Thanks for telling. >> I told him this would happen. But yeah, >> yeah, you guys can I think we've got uh one or five seats here. >> Yeah, we probably just And then
>> are they gone upstairs? Tell them I was bringing this back. >> They they might still be here. I have 5:30. >> All right. One of these. I lost my phone about every 3 minutes till I got a different Okay.
>> It's just but no. So now little did I know I guess that >> do you think this is like this hasn't >> reinforced
Heat. Heat. together probably otherwise you just going to stay up there. >> Yeah, we're shortanded today. >> We're shortanded. little nervous because
we bring here. >> Yeah. But you could >> always be so fun. where I am. I will play about right now.
Oh, he's stealing today. All of us got to sign in here. I'll do it right now. You didn't like >> Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, right? Oh, here it is. >> Yeah.
>> I feel like I'm the odd without a computer. Well, I mean, I happen to be, just not. Also, I meant to call you back. I'm sorry. >> No, I left you a message and that was it. >> Okay. So, yeah, tried to make things in
similar fashion as quick as I could cuz I made them not 274. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Thanks. Your name is Lou. There we go. All right.
Right. So because time. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Oh, papers. I like it. Give me another one. >> You know what?
Do I do one? >> No. >> Okay. >> I can't knowingly. Okay. >> Oh, yeah. So they don't have >> uh no like
>> we've always had to do that but we just pay at the end. >> Yeah. I did I it was just adding to my dad started 23 is the first time I had to take my know
>> I knew it 24 that's all I know and it was in the thing like 10 Yeah. >> My back up. >> He knows I can't walk with two dogs. >> Oh, I got a new background. Do it right. >> Yourself, executive director.
I like that. Um, did you get your flight ready for DC? >> I get required. >> Are you How are they? Did you uh on the way back did you are you doing the Arlington?
>> So Arlington Cemetery that thing that morning. >> When are you coming back? >> Oh that's the last thing on Thursday. >> Yes. It's just that we're doing a person. >> I have been there years when I was a kid
>> facilities. But I'll try to get the same flights as you if you >> Yeah. 3 minutes. I was like, "You're almost there. Almost there. Almost there." He's not gonna he's not here.
Nice to meet you. a little sitting chair. >> I know that's Huh? >> She's I'm her sidekick. I think she's my sidekick. >> When she told me that she was the one to come, I was like, 2 minutes 2 minutes.
>> We were uh we were the fantastic duo and I'll see these are not trash guys. No should people. So, I said we weren't going to have to miss.
>> It was tonight. >> Oh, I'm doing um picnics and paperbacks. >> So, you can go at lunchtime and buy books. >> I'm really into digital books now. What digital books? said, "I'm trying to get Bernie."
>> I still read I read a lot on the Kindle >> and I did that for a while cuz I read >> and then I was like, "My kids go on my tablet all the time." >> So then I started reading a lot of books and now I'm like building my trophies. >> They go down my bookshelf. I like buy them like look at my like dragon books.
So um I'm not going back. >> I also like dragon books. >> Yeah. So yeah, alternate reality is some kind of dragon kid one. >> Oh, I bet it's fire. Super popular with kids.
>> Henry's on the second. Wild robot. >> Oh, wow. >> Oh, wild robot. That one, too. Yeah. >> So, the first one was his first chapter, but he finished that. Are you guys ready? Yep. >> All right. >> Good evening. Welcome to the city council work session. It is 5:30 and we
have all members of council present. I don't have any um written request to speak. So this is our public comment section. So there's anyone in the audience wishing to address council. Um please come up at this time. Okay. We'll close public comment and
move on to our second order of business which is the future local interlocal agreement regarding the assignment of local option fuel tax proceeds for the seminal connector project. Mr. Cobb. >> Uh thank you deputy mayor. I'd like to introduce Mr. Darren Gray. He is the
seminal county county manager and he's going to be your primary presenter tonight and he has uh representatives from the expressway authority here with me as well as our commissioner. So I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Gray
and let begin. Good evening. Before I turn it over to uh Commissioner Delari, just like to introduce you to everyone again, my name is Darren Gray, the county manager. I've been the county manager for about 3 years, but my whole public career, I'm a
UCF graduate. Um, go Knights. Uh, both undergraduate and grad school. Um, but I have my whole local government career has been in Central Florida. So, uh, this is our turn. So, glad to be with you tonight. Um, Commissioner Delari is here with uh, me tonight. I also would
like to introduce our public works director, Donnie Oori. We have the CFX uh director, Michelle Mage, and Will Hawthorne. And what's your title again? I forget. Planning policy. >> There you go. >> Thank you. >> For CFX or >> CFX.
Yes. Uh so with that, I'll turn over to Commissioner Delari and for opening comments. >> Thank you, Darren. And thank you, council members, for allowing us to be here today. Uh it's always a pleasure to be in front of you and to be here in Ovido. Uh, a couple things that Darren didn't mention was that uh, today is
Tonnie Olri's birthday. Happy birthday. >> And tomorrow is Darren Gay's birthday. Yeah. Happy Thank you. Thank you. Happy birthday to both of you. Thank you. But I think in a big to get serious uh big
picture here in Semino County, we've been looking at tourism very big because we know that sports tourism is our our niche. It's been our niche for the past 25 years. Uh one of the things we did in
the early 2000s was we invested the county invested through tourism tax. the uh complex called Bumba as well as Soldiers Creek. Uh before that, the county invested in uh Lake Silen for
soccer. Uh between those complexes as well as uh our tennis complex, we've really put this county on the map, but the issue with those complex, they're all outdoors. And with that, you're subject to the weather. uh both
when it rains as well as when it gets hot. In order to really bring the economy forward here in Semino County, you really need to be focusing on tourism. That's truly the bread and butter of this county. Uh it's not just hotels,
it's uh many other aspects of it. People coming through the county, people staying in the in the hotels, but they're also going into the restaurants. They're also uh buying goods. uh wonderful things that they do here and we can actually show you those numbers. But our tourism numbers have plateaued
and we've showed our hotelers that if they want to grow there is no more growth here in this county to get heads on beds. But we had to bring in some experts. We've done that over the past number of years and
we've looked at how to grow our market when it comes to Monday through Thursday and also on the shoulder months and the summer months. Everything points to an indoor sports complex. So what the county did was they actually
did a feasibility study on the indoor sports complex about how it would grow this county from a tourism perspective. To put it in simple terms, an indoor sports complex is the next booma. It's the next soldiers creek. It takes our hotel years and it breaks up. It brings
you more demand. Uh if there's any chance to bring in more hotels in this area or throughout Semino County, it's from indoor sports complex. That's the only way you're going to get hotels to come into this county because they have to have demand Monday through Sunday
because right now it's just weekends and it's only the winter and the shoulder months. So by doing an indoor sports complex, the board of county commissioners, we're having this conversation another two weeks, not tomorrow, May 12th. Uh we
did have a retreat at that retreat time and correct me Darren, we talked about 12 indoor basketball courts. By doing 12 indoor basketball courts, it equates to 24 volleyball courts. We're also committing
to doing the same amount of uh volleyball courts outside, which is beach volleyball. We've had our team as well as the Central Florida Sports Tourism, now it's called GO Sports. Mhm. >> There have been the past week they were at the biggest trade uh event in the
United States. This last week it was in Vegas. >> The demand that we have shown and that we've had seen is astronomical. So when they say you build it and they will come, they're definitely coming if we build this
thing. Well, if we build an indoor sports complex, it's how do you get there? Right now it's off of East Lake Murray Boulevard and still going to be there because it's going to be on the other side of the airport which is about a quarter mile from Bumba on the other side of the runway not the airport.
By doing that, the traffic on uh the 417 as you go over Lake Jessup on peak times getting off the 417 onto uh Sanford Avenue, you can tie it up about maybe a quarter
of a mile on the 417. You just have to go there yourself. You'll see it. So we decided with the help of CSX to put in what you see here and you're going to get into the presentation is what we're calling the seminal connector right to the East Lake Mary Boulevard and the
airport. Uh by doing this you'll have a very direct connect to the 417 and to this part of the county. It's not just about moving traffic, it's about growing tourism. If we have any
hope of bringing more tourism into this area for uh hotels, this is a part of it. It's not the only part. It's a part of it. Uh I will tell you that we've all been very involved in
the slight selection of hotels. They do look at this stuff. They look at the demand. They look at transportation. They look at how fast they can get from one side to another. This is a piece of that equation. There's many pieces to it. Uh and so that's why I'm glad that
we're doing this. Uh the board decided uh last year to uh raise the gas tax to do this. Uh we probably should have got the agreements signed beforehand, but we didn't. So now we're trying to get them signed now. Uh this is additional funds
that the board is levying to help pay for this and uh that's what our staff's going to be talking about today. So with that, Darren, I'm going to bring it back to you, but I just wanted to set the table. >> I appreciate it. Thank you, Commissioner. Um, again, thank you. So today's uh purpose of the tonight's uh
presentation is to talk about the connector, talk about the funding options and the benefits on the tourism and economic development uh side to to show you uh regionally how this project will help the the entire county. So next
slide, please. So, just a quick uh few background points is that this the planning for this project has been going on for 20 plus years and since the early 2000s and Michelle and I talked about she actually brought it to my attention that she worked on this project in the
early 2000s. Correct. Um but we actually uh so when this project when I came on as the county manager it was going it was going through the uh the CFX board uh for them to look at our commission asked uh the
CFX to look at this uh not they didn't had chosen alignment yet now they have but to to move forward with looking at the uh the connector project. So the uh CFX, Central Florida Expressway Authority, they did their PD PDNE study
back in 2025. They actually set on alignment, preferred alignment on October the 9th uh of last year, 2025. Since then, the the board of county commissioners and CFX entered into an interlocal agreement uh to fund the
project. And I'll get into more about the funding and what I call the shared investment. Mayor and I have had a couple conversations about this recently um in the past, but want to explain to you what that interlocal is um and why it was set up. Um and then also and the
project is already been approved by the by CFX uh this year and that they are going to kick off their design next month or go out for design for to to bid. So, with that, I'd like to turn it over to Will Hawthorne, and he's just going to go over the project uh with you, and then I'll be back and um talk
about the benefits, the shared investment, and then what our request of the city of Oto is. All right. Thank you, Darren. Good evening, mayor and uh council members. Again, my name is Will Hawthorne. I serve as the director of transportation planning and policy with the Central Florida Expressway
Authority. Uh here to give you an overview on the project. And as Darren said, this corridor has been looked at uh by a number of different agencies over the last 23 years in various forms. Um some truncated, some truncated, some
longer. They went out to I95. It's at one point. This version, um as you're well aware, goes from 417 up to Red Cleveland Boulevard and Lake Mary Boulevard. Next slide. This should Okay, so this slide. All
right. So, this slide will loop a few times. And the purpose of this is to show the growth in the area in the last 23 years in and around the airport. And if I can draw your attention to uh areas east of Sanford Avenue, you really start to see how it's been transformed uh in
the last two and a half decades. And one of the things I want to leave you with here is you'll see how a corridor for doing a new uh facility like this is rapidly closing. Next slide. Oops. All right. So project benefits are
summarized here but I want to give you a review of what the regional picture looks like uh in this area in Semino County. And first is the growth. It's projected that by the year 2050, Semino County is going to grow by 21%.
When we kicked off this the study in 2024, there were 10 developments just in the pretty much the area you're looking at. Uh that would bring another 849 rooftops again just in this little snapshot. So, we're talking a pretty uh significant growth area for the county.
Another reason is the airport growth. in just 15 years. Uh, Orlando Sanford International Airport is slated to double in size in just 15 years. And last but not least, but with all of this growth comes the traffic, which will
undoubtedly add stress to uh not only east Lake Mary Boulevard, but other local road facilities as well as State Route 417. And like I said before, you can see the alignment we've chosen. And that corridor uh for a new facility of this
nature is is closing every single day. So um not only that, but you see where East Lake Mary Boulevard is and it essentially is a constrained corridor itself. There's not a lot of room to add lanes on that facility. So you have to look at new alignments.
Next slide. Okay. So on this slide uh we when we are doing the public meetings we we get a lot of feedback and it says you know there's not a problem today why are you doing this well we don't have the luxury of looking at things today we have to look 20 years out and we looked
up to the design year of 2050 and what this slide shows on the left side are the intersection uh operations in the morning on the right side are the intersection operations in the evening and inside those callouts It might be a little hard to see on the slide, but you
see letters uh A through F. Uh A through C being general uh A through D being generally acceptable. Those are the levels of service at the intersections that were analyzed in this corridor. And what you'll find is with the addition of
this facility, you're seeing uh intersection timings drop in the area of anywhere from 40% all the way up to I think 69 to 80%. And to put that in in other in other words, uh just in this 1.75
miles between 417 and red red Cleveland, you're looking at a 5 to 6 minute drop in just that less than 2 mile stretch and and you're uh in the commute for those people in that area. So again,
well, yeah, before we can is this working? I don't know. Sorry. I'll just speak up a little louder. All right. So again, one of the the walk the takeaway here is 20 years is the design horizon. What we are planning for with a facility like this,
we can't just look at today or the next 5 years. Next slide. So as you drive this facility, what we laid out was a two-lane facility or one lane in each direction. This is a a reduced section or reduced width corridor. It's not our
typical expressway. This is only 150 ft wide and the design speed is less than what we would do for our typical expressway. The design speed here is 45 mph as opposed to 70 mph which is what we do on facilities like 417.
Uh we built in growth to this when and if that day arises. We don't see a need for that in 2050, but we do know that traffic patterns can change and this is expandable to the inside. So, we would not need to go outside of this 150 foot
corridor that we've laid out uh before you this evening. The project costs when we wrapped up the PD are shown here. We've got it summarized in four different categories. In all, the project totals around $200 million.
And then next slide. Um that as with any P& we look at a viability of doing a project like this which is summarized here and then as Darren mentioned we did get into the interlocal agreement which we've got
some milestones on next slide. So the milestones of that interlocal agreement are shown here which uh we will be kicking off the advertisement for design in two weeks from today. So May 11th we'll be putting that out on the street. it'll go to our board uh in October and then we'll be starting design before we
close out this year which leads me I mean that those are the high level milestones of where we're at with the project and uh that that concludes my presentation I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have and then actually hand back off to Darren >> yeah thank you
Got to get close to this right so I have been asked many times why Obito right why why veto or as well as why is winter Springs. Um, as Commissioner Delari uh mentioned,
the activity, the sports tourism activity that is on uh East Lake Mary Boulevard really spurs our uh tourism e economy in in uh Simol County. And as you can see before I go through the the top of it, that last bullet. So, this is
something good you may or may not know, but 38% of your visitor spending in OO comes from outside semol county. And a lot of that is derived from our sports tourism that comes uh Bumba uh Soldiers Creek uh over at Silven Park for the
soccer complex. It really uh benefits and it really opens up uh this corridor. It strengthens the the regional access uh 417 to 434 to uh 419. I know we're working with a partnership with you now on uh County Road 419. Improves the
connectivity for our visitors traveling across Simo County. um also supports like I said the local businesses uh that that benefit from that regional approach and bringing in sports tourism. Thanks. So back so why we're here for
this show uh not only to show you how awesome uh our projects are here in the county but also what this connector means. And when I first got here I didn't really understand the connector until I really our county commission spoke with me. I talked to with Michelle
Mish from CFX and if we if really if we don't do up this project now it most likely won't won't happen. It's just it will be the cost would be uh unfeasible uh in order to to do this. So what the county what we're asking for so the as
will mentioned the total project cost is 200 million. There is a gap of 50 million and we knew going through this uh when they were doing the PDN there would be a gap. We just didn't know how much the gap would be. We had a an estimate. In fact, the county commission asked me um with the one penny tax
renewal that we had got renewed uh a year and a half ago by 73% by the way of the voters. Um this was on our project list. We we earmarked 25 million uh for for this just uh uh cuz we knew it would
be probably in north of that. When the cost come in that the gap was 50 million, the CFX could not move forward with this project. uh just wouldn't be feasible for them without the the the gap being funded. So the county commission uh took uh a risk if you
will, took a step and said this is so important. We may not realize it now how important it is 10 years from now, 20 years from now, we're going to say how important regionally that this connector is going to be uh to Seminal County. So with that you see on the pie chart uh
CFX of course will fund 150 million of the project and then the gap would be uh 50 million and that's what the interlocal agreement was about how to fund fund the gap. Yes, the county commission took the risk to put said we are responsible for that gap we
immediately sent uh CFX after they approved this back in February 25 million to get this project uh moving to design. The county commission asked me to work with the four cities uh Sanford, Lake Mary, Oido, uh and Murder Springs
to to fund the remaining and that actually doesn't even fund all the 25 the additional 25 million. Uh we're looking at the airport. Uh we have some incentive fees with the airport that we're uh we're going to contribute. So the airport has a lot of rules with the FAA and what they can and can't do.
