took my shoes off be a little taller good afternoon and welcome to the special commission meeting for April 8th to 2025 i'd like to call this meeting to order now if we could please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the
United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all city clerk would you please call roll vice Mayor Vazquez here commissioner
Clark here commissioner Sison here commissioner Dicki here mayor Doctor here thank you all right we're going to have a very short meeting and then we'll get into the the real meat of it which is the workshop so um at this point um I have
some public comment cards and I'm going to read those out and if you'd please come up and um make your statements we'd appreciate it uh Robert Bazo uh hi real quick Robert Bazo Isa Capri and welcome welcome to Tammy uh couple non-aggenda items real quick i've
been asking for a long time to get a lessons learned somewhere on our calendar um to to have all the department heads get together and really discuss in front of uh of the of the public and be moderated on how we responded and uh and maybe provide a plan for the future i really think
that's important again to stop pointing fingers nobody's going to get in trouble um and not personal but really tell us from from public safety to fire city manager city attorney public affairs a good lessons learned we need to get our hands around that and then discuss the
future have all our 1206 packages ready to go uh discuss what we're doing for uh uh market value of houses for example that's going to be important coming around so I really really stress the need for a list is lured number two understand train modification passed
great i was I was gone for that um I would like an answer at some point i know not now is to why we didn't get the uh the fill dirt ordinance back in August i did some research and it was in 2013 with a commission voted uh for no fill it was a commission vote it was
ordinance 13 tac 10 and at some point in time I think we would like an answer as to why um we didn't produce a fill dirt ordinance just just an answer again not pointing fingers not getting personal just like to know that if a a no fill
policy was introduced as an ordinance 20 TAC 13 in 2013 why we couldn't as directed produce a fil dirt ordinance in 2025 uh second uh third thing is uh we did hire an economic development
director and I think it'd be nice to every maybe once a month have that officer come and brief us on what we're doing in terms of economic development um 108th 107th uh the yach club um I I maybe I missed something but I'm not
sure where we stand on promoting a public partner partnership and getting this this uh land developed and produced revenue and also places that we can come and spend all our money and have it come back and fund this beautiful island okay
thank you very much thank you Robert diana Krael good afternoon mayor commissioners and staff um I would like to um have the commission consider an ordinance or
resolution whichever is the proper legal vehicle to extend our building permits expiration dates beyond the normal sixmonth period this would be for permits that have been already issued or issuing underneath our no fee at this
point through I'm not sure what the date is in May for the removal and replacement of damages in our buildings due to hurricanes Helen and Mish and excuse me and Milton for example we could have a threemonth extension
similar to how we did the special events that we can just tack on to that and we can do another extension maybe i'm not trying to delay or push um restoration for us getting back in our homes or
businesses open any but we are going to have some problems as things go on and materialize as we each person gets closer to getting all these improvements done so I would like you guys to
consider having a legal document that will allow us to go past that normal six months and I have outlined a couple of reasons on why we really do need that as a city and one of those is because every
time the state of Florida goes into an emergency status that how no matter how long that period is that adds to current permits so you're chasing a permit date
all the time where I if this in my example you have three months extend three months and then have another extension for that that would take you out a year as long as that does not undercut what the states would be I
think that would be beneficial to the residence the residences the businesses and the staff and part of the reasons on that would be is we're two months from hurricane season we could substain damage again hopefully we don't but we
have to be in reality on this um we are also starting to see that we're having a um availability of supplies special orders appliances interior doors that type of thing and
then competing for com contractors coming into homes and businesses to do the work and as these as the permits are pretty well resolved now we're all competing for all these supplies and
these services and I just don't want the residences or the businesses to have to be chasing well what's my expiration date on my permit what's my expiration date on my permit and chasing that where if we knew that you have your date of your permit you got your six
months you got your three months it's kind of quick and dirty and that would take I think would eliminate some stress on everybody in addition to that um this would allow residents time to pull their
inspections and then for the city staff to be able to get those inspections done and within these time com uh constraints so I would really like for you guys to consider taking up something into this
um venue on extending that regular permit process of over the six months um that's on all of our permits and have some type of a standard way we could do it as long as it did not impede anything
that would um counteract state law thank you thank you Diana mark Hoey uh good afternoon mark Hoey 225 4th Avenue District 3 uh just want to share a couple of thoughts with you
last meeting and I confirmed this this afternoon it was uh mayor doctor had mentioned it had mentioned a move of foot at the legislative level at in Tallahassee about a small town or small city government
consolidation and that kind of you know it sounds really ominous uh on the forefront so I had to do go dig a little more on it and there's a little information about it nothing's going to happen this year but this isn't the first time what I did find is that this
has come up repeatedly in 2009 1983 1975 the legislature addressed this the most recent in 2009 they spent two years studying the impact the effects the wise
the what's the hows of that of course nothing really came that was going to force it but they did change some of the state level rules governing that type of activity and you have to ask yourself why what is all that about well it comes
out they came at a time each of those intervals was at a time of particular financial stress financial stress that was affecting the small cities disproportionately that the smaller communities struggled to maintain the
basic services and much less amenities for the residents and therefore they were having to either cut back on those services or let things slide or raise property taxes or any other types of fees to offset it and I think what's uh
coming back the the return of that thought is that's what's happening now is that under the stress particularly what we see in Treasure Island of the disaster and much of the coastal areas the communities small communities are under stress we're all scrambling for
ways to fund uh basic things that need to be either replaced or redone or added and it's just not uh easy to do that in fact today you all will start that discussion later today in the workshop of how do we maintain and build the
services and structure infrastructure needed in an environment that is is the pressures of costs the pressures of operating keep going up and up and up so I thought it was interesting and you may want to in your spare time not that you
have a lot of spare time look up that 2009 study and it's about 50 pages which is not much when you think of it's coming from the state government uh and take a look at at what they studied and what their conclusions were and it starts to make a bit of sense to you of
course on the surface nobody wants to lose local governance and they weren't really pushing that what the the conclusions were is shared uh infrastructure shared services made sense for these smaller communities
because otherwise it was going to just continue to lump on those costs on the residents so thank you thank you Mark Mitchell mayor commissioners city staff thank you um I was here a few months ago and um we
talked about uh permits being refunded the dollars being refunded so I'm just wondering what the update might be for the residents that have paid that day to get their permit when they're going to be getting their
refunds thank you thank you Mitchell are there any other public comments at this time please come on up hi my name is Kimberly Stewart i live at 11090 Second Street East which is
District 2 I love Palms um I'm just going to ask you please do everything you can to find another way other than raising our property taxes um I'm not sure if any of you have actually like looked at your 2019 versus your 2024 tax rates you can just start by
looking at the mills okay every other fund on here managed to cut their mills over the last 5 years significantly not us we increased them significantly why is that on top of that you got a bonus at least for my property
20% in increased taxable value how is it that not only were the last mills that you chose to implement on us over a course of years not enough but the increase in property taxes enough and now you're going to tax us with more how is it that we're not finding a way to
manage as well as all these other funds have this is something we've got to figure out i know a lot of you guys are new and I put my faith in you guys i I voted you guys in here and and I really want to see you guys make this so that we can maintain an affordable Treasure Island because people like me not going
to be able to afford it if this keeps happening i mean just this increase is significant you know I I don't get increases like this every year on my paycheck um we've got to just figure out a way and I just wanted you to know how concerning it is to me the thought of having them increase to cover things
that maybe aren't necessary you know I wish right now I had the money to tear down my house and build a big huge beautiful amazing home with everything I wanted including that rooftop hot tub because that's what we all want right i don't I can't go out and get bonds i
can't go out and do things put go to my neighbor and say "You know what i've decided that you probably need to kick in for my house because I can't afford it now we can't do that guys let's look at what we need give the basics that we need if we have money later when the city's doing well to provide bigger
services and better toys for everybody then great but right now it's not the time to be doing it thank you very much thank you all right any else anyone else seeing none we will close public comment and we
will move on to our one item today and that is C1 authorization of funds to extend augmented staffing for permitting hi good afternoon um so we are introducing this uh since October we've had uh augmented staff being supplied
through state resources and as well as Jacobs and uh we're looking right now for a continuity of services the 1206 program that was paying for all of these additional resources does end today and we were all very very hopeful that there was going to be some sort of an
extension everyone was asking for it and unfortunately that just did not come to fruition which is why we're here today um with that ending we are asking um for approval to use the remaining funds from the Jacobs contract at approximately
$130,000 to supplement and pay for continuing with the state resources that we currently have not all of them um enough to continue with uh being able to provide those permits in a more timely manner to be able to answer questions to be able to continue with people being
able to to start to move on so um with the with this approval then we can move into then um doing the contracts which we would bring forward to you on the 15th great thank you any questions of staff so I may have missed it when what what
you just said but these going to be the same people that we already have that are that we're currently using i mean because is it there's no really backup as far as you know what the expenditure is what people are getting paid how many people what's the rate there there's really I feel like we're voting on
something that we have no data on whatsoever so the rates are are completely it includes everything if there's any in travel involved if there's any overtime involved if there's any you know so they they include all of
that um so these would be uh the same people that we have um unfortunately we are going to miss about a week um however we're working with the contractors to ensure that hopefully we can continue on with those exact same people that we've had so there's no
downtime for training purposes and that kind of thing um there is a possibility um if you would approve it there is a possibility that we could backdate the contract to today with approval and then knowing that and then bring that contract back to you on the 15th and
hopefully then even continue this week with some of those resources that we have um so that is the goal is to keep the current people to uh ensure that we don't have that downtime and continue training and just to be clear for everybody is this is using funds that
we've already spent correct these are using funds that we've already authorized okay yes authorized or we've already spent we have not no this is what we have not spent in the Jacob's contract okay mayor Commissioner could I thought there was a um an item that was included
in the agenda report this is for actually um five full-time positions and two part-time positions there would be two permit techs one administrative support a plans reviewer a flood plane manager and a
part excuse me a part-time appraiser and a part-time flood plane manager the approximate cost over six weeks is about $135,600 we have approximately 12 to 14 state assets right now but this is taking this
down to um excuse me five full-time and two part-time people in those specialties and what Jessica was was also looking to relay is that these are people who've been working with us since last October so they've been trained
they know our systems they know our processes they're familiar with with how to do this fema came out last week and said they would not support the state with an extension to the 1206 program the Florida Department of Emergency Management Executive Director was trying
to work with the legislature to get funding from them to continue this program for six more months that has not come to fruition but knowing that we are getting the number of rebuild permits that are coming in now and people still putting in applications for getting back
into their homes with other permits we'd like to keep the continuity there for the benefit of the residents and the and the business owners excuse me do we know approximately how much longer that would the 130,000 like how many weeks approximately would that that would that
would give us approximately six to eight weeks six to eight weeks so because the other thing that we can do is if we also find that you know we're we're really that that there's just not enough work then we can also start to kind of back down on some of those hours as well
as long as we justify those positions moving f forward i saw the spreadsheet this morning so looks pretty good to me yeah great and we definitely need it yeah i like keeping the the same staff that have been doing this for the last 6 months so there's not a training curve
or anything like that so uh and these people are much lower hourly rate than some of the other uh contractors we were using correct all right do we have any public comment
yep robert please afternoon Robert Bazo is of Capri um I've worked for federal government 30 years i I know the 126 program quite well this is an interesting document um the whole Jacobs thing for instance
was presented to us as being you know reimburseable not going to be reimbursable and maybe a 75% the 1206 program should have been used to fund every position back in October every position what this is actually saying is
that $130,000 is our money to do this and the question is why we need to defend why we need this augmentation now six months after the uh after the uh uh the hurricanes we should be in normal permitting now and you know it it should
be going smoothly but why do we need the augmentation now and you don't understand this is our money this is not going to be reimbursible this is written ex very craftily by the way um and again there's not not much I haven't seen in my in my life
um and the motion by the way it talks about how with CRS or the workforce group what's that or to hire temporary employees but we were just briefed at that we want to continue the people that are already trained up that's not what
the motion says here who is CRS and who is the workforce group i don't know but Arthur that $130,000 is our money i think they need to defend why we need this why we need augmentation now why
are we don't we have enough staffing and we're doing the normal permitting process now where they come in they have a cost there they do all the work should get out within a day i don't know if this is a good idea this is our money is not going to be reimbursed
and somehow they draw a connection between faster processing through the end of May while the permitting fees are waved they're connecting the permitting fees with the speed of the permitting process it does that does not does not make sense to me
um well obviously if we're understaffed and let's try and increase staffing or come up with a staffing plan which is why we should have a 1206 staffing package ready to go for this season so I don't think they've done a really good job in documenting why we need this
extin staffing and to understand Tammy mentioned something about being obligated or authorized this is this is our money this is not going to be reimbursed this $130,000 is our money and do we really need this i'm not sure
they actually defended it um they actually made a comment saying that the state provided people are great trained up ready to go if we're going to continue those people that's fine i'm willing to spend the money but why
couldn't we done this work in the allocated time of the uh of the hurricanes so this is an interesting document now one department in this city augmented a lot of people for
free a lot of people i won't mention that particular uh department head but the city was flooded with these individuals from throughout their states in their own cars fully funded it was a 1206 program
why didn't we have 20 permit people here flood plane manager and emergency manager on day one paid for by the federal government this is our money and now we're being asked to extend for six or eight more weeks i'm not sure thank you
thank you Robert any other Mr vasy um good afternoon Intervasa District 2 um I'd like to echo Robert's comments um this sounds like it's sort of not ready
um for prime time in the request i don't know how you put a page and a half forward on $130,000 and then you there's a spreadsheet as a resident would love to see that spreadsheet didn't make it to the agenda packet somehow so we'd
like to see the positions the hourly rates the number of hours i'm hearing six to eight weeks duration understand what tasks they are um you read a list that's great we'd like to have seen that before this special meeting so since it didn't go out maybe you should consider rolling it since you have another
meeting on Tuesday get the information out there so you all can look at it and we can look at it and comment fairly on it because uh it it doesn't make sense but it's also very hard with a page and a half of information to to understand how you're going to spend $130,000 on it
thank you any other public comments okay we'll close our public comments um do we have a motion i make a motion to authorize the city manager to utilize the remaining funding from the Jacobs contract not to exceed
130,000 for the hiring of temporary employees and contracting with the state resources uh CRS andor workforce group beginning today May 31st and instruct the city manager to bring the contracts back before the commission for approval on
4:15 i second we have a motion and a second do we have any discussion i'd like to add one comment the as far as the need uh we were running prior to the hurricanes we we're averaging about 30 31 permits a week that's what we were
staffed for uh as of the most recent week we're still running about 100 new permit applications a week so we're we're three and a half times uh over our normal uh uh application new applicants
coming in so that's why the need for the additional people for uh through May 31st we also had a resident who asked us to extend uh no permitting fees for some applications so I mean if we went down to the normal staffing I would say it
would take a lot longer so I'm really torn on this one because I really um I Jacobs has not really performed to what we thought they were going to from the beginning and the fact
that this is this is money we have not spent and we are uh I don't know i'm really torn on this one because we have a tight budget we're wanting to extend free permits that's less money that we're going to have um you know we're not going to have the
property taxes we normally have i mean yes I mean in the general scheme of spending it's $130,000 but when you look at all these add up and I'm just really concerned about that i do understand it may slow
the permitting a bit um I do get that um I just I I'm I don't know how I feel about this one and I'm think I'm thinking I'll know here shortly but I'm I'm very torn on it i'm in the same position uh no last thing I want to do
is slow down permitting but um I hope the woman that spoke earlier about taxes going up stays around because I'm going to address that in uh some of the talks later and again $130,000 is $130 and we have got to buckle down around this town
we cannot continue to operate the way we've operated over the last years where you just hey spend whatever you want and then tax the residents that that doesn't fly with me so uh to me this is what I wish I had more data than I really did to know what this what this is all about
uh but $130,000 is $130,000 so I I think it's uh last thing I want to do is slow down permitting but I think we could have been a lot further along with the permits had we run things more effectively so it's it's a tough one
i don't think that it's uh it's all that tough i I do realize that's $130,000 and and that's important but um the stat that uh Commissioner Dicki had um on our normal activity to where we still are
we're three-fold what uh above our normal activity and we definitely don't want to take a step back we've I think that we've got this you pretty much licked i think you know that uh that we're moving forward um and I'm hearing lots of positive things uh but I think
it really comes down to the volume of activity that is still out there is there a way to find out as opposed to um where we're at on how many permits are coming in on a daily or um weekly to know um because I mean
obviously absolutely we needed them in the beginning and I truly know how much that helped um but I also know that has slowed way down so I just you know I'm a little unsure whether it's it's for the amount coming in because obviously I don't want to
slow it down either i mean heck we all had to wait for our permits forever so I don't want that either but without knowing how many in comparison even to say two months ago 3 months ago how many are coming in weekly daily or weekly I
would kind of really love to know that as a comparison because we kind of don't have anything to compare the workload i will I will say this when I went doortodoor campaigning um I found out that there are a lot of people who have
never submitted a permit yet and so at some point we're gonna have to address that and how we're going to handle that so there are going to be considerably more permits coming in um I mean those people I think they said I'm just going to fix my house i'm going to take pictures and when the city wants to come
talk to me about it i'll get my permit then so um with that being said I think there will be a fair amount more permits that are coming down the pipe is there a way to get I I have a print out right here you do okay that I keep
track of every time the the new numbers released I I update my own little worksheet here to track uh the number of permits but we peaked uh at about 160 a week uh in the middle of November in terms of the number of permits coming in again prior to the storm we were
averaging 30 about 31 a week uh prior to the storms uh last week week ending March 31st i haven't updated it with the latest numbers cuz I haven't seen them yet uh but last week we had 100 the prior 3 weeks we averaged we didn't
average we had 95 94 and uh the week of March 24th we had 71 uh new uh permits coming in at that time thank you i appreciate that Ardan so basically we have about double coming in what the normal is triple yeah triple
