads >> yeah each department head that says

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here's your standing oper standard operating procedure of how you're going to follow the procurement policy and how we're going to make sure that it's being followed and that the dollars spent are within the exemptions and that you know the any legal agreements been reviewed

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by you and etc etc >> almost a standard checking list. >> Well, it should be just a standard operating procedure. >> Procurement policy itself, I think, operates as >> but not really that like I've read it. It's it's not really an it's I can't hand this to the head of public works and say follow this.

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>> Yes. A simple checklist of check check check would be a lot better than here's a procurement policy of a couple hundred pages >> because I can guarantee you can go give it to every department head and ask them what's in their procurement policy and they probably don't know what's in it. Maybe they do. Well, but they're not but

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they're not they're not following. >> The question is I mean there should be literally it's a one or two page document of this is the flow almost like a workflow. You you get a contract, you follow the you know you give it to Jeff for review legal for review, you get

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bids or if if necessary almost like a you know >> almost like a checklist. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> Or a flowchart. >> Yeah. So, how can you So, being the town attorney, how can you actually what is there that everybody gives to you to actually verify that they've done

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everything according to the contract? >> Um well, it depending on the uh amount they will give us verification that they have um complied with the um the procurement policy whether it was three quotes or whether it is a formal

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contract or a formal bid that has to to go forward. So, do you have like a form document for that that they give you back that that says for this contract I got these bids, here they are, and everybody signed off on it or how do we know >> like if I just

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>> typically it would be typically it would it would be a um a memo from them explaining what they have done. >> Okay. And you do you keep those memos on file >> um >> for for everyone? >> They are they are kept as a public

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record. Um, I think you're I'm not sure when you look at things I I don't know how many contracts you think are actually being produced in a manner of of a written document per se and the

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purchases that are out there. >> Yeah. If it could be 100 I mean doesn't matter about a dollar amount. >> All right. So, so first of all, um, every contract that is over $25,000

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>> goes to to the council. Okay. And so, and the council >> unless the document, >> huh? >> Unless it's exempt, right? >> No. If it's over $25,000, it goes to the council unless it's an emergency and then it goes back. it. You enter into

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the contract and you come back and you get um their approval on the on themer the ratification of the the emergency purchase. Um and so that all goes through um you know so administering

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those contracts. Um there's going to be invoices that are submitted. Um and that's where uh projected point um David and Jacob um input the invoices into the system and they go through the

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verification that there was a contract and all those kind of things associated. >> So y'all keep all the documents to make sure that the SOPs are being followed. Is that what I'm hearing? >> Yes, there. >> Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. This is Can you

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hear me? Uh, this is David. Yeah. Um, you know, there's not uh like for example, we're working through right now the uh solid waste assessment contract. That obviously is a very large contract uh that exceeds the various thresholds

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uh that would then have to go before the council. When a uh when a when a packet goes before the council, we will usually put in there a memo or uh entertain questions and have our doc

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backup documents to the council which will show whether or not it was uh piggybacked on another contract with another municipality. if it was uh competitively procured or

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um if it was a service that uh that uh met one of the exceptions that are in the uh uh procurement policy. But uh but yeah, we'll then have to go through we'll set up if it's a new vendor. Let's

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say it's uh you know uh a a new vendor. Let's say the let's say the department needs to buy here. Let's let's do this. Let's say the department needs to buy a vehicle. So currently the state of Florida has what they call a sheriff's

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contract. It's known throughout all municipalities that uh the sheriff's contract is the best contract to get the best prices uh for a vehicle. Well, when we bring

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that a vehicle purchase, let's say to the to the commission, we will outline what the purpose of the vehicle is, why we need it. We are we we obtain the vehicle through a Florida governmental

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state contract with Ford or Chevy or or what have you and this vehicle meets the meets the needs and we'll go through the process of making sure that we get the contract attach it to Blackbod uh create the vendor you know get the W

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get the I9 information or any relevant tax information all that. >> So, all the contracts and all the documents and all the information are in Blackbod. I just >> It's hard. It's hard It's hard to say all. It's It's hard to say all, but uh

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but I mean, but I I think that it is up I think that it is up to-date all. I would never answer a question with an all statement. >> No, I've looked for many at times and I have yet to I found maybe one or two, but not all of them. Yeah, that's the

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thing. I have a hard time finding that. >> Well, that's >> especially the day before. >> That's a big issue. >> And I've been in black spot a lot longer, >> right? Yeah. No, I haven't gotten in yet. >> Right. But and then the other thing too is Florida statute requires certain

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professions. Let's say it's the town's auditors. uh the town has to uh go out every every five years or so to go out and to competitively procure. Uh we go through

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a process uh every year to do that. Uh so the the next round of auditors will will show that we went through the steps and the processes to do that. uh most of your bigger contracts as far as

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construction related uh you know they go through this procedure. The reason why is cuz most of them will be in excess of $25,000. The only reason why municipalities have used a threshold of $25,000

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is not to bog down the process of having to not not to abuse it obviously, but bog down the process of just getting the work done in a in a in a prompt time. But most of your bigger contracts

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uh uh you know go go directly to the board. they get directly uh you know the first stop is Jeff obviously Jeff has to be there early in the game uh just to look at legal sufficiency. Uh then what

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happens is it gets turned over to the accounting department in which we ask the question all right what what department is this for? What uh fund is this for? And do we have budget? Yes or

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no? uh do we have to uh adjust said budget by pulling from other line items within a budget? But we can produce a flowchart for you uh to just show you kind of all the steps all the steps that get to

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uh point A to to to point Z. Uh yeah, we can do that. >> Let me ask this. Would you say you are probably one of the most knowledgeable people we have about not only the blackbod system but but how the finances

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flow and and how this procurement policy is um is followed. >> Um I I mean I I would say uh uh yeah I would be I would be one of them. Obviously been in governmental accounting for 15

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15 years. Jeff as well. These these procurement processes they are checked as part of the annual audit. It is a sample. It is a sample size of course. So it is checked as part of the annual

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audit. uh and uh most people I'm sorry not most people most department heads who are higher paid than other types of employees they're held at a little bit

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higher standard. So most department heads when it reaches those amounts that are above the $25,000 figure and have been in local government for 5 years or more know that the first stop very first

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stop is what's the dollar amount is there an exception and if not then does it follow our procurement policies. So >> okay and is it okay if I question? So,

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so is ha someone having the one of the most knowledge. I'm not going to say the most knowledge, but one of the most knowledge. Are you satisfied with the way that the documents are in Blackbod? The way the numbers are um are documented, the way the procurement

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policy is followed. Um do you feel like it could be better or do you feel like it's it's um the best it could be? No, I I'm I'm a big uh proponent of uh everything can be improved. Uh we've

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been uh we've been on site now for probably a little bit over a year and uh jumping into a town like this is unfortunately normal. But it takes about two years to get everything pointed in the right

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direction and we are doing that. Our mantra at uh projected point is everything goes into blackbot. Now uh in what we do there are certain seasons

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you know we have uh two busy seasons. We have audit and we have budget. And at the end of the day, uh, you know, we're trying to obviously wrap up the audit side of it because we're quickly jumping into the budget side of it. I'm not

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saying that that's not important because you are correct. The procurement policy is the first domino in a series of dominoes that uh that affect various things. So, you're absolutely correct.

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Uh I would say that uh everyone involved can do a little bit better. Uh but it is it is a mantra with our working management team of what does the procurement policy state.

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The reason why is is because that's the that's the procedure and the policy. You know, typically we do hand the the procurement policy to a department head because if a department head has been in

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government for any length of time, then they know that that's the Bible and they might have to jump through a certain amount of hoops to get it done with. But yeah, they'll uh they'll go through and they'll make sure that if it's an exception, we get it passed by legal. If

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it's a certain dollar amount then u you know then then we go down the processes. Is it perfect? No. Uh right now we are trying to get everything into Blackbod and uh and and

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that we will uh which which doing the procurement getting all the contracts in there getting all of the uh other types of pieces of paper getting getting those things electronically those are very

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very important and I would never discount that. Uh yeah, getting them in there is very important >> that's scanning those in or is it someone from the town? >> Uh a little bit of both. You know, we get a a little bit of both.

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>> Okay. >> But the but but the threshold of >> I'm trying I'm trying to think uh I'm trying to think. Um, mainly you're going to see that $25,000 threshold

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be implemented if we need somebody like who's an expert at something. Do do you know what I mean? and and so >> you have in place that checks um something for example there's a $20,000

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payment and then a $10,000 payment to the same vendor within a certain period of time. Do you have anything in your system that checks those um recurring type payments that cumulatively would have would have been over the $25,000

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mark? >> Yeah. Go ahead. I mean yes the the idea is is that after uh after it goes through the procurement process and legal process and we issue a

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purchase order. What the system does is the system is supposed to say hey you cannot go above that purchased order amount uh in the system and uh so that that is

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the idea without issuing another purchase order. >> So so if I'm uh just for example because the way my mind works is is how we what we want to do is stop any wrongdoing right that's what we're We're looking over the finances. We're making sure

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nobody's taking money, embezzling money, paying their friends and family under the table. What would prevent someone from putting in a vendor as, you know, >> Joe Blow, >> Joe Blow, LLC, and then Joe Blow, Inc. Because

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then that would be two separate vendors who then are are getting more than $25,000. What catches something like that? catch is that would be the segregation of duties. It would be and that and in smaller government it's uh a

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little bit of a challenge. Uh but it is the process of who we enter in as a vendor in the system. Uh we as your accounting staff, we only have the

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ability to enter people in as vendors. uh your your department heads can't uh I mean I may miss may may be misspoken but uh and Jacob you can confirm because

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he's the technological expert uh but uh but Jeff as well uh there are limitations like when we give you login when we give you all loginins to Blackbod you're restricted on what you

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can do. Now, we we can't restrict the town manager because the town manager is above all the staff. Uh but typically, God, >> if the town manager wanted to go in and

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I'm not saying a town manager would do this, but if they wanted to, they could go in and make a change to the to a vendor name, so now it doesn't flag in the system that they're being paid more than the 25,000. I guess they could, but there would be an audit trail. There would be an audit

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trail. >> Checks that audit trail. >> Well, um uh I don't know. I don't know the answer to who checks the audit trail, but if someone was brazen enough to do that, they probably they would get caught. uh

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we we uh but we can we can maybe implement something that uh that uh that that reviews that but it's also part of our annual audit when the auditors go through the auditors look at uh all the

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uh dispersements and >> the auditor is not you your firm it's another firm >> that's correct >> they're just doing checks and balances not what we think is an >> okay >> um would miss Stevens Um, let's go back to the premise of your

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question. Jolo as an individual and Joe Blow LLC. >> What I'm trying to understand is are these are you saying these are two legitimate entities?

