where to go so that can cause water to back up along the rivers and cause flooding that along with a lot of rain that comes from these hurricanes can also cause an increase of water flooding into the rivers and into our Water Management Systems causing flooding as well Public Works do a lot of work
before the storm to make sure that our water levels are as low as possible so we can handle additional storm surging flooding in our water systems if you want additional information about that we have a great video about our water control structures and you can visit the public works
[Music] e e e e e e good morning everybody today's Monday
March 3rd 2025 it's 10:00 a.m. we're in the city Chambers and I call the city commission Workshop meeting to order Commissioners present are Commissioners tuval commissioner langden mayor Stokes vice mayor Emer is missing
today and commissioner Petr is in attendance so there's a quarum present for this meeting also present city manager Fletcher interm City attorney goolan city clerk F board specialist Lane police chief Garrison and fire
chief Titus are in the house uh Miss cim would you kindly do us the pleasure Al to the flag of the United States America for it stands one nation God
indivisible with justice for all righty city clerk any public comments there none there is none so we'll move on to General business 25-1 1950 uh discussion and possible
Direction regarding the findings the city Feast structure study for fire rescue fees Park and Recreation fees facility rental fees Road and drainage fees and utility fees conducted by weldin uh Financial Services city
manager this is your item thank you Mr Mayor um we do want to thank our finance director Kim Williams for uh securing the services of the consultant of will Financial Services here's a presentation to go over their findings which was
communicated and sent out as it was adjusted on the agenda last Friday but now I'll turn it over to um our consultant we'll hear from him and then we'll have a discussion thank you sir good morning members of the commission my name is Dennis goral I'm a project manager at Wilden today we're going to
be talking about the user fee study we recently completed before I get started I want to make sure I thank all the staff that was involved in the process of this uh study there's a lot of effort involved from staff uh on top of their heavy work Lord so we want to make sure we thank them and a special thanks to
Fowler for organizing and coordinating all the Departments which is uh not an easy task so let's get started so what are user fees user fees are fees that fund services that provide a private benefit and I want to highlight those words those are very
important words private benefit to the individual requesting them with very limited to no benefit to the community as a whole so what is a user fee study the primary objective of a user fee study is to determine the full cost of providing
each service each service in each department is calculated individually and we discuss each service in each department with the staff members as well to calculate the full cost of providing the services we use what we call fully burn hourly rates that
includes salary and benefit cost and on top of that we layer the direct and indirect overhead and I'll get into uh that a little bit more in the next couple of slides and of course up to 100% may be recovered right the same so what kind of information did we use
to complete this study we use Department budgets salary and benefit information Staffing structures productive hours time estimates for each single Pro program or fee current activity levels and City staff interviews and policies
let's talk a little bit about the methodology components of the user fee study here we start with the data analysis portion where we conduct Department interviews We Gather time estimates and we start building the labor cost the next step of the process is building cost layers the majority of the cost you
incur is from the Direct Services and indirect Services of providing this kind of service uh on top of that we layer the department overhead cost which is the administration of your department What It Takes what kind of materials and supplies does it take your department to
operate and lastly we add on Citywide overhead or indirect overhead that is the overhead of the support that is being provided to your operating departments by the C services such as Finance it human resources and lastly we Define the full
cost of each service and we Tred to talk about what kind of cost recovery goals and levels we want to reach with certain departments because every Department would want to reach different kind of cost recovery goals let's look at a typical Fe composition here like I said the direct
cost is the majority of the cost you incur of providing a service which includes the direct labor third party cost and M material cost on top of that like I mentioned we uh add the department overhead which is the operational cost of the department the supplies and materials within that
department and lastly we add Central service overhead which is the support that is being provided from city managers Finance it Human Resources all those Central service departments that need to support the operating departments I want to this is a very important uh slide here I want to spend
a little bit time explaining this right so when you provide a service you are incurring the cost of providing that service whether you charge for it or you don't charge for it right now as the policy makers you have to make a decision do you want to use tax dollars
to subsidize the cost of providing the service or do you want to charge the individual requesting and receiving that private benefit and you want to recover the cost from that individual so you're going to get the cost no matter what now you got to make a decision do you want to use tax doll to subsidize or charge
the individual let's take a look at some examples let's say the the community is the only one really that's benefiting from this kind of service the your cost recovery strategy should be primarily taxes and maybe a little bit of fees an example of that would be police
patrol now if the benefit is primarily Community you want to use a mix of fees and taxes something an example of that would be code enforcement now if the benefit is primarily individual you want to try to recover as much of the cost with your fees and maybe some tax
subsidy an example of that would be Parks and Recreation now if the benefit is completely individual benefit you want to try to recover as much with the fees themselves example of that would be development services so what kind of fees did we
review we looked at Citywide fees utility user fees Road and drainage fees police fees fire and EMS fees fire and EMS is a little bit unique and when we get to those slides I'll explain a little more in Parks and Recreation
fees let's start with Citywide fees Citywide fees is basically your uh city clerk fees for copies uh the current cost recovery for Citywide fees on average is 24% the reason for that is is that
majority of those fees as said by Florida law in reality out of all the nine fees we reviewed there's only one fee that you had the possibility or theity to change at all so we reviewed nine fees we added we didn't need to add
any new fees here we increased one fee just to slightly increase the cost recovery seven fees are remaining the same and we deleted one fee for something that is not being used anymore that is part of our process as well any fees that are not used on the schedule we want to clean them up and any
additional fees we want to make sure we add those fees as well so the average cost recovery after the increase would be about $27 % on average for the fees let's take a look at your utility user fees utility user fees I want you
to understand is different than your utility fees so we are not looking or touching anything like your water bill your sanitation Bill your Wastewater bill this is just direct private service from the utility fees your current cost recovery for utility fees is about
49% the suggestions are to bring the cost recovery a little bit higher we took a look at 17 fees here we added three new fees for services that you are able to charge now an additional service to the citizens we increased six fees
four fees are remaining the same and we also deleted four fees that are just not being used anymore to clean up the schedule the proposed average cost recovery with these increases would be about 66% of the cost let's look at roads and drainage
fees your current cost recovery for roads drainage is 50% here we also want to bring it a little bit higher the cost recovery and with the total 14 fees that we reviewed we increased eight fees six fees are remaining the same and the
proposed average cost recovery is [Music] 67% Let's Take a Look at police fees here what I want to make sure to mention is with the police fees this does not include your police patrol at all this is just your police user fees in reality
it's for fingerprint it's for uh I think a handicap uh fine so it does not include your police patrol at all so when you see the average cost recovery for 42% that's just for those user fees not for the police cost uh police patrol at all
majority of the fees here on the police schedule are also set by Florida law or they're just a direct pass through uh fees here of course the suggested fees are to raise the cost recovery a little bit higher we looked at 13 fees we
increased only two fees here 10 fees are to remain the same we deleted one fee for something that was on a schedule that's not being used anymore and the proposed average cost recovery for police fees is 51% here let's talk about F let me just
grab a simple water apologies so with fire fees the reason they're unique is because you have emergency services then you have fire basic fees like inspections so we wanted to make sure we separate your fire basic fees from their emergency services so
when you see this recovery of 88% majority of the fees here are dealing with fire inspections new development inspecting new buildings this has nothing to do with your emergency services right now but your current recovery for fire fees is
