Uh we'll call to order the uh Wednesday, July 20 22nd city commission meeting on water department budget briefing workshop and agenda review workshop meeting to order. >> Can we get a roll call, please? >> Commissioner Davis >> here.
>> Commissioner D who's not yet present. Um, Commissioner Bong >> here, >> Mayor Prom Mercer >> here, >> and Mayor Yates >> here. Thank you. So, we'll have the budget briefing workshop now. The city of Winter Haven fiscal year 2627 proposed budget presentation by city
manager staffers. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm going to make my way to the do to the well to present this from the podium, but I do just want to offer one correction. And I see that the title of this meeting at the top reflects water department budget
briefing. This is actually everything but the water department's budget. Um that will be included in the numbers I present. However, the detail on that budget will not come forward until I believe the first workshop in May. We do that separately. Um but what is included
in the budget briefing discussion under 3A is correct. So, mayor and commissioners, it is a pleasure to present to you this evening our tenative proposed budget for fiscal
year 27. 7. I've had the opportunity to meet with the four of you plus Commissioner Dolison individually to provide some briefings and go into a little more detail on some of the items that are particular interest uh to you and that gave you a chance to ask
questions, helped us further refine some of the things within the budget. I want to start this evening with uh just a word of appreciation first off to our CFO Chris Reer, Mr. Alan Weekes and Brandon Boozier of our finance
department. So these three gentlemen have the pleasure of taking all of what departments bring forward uh guidance from the commission, my own guidance that I provide to them and bring that into a bud land that as a budget that we
can um that we can fund and that is uh consistent with revenues that we have and priorities and the like. So to them I special thank you. That's a lot of number crunching that has occurred. Also to Katrina Hill who has played a key role in putting together our
presentation for this evening as well as the tenative budget that we provide out to the public. Also want to extend to my department directors that are here in the audience my appreciation to them. They were given some pretty clear instructions on how to approach this year's budget and have done so. And I
think they've been very responsible, very strategic, uh, very future looking into what challenges and opportunities may exist out there and have structured their requests accordingly. And certainly last, but by no means least, the five of you in providing direction
to us in what you're looking for and what your priorities are for the coming year. Um, this budget uh presentation this evening is going to be a very high level yet detailed overview of the overall
budget. It's done in a format that kind of communicates in clearer terms what all the numbers say. Um, in advance of me getting into the presentation, one of the things I'd like for Katrina to walk us through is, you
know, in in full commitment to our transparency in our fiscal accountability, you know, we're required by statute to post information to our website. Our entire tenative budget for fiscal year 27 is available online. And that is not
just for you, but that is for our cit citizens and interested parties. um you don't get a big giant book anymore like we did in years past. Everything is available through our open go platform which is embedded within our website. So
I'm going to ask Katrina Katrina if you would to to walk through that. >> Yep. >> All right. So what you see on the screen is our homepage of our website mywinterhaven.com. If you hover over the departments tab, scroll down and just click on financial
services. That will load the finance page and right here at the top you have your proposed fiscal year 27 budget. Clicking on that link will take you right to the full budget. Takes you right to the table of contents page where you can find any of the different cost centers
and funds and you can also navigate at the top or translate into about 75 languages as needed. So again, every cost center that we have, every fund is within this. So if you're having trouble sleeping at night
and you want to see what we're doing within the urban forestry fund, it is right there for your perusal. Okay. >> We've been doing that for a few years now, right? Like well, >> we've had the um in this format, we so
we've always put the budget online as a PDF. this this last year we were able to load in the budget in this format. Um even though we only created a portion of the budget from certain departments that we like in that test version of open gov
this year we put every department through open gov's uh uploading of information. So this will look very similar to what you would have seen in 2026. Um, and then when should this be approved and adopted by the city commission, it will then be just kind of
relabeled as the final budget for 27. And I think Katrina, if I'm not mistaken, we have to maintain I think the past five years of budgets um by the statute so citizens can do comparisons and the like there. So with that, I will jump into our
budget presentation. Um, I want to apologize in advance to those that came out to give presentations tonight for items that are on the regular agenda. So, my friends from Jones Edmunds and Morton Smith and other folks, uh, they're going to be waiting a little while. I also just looked over my shoulder. And I do want to make a quick
introduction if I can before I get started. Mr. Alex Price is with us this evening. Alex, if you would stand, please. Uh, Alex is the new regional affairs director. I don't know if that's manager. uh position for Tampa Electric Company.
Um this position uh you probably remember through your dealings was recently held by Nick Plot and then was temporarily filled for a short uh few months by um Morgan ODM I believe the name was MJ. Is that correct? Um and
since her departure, Alex has now come into that role. He's left the CFDC and stepped into this capacity. We had a chance to meet with him today to talk emergency management and coordination on projects and the like and we are extremely excited to have him in our
fold and uh working with us is our representative from TICO joining us in these types of things. So Alex, welcome aboard. Okay, so the budget for Winter Haven is built around the strategic plan. strategic plan was adopted by the
commission in 2024 and is founded on these four these six pillars. You know that we do surveying throughout the year twice a year each year that gives us a uh kind of a snapshot of the public's sentiment in terms of satisfaction in
each of these areas. It's interesting and and I'll be able to share more in the in the coming weeks. We're actually going through the budget and identifying all the costs that pertain to each of these strategic pillars. But coincidentally, one of the
pillars that we perform lowest on in terms of overall satisfaction. When I say low, it's not a horrible score. It's in the high 70s is infrastructure. And what you're going to see in this budget is a tremendous investment in infrastructure of strengthening
predominantly our water and sewer systems. Um it is a conservative budget but it does have a tremendous investment in infrastructure and I will reiterate that throughout and I'm going to try and share some analyses that I have done
that complements the conservative approach staff took in building a budget predominantly as it pertains to the general fund where taxpayer adorum taxes go in as a revenue. Um, a lot of the big expenses we have will exist within our
proprietary or businessoriented operations that are that are funded through the fees and charges by those that use those services. Budget highlights and I will start and close with this slide. Um, our budget as
proposed for fiscal year 27 is $371,845,623 th23. So throughout the presentation, I'm going to refer to that as just 372 million. Um, save me a little bit of breath and tongue tongue tangling. the
uh in comparison to the fisc year 26 budget, it is a difference of about $120 million, an increase of about $120 million,
of which all of that plus more is tied directly to one-time capital investments, many of which will be for projects that serve the community for over 50 years yet to come. Water plants,
wastewater plants are the two biggest within there. If we just looked at the general fund, the general fund for fiscal year 27 is crafted at about $85.5 million
in comparison to $79.7 million the year prior. That's a difference of less than $6 million between the two years. And I think that that's important because again, when you start talking about property taxes and
affordability, that's where people's minds go. What are we doing within that general fund? We're not spending like drunken sailors in port for the weekend. These are reasonable and realistic increases in certain areas that it costs to maintain
the level of services that we have. The budget is fully balanced as it has to be at the current millage rate of 6.5900 mills. Coincidentally, the roll back rate is calculated for uh to achieve the
same revenues is at 6.55. So, it's a difference of 4100ths of a mill. That's probably the closest that we've ever been to the roll back rate. Uh certainly in the past several years, I think you'd have to go back to the
great recession to be closer in in terms of your actual millage to your roll back. Gross property values in Winter Haven increased by just under 5% at 4.97%. The total taxable values for property is
approximately 5.61 billion dollar. that is all your residential, commercial, industrial, agriculture, vacant lands throughout the community. If you take that 4.97% uh kind of interesting this year, 2.83%
is tied to new growth. So that is developments that have happened that got a CO in time for those properties to be added to the tax role. Um that is some of the industrial stuff that comes online. that is some
multifamily, some commercial and certainly single family residential. We do have other projects in the mix as you know with the industrial park. The Chick-fil-A complex will come on at some point in the not too distant future.
There's also development of a 1.4 4 million square foot warehousing operation out there that is under construction now but will not come online in term to reflect in next year's budget. Property values of existing properties
only increase by 2.14%. Um I can't give you reasons for that. I don't know if that's tied because there's sufficient inventory or there's just less people moving in that has caused the cost of new housing or resales to come down, but that is
reflective of that type of environmental uh influence. Adalorum revenues that we take in based upon these property values increase this year by a total of $1.5 million to give us a total adorum revenue
projection of $32,753,796. By comparison, in recent years, the increase in advorum that we anticipated year-over-year was usually above three maybe $ three and a half million dollars. So the fact that you only have
a 4.9% 9.7% increase in taxable values has a direct influence on what is your additional revenue coming in for ad valorum. It's a pretty flat system to say the least uh going forward this year. In the downtown CRA we saw an
increase of about 147 almost $148,000 in revenues to be realized there. and in Florence Villa an additional approximately $109,000. Our budget does continue your investment into the affordable housing trust fund.
