Please rise for silent indication followed by pledge of allegiance. >> Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation
under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you very much. Will the court call the role? >> Councilman Fully. Council >> Gford >> here. Gosh, I messed that up, guys. I am so I'm sorry. You got You guys come back up
here for just a second. I got ahead of myself and I I meant to to have the uh the members of the chamers's youth civic leadership was going to lead lead us in the in the pledge and I apologize. So we we we'll certainly try to get you guys but I want to take a moment for you guys to introduce yourselves and tell us a
little bit about you. >> Ladies first. >> That'll be I tell you what we'll do ladies first or you can make one of them go first. How about that? >> There you go. >> Well done. >> Well, good afternoon everyone. My name's Cameron Holmes. I'm 11th grader. I'm
going into 11th grade at high school and I currently I am working on trying to become a junior defense attorney. >> Excellent. Outstanding. Outstanding. >> Hi everyone. My name is I go to school and I'm a rising junior and I'm hoping to study neuroscience.
>> Study what? >> Neuroscience. >> Outstanding. How about you? >> My name is Michael Chro. I'm a rising senior at Spree Creek High School and I'm hoping to become uh an entrepreneur. >> Outstanding. Outstanding. Well, thank you guys very much and I do apologize.
We will get you guys back and as you meet us in the pledge. So, I jumped the gun on that because this is kind of a new thing we've been enjoying doing. So, good to see you guys. Enjoy the rest of your summer break. School's coming soon, right? >> All right. Thank you. >> Have fun. Thank you. >> Sorry. Clerk call the roll.
>> Councilman Foley. >> Councilman Gford >> here. >> Councilman Green >> here. Vice Mayor Krebs >> here. >> Mayor Stilton >> here. Item four, public comments on consent agenda items only. Is there anybody wishing for public comments on consent
agenda items only? I do believe Rich Richard Lee, you wanted to speak to a consent agenda item, Rich. Now is your chance, my friend. >> Good evening, gentlemen. Um, I want to call your attention to the uh
the proposed increase in rates for the golf course. Um, I know these are maximum rates they're talking about, but you may be getting calls as I'm getting calls that people are reading these and going, "Oh my god, these are 25% higher than the current rates roughly." Um, I
try to assure them that uh these are not the rates that we hope that we'll see if there's any increase at all. Um, but it is a bit shocking to see that these are so much higher than the current rates that are out there today. Uh, we certainly don't want a deterioration of the golf course in terms of quality and conditions, but we also don't want to
scare the public away uh by raising rates to a point that makes almost unaffordable. U, a non-resident right now would pay over $100 a round to play at Cypress. Now, that's that's pretty good compared to other courses, but it's still very very high. The other thing
that uh was just brought to my attention that they're also in here they have changed the search charge which used to be $2 for 18 holes. Now it's going to be double that. Not sure why that took place. Uh there was no justification at our meeting. uh there was no discussion
around the change in the search charge and realistically there was very little factual there was no factual information uh presented in terms of why the rates were going to be changing other than uh antidotal comments about the need to
have the rates uh increase. So, um, our position really is we accepted the rates, but the real motivation behind it is confidence in parks and recreation to monitor the activities of the golf course to make sure that they're not
proceeding foolishly with rates that are way too high for the area and losing members and people not playing here simply because the rates are too high. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Rich. >> Thank you, Rich. Anyone else wish to speak to consent agenda items 5 through
8? >> All right. Can I get a motion and a second to approve consent agenda items 5 through eight from the council? >> Get a motion to approve consent agenda items 5 through eight. >> A second. >> I'll second it. >> Have a motion and a second. And we do have a resolution. So I'll have to quick
call the role. >> Council Gerard. >> Yes. >> Councilman Green. >> Yes. >> Vice Mayor Grubs? >> Yes. >> Mayor Stan? >> Yes. 40. Moving on to item number nine, parks and wreck recreation month proclamation. Sign this thing real
quick. Sign this in real time. You got a representative there, Miss Lavalo. >> I figured I figured you might. >> I figured you might. >> Come on up, folks. Tell us who you are and who you brought with you. Good evening, mayor and members of the
council. Susan Ball, parks and recreation director. I have with me tonight RecMan and I have our president of our um parks board, Mr. Bobby Ball. >> Outstanding. I I will just say first of all um if if Rec man, he has a tendency to get very
long- winded, so if we could just ask him not to speak tonight, that would be great. Uh, but thank you for everything that the staff does at parks and recck and also our volunteer board for the suggestions and overseeing and being able to to be an extension of the council to bring such a great service
and a product to the residents of Port Orange. And and I know everybody's going to say it, but wow, did you guys really knock it out of the park for 4. The amount of feedback that I have gotten is absolutely amazing. um to the point where I will
say I'm a little nervous about how you do that next year because while there was a very special anniversary that led to a lot of that, uh a lot of the residents were were so happy and and impressed with with what they saw out of that. So, thank you guys for everything
that you do and it's my honor to read this proclamation to you guys tonight. Whereas parks and recreation programs are an integral part of communities throughout this country, including the city of Port Orange. And whereas our parks and recreations are vitally important to establishing and maintaining the quality of life in our
communities, ensuring the health of all citizens, and encourages physical activities by providing space for popular sports, hiking trails, swimming pools, and many other activities designed to promote active lifestyles. And whereas parks and recreation programs build healthy, active
communities that aid in the pre prevention of chronic disease, provide therapeutic recreation services for those who are mentally or physically disabled, and also improve the mental and emotional health of our citizens, and is leading and as the leading provider of healthy meals, nutrition
services, and education. And whereas parks and recreation programs increase a community's economic prosperity through increased property values, expansion of the local tax base, increased tourism, attraction and retention of businesses, and crime reduction. And whereas our
parks and natural recreation areas ensure the ecological beauty of our community and provide a place for children and adults to connect with nature and recreate outdoors and as a fundamental and is fundamental to the environmental well-being of our community. And now therefore, I Scott
Stillner, mayor of the city of Orange, do hereby recognize July as Parks and Recreation Month. Well done. I hate to put you on the spot. Somebody asked me the other day, and I thought I knew the number off the top of my head,
but how many total parks and wreck locations do we have in the entire city? >> We have 26 parks as of right now. >> Close to 24. >> Yeah, with the bond, we will be adding a couple more. >> Okay. So, some I just think that that's, you know, most people can name some of
the big ones. Obviously, city city center, riverw walk, airport park, all children's park and stuff like that. So you think h you know they've got five, seven or eight, but really there's 26 and uh that's that's amazing. And and there's there is a park almost for everybody no matter where they're looking for a place to to go do some
physical activities or just read a book or sit by the water or what have you. Um so I encourage people to get out and explore those and and you guys have done a great job with your part on the website uh that that will showcase those parks and tell you where they're at and tell you what's there in those parks.
But it's really cool when people can get out and about and go check out some of the parks they didn't even know existed. >> Yeah, appreciate that. About 500 acres, a little over 500 acres right now. >> Wow. >> Of Parkland. So, >> before I come take a picture with you guys, council, anybody comments for parks and >> Thank you. >> Thank you for all you do. It's
fantastic. Fantastic jobs. >> Yeah, I missed out on that. That won't happen again. >> Much good to see you as always. >> Get y'all set up. >> Yeah, that won't happen again. >> All right, moving this on to public
participation or non-aggenda items. And I've got How about we start with Emma Clark tonight? So, what's going on with the chamber? >> Hi. How are you guys doing? >> Good. >> My name's Emma Clark. I'm here representing the chamber. I just wanted
to give two updates. Uh right now we have our golf tournament coming up on Saturday, August 8th. It's taking place at the club at Venetian Bay at 8:30. We still have sponsorships available as well and you can either enter as a team
of four or individually as well. Uh the tickets are all sold online. So please sign up if you're interested. And then you got a chance to meet uh three of our fantastic students from our youth leadership program. Applications are open right now for the adult leadership
program that the chamber has. And the applications are due on August 10th. It's an 8-week long program that starts on September 8th with an opening reception. So, we always love seeing uh city officials or um any city team
members that are interested in participating as well. And anyone in in here that is interested in signing up for our leadership program. As always, thank you so much for all of the support that you provide to the chamber. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you,
>> Mr. Robert Reinhagen. Oh, there you go, Robert. I looked over there a minute ago. I'm like, where's he at? I didn't see him in the seat. >> Welcome. >> Thank you, >> mayor, council members. Robert Reinhagen, 1425 Dexter Drive, Fort Arch.
Um, I wanted to talk about the community development block grant. I went to two meetings that they had updating the program uh the five-year plan and um there was a consensus there that um because the money was so little, it's a
HUD HUD money and it's like $300,000 each year and it has to be used within the uh lowincome areas of the city. Um and it's not enough money to to really attempt to try to do anything for an
individual homeowner. So they the consensus seemed to be and the uh the survey supported uh putting the money towards the uh infrastructure. Um my concern is that the survey that was
done it was an online survey and the information that they got collected you couldn't tell how many people within the the low-income districts actually responded to the to the uh to the survey. So what I would like to propose
and suggest is that you consider taking the money because it's not a lot of money and creating some sort of an arms budman program and you could have somebody then that will go out into the communities these low-inccome lowincome
communities and interview these people find out what their needs are what what their concerns are and then be a c a central point of contact for people that they can get directed towards the
various community services that are available and um I think that would be a a good experiment to to try to do that. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> What was the program you said Robert? >> The community development block grant.
>> Mr. Robert Fleck. >> And Mr. Fleck, on your on your topic here, you may want to stick around because I'll get the city manager to because we can probably give you some information on this. >> Oh, okay. Thanks. Go right ahead. >> Yeah. In fact, I've been in contact with um Dick Colby who's in charge of all that for the Anyway, so yeah, my name is
Robert Fleck. I've lived at 835 Ambury Drive for about um 40 years now. Thanks for giving me the time to share this with you. So about 5 years ago, I got this note saying they were going to resurface Bambbury Drive. We didn't need resurfacing. I don't know how that happened. So I called and that's how I
got introduced to Dick Colby. Um and uh you know he said uh he'd take my concerns into consideration with regards to Charles Street. I don't know if you have been down Charles Street. It it's a street that runs parallel to um Herbert Street. It's just one street north
between US1 and I think it's McDonald Road there. >> Yeah. >> I haven't been on every street in the city. I've been on a lot of them and that's the worst I've been on. It's it's it's terrible. I've got some pictures here. I took some photographs but I was told that I probably wouldn't be able to
show the color slides. But okay, you but anyway, I was told to bring some so that you had evidence. Um anyway, so a few years went by and I called him back and he said that well they couldn't consider resurfacing then because that new development there they were putting a
roundabout in and so that made sense. Had to wait to get all that done but actually the roundabout didn't go on Charles Street was over you know where it is before where I guess it's a McDonald that comes into what is it Madlin and Salt. Uh anyway, so I called again uh I think
the third time and I was told that it that it might be moved up on the priorities, but um I just thought it would be a good idea to come in and let you guys know that there's a bunch of us in the area there. I mean, it's bad enough with a car. I ride a bicycle a lot and it's almost
I mean, it's really bad on a bicycle. It's it's like a washboard road. So, I'll just leave these with whomever. >> You live right there with the court. Like I said, >> but anyway. Yeah. Thanks. And I'll stick around. >> Yeah. Stick around for a moment. We'll we'll weigh in on that. I'll maybe I'll speak to it as well. >> All right. Thanks very much. >> Thank you.
>> Angela Luk. >> Welcome. >> Thank you. >> Hello. Angela Luke, 674 Herbert Street. Under the city's current sign regulations, a billboard is a prohibited sign. Our municipal code discusses non-conforming signs and it reads, "The
intent is to allow non-conforming signs until they are no longer used or become hazardous, but not to encourage their survival." Last year, an applicant, Lamar Outdoor Advertising, was approved to amend the land development code to allow the replacement of static billboard sign faces with digital sign
faces on existing structures. Along with that amendment, the approval gave the authority for city council to enter into the agreements with billboard owners to reconstruct existing billboards along I95 and Rididgewood in exchange for permanent removal of other existing billboard sign faces within the city.
Lamar currently has four sign faces at US1 and Nova and two sign faces on I95. I'm up here. I'm up here tonight because I want to know if it was intentional deceit or an honest mistake made by the applicant or maybe the council didn't truly understand what they were
approving. The original request to the planning commission along with approval from staff was to remove all the billboards at the US1 location and reconstruct two digital faces on I95. The council didn't get to vote on this amendment because Lamar pulled it from
the January 21st agenda. Then Lamar went back to the planning commission in July to state that they had messed up and one northbound digital sign is intended for Ridgewood and one on 95. Staff did not recommend this revised
text amendment because it may not lead to the ultimate removal of billboards specifically within the city. The planning commission approved it anyway. Then council approved it on September 2nd. Then on October 7th, there was a consent agenda item to approve the
billboard relocation and reconstruction agreement. There was no public discussion about the agreement and it passed with unanimous roll call vote. The same meeting had a second reading of the land development code amendment text and it also unanimously approved with no
discussion. The slight of hand was made in the agreement because the second reading of the LDC amendment and all the exhibits and texts in the previous stack reports presented at earlier meetings clearly showed the intended reconstruction would be one digital sign
at US1 and one on 95. The US1 northbound lane southbound drivers on US1 would see a blank rear side of the sign. Even P. Castanza, the GM for Lamar, stated on record that the four signs on US1 would
reduce to one sign. But when you actually read the agreement, it states two digital LED sign faces will be constructed on US1 facing both north and southbound lanes and one digital sign face on I95. Why is the agreement different than what was discussed and
voted on during the first and second readings of the text amendment? Why are you all encouraging the survival of prohibited signs specifically within our city? >> Thank you, >> Adam Toby. Welcome,
>> Mayor Council. Thank you for uh giving me the time today. Um I second everything Angela just said because that is spot on. Um as far as my time today, um I gave everybody on the council a nice little packet. I'm starting to get
creative with our arts and crafts. Um, I'm simple today. Not going to browbeat, not going to go after anything. Just simply overdevelopment. And I've talked about this over and over again. Uh, the catchphrase I'm going to try to use today to sink in is suicidal empathy. And it's a very strange phenomenon
that's going on in the world right now. But we're so desperate to say yes and be liked that before you know it, we say yes to things that shouldn't be shouldn't be approved. things that should be approved. Indigenous Florida heritage, springs and
waterways, things that mean something to the community. Things that mean something to our kids, our citizens, citrus roots, coastal surf and culture, things that Sean, we were just talking about going surfing down in Sebastian. People talk about coming up and surfing
in Pon Inlet. What they don't talk about is, "Hey, I can't wait to go see more zero lot line houses with driveways too small for my truck to fit in. Hey, I can't wait for more flooding. Or Sean, I know you love this one, more traffic. I I know we've run out of the majority of land in Port Orange. There's just a few
big parts left, but they should be taken very seriously because this is the last little bastion of what we have. There's a an old saying, Nimi, not in my backyard. Orman Beach is dealing with this right now in the county with the uh the fuel farm up in Orman and all this stuff, and rightfully so. Well, there's
the other side of the story of somebody else is going to take care of it. Somebody else is going to take care of it. Somebody else is going to provide the wetlands. They're going to save our environment. We're going to have places to go hike. We have 22 parks here. That's phenomenal. Or 26 parks. That's phenomenal.
But when you contrast that by arguments of 50 foot lots being dropped down to 40 foot lots, that is insanity. Um uh not Congressman Foley, maybe future Congressman, but Councilman Foley had mentioned all these uh Lake Nona
comparisons. uh the ones in Orlando, they're all 20, 30. I I remember when those developments were built. We are 120, 140 year old city. We should be treated differently. We have very little land left for our wershed, for our quality of life. It is not
rocket scientists, but we don't have to say yes to everything. And I strongly strongly suggest everybody here, no matter who comes up, because I I wish I could stay longer, but I did the the double duty of county council and city council. Um, but anybody that comes up here on behalf of a developer, please
listen to what they're saying and take it for what it is because specifically west of 95 near Airport Road, Williamson, if that traffic has even 10 horn cars, it's overwhelming. Let alone adding whatever thousands of cars are going to be put into the system based
off of the proposed development that's in the works right now. But on that note, thank you for giving me the time. Have a great night. >> Thank you, sir. Good to see you. Thank you. All right, on to item 10, council member comments. Tracy, we'll start with you tonight. >> I don't want to take thunder away from
everybody, but uh Fourth of July. Wow, you guys did a fantastic job. Um, and I know everybody up here is going to be commenting on that and it's just a beautiful event that happened down at city center and those that missed it at social media did a great job showing it
and uh representing that out there. Um the other one that I have is police department uh volunteers. The VIPS are doing back to the school bash and it's it's a great program at the rec center
that's coming up on July 25th, Saturday uh from 10 to 1 uh fingerprinting of kids to try to help uh parents, things of that nature. It's all free. Uh great event, lots of things going on for that. And then mid August is going to be great
for Port Orange. Mid August, if weather holds, we'll have the Willow Run extension of the bike trail, walking trail that goes all the way down to Williamson completed and then the long awaited Dunlot boat ramp will be open to
the public. So, a lot of uh good things coming in mid August. That's uh great to see. >> That's it, John. Yeah, I just want to say um it's nice to see some of the surface roads being done by the county
Williamson and Taylor Road and I was kind of a little concerned there for a little while because there was a lot of things being left behind and debris, but today I witnessed them Massie going back through there and pulling all that up. I know that wasn't under our jurisdiction, but it's it's part of our city. We drive
the road every day, so it's starting to come together really nice, which is really getting a lot of positive comments about the resurfacing going on. I know gentlemen have brought it up. Uh it's a process that takes a long time and happens different times of the year, but it's really nice to see. Also, uh
got to witness uh on video the water coming into that new boat ramp as they were testing it, and that's going to be phenomenal. But I've actually been using the north side, and it's been going pretty smoothly. Everyone's been I haven't witnessed any fist fights down there. It's really nice. I keep that to
the ball fields on our park, so it works better there. No, I'm just kidding. But good job on the recck department over Fourth of July. That was uh navigating the weather and the lightning and shutting the beer tent down and opening it back up and uh just all the people
that ultimately came out as the as the sun set, which was a beautiful sunset and the event was really cool. the I I had a lot of good comments about the drone show. It was the first one I've ever seen in the sky like that. It was really cool. And uh I went home with a
nauseous stomach because I was one of the judges on the pie contest and that was uh phenomenal. So great great participation from our citizens uh all around and thank you parks and wreck for all of that. Just uh looking forward to
the rest of this meeting. Oh, you know, I want to mention one more thing, too, because we approved something tonight on the consent agenda that uh was to continue working with our u basically our lobbyists up in Tallahassee who uh
over the past few years have been able to help us get $10 million for our city for infrastructure and storm water improvement. So, I'm really thrilled to have the opportunity to be up in Tallahassee and work with our lobbyist.
His name is Sean Pitman. He's amazing. You walk through the halls and everybody knows him and he's just got such a great reputation and he's done such a good job for us. So, I was pleased that uh we were going to continue to use his services. That's all I got. >> Lance, I'm going to echo that. I mean,
Sean Pitman is uh that was that was an eye openening how much that guy knew and who he knew and whose dog he knew and whose horse he knew. I mean, he knew everybody in the building and uh that was money well spent. Um, also want to echo again parks and wreck on the 4th of
July. Man, the the the drone show was really cool. I mean, that was uh a lot of people talking about it. Uh, the other thing I want to talk about though is the Cypress Head thing, item seven on the consent. And I do want it to be known that again, you know, these fees are are the parameters, I guess you
would say. But I I'm going to echo what Rich says and I don't want to price us out of the market either. We have a good product and we got a good thing going and at the current time it's it's making a little bit of money that we're able to
reinvest back into the course, but at the same time I don't want to price us out of contention and then we've got something where we're going backwards. So hopefully like like we said, you know, it's Park's, you know, job along with our management team and and Keer
Sports and these cats to make sure that we are at the right number all the time. And I think they're doing a good job at that. They've got this revolving price code and if the book's empty, they'll put you in. But that's going to be their main focus at these rates because as you
see, everything's going up and the cost of Cypress Head is going up. It is everything, manpower, you name it. Fuel, fuel, fuel. So hopefully though, we can keep uh keep a good eye on this and keep us a competitive city-owned course. So
hopefully we don't price oursel out. But that's all I got tonight. >> I'll I'll lead off with the just a follow couple comments on the golf course. So, having been up here on the council the longest, I can tell you that the overwhelming amount of years that
Cypress Head Golf Course has been in existence, it has not been able to carry its own weight financially, and it has had to be supplemented by the general fund, the taxpayers, many, many, many, many, many, many times over. And so this current management team along with all
of the people within that team to include their ground staff and the pro shop folks and and everybody else has has been able to tune those things in to where now it is it has sustained itself uh in the recent years. And that is
ideally what we want. And and and I and I say that because the golf market can rise and fall a little bit as we have seen and and we are not the experts in that industry and and we need to entrust in them to be
able to adjust accordingly as needed to sustain that course so that we don't get into financial distress. You saw uh you know over the last 10 years you saw golf courses all over the state of Florida closing down >> our county right >> gone just like that and and when that
happens it not just it's not just the loss of a golf course it's the loss of a resource within a community that impacts property rates and and the overall quality of life and and so it is we could talk about golf courses all night long and most of us be talking about stuff we don't actually have the
expertise in but having sat up here I can tell you that those are real concerns. Additionally, those rates, the the resolutions to be able to change those rates accordingly haven't been done in five years. What has happened in the last five years? Well, we saw the
minimum wage by voter approval in the state of Florida increase 72%. 72% in 2019. I am still shocked that people can't grasp why the cost of everything in the state of Florida has
gone up. every service, every product when you move the needle 72% in such a short amount of time. And I'm not saying it did or didn't need to be done, but but the reality of it is when you move the wage needles and the minimum wage, the cost of services, the cost of goods,
and on top of that, you've had about a 28 to 35% increase in inflation over that same period of time. You cannot maintain a golf course at that same level of those costs from five, six years ago. So the reality of it is you
gotta have those fluctuations. They got to do like everybody else do their best to look for opportunities to to have efficiencies and have savings and and and still make the course uh a course that people want to go pay for. And I will tell you that they've done that.
Um, that is one of I don't play a ton of golf, but I but I get around enough and I play enough to see that that that course is a desirable course. People want to go and play that course. So, that's my thoughts on that. On the Charles Street uh comment, and I'll let
the city manager weigh in. You know, we've got some major huge storm water mitigation projects. one of the largest in the city that we're working towards will impact Charles Street to me tremendously because we need to be able under the current design and engineering
plans run a line about 8,000 linear feet 36 in in diameter >> 42 >> big >> big and it's got yeah so a lot of Charles Street as you see it today will have to be totally tore up completely so it doesn't make sense to go out there
today and resurface a street that tomorrow we've got to get that torn all up. And so that that final design and final engineering is still kind of going on. But once all that's done, that will be part of that is to have that street completely repaved and pro probably more
repaving than just resurfacing the amount of of property that we anticipate. Uh so just kind of stay tuned on that and and know that that will be coming and that will be part of that larger scale project for sure. Um, in terms of the the the the acquisition of funds in Tallahassee, I appreciate
you guys bringing that up. You you are right. I I have seen what Sean Pitman is capable of doing in Tallahassee and not from a standpoint of bragging, but a lot of cities go to Tallahassee looking for funding and they come back completely empty-handed. It is very common, too,
that if you go to Tallahassee and you're fortunate enough to get some dollars to bring back to your community that you probably aren't going to get anything the following year. It's just kind of how it works up there. It's very political in Tallahassee. Not so much what we do, but up there for sure. I see
Robin laughing. She knows what I mean. But but Sean and our staff together year after year after year, and I'm not jinxing you for next year because I got big expectations, but year after year after year, they they put a a strategy
in place, and you have to know, you can go up there asking for money for something and if it's not the interest of the legislature or the Senate, you might as well just go out there and talk to those walls. So year after year after year, Sean does a great job of a strategy and helping our staff say,
"Okay, these are where the interests are. We this is where we think there will be money available." And then that allows us to to acquire that money and move funding around because money is money when it comes to trying to get a lot of these projects done. And so they have done a tremendous job. I appreciate
you guys bringing uh bringing that up because we have we have done very well in getting our return return on investment out of having him and his firm up there for sure. Uh and lastly, kind of a a sad note. Um we recently had
uh one of our VIPs uh Captain Bruce Wickcom uh pass away. Um Bruce had served for 21 years serving this community. 21 years. not just somebody who shows up occasionally, but showed up all the time. I don't know how many
thousands and thousands and thousands of hours um he put into serving the community, but I can tell you it's that much. It's not a couple of hours or even a couple hundred. It's in the thousand thousand. >> And so um I don't have um his obituary tonight u but on the next council
meeting I'd love if one of you would read his obituary into the permit record here in the city of Port Orange. So, our thoughts and prayers are with Bruce's family and and everybody at the police department because every time we have a loss like this, it's definitely felt by everybody.
>> All right. And that's enough for me. Uh, city attorney, >> nothing for you tonight. >> Mr. City Manager, do you want to weigh in on that Charles Street? Did I Was I somewhere on base? I thought Matt was going to go for like 10 minutes. I need a little more time. >> You want a filibuster? >> Yeah.
