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Video-1: youtube.com/watch?v=Kcm2zj48qQg

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Thank you. All right. >> So today, uh, first thing we're going to do is a just a presentation on the general fund. Uh, subsequent to that, once we finish with the council discussion and questions, then we'll move on to the special revenue funds and

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the capital budget. On the 28th of July, we have scheduled a second round of budget workshops, which will in essence be the time to catch up if there are any lingering questions, details, things like that. Again, we'll deal with the general fund and the special revenue

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funds and the capital budget. Uh that day, what we have targeted as well is the there's a new state law that requires each municipality and county to go through a a 10% reduction exercise on the on the general fund. Uh it'll be the

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first time for us as it will be for every other um municipality and county in in the state. So, we're going to plan to do that on 28th. That should meet the timeline as required under state law. And that is simply an exercise not doesn't have any direct bearing on

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on the budget that's being proposed. That same day pending council approval we would have a special city council meeting to set the millillage. We have to do that prior to the first few days of August. So we're hoping to target that day to do that u after the

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workshop. Uh on August 11th as council is aware we are having a water and sewer fund workshop. Um, we are we're going to talk about the water and sewer fund today, but we're not going to get into the level of detail to deal with all the projects that were highlighted in the

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town hall and the meeting in the presentation that CHA made here because we we're taking that information, those questions, and the insight that we got from city council, working through that to get you something on August 11th that'll be more robust and then get some more clear direction as to what you want

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to do uh moving forward. On September 3rd, uh we again this is pending council approval. We're hoping to have a special city council meeting for the first public public hearing of the budget. This this is a product of what happened um of of state law basically last year.

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The same thing happened. Our first meeting in September ends up being too early to meet the statutory timeline for the for the public budget hearings. So because of that, we have to schedule a special meeting basically one or two days after our regular meeting, which is what that reflects. And then on

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September 15th, we would have the second public hearing of the budget and we would also with council's approval adopt the utility rate resolutions uh that evening. So, uh let's talk about the current budget and some of the highlights. So, the FY26 budget, the one we're in right

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now, is the ninth straight budget with no tax rate increase. Uh I want to thank the finance department for the uh distinguished budget award that we received from the government government finance officers association that reflects the great work that they've done to put that the 26 budget together.

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In the current year our employees our general employees uh were awarded a 4% cola cost of living adjustment as well as a 2% merit. We also provided for contractual increases for the police and fire union contracts. Uh we absorbed the increase in health insurance. I think

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that's a great perk that we were able to offer our employees in the current fiscal year. In terms of hurricane preparedness, which is a council priority, we acquired two fuel trailers this year, as well as two 6-in portable pumps to help us with our storm water issues. The council adopted a social

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media policy for elected officials. They also adopted a short-term rental ordinance, which I think is a groundbreaking type of legislation. Uh, we acquired AEDs for the ball fields with council direction, created an innovation office. We launched the celebrate what's next initiative. We held two food truck rallies within the

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CRA. We also renovated the utility billing office and as you walk you probably walked by coming in here today. So, it looks it looks great. We put a new floor in the Lightfoot Senior Center, a new playground at River Hills. Uh, one of the most most sort of momentous decisions that the council

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made this year was adopting the uh, general obligation bond ordinance and you know, we'll see what happens on August 18th at the the primary election. The police department and fire department also had successful accreditation visits this year. Uh, we

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have been archiving historic artifacts. Uh, Riverside Park, the project was approved by city council and we're moving towards construction in the first quarter of 2027. Uh we acquired additional equipment as we've done every year for the family rec center. Uh this year I think it was an a lotment of treadmills and other things

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like that. CRA properties were tenatively approved by the CRA board and the council for sale. And the utility service centers, if you drive by on White, it's close to being completed. Uh we'll have a ribbon cutting, I think, sometime in August for that. And the EOC is well under construction and uh is

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meeting its timeline for uh uh funding. So that's the part that we control. Now, of course, we have we don't live in a vacuum. We're part of a a greater economy. And so there are some challenges out there right now in the macroeconomic world.

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So the National Consumer Price Index for urban areas, which is what we use when we look at sort of the metrics that apply to our community. So May 2026, the 12-month period ending May 2026, the national CPIU was 4.2%. just to have you understand what the

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difference was. A year prior was 2.3%. So you're seeing basically inflation that's happening uh right now in in our local community as well. We are seeing some cooling of the home market and industrial real estate activity also has cooled off in 2026

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and we're seeing an uptick in unemployment as well. In terms of housing, uh there continue to be affordability concerns with housing. We're not seeing necessarily that prices are dropping um precipitously and we're seeing small

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drops in prices. Uh but what we are seeing is that the homes are staying on the market longer. So for example, a year ago, a home in Temple Terrace would be on the market for an average of about 53 days. Today it's about 64 65 days that it's it's on the market. Homeowners insurance continues to be a concern uh

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which is further dampening uh um housing activity. Um, so that's sort of the the market for for that perspective for residential, which is a big part of our local economy. When you look at commercial and industrial, uh, if you'll recall a year,

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probably over the last two years, I've talked about if we could only have more industrial property, we'd be better off because it's a low service demand, uh, entity, but it's a high generator of of tax revenue. Um, the marketplace has caught up with us. Uh in essence what's

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happening is that if you look at this chart here you see in 2021 the vacancy rate for industrial property across the region is not nec necessarily just temple terrace was 3.6%. Today it's 7.3%. So now there's been a supply that's been provided to meet that

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demand. So the vacancies going up which is dampening some of the rents which will in essence also dampen some of the valuations uh later on. Um commercial is is restabilizing. uh commercial is is uh and retail particularly is stable, but there's a limited inventory of retail out in the

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general Tampa Bay marketplace right now. Now, speaking specifically of FY27's budget and the revenue constraints that we're operating under, so we just painted the picture what's happening in the economy. Um in terms of our tax base growth, uh we the final number we had

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had an estimate that was about 1.3%. It's the final number that we got from the property appraiser now is a 1.71% growth in Temple Terrace's tax base year-toear which is this is the lowest growth number in a decade for the city. So to understand the orner of magnitude

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here if you look at the number from last year so at this point last year we're looking at uh a number that was going to generate an increase in revenue advalorum revenue of $825,338. This year, this 1.71% growth will generate an advalorum um increase in

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revenue of $337,762. So, it's far less um which makes it a little bit tighter, considerably tighter for us to operate. Uh but we've we've made it work. The other revenues that we we get towards the general fund um are

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basically flat or declining with the exception of particularly utility service and franchise fees uh and some building fees which we'll talk about. This chart just graphically illustrates what I was just mentioning. Uh you can see here the progression of growth in

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our tax base. As I know I've been saying and the team's been echoing that. Uh this is not sustainable. We all knew that eventually this wave of growth would taper off. So you're starting to see the taper now. Last couple of years you've seen it. Um with some of the changes proposed under the state constitutional amendment that's going to

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be on the ballot in November. This chart will look dramatically different in the future as well. should those amendments be approved. This chart illustrates some of the other general fund revenues. So again, you see here that most are flat or declining with the exception of utilities,

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franchise fees uh and things of that nature. Those are the ones that you're seeing some slight increases. Everything else is pretty much uh status quo. So now specifically looking at the 27 milestones for our budget. So the thing I want to stress right off right out of the gate is that this will be the 10th

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straight year with no increase in millillage. We are not proposing any tax rate increase for the 27 budget. Our total general fund budget uh is projected to be 41,377,75. The budget meets as many council priorities as we could within the limits

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of the financial constraints we're working under. uh it maintains competitive pay and benefits and that was something that I really want to commend the team uh the department directors particularly what I asked is and you'll see that 79% of our of our general fund budget is personnel costs

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those are almost fixed costs so department directors don't have a lot of flexibility with that but the remaining 21% they do and they were really great about sharpening their pencils this year and trying to make the math work so that we could come out with no increase in mulage um and allow us to make sure our

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employees get raised is uh we also continue to fund our public safety contractual obligations in this budget. We fully fund all the general fund positions. We are not proposing any additional FTEES or any no new positions for the general fund. Uh we have a continued emphasis on professional

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development. That's the one thing that I I really want to thank the team as well because they get it. This community for years didn't stress professional development and training. And it's one of the things for the last several years we really wanted to change. And I know that when things get tight, it's sometimes the first thing that people

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want to cut. And I think that's a horrible idea. We want to make sure that our staff, particularly when they're under challenged, that they have the tools necessary to perform. So that's something that we we maintained in this budget. And we're also going to be using more and more technology. I think that goes without saying, but particularly for

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this community, there's certain things we're going to highlight throughout this morning's presentation that achieve that goal. So, uh, property tax millage rates in the county. I have not heard that any other entity is proposing a tax rate increase. So, this is a slide from this current year. It's probably still the

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same then. So, if you see here, overall, this is the overall tax rate. So, all the different taxing authorities that would show up on your trim notice. So, overall tax rate at Tampa is still at 19.84 84 and Temple Terrace, we're at 19.53. So, uh we're we're right there.

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Um in terms of our position, uh behind Tampa, some of the council priorities that we did incorporate in this preliminary budget. Um council stressed that they wanted to make sure that we continue professional development and continue to cultivate people in our organization.

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People are the most important asset we have. So, we've continued our internship program. We also continue the leadership and management program which has been extremely successful for us in allowing us to get people who might be starting out their career or college students things like that. Bring them in to the

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organization, teach them what it means to be part of this Temple Terrace family. And then when an opening happens, we bring them in and they're already, you know, trained up and ready to go. The leadership management program allows us to foster future leaders in the organization and helps us with succession planning.

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budget continues funding for employee employee engagement and education. Uh we also council direction added $1,000 each to the riverwatch task force and the bike ped advisory committee uh for outreach. Uh this budget also and this was a I believe a priority for council

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member Fernandez implements building fee um and building fee penalties increases as well. So as council knows you appropriated dollars for us to do a building fee study. We should be bringing those results to you for adoption sometime between now and the beginning of the next fiscal year. Um

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and what we're actually using some of those building fee increases as assumptions towards this budget um this budget document moving forward. Uh we also increased outside legal council funding to $45,000. So in this current budget it's at 20,000. I remember council member Kravitz last year at the

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same workshop asked if that was enough. And my answer at the time I believe was you know it's the first time that we've really increased that budget. So, let's see how it goes and then we'll come back this year uh with a number that might be more indicative of where we we are. So, that's what we are proposing right now.

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We also adding $20,000 for a land development code consultant. Um so, one of the council priorities was to get our land development code revisions actually through council for hearing and for adoption. We've been working on some of these for several years now.

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The challenges I I I know the council realizes is that we're doing that all with our own staff, particularly with the planning staff. Um it when you look at all the projects you're getting, all the applications, site plans, subdivisions, things like that, it they take priority because there's certain

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statutory expectations of time for those applications. So the working on the land development code revisions is is harder to do when you're when you're dealing with these different um workloads. We're also currently short staffed in planning which is not helping. So council asked

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us to look at what we could do to expedite some of those revisions. So we programmed in $20,000 because we felt we could afford $20,000 in this budget. I will be very clear. I don't want to mislead the council into thinking that this is the panacea. This will resolve it all. This is a small number and in

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the world of consulting, this won't get you very far. It might get you maybe one or two specific land development code revisions faster than we could address it, but it's not going to address the full breadth of all the land development code changes that could be necessary. Um, but that number would be much much

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higher. And again, uh, we had a tight budget. We were trying to make all the pieces work. We also expect to have permitting software um, in fiscal year 27 and go live with that. That's I believe council member Fernandez, you brought that up as well and under council priorities. So, we're hoping to get that um in place and

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we expect to get that in place during the 27th budget. Uh we proposed $75,000. This is the same number we've done for the last couple of years for additional city hall improvements to continue working on improving this building. Um particularly as as different pieces are changing. We're moving the dispatch down

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to the EOC and things like that allow us to do more flexible um uh make the building a little bit more conducive to what we are as a city hall today. Um, we continue to we continue to fund $10,000 in arts funding in this budget. Um, and

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we continue to collaborate to have code, the police department, and public works collaborate on quality of life issues and quality of life issues here. Specifically, I'm dealing with some of the priorities that were mentioned by a number of members of council um about dealing, for example, with issues of homelessness and making sure that we

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have areas that are, you know, vegetation is kept down, that we've we keep clear, that the CLU still works with folks to help them get to resources they need, etc. So, that that continues to be a priority and is included in this budget. As I mentioned uh shortly a little while

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ago, 79% of our general fund budget is personnel costs. That includes wages, benefits, payroll related insuranceances, and payroll taxes. So again, it's really hard to make a lot of changes without touching people in the budget when you have to make dramatic changes because of the magnitude of how

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much of it is just the personnel side. Let's talk now about public safety. Um I I just want the community and the council obviously knows this. I want to make sure the community fully appreciates this that this this city council and this city we value public safety tremendously uh to the tune that

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we in this FY27 budget public safety police and fire alone uh personnel costs alone represent 127% of the entire advant revenue we'll be collecting. So that means that every single dollar we get in adv. So 127% goes to public safety. Um some

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of the particular changes of note I want to make sure that the council is aware of this year. So we have an actuary that works with the police pension board as well as the fire pension board and uh regularly they'll tell us what we have to contribute based on the marketplace of the the pension

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for the for the community to know there are only two departments or two sets of of individual employees that receive pensions in the city and that are that those are police officers and firefighters. everyone else is on a defined contribution plan. So pension does require a a significant

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contribution by the city. The police pension this year based on the actuaries recommendation has an increase of $328,719. Again, that's the increase. That's not just the same number. That's how much more we have to pay in this in the FY27 budget. We're also negotiating a new

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police union contract and we have programmed for that increase $426,97. Now, of course, we realize that we're still negotiating. This is just a plug number we put in based upon what we think would be a fair um increase. Um

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but again, that number will could could likely change. Fire pension contribution, $337,911 increase over the current fiscal year. fire union, the third year of their contract. It's going to be a $355,730

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increase over the current year. And then we've got personnel in fire and police who aren't union, such as the command staff and the administrative support staff. And that increase will be $139,672. So total for public safety from the personnel side for two departments alone

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is $1.6 million increase over the current fiscal year for FY27. You can see that represented here on these graphs. Uh in terms of of just sort of you got personal expense here and you have the p pension expense also noted.

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Now, everyone else, the remaining employees that are funded, so that the remaining 10 departments, for example, that are funded in any way by by the general fund, the increase for those employees is $495,333, largely driven by what I'm proposing

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here and the team uh is proposing is a 4% COLA and a 2% merit, which would be consistent what we've done the last three fiscal years. You can see on this pie chart here in terms of the uh the increases you see here that police and fire again represent the vast majority

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of of the increase and non-public safety is about 9%. Can see this this is comparable graph. This is again just the non-public safety personnel investment that we've made. And I want to just point to the if you look at the purple column, the last one for 27, you can see how it's come down.