We anticipate some requests for use of those dollars in the coming months and over the ne over the fiscal year. Uh we do continue to put $250,000 into that account. Um, we also continue to fund uh our STEP program that was put
into play several years back that provides employees an adjustment through their pay grade on their anniversary date if they have achieved a satisfactory or greater rating on their annual performance review. And then I have incorporated and I'm recommending a
3% cost of living adjustment for our employees absent the collective bargaining units within police and fire. We're still at the negotiating table with them. So that remains to be seen where those land, but we have budgeted in a 3% for our workforce. The number of
employees, 776 budgeted positions total. That's part-time and full-time. There are only six new positions recommended for next year despite growth within our community. Of those six positions, one is recommended to be filled at half
year, meaning it wouldn't be approved until March and that is entirely contingent upon property tax reform outcomes. The other five are within our proprietary accounts, so they are supported by the fees and charges of
those business-like operations. The other thing I failed to mention in creating a budget for fiscal year 27, this is the first time for me um and probably for most city managers that you're building a budget for fiscal year
27 trying to figure out what your revenues might be in fiscal year 28. Because the decisions we make for fiscal year 27, particularly as they pertain to recurring expenses, personnel, operations, expansions of services, you make that decision today
based upon what you have in terms of revenues knowing that you might not have those revenues in the following year and for years thereafter. We had to be conservative in doing so. And so when we look at positions, when we look at cost of living, when we look at expansion of
services, we throttled that way back. not knowing if we were going to be able to continue it past fiscal year 27. Millage rates throughout the county. We continue to acquire this information as our our brothers and sisters in local government uh present their budgets. But
you can see at present time we are in the lower half of the property mill rates number eight in comparison to the 18 other taxing jurisdictions throughout PK County. Um, I don't anticipate
changes in other cities or the county with respect to their millage rate. I think the uncertainty of amendment three and property tax reform has got everybody pretty much in a holding pattern. But what I do find interesting and because you have recently had discussions about the consideration of a
fire service fee that is it's not an additional millillage, but it is it is an additional revenue that some cities tap into. And if you think about that, if they didn't have those fire service fees, then their millage rates would likely be
higher than what they are to support their fire operations. So those agencies that have fire service fees would include Barto, which is presently number five on this list. Unincorporated Pulk County has a fire service fee and they
are number nine. Hayne City, number 12, has a fire service fee. Dundee has a fire service fee and Lake Wales has a fire service fee. So if you think if they didn't have those, those millage rates would likely be significantly higher than what they're they are at
present time. Looking at the budgets compared, so let me kind of walk through this. You can see at the top last year's budget or the current year's is about 252 million. Next year's about 372 million. The first thing that we do is we back out
intrafund transfers. So what that means is if there's a transfer from one fund into another, it's recorded as an expense going out and then when that ex when that receiving fund spends those on a project or a service, it's recorded
again as an expense. So we don't want to record things as a double expense. So we back those out as you can see with those negative numbers there. So the total amount to be appropriated for next year approximately 329 million. I mentioned we have a significant investment in
capital projects next year. You can see $110 million alone with just within major projects in the utility operations. the downtown parking garage at 10 and a half million. Efforts to uh establish new pickle ball
courts, a million and a half. Improvements at Satoma Park specific to the football operations, a million and a half. A new roof to go onto the Florida Citrus Building or Norma Hall, half a million dollars. Ritz Theater, a new roof and new air conditioning, half a
million dollars. Improvements and enhancements to three of our existing fire stations, a million and a half. I shared with you all that in December of 2025, we had the unfortunate situation where somebody totaled out one of our fire trucks by driving a car into
it. We received some payment on that for insurance, but it didn't cover what the cost of a new fire truck is. So, we have to find $720,000 to fulfill the rest of the cost to replace that fire truck that we weren't expecting to replace this year. We were
hoping that we'd be able to fund that for the next few years and replace it according to our schedule, but it came due much sooner because of that accident. And then the other capital that's tied in specific to vehicle replacements, equipment, other
miscellaneous infrastructure. When you back those out, the total amount of personnel operating and non-C capital expenditures is 151,550,000. That is about 12.8 million across all
funds more than it was last year or about 9.3% on all funds including your business operations. I think that taking it from that approach you understand more so the investment that we're proposing within
capital is what that cause for such a significant increase in budget is. If we look at all different funds that we have, the utility fund is by far the largest and again the vast majority of
what is in that utility fund is the initial investment in infrastructure that's going to exist and serve the community for 50 years plus. This happens to be probably the first of three or four years in which we're making significant investments into
water plants and wastewater treatment plants. The general fund follows that at 85 million. The next two largest funds are transportation and construction. Again, one-time expenses, nonrecurring. This is capital that we've got to move forward.
And then you can see the rest of the funds as they they come down through there. I talked about the proprietary funds as being business operations. So we hear all the time, why doesn't government operate more like a business? Well, the reality is we do operate like a
business. In fact, 215 almost 216 million or 58% of our budget is in business-like operations. Wastewater, storm water, water, um the golf course, the the dark fiber
operations. Those are business operations. They don't rely upon taxpayer dollars. They instead generate fees that offset their expenses. The solid waste fund, you pay a solid waste fee to have your garbage collected. That is what pays for the staff and the
equipment and the resources it needs to provide that service. Where we can operate as a business, we do so. The other ones fall within the general fund or special funds, construction funds, and internal service funds. I think this is important and
it's a good talking point that when people say government should operate more like a business, 58% of what we do in local government is operated as a business. If you look at all of our expenses, capital is the biggest demand on on our
cost. So 177.5 million is going towards capital investments. That is investments in roads, in utility systems, in playgrounds, in equipment, variety of different things. That is the bulk of
where our expense lives for next year's budget. Followed by personnel services at about 18.4% and operating at about 17 almost 18% of the budget. That's looking again the entire picture. Everything from
utilities to urban forestry and everything in between there. Looking at all the funds by classification. This just gives you the same information but a year-over-year comparison. And I draw your attention to the chart that you see. So the first
bars within that are capital. And you can see what we did in capital last year versus what we're proposing to do in capital next year. It is night and day because we're at the point where those wastewater treatment plants that are 50 years old are coming due and have to be
upgraded, enhanced, replaced, expanded to meet not only today's customers but customers well into the future. You don't expand these every year. These are one-time major investments that you have to do and the longer you put them off,
the more expensive they become. Personnel less than 5% change year-over-year. Operations just over 8% year-over-year. You know, that is that is attributed to uh the merit increases or the step plan
that we do with the personnel side. It certainly isn't from adding a whole lot of new positions. In operations, we see the same operational expenses that others do. The price of gas, we use a ton of gas. We're running fire trucks,
police cars, solid waste vehicles, utility service vehicles, seven days a week. And when gas prices go above $4, because we're government, we don't get some special break on that. When electrical costs, electricity costs go up, we pay those. When water costs go
up, we pay those. So, we're seeing the same kind of inflationary costs as the general citizen or business owner is going to see. I will point out the um in the support of other funds, you see about a 26% increase there. A big piece
of that is transferring money to the um for the specifically for the parking garage that we had in one fund and we're putting all of our parking garage money into a a single fund. Um, Chris, I think we're putting it all within the construction fund if I'm not mistaken. So, there's some money in the
transportation fund that transfers in there and that's what that represents. You have a copy of this presentation, so I'm not going to belabor this part too much, but when we talk about support of other funds, there's some detail there. uh not only what the general fund
provides out to libraries and cemeteries and the airport, but also what solid waste and water and sewer provide back to the general fund. When we talk about non-EP departmental expenses, that's our insurance, our internal service allocations for human resources,
information technologies, engineering, facility maintenance, our pulled vehicle expenses. And when we talk about debt services, we have a few um debt issuances within the utilities either through bonds or through SRF loans and
then four that you can see there under general government. We are anticipating doing a bond issuance at some point in fiscal year 27 to help support those capital investments. And I'll say this now, the fees that were adopted by the
city commission in August of 2024 contemplated a large borrowing to fund the capital improvement program and what the debt payments on that would be. So you have already put into play the means to pay down debt service
within your utilities and those dollars are coming in so that when that money is borrowed to do those projects, the cost to pay it off is already accounted for. In fact, we're doing uh an update to those rates now to verify
yes, this is what it needs to be and in consideration of changes within state statute that change how we do rates. in the general fund. I'm going to spend a few minutes here because we talk about property tax reform. Your advalorum tax revenues anticipated for fiscal year 27
are about $33.1 million. And you can see that is the biggest slice of the pie. Um compared to last year, it was about $31.5 million. We do get some additional revenue about $400,000 off penalties and
delinquent payments, late payments, things like that, but not a big change in the overall number for um for Adalorum. We received earlier this week a copy of the uh state's revenue estimating
conferences report that spells out what the anticipated losses are for every county and every city within the state. You may recall when I presented information a couple weeks ago I shared that the property appraiser Neil Comy's
office had anticipated year 2 losses in Winter Haven to be about $10.4 million. The state's revenue estimating conference report shows that over $13 million. So that is a significant blow should that come to to fruition.
Um and I think that that's just important to to be mindful of that it's it's likely going to be over 33% of your advorum revenues if it should pass in November.
other revenues that come in, the transfers and contributions. We do get some money that comes in from the downtown CRA, that is for debt payment and law enforcement services that are provided within the CRA. We received some money from the federal building which we have down on Third Street
South. Impact fees get transferred in to offset some capital expenses where we are expanding a service. The building fund makes a contribution to offset some of the fire inspection services that are tied back to building life safety and
work that they do in partnership with the building division. And then the utility funds contribution represents 12% of their um operating revenues from the year prior and that is consistent with the commission's policy that was
adopted I believe in 2017. And then the solid waste fund also makes a contribution of about $1.2 million. We received some money from the county is a portion of debt on improvements that were made at Chain Lakes Park. We also
received money from Florida Department of Transportation for our maintenance of the traffic signals on state roads as well as rights of way maintenance. And then some funds come in for offduty details associated with the police
department. We receive about $43,000 of county business tax receipts and about $60,000 in a SRO that has been traditionally assigned to New Beginnings High School. It's my understanding that may go away this year. However, uh a new charter
school that is going to be opening up has expressed interest in having an SRO and potentially one other. So, that number could actually increase which would be great. The general fund. Again, this is where your taxpayers dollars are going. About
48 and a half% of the funds are being used for personnel expenses operating about set almost 18% in capital just under 9%. In your general fund, you have police, fire, uh code compliance, planning,
finance, uh the streets division, all of your parks and recreation operations. It's a very heavy personneloriented uh operation. At the end of the day, their capital as you see here at about $7.3 million, that is certainly not all
of the capital that happens within the general fund. Big projects that they are doing is an example. um the parking garage or a fire station. We pull those dollars out and we put them in a construction fund because they are
easier for us to track and manage in a construction fund. Those are projects that take multiple years to deliver and when they're isolated within a construction fund, we can more accurately track and understand where those dollars are being used and for
what purposes. What remains within capital within the general fund are the smaller things that is a new roof on Florida Citrus building or on the the Ritz theater. It is the delta between what has already been funded for police vehicles and what the actual cost will
be. It's for pieces of equipment, things that we can easily complete within the fiscal year that don't have uh such a a complexity to them as some of the bigger projects. Again, year-over-year comparisons,
you can see that the general funds increase from 79.6 million this current year to 84.5 million or 85 and a.5 million next year is about 7.26. 26% increase year-over-year. I ran a
calculation earlier today that if you pulled out the capital, if you pulled out those true one-time expenses and left everything in, the difference from 26 fiscal year to 27 is about $3.4 million or 4.6%.