well yeah if you look at weeks March 10th March I wouldn't call that triple if we average before the storm 31 right and last week we had 71 no no we had Last week we had 100 the week before we did have 71 the two Oh I apologize yeah that's all right two weeks prior to that
we had 95 and 94 okay do we know how many um plate residences or buildings have not asked for a permit how many how many are outstanding that have never applied for a permit commissioner I don't have that number off the top of my head but I can get
that for you it's over a thousand that's what I heard not not confirmed over a thousand that still have not ever applied for a permit with the deadline our most recent uh uh
extension of waving the permit fees for hurricane related uh expenses ends May 31st so you know I'm telling people when I talk with them is if you want to get your permits in now between now and May 31st to avoid those permit fees this is
the time to do it so I am expecting that that number is not going to get less than 100 for the next few weeks between now and that May 31st and commissioners it's not a a light ask to do this because $130,000 is a lot of
money period it it it is and and we don't overlook that the numbers of the permits that are coming in have come down slightly but we're not requesting to keep all 17 or 15 CRS and workforce those are the two contractors through
the state uh the entities that the state contracted with to provide those resources here locally under the 1206 program and they've been paying for those resources up through today you know it's not a light s but the permit numbers have not dropped off and in fact the permits that are coming in now are
rebuilds and rebuilds are much more complicated and are much more intense than what you have in just a regular permit to take your structure back to pre-torm condition you know so while while we know that it appears that we're asking for
assistance we need the assistance to do this if we go back to Blue Sky Operations and we go to you know 30 to 32 permits that we have the staff to process it will probably go back out to where there's a 30-day wait time for individuals to to get a permit and we don't want that to happen we want to try
and get as many people to completely be in their home as um Commissioner Clark mentioned we need to do the force or excuse me the code enforcement piece and find these you know hundreds to a thousand entities that have not requested a permit yet and figure out
why they haven't done that and get that appropriate paperwork submitted from them so that is all part of the ask and that's what's in the the manpower pool that was requested i guess my biggest fear is at the end of this six
weeks you know people are still going to be getting their rebuild permits plus the people who haven't gotten permits are going to be coming in with their permits so we're going to ask for another $130,000 because now we're going to have another influx of permits coming in and please understand like everyone else I
had to wait for my my permit a very long time um I um I'm just it just seems like it's going to continue because now we're going to have all the permits coming in from the people that didn't have permits who did rebuild their house and you know they're
just kind of waiting for the city to come out and they're going to have to apply and then call for inspection so there's going to be for a very long time a continuous amount of heavy load for permits and I get that and I respect that i just the the continual well we
need to extend this we need to extend this i don't see an end to that in six weeks because of the influx and that's my I'm just trying again trying to be like I said in the last meeting trying to be a very good steward of the money
and it's a lot of money and let's be honest it's probably not going to be the only time it's asked it's going to be asked again in six more weeks because our permits probably aren't going to slow down because now we're getting into um different kinds of permits um we're
getting into people like myself who you know a couple weeks after the or a couple months after the storm my backyard started sinking in and it destroyed my pool so now I'm going in for a pool permit so there's going to be those type of permits and I'm not the only one who's going to have to deal
with that but nevertheless when's it going to end you know in six weeks are we gonna approve another $130,000 for six more weeks and that's that's the problem I'm having with this not definitely i know the
staff is working extremely hard and I know having the help is amazing but I just that's where my hesitancy is is where's the end because the permits aren't going to stop flowing in in six weeks well I'm hoping again I I hope
each each of the commissioners my my colleagues here are doing the same thing I am and that's talking to your constituents making aware that these permit permit fee waivers expire at the end of Absolutely and if you want to save the money from those this is the time to get those permit fees in and I
definitely agree but I'm definitely getting the feedback of we have to stop spending just unending spending this money and to exactly what Chris said it's um you know the city's going to have to go out and start knocking on doors and we know that's coming for
those people who didn't submit for a permit so they're going to have to go through the process of getting the permit again and doing this so where does the slowdown come from do I see that slowing down in six weeks no which means that's another
$130,000 for you you you know again I'm not trying to be difficult i'm just I'm just um Clearly this I don't see an end in sight and I mean I guess the other part of it is theoretically unless there's an extend extenduating circumstance you probably should have
had your permit turned in by now right and if someone who didn't pull a permit did the work um after the way thing and took pictures and is going to wait to get their permit later again I probably don't at this point don't blame them for doing that after how the way the permit
process went but why do we care if they have to wait their house is already put back together or three months to get a permit right exactly so I mean at some point you got to look at that too and if I have to wait a month or two for a pool permit I have to wait a month or two for a pool permit and that's that again
that's my biggest thing is it's just I don't see it ending at six weeks and that's my biggest fear i don't see it ending at six weeks the ask well I'll commit to if it doesn't end in six weeks I'll be uh I'll be talking
like you and uh Commissioner Clark are so I appreciate that okay city clerk would you please call a roll vice Mayor Vasquez why do I have to be first on this no I'm kidding you're number one
i'm going to vote no commissioner Dicki I'm sorry oh roll call they're already starting to to the vote i thought I heard Commissioner Clark uh uh I go first second yeah I know how you
went i just thought I heard Anyway I Commissioner Clark nay commissioner Sison no mayor Doctor I Okay three nos two four um it did not
carry all right this is uh the end of this uh special meeting uh in 5 minutes we will start with our workshop and welcome to the commission workshop for April 8th 2025 i'd like to call this meeting to
order and we're going to start in jumping in with uh our discussion items and the first discussion item A1 public safety building air commissioners good afternoon good afternoon um as requested Chief Arley
and I are here if if you guys have questions if um you'd like for us to do a brief overview we're prepared to do that as well so however you'd like to handle this yeah if you'd do a brief overview and uh and also uh if you'd be able to touch upon I know we all can but touch upon the uh what's happened with
the um the legislature and uh our uh our hope and prayer so absolutely we'll do Mr mayor uh so on behalf of Chief Barkley uh you know thank you for having us here and to the citizens thank you for being here
and and hearing our our desperate plea at this point uh to get a public public safety facility funded designed and built uh at this point we need a facility the temporary one behind you uh they're just not getting it it's not a long-term
solution it's not a cost-effective solution to to the situation you know we have been looking at this for I've been here six and a half years since before I got here we've been studying it we had always planned on going out uh for a bond or borrowing to do a public safety
facility um in that whole time and it's been put off and put off and put off uh in the CIP it was originally budgeted at $8 million uh at this point we're back before you five and a half years later asking for 12 million and I can touch on
on why as I go through this but if we don't do this and I and and chief and I have to come before you in another year and a half or two we're going to be asking for 14 million it's just the economics of it with the inflation and the cost of construction so um with that
I'll go into why so immediately after Helen we came back from our off island emergency operations center and police and fire went right to work life safety stuff clearing the roads making sure we didn't have electrical lines on houses uh
people weren't trapped flooding was receding we were making access over 4 ft of sand the entire width of of Sunset Beach a lot of work to do our folks at at the end of the shift when we we were all hands on deck and when we we had
half working day and half working night at the end of that shift when we expected them to to lay down and get some rest so they could work the next day um they had nowhere to go we were at seven different locations during that time uh the floor of of this building in
second second floor right here with no AC for a couple nights uh we were at a church we stayed in a church um the floor of a library at St pete College in our vehicles uh several town home uh
condo associations reached out and gave us places to stay th those just aren't sustainable solutions for a modern city and a modern public safety workforce we need a facility that we can come back to on day one after we get flooded and go
right back to work serving the citizens um the community center which has been mentioned and other facilities that are on grade are simply not an option they will not survive a flood the community center doesn't have drywall in the first four feet or 3 ft out as we speak we get
flooded again if we're in there as is our temporary facility or we decide to go permanently there it's just not an option because we'll be flooded out again remodeling experience with city hall i know some folks have mentioned let's put police on the fourth floor and
and build a fire station standalone and save some money not really the case as I'll get into but again we're remodeling and we saw what the experience was with this building when we did a remodel it's my professional opinion and chief's professional opinion that a
purpose-built structure built for the next 50 years considering what we know is going on with growth in the state of Florida is the way to go um Steph's recommendation is the spot here that we already own where our temporary facilities are right next to
city hall it's going to be proximal to the city center for access to residents and visitors it's it's a great to have a beautiful building right here i mean we on 108th we even got tons of visitors coming by police and fire just wanting
to talk wanting to share um talk about their experience on Treasure Island meet the firefighters and police officers it's part of the community and we want to be centrally located not to mention as we've reported in past it's a 38 second reduction in response time
citywide for your fire and EMS which is significant to our current 4 minute and 14 second response time so we'd reduce that collocating share space it allows us to have redundant generators if one
fails we've got the one right here we can plug back into and pair down operations and and have backup you know emergency power extra staff collaboration being right here i mean I can't count how many times I made the trip back and forth
between 108th and and city hall to to collaborate it was great when we were out in city hall but now that the majority of staff is over here um I think it just promotes a better more efficient more connected police fire and
city staff departments so collate locating uh FD and PD it allows us to share space it'll decrease the footprint of the individual facilities where we to separate them we are fac we are building
in an EOC the emergency operations center will be where we conduct noticed events you know we will manage our our big beach events um any downtown events and those are only going to increase I think as we as we have more residents and more visitors come to Treasure
Island so um there's training space a fitness space uh even simple things such as a lobby and an elevator in storage space can be shared if we're in separate separate facilities that's not the case we have to build twice that space
um couple of examples and there the myth is out there and I've heard it from several folks that that if we're asking for $12 million for a police and fire facility if we put fire on the or police on the fourth floor of city hall and build that out um then the the fire
station should rationally only cost 6 million right that's just not the case adding the third or the second story to a combined building should only add about a million and a half or two million to the project and when you consider what it costs to build out a
not ideal space on the fourth floor that we're not sharing space again um we don't even know if this building can handle it we'd have to do an engineering study uh police has to have concrete block constructed evidence and your was
it a firearms an armory yeah I have a list of that's included in there i can cover that yep so we we'd have to do an engineering study I would imagine to make sure that we can actually and that would be part of the design you would obviously do design and engineering anyway when you built it out because
we'd have to go get a permit right so you need to have those things um a couple of examples south Pasadena just built station 20 it's a beautiful station right across from Palms of Pasadena Hospital that's an 11,000
square foot fire station standalone fire station uh they spent $10.4 million on that um remember this was contracted two years ago if they were to contract it today it' be a lot more because of inflation and that's $817 a square foot
at two year ago price clearwater station 47 which is not in a coastal alay zone which decreases the engineering and building requirements significantly um I'm sorry South Pasadena was 945 a
square foot station 47 is 817 a square foot both are currently operational but again you know with the significant inflation and increase in in building materials and building costs over the past two years um what we're hearing
from our design and uh construction folks that we've consulted now we haven't contracted with anyone yet but just going out and talking with other police and fire chiefs and folks in the industry again we're looking at $1,000 a square foot for a coastal
Azone resilient mitigated building that that meets our needs and that's today's needs if if at some point down the road we build this and then I'm standing before you and I won't be before you in 10
years but okay in five years um and the commission wants to increase the heightened density requirements and allow more residents and um greater density i may need a ladder truck if I don't get it our ISO rating goes up and
cost of insurance goes up throughout the city so there's these trickle trickling down and compounding effects that we need to think about as we're planning for today's facility looking into the future for the next 50 years this building is going to last so what we propose is is no
excessive amenities polished concrete floors industrial surfaces um decontamination and reduce contamination being forefront you know making it a safe space for our police and fire um moderate fill would be allowed i know
there's there's some discussion about structural fill not allowed um this is not structural fill it would we would bring it up a few feet uh the apparatus bay floor a few feet to stop with that summertime flooding um and it would be compacted so that you know it's
structurally significant enough to hold the weight of the building when they say structural fill they mean like building into the slide of a slope of a mountain you can back fill and build a a retaining wall to hold it in place and then build on top of that so Phil would be allowed to bring it up a little bit
the next section would be the fire fire department programming which would be um like on I I would call it the second floor but it's really a half floor above the first floor it would be above 13 ft so it would be above base flood elevation plus two as required and then
police would be above that so those would not flood the apparatus bay would be designed if it did take a storm surge it's a wash through design and we go right back to work so we've done our diligence in planning and and what we
present to you is clearly our our 60 plus years of combined experience telling you what we need to provide public safety to the citizens and residents and visitors of Treasure Island um and and I can pause here for
questions if you'd like i still want to talk about about funding and temporary stations so it's your pleasure if you'd like to ask questions or have me continue uh please continue okay so the funding on this we've been talking about
doing a public safety facility for well over six years at least we've got a 2018 study that gave all kinds of different locations for it um it's been bounced around and and approved and put on hold and you know ever since it was just a way wee bitty public safety facility of
$8 million still 12,000 square feet but now we are where we are and we're trying to get this done we asked the state for a um it was a bold ask of $6 million can I Can I say something real quick on
that there was some misinformation put out um I talked to Senator Diggley probably about every two to three days and I spoke with him at length actually driving back from Tallahassee he was driving back on Friday and that was
something um he wanted to make sure and let everyone know including you both that there's everyone thinks that this that the Senate has dropped it down to a million-doll ask it is a million-doll placeholder and what a million-dollar
placeholder is is basically that keeps it open for a discussion which is what it's going into now is going into conference which basically means the Senate and the House are having a conference with one another to try to figure out how to fund this one thing
Senator Diggley wanted to make very clear he is not asking for one he's not asking for three he is 100% still fighting to bring us home $6 million he it is his number one priority he is willing to take from other projects to
make this happen um and he just wanted to make sure that I made it clear to not just you guys but to everyone that that is not a closed subject as a matter of fact it's a very very fluid situation
right now senator Hooper 100% supports us i've talked to him he 100% supports us um I've talked to a couple people in the House um that's kind of where a little bit of the hesitancy is has been to be quite honest with you but that is
in conference now so I just want to make it really really clear that the 6 million is by far not off of the table so I just wanted to make that real clear and I'm didn't mean to interrupt you Chief but I just before you kind of went on on that I wanted to speak on that
because I just had that conversation let me just add to that um there are three different proposals in the state government um the Senate has proposed a budget of 117 billion the governor has
proposed a budget of 115 billion and the House has proposed a budget of 113 billion the lowest and that's the one that we're really fighting for this the Senate has been doing everything they can but the uh in the House it never
even made the first cut call was not there never fight for us so but it is when you take a look though the house has also got the lowest budget at 113 billion uh the governor is right about in the middle and then the other is 117
billion um it's going to be a tough ask and uh and we did we sat with uh Senator Hooper who is running the Senate budget uh we sat with Nick Diggley and uh and and he they're for us but I'm not real confident especially
since the House is going with the lowest budget number and uh and basically we had heard that uh in the House it it did not make it so it's still it's not dead there is a placeholder and if you if you know the difference between the the
Senate's rules and the House rules the House rules when they do a budget the budget comes up and they do not have an opportunity to put any amendments in the Senate can do amendments and they can do a lot of amendments and I think this
year it was a little over a hundred amendments now that doesn't mean that it's completely dead either because now what has to happen is the you get the top folks in the House and the top folks in the Senate and they have to come together and decide upon what those
numbers are going to be so it it's a lot easier in the Senate to to get something through a little tougher because there are no amendments in the House but that's where it's going to the next thing that's going to happen is that they're going to get together here shortly they're right now in the midterm
uh and they're going to see what we're going to have so um it it's not going to be that we have to wait you know another year to to see what we have it it does say that we're going to need to uh take at least probably another six weeks uh
to see if the uh the state house is going to actually help us out and it does help for citizens to reach out and make a plea to the house it really does and the Senate even though they've got our backs if you guys you know take the time to write an email or to make the
phone call it really truly does help i can't tell you John would tell you the same how many told us it's you know it is a lot harder to tell people no to their face which is why we were in their face and um but hearing from the citizens is everything so please you know take the time to do that it takes
five minutes so thanks John amen and I second both of those so absolutely what I heard as well thank you for sharing i was up last week and met with Senator Hooper who is appropriations chair in the Senate so he carries some weight and he definitely
has our back um Rep cheney has our back too she just got out Yep wrangled political voted whatever um it just didn't make it in the House so to your point if it's better to be alive and won it's better to be alive in the Senate so that's a plus um additionally we've got
our lobbyist up there working for us and and I don't know if this the the residents know but I'm sure you're all aware legislature doesn't have to abide by the sunshine law they they do all these negotiations closed door absolutely and when they come out of of
meetings the lobbyists are in the hallway hey Sick or Senator how you doing and and remember me and what we're asking so not only is our city lobbyist up there uh for state government but the special district lobbyist uh Jim Milikin
uh who's also a firefighter here in Lman I spent some time with him at the capital last week he's going to have our back as well um and then the Florida uh Florida Fire Chiefs Association's lobbyist um while we have as a state our
bills that we're working on he also agreed to kind of you know nudge and elbow as best he could for our our appropriations request so yeah I I do uh appreciate you mentioning the sunshine law and sunshine law basically says that
we cannot talk about anything that that uh city related that comes before us um and even they they say in the ethics training that you know even for you to be seen in a in a group you know kind of is is not the right optics so we don't get to see each other the reason that I
called for this special meeting was so that it is a new commission and that we can get everybody together in this room and we can say what we want to say here and we can disagree we can agree we can you know shake our heads we can do whatever but uh this is really for us
the four items that we have are are relatively important we've got another group that looks just like it and we're probably going to have some more uh meetings um probably is something like this in May as well and uh but that's
that's what we're trying to to work through is you know what can we do what can't we do what how are people feeling uh about the uh you know the different scenarios that you've thrown out there's a couple of other scenarios I think that are probably out there but uh we appreciate you bringing them all to
light as well thank you and and I've just got a few more things and I'll wrap it up here but um you know whether it's 1 million 3 million or the full six whatever we get this year uh we can always ask again for more next year we've always known we
were going to go to bond or to borrowing for this anyway because this money our next pots are FEMA money resilient Florida grant at 1.5 million which we should do fairly well on um insurance it's a big question mark we're working through that now so the bottom line is