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>> No, it's an illeg. It's an illegitimate entity, >> right? or it's the same or maybe it's JLO and then Joblo LLC where Joblo LLC is a sole proprietorship under an LLC and legally it could be either one but now you pay them separately so they're

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two separate vendors in your system and it doesn't flash that's what I'm trying to find out >> okay so it depends first of all with respect to the $25,000 it depends on if um it is

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a different project the limitation on the $25,000 is um per project. It is not an overall um expenditure. At the same time, what you have is

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all payments to vendors of over $10,000 cumulatively or $25,000 cumulatively are reported um to the council on a regular basis. >> Right. that wouldn't accumulate because

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they're two separate vendors. You see what I'm saying? >> They >> Yeah, >> they would accumulate there. Sorry. They would be separate vendors. So, Joe Blow, Joblow, Inc. would show up on that list twice. And so, then we'd be like, why is that in there twice? >> Yeah, cuz uh you guys have to approve all the vendors on there, right?

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>> And also, um Yeah. And so, even if we sent on different like sending it straight from the bank, um it'd show up under two different names. Um that report would be under two different names. And then that would >> unless you wrote a check to Joo and then Joel LLC

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>> if there so there's if there's two different vendor names then it would be you'd see a check EFT credit card anything because our report that we give summarizes by the vendor name >> in total. >> Yeah. >> So say you had a vendor Joe blow and

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then you had blow Joe. >> Yeah. Well yeah. So >> sorry. What we're trying to figure out is what truly checks and balances are in place to make sure that either a a a town manager or or somebody else in the

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town isn't um playing games with money. I'm just saying they're stealing. I'm not even saying that's happening. >> Can I jump in here? >> The your scenario you're putting in First of all, those guys got to approve each vendor that's added to that list. Correct.

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>> Yes. Approve each vendor that's added. Yeah. >> Yeah. So we so we would need their taxpayer identification number. Who's it for? What department is it? And also who who is requesting

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Joe Blow versus Joe Blow Inc. And then I I would say I would say the other backs stop would be the budget because eventually line items run out of budget and we sit there we go, "Wait a second.

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How come, let's just say office supplies, how come office SUPPENDING SO MUCH money in office supplies and that's how things obviously would get caught? It it wouldn't happen uh indefinitely, but things would get

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nailed. >> I think I think there's two really good ways. One, every single check EFT gets signed off by council and they get a prepayment. Two members of council, they get a prepayment report. That's Jennifer recently with the EFTs.

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>> Uh yes. Yeah. And so they so they >> so they so that would >> they would even they get their own line items even if there was a space difference. So the or >> with the space difference it'd be completely different. Let's just make it

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a little less obvious like like I have a a farm, right? And it has a business name and then I have my individual name and but you know somebody wants to pay me more than the 25,000 but they don't want to get council approval. So they pay Jennifer 15,000 and they pay pay my

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business 15,000 to make 30,000 which is above the limit. You'd never catch that. It's a it's a tax ID number versus a social security number that don't match. The names don't match. we would catch that. >> Wait, let's back up. Let's back up here.

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Okay, because I'm not aware of anything like that where we have two two vendors and and those kind that kind of circumstance. >> Well, I'm familiar enough with the with the payments. I don't think that

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situation exists. Um, and that's why you're speaking purely hypothetically. >> But it's it's our job to find out. >> But let's go back to to what would have to to happen in that in that circumstance. Um, because there would be

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a contract of some sort. The contract would be reviewed by me or my office. Okay. So, um, I think I would probably ask the question, are these the same? Well, but they're not at the same time. One's a

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month ago and you signed off on it and then this one's a month or two later. And >> well, I'm going to go back even further. So, last year you guys were hired way before you were actually hired. You guys were getting paid January, February, and March. You guys weren't hired until, I

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believe, April. And those checks were how did that get through? That went under >> the town manager's $24.99, but they were already getting paid before they were even approved. And we were already paying another >> they did not >> they did not well there was a transition

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period that was agreed on that. Yeah. All we're trying to do is make sure that going forward there are checks and checks and balances that we that everyone understands the process. There's a good standard operating procedure that's easy to follow for these department heads and that you have

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the tools you need, Jacob and David, to to make sure that everything is within the budget. We talked last time about adding a line item into Blackbod that ties directly to um to the budget item.

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I I don't know if if you know what the if we've done any investigation of that so we can determine um you know it so it's easy because right now I understand there's maybe a little bit of a delay. I could be wrong in getting the financials out so that we can look at them and

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determine how we compare to our budget. Um, are we over our budget? Are we under? You know, are we way over on one item and really, you know, under on another? That's something I think we should be looking at every single month so that if

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there is a problem, we can quickly catch it and and figure out why was it not budgeted correctly? Why was it, you know, what went wrong? I mean, I do financial statements for large trusts and this is what we do every month. we review the the financials compared to

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the budget and determine if there's a problem. >> I think where Jennifer is also going is that th this policy, this procurement policy does not require any routine public reporting on those purchases. The manual requires three quotes documentation approvals, but no regular

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transparency report to the council or the fact. >> Yes, I go back to the 10 and 20. >> So, it just goes back to No, it just goes back to transparency. No, I'm saying with the transparency, I think the the beginning of the transparency at

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least is the 10 and $25,000 um levels of expenditures that does go to the um the council and I think at times has gone to the fact I'm not going to say it always has um but it it does

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go to to the council. And then um as indicated um when it comes down to signing off on checks, the council members um get backup uh materials and they have the

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ability to to question um and Blackbod's not perfect. It is not in perfect shape. I'm not going to say that it is, but you do have the ability to go back and look at invoices um and find contracts and all those kind of things within there from a transparency standpoint. I I

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think though that what Tracy's saying about the transparency policy is is we I think we need to add a line to the correct the policy that says after we do X Y and Z we're going to be transparent about it and and report it to the

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>> give a report even if it's a once a month once a month written a report you do monthly financials right >> so so after the monthly financials are done um all the bank you reconcile bank accounts every Are they all up to date, reconciled? So

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once all those are done, >> um you should it should be a quick report out of Blackbot, I would guess. I haven't been in there, but I mean I use other accounting software. It takes 5 seconds to run a report that just shows, you know, what's been spent on how much.

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And um it it seems like it'd be a pretty easy thing to do. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Jacob, you you agree? You're the tech guy. Uh yeah, I mean there uh >> you can definitely it's I guess what line like how much detail do you want?

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Um >> yeah. >> Well, I think at least categories. So if it's office supplies or if it's, you know, and that way too, you know, if if there's a $100,000 spent on office supplies one month, I mean, what in the world is that? Somebody shouldn't be

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asking the questions, right? So I think I think that would be um I think that would be very helpful to to for us for the procurement policy to recommend to the council to just add in another step which is to then report it and then to

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have your financials um reported but also tied to the budget which we you know if you can do that going forward for example if you started that in July 1st I mean it'd be easy enough to just add in all you have to

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add in is your um you know budget number create a numbering system for that add it in right >> and then you run a report based on that and you can say that ties to budget item x y or z >> I think what you're looking for it

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sounds to me like you're looking for the monthly budget to actual reports correct to be sent to council and to um back >> well and and to potentially be made you know have the council look at them and then determined to make them public so

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that the the citizens can look at it and say I mean it all should be open records you know available >> but it would be nice if we got those more periodically than once a year. >> Well it's you run every month anyway. I mean it should take you a few minutes.

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It shouldn't be a a hard thing to do once the bank accounts are reconciled and your credit card statements are reconciled. I mean, it's I can't imagine there are that many transactions every month. How many would you say there are a month on average? 100, a thousand?

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Like, what where are we talking about ballpark? >> More in the neighborhood of the hundred. >> Yeah. So, that would be easy to do. >> Yeah. And then so just so we're all on the same page, the

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budget to actual that I'm thinking of, it will it'll have all the it has all the GL um numbers and you can say, okay, um you know, legal um education and and

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training. Uh Jeff hasn't spent anything um up until this point in time. He's got $2,500 budgeted. >> Sure. Well, what can >> and then the next month you'll see, oh, he spent $1,700 cuz he went to a conference or whatever it happens to be. >> And the way I do it when I create these

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budget to financial reports is you add another column in there, which is a prrated amount for the month. So, you know, for example, if you export that to an Excel spreadsheet, you can easily add in a month four and your your total budget for the year is 100,000. you

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should have spent up to 40,000. Um, you know, or you have up to 40,000. If you've spent the whole 100,000 and it's month four, maybe we look at it and say, "Why did that happen?" And maybe there's a good explanation >> or you may have not spent any for Jeff's

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explanation. Well, he hadn't gone to the conference yet. But that's okay, too. But, but it at least gives us the ability to say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait before there's a big problem." Um, >> have you guys explored the PowerBI on

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the town's website? >> I have. I've been I was looking at it earlier again. Um, it's not quite up to date from my understanding. >> Yeah. Yeah. We we we were we got caught off guard with the audit stuff and on

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next is the the budget stuff, but I'll get that up to date. But >> can you see >> give us a clear indepth um perspective of the money in money out what's going on truly behind the scenes? It's it's just throwing some numbers out there per

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month. Um for >> I'm sorry. >> I'm sorry. Did Did you say it's just throwing numbers out there by month? >> That's what it looks like on the screen when you just look at it. It doesn't break each one down. So like the if you go back to the one

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>> okay >> I mean it's far away from here but when you go down the line items again hard to see from December November I think you have it >> looks like regular this right here is regular here is all your departments

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>> for the last what do they purchase where you know that's >> if if so if you want to get >> you want to see vendor here's all the vendors you want to see the vendor rank amount by who we who we paid most of the vendors to, what GL account they go to,

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what they're for, what the average of the invoice amount, how many invoices were we talking about? Uh, you could search here if you wanted to search here for a specific vendor. Let's see if uh what was the name today? Today's name

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was uh what name did we say for inc? >> Joe, but he's not there. Yeah, I'll be shocked by something wrong. >> Yeah, let me see. And then there was something else below something that wasn't in there. And not only that,

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though, but and this right here, uh, comes Oh. Uh, this right here, this matter of fact, what you're looking at here is nothing manipulated. This all comes right. It's a direct link to your

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Blackbod because what Blackbod is is Blackbot is just a I mean you have your revenues by month, you have your expenditures by month. It shows the actual budget whether or not you're over under. And maybe you don't like that.