That is an extremely conservative budget year-over-year in relation to what cost of living or CPI and other expenses are showing. And I think that that's the takeaway. Yeah, you've got a 372 million budget versus 252. Oh my gosh, it's
increasing, you know, close to 50% year-over-year. It's all in capital. When you look at where the rubber meets the road and where taxpayer dollars are being used and you cut out the capital that's within that, it's about a 4.6 increase year-over-year.
some of the operating services that we cover within the general fund. Obviously, contractual and professional services, all the occupancy, utility costs, fuels, those types of things, phone services, um memberships, subscriptions, travel, fuel, I
mentioned, uh other consumable supplies, the non-EP departmental expenses, that's the bus service. We just heard from Citrus Connection about a month ago that that's going up ever so slightly. Our insurance, our internal service charges for those other supporting departments
that help every department, the audit and bank fees, and then we also have a qualified target industry incentive that we pay out of there. The general fund also helps deliver uh services that are outside the general fund. So, they make a contribution to all of those that you
see there, the library, airport, cemetery, an uh a contribution to Willoughbrook Golf Course. They're making a transfer to the transportation fund of $2 million that goes towards the road resurfacing project each year.
They're t uh contributing money to the construction fund off of available fund balance for improvements at at Sertoma Park. Um the contribution to the Winter Haven Housing Authority. I mentioned and then the debt service. You, as I mentioned, they have a number of uh
projects or bond issuances that were established over the years that they continue to pay their debt service on. And then their capital, again, about $7.3 million. You can see where the bulk of that exists within those items listed at the bottom.
Looking at the departments of the general fund, where does the money go? So if you take the biggest chunk at the top, $21.2 million is going towards support for other funds at about 7.2
million, debt service about 6.7, non-EP departmental expenses about 6.8, and grant and aid in the CDFI pro program at about 4.83 million. In terms of actual departments,
police is the big dog. followed right behind it by fire. And that's the way that we would expect it to be. That is our number one priority is to protect and safeguard life and property.
So your biggest expense falls within those areas. The second the third biggest expense within departments is in parks and recreation. again makes a lot of sense when you consider the quality of life in the parks and recreation
facilities that you provide for your citizens. The fieldhouse, the cultural center on on MLK Boulevard, the sports complexes, the senior center, um all of the parks that we have throughout the community. You know, there is a tremendous amount of land and resources
that they manage through the general fund. I do this each year. Um kind of the comparison of how much do you take in in advorum money because that's the elephant in the room and how much goes out towards public
safety. So we operate under a three-legged stool of property of public safety. So police, fire, and safe neighborhoods make up that stool. Those three departments combined
cost next year 3.3 $38.8 million. Advalorum property tax is projected to bring in $33.1 million. The delta between property tax revenues and what it takes to keep a community safe is
almost $5.7 million. And so when we talk about in the long term, if you had to cut 10.4 or god forbid $13 million from your budget, there's your budget next year. Where do
you take it from? What do you no longer do? And I know we've had some some discussions on rather than cutting, what are the replacement strategies? And I'm grateful to hear that because if you put it upon me to say what are you going to cut that equals $13 million, there's a
whole lot that this community has come to love and appreciate uh and support that would no longer be there. Funding partners that we are uh scheduled to contribute to next year are community partners. Again, these are the
agencies that help fulfill the mission of the city. So, Pulk Vision, Main Street Winterhaven, the Chamber of Commerce, and the EDC. Those are consistent levels with what we've funded over the past few years. Our service
delivery partners help us actually deliver a service to the community uh via partnerships within our departments. So, keep Winter Haven Clean and Beautiful and Keep Pulk County Beautiful are part of our litter control initiatives and beautifification efforts. We fund them within the solid waste operations
and then within parks and recreation we fund we set aside dollars for the marching Wolverines community band and ridge art association. Those are not checks that we just stroke and hand over to the individuals. This is money that we've earmarked specifically for needs
that they have as they come up throughout the year that we if they need in ridge art new hanging equipment for something in one of their exhibits, we have the dollars to make that purchase up to this amount. And then the external services that we budget for uh Winter
Haven Area Transit next year is just shy $36,000. I have included a continuation of the homeless initiative with Hartford for Winterhaven at $295,000. That is their efforts to uh eliminate
homelessness amongst families with school-aged children in Winterh Haven. They are making tremendous strides in that. Uh I have a meeting scheduled with Mr. Brad Bey coming up in the next week or two uh where I anticipate receiving that request and it will come to you all
for authorization. But rather than having to find that money later, uh, I went ahead and put it in the budget. If we don't need it, we don't need it, but I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. And then the CDFI program, that is their um,
community development financial institution. I think I'm saying that right. Um, we put $500,000 towards that last year as seed money. And the uh anticipation was that on the four years following, so years two through five,
the city would contribute 125,000 to that. That is money that is seed money that allows them to do microloans out into the community for startup businesses and those that cannot qualify for lending through traditional means.
>> We didn't expend that money yet, though. >> We have not. So, there is still $500,000 earmarked in this current year's budget. I know that they are working to get that program off the ground. Um, and you know, if it doesn't go forward in this
fiscal year, we will note that and have that available in the event. I think that just because they don't meet a a fisc year timeline, I still think that's a valuable program. I think the commission agrees that if it if it can can come to be, it's a it's a worthy uh
avenue for people within our community. There's a lot of hurdles, you probably know from the banking industry working with um IRS and others as to how to get that established. I know Mr. Murphy's had some communications with them on where they are in the process and the
contractual language, but I do think it will happen. I just don't know it's going to happen before October 1st. I think it is a valuable program for a community to have a CDFI. However, I'll say that there is a lot of
federal funds that are available for CDFIs and in the midst of potential changes to our budget. I mean, I think that everything's on the table. Um, and there there is a large federal amount of
funds that come in and go into CDFIS and I'm not going to give a CDFI lesson tonight, but I mean it's it's kind of silly how the money gets uh comes in and gets dispersed and hope they get paid back. That's a that's a federally government
uh funded program. So, we can tackle that later. But I just wanted to confirm that that that money was still there. It hasn't been expended. Will that come before us to expend? >> Absolutely. they so we'll have a discussion at that time where it's at
>> and and you make a good point mayor that you know in the event that amendment three should pass and when we had our discussion on July 3rd it's not just about where do you find alternative revenues but where do you find
opportunities to tighten the belt and maybe not do some of the things there's about $810,000 that goes out in grant aid through the things you see here. Um, I don't know that that I would put mass
transit in that mix because that is so essential of a service to so many of of the people in our community to get to school, work, doctors, etc. But these are the things that I think come into question of can you continue to do that?
If it's between, you know, funding these or maintaining police and fire services, I think, well, I can't speak for you all, but I I would sense that's a pretty easy decision to make at the end of the day. Along those same lines, you have 358,000
uh that's within that 810,000 number I mentioned that go out to your grant and aid recipients as we discussed in late spring. Interestingly, of that 358,000, about 150,000 is what goes to those
legacy agencies. So, Boys and Girls Club, Girls, Inc., uh the Learning Resource Center in their operation of the PEP education facilities, the um Neighborhood Service Center, Meals on Wheels, and the Haley Center. Those are
some of the the ones that the commission has for many, many years been involved in. Um those those are about 150,000 of that 358. City is self-insured and so um you know we feel the pains of when bad things
happen to people whether they're our employees or dependents that are in our insurance program. Uh we we carry a big cost within that. Um our estimated expenses for fiscal year 26 are about 10.6 6 million.
It's sad to say and and you know one significant illness injury incident uh can have a tremendous effect on this. You know to to have somebody experience a million-doll situation is not unheard
of. Um, we are trying to do everything we possibly can in advocating our employees to be as healthy as they can to take advantage of the programs that we sponsor that we make available to them to identify particularly medical
situations that can be caught early and dealt with at a much lower cost than if you just don't ever get a a wellness check or you're not doing a health checkup. and what could have been a simple doctor's visit now becomes a
multi-month hospital stay. Our pension plans, I know that Mayor Prom Mercer and Commissioner Birdong spent better part of the day in pension meetings today. Um my takeaway in discussion of pensions with our CFO
quite simply for the general employee the fire and the police the the funded ratios are stable within these um the general employees pension the uh the investment return the actual investment
return outperformed the actuarial assumption. It was slightly less than that in police and fire. Um, in the general employee pension plan, MJ, I'm going to look to you because you gave me the number that of employees that are still in that now. >> 82 active.
>> So, there's 82 active employees within that. That number will continue to go down because it's a closed plan. Um, I'd prefer not to have any discussions this evening about MJ's mortality rates and, you know, how long we think he's going to live as one of the younger people
into that plan. Um, but we I don't have concerns from my perspective. I don't believe that the CFO has concerns at this point. He's very in tune with our our pension plans and certainly uh Commissioner Birdong and Mayor Prom Mercer can weigh in if they feel
differently. Um, this is the general employee pension plan. This is the firefighter pension plan. As I mentioned, the actual investment return slightly less than the actuarial assumption. And then the same thing for the uh
police department. And keep in mind, you know, there's things that affect the um the percentage of payroll. The city's contribution is percentage of payroll. you know, the length of service that people stay with us, the mortality rates, life expectancy, those amongst
many other factors play into to how your pension plans perform. In terms of compensation, one of the first places we start is looking at CPI year-over-year. Um I'm I'm grateful that we continue to
maintain this chart because it kind of gives you a snapshot of what the economy has done coming out of COVID through present day. And I've shared with you all in our briefings. You can see where you know the economy was really struggling after COVID coming out of
2021 and particularly in 22 significant CPI changes. Um coming into about August of 2024, things started to get a little better and stabilize. We were around
that 2 and a.5% CPI and that continued through all of last year and through the first part of this year. And then when you get into March of 2026, that is when the Iran conflict really kind of started off. And you can see how that number began to rise over the next two months.