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And again, that's that thanks to the effort that everybody put this year to kind of really tighten the the the numbers. Of course, it's not just wages. Uh it's also benefits that um that add to these to these increases. Every year at this time, we are basing our budget on

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assumptions because we only get the final numbers typically in August for our insurance costs. So if you look at insurance, we are assuming a 12% increase. Uh we're also assuming for other insuranceances a 10% increase. So that would be property liability, auto

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and workers comp. So when we put together the budget, I'm sure this is a practice that is common across many municipalities. We everybody puts together their numbers. They're given certain parameters. Um and then we work with the finance team and we do a first round.

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And then in the first round, it is very common that we'll have a deficit because we've got more expense or less revenue and we're trying to figure out okay how do we make it how do we make everything to balance. So here are the steps that we we took to balance this particular budget. The first one I want to take a

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little time to explain. So it says here use of carryover savings. So, historically, and this is a common practice in in across the country, many municipalities, historically, what we've done here in this city is we'll budget a number. Let's say it's $100,000 for some

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line item. We'll budget $100,000. If the department director, when we meet with them in March, for example, as we're preparing the budget, and the department director says, "Uh, I'm only going to spend $50,000 by the year at the end of the fiscal year." Typically what would happen is that $50,000 delta then would

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just go into unassigned fund balance at the end of the fiscal year go into your savings if you will. That has allowed us over time to build up our unassigned fund balance u in those cases. The the challenge we have with this upcoming budget because it is tighter and our revenue is is much less than it

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has been historically is we were trying to very much not impact the military rate. We wanted to be very very tight with the military. So, what we've done instead this year, I I think I shouldn't say instead because we've done it in the past, I think we've done it with much more regularity now this year in this year's FY27 budget is looking at that

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same example where that was $100,000 budgeted and there's $50,000 expected to be spent rather than put that $50,000 into an assigned fund balance. What we're proposing to do is carry that $50,000 over to next year's budget. It's 27 budget. So, in essence, you don't have to budget for it again. You don't

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have to impact the mill rate again. you're just going to you're going to have it as part of the budget. What that means is that the budget that you will adopt in September of this year will be a certain number. Once we close out the fiscal year for fiscal 26 and we get all the final math done, we always come back

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to you and do a budget amendment later in the in the year in the calendar year. And when we do that budget amendment, we will bring the savings over. We'll bring those carryover savings into the fiscal 27 budget. So that allowed us that practice allowed us to save $345,743.

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We also looked at um administrative overhead. So internally in the general fund, we have an administrative overhead charge for because for example the finance department that works on everybody's budgets. Uh I work on everybody's budgets, things like that. So there's administrative overhead that's always contemplated. Again, very

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common practice. It for the CRA, you can do the same thing. CRAAS in the state of Florida allow for operational administrative expenses. Historically, we've not charged the CRA for those expenses because up to just a few years ago, we didn't have enough money to do that because we all the money was going

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towards paying the debt. Starting about three budgets ago, we started to have surpluses in the CRA. So now we have more flexibility there. So we looked at the CRA and we realized, for example, that Mr. Paulie, for example, for all intents and purposes, he's running the CRA on a day-to-day basis, but we

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weren't charging any of his salary to the CRA. Portions of our salaries, portions of public works that are picking up trash in the CRA or looking fixing the parks in the CRA. All those things, portions of them can be charged off with a rational nexus, which we believe we have, to the CRA. So, what

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we've done is we we've done that to a very conservative degree here. So, we're charging $484,528 from the CRA to the general fund to accomplish this. We've also been very successful uh again, thanks to the finance team's uh

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leadership in getting a uh our FEMA funds back from some of the storms. Uh we have a lot more coming, but we felt comfortable with the amount of of FEMA res funds that already been encumbered, officially encumbered for us that we could book at $170,429

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as revenue in fiscal 27, which is what we've done here. Another thing is looking at interest. So, as you know, the city has it generates interest. We have we collect money from different revenue streams, put it in in bank accounts, for example, and then that generates interest. Historically, what the finance

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department will do is then take that interest and they will allocate out the interest back to certain funds to the CRA, to the CIT, etc. That builds up those reserves and those funds. Um, you're not obligated to do that, that there's no law that specifically states

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you have to do it. It's just practice that the way we've we've done it here. So what we did this year is we actually moved the interest earnings from the CIT and the interest earnings from the T the tax increment fund and move those into the general fund. Show that as revenue towards the general fund. So it's

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$165,000 there. the building fund. Um, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, we were looking at um hopefully council will adopt a building fee increase and we we typically provide a subsidy as has been noted by the

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council in the past of about at least $300,000 or more from the general fund to the building fund. And by increasing the fees, we will hopefully reduce that subsidy. So, we provided a conservative reduction in subsidy here, about $150,000, assuming council adopts these

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building fees. Um, so that's that's new. Uh, short-term rentals, as I mentioned when we talked about the highlights of the budget, we're going to start the short-term rental program actually started July 1. And so, there was there's a fee associated with a short-term rental based on the numbers of projected rentals we believe they're

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in the community. We anticipate a conservative $20,000 uh in the budget for that. And then the final substantive item that we use to balance the budget is street light maintenance. So our street lights uh we pay a bill to maintain the street lights. And that

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maintenance expense has historically been charged entirely to the general fund. However, we looked into this and we felt comfortable that we could charge this to the street the street fund. Um because the street fund is where we we have all our paving or sidewalk work,

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our uh storm water infrastructure, etc. that services our streets. So we felt that this was a rational nexus to charge this off to the street fund. So this $515,000 that have moved from general fund is as an expense to the street fund.

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So you may ask um if we're doing these changes particularly with the change in carryover what does that mean for our unassigned fund balance? because historically if we weren't doing as much carryover on assigned fund balance would then be growing at a faster pace. So as

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this chart illustrates a well illustrates a few things. First of all let me draw your attention to the red horizontal line which is at 20%. So, you know, we're going into the bond market potentially this year. Um, either through a revenue bond or through the

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general obligation bond and a a minimum do you have to get a bond rating first when you do that and the minimum for AAA bond rating which is the highest bond rating. I'm not saying we're going to get AAA. It's very likely we would not be AAA community. Typically, you'd have to that'd be a much larger community or

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a lot more economically diverse community. The county, for example, is AAA rated. that is the vast minority in terms of a rating for the for entities in this country. But to get a AAA rating, you have to have a minimum 20% unassigned fund balance ratio.

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And uh you can see from this chart that we far exceed the 20%. In fact, about two budgets ago, we we talked here at this workshop and we said, you know, we're exceeding the 20%, let's change the target to 25. We felt that comfortable doing that. Council accepted that recommendation. So you can see here

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that we're hovering right now. Now, we anticipate at the end of the 2026 budget that our unassigned fund balance will be about 34.04%. That's projected. Till we close out the books, we won't have definitive, but that's what it's looking like right now. So, we are still well above both the 20

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and the 25% uh council goal. Now, although not specific to the fiscal 27 budget, I think it would be remiss of us not to talk about some of the implications for the future budgets from the constitutional amendment that is on the ballot for November that will be on the ballot for November.

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So, uh, today 69% of our Temple Terrace homes have a taxable value of $200,000 or less. But if you look at the market value of Temple Terrace homes, the average market value of a single family home in Temple Terrace is over $420,000.

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So that that chasm between the market value and the taxable value, what that tells you is that we have a lot of homestead protected properties in our community. And so the impact from the constitutional amendment, should it be adopted, should it be passed, um would

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be significant for us. In fiscal 28, the proposal that's being that will be voted upon is to increase the homestead exemption to $150,000. That would mean that in fiscal 28's budget, the city would see a reduction of $2.6 million based on where we are

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today in advorum revenue. In fiscal 29, that homestead exemption, should it be approved by the voters, would go up to $250,000. And then that reduction will increase that that um uh excuse me, that change would increase the reduction to $4

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million, which would be 21% of our current advalor. Those are very very significant numbers. Um and so because of that we have started our rate to look at first of all what what kind of impacts would would we face and what could we do to mitigate

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for those impacts. So again looking towards the future this is not for 27's budget but planning for 28 and planning for 29 should this be adopted. I think that without a doubt that we would be looking at programmatic service reductions. That could be attrition not

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filling open positions when they when they turn over. Um it would directly or indirectly also mean reduced unit size or limiting hours for certain services could be anything from senior center, library, uh family rec center. The

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reducing units could be for example in the police department. You had created a traffic unit several years ago. We have openings in the police department all the time. If we chose not to fill all the openings um you know maybe this hits one of those units, things like that. Um could also be looking at reducing or

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discontinuing non-core services. Now, I'm I'm not a fan of the non-core service label because I think everything that makes a community wonderful is a wonderful place to live is a core service regardless of whether it's public safety or or not. Um, but that will be a conversation I'm sure people

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will will start having uh in the community. Uh, and then the last term here, I really struggled whether to include it here or not. Um, I don't want to panic our team, but I people are this I mean, we just want to be realistic. If

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we had to lose $4 million, it is very very likely that we could be looking at layoffs as well. Um, that would be the very last thing that we'd want to do as a as a staff. Uh, we would look at ways to avoid doing that, but it it is a scenario that could play out. So, I just wanted to put that there so it's it's

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very evident um that that could be a scenario. Now, to mitigate for that, the council could if it wanted to, and we could explore that if the council wishes us to look at alternative fees. Um, fire assessment fees. I know historically this community has looked at that under

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a different context and it has not been supported. However, if you're looking again at at a $4 million loss, this is something you may want to look at. Particularly if you think about remember the slide where I talked about public safety. It's such a large part of the budget that if you had if you wanted to explore a fire assessment fee to at

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least reduce some of that consumption in the budget so you could have some flexibility with everything else. Perhaps that's something to consider. The storm water utility fee could be something to explore as well. Our storm water infrastructure is not getting any any better. Um we're going to continue

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to have that investment in perpetuity. uh with and I know we're we're still in kind of a drought here, but it's only a matter of time before we start getting those delusions and that's when we start to see some of the bigger problems. Uh Florida also allows for park special assessments, things like that. I mean, there's different tools out there that

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the council could explore if it wishes to. Uh we could also look at fee increases. So, family rec center fees, our fees, it's a great value. It's a wonderful value, but we don't compete. We're not in the same universe. Our direct competitor is really the Y in

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terms of the kind of programmatic uh pool and studios and gyms that we offer. And we are not even in the same universe as the Y in terms of what what we charge. So may maybe that's something we look at as well. Fire inspections. We do not charge for fire inspections. Most I should say most, I'm not sure if it's

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most, but many communities do charge for fire inspections. our EMS fees. We've also been uh advised that our EMS fees could probably be raised if council wishes them to uh to keep up with the marketplace. Those would be the fees for transport, things like that for 911 calls. Um and of

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course, this is goes the last one goes without saying. It's really again increased focus on technology that's not necessarily a product of this of this ballot initiative, but I think it'll be more of a greater reliance on that as we move forward. And that's what we have for the fiscal

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27 budget. Council questions. Council member Schistler. >> Thank you. Um that's a lot to uh try to absorb. I do have a couple of specific questions. Um

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what see I read my writing here. Do we did did we not rec going back to the one thing the FEMA fees? Didn't we didn't we already recognize those FEMA fees? Can we use Good morning.

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We have not recognized um well, let me go back. I think we only recognize a small amount for Milton. We have We've had like three storms in the past few years. We did recognize a bulk of fees

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for prior storms, but no, we have not recognized the revenue. And we have about at least 4 million coming mostly to replenish the uh the fund balance,

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but that 4 million was alone covered our debris pickup cost. >> Okay. But the one the 170,000 has it already been recognized when we when we declared the receivable. >> No, it has not. >> Okay. All right. That's because that would that could bite us. Um what is uh

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the recovery rate and they thought that might not be the right terminology. It cost us $4 million. Say pick a number to run leisure services. And I noticed that the um uh the one slide had uh um fees

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for recreation and so forth. What's our recovery rate on that as it stands now? 25% 30%. I mean, I'm not >> Can you Can you When you say recovery rate, can you explain that a little bit more as to what you're getting at? >> Alexa, we we we we charge for joining

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the rec center and utilizing the >> You mean the recovery the amount to full cost? Are we covering our full cost? >> How much of that? What's what's in at at at heart we call fairbox recovery. So, how much of that are we recovering? I'm not sure if we if we have that,

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>> Corey. >> That's just a curious question. >> Get back to the council. >> Okay, we we'll get back to you on that. >> That's fine. That's fine. Um and then the on the one slide that showed the unfunded balance, >> 27 went to zero. Is that because you

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just stopped at 26 or >> right was because we're not able to tell at what's going to happen at the end of fiscal year 27? So cuz right now we're projecting >> the 26 number is still a projection as well because we're not at the end of the fiscal year. >> We're not we're not we're not that that shouldn't probably be

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>> Yeah, that's not really a zero. It's more of a NA not not available right now for information. Good point. Good observation. >> Um and then uh no I think that's that's all the questions I have for right now. But uh thank you for the additional numbers or

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or or qualifica qualifying the numbers on the uh fiscal 28 impact and the fiscal 29 impact based uh depending upon the 250 thou 200,000 and um the increase in the uh ad um homestead exemption. So

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thank you for those numbers. It cost you a million 1,580 to plug the holes. It's going to be a hard one, but thank you. That's that's all I have for right now. Other questions? >> Yes.

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>> Council member Fernandez, >> can you go back to the steps to balance the budget slide? Sure. >> Okay. So, um I want to just I'm just going to start at the beginning. Um the use of carryover savings. When you used your example of maybe a h 100,000

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budgeted to a department, they're only spending 50,000. So that that remainder 50,000 is rolled over into their budget. Do they need to come to you and I I maybe justify is not the right term,

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but explain I I don't want to be in a situation where we're budgeting because last year the department's budget was 300,000. So this year we're just going to say 320,000 is your budget. Can you describe the process of how they

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that department requests the specific funding that they're requesting? >> Sure. Good question. So what we do with everybody so when they we ask all the departments to submit their budgets um then Mr. Ingram and his team and I will look at the budgets even before we meet

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with the department and we'll look for trends. And so we look for a trend and typically the trend will be a multi-year trend. let's say it's two or three fiscal years at least that we'll look at prior and we'll say okay how much have they historically spent here and if we're seeing that the trend is far below what we've been budgeting then we will

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not continue to budget at that level. So to your to your example is again if that 100,000 they only they only spent 50 and it's been 50 now for three fiscal years then we're not going to say we're going to like we're not going to budget 50 anymore like all you're going to get is is going to be a lower number whatever the number should be based on actuality.