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Maybe you want to go to line items here. Click on line items. You can sort the line items from highest to lowest by any of these categories. Here are all the >> How toate is this? >> March, I think.

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>> I'm sorry. What's up? >> How up to date is it? >> I apologize. Jacob told me I should update it, but I'll I'll update it tonight. But right now, the most uh the most recent one, let me see. Let me go to monthly expenditures. It's through

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March. So, I can May quarter. >> Well, I can do April, May. Uh, yeah, we're not we're not quite done with June yet. It takes us a little bit of time. We just don't >> That's just a PowerBI update and not not We update the bank records monthly. So, all those transactions are in there.

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>> Sure. It's just you clicking a button to have to when he says a direct link, it's not directly. Well, you know, monthly when we were doing this, we download the report and then upload into here. >> Yeah. >> So, Gotcha. Okay. If you give me 10 minutes, I'll refresh it right now. But

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>> perfect. Good. Thank you, Dave. Oh, >> thank you. I >> I think I think if we could maybe I don't want to be here, we've been here an hour. I don't want to go over our time tonight. We have till one more hour, right? >> Is is to maybe make some notes about

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what we recommend to the council. And I think one of the things um we can recommend is on that procure on the policy we get the bid we you know go through all these things that then there's some

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transparency and we sort of you know either announce that on the website or we put it somewhere. >> Yeah. >> Or we give it to the bot committee and the council >> just for transparency. >> That's at what level. So,

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>> it's just not in there at all. There's no reporting. >> Well, I mean, it it happens anything over $25,000 that goes to council. Obviously, there's transparency. >> This is other this is the other >> So, you're looking at at at things that are less than $25,000. I don't imagine

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you want to go down to $1,000 or anything like that to >> Well, I mean, it's it's they're just numbers. It's just information. It's just a report on the I mean it's not and you're only talking about a 100 transactions a month. I mean it's it's not like it's >> Well, no. Well, hold on. Let's hold on.

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We can we can determine that because I can tell you how many invoices we have through March. Uh let's >> inh 205 uh invoices. Now, that doesn't account

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for payroll or anything like that. we had uh 2080 2080 invoices and uh for 2026 just through March we're at 742. So >> So it's at that

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>> I mean right there that tell me >> range >> why or why do we have so many more this quarter than compared to last year or is that typical for the first quarter of 2025? I don't know. I'm just thinking who's looking at those things.

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>> Well, we we do have to >> if they were public, someone would be looking at them. >> The the answer is nobody is is looking at that question because I can tell I can I can confidently tell you that nobody is looking at what the reason is.

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There was 2008 742 in and now we're almost halfway to what we were last year. Maybe it's a bunch of small vendors. Maybe I mean I don't know what the answer is. Or maybe last year there were 750 up to March and that's when we pay most of our invoices. I I

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don't know the answer, but if we had the reporting then we we could look at those things quickly and and dismiss it. What happens is when we don't have the information, our minds start spinning and so do the the residents mind start spinning and saying what's going on behind the scenes because we're not

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getting the information. And I think if we had the information then it would quell a lot of that and it would also hold people accountable because they would know people are looking at it just in case. >> I mean that's the whole purpose of >> it's six less PBSO. >> What's that?

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>> Six less PBSO and >> uh something to note I think that um uh it's been done recently. Not >> recently but the department heads we have a lot of people those line items that you say is this going to go over? there's a lot of eyes that look at any

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of those changes. So, not only do we look at them when we, you know, monthly say, "Okay, where are we at?" So, we can make recommendations to the um commission for any technical amendments that we might be needed, but now department heads um have been trans. They're watching their GO. They've been

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involved in the budget process for this year. So, there eyes that see, okay, hey, something's something's out of park and then looking at a fund level, but where are we going to fall? like kind of like you said the uh I think it's on one of the pages on the par like what percent do we have left we're meeting for those fun

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>> and especially those line items too so >> right yeah and then and then that takes us to what part of what our job is is the next step to all of that is what happens when that department head goes over his budget >> who's holding him accountable

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>> so usually um and dad you can correct me if I'm wrong but so the line item specifically um we just we we kind of make sure we take it as as departments. So, hey, where does their department look like? Maybe they spend a little bit more in office supplies but less in subscriptions. And as long as they're,

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you know, looks like they're on par for their department, we don't necessarily raise any red flags. Um but if their department's looking like, hey, you know, this is something's big and out of control here, then um it gets something happens. >> And who do you report that to if that

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happens? you who's your first >> I would probably talk to my dad and then talk to town management say hey >> and who in the town the town manager or who would you speak to like if you let's say your dad of town you can't get a hold of him you got a problem >> well I would probably talk to the department and say hey why why is this

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out of balance and then they might say something happened and then bring it up to the town manager and say hey by the way this department looks like they're going they're not going to they're going to go over budget um >> do you have a monthly meetings with her

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with the town manager to to kind of go over this. How are we doing on the budget? Are we is everybody on task? Do you all have those? >> Um, no. I I don't think we have monthly meetings. Um, but normally, uh,

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no. No. To answer your question, >> would that be helpful for you, David Jacob? Did that be helpful for you to have >> either, you know, 30 minute phone call to say, "Hey, we're right on budget or we're here. We are >> you guys actually discuss that with anybody?"

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>> Wait, back up for a second. Let's first of all when you talk about usual and those kind of things you have to understand that first of all um this is the first year that there's been a true departmental concept before um it was um

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everything was basically under a town administration and then >> and when was that started? May >> started in October >> October. October. >> And I'm not being critical. You're just trying to figure out going forward what would be helpful. No, you're you're absolutely right and I'm not taking it at all as criticism. I'm just trying to

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explain the background when you talk about usual and things like that >> been operating under this system where community standards and um the clerk's office and all those night kind of things are separated out and

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individually accountable versus being a part of a general fund basically since October. and we probably didn't get the the numbers and everything inputed um until the November December time period.

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Um and so um there are there are regular scheduled meetings um that David is scheduled to to participate in. >> But is that with the town council or the town manager? >> That's with the that's with the town

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manager. he's invited to participate in in those meetings. >> Yeah. You know, in uh in government, uh that's why and what the PowerBI shows you is uh where you should be quarter 1,

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where you should be at quarter two, where you should be at 75%. But just to give you just some perspective, 73% of your entire budget is labor

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and transfers out to your other funds. So, you know, when you're looking at a you know, >> when you say labor, do you mean mainly payroll or is is that a combination of payroll and um contract labor? No, it's

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uh payroll, payroll taxes, health insurance, workers compensation, and pension. >> Okay. >> Yep. >> Yeah. And so, and so, you know, when when we look at that now, now we're also

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looking at So, when we look at where the spend rates are, uh we usually get together the first quarter and we say, "Hey, this is where things are lining up. This is where uh things are seem a little bit out of

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whack. Uh then uh we are allowed to move with I guess the the the manager to move within the uh funds budget. Maybe as Jacob had mentioned uh maybe we didn't spend enough maybe we didn't budget

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enough in subscriptions versus office supplies. we can move money down to office supplies. The Florida statute uh doesn't allow us to go over the expenditures for that fund.

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Um and uh so within that fund, as long as we stay within those rails, uh the state of Florida recognizes that it's a budget, it's an estimate, and it's used to set millage rates and various

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assessment rates for this time next month. I think the biggest thing that Jennifer is trying it's not so much about it's it's establishing internal

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controls. Um, when it comes to this policy, I think it's a solid procurement policy. Honestly, when you look at it, it's the internal controls I think that we're we're sitting here looking at and wondering who's reviewing it, who's

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making sure that all these policies are being checking off. This is being done. This is being done. How do we know? How does council know? Um, there's some things that probably could be done. Why can't there be an annual uh procurement comp uh comp compliance

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review? Quarterly procurement activity reports. Things that we've never been given or town council hasn't been given. Standardized contract administration checklist. Checklists are great. We I think we all like them being in finance. Uh periodic internal audit and

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procurement files. Random sampling of procurement for compliance. How do we know that anything that's been going on in the last couple years, this year, last year is actually is actually being done according to this procurement policy.

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Does that make sense? >> And I understand we have auditors that that come and look at it that >> but they're not going to do all the checks and balances. >> Yeah. Are they looking at did someone comply with the you know policy? How deep are they going? I don't know. >> Or are they just looking to make sure

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there was no, you know, fake names in Oh, >> no. They do when they when they pick their sample size. Yeah. Uh that's >> yeah I believe >> they do an internal controls narrative. So they test our internal controls and see how they go.

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>> Every year they ask us for our update to our purchasing policy. They will pull a random set of I don't know how many invoices. Uh and they'll ask us for the package, right? They'll ask us for the

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contract. They'll ask us for the uh W2. They'll ask us for a bunch of documents related to um you know the sample size that they get to pick from uh for the uh for the entire year. And with today's technology,

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>> if there's 2,000 invoices or purchase orders or whatever that number was for last year, how many samples did they ask for out of that 2,000? >> I don't maybe 25. random sampling which excludes any

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payroll related items. Right. So if I'm not if I'm not Oh, and payroll testing is a whole another set of testing uh that's done. Um so yeah, >> has the has the inspector general ever provided recommendations related to this

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procurement? Does anybody know that? >> Not to my knowledge. th this particular policy. >> I don't I don't know there uh >> I don't know does the inspector general do that? I don't know if >> I'm just curious. Not saying that anything's wrong.