It did come down for June uh to 3.53. I think that's something we have to continue to watch going forward as to what happens uh with that conflict if it escalates further. Do other parties become involved? Those global uh events certainly have an impact on everything
that we're paying for. Not only in terms of the fuel that our vehicles drive uh here in the city, but also the cost of materials because those materials have to get delivered to us. the cost of pipe. People don't often think about that or the cost of asphalt is directly
influenced by the cost of of fuels. So, we start there when we look at um what do we what do we hope to be able to do with with our compensation plan and then we also look at the study that is done by MIT that you see in that blue
banner across the lower part of the page that this is available I believe for every county throughout the the United States that it calculates what the living wage is. What does it cost for a single individual to afford housing?
You know, all the all the things that go with shelter, all the utilities, food, clothing, transportation, etc. Uh, in Pulk County, that is presently $22.16 is the living wage per that study. And
we just like to use that as kind of a comparative to where we are. I'd love to be able to say that our lowest paid employees are at $22.16, but we are not there and I don't know that we're going to get there. Um, but at least lets us know in comparison where we do fall. I mentioned when we do
cost of living adjustments for our employees, there's been years where we've not been able to do anything. There's been years where we've been able to make significant improvements. Um, this is one of those years where coming out of our retreat, you all made it abundantly clear that you were very
interested in taking care of our employees, the existing staff that we have, and I went back with a great hopes that we'd be able to do something impactful. Well, little did I know what our our rate of growth would be in terms of taxable values and little did we know
what might be coming about at that point with respect to amendment three or property tax reform. When you only have an additional million and a half dollars that's coming in as new revenue off of your adorum, there's not a whole lot you can do. And my
approach to cost of living adjustments is I want to do something meaningful for our employees, but I want it to be able to last, too. I don't want to be able to give something this year with your blessing only to come back next year if property tax reform goes through and
have to say we've got to claw that back. Everybody's got to take a pay cut or we've got to eliminate positions to maintain the rates of pay on others. So, in working with um our HR department and our finance department, what I'm recommending we do next year, and again,
I am still in negotiations with the collective bargaining units for police and fire. I have to make that abundantly clear that we're still at the table with them. But for our non-collective bargaining employees, we're recommending a 3% cost of living adjustment. Uh this
does consider inflation. It does prioritize retention of our workforce and keeps us competitive with what I'm seeing in the other organizations around us. And it also takes into account the potential impact of property tax reform.
Now, if I back up, I think this will let me do it. You see that cost of living went up by 3.53%. Year-over-year, and we're proposing a cost of living adjustment that is less than that. But keep in mind, I'm also recommending that
we continue to maintain our STEP program. So if an employee is performing at the levels that meet or exceed our expectations for that role, they are in a position to get an additional 2 and a.5% increase or if they're on a five-year um
increment, a three and a half% which puts it above the this this CPI when you factor in the COLA that's recommended. This is that step program in the blue banner in the middle of the table. Normally what we would be doing is if we
adjusted if we had the step program at two and a half% we would adjust our minimum uh base rates for vacant positions by two and a quarter or maybe uh 2%. But our my recommendation is that all positions increase by the the 3%
cost of living including vacant positions. and we avoid compression because of the step program. So that's always been a concern of our workforce that somebody that's been here a year is making the same thing as somebody that just came in. The step program allows us
to avoid that. This is the minimum wage um that is set by the state. So, several years ago in 2020, they came forward or 2021 and wanted to advance the state's minimum wage by a dollar each year. Uh, that
plan ends in 2026. I don't know what their plans are beyond that, but the state's objective was to get to $15 by September 30th of 2026. If the budget, as I presented, is approved, our starting pay would be at $17.30.
that is for positions like our building service workers, lifeguards, recreation aids, some of our lower level um less technically oriented positions, entry level uh to start. I think it's sorry I think it's
important to remember too that you know while yes it's 2216 per hour uh average living wage in pole county that's private employment numbers that that's coming into that equation right and
>> I believe so I believe that is correct >> so in that that also comes with privatized health insurance and in those employers so Our employees receive a health insurance benefit. It's not free. They do pay for
it, >> but it is less than what a privatized plan might be through a a private employer. >> I wonder if you have ever looked at those numbers to see, okay, if you factor in that savings, where would we
fall in um rate of pay versus where the county sits? Does that make sense? And we can certainly look at that. Um we're not due for a we didn't do a compensation study this this year. We try and do that about every two years.
Compensation studies are comparing um one fruit salad to another fruit salad. They're so different because of those very factors. You know, when you look at everything from, you know, what's the health benefits, what are the other benefits you provide in case of police and fire, what are the shifts that
they're working, how many hours, do they have Kelly days, do they not have Kelly days? There's so many different things that go into that that makes it very complicated. We're trying to find ways to to gather all that data to make it easier to do the comparisons. >> Yeah. And I'm not suggesting let's go do a compensation study. I'm just merely
suggesting that, you know, if you are paying $2 $300 less than what a privatized plan through a private employer might be, that has to be factored into that 1730 and probably gets us a lot closer to being where that living wage is in Pole County.
>> I think it certainly brings it up. Um, and we can do a little research on that, see if we're able to analyze that data if it's available. What we get is just the raw number. I don't know that we have access to the the full data set, but we can certainly
research that. I mentioned new positions. Um, I've I've approved from my end to include in the budget one position in our public works operation in the streets unit for a traffic sign specialist scenario. We
really only have one employee that does our traffic signs. Um, but this is a mid-year hire, so it's only half the cost for fiscal year 27 in the authorization to move forward that should you all approve it. On my end, I will not authorize that until such time
as I know what happens with amendment three because there's no point in adding a position if I can't keep it or fund it. I'm going to tell you there were this isn't the only position that was asked for. had positions in most departments come forward and I I want to
thank the department directors publicly because I went back to them and said I can't do that. I can't give you those positions without knowing that I'm going to be able to maintain them well beyond. I think one of the most um legitimate arguments I heard for new positions came
from Chief Monroe for additional sergeants within the police department. I want to give him the additional sergeants, but I can't do that if I don't know that I'm going to be able to fund them past that. I will say that that is a priority for me going forward.
Um that, you know, as our community expands, we we need to make sure that we can can meet the service needs. But all the department directors, as I spoke with them of what I can and cannot do, we're very understanding and supportive of those decisions. The other five positions I mentioned are
within those business operations. So within the storm water operations, we're adding uh recommending the addition of a storm water systems specialist. Uh Senate Bill 180 as well as some of the NPDES regulatory changes require that we inspect more of our
storm water lines than we previously had to. I believe that's increasing from 10% to 20% inspection. That is difficult to do with the size of workforce that we have. So that can be funded out of the business operations of the storm water fund. The other four are within
utilities compliance manager that's tied to regulatory compliance as well as grant compliance. I think um Commissioner Mercer could probably give us a uh a dissertation on the challenges of utility regulations and grant compliance and when you don't have
somebody that is specialized in that is extremely difficult. A business analyst again it's a business operation. Having a business analyst makes perfect sense to understand the long-term impacts of decisions that we're making in the water sewer operations. And then two assistant
superintendent in the water maintenance and lift station side. I believe we are uh if we haven't exceeded 300 lift stations in our community, we are right at it. Uh that is a significant growth over the past 10 years.
There's a couple reclassifications that are recommended. One is within the airport. That's actually a downgrading of a position that allows Troy Hidle, our airport director, to have a specific matrix of uh positions on each day that the oper the airport is is operating and
staffed. And then within utilities with all this capital project, it's important that we have uh our utility construction project managers at a competitive rate with what the industry is calling for. So, we're adjusting those three positions. And then the asset manager
increasing that one as well due to some additional responsibilities. Again, these are not funded by taxpayer property tax dollars. These are things that are factored into our existing rate structure.
I'll go quickly through this next section, but this just gives a little further detail on the general fund and the various departments within it. So you can see the total expenditures is a difference of about 5.7 almost 5.8 million dollars year-over-year. Um the
capital that is shown within the budget the 7.3 million again vehicle replacements that's Vance needs new police cars. We've put money aside for police cars but the cost of those goes up beyond what we had budgeted for or planned for. So, we have to fund that
delta. That is um replacement of that fire truck at $720,000. Uh the trail head park improvements, improvements at Lake Ship Park, the Florida Citrus Building roof, the roof and HVAC at the Rich Theater, and some
structural improvements at the women's club. The individual departments, uh this just gives you, and you have a copy of this presentation so you can dive deeper into it. you have access to the budget via that online link. So, if
you really want to drill down into it, um you can see how we crafted it, but you can see um most of these go down. A couple of them will go up, but city commission where their dollars are uh city clerk, we don't have an election this year. So, the city clerk's budget
pings up and down by about $50,000, $75,000 each year, each every other year based upon elections and runoff elections. city attorney uh remains pretty flat um despite the complexity of issues and the magnitude of issues that we deal with on
the legal front. City manager's office uh the only increase there again that's with the cola and the step program. Public affairs and communications comes down because of some of the subscriptions to software programs that are now housed
within the information technologies budget. finance uh has an increase. Uh the about half of that increase is tied to some retiree costs that hadn't been accounted for in years past that they need to show within their budget to accurately
reflect where those are. Planning division again that is mostly tied to their staff uh increases across all their members. safe neighborhoods drops a little bit because of some a retiring senior employee that was replaced by a less
tenured employee. So that cost comes down. Police increased by about $1.2 million. Um probably close to a hundred sworn officers. And when you factor in the the COLA and the STEP program, that's where
you see that 881,000. And the operating um uh is just the fuel and vehicles um the consum consumable costs there capital uh in their capital I'm sorry in the in also in that operating is uh
maintenance on their radio system and increases in some of our costs for the sheriff's dispatch also play into that. And then in fire the biggest jump in there is almost two million of their increases in capital. So, improvements
to the three fire stations. That's number one, number four, and number two. Um, fire stations have different repairs and maintenance that need to happen there. And then replacement of that fire engine that was uh totaled in the accident.
