I call to order the budget workshop of the City of Tarpon Springs. Tuesday, August 4th, 2026, 6 p.m. Roll call please. Mayor here. Vice mayor is
absent. Commissioner Eisner here. Commissioner Banther here. Commissioner Weaver here. Okay, so tonight, we're going to go,
Ashley Kimpton, our finance director, will go through, the budget items. Miss Kimpton, just feel free to just flow to the next item. I don't have to necessarily call one, two,
three, four. You just, you know, you flow as you give your report, so feel free. Thank you. All right. And just let me let me start to say something. I'm
a lot more comfortable tonight than I was the last budget meeting. There's been a lot of hard work done. Ashley and everybody and staff, we are at
a good place when we get to all the little numbers. Everything you see here, we are in a good place to bring you that balanced budget. That will be on the two public hearings for September. Remind you, and I'll
probably say this every time, this budget will be a work in progress from now through October, from October through, it will be a work in progress. But but we have got something
that we're presenting to you that is going to come in ready to go to the public hearings and be approved, and we'll be working on it, the little nuances of it. But I'm not a
lot more comfortable. We've got to the place. You all know why you brought me back here. This is my wheelhouse. So. So I'm a lot more comfortable again,
with a lot of hard work from all these people out here. And our finance director trying to catch up for not having the institutional knowledge of everything that's going on. But we're in a good place right now.
And again, we'll be working every day for the near future, improving, looking for areas to gain us more reserves. But what we're presenting to you, we're,
we're, we're ready and comfortable to go forward with the public hearing, balanced budget, balanced budget. Okay. Good evening, mayor commissioners. Ashley Kimpton, finance director. This is
budget workshop number two on the fiscal year 27 proposed budget. Our first budget workshop was on July 7th. Since then, finance has been busy working with departments and updating estimates. We will
continue to fine tune for the next few weeks, and here are some of the updates we've incorporated so far. We met with our Florida League of Cities representative to
discuss our property and liability insurance renewal rate. We were able to reduce our placeholder from a 10% increase over prior year to a 5% increase over prior year.
This results in a $335,000 savings citywide. We also met with the gearing Group to discuss our health insurance renewal, and we were able to reduce our placeholder from an
18% increase over prior year to a 12% increase over prior year. This results in a $310,000 savings citywide. We do have some options to reduce the rate further, saving an additional
couple hundred thousand dollars. These options and recommendations will be brought to the board. I believe it's next week. On Tuesday. Police and library. They made another
150,000 in cuts, and that was in various operating items. Also, the personnel module has been updated to match the live system. I think in the June
30th book, we had data in there from the end of April or early May. So that has been updated to match the live system as of July 13th. This resulted in a
an increase of 13,000 citywide. In addition, we factored in a 3% cost of living adjustment for employees. This was an increase of 1.1 million
citywide. We noted that there were a few departments that were not budgeted in fiscal year 27, and we've since corrected those line items for a total of 40,000 in the general fund. There was also a
request for which vacant positions were currently frozen. The general fund has seven frozen positions, which were the Assistant city manager, the budget analyst, the HR
specialist and two library assistants for the Director of Planning and Zoning. Either the director position or the principal planner will be frozen. Same thing with the Cultural Services director.
Either the director or the Assistant director position will be frozen. The total amount is 787,000, which includes salary and benefits.
This is a pending adjustment. This has not been factored in yet. We're kind of waiting to see how everything else falls
out. Last workshop, we had a question on what our planned checking fees and why do they decrease from fiscal year 26? Plan checking fees? Are the
fees charged by our staff for checking residents and commercial owner building plans, and the revenue was reduced in fiscal year 27 because 26 the
fees were, they were already trending down. And then in 26 they were artificially inflated due to the hurricanes. I've included a list of all the
changes we've made in your handouts. And I believe it's also online. This includes everything to the general fund and all the other funds that have been impacted. We're still
making changes every day and we'll continue to track those adjustments. There was also a request for a Penny fund reconciliation, as it applies to the series 2026 debt, and I've included that in your
handout as well. So that is the update from last workshop. And if you guys are ready, I'll go ahead and move on to enterprise funds. Okay. Starting with the
water and sewer fund personnel, we have an increase of 5.3% over prior year. So this includes that 12% placeholder for health and a 3% Cola. We
are expecting that 12% to be reduced even further. And operating. This includes a 5% increase for placeholder for the property liability insurance. And then we trued up
the utility and the vehicle repair and maintenance budget to reflect prior year. Actuals capital is going to be outlined on the next slide. So hold off
on that debt increase to reflect the 2026 debt, as well as the lease payment on the 2026. That contract transfers out. This is the general
government admin fee charged to enterprise funds. The amount is 8% of charges for services revenue. Since rates for water sewer increased, the transfer
out increased as well. Under other. This is the reserves that are budgeted as non operating expense and these entries will be finalized after all changes are in. Before the
budget adoption. So going to CIP this is the list of CIP budgeted in the Water Sewer fund. It is based off the revenue sufficiency study. The
project shown in red font total 4 million and were supposed to be offset with a second phase of debt proceeds per the revenue sufficiency study. In addition, we have the Beckett Bridge project that needs to be
budgeted and funded. Once we have a better idea on the grant funding, I think that it's going to be between 1 million or 5 million. So we're kind of waiting to hear back from the
county. We should know that by mid month. Tommy Kiger is here, public services director, and he is going to give you more information on those unfunded
projects. And again before he talks this is some of this some of the items I had to be updated on because I was not sure what was going on in the
area and looking at things that were funded and not funded. And I was made aware of some of those things. So Tommy is going to update you what was brought
forward to you in the past for I was here and some of the implications in there that will be some things will don't have to resolve and discuss tonight, but they will be a discussion
item for the future and how we proceed in some things. So I'll turn it over to Tommy and, give him the information and we'll talk afterwards. Okay. We've
got a quick update on the CIP primarily. Again, harkening back to last year, last year's rate study and CIP adoption, as
you recall, one of the, this is one of our slides from last year's rate study and, rate adoption hearings. This is from late August and early September of last year. So, while we were
developing the rates, we adopted a plan that included 7.5%, 7.75% annual increases in water and sewer rates for four years. And we also included a borrowing package in that rate
plan in order to make the long term fund balance of balance effectively and be able to fully fund our capital needs and our operational needs. At the time, the, the plan was to
do $8 million in borrowing in fiscal year 26, that included 4 million for some high priority projects like wastewater treatment, plant resiliency and meter replacement, and an
additional $4 million that was to be scheduled with for the construction of the Beckett Bridge utilities improvements of that, 4 million has been taken out, as part of last
year's debt package. The other 4 million for the Beckett Bridge project has not yet been taken out, because there were still questions about schedule, and they've now applied for a grant. We're still waiting to
hear back on that. But that is one thing that's outstanding for 2027. We had also identified a supplemental $4 million in loans to basically
keep the capital program fully funded through, through the next few years. And we had also planned out into the early 2020, 30, 2031 timeline for a large
bond issue that we're building up towards for fully rehabbing the 50 year old wastewater treatment facility. This is a summary of our water projects
for fiscal year 2027, as well as their estimated project costs as well as their funding sources. The top projects are on site treatment projects for
restoring some of our legacy freshwater wells to service. Those are fully funded with our settlement funds. And both of those projects are continued funding from last year. We're already in design on those
projects, although for the Tarpon project, we'll probably be up, transferring that to another well, project just because of on site conditions. Another one of note, we've got
the next year's meter replacement project scheduled, as well as the security upgrades for the R.O. plant. Basically SCADA network, these
are replaced aged, network components for our Skata systems that are no longer supported by the manufacturers. These have been deferred from 24 through 26. And those are
both scheduled to be funded through loans through the 2027 projected $4 million loan, as well as 600 000 of our legislative appropriation project, which is the North
North Austin Heights water main replacement. We got $600,000 from the state for that, and the other $600,000 would be debt financed in order to execute that project, and replace some legacy, some aged
rusty galvanized water mains in the Northeast Heights area, just to the east of City Hall. All other water CIP would be funded from water Sewer enterprise fund to the tune of
less than $700,000. You can see we're very much focused on alternative sources of funding that are not yet hitting the the water sewer fund. Regarding
the wastewater projects, we've got continued funding for the Electrical Life Resilience Project for the wastewater plant. This is already been funded by revenues from last
year. And this is just a budgetary placeholder to expect year over year expenses as this is a long running project. So those that's already fully funded, the, bar screen
replacement is to protect basically the entire influent structure, like where all the water comes in the wastewater plant and the network security upgrades is again, another project from our cybersecurity
master plan, which was created back in 2023. And those are deferred from 2024 through 2026. Additionally, we've gone ahead and put the wastewater collection system lining and
manhole lining in here. Those need to be fully funded this year. With that $4 million in loans, other, all other CIP is just over $1.7 million. That
will be water sewer fund funded. And that's, everything including, repair and rehab funds as needed, capital replacement pump failures, things like that, that we
budget for on a year over year basis. And all other minor projects like rehabbing our lift stations and things like that. And again, just touching base on the, the Beckett Bridge project that's still
outstanding as to whether we get that grant or the county gets that grant. The construction cost is $5.2 million, and that would be planned for loan funding that's been planned for loan funding
since 2023. In our previous previous two rate studies. One thing we also wanted to talk about that the board requested an update on last year. Was our water supply. So in 2020 ten,
this was our water supply plan. You can see, you know, 2020 tens on the left and 2020 was on the right. And the goal was to use that green bar, which is our very affordable fresh water
as our sort of base supply. And the rest of our water was coming from the county. And over time, the our plan was to make up the balance and shift all of that import water costs onto the Ro plant once it was
constructed. So that was the original plan from 2010. And this is what happened in actuality with operations. We did continue to use some of the
freshwater wells over time. Many of those were taken offline for variety of reasons. And ultimately we ended up shifting more of our water supply burden onto the Ro plant
than was originally anticipated. Originally, we were forecast to have, seven fresh water wells, which make the very, you know, affordable fresh water and help keep our costs down. And 22
wells for the reverse osmosis plant. Our current water supply mix is all ro five of those freshwater wells were taken offline in the 20 tens, and two wells were taken offline in
2023 due to the new regulations from EPA. At the plant, we originally supposed to have 2022 wells. We currently have 17. And the outcome of this is that essentially the Ro plant
is making about a third more water than originally projected, with about three quarters of the wellfield that was originally envisioned. And that's driving our salinity trends up. So the water is getting saltier, which drives up our electrical, our
electrical costs and our operational costs. And in turn, I know this is a lot, but this is from our most recently completed, water supply study.
The gray bar is our current water demands. And that little green line shows our annual average daily average day. Water demand is increasing over time. One thing that's interesting, this these orange
bars, the light orange bars represent the sustainable yield from our well field. And you can see that our the gray bars taller than the orange bars, meaning that we're already having to produce more water from our well field than it can
be sustainably produced. What that means is that in order to meet our current needs and continue not to degrade the well field, we need to bring projects online. And that's why we funded those three critical water supply projects with the
PFAs funds and with water with water impact fees. And the goal is again to, drill two new brackish water wells for the r o plant in the next 12 to 18
months, and also to try and get the gross avenue well back online with fast treatment. We're currently in design on all three of those projects, and we're optimistic that we can fully fund those with the
PFAs funds and with water impact fees. So with that, I'll entertain any questions on the water CIP, Mr. Weaver? Mr.