that borrowing is going to be required and then when all these pots of money come together just like we did with Palms and Capri bridges you know we took out basically mortgage on the bridge we'll pay those off early that's right is that kind of the the plan legal
that's what I thought that's that's where kind of our heads are at is we knew we'd have to borrow for these anyway and we're working as hard as we can and I know you are as well to get money from every other source besides our residents pocketbooks because it's
just not fair and this is the the argument I made when I was up on the capital is at the capital was you know we've been hit and we got hit by three hurricanes last year um it's not fair to ask our residents to pay for police fire
public works recreation infrastructure while they're paying rent on a house where they have to live because they can't pay the house that they own and or paying a mortgage on and that they have to sink substantial dollars into to repair so we're kind of counting on
those optics to help us out with grant money and state appropriations money so we're we're not insensitive when we come up here and ask for the $12 million we feel the pain and we understand i think the greater injustice would be not building the appropriate
facility or building an inappropriate facility even worse for the next 50 years and saddling 50 years worth of of residents and taxpayers with a burden that isn't meeting their needs uh I also I wanted to talk about the temporary
station you see it before you uh we had it up a minute ago and it's just a cost comparison to show that we are doing our our darnest to try and cut costs as low as we can fema paid for the temporary stations initially um we're down to a
75% federal and 25% local cost share with the state picking up half of ours currently um but these are the totals of what they look like and and the juryy's still out and we're hoping to hear back from our insurance company at any point um if we're building a new facility and
we're out of our old one because it's substantially damaged uh once we get that final assessment they may pick up the cost anyway but we have found a much uh much more economical and frankly a better option it's a company called
Wilcott and these are triple wides trailers that are put together and essentially delivered on site uh you'll see that the current one fors the provider while great for for immediate needs and they go up quickly and they're scalable and modular um they wrap their
setup and tear down costs into the monthly cost as you can see so um the delta on this is almost a million dollars you know 1.4 4 versus 400,000 um so we're definitely going to go with the will once we make a determination on
insurance and I I'm just asking the commission again today to confirm that the employee parking lot over on 108 is probably the best spot for that and you can it can come out in discussions i'm just putting it out there for now so um and we do I believe
we have a slide that shows where we anticipate putting those if if it helps for your decision- making we can get Brett in the back to put that up here shortly brett doing his magic there we go obviously fire is in red police is in blue
so uh that's this where we'd put those temporary stations they can be hauled away in the event of we come under threat of another storm and replaced back and we'd have a place to go back to work so uh next steps so we have a request for qualifications for design and
engineering out currently those responses are due in two today two days from today we'll do a an opening and see what we have we're expecting based on the pre-bid meeting and and emails I've received asking questions um and we've
posted those to our website but uh six to nine responses which should give a fairly good cross-section of architects and engineers to choose from we'll evaluate those and bring the first three
top three back to commission for uh authorization to negotiate with the top one and if that doesn't work we'll move down the list i think we talked about that at last commission meeting how that process works um so that's coming soon we're pushing this process as quick as
we can really quick faster than I've ever seen it done just because we know it's going to take 18 months maybe 24 months to actually take possession of the keys of a new building so we want to shave off time wherever we can once we get to about 20% design once we've
approved an architect and engineering firm uh we'll put out a request for proposals from construction managers at risk and those folks will help with the design and when we when we put that out we tell them what our budget is and
we'll get a do not exceed cost when we hire them and we will build this building for you come hell or high water for $12 million or maybe 115 we don't know we'll see what happens um and if and if it goes over they eat that and if it goes under well good for
them um but we're going to make sure we get the building that we contracted for so I think that eliminates a lot of the the back and forth with the other types of construction and you know the arguing and lawsuits and coming back to replace
windows a year later um we we've decided as staff that we recommend to you that a Seamar is the way to go on that it takes a lot of the guesswork and the the stress down the road out of it uh we'll come before the commission with the Seamar recommendation and a
price and and that'll be our proposal is as professionals and subject matter experts to what we feel is best serving the citizens but at the end of the day uh whatever the citizens through the commission decide we'll implement it
we just want to make sure that any questions that you guys have please ask us any questions that the citizens have there's a lot of rumors out there there's a lot of stuff going on our staffs hear that it's stressing our staffs out you know these are the same men and women that busted their butts
you know after the storm and pre-torrm and to get all this goodwill in the community and they really don't know what the future looks like cuz they keep coming up to me hey chief is this true this is this true that is this true we're going on the fourth floor are we going on the second floor are we going over another they going to build this thing so we really want to just get
direction from from the commission again firm it up and please ask any questions about you know the feasibility of certain things we are experts in our areas you hired us to be the chiefs and run these departments i think we've proven to you you know over our tenure here that we're not we don't ask for
shiny toys that are don't have a purpose you know I hate the term Taj Mahal and stuff like that we will build this thing for as bare bones as we absolutely have to and understand you got 70 years out of that old building 70 years out of the old police and fire department you know
thank God city hall moved i can't imagine what we would all look like right now if this if we hadn't taken possession of this building like this building or not if we didn't have an elevated structure for city hall and you thought permits took time with this one I I can't even imagine what it would have been like the most important thing
for a city to do its residents is make sure that you can get back to operational as quickly as possible and I really want to get out of those trailers before rainy season because if go up to the third floor look out the window and they've put their their answer to the leaks the leaky roofs is putting a tarp
on it and my employees God bless them they are absolutely hardcore awesome people my civilian staff moves their personal belongings around in the trailer every day when the when it's leaking through the roof when we get rain and stuff like that so we have to be able to operate we will serve the
community if you thought we did a good job after the storm wait till we get our own station here that can handle this we flipped the generator on and we're back to business yeah fire department had a tarp it blew away you won't see it yeah chief Chief Barkley could you take
a couple minutes and review the uh the elements of this of of what's required for the police station yes and it's important to note on this this is literally a a walkthrough of our old department we're not asking for anything we didn't have before the only thing
that was detrimental in the old building and because it was built in the 50s was the space layout was bad we're not asking for much more square footage than that the additional square footage is for the EOC that we're proposing which is a multi-purpose room it's just not an EOC it's a training room it's used for
many different things so we're talking when you walk in the front door many of you already been in the building it's a secured lobby of the reception area with protective glass of course for the people behind there um separate entrance for employees administrative offices that would be for myself my second in
command and the administrative assistant a small lunch dinner break room you know we have in there basically a sink a refrigerator and a microwave oven it's nothing fancy no stoves or anything detective office with two different workstations a sergeant's office we have four sergeants so that would be four
workstations an officer workstation and they do the majority of their reports in their vehicles but in the event that they have to come in they may have a complicated report or bring in a lot of evidence it would be two workstations for the officers quartermaster storage area for police uniforms and equipment
armory for storage of weapons and ammunition property evidence processing station and storage area uh officer locker room with 24 lockers restroom area with showers for male and female a wait room which we share with the fire department once again the training
meeting room was at EOCC and a garage or storage area for our UTV police bicycles and the antique police car and that's everything we had in the old building that's not really asking for anything anything different now those are kind of our minimum requirements and I know there's the square footage plan that was
floating around and literally they an architect came around and asked me and chief well what do you need for this and that and somebody said oh my god why do you need 400 square feet in your office none of that none of that is set in stone we don't have any plans yet at all so that was just to fill in the blanks and and come up square footage and stuff
like that so that none of that was in stone and to Chief's earlier point you know the building is 68 years old we're looking 50 years in the future as we design this one that's 118ear span and we're asking for,61 more square feet
i I think the important thing is we all know everybody's sitting in this room and and I've came from a a high growth area as well on the water in Florida post storm i think we know that Treasure Island is not going to look right now in in 5 years it's not going to look the
way it does right now i think we all know that we all know Treasure Island's growing and I I just don't want to you know build something let's just get something out of the way put it somewhere off to the side so it's done and then five or six or seven years we're regretting doing that i just want
to be smart smart with our money and do the right thing for the community which will be everybody's legacy here this is a legacy structure this is a 50-year building uh regarding the cost I I just want to add a little bit to what we heard from Chief Barnes on that he
talked about the South Pasadena fire station being $11 million uh I did I just Googled recent Florida cost of recent Florida fire stations and uh what I picked up was that South Pasadena one
uh the Palm Coast which is the Orman Beach area they just did last year January last year two fire stations uh one at 9.7 million another at 9.9 million uh the St john's County which is a St augustine area also two fire
stations 9.9 million 10.8 million so you can see those you know I' I've heard the number you talk about hearing rumors and stuff like that i've heard the number floated around build a $5 million fire station i don't think I don't think that exists i think if you eliminate the police
department the fire department is going to cut the cost on half that's just not true right right i mean there with coastal a zone construction there's things like a matte foundation which is six feet of poured concrete under the entire slab um there's things that are done to engineer the building that
whether you put a second story on it for police or not will be done anyway so your costs are going to be what they are and we like I said we don't know what it would take to outfit hopefully not the community center but that or fourth floor or
second second floor and part of fourth floor it's just a lot of unknowns when it's worked for us for years it's a great dynamic to be police and fire in the same building we are your emergency services um we collaborate on a lot of
stuff both daily and in emergency situations it's it serves the citizens best to have this in the same building i mean to me it's common sense that combining the two just makes sense i mean you could you share so many
facilities um and there's so much intertwined things that you guys do together on calls and everything else to me it makes sense and I mean I know just what I've observed coming in and out of city hall how many times I see both of you walking back and forth i've seen you
sitting behind the counter back there assisting with city stuff nothing to do with fire the constant back and forth um I've seen it just coming in and out but um but yeah the the combination of the two to me is it really only makes sense
and again I I lean on the professionals and it's not like you guys are new at your jobs and you know what you need and you're definitely I I know the panhandle there was a police fire combo was $27 million in the
panhandle so you're definitely not asking for a Taj Mahal and again this is this has been you you guys are very generous in saying six to seven years because my calculations are 10 years it's been talking about so you're you're
being generous mayor doctor is there public comments this there will be public public comments after we uh have the opportunity to address staff gotcha do you want us to give our opinions on this after public comment or now or no well if you need answers from the the chiefs
do it now i mean we could always pull them back up but uh now would be the time well I I I guess I have a question um you talked about police being you know possibly in this building
um so hypothetical question last night I was across the street at my neighbors watching the national champ Florida win the national championship game had I seen someone break into my house and I had to call the
police how would that call differ at all from the response whether the police was headquartered in this building or the police was in a $12 million facility it wouldn't and I've said from the get-go this the location
of this public safety facility has nothing to do with police response time because we're in our cars out on the street we never we don't respond from the station that's never been any of my selling points for the police department it's just colllocating it that that's all it's most economical it shares space
like we mentioned and it's our mode of operation is to work together on a lot of stuff it's the um administrative things that go on behind the scenes that keep those officers on the street and doing their job that would occur in a shared facility
there was one talking point that you had that I don't necessarily agree with and I I'll ask both of you and that is the EOC um you know we are on a barrier island you know if we got tornado tornadoes coming hurricanes coming whatever it is uh we probably don't want
to be on the island and if we if we did if it was some other type of event we could utilize space in this building whether it be the fifth floor the fourth floor that's that's not built out yet whatever it is and it would be a lot cheaper uh having an EOC even if it was in this building than
$1,000 you know per square foot um so that that would be kind of my comment as to the the EOC i don't know how safe this building is though that's the problem i don't know what this building is rated to this is a windowwalled building i mean I've seen condominiums and I'm saying from personal experience or condominiums in Naples that got
completely blown through when you have a windowal building the wind comes from a certain direction blows the wind all the way through furniture and everything else goes out the other side of the condo so unless unless the windows were and I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt unless the windows were reinforced I I I don't know i mean we're going to build this structure that we could withstand
that and I would say you know about that it would all depend on the type of storm we could get a a landfalling storm south of us we could have a wind event like we did with Milton we could have stayed in this facility not this particular here but a public safety facility we could stay in there it's all going to determine storm surge whether or not we
need to evacuate which is the same thing we tell our residents too we build a facility that would be okay for wind rating but storm you know we run from the water height from the wind but having the EOCC is we come and work in the EOC for multiple days after the event that's just not during the event
we are we are in the EOC for two or three days before the event and in multiple days I mean I we weren't even back in city operations here probably for a couple weeks after after Milton um so that's that's the purpose of having the EOC in that building and we
programmed that that space is 465 ft it can be reduced that can be you know changed when we get in consult consultation with designers um but it's also a training room we we conduct training classes our ongoing education that for medical education we do monthly
police officers we bring in experts to teach advanced skills the police officers need a readoff room and and you know a place to sit down for noticed events on the beach where we have a controlled area that that we can manage from and we can have our folks check in
before they disperse out into the field it's a multi-purpose room it won't sit vacant until hurricane season i assure you if if that is if that's what this comes down to is eliminating the building having an EOC if that's that you know we we can talk about eliminating anything we're giving you our expert opinion on what we think we
need which is the only thing we didn't have previously was an EOC we didn't have a room in our well our building was right next to the water so we have to run when there's a tropical storm but that's one thing we didn't have i mean if that is a deal killer with an EOC and we choose to do one here we'll do one
here we're just giving you our expert opinions on what we think the minimum requirements of the building are public comments you want to move to Everybody's Good for Sure okay yeah now we'll take public comments and I do have uh some
cards uh let's see here i don't know what I guess it's I guess I don't have any for this one i do have for uh later in the discussions so he has a public comment go ahead
Robert thanks a lot Robert Vazer out of Capri nobody's a bigger fan of of fire and public safety than uh than I am i mean I think we have two of the greatest chiefs I've ever met and I've worked a lot with their emergency support function 13 uh when I was at Homeland Security
unbelievable advocates fantastic love them and I trust them i kind of think it's kind of the horse uh horse in the court situation um it's want versus need by all means i mean as as Commissioner Vasquez said uh having fire and public
safety together yeah i mean I that's great that's optimum not a whole lot around here are combined but yeah that's optimum for sure um Commissioner Dicki mentioned cost let's say $10 million it really comes down to square footage you
know how much square footage do you need so I mean it's when we do budgeting at least I have uh I mean they're they're provider of services and they're the experts they provide you and us uh requirements but it's really up to you guys to determine the dollar amount and I think kind of like they're driving the
dollar amount and they're writing the RFQS and I'm not sure that's their job to do that but let me again state finest public finest two chiefs I've ever met in my entire career love them and trust them but I think there are other alternatives for instance uh
um having the second floor in this building perhaps you know uh fitted out for uh perhaps uh police there are things to do you can make it hardened controlled festivities like that um I think the fire chief needs 6,000 square
feet $6 million i think there are ways to do that in other you know a standalone building um with three bays for instance i've seen some designs for that and again them coming to you with their own design people engineering i'm not sure that's the way we do business
here they set the requirements and you all then set the budget okay not not them um we do need we need need to get get them out of these temporary uh facilities as soon as possible i think there are other options on the table
that we need to look at um this building will be uh being one of them for uh for police uh they have special requirements i get it um but I think we can make something like the second floor work with controlled access an elevator uh some bulletproofing down maybe half the
windows uh and six or seven million for a standalone fire station and some other piece of land i don't know maybe that direction uh uh you know near the community center perhaps a corner of 108
i'm not sure um but again let me state that there's no bigger advocate for fire and public safety than I am i just think that there are other ways perhaps we can look at this and let's just keep an open mind um want versus need 12 13 14
million for a fantastic facility right next door again I'm not sure that's a great location considering it's prime real estate on on on the water um if we can afford that you know that's something I'm for that let's just look at the numbers let's let's crunch the numbers but we you all crunch the
numbers with our help not them okay we And I'll tell you these are great soldiers you give them $10 million $8 million they're going to make it happen and I love that answer i mean that's what you want from your people i mean they'll make it work i mean I'm so impressed with these two two individuals
i'm very proud to be here i really am if we can afford we can make this work let's do it but I also look at other options second floor another fire department building um I think I let's let's let's make that work i think let's look look at the options are revenues
going to go way down look around us not a lot of economic development going on around here are we really going to be growing in the next couple years i don't really know but again I'm a big advocate of these two individuals here i'm very proud to be here and let's look at other options maybe $7 million um but if we
can afford 14 well heck man i feel rich and we can do like uh you know sell coffee donuts raise money sell bonds I'm all for it if we can't afford it let's scale it down and these two people are the ones to make it happen
thank you sarah you'll be next Rick hi Sarah Pennington District 2 um I had a couple comments which first of all lots of great points made by the police and fire chiefs and I totally understand where they're coming from and what
they're wanting and I can envision it and it sounds wonderful but I was wondering if we're going to know in approximately six weeks or so the decision on this $6 million uh potential grant then would it make sense to wait
until we know that information to make a decision on moving forward on this um that could potentially affect my opinion on whether we can go forward if we decided no we have to have this building no matter what whether we get the grant
or not it's the best option then can we where is the plan to look through our budget and say "Okay well where are we spending money that we shouldn't be spending money so we can help fund this police and fire station?" Um we can't have it all right we can't just spend
all the money we want all the time so if we're going to consider doing this maybe we could also consider some sort of workshop where we look at our budget and take a real hard critical look or where are some things that we could save some money and that they we could then maybe offset the cost of this and additionally
maybe just looking at some other potential backup options if we don't get this grant and we do decide hey we cannot afford this we just can't do it what are the options what would be some good options could we potentially build on top of the old fire station over
there i don't know i'm not I'm not an engineer i'm just thinking about okay we have that old fire station lots of houses here are elevating or building on top is that an option for the fire station or not or what are other options i would just like us to kind of get some
potential options lined up on the chance that this doesn't work out for us budgetarily and that way we can make a more informed decision thanks thank you Sarah rick Rick Matthew District three i
just had a couple question uh one of the concerns was the weight of the building if we were to build an armory well the question is how many long guns do we have i was an armorer you don't have to build an armory you can put safes in depending on the net explosive weight of
the ordinance that you have which is I would guess 1.4 ordinance which is small arms ammunition that has such a minuscule new weight net explosive weight that you don't need anything other than a lockable storage you don't need a
floodable magazine or anything else so the question is how many long guns we had a uh an issue up in Norolk where we made an armory it was basically a closet with safes and then we put an IDS system which is intruder uh detection system
satisfied all the ATF and DoD requirements so it's not a matter of building an armory it's a matter of safeguarding your weapons so if we're talking about 10 to 20 weapons that's easily doable with safes you don't have to build some grandiose armory okay the
other thing was property and evidence storage concrete and metal door that's all smoke and mirrors normally what you do is how long will it take somebody to penetrate your forces before you respond that can be done with steel cages which is actually better than concrete block
because I can go through concrete block in two seconds so with an interior steel cage made you got property and evidence that's all I have thank you Rick andrew um we came at this um from a contextwise
um where um the $12 million um that's sort of requested right now is really part of a $37 million um number the reason for that isn't because of fire and police but it's because of all the other critical
infrastructure that has piled up and hasn't been executed um the master lift station under under the current numbers in the city's budget is uh $6.5 million then you have 12 million for combined
police and fire you have two million for seaw walls and then you have 8.1 million for public works so and then we the only number that we put in our analysis that didn't come straight from the city budget was we added $500,000 for EOC
emergency op center assuming we put in a building somewhere but it required specialized equipment they might buy a mobile van to do something in or something as well so we put 500,000 in out of the 29 million so right now you have a $29 million need for the city and
um with the 12 million on the on the um police and fire well when you borrow that much money you when you get the money the 29 million you need to build you owe interest on it from day one so you capitalize the interest on what you
borrow as a city the capitalized interest is going to be $4.3 million if you assume that you can execute all this in three years in other words borrow the money do the design procurement build and open it and given the track record here that's going to be a a lift to get
it done in three years but you're looking at 4.3 million in capitalized interest okay you also have to when you do bonds have a debt service coverage reserve that'll be somewhere minimally at 1.3 times your annual debt service and it could be as much as 1516 i would
assume lower end so we assume 1.3 um on the debt service coverage reserve so that's $3 million so when you go to get your 29 million to do all the projects you have to capitalize your interest that's over four then you got to have debt service cover reserve
that's another three then you have the cost of issuance for those of you who recall the sales folks that were in here the other day on the bond council and the financial adviserss they when you get into these kind of bond issues they tend to run about 1% to one and a half%
so on an issue of this it's going to wind up somewhere around half a million dollars if it's a a municipal bond issue so you're looking at $37 million that you need to finance to build $29 million
because you have capitalized interest you have debt service coverage and you got to borrow that money too so that's going to create a debt services of around $2.3 million a year from where you are right now and you got three ways to pay for that you can create new economic
development and earmark the money that comes from those businesses and other sources whether it's parking revenue to cover some of that um you can reduce some of your spending because in the time that the police and fire have been considered the budget's gone up 50% the
revenues went up 50% so nobody put anything aside for any of this or you can raise the property taxes on your residents and to cover a $2.3 million debt service that's about 20% increase
on the mill rate for the city so your 3.8129 goes up to 46 and change if you just take it all out on the residents so that's just to provide context of what you're facing as a new commission with
all the critical infrastructure that's out there the limited ability to pay for it and the of the three ways to do it raise taxes generate new economic development or cut spending right now nobody's got to brought forward a
dollar's worth of cutting spending or of economic development so it seemed that you need to start focusing on that um if you're going to convince the residents that you're going to be able to to bond $29 million uh worth of projects that
you need to do thanks thank you Andrew yes please stewart District 2 um I I completely agree building for the long term is the important thing to do in thinking about the future um I also really like what
Sarah said about the fact that I'm not sure why it's like right this second when we've got other components of this that are weeks out yet um something that was mentioned that I admit I don't know much about and I really rarely hear talked about is insurance money how much insurance money did we get for that building and how much of that is
available for this project it sounds like we haven't even finished those claims so why aren't we focusing on things like that like finishing insurance claims i don't know i just that's something I haven't heard a lot about and I'd be curious is how much insurance money has actually come in if if we have active claims out there if any of them have been settled and what
we're doing about getting that funds available for us hello Mike Brady is of Capri i'm all for the fire and police department i think they're professionals i think they know what they're talking about um I don't
know the dollar amounts they have uh seems to me they have a pretty good grasp on what they think it's going to cost i don't know what we can do to offset those costs um isn't Penelis County getting something like 800 and something million
dollars to help for infrastructure has anybody talked to anybody about maybe getting some of that money to offset some of these costs i think that's something to look at we do have to look at the fact that we are going to have to have fire and
police and we're going to have to have some place to house them and it's going to have to be a structure that is built to withstand hurricanes we can't get away from that it's where we live so I think we do need to take that into account this is a workshop so you're not going to decide
today on the $12 million expenditure so you do have time to look into it but I do support our fire and police i do believe we need new buildings for them and um that's all I have to say thank you Mike
karen Karen Barnett I'm at 2014 i agree with Mike um I know it said that you guys should be the ones who decide what the budget is ultimately you will be but so far as preparing what the police has to have what the fire has to
have the average cost of it either you're sending it to the accounting department to come up with all this information even though they may not have the knowledge of what fire and police needs at this time i think a suggested budget from fire and police
and then of course your review and the accounting department's review financial department's review because you're going to have to spend a great deal of time learning everything they already know in order to prepare a budget and give them the budget seems understand that
creating a budget and giving it to them telling them okay get it done within these parameters but you're increasing your time a great deal the amount of knowledge that's available readily you're ignoring and asking other people who don't have that knowledge to come up
with your appropriate amount of money so far as moving them to the second floor then you got to take everybody on the second floor and move them up that's I know the gentleman kept saying we you know can probably make it work here on the second floor that's maybe not the best solution either you just got
everybody on the second floor um and I also agree that we definitely are going to have to have our fire and police i do know some people who received some of the letters didn't even know I lived on Treasure Island and they were talking about it so I was listening and they did say that they were kind of
disappointed that they didn't aim for bigger because they're not taking into consideration that there's going to be growth i said "Well you know we have limited space here." But they are right because a lot of these homes that are being torn down can go up as multi-dwellings in some areas and places
um and so I asked I said "Well what about it where are they putting it?" which I already knew the well they picked next to city hall which actually is the most economic place for them to put it so this is somebody who does this for a living who has no idea I live on the island and making these comments and
general I mean I'm just there with several other people general conversation so I do think there's forethought that has gone into this i don't think it's a pie in the sky dream uh but it is your decisions to make but I do think you need to take into consideration not just you you
absolutely have to come from where the money is if I understand correctly there is potential out there for FEMA money because they were over 50% substantially damaged insurance money possible money from the state and possibly money from Penllis County so surely something out
of all of those will come through but if not we have to know that but are is it today am I correct They're just asking for an opportunity to put out to move forward not committing to $12 million i don't know if that's is a question today
committing to $12 million or is it committing to moving forward with getting to where they need to be get I don't I'm not real positive what it is that's being asked today to be decided thank you thank you
is there anyone else okay we'll close the public portion uh I guess do we need any other discussion before we'd uh try to see if we have consensus in which direction to move is
there I'd actually like to address a couple of the comments if that's okay okay sure um Mr vasey brought up a very good point in the um you know the carrying the debt for public works the lift station the police station all of
that very good um that's one of the main reasons and if you guys stick around after you know for the latter part um I've actually been researching for the last six weeks um on different ways to cut the budget different ways to
outsource things um I've been comparing our staff size to other beaches that are very close to our size in population and how they run their governments um their budgets etc um one of the reasons that the last thing was put on the budget
last minute is because fortunately and you guys will see soon um uh we have a representative from a deputy director of public works Penllis County that's going to be speaking um the lift station in public works alone um is massive massive
space massive cost we have 88 employees in public works madera Beach which is 600 people less than us has 15 um one of the reasons that I wanted uh Penllis County Public Works to be
here is because uh again what we're going to be speaking about is possibly um selling off our sewers to them and that would save us from having to put in a lift station and having to do a lot of work to our pipes and our sewer that's
going to need to be done because we are going to have a huge boom in building so no um everyone needs to know we are looking at ways uh to cut budgets i've talked to so many people about this in
different cities that have done it st pete Beach and we are one of the few who haven't done it um it just makes sense and so I just wanted to address that specifically i agree that's a lot of money and I personally am looking at
many many ways to cut budgets and you know to cut the amount of money that a city our size is spending because it is a lot and but that is being definitely looked at um to me there's so many
things that can be done and be cut without even thinking about raising our property taxes or our millage rate i don't to me that's not even on the table so um that is the one thing I won't sacrifice is my police and fire and I've made that clear from day one i always
have so I'm not surprising anyone um there's many many many places we waste a lot of money and spend way too much money and police and fire is not it so that's my little two cents um I want to echo a couple things i I agree with a
lot of what you just said and one thing I did not have time to add on to the agenda that I've been researching and I'd like to probably add on in the future is also looking at outsourcing our permitting to the county um so far I have talked to probably 20 um
contractors and it it out of those 20 contractors before I can even finish the sentence of whether or not that might be a good idea they they say yes um but I got still have more research to do and I still have to talk to the county so that would be another way to possibly cut
costs and increase our services but I think what's unfortunate about some of what I've heard here today is that if you don't support this $12 million you know building then you don't support the police and the fire um I love our police and fire i echo
everything Robert said we got the best in the business uh I when I ran for office here I said that I would never um outsource the police i never want to do that i stand by that we need to have our own police and fire that's a huge asset
to us and I would love them to have the nicest facility on the entire Gulf Coast the nicest in Florida if possible but there's a big problem we don't have the money you know I I I don't know if
you've looked at our I I could get more into our budget every day unless we slash massive amounts we have all these facilities that we have to rebuild you know I I I just think we have to look for other ways here um you know I would
I would I want a bigger boat i want one with a cabin and way longer but I can't afford it right now so I'm not going to go into massive debt to get another one either don't get it or I wait till I can pay for it um and I think you have to look at you know I feel like we're kind
of being the bad guys here i think you have to look back at why we don't have the money for this number one is the hurricane we couldn't control that but we also have zero not barely any tax revenue because we've chosen as a city to do zero
development over the last 10 years so we have no money coming in from that that's not not not our fault up here um you know over the last few years the amount of money that was wasted on elevate TI the mobility study um you know train
modification manual it's it's a joke and that's been our MO and the MO has been and Kim I think this is the first time I've met you but I think you read read my notes before I came up here about taxes and things the MO has been spend whatever you want and then do what we
tried to do over the last three years raise taxes raise the debt limit or come up with this assessment scheme like our former mayor did which was you know try to pass off this assessment where we could just assess the residents whatever we want to assess them i'm never going
to vote for increasing taxes i'm never going to vote for raising the debt limit and I'm never going to vote for some sort of assessment scheme on the residents we've had enough we have to run like a business and actually you know balance our budget and and and do
this it it's it's it's it's just it's I've never seen anything operated like this um and so I mean I I just can't support that any longer i mean I'm to the point where if we got the $6 million and we could do this for $6 million
don't don't spend the extra money we needed other places so I personally am for you know having the the police in the city hall i've seen beautiful fire stations they just built one in Key West for I think you know $67
million and I think I don't think we really have a choice i think we've been put in this financial position not of our own doing and um you know I think there's there's a I think we at least need to look into that and um I don't
think we have much other choice me thank you go ahead so I wrote some notes down um I think we have to stop waiting for money i think we have to uh think and plan on uh that it isn't coming quite frankly as a country we're
heading for a belt tightening president Trump and Governor Dantis will be cutting everywhere both have Department of Government efficiency uh plans moving forward and cutting costs unless it's in our checking account it really isn't ours uh I think
we got to think about the shareholders for the future before spending uh let alone borrowing so I think we got to figure out a way um and don't get me wrong uh I definitely would love to see a facility where uh that the police and
fire deserve uh but it's not in our realm right now nor do we want to um increase taxes or go down that route um I pay about $125,000 in property taxes in Treasure
Island so I don't want to pay anymore quite frankly um and as a business on Treasure Island we get taxed left and right um in many different avenues um so I would like to see uh quite frankly uh to move uh these ice
fishing pods uh that are here that are leaking uh just a fire uh pod to uh the old police station parking lot um I think the police station uh the police administrative uh pod I think we just
get it get rid of it all together i think we move them up to the fifth floor in that empty space temporary as we figure out um a long-term solution um whether that means uh putting police on the second floor or on the fourth floor
or any combination of thereof um I'm not a builder uh but I've been in construction and know uh the basics I guess um I think uh putting the a standalone backend fire station on the
108th closest to a rally gas station is the best move um and I'm sure we could come up with uh a facility that is state-of-the-art and uh work for our small city our beach community um I mean
that's really what it comes down to and without a doubt keeping our police here in town and our fire department commissioner Dicki I think one thing all of us uh agree on and I and I I think everybody should be pay a lot of
attention to this is there's nobody up here that wants to increase your taxes none of us agree uh I mean all of us ran on platforms to to control government spending to not raise your taxes and I I I know personally when I uh joined this group a year ago I said I was going to
do everything I could to make sure that we didn't have to raise millage rates uh while I was here that that is not a battle I wanted to undertake uh having said that uh I you know I'm glad that that that's is the case what what we didn't nobody expected was the
hurricanes and the damage it was going to do to our facilities like it or not we've got uh we've got we've got issues that we need to deal with as a community and I agree with uh with Arthur we can't uh rely on getting money from FEMA and
and CDBG and everything else but that doesn't mean we shouldn't go like hell for that money and there's a lot of people working very hard to try to get uh that money in here uh I can't imagine that at at the end of this that we don't get some kind of funding from some kind
of state or federal agencies we'd probably be the only city in the history of Florida that that went through a hurricane like we did and not get any kind of uh federal or uh or state funding to help rebuild we have uh more
rebuilding needs right now than we have funds to to to to uh carry you know to to cover them so we do need to have those kind of talks i also agree with some of my other colleagues here about cutting spending and I think the best
place to look at that and when we is is with the carry forwards uh the carry forwards and our currently approved capital expense items i think we ought to take a hard look at those kinds of things and see what items are on that list that we can either postpone or cut
completely and use uh the savings from that to fund some of these other critical infrastructure needs that we that we uh have to deal with uh so anyway that's where I stand on spending but let me just make this one other point and I and I have been reluctant to
use this expression but I but I think it's important uh a resident told the previous mayor one time he told me this and I thought it was a bit crude but I'm going to use his exact language at the bit at the risk of being crude myself but he said a resident uh who still
lives here he said to the mayor he says "You everything about your city is halfass you have a halfass golf course you got a halfass city hall you got a halfass community center you've got a halfass park uh park across the street
from here and I thought about that at the time the this resident told me that he had said that to the mayor and I thought boy that's pretty that's pretty pretty strong language and pretty tough but but I've started thinking about that and you know when I talk when I think about us putting the police station
shoving it into this building and not that we don't have the square footage for it but it's just not the right place for the police station it's just not the right place so if we want to build a half-ass police station then then let's go do that but I think this is the time that when we can do this we can look at
it we can do it right and we need to figure out how to how to cover the funding without raising taxes one of the things that uh that we uh we don't know is how much money there is what money is still coming in from from
FEMA um money you know that uh from the uh insurance policies we still do not have numbers from uh from the insurance on the the police and fire building that's what I understand correct correct Mayor okay so there's still a lot of
things that are very open but I do think that Commissioner Dicki hit it right on the nose we don't know what we have especially in those carryovers yeah they're written down and there's dollar figures but nobody has really gone through and said "Okay this one comes from
2021 and can we wipe it out or is it still going to be there?" And then 2022 23 24 now we're going to be pushing things from 25 into our our budget next year um I mean we're we're just going to
have to uh one resolve what we do have and don't have two is to take a look at the grants and funds that uh that are accessible some of them potentially in the near future and the same thing with the insurance policies um so I you know
I'm not in favor of saying you know what we're going to do u today because I think that uh in a matter of weeks or months we're going to have some of the answers to uh to the questions that that everybody is asking right now um yes we
do not want to raise any taxes the appraiser has basically said that we will go down our our uh funds for property tax will go down eight and a half to 10% um I'm hoping that he's he's really
high on those numbers i'd love to see us come in basically some place neutral you know maybe 1% either direction and uh and that will be there but we do need to make sure that we eliminate as many things as we can and one of those being
that I've been told that uh you know I've hear heard people say and not myself but on second floor we can put this you know the police on the second floor well um there's not enough space uh we need about 3,700 square ft and there is not 3,700 ft so it does not
necessarily mean that we can't be in this building but we certainly can't do it on the second floor you'd have to build out the entire fourth floor uh or at least about 60% of the fourth floor um to make something happen with the police there so um there are a lot of
questions i do like the idea of getting you know our folks that are here from the fire department police department moved down to the other parking lot i think that that is is a very positive especially on the cash flow side it's it's a it's a go it's a win um so I you
know at this point um I think that we I know that the the bids are all coming in i don't know if we actually called them bids or what they were called but u on April 10th they're all due uh but it may mean that we need to just hit a pause for you know uh 6 weeks 8 weeks whatever
it is and you know still begin looking at it and seeing what we can and cannot do but uh but holding on to that uh for at least you know the the next couple of months um and that's that's on this topic i think that's about all I have
mayor if I could actually dire Zamora does have the information on the insurance okay she was working to pull something together and just texted me that she Thank you very much okay so this breakdown uh I'm going to go over flood insurance and then property insurance so
for flood insurance for the Treasure Bay Clubhouse for the contents we've received $5,000 for police and fire for contents we actually hit the max at $172,000 for the master pump station for the building so not including the
contents we've received $22,146 and for the community center for the building not including the contents 245,000 um yeah 245,85 so the total that we've received so far from our flood insurance is