Parks and recreation, again, they have the most services that are out there, most facilities. Um they have some capital increases tied to major playground replacement and splash pad uh repairs at Trail Head Park. Um Winter
Haven Recreation Cultural Center being fully online drives some of their additional operating costs. And then in streets, uh a relatively low increase there. Again, mostly tied within their um capital.
your unassigned fund balance in the general fund. So this is your this is the emergency, right? This is the rainy day fund. This is we have a hurricane, a pandemic, a financial crisis that occurs. What do you have in reserves to address that? City's uh commission's
policy is that you have no less than 17%. About three years ago, you adopted additional policy that sets a target goal of 30%. I think that's important, particularly in light of not knowing what happens with Amendment Three, but
also the challenges we face with FEMA. The mayor and I had a chance to meet with a representative from Senator Moody's office today, and the point that I drove home with that individual was that we have about $800,000 that we are still waiting on to come in from
Hurricane Milton. That the FEMA process is slow and we have not had any incidents since Milton. Knock on wood. I hope we don't anytime in the future, but the ability to recover those costs, I think, is is going to be more challenging.
So, right now, we're forecasting that you'll be at about 33% at the end of the fiscal year 27. Um, and that that will be a balance of about $2.5 million. A million five of that is recommended to
be peeled off and put towards the Sertoma Park project. The policy has been that anything above 30% I come back to you with a recommendation on where you can put that towards one-time capital and that's where that would go and we suggest not doing anything with
the other roughly million dollars until we know what happens post uh November elections and post audit in the spring of 27. But you're sitting I think extremely well and healthy in terms of your fund balance. I think most cities
in uh government operations would be envious of having sufficient fund balances of this magnitude. major uh items within the general fund. Again, police uh replacement of a number of vehicles. I I think I've hit on
everything within fire in parks and grounds, improvements at trailhead park, at Lake Ship Park where the boat ramp is, asphalt replacement. We continue to fund our two crews that we get from the Department of Corrections. Uh various park improvements, that's benches and
miscellaneous playground enhancements, fencing, those types of things. portable light towers, replacement of a dock at Lake Cartridge Nature Park, and then those two roofs in the one HVAC project. Uh, also within parks administration,
some early design work in partnership with Pulk County on the Lake Lulu wetland area. This is south of Lake Lulu, south of Chain of Lakes Park, the wooded area that runs along like between the lake and the CSX railroad there. We own a significant portion of property
there as does the county and we would like to see that get activated and create a connection all the way back to the Harmony development and then complete street work on East Lake Howard Drive. I mentioned splash pad amenity and upgrades at trailhead park, a
partial HVAC replacement at the senior center, painting the exterior of the women's club, and doing some window and casement replacement, and then finishing out the upgrades at Diamond Plex that are presently underway. In planning, uh we we fund monies for
various planning studies uh and grant applications that may come through that we need consulting service assistant with. And then consulting surveyor reviewer fees. We budget for that as well. In streets, finishing out the ADA transition plan, a signal timing
analysis on Sixth Street. They're getting a a significant piece of equipment that will help them in the performance of their work in that skid steer. And the last two items, bridge repairs and emergency tree removal. Those are things that can come up through the year, particularly following
DOT inspections of our bridges. They those bridges were responsible for they do the inspections on, but if they find something that needs to be done, we need to be able to have the funds to do th those repairs. The airport um is getting a contribution
from the general fund of about $1.17 million for next year, little less than the year prior. Um their other revenues that at the airport are coming in through fuel sales, grants, and then the rents on hangers.
Their projects that are significant in the year ahead, the obstruction clearing that's at the end of our runways, vegetation that gets too large that we have to address. The remote control tower project is happening. It is moving forward. There's a kickoff meeting in
the next few days specific to that. the Commerce Park phase one, that is some um horizontal improvements for parking and additional apron space to the west of the existing terminal. And then taxi lane hanger uh t- hanger rehabs. Um
we've talked about that. That has come before the commission to approve that project. The design work they're updating the master plan. This will position us for future grants and growth and development at the airport. The generator project we are is underway.
We're just waiting for that to come in. And then the airport beacon and the papy lights. That project is also underway. You can see at the bottom the city's contribution towards those $ 8.4 million worth of projects is about $1.25
million. That's less than 15 cents on the dollar. It's about 14.9% of our capital investments at the airport the city is paying for. The rest is coming through FAA and FDOT.
Other important things at the airport, air traffic control services. So we are going to have air traffic control at the Winter Haven airport. I don't know if Troy has made it in this evening, but uh we expect delivery in the coming months of a modular structure out there that
will be traditional manned air traffic control. We have had a air traffic control dedicated frequency assigned. We have not put it into play yet. Um, and that modular unit will continue to be operated until the remote traffic or
traffic control tower is online and everybody is trained up for it. That $300,000 is contractual with anticipated to be with Barto Air Base for their employees to provide those services to us. However,
it could be that those costs are covered by FAA. And if that's the case, that is a $300,000 less investment that the general fund has to contribute to the airport. So, we will we will be mindful of that.
The library, um, a little bit less of a general fund support this next year than this year of about $75,000. Uh, that's pretty impressive considering we're operating two libraries now. um their overall budget only increases
by a little over $92,000 year-over-year. And what I'm interested to watch in the coming year, if you see the first note underneath the table, that they had over 472,000 visitors to the library this this last
year. Whenever I go to the Winter Haven Recreation and Cultural Center, there are always people in that new library, the branch that is out there. So, um, I fully expect us to surpass 500,000 visits to our library system next year.
again, and I don't want to editorialize this evening, but if you're looking at revenue cuts in your adorum taxes, $875,000 from your general fund supports your libraries.
So, without those dollars, these are things that are difficult to maintain without some replacement revenue. Big things that they're doing, HBAC replacement. We have had a fit this summer with HVAC at the library. If I use those two terms
together, library and HBAC, if you watch Scott Eers over my shoulder, he'll probably wse a little bit. Um, library HBAC's are critical, not just to maintain the comfort of our guests and our workforce, but the integrity of the collection. If you don't have uh
reliable HBAC, you can lose a collection pretty quick through the humidity and the mold that can establish within that. We are presently working to replace the second unit that this 150,000 goes towards. However, that will not come available to us until sometime after
October. So, it's not something we need to rob Peter to pay Paul. Now, we anticipate uh that if this budget is approved, those funds will be there. If not, we'll have to find other means, but we have to replace that unit now. Although it won't, the work won't
actually happen until probably October. Cemeteries, um, I joked with each of you. I think this is an area where you never want to be booming in business because that means bad things are happening in your community, but our cemetery operations are performing well.
Um, Steve Puit, Mike Shiml, the folks that oversee our cemeteries, I think are doing a fantastic job with them. Uh we have about 4,800 spaces still platted within our cemeteries. Most of those are going to be at Rolling Hills Cemetery. Although we do have a number of niches
available with it in Lakeside Cemetery. We also have about 35 additional acres of land to expand the Rolling Hill Cemetery should that become needed in the future. Main things that they're doing uh some fencing enhancements and
beautifification at Lakeside Cemetery. I don't know if any of you have had the chance to visit Motorpool Road. Now that it is open, uh it is absolutely gorgeous and has a tremendous landscape package and this fencing will just add to the aesthetics along that road. And then the
tree service you see within there that is miscellaneous that can occur throughout the year. Construction fund. Again, a lot of your big capital that applies to the um to the general fund, we move that money into a construction fund. So, the
parking garage is in there. That is moving forward. Uh we saw some renderings and and worked with um the design team to make some decisions on some more of the technical factors of that. Just recently, the pickle ball courts that is to advance that project
as we secure the location. STMA Park renovations. That's the football field uh improvements and and some of the uh the things that we've discussed in recent meetings. There's $625,000 allocated for a land purchase that we
are in negotiations on that are simply stalled due to some um some health challenges within the family that we're dealing with. But we hope to bring that to fruition and be able to expand Satoma Park by about MJ I think it's about eight acres if I don't if I'm remembering that correctly. Um, but that
would be a significant improvement. And then something that wasn't in our prior briefings that we've been been made aware of since the interest expense that 800 almost $50,000. Um, this is tied back to arbitrage. So
it goes back to bond issuances that we've had. You cannot earn more interest than what the the interest is on those bonds. And if you do, you have to pay that back to the IRS. That's not something you can control. It's just that's the nature of it when you borrow
and what the markets do and the interest rates around that. Um and this is this money we have within the construction fund to pay that. Uh but that is um uh something that just it's how the economy performs. Yes, Mr. Mayor, I wish we could keep every penny of what we earn,
but I think that the IRS thinks there's some illegalities within that since we are tax exempt and we're issuing taxexempt bonds. They think they're so special. >> I'd just be curious what it goes towards. >> I promise you not not a better thing
than what we would put it forward. >> In the transportation fund, we expect to spend just shy of $15 million. U there is the transfer from the the uh transportation fund into the parking garage project. There is um design
engineering for lap related projects and lap services. The Roosevelt Drive project out near Legoland uh is getting underway. $2 million again for roadway resurfacing. We continue to move that needle on our pavement condition index.
Um fewer and fewer roads are in those lower numbers. So, we're doing a tremendous amount of work there. The intersection improvements at 6, 8th, and 9th, as you know, we are uh pursuing acquisition of property there. that is still under some litigation that's going
on. I don't have anything to report on that, but that is we're just waiting patiently to see where that lands. Um improvements with South Lake Howard Drive West. Uh MJ's quiet zone project that continues to be the bane of his existence. Um but at some point we are
going to that is going to come to fruition. It's not because of anything we're doing. It's because of delays that happen within the railroad community that are well beyond our control. And then sidewalk gap infill and uh pavement
markings and strike. >> If we had a bigger budget for sidewalk bill, I mean, could we even could we accomplish it? >> MJ, would you like to respond to that? Could we if we had additional funding for filling gaps in sidewalks?