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So that we we we do that with all the departments. We do that as we go through all their line items. Um, in fact, it's one of the ways that we can control costs because it's it's important for us not to keep just because they got it one year, keep it going. That's not the way that I it's not the way I was taught to do to do budgeting. It's not the way

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that I think our team operates as well. So, that's why I said asked the departments really sharpen their pencils is really look at that. Look at the trends. Look at where you've you've been in the past. Um because if again if you haven't spent it or alternatively the other way could be like let's say you

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you spent to the full amount every year or slightly over then you know maybe it's maybe you need to increase that request going forward. >> Thank you. Can you can you I I have a question basically about each of these

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items. So um for the CRA and the TIFF funds I'll combine those two. Um I I know I I have no issue with allocating some of the expense because it it

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certainly the tasks are are spent in that area. But I did want to make sure that the public understands that the CRA and the TIFF funds do have specific limitations as to what

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they can be spent for. So can you just briefly just so that people understand it's not the same as general fund revenue adalorum taxes. >> Correct. Correct. So what happens with the tiff is that so in our instance we we receive the city's general fund

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actually pays about 900,000 per year towards the CRA. It's our obligation to pay into the tiff. The the county pays into the tiff and then the third one's the Tampa Bay Port Authority I believe pays into the into the tiff. So the three entities pay into the tiff. uh that's based on statute and whatever

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practice was in place when this was adopted here locally. The the the TIFF dollars can only be used for activities within the the borders of of the of the CRA area. So within those geographic borders, you can't use it to fund things that are happening outside. You can't

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use it to fund a park, for example, uh on 113th Street. You can't use it to fund the special event that's happening, you know, at the at Greco or whatever it is. You can't do that. Now you could fund things inside the CRA certain activities. Um you want to have those activities delineated. Typically you can

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fund operational expenses. Um for example many CRAAS have funded if they have you know some CRAAS will have will have like special they'll call them different names like ambassador crews district cleanup things like that you know special activities where they're cleaning up. You see them in large

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cities for example where they'll the people dressed in like a yellow uniform. that those people are sometimes will be funded from the CRA. Um so that's in essence what we've done here. Um now your expenses with the CRA, your CRA reserve is quite you're going to talk about that in the second presentation.

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Still it's actually pretty healthy. Um despite the fact we're we're taking these dollars from there. Um and you've you you don't have many expenses in your CRA. So we're not I don't see anything we're running a file of what we're doing. It's very limited what we can spend it on. So, we're spending our CRA

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dollars on our on our debt, which is about 98,000, I think it is, FR27. On debt, uh we're spending about $3,000 on an audit because we have to do a separate audit for the CRA. And then we've got this expense here that that

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we're allocating uh from the CRA to again cover what we believe are are very defensible expenses um in terms of personnel costs for for investment made in the CRA. And then the my last question on this particular slide and

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that is the interest earnings from the CIT which are the funds for the community. So first I just want to define TIFF which is the tax incremental funding u which is the extra advalorum

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tax that the city is able to collect based specifically on CRA value as part of creating the CRA years and years and years ago. But um the CIT, which is the community investment tax, that's the

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special sales tax percent that is only allowed to be used for investment in the community. Um h how how are we able to use the earnings or the interest from the CIT funds that we

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have been allocated but we haven't spent yet on general fund. that's not specific to like some sort of community investment like um infrastructure or uh pro or u equipment.

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>> So it's a good question. So let me let me just uh can I just clarify one small thing? So the tiff the tax agreement fund is not an extra tax. It's the tax increment fund basically what's happening there is that the properties that are in that geographic area they're

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paying the same tax as everybody else. What's happening is that the value from the Tampa Bay Port Authority, from the county, and from the city, the value that's in that area, the new value beyond what was approved back when the CRA was founded, whatever year that might have been, let's say it's 2000,

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>> the the incremental value there is what's being put into the CRA. So, the property owner there is not paying any additional tax. I just want to make sure that's clear in case anybody starts thinking extra taxation. >> And then you're correct on the community investment tax. It's a half cent sales tax. uh we're not addressing the

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community investment tax dollars that come into the city. So what the what a taxpayer somebody buys something wherever in in Hillsboro County would go to a store and they buy something they pay the cent sales tax that those dollars we're not using those dollars for anything but the purposes they're

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explicitly meant for what we're talking about here is interest that's being generated uh from the dollars that are basically sitting there in in our in our accounts until we we used to expense those. Now we looked at this expense and maybe Mr. Ingram, if you want to just talk to it a little bit. Um, if there's anything I'm missing here to help

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clarify this. >> No. Um, yeah, I don't think you've missed anything. We looked into it and it is it it is a practice done where if you need

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to infuse more money into your general fund. Um there are other governments that have done that where whereas a typical practice might be to use all of your funds and

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take the pulled cash, the total amount of cash you have sitting in the bank and divvy up your interest accordingly. Um you don't have to do that 100% across the board. As far as I've seen, we can do before we

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finalize the budget, we can do a deeper dive maybe into the Florida state statutes, but uh so far I haven't seen anything that disallows us from in instead of recording

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interest to one fund, you can't put it toward a weightier fund. a fund particularly general fund that has payroll expenses. CIT TIF um TIF we're doing the

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administrative expenses but uh CIT does not have any expense expenditure like that other than what we're buying or projects funded through. So the so the interest earned

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on allocated CIT funds that remain unexpended at this time. So they're in the bank earning interest. There's no state requirement that that interest only be spent on CIT eligible expenditures. the interest that it's

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earned while it's sitting there, we're allowed to use in uh other uh other expenditures. >> Right. Again, we will before we finalize this budget, we will

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double check that. I have not seen that preclusion, but we will double check and make sure. >> I just want to make sure. >> No, no, that's a good question. One thing that you mentioned, Jim, and correct me if I'm wrong. These are pulled. The money comes in from the CIT, but it's not put in a CIT bank account,

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right? >> No, it's pulled. >> No, it's pulled cash. >> And but again, I just want to make sure that there's no there's nothing that would preclude us from doing that. And then I do want to talk about um I have two other items. One is the document

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retention system that we are looking to improve. And so throughout this increase in technology discussion and and the budget um h what how does that encompass

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the improvements in document retention to make it easier for staff if there's a foyer request or any kind of need to search the documents. Um, so you like how does this help staff time with

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saving the documents, archiving them, and also retrieval? >> Well, actually, um, although that's part of the the second presentation, we can talk about it now since you mentioned if that's okay with the rest of the council. Um, >> I mean, we can wait till the next one, but that I just want to

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>> might be good to just address it now since you brought it up. Could I get Miss Taus to come up and address the council member's question and maybe give the council an update too as where we are with that that project? >> Sure. Um, so over the last year, we have since the inception of the project of

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the document management system overhaul, um, there's been quite a few improvements made to the system that we already have in place. uh there's been improvements in the ways that the documents are actually filed, the way that they are able to be retrieved from

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the system and that was kind of the first layer of the project that we went forward with the discovery section. Um, from there we wanted to determine what opportunities there were as far as how we could make that system more

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uh, as you said, more efficient as far as retrieving those records for the public. Making sure that that timeline was reduced and making sure that workflows between departments were done in a way that was um the most the most

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efficient between those departments. Uh so what we did is we compared various different programs that we could use whether that be changing the system entirely or using additions that were part of the system that we currently have. And what we landed on was a

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multi-phased approach. Um the first phase of that approach is going to be changing the overall way that the records are requested in the first place. The experience that our resident or customer whoever is requesting that item has. So there will be um a portal

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that they'll be using in order to have that request go through. That portal will then go through the uh the journey of basically alerting each department that has anything to do with that particular request and a workflow will be started in order to get those records

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and it will be able to track the timeline that it takes to retrieve them, where it goes, how long the overall request takes. So, we're able to gather some data as long, you know, along with making that whole interaction a lot more pleasant. Um, it will also allow us to

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provide, you know, an invoice if there's going to be a charge associated with it, collect that. It will essentially add automation to the whole front-end process of requesting a record in the first place. Um what we'll be doing with that is we have chosen a product just

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which is an extension basically of the current project product which is the laser fish project product. This allows us to do something that's in addition to what we already have. We're not spending you know a huge amount in order to do that and we're getting the highest amount of

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you know payoff for the public within a short period of time. At this point, we are in the process of reviewing legal documents on this so that we can get a requisition through and it will take us about two months in order to implement this system. So, we're hoping that prior

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to actually any of the other systems going on, this this would turn on first. So, towards the uh beginning of September is what we're looking at. So, at that point, customers would be able to have like an an outside portal to, you know, go through the request. the

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request would be tracked from that point. After we put in that item, we would be doing additional um additional cleanup on the back end in order to make sure that once we take that data that we received from the first uh from the first phase, we're able to use that to

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its uh basically to to its best the best ability that we have in order to use it to make further changes. Um the third phase will be implementing another addition that is part of the laserfish package which is called a records management module. That is another piece

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that we can add on that does not cost us a ton to make the package a little bit more robust. It's going to allow us to further add more automation metadata, be able to um ensure that anything that's coming out of the current system is

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labeled in a way that it can be retrieved quickly and there's also some opportunities in there for automated redaction. Um it has some it has some additional features to it that we would be gaining from that uh that last piece adding that on. We anticipate that the

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whole project should be completed around the beginning of 2027. Calendar year 2027 is what we're looking at. So just to follow up then as part of the technology or increased use of technology that you have

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indicated would be considered in this budget. Will that management system help reduce personnel hours in not just foyer requests but overall managing the the

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required archival and retrieval? >> It it should in the if it works well and it it in a in in the long term that's what it should do. It doesn't mean that we wouldn't need people still. just means that rather than spend threequarters of their time trying to

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address public records requests, now they could actually spend the bulk of their time doing probably what's more in their job description uh when they were hired. So that's hopefully one of the goals that we'll get from this particular project. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. I just have one more question right now and that is

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I just I want to make sure the public understands more about the required pension contribution for the police and fire pension funds and that is um the actuary tells the city how much is

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required to be contributed based on the calculation of who is retiring what age uh that because it's a defined ed um benefit plan which means that the people who participate in it come out with a

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specific benefit that they'll be paid every month. So it's a it is a complicated calculation and it's based on the balance of the current fund what the earnings are anticipated to be and then the city's contribution comes out

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of that calculation. So that where a lot of people in the public are probably much more used to a defined contribution plan where you contribute a certain percentage of your salary and your paid benefit upon retirement is

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based on what that contribution is earned over the lifetime. This is basically the reverse. Our contribution changes every year based on what the calculated benefit needs to be to the

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retired person at the when they retire. So it's a different it's it's not anything that the city can control. That is 100% established by that calculation. It's not anything that we can change.

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So, I just wanted to make sure that people understand the difference. And that's all I have for now. >> Other questions? Council member Krevitz. >> Hi, good morning. Thanks for the budget. Um, I understand that this is sort of an

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early draft. Is that accurate? More or less? >> Sure. This is so this is the preliminary budget that that we present to council. We get your questions and then we come back in this case on July 28th. We'll come back uh answers if not before then. Okay, then file this away under maybe

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I'm missing something. Uh the um proposed capital plan has a page for a big green tractor. >> Uh >> we're not we're going to So if I might >> this this presentation right now is just on the general fund. We have a subsequent presentation as soon as the council's completed with

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>> this relates to the general fund. >> Okay. All right. >> Yeah. So it is the tractor is assigned to the general fund capital projects, but then in the documents provided the general fund capital projects is zeroed out. So, it seems like there's $75,000 missing. >> So, the the the the tractor you're talking about, the $75,000 tractor is

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actually being paid for would be assuming council proves it paid for from savings from the current year. So, we have an we have a project in the current fiscal year that was budgeted through unassigned fund balance. So, it came we already took the dollars from our savings account essence used it to pay for a project. The project came in at

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far less than we thought it would. And so, we're using that savings. So, those dollars already been budgeted. We're using that savings to pay for that tractor. >> Okay. So that doesn't it doesn't show up then in the accounting for the 2027 budget under capital expenditures. You want to explain in 2026 then is that how it works or

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>> um it will be a part of a budget amendment in 27. Uh right now in our notes we have like a 292 page document and in the notes it it has that in our budget and

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it has the notation that we're using the unassigned fund balance carryover savings so that we will again have a budget amendment. >> No problem. Okay. Thanks. Great. Um and just a couple of general questions. One

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relating to the streets. Um, we're moving 400,000 from street lighting into the street fund. Uh, should we expect then that there will be a reduction in the amount of repair or maintenance done to the streets? Otherwise, if the

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>> I believe we're using some of that reserve from the street fund. Can you talk to that, Jim, as well? >> I'm sorry. >> This is the light. So, we're moving $515,000 from the street light maintenance to the street fund. So the question is, is that going to impact the amount of paving for example in street maintenance we would do otherwise? No,

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it it's just merely moving it as a general fund expenditure to a spending it out of the street improvement fund, which historically we've only done capital projects

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out of the street improvement fund, but we're not restricted to capital projects. And as uh Mr. Bay said, it is a very rational nexus. I did check the Florida state statutes. You can use

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these kind of like street maintenance, street lights uh out of the street improvement fund. >> Okay. Sure. Yeah. Well, if we're going to do that going forward, might it be sensible to rename it the street fund? >> It it is called the street improvement

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fund is is the name of the fund, >> right? But now it's not only being used for improvement, it's also being used for ongoing expenses. So maybe just call it street fund. >> Um thoughts? Well, I would have to look into that and and then I guess if if that's something the

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council wants to do, we could change the name of it. >> Yeah. I mean, I understand what the what the impulse is in this budget and I've I just noticed a a pattern of um operating expenses moving into funds that are generally for um renewal or or new

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improvement. So, this is one thing that tracks with a couple of other things that we'll probably come to later, but um when when ongoing expenses begin migrating into capital funds, that's generally a warning sign. And it's not necessarily terrible, but it it was

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important, I think, that everyone name things transparently. So, if the street improvement fund is not only for street improvements, then we could rename it so that everyone understands what it is. Just a thought. So, >> okay. >> Um Okay. Uh, so and then the um

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let me check my notes real quick here. I think I had one more um uh the um subsidy to the building fee. I was wondering if uh building fund, excuse me. I was wondering if um someone might be willing to explain that a little bit.

