[Music] I'm Stacy Losio. I'm the emergency manager for the city of Northport and I'm going to discuss first responders after the storm. So, it may take a while for first responders to get to after the storm and that's due to a variety of
reasons. One being we pull first responders off the roads when tropical storm force winds are sustained for their safety. that is a standard usually across the state and other states that have hurricanes as well. So, we will have a backlog of calls that have come in during the storm that we will
prioritize based on urgency and they'll be responding to those as well as the calls that are currently coming in if they're urgent as well. Also, the roads might be flooded. There might be debris in the roads. Our tactical first in teams will be going out right away to clear the roads of any hazards uh so
that our vehicles can get through and respond as quickly as possible. Just keep that in mind when you call after a disaster for assistance. We are coming. You are very important to us. We care about our residents and their safety, but it may just take a while for us to get to you depending on the conditions
of the roads. [Music]
Hello everyone. My name is Mario Van Diddi. I am the planner scheduler for the city of Northport solid waste. I got into this position um first I was a recycle driver for 5 years Monday and then came after 10 a.m. We're in the
city chambers and I call the city commission workshop meeting to order. Commissioners present our commissioner Duval, Mr. Langden, Mayor Stokes, Vice Mayor Emerich, and Commissioner Petro is absent. There is a quorum present for this meeting. Also present, city manager
Fletcher, interimm city attorney Goolan, city clerk FA, sport specialist Lane, police chief Garrison, and fire chief Titus. Uh, let us see. Jason, would you do us the honor, buddy? To the flag of the United States
of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all the clerk. Any public comments? I got three topics. Uh the first one is recycling over at the family uh service
center. I've been hanging out there in the office of Meals on Wheels for uh several months and there is no recycling within the building. Uh I carry my own paper and recycling items out of the building to discard them properly. So
even in this building we have recycled m uh bins and so I would highly suggest we have that at the family center. Uh also somewhere along the line has been changed as past or former commissioners
were always invited to ribbon cutings and groundbreings. We put in years of work within projects and then we are no longer invited to do the hurrah. uh I find that disappointing and I would like
to see that uh old system of doing things brought back. The last one is uh your meeting today talks on the linear parking that has been a thorn in my side
since 2017 when I got on board. It was supposed to be paid for through sir tax and I would still recommend it be paid with sir tax not the businesses along those strips paying for it not meters
going up in a section where we're having people come in from the outside to do business with our city it needs to be done through sir tax it was the money was in there it was stolen years ago by
commissioners making decisions to pay for something else. A pot of 25,000 was left in for both sides that eventually got taken too. So, don't know if it's on your current list of sir tax, but it needs to be. It's unfair to put that
burden on the these citizens and especially the businesses when it should have and was part of sir tax all along. Thank you. Thank you. That's all right. All right, moving on to presentations.
Uh 25-2185 presentation regarding 2025 hurricane season and city preparedness effort. City manager, your item. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We're going to have a presentation by our emergency manager Stacy Lucio, deputy city manager Mike
Novarez. Thank you both. Um, can we get the presentation up on the It's on this computer. Yeah, there we go. I'm too tall. We're good. All right. I'm Stacy Losio. I'm the emergency manager for the city of Northport. Morning. I'm Mike Neverz. I'm
the deputy emergency manager. Yes. So today we're going to talk about the 2024 hurricane season, some of the lessons learned there, some of the challenges um that we faced that we are um working to improve the city so that we can tackle
those um continue to tackle those in the future. And then we'll also talk about what the 2025 hurricane outlook is going to look like and how we're preparing the city. So seems like it was just yesterday. who was hurricane season 2024 and now we're
quickly heading into 2025 season. Uh last year Sarasota County was impacted by three storms, Debbie, Helen, and Milton. They were three very different storms with very different impacts. Debbie was a rain maker. It dumped 17 inches of rain in Sarasota County and
caused a lot of inland flooding there. Uh we also had Helen and that's what this picture is is Hurricane Helen. You can see how far the eye of the storm is from Sarasota County's coast and it still pushed seven to nine feet of storm
surge on those barrier islands and pushed water up the Maka and past some of our water control structures here in Northport. Um, so it just shows that the center of the storm can still be hundreds of miles away and we can still see significant storm surge impacts from those storms that parallel the coast.
And then Hurricane Milton, that was a direct perpendicular impact pretty much 90 degrees right at Siesta Key. Um that caused significant storm surge, but not as widespread. It didn't impact a bigger area because it was that direct impact.
Um but we had a lot of wind and debris also from that because we had the the eyewall come right through Sarasota County. So we had stronger winds there. So different impacts for different storms. No storm is alike. And that was definitely something that um was reinforced uh last
season. It also reinforced the need for a hardened EOC for the city. Uh people who are here and work in this building during a storm know that it's not a comfortable place to sleep. There's no showers. Uh it's very loud when the storm is passing over. Uh it doesn't have a lot of the technology needs. and
having to be activated twice, staying overnight on two separate occasions, living here that reinforced the need to have um a facility here in the city, a standalone heart in DOC. And then the realistic threat from backtoback storms, you know, it's a hypothetical. What happens if there's a backtoback? Odds
are that won't happen. Well, it happened. We had three storms really that impacted Sarasota County very, very, very close to here. If Hurricane Helen was just a little bit closer to our coast, Hurricane Melton was just a little bit further south, we would have had substantial damage here back to back
within 10 days. So, it's definitely something that is on our radar and we're going to continue to be prepared for. Um resource and preparedness measures, debris, messaging, those are all things that we worked through and we're continuing to improve. Um, a big
challenge with debris, not so much for us because we were able, we weren't as heavily impacted as Sarasota County, was the competition for debris vendors because Helen not only impacted Florida, but all the way up into North Carolina
and then Hurricane Milton came through and there's only so many debris haulers and monitors around. So, it was really a struggle to um get debris haulers into Sarasota County. Um, and that's something that we're working with the county if that were to happen again, how can we um, mitigate that and make sure
we have the resources here that we need. Um, and then that goes into that funding piece. Um, which, um, I won't get too much into the referendum, but the emergency borrowing and being able to fund the back-to-back disasters. Um, we're constantly talking
about what what we can do to leverage existing funding. So things that we've improved uh our emergency personnel policy uh we updated the process for implementing the policy. So we have now our emergency role policy that we'll talk about a little bit
further in the presentation as well. But we created updates along with human resources and the city manager's office to leverage everybody in the city to be able to help us uh prepare for respond to and recover from disasters. We have a vast variety of skills in the city. We
want to make sure that we put all those skills to use to the best of our abilities after disaster to respond and recover more quickly. Uh we updated our plans based on lessons learned that includes our comprehensive emergency management plan, our evacuation plans.
Um and then we also had workshops all last week to create plans for each section working in the emergency operations center. Um mutual aid agreements and contracts. We're working on a mutual aid agreement with uh Florida Power and Light to have them stage here in the city, which would be
great. Um right now they stage at the Brave Stadium uh for basically regional response, but to have a response dedicated just for Northport here um will be great resource for us to have. We're constantly doing hurricane
trainings and exercises, not only with our city personnel, but also with our partners. We have increased collaboration with local, state, federal, and non-governmental partners. We're constantly working with county, the state, FEMA. Um we have a Coast
Guard auxiliary here in Sarasota County. There's all sorts of partners here. Um and our non-governmental partners, that's United Way does amazing work for the city of Northport. Um they have a long-term recovery group that is now handling recovery from not only Ian, but Debbie, Helen, and Milton as well, and
they're going to continue to do that great work here. um established additional department operations center. So parks and wreck, they are going to have a department operations center. Now um we're having discussions with other departments as well just so that we can better collaborate with the departments
after a disaster. They have their core people on site or somewhere with uh connectivity so that we never lose contact with them and all of our departments can continue to operate. And then uh our storm ready renewal which uh deputy emergency manager Mike Neverz did
a lot of great work working with the national her um the national weather service to get our storm ready status renewed. So we are a storm ready city still. Okay. And I'll hand it over to Mike to talk about the predictions for next
season. So that takes us to what the 2025 season might look like. uh the headline that they've been saying is a dynamic hurricane season, which I think is another way of just saying a potentially above average hurricane season again. Uh so what average looks
like is 14 named storms. So that anything that's a tropical storm or greater, they name seven hurricanes and three majors, which is a category 3 hurricane or above. That's an average season. Last year we had an above average season. We had 18 name storms.
11 of them formed into hurricanes and five of them were that category three or higher major storm. So looking at the different predictions, we look at three of them because the National Hurricane Center, which is the official prediction, uh is not out yet. So ACUE weather, they give a range for theirs.
So they're predicting anywhere between three 13 to 18 name storms. So pretty much above that average point. Uh 7 to 10 hurricanes and three to five majors. Uh Colorado State University, although Colorado has never once been hit by a hurricane, their meteorology department
has a premier meteor uh hurricane forecast that we look at very closely every year. Uh they're saying 17 on the name storm, so pretty close to that 2024 season. Nine hurricanes and four majors. And then right here at home, we have the Sarasota Climate Adaptation Center,
which is a 501c3 nonprofit do that does a lot of meteorolog meteorological work. Uh they're saying 17 name storms as well, 10 hurricanes and five majors. And then the National Hurricane Center, we expect to get that information on May 15th. They put their official forecast
out two weeks beforehand. Which takes us to why why another potentially above average season. So very high level on the intense meteorological stuff. There's a couple different factors that all these forecasts all these different centers
look at for their forecast. First one is how hot the water is. So they're still predicting above average surface temperatures, but the sea surface temperatures this year do not seem like they're going to be near as high as last year, which is a good sign for us in comparison to last year's season. But a lot of that can change just depend upon
how much rain we get and how hot the summer is. So this is definitely our initial projection and could change. Then there's the neutral ENSO. That's the El Nino Leninia. So we're going to be in a neutral. We're not going to be in either El Nino or L'inia. this year for hurricane season. And basically, El
Nino makes it generally that the Atlantic hurricane season is less and lin depending upon where the wind currents are and how much shear there is. So, being in net neutral, being in between the two, it means that that's really not going to have too much of an effect. So, it's going to be kind of
that's going to be more of the average side of it. Uh, then there is the Bermuda high. So basically around Bermuda there is this high pressure system that is always there but it es and flows of about how high that is and when it gets stronger it basically pushes things away from it. So this year
they're predicting a stronger Bermuda high which means that those potential tropical waves and tropical storms they're going to form lower down which usually puts us a bit more of a path towards Florida than if it's weaker that's where it curves off into the Atlantic a little bit more. Then there
is overall they're predicting a lower level of wind shear. So windshar is really what took down Milton. So wind shear is when you have those higher level winds that are stronger. It makes it harder for those hurricanes to form or stay formed. So if you have lower levels of wind shear then that's a little bit more conducive to hurricanes
forming. And then the last one is that saharin dust. So as you get dust pulled off of the Saharan desert and goes into the the air there, it makes it harder because hurricanes really need moisture to form. So as more dust is blown off of Africa, it really stifles the ability of
those hurricanes to form. So they're predicting a little bit less saharin dust this year than last year. That's usually seen in the earlier part of hurricane season. Generally the dust kind of ramps down by the time you get to September, which is another reason why like late August to early October is
you that peak hurricane time frame. Early October. Yeah. All right. So like I said earlier, we're continuing to prepare. we would be preparing whether the hurricane forecast was zero storms, whether it said, you
know, 20 storms. Um it only takes one to hit Northport for it to be a bad season for us. So, we're always prepared and uh ready to go whenever we're needed. Um so, we're continuing to implement lessons learned from Helen and Milton. Uh we have a corrective action
spreadsheet um where we're making sure that all the lessons that we've learned are being implemented and we've been um keeping track of all of that. Improving coordination among departments and external partners with our trainings and exercises and our regular communication
um web EOC. So that is a software that is not new to the state of Florida but it's going to be new to Northport. The state of Florida has been using it for several years and it's how they process all of our resource requests. So now we have our own webc instance that will allow us to be on the same system as the
county and the state. So when we request resources, it'll be a lot more streamlined. We'll be able to have more visibility of where our resources are after we order them. So that is uh a big step up for us and we're very excited to have that rolling this hurricane season. Um expanding the emergency roles for
city employees. So we now have a tier system. So there are four tiers that a city employee can be assigned to. Tier one is our first responders. That includes fire, PD, public works, utilities, some of our development services that do those uh damage
assessments. We consider those first responders. They're out in the field right after the disaster. Um then we have tier 2. Those are the people that work in this building. that is emergency operations center workers, the call center and then the communications uh personnel who work in the joint
information center. We have tier three, those are the department essential people. So those are the people who are assigned mission essential functions that need to happen to keep the continuity of government happening for their department. And then we have tier four. They're not assigned anything, but
they're on standby and they're ready to go. So with every disaster, you never know what's going to come up. So, it could be that we need to open a second staging area, so we need to call in more employees. So, they're at home on standby ready to go. We call them and we bring them in to help. Um, and they'll
um get last minute training and ensure that all safety is in place for those staff. it. Um, so everybody is assigned to a specific tier and that's very helpful because for me during a disaster if I do have to have an operation pop up that I need staff, I now have a list of
people who are ready and available to come in and assist. So it is going to be a way to have our personnel a lot more organized this year. Very excited about that. And then we're identifying mitigation strategies for critical infrastructure. There's some mitigation grants that Sarasota County has
available to us. Um Mike Nava has done a great job working with the local mitigation group. Um actually helped create their uh point system for ranking uh all the projects. Just giving them a little plug. Um so uh we have identified
some projects for that and um we're um hoping to get some funding through the Helen and Milton uh mitigation grants. All right. And then really hurricane prepar preparedness starts at the individual level. So it's definitely something that you all can help us with
to get this word out to as many people as possible. Um the first thing that we want everybody to know is to understand their evacuation level. So evacuation level is different than a flood zone. It's the basically it's based upon storm surge and it's the way in which the county and the city will call
evacuations in preparation of hurricanes. uh really for life-saving measures and different than a flood zone which is that day-to-day how risky is my personal property to flooding in a non-hurricane event. And we also want everybody to sign up for alerts Sarasota
by going to alerts sarasota county.com and that's how individuals can sign up for those emergency alerts. So if something impacts the city of Northport or Sarasota, that's where those buzzers are going to go off on their phone to give them that life-saving information. Uh there are also four evacuation
centers within Northport. Uh generally the county's policy has been to open every single evacuation center every time evacuation centers are open. So those locations are Northport High School, Aaron Creek Middle, Atwater Elementary and Woodland Middle. And that information is all on our website as
well as the county's website. And all of those evacuation centers are pet friendly. But as we kind of like to say, the evacuation centers are lifeboats. They're not cruise ships. Basically, it's a space on the floor that is in a safe building and nothing else. So, if somebody's going to an evacuation
center, we want them to bring everything that they need for that time there, including anything that they have for their pets, any medication, all of that. The county also offers a medical uh needs program registration. So, this is typically for individuals that have special medical needs. Um, somebody
typically it'll be electrical dependency, somebody might need electricity for oxygen, they might have a refrigerated medication that they need. So to do so, they can go on to the county's website to sign up for that medical needs program, and the county will go through and approve them. And there are special medical needs
evacuation centers that are only for those people that are on those list. And it ensures definitely redundancy for that electricity so that those individuals that have those special needs and access functional needs are able to have that life-saving care. It has generally a greater degree of intervention as well from providers. Uh
we also heavily heavily heavily encourage everybody to have a disaster supply kit. Guidance used to be three days. It's now going up to seven days nationwide. And really it gives gives people that that uh comfort, that safety to have the supplies that they need for those seven days, you know, because we
don't know what individual disasters are going to look like. We don't know the state of the city. We are going to be coming out to help everybody as soon as possible. But we know that in a widespread incident like Ian where there's total loss throughout parts of the city that we want to have people to be as self-reliant for those seven days
as possible. So there is a really great supply kit on the ready.gov page that we link to on our website as well. So people can go on there and see a sample supply kit for building out everything that they might need for those seven days. And then we encourage people to prepare their homes ahead of a
hurricane. That's putting up your shutters, that's taking things outside that might be debris and bringing them indoors and just getting the house ready whether you're planning to evacuate or planning to shelter in place. And then we have some great events to get this information out to residents as well. Uh
we have our annual hurricane expo that's going to be on May 31st at GMAC from 10 to 2. And then we also Stacy and I will go out and we'll talk to residents, we'll talk to communities, talk to HOAs, we can speak at churches, wherever that we can get this information out to people. People can sign up to have Stacy
and I come out there and share this life-saving information by going to northportfl.gov, request a speaker, and we'll come out and we'll say this to anybody. So, we want to get this information. Any questions? Questions? I have a couple. Um, one a
comment. I went to the recent employee training for their emergency roles and that was very well done. I really commend you for um sort of making that response more robust. I think that's
terrific. I was looking for a role though and I didn't see myself on the list. So, um, and then a question getting out of the way, the web EOC, that software package, um, would it
be appropriate or do we integrate our local nonprofits and business community as part of that? I recall particularly after Ian that our nonprofits, not just those located in Northport, but some
that are um located further away really helped with supply dispersements and and all of that kind of thing. Would it be appropriate to link them in or is it really I mean if
we're requesting support it might be a great way of integrating those folks into the response. Just a suggestion. We we might not be able to have them log in directly but absolutely we want to capture that information any way that we
can. WebOC allows us to set up mapping. So, we want to coordinate through the nonprofit network to get as many of those sites coordinated and we can map all of that out through webc and push that information out so that we have the nonprofit channel that's all working together and we know about all those
sites that are up and coming because I know that during a disaster there's a lot of nonprofits and a lot of faith-based organizations out there doing the good work and we can get a handle on that we want to. Right. Right. because I think it's helpful if we have three street corners that need coverage
to not have three nonprofits on one street corner and two empty. So again, just a thought. Thank you. Um I remember after Ian that one of the issues um was that Northport did not have a
representative in the county EOC. Um are we addressing that in our enhanced policy? So, so that before the storm hits, we we have representation there. ACM Balia does a fabulous job up
there for us. We call her with a question and she goes right up to the table that that representative is at and gets us everything we need. Yes, I heard she was a rock star in that role. So, that's good. And and then a question, do
we do something similar with the Charlotte EOC? We do not I mean we don't send represent representation to Charlotte County, but we work very closely with Charlotte County. Okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you.
That's all I have. Anybody else mattress? I think we'll put in a resource request for her. She had to sleep on a floor last night. She has a buck. It's just do you prefer to use it or not?
Any other questions? Anything else? Thank you very much. I do have a question related for city manager on this and it may take the form of another agenda item somewhere else but have we given much consideration in the event the emergency borrowing referendum fails
have we developed any kind of a strategy for financial management of disaster recovery in other words after Ian we spend an enormous amount of money perhaps more money than it would have been prudent to
spend in the event that we got hit again with a reoccurring storm afterwards. So I wonder if it would be prudent of us to perhaps not in today's meeting but for another workshop item or a special agenda item somewhere to discuss our
strategy financially because I think commission in the event we get hit with a storm, you know, it's right away we got to clear debris. we've got to do this that we've but maybe we should have a strategy on how much of our our fund balances we're willing to commit to a
storm. We need to maybe have those kinds of discussions because I would hate to see us in the same position and and I don't know how prudent it would be to expend the kind of resources we did after Ian, you know, to do that again in light of the fact that we could very
easily get hit again, find ourselves in a in a horrible position. So, we may want to prioritize the kind of relief, you know, debris, uh, critical infrastructure that that inhibits people to get around. I mean, I there's just a conversation to have and I didn't know if staff's done any of that or because
ultimately it's it's us to decide how much money gets spent on this kind of stuff. So, you know, once a disaster hits, it's kind of a little late to be scrambling a strategy together. So, so thank you, Mr. Mayor. So our strategy would be to use the reserves that we
have in place in order to handle oursel the same way that we did have at the end. The only thing that would change is if we did have borrowing authority that would make you want to go in a different way to keep that money in your hands. But until we get past the decision of whether we're we're going to have it or not, I don't know that we would want to
I don't think we would want to have a conversation with that much detail that would sort of confuse people at the same time as well. I think what you and the staff definitely want to know is that we are going to be covered and we're going to make sure that we are not going to be
put in a position to fail financially. And that's what our finance team does is they sort of lay out the plans of how we recover. But I don't it's up to the board, but I don't see that being a public conversation for that particular reason. certainly
premature at this time until the 13th comes and goes, but depending on how that goes, this may be an item to revisit at some point. Um, but okay, other than that, I don't have anything more. Appreciate the presentation. Thank you.
Any public comment on this item? Moving on to B 25-2204 presentation regarding inventory list of city-owned surplus property sites that are appropriate for use as affordable housing. City manager your
item. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Um this conversation um we are going to discuss whether move forward placement of the list of identify surplus property suitable for affordable housing um on a regular commission agenda item if necessary.
this. We know that affordable housing and the property we have is very limited. So, we're going to get an overview here and get some directions from the board. Good morning, city commission. My name is Thomas Fierelli. I just recently, about nine weeks ago, moved to the state of Florida from the state of Oregon,
which is where I've spent the majority of my career. I will note that I actually grew up in Florida. So, I went to high school here before the high school was built and I'm now returning back home. So, it's a wonderful opportunity to be here today. Um, I have
a couple of resources that I will be sharing on the screen this morning. One of them is an a map that we have developed which shows all of these properties uh within their specific zoning districts. And secondly, I'm going to take a moment to navigate over
to our own zoning map within the city of Northport so I can zoom in to specific parcels for which you may have questions. Bear with me just a moment. Excellent. And while this is loading, I will bring up the map that we've
developed specific for this list. You have in front of you as well as within the agenda for members of the public a list of the properties that we have identified under live local. I've also created some additional resources should those be of interest to commissioners
this morning. Uh this includes just some of my notes covering the Florida statutes and the laws that uh this list was developed under as well as uh an attachment of the list should folks like to have this. We will be returning to you during a regular commission meeting
in order to request uh that you approve a resolution under the state requirements for live local. So a brief overview, Florida statute 166451 requires municipalities within the state of Florida to prepare an
inventory list of all real property within its jurisdiction that the municipality owns as fe simple every 3 years. Once the inventory list is adopted through resolution, it will be required to be publicly available for entities that would like to identify
those properties and develop said affordable housing. This is in compliance with the Florida statute with a primary purpose for those city-owned real property parcels to be there for independent developers as well as those nonprofit organizations uh such as
Habitat for Humanity, for example. And once the inventory list is adopted through res resolution, it's required by state statute to again be available on our website so that folks can download that and see if they'd like to identify any of those parcels for
development. The parcel count, we have specifically 118 parcels on this list. Uh and this process was initially begun some time ago early in 2024. There was engagement with all of the departments
within the city of Northport. So, as you can see, there is a significantly longer list than the 118 that we've identified specifically for affordable housing. Our departments, including utilities, public works, and other entities, identified parcels that would not be appropriate
for affordable housing for one of many different reasons that they provided back to us. We our staff prior to my arrival here, I've had about the last eight weeks that I've been here to be engaged in this process, the staff had the opportunity to work with all of those departments and identify columns
within that spreadsheet which said, is it is it appropriate for affordable housing? And that's where we have that yes or no column. Uh and these again are properties that are viable building sites. And so you'll notice there are a number of these within some of our
activity centers. As you all know, we cannot build single family housing within those areas, but those would be appropriate for multif family housing under the uldc provisions that guide those specific jurisdiction areas. Um, and uh, these pro these parcels may
be utilized through long-term lease, through sale, or through donation by the city to an affordable housing developer. In the R1 zoning district, just to quantify this for you, there are 88 properties within the R1 district. So
the vast majority of that 118 uh list of properties would largely be single family residential homes of which some of them depending on the way that legislation moves forward may be able to develop an accessory dwelling unit in the future if and when that happens at
the state level. Um in the R2 zoning district there are four properties. In the R3 zoning district there are two properties and within corridor there are three properties. So again, those would likely be multif family
housing. The corridor transitional slightly more. We have 17 properties within that specific district. Within activity center 3, which I alluded to a few moments ago, there is one property, just one, that would be appropriate for affordable housing. In activity center
6, there would be two properties appropriate for affordable housing. an activity center one. Once again, uh just one property that would be appropriate for affordable housing. And again, I'll direct your attention to the screen and also for members of the public who would like to see where these properties
actually fall within our zoning map. And as I noted a few moments ago, I also do have the zoning map available here, and I could search for specific properties if commissioners have questions about any of them in particular. I'll also note again just for the record that we
will be back again for a regular commission meeting in order to present to you the resolution. The intent of today's meeting is to show you the properties that have been identified and ask if you have any questions or feedback for us. I have a question. Um, I'm reviewing the
list and I just have a few questions about the list. So, the first couple of pages are highlighted in yellow. I might have missed. Are these the ones that are most appropriate? That is correct. Okay. [Music]
Um, in looking at the list, I mean, my and I think I heard you say and I want to confirm that any housing development in in any zoning that's activity center would have to be a
multi-family development. No single family homes. That is correct. Okay. And then I see some of these. So I'm looking at it doesn't matter, but um an R1
residential with a yes um for development, I think. But it's drainage reservoir. Wouldn't that disqualify a property from residential development? Or should it? As a point of
clarification, is it one of the ones that's highlighted? Great. So, those are ones that our public works folks have looked at and determined that they would not need to reserve that or keep that off the list. So, this did get vetted by other departments, but if you would give
me the P uh that you're specifically referencing, the purpose of this meeting is absolutely to take those questions and just double check if there's anything that you are concerned about. Yeah, if I'm reading this correctly. So, there's one again. I printed it out and
it's very small. Okay. P0971 131223. It's identified as drainage reservoir. So would that be potentially identified
for Oh my goodness, I have friends. Yeah. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. The uh list downloaded and provided incorporates the county's designated land use types. And the
county has a tendency to identify those land use types not based on our zoning but based on the ownership. And so if the Northport Road and Drainage District owns that property, they identify them as drainage
reservoirs. Okay. So it might not be underwater property. It's that's correct. Correct. So, our uh road and drainage district did review this list and they did u reserve some parcels that they know are needed for future storm
water or for expansion of existing storm water areas. Okay. And I would also hope that any property in a corridor or any other zoning type that equals commercial
would not be developed for housing. That would just be my preference. Let me put it out there. There seems to be plenty of other properties that we wouldn't have to target the six that
through a lot of pain, sweat, and bleeding, we converted to commercial properties. I don't want to see residents, right? Does our local law allow us there? Um our our code right now
requires the corridor and corridor transitional to be mixed use if residential is incorporated. Um there are some bills that have been um approved in the legislature that modify
the live local act and open up mixeduse properties um intended for mixed use to the live local act. but they also incorporate a requirement for 10% commercial. So, moving forward,
we'll see if the governor signs those bills um in which case we will be preempted um and only allowed to enforce that 10% commercial. Wonderful. Lori, have they have they passed both the House and the Senate? I
Sorry. Yes, they have. I I knew they were moving along. I just didn't know if they made it through. So, it's going you're going to the to the governor's desk. Yes, sir. Thank you. Anything else, commissioners? Mr. Dell,
u quick look at that map that you had up. Uh, I kind of looked at one one area and uh I saw a little dot on here. Can you see where it says low Largo preserve
at the bottom middle of the screen? Yes, sir. Right above the word Largo. Okay. Uh, and there's a there's a there's a spot right there. I'm going to have to look that one up after the meeting to see exactly what it is. But that looks like Sadet Lane. As far as I know, that is a that is a single
family zoned area. And how are we going to put affordable housing? So, a majority of the sites are within the single family residential districts. Um, affordable housing as as you all
very well know is based on the area median income. So, anything from 30% all the way up to 60% AMI is typically what we call affordable housing with 60 to 120 being in what we typically call workforce housing range. Um, we could absolutely and organizations such as
Habitat for Humanity, those which operate within cities that have predominantly single family neighborhoods and that's what the housing mix is is really desired in terms of what the citizens are looking for. They do build those types of houses and they do develop contracts so they can place families within those homes
within single family districts. So we want a mix of housing essentially that provides affordable housing to all of the different typologies that people would be looking for whether they have a family and they would like a yard or they prefer to live in an apartment complex and be more along the multif family type. So you're saying that it
would still be a single family home that would be there. Yes, absolutely. So, I don't want to imply that affordable housing means you you'd have um any density greater than single family. As I mentioned, the 88 properties here, the vast majority of the ones on this list would be single family residences if and
until there's actually the law that's passed allowing for an accessory dwelling unit on each property, then that's the only time you'd actually see some middle housing or anything with two units or above. Thank you. Anything
else? All right. Appreciate it very much. Thank you. Look forward to bringing bringing this back. And uh we have any public comment on this. We'll move it right along to C2-2093. Presentation and possible
direction on a proposed assessment for Tamiami Trail linear parking. City Manager is sure it Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This presentation will um restart the conversation regarding the parking that we know on Tanyam Trail that has been ongoing for multiple years, but we're
going to provide you our latest updates and information that we have. And I will now turn over to the assistant public works director, Miss Trisha Whisner. Thank you, ma'am. Welcome. Good morning. Trisha Wisner, deputy director of public works. With me I have Vita Quinn um SCS
engineering and she will go through the methodology as to how we got to the technical report and then we're all here to answer. Give me one second to get this it beeping but it won't let me click on
anything. I see it. Call in the help. drive to just not working here. I always feel better when I teach people button to make it happen. Sobody else.
That's pretty good. Want to try a drive? I'm Vita Quinn, director of management services for SCS. we worked on this um assessment for you all. So, I just wanted to walk through the methodology basically today, how we got to where we are and um next steps and get some
recommendations. Um the basis for the assessment was that you do have a number of businesses along Tamiami Trail that don't have sufficient parking for the types of uses of those businesses. Um you're looking at installing parking along that frontage road there. Um, and
the easiest way to recover those costs from the property owners is by means of a non-advelorum special assessment. So, just so you get an idea, this is the map of the area. I'll show you all the businesses that'll be benefiting from the parking. Parking
being along that roadway um on either side in front of those businesses. Nonvalorum assessments, I know you're familiar with this, but just as a refresher, can be used to cover the cost of these capital improvements. The basis for an assessment, how it differs from a
fee, is it's based on special benefit provided to those properties and therefore the costs um that are to be put into that assessment or portion on the basis of benefit or relief of burden, not on the property values as
would your taxes. The special benefits that are really being received by the properties that are to be assessed here is that there will be additional parking which is which um means increased ease of access to the property. Um and in the longer term that actually increases property
values as well as rental values of those parcels. The cost that preliminary I'm I'm going to go ahead and say upfront everything in here is preliminary. Um, the engineering costs have been quoted, but some of these other things are assumptions that we're going off of, but
this is our best estimate at this point. So, you have some of the construction costs and the cost to install parking meters, which we'll get to in a minute, how that might factor into this assessment, is 2.2 2.3 million. There's another additional probably $100,000 in
costs are anticip anticipated to be annual maintenance costs for um the parking spaces and meters. Um, oh, it's important to note in that right column with the totals is the annual cost. So rather than trying to
pay for all the capital costs up front or to assume um that you're borrowing necessarily, we are just advertising those costs over the useful life of those parking spaces and the parking meters.
The methodology that we chose, again, we're looking for how best to aortion the benefit being received by these properties is to look really at who's going to be using the parking spaces. And parking really has to do with the number of trips that a a business is
generating, right? So you have some restaurants in there, high turnover, lots of patrons throughout the day, whereas you might have some that would be just a small office building, less likely to need as much additional parking because there just aren't as many cars coming and going throughout
the day. So um based on the getting in the weeds a little bit, Institute of Transportation Engineers has trip generation rates based on property uses. I'll just leave it at that. But we calculate then the anticipated trips for each property
based on the size of the building and the trips generated per thousand square feet. And then we look at what the business's net parking requirement would be. Meaning that most of these businesses do have parking available to them. It just may not be sufficient for the number of trips that are generated
through a day. So we would take the the number of trips anticipated less the the um parking spaces available to them. Whatever remains would be their net parking requirement. Um there were a few assumptions that we had to make because
of businesses that don't traditionally have all of their patrons parking. The drive-through banks, you may have about half of those customers that will actually park and go inside, the other half going through the tellers, never really requiring parking spaces. Um, same can be said for car
washes and gas stations. While those parking spaces there may be utilized somewhat, um, it's not a regular requirement. So, there's very little of those trips generated by that business that would really require additional parking spaces. And then we started to look at
how to formulate the assessment. There was another question of how easy is this going to be to understand and to administer and maintain every year. meaning that every year you have to go back in and make sure that you're assessing these properties um the right amounts and business uses do change over
time. We know what the list of businesses currently is is what the property uses currently are but as those things might change over time um it might become a little more difficult. So we had the concept of looking at
restaurant uses versus non-rest uses. The primary reason for that being, as I mentioned earlier, restaurants do tend to generate more trips in a day. But also, they require a significant amount of tenant improvements. Meaning that you have to install kitchen, grease traps,
special equipment, things like that that make it highly unlikely that what is a restaurant today is going to be accountants's office tomorrow. And vice versa. buildings that don't have these improvements are highly unlikely in the near future to be turned into a
restaurant. So, we looked at a methodology where we calculated it based on current use but also as well as average um use by class. Again, restaurant versus non-rest. And then now back to the parking meters. There are about 150
spaces uh that are going to be um there. And the concept would be that if you install parking meters, those spaces would be used at least somewhat during the day and that would generate some revenue that might serve to offset some of the cost of the assessment. So this
slide really just shows you the anticipated annual revenue um for those parking meters. And the assumption given the current calculations is that as long as those meters are utilized about 11% of the time, it would be a net benefit to the
properties um that are paying that assessment. These are what the assessments would turn out to be per billable trip. So again based on that methodology um for however many trips each parcel would generate or net trips
um with and without parking meters based on actual and average trip generation. You can see that it doesn't vary a lot. It's um about a dollar difference but it uh the average trip generation generation being just an easier way to
kind of look at and understand that assessment. And that's really all I have to say as far as the methodology. Now, understanding um like I mentioned, this is kind of the first step in the process. These costs are not finalized, but it's really more to get some input
from all of you regarding the methodology. Um and you know what you see being most feasible going forward. Understanding their recommendation is though that you would um assess 100% of the costs associated with this so that you're recovering those through the b
businesses that are benefiting. I'll take any questions. Commissioners, Mr. Dval. Yes. Um down near the corner of Biscane 41 across from the Northport
Library, there are some parking spaces there. Who pays for those? I have heard there are parking spaces. I have people that will tell you that. City Chuck speak public works director. So there are some linear parking spaces
that were installed in a project earlier uh that the city had done that were paid for through Certex. Um kind of expanding a little bit. Uh during our public comment, former commissioner, you know, I mentioned sir
tax money. Uh has this genuinely been totally decided in the past that we're not using sir tax money for this project? We're definitely going to be assessing or is this up to us to decide what we're going to do? I can I I can
answer that. Can decide. Right. So this this is bringing back there was there was a request by commission uh to bring back funding options for this um road and drainage funds 107 funds aren't qualified for this transportation impact fees can't be used for this can or
cannot cannot cannot it has to increase the capacity of our network our roadway network this does not do that right so this these parking spaces benefit those businesses more than they do the city and every resident within the city it. So that's what precludes that road and
dra drainage district funds as well. And I'm assuming that's why they paid originally was sir tax the last time. So it was funded somewhat through certax. I knew design was back in 16 I think this project started or switched over to 19.
Um and then some funds were pulled back out of it and that's when commission decided to prioritize other projects in front of this one. Right. So now as far as prioritization, um I noticed when I was looking
and the lady just mentioned also, you know, that we will be keeping track in the future of uses of some of the properties. Like some of the properties are vacant right now, but maybe someone's going to build a a store and
put a business in there. And will they then be you know will will we look at things again and you know and add them to the assessment. This would have to be updated regularly. This just like our methodologies for any any other assessment that we do. And then uh
installing parking meters. As far as I know we don't have any parking meters in the city of Northport. No sir. Uh, if we do this for this, um, how do I put this? I guess those business owners have a complaint that,
hey, wait a minute, our customers have to pay a fee. That can hurt our business a little bit. What about other customers at other parking areas around the city? uh you know, do we have an issue there of
uh deciding where and when we'll put parking meters? Again, parking meters uh were one of the things brought up when we had this discussion. So, so we looked into that. We're personally parking meters are uh kind of a maintenance and
enforcement challenge uh for a city. And to have a just that few parking meters, you would have to hire someone to maintain those. You know, PD would have to enforce. You have to weigh that versus what they would actually bring in. But it is an offsetting revenue for these
parking spaces. Also, u thank my wife for this. She said like, "Oh, you're going to need to hire a a meter maid." Likely. Likely. Yes.
Okay, that's all I've got for questions. Vice Mayor, yeah, since we're on the subject of the meter made on your one chart, that $78,000 under maintenance, would that be for the position of the meter rate? See, that's that's what I
was fingering. And then on that same chart, it was $ 250 an hour to park there. Is that a a national going rate at this point or is that just a number that's what I pay a lot? Well, the
reason I ask is are they automotive? You know, automatic to where you put it on a card and then you get charged for the time you're there or you got to run out every hour and put 250 in. No, the this was the again this was these are all assumptions but our research was done based on those kiosks that you're used
to seeing now where you pay at the kiosk not putting in quarters anymore for however many hours you choose at that time. Well, the reason I ask is is uh Commissioner Deval brought up a good point. When you're at like let's say a restaurant and I'm going to use Anamaria
Oyster Bar as an example, you could have an hour wait outside trying to get in to have your dinner. Then you have your you could be in there for two to three hours and now you just added 750 to the cost of their meal by having to park there to
where in other areas you don't have that. Now since I'm on an Maria Oyster Bar and the Moose specifically, that's where one of our hugest parking problems are, you know, with damage to the swelles and stuff in the rainy season.
Would they they both have the same need? Would they share the same type of cost towards that going in or would one, let's just say the moose may have a little less impact than Anamaria Oyster Bar
does. How does that get divvied up there if everybody's fighting over those same parking spots? Sure. To get in. And I can let you answer that. It's it's square footage. Well, in terms of using those spaces, that's just going to be first come, first serve. No, I understand that. But the assessment to
the business, the assessment is the net assumed trips. So let's say Anamaria generates 100 trips, but it has 50 parking spaces available to it. It's going to get build for those assumed additional 50 trips. But let's say the
moose only generates um 30 trips and it has 20 spaces available to it. That would be 10 that would be left over that would be assessed for. So, it's based on the assumption of we did some GIS and overhead analysis and looked at the parking spaces available um to each
business and just calculated the number of those additional spaces that they would really need to use. Okay. But we we also have other businesses down that same roadway. When we're looking at this, are we just looking at small sections or are we looking at doing that
whole roadway, let's say between Northport Boulevard and I can't remember the name of that road, but where the hotel is, are we going to make that whole section parking rather than just the corner for the existing super need right now? So,
if you look at the the overhead or your screens, all of the highlighted businesses would have parking in front of them. So, it would run that that stretch from Northport over to uh to the motel at the spot you're
speaking at. Okay. But on those vacant parcels, would there be no parking there or would that be included to go as as we're doing it, are we going to do it all or we just going to peacemail it? Put parking here and move down and put parking there. The parking will run the entire length. Okay. And then the vacant
properties, they could possibly be assessed for the areas right in front of them or no. Once a business came in, yeah, vacant parcels are assumed to not generate any trips. So there wouldn't be an assessment based on there not being any benefit at the time, but once the
parcels developed, yes. Okay. And this this is the last thing I got. Mayor, when we're talking about certax or meters or anything like that, we and like Commissioner Deval brought up brought up, we don't have meters anywhere else. We don't have the
maintenance for meters. We're not going to create another position to watch these meters. Cert seems to be the viable answer to get this done. And I'll tell you why. These businesses are the ones that are generating the sales tax
that's coming into certax. So by their business itself, they're generating the certax funds to be able to be used back on the business. Now I've always said, why should uh tax money help a private business? To me, now it's the private
business is helping to pay for their escalating needs, especially in parking. So when we come back again, those are some of the discussions we need to have because I'm I'm really not in favor of 250 an hour parking. I'm not in favor of
having meters out there and having to maintain them. It's just like we're adding more to the problem to where if we just set aside funding, get it done, then we move on. Yeah, you may have to sweep it out every once in a while. With the street sweeper, you're doing the roads anyways. Just whip in there and do
it. I I think it's a lot less complicated and everybody will benefit from it. Not only the businesses, but the patrons and this that and the other because I mean after you get done eating dinner in the raining season, you got to walk out to your car and you're parked right next to a ditch. I mean, how
comfortable is that when you had a nice night out with your loved one? So, I I I see the need and I'd like to get it resolved somehow down the road. That's all I have. Thank you, Commissioner Langden. Yeah, I'm really struggling with this.
And philosophically, I have no issue with the businesses chipping in. I have no issue with paid parking. Let me tell you, Anamaria Oyster Bar isn't cheap. You go there for dinner, a few more bucks for
parking. So, philosophically, I'm good with all of it. But, but here's what I've also been thinking about. All of these businesses are in an area that we really
want to be commercially viable. We've reszoned. We've done a lot of things to stimulate economic development in these areas. And I'm
assuming that any new commercial development is done so with adequate parking. I'm looking at Miss Elena. You don't have to come down. She's nodding. So safe assumption. So these are all the older
businesses in the area. I could easily see in a few years some of these properties being bought up, torn down, and something else built. So, what am I getting at?
All along Tamiami, we're going to have this issue of how do we stimulate and balance economic development and rehabbing honestly of the
area with implementing business unfriendly policies. I'm I'm just trying to reconcile this in my mind. And a few months ago, I was much clearer on what I thought we should
do. But the experience with Anamaria Oyster Bar, they have done so much to really improve the quality of life in the city. Why should we punish them by making them pay for parking? And again,
at a philosophical level, if these businesses chip in, I really don't have an issue with that. But to leave them holding the bag and setting a precedent for what's going to be an issue up and down Tamiami, I
mean, at least until you get to, you know, Cocoa Plum, some of those newer developments along Tamiami. I just want to make sure that whatever we do along this older stretch
of Tamiami that we're fair and consistent with what we do and I hadn't really considered that that other you know across the street strip of retail that got their parking benefit of certex
no cost to them. what we're proposing here just seems inequitable to me. And again, philosophically, I have no problem with any of it. And I am supportive of paid for
parking, but I think we maybe need to think bigger. Um, we talked a so it's what is our parking strategy going to be all up and down Tammy where these older businesses
exist knowing that we want to see this area revitalized. Are we going to do something today to solve a $2 million problem that's really going to become unmanageable and
inequitable as we move forward into the future? Um, a few months ago we were sort of talking about a parking strategy for the city. I don't know if we've done any work on that. I was trying to remember
did we make a motion or did we really direct staff to work on that and I don't remember you might remember Chuck this is part of that this is right so this was our first this is our first parking project that we have that's been on the books that has not been funded or was funded and and and rep prioritized so as
part of that this is the beginning of that holistic parking that look at it um I will tell you that that the initial parking the angle parking that was built for the college really is why it was built initially the
other side further down, right? Came in at a cost of about 300,000. So, you know, we're talking much bigger numbers now, right? Uh and and that's why we're here is for direction, right? As far as as the board and and which way
they want to go, uh as far as CERT tax or these assessments, those are your options. There's there's not really uh like I said, transportation impact fees won't cover this there. your funding sources are very limited and and sir tax again is very stretched. So yeah, this
is just another option to try to fill that void and from a a policy perspective you know I mentioned adopting the assessment at 100% would be what would cover all these costs but definitely worked with other municipalities where they they negotiate
with the business owners because the business owners are likely going to say that they would like this done rather than tabled for now. So, they might be willing to contribute toward this project. Maybe there's a way to negotiate a portion of that.
Um, trying to remember the city of Sarasota when we were looking at something with St. Arman's Circle, but I believe at the time they were negotiating with the businesses there to cover basically um some of the a portion of the debt service on the project they were borrowing for that. But you can see
where you can just agree on a portion and maybe fund the ongoing maintenance or something else through the sir taxes. I mean there's a number of different ways you could look at this. It just cannot be more than 100% that you assess those businesses be as low as one. Right. And and just a couple of
thoughts. So again we'll we'll pick on Anamaria. Would we? So if Anamaria kicks in, however we figure that out, will there be a sign saying this parking is for Anamaria
customers? The entire parking will be first come, first serve, right? So the entire stretch will be first come, first serve. Yeah. Yeah. And again, you have some businesses to the south that that generate very little parking. You have some vacant lots to the south. So that's
going to open, you know, a good portion of spots through there. And and I have to wonder again, I'm looking at the map and I'm seeing some undeveloped lots just a few parcels down from Anamaria and the
chamber and the Moose Lodge. Would it be more cost effective to buy those and make it parking? They're they're privately owned. Uh I don't think that that
owner would be looking to do that. Yeah, we've had contact with that owner. They work with the city in a lot of different ways, but they're not interested in turning that into a parking lot. Yeah, it's unlikely that would be the highest and best use.
um today. And again, I'm still all over the place on this. I'll be I'll be honest. I'm usually not so wishy-washy, but I'm just sort of I mean, this is an area we really want to revitalize and rehab and and I I'm reluctant to do
anything that's punitive to current or future businesses. But right now, I'm sort of thinking, well, what if we did a hybrid? So, let's let's hold on paid parking.
Although, philosophically, I have no objection to that. Hold on paid parking. And and maybe the city should pay some of it. I'm talking just capital costs. The businesses pay some of it.
[Music] Um, but boy, you you have a good memory, Chuck, and and you might remember at one point, didn't the city receive a grant to do some parking improvements in this area? If I remember correctly, that was
for design. That's what helped design this project in the beginning. Okay. Been redesigned since, but I believe there's some design funds at one point. Well, I don't have anything else but to say I still have a lot of angst on this
issue. Vice Mayor, you have uh you said you had a question or two. All right. Um I get a question. How in calculating the trips per day, how do you do that? Is it based on the type of business? Okay. It's the type of
business and the trips generated per thousand square feet. So it's the size of the and that's based on like a what a statewide nationwide how how where is institute of transportation engineers ah okay um does these trip generation
studies got we try to choose ones wherever possible that are better studied because some of them may only have one or two instances of it but we try to choose property uses that are fairly common that have been fairly well studied and then we use those to base
these tricks on and Um, no consideration given to virtual parking systems at all. We're talking like the meters, you know. I mean, I've been places where you pay by app. There's this little tiny sign.
It's got a eightdigit number on it. You put that in. You download the app. Pay by phone. It's called I have it on my phone. I use it if I'm in, you know, somewhere like say Fort Lauderdale or wherever. And I thought it was incredible. No meters, no
infrastructure, no nothing to take care of, no buckeye. They got cameras which shoot it. So you don't even need a meter made and you can sit in your restaurant and if you're waiting to get your table and you need to extend the time, you do
it right on your app and that's another avenue that has no maintenance cost to speak of going forward. So there was no consideration in that. This is just looking at meters. But um I can't think of how can I say this.
Um government does a great No, I don't want to say it that way either. Um I would say that I can't really think of anything about this that makes sense to me. Um I travel this multiple times a
day. There are on one hand I can count the businesses that have parking problems. No one else anywhere else that's highlighted here has any parking problems whatsoever. Any time of day or night, weekends, you name it. Never.
There's handful. There's the Mexican restaurant, Blue Tequila. There's maybe uh Shark or whatever that place is. Sharkies. No, there's a No, not Sharkies. is a a seafood charts
restaurant. You got um Anamarie, you got the Moose. Um I can't think of another business that's impacted at all by parking in any way, shape, or form. And this the only people who I've ever heard who have
brought up this parking problem has been, you know, from basically uh quality TV on up to the Oyster Bar. and there's only a couple of them.
To impose an assessment on these people, on their customers or their businesses is, as Commissioner Langden said, uh thank you very much for doing great and contributing to our city. Um, a couple two to 300,000 I believe
was was uh I wouldn't say stolen as excommissioner um Luke said but reappropriated elsewhere and uh that came out of CIA. This is a perfect cirax project as vice mayor said. I think it should all be
paid for by certax. I think we should look at the certax list and rep prioritize some of those projects anyway because there's money in certax that are going to projects that I don't think are nearly as beneficial to the city as helping to improve the economic climate
along this corridor. So I would be more in favor of doing something like that. I think there's a whole host of businesses here that would not benefit one iota from parking spots. And if you tried to assess them, well, as many people as we already have
who think that there is no brains within city hall, this would just contribute to that narrative all the more. Um, I just can't even imagine in any way, shape, or form that this makes any kind of sense. And yet, I appreciate that there's a
little bit of a parking problem, but you want to know something? They're all parking parallel now. They're not parking in at angles. They're not parking into the swailes. And if they have to, they're parking down past Mike's place at Quality Order. They're walking 100 200 feet or 200 yards if
they have to to get up to the restaurant. And you know what? Maybe that's just how it should be for the time being. Um because I don't see how this makes sense in any way. If we wanted to spend a couple of million dollars of sir tax
money, I sure wouldn't have a problem because I consider this a little more priority than some of the other sir tax lists, but that's just my personal opinion. So I, you know, I don't know. I mean, I appreciate the work that went into doing this, but really, but boy,
you know, and and Commissioner Lang made a made a good point. As a city, we've got issues. I I think it's horrible to think that, you know, here in an area that, you know, we got a brand new restaurant that comes in, it's doing gang buster business and there are customers who are either going to get
penalized or the business is going to get penalized for doing well when right across the street where Austin's is going to be now a new Asian restaurant and they got a big parking lot and they're not going to pay Bobkkey. And you know, like if I'm making a choice,
there's going to be some people I'll just go there. Why should I pay that extra money, you know, and I I don't know. I I mean, it's a struggle. Yeah. I I just So, mayor, that's that's why we're here today. You got it. I know your direction. And And they know how
this all came about, too. So, I I know. Yeah. We had a handful of of patrons there who asked for it because they're perceiving the problem. But if you were to go to that four or five businesses and ask them what they think of this, I
would say they'd be more apt to say, you know what, let's just leave it the way it is. We're okay with that. That's what you're going to get. Anyway, that's all I have to say on this stick. Um, parking
meters. I still don't like that idea. Parking meters. Uh, unfortunately I look at this area and and I'm one of those people that uh Oyster Bar, my dentist office is
there. Car insurance company there. came out of my dentist office one day and I had to get a cable out of my truck and hook it to my trailer hitch and pull a car back up the swale. An elderly
lady put the car in the wrong direction and went down into the swale. Um, it is a problem. You know, Elaros, you know, that's another one of my favorite little places. Um, it is a problem and we do need we do
need that parking. We do need this project done. Um, and more and more just listening to my fellow commissioners, listening to what you folks have to say, uh, listen listening to former commissioner Luke,
um, that idea of certax money is looking looking more likely to me. Um, just my opinion. So, um, if I could say something, I will tell you that the reason the parking meters came into that
conversation was the question of whether those spaces could essentially pay for themselves. How much would it take to mitigate the need for that assessment entirely? And I believe, I don't have it in front of me, the answer would be if they were utilized more than a third of the time, maybe 35% of the time, you
wouldn't have anyone needing to pay an assessment. So, just think of that. Um, depending on how heavily utilized those spaces are, it may really mean that businesses won't have to pay very much, but people would I understand that. Thank you, Vice Mayor.
Yeah, just a couple other things. Um, when you all bring back some more information, I think you pretty much heard what we've gleaned on up here, too. But another aspect of this is we've seen where the priority may tend to lie
to where if we did this in phases and did the one section like I said between Northport Boulevard and the hotel phase one get all those costs together. What would that cost? If we were to assess a
business a cost or whatever, maybe what we assess is the cost of the maintenance of that parking area rather than the city going out having to maintain it. Or if we do maintain it, then we recoup cost or having to because they got to
maintain their own parking lots. Now, if this is extra parking, if they maintain it, it costs less on the city. You know, just options to look at to come back to where we can think about it. decide we don't have to do it all at once. We see
a specific need. How are we going to fix it? And then maybe after phase one, we can jump right into phase two or wait a couple years because they still don't have an issue in phase two at that point. So, it's hard to predict the future, but you know, if it's half the
price now, we're only looking at a little over a million dollars to do one of these areas. You know, it gets it chops it down a little bit and it still gets the work done. That's all I'm thinking of for our next conversation. Sure. So, if I can get some clear direction for our next conversation on
what you would like to see us bring back. Uh, and and phasing the project, that's fairly easy. We can break that up into the the three different phases. Um, it would help us dial it in a little better for our next meeting. It would be
I mean the areas as as vice mayor said from the hotel to Northport Boulevard that runs along where Anamarie and the moose are that is probably the most critical. Also the piece across from uh
the Mexican restaurant Blue Tequila. I mean it's not bad but in in high season they're parked on that access road and it really isn't bad. I mean, they park parallel on the access road and I don't know that it's causing anybody any problem there, but there's no real
parking spots. You know, they're I mean, cars still traverse it and they're just parking parallel. And then Alveros, which I forgot about, that's the other piece. They do park right up along the swell. I mean, you know, on a on a Saturday, you're right, cuz you got the dentist office. There's a parking lot
right next to it that, you know, I park in Saturday morning when I go eat breakfast there after meals on wheels because their businesses are closed. But during the week, I'll see people along. So there's those three sections. If we just look at where the restaurants are,
that's where the problem is. The other businesses don't have a problem. Not that I'm aware of. So are we leaning towards sir tax funding? I mean this is that's kind of what I
heard there. I mean I truly believe that's the right bucket to go looking for money. I would say at least for the capital costs sort of the the maintenance p you vice mayor had a good idea maybe I'll Yes. going along with that. I say you
know sur and then maintenance maybe a hybrid in the maintenance where you know business kick in the maintenance hybrid if I can just add to the maintenance
cost. So if we the city takes the capital side of that project right construction we've already worked through design we take the capital side of that project and we do not put in parking meters right maintenance is going to be at such a minimum that the time and energy spent on putting
together the agreements or the methodology likely wouldn't be worth it just like nothing to it right so I would personally because we would have to put that together Michael would have to go through it I think uh I just don't think that would be a good investment of our
time. I think we said sweeping was $575 a month. So, pretty minimal. Probably a year a year for sweeping those little spots, but it would be very very minimal. And you would spend more on staff time putting those agreements together and
having them executed. City manager, I saw your hand start to go up. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I would say that as we come to you with your budget information in the upcoming weeks, we'll make sure that we have the certax on there, the list as you said, you want to review to see if you want to rearrange the priorities on that list as it
currently stands. Yep. Perfect. And and from what I understand, we're going to bring back then some phasing options for construction which may break that number down. If you decide to go certax, it may be a lesser number for
some of the areas that first. Yeah, like vice mayor said, if we knew by section because that'll cut that number down fairly significantly. Yeah, because if you look at it, you got three different possibilities here. Three different areas. So, right, a cost per area would
be, you know, this way we can look at it. You never know, we might be able to knock out two, but I'm I'm hoping to knock out one. That's that's the starting point. Do you I mean, I don't know how appropriate, Mr. speaks, but are as you look at the city at large, do
you see other areas, especially probably along the Toledo Blade area where this could eventually become an issue? because because Commissioner Langda made a good point. As as development takes place, we've sort of done a better job,
you know, is with the issue of parking and and and as new businesses come on board in undeveloped areas or even redeveloped areas, you know, the the proper, you know, adequate parking is provided for. So, it doesn't seem like it's as big a problem as it is in some
of these older commercial sections, right? You're just going to run into this problem in the older sections. The the Development Services has a real good plan for parking now and requirements for new businesses coming in to accommodate the the needs of their customers. It's just in these older sections that have been repurposed over
the years and now are uh a little crowded. We want to do everything we can to make it attractive redevelop. Yes, ma'am. Need anything else from us? No, sir. good conversation and thank you very
much for the efforts on this. I appreciate this is one of those that just been kicking around for a long time and we need to get it addressed. Um, city clerk public comment. There you go. There he is. Just squeaked it under the wire there.
Good morning. Mike Morales, Northport. So previous commission I know obviously you may or may not know so I just wanted to bring your attention to that. Obviously I was involved with bloat which was the business owners of Tamiami Trail right and we ended up getting in for a grant from the state which the
city did get I believe it was a quarter of a million dollars to take care of this parking that was needed for when general development donated it for that purpose. And obviously it started at the library and on the other side of Pan-American, but then just stopped. So I've heard some question about, you
know, making the businesses pay for this, but we got quarter of a million dollars from the businesses that we worked to do that to get that to the city so you guys could take it to the next step. And no one knows, I still have not yet found where that money went. I'm sure it went for something
that was more important or a need at the time or whatever. But I'd like to see if we can re get those funds in in place of putting that burden on the businesses to take care of this uh parking need that's in great demand as you know. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Anything else? Let's move on to our final item. D25-2124, presentation and possible direction on the facility condition assessment. City manager, it's yours.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I will turn it back over to our public force leadership team, deputy director, Mr. W. All right. Good morning, commissioners. Trisha Wner, deputy director public works. Um, this is definitely one of
those not new conversations. We've been talking about this for a while. were aware that there's deferred maintenance issues within the facilities. Um, and we had been given direction to start with a facility condition assessment. We were ready to kick off that assessment. Actually had a meeting in late September
and then Hurricane Ian made landfall. Uh, with the damage that Hurricane Ian did to the F buildings, it just did not make sense to try to run parallel facility condition assessment. We kept the um hurricane Ian claims and damages separate, worked through those, and then
relaunched this project in August of 2024. So, this project started with a couple weeks of onsite work. We had staff from Alpha come out. They evaluated each facility with our facility maintenance team walking with them. Um, not only did they look at the
physical, the visuals, but they looked at the records of maintenance. They talked about the wear and tear of the different buildings and what how the systems are used to kind of get a comprehensive view of what kind of condition everything was in and how
we're using them. They categorized all of our items. These are pretty standard categorizations from high, medium, and low. So, we have the high priority things, roofing, electrical, HVAC. The medium priority things are doors, windows, sprinklers, and the low
priorities are the finishes and the aesthetics of the building. So, they took all that information back and started to work on a report for us. Now, the goal of the report was is multi-layered. One, we need to know where we are so that we can develop a
clean budget going forward. We also need to evaluate what the priorities are and what our process is going to be to avoid growing deferred maintenance to this level again. So looking at it both from how to address what's currently going on
to um a better view for the future. The first thing that the alpha team did was develop a facility condition index. Um they did it both by um for each individual building that they looked at and again they looked at just about 50 buildings throughout the
city. Um and it compares the total cost of what they saw we need to address to what it would cost to just rebuild the building. That's just to give you a percentage as to what condition that building is in. So, if we had a building that was worth $10 million and it had $2
million worth of deferred maintenance that needed to be addressed, that gives it a 20% facility condition index, FCI. They take that and then they apply it to pretty industry standard ratings. Um, so this isn't something that they develop for us. This is pretty common across how
you evaluate buildings. So good is 0 to 5%, fair is 5 to 10%, poor is 10 to 30%, and greater than 30%, you are in a critical situation where you need to be evaluating that building to see if the building is worth putting money into or
what your next steps are for that building. Um, right now the city is in the poor, just starting to be in the poor range for overall with our facilities. Now, some of our facilities are better than others, but if you just average us out, we're at 11%. That is
based on current needs for 2025. If we go to 2030 and we don't address those needs, we'll obviously have more things that will, you know, be coming at the end of their life cycle or will need to be addressed. And they alpha then combines those together for
so for 2030, we get to the 17% range for the city overall. They broke out those needs by those priority levels that we had talked about earlier. So, roofs um and those things are at the high priority. Uh fire sprinklers are medium and finishes like
walls and floors are the lower priority. You can see that in 2025 we have about just under 10 million in high priority items that need to be addressed. That number increases to over 13 million in 2030. Um, this gives us a good idea of
how it continues to grow year-over-year if we're not adequately addressing those needs. So, why are we having this conversation? Because it's budget season and we're going to be coming to you with budget requests. Um, right now the our
budget is going over to the city manager's office and it currently has about $2 million in operating that is being added to the facilities maintenance division budget to address really some of those high needs. Now, we saw on the previous slide that that
number is like 910 million. So, why aren't we budgeting that? Well, one, our budget would not be able to handle that kind of a skew. Um, also we are trying to make sure that we align the budget requests with the resources we have either for our staff to handle it internally or for our staff to manage
contractors. We wouldn't be in a position right now to handle $10 million worth of extra work next year. Does it need to get addressed? It does. Um, so in the upcoming years following that, we'll continue to incrementally add more money to this fund to be prepared to handle some of these projects and to
make sure that we're bringing our facilities up to um an agreed upon level. We also recommend something that hasn't really happened in the past, at least consistency consistently, um, making sure that we have a repair and
replacement fund for these facilities. So, not only are we asking for money to address what needs to be fixed, we're saying let's start putting money aside for the future so that we don't have these huge swings in budget to address these. Um, so the report that's attached
itemizes or indicates that industry standard is 2 to 4% of the value of your building. So you take the cumulative value of all city buildings, add it together, and 2 to 4% is what you should be squirreling away every year so that you can address these things and they
don't cause huge swings in your budget. So that would be about 2.2 million to 4.5 million. Again, that's just the RNR fund. So we're here today to give you a heads up that this is something that we're asking the city manager's office
to include in the budget that goes forward to the city commission. Um, and it is something that is out there that we're going to need to address in the near future. And we're here for any questions. Thank you, Mayor. Um, this is something
I'm really a stickler on. And if we don't put aside, so new construction, if we don't put aside money to maintain something new, then we shouldn't build it. That's
how I feel. Um, and whether it's a police headquarters or a new utility building or a new park, if we're not putting money aside to maintain that asset, don't build it. So, um, we need
to do it. There's no question in my mind. Um, except we do have a small RNR budget line item, don't we? I know a few years ago we had this conversation during the budget cycle and we didn't
have an RNR line. We put $97,000 in there one year. Um so so it definitely doesn't meet the 2 to 4% and that um those funds I think were utilized elsewhere. Yes, we might be able to paint. Might be able to paint.
Okay, that's it. I mean that's how I feel about it. There's just not a question in my mind. And yeah, where would um how would you propose funding these reserves? Where would they
come from? This the majority of this is general fund. Um the vast majority of this uh the fire rescue district for some of their items we have a 50/50 split. Um but for maintenance typically that is general funded.
Gotcha. Gotcha. I'll tell you this budget cycle, any new construction, I'm going to be all over it. That 2 to 4% putting away for means for for R&R as you said. Um, that's just
common sense, you know, and I'm kind of surprised, you know, I mean, I don't know, you know, I'm kind of surprised that we don't already have that set up. I mean, uh, anyone that runs a business, you know, just just
imagine a an Uber driver, an Uber driver has to take a certain percentage of that income to be replacing that vehicle that is stop and go and uh, you know, putting putting miles on.
Uh, so I'm I'd be kind of surprised if we don't already have something like that. I'm not surprised. No. Well, requires taxpayer dollars to do it. I think it was just a different philosophy. The the funds are there.
They just haven't been locked down and allocated directly to facilities. Um, kind of have the the bucket in the background. But in this case, we'd be able to really identify what funding is going where. It's a mad scramble every time we have a capital
need. I mean, we can't you can't run a business that way. You can't run a city that way. I have a question if I may. Um, so I I haven't gotten through this report, but I am going to read the whole thing. And um I do have one question.
So, um, when the police move out of their current headquarters, what does that building look like? Because I certainly have been going to the community and saying, "Oh,
wonderful news. We don't have to build a new building for the city hall annex. We can refurbish that building." Where would that specifically fall in terms of this criterion? and don't tell me more than 30%.
Um, that would be handled differently. So, that's basically a reset of that building. That's not um necessarily a facility condition assessment situation. That's more of a reset to meet the needs of the new um occupants. So, uh I know
that there are a couple capital improvement projects that are included in the draft budget at this point for consideration to go forward depending upon um what owner group will end up utilizing that space. Right. Okay. Thank you for that,
Vice Mayor. Yeah, since we're going into the budget process of this, um, between two and 4%, I fully understand we need to have a piggy bank in there to be able to cover these costs, but we also need to
take into consideration on construction costs in the future, how they fluctuate up and down. So, if we just went with the bare minimum, is that good enough? If we went halfway, is that good enough? or do we need to go to that 4% to have
all of our bases covered? And since it's coming from the general fund, this has to be like a unified sacrifice between all the departments involved to where we got to come up with this number. So what are we giving up to get this number? And
let me start with your first um comment. We are working with the um consultant and as part of this they have a software that um doesn't stay static. So it will continue to upgrade those numbers not just the numbers for the the value of
our buildings but also um the cost associated with replacing things. It's a dynamic system that when we replace something it will acknowledge that and recalculate the numbers. So we're working on that second phase coming up. Um, but that will help us keep those
numbers fresh and it won't be a, you know, 10 years from now, we're using the value of our buildings that I'm saying today to determine that 2 to 4%. Right. No, and I understand that. But what I'm saying is when we're doing that math, something's got to give to get,
let's say, $2 million. So, where are we robbing from Peter to pay Paul for something that we need? Everybody needs to be on board saying, "Hey, I may not need X this year, so let's get that money over there." And that's totally up to the city manager and bringing the budget forward. And if the numbers all
come out and they're good, I'm I'm fine with that. We do need to have a savings account for this. And I just want to make sure it's proper and we're not underlighting ourselves as well, too. So, you guys do great bringing all this information back. and I hate to have you
bring information then we sort of change it on you but it it is a plus to where we can talk about this a little bit more so I I appreciate all your time that's all I have um I would you know just to piggyback I see commissioner deval up there but just
to piggy back off of the vice mayor that's you know obviously that's going to be the challenge in this budget cycle and you know um I'm all in on this I mean this is this is the right way to do this. We need to have the reserves to do
this. We cannot kick the can down the road. We'll reach a point where these buildings will be beyond the ability to fix and maintain and have to be replaced. And we all know what nightmare that becomes. So, I'm good with that. But at the same time, as the vice mayor
says, the budget is so big. You got a big balloon. As our county administrator likes to say, you got so much air in that balloon. squeeze one side, the other side opens and vice versa. So, you all have to decide what's getting cut to
pay for this because that's what's going to happen because there's only a finite amount of dollars that are available from the taxpayers. Mayor, that's that's Chief Titus that likes to play the balloon game when it
comes to budget. Just saying. Um, I did, you know, just this morning I was looking at, you know, the extended the I think there's 123 sheets or 128 can borrow my printed. Uh, yeah. on
uh the first point that that struck me was uh on the facility condition assessments, you know, it showed uh fire sprinklers is a medium and HBAC
is a high. Uh I would I would think just just for safety that the fire should have been in in the in the high category, but I'm sure you you've looked at that. Um, on page 14 of that, uh, it
talked about the roofs that were beyond their recommended life, and city hall was one of those. Um, and my question is, well, you could have a roof that's beyond its recommended lifespan, but if you did an inspection,
you might find out that, hey, for various reasons, um, maybe it isn't ready to be replaced. Uh, so I'm just asking if, uh, are we inspecting things like that? you know,
like I know we did have a leak in the, you know, city hall roof and I don't know, you know, if the plan is to replace the whole roof or, you know, if we've just done the repairs. Um, that that's one observation I made.
Um, on page 15, it talked about u desired levels and a renovation or repair level. And it said that the desired level is less than 20 and the renovation or replace level
is greater than 50. It just made me think, well, what happens between 20 and 50? It's it's desired or maybe it's not desired, but it's not at the repair replace level yet.
Um, and then I looked at I just saw some numbers, you know, on page 31 it talked about city hall needing greater than $7 million in 2025 with the replacement value being
22.7 million. We really build another city hall for 22.7 million. If so, let's do it. Um, you know, I I'm just questioning some of the numbers there.
Uh, you know, I mean, you know, realistically, 22.7 million to replace city hall uh today. I just can't see that as being accurate. And they we have asked them to go back
through some of these numbers and they have adjusted those. Um the 26 million is probably closer to accurate, but it's still a lower number. That does not include any of the finishings or furnishings or any of that stuff. That's just the the
building. Um and if I you mentioned city hall roof, we are working um on a grant for replacement of the roof. But before we do any work, um, and we've been meeting with the departments as well, in addition to this report, there's individual reports per building. It's
just a really, um, you know, huge document that we have. Um, and they're looking to ground truth some of those things, too. you know, if if it just doesn't meet lifespan or it's looks like it's aged, but they know they don't use it that much, we're working to rep
prioritize those things to make sure that the money and the effort that is being spent are on the highest priority items. I, you know, again, this conversation and it'll be part of our budget conversation. It's going to come down to
it's hopefully this year that this commission finally addresses the mechanisms necessary to help finance our capital needs going forward. Going out to referendum and asking with a your hand out for the money to do what has to
be done to run a city this size is just not viable. And we need to have in place the mechanisms to do what has to be done in order to keep pace with it with the needs the capital needs this city has. In one way or the other, we're going to
have to bite this bullet and deal with it. And we'll know better after the 13th. But make no mistake, it's going on an agenda if I have to ask for it myself. This is going to be the beginning of a long conversation about how we deal with our capital needs
because every single department in this city is getting strangled by it. And we have no real solutions to it because we don't have the money for it. And unless we start using some of the more creative methodologies out there to do it, okay,
we're going to be in trouble and the costs just keep going up and up and up. So with that, I don't know if anybody's got anything else. Any public comment on this item happy to hear
that. Uh there's nothing more. Thank you very much. And uh with that, unless anybody else has anything, it's 11:53 and I join this workshop.