>> Yes. I mean, you know, the more funding you have, the more the more you can do. >> Do we have the manpower to to knock it out and get it done? >> If you had additional funding, you know, you could always contract some of that work out. I think one of the challenges uh beyond some of the simple >> simple areas where we can add sidewalk
is you got to get into some design work. Um maybe even some rightway. So, it's Yes. Yes. I think generally speaking, we >> I think it's a need we have throughout the city and I don't $75,000 doesn't do >> well and keep keep in mind too that
there's there's also funding um for internal um repair work that we do. So that shows up in like materials budget within streets and then a lot of the large capital projects include closing some of our really significant gaps. So like along South Lake Drive is a perfect
example, North Lake Ship Drive, things like that. Looking to the CRAAS, I mentioned they're going to see a slight increase based upon tax values within the various districts. Um, advalorum revenue that's expected to
come into the downtown CRA is about 4.382 million and into Florenceville about 1.7 1.676 million. There are some other revenues that come in. CDBG grant is going in for the Malcolm Park project. there's interest earnings and
there's reserves as well. The um the CRA budgets really are yet to be completely finalized. Those advisory committees will meet um again uh in the coming weeks and that will come back to you as a board to approve, but this kind of gives you the overall numbers of what
they're looking at. The question really is what do they appropriate those dollars towards? in the downtown CRA. Um they have significant funds there uh including their fund balance. So what are the projects that that should go towards to include some projects that
were identified in the current year budget that have not gotten off the ground yet? Um such as our commuter or our um the small commuter route that we want to do with uh lambed or the citrus connection and our microtransit project
as well. Um, so those budgets will be further refined, but the the bottom line numbers do not change. It's just more of a question of what are the specific things beyond what they've already identified do they want to tackle. In Florence Villa, same thing. There's
money there to go towards various improvements. It's really getting a consensus amongst the CRA advisory committees and bringing that back. and Eric Labby and Angie Hibbert and team will be meeting on that later this week to uh kind of formulate a strategy and
and give some guidance to the advisory committees on that. some of the projects that are anticipated within downtown CRA lighting uh along Avenue C and Second Street Southwest and around the FDOT pond as that project begins to develop
the improvements at Malcolm Park which is over by Southside Baptist Church in Oaklan Cemetery and then various capital projects and contingencies. There's also, as Eric and I have discussed as recently as today, the ability to underground a lot of our utilities, uh,
particularly our electric utilities that, uh, clog up some of our alleyways and create some blight within areas and have some resiliency concerns, uh, with storms and the like. If we can get those undergrounded, that that's a viable
investment within our CRA. in Florence Villa. Uh contributions to the neighborhood service center, modernization, various capital projects, again, sidewalks, lighting, park enhancements, uh still some funds for property acquisition and expansion and
enhancement of bus shelters. Willoughbrook. Uh I believe our CFO is meeting with our Willoughbrook management team tomorrow or or yeah this week. Um just to kind of get up to speed on everything we're doing there. Willowbrook is performing well. Um it really comes down to where can we get
more rounds and where can we get more dollars coming in so that there's it truly is operating as a pure business operation. It's getting about a 34 a $365,000 contribution from the general fund this year. Uh we think that we can get that
down to significantly less and certainly work towards eliminating any contribution in the future to Willowbrook. Um given what we see happening within the greater Winter Haven Gulf community. Solid Waste is operating pretty flat
year-over-year. uh about a $300,000 increase. Again, this is a business operation that their funds come in off of solid waste fees that are charged. Um their biggest expenses outside of um personnel, their
tipping fees, fuel and tipping fees are their biggest things. And um we're undertaking a study to look at our solid waste fees. You may recall that Pulk County increased tipping fees at the landfill and they are going to continue to do that for the next few years to
build up their fund reserves again in response to the impacts of debris management hauling post hurricanes. We need to account for that in our collection fees and can't just eat that on our side. That's an additional expense that we have. So Britney Hart
and her team in public works are going to be looking at what does that need to look like long term? their investments next year. Uh replacement and and uh further bridging the delta or the gap in replacing solid waste vehicles and then adding a trash
compactor for the what seems to be never not busy chain of lakes park storm water. You just had a great presentation from Dustin Everett and Devin Moore on what's happening within the storm water project. uh their budget
actually goes down by just shy of a million dollars next year. Uh they bring in about $3.4 million in revenues. Their big projects for next year include the work we just talked about during one of your recent pillar updates on Lake Idol.
So work within the lake itself and then within the basin that contributes storm water to it. and then also starting the uh design for the northern chain wetland restoration project. That is the 150 plus acres of land that was purchased up
off of northern side of US7. I think that's the right number, is it not MJ? 154 acres, give or take. um the all of the wetlands and environmentally sensitive land we bought up there, the long-term design of what that's to be is
a future nature park that can be um there to serve our citizens. And then also pipelining and replacement and acquisition of a new street sweeper. Um our sweet street sweeper gets a heck
of a lot of use just about every day through portions of town. Um, and those are pieces of equipment that are, as you can see, are not inexpensive to replace. getting to the end. Uh in 2018,
Mike Herrer, uh the city manager presented to the city commission what was actually a one mill increase in the millillage rate with a uh program that would take the funds generated by that one mill and set them aside to be solely
used for capital. They cannot be used for recurring operations or for personnel. So this just shows the past four years and and in and next years as well, but you could take this back to 2018 and you would have a list of projects where we use the revenues off
of one mill to go to very specific capital projects. For fiscal year 27, we continue to fund the transportation improvement program at $2 million. We are putting $673,000
towards playground replacement. 981,000 towards the station hardenings at fire station one, two, and four and then funding that will go towards Noro Hall in the Ritz theater uh roof. For fiscal
year 28, I have not made any recommendation on how to program that out because doing so in advance of what happens with property tax reform would be ill advised. Um, we have noted in there that it would be advisable to try
and continue doing $2 million worth of transportation improvement program investments, but that number may even need to come down. Um, playground replacements may need to come down. But you can see as it stands right now, we're sitting on a savings or an
available um, uh, fund of about 2.3 almost $2.4 4 million that has not yet been programmed for fiscal year 28. I advise you just leave that be. Don't make any decisions on that until we know where that money is best used in light
of what could happen in November. And then back to the beginning again, just to kind of recap um our budget next year, it does show a significant increase in overall budget compared to fiscal year 25 or 26. However,
the vast increase is all within capital of the $120 million increase. 110 million of that is just within the utility fund for major investments that are funded and already established by the existing utility rates. The property
millage rate remains the same as it has since 2022 at 6.59 mills. Um, the fact that we have only grown in taxable by value by 4.97% means that our adorum revenues only
increased by about $1.5 million year-over-year. We do continue to support the affordable housing trust fund. That's again one of those things that if you had to make a decision long term, do you continue to do that? Uh we do continue to uh care
for our employees with our STEP program as well as consideration of a 3% cost of living for those that are not within the collective bargaining agreements and until such time as we reach an agreement with them. Um and we provide our we maintain and sustain the level of
service that we have today with 776 employees. So with that, mayor, commissioners, I'll gladly stand for any questions that you may have. I will tell you that this evening you uh well from Monday evening,
you have an agenda item that is to this budget is built around the millage rate as I mentioned 6.59 mills. Monday evening, one of the actions you'll need to take that is on your
budget is to establish a tenative millage rate. We'll talk about that more during uh the the rest of the workshop and to set the date for your first hearing. Um so that is that is the significance of you understanding the budget as we have crafted it. Again um
it is a balanced budget based upon revenues that are available. Uh it is I think a in terms of the general fund a very conservative budget and uh my my appreciation to you all for the guidance and patience you've given to us in
crafting this and to the staff that were played a key role in in bringing it to fruition. Thank you commissioners. Any questions or comments? to discuss further at a later date. >> Okay.
>> All right. I thank you. And we can move into the agenda review unless you need a fivem minute recess beforehand. >> I'm okay. Is everybody else good? >> Keep rolling. >> All right. Everybody's waited patiently long enough. So,
>> okay. So, we will now move into the uh normal city commission meeting agenda. Uh would you like another roll call or are we still good? You're still good because we've not uh dismissed from the first. >> Okay. So, we'll have our normal invocation and pledge. Then we'll have a
uh proclamation for Florida Water Professionals Month, and we'll move into the consent agenda with one item. That's the smallest I've ever seen a consent agenda. So, >> Mr. Lavyby, we'll uh give you an update on this.
Sir, >> mayor, commissioners, um this is an easement between the city of Winter Haven and Tampa Electric. Um this is for the remodel project uh right across the street here at Old Fire Station One. Uh they need to set a new uh transformer to
handle the new electric load over at that building. Um there's a depiction there on your screen of the location of the easement required to place that new transformer. Um, for clarity, it's the small black box you see on the left side of the building. It's a little difficult
to see. >> It won't be in the middle of a driveway. That won't be a driveway anymore. >> So, we're just recommending to approve that. >> Okay. Um, since we're on the topic of TCO, just where are we with
undergrounding those lines around Grove roots and stuff? I can get a project update. I know that they've been working on on that project. There was a a delay in that they had to get an easement from a private sector entity um to set a new
transformer down there as well, which I think that they um are currently almost done with at this point. >> Yeah, I think I think a lot of the power is underground. There's still some communication lines that are there though, and that has to happen separately. And then will the lights come down and
when all that happens at the same time or the lights coming down sooner >> lights being traffic signal >> that so that'll come down separate from this >> okay >> from the team but that is something that we are getting quotes for and work on how to make that that separately.