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>> There was there was an inspector general report a few years ago. Um and it didn't look at the overall procurement policy, but it did focus in on a couple of items, you know, as requested.

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Okay. What was >> you asked a lot of my questions. Sorry. >> No, no, no. It's all good. No, it's all good. >> If we selected a contract today, just random just we pulled one out of the hat. >> Could someone show us the complete contra the contract administration file

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demonstrating that all required monitoring has been performed? So, basically, we put all the contracts in in a hat. We pulled one out. And if we ask these questions, could they be answered? Who owns the contract

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administration? How many departments administer contracts, which I think we've determined there's 10, correct? Is there a standardized process of looking at contracts? How many people does it go through? Just those department heads, or does it go the department head, town

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manager, lawyer? What um is there a contract administration checklist? There's that checklist word again that we love. Um is compliance documented and how who verifies that it was completed and documented and is there any internal

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audit or periodic review of the contracts? So here we have a contract. It's looks great. Who's going back doing the checks and balances of everything in the contract? I'll take F- Road and Collecting Canal for instance with her homes because for me, let me tell you,

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that is a disaster and whoever's looking at the contract needs to be fired because what is going on at that that area is hor horrible. They haven't finished, but they've moved down to FRO to another one. I just don't understand the checks and balances of what these

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contracts are saying, what they should be doing. The dates way past and it looks like it does. So that I think is a lot of things that we look at as residents in the town is they have a contract. Why isn't this done? We're almost in July and it looks like that.

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So who is looking at that overall contract looking at the checks and balances? >> The contractor administrator for that particular contract is correct. Um it is not complete at this point in time because there's a change order that is

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required because the original um bid documents did not have all of the paving um that uh for that entire area. So there's a change order required and one of the things that

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>> who missed that engineer, >> huh? >> Who missed that? The engineer. >> It was >> you ripped up payment. you're going to have to put payment back down. >> It was Mr. Galant who was in charge of putting those specs together. Um and um

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so Craig has met with um her homes. Um there's a change order that is uh in process. Um and there is a uh he's also contacted Chetum to see um

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whether or not they could do it for uh a lesser amount. Um so that's all going on right now. So that's what's going on with that particular matter at this point in time. >> But is there a sheet of checks and balances going through that contract

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with roads and drainage department? When you say a sheet of checks and balances, >> I'm just I don't know if it's a piece of paper or what. >> We're just asking is there one? Is that in the process? How how do we know? Like I've I hear through the grape vine that

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one of the contracts provides for every day you're late there's some fine amount who's enforcing that is that being enforced? What's happening with that? >> But but with not just that contract, I'm not asking specifically. I'm just asking in general for every contract who's

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who's managing doing the contract management to make sure that the vendors are complying with the contract. >> The contract management that you see on the um construction contracts that are undergone, those are all um with Mr. Low.

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>> Okay. So, so each department head manages their own contracts is what you're saying? >> Yes. >> Okay. And who's verifying that they're doing what they're supposed to do? um they update the um town manager on

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what is going on. >> Okay, that's part of the checks that we're looking for. >> We're just trying to see just trying to understand this. >> In answer to your question, I don't think there is a checklist with respect to to to that um that explicitly, you

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know, says Craig, you know, report to um the acting town manager. But it happens on a regular basis. >> It's not trying to create so much, you know, red tape that you have to get through. But but what also what this prevents is from things from falling

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through the cracks. So that's really what all we're trying to do is see, okay, how do we prevent things from falling through the cracks? How do we make sure from a financial perspective that we're not going over our budget, that our our numbers are are done correctly, that we're not spending money

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we don't need to spend? Hence, we're over budget on this project and now we're doing a change order. Could that have been could that have been prevented because that's not part of the budget? >> And how many and how many of these contracts is this happening to? >> That's all we're trying to see.

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>> But but from our perspective, what can we put in place to make sure this doesn't happen again? that because we we can't do anything about what's happened >> to be for the next. >> Yeah. >> Um the root of that particular problem I

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think as far as I know is that um the specs um had a mistake in them. Um, and >> definitely that falls to the town manager, right? Because she's supposed to be overlooking >> he or she >> he or she, whoever it was, I don't know

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if it's this year or last year, should have been looking at >> the to make sure a big project like that, which clearly is more than $25,000. Right. >> Right. It went to council >> that >> uh but and the and the specs were um reviewed and and people missed it.

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>> To be right, so everybody missed it. Council, town manager. The thing is >> I think I think you rely on the experts that you have. >> Yeah. >> Um and my understanding of that is that

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the mistake was made in the preparation of the um the specs. >> But doesn't it also go through engineering? Not just that was the head person over at roads and drainage. Would it have gone through an actual engineering firm?

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>> No. Oh, so none of that was engineered by an actual engineer. >> Mr. Galant was in charge of the project and he is an engineer, although he's not a PE, but >> but now we have somebody that's not an engineer that's been here now doing this since November, December.

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>> No, Mr. Kluff is an engineer. He is a registered PE. >> And he's been here how long? >> Since November, December or so. >> Okay. but he wasn't involved in the >> and he didn't catch it when he looked at

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it either before they actually started the project because they only they started it very late. >> Um, no, he wouldn't have been he wouldn't have been reviewing that project for for that purpose. Maybe that's some of the controls that we need

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to put in place for the town council is who's reviewing this before the actual start. So we don't have to spend all this extra money on change orders, but that should have been caught because he started way before the actual project began. Same thing with a road, some of these other newer projects also.

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>> Yeah, it it might be a recommendation that um all of our road and construction projects be professionally engineered. Well, that are reviewed before they actually start and say, "Hey, what did we miss? We're ripping we're ripping up this this was that on our bid."

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>> But that's that's one of the things that to consider is whether or not we should hire an engineering firm to actually go forward and and do the specs and come up with the plans and all those kind of things. >> But it seems like we've also spent a fortune on engineering firms

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>> or a variety of of circumstances, but they That was not within their task as I understand. >> You have more? >> I have more, but I I'm I'm just going to say I I do I'm very comfortable with a

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procurement policy in many aspects. There's I mean we could whole be you know questions on different things like we talked about the performance bond and um questions about um Again, those checklists like behind

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the scenes, keeping accountability for our departments is so important and and those are the things that I would recommend to council and moving forward keeping with our procurement policy. I think it's great. There's some questions with disposal of assets um potential misuse under $5,000

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of of sending items that are no longer needed. Um, I'm not familiar with where they're going, what's happening. There was I had questioned about the water truck many times in the past. Um, there was never any answers about who

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was getting it, if it was being sold. Just little things that again, accountability. >> The water, >> the broken water truck, >> the the water truck uh was sold. Um, it was sold at auction. Um, I don't recall

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what the price was. the um the items that were sold at that auction um which ended up generating a good bit of money enough to purchase the new dump truck. That was about two year and a half or two years ago. Um that

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um decision as to what was going to be sold um was presented and ultimately determined by the council. >> Okay. Yeah. because it just wasn't very clear in in the procurement policy itself. That's I just had a question about it to see how it goes because I guess under

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five obviously the water truck's more than $5,000. Yeah. So, um that was just an example of I had questions. I know it's been a year and a half. I've been around a while but not for this board and um but I think the procurement policy is great. Um

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I don't want to beat a dead horse with it so I'll I'll I'll stop. You're not beating any dead horses. Oh, what are sole source documentation that the policy requires a written jur

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justification, right? >> Yes. Yes. Uh soul sources are very very rare. What would be an example you say there were last year? >> Oh, I don't they're they're extremely rad. I mean, I guess the police contract

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would be a sole source contract. There's only one police department that can do that service. uh they're extremely rare but you know uh procurement policies do identify that maybe oh another sole

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source would be uh if we wanted to get a particular module for our accounting software right we use blackbod and so therefore we would have to use blackbod

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as uh to to to go through that So, so they're rare and you usually don't usually see them unless it's software or some type of maybe it's a mechanical piece of equipment from John Deere and only John Deere has this type of piston

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and yeah, that would be an example. >> That's that's exactly there was and I don't remember exactly who the vendor was, but um I think it was a a pump or another piece of mechanical equipment. I

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think that the um our system was like so old there was only one place that you can get that particular, you know, fit for it. >> Emergency purchases, our current policy allows emergency purchases without a

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competition. >> Um after an emergency, what happens? Is it just the money spent? what happens in that type of emergency, >> you go through a if there's been an emergency purchase, um it gets ratified

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by the the council. >> But when you have those expenses, is is it documented somewhere where it's telling what happened? What why was it an emergency? Um why was the vendor selected? >> Were there any emergencies last year?

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How many emergencies were there last year? Like how would I know that? Well, I'm trying to think when the um uh was it last year or the year before that the the tornado went through the year before. Okay. >> Um but that would have been an example

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of of something that would have been >> right. I know I know the examples of them. The question is how do we >> how do we how do we prevent someone from just categorizing everything as emergency? How would we how would we know >> wait these are being categorized as

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eies? expenditures have to be taken to the the council and justified >> and and who who makes sure that happen. >> Yeah. >> But I think the money's already spent before it's ratified. Correct. >> It's already spent. >> No, no, no. They usually No. They would any type of emergency we would usually

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have uh let's just say for cleanup uh I think the one that comes to mind for an emergency was debris dog. Now, that was >> I'm not that familiar with the town of Luxah Hatchee or how many debris companies you have at your disposal in

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your area. I don't know. Uh but uh I'm assuming that debris dog and in an emergency, we're just trying to get a reasonable prices. Now, the vendor with a purchase order, because let's think about it, what is a purchase order? A purchase

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order is a contract, right? The vendor is going to mobilize. A vendor is going to get there. Everyone's power is down. All the trees are in the road. No one really cares about if we have to bring something to a council or not. They need

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it evacuated right away or cleared up as soon as possible. At that moment in time, staff will bring uh at at probably they'll probably call an emergency council meeting if the emergency is that

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detrimental. Uh once everyone gets back into town, if it's a hurricane, for example, uh and then what'll happen is yeah, that'll be the first thing on the agenda. and we'll try we rely everything you're talking

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about. You're really relying on your town manager to manage the emergency. That's what the that that's why you pay a town manager extremely well is to manage those types of uh issues. Would

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it be possible for a town manager to um sort of declare her own or his own emergency and then >> pay a bunch of vendors for that emergency and then nobody ever knows about the emergency?

