--------- people what it entails, what you do. I'm a planner scheduler for solid waste of the city and um I go around and I I greet the new residents and I educate them on the recycle. Excellent. Sounds interesting. Very good. Yep. So, Mario, what do you find inside the recycling bins that shouldn't be there?
So, let's try to tell the people how to recycle, right? Well, the most common thing I find, Frank, is plastic bags. Okay. So, the plastic bags are not recyclable. I find them just tossed in the container or they bag the recycle with them. Right. And they should This is inside the blue lid containers. That's right. Inside the blue lid
containers, correct? And they should be either taken back to the grocery store or tossed in the trash. Very good. Do you see a lot of recycling inside the containers? Uh I do. And I come across a lot of that. Okay. We don't want to do that. So, okay. So, if you have any questions, you
can always look at our website ww.northportf.gov/solidwaste. [Music] Welcome to the brand new Northport Podcast Network. We're so excited to introduce you to our revamped lineup of shows created to keep you connected, informed, and inspired about everything
happening in our city. That's right. With three unique shows under one network, there's something for everyone. First up is Northport. Now, Madison and I will rotate hosting this fast-paced news-driven podcast to bring you the latest city updates, event previews, and
important information, all in one quick listen. Think of it as your weekly guide to staying in the know about what's happening in Northport. Next, we have Northport Stories. Laura and I will share heartfelt and inspiring tales from around our community. Stories that showcase the people, places, and
moments that make our city special. And don't worry, Voices of Northport isn't going anywhere. I'll continue bringing you even more personal stories and interviews with residents who shaped our city. And last but not least, Northport Living. Cody and I will also rotate hosting this show, which is all about
tips, events, and lifestyle ideas to help you make the most of life right here in Northport. Whether you're looking for family-friendly activities, ways to get involved, or helpful home and garden tips, Northport Living has you covered. With breaking news, heartfelt stories, or practical tips,
the Northport Podcast Network is your go-to source for all things Northport. Make sure to subscribe to the Northport Podcast Network wherever you listen and join us as we celebrate and connect with our amazing community. Northport Now will be released bi-weekly. Northport Stories and Living will be
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Hello everyone, Devon Pulis here, aquatics manager. Welcome to my crib. We have fun here at the crib. Programs included. Become a pass member. Play all year long. Payer at the crib. We do have rules. We take all payments here at the
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Duty calls. Good morning everybody. Today is Wednesday, July 23rd, 2025. It's 10:00 a.m. We're in the city chambers. I call this city commission workshop meeting to order. Commissioners
present our commissioner Duval, Mr. Langden, Mayor Stokes, Vice Mayor Emerich, and Commissioner Pedro. There's quorum present for this meeting. Also present, city manager Fletcher, interimm city attorney Golan, city clerk FA,
administrative service specialist Lane, police chief Garrison, and fire chief Titus. Congratulations, police chief Garrison. [Applause] And Valerie, how'd you like to lead us in the pledge?
[Music] To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. City clerk, any public comments?
All right, moving on to general business. Uh A25-2482 discussion and possible direction regarding the fiscal year 2026 city manager proposed budget. City manager your item.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. U so today is a continuation of our workshop conversation. Uh we do have a presentation that we want to guide you through for this particular item. Um as you recall we met um mid June June 16th
17th and we received the guidance from the board regarding the information that we had prepared um as a balanced budget. Uh and one of the things you directed us to do was to go back and find some other funding to re re- uh distribute through a couple of different line items that
we're going to get to. And we've received some other information in as well from outside sources that affected our budget. So we balance that as well. But we'll begin just by walking us through some of the information so we can all get caught up. Um as a reminder,
our strategic pillars are as follows. The community quality of life, economic development and growth management, environmental resiliency and sustainability, infrastructure and facilities integrity, good governance, uh disaster response and recovery
management. U we do know that um while these are all important all pillars are not created equal but they all do represent an opportunity for what we have to do and provide for the citizens in the most effective way and that's where the challenge of the process comes
in and uh we thank you for looking at and listening to everything that you did for us in early June and we feel like we're on a pathway to meet your needs and make sure that the items are covered as you would require. Um so right now we're in step three of
our budget process of going over the second round of um conversation and choices and changes and by the time we get to September when you come back from recess we'll present to you as regulated um through the state the proper budget
approval so that we can have our budget approved prior to October 1st. Uh when we look at the June workshop activities, um here we are talking about the $500,000 that was included back in the police operating budget. This was
done based on your direction. And the purpose of it was to make sure that even though police did not have the total amount of funding that it was requesting for the year, that it had more than what we put into it. Um which was not an
unfeasible request. We know that their budget in the general fund is our largest budget, but they also have the most needs due to their size based on the function that they provide for our citizens and our community to feel safe and to have great response times um when
they are in need. And not only do they do a great job of that internally, but they also do well with partnering with um other surroundings such as the sheriff and Sarasota County, etc. to make sure that um we keep a safe city.
The $500,000 that was requested to put back in was was directly related to um future facilities maintenance. And the report that we got this year that talked about the shortcomings that we have as a city, the shortcomings that we have in
not funding future maintenance is a all too familiar story of being able to kick the can down the road and your desire to reduce that. um is appreciated um because we know that based on the later conversation that we talked about today,
our unfunded um capital improvement projects is something that we have to stop and take a stand on as well. We are we are entering a time in our city's life cycle where things are just starting to need to be repaired. You
know, it was 65 years old. Unfortunately, a lot of the things that we are talking about are multiple decades old and that only creates a bigger problem down the road if we don't stop and address it right now. So, we thank you for putting that in there for that to happen. The the last big change
that was made um by the board was $654,000 for phase one of linear parking over on Route One. Uh we do know that this is caused by um one of those good problems which is the area over there is needing the space because of the activity from
the businesses that are that are generating which is bringing another sort of not only um welcome activity for our residents but it also brings in revenue for this city and this particular problem which has been there for a while is being addressed. So,
we're grateful that we're able to keep that going, keep it moving, and work with the people there to make sure that the the project meets the needs of not only the citizens, but the business owners as well. When you look at what the taxable value
is that we are working with, which is one of the main funding sources of how we look at the money that we have to move on with the current year's budget, um I'll I'll remind you that this number, which today sits at 8.86% 86%
traditionally has been uh 25 27 then I think dropped to maybe 17% in recent years. So our numbers are going down and as one report said our home values the sharpest decrease in the country. I think it was at 10.3%.
But then another article still celebrated us as one of the fastest growing cities. So in my mind maybe the maybe the uh the home values coming down will keep the people wanting to come here as as we do experience that particular change. It may not balance
out in the revenue that we've been used to seeing over the last three years for this year. But it is hopeful that if people still keep coming here, as we believe they should, it'll keep our other um other plans of growth and trajectories of what we know the city
needs to build out to in order to get that revenue source so that we can do the things that we need to do, not only on a uh unfunded CIP basis, but making sure if it is the will of the um commission that the mill rate stays the same. this would be a key factor in the
future of that rate continuing along that pathway. The increase in FRS contribution was something that we didn't know at the actual um midJune budget and the $478,000 figure was given to us as one that we
have to allow for and so we made changes to accommodate for that. uh none of which were too big. And these are sort of the things that happen behind the scenes that you normally would not sort of be bothered with, but we're trying to show you as much as possible some of the
decisions and impacts of things that are material in nature so that you can better understand sort of what the balancing of the budget looks like. Um, so when we have things that are within our control like things that you gave us, there are things like this outside of our control which comes and we have
to adjust for those and that's just part of us budgeting with the millage rate staying the same 3.7667 for the sixth year in a row. Um, that is impressive. Uh I have been and will continue to say that a small steady millage increment
rate is going to be better than I believe the 13% increase that we had at last time that we had before this 6% started but it is going to catch up to us at some point where we need to be able to raise more revenue for the city.
We focus a lot on our expenses as we should and our people as we said in our first meeting in mid June is our most um our most costly driver of expense for the entire city. So, as part of what we've done, as we talked about, was
reimagining how we bring on the police. Um, and I'll use the police because they're the big biggest example, but there are other smaller examples as well for other departments, but looking at how we bring on the police force needed staff in 20 fiscal year 26 is going to be very, very important. So, I think
that's something that we none of us need to lose sight of and we all need to make sure that we stay in constant communication about what the need is and how do we want to get that need. But overall, we have to make sure if we keep this military the same as you have
directed for this year, that we look at things a little bit differently when people leave, when we have our strategic hiring initiative, we look at people and determine to ensure that those positions need to be replaced and how those duties are being performed and who's performing
duties in similar fashions. And all of those things need to be on the table as we continue to move through the process of making sure that um our human resources and our staffing levels stay within the limits and needs of what we should have to provide the quality of
services that you want as well as um making sure that if we can provide a little bit of give and take that we do so in order to keep our um our figures down for our Miller frame. We did receive our second um Doge letter from
the governor's office on July the 11th and they asked for a quick turnaround um which I think the first one was a quick turnaround as well but it was on this past Monday, July 21st. They really asked for um some more revenues and expense numbers. Um we shared it with
you and we shared it online and so we posted we posted and been transparent about what they've asked for and what we've provided. Um, from my understanding, some of their next steps through other municipalities have been to schedule an on-site visit. So, hopefully they will come on site to ask
us some questions and details about the numbers we provided and what we do and why we do. They're never going to be able to get the context from just us sending them numbers. They're going to have to ask us some questions at some point. And, uh, we look forward to them when they want to come here and do that.
and we'll be prepared and we'll be able to respond to what we have done and where we spend our money and why. If we can't answer where we spend our money and why, then we shouldn't have done it in the first place. So, I feel very comfortable that when they get here and they see our overall and total
comprehensive city package of what we do and why we do it, um they'll have a a better understanding of how we presented you a balanced budget and how we continue to operate a city of this size on a military that doesn't change um and
a population that continues to grow and be one of the fastest growing in the country. So when you look at the next couple slides, we're going to talk about a couple of changes um from the first time until workshop until this workshop. We
just wanted to show you some of these changes. A lot of them are minor when you see them, but again, we we're showing you what we see. And when you go through this and you see some of this, some of them you're going to see, well, there's the $500,000 that we said for
police. There's the $500,000 that we said for um the the facilities maintenance fund continuation. And this is sort of what it looks like on a line item by line item basis um in its
totality. Um you'll you this also is getting you familiar with the line item basis that we're going to go through when we look at the unfunded CIP in the next item. I think it's important that we go through that one line item on line item because we need to make sure that you understand why we did that. Um so
when you look at the changes from this workshop um you'll you'll see the one that draws attention and I'm going to speak about probably a lot of today is going to be the certax one that you see in the middle. The certax has sort of been our um
safety net for some projects and the reshuffleling of projects to make sure that some things were done that we needed done and that's going to be our natural um our natural first or one of our first starting points to say well let's look at certax and what can we do with it when I tell you that you have
looked at it and you have kicked it around as much as you possibly can the only way to sort of relook at certax at this point would be to have a certax specific meeting where you would do some wholesale changes to what we have
projected in the future of that particular um funding source. Not saying you can't do it, but it it's it would be more than just nibbling around the edges, so to speak, because when we make um sacrifices and changes to projects that we brought before you, we've done
that a lot already. And I'll use the example of the um the the emergency operations center where we're waiting on the final GMP price um through the fire chief. But let's say that that number comes in and it's $4 million short. You
know, you know, we've sort of rearranged and you know, moved money around in order for that to happen um in the past. And my goal is to continue to figure out ways so that we don't put you in the position of having to pick winners and
losers based on particular projects that have been already slated to be done. Um, but I think at that point we're really bumping up at at the end of being able to do that and that's where the challenge is coming in on our side. And so when we can no longer sort of do that
in a way that is comfortable, then that's when we bring you in to get your direction on some of what are the priorities that we're having challenges with and what needs to shift up and down in priority based on how you as a board might direct. So this is this is sort of
where the um the challenge comes in with sort of u making sure that we don't neglect one particular item for another one. um based on all the department needs that we know that we have. And here's just a second slide of
changes from the workshop. You see police right down there near the bottom which you asked for and you can also see the FRS that was um included in that as well. Um so we have presented you a balanced budget and now based on um the
the sequence of the next few slides we'll go through the departments and sort of just show you exactly how they landed and ended out. If you remember when we talked in June in the workshops we went through every single department was a different agenda item. Now, we've
sort of just combined them as a holistic view for you to see. And when we get through the end, you're happy to let us know any questions you may have or any direction you want to give based on what you've seen that we provided. The uh general fund budget that we're
looking at here chose uh an increase of uh $ 8.7 million or approximately almost 10% from the adopted budget. Um which is good. It's positive. You always want to see your your general fund um of course be healthy enough to keep up with the
with the um with the expenses that we know that we have. I I don't think I can say it enough, but I think we all know that things continue to rise in price and we have to keep up with it one way or the other. And that's the the challenge and I believe that we we have
um we have done so by looking at our general fund balance overall. the fund balance. When you look at this slide, you'll notice that the remaining balance after our 20% reserve, so the 20% reserve is approximately almost $20 million. So that is your rainy day fund.
So when it happens at a general fund level, that would be it. That's not to be confused with how we balanced or used the road and drainage fund for Ian for when all of that happened and we had to expend our money, most of which we got back through FEMA. It's no surprise to anyone, you know,
that we're all sort of waiting and to see what's going to happen with the future of FEMA. It may not go away, but it just may look differently and it may look differently at a state level. And the state has its own challenges. So, there's going to have to be some sort of communication and um
agreement with the federal and the state levels of government what and how the local government will be supported during that transition of that agency. And I don't know that that has been decided yet, but as soon as we know something, you'll know something. And as
you can tell from this diagram, 1 88% or 1.8 million is what we are above that 20% number that I just recommended. So, your general fund is in a healthy place. We would we would and we believe that
based on what we're doing at the end of this current fiscal year that we're going to put it in a healthier place. Um, we don't know what that's going to be yet, but I can almost guarantee you it's going to be more than what you have in there right now above the 20%. And that's a very positive uh place and
feeling to have for your general fund for our city. Human resource department um we talked to and went through their budget. Um they're have an increase of uh $127 million.
um this department as it continues to grow um they are expanding they're expanding their services they're expanding their reach. We know that if we don't train and keep our people we will lose our people and it costs more money through turnover than it does to
actually train them and keep them in the right working environment. So, we're always going to make sure that we try to keep up um our HR team with what they need so that we can um be one of the places that are recognized as one of the better places to work in this uh in this
area, region, and uh in this state. And I do believe that we bring a lot to the table. Um looking at their their fund balance, you'll notice that they have three. the self-insurance risk fund which of course we are self-insured and the self insurance medical fund as well
as the employee benefits of 810. Um there's nothing there that concerns us at this point. We've talked about the insurance and what benefits we provide to our employees and looking at different models of a different contribution level so that we can make
sure that the city doesn't have to eat or bear all of the gap in between what they pay and what the cost is. So the city has done very well in being that middle agent of paying for those sources. But we also got to look at some
of the different cost drivers of um I believe it's cancer and diabetes and there was maybe one other one that was some of our serious medical cost drivers and making sure that those services are still provided but in a way that uh hopefully will allow for the
distribution to be better on both sides. So that's a continual challenge that we will not stop working on. the police department um as mentioned earlier, safe community is their pillar and when you look at their budget amount um you're
probably not going to find a police budget in recent memory that only goes up by $300,000 or 72%. That is very small for a budget of their size. And you really need to commend and um
recognize Chief Garrison and his team for what they've done in order to say, "Hey, look, we know that we're one of the major cost drivers. We know that we need people, but we also recognize that we're only one piece of the team as well." So, as being the team players that they are and being able to manage
within themselves, um we are um they just had interviews for a sen senior business manager and once that person gets on their staff, they'll be able to coordinate with our finance leadership to ensure that those numbers that you're looking at are maintained and they are operating within those borders and those
boundaries. But it's going to be critical as it is every year, but even more so this year for everyone to stay locked in to the numbers that they have to work with. Um, but that does not reduce our pledge as I told to you where we will bring to you quarterly
information on how they're doing with their staff and what think they might need and how we can pay for it and put it in front of you to make those decisions. When you look at their fund balance, the forfeite funds is one that we just talked about yesterday with some items that we approved. Um they also have
police education and the law enforcement impact fees and um those are all um very healthy funds and there's no concern there as we move forward. Um this is the second most expensive office in our
budget which is the clerk's office. Just kidding, Madam Clerk. Um, so the clerk's office is one of our smallest, if not the most efficient office uh, in our all of our departments and you can only see an increase of $40,000 there or 4.4% from their 25 year budget. I don't
believe there was any um any budget proposals requested from Madame Clerk and um she always stays within her numbers and even with the special election that we had this year in May, she was able to work with us and through her in order to make sure that that cost was accounted for and those bills were
paid in a timely manner. So, we thank her for her cooperation on the special election which was extremely important um for the city. uh city commission um your budget um only changed by uh $150,000 or 25%.
Um the main cost driver of your budget changing was I might need some help because I don't remember exactly salary. Oh yes. Okay. Yes. So the salary increase that happened for the commission was after
last year's budget was adopted. So when you look at that right sizing of those salaries, that's where you see the difference. um the the right sizing of those salaries. I know 40% or two commissioners weren't here when that was done. But when you looked at the meeting
information that we provided, the inequity based on the the the time and the model that we were on, both were out of date and needed to be corrected. And it was done so in order to recognize not only the volume, but the value of the
job that our commissioners um provide. So, uh, I'm grateful that it was it was fixed and now that we're on a different path and I believe that you have already already discussed publicly as a board how you want to talk and sort of get off of the population model going forward
and you'll do that in the upcoming year. So, you won't have to worry about it being done or discussed during the election year of 26. But that's a discussion of what you will decide on how you want to sort of stabilize whatever rate you believe should be
there for your salaries going forward. Um it'll be a it'll be a good discussion and we'll walk you through it and get you there at the appropriate time. The city attorney's office uh fisc year budget they are part of our good governance pillar. Um they had an
increase of $176,000 or 9.3%. Um their department just recently congratulations Mr. Goolan has added on one of their vacant city attorney um spots which is very important because we keep growing as a city. That means we keep giving more work to them and we
keep giving them more timesensitive work and from our side we're pledging and hoping to do better so that we don't make our emergencies his emergencies. But their their job their office has done a great job of making sure that a lot of the timesensitive information
that we need from them get back to us on a regular basis. You're also uh meeting next week with our consultant Doug Thomas who will be here virtually so that he will be able to um show you the eight or nine applicants from the city attorney's job and then you'll make that
decision. So your new city attorney will inherit this budget when they walk in the door. I think that they're going to be pleased in the space that they need. But I'll also put my foot in that door to say when new leadership happens, they have new ideas and new plans. So the new
city attorney may want to come to you for a budget amendment for X Y and Z and we'll communicate that as necessary if need be so that they can make sure if they want to put their own fingerprint on their budget that they talk to you and allowed to do so.
Um the I the IT department um thank you for your approval of allowing them to transition to a department from a division. Um, again, very important that they are recognized for the comprehensive and holistic work that
they do. Um, I know they are an internal service department, but they internally service all of our departments and, um, they do a great job and we're we're we're fortunate that, you know, their $1.2 million increase or 24% is going to
allow us to stay more secure. Um, we've all been through cyber incidents here at the city. I don't want to talk about it anymore, but we all know what it is. We're all glad we're protected and we're happy that um this department is there to help get us there.
Um not non-E departmental for fiscal year 26 um covers a few different items, but the total amount of this particular increase is uh $15,000 or 5.7%.
What you will remember is that there was a contingency that the city manager office had in there $450,000 for the last few years which we used over the course of time for various internal needs. Definitely not specifically to the city manager's office but normally
specific to um ones that fall in our our close orbit. That has been removed. It was removed prior to to the June budget. we reflected to you just because times were tight and if we need to figure out something else when those times come,
we'll do that. But we we just couldn't leave it there. And you had a budget of $50,000 which based on your past history, we moved to $25,000. But same re same way that goes for us, we would apply to you. If you as a board decided
you needed more money for whatever reason, we would go and figure that out and make sure that you had what you needed. We don't anticipate you as a board or us as a city manager's office going without anything that we feel would be very necessary or needed for
your success for ours parks and wrecks. Um quality of life, environmental resiliency and sustainability and economic development and growth management. Uh they still remain one of our pillars of why people want to um be here and why people are
looking to uh stay here. Um when you look at their budget, you'll see an increase of uh $2.4 million or 20 almost 22% from their 25 budget. Um there are some projects when you look at the capital of the $4.1 million compared to the 1.475
of fiscal year 25. U some of the significant projects in 26 will be the Bokeh Chica Park for a million dollar. U Dallas bike park for $1.1 million. Um a dog park east of Toledo for $400,000. And parks maintenance and operation for
$500,000. Those are some of the the the projects that were sort of hand selected to show you the the increase of what's going on and how this department um needs fund needs funding. You'll also know and recognize that we're going through the parks master plan right now.