>> Okay, >> Mr. Mayor, we could put Alex Price on the spot. >> I mean, I wasn't going to go there, but no, that that's okay. I was just driving by there today and I was like, it's about time these uh these get wrapped up. So,
All right. Uh, resolutions R26-20. City Attorney. >> Uh, thank you, Mr. Mayor, Commission. Um, this is a resolution we've talked about previously where we're rescheduling the meeting for September
14th to September 15th in order to accommodate um the tenative hearing on the budget. We cannot conflict with the board of county commissioners or the school board. So, we have to move our regular meeting from September 14th to September 15th requires four votes by
the way. >> All right. >> So hopefully there'll be four of you here Monday. I >> think we can handle that one. >> Okay. Uh first ordinance first readings 026-16 city attorney. >> I will defer the city manager on this. >> Sorry. Yeah. So we won't read the
ordinances in full this evening. We'll do that on Monday. But um we've been we've gone through a evaluation and appraisal report uh via Eric's operations and planning. So I'll ask him to present this. This has gone to the planning commission at their most recent
meeting. >> Yes, sir. Uh mayor commissioners, this is part of growth management legislation in the state of Florida. we are required to update um our Winter Haven comprehensive plan uh in response to our evaluation and appraisal report. Um
normally I would say that this is a a much more significant item than um what you will see this year. Um the only major requirements that we're we're changing in our comprehensive plan are that we now have to have a 20-year um planning period for our comprehensive
plan. So, uh, we made modifications to, uh, population projections and dates for, uh, goals and objectives within the comprehensive plan to accommodate that 20-year um, period. Uh, unfortunately, uh, there is state law, Senate Bill 180,
that prohibits us from making major changes that could be seen more burdensome at this time. Um so if and when Senate Bill um 180 goes away um we plan to make more significant changes to the comprehensive plan um most
specifically around um all the one water efforts that we've endeavored over the the recent years. And so yeah we would recommend approval of ordinance 02616 which is the uh revision to the
comprehensive plan. And the next item goes right along with that and that is the adoption of the 2050 future land use map series. So that is another piece of the uh the ear process. So those kind of go hand in hand.
>> Y and again there are no major changes. We did reformat them but we're not changing land uses for any of any of the properties in the city. Mayor >> Pton >> I was just looking at some of the subsets and everything on that.
and going through looking at it. >> Okay. 02618 city manager. >> This one uh we have a presentation for you this evening and and I'm going to ask um our assistant director of Winter Haven Water to to come to the podium and
help introduce this. So, this pertains to industrial pre-treatment. Um this is a matter I'm going to kind of give you a thumbnail readers digest version of it and then Mark and our consultants have a
presentation on the what we're doing overall. But when you have certain industries within your community that produce waste water that has certain parameters to it that exceed what your typical wastewater or residential
wastewater discharges your fluent um are you have to account for that either Well, in just about every case, you're doing some level of pre-treatment at the source where it's generated to remove some of those um those elements, those
contaminants before it enters our stream because it can have significant impacts on the integrity of our wastewater operations as well as the cost of those. So, pre-industrial pre-treatment is the means by which you do that. We also have
a fee structure for those customers that accounts for their flow as well as the concentrations within that. So this is an update to our code of ordinances that adjusts the fee structure as well as the
fees for those customers. There are three such customers present day in the city of Winter Haven. Um, there may have been more in the past. I don't recall, but these three have been at least for the past several years, the only ones
we've dealt with. Uh, two of them go back many years. So, Mark, with that, I'll turn it over to you and our team from Jones Ed B. resisters exceed those limits. We monitor those through our
pre-treatment fog team. We do that on a weekly basis and those limits are exceeded that's what we have to treat. So those three users are very confident and very good
program. Mayor, commissioners, just And and as Jim's coming to the podium, this does result in adjustments to wastewater pre-treatment fees
that through the the process of two readings of the ordinance and such because we're amending the the code. But this, if approved, this will result in modifications to the specific fees assigned to those current
um me those current permites under our industrial pre-treatment pro program as well as any others that could come to be in the future. So I just want to give you that as a caveat. >> Good evening. >> Sorry. Good evening, Mr. Mayor.
Commissioners, my name is Jim Mcclullen. I'm a chief engineer with Jones Entins and I've been working with the city over the last year, year and a half to evaluate the wastewater searchcharge system and update it. Um, and searchcharge system, as has been kind of
alluded to, is basically just a component of your industrial pre-treatment program. You have a wellestablished industrial pre-treatment program. And so, just to kind of give you uh A little bit of background on the industrial treatment program, what it is
and why you have it. Um, it dates back to 1997 when the Florida Department of Environmental Protection adopted its own industrial pre-treatment program. Um, and the purpose of the industrial
pre-treatment program is to protect your wastewater treatment plants. is to prevent the discharge of things that could enter your sewer system and disrupt the operations of the treatment plant or pass through and end up in the effluent from the plant and cause
violations or could present uh a health or safety risk to both the plant operators as well as the public in general such as something like a flammable subject that was discharged into the sewer system that become a hazard to everybody. Um, so those are
the general purposes of what this is and it's all aimed at trying to maintain the integrity, quality, and usability of the effluent from your wastewater treatment plants. So, a little bit more detail about it.
Who does it apply to? It applies to commercial and industrial users of a certain size. Basically, we're looking for what is deemed a significant industrial user. And a significant industrial user would be somebody who discharges more than 25,000 gallons per
day of wastewater andor has a component in that waist stream that has the potential to impact the operations of the treatment plant. So those are what that basis is for. And the whole purpose of the searchcharge program is to
address the fact that not all wastewater is the same. It costs more to treat stronger wastewater that comes from industries. Um and the program is also intended to provide an incentive to the industries to reduce their levels that are coming from their facilities.
So the application to the city of Winterhaven as has been noted there are currently three dischargers that are in the program now. Um specifically it's New Dairy, Florida Can and Indian River
Transport. Those are the three and all of them discharged to wastewater treatment plant number three in the city. Um and essentially each one of them is issued an industrial pre-treatment permit from the city. And
that permit is essentially buying capacity if you will in the treatment plant. And that is measured by the flow and the biochemical oxygen demand, which is essentially just a a measure of how much oxygen it takes for the bugs at the
treatment plant to degrade the organic material that's in the wastewater. The higher the BOD, the more oxygen that's required, the more energy and cost that are associated with it. The other is total suspended solids. Kind of indicative of its name. and it's the
material that's suspended in the wastewater and those suspended solids are carrying the organic material that contributes to the BOD. So those are the components that are utilized to look at um what the individual discharges are
are buying in terms of capacity. The search charge program that the city has is currently a two-phased process that is implemented when the waste streams from the industries exceed the permitted capacities from their permits
that are issued. There are two components operational search charges which are related to essentially the operations of the treatment plant. So that's things like electricity, chemical cost, sludge disposal, and it also includes the cost of the actual operations of the industrial
pre-treatment program. The staff, the testing, all of that is tied into that. Secondly, the city has a capital recovery sir charge. This one's a little bit different. It
basically dates back to the 1980s and it was tied to when the city got grants for construction of wastewater treatment plants. And as part of the grants, they were required to establish a capital recovery search charge. We'll talk about
that a little bit more as we go on, but essentially the search charges are applied to the unreserved capacity at the treatment plant. you're trying to maintain that that capacity. So, the request that the city had for us
was to evaluate the search charge program, develop recommendations for updates to it, and more specifically also consider adding additional search charge pollutants as part of the system. Those include nitrogen, total nitrogen,
total phosphorus, total dissolved solids, and fats, oil, and grease to establish search charges associated with each of those. So, the first thing we did was we looked at the operational search charges
for both BOD and TSS. It's kind of a misnomer for it to be labeled as a search charge for flow because flow is simply charged at the commercial wastewater rate for any industry. As the commercial rate goes up, that flow
charge goes up. The BOD the current rate is point or 15 cents per pound of BOD. TSS was 3 cents per pound of BOD. Those were based upon old operational costs
associated with the treatment plant. When we updated them looking at the operational costs for the plants in 2025, the adjusted numbers would be 82 pounds or 82 cents per pound for BOD and 0.9
pounds.9 cents per pound for TSS. So basically this is a reflection of catching up to the actual cost associated with operations at the treatment plant. In looking at the other recommended uh
parameters that the city asked us to take a look at. We also took a look at the total nitrogen total phosphorus fat oil and grease and total dissolved solids. And these are the rates that were developed associated with taking the remainder of the operational cost
that wasn't applied to BOD and TSS and applying it to these parameters. I will tell you that a number of communities in the state have total nitrogen, total phosphorus, and fat, oil, and grease search charges. I don't
believe there's any that have a TDS search charge as yet. But the TDS search charge is need to look at in terms of preserving the quality of the reclaimed water that is produced by the treatment plant. That reclaimed water, the city
has wonderful plans to be able to utilize that water for wetland recharge among other things that will allow it to continue if the TDS is too high and end up risking that. So the whole purpose of
the TDS searchcharge is to try and maintain a reliance that the TDS and the effluent from the plant would be under 450 milligrams per liter. So what are the benefits? Basically it's you're bringing things up to current
cost. Again, it's been a while since these rates had been adjusted. And your operational cost, as we all know, everything costs more. Electricity costs more. Chemicals cost more. It costs most more to dispose of wastewater solids.
It provides an incentive to reduce pollutants because again, we're looking at maintaining the quality of that effluent coming from the treatment plant and protecting residents cost. We want to make sure that the industries are paying their appropriate cost associated
with the operations of the system and that it doesn't overt tax the user rates for the residential customers. So back to the capital recovery search charge again they were originally just established as part of a grant
requirement from the 1980s. They've been updated over time to kind of tie them to the impact fees that are charged to new users.
They're the best way I can put it is it's a temporary lease of capacity within the plant and it's amvertised over a 30-year period at 5 and a half%. And when you're applying this, you look
at what's the charge for flow, what's the charge for BOD, what's the charge for TSS, and you take the largest of those three and you apply it as part of the search charge on a monthly basis. We'll tell you that we looked and looked, we could not find any other
communities in Florida that have a similar system at this point. And based upon that, our recommendation would be that you discontinue the capital recovery search charge component of the searchcharge systems. Looking at Winter Haven in comparison to
communities throughout the state, your proposed current and proposed searchcharge rates are on par with your communities around you as well as throughout the state. So there's nothing
dramatically different about yours. Other communities do have TD TD uh total nitrogen, total phosphorus, and fats, so oil and grease. And again, the numbers that we came up with would be on par with what other communities are charging for those.
