--------- Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey,
hey, hey. Heat. Heat. Uh, no, it's good morning everybody. Uh it's July 14th, 2025. Welcome to the Orlando City Council workshop for today. Commissioners, today we have two
workshops. We're going to begin with a um update from the most recent legislative session that finally ended with the passage of a budget uh just before the fiscal year ran out. Uh we'll have an overview of uh what else went on
during the session and um some items related to local property taxes in preparation for the next legislative session. And that'll be followed with a perfect segue into our budget budget presentation for the 2526 fiscal year.
So let's begin with a legislative update and I'm going to call in our director of intergovernmental relations Kyle Shepard for a session overview. Kyle, welcome back. Welcome back.
Oh, I see what the problem is here. Um, gotcha. Thanks. Um, and uh two, it's not possible within 30 minutes to go through all the bills that impact the city uh and and uh cities and counties across the state of Florida. So, we're going over just some of the highlights here. And of course, we'll always take a
little bit more time, me or others, to sit down with you if you want to go through some of the other bills that um that impact the city. Uh up in Tallahassee, of course, we are represented by a a team of folks, uh the lookout for our interest, and a few of them are here today. Uh behind me from
the Gray Robinson team is Chris Cardy and Robert Stewart Jr. Also behind me is Oscar Anderson with the Southern Group. So they're here to answer any tough questions that that I can't answer this morning. Quick overview of what occurred here in the last legislative session.
Session of course is supposed to be 60 days every year. Um it's preceded by a number of committee weeks or interim committee weeks in which a lot of the busy work that is done by the legislature is conducted and those uh occurred last year starting in December
and went into February. The regular session this year supposed to be 60 days. It went for 105 days. It was incredible. It was the longest session that I've ever seen and longest session in in many, many, many years. It started on March 4th and concluded on June 16th.
And the reason it went so long is that the one thing the legislature has to do every year is of course pass a budget. And they were not able to do that on time. And so went into June. This year there were almost 2,000 bills filed. There were uh almost 2,000
amendments to those bills filed. There were nearly 3,000 votes taken by the legislature. And there were a total, if you add up all the sort of legislative action, the things that the legislature does every year. There were over 18,000 individual actions by the legislature
within that 105 days and the interim committee weeks. So, there's a lot to watch. uh and your legislative team is watching all of that to make sure that we understand what the impact is on the city or what the impact might be on the city. But after all of that, there are of course very relatively few bills that
actually passed through that legislative process this year. There were 269 bills that passed both chambers and now they've all either been signed into law or gone into law or they have been vetoed. So, all the bills we're going to go through today, the sort of 12 that I
want to focus in on, uh, they've all been signed into law. Out of the total almost 2,000 bills filed, we at the city were tracking about 400 of those. So, in any given legislative session, there is 500, 600,
700 bills that have some impact on local government. A big impact, small impact, but some impact. But out of those, we uh were tracking 426 of those. Um, in the end, out of the bills that were passed, there are 116 that we calculate has some
small or big impact on the city of Orlando. 116 of them. Now, a few of those may not have much impact at all, but others have a lot. So, here's sort of the historic bill statistics. You'll see, you probably heard in the media this year, that this
was an historically unproductive legislative session. There are a variety of reasons for that. there were fewer bills that were passed. Uh but sometimes the number of bills passed isn't very illustrative because a bill could have a lot in it and be a 100 pages long or have very little in it. Um it was a
little unproductive. There are a variety of reasons. One is of course there were a series of special sessions during the interim committee weeks. That's time when legislature would normally be looking at bills and processing bills preparing for session. There was also, believe it or not, a blizzard in Tallahassee that just sort of canceled
one of the interim committee weeks. So that on top of, as you probably heard, um some um significant disagreement between the House and Senate and the governor's office on a variety of issues related to the budget and other things meant that this legislative session wasn't terribly productive, which often
works to our advantage because often times what we want is fewer bills passed because the bills that pass often have some sort of negative uh impact on us. Okay, again, we can only go through a few of the bills and it occurred to me that I put way too much information in here. So, I'm going to skip over some of
the bullet points, but if something catches your eye, let's let's chat about it afterwards because I want to hit some of the some of the high points in the time that we have. So, um, out of the 116 bills, we're going to go over about 12. The first one is SB80. You're going to hear more about this in the future. You've probably already heard some
things about it. This was a supposed to be a comprehensive emergency management bill, and it does change some laws related to our state's response to natural disasters. So the state takes all the lessons they learn in the hurricanes that occur from year to year and then they amend laws accordingly.
And there's some of that in this bill, but there's also a lot that impacts our land development regulations. And I'll talk about that here in just a moment. But one thing that has to happen uh under this bill is it limits the circumstances in which impact fees can be charged for the reconstruction or replacement of previously existing
structures after a storm. Um, it also requires the division of emergency management to specify the minimum number of emergency management training hours that certain members of city and county staff have to undertake. So, there are emergency managers, uh, CIOS, city
managers that now have to take uh, continuing education uh, for emergency management training. Um, here's an example of something that we've long done, but the legislature has uh, imposed on other local governments that have not done it before. And this, by the way, is sort of an example, sort of
a a lesson I think we learn year in and year out. There's oftentimes things that we do because it's good government. It's just good bureaucratic hygiene. Um, and one of them is providing information to our constituents about storm recovery. Well, some local governments hadn't been doing that. So, there's a requirement
now that local governments post certain storm preparation and recovery information online. No big deal to us. Uh, also a requirement now that cities and counties develop a poststorm permitting plan as a way of expedite expediting the issuance of building
permits after a storm occurs. Again, something that we've largely done. Um, this bill also requires, by the way, DEM to work with local governments to come up with recommendations for statutory changes to make it easier for people to
get building permits after a storm. Okay. After a storm, local governments cannot increase building permit or inspection fees for 180 days after the declaration of the state of emergency. Um, but here's here's something that you need to be aware of that is an and
important and it's a controversial provision that was added sort of late uh in the session. This actual this provision actually came in and out of the bill throughout session and we we fought it. for one year after a hurricane makes landfall, an impacted local government. And
there's a definition for an impacted local government cannot have a moratorum on construction or reconstruction. So the concern there was that there were some local governments, particularly on the Gulf Coast, who after a storm were saying, "Hey, wait a minute, don't rebuild. Just don't rebuild for we need
to update our codes or or whatever." So there's now um a prohibition on that, but it goes further than that. For a year after the hurricane makes landfall fall, the local government cannot adopt a more restrictive or burdensome change to the comprehensive plan or to land
development regulations. The idea there, it's a preeemption, forbids you from doing something. The idea there was to make it in the legislaturator's mind easier to rebuild or not harder to rebuild after a storm. You also, excuse me, you also
can't adopt a more restrictive or burdensome procedure. um for the adoption of land development orders. So the process can't get any more complicated as well. Local governments also have to include a provision within contracts that they have with posttorm vendors to make sure
that posttorm vendors are penalized if they just walk off the job after a storm. And then um there's also an something that encourages local governments to have a writer on their solid waste contracts um to encourage your solid waste uh service providers to uh help
clean up after a storm. There's also a new requirement that there be a a plan in place and precautions taken by tower and mobile crane operators before a storm occurs. Um and then finally,
and there's going to be some discussion um in our community about this um over the next few days, in addition to that prohibition on more restrictive land development regulations a year after a storm, there was a provision put in here very late in the session that makes that
apply retroactively to the storms that occurred last year. So it goes back to August 1st of last year. So if there was a more restrictive land development regulation, whatever that means, occur that was adopted after August 1st, then
that would be preempted through August or excuse me, October of 2027. Okay. Okay. Moving on. U public records for congressional me members and public officers. There is now a public records
exemption for certain p personal identifying information for you as a city commissioner and as a mayor. Um so that includes um your partial address. So not your zip code and not your city of course but um your address. Uh but
also uh the telephone numbers of you and a spouse, the name, home address, telephone numbers, date of birth, and other things of a minor child, including where that minor child goes to goes to school. Um, Commissioner Rose had a good question. Um, and I'm sure Jody will
follow up on this, but there may be some form that you need to fill out at some point uh from the property appraiser or tax collector or some government agency to take advantage of that exemption. So, we'll find that out uh for you. Um, here is a bill called uh SB582,
unlawful demolition of historic structures and buildings. And this is actually a good bill. There have Commissioner Sheen will remember this. There have been occasions over the years where you have somebody that demolishes an historic structure or does something um to harm an historic structure and there are limits to how much the local
government can find the individual for that unlawful dem demolition. And so what happened is sometimes people would just do it incurring the fine because the fine wasn't very big. This bill allows local governments for some historic structures, not all, but for
ones that are listed nationally, to impose a greater fine or or higher fine that can be up to 20% of the fair market value of the structure. The idea there is to disincentivize people from taking down historic structures. So, good build
there. HP 683. Um, there's a number of things in there. Some of it gets a little technical. Let me hit a couple of the high points. This is construction regulations by Representative Griffiths. U one of the things that it did originally in this bill would it would preempt local governments from regulating artificial turf being
installed in pe on people's yards. So we used to call that astroturf, but that's that you know the synthetic grass looking stuff. Um it was originally a total prohibition preeemption. it was changed to say that the DP needs to come up with rules relating to that that
material. And then once those rules are adopted, things like the impervious nature of that material, allowing water to percolate through so it doesn't cause flooding. Once those rules are adopted, local governments uh can't adopt more restrictive rules and regulations. when that rulemaking process goes through,
we'll want to watch that to make sure that our concerns, staff's concerns related to permeability and impervious surface are taken into taken into account. Um, there's a few other things related to uh public works uh bidding in this bill u that may be of some
interest. Um, there are also provisions in here that loosen up and make it a little easier in some circumstances for applicants to use private providers to review building uh plans um instead of coming in to get the plans reviewed here
in house. Um, and that includes, by the way, making it easier to use private providers for the installation of solar panels and batteries that are uh attached to solar panels. Okay. Utility relocation. Um, this was a bill that started out really bad and
wound up just kind of bad. And that's a story that we often hear in the legislative session. Something comes out of the legislature that is a real problem for local governments and your team works hard to sort of make it a little less bad. There was an effort during session to transfer the
responsibility for paying to relocate utilities in the right of way. So, if a communication service provider has their wires in our ride ofway right now, if we are going to widen the road or do storm water work, something to that road that requires those wires
to be moved. Right now, the utility has to move it at their expense. There was an effort to change that to be at the city's expense or the county's expense. So, think about that. All of your public works projects that would require the movement of wires or facilities would become more expensive. We managed to
beat that back and instead what happens now is that there is a grant program at the state that is funded every year with $50 million and the utility providers can go to the state and get reimbursed for some of the expense related to moving those wires. But here's the
kicker. That $50 million, it comes out of our CST, our portion of the CST. Now, $50 million at this for the entire state is not a lot of money. U but it does come out of the local government portion of CST. My fear about this though is is
that now that this change has been made, next year it won't be $50 million, it'll be $100 million and then the year after that it'll be $200 and and so on. Um so that's something that we're going to have to watch going forward. Okay, here's something you'll be hearing from, if you haven't already, from staff
because this goes into effect here pretty soon. And this is a platting bill, SB784 by Enogia. Uh, and basically it changes the way all local governments process and approve plat. So before platt would come to city council for
final approval. Now plat all have to be approved administratively. Um, and each local government will have to designate someone on the administrative staff to process them. Um, and then we have to make certain responses back to applicants within a certain amount of time so that they know if they're
missing something. There was a requirement in here at one point that plats were going to have to be processed on uh by local governments within a certain amount of time and we were able to beat that back. So there's no time limit on when a plat has to be processed like for a lot of other land development
orders and regulations. Um but we have to come up with the time frame. We just get to choose what it is. But then we have to follow whatever that time frame is. Uh but there was no time frame imposed on us by the legislature. Okay. HB929 firefighter health and
safety. This amends the Florida Firefighter Occupational Safety and Health Act and it does a number of things. It tells the state fire marshall that they have to rulemake on the following items. um requiring firefighter employers, so the city, counties, uh cities across the state to
purchase firefighting gear that does not contain chemical hazards or toxic substances when such gear is readily available on the marketplace. And until such material, until such gear is available on the marketplace, we have to provide certain notices to our
firefighters about whether or not their equipment has been manufactured with chemical hazards or toxic substances. It also encourages firefighter employers to implement work schedules that do not require normal work weeks to exceed 42 hours. And then it also requires the
fire marshall to rulemate in the area of mental health best practices including resiliency and stress management for for firefighters. SB954 certified recovery residences. Um this was a bill originally that was a
wide-ranging preeemption on your ability to regulate what is often referred to as sober homes. So group homes where folks go to um sober up from drug dependency uh or alcohol dependency. the bill um we worked hard and got it changed so that
instead of preempting where uh your regulation of sober homes, it simply says that you have to have a process for taking in applications for approval or denial of sober homes and then you have to do something that is already in the law which is have a method laid out for folks to seek a reasonable accommodation
from those land development regulations pursuant to the US Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. So, it's something that is already the law, but now you have to write down the way you're going to process those things. Okay. Um, Commissioner Rose, uh, there
was one thing in the transportation facility designation bill. Uh, you know, every year the legislature designates, uh, makes honorary designation of, uh, streets and roads throughout the state of Florida for important people. And in our community this year, that included renaming a portion of South Street
after, um, our, um, senator um, local senator Gerald Dean Thompson. Geraldine Thompson Way, which will be um South Street between Division and Orange Blossom Trail after Senator Thompson sadly passed away earlier this year. Uh
you will have a resolution coming to you in the next uh few council meetings whereby you will make the decision about whether you consent to that. Um the legislature designates these things, but it's always up to you to decide whether or not that's appropriate or not. So that'll be coming to you very very soon.
Okay. SB1080 local government land development regulations. Um there's always a bill every legislative session that's sort of a grabag of grievances from developers who've got some local government that they feel like is treating them uh improperly. This was the bill um this year 1080. A lot of the
bad stuff and a lot of the preeemptions got stripped out of it. And some of the stuff that stayed in it frankly is not all that bad or stuff you already do. So, for example, some local governments, for whatever reason, sometimes had development applications where they'd never described what exactly had to be submitted to apply for one of those
orders. Um, so this bill does something that we've long done, which just says that if you have a land development order application process, you have to tell people what they need to sub submit when they're doing so. Few little changes in the way that impact fees can be raised. You remember a few years ago, the legislature put some caps on how
fast you can raise impact fees. There are a few little tweaks to that. If you want to exceed those caps, you have to do so by unanimous vote now rather than just by a super majority of twothirds. And then it also requires you to phase in those hikes if they are above the
statutory caps. Um, okay. What else do we have? Providing that the 120 and 180day time frame for final action on land development applications restarts if uh the developer makes a substantial change to the application. So that's a that's a
good change. Uh there is um one thing that was also added in those statutory time frames for the review of land development applications. Uh local governments have to return application fees if we fail to meet those deadlines. So we have to
return the fees ranging from 10% to 100% depending on how uh late we are in processing those those applications. Okay. Um affordable housing bill SB 1730. This is the legislaturator's third
go at um working on the live local act. Um this bill like a lot of others during the early part of session had a lot of new preeemptions. There was a a a perception by some in the legislature that there were local governments out there that were trying to get out of the
live local act or uh not approved live local act projects uh using sort of various um methods. And this was intended to sort of crack down on some of those things. So, for example, some local governments said, "Hey, you can't take advantage of the live local lack zoning bypass unless you transfer
development rights or you amend a DRRI or you amend the city charter." Those things have all all been um all been forbidden. Um, one provision allows but does not require you to approve certain affordable housing projects on parcels that are owned by religious
institutions, including property that are adjacent to um religious institutions. not a shall a may. Um, local governments are also though prohibited from requiring that more than 10% of a mixeduse project be used for non-residential purposes if it's a live
local project. So, there were some local governments that said, "Hey, if you have a mixeduse project that is using the zoning bypass under the live local, you got to have 40% of the project be non-residentidential." And the legislature cut that down and said that the maximum you can require is is 10%. The view there was that local
governments were imposing those non-residentidential uses to make the project infeasible uh economically. Uh there by the way was some new flexibility added to local governments to it's only a slight adder
for you to impose height restrictions on live local projects that occupy the same site as an historic structure. It's it's only a slight um addition of flexibility, but it is a little more flexibility. It does require us though, however, to administratively approve
demolitions associated with live local projects, but you may still impose the regular rules that you have for historic preservation and other things like that. Um it um instead of saying may the local government shall um wave minimum parking
requirements in some limited circumstances up to 15% of the minimum parking requirements for live local projects. Um it also by the way provides definitions for things that were not defined in the original live local act. Things like what does mixed use mean? What does industrial mean? What does
commercial mean? Another thing that was added though is the Wakiva study area which comes down into the city of Orlando is now exempt from the live local act. So you may not build a live local act project within the Waka study uh area unless you choose to allow it.
Okay. Finally, the um HB459 is the Sunbridge Stewardship District. That was a basically a large CDD that was created for the Sunbridge development down in OciOla County. The this uh special act uh extends that stewardship district up into the
Sunbridge portion that is now in the city of Orlando. Okay. And this year we actually got a small appropriation um for the Pulse National Memorial um $394,000 um that will assist you in um um
building the Pulse National Memorial. This was money that had actually been appropriated before a few years ago and was returned to the state because the prior organization was not able to um to do what they were going to do and um happily that was reappropriated to the city of Orlando.
So here are some of the key bills that failed and again this is the way we sort of measure success. Um there was another effort this year to raise the caps on sovereign immunity that would be very costly to cities. Um the current sovereign immunity caps of course are 200,000 and 300,000 per incident and um
per person. Um there was a proposal to raise them to many millions of dollars. That would be very costly to cities and counties. That failed. There was um another effort this year to either repeal or dramatically roll back the local business tax, which is a a a
funding source that goes into our general fund. Uh and also um there was another effort this year to impair the transfer of dividend payments from utilities owned by local governments uh into uh the general fund of local local
governments. Again this year there was an effort to um sunset basically all the CRAAS in the state. Um, this year's effort had an unintended consequence on us when it was trying to also forbid the expansion of CRAAS over the next few
years. There was also a provision in some of these bills um that would forbid local governments going out and pledging uh tax increment from CRAAS for um for u for bonds. And um both of those things
failed. Uh there were also as you probably heard um efforts to reform or change the TDT. Um from our perspective the one thing that we had to guard against this year was that there was an effort to change TDT in such a way that may have caused problems for our efforts
to use um TDT um granted to us by the county uh for work on the two venues Kia and Camping World Stadium. It probably was not intended that way, but that was the effect it would have had on us. So, we had to work really hard at the end of session to prevent that from from
occurring. I noticed I noted a couple uh bills here related to uh homestead property tax exemption. The truth was is that there was like a dozen or more of them. Um and um that's going to segue into something we're going to talk about here in just a moment, but there were a lot of bills
that would have changed the way property tax exemptions work, adding new property tax exemptions. Okay, quick look ahead. Um, the next legislative session is early uh because it is an election year next year, an even numbered year. So,
committee weeks actually start in October, so it's just around the corner. Regular session next year, January through March if it ends on time. And just some issues that we need to watch and be aware of. There will be an effort again to uh impair local government's municipal utility transfers. That will
have an impact on our general fund if it occurs. There will be an effort again to um uh cut local business taxes and communication services taxes. There will be efforts again at raising the sovereign immunity caps. And one of the things that I think the legislature is going to be thinking about more in the
next few sessions is um permitting issues and uh expanding the use of private providers to review plans for building permits. Okay. But here's the important thing and this segus into Michelle's presentation which is coming up.