However, we we do provide incentive funds for the airport. So, we're able to use uh that funding. We're looking at uh grant opportunities. We're looking at mobility fees to actually shore up the the gap because with all four cities participating, we still are about a3 to4
million uh fall shortfall with that. So, we are looking at uh a couple other uh funding options. But to tell you um how go back one sorry Chris but what but the what commissioner was referring to on the indoor sports
facility on May the 12th we were actually going to get the green light to move forward with the sports facility. We went through the feasibility study, discussed it at our retreat. But let me tell you some numbers what that um the sports facility you you've heard what BoomAba has done for uh the county. In
fact, our tourist development revenue went up by a couple million after Bumba was in uh was was open. But the indoor facility is expected to have over 300,000 uh annual visitors, 38,000 hotel room
nights. Um, and for a long-term investment, it's over $2 billion. So, and that comes right back to each of the the the cities to the county. And that's what's important to know about what this this connector is. It's just not a road project. It is a connector connector to
region graduation. >> Oh, yes. Good point. This we've been in talks with uh the school board, Similar County School Board to actually hold graduations there. They would like to hold graduations in Simol County. So we're looking at so we're talking with them right now. So there also it could
be another funding opportunity as well and in the interlocal that we are running with this with all four cities. It does state in there that if we get grants, we get um I've talked with CFX, we've get mitigation uh credits, if we
get land donations right away, things like that. That all goes towards the cost and the county commission has committed to this the cities that they will proportionately reduce the city's amount to contribute to this by the amount of grant and funding. And we're
going to be very aggressive um in looking at funding. That's why Mrs. Aori is here as well to to help with u uh funding, look at direct appropriations, anything that we possibly can. So, we're actually uh working on that. So, again, you can go ahead Chris. So this is just
it's moving forward. It's this is a great opportunity for Simol County and for the region. Um and so our request would be to for you to consider an interlocal agreement with Simol County uh to use the the gas tax that
Commissioner Delari referred to. We're not looking at taking your exist or taking that's not a good word contributing your existing >> perfect word your existing dollars. This is a this is the additional 5 cent gas
tax that the county commission approved last summer in order to help with these transportation projects. And so this was the first one on our our list that we wanted to do. The reason and Mr. Cobb knows this too. We talked with all the
city managers uh these four cities last year but we actually put it on on hold because the county commission did not approve that tax yet. And I heard from the city managers loud and clear that they would rather have the county take
that step forward and approve that 5-step local option gas tax because if the county commission didn't approve it, you all would nobody would be getting this extra funding. It has to come from the county commission. Um so we decided to put to pause that. Um we were getting
a little little ahead of ourselves until uh the commission approved that which they did last summer. Uh the collections started this January in 2026. I think you probably should have just received uh started receiving some of that that
funding. They're they're about a couple couple months behind at the state. Um so that would be you know our request is not to look at your existing dollars. It looks like this is new revenue that the county commission authorized back in the summer. All we're wanting uh is to you
be a partner regionally for us and that um again up to 10 years but it might even be less with that depending on the extra funding that we are able to commit or to able to obtain. So I know that was a lot in a nutshell
but we're here to answer any questions talk uh anything that I could pass along that would be great enough token. Thank you. Thank you. So, >> is that better?
>> Push again. It says red. >> My battery's dead. All right. So, I have on the table they're looking to see if we're interested in interlocal agreement. So, I'll open up for discussion and we can Mayor if you want to kick us off.
>> Well, it's a pretty heavy lift. So, I' I've got some questions. One of them is, is there any way to get on this connector road without first paying tolls? I'm thinking the answer is no. Is that correct? >> No. This would be a toll facility.
>> Okay. So, once you exit 417 and get onto this connector road, would there be an additional toll on this road? >> That's correct. >> There would. Okay. Um I would just say, mayor, pull it up. >> That's how we're paying the $150 million. I mean, are you just are you
just not willing to charge an extra, you know, raise the toll by 33% or whatever it is to pay for the whole thing? Is that just not the the market level? Is that what's going on? >> The it's our board guideline says that
the the for us to move forward with a facility, um, what we do is we look at the bond because how we pay for for roads is bonds. So we go out and bond all of against the future uh traffic on our
roads. So what happens is is that we look at what the cost of a facility is and the facility has to pay for 50% of the cost. This facility was going to pay for $50 million. So the gap was
another 50. That's the gap that we needed filled so that we could move forward with it. But ultimately we're the uh the region will pay the hund meaning all of our facilities together back the uh
financing and the building of this facility at 150 million. So basically the market will not bear you can't borrow any more than 150. Is that basically what's going on? >> That's what because of can we we can is a guideline. We've got
a we This isn't the only facility that we're building. >> Michelle, may I drop you next? >> Go ahead, Commissioner. Thank you, Will. So, mayor, what they do is they look at one for one funding formula for all their all their facilities. If they're
just going to pick funding formulas for each facility, it would affect how they do bonds and everything else. So, it's one formula for all their facilities. And part of it is that all the facilities pay one portion, you know,
that puts into their pot. And then what happens with the tolls, this actual segment has to pay up a certain percentage. And that's how they actually define is the project financially feasible feasible. That's how they do it. >> I'm just not getting why you don't raise the tolls. That that's
>> do I I can actually weigh in on that. Um we we do do scenario tests that look at dollar tolls. you know, just doing it $2, $3, and the revenue actually starts to go down, which means the viability goes even further down, which build that $150 million or the $50 million gap goes
up. So, there is a supply and demand with these facilities that you can't just throw it too high or you start to actually lose traffic and lose customers. >> Well, I like I would never use it in the first place. So I would just get off where I always get off on Lake Murray
Boulevard and jiggy jog the not very far away to the airport without paying any extra. So you know if I'm already and this is just me personally I'm trying to think the psychology of other people coming from Orlando any local you know I guess this isn't for locals. This is for
people who don't know that you can get to the airport with lower tolls. Uh so true tourists may just stay on this uh and not jump off it. I I would avoid the toll, I think. >> So, also think about on I4 with the toll roads,
>> uh there's a ton of traffic on the toll roads and I4. >> Uh so, the toll roads do make sense, the additional tolls >> because people will do it just for the convenience aspect of it. And I'd also tell you that I forget what year it was, Michelle, that we actually opted not to
put the additional toll within the toll in the 417 just because of that. just because people won't use it because it costs too much and they'd rather save >> the revenue goes down if it's if it's cost prohibited. >> Okay. So, it's an interesting balancing act that you guys have going on there.
So, >> it definitely is. >> Okay. I would just add one more thing that in addition to the direct access to the airport, this is a major reliever for East Lake Mary Boulevard is there is a lot of traffic coming from Valia County and they it allows them to kind of cut
that corner and get on 417 which I'm happy to sit down and kind of walk through that with you. Uh the m one of the major if not the major benefit is a reliever to East Lake Mary Boulevard which frees up the local trips for the citizens and you know the
tourist development. >> Well, can you put that slide back up on the plan because there's a piece of it that >> Winter Springs and Ovito may not be aware of because the connector is not going north, it's going south. Right. >> Good. That's a great point. Yes,
>> because you see what's happening there? That green line that comes down, it turns south into the 417 into Winter Springs and Ovito. It does not go north to the Heathrow Lake Mary area. So, we're funning all this traffic because that's where the demand is. The demand
is from down here. It goes north up that way. It does not come from the from the north south. It goes from the south up. And Will, you can speak to that. >> Yeah, it's it's to and from the north on 417 or to Orlando. We and there is an option to do it to and from the to the
north but the demand there is very low and the cost is very high. >> So you mentioned that a lot of the traffic is is from Valuchia County. Um I'm not totally seeing how this helps
Valuchia County and uh I guess the second question of that is have you approached any cities in Valuchia to ask them if they would chip in or Valia County itself? No, we have not. >> Okay. >> No. And each city as well do you and you
could comment on on that u with the how we came up with the four cities is it was the direct connection to the connector. So each of you have different. So we say you know Vidito and Winter Springs. It's about that tourism. It's about I mean your your folks use
even though you say you may not but there are a lot of people that would use this connector to get right up to East Lake Mary Boulevard um for uh sports tournaments things like that and those folks would then would come into your businesses to stay in their hotels shop
at your your uh yeah and and >> you know we don't have any hotels here right this will tell you this will open as this I tell when I say the the indoor sports facility and we've just seen what Bumba has done to this county. Wait till this indoor sports facility comes and when it opens up for you for Winter
Springs and Obito um with more with with hotels, more businesses and and with your existing businesses here and how it uh supports that. Michelle, did you have something? Sorry. >> And the other thing that I I think is interesting about this is is not
including Alamont Castleberry and Longwood. >> Longwood. Correct. Um and just thinking about who who would not approach the airport via 417, it is probably those cities. So their commutes in in Sanford, you know, they've been asked to participate, but that obviously is in
Sanford. It will improve commute times for people in those cities. But it will improve commute times for the other cities too by removing traffic from people in Ovido who not only would subsidize the toll road, but presumably use the toll road and pay extra lots. So
something about it just feels a little bit off that not only would we pay to build it, but then we would be the ones who would expect our residents to pay to then use it. And then all of the money that may this may generate, I I think most of it goes to the county first. So
any tourism tax, and I I guess this is a something I've hope we can sort out today. Any hotel tax, if we were to get a hotel, does that that goes to the county, right? Correct. Not to the city. So our hotels can only our hotels tax can only be spent in two areas. One is
advertising outside the county >> and the other one is for sports facilities. Those are the only two things we spend it on >> by statute. >> By statute. >> Okay. So then >> we don't spend it on roads. We can't. We don't spend it on things we you may want
because it's going to go for advertising outside the region and for the facilities that we built. That's it. So the direct benefit to OVO would then presumably be the sales tax portion of any hotel stay. The 1 cent, you know,
50% of that would go to the county, 25% would go to the school board. >> We also get the property tax mayor for the hotel. >> Yeah. Okay. Correct. >> Yeah. There's a big economy together, but I'm glad you brought up the other cities. Uh I failed to mention that. Longwood, Castleberry, and Elima. We're
working on other projects with them as well um with this uh 5 cent gas tax uh dollars. So that's so they they're not left off the table. It's just this was this was just a the priority that it was on even before the county commission even thought about doing a five the
extra 5 cent local option gas tax and so we are in conversations with them as well on on a different project. >> How how much is being asked of the city of each of the cities? >> Yep. I have it right here. That was a so s So, um,
total of 47 million is with the I'm sorry, no, that's not right. Here we go. Uh, Samford 11.7 million. They're the biggest contributor to this. As you say, East Lake Mary Boulevard, a lot of that's in the city. A lot of developments are there. The airports in the city, they're the biggest
contributor. And are they also is that are y'all basically asking for whatever 10 years worth of expected gas tax revenue is? So Sanford just has more gas stations. So they'll get more. >> So how this how the gas tax is is distributed and form formulates by this
the department of revenue in the state by statute this 5centent local option gas tax. You know you have another 6 cents that you already have and that's you're I mean we're not asking for any of of those the additional 5 cents that we just approved. You go back and look at your last five years of
transportation expenses, which we all did. Uh my team worked with your team and all the cities and you take that those last five years of transportation expenses. We send that up to the department of revenue. They have a statutory formula how they distribute
the funds and a lot of it is by in intake, you know, um that that and then they decide they decide how that's distributed and what amount it's distributed in. And so, so Sanford's at 11.7 million over 10 years, Lake Mary
1.5, Winter Springs is 2.6, and you are at 3.8 million. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. And that's on the current distribution that's currently exist based on transportation expenses. We weren't we didn't look at any different formula.
>> And what what was Winter Springs again? >> Winter Springs uh 2.6 million. >> 2.6. All right. Thank you. All right. That's all the questions I've got. >> Great. Thank you. >> Okay, Commissioner. >> Um, it does
it does seem like a lot for something that's a long way from here, right? As far as, uh, >> you know, as far as public works projects go. I mean, you know, getting on a toll road, getting all the way up there to build a long road that's two
lanes and 45 mph. It seems awfully frustrating to drive on, honestly. Um, can't pass anybody, probably be full of speed traps like roads like that are. I I don't
know. I I I'm just having a I'm having a hard time feeling it. And I if you don't mind if I could and uh Michelle or Will could answer this. People thought of that with the express toll lanes on I4 about um people are not going to use
those. It's not I will tell you folks locally want to get to where they want to go. They make their own choice but they want to get to their may need to get there quicker, faster. But what this is going to do, I'll tell you the most in my opinion people will pay for this. It
would be those visitors. It be the tourism folks. It will be and it could be for local people that just want to get somewhere faster and then it will free up our local roads. >> They'll pay for it, but apparently not enough,
>> right? Um can you go over something again for me? Um that slide about the the viability that that seemed to be in in conflict with what you were saying about the uh number of um with the amount of money that you can
raise from tolls. This is saying that the viability percentage is 24%. I mean is this over how many years? >> That is over what is this? I I'm sorry I I missed it. >> No how it fits with >> Good question. represent. So, we look at
a a bondable period of time, what the revenue will be over that bondable period. That's typically 30 or 40 years. In this scenario, we looked at the 40-year bond or, you know, bondable period, and that was at 41 48.1 million,
and that's a 50 cent toll, which is the the minimum we can charge for a new facility. We looked at other tolls and that revenue I'd have to go back and look at the exact numbers, but we did hit a crest and we had to bring that down. So, >> what number did you end up at?
>> The 50 cents. That's it. So, all you have to do is be a dollar and then there's no gaps. >> Well, hang on a second. I I I still don't understand. Projected total revenue over 40 years is $48 million,
>> right? >> 50 cents a pop. Yeah. Yeah. But the estimated project cost 200.4. But you made it sound like the 150 was derived somehow from the amount of toll revenue that could be collected.
>> So how how it works is we have 125 miles of expressways in the region. That entire 12 and the majority of that is actually in Orange County right now. We're in the process of building an
additional 57 miles of expressways in the region because we're a regional agency cover five counties. So the 125 miles backs the revenues on those facilities back the bonds to for us to
issue bonds to pay for this road. Okay. So yes, the construction estimate, all of the things that we um he put had up between construction, rightway, environmental, all of those things. We estimate this road is going
to cost us $200 million to build and um the revenues specifically from this project is estimated to generate $50 million. So basic this is a regional project of significance as far as we see
and we CFX's board has agreed to put in the money up to $150 million to build this facility for this regional project. Does that help? Does that make sense? >> Yeah. So you know you're talking about
how much they would have to raise the tolls. It would be systemwide. Yes. they would have to raise it percent. >> I mean, we do try to be sensitive to the fact that um there's a cost per mile on
average that we charge systemwide. Um and I'll give you an example of how that has been difficult. In Ocola County years ago, they built the Point Sienna Parkway at an elevated their toll rate
was 225 or is that right? do you recall? >> And it was uh I think it's like 40 cent a mile or something like that. And that is the highest toll rate in the area in
an area where people depend upon that road to get to and from. So we have a responsibility to the citizens too not to overcharge um uh because toll roads are a choice.
So, when you choose a toll road like I do or you do, then you're freeing up the space. Kind of what Darren said, you're freeing up the space on the non-toll roads because there are no roads are roads are not free. They do cost all of us money, taxes or tolls and so it just
diverts that traffic and it helps open up capacity on the local roads when you have a toll facility. I I guess the other place I come to is that you know last year the board of county commissioners voted 4 to one to
raise taxes on Ovidito residents raise millillage.5 and then voted 4:1 again to raise a fuel tax >> on correct >> our residents.
>> All that money goes up all that money goes up to county right. Well, we get we get we get a little bit and but now you want it back, >> right? To essentially a partnership this and remember this tax this local option
gas tax is for 50 years. So you all will be getting this for a will benefit this for 50 years. All we're asking for is the first 10. And remember gas tax is not just paid by locals. There is study out there about our private we looked at
our tourist development tax uh what gets or the sorry the penny sales tax about 30% of that is paid for people that do not live in the county so we are and so the reason we incre like you all increased your millillage I'm sure right
now we lowered our millillage.1 okay you never you didn't increase it the last couple years though okay >> well two years ago >> I knew you know >> I knew okay I knew you I knew it one But I'll tell you, this is a good question because um our county
commission made a point that they wanted to diversify our our taxes. They did not want it to be on the backs of the property owner. That's why they only raised the millage to half half a mill. The other couple other revenue sources that they were looking at to help with projects were the gas tax that would help all the cities as well as well as
our what we call our public uh utilities uh our public service tax um which which doesn't affect folks in the city. So we had cuz we did have and commissioner knows this we've had a gap for the last probably decade uh to provide services
you know we're also required to fund all the constitutionals everything so we were we're running into a financial area that's why we did that there's a lot of things we pick up the cost that you may not be aware of >> we pay for mosquito control >> for you even though we're only supposed
to do it for two years >> we're only supposed to do it for two years but we just picked it up and just kept on going for it We pay for all your recycling. >> You don't pay for it. We do. >> Right. >> A lot of things that we pay for. >> We're about to though. >> We're not asking you to pay for it unless you want to pay for it in uh
>> 911 911 communications. A lot of >> a lot of things that we pay for >> because we think that we should as good partners. >> Yeah. And as a partner, you can't always be a
winner and you don't want to always be a winner, a loser. You want to make sure that everything meets somewhere in the middle. This is one of the things the board is asking for help for. Yeah. And we've partnered and you all, but we partnered with a lot with with you all a lot on many projects. And that's is actually I have and I told you I've been
in this region my whole career, almost 30 years, and I have not seen a county like this in the seven cities and the school board work together like they do. It may sound but I've been in Orange Oyola and I have been in Lake and uh they do not partner like you all partner
and so that's what we so that's the board is asking help from this you're going to need you know some partnership help in the future I'm sure and remember this is I know money's money but it's money that you didn't have before until the county commission authorized it last year to help with transportation
projects >> if you're talking dollars even on ne tomorrow's budget tomorrow's agenda there's an item And it happened that the city of Los Veto has been paying for the lights on 417 for quite some time. So, we're transferring that over,
>> right? >> Things happen. Uh, no one is perfect, >> right? >> You have any more questions or >> Yeah, I just like to say um you know, you're talking about people other than residents paying uh certain tax. So,
like hotel tax is generally a tax on somebody else. um this fuel tax is partially a tax on somebody else. The issues with taxes on somebody else is that whenever we increase those other cities are looking at us and they say,
"Hey, well, they've got this much hotel tax now. We're going to raise it." And so, while we don't pay the tax here, we pay that same tax when we go on vacation somewhere else. Correct. >> And so, when we raise it, they're going to raise it to match. and and you know because those types of metrics are used
in the the justification of what it should be, right? Um in fact, even in the um uh the the fuel tax, I was looking through the presentation from when that came up last year at uh Board of County Commissioners, there was a table in there. Here's all the other counties. Here's what they charge. You know, some are five, some are zero, you
know, etc. Correct. >> So I So that doesn't help for for me, right? the the the fact that there's a a tax on somebody else angle for those reasons. >> And the other way to look at it, if you want to look at it, it's people it's folks that don't live here that are in
in impacting your community that are not paying for anything. So now we put a device in there where they do pay. So if they're using our roads, they pump their gas here that goes to help our transportation projects. They come here to stay in a hotel that helps our, you know, our facilities, you know. So
that's the whole purpose. It's the way the legis unfortunately we the state legislature set this the statutes up like that and um you know it's just the way that we you know cover costs for visitors who come into our region.
>> Thanks. That's all council Bradford. >> So you've gone around to the other cities already. >> Yeah. So uh Samford uh went to a workshop with with them. Um they actually have this on their agenda coming up. They're in our local like Mary has it next week on their agenda.
um depending on you all to see if when it has with yours and then Winter Springs has it on May 11th is on their agenda on their regular city council agenda. >> So you've presented to all >> No, the only I have not presented to Winter Springs yet. That's on May 11th.
>> So they put it straight on the agenda, huh? >> Correct. But so each of you cities do it differently. Some have requested a workshop. Sford did. We had a great uh conversation with them a couple weeks ago. Um yeah. um Lake Mary. Um I briefed all of them and they're going to take it
right to their council. They understand because each of cities have different positive, you know, benefits to it. You know, they're aver on Lake Mary Boulevard on the west side of Lake Mary Boulevard. It really helps them um on it. Uh Winter Springs, I've I've spoken
with them as well. So, he they're going to take it right to their their city council and we're going to be there to make the presentation uh the same that we did with you all tonight. Mr. Cob, in the staff report, it says that the annual estimated revenue from
this additional 5 cents is $388,000. Is that already earmarked for something or was it never earmarked for anything? >> I it hasn't been earmarked for it hasn't allocated. We just received our first a
first allocation from the state 31,000. So the estimate is 88 per year. Uh we do have projects that are gas taxable, but we have taken those dollars and actually put them toward a uh a specific
project. Our capital does have three projects in it that our gas tax. >> And now is that the total gas tax or just this additional 5 cents? >> Uh that would be Yeah. So, of this 388,000, is this something
that we need to keep? >> Is something we can use? Yes. >> Okay, I'm good. >> Council Britain, >> I'm kind of piggy back on that because that was my question. So, we have a I guess a total of 11 cents a gallon gas
tax, 6 cents that referendum, and this is a 5 cent additional. Yeah, it wasn't a I don't believe a six sense was a referendum. I believe that was just passed. Yeah. So, the county commission could pass that. And that 6 cents real quick um cuz I did
get that's up until 2043 and this one is for another this is for addition uh 50 years for the 5 cents. >> Okay. So I guess Ron, my question following up on it looks like we're going to be giving up the mobility improvement projects if
we don't have this money. That's correct. >> It would it would be money that would be used for mobility projects. >> Yes. So it um it's one of those where it's another tool in the toolbox where you have your local option sales tax,
you have your mobility fees, you have your six cents gas tax, then you have this one on top that you gives you another source those cost instruction. Now I have a kind of a another question
along the funding lines. I guess this is going to go from 2026 to 2015 project. >> No, that's the traffic design year. That's not the time. That's the design year that we look at and we plan for. So we we
>> 200 million was escalated to 2050. >> That's today's dollars. It's present value. >> Yes, that's current cost. >> 2050. What's it going to be? >> Well, we would have it built before 2050. the the construction timeline is I I think part of the agreement is out to
2038. Um but I think there there's already discussions of expediting that. So those are we take the I mean we look at the cost almost monthly on all the bids we get in. We look at what DOT is getting in the area and I mean that's how we get
to that $200 million number of today's cost and that's the revenue is today's revenue as well. >> Okay. So, this isn't my first time at this, but uh if we're going to have a project that's going to go out through 2038, we're
using today's dollars to fund it. Um there's going to be a shortfall sooner later cuz I know we're not going to inflation's not going to go down. Construction costs aren't going to go down. So, is that really a good number? >> It we inflation's accounted for in that.
Yes. >> Okay. So it's not spending. >> Okay. And do you have a a spending profile versus your revenue stream? >> A a study profile. >> Spending how you million.
>> We don't typically do that in a PD study. If this now has this has moved into our work plan, that's when we do set it out and it will be part of the work plan that we're adopting in June of this year. And that's when it's set out in a quarterly increments from a cost um
cash flow perspective. >> Okay. >> I'm sorry. I didn't use that. Sorry. >> Yes. This will be a bonded project. I don't sorry. >> Yeah. Yeah, it is a bonded project. Yes. And Okay. Correct. >> All right. I want to change uh
directions just a little bit here. And Mayor Slick might remember this, but uh you guys say you started studying this 20 years ago, but there was another study back then called How Shall We Grow? >> Um that was a regional study. Yeah. >> And what I remember of it was that
mostly that uh that corridor you're talking about that uh that Valuchia County uh I guess eastern seminal county corridor was one of the areas that were really really going to explode between the early 2000s and 2050.
And just so happens I was going down Highway 46 today and I I understand what you're talking about. It was jammed and I was wondering when is 46 going to get widened because it needs to be. And all those people coming off of 415 from Valuchia County are either going to go
straight or right or left on 46. And same thing coming from uh I95 in and Titusville. A lot of traffic out there. So, u if this thing goes through and you guys do this, I think it's going to it's going to have a cascading effect on 46,
415, uh and other roads out there. I don't I can't you know maybe Nick Lake Mary will be done. So, um I I can see your point of view on on wanting to do this,
but it's, you know, I I guess we'd have to go back to the drawing board, Brian, and and look at how we could fund some of the uh mobility improvements that we we'd like to do, whether we can get grants or some other alternative funding, or if we can have a handshake
with that after 10 years, we get we do get some of these funds coming out of the uh the gas tax to help with this. >> May I address that? >> Yeah. >> So, so Keith, in the I'm going to go by first names. It's so much easier. >> You can do that, >> Keith. It's so uh in the agreement,
we're only asking for 10 years. However, in those 10 years, the lady to my right, uh I'm amazed at where she can pull money from and where she's very creative in doing that. So, if we can pull money from other areas, we'll reduce your
portion. That's going to be in the agreement. Nothing. So, we're not asking for in perpetuity. We're not asking for more than what we're talking about here today. >> Correct. Is that Am speaking out of terms here? >> Right. >> Even though you may not realize that you could pull money out of thin air and maybe print money.
>> You do. >> Yeah. And and I've seen her do it. >> Okay. And also with the penny, just so for the penny sales tax, we already we already looking at shared projects with partnerships with the city too, you know, with that sort of thing. I know
we're working on 419 as well. There there could be >> there's another piece to this too because the indoor sports complex as Darren talked about 30% of the 30% of our sales tax is paid for by people outside the county. We can prove that to you. Orange County, it's
higher. It's close to the high 40s. The reason why it's higher cuz they have more tourists to us. This will bring in a large percentage of tourists that are going to be spending more and there'll be more sales tax available. I can't commit to that. But I will tell you, we
have looked at other projects and we've funded other projects in this area and helped cities overall the seven cities many times. We're not nickel and dying anybody. We would never do that and you know that Keith. >> All right.
Um just as kind of a question that'll lead up to my next comment. Is is the beach line part of your uh network? >> No. >> Is there parts of it? You know, this connector is very similar to one uh from the beach line that goes from just over
95 north to Titusville called 407. It's a two-lane road that comes off the expressway for about 5 miles. That's not part of the beach line. Is that a state road? >> Well, no. That that's not part of our facility. That's actually part of DOT's. So, >> okay. Part of going back years ago, we
were confined to Orange County. So our our beach line goes up to 520 and then from 520 east is where DOT picks up and then they have the the 407 that you're talking about and then you the 528 that turns south. Okay. So that's not really a toll road from 520 over to the the
beach >> technically for this for the turn. >> So yeah, but just on that one exit on 520, right? So technically, if you were on 520 heading north, >> so you're coming from Melbourne, you're get you're running up 520 and you take a
right on 528, when you get to the fork in the road, you can either go south on 528 and continue. It kind of turns south and then continues to Cape Canaveral >> or you can go north on northeast on 407. >> You're that toll is paying for those
spurs all the way out to the next exit essentially. So until you get off, it's it's a toll facility or until you have the option to get off, I should say. >> Okay. But it's being paid for back at >> you pay for it at 520. That's correct. >> Okay. All right. I I just wanted to bring that up because it's it seems
similar to what you're trying to do here is a is a two-lane road just to get uh get to another area. >> It is. >> Um and I this is a a comment that came out of uh the discussions that the counties pay for. Brian, you you said the county
pays for the 911 system, but don't we pay for dispatch through the county through the 911 system? >> Contract with the sheriff's office for police dispatch. Yes. >> Okay. We pay for fire. >> Police and fire. >> We pay for fire.
>> Oh, you pay for fire. Okay. Cuz that it'd be nice if we to me that's a that's a county service that's being paid for, but we get build for it out of our general fund. It would be nice if that could become a line item in our budget that says this is a a county service
that we're paying for and added on to one of the lists of of the other fees that that we have on our our tax rules. Is that possible? >> That's worth a discussion. Yes. Okay. >> And I here's what I would tell you, Keith.
As long as you give us a resolution of things you want us to look at that three of you have passed >> that voted for it, we'll entertain it. >> Okay. I will not entertain one thing from any one individual, no disrespect to any one of you, but as long as you as a group,
three or more, we'll entertain it. >> Okay. Well, maybe we can add that as a discussion item. >> Absolutely. >> For one of our meetings, we can talk it. >> Um, I think that's all I have. I I I think there's a lot of concern over this. I just wanted to make the point
that if we're looking it's and I'm not going to benefit from this thing one iota. They'll be long gone by the time this thing's done. So, um, but you got you got to look. >> I believe that's what you said. >> Well, in 2050, I see 2038 up there. I'm not sure we're going to make 2038 yet,
but we'll see. We'll hope we can do that. But, uh, we got to I've always said we have to look over the horizon as a city council. Sometimes we get a little shortsighted. >> And, and Keith, much on that. And if you really want us to be a partner, uh, there's other things that we can be
partnered with. I would love to do a hotel study that we would pay for half of it in your area if that's what you want. >> Okay? >> We've done that in other cities, city of Sanford, we've done it. We've done it for the airport. We pay for 50% of it if the city wants us to do that. Okay?
That's and you can give that to developers and they can actually go to the bank to borrow money off of it. All right? just just saying we got to look over the horizon and and if we don't plan now um I did a bunch of climate change studies and the outcome
was if we don't start planning now uh we're going to be in a bad shape later. So now is the time to start doing this sort of thing. >> Okay. And then I I think that goes up to me. So um I want to say I do think we partner pretty well on some things. We've done our 419 road and we have
worked with the county a lot. So um I would not say we're bad partners. I would also say partners. Um, this project in particular though, I understand we haven't received the funds before, but as you pitch this, if I um agree with the success that you say it's
going to bring, which I don't have any reason to think you're wrong, it it also brings some other problems to our city. Um, if we have all this success and we are going to have more people in our city and more cars in our city and more things moving through our city, then I
hesitate to also give you the money away that's going to solve the problem we're going to create. Um, so we're looking at $388,000 a year. And I assume, Mr. Cobb, our our project list for mobility is going to be it's it's always way more
than whatever we have. >> All of all of ours all of us. >> It's never ending. all of us. So, I personally hesitate on this one. I see the vision. I see what you're trying to do. I don't disagree with it. I don't have an issue with the project, but I do
I see us having more of an impact with the money staying here for our mobility projects within the city. That's just personally where I stand. But I do think we're good partners. Um, and I the other question I have is you've talked to all these cities. Has anybody officially said yes, especially Sanford being the
biggest? >> Yeah. Uh, no. They if you're talking about an official vote, no, they they all start next week. So, um, I'm we're making the rounds. We have, in fact, I've been talking to the managers what since January, February on this. And
actually, this was just one of the options we looked at. We were like just brainstorming what other funding options can we do to make up up the gap. And so this is the one we landed or sorry that I landed on if you will and the board uh because it was a new revenue source that
doesn't exist and and that uh the board had an opportunity to take advantage of it and which they did uh to move forward with. um this sometimes regional projects it's hard to see close but again 20 years from now we're I honestly
do believe that you're going to see the the benefit and I promise you I said that and Tony knows this and commissioner Delari we are very aggressive in getting other funding dollars that immediately goes to the partners that does the county commission
is is keeping their 25 million into this we've already sent it to CFX they already have it any additional dollars that come into this will be proportionately reduced from each of the cities. So that's that's the board's commitment and they have given us a task
and we are working on it. It could even be we're working with our our legislative delegation for appropriations. We're working at the federal level as well. So um there's a good opportunity that this won't be for 10 years. It might be less than 10 years. >> Interesting. Okay. Does anybody have any
further questions? And then I guess I will ask if we have consensus to move forward with um putting this to a resolution or not. At this time I I would like to find out some other ways that we might could
partner to figure out if we can offset the loss to make sure that we're keeping some kind of value here in the short term. >> Yeah. Same. >> Okay. Okay. So, it doesn't sound like we have consensus to move forward with a resolution at this time.