A lot of us attended the open houses that were I think a week ago um on two different nights and getting input and seeing the vision of how the parks out east need to be more um represented than the ones that we have out west. We have some work to do for balance, but I think
that we're starting that process because we've heard the commission, at least for the three years that I've been here, that we need more parks out east and we need to make sure that however we um situate our parks that everyone needs to have a park within a certain driving
distance to their home. And right now, we're a little bit we might be a little bit out of balance with the number of parks we have out east versus out west. uh when you look at their fund balance. Uh War Springs, you just decided on this yesterday and talked about sort of the
fees that we wanted to charge and how you look at those fees that you want to charge. I believe uh a senior rate and a veterans rate were discussed yesterday. And if you decide to move those when we bring those information back to you, it will only affect this particular fund
right here because it's an enterprise fund. It's not going to jeopardize the balancing of your budget. Um but it will it depending on what you do it will it may have the possib it may have the um the outcome of reducing the amount of money that you have to fund War mineral
springs improvements going on because one of the things that we're looking at right now which which will fall under our unfunded CIP is the work that we've already decided to do out there which is underway is still underfunded by about five and a half million dollars. But we
still have to figure out how to solve for that funding in order to get that done. There there are there are unfunded opportunities everywhere and I I I really think the CIP conversation that we're going to have is going to be one of the more important ones that you've
had in quite some time. But the Warm Mill Springs conversation that we had yesterday and keeping that plum balance in line, we are going to reach out to there was a one of the speakers left a letter with a phone number on it. So, we're going to reach out to them and see if we can talk to that group specifically so that when we come back
to you as a board as directed, we'll be able to tell you exactly what we said and what they said and where the differences are and what we're saying together. Um, we believe that um the information that we gave was correct and they believe that the information that they have was correct. So, there's a
disconnect somewhere in what we're saying. we'll we'll shorten that or reduce that and then bring it back to you um as a board to have a conversation on. Um our goal should be to put that on the the um September workshop which I
believe might be September the 8th because September the 1st I think is Labor Day. So, I think we moved it probably to the ETH on that Monday and the goal would be to bring it back to you at that time so that you can have a further conversation. Um, and
parks and direct impact fees, as you can see, um, they have a a projected fund balance as of September of next year of 16.4 million. Social service division, um, small but mighty, um, and our good governance. And
um I'm not sure we have a slide on here about our MP2 program, but it was in the paper recently about our NP squed program and how we created that to help our nonprofits. And I would like to point out that the chamber has piggybacked on that with the NP3 program if you didn't
see that. And I thought that was I thought it was very um first of all, it was theft. They stole it without our approval, but it was for a good reason. And when I saw it and what they're doing, I thought it was very it was very nice that to see that we've started something that is helping those and
people get involved with our nonprofits and what we need and what we provide in the city. I'll say it once because I've said it a thousand times. I just I still think there's so much room for what we do with our community and how we impact them. so much to the point that um
Caitlyn Griffin in our office, she is part of the lean sigma team and we've assigned one of their projects is to review how the county distributes their social services funding through the agencies that they they have allocated for and then how that trickles down to
us in Northport. I just don't believe well first of all I don't believe it's the best model for a city of our size. That's first. Two, we can't change that model because it's outside of our hands. So they're I'm just having them analyze and look to see if they can find out how
much of that money trickles down into South County. And if it's not at a level that we find acceptable, we may need to have a conversation at a county level to say, you know, let's look at let's let's look at the big picture here. How much money are you spending and how much
money are we being affected as the largest portion of the county? Um it's a good conversation. Uh Janet um Curillo, our social services division manager is involved in it and we really look forward to some of the outcomes and how we can better service those in need in
the city of Northport. Our finance department um also in our good governance group and they have a budget that of increase of only $347,000 or nearly 12%. Uh, want to take this moment to thank the two finance people
to my left, our interim uh, director Arena Kareno has done a great job and Lisa Lisa Herman, thank you so much for all the the multiple versions of number crunching that you do in order to get us to the place of what we're seeing today
is um, she works on this tireless tirelessly, not just for the few months that we talk about it, but year round in order to make sure that um, we stay on top of the numbers that you see to give you confidence. Uh, city manager's office. Um, you might remember that we
talked about the disaster response and recovery management. When we look at some of the other models and what we talked about was bringing in our disaster recovery into our particular team and set setting it apart from the fire department. Um, that was a model
that we and we and Chief Titus uh talked about and we're going to see some of that increase go into our budget and we're we're okay with that because we want to make sure that we have the right we have the right divisions, right people under the city manager's office to get the right results holistically
for the city. Um, we do want to grow our emergency um management portion of this and some of that is in there based on what we want to add to her team. I think that um Stacy and Mike do a great job, but we have to recognize the fact that
the the frequency and the strength of the storms that our region and our city has received in the last decade has definitely increased and we don't see it stopping. We were very fortunate last year to not be completely harmed by the
three storms of um Debbie Helen and Milton which hurt a lot of people around us. And the more that we can talk about getting staffing levels to the right level and the EOC getting built out to have space for us to be the most
efficient for our city is super important and we we're not going to take that lightly. In my mind, I think that we could actually have an emergency services department at some point, but that's a little bit further down the line and we're we're definitely not there yet. But something to think about.
Um development services department fiscal year 26 uh representing quality of life, economic development and growth management, environmental resiliency and sustainability and our safe community. Um under the leadership of director Ray, they are in control of a lot of the
success of this city. um even coming off of the unified land unified land development code rewrite of last year which was super important and now we're talking about hopefully adding more code enforcement officers to our team so that
we can be more proactive than reactive. Uh we've also talked to you about um an additional revenue source of the um the vacant um lot registration program that would hopefully be discussed as a future source of revenue. you know, we're
thinking and trying to make sure that we are um staying creative with how we can keep revenue sources coming in, but still allow them to be in alignment with the duties of what we are to take care of the city. And that's that's not an
easy balance, but we appreciate their creativity. We appreciate u their work and their increase of $4 million or nearly 28% represents um a large segment of how you see the future of their department servicing our citizens.
Uh the three different funds that you look at are the um inspector education, the tree fund and the building fund. So the the tree fund um as you can see the projected balance of September uh 30th
26 is $1.8 million. That's an important number as we have updated you and we continue to share what the progress is of the natural resource division that was created u nearly I think two years ago now and their impact on our ability to make sure that we keep Northport
looking as well as we want whether it's trees, landscaping, uh other items that we know that are important to making sure that the the greenery and the the wildlife of our city remain in constant
um front of mind as we continue to grow and develop. Uh growth and develop is not a bad thing especially if you do it responsibly and I think that uh director Ray has made sure that that has happened and of course the building fund as we see remains um healthy uh showing a
remaining balance of over 20% of nearly $5 million and there are plans I know for her to use those funds as well. um fire and rescue department um safe community they presented a a very good and tight budget. I believe that you
have you have had conversations regarding their um particular percentage of increase. Uh Stantech um came and met with you all and met with us and talked about what their not to exceed rate should be and that goes to a part of how uh Chief Titus has managed his budget
and as you can see an increase of 2.6% 6% or 6.5% from the fiscal year 25 year budget is there and is still important as we recognize life safety and what they do as far as their response time and being able to um get there quickly
um is super important. Their budget includes um the eight eight new positions, seven firefighters and EMT paramedics starting on April 1st of 2026 and system support analyst starting January 1st of 2026 as well.
When you look at their fund balances here are the ones that they are in control of. The fire and rescue district um as I was talking about earlier with the the impact of the 10% uh fire rescue impact fees and the fire rescue district
RNR. Um all of which are important. There is a there's definitely a a uh a science here and an art blended together to make sure that as we grow in the different stations become online. His ability to project and forward think and
make sure that they are staffed appropriately um is is super important. I think that he does a great job of ensuring that the staffing that comes in that meets the standards that he sets for high excellence are achieved and we have one of the most sought after fire
departments um in the area for people who want to join that profession. Our utility department uh under interim leadership of Trish Wi Trish Wisner um has been going very well. um they
actually have a few challenges um as you know one with the affluent public station that needs to be done for the consent order but there are other projects in as well and there's also um an entire team over there that she's sort of helped and gotten ready so that
we can um just keep moving in the right direction. You know, as we talk about our utilities, people are always asking about how we're taking care of them and how we're growing them to meet the level of service that's needed based on the population that's growing. And you know, the 14.2 million or nearly 25% from the
adopted budget is critical and key so that we can um ensure that um the the major capital project of the pump station pipeline for 17 $17 million gets done. And they have five new positions. Uh planner scheduler, wastewater
trainee, collections operator 2, distribution operator 2, and distributor operation one. All starting on January 1st. And we know that they are they are backed by their rates and their um rates of recovery. So that's what drives them and allows them to be able to support
their needs and support our future needs. public works. Um very very large department um built on the four pillars of infrastructure and facilities integrity, economic development and growth management, environmental
resiliency and sustainability as well as safe community. Um I really want to say let's start at Price Boulevard widening and and stop right there. But you know they are they are very busy right now. they are, this budget is built on an
increase of 14.7 million or nearly 18%. Um, and that's because they they have a lot of activity that they have to account for. And when you look at their new positions, you know, we've added some in fleet, uh, administrative services specialist and emergency
vehicle technician. Uh, road and drainage added an assistant director and fuel supervisor. Solid Waste added a planner and scheduler as well as two equipment operators. All of those positions starting on October one are built into this budget, but their budget
is very um complex. Um there's always a lot going on in it. And as a department, they contain a lot of the IP funding that we're going to talk about as well, knowing about the infrastructure and the things that they take care of us as a
city. Um the voting drainage uh fund balance is uh first here with um the drainage of the district, the transportation impact fees and their R and R. Um we will point out the fact that the road and drainage district is
over um the 20% of the policy reserve by 17%. This is the number that we had to get up so that we could make sure that we met the deadline of replacing the money that we used for Hurricane Ian
by the three-year window which we had which ends now. So, we've met that mark. We've met that obligation um hopefully just in time for us to sort of keep going and get through this current season as as well as we can. But um
please stay comforted in knowing that um that has been that obligation has been met through the road and drainage fund balance. Um the solid waste fund balance um they have solid waste district solid waste impact fees and solid waste RNR. You'll notice that they are above their
reserved amount of 20% by 2.88% or nearly $600,000. Uh again, important to stay on the right side of that number, knowing that we have uh conversations and solutions to um provide for for the transfer station
and how we're going to do that. when we talk about the transfer station, when we talk about um just the police headquarters as another example, when you come back from recess in September, we're looking to have more information put in front of you so you can decide how you would like us to move forward
with during some of these items that we know the city must um deal with. Our fleet fund balance is um made up of fleet RNR and uh fleet itself. Um both are projected to have positive fund balances at the end of this particular
fiscal year within our budget capital improvement projects. Um I think that's the next line. Yeah. All five year still part of this window. Oh, five years. Okay. Thank you. So this
here is our fiveyear CIP improvement. So, the longer version of what we're going to talk about in the next item is information that was um drilled down on by the consultant who did us the 20-year vision, which we needed to know what the universe of projects looks like. That
was the $2.1 billion number. This number that you're looking at here for the next five years is um 581 million. But it's important to break it up so that we know what is your your immediate which is what you would see in
your annual budget process. This is a shortterm picture snapshot on the screen right now of five years and then the next conversation we'll have will be a longterm vision of a 10-year window that we're going to look at. But it's
important when you look at the appropriations to date uh which which are a total of $277 million um you add on the fiscal year of uh proposed included of $16 million and then you get
into the years that would need funding considerations and conversations. uh some of which are driven by um uh revenue fees that offset them, some of them are not. But we need to sort of have a deeper conversation to make sure
that the needs that we have are properly adequated for so that not only you have the confidence that you can take care of the citizens needs, but the citizens have confidence that we are looking a little bit further down the road to make sure that those questions are answered
and those problems are solved for. That was a lot, but thank you for listening. Um, this is also the time where I believe some of you may want to um make new proposals of the budget that we just discussed. Um,
in addition to what you may or may not have said on June 16th or 17th, we'll answer those questions as well to see if we can give you some um some some good responses. Um, if not, you know, as long as we get our questions and answers done
to make sure that we maintain our balance schedule and approval process in September, I think we'll be good. But we're happy to answer any questions that you may have that we may or may not um have discussed, any considerations you want us to think about or anything that you did or did not like about that
wonderful presentation. Thank you, city manager. Commissioners, you're up. Mr. Langden. Uh, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I have a just to warm us up a few questions. Um, in
the changes to the budget memo um that went out on July 9th. Um, in the second paragraph under included in the proposed budget workshop
backup changes to the budget, the the second one, the 500,000 added to the police department budget. In that memo, it says to the minor operating supplies account. My recollection is the
commission um approved additional funding for the police because there were a number of smaller CIP projects that we felt were important and were not funded. Um so my
question is how are we proposing to spend that $500,000 Um, finance is telling me that any minor CIP that wasn't approved was moved in this year and we took care of it in buying it this year. Um, I don't particularly remember which smaller CIP
project. They weren't the CI if you're referring to budget proposals. Oh, they I'm sorry. Budget proposals. Yes. Yes. Yes. They're not always Yes. Not correct. Yeah, there that's Yeah, there were several smaller budget proposals that we wanted to see funded.
Correct. Because we removed, if I'm not mistaken, about a million dollars out of their their minor operating, and this was to put half of that back so they could use it for those proposals as they prioritize as they began their year. Okay. It's just that that's very misleading. Um, and anyone from the
community reading that would say, "What? Another half million dollars for supplies? that doesn't make sense. Um, so in in your presentation it was represented more clearly but I was just concerned about the language of that in the budget change memo.
Um, a higher level question tax um, and I agree with your comment that the city has been very reliant on certax to bail us out of tough spots.
What are we thinking is going to happen to Certax? And maybe Mayor has some insight on this because he sits on the tourism board, but with all the chaos going on at the federal level. Um, and
I'm thinking just even in terms of Canada, I have a number of Canadian friends who live down here part of the year and and some of them are selling their properties and not coming back. So, I I only bring this up because
potentially I see a wrinkle with our sales tax and hence our penny tax. And so, I'm I'm just putting a caution on that. Um I' I've sort of called sir tax the
crack cocaine of um our taxing methodology. We just have to be careful with our level of dependence on this source of revenue because I'm worried about it. Well, I should say I'm concerned about it. Yes. Yeah. Um
that is a that's a big question. Um so I my crystal ball tells me that um the instability outside of what we see in this city is scary. Y um and it's scary because you mentioned
sales tax. We what we didn't mention was what if property tax goes away or or is impacted and then sales tax or tourism tax is leaned upon more heavily than it is in order to help some of that help us. Yeah. Yeah. So there there there's a lot of
different moving pieces, but I would say to answer your question is that the certax even though we've used it and leaned on it without it being there there's no way we could have kept sort of things as stable as we could have for as long as that we have. Right. So we're grateful that it's been there. We're grateful that it's passed and I
believe that it was passed for the next like 14 years or Yeah. or 15 years at this point. So there could be a lot that happens in between the one that was just passed and the next one that would come up for referendum. Um the projects that we have
in there are you know critical to our needs and if we do see a decline or a decrease or a gradual sort of shift in our certax we will have to address that ourselves because there's not going to be someone who comes in and says well
let me make those certax whole based on what you thought was going to be there five years ago. We'll have to adjust and the state of the economy overall. I just don't see it getting better in the short term, which is what we're talking about right here with our budget and CIP. So,
I'm really worried about what it'll do in the long term, which is the second half of the search tax that you brought up, right? If you want me to weigh in, I mean, yeah, weigh in on what you're seeing. It's really a lot of conflicting
information that just generates enormous uncertainty. Certainly, tourism dollars are down. They've been down month after month after month after month throughout this last year despite aggressive marketing to bring people
here. clearly Canada, Germany, UK, which are typically the three countries that that we see the biggest, you know, influx of tourism dollars from in Sarasota County. Those numbers are down. Um, I don't know that there's much
optimism based on tariffs and some of the other international dealings that are going on. On the flip side, as city manager brought up, depending on what Tallahassee decides to do with regard to property tax, let's face it, if if if
property tax revenues reduced at the municipal and county levels, how do you make it up? One option is to raise your sales tax, but there's a a a a portion of Tallahassee that
thinks that should go the other direction. If you raise sales tax, that's going to have additional impact on tourism because it may well be cheaper to go elsewhere in the world.
And um so um probably the best we can to prepare I I would say like the uncertainty is on steroids and and as we plan forward we should be careful. The vast majority of all our certax
dollars for the first five years are tied up in Price Boulevard. There are some other projects in in the first five years, but you know, depending on what happens, if that revenue stream dries up a little bit, we're going to have to do some pivoting and rep prioritization.
But it's just premature to know, you know, till we see what happens next year because everything depends on what Tallahassee is going to do, right? But I would say we need to be careful not be overly dependent on stretching those sax dollars. If I remember when
the referendum passed in 2022, I believe projection was $315 million. Um, last year or late the year prior, we were projecting for the city of Northport we may well see upwards of almost 400
million, 370, 380 million. I don't know where that if there's been any reprojection since, but I would be cautious because I would not expect any certax windfalls. That's for sure. That'll help bail us out here. So, yeah, thank you for that. I appreciate
that insight. Um, couple of other questions. Um the the police currently are relying on the temporary trailers to handle their
personnel overflow issues. What's the annual cost of renting one of those? And and how many are we planning to need or have? we're going to get to and I believe the
initial cost might be different than the annual cost. Instead of [Music] instead of leasing, they've uh moving to purchase um the trailers and the total cost is about 900,000.
I'm sorry, can you repeat that? Just speak up a little bit. Uh it's instead of leasing, they're moving purchasing the trailers and it's going to be about 900,000 as a total cost of the project. So that's total cost. How many trailers
are we? Two. Two. Okay. And where's that money coming from? We're planning to use the impact fees. Fees. Good. Okay. city manager's office, there was a
pretty big jump in operating expenses and personnel costs. Can you just refresh my memory on how that money is being spent? I believe it's due to the emergency management division coming over to our
office. um as it said on the slide and as I stated when I was speaking, we are bringing them out of where they were in fire um and allowing them to have a direct connection to the city manager office and and is is that contributing to the
reduction in costs on the fire side? I saw I think I saw a pretty steep decline in their operating expenses. So, it's not really a net new spending. we're just kind of moving one after the other and sometimes when you do that when you make those kind of changes it
takes there's a timing difference in there so it all shakes out but you have seen um I believe in detail what the details of our office are and there's not any new call okay thank you for that
no okay that's been for me for now oh yes oh clarification there one new position manager's office which is in our grants department. That was Oh, right. Yes. Yeah, I remember that. And again, I don't think I mentioned
grants in my earlier conversation, but um again, they still be they still continue to be proactive and making sure that they seek out as much as we can, right? We all know that those positions pay for themselves either through external funding that are directly given to us or funding that are related back to some of
the projects that we actually are successful in achieving. So, right, very thankful for our great support. Right. Um, thank you for that. That's it for me for now. Looking for commissions. Dimmitri. Thank you, mayor. Just want to weigh in
on the general state of economy and I'm genuinely concerned about what's going to happen in our state on and on a local level. And I do believe we have to be prepared. Um the new state CFO said that he's really
going to be pushing for the state uh to repeal homeowners homestead tax, at least real estate tax. So they they at least pushing that and they pushing hard. Uh, so that's
something we have to think about that, you know, people own a second home, they're still going to pay real estate tax, but the homeowners, there's a possibility might be exempt from paying their share.
So, it's better be proactive than reactive. And I think with this budget and in light of our current state of economy, it seems we we adding 26 new positions and um I would advocate or at least open
for discussion maybe to put a hiring freeze. It's very painful to hire people then to be prepared and to freeze of uh hiring. This is just my
sense of development, what's going to happen. Um, as a numbers are going down as far as the city's economy. Um, we have the biggest inventory
in this in the country as far as the real estate goes. The purchasing of the houses are way down. Um I think we are ranked third after Cape Coral
and I forget the other m municipality. So we are we have the largest or one of the largest inventory of unsold houses. um not many people coming and yet we we are hiring 26 positions and I get that
we'd have to hire people especially for the vital departments uh like fire and rescue I would be very hesitant to put a freeze on those departments
as far as other departments I would uh I would I'm very compelled to at least to discuss if we and put a freeze on hiring of uh new personnel. Um and the reason is new positions are very expensive
year-over-year and we just heard that this is the biggest addition to our budget and god forbid the economy going to go back going to go downward. we have to do something and that means
we're going to fire people and I'm I'm reluctant to fire anybody. So, it's better to be prepared and not to hire at least for this budget um year coming up that you know than we have to fire people in the middle of the
year and this is just my opinion. Um as a contractor I see a lot of uh slowdown in the economy. Uh prices are going up for the material surprisingly. Um not a lot of big demand even in
repairs not to mention new construction. Um, so I'm open for the commission to maybe entertain any ideas of uh putting a freeze on
hiring. Um, and it's just the reality speaks for itself. Um, and I don't I don't know the state of your opinion, my fellow commissioners, but uh um maybe I'm in the minority, but
at least I I want to voice my concern and I'm genuinely concerned uh for the state of our economy, for our city. So, I know it's painful. um maybe more workload.
Um but we can do it as a city if we come together. That's just my realistic projection and anticipation of what's going to happen. Um granted the revenues are going down and yet we hiring 20 more six positions.
I I don't see a balance in our approach of this discussion. So, and the balance is the key to life. I mean, we got to balance. Um, and then I have a nitty-gritty question. So, like more specific questions. I
don't know. I should do it now. Maybe we should discuss this portion of my question and concern. Why don't why don't we and then come back to your additional questions otherwise this issue will get lost in the conversation. City manager, you
wanted to comment. Yes. Thank you, M. Just as a point of clarity so everyone knows what you're voting on or discussing. The 26 positions, which I believe was on page nine of what you had maybe have been given earlier, but uh 12 of the positions are not general fund
funded positions. They're through either the utility fund or voting drainage or solid waste. So those typically pay for themselves based on the assessments that are that are raised or charged for those particular services. But the remaining ones that are um in this conversation to
total 26, one is an assistant city attorney. Uh one is the grants compliance specialist we just mentioned. U one is a planning coordinator which is through um the emergency management that we just mentioned as well. Two of them
were for code enforcement inspectors for development services which I talked about being proactive. Um there's an accountant three in the general fund from finance. Uh there's also uh seven firefighter EMTs that I mentioned. Half
of that is general fund u funded and the other half is district fire district fund funded. Um and then you have one more person which is the system support analyst in fire uh which is funded 50%
of the general fund and 50% of the fire district fund. Uh, and that's it. Um, and I this is one of the lightest years since I've been here of adding staff. So, to
Commissioner Fedra's point, we too have thought and been considered about the request to you regarding what we have. But, um, I will just say this one more time because I think it's necessary. The expense side is not the side of the coin
that needs concern. It is the revenue side. And for a city of this size to grow and not have the revenue it needs is going to remain a challenge. But I just want to make sure that you all were looking at the same numbers and information that he was using to have the conversation before you make your
decision. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Commissioner Lang. Uh, thank you, Mayor. Boy, a freeze. A question. City manager. How many new positions were proposed
in the initial rev of the budget? We have 26 new ones that have made it through. There probably at least 45 more. Well, there was 30 in police alone, right? So,
so, so we've already done some pretty substantive cutting of positions. Um I'm uh and I hear Commissioner uh Pro. I'm concerned too and and I think we need to
be very very conservative in this budget. However, at the same time, I'm I'm not ready to go into panic mode. Um you know, thinking about
freezing raises and laying off people. There could very well come a time when we're forced into that position. This year, in my mind, 26 um is is not it.
So, the way I look at the 26 new positions, um you know, 12 aren't general fund and they'll be covered. So, I'm okay with those. and there's a level of service
that would be sacrificed if we don't add those positions. Um, we are growing and I get it. We have a lot of we have a big inventory of empty houses, but there are still new people moving into the city.
And I can remember Miss Ray sharing with us some time ago um that there were over 5,000 people, new people a year coming into the city of Northport. I'd be interested
on what that growth is today or are we sustaining that level because again we are getting some conflicting information in terms of the relative lack of health in our housing market here in Northport and then hearing that
we're still on the list of the fastest growing. It's a little bit inongruous. So I don't know if anyone has that information today. What have um our movein rates looked like
um so far this year and and how does it compare with previous years? I know we tend to get that data in a rears a little bit, but I'm just wondering if people on the front um solid waste probably has the most accurate line of
sight into that. Good morning, uh, commissioners. Uh, we had a developer, uh, just yesterday ask for, uh, number of new garbage carts that we've dropped off for the last 18 months. And surprisingly, it has
relatively stayed stable uh, for the last 18 months. It's about 180 190 new garbage carts every month. it goes up a little bit, goes down a little bit, but it remains relatively significantly the same. Um, he wanted
that information because he too was picking up on a softening of the market that may be happening everywhere else and there may be housing inventory issues as well, but there's still a lot of new homes getting built and a lot of people moving in. Oh,
so it is it safe to assume that the majority of those new carts are going to new households and and not so much commercial? Those are all single family. Those numbers were all single family. Doesn't include all the massive multif family that y'all uh that we've brought
online. Doesn't include commercial. It is strictly single family homes, nothing else. Okay. Uh and and like I said before, one of the things I I I wrote to that developer was, you know, keep in mind there's a lot of other things that are
popping right now that don't even reflect the single family, you know, like commercial and um multif family. Right. Right. Thank you for that. Um, and and sort of back to the the hiring freeze, as I look at the requests, I am
very very reluctant to approve a freeze that impacts public safety. So, a good number of those positions are in fire and rescue and and I would I would not tamper with those numbers. And
in fact, we're not hiring any new police officers. is if I'm remembering correctly and I'm concerned about that. Um I'm I'm not going to add headcount in because we are in a a tough position, but at some point we're going to have to
pay that piper because the need does not go away. We continue to grow, etc., etc. Um so hiring freeze, no, if if we want to take another look at that headcount, I would rather cut out anything that we
consider a fluff or that we can not fluff. None of it is fluff. But if we can delay hiring in any of these categories, I'd rather surgically go through it and see if there's an opportunity to trim. And if there's an appetite to do that,
as I look at this list, the only thing I can even begin to consider are the two new code inspectors. And again, the conversation about are we
going to be reactive or are we going to be proactive, our strategy up until this point has been reactive. That causes consternation among our residents who see their neighbors maybe not maintaining their
properties as we all would like. but to propose going from a historical reactive strategy to a proactive strategy at this particular point in time. I'd like to have some discussion
about and I'd like to hear from city manager about that as well. Thank you for that opportunity. So, right now we have five code enforcement officers. Right. The budget included four before you ever saw it
and we reduced it to the two because five for 104 square miles is not very good. I know all of us I mean all of us have seen this year a lot of emails from people where they've had whether they've gone through our North Report app the
way that we would like them to or whether they've just seen it. And I think we we got one just yesterday where you know they were looking to be well why can't I do this in an anonymous way so that I don't put my name on it which is a law that was changed but they can't do it because they don't want to feel
the push back of that but that's state statute correct yes it was okay but but it's so needed in our community and the two that we were are requesting is not it doesn't it definitely will not make us in the proactive category but we're trying to
inch our way there. We're trying to make sure that when you think about what people don't like the most in our city, it's what they see the most, which are the violations that they see when they drive home every day. They're everywhere. The need is there. No question. I went
to a area um we went to an area um a few weeks ago for one particular location of a violation just to see it for ourselves and we got bogged down on two different streets to even get out of there with violations before we could
stop seeing them. It was it was just so it's just so many. The city is just too big. and whether we talk about changing our strategy so that if other city staff are in those areas and even if it's not their particular responsibility, they can raise the flag and say, "Hey, someone needs to look at this area."
There's there's probably a combination of technique and staff as a total that can help, but the two will get us a lot closer. That's that's um that's that's a huge increase from the five that we have that we're currently dealing with. Yeah, I I get it and and I totally
understand that. we've really whittleled it down to what we think are essential. Um I'm I'm just trying to poke where where we might have an opportunity to delay a year. Um and I have a question. This might be from Miss Ray or perhaps
you can answer. Um and that is a couple years ago we adopted international building standards because it would give us more teeth um property maintenance standards. Yes. Thank you. And the intention, I
think part of the discussion was commercial property and and private roads. I mean, the pothole behind the chicken place is sort of the famous one. Um, but I'm just wondering,
has that adoption really helped us? What are we seeing in terms of our effectiveness? Good morning. Uh currently we don't have the staff to even enforce that. We we have not started looking at commercial
properties at all unless we are specifically asked to go look at a property. We are so far behind at this point. We to say we're even reactive would be an overstatement.
We're we're not we are so far behind. Um this does impact our property values. It is a direct impact on our property values and as we continue to slide further and further behind in code enforcement, it will have a greater impact on our property values. So, if
we're concerned about our taxable value and resale, we have to address the code enforcement. Um, to say that it is um I it is a critical need. Um, it is becoming more and more problematic. We
can go to any street. I can go to any street right now in Northport and I could probably walk away with at least a dozen violations. Are the abandoned homes sort of part of that picture? They are. We are having and I'm sure the
commission has heard it and seen it. We are having increasing problems with uh contractors not maintaining properties that they are working on. Even even properties they're they're actively working on, right? They are not being maintained. And as
that streets become uh more and more built out, that is more of a problem. If there's only one house on the street being built and there are no other houses there, nobody else lives there, nobody cares. But when most of the street is built, you've got more
neighbors that are obviously impacted by that construction. We currently uh do not really have anyone who has the time to address each of those construction sites. That is also something that we would like to do, right?
Um we we simply have not had the staff to to do that and our building inspectors, they don't have time to deal with those violations issues. They are um we have some of them will have dozens of inspections a day and to
get to all of those they simply don't have the time to concentrate. Thank you for that. Um, I just have a really, really tough time of figuring
out how we can continue delivering a consistent level of service without these new positions. I mean, I think we're borderline already in a couple of areas. So, um I I
hear Commissioner Pro's concerns and but I just don't see how we can proceed without those positions. As it is, I'm concerned that we're not adding positions in some areas.
And that's my two cents. Mr. Petro, you're up in the queue. Thank you, Mayor. Um well I know my opinion is not popular even to myself it's not popular but the reality speaks by itself and by itself I tend to
disagree that we need to grow our revenues when there's a expense category that we can be more controlled over. Um and uh yes, we are growing as a city,
yet we're not growing uh because we we continue to look for more revenue and that is by raising a tax rates, fees,
franchise tax, whatever that may be. But we I just had a conversation this morning with my neighbor, immediate neighbor, and he said, "Listen, in my time in this house, my taxes doubled, and he's close to 70,
and I he knows that I'm a commissioner." He said, "Listen, I'm on a fixed income. I'm on a social security. I'm on a fixed income. How long it's going to be?" I mean, we continue to grow. We grow in our fees,
our taxes, and so on. At some point, it's going to be unsustainable. And uh and I'm not in a panic mode by no means. Um and I never said I want to put a higher increase on public safety. Um, by
the way, um, if I understand it correctly, the police department will come to us on a quarterly basis asking for more personnel to be hired. That's going to be additional money. We
not taking into account that expense. Um, and again, uh, new positions are very expensive year over year. And maybe I I just to me it's as a business-minded person, I I don't
see a sustainability. I guess we are a little bit detached from the reality. And again, I want to be more balanced and uh and when we say yes, are we going to cut our expenses, but the level of uh
service would be reduced and we sacrifice the level of service? Well, when we talk about the level of service, does it mean that we're not going to be able to pick up people's garbages? I mean, that's essential. It's going to be picked up regardless. I mean, they pay
taxes to us as a city, right? Level of service. Um, we're not going to protect them when our u one of the pillars is public safety and we support our police. Um, and I can speak for
myself and for all of my fellow commissioners that we support police in its entirety. And that's very evident that we added $500,000 back to them. But when we say we're going to cut our level of services, what do we mean? we not
we're not going to pave the roads when we collect taxes to do that or um clearly I saw it that we collecting a big chunks of money from and I asked that question in the budget uh workshops
in June on a specific item we collecting enough but I I'm just saying I think prices will further go down as a property values because we're raising taxes fees and and when you go to a park
talk to a family um young family I've talked to many families my age and they've been squeezed literally speaking they said we cannot afford to live in this city I mean this is the reality I have
conversation anytime I go out um so what is the direct property value effect Um and uh I really appreciate our building development department. Um but a lot of
those houses that are are being forsaken, those are con um under construction and they're in a state of disarray because contractors are bailing uh becking out. Either the customer is
not paying them. I mean, and it's true. You go on any street and there's a house that under construction, but it's you can see that it's been sitting there for a long time. It's it's not just and yes, it's a code enforcement issue, but that's another indication that there's
no demand. Um it just uh I'm concerned myself. on building three houses but it's just I think what's going to happen a lot of houses going to be 2008 repeating to a small and a smaller effect but it might
be foreclosed and then we lose more money people are not coming uh the broken window theory you know one house is abandoned there's another house people don't care in one street and it trickles I I just I think we should go
on a diet as a city and be realistic because when the new CFO is going to push this property tax exemption really hard and that's his objective for property owners not uh second or third house that's
going to decrease our um revenue big time if that goes that way. Um but I just think we have to be realistic and maybe I'm babbling and talking too much but and I
know I'm not probably in a popular mode as far as but we just have to be realistic and I tend to very disagree about uh we have to grow our revenues and how do we grow our revenues we we tax our citizens.
Oh. Um, no ma'am. I didn't finish then. Who's up in the queue? So, um, and, uh, maybe just to practically speaking, we can go one
position by one position. Maybe we can tighten our belts and show our citizens that we do care. U, that we do take them seriously and what they say. After all, I do represent the people of the city,
yet I'm part of the city, right? So, we have to work together. Um, I just my philosophy seems a bit different. Uh, but I I think reality speaks for itself.
And I apologize if I nothing personal to anybody, but I just think we have to take a hard look at our budget and at least show some effort into that. Um,
we as a city, we we've as a city city employees, we we get a lot of um perks, benefits. um we as a personnel staff we're not suffering
financially as much as I hear from outside of cities people you know who not part of the city's staff and it's just I'm relating what I'm being told what I hear from the people people
contact me or people meet me um those are my two cents but uh again, police count. They're going to come to us quarterly. We're going to have to find additional money for that. Um,
level of service sacrif and I hear this a lot. What level of service are we going to sacrifice? That's my question. It's just maybe maybe it's a generic phrase that we're going to say we're going to sacrifice
the level of service. to what extent and how. That's it, man. Thank you. All right, city manager. Um, not that I don't wish to recognize you, but I'm not sure. Do you are you really sure you wish to weigh in on this or would you
wish for commission to have this conversation in and among the commissioners? Briefly, may I respond? Absolutely. I'll be brief. Um but to Commissioner Petro's points about some of the things that he said, um the level of service that you talk about, if we're on a scale
of 1 to 10 and we're providing you at a nine, that might go to a six or a seven to bring it down to see what it looks like and what it looks like. You use the examples of trash not being picked up or police not responding to emergencies. Those are two of the more drastic
visible things that people see. But whether it's customer service from this building, which already gets comments and um concerns about it, whether it's how we interact with delivering the entire levels of service to the city, those are the ones that we're talking
about um being sacrificed. And if you if you sacrifice our services to a level that's unacceptable, then you start to compromise the growth that is still happening. Even though the report came out said our taxable values are down, we're still getting the same number of
people here, our cos, our occupancy, and our our our new filings are still in the same way that they've always been. So, we haven't seen a sharp decline in people coming here that would affect us in a way. The the neighbor with the the
70-year-old neighbor with his taxes being doubled, the main tax that you control is your millage rate, and you haven't touched that in six years. So there are other things and other factors outside and property values going up over the boom that just happened the last three years I'm sure affected his
taxes. But we want our property values to go up and stay up in the city because if they go down then we have a whole different set of problems that we have to deal with. And I know that it's not ideal and I know that it's not great to tell a neighbor that. But this is a lot
outside of your control and everything can't be on the city to fix for. And if we do have a hiring freeze and we're the only one that has a hiring freeze and then let's say you know um you know other people um don't have a hiring freeze, we'll stand out as somewhere
that people not only will not want to stay, they won't come here and then that will that will reduce our uh employee um quality as well. So when you're the only one doing something, whether it's a high earning freeze or a merit freeze or
something like that, and you stand out, it is going to impact you as a city. And I think the city has come a long way in the last few years, and I'd hate to see us go back in a different direction based on some decisions. But thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, city manager. Um, yeah, it if if you look at it from a macro
standpoint, I mean, you know, let's face it, there is certainly an emotional response, an emotional response to what we see and hear and feel out there in the economy these days with uncertainty.
And what we heard from my fellow commissioner is just that, a very emotional response. And it it's real. I I don't mean to denigrate that response because it is real to people, but
the facts are that we are seeing a net increase in new property. We are seeing aggressive construction. We are it's undeniable on every street everywhere you go, including Wellen
Park. just based on the gar new garbage cans alone. I mean, we're talking two 3,000 increase properties a year. If you look at the property appreciation, yes, we saw it drop from
over 20% what, three years ago to high teens to the mid- teens. Now we're at 8 and a/4, 8 and 1/2, 8 and 3/4%. But if you analyze that number and look at the actual facts,
new builds are up over 10% in property appreciation. Existing property valuation is down. As city manager said, six years running now on to six years of
flat property tax rate. Flat. What's gone up has been property appreciation. You can look at that two sides. As city manager says, it's positive in that you're building equity in your property.
The crappy side of it is you're paying more in taxes. Fees go up as people have experienced because the cost of providing those services go up. A garbage truck cost a half a million bucks.
A a a fire engine cost over a million bucks. I mean the reality is costs go up. So if you look at it and you say what are we expecting? You know revenues are going to continue to go up. New builds in this city are going to
continue to go up. Property values might go down for existing structures and that may help if people go back and revisit their values may actually see reductions in some of their property tax rate because of it. But ultimately, we're on an upward trajectory and we
are, if you cut too deep, we are going to impact the quality of service to this city. We will make us a less attractive place to come to. That is not a healthy thing for our city if you ask me. Um, I just don't think it
is. And the reality is that nobody knows what's going to happen at the state level. And I can guarantee you one thing, whatever happens at that state level
will not just affect us, but will affect every municipality and county in this state. and we will all face that challenge together. To respond emotionally
and and again I'll say it that emotion is real but to respond to that is a mistake. We have put together a budget here that is the most austere, the tightest, the
most restrictive budget I've seen in not just the years I've been on this commission, but even the preceding couple of years that I followed the budget year after year. You know, can you cut more? Sure, you
can always cut more, but at what cost? And I think that's where the balance comes in. With all due respect to people's opinions and everybody has an opinion to respond based on the emotion of
opinions that I can't afford to live here, I can't make ends meet. We have to as representatives of the city of everybody look at it and find that balance. And to
me, freezing across the board, whether it's salaries, whether it's hiring, is a terrible, terrible way to go. I have never in my entire career experience seen that work at any level in any organization. Across
the boards don't work. If you think there are specific positions that shouldn't be funded this year, that's one thing. Um but it's a strategic analysis that takes place and if you look at the process we
go through that's exactly what we do. So I I I am definitely would not be in favor of this but I'll defer now. I went a little longer than I expected to. So you always do. I always do. So Mr. No.
Yes. You still do. Thank Thank you, Mayor. really ditto on everything mayor said. There is a tremendous price to be paid when you freeze. Um,
and I I try to point out I I get it. My taxes have gone up. Everyone's taxes have gone up. The appreciation of property values is not a Northport phenomenon. It's a United States
phenomenon. So my question to people always is well where are you going to go because every place has experienced that appreciation. Um and people need really need to look at their trim notices. We
pay twice the millillage to schools that we pay to the city. We pay as much to the county in taxes as we pay to the city. And what do we get for that? So,
let's talk about balance because punishing the city, making this city less than it can be to react to things we don't control is just not the right approach in my mind.
But anyway, I'm going on too long. And the one thing that I did want to address, Commissioner Pro, is in your comments, you seemed to conclude that the only way we can address revenue is by hiking property tax and fees. That is
not the only way to address it. Our commercial footprint needs to grow. And if we take actions that make Northport less desirable for that to happen, because one of the things that companies
will look at when they're evaluating a potential community to move to is the quality of life, the quality of service, the beauty, how wellmaintained that property is. And we heard we
already have a code enforcement issue. We have a lot of issues in in that area. And I I really took what Miss Ray had to say. Those new heads aren't to become more proactive. It's to be better at
reacting to what is going on. This stuff is a spiral. It's and everything impacts it. Our parks, the the beauty of our neighborhoods, the amount of our commercial base. And if we start doing
things that negatively impact our ability to grow commercial, our ability to bring new people here because another point you brought up, Commissioner, is
you know, we're homesteaded most of us. If you're not, you're homestead in there because it does lower our property taxes. But when someone moves here, their property tax adjusts to the market
rate. So for example, when I bought my house here 11 years ago, I started paying twice the property tax that the previous owner was paying. And and that is as it should be. I'm not complaining
about that. But that growth helps us building houses that are and I don't know what the pivot point is. I don't know if development services might have a gut for this, but it is a fact that households consume
more in city services than they pay in taxes. I mean, that is a generally understood and accepted fact. Businesses pay more in taxes than they consume in services. That's why it's so important.
Every time we build a house where the value is less than some break even, we're subsidizing that house through taxes. Everybody's paying to provide those services. And I don't know what the number is. If a house is $700,000,
$800,000, when does it sort of break even? What's the value of that house where the taxes and the service consumption kind of breaks even? I don't know what it is. I I don't know if Ms. Ray might have a sense of that, but
we have to be really careful. Really, really careful because just a few years ago, Northport was not a very desirable place to be. We had a lot of issues and I'm not going to go into them and we have corrected
those issues and we have been recognized for that. I'm not willing to go back. I won't go back. So, we need to focus on our commercial development and we need to do everything in our power to continue to make this
city an attractive place for businesses to come to and for people to come to. Anybody else want to weigh in on this specific conversation regarding a hiring freeze?
Anybody? Anybody else? Nobody else? Okay. Um I believe Commissioner, you had some additional questions which you know. So you have the floor, sir. Yes. Couple questions. the
uh FRS increased adjustments. Uh those were not taken into account in our June. We just learned them now or we were waiting on their final number and their final number came in after we
knew that it was coming and we knew that it was probably going to be you know more than what we had budgeted but we had not received that final referral. Okay. And um one question I had about that opioid
vehicle, $85,000. That's a new thing. Is that a opioid vehicle? Yeah. Went away police. Okay. It's a new thing, right? Because we didn't have it.
Oh, thanks. The o the opioid vehicle is purchased out of the um settlement funds. Okay. So, it's going to be a a truck that's going to be wrapped with um preventative information and used for that.
this. Okay. And it will be just more of a message related marketing thing. It's going to be used for awareness for uh opioid addiction and all that stuff. It's it's through the settlement um that
those funds were distributed to the city. And another question I had um I'll get that question answered before the meeting about um the fund balance being used to balance the general fund.
It was uh $742,000, right? It was just the Can you repeat that? So, so my question was, why is $742,000 in fund balance being used to balance the general fund budget,
right? We had a change in the revenue some of the revenue projections from the state since June. So, they were updated. So, after adding in all the other things and doing all the other changes, I was able to add 742,000 back to fund balance. But of course that
is against balanced against the fact that we are using the 1.1 million for the uh city hall roofing hardening project. The city's portion of that the rest of it's being grant funded. So it's a one-time project. So
um in all we are actually using some fund balance but not the whole 1.1 that we were intending in June. Right now we are only using 376,000 from fund balance for the general fund.
Thank you. And the next one, commission contingency has been reduced uh to 25,000 from 50. It's not a huge reduction, right? But um if we need it, it's not in the budget.
What do we do? I mean it's better to have it and not use it and leave it in the U general fund. Correct. But remember if we leave it in there as an expense, we have to balance it with the revenue. So if and we have
looked at past and you've not the city commission has not used their contingencies, but if we needed it, we do a budget amendment and put it back in. It can always be changed. The commissioner said we okay with that or how we
And same with the travel expense, correct? We we reducing travel expense as well. Um will that include our conferences if we go?
The the travel and training wasn't deleted altogether. It was just reduced to be more in line with what the past spending has been. And again, um, there's five of you. So even then, if one of you isn't going somewhere and one of you goes to more than you planned, we
can just move it between those accounts, too. And again, if there's a need for all of you to increase back up, then we can do a budget amendment. And as I stated, commissioner in my opening, whatever you need that's going to happen from your funding, whether it's
contingency or your regular funding, if it's not there, we as a team will find it to make sure that it is there within the funds that we have available in our total budget if even if it's not in your individual budget. Art also, you know, not participating in
the National League of Cities has cut our commission budget travel expense significantly. Traveling to Washington, stay in Washington hotels for the value we were getting. So, that's cut it and we just haven't spent it. We haven't spent it. So, why put it in the budget?
And we did the same thing with our out of state travel as well this year looking at and scrutinizing do we need to be in those places outside of the state if it's not related to a certification or some kind of license. And the last question I had um is um
we proposing reduction of $654,000 to construct the parking lot uh along the 45 41 access road. Um is that are we reducing that amount for maintenance of the other roads or how is it done?
It was transferred out of the sir tax portion of the road rehab for 26 but remember road rehab they still have sir tax money and they also have road and drainage money for the road rehab. That's it from from me.
All right. Thank you commissioner. Uh just a couple of general questions. Um, in public works, uh, there was a category called other uses that showed about a $5 million increase from last fiscal to this fiscal. I just I don't
remember what it was. If somebody could refresh my memory, was in one of your slides there when you got to public works and you were showing the different categories, you know, where it breaks down capital and operating and payroll. And then on public works, it had a
category called other uses and it was like $5 million up. I I'm sure it's I just don't remember what it was. Yeah. Um without looking it up exactly tell you what it is. Other uses would be transfers to other funds and also I believe like the West Villages payment
from the impact fees is also included in there and it definitely adjusts yeartoear. Okay. Yes. Okay. one. Yep. Yep. There you go. I couldn't for the life of me could That's that makes
sense. Um tree fund. Got a question there. We will we have enough with our projected revenues in the tree fund over the next couple of years. This year we're covered, but you know, utilizing that fund to
help sustain the department itself. Do we anticipate for the next couple of years having the revenues in that account to support us? I mean, I know it's sort of outside the window of this immediate current fiscal budget, but
that was just a concern because there's not a whole lot left on the bone. And I can't remember. It's a couple of million a year that's going into that fund, correct? Yeah. Tree fund. Yes. I believe couple couple two
or three million a year. I just want to be comfortable that it's it's it's sustaining itself. If I'm not mistaken, we have a balance in there about 4 million or projected balance. And at that rate, I think the division is about a million dollars. You've got a
four-year operating kind of if you take out the capital the planning probably got a 3 to four year operational window if you stopped all together construction if I'm not mistaken. So you're good for three to four years
if all construction were to stop completely which is not going to happen. Okay. Yeah, that's true. That's for sure. Um All right. So I'm good with that one. uh you know just an observation before I have a couple more questions.
You know looking at that breakdown as we went department by department payrolls personnel really year overyear was nominal as were operating expenses. The couple of departments where it
jumped up were departments that truly needed it because of growth and meeting that growth maintaining the quality of life and there was they were well explained. The biggest single bump came
in the area capital projects and if we're spending more money well to me that's the place to spend it. So, I feel good about that because we're I believe we're spending the money in the right places. Our increased revenues
year after year, in my opinion, are going to the right things, not to continue to to to fund runaway spending of personnel, operating expenses, or anything else. It's to fund projects if
you look at it from from a macro perspective, which is a good thing. That's what we have needed to do for years. Um the I won't go to five years. Secure that one. Um
War Mineral Springs. Um anticipating that we're going to be 5 million short of what we need to fund the improvements that we've already voted to do at Mineral Springs. We have
a fund balance of about a million6. So for all those folks who are, you know, grumbling over the fact that people who don't even live in the city are going to pay incrementally more to attend the Springs. Um, I would just say that strap
in because Springs needs to pay for the Springs. Okay? The rest of the citizens of the city of Northport do not want to pay for mineral springs. That is a fact. So the bottom line is the people who use it,
half of which do not even live in this city and don't pay taxes to this city, are going to have to subsidize it. There, I said it. Fine. People can hate me for it, but the reality is that they're going to have to pay for it if they want that amenity. Otherwise, we
should put a fence around it. Make it like little salt springs. Don't let anybody go there and shut it down. And that's not I believe what people want. So, you know, we need to clean it up. We need to put bathrooms in. We need to bring water in. Sure. We're going to make major investment. We cannot allow
that cherished spot, that nationally recognized treasure to fall into disrepair again. And the people who use it are the people who need to pay for it. That's just the fact. in my opinion.
Um the only other thing we haven't discussed in it I don't well let's see um thatision cost um well a couple things um is there any appetite to have a
conversation again I'll ask my fellow commissioners about the communications department uh or communications division being uh switched to to a department what I I got to ask this question before we even have a conversation if we do
what was the cost to us if if that division became a department? I just don't remember the number so I apologize. They're looking how much it was $47,000.
Mr. Mayor 47,000. Yes. But part of some of the confusion from what I heard after that decision was made was that it was it was perceived to be that we had added a department a division that went from like two people to 10 people. And what
seemed to have been lost in there somewhere was many of those people were in our department existing or our organization existing already. They were embedded within the departments. It was a very decentralized model. So, we pulled those people in into one
location. They didn't we didn't get eight new positions in exactly communication. They may have gotten a couple and I don't want to say that they didn't get a couple, but this idea that well, you added eight or 10 people to this one division and two people were doing it before. No, it
was always a team before. You didn't see the team before. Exactly. And I'm not a fan of decentralized models of most things because they're less effic less efficient and it gives less sort of oversight to the process. But you know we have a decentralized financial model right now where there are business
managers embedded within departments. We're going to see if that's the best model that we have. Our IT is decentralized in certain areas. You know we want to see if that's the best model. But collectively what we have seen under the leadership of uh Jason Barlon has
been the bringing together of many different disciplines of communication in a very productive way for the entire agency and the city. Thank you. So with that in mind that we're talking less than $50,000 is there any appetite on the part of my fellow commissioners to want to discuss because
if there's a time to do it it would be now. And uh you know I I personally personally I I believe it's invaluable. I I see no reason why the communicate for for less than $50,000 why communications
division shouldn't be a department. It interfaces across it needs to have equal standing with every department. I I I just think it was pennywise and dollar foolish to to to vote yay for for um it
and not for communications. I mean people want two things out there in the public. They may not agree with all our decisions but universally everybody wants more transparency and more inclusiveness. Well to me that's
communications. So I if you ask me I think it's money well spent less than $50,000 you know can easily be absorbed in this budget and and it would put this division on an equal par with other departments. So
again I asked has anybody got an appetite or am I just I do but I'll wait. I've been talking a lot. Um well nobody else seems to be going in the queue here so okay I'll leap into the breach. I'll explain why from the last time. Okay. Whenever you're ready.
Vice Mayor, you're up then. And I I do believe when we discussed this the last time, we were discussing about the IT and what the cost factor was and what the adjustment of salaries to the individuals would be, right? And and with the IT department, and if I
remember the numbers correctly, the salary was going to change with benefits and everything of approximately $12,000. Was that am I close on that? I think that sounds a little light, but it could be a little light, but but when it came to communications,
that salary adjustment was the $45,000. Well, that we discussed and that's what I brought up. I said it's kind of hard to give an individual a $45,000 raise, but that included um FRS benefits. That was not benefits and everything.
That was not a salary. Yeah. No, it wasn't. But I'm just saying everything added up. And to the public out there, giving an individual, $45,000 was the discussion. If that was the total for the compensation package, I won't disagree
with that. But I will say we are not giving any one person a $47,000 raise to their salary. Now, the FRS um thresholds that they will reach based on their new distinction is part of the benefit of going from the division to the correct
the U director. They are they are putting in the same level of commitment throughout the agency as other departments who are recognized for similar work. But as other people citizens out there see it, it's still to the benefit of the
individual because down the road FRS is retirement, higher retirement, hire this. I understand all that. But that's what the difference was and that's where the conversation came down to it to where from one individual wasn't that much.
One individual was pretty grand. So So based on what finance is just telling me now they're both very similar which I thought that was the case. Both of them are in a very similar position of where they're currently being compensated and the FRS package that will improve. There is no great
distinction between the two. And I believe that the information that we had during the first meeting, we we had it off. It was our error. I remember saying that something didn't look right with what we were saying to you at the time. Right. And that's when I was hoping you were going to come back with a different
Yes. analysis this time. But both of them are so the the difference is they both are going to be very comparable if you're looking at it from a salary and FRS benefit standpoint. Um, I believe that even with the increase in salary, if you take
that, if you separate the two, they're both still going to be on the lower side, if not below the medium, the median of their particular peer group. They're not going from here to here. It's an incremental process to get them
closer to their peer group. And I understand all that. So, and I can add, I'm just looking at the numbers. was the salary was just 13,000 on a year. Okay. But it was everything else. So, we didn't have that number back then.
But no, I appreciate it. And I knew you were going to come back with this because we've discussed this at one ones too to get the numbers at least correct to where I know the overall cost is X, right? But how did that cost break down? And and I appreciate that. So,
yes, sir. Mr. Lang. Uh, thank you, Mayor. Um, part of the conversation we had back then that I do want to address that there was a tone that communications just isn't as critical or
as skillful as some of the other departments. And I challenge that because I see the contributions of that organization significantly
in two buckets. One is since Mr. Baron came and since we changed the model of communications, our outreach to the community and the flow of timely information to our
residents has just improved to such a degree and that is a critical need of this community. We have so many new people coming in. There's so much change going on. getting that information out to the
community is vital. So kudos because the team has done such a great job with that. People don't always like it um to to mayor's point of view, but the information is out there. Second, we were talking before about the importance
of Northport to maintain its position of being a desirable place to be and all of the departments in this city, everybody has contributed to that. But in my mind, communications
has done has had such significant impact in how this city is viewed. And I I'll just share one example. When I first moved here and I'd be outside the city and people would say, "Where are you from?" I'd say, "Oh, I live in
Northport." And people would kind of, "What? What are you doing in Northport?" And now when I say I'm from Northport, people say, "Wow, that is such a happening place." Huge difference. And
our communications team has made a significant contribution because they pump out positive information about what's going on in the city on virtually a daily basis. Maybe not on Sundays, but
the information is going out all the time. And it is elevating it has elevated our standing in the region. And um I really compliment them for having played a very key role in turning that
perception of this city around and and really amplifying all of the positive things that are happening here. So I believe the the function is as important as any of our other functions. I
supported the elevation then and I support it now and I thank city manager for I mean city uh maybe you are city mayor. Um it's tough being a commissioner with all
due respect but thank you for bringing it up again because because I do think it was an oversight collectively on our part and I would like to correct it. Uh vice mayor Yeah, the main concern like I said
before was the numbers and what I wanted was to have that information come back and broken down to where it was more easily digestible on the why and what that number meant. I mean, we didn't have that information back then. So,
that's why I said nah, I couldn't support that because I couldn't I couldn't support that number. I will support this going forward because it is a just need, but I just wanted those numbers broken down and I appreciate that coming back because that
needed to be out there for information. So yes, sir. Thank you. Um yeah, that's right. I was going to say motion, but it is a workshop. Um, so what I suggest I do have a couple other questions as I had the floor and then I'll wrap it wrap up my end, but um
I would like to do a consensus for uh electing staff to bring this back for a vote um by the commission to uh turn to to make the communications
division a department and um I'd like to see that come back at least for a vote another conversation vote. So if I can get a consensus commissioner Dval send back for discussion. Yes. Yes.
Yep. All right. Staff's got some direction. Um, if you could bring up the slide from the LA, like the last slide of your presentation, we're at the five-year CIP. Just had a question.
Uh, there we go. So, basically, we're looking we have our five-year totals of 304 million. Um, total CIP 581, but I is there a reason why
the PD headquarters is not in that number at all? Only because it was never designed to be a CIP project because of how much it is. If you were to put it in the CIP, those would have to be funded through the CIP
process. Um, the headquarters is a large scale infrastructure project. I don't think you would have put it in your CI. It's in our master unless you put it as a placeholder, but it was unfunded. It's unfunded. Right. Exactly. You can put it as a placeholder to be aware of it, but to fund it through the
CIP would not be its normal natural course of funding. So, these are funded well either funded or designed to be funded through a bucket of funding that we're going to talk about in the 10year conversation. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. The only other
subject and I and I don't know if it's at the code for this at this point, but the vacant lot assessment I know that's coming back to us when the you know the um the what we were doing I know was
as she's coming down here was flushing through the details of that particular program. It won't come back to you before you come back from your recess in August but it should come back in September. longer than that. Next year,
there's there's a lot of there's a lot of legal work and coordination that has to happen between now and the time that the commission would have documents in front of them to look at regarding a
program for um that and for the other issue that we talked about the lean recovery. um the outside attorney um we need to have more discussions with them regarding the process and the u
ordinances that are required. Uh there's also timelines that have to be managed with the tax collector. So, it is it is a very long process and we were told that it would likely be 2027 before we
could get a program like that into place, fiscal year 27 determined because we knew we missed this deadline for to get on to this fall, but our goal was to get on to next fall, which that
deadline to get on to next fall has to be somewhere probably in early 20. it would not be for this school year. We would not be able to have it for fiscal year. He he our outside council did state that it would be a minimum uh
probably 18 months before we could get something to adoption. Okay. Because next fall would be fiscal year 27, right? So if it's not likely calendar year Okay. Yeah. That's a little ways out.
It is a ways out. because that would have given us I mean one year would have been better because it would have given us a little bit of a cushion you know and and a source of revenue to help in a variety of ways but all right it is what it is
and and a lot of it is is not something we can control it's it's timelines that the tax assessor requires for putting things putting assessments on the tax ro and uh again just a point of clarification with regard to, you know,
the the one glaring hole, so to speak, in in our fiscal year budget, which is funding any police salaries, the police bodies. You know, the reality is there, you know, while it's while there's some concern on some parts of like where
where is that money going to come from? Obviously, you can't hire them if we don't have the money to pay for them. So each quarter we will look at it. Any budget, every budget is just that. It is a budget. Some things you spend more, some things you
spend less. Some things don't get to get spent in the time frames you anticipate it because of a multitude of reasons. So there is always the movement of money. To the extent we have that flexibility and that ability, obviously we'll be
able to fund quarter by quarter. So you know there is a methodology to everything we do. The budgeting process is a perfect example of how meticulous it is. It is careful. It is analyzed. It
is methodical, thoughtful, and it is a living thing that gets adjusted as you go through your year. And so I wouldn't want anyone out there to think that this is not a very carefully managed
process and that every dollar we work with is not carefully considered and because it is and I look forward to anybody who can point to specifics not generalities not emotional reactions to
how they feel about their life condition but specifically where they might feel we are spending money where we shouldn't that wouldn't be in the best interest of our city. I welcome that conversation. On the 29th of this month, I have a
roundt town hall. I welcome anyone who is hearing this to come talk to me and I'm more than happy to listen to specifics of where you think we might be wasting citizens money because that's a conversation I'm willing to have and bring back for all of us to discuss. But
I think we do a great job. I really want to commend this staff for the hard work this year. This was of all the years I've watched this and it's going on over five or six well before I even became a commissioner. I used to download this
budget and analyze it just cuz I'm a numbers geek and and I got to tell you this is the best budget I have seen in all the years I've been following this city. So you are all to be commended for doing a good job. this was painful and
there will be some levels of service impact based on this budget but I think it's as great a balance as we could have come up with so um I don't see anyone else in the queue nobody else has anything to say here
shall we all rest up Demetrius Petro you are up thank you mayor I'll be quick technical question because we want to go to lunch yes uh utilities Capital category I forgot to ask that there's a jump in 10 million
does that include the station or no as a as a category that sir it's uh in utilities department oh utilities yes and those big jump amount somewhere $10 million
what is that does include the 17 million that was the affluent pumping um waste water treat waste water include doing it ourselves. Okay. And the the development department there was a big jump in capital
category. What was specifics on that? Uh 2 and a half million for some environmentally sustainable land. There was 1 million for the online permitting forella. So, it's capital, right? We're talking about capital.
Yes. I think it was more than one. What What was the total jump? It was from one of your slides this morning. I didn't write down how much was it was it was 3.7
million and online permitting was one. environmental sensitive plan was two and a half and then the renovation um is listed at 500K for what they might do with the pre
headquarters. That's the total of capital that went to proposed from adopted from last year. Okay, that's all. Thank you. Um I think everybody hopefully is in agreement. Why don't we take a 45minut
break? Let's come back at 1:00. Pick up. Welcome back everybody. It's 101 and we're back at it. Uh, I did want to just make a quick ask, did we did we have any public comments on 25-2482?
No public comments, sir. All right, then. Uh, I guess we are ready to move on to D. Huh? 25-2530. Discussion and possible direction for the 10-year capital improvement plan. City manager, you're it.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh we do have a presentation that we are going to go through uh a few slides that will sort of set the set the tone of the complete list that we're going to walk through um in some great detail. But
as we start with our slide deck which shows the 10-year capital improvement um this particular presentation one we want to talk about what it looks like uh from the beginning and we do have a total in our 10-year CIP of nearly $ 1.5 billion
and this was a um part of what PFM did for us if you recall what we wanted to do was to show the entire universe of projects out there for like a 20-year window and we did that and it showed a lot of funding gaps.
So the goal of this 10-year CIP agenda item is to sort of today look at what the 10year CIP window looks like accept what it looks like. Uh and we're going to give you some funding considerations for you to think about over the course
of August while you're on recess. Now, knowing that you're not going to think about it every day while you're gone, we will do some work and look at the information that we have while you're gone so that when you come back in September, we can have a conversation about, well, how can we sort of slot
some of these projects into the funding that we have or where do we need to take some of the funding buckets that we have in order to meet some of these obligations? Um, this is this is most likely going to be an ongoing conversation. I don't want us to lose
sight of it even as we talk about it today. We're not going to solve for it today. We're not going to solve for it in September. But I think that the sooner that we identify a strategy and a and a roadmap to getting some of these things done, the better off we will all
be because it is a lot and it's it's um it's important that we talk about it. So when you look at the appropriate appropriation to date, that's 251 million of our 10ear CIP and 500 excuse me, $725 million total has been funded.
It leaves a shortfall of about half a billion dollars. And the half a billion dollars um as we discuss the projects that you're going to see, we've ranked them and this is how we sort of ranked them as a department and team. We have
um when you look at our guidelines, you know, if it's critical to public safety and health, it was ranked high. Um part of some of that determination was irregardless of the year that you needed it, it was ranked high, which means that some things that may be ranked in the
high category could be a few years out, but you know, looking at the criteria, if it's high, if it was public thinking critical, you can imagine it's going to be in a high category. I don't want you to confuse high for um um high in
ranking versus a right now priority. And the projects weren't ranked against each other that you're going to see. So we didn't sort of rank them and say, well, one department was more important or valuable than the other. They ranked them their their projects based on the criteria that you're looking in front of
you. So, I'm sure we'll have some conversation on some of these to see if they stay where they're slotted or if there's movement that needs to be done. Also, high in the category is needed to prevent imminent failure of essential infrastructure. Uh, this goes back to sort of what we asked the citizens on
the referendum. Could we could we build and borrow for those items and knowing that it failed, now we have to look at some of those and make sure there's a pathway to get them done. uh the essential for maintaining core municipal operations. Uh we know that if we can't
service our citizens, then that reduces drastically our impact to make sure that they um remain um serviced with a high quality of life that we want to provide. Um link to timesensitive grant funding
or external contributions. um whether we're talking about you know the police headquarters is the first thing that comes to my mind regarding some grant funding we were seeking for it from the state and you know there were timelines and limits that were on those and it comes with
stipulations and um Val Valerie Malinowski our grant manager is the one who keeps us in line with making sure that we stay on top of our our grant compliance deadlines so that we don't miss out on funding that could support a project. Um, fully funded and ready to
proceed without a construction contract or necessary resources already in place is very important and directly tied to high priority items in the city's strategic plan as set by the commission, which we know those are ones that you set annually and expected to provide a
high return on an investment. If we can get a project in priority, it makes sure that it stays at the top and we can get money back of it. One that meets that category off my top of the mind is transfer station that we've all been talking about recently. So a medium ranking would look like an an
improvement of operational efficiency or service delivery. We're never going to stop looking for those. Um we're always going to keep that keep that door open and keep it moving. Um to extend the useful life of existing assets. uh the longer we can keep something that we already have in place, the better we can
um make sure that we don't have to spend money on it until we absolutely have to. Um the media can also be deferred one or three years without major impact. This is where the flexibility and some items come from to allow us to say it's important, but we have a little bit of
time to make sure that we have a plan in place to get it funded. Low ranking guidelines would be non-essential improvements, uh projects within products with minimal impact if laid beyond three years and initiatives that can wait until higher priority needs to be addressed. So everything as
you can imagine in the half a billion dollars that we're looking for, it cannot be priority number one. We have to sort of make sure that we rank them in a way that allows for the department heads and their teams and the subject matter experts to be able to live with some of the um projects being done
sooner, some being done in the short term and then some being turn done in the long term. Uh when you look at this particular chart, it shows you a summary of those funding statuses by priority. And we would, you know, highlight in the the high category that
326 uh million of the high category, which is 735 million, is currently unfunded. Now, that would be what I would call a red flag because one, we need to talk about what's ranked in the high category, and if it's unfunded, how
can we fund it? Like what are our options and what are our realistic options to get that done? When you look at the medium category, it's a little bit more balanced uh with $216 million being totaled and 111 million being
unfunded and 104 being funded. And then in the low category, which is sort of the opposite of the high category, most of it is actually funded at 211 million and 71 million is underfunded. Um so when you look at this just on its face
value, we can clearly see the need is to address some of the high uh unfunded projects that we're going to go over. So how are we going to pay for some of these fundings? Um you know when we talk about different buckets and you literally are seeing buckets on your
screen, this is what it looks like as we start talking about well where's the money going to come from? you know a lot of it is not sort of things you have not heard they are just things that we need to take um take into the proper perspective. First bucket says road and
drainage uh district fire rescue district solid waste district and utility governor funds and those are based on the rate studies. So those are the assessments that we talk about and what you see and what you decide upon and allows us to actually charge the
user back for those and they pay for a lot of those projects. Um the next bucket is certax which we talked about and we know that it's based on the commission approved plan that you've already put into place and again you
know our natural reaction has been to use certax for a lot of things and we're grateful it's there but whether it's the future um uncertainty of it or whether it's the the impact that we hear from the community when we tried to change it before if we change that it just needs
to be a very deliberate and separate conversation. I wouldn't want you to start rearranging certax in this particular exercise just knowing that you've already made some decisions and there's some things in certax that uh absolutely have to be taken care of first and foremost and the one that
comes to my mind off the top of the head is always going to be Price Boulevard because we rearranged a lot to get that done based on what we needed when we needed it. Um so some some are department specific funds that are based on capacity and whether it's a tree fund uh we know what
we've obligated those funds for. Warm middle springs fund we know that as mentioned earlier we want Warm Mill Springs to pay for itself. So how do we how do we fix the shortfall there in order to rebuild it and renovate it the way that we're doing now based on the
plan that was approved by the commission in um earlier this fiscal year. early early this calendar year. Um also we have uh the building fund which touched on earlier and the fleet management um impact fees. So the impact fees based
on the PFM financial model that is crucial very crucial to how the city continues as was mentioned earlier the commercial development and the footprint of what we do in order to keep growing as a city. It's important that those impact fees continue to come into the
city so that we can benefit from that revenue source um directly related to the growth uh that the city is experiencing. And the replacement and renewal funds uh they reflect district approvals and plan transfers from this source of funds. And
this goes back to the the um the the proactiveness of making sure that we don't just neglect those replacement and renewal fund opportunities that will allow us to take advantage of those funds and reduce the need to find new
funding sources uh in the future. So then now we have new potential funding options and you know again as it was also said earlier you know one we've talked about search tax two
we've already talked about the um adalorum rate some of these we've sort of already talked about in our conversations and we also talked about the vacant lot registration program with director Ray here earlier but when you look at increasing things that you can increase other than those we've already
mentioned um the nonadalorum um assessment, water and wastewater utility rates, impact fees, and utility franchise fees. Those are some of the ones that you have touched on or used in the past in order to get some of the revenue shortfalls
taken care of. Uh new revenue sources, you know, there's not a lot that has not already been done or thought about or ruled out, but I think we always need to keep that door open. and the vacant lot registration one that we talked about. Although it won't be in effect uh for a
few years, I think that if we would have rushed it and made it come soon faster, we would have more headaches than tying it in to the tax collector and allowing that to be the vehicle that we use to actually um collect those funds for our
city. Um we can also explore and pursue um cops, which we know that we're doing that for headquarters. uh some of these uh other projects might be valuable candidates for that as well. So once we do it, I think and prove that it can be done. I think that that will open the
door up for us to be able to do it more often. But at the end of the day, no matter how you do it, you have to be able to have the money to pay for it. And that's what we want to make sure that um regardless of the vehicle, we have a way to pay for it. um the P3 initiatives. I think that we are very
fortunate that there's a vendor out there who is soliciting us for P3 opportunities without us going out to solicit to the world. That doesn't mean that that is the only P3 partner that you might have, but I think it shows that there's an attractiveness to what you're doing as a city. Then you people
want to be connected to what your future looks like. I don't think everybody can say that and I think that we should uh we should we should be grateful that we're getting that sort of attention. our legislative appropriations. We are we are very grateful and fortunate to
have people that support us at the uh the state level. Um we get we get constant support from um whether it's um Buchanan and Guters and some of the other ones who have just said that they believe in the city of Northport and that not only they believe in us when
they are here visiting our city but they also speak very highly of us you know when we're not there to speak for ourselves in Tallahassee. Um cost sharing uh interlocal agreements. Um there's there's partners here whether it's the county or others that we would love to be able to make sure that we
keep sort of those doors open in ways that benefit our city which in turns has a mutual benefit to them as well. developer contributions. Um some of the problems that we need to solve for including activating the area out in
activity 6 and 10 is important and that developer contributions in order to get that done is going to be crucial because we just cannot figure out a solution to solve on our own. we're going to have to find a way to partner with them in a way
that allows them to be um paid back either over the course of time or get a benefit that allows them to understand that we need that commercial we need those areas activated in order to fulfill our future plan. Um and one of them is the next one which is um the
consideration of uh an independent special district. You know, if we are able to implement a special district in the future that allows for it to maintain itself and allow for it to have revenue that is generated for itself where we don't have to go out and look
for an external entity, but it is controlled and maintained under the rules of a special district. I think that the city should consider that. I think that's a very uh important option and we are doing research on that and exploration of that model to bring back to you in the near future. So we can
seriously consider that. But as you can tell and hopefully that you understand, we are leaving no option off the table and no stone unturned. But when you look at some of the projects that we're about to walk through now, what we would like
for you to do is just help us. And when you see the unfunded amounts, like how do we solve for this? How do we fund for that? You know, which which bucket makes the most sense? Or is it a combination of buckets? And you know, I think our team is here to answer some of the questions on a priority of how we need
it and why we need it. And that should generate us to a pathway of how we move forward through the month of August while we wait to re-engage you in the month of September. So now, if you don't mind, Mr. Mr.
Mayor, we're going to put up on the screen the attachment that was with the uh document and I'm going to sort of just walk us through uh on the screen uh some of the make sure we're looking at the same one. Is that the same one I
look at? I think it is. Okay. Um so this is the uh 10-year capital improvement plan um with um projects and priority and funding status. So, let's start to go through this. All right. So,
development services uh is up first with their online permitting system. And let's just use one example so we can keep going see what we're doing. So, the project total through fiscal year 35 is $4.7 million. We have appropriated $3.7
million and funded uh a million dollars of it. So when you look at this particular project, you can see that in the far right column of fiscal year 25 uh 26 through 35, excuse me, there's no unfunded amount.
That's a great thing. They were all that easy. Be awesome. But that is a good example of one that takes care of itself. Um if I come down to line 11, because I'm going to go to the ones that are unfunded as we can see
the ones which are funded. Um you will see that there's um there's in information technology department there are unfunded A and B equipment charges of $275,000. There's an ERP um system uh replacement
potentially of 10 million that is unfunded. If you if you recall this budget year we needed to have 200 $200,000 estimated in order for us to move forward with the project for the ERP. We did not have that in there. We had to
take that out. So, our ERP that we have right now, our enterprise enterprise resource planning system, I told you that we need that done immediately. We are going to have to, and this goes back to sort of managing our expenses on things that we have to
defer to. We're going to have to either add some modules to the one that we have or stretch it out a little bit longer until some of that that other revenue comes into the city. I hate to do it. I don't like to do it but we are we are really really not in a position to take
on that project right now. Um so and you can actually see that that is why it's in the low funded as a priority. We can do without it because we have a system right now. Would we be more efficient and effective with the
new system? Absolutely. We need to leverage technology so that our people can be number efficient. But we have to also make choices regarding things that we have to deal with. Uh there's a couple of the items there as you see some switch some replacements in it. Um
going down to line number uh through 18. Uh the next section is parks and recrecks. Uh what you're looking at in the first few items of unfunded and they are mostly in the medium category right now. You're looking at baseball field
renovations. be looking at atwater park atwater park baseball field renovation led conversion um the park lot um LED conversion regulation field LED conversion there splash pad rehab um
most of these are unfunded especially when you start looking at Butler Park and the basketball court and multi-purpose fields one two and three all of these are unfunded through our parks and wrecks but we know that they
are on the list of what's coming up. Our next slide, when you look at slide 34, and while you see a lot of items for parks and wrecks, you will see that they are smaller in size than what some of the other larger ones look like in some
of the other departments because we are talking about, you know, conversions, replacements, but there is a volume here that I want us to sort of not lose, especially as we talk about Daz White Park. Um, you look at number 45 and you we talk about the Judge Mullen Center.
You know, one of the things that, you know, um, I've talked about or had a conversation with recently is about the Mullen Center and its, um, numbers on how it's utilized. It does provide a lot, and we've had this conversation sort of before, but not in this same
way. But we've talked about the what we provide as a city for the Mullen Center, the space that we provide. We're no longer using the gym there. The gym there has now the equipment will be has been has been or is being moved out and then that space will be repurposed for
um the the main thing I think of is um extra space for their summer camp usage. But you know now would be extra space when summer camp's not in maybe for meetings or etc. But you know thinking about the long-term uh the long-term
plan for the Muller Center might be important. You know, the Mullen Center could be somewhere that could be repurposed if the events that are there now were used in other venues were they could be used at the Morgan Center. Some of those events, you know, STC has meeting space. Maybe they could be used
there. What if you use the Mullen Center as a place to sort of help with the swing space of the police department while we are waiting to get their building built while we are still using trailers out for police. So, it's just a thought process of how do we make sure
that we explore all of our options, but the Mullen Center provides a very, very valuable impact to the community. We would want to have a conversation about, well, how would those needs be taken care of outside of what we do? And the city doesn't have to be the owner of all
the solutions, but when your back is against the wall, and make no mistake, that's where we're at. We're just thinking and spitballing conversations that could make an impact down the line. Um, and as I keep going through now, I'm looking at sort of line number 55. We're
talking about McKibben Park and some of those conversions and replacements. Narrowmore Park, same way. We're still looking at unfunded um parks activities that need uh attention sooner rather than later. And again, they are they are a little bit split between low and
medium um priorities. You look at the high priorities, we're talking really about Narore soccer field um rehab and replacement because it's one of our emptiest used fields. And then you also look at the park maintenance uh building which is a high priority which we know
is being used over at Dallas White Park for its new um location. So then you come down to uh item number, excuse me, line item number 79 and 80. We start talking about the skate park and some of the renovations that need to
be done. Uh on that side there there are some high priorities here at the end of this parks and recck schedule that we don't want to um minimize. And you know one I I thinking about is the is the warm middle springs on line 85 master
plan implementation uh on the 60 acres. And then you have the building uh rehabilitation that we're doing as well. We have some unfunded numbers there that was just mentioned earlier about Warm Mill Springs. And ideally, we want Warm Mill Springs to take care of itself. It
is an enterprise fund. It needs to generate revenue to offset that amount. Unfortunately, it won't be able to offset this amount because of what we need in the short term to get it rehabed. But there's not to say that the money can't come from this fund to
replace wherever you might use it from in order to take care of the project that we are currently involved in. But as you can see, there is an unfunded amount in that high priority for Warm Mill Springs. The 5.5 million for the 20 acres is the most important. Then the
five million depending on uh how we implement the master plan would be the next one. and knowing that Christine Johnson and um Don uh Jackson have met with us and are you know will come back to us because I believe you left that
conversation with us going back to them to see uh if the initial uh the initial points of their conservation easement could be reviewed. It will come back to you and that will help you make a decision on that second
bucket of 5 million. But again, still very important for War Mill Springs. Uh the next bucket here uh is public safety, the PDN fire department, the public safety training complex. Um this is a high priority and unfunded item
that touches on both of our public safety department. Um when you look at fire and rescue u by itself for public safety starting at line uh 90 and 91 you can see that uh again high priority because of its
critical mission to life. But you can also see that there's an unfunded amount in these projects as well, especially when you look at something like line 95, which is controlled medical supply uh dispensers, if I'm reading that right, or was that the ambulance? I'm sorry,
94, the uh ambulance uh for fiscal year 34. It's a million dollars, but it's unfunded. So, we we have to figure out how in the set of buckets that I mentioned earlier can we get some of this accomplished. um fire station 81
rebuild. Um that actually is looking good and we know that they're moving forward with that. So that shows a good example of a high project that is actually funded. The amount of the EOCC operating building which was on line 96 and that one we're still waiting on to
get that final number. As you can see the 11.2 $2 million in that line item is what we have all known that you have appropriated for that project but approximately $6 million hopefully less is what's unfunded that we still have to
solve for. Um and when you have unfunded projects competing with unfunded projects that is where um a lot of the challenge comes in through us that you're trying to convey in this exercise. Uh moving down their list, you'll start
to see that they need some some some engines replaced and some fire trucks um added to their particular uh budget. Uh you'll see some fire stations and line items uh 105 and 106 start to uh needed
to come online in fiscal years 3132 and also fiscal year 34. We do have some some time before that gets here, but you know and I know that that time will come faster than any of us can think. And so us now being able to say how we plan on
addressing that funding issue will keep us all on the right track to getting it done. On the next page, when you start to look at line items uh 110 through 133, you'll see some more of the same of ambulances
that are necessary. You'll see the replacement of some extrication equipment, um some staff vehicles, um rescue 80 scheduled replacements through rescue 87, uh all of which are unfunded
at this particular time. You'll also see that there are some uh trucks 82, 84, and 86 that are scheduled for replacement um that are funded. So, we don't want you to think that everything that you see is unfunded, but like I said, we really need to look at things
in a very holistic manner. And make no mistake, I'm I am fairly certain this is as much CIP detail that any commission has ever received from the city of uh Northport staffing because that's why we did the exercise and we thank you for allowing us to do it. Um, when you look
under police, I'm starting now at line item 135. You will see that they have a total of uh you know 191 which should be 19 million total there but they have a lot of that that is also uh unfunded
when you look at the 153 and that totals down based on you know the police headquarters is the biggest item that you're going to find in there. Um, that is an item that again, as we were talking about earlier, putting that into a normal CIP window, unless you're going
to again take the pathway of just raising something up for that amount of money, that's not something that's why it was on the ballot for approval to be funded through um general obligation bonds, which is the cheapest and normal way that a city of our size would take care
of it large-scale infrastructure projects. But we are where we are and it is what it is. So now I think that sort of the conversation that we had yesterday that talked about the future of the P3 and it's some some have written or some have
said that well you know now they you know they put it on the shelf and you know they put it on hold. I don't really think that's an accurate way to say what what you did. What you did was say keep trying to figure it out and keep working on it. And what we need to do is have more information brought to you, more pathways further plushed out. But you
have in no way said, "Put this on a shelf unless, you know, let's not answer it." We are still solving for this problem. And it is going, it is a it is a long-term effort and we are committed to solving for it because we know the need is there and we're going to keep bringing you information on different
pathways on how to get it done until we figure out that it is done or you told me stop. One or the other. But there was there was a writing that said it was kind of put on hold and the cost of it does need to be re-evaluated in a way that can make sense. And in the way I
speak of it is we asked for 115 and that number was too large for our community. The number needs to be somewhere in a double-digit number that will allow us to actually get it done. I don't believe I've done this, but I got a memo from
our um our police design um architect and he was out of the country, but then he gave it to us and I believe he gave it to me right before I went on vacation. I need to give it to you and we're going to put it online. It further talks about the substation effort and why that's not the most ideal way to go
for our city and it talks about other cities of our size or our growth that it just doesn't make sense for. But at the at the same time it gives you an example of a municipality. I think it was Bradington where they said this is your number you build to that number and that
way they have been able to say you know get as much as you can for that number. We just need to keep thinking and I'm going to send that to the commission and we'll make sure we put it online but we just need to make sure that we keep thinking about how to get this done. And I don't want the paper the the newspaper to make it sound like the commission has
said, you know what, threw our hands up and said, you know, we we we can't we can't we can't deal with this. You can't do it because we haven't brought you the right option. When we find that right option, that right tool, I think that will unlock some of uh uh of the of the the problem that we're trying to solve
for. Um so I'll go past police and now we go to public works. And you know, public works is one of our larger capital needs um uh departments, but when you look at some of their unfunded
items, I'm looking at facility um citywide rehab, which I'm pretty sure came out of the the assessment that we just received, and you know, that's a pretty big number when you look at it. and forward to see $37 million unfunded. We have to figure out how we're going to
get that done over the next uh 10 years. And that is unfortunately unfortunately not even the biggest cost um in their particular bucket of needs which would which would turn to the public works facility phase two of it looks about $50
million with $45 million uh total but 41 million looks to be funded and $4 million of it is unfunded. So again, the give and take of how the CIP works. Uh their drainage, public works drainage um
is a big total and most of it is funded as well. Their total is $104 million with 79 being funded and leaves about 9 million unfunded. So uh we're glad that they're able to take care of themselves based on their rate
assessments. Uh and when you come down to fleet um they have not a large need but as you can see it's spread out over low medium uh and high pretty well but still needs funding consideration.
Um the now I'm on slide 185 which is uh starting with public works solid waste. Um you see the transfer station there that is a problem that we keep admiring but we are going to get to the end of it but you know we've been able to fund it and that is something that we are going
to be able to do within ourselves. It's just going to take some rate increases and some some time to get it done but we believe that that's one that um along with the F4 station is one that we have to take care of. We know that there's a
rate of return and a rate on um there's a return on investment from doing that ourselves and having someone else reap some of that rate for return or return on init return on investment is not something we want to do even though we know that a P3 partner might be able to
get us there uh a little bit faster and easier. We want to protect projects that allow us to protect and retain taxpayer dollars uh as much as uh possible. So, um that transfer stationation still
stays top of mind. Um um on line 192 now we're looking at public works uh transportation. When you look at a lot of these items, they are spread pretty pretty good throughout low, medium, and high. Um the low medium ones seem to be
more of the um uh unfunded because they do have a lot in public works transportation that are appropriated. And when you come down to some of the bigger items I'm on line 217
which is our road rehab program. Um our road re our road rehab program. Uh I I hate to say it. It may it may never be enough just because of the way that our roads need constant attention. More people we put on those roads, the more attention that it's going to need. And
that just goes handinhand with the growth pattern of the city and the needs of our infrastructure. So there's u there's a lot in our transportation public works needs, but again we have to take care of our thoroughare so that people can get through the city as much
as possible. Uh next page we're looking at um utilities and facilities and you know they're on line 232 their um administrative building and build operation center. We've already been to the uh ribbon cutting of that and that
$35 million facility is underway. So not everything that we have that is large ticketed is a problem. This is one where uh we did reshuffle some projects to get the get the amount for the building to be done but it was worth it based on the
needs of the the department at the time. Uh when you look at utilities and wastewater system here is the 17 million for the effluent pumping station line item 236 that we talked about earlier. We do have the funding accounted for in
here for that and it will take rate um assessments to get there but also we know that we tried to get it a different way and that was not successful and not to say that we couldn't sort of pivot or use a cops in this process but at the
end of the day we need to get it allotted for now right we need to get it allotted for now while we still explore operations and if you have to move it from one pocket to the other if that's the case with the wheel the board, then that's fine. But I think that the sense of urgency with that project has to be
front and center so that we don't end up in a worse situation, whether it's uh publicly by what we provide or financially by what the D might says you should have done differently. Um, as I keep moving down through utilities and
wastewater, uh, a lot of these are funded through the actual rates and what they will recover. problem is you just want to make sure that there's a balance between the rates that they are charging versus how much people can afford.
People can't afford unlimited rates. So you have to make sure that you are considerate of how much and how fast you're raising those particular charges. Uh on section well section utilities water system starting at 255. uh again,
enterprise funding sources that allow for us to be able to um charge for those services as needed. And when you're looking at these, we're talking about now the booster pump station, the direct portable uh reuse pilot planet, we're talking about items
that are low priority and a little bit more on Norwegian weight side as opposed to they are a emergency um that needs to be solved for today. Um on the last page um we are still looking at the category
of utility waste system and when you you look at there's a good there's some of their some of their money is appropriated but when you get towards some of the outy years of um uh through 35 you will see their
unfunded amounts are small and the and the total of their funded sources total about $81 million even only 5 million and uh unfunded. So this was um this was a lot and but it was this was what the
universe looks like as far as how we got this all for our CIP. Um the buckets that we mentioned earlier in the report are where we're looking at to get a lot of this done. But collectively what we are looking for is one any questions
that you might have regarding some of these projects, some of their funding sources or even some of the um timelines of what some of this might needs to get might need to be done based on knowing the budget that we're in this year and where we're going to go in the next. Um
so I will stop right there, Mr. Mayor, and we're happy to answer any questions you might have. That was a mouthful. Well, commissioners, somebody want to start somewhere, Commissioner Duval.
Thank you, Mayor. Um, I want to key in on one particular issue and that has to do with the solid waste transfer station. We've been talking about this project
and one phrase we keep hearing is that it will pay for itself. I want to suggest to you a possible way to show that it can pay for itself. I'm suggesting to my fellow commissioners
before 2026 or 2025 is over, we institute a special $100 fee on all customers of solid waste. That's our residential customers. I do not know
what our commercial customers pay, but we could tack on something on them, too. Okay, that $100 fee will be for three years. Each year it will generate $4 million.
I'm told there's already about $2.5 million appropriated for this. And if this project costs about $15 million, then it can be paid for in about three years. Now what we do is we institute this fee before this year is over to
start for the year 2026. During 2026, these fees will be paid on the taxes, you know, starting on, you know, they got to be paid by March 31st. So, uh, those taxes will be paid for the years
26, 27, and 28. In the meantime, we find a contractor that's willing to work with us and get that design built. And at the beginning, after one year of collecting these fees, we've got $4 million in fees, about $2.5
million already appropriated, and we get this contractor to okay that we're going to give him a down payment of around $5 million. Now he starts construction and after one year he should be pretty well on the construction and we give him that
second $5 million that second $4 million that we've collected. Okay. And then within two years I would expect the project would probably be completed. Okay. And we can now give him that third installment. It's now paid
for. Now, that $100 fee goes away totally and for the next six years, we decrease because we're expecting to have lower costs and we're expecting to start getting some revenue.
We give a six-year time period where we're going to lower the fee for our customers by an additional $50. So after six years they paid for three years and then after six years they've got their money back and we've got a
solid waste transfer station. Uh and in the meantime I would also advise that uh our grants department keep applying for grants to you know maybe help out with us. But that's my basic suggestion.
Let's you know since this is such a voluminous topic. Why don't we do them one at a time and let's like Okay, Commissioner Dval brought up the solid waste transfer station. Let's weigh in on that and see
if we can't come up with something that can give direction to staff as to, you know, where we're at. We've had some obvious discussions in prior meetings about solid waste. So, Commissioner Langon, Mr. Okay. I I find the
I find this a very interesting proposal. I do have a question for legal. Um, it was my understanding that before we started any construction effort
that we had to either have the full amount of the project ready to go or the full amount committed through some other methodology. Is that correct? Is my
recollection of state statute accurate? I don't I I don't know the answer to that. I don't believe that's a a legal requirement. I think if what you can't do under our charter is to accumulate debt in order to in the future, right? Um if you budget for something and able
to pay it as you go, that would comply with requirements of our of our charter. Okay. Maybe someone from development services can help me out or a city manager or Jason, you might might know. I thought we really had to have all the
funds of a capital project accounted for before we could begin the project. I think that's a financial question and I believe that you're you're correct if I'm not mistaken. Yep. Yes. Normally we need to budget it uh fully for the construction before we can
spend it. And now would a methodology now I don't know if the numbers are the correct numbers but would this kind of methodology qualify for that type of an approach. We might need to do a little bit more
research um because in the grants world that we we do get reimbursement after the fact. Um we'll have to do a little bit more research on that. Okay. Because I think it's fascinating and um I can remember city manager we had a conversation not that long ago
about Port St. Lucy. Mhm. And you had mentioned that they were in like year eight of reducing their millage rate. Yes. Because they kind of went whoa big millage rate to fund some things and then had a methodology of backing off
it. Yes. something like this rel I I don't have the intestinal fortitude to suggest something like that with our millage rate but with solid waste maybe a variation on commissioner Duval's theme
is maybe we have sort of a hefty increase to the fee and with it reducing every year I think the model is intriguing and and if it might if we do our research and If having this kind of
methodology qualifies for sort of having all your ducks in a row before we start construction, then I think it's a very interesting concept. Oh, go ahead. And just for clarification, definitely we won't be able to do it on this uh
next, you know, coming up fiscal year for the tax role bill because too late. So, we'll have to wait another year. And I was just going to say I I I I agree that we're throwing we need to think and
creative out of the box. Everything should be explored. So we have no problem going through and seeing we can bring you back some realistic data from the conversation. Couple things um on this item. First of all, each year assuming a $15 million a
today cost a today cost of $15 million for the solid waste transfer station. Reasonable right today if we had the money right now to write a check with. Every year 10% is a fair number. Some would say eight,
I would say 10. So every year that's delayed adds 10% which is a million and a half dollars to the cost of this project. Assessing people over a three-year period or let's take a threeyear period is going to generate $4.5 million. I
mean or I'm sorry over a three-year period we're going to add $4.5 million to the cost of this project which is going to take it up to $20 million. To me, that's the wrong way to approach this. There's a tool out there. It's called
certificates of participation. It's a simple always use other people's money, preferably not our taxpayers money. So, I say get the damn cops done. Get it done. Get it done ASAP because what it's
going to do is spread out the cost. It's going to be an infantismal increase to the citizens on their utilities. We can pre we can pay it down. We can pay it off. The ROI on this is going to
be astronomical. So to me, it's just a no-brainer. I mean to ask, you know, to assess on top of all the other expenses our citizens are are are experiencing to upcharge them over a short period of
years. I mean, to me, all and then delay the project because that's exactly what we're doing. We don't have the money to do it and the law and the rules say if you don't have it, you can't build it. Okay, you can go check on that, but that's the fact. And what's going to happen is you're going to make this a 20
million or $25 million project before we're all done. If we move quickly before the next year's up, we could be in production for this. We could be building this sucker and we could get it done and we could get it in operation.
We could start making money on it. Once we even out Northport's participation in utilization facility, we can start selling those services outside. And in less certainly less than 10 years, maybe even less than seven, this whole project's paid off. And it's such an
example for the whole city to see how you can utilize the funding methodology. The only thing with this is we got to go to validation. So what? If there was ever a project that we should have to go to the court and get validated and anyone who wants to challenge it can feel free, but it is the most sensible
project we've got that lends itself to this. That's where I would go. I don't think we need to reinvent the wheel here. I mean, if I can just respond to one little bit, city manager, I'm assuming that with this meth methodology, construction would begin.
So, it wouldn't be a delaying the project point of view. How long would it take to build a transfer station? A year, two? Usually takes about 18 to build something of that station. Okay. So, maybe maybe less. Again, if we popped it up higher and worked it back, I just
think it's a an interesting party first. Well, or a source identified, right? That's what we have to research. Would would something like that qualify? And I agree with you. I think this project is perfect for cops,
but I appreciate the thought process. Yep. And if not for this project, then maybe for another project we could consider that type of a methodology. I think it's just worth exploring. And and from our standpoint, um um Mr.
Mr. Mayor and Commissioner, we're not changing the pathway of the cops. I mean, you've already given us that direction for that. That that bus is driving itself, right? The idea that Commissioner Duval just mentioned is something that we could sort of put together and put some numbers to it and some dates maybe that
would show maybe the pros and cons or the viability or lack thereof of the project. But it's just um what we're we're taking is just another exercise to try to in the cat so to speak. Okay. Um
anybody else on that one? All right. Um, moving past solid waste transfer station. Um, who wants to take the next stand? Go ahead, Commissioner Wang.
Uh, thank you, mayor. I just have some questions. Um, where are we in it? It's sort of moved off my radar. Where are we in implementing mobility fees? Couple years ago, we had a big conversation
about that that it would generate more revenue than the tra the transportation fees we currently have in place. Where is that at? Staff can correct me, but I'm pretty sure the state legislature threw us a curveball with uh you can't do more
restrictive action. um after hurricane Ian they kind of tied their hands on some land development code stuff and I think if I remember right mobility fee was one of the victims of that action up in Tallahass but that proposal predated Ian I mean
we've been talking about that didn't matter when it was going to be instituted they kind of retroacted it back if I remember right that's one of the issues that we've run into that if I'm not mistaken right staff can correct it
uh we can do it inuh 2027 that that limitation goes away or window of opportunity opens up. Okay. Okay. Thank you for that. Um the independent special district. This
is the first thing I've heard in a very long time that gave me hope for developing the infrastructure out east. um feasibility, time frame, what are the hurdles, next
steps? I I know it's early in that thought process, but should I remain excited? I would say yes, remain excited. And I would say yes, Mr. Yarbor would say also that all those questions are trying to be vetted out right now. Okay.
And you know, the the benefit of it is it's already been done. It's not something unique, but it is something that we would sort of have to in my opinion right now sort of shepherd, you know, through the process. So, right, I think that if we can get the support of it, I think that it would be a great
way to go that would allow us to do a lot in an area that needs a lot and the faster we can get it done, the better. But we look forward to answering all of those questions today. Yeah. Just a very rough when we might get an update. I I believe I I threw out
September and I believe I was gently denied, chastised, right? I think I think I was a little too aggressive. So I believe that hopefully in the fall. Yeah. Our we um don't want to bring any incomplete information. Um it is a very
viable pathway. We just want to get our ducks in row before we kind of unleash it to the world. Yeah. We understand the time sensitivity. Yeah. the time sensitivity of it all as well, right? Yeah. I'm I'm just so excited about that. Really, it honestly, it's
the first thing in a long time that has given me hope for jacking up the revenue of this city. It's not all taxes. It's getting that area commercially developed. So important. Um
my initial reaction, one of your early slides, city manager talked about funded and unfunded buckets in the three categories of high, medium, and low priority. My initial reaction was, hey,
maybe we should move the funded buckets of medium and low priority to fund high priority. And we went too fast through the list for me to say, okay, this is what we would be sacrificing. True. Yes, ma'am. What would we be s
It depends because some of those fundings are tied to specific funding uh buckets. Yeah. And and projects like you can't fund like if it's a lowunded u building fund, you can't take that and then put it into something that's a general fund. It has to match with the bucket that
it's funded for. So it's not as black and white or as what you saw. Yeah. Um do do we have any gut feel on if at a high level we agreed to do that which
projects would we sacrifice? I don't think we know which project and how much could we free up that that may be part of the exercise that you charge us with right over this over the summer if that's what you know. I I I would not want to get your hopes up though to say that I would because I think it would be low, but that's just
based on my initial reaction to the question. Well, you've given me a sort of a plug for a consensus, right? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Let me just make a note of that if someone else wants to take it over. I
have more, but I need to make some notes. Um, this is hard to do without having those schedules up there to go page by page with. I'll just try to deal with it more from a high level and and and see if this makes sense. Um,
you know, thinking about we have some projects. I mean, we know we want to on our capital improvement project list. We got um we got Italy Avenue out there. We've got I think what five on the new uh new community center
like five million funded 10 million unfunded. Um could I mean we ought to if we think about it is there a way to repurpose assets
that the city has to help better align ourselves and offset some of the costs of this stuff. I mean, you take the Mullen Center and we we've touched on it a little. Mullen Center is not that far from the Warden Center. appreciate that there's a lot of activities and programs
that go on there, but if we were to find a home for all those, not looking to cut anything that the Mullen Center offers, but if we could find a home for everything that the Mullen Center offers, all those services, whether it
be privatized or public, move them to wherever. Can we repurpose that building? Can we repurpose it for police? Could we repurpose it for public works? Could we republic repurpose it for the building department and you know change the
dynamic? If we could move the building department out of this building and move it into the Mullen Center with some modest reconfigurations, it frees up the downstairs here. Could we move senior administration of police into downstairs
here? I think we need to start thinking with this repurposing multi-dimensional kind of concept because if we don't then we're totally focused on where do we find the money to buy to build each of
these things when maybe there's a way to repurpose. Absolutely. And from our standpoint that's one of the exercises that you send us towards during the month of August. our programs that are run out of there are the ones I would hope that you focus
on. The ones that are not ours, I don't think that we should be the owner of finding them new homes to run those programs. I believe there's other options that they could consider and the Morgan Center is one of them based on what the director would say is
available. But you know whether it's STC or you know some some other place within the city I don't think that we should put it on our team as the exercise for external programs just our programs. I didn't really know that there was projects or programs that were outside.
But the point I'm making is I the point I wanted to make was I don't want to see our our our citizenry our residents suffer with a loss of programs or services. They just need to find a new home to free up that building. The whole
concept being a repurposing, you know, that's one idea I have. Um, you know, uh, the public safety training complex was that that's still an unfunded that 30 million that's unfunded. The public safety training complex.
Oh, yeah. That's unfunded. What do we do now? I mean, how do we train people? Oh. Oh, yo, I thought you were like, "How do we fund it now?" Like, well, that's the problem. What do we do now? That's a good
question. And I can't remember. Was that a low priority or a medium priority? I don't think it was a high priority. That was a high priority item. Well, and again, high priority because you look at the first critical need of saving lives, that puts it as a high priority. That
doesn't mean that it's a high priority maybe from a a timeline standpoint. He might be able to tell you he can wait three years for it, which would sort of blend it. Good afternoon, Scott Ted for the fire rescue district. And I'm sure that chief has some additional stuff. So there's a
lot of different ganged up on um a lot of different considerations uh on this project. So if you remember when we put up the fire training tower that that's really changed our ability to do some things. We have a very very young
workforce right now and immediate access to training props and things like that are absolutely necessary and going to someplace out of district to do those things is very impractical. It involves a lot more overtime, a lot more personnel costs. So
what we tried to do in the moderate term was to develop a plan. police department had needs and we had needs and as I said I'll have Chief Garrison speak to theirs um on how we accomplish that here locally. Um one of the things that we're running into now, we've just had some
recent conversations with uh Sun Coast Technical College is paramedics. So there are departments all over the state that are converting to ALS that were not ALS before. That's advanced life service, advanced life support, um emergency medical services. And so the
number of paramedics that are required in the state right now, the classes that we have locally are there's not even enough classes to do that. The county to the north of us and the county to the south of us are now hiring personnel and within their and making them sign an agreement pre-employment that says within three years you'll become a
paramedic or you won't have a job. There's not enough paramedic classes running. So, one of the things we're trying to develop right now with STC is create some programming down here um at their campus, helping them provide with some stuff on the other side. We're trying to do the same thing in the fire
programs. You know, we're starting our cadet program this year, and we're going to start that up out of the training tower, but there there's not the equipment out there to do a fullscale academy. Our goal over the next five years is to develop head cadet program into in partnership with Sun Coast Technical College into a high school
program so that we can recruit locally, get the kids started early, get them into that program and actually get them fire certified. So, not to interrupt you, Chief, but why would I mean I'm being sold on why we need all these. Why do we need a $30 million investment in a in a safety complex when we could partner it with
STC or any one of a number of neighboring counties or municipalities to do the same thing? That's the out ofthe- box thought. Trying to find ways to get rid of some of these projects, get them off the board if they're unfunded.
Okay. Do we really have to do them in the short term? When you look at $2.5 billion dollar here and the prize ultimately for this city is to stimulate economic development to generate the kind of commercial growth in this city
we need to keep us from tripling the millage rate in this city. Anything that doesn't contribute to that is worthy of thought as to how we defer those expenses if it's unfunded. Okay. Do we find a way to buy the time not to have
to fund a $30 million public safety training complex? And at the same time, if there's things that are already funded, maybe we unfund them if we can do the same thing. You see where I'm headed? The the problem with this monster list is it's great, but but we
got to come back to our strategic planning, which is what is our goal here? The goal on everything we do with capital improvement projects, funded and unfunded, got to be with the purpose in mind of growing the commercial base of
this city. Without that, we're trip on the military. It there is no way not to have that happen here. If we can't get to 15 to 18% commercial revenue in this city,
everything has to sacrifice at the expense of that. And it's real easy to get lost in all the needs cuz I you're preaching a choir. I absolutely support all this stuff. But at the end of the day, there just ain't no money in the
checkbook. So the only way we'll ever have money in the checkbook for these projects is going to be to grow the city economically. So to me, any project funded or unfunded that does not contribute to that goal out there of
developing the commercial base of the city is something that I think goes on the back burner or deferred or we come up with some repurposing partnership, you name it. because otherwise I don't see how we get to where we need to be.
We're looking at hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in in in in infrastructure to get to where we need to be to grow the commercial base of the city. So I I didn't mean to be rude at all, but I hear you're telling me what I agree with already. Well, some of the things
question very related. So some of the things I didn't get to finish is so there's a so partnering with Sun Coast Technical College for the high school program the the technical colleges just discontinued their high school program. They don't have it anymore. The reason they don't is because they think they lose too many candidates through that
program. I my belief is and I've met with them is that on the front end their vetting process is they let anybody into the program. You have to our cadet program is designed to be a feeder program into that. We would do that and Sun Coast Technical basically would we would use their accreditation
certification to have our own program here. Now we have people that are bringing into our system. I will tell you at at the college a lot of the technical colleges that that people are sent to especially for fire and EMT they call it minimum standards for a reason and their goal is they are a
money-making program. So they don't have stringent as much stringent standards. they don't have other things and so now we're getting people on the tail end sometimes to come through those processes and we have to bring them up to a certain level to make them what I would consider to be for us.
I understand what you're saying and these are one of the things we're working on a temporary solution with some temporary classrooms and stuff for the setup long term we don't think that's ideal we had partnered with PD you know a big piece of that is we have the property it was classrooms some of
those other things which could be utilized there are classes that could be done from outside of the area tech rescue and things like that would bring in help offset those ongoing costs for for continuing things I'm going to turn it over to Chief because I know he probably has a lot to speak to on this as well but there's it's a long it's a big discussion. There's a lot of goes
for Commissioner Lang. Yeah. I just if we're able to solve the EOC issue for which we do have funding, not enough, but we have a chunk of money allocated to that. Can that resource pay
double duty? Could we use it as classroom space for training for our folks? And don't be thinking of all the why nots. Let's think about how it might work. How could we make it work? Since
I'm assuming that space would be underutilized unless we have a disaster and if we have a disaster, I doubt standard trainings are going to go on. Could we possibly make that work at least over the next few years until we
generate more income as a city? Short the short answer is no. And and I'll tell you why. The classrooms are very important in a training complex arena to where you start out in the classroom and then you go out into the field to do the practical exercises. So
if you're going to do that at an EOC, you meet here have classroom and then have to travel somewhere to carry out the rest of the training. It just it's not the best practice of time, effort, money to do that. You know, if you're just thinking about just a classroom
instruction, then yeah, you could do that in any classroom type environment. But in the type of training that we're doing, we're not we're not talking about your typical uh school sit down, open up a book, look at a monitor type of
training. It's that's part of it, but a lot of what we are getting into is practical real life type training. And that's and that would happen in the field. Correct. And that's why you need it at the training complex. So you transition from
one and you immediately go out into the an immediate colllocated open space. Is that what would happen? Well, that training that training environment would have, you know, different types of obstacles or uh props
or whatever there. So just like the driving track, you need a classroom there. You leave the classroom, you go out to the driving track, you do your emergency vehicle operation, right? Would that complex lend itself to a P3 arrangement that
could be funded by this a you know a district funding so it wouldn't come out of the general fund since it would be a a I mean is there a way is is there a way to structure something that way? I mean, if I can go back to the original
question as far as partnering, we did approach STC originally. I don't know if you remember, when they were developing the campus down here, there was a period of time where they were going to expand that campus, do certain things. We talked about putting the fire academy out there, all all different kinds of things. And we elected to keep the property there where it was. We invited
them to partner with us on doing a regional training complex that that not not only would be just for us, um, but it would be for all the areas that at the time they didn't they didn't have the money to do that. um that same fiscal year within a relatively short period of time they were in front of the
county and in front of the school board talking about a partnership for our training complex um in Sarasota County which I think is a 40 million dollar project or I may be wrong on that number um that they're calling that regional training complex. So STC has said they
they may partner with us on some things. They do have plans and they're working with us on moving STC down here for a paramedic program. They already have an EMT program at their location. As far as a fire academy or doing things like that down here, you know, they they don't
really want an intention of doing that. As far as capital investment partnership, as far as getting some of those other things done, yes, they'd be happy. Do are there any independent training
companies or organizations that we might partner with to implement that kind of training? I think one of the things that we had looked into potentially was approaching at some point in time and we had some discussions with the city manager to see at some point in time when we could
prioritize or ask for you know each year you can go to the legislature and ask for for money for certain projects and but we wanted that to be a citywide approach to determine what those are each year is as they go on. This is a project that probably would be eligible
for those types of funds, but it's part of almost like the discussion we're doing. How much space do you need inside and out? Well, that's part of the plan overall. But, you know, let me just get let me just paint a picture for this. We are having to take our people and ship them
all the way up to Hillsboro County to use their facility, all the way down to Lee County to use their facility, up to Bradington to use their facility, the nights trail, everywhere far, far away from the city limits. You start taking 30, 40 cops and moving them away from the city limits
to an hour, hour and a half for training, you know, it's it's not feasible. It's not economical. right? Have to pay overtime for them to travel back and forth to accommodate that. And the other major issue on all of this is availability, right? You're starting
to compete with all these other agencies trying to get calendar time to do the training and it's always booked. I mean sometimes we have challenging time sharing the the training classroom in Win Park because that's a shared classroom you know and availability
there is very difficult trying to get on the gun range in at night's trail is almost impossible for the law enforcement agencies to do that for instance Cape Coral just built their training complex with an indoor gun range because they couldn't get on the gun range anymore in Lee County the
availability is just drying up I'm sorry the shipping the officers the Hillsboro County. Have you had to do that your entire time since you've been here? Oh, wow. So, how to go? Is is this Well, as much space as we've got over there where the tower is, that
entire property would probably be sufficient, right, to build this complex. That's where you'd build it. Right. Right now, there's a design team working on how that would be laid out, how that would be done. Um, where where classrooms would go, where their driving would go, and all of
those things. So, when when um when you ask about how much space is needed, that's one of the things they're working on right now. We want to make sure that we do an assessment on. So, how's Venice doing? What's Venice do? They shipping their people all over the place, too. Englewood, uh, Charlotte, Port Charlotte, Punta Gorda,
they're in the same boat, right? Inwood has a full-fledged fire academy that they run at at their department. Is is there an opportunity potentially to gather the the organizations that are in exact
same pot we're in come together as as a partnership and and build something on our property. We got the property, we got the spot, we got the plan. Why not go to the other groups that are
experiencing the same pain we're feeling and saying, "Hey, let's partner up. Let's find our buddies at the P3 group that wanted to build everything else for the city and let them build it and we all pay into it."
Might be an interesting I mean, might be worth exploring. I don't And that that's part of what the the chief's idea was that they would have people come and pay for training on our facility, you know, just like we have to pay the sheriff to use the gun range
and that would help pay for the cost of operation and maintenance and all that. But what about cost of building it? See, what about a re what about a South County regional safety training complex that we
organize? I mean, the county went and and did their thing with very little thought about South County, you know, not to not not to give them a shot, but, you know, they got a big county they're worried about, but could we collaborate? May maybe there be some interest there.
Well, mayor, it's it's it's it is a great point and we I I don't want you to think that we went into this half-hazardly or didn't invest. I would we actually really were trying to be on the forefront of developing a south what we call a south county or regional training complex between police and fire. Um as I said when we approached
STC they didn't have money. Very shortly thereafter they were with Sarasota County and they designed and they're I think they've already broken ground on this $42 million training complex there. At the time they wanted money from us. The only money that we had was the money
for our fire trading tower right here. And as you know, previously we were traveling always outside of our area. And we weren't getting enough facility hours to maintain our ISO rating. And our new people weren't getting enough enough hours and enough time working that type of a structure be proficient
at what they were doing. But but the county and and STC, they wanted contributions, capital contributions from each of the departments if they wanted to be a part of that or in the future they would charge them for that. And so we didn't have at the time we did we're not willing to give our own money for the tower because was very
short-sighted thinking. And so and long-term our hope was to be able to develop some of that and be able to do those things here locally. And they have the same thing. They're going to be charging. They're going to be charging up there. But we recently had Michigan come down USAR and we charged
them. They came down and put on a class and so we have the ability of doing some very very technical. The other thing you need to remember sir is that our departments are becoming large right and the more people it's it stretches that calendar out to try to funnel all these people through
training. So it's a lot easier for you to sit there and say something about order whatever but they're a lot smaller. They you know you can't compare apples to oranges. I highly doubt there's going to be an appetite with the sheriff to develop a south county regional training center city of
Northport. Um Sarasota Police Department, I highly doubt that they're they're not going to travel south county to do their training when they can make things work up there. And I highly doubt you're going to get Sheriff PL in Charlotte to want to come into Sarasota
County to develop any type of training complex. That's all you got there? Yeah, it's too bad. Then we're on an island all by ourselves and problem is we're growing to that point where you know it's hard for us to get
training opportunities because our departments are getting be too large and the demands the requirements for our training keeps increasing keeps increasing keeps increasing. Could
if we were to do this and we had a third party build it or we did a cops for it and then utilized our a combination of impact fees from police
and fire rescue to to pay it. I mean is that a viable option as a as a I mean so we so we decide okay we're going to do it. Let's you know we'll do it. Why not why not do a cops and the funding mechanism would be the impact fees
between police and fire rescue to pay it. Is that doable? So the concern there is all those things are doable, but you're taking funding then from one source to another. For example, some of our future fire stations are not fully funded. We're we're hoping through future impact fees
as they come in to be able to fund those stations. So, as I said, we put this out there as something that we want to do and even if it's peace meal, even if it's over time, if it's a little bit of time or if we can get appropriations, you know, if that's a project that the city decides to support for appropriations, we would
do that. I think we probably we realize what the uh what the what it looks like for certax monies that are that are distributed right now through 20, you know, 35 and beyond. And because the reason I say that is is bearing in mind just what you said that we have out east
and even in Wellen Park area, we have areas where we have projected new new fire stations. But if we do what we did with the safety building in Wellen Park and have the
developers or the special district if it comes to that build it and as the builders and developers develop those areas they're going to be generating new impact fees to service those facilities.
That's see there's a great funding bucket in developer partnerships because as they develop any undeveloped areas whether it's Well Park whether it's out east at Yorkshire whether it's out in the innovation corridor out beyond where
Toledo villar farms would be those special districts those people will create those organizations will create additional impact fees as they develop and build and all that will help pay for some of this which may allow us to
massage some of that money over to this public safety complex. That's what I'm thinking. You can't I don't want to think of the utilization of our existing impact fees to pay for this because I know you're planning to use those impact fees to do other. So, you're almost
playing three-dimensional chess here to see how you can massage them around. But it's it's it's again we're spitballing. We're we're thinking to to force ourselves to think outside the box. That's all right. And smarter minds than me are going to
figure this out. I ain't that smart. And just to clarify, using the example you said earlier about, you know, directing our immediate resources towards those activities or projects that would sort of activate the commercial and what we need. This one, even though it's in a high priority category, it's based on what it provides
as a critical nature. It's not something that's on fire right now. um us and our ability to get it done is going to happen over the course of a few years. And like the chief said, they've been doing this since he's been here. So we we want to solve for this, but I don't want you to think that just because it's
in the high priority, knowing how slow we move in government, like even though it's not on fire, it it could be by the time we ever get to it. So that's why I say it's worth conversation. But you see what I'm do? All I'm trying to do is say
get we get really creative. I'm not saying it's the right way. I'm not saying it's going to work. I'm just saying this is the kind of thought processes we we we need to start thinking about because and I promise we are we are doing that. We're always actively looking. And one
of the reasons this was a priority one instead of priority two was because the the year at which it was already planned to bump it out further than that. That's that's what we were in a little bit of fear of if it was a project for next year. I think we could say no, we can bump it out three or four years was
because again we're still we're working on some you know moderate term solutions that don't require $30 million but long-term solution moderate to longterm we you know we do need some viable options. Cool. Thank you. Appreciate it. We can move on maybe from this one. Yes.
I got like Thank you guys. Thank you. Appreciate it. Um, I noticed we got like a Well and Park government building in there. Um, again, I think it was low priority. Is it fun? Was that one funded? I made a
note on it, but I missed putting whether it's funded or unfunded. The Wellen Park building, it was funded. I want to say we moved some of the funding out. Yeah, I showed like six and a half million and I couldn't tell whether Yes. Yes, it is funded. Okay. Okay.
Is there do we have some kind of contractual obligation to do that? We have to build um a building within a certain I can't remember the time frame, but we're also having conversations for the second amendment to the post annexation agreement. Well, park and one of the issues we're having conversations
with is maybe we allow the developer to build the building and then uh do a lease back to us. um they need space. We have to have space eventually contractually. So we're we're
negotiating that as part of the second annexation. And when you say eventually it's not in stone. When you say eventually 5 10 years over 5 10 because it was a low priority 5 10 year out there. And here's why I bring it up without you even have an answer.
We're going to be annexing 3,000 acres 10,000 homes. 10,000 more homes built from Manglewood. So, we're going to have a lot more players in the game. I mean, granted, it's Madam Property. They own it, but they're going to do what they always do,
which is sell off parcel off land, have all kinds of builders and developers in there. When it comes to Well and Park, we might give thought not only for this government building, but for safety buildings, whether they be police, fire,
or a combination thereof. We're going to have a set of new players. So we ought to bear that in mind when we think about tying up any of our money or our money I say money in the CIP right listing now where we might have
development partners there that we can do just what we did in Welllet Park with well how it works or how it's worked in the past is they'll build it but then your money's tied up to pay paying them back as you as you collect it as you collect it. They won't let you go run off build a fire station on Cleo
Blade. They want their impact fee money. But but you see what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to do is free up as much as we can to go after our our commercial development areas. I I still say the the
biggest part of filling the gap for some of these unfunded unfunded CIP projects is going to be developer partnerships. And yeah, I know we're going to tie up impact fees forever on this stuff, but who better to pay for it than the
builders and developers, which is what everybody, including all our citizens, would love to see. Make the developers pay for everything. That's what they do. That's the beauty of what happened in Wellland Park. And we can clone it with the Englewood, with with the Winchester. We can do it with Star Farms. We can do
it with the special district we do out by Yorkshire. That to me is is the way to shrink this unfunded CIP monster that we're looking at. It's not going to solve all of it, but that is a model. That's the model. But getting the developers to buy into
that model like Wellen Park did isn't always the easiest. Yeah. And that's why we got to keep Northport an exciting place to move to. Get more and more people to come here. provide the high level of parks,
recreation, quality of service, safety, and all the other things that make people want to live here. Because when the numbers go up and more people come here, those developers are going to love it because especially commercially and industrial because there's the job base
and there's the density. And that's what people need to understand. They go hand in hand. If we don't continue to stimulate our residential growth, we're not going to attract the commercial and industrial development. We also need to go hand in hand. So I I appreciate that
and the model's good. You know, we just keep working it. Anyway, I'll defer Dmitri, Mr. Petro, you are up. Thank you, Mayor. Uh regarding the training complex since it's a high priority
uh unfunded project um 30 million is a lot of money but we can we get a consensus to direct the staff to explore and draft an official proposal to share the cost of the building the training center with the neighboring
communities and I mean we don't know for sure if they want to do it or I mean we can say yes or no but can we do that? Well, I don't know if you weren't listening, but I thought we got that answer pretty certainly from
chiefs that that's there's no pathway there. That's the only reason I backed off. It doesn't appear to be any pathway. I like your proposals uh thinking outside of the box and this is one of the things that uh in the future
we have to partner with either developers or neighboring community municipalities. Um that might be a I mean it's nice to own as a city to have our own training complex and being the owner the sole
owner but uh it's either you have it and or a share or delayed till infinity how we how we going to fund the 30 million. They just told us that nobody has really an appetite for doing that. That's what
I heard the chief say. Well, that's why I'm asking for the official consens uh or consensus to have an official draft of a proposal to approach those municipalities. I mean, doesn't hurt to ask if we do it officially.
I don't know. And what if we have three partners? It would be 10 million each. That's going to be a lot of three times cheaper. Well, yeah, but they aren't going to pay. Chiefs, come on down here again and address this
one more time. The question is, can we ask? We can ask. But my sense is it was asked already and no one bit. That's what I heard. Yeah. Unless I heard it wrong. I kind of thought that they already
explored that path. That that was why I shifted gears. And the one thing that I heard too was with all of the different officers and stuff between the three different communities, you may even need to build a complex three times the size to get
everybody in there be able to use it. So I I don't think it's a win at all. What if we do classes? I mean, if you have 300 people, you you can't it's like a college. You can't if you have a town of 5,000 people, not all of them go at
the same class. right there. Monday through Friday classes. So 8 to 5 you schedule 8 to 10 one class 10 to 12 another class. I mean not all about classes but chiefs you want to weigh in.
Just looking for a practical options. We we can go back and ask but I'll ask you commissioner. Are you willing to spend Northport tax dollars to invest in property in Manatee County for a training center?
Nope. Not me. No, what I'm saying is to ask uh to share and partner in building it and use it equally for he's asking that question because the reason he's asking it is because why would they right
it would be outside their city or municipality boundaries but it's a county and it's the common purpose. I I just felt that like if we do an official ask u or proposal I should say that might be a I'll be more than happy to ask the
sheriff if if he's willing to uh partner in some type of an arrangement that way. I can tell you on the fire side the answer is going to be no because they're building a training center. Ask the sheriff if he wants his jail.
Well, one thing he isn't getting that either. The one thing that I think about too is is I would much rather be self-sufficient within our own people and then if there is extra time or whatever then charge the individuals
that may want to use it rather than partnering with them. That was the early discussions. I'm I'm glad to remember that that you know we are becoming a size where we have to become self-sufficient. We are no longer the little kid on the block. Like the city
manager said, you know, if you want to be respected, got to act like it. And you know, we're that point. Our agencies are are becoming large. The demand is there. We know we're not getting it today. We're not getting it tomorrow. I've already been preaching for the past seven years and we need a police
station. That didn't happen, right? So before you know it, we're going to have a decade there that we're completely out of space there. I'm telling you right now, we're out of space for a training area. fire and police, the needs theirs. It's our job to come and say that what
we need, this is what we need. You want professional law enforcement, public safety, fire service, training is the most important part of that professionalism. And if I can address um to your remark, I'm totally agree. I agree with you.
It's nice to be self-sufficient. The only problem is we're going to delay it and delay it and delay it because of the funding. There's there's no funding. We can't build it. But if we if we get some appetite from other if we officially approach them there might be an appetite
and there might be a deal made. I mean why not to try otherwise it's going to be delayed delayed delayed because in reality how are we going to find them? That's that's my simple question. Well, and another thing that I think about too, especially if we went with a joint
adventure, who's going to take priority on the classes? I mean, are they going to be constantly back and forth on who gets, you know, training time this month, the next month, whatever? They got to coordinate everybody's schedules to be able to work through that as a
complete group. I mean, if it was just the city of Norport, they've got their hands on the jar. They could say, "Hey, we're open here. We're doing this. We're doing this." But when you're competing with two other agencies or six depending on fire and PD that's an impossible
dream if you use the existing if you use the existing impact fees of police and fire well police but fire rescue if you utilize funding for
projects now that are funded and shift them if they're if it's allowable and and look to refund those projects you've pulled money away from to developer funding which will create
as they develop new impact fees to pay for those projects. You now free up the money to do this safety complex. To me, that's the best way I know how to do it because we can't print the money. We can't tax the citizens to pay for this.
Realistically, we're not going to get the buy in from the others, but we could always ask. So, how do you do it? You got to take it from somewhere. I say we take it from those projects that are funded that we could find other alternative funding methods for in
partnership with someone and redeploy it because we truly don't have a way to fund this 30 million. If it's that important, and I say it is, may not in the short term, maybe over a midterm period, let's get the money for it, and
then figure out is it easier to replace the money we're taking from somewhere else in another way. That's got to be part of our thinking. It's it's really a repurposing of our funding kind of. Go ahead, city manager. Mayor, the thing about it is is I believe at the
beginning of this whole exercise that that's where the city manager warned us that we would be studying over our vacation time to come back and discuss these exact items. This today was not the day to solve the problems, right?
Today was the day to give him direction to say yes, we're willing to do this. We may take from low to pay high, may take from medium, but like you said, got to make sure it's coming out of the proper buckets, coming out of the proper monies through finance.
And once we have all of that, then then we then we can rock and roll and maybe cut this, add to this, do this. But today's not going to happen because he zipped through that chart again. Like I want that chart in But I'm serious. Cigarette break.
Absolutely I do. But I'm just saying I'm just saying that was the whole demeanor on today is what I was thinking. Not solving, but and that chart is attached back of the gen item. So it was part of what we sent out for people to view and see. So they
should have been able to follow along. Oh, it's up on attach. I didn't see it. It is part of Yeah, it's part of the attachment. That was our take-home homework, right? So So what I didn't take it home, obviously. I was looking at the information in my binder. Um just if I may
so really quickly just so so what the mayor is describing is um is an approach philosophy. So if you as a board are agreeing with like what he's saying he's saying let's take away from everything that's not economic development driven
in order to put those eggs in that basket. then we are acknowledging that we are taking that approach and the other items that are not included in that particular trunch will have to be sort of put onto what I would just say for instance the back burner and if
that's part of the direction that you all agree on we could sort of bring sort of what that would look like back as we all sort of mold over this over the course of August so to speak yeah that that combined with what vice mayor just said and I said about, you
know, the the redeploying of resources to to fill the gap for certain projects we just really don't have the money for yet that are priorities that may not be just directly tied to that economic development. But it is really a level of three. It's a three-dimensional chess
game. It it's really hard to think this stuff through because you're dealing on a whole bunch of different levels with a whole bunch of different departments and all these funding restrictions on where you can move money. So it's I mean I'm not telling you anything you don't welcome to your world. I know that's why
it takes someone smarter than me because I don't but yeah. Okay. I have a couple of consensuses that I'd like to float but commissioner I just want to finish if I may. Pro Sure. wanted to float a consensus. So, okay, Commissioner,
you're up there. Yes. So, basically, uh, can we get a consensus to direct staff to explore and draft an official proposal for to share the cost of the building of the training complex center
with the neighboring municipalities? and it has to be appealing so advantageous for all of the neighboring municipalities. May I make a suggestion? Um because the chief has said that he's willing to reach out to you know his
counterpart and get feedback. I'm sure you titus can do the same and we can meet with Charlotte County's um executive leadership team as well. How about we talk to them in a way to bring you feedback by the time you get back in September as opposed to drafting an
agreement that may take a little bit a while to go through a legal process and go through a more informal process to bring you back what you're looking for. Then that if it goes your way and they they all say, "Oh, this is a great idea." Then we can sort of go through the legal process. I don't want to get
hung up in the details before we even get sort of the feedback first. Would that work for you? I might be okay. Yeah, it's just uh we because you put together anything formally, not only will it bog us down, but it'll bog them down. Send it to them. Let us ask. Let us let us let us go
explore. Put the feelers out. Yeah, that's Yeah. And ask nicely. No, I mean it depends how you ask. You can ask the way that they don't want it. Do it. That's one thing. That's why I want it to be more official way of asking. But if you can have a feel and
talk to them, that would be okay, I guess, too. And this way, I think they'll give us feedback as to the pros and cons of the approach. Yeah. and and and I I think it's worth noting since you made that particular comment, Commissioner, that
when we urge any member of staff to look into anything that one should make the presumption that they would do everything under the sun to do it in a way that would be for the best interest of the city and and
and forcing or or directing a more formal process to theoretically hold them more accountable I I think is is is a bit rude and I I I don't know any other way
to say it. You know, if we simply express our interest in inquiring as to whether or not our our neighboring partners would be interested, you know, you say, "Well, there's a way to say it." I would think they would say it in a way that would be very sincere and
very inclusive and very caring about doing what's best for our city and and you know at smacks of past commissions when I hear that and I think that's not fair to our staff who work so hard to do the best for our city and and it leaves
me I mean if I sitting here on this commission felt put off by that I think other people put are put off by that and and I think we our staff deserves the benefit of the doubt always. They do the best. They're not interested in pissing away the
citizens money and and I resent that. That continues to be a reoccurring theme at times and I think it's not fair. We're working real hard to figure out the most creative ways to accomplish these projects. So, pick your words
carefully, please, sir. Yes. No ill no ill intent and point well taken. I mean I didn't mean any I just thought maybe officially drafting would be more appropriate but point well taken. Yes is if I apologize
if I did intend anything else but that was my pure uh intent is to make it better for the city. That's said. Where are we next? You had some commission. Do you want to take a 10-minute break? Do we need to
stretch our legs? Sure. Yeah, it's whatever the will of the It's 2:45. I mean, do you want to come back at 3 and and do a little stretch? It's been a couple hours since lunch. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, definitely smoke break.
Yeah. Oops. We are back at it. 301. Commissioner Langden, I do believe you got the floor. Oh, thank you, Mayor. I I just wanted to float a couple of consensuses. Um I more to find I really want to find
out how my fellow commissioners feel about a couple of topics. Um for me I was intrigued by the mention of the Mullen Center and perhaps repurposing the Mullen Center. It is clear we have
such incredible need for space and room. Um police need room. We need training room. Other groups are busting at the seam. And the thought of perhaps repurposing
the Mullen Center might provide a temporary solution for some of that. So, I' I'd like to float a consensus to direct city manager to work with staff
to identify the best purpose for the Mullen Center, what groups might utilize the Mullen Center, and a very tentative budget of what it would cost to retrofit
the Mullen Center to a new purpose. you said. Yeah. To retrofit to that purpose. So it's like identifying how we might use it, what groups because who goes in there would impact how we'd have to
modify the inards of it. So we might have to take it in stages, commissioner, you know what I mean? like to figure out what it would cost before having a better idea of what the use or you know maybe to bring back the uses and then I mean it's that's going to be
an ongoing conversation anyway it isn't going to be like a one two three yeah I mean you can do a it um yeah commissioner Dval you good with that consensus yes I'd go along with the consensus but
I you know first of all I'd like to ask you know right now the mullen center I believe is underneath the purview of parks and wrecks like to ask them, you know, what are their uses and what would they not want to lose. But well, the presumption
being underused. presumption would be that everything they're doing there with the building would be taken away from them entirely. But all the all the programming programming everything that is presently being provided at that facility.
There would be a new home for exclusive of as city manager said those private businesses that may rent or utilize space there. But certainly there could be a help and a collaboration in trying to find and direct them to places where
they go in particular. We need to find it repurposing it for parks and wrecks. It would be the city repurposing that facility unrelated to parks and wrecks. So, as we have this conversation with Director Vunhiller, there was a memo, I
believe, that went out probably early February because the report to me is dated January 30th that we're going to put up here to just walk you through the the um the GMAT and how it's utilized right now as a summary. And that will
sort of just be the foundation of your conversation. So it'll be a reminder to us all what the director has already shared as far as the percentages and her thoughts and um recommendations. So uh just to start off with the the the
thought that the Mullen Center is currently underutilized is not a correct statement. Uh there are certainly some windows of time that are available. Uh but right now uh for at least three three months of the summer, it is not
available for anything but summer camp. Um we have 150 children there now that we are providing child care for throughout the summer. We also do that uh for winter camp and we're expanding that for spring break camp which was part of the reason of the fitness center
transition into a multi-purpose room. We have waiting lists, very long waiting list for camp and you know that we've heard that child care is one of the major issues um in Northport is being able to find child care. Um so so that would be a concern. I can tell you happy
to run the exercise, but I'm I'm confident that there is not space in the Morgan Center to handle all of the children from that camp. We already have a camp at Morgan Center currently for the teens um which continues to grow. So, that is there currently.
What about the Scout House? The Scout House is a building that is um first exclusively open to scout troops. That's an agreement that goes way back um from when it was built. And so its
primary use is for those scout troops and they pretty much use it every single day um and on the weekends. Um once they have been um accommodated then we open it up to uh programming uses. Sometimes
we do have exercise classes there, art classes um and then we rent it out and there's quite a few groups that use it on a regular basis. Uh we have churches that use it every week. Have Have we had any conversations with
the Boys and Girls Club? They are rebuilding. Um have we talked with them perhaps of accommodating some of our summer camps? In what capacity? Just us not offering
camp and them offering it or us using their space? I'm just all of the above. We have not had those conversations. Our uh the Boys and Girls Club does their programming on a it's under a kind of a different philosophy. It's on a sliding scale. Um
there would there would be no way that we could under the same program format pay for camp. We currently um have I believe it was 120% cost recovery on summer camp.
And what about the new YMCA on Toledo Blade? Do we have a um groundbreaking scheduled for that yet? No, ma'am. They're looking for the fall, which I think is November is the date that I received last,
right? And we we're still of course not certain that they will be able to have that. Here's the reality of where we are. No one is going to get everything they want. We are really under a crunch to figure out how we accommodate the needs
of this city and I don't think any of us are going to get exactly what we want as we figure this out. So we we need to be open to anything and we're just we're
going to have to figure it out. I I think we're absolutely open to looking into um different um scenarios. Um I I would just not be in favor of displacing hundreds of kids um and their families that count on that for child care and
they have for many many years. Um and we have child care centers though being built in the city. Understand? Yeah, understand. But it's not serving the same age group. We are serving a kindergarten through 8ighth grade age group in our camps and that is not
something that you find in the child care centers here in Northport. I think I do think that there there is um the only one I knew of got blown away in Ian. So I think there's a real need for it. Um and while camp is one of the biggest
users of that space um we have um youth basketball, we have cheerleading u programs that are using there. We have all the rest of our recreational programming, open gym. It's It's not that it's underutilized, and I don't believe they would have built the Morgan
Center had that been sufficient. It was that there wasn't Well, we better get busy on the community center out east. Right. I agree. I I will be your biggest cheerleader if we lose the Morgan Center to a parks and wreck programming. I will be all over
Italy a supporting building and we can take into account sort of update our needs for anyway. So, I'm just trying to get a feel from fellow commissioners if they're even interested in having us look. And that's where I my mindset was with
42 acres to work without at Italy and the thought of all that we could do. Granted, it's a more than a hop, skip, and a jump from the Mullen Center. But the thought being that if we redeploy out east more, another case of could we
free a building? I didn't mean to intimate nor I don't even know if I said it like underutilize it. I didn't I didn't see more mullen as being underutilized at all. I just thought could we take everything we're programming there everything we're doing
find homes for it elsewhere and take that parcel. It's on right on the city hall campus. It is a great spot for the building department since it may not be lend itself to hardening for police as I
understand some time ago they actually explored that opportunity. So, but for the building department and then that frees up downstairs here. What could we use that for? It's kind of this shell game of redeployment, but it's predicated on what do we do when all
those valuable services and programs Mullen offers right now had no intention of not doing them. It's just is there a pathway to find another place to do them even if whether it's Italy a or whether it's somewhere else or whether it's a
combination and then the timetable of doing it since it isn't like Italy is going to be ready to go tomorrow. So, it would be a stage thing, but it's a plan for the future as to what we could do. And that that was the reason why I brought it up cuz it's,
you know, there's no doubt the value that Mullen Center offers our community. And it should not be conveyed to anybody that the idea is to cut those services or do away with them. It's just to find a way to find a new home.
Yeah. And I think that we've all probably used the word underutilized in the wrong sort of way because there is programming there. But as we showed up on there in that document, it shows you the percentages of how they're used either seasonally or annually um based on what the director uh put together.
but also the um the communication education center that we actually have uh rights to over there where the senior center and awaken is you know that senior center piece and whether or not their lease is going to be up and what that area might be used for. We don't ever talk about that sort of as part of
our planning of space that we actually have an influence over. Um so you know as leases become uh up and available you may want to think about sort of expanding some footprint. Thank you because sir it well thank you for bringing up an
area of our city and and a lump of property that we the city owns that right now we are sharing with nonprofits and other organizations that to me is an invaluable piece of property that may help us repurpose that we could
repurpose for other city utilization as much as I I support nonprofits and all the you know, something to think about. Yeah, it's something to think about. And that that's the kind of creative thought we we got to have so we can stretch our dollars. But cool. Thank you.
We finished our consensus there, Chief. We we haven't. Yeah, we haven't because we're kind of like, do you want to restate it or Yeah, let me modify it. Yes. Um and then I'll ask assistant city clerk
to restate it. But um add to you know repurpose the Mullen Center or other cityowned properties for alternative use. So
what do you have as a consensus assistant city clerk or are you deputy? I always get I'm I'm assistant. You got it right. Okay. All right. This is what I have. Um to direct the city manager to work with
staff to identify the best purpose for the George Mullen Activity Center or other city-owned properties, including what groups might utilize the Mullen Center or other properties and a very tentative budget of what it would cost to retrofit the Mullen Center or other
properties for a new purpose. Good. Excellent. Commissioner Dval, you in? I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. The only way I would even consider this just requires a yes or a no. Well, you're going to get more than a
yes or no, but I won't be as long as you, sir. Thank you for that. The only way I'd look at that is if we had the community center already built and then we may be able to vacate the Mullen Center. Until that point, there there's
no way that I would repurpose the Mullen Center. Like the director said, there's way too many families that rely on that. And so I'd be a no at this point right now. So whether I'm in the minority, I don't care. But remember, this is only
to like a no, sir. I'm done. Hey, I'm changing your vote. Commissioner Pro. All righty. You guys got to then I have one other. You know, as long as you discount what the vice mayor says.
Can I give it a no already? Go ahead, commission. Um, so to to bring back before the end of the calendar year, I know to bring back before the end of the year a path forward
um, including milestones and timelines for creating a c a special district in e in East Northport to fund infrastructure development. in support of commercial industrial
development. Mr. Pet or Mr. Petro, what do you think? Yeah. Vice Mayor. Okay. Yep. You sure? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. I'm a yes.
I'm a yes. Want to hear it again? Oh jeez. There's always one 10%. Okay. So, uh it was to bring back before the end of the calendar year a path forward including milestones and
timelines for creating a special district in East Northport to fund infrastructure development and support of commercial industrial development. Oh, okay. Yes. I'm glad I asked for it to be because I missed that word infrastructure. There you go. Yes.
All right. So, we're off that. You good? I'm good. I'm happy as a clam. I had one other thought maybe we could talk about. You know, we know a big chunk of the two and a half bill there is water and sewer
expansion. And I gather like I believe it's the state correct mandated that all municipalities eventually got to get on water and sewer. Did they do that or is there any legal requirement
that we do that? Um, and it and I I will say there's a proclivity towards that and staff can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't know if it's necessarily been
mandated. We have done water testing and we have found man-made substances that go through the human body, sucralose aka Splenda, that have shown up in our storm water system that don't occur. Splenda doesn't occur naturally. It's a man-made
product and it the only way you get it in the system is if you eat it and it comes out into the the the uh drainage fields of and eventually goes into your your storm water system. That's the only way it could have got there and we've got proof that it's
there. Um but um yeah, that's to answer your question. I'm not aware that we've been we have a mandate, although there is a there's a movement and they're putting their money where their mouth is. They're putting hundreds of millions of dollars toward getting people off of such.