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$300,000 a year seems like a lot and I'm a little surprised by it. Also irritated that I didn't find it sooner. So >> sure. So, so we have to I'll give you a little bit I'll go go back a few years because this takes a little explanation first. So, um probably three or four

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years ago, uh there was a change in state law that mandated that building departments, which were historically their their budgets were part of the general fund that mandated that building departments now be separated out in an independent fund that where you could

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account for the revenue coming in from building permit fees, for example. and the expenditures from the inspectors and things like that, permit techs and whatnot. So in making that change what we in our instance what happened is that um we would still need to subsidize the

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building the building fund because now it's an independent fund it has to balance and the building fund would not be able to balance based upon it the revenue that it was taking in and the expenditures that were being incurred. So the last couple of fiscal years when we've done this in the budget under this

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new separate accounting for a different fund, we've had to subsidize in essence subsidized the the the building fund to the tune of $300 to $400,000 some somewhere in that range. the because of that what we what came up as a concern last year at this council workshop was

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what you know we need to look at the revenue side of that of the picture and when we looked at our fees we realized that our fees had not been changed in probably 20 years perhaps more um which is not uncommon that that happens in in communities uh I think

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it's it's I think it'll change now but with with with some of the other changes happening in globally um but a lot of times communities just kind of they pass their fees. They don't go revisit their fees. There's not really an inclination necessarily on the part of the elected officials to increase the fees and so

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the kind of things just stay a stasis. I imagine that's what happened here. I can't say for sure because I wasn't here 20 years ago. Um but the council based upon the direction we had and looking at it we felt that it merited we need to do a building fee study to bring our fees up to date. So that study is is being

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closed out now will be presented to you like I said probably over the next month to two months and what we looking at some preliminary drafts of that study uh we feel comfortable that even at a conservative increase in your building fees that we should be able to reduce

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the subsidy by at least $150,000 in the FY27 budget. So that's what's projected here as a as a savings $150,000 savings over time over the next let's say two three or fiscal years. What in in theory what you'd want to do is get to a point where the building fund would be self-

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sustaining. Um you you may not want to do that immediately right away because there will probably be some sticker shock in terms of some of the building permit fees. But that's a conversation we'll have once we present that to you and then you can make a decision as to what you feel comfortable with as a as a

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body. Um, but right now we feel conservatively that at least $150,000 savings could be uh acred here in the general fund based on the on the uh what we've seen so far. >> That's great because I think moving toward more aggressive fees is definitely something that we need to do.

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Uh I think there have been a lot of cross subsidies uh and I'd like to see fewer of those generally speaking. Um, now when it comes to the short-term rental revenue, 20,000, is that going into the building fund?

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>> No. >> Okay. And why is that? >> It's not part of the building fund. So, the building fund activities are are really limited to your construction permits, you know, trade permits, things like that. And then the the the cost associated with administering that.

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>> But but the cost of inspections also comes out of the building fund, doesn't it? The cost of the inspector. Let me put it that way. >> But but in this case, we're talking about the fees for the inspections here would be the fire fees that are related to the the public's the the the safety of the unit, which is part of the

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short-term rental. It's not within the building fund. >> Are are there no um building inspections that are paid for by fees? >> There are building inspections paid for by fees. Correct. If you're there would be if you are doing a renovation for

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example to your property you pull a building permit then there would be a subsequent potential inspection depending on what you were doing >> that would be paid for by a fee >> and it would be interesting for me to uh discover whether the fees that are paid

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for such services could be uh treated differently for example for a commercial property or for a single family home because Then we might explore increasing those fees on short-term rentals which are commercial properties or on multif

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family units which also are commercial properties. So if that is something that is legally possible that might be another way of increasing revenue going to the building fund potentially. I just want to just I'm sorry I'm not clarifying it and the the

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short-term rental program you have is completely separate from the building fund. It's not it's not because it's not administered. >> Talking about the permit to clarify. Yeah. I'm talking about what you just mentioned, namely if someone's doing a renovation. >> Yes. >> Right. So >> you're trying to create a strata where there be commercial a commercial permit

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fee structure schedule of fees and and a and >> so I think some of that's already addressed based upon some of the the fee types. But it's a conversation that can when we have the presentation um uh based upon the fee the fee study. I'm sure you can ask that same question and get an answer directly from the from the consultant.

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>> Okay. And um final question, I know I bring this up all the time. Um private sponsorships are used to a limited degree in Temple Terrace, for example, on 56th Street, the banner program. Um are there any current ongoing

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explorations of whether uh sponsorships similar to that could be expanded to other uh parts of the city or for other programs that the city operates. for example, public library, rec center, whatever we may have there. >> I we we could look at that. And in fact,

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if the state constitutional amendment is adopted, I think it's something that if council feels likewise, we should look to explore. I don't believe that it will it will generate some revenue. I'm not going to discount it. I don't know if it'll generate the type of revenue that

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will save a service. For example, in the worst case scenario, $4 million loss two fiscal years from now, for example, will that save an entire service? I think if we were in a in an area, if we had a large corporate resident in our community, >> like a a Microsoft or something like

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that, >> Amazon, >> we do have Amazon. That is correct. You're correct. Um potentially something we could explore. Absolutely. Um, I think we should, my personal opinion, we should look at this year. I I don't I don't have a I have a

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personal opinion about what's likely to happen with the with the referendum on the property taxes. Uh, and I'm not going to share it here, but um, we should look at this year maybe as an opportunity. Uh, no matter what happens, whether it passes or fails, there are efficiencies that we can look for that

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we haven't looked for because we haven't felt the need, but now the need is there. Um, the need was always there, but now it's more evident. So, I think as we discussed the budget, looking at all the different ways that we might raise revenue

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uh and increase more efficiency uh in in our fee collections, in our sponsorships, all of those things could really help uh also just in general to make sure that we're not raising property taxes even if the amendment fails going into the future. U so that that's all I'll say on that. Thanks.

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That's all I have. Thank you. >> Couple questions. Um going back to the idea of using the unassigned fund balance to carry forward and therefore reducing the the new budget requests for various departments.

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Good idea, good strategy helped us to stay within our constraints this year. My question is have you modeled that out? because I noticed that the unassigned fund balance percentage on that slide for FY27

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was blank. And my question is, have we modeled that out to see are we going to meet be able to meet our 25% goal and and do this? This is a great

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strategy one year, but how sustainable is this and what impact will it have in our goal of 25% fund balance moving forward over another fiscal year or two? >> So, I I think we're I I understand just

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to reiterate that the the reason it's zero is that it's it's projecting what you're going to save for a budget that hasn't even started yet. So, that's why it's zero. We'll clarify that slide after because I know if if it >> Yeah, I know it's not really zero. >> Right. Right. Um, we we still feel that the number I feel and unless someone

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tells me differently, Mr. Ingram wants to address. Come on up, Jim. Help me out. Uh, one thing to keep in mind is that um, one of the reasons our fund balance, unassigned fund balance,

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uh, dropped, actually dropped to 35% as of fiscal year, end of fiscal year 25. And tomorrow night you'll see that on a slide when the auditor presents u our audit.

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But keep in mind that we have at least as I mentioned before $4 million coming back that came out of our reserves for Hurricane Milton. That was just the uh

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how much we paid spent on debris pickup. So we do expect to get that back and that will bump up the unassigned fund balance. Now another thing to keep in mind as we go out is that there's still

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a considerable amount of that we haven't spent the uh the parks or the Riverside Park. There's a big chunk of that in there. Uh the ERP system, we are just now over the next couple years, we'll be spending that

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down more aggressively. So there's a lot of little things to look at. Over the next two to three years, I think we'll be fine, but we certainly will need to look at that and continually looked at that year to year, especially as changes

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may or may not come. Uh, it will be I I will say it will get more challenging. >> Okay. Well, you're giving me way too much information. I just want to have some reassurance if we're going to be able to meet our 25% goal or not. Have we looked at that? Is it a concern? Are

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we good or you know, I mean, >> so to pick up on Mr. Thank you, Mr. So I I think to pick up what Jim is saying, I I I we all feel comfortable that barring any change in state law at this point where we are today based on the laws that that we have in place today that we are good for like as Jim said at least

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two or three more years. We don't now of course if we had a season a hurricane season and we had three or four backto-back storms that will have an impact eventually we'll get reimbursed but it'll take a while. So that could impact but that'll impact everybody and who's in the same boat in terms of that storm. Um, so we feel reasonably

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confident that we're going to be good hitting those targets. Again, state law changes, uh, then all of this has to be changed. I mean, I think all all the expectations will be different um um because you're going to be looking at a far different revenue picture. >> That's a whole new reality there. So,

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okay. I have um another question concerns legal and the use of outside professional services. So, our I'm looking at the FY25 actuals that we spent were 21,000.

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We this year's budget was 23,000. We've exceeded that. Well, we are on track to exceed that. The FY26 estimates by October 1st are almost 60,000. So I mean we we're

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overspending our budget like crazy and we're increasing to in accommodation to that for FY27 we've proposed to increase that budget to 45 we're not reducing expenses we're increasing the budget to match reality

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and so I'm just wondering what's driving that is that the bond council is that coming out of there or the real estate attorneys that were hired to look at these potential land deals that coming what's coming out of there that's driving this. >> So >> we're three times over budget. >> Correct.

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>> So there have been a number of factors that are part of this equation. So you're correct. So uh if council will recall when we had the the blazing paddles um that those expenses uh actually no I stand corrected. I believe those expenses came out of the CRA. So I

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stand corrected on that. Um but maybe the city attorney can speak to the other expenses right now that that have come out of there. There have been ones related to different issues that have come up before council, >> right? Well, last year was the first year we kind of really did some tried to

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project the budget for outside council. So, we kind of just picked 20,000 I believe it was was the number. Um, we did have a few things come up uh that we had had not anticipated that were coming out of that, but the biggest thing probably was zoning, our zoning type

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stuff. We had zoning issues come up. As you know, we have the state um legislature constantly pulling out more and more statutes that um we're going to be regulating the land use and my

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expertise in the land use. I can get us to variances and all that, but all the annexations a lot of, you know, stuff considering reszoning the higher end with all these statutory changes. We went ahead and got some specialization there and that can just begin to add up.

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Um, we did have a couple of other issues come up that would have fallen out, you know, that that would have just fallen toward me, would have been outside the CRA that we're kind of paying for at this time, too. So, it's just more of a we're trying to get a feel as to what the appropriate budget is for outside

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council as we try and balance what this legal department's going to be between in-house with using Nicole trying to use technology as the uh city manager brought up and then are trying to use outside counsel in order to provide quick efficient

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um legal advice to the city. >> Did the bond council come out of this? Is this reflective of the bond council expenses? >> Isn't it? Bond council is coming out of this, I believe. >> Yeah. Yes, I believe so. >> And one other thing I believe was uh we

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brought in uh a um we we brought in a part-time parallegal and she's working with the clerk's department and our department and bringing her in. We brought her in from Robert Half and we had to pay out some I forget what it is. We had to what that's called, but we had

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to pay out her contract as we hired her here. So, that also went in my uh out of my budget. >> Okay. Well, that that kind of goes to part of my question is I don't I I do understand that the bond council is something that we haven't faced. I mean,

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that's that's an anomaly. the real estate deals. If that's coming out of here, that's I don't know if that's coming out of CRA or coming out of legal, but that's something that's not routine day-to-day business. But I

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do wonder I mean, we have two full-time attorneys in a parallegal now, which is more than we've ever had before. And our use of outside attorneys is skyrocketed to three times what it used to be at the same time that we've bolstered our staff. And that's what I'm trying to get

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at is if these are attributable to anomalies like the bond issue and the real estate transactions and you know unusual things that come up. I fully understand that because I know city attorneys are generalists. So you know and when you

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get a specialized area you want to make sure that this is done by somebody whose specialty is that area of the law. But it does beg the question. I mean, we've increased the size of our legal department and at the same time, we've

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tripled the amount of time money that we're spending on outside counsel. I just want to make sure this is a flash in the pan and not I mean, this is kind of hard to explain to everybody. It's like what? Wait a minute. You got two attorneys and a parillegal and you're now you've tripled

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your I mean, how do you explain that? And as long as the explanation is well, we had some anomalies with the bond and the real estate that that's a good explanation. But this becoming business as usual is not a very good explanation. Um,

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so anyway, that's that. >> Yes, Council Member Crab. Well, actually, Vice Mayor, you had a question. >> Yeah, thank you. Could you uh someone pull up the millillage comparison slide?

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>> Thank you. Okay. So, question. Uh, Hillsboro County and Tampa, they have a a millage for just library services that we don't have. Is that included in that number? >> Yes. >> That 0.5 or 55? >> Yes. >> Okay. What about water service fees,

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storm water fees? That's not in their millillage. >> So, so this this would account for everything that shows up on their trim notice. So when they get their their their trim notice um their their total impact on their on the on the resident on the property owner this is what is

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should be included in these numbers here. >> Okay. And I think in years past I think the mayor had asked for this sheet to include uh costs of like street lighting fees and storm water and other fees as comparisons to our city. Do you remember

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that mayor? >> Um >> we used to have it somewhere. It was either on our website or something >> bee on the trim notice though. >> No, it's not on the trim notice, but we used to we used to advertise that because there's fees that are charged in other areas that is not just it's the

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cost to live in the county or the cost to live in the city. I I know we used to have that somewhere. Um I keep looking for the city manager over here and he's way down here. >> I'll figure it out by the end of the day. I know I know that the mayor in the

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past has asked for comparisons for >> and we've had it somewhere and >> like that so that >> yeah ju just you know it's it's not just millillage there's fees that we have that they may not charge and fees that they charge we may not have to live in our city I know we had it somewhere just

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for a residents to see so that was it >> thank you mayor >> council member Kravitz >> thanks um just a general comment on the uh the legal department Um to their credit, they did generate about $560,000 of fines and forfeitures. That was

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significantly over what was in the budget for that year. Uh so I think that that is a positive trend because uh in the past there have been a lot of reductions in these fines and forfeitures. Um and um I'm I'm not convinced that those are warranted if they're provided for in the law and we

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are entitled to collect. Um, so in fact, if you take the fines and forfeite revenue and you compare it with the cost of the department as a whole, which I believe is about $500,000 now, um, that's including all the staff. Um, they do come out ahead and I'd like to see

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that continue even though in the 2027 budget, the estimated fines and forfeite revenue goes down to 330,000. I'd like to see an overperformance there um next year as well as we have this

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year or similarly too. Uh and as far as the relationship between outside council and the uh staff that we now have in the legal department um to the point that uh the mayor raised um

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90% of that is permanent. The staff the staff is not going away. The only variable there is uh the outside council cost and I think we've gotten very good value out of that. Uh but that's 10% of what we're spending. 10% goes to outside counsel, 90% goes to our own legal

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department, pensions and so on that we owed to people who were our lawyers in the past. So I think uh that that is a permanent fixture if we go down this route with the size of the legal department that we have. And uh you know I c I certainly think that the legal department has the capability to um be a

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revenue driver and to also warrant its own size and and this year they did demonstrate that and I think that that needs to definitely continue going on into the future. >> That's all. Well,

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I I disagree and I'm going I'm not going to make a big fuss about this budget, but if this if we have the same thing next year with the outside council, I will be raising a big fuss because the purpose of codes and and fees and

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forfeitures and is not to bolster the city's budget. It's to I mean we how many years have we said this with code compliance? The goal is compliance, not revenue. And um this that would represent a

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fundamental shift in that in that principle and I don't I I'm not going to I won't support that. I will ask next year if this trend continues why we've expanded the legal department and at at the same time tripled our doubled not

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quite tripled our outside legal counsel and I don't know what maybe I'm cor you can correct me but if we've used outside counsel and somehow recovered some but I don't see that the outside counsel has anything to do with the fees and

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forfeitures that have been recovered unless I'm missing something maybe there's a case I'm not aware of but anyway okay so yes >> a quick yes >> followup comment and question regarding

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since labor related is almost 80% of the entire budget >> we have are we are we still utilizing specific identification of employees I mean years ago the the budgets were developed very haphazardly and then you

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guys eventually got to you had five employees in this department, you knew what each one was doing. So, we're still doing specific identification. Good. Because you get away from that, it becomes too hard to to manage. And then the last comment that I wanted to make that many of the items on the page of

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where the $1.8 million is coming from is going to be um going after dollars that are stuck within specific funds that you can't utilize um without moving it. And the only way you can move it is to allocate the expenses to it that

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wouldn't norm that that may not be normally uh recognized so that you can actually put those dollars into the general fund or re not necessarily putting dollars in general fund but you're reducing the general fund expenses so that you can tap into those

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dollars. So I but the only caveat to that is that could be self-limiting over time. you know, eventually all eventually those excess dollars will be gone and you'll you'll you'll but that's just that's that's down the road and and I'm sure that you're modeling that to to

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make sure that it doesn't become an issue. That's my only comments. >> Council member Fernandez, I >> I just have a couple of things. Um, one, I do I also want to um concur with the mayor that I am I I do want to make sure

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that when we're considering outside legal counsel that it is specifically for things that are uh uh more unusual or anomalies versus consistent

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city activity. just to make sure that we have we're not just having a a good in-house staff, but also increasing our outside expenditures. I mean, I've

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so I I agree with that. I I don't I don't want to see it necessarily as a a revenue source. the expenses um when we're setting fines or collections. Obviously, we should be establishing those to try to recover the

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costs in going um through that process, but at the same time, I don't necessarily want to see it as a a revenue source, per se, but I am concerned. I just want to make sure that we're doing this consistently with what

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in-house can handle versus what we really have to have an external law or lawyer for. Um, I do want us to continue considering the payment of ongoing or recurring expenses out of fund balance

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because that is u that can be a situation where we have established a requirement of the ongoing expense but the fund balance will not continue to grow. So, um, I know I I don't have any

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issue whatsoever paying for capital improvements or equipment out of fund balance. I just do have a little bit of a concern as we move forward with paying any kind of recurring expense out of

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fund balance. Um, and then with 79% of our general fund being payroll costs, can you talk a little bit about the the best practices expectation of what

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percentage should be your employee costs? And can you just talk a little bit about since the majority of it is is safety personnel, police and fire, how we have established

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um what we're our our pay structure and and how we're trying we we've established this pay structure to be competitive with surrounding jurisdictions just just for people who aren't part of those talks. Sure. So,

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um, although I don't have this for as for a fact right in front of me, I I would gather just based on my experience and talking with other managers around the country that our 79% is pretty common. They're in the ballpark. That's threequarters of your budget typically is going to be your personnel. And some communities it might be a little bit more, some communities might be a little

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bit less. So, I I don't think we're outside the norm at all when it comes to that. I think in terms of the other question is it's been very important to the council. It's been very important to our our team to make sure that we provide competitive wages. Um you you

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all remember I'm sure several years ago that we we we had a legacy of not really being competitive. And so what was happening is we had we'd have consistent turnover or we wouldn't even get people in the door to have turnover that so we have when I first got here um there were

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jobs that had been advertised I remember it would blew my mind had been advertised for four years and it hadn't been filled yet and so the team that we all got together and figure out how can we do this and we brought some recommendations to council and you supported which is um doing a compensation study which we did early on

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actually I inherited that that's not even something that was my idea that came to me and it was great because it got us to a certain landing in the marketplace. We've made other adjustments as well since then. Uh thank you to the council for providing the the colas to the general employees as well

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as supporting the country the contracts since I've been here. We've already negotiated police and the fire contract and you've been supportive of those initiatives as well. Um, if we we're in a very unique situation, I think here because we're we're a small city and

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we're right next to a behemoth that is the city of Tampa. And unlike Plant City, and I I'm just using Plant City as an example. They're out in the eastern part of the county. And so, it's a it's not the end of the world. It's a little bit more challenging for their employee to make that calculation. Am I going to

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leave here to go work for the city of Tampa and have this 45 minute to an hour and a half commute every day? But an employee for the city of Temple Terrace, that's an easy answer because it's right next door. I mean, you walk, literally, you walk 100 yards and you're in the city of Tampa. So, that was a challenge

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for us. So, we had to cobble together a a a basket of benefits, both pay, um, health insurance improvements, other things like parental leave. Like, we were leaders in coming up with parental leave. I I don't know if the other entities around us all had parental leave, but I know that we were on the

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cutting edge of doing that. um things like that that we could put together to make us more attractive. I can tell you that on a pay perspective, we do not pay at the same level as the T as Tampa. We don't we don't pay on the same level as as the county in some some positions,

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but for Tampa, it's more glaring. Um in some positions, we're more competitive than others. Uh but what we try to do is provide other benefits and other things. like it's a smaller city so you get it's the quality of life here for an employee I think is better than it would be in

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the city of Tampa. I think there's a in some respects there's a more there's more of an avenue to progress in some respects there's less of an avenue to progress because here it's a smaller organization so you can become a big fish in a small pond pretty quickly but in in Tampa you have more you know rungs

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to climb and so you have a little bit more flexibility there so we we take that into account all the time in a pretty good spot right now will it change? Yes, it could change. It could be a contract that's negotiated at the county over Tampa and then all of a sudden we're on, you know, now we're

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trying to play catch-up again. Um, but we also have to recognize our limitations because we are a small city that, you know, I I can't and I'm never going to tell you that we're we're we should pay exactly what the city of Tampa pays across the board. I can't tell you that because we we couldn't

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afford that. So, we try to do what we can with the revenue that we've got. We try to be judicious with that revenue and I think our employees appreciate uh everything that's that the council has done for them. Um and I'm hoping that you'll be supportive of the increases in terms of compensation benefits that we've got programmed in this budget to

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maintain that competitive stand. >> Thank you. That's it. >> Okay. Are we ready to move to capital? Council member Kravitz. >> About the leans, um you have people who are breaking the rules as a result of that. they get a lean or a fine

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attached. The problem actually happens when you are reducing the lean because some person might get 50% off, some person might get 75% off, some guy might not get a rebate at all. And so in reality, the way to treat everyone equally is to

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collect all the leans. When you start giving people lean reductions in order for compliance, then you have a process that's not transparent and you have a lot of subjectivity. There's no way of knowing whether the person who gets 75% off is more deserving than the person

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who gets 25% off or whether any of them deserve any reduction at all because they both broke the rules in the same way. And so I just want to point out very briefly, it's not about driving revenue. It's about treating people the same way. And that's So now I'm done. >> Are we ready to go to capital? Okay.

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>> You want to go straight into capital? You >> want to go straight into capital or do we need a break? Five minutes, please. You >> need five minutes. Okay. Mr. Bay, I think we'll move into capital. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council, um before I start, I did get an answer to one of the questions that was asked by uh

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council member Schisler uh during the prior presentation about the recovery rate. So, just looking at in terms of leisure services, all we looked at was parks and recreation. And for parks and recreation, based on the fees that they charge, the fees cover about 25% of the

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total cost of parks and rec. Okay. Okay. So, we are it doesn't seem like we're going to be able to fix that technical problem in time. Um, so everyone on the council has been handed out a hard copy as I was mentioning earlier. What Mr.

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Hill will be able to do after is u once he does a post production, he'll be able to put the slide deck in. Um, I imagine I can't swear that this is how we'll do it, but it'll probably put I would imagine in sort of in the order that we're going to be talking about it here today. Um, so I apologize for that. Uh,

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so if you would uh direct you to the first page. So today we're going to be talking this this particular presentation again is on preliminary capital and special revenue enterprise funds. Um, starting with the first slide is uh FY26 some of the capital

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highlights. uh River Hills Park, the playground, uh renovated utility billing, uh the restrooms at the public library, replaced the treadmills, for example, at the family rec center. Uh we got a valve exerciser for the utilities department, and that was just a small list of many

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things that happened in the FY26 capital budget. Draw your attention to the next page, the FY27 capital budget themes. So, this is one thing that you've probably already noticed um once you looked at our our the draft documents is that this

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is probably the most limited capital program we've had in quite some time. And there is a a a reason a very strategic reason for that is uh what the team and I have found over the years is that I think rightfully so that the departments all try to do the most they

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can and I think there's an idea that you know we're going to be able to do these 10 things and then you realize once you start the year and you get through there might be supply issues there might be other competing projects that come through other initiatives and you don't get to the 10 things you get to seven of the 10 things and you got these three things that kind of linger for for a

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while and eventually your capital program just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And we we wanted to get away from that. Uh we wanted to sort of press pause, if you will, in this year's budget and say we need to complete the projects that are still in the works that were approved uh under

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prior budgets. Um we also know that we're going to have our hands full assuming council approves the water treatment plant uh improvements. um that will take up an extraordinary amount of time on the part of our public works team which is the one responsible for a lot of our capital program. So for those

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two strategic reasons, this program is scaled back. So this presentation actually is not very long because there's not a lot to it. Um the capital program also continues our investment in our employee safety and the public safety. um continuous

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hurricane preparedness efforts that this council has stressed and continuous funding for parks and recreation. So, going on to the first page of the actual projects, as I alluded to in the general fund presentation from earlier, we are programming $75,000 again for additional

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work in city hall. Uh this is one of the c the council priorities. Next page, we are looking at making some upgrades to the council chamber equipment. Um, ironically enough, you know, this probably we may have to add to this item. Uh, but these upgrades

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that were programmed here, audio upgrades, new speakers, microphones, signal processor. So, right now, as the council, you're aware, for example, small things like if your microphone's muted when you talk, Brian does a little flashlight. Well, there's a way to there's systems out there that's as part

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of their their package. Brian can actually unmute you, you know, automatically. We don't have to be doing this awkward thing where you're like, "Oh, everybody say you don't." He can do that. There's also the system would allow us to register. For example, if you you raise your hand, you want to speak actually you could press something

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either on your screen or whatever the apparatus will be there and it'll put you in the queue for for so that the mayor knows okay who's the order of who wants to speak. It'll also register votes. Uh it's a feature again this is these these things are meant for bodies of different sizes. So it'll allow for

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that as well as providing some audio upgrades and improvements to the meeting um as well. Pro this program um this system is budgeted at 59,500 and this is from unassigned fund balance carryover. So again this is from a project that was already budgeted in

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fiscal 26 budget from unassigned fund balance. It was a capital item that we saved we had savings from. So we're using those savings. We're not budgeting in essence not hitting the budget twice. Theoretically, we're going to make an amendment. We're taking the money from this year's budget to pay for this item.

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Next page is the fire department. So, um you'll see here a lot of where you see CIT, that means community investment tax. That's the half cent sales tax that we have that we receive um like all cities in in the county receives here in Hillsbor. So, the fire department, the largest

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expense proposed for the CIT this year is $525,000 for a new ambulance. And this replaces an ambulance, excuse me, just as I pull this up here. From 2010, if I'm not mistaken, give me just one second here. >> Yes,

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>> somebody said yes. Good. I'm glad somebody's saying yes. >> Freighter. >> 2010 Freightlininer ambulance. Um, hang on just one sec. Correct. And then the thermal imaging cameras, uh, we are looking to replace

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two of the cameras we have. These are the the the cameras that the firefighters use when they go into a structure fire, for example. Allows them to see if there's a body somewhere or someone in in in the room. That's $20,000. Um, $60,000. This is an estimate for

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projected improvements to fire station one. So, with the opening of the EOC projected for the end of this year, what's going to happen is we are going to move the command staff from the fire station one, we're going to move them over into the EOCC building. That'll

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allow us to move fire risk reduction staff that's in city hall. They'll move into fire station one. So, they'll be sort of at home within the fire department because right now they're they're split out. And then we'll use the training room. You're all familiar with the training room at the fire station. That training room will be

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converted into the physical fitness facility for the fire station. Right now, the physical fitness center is in the apparatus bay. It's just wide open. They've got the weights right next to the engines and the rescues. And so, that will move over. To make those changes, we're going to do some have to do some improvements, some drywall here and there, things like that. So, we're

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estimating $60,000 to to do that work. The fire department is also very proficient on a regular basis of securing EMS grants, emergency medical service grants. Typically, we don't budget for a match, but because they they do it so regularly, we felt that it makes sense to have the match already

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budgeted. And this is from CIT. So, this is the $25,000 there. Uh we're looking to um invest $160,000 for the EOCC's furniture and fixtures. And this would come again from unassigned fund balance. So, this is savings from an unassigned fund balance capital project from this year again.

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So, we're just moving the savings over to pay for that. And then we're looking to invest $35,000, $35,38 using opioid dollars. These are dollars from the national settlement the city was part of in the opioid um uh pharmaceutical

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litigation. And that $35,000 would be basically the match to allow us to purchase a life pack. A this is a um EKG um a cardio monitoring tool that's used on our rescues. Next slide is the police department.

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We are looking to replace uh several vehicles in the police department. This is the ongoing program. Every year we've brought you certain just keeping the free the fleet fresh. So we bring you certain requests every year. This year we're replacing a 2013 vehicle with

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123,000 mi, a 2015 with 119,000 mi, and a 2015 with 128,000 miles with three Ford F-150 pickup trucks. Now, I want to make note that the department's policy is really to move towards expeditions, the SUVs, and not necessarily the pickup

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trucks. We felt last year that we were kind of we we acquired the pickup trucks we needed. However, the chief this year in looking at the the operations of the community liaison unit, the clue unit, felt that the pickup truck made more sense for those operations because they

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go when they go to events, they're bringing tents, they're bringing boxes of material, they're bringing different things. And so, it's it's easier to have the pickups in the fleet to allow them to do that than necessarily having the the the explorers. So, that's the reason for these three pickup trucks here.

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That's a investment of $196,548 again from CIT. Also looking to replace a uh SU the special enforcement unit is our under or basically our undercover operations. And there's a vehicle that they've used uh

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for quite some time. It's a 2013 with nearly last we checked 155,000 miles on it is giving us some mechanical problems. We'd like to replace that. Um, and that would be for $32,980 again from CIT. Looking to um add a tactical night

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vision scope to the SWAT team for $15,300 from CIT. And then acquiring a fourth drone, which would now provide a drone for all the shifts um for $24,400 from CIT. Next slide will take us to parks and

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recreation. As if you've used the fitness center, you know the first one here on this list is an important one. Um, so we're looking to replace the air conditioning units three and four, which is the fitness center and the front lobby. Uh, for $300,000 again from CI, they're all

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going to be from CIT. I'll tell unless I tell you otherwise so I don't seem so repetitive. Uh, also looking to remar site the fund pool as well as the plunge pool for $80,000 and $30,000 respectively. Looking to resurface clay courts 4 through six for $40,000.

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seeking to replace the LED sign at the Family Rec Center. So, that sign, the technology in that sign, you it's a stark contrast with the other LED signs we have. Um, so we're looking to bring that up to to more modern technology. Um, that's $23,000.

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The fall zone at the Family Rec Center playground, looking to replace that to make it a safer experience, $75,000. Resanding the pool deck pavers at the Family Rec Center for $8,000. And then the public works department, which it does work, does the the

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maintenance of our parks and playgrounds, uh, is looking to invest $9,000 to put in playground borders as well as $75,000 for the tractor that was mentioned earlier by council member Kravitz. So, it's listed here. The tractor is not CIT. The tractor is

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unassigned fund balance carryover. Again, projects already been paid for this year. Savings from that project moved over to pay for the tractor. Moving on to the uh street improvement fund. So the street improvement fund uh

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just a reminder for the folks watching that it's funded from a variety of fuel taxes basically state fuel taxes, county fuel taxes um and it goes to uh maintain our streets. So looking at the next slide, we actually have the programmatic

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requests and we are looking to um purchase another flooding bypass pump for $150,000. Uh our philosophy is, at least my philosophy is I don't think we can ever have enough pumps. Um so this is one

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that's going to we've the ones we've acquired have been extremely helpful. um if we have a storm or even just a sort of a typical summer storm sometimes if there's been a lot of rain already in the in the past this is critical for us. So this addresses a council priority. Uh

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also looking to replace a long bed truck that it's basically u um uh replacing a 2007 um truck that we've got today as well as acquiring a dump trailer for $15,000. Next slide addresses paving. So, I know

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the council has asked for the list of the streets to be paved. So, what we've done is we've taken the the PCI uh which is the pavement condition index and we've looked at that staff, public work staff has looked at that and then looked at sort of the past history of that of

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the prior pavement condition indexes and seen the degradation and come up with a five-year plan to address the streets, the paving of our streets. What is on this slide right here is the the paving for the fiscal year 27. This is projected paving. Now, I want to just

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disclaimer this is this happens in every single community. This is projected paving. Sometimes these streets will change and it'll change because once you're in the field, you may discover something else that now you're you're whereas before you may have been doing a a shim and overlay, but now there's a condition of the road that you you

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discovered that you may have to do more of a full depth reconstruction. So, now it changes your paving program because that's a more costly initiative. So, so things can change, but this is our best guess right now. And essentially, it's a guess. It's our our best projection of what the streets will be in fiscal 27.

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So, I'll read through the streets. So, Belmont Avenue from the start of pavement. So, what is when we say start of pavement? Typically, these would be streets that either a butt up against a county or state road or at the border with the city, for example. Start of

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pavement would be when the city portion starts to Gillette Avenue. Grand View Drive from Rainbow Drive to Beverly Drive. And then Grand View Drive from Ridgeway Road to Rainbow Drive. Shirley Drive from Rainbow Drive to Grove Hill Road. Shirley Drive from Ridge Ridgeway

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Road to Rainbow Drive. Schulut Street from Stout of Pavement to North 52nd Street. Pinehurst Avenue from Ferncliffe Avenue to St. Augustine Avenue. And then Pinehurst Avenue from St. Augustine Avenue to Brentwood Drive. So that's what's projected right now. Now, I know

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you're just seeing this for the first time, so obviously the reason we do a preliminary today and we come back later is gives you some time to kind of digest through this um uh and and then um if you have any questions, you could follow up. Next slide is the um 410 fund, which is

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our water and sewer utility fund. First item here is a GPS utility locating unit for 32,000. I have an asterisk here that this is council priority in the sense that it's part of the bigger picture of us trying to identify our underground infrastructure. Now, this will not by acquiring this one

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tool, it does not mean that we'll know where everything is overnight. That's not at all the case. Don't think that's the case. This is just a tool that helps us to better measure where where our pipes are, where our valves are, and things like that. So, it's part of the overall effort. Now, it should be said because I've said this individually to

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at least one or two of you, but I want to make sure the entire body knows. We've talked in the past about being able to look at our all our underground infrastructure and and measure and map that infrastructure. That is a significant effort for any community. It is an effort that usually takes more

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than one year, multiple years. A lot of times you bring somebody in from the outside because you just don't have your staff is doing other things. In light of the water treatment plant upgrades and the and the PAS mitigation, we do not have the capability in my mind to do the

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mapping of all our underground infrastructure at the same time. It just that that's asking a lot. So I just ultimately as you know council, we have to prioritize things. So right now our priority we feel is what we want to serve in council is a water treatment plant and the PAS issue. So that's where our focus is going to be. We are going

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to do where we can we're going to try doing pieces of this mapping. Um and you'll see this is here. We're going to talk about a GPS um GIS uh position as well that's going to help us with that. But it's not going to be part of a very comprehensive effort at this point until we get through these other water

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treatment issues first. Um next item is a camera truck retrofit. So, we have a camera. It's It's part of it. Comes with a truck and it allows us to It's a mobile camera. It's on wheels. It allows us to um video our underground storm water pipes, for example, and our

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sanitary sewer pipes. Um it's a great tool to have. The truck is uh it's getting up there in age and in use usefulness. And we looked at potentially acquiring a new truck, but a new truck is at least $600,000, whereas you can retrofit our existing truck and make it very comparable to a

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new truck for 300,000. So staff felt that was a much better investment. So that's what's proposed here. Um looking to install a chlorine monitoring system. As you know in this current budget we have programmed a conversion from what we typically do for our chlorine disinfectant. Right now it's gas and

408
01:50:58.000 --> 01:51:13.280
we're going to move to liquid. We feel that liquid is a safer solution for us a bit more manageable solution. But in making that transition once we make that transition we'll be we'll need a new monitoring system because it's a different form of disinfectant. So that's $150,000.

409
01:51:13.280 --> 01:51:29.679
The next item is SCADA. SCADA is the remote operating system for our both our water treatment plant as well as our lift stations. Council, as you know, uh recently in one of our meetings, you approved the uh improvements to the water treatment plant, SCADA, which is critical. I can't stress enough, this is probably one of the most important

410
01:51:29.679 --> 01:51:46.480
things you're going to do. Um because SCADA is is the the the life the the the the brain if you will of our of our system of any system actually across the country probably around the world in terms of of water and sewer infrastructure. So we feel it's important this will allow us to upgrade the SCADA systems for our 49 lift

411
01:51:46.480 --> 01:52:04.080
stations uh for $375,000. And then of course we have the water treatment plan master plan upgrades. Um right now that number is in excess of $8 million. Uh, but we're going to talk about that in at the August workshop. So, we didn't put it in here, but it's

412
01:52:04.080 --> 01:52:19.840
programmed into a tentative rate. So, which we'll talk about later in the presentation. Next slide is the 440 water improvement fund. And this is last year, if you recall, we talked about the I hydrant program was the fourth year of of making

413
01:52:19.840 --> 01:52:34.719
improvements. The iHy program is telemetry that's mounted on our fire hydrants. And so what that allows us to see is you can receive our staff gets a text immediately if there's a loss of pressure at a hydrant because a loss of pressure at a hydrant is usually the first sign that there's a water main

414
01:52:34.719 --> 01:52:50.639
break somewhere. Um this year earlier this year of course that became a very great tool to have because it allowed us to address those issues quickly. So this is the final year to get the the entire system um in play for $40,000.

415
01:52:50.639 --> 01:53:06.880
Next slide is the 450 sewer improvement fund. This is impact fee funded fund. So this is not on the rate. This comes from impact fees looking to acquire a vacuum truck for $375,000. So in the current budget, you know, we acquired a pump truck and uh we have a

416
01:53:06.880 --> 01:53:21.679
vacuum truck. So today we have the old vacuum truck and we have the pump truck. We'd like to have this this other vacuum truck as well. Um because the vacuum truck we currently use is is getting older. Um this is another thing like the pumps. You can never really have enough of these because they use the vacuum

417
01:53:21.679 --> 01:53:38.480
trucks for everything. U you have inlets, you need to vacuum out the leaves and things like that. You have a water main break, you have a sewer break, you need to get the the liquid out of there so the the staff can work in in the hole and put the pipe together. Um you need to get things off street gutters and things like that. This is what helps us do all that. It's

418
01:53:38.480 --> 01:53:55.280
a workhorse for us. So it's an important acquisition and it's impact fee fund in the sense that we are we're we're adding capacity to our system. You know, we're trying to do more and more within our system. So, we need this this vehicle to help us keep up with that. Next slide is an FTE request. So, as I

419
01:53:55.280 --> 01:54:10.239
mentioned earlier, we do not have any FTE requests in the general fund, but we do have one here in the in the water and sewer fund for a GIS specialist. So, today in our organization, we have a GIS coordinator, and he great. He does a ton

420
01:54:10.239 --> 01:54:26.880
for us. Maps all our our different layers of our GIS. um also manages our interns in the engineering division um and just is a great asset to have. However, I I will tell you from direct experience that our GIS capabilities are

421
01:54:26.880 --> 01:54:44.000
still lagging uh in terms of for example where I came from my last community where we did a lot of in-house and we but it was much more sophisticated there. So I we all agree that GIS is one of the areas that we need to improve upon particularly if we want to get to the point of mapping out all our infrastructure. uh we need to have the

422
01:54:44.000 --> 01:54:59.760
extra capability internally to have somebody help us with that. So this GIS specialist would allow us to do that. Um the number you have here, $81,295 is total wages, taxes, and all benefit calculated internally. So it's the full package is what we anticipate for this

423
01:54:59.760 --> 01:55:16.320
position. Next slide is actually talking about the rate now for the water and sewer fund. This council will will recall during the the meeting that Stantech uh presentation they made to you um uh earlier this year as well as a town

424
01:55:16.320 --> 01:55:33.760
hall, they talked about a 10% rate projected for fiscal 27 to uh as the first step to allow us to get enough generate enough capital uh cash flow to go out into the marketplace, for example, and do a revenue bond if you needed it uh to help keep up with the

425
01:55:33.760 --> 01:55:48.960
water treatment plant improvements that we're projecting. So, this budget today, the preliminary budget you have before you contemplates that 10%. Um, and of course, we're waiting for the direction from at the workshop. We'll have hopefully final final direction from the council as to

426
01:55:48.960 --> 01:56:05.599
kind of where you want us to go with that, but right now it's a 10% rate increase as recommended by Stantech. Next slide takes us to the fleet fund, the 510 fund. Um, we are recommending a forklift for $65,000. uh fleet. They

427
01:56:05.599 --> 01:56:21.199
have an older forklift that is uh is reaching its its end of life. Um and we also are recommending an awning for $20,000. Let me explain the awning. Um you all know Eddie that works in fleet, their fleet, our fleet manager.

428
01:56:21.199 --> 01:56:36.159
Um when I first took a tour of the city, the day before my final interview here, uh we went out to Fleet and I I remember meeting Eddie for the first time. He was inside the bed of a sanitation truck in the middle of August uh in the blazing sun and he was working on something and

429
01:56:36.159 --> 01:56:51.679
I just thought my god this is what what a tough job that is. But that's back then we still had some trees. What happened is after Hurricane Milton came the tree cover that was in that back end where the garage is and where they work on the bigger vehicles outside in the open. Uh we lost a lot of that tree

430
01:56:51.679 --> 01:57:07.520
cover. So now that that those conditions have gotten even worse. So, it's really just it's really not the greatest working conditions to have our our employees being out there in the blazing sun in a sanitation truck trying to get stuff fixed. So, we feel it's important to get an awning to allow them to be at least have some shade cover and that's

431
01:57:07.520 --> 01:57:24.239
$20,000. Next slide takes us to sanitation. We are we have one request in sanitation for a commercial front loader for $475,000. Um and uh I'm happy to say that we are not

432
01:57:24.239 --> 01:57:40.639
proposing any rate increase. So a zero rate increase in f fiscal year 27 for sanitation. Now this does mean as you saw in the backup that we are not hitting the 25% reserve target which we didn't hit last year either and we're comfortable with that because sanitation

433
01:57:40.639 --> 01:57:56.960
unlike water and sewer sanitation kind of is is more nimble kind of works more like a business than any of our other funds. So we feel like if there's ever any issue that you know there'll be a way through added customer base, new services or some changing in fees internally here and there that can accommodate that. So we're not that

434
01:57:56.960 --> 01:58:12.960
concerned with that for that particular fund. So that's the reason why we're we're comfortable with a zero rate increase in FY27. And honestly to be frank with all of us, we were very much um aware of the impact from the water rate increase. Uh we're aware of other

435
01:58:12.960 --> 01:58:27.679
issues going on in the community too. We know we have a geo bond. We have a number of different things that will impact our residents. So, we wanted to be conscious of that with how we uh did the budget u in fiscal 27. Next slide, we'll take us to the community redevelopment agency, the tax

436
01:58:27.679 --> 01:58:44.400
increment fund. So this uh this year uh for fiscal 27 we're proposing $98,754 in debt service, $484,528 in the administrative overhead, which we talked about extensively earlier, $3,000

437
01:58:44.400 --> 01:59:02.159
for the audit, and then that leaves a reserve for contingency of $1,189,900. That's our tax increment fund. You go to the the next slide. During the council priority setting session, I believe it was the vice mayor

438
01:59:02.159 --> 01:59:18.960
that brought up the having us explore moving to phase two of Riverside Park potentially. How could we fund phase two? So, we we looked at that. So, to remind the council and the community, we have budgeted this this council has budgeted $3.8 million towards the

439
01:59:18.960 --> 01:59:35.840
project for Riverside Park. When the consultants came in uh earlier this year, the council uh agreed to do a phase one. They broke the project into phases, and phase one was going to end up being $3.45 million. Phase one, we anticipate will start construction first

440
01:59:35.840 --> 01:59:51.520
quarter of 2027. To do phase two, based on the last time we looked at the numbers, it was going to be $2.61 million additional cost to do phase two. right now. Um I this I understand this this was brought up in council priority

441
01:59:51.520 --> 02:00:06.719
sitting, but I just I don't recommend that we consider using any additional unassigned fund balance, which was the bulk of that 3.8 million. 3 million of it was unassigned fund balance. Um I think and also if you you might look at Carlos, you might say, Carlos, look, I

442
02:00:06.719 --> 02:00:22.800
just saw 1.189 million in reserve for the TIFF fund. Can we use some of that? You could you could use all of this. I mean at your discretion. I think that there's just a lot of factors out there that are still still unknowns. First of all, we haven't even started construction. I know there is benefit for mobilization if you, you know, if

443
02:00:22.800 --> 02:00:38.000
you made some changes, you added if you were going to decide on a second phase while the contractor still on site, that makes some sense. There's some savings there. Um, but I also am aware that again going back to the state constitutional amendment that may be approved. If that is approved, it will

444
02:00:38.000 --> 02:00:53.520
impact tiff as well. I mean, the amount of tiff you get will be impacted. Um and then also how we can maintain some of the infrastructure may be impacted in the future also. So I think there's some unknowns here that I don't feel comfortable enough saying yes I recommend let's go ahead and do it if

445
02:00:53.520 --> 02:01:09.920
you want to obviously it's your your decision but I think we may want to wait a year and then take a look at this and we may even want to maybe you don't wait a full year. You may during the once we start construction we'll know what happened in the November ballot. we can come back to to you council and you can look at doing some some sort of an

446
02:01:09.920 --> 02:01:26.560
amendment at that point uh to the CRA and the TIFF fund budget and and looking to do something different if that's your your decision at that point. Um so that takes us to the final slide which is just questions. Um and that's it. Thank you Mr. B. Council

447
02:01:26.560 --> 02:01:43.520
members questions. >> Yes. >> Anybody down here to start for change? Go ahead. I'll >> council member Fernandez. >> Okay. So, I want to start with the council chamber upgrades. I I don't have any issue with um up

448
02:01:43.520 --> 02:01:59.520
upgrading these the the items that you suggested, but my question for you is with as much as people are getting their information online, watching the YouTube channel, etc.,

449
02:01:59.520 --> 02:02:16.480
Do we have enough or or do we have the ability to make it so that that is a much more robust ability to broadcast? Um just because that's how more people are getting information today than they

450
02:02:16.480 --> 02:02:34.320
have been in the past. And we haven't had you know a a full comprehensive video audio video system. if you could help me just tell me what your what your vision of that means. Well, I'm just thinking of making sure

451
02:02:34.320 --> 02:02:52.800
that we have the technology available that uh consistently to broadcast um to video the meetings, to broadcast the meetings, to make sure that we can get them out and on various mediums in

452
02:02:52.800 --> 02:03:09.679
a a broadcast capacity versus kind of doing the best that we can with what we have. It's a very timely observation. Um, >> barring whatever happened here today, which we'll we'll have to look at and if

453
02:03:09.679 --> 02:03:25.360
that if that requires us to make any additional changes, we'll obviously let council know. I I think we are we have been able to um improve our broadcasting uh ability, I think, considerably in the last few years. I mean, if you look at

454
02:03:25.360 --> 02:03:41.360
where we were before and where we are today, I think we've done a lot a lot more um based on the structure that you have in place today. I mean, the meeting the way you do the meetings today, we we accommodate those. We broadcast all our meetings typically that are in this room. The the regular meetings live

455
02:03:41.360 --> 02:03:56.159
obviously. Um uh these meetings, the workshops, we typically will will record them and then put them on live bas usually the same exact day because allows the the Mr. Hill to edit the the the meetings um so

456
02:03:56.159 --> 02:04:14.000
that it flows better for the public. Um but we can always look at it if there's other improvements that we can we can do in terms of I I the marketing team's great the marketing communications team in terms of looking at how can we improve the experience. Um, now if we're

457
02:04:14.000 --> 02:04:29.840
talking about doing something completely different, whereas, you know, doing some sort of like virtual meeting capacity for regular meetings, that's that that would be a very different scenario and we'd have to look at that if that's where you want to go. Um, >> no. I'm just thinking along the lines of

458
02:04:29.840 --> 02:04:46.239
making sure that we have the equipment necessary to keep the the broadcast consistent and um available for people. >> So, all right, that's um for the fire

459
02:04:46.239 --> 02:05:03.199
department. This isn't something that was listed, but it's something I wanted to ask about. And and so in the past there have been questions about the equipment that firefighters wear um that there's PAS in

460
02:05:03.199 --> 02:05:20.000
the equipment or there's various um issues that have been raised and I wanted to ask I'm not I'm not suggesting this I just want to ask about it and that is if we were buying new equipment which I know that there's a a rolling

461
02:05:20.000 --> 02:05:37.080
five-year timeline of buying new equipment, but would that be considered an ongoing expenditure or would that be considered a capital expenditure? >> Mr. Ingram, you want to take that one?

462
02:05:38.560 --> 02:05:53.920
>> Yes, we've had these discussions internally. It all depends on the cost. Uh 5,000 is our capital threshold. So, if the piece is um is $5,000 or more,

463
02:05:53.920 --> 02:06:10.960
then we capitalize. If it falls under $5,000, we don't. And um and it also depends on if we order a piece of equipment that it may have several parts to it. Um when I say

464
02:06:10.960 --> 02:06:27.440
equipment, I'm talking about the You're talking about the body? Yes. armor, whatever they they call it. Um, if it's all comes together, if we can buy purchase it all together and it's

465
02:06:27.440 --> 02:06:44.480
over 5,000, then we could capitalize it. But a lot of times these are bought in peace meal and most of the the apparel comes under 5,000. So you'll see it in our operating cost. Um, and we did

466
02:06:44.480 --> 02:07:00.400
budget for some this year, but when we can capitalize it, we do and we'll pay for it out of the CIT fund >> since it's capital. >> Okay. Thank you. um

467
02:07:00.400 --> 02:07:16.239
for parks and recreation. Um, I I I don't have any issue with the items that you've outlined here as a current year or or 20 fiscal 2027 capital budget, but I do want to know

468
02:07:16.239 --> 02:07:33.199
how are we evaluating the trends, the the various recreation or exercise trends that maybe come up throughout the time. you know, raetball used to be popular, now it's pickle ball or whatever, but h how are we analyzing

469
02:07:33.199 --> 02:07:48.560
those trends to make sure that we're not spending money investing it in some way and then the recreation trends have changed and and we need to invest in something else. How how are we keeping consistent with those trends and

470
02:07:48.560 --> 02:08:03.679
making sure that our investment reflects what people are looking for in recreation and exercise? >> Sure. So, I I can address part of that question and I'll ask the interim director to come up and pick up the the second half. So, um looking at the list of projects today on on in this

471
02:08:03.679 --> 02:08:19.840
particular proposed budget, um these are all things in this particular proposed budget that we know are in high demand, right? So, the the pools are always in high demand at the facility. Um the clay tennis courts are very popular, so we've got metrics to show that. Um the the the

472
02:08:19.840 --> 02:08:36.000
fall zone at the playground, the playground gets a lot of usage. The fall zone again is is more of a safety issue. So in this case, which I know is not directly what you're asking, but I just want to make sure that we know that this request, I think, is clearly measurable and we understand why we need it. Now, as to the measurement of trends, I'm

473
02:08:36.000 --> 02:08:50.960
going to ask interim director Collins to come up and talk to us about what the department typically does. >> Good morning. still. Um, as far as trends, we're watching FRPA, the Florida

474
02:08:50.960 --> 02:09:08.719
Parks Recreation and RPA kind of they're constantly shooting out information. We talk to our members. Um, it's very informal as of right now. Um, but I mean, that's kind of basically where we're at. Uh, we look at other parks and recreation agencies, see what's going on

475
02:09:08.719 --> 02:09:24.480
there. Um, but that's pretty much it. >> Okay. Thank you. Um, I just have a couple more. Um, as far as the paving and and this is something that I've asked about and this

476
02:09:24.480 --> 02:09:40.880
might not be something that is um going to come through this budget, but with the uh streets, the sewer piping, the water delivery piping, the storm water

477
02:09:40.880 --> 02:09:58.719
piping, etc. Um, how is there any anything built into any of those budgets to start creating a a more manageable system of ongoing maintenance where it's

478
02:09:58.719 --> 02:10:14.639
very I I don't want to say very specified. I know that there would be changes. I know that there could be something that happens that takes something out of a schedule, but is there anything that we have planned

479
02:10:14.639 --> 02:10:31.360
that we would need capital funds for to create a full system of the timing of when each road would be expected to be repaved or the storm water pipes expected to have reached their useful

480
02:10:31.360 --> 02:10:49.360
life or etc. just so that we start with um timeline. >> Yes. Um but that goes to what I was talking about a little while ago, which I think is that comprehensive plan about mapping our underground infrastructure and knowing what the vintage is of each

481
02:10:49.360 --> 02:11:07.119
particular pipe segment, valves, and things of that nature. And as I as I noted, that's going to be tough. Again, looking at priorities, we'd love to do it all, but I just don't think we have the financial wherewithal within the rate today or um

482
02:11:07.119 --> 02:11:22.719
uh capacity wise, bandwidth wise with the staff we've got today to do to do that in the fashion I think that you and I probably are on the same page with in terms of where we think we need to go. So, I think what we're going to have to do and what's been outlined in this budget and in prior budget, bits and pieces, we're going to have to take

483
02:11:22.719 --> 02:11:37.920
elements of this, for example, with our with our paving program. What I would imagine, what I would expect is that when we look at these streets, that we're going to look at the underground infrastructure in all of these streets first before we start rolling out the pavers to make sure, do we need to change? Are there some pipes in this in

484
02:11:37.920 --> 02:11:53.520
this area that need to be changed out right now? Because now's the time to do it, right? Get the pipes out if you can before you come through and you particularly if you're going to do full depth reconstruction. there's really no reason not to look at that. If you're just doing a skim and overlay, that that's a a little different. Um, but

485
02:11:53.520 --> 02:12:09.280
that's what I would expect. So, every community typically will do that when they do a general paving. Um, but that's again still rather peaceful. It's not what what you're describing. I I would like to do what you're describing. I just think we we just have to get past some of these other bigger capital

486
02:12:09.280 --> 02:12:25.199
demands right now on the on the the watering and wastewater side of the house first. Okay. And then my my last question has to do with sanitation.

487
02:12:25.199 --> 02:12:40.560
And the the really the only question I have about it is in the past we have seen the tipping fees go up from the county um pretty extraordinarily high. And

488
02:12:40.560 --> 02:12:56.960
when we have said um zero rate increase, which I I'm fine with your assessment right now, I'm I just want to ensure that we have considered what the potential increase could be passed along to us because it's not a charge that

489
02:12:56.960 --> 02:13:13.280
Temple Terrace charges. It's simply a pass through from the county. Um, and you know, have we considered what they may be increasing or do we know already what their rate is going to be? >> Mr. Ingram, do we we have that number

490
02:13:13.280 --> 02:13:30.079
now, don't we? >> Um, I know Jason uh Jason may have more knowledge on this. I know it was plugged into the budget. I do not know off the top of my head what the percentage was. >> Mr. Warren, do you mind coming up? And

491
02:13:30.079 --> 02:13:46.000
really, it's not so much that I need to know the actual amount. It's more that have we considered >> that that this is part of it. >> The assumption is we plugged it into the budget. So, we wouldn't present you a zero rate increase unless we could absorb it. >> Okay.

492
02:13:46.000 --> 02:14:06.960
>> Just come up with we just need the number whatever the number is. And I will while he's coming up, we are ending entering the last year of the contract with the county. Am I correct? >> Expires in 2027, I believe.

493
02:14:06.960 --> 02:14:24.000
>> Yes. So, so we're going to be we're going to have to negotiate a new contract. Um whether we do it with the county or we do it with the city of Tampa or some other iteration, that's something that staff's looking at right now. Um, one of the things that I I I would like to ask for whether these

494
02:14:24.000 --> 02:14:39.440
things are going to be negotiated would be caps, some sort of caps on these increases because what we discovered with the county is that there there was no cap. It's whatever they felt like they could charge. Now, I'm not saying they will agree to that, but I think we have to start off on the premise that we need some cost containment on our side.

495
02:14:39.440 --> 02:14:58.159
Um, even if it's some sort of like a bandwidth of, you know, flexibility in that pricing, otherwise we're just budgeting in the dark. Um yeah, >> if we don't have it, if you don't have it, we'll come back to the council. Rather just give the right information. >> They sent it to us, so I have to do the

496
02:14:58.159 --> 02:15:13.199
math. Uh they sent it to us in the dollar amount. So let me get you. We'll we'll get that information. Let me get you the >> And again, my only concern was that in years past, sometimes the increases came more than one time a year, and it was a

497
02:15:13.199 --> 02:15:29.440
surprise to us. and I just want to make sure that we've considered that as part of our budgeting process. >> That's a good observation. I can tell you that we've had some discussion about not prop basically proposing a zero rate increase because even if you looked at

498
02:15:29.440 --> 02:15:45.760
the performance for the for the sanitation fund, I don't believe there was a year where it was a zero rate increase. I thought I think there was always basically a projected increase of some sort. Um uh I think that the feeling was we felt we could absorb it this year. Um, but if we go back and we do the run the math again, if that's the

499
02:15:45.760 --> 02:16:02.320
if we find differently, we'll obviously make an adjustment and bring that to your attention. >> Okay. Thank you. >> I just want to add to that we're only buying one truck this year. That's helping it. We have been upgrading for the last several years,

500
02:16:02.320 --> 02:16:20.239
the sanitation trucks, because they've been aging, they break down, we have to pay rental. Um, so we're progressively getting better with that and not having to spend as much on the maintenance side, having updated those trucks.