88% the suggested fees we felt like the cost recovery was pretty good here for fire so we didn't really want to increase it or decrease we want to kind of remain the same level but we wanted to make sure we adjust the fees based on their cost of service uh and just make sure we're uh we're Bing them on their
cost of service now any fee that increased here is increasing basically just by CPI of 2.7% the increases are very minor for the fees we are increasing for fire fees we looked at 146 fees we added two new fees for
additional services to the citizens we increased a 100 fees I know it sounds like a lot but again those 100 fees are increasing basically just by inflation we decreased four fees and that's why you see that average cost recovery of 88% actually go to 87 in
reality they're pretty much the same as just in the decimals it's because the decrease in fees the percentage wise was much larger than the increase in the fees 40 fees are remaining the same and like I said the proposed cost recovery for the fire fees excluding Emergency
Services is remaining in that area of 87 to 88% now let's take a look at your emergency services for emergency services it is very unique you can charge your full cost but the insurance
will only pay you a certain amount so a lot how a lot of agencies do your EMS fees are based on kind of a market analysis of what are the surrounding cities charging around you again any feed that we're increasing here is just an inflationary increase of 2.7% which
is very consistent with all your surrounding areas and actually I believe Longboat Key and Venice just recently did increase as well for that now at the seven fees we looked we increased six and one fee is going to remain the same let's take a quick look at this market
analysis here for the first fee of basic life support you currently charge $740 that is a little bit High than the comparison cities here so that is the fee we're not touching in reality the other cities and the other counties are going to reach that with only one pretty
much inflationary increase so in a year or two they'll be at that level but for right now we wanted to not increase it just to make sure we're not you know ahead of all the surrounding cities now for advanced life support you currently charge $800 which equals or below three
of the comparison three out of four comparison cities as you can see Sarasota County is 823 Venice is 800 which is pretty much it lbo key is 820 so this one we're just doing a small inflationary increase for level two of advanced life support you currently
charge $825 this one is very similar as well where you're at or below three of the comparison cities uh this one is also have a small inflationary increase the per mileage charge you're pretty much at Sarasota County Venice and Longo they
have a pretty much same per mileage charge we're just doing an inflationary increase for the per mileage charge uh it's going to be a very minimal increase for that medical treatment without transport you're at three you're the same at three of your comparison cities
and actually below Sarasota County so we're also doing just an inflationary minimal increase on that one now when we get to this EMS stuff ambulance waiting time plus the additional time that's a little bit unique CU every city and every County charges a little bit
different for time some give you the first 30 minutes free some charge you after 15 minutes some have the increments of per 15 minutes and some have increments per half an hour that's why uh it's not really Apples to Apples here as much but for Northport you're
currently charging after the first half an hour $123.6 which is pretty much below all the county and City comparisons here so we're increasing that by the inflation uh inflation now with the staff waiting time an additional staff waiting time I
believe you charge for per 15minute basis where some of these cities might be charging per half an hour basis so in reality you're not really half their cost they're just charging it in a different way but you're still below them if you multiply it by two right so you're going to be at about $32 uh $62
which is still below all the comparison cities here so we're also doing just an inflationary increase on this fee as well let's take a look at parks and Recreation Park and Recreation is unique also because you don't have a cost
recovery the cost recovery here is different than the other departments in a sense where in the other departments it was individual feet average cost recovery where here is the overall Department cost recovery so when you're looking at the overall department for Parks and Recreation we wanted to
exclude warm Mineral Springs and we also wanted to exclude any expenses you spend on free events here as well so your cost recovery for par and Recreation is a 22.66% now your warm Mineral Springs and camp
programs are recovering their cost of service they're good and lastly for this because this is kind of Al this is unique we wanted to use comparisons and staff had some very good comparisons that they took into account when setting the
fees uh we didn't we reviewed 194 fees majority of them remaining the same 109 fees out of 194 the reason for that is some of those fees had already been increased in the past year and we didn't
want to have adjust the fees twice we wanted to give a little bit of break on those some of the fees are not being increased until you finish some Renovations make sure you can justify the increase in fees after the renovation but we overall we looked at
194 fees the new fees we added seven new fees fees for additional Services you can provide to your uh citizens we increase 72 fees and the increases in fees in Parks and Recreation is very minimal we went for the target of about
25% cost recovery where you're about 22.66% that means an about uh an estimated 10% increase on on the fees it's not a very it's very minimal increase here H we didn't decrease any fees here and we deleted six fees for
services you're not currently provided just to clean up the schedule here now we looked at overall over 500 fees right it's a lot of fees to look over so we like to go over cost recovery standards Department cost recovery and
the general standard if an individual is receiving a private benefit from a service he should technically pay or she 100% what it cost the city of providing that service now you you have the policy decision to not charge 100 right but
that means anything below 100% of the cost of service you're using tax dollars to subsidize the fee right which makes sense in certain situations of course whether you want to encourage participation like with your Parks and Recreation program if you want to ensure
compliance like with code compliance if you want to allow access to the service like with your library Services that's for every city I work in that's probably has the lowest cost recovery and I'm down to my last slide right now there's a reason you're not seeing development services here and I
wanted to talk a a little bit about the next steps for development services the development services analysis had to be delayed a little bit because of a new unified Land Development code and implementation of a cell which basically changes the entire efficiencies and changes the entire way the department
operates and we didn't want to fill out the time estimates for that department when you know in half a year or whenever you figure out the system everything kind of changes so it's going to be irrelevant anymore so with that said we're going to have to wait about a year from December 2024 that's when a cell
was implemented so the staff has a better understanding and better idea of the time estimates that actually takes to produce or provide the services and they can provide accurate time estimates this was my last slide now we have all the 500 fees their cost of
service subsidy amount cost recovery and fee change for every single fee and I would be happy to answer any questions or speak about any individual departments you would like to speak about thank you very
much Commissioners Lang um thank you mayor do do you want us to do questions first and then comments or just keep it Loose whatever kind of comes to mind yeah I think we can probably keep it loose
um guess I I'll do a couple questions first on and you might have to time um let you know in that plane need still um in the user fee study in the
methodology did you ever consider including the depreciation of certain assets depreciation is not included in a sense of the depreciation but it is
included in a sense of you having the budget uh budgeted numbers to replace to uh maintain and that kind of thing so in reality that should kind of offset the depreciation and that's why we have the department overhead of all your
maintenance replacement uh supplies and ser and uh services so you can make sure you account for that somewhat I I would make the case that in certain instances the provision of service is very
building Centric um so for example in parks and wreck we have four very expensive assets that we manage um we have two community centers we have the Aquatic Center and we have warm Mineral
Springs so let's talk about the springs for a minute we are about to spend $10 million give take a million dollars in either direction if somehow we don't give
visibility to that we're doing the community a disservice because of the expense and and the millions of dollars that have gone into that property um I I really I I guess part of what I'm feeling is for
those four assets that I mentioned again because there so building dependent and so expensive to maintain that we need to reflect that and and so I was sort of thinking do we do do we try to capture
the actual maintenance costs and build that into it do we take a look at the asset and just depreciate it I I'll let Miss Kim figure out the best way to do that but I think for those assets we
really need to build that in because they are very expensive now whether we decide to to recoup cost for that is is a different conversation but one of the things that I've learned in our conversations about the referendum with