So, so with that then my question is and again I I I don't know if I was even born when people started talking about like water and sewer expansion here. I guess I probably was because I'm older than the city I'm older than the city.
But um is I mean is that something that we should be setting aside money for and funded or should we be redeploying those dollars elsewhere? I mean, if we're not
I mean, there may be areas where we sorely need water and sewer, but when you look at all the new development, certainly all the new development that's occurring, whether Star Farms ends up with a special district uh out
east with a special district there, Wellland Park, the Winchester Farms, all these areas are going to create their own infrastructure. They're all going to have their own water and sewer. They're all going to have the roads and all the all that. So, what we're really talking about is all the rest of Legacy
Northport. And my only question is, is there a is there a more urgent use of those funds that may be funded where we could redeploy them to to some
of the other areas? I'm just asking. I don't know. And as he answers this question, I believe that's where we have reached into several other projects. Yeah, we've done it before over the last year or so. So, it's a heavy used area based on exactly what
you just said. But I'll let our interim utilities director. Yes, we have taken a lot of funds from that project and rediverted them. However, we have received grant funding of I believe it's 5.3 million is in play which will have timelines required to utilize those
funds. there is some matching funds required. Um we do know that there are regulations anticipated from D to really move us along the timeline and getting people away from septics and onto the
sewer system. We also have heard that there's many residents that would be interested in water. So, we're looking at this from a multi-phase approach, trying to one in see what the um outlook is for who would like to voluntarily begin looking at a connection to water.
Um we'll utilize the grant funding for the sewer connection, but it is something that the city really needs to be looking at, not only because it's, you know, the the best offer for the resident, but we need those funds, those uh capacity fees, and the resident
paying monthly. so that we can continue to maintain the infrastructure. And and if I could add to that, when I was a utility director a long time ago in a far far away place, we went out to the voters. We carved the city up into about 2500 lot neighborhoods. Actually,
it was already done for us by general development, but and then we asked them, do you want water? We did a survey to see what the interest level was. And then we based off that interest in that survey. Then we went out for ballot votes in each of those neighborhoods and
they voted themselves up or down whether they wanted to assess themselves to have centralized water brought to their neighborhood including fire fire hydrants. About half of them did. So about 12,000 lots voted for themselves to be assessed and um water was brought
to their neighborhood. And that's something we're also exploring. Sewer. Sewer. We can do that on sewer. Sewer is usually a little bit more of a heavy lift because of the expense, but a lot of people want water, centralized water. See, because I mean, it's just an area
to look at and see because I always hear from people who say, you know, if they have wells and septic, it's like, don't put me on public water. I don't want public water. Some others say, I want the water, but I don't want the sewer. So, that's why I'm just saying, gee, is
that enough? I noticed as we scanned through these sheets, it looked like there was a bunch of during like the the timeline that there's funded amounts in there. And I'm thinking, and I know we've been kind of raiding it for other
things. So, I'm thinking like, do we, you know, do we just bite the bullet and say, "Yeah, let's just raid it and red, I don't want to say raid it, let's redeploy it to where it might give us a bigger bang for the buck and help us with some of the other areas of of utility infrastructure because I assume
it still needs to be done in the same. You we can't just take it and go spend it somewhere else. There might well be restrictions on where it gets." I wouldn't rate so hard that you come up short. No, you're not able to do that five, you know, needed for the matching.
The grand funding is very specific. Yeah. So, based on what I'm sorry, based on what we just looked at, Mr. Mayor, it looks about 27 million of that amount is in Certex in theory in the direction that you're going that would be
allowable for repurposing. The other one is the utilities revenue fund which is restricted to that particular Gotcha. category. Gotcha. All right. Good. I'm good on that one. Next item up. I got Price
Boulevard 2 and three. Now, I know too we've, you know, Mr. Speaks convinced me a ways back how important it was to do the widening from Sumpter to the bridge. Beyond that, like I can't remember. I
don't think it was an enormous amount of money, but it was certainly I believe in excess of 5 million that was set up for price three, which would be from basically the bridge all the way to Biscane. Yeah. So my question is should we talk about
that? I don't think it was I don't know if it was funded or unfunded either if price three is funded or unfunded. But I think is price two funded and price three. Price two and three are not even on the list. Three is not even there anymore. I
couldn't find it. I was looking for That's why you couldn't find it. Right. Okay. I thought three was Toledo Blade to Yorkshire. No, that's part of one, isn't it? Phase three. No. Oh, no. That's three. So that doesn't even exist. I mean, I had had some conversation. I
really feel that widening is way more important than Sumpter out to Biscane. That was my thoughts too. I thought that flip out. Yeah, in my opinion. Okay, maybe I didn't remember where three was, but see even with two that's 20 if I
remember 223 million to go from Sumpter to basically the high school or prior to the high school. $23 million to widen that area there. We really got to do it. I'm I'm just asking. You know, I believe
Chuck convinced me one time, but that doesn't mean I'm still convinced. I think it fixes the bridge too as well. Going over there and widen or could we or could we find another way to fund a bridge work and not the road?
Zero potential. Yeah. It's got zero commercial. Yeah. traffic public works director. So just to clarify phase three is from Toledo out east. Okay. So it is okay. So initially phase two was from Sumpter
to Biscane and that's where that larger number was without the bridge. Okay. Because we had some funding coming grant funding for the bridge. So what we're doing now we've kind of broke that up into a phase 2 A and B. We're currently working on phase 2A which includes this
section as you discussed from Sumpter just to the west of the bridge and we do have grant funding for the the bridge. Right. Uh and then we're going that was SRQ. No, correct. And some transportation impact fees
to cover that other stretch. So, why do we do we really need I mean I I mean personally I like that everybody's on a two-lane road and going slow as they go past the schools and and and all that and you know traffic's relative. I mean,
you know, just go up north, go out to the west coast, go to any metropolitan area and like then come back here and like we don't have any traffic issues at all in this city comparably speaking. So everything is relative. But why why
widen it? $23 million that we could utilize. You could utilize it. Every department could utilize it. I don't know. You know, I'm I'm just asking the question because we should look at every stone every stone should be, you know, turned
over. And I would just add, if I may, mayor, um, that FDOT is requiring us to improve the roads out east before they'll consider looking at the exchange again. The exchange. So I'm sort of thinking
phase two a ought to be Yorkshire to start widening and improving price from Yorkshire West if that's what they require. It can help meet that requirement.
I mean we we need to do everything we can to accelerate that area we do. We just I don't think we also just don't want to do anything that's going to cause us to lose that significant grant grant windfall. But anyway, I'll So the the section again that we're
moving forward with is from Sumpter just past the bridge. U we had conversations after that during that time when we were talking SRQ funding for that. Uh, and the impression that we got from commission at that time was there wasn't
really an interest to go out to this game any further at this time. So, as far as I know, we don't have any money dedicated to that. So, there's nothing to pull back from that. That's just a CIP that eventually that roadway is going to have to be widened. We want it
on the radar, right? So, that project is there just like uh phase three. But I'm talking the piece from Sumpter right there to right past the bridge. I mean that's so we've got somewhere around between 10 and 12 million dollars coming for that project. So I would I would not want to
walk away from that grant money. Yeah. But that isn't that the SRQ that's for the bridge. But I'm talking about the right there's $22 million in the CIP list for price two that's funded. Is it not funded?
Where's two is unfunded? It shows unfunded and it's outside of the 10year. Right. That's that's phase 2 B, right? Okay. So, I guess if it's unfunded, then it's unfunded. We don't have to worry about, right? Exactly. Yeah. It's not. Yeah. Just I wanted us to be clear that Yeah.
that it's based on what we're talking about with phase one and 2A that money is really tied up with the project and grants that you don't want to sort of uh separate. Well, hold 2A and I'm confused. 2A is what? Sumpter to the west side of the bridge.
Two is 2 A is Sumpter to the west side of the bridge. 2B is the other right out of this game, right? So, forget about 2B because that way ain't doing them. But 2A, are we talking just the widening or the bridge as well?
It's a combined project because you're widening the bridge to four lanes. That's how we got that grant money. The road has to align that next little piece that goes that short piece has to align with the four four lane bridge. And that's the
I mean that's not the expensive part of that project. The bridge is the expensive part of that project, but it'll also solve those issues that we have with the drainage along there where you always see the cars stuck because it's so wet. All that will be underground. So the bridge though
is more. So to do the bridge costs more than 12 million in total. I I want to think the bridge was about 14. Okay. But we got what 10 or 12 I thought from SRQ. Correct. So basically the bridge is paid for with the grant money within a couple mill.
Yes sir. Okay. So the widening is that to do the rest of 2A is $22 million. No sir. I don't know. You're you're looking at that number that's for that whole section alphabis. Okay. Right. You're looking at the entire
phase 2 probably before. So we probably ought to clean up that number since it's unfunded anyway. get it out of there so that we don't think it's something we got to spend. Cuz I was looking at it and even though it was unfunded, it's still $22 million of CIP project that we were looking for
money for. And obviously we don't need it. We need a portion of it, you know, whatever to augment the 12 million from SR. Correct. And understand that most of those funds for that kind of project, as much as we can, will come from transportation impact fees, which are very restrictive. You're not going to be able to move those.
But like you got a little bit of transportation challenges that you couldn't redeploy some transportation money to. Absolutely. We have plenty of those. Absolutely. Cool. Um anything else? Anybody got anything while I look?
I'll make him walk down. I'm going to wheel him down. Yeah, while you look warm, the only other one I had on here was back to my favorite one. Warm mineral springs, $4 million for the uh connection.
Is that funded? Because I just couldn't. We moved through those sheets so quick. Have we did we funded that, didn't we? The $4 million that's for the legacy trail and um it is not funded. Uh, let me go back and find it. It was
earlier on. It was on page It was number 84. So 84 and excuse me, line item 84 and 85. Um, the 60 acres is sort of um unfunded for $5 million. And I would sort of put that one to the side because you're still
deciding on what you want to do with the 60 acres, right? But the other five a.5 million that we need to do the project total for what we've already committed to doing, we have roughly $11 million that is appropriated and we need five and a half million that is unfunded.
Unfunded. That's to do the improvements for the 20 acres. Correct. Right. What about the legacy trail connector? That was four million of which I knew we had some grants. I I a million and a half I want to say
of grant money that we were going after. So we left us I want to say like a little over $3 million that we needed. Right. So that's uh funded. It was $4.7 million. The 7 million is fund 700,000
is funded. The $4 million is unfunded for the legacy trail. And that is item that is line number uh 54. Okay. So that's still unfunded. Correct. All right. They haven't figured out how to pay for that yet. Okay. Plus the five million we need for
we better triple those fees. Got off everybody today. Yeah. Um Okay. That's I think that's all I got. I know you'll be happy if I may. Well, yeah. Just got to Commissioner Petro. Oh, okay. Oh. Uh
oh. And we don't need We got another meeting at 5, sir. Just just say that's right. So you got a w a window to work with. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, vice mayor. Oh, just a quick technical question
regarding legacy trail. I know we are responsible for the city of Northport portion. Um but yet we as residents of the city we've been collected or we are required to pay I
think it's 0396 um militaryrate on our ad valerum taxes. How is that how's that come into the entire picture? I mean we paying for our own and then we paying
for the county. So, if you look at the city, uh, I'm sorry. If you look at your Florida tax collector, great question. Yep. That's a great question. I never the county. I really want to know the answer. We pay twice. Not No, actually, we're
contributing as are all the other uh entities or whatever within Sarasota County to the Legacy Trail bonds. I believe we make we pay in our in our taxes. We're we're helping to pay for all
little Legacy Trail in the county as is everybody else in the county. We're all paying into that. But this would be the connection from uh the end of Sumpter from the trail head from the that little bridge by
Price and past Biscane from there and bringing it right down into uh War Mineral Springs and right down into the front there with a trail head. So that four million that became the city's burden even though we we own the land
anyway. Um in order to make that happen and despite my continued consternation over it commission voted to support that and pay for that. So and but it's unfunded so we haven't figured out the money. I I couldn't like I say we went
through them fast so I couldn't tell if we had already funded it. I thought maybe I could make one more shot at moving the money, but it isn't funded anyway, but if we do that and and again, it it dovetales in with the plan for the overall 60 acres and and the enhancement
of the springs and all that. So, not to relitigate the need for all that, having the legacy trail connector, it's a good thing in a long run. I would love if we didn't have to pay for it. And maybe there's grant money and other ways to raise some money to do that, but in the meantime, I didn't fund it anyway.
I just don't want to pay us double. Nah, we're not paying double. Just paying more. I was just curious, why are we paying tw as we keep expanding? Because it's a new section and it would be us that's building it. Us that's doing it. Okay, that's it.
Anybody got anything else? Absolutely we have. You always say that vice I'm just trying to be positive. That's all. I mean, we haven't even worked a full day yet.
Go ahead. Give me the finger. No, I'm good. Anybody got anything else on this? Good, sir. Yep. Thank you. Thank you all. Yeah, you guys good. really appreciate indulging us because like it it really
you know I I I was saying at the break I I'm not sure how often it's been at least in the four, five, six years I've been watching how engaged commission and staff has been in this area of our budget and it really is important. This
is where the biggest dollars are, the biggest challenges are both currently and future. So, you know, it won't be the last time we visit all this stuff, but you know, US September. Yes, that's good. Gives us a month rest. And I would say we're sort of laughing a
lot because it beats crying. Correct. That's right. We will have There's no crying in city updates for you in September. That's right. So, thank you all. It is 3:39 and uh wait a minute. Wait a minute. General public comment. No
public comment, sir. That is truly hard to believe. So with that, at 3:39, turn this workshop. Part: 2
Anything that doesn't fit in the container that's garbage is going to go curbside. We're going to stay off driveways. What's not accepted is tires, chemicals, stuff like that. You can put yard waste out. That's considered bulk, but just make sure it's separate from the garbage
pile. Yard waste is a separate pickup. So, what happens if I use all my bulk pickups, right? Good question. So, you can have more, but you just have to pay. It's going to be 1650 a cubic yard and that's length time width time height divided by 27 is 1 cubic yard.
Any questions of course let us know. Give us a call 941-24850. Water in a swale that's kind of the ditch by your house is not flooding within a after a storm event. Water should be in that soil up to 72 hours
after the storm. that allows the water to be filtered to get the stuff that came off our roofs and off the road out of the water so that when it reaches the habitat, it no longer has those contaminants in it. It also provides an opportunity to slow down water so that
the water doesn't go so fast that it erodess um the roadways or any other infrastructure. So, when you see water in a swale, if it's only been, you know, up to 72 hours since the last rain, that is not flooding. That is doing its job.
[Music] I'm Stacy Losio. I'm the emergency manager for the city of Northport. And today we're going to discuss storm surge and flooding and how both of those affect Northport during an earthquake. So storm surge is when strong sustained winds are constantly blowing over a long
period of time over the Gulf and pushing water up onto shore. So when that happens, there is a lot of flooding along and beach erosion along the beaches and the homes inland. However, the storm surge can also push water up the river. So it could push storm surge
up the Maka River, for instance, from the Gulf. And then the water coming downstream from the river has nowhere to go. So that can cause water to back up along the rivers and cause flooding. That along with a lot of rain that comes from these hurricanes can also cause an increase of water flooding into the
rivers and into our water management systems causing flooding as well. Public works does a lot of work before the storm to make sure that our water levels are as low as possible so we can handle additional storm surge and flooding in our water systems. If you want additional information about that, we
have a great video about our water control structures and you can visit the public works website. [Music] X class. Good evening everybody.
Today is Wednesday, July 23rd, 2025. It's 5:00 pm. We're in city chambers. Call the city commission special meeting daughter. Commissioners present. Commissioner Duval, Mr. Langden, Mayor Stokes, Vice Mayor Emerich, and Commissioner Pro Squarum present for the meeting. Uh, also present, city manager
Fletcher interm city attorney Goolan. Uh, city clerk FA, the administrative service specialist Lane. Uh, Chief Titus is back there. And I Yeah, he's slouching. Andut and deputy chief Morales. There he
is. And Jason, you want to lead us 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.
Looking for a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Second. You figure it out, mayor. Got a motion by Commissioner Langden, seconded by the vice mayor to approve the agenda. Let's vote on this.
And that passes 5 to zero. Public comment. Yes. Um, concerned parent. This afternoon, Commissioner Langden again ambushed the parks and recreation department with Mayor Stokes not far behind by trying to remove the George Mullen activity center from their
budget. My kids attend the GMAC summer camp and love it. But according to Commissioner Magnan, there is other child care cares being built or what about the Boys and Girls Club. So according to her, I should have to go to a different center because according to her, everybody is not going to get what they want. Please listen to your department directors and city manager.
No one is even remotely recommending this to solve any issues. Commissioner, there are other departments in the city to pick on. Thank you, Vice Mayor Emmer, for bringing some sensibility to the commission. In person, we have Bowie Oleander. Good evening.
Good afternoon. I am Valdi Hollander. I come here in peace. I am not the criminal. Stokes. I am instructing you to order policemen out of my back. Send him somewhere to fight the crime.
Stop intimidating. Stop assaulting me. I am the peaceful man. I have a dignity. Please respect my dignity. It is people right in Florida to instruct their representatives. No jurisdiction around disrespect people
like all of you here. I am instructing you to move the podium to the middle. Do you understand English language? What is your culture? Where did your people come from?
To whom did you took the oath of office? Let me make few um uh lines on the next budget. Reduce marriage rate to zero for 2025 budget. No concern to $331
million plus on the next year budget. No concern to $65,000 per commissioner salary. It is $22,170 more compared to previous years.
No consent to $735 $680 for total budget for the commission. It is $150,000 more than previous year. Do you remember such a phrases? This one
no taxation without the representation. Whom do you represent here? Do you represent the mayor? I'm sorry. Manager, city employees or with the people from whom you giving the money.
Next phrase. Lot of the money is the root of the evil. End of the quote. I I missed the email deadline yesterday. So I'm going to read on the 25-2508. This is about the three PS on May 13,
2025, people of North Florida rejected all five proposal are commissioners uh proposals. Now commissioners uh me plus managers with his staff try to nullify election results.
For what reason election was handled? As once Emirates says publicly after people of Northport, Florida approved bond to widen is price boulevard. Emirate says people have spoken. End of discussion.
Hey, try to remember it today. I mean yesterday. I I hope you you you voted against it. People in Northport, Florida, reject five proposals. May I finish? Thank you, sir.
All righty. Thank you, ma'am. Moving on to general business. Uh 25-2485. City manager, your item. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This item is discussion and possible action regarding the 2025 certification of taxable value,
proposed millage, and scheduled dates for public hearings. Uh during the budget process every year, the city of Northport is required as part of the truth and mill process to submit a proposed mill rate. This rate is not the adopted rate, but rather the maximum
millage rate. Uh the actual adopted rate will be voted on by the city commission at the budget hearings in September of 2025. In June of 2025, the city received the gross taxable value from the Sarasota County property appraisal, which was 10,844
84 45 million, excuse me, 467,000 uh dollars for 2025. This amount includes new construction of over $835 million, which leaves the adjusted taxable value at uh 10 bill9,960,000.
This amount is compared to the final gross taxable value from the prior year of $9.9 million to determine the roll back rate. Uh in preparing the city manager proposed budget for fiscal year 26, the miller's rate of 3.7667 the same
as was year since the year fiscal year 2021 was used. The roll back rate for fiscal year 26 is 3.7491 which is calculated to bring in the same amount of tax revenues as the prior fiscal year excluding 2025 net new
taxable value. Uh the schedule for fiscal year 26 budget is the first public hearing will be the city commission special meeting on September 4th at 2025 501 p.m. The second public hearing will be the city commission special meeting on September 18th 2025
at 50:01 p.m. Uh we do have a quick presentation that we would like to walk you through to go over some of this information in a more visible form. But as I said, this is um to discuss the fiscal year 2026 maximum millage rate.
Um the recommended rate of 3.7667 has been consistent. This will be the sixth year and will generate 39,421,820 in ador revenue. Um, as discussed, here's a picture of the roll back rate analysis and what it would mean if we
were to keep the same taxable revenue included for this year. And I believe that number was 3.7491 if you considered to do so. Our general fund by department, we've had um conversations about police being our
highest general fund department. It's um the highest by far and we've given it a lot of extra attention this year which we previously discussed. But their budget this year is um lower in percentage increase than it has been in quite some time. And the other
departments that are on here for the general fund have been impacted by your direction and what we've proposed to you this year. Um all the way from fire to um city commission at the bottom. I think everyone has been affected in some way to make sure that we contribute to
the success of our fiscal year. A general fund overview uh which is nearly hundred million dollars um is based on keeping our service level. Uh the 95% of this budget is our service
level. Meaning that this is a year where we did not add a lot of new budget proposals and there's a small piece of CIP. But maintaining our service level as it exists is very important as we know that the quality of services that we provide are a big reason why people
want to stay and come to our city. The budget proposals of $2.6 million were included of a few different categories. Uh $500,000 roughly for police which was 19%. Same thing for facilities maintenance. Um, also the IT department
had $532,000 or 21% and then the next highest one was fire at $344,000 which was 13% for budget proposals. Um the history of our millage rate is something that we uh constantly keep an
eye on. Not because of the the stable rate that we've had for the last six years, but the 2020 year where it spiked up. I think that was about 13% if I remember correctly, which is something we want to avoid as we recognize the the revenue challenges and the expense
challenges combined on a city of our size. We know that this will be a constant conversation piece every year and to present a budget that is balanced based on a stable mill rate is something that we are very proud of and we thank
you for your guidance in this conversation and we're happy to answer any questions you or the commission may have. Mr. Mayor, thank you sir. Commissioners, anybody got any questions on this? Was pretty straightforward.
Going once, going twice, going three times. All right. Any public comment on this? Uh, looking for a motion. I make it move to direct the city manager to submit the 2025 certificate certification of taxable value with the
proposed mill rate of 3.7667%. Second. A motion by the vice mayor, seconded by commissioner Dval to direct city manager to submit the 2025 certific uh certification of taxable value with the proposed military 3.7667%.
No percent. Just strike the percent. Strike the percent. Yes. No percent. 3.767. 3.7667. That's it. No. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Let's vote. And that passes 520.
Any general public comment? Yeah, I'd like to make another motion. Motion. Motion for the dates. I move to approve the dates of September 4th, 2025 at 50:01 p.m. and the September 18th, 2025 at 50:01 p.m. for
budget hearings. Second. A motion by Vice Mayor, seconded by Commissioner Langden, to approve the dates September 4th, 2025 at 50:01 p.m. and the September 18, 2025 date at 5:01
p.m. for budget hearings. Let's vote. And that passes five to zero. Now you can ask for public comment. Yes. Now with that it is 512 and I adjourn this
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