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>> I believe when you say it um >> I'm just trying to find out. >> The answer is the answer is yes. It's possible >> because all right if you had um

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let's say uh FRO um collapses and you know or collecting canal >> let's be let's be more realistic let's say that >> no that is that's realistic >> no no but but this is this is the kind

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of emergency I'm talking about let's say that we're going to have a town council IL meeting and we know the press is going to be here. So, we really want to get all the flowers done in the front and we want to spend $10,000 landscaping and making the front be beautiful. And

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I'm as a t town town manager think that's an emergency. So, >> that's not an emergency. >> Well, I know it's not an emergency, but could I still get away with it? >> Well, you you probably what I'm saying. >> No, you you 9999 without >> you. Okay, that's what I was gonna say.

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you it's not an it's not an emergency, but you probably have contracts or um personnel that can go ahead and accomplish that task. And you can say um >> but let's say it's more than $25,000. I'm just saying >> if it was more than $25,000, it would have to go to the the council. believe.

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>> Yes. If you would be very foolhardy as the manager to go up there and say, >> "I thought the flowers were an emergency and because I'm going to have to >> say nothing and nobody ever knows >> the check where it gets where it gets caught is on that report that would go the 10 and 25k

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>> question it. Oh my god, this what was this emergency?" Because it's emergency. Would you guys question that? That's what we're >> Well, if it was over 25K. >> No, no, it doesn't matter. Just say she spent 510,000. He or she spent five tous thousand. Not saying this has been done, but they did this and

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>> emergency. >> Yes. Yeah. I mean that would Yeah. I mean first of all an emergency and Jeff you can correct me if I'm wrong but the county has to declare an emergency. I'm assuming my emergency and your emergency

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might be very very different. >> Okay. >> What we're trying to find out is can >> can it be done? >> Can can someone get away with it? Because as a financial committee, we're again trying to make sure that the checks and balances are in place and that someone's looking at I'm looking at

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ways that someone could filter money to their friends and family or themselves or do something >> if you would >> if you were thinking of doing that >> justifying it on the basis of an

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emergency >> would be foolhardy because there's the policy in place that if you justified it on behalf of on because it was an emergency, you then have to go to the council and explain what was going on. >> Who's going to do that? That's my question. >> That's what I think she's not trying to

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make before you get approved. It's got to go to the council. >> The checklist of who's going to do this to make sure are you going to go look see, oh my gosh, somebody wrote a $10,000 check for emergency. How would you know is what I think we're trying to figure >> if you if you are Here's the thing,

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guys. If somebody is corrupt, >> okay, >> they're gonna figure out >> and that's where that's what you're thinking of right now. Somebody is is operating with corrupt motives, >> right? >> Okay. And they are devious and all those kind of things.

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>> Um, and they implement a plan to to move forward. Um, might they be able to get away with it? Well, the might is there's always uh maybe they could, but there are checks and balances in place.

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>> Okay, that's >> because that contract that you're talking about, if it was a contract um is supposed to be routed through me. >> What happens if it's not a contract? It's just >> or what happens if they don't route it

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through you? She just signs it >> and does it and you never know about it. Well, and then then when the payment when the payment comes through, >> perfect. >> It goes through the finance department. >> Okay. >> And they go, "Wow,

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>> where does this get going?" >> So then >> and they can ask the question, >> you being the finance department >> and but you but let's say it's the your boss, the town manager doing it. >> No, no, no. I don't I don't I I got one

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boss and he's much much higher. But at the end of the day, uh, no, we question things all the time. Now you're asking questions. Let's look at, uh, you know, whether or not you want to assign a probability

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to these events happening. >> Um, uh, you know, >> I need it to be zero. >> Well, okay. >> Zero, zero would be perfect. And we can Yeah, I mean I listen, I

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agree with you. You should probably have five more staff. We can add that to the budget just to make sure that we do these internal controls, these double checking. >> We only have a couple hundred, let's just say 2,000 from last year. We divide

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that by 12 months. It's less than, you know, less than 200 a month. 200. Why do we need five staff to look at 200 items a month? Well, because you also talked about uh the contract, you know, uh there are three things to managing a

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contract, right? There's the contract, the contractor, right? Who you pick as your contractor and the contract terms. Yeah, you need somebody and you can't expect the town manager to manage all of these contracts

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that are currently in place. So, we have to rely on our department heads to make sure they >> You're talking about contracts. There's more there's other ways to spend money than a contract. Another one that we that I found personally was a $1,500 to Publix and it was under office supplies.

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Who in the world goes to Publix for $1,500 of office supplies? That was missed by the finance department or it just was ignored. >> No, I don't think it was by the finance department. the $1,500 um I think that you're referring to were

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gift certificates that were given out to um needy folks as a part of a program that we have um around the Christmas holidays >> and so it was probably miscatategorized um as office supplies um but I

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>> then that goes back that goes back to Jennifer's question is who's verifying this miscatategorizations who's who's the one that's actually going in and making sure that it's going to the proper category >> because that was missed and that was missed for a very very long time and it's still in there.

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>> So I know that now that we have departments broken out they code the transactions. Um I'm not sure in the past uh how the uh I guess in the past how was it how I know the department heads right

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now are responsible for coding transactions. So if it's their credit card, they say, "Hey, what GL account has this for?" And I believe that what department hands can't spend over $1,000 without time manager approval. So I would guess that 1,500 must have had some sort of purchase or or something

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with town manager's approval. >> Um and yeah, so >> maybe those weren't in place then and they're in place now. What would be helpful going forward, I think, to get us down to the zero probability of something like that happen, David, is is

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in Blackbot or wherever. You you see um the purchase order, you see the attached contract, you see the acknowledgement that town attorney has reviewed it and approved it. And um if it's over 25,000, you see that the council has approved

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it. or if it's under 25,000, you see that it's, you know, has the two check signers from council members and um and then the money goes out like that that is going to get you real close to zero. Well, >> yeah. No, you you're absolutely right.

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And one limitation >> supposed to be in in BlackBod in the Yeah, in the sense that >> have a person checking them. >> The contract the contract should be there. Um the um if the contract is signed, you know, it's reflecting that

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it has been stamp, Jeff, that you say it's been approved. >> Yeah. >> And in >> Yeah, but hold on. >> If it's over $25,000, you're going to have the attached resolution that's in there. >> Okay. So, that all should be in Blackbod.

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>> That all should be in Blackbod. >> So, tell me what >> one question. Uh we as staff we know that there is a break with your uh with the purchase order module of Blackbod.

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So we'll come back and Jacob maybe you can uh explain this. Um if someone needs approval it all happens outside of the system. And so you're absolutely right uh madam chair that that uh we should

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have it all in the system. So we'll look at uh there's a module that uh blackbot has for procurement in that purchase orders can be approved by email. Jeff goes in, clicks it, it

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has the audit trail when he did approve it. It then attaches it. It allows the purchase order not to be exceeded by a certain dollar amount. Yeah, these are these are upgrades to your current uh blackbod system. But Jacob, go ahead.

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You can maybe >> we don't have that capability. >> Right. Well, like you said, right now um how it works is it's uh it's not uh electronic. So, it gets printed off. Town manager signs a purchase order that gets scanned, uploaded, and blockbust.

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Instead, he's saying now it would just be uh digital. >> So, so we could upgrade to a digital system is what you're saying. >> It'll be timestamped and dated uh as well as it'll be secure with their

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login. Each one of you has a login and that login allows you to either approve invoices, enter vendors, do journal entries, so on and so forth. So, yeah, we'll we'll definitely look in look into that and and bring you back that uh that

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recommendation >> and and it may not it may be that we don't have enough transactions to justify that cost. We don't want to go spend a bunch more money on Blackbod, but if it's another $50 a month for that feature, maybe it's worth it to make it electronically a lot easier for you to

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do your job, for town manager to do her job, but but also so who from your firm is going through all of these transactions? For example, when you went and reconciled May >> and you had, let's say, a hundred um purchase orders in May, did anyone from

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your firm go through those and say, "We have the contract, we have the we have this signed off, we all of the things that need to be done." >> You know, mo most of the time there is not that many. I will tell you the one that keeps on popping up is um where we

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get the the rock from. We get some uh ground ground rock. Oh yeah. Gravel. >> Yeah. Out at PB Palm Beach. >> Yeah. Uh Palm Beach aggregates, right? Palm Beach aggregates, they do a uh we have an an agreed upon amount, and I

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usually get that a lot from your uh from the the public works department. But a lot of uh $25,000 or below uh purchase orders, there's there's not a lot of them. 90% of those

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will come from the town manager's office because they're typically those types of uh professional types of services, whether it's, hey, I need a grant writer. We have this grant. Who's going to write

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the grant? you know, uh uh thing things like that. But uh but to answer your question, yes, the idea is is that hey, a department head can request something. We'll bounce it back and say, hey, did

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you get did you look at the procurement policy? Did you this right here seems like it exceeds the $25,000 amount? uh go ahead and get attach your three bids because we will obviously have to have

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that to upload it uh into Blackbot. >> Freddy, you had a question. You had your hand up. Did you forget it? >> Hey, I I appreciate your thoroughess, but at the same time, >> your mic your mic. At the same time, you know, we we we we're coming down close

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to the wire here and uh you know, former Navy uh our our thing was request [ __ ] You start at the bottom and and I mean at the top and and the last person approves the either the time off or the