>> I could be my mind could be changed. So, um so for right now for right now, we just want to understand it's like the 388,000 if if there's a way that we can fund the mobility projects that we have in town and we don't need that even though it's brand new, then yeah, I I
definitely would be open to it. >> Okay. So, I'm hearing not a definite no, but we need more information. And well, does anybody from our finance department know what our invoice is for dispatch? I believe it is higher than
400,000 a year. So I mean things like that where city of Lvita residents pay the same full freight tax as everybody else in Simino County yet they pay an additional fee to get this dispatch service which people who live in unincorporated areas get at no additional charge.
that things like that. We need to be more transparent with our residents as we move forward in this wacky um in the wacky weather from Tallahassee. Um so that that is one one way that we could
perhaps partner together quickly cuz do I understand correctly that you guys need to get this secured by May? >> So the Department of Revenue has uh deadlines. So we have to have it up to them by June 1st for it to take effect
January of 2027. >> Okay. >> So that's why we've been working on it the last last couple months. So the interlocals have to be entered into by the end of May by both parties for it to be effective. If it happens after that, we can work on you know something
internal that um >> like get localized >> that that you all could just you all you could receive the funds and just you know send them to us. that we were hoping that we can get them all done uh in the month of May. >> 472,000. That's what our bill for dispatch is. So, you know, six of one,
half dozen of the other. >> I don't know that we have clear uh consensus on how to move forward on this one. Mr. Cobb, what do you think we need right now? You you asked I heard you need more information, but I'm not sure what information you're really looking for.
>> I want to know if they'll pay for dispatch. I mean, that's the information I need. I think that's a different topic. >> Kind of is a different topic. >> It's a It's a tradeoff that helps absorb the cost of of or the value of this uh
this gas tax, >> but then it doesn't get you guys where you need to go. You just need more money. So, if you give us $472,000 of value and we give you 300 3.8 million in exchange at a rate of what is it? 388,000 a year, you're upside down.
>> Okay. I'm not saying we need to we need to have the county pay for it for free, but I just wanted to be put on maybe the the the tax bill as a line item under the county's taxes. >> Are you saying you would like to see a law enforcement fee applied to county residents? Because I think that'd be great.
>> We're topic. We're really so as far >> about alternatives to to get the >> And that's fine. So all right, >> that's fine. So as far as tonight though, we I'm not hearing consensus to move forward with resolution. Is that correct? >> That is correct. >> That is correct. So as far as that,
that's where we're at. >> Well, we appreciate your time. Absolutely. The ability to present this to you. >> Thank you for coming out. Thank you. >> If you give us a moment to excuse ourselves and get on with business. All right, we're going to take a couple minutes.
>> All right. >> Good water. >> Yeah. >> Well, actually, maybe. Yes. Just in case. You'll learn from last time. But that's not that. >> Oh, okay.
>> Oh, you want me to do that? Okie dokie. Ben, why are you all dressed up? >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, thanks again. Heat. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.
Heat. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Oh, we're still missing one. >> All right, we're I I a climate change advocate here. >> I I did some stuff with government.
>> Okay. >> Well, now I don't see really far away. We should take out a table to get closer. You just like shove the tables closer. >> Does this one work? >> Does this This one works. >> This one sort of works, too. Yeah.
>> Check. Okay. Close this up at >> Okay, we're going to move on to our next order of business, which is our solid waste residential service request for
proposals. Mr. Cobb. >> Can you hear me okay with this one? This working? No. Okay, I'll try this one. How about this? Ah, there we go. All right. Now we're Now we're What is it? Now we're cooking with bacon. Is that
it? Um, yes. Thank you. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Uh, tonight we have a proposal for you uh to We want to go over with you the solid waste. Uh, we are coming to the end of our current contract with our current provider,
residential provider. It will end at September 30th of 2027. We want to start the process now. Uh which uh those of you who were with us 7 years ago, you remember the first thing we did was we sat down with council and
we wanted to talk about services and we wanted to talk about uh how we provide those services so that we could get a good idea about where what we wanted to put out onto the street. And so, uh, one of the things we've also learned postco
is that it have there's a very large lead time on how to get trucks. So, if we decided that we wanted to go a different route than from our our current provider, that's something we would have to take into account. And so, what we're trying to do, we want to start now so that the possib the hope is
that we'll be issuing the RFP in January so that then we've got from January to September to get them online if it is a new company. And so, uh, Mr. John Cbertson's here. He helped us with our last RFP and so he's going to have a presentation for you tonight and I I'm going to but I'm going to first I'm
going to turn it over to Mr. White. He has a few opening remarks before Mr. Culperson begins. >> Well, I I had a few opening remarks until Mr. Cobb just took everything I wanted to say away. Uh but I'll just add to what he said really why we want to start now. you know, we want to prepare
a bid, advertise it, um, review the bids, award, and then provide the contractor ample time to get geared up for service, assuming it's a different contractor. We don't know, could be Waste Pro, could be somebody different, but lessons learned from the last time. That's why we want to start this early
and get started now. Um, and really, you may not want to change anything. U, but Mr. Dr. Cton is going to provide some different options you might want to consider that that could or could not potentially have some cost savings associated with something to give a thought to and then we we definitely asked for you to ask questions um once
he's done and then we'll go from there. But with that, John, all right, first thing, sound check. Sounds like that's working. Okay. Um well, so after uh uh you've already been through somewhat of a lengthy and detailed process, I want to set a few expectations that it is my intent to go more quickly through the
slides than they're there. But we tend to be fairly content heavy on slides, but honestly, um, I'm going to go pretty quickly through most of them because a lot of them are recapping some things you are probably already know about your system, talking a little bit about the regional market. Uh, and the focus is intended just to be on, uh, options you
may have, uh, you in terms of staying the course with current services or going a variety of different directions. So uh with that as background um the quick word I will say about um I'm the a principal of a specialized management consultant. Um I think it's important
that we have made a decision as a business to provide only management consulting services to public sector entities. We don't work for haulers. We don't work for technology providers. We don't work for equipment salespeople. We're not advocating some form of recycling or composting. We're here to
represent the interests of our clients and we think that's really important. We don't even have an engineering practice. So we're not trying to lead you into a planning process so we can design your facility. And we think that's a part of the market that we prefer to be in. So as we offer services, that's always our mindset is to try to understand. I I
I've got, you know, great uh respect for your understanding of your residents and the values here. And we look at our role as providing data that you can rely on to then apply your values and make good decisions for your community. So I'm going to go pretty quickly through the agenda. Um the only thing that's read on
this highlight is looking at uh some of your service delivery options because um as with any um capital intensive contract from 5 to 7 years, you don't get too many options to change the way you do business. And if you are going to do that, um I it is delightful to have a
city client that is this far ahead in their procurement starting this process as opposed to calling us with, you know, 7 or 8 months before their contract comes due, which is not a sufficient amount of time to to get the services you want at a price that's going to be competitive. So, um so I think uh um I
think we've already heard most of the data about when uh your your contract uh comes due and we have good lead time, so I won't go through that. I'm also going to go pretty quickly through your current collection system. Uh my my opening statement is on the one hand nothing in sanitation is rocket science,
but on the other hand, every community has a few details. They do it the way they do it for whatever reason. Uh and the devil is in the details in our business. It's a very local regional business um with characteristics in one part of the state that may not uh relate or be the same as characteristics in
other parts of the state. So in Ovido uh suffice to say uh your residents have uh I think a high level of service. Uh they're getting refu recycling yard waste. They get bulky waste. Uh it's built into a monthly fee. So pretty easy to administer. Pretty high level of
service. Uh and uh it's funded through uh through user fees. So um all the foundational elements are there to deliver good service uh at a transparent price so residents know what they're you know know what they're paying for. So we won't go into details um in terms
of how the service is delivered. Uh this is the the service territories for weekly collection. Uh there are we'll get into some frequency issues because that is one of the decisions to make is are you happy with current frequency? But um just a couple things to point out that while yes, this is about renewing
your residential curbside collection, there are a few other services that are built into this contract that uh allows the city to have your hauler provide additional services at additional costs, including at some city buildings, including uh putting containers out for
uh special events. Uh and so um all of those things um most vendors are happy to do. Um it used to be that a lot of uh city councils and county commissions would ask for those services to sort of be tucked into the pricing sort of sort of hidden. Uh we are a big advocate for
being clear and fair and transparent in terms of that pricing and we actually move that way so that the city now if you ask for these services you know exactly what your vendor is charging and so that's another part of our philosophy is to be very clear and transparent. Um I want to point out that I'm speaking
of the residential curbside service. The city also has uh other uh franchises in place to manage multif family and commercial collection. Um that is not what we're talking about right now. That those are non-exclusive franchises that
uh simulate somewhat an open market. So just pointing out that uh that is not currently to be discussed. However, I will point out uh in Florida and in other parts of the country, there is a decision to make when a community goes out to contract for residential service
of whether or not to bundle commercial service with it. Um, and I'm not here to advocate one way or another. I'm only here to point out that there are are alternatives. And if if you're interested, we can >> Well, I I believe that the state made it next to impossible to do that because
you have to then buy out anybody's contract who's in your city. So that's a whole that's a legal issue for but so >> so um so yeah. No, that that's good to bring that up. Uh I'm not an attorney so I can't speak to that in terms of a
legal context but it is our technical interpretation that if you already have non-exclusive franchises that you have regulated the market and it would be your option to then uh go from non-exclusive to exclusive or to further reduce the market. But I completely agree. I would defer to the city's legal
council um and making that decision and having that discussion. So in any case moving along, sorry to get distracted there. Uh a couple of things that we like to look at uh as we've gotten uh heavier and heavier into procurement uh is just recognizing um how the city
you're working within as I listened to the previous uh presenters you work within a county system through a variety of uh of partnerships and teaming arrangements and certainly uh the disposal and recycling services are no different. Uh so the city works in with Semol County. Um I have some
benchmarking comparisons of pricing. Uh, I'm going to go pretty quickly through them. Number one, the numbers are small. Um, this is there will be no pop quiz, but if you like to look at this and and want to reference it, it is helpful. Um, I will I will say I think it's pretty easy to to throw other city rates in
front of people and make comparisons and I'll jump to the graphical version that shows that Ovito is about in the middle. To be perfectly honest, uh it's it's I would caution drawing any strong conclusions strictly from looking at rates to truly compare your cost of
service or the rates you're receiving from your vendor. Uh you would need to go through quite a number of other issues in terms of service delivery and service levels. Um so certainly we looked within Semino County, so there are a lot of similarities, but what I would say is Ovito is getting re re
reasonably charged at the moment. I think that that's the strongest takeaway I would make. Um, and it is important to if you're redoing this contract to make sure you get the services that your residents want. So, regional waste market, I'll make a quick statement. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on too
many of these slides. Um, I did hear that uh um the county indicated that uh you that they pay for recycling. Um I our understanding is that the county is intending to um change their rates in a
way that makes the cost of recycling not hidden and bundled in the overall cost of all of their tip fees and other services. Um at the end of the day, if city of Avido is delivering waste and recyclables and paying county tip fees, you're paying into an enterprise fund. it's kind of up to the county to decide
how they want to pay it, but it is our understanding um that recycling will uh have an equivalent cost to solid waste going forward. Uh and so uh we obviously that's going to be part of the overall cost of the system. Um and this is really just I was actually here a couple
weeks ago. Um I believe the county's rate consultant uh provided this information. It just shows uh this bringing forward the cost of recycles processing and then setting some escalation rates. So that all plays into the overall cost of your residence. Um, a couple of other things we look at. You
had a question. >> Can I ask you to say that again? Um, you're saying that currently the county believes or or you believe that the uh cost of recycling is built into the tip fee for
uh regular disposal. Even though your chart here says it was $41 current or it is $41 currently, it's going to go up and then Yeah, you know what? I I cycled I apologize. I probably was was a little a little glib in that discussion. Um
stepping back to what does it cost to transfer and bury it trans so waste and recyclables can go to a transfer station where it's loaded into big trailers. So there's a cost to load it, there's a cost to transport it, then there's a cost to bury it in a landfill. Um, if
it's recycling, there's a cost to run it through an industrial plant to sort it out and, you know, aggregate it and bail it. So there is the cost to handle a ton of recyclables inclusive of the processing is higher than the cost to
just dump a ton of waste in the ground and cover it with dirt. That industrial process is more expensive. So strictly from a cost standpoint, the rates being charged for tip fees for disposal by the county that 41 I can't quite I got to look at a closer screen. 4163
um probably pretty good, probably on point to cover the full cost of all the disposal. Um charging zero for recyclables processing is definitively losing money for the county, but the county has to cover their entire expense. I do not know and I apologize
if I represented that. I I do have a thought about how the county does it. But my point is the county uses tip fees in whatever combination it sees fit to cover the cost of its solid waste facility infrastructure. Um I think what I would interpret is by um making the
processing fee for recycling the same as landfill disposal fee. Um, I would argue that the county is going in a rational direction to make its fee structure more, you know, more accurate relative to the cost to those two different waist stream management pathways. So,
does that get at what you were looking for? I I probably was not very clear and maybe even the second time around struggled. >> Well, so I think what you're saying is is perhaps there's something else that's covering that rather than that 4163.
So, um I think I think the so the county's rate study as I understand it um which I believe has driven uh the rates that we have pulled. The purpose of that rate study is to look at the current full cost of the system and then
the blend of different rates that the county then would charge to cover its its full costs. And I think I would be more responsible to say that if the county has been charging zero dollars for recycling, um it's either under
acrewing revenue for the whole system or it's charging more in some other fee to cover what is in fact a cost for recycling. But I do not have any inside understanding of exactly how their rates work and lead to their their overall system health. But you don't expect that
at some point in the past or maybe even now that they are selling those materials that they're recovering to cover that cost. Absolutely. So if you look at the full cost of recycling, it's made up of collection, processing, and then you're selling your
secondary materials to the commodities market. The collection's pretty fixed. It costs what it costs to run trucks around. The processing per ton is pretty fixed. It cost what it costs to run a ton of recyclables and sort it all out. The value of those sorted recoverable commodities fluctuates on the commodity
market like pork bellies, oil, you name it. And if you go back 5 to 10 years, we've seen both very high peaks and very deep valleys uh in the recycled markets. And so, um, without I'm probably getting a little more off on a tangent, but, um,
this is moving by implementing a rate for on a per ton rate for recyclables, the countyy's moving towards a little bit more rational revenue structure for covering the cost of recycling. You seem like a numbers person. The best
practice, I would argue, is that whoever's delivering recyclables pays the processing fee to cover that processing cost. but then receives a significant percentage of the value of the sorted recovered recyclables. So it it's a way to share the risk, cover the
cost, but earn the the benefits. So in high markets, you might actually make a little money. In low markets, you may not make any money or you may even have to pay a little bit more. And it depends. And we've seen both sides of that over time. So probably more than anybody wanted to hear. So appreciate
it. Um, so, uh, um, we always go look at regional disposal facilities, which actually is not overly important here because you work within the county system. But this next map, I'll just pause briefly. Um, as you're looking for a collection vendor, um, I think a
takeaway if you look at the vendors around this area and the locations of their fleet yards, um, I think our interpretation is we do thankfully have a fairly competitive market here in Central Florida. Um if you uh look at um your current hauler, you'll happen to
notice they're one of only two that actually have a yard here in Semino County. And there is no question that the closer your fleet yard is to your customer uh and to your disposal and recycling facilities, in theory, the more competitive you should be able to price a job because you have the least
amount of non-productive time driving your heavy duty trucks from your fleet yard to your city. And so this map gives a little bit of a clue as to how one might expect competitive dynamics to bear out uh if all of the vendors are uh are in fact focused on providing price
and wanting to win business and grow volume. Um I would be remiss if I did not point out that sometimes in the waste industry uh not all vendors are operating under the same business assumptions. Uh they go through different phases where they're trying to grow market value, where they're trying
to raise prices. Um, and all of those things together create whatever competitive dynamic in the market. But thankfully, there are a lot of providers here. So, that's that's a plus. All right, I'm going to I'm going to try to hit the highlights on service delivery.