our community is we do have a group of people in the city who want the details and when we say things like warm Mineral Springs pays for itself that is not accurate we paid $5.5 million for it
we're on the brink of spending another $10 million to restore the buildings um we need to give visibility to that to the community so and for us so that we really understand the cost
of of providing these Services um and for me um and I'll kind of digress a little bit in in the model when we looked at um parks and wreck I I think you had said that parks and wreck is
primarily individual I would challenge that I think parks and wreck has a very strong CommunityWide benefit now we might have to look at some things separately but I'll tell you um so much of what parks
and wreck does is for our children and I don't know any way you cut it when we invest in our children that's a CommunityWide benefit so that kind of popped out at me is as maybe not being the best way to view parks and wck
there there might be some aspects um for example I keep picking on war Mineral Springs I don't mean to but it's it's a very select group of people who participate and enjoy that asset I would look at that very differently than I
would our playing fields or or even some of our Community buildings which provide a lot of services for our kids so I I just wanted to point that out I'd be interested and how my fellow Commissioners look at that I have more
but I'll kind of keep quiet and see if anyone wants to pick up on either of those two themes anybody else commissioner dval I'm going to tag along with Barbara here um I don't want anyone to think I'm picking
on Parks and wreck but there are so many different facets to parks and wreck uh one statement that you made was that users should pay 100% of the
cost well at parks and rec we have a community of people that use warm Mineral Springs but because of our Geographic lines a good share of that community
that uses it does not live in the city of Northport and we do have a difference between fees for residents and nonresidents and that's part of an issue where a part of that community that uses
it uh in the long run we' kind of like to Annex them in to our community they live close to warm Mineral Springs but they don't live in the city um another part of that idea of the
user should pay the cost of the service well if we set the cost of the service you know an hour of use of a basketball court at $100 well
if the cost is $100 we charge $100 but what about a non-resident do we pay them extra or do we charge them extra um that's that's just a question um now one of the other statements that
you made was that Florida law sets a majority of fees um should we that's a question for my fellow Commissioners should we look at maybe mimicking the
state just a question you know as far as you know do they get a recovery of 50% on something and we get 25 maybe we should go to 50 or if we get 75 maybe we should go down to 50 um
another little thing this a pet project of mine um I noticed our utilities recovery fees is set at 49% now we do have in this city on people's electric bills a
10% tax for the city plus a franchise fee now if I go to a store and buy something basically I pay about 7% sales
tax the city doesn't really do it anything to provide that electricity FPL does we're getting 10% plus of franchise fee now some of those fees just lately FPL has announced
they're requesting more money and my suggestion this is something that I'd like to see happen with us later on is as those fees go up for FPS
we could lower like say this year if they raise the fee by this amount we should be able to lower our tax from 10% to 9% and still receive the same amount of money for the
city because their fees are going up we're now taxing at 9% on a higher amount versus 10% at a lower amount Plus we're continually adding a number
of homes each year to the amount so what we could do in the long run is as the utility fees and I'm talking purely FPL here okay because there are other utility fees that are kind of in a
different category but as fpl's rates go up we should be able to lower that tax down to about that six s% range like people pay on everything else they pay
okay I'm off my so box Mr Lang yeah I'd like to respond to a couple of things you mentioned commissioner McDow one was should we I'm sorry
mdal do commissioner Duval should we mimic state or County fees um I've never been comfortable charging what other municipalities charge without
considering cost of service delivery or quality of those services so just for example I have I I do not lose sleep charging more for our Emergency Services um because I know we don't like to say
this in public but I'm not running for reelection again so I'll say it in public we provide a higher level of service in a lot of areas in this city particularly compared with counties and and that shouldn't um surprise anyone
some people want to live in a city though it's more expensive because cities do in general have a higher level of service um but I do think it's important important when we consider raising our fees to look at what
surrounding communities are doing with those fees just as a reality test because if someone's charging and I'm making all of this up $20 and and we're thinking of charging
$100 then maybe they're grossly under collecting we may or may not want to under collect to the same level but I would have to ask are we delivering that service in the most efficient
way so I I'm not comfortable with out of the gate a cost plus I want to look at that cost and make sure that we're doing things in a very cost effective way and
if we are then you know that sort of relieves a burden from my mind in raising fees so I know efficiency isn't part of this conversation I don't think but at some point we need to look at
that um when I was and and I'll I'll pick on Building Services for a minute when I was running for um election and reelection I talked to some residents of the city who one gentleman said he put a
shed up pulled a permit put a shed up on his property and to close out the permit of course it had to be inspected one inspector came out to make sure that um the resident had respected you know boundaries and that kind of thing that
it was located in the right place and then he had to wait a few more days for a different person to come out and make sure that the tie downs were sufficient so that kind of worried me a little bit
that we were approaching that particular thing in the most coste effective and efficient way so um that would sort of be one of my things the the service fee we did approve couple years ago I think
it was going up to the maximum service fee um that municipalities are allowed to charge on things like electricity we went to 100% I think you know municipalities can also put a little S sech charge on gas and a couple of other
things and the thought process was it's either that or raise millage property taxes so it was sort of for us a tradeoff now you can say whether that was a good tradeoff or not that would be
an interesting conversation but that's the decision we made at the time um so anyway I'll keep quiet that's just sort of my two cents on what commissioner Duval brought up
commissioner yes um I forgot to mention a couple of things that I had intended on mentioning and again with Parks and Recreation um our Parks and Recreation Department provides a lot of services
that we do not charge for um we have a number of kayak launching sites around this city I've used them myself there's nobody there selling me a
ticket okay that's quote unquote an unrecoverable cost to the city city can charge taxes um we have a lot of hiking trails that are built and
maintained um they have a lot of playround the playgrounds right over here by the Mullen Center every time I've looked there's a large group of children using that nobody pays a fee every time they
bring their kids there uh so ARs and Recreation has got to be able to recover some of those fees without actually you know having a ticket booth there um one more thing I'd really like
to mention is a few days ago a resident got in touch with me and wants to put some papers on the back of his new home and have an area
screened in and he went through the process and everything was approved except for one item well over the weekend I was able to actually get on our new sellup
program oh my God it's a miracle I'm new here and I haven't learned how to use my Apple phone yet but I was able to get on a Cella look at all the approvals for that project he has and find the one part of that approval that hadn't gone
through yet and I was able to say hey that approval that goes to planning and z and I was able to meet that gentleman here here early this morning and say there's the door to their office and a few minutes later he sent
me a text and that text said hey we're on our way uh I think aella was an excellent investment number one that it was user friendly to an old guy who technology is
you know a foreign language um and number two you know how quick it gave the information that was needed thanks um I have a couple questions comments
um a couple of these I guess it was the overall City fees and police fees you indicated uh the state sets those are are we still considerably under what the Caps are there how does that work is are
we allowed only to increase a certain percentage each year is that how that works no there is a cap and you are at the cap for those uh fees so our costs based on the recovery are our actual costs are way in excess of what the Caps
yes yes um I don't know whether or not the scope of your study looked into why is it it's cting us so much more than what the state says it should cost us that's not what the state is not saying what it should cost trust you uh they're just putting caps because those are
Community a lot of these services are just something a city has to offer like copy of their Charter uh certain copies of things that you request for public information request uh it's not that the state is saying this is what it should cost you I wanted to make sure that is
very clear but the state sets a cap it says this is you can't charge any more than that but yet our actual costs obviously are in excess of that since based on your category report there
we're not recovering our costs is that am I misunderstanding oh that's correct yeah you're not currently recovering your costs so then why are we providing services for which we can't get reimbursed if we can't recover our costs
why are we providing those Services State mandated Services let me try again State mandates we provide to services but it doesn't allow us to recoup our costs that's correct uh but but again
your full cost calculation takes into account your staff effort as well where the state might be calculating just how much is a one-sided copy just the paper itself right uh yours also includes the staff effort of time of talking to the customer getting the service done that's
why it's a little bit higher here I gotta all right at least I have understand it um you know I when it comes to parks and wrecks well I appreciate that 25% recovery is kind of you know of all the categories of all
the areas throughout the city seem so horribly low and oh my God why aren't we covering more I I I am an advocate of of quality of life and and I know that it's pretty hard to recover the costs for
ball fields and some park-like areas and I'm not so sure I'm a big advocate of charging a lot more for some of the parks and recreational services that might well dissuade people
from using them people who may not have a lot of money can't afford their own pool can't afford their own this that or the other use a public service because it's affordable but the area in which you know I have shown some concern and I
have concern is is is our inability so far to find and develop programs and events that are real Revenue producers and I think that that may be a way to
help offset some of the difficulty we have recovering our costs I um I just believe that when it comes to our you know whether it's the Aquatic Center or whether it's the Muller Morgan centers we have to make a huge effort to
create programs and events that are going to generate big gener Revenue generators that can help offset some of the costs to provide the rest of the services to people who can't afford them who we want to continue to offer those services to so that's maybe a
conversation for another day but um that's sort of one my heads at on it I um you know I mean as as we try to see how this is going to fit I mean um at
least we did one thing from last year when we kind of looked at adjusting some fees and there was criticism about the fact that we didn't do this in a methodical professional way we didn't hire someone to do it you know we've
addressed that and what it's clearly shown and should show everyone who looks at this is that our fees are still sorely under undercosted or underpriced compared to what the cost of providing these services are so wherever we can we
should try to adjust them up but you know whether we do it all at once or whether we phase it over a period of time I think part of that's got to be you know looked at in conjunction with our budgeting season our budgeting cycle this year and to see how this works I
don't know whether we want to try to talk about we want to ask staff to do a couple of different scenarios you know a 50% 100% of the recommended increases here as as into how that affects our
budget you know um I mean how are we going to use this that's where I would like to see the conversation go how you know we got a professional study that's recommending increases do we just say yeah let's do them and or do we want to
see you know what half of that would look like in this next budget cycle and what all of it would look like and see what the differences and what the revenue differential is or lack thereof I mean you know what do you guys think
uh commissioner Pro you're up thank you mayor um few things um I want to address and then open up a couple questions to the my fellow Commissioners you
mentioned sorry um how much of a you did a good presentation and uh presented us with cost of service now did you look at any quality of service of each service being
provided that's uh something we don't look uh we don't look at the Quality or efficiency of the services we're not operators we're Finance folks so we calculate the we concentrate on the cost sure but cost can be brought up
easily by just you know advocating for a new service and that service is not being utilized or used and then you're doing your Finance thing and cost recover and that might not be efficient at all I'm an efficiency guy so can you tell me have
you looked at any efficiency policies or any efficiency um services in the study at all or did did you encounter while doing the study hey this could be combined therefore we can recover much more percentage of a
recovery cost we didn't look at individual efficiencies we did talk with staff about you know their operational knowledge uh of what kind of services and that's why some we added some new Services that's why we deleted some services but we didn't uh do an analysis
on the efficieny mhm in my opinion one thing cannot go without the other one I think efficiencies are have to be incorporated and that's something we can look into the future studies um
as a recommendation to the staff because if we if we have services that are not being utilized and yet we pay for them uh just a simple example we we hire more people we think it's going to be great service for the Comm
Community we realized later down down the road that it's not really utilized but yet we keep the employees does we have to recover more money does we raise the fees does we charge more you see where I'm getting so I think it has to
be as a consultant and I'm not getting into operational branch of our city but um as a policy maker we have to look at a the entire picture to look what services are
effective what services are efficient and th but I see you now Kim go ahead good morning Kim Williams the finance director so while this wasn't a study to come in and look at the efficiency of the different areas I think it does speak a little bit to it if you look at
a comparable cost recovery for uh parks and rank is what 20 to 30 um so so you can our with our fees not being outrageously higher than other areas um or lower um it does speak to us
being compared to other governments uh we we're we hear with these adjustments we'll be covering 25% that speaks to our efficiency being very similar to other governments I don't know if that helps yes to some extent and and then of
course parkson's Rec is not designed to fully recover where you know we're not a for profit entity government is here to provide those services for the greater good and not at a full cost recovery we're just a different
setup and that leads me to another question and that might not be U very articulate in this sense but uh as far as the how much of the user fee is structured into the pool of expense as far as the you have your own
budget for example one let's let's take Parks Parks and Recreation um get picked on it how much of a user fee or how much of a recovery cost is
incorporated or how do you differentiate between the budget that comes in and the user fee or is a user fee strictly uh depends on the user that uses that Serv yes and I can
def I think I know what you're asking did you I don't really articulate on that question as far as the budget I don't want to be overlapping the expenses and charge people more than we should of course maybe we should utilize our budget in a better way and not
charge separate and not increase user fees every year or whatever the only Department in our study here that was based directly on budget recovery is Parks and Recreation and the reason for that is there is no real cost calculation for each
individual fee for example someone gets a membership there is no real cost calculation the cost calculation comes directly from the staff time involvement and materials or any third party that is used right so the only one that was based directly on budget is Parks and Recreation now all the other departments
the budget comes into account by adding the department overhead but the real cost is calculated based on the salary and benefit position so even adding an additional staff member uh doesn't really change that as much because we're looking at that specific position that is doing the
service and then we account for the budget by adding the department overhead and the indirect overhead uh but only parks and recck is directly based on all the budget expenses and revenues okay and that leads me back to
the efficiency processes or policies um in your discussion with the staff how much time did you devote into the asking hey are we repeating this service through the other service or these servic
overlap um we tried that goes a little bit into our uh into our uh uh study we made sure that there is no overlapping fees in different departments we made sure that if we need if there are we delete some of them uh but again that is
pretty much we we did have a little bit of discussion based on what is their cost what is the other cities are charging and that kind of gives you a little bit of a measure of efficiency but again we didn't look at direct efficiency of every service you provide
uh we did not do that yeah well as a policy maker uh by the city Charter we are restrained from going into operational management or hiring Consultants but for the future I would
like to see some efficiency studies incorporated into the user fee recovery cost recovery because I in my opinion you know when we get contacted by the citizen they ask us hey my fee has been
increased can you do something what can I say I really can't but this is the time when we are allowed to discuss and make recommendation or um make policy change by the majority but
for the future I would like to see some efficiencies uh studies Incorporated in the in this presentation which which by the way is a good presentation um but as I I don't think one can go without the other one I mean
we have to combine efficiencies and um utilize the services to the fullest extent trying to incorporate or make it more effective as a city as a whole um and one other question for you