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money or whatever it is. And uh right now we we we have the paper thing, you know, before the next person or you sign, you say, "Okay, what was this accomplished?" I mean, you just don't sign it and not not asking that question. Uh same thing with you guys,

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right? You you you're the money man. You just don't boom, stamp it and let it go. Hey, did everybody >> who's supposed to do their checks and balance get it done? >> Right. >> Yeah. Yep. Yep. And we don't have

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we don't have a credit card. We don't have any of that. We uh we have access to ADP and that's just to download reports uh to be able to do the journal entries

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to record payroll. uh we have access to FRS to be able to take the data that's in the payroll system and upload that into the Florida retirement system. And uh and typically I would say credit

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cards to an accounting department, credit cards are horrible. The reason why is because the transactions already taken place, right? you know, we're we're we're after the fact, but

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realizing that we are in 2026, most things are digital, electronic, so on and so forth, we require that the uh department head gets their statement and tells us with

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the receipts and everything, tells us what it's for and where it should be coded in their budget. Uh, and we, you know, we still have to pay the bill, but Jacob will tell you that, you know, sometimes you, obviously, like anything,

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we got to chase people down, and we do that. But, uh, but most of your expenses are pretty straightforward, payroll, FRS, electric bills, health insurance, Florida Blue, the Palm Beach

348
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aggregates. It used to be uh the Palm Beach uh Police Department. You know, that was one of your top top vendors. Uh but in a in a side note, I updated the PowerBI. So that's updated through uh the month of uh May. So

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>> who who inputs into when we're in Blackbod and say we go to a certain vendor, who's the one that actually inputs the either the invoice or the receipt? Because I'm noticing there's a lot missing. Well, well, right now there's uh we've

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we've tried to bridge the gap. That's not necessarily part of our contract. You know, we don't want to be data entering stuff in. >> Okay. Then whose responsibility is it if it's not yours? the >> invoices and recent upload. Can they

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>> can they upload invoices or >> um Yes. But the and they typically assign it to um to someone um but yeah so so >> junior people >> so it like in >> Jacob I see your name on a lot of things

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so I do. >> Um >> so basically no. So, no, you have you have Cammy um over in public works. Um we used to have Mark doing it, I think. Now, Erica. >> So, who's going behind them to make sure

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that these things are being accomplish? >> So, what So, what happens uh what happened in the past was uh when when Amber was here, she would uh code them, print them off from the email. The invoices all go to the email box. she

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would print them um assign a GL code, send it to the finance department to upload. Um what happens now is uh goes to the inbox. Um we're working on uh it gets routed. For example, the public works department is right now they're

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the most efficient in Blackbot and doing it how everything should. We're working on I think we have a training this month for the rest of the staff here. But how it's supposed to work is it gets routed to them. The not the department head, but the department head uh someone underneath will usually be designated.

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They'll put it into the black bar. The department head will code it. So the department head is always uh coding everything. They're responsible for their line items, their budgets and actuals. It falls on them. Um and then they approve it. We never and we just run the payments. So when nothing we

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don't ever approve anything um once it gets to the payment >> but >> what she's saying is that she's looked in blackbod and there's a lot missing >> so forward how do we how do we make sure that nothing's missing

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>> sure so so like I said so we're talking about so we uh we are putting in some of them now until the staff gets trained um when when you say missing are you saying that um >> like You go to click on like say I go to >> Oh, you mean the scan? You mean the scan?

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>> Yeah. Okay. >> Joe Blow and it says we paid him $5,999. >> I want to see the invoice. I want to see the receipt. How >> it's not there. >> I I mean a lot. >> I that that that would be new newer to me. Uh it should be

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>> like n probably 95% of them I would think are um >> very low. >> No, I' I'd be very very surprised. I'd be I'd be surprised that because one of the responsibilities that you have. Okay. >> Okay. That goes back to my checks and balances is who's making sure that this

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is actually getting done besides your finance committee that's actually going and looking >> in order for the payment to happen. Okay. They set it up for it to be paid and then department heads or the town manager

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um is has to go and look at it and approve each one of the um the payments. >> And in order to do that, they should see that there is um an invoice. >> Um

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>> we're not saying there's not an invoice. What we're saying is the invoice is not in Blackbond. No, no, no. The no this is this is all within Blackbod. >> So the department will see the department should not and I tell them should not approve an invoice if there is not a scanned in there and >> there are some there's some invoices and

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there's some receipts in there and they do have some signatures on them but a lot do not. That's where we're trying to say where are the checks and balances that's making sure that people are actually doing their jobs. Like if if what Jeff is saying is true is that you can't even

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make a payment unless it's all in blackbod then then something's gone wrong. >> Well, not not only I I would say not only so there is that the department head that has to see it to approve it but then also for checks and EFTs for commission to sign it. They get a backup

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of the invoice that is uh sign the only ones that >> you are you guys able to flash up the um and show them the invoices. go to payables, fill me in so that they >> The only ones I could think of that I I believe that Valerie brought to my

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attention was um like Florida Blue >> that might not be in there and those are ones that are on automatic payment like to only very specific vendors like that. >> Um >> but th those those are very few that >> if let's say an employee just going to

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Florida Blue, an employee leaves. Yeah. Who is it that then looks to make sure that the automatic payment to Florida Blue is corrected to not pay for that employee? >> I believe the HR department deals with that.

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>> They and then and then let's say they do leave and it's been paid. I believe we would and the HR department contacts them, we would get a credit back for whatever that has been paid on the next invoice >> that I believe that's happening. >> But you guys are making sure that's you're >> the HR makes sure that the right people

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are in there. It's on on auto just inputting. >> Well, yeah, floor blue is on auto pay. We don't cuz we don't ever want to miss those. Um, >> sure. >> So, those are autopay. That's might be the only ones that haven't been scanned and uploaded. But if Yeah, I I would if you uh Yeah, the other invoices I' if

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they're not in there, I'd be >> if we came up with if we look at it and see 50 of them that aren't there, we can send that. >> Please. Yeah, please. I >> I have a list in my other folder. Oh, >> do you know were they kind of like those ones or were they um >> they were specific vendors? >> They were specific vendors.

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>> Now, I will say for receipts, uh if you're talking about credit card receipts, those those uh can be a little bit more chasing downish, but we tell the department heads, hey, if you have to chase down dominoes or whatever to get the receipt, code the transaction

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amount so you know your budget and actual is correct, worry about the receipt because um that is something they do pull for audits. uh uh they do that sample sizing for not you know receipts and invoices. Um so we need the information but that we're a little bit

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more lenient on. >> Well I think I think some of these things we've mentioned we could you know put in writing and make recommendations to the council for um you know we we don't want to make everybody's job crazy difficult. We just want what's the

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easiest way we could get to zero likelihood of someone >> Yeah. Yeah. We Yeah. We tell departments they should never approve anything if it's not code to the right go and there's no acceptable uh uh invoice. And sometimes the department they know this and they catch hey and they go back to

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the vendors and say hey you need to be more specific on this line item. Like it just happened with Valer. She said I can't approve communications with these people. You need to be specific. So then we they contact them and >> are held accountable for that. >> Who enters credit card charges?

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>> That uh is that is one of those things that it's more it's mainly me. I so it it should be the department heads do them. Um but I will enter them as a bridge gap while staff is still being trained. Uh public works they're they're amazing. They have everything set up the

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system. Um >> and then who reconciles the credit card charges? >> Uh >> does any or or it's not? >> Yeah. So, I mean the reconcile because if they're late then it's hard to reconcile but we make sure we we pay them. Um >> you pay who? like we pay off the credit card like that's on automatic

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>> actually go back and reconcile every single >> but yeah they get that it's just not if if it takes a long time then obviously there's not a we keep bo like bugging them hey we need these so there is a it won't balance reconcile until they're all paid but that never gets swept under the rug

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>> because I just I couldn't find it in black that's why I'm asking >> well it is a separate it is a separate accounts payable right Jacob >> yeah so we have a separate liability line item that is completely separate from the other invoices. That is a Bank of America credit card that won't b it

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will show an out of balance until all those credit cards in there. So, yes, if you're saying uh someone swiped their card for Domino's and that's not in Blackbod yet, that wouldn't you're you're right. That wouldn't be in Blackbod. if I if I might approach you guys just

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so you get an idea and that I don't know what I'm doing is I'm showing them the invoices that go to department heads. Um, and so you'll see

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here, um, there's the invoice date, that's the invoice number, um, that's the description of the item, that's the vendor, the due date, disregard the due date because for some reason the those two dates match up.

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Nobody's been able to figure out um how to go, okay, this came in on 610. It's, you know, the I >> like on the actual >> to see what it actually is. >> Go ahead. >> I'm trying to find today when it opens.

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So, >> or if it opens, it opens to nothing. >> Mine was a blank blank screen. >> Okay. So, it's there to the endoice and then

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I'll go to new for record. record comes up and the attachment is there. I click on the invoice. >> And is that invoice tied to a contract? >> Yes. >> And is the contract in there?

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>> Yes. >> I I believe you're also able to see the GL that it's coded to before. They approve it. >> And then where's the Can you show me the contract >> in there? Just so I know where to look when I'm going.

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Good break time. Jacob, do you want to see if you want to help? Uh, >> yeah. >> The attorney find >> and so did you go to the main >> main vendor file? >> Okay. So not that particular transaction

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but the main in the invoice they won't be able to see if they click on that vendor there's attachments you know that they can view >> well they can look it back >> uh yeah >> I don't know >> and for that one if I was the approving

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person I know that they are under contract So, I probably wouldn't go back to look for the the contract when I was going through my approval process. And here's just a little bit of the reason why we're not trying to cross-examine anyone or >> we're just trying to understand

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>> we're but we're also trying to help the public who's watching this meeting understand so that a lot of pe a lot of the uh town members they're having some doubts about things where we hear it and so if we can get these things in place

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and give some people some confidence that this is being done correctly there's nothing I'm not saying anything nefarious has happened, but we don't really know that from what I'm being told here. >> Transparency and accountability has been lacking.