So, so on the the Charles Street, we are going to be working on the east side from the railroad tracks to US1 in month of August. So, we should have that part done. As you mentioned, the west side is affected by Porttona, also the the other project, the sugar bars project. So, because of those two, that's why we
wouldn't be going as fast on that side, which is the area in question. So, we will be getting the railroad tracks east to US1 though coming up here in the next month. The other stuff I have on the list, so Riverwalk being the first one, we have two letters of intent now from two interested parties who would like to
acquire the property and develop it. I haven't had a chance to actually review it yet because I've been spending more time on the budget right now. The intent is to to go through them and review them as staff and bring something to you. Hopefully the second meeting in August would be the plan to look at that. So, uh they're both both of them consistent
with what we were hoping to see mixed use projects. One of them has parking deck, one of them does not. uh both have hotels, multif family, uh commercial, that kind of stuff. So they're they're both valid. Both of them come from parties who I think could could do a successful project. So we'll analyze those two and bring something to you in
the next 3 4 weeks. >> Excellent. Stormwater project. So we acquired three properties recently. The property at Trailwood and the one at 893 Sugar House have now been demoed, graded, and seated. The 798 Sugar House is coming up in the next couple weeks.
the same thing. Once we have them all cleared like that, you've seen that probably in I think it's in the newsletter where we talked about we're going to go out between grants and other funding sources and work to landscape them back so that there's more of a native Florida approach so the maintenance costs are are lower going forward.
Other projects, the transform 386 projects at Porttona and Powers, uh the the county is leading these projects at this point. They've been doing field data collection for a while, looking into what kind of dirt's there, what's underground. Property acquisition supposed to be going on this summer with
D design and permitting next next year. Uh so we'd start construction about September, October of next year on on those two projects going forward. And then the sugar forest project, the bigger one that you mentioned, we're at that odd 75% plans, which is they've got
enough detail now that they're able to go out there and see where that pipe the pipe you were talking about. And we're in the process of pretty much going down the entire route looking for utility conflicts along the way. So you're you're mapping it out in detail to see what else is in the ground and how we can put this in with the minimal disruption and cost to to going through
the existing utilities in that area. So projects are continuing to progress there. You can bet we're going to find stuff in the ground that we didn't notice >> and once we start digging >> and that's a guarantee >> the parks bond project. So the the city center sports complex one back here
behind us has the notice to proceed. Well they're they're going to start construction in August. So we're about a month out from construction on the first project going forward. And then on the we've sub submitted the echo grant for the Willow Run Park as well. So we expect to hear about that award in the fall and then we would start
construction. We didn't slow really down that process. So, we're ready to start that construction if the grant gets awarded in the fall. Not, we still go forward with the project, but we we have believe we've got a really good chance of getting that grant going forward. And then you mentioned already the Causeway
Park uh that we have the the boat ramp ready to go about. We're now three two three weeks out or so from opening that and getting it ready to go. >> That's going to be a little bit ahead of schedule then. >> Mid August is what we're good. Good. >> What else you got? Anything else? >> That's it on those topics.
>> All right. brings us to board appointments, interviews, and reports. Item 13, sticking with a popular theme tonight, parks and recreation board report. >> Welcome, sir. >> Good evening. >> Bobby Ball with the uh chair.
>> Yeah, you got to remember. Yeah, parks and wreck. Um, you know, it's actually kind of interesting. I'm sitting here listening and everything you guys are talking about is things we've been talking about. And so I don't have a whole lot to really new stuff to tell you, but I'll I'll just simply say that you know uh last year the voters
approved the bond and we are coming out of the ground with bond projects and uh we've got uh heard a report from staff with the different projects. We've got city center soccer fields, we got Willow Run Park, we got White Place, we got the train depot going, we've got Crossy North expansion potentially happening
with the school board and and the Crossy family. We've got Crossy under drain project redoing the baseball fields in the back. We've got uh potentially well that's going to be maybe later. So um it's just really exciting to be part of of the the board right now because um we
sort of have these ideas with you to do something and they're actually coming to fruition. So it's uh it's pretty exciting for us. You guys talked about the golf course. I can't tell you as a golfer, you guys know I'm a golfer. If you have a good quality golf course, people come to play. Um, you can look all over the state and look at the part
at the courses that aren't doing well and there's a reason why they're not doing well. And when you hired Darren whatever it was four, five, six years ago, maybe it was more by now, and he came in did a good job. That's what's going to happen. You're seeing the results of a good decision a while back. Um, not to mention Darren was from here,
so he's going to take care of it like it's his own >> for sure. >> Um, you mentioned Fourth of July, you mentioned the boat ramp. I'm super excited about that. As an engineer, I'm a nerd. I want to see that. I want to see the pictures, you know, before before they filled it back in. So, I don't really have anything else to say. I was quick. I know you got a long night. I will just say one last thing as
it relates to the referendum that's in in November. We talked about that as a board. And um we want to know, as you've heard already tonight, everything that we've talked about that makes Port Orange what Port Orange is is parks and wreck. And this the voters in this city
decided to tax ourselves to take care of parks and wreck. And I think I don't know how how far I can go as a board person, but I know the city has to educate. Perhaps I can advocate. I'd like to find a way that the board can do that process for you and help with that. So, um, as a board, what can we do? You
need to tell us and then let us do it. >> Thank you. >> Excellent. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Bobby. >> Thank you. >> On to the public hearing portion of the meeting, item 14, second reading of ordinance number 2026-6. It's an ordinance of the city of
Porridge, Felia County, Florida, proposing amendments to the city of Port Orange charter. Setting a charter amendment referendum amending the charter of the city of Port Orange to change the qualification requirements for city council members including the mayor. Amending the residency requirements. Providing for authority to resolve disputes related to qualification and election. Providing
for an election to be held November 3rd, 2026 when qualified electors of the city may vote for or against the charter amendments. providing for ballot questions, providing for public notice, providing for severability, scrier's errors, repeal of conflicting ordinances, and an effective date.
>> Can I get a motion and a second to approve on second reading ordinance number 2026-6? >> Motion to approve ordinance uh number 2026-6. >> Second. >> Have a motion and second. Council, any comments? >> Second. Anybody from the public wish to
speak to item 14? Seeing none, back to council. Last chance to comment. Clerk, call the role. >> Councilman Gford, >> yes. >> Councilman Green, >> yes. >> Vice Mayor Krabs, >> yes. >> Mayor Stilton, >> yes. 40.
>> Item 15, second reading of ordinance number 2026-8. >> That's an ordinance of the city of Orange Blush County, Florida, amending the land development code chapter 17 zoning district regulations relating to updating the PCA zoning district regulations in response to changing market demand. by revising locations of
where certain uses are allowed within the PCA district while keeping consistent with the current planned community westside future land use designation relating to minor revisions for clarity and development standards. Removing redundancies to improve consistency in the application of the code providing efficiencies in the
development review process all in support of future development within the PCA district providing for repeal of conflicting ordinances severability and an effective date. Can I get a motion and a second to approve on second reading ordinance number 2026-8?
>> I move to approve ordinance number 2026-8. >> Just second it. >> A motion and a second. Council, any comments? >> Not yet. >> Mayor, just let you know when this item came through on first reading, it was approved on a 3-2 vote. Councilman Foley was one of the votes in favor who is not
here. So, unless one of the council members who voted against is going to change to a yes, a 22 would kill it on second reading and the applicant may want to address that for you as you go forward, unless unless one of you wants to go ahead and change your vote on second reading and move it forward. Otherwise, the applicant may want to
request to wait until we have a full board to do so. I will tell you that what you did ask to do taking out the 40 foot lots and changing that one uh exhibit that 17 figure 171 where you had the 16 units an acre to eight. They made all the changes council directed. So
they were prepared to go forward tonight as directed on the 3-2 vote at first reading. >> Okay, that's good. The applicant like to come up. >> Welcome. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. I would just say having heard that from the city manager because we
ran into this all that not long ago that if that is your interest now would definitely be the time to exercise that. >> That was going to be our request this evening. We recognized that there was quite a bit of discussion at the last meeting. Um we wanted to have the benefit of the full board so that we could have the final discussion see the final changes that were made as a result
of the discussion at the last meeting. So if we could ask to table it for the next meeting that'd be our request. >> Okay. We need a We need a motion and a second from council to table. >> Uh I'll make a motion to table it. >> Second it.
>> Have a motion and a second to table item 15 on the second reading of ordinance number 2026-8. >> Procedurally m does it make any difference? We just does it matter just to make sure we put it on the agenda correctly. It should be continued to August 4 specific to the next >> place it on the table. We can take it
off on four. >> We don't have to have them vote to take it off the table though. We can just put it on August 4th. >> You just table it. Okay. It doesn't have to be a specific date certain, >> but do we have to withdraw the first motion in second? >> So, we want to Yes. >> So, we'll have to do that again
>> to preserve legal notice and that's I mean, is that okay? So, they're looking to to preserve legal notice. So, that that would be for a date certain. >> August 4th is fine with our request to >> continue to August 4th. >> Yes, sir. >> Sounds good. All in favor signify by saying I. >> I.
>> Any opposed? >> All right, that's been tabled and you just to resend the motion and the second that's already on the floor. >> Well, I shortened that meeting. >> Can you go ahead and >> I'll go ahead and I'll go ahead and resend my motion to approve ordinance number 2026-8.
>> Second it. >> Second. Thank you guys. brings us to the regular agenda items for tonight. Item 16, first reading of ordinance number 2026-11. That's an ordinance of city Rouge, Scanning, Florida, amending chapter 54,
article 4, fire and rescue pension fund, amending section 5477 definitions amending the definition of salary to include certain overtime hours, providing for codification, repeal of conflicting ordinances, severability, and an effective date. Can I get a motion and a second for the
first reading of ordinance number 2026-11? >> Have a motion to approve ordinance 2026-11. >> Second. >> Have a motion and a second. Any comments from council members on this? >> Rain, did you want to weigh in or anybody on staff want to weigh in on
this one? >> I don't have anything further. >> No. Okay. >> No, I mean we've had this discussion and I think it was uh kind of just clarifying clarification. So, >> this is definitely something up here. >> Yep. Anybody from the public wish to speak to this particular item? See none. Back to council. Last chance
for comments. Call the role. Councilman Gert. >> Yes. >> Councilman Green. >> Yes. >> Vice Mayor Krebs. >> Yes. Mayor Stler. >> Yes. 40. Item number 17, fiscal year 2026 2027 budget discussion.
Oh, she's pulling up the PowerPoint. So, this is a second half of the budget presentation we did, capital projects, back in June. Um, the difference with this one is it focuses more it focuses more heavily on the general fund and and where the the
last one we did didn't have any action required, it was really just a discussion, this one does conclude with a a follow-up item, which is an action to set the max millage. Our maximum millage has to be submitted by early August. So we have basically two weeks to get that taken care of. Tonight is
doesn't work. We do have a tenative meeting set next Tuesday night, but if we can get it done tonight, we'll submit it from from there. Uh there's a lot of complicated information in here. It took a bunch of staff to put it together. Uh I will do my best to answer every question you have as we go through the presentation. If I can't answer it,
staff may be able to help. If we can't get it to you tonight, we will get it to you right after the meeting. Uh, and if I misspeak on anything going through all this, the staff is out here to help me out, making sure that they send me corrections throughout the process. >> Yeah. before you before you get started,
if if you would um I I would like to ask that as you talk about revenue sources that you slow down just a little bit and give some examples for those that that are listening in or will watch these meetings because with discussions uh
that we've been having out in the out in the community and with the vote that's looming in November, a lot of people really don't understand how ultimately the revenue comes together, the the strings that are attached certain revenue streams and things like that. So, if you could kind of slow down when
you get to that part a little bit, maybe give some examples and how those things are restricted and all that kind of stuff, that would be really helpful. >> And we got here a lot earlier tonight, so the audience seems to be more alert than we were back in. >> Yeah, I know, right? It's better having this discussion at 7:20 as opposed to 11:20.
>> So, so the out you can see the outline here, standard outline with some introduction. The focus really is the general fund part. We do have a section that that deals with amendment three that I thought that that was the responsible thing to do. we know it's out there and it's a possibility and as we built this budget, we built it understanding that that was a real
possibility. And so just being able to talk about what the impacts might be, we put that in there. We did we start with this every year with these are our five strategic priorities. We've had these for several years, but the budget focuses on funding into these areas. You've already talked about a couple of
them tonight. Public safety and parks being two of them. We've also had items talk about paving and infrastructure, which comes up quite a bit. Uh before we go into talking about requesting money for the future year, I think it's really important that you show the community what they got from the money that that
we got this year. And so this is just a sample of some of the things that were done this year to help the community be a better place. And and it's grouped by those strategic priorities leading with our public safety. and and we really have I think we've done a really good job in recent years turning the corner
of investing in our public safety of providing them with better equipment to keep them safe while they're out there and help them do the jobs while they're out there. So whether it's better vehicles, better equipment, the the Axon upgrades for police were really nice having the better SWAT van. Uh we had
some pretty aged fire trucks that needed to be replaced. I kind of lump information technology in with that too because the cyber security is critical to keep people out of our whether they're in trying to get into our plants or trying to attack our infrastructure in general. U but we have we have invested well and need to continue to
invest in in public safety and I think the results are there. We remain one of the safest communities to be if something's going to happen to you. you've seen the presentations that we've had um the the firefighter and police officer of the year, the presentations on on the various things that the the
actions police have taken. Uh we had the the life-saving uh presentation that what we've done in fire for EMS also. So, as we continue to work on what makes this community great, one of the things is always and it seems to be lead is that it is a safe community to live in.
Uh, in addition to that, the park stuff, and you've covered a lot of that tonight, too. The the Fourth of July, they continue to do an amazing job at events and activities. So, the the adult I still everybody knows our baseball and softball programs and basketball programs, but the adult activity center,
too. It's huge participation down there. That place is full all the time. I probably use two or three of those things. But they they in addition to to events, they they are constantly doing things for people in this community at really good value. A lot of these things are free. You just show up because you
live here, paid for by your property tax dollars, but it is what you get as a resident in this community that you don't get everywhere else. In addition to that, and we we went over this a bunch in the last meeting that that maintenance of what we own. Uh we we maybe in the past had not been as strong
as that, but we we have made a big emphasis on taking care of what we have. So parks has done a really good job of that. It kind of become a running joke because a lot of the projects were bathrooms. So we said really they're really good at fixing bathrooms. Um but they do take care of the fields and the lights and other things too. So she appreciates the humor of that. Experts
at bathroom repair if you need any assistance. Um but in addition to that and Bobby mentioned that in his presentation the parks bond projects. I've worked in places where we did bonds and it may be three, four, five years out before you see projects really coming close to fruition. They've done
so good that we have all five of them in the design stages and ready to go. We got one ready to start construction. We could have started the Willow Run already, except that we held it for an echo grant so that we could then spread the the dollars out even further. They they've done done so well that we have
two projects now, Rec West and the Karasi Park expansion that we might have to actually hold on to a little bit uh because of the November vote, but they they are the ability to have those projects teed up and ready to go is impressive. And then the rest of the stuff on the list is really getting at
infrastructure. So, we talked about the legislative appropriations, Pitman's group's ability to consistently get us in the ballpark of about $2 million a year. We have had a a bunch of positive impact on improving water sewer lines, improving drainage because of all that money. Uh, as we continue to move
forward with the major flood projects and continuing to make sure that the infrastructure is reliable, I think it's it's it's sometimes not seen or talked about because it's buried in the ground a lot of times or doesn't happen till you have a hurricane, but when it does, you want to make sure that that stuff works. So, so the the funding that we
have this year in the budget, I think has produced results to the community that are visible and that people should be should be proud of. There there's nothing what we did is is very well used the funding that we had to make a difference in this community, focusing on the priorities that we have of
keeping it safe, family oriented, great quality of life and very reliable infrastructure. These are some pictures of it because some people are not word oriented. They're more visual oriented. So, we put in a series of pictures to see that uh all the various things that that we did
this year. U there's a couple of you guys at Fourth of July in here too. Everybody had great shirts that day. That was that was that was nice to see. So, so the environment that we're going into when we started putting the budget together, it's like there's certain things that affect you that that aren't
necessarily directly under our control, but some of them do. Uh, one of the things, and it was it was brought up by one of the speakers earlier, we're essentially built out. We have a little bit of land down on the south end of Wood Haven at the I95 interchange that already has everything's got the the comprehensive plan, which is the bigger
broader view of the city. That's they're already planned out. Now they'll come back in like tonight the item we were hearing with the the VCOR Karasi land and work on some of the zoning to get it in specifics but the the land uses are all basically laid out in those areas. So we knew that we were seeing limited
revenue from new growth. So you'll see some of these cities talking about as we go forward, we were able to keep the millage rate flat because we have 6% growth in our tax base and and so it's easy to do that when you're getting five and $6 million of new revenue every year from shopping centers and thousand home
subdivisions and and despite occasionally being told that we have we need to slow our growth, I can show you we don't we don't have any growth to slow. It is it's so low we barely make money off of new development going forward. So we we are at the end of the line when it comes to new our focus and
council's talked about this before why code enforcement is so important and maintenance is so important because what we have is what's going to keep our values up because we we're not going to see new really added to it. One of the things that really caught us a little off guard this year is the residential property values are decreasing. So, when
we went to VCard hosts this event where the property appraiser shows up every summer and I I'll show you his graphic, but this was the first year I think I've seen us losing money and we there's 17 16 cities plus the county and we used to be in the top three or four from revenue
from our tax base growing and as the residential values houses are selling for less. So, as houses have depre depreciated down in value that revenue went down with it. So we're now 15th of 17 cities in this area when it comes to value our tax values. So so that was a
hurd that that took away that flexibility that we had to do more with the same amount of money or with without changing the millage rate. We also have contracted wage and benefit obligations. I think we we've been headed down a really good path with our bargaining
units and working to get get fair pay, competitive pay. Uh we we had a few years ago we had our general employees were generally below half of the market rate. Uh and so we made some progress in getting most of the general employees up. We just had a three-year contract
with fire that's kept kept wages competitive and we're now in an open uh right now open negotiations with the police department for their agreement as well. So the wages that come out of that are are are critical. We are a service organization. We're not selling tennis shoes to people or cars or hamburgers.
We provide services to people and those services are provided by the 520 employees that we have and uh and the better the people are you have the better the value of the service that they get. Um we have other contracts the fireworks the mowing these things that
have inflation increases in them as well. And then I've got a slide that shows our debt payments but just like you have credit cards at home and uh home mortgage payments and car payments we have debts we got to pay. Uh, and then the last one is is a little unique to this year. So, we've run our fleet
program off of a replacement fund and then we've switched a little bit to a borrowing debt model and we're switching back and we also had some we we really weren't funding it u in a reliable way. And so, I I'll explain that in a second a little more, but I didn't want to get
off the topic first of the property values. So, this shows the the 17 governments in the area. So this slide popped up a couple weeks ago when we were at that presentation and when I was in community development years ago, I used to I used to go to this presentation and watch us. We were
routinely, you know, when when we were in that period in the 2010s, we were up at the top and it gave us a lot more flexibility with with services. We are in this area and you can see all the cities around us. Ponlet, South Daytona, the shores, we're all we're all
experiencing lower values. We we did call them. They're they're very helpful property appraisers office and said, "Can you give me an idea of what's driving this?" Because what we wanted to be sure is it's not something we control. Like it's it's not that the homes are losing value that that we have, you know, it's not a code
enforcement problem. It's not that we're letting the city go down. It was that houses went up in value and now the houses are the market is bringing the houses down. But as the houses sell for less, less revenue comes in as a result of that. And I'll show you at the end when we talk about the millage rate
because there was a lot of criticism level cities this this through this winter and spring about taking booming property values and then raising taxes and getting out of control and we didn't do that. We did not take advantage of booming property values to push taxes way high. We've done a pretty good job
of having ours stay level with the inflation rates. So the the this part of the budget deals with the the overall it's the big big picture of it all. Uh, a lot of it doesn't impact the the actual village rate, but I wanted to show you the whole
budget so you can see in context how it fits in. So, this is the overview of the total budget, and you can see it's in the $220 million range. The total budget is actually a little lower this year than it was last year. The pi over there reflects the total budget. That is that's the breakdown of the 220 million.
And you can see where the largest components are with personnel, capital, and operating. Uh and so so the reason it's a little lower you'll see the capital projects tend to push it up and down. So if you have a big capital project like the public utilities operating facility when that
project gets funded once it's done and comes down the number lowers a little bit but the importance of those three pieces of the pie. So when when anybody tells you sharpen your pencils or tighten your belt those are the the biggest pieces of the pie where you get the biggest return. And I'm going to
explain why we've already done that in a lot of these cases and and and it helps a little bit explaining the value we've provided in these areas before we talk about what we may add or or decrease. The general fund budget, you can see did go up. Uh I've got a little background.
We we balanced that that budget, the 678 at a 5.1 millage rate, which we'll get to at the end. And we transferred some money over from the fund balance at just under $6 million. Most of it is for the capital improvements. A little bit of it covers that fleet transition. So we do
CIP every year. There's a little bit more this year in general fund CIP transfer than the past. But the fleet issue, so when you fund it as a basically you have a pot of money that everybody pays into every year. So if you got a hundred vehicles in the police department, they pay a portion of of
those 100 vehicles every year into this fund. so that when the vehicles need to be replaced, the funds are in there and you just buy the new vehicle out of the fleet fund. But it helps to be realistic. If you got a car that's going to last five or six years, you don't budget it out for an 8 to10 year life cycle. And you also have to say if the
car costs $60,000 today and you have a six-year life, it's not going to be $60,000 to replace it. So you've got to account for inflation and you also have to account for the things you put on it. So you don't just take a car off the lot and give it to a police officer. You got to put the lights in it. you've got to put all the equipment in it to make it
function. So when you budget for the replacement vehicle there, you've got to account for the full vehicle and the full life. And we hadn't been doing that in the past. So the fleet fund was a little light. So, when we started moving forward on on doing more realistic replacement, it's going to take a little
bit of money and we're going to take an infusion from the fund balance to to help us catch up and refill that fund so that we have the ability to continue to replace vehicles because we've been doing about 13 police cars a year in replacement. And you got to make sure you've got the funds in place to do that
and continually do that reliably. So, and this usually leads to this conversation. It comes up every year. where are we at in fund balance? So, uh the policies there. So, but what we've adopted as a policy is that 14 to 17 million uh which is sort of what we would call our hurricane reserve. It's
it's enough money to handle that we got hit by two in a in a cycle. Um at the end of the year last year when we did our offer our audit the ACFR is it's the financial report. So, it was the report that was the audit was presented off of back in April. That was the number we
had. So, we were a little over the top of the range at the audit at the end of last year. Since that time, we've spent some money during the course of the year. We've transferred some money out of the general fund. You you probably remember we have an agenda item occasionally that's a budget transfer where we move money from general fund to
do something. Couple of things we did was buy some properties in the central part of the city to to help with the storm water projects. So, that money came out of fund balance. At the end of the year, the departments, if they don't spend all the money, that goes back into fund balance. And I can say our
departments did a really good job of of executing their budgets, if you give them a million dollars. They're spending 90 to 95% of it. We don't have large vacancies. In the past, we've seen major influxes back in the fund balance because police and fire had a lot of vacancies, but they have done a really
good job of staying staffed to the point where there's not a lot coming back. But the number down at the bottom is what we estimate when with the money going out and the money coming back in. We believe we will still have a fund balance at around 16 million. So it's a healthy in
the middle of your range. It does allow you a little bit of flexibility if you want to lo move a little bit more for some capital projects over it. It doesn't have a whole lot of flexibility if some really great opportunities come up, but just but it it's it's healthy and it's in your range.
So the budget itself is made up of seven major fund categories and this is the broad overview of where they are in the draft budget right now. General fund at the top uh this year the biggest of those the in the past the utilities is occasionally larger if it has a big uh
capital project in it. Uh but you can see the two those are really the two biggest general fund and enterprise and then they get smaller as you go down. uh one of the challenges. So so this is one of those government accounting things where uh it it studying this can be confusing because one of the things that
we had to do this year a few years back we took some money out of the building fund reserves the the building department the building inspectors and we moved them into a fund because we were going to tear down city hall and rebuild it and then a bunch of hurricanes hit and building city hall is not a priority anymore. fixing flooding is a priority, but we're also no longer
by state law allowed to take building fund revenue and use it on office space for building inspectors. So, we had to give it back to them. So, it shows up in here as a cost to the fund giving it back and it also shows up in the fund as coming back to them. So, it looks like $6 million is getting spent when all
we're doing is moving money from over here to over here. But that's how you have to do it with government dollars. So, I wouldn't other than just seeing the magnitude and the scale. If you have questions on any of the lines, Sue can remind me what's in in a lot of them and the detail, but it's not that's not the
best way to analyze the budget. It just kind of gives you an idea of the scale of the funds and then they get smaller as you go along. So, you can see the building fund, it won't be that big going forward. That's the that's the influx of all the money coming in this one year. And then he'll it'll be in his reserves. And he's uh Tim's already
basically lowering the the the amount of cost in that division because of the slowing of growth. and that reserve will allow him to continue. Plus, the states changed all the rules on building permits anyway. You don't probably need a building permit for much in the next few years. We I have a slide on debt. I put this in
here because it's important. It's a required expenditure. Uh the general funds at the top, the utility or the enterprise funds are at the bottom. And I forgot I should have talked about this when I was talking about the broad budget where the mayor asked me to talk about where funding comes from. So the general fund when I get into the detail
we do have slides that show where the money comes from. The enterprise funds are like standalone businesses. So like the water sewer fund is an enterprise fund. Water and sewer rate payers are where all that revenue comes from. It is it's fully funded by its own rate
payers. The golf course fund is paid for by the people who play golf. The storm water fund is paid for by the the stormwater fee. So those are not part of the property tax base. The general fund departments like fire, police, parks, those are the ones that are funded from
property taxes. But there's some other funding sources I want to show. So the utility the the enterprise funds at the bottom. We had our financial adviserss in when we were looking at the revenue and looking at the the fee structures a while back and he indicated that our our
debt levels are are fair. They're su they are appropriate. We're not high in debt. We're not too low in debt. We're a little low in the utility, but that's because we're anticipating the $170 million sewer plant rebuild coming up. So, we we you you kind of pay it down just in time to to go back up for the
sewer plant. We may get some forgivable loans for that. That's certainly a likely possibility. We got some on the early, but we will ultimately end up paying a good bit of money out of that fund for the sewer plan upgrade. The general fund ones at the top, and the reason I put them in two different
shapes, so the ones that are in a box are are different. Those are the ones that are actually we pay that out of the the operating money every year. So that is a general fund impact. So those debts that we have there are a bill we have to pay just like you have to pay your mortgage. So you get your paycheck and the first thing you do is go in there
and go okay I've got to pay the mortgage. I got to pay for the car. Uh you know those things you take those off the top. These are debts that are obligations we have to pay off the top. The other three the ones that are not in a box are are part of bond issues. So they're paid off taxes. They don't affect our general fund every year. So
half of that three million immediately every year three million of that $65 million general fund is paying these debts. So the general fund so this is the bulk of it and this is what really gets us to the millage rate. One of the things we were able to do this year we hadn't done in the past is give you more trends. I
know I talked to a couple council members who really wanted to see some trends and uh thanks to the the finance staff because they were able to put this all together for us. So, one of the things that we did here, so this is looking at the the the budgets, not not the actual budgets that we have and blue
is the people and pink is the operating supplies. And so there's some examples of it down at the bottom. And so we didn't put all those transfers. So when I was talking about how you move money from the building fund around and it it doubles up what it looks like, the same thing happens when you have money, whether you're paying for your cars or
something. So what we did is this is just looking at the core operating costs and the core personnel cost. And and this is back to when I was showing you the three big pieces of the pie of the budget, operating, capital, and people. And so capital, we we got more slides to talk about. This one is showing you your
operating and your people. So across a four-year window, if you look at that that pink level, this year's proposed budget is actually lower than the prior years. It's lower than anything but the first one. the departments with all the inflation going on, the cost of stuff going up have managed to keep the
operating budgets flat. So all the stuff it takes to do our jobs, they have not you don't see that increase in that area. And the benefit of of being really good at that. So that's another example of sharpening pencils and tightening belts is they have done a really good job of sitting on the cost of of doing
business, which has allowed us to to put that money and invest in our people. So the blue going up, that's showing our investment. So whether it's picking up the $15 an hour minimum wage that affected all of us that the state voted to require us to do or the agreements we have with our bargaining units to pay
competitive wages. But that that that discipline on behalf of the departments is allowing us to invest back into our people. So this is where money comes from for the general fund. Uh taxes being the big one there. We've used this slide a lot. you see this every year and to see how
we got there. One of the things we did different this year we haven't done in the past is we took the two biggest pieces of pie, the taxes and the intergovernmental and broke them down separately. And then so you can see underneath it what makes up all that money. So while the property taxes are
the largest amount of that 65, there's still a lot of other meaningful amounts. Now the intergovernmental revenue at the bottom doesn't change as much. You can see it's relatively flat across that trend. So, it's not really allowing us a lot of increase to help with wages, but
on the top you can see the millage rate is affected, but we're getting about a million or so more a year in taxes going forward. And then the utility service tax has helped us, but there's some meaningful money. We do have the the property appraisers estimates on the property taxes. What we don't have yet
are all those other numbers which are state revenues. So we we tell you this usually every July when we come to you to set max millillage. We don't really know exactly what those other state revenues are going to be. This is the breakdown of them. You can see the sales tax. There's been some conversation if
you do away with property tax or limited maybe the sales tax picks it up, but it's not really reliable. You can see it actually went down and we didn't really have a recession. Um that that number really is economic dependent. So it's it's not as as consistent. So, it's hard to budget when you're trying to go,
okay, I need to I need to have a wage contract over a couple of years. You need to know consistent revenue streams in order to address that. Same thing if you're going to buy a big fire truck or something like that. It's good to kind of know what your revenue is going to be so you can project out five and 10 years. But we thought that was helpful to go in and break down, as the mayor
mentioned, where where is this money coming from? What is the source? So this this is the critical money that pays for police, fire, parks, road maintenance and grounds maintenance and then you get the smaller departments as well.
So this is looking at how it's so those were the slides of money coming in. This is the slide of the money going out. This is how it gets spent and this is by broad category. So this is uh showing you personnel is the largest expense here. uh where in the budget as a whole
personnel was about a quarter as in the general fund itself it's more like twothirds and then operating up there at the top I would say that we back again to being really good stewards of public money when it comes to the cost of stuff of 15% the operating number uh because
like small departments that are paper oriented so the office people aren't spending a ton of money on equipment so their operating costs for HR or for uh finance or community development aren't as high but police and fire also have a bunch stuff. So, your bulletproof vests and bullets and guns and everything else
that we buy, uh all the life-saving apparatus that we have in the fire department, these are all things that they do a pretty good job. So, that that level of operating is reasonably fair. We're not we're not overspending on the cost to do stuff. I do think the focus on the people as a service organization
is critical. And this is it by department. And we showed you this one last year, too. uh the public safety departments being the largest followed by parks next and we grouped together the smaller ones in the bottom. I think one of the things that we did this is different than what we were able to do in the past. So we were
able to give you a four-year trend of all the departments so you can see how they've changed over time. The you can see by the when you put it in this form you can see the towers and how dominant the police and fire are to the rest of the fund when it comes to general fund expenses. Uh so
you you kind of see the gradual ups and downs I think with with police we added some new officers uh and so that helped and and we added some new equipment, fire got some new fire trucks. So you'll see that's kind of what it's not just personnel, there's other things that that have that have added to those numbers. And then the other departments
kind of have patterns that follow the overall trend. So that's that's the general fund breakdown. Switching over to the enterprise and the smaller funds. Uh so this is the the enterprise the breakdown of what they all are the we talked about the utility being the largest one uh and
then storm water next to it. We also did a trend of that. You see a little more spike in these than you do in the general fund departments because as as an enterprise the capital goes with them. So when they have capital projects it'll spike and it'll go down. One of the council members was talking to me when we put the $170 million sewer plant
in there it'll kind of spike off this page and then it'll it'll come back. Uh the storm water, you can see that's the growing investment in the storm water projects following the hurricanes that's kicking that up. And then the other departments that are smaller have that same gradual increase. It's really
driven by personnel investment. And then the special revenue funds are smaller. The the building department is the biggest one. It's it's a bigger piece of pie this year because that's the money coming back to their reserves. Uh it'll shrink again once he spends the reserves going forward.
We didn't do a trend off of those special revenue funds because they're so small. So this this is an over we did this back in June, but but it's still part of the overall budget important. So I wanted to recap a few things we talked about in June. Uh this this is in here just
because it's important. Every sometimes people always ask that question. Why is this project not here? It's not done yet. So a lot of them are multi-year construction timelines. And so these are projects that won't be finished in the current fiscal year but have been funded. And so they're not going to show up in the budget that's in front of you,
but they're they're still ongoing. They're not done yet. And then I also had a little space on this slide. So I did go in and put in the ongoing maintenance. I think our our our effort and and thanks to the council for helping with this is we're not doing deferred maintenance anymore. We are
trying to do what we can to take care of what we have. Uh, one of the I thought one of the bigger successes we had that I didn't actually mention earlier is with when we got Tyler, we got an asset management program. And so the stuff we own had been handled by people with
paper spreadsheets. And so we own, you just heard Susan talk about 26 parks and and tons of acres of land. They also have a ton of buildings that we talked about last time. We have air conditioners. We have generators. We have a lot of stuff. And asset management now electronically tracks
everything we own. tracks its maintenance, tracks its work orders, when people do something with it, what are its warranty requirements, so that if we spend money, $2 million on an air conditioner for the police department, it's going to last. If it's supposed to be 30 years, we're going to get 30 years
out of it. Uh so, so that's that's being again good stewards is if you don't do this kind of stuff, it cost you way more money down the line. Deferring maintenance means higher costing capital in the future. So we we were we were able getting here to sustain and maintain the money that we had for
maintenance in this proposed budget. >> So these are when we showed this back in June, all of these had their own pages. They had a page of of them with the five-year plan. We had maps of them, all that. I just put them all on one page here. So these are the projects that are still in the budget. We've already
talked about parks bond projects. I do think and and it's a it's a reality to consider with the amendment three that both recest and the Karasi park expansion while we can build them with the parks bond revenue that's fully covered through a different funding source they will carry permanent and ex
extensive operating costs going forward. So, if council wants to to slow the pace and wait on the vote for those, we can do that. But the the revenue to build them is is in the budget because we just can if council says don't sign off on building them till we find out what's
going on, we can do that. But we don't have to take it out of the budget because it's in the bond funding cycle. >> I'm going to back you up. Explain that op explain those options one more time. So for so the fund the parks bond revenue is is different from the general
fund. So we we have a pot of money already allocated. You have $30 million to build these parks. You don't need the property tax change. You don't you've already got approval by the voters. We borrowed that money. They're paying that debt every year as part of the parks bond. So that money exists. You're not
required to spend it either if you don't want to. But it's there. We have that money. But once it's built, it will take employees and electricity and maintenance cost. And so if you go ahead and build Wreck West and keep it, it the one we have here is incredibly heavily
used and very popular. And so it will be used a lot. It would be a shame to have such a really nice facility and limit the hours of operation to lower cost. So, uh, you have the ability to say, you know, we we're moving forward in the design process, but before we actually start with shovels and start
construction, you might want to wait and see how the vote goes because if we have to take $10 million out of our budget, we would probably be struggling to find a way because parks is going to need a third more staff, if not a half, to maintain everything that we're building when we go forward.
>> Gotcha. So, so those two pro projects are are are they they are and the sad thing is is they're probably the most important and valuable and best things we have going. The other ones aren't bad, but these two things are very very good projects for the future of this community. And I'd
hate to see them not go forward, but you have to take into account that reality is if we don't have we lose $10.5 million, it's going to be hard to operate a lot of the stuff we have. A couple of the other ones we've we've talked about before if you had any questions on any of them. We did leave
the air conditioner in this building because it it's very inconsistent in how it works. We took the the AV system out. It's working tonight. Apparently, it didn't work for the planning commission last time, but it's working tonight. And then we left the storm water
projects in there. U probably every presentation I do is going to have something about storm water. It seems like, but it's it's still there. the $60 million of projects, 40 million of outside funding already leveraged. Uh we just did get notification. We weren't sure the federal uh program called brick
uh which is a building resilient. I forget what all the letters stand for, but it's it's a storm water resiliency type funding source. It was FEMA ran it and it got cancelled after a bunch of people applied last year and then a court ordered them to to re start refunding it. and they were letting
people who had applied come back, but we just got a notice to submit a notice of intent for new projects. So, I mean, it's still not necessarily, I think, the federal government's top priority, but it it's federal money and it's a bigger pile. So, we're going to try we're going to take a shot at it between that and a
state grant. So, we're going to keep trying to take that 20 million we still have left and continue chipping away at it with other revenue sources. And then the next couple slides get to stuff we're not going to do. So, this is a list of the stuff that we deferred from the meeting we had back in June
because there's not enough money. Uh the the the request for the millage rate is really to allow us the flexibility to pay people. It's to it's to let let us put it into our employees. And so, some of the construction projects got pushed back. You can see the facilities are
listed there. Parks took a big hit. So, they won't be as good at fixing bathrooms next year as they were last year. So, those got pushed down. the the golf course one is in there and I think that was important that that came up in the meeting about the golf board. So that fee that he was mentioning that went up and not knowing what it was for.
So the golf course has a reserve fee like the YMCA and finance has fund names the 105 and the 228. Nobody knows what that means but finance people. But basically the like the YMCA there's a pot of money we set aside. So if the air conditioner breaks at the Y we have a savings account to get in there and fix
it. And the same thing with the golf course. So, as it was mentioned by several of you, we have one of the few public golf courses in the entire state of Florida that pays for itself. That that our taxpayers aren't paying for this, that it's being paid for the people who play golf out there. Um, but we have spent quite a bit of money out
of these reserves in recent years fixing bumper bunkers, doing the tea lines, buying them golf carts, working on the TE's themselves, and that fund kind of got a little low. And so, the project here to redo the clubhouse made us nervous that it was going to get a little too low. And if something broke
bad that we really needed to get out there and fix, if we went ahead and did that project before that extra revenue comes in to build the reserve up, we could find ourselves in a problem. So we thought it was wise to wait a year on the clubhouse renovation and let that fund grow back to a safer level and then go out there and do it. So you don't
have to subsidize construction cost at the golf course by the general fund. So that's what that is and that's what that extra fee was is that the it was not growing that reserve fund at a rate to keep pace with the capital we were investing into at the golf course and this is the other one. So all those
service enhancements we talked about a couple weeks back all gone. Um we couldn't afford them. Uh so the personnel, the new equipment, we also though just because of the fleet replacement issue and trying to make sure that we smooth out that fleet replacement, we went into the first
three boxes over on the left side are vehicles that were due to be replaced and they got pushed out because the funds weren't there to cover that. So as we said, those were all good ideas. There weren't any of those things that weren't going to make Port Orange a better place to live and a safer place for their community. I think a couple of
them were were really really solid positive things to do. U so we've done that. We've pushed out replacing some police vehicles a little longer than than I would like to do. Uh we have a fire vehicle that got pushed out. Uh so so there's a there's a there's a hit
here. Uh but what we we did here was was prioritized the funding going into the personnel versus the stuff in in this budget. So I just summarized them here so you can see the total amount. So, again, back to that theme of we've been sharpening pencils and tightening belts
for a while. Uh, that's $7.5 million of stuff that we talked about in June is not here now. So, moving on to the next section on amendment three. Uh, we just thought it was it it's it would be it would not be prudent or to to act like this doesn't
exist. It's it's a real thing whether or not it passes, but the the polls are still showing it in a at a potential that it does. And if it does, it has a pretty big impact. I think every city has one of these things. If you go on the internet or go watch any news program or anything, every city has some
kind of graphic that shows how it hurts. If you do it in our case, it's in in the two years out, it's about 10.5 million, which about a third of our general fund or one six of the total general fund, a third of the tax revenue. Uh you can see the departments that it affects over there. 10 and a half million out of that
group is a it's a pretty big hit. It hurts a lot to to lose that. Um, I I was trying to put a scale to it so that it makes sense to people because it's really hard. Sometimes you see these things that are put out there and I don't think regular people people just don't understand what's going on. And so
we were trying to find a way just to talk about it in normal terms and one of the things I did is I knew it was a big hit. So I went back I was I was worked for the city at the time when we had the recession in '08. And what I thought was I know we did a lot of cutting of stuff back in '08. So I went back and wanted to know exactly how much did that budget
drop in 2008. And so I went back and we dug through budgets and and the reason I show those several years is the 2006 we were still normal. Like we thought everything was going to be great. Those early 2000s were booming. The economy was great. You could buy a million dollar house with 50 bucks down. You
know, we really thought things were going good back then. And so so that was probably the peak of our budget. And then I went and started looking as the recession hit, how how did how did the expenditures that we had drop? And the lowest we got from the high to the low was about an $8 million
reduction in expenditures during that period of time between 6 and 11. So we we kind of went from six to 10 to 8. We kept we kept going down and then we came back up and and as we came back up, so it was a relatively short duration. It was a big trough, but it was a short duration and we we've come back up. But
that $8 million, that's the biggest difference we had from spending in one year to spending in the low year in in the the hundredyear worst recession in the world's history in about a in about a century. Uh this one is more than that. And it doesn't have the the the
ending where it would come back up. Like there's not going to suddenly be an end to the recession. If you lose 10 and a half million, you lose 10.5 million. U you got a couple choices. You can change revenue sources or you can reduce expenses. Uh we did a lot of reducing expenses the first time around. Put a
couple things in there on what the average savings is. I think statewide some of those numbers were were developed when there were still schools that were going to come out of the taxes as well. So ours this is the savings. What we thought was interesting is if you put a $250,000 a year homestead exemption on our homesteaded properties,
71% of the people with a homestead won't be paying you any property taxes at all. And almost half of all the properties in the city won't be paying you any property taxes. So, and I get the term is not a very popular term, but but as we've talked about, our city thrives and
lives off of being safe, having reliable infrastructure, and having a great quality of life. And and those have got to get paid for by something if we want to keep doing them. And and I think just based on the parks bond vote, the people of Port Orange like what they have. It seems to me that this is a community
that appreciates the quality of life and the safety that we provide. So, I'm not sure that having half the people paying nothing for the what Port Orange really provides is a sustainable future. So, I put this in here. This is what businesses have done when they lose
revenue. You cheapen the products in your you sell the same thing, same price, but you're using a lot cheaper product. Sell the pizza, smaller pizza, but at the same price or you take away things. So, like your ticket used to allow you first come, first serve, an aisle seat or an exit window seat and
and a luggage. Now, you got to pay extra for them. So, you know, that that's what's going on out there. You we're not the only ones that that deal with this. If you want to get your haircut or get shamp buy shampoo, buy eggs, fill your car with gas, it's going to cost you more money. And and the people are trying to figure out ways to address it.
Um alternate. So, so cuts are a thing. So, we can do that. And I don't want people to think we didn't that's not a an alternate if that's where where we want to go. Uh but there's also alternative revenue sources that you can you can come up with. Uh so the top three here,
the fire assessment fee, the pilot franchise fee, all are things that we can do. Uh they're not always popular because it's the same thing as a tax. You're charging people for the cost of services. Um the the fire assessment fee we do not have. I think more than half
of every community in Valuchia County is in some way or form going down the process of studying and analyzing these at mixed results. So it didn't do well in Deltona last night. Uh there was some pretty good heat at the new Simra conversation a while back. Uh I can't say that you know for they exist in
other parts of the state. Some people use them. It's it's an assessment. So it's structured by a sing a cost per structure by the type of structure based on the value that's provided by fire services. And if if council gets there, we actually have somebody trained and qualified in fire service fees to bring
in front of you to talk to you about exactly what you would have to do and how it would be structured. Um, so, so I think that's important. The the payment lower taxes, so that would be our utility paying us a little bit more. The the franchise fee is for for Waste Pro and Solid Waste. What generally happens
is those costs get passed on to the customers and fees. Um, but when we looked at this, and we do have small amounts of two of them, you could generate, and I'm not being an attorney, but legally. So, it was my version of it, not the attorney version of legally, but you you can do this and
generate the 10.5 million that we would you could probably between the three of them cover what's lost under amendment three. You may not want to. You may want to go partially or or not, but at least there's an option to generate revenue to allow us to continue the level of service. You've just switched the funding source. So, you've heard that
conversation. We're not at the point of having to make that decision yet. Even if the vote is approved in November, it doesn't affect us until the 28th cycle. You don't want to wait till then. We want to be way ahead of it and be prepared. But, but I think that having this conversation now at least gets the conversation out in the public. What
level of additional fees do we want to do versus what level of reductions would we want to do? So, that that's that's there and being discussed with plenty of time to make a decision. So that tanks us to the maximum millage rate. And before we actually go to the item where you have to to read and do something, I I'll go through the
background before we ask you to do it. So we use this slide every year. It shows how we compare to the other cities. Uh Florida is is already one of the cheaper states when it comes to property taxes. So it's relatively cheap to live in Florida. And you can look at this and say it's relatively cheap to live in Port Orange in Valuchia County.
But I don't think I have ever heard a person once say Port Orange, it's cheap to live here. That we don't brand ourselves with that. We don't push that. Uh what I always hear is Port Orange is high quality, high quality of life, great events, great facilities,
attractive city, a safe city, a city with reliable infrastructure. Um and and what I was trying to figure out a way to to talk about how that what that meant, I think, to us and and the the services we provide is again, we're not a product producer. We're not we're not building stuff, but we do provide services. So I
was using a hotel as an example and you ifel 6 and Marriott. So, Motel 6 will you can get a room in Motel 6 for 100 bucks a night, but you're going to get a whole lot different level of service and quality than you do if you go to a Marriott. You may pay $200 in a Marriott. So, I know we have done a
really good job of keeping our our costs low. Uh but it's really hard to produce a value at a low cost and and and that's thanks to the department head and the people over here that they have come back and shown you here's how we meticulously add chemicals to lower the
cost and production of it. how we have an in-house lab to lower the cost. How we have switched out our uh breathing apparatus or our CPR unit so everybody's trained on the same thing. How we went to electronic building permits so that we don't have to have as many people to process them. We can get them done quicker. We're now going to electronic
procurement to to get things done cheaper. So we are consistently trying to find ways to keep create a good value, but it is becoming more and more challenging to provide that value. Motel 6 cost ain't going to get you the same thing. So, so while that's a it's a
valid thing, the people below us, the Barry's got two giant power plants that pay tremendous amount of taxes to them and the other cities below us are are have major beachfront properties that are taxed pretty heavily as well. So, we do really well at providing a tremendous
value to our community. Uh, again, I I I hear consistently how proud people are to live in the city. I I think our our people do a great job of being stewards of the tax dollars that we do get and we we would like to continue that through through the quality that we can provide.
This slide's got a bunch of numbers on it, so I'll try to explain some of them and answer questions if you have them. But we wanted to be straight. This is our history of of millage and roll back. But I think when you talk about how much what is the millillage and what's the percent over roll back, I don't know that a lot of people use that term. So,
I put this third line down at the bottom, which is actual dollars, because I think people understand actual dollars. So, uh, what we've really done over the last five years is added about $1.7 million a year to the budget in the general fund to cover the cost of stuff
costing more money. Uh, and as you look across that over time, you know, there's a there's a couple that are higher and a couple that are lower, but on average across the five years prior to this one, it's a little over 1.7. This year's budget is balanced at a 1.67 increase over that. So it's lower than the
average over the course of the last five years. And I also went in and did a analysis because of that criticism to the governments that you're you're you're taking people's rising property values and and taxing them heavily on it. And that 1.7 million looking at the
62 or 60 million or so fund general fund is less than 3% of the general fund. So we in the the inflation rates are in that three and above. So we've been well we have increased it. It has cost more money. We have we have definitely done that. We had a prior council member used to always pick on me during budget
season goyou just going to come ask for $2 million every year, aren't you? And and and and so I would tell him I was like yes sir because that stuff costs more money and and we're investing it back in our people. So so that is that is where we're at. We we had a a fairly small amount of new revenue and I tried
to summarize this here before we go to our traditional chart of millage to show you and this one I need glasses because I can't read it without them. The 4 and a.5 million or so increase in the in the general fund. This is how it's broken down. At the very bottom you see that 678. So if the current millage rate with
the no new construction, very little new construction and the lowering loss of money from property values, we get about 700,000 new dollars. our our obligations to our personnel cost 2.1 and we're still in an active in active right now negotiations with the police department.
So that's that's an estimate based on what we have. We haven't we haven't reached conclusion there. So we we don't have enough in the new money to pay payroll. the other stuff, fleet transition, capital projects, uh, are you could use the fund balance to to
cover those because they're one-time cost, but if we don't have a little bit extra revenue coming in from the from the millage rate, the the cost of the people and the cost of the insurance increase are going to be ongoing into the future. They're not going to go down. Uh, so we need that extra revenue
in order to to pay uh the people. And and so that's that's what we've done with the budget that's in front of you is done the best we can to sustain maintenance, sustain key capital project and the core areas and allow us by by tightening the belts when it comes to
operating costs to to allow that flexibility to put that back into our our payroll as we go forward. And and that's the end of the presentation before we go I think we have to actually have you read when we go to the other item read it. One note of note this year, this is new to us this year, the
legislature, one of the things that went into effect immediately is in order to set a max millage above roll back, it requires a super majority, which is 2/3 uh for us or two-thirds majority, I guess, is the correct term, but two/3s for us maths out to four of five and and
it is four of five of the total membership. So, with Councilman Foley not here, we have to have a unanimous vote. All four of you have to pick a number or we we won't if we don't end up deciding on it, the state will put us at roll back. So tonight or next week, we need a 40 vote on on whatever you're
comfortable with. Uh we we we we think that we have shown through the public that there's enough value to go to that 515, but obviously I I need to hear what you think and what other things we should do from here. So with that, I can turn it over to the next item to allow you to start on the max millillage
discussion. Before we do that, any any uh questions for the city manager on the budget presentation? >> Yes. Okay. >> I do. >> Why don't we start? >> Okay. Sorry. No, you're good. I'm good on the question. >> You had mentioned um that the money you
need is like 2.1 million. Is that correct? >> That that's just the requirement for personnel cost that exceed. That's how much this year is higher than last year. 2.1 million in personnel cost. We have 700,000 new dollars. We have 2.1 million
in obligation to our people. >> All right. So, >> and again, that's with an unfinished police negotiation. >> So, the reason why the 5.15 gives you the 1.6 million and then we have the 700 carryover. >> Correct.
>> That that'll cover the additional personnel cost and the insurance. >> Right. >> So, you're like taking us right to the limit with 5.15. I think it's it's to a fair number that provides the public with a good range of services that covers the necessary cost
that we have in the budget right now. Gota >> anything else >> other than I'd just like to take a fivem minute break before we get started. >> All right, let's finish up this item then Lance. >> No, I don't have anything for Wayne right now. >> Tracy, >> not at this time. And and the only
comment I would have is on your um your slide for uh slide 40 I guess on the adopted draft millage roll back rate history. One of the things that the previous council tried to do after 2019 when the um the um the vote was passed
to increase minimum minimum wage to $15 an hour over the course of time was to be ahead of that to to get that done sooner. And and we were able to do that. So when you see some of those percent numbers uh percent of a roll back a lot of that uh was again like the city
manager has pointed out the investment in personnel to get that done. So all right anything else Wayne you wanted to ask? >> No sir. >> All right we will uh at the the request of Councilman Gert we'll take a a fivem minute pause and come right back for
item 18. I'm going to time you. We're back for item number 18, setting the maximum operating millage rate for fiscal year 2026-27. Back to Mr. City Manager. So we we've provided the chart uh which
we'll get back up here on the screen uh similar to what we've done in the past that just is a range uh the existing millillage in the lighter orange the the draft that we've got it balanced at at the dark roll backs down at the bottom several columns. One of them shows how much additional revenue it generates.
One of them shows off of a what was a typical house at 185. I remember a couple years back we went through a very detailed explanation of how we got to that number on an average house because it's the the the value that gets taxed on, not what you sell it for, right? >> Um and it's actually a little lower now because of the reductions, but we went
ahead and left the higher number in there. Um so so you can see what it costs per year and what it costs per month for that average house. Uh and and with that council usually you let us know what you'd like us to do if there's any other information you'd like us to provide. Otherwise, I do think we would we would prefer to get the 5.15 that
would help us uh meet meet the requirements that we have in the current budget. >> Okay. Just a reminder uh for for council, the objective tonight is to simply set a max millillage for the the staff to continue operating on uh as they as they
uh bring a final budget to us later in the fiscal year. Um, Wayne, you you had noted earlier that we are still waiting on some funding numbers from other revenue sources. Can you just expand on that while we're waiting on >> That is correct. I don't know if I can
find what slide it was, but it's way back there. >> Got people with better memories. Better memory. >> I got to tell you, this monitor right here, I know we took the AV stuff out of the budget. I'm okay with it, but this thing is horrible at looking at this. That's why I had to try to fire it up on this computer because I can't see
anything on this. 18. Okay. So, these are these are the breakdowns of the the other funds. So, advalorum we already have because we got that from the property apps. The other ones in this list are the ones we do not have from the state at this point >> which is going to be your utility
service tax, insurance pre tax, local business tax. >> Okay. >> And the sales tax and and revenue below. So, you got about 8 million below and about 10 million on the top. So, you got about 18 million. We we we are estimating at this point. >> All right. And and when do we project
getting those final numbers and usually about the first >> there's a requirement for somewhere in August, but but they some of them that last year we had almost all of them by the end of July. So it's there is a date certain for when they have to have them all sometime in August. But
>> okay. So just for just for council just to remind you guys of that that there are additional funding sources that we do not have those final numbers in. So when we tried to be conservative so that we weren't cutting ourselves short, but if they go up, we we we we have tried to
estimate it so that you wouldn't need we wouldn't affect the max millillage. You wouldn't have to go higher because you can't really. >> All right. So the uh that the ask from the city manager uh tonight is a a max millillage for them to continue the
budget process that we set that at 5.1500 bills. So we'll start with that as the discussion. Lance >> um again this is this is a tough one man. This is a tough topic. It's a tough
subject and and there's a lot of unknown coming in November. And that's that's what has me concerned here. And as we move forward, I almost feel like this is just like it's going to be the last budget that we do that's probably going to be, you know, a full budget if if
this November thing goes on because then there's just something totally different's going to have to happen if if this goes. And that's I'm not going to lie, I'm really worried about it. Um, but with that being said, um, I I just
feel like everything goes up around us, every single thing, every single day on everybody. And I'm at a point where I just I don't want to raise the millage from where we sit right now. That's just my position.
Um, I just I I would rather take a little money out of fund balance and make it work this time or however it goes and then and then come November, let's see what happens. I mean, but because I think there's going to be different different ways of going to have to fund
fire and police. I don't know if it's a public safety fee or whatever we're going to call. I don't know because, you know, we're not going to be able to to to sustain losing 10 million a year after the second year and every every year beyond. So, um, not going to lie, then I'm I'm I'm really worried about
it. So, but with that, um, I mean, we just raised the water rates. We just raised, you know, we raised everything. And I just feel like raising the millage at this time is just not good. But that's just my opinion on it at this moment.
>> Sean, well, um, this is the absolute most important thing we do of the council and that's provide provide the funding to our citizens. It's their
money and it's their city and we have to be good stewards of that money and we don't run the departments. we hire someone to do it and he does it and he has shown his staff has shown us over the years since I've been here and
actually since I've been following politics in Port Orange and we'll call it that but how this city's been run over the last 20 years and I have always felt that the leaders and whether it be the city manager have always tried to do
their best to do what's right for the people that own this city because they own they pay the taxes and we hire someone to manage it and he's coming to us with a request and and I just by seeing what our
departments do with the money they get and the cost savings that they always are out there looking to provide. It's never going to be enough because of the cost of things that are going up. insurance on the the vehicles we own and
the buildings we own, the liability, the insurance, everything is going up always. And uh we have our biggest budget is our personnel that protect this city and why people move
here. And we as a team need to give uh we're the general managers, the owners are the people, our coach what he needs to
manage this city and keep the services there that the people expect. They in the past have voted for a new police station which they got that they're willing to pay for over a period of time. A lot of those people that
approved that don't aren't even alive or don't live here anymore. But they they knew then that it needed to be done. So the people can have those services here today for the increased population that's happened since 2004. at least back to 96 when the Port Orange really
started growing like crazy. Um, they voted for a parked bond. So they have faith in our leaders and when I say leaders the leaders of
our departments and the leaders of them our city manager and yeah we do have to face something we have no control over. I I I'm very disappointed that we're throwing a blanket over the whole
state when all of our municipalities are different. None of them are the same. But we want to throw a blanket over every one of them. And we're going to have to live with that on a decision someone from Dade County is going to make for us to run our city here. But there's no control over that and it
hasn't happened yet. And I'm sure we'll deal with that when it happens. Um there's going to be ways to fund the services whether it be through fees or additional millage rate. It's going to be unfortunate for non-homesteaded properties, commercial properties,
rental properties. I think the less fortunate are going to be hit the hardest if this gets approved. But back to this budget, we have a city manager that we've hired who's done a fantastic job. He's done amazing things for everything that's been put in front of
him. We need to give him the tools. And what's here tonight, what do people think? And he's asking for 5.150. And I'm willing to give it to him. And I asked him, are you going right to the limit? And he's pretty much, yeah, we're going right there. We're cutting it right to
where we're going to be able to provide the funding for the services that the people expect based on his analysis after meeting with all those department heads that we talk so highly about every time we're here. So, let's give him the
tool he needs. And um I think that's the the right thing to do. It's it's it's um I mean look where we're at compared to the other cities in this county. We're the fourth lowest tax city. We're fifth.
So we've we're we're in a good spot. Um we're not asking too much. I'm looking at uh the average homeowner is going to pay $4.50 more a month for to live here. So it's not asking much.
That's all I have. >> Tracy, >> so the question is that's always brought up to me is millage rates and what it actually comes out to be and how that affects property taxes, but it's it's also hearing where we are today as
barely $700,000 came into our property tax as far as new taxables coming to us. I asked Wayne and the staff earlier yesterday to just give me some figures to uh show where that is. And everybody's talking about growth,
growth, growth. And 10 years ago, yeah, there was a growth boom inside Port Orange of approximately 12% for single family homes. Five years ago, that 12% turned into 5%.
This past year it's three of a percent. 71 homes. So when we look at this we are coming to a age of where we are truly built out.
This is going to be an ongoing issue and I think everybody needs to understand that as we go forward that tax base in November affects us drastically also. So, we have two fronts that we're going to have to be tackling. I have to give
staff credit. For the last couple of years, we've had over the last four years on slide 16, you guys can look at this, it's about a $77,000 a year increase in base wages, but from last year to this year was a $500,000
decrease is what we're looking at for operating expenses. Then you get to slide 32. How do we trim this down? And everybody's always talking about governments being fat and keep asking, asking, asking. Well, out
in Port Orange, and I I'll probably get blasted for this saying this one, but they just deferred $7.6 million out of the budget. Things that the departments need to go and run. And they're doing that
purposely because of what November may hold. That's where where this is all leading to. So our budget tonight of what they are asking for is approximately a 6% or 5.15
in millillage equals 6% which is 1.6 million additional revenue to the general fund. Average general fund over the last five years it was on slide 40 pointed out was
1.7 million. So, it's less than what the five-year average is. What we're asking, and that's 95%, if I'm wrong, correct me, Wayne, is to paying our staff,
taking care of our people that have been taking care of us. I I echo with Sean. We have a phenomenal town that our staff has been taking care of us and we have contractual
obligations that are already set in place with two of the entities with police being done right now. The 5.15, it's a hard thing to swallow. I'm not denying that. But it is what takes care
of our employees. That's where I'm at. >> Anything else? >> That's it. >> All right. Good. And one of the things I think that is the uh is always important when we get to this part of the fiscal year is that all
you're doing tonight setting a max. Okay? You're just telling the staff and you're telling the taxpayers that we're obligated to set a max millillage to say no matter what happens in September, it will definitely not be higher than this. So that's all this is about. This doesn't finalize a budget. doesn't
doesn't factor in all of the other revenue numbers that we still don't have, doesn't factor in other opportunities for uh revenue generations and and further discussion about what may or may not come out of amendment three. So, I would just encourage you guys to keep that that in mind that
that's what this is about tonight. So, u I appreciate the work that the staff goes into that. Ju just a couple of just I guess maybe just general comments. Um, you know, I I've looked at this and and talk about it almost daily now with residents and business owners and people
that are interested in it >> and and people are always saying it's almost just becoming part of casual conversation. Nothing no nothing stays the same. Prices always go up. Whether that's gas, whether that's groceries, whether that's your electric bill, your spectrum, cable, internet, buying a pair
of shoes, whatever those things are, prices always go up. Municipal and county government services are not immune from those impacts. In fact, we feel them exactly the same as every business and and every residence.
And and our challenge is to try to identify what level of service is each one of the investors in our city willing to pay for. One of the things that's going to be very unique about this vote in November is we're going to find out exactly what they're willing to pay for
because we will be able to see maybe not what each individual voter votes, but we will be able to see the percentages by precincts in our own city to see what our residents have to say and how they feel about that. I I would agree with some of the comments that have been echoed up here that the residents in
Port Orange do expect a quality city. They also want you to get the biggest bang for the buck. They want you to stretch the dollar to get that. It is not an endless supply of revenue. We're not the federal government. We cannot print funding.
I wouldn't be telling the truth if I said I wasn't concerned about amendment three. But in the same aspect, I think our system for generating revenue to provide services is broken. I I I but I what I what they have brought forth out
of Tallahassee, the fact that it wasn't even vetted city by city that there was no exercise to say, "Okay, we're going to put this on on the ballot, but we're not going to see what the impacts are." Now, I I I just think that was the wrong way to do that. I think there were
opportunities to do that and that should have been done. And so now we're going to, you know, we're making decisions tonight and I get we're talking about one-year budget. The reality of it is folks, the city doesn't stop. It keeps going no
matter what, right? And so, whatever the outcome of that vote will be, um we will have to adapt and adjust to it and we will have to listen to what the the residents of Port Orange what they want and then we'll have to figure it out. Um I am very concerned about the amount of
misinformation that's out there. there seemed like there was this massive hype for something that sounds as too good to be true and somehow or another the information that you see circulating out there is horribly wrong in a lot of aspects. I keep getting people telling
me time and time again, well, at least they protected public safety. No, they didn't. That is not part of the bill that will be on the ballot in November. People will say, well, the state has a relief fund that they're going to support cities who need that. No, they
didn't. That is not part of the bill that ended up being approved. >> Those were those were two main things that Governor Danis wanted in his initial thing. And if you're following the media, you've seen the governor has even walked back and away from what this
bill actually is. So, I I hope people will will thoroughly educate themselves. Listen, the summary of the bill is less than two full pages. It does not take much to read it. It does not take much to reach out to your local elected officials to understand impacts and the
whatifs. We're happy to have those conversations. Vote for it, don't vote for it. That's up to each individual person. Um, but we can certainly have those conversations. And I think a lot of the information the city manager provided tonight helps with people to understand this is why certain revenue
over here can't be spent on this. And and then there's a lot of moving parts to a budget for municipal government our size. And as we have seen in past studies, overall quality of life is incredibly important. Time and time again, it comes back as one of the
highest rated things from our residents. So, it's easy to say, "Well, you just get rid of parks and wreck or you just get rid of this. That's not why you live in Port Orange. That's not why you decided to buy a home or a business or or put your kids in schools in our area and all those different things." So, it
it is a big big picture. Um, that being said, you know, I I'm I'm okay with starting with this max millage number, giving our staff time to to bring in, you know, the additional revenue um figures as they come available to us,
continue to work on the budget, continue to have these discussions, and to some degree, it'll it'll be a wait and see. Um I I appreciate um the city staff and the city manager already looking at certain things and having the mindset to say let's hold off
on that because I will tell you guys for for for those of you that are up here and I'll be up here for two more budget cycles after this one. The worst thing in the world is having to take things away from our residents and and our and
our city staff. And that can happen. I've seen it. I've been through that. and it's horrible. So, I I think the mindset of let's continue to invest in our people. Let's not create a bunch of of other things that could be highly at risk that we have to now, you know, go
through that process in a very short amount of time. So, I I think that that's a good thing. So, all that being said, I will entertain a motion in a second to put on the floor and then we'll go to the public. >> Mr. Mayor, I'll make a motion that we set the max millillage at 5.0 Zero zero
zero zero. >> Do we have a second one once? One twice. All right. We don't have a second. I'll need another motion to put on the floor. >> I'll make a motion that we go to 5.150.
>> I'll second it. One more zero >> 1.5 uh 5 5.150. I'll second that. >> Have a motion and a second to set the max millillage at a rate of 5.1500.
Council, any other discussion on this before we go to the public? >> Anybody from the public wish to speak to it? I'm going to call this guy up first because if he don't stop swaying, I'm going to be nervous. Come on up, Warren. Warren Carmen, please.
How are you? >> Good, buddy. Good to see you. >> Good. Warren Carman. I work at the PD. Um, I'm going to kind of concentrate my my comments towards Councilman Green. I think everybody else here by giving what they've said tonight is good at the the
515 for a maximum. Um, I understand your trepidation in raising rates, but I think it's really important that we talk about what the city manager said, which is this is nearly 100% your personnel.
So, if you're not going to go with the 515, then we got to talk about cutting wages or cutting people or freezing positions. That's that's the only thing left. They've taken everything else over almost $8 million
out of the budget. There were a lot of I had words ready for tonight and then I threw them out because there's so much more. Uh the mayor was talking about a 72% increase in the minimum wage, right? And
inflation at 30 plus% over the last few years. Yet city staff has been able to keep your controllables at that same level. That means we're not buying what we were. So your guys are already doing more with less, right? They've kept it's
roughly 10 million. I think if I go back to that slide, that same slide unfortunately shows wages and it looks like they're huge, right? But if you actually look at the numbers year-over-year, last year was 5%. with a 30 plus percent inflation rate
and your wages for your people went up 5%. Overall citywide, you know, I think the rest of the guys are kind of on board with the 515 as a max mill. Nobody's saying that's where you're going to end up, but you got to give us a chance to get there and let
city city staff work on it. We are going to get some numbers in in early August, including what's most important for us on the pension board is to say premium tax revenues, right? So, we're going to get some numbers in before you need to set the final millage rate. So, give
staff a chance, give your people a chance at the 515 to get where we need to be. And if we if we can come down, then I don't think anybody would hold it against anybody on the council, right? But if you kill it now, we're going to have issues. you're not going to be able to pay your people and you're
going to end up either cutting jobs or freezing positions or cutting pay. Right? When I started here 20 years ago, there was fear about hi hiring me because I lived in Palm Coast at the time. Everybody at the PD lived in Port
Orange. I can tell you that none of the guys left in the back, I'm sorry, I'm fibbing, one of the guys left in the back still live in the city of Port Orange. We just can't afford it. So that's what's happened to our guys over the last 20 years, right? Don't
take it out on them some more. Thank you. >> Just want to go on record. I didn't have a fear about you living for him because >> others did. >> Uh Chris Rogers, >> welcome. >> Good evening, Mayor, members of the city
council. Uh council member Green, I'm going to speak to you as well. You're my district seat. Uh, my name is Christopher Rogers and I'm a resident here in the city of Port Orange and have been for over 30 years. Tonight I'm standing before you wearing three distinct hats.
First, as a citizen who chooses to live and raise a family in this community. Second, as the vice president representing the IUP union membership and third, as a Port Orange police supervisor who has taken an oath to protect the city. I am here tonight to voice my strong
support for the city manager's proposal to set max operating millage rate. As a resident and taxpayer, I took I look at this proposal and I see genuine fiscal responsibility. The city manager's budget doesn't use growth as an excuse to hike the tax rate
on our citizens. Instead, it strikes the exact right balance. It holds the line for the taxpayers while capturing the necessary revenue from our city's natural growth to invest back in our infrastructure and public services. As the mayor stated himself last year,
it really does come down to trying to work to a budget together to maintain a quality of life the residents and the business owners in the city of Port Orange have come to expect and want to maintain. I believe this is a minor move on us as citizens to achieve that expected maintenance and to take care of
the city that we love. And that brings me to my perspective as a law enforcement officer. I see firsthand every day what those tax dollars actually buy. Public safety isn't passive and it isn't free. As Port Orange continues to grow, the demand in
our department grows right along with it. The revenue generated by this budget framework is being generated or directed exactly where it matters most into the personnel and the essential services to the men and women on shift. This funding ensures the personnel, equipment, and benefits we need to do our jobs in an
evolving world of law enforcement. At the time when communities across the n across the nation are struggling to keep pace with public safety needs, Port Orange is making a proactive choice to keep our streets secure. Thank you. Every year we have officers faced with
horrific accidents and critical incidents that create lifelong scars on them and even their families. My members carry these burdens and their selfless service to our citizens and only ask that we ensure our families are cared for when their service comes to an end.
Their medical stipen upon retirement is currently only $200 a month, which would not even cover half of the officer's medical insurance at retirement, let alone any medical expenses or medications due to ailments from this career. Setting the max operating millage at the city manager's
recommendation tonight locks in a reasonable ceiling. It gives our city the administrative framework it needs to protect its citizens and maintain the city we care for without overburdening them. I urge the council to vote in favor of the city manager's recommendation. Let's keep Port Orange safe. Let's keep it financially stable.
And let's give our departments the resources required to maintain and protect the community we love. >> Thanks, Chris. >> Thank you all. >> Anybody else want to speak to item 18? Now's your chance. Anybody else? All right. Back to council. Council
comments. We'll start on this end. >> I'm good. >> Tracy, no comments. Sean, >> we're here again one year later. It's my second budget season. And once again, one of the most important things that we've got to do is to set this millage
rate and then approve a budget. And once again, I don't have one citizen in front of me telling me to reduce taxes. Not one. Again, we got to do what's right. And I'm not
wanting to to raise taxes, but we've got to run a city and we've got to give him the tools. And tonight, we're just setting the maximum millage rate. We can work on and he can work on it. Maybe he comes back to us. Maybe we get revenues from the, you know, that the funds
coming in. Maybe the citizens see what it could be and they fill the room and say, "You're crazy." But not one person, Lance, and and I have talked to so many people and I've welcomed them to come and talk to us and
tell me what's your biggest concern and it's never related to what they pay to live in the city. It's when can we get this fixed? When can I get the lights west of Taylor Road fixed? We don't have the money. When can we get that sidewalk fixed? It's on a time frame. We never
have the resources. No one ever complains about us asking too much of them. So I I there's four of us here tonight. I'm going to ask you to come along with us
just to set the maximum millage rate so then our citizens can know what it's going to cost to them and then our staff can do the best they can to maybe work within it to be a little lower. No, I appreciate that. And again, I'm not I'm not choosing out any one
department. I'm not choosing any one thing. All I'm saying is we just keep raising and raising and raising. Everybody feels the pinch. And I'm not picking on any one department. I don't pick on anything. We do a great job at it. I'm not saying we don't need this.
There is absolutely a need. It's just, you know, we just keep raising and raising and raising and I get it. So, I'm going to be on board tonight with setting the max tonight. And obviously, we've got a little bit of time to massage and see what we can do and get
the rest of the numbers in. I'm not I'm not trying to be the naysayer here. I'm just, you know, I look at the people on fixed incomes in our community over and over. And those are the people who I know. I'm I'm from old poor Port Orange. And I know a lot of people from poor
Port Orange still to this day that the water rates five bucks makes a difference. This makes a difference. Everything makes a difference. That's all I'm getting at. So I'm not saying that I'm not on board about any one department. I'd love to have it all. I just want to make sure that, you know,
we're not again pricing ourselves out, but I'm on board tonight with setting this max and then obviously we'll come back to when we we set the budget. Anything else? >> Nope. >> I I echo a lot of those same concerns to
be quite honest with you. I you know the pro the challenge and the frustration that we have is there are so many variables that are so far outside of our ability to control. you know, it whether you voted for it or you didn't vote for
the uh the the increase in minimum wage in 2019 from now, 72%. Look it up. It's what it is. >> So, when you go and by the way, ironically, the city manager has a picture of a pizza in his budget. But
you go and you go to a restaurant and you buy a large pizza. If you think you are paying anywhere close to that price that you paid in 2019, tell me where that's at. >> Because that is not what's happening. Because the the cook now has to make
more, the bus boy makes more, the waitress makes more, everybody down the line, the person that makes the dough, delivers the dough, so forth and so forth and so on. And so this idea that you're going to pass these, you know, these types of voter initiatives and
it's fine, but but there's going to be a story that comes after that and right and and that's what I think we've seen by and large over the last six years is you're seeing this this change in everything costs more. >> Yeah. >> You know, and then you add on that the
top the inflation. Um, you add on health care costs and insurance costs, which in my mind should have been the two things that state legislature and the senate and governor fought the hardest at was getting that under control. But nonetheless, I digress. But a lot of
those things are so far outside of our control. And so what comes back to us is is again you find yourself what can we do without what can we what can we try to find better efficiencies? and and I do applaud, we probably don't talk about them enough, but I do applaud the city
staff that has found these efficiencies over the years. They have been very meaningful uh in a lot of ways. We also are are a unique city in such that here in East Valuchia County, we don't have any property in the ocean front. We have very little waterfront. We have very
little really quote unquote high dollar property to have that tax base like Orman, New Somna and other places where they have a large percentage of that. And then additional we don't have a lot of commercial and industrial. So we are predominantly a bedroom community. I
think I think we're close to uh homestead exemptions close to 70%. >> Yeah. And the state average was like 40 >> 40 under 50. >> Yeah. So we so far and that was the problem that I have with amendment three and I'm I'm going to get off that horse because that's not what this is about tonight. But the problem with that is is
that conceptually it amendment three is going to do and be voted on by the entire state hurts cities like ours that are bedroom communities that have a desire for high quality of life and a certain standard of living. And it hurts us bad because so many of us have
homestead exemptions in our city. So, it's disproportionate and um but we'll see what we'll see what happens. U but in any regard, I'm I'm good as well with us starting at this. I will I will say that in and this is just a feel that I
strongly am going to encourage the city manager and the city staff and everybody in this city to work towards reducing this 5.15 because I think the more we can reduce that the greater chance we have of our residents saying we don't need amendment
three because our city maintains a tight budget and they look after our dollars they spend them wisely and things like that. So, we'll see. That's just my thought. So, I think we need to continue to work on that. Uh, moving forward. I think we're going to come to you, Amanda.
>> How about How about you call the role on on the motion and a second to set the max millillage at 5.150. >> Councilman Guffer? >> Yes. >> Councilman Green? >> Yes. >> Vice Mayor Crabs? >> Yes. >> Mayor Stelman? >> Yes. 40. Before you move on, I I need to
announce the hearing the public hearing dates for the budget if that's okay. >> Do you announce them or you want me to announce? Okay, you you can if you want or I will. Whatever. >> Okay, I'll do it. >> All right, I think I got this. It's written down here. How much can I mess this up? Right. So, per Florida State
Statute section 2000.065, the city council must hold two public hearings as part of the truth and millillage known as trim process. Staff recommends the public hearing dates and times to be held in the city council chambers at city hall at 1000 City
Center Circle, Port Orange, Florida, as follows. Tenative hearing will be Wednesday, September the 16th at 5:30 p.m. Note the unusual day, Wednesday and time at 5:30 and the final hearing on
Monday, September the 28th at 5:30 p.m. >> How'd I do? >> That's correct. >> We're good with that. >> Yes, sir. >> Mr. City attorney. You good with that? Clerk. Good with that. >> Okay, moving on. Council committee reports.
Item 19, First Step Shelter. >> Yes. I do want to say that uh First Stepep Shelter has a new executive director that will start in early August. Her name is Susan Clark and she's got a great background in
homeless shelters um and those services. We're very excited to have her. She'll be coming to us uh in the near future to introduce herself. So, we're excited about that. Uh you heard about the chamber today. They've got a lot going on. Uh they their membership's growing.
They've got uh their one of their biggest fundraisers is their golf tournament uh coming up in August. So, uh everything's going really good. I I went to their new member recept reception today. They had uh eight new members speaking. A room was full of
supporting members. So chamber's doing really good and uh doing a lot for our community and businesses providing good good services for them. >> Excellent. Tell us about the Port Southa chamber which I know they spoke tonight. Anything you wanted to add to that? You don't have to. >> No, that's what I just did.
>> There you go. >> Yeah. >> I'm just kind of trying to go in order here. >> Yeah. >> Art House Art House has had a uh just a fantastic summer. uh all the classes and events have been full and I think during uh
Fourth of July the wings mural that they did on the city hall was a big hit. Uh the angel wings that were up there for red, white and blue just fantastic job. And for those that were wondering they literally
did that in less than four hours. >> They had that painted enough for everybody for Fourth of July. So, our house is doing good. >> I know. I went to look out my office window, which I rarely do, and there was a set of wings painted on my office window. So, yeah, felt good about that. Lance,
tell us about the police pension. >> Um, to be honest with you, Mr. Mayor, that meeting was so long ago that none of the numbers matter anymore. And, um, we got a and Wayne can attest to that. We got a we got another meeting coming up in a couple of weeks. >> We do. >> And uh, million as of last month. >> We'll Yeah. So, there you go. That's the
report. He says so. All right. Anything else come for us tonight? Have a good night.