and then I'll have more questions to our fellow to my fellow Commissioners um I'm sure you've done many other studies for all the cities and municipalities in your experience are we below or more over how will we
recovering our cost of course um every Department like I mentioned a little earlier has their own kind of cost recovery and cost recovery goal with Parks and Recreation you're a little bit below than what I've seen from other cities uh pretty much all your fees
except your fire inspection fees which again are for development right that are not emergency are recovering a little bit less than the average I see in other cities that with fire an with the fire inspection fees I think you're pretty
much the area where I see a lot of the Cities a lot of the cost recovery I see for most departments is between 60 to 80% and if it's development services majority of the time I see 80 to 100% with that so can I interrupt so for the
parks and recs we can say that they're doing good job they're trying to provide as much Community Services as they can for the community and that kind of uh if fact could maybe answer a little bit of the non-resident and resident here the reason you want to charge non-residents a little bit High higher is because the
residents if you're a resident you're paying tax dollars so if you're not charging your full cost your tax dollars is being used to recover it now if you're non-resident you're not paying tax dollars to you know subsidize or help out with the cost and that is the reason that almost every single city has
a non-resident and Resident separate and a little bit higher for the non-resident that's because their tax dollars are not helping to subsidize or help out with any of the community services in the city and the other one Are we more or less in line uh all the other ones
you're pretty much you're pretty close like I said uh majority of fees like roads and drainage I see 60 to 80 you're at 50 you're a little bit below you're below with majority of your departments except the fire development fees which you pretty much in the average that I
see from other from other cities that would be a good time to commment our Parks and Recs Department um the couple questions to my fellow Commissioners um if I
may the question that was brought by commissioner Dalal about the FPL and I've heard same thing from the that they're going to increase the rates we as a policy makers should look into kind of lower
that um and we at the max plus there's a franchise Fe which does not correlate to the services we provide as a city so I just want to make sure that we look into that and um
a lot of residents are concerned about that issue that they're being charged on their FPL bill whereas they don't get any services from the city I mean it's just an up tax let's be honest
and um we and I know the inflation grows and expenses are going up but we have to also look not only at the revenue side but also at the how can we cut not the service but minimize or make
it more efficient for the city to substitute that cut that we charging the citizen and when I say we um say as a city is people pay it to the city
I may if I can address Comm commissioner Petro um packed a lot in there so let me just sort of separate out the FPL fee um I agree I I'm re I'm a value ad person
so I'm a great supporter of where we add value that we charge for it I'm reluctant to charge where we don't add value so so I hear what you're saying but again when we made the decision to
increase that to 10% it was in lie of impacting our property tax rate so I would very much like to revisit charging those Sur charges
on those utilities that the state allows us to like FPL but we need to have that conversation at the same time we look at our millage rate because it was a clear tradeoff you either raise one or the
other if you decrease one it has an impact on what we do in other areas so yes I would like to revisit that but it needs to be in the context of what we're charging from a property tax point of view um efficiencies I'm I'm right there
with you it it's more my style where I've a observe things where I I personally felt we could be more efficient or when community members came to me and shared stories of where they felt the city could have been more
efficient I'll have that conversation with city manager we all should have that conversation with city manager and as perhaps part of our budget conversation if the five of us are sort of concerned in similar areas then maybe
we bring that efficientcy conversation back either as part of budget or as an agenda item or whatever is most appropriate I personally am reluctant to have those conversations at this stage in public but at least we
should mention that that we are efficiency but it's important that that we be efficient um so that's sort of in response to commissioner Petro I also had some comments I wanted to share with the mayor things that he brought up if I
may continue um one of the one of the things you talked about was we need to be more entrepreneurial that's how I describe it what when we take a look at our very
expensive assets like warm Mineral Springs or the Aquatic Center then we really need to think about if we want to keep what we charge the community low for those um
amenities then we need to get creative as a city as staff as Commissioners in terms of how do we utilize those assets in a way that helps recoup some of those costs
um I I think enough said on that i' I've had a lot of conversations with staff the past few years um particularly in the past year on that specific item um and and back to parks and W because I
think we've all and and I'm sorry we're sort of picking on Parks parks and W but it's an interesting conversation to have because there's such a in my mind a dichotomy in
what we provide there clearly our playing field our Parks um I call them jungle gyms I don't know what you call them today you know the structures that our kids play on um even though I I
choke a little bit every time we replace one of those because it's between $400,000 I don't think the community realizes just how expensive that is and parks and wreck is the third biggest
consumer of our general fund which is fueled by property taxes so it does deserve some scrutiny how I come down on it is our playing fields and our parks with the jungle gyms I would move that
in terms of our methodology to having primarily Community benefit I am 100% okay with not recapturing those costs that is just something that so benefits all of us when we invest in our kids but
but I come back to those very costly assets that are enjoyed by a subset of our community very costly for us to provide
um and we need to look at those I would like to go through an exercise and maybe we we might need to do a consensus on this but for those four assets the Aquatic Center War Mineral Springs and our two community centers I
want to see a p&l on those I mean I'd like to run them either as a well let's say a cost center but let's really embrace all of the costs that go along with maintaining those properties and
and whether we try to capture maintenance costs or just a depreciation we need to see those things because when we talk to the community about these assets it's important that
we understand the real costs of managing those assets and we can share that information with the community um you know our Aquatic Center currently loses about 600,000 a year
maybe that's okay maybe it's not I would I would also say that I'm I'm a hiker and I go to a lot of state parks in multiple States I enjoy that kind of thing that might shock a lot of people I think they think
I I live for concrete but I don't I I love nature and I love hiking in places you go to a state park there's a user fee you go to other state parks that I've been to there's not a user fee but there's a charge for parking now we may
or may not want to do that but there are a lot of examples of how other municipalities and governmental entities make an attempt to collect some cost recovery from the subset of
the community that utilizes that um and so I think for me that's part of the equation and again just to recap again with parks and wreck I can accept a lot of what parks and wreck
does it's having primarily Community benefit and I don't think of it in terms of cost recapture but when we get to those very expensive things we only a small subset of our community enjoys it
we need to get smart on how we provide those done question for you um sir did you take a look at if all these proposed fees were to be
adopted what the additional annual revenue would be what the additional generated Revenue would be based on say this past Year's worth of usage level in other words could we say this is going to add a million dollars a half a
million 2 million five million do we have any idea what the adoption of these Fe would generate in the way of Revenue annually um the actual Revenue increase is uh very hard to calculate unless we
have every single service every single fee have its own how many people used it how much revenue because not every fee is increasing at the same level if if the fees were increasing all at the same level it' be very easy to kind of estimate how much additional Revenue but when you have for example 72 fees that
are not remaining the same and then you know 70 fees that are increasing we need how many users for each single fee and some of this uh out of all the studies I've done cities don't have that very accurate data unless they know to keep track of it uh which of course costs
more money to keep track of it um I got just so we have no idea I mean um you know everybody brought up some very good thoughts and I ideas the way I see it um
you know certainly uh from creating greater efficiency uh at the operating levels of our various departments to being more entrepreneurial in terms of adding programs and events so that we can
offset some of the costs of providing the basic amenities and Quality of Life Services you know this all still ties right back into our overall budget process and I don't know how you have the conversation of one without the
other I mean we're here in a workshop to review these proposed fees Beyond a general direction to staff to take these and integrate them into the budget process and see how that
overall budget shakes out I mean I don't know how we can do much more than that that's why I asked the question how much revenue do these produce and nobody knows we don't really know we can probably try to Ballpark something but I don't know how accurate I I I wouldn't
venture to say that this is going to generate more than a couple of million dollars worth of annual revenue I'd be surprised if it even generated more than a million dollars worth of Revenue but that's just me okay um and I have no you know actual foundation for making that
statement just a gut feel that it wouldn't be that overwhelmingly significant so you know one we have the issue where do we go from here you know we can talk about all these things on infinitum they really tie back into the budget my my
strong belief here is that we as a city this is the year to tighten that belt to the point where it hurts and I think that that message is transmitted already at least it has been from me to city manager I would assume it it's come from
other Commissioners as well I would certainly hope it has because we have some real challenges in the way of capital expenditures we're asking our citizens in a referendum to ask to pay to assess themselves to to
pay $115 million for Police Headquarters and I got to tell you this we all as a city government are going to have to squeeze till it hurts for the next couple of years until we see as the FPL
study showed for the uh um our outside pfm study showed that we're going to see some appreciable Revenue increases down the road for the next couple years they don't come home to roost yet but yet we're asking citizens to pay more now to
help with some of these major projects that can't wait and so I would say that you know we're all looking at a real lean year or two and and we need to figure out the combination of where can we cut to the Bone and where can we be
more entrepreneurial to generate revenues in areas we haven't done before um that combination hopefully will balance our budget and save the taxpayers some money because there needs to be some relief if the average citizen
just says it goes up it goes up it goes up you want to raise my fees you want to raise my taxes you want me to special assess myself for a police headquarters I mean when is enough enough I think the city we all collectively as our city government we need to give something back to the citizens this year we need
to find a way to roll back that milit rate we need to find a way more than just slash away at the budget we need to return some of it to them and I'm saying it here now I'm going to say it in every budget meeting that we have right through this cycle this is the year that
we need to find that balance we are asking our citizens to make a huge sacrifice and they want to see us make a huge sacrifice as well commissioner langen um I see city manager on the
board and I've been flapping my jaws I see commissioner Dalal CM I'll come after commission priority go ahead thank Mr Mayor I was just wanted to point out that the amount of revenue from the utility and Franchise Tax total roughly
about $1 million so if we do affect those numbers that is the amount that you're looking for that will be affected by our budget compilation the question about how much would the revenue increases raise of course we don't know that as we said right now but we're
happy to bring you back scenarios during the budget process that will sort of outline those numbers um even though these fees are being recommended to be raised to ensure that they are in better alignment with the industry AES or best
practices uh we we still have the building fees to do next year so if we don't recognize and catch up for these fees and let's say those fees are over and then you end up lowering those fees I don't see how we can sort of balance a
budget if everything that we're being given to Aid Us in balancing the budget without affecting the millage rate is going to help us continue the quality of services that we're providing what I'm hearing is something has got to give and what's going to give are going to be the services that we provide as we do get to
the number that you are trying to accomplish but we are prepared to give you better detail and more conversation during the budget as it evolved but just want to make a few of those points clear thank you and just to to to address your comment I don't disagree there's no way
to tighten the belt sufficiently without it affecting levels of service and I would expect that staff will be prepared to lay that out for us and show what it would mean if we were
to and what the implications are you know we're going to have to make those tough decisions as to whether or not we consider the costs savings or the budget cuts or the roll back of any property
tax rates offset and you know the the the the hit to Services because there is no doubt that there is not a tremendous amount of fat if at all in this budget despite what the public may think from
time to time we run a pretty tight ship we really do but I'm saying that something has to give and if we work to do this we're going to need to understand what the hit the services are going to be how it's going to affect our citizens if we were to cut back but I
got to tell you I believe we need to look hard at this and have a real serious discussion and these fees play into that you know how much we increase them everything's going to play a part we're going to be impacted by and I'm taking this conversation a little Beyond
scope of this meeting but you know let's face it we've got homestead exemption numbers that are going up we're not going to see property appreciation what it was in past years all that is going to have an impact on our revenues and consequently on what decisions we make
on expenses but you know it'll be a be a very interesting budget process this year uh commissioner Deval thank you mayor um there's so many different issues here
uh included in this this meeting's paperwork with some background material and and one thing I looked at here was the Citywide fee structure as
it is today and this was from um an ordinance 20 202 24-34 and there's 44 Pages now we're kind of having a macro discussion here
and this these 44 pages are kind of micro but there are some things to look at um some of these are you know little things but but every penny counts um I'm
looking at PID one of that ordinance on Citywide fees and it says that a DVD is 30 cents per DVD a compact
disc is 25 cents well number one those are both getting to be pretty much obsolete Technologies I don't know how many people use them but if this city is willing to give me a CD for25 or 30 cents or a DVD I'll
sell them on eBay there'll still be people that'll want them uh what I'm saying is we I think we need an update on some of these things um you know I was on our city Charter review
board and I noticed there a copy of the city of Northport Charter is $3 a copy well that copy of the city Charter the ones I got when I was on the board they got a plastic binder on them two
cardboard things somebody had to put those together that takes time and for $3 that's pretty cheap um like I'm just using this as an example there are 44 pages of City fees
and obviously we can't go through them all today uh but I think you know we can spend time looking at things and the mayor is totally correct our next couple of years
with the increases that we're asking the taxpayers to pay for things that we need for infrastructure that we need that's difficult enough but when you add in some of the
chaos that's coming to us from up above from the state level from the federal level a lot of things that we may have been able to count on before we're not sure if we're going to be able to count on and I'm talking about Federal LS grants loans low interest loan we just
don't know so we have to be extremely careful in balancing what we're spending versus what we're
charging uh um this is going to be a difficult process thank you Mr Lang um I would just ask the city manager want to go first and um just one final
comment and and it speaks to let's get creative let's be more entrepreneurial in how we approach things in the past North was not a desirable place to be and in all honesty
if we didn't do it if the city didn't pay for it there was no profit making or business that wanted to come here for lots of reasons that we don't have to go through today that has
changed and with that we need to think about are there some services that we're providing or some services at a low cost that we're providing that we no longer
need to do because we have businesses coming here who provide those things and so I think one of the ways to test is if we
increased the the prices we charge charge for some of these assets would there be a very immediate and sharp decline in demand I'm using business terms but you get what I'm saying and
for me that would be a very telling piece of data to have so for example we maintain two gyms in our community centers um do we still need to do that we we
have Planet Fitness opening up on Tamiami um in the old wind Dixie building they charge $112 a month do we still need to provide that for the community and and I think there
are other examples um we have restaurants opening up with meeting space you know we we always historically in this city we we've had a belief that if the city didn't do it and
pay for it then our residents wouldn't have it and and that was pretty accurate 10 15 years ago not so accurate today so efficiency is is certainly part of it um how much cost we want to
recapture I think I like staying at the macro level I'm not paid enough to figure out how to do it that's why we have staff but again taking a look at certain things and determining where on
this user fee policy consideration they fall and things that are really individual we either need to charge for it so we recapture our costs and or find a business maybe that would come in and
do it for us anyway I'm just throwing out some thoughts and and I want to be clear I'm not supportive in of a Cost Plus automatically charging the max in user fees that's not what I'm saying
what I'm saying is if we choose as a board and as a government to keep our user fees low then we need to get really creative on things we can do to recapture some of those costs and or
increase our efficiency in delivering those things and let me just say say I've always been impressed with the Aquatic Center um in that you guys just had such a handle on your usage and you
know days of the week and times of the day and sort of matching are you open are you not open I really like that way of approaching things and we need to do more of it so I'm I'm done I've said
everything I can say yeah thank you Mr Mayor just one clarification is you as a board give us guidance on the conversation that led back to parks and recs and the cost recovery in the buildings and the depreciation when we do that do you want to do that only for
parks and rec because the other other fees on there such as police and fire they have buildings attached to them as well do you want to see something that comes back with all of those ones that include buildings or just parks and ranks I I would just say for
me um the IND costs so that model of direct and indirect costs I would assume that some of those indirect costs would capture the buildings that house our our fire
and police Personnel for example for me it's more what are those assets in the community where we're delivering services that are building specific or
facility specific whether or not we charge for um a fire station if if we don't do it we don't I mean we we're g we have to do it to provide the service but if if we're not providing a gym if
we're not renting out space then we don't need a community center so some services are just very facility based in my mind and it's just poor parks and wck that's the most obvious one there might be others if we
thought about it but those are really from a user fee perspective the most obvious in my mind would you clarify again when you say the other departments say that again so I understand what you're asking when you look at the information that the
consultant provided today he goes through other departments with fees um you got EMS you have fire you have police uh even Road and drainage but you know there still buildings attached to those departments that have these fees
but with parks and recs as commissioner langon just said essentially if those buildings go away because they're not mandatory to provide then right essentially the cost goes away but with those they're different because they are
mandated based on what they provide if I if I recap what you said I think so right so that's what makes them different as it relates to how we perform the exercise that we believe you're going to want us to do which is to sort of scrub down deeper into parks and wrecks to see what um I think you
you referenced as a pro former earlier commissioner as to see more details of the revenues and expens it really costs to provide those facilities when you you asked do we want us to do that
do we want staff to do that for the other departments why would we not want to do that for every Department I I don't I'm missing something here well based on what she just explained I would be going on the assumption that you're only talking about parks and recs
because uh the facilities they provide when they charge a revenue to get into them and use them if that goes away and then you have the building that goes away you don't have to provide a Morgan Center for a basketball court or for a gym or for meeting space if I may let me
say it a different way this might help you mayor for those Services if you look at uh it's not page numbered but the user fee policy considerations those services that are who benefits the community I don't feel
a need to do that we we cover that primarily through taxes I I don't feel a need to go to that level of granularity for those assets that benefit the entire community and are today funded primary through
taxes it's as you move down that food chain to those assets that are primarily individual and individual that's the area where I have some concern because it's user
fees how much do we want to use property taxes to help fund those those are the areas where I think we can get more creative in how we fund them does that
help to a degree but are there not overall City some overall city services that we are providing that we might want to take a look at not providing anymore I mean I don't know in
these other areas I mean are there things we can do with that commissioner Deval brought up a couple of examples you know in the overall General fees without going one by one through 40 some odd Pages or whatever they are I mean are there some things we should just not
be doing can we just cut out can we just say no we're not going to supply this or that or the other if the law doesn't require us to do it do we need to do it I mean the reality is somewhere we're going to if if I mean you got two
opportunities here one is to continue to charge more and more for everything we do and provide the other alternative is to cut expenses everywhere we possibly can or obviously the third is a combination of so which
is the reality so I'm just wondering do we not want to look hard at some of these other departments because it's going to take this this meeting this this discussion right into the budget process and I would hate to get to the budget meetings and and start asking
questions because I'll tell you this's going to be one really different budget process you know I mean I don't want to go every single line item through that budget but I'm going to tell you we better find a way to cut and in order to do it we're going to have some hard
discussions on one are there efficiencies and two are there things we can cut out and and cutting certain things out are may or may not affect a level of service and services that we provide but you know so
I just don't want to not ask for something that in a month or 3 weeks we're sitting in a meeting going gee I wish we had said to staff look into this that's all and I don't really understand like what you're saying I I I'm not getting it the the you know fine parks
and recs is real easy to tear apart but what about the other departments are there areas we should dig deeper in should staff really be looking at this and I'm I'm if I may mayor because I think it was part of my floor that we had the conversation because I see other
folks on the the thing number one as part of this exercise it was recommended that we cancel some Services because of low utilization so um I see as part of your concern is being addressed by the current
exercise um but I totally agree there are other areas of the city where it's not a user fee situation so it's different from Parks and wck but efficiency so again commissioner
uh Duval talked to this quite a bit certainly there are other departments too where we really need to make sure are are we providing some things where you know if we stopped providing them fewer than 10 people would shed a tear
you know and and there's cost associated with it so definitely I think that will need to be part of the budget conversation um yeah I think it's more of an efficiency kind of conversation um Mr
dval um really I want to just make a comment about um what commissioner langon spoke about and again I do not want to be picking on arks and wreck
but you talk about the fact that we do have two gymnasium and there are businesses that provide the same service number one when the business provides the
service we're going to get revenue from that in tax income and at the same time we're going to be relieved from the cost of providing that same service so uh you
know not in this particular case you know to pick on it I just want to go on with commissioner langon that there are services that private businesses can
provide and take away the cost of the C City doing that um and then as I said to get away from Parks and wreck and maybe pick out a different department um poor fire chief is sitting here right
in my eyesight doesn't the fire department go to people's homes and change batteries on fire alarms and if we do does this
does the city charge that Resident good morning Scott sidus fire rescue chief for the fire rescue District um in response to your question yes we do and actually one of the things that we're doing in our budget right now and upcoming we're looking at how we do
that in a manner that is less responsive to each individual CI Citizen and more responsive to our scheduling because we're we're running into a strain right now with the amount of training that's required for our people and all the things that we're doing so we're looking at you were talking about efficiencies
we're looking at how we do that better we're looking at dedicating one day a week instead of when they call the difference that being is if smoke detectors are beeping by telephone often times we don't know whether they're beeping because there's a low battery or they beeping because there's an issue in the house so of course we're always
going to air on the side of caution there um in response to the overall thing you know this is what we do through the budget process every year by the time the budget gets to you I promise the city manager has has really pushed and we've gone through a lot of exercises on how do how do we look at
all those things uh one of the things city manager has implemented that we've worked on is and you you all have seen them as our performance measures our performance measures speak directly to those efficiencies and the things and the difference that we're making in the community if you go back years ago there was not as many user fees the reason
user fees came was previous dire commissions directed and said we would like you to develop more fees to recover some of the costs specifically targeted towards the people that are utilizing those services so they weren't a complete offset they were just so that
it was it was one those things so that they didn't have to increase the millage rate as much that year or other things and to more directly allocate that cost so there's there's a lot that goes through that but I do assure you we look at efficiencies every day and everything we do how can we do it better um cost
for everybody that's in the community watching this is is the same as for all of us providing the service our costs go up for repairs on apparatus for equipment for everything else and so we have we've we continue to tighten our
belt and do those things I assure you but we'll continue to do so and find ways to do better thank you hope that answers your question city manager your yeah I just wanted to finish off the comment back that we were talking about we were only referring to when I asked
you about the parks and the building the use the fees of what you're talking about today the entire budget and everything that we are going to look at by no means are we saying that that will not be reviewed as it should be throughout the entire budget just the conversation
thank you commissioner Pro quick question to our consultant and to the staff so when you did take a look at the parks and wck user fee recovery you did not take into consideration the building's correct
that's the maintenance of the building is taken into consideration the capital cost of the building is I don't know of a way how to really include the capital cost for an individual person using a room inside a
building for half an hour um I'm sure you could take the total depreciation divide by total hours of usage divide by the members people of that day divide by the square footage of that room but that is not a way that it's usually done uh
it's usually done based on the maintenance of those assets uh and that is included in our calculation so maintenance is included yes sir from the accounting point of view uh and correct me if I'm wrong don't we use the depreciation that comes back to the city
manager's comment I mean we do have to take into account not only the hours per user but we can count the total hours of the week and to include the depreciation do we have to do this or do we look into
that as far as depreciation cost or simply for M maintaining those buildings as they age so and a government depreciation is not used until you get to the government-wide financial statements um
what you're looking at I think you're looking to apply that charge to a fee that only um a fee that benefits just one person there that I can think of there's
no building I can think of that is provided for that type of situation there's a building that's used um because it exists for other purposes fire their primary fire and EMS they're here to provide those Services now do
they do inspections could there you know I don't see how you could take the cost of that building and apply it to just the that we provide inspections in that fee because that building has the exist for their primary
purpose that's what you want well just that the kind of I think what would be the perfect example is war Mineral Springs you know we don't want to raise the prices because of the condition of the property we're about to spend $10
million restoring those buildings upgrading the property when we consider a fee schedule for that asset it's clearly as I look at this policy consideration slide it is
clearly in the individual benefit category when we look at our user fees I would like to see a depreciation of that $10 million over the life of those buildings you pick it 20 years 30 years whatever
um so that we really understand the cost of that asset and again we may or may not choose to amp up the user fees as a result of that but we need to understand what it costs
um and cost recovery I mean I'll tell you it it could significantly impact the user fees of warm Mineral Springs if we chose as a body to go 100% cost recapture um and and again I think we've
done the community a disservice in the past when we have said warm Mineral Springs pays for itself it doesn't we never once considered Property Maintenance costs um depreciating the
$5.5 million the city paid to acquire that asset and now another $10 million to bring that property to where it should be we need to understand if we're charging user
fees what the real cost of delivering that service to a very limited number of people because as this chart says if we're
subsidizing those individual user fees out of property taxes we need to understand that at a policy level we're burdening everybody with those costs in order to keep the costs low with the small group
of people who are really using that asset we just need to understand it and I agree with you uh and but for the cost recovery it's probably not related but for us as a board and to be
transparent we do have to see that with only one exception I do not agree that you said pick a number the depreciation has to be a certain number of years as as a guideline 20 or 30 whatever the counting right now is
specifying so we do need to know the depreciation cost so we can know exact cost of that building but from the uh consultant's presentation I I don't think it's relevant to to take into effect as a user Fe Recovery whatever
increase or decrease city manager just to piggy back on commissioner langan's Point um when we say more midle Springs than a 10 million dollars that we're using to fix that that is not property tax or taxpayers money that's the excess and I believe
there might be some C tax money in there but it's not the the global Community pay to re renovate woman of Springs if if I may yes sir when when we spend money even if it's
parts and wreck impact fees when we spend that money on warm Mineral Springs we're not spending it somewhere else we're not using that money to defay the cost of new jungle gym equipment or you
know restoring uh uh a park or or maintaining our Playing Fields so even though it's not property tax it it's all related it's a tax and and whenever we have used sir tax
to create something that's nice to have we have made a decision to not spend that money on something we need to have that's a policy choice and depending upon how you decide that you live with the
consequences and I think we would all agree that today this city is living with the consequence quences of 30 40 50 years of decisions and non-decisions it's got to stop off the
Box commer dual as I'm sitting here um I had a thought thoughts are good we need to vote the mayor sto early on to this meeting about we've got to
tighten the belt it occurred to me we have 900 city employees and uh I've been in an office just over 90 days and in those 90 days I
have conversed met with you know in some cases worked with quite a few city employees and I'm pretty impressed with the city employees that we have and what they do and it occurred to me that as part of belt
tightening wouldn't it be nice if we could have some kind of an awards program for all the employees in this city that if they come up with some idea that saves this city some money maybe they get some sort of a
reward for that like a share of some of the savings just a thought I like it anything else here my phip Commissioners it's
uh I mean this a good discussion I think I hope everyone listening takes it in the spirit in which it this these conversations were offered we're you know we do have lots of challenges in
lots of areas this year and you know the idea is always to do the best for the most it's always to be the best stewards of our citizens tax dollars and you know we're asking a lot of our citizens um we have because we
are growing we are challenged and we're trying to do the best we can to to balance the costs of all this growth and and to make sure that those who will benefit from them even those who have not yet even thought to move to this
city whether it be citizens or businesses that they pay their fair share too so you know uh it is a challenge and and we can't forget that part of what we do is to provide a quality of life you know we have we have
a set of pillars that that this city rests on and we can't slash away at anyone so severely that it destabilizes this city part of the reason people have come
here part of the reason why northport's so attractive and it's the most livable City in this state is because we offer a quality of life that not a lot of other cities do and so we have to be real careful to maintain the character at the same time do it in the most cost
effective way because as we've all heard today there are those Services we all share in or from time to time we may all share and there are others that are very particular to likes and interests of certain citizens and there's a balancing
act here so you know as we move forward we have to do it with deliberation and with thought but also with a with a bit of heart and Humanity because this needs to be a careful balance and so you know I I personally appreciate the conversation it's hard to know where
this was going to go were we just going to go H okay let okay here you go staff like go digest this and fit it into the budget somehow but there were some real good conversations and I hope the citizens who listen understand some of the the
challenges we have in trying to see how all this fits together um so again unless anyone has anything else City staff is there any better Direction you want from us what would you would you are you looking for a specific consensus
so I think we heard that you would like us to explore what the changes would look like based on the consultant recommendations we'll bring that back to you as we continue to put together the budget and make it part of the assumptions that you have to choose from in the near future all right so you guys
are good it's a great presentation I really appreciate it and staff for those of you who spoke up and for parks and rs who stood [Laughter] strong we do appreciate everything parks
and Rex offers this city and its citizens please do not think that is not the case despite that you hang a little lower on the tree doesn't mean like that you are not every bit as important to this city as every other department here so you know we'll work our way through
this process uh if there's nothing else I guess thought I was going to ask you thought I'd forget about public comments C clerk we have any public comments there is none good lord well
with that any general public comments there is none well then if there be nothing more to this it is 11:46 and I'll adourn this meeting thank you for having me for