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>> And so if if we can just get to that very next step of the reporting of all these things, then I think the town members would get a lot feel a lot better and a little more warm and fuzzy about our money. Where's our money going? >> This is all being done right. This is

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all being, you know, we can see it. >> There's people looking at it. There's people holding people accountable when it's not done correctly. >> That's all we're really looking for. >> Yeah. >> And it seems like in the past because we've been held and like we're not allowed to do this, we're not allowed to

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do that. And it as it seems it's wasn't transparent. there was no accountability and we have new people that are here and we're working very hard to make sure that things are I don't want to say not on the up and up but on the up and up because when you you're being told

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something and then you see something else you're like you start to wonder what's going on here and it and as a as a resident this is our tax money this is where's our money going we we're over budget why so we've been tasked with these questions and I think they're good

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questions because I think everybody wants to know where the money is going. You don't want to just sit there and be blind and not say, "Okay, all we have $8 million. Where is it going? $3 something million is going to payroll. Okay, where's the rest going?" We're not seeing it in the

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community. So I think this is why we're asking the hard questions public. We don't know that there's any nefarious things going on, but we want to make sure I think that's the whole part of this committee is to make sure that the checks and balances and account accountability and transparency is being

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done. >> Yeah. So when you go in in there, if you let's say we were looking for Joe Blow or in this case forever, >> you can >> maybe we should say John Doe. You can um

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you can go to the vendors um and you can open up the the vendors and there is a thing that'll say all activity >> and you'll see every payment that has been made to that vendor since they were

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under contract and it goes back >> beyond their current contract. I think it goes back to 2002 and it doesn't go back before that. >> I don't know if it goes it doesn't 2006 that would be the beginning in time. You said

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>> 200 it goes back to it goes back to 2022 and you can't see before 2022. So I made the mistake last year of saying somebody made $1.7 million and this is from only since 2022 and I was corrected because it didn't show me past 2022.

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But yeah, so um I mean you can go back and and see invo if you were concerned about a particular person or or entity that had been paid. You can go back and very quickly see all of their payments and you should be able to see all of their invoices.

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>> That's the problem. Not all of them are >> every one of the payments is >> okay. We'll table that for now. >> Okay. I will say that uh I think having that PowerBI on the website is like I' I haven't seen much of other municipalities have that much transparency where they will put the

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vendor and other people can see exactly what they've paid and the line items. So I think that's that's pretty big. >> But Jacob, you would want to know if we found something where the invoice isn't in there or documentation isn't in there. >> You guys if you guys have my email like I would be very surprised and and so

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what we would do is we would follow the chant command. Who approved that? Why did you do that? And that's where the kind of checks and balances fall in place that now that we have a lot department heads and it split up. We're able to hold more accountability to people >> do tonight. >> I'm I'm get a bunch of email I'm gonna

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get a bunch of emails and be like oh and I'm I might by responding with I'm sorry. You were absolutely right. I I'll say it. >> I hope I'm not wrong. >> I I I admit when I'm wrong. >> You know what? We're in a new we're in a new cycle. We have new people. We have a

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lot of new faces. So hopefully the things are that weren't being done or if they weren't being done, they're actually being done now. And that's what we're hopeful for is more transparency. It's being done. Checks and balances are there. >> Uh

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>> yeah. No, sorry. Uh I I didn't want to interrupt. I'm so sorry. And I and I and I do that sometimes. Um we uh June is a very big month in governments. June, July, and August. very very big months.

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Uh it's time sensitive because we do this dance between us, the property appraiser and uh the Florida Department of Revenue. So we all participate in this

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dance. And what this dance does is it sets the millage rate. And so the millage rate is where we get a majority of our funds. Uh

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we worked on some presentations and we'll provide that to you, but there's a lot of talk out there now about oh doing away with property taxes and the exemption amounts and all this other all this other great stuff. Uh but we do

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have to see how that affects your local government. Uh uh and so uh you know we've been working with staff. We have some pre preliminary numbers but you know the next meetings the next meetings

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will be hyperfocused on uh the budget and uh the budget uh for those people that are new uh the state of Florida doesn't doesn't uh

415
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necessarily want our detailed budget. They need three numbers from us and that's it. And uh and so that's the important part of of looking at what the state of Florida needs uh in order for us to hold

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public hearings, in order for us to communicate with the property appraiser, in order for us to send out tax notices and so on and so forth. So uh that'll be the next phase. David, when is your

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dance going to provide us with some financials? >> Uh yeah. Uh we're I can I mean I we sent it to Jeff. They've reviewed some things. It's preliminary and uh you have the PowerBI for actuals. What we do is

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we give you two years of actual data. We give you where we think you're going to land at the end of this current fiscal year. And then we tell you what we think our budgeted expenses are going to be

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and that's what the millage rate that's what staff is requesting the millage rate to be set at. Now in local government there's some uh there's some twists and turns because uh there's a

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thing you guys probably have heard about it. It's called a roll back rate. And uh if we don't get a unanimous vote, then it's the roll back rate and it's a certain percentage of the roll back rate and all of that affects how much money

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the town is going to get in terms of adorum dollars. Uh now here's the interesting thing. 2027 budget is going to be like anything else. Oh, keep in mind last year we lost

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the local option sales tax dollars, right? So that's going away. That that that went away this year. But at the end of the day, 2028 and 2029 when they start to push out this homestead

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exemptions amount that escalate uh that puts local governments in a uh particular uh challenge and uh we've got to figure out how all of this stuff

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gets paid for because everything that your local government owns I'm Sorry. >> Have you done have you done the math on that? >> Yes, there is >> reports from >> there is a um there's a preliminary budget that the

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manager is is looking at. The next thing that's going to happen on uh July 7th um is the council will review and um do the preliminary trim. Um and there are three

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assessments that they look at. um the advalorum which is your millage rate um the solid waste um assessment and um the road and drainage or the district

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assessment um and for the I I'm anticipating I don't want to steal anybody's thunder but I'm anticipating based on our discussions that we've been involved in and um David has uh uh gotten something to the manager to to

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review, but I'm anticipating that the recommendation from the manager will be um that the millage rate for trim purposes stay at the same rate it is this year, which is 3.2564. um and that the um assessment rate or

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the road and drainage fund um be increased um to get that road and drainage fund um pay for itself. The road and drainage fund has been subsidized by the general fund to the

430
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tune of about 600 plus thousand dollars for the last several years. Um and what David and then on the um solid waste, we've got a favorable

431
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contract um by piggybacking off of SWA solid waste authority. So that we anticipate that that um number will go down from $450 a unit to $300 a unit.

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The important thing about the preliminary trim is that's the highest rate you can go. If you set it lower um then you in a situation in which if you find out you have needs um you're not

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going to be able to to do it. Um and so I think those are going to be the the recommendations. Now there's a whole bunch of uncertainty out there as David mentioned first of all. Okay, let's get voted. It'll be a year or two. >> But but my question was >> that's going to cost us $400,000 up.

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>> My question though was has anyone gone and done the math, pulled the reports from, for example, the property appraisers office of of all the homesteaded um properties and what their amount is and if we put in, you know, added a line in there and put it from 250 to 500,000

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or whatever the numbers are going to how that's going to affect the taxes. Yeah, there there was some preliminary work that was done by the League of Cities that David is verifying, but it's about $400,000 that it cost us when um in revenue. >> That's just year one.

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>> Yeah, that's that's that's just year one is about $400,000 and then year two is about 600,000. And then you know that when that starts to tick up, more people are going to try to jump on the bandwagon and and which

437
02:02:42.080 --> 02:02:58.880
is fine, right? It's just that it's going to continue to creep up. And if you think about it, the only see these yellow numbers, these yellow numbers are the only numbers we get to control on the revenue

438
02:02:58.880 --> 02:03:14.000
side. That's it. That's it. Here's your millage rate numbers. Here's your road and drainage assessment rate numbers. And here's your solid waste numbers. All the other numbers here on the total

439
02:03:14.000 --> 02:03:30.560
revenues and other sources of of revenue, all these come in just because we're a municipality, right? And so alls I'm trying to get uh uh the the commission as well as the

440
02:03:30.560 --> 02:03:47.280
the fact committee to understand is is that when these start to get affected uh these are the only things we can uh we can we can change. That's it. You know uh uh now >> then we have to go to the other side and

441
02:03:47.280 --> 02:04:03.599
figure out what we have to cut. Well, here's here's here's the here's the thing. Look, if you look at I I don't know if you guys can read those numbers, but basically what >> but what we what he's show what he's showing what he's showing is approximately in the general fund $5

442
02:04:03.599 --> 02:04:21.280
million of revenues. Um, and on the expenditure side, it's about $3.4 million. So, you go, "Oh my gosh, that's $1.6 million." um should we give that back or should we bank it or do we use it for capital

443
02:04:21.280 --> 02:04:38.400
projects because as David indicated you no longer have um the sir tax for um infrastructure improvements so you're losing we lost about $320,000 a year

444
02:04:38.400 --> 02:04:54.159
>> um that you don't have to apply to capital um this number of the 3.4 4 million is factoring in that we will not have a contract with the sheriff's office. So right there if that deter change in

445
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determination is you've got a $700,000 number minimum. Um because that was what the the old contract would have come up and we'd probably have to negotiate a new one. Um, so when you you look at that and you say,

446
02:05:10.560 --> 02:05:26.400
"Okay, how how is the council going to pay for the next project on their list, which as far as we can tell is North Road, and North Road is going to cost millions of dollars.

447
02:05:26.400 --> 02:05:44.639
>> Well, that's the down payment on that. Mhm. >> And if you and and in future years, as David has pointed out, you're going to see a reduction in your your revenues that you're going to have available. And this is the only source

448
02:05:44.639 --> 02:06:00.960
that you have to build up so that you can do projects, >> right? I get it. I get it. Yeah. I was just my question was and you have done the math is how much >> how much we lose on these, >> right? and see and and what we do and

449
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then the highlighted green numbers here that you can see those are just internal transfers right so we have money going out of the general fund into the uh capital improvement fund you know what I mean to go ahead and fund that that's

450
02:06:17.520 --> 02:06:36.159
what these green numbers are for but you can see here salaries and related out of all of your funds salaries and related take up a third of your expenses Uh you can see that uh professional services make up 5%.

451
02:06:36.159 --> 02:06:53.119
You know, operating expenses, keeping the lights on, just the general operating uh you know, local governments have the same expenses as any business does. we there, you know, and and so at the end of the day, but we just need

452
02:06:53.119 --> 02:07:08.719
people just to or we need those that are elected just to now, yeah, we can lower expenses, but I think we've tried to do that uh tremendously. Um but you can see that uh the only real things we can

453
02:07:08.719 --> 02:07:26.320
control on the top end are you know these three levers you know the millage rate the road and drainage assessment and our solid waste assessment. Uh and we need we need those those preliminary

454
02:07:26.320 --> 02:07:41.440
numbers to say yes these are good preliminary numbers. They're not set in stone until the final second public hearing happens in September, but it's a process that we'll get you guys all

455
02:07:41.440 --> 02:07:57.760
wrapped up in. And and just to to go back to the numbers for a second, you know, if you uh if the the council ultimately would make a decision that oh no, we're going to continue the process of transferring

456
02:07:57.760 --> 02:08:15.199
over $600,000 to the road and drainage fund for to cover maintenance and keep that rate low. Well, between that and the possibility of the the sheriff, that's $1.3 million. And all of a sudden $1.6 million doesn't

457
02:08:15.199 --> 02:08:31.679
look like a big number at all, does it? >> Well, yeah. Well, then you're right. Yeah. And then you're not funding any capital projects here. Yeah. So, anyway, well, but we'll get into that. >> Thank you, David. Thank you, Jacob. In closing, Freddy, do you have any closing thoughts?

458
02:08:31.679 --> 02:08:47.760
>> No, I think you guys covered it all. >> Jennifer, >> I don't have anything. Lisa, >> nothing. >> Oh gosh, you guys are make me do it all. I have some closing thoughts. I want to thank everyone for their time and participation tonight. I appreciate the thoughtful discussion and the willingness to ask questions and

459
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consider different perspectives and I think we've done a great job at that. Our responsibility is to provide council with recommendations that are thoughtful, fact-based, and in the best interest of our taxpayers. I think that's exactly what we accomplished tonight. I hope over the past two years

460
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I felt that our committee wasn't always able to fully perform the role of a of the finance audit and advisory committee. It's intended that it was intended to play. Our responsibility isn't simply to receive information. It's it's to ask those hard questions,

461
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review the facts, evaluate financial information, and provide independent recommendations to the town council. I am very encouraged that this council appears to be looking to fact as a true advisory committee. That's exactly what we should be. Good governance depends on

462
02:09:36.719 --> 02:09:53.760
informed questions, thoughtful analysis, and recommendations that are supported by facts. Last year, after reviewing the town the town's financial information, I recommended focusing on reducing unnecessary spending, delaying the fulfilling of vacant positions were

463
02:09:53.760 --> 02:10:10.000
practical, and postponing salary incre increases until the town's long-term financial position was stronger. My concern was structural sustainability, not any individual employee or a department. Whether others agreed with those recommendations or not, they were

464
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made with one goal in mind, protecting the town's long-term financial health and being good stewards of our taxpayers dollars. As we begin this year's budget process, I am very, very, very optimistic. I believe that there is renewed commitment to transparency,

465
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accountability, and thoughtful financial planning. My hope is that FAT can continue to provide objective fact-based recommendations that help council make informed decisions for the future of our town. >> Thanks.

466
02:10:42.639 --> 02:10:58.960
>> Anything else? >> Um, >> next meeting. I mean, motion next meeting. >> Next meeting and and budget schedule. And unfortunately, we don't have the exact dates. We can tell you. >> Can we get better about that? >> Planning. Can we get better about that

467
02:10:58.960 --> 02:11:15.520
>> planning? >> The um as as David's shown here, he's got some uh preliminary numbers um that'll be presented um and we'll probably be able to ship those to you um

468
02:11:15.520 --> 02:11:33.599
and um within the the next week. Um, council, just because of the timing on everything, Council is going to have to set the preliminary trim um on uh Tuesday, next Tuesday. >> But it would be good, don't you think,

469
02:11:33.599 --> 02:11:48.239
to have a meeting to go over the financials and the um uh last year's uh audit that we haven't received yet? >> Um yes. um

470
02:11:48.239 --> 02:12:03.199
>> before we even talk about budget. >> Well, that that's the that's the difficulty that we're we're in at this point in time. We have to talk about the preliminary numbers. Those are not those are not final, but that you you have to

471
02:12:03.199 --> 02:12:20.639
set those um in order to get them advertised and and all those kind of things. The actual budget hearings themselves um will take place in um September. Uh we've got to work on some

472
02:12:20.639 --> 02:12:38.079
um dates because our the natural meeting is uh for the council is September 1st, but we can't go um and have our initial hearing on until sometime after September 3rd. Um, so it'll probably be

473
02:12:38.079 --> 02:12:55.119
uh the um week after Labor Day um that the first hearing will take place and then the second hearing takes place um and about two weeks from then generally as you do some advertising and so forth. So sometime between like September 8th

474
02:12:55.119 --> 02:13:10.480
and the 22nd is what you're we're going to talk about for the final. Is there any way we can get financials year to date from this this this fiscal year's year to date? So we're we're getting ready to end third quarter >> to and then the budget.

475
02:13:10.480 --> 02:13:26.560
>> Yeah, we have Yeah, we have that's the way we developed uh the preliminary. Jacob was intricral and in forecasting a lot of those numbers. We have some of our estimates in there. COLA increases, increases in health insurance, what we

476
02:13:26.560 --> 02:13:42.480
think the electric bill is going to go up to, what is our general liability insurance going to go up to. These are all the things that go into what do we think we need uh for next year's budget. Therefore, >> I'm talking about I'm talking about this

477
02:13:42.480 --> 02:13:59.360
past I'm talking about 20s >> the actual numbers 2526 October to now. This is we're ending the third quarter >> to what our budget was last year. >> We can't go forward till we look at backwards. >> Correct. >> So you I'm sorry. Yeah. So you have the

478
02:13:59.360 --> 02:14:16.719
PowerBI is updated through May. uh we have as and we'll we'll along with the uh PowerPoint presentation we'll send you our detailed paperwork of uh the Excel files that show all the calculations

479
02:14:16.719 --> 02:14:32.880
uh for uh every single of every single of the 7 800 line items uh that that are included in there. So yeah. Yeah, absolutely. >> Is that a report we can pull in Blackbod or is that something you have to send us? No, that would be something that

480
02:14:32.880 --> 02:14:48.560
we'd have to send you. We downloaded it and then uh but yeah, you can uh but you'll be able to you'll you'll have you'll have everything that we have available to us for you to peruse. >> Yeah. So, from your >> can you send it to us?

481
02:14:48.560 --> 02:15:05.520
>> When you talk about the the next your next meeting, >> um it's probably the latter part of July, beginning of August. Um, that would make sense. >> Would it make sense for us to even have a workshop with the town council?

482
02:15:05.520 --> 02:15:20.800
>> That's up to the count council >> cuz that's something I think that would be very beneficial for us to have a workshop to where we can actually sit and have conversations instead of it not have conversations. Hoping they listen. Yeah. The YouTube. Exactly.

483
02:15:20.800 --> 02:15:36.880
>> But you know what? And and you know what? Last year we must have had 15 meetings on the budget. And all I'm alls I'm just trying to show and again all I'm trying to show is

484
02:15:36.880 --> 02:15:54.560
to those two other dance partners that we have the state of Florida Department of Revenue and the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser. They're interested in three numbers. And I'm I'm and and they're big they're big numbers, right?

485
02:15:54.560 --> 02:16:11.199
They're big numbers, but at the end of the day, uh we have to do a little bit of forward thinking because 2027 is going to be the best there is >> because of Right. No. Well, because of

486
02:16:11.199 --> 02:16:28.880
what's happening in 2028 and 2029 and 2030. And so every asset that the town owns, we still have an obligation to maintain that asset. And so we got to start thinking, hey, yeah, it might be

487
02:16:28.880 --> 02:16:46.240
nice to lower the millillage, but we may need those reserves in the future years when uh everyone just homestead exempts their property. And uh you know, we've got some bigger challenges

488
02:16:46.240 --> 02:17:02.319
All right. So, the good the good news for us is is that the the properties are a high dollar amount generally in Lockache Groves. And so, and that it's that homestead exemption doesn't exempt the whole property. It just exempts a portion. Right now, there's already a

489
02:17:02.319 --> 02:17:18.399
portion exempted and it that portion will just get a little bit bigger. Obviously, you know, you've done some math on that, but it's I don't for the public's benefit, anybody listening, I don't want them to think that that's going up. by thousands and thousands of dollars. >> We're not we're not saving the whole I

490
02:17:18.399 --> 02:17:35.679
pay $30,000 a year in property taxes. I'm not saving that 30,000. I'm saving like 4,000. So, I'm just >> And the other thing to remember out of that $30,000 number um >> some of it other stuff. >> It's it's mostly

491
02:17:35.679 --> 02:17:51.840
>> stuff. Mostly Poppy County. And that was something I was trying to portray last year is the number that we actually pay the town of Lockahhatche Groves is such a small number, but the only thing people look at is their overall property tax paying $10,000 for our property, but

492
02:17:51.840 --> 02:18:08.559
>> in the reference is we only paid tal maybe$25 to $3,000 of that amount. So yes, we don't want our property taxes to go up because I surely don't want to continue paying Palm Beach County, but it is what it is. >> Yes. That's all I got. Right.

493
02:18:08.559 --> 02:18:27.240
>> But and remember at that at that $250,000 number as David's pointed out, that's 25 to 30% of the town's um Adorum revenue.

494
02:18:28.000 --> 02:18:44.840
>> All right. Anybody else questions, comments? >> I would like to make a motion to adjourn the meeting. It's 819. >> That motion. There we go. If there's no more comments >> anyone I all in favor >> I

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got >> Thanks David. >> Thank you David. Thank you, Jacob. >> Thank you.