$483,416 for the So what we're doing though we do still have some contents um that we're waiting to still finalize those lists i guess you could say sometimes some of it kind of came in late because we weren't sure the damage actually occurred later um due to
different things like just being in the elements for so long um so I'm still working with flood insurance on some of those contents for property insurance um based on the current statement of loss we've received a lump sum payment of $1.8 million um I just actually spoke
with insurance this afternoon they are reviewing the statement of loss again considering the additional uh invoices and other information that we've submitted um that continually gets submitted um and they're looking at doing another lump sum payment i just won't know what that is until a little bit later i'm hoping by like April 21st
is when my next meeting is with them uh also we lost four vehicles um and we have um gotten about $57,000 total for those four vehicles thank you Jessica welcome
any additional questions thank you okay so I I think that uh we're at the point where we're taking a look at a consensus on how do we move forward so is it going to be on the consensus of
putting the for right now putting the um trailers over in the parking lot i'm assuming that's what we're correct i I would think that that's uh something that we can all agree upon absolutely um it's going to be a lot less expensive
it's going to be a little bit nicer digs for the the folks um and uh and I think that that's a good step to move forward yes absolutely i would agree with that so both departments both departments
is that assuming that the fire station's going to be here or have you already made a determination no this is about made no determination on on this this is the contemporary wait I'm sorry if if you're going to take public comment he needs to come to the mic just so it's recorded and
everyone can hear this is strictly on the temporary facilities in the parking lot for both departments over on 108 this is not for the permanent um building the step-by-step consensus is
uh move both trailers to or both fire department police department to 108 parking lot correct eric yes I could agree to that yep agreed agreed and then I don't know how we would hold on you know what's being submitted here
in the next couple of days they have to be in on the 10th and how we would uh how we'd go and be able to hold off for 8 10 12 weeks yeah there's no I mean we we can reject any and all bids which I don't
suggest we do but we can also uh still make a selection and bring it before the commission we can I was speeding that up as fast as we could because we felt like you know we wanted to minimize the time that we were renting apartments can you uh bring all the bids to the commission so we could review them during a
workshop no so this I believe what we're talking about right now is you're talking about the RFQ that went out for design and engineering so what'll happen is is there'll be a a committee that meets in the sunshine or whatever that will evaluate who's the most qualified you have no numbers before you it's just
who's the most qualified that'll come back before the commission and there'll be a ranking and the commission will approve that ranking after that then staff is tasked with going and negotiating if they can't come to a proper negotiation with one then they move to number two if they can't with
two they go to three and so on and so forth um and at that point if they can't get a negotiation they may end up having to go back out but let's say just for the sake of argument they get it with number one then they would bring that contract back before the commission and
at that time the commission can decide whether or not to award it or not um additionally with that contract there would I think be a work authorization that would go forward with regard to when everything starts so you know when they anticipate the design to go forward
in that time frame so again this will come before you two more times before and at any of those times if you decide you don't want to move forward you do not have to you're not obligated to so the beauty of it that is by the time that all happens we'll pretty much know
if we're getting money or not okay i think that uh that's how we'll leave it and we will uh move forward on the next discussion item great thank you that was easy don't say that too long all right the uh
the next item A2 is the fee waiver discussion for elevated homes and new construction this is something that we had said that we were going to revisit um after we had dealt with the residential units good afternoon mayor and
commissioners uh this is a followup on uh previous discussions at the city commission meeting on February 7th the city commission requested that there be a workshop to discuss a potential waiver of additional permit and plan review fees um specifically for elevating
existing structures or replacement new construction for a storm damage structure this came back on February the 18th to the commission and discussed again and then what we were asked to bring this back to you so the purpose today is to discuss and consider
extending the waiver of the two permit fees so we'll go through what's already waved um these two new proposed waiverss what other cities are doing what the financial impact is and then leave it to
the commission for discussion so on February 7th the city commission approved a resolution which extended previously approved fee waiverss for interior demo fence installation tree removal roof repair and replacement and
electrical for meter bases and power surges on appliances they also added another fee waiver for all fees associated with the repair or demolition of storm damage residential or commercial buildings but not including
accessory structure so that's a repair um and those fee waiverss are in place already and are in place until May 31st of 2025 at the same meeting the commission requested that any fees previously paid
for any of those permits be rebaited for the period from September 27th through February 6th and then on February 6th we sorry I think that's should be February 7th the same date to make it continuous for they were being they were not being
charged after that resolution went through um I can have finance give you an update on the timing for that fee waiver i know they have been working with the vendor on uh software issues to get that
done so we were requested to bring back these two uh additional subjects elevating an existing structure or replacing new construction for storm damage structure um these are some of the other municipalities uh Pineellis County has
storm recovery repair permits um which is limited to buildings st pete Beach has all permit and plan fees with repair or demolition of storm damaged through 422 st pete has demolition and repair of
properties damaged by hurricanes through 329 bair Beach has all residential structures through which already expired back in December and Clearwater also has expired they have building plan review and
permit fees um big difference with some of these cities is we are 100% in the flood plane many of these uh St pete um city of St petersburg Clearwater Pineellis County only some of those uh properties are in a flood plane so it's
not affecting the entire building budget so the building fund is a special revenue fund and what we can do with the fees collected in the building fund is restricted by the state of Florida these fees can pay for salaries fringe benefits contracted building services
and operating expenses directly related to building inspection permitting and building related activities um the question keeps being asked what would it mean to wave additional fees so
that's hard to predict um because all we have is historical data which does not reflect this hurricane situation we do not know how many more permits we're getting in we know that there are substantial numbers was discussed earlier of people who have not applied
for a permit we do know that there were 200 um properties had uh applied to elevate Florida to elevate structures um right now we have 102
single family demos in 11 commercial demos 16 elevations and seven new construction for replacement of storm damage so to give you an idea what these fee waivers mean um this was uh calculation
was done back when we were doing mainly interior repairs so a $200,000 permit would be um pretty common in that environment uh so we have a base fee and some other fees and you'll see that
there are zoning fees flood plane fees um and a lot of state searchcharge fees so basically what this means is that for a two thou $200,000 permit the permit fee is
$2417 or roughly 1.2% 2% of the permit cost of work so this was prepared at the last meeting this was the current state of the building fund um based on the um
evaluation we did at that time including the rebated fees we estimate that the building fund will be completely depleted in August of this year so we have some um expenses and options
for how we replenish this building fund um so we had uh financial numbers had decreased revenue due to waving fees um we start at the beginning of our fiscal year in October right at the time of the hurricanes uh we were not back in uh
working here until almost the end of October but for replenishing the building funds so we have some permitting costs that are going to come back to us through the 1206 program that ended today that would be um overtime
for our employees uh some of the contracted personnel like we talked about Jacobs earlier um and software and hardware to support all of these people we had to buy a huge number of licenses to have support all the
people that we had working here um second way to uh replenish that fund is something called a CDL a community disaster loan um that is something we would apply for uh but there are
some legal complications with that because it has to be the lowest price loan that we could get and I will have Jen explain that if you would like more detail on that um those loans are often forgiven but there's no guarantee on
that as well um we can transfer funds in from the general fund to operate the building department um we could get a loan from the general fund or increasing fees on future applicants um so this is uh you would
ask how much staff we had we had we asked for additional staff when we were still in the EOC we have had additional staff since the very beginning um these were provided at no cost to the city we're 100% covered through today
um and so as of last week we had three permit techs four administrative support people two property appraisers two cost estimators and a flood plane manager as well as a bunch of remote part-time people so they were fill in whenever the
workload allowed it it rolled out to them um we also have our existing consultants from MT Cosley Safeuilt which is um and Joe Payne International so that was our building people and some
codes people that we had now we have ongoing contracts with Safe Built MT Cosley they do provide our building official and building inspectors in blue sky days um and then we mentioned Jacobs
so here are some possible options for the commission to consider um we could continue with the fee waiverss that we have in place through May 31st we could rebate a certain amount per applicant we could rebate a certain
amount per applicant um one of the things the commission had asked was could we do only residents or only homesteaded properties um Jen can once again advise us on that um we do not think that's a very good legally
defensible place to be um or any other suggestions that the commission may have so that ends my presentation all right oh any questions for staff what would uh how would we be liable uh for
litigation so essentially what you're doing is you have a program where you're charging a fee for a particular service and you're talking about changing that and reducing that providing a rebate back but only to specific individuals and you're not
cutting it and you I think the last time we talked about it was like taxpayers as of a particular day um so forget about the tracking and the other issues from that it's just um most of the time when you do a refund or a waiver of fees and
as you've done with all the other fees that you've waved in this matter you've waved them for anybody applying now you're only going to refund as to particular individuals so not your businesses not
your um individuals who may purchase property and came in for a building permit you know and yet they're in essentially the same position as the others so there could be a challenge to that the safer way to do it would be for those who are um just like you've done
in the waiverss if you're coming in for this service we're either waving the fee or we're not i have a question what if we um only waved the fee for people who were substantially damaged because they are
the ones that have to either rebuild or elevate right so I mean that seems uh that Well aren't you waving you're currently waving fees right now we talked about
expanding it I thought to new new construction or elevation are new or elevating isn't that what we said okay so what you're saying is you would continue the waiver with anybody that's come in for permit fees so far through May 31st through May 31st and
then after May 31st there would be a new program where anybody who was substantially damaged you would wave their fees to either or to elevate or um rebuild yes well that's not quite clear because
the fees that are already waved do not include elevating and new new construction so just to be clarify that would be a completely separate thing it'd be something new and would that include commercial as well if you wanted to wave that fee like would the
Thunderbird get their fee waved i don't know how the city could afford to do that yeah i mean we're trying to save money we're also trying to make money as well it's going to be depleted in August exactly and we don't want a loan you know so you're cake and eat it too
katherine can you go back to the slide that you were showing our our uh I guess you already moved back to that sorry about that i didn't see that anyway those were some recommendations uh using a set dollar amount or something like that i'd like to propose uh another
option that that a resident suggested to me and that was uh using percentage that and I was thinking about like for and this is only for elevating and new new construction it isn't for any of the other stuff because that expires May 31st and we're going to hopefully allow that to to expire and not renew that but
anyway so so for elevate elevating new homes and new construction just use a percentage amount and I I was thinking either 15 or 20% so for a million-doll home using your your math that you had used up there uh not counting the $53 and that
just using the $11 per thousand if we wave 20% on a million dollar new construction uh that that uh applicant would get a $2,200 credit but the but the city would still get $8,800 in revenue so I I like the idea of not
waving fees completely but giving them you know a percentage as opposed to a set dollar amount uh for elevate for an elevation uh $300,000 uh at 20% waving we'd wave $660 and we would generate
$2,640 in revenue for the city uh with the 300,000 elevation so I did the same scenarios at 15% too if you want to look at those numbers but you can probably kind of calculate those pretty quickly in your head so Commissioner if I could I'm slow at math are you saying
basically the percentage of the fee is waved yes right so it's that Yeah yes okay so it's not it's not the percentage of the overall cost of the improvement or the elevation no it is okay so if it's a and I used a million dollar new
construction as an example that would wave you know $2,200 uh in fees at $11 per thousand so So using a straight percentage whatever the if it's a million and a half 2 million $5 million use either 15 or 20% so I just wanted to
throw that out as a another option to to consider and that's actually kind of where my mind was at also i mean the city cannot I mean in my opinion we can't afford to wave the fees i mean I agree with absolutely giving discounts i have no
problem with that but I just I don't see again in our current financial state and and we know what's coming as far as property taxes and everything else the hit um I'm definitely for figuring out a way to discount it but I I there's no
way we can afford to in my opinion the property taxes was my actual thought was is if you if you you know wave them for people that were substantially damaged you could get them to build back a big nice house that's going to have huge tax revenue and you start getting that tax revenue
way faster it's going to probably more than pay for the discount that you got right i mean that that was No I get what you're saying oh but it it makes sense no the I I like that idea too as well i like that uh substantial damage type we
got to figure out whether we want 15 or 20% yeah I think it's simple and the difference I just used like 100 uh if aund 100 new uh construction the city would wave 220,000 in fees but generate
$880,000 in new revenue uh from that and for elevating houses at 20% uh wave for 300,000 elevation job we'd wave 66,000 this is for 100 houses uh but we would generate
$264,000 so from the numbers that Katherine was throwing around that I think the 200 between new home new construction and and elevations we're going to probably be looking at numbers similar to that a couple two or 300 so we're talking about you know the city
could generate uh 1.1 million in revenue uh and still give a discount and and I don't feel strongly either way about a 15 or 20% but some some uh amount either one of those I would uh could support on the flip side of that Katherine um what
if someone wanted to expedite their permit u adding if they want to say I'll give you 5,000 if you could give me give me the permit faster i think that would be a total mistake no darn it i like where your
mind's at though i know some cities do that we're under awful lot of constraints from state law already about permit turnaround times which they're proposing to make much much much shorter right now so
um I like the 20% i really do i think that uh it's substantial nice incentive i would agree with that okay public comments so yeah let's uh let's open it up to public comments and the first one would be uh Ross Sanchez
good afternoon everybody ross Sanchez is this on all right good 44 Dolphin Drive um Commissioner Clark appreciate your comments in regards to like the substantial damage folks because obviously we don't have any other option exactly there's zero option to even renovate so when you look up there and
you see okay the the fence permit gets waved well if my house is substantially damaged I have to build a brand new one and my f the fence is included in that so you know I don't have any other option i have to build a brand new home so I really really appreciate that Commissioner Dicki when it comes to
reviewing it um and the comment of the percentage I love that idea i think that's phenomenal when it comes to that's an option um I think and I I know that it was uh I don't know if it was translate appropriate but let's just say you build a new home today you come in with plans it doesn't matter if it's
2,000 square feet 3,000 ft whatever 10,000 ft there is a permitted fee number that comes out and let's just say I thought the number was for a 4,000t home up in the $30,000 range i I don't know if that's accurate or not i don't think that it is i think it's more
Katherine I'm sure can comment where it comes down I think in that 10 to 20 but whatever that number is in in present day that's like cut that by 20 like a 20% discount and then that's what the applicant would owe i feel like that makes perfect sense city still gets
their money um applicant or resident uh has the ability to continue to grow in Treasure Island the tax revenue will eventually be there if it's a brand new home i think that those things are beneficial to the city in general um but also putting a time stamp on it when
this comes to an end for people to submit those permits um you know there will be some dirt lots that still sit out around the city and putting this in place actually will kind of incentivize some of the folks that are working with the architectures working with the
builders trying to get funding trying to get the flag going plant their flag in the ground to to start building their homes i think it incentivizes it and then falls full flows back to the tax revenue like we were just talking about so um again appreciate everyone's time thank you side note a lot of talk about
development very exciting to to hear that because we need the money as a town i mean clearly as you can see so thank you all thanks thank you Ross all right dana Ball dana Ball isa Palms i think we're being
a little shortsighted about not giving the residents waving fees for them to elevate or build a new home i can tell you personally I know of dozens and dozens of companies who are coming in here have purchased our homes for dirt
cheap money and who are going to build on new homes on those lots the money from what you will get from a a tax base when a new person moves in unless they have portability which could be a very low percentage we don't know and what
you're going to get from the builder is going to be very high it's definitely going to offset waving the fees to the residents another thing too is somebody had mentioned that oh it's going to be so hard to track who's a resident who's who isn't i don't know when I go down to
the DMV it's pretty easy for me to say where I live and prove that it's pretty easy to know these companies that are coming in that are commercial who are speculation builders and who the residents are going to be so I think that you really take need to take a very
long hard look because everyone's been pushing tear down or elevate tear down or elevate well you need to help the residents who want to do that who want to stay here and then also too you're going to get that money from the specs that are coming in i can't talk about
commercial just residential that's where my specialty is but you really need everyone's talking that we need to help we need to help the residents it's a very very very substantial way you can help the residents thank you is there anyone else andrew
yeah um Dana said it well um what this whole scenario lacks is any analysis right now or data i mean we get up here we get another one of these slide presentations where we can't determine how many permits they're going to be we can't determine the fee we can't
determine the when we don't know how many might be out there we have Commissioner Dicki doing quick calculations sitting up there because we can't get an analysis with any assumptions look please with 130,000 you
want to spend get yourself a fiveyear out of college analysts and run some numbers on this kind of stuff and create a couple scenarios you know how many empty lots are out here figure out how many were bought by spec how many are residents like me and figure out we're
going to collect fees off of these that are being built by spec we're going to collect fees off of these at least come up with an educated guess on it this is just nothing this is like vapor that we get in these presentations up here they contain no there's not a single number
in there of any kind of projection of what you're going to make on revenue where are the costs of the permitting department you're supposed to be able to cover the costs so you know somebody else is asking about um whether the business can be waved where's the analysis on how much business we're
going to do and what we're gonna what we're going to do so instead you're just making stuff up oh well we'll take 20% off of this and five off of that and oh we wave this one but it doesn't count the fence i mean would you please professionalize the effort get somebody
to create an analysis make some assumptions put the data out so we can look at it so then you all can look at it and we can figure out what the best way to go is but out of these vapors that we're presented here you can't do anything and this is just sort of
typical of how this stuff gets rolled out and there is a higher expectation in this community of the way that you're going to bring this stuff forward and we'd like to see you meet that expectation by doing this in a professional way and many of you that are sitting up there as the elected
commissioners understand this you do it in your own businesses you've done it in your own careers why is the expectation out of the staff here that they can't deliver that kind of quality of product to us to you the commissioners and to us the residents when it involves a lot of
money for the business owners for the residents and everybody else this should be an unacceptable product that was put forward today you should make written requests to the city manager of exactly how to analyze this it was like on TMM they said that the difference was no
business damage indeterminable damage you you got to run scenarios on this folks know how to do this and this should be this is certainly an expectation of us on the residents and it should be an expectation of the commission back to these folks to produce something that is usable not
what we saw today thank you thank you anyone else okay going to close the public uh section and um now we can move forward to uh see if we've got consensus on the
direction i have a question what if do we need to put an expiration date on on this yeah I think we should oh is that uh does do you have a date in mind 26
do you want to do the end of the fiscal year so that way it's only in this fiscal year and you're not dealing with it in budget september September 30th september 30th okay yeah i think I think that's as good a date as any we can extend this out i know this one requires because people
have to design homes and get the plans and everything else these permits are going to come in a little slow slower at a slower rate than than a you know just a a uh I agree to recondition the house so so I'd say let's do it to through this fiscal year and then if we need to
renew it later we can talk about that so just to clarify what we're deciding on is 20% on the brand new builds just to be completely clear or or elevating correct is basically do I'm just trying to be
perfectly clear because Chris did bring up you know about the substantial damage and things like that so I just wanted to be clear exactly what we're Yeah I brought up that but again right no and that's what I just want to clarify but I have no idea what that would do to the
bottom line and and I don't think we know what and I kind of don't disagree with you on that we don't know what 20%'s going to do to the bottom line we have absolutely no numbers i mean I appreciate Ardan you doing some math down there front but I mean I'm I'm just not used to making decisions
without real numbers in front of me so can I ask that's why I I I went to the I'm going to ask a quick question and kind of tag off of that so right now fees are waved till May 31st correct now that does not include new build and
elevate correct so there as of right now there's zero discount zero anything and there may not be is there a way to go ahead and discount at this point but I would I would like to see numbers
myself i would discount it at this point and then in the meantime look at maybe a little further in depth i don't know exactly how that what that looks like about possibly because you know it it I get it if
you're substantially damaged and you're trying to rebuild it's a lot permits are a lot of money on these houses so I do get that on the substantially damaged ones and there are a lot of speck houses going up around um but I don't want to not give something right now and that's
my big thing earlier said so I'm not sure how Commissioner Sison was that he had heard that there is as many as a thousand people that still haven't found their permits or found the building to get permits whatever it is but if if any
of that is even true we will not know the numbers we will not know how many people are going to elevate how many people are going to be knocked down because those thousand people haven't even come in for a permit yet let's even say it's 500 right so what we're looking for is to give them a piece no I agree
and that's what this is i'm 100% agreeing with that i'm what I'm asking is is there a way that this can be if we feel moving forward in the future if that comes back and I guess this is a question for you Jen um is there a way
to if look at this again um when we're moving forward if we feel like it's a need to to possibly um wave the fees for some of those people but I it's one of those things that's kind of difficult it's kind of an either
waving 100% of the fees no I I I don't see we can't afford to wave 100% of the fees there's no way the city can't afford that but if we're substantially damaged if if someone's substantially damaged are those people do we give them
50% off or and then the people that are just doing it to do it we do 20% or is that even a possibility that's what I'm asking we be open to litigation that's what I was Well that's why I'm asking Jen you know I I So as I I hear a couple
different things i want to make sure that I'm going on the right path so um one of the things that could be done is that a draft resolution um waving fees leaving the percentage open right now um could be done and brought back to you at a regular meeting where you can take
action because obviously right now you can't take any action at that same time I've heard a lot of individuals talk about how many letters are there of folks that were substantially damaged so maybe one of the pieces of information that could be provided is the number of substantially damaged letters that have
gone out obviously there's a percentage of those that folks have come in and appealed and said "No I'm not substantially damaged." So you would have a at least an understanding of like what percentage overall that is and which ones haven't you know have concluded the process versus which ones
are still going through the process and maybe from there you can start to garner some data of if all of these let's do worstc case scenario were substantially damaged what would that amount what would that impact be to the city if only some of
those and we'll take a percentage off based on how many have come in already and appealed you know and are no longer substantially what would that be and that way you know what your 10 your 20 your 50% looks like how many I mean how many folks do we have here right now
that are basically going to evaluate it on the substantially damaged letter I'm I'm not necessarily in favor of doing that whether Whether it's 100 or 200 or 400 homes it doesn't matter exactly we We're going to extend this do we have
three folks that that believe this is an issue why would there be a cap no I mean it's substantially damaged you're not I thought you were waving this fee for people who were elevating or um rebuilt yes correct but it's not tied to substantially damaged so it's anybody
who's wanting to elevate and rebuild because that that that's why I was bringing this up right well I mean that's where we need like we need like five sets of numbers up here what if it's 10 what if it's 15 what if it's 20 what if it's 50 what if we don't do it for anybody but just the people that are
substantially damaged i I I don't know what any of those numbers would look like or what that means to the city if I went into my boss and said "I want to lower the price of our product by 20%." And he said to me "What's that going to do to our bottom line?" And I said "I have no clue." He'd kick me out of my
office i probably would actually be fired commissioner this is the first time we've heard anything about looking at substantial damage so that's why there's not numbers that's even if it's not substantial throw that out i'm sorry that was an idea I had what about the 10 the 15 we don't have any numbers on any of that either but I think if if you use
what Katherine had up there as just the $200,000 example you know if you take $11 per thousand in improvements you know and you break that out and you have the base fee and the other fees you know then you you get an idea on what 20%
would be waved on that fee and I think Commissioner Dicki hit it is you're going to get a larger you're going to have an overall bigger fee and you're going to pull in more revenue roughly eight $8,000 versus $2,000 which would be rebated so using a 20 20% piece you
know whether you have five homes or 500 homes you're going to pull in that 4:1 ratio of revenue versus what you're looking for to wave in your fee i think we should move something to a regular meeting and get some numbers in
the meantime that's that's the idea i liked what Jen had said because we not really much I mean it's not a regular meeting anyway kind of leaving that openended and then we can make that decision and then Okay numbers would be great so looking
at just so there's clarity looking at the properties that have not received permits as of yet so we're assuming they've those folks have done their repairs anyone who hasn't and then are you'd like to know the numbers based on that as well as based on how many of
those are substantially damaged do you want I mean we're not we're not we're not looking to extend the May 31st for free permits no no but there was a a remark made here i don't want to go unsubstantially damaged because anybody could want to tear down
and elevate and they should have that same benefit which is fine i just want to make sure and this is only as to residential correct i I believe so right or is it not i don't know on that one was residential residential that's what I thought okay so we have a consensus to move something
forward yeah i guess the percentage is what we're looking at and we can leave that blank for the time being and fill it in at one of our regular agenda meetings okay okay that makes sense yeah that that makes sense to me good that's fine okay all right so that
takes care of item number two and let's now move on to item number three solid waste discussion here he is so mayor and commissioners while they get set up I'm just going to give you a little bit of background on where we
started this conversation on the outsourcing of uh solid waste started about a year and a half ago I think when the former city manager had brought something up to some of the commissioners to take a look at outsourcing um solid waste due to a
larger number of injuries that were occurring within the workforce and the turnover that was going on within the workforce and what had been proposed was to take a look at solid waste and outsourcing that piece because overall what you have is you have residential um
sanitation pickup you've got commercial Um and excuse me when I was saying solid waste before I meant commercial you've also have you have recycling and then you also have what are called special pickups and and also beach and beach
area pickups that are performed from the solid waste department so that about a year and a half ago previous city manager came up and started having this discussion storms hit that discussion is stopped and so met with the commissioners on an individual basis to sit down and to this
was the previous commissioners that were uh part of the previous commission sat down with them to try and figure out what was actually looking to be looked at and to be analyzed to for potential outsourcing and there was not a clear consensus among the commissioners on what they wanted to do so Mitch who is
here from Kesler Consulting had worked with the city previously and it provided guidance when we had um an a death that had occurred related to sanitation where had an individual that was run over by a truck and so Mitch came in and provided consulting services on how we could
improve our safety and our operational perspectives within the department we asked him to come back because as he'll tell you he he works for many municipalities and um also across many counties within the state of Florida and has been doing consulting on this level
for about the last 40 years where we are right now is Mitch sat down with the previous commissioners and the current commissioners as yes as of yesterday when we got to talk to Commissioner Clark was to try and to understand better what the commission would like to do would like would they like an
analysis done on um commercial sanitation residential sanitation all of solid waste the entire sanitation and that's what we're trying to do and Mitch is here today to speak on that perspective also to give some advice from where where he's been
on that and Steve is also here from the public works department because Mike HR is on vacation and Steve is here to provide that guidance as he can from the operational standpoint thank you good to see you all again commissioners i appreciate it i have some good news for you um this is going
to be a happy topic it's going to be a happy topic because I think you're at the right place to make a decision to make the things you want happen in the city of Treasure Island occur and for those I' I've met a number of you and I've met I met all of you and some of you know I actually have condos here and
live here part of the year over at Sunset Chateau so it's interesting to sit here and hear the discussion you had on some of these events of permitting and taxes and everything else that went with it so just for a quick background for the record uh my firm's 37 years old we only work for the public sector we
help communities define meet their objectives in a solid way so why I think this is going to be a good topic is you're at a point where I think you could make the change that you want if it's well we'll go through them also talk about that um the work uh Chuck mentioned the work we did that was about
six years ago so we haven't been involved in what you've really been doing in sanitation since that point um I think what's important today is how you should proceed what you want to do and we've been through this drill we've done procurements we've done renegotiations that's my company's done
for 40 years we've done 25 of these type of changes whatever the change is because even if you stay with your existing service with the existing people I think you're going to make some changes and improvements to your program so we've done that with all kinds of cities and counties around the state so enough enough on that be it
renegotiation be it optimizing your service uh be it preparing procurements and contracts what's what I thought it would be make sense to do is kind of share with you because you were obviously not together when we had these meetings the things that we heard from some commissioners that were the big issues for them so you could see if you
could reach a consensus on them my job is tell you the ramifications and implications of some of these choices so you could come to a consensus so you know how to put that i didn't do that oh see do you know how we could get up there so they could see that i didn't do
that um ask can you All right we're getting some technical help i'm just going to start on them so these are these are going to be when they go up there um what has been discussed and you setting the priorities so I'm just going to start with the first one and then you'll see them in a minute but it's the type of service and we discussed that in
a number of meetings what I mean by the type of service and uh Chuck hit on this this is a little different when you're a beach community you do residential you do multifamily you're involved in commercial you're involved in the beach and you're involved with public access areas and as you think through what you
want it's which of those do you want to continue with if any and how do you package that together so we're going to call that as soon as they push the right button right button yep the type the types of service so that's the type of service Treasure Allen uh currently um
does then there's levels of service and what I mean by levels of service oh I see being very nice and writing we have it on a nice printed sheet for um the level of service is talking about as a resident in this community you get 211 service which is twice a week garbage
once a week yard waste once a week recycling one of the things I've heard today and heard in all meetings you looking at how you could possibly back well it's pretty common you might like it you might not like it but to communities do 111 service which is once a week garbage once a week recycling
once a week yard waste or even shifting to every other week yard waste the point of the level of service is really getting at the more services you offer the more the cost is and you have a pretty deluxe program here and I think your residents and from what I understand the
businesses are fairly happy with that i'm not suggesting you change it but just to answer how you could lower the cost would be adjust the services that doesn't mean they get people get poor service what it means is they're just getting service at a frequency um
Commissioner Clark we talked about this a bit yesterday with Chuck which is this is not a community that's booming with families of seven people it's not where you tend to move at this point you know for this kind of community so twice a week garbage in the large carts that's a
lot of trash to put out there those who worried about odor and everything else about a third of the state of Florida populationwise has once a week service so it is not uncommon to give you an example close to us all of uh Sarasota County has and Manatee County
is shifting both of those clients next uh in October 1st they'll be shifting to once a week service in Manatee the entire county and in Sarasota has already been at once a week garbage service for decades so that's level of service then the quality of service
really gets into two things it's response time how quickly does the public or private sector respond to a complaint from a customer of what's out there they put this out there they have something special needed to be picked up they missed the collection and getting
back and then the the um customization of the service if Mike was here I think one of the things he would say is that we respond quickly to whatever somebody needs and and do it well and people care about that and willing to pay more for that again just putting down some of the
items so that's quality of service then the one that's uh I've heard a lot of talk today about cost it's the cost of service and some of you asked and some of you discussed well how does it compare at other locations what is the cost your residents as you I think you're aware pay on a residential side
28.50 that 2850 is made up of two components it's the material being collected and it's paying Penllis County at the West Energy Plant to dispose of that material so they're two separate things no matter what you do with collection the disposal component of that is going to be there um it's really
then under the cost of service is looking at the choices you have to change service and the economics of the system that you're running if you run it or the private sector runs it we're going next to public work uh the uh the public works complex a number of you brought that up that's not my
area of expertise i'm a garbage guy i've been since I was a little kid that's all I ever wanted to do is be in the garbage business a little bit weird but that aside it really came from I grew up in uh the Northeast and we used to go to the Catskill Mountains as a kid and one of the things he always did is he took
these cans big grape juice cans and he tore off the label punched two holes in the side put a handle on it went blueberry and huckleberry picking i say that because that's you know garbage is an interesting field once you get in and you guys are now deeply into it so the public works complex came up that was an
aside but the public works complex has come up with almost all of you about what to do with that site what it's worth that's outside of my world uh Puckleberry cans I'm good with but knowing what to do with that is really up to you chuck and I have talked about it we've talked with some of you that
that site could have other values that's another decision that I think you need to reach consensus on safety chuck talked about that there was an accident here years ago and I think we came in and really helped with the efficiency in the operation of the department and had to make sure that there were things that
were followed with vehicle replacement and better practices best management practices that's still there safety exists you're driving very large vehicles on some tight streets u I mentioned Sunset Chateau you all know down that in Sunset Beach some of the streets that you have to make turns on
are not exactly easy for a larger vehicle and lastly I would throw out that service provider options are what really you're going to be faced with a decision what am I talking about service provider options i'm talking about right now you are 90% a public operation some
percent of the commercial is outsourced to the private sector who comes in and applies and is is licensed so a public sector operation really what you're doing is you're running it you're managing you know the the whole show um the next choice and you're doing the
work i mean it's your people doing the work there's ups and downs to everything in life but you're doing all the work there are communities that do public private split the work up i have some thoughts on that but we don't have to worry about those until you know which way you want to go but I'd be happy to
talk to you about that some communities they do the public the private does the commercial now you had to hear you had to throw in the beach the access everything else that goes with it so that's a shared partnership and that has advantages and disadvantages and lastly
the private sector almost every county in the state of Florida the county not cities has private sector managing their collection why because it's too large for one entity to take on in Ellis County Hillsboro County Manatee County they could not staff the 75 100 garbage
trucks that are out on the street the 25 recycling vehicles etc etc it's a huge undertaking it's usually privatized on a county level on a city level it's about a 50/50 split throughout the state about half of the communities run their own about half of the communities um
contracted out there's no right or wrong it's what's best for you in that case you're now managing that contract you're managing the work so those are the things that we heard about and my goal was to have you add anything else you'd like to this list talk amongst yourself and see if we could come to some
conclusion of you know what to do next and I'd be happy to talk to you about any of those options and what works i think I could help you move that forward chuck talked about before that this is another one that's been sitting around for a while and I think the time is
right to move it forward your department the department that exists in these new vehicles there's a lot of questions came up about that what are the vehicles worth all stuff we could talk about so I'm really going to turn it over to you if you have any questions for me now great i'd be happy to talk to you about any aspect of that if anybody wants to
add to we have seven items up there that's kind of what we heard you want to make it 10 items let's go for it want me to kick it off go ahead um one thing that you brought up was the uh the residential versus the commercial
and I've talked to a lot of different people on this i've talked to several of the county commissioners i've talked to other cities that have done all or nothing or both and basically the consensus across the
board the cities that split it wish when they did it they would have done it all um the people who didn't do it it was because it had to go to referendum at that time um and the residents just didn't want it um they would still like
to have it but they don't and um then you have your little really small communities who you know they they couldn't afford to to do their own anyway um to me the whole purpose of
outsourcing anything is to um downsize um to eliminate the need for you know we could look at it and I get the service side of it um but if you just take it from one
aspect of it if you don't do both you still have to have trucks you still have to have mechanics you still have to have garages you still have to have parking you still have to have all of those
things you still have to pay retirements you still have to pay health care you still have the highest workman's comp and this is going to go for both subjects we're going to talk to by the way on the sewer as well um you still
have the most workman comps uh workman's comp claims um of any other department um you have the highest turnovers and anybody who owns a business or runs a business knows it costs way more to train new employees
than it does to keep them and so you have that aspect of it and none of that really changes if you only do half you may downsize a little bit of that but you're not eliminating those issues
and to me if you're going to do it it does make sense because to do it all from and we discussed this when we were in our meeting um just looking at it from a purely common sense level um you
don't even have to have numbers for that i mean common sense tells you if you keep half of something then you have to keep half of everything just a smaller amount of it and it it just doesn't make sense to me personally
um I clarify something you said real quick earlier absolutely you said communities that only outsourced half wish that they outsourced all they wish they had taken the opportunity yeah i want to make sure I understood okay that makes sense to me and one of the big reasons for that um just to touch on
that um is one when you put out for an RFP um to take over a city's entire sanitation your pricing is going to be
so much better than and please tell me if I'm wrong on this or what that looks like if it if I am wrong but in speaking to um several people um the it's going to be a lot more attractive to them and
they'll be a lot better on negotiating contracts tax if they're doing all instead of half so I I think you raised a lot of great points and I agree with everything you said the only thing I'd add to that is I'm a big believer you know we currently work for 38
governments in the state of Florida alone we've worked for over 100 governments in the state of Florida in the company and there's no one right answer the right answer is what's right for Treasure Island and I think that's what we have to focus on because I agree with you Commissioner Easquez that some
places have made the change and like it some don't like it i have we have clients who made the change to privatize who wish they never did so there's not one sizefits-all what makes this community unique is right out there and people don't and I'm not pointing to your hotel
the uh um it's the beach and um the private sector generally if you look at beach communities does not want to be on the beach why it's ineffective it's inefficient it's costly so that's where some people would say well maybe we should keep that and you can control it
more and the public access are not advocating for it i've learned over the years that there is no right or wrong i mean there's great there are great private contracts with cities all over this state they're great public departments collecting it's which one's right for Treasure Island and I think if
you're going to go steps further it's looking at what is the right option and why is that the right option i'm going to cut to the chase there's only a couple ways you could possibly know that because nobody in this room myself included could tell you how much it would cost to privatize and then that has to be compared to what it's costing to run
that now well how do you get there to get that answer so you can make a decision there's a couple ways we've uh Jennifer and I talked briefly chuck and I have talked about this a bit and you could take any one of a number of approaches to get that information so you can make a fact-based decision on
which way to go because we could talk about which way to go here and everybody's going to have a thought including myself um and I just want to make one other comment on your point i'm not personally I just don't think it makes sense to split service for the efficiency reason you you're talking about but what you need to remember this
is a really small contract republic Waste Management Waste Pro all the companies you know you don't want to get them excited the Manatee County has divided the counties into two parts it's $25 million a year for 10 years with a 10-year extension now they're
interested it's business i'm not saying they're not interested in Treasure Island in our industry we'd call Treasure Island a tuckin there are communities all around you that trucks are driving around for one of those vendors this is going to be a great tuckin spot and they could do it effective and efficiently so it's really
what's good for you guys and if I'm Who's the vendor uh sorry for interrupting who's the vendor in Madiraa Beach who's doing the service all right so we would obviously try to get a quote from them it is Madiraa Beach they do okay we're the only two that do what about St pete Beach if you go if you go
out both outsourced madiraa Beach is not out madera Beach is not outsourced no they are on their sewer but they are not on their solid waste assure you if you go out with a procurement you have numerous people respond to there's no doubt about that so there won't be a shortage of companies responding it's a
question of if you choose that path who has the best service and the best price for the community I would say we do an apples to apples comparison on our current level of service with an outsourcing company as a start so here here I think that I thought we
had a great conversation yesterday I really enjoyed it I think that you uh were receptive to what I was saying but um I think that we're almost making this too complicated i think it'd be made very simple i do agree um with the vice mayor that it's probably going to the numbers are going to pan out that it's
better to do it all but I think we just let the numbers decide so all I care about is that my trash gets picked up i take it out to the curb and it gets picked up and then you know so long as that happens I'm happy so what what we've talked about a lot today is cost
we need to save money in this town so I'm making up numbers let's say it cost us a million dollars a year to do our trash i I think it was 3.3 whatever and we go out and we get quotes to get the exact same level of service to do
everything and it's 800,000 instead of a million then I'm all for it but we don't know any of that until we find out what these costs are right and we can get multiple costs we can find out to do 100% we if the beach is going to be a
problem maybe we get a cost that doesn't include the beach and see what how that comes out and then maybe we also get a cost for once a week and twice a week that's what I would like to see but and the cool thing was is you told me that you know all these people and you could
call them up in the next two weeks or three weeks and get all these numbers that are going to be within 5% or less of what an RFP would be yes so why don't we that way we don't have to go through some huge RFP process you call them you
get the prices for all this stuff we compare to what it costs us now and now we actually have something we can sit here and talk about and look at and and in a couple of weeks maybe we're we already know which the direction to go and we're done with this whole thing just to help Thank you Commissioner
Clark um what I do at the company besides being the owner of and the president is I do the negotiations for the firm and the procurements and that type of work so that's how uh Commissioner Clark saying I know the people I sit down across from the table we just did the negotiations in Manatee County Sarasota we do it in Orange
County Florida we do it in Indian River County we do it in municipalities so when you do that much of that type of work you know the people you're sitting across from there's mutual respect and trust uh and you could get that kind of information jennifer and I talked about
this earlier and I well I'll let you add to it what would have to happen but yes confirm that can be done i call those informational meetings because there are procurement statutes and requirements that put some hindrance on being able to take it in my opinion quite as far as I
would like to do it and what you're suggesting but that doesn't mean we can't have an informational meeting and say "Hey Treasure Island here's how many households here's how many businesses here's the current costs that they have." They're interested in finding out if the public the private sector could you know come up with a better deal and
that's what Jennifer and I talked about i'll let go because I mean yeah if we if we went that route maybe we find out three weeks from now that instead of costing a million it's going to cost two million to outsource okay done we we're not going to do it maybe we're going to find out it's half the price we should try to do it immediately you know to me
we have to have those numbers to know which way we want to go so yeah and in our discussion I didn't have any issue with them sitting down kind of holistically with the different groups um not necessarily having them bid on anything but just kind of giving a ballpark of what they would bid for this
many houses one week once a week service twice a week service overall so that you had some numbers to consider then if you decide to go that way it'll be through a public um procurement process but even when you're going through that public procurement process understand you don't necessarily have to make the decision of
once a week or twice a week before you go out you we can bid them in such a way that they bid both that would be awesome yeah so we can do bid alternates that allows you more flexibility in deciding what you want but at least initially to give you some kind of concept of what
this is he could do someformational leg work and provide that to you but you're saying thatformational leg work you think would be incredibly close to what they would come back with on a real RFP because they know when I'm asking them that question and they this is a public meeting they know that the city of
Treasure Allen is serious about considering privatization so therefore if they want to help convince you to do that they need to provide the information to help you make that decision and we have done that before again I call themformational meetings because it's gathering information to bring back to the people I'm working for
so and process that and make a decision i mean I say we do that immediately otherwise we're sitting around talking about conjecture here that's what I was going to say i think this is very urgent because all of this with having to build a new public's work building yep the
amount of land that it's going to take um so on and so forth is and and tying all that into just the ROI of the piece of property that currently sits on of the potential it could be because it's all waterfront um all of that ties into
this decision and our next topic um because obviously if we outsource this I mean we are shrinking everything way down so I think this is very urgent too to Sure and sorry just jump in i think just helping Mitch understanding what
those different scenarios are is what's going to help get those numbers you know if it's being clear in everything is looked at and everything is outsourced or is is there a portion or a piece like hypothetically we wanted to do residential only okay then Mitch you know okay it's residential only i want
to see it all i'd like to see it all and then but I guess we have to find out i don't know i'm not a how big of an issue this beach thing is is that going to make them say I don't want to do it or I'm going to tack on a whole ton more money that that I I I don't have to look
to you but I mean if if if if it's not then I say go for it all but if the beach is going to be a showstopper then to me we have to look at it with with and without the beach you know I'm a free enterprise private sector guy i own a company and I appreciate Chuck's point on that but I think I know what you want
what you want to know is to have information to make i don't think you know what Ardan wants yet i saw that thank you thank you it's hard to get a word edge-wise sometimes uh again I think all of us want the same thing we want a good apples to apples comparison that Commissioner Arthur had mentioned
uh so so let's compare it to what we're currently doing right now the levels of service frequency all that stuff so so a basic uh uh applesto apples comparison i do have two concerns and one we've talked about heavily already and that's the beach pickups that's one concern so
we need your guidance on on whether we should pull that out or just include it in the package but but at least initially if we're going to do apples to apples we got to include that the other piece of it and I'm less familiar with uh with how the private sector would do this but the stretch of Sunset Beach
from 95th Avenue down to 85th Avenue very very small roads you can't have those big garbage trucks going there and we have special equipment that's that picks up the trash residential uh pickup in those neighborhoods so h how does
that work out too is so so I'd like to understand how that works out it's a great uh question Commissioner Nikki it's the same trucks you use they use and service many communities by the private sector use small trucks and mini trucks to do exactly what you're so they're very familiar with that
equipment right so that that's good to know so so then then I think we're in pretty good shape to get that apples to apples comparison and come back and also at the same time while you're talking with these people getting the other questions asked about the uh the
frequency I think is a is a very good point that you brought up in uh and something we should look at but that's separate from the applesto apples comparison and just to address what you raised because that's very helpful is they all know what they could do they could do everything you're doing and you
could do everything they're doing so there's no match to this it's made up of two things trucks and people everything else is the process of how you're doing it so it's not rocket science we're talking about here it's picking up you know recyclables yard waste garbage so everybody's able to do it i think one thing I feel a responsibility to share
with you is that you know every choice you make in life has advantages and disadvantages and when it's time to make that choice I think I could help you see and understand those so I'm going to give you an example private sector is great as I mentioned they're doing the majority of the service by population in the state of Florida but one thing that
happens when somebody comes in and bids in a community like this and I think this will be a very desirable community i'll explain why in a minute then there's a business opportunity it's you get a contract let's say it's a seven-year contract we talked a little bit about this yesterday with Commissioner Clark well after seven
years if you don't structure that contract correctly it's like okay we got in we bought the admission and now it's 40% increase so all of a sudden what was a good deal isn't as good of a deal so there's techniques and ways to ensure that doesn't happen because I think you're
all willing to pay whatever the CPI is and whatever the adjustments are appropriate as society gets more costly so there's ways to structure that contract that are critical because you don't want to make a short-term decision that ends up biting your future colleagues in the butt down the road well we just have to just do smart
contracting the other thing I think I forgot to mention um you know I don't take it lightly i don't want to see people lose their jobs but I think it's common tell tell me that a lot of these people will pick up our employees if they get the contract they might even
buy our equipment i mean and that's all stuff that can be negotiated into a contract also correct i I would do more than that as we talked about yesterday I would put it in the procurement document as a requirement because you have a number of assets here that are valuable you have vehicles some of them are old and don't have much life left but it
would be a requirement of the document to buy those back or give you fair market value for those and a preference to hiring the people who work here i mean so once I understand your objectives and we flush some of these out more I would assure you that they would be in the contract plus other
ideas that we've seen work elsewhere to accomplish what you want i'm not overwhelmed by the beach what I'm saying is that's a costly activity and it's costly to your city staff to do it and it's going to be costly to the private sector so their preference is that well you know why don't you keep the beach
because it's you know it's hard to make a good buck running down the beach picking up quarter full cans of material that's the question I was going to ask is was is there anything you would omit from the contract and Dicky nailed this and a few of you said the same thing which is that apples to apples here's
what we do now you're going to add to that because currently you outsource the larger compactor larger you only go up to a certain size with service so you'd want to get pricing for all of that okay well I think that we just need to get
the information and uh and bring it back i also don't think it's a bad idea though to for us at some point to look at the difference between two pickups a week and one no I don't i mean do apples to apples first and if it shows it's much less expensive then also let's see how much even less expensive it could be
if only did one day a month and where I come from we got our prospect up once a week a week half I would say three out of the four weeks a month here I don't ever put my garbage out the the one day because I don't have enough you know to put out so well and we're trying to not
maintain cost we're trying to cut cost so it does make sense one thing to thinking about is also on the commercial side if you want to manage that and what I mean by that is there's an amount that businesses charged now for garbage and residents are charging amount for
garbage but one thing that happens is do you want those to be weighed equally because when you're comparing the companies someone say "Oh I'll give you a great deal on the residential side and then the commercial people are paying the burden to bring that up to this point." Yeah so that's just a way the industry works and it's a question we
have clients who say "Listen we want to equally weigh those two factors." Others who say we want to put the burden on the commercial less on the residential so that's a policy decision i can tell you the implications of it um but you'll have to make the decision when it comes to that what I would
suggest asking for now and why I think this is an attractive community is there's a fair amount of commercial work here for sure for for a small town and there's going to be a lot more okay and there's the potential for a lot more and
concept that I mentioned every company drives around this area republic drives around Waste Manager drives around Waste Connection drives around Waste Pro drives around they're all here so for one of them it's going to be like oh my gosh all we have to do is get four more vehicles and they're driving through
here anyway right for the record I've been trying to outsource gar commercial garbage at my property for decades because they pick up wet garbage at Sloppy Joe's and then they come and pick up my garbage and then they crush on my property and the salad dressing of
couple hours old and shrimp smells fantastic commission is raising a great point so in the industry and it's the same for the city doing this work it is much more expensive to pick up the restaurant waste for a variety of reasons than it is to handle the waste out of a hotel one's messier one's
bulkier etc etc so there's a differential pricing now the city probably doesn't handle it that way for some very good reasons but that helps yep good i think that we have consensus on direction yeah absolutely
move forward 100% thank you guys thank you thank you thank you all right moving on all right our last item then is Penelis County acquiring our sewer system oh I'm sorry i've I've got them in my
hands and Okay Carrie please good afternoon i'm Carrie Hourbach Treasure Island Adopt a Beach as you know I partner with Keep Penelis Beautiful to keep our beaches clean and clear both our parks and recreation department as well as public works
handle trash pickup for the beach and parks depending on the location and the receptacles if I have this correctly parks and recreations handles the walking trail all the parks within Treasure Island and its facilities public works covers the beach and beach
accesses so here are just a few examples of my interactions with these departments number one it's Sunday morning the trash cans are overflowing at Sunset Vista Park a quick email or text to Parks and Recreations and within 15 minutes the trash cans are emptied
number two five tires are discovered on the beach dragged into a pile although one is getting covered by the incoming tide a quick text to public works employee and a tractor is there in 10 minutes loading up the tires and pulling the one out of the surf number three
beach cleanup is scheduled for the next day i find a location where a dumpster should be on the beach and it's delivered within the hour full dumpster removed by the next morning or Monday if a cleanup is on a Saturday number four over a thousand college students arrive
and fill the beach north of Caddies one quick call and over 10 trash receptacles are placed on the beach number five an unex unexpected big storm with winds come in blowing cans all over almost immediate responses in res in removing
and securing the cans number six expected storms are coming we need to secure cans by removing them before the storm and returning them very quickly after the storms number seven weekend trash receptacles are monitored and
emptied up to three times a day number eight a major holiday let's take July 4th parks and Rex assigns employees to monitor and uh empty trash all day i could make a list of many more examples
but I think you get the idea if you don't I can prepare a longer list as a vacation community we must be prepared for trash on the beach nothing about the beach can be a regularly scheduled trash event i hope you spend some time in your
research speaking to the actual employees who have boots on the sand every day the beach is the most important asset we have here on Treasure Island keeping it clean and trash-free has been my goal since starting Adopted Beach over five years ago changing the
relationship from our hometown crew to a paid contracted outside company changes the complete relationship with beach cleanups this morning I spoke with Megan Weeper public works director on Mad Beach they did a cost analysis within
the last year and discovered outsourcing would save about $150,000 a year they rejected it because they knew the level of service for beach maintenance as well as residential and commercial trash removal would be greatly diminished just think of a simple storm like we had
yesterday with a phone call to an outsourced company bring will it bring someone to grab blowing trash cans within minutes forget a major storm we would be on a neverending list of community priorities for cleanup madiraa Beach solved their trash truck
replacement by leasing a vehicle for $8,500 a month another thought TI outsources recycling how is that working out mad Beach is extremely disappointed in the level of service they get from their outsourcing 6 months later
residents who are promised replacement recycled bins have still not receive them please do your due diligence with your reports and calculators but listen to your constituents who expect a certain level of service i am proud of both of these departments who work
tirelessly without complaint and do their jobs with smiles on their faces at least to me thank you for your time i expect good things from this commission thank you Carrie rick Matthew
rick Matthew District Three um you guys stole a lot of my thunder already we we entered into this discussion and A1 A2 A3 um so we hired another consultant to analyze waste
management eight months ago we asked for cost analysis we still have not received cost analysis of waste management but we hired a consultant and he showed up and provided us with nothing now we agreed to keep him on how
long what's the contract for this guy when are we going to get an answer so we can make a decision eight months and we still don't have cost analysis waste Provides our recycling call Waste Pro call Waste
Management say "Give us a bid so that we can analyze it." It It's not that hard cost analysis i'm not an accountant i'm not a financial guy i know what cost analysis is cost cost hey there's a delta
done thank you thank you Rick mark Hoey good afternoon and a long afternoon it's been right folks i try not to belabor it a little bit um before I start just a quick comment about what Carrie had said
about the waste pickup on the beaches area i walk the uh boardwalk strip from here to the end every other day early 7 a.m.ish that time nine times out of 10 the trash cans are overflowing at that
hour so if they're picking up as frequently as she is indicating they're not doing it at the end of the day and and the closer you are to this end the bigger the pile is and that's not just happening from the bums overnight that was there at the end of the beach day
and people filled it and left so I don't know about the quality of service that's something we should uh check on a little bit but my comment was really directed at the uh the whole effort to go after the uh the outsource and this is really
a a pivotal moment that you have the opportunity to set the course for the concept of outsourcing of of private uh public partnerships on getting things done because yes not only do you have
the cost of the services rendered but of course we're on the cusp of major uh capital investments in solid waste not only in a facility But vehicles we all know we were we've been dragging those last few compactor
trucks over the finish line and are even using rentals now because of the condition of it so we're we can't put it off anymore we've got to make that decision and fast to do the right thing and that will set the course of action
for years ahead yes you can adapt and change and maybe do things differently with it but it really sets the motion that we're not going to just stay status quo and continue to build and own facilities and property just for to
provide public services and and I do have a little question um I guess and and Mitch I'm sorry I didn't catch your last name but I guess I'll assume it's Kesler um so Mr kesler had a lot of great points that he's picked up over a lot of years and I think that's been
very valuable as a early you know get the ball rolling uh but I would like to know if he can share that or you can share that Chuck what's the cost for his services and what are the costs for if he becomes a negotiator
for our services what does that cut into the savings that we would earn assuming there are savings from privatization thank you thank you Mark tom Lance good afternoon uh Tom Lance 135 85th
Avenue uh Treasure Island i'm a resident here uh this kind of speaks to my job description i've been in this business the solid waste business working with the what we call the public
sector for almost 40 years so I've been in front of you guys representing waste management and prior BFI which is now Republic so I spoke with Ardan earlier uh trying to get an idea of what was
going on because I feel that the council needs to really research this good points made regarding the disconnect between private and doing it yourself there is a disconnect but there's ways to contract
it in such a way in terms of personnel equipment services i agree twice a week is big it's a it's a large service but you know it was done earlier because of
vector control vermin and Florida gets warm so you set garbage out in a can for a week and it's going to smell and that was the reason why we did twice a week in Florida other parts of the country
not so much but it also comes down to container sizes my wife and I live in a place we don't need 90 gallon service twice a week we just don't we probably use 45 gallons a week but they're
dumping 180 so that's that's another point of right sizing for residents and the city can do that if even if you decide to keep the service and doing the service yourself is right sizing the
homes because there are ways to reduce the amount of costs and how you service uh I can I can guarantee that the service probably won't be as good as how
the city does because they're not as responsive you know either it's Republic coming out of Penllis Park i think Waste Management up in Penllis Park too so they got a long way to go but there are ways to do it residential
versus uh commercial is a is a good point because uh commercial should be paying more especially if it's a restaurant because we pay by the ton we don't we don't pay by the cubic yard we
pay by the ton so a restaurant's going to be a lot heavier than an office building that's producing paper and a little bit of petrusible waste so I I just ask that you guys look at this
thoroughly and if it requires a consultant I don't know typically I worked with city staff on this in going through and what the needs were and most of the private sector companies are going to ask what do you
want and you can contract every bit of it in in terms of service standards in terms of the year of equipment uh absorbing the old equipment into the cost and personnel if they
pass the necessary DOT tests and drug tests for their that company and you know I I see it happening now with with our uh our recycling you know uh Waste Pro coming down picking up our recycling once a
week uh where I live prior it was 90 gallon was once every two weeks that's another way to save money do we need our recycling picked up weekly you know that's there there's just a lot
of different ways you can look at saving money with the private sector or even doing it internally thank you thank you Robert Baso i know I know I'm good-looking you see
me a lot here robert Bazo Capri I'm outsourcing Deja Vu all over again uh Mitch gave a great presentation but it kind of like was the same thing we talked about in August and I think we could have had the numbers by by now um I I really do believe that and and but
this is a now a good opportunity this is day one let's get the numbers um and do a costbenefit analysis one of the things uh the N I was one of my careers was in the Navy and we were slow to learn how to be joint you know and if you're joint you you ain't you can't do everything by
yourself let's maximize our resources i really like what what uh Commissioner Vasquez is saying i think we're all on the same page here um costbenefit analysis if you're not joint you ain't and it may be I think uh Commissioner Clark made the great point we don't know
the data yet let's get the data let's analyze it and it may be that we're going to be fine let's keep uh the way things are public works again Carrie made a good point it's about level of service and I would and public works is fantastic they have a great help desk and we're not called in to showed up in
minutes so I really appreciate what what Carrie said but again that can be written into the contract you know you know like a help desk uh you know 24-hour coverage whatever but that's part of the contract i like what Mitch said about making a contract that helps our people get employed uh protects us
and also protects us uh in seven years when we renew so I do appreciate the level of service we have in this city i'd like to see it continue and let's look at the numbers anyone make a decision then thank you thank you Robert anyone
else west Evans Palms um kind of piggybacking on what Carrie said about uh the level of service we do get with public works um that's a great thing but uh going private doesn't mean you're not going to
get that and like Boso said you can work that into the contract um I'm sure we're still going to have some sort of uh maintenance people around city hall and there's nothing that says we can't uh
integrate their jobs into hey when we get a call about overflowing trash cans you got your golf cart go take a look at it get them a four four-wheeler to go down the beach and if you do that I volunteer for that job because that's
my dream job all right thank you thank you West anyone else okay we'll call the uh public comment uh finished and we'll move on to I would like to say something if you don't mind really quick sure uh for the beach I actually would like to see if we could keep uh the beach side
of it because uh during holidays it is a big undertaking of especially after Fourth of July uh we do have that uh garbage truck that goes on the beach with the big old tires i'm sure uh companies have that as well but how accessible that's another story uh like
to keep a couple grapple trucks and dump trucks and what about considering uh picking up two times a week during the summer and once during the winter is that something that cities do tend not to gotcha
thank you that's it sorry Chris what was that h you you mentioned something to Tammy i don't know if that's relevant he was just talking i mean I don't know what he said but he was talking no problem wasn't really targeted toward me no worries all righty so we'll call this
uh uh this item taken care of and now so the clarity has been made on it though just to be sure right he knows the direction to go yes i I believe Do you need any additional direction you guys he'll get what okay i just wanted to make sure
okay so that is a question were Have you been being paid to to do this yes okay small comm great thank you all right our final item A4 Penelis County acquiring our
sewer system all right well thank you Nory um I'll kind of take this one because I add it added on at the last minute or not last minute but last week um this is something I've personally been working on um with Commissioner Kathleen Peters
County Commission um she's the one that actually referred me um to speak with them and um this is something that honestly has not been talked about and I'm it's kind of crazy that it hasn't to me but now it is and it's very very
important right now um again that's why I wanted it put on this meeting is all of this plays in together because again it's all to do with the size of public works um our public's works is massive um you know Carrie brought up Madera
Beach i actually you know I I know them very well and I actually spoke to the public works director at the time that Penllis County acquired them back in 2003 he was their um he was the head of public works and he's absolutely said
it's the best thing they've ever done i have not spoke to one person that um has done this that didn't just say what a difference it made um in cost in employees etc etc again the reason the
urgency to to get this in motion um it was brought up again um about you know the master pump station of what it's going to cost in the new public works building and let's not forget we are going to be having a boom in building um
we have all these empty properties we have the hotels that are going to rebuild we have the all of downtown um Treasure Island that has to be built that's all going to take infrastructure we don't we one don't have the manpower and we don't have the money um this is
to me it just makes sense um I know and and that's why I wanted to bring it up so you guys would all have time because we can't talk to each other um so that you guys could have time to do the research and I had asked Nori if um she is the deputy deputy director of public
works for the county um kind of to be here not really to do a presentation at this point but more for question and answers because I know we're all going to have them but we definitely have to get this conversation started because this is just as important as solid waste
when it comes to moving forward with the public's uh works um you know Madera Beach does still run their trash um but they do outsource the sewer and I'll go back to they have 600 residents less than we do they have 15 employees in their public works we have
88 88 um Gulfport has 11,655 residents they have 37 public works employees belair Beach has four so if we don't think there's a problem in the amount of of people in and and
I've and this is just public works i'm not even talking about other departments so I think this is extraordinarily important to to start the subject and I'll be quiet so Nory can talk all right um good afternoon major and
commissioners Nory Hancock i serve as the uh deputy director for utilities and just a little bit of background first I want to uh thanks Commissioner Basket for inviting me over i know it was the last minute but happy to to come and accommodate and try to discuss with you
all about the potential of looking at acquisition of your sewer system by the county um the county does provide currently your drinking water and your reclaimed water so the only thing that the city is currently doing on their own is your sewer and then you guys are a
wholesale to the city of St petersburg so you don't even have trimming capacity here so you just collect your waste water from your residents and then you send it to the city of St petersburg for treatment and disposal um another fact is in 2016 2017 we did a similar a
similar um evaluation for for this city and at the time the city decided not to proceed we gave the city a number a bottom line number how much it's going to cost because I know that's at the end that's the decision making here how much is going to cost the city how much it's
going to cost our residents how much it's going to cost to our property um uh taxpayers and and so on so at that time that decision was made that's before my time working as a public servant so I really don't have any background on why
and I think this whole commission is sort of new also here so you guys probably don't also know the reasons but anyhow so today I didn't bring a a presentation or anything i just want to kind of cover what we'll take from the city to go through these uh evaluation
and it's very simple it's basically four main pillars four main steps it starts with a um a letter of intent um from the city to the county then this commission will execute that letter and then our uh county um commissioners will execute on
our behalf and it is a non-binding letter so again it is just a letter of intent saying both parties are committing to do to go through the process and there's no biting biting from anyone at that point and then we start with the first step of the
acquisition framework which is establishing the strategic objective the why why does the city of Treasure Island wants to give up their sewer system basically why why we want to do that and there's several reasons that we can talk in various discussions some of them are
operating reasons like Commissioner Basquez was saying um it might be difficult for a small city to continue you know man power is becoming even for us as a county it's becoming difficult to find people with the right skill sets with people that want to work let's be
honest wastewater is not the most clean of fluids out there so not everybody wants to be in a wastewater you know digging holes repairing pipes and so on so operate operating uh can be a reason uh there is also the regulatory reasons
so we know that um the legislation every every year is becoming stricter and stricter when it comes to envir environmental uh rules so for a city like um Treasury it might be difficult u to maintain regulatory compliance in
2022 there was a new uh law that was signed by the uh by our governor where every wastewater collection system owner has to provide a plan for a 10 year how you guys are going to plan on improving how are you going to plan how are you
going to improve on reducing inflow and infiltration into your collection system how you planning on reducing from sanitary sewers overflows uh from um reducing those and and contaminating uh the environment and protecting your public health and so on
so again it can be regulatory reasons for for that um other reasons can be perfectly um financially and and rates you guys might not want to increase the rates to your customers but again you guys only have partial control over that
because as a wholesale customer you don't control what your treatment and disposal provider does and their and their rates so you have to accommodate for that so once that we go through the strategic objective and the why why are we doing these then the next step is
what are we doing so it's the the what so that's the the part where it we we're going to be doing our due diligence process so we you're going to be asking for a lot of data from the city okay tell me about all your assets what do you own what is the condition of your assets what is your GIS how how many
pump stations do you own when was the last time that you replace it rehab it all all of that data and then that's the due diligence process and finally we get to the last step which is okay let's do the um evaluation uh process and then
that valuation process takes into account first your cash flows okay what are your sewer revenues what is coming in to the city and then we take um what is your operating cost that that is a you got to deduct that what is your operating cost how much you paying your
staff how much you're paying on truck how much you're paying on fuel everything materials etc consultants and then we take that and then we from that cash flow that number uh we take any any
one-time cost so for example you guys might need to come into our billing database and then there is one time cost because we got to bring you guys all your customers got to be bring into the county's billing um software so there
might be a few one-time costs and then we will have the actual capital uh improvements that will be required for your system and then we between those two so your cash flows minus your one-time spends then we get to a bottom
number sometimes the number works in the city's favor and your system is in great shape and that means the number comes that county if you want to take over my system you have to pay me and this is my number sometimes it's the other way around and it's like well your system is
not in that great shape you're not meeting certain level of service at least not the county level of service so city if you want the county to take over you will own these numbers so there's both ways that can come up so that's
sort of the uh framework i'm happy to answer any questions like I say the process will generally depending fingers crossed I know today I have heard today from you guys a lot of discussions on the hurricanes and the impacts and where you guys have been
dealing with um just anyone in most of Penelance County but as a coastal community I can only relate you know the challenges that you guys are um dealing with so if we don't have any big storms it can be anywhere between nine months to a year for us to come back with a
number and present to this commission any questions how many current customers do you have how many municipalities do you do this for today uh quite a few so the last one that we acquired was Mata Beach in uh
two it was 2003 2004 time frame we um we have uh Bellair Beach Mada Beach so everyone above you guys north of you we do it except for Readington Shores and not Readington Beach which I think is
not secret that the county is currently negotiating with no Readington Beach for a post a potential acquisition so and Seol as well just for the because that's a pretty big one they have Seol as well yeah what is the biggest um deciding factor
in them deciding to go with you guys is it cost is it equipment so I I will say there's two main factors there's always been the cost yes operating um a wastewater collection system is
costly and then again by not having your own treatment facility that always creates because now you become a wholesaler of somebody else and you got to you are subject to that cost definitely is one um the other one is the regulatory like I said regulatory
it's becoming stricter and stricter so um sometimes it's very difficult because they want you to reduce so much inflow and infiltration in a coastal community that is a very difficult thing to do so um that has been in my experience what I
seen but number one cost for sure another question do you have any of your own like capital expenditure products you know projects going on that if we did this in a year you're going to have to build a new something that's going to wind up making our rate go up a bunch do
you have anything in that will be part of the acquisition okay um evaluation we will look at we will look physically at at your infrastructure and decide okay over the over the just like any capital improvement plan on year one we need to
take care all these things and here's the number and on year two that's this is the part that we need so we will present to you several years of what is going to be required in order for your system to be up to the standard of the county it might already be I don't know
I cannot tell you today I doubt it thank Yeah we uh have a what a grant I guess for our master pump station and well would would we no matter what have to replace this master pump station
i mean are we going to end up building that before we'd even get through this 9 months to 12 months but did you say you have a grant for it so you got grant funding to do some of this work are you ready to do where where are you in the process let me ask you that are you
engineering are you ready to construct no we've got one response on the RFP so it has to go back out anyway so we're nowhere on it right now work so to to do your plans and specs no we have a 30% design but we do need
to hire engineering services the engineering services okay i think it depends you could continue and then we can pick up or you can pause not risking your grant i will not recommend i'm proponing of getting every grant you can
free money is free money let's take it so even though sometimes it's not such a thing but um or we can we can wait and u we we could talk about that this is a kind of our first okay need to get that master pump stations great thank you
okay i I have two things and please don't take this personal because it isn't intended to be personal but uh with with uh water with the water uh that we get through Penllis County right now whenever there's a water leak in Sunset Beach or whatever somebody calls
me and I call that that at uh a line for water leaks and sometimes people answer most of the time they don't and it is taking days sometime to get people from the county to come out and fix a water leak uh and I'm talking about some some
like gushers that that went on for two or three days before we finally got somebody out there from the county to do that so so that would be one concern I would have and I'd like to talk about that when when I we've had a similar problem uh with with uh not with water
but with other issues i've called on a Friday night at 9:00 our non-emergency number for public works and somebody took care of that at our public works at 9:00 at night on a Friday so so I do want to talk about a about the service levels and response the other thing is
if you take a look uh at our wastewater fund uh you can you will see that uh this is more for for the my colleagues than it is for your benefit but we we net we have net revenues favorable we
have about uh 6 million a year in revenues coming from that and we only pay out about 2 a.5 million so we have a net cash flow in the last three years of about three and a half million favorable that we get out of this fund that we can
use and we can transfer to other departments to use other money so we need to be appro approach this pretty cautiously that we don't lose the benefit of that three and a half million uh uh fa difference in revenue and expenses that we have for the wastewater
fund yet we haven't and we haven't even kept up with what we have that's the problem we've I mean I I I hear you i do but that's the problem i mean we've needed a master pump station for how many years now we've needed you know a
lot of things done and it's kind of really even more disheartening the fact that we have that much coming in and yet nothing's been done and it's not like we're running everything ourselves anyway this is the only thing that we're not and we can't
even keep up with it is that manpower is that ability is that what why would be because if it's not money then why hasn't any of it been done those by the way those expenses did not include capital improvements uh and I excluded
that because as you hear heard from Mayor Doctor like with the capital improvements we're talking about we gotten a lot of grant money to cover a good portion of that so I left the capital improvements out of that but it is a a lucrative account and I'm just saying as as we explore this let's make
sure we don't lose sight of that as well i have a question uh currently we pump our sewer uh towards a pumping station in St pete Beach and then it goes to St petersburg will we have to divert uh the sewer in a different direction potentially yes and that that could be
the game changer on these i I will be completely um blunt because we will probably want to run a force main going into our own collection system and eventually get it to our facility however I will also say that the county
has a small um sewer uh collection system in the Bar Creek area that is connected to the same station as you guys are and we send it so there might be mutual um opportunities for us to build that
pipeline so but yes who would take the expense of building the pipeline well we will have to look and it is usually based on the flows who is how much flows is contributing let's say so if you guys are 60% and we are 40 that's kind of it breaks into the capital but it's so we
will have to sit down and have that conversation how much did Madier Beach have to pay you to take over their sewer do you know that figure uh Mata Beach we actually ended up paying then 3.1 million they were one of the positive so
they um ended up I think we ended up paying then slightly over a million dollars no 3.1 to be exact oh thank you yep $3.1 million so again it it it sometimes is favorable for the city
sometimes you guys are the ones that have to pay so do we move forward with writing a letter of intent the way that I feel about this is no different than the solid waste is I think we move forward with the letter of intent we
find out what it looks like we start the process it's going to take a year and and go from there and if it works amazing and if it doesn't it doesn't it's an exercise for everyone absolutely educated decision for you guys
absolutely any money to do the letter of intent like the letter of intent no okay or the process or the process right great great so I think we proceed that way excuse me mayor if I could did you say in the beginning that this had the
before you got here that there was an assessment done like this yes okay in 2016 to 2017 okay would you have that available or do do you know anything about it or what the result i do have that report i can share it with you guys for sure yep that'd be great that's
something you guys want thanks Chuck all right uh do we have any public comment robert I get out of your way so you can make Thank you a couple things uh uh uh Commissioner Dicki great comment about
level of service um I live in a Capri and every time there's power loss or a storm we get lots of generator trucks out there and and keep those puppy stations open so again that'd be a question of what kind of service can we get i think that's fantastic i'm all about outsourcing i think it's a
fantastic initiative on your part i I think it's fantastic to look at um I happened to come right a I I came to uh Treasure Island right after um we tried to we looked at did the LOI with the county and I had a chance because I I talk a lot asked a lot of questions um I
know it's my personality but um so I did at the time I I did talk to Penelis County people that were running around the island then and I do have sources within public works and the feedback I got was that our system is really in terrible shape it's it's I mean they
used the term you know uh like band-aid and and uh and so that was kind of think the reason why perhaps we didn't said but I think Commissioner Minnik probably could help us to give us a history of why we turn turned them down but it's probably that reason um our antiquated
system and the cost is not going to be maybe us getting money it may be us having to give money and I don't like to do that and the other question that was raised was that you know maybe that line that that we don't have that particular line that could feed uh them directly so I I I think our system is antiquated
needs a lot of help but I do love the level of service between public works is a f I mean f fantastic and the pumping stations that go to a capri that helps you and me is like my bathroom okay thank Well Mike Hellfrick uh who is our public works
director has been working diligently uh over the last five years to uh get everything relined all of our laterals everything else so you know we're in a whole different situation than we were back in 2017 which is exactly why yeah just finding
out moving forward and finding out I think it's definitely it okay with that being said this workshop is adjourned