Weaver, do you have any questions? You know that that's great. Thank you. Tom, you are so thorough. The the electrical
extension is is something critical, isn't it? Very much so, yeah. And and when when would we when could we expect that to begin? You know, it's
it's renovation in a sense. So we we had that out to bid over the summer. We had some discrepancies with the bids. Yeah. So I don't want to get into the, what happened with the bids, but like, ultimately
we had to reject the bids because they were all inconsistent. And so we're putting that back out to bid probably next month. So hopefully within the next 6090 days we'll be bringing that back forward for for execution.
Okay. How long do you think once the once the bids are are received before you could actually issue, you know, purchase order for it? That that depends on a lot of things,
you know, usually procurement in particular, but probably within 60 days of bid opening, I would think would be very conservative, maybe more like 45. Okay. Would you, would you be interested in elaborating
why, why the other bids had to get had to get thrown, thrown out? In a sense, there was confusion about the nature of how we wanted to do owner direct purchase as a cost saving measure. So the low bid
didn't include all of the equipment. Okay. So they the other bids did include the equipment. And so we have to go. We had to go back and clarify. You need to include all owner direct purchase items in the
bids. It was just logistical in a sense as opposed to anything else. Largely. Yes. That's it. That's good. Thank you very much. Commissioner Panther. Yes.
Thank you. Tommy. So as I understand it, the, Beckett bridge that's not in this budget is not going to be done this next this next fiscal year, but it's as a placeholder. Yeah,
we don't have that in the budget right now. And we would handle that through a budget resolution once we know or late additions to this year's budget, once we kind of know what's happening with the grant, we can clear up the project
schedule with the county. Is there is there any chance that that would start next year or. No, I mean, I, I highly doubt it myself, at one point, like maybe like three, four months ago, they were talking about potentially going to
construction next April. I think that's probably optimistic Bob might be able to provide a little bit better update on that. He coordinates with the county on that project, but it could go like late next summer or sometime next summer,
perhaps. Okay. And that number could go down depending upon the grant, the grant, the grant funding. Correct. That would be the driving factor, I believe with the grant goes through, we'd be in instead of 5.3
million. The cost would be like in the neighborhood of 1 million plus for us. That that'd be wonderful. And that's the county applying for that grant or us or both. The county has applied for that grant, and that includes a variety of
things on the bridge, including a lot of our utility work. Okay. I'm sure, I'm sure Mark will keep us updated on that. Thank you. We're they're anticipating around the 15th of August
knowing as a big, oh, wow. It's a big it's a big decision coming. So, again, they missed it last time. But they were
close towards the top. So we're hoping, but it's, we're hopefully in a couple of weeks, if it's good news, it's going to be huge. It makes a big deal of difference because again,
right now it's putting in my plain language, we don't have the money to fund. We have to. And the anticipation was we're taking another loan to get the
money to do that with. Now a lot million, if it's down to a million, we can maybe search someplace and avoid that loan. If it's 5 million, I can't pull
that miracle off. So but hopefully in a couple weeks we'll know and have a good favorable answer on that. All right. Sounds good.
Commissioner Eisner. Thank you. Mayor. Commissioner, I can almost answer that question for you because I do sit on forward Pinellas and they don't have that, estimated to be done till
the end of 27. So that, that he is correct on the. Now that could change of course. Depending on this of course, property tax. Bill that's
coming about as well. Everybody is sitting on that property tax as we are as well. Are you talking about when they begin the project. No, I'm talking, I'm talking about. Yes.
Beginning beginning the project. Yes. Not completing it just right. Starting it. But but we have to have our either 5 million or 1 million plumbing
done prior to them touching anything. Right? Because they won't even start the project until we do what we need to do. So we actually have to get a, a start date from them. And then
we have to act. So and of course it could go either way. You know, hopefully, you know, we get the grant and it's, you
know, the way we need to see it. Something this is not a question. This is more of a statement. I have a question after the statement. You know, I see variances coming. I see
building coming, you know, buildings coming. And every single time they somebody comes before us. And I'm going to even use the 404 apartments on
the Anclote Harbor. And we seem to answer that we have enough supplies, we have enough water, we have enough electricity. We we have everything. When I'm listening to you, we don't have
it. So. And in order for us to get it, it's costing the rest of Tarpon Springs a ton of money because we need more wells. We need, you know, when
we're not preparing for the wells that have the PFAs in it, we're not preparing for all these people that are building.
And, I'm really concerned that every single time I've listened to something coming before us, we get a presentation that says we can handle influx, but we
can't. I'm waiting for your answer. So I will say that the study that I showed you with from our water supply plan, that's brand new, that just came out like last month. So we
had not done a review of the health of the well field, like in a systematic way since the plant was constructed. So we started this two years ago and we're knowing that this was an
ongoing issue. So that's relatively new information. And regarding our ability to supply, there's always a little bit of a chicken or the egg thing with that, because the city has long had a desire to remain water
supply independent. But at the same time, we're also interconnected with Pinellas County system. So we have the ability to supplement our water supply from Pinellas County.
When it comes to, you know, new growth and in some cases, especially like on very high water use days in the future, that might be beneficial for us, but we need to explore what that looks like. So will that water that comes from Pinellas
County still go through our R.O. plant? No, it would go directly into the water distribution system for our interconnects, but it would it would be an additional cost to the city. So it's a cost and
it's a not as purification, water is what we are producing. The water. The answer is yes, I would say, but yes. So, you know, the whole issue is we
built this exorbitantly expensive R.O. plant to service Tarpon Springs. And if we I mean, I don't know how much more building we can do. But we
kind of have to cut it somewhere because evidently whether this, presentation that you just gave us, whether you just got it and did it, or
whether it's been ongoing all along, we've, whether you didn't. My point is that you didn't have that presentation last year or the year before, but we still been actually
moving through blindly and using more than we have. I would say that regarding new development, one of the important things there is if we can get caught up on these next
few projects, we've also raised our water impact fee significantly last year at the with the board's direction. And so that should be enough that the goal was to raise revenue
to support additional water supply development to meet those growth needs. But we do need to get caught up on our legacy deficit. The impact fee, though, is a one time deal. The
consumption of water is ongoing. So we're going to lose one way or another. But I'm glad you brought that up because, in a conversation I had with the
city manager, it was asked, whether I knew about the, amount of loan. And I will tell you that I knew about the seven,
seven, five as you put up before, but I don't know if you noticed when you're doing that presentation, which I noticed this time you get a little more
silent when it's the loan part of it. I'm just, I'm just saying, you know, I didn't know that we were going to be needing to borrow that kind of money. And, you know, that is
something that's I didn't even, I guess I would love to hear in the future when there's going to be a huge purchase of a loan
that that stands out. Because what I don't want is I, you know, if we're going to need it, we're going to need it. I understand, but I'd like to also be more, more pronounced
is my word I'm going to use. Okay. But it was good presentation and thank you always. Thank you. Let me ask you a few questions. You
answered one of them, which is okay. August 15th is when we should hear something on approximate date. The last date I heard that they thought they were going to hear it. Okay.
And then, can, the, any of the FEMA reimbursement that's should be coming? Can, can some of that go towards the, the
shortfall? If we don't get that grant money? So we, we have been talking quite a bit with finance. It's, it's not in the current draft budget, but we do have some legacy like rehab and
repairs for all the lift stations as a result of the hurricane impacts. Like we had to build a lot of temporary electrical panels and things like that. And so we've been working very closely with
finance. And if that money comes through the, we've collectively made a plan that that would go directly into like doing more permanent repairs and bringing all of those lift stations fully up to
code, because that's where the damages occurred. Okay. The, so, the commissioner asked the question about the water, from
Pinellas County. So have you if if we don't, if we were to get our initial, additional needs from the county rather than,
drilling for the wells that we're going to have here, would that, would that preclude us from having some of that debt?
So we did look at, an option to do all of our growth through imports from the county. Right now the, the county costs are lower than our total production
costs, which include, but that includes our bonds for the water plant, right? So long and short of it, it would be, it can buy us a little bit of time if we need to use it as a
managerial strategy. But overall, if we didn't long term build our build out those water supplies because we're kind of tied to the the project right now, it, it would be more expensive to import from the county, all of our future
growth needs. So, but it could be a good managerial strategy in certain high water use years. But the water that we would pay Parnell's County for, do we
charge enough for water usage that would offset that? It would, but it would result in an increase in the cost of delivering the water to the customers. Okay. Which result in net negative from our
financial. But it's possible to use them as a short term measure, to buy a year or two if we, if we chose to, we're going to be looking very closely at what that would look
like. Managerially. So the question is, can we meet every can we meet our average demand for like the average day? And there's a clear path to that. But the question becomes on the driest day of the year, when
everyone needs lots and lots of water or there's a fire or something like that. Do we want to pay for all those extra wells to get that capacity that you might only be running at full capacity, like a handful
of days a year or 30 days a year? And maybe that capacity is not the best investment. Okay. So, getting back to this debt thing, because I know
we've kind of, kind of put some, boogeyman stuff on, on these, on this debt, right. You know,
I, I remember you doing your presentation and that's, that's a, a decision that we would make. At some point that decision had to be made about
either, you know, these are capital investments that we're putting this money into, whether we spread the cost and defer and, and reduce and defer
any, cost to the residents so that it's smoothed out for them as well. Right. The same thing with the loan that we had last year for the electrical panels, the 4 million you're talking
about, you had given us a, okay scenario. Hey, if we don't spread this cost by borrowing some money at, at an inexpensive rate, we would have
to raise rates, pretty, pretty precipitously, right? Yes. The the numbers. I'm sorry. I, I had that as a backup slide that's hidden in the PDF. I believe the no debt scenario
that we were looking at because we did run a no debt scenario to see what that would look like. And it included either 23 or 26% increase in year one and an additional 20% water rate in
water sewer rate increase in year two. And so the the solution was to take some loans at a low cost, keep the utility running, and keep investing in what we need to. And yeah, and
this investment that we're using the money for has benefit for future, years. Correct. Certainly. Okay. Certainly. So,
so spreading, spreading the cost of a capital item, to go over a period of time to keep
costs down is a, is a wise, use of, of, on finance decisions. So we're, you know, part of what we're here for and I, I
understand that, you know, these things get a life of their own, but these are business decisions, right? These are economic business decisions. We pay for something
now all up front. And then we have an effect, right? It's an effect. It's going to pass on extra costs to the residents. And it's and, and, or we make a choice that we spread a cost,
which then reduces that effect on the residents. And it's spread out over time, just like we would do to spread the cost of a, your car, your house,
your whatever. Okay. So, I get the 4 million. It's going to be a decision, right? Either do it and you spread costs or you
don't do it and you raise rates a lot. We've chosen let's spread it. As long as these costs are are reasonable. We don't put the city in deep debt.
Our debt to equity ratios are low. And and they make sense. These are business decisions. These aren't, you know, historical decisions. These are
business decisions. Okay. Thank you very much. Any anybody else have any other further questions of Mr. Kiger? I have
a quick question for Tom. Is there any is there any opportunity in the future? Because one of the one of the graphs that you had up showed
several, maybe several years where the water usage increased and it didn't drop back down again? For some reason, I'm not sure what you are accounting
for that if some future project made made that made that change. But is there any opportunity to put water restrictions in place in the future? Should we start
to experience a deficit like the county has done to the county? Yeah, that's a great question actually. So, we are very much we've really kind of kick started our water
conservation program this year, especially in light of the, the long term rainfall deficit we've had. Also the state required us to do it. So, but conservation certainly an important like water resource
management strategy, it can help to push out the need for costly capital projects in the future. You know, helps keep our maintain our well field and
all those sorts of things. So, we do already have some strategies in place. We're already at year round, one day a week water restrictions. That's been a little bit loosely, enforced and
advertised in the past. So we're kind of refocusing on that to make sure that we're getting the word out and helping people make smarter decisions on their water use.
And, hopefully that will pay dividends. We also have a conservation rate structure where the more water you use, the higher rate you pay. That's also required by the water management district, but ours has been fairly effective.
People get a pretty good price signal when they overuse the water. And they, they do tend to call afterwards as well. So.
Okay. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you.
Okay, so we're going to move on to sanitation fund. Personnel. We're looking at an increase of
8.2% over prior year. Again, this is the 12% placeholder for health and a 3% Cola. And we're expecting health to be reduced further in operating. We've got
the placeholder for 5% for the property and liability insurance. And then we did make an adjustment for utilities and vehicle repair and maintenance to reflect the prior year
trends. The majority of the expense is from the solid waste, recycling and yard waste contracts. These are adjusted twice a year, once for CPIA max of 3%, and again for any
changes in county disposal fees. The current contract is with waste management and that expires in March 2027. Transfers out again. This is
the general Government admin fee charged to the enterprise funds amount is 8% for charges for services revenue, and the transfer is flat in 27. As
fiscal year 26 revenue was budgeted a little bit too high under other. These are the reserves budgeted as non operating expense and these entries will be finalized.
After all the changes are in. Moving on to stormwater. Personnel's got an increase of 8% for all the same reasons.
I've already mentioned. Under operating. We're seeing an increase here of 31.4%. So besides the 5% placeholder for
property liability and the utilities and vehicle repair and maintenance throughout, we've determined that there is some duplication in operating. So once we make that adjustment,
that increase will go from the 31% down to 13%, which is more in line. Capital will be on the next slide. The debt is
increased to reflect the recent 2026 debt payments, as well as the lease payment on the 2026 that contract transfers out again. General government admin
fee that's charged to enterprise funds since stormwater rates increased 19%, the transfer out increased as well. In addition, the budget is based off the fiscal year 26
projected actuals, which are estimated to come in higher than budget. I'll go over to the CIP. So this is what we
have for projects in the CIP in the stormwater fund. I just wanted to highlight the projects in 27 that will still
be using the fiscal year 26 series debt. So we had some projects in 26 and then some more in 27. I'll go ahead and
move on to the Marina fund. A small increase, 12,000 for personnel. Same reasons as before. Operating again, same
reason as before the 5% for the property liability. And then the utilities and repair and maintenance have been adjusted
to reflect prior year actuals. In the golf fund personnel increased only 2.9%. This includes the placeholders. And
we have had some adjustments in that fund to bring it up from beginning of the year to July 13th. In operating, we're seeing an increase there.
That's for the golf course maintenance contract. The debt, that's a slight increase to adjust for the 2026 revenue
note. And then I'm going to just go ahead and move on to the rest of the CIP that wasn't already talked about in the enterprise funds, which basically means the Penny fund.
This is the public safety CIP list. Not a whole lot has changed. Actually, nothing has changed since our last meeting
on public safety for these numbers. Under streets. We had we took Orange Street
construction. This right now is unfunded. So that's why that's shown in red. Maybe needs to come out of the penny fund or
we need to figure something else out. But right now it's, it's unfunded. The other thing I wanted to mention under this fund is the Lime Street
construction. So we have a placeholder in of 2.5 million. That is for brick replacement. We do have another option. If we do asphalt, we could reduce
that down to 900,000. There's also a stormwater component, which I believe is $1 million. And that's in the stormwater fund. And talking with Chris, you know that we do have
options of how we want to handle that project, whether we do full, you know, brick or asphalt or some other smaller repair. So we do have some
options there. Again, let me, let me add, and that's one of the places again, that's a project that may not happen
because we have to use the money for other things. So we not only have to look at it, but again, we have the Orange Street and we have that one
that we may need that penny. You might have to make a decision that that penny money may need to go somewhere else. We may need that utility money that's in there to go to
something else. So that's her budget. I think my, my budget language is those projects are in jeopardy right now and are for the future. And you may have to make some decisions on
those and some priority about where those monies go. Excuse me just for one second while you're on that, is there a that
you could make up a priority list for all of those CIP of what you feel is, you know, mandatory what is, you know, semi mandatory and, what is,
could be on the chopping block so that we can all get that. Yes. And again, we got all those variables like the bridge when those, when those come in, that'll be something again, I talk about the budget going all
year. That's something that will be coming back for the board to look at all those things, the factors, what we need money for. And of course, you know, I'll say what I think,
but you'll ultimately make the decision where that money has to go to. But we just want to point out those, those projects that are going to be in jeopardy of move back years
into CIP. Because we may need that money for some of the other things we've talked about that's not funded. Thank you. So let me, let me just clarify
or just reiterate what Mark is saying. So what we're doing is we're at some point we're going to approve the budget. The, and
there's going to be dollar items in the different departments and including CIP, we can have a, have our CIP
workshop. We could do it in the fall. Okay. And then this is where we would zero in on all these options and making these choices. So we don't really have to resolve any of that
before we approve the budget. Right. And we probably can't we don't have all the information for you to deal with. Right. So we're right now, we're approving a general budget with, with what we feel we can spend
in the different categories, but the actual details can be resolved. This is a, like I always say, our budgets like a living document, right? It's, it's, it's constantly rolling
and, and so in the fall, we can sit down and have a CIP workshop and go through all the different items and how we spend money and what things we feel are priorities and make
our own priority list at that time. So, we, again, we don't have to decide those things at this, this stage of the game. All right. Okay. The other CIP,
we've got other large projects and Penny, I've shown the second phase of the dredging is partially unfunded because we just kind of need to see how the Penny fund is doing over the next couple of years. So
that's why that's shown there. And then in summary, kind of this is going back to what you two are saying. Here's a summary of fiscal year 27
unfunded projects. The Orange Street construction, the water sewer projects that Tommy was just discussing for the 4 million in debt. And then the
Beckett Bridge, you know, depending on what number we land on there. So this is our current list for 27. Go back just a second to the page
before that, because I want to make that clear to, especially since this is an issue that is very big in this town forever. Just know right now with the
structure, those two years of $2.5 million for dredging, which which doesn't even give us all the dredging that's possible need. Those are in jeopardy. Those those are
jeopardy projects with what's going on. So I want to be transparent real early. Since the dredging of the areas and stuff is important, we've made charter issues on them and all
that stuff. The reality is that $5 million over those two years, depending on what happens this year and next year and stuff, is also in jeopardy. I want to try to get out and get the word
out there of the projects that could be in jeopardy, depending on all the factors we've talked about referendum, everything else and diverting funds. I want it known early that that
that is something, as you can see by the cost. That's something that's in jeopardy.
Okay. And then, just to remind everybody that, we have a placeholder for the 18th if we need it. And then we will have our tentative millage and
budget on the September 9th, and then the second final public hearing to adopt the millage and budget will be on September 23rd. So if you need
me, I've got a conflict. That was before my pulling out of retirement on the 18th. We either have to move that day or continue with my fine staff at the point where we're out. So
that's something we have to talk about. When you decide on on those things, well, let's let's see how we get through tonight because that's an optional meeting that may not be necessary. Okay. Okay.
That's I'm ready for questions. Discussion. Commissioner Weaver, thank you. Mayor. So I think, you know, through all the
presentation, all I can think of is, is grant writing grants, grants, grants. I mean, we've got to step up our, our grant application game, going forward.
And I, I hope we'll have a plan for capitalizing on, on that even more, you know, as time goes on. But one of the things that, so one of the first slide
that you had pulled up was from waste management. And, you know, I've had people actually say to me, well, I hope this doesn't mean, you know, if a referendum passes in November that, you
know, they'll pick our trash up once a week or whatever. And, and I was just reading a little bit, I think it was Maggie that had come up a couple weeks ago
and talked about the side loading trash, getting everyone getting new trash receptacles and side loading trucks. And I
did, I did have a conversation, with someone from waste management regarding that it would, it would actually be cheaper. It is an expense. There may be some grants available. It might be something we want to pursue. I
would never want to pursue cutting back trash service before we have other opportunities. But whoever whoever's overseeing that, that may be something we want to
visit with waste management again, is, is changing over to those side loading. They don't have to hire as many people. It's all done basically by the
driver. That's, that's pretty much it. Thank you. That's good presentation. Commissioner Panther. I have no questions. I just want to thank staff for their excellent job and working
with Mark and figure this out. Thank you, Commissioner Eisner. Thank you mayor. Well, I have more of a statement than I do
of a question. Go ahead. Yes. The project fund that I was glad to see. You know, this
1903 that we borrowed, I did do some numbers and I figured up, from the amount of interest that you have put here, that we will make on this and I know
their estimates, but we would lose, we would lose, we would gain 300 zero zero $0 off that 1903, making it $19 million purchase when all is said and
done, because it's not actually a 1903 when you're getting 300, 000 in interest. But I also ran some numbers and I could be 100% wrong, but or 98% wrong.
The amount of money that we save doing using it, up front and gaining the, the projects now and not paying the
inflation rate, could save us between 4 to $6 million because that's how much it could be costing us down the road. So back to what the mayor had said
about making, you know, our debt to income ratio, helpful that we get that we got this passed by the board to be able
to utilize this so that we're not actually, when numbers come in, we're not actually using and losing $19 million per say, we'd really be actually
consuming somewhere between 13 and $15 million. So I just wanted to, you know, do my own little calculations. So but thank you for the presentation.
Right now, it's so difficult to ask you a question because you don't have the answer for this. This I know, but you don't you can't foretell the future. No.
And so we have to put something that is presentable, which I think we did. And as city manager said, this is something that is going to be moving, as
you know, as we go along. And I'm just glad that, you know, I got to look at what Commissioner Weaver asked to be, you know, pulled. And I know
they don't you know, they don't know. But I did look through that. I have a stack of pages here. The Commissioner Banther would kill me if we were to go
through. So. You know, I mean, you know, like I said, it's there's a lot of different items that you can look at. But again, this is something that's
going to just be as we move along, we got to just make the decisions at what needs to be done. So I do appreciate and I have nothing more to add. Add
to that. Ashley, can you move to the next slide? Okay. So on the bottom where you have other and you say fund balance
reserve budget 2026 and then nothing under the 2027 column, explain an accounting entry. So that we, you know, when we're
done with the budget, the change in reserves, either that's where it gets plugged or we still have changes going on. So I'm not going to do that entry until we're done making
changes. And then I'll put it in. Okay. All right. I don't want anybody to think that was a flaw in there. No. Okay. That that's really on my question.
Everything else was very clear. Thank you. Okay. Proceed. Anybody else have any further questions on that? On the slides that were just put up?
Okay. Okay. Well thanks guys. That's it. That's all we got. We're done. We're done. You said do them all together. So we. Okay. Beautiful. All together. Beautiful. All right.
So, Commissioner Weaver, do you have any any final comments or questions? Thank you. Mayor. Well, you know, obviously I'm going to give you accolades and
thank you for, I'm sure, a lot of hard work. And I apologize for requesting information during. I'm sure your hardest time, but it was something I really wanted to look at. So
the only final question I would have, and I'm sure it was your nemesis at some point was regarding the health benefits. So you had estimated them
higher and conservative appreciated. And, and they came in a little lower rate than you expected. Was there a changes to the health plan in order to lower that, or was that just a
concession made by the the health care provider? We went out to bid. So, we got competitive. I think that's why
we went from 18 to the 12. Okay. And then, on Tuesday, the HR director, Tabitha and the gearing group, I don't know is the Tabitha, the gearing group
be here for that. Okay. They'll go over the, the plan specifics. And what could change to get that number down even further.
So the short answer is we've always had the Cadillac of plans. When we weren't paying good money, we still beat the other cities and their plans. This was not going to be the
Cadillac plan. So that's how you got the cost down. We wrote many years with it. We were. But time. But it is the best plan I think. And again, your
gearing group that this commission many years ago decided to go to and negotiate and work with. There's been a lot of work with HR and this gearing group dealing with the
companies and, and believe me, we only had two companies to bid. Oldsmar had a worse problem. They had a company that you all know and a company that nobody knows. That was the only ones who bid for their
place. We had an experience probably 25 years ago or so, where we went with one of those companies nobody heard of, and it was an absolute disaster. So they're not even bidding for
cities. We're not even getting the choices of of a lot of people to negotiate with it. Gearing only had two, but they did a great job of wearing the two of them down, pit them
against and trying to get the best plan for employees. So it's not going to be the Cadillac that we've experienced before, but it's probably going to be as good in the market. What other cities has that
it'll still be not lower and up there, or even a little more in the other cities, but we did have to go down on some things, up on some copay. We there is a difference to this plan that's going to go, but there's,
there's no other alternative to go to with it. Understood. Okay. Sign of the times, I guess. Thank you. Commissioner Panther. No questions. Thank you,
Commissioner Eisner. Yeah. I just want to give a shout out to, the we had a pipe break
this past week and, the vac truck was out working, just unbelievably going from, lift station to lift station, emptying things. Very difficult
job, working through the night while at the same time, you know, because everything was shut off on at least on Riverside Drive, you know, from the break point all the way out
to, almost Fred Howard Park. So, I just wanted to thank everybody that was involved. We have a great staff all around. And I do appreciate I, I came
up and I thanked them personally, I have pictures to prove it to, I mean, it was really, it could have been catastrophic if we didn't respond, you know, quick enough.
So I do appreciate that, Mr. Kiger, I appreciate that. Thank you. And Chris. That's it. Thank you. So, yeah, first, I
want to thank, our finance director. I mean, she came on, you know, when did you actually start? Feels like a lifetime.
January when? January. January. January. Okay. Since you started in January. Here we are. And at the end of July or the first part of August. And so
you've had to do a yeoman's job and given, you know, all these challenges that we have, with finances and such, and you did a great job. And obviously all
the, the costs and, and Mark was, you know, maybe God works in mysterious ways. So, he, he,
you know, we, he's here when we needed him the most. And, and again, he was enjoying his, his retirement and he decided to come back and help us out. And,
I can never thank you enough. I seriously mean it. So, you know, we Joke with each other all the time. But, you know, it's it's sincere. So, just just so
everyone understands and I don't want to keep beating this dead horse, but I'm not the one who trying to resurrect the horse. So, you know, when we make decisions about, whether
we finance things or don't things again, like I said before, they're made out of, you know, logical business decisions that we think are,
are, are prudent. Again, the, the loan we did last year, if we had not done the loan, I think we would be in a very tight position right now, given
the 6 million that we would have spent on the fire station and, and now being able to spread that. And I think, the then vice Mayor Eisner was, you
know, very clear on his, his, his example of, of a home equity loan spreading out these things. You know, nobody buys their house cash and, and, and it's nice that you, you know,
want to, we want to do that, but then it has repercussions. And again, like the thing that you gave us showed and it's, and, and it's right on target with what, Ron Herring talked
about last year, if we hadn't had, if we fund the fire station cash and used the funds, then we were going to be left with about 200,000 in the Penny fund. And that's really, for,
you know, a city of, you know, the size of ours and having a budget of close to 100 million, having only 200,000 left. The penny fund was a precarious place to be. Okay. So I think
we made a good decision. And, and, you know, one of the things about we talk about interest earned and interest expense, just so everybody
understands it that we, we could have borrowed the money in, in what we call tranches, right? Like, oh, we don't like, okay. For example, the 4
million for the, the clubhouse. Right. We could wait till we were ready to do the clubhouse and borrow the 4 million instead of borrowing it. It part of the 19. The problem
with that and I, we went over that, painstakingly with Ron Herring was that we pay a fee every time we borrow money. And I think that fee was close to $50,000. Right. I think we
budgeted 60, but yeah, was about 60. Okay. So, so had we borrowed the money in 4 or 5 different tranches, we would paid 50, 60,000 every single
time. So we looked at interest rate and it currently the interest rate that we're paying on the loan, which is that's in stone. That's that's not a
variable rate is 3.74%. Right. The interest that we earn on having money right now is 3.8%. Okay. So we it doesn't cost us anything. It's basically a wash.
It doesn't cost us anything to have the money sitting there right now. In, in the fund that it's in. Okay. So now when, when, when we get into, we can
get into some weird semantic kind of thing where we say, the interest we're paying is higher than the interest we're earning. Well, yeah, that's going to happen because we're spending
the money, right? So what we're the whole point of the interest earned versus the interest expense was to not have it cost us money to hold the money.
Right. So but then when we spend the money, so if we start with 19 and we spend, you know, nine of it, and we only have ten left in the reserve in the,
in the thing that means we spent the nine so we're getting the benefit of that. It's, you know, we're, we're, we're, we spent it on the projects we need to spend it on. And now we're only earning 3.8% on the
ten that we have. Right? So it's. So yeah, the interest expense is going to be higher in total. But that's not the whole that's not really the point of this. The point of
this is not to have holding money cost us money. That's all it is. Now the offset to spending money is two things. One is one is we get the use
and enjoyment of the money. Now, okay. Rather than waiting till we can pay for it, cash down the road I the Craig Park seawall. The the, the panels
across the street for for putting the 4 million bucks in. That's important. Okay, now we could wait till to fund that later when we save money, save
4 million. But then we have a, a potential problem. We ever have another really big storm, we have a real problem across the street, so we have to take care of it. Okay. So we, again,
we, we borrow money. The, you know, the, the interest rate on construction. And just to, you know, just so you to understand everybody, to understand it,
inflation rate over the last ten years on construction costs is about 6%. Okay. Now we hit
during Covid, we had almost a 15% rate increase inflation rate. The last few years, we've had close to 6% inflation rate.
Eight years back, the rate was lower. We don't know where it's going to be, but we know that it's going to be a lot more than it is today. And we know those things. So we, we, we
borrow money when we think we can utilize it now and again, spread the cost. We buy, we do things now because we have a need, i.e. the seawall at Craig
Park, I, the the panels across the street. The clubhouse is a is an economic decision. We believe that that will pay for itself. So we want to go ahead and get that clubhouse. We
could wait and not use any debt money and pay for it five years from now. But, you know, our residents would like to enjoy having that clubhouse. And I'm sure all the golfers and everybody will help pay it, pay
for that. So, you know, again, I don't I don't want to keep beating this dead horse. I hope this is the last conversation we have about it. I, I kind of figure we're not, but I want to
just put my thoughts to rest. This is how, why we're doing what we're doing. And the same thing with, Mr. Kiger about maybe if we have to borrow some more money to do some other
future things that are necessary, that'll be a decision, right? The decision, this board, this body will decide when to raise rates, pay for it all now, or do we want to spread it, keep the rates
lower and spread those rates over, over time to help the residents. That's all we're doing. Everything we do here is to help the residents. And,
that's my diatribe for the night. Not yet. Oh, you got something to say? Yes, sir. I just want to say, and as you know, we haven't gone into it. There's really not a need right
now to go into what happens on referendum November. We've seen the court case today and they're going to have to change the language. I don't know why it took a judge to say that,
the third grade gifted class at Sunset Hills Elementary could have said that language was not neutral and all this stuff, you know, the city's got to be neutral. We got to do all this
work and all the work to do about the thing. I'm going to talk next. And you have language that's so inflammatory. You didn't need a judge to say that language had to change. But the judge did say that does not stop the vote. So the
vote's going on, but we have instituted and the word is going out our website on connect Tarpon. You can go to connect tarpon. We are following the rules that the
state doesn't have to follow and we are being objective. We have articles on both sides for people to read, look at and, decide for themselves.
Hopefully do more research. And we got fine citizens out there like miss McKinney, who's putting facts out there from a regular citizen that people should read and look at on the thing. So that website is going
to be going on connecting Tarpon. As articles go, the article today, probably from the Sheriff's association, other things are going to keep going on there. We're putting links to the other cities.
Clearwater had a big meeting Saturday to discuss all the things that could be cut. If you look at all the other places, everybody knows all the things that could be cut here.
It's the same when you read Clearwater and you know, it's everything. It's it's everything general fund wise. And we are working on it and doing that. But we encourage people to go to that website
and connect. Tarpon has got all the information on both sides for you to read. There's not much coming out on the other side, but we'll put it in there. If it's in there and we'll add it. The other cities are
starting to to let people know it's the same. I know talking with the library and all throughout the county know what the issues are going to be with the ability to provide library services and all the other ones
and stuff. So we will be working hard on updating that to get the information out to the people. We are cognizant that while our job here right now is to get this budget to
the public hearings in September and get this passed that we are already working on bringing back to you things that will happen depending on October. And another thing I
want to say again, whether it passes or not, we're going to have to do some adjustments with our schedule going forward. There are still going to be things I'm going to bring to you that we need to backtrack a
little bit on. There's maybe some positions we've added. We may need to push back on. There may be continued freezes on more jobs. Even if it doesn't
pass, you may say, why is Mark still freezing additional jobs as they come available? Because that keeps me from cutting people if that comes in. So
believe me, all that's going on every week and a look at what might happen. The list that you see up there will grow with it. As people start leaving, we're
evaluating every job. It's also where you would think it does not affect the enterprise funds. I don't agree with that. And we need to do something there because we really don't have
our enterprise funds with reserves or money. None of them look good right now. And we have to do something about improving that. These were funds that we borrowed for projects from those reserves,
from these other places that are not there now. So you'll be seeing as long as you keep me here, they'll be some conservative freezing of some
other things going on, passed or not passed. So we can build up some of those reserves and some of our areas and, get a better place to handle the, the
emergency that may come up next year, next summer, whenever the emergency comes up, we're, we're going for now, we're not accounting for another emergency happens. We're going to go to. So that is something
this staff is bought into and knows we have to do. And, we're working on that every day. And, we'll deal with those issues as they come and try to present
the best we can, to providing service for the city. But within the operational monies that we have. Thank you. So, just for some. Yes, sir. Yes,
sir. I just wanted to add to what, city manager said they did post today in Clearwater that they would lose $12 million in the first year. And that's they said it would just
be catastrophic. And I didn't know we were going to spend this. 1903 so that hurts my interest money of the 4 to $6 million, you didn't have to blow it for me, did you? I'm
just kidding with you. But okay, so on on some housekeeping going over this timeline, we you have presented us a balanced budget. We have asked
you the questions we need to ask you. Again, this is not a in stone because things will transpire. Does any
commissioner here wish to have the optional budget workshop on the 18th. Do you see a need for that? Okay. Do you see a need for that? Okay. With that said,
let's, let's just mix the 18th again, it's an optional one. You had it there as a place holder, but there's no need for it. Okay, so you don't have to worry about the 18th. Yeah. All
right. And thank you very much. You can always email me with any questions. And I appreciate anybody. And again, if anybody has questions, keep those questions coming in to staff to
answer whatever it is. Keep those questions coming from the board. Okay. But again, there'll be no workshop on the 18th. All right. With that said,
meeting adjourned. 711. That's what I did. 711 mark.