You have no doubt heard heard that there are a number of state leaders who believe that property taxes are too high. Uh and that is the primary funding source of course for a lot of what we do here at the local level. And um this is a concern. Uh the governor uh leaders in
the Senate and the House um have decided that they want to tackle whatever that means property taxes that they believe have gotten out of control over during the next session. The House has impanled a select committee on property taxes. It was
created near the very end of session. Uh it is chaired by two um um members out of South Florida, Representative Overdorf and Representative Lopez. It has 37 members of the House on the committee. That's like a third or quarter or whatever that is of the members of the House. So, it's a big
committee and they are tasked with reviewing the current state of property taxes in Florida and exploring innovative solutions to red reduce local property taxes. So, this House Select Committee is going to be meeting throughout um the summer
and the fall. And here's what they've been asked to do. The speaker has given five ideas to this committee and said, "Think about these ideas for cutting property taxes." Um, these are just ideas. The House Speaker himself has said they may be
good ideas or they may be bad ideas, but I want you to think these through. And so, here's what they're looking at. Requiring every local government that gets property tax to hold a referendum on whether or not to eliminate property taxes on homestead properties. Just eliminate them. They're gone.
two, creating a new $500,000 homestead exemption as well as a $1 million homestead exemption for folks that are 65 and older or have lived in their homes for 30 years or or more. And this would only be applicable, by the way, to non-school taxes. So, cities, counties,
and special districts. Authorize the legislature rather than the voters to decide on new homestead exemptions. So any value the legislature just from year in year out could up your um exemption um dramatically dramatically impacting your budget our
budget modifying the way that incess assessment increase limitations are calculated on on property values. So you know there's caps on how fast property values can be on their assessment can go up and this would adjust those in such a way to prevent them from going up as
quickly as they have in the past. And then finally, the fifth idea is just forbidding local governments from foreclosing on homestead property due to a property tax lean. That probably doesn't happen a lot. Um, but that's also an idea. Um, there are other ideas
that are floating around out there, um, including things that may make some sense like having a a more um, standardized way of assessing properties um, between different property appraisers in the state. Um, there's now some complaint that some property appraisers do it one way and others do
it another way, standardizing it so that there's a little more predictability. That's one idea that's out there, but there are others. But I I tell you this to say that one of the paths of possible lease resistance is some sort of increased homestead exemption for folks
that have been in their home um a certain number of years or or above a certain age. Because the complaint that you often hear legislators talk about is that people who are on a fixed income, who are retired, struggling to meet their property tax uh bills. Remember,
I'm just the messenger. Um so what's going to happen going forward? Uh that select committee has met twice already. Um I have to tell you so far by listening in on those committee meetings, I was surprised to see some members already starting to kick back at some of this and say, "Hey,
wait a minute. this is how we fund important things locally. This is how we fund police. This is how we fund fire. Um let's, you know, slow the roll here. And um so I was I was heartened to see that. Um the panel though, the House Select Committee, as I said, is going to meet throughout the um summer and the
fall. The speaker has said that he intends to have some proposal to vote on in the first week of next session. That means that that proposal will have to be landed on sometimes during the committee weeks that occur during the fall. Now, think of this through. There are some
property tax reforms that the state can do by statute. But when you talk about adding an exemption or making large-scale changes to property taxes, those can only be done by the voters under our constitution. So, what's going to happen here is that proposal is going to need to be a a joint resolution of the House
and the Senate. It will require a supermajority vote, but ultimately it will go to the voters next November uh on the ballot. Okay? And of course that will have to pass by by 60%. But I say that to say that whatever happens isn't necessarily going to happen right away.
Uh but it is something that we are going to have to work on uh during this interim interim period. Any questions? Thank you, Kyle. Good presentation. Questions? Commissioner Stewart, thank you, Kyle. Appreciate um your
efforts, the efforts of your entire team. Uh a couple of quick things come to mind. I mean um Commissioner Ortiz will share the same thing with you is that philosophically I'm against anything in which somebody will actually um take away the rights of
cities to impose that where the were the best place to have those kind of issues in terms of tax. But a couple things come to mind and then then we can talk privately later on. First is um uh on your SB 180, it applies retroactively to
August 124 to August 127. Does that mean that the bill is also sunsetted in August 127 uh and it has to be reauthorized? Yes, sir. that provision. But there was an earlier provision in that bill that said that anytime you have a new storm
that comes along in the future, these same rules apply one year after that storm. Not retroactive. But the point is is that even when this provision expires in 2027, unless the law is changed, say we're in the year 2029, we're impacted by a storm, those rules will still apply
for one year after that storm impacts the city of Rwanda. Um, thanks. Um, second question is real quickly. Um, on 683, um,
can have if you got any idea what the impact that has to us on on those things like change orders and approval for change orders and the threshold to which those approvals can be made or who can make those internally. Uh it seems to me
that 35 days is a little bit too tight when it when some of those change orders may have to be approved by city council and some of those change orders may have to be approved uh more than administratively. Yeah. Yeah. What that provision says, and I skipped over it, but it's um it's
important is there were vendors out there across the state who were complaining about submitting in response to a local government asking for some change in the work that is being done on a public works project. um that the vendor would go out and do the work necessary to submit that change work
order, cost it all out, and then they would never hear back. And so um what this does is it requires the local government to respond to that change work order within 35 days. Um maybe saying no uh but you have to respond within 35 days.
A change order comes in that would something occurred at a particular project, we have to make a change order. We we could just I mean at some shows we could just say no. Yes. I mean yeah that's still an option. Okay. But you have to respond as well which could stop a public works project
like in a moment's notice. Could um let me change go get one we've worked really hard on. Um and that was the property tax reforms. One of the things I've always had a challenge with is is that there's a misunderstanding of
what's going on essentially inside u um I guess it's probably a lack of local officials who've actually graduated into into serving in the state legislature. They they misunderstand the role of property tax and and how local cities are funded.
So couple things come to mind. Um the first is has there been any discussion about having these local property taxes also apply to schools? Because part of the challenge that we have every time a a an exemption comes through, they they
actually just skip over schools and schools kind of get whenever they want and so they aren't paying the same penalty. So the voice of the property tax really is screamed is is lack of screaming. you had to do
that that the average property tax in Orlando the property tax bill only 31 to 32% are actually paid to the city. So literally three core I mean twothirds of the entire property tax now is being paid by other things like schools and
like other areas that um that that the city has no control over but we get essentially the blame for. So, um I know that Georgia has a specific way to control property taxes by by saying if you're over 65, you don't pay any school
property tax and puts all that property tax on the burdens of people who essentially are childbearing age if you want to call it that. Um and uh I don't know if anybody's is is investigating that and
see now that changes the burden slightly moves these other property taxes up significantly but also they get essentially a direct bearing of direct benefit out of the property taxes that they're paying.
Commissioner, it is true that in some of these cases where there have been property tax reform adding exemptions that it in the past has not applied to school taxes. This time there is a discussion on both sides. There are some who say well wait a minute we need to cut taxes across the board and that
includes cutting school taxes as well. There's others that say no you need to maintain the exemption for for schools um and apply these new exemptions just to cities and counties and special districts. So you hear both of that. There is also, by the way, a proposal that has been thrown out there to say,
why don't we get rid of local property taxes, the required local effort portion of school property taxes, and put that on the state to pay from state general revenue. Um, and so I don't know how far that is going to go, but that is a proposal that has been thrown out there as well. Well, it seems that over the
years, at least the 20 years I've been here, they have nickel and dimed exemptions. And and I don't necessarily disagree with any of them individually, but it seems that what it happens is it it creates an unfair um uh taxing system
essentially. Um uh and and I and I think that if you're going to have overhaul, overhaul them all. I mean, if you're to take get rid of all exemptions, you know, forget to get rid of them all. Uh then everybody's property tax will essentially come down. Um and uh but but
some of those are in by constitution. So now you now you've got another another issue. Um I'd like to know when the the the U task force is meeting and and the names of the people that are on there. If you if you'll just provide that to us, I'd
appreciate it. I know that uh um uh we have some friends on there and some those who we oppose uh who have imposing home rule on a regular basis, but I'd love to be able to kind of monitor what they're doing and also communicate to them directly like we do during the session about individual bills. Thank
you for your work on CRA. Uh I think that was an important part of the work that we did here in the city. Uh and thank you for the work on sovereign immunity. I think we they've not yet come to some kind of compromise that I think would be appropriate. Um it
seems to me they're just u jumping too far ahead of the game from where we currently are. So I appreciate your help and your entire team. I appreciate it. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Commissioner Sheen. And then Commissioner Rose. Thank you, Mayor. And and to to add to
what Commissioner Stewart said, you know, I think a lot of people, you know, pay their taxes through their mortgage or whatever and they're not aware that a large portion of that is school tax and know lion's portion of my property taxes are are school taxes and I don't have children. So, I mean, I believe in paying my social freight, but it people
that are screaming that they're not that, you know, I'm not that uh that that we're not paying our fair share, but then people who aren't don't have children are disproportionately burdened by the school taxes, which have really gone up high. So, I think that that's a huge problem in terms of the perception,
but we're kind of hampered as well because we can't campaign against these kinds of amendments. Correct. I mean, did they preempt our ability to campaign or are we allowed to educate? Because I think it's going to be important because people say, "Oh, yeah, let's cut all the taxes." Not realizing, "Well, yeah,
you're going to cut your police. You're going to cut your fire. You're going to cut your road work. You're going to cut public works. You're going to cut, you know, people when you flush that toilet, make that go away. So, we can't use city money to do that. City money. You can certainly campaign against it. You can campaign, but you can't use city money. Okay.
All right. Sit down with Jody at some point. There is a distinction here and a subtle one, but in essence, you can't use city funds, taxpayer funds to uh send out a campaign material. Um, but you can educate, but but we can educate on what our portion of the property tax bill is,
which I think is important for us to do because I think again I don't think people realize and people I've talked to when they get mad about property taxes, they're not understanding the percentage that's actually the city. And then the the um the state can Yeah. Well, there's that.
But the again, my concern is letting them know what their property taxes pay for. And I think we need to I think we can do a better job of that just on our websites and different things like that because again if they're just going to say, "Oh yeah, I want to cut my taxes not realizing that that's going to have an impact." So that's all I had mayor.
Thank you. Thanks, Commissioner. Commissioner Rose. Uh Kyle, thank you for the great work in the team in Tallahassee. Couple of questions. Um I want to first thank you for Gerald Dean Thompson, Senator Thompson's um renaming. Hopefully my colleagues will see fit that we can
rename the street. Um, I see the Sunbridge Steward Stewardship District. Are we adding more board seats? Um, I'm big on the board appointments and making sure the community is represented. Are we adding more board seats um to make sure the city of Orlando can appoint? And then will some of that stuff have to
now come to council for our review um since it's incorporating the city of Orlando? Good question. The answer to that is that the board seats do not go up or down. They stay the same as they are now for the district. CDDs and stewardship districts, those seats are by law
appointed by property owners in the district, not the local government. Um, so there's that's not one where the city council appoints to the board, but that is true of all CDDs. Okay. Um, I want to encourage communications to do a graphic for the new demolition so that
we're encouraging, we're making the community aware of, um, it's illegal, it's illegal now to um, demo historic properties. Um, and then I want to thank you for your CRA work. Uh, it's that's been a challenge. Obviously, for years, for a long time, this administration has
been anti CRAAS. I have two in my district. So, it's important that we're working to make sure we're uplifting the community. So, thank you for your hard work. Okay. Anybody else? Uh, Mayor, I failed to mention one thing. Sean Pitman walked in behind me. He's also on our team. He came in a
couple minutes late. Sean, wave. You back. Wave. Sean. Uh Sean is based out of Tallahassee and I tell him every year, don't come down for a 30 minute presentation. He was here anyway, so I asked him to come in and and duck in. Um we can't do it without these folks. They have the access. Um and they have the
trust of our legislators. Um and that goes a long way to meaning that these bills that you hear about, they're bad. It'd be a lot worse without these folks. So thank you. So couple quick thoughts. Um, I'd say for at least the last 30 years, every year the legislature has to brag about
cutting taxes. And you can only do it so many ways if you've been doing it for 30 years. And usually it's the sales tax holiday things that they just reinstitute every year. But I guess it's just a new way. And then I don't know about you guys, but I can't think of any
time in the last 10 years I've actually had anybody say anything to me about property taxes. It's property insurance. That is the thing that is nailing everybody. And on my personal checks that I write, it isn't the property tax, it's the property
insurance. I think we need to get people refocused on asking the legislature to do something about property insurance. Um, which they think they've taken care of, but they have not. And then teen, good job. Um, is that the first time we've had an appropriation in a while?
It is. And it wasn't. used to be something that was a fairly routine thing, but cities don't get appropriations as much as they used to. Rural communities seem to get them a little bit more than blue cities these days. But anyways, we appreciate Kyle your work and all the
work the whole team does. And um anytime we get criticized for having lobbyists, I tell everybody it may more than pays for itself to have a team that is helping us make sure that um we're either getting our fair share or not getting hit by somebody else's fair
share. So, thanks for the work you did this year. Let's give them a hand. Okay, that's a good segue the property tax thing right into budgets. So, we're going to have Michelle's team talk to us about our proposed budget for the next
fiscal year. And once again, we will not be raising the or we're proposing not to raise the millage rate for the 12th consecutive year. And um I can actually say that we've only raised it one time in the last 22 years and that was in
response to the year before when we were mandated to reduce the millage rate and we simply restored it the next year after that. So we really haven't raised the millage rate in about 22 years if you take the reduction and then the reinccrease. But again, we're focused on
public safety. We're increasing the number of police officers. We are creating a new city sponsored paramedic school certification program. We are um working on several designing and building several new fire stations. One
replacing um an old fire station, another going to the new uh area that we annexed recently and then another station down in the southeast area. A lot of focused on our mobility na needs. Um, here's one for you, Commissioner
Sheen, and several others is we're spending more money on roadway pavement rehabilitation than ever in the history of the city of Orlando. Some pretty flat budget overall, um, but still, uh, providing great services within our
means. Michelle, take it over. Great. Thank you, Mayor. Um so we um started the budget cycle feeling a little uncertain going into um fiscal year 26. We asked the departments
for flat budgets but um knowing that there's cost increases we allowed to them to uh continue to justify that plus um providing the growth of services. Um we continue to see increased prices with our vendors and still have some challenges albeit not not nearly what
we've seen in previous years. But like last year, you're going to hear our revenues for fiscal 26 have grown. Um that's allowing us to propose a budget to you that uh gets us to meet our operational and capital needs and then also plan for some future debt
obligations. So as a from a 30,000 foot level, um as the mayor mentioned, no increase in millillage, and you'll see that on today's uh agenda later on. Um, we did see a 6% increase in property taxes, which was right in line with our
expectations this year, uh, and slightly higher than last year's 5.2% increase, which was good. Our OU payment is flat. Um, and I'll I'll talk about that in a little bit. And then due to oper operating cost increases, water
reclamation has proposed a 5% uh cost increase. Um, you can see the average impact is about $3 a month. Solid Waste has proposed a 4 percent increase. Um, average impact just under a dollar a month. And then last year when Storm
Water proposed their rate increases, that included a 25% increase for this year. Um, which is an average impact between 20 and $50 a year. Our personnel expense is our largest line item. Um, especially in the general
fund. It's about 62% of our general fund budget. and our collective bargaining agreements all expire September 30th of this year. Um, which presents a challenge to budget any future increases. When we compare this year's budget to last year's approved budget, we've added
30 new positions. Um, 28 of them are in the general fund. Uh, but you can see we also deleted 20 positions. Um, so our net new positions are 10. Uh this year our budget team worked proactively with the departments to identify and delete
positions that had been b that had been vacant for a while. So some of those new positions um in OBFS we had two new IT positions um offset by uh two vacant positions, one in IT, one in real estate. Economic development deleted one
vacant position and then funding for six site engineering inspector positions got transferred to public work. So, no net increase, but just moving from e economic development to public works. Uh the executive offices deleted two vacant positions.
In fire, we've added three civilian program managers. Um that's going to help with the leadership structure as they expand and add new fire stations in the southeast. In police, we added 16 sworn positions. uh 10 officers, three
sergeants, one captain for growth in the southeast, plus two SRO's, and then four civilian positions focused on reporting, uh records and crime analytics, public works, um continuing down the line there, um public works, one vacant
position was deleted and then they gained the six um site engineering inspector positions from economic development and then two public works general fund positions were transferred to the solid waste. um fund. So that's why kind of little
little far down the middle under public works you see four because they gained six and then moved two off. Uh transport transportation uh we have three new positions being proposed and then two um vacant positions deleted all within
traffic engineering. And then down at the bottom in the all other funds the two new positions added are on the GOA fund. Um there's two new Goa Lieutenant positions added and then the 12 vacant positions that were deleted were primarily grant related.
You'll remember from last year we picked up Sunrail for the first time, but last year was nine months of our Sunrail obligation. So this year we're picking up 12 months. Uh so we've got an increase in costs of about $4.5 million related to Sunrail.
Um, and the city's portion is about 32% of the total Sunrail cost just because of the number of boardings within city limits. And then we'll go through the other highlighted u operating costs in a little bit. But on another positive note, we
continue to maintain our strong fund balance. Um, so our goal is 25%. You can see we're hovering just above that. And just a reminder, our fund balance is calculated. You take the the dollar amount of the fund balance and you divide that by next year's budget. So if
your budget grows, you've got to add more dollars to that fund balance to maintain that 25%. Um so it's not only fiscally responsible. We we've talked about this for years and you've you've been very supportive of um having us maintain these strong fund balances. Uh it's kind
of like a savings account for you personally. Uh but it also when we go out to issue bonds um it looks very favorable to rating agencies and allows us to get um better interest rates out in the market. So this slide just provides a highle
breakdown of how our all funds budget of 1.8 billion is split between the different types of funds. Almost twothirds of the city's budget is made up of the general fund and the enterprise funds. Um and during the workshop I'll spend most of our time on the general fund but we'll go through
some of the um enterprise funds as well. And this is just again looking at our all funds budget uh our different revenues by source and then our expenses by department which are fairly consistent with prior years.
So, if we go into the general fund revenues, the proposed fiscal year 26 general fund budget totals about $742.6 million, which is a 4.8% increase over last fiscal year. And we'll go through
the larger components in a few the next few slides. Property taxes um again 6.2% 2% increase, which is an impact of about $21.1 million to the general fund. Um,
we talked Kyle just went over all of the um discussion about uh property taxes and this is 48% of the general funds budget or property taxes. So certainly um certainly impactful. Um
and our 2025 uh city total taxable value is about 56 billion. Um which is an increase of about $3.3 billion um from last year and about a third of that was from new construction. And just by comparison in fis in fiscal year 25 the
increase was about half from new construction. So, I think this is um what a few of you have alluded to, the kind of our our illustration of how much the city's piece of the property tax bill makes up, which is, you know, roughly a third. Uh
with the lion's share of the property tax bill being um Orange County Public Schools and Orange County payments from OU is also a significant source of revenue. So, we're grateful for the work that was um done on the utility bills um discussion because it's
16% of our general fund revenues. Uh the blue line there are the franchise fee equivalent. Um so those are revenue based payments based on electric water um and chilled water sales within the
city. And then the orange there is the dividend payment which is based on 60% of estimated income with a a true up element to it. Um so the reason this year this fiscal year is flat is because
when the um estimated um fiscal year 24 payment uh was made for us, it didn't include a price a fuel price decrease that OU implemented. uh last fiscal year. Um and so that
impacted we we kind of true that up um based on their audited financials. So that impacted us um by reducing the revenue by about $3.4 million, but at least it was flat this year. Sales taxes are certainly our most economically sensitive revenue. It's
about 8% of general fund revenues, which is pretty consistent with prior years. You can see that in 22 23 we had some big gaps between what we had budgeted versus what we actually saw come in. Um we were still uh budgeting pretty
conservatively postcoid. And then you can see fiscal year 24 the gap kind of shrinks a little bit. Fiscal year 25 um that's our uh what we think the taxes are going to come in at. And so for fiscal year 26, we've assumed um
you know current year expectations for next year with kind of a slight haircut um just in case there's any unexpected impacts. So we try and stay conservative with this but um not not being too conservative um as well. So it's kind of
a balance for sales tax given the nature of it. And then charges for services um that's about 10% of our general fund revenues. So if you look at the bottom, the dark green is the cost allocation. So that's
really looking at the central services that the general fund provides, legal, purchasing, accounting, services like that and um charging them to the various um enterprise funds and then the light green is the enterprise dividend payment
as well. So the two greens are really our internal charges. The yellow is our EMS fees. Um these are additional reimbursements for medic Medicare and Medicaid um as well as uh as um the EMS
uh transport service fees. And then the orange at the top are the department fees. So you can see the uh in total it's fairly consistent with last year. And this is the general fund budget by department. We have it in order of
dollar changes from large to small. So we'll go into some more details in the next few slides, but you can just see at a quick glance the largest dollar increases are in police, transportation, fire, families, parks, and recreation. And then the biggest decreases are in
executive offices and non-EP department. And this is just another way to to slice and dice. just showing graphically um the general fund um budget by department, but we've also, you can see on the far right hand side of that slide, um breaking out the elusive
non-depart department uh to explain that a little bit more. And so what's included in that, just a reminder, is any transfers for capital um or transfers to other funds, the tax increment payments, which is which is the CRA payments, uh debt service,
contingency, and then we've got other various charges in there as well. And then we always talk about this, but the cost of police and fire is continues to be more than property taxes that we collect. Um, and in fact, the gap has
grown. Uh, last year it was $40 million and this year it's $46 million, which has really doubled since fiscal year 23 and 24. Because we have a balanced budget, the general fund expenses have also increased by 34 million and 4.8%.
In the next few slides, we'll look at the variances and and get into some more details. So, personnel costs have increased by almost 28 million and 6.4%. And this really just breaks out um what
are personnel costs for the city. Um, you can see salaries make up the majority. Um, so that's the the blue on the right. Um, it's about 55%. Other benefits include health care, that's about 20%. Pension and OPED, which are the post
post-employment retirement benefits, that's 18%. And then the RA remaining 6% overtime and temp seasonals. And these are the increases within each of the categories. Uh so the salary increases include um step progression
for public safety. Uh we've got the additional staffing that's in there. And then offduty has also increased by almost $2 million. You can see that the pension and oped costs have gone down. This was primarily due to reductions in the general and the
police pension plans, but the police pension plan jumped up quite a bit last year. So, it's really kind of just normalizing, but um the decrease definitely helped us this year. And then other benefits include some um proposed uh rate adjustments um rate
increases to the medical plan to the general fund. And then while you can see overtime has percentage-wise has increased quite a bit, um it is a very small um percentage overall of our personnel costs. Um but
the increase is primarily due to uh OPD. Um it's increased by about just over $4 million and then OFD is about is at about a million and a half dollars. And really both of those um were adjusted up
to just correlate with their historical overtime that they've actually been spending. Um police overtime. Um they've got numerous events occurring outside of working hours, vacancies, special details, special ops, investigations,
and then police 911 communications and fires overtime when the new Sunbridge temporary station opens. Um there's likely going to be some increased overtime that those additional firefighters are covering right now.
And then you can see an adjustment. it's on that little sliver of um for temp seasonals and that's primarily due to um minimum wage adjustments being made for employees at FPR. So our citywide staffing total employees
uh number for fiscal year 26 um the proposed number is 4,152 city employees. are employees per thousand residents. You can see that the numbers slightly tick down. The the top number is the all funds and then the yellow is the general
fund. Um and general funds hovering pretty much about the same. And then if we further break that down into public safety, you can see um those numbers are kind of hovering about the the same as well. Um when the new Pitus
fire station opens um which you'll see that uh design build the construction contract is on today's agenda. Um when that station opens and we'll be adding new firefighter um positions for that station. Contractual services have increased by
almost 14 million and 22%. So there's lots of different things included in the contractual services line, but we tried to break out and and identify some of the bigger chunks, which is the Sunrail portion, IT contracts, um police leased vehicles,
and then FPR maintenance. And these are the percentage increases in each of those categories. So you can see Sunrail increased because we're picking up that extra 3 months. Um so nine or 12 months versus nine months. IT contracts have um jumped up quite a bit.
Um these are primarily increases in IT licenses, but also we had about $2.5 million increase for the OPD Axon contract for their bodywn cameras and tasers. And then police vehicle leases have gone
up um as well about $3 million. That's really just to get get that get the budget in line with what their actual expenses have been. Um they've seen increases over the years because as we've grown uh the number of officers um
we had some real supply chain issues with purchasing vehicles and so um their police leasing program was expanded um in order to to get those vehicles. And then we've got park maintenance um increases of just over $300,000 due to
cost increases. So the supplies expense has increased a little bit over $900,000 and 8%. Um and this just shows kind of the largest using departments of supplies expense. Um that's IT licenses and subscriptions,
guns and ammo, medical supplies, pool chemicals, cleaning supplies, and then these are the increases um and decreases in each of those categories. Um police has increased due to SWAT team supplies and training ammo increases.
Fire has decreased because we added um 24 new firefighters last year. And so that's where we actually um budgeted any outfitting costs. And so since we don't have any um positions added this year, that's why there's a decrease there. And
then FPR has increased um due to increased uh costs for pool maintenance, mulch, restroom cleaning. This is the breakout of our utilities. So you can see it's our traditional utilities are electric, water, kind of all that normal. then street lighting,
internet and phone and storm water. And this these increases in each of those categories um are primarily due to rate increases that we've seen um both our electricity as well as water rate increases and even um the storm water
assessment. Uh we also have some sports lighting contracts as well that are reflected in there from a few contracts um that FPR entered into over the last few years too. Fleet and facilities. These are our largest using departments um for that
line item. So that's the u maintenance of all of our city- owned facilities, all of our vehicles. Um uh also um fuel as well for those vehicles. And then these are the percentage increases. Um most have decreased other
than fire. Um they've got some higher fleet costs for maintenance and replacement costs for their larger apparatuses. And then they've also got some increased insurance costs. And then we've also uh provided them some additional facilities funding as well um for their fire station maintenance
costs. And then other operating expense has decreased by almost $9 million and 10%. Uh so these are the biggest components of other operating. You can see the CRA tax payments, debt service, um payments to community organizations, our
contingency, and then our other and then these are the decreases in those categories. Um the decrease in CRA, I know we focus a lot on downtown CRA, but we actually have three CRAAS and um one of them we made uh the
Republic Drive CRA, we made the last debt payment this fiscal year. And so, uh, we had $700,000 or excuse me, $400,000, uh, in our budget this year, um, that we don't have in next year's budget. Uh, we
will make the last payment on the Conroy CRA, um, next fiscal year. And we've got some debt service funds that we can use to make towards that last debt payment. And so that's also going to save us um, about $1.1 million. So the lion's share
of the decrease in tax the CRA tax payments are from those other two CRAAS. Um although the downtown CRA um did see a decrease of 1% in their increment re revenues this year.
And then uh we also decreased our contingency by about $5.5 million. Now, while the debt service number there looks fairly flat, um the reason for that is that we um had two internal loans paid off that reduced our debt
service by almost $3 million and then we added some new debt service assuming that we were going to do a bond issue um as well. So, in total, we've got about a $7 million annual debt service um
for uh this future planned bond issue. Uh storm water will have almost 2 million of that. So, uh estimated total cost for that bond issue will be about $9 million a year. And you may recall a year ago we brought you a declaration of intent for this
bond issue. Um issuing up to $200 million and we were still fine-tuning the project lists. Uh but we've got fire stations planned on there. Uh that'll include um the Starwood fire station. Um
the Press fire station that's on today's council agenda is already fully funded. So that doesn't need any bond funds. Uh as the mayor mentioned, we've got a replacement fire station at Southport. Uh we'll have additional funding for fire training facility and then a public
safety complex at Everbeby. The bond will also include additional funding for Pus Park, um which that design build was approved a few months ago in April, and then some other park projects. And then we also have several
road projects planned. um uh in the southeast phases of Dowen Road and Econ Trail um as well as some other projects within this bond. And then we've got about $40 million in storm water projects um that will be funded that that storm water's already um been
budgeted and is programming those capital dollars. And um just a reminder though, you you approved the declaration of intent, but this bond issue would come back to council for approval. But this is this is our plan to handle some of these larger project needs.
And while that debt service obligation to the general fund is not not insignificant um because it's about 7 million, this right here is a a visual of our existing covenant debt. So you can see starting in fiscal year 29 that
debt service drops off quite a bit. So when we ultimately issue this bond um we can um wrap that new debt service around our drops um to avoid you know spikes in our debt obligations and we'll work closely with our financial adviser to do
that. So, segueing back to our expenses, um the remaining expense categories are here, which really didn't have um too many uh uh tremendous increases. Um the mayor mentioned the new um paramedic
training program, and so that's why you see a slight increase in training and travel there. Capital outlay has um increased, and that's really primarily due to the new positions that we're adding. Uh especially in OPD, we've got outfitting costs. We've got new vehicle costs um as well that are included in
there. And then transfers out, you see a slight decrease and that's due to a reduction in our transfers to capital. So this is just a quick snapshot of some other funds that are outside of the general fund um that I'll go through.
So up on the top we've got a summary of water reclamation and then down at the bottom solid waste. And just a reminder both of those are enterprise funds which means they set their rates and charges to cover all of their operating expenses including their capital costs uh without
a general fund subsidy. So the water reclamation fund up on top reflects the 5% rate adjustment plus recognizing some growth in the usage of the system. They have some modest personnel growth and you can see that most of the additional
funding is for operations of the wastewater systems. So they've got increases in supplies, contractual capital, and then they've also got additional debt service um from a bond issue that we issued um last year. And then solid waste reflects the 4% rate
adjustment with some also some modest increases in personnel, but they've got some increased tipping and landfill costs included in theirs. The storm water utility fund is an enterprise fund. And so you can see up up on top there, it reflects the rate
adjustment um plus some some anticipated growth. uh they've got modest personnel growth, but most of that additional funding is going towards capital project needs and um the debt service on this um planned bond issue.
And then the downtown CRA fund is a special revenue fund um and their tax increment, I mentioned this previously, decreased 1% this year um which is an improvement. Last year it was a 5% reduction. So, uh, we'll take the 1%.
Um, and you can see that's reflected in their operating budget there. And then venues up on the top, we've got the KIA Center down at the bottom, Camping World Stadium. Both of those are enterprise funds as well. The increases
in KIA is really due to a strong event schedule. Um, and their operating costs increase as they um as they have uh events. but they also have um higher amounts of property insurance, roughly half a million. And then KIA will also
be participating in OUC's community solar subscription. Um and that's going to further the mayor's goal of having all of the city municipal operations on 100% renewable energy by 2030. Camping World Stadium down at the bottom
you can see um a decrease in revenues. Uh, as everyone knows, there's going to be some substantial renovations going on over there. And so there anticipated um a slowdown in events because of because of those renovations. And um
just a reminder, that's going to be funded by the bond issue you approved a few months ago, which will be paid for with county TDT revenues. Uh parking is also an enterprise fund. um and their parking revenues are fairly flat compared to last year, but they've
proposed a use of fund balance to fund um a digital wayfinding project. And then down at the bottom, housing is a special revenue fund. Um and so this is really combining their uh federal and state grants. And so you can see there's
a slight decrease which is primarily driven by a reduction in ship revenues um of about $145,000. So the next few slides uh we really similar to what we've presented before where we summarize all of the different
facilities, assets, sidewalks, lakes, sewer lines, vehicles that we have to maintain to provide municipal services. And so we try to align our proposed capital spend to each of those really to to show the investments that we continue to make in our infrastructure.
On this line, we have about uh $7 million um proposed to invest in FPR assets and amenities. We have over $5 million programmed for the maintenance of city buildings. That includes HBAC replacements, painting,
window replacements, as well as some emergency generators. We've got dedicated funding for sidewalk remediation of $3.4 million. And as the mayor pointed out, um we've added about a million dollars to pavement rehab. So,
we've got about $7.5 million programmed for that this year. water reclamation and storm water. They both have significant um capital PIGO programs um included in their budget as well. And we have over $8 million in public
safety capital investments program that includes radio and equipment replacements. And then the CRA program capital budget is here. Um, plus we've got some IT funding. We're adding $500,000 for affordable housing. And then parking's
got some um RNR uh plans as well. And this is just a summary of all of from all the various different funding sources for the capital improvement program. Um, a couple things that I'll just point out to you just because they're very large numbers. If you look
down at the bottom, the storm water capital fund, you can see that's increased by about $9.1 million. And that's primarily um from the rate increases that I mentioned that was all going to or primarily going to capital.
Um and this would all be PGO capital. And then you see a very large decrease in water reclamation. And that's because the fiscal 25 included the bond um projects uh which that bond was issued. And so now they're going back to their kind of normalized PGO uh capital
program there. So that's why you see those big changes. And then this just slices and dices the capital improvement program by function. Um the vast majority is going to be in um water reclamation, transportation, storm water and then economic
development which is CRA. So we are presenting to you a balanced budget of just over $742 million in the general fund, just over a billion dollars in all the all other funds. So our total proposed budget is just shy of
$1.8 billion. Um we will likely have some refining between now and the actual budget that we'll bring to you in September. And next steps is um we will have the uh agenda item today to vote on the
resolution to to set that tentative millage rate. Again, no increases. We've got briefings scheduled or they're being scheduled uh with each of you. And then we'll also have the commissioner notebook ready in about a week. And so that'll have more details um because I
know that's what you want, more details. Um that'll have that in your notebook. and then um we'll be ready for the hearings in September. So, mayor and commissioners, I I really want to thank you for your support of this budget. Um I want to thank the
budget team over here behind me. This was Jason Wovich's first budget as the division manager, so he kept us all straight. Um, I want to thank his team, Anthony Blesio, Nicole Novak, Chris Mendoza, and Miam Heon. I want to thank
the city's fiscal managers, division managers, department directors. They really made thoughtful budget requests um this year and they always um manage their budgets very prudently each year. So, thank you very much and happy to answer any questions.
Okay, let's go to questions. Commissioner Burns and Commissioner Stewart. Excuse me. Uh, thank you Michelle for for your presentation and and to your team. Uh, and I do look forward to getting uh the
the notebook to have the additional uh details, but I had a uh really two questions. uh when we were talking about overtime um and I think you mentioned overtime between the police and and fire was about 5 million
and so that other roughly 12 is just general uh employee overtime and I guess my main question is is there a way that we can control that in in in some way? Yeah. Um overtime is um so I cited some
of the reasons for the police overtime and really it's standing out this year I think because um it's such a large increase and but really it's matching their historical overtime um and so we're trying to kind of better align the
budget um so that we don't have any surprises at year end given that our increases are limited. Um but yeah, certainly departments I mean they all um manage their overtime um and really we ask for their requests for overtime um
based on their operational needs. So there's various reasons for it. Um it could be events that occur outside of ours. Um it could be um vacancies as well. So that kind of es and flows but but yes, departments do manage their overtime and
and I I do see that we're adding 20 new officers. Do we know how many vacancies we currently have? Or chief, I'm not sure if you So, we currently have about 70 vacancies. Some of those are assigned to OIA, the airport. So, I think they run
about 20 of those. So, we're we hanging about 50 vacancies. Um, I still have about four to five retirements a month. So, my attrition rate is still pretty pretty normal. So, I'm maybe gaining one or two a month if you really did the math for it. So, we're still struggling there. So, a lot of the overtime is, as
Michelle said, um a lot of the overtime is spread over special events. I have areas like, um some of the areas in district one where we weren't fully staffed. We had a lot of vacancies down there. We were carrying a lot down there. We have overtime details. We did do some annexations. So, there's overtime details for some of the new
areas we annexed because there's some construction going on there. We do have a lot more um camping world and key events. those skyrocket. So, we have to cover some of those where we have like the parking issues and some of those kind of things where we staff it where it's not at the event, but it's things that affect the event. So, those are the
kind of things we have to staff. And then there's also spikes in crime in certain areas where we'll add to handle those kind of things in in a short process to take care of those. But, we've historically been at that level. It's just now the the budget is catching up with it. We've historically spent anywhere from two to three million
dollars every year. So, now it's just like, okay, let's just budget for it and sort of count that in. Um, I hopefully hopefully we'll go down. Our staffing is getting a little bit better, but we did add that other area. So, we're going to try and man that with our new officers. Okay. Thank you. Thanks.
And and Michelle, my my next question um is related to the storm water utility rate. Uh I know um I guess probably over a year ago we approved an increase in that storm. Now, how does this relate?
Is this a an additional increase or because I see the 25% storm water rate adjustment? So, can you educate me on that? Yes. So, last year's uh rate approval included a planned future rate increases
as well. So, it was not only the rate increase from last year, but it was a planned 25% for this year. Um I think what's the ne 20 and then five. Okay. 20 for next fiscal year 27. Okay. So then next year we'll
have fiscal year 27 we'll have a 20% increase and then a 5%. So that was all wrapped into the approval. Yeah. From last year. But that was not my understanding. I thought that we approved the rate for the upcoming year and there would be
additional discussion about the future years. Am I am I missing that? Because I thought we had some discussion and I thought the rate that we approved was for we approved that first year and there was going to be some additional
discussion about the rate moving forward. I'll turn that over to Corey. Good morning, mayor and commissioners. Um, yeah, the rate that we um took last year was a in was basically a five-year
rate. So, the vote that you did was on a five-year rate because it has to go to you have to approve the entirety of that rate adjustment as it's rolled out over the five-year period. That's by state statute. Anytime you do a storm water utility, that's the way we rolled that
out. So if you had to do increases, they were in segmental sections, if you will. So you voted for the total increase based over a five-year plan. So it was it would roll out in 35, 25, 20, right? Yeah. 25 and five. So it kind of rolled out. You voted on the whole
increase, but we rolled it out kind of gradually over that fivey year as to not just lump one year's increase in that right on that. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And that's all I have, man. Thank you, Mr. Stewart.
Thank you. Uh Michelle, thank you for your work and thank you for uh your team's work. I appreciate it. It's a It is a yman's task. Uh I've taken a lot of notes here. I'm not going to go through all the details with you except that um philosophically
when we begin to discuss this with our constituents, taxpayers, they they want to know more specifics. uh the ideas of what parks are impacted uh what roads are impacted and those kind of things and I'll share some of those details with you as we get a chance to meet
because that becomes the single I mean we we've seen that in every time we've talked about taxes that people really aren't opposed to know paying taxes they know how it's going to affect them um and they really get concerned when they we kind of get lumped in all
together and so I think that's important I also think it's important I think if I saw that the information that property tax figures you gave us is a combination of both residential and commercial combined if I'm not mistaken. So yes sir um a lot of our um uh constituents
they I don't touch I don't talk much to the the commercials that pay for it but I do talk to the residentials. I think that number is down from the 34% 36% down to like 32 or 33 in residential. And uh maybe we can kind of look at some
type of saying, you know, if you can look at what's the average residential um uh property and then therefore what his taxes are compared to that. I think that's going to give a little bit better sway to the people that we talk to. Um,
outside of that, I've got some very specific questions. I'm not going to, but I appreciate the work you guys do. Appreciate holding the line in terms of taxes. Uh, and I'm grateful, mayor, that we made that adjustment that 10 or 12 years ago because it has kept us uh with
a strong reserve. Uh, as most of y'all know, I serve on the finance committee. and I get a chance to work on some of these bond issues um with the mayor and with Michelle and so grateful about how you are um uh continuing to look out the about the fiscal responsibility that you
have and and and your responsibility to the citizens and I appreciate that a great deal. So, thank you very much. Thank you, Commissioner Rose. Uh thank you and all the departments for your hard work. I have a couple of um con things I'd like to share. Um I would
like to see there are a lot of increased positions in OFD and OPD. I like to see a diversity plan as our population is changing increasing all um race ethnicities as well as gender. I want to see the plan I want to see the current
numbers for where we are with men, women in both forces as well as uh the diversity ethnicities as well as the plan to increase as our population changes. Um you mentioned increase in offduty. It are we is that specifically for city
related events? Um it's some of it is the uh homeless detail in the downtown. Um so that's roughly about um 500,000 of that increase 800 800,000 of the increase. Um
but otherwise uh OPD typically has a lot of offduty and that's funded from third parties. But that piece of it would be um the city related. Okay. And then the last piece, I'd like to see grants that we have and are currently applying for with some of
these special operations. Um there is a lot of um project overdose and a lot of initiations coming from the White House and uh Tallahassee as it relates to reducing um overdoses in certain drug crimes. So, I'd like to see uh grants that we're applying for as a city and
that we've received um to deal with some of these special operations and ensuring that if we have to advocate on on the state and federal level for more funds for some of these details and operations for drug uh for drug operations, that would be great. Thank you,
Commissioner Ortiz. Thank you. You guys keep outdoing yourself every year. This is a great presentation. I gotta say, very specific, very detailed. I mean, it's really hard not to find the answers to any questions we may have. Although I my
questions are more in terms of uh just to have a little bit of a little bit more knowledge when I'm explaining to the community back there. So, let's go back to what Commissioner um Burns was talking about with the police department. and and chief, I think I
heard you saying we have 70 vacancies and to to which we're going to go ahead and add 20 police officer. We still have like we're still down by 50 then about 50 vacancies. So So what's our manpower? What's the what are we assigned? What are we
supposed to have? Just to have an idea. So, we're supposed to be at 1,023. Okay. Okay. And that's the one. All right. And um this is going to these 20 police officers are going to cost us
approximately and I'm including outfitting and vehicles. It's the whole package, the whole office, running office and whatnot. You're asking me how much it's going to cost for each ultimately how much it's going to cost us
if you have it. I mean, it's it's not I'm just Can we get it to you? I just don't know the the breakdown right now. How much it would cost for me to be able to tell people how much it's costing us when we're talking about property taxes as Commissioner Cru was talking about because Oh, two and a half million total.
Okay. It's just so when we're explaining why property taxes are so important, you know, to to add this as an example to that. Uh so I appreciate it. Um, so because of this because 20 this other 20 20 police officers, do we expect the
overtime to come down a little bit or still going to be? It'll definitely be coming down. These are officers for a new area of the city that's been annexed. So these officers will take care of the cost for service out there. Right now the officers being the areas is being taken care of from the uh from the uh east patrol officers
and now we're going to go and start de make up the south patrol division which is out towards Narusi you know tradeport that area and that will also push out towards Sunbridge and that's where the captain's going to go. So the big goal here is to keep response time down for our constituents because the big thing
would be if those officers have to cover all the construction and all the areas of new new areas of Sunbridge, they're going to get pulled off of Simon and pulled out of Narusi to go way out there and come all the way back. Your response time would skyrocket. So we're going to have officers out there full-time. Um and there'll be probably a little bit of
of off of uh overtime to cover some of that because we didn't get the complete number of officers needed to cover that area 24 hours a day. So we'll cover most of it, but we have to cover other times with it. But right now it's been all overtime. So all that overtime is going to go down. If you remember after the Halloween shooting, we spiked a lot of
officers down in that area. So there was a lot of overtime in that area. So we had a lot of spikes in different events that happened. I mean, we're hoping we don't have those kind of spikes that this year that we have to push officers to an area to make sure things are covered. So there were a lot of spikes this year, but every year we've been averaging anywhere from 1 to three million in overtime just based on what's
going on in the community and what we have to cover. Chief, since I have you here, I'm going to take advantage and and congratulate you for the management of the police officers in the city and also for what you're doing in the communities, advising people what we're doing as in in law enforcement because the meeting we have with the community
the other night was really successful. So, I want to appreciate I appreciate what you're doing and our community does too. So, thank you for that. My next question has to do with bonds. Um, thank you, Chief. I appreciate it. Chief, you don't want to do the bonds.
page 19. Um, Michelle, you were talking about slide number 37, future covenant bonds, and it got my attention, parks there, because I have something planning with Aelia Park. Um, and I want to make sure
that those bonds include our new uh area there at Aelia. Okay, that's basically that. I wanted to check on that. And let me see my last question. Page 22, slide 43 with the CRA. I keep asking how come
when the property values are going up all over the place. How is it that downtown keeps the property value are going down? Well, I mean, really good question, Commissioner Ortiz. I can't figure it out either. Yeah, we dug into that last year and it
was the multifamily housing. um which kind of makes you scratch your head because you know they've um they're they're full. Um you're not seeing the rentals go down, but it was really driven by the increases in operating expenses, the increases in insurance. Um
so that's what the appraisers's office had told us was the reason. We haven't uh talked to them this year, so not quite sure about the 1% other than I'm assuming it's probably the same type of issue um that's still out there. But we were encouraged that at least it wasn't
uh another 5% decrease um this year. You know what? Maybe the legislature should come up with a law where people that go to Tallahassee should have at least five years of experience of in local government so they can so they can really uh legislate based on our needs
down here, right? Amen. Um and and as you said, Mayor, the the real problem here is insurance. It's not so much a property taxes is insurance, which is killing everybody. Guys, you guys, every every year you excel yourself. I mean, and so thank you for
this tremendous job. Very easy to read, very easy to explain. So that's what we need. I we really appreciate that. God bless you. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Michelle. Thank you. Want to emphasize just a couple points. Um we have, you mentioned it, but you didn't say specifically, we have
one of the highest bond ratings of any city in the state of Florida. We have some of the highest reserves of any city in the state of Florida. We're the only city that I know of that has fully funded our oped requirement in the state of Florida. We've maintained our millage rate once again at the same and I
mentioned that we've only raised it once in the last 20 years and that was in response to having lower lord the year before. So we're one of the f most fiscally sound cities in the state of Florida and I'm very proud of that. I'm proud of our staff and the work that you've done. Also proud of this
commission for holding the rate and I'll mention one last thing on the property taxes. Um during COVID uh cities around the country were having great difficulty. Many of them were at a deficit because they relied heavily on
sales tax revenues which are uh more likely to be in flux than property tax values are. So one of the reasons that cities in the state of Florida including Orlando were able to weather the COVID storm was because of our reliance on property taxes rather than sales taxes.
And I think that's an important thing to point out to the public as well as we move forward. So, we got a couple more months of budget. You guys aren't quite done yet, but let's give our budget staff and all the departments. Okay. And as to the workshop, we will
stand adjourned and we will convene our agenda review meeting. Madame Clerk, do we have uh requests to speak on the consent agenda? Yes, Mayor. We have four speakers.
I will let you call the names. The first speaker is Joshua Hernandez appearing on Zoom. Please state your name and address for the record. Mr. Hernandez, you are muted. Anything we can do about that, Miss Middle Clerk?
Mr. Hernandez, if you can please unmute your device. Let's move on and we'll come back to him if he can figure that out. The next speaker is Zachary Blair who does not appear on Zoom followed by Lana Gellzer
in person. Miss Gellzer, you can come up. He's not on Zoom. Lana Lana Gellza 815 Hill Street Orlando zip
32805. Um I'm just looking at the budget and I'm very concerned about certain things being on the consent agenda for somebody who now reside permanently in the Paramore community. We have the UCF
Valencia downtown campus. We have the uh second arena and even real the soccer stadium and even the um camping world stadium. But what I want everybody to understand as a property taxpayer,
I'm paying property taxes and it's not it's not easy. I'm paying over five grand a year in property taxes. And yet I see the dollars that I am paying paving the roads at the UCF
downtown campus. They got better lighting. They got sidewalks. They got everything. But I'm the one paying for it. It took you 40 years to pave my road. 40 years. This is ridiculous.
When will it stop with the people who are paying the taxes? When will we receive what we've been paying for a long time? I'm not saying everybody else shouldn't get anything. I'm just saying when I'm gonna get mine. I don't have no sidewalks.
I don't have a lot of things on the street that I reside on. And the reason why I'm here today is because on the consider you going to get six more uh increase of six mill uh 6%, but where's that 6% increase going to
go? and in what district is it going to go to and what community is going to benefit from that? Because see, I'm t I'm being taxed, but I'm seeing expense somewhere else. And then another thing I was very concerned about, and I hope the gentleman can make
it upstairs, is you're going to buy the Pulse uh land adjacent to the memorial for a million dollars. It's overpriced. It's overpriced. Once again, bad management, bad
spending. You come up here and you say it, you do what you want to do no matter what, but for some apparent reason, you fail to understand there's an audit trail when it comes to mismanagement of funds. And that's why I keep coming. Enough people
will see what you have done over the years with the mismanagement to cover up for your friends. And it's not right. pave my roads and don't take 40 years. Give me sidewalks. Paris been done since 71. All I'm saying
is why we can't get what everybody else get when we paying our property taxes. Thank you. Up next is Matt Zacharino. Okay, going back to Joshua. If you can please unmute your device. Okay. Commissioners, who's up today?
Commissioner Sheen, I think. I met with staff. I have no concerns. Mayor, thank you. Commissioner Rose. Commissioner Burns. Uh, I've been briefed. I'm good. Mayor, thank you. Commissioner Gray, I'm fine, sir. Commissioner Ortiz, I'm good, sir. Mr. Stewart,
now that I've got a few minutes, I'd like to talk a little bit. No, I'm okay except I have to abstain on the ordinance 13B and I'll file paperwork with the clerk. Okay, we'll stand a journ at 2:00. Heat.
Heat. Part: 2
Hey, hey, hey. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music]
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Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Music] Good afternoon and welcome to the July
14th, 2025 regularly scheduled meeting of the Orlando City Council. We're going to get begin today's proceedings with the invocation and the pledge of allegiance led today by Commissioner Patty Sheen. Thank you, Mayor Dyer. And today I'd like to read a poem by Amanda Gorman.
This sacred scene we gather at this hollowed place because we believe in the American dream. We face a race that tests if this country we cherish shall perish from the earth and if our earth shall p perish from this country. It falls to us to ensure that we do not
fall for a people that cannot stand together, cannot stand at all. We are one family regardless of religion, class, or color. For what defines a patriot is not just our love of liberty, but our love for one another. This is loud in our country's call. Because
while we all love freedom, it is love that frees us all. Empathy emancipates, making us greater than hate or vanity. That is the American promise. Powerful and pure. Divided we cannot endure, but united we can endeavor to humanize our
democracy and endear our democracy to humanity. And make no mistake, cohering is the hardest task ever wrote. But tomorrow is not written by our odds odds of hardship, but by the audacity of our hope, by the vitality of our vote. Only
now approaching this rare air are we perhaps the American dream is no dream at all, but instead a dare to dream together. Like a million roots tethered, branching up humbly, making one tree. This is our country. From many one, from battles won, our freedom sung, our
kingdom come has just begun. We redeemed the sacred scene, ready for our journey. From it together, we must birth this early republic and achieve an unearly summit. Let us not just believe in the American dream. Let us be worthy of it.
This sacred scene by Amanda Gorman. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Okay, let's call the meeting to order. Madam clerk, would you call the role and make a determination of a quorum, please? Commissioner Gray here. Commissioner Ortiz here. Commissioner Stewart here. Commissioner Sheen here. Interim Commissioner Rose. Commissioner Burns here. Mayor Dyer here.
Mayor, you have a quorum with all members present. Thank you, Madam Clerk. First item, business is consideration of minutes from the agenda review and city council meeting of June the 23rd, 2025. Motion by Commissioner Stewart, second by Commissioner Rose. All in favor indicate
so by saying I. I. Those opposed. And so the m motion carries. Okay. Right into the mayor's update. This is the final meeting not of the year before we hit a really big milestone. the city of Orlando turned
150 years old on July 31st. Then those of you entered the building through the rotunda would be which would be just about everybody. There is a great photo exhibition down in the Motunda Gallery that bridges our past and present. There
are photographs of things from 40, 50, and 60 years ago and what they look like today down there. It's pretty cool. So I would encourage you to stop through and take a look at that on the way out. On July 31st, each commissioner has organized service activities and
volunteer opportunities in their d districts to celebrate the birthday by showcasing our compassion. Um the Orlando collected exhibit is at the Orlando Regional History Center. opened in April and will be um there through
the end of the year, but on the 31st there is free admission and that exhibit showcases 150 unique items that were donated by local individuals and organizations which are a window into Orlando's rich history. Um there's also
free admission to Lou Gardens and Manello that day. So visit orlando.gov150 to register for those events. Earlier today, we had a couple workshops. One was a legislative update and the other was a budget workshop presentation. Um,
and as a result of uh great work by our dedicated city staff and strong financial planning, I'm proud to announce that we will be providing our municipal services again without raising the mill rate for the 12th consecutive year in a row. Um, and I think we're
also probably the uh sit as uh one of the best cities in the entire state of Florida in terms of financial stability. Uh moving on to items of note from the agenda. The partners for places grant
helps us expand a program which will provide items like solar panels with battery backup, high pump water heaters, heat pump water heaters, energy saving kits, and help residents lower their electric bills. and keeping up with
public safety, which was also in our budget. Um, today we are looking to approve funding to construct fire station number 18, which will be out on the Butcher property in Lake Nona. And then finally on today's agenda, um, are
two really important items that allow us to continue to advance the progress on a permanent morale at the P site. Um, which is important to the families of the 49, the survivors, and our entire community. First is the is the purchase
of the property that is adjacent to the PTZ site and second is the ranking of a design build firm um in this case being Gomez Construction Company which was the highest ranked firm to do the design build and the conceptual design will be
developed that was developed by the Pulse Memorial Advisory Committee will be taken by Gomez and transform that concept into detailed design. then they'll be responsible for constructing the memorial which we anticipate to complete by the end of 2027.
Actually, I'm hoping for the summer of 2027. Um, but these two steps are significant as we move toward the construction of that permanent memorial. Of course, that was one of the darkest days in the history of our community, but as always, Orlando has responded
with love and compassion and unity. And today we take two more steps in recognizing what happened that day. Also want to recognize and thank Craig Matier with RS RMS Investments. Um you'll recall commissioners that when one pulse
was dissolving, we prioritized the purchase of the actual pulse property from the Palmas. We did that to move forward and we knew it was a small parcel and that there would probably be challenges if we didn't have the property that was adjacent to that which
one pulse had in fact purchased and was trying to sell at the time. We asked Craig to step in and purchase that and hold that property for us. He did so and he's selling it to us. We'll act on that today for the exact same price that he bought it from one pulse. And then finally, I would like to acknowledge and
thank again Mayor Demings and the Orange County Board of Commissioners for their $5 million commitment towards a permanent memorial. Um, with that, we will move on to the consent agenda. The consent agenda is a number of items that are acted upon through a single vote of council. We give each of our
commissioners an opportunity to comment on the consent agenda as well as update you on important happenings in our district. We rotate the order that we do that. And today, Commissioner Sheen is first up. Thank you, Mayor Dyer, and thank you, commissioners. Today, the Orlando City
Council will vote to avoid the design build contract and to purchase property adjacent to the pulse site. I want to thank Mayor Dyer and the Orlando City Council for their support of this endeavor. Please indulge me to go over a brief factual history of what occurred in the aftermath of the massacre. Over
$32 million was raised by the city of Orlando and Equality Florida in the immediate aftermath. All of this money, the one Orlando fund, was distributed to the victims and their families. A committee was formed and awarded $350,000 to families of those murdered, between
$300 to $20,000 to those who were injured, depending upon the severity of their injuries, and $20,000 to anyone in the club during the shooting. Congressman Sodto, Congresswoman Demings, and Murphy worked with the federal government to make this money income tax-free.
The hospitals forgave most of the bills for those impacted. We dispersed all of the money in a transparent way. The city of Orlando offered to purchase the Pulse property for a memorial in the immediate aftermath. The owners refused to sell at the last minute. It was even on the city
council consent agenda. The One Pulse Foundation was formed and run by Barbara Pul. The organization raised millions of dollars but failed to build anything. Even the interim memorial was donated. One pulse foundation spent all of the money and was in debt. So they had to
sell the adjacent property quickly to pay off those debts. A local businessman, Mr. Matier, offered to buy and hold the property until we could go through a lengthy municipal purchase pro process. For that, I am grateful. Now we
find ourselves here today, nine years later. While what one pulse did to this community was horrible, it can't keep us from building a permanent memorial on the site. It is the only appropriate use for the site. The only appropriate use. I want to thank all of the city staff
for both their help in the aftermath of the tragedy. Leaving their desk to help with funeral expenses, benefits, immigration, grief, counseling, referrals to numerous needs too numerous to list. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I want to thank the families who have worked with us in a constructive
way in the way they showed compassion to each other. I want to thank Heather Fagan who has weathered unfair criticism and calls for her resignation. She has done nothing but help from day one. It is easy to criticize when you are not in the arena helping and lack understanding
of those who are helping. We have become we have become far too accepting of treating others with cruelty and derision. It is the opposite of what Orlando showed the world and how we inspired others to help those who were impacted. There were hundreds involved
in this noble cause. From the original donors to the committee that met to provide guidance on the permanent memorial, everyone played a part in helping Orlando heal. And for those who just want to tear it all down, I say we will not let hatred win. Love wins. We
are Orlando United. We are Orlando strong. Orlando unidos. Orlando Fuerte. Let's get this done. Thank you, Mayor Dyer. Commissioner Rose. Uh, good afternoon everyone. Um, I want to thank recreation and legal staff for
getting uh diligently working on anou that was able to connect with the Florida Department of Health so that we can provide dental services at the district 5 neighborhood centers. This is part of my continued health is wealth efforts. Uh, we started off at Orange Center Elementary. So, after we're done
with the centers this summer, we will then head back to more elementary schools in the district. Um, it has been while we're celebrating 150 years as a city, the parks and recreation department is celebrating a hundred years and I've had a great time at the center spending time with the kids,
giving cake, but also learning more about some of the kids uh needs that go to our center. So, I want to thank Lisa for um answering my request and accepting the request. Northwest Center is a newly renovated pool and I've requested that all of the kids who are at the neighborhood center and attend
for after school program and summer program receive swimming lessons. Safety is a top priority here. Um we I am also I also want to thank the children's safety village. U Brent is also working to uh figure out how we can get some of the elementary school kids during the
school year uh safety lessons, swim lessons as well. Um NCAA 26 came out last week. It was built right here in district 5 in the Paramore community at EA Sports. I want to thank EA Ulissiz and Josel for allowing our teenagers to
come over and play the game before it was released and they're also able to take the game with them back to the center to play. I want to thank United Against Poverty for partnering with me to provide free groceries and resource resources for the residents of this community at the Jackson Center and the
Ivy Lane Center both in District 5. I also want to thank uh Lisa and the recreation team again um for making a swift adjustment to allow for uh United Against Poverty to be on site. I also want to thank Andlay for her leadership
at United Against Poverty. Uh interestingly, a memory popped up. Two years ago, we sat at on a panel with Orlando Business Journal. We were talking about food deserts and now being able to partner to provide the residents free groceries is rewarding. Our next
stop will be this Wednesday at 4 pm at the Ivy Lane Center. And again, it's free. You just have to register. I want to thank Mission Orlando Church. They we hosted we co-hosted something called Christmas in July this past Saturday at the Northwest Center. It was a free back to school and community event where we
were able to provide um haircuts, bounce houses. There's all kinds of fun. Uh we are planning something special for Christmas um at the Northwest Center. So stay tuned for more details. As you all know, we are heading into the back to school season. I believe in
meeting people exactly where they are. We have neighborhood centers throughout the district. And so I will be hosting back to school events at each of our districts um neighborhood centers. So check it um follow on social media. I will list them out right now, but you can um go on social media to find
exactly what dates. This Saturday I will be at Mount Olive Church. Next Saturday, I will be in the Palms on Mercy Drive. August 2nd, we will be at Ivy Lane Northwest in the Jackson Center. August 3rd, Men's Closet. And then August 9th
at the Callahan Center. This Saturday at Camping World, there's also going to be Feed Palooa um which is a partnership with One Heart as well as Advent Health. Um Corey, I want to thank the public works team for their hard work in all of the divisions. Um this Saturday I was
driving saw some trucks out on Ivy Lane and I uh my aid was with me and I was like wait we got to stop what's going on because you know we get the phone calls if there's something going on. Come to find out we were just doing routine um servicing and so not only for staff's commitment to Saturday but also being
able to explain to me like I just walked up some of them knew exactly who I was but they were like this is exactly what we were doing. I was late for an event so I couldn't put gloves on and get to work. But I just want to thank public works commitment to this entire um city. Um the f the response time um from picking up trash to filling potholes. I
want to encourage anyone listening, anyone in the audience. We have a way that you can go online and report any issues. I want everyone to live in a see something, say something mindset. So if you see a pothole, if you see a broken sidewalk, don't assume that we know because we cannot be in every square uh
centimeter of this of this city. But report it. Call our offices, email us. um to let us know so that we can make the proper adjustments and fix whatever needs to be done. Um tomorrow, Orange County will vote on the
transition from their MWBE program to a small business enterprise. I'm actually really disappointed that um we haven't received the draft transitions from our current consultants to see where we're going. Um, for years there has been a struggle with reciprocity where folks
are certified at one agency but not at the other. And so I would like for us to make sure that that is part of the transition that um, if a person if a business's small business enterprise is certified at the county um, they could be used at the city and vice versa. If they're certified at the city, we could use at the county and then expand to all
the other government entities. For those that don't understand, it's really um, there's a lot of we make sure there's a lot of checks and balances to become certified to be a small business contractor. current. Previously, it was u minority women business enterprise, but we've had to suspend the program and transition. And as we're transitioning,
want to make sure that there's reciprocity so that businesses can work in all of our government entities. I want to thank Chief Smith for continually to host um community meetings with OPD um to allow the residents to learn about things that are changing in the department, share their concerns, and ways that we can work
collaboratively to improve community policing. I want to encourage everyone to follow District 5 page on Instagram and Facebook for the latest events and activities that are happening in and around the district. On to the agenda. I would like for staff and legal, which is
most likely HR to figure out how do we handle employee contracts. As you can see from the agenda, we have dozens of employee contracts. I do believe we need to figure out how to handle that internally so that they do not have to come to council for approval. Um the money is already budgeted for these positions. Um, I worked in the peritting
office and one of my my duties when I was in the peritting office was handling employee contracts. And when we need to quickly fill a position, we have to wait for the next council meeting. So, I'd like for uh legal and HR to work on how do we um do employee contracts internally. Again, the positions are all budgeted for. It slows down the process
for some of our muchneeded positions. I'm grateful to see the KIA improvements that are underway and the contractors that we will vote on today. I'm also happy to see us take the steps forward in bringing Art Squared into real life. For those that don't know, that's the pop pop-up park at Robinson and Orange
Avenue. Again, thank you, mayor, and commissioners. Thank you, Commissioner Burns. Uh thank you, mayor. Good afternoon, uh fellow commissioners and all of our guests. Um, on June 26, I had the pleasure of meeting with the Secretary
of Tourism for Rio de Janeiro to discuss mutually beneficial uh uh tourism partnerships. So, we we discussed a lot of uh exciting uh potential. So, we're hoping that some of that will come to fluition uh soon. Also on June 27th had
the pleasure of uh attending the Orlando Sigma's good getting getting in good trouble awards uh and Stanley T. Mueller's uh scholarship lunchon where they gave out several scholarships and identified and recognized several of our uh community members for the great work
that they do in our community. Also uh in Mayor Direstead I had the pleasure of uh honoring Dr. Eugene Jones with a resolution for his eight years on the DDBC board. Uh he was very committed and served diligently. So we thank Dr. Jones
for his time and his service to the city. Also on uh July 9th um Orlando to 150 art exhibit. I was glad to see uh Grand Avenue, the old picture of the Grand Avenue Elementary, now the Grand Avenue Neighborhood Center, as well as
Washington Shore Savings and Loans Bank. Uh which was the bank that I got my first uh bank account at when you used to they used to write your balance and then stamp it on there. Uh and so it was it was great to see that old photo and now the Axiom uh bank. So, all the uh
photographers that uh took those pictures did a a great job. Uh just a few upcoming events. On Wednesday, July 16th, we're having a senior safety presentation uh discussing fraud uh fraud prevention and other safety issues
that our our seniors um our seniors encounter. That will be at the Smithsonian at 6 p.m. Wednesday, July 23rd, I will be hosting my uh satellite office hours. This is a time for residents to meet with me outside of the city of Orlando uh in a
more convenient uh setting. Those hours are from 10:00 a.m. to 300 p.m. Uh and as I'm speaking, one of my great um neighborhood association um presidents just walked in, Miss Shirley Heath. So, I think she was uh waiting for that introduction. Good afternoon, Miss
Heath. Um, also on Sunday, um, July 26, uh, Saturday, July 26, we'll have our first back to school bash at Grand Avenue Neighborhood Center. Uh, we'll start at 10 a.m. while supplies last. Also, the following day, July
27th, we'll have our second back to school bash at the Smith Center at 1:00. Again, while supplies last. Uh Wednesday, July 30th, we'll have our second senior safety presentation at the Elclaudia Allen Center. Uh and then on
Thursday, July 31st, as Mayor D mentioned in, uh recognition and celebration of the 150th anniversary, uh District 6, our volunteer event will be at Lake Fran. will be doing a Lake Fran cleanup at Eagles Nest at 900 a.m. Uh,
also my uh the fifth annual for the children's celebrity golf tournament at Shingle Creek Golf Club uh will be happening on August the 22nd, shotgun at 8:30. Uh and then we will have an inaugural uh golf clinic at 10:30. So
please if you're interested in uh supporting being a sponsor or volunteering please reach out uh to my office. Then on the agenda mayor I just have one thing I'd just like to uh on 3A1 just like to say thank you to all the citizens who have agreed to serve on
the various citizens advisory uh boards because we cannot run our great city without uh without your help on these volunteer boards. And that's all I have. Mayor, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Gray, we're on a roll. Here we go. I got a couple quick announcements and then some
agenda items. On June 26, I want to say thanks to Orange County, uh, we did Orange County business journey, uh, which was an outreach to the Hispanic business community to try to get those folks more engaged in in opportunities here in Central Florida. So, so thanks
for that. And also, uh, to echo what was said earlier, uh, the U exhibit we did last week for the 150th anniversary. Well done. So, congrats to Flynn Dobs and her team. Uh, it's great. I wasn't sure there was anything in district one that was 150, but we found the airport.
So, the airport was great. So, we got some pictures there. But, uh, well done to to Flynn and her team. On the agenda, uh, four or five items. Um, Commissioner Burns just mentioned 381, which is our citizen advisory board. Can't add anything more than what he said, but we
appreciate all those volunteers. 3B1 um with the pulse contract for the design build. Look um as Commissioner Sheen said um it's been a long journey and not everything has gone perfect, but uh we're down the road and we're going to push forward and I certainly support
this one. I I would ask though that as we continue that we start to look at some operating expenses and and the maintenance cost involved in this. uh we want it to be a you know a best-in-class facility and so we need to make sure we've got the funds allocated to
maintain it and and to keep it in good order. So uh I'm sure we'll do that. So that's my challenge to the to the staff. Uh 3B19 u supporting that a new fire station out in Lake Nona in the Press area, South Lake Nona. Uh as we continue to grow uh
we need more public safety. So thanks for um the the allocation for the new fire station. We will start that the end of this summer. Uh 3B24, the art 2 park mentioned earlier. Glad to see that's finally uh coming together. We've had a couple of stops and starts, but thanks
to Sherry and the team on that one. And finally, um 3F1, which is our uh 2025 agreement with the housing urban development HUD. Uh Orin, wherever Orin is, he's here. There he is in the back. Orin, congrats to you and your team. There there's a lot of moving parts
dealing dealing with HUD, especially some of the things going on in Washington these days, but by all accounts, we are in goodstead with HUD. Their funding is important for us and for our housing initiative. So, thanks to you and your team for uh continuing to work with HUD and the way you're
doing it. Thank you very much. That's all I've got, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Ortiz. Uh thank you, sir. In lie of the agenda we have in front of us and I think every other commissioner have mentioned about everything that's been happening in the city. I'm going to go ahead and hold my comments and let Commissioner Stewart.
But before we do that, I want to recognize a sergeant, a Marine sergeant who's here today with us. Could you stand up and give us your name, sir, please? Dr. Jim. Dr. Thank you for being here with us today. All right, that's all I have. Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner
Stewart, what do you want? Is is there a vote coming up I need to know about? I didn't tell me. Oh, thank you Tony. Um, let me share just a couple things. Uh, and um, and some comments at the end. U, first of all, I want to say thanks uh, to all
those who are involved in the cross engagement open house with our transportation people. Thank you very much. Uh, that is a a challenge to get input from our community. We've done had four or five six meetings. Some had to be cancelled, but I had the opportunity to go and spend some time over in the
American Legion. And here are some of the comments about our cross engagement the uh safety pedestrian safety issues. So, thank you very much for the work y'all doing, Chrissy. Um uh I had an opportunity to attend the uh getting in good trouble with Commissioner Rose and
Commissioner Burns. It was great to sit there and see a bunch of my old friends uh and and to recognize uh some great work. I'm trying to remember, Commissioner Burns, what's the name of the fraternity? Uh, Sig and they were they were great uh
and gracious and the room was packed and it was great seeing people who are making impact in our community. I appreciate that. I want to say congratulations to Baldwin Park for their for their Independence Day bash in January 3rd and uh had a great response also in January 4th. mayor. I thought
well I apologize for missing that but I got a chance to see a little bit of that from across the lake and it was great. Um once where's Chief Smith I think he's still here so maybe but anyway I thank Chief Fifth of course I know that Tony did the same thing earlier this morning
but conducting our community meetings um uh with our neighbors and our constituents is important and he we conducted one over in College Park. Our next one's going to be on the we kind of go west, east, west, central, and east. So, the next one will be over towards um
uh the eastern side of the district. And so, I appreciate his work and what he does there. Uh this past Saturday had the opportunity to go support Dueling Dragons uh with their 2025 corn toss for kids. It was a lot of fun to be over there and get a chance to spend time
with Chief Mina, I mean Sheriff Mina, sorry. and uh uh and uh got a chance good lot of good support out of OPD. Uh that program is really changing lives and I'm so grateful for it. Upcoming news, there's a clothing swap uh tomorrow at
Ivanho Park Brewing. There's a sustainable sips over at at Luke Gardens. Next week we have neighborhood watch meeting at College Park Town Home Estates on the 16th. got a chef academy cookoff uh from our um after school
allstars on July 22nd. And the most important of all that is on August 6, we have our District 3 safety splash. So, it's going to be over at the College Park pool and College Park neighborhood center. Please, please, please come out and and and get it. My wife won't let me take all those hamburgers home, but
we're hope to serve about three or 4 hundred people there. So, please come out and enjoy that. Um, mayor, let me say a special thanks to um, Flynn Dobs and all the work that's being done around the art and in the history of Orlando. So, downstairs, if you had a chance to get down there,
it's really been neat. Um, I saw a book years ago about Miami and it had exactly the same thing in Miami. I shared it with Flynn. She took the idea into the next level. I'm so grateful for what she did. Uh, but we got a chance to see that and and unfortunately u most of those
places were around when um Commissioner Gray was just a small child and I appreciate you seeing them firsthand, Commissioner Gray. You're welcome. Um, on the agenda today, I've filed um an abstension on item 12B.
Um, and I'll talk about something else later coming on, but that's um my son-in-law is the president of PY Homes North, which owns Everbe. I'll share that with you. On the agenda, um I want to say a special thanks to all those who got involved in solar panels for the
Rosemont Neighborhood Center. Thank you. That's going to save us a ton of money. I appreciate that. Um on the business assistance, um doc Dr. Drips is here. Where are you, Will? Will you all stand up to submit? Um new business coming in
on North Orange Avenue, Dr. Drips, and we're going to approve them for some little bit of assistance. So, thank you very much for being here today. We appreciate it. Looking forward to the grand opening. Um, uh, Commissioner Sheen, thank you for your comments on Pulse. You're right on point. Um, I hope
that, uh, the combination of the city and the county working together will hope inspire some private donations and keep us in a way that that we really get back to where this is a community event and not not a government paid event. So, I know the mayor is working hard on that and those I think I hope will inspire
people to get involved and engaged in what we're doing. So, thank you very much for that. And we added something at the last minute. Just to let you all know, I want to be public about it. 3K1, we added a $15,000 grant to Ivanho Main Street. They are doing a pocket park over there. It's a matching grant for
their dollar for-doll raising, not including what they're doing on inind. And I'm taking money out of my funds to accomplish that task, but I wanted to make sure that we were transparent with everybody here. So, uh, and with that with mayor, I'll move the consent agenda.
Motion by Commissioner Stewart, second by Commissioner Ortiz. All in favor of the motion indicates so by saying I. I. Those opposed. And so the motion carries. Okay. If you're just here for the consent agenda, this would be a good time for you to sneak out.
You know, while we're doing that, I think I see some Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts that are probably getting a merit badge for attending a public meeting of some sort. You guys want to stand up and let us give you a little love there. [Applause]
What troop are you with? Okay. Okay. 2473 173 173. Where is that? Avalon Park. Avalon Park. Okay. Welcome. We're We're glad you picked this public meeting to
earn your badge. It is a geography meeting. Okay. If there's no objection, we'll recess the city council meeting and convene the CRA meeting. Uh 4A is CRA meeting minutes from May the 19th. Motion by who made the motion?
Commissioner Rose, second by Commissioner Shei. And all in favor indicate so by saying I. I. Those opposed. Motion carries. 4B is CRA meeting minutes from June the 9th, 2025. Second. Motion by Commissioner Sheen, second by Commissioner Rose. All in favor indicate
so by saying I. I. Those opposed. Motion carries. 4 C is advisory board meeting minutes from April 23rd. Motion by Commissioner Stewart, second by Commissioner Rose. All in favor indicates so by saying I. I. Those
opposed. Motion carries. 4 D. David. Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, council members. So 4 D, this is an amendment uh it's amendment three specifically to our agreement with Simple Solutions Exterior Cleaning LLC, which is doing business as we hang
Christmas lights. though if you get any context of that. This is a piece of the puzzle that helps us transform Lake Eyola into a full winter wonderland every December. Um so excited to potentially partner here with them again. Specifically, they handle our 64 foot tree for us that we get a chance to
light up for that season. They store it, install the lights on it, uh as well as help us wrap trees and other high holiday decor uh really throughout downtown to help with our holiday stroll. Um so with that, the total cost of this contract is $167,240.
and I am happy to address any questions. Mayor, Commissioner Sheen. Yeah, David, I just want to say thanks. And when I came back from Italy 5 years ago, I went to Thomas and I said, "Why do all these little towns in Italy have these beautiful decorations and we have a bunch of people throwing stuff on
bushes and it looks awful and it's very amateur." And you know, you all took that, the CRA, DDB took that to the next level and it is amazing. And I have seen it grow year after year. And what's so great is to see the number of families that are coming downtown, the number of people who cannot afford to go to theme
parks to see these beautiful lights. The kids are having a wonderful time. It is truly a winter wonderland and it's a lovely place. And I just want to thank you and I think and thank the city council for for supporting this every year and the funding. But uh I just want to say that this is money well spent and
it really creates a sense of place and that's what brings people to downtown Orlando. So thank you. Is there a motion? I'll move approval. Second motion by Commissioner Sheen, second by Commissioner Rose. Discussion hearing none. All in favor of the motion, indicate so by saying I. I. Those
opposed. And so the motion carries. 40. Uh so next up, mayor, this is a license agreement with Sentinel Capital North Orange LLC. So both this item and the next item are in reference to Art Squared, uh which several people mentioned earlier today. Uh so this specific agreement is a license
agreement with the property just to the south of that park. We're looking at installing a mural uh that would be 28 feet by 55 feet on that wall that'll provide a great cap uh on the south end of the park. Uh this obviously allows us to do that and sets up the appropriate
uh legal necessities. Happy to address any questions. Motion by Commissioner Rose, second by Commissioner Sheen. Discussion hearing none. All in favor of the motion indicates so by saying I. Those opposed? Motion carries. All right. 4F and 4F. is the management contract for
Art Squared specifically with Alakart Management LLC. Um so uh Alakart has been working with us really to help us figure out how we can program Art Squared in a way that it can uh play a huge role in downtown but also for our community at large. So we're excited to
have the opportunity to part with them as we get ready to launch the park. Uh it is right there on the southwest corner of Robinson and Orange. This specific agreement uh will have them open seven days a week. Uh they'll be open from 7:00 a.m. to 10 p.m. uh Sunday through Thursday and then till 11:00
p.m. on Friday and Saturdays. In addition, uh there's about $34,000 of additional equipment uh for the cafe that the CRA will cover on their behalf. And April with Alikart is here uh with us today as well and I'm happy to address any questions from the council. Second. And I just like to say they both
both are in my district. They're they're they're amazing. It's a great place to go. If you haven't been to Alikart, it's wonderful. So, if you haven't gone, go to the one downtown. So, I'm sure they're going to do a wonderful job managing that facility as well. Motion by Commissioner Rose, second by Commissioner Sheen. And I'll agree with
Commissioner Sheen. I visited both sites, one of which we annexed into the city of Orlando so they could have that site and turn it into a great um Alikart Park. You want to stand up and be recognized? Further discussion hearing none. All in
favor of the motion indicate so by saying I. I. Those opposed. Motion carries. David. Further business come for the CRA. That is all. Mayor. Then without objection, we will adjourn the CRA meeting. We will convene the neighborhood improvement district
meeting for the purpose of meeting minutes. So I think I can handle that myself. 5A is uh Downtown South Neighborhood Improvement District Advisory Board meeting minutes from February the 12th. Motion by Commissioner Sheen.
Second by Commissioner Stewart. Discussion hearing none. All in favor of the motion indicate so by saying I. Those opposed. Motion carries. 5B is meeting minutes from June the 11th. Motion by Commissioner Sheen, second by Commissioner Stewart. All in favor
indicates so by saying I. I. Those opposed. And so the motion carries. All right. If there's no objection, I'm going to adjourn. Good job. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to adjourn the neighborhood improvement district meeting. And here's something
we haven't done in a while. I'm going to convene the OPED board of trustees meeting. And commissioners, we have one item for us today to approve as the board of trustees of the OPED trust fund. As a reminder, city council sits as the board of trustees of the OPE
trust fund, which was established in 2008. These are funds set aside to pay future retirey healthc care benefits. The city is one of the few local governments to fund these obligations. The city's investment consultant has recommended to remove the current small
and midcapization investment manager, Clarkson, and hire Atlantic Capital as the new small mid capitalization investment manager. This recommendation has been reviewed and approved by both the investment committee and the finance committee and is now before us for final
approver. Is there a motion to approve the recommended action? Motion by Commissioner Stewart, second by Commissioner Sheen. All in favor? All discussion. All in favor indicate so by saying I. I. Those opposed. So the motion carries.
I will without objection adjourn the OPED meeting and reconvene the city council meeting which brings us to hearings ordinances on first read. Madame clerk you're up. Ordinance number 2025-22
an ordinance of the city council of city of Orlando, Florida amending and restructuring the city's growth management plan to update the plan's data and analysis vision statement definitions elements and figures providing for legislative findings. providing for conflict severability correction scrimmage error and an
effective date. Motion by Commissioner Sheen, second by Commissioner Rose. I have no request for public input discussion. Hearing none in favor of the motion indicates so by saying I. Those opposed and so the motion carries.
Let's move to hearings. Ordinance is on second reading 12A. Ordinance number 2025-23, an ordinance of the city of Orlando, Florida, amending chapter 65 Orlando City Code to establish procedures for the review and approval of reasonable accommodations for the establishment of
certified recovery residences providing a process for reasonable accommodation requests to the city's land development ordinances, rules, policies, and procedures for per persons with disabilities as provided by the Fair Housing Amendments Act, title two of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and other applicable state and federal
regulations. s providing legislative findings and for severability, codification, correction of scrier's errors, and an effective date. Move to approve. Second. Who made the motion? You did. Rose. All right. Motion by Commissioner Rose, second by um
Commissioner Burns. I have no requests for public input on this either. Um discussion hearing. None. All in favor of the motion indicates so by saying I. Those opposed? Motion carries. Uh 12B, Madame Clerk.
Ordinance number 2025-24, an ordinance of the city council, city of Orlando, Florida, amending and restating the land development regulations of the Vista Park land development, relating to certain land generally located south of Lee Vista Boulevard, west of State Road 417, north
of State Road 528, Beach Line Expressway, and east of Narusi Road, and comprised of approximately 1,561.4 4 acres of land providing for amendment of the city's official zoning maps providing for severability correction of scrimmers error permit disclaimer and an
effective date. Move to approve. Motion by Commissioner Gray, second by Commissioner Ortiz. Commissioner Stewart, I believe you have declared a conflict on this one. Um I don't have any requests for public input on this as well. Uh discussion hearing none. All in
favor of the motion indicates so by saying I. Those opposed and so the motion carries. All right, let's move to ordinances on first read 13A. An ordinance of the city council of the city of Orlando, Florida, amending the land development regulations for the
veranda plan development generally located east of North Summerland Avenue, west of Hill Avenue, north of East Washington Street, and south of East Jefferson Street. and to change the land development use for lot 2, which is comprised of approximately 0.13 acres, providing for amendment of the city's
official zoning maps, providing for serverability, correction of scrier's error, permanent disclaimer, and an effective date. And that's ordinance number 2025-25. Second motion by Commissioner Sheen, second by Commissioner Stewart. I'm going to declare a conflict on this one. My son represents the owner of this
property and I have filed the appropriate paperwork as well. I have no request for public participation. Is there discussion? Hearing none. All in favor of the motion indicate so by saying I. I. Those opposed. And so the motion carries.
Okay. That brings us to appeals. Um item 15A is an appeal by Redspeed Florida LLC on the recommendation for the award to American Traffic Solutions Inc. DBA Vieiraa Mobility for the school zone
speed detection system RFP25-0123. So the procedure for this staff will be given 10 minutes um to explain the selection and set out its recommendation related to the appeal. Um Red Speed who
is the appellant will be given 10 minutes to present its appeal. uh Vieira will be given 10 minutes to respond and then uh council can ask questions whenever it deems appropriate to either staff or either the appellant
or the apple and then we will have discussion a motion and vote. So let's bring staff up. Good afternoon mayor and commissioners. Uh my name is Mitch Davis with the city attorney's office and I'll be presenting
the city staff portion of uh the information and recommendation uh on this appeal. Um the council remember the solicitation is a product of the ordinance that the council adopted last December for enhanced speed enforcement at certain
designated school zones. Uh on December 27th of last year, uh the procurement department um posted uh the solicitation seeking proposals for camera systems uh to monitor 26 approaches at the 21 school zones designated uh in the
ordinance. Um for your reference, the solicitation included several provisions that are specifically relevant to the appeal. Uh one was that uh it stated the city did not want a turnkey solution. The intention was to retain certain functions for the city. uh and partner
with the outside vendor uh to perform uh the overall service. Um the solicitation uh required submissions on proposers financial strength uh and specifically reference the use of done and Bradstreet reports uh as part of that assessment during scoring.
The uh solicitation stated specific requirements that proposers were supposed to be subject to uh for flat fee price submissions, items that were to be included and excluded. Um, and it specifically directed proposers not to submit proposals with alternative pricing structures because these would
not be considered. And then finally, the solicitation stated the formula that would be used for allocating points relating to uh price as included in the submissions. Uh that involved prorating proposals based on the lowest price that was received um
and the price for a particular vendor and allocating points accordingly. Um on March 4th uh the uh committee met for the second time to receive short list presentations from the vendors uh as well as uh the the original intention
uh was to score those presentations at the same time. Uh however in the course of uh that meeting a question arose about Redspeed's corporate structure um it's uh the experience available uh sharing employees between the affiliate in Florida that was presenting the
proposal and other affiliates in other parts of the country um that were part of the proposal. Um and so that led the procurement department uh to recommend delaying scoring uh until those questions could be resolved. The committee considered that unanimously
approved it. Um over the next several days, procurement staff requested additional documents from Redspeed to explain how its affiliated LLC shared staff, technology, and financial resources. Uh Redspeed provided uh documents to answer all of the questions
that were raised. uh and the issue was uh satisfactorily resolved so that Redspeed could receive credit for the experience and and staff financial status and technology that it was claiming. Um on March 20th uh the committee met for a third time uh at
this point to proceed with uh scoring on the presentations. Uh the meeting facilitator determined that a quorum was present and the meeting could proceed. Um, budget division manager Jason Wvich provided the committee with a summary of the reports that they had received from
uh, Dun and Brad Street now that it was available for all proposers after the work with Redspeed. Um, you'll see on the screen here a copy of the summary spreadsheet that was presented. Uh, he noted that the reports uh, don't explain in detail why Dun and Bradstreet scored
what they did. Uh, so they're most useful as a comparative metric from one company to the other or to spot trends in relation to a specific vendor. Um, and then the summary flagged any scores indicating a moderate or higher risk under Dun and Brad Street's framework
uh, which are those cells that are shaded in in a light red color uh, for the several vendors. Um following that presentation, the committee proceeded with scoring with the result that uh Redspeed generally outscored Ver in the experience,
equipment and program support categories uh in those categories. Uh they generally received an equal or higher number of points from a majority of uh committee members uh that were scoring. Uh however on the price category uh
redsp speeded score based on the formula that was published in the RFP was lower than Veras by almost five points. Uh and this was because Ver's proposal included a price of $2,800 per month per approach. Uh whereas
Redspeed had proposed a price of $3,999 per month per approach. uh which was nearly 43% higher and would have resulted in an additional operating cost of over $31,000 per month for the 26 approaches uh or over $143,000
for each approach over the term of the contract. And so mainly as a result of this price disparity, Vera Mobility ended up being ranked first. Redspeed was ranked second by all four voting committee members. Uh on March 24th, procurement issued its notice of
intended action, confirmed the proposer rankings, and stated its intent to enter into a contract with Vera Mobility. Uh Redspeed made timely appeals uh to the chief procurement officer and chief financial officer. Uh both of those upheld the selection committee's ranking
in Vera's selection. Uh the issues that Redspeed has raised in its appeals at the various stages generally focus on three subjects. The first of those being unfair disadvantage uh that favored the incumbent. Um, in response to those issues, I' I'd point out the city generally considered all available
options for uh ways of procuring the services uh including possibly soul source and cooperative procurement. Um, ultimately it decided to go with um uh competitive solicitation um which um gave u redsp speeded the
opportunity to to compete and possibly win the business. Uh so the earlier consideration ultimately didn't favor vermobility in in any meaningful way. Um staff did postpone scoring as discussed. Um but this was to um develop
information about references and financial information that was submitted. Um uh it uh this information was not included in Redspeed's original proposal. Um and had staff moved ahead with scoring based on the information that was just available at the second
meeting um there would have been a considerable amount of Red Speed's experience that could not have been considered and scored on. So ultimately this analysis gave Red Speed the maximum opportunity uh to receive available points. Um it's also staff's position
that Mr. Wvich provided the committee with a balanced assessment of the company's relative financial status. He let the committee members know that um you know these are are credit reports essentially the the company's ability to spend. It's not necessarily a good measure of how well they perform on a
particular contract for the city. Um and so to consider that as one of several possible factors in assessing their financial condition. Um on the second issue, disregard of the city's goals and preferences. Um, Red Speeds asserted that the uh, city did not account for
technological advantages that it gave in its uh, proposal. Uh, the city did do that. Uh, as reflected by the result of scoring in the equipment category where red speed scored higher. Um, so they they received credit and consideration
for these features. Uh, however, none of the proposals completely satisfied all technical preferences and and the scoring reflects that as well. Um, Redspeed also asserts that the price category fails to capture certain aspects of their proposal, but these
were considered in in other parts of the scoring, including program services. Uh, again, Redspeed received points in these because of the advantages in its proposal. Um, but Redspeed was aware of the relative weighting of those categories. Um, and and chose to present
the way that it did. Uh, there was no challenge to that methodology until after the rankings were already made. Um and under a procurement code that's a challenge that's not really permitted to um um uh a challenge isn't permitted to
um procurement criteria in general. But if there is an objection to something in the solicitation, it has to be made within 7 days of publication so that there's a reasonable opportunity to fix it before the process goes too far along. So even if that protest were available here, the issue is being
brought up much too late. Um the third general uh sort of issue is procedural irregularities that uh allegedly undermine the fairness of the process um having to do with the absence of one committee member Corey Keith. Uh the RFP allowed for the committee to proceed
with only four members rather than the full five. Um it was delayed to the third meeting uh because of clarifying Red Speed's proposal and by that point Mr. Keith was um unavailable on on pre-approved leave. So the committee proceeded to scoring in an effort to
keep the procurement on schedule and try to keep him implementation um by the upcoming uh fall semester. Um um based on staff review, Mr. Keith's presence would not have altered the the committee scoring. Uh he had shared his expertise
with the committee on previous occasions. Uh he would have voted substantially in line with the rest of the committee. Um, and so this was not an irregularity, nor would it have affected the outcome if if it had been different. Um, Red Speeds also suggested that uh, Mr. Keith might have
implemented its best value standard rather than the price standard appearing in the RFP. This would have been arbitrary and capriccious. It's not something the committee could have reasonably done. Um and so based on uh all of that um it is
uh staff's recommendation um between the two options available to the council uh that the appeal may be denied or that the council may reject all bids and cancel solicitation. Uh staff recommends that the council deny the appeal uh and award the contract to American Traffic
Solutions Ver Mobility Corporation um in the following new business item. Uh, and I'm happy to answer any questions the council may have. Okay. Thank you. Questions for Mr. Davis at this point? Okay. Representative from Red.
Commissioner Burns has a question. Mitch, can can you come back? Yes, sir. Yeah. So you mentioned that uh Red Speed scored higher in technology and experience. You start to mention the uh
financial difference. Can you go uh repeat that please? Sure. So um there was and I can go back to that slide. Um so the uh financial status of the companies was one of the factors that um the committee was
considering under the general heading of experience where they're looking at I'm sorry I'm I'm speaking of cost because you said that um red speed was about 41% higher. That's that's correct. So they the
proposers were submitting um a a fixed cost uh per installation. Um and under Redspeed's proposal, they were proposing a higher monthly rate for for each installation. Um term being
used is as approach uh to to the traffic signal. um their monthly rate was higher than Veras was um with the result that there was about a fivepoint deficit um from their price proposal compared to Veras. Um and so for each of the scoring
committee members uh they're receiving five fewer points in that category. So now are we are we sure that the proposal that Ver uh state uh presented has no additional financial uh concerns or some financial issues that may come
up later on. So there there are some um elements that could have a cost element um that um vary between the proposers. Um and this was one of the issues that came up in Red Speed's appeal and and was
considered by staff. um things like um if if there were costs from legal actions that took place um and and some other um uh things like serving as an expert witness in um proceedings involving specific violations. Um so
there are aspects like that that could factor into cost at a later date. Um but these were features of the proposals that were considered under other headings uh where one proposer, you know, would would offer a service um at
a a lower cost or no cost that the other wouldn't. Um so it it may it may impact cost and it it would be something that might affect price. Um but the way that the RFP was structured, it was just considered under a different category
rather than than price scoring. if if that answers your question. Right. And and with the technology, um you say they were superior in the technology. Can you kind of uh describe what you know when you say superior in technology, do they have a better
product that's more forwardlooking or are we getting something that may be obsolete? So the what the committee was mainly looking at and and kind of where that issue has centered is um there as I understand it there are two major ways
that uh a speed camera can uh be triggered to um assess whether there's a violation ongoing. It can use LAR uh laser ranging or it can use radar uh with radar being something of an older
technology. LAR being a newer technology. Um and in our RFP uh there was a statement that the city preferred but was not going to require that proposers um offer LAR technology rather
than radar. Um in the course of the presentations um this was something that was discussed by uh the different vendors because Redspeed uh offered a LAR option. Uh Vera's option was radarbased. Um uh but the committee
ultimately determined that because the radar was being supplemented by a secondary feature that improved its its accuracy and performance um that there was not a substantial difference in terms of what the ultimate performance
would be between the two systems being considered. So, um, Redspeed did ultimately, uh, receive more points in, um, equipment because of that, in in part because of that response. Um, but
ultimately it wasn't a significant enough variation in how the systems would perform uh, to to put them over the top. All right. Thank you, Commissioner Gray. Thank you, Mayor. I I prefer to save my
questions. Can I get another bite of the apple after the Okay, I'll I'll hold off. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Then we will hear from Red Speed for 10 minutes. Uh thank you, Mayor uh council. I'm Greg Parks, representing Redspeed. It's a
pleasure to be here. I've elected to go without our presentation as I was counseledled. might be viewed that our attorney put together as a little incendiary and uh that is not our intention. Uh we have great respect for the city staff and our competitors and simply want to
state where we feel we're the best value. Uh Orlando has been on the forefront of photo enforcement protected your citizens and tourists and motorists longer than anyone at the state I believe. And I don't believe that lowest
price is the goal based on my almost 20 years experience in meeting with elected officials uh in Orlando. So we want to stress that our approach is not a legalistic approach but you all as policy makers but you have the right to do if you choose to is to give the best
value in protecting your school children and the visitors that traverse uh through your school zones. It is clearly stated again with all respect for everybody that responded that our technology is superior. Uh we're blessed to serve more school zones
than every other vendor combined in Florida. Some of our uh customers are Hillsboro County, Miami date county and uh about 35 others. So uh it's been a good state for us. We've invested heavily in it and the superior technology
we believe is generating superior results and safety. We've had the good fortune on our red light business to replace the the first ranked vendor a couple times in jurisdictions like Sarasota and Coral Gables and Hillsboro County. And we have noted significant
increase in violations captured uh safety improvement more importantly based on the superior technology in a number of areas. Some of that is laser, some of it's all video. I also wanted to take a moment to stress
one of the uh city's preferred qualifications was a infrared no flash strobe. Uh you've seen the strobes here now for over a decade. Uh I don't know we needed a scientific study for this but Florida State did put out a study
and we've supplied copies to the clerk that the the flashes are dangerous as well as distracting and annoying. And we believe that's why the city made a preference for that along with laser which is generally regarded as superior.
So we have some mild frustration that we provided something superior that we believe was specified and u you know are bad I guess but the the no flash is a serious benefit that we urge you all as policy makers to think of the benefit
that it provides to your citizens. And again the all video which again we've seen that it is going to increase violations captured. I know you don't care about the money, but we are seeing less than a 10% repeat violator rate. So, if you get this a ticket with
superior technology, you're not going to get a second one 90% of the time. So, there's great behavior modification in the school zones and your monitored approaches we think is valuable. And as far as the kind of the the gist
of the day pricing, uh it is frustrating to me and I'm I'm coming to this as a very positive tone. Uh nothing's negative toward anybody that did any of their job working for the city who did the best they could. I know as I've worked with the city on many projects for a long time
that some things that I don't believe price should carry that much weight in it. It's a safety program, but as far as determining the value that is building in that price category on the sheets, which to this point in the day, and I hope you'll reconsider, has swung the
day for our worthy competitor. One of the big benefits to our price proposal was a concept called revenue neutrality. Uh Orlando is the only jurisdiction in the state that I'm aware of that is charging a flat fee, uh paying a flat fee to their vendor. And
again, we're seeing over 90% reduction in violations in our programs at Georgia and Florida. And it is conceivable that the program could do so well, and that's a wonderful thing that you could pay more out to the vendor. Uh so the the
the burden has been shifted to the taxpayers of Orlando from the vendor where our proposal and every other vendors. Uh the vendor bears all of that cost and risk. Uh, one of the things that was unaccounted for that your staff
noted too was uh, relocation cost. There was a category on that. Uh, we noted where there was no cost to ours. Our great competitor noted to be to be determined. So, there's a lot of TBD that I don't think the pricing can be quantified enough to swing the day from
a decidedly second ranking in technology and services. Another thing is that uh termination for convenience. Again, I think it probably the last thing I could ever think of happening that the Orlando City Council would terminate a program
that's successful. But if you were to do that in our contract proposed in your RFP, there's no cost where again it was a TBD to be negotiated uh from our competitor. So the cost is unquantifiable. And from our perspective, we think that
matrix of just filling in a a percentage to get to the scores uh difficult. And then lastly, kind of the elephant in the room. Um I worked with the city of Orlando quite a bit in the in the early 2000s, mid 2000s on the challenges to
red light cameras, to photo enforcement. Orlando was on the forefront of leading that effort. those cases went all the way to the Florida Supreme Court and encouraged sign incur significant legal expenses. Um we have that law firm Weiss retainer
on retainer and it was on our proposal that if there are challenges and I hope there aren't but if there are that the city has no out-of- pocket expense and I spoke with Serotaa prior to having the opportunity to come here today and that could easily be several hundred,000 uh
in legal offenses if it would happen again there's no guarantee. So what our ask of you all today and very appreciative of the opportunity and the consideration. Uh your staff has noted that they believe we have a superior technology
and service offering. We believe our price was misunderstood. Was some of that our fault? Possibly. but asking you not to consider it from a legalistic perspective and what's best for your constituents, for the school children and for the millions of tourists that
traverse through these uh each year in your community. So, as policy makers, you have the opportunity to either ask for a redo, which axiomatically would get a better price from every vendor. Nobody's going
to raise the price on a rebid or we're confident enough that we believe our with all due respect, our solution is superior and consider having both vendors perform services at some of the 20ome schools for a designated period.
Competition benefits everybody. So again, not from a legalistic perspective, but what's best for your constituents. Uh we appreciate the opportunity to address you today. Quest questions.
Okay, thank you. Commission Ortiz, we do have a question. Do I have a question? Mr. Park, um I keep hearing you saying superior technology and I and I think we're going to need a little bit of a understanding
how these technologies work in order to have a better I guess a better way to deciding this uh this Salomon's uh deal here. Yes, thank you for the question uh councilman that um and I I in some way is is parody in your excellent staff who
noted that it was the city's opinion our techn was a preference for laser uh I think axiomatically tease my word of the day I guess that um if the city is stating a preference for it they're not going to state a preference for uh inferior technology uh laser is more
expensive to procure it is newer technology and uh it does have a narrower beam. Radar works absolutely, but laser as specified is a superior solution. And then secondarily, as I mentioned, we use
all video cameras uh to capture the alleged violation uh where our great competitor uses a combination of steel cameras and video. And that's in these places where we've been blessed to replace them, Hillsboro County, Coral Gable, Sarasota, at the same monitored
locations, violations have gone up. And again, not about the money, about improving behavior. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Other questions? Commissioner Gray. Thank you. I'll ask the same question to
the to the applicant, but um I'm still trying to to grab what what's the approximate cost in your opinion of doing a site? We have 26 of them, I believe, we've identified. So, I'll ask you the same question I will ask them. Uh what what in your estimate is is the
kind of average cost for doing one of these? Approximately a h 100,000. Councilman, there are variables. The largest expense in in Florida these days is the permitting and construction. Construction costs are very high in Florida for all vendors. And then there's the equipment on top of that. I
would say slightly under that, but it'd be bumping up against that with the laser, the video cameras, the poles, etc. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
All right. We will hear from Vera Mobility. Hello. Thank you, mayor, commissioners. Um, I thank you for this opportunity to speak to you. Um, I think, um, Commissioner Ortiz, you kind of hit it on the head. We're we're hearing superior a lot. Superior.
You want to introduce yourself? I'm sorry. Wayne Jenkins with Vera Mobility. I think we've heard superior several times, and I I like to dig in on that. When we're talking about laser versus radar, laser is more it's more of a pinpoint mechanism where yes, maybe
it's better for a police officer to be holding the laser to be pinpointing a vehicle and capturing that individual speed. With radar, as referenced previously, it's a wider beam. We're capturing up to six lanes of traffic. And I consider it a net being cast
across the roadway. So we could capture all those vehicles, monitor the speed, monitor their actions on the roadway as they're passing through. Secondly, laser and radar, a big difference is the way that they perform in inclement weather.
And when you I've I've been I've worked for other companies where they use laser and when they hit those particles because we live in Orlando or we're here in the city of Orlando there's rain there's um there's um there's all kinds of different weather conditions and rain
primarily that we come across and those laser beams when they hit that inclement weather when they hit a raindrop it can falsely identify a violation and you can have an instance we were talking about having a strobe it could cause the strobe to constantly go off and almost
look like a a disco ball. Whereas, if you have a radar, the radar is not impacted by the weather. If it's raining, it's still capturing those violations. It's still monitoring those roadways and ensuring that those violations are being captured to ensure that your roadways are safer. If we
think about it, when when are children most in or at the biggest risk or when are drivers at the biggest risk of losing control of their vehicle or something occurring? When there's rain on the road or when there's inclement weather or there's um or there's mist or
whatever it may be that's making it hard to drive or decipher what's occurring on the roadway. In those instances, that's when you most need a radar camera system to be out there and capture those violations. I I I've I've heard yes we've come in and we've taken this
project or I know some projects that haven't been taken from us and these are the projects that I consider city of Orlando to be comparable to because you're influential and you're a large city the New Yorks the Chicago speed programs the Washington DC program our nation's capital Baltimore city if you
look at all the large jurisdictions that have speed enforcement they're leveraging our camera system and are using a radar solution radar based capturing those violations. To also add another level of complexity to further debunk the superiority um conversations
that are being had, we have what's called secondary speed validation. And secondary speed validation for every violation that occurs, it is doing a secondary analysis. It's taking one image and then showing the displacement between the first image and the second image and using time over distance. that
it's looking at that violation and saying, could the vehicle have gone from point A to point B at the speed that our radar is saying it traveled and then it does an analysis. If it falls within the parameters, yes, it could have occurred, then we approve that violation. If it
did not, we're throwing it out. So again, that's a secondary step that ensures that our radar camera system is functioning the way it's intended to work. And then if we're And then I also heard about um the strobe. We have we have three different options and we've
gone to the LED strobe because it it lowers the intensity of the um of the strobe but also captures the violation that you're looking to capture. If if if there was a um desire to go infrared, we have that capability as well. The reason we shy away from infrared and a lot of
our clients do because I've had clients ask about it, but when you look at infrared, it distorts the colors that are caught in the images. So a a purple vehicle may look a little red or whatever the variance may be. So there are factors that are impacted by infrared. And why is that important?
Because when we have a violation that we send to a police officer or is reviewed and then it goes out to a citizen, we want to ensure that there's no confusion or no guesswork on their end. I want them to open up the violation and say, "Hey, I was I I did something I shouldn't have done. I'm going to learn
from this because I've me speeding puts others at risk and yes, I made that mistake and I'm going to pay my violation and I'm going to move on. I do not want them to say, "Hey, that doesn't look like me. Maybe I should protest or appeal this violation." And and to that
point, appeals, we haven't touched on this a lot, but when we mail something out, the citizens have the ability to log in and see a 10 to 12 second video clip of what transpired. We're not going to provide a short segment. We want them to see exactly what transpired. And then
in in addition to the photo enforcement and being able to capture those violations, they're going to see the blinking strobes in the video. So it's there's no guesswork as to where were the strobes on where was it school time or should the sorry the speed have been
different. No, you see the strobes. You know a violation occurred. You know that we were enforcing the proper speed at the proper time and there's no guesswork. We do not want a police officer or anyone representing a pro a project showing up and having to hope
that maybe they don't show up to for the appeal or hoping that they're they don't they don't encounter something that could throw off whether a violation truly occurred there. You will whoever represents the city will walk in knowing that a violation occurred. They have our
violation package that shows yes these are all the parameters, video, images, everything. and a citizen had the opportunity to look at them too and then they can move forward and uphold the violation. So when I'm looking at this, I just want to say thank you for the opportunity. There there were other
vendors that were um that bid on this opportunity, but none of them were industry leaders. Industry leader is thrown around. Industry leader is the company that has the most speed camera systems on the roadway in the country. That is Vera Mobility. industry leader is the company that is managing every
large city and hopefully based on the selection committee's decision. We're doing the same for here city of Orlando after today and we are we are a company that takes pride in what we do and we look forward to the opportunity to team with you. So thank you for this time and
I appreciate it. Questions commissioner. Yes sir. Thank you for coming. I'd ask you the same question. Do you agree with the cost per zone plus or minus 100,000? I I think 100,000 is high based on the work that would be done to be honest
with you, but I'm I'm honest. Right. You you're going it's going to fluctuate. The pro the reason being, right? You don't know where where the is it going to be concrete where we're going to be putting the poles? Will it be grass? Will we have to run conduits across roadways or are we going to have a power support on source that's already there?
There's always so many variables that impact the um the cost associated with the installation of a camera. That's why I it's I you know some during a procurement process you have some companies that come in and they say I'm going to put a camera in the ground get all the cameras in in three three weeks
three months whatever the timeline might be that that it's it's naive to make a a a far sweeping comment like that because there's so many variables that are included in the installation and those variables are what drive the cost as well. I heard permits reference that is
a timeconsuming process but when it comes to the cost it's variable. Got it. And and it look well I guess the question followup to that is for your investment per site how long does it usually take you all to recover that investment
that I do I do not know the number the number of days or time. Um we normally it's typical that you do a 5-year contract. The reason for that is to recoup the investment over time associated with the project. So that's why normally I I'll tell you that
five-year um programs with the fixed fee is customary and and that's that's why they go in that direction. Okay. The reason I ask you you do a little research. I think most of the sources I saw say you should be recovering your money within two years. And so that is another question I have for staff later. But thank you very
much. That's the only one I I would love it if we could. That'd be great. Understood. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, other questions. Yes. Uh, back to the to to the technology. So, uh, you mentioned laser and radar and radar has the ability to, I think in
your words, uh, work across six lanes. Yeah. So, are you saying that laser can only do one? What's the difference between if if radar can do the six lanes? You're saying laser is pinpointed and you would miss something? Yeah. Laser has a laser has a smaller
thinner beam whereas radar has a wider beam that's cast across the whole roadway. Um there are different laser solutions. There's scanning laser there's or single pinpoint pinpointing. That's why for some solutions you see like five six camera systems right on
within uh one location. So that will drive up cost. If you have to put six cameras out to capture six lanes of traffic versus us having one camera system that allows you to capture all of the lanes of traffic that you're trying to monitor, that's a price variable. I don't I do not I can't speak for what my
competitors why they priced the way they did. All we did is we followed the rules of the procurement. We made sure that we captured all of our costs knowing that our radar solution which has secondary speed validation is comparable or and meets all the criteria that's required for this project and projects across the
country. That solution was what we priced and we made sure that we provided that pricing and and provide a favorable price to the city of Orlando. And so now the laser is a newer technology. Laser has been around for a long time as well. I can tell you. So
I mean compared to the radar in this in this in this situation in this segment. No, I've I I um I deployed laser on a project eight years ago. So I question how much newer laser technology is. But what I can't question is how far radar has come with secondary
speed validation. And so the future of all of this, do you see the future being radar or laser or still a combination? No, I I've been in the industry for 20 plus 20 20 years. I I think it's going to be a mixture of
both. I think it'll be greater. I So I know of a project where they were not capturing it was an interstate project. They were not capturing speeds using laser at over 65 70 miles per hour. Whereas a project that we have an interstate project, we're capturing um
vehicles going over 130 miles per hour. What I can also tell you is is that laser or is that radar? because there's a lot of variables that go into both. Are you are you c and that's where the expertise comes in, right? Are you setting the the camera system low on the roadway so it's only capturing the near
lane when another vehicle is passing by at a higher speed on the outside lane. In those instances, you should have a pole where you're getting a better um line of sight. Are you setting it up on a curve or can your camera system not handle capturing violations on a curve? There's just so many variables and
that's why not to right I've been doing this for a long time. Our company's been doing it longer than me. We're leaders in the industry. And those are the types of things that we come out and we assess. We do site evaluations. We make sure that your camera is in the right location to again capture those strobes
showing that the lights are blinking, that enforcement is in um session, that there's children that could be present, that anyone's life matters, and we're ensuring that safety occurs on those roadways. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner Ortiz.
My next question is for staff. Any other questions for Mr. Jenkins? I guess staff questions. Okay. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you, Mayor. And sorry for forgetting to say my name. I just got a little excited. So, thank you.
Not a problem. Mitch, you want to come back up? Maybe Mr. Jim Young want to step up to the plate. Okay, Commissioner. Thank you, sir. Mr. Young has ample experience in this
particular field. He was with the police department for many many years and as a matter of fact his expertise was in that particular field in traffic. So um the question is have we have we tested both well we I know that we have
tested um vera mobility because u mobility am I correct um because it's the one we have for the for the stuff but have we tested um the red speed system I'm sorry commissioner just tested like
tested as has we tested we have actually um because when they do the presentations it's all visuals and and and maybe videos I don't know I wasn't there but u it's all theory right and and then uh so I was wondering if we
have tested compare given like I don't know a week or two weeks for them to to see how these systems work physically so we can see the operations have we done any of Yeah, as as the I was the chairperson of the committee and um you
know they we were guided by the RFP uh what was in the RFP as well as uh when they uh conducted their presentations to us. Um but I know all factors were considered and the scoring by the committee. Um so that's where we kind of
ended up. Um it'd be challenging for to ask a company to go set up something that could cost them, you know, up, you know, a lot of money to set it up for a test program. Uh that's why we didn't do any infield testing. We rely on what the
RFP uh specifies. This is this is pretty interesting because it's it's two um advanced systems and um and even a gentleman from Vera Mobility says that both when when Commissioner
um Burns Burns I'm sorry my brother Burns asked which was the future he said both laser and and radar are systems that we will
see in the future. So I was wondering um if testing them I know that it's pretty expensive but then what would be the chances maybe uh splitting the uh the baby here and see how how we can see this working. uh not to answer that specific question, but with
the with the different technologies like you said, Commissioner, you know, my experience uh you know, almost almost 40 years in law enforcement as a whole, a lot of that time spent in uh traffic enforcement um utilizing both uh both technologies. Um radar and laser are
both still widely used in the law enforcement field uh to this day. I know the Orlando Police Department as well as most police agencies still use both technologies. It does depend on the circumstances on which way you're trying to use it where laser is normally used from a stationary fixed position and
radar is used uh can be used from either a fixed position or a mobile position. Uh so it's usually attached into police vehicles. So while you're in motion you can still capture uh other speeding vehicles. Um so both technologies are still acceptable technologies. The
courts have accepted both technologies. Um, and it depends on, you know, when it when it goes to a court, uh, how the your your certifications, um, as well as your testimony into saying that you have
the right vehicle at that speed and what technology was used at that speed. Gotcha. Gotcha. Thank you, boss. Appreciate it. Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Rose, it's been mentioned, I guess, two or three times so far about splitting. What
would splitting the contract look like? I can leave that up to I can address that. Um, unfortunately, at this point, it's not um really a viable option to split the contract. Um the way that the RFP um
prop proposed the service was for the uh collection of um of approaches um and you know it's it's set out the scoring system uh to be used to uh to assess that um on on some of the case
law that we've reviewed um making a change to material terms of of the RFP or the basis for um determining uh the recipient of the award um would would be something that wouldn't really follow the the available procurement law. And
so that's the reason why the um the options that we presented are either to um terminate this one and and go back to the drawing board or u to approve the staff recommendation. So when did the procurement laws change
in the CRA? when the CRA homes were built, uh, RL Burns was awarded the contract, but when it came to council, it was split between RM Burns and another contractor. And, and there are certain solicitations where we can do that. Um, usually the
RFP has terms in it saying that uh the city may award it to one or more um and then come up with some kind of a a principled distinction between um you know one uh one vendor that uh is receiving a certain type because they
you know meet the criteria for that category over the other and then another vendor is given another category. Um, for this one, we we really don't have any distinction between the locations where the cameras are going to be installed, uh, where where that could be
done. Um, and so there's not a a criterion uh, in the RFP where we can kind of draw a dividing line. Um, and that decision wouldn't be departing from the the criteria that we've established.
Are you done? Commissioner Commissioner Gray, thank you. I think I think I may have another question for uh Jim or the staff. Apologize. I was asked to kind of clarify your question, Commissioner. The um in this type of environment for this
type of program, it would be very challenging to split um because now you're dealing with two enforcement systems. It'd almost be like having two police departments do the same type of job within your jurisdiction as far as that would be concerned. So it' be a little bit challenging to go with two
because one the citizens well I got a ticket under this technology. I got a ticket from this company. I got a ticket from this. It it could create a lot of uh confusion and disparity and may also create uh citizens appealing more
violation notices uh than with other type of programs. I know and I've sat on committees before that have awarded two contracts. Um but in this situation I think it would create some challenges uh by going with two different systems.
And if I could just step into Tanya Wilder, director of transportation. Um another plausible solution could be um when we did the analysis we had to establish what uh schools had school zones and so there are currently 26 areas that we've identified. But we are
going to be in the future putting in the um necessary um traffic calming devices and things that will establish school zones within the districts which then could open up more opportunity for uh school speed cameras.
But but Tanya, but would that open opportunity for another or new people not to have two vendors? Because I think what Jim is saying having two vendors causes causes an issue.
Yeah, that could cause a conflict. But for this established 26 areas, I mean that could be an opportunity because we are um looking at our school um our um excuse me, our red light cameras as well. And so, so Jim, in your in your
assessment, having the same vendor for the red light in the school, is that a positive or can we be in a a a situation where you have different vendors for red light and different vendors for the school?
That would be perfectly fine, Commissioner. Yes. for because red light is a different program. Red lights aren't speed controlled, aren't under the and they were those are awarded under the red light RFP and I know there will be a new red light RFP as well
where the school zones are a separate RFP different uh different criteria for what they need to meet. So correct and in the future if there are separate then we would have a separate RFP for those school zones which may offer those opportunities. But I think for one RFP
that went out based upon the ordinance that was passed, it'd be important to keep them under one company. But however, the red light program and this program do not need to be the same companies. And hold on, Commissioner. It was Commissioner Gray this question.
Oh, fine. Um Jim, question for you. Uh more on the financial support of whoever we choose. Um, I noticed in the criteria in the RFP there's seven scoring categories and unless I misread it, not one talked about the financial
wherewithal and ability of the vendor. And I'm curious why. That would probably be a procurement question. So, I'll let him answer that. And and it it's a a little bit of a misnomer the way it's laid out in that in that spreadsheet. Uh, because there's a um category for proposers experience.
Um but uh kind of further back in the in the longer solicitation um one of the components of that experience category is financial status and that's where the procurement calls out reviewing the Dun and Brad Street reports and other uh financial
information about the the companies that are share with me the other financial information because hopefully we didn't make a decision based on a D&B report. Right. That's right. Um I I believe that the presentations had other information about you know the companies. Well,
counselor, with all due respect, I'm asking that question. If you don't know, perhaps Jim or Tanya knows what what was the financial criteria for selecting any one of the vendors, not just, you know, not just Vera, any of them. What did we
do? And the frustrating part for me is when you guys came to me to say, Gray, we're going to issue this RFP. What's important to you? One of the very first things I said to you is let's make sure the vendor or vendors we select have the financial wherewithal to do this. This
initial um again using plus or minus 100,000 the initial contracts 2.6 million and we're just getting started. So we need to have a vendor that's strong. So a as the committee scoring this what kind of criteria did we look at? So as the committee I know that we
looked at we listened to the reports we took it into their experience um overall as well as their pricing. Um I know pricing is a separate category in the procurement system. We as the committee don't choose the categories um
and the scoring categories. It's a procurement process category system as to how they choose the categories in which they're scored. So we scored once we heard the DMB reports and things like that. And in all actuality, Commissioner, it actually gave Red Speed
more opportunity to show that because of the um ability that they operate as a company as a whole, not just as Red Speeded Florida. Because had they just been awarded as Red Speed Florida, had we moved with that first vote, they they may have come in last out of all five at
that point. Just again, I'm not trying to compare one vendor to the other. I'm just saying as general when we score this, it appears that with short of a D&B report, we really didn't do a lot of diligence on the financial wherewithal. If I'm
wrong, tell me, educate me. Yeah. Um, I know I've sat on several committees uh for RFPs. I know this is standard procedure for, you know, to be presented with a DMB report. Um, and that's normally what we're presented with. Um, and all I can say is we based
on the information we had. The difference I see in this one though is that there's a little bit more liability, which we've experienced in the red light side of this equation. In this side, there's more liability. You're in school zones, you're you issuing citations. If we don't have a
good strong vendor that's there to support us, we have some issues. So that was my first question and source of frustration because we talked about this before we ever issued the RFP. And um then the second part is the the term of
this. Um now I don't know how long it takes exactly. I'm not in the business to recover the investment, but the term of this is a five-year term with a five up to five one-year extensions. Do we Why did we decide we needed to pick somebody for a 10-year term on this?
I'm I'm not sure. Do you want to add a procurement or time? It's the investment of um what they're putting into uh for the school zone cameras, the investment into the ground for the poles. I mean, I think it's similar to the red light camera system. It it's it takes a long time for for to
implement the infrastructure and then to be able to have that program working in that manner. So, I mean, we we pretty much modeled it, I would say, after the red light cameras. Okay. Well, it just seems to me again in this area, technology is going to change
so rapidly over a at least a five, if not a 10-year period. I'm I wish we would not have gone quite as far. My frustration in all of this, and I'll shut up, is you guys come and ask us for our opinions, we give them to you, and then you guys issue an RFP that doesn't
address what we talked about, and now you're asking us to vote on things without good good background and information. So, um I'm I'm frustrated by that part. Um because it appears, nothing against Veric, could have been any of them. We don't really know the
financial wherewithal. They're a public company. If you look them up, they're uh less than investment grade credit. Doesn't mean they're a bad company, but it's less than investment grade. So, it's not like we have the strongest financial partner. Um maybe they're the
best in the lot. I don't know. But um you know their their credit rating by a standard POS is double B minus. That's not investment grade. So um that's the frustrating part for me is we're issuing RFPs and we're asking for stuff that I'm
not sure it's the most important, at least not to me. So, um, I I'm I'm struggling with this one just because I think we're committing long term to a group that we really don't know and technology is going to change and we're hoping that vendor will be in a position
to change. Thank you, Mayor. Now you're up, Commissioner Barnes. All right. Thank you, Mayor. Um, and if Jim could come, I know you were on the uh you're the chairman, so I I
just want to get this straight. So the my understanding the RFP states that a preference would be given for laser and for flashless strobes that no uh it basically in the RFP
it just mentions that this city prefers that technology doesn't mean it's guaranteed or anything like that. Um and for the flashing strobes I think there might have been some confusion. So where um Vera Mobility when they talked about
uh what the strobes they're actually capturing are the school zone flashing beacons is what their cameras are capturing versus I believe Redspeed did not show that they actually captured uh those beacons um and uh it's important
that those beacons were captured. Right. So, so again, so the RFP said we prefer laser it and and and so then my question is if there was a if you preferred laser, was there any additional consideration
given because uh they responded with what was a preference or what was preferred in the RFP. Yes. And I believe as Mitch explained was that uh most of the committee members did score them higher in their technology and equipment. Um but once
again it came down to I believe the costs for those um per location. Can I clarify that somewhat for you? So Ray, introduce yourself. Uh my name is uh Ray Rodriguez. I'm the operations manager for the city of
Orlando land stops. So I'm on an operational side of it and management and division side of it. But the RFP for the most part as far as what we were looking for was written by me. So your question is is what's the pre why why do we have we prefer laser? Is that is that
what you're asking? Yeah. Yeah. That's one. Well, one the question was, did the RP say that we preferred laser? Yes. And then when someone responds with laser, were there additional uh considerations or points or how did we acknowledge them providing
something that we prefer? I can't speak on that because I was not a committee member, but I can speak on as far as being an expert in this subject matter. So, laser, let's say you have six lanes of traffic like the gentleman said, right? There's a there's a couple of ways you could you can come about. You can go ahead and put one
laser in each individual lane, okay? At a steady point, at a fixed point. So when a vehicle travels through that laser, it identifies your speed, right? So let's say there's a vehicle is ahead of another one, there's another one that's way behind. Once you pass that fixed point, wherever that fixed point
is, it identifies your speed. Or you can have a laser that basically scans, right? The difference I can't say what the committee did or didn't do but the difference is is that with what one of
the vendor has okay it's not laser so it's radar but not only do they have radar and I don't want to speak on their behalf but what they what they testified today was that they also have something that's called time over distance and that's the same technology that we have in red light camera when it first
started out back in 2008. So you have a a fixed point, right? Then you take another fixed point ahead of it. Let's say it's 10 ft apart. When the vehicle hits that first fixed point, the camera says, "Whoa, there's somebody there." When it hits a second one, it goes,
"Hey, it took them two ten of a second to get to the second one." Then it identifies the speed. There's no better way to than than to identify the speed of a vehicle than two fixed points. The fact that a vendor has a fixed point on top of a a radar that more than likely
is going to sway somebody to go, "Wait a minute, there's a backup to that." And there's no better backup than to have two fixed points. And so with the lasers, there's no backup like that that the other vendor has in place. No, not that not that they not that they
went and and and and showed us anything of that matter. Um, like I said, and there was something else that was brought up by one of the vendors that's that's basically standard operating in the industry is raindrops. It'll distort it. Light will distort it. You know,
when you have the sun that's that's coming up, it will distort the laser, but not the radar. It will distort the the the laser, not the radar. Okay. Okay. And now there was a there was a mention of
um I think it was Red Speed saying that they have full video if if I'm correct full video and Vera Mobility saying they have a combination of steel and video is there a you know from your expertise is
there a a a more superior arrangement all video or video and steel and if so what what what would that yield? Well, I don't want to talk specifically about about what each of them have. I'm just gonna I'm going to hint to to to what to what they have. Um, so if you have a
video camera, in today's world, everybody watches football and so forth, right? So, a video camera that's that that that's a video, you can go ahead and grab, so let's say it's shooting 30 frames per second. You can grab one of those frame and stop it to see if the person was actually out or safe, right?
We've all seen that. We've seen it in football. They they'll move back the frame. and so forth. On video, you can actually move back the frame and and see if the vehicle actually uh was behind the line when the light was in was in fact amber or red. So, you can move the
video along and go, "Okay, this is the best image I can get." Maybe because there's a vehicle that's blocking the tag, so you need that video to advance so you can see the tag so you can identify the vehicle. So, laser, I'm sorry, um uh the video camera has that
advantage. Now, I'm not gonna say who what has what I think they all do. It's pretty standard throughout the industry that they have they grabbing everything from video. Of course, there's a financial reason for that and that reason is because it's cheaper to put a video up there and let it run all day, you know, and then you can grab whatever
frames you want from as opposed to having a still a steel camera up there in the heat and so forth. They don't want to do that. The other thing is when you have a still image, you need a strobe. You need some type of device that's going to illuminate the situ that's going to illuminate the the scene. Now, ambient light in the
daytime, of course, is going to produce that, right? But at night, not so much. But now with with with video, you can increase the ISO, which is the international um way of uh remember back in the day when I was a kid, there was
800 ISOs and there was 400s and there was 200s and there was 100s. So this that that is the ISO is the sensitivity that it has to the ambient light. the higher that number. Right now there it's well over 6 640,000. So by you increasing the ISO, it
introduces more more light into the videos not needing a strobe. Yeah. And and I'm and I'm sorry I and I'm not going to profess to really understand exactly what you what you just said, but with the with the video cuz you mentioned that um them having
the backup, you know, being able to go from one point to another. Does the video take away that need to have those two points? I'm not sure the question, but I will say this. Um well, wait, wait, no. Let me let me say it again so you can understand. So you
mentioned that there was a uh uh Vera Mobility has the backup system. They have the the radar and then they have time over distance. Time over distance. Does the video get rid of the need for the time of a
distance because you have the entire video. That's my question. Well, the time of distance really is really about speed, not not about video you wouldn't be able to video you wouldn't be able to determine the speed. Right. Video is really for for for the
quality of of of of the imaging. Okay. Time over speed is over to identify the vehicle speed when we're talking speed cameras. Right. Right. Okay. All right. Thank you, Commissioner Sheen. You mind if I ask a question because it's direct followup to Commissioner Burns before I go to you?
Oh, yeah. I have I have a question. No, I said, "Do you mind if I ask because it's direct?" Oh, no. I don't mind at all that. Go ahead, Ray. So, you wrote the RFP, right? Yes. Okay. Does Vieierie's technology meet the criteria of the RFP?
Yes, it does. And does red zones. Okay. So, you put me in a position. Well, all right. So, red speed. So, red speed, sorry. So, one of the things that was a requirement of the RFP was that and it was mentioned before at this
meeting was that the the beacon light that pretty much has to is standard in in school zones, right? Beacon light, everybody's everybody knows them. The beacon light has to be visible in the video. Okay? So, when you look at
a video, you're going to see the beacon flashing, right? As long as it's within those time frames here in the morning and then when they're discharging the kids, you're going to see that beacon flashing. You go, "Wow, the beacon is flashing. Look at that." The So, Red Speed does not have that
feature. What they have is a sensor that is placed on the roadway, whether it's through laser, whatever, but it it that sensor signals to the camera to go ahead and activate,
right? You're not going to see the the actual beacon flashing, but you will know that it's activated because of that sensor. But what happens with that is is that since we're in the camera business,
right, why can't you show me the beacon since we're in the camera business? So, that's a that's that's also a big deal. I'm just trying to simplify this. Does Viera's
methodology fit the criteria that was specified in the RFP. Yes, absolutely. So, as I understand, Red Zone's argument is their technology is better, so we had to throw them out, but their technology fits what you asked for in the RFP, right?
So, does so so let's go to the to the latter part, the second part. Does their technology meet what what I wrote in the RFP? Yes. It's deficient in the fact that it does not show the the the strobe in the Oh, wait. does Vieieras. Oh, Vieierie. Yes, it does satisfy that.
Sufficient. It is sufficient. Now, as far as Red Speed, it does not have that strobe in the video. Okay. Well, I don't think I have to get to red zones if I believe that Vieira has met the criteria within the RFP.
Yes, they have. And is the better price for us? Absolutely. Because the argument, as I understand that was made by Red Zone, is they're technology is so more superior that we ought to throw Vieiraa out just because
the radar doesn't work or I'm sorry doesn't work doesn't isn't as good as what their product is right I heard that too I don't know where that came from but um on some applications it's good to have a when when you're talking about a human being you're holding a a laser you can you can
you can look at the video at you look at the at the at the vehicle and pointing at it and it'll give you a speed, but we don't have a human. Okay, let's just simplify it again. Vieier's product meets what you asked for in the RFP. Yes, it does, sir. Okay, Mr. Sheen,
thank you, mayor. Thank you for clarifying that because that was my that was what I was going to say is that the video shows the beacons and you have to have the beacons in there to be able to show that this the school zone was active. Exactly. So that was my So even though it might not have been written that way, the committee took that into into
consideration when they made their decision because they're experts on it. And that's my concern is that if we make a different determination than the experts that we have trusted with this process and they can they considered all of these factors, we are undermining
that committee process. So it sounds to me like we are changing the criteria after the fact. So, and I don't want to get to that point where we're inviting these challenges because David Billingsley's letter, if everyone who had read that in the packet addressed every one of those questions very
succinctly. So, I want to say that after having read his letter and having listened to this testimony today, I think that we should go with the committee's recommendation. Is that a motion? That is a motion, mayor. Thank you. So, your motion is to deny the appeal and move forward with the um
recommendation of the committee. Yes, mayor. It is. Is there a second? Then I'll second it. Okay. Discussion. Yes, sir. Mr. Gray. Yeah. Um Ray, since you did the RFP, I have a question for you. Um because
while you say this, I'm looking at the RFP page 10 number four. The city prefers a system which uses laser laser imaging detection and ranging LAR technology right out of your RFP. Yes. you got one vendor that that is
awarded this that did not do that and you said you've made allocation for that. Then in number six right behind this is finally the city prefers systems which do not utilize strobe devices or flash and which do not require the installation of flood lights.
So if I'm a respondent to this RFP and you've told me in two spots you want LAR and you don't want flash. Well that's a preference. It's not a shall it's not it's not has to have. It's a preference if they in not require the installation of flood
lights. Maybe I'm missing that one. No. So So what that means is as far as the flood lights is, it means that you can't go up and and and erect flood lights to better the the the ambient uh light so you can get a better quality video is what is what that's referring
to. Okay. Like you got to go with existing lights. Well, I'm I since we're in discussion phase, I I think the RFP was poorly written. With all due respect, I know we do a good job on some. This one to me is very ambiguous and I don't think it was
a fair field for both sides. I wish there was a way we could figure out how to, you know, split it because there's a lot more down the road. You know, the notion of doing uh another vendor on the next 26 puts us right back in the soup that Jim said that you've got two
different vendors doing different things. So, what difference does it make if you split it now or you split it later? Um, I don't understand why we can't have a standard system that vendors either can do or they can't do. And if they can't do it, it's okay. We'll catch you on the next one. But I
just feel like this RFP was was not very succinct. Put it that way. Yeah. May I I I make a motion. Motion's on the floor. All right. I'll wait. Commissioner Ortiz.
I was just going to second grade motion. Okay. Further discussion. Commissioner Stewart. Mayor, let me express a couple things. And and I say this kindly because I'm probably the only guy on this street on this DS that actually has traffic
experience. But I do want to make a couple of comments real quickly. Um uh Florida statute 28612 addresses voting conflicts which require abstension and the appearance of a possible conflict of interest which
allows for an extension. Two matters currently before the council. This 15A and 15B involve an appeal for from a uh recommended award speed for speed school speed stone
cameras and therefore an award later on. I want to make sure everybody understands my son works as a lobbyist for the Gray Robinson law firm. Orlando law firm that is the lobbyist for one of the propo of the proposers. My son has
not been involved in this matter, nor would he ever be involved in lobbying the city of Orlando. So, I have been advised by our city's attorneys that I have actually no conflict of interest and could proceed on a vote on this
matter. Because of the controversial nature of this appeal and the award, however, and because there could be an appearance of a possible conflict of interest, not an actual conflict of interest, I'm going to abstain from voting. And therefore,
that's why I have abstained from offering in my opinion. I do have one and I will share with you later on if this if I have the opportunity to do that. I'm doing this because the importance of this program to me and to school safety, the importance of
resolving the appeal promptly and moving forward with this project as quickly as we can and to remove any potential for further controversy related to this council on this council action. Mr. Mayor, I filed the paperwork with the
clerk uh and that's the reason why I have not been involved in this conversation um and would encourage uh would would would live with the um uh the wisdom of this council uh and would want us to move as quickly as we
possibly can to make sure kids are safe on our streets. Thank you, mayor. Okay. So, you're abstaining. I'm abstaining. Further discussion then on the motion um all in favor of the motion indicates so
by saying I I that's three uh all oppose the motion say nay nay. So 33 looks like you'd have been the deciding vote there, commissioner.
You've uh already taken yourself out, which I think was uh the right thing to do, quite honestly. Okay. Then does somebody have an alternative motion to uphold the appeal and uh
throw out the award of the um to the air mobility and start over as you're looking down this way? Yeah. Well, I voted no. I would make a motion that we revisit the RFP with all due haste and make sure it's a little more
specific uh and and has specific criteria of what we want and judge it accordingly. I second. All right. Then your motion is to uphold the appeal and to decline to make an award of the contract and direct the
chief procurement officer to cancel the RFP. Is that your motion? Yes, sir. Could be 33. Okay. Yeah. I don't know what happens then. All in favor indicate so by saying I. I
suppose. No. How did you vote? Commissioner Rose. No. I think so. Jody, what do we do here? I'll be crazy enough to put in motions on the board. No, I'd like to make a statement. So, um,
our kids safety are at risk here. This process has been long, um, has been long awaited. Um, we've talked about this. This is something that I think this is one of the first things I voted on last year when I got elected. Um, it's just been a a really long process. I think we
go back to the drawing board and then we find ourselves back here again. Then what? Right. I think the RFP was as was written as is. A preference is a preference. Whether you say yay to something, nay to something, you should add this, you should add that. You look at uh we cannot sit down and challenge
what our staff does, the experts, the ones who are working daytoday, especially Rey who work daytoday with our operations in different in variety of fields. That's like saying to uh Corey, you poured that concrete the wrong way. That was part of your RFP.
Well, we should have had concrete put it. I think when we have experts in a field that we hire to do a job, they sit on a committee, they look at what our what our specific needs are and and red light cameras have been a controversial
in this state for a really long time. So, you have an expert um who put the packet together. He did not even sit on the committee. And so for the committee members to make a vote and to rank a project the way they see fit based on what our needs are as well as the way
the criteria are. No matter what you do, you're going to get more points in one area versus another points. If we look at a holistic package, if a person scored better, um that's what we should go with who scores the best there there is appeal process. I don't know that. I
think from what I heard and I could be totally wrong, laser is the only thing I specifically heard that stood out with the appeal because it was a preference. It was not like that's a preference. It's like I I you know when we do mural when we go put out um call to artist, I may say I want like I prefer to have
this but that doesn't mean that if it's not part of that mural, I'm not going to choose that. I'm not going to choose that rendering. So I think that's what we really need to look at. I think it we're going to look at a months months of drawing our process. we could find ourselves back here in the same exact place. And I think what that does do for me, it really, and I'm gonna be honest,
being a former employee, it really sends more a horrible morale signal as a council member to our employees that we don't trust the decisions that they're making with ranking and with overall and with the processes of function and how our city should function. So, that's what I would say. Sorry. Amen, sister. Sorry.
If if I could, and I understand that, that's that's fair. That's why we're elected, right? not to seconduess staff, to work with staff, and then we ultimately make the decisions, right? That's why we're here. If if that wasn't the case, why would we ever do an appeal? Whatever staff said, we just
rubber stamp it and move on. So, I respect staff. They're very good at what they do. But in this one, I just felt like there's a lot of areas that weren't addressed, and I don't think it was a fair playing field. That's all I'm saying. You're right. We need to get this going. It's we're behind the curve.
No doubt about that. Um, but I I I just think we need to do it right. You're talking about what could be a 10-year contract. That's a long time. So, let's make sure we get it right. That's all I'm saying. If it was a if it was a six-month or one-year contract, maybe
it's different. But this is a long-term contract. I think we should spend the time to do it right. And if they come out on top again, great. But let's make sure we have the playing field. That That's where I feel on this one. As a council, we can make amendments to it. we can make amendments to a
contract. So if we said that there's a part in the um the RFP that we or the contract that we'd like to strike, we can strike that as a council, we can vote and say, "Hey, instead of it being a 10 year, we would like to look at five year and then reevaluate." So I think rather than scrapping something, going back to the table, getting finding ourselves in the same place. If there
are specific parts of the contract that you don't agree with, we can address that. Okay, here's what we're going to do. So Jody, I'm a lawyer, too. And so the motion to uphold the appeal
failed. So the appeal has failed. Right? You agree with that? Yes, sir. So the um action is that the appeal wasn't successful. So we can move on to the award of the contract. I'm going to say that we table the the ruling that
the award of the appeal or the appeal was not successful and we would move on to the contract. But I sense that the vote on that would be 33 as well. So I'm going to suggest we table that item um
and bring it up at the next meeting and we'll just see whether what we want to do from there. Everybody agreeable to that? Got six votes for that consensus. Shake of heads. Yes. Okay. Without objection, we'll table the
other item. All right. Everybody know where we are even if they don't necessarily agree with it. Okay. Okay. That concludes the uh agenda business of the Orlando City Council today. Fortunately, we have general
appearance left to do. So Ed, would you get us in position to do general appearance? [Music]
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