So, as I said, uh, with a 5 to 7-year contract, which is what you have now, if you're going to change course, that can be a big deal both for transition issues and frankly, um, our industry is one of inertia. Uh, your residents get used to what they what service they like. Um, but really I'm going to focus on two
things in terms of changing service delivery. Frequency of collection, you know, do you do it more or less frequently or stay the same? And the manner in which you ask your customers to set out their materials. So, uh, all of those things will they're all changeable, but they all could have
impacts on, uh, how the market might uh, anticipate and price them. Uh, and certainly they'll have impacts uh that you'll hear from your residents uh, in terms of opinions. Um, so there is, I think, a lot of information on this table. And so I'm just at the moment I'
I've actually uh when this was put together by sta by my uh my staff, they uh they loaded a fair amount on here. I'm going to try to be as concise as I can, but what you'll see is you'll see frequency and you'll see set out limits. Uh and so uh I'm not going to go read
each of these other than to say if you go down the lefth hand column, uh you we're looking at different materials. So, refuse collection frequency, recycling frequency, um, in the recycling program, what recyclables do you target? And so, I'll come back a little bit to those. Uh, and then what
is your frequency for a bulky way set out? And what do those setouts look like? So, you know, one simple way to think about this is if this is all going great and your residents love it and you love it and your hauler's not complaining, well, maybe maybe your current uh all your current frequencies
are great, maybe your setout limits are great. But if you look across the industry, there are many there are many variables that other cities and counties have chosen that are different than what you do now. And so, uh, when it comes to refues, uh, Ovito in Florida, we have a
combination of once a week service and twice a week service if you go around the state. And so, to me, Ovito's already made this shift to once a week. Recycling in Ovito is once a week. Um, recycling's been costly for some communities. We have seen some communities shift from a
weekly to every other week collection. If you reduce the frequency of a service, you will reduce the cost to provide that service. Um, not necessarily linearly, but but def definitively from an op from an operational basis. Um, looking at at bulky waste, bulky waste is probably the
most variable service in the state and even the country. There are no standards. We see bulky waste collected everywhere from weekly to quarterly to twice a year across the state and across the country. Um, so I think already there's a pretty good balance in Ovida
with twice a month. But there's some communities that go to entirely a call-in system. There's no scheduled bulky. You want bulky, pick up the phone, call a hauler, get a rate, have them schedule it, and come pick you up when they can get it. So again, a lot of a lot of differences are possible. Uh, and certainly the setouts for bulky
waste have a big impact on cost. the more you ask your vendor to pick up on any one setout, um the kind of the the harder operationally it is for them to do their routing. So, uh just a few more alternatives, just the highle summary. Uh yard trash
set out limits. That's a little bit interesting. So, in Florida, we've seen a bit of a steady flow from uh the old yard waste, humongous piles of brush into more organized bundles and containers. uh and we have started to see communities put yard waste carts out
at households. So yes, that's another footprint in somebody's garage or in somebody's backyard, but from a collection uh efficiency standpoint, anytime you can have an automated arm pick up a cart, that is a faster, more efficient form of collection uh than a manual collection system. So we've
started to see uh those carted yard waist services. Um, I am not here to say that I would expect to see a food scrap uh diversion, but if you look beyond Florida, if you look nationally, um, there are many communities pilot testing adding food scraps in with their yard
waste because those are huge sources of methane and landfills. They're highly compostable. You can recover nutrients, etc. So, I looked at, again, my role is to share a broader view, not to say there's any one thing that's right for the city. Um the last sort of uh to me a little
bit of technical detail uh that I wanted to mention has to do with is there might be an interest in specifying some kind of technology for automated collection. Currently you've got automated side load trucks. I really should have had a picture put in here but I didn't. Uh but there are other forms of automated
trucks that if you imagine the front load trucks that pick the dumpsters up that put the arm on on a dumpster so that the driver can see what's going in and observe is this contaminated is this inappropriate? Is that a can of paint? Is that a propane canister? So there are some technology options. Although
candidly I would rarely advise the city to dictate a technology. I think dictate your service and let your service provider probably select your technology. So, um, so having just gone through a variety of alternatives to the different material streams you collect, um, there
I now have two slides that go in the same order and duplicate the same thing and talk a little bit about pros and cons. So, timing wise, I'm feeling like I don't want to get into a ton of detail on each of these rows for pros and cons. But, um, again, generally speaking, um,
there's just a trade-off between level of service. The higher the level of service, the higher the cost it is to provide that service. And so in many regards um as we look at this slide uh just briefly um we're trying essentially to point out um you know what are going
to be those cost impacts of some of these different options. Uh and some of the options do uh have been shown to impact behavior if you go from weekly recycling to every other a week. Some studies will show that residents recycle equally well. Other studies will show that those residents don't recycle as
well on their off week. So, there are some behavioral issues that uh that you could get into. Um, let me just give a quick skim on this one to see if there's anything that I really want to point out. Um uh I think the opening statement I would
have is that the current frequency of collection that the city has for all of the materials that we generate here in Florida uh is a very strong and widely inuse level of service. I I think that would be my that would be my opening
statement. Um in some regards uh if you are looking at changing things um I would love to hear about that. I' I'd love to know about that and maybe debate that a little bit. Um, but there is nothing that stands out in your current service level as being an outlier to your level of service.
So, I think I have one more slide and I do and I'm just going to skim it over real quick to see if there's something that I want to call out without walking you through way too many words. So, uh, um, I think I think my suspicion is your
trash collection, if you're not hearing issues from residents about out of cart setouts and not having enough capacity, um, you're probably pretty good with once a week. Um, carted recycling is plenty of volume to to handle household recyclables. A lot of our clients hear
from their haulers about high levels of contamination in their recycling carts because nobody's looking inside that lid. So, I might I might ask uh for feedback on whether you're hearing about too much contamination. Um I don't
believe I have heard that. I think Oto has historically done a pretty good job with its recycling uh cleanliness, which is ex uh increasingly important and I think will continue to be increasingly important. cleanliness of recyclables um is something that this nation didn't do
very well at the outset of the industry and I think we're finally getting serious and getting better about that. Um some interesting considerations to me would include do you cart your yard waste? Do you provide a third cart for yard waste? A 95gallon cart it's pretty
good size. Um there's certainly a kind of a fairness component. If everybody has a cart, everybody has the same capacity for yard waste. that probably forces c certain yards to spread their yard waste every week and then yards with less yard waste maybe only set that card out once every two or three or four
weeks but it's another cart that you have to find a home for it in a footprint you know whether on your yard in your garage and so th those are issues that will impact everybody uh but I think that is you know potentially interesting and is a trend that we're seeing um the the other comment I would
make about trends in general uh unfortunately the solid waste collection industry has been in the top 10 um least safe industries in OSHA uh as ranked by OSHA for over 10 years. Uh and we seem to jump around between about four and seven. Uh and every time the industry
seems to make progress, we have a bad year and then it it kind of climbs up the list on, you know, deadliest industries. And so automation is definitely the way your vendors want to go. um anything that uh a city can do uh
to drive automated collection uh is going to be more favorable uh and probably I mean again I a lot of things impact pricing but that I do think that is worth keeping in mind which is maybe why I'm pointing out the carded yard waste but again
vendors are continuing to provide manual yard service in craft bags and and customer containers it's not like they're not going to price that or they're going to be ridicous ridiculously unfair on that. Um, but I just think it's been a steady trend to automate to the greatest extent possible. Um, on bulky waste, I would
say also there's a trend of managing setout size to keep routing efficient and fair. Um, we have some clients that allow very very large bulkway setouts which can disrupt an entire route if you get unlucky. And so that's generally already managed in Ovido as well.
So, I'm going to breeze through the rest of the slides to get to questions. The procurement process, it's already been mentioned that um to the city's credit, you are uh well out in front of things. Um we I'll I'll throw this out. Um uh
having done having been involved in the last iteration of the city's procurement, um we have a bit of a head start. We have a good model, I think, for this time. I think I think there's a unless you really want to try to price a whole lot of different options, I think you're in pretty good shape going
forward. Um, don't be surprised, no matter how easy and vanilla your procurement is, don't be surprised to get a protest or threats from the hauling community about some kind of impropriety because for whatever reason, that seems to be a a trend that we're seeing. Um, it's pretty competitive and
and we do see posturing, if you will. So sometimes uh sometimes that's something we have to face but uh but ultimately um the goal is to be transparent in what you're asking thorough in what you're asking for. Ask for it in industry parlance so that the market isn't kind
of guessing that they can see that you really know what you're talking about and that's the key to getting very competitive pricing in what should be a competitive market. So it's a good should be a good position to be in. Not the case in every part of the country. Um we've included a timeline which we
don't need to go line by line and this just brings kind of a conclusion uh of looking for guidance. Um I would just raised the high level question is it a stay the course service or have you heard things or have you formulated thoughts that make maybe it is time to
go test different prices. Uh and it is very important to point out that you can absolutely test different service levels and ask for pricing for multiple options. Uh and so this is also not only is this an opportunity to change, but maybe even better, it's an opportunity
to compare and contrast what the market would charge you to possibly change up how frequently you collect or how you are asking your residents to set out their materials. Uh and so I think the art of this uh of this solution if I
mean obviously if you're dead set on doing exactly the same thing this becomes a pretty straightforward process. Um if you are interested in comparing and contrasting some different options because you're hearing interest from your residents or elsewhere that is also absolutely what you would want to do as part of the procurement process to
inform you as elected officials to make good decisions for your residents. So, um, with that, uh, I think I'm here to, uh, answer any questions, uh, and hopefully set set the city up to then proceed with, uh, with a procurement
process, uh, that follows your sense of things. >> Okay. Thank you. Do we have any questions? >> I'll start off with those guidance. >> I I think right now we're just asking for questions and then Mr. Cob, if I'm
right here, we're looking for going to RFP, correct? >> Yes. >> So, I have a preliminary question. >> I think Council Britain had it to start, but we'll get >> I'll start off by saying that I'm perfectly happy with all four components of our current service, the yard trash,
recycling, waste waste cycling, and and the bulk bulk uh pickups. Um, I from a personal standpoint, I use the recycle bin, but I don't fill it up every week. I think maybe something to look at is an
every other week and how that works as far as people understanding what their week is to pick it up. I don't know. Maybe it's better to just keep it once a week at a lower level. But, uh, that's that's my take. The other question I had is maybe Brian you can answer this that
the county fees that that were shown for tipping fees or whatever does that get buried in as a pass through to waste pro or how do we pay that? >> Oh no we pay it directly. >> So we get a bill for that that's part of the the monthly bill that we charge our our
>> we get an invoice from the county and it is built into the rate. >> Okay. So we can expect that to go up. Does that >> expect that? Yes. >> Okay. But but that would be a side issue from the from the uh waste collectors the RFP that we're looking at. >> Correct. Okay. Unless they want to do it
for us. >> I from what I've heard from Waste Pro, they actually like the fact that we pay the the tipping fees ourselves. >> Okay. All right. That's all I had. >> Yeah. Uh well, so this is a a before that input even kind of a question and
and uh I'm a little bit confused as from our staff why it appears that we have hired a consultant with you know I don't I'm not understanding why we are paying a consultant. I I appreciate you giving us a a thing of a little presentation
here. Um it doesn't seem like a very complicated process. So unless somebody can explain why we can't just have Yeah, I have volunteered to staff to write the RFP using a pretty good um template that has been used by
other cities. And if because it's it's basically multiple choice. Do we want it once a week? Do we want to duplicate the service? Like it's it's very wrote. So, the amount being charged, which I believe is $50,000, I I am struggling to
understand that aspect of it. I may be incorrect. That's what staff has told me is the >> I guess I guess a quick comment. Um, in ter So, in terms of charged, I heard you say $50,000. >> Um, so uh I >> like this is not a question for you.