501
02:16:20.239 --> 02:16:38.240
The other thing is the revenue has done well with the Amazon program, our ability to resell some of the scrap materials from Amazon. Those factors have all contributed in in recovering what five years ago was a a fund that we

502
02:16:38.240 --> 02:16:55.519
were struggling to keep in the black. >> That's it. >> Vice Mayor, >> member Scher. >> Yes. Just a couple of quick observations. Um, capital overall looks great. I'm not a problem. And the utility funds as well. Um, I did have a

503
02:16:55.519 --> 02:17:14.240
concern or a question regarding the uh 130 street fund. Um, I didn't see anything for striping. I looked in the detail. Let me see. Are we doing anything with that? >> Jason could address this too, but the

504
02:17:14.240 --> 02:17:30.160
striping uh you're not talking about repaving, just striping. >> Striping. We determined that's actually cost under 5,000 for most of the the striping projects we do. So those um are

505
02:17:30.160 --> 02:17:46.800
now not in capital but in maintenance cost. >> Are they included in the current budget? Is there anything included >> 27 budget? >> I'll have to I'll have to double check. I believe it is. >> No. Yes, there's there's striping included in >> Okay, that's good. Um the other the

506
02:17:46.800 --> 02:18:03.359
other comment concern I had regarding the uh uh sanitation fund um I'm not asking for increase in rates. Trust me I'm not. But um 17.9% if we if we have to do any kind of bond issue they're going to I don't think

507
02:18:03.359 --> 02:18:18.559
they're going to allow us to aggregate our reserves in order to come up with something that's that uh is um acceptable uh for a bonding issue. So we might just there's just this caveat be careful particularly if we have to go

508
02:18:18.559 --> 02:18:34.800
with something specific that's all >> right. No no we agree yeah we couldn't aggregate if you're talking about aggregating sanitation and the water reserves. No we're not we know that we're looking at it from the perspective we like we always do. I mean this is not a change every year we go through and look from the perspective of our residents and our community or our taxpayers

509
02:18:34.800 --> 02:18:50.639
>> as to you know how can we how can we make sure that they impact from what we do here and our budgeting is the least impactful on them. Um, and we were in a position with sanitation that we felt we could we could do it with a zero rate increase. We know it's not directly related in terms of the bond, but we

510
02:18:50.639 --> 02:19:07.280
felt that it's a bill. Your utility bill includes your garbage and includes your your watering rate. So, that's what we're looking at. Um, like I said, if we go back now and we look at everything and if we get any new information, we have to come back and say no, we we have to be based on like what the performer predicted we were going to do with some sort of a limited rate increase. We'll

511
02:19:07.280 --> 02:19:22.559
bring that to your attention. Right now, we're in a spot where we feel we could we might be able to pull it off at zero. >> The other the other side of my concern is that uh part of our annual audit is the analysis and of the of our reserves and the economic outlook and everything.

512
02:19:22.559 --> 02:19:37.519
And it took us a long time to get out of trouble with that. Uh I I don't want us to start getting dinged in the next couple of years and it become an audit finding. Took us a long time to get rid of that that uh moniker. So that that's that's more of a caveat for the future

513
02:19:37.519 --> 02:19:54.399
than now. I agree. No, no, don't incre don't make it any worse than it has to be, but we got to be careful going forward. That's all. >> Absolutely. >> Council member Kravitz. >> Um, with respect to the 8.7 million investment in the water treatment plant

514
02:19:54.399 --> 02:20:10.080
for 2027, does that include the temporary treatment solution that we're pursuing? >> I don't believe it. Did it include a temporary treat? I don't believe it did. No, it did not. That number did not include that because that was an add-on that came up during the the the time. These are the things we're gonna flesh

515
02:20:10.080 --> 02:20:28.479
out right now. We're going to bring to your attention on August 11th. >> So, is that is that's going to find its way in >> potentially be presented to you and then whether the council you're going to have to tell us what you want to do at that point based on information we'll have at hand. >> Okay. Uh and um the 10% rate increase

516
02:20:28.479 --> 02:20:43.840
um we're going to address that on August 11th as well. Is that the plan? So, at the workshop on the 11th, at least my vision of it would be that we'll have some of the outstanding questions answered by then to be able to present that information to you. You

517
02:20:43.840 --> 02:20:59.920
asked about temporary solutions, for example, um the county, we already know the answer from city of Tampa. You know, if we have an answer from the county, what that would cost if they said yes and what we could do. So, we'll have those costs break broken down to you. any other lingering answers to questions

518
02:20:59.920 --> 02:21:16.160
that we'll have that and then that evening what that that day we'll be able to present to you here's here are the answers here's what we think um you may want to consider potentially and then what the rate implication might be from that >> and then ultimately it's the council's

519
02:21:16.160 --> 02:21:32.399
decision as to what you want to do and you give us some direction and we'll prepare something to come back to the council for actual hearing in September >> good okay um and um when it comes to the the park. I wanted to ask about the 3.45

520
02:21:32.399 --> 02:21:49.920
having been committed. Um, have we received bids yet from anyone? >> No. No, because we're still in the permitting phase right now. So, they're they're engaging back and forth with the different regulatory agencies. I anticipate we'll be at a bid letting sometime in the fall most likely and

521
02:21:49.920 --> 02:22:06.880
then hopefully construction in the beginning of 27. >> If there are bids received that end up uh higher than anticipated, do you have already a contingency of um uh amenities that will be scaled back or

522
02:22:06.880 --> 02:22:22.479
what's the plan to deal with that? Right now, we are going to bid the project the way the council directed us to in terms of what you wanted to see in that phase. There was a if I recall, there was a fair amount of contingency already built in to that to that budget.

523
02:22:22.479 --> 02:22:38.640
So, uh I think it's a little premature right now for us to speculate on that. I think once we get those bids in, we'll be able to >> we find that all of them are are far higher, then we'll have to have a conversation back with the city council as to what you would like us to do at that point. Now if it's if something is

524
02:22:38.640 --> 02:22:52.080
within the contingency window that's something we can handle administratively that that would be simpler but um your scenario I think contemplates of some bigger abnormality there then that would be something we'd bring back to you >> whatever happens but you never know.

525
02:22:52.080 --> 02:23:07.680
>> Um my um my final question is also about the park. Um, this is just on my memory, so I don't I don't know if this is completely accurate, but my my recollection was that the parking was one of the absolute

526
02:23:07.680 --> 02:23:25.359
largest items over a million dollars uh at Riverside Park. So, please please do correct me if I'm wrong about that. Uh and since we are now selling the south parcel adjacent to Enigma Plaza to the same

527
02:23:25.359 --> 02:23:41.840
developer and he is to some extent consolidating parking and also building a walk walkway uh that connects to the park. I I wanted to ask whether there is a possibility of exploring

528
02:23:41.840 --> 02:23:57.439
reducing the scope of the parking at Riverside Park somewhat perhaps to save half a million or whatever it may be if we could then piggy back off of the parking in that other development because there's a lot of parking that going to go into that

529
02:23:57.439 --> 02:24:13.600
section of downtown um and we might be able to benefit from that. So, council member, on that one, the direction we have from city council is to build a project based upon what council decided back whatever February,

530
02:24:13.600 --> 02:24:29.840
I think it was. Um, that's the direction we've given our consultants. That's the direction they're operating under. If the council now as a whole wants us to go in a different direction. I I think you got to be careful too just thinking about this because the I don't we haven't gotten indications from the

531
02:24:29.840 --> 02:24:44.880
property owner that he is wanting to use I we got some indication he may want to use some of the city parking actually for his facility for some of the larger things that he wants to do. So I I don't know if he's necessarily aligned with having us use his property on a more

532
02:24:44.880 --> 02:25:01.600
permanent basis. Um but again the direction is we've got the parking the way it is. If you want us to do something differently, somebody needs us. That has to that talking about motions, that would be something we'd probably want to have in a motion that because it's a pretty substantive change. >> All right. Well, let's wait and see how

533
02:25:01.600 --> 02:25:18.160
phase one goes and we can have a look at that. All right. Thank you. That's all I got. >> I just have one question and I have a comment when we're exhausted questions, but this may be for the police chief if but cons the um expansion of the drones.

534
02:25:18.160 --> 02:25:34.880
Chief, I know um and I don't want to go into a great deal of detail about this on public record, but I know that there's some limitations to the drones that we have, the technology that's used. Are we purchasing does the new drone expand that

535
02:25:34.880 --> 02:25:50.479
capability solve that limitation? >> The the drones we've purchased for the last few years do solve that problem. >> Okay. All right. So, I just wanted to make sure we weren't buying yesterday's stuff. Okay. All right. That's good. Any other questions? I I've got a comment if

536
02:25:50.479 --> 02:26:05.120
we're exhausted to questions. And so this budget obviously takes effect October the 1st. The election is in November, right? The beginning of November. The ballot question concerning property

537
02:26:05.120 --> 02:26:23.040
taxes on the on the during the election is a gamecher. I mean, that's a that's a huge reset for not just for us, but for all 411 cities and all 67 counties. And this is this is a real game changer, not

538
02:26:23.040 --> 02:26:40.800
just a a little adjustment. Some of these capital things we need to do regardless of what happens with the election. I mean, we need to buy the truck, you know, we need a garbage truck. We need to keep the replacement scheduled. some of some of these things, but others

539
02:26:40.800 --> 02:26:56.240
of the capital program that we've discussed here, um, at least in my mind, and that's why I'm bringing it up here for everybody to to talk about, some of them we would need to really look at and reconsider. I mean, some of

540
02:26:56.240 --> 02:27:13.680
this stuff um we may not, you know, we're buying equipment to enable activities that truthfully we might even be able to do that activity anymore if the if the property tax re um referendum passes.

541
02:27:13.680 --> 02:27:28.800
My question or for discussion is I mean we're only talking about if if the measure fails, we don't need to do anything because we've got a budget and we need to just move forward the budget. But if the initiative passes in November,

542
02:27:28.800 --> 02:27:45.600
I think we need to regroup here in a meeting to go through and say, okay, I mean, it's going to take us a long time to figure out all the extent of what we're going to have to pull back on. But some of this, particularly as it pertains to the capital, the general

543
02:27:45.600 --> 02:28:01.359
revenues kind of is what it is, but the capital, some of this is discretionary. Even the park. I mean, I know it's funded, but we need to really re do we really want to build a park 60 days after our property t I mean, I don't

544
02:28:01.359 --> 02:28:18.479
know. We need to have a talk about that. Um that do we want to hire a new GIS specialist, you know, dur in October only to be doing layoffs potentially in a year. So, um, anyhow, my my the reason

545
02:28:18.479 --> 02:28:35.760
I bring this up is I think if this passes and first of all, I don't think we ought to go out on October 1st and try to get a purchase going on all of this. Some of this I think we need to wait until see what the outcome of the election is. And second of all, I think

546
02:28:35.760 --> 02:28:50.960
sometime after if this passes, we need to start getting together and saying, okay, what moving forward do we need to not do that we had planned to do? So, I don't know what the plan is or what the desire is for that, but

547
02:28:50.960 --> 02:29:09.680
and we're facing 25% reduction in our general fund. You don't do some of this same stuff if it passes. Well, my two cents is um one, yes, some of it maybe we decide is not going to be

548
02:29:09.680 --> 02:29:25.840
possible based on future, but some of it like at least what I see listed for the rec center for sure, even though it could be >> potentially that we can't that that's not going to be one of the services that the city provides the same funding for,

549
02:29:25.840 --> 02:29:44.000
but that stuff to me seems like it's a need for right now. Um, so I wouldn't so I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to most of what is listed here, especially in the enterprise funds because those are going to be paid for by totally

550
02:29:44.000 --> 02:30:01.280
different fees like the the fees to provide those services and then the gas taxes and things. But I absolutely I would think that we will need to regroup um probably about the entire funding of the general fund

551
02:30:01.280 --> 02:30:18.240
if depending on the outcome of that vote. So and we are allowed to amend the budget at any time during the year. So, I would agree that we would need to revisit pretty much our entire financial

552
02:30:18.240 --> 02:30:35.920
future depending on what the outcome of that vote. >> Yeah, >> Mr. Viceman, >> some more comments on that and I'll just do uh parks and wreck. Um, you know, some things unless you we we and I say we uh council member Schistler and

553
02:30:35.920 --> 02:30:50.880
myself won't be part of this conversation. Um, but the pre the next council, unless you decide to close the pools, those two pools need to have the Marsite redone regardless unless we just

554
02:30:50.880 --> 02:31:07.760
close them and fill them in. Uh, because the health department controls some of that. So, you can't keep putting off the Marsite. Uh, we tried that years ago and it almost failed miserably. So, uh, things like that and the surface of the playground and some of that stuff and other items. a lot of our capital's in

555
02:31:07.760 --> 02:31:23.200
CIT, which it doesn't. So, I I agree with you, mayor. I think we need to talk about it. Um, but I don't know if um, you know, when is the election, November, December 1, or whatever we get back together. I don't know if it should

556
02:31:23.200 --> 02:31:40.800
be that soon. I also expect if it passes, there'll be some legal challenges and stuff to drag it on a little bit. So, but anyway, but I agree, we need to look at everything. Okay. Anything else with capital questions,

557
02:31:40.800 --> 02:31:57.120
comments? Okay. So, what do we want to do here? We have two more funds. Enterprise and special revenue. Now, we were scheduled to go in the morning, break, and then come back in the afternoon. >> Actually, this presentation encompassed everything. So, you you get enterprise,

558
02:31:57.120 --> 02:32:12.560
special revenue, capital, everything's >> it. You're done. >> We don't have a decision point. We're done. You can make a decision point, I guess, if you want. What I would ask is if you are comfortable with the preliminary budget has been has been presented. If you want to if you want to make a motion saying we're comfortable

559
02:32:12.560 --> 02:32:29.359
with it, we can move forward. If you were strongly opposed to something, we would need to know that pretty quick. Obviously, we've got some outstanding issues, a couple bits and pieces here that we'll we'll bring back to your attention. Um, >> but that's up to you. >> Was this a How is this noticed? This is

560
02:32:29.359 --> 02:32:45.359
a budget work session. Oh, that's right. It's a workshop. So, yeah, we're not voting. We're not voting. So, as long as as long as you our our impression is that you seem relatively okay, what was presented for the most part, barring the questions that I we've made note of, so that we'll operate under that premise

561
02:32:45.359 --> 02:33:02.160
and get answers to anything that's outstanding. >> Council member Kovich, my one major concern is that the the temporary filtering and softening solution isn't in there. So that that would be if we're proceeding with that. I think >> it doesn't have to be included per se,

562
02:33:02.160 --> 02:33:18.479
but it could be included perhaps as a a contingency. >> Yep. Understood. And again, just as a reminder, the the water piece is still the one that's least fleshed out because we're going to address that in August. >> Council member, >> I think we should move continue to move forward

563
02:33:18.479 --> 02:33:33.920
taking consideration the affformentioned items that you still need to come back with uh for the August meeting. I am very comfortable with what I've heard. So good. >> Okay. >> Okay. Right. Well, thank you very much. >> Very good. Any other issues concerning

564
02:33:33.920 --> 02:33:51.000
the budget that anybody wants to discuss before we adjourn? Let's close out. >> Finance, everybody's good. Everything's good. Legal, we're good. Okay, we'll stand a journ. Thank you everybody. >> Thanks everyone.

565
02:33:56.880 --> 02:34:20.439
I'm making Heat. Heat.