Again, we did not find any other community that had a TDS. Um, and additionally, we could not find any communities that had a capital recovery search charge. So what's the impact to the industries?
So what we have here is a summary of the cap the the current cost in 2024 for the three industries which is the flow charges charges the TSS charges and the
capital recovery component. I'll point out to you if you look and see that the capital recovery charges represent nearly twothirds of the overall cost associated with the charges that were applied to these industries.
Specifically, New Dairy faced a lot of that. So their total sewer bill in terms of sur charges and and water usage was nearly a million dollars in 2004. Florida cans was about
96,000 and Indian River was about 20,000. Overall, the system had generated about 1.1 million in fees in 2024. In order to assess, excuse me, the impact of these on the new rates on
these, we took the 2024 flows and loads from each of these industries and applied the new rates to them. And that's the proposed side of the chart here, which shows that at the bottom you can see that the total
for new dairy would be about a million dollars, not much different than what their total was for actually in 2024. Florida cans would go up based upon a TDS search charge. and Indian Rivers goes up a couple of
thousand dollars altogether, but in total you end up with about $100,000 in additional charges if all of these search charges were applied to the flows and loads of these facilities.
Again, basically the additional search charges for the new components would help offset the idea of eliminating the capital recovery component of the search charge program. So again, our recommendations would be to implement updated operational search
charges for BOD and TSS. Your flows automatically go the flow charge automatically goes up with the commercial usage rate. We also would recommend that we collect additional data on total nitrogen, total phosphorus, fog, and TDS from the various industries in order to help
refine the numbers. And finally, we would recommend discontinuing the capital recovery search charge to align more with the pro the the processes that are more modern to today.
With that, thank you. I'd be happy to answer any questions. >> I'm going to yield to our resident expert up here. >> Okay. Um, what percentage of of the industrial stream um versus residential
>> in terms of total flow. >> I think we're talking let's see it's it's less than 15% alto together currently and I'm sorry I'm I'm estimating that
>> I just I was curious as to usually it can usually go up to about 25% and so I'm just wondering what it based on as far as percentages of the flow. Um I'm kind of familiar with it and I'm
conf com I am familiar with the charges because I used to calculate them a lot. So, and I know the users, most of them, there's some new, but I'm certainly familiar with um that. And I have seen
some of the damages um that can happen to lift stations and that can happen, you know, uh involved in those close by to those facilities. And are we going to have someone that is going to sample
um to verify and make sure um that we're you know that they are following these or they're conforming and everything that is part of the city's industrial pre-treatment program that the sampling is done by the city at
the various industries on a weekly basis and the industries pay the cost for that sampling and analysis as part of their monthly bill. So yes, they will be they will be monitored >> and Mayor Pertam, I believe that I don't
know if it's if it's the requirement or if it's just the common practice of a lot of communities that that's done on a monthly basis. Our practice is to do that on a weekly basis. So they're sampling that so we know what those um
contaminants with those parameters are and can apply that accordingly to to their their IPB search charges >> and the and the process utilizes the weekly data and averages it out as a number for the an average for the month.
>> Are we going to comply with um our set goals on this? I mean to make sure um that we remain at that 15% or that we because we have to have some available for new um >> correct there I mean there are other
industries um you have one significant one that's that's looking to come on board as well um so that would be part of an assessment of the maximum allowable headworks loading component in terms of the local limits
calculations where you would set aside side reserve for a certain amount of that. >> So yes, that would be part of the calculations. >> Okay. So again, mayor and commissioners, just kind of to bring this home,
this is recognizing the impact that industrial affluent has on on wastewater operations that in in in protecting residents, your
you know, 40,000 residential accounts that are out there um from varying costs that are associated with industrial waste that comes in industrial waste water rephrase that um and ensuring that
those entities that have the IP permits that we're appropriately charging them for the impact that provides to it. It does it does result in an increase. The timing of this is that these fees would not take effect until after January 1st
of 2027. um that is our effort to give them advanced awareness of those as they're preparing their operating budgets and the like for what lies ahead. Um, and certainly there
are things that can be done, Jim, correct me if I'm wrong, on the industrial users side to do further pre-treatment on their behalf. capital investment that they make on their filtrations and
processes and the like at the point of the discharge to treat it to the highest possible level so they're not incurring sir charges on all those other things. You know, the cleaner it comes to us,
the cheaper it is for you at the end of the day in terms of our bill, but it may require a greater capital investment on their side, >> right? And the whole program again one of the goals of the program is to provide that incentive for the
industries to self self treat as much as possible. >> So um I'm good. Um >> we're going to make you a wastewater expert. >> Yeah. I'm I'm scared to death. So the
there there there's a there's got to be a cost for these three entities that they're going to have to spend on their equipment to get them more up to par. >> Not necessarily. So Jim, can you go back
to the slide that has the table? So what um what they did what what the team did Jones Edmond team in looking at this was taking the flows that we had in 2024 um as they were come you as they existed
and applying the new rates to them. This is what those rates would be based upon those flows. Now if the flow is higher then the numbers are going to be higher obviously but the um the only additional cost to them is if is the incentivizing
them to do more treatment on their end before it gets to us. But this is based upon how they're processing their their their waste water today. And is their cost uh if they put that expense and that
cost into it, is that cost less than what they would char be charged here? >> I can't tell you that. I think that's a that's an operation. You know, that's the is it better to do a greater level of pre-treatment at my facility or incur
the ongoing costs here? That's a a business decision that each of those would have to make. You want the water as clean as possible to get to you because it's a biological process, which means it's not going to remove anything. It won't take out metals. It won't take out anything like
that that comes to you. >> Yeah, I get that. I get >> and they need to clean it up as clean as they can get it before they give it to us. >> Yeah. So, I get all that. I guess I'm just looking for the encouragement to do that, >> right? because really there's not I mean
yes it's up a little bit from what they were paying in 2020. >> There's not that much encouragement. >> Exactly. That's that's kind of what I'm getting at. So I I assume we've talked to these three entities and they know this is coming or >> yes they've been informed aware that
we're going through this process for last year. Some go back to some of these look at Florida but new has been around for a while their technology. So there might be incentive
News down the long term. in your discussions with them, do did you get an indication on that was something that they would want to do or they looked at it and said it's an extra 50 grand and >> that was more the trend.
>> That's kind of what I'm afraid of. So, so that's where I'm trying to get at, like is this is this what we're looking to institute now and it's kind of stuck or we going to re-evaluate this year over year if they're not continuing to make the changes needed that we're going
to potentially adjust these fees higher to encourage them to do it. Again, I think as part of our recommendations to the city was that at a minimum, like every five years, you would re-evaluate these fees and update
them to the current operational cost associated with the plan. I will tell you that we did look at the capital recovery component of the search charge to say what would it be if we updated that to the current cost and it
basically resulted in a 200% increase >> in that in that search charge. which means you could look at the capital recovery for New Dairy would be 1.2 million instead of 667. >> So yeah, so that's that's kind of what
I'm trying to wrap my head around. >> Understood. Commissioner David, >> um could there be any concerns if uh we were to try to make it a deterrent or even punitive that it would be arbitrary and probably not a good idea?
I I don't believe so because the com the the process is pretty well established. You're not reinventing the wheel, so to speak. The values are just simply numbers that are being updated to the actual costs that are currently >> That's what I'm asking. If we were to go above the actual cost, >> correct?
>> To try to be deterrent or even punitive. >> I I'm concerned that >> I think if you tried to do that, you would run into that. >> Okay. Thank you. That's that's my concern. >> Valid concern. I think the way that that they've structured this and and Jim and his team have done a tremendous amount
of work on it, it's really how do we improve the system so that the costs were incurring are being recovered that what they actually are and being accounted or being paid for by the the entities that are providing that
industrial waste water to it. So, you know, again, I think it's a business decision of what am I paying, what are my flows going to be, what are my future projections going to be in assessing that versus what would my capital investment be to, you know, really
reduce this down. I mean, the flow is going to be the flow. I don't think the flow is going to change. You got to get rid of that waste water one way or the other. It's how clean is the waste water. So, I'm either going to pay the city to clean it through the fees that I'm charged being charged here, or if I
can do that more economically on my side before it enters the wastewater system, then that's to my benefit. But I that's a decision that they're going to have to make. >> So, do these numbers cover 100% of that cost?
>> It's 100% of the electrical, chemical, sledge disposal, and operations of the industrial pre-treatment program itself. >> But you run the risk of the city being in violation if they don't conform.
>> Correct. Correct. >> Well, they're not conforming though, right? >> They're meeting they're probably meeting the levels right now, right? >> They they are. I mean, if you look at if if they are in compliance with their permit, there are no search charges
other than the cost associated with sampling for proving their compliance, if you will. >> So, what what part are we missing that we're that they're not paying for it? That's what I'm trying to grasp at is >> from an operational standpoint. You're
not paying for the staff at the plant because that's a sunk cost associated with the operations of the plant. That's the main component that's not being covered. >> So, can we not try to incorporate that number into this? Like you wouldn't pay
they wouldn't pay the full-time person nec I maybe they would. I don't know. Can you not incorporate that into it? I don't want I don't want taxpayer dollars to fund the cleanup for these three individuals. That's what I'm getting at. >> But I think if you look at it from the
standpoint of what are your residential user rates, your residential user rates are based upon the operation of the plant based upon a certain strength of waste water coming into the plant. So trying to charge a sir charge for
industrial uses associated with the operational staff, the extra strength of the wastewater doesn't result in additional staff members at the treatment plant. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> You got to operate the plant regardless. >> Yeah. Correct. >> You see what I'm getting? I'm trying to
get I mean I understand you don't want to be pumitative, but these are multi-million dollar corporations that we're dealing with that are pumping this water to us. You know, I I you know, my recommendation in in reviewing all
this with Jim and his team and and Mark and Gary and our wastewater operators is that, you know, this is more in line. You know, the restