[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] please take your seats the meeting is about to begin remember to speak into
the microphone as this meeting is being recorded for public record please stand by we are going on air in 5 4 3 2 1 good morning everybody uh welcome to
the Friday Finance economic resiliency committee uh meeting I will turn it over to our CFO and the staff that is here um we have some stand-ins I have uh with me my colleague vice mayor Tanya bot uh we have two um which given the makeup of
the committee is now three we do have Quorum so we'll go ahead and get the meeting started Natalie I'll turn it over to you and Jason for some announcements sure good morning today's meeting of the finance and economic resiliency committee has become has been scheduled in a hybrid format with a quorum of the committee physically
present and remaining members staff and members of the public appearing either in person or virtually via zoom in order to participate in today's meeting virtually members of the public May D 1888 475 4499 tollfree and enter the webinar ID
which is 863 6059 5462 pound or log into the Zoom app and enter the webinar ID which again is 863 6059 5462 any individual wishing to speak on an
item must click the raise hand icon if they are using the Zoom app or dial star9 if you are participating by phone okay H thank you and just a couple of announcements um item ob4 will be deferred until May and items NB 9 10 and
11 will be linked when heard that is it thank you excellent so uh let's go ahead and get started uh if we you call our finance committee up we're going to have a pretty important discussion here um we're going to go with nb1 uh tamaa if
you want to uh actually you know wait for commissioner Fernandez for this one do that to the chair y just um a little levity in a serious meeting I feel like we're doing a weekend update on
SNL just you and I yes which okay yeah commissioner bot um given you are here and present and because it's also a good item Let's uh let's talk about nb20 okay let me call it in mb20 discuss discuss funding needs for bicycle lane improvements and safety
enhancements identified in the bicycle pedestrian master plan projects implementation Matrix restriping restriping Andor uh repainting green bicycle lane Citywide drainage improvements along the beachwalk to address ponding potential widening of
the beachwalk at critical choke points and purchasing solar powerered electronic speed feedback devices and data collection sensors mb20 thank you Jason um thank you to the chair Jose thank you for being here I'll turn it over to you in a minute but the
reason why um this is really important um not that everything else isn't but this is a project we've been working on for going on a year and a half now um and we've made some good Headway and we are going to continue making good Headway but part of that is you know
there are lots of different types of projects that we're addressing some of it is super low hanging fruit that we can just do some of it is more challenging um and requires State input um this kind of stuff is in between which is um lwh hanging but we need
funding to comp accomplish it it is finishing the last block of bike lanes that already exist it's putting in it's purchasing the data counters that we need to make informed decisions it's it's a a bunch of bits and pieces like this um that Jose can go through more
detail that will take a make a big step forward in what we've been working on um as we do more of the sort of heavy lifting stuff and I know it's preferable to go through the um the budget planning process for next year but if we do that
then we can't even start making these fixes until 2026 some of them require vetting venders and getting samples and doing things like that so that would delay the progress another full year and a half and I think that um given that micromobility and Public Safety of
people trying to get around in vehicles other than cars or their own two feet is one of the hottest topics in the city right now I I would urge everybody to um support moving this forward Jose thank thank you Madame vice mayor Mr
chair Jose Gonzalez transportation and Mobility director and interim parking director so vice mayor as you as you pointed out this item is pretty comprehensive it includes several components uh what we've done is we've you know categorized those com
components basically four four or five different categories I'll start with the the first one which is um sort of a lwh hanging fruit we conduct did an assessment Citywide of all the uh bike Lanes in the city all the all the
striping the symbols associated with bike lanes and we've got some bike Lanes out there that are in need of repair refreshing repainting and so we actually excuse me a second so we um we identified we
identified those and those are part of the item it's a it's a long list bottom line is that we estimated that the cost of refurbishing the existing bike lanes that we have in the city is approxim will be approximately
$375,000 and that's more of a maintenance uh need which we don't have currently in our in our budget um therefore it would require some some either a budget amendment to be able to include that in this year's budget or we
can work through the budget process and uh try to secure the money for next fiscal year it could go you know either way but those are these are more maintenance type of needs where we have a contractor ready willing and able to jump on these uh we just need the
funding can I ask a question before you um proceed if you so if some of this stuff is maintenance um why don't we have a bicycle infrastructure maintenance line item on the budget well um vice mayor
very good question and we we do but not to this not to this extent what's happened is that some of the bike lanes are tied to capital projects uh which haven't come to fruition yet um for
example there's a a bike lane on West Avenue from about 17th Street down to to 16th Street um that was actually done with paint that was done a few years ago with paint in hopes that the West Avenue
project would build a whole new beautiful bike lane and they're coming but they're not there yet and what's happened is that that paint really was not intended to to uh be there as many years it's been at least I want to say four or five and it's it wasn't intended
to be there that long so it's in you know very uh poor shape um and similarly we have other other bike Lanes in a similar situation where there's also been a lot of utility work around the city roadway construction work that has
uh for some reason a lot of our bike Lanes just have a lot of patches these days and it was that was not envisioned back when they were um you know back when they were installed but they affect the quality the the appearance the aesthetic of the bike lane and the the
writeability of that bike lane and therefore need to be need to be restored repainted re and refurbished so two things one is the separate from this conversation about allocating the funding can we going forward into the 26
budget process put in a line item for micromobility maintenance issues um which you know we don't think we need because Project X is going to come online and take care of the issue but we know and even as we have um sort of unpaused the pause and we have a lot of
projects coming it it always takes longer than we anticipate something always happens so I think it is prudent for us as a city to plan that we are going to need to make maintain and upgrade our our bicycle Lanes um in in a manner different from the way it's been in the past because it's a much higher
need now and it's got a lot more attention and a lot more people looking to use this as an option so that's number one as we go forward into the next budget process and um uh I lost my second Point um your first was great well thank you um the second
point was um ah and you know this is a pet peeve of mine because when we go on our our walk or or problem block or block party walks we talk about this all the time when utilities come in and or whoever comes in and does repair work they leave unfinished business it's a
half-ass patch no no no we're not done yet or we might do this and I know there's a process where and this is not directed to you but and um I know there's a process whereby the permit isn't completely closed out until um somebody approves everything but somehow
whether or not it's because a permit isn't actually closed out because there is still some work or whatever but there are countless examples of Unfinished lousy um what look to be temporary patches like for a week while the new part comes in but end
end up being years and so side note what's wrong with that process if that isn't working correctly and and main point is we must get those people who are doing that work to restore the bike Lanes if they have destroyed them or parts of them um or to
repaint them resurface them so people aren't flying off their bikes because they don't see a you know a bad Edge um I mean I don't know how it feels on on your scooter but I'm sure you've taken a few a few um unexpected jolts so um that's this side I I would really
strongly encourage support for this item we need to move forward we can't keep kicking the can down the road these are small relatively small dollar amounts to do um things that will have a good size impact thank thank you vice mayor and I didn't say that in just it's a fantastic
Point um uh Mr CFO we've talked about this for many years uh even before you know I assume this position it's concerning that routine annual maintenance isn't funded in our
annual operating budget and we've started changing Financial policy we borrowed to repair a lot of the annual just routine maintenance which we shouldn't do but we had to because it was wasn't implemented in the past um but it seems as if we need to be more
comprehensive in that right because annual maintenance should be maintained and then that leadway into my second point is it concerns me greatly that we don't keep up maintenance when we have capital projects much further down the road and
I think that's what happens often if you look at 17th Street or West Avenue or Washington Avenue on Fifth Street some of our capital projects are what 10 10 15 years away still are we really not going to pave roads because we have something hanging out there 10 or 15
years from now uh right outside of city hall right front of our Convention Center where we have Art Basel the boat show uh the most prominent events in the world it looks like it hasn't been paved in 30 years and I know that we have the 17th Street project coming up but there
has to come some point where we say that is x amount of years off we need to continue doing routine maintenance we need to take better pride in our city and then on the third point about the utility work that's being done I see it front and center after we just had uh I don't know if Brad's here um but after
there was the I think FPL project on West Avenue where you know they dug up they repaved where they dug up it looks like lightning bolts going through three blocks of West Avenue right it had to have been harder to just repave the
portion that they ripped up than repaving the entire Road it's awful and thank good well in a way thank goodness West Avenue hasn't been repaved because if they came and ripped it up and left it like that it would be even worse um but do we not have some sort of comprehensive policy where they go if
FPL or somebody else comes up and tears up three feet of the road that they repave that entire Lane is that something that we could look at it just it looks absolutely awful it's a safety issue um and instead of peac mealing all
this together can we have some sort of sort of comprehensive policy or overview I'll add something and then I think Brad wants to add something I I you and I have talked about this for for quite a while um and I and I do agree and I
think you know with this commission there's been discussion of changes and commissioner fernades being here as aopo with his you know stop the pause uh policy that be in effect and you know we're going to be talking about moving these projects forward I believe and this is back before I was an employee
and and now is there was an assumed time when a project was going to start and then there was a pause so something may have been let's not pave this section of West Avenue because we're starting a project next year and then something happened and that got pushed out many years but I know Public Works does have
an indepth uh pavement condition index studies that they do every couple years and every single I think they can if you point it to a section of street they could tell you when it's scheduled to be um because they're you know recyc they're resurfacing let's say every 10 years which is what the appropriate
should be done and they're going to know whether it's going to be hit by a project or they're going to go ahead and do that and I think by the commission uh you know allowing the administration to be consistent and moving projects forward when they're supposed to is going to absolutely alleviate the the issue that you just brought
up agree uh Playing devil's advocate here and pinpointing a specific street so the First Street project right we have it three phases uh thanks to this commission that finally got serious on resiliency we are moving forward with that right so that's fantastic however
it's multiphased and there's a portion on uh the part of Washington Avenue a little further north so not right in front of First Street that is part of what phase two or is that phase three actually which part uh which block of Washington let's call it Fourth fth
Street there's phase one phase two and then phase three phase four is is I think the question is is Washington Avenue between third and fourth part of one of those phases I don't recall I'll further up but yeah it's $100 million unfunded and that's probably 15 years
away but I would bet any amount of money that were essentially not Paving that because it is part of let's call it phase three or phase four that uh listen we're moving forward to phase one and two but we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars that's unfunded and
perhaps 15 years away for phase three or four I if that portion gets done right we're taking care of the the 80 or 90% the meat and potatoes and and I I pla you know I lo back padding but we have moved that forward um but there's
portions that probably aren't going to move forward and I don't think that we could just sit there and not maintain regular maintenance on Those portions that are likely you know decades away yeah yeah I think absolutely we can take a look at those things uh you know particularly on you know other the made
thorough fares like Washington Collins and and um Alton Road uh and take a look at you know where they fall into the plans that we have as it relates to projects and certain uh maintenance on a year-to-year basis and and also just to um follow up on that point uh as it
relates to uh like fpnl and other contractors AT&T doing work uh as it in our right away with permits we will certainly make sure we are more Vigilant and uh not letting them you know leave sites incomplete or leaving them in a
condition that does not meet you know a city standard uh it is obviously a frustrating topic for for all of us because we go out and we see different things as we go through walkthroughs um and it can be frustrating and sometimes certainly with the paint that they leave and that's supposed to you know obviously fade away but it doesn't
always fade away as quick as it should um but we can certainly look at those things and we can um you know reevaluate some of the things perhaps in our process as it relates to permitting um and you know listen you know there are worst case scenarios uh you know in my experience in other municipalities where we have held back issuing further
permits to particular uh you know utility because they just could not you know do what they needed to do when it came to closing out a particular project a standard operating procedure because I'm going to send you pictures later of let's call it from 8th 9th 10th West
Avenue uh I couldn't imagine that they go down to Coral Gables and perform road work and leave Coral Gables like that right it it just it would never be acceptable um quite literally it looks like lightning bols going over three blocks and it would have been harder not
to just repave the entire Street and just kind of go in line with what we take a look at the specifics but there are obviously supposed to be protocols in place to make sure those things don't happen excellent if if I can share I think in the item as presented uh you know Jose went through the number of the items one of the items and it was
already funded in the 25 budget which was the solar feedback line so perhaps this could be returned to commission with a favorable recommendation to consider funding uh during the FY 26 budget process for the unbudgeted items as presented if that's an acceptable motion no well so no I was actually
hoping that we could fund it from through a budget amendment so that we don't have to wait a year and a half to get the rest of the stuff done is there a particular item because I think that there's you've um transportation identified a request for a need of
$375,000 to uh do repave the green bike Lanes but there was a couple other ones that you didn't have specific numbers on and I I think you were waiting on commission to give direction before you would engage to come up with a cost estimate is that correct correct there there's another category which is more
capital projects and so for those projects we're we're currently estimating what those projects would cost and we'll go through the capital budget process for those um we don't we don't have those costs yet but these are
projects that are recommended in our bicycle pedestrian master plan and our our pending and low hanging fruits so commissioner maybe what we can do is modify what the motion I had stated to to also add that the the fa recommendation to immediately in the 25
budget am amend the 25 budget to appropriate $375,000 for the uh the bike lane uh aspect since that one is a known amount is that acceptable um the other thing that I wanted to make sure we were getting done very quickly is the
um the or do we remind me Jose do we have funding for the um electronic speed feedback we do we have okay so that that was in 25's bug perfect okay yeah that's fine okay so the motion return to commission favor recommendation and consider funding during the 26 budget for the
unbudgeted items as presented but for uh with $375,000 for the restriping of the green bicycle Lanes to be appropriated during 25 yeah all all in favor all right thank you oh I guess who
made the motion will say commissioner bot yeah I think that's the only possibility right because I can't make a right you're correct so so going forward we'll make the assumption that it's commissioner bot making motions thank you wait can we can we do a roll call vote Comm let's hear
ob3 uh utility rates and uh Mr CFO as part of that you know because we're going to talk about something that's uh I don't want to say uncomfortable but it's going to give us the reality of uh some financial decisions um that we're going to be looking at going forward and
as part of this uh I don't want to just peace me it Mr CFO I believe that uh it's part of uh Wednesday's commission meeting uh just to discuss I know that we all got A LTC um but as part of this discussion I'd also like if you could just give a 30 second overview of a
budget challenge that we're going to be facing not just this year but on our uh annual budget uh moving forward with uh decisions that were made in the newly elected office from the county so why don't you start with that and uh for you know further down that path we're going
to get into the utility discussion but I I just want to lay the ground floor of yeah a challenging budget cycle that we're going to face and then we'll kind of use that to leeway into nb1 as well commissioner fand is your item okay so
uh you wanted to start with ob3 ob3 discussed the instruments of new water uh new money water sewer and storm water revenue bonds uh ob3 that's correct but if you could also just and then just to to to tea up a little bit I think what you were speaking of is some of the budgetary challenges that we're
expecting to have in this upcoming 26 budget and to make when she comes up on mb1 we'll go in more depth is you we were alerted recently uh by in the last two months that the newly elected tax collector a new chartered Office of the
of the county our first ever elected one uh has availed himself of as a constitutional right to take over the State DMV uh which has runs on a giant deficit and and he's availed himself to to modify his offices funding structure to was called a fee office uh which is to
collect 2% of the property taxes from the taxing agencies uh in the county that's still being looked at but it's not only the county but he is also uh asking to impose that on the municipalities uh the OM office has done an analysis of that and across the different funding the general fund being
the biggest uh the voted Debt Service uh Normandy Shores uh CRA and RDA we're estimating that um this will be an additional almost $7 million uh budget hit uh that we're going to have to Grapple with approximately $7 million
across the multiple different funds the the general fund taking the the brunt of that hit so when we're starting off and you know we come in May and we're going to talk about current service level which you know we usually need a few percent property value increase to cover our Union contracts General inflation
everything that we did yesterday would do tomorrow uh with that cost this is we're we're starting a bigger hole so that's really going to make things difficult and just very simplistically back of the envelope um our budget surplus
last about $14 million yeah I think it was somewhere I think it was somewhere in that real asking questions I the answer to and uh and that was a very good we had a very healthy um you know property tax value uh at property value
increase uh which we don't anticipate having such a a high increase uh this upcoming year we believe we will have one but it'll be a declining increase so it's something to be very uh cognitive to make sure that you know as you and I have spoken on many occasion making sure
we build a financial resilience setting and what is the incremental cost just born from uh our Union contract negotiations I would like to wait till the mb1 for our budget director will get up to to talk about those specifics but I I think for now um what we're going to
talk about here I'll just tee it off before they bring up the the PowerPoint here to go through is our utility rates um and you know as we discussed um our utility rates uh were looked at over the past number of years back in 17 there was an analysis done familiar to this um
and the commission of the time I know did not move forward with the administration at the time's recommendation of those set of rate increases uh and they set a specific set of numbers um and actually ended up being lower than what inflation has been so we've actually lost out a nice chunk to inflation and we didn't which is
probably part of why the Paw has happened on many of the projects uh but you know as we discussed this commission's interest is moving forward to a resilient City to fix our water and sewer infrastructure our storm water infrastructure the commission has already approved on multiple times our
storm water and our water and sewer critical needs program H and our neighborhood Improvement program and the the phasing of those projects there's separate resolutions for West Avenue phase 3 First Street Northshore D all of these are strongly ended endorsed by the commission uh and now what public works
and and our Ray consultant who will introduce himself momentarily will explain is what we have to do to actually close those funding gaps yeah and thank you Mr CFO it's never a uh easy decision um to move forward with something that's going to uh flow
through to some sort of increase but I think you hit the nail on the head where previous commissions uh kind of passed the buck on that and look at what it resulted in one is those resiliency projects not getting done in timely fashion and what did that result in huge huge inrees cost increases for
some of those projects so uh you know we're facing a decision we can continue just kicking the can down the road but at what expense right at the expense quite literally of the resiliency of our city so I hand it over to our Public Works director and our R consultant to uh kind of see what we're looking at going
forward uh thank you chairman magazine um good afternoon committee I'm Alex we're gonna talk a little bit about today about our uh or utility storm water and sewer rates and kind of give you a little bit of a history um there's
a lot of information so we're going to try to condense it as much as we can uh considering but kind of um talk about why we're here and what everything um you know encompasses as part of uh going forward with these you know rate
increases um this basically is a process that's going to keep us in line with all of the projects that we have that um in our neighborhood Improvement project plan for the next 10 years as well as uh our critical infrastructure projects as well so um I'm going to turn it over to
our consultant Brian mans from gates to take you through this presentation and answer any questions uh anybody may have at that point thank you uh thank you Brad uh members of the the committee uh staff
public uh good morning my name is Brian man from rates and I'm here to of course talk about the water sewer and storm water rate study there's uh we have a a you know this we have a presentation but it's
it's we certainly have a lot of backup information associated with this agenda item to but but certainly um you know whenever the utility the water and sewer storm water utility issues bonds
rating agencies want to see a five-year projection and to show strong management it's uh in the city's best interest to show that all the all the um that that the the multi-year capital program
whatever it is is fully funded that can position the the utility to maintain its doublea uh ra uh credit ratings and you know save millions of dollars in interest and issuance
costs so the last formal rate Water and Sewer rate study was completed at in 2022 that was sorry at the end of 2020 and the focus was being able to fund approximately 122 million in critical
Capital needs through 2024 56 neighborhood Improvement projects were not included in the financial plan and in and at the end of uh you know 2020 we were in the middle of uh covid-19 there was no way of
knowing whether there would be future inflation or or deflation but uh the bottom line is is that rates have not kept up with the actual inflation if you look at this at this uh chart on this on
this slide uh there's about a 10.1% uh that just the Consumer Price Index uh inflation has increased about 10% more than user rates uh 20 thou since 2020 the the bit amounts received are
significantly um higher than anticipated and there's been um a lot of emergency repairs of pipelines and pump stations the last storm water rate analysis was completed in
2017 and it's important to have a dedicated funding source for future bonding issuances uh there was a in this analysis there was a two rate increase programed for 2019 or at least recognized that was needed to prepare
for the 2020 a $100 million bondage issuance in 2022 but that um that increase was not uh implemented it was a about a 23% increase uh the storm water 10-year
master plan was approved in March of 2024 and recommends uh implementing neighborhood Improvement projects at at the same time as critical needs projects and so here's the you know the
fundamental issue associated with these rate studies is um a public health and safety issue and that is reinvestment in the utility system so we have we we've put together three options uh one is uh
the recommended op option which which is links to the to the city's master plan and then there's some then uh the the these yellow um highlighted areas show what would be deferred or not funded if
we went with some of the other options and certainly we can go to the uh into the weeds as the as the committee uh based on the preferences of the committee and and here we have a similar chart for this the storm water system where we have master plan
recommendations versus what would be uh deferred under or or not funded under some of the other options uh it's also important to note that there's about $67 million in Grants
that that's been awarded to fund additional project costs that are not in these tables and if some of these projects can't move forward uh due to a lack of funding if we if you can't fund the full project then You' also lose out
on on those grants the city would have to Forfeit them and if I could just interject here we had a pretty eye openening conversation as part of my briefing for some of these decisions are hard right but there's no more kicking the can down the road right even if we
wanted to these are at a point and Mr City attorney or Mr Public Works director or Mr CFO I forget which one of you laid it out very eloquently to me but it was if we don't provide the necessary funding for this these projects are over we can't just continue
saying oh we're going to get to it next time or we're going to get to it a few years from now we essentially have to go back and say well we're not doing West Avenue or we're not doing Project B and what that's going to result is is where you're going is a loss of State funding of $67 million it's not just that we
could sit here and say well maybe in a few years we'll get to the utility increases and we'll keep these projects on the back burner if we don't go forward with this these projects by all intents and purposes die and we lose the uh state grants and funding that's been allocated towards those is that correct
yes uh yes commissioner uh so these projects are in various states of design especially the West Avenue phase three and the First Street which are in the 60 90% somewhere in that that that time uh design wise Northshore D which is a very big project I think is on your agenda
for the commission to approve the design there and if the interest is not to move forward then obviously we would pull that um designed would be you know would probably be have to be shelved until such time as as rates will be adjusted to afford those projects but absolutely
so let's get to the x's and news okay yeah there's here we show funding deficiencies if we don't move forward we got um um we have a lot of Weeds on what would uh have to be deferred or not
funded um if um uh so this the these uh percentages here show what what the um what the um what the percentages uh look like where
we'd have some addition some initial um rate adjustments um uh as implemented as soon as possible and then the next uh adjustments would be implemented at at the beginning of fiscal year 20 uh 27 I can tell you as
someone that works with hundreds of utilities these rate adjustments are are tame compared to to what I see I mean I work with some utilities that are looking at 18% adjustments per year I just finished with a utility in in New
Mexico that it's looking at 25% per year I mean these are like I said I mean these are not atypical compared to what I'm seeing in other um you know with with other local governments um and and this this slide
shows the shows the financial Effect one thing we do um when we we proactively you know we we we recognize that affordability is always a concern and the EPA considers 4.5% of median household income uh to be an
affordability threshold for Water and Sewer Service only um under any of the plans that we that under all the plans the combined water sewer and storm water rates would be well below 4.5% of median
household income which again is just the affordability standard only for water and sewer not not including storm water so by any utility industry standard uh this plan would would uh would be considered affordable and can help the
you know City move forward and and not be resilient as um as you uh as has been mentioned uh and then another part of the recommendation is to is to imp is to update the city's Water and Sewer impact
fees which were last adjusted uh in 1995 or 30 years ago and obviously um costs have gone up a lot since then but uh these these calculated impact fees are are very affordable uh very um
consistent with the very uh and if we just go into depth into to exactly what you mean on that right right now we have if a development takes place a developer has to essentially pay an impact fee and this is per unit is that
correct it's it's multi family yeah it's actually based on the on the meter size um but it's it's paid by by growth it's not paid by existing un users right right it's an impact fee for new development so on a multif family
building that's going up essentially the developer would pay an impact fee that would equate to $400 per unit is it's not by is it by unit it's by connection to the building so if it's a it's it's it's by it's by the meter size it's it's proposed to be by meter
size that's that's um whatever the meter size is of the development that's what the that's what the uh they would they would pay but it's proposed to it's right now it's at$ 390 degrees um $390 90 um and it's proposed
to go up to 3,660 per what is that per unit by meter size that for a for a 58 inch meter so a building if I is that if a building just had this one connection it would be that one
payment of that it wouldn't be if it's a 10 unit building it wouldn't be that number times 10 it would be just that number it's just dep it depends on the on the meter size like this is this would be for the lowest meter size and I you know if I had one meter it would be just that one charge yeah General help
help me out here layman terms if there's a multif family building is is there one hookup is there one hookup per unit it wouldn't be per unit it would be no it would be based on the on the meter size of I I get so that charge one time help me understand more in my elementary you
know level of understanding about development and utility rates if there's a m multi family building mhm how many meter what's the meter size what if it's if it's a 2in meter it would it would be U I think I'm sorry if I it's a one time
it's a one building it's a one charge so that building would be charged $3,660 that's it what I'm trying to get at is these seem like incredibly low rates that are being charged while it's a from a percentage
basis an eye-opening percentage increase just given the level of growth This is aing er um in terms of an overall project right the the these put you in line with normal Market rates that you see in in many municipalities what you
see here existing doesn't exist anywhere if you had a 10un building that had a 5/8 meter it would be that $3600 charge for you know a 10un building was probably be millions of dollars it's an it's a rounding era I think you would said thank you that being said I'm certainly fully
supportive of this aspect if there I think that is the end of the presentation correct what what what we're hoping for I think if we can hone in a little bit on the can we go back to the page about what those rates are going to be this year next year and
and kind of going forward yes right here so if we can kind of quantify essentially what we'd be looking to uh approve uh or put in front of our full commission right here can I say yeah please um when I had
my briefing on this with both Jason then later with with Brad and Jay um I was floored at the fact at two things um one is that we hadn't inj adjusted the impact fees in 30 years and as a city
this is not the first time we've found out about something like this the rolloff fees remember there was something you know so um I'm flabbergasted that when we are looking to find money to fund projects
we do not have a handle as a city on are our um fees tied to cost of living increases CPI or a minimum threshold if there's very low inflation that needs to be done yesterday what are we charging as impact
fees wherever we charge impact fees whether it's waste halling or parking spots or whatever we need to take comprehensive review and figure out what is the deal in some cases we might decide that something is priced
accurately but it seems like we stumble across these opportunities to recoup money that we have been leaving on the table for in this case three decades it's shocking this at the same conversation I mean I know it's not going to materially affect the cost that we're talking about and and more is the
pity but the fact that for 30 years we've been leaving money on the table that would go to help um fund some of the things that we need to to pay for um it's it's completely shocking so those things need to be done yesterday like we
need to make sure that whatever our rates are increasing to after this first fiveyear cycle that we build in that things are tied into CPI or whatever the right number is let's say 3.5% whichever is higher if I can commissioner we can
definitely look and I think that was going to be part of the proposal when um the the Water Source storm water rate ordinance uh would come in I believe March is what our anticipation it doesn't seem we're going to get a favorable recommendation here and that we could definitely make sure that the those rates are set or the impact impact
fees side of it would definitely be impact to to to a CPI inflation index um the other thing I want to say is that um I find it amusing that prior commissions um talk about the pause and how damaging it's been which has been
and I'm thrilled to be a part of the commission who's un unpause the pause thank you commissioner for stop the pause what' you call stop the pause and we have stop the pause 2.0 coming in the way soon pause the PA stop the PA 2.0
um but yet that's those same commissions that prided themselves on being so fiscally astute have kicked the C down the road on so many issues the parking issue um the parking rates issue these kind of sort of basic blocking and tackling things of making sure that we
are um charging the right amounts at the end of the day the issues that we are trying to amarate with these um projects that these rate hikes are funding the the rate hikes aren't going for more people or more services or
things that are um discretionary to a certain degree the rains are going to keep coming and they're going to get worse and the sea level rise is going to keep rising and the issues that we face during rain season and during High Tides whether or not the State of Florida
wants to talk about it in their science books we are going to be facing them here and our residents when their cars are being flooded and they are stalled on Alton Road and parts of Normandy Isle are available to you only with scuba gear are going to be really upset that
we have not um done the work fast enough but the only way to to do the work at all and maybe we could do four projects instead of too with these rates that we're discussing the only way to do that is to be grown-ups in the room and do
what should have been done years ago which is increase the rates the way we need to to get us to the funding levels we must be at in order to make this city um resilient to the point that we can continue living here in a manner that we
are accustomed to I don't see any way forward other than to approve this fully funded um option number one understanding that it's a challenge for for colleagues who are running for elections but at the end of the day the issue is to our
residents you need the services we are ready to pull the trigger on the services the services have been delayed the only thing uh in Prior years now we need to fund the services and that is the only path forward if if I may since you mentioned president's
running for reelection uh this year you didn't vot yes yes um you know it listen yes is it is it something unpopular to
do yes you know um it something that's near and dear to my heart is you know equity and affordability issues in our in our community in individuals who live on very fixed incomes uh lower income
residents who who could be dis tionately affected um by rate hikes um you know which exacerbates affordability issues but what's our alternative and our alternative is as my
colleagues have mentioned delay projects you know we can seek additional funding from the state and federal government but I don't think it's we're going to get the level of funding uh that's going to be sufficient to shift
the cost of of away from the rate payer is that correct correct and so you know so what is what is important here I think is also you know
realizing that we can maintain our credit worthiness um you know by doing this and that's important we need to deliver on these on
these projects and and I I see that this you know proposed rate structure is trying to minimize as much as it can the financial impacts on residents while making sure that we ensure our long-term
sustainability and that's not an optional expense infrastructure and the Integrity of our infrastructure is not an optional expenses a necessary investment and deferring these upgrades will only lead
to higher costs and increased re risk in in the future so the question is not it's not whether we do this rate change the question is when do we do it and if we wait later will that rate increase
have to be higher and that's where this becomes you know a very easy decision to make not one that anyone likes to make I don't think any of us like making this uh this decision but you know I I think it's
it's a necessary one if I could add Jer to to that I think when when we first started talking again might have been before before you were elected um you would ask the question when we talked about this billion dollar backlog of infrastructure you said what do we need to move the needle it's a million
dollars this moves the needle this is this is hundreds of millions of dollars worth of absolutely needed water sewer and stormwater infrastructure this is going to ensure that we're delivering clean water to our residents that we're not having sanitary sewer overflows that sewage is being transmitted properly and
draining our streets um you know we don't want to end up being you know we have a good example to our Northern neighbor uh in Fort Lauderdale several years ago who had a massive uh failure of their sewage system and had to do emergency rate increases and an
emergency $200 million bond insurance because it was run to fail at the end of the day and we were luckily are not able to do that and then so speaking of the rate increases the recommendation here is to right after the rate ordinance is put into place that these the first set of rate increases would be immediate but
to note that for FY 26 the October 1st when we usually adjust the rates there would be no increase so we'd have an adjustment now immediately is and then for FY 26 other than the regular pass through charge you know whatever Mi County charges for water there will be no additional increase for 20 uh for
October 1 26 so we have immediate one May or June nothing in October like there is standard and then we' start again on a regular annual basis so I just want to mention that for the record I I have a question about that um because we talked about it U before but I I it just occurred to me would it make
it more palatable if we didn't skip the year where we' have no increase and just made smaller increase effectively it's it's just accelerating the one that would have been October 1st to to now um and again it's important we think it's important to have that rate adjustment now instead of October 1st because we
are not the October 1 thing is like accelerating it is fine but then we skip a year so the remaining three years three four and five could we make those increases slightly lower if we started them earlier we're not really skipping a year um because instead of it being
October 1st it's just being implemented a few months early then instead of on the October 1sts so there's not really a year skip from thatp May versus October exactly exactly but there's no increase in right we're we're doing what would be October
1st we want to do now in May or June um so by accelerating that we're able to build a new Financial structure so that if we have to go out to the markets I will have to probably come back with a new Declaration of intent to issue which was last done for 85 million we haven't issued that yet we've run out of bonding capacity as you know uh when we did Pump
Station 20 8 uh which was needing I think was short like N9 million-ish dollars we had to do kind of an unpalatable thing which was robbing Peter to pay Paul where we took money from the dot uh Alton Road South project temporarily because that money is not needed till next year so that's why we
think it's important to get that structure uh put in place now right I understand that so I have I have no problem with starting it now but then in the next year there's the the rate will stay the same as it is now I I I had the same
question okay right and we walked through it my understanding is we're not skipping a year it's actually just like two or three months right so if we would implement it right now and then again in October essentially it would just be three mon right be a double so we're
just exactly so that would make sense to do one now and again in a few months in October for next I'm talking about the back three months so back three years so the the 26 rate basically starts now right and then there's one 27 28 29 30 yeah there'll be
a rate increase every year took if you took the last few years and um put them into 26 so there'd be a rate increase now then there'd be another rate increase in 26 but then 27 28 29 would
all be slightly smaller because some of that would go into 26 you'd be talking about like two increases then yeah would two it would be two increases within three months um and that's not the administration's recommendation that's the answer I needed to understand thank you I just
need if I may through the chair so what is the benefit between implementing the rate increase immediately as opposed to with fiscal year P to me it seems like with the fiscal year is the right time to do these increases and I don't like I
don't like the precedent of mid year doing the changes because then you know mid year you can get you know all of a sudden changes on BTR fees mid year you can get changing changes on you know parking rates uh I don't I like things
starting clean with the fiscal year generally so explain to me again what's the advantage one of the the main things by putting it in place now is we may be in a situation to be talking to rating agencies we may be in a position to where I have to come back to do a declaration of intent to issue we have
to really look at the financing plan we thought be building it this way um and having it immediately in effect would be a more palatable approach to it but if you pass the ordinance effective uh rate implementation with fiscal year 26 you can pass the ordinance immediately you
have you know the Declaration of the policy uh for for for for the increase isn't that sufficient for you to go to be able to go out and do that financing we would have loss Revenue obviously that that additional increase four
months worth of additional increase uh Revenue I don't know if we would look to back to to adjust the rates higher in the future then to compensate for those four months of additional loss or we would just look at well we're not going back and I mean I don't know are we going back and recouping lost revenue
for not having done it at the beginning of this fiscal year I mean no to be applied immedately so I mean I've I don't know I I just think you know this does need to go to the city commission and realizing that this does need to go to the city commission and I think that
the p path forward given how important this is um to support our infrastructure needs that which again they're not optional uh infrastructure improvements I think the way that this
reaches the finish line is if it starts with fiscal year 2026 October 1st of this year if if that's a direction of the commission make a recom the committee to make that recommendation to the commission uh we could I think we could work within that structure and if
if I could make just a couple of of just a few points as to why there's a you know um a few additional points one is is that when when you issue bonds the the rating agencies also want to see five years of of History uh historical
um performance on on your coverage and so by um as as Jason mentioned you'd have improved metrics for this fiscal year which I think would would help uh would favor your your credit rating and the other the other point is
you know we've we've talked about how we're you know we're behind on keeping up with inflation and you know having early recovery is just going to help catch up uh get you know kind of a time value of money with three months right
yeah um yeah I'm open to either the one thing while we kind of uh on that about when best implemented I'm rather indifferent I see the points that you're making uh as part of this is and we talked about this in my briefing Mr CFO and City
attorney uh I would like our marketing Communications Department to put together a robust messaging uh program here right because yes people eventually are going to be asked to pay more um but I think our residents are uh
tremendously um nobody's enthusiastic about paying higher rat but if we can show them there's tangible projects that are going to improve our everyday lives this doesn't just go into this black hole or into this ambiguous billion
dollar budget we are actually able to deliver on these long-term planned and needed resiliency projects because of this I I think uh if we can have a robust messaging program there I I think
that'll go a long way um you know I don't think any of us take comfort in doing this but this is going to specific things that is putting our money where our mouth is for resiliency and the long-term well-being of our city okay I think we can definitely add that to the
motion one question just to clarify on the is appears the request to to modify to October 1st would that be for the standard water monthly water and SE storm water but the impact fees would be immediate um there seem to be I want to just get clarification on it because there's really two sets there think uh
commissioner Fernandez's uh premise was to remain consistent and maintain president so while I am flabbergasted as well voice maybot I always get better at Scrabble every single meeting that I have with
you what was it malate put putting that one down for my Scrabble game against coery I am a full Serv I a full service commissioner um but you know I certainly don't want to appear the we're kicking the K down the
road uh for the development fees but I think we're this is for the longer term so we'll just be consistent in that I I believe what I'm hearing then is the return to commission with a favorable recommendation to present a water sewer storm water uh rate ordinance uh with the initial implementation to start uh
October 1st and the administration develop a marketing plan for this infrastructure program because that's what it is if I might um I I understand about not wanting to break president but when we did the roll off fee increase did we wait until the next fiscal year
did we Implement so I would separate them because I think one sort of affects residents and um and that's clean but if we're just correcting um bad housekeeping on our on our side from a development perspective I think
the impact fees we could we could start now we we have a precedent for that already we're continuing it it's repairing damage that was done for the last 30 years and it's not really public facing few for the whole building is that
okay this is that's for new development impact fees for new development whenever we yes yes yes right yes okay few for yeah minor good okay we'll show commission if we can hear from the public I believe
our is onine Mitch no please unmute yourself thank you it was a thank you it was a delayed unmute Mitch novic here I've 37-year resident
come March our billion doll budget was 500,000 a dozen years ago as seen every October since then we we've had over a dozen Utility Billing rate increases
which also include newly created fees such as the month monthly fire sprinkler fee we have hired 500 more Municipal Employees over that period of time as public safety and quality of life
improved enough with the poor barral spending we hear it we watch it we're amused by it but you need to focus on reducing our budget and deny raid hikes these types of raid hikes which have had the greatest impact on housing and
affordability in The Exodus of residents in our city thank you thank you Mitch and I believe we have two other people as well Jeff Bal please unmute yourself yes uh thank you Jeff burcal
590 Lake View Drive um I I would like to speak on behalf of the administration and its recommendation we have a critical need here and I think the proposed changes
recommended proposed increases recommended by the administration ought to be implemented immediately and it's not creating a precedent because we have a longstanding and critical need for these
infrastructure projects just to cite some of the Salient points from the administration recommendation as and as you heard from your expert the city's Water and Sewer rates have not kept up with actual
inflation the storm water system does not have the financial metrics to enable the city to maintain a favorable doublea Bond rating and has minimal debt capacity to finance future projects the city's renewal and replacement needs are
not going to go away and will be more expensive to address in the future and with respect to storm water the city could possibly lose grant funding if it's unable to proceed with the projects due to lack of adequate
Financial Resources as the chairman of the committee has noted so I would urge the commission and the committee to uh adopt the administration's recommendations adopting the proposed
monthly water sewer and storm water rates immediately uh the pass through of the rates from the county and uh immediate increase to the water and sewer impact fees and as you know uh I and my firm
represent developers those are the ones that are going to have to pay it uh they need to be paid the development Community needs to Larry Schaefer please unmute yourself good morning um I wanted to
just highlight that you're bringing out rate increases and I I don't oppose the rationalization here basically you're cleaning up stuff and doing work that prior administrations refuse to do so very much in favor of that but I just want to sort of encourage you to read
the room on on on financial matters related to the the taxpayers this year is going to be a perfect storm of pain for condo owners by the end of 2025 the impact of the champagne Towers collapse reserve requirements laws are going to be hitting condos you did pass a budget
that was is ballooning and increased property taxes more or less by 10% insurance rates have gone through the roof and mortgage rates remain very very high so when you bring this out I I Joe said let's get a good marketing and Communications effort going here you're
going to need it um it because it's coming at a time where there just doesn't seem to be any relief from the pain for these condo owners and I own a single family home I'm just speaking of hopefully for for my neighbors very much you know live in condos and pay for this
um and the other thing just to maybe sort of uh show it that you're you're working on it I would maybe suggest that you say these increases uh are going to pay for new sewage systems and we need that to correct our water quality problem so if
the taxpayer says hey I'm going to get uh better quality water in the bay and in the ocean where I swim and my kids swim and my my dogs swim then I say okay great now I know why I'm paying a little bit more and then go out and actually deliver on those sewage pipe upgrades
and actually deliver cleaner water then maybe you have a win here thank you guys for your service have a good one yeah thank you Mitch thank you Jeff thank you Larry uh Larry to hear Last point I agree and that's what I where I was going with the marketing strategy when we look at the um water alerts that we
continue to get at uh uh Park View island or recently uh on the ocean and things like that um this goes a long way towards uh really putting our money where our mouth is and caring about the quality of our Bay caring about our environmental issues caring about
resiliency and um while I don't want to minimize the financial burden that I I think uh a large majority of us I want to say our residents but you know we're we're residents as well that are not immune from that um can we quantify
essentially uh if we could go back to the slide that uh we did before essentially I think you know for the next couple of years again not to minimize anything but for the average homeowner or average condo dweller we're talking about a monthly increase of
about $15 correct the the first first correct increase correct first year exactly and that's combin water so and storm water gets so again not to minimize anything but when we're talking about preparing for resiliency challenges for the future improving our
water quality um not only what's coming into our home but our most precious resource is out in biscan Bay uh you know we're talking about an increase for the average person of about 10 to15 per month just a question so the proposed
rate increases it's 9% in 2025 in other words October 1st 2025 then another 99% October 1st 2027 uh and then another
9% uh in 2028 is that correct and then from from there on forward uh it's uh 4.5 annually through 2031 that's the for the water so we correct okay but that's under you know
today's costs and you know I'm very M mindful of inflationary and economic uh uncertainties yeah that's something that I think you know I'm you I'm my my my
financial scrapple game is getting better every every every Finance meeting Mr chair so you know you know could these Rising construction costs you know construction
materials Labor uh could they make these project estimates potentially unreliable and you know could we be facing instead of a 9% increase in 2027 or 2028 a higher uh increase because of
you know inflation and economic conditions that we can't foresee right now um I I'll let maybe Brian speak to it a bit but I would say that when this uh long-term financial plan is put together when the infrastructure plan
when project projects are meant to be put out there the public works department has cost estimates uh that are done now and they are cash flow escalated they do index those items to inflation so they do take it does is taken into account now if it's an extraordinary level of inflation like we
had here over the past couple years it does make it a little bit more difficult but Brian can you add a little bit to that yeah AB absolutely I mean for if if the actual inflation turns out to be nine or 10% per year like um you know which was you know uh what we had a
couple years ago but um you know then yeah the the financial forecast may need to be looked at again but uh I mean right now we're assuming inflation of around 3% per year and we're hoping that that's you know we're hoping the prices
will stabilize but we have um in this financial forecast we have included inflationary allowances and so what I guess the policy decision at that point that the city commission could take is okay how many projects do we move
forward with at that point rather than you know because let's say you know you have these you know inflationary issues or economic uncertainties there's there's let's say a downturn that could impact the resident ability to afford
higher utility bills you know um you know the the discussion at that point could center well how many of these projects do we move forward with as opposed to passing along higher rate increase than what is being determined
correct okay one thing you never get back is the time value of money sure so so you know you're you're at least in The Proposal is to increase them incrementally so that even if you do have higher costs at least the incremental increase won't be would not
be as high as if you um uh than than uh you know if you hadn't gradually incre started the the increases so if I can chair may we just um I'll St the motion again just to make sure it's clear the motion the commissioner bought I think who has to
make uh return the commissioner favor recommendation present the water sewer storm water rate ordinance with the initial implementation of the monthly rate structure to start October 1 2025 and the impact fee adjustments to start as presented and for the administration to develop a marketing plan for this
infrastructure program all in favor I thank you and next you next you had uh mb1 yes thank you can me read that in mb1 comprehensive analysis of impact
of rolled back property tax rate on the adopted 2025 budget mb1 good morning PJ's put up presentation good morning so yeah so uh just thank you Mr
chair for uh bringing forward this uh this this analysis I think we introduced this um in in November to understand the financial implications of what would be like to adopt a roll back budget just uh
not just in terms of immediate Revenue changes but also in terms of our ability to sustain vital Services uh and maintain uh fiscal responsibility uh so uh we have tamaa uh
who has put together a presentation for us and I'm looking forward to it right thank you all right PJ you can put up the presentation all right so we will be talking about the analysis that we did we were requested back in November to
look at what the 25 budget would look like if we did adopt a roll back rate so we'll talk about the impact on the city's operations if we did this the impact on Homestead property values and their taxes and the long-term viability
of our financials so just a little background on our budget so 61% of the general fund property um budget is in property tax revenues and so if we impact our roll back rate to or millage rate to be the roll back rate that's
going to impact those dollars and obviously because it's 61% of the overall revenues it's going to have an impact on our operating expenditures I apologize for putting you on the spot Mr Sao feel free to jump in do we have a breakdown of those property taxes what
is commercial versus what is residential I don't have it with me but I'll have it before we get today okay that's great yeah that be a great time I think I have it somewhere and I guess I'll just take that one step further is there any way where we'd be able to bif for Kate uh know you you can't have
discriminatory property tax rates property tax rates are set for all properties within a municipality and just for purposes of those who are participating virtually or or watching um at home you know we're talking about a rolled back um tax rate
and for for their purposes you know that's the tax rate that would generate the same amount of revenues as as last year as the last uh fiscal year doesn't include new construction or other adjustments uh just you know existing
existing property is that correct Mr CFO correct okay just for context oh let me go back so on the expenditure side that's 61% of our property tax revenues is supporting 61% of our overall general fund budget and
of that amount 60% is just Public Safety so that's police and fire if you did add in homeless Services Code Compliance and uh Park rang that actually goes up to 64% so any impact on our general fund revenues property tax revenues is going
to impact our ability to support those Services as well as other services that are supported by other property tax other revenues so what is a roll back rate so the rolls back rate is a millage rate that we would charge next year in
order to gather the same Revenue that we did this year so that's a calculated number and based on our FY 25 budget it would have been instead of 61481 the millage rate would have been 6 5.6
354 so the millage rate is broken down into four components as you can see here the operating millage rate which takes care of most of our operations is uh 5.66 36 uh we also have a capital renewal and replacement millage rate
which takes care of the renewal and replacement of our existing assets uh and we also have a pay go millage rate which takes care of our other existing assets and it pays for the funding of new capital projects and then we have the voted Debt Service millage which
covers all the geob bond expenditures and that stays flat it's it's a calculated number based on our debt service payment and the value of our properties so if we did have a roll back millage rate we would have to change one of the general millage rate numbers we do not want to reduce our capital or our
Pago uh dollars those dollars we are trying to fund as we said uh previously that $1.1 billion unfunded CIP we're sending over just about $8 million now from that little those little millage rates so what would we impact we would
be impacting the operating millage rate and that's what we see here we would propose if we had gone back to a roll back millage rate and just to speak in layman's terms for anybody following along when we talk about this if we could how do you apply that uh is it on
every $100,000 or or every million dollars what would that translate to so the math is if you have a property value of 100,000 you would divide that by a th000 and then you multiply it by that tax rate so that would be 515 um for every $100,000 of property
value so essentially we're looking at uh 500 the next slide actually tells you what you're what you're probably asking so this slide says what would somebody get in Savings in their bill if you actually uh did do roll back rate so you would have the average property owner if
the value is at 778 as of last year they would get a savings of 3.99 from last year's the the bill last year um which is great um and let's see the impact what we'd have to do what the city would have to do in order to give this back as
a reduction in the tax bill so the the pro the millage rate impact several sources so it impacts our property tax revenues which is primarily what we talk about but it also impacts what we transfer to the CRA and to the RDA as well because that's just a function of
our millage rate so the big hit would be on our property tax revenues we would lose $24 million that's in the general fund in the general fund um the CRA would lose 130 the RDA would lose 3.12 million for a total of 27 million that
we would have to cut from the budget so last year we spent a lot of time talking about what we add to the budget if we had gone back to our roll back rate we would be looking to cut and how would that look like in the budget which is the Crux of the conversation so we would have had to
gone back in the budget after we've gotten the property vales in July and look for $14.4 million of cuts in our operations that includes uh commissioner magazine you were asking about the union contracts we set aside $7.7 million in
the 2025 budget to cover the cost of the Union contracts uh the majority of those dollars went to to police and fire uh but we would have to cut 14.4 and then on top of what we would have to cut on our current service level
we also would have to reduce all the enhancements so we approved $9.3 million in enhancements in the 2025 budget just from the general fund and then we also had 700,000 of midyear budget changes that the commission approved that had an
impact on the 2025 budget so those two items would go plus we have have to go back and make $14 million of cuts which would obviously have service impacts and it would be hard to have service impact service impact without touching Public Safety because they make up 60% of the
budget let alone all the union contracts that we have got approved and then the CRA would lose uh funding as well and so would the uh the RDA uh the RDA the funding that we put there eventually they want to pay off um the debt on the
RDA so we could sunet the r the RDA that would just slow on that rate so commissioner magazine last year in the budget process he asked us to kind of show a forecast of where we think the budget is going and this chart shows where it was at that time at the
millage rate that has been approved and what we saw is that we have a projected Surplus all the way to 2029 and then we estimate that we'll have a funding Gap and this estimated that this year we would have an 8% increase in our property values uh last year we had a 9.
before and the year before we had 10.2 I believe so we estimate an increase but at a lower rate and this is where we saw we were going and we did forecast that we should be you know conscious of the choices that we're making adding to the budget because we're foreseeing a gap
and that's with a you know reasonable estimate of what our property tax revenues will be so what we did is another chart that showed if we adopted a build back millage rate what that budget would look like so we have the 24 Mill million dollar Gap that we just talked about and if we kept that mill
rate flat which technically would be a mill rate increase if you keep it flat because you wouldn't go back to the radb rate that Gap would just keep increasing over time which would put us in a more dire financial situation uh so Jason mentioned one of
these or maybe two of these earlier today but we kind of want to forecast what's coming in the budget process and we know we come back to you in May um but we have an increasing unfunded Capital uh program the item that you approved just now will help if we get that funding we'll have some additional
funding to fund or utility projects but we also have this long-term Financial projection that shows that we are heading towards uh some financial difficulties unless our property value is come in significantly higher or if we cut a significant amount of our expenditures and then Jason mentioned
the $7 million hit on our budget if we are going to have to pay this uh additional Commission of 2% to the M Tax tax collectors of which 6 million will hit the general fund so we're working on the budget right now and in the budget I have a placeholder for 6 million if our
property values go up which we expect that 6 million will go up because it's a percentage of the revenues that we're going to collect and then last but not least we uh we had amendment five that was passed by the voters in November last year which increases the homestead exemption on all the property the
Homestead Properties so for example example we have two exemptions of 25,000 so for the first 25,000 exemption that's now going to be tied to CPI so every it's good for the homeowners I actually voted for it um but every year now my exemption gets bigger which means less
property tax revenues to the city and so that's another thing that's going to you know curtail the values that we would have gotten I'm just playing Devil's Advocate uh there to with the homestead um I saw um a property traded on North
Bay Road it was bought in 1990s or something along those lines for $2 million uh and presumably was Homestead and just traded for hundred some million dollars um that should bring in a pretty substantial increase to our city
obviously not one property will move the needle but if we see that kind of uh especially in some of our higher value areas yes the only thing I would just add to that is with the concept of portability where you get to move that that homestead exemption so if the
person stayed within the city of May beach you wouldn't really get that impact because he's going to move that differential between his market value and taxable value over but if it's a new person if they're moving out and a new person from New York or the Northeast is coming in then then absolutely because then you would have that jump in taxable
value excellent so you know I kind of framed the uh back of the envelope just to have things simplistically so if we had about a 14 million surplus last year and we essentially chopped $7 million of
that6 to7 million of that just for the DMV off the board and then how much uh incremental of the new Union contracts are we looking at I think that's about five to six million dollar uh well this year we had a placeholder of 7.7 um the impact that it probably will be higher
next year because in the first year usually it's you know not including pension costs so for any positions that were added we added 15% for firefighters and so next year we'll have a pension impact so it's going to be more than 7.7 million so commissioner
Fernandez I love the initiative I love it I think the story that we're telling here is we're all going to have to be financially disciplined just to maintain our current tax rate right I if property values don't come to
8% uh increase of 8% we could be not looking at cutting taxes or even keeping taxes as is we could be looking at very you know tough uh times at the end of the year and it's not idiosyncratic dos right the county
is going through a similar exercise um they just uh let go of some recent positions uh so I think the key takeaway here is this is eye openening um yep we're going to have the discussion at
our city commission as well because I don't think it should just be uh contained within a few members of the finance committee here uh the message has to be conveyed loud and clear that we need to be financially disciplined right we have been blessed beyond all
measures that we've had close to double digit property tax increases over the past couple of years and even with that we are facing a scenario with without any unexpected surprises that that $14 million surplus on just two line items
right the DMV and the union contracts just disappeared yeah well and I think you've you've brought up some some great points I brought this up because during the last budget process we we weren't really increasing taxes uh but but you know some some
people were were saying well you you are because you're not adopting a roll back rate and so you know I wanted to make sure that the public understood what adopting a rollback rate means it's it's not without an expense we are we would
be we would be having fewer officers we would be having longer response times we will be having reduced homeless Outreach efforts we would have less Parks maintenance uh we would have park ranger reductions we would have slower repairs
of our streets and and sidewalks and fewer cleaning services and possibly reduced after school programs that we all cherish and you know you know and and it goes on and on and on and I think so the message here is that you know
while tax relief property tax relief is always a consideration I think something that we always as elected officials would love to be able to achieve it must be weighed against the tangible impacts it does have on public safety and
infrastructure and quality of life um so you know this analysis presented today I think offers a clear picture of what a rolled back raid would mean uh for for for our city and uh and I think you know
when you see that for me the real takeaway is how do we generate new revenues for the city and I do think we do have opportunities to generate new revenues um I'll tell you for example and this is
really out there um really out there it's almost dangerously out there and I don't even know if it's I I'll probably get slammed online later for but no like for like for example you know you were you were mentioning you
know the exchange of property you know when when there are new transactions that that happened and you know you have a new property owner that's going to be paying a $100 million for a piece of waterfront real estate and I see Tanya shaking her head and it really is insane
that we live in this environment um and what that translates in terms of taxes but how do we actually you know you have areas of our city where you have very valuable real estate um like Sunset one and two and sunsets three and four um
you know they're almost like private islands but they're not private islands all right and you don't go into Sunset one and two or Sunset three and four unless you have to you don't cut through through those ISS to go to public so you
don't cut through those islands to take your kids to school or to go to the park now imagine if we made those islands private islands the way the Lor is a private island I'm sure I'm sure if you get a waterfront parcel you evaluate the
value per square foot of a waterfront parcel in lagor where you have a private island and you compare it to sunsets one and two I'm sure per square foot it's much more valuable in lagor because
it's a private island is anyone's quality of life affected by the fact that lagor is a private island no because no one cuts through there it's not it's not feasible to cut through there and I think it's the type of thing we should be doing we should be looking
at how do we make our real estate generate more money ultimately it's not for us it's for the public ultimately to support our police services and our cleaning services and our Parks services and everything that that that our city
is looking for and I think we have that opportunity how do we look at areas like Sunset one and two and consider maybe you know we if we privatize those islands how does what does that translate for all the other residents in added benefits and uh for them and to
their property taxes how do we look at like palm and hibiscus no one has to cut through areas like palm and hibiscus um to get to school or to get to the park or to get to Publix you know we look at those areas and if we were to do
that what would that generate and I would love for for our CFO and our budget team to look into this um because I think it's a way that we can look at addressing some of these issues that we have Without Really impacting anyone's
quality of life I don't know what you guys think about that because I'm not a member of the committee I'm just no I I appreciate opening up the cans of worms yeah I I think it leads to a lot of interesting discussions about ways that I think it's twofold right we we find a way to be
more financially disciplined but then also find ways to raise more Revenue right um using what you currently have I I would like to understand what it means in Impact um to the residents of an
island that gets privatized to neighbors who live adjacent to the island who are not privatized and how that would translate into their daily life and also what the financial benefits could be because I don't know much about I've yet
to privatize an island in my life so I don't know much about it amateur I know I'm just aing there's a lot I told you I was opening I can't inform there's a lot of different ideas uh one I've always kind of kicked around about how we could raise money if we're going to have you know we're we're in a
perhaps once in a generation real estate cycle right and who's benefiting from that a lot of very wealthy real estate developers uh but if we have something like a waterfront um project that's happening on 17th Street right and these
developers they're selling for $4,000 per square foot yes the city is benefiting through a significant amount of property tax increases but let's say that developable height is 150 ft right that they're allowed to build up to uh let's use the Raleigh for example right
if they have a 10,000 ft uh floor plate I'm just doing back of the envelope math here let's say their cost of construction uh in land Acquisitions $2,000 per foot and they're selling at $4,000 per foot they have a 10,000 foot floor plate if we would essentially say
you could go and build an extra uh 10 to 12 feet there one single extra floor that could bring in $10 million to the city I don't know is is that worth it perhaps on a uh one-off basis you know we look at that um on a project by project basis I'm not saying we move
forward with that but those are the types of ideas that we could essentially uh look to be creative with um but no matter how much revenue you raise whether it's our government the county or the federal government uh rule number one is we always have to maintain Financial discipline because you can
only you know the the areas where you can raise money you're always going to be finite it starts at fiscal discipline at home chair if I can just a couple items just you know back to T mik's presentation and the item on the roll back is just a couple of reminders to you know to the residents is that if
you're a homestead uh property if you keep you know as commissioner Fernandez mentioned you know we we haven't increased taxes it's the same tax rate as last year you would see an increase if you're taxable value went up but if you're homesteaded you're capped at 3% so in that sense it's you know it's it's
basically keeping up with inflation which has really been the long term there will be uh my second point is that in at the May budget Retreat that will be the biggest part of that where we will be presenting the current service level budget and to let you know what the projected deficit would be uh going
forward and what the J the June 1st estim um preliminary tax uh numbers would have to come in to make that so that there'll be a whole Workshop specifically where we're going to get in deep you know on these kind of Concepts and and third third uh just you know the broken record that I know you know that
I am is whenever there's a discussion about expenditures and and all the wonderful programs and things that we want to do Administration you know as St St its recommendation that all of these things should always be presented during the 20 you know 206 27 you know budget process for consideration to see how
much money we have in our wallet to pay for them so I just wanted to mention that to close this out okay commissioner we have public comment yes please Larry Schaefer please unmute yourself hello I uh have a few comments we have a new property
appraiser named Tomas regalato and he wants to reduce property values based on climate change so for example if your home is in a flood zone and you have expensive flood insurance he's going to look to lower your property value because you have to pay more for flood
insurance um this is the kind of guy that might also lower your property value if you are if you live near polluted Waters like on Parkview island or like right about now we have to bring up water again uh if you can't swim in the ocean you don't really the value of your ocean front property is less so I
wouldn't count on the property values you're getting now after this new politician property praiser has his way and there's plenty of articles in WLRN documenting his strategy and I think everyone needs to read those to see what's coming down the line uh also I
predict a decline in condo property values this year due to the 202 you know the deadline for meeting the new reserve requirements so don't assume that you're going to have the luxury of these high values real estate is cyclical and it does go down and you know people never
want to think about that but that could be now um regarding costs and lowering costs I don't think it's a bad idea to take a look at starting your own local Department of government efficiency now please separate Trump and Elon Musk from that but just consider the idea that
this organization is too big and that there inefficiencies and that they're waste within different departments and that maybe you could really be a leader in trying to take a look through this organization and see where costs can be cut and finally I know this isn't going to be received well at all by some
people but the state of Utah has banned uh government unions uh except for police and fire and so other states y I don't want to get Tanya like to say I you know I am all in
favor of being a better more efficient more consistent and more flexible government and I value outside of the box thinking on how to get there I don't think
we want to start um making this a non-union City I don't think we want to start um taking guidance from models that are dramatically
unproven um and I I think this is a a dangerous direction in which to go I want to do the right thing for our citizens and our residents and our businesses and our visitors we are a city that we hear consistently from all
of those populations that they want a lot from us and we have a lot of challenges that a random City in Utah doesn't have or different parts of the the county don't have and we need to either accept that's what we are and
figure out a way to consistently manage that and keep delivering or decide we are going to step away from that and not provide countless free services um that improve people's well-being both from
Parks and wreck and arts and culture but also the services we offer free taxpayers services or tax filing services and guidance on how to navigate various government departments if you need help and we do all sorts of things with this budget and the vast majority
of it goes to Public Safety between our fire and our police which I would be very hardpressed to believe that our our residents want fewer fire police or code officers um or Public Safety workers or
sanitation workers because those are the areas where we hear the most complaints of insufficient service so we can strip ourselves back and save a lot of money and go back to the Bare Bones but then we are not what
we have committed to being and that is a real inflection point and I for one am not prepared to lead this city which is so many things to so many people into
um libertarian at best that's being generous um strip down fend for yourself Community that's not who we are it's not who we have been and I don't believe that's who we will ever be so we'll show the item uh item
presented this was a discussion item uh so we can call the next item well just to add commissioner magazine the commercial properties of the last uh set of values you got were 18% is I'm sorry 18% 18% that 18% is between uh property
taxes 18% are derived from commercial versus uh the remainder from residential resal others so this might be a dumb question 18% of value or 18% based on number of units or 18% of the value of what's levied so of the total Levy of
332 they would be like 59 million a and do they have the equivalent of commercial property uh commercial property equivalent of Homestead no no no no it's meant it's a protect residents yeah no I I know that but is there anything you know so the so the
fountain Blues you know uh costs go up every single year with no they would their my understanding is their their taxable rate is at Mark is at um Market and one other thing if I may um through the chair a a uh business owner can always
challenge the property taxes in years where their revenues have decreased so there may be years where property tax for commercial uh property will actually go down right and that's the value adjustment board which is a very common practice especially in the commercial area right so essentially if they're if
they are a uh commercial Hospitality establishment and their revenues go down and they essentially say their appraise values based on their cash flows R A why Point that's exactly right so with a VAP with a value adjustment board so when people appeal their their taxable value
are we observing those appeals because I mean I think anyone anyone anyone that's able to hire an attorney will be able to find an argument in which to appeal you know like you know we had a caller and
say well you know the water quality around my Island yeah I live Waterfront but the water quality is it's it's not good so my value should be should be less um you know or I don't even want to
come up with I don't want to give people ideas of other things that I that are crossing my mind of other things they could use to appeal but do we observe do we track these appeals do we do do we have um standing in these appeals
because we're we're an affected taxing district um so just wondering just wondering what standing do we have Mr attorney as it relates to these appeals um I think anybody could observe the appeals I
don't know that you not observe that's done in public that the value adjustment board is a public hearing but standing yeah we I would need to look into that um I suppose because we are a d direct beneficiary of the tax but Jason is shaking his head so
and definitely not an attorney uh but I I don't believe that there's a a role for that in working at other municipalities um no there's never been really a need to observe because that's between the pro whoever owns that property let's say my house between me and the value adjustment board and and
the appraiser but you're talking about okay the the typical situation is commercial properties that appeal we could be any property I mean whether it's a commercial or residential everyone everyone legally has the ability to value generally speaking the the appeals are mostly commercial
because they're tied to cash flow so a commercial property appeals they're making you know they might make some crazy claim let's say to lower the amount of taxes they have to pay we don't have the ability to go in there
and challenge that let me look into that and find out pleas back to this because I think that's very important I remember one year I actually went in and I did an analysis of this was probably like three years ago and I almost contacted our our Inspector General who's sitting in the in the
audience about it because it was just fascinating how in one area of of the city where it was you know consistent you know the land it was kind of like the same landlord in this area you just saw a consistency that all those
properties had every year the same amount of reduction to their value and was very different than in other corridors like I actually went Corridor like I went down Washington Avenue Collins Avenue I went down Lincoln Road and saw what were the property values
the the SS values and then what were the appeals and what they were granted in terms of the of of the reduction and it was insane to me how in one Corridor it was like this just this
property owner was able to get other properties reduced by a certain percentage unlike any other Corridor and it just made me wonder at the time well do we have a say in this can we
fight this in in any way can we make sure that the statements being made about the city that could be influencing this decision is accurate because it affects our uh our bottom line at the at the end of the day so Mr attorney if you could get back to to us with information
on that I think it would be very helpful I I I I fear that um I don't think it is at this moment but I fear that this conversation could go slide very easily into dangerous territory and um you know
when you look at your tax bill and you're like I've got money going to the schools my kids are out of school I don't feel like I need to pay taxes to go to the school or I've never had a fire I don't want my tax dollars going to the fire department I don't need them
you know I'm all for efficiency I'm all for for departments speaking to each other to maximize um synergies where there are we I think the city has come a long way since I first started being involved in interdepartmental collaboration and and
sharing of information there's always room for improvement I think procurement processes can always be evaluated I think there's a lot of room for improvement but to start questioning and commissioner Fernandez I'm not suggesting this is questioning the fundamental what you just suggest was
questioning but I what I fear is that other people are going to take what is a very legitimate inquiry and extrapolated to the furthest possible outcome where people we see it for years selecting the facts they choose to adhere to or Rec
but I'm saying the opposite no but I understand that but what I'm saying is I I I feel that these conversations about um what is the role of government what we provide what we do what we will do in the future could get away from us I
think here we're having a very robust conversation what I don't want to have happen is for folks to take the kernel of an idea and then run with it and start saying you know I I have never gone to the New World Symphony wallcast
therefore I don't want a single penny of my dollars going to support their their effort so but but what I'm saying through the chair is like for example we have commercial landlords that keep their properties we know that there's been precedent in the past where where where Property
Owners can go to the value adjustment board and say well I'm not able to rent out my property so give me a discount on my on my on my value on my on my taxable value and well are they choosing to keep their their their property vacant have
they had opportunities to rent their property is keeping their property vacant affecting the E the general economy of the of of the surrounding area and if so you know you know we need to be aware of that because now not only
is that vacant property property affecting the economy of the surrounding area but now also that vacant property is going and taking money away from the taxpayers uh where where other property owners who are responsible on
contributing property owners are actually then having to pay a higher rate yeah so we really need to be we Mr yeah I please we need to be on top of this yeah I me we see it in um in North Beach where literally Property Owners
commercial property owners are literally saying I'm going to hold on to it until I get you know until the zoning laws change and I can build higher and denser on it yeah and and that is very bad for the city so um again I it's not this issue your suggestion in particular it's
that my fear is that folks out in The Ether are going to be you know twisting the intent of the dialogue to to do damaging things so I think there that's I think the End of the Roll back item yeah excellent
um it's an important one right because I don't want to it does none of us any justice or our residents any justice to paint an overly Rosy picture uh I don't mean to sound an alarm but we are compared to where we were in the past
going to be going into a challenging budget year right just by two line items that essentially eliminates our entire budget surplus that we experienced last year um yeah I'm going to try and try
and lead by example on something um and listen the only way to start making big changes is by small ones uh I'm going to hear nb16 uh Aid housing allowance and I'll te this up where I was essentially
going I can call the ad sorry y uh MB that was one of the things that we were going to cut out you calling the item discuss proposed resolution of the mayor and commission of the city of May Beach Florida authorizing a stien in the amount of $500 per month for each City Commissioner Aid to enable these critical members of the staff to find
suitable housing in the city of Mii Beach mb16 yeah listen our we get the credit and a lot of times more often than the credit the uh uh the scorn um but our AIDS are the ones that really
put in the full-time effort to work they they are often times the heroes uh in this operation going forward and it's been um a huge initiative of mine I can remember sitting there as a private citizen commissioner Fernandez hearing uh you talk about ways to incanti
employees to live in our city when we had a an awful traffic accident last evening on the MacArthur and uh quick Public Service Announcement please do not drink and drive please please it it's the easiest thing to avoid it's the most selfish thing anybody could ever do
and it has real life consequences uh but that being said it snarled traffic had a number of people that live outside of the city uh that weren't able to get here or got here late Rick um I kid uh but the point being you know uh
you provide incentives for people to live here and our AIDS uh work a very uh helter sculpture schedule it's unpredictable it's early mornings it's late evenings it's weekends uh so my
original thought was to provide $500 uh dollar per month to incentient live in our city uh part of it is self-serving so they can spend more time here and they uh are even more on becking call um that being said you know we just got done for the last two
hours highlighting how incredibly pinched our budget is so while originally I was going to go forward and uh ask for a new budget item I'd like to maybe possibly slightly amend this and see how my colleagues feel about this uh several months ago um it was approved
where each commissioner got uh I believe the total amount was $155,000 for like miscellaneous expenses for um uh conferences events and travel yeah yeah events travel and things like that uh that's already been allocated that's
been approved that's an existing line item I guess what all gee the colle the temperature of my colleagues is at a commissioner's discretion can they provide let's call it a $250 to $300 per
month stip in to their aids for housing allowance living in the city out of that stien that has already been approved so this would be providing incentives for our aids to live here it's much needed
uh but we'd be doing so with fiscal responsibility um a commissioner could choose you know what I don't think that that's uh important to me or if it is important to them uh pay for it out of that uh stien that's already uh been approved uh for the events conferences
uh travel and miscellaneous expenses so is in in an additional miscellaneous expense that could be included in that allowance is uh housing stapen for individual Commissioners aids would that be uh sure I think we would just need to
amend the the resolution that originally authorized the uh the 15,000 per commissioner allowance for attending uh various events and um I I think perhaps I think there's a resolution attached this was originally a commission I think
you might just amend this resolution that would allow and I'm going to try to yeah return commission with a favorable recommendation to provide each commissioner's Aid with a city by Beach Housing stien of of insert dollar value here I think $300
$300 uh to be funded from each commissioner's $15,000 events and travel budget at each commissioner's discretion I think that's what you were yes so we wouldn't be that's already been budgeted allocated and approved so we wouldn't be
increasing our budget whatsoever it would just be uh the commission that already had this uh incremental State been approved we at our discretion If instead of attending a conference or something along those
lines if we would rather give that to our individual aids for a housing Sten we would be able to do so yeah yeah I think if I know yeah we would not require a a budget amendment or anything coming back to the commission what would just happen is that I guess we would work with uh the mayor's Chief the staff
who the your office manager I think keeps track I guess of each 15 who other $15,000 if you Avail yourself of that um you would just have to work with you know uh the HR department to have that new one allocated and then the U the mayor Commission office would then
process a budget transfer to transfer whatever the that fiscal Year's amount is from that general ledger account to another G Ledger account so it would just be operational so if I could just chime in I'm I'm fine with that I I don't think that has a fiscal impact to to the city and I think that that should be up to
the prerogative of each commissioner what I think is um I think we could look into this pool of money that's already been allocated in the budget and like for example you know what if someone really you know doesn't go to an event
that much or something like that I think you know if someone wants to support their aid they can or if someone wants to you know make a contribution to a PTA that's having an activity what I what I think is you know kind of giving more
discretion to to to the Commissioners as to how to use those funds in coordination uh with the either the chief of staff in the office or the office manager um just for as long as it's you know for official purposes um
because you know I rather I I might rather you know support a PTA uh or a good cause in in the community as opposed to going to a Gala you know so I just would rather have um more of that
type of flexibility wholeheartedly commissioner vice mayor B I agree on all counts I like not having an additional budget impact um I like having the further flexibility to use that money for the greater good in
the community and um I am in favor Jason maybe this was a question for you um at the end of the year if somebody hasn't used their allocated 15 grand does it go back to the general en fund does roll over to the next year and if you have
3,000 left late left over from year one and year two you would just be brought back up to 15 correct correct it's it what you call use it or lose it budget because it's allocated for that specific year so any unused dollars get rolled down to the the general fund balance which then is how we fund our capital projects so that would just go down to
the bottom line Surplus so does it have to be voted on every year or no it's it's no it's a part of the budget as it is now and and and Tama was just correct me it's not $155,000 per commissioner it was reduced during the final budget to
12,500 um so just as a as a note if you you did that you might have we just have to keep that in account um but the motion as we had spoken was just related that but then there's other discussions here so uh I just need to know if if you need to modify the motion because this
relates to specifically giving a $300 per month uh a a City May Beach Housing stien to to uh one or more you know AIDS um and obviously within your own budgetary constraints of your own um now $12,500 allocation so let's amend it to
uh include that or other uh benef other official usages I'd ask to the attorney to help the language there well we we'll we'll now go back to the original motion as opposed to using the motion that the
CFO referred to and to make it a little broader I'm going to to make sure that we include language that includes some some guard rails uh public purpose Etc no campaigning nothing along those lines no payments to people involved in
campaigns yeah because there's the the limitation there may not be enough for 28s to have this the 12,500 you mentioned 300 is there and I'm looking to HR here in case I'm offline here is because you had mentioned I think a briefing about an option about being up
to um is is that is that yeah I mean is that one we say 100 because I only could afford may've already utilized it for some travel and events are we able to give the dis the commissioner discretion to have it variable up to a Max per month per per
commission Aid and don't want to just ask HR if there anything that I said there would run a foul of any HR rules good good afternoon I'm Lina Bravo it's good to meet you I'm the assistant director of HR thank you for all you do for our city thank you um uh Mara is uh
on vacation for a couple of days so I'm happy to be here and answer your questions um I'm unaware that there is a uh a restriction in terms of the amount or some requirement that may uh specify
specific amount I I think that um for uniformity and ease of administration it may make it much easier and simpler um to indicate a specific amount um for for the AIDS okay
excellent I think this is good where taking care of people that I I think deserve and need it um but we're also doing so in a very fiscally responsible way of using money that's already been budgeted and allocated if so I may add one more just for your consideration um that money whatever the
amount is will be taxable to the employee so if your intent is that the employee have an additional 300 each month that amount would need to be grossed up and I don't think we need to take time here to do that um but I just wanted to mention that and we do have other allowances with employees that are
not handled in that way most of them are handled just as as a taxable income so I'll keep it at the $300 per month because I think you can't fit that within the budget and then I'm going to work with the city attorney I guess to add additional language about opening up
um additional uses of the $12,500 per commissioner allocation if that's what I'm hearing are you okay with that Rick right we're going to modify the original reso from last year um to to add more flexibility correct so there'll be two
so there'll be two resolutions that'll be the the 15 that one and I I think we could subsume the one that was on the agenda into so we can keep it at one reso okay I this was a city it'll be one new reso amending the original reso okay
and it was this was a City attorney reso so I think I think it was placed on the agenda by the City attorney but I think the finance Department was the one working on it wow kids kids kids kids all in favor sorry uh all in favor
I I okay excellent and you know talking about uh our our budget and things like that uh let's go to nb9 uh the Roosevelt Theater um I know in our briefing it seemed uh a great
cause initiative um the feedback we got I'm really hoping that there's a private sector solution uh because from a government standpoint I think it would be a stretch but why don't we run through that I don't know if commissioner Rosen Gonzalez is listening I I know it's her item um but
it's been some time and I think it'll actually fall off if it's not heard uh today so let's uh hear that um but I think it's a pretty clear-cut recommendation from the staff okay mb19 discuss Administration non-binding discussions with the owner of the Roosevelt Theater located at 770 Arthur
Godfrey Road the theater for the city's potential purchase of the theater and the administration and administration appraisal the theater and propose terms for the potential purchase of the theater mp19 good morning chair vice mayor Commissioners colleagues I'm Heather
Shaw I'm the assistant director for economic development happy to bring this uh item to your attention um you may note that in um November we sent out an LTC about um the discussions that the city was having with the Roosevelt
Theater um last summer we were directed to well last actually before that was last year um we were asked to um explore if there was a way to work with the Roosevelt Theater so it would no longer be or it would be something that would
be beautiful and enhance the 41st Street Corridor um together with my colleagues at uh facilities Department the facilities Department did a an appraisal of the property and the property value
came B back at estimated um $6,150 th000 and Liz is here did you want to add to that let's hear that number again million 16 million sorry I said 16,000 I'm in I'm in 16,000 i' say let's WR the check now my apology and
thank you Heather and my understanding uh just to have on the record is we reached out to the owner and he said perhaps you know I not committing to anything but I have something perhaps under discussion in the works and if we wanted to step in uh he gave a number of
30 million 30 million 30 million for that that they are that's their Baseline of what they want to discuss um I know that's if you want that's basically so while important that would just be to purchase it and then heaven knows what we would do with it which would be tens
of millions of dollars of more um did what did I misspeak in saying that the property owner said he was under discussions in ways to activate the project well they have an internal um uh company that's working with them on coming up on how they can utilize the
space but for us when we asked them what they would their price for the purchase of the property they said 30 million so but after that 30 million we haven't really done a due diligence on the cost and um walk through the property to see
you know exactly the cost of remediation or maintenance or um you know 30 million would be our Baseline and then yes and then also if we were to engage in a long-term leas with them more than 10 years it would require a referendum as well um so all those things have not
been kind of flushed out um what we're coming to um the committee about is there alternative ways to look at how we can dispose of when I say dispose of utilizing uh the property um and they are in the memo one is you know the city can obviously buy it outright we can
enter into uh a public private partnership we can engage directly with the the ownership there are a number of ways that we can you know come up with some type of of disposition for that property um but we haven't explored we want to make sure that you are aware of
what the value was and what the asking price is yeah I appreciate that and I guess from my perspective I I would take it off the table about potentially buying it you know when his Baseline is
uh two times appraise value and we don't have a good estimate for what we would do or the incremental cost for that um that doesn't mean those discussions are dead forever just in the iteration that we got back if uh people wanted to work internally on seeing if that really is
the Baseline number but when we're getting back you know do we move forward with uh any type of discussions in the $30 million range um I the mint that the property sits there you know kind of abandoned since 2006 but uh the current iteration of the city purchasing it for
$30 million and then figuring out what to do I just don't think is uh is feasible but I'll I'll turn that over if I'm happy to be swayed with a compelling argument um if somebody has one Heather do you know if it's the same um Property
Owners as it has been since 2003 I believe so do you have other yeah I believe so I'm not sure we'd have to check commissioner I um lived in that neighborhood for 16 years my first 16
years here and I know for a fact a very well-known restaurant tour approached them years ago um 2005ish uh maybe a little later but around there um to use that unique and beautiful space at the entrance of our
city to do a very high-end restaurant and they said No at the time and um so I I don't know these folks I don't want to cast dispersions but I'm not inclined to spend $30 million on a relatively small property where the use is unclear
um I hope that whatever they develop has a way to incorporate the facade of the theater because it's so iconic and beautiful um and they could be really creative and build something Nifty there but I don't think 30 million of our soon to be disappearing dollars um should
if I make um vice mayor they when we put out the rli for the city home lots in that area they had put in a proposal to use the lot I think it's p60 that's behind the building yeah I remember that but um again I I I'll pass on that Stu
so you won't get a compelling argument for me yeah so if I can yeah uh listen I and and I don't think that investing $30 million or the taxpayers dollars on that is is a right because then on top of that you got to think of how do you
improve the property uh and there's going to be significant significant Capital costs uh in that and so you know that's just entry on top of the fact I don't know that they're really interested in selling you know this is this was us knocking on someone's store
uh you know saying hey sell we really want your asset you know so I don't know I really don't think that they're uh interested in selling this to us it is a big uh property and I think the biggest impact that that there is is
that you're really not you don't have that that ground level activation and you know and and that's where I don't know if we've engaged in any conversation with the property owner of well I got activating the entirety of
that property might be difficult that theater might be difficult but is there the ability at least the ground level portion to look into you know what improvements can be done to to that portion to at least activate at least
for the purposes of supporting pedestrianism and and stet level uh activity um to you know focus on that um and see and see even do they need some zoning relief for that because I just
think that that uh lack of street level activation does have a domino effect in that area in the economy of that of that area and so right so while activating the the entire space might be a big
Endeavor if we approach them and see well what can you do as it relates to you know a smaller activation of what is more of the storefront and you know how can we help you achieve that um might be might help
us get some traction uh at least some low haning fruit I believe a portion because they own the whole block they own the whole block but you know you have the storefront of the theater itself the St
that that that portion there it's it's dead yeah and so and so that's what you know I'm wondering you know what could potentially happen with that that's not happening now we can explore yeah if I yeah I mean have were you guys either of you or anybody from the city
inside the the building is it functional doesn't need to be brought up it's not functional it's it needs repair so they even if we did some kind store you know street level activation which I love that idea they would have to or somebody would have to put some money into it to make it which I I understand it's like
in millions upon Millions but but if we look okay how about a smaller footprint of that that at least addresses you know what's part of your Urban environment there you know you need pedestrianism you need activity that supports the
neighboring businesses as well at least that low hanging fruit as opposed to how do you activate this bigger more massive space as tens of thousands of of square feet I don't know how big is the interior envelope it's uh I think it's
over 20 the lot is 21538 Ft it's about a half an acre and the structure itself is 4,947 okay so that's that's massive that is massive but the part that actually
you know supports street level activation it's much smaller and might be something much more manageable uh to to to work around and if we can approach them and see what can we do about that and if we can support them in
non-monetary ways you know they need any zoning relief or anything for that I think it's something that we should be considering to support the E the economy of the area commissioner we have public comment please Robin Jacobs please unmute
yourself thank you so much thank you for the opportunity to take Commissioners um my name is Robin Jakes and I'm a 35 year res of Miami Beach specifically the mid Beach Community as a committed Community activist I had the
privilege of serving on the mayor's 41st Street committee for the past eight years and spearheading many many initials aimed at revitalizing 41st Street I'm here to advocate for an opportunity that could transform the heart of mid Beach while advancing our City's commitment to
economic resilience and Community wellbe I urge you to consider the acquisition of the ruselt theater and adjacent properties on 41st First Street the true gateway to Mii Beach was a concept that I had presented during mayor Gilbert's tenure the time is now for this project
um it has the potential to become a cultural Community Hub a vibrant multi-use space for Arts education and connection it's no secret the 41st streets in dire need of activation while private investment is already being made toward future development there's now a
bid the city has the opportunity to lead by investing in a space that will benefit residents for gener ations imagine a community center where children can find enrichment support right in their own neighborhood picture Street alive with cultural activations programming small business opportunities
potentially Workforce housing safe inviting spaces reflect the vibrancy of Miami Beach this is about more than real estate it's about resilience Community strength and economic Vitality for our most important gateway to our community either by financing this or through a
public private partnership the city can create a landmark that not only enhances the quality of life on 41st Street but in the whole entire Community but drives Local Economic growth I urge you to take a bold step forward to a stronger more connected Miami Beach I urge you to not
stop the conversation today to direct um City staff to continue the conversation thank you Robin one thank you for all you do for our community it's truly noted and appreciated I'd be happy to uh entertain in some uh
brainstorming for public private partnership uh ideas uh for this I think we'd be hard pressed you know from a city standpoint we'd be looking at a minimum of $50 million off the bat with the $30 million acquisition and then uh how we renovate and activate this um but
given the adjacent lot there and then this uh maybe it's a prime opportunity for a public private Partnership if you had if you or the 41st Street bid our community in general maybe we can have a uh you know kind of a Community Driven
brainstorming session for what the proper usage of this would be um I'd be happy to uh to entertain that to um be by your side help lead those efforts uh but let's talk offline after this and I Yule that because 41st Street does need the activity we just need to get
creative you know $30 million it's not the solution because because that's a lot that that is very that is a lot of creative but I think uh we can certainly um look at what else can happen besides sh if I can I think what I'm hearing
then is it's a twofold is that this would return to commission with an unfavorable recommendation for the purchase of the Roosevelt Theater but for the administration to engage with the property owner and the bid on some type of street level activation is that yeah and then you
know kind of an all Hands-On deck effort to uh brainstorm or collaborate on uh P3 ideas I I have absolutely none in mind um but you know Robin really uh made a great compelling point when she talked about some sort of community activation there for the children in the area um
given I believe that we're a landowner adjacent there I think the city entering into some sort of P3 with uh another private party uh could be You Know the Way Forward there commissioner bot who would technically have to make the motion is okay we could add street level activation any P3 opportunities is that
acceptable though we do have two comments Natalie I always want to hear from our public Amy meu please unmute yourself hi hi commissioner Amy Mayhew executive director of the 41st Street business improvement district um we are
supportive of staff's recommendation of working with the property owners to identify some P3 project uh with the city uh we don't think it's something the city can do on its own um and the property owners have been have expressed interest and are continuing to express interest on working with the city with
the lot in the back in order to redevelop the site into something that uh is more best suitable for the street and for the and for the property and the owners um there's opportunities for Workforce housing um and creating Dynamic ground floor operate um ground
floor retail opportunities we'd like to be able to explore all of that with the with the commission and the city um and we are here and active with donors to be able to support all of that so we appreciate um commissioner magazine your and commissioner Fernandez and everyone's Direction on working with the
with the property owners thank you for that thank you for all you do for the city and 41st Street specifically Natalie one more Larry Schaefer please unmute yourself hello again um regarding this item I just want to say didn't we just have a conversation about budget
financial responsibility the city should not purchase this property this is not the Byron Carlile The Carlile was is is owned by the city and so that's the theater we have to deal with every city around this country around the world has old theaters that they want to repurpose
the problem is that these shells are very hard to repurpose you can scrape out the interiors and there's very little that you can do um I talked to some development e uh experts they gave me their time on this and two options that may make sense are live music venue
off owned owned by the current owner and maybe run by Rhythm Foundation or Live Nation maybe with some Street Front retail um it and the best idea that I heard from these guys was a grocery store like Aldi Fresh Market or Whole Foods you have Canal there maybe a
little Canal front Cafe the area I don't not sure they have like a discount grocery store like Aldi or a high-end grocery store like Whole Foods I think even K G had something to have a discussion on that and the action may be to go to the economic development department and say reach out to grocery
stores and Live Nation maybe they have a proposal for you and finally one creative idea might be artist workspaces subdivide the place and and bring some artists in and and have like what we used to have on Lincoln Road uh with artist Studios thank you yeah thank you
Larry and I think uh the comments that you heard from the three of us up here Echo uh the original comments that you made uh but then in terms of you know doing some sort of artist uh workspace given that it's private property we'd be limited in what we're able to do but I encourage our economic development team
to uh be uh creative and collaborative with the property owner and we could do so with Robin and the 41st Street bid as well so thank you all for the Domin this on on the motion all in favor I okay item passes thank
you let's go to nb5 uh the south of fifth employee parking um I think that should be a quick item uh be I think pretty helpful for that neighborhood um Jose and your team thank you for all the work that you've done
and mb5 discussed a potential parking pilot program for South a fifth restaurant employees and B5 thank you Mr chair Jose Gonzalez transportation and Mobility director and interim parking director so we recognize the challenges that restaurants in the
south of fifth neighborhood face with high high employ turnover partially due to just the challenges with finding parking the cost of parking parking metered parking in the area competing uses and and uh limited Supply so um
under your uh leadership as well as to some extent uh uh commissioner uh Suarez had also met with the community and was trying to developed some some options to uh parking options to assist and so um we've we've developed a staff has
developed two options that we think hopefully are viable for the neighborhood and I think we're prepared to you know have a meeting with with the restaurants and share those options and get their feedback so the two options include the first one is the use of the
South Point um Elementary parking lot through a joint use agreement between the city and the school board the city is able to use uh to have joint use of that parking lot during after school hours
specifically uh Monday through th Thursday from 6:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. and Fridays from 6:00 p.m. all the way to Monday at 3:00 a.m. uh that also applies to um holidays and and obviously
weekends as well um through that joint use agreement it is possible that south of fifth restaurant employees may be able to park there at at a cost there is a cost Associated uh the city has to pay the school board an annual lease fee if
you if you will and so what we've done is we've backed from that number we've backed into what a monthly parking permit would cost uh and we're we're at $90 per month per taxes so $90 per month
when you look at all the working days in a month that comes out to like three or four $ four dollar a day so Jose just to clarify there the city would make an upfront uh payment of $155,000 for the year but then we can essentially go out to uh a handful of restaurants down
there I believe there's 62 spaces is that correct yes 62 spaces and we could say okay there's six restaurants that want to utilize this you can essentially pay $10 or I'm sorry get 10 spaces uh each divm up to your employees as you
see fit and we could essentially break even on the cost of that we can't use this as part of our agreement with the Schoolboard as a revenue generator but we can essentially subsidize or offset our cost so we essentially this would be Revenue neutral and Mr chair even that
upfront cost I'm sorry Mr CFO uh didn't want to uh delegate my title but um uh that that cost has already been allocated um and this is just kind of moving the program forward yeah the the $115,000 one for South Point Elementary
that one has already been handled by resolution and has been uh is in the process of of implementation so that aspect one of those two options is already done I think it's the second option at Fifth and Alton that is we're on the table for discussion if if I may very quickly the second option would be
the use of the Fifth Fifth and Alton uh parking garage it is a little bit further from the south of fifth uh restaurants however it does provide more flexibility uh because at the very comparable cost of $100 a month
employees are not limited there are no time constraints we would set aside about a 100 parking spaces in that garage and they would be available at any time of the day or night any day of the week for um south of fifth restaurant
employees Alex yeah commissioner yeah Alex is just fine um let me ask you this because I I have a I have a separate item but I think this is a good opportunity to to talk about it um because making the spaces
available is important the workforce has a lack of parking spaces but then it's also just in general throughout the City for a lot of businesses is hard for them to keep their Workforce because of the cost of the parking and I think one of the things that we really need to
consider and um I think I think it might be coming to this committee is I really think we need to almost see our Workforce as a part of our community they're not our residents but they do contribute to our economy um and so you
know how do we extend to the workforce the resident parking rate um I think that that's something important uh just because you know they're a part of our community a lot of them deal with again
fixed incomes they support our economy uh yet they're being displaced not displaced in terms of housing but displaced from their jobs they're choosing not to come to work in in Miami Beach because of the cost of of the
parking here um um so you know I would like us in addition to this which you're taking tremendous leadership on this uh commissioner magazine is you know that cost of parking and you know Is it feasible to extend to those who work in
our city that the resident rate to so that we don't end up displacing our Workforce yeah it's great uh F I have family my daughter's mother is part of that Workforce that you know is burdened by the High Cost of parking in the area
um so it's near and dear to me perhaps where that can really be immediately utilized because you know I'm sure there would be some concerns areas that are already tight on residential parking increasing but especially in areas where we have underutilized garages um in the
ACDC uh Art Deco Cultural District and actually I just had an item uh this past commission meeting that'll work its way through the process for the 17th Street Garage uh for the employees in you know kind of that Collins Avenue the hotel
District the hospitality workers there and I just came up with that because uh I was walking our Municipal garages at the New World Symphony on 17th Street and saw how underutilized they are and then we have the service workers you know parking out on the street taking
oftentimes abusing the handicap placards um or uh you know at very high cost to them they are an extension of our community so to be able to accommodate them we already have underutilized parking in the 17th Street of New World Symphony garage do so at accommodative
rates there um perhaps we can uh work jointly on other areas where that makes sense in some of our underutilized garages so we're bringing more Revenue into the city freeing up parking that might be being you know in many ways abused as part of the handicap lacquers uh and that'll actually maybe increase
some of our parking rates is you know uh uh tourists and visitors they're actually paying the full rates instead of you know the employees using the handicap stuff and you know parking on our street so it's kind of a entire ecosystem that we'd be helping out there if I can commissioner fernz is correct
there is a it's future item 25 uh that'll be heard um next month on reduced parking rates for all Miami Beach Workforce ex um but on this this particular item I I think uh if there's any comment it was just return to
commissioner with the favor recommendation implement the program is presented yeah very cool EXC all favor you all did a lot of work on this Dr lese Rosenfeld if you're out there in the abyss Somewhere listening I know you did a lot of work with uh with the school board as well so thank you for
that perhaps one conversation that we could follow up on is the initial feedback that I've gotten and I think you hit on this you know the South Point Elementary parking lot while much better logistically placed because of the time limitations could present some
challenges then I said okay well maybe it's better you utilize on the weekends but even that Friday starting at 6:00 p.m. is probably going to limit the weekend shifts uh for some of the restaurants let's have conversations with the restaurants and say what time would you what time would your employees
need that to start with if they used it on a Friday night is it 4 P.M is it 5:00 p.m and then perhaps just for that one single night uh we could go back to uh the school board and say on Fridays can we essentially uh make that accommodation instead of 6 pm at 4:30
p.m. or 5: PM because it does this new good the program won't be utilized if employees have to show up to work at five: but they can't park till six I I I think that that's a distinct possibility I know that the children are on campus until I think six o'clock when the final after care is open which may be why the
6 p.m. is there but it could be something that's explored but all right we'll show all all in favor in the item passes yeah thank you thank you it's a great thing we re see things from a perspective youring
okay let's go to mb13 okay mb13 discuss earmarking all rent and excess of the minimum fixed rent received pursuant to the development and ground lease agreement between the city and MB mixed use investment LLC for the development
operation of the convention center headquarter hotel for the purpose of promoting and supporting Workforce and affordable housing development nb1 13 so this um was an idea that I brought forward when we had the discussion of um
the homeless trust funding and how to use whether or not the hotel is going to go forward and how to provide um affordable housing options in a city where land cost land acquisition costs are so high and um One Way um this is
money that is going to be falling into our laps in in a manner of speaking um is using the the rents coming from the convention center hotel and the reason why I think this is meritorious of conversation is because like other sort
of intractable issues in our city like traffic and um sea level change um climate change in general affordability REM remains one of the biggest problems and most vexing to solve in our city it
drives traffic no pun intended um but we just had a conversation about where do are not intended really not intended I couldn't I'm not that clever to think of these things they just pop out um we just our literally our last conversation was where do our employees Park when
they drive across the bridge to come to work so you know the more housing we can provide to the workforce at multiple levels of affordable housing because there is a need at multiple levels um the better off we are and the biggest
challenge to um to affordable housing is the land is the acquisition cost whether it's you know land and you build new or it's land and you rehab which is a great way to go and I'm very much in favor of that but this
is money that is um not insignificant and is going to help mitigate traffic issues and improve the quality of our life and collectively because the more people you have you know Eyes On The Street the better off
the colle the communities become and um it helps us become less of a tourism driven economy more of a resident driven economy because we've got people living here full-time so that's the conversation I wanted to have I don't know Jason is this your item to present
in more detail or is there somebody else I think we have Maria here oh Tes is here sorry Tes is here uh but also um I'm available to to speak on this I I just high level is just to remember that uh the Convention Center Hotel a nice
chunk of those revenues are already allocated so the fixed portion of those rent is already allocated based on a previous resolution and part of the ballot question that the voters voted on uh onethird education one third to transportation onethird to resiliency storm water projects uh and then uh just
recently is in the past few months uh the bed tax portion of the resort tax was allocated to fund um homeless efforts going forward so the the main point outside of property taxes that would be a talk about generating revenues additional revenues to the cities general fund to pay for police
and fire would be this variable portion which the developer is estimated to be in the anywhere from like 1.8 to 2.5 million dollar range over the next you know five to 10 years per year uh so I think the uh T I'll let T add anything to
that to the to the B uh good morning uh TP CDA is on to the hotel project um so the um the lead stipulates that the minimum fixed rent rate we have it uh
calculated at 16 about 16.8 sorry 16.6 million over the next over the first 10 years and the guarantee rent I'm sorry the percentage rent which is based on revenues right gross revenues of the hotel so uh the variable rent which is what we're talking about about here is
really a function of of the overall revenue of the project so uh the calculation of the variable rent over the first 10 years about 20.4 million um so I think just that it was listed in
the memo there you know obviously this is a very big policy decision of the commission is just from the administration's perspective is to see whether um you know one would consider perhaps you know the onethird value like is done on the fixed rent portion is if is this a recommendation that's going to
be all of it and nothing towards the general fund or onethird or 1 half so that's really I guess the discussion is if um this is is something that this committee wants to forward to the commission uh the recommendation to to do this at all or or portion or
whatnot and just the calculation of the one-third if we calculate a one third capping it at $700,000 per year which is what we recommend in the memo that comes out to about6 .5 million over the first 10 years so the the way I see it is that
um you know 6 point whatever million over the first number of years is not nothing but in our overall budget um general fund budget it's not a significant amount versus if we kept it
focused on affordability issues and we could um you know hopefully insurance rates I mean um interest rates would stay high um and we could roll that money over over five or six years and then every sort of 10 years or whatever
we'd have a nice big chunk of change to go acquire a property or do some Renovations or pick up a piece of land um to and I don't want to take away from anything that is already earmarked out of these funds so I'm not talking about touching that this is purely how we use
this does it get dumped into the the general fund for future use or do we focus it and my view is we focus it we invest it we we get it working for our city and then we scrape it at every opportune moment when either we have a
great deal that falls into our laps or you know it hits a a predetermined limit of whatever it is $10 million and then we put that into to use to affordability issues because I don't see that going away of its own accord anytime soon either and I want to hear commissioner
Dominguez Mr CFO just uh this is just off the and um I'll caveat it with how commissioner Fernandez caveat the crazy ideas and things like that but uh anything that has a uh future cash flow can be securitized in essence right
through through Bond funding it can be securitized yes it's a cash flow stream could be bondable right so instead of sitting here picking up five or $600,000 per year uh could we essentially issue some sort of uh attainable housing bond that would be paid out of this cash uh
cash stream over the next 30 Years so instead of getting $700,000 per year um and 10 years from now you know we have uh six or seven uh million dollars and we can't really can't even buy a property for 30 years can we essentially
borrow over the future uh let's call it cap of $700,000 of uh future uh tax flows that way we get that money now or we could even go to a developer is linked with a project that has future projects and say Hey you do
it and you get paid back through these cash flows over time but I think the easier solution would be essentially bonding that yeah there's two ways to go is is there's the payo model where you would take that we'll just use the number 700,000 uh 700,000 per year and
it builds up a couple years and you know we make uh either a purchase to make an affordable housing uh project whether we're buying a building or a unit or condo units itself like uh Alba's team does from time to time or if it's a Depo um a contribution to a developer's
project to make a certain number of units affordable so that's possible so other than that was yes you could you could bond that out and you know get an immediate um you know chunk of change now to do do something bigger and then use that cash flow to pay the debt and
that $700,000 is about a half or onethird of the total uh I think the recommendation that was in the letter was uh is if it was onethird um it's V because it's variable and and it's it's kind of jum some times well it depends
on how much you're you're going to end up bonding bonding it out um but in this example the only caveat with that is it locks you in for a long time into that usage of those funds where today you know it could be Workforce housing 10
years from now it could be another need if you would essentially bond from future cash flows you're locking into okay that's what this money for the next 30 Years you would be locked into the whatever the period of paying off that debt if you went down that but wouldn't the goal of that be to get the money up front so you could do the project now so
even if you're locked into it for 30 years you're locked into the service of the debt for 30 years but in theory the project would be completed or the projects would be completed within the first 10 years so it's just you know the way we did with the 20 the the original goo Bond not the one
in 2018 the one before that that people were talking yes but that uh this Bond wouldn't be adorm tax revenue it would actually have a dedicated funding source so it would essentially be a revenue Bond right um but but my point being that you know we would see the fruits of
that Bond now um and just pay it off like a basically a bridge loan going to regret to give you all these ideas no it's a great idea Natalie can we hear commissioner Dominguez commissioner Dominguez please unmute yourself hi everybody hi commissioner
thank you for joining all right let me see if I can do this without having Echo okay I think we're good um I'm calling uh about uh this particular item just for clarity uh
commissioner Mark saman um started the private property adaptation program and he did a resolution in 2020 earmarking the storm water portion of the hotel Revenue uh to go towards the private property adaptation program um I ensured
that it's been funded through the end of 2025 uh because the hotel had been delayed in getting built but the resolution is there for that program and the purpose of bringing that program together and having the money from the resiliency portion of the ballot
question earmarked for the private property adaptation is that the city is doing a lot of work to ensure that our public streets are dry our public seaw walls or raised and that we're setting the standard
and what good is it if all of the public stuff is dry but then we're drowning out uh the private property or the private property is being put at risk so that was the purpose of this I don't know if Amy nolles is in
here in uh the room she's coming up okay uh cuz she can talk a little bit more about this uh um she has uh more of the backup I know a lot of people are new uh this was before Jason uh was in there um but Amy worked
very closely with commissioner samin to ensure that uh our private properties are protected and she can talk more on this topic as well sure um good afternoon Amy nlls Chief resilience officer I'm absolutely I've been with this program from the
beginning and it's really to incentivize private property adaptation and for flood m ation really important for our city since 93% of buildings are in the FEMA special flood Hazard area um so I'm happy to answer any questions but it was you know presented to the full
commission back in 2020 we did have a different CFO at the time um it was very clearly explained that um some of that hotel Revenue uh could be future funding for this program understanding that there really isn't Federal funding available for flood mitigation for
private property owners so there there was discussion in was on the record at the time and um there's a resolution as well so for clarification the money that I'm talking about is from a different part of the the rent money coming from the hotel than this private property
adaptation right I I would have to I think Jason would have to well let Rick jump in too is uh currently the private property adaptation program is funded through the resiliency fund no I I understand but I I believe
that there was some confusion at some point in time not this commission but the prior commission um because there were references in some of the minutes uh to the idea that once the hotel was online then the money would no longer
need to come out of the resiliency fund which led me to believe when I read those minutes that that commission was acting under the impression that there was some portion of revenues from the hotel and whether they believe that that was out of the minimum guarantees which we know are currently already earmarked
for three specific items or whether there was some thinking that it would come out of the percentage Revenue that is unclear from the record but I think that the issue that that commissioner Dominguez is Raising is that there was some expectation that hotel revenues would help to fund the private property
adaptation program but isn't part of the um the three earmarked areas that are I already identified one of them is resilience well it's specific to storm water projects that would um in theory keep the at least help to mitigate
against uh rises in the the utility costs and how much funding do you need per year for the private property adaptation well right now 666,000 yeah oh sorry yeah that's the current that how the program was set up was
666,000 annually and that was the onethird of the two two million that's how it was set up uh initially in 2020 right it's currently funded through this fiscal year and I believe we have a resolution coming up that'll continue that funding for five additional years
as this program gets implemented so out of the rent you could do um a third which would cover the resilience program the private property adaptation program in the future right right because I'm because we said
700,000 for this for affordable housing is um onethird of the percentage if if the if it's the committee's desire to forward to the commission uh with a recommendation that the variable portion of the rent would
be used onethird right so what I'm saying we could do onethird private property adaptation oneir one3 to affordable housing what's the third third the general fund education no that that comes out of something else uh the onethird of the
fixed rent is also is is Ed that's separate from this this is the variable rate this is we're talking about the variable today so what I I would recommend is doing onethird to the private property adaptation to ensure that is funded going forward and the remaining two-thirds go to um affordable
housing issues I thought just the remaining third right so third would also just then flow into the general fund no I'm saying instead of it flowing into the general fund having it be focused on um affordable housing issues I think I'd be
okay having a third of that right that's the $700,000 that we're talking about we uh recommend capping it at $700,000 this is variable rent so it could be higher it could be lower right um so we
recommended capping at 700,000 as currently calculated uh based on the performa they did last year it starts out the variable rent the third of the variable rent starts out at 800,000 the first year and then it goes down from there um and and then the average
becomes about 600,000 no I'm sorry on the variable rent 2 half million the first year so uh if it is the private property adaptation funds at 6 666,000 if the condition is to continue the private property adaptation as the existing funding stream of you know the
first 666 there 700 more and then it comes up to uh what the committee wants to entertain if they want to make it as a percentage if they want to make it as a specific uh dollar value and anything above the general fund I that's the
so so we might not even have as much as $700,000 in total there may be years looking at the the estimates it could be 1.88 million so that's used the third it might actually be less than 700,000 but you could do the thirds you could do the private property adaptation
at 666,000 oneir to uh affordable housing with a cap of 700,000 anything above that to the general fund or or anything above private property adaptation to affordable housing however the committee I may have made things confusing the
variable rent as calculated it starts out at 2.4 million the first year and then it goes down from there and kind of staying at the same average as currently calculated okay that this is based on performa they did last year so when you do a third of