This is a question for staff. Like do we just we just pick this guy cuz we like him. like you seem nice enough, but you know, I really just I don't know what the going rate is. I I'm not sure how he arrived. >> We used Mr. Cersonson's company before with the original bid 6
years ago. He helped us prepare the original RFP. So, yes, he's our go-to expert because it's the only one that we've used in the past so far. We've used him because staff, there's no technical expertise on staff for solid waste. As I explained before when we had
the previous work session with the rate study, we don't have that expertise on staff. I don't have it. The city engineer doesn't have it. The assistant city engineer doesn't have it either. So, we need someone that we can fall back on for the business way the business of solid waste is run as an
expert. Otherwise, we're >> So, is the presumption that people are going to tell us lies that we won't be able to understand ourselves? Because it looks to me like they're just going to I don't know. I I think everybody should tell us the truth and we can put everything into a chart, make it apples to apples. But if if this is something
that you guys don't have bandwidth for and you don't want to and this is something that we need to bake into the cost, if everybody else is okay with it, I can I can wrap my brain around it. I mean, as as far as okay with it, it's well, I guess it's what we're doing. But that being said, I've been on the
private side of a lot of these things and consultants end up saving you a lot of money, especially a third party, which I think he explained really well at the beginning, is that he doesn't work for any of these waste haulers. So, it's I agree some of the stuff is are we going to do the same thing? Are we going to change it? But I do think there's a
lot of nuance and how you negotiate a contract and I can see why our staff brought him on. And have we done any like basic comparison of market rates for this kind of thing? I don't know how many waste consultants are in this area. >> No, but I would suspect that the cost for this goound would be less than the
original. We have an RFP from the original proposal that would be marked up for this go around. Wouldn't be shouldn't be too much variation. Um >> so it might be less than $50,000. >> Let me explain where the $50,000 came from. >> Okay. >> $50,000 is a budget. It is not it's not
a task order. So when when we determined we needed to move forward with this RFP process, I needed to come up with a budget. So what I did was I took the original number which was 42,000 and just round it up to 50 to assume this is this should be enough to do whatever we whatever possibly comes up either what
we think we need or what council comes up with any ideas this will be enough and then we can use that money which was approved as part of the midyear adjustment as part of going forward with the task order and that's to be determined that'll be negotiated following tonight because I needed to know what does council want if anything
if you don't want anything different it's a pretty easy process to renew an RFP that Pretty much most of that can be done in-house with staff. Mr. Culbertson is here because of the business and the nuance. We had a bid protest as far as the original bid that we desperately needed his help with and it worked out to our favor fortunately. So that's why
that's why he's here. >> Okay. Now that I know your budgetary number, you got to cut me a little little swag. We're not the most professional guy, but on a serious note, trash, right? I'm I'm here to we little guys. I I've
got a staff of 20. Uh I'm not a big engineering firm. I don't employ a fleet of attorneys. I don't have I'm I'm the owner. I, you know, I I don't have to make some margin. Um, we'll work with you at whatever level. I mean, really, if if if Mr. Wyatt tells me, hey, we're going to go ahead and put this draft
together and send it over wants me to spend a couple hours reading it, we'll do that. If in other words, >> so you're willing to hold their hands less if it if we turn out not to need as much help. Is that basically? >> Yeah. And and the so the the way that we look at that as a professional in the
industry is I mean in some regards to be honest you get what you pay for. If if you just want us to skim over some stuff we'll say yeah sure have at it and and we'll point out what's good or bad but it's kind of up to you to fix it and make it right and make sure you know you've got all the tees crossed and the
eyes dotted. Um I think for us I I think a lot of times we are asked to do a larger amount of the procurement and formulate the valuation criteria strategy and develop the you know the pricing matrices and the evaluation matrices and then frankly the re I mean
the only thing when I heard 50 the only I can think of because of this sort of latigious nature of the vending community right now a lot of times the procurement I mean we can we we'll price the procurement it'll be well less than that but If you get in negotiations and protests and battles, that's kind of
where the the buffer comes. And to me, that's that's why it would be a $50 planning budget. So, if things go really smoothly, I would not as much as it pains me, let that fee go to waste. I I would I would >> I was like backing up like if you get 250 an hour, like that's like
>> Yeah. We'll totally work on appreciate that. Thank you. One other thought I had just just to share with you is so what whatever the budgetary number comes out to be with a work order think of that divided by seven because if we do the same procurement period so 5year contract with two one-year adjustments
take that number divided by seven that's the investment the city is making to protect the citizens over the time peri you think about that divide by seven you're you're at $7,000 a year plus you know as an investment kind of protection to fall back to make sure we have
someone that can help us So, >> all right. Thank you, >> Deputy Mayor. If I could, I served on the review committee last time. And I can tell you the terminology that comes in with these responses. Uh, I needed him to help me interpret. And the one
thing he also was a huge help with was like the mayor was talking about is going to apples and apples. Uh, being able to process uh we had we had proposals that came in with the mechanical arm. We had proposals that said no, we don't do that. However, we want to provide even though we said we
want the mechanical arm, the others there were proposals that came in that had some other form of of of collection and being trying to be able to differentiate and be able to show to compare those costs. He he was a tremendous help in doing that. So yes,
we may not need as much help now with the RFP like we did last time because we had not written one in forever, but getting through the process and I also having to go through with the uh with the protest. They protested our ourh
recommendation. Uh but he it is a tremendous and then when we got into the council side of the process, he was able to be able to break everything down into a non non-technical term. And so that's that's what I that's
the value I see in it was the assistance that we got in interpreting all these different industry terms and how they compared to each other. >> Okay. All right. Well, are we good on that for now? >> Okay. All right. So, let's reopen the topic back on if there's anything we
want to change. What's good? What's bad? Uh, we just heard from Council Member Britain, so we'll go down the line here. >> So, I I would say same thing. I mean, we have not heard a lot of complaints about what what's going on. I do think recycling is a polarizing issue. I do understand that there is a market. It's
very flexible and it's, you know, glass has been a problem. You know, we still have glass that goes into, you know, containers. You know, to educate people on what the right items are and you're dealing with contaminated recycling. The whole recycling thing, I think, is a challenge. You get rid of it, you're a
horrible community. You know, you're not taking care of the environment. You you to have them do it on their own probably not going to happen. um you can keep it the way it is, you still run the the whole problem of what the market is and and I don't know what
the answer is for recycling. >> That com glad you expressed that because the concern of is recycling real and does it do anything is is one that unfortunately pervades our field. Um, I think it is very relevant to point out that the large profit-seeking private
companies that serve Florida have invested over $100 million in upgrading recyclable sorting and processing facilities in the state in uh especially over unfortunately not as much here in Central Florida, but around Florida um
we have seen tens of millions over hundred million dollars all told in large companies upgrading their sorting uh essentially their recovery capabilities. Um, it's increasingly robotic. It uses machine learning with
video looking on conveyor belts and using machine learning to identify uh all kinds of materials um outside of Florida. One of the reasons, so one of the reasons we're seeing this investment, uh, that I believe is indirectly driving this investment in Florida is because in other states
across the country, uh, we're up to about seven states now that are, uh, pilot testing, uh, a new way to fund recycling, which is to charge the consumer package goods companies for what it costs to recycle their bottles and cans and cardboard boxes. It's
called extended producer responsibility. if I'm sure you have a lot of spare time to Google the acronym EPR. Um, but it is a way to take the cost of recycling off the backs of local governments and off the backs of the people purchasing product and having all this packaging with fancy marketing and labels and
wrappers and tape. It's it's pushing that cost back up to the consumer package goods companies. And so um I am persuaded that the what you know what formerly was the waste management industry is slowly but surely moving towards being a sustainable materials
management industry uh and is making those investments. And so um whenever I hear that gee I just you know recycling is controversial. People don't maybe don't believe in it. Um there is certainly a shortage of education on that. I do think there are opportunities to educate folks. Um, but I believe that
it is it couldn't be more clear that recycling is is quite healthy and if the contamination is kept low, that people who recycle should have very high confidence here in Central Florida that their material is getting sorted and recovered and the contaminants are getting screened out and going to
landfill. Uh, and the valuable stuff is getting sold. Even glass, which admittedly is a problem child throughout the industry and throughout the country. It turns out if you kept your glass sorted by color, you could sell it and it's a positive value. If you could sort
your glass into green and clear and amber, you could sell it. Turns out all these processing facilities screen all the glass out right up front cuz it's really problematic and it tears up belts and then they crush it into culllet. It's a mixed color clet that has a negative value. It it costs well it it
can even sometimes fluctuate to be higher than landfill disposal or the same or lower and it fluctuates just like any other comm. It's got a negative value. So I'm I but I think that's an education thing. I I think the industry has not done a good job sometimes and explaining the value. The flip side is
those water bottles and those aluminum cans and that cardboard. There's a high volume of that cardboard that makes a lot of money. that aluminum and that PET and that HDPE plastic. Again, it has its ups and downs, but that's been that's been very valuable. Industry's had a
tough year. Tariffs hasn't exactly helped. Um, but that that's just the way it goes with commodities. >> Yeah. And I guess the other thing on the collection vehicle, >> I have a hard time picturing our front loader going through our communities, especially the people that park on the street. Um, so I think you know I think
we're staying with the side side loader is would be ideal for us and then you know yardways like again doesn't seem to be an issue. I can understand if we have a companies that come in in their bid and say you know we need to go to cans and then be open to that but right now
we don't seem to have an issue good going on >> and I'm okay with the current timeline. >> Okay. Council member, I >> I'm amazed that yard waste collection happens at all. Just thinking about the stuff that I put out there and it's like
this is all full of thorns and whatever. You know, I try to do the best I can, get it all, you know, in the in a can so somebody doesn't cut themselves, but I think about doing that all over the city. It's it's it's pretty amazing. Um, you were talking about glass a second ago. I
on the waste pro ovito website it says they that we can put glass in there. Clear clear and brown what they're saying there. What what the problem is is once they recycle it there's not market for glass. >> So they're they we never took it out. We
left it in there. But then once they get it, they have nowhere really to go with it. >> They just they basically use it as dirt to cover up the trash at the landfill. >> That's all they can use it for. >> Yeah. that would be called beneficial reuse. Um the term is alter alternate
daily cover. Um it in other words it's going to something that needs to be done but it's not turning into other it's not going getting turned back into glass. Um the closest market for clet uh uh is strategic materials and they're a you know couple hour drive away due to the
the weight and the low value of glass clet. It just is not economical to make those long long transportation halls. But it's um it is used to replace for example dirt in how you would cover a landfill for daily cover. So there is a
use to it. >> Okay. Yeah. And glass is one of the things I think about, you know, when the the can picks it up and dumps it all and I hear it all shatter. I know in Orange County they at least used to um have different uh containers on the truck,
right, for putting the different color glass in. Is is that kind of stuff I don't know. >> So you got to have it manual now, right? Cuz somebody has to pick it up out of the >> Yeah. So So historically, recycling here in Florida mostly started as what what would be called a dual stream system.
Right now you have single stream. So the cardboard and the paper and the junk mail and the bottles and cans all go together. But you used to have dual stream, right? Where the bottles and cans, the glass, aluminum, steel would go in one probably 18 gallon bin and then your cardboard and junk mail would go in another. So that's two different
streams. Um in the early days the the glass would get separated by color and there the the facility would actually have two different processing lines one for the paper and one for the containers and they were recovering glass by color. Um but without going into a much longer
than you want to hear me talk about uh it has moved towards single stream for efficiency. The collection efficiency is the highest for single stream. Um and there has been the ability of industry to justify alternative use for glass color. Uh you know in instead of
recovering the nice color sorted glass and making a little money and so that's been the kind of the economic pressure of it. But make no mistake when glass is recovered it is reused. It's not just oh we're not just like telling you we're recycling glass and then just dumping in the landfill with other trash. it is
being separated and then used in a beneficial way to offset the use of some other other raw material like dirt or soil as an example. >> Okay. I agree with you about education cuz it's uh it's a thing that I've looked closely for in in some cases and
not really seen the hard part happening, right? Single stream going into being separated into something that that can be used. You know, when you >> see stuff on TV or whatever about recycling, it's like, oh, you skipped the hard part. That's what I want to see. Right. >> Yeah. So, I I don't know if that's
something that um city uh uh PR might be interested in taking on at some point. Um you know, if we're looking for a project or whatever, you know, ironically, for years, you would I I could I could tell you every single, you know, uh report I ever delivered or any
competitor report I ever read would say, "Oh, recommendation one, make sure to enhance public education about recycling." Well, it turns out in the last five five to seven years, for the first time with all the consumer package good money coming into the recycling market, it has actually funded some
excellent behavior research. And what we've learned is that, you know, some of us will do anything you tell us to recycle. I mean, if you need me to wash out my mayonnaise jar, I mean, I I'm I'm in, right? I I'll do that. But that's only maybe 10 to 15% of the people. >> 60% of the people will do it if it's
easy, right? right? They'll throw their aluminum cans from their kitchen and they'll throw their junk mail in their cardboard boxes and and you want the the dogooders and you want the 60% of all I'll play along if it's easy. Unfortunately, 10 to 20% of the residents out there just don't care. And
you can educate them all you want and they're probably not going to recycle very well and they may occasionally I'm going to throw my trash bag in here. So, I think I think the behavioral side of recycling uh is really where the hang-ups start. Uh, and so if you're just educating, you're not really
addressing the 10 to 20% of the misbehaviors. And so I think the the industry is coming around and what we're seeing are onboard technology systems and even uh intermittent audits, lid lid lifting audits. Uh, Orange County has uh
deployed teams around its 240,000 unincorporated households for 5 years to systematically record contamination issues and leave tags and will soon be taking carts away from the problematic recyclers because it only takes about 10% of your households to mess up an
entire load of recycling by not caring. So I think the industry is slow to arrive at the importance of managing human behavior and the reality of it which is get your good people excited, keep it easy for your 60% middle ground
and then you might have to take the privilege away from some subset or look at some other some other enforcement mechanism. >> Yeah. Perhaps the education there is just telling that 10% on the the bottom to just not participate at all the garbage contaminate. That's so that's so
on on contamination and and maybe the answer here is is no or nothing but um cuz you talk about how we've um had had pretty good numbers as far as uh contamination in OTO, right? Um on the list of acceptable recyclable items on
the Waste Pro OVO website, you you've probably looked at it before. I I probably have. >> Okay. Um I can't dredge it up. Well, well, I guess the qu the question is um is there anything you probably have some idea what we're doing and and maybe you can compare to other cities too. Is is
there something that we're doing where um you know perhaps when you tell somebody that they can do uh a and it's okay that then they will go ahead in their minds because maybe they don't read this site very often or they you see Facebook reels that say it's oh in
some other city this is fine. I Mr. Tom and I were talking today about, you know, the the the windows on the the junk mail, right? >> I don't know. I've been putting those in the recycling because in my head that was I saw something that said that was fine and now I'm not even sure, right? You looked here and
>> so I don't even know. Are are so are there certain things that we could perhaps uh take out of here that might make the contamination better or is it even worth it? Um, I I would generally advise make sure you educate that nobody should ever put any recycling inside a
plastic bag and then put that plastic bag in your recycling container. Plastic bags are incredibly detrimental to the industrial processing because they wrap around axles and they tangle things up and they cause shutdowns at recycling facilities. So, number one, keep the
bags out of there. I think number two, um, and and this is where what how it really works and the message you'll get from your vendors might differ, um, is keep the gunk out. Keep the food. And you'd be amazed the number of people put yard waste and bags of brush and weeds
or whatever, uh, in their, uh, in their cart. Um, anything that's introduces moisture and any bulky item is very problematic for recycling. The putressible stuff degrades paper and cardboard and you just lose quality and
you you your yield goes down. So keep it dry. If you could have people make sure that they're recycling clean, dry bottles, cans, and and paper and cardboard, you'd get 80 80 to 90% if not more of the available recyclables if
people follow just that very simple guideline. I believe that the $150 million of upgrades that we've seen in our state um will enable the recycles processors to capture a lot more of the plastic resins, the tubs and the lids
and the cups. Um maybe even some might be able to recover some film bags with some vacuum systems. Uh it is unlikely to me that they will extend any additional value that they earn on those to their customers. So, they will most likely be continuing to ask their cities
and counties and suppliers to just give them the bottles and cans and cardboard and they'll complain about the film bags and they'll complain about the rigid plastics even though they're starting to recover those and make revenue streams out of those. Um, that's my maybe cynical view of things. Um, but clean and dry is is critical. Those little
envelopes, not a big deal. If you go to Publix and get their delicious key lime pie with a great big cellophane window and it's all covered with like pie residue, don't recycle that. put that in the trash. The combination of food residue and that gigantic rigid plastic thing renders it unrecyclable. Yeah.
Little business envelope with a, you know, little little window. That's fine. That's perfectly fine to recycle. >> Okay. Uh so as far as uh how often to pick up, you know, and I know you said you didn't want us to compare, but it's hard to not compare that uh that graph with the um you know, how much we're
paying. I don't have a page number, whichever one it is. comparison, seminal county, and nearby cities. >> You know, I mean, it does seem that we're um you know, toward toward the middle, you know, I guess, but also
we're only getting one time a week and that does not include tipping fees. So, Sanford is picking up twice a week for close to the same money, including >> tipping fees. How much is tipping fee on top of that? Yeah, it it's so to be
honest um I I so this was put together by um we actually uh are a longtime uh Castleberry is a longtime client. Um we stay in touch with them. Uh their staff had recently pulled this information together which we came across. So we
assigned one of our analysts to go through and update it. I think it should be good. I think my staff generally knows this, but I also feel like um short of putting a much more thorough matrix together that brings not only the price, but the specific service levels,
I wouldn't make too much out of this graph other than to say I believe you're in a reasonable market range. I think that's the strongest takeaway. I I would hesitate to try to draw conclusions that you know why are you over or under somebody that has just one element of
their system shown on this graph. >> Okay. Okay. >> It's a bigger trash can too >> like ours. >> Yeah. You usually you get half the volume. >> So it it could it could be how it could be how they set out. Um, it could be the
logistical difference from their fleet yard to that city to disposal compared to you. It could be, um, it could just be other factors. It could be that one entity allowed trucks that could be partially used and another entity demanded all new trucks at the outset of
the contract. Uh, it could be uh, who bought the carts, did the city buy the carts, did the contractor buy the carts, did they build ROI into their cart purchase? So there are many other elements that are driving that price difference which is why we just things that we could ask for not ask for if we
knew to ask for not ask for. >> Yeah. So so some good news is that OA I think I would invite staff correct me if I'm wrong but so will own its carts at the conclusion of the current contract. So that's that's $60 a household that
you don't have to re capitalize. Obviously, there'll be, you know, damage and you might have to repair axles or lids or replace what have you, but you won't be repurchasing new carts for every single household. So, that should have a downward impact. Um, but yes, you
can test those different aspects of frequency, set out size, you know, big volume, small volume, etc. But as far as those kinds of uh uh parameters which you know we don't know about um you know my information I mean the extent of it
is what's in this packet right cuz that's what we've been given to to look at. Is there more information forthcoming or as we go through the process we'll start to have that kind of thing or is that something you and Mr. will work out together >> and come up with give us I guess what I would say is is I think it would be
possible to do a deeper dive into that. Um we could do it. I don't know if it would I don't know if it would really change a whole lot. Okay. And I say that because if you're unless you're hearing a lot of dissatisfaction from either your residents or the hauler, um I think
what I've heard I think these comments to me have been very helpful. One is I think it may make sense to test an a less frequent recycling collection which should offer you a lower price for a lower level of service that you can look at. Hey, stick with our once a week or reduce to every other week. So that
would be something that you could you could potentially look at. Um maybe on the yard waist side may maybe a carded versus not. But and those are exactly the types of things that this process can test so that you as elected officials can understand exactly why the
prices are different. And then as you get people, oh you should do this, you should do that, you've got real data from this process that that lets you have the cost element and then you can have the service level debate, you know, separate from the cost. All right. So, I guess to to to wrap up my my section, I
I would say I'm not really interested, I think, in uh decreasing recycle pickup. Uh I know in our house, it seems like the recycle is far more full than the regular garbage. If you take that to twice a week, I don't you know, and then you miss one, that's kind of a whenever
you go infrequent, it's about it's about when you miss it. >> Mhm. >> Um and I haven't heard any um I haven't. What's that? or holidays are bad. But oh, holiday Yeah, holiday. That's right. Yeah, holidays. Yeah, when you have more garbage in, they didn't come. Um, I
would say uh where was I going with that? Oh, I don't hear any um residents complaining about once a week. Uh I I think that once a week's fine. Um unless people are just uh keeping quiet on it. Uh but but those are those are my
thoughts. Oh, and also, you know, as far as recycling goes, you know, if you >> if you recycling less, more of it's just going to end up in the garbage, right? And if you >> if you got if you got rid of recycling completely, now you're looking at maybe having to pick up twice a week just
because of the volume, right? So, even paying the same amount recycling for regular refues, it still seems like it it still seems like it exists. Uh, I guess what I would say is, um, one of the justice, so Florida used to have statewide requirement for twice a week
trash collection. One of the ways we've gotten away from twi twice a week trash is to offer once a week recycling and once a week trash. >> I do think if you were to decide the city didn't ever want didn't want to offer recycling anymore, then that's going to drive a lot of material into the trash system. So, so that would that
would absolutely have an impact. >> Yeah. Okay. Nothing. Thank you, Mayor. All right. The only remaining pain point that I've heard about is people being annoyed when bulk items are put in with the yard waste. And maybe that is not
something that is easy to change, but I would imagine that once you scrunch in leaves and plastic bags or, you know, porch furniture that that entire thing is no longer compostable and now the entire load is in fact trash. Um, so I
would be as we move through this process interested in in finding out what what impact that has and if it is something that the city can reasonably get compliance on or we can get help from our vendors saying we will simply not pick up items in this, you know, it's
it's on them when they put the bulk items in. It's on us and our residents when we put trash bags in there, thus tip changing around what our tipping fees may be. So, that's the only pain point there. Uh, and did want to uh mention you, you probably knew this from
looking at our contract, we've got a 30% contamination allowance. That to me seems incredibly huge. Um, I would be interested in finding out if that is the tolerance level that the county will have going forward. I'm guessing that's just what the county said. So, our waist
holler said, "Oh, we're allowed to have 30%." Uh, I'm one of those people that I tried to find out if I'm if I've got to wash up my peanut butter thing and nobody told me. So, I've been putting my peanut butter jar in there scraped pretty clean, but I'm not washing it. So, apparently this is wrong, right? Is this wrong? We should not put the peanut
butter in. We got to wash out our mayonnaise containers, too. Is this right? Cuz nobody can tell us. So, we can't even do education cuz nobody is giving any like I have actively sought this out. I can't find out. Contamination was actually a big part of
the original bid in 2020. As far as one contractor wanted a higher amount and Waste Pro wanted a lower 30%, >> but the 30% from a cost perspective was the more cost effective rate that came back as part of the proposal. So, I
would argue 30% is is probably part for the course. In Florida, we're not really known for keeping our recyclables especially clean. um kind of um interestingly uh we have clients in Florida who have that 30 to 35% threshold and if recycle if the if
commodity values are low you can bet they're enforcing no we we don't want your 37% recycling we're going to bypass and throw in the landfill when secondary commodity values are high they'll take your 30 or 7 or 40 or 42% recycling because they can recover enough to make it more valuable
>> so do they look at as look at it as it's coming into the dump like >> there There are countless debates and arguments and contractual disputes between how you evaluate the load of of recycling coming in. But generally speaking, the that's why I think the
messaging that we're persuaded is the way to think about it. Keep your recycling out of bags. You never contain it in a bag. Don't put bulky things in it. Don't put stressful things in it. And keep it dry. And processor going to be able to handle that. So, um, you know, if you some people throw in their,
you know, their little cleaned out little, uh, plastic clamshells that their strawberries come in. Well, some some hollers might tell you, "No, we don't want that." I guarantee you all these $60 million plants are going to be recovering thermopforms. There's no doubt in my mind that they'll find a revenue stream for that, but they may tell you that's contamination when they
see it coming in the front door. So, there there's a little bit of that going on. >> Like, we don't have any of that going on that I'm aware of. I've not heard any feedback about our contamination rates or that we need to do better, which is an interesting, you know, now you know that >> that's a that's a no that's a plus. If if you're if you have highly contaminated material, I would say you
would be hearing about it from your from your processor. >> We've heard nothing. >> Do we have a percentage of contamination or No, >> we've never been offered one by Waste Pro. We And they but they've never they've never said anything about it. They just they take it. >> There's I've never gotten a complaint
about contamination. >> Yeah. You usually well usually contamination doesn't become a contractual issue unless you have built a pricing mechanism where you the supplier are paying whatever $90 or $100 a ton processing but you're getting the
value of the recyclables back which could be anywhere from $60 to $180 a ton. So sometimes you're you're losing, sometimes you're winning. So bigger cities, if you have more tonnage, at some point you hit a tonnage threshold where it's to your advantage to
negotiate um the an actual economically rational pricing for your recyclables. A veto I I it'd be close. I'm not I'm not sure you're there yet. And because you are part of Semol County and they're offering you, I would argue that $43 a ton for processing recyclables even
without a revenue share. Probably not terrible. I maybe I'm I might be outside of my might be might might be out over my skis on making some of these opinions, but um you don't have as much tonnage and you also are within a county infrastructure that is geared to
properly recycle the recyclables that your citizens are generating. >> That's it for me. >> I mean I would I mean we're hearing a lot of unknowns about recycling. It sounds like we don't have contamination, but I'm also hearing that we don't quite know. So, is that something we can ask
our current waste hauler on what percent is going to landfall landfill and what is actually being recycled? Because I think that would be useful for when we're going through this. But, uh, personally, I think the services we have currently are good. I hear the most positive is that we do the bulk pickup.
I know a lot of residents love that we actually do that. And I think the only problem I've had is with uh forgetting to tie my my long waist, but they picked it up the next time anyways, so I'm good. Um, as far as
going for an RFQ, it sounds like we're good moving forward with that and everybody's on board with keeping it what we're looking for the same. >> What about the carts for the yard waste? Was there any thought about I know neighbors that use their green card for yard waste.
>> I don't really hear from got the trash on Tuesday and the yard waist comes on Wednesday, they just throw it in that thing. >> You got an old trash can that I use when I need it. I mean, I don't I don't think we need to invest in another car. >> Yeah, I I I do too. Um the the thoughts
I have about that are if you use the the big green can, it's very heavy and a you know person has to operate that. >> They have a little handle that can come and pick it up. >> Oh, really? >> Yeah.
All right. So, well, something >> that is a question. I'm glad you mentioned that the the landscape truck and it is a rear loader. Um, >> one of the complaints that I get is about the mechanical arm and it leaking.
Uh, do you want to continue continue with the mechanical arm service or do you want to test out what I call two men in a truck where you have a driver and two guys on the back and they're >> Why don't we just have arms that don't leak?
>> Arms that don't leak. That's That's why we're functional, working, well-maintained. >> Assign Assign a guy to handle those complaints. >> I'm sorry. assign someone to handle those complaints. Oh, I I have I have a
contact at WebR. I go directly to I mean, do we have a lot of complaints? I know about two people about the leaking >> about the the leak. It's mainly two people, but it's a lot of complaints by those two people. >> That sounds like a truck problem versus >> Yeah. >> One day it was a truck problem. They
brought one in from Orlando and it went all over the city. >> We still have a budget discussion, right? >> Yes. >> Okay. All right. Just want to make sure. >> Yeah, we're going. >> All right. Well, we have our direction here. We have consensus to move forward with the RFP and we're looking to keep services as is. Thank you for coming.
>> Thank you. Appreciate the Thank you. Bless you. Well, while you're coming up, I'll give you a recycling story. I always say that uh there's there's a smart person out there that'll take stuff that's recyclable. There's there's actually a uh a rocket company called Va Space that uses
recycled plastic as their rocket fuel. And they're building a rocket in Coco that they're going to launch pretty soon. They're going to launch a recycled plastic rocket. No flashing is the rocket rocket fuel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Put it in the booster
and it shoots out the other end. >> Yeah. Yeah. With their lightsaber. That's right. He's going on here. Did you hear me?
>> Sorry. Well, I'm just thinking, you know, we got like we get excited about I'm excited about the garbage. I think it's >> it's important, right? I mean, when the garbage stops working, it's it's a big deal, you know. Yeah,
>> about >> I guess we'll wait a couple minutes. I lost half half. We got to do a potty break every every 75 minutes or so. >> Is that going to be in the minutes? >> Yeah, the mic's on.
>> We're going to reset. >> I went fast. Then you then you take a some tips for me the fastest. >> Yeah. >> When you go through 75 minutes, you learn how to do it quickly.
>> See, I did this the last meeting like April 27th. That's someone's birthday. It's my aunt's birthday. >> Oh, nice. >> It is. Except it is your birthday. >> Still got time. >> I did that the last meeting. >> Do it right now. >> They'll have the video of me doing it
though. >> Yeah. Doing good. All right. >> Works. >> Okay. Sit too long. >> Those little bicycle things. >> Is it still here?
>> No. All right. Are you better? >> Okay. Of course, it's not working. We're going to move on to item number four, which is the 2026 27 budget with the April update on capital and personnel requests. Mr. B.
>> Uh, thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council members. I will try to be brief. I know it's uh getting late uh as we go through this. Um but uh starting from the top basically um the directors
uh the assistant city manager, city manager and deputy directors met on April 8th to prioritize personnel request capital improvement large projects capital outlay individual items costing less than $25,000
facilities maintenance. Um, and we also took a look at debt uh, as it relates to the police station and we have a slide for to show you that a little later in the presentation. So, the discussion that we have tonight isn't without its own headwinds cuz
you'll remember the last time that we were together, we talked about HB203 and its potential impacts that could possibly happen in the next the 20 uh, 2627 budget year. Well, HB203 died, but
what Mr. Cardy communicated to us is that something is in the mix and we may not find out what that is until August. Okay. So, going forward as we make our decisions, we have to be very careful to
think through that and its impact on any recurring request, any recurring expenditures that pop up year over year going forward, including debt service. Okay. So basically every decision that is made
in regard to the capital plan, capital uh outlay, facilities maintenance as well as the operating budget passes through the stat the strategic plan. If it doesn't pass through the strategic plan, then it doesn't meet muster. So we look at these individual categories,
make sure everything is rated correctly. And if you look at the individual sheets that are that comprise the um the capital individual capital items, you will see that there is a tie to the strategic priorities. So the first thing that we have up is
that we have personnel requests. We have one from fire for an assistant fire chief of training. The projected cost for that is 169,000. We have one from police for intelligence analyst and the projected cost for that
is 77,877. We also have a request for three additional firefighters total cost of 314,000. So the total cost projected for the personnel requests that uh were provided
to us on April 8th were was or is $561,000. And I have to be mindful again, personnel requests are recurring and if they are approved and in the 26 27 budget, they will also be out there in future budgets. Things that we need to
consider when we make those decisions. Any thoughts on personnel requests? >> Does that include the cost of uh benefits and everything or are we talking this is plain salaries? Okay. >> Okay. Anything else? Moving
on to the capital project request. These are the top 10. We also have the listing over here to the right that includes every single item that that we discussed on April 8th. But these are the top 10 items. And what we always do every year
when we discuss these individual items is that we ask you, is there something on this list that you want to take off? Is there something also included in the other capital list here on the right that you want to include? Um, Annie, do
you mind scrolling down just a little bit on the right hand screen? Yeah. So, you can see that this is that it encompasses 27 total items. The total cost is 4.3 million. These are the top 10. Top 10 is 1.2 almost $1.3 million.
>> I do have a question about these rollup doors. Um, I don't personally have a garage, but I have encountered plenty of garage doors and they don't seem to really wear out. All of the rollers wear out. So, I'm wondering, you know, how many doors are involved here and and what's wrong with them?
>> Defer, Mr. Beldon. >> Good evening. I may need some help from Chief on this one as well. Um so this request from a facilities perspective um we've encountered numerous repairs over the f you know past 5 years. Um
>> are we running into them? Like how are we how are we getting them? >> So from from what we learned from working with our contractors is that um from when these fire stations were were built, they should be put in with you know built with like commercial grade equipment. Well, there's different
levels of commercial grade and we've come to learn that we may not necessarily have commercial grade doors on our fire stations. So, we've actually made numerous repairs, you know, to the tune of almost $56,000 of repairs in the past 5 years. We do perform an annual
preventive maintenance on these doors on top of that. But from a facilities perspective, we're looking at a way um with our staff of eliminating these costs, being more efficient. um you know so we're looking at what you know what's the you know the best of the best when
it comes to you know garage doors for public safety and we think we came across a a great product. Um so we actually met with the vendor um we actually you know received their you know the performance of their of their system and we felt it's not only from a
facility standpoint but I think from a you know from a public safety you know and and service level there's a component that actually will help the fire department out with rescue time you know rescue response but also um with other factors that I'd like to have chief you know fill you in on
>> yeah the um the the rollup doors that we're proposing are a new industry standard in the fire service. They help reduce response time significantly in getting in and out of the station. Um, as far as preventative maintenance goes and and maintenance issues, we do have
doors pretty regularly that go out of service. When they go out of service, the trucks can't use those bays. um it could impact us actually responding to a call if the if the door doesn't go up when we leave the station or if it doesn't go down
when we or if it doesn't go up and we have an emergency call, if it doesn't go down when we leave the station, now the station's being left unsecure. Um so there's there's multiple issues that that go into play with this. Um this is something we've been we've been dealing with and combating with. uh facilities
has been great trying to get people out to do regular maintenance on these doors, but we keep having issues with them. >> And these doors, these doors go up and down multiple multiple times a day, which is a lot more use than what you would have in your typical residential
garage, for example. >> So, next year's request is for fire station 46 um for 10. >> Looks like all of Oh, 10 doors. >> 10 doors at station 46. >> Yeah. 5 days, 10 doors. And then the next year's request would be fire station 48 with three bays, six doors.
>> So it's $56,000 a door roughly. >> And this this will based on what the vendor is telling us, these doors that they're installing are virtually maintenanceree. >> Yeah. So that you know so basically we would have a $1,000 operating expense for the annual preventative. However,
it's been conveyed that you know these doors can last over 1 million cycles of opening closing. Um it's a top-of-the-line product before you need to replace or do anything. It's it's a it's a heavy duty product. Um a lot of the new fire stations are are constructing their facilities with this
capability. >> And one of the largest components is uh when somebody like when we get a call for a cardiac arrest patient, that patient seconds literally count whether that patient survives or not. And the quicker we can get on scene, the the more it increases the survivability of
that patient. And if we can knock 15 20 seconds off of that response time, that could mean a matter of life and death for a patient. >> Additionally, when we have to put a door or a bay out of commission, lead times may take maybe 1 to two months possibly
with, you know, a door or bay being out of commission. And I think that really impacts the the fire department as well. So, >> all right. Thank you. >> How many years do we expect them to last? I mean, because a million is a long time. You said something uh to me like 5,000 calls a year. Is that Did I
remember that number right between the two stations? >> We average about 5,000 emergency calls a year. But that doesn't mean that that that the bay doors only go up when they go out on an emergency call. They go out they go out for training. They go out for >> you know multiple times a day. >> Yeah. I'm saying you're not going to get a million for a very very long time. So
I mean these doors expected to last you know 20 years or >> Yeah. These are probably in excess of 20 years. >> 20 years. These bay doors are the new industry standard and they're actually incorporating this type of technology into all new construction fire stations.
>> Lifting mechanism for them. >> Is it spring-loaded? >> The new the new doors are direct drive with the in with with the with the motor being installed in a fashion that that doesn't use cables and pulley and things like that on it. These are direct drive. >> Okay. >> Yeah. And these doors open, you know,
two two and a half to 3 seconds to open. >> That's maintenancefree. We're hoping. Yes. >> Okay. >> A lot more than what we have now currently. >> Okay. >> Any other questions?
>> Can you tell me about the OnBase cloud migration? >> I can't tell you about it. I'm not sure if there's anybody. >> Mr. Mr. Kashai. >> Yes. Good evening, >> mayor.
>> They were asking about the uh cloud onboarding, the cloud migration. >> What is the question? >> Oh, c can you describe I mean I I got some idea from the the write up, but what what is it that it makes our current system difficult for looking up
records? >> Right now, our system is physical is here. It's three different servers. And what we want to do is take those three servers into the cloud, which will allow us to take the other two parts of this project. One of the parts is being able
to publish onbased documents online for citizens to look up for anybody to see. They're public facing. And the second thing is is to add the Azri layer over the uh documents that are in there. And so you can just click on a onestop shop
to see all the uh things that have happened to a piece of property or a parcel. >> So BS people will basically be able to do their own record searches online versus having to ask the clerk's office to any documents that are public facing.
>> Okay. So the stuff that we can do on the computer in the council office for example, we would no longer have to log in as council people or you know city employees to the secret not it's not secret it's public records but you know the limited access database and instead
this could be done for by any person anytime from anywhere. >> Correct. >> I like the sounds of this. >> That's cool. >> Yes. And then I don't know if this is the place to ask for this or not, but um this is a great example of I feel like
we should put new microphones for our city like the city on there. Um and I did ask and Patrick said it was around 10 to 12,000. So I know I don't know that I've been in a meeting in the past year and a half where we haven't had a mic go out. So
>> if there's consensus there is the batteries just dead. Isn't that >> a million times they've changed batteries? I don't know how old they are, but >> I I don't I you know, this is one of those things where I even wrote a note on my my thing tonight, you know, get
new mics. Um it's it just seems like every time we have a meeting, the next day we have to have Tier come out and do something with them and then they work. >> And but it's funny when we test them before the meetings, they work just fine. It's and I even mentioned to the
deputy mayor, I think we need to change our our meeting to a different day because they don't work on Mondays, but they work great on Tuesdays, you know. So, I I'm Yeah, I'm at a loss. >> It's It's not a huge ticket item, but I It's a continuous problem. So, I think
we should throw it on maybe with like >> get some corded mics so we don't >> get glitchy like this. >> If I may suggest, >> Mr. Um, if it's okay, uh, let's ask Patrick to look into what we need to do to rectify the situation and let's take
it out of our contingency reserve in the current budget and just get it done. >> Perfect. Okay. >> Okay. >> All right. >> But other than that, I think it looks great. >> Okay. >> Thank you. All right. So, Annie, if you can go down on the right to the next uh
component. We're going to talk about capital outlay. And again, capital outlay consists of items that are $25,000 or less. And this is what uh the folks voted on at the April 8th meeting. Is there anything on here that you would
like to change? >> If everybody voted that these are the priorities, I am okay with that. >> I think we're good. >> Okay. Going down to facilities maintenance. um facilities maintenance request comprised
of eight items and these are the items. Is there any change in priority or any changes at all? >> Well, every year I ask about carpet. Uh it it seems like we spend a lot on
carpet and perhaps we should be acid washing cement or something else that is a little bit more longlasting cuz our carpet budget. This isn't huge huge, but that's not nothing. And we could repair a lot of sidewalks with $118,000.
So, I I guess the question is, you know, could could we replace less but do it with something more durable to potentially over time liberate more forever? >> Anybody else? It's
>> Mr. Good point. Yeah. >> Is the problem that we just got way behind on carpet? I know that was one of the things discussed about the police station. We're just catching up and then we'll get to a point where the carpet's good for another >> actually 10 years. >> Thankfully, as you know, through the
ARPA, um we've actually replaced a lot of carpet within the city at most of our buildings and facilities. We're just falling on these like the you know, one of the you know, couple final you know, five locations that we need to recarpet. If you look at an alternate source of going with a tile or polished concrete,
there's still going to be a major cost involved. You know, the the tile is going to equate to the carpet if not being more expensive. So, we'd still be looking for a pretty big ask. >> Well, I think the thing that was last longer, but it sounds like what you're saying is is that maybe after this year, no more carpet or no more carpet. Uh
>> I think I think carpet has its benefits in some locations and I think tile has its benefits in other locations. It really depends on >> acoustics and all the things >> acoustics but also like in in at you know public works fleet placing tile at at that location doesn't make sense due to the wear and tear and and what's
going through those facilities you know a lot of our locations on you see the tile squares here versus the rolled you know that helps us know because if there's a an area that if there's a spill we can replace one square versus replacing that large section and we have a a stockpile from all the past orders
so >> I don't know >> I guess if you guys think this really is the best way to use the the limited resources. I I guess >> I think it's something you make a good point on is that and and Mr. Mr. Belin
did just now we need to look at what the floor is. Where's the floor located? You know, in fleet maintenance in the base, obviously you're not going to put it there. Maybe in fleet maintenance in the uh in the offices, possibly. Um, but
there's when we get into some of the wreck buildings, carpet is not going to be probably the best option in some of the wreck buildings as well. So, I think that's one of the things yes, we can look at alternative surfaces and see if there is a better better suited surface for what's being used in that building.
>> It's also looking at like at at Fleet, we were looking at polished concrete initially, but there's an operating cost with that on a yearly basis for maintaining that. Um, just like tile floors, you know, we or you know, we put in a specialized tile at at police, there's still an annual maintenance of
of uh cleaning that on a on a yearly basis. You can't just let it go. So, we're trying to be, you know, making the best use of our money, being as efficient as possible. Um, but really reviewing the, you know, the best product for the the location, and we feel like we have it right now, but we'll always continue to review that as we go forward.
>> All right. Thank you. Anything else? I think we're good on that one, too. >> Okay. So this is a summary of requests. Personnel requests 561,000 uh CIP capital well 1.2 million capital LA 320 facilities maintenance a
million28. These are all the top items for total cost of 3.1 million. So, one of the things that we were asked the last time we were together is uh is there a way that we could consider alternative
um debt scenarios that perhaps would result in a lower uh annual payment, a lower millage rate, etc. And so, of course, looking at the very first column, the current mill rate is the current millage rate. Total mileage is
5.9750. Scenario A is with the debt payoff um paying off the debt and using it to reduce the current operating millage rate down to 5.7 from 5.86
and then issuing the new bonds with the total millage rate of 6.0399. So it changed from the current mill 0649. And then we were asked to take a look at another scenario where we actually took
um the b the the savings and some other money and we reduce the amount that we were to borrow. So the operating millage rate is the same. The bonds related to OTP is the same. The new go bond would
be lower but the overall mill rate would be higher. And the reason it works out that way is because there's nothing to offset the current operating millage rate by paying off the debt early. Okay. So,
does that help you with that understanding of what we talked about in the month of March? So the c the key understanding with this is that the total operating millage rate reduction
is what offsets the total increase in the millage rate. Without a total without a millage rate an operating millage rate reduction there's nothing to reduce the overall millage rate. And no matter what you do to reduce the amount that you're borrowing, the only
way to reduce it to get it back down to zero is to not borrow anything. So that's the way that works out by the math. >> But you could technically pay off the debt early and then put more money towards the PD. >> Absolutely.
>> That's a no option, right? Absolutely right. And it basically comes down to and and maybe you said this and I missed it, but the the interest rate of the geo bond is less than these other bonds. No, actually the
the other bonds are actually lower cuz they're right between 2.3 and 2.5, I think, is what I wrote down. But they're actually lower. Uh so there would be an interest rate savings. What would we would what we would save is basically
the reason why we would do this is because we want to create enough cash flow to be able to offset and reduce the current operating millage rate to help pay for the increase in the mill rate that's going to be required for the new
police station issue. Okay. So that's what we that's what that's what we intended to do. So it was to provide an offset. So no matter what scenario you scenario you pick, you'll see that there's a slight increase. It's
a larger increase, you know, under scenario B, unless we do exactly what the deputy mayor suggested, >> pay off the existing debt and then throw more more money to reduce what we're going to borrow towards um the new police station. That's another
alternative. We can definitely measure that. So, the thing that was asked about last time um and was what I thought it was was last year when we talked about um the budget
the it ended up that what was in what we were making off the fund balance, right, was more than it was costing us to carry that debt. >> It's n it's nominal at this point, you know, >> because the rates are different. Yeah, you're absolutely right. We we get a
little bit more investment income because the investment income was higher back then. I think when we initially measured this, our our our rate of return was right around 5.5%. Now, it's hovering between 3.5 and 4%. So, it's come down significantly.
So, what we're making right now uh in our current investments against our current debt is roughly 1 to 1.5% interest. And if the Fed funds rate get continues to be reduced, that margin gets even smaller. So at some point in
time, you know, there's really diminishing returns in that option. At some point in time, you know, if if we want to have an impact on the overall millage rate, the right play would be to from my perspective would be to increase your cash flow, reduce your current
operating millage rate, okay, and then take out the debt service on the new debt. Okay? So you have an overall reduction in your military. So uh and again I mean option scenario C would be to do that and then of course throw more
money you know towards the amount that you're going to borrow and reduce that as well. So nonetheless great position to be in. We have these options in front of us. We don't have to make these decisions tonight. Okay. But these are things that we can think through when we
finally get down to making those decisions. Okay. Right. So another thought that we had too is as we go through and we take a look at these debt borrowing scenarios and I might need to defer to Mr. Cabo on this but one of the things that you know
we're looking at from a recurring expense perspective is what's the timing on doing this debt. So, you know, again, right now, you know, with what we have in front of us, we we we have this sense of something's going to happen in August that we're not
going to be a to be able to recover from. So, our thought is that we should delay the debt issuance for the police station until next year. If we get past August or November, whatever it ends up on on the ballot and we can we can
measure that it's not going to have a significant impact on our ability to provide funding for the new debt service, then we should move forward. You know, >> just pause on that for a second. All of the proposals to date have said that
anything of this nature would not be impacted by the elimination or decrease of property taxes. Am I understanding that correctly? I thought the the thing that the house passed carved out geo bonds. >> You are or >> or is it new? Maybe new ones are not
included but old ones are because that would be a big problem for bond holders. >> You are correct. Um that is the current understanding. However, if your taxable values decrease, your millage rates are going to go up. >> Gotcha.
>> So, we're just being careful. >> Yeah. And I I do want to add uh an additional caveat to that. Uh most of the drafts that came through with the House and the Senate did not exempt general obligation bonds. They did uh by
virtue of the language that's already in the Florida Constitution, it uh exempted assessments, so non-advalum assessments, which are a different category even though they go on the tax bills. But um most of the proposals that came through
were straight up attacking uh any sort of of uh advorum taxation on for example homestead property. All right. They did not have an exemption for general obligation bonds >> even though people voted them onto
themselves. >> That's exactly right. Okay. Just double checking. >> So yeah. No, the the the the attack there because for example the effectively that proposal raised the advor tax exemption to infinity. All
right. It made it and um and the exempt portion of the uh advor exemption or pardon me of the uh homestead exemption doesn't apply to geo bonds either. Now, mind you, that's a small part because it's a a small piece, but the way they
drafted in each instance, geo bonds are not exempt from any of this. >> Okay. Well, that leaves us in a substantially less stable place than I thought we might possibly be able to be. >> That was the concern when we realized that the geo bonds taxable value is how the geobond millage is calculated. And
so, if the taxable value, let's say in our case, gets cut in half. Okay? Okay. And then you just hype hype up whatever you're >> doing. It those numbers up on the screen increase significantly. >> And so what our thoughts was was not knowing where we're going. Even though
we feel like right now we have a good opportunity to start expressing to our legislators that you need a geo bond exemption. If you're going to require us to approve all this development administratively, you need to give us the ability to put the infrastructure in to serve it. and the
geo bond is one of the better ways more actually stable ways in order for us to do it. Uh you can't do it with impact fees. It's not going to work. So that's one of the things that we looked at. But we the thing that we're seeing is that if they're if they do wait until August
so that we don't have a chance to mount an opposition then we need to know where we stand and we don't feel like that right now is the appropriate time to issue these bonds. I
given that there's the opportunity is going to be that if we did it now the millillage would increase dramatically in the next year and so wanting to go forward with knowing knowing the situation is we feel would give us a
better better opportunity. >> Thank you Mr. Cob. >> I mean on that though so you're essentially asking to delay starting the police department another year. Well, just the financing. We have money to finish out the design. We could probably
get started on construction, but it's just on the financing of the 11.4 million. >> So, we're not delaying starting building the police department cuz it sounds like we are. >> But go ahead. >> This is the option.
Right now, it doesn't look good strategically for us to go out and issue the debt because we could could get caught in a trap. However, once we get past August, we know what what they're going to propose. Once we get past November, we know what gets voted in. We can then recircle back, take a look at
this, and then use our current fund balance for construction of because the fund balance in the general fund is very strong right now. We've never had this financial position ever. >> Mhm. So we can use fund balance in the general fund to proceed forward with the
construction and then mid year next year at some point in time we'll get have discussions with our financial advisor. We'll pick the right time to go to the market and we'll reimburse ourselves for whatever money we take out of fund balance to start construction for the
police station. So, it's really just a matter of planning things out for the right time to do what is best at the least amount of risk. So, >> I'm okay with that as long as it's we're not stopping and waiting because
>> we've been waiting on the police department since 2017 and it's clearly never convenient. >> No, that's that's not the intent. The intent is to proceed on with our to proceed on with our design. The design is going to carry us through the through the probably, you know, October, November era anyway.
>> Okay. >> And so we'll have a design, we'll know what the cost is. We'll know we'll have a lot better idea and plus knowing what's going to happen as far as with the referendum as well. So, I mean, hopefully nothing will happen and we'll
just issue the bonds later this year. >> Okay, that's fine with me. You ready? >> Good. >> We're good. So what we're asking of us tonight is to give us permission to move forward with
the CIP capital outlay facilities maintenance. And one of the things that we would like to do is to establish a capital reserve. As you know, whenever we go through the budget process year over year, we try to squeeze, you know, into our operating
budget whatever amount we can afford, which is usually not much. So if we establish a capital reserve this year, we can then reserve those amounts to be spent for next year and the appropriate funds wherever those end
up being and then carry those forward carry those funds forward to the next year. Okay? That way we have the money and also we can take a look at our current operating budget and we can budget components of CIP capital outlay
facilities maintenance in that budget without exceeding the 3% threshold that we get caught up into every single year. Please remember that we can only use 3% of the total revenues to balance the budget. Hopefully we can keep that down
to a minimum, provide the right um structure for funding these items and use the capital reserve. Now, if we have your authority to move forward with this, we'll bring back to you a capital reserve sometime
uh either in May or June and ask you for your authority to approve that and we'll establish that to move forward with the capital funding. Are we okay with that? I'm seeing consensus for a yes. >> Okay. >> I'm not quite getting it, but uh maybe
we'll if everyone else wants to move forward, >> we can talk about it another time, but >> and I'm sorry. Go ahead. >> Well, just exactly what things that that would fund. Um what that would fund is the items that we reviewed here on the schedule. Perhaps not all of them, but
as many as we possibly can. We would take a look at the top 10 when we get when we get to that place and then we would move through that and fund as many as we possibly can. Some will be funded in the operational budget. Some will be funded through this capital reserve.
We're going to be careful and end up in the right place. Also in this this discussion is that is the mix for the police station. Need to make sure that we measure things correctly so that we can get everything done. Now, one of the things that we did discuss as we went through the budget
process this year, is that my is that me? Is that we really need to take a look at developing a pos policy for capital. Meaning that um we need to Oh, thank you. Meaning that we need to create a policy
that takes a look at all of our one-time revenues such as interest, income, and all these other pieces that basically comprise the general fund budget. And we get to the end of the year, take those pieces of excess revenue and
funnel them off to a capital reserve fund. But in order for us to do that, I mean a separate fund entirely outside of the general fund. But in order for us to do that, we've got to develop a policy, specifically identify those revenues, and make sure that it doesn't have any
negative impacts on our general fund going forward. But we would just focus on those one-time revenues, those those things that we have that have been very generous over the last five or six years that we have benefit from significantly. Like I talked about last week uh during
our act presentation, $3.5 million in revenue benefits to the general fund just in the last 3 years alone. That's phenomenal. That's phenomenal. But those monies need to be taken out and separated and thrown against capital because those are not
recurring revenues and those should never be used to balance the budget. So those are things that we need to be very careful about. We've talked about that internally. Miss Jones and Miss Tador have some really great great ideas on how to do that. We just want to put that together in a policy and bring it back
to you for your approval. So, >> okay, good on that one. >> I think that's it. >> Any questions? >> Get it in 30 minutes. Is that quick enough? Yes.
>> Okay. All right. Thank you, Screw. Is there anything else for the topic of the work session tonight? >> You're scaring me. Okay.