that um it starts at 800 then 786 then 741 what we're saying we're recommending capping it at 700,000 right and that but that is a third for for affordable housing a third for general fund and a third for private
property adaptation we think we keep the property property adaptation at it's a specific funding amount which is 666 so I what I might want to do um and this isn't a request it's a conversation is to better than the demand yeah well you
know um is to um continue this until next month and see if you guys can flesh out this idea of um doing a revenue Bond because what I'm concerned of about is that we're going to have these small amounts of money that aren't going to be
substantive I mean it'll fund the PPA and that's great um but to the general fund and to the affordable housing Mission $700,000 every year is not going to do much and so if we can use that money to leverage funding for now where
we you can go and and buy up a whole bunch of units and refurbish them um or whatever the right direction is I would be interested in that otherwise I would um and I would be willing to do third third third if we could get to good enough numbers if not I'd do onethird
for PPA and the rest for affordable housing but that is all predicated on whether or not we can do this um and what kind of numbers we could generate so I don't want to have a vote on this until we have more information based on you're a good idea that's why you're
chair of this group does that work for everybody Jason and I think uh staff may may already be doing some uh leg work on this I know uh we had a conversation about reaching out to bond Council about doing an
affordability uh Bond a while back I think our bond Council had concerns about some legal and financial even some regulatory things uh specifically if we used uh Bond Pro proceeds um you know making sure that there was a
valid uh public purpose uh under state law uh for these Pro for for these proceeds um especially if they if it involved any private properties buying out of private properties uh investing
in private properties for property for purposes of of affordability um and and making sure that um that we meet a definition of public purpose um if something could be seen to be of private benefit I don't know Rick if you
want to chime in on that there was sure also issues having to to do uh on whether we issued um tax exempt bonds or not so if you could just chime in a little bit on that sure um well using taxable bonds um there are fewer
restrictions than tax exempt on um what what we consulted with with Bond Council on was a very specific idea of about preserving um existing uh or organically existing affordable housing um but we
also asked um Bond Council to give us a a menu of different options that are in the world of affordable housing um projects that could be done and um we are expecting actually we may have received something yesterday with some bullet points um which we will be
sharing at the at the right time I believe this would be at the March commission meeting that this would be uh brought but it's um related to this program not necessarily the exact same program but similar between my way it's a different I don't
know if I if I may we have to look at that we'll have a kind of an additional discussion with tax and and bond Council might just be the the funding stream you know where the money comes from may have some caveats but that's nothing that that's Unstoppable something that to work through and see if that opens up any additional opportunities or um has
additional caveats yeah and and not open Pandora's Box you know going down talking about uh Workforce affordable attainable housing uh but if we're going to be using taxpayer dollars I'd rather do it in a way that increases the supply of overall housing not just buying uh
existing Supply that's already on the private market and essentially uh taking that under our watch and control I'd rather if we're going to be spending money do so where we're actually increasing housing Supply well I think that
will be predicated on whether or not we have strictures um placed upon us um and I'm open to any of that I mean I think there are lots of good ways to do um more affordable housing and it depends on what we're trying to accomplish where but so can we continue this until next
month to let you guys all figure out what is available and doable and then we can proceed from there yes I can I can work with Rick and then we'll we'll return to FK with information on bonding capacity of the the the this C flow stream and the legality any legal issues
that that very May well exist thank you is it possible to hear ob1 uh quickly or do we need to uh run and vacate it's up to you all well I don't count t for yeah but see you you're like family we can hear obi-1 uh discussion
on on commercial retail vacancies and potential leasing incentives for owners of vacant properties ob1 good afternoon Commissioners um Heather Shaw uh Economic Development assistant director um pardon me I thought here we
go so great um we were asked to look into uh the administration was asked to look into a potential program called the vacant storefront registry program as part of that that evaluation the reason
why we're doing that evaluation as as we all have seen um and it's not just um specific to Miami beach but it is something that is happening across the country that there a number of an increase in vacant storefronts and vacant storefronts obviously have a
negative impact on our communities it uh it deters foot traffic it doesn't encourage um new businesses to come in so we are trying to explore how we can work together with our property owners with our business organizations with the
city to try to encourage the activation of tenants in these vacant storefronts so to do that we did some due diligence we called um a few cities um actually eight of them some of them are big cities where they were having some vacant storefront issues in small
corridors and then we also called some small cities some of them were smaller than us some of them around the same size to see how they were activating their vacant storefront registry so a registry is a a program where um once a a building is vacant
unoccupied that they have within a certain time frame between like 30 days to 90 days to register meaning that the property owners have to communicate to the city that they are vacant they pay a fee for being on that registry and with
that with the listing of the registry that the city goes about connect seeing the property with potential real estate agents or tenants and how they come to the city now in talking with these nine cities uh a number of them do not the
majority of them do not share this listing publicly but the City Works behind the scene to try to make that connection it is a strong connection of H A Communication channel of how we how they connect people um they use the money that they collect for the registry
fees to actually pay for the program um most of them have very small teams um they also do a waiver of the registry for certain issues like if if a building is under contract or if it there's some
financial hardship um if the building is going to use the space for a popup or something cultural then they have all these different list of of waivers and we've added that within the um the item so you can see and then if the business
or the property owner does not pay the fee or um uh give ask for some type of waiver there is a uh a fine in quotations um against the property owner for not doing that um and each year also
as they register if they haven't if a year has gone by on some programs and they still haven't found a tenant then the registration fee could go up there different elements to it there's some positives and some negatives the positive being that it it forces the um
property owner to talk with the city and the and the city can work with them to try to find other tenants to find other ways to activate the property some of the challenges are that it is um time and staff um consuming um and trying to
um follow up with them um that was one of the concerns that most of the cities had that they really don't have a lot of resources to go after these property owners and even some of the property owners um kind of just disregard the the fees and they don't pay them or they pay
them and they think it's this non you know so this isn't an opt-in program right Heather this is M this would be a mandatory program yes um I mean well it's it's in concept but with the other cities it's a mandatory program but they find it very challenging to stay on on
top of it um so um uh like I said there's some opportunities to it it definitely kind of pays for itself to a certain extent but um most of the cities are saying that they're not finding the traction and the results that they were really looking for um and a number of them have
been doing it for a number of years um it is an option um to potentially do um but uh and we've we've scoped out a a a program that could be very similar to how it's done in other areas another uh element that we were directed to do was
to talk with the business Community to so we so we we invited the bids the chambers to come and talk to us and we walked them through a potential program and um uh they um gave some feedback um some of their feedback was that they
really wanted to focus on um kind of the internal issues uh with the city in terms of they would like to see a more um engaged permitting um process to make it a a little more um easier um and that they thought that that was that may have
been one of the hurdles for most of the businesses coming in um and they were not um completely in favor of the registry they thought that the the the staff uh focus should be on attracting businesses and not chasing businesses to
register um they have I they over the last few days they've been sending in emails and I'm sure that they may join on for comment um I don't want to speak for them but um they weren't 100% in favor of it actually most of of them said that they wanted us to focus on
making the permit system a little more efficient they want us to focus on Communications to to inspire businesses to come and and and put rocket boosters on our Communications which we're already doing at at at your um suggestion shair and then um they also
wanted to focus on how we can advance the popup system and we spoke about that yesterday in Lan use about extending the perent popup programs from three months to six or nine or 12 months um because with the three months if you're a
business that you really want to start three months is really difficult for you to get up and it takes three months to find a place clean it out set it up and by that time you have to be out so if we extend it that that might be a way to also address the vacant storefront issues so where we are now is where our
suggestion of having a vacant storefront registry would be mandatory it would be if we would have to create an um uh and correct me if I'm wrong uh City attorney but we'd have to create or edit um the
ordinance um about vacancies store from vacancies that's correct right um and we would add language that would be kind of a a compilation of what we found from other cities where it would be potentially 30 days that they have to notify us we would make a a red a
listing the listing would be available internally and we would work with the business organization like the bids and real estate um agents and potential tenants to try to make those connections and we would suggest a a registration
fee and we could potentially also suggest a um a penalty for not registering and that's where we are do we we have public because I know the Lincoln Road bid was here um in
Washington Avenue in Washington Avenue so I apologize if uh we ringly conveyed it wouldn't be heard um perhaps if if there's no rush on this uh since it was hurt I didn't want this to drop off since it was heard could we open and
continue it uh for one month and I you could bring it back next next month okay you could continue the discussion wanted to drop off so we can hear just show the item was heard and return return next month yes yeah where I am I I feel it's
a I am sympathetic to this issue right uh Heather as you correctly point out it's not uh unique to Miami Beach um there's a lot that's going on tax and accounting system the change of ownership from a lot of these commercial spaces from uh your mom and pop that
used to live right here uh to these National reats and hedge funds and private Equity firms that have their own accounting gimmicky um why we're seeing some of this uh sit vacant so I'm sympathetic to the issue and it needs to be resolved I don't know if uh the heavy hand of government is the right way to
do so I think we might be able to thread that need a little better of implementing I just see this kind of going into the abyss right we have this registry and we do a lot of work for one or two months and then it kind of just Falls by the wayside and it just becomes one of those bureaucratic government
processes that you works here and there um I have a question yeah how is how were the registration fees determined is is there a legal cap on these uh is or no no with with the other cities they
they just it was a consensus of of what they thought based on the um the budget of actually the administrative budget of of running the program and I guess they backed out of it but some of the cities have really high fees somewhere like 250 and somewhere like 12 12 uh uh
$1,250 so and that's and that's where I was going to because you know I don't think anyone wants to make things more difficult for business and as you well described you know yesterday at land we had a conversation about popups um you
know in essence cutting red tape to help businesses come into retail and fill that retail space uh bring in positive activations into our areas and hopefully roll out that red carpet so that hopefully you know through that pop-up
permit they can finally you know make that long-term commitment to uh to to our city tied to that program is the commercial lease subsidy program that we started a few years ago that I think we can give up to every year up to $20,000 in rental
assistance uh to push out uh non-conforming uses nuisance uses out of our commercial districts and so to the extent that we create this program you know perhaps this program can be an Avenue through which we can fund
something like the commercial lease subsidy program so that you know and that's and that's what that's what ultimately um I like and what mayor Miner has has brought forward here I think is this is Mayor Miner's item I
think it's christen's oh asess your sponsored by commissioner by Mayor Stephen Miner I think he's the prime and then you have a number of co-sponsors commission so you know I I just see you know I don't know the
$300 annually it's going to get someone to to fill their space and I don't even know if after three years if it goes up to $2,000 if that's going to gonna gonna
change anything but if we start the annual registration more like at the $2000 range you know and those funds are dedicated to something like the commercial lease subsidy program that
helps bring in quality retail that's a very different conversation to me because that that that way okay you're actually also helping businesses along the way quality businesses I mean we have a churo place from Spain that's opening up on Lincoln Road that's coming
in in a place where we engaged in undercover investigations and were able to get rid of uh of a business since I was engaged in selling illegal substances um and now we we've been able to push that out and bring in positive
activation on Washington Avenue we have a brewery a local Brewery that's going into into a space you know and so we have the opportunity uh to help small businesses um if we
really take the right approach with this so I don't like the idea I'm not necessarily crazy on its own but if we tie it to the commercial lease subsidy program it could actually end up helping uh businesses and landlords who are
willing to activate you know I real quick Heather um I feel bad because we did have uh two representatives from two various bids and uh at my direction uh our team communicated we probably wouldn't be hearing this I thought we
could fit it in maybe you know very quickly before for 130 but out of fairness and respect to them they kind of came and gave their time and we told them to take a hike uh why don't we continue this next month when we can hear their input as well and maybe to assist we we'll we'll bring it back uh
for next month but maybe uh Economic Development can um just uh maybe uh get with them the two bids and see if we maybe recommend a Time certain can I is there an opportunity between now and next month to have some refinement done
or if you open it and continue it does it need to be presented again the same way as it is currently I I I think the committee can the committee has some tweaks or recommendations that Ed can take that comment in and I I I I agree with you
vice mayor I think that what could be shown is that there's no Panacea to this issue and it's going to take as commissioner Fernandez was saying it's going to take a number of elements that are going that we need to activate to address vacant St it's going to be CLS
it's going to be a number of programs that are that we need to kind of put together to have as a kind of a package for businesses to support them so yes we can we can definitely modify this so then and I and I'll just make it quick so that we can wrap it up
um I my intent is not to um put another owner's business expense on a business that is trying to get open or is in the process what I'm most interested interested in is the people who've sat on property for three or four
generations or corporate landlords who for whatever what was the word you use trickery chicer gimmicky um you know whatever tax accounting loopholes they have are preferring to keep it open and take the loss so what I would be really
interested in seeing because you can still sell your property later um if if that's your endend goal if it's rented out now so I I'm more interested and I have no issue with having the the proceeds of this project of this um process go to
supplementing things like the the lease popups you know fund whatever but I'm more interested in focusing this process on sort of the Bad actors who are you know and I know it's a property rights issue so I don't know how much latitude
we have but maybe it's something if you're over a certain size I mean maybe we can limited do a little bit of research and figure out you know most of the people who are sitting on vacant storefronts um uh for tax evasion
reasons or whatever doing it because or is there a commonality of their size or you know maybe there's some common elements so that we kind of protect the people who are doing their best to get their their act together and go after the people who are making a financial decision to not lease and then also that
gives us the ability to increase the the rates that we charge for this because we know they can afford it in in the memo you'll see like in New York New Jersey they charge their fee is based on square footage yep so the bigger the property the the more you have to pay I'm not
convinced that this program will address what you just mentioned because big corporations and private they'll just pay this is what the other cities are saying they'll just pay they whatever you tell them they just pay it and write it off or they don't pay it the what
we're getting from these nine CI that and that's a conversation I have with people because if the intent is legit and the goals are legit but this mechanism excuse me doesn't get us to where we need to be then we need to rethink you know we don't want anybody's
Wheels being spun without getting to an outcome so maybe this isn't the right mechanism to generate the outcome that we want yeah and and there is uh in addition to the feedback that you got there is a fair amount of case study out there that um while it sounds good in
theory this hasn't provided the results in a multitude of places that uh that it's intended to do so with that let's uh let's get the input when our business Community is here I apologize that uh that they sat here and uh we didn't think we hear the item um but I think
this was a a great meeting uh we didn't get to as many items but we had a lot of very uh realistic discussions um and there a big boy and girl meeting it's not always to convey you know positive news but it's the reality that we're all
living in so staff thank you for all your hard work and your time uh colleagues friends thank you uh you know for the collaborative effort up here nobody yelled at each other no one yelled yeah and to and we need to wish each other a happy National Margarita day
tomorrow Public Service Announcement have a nice weekend so are we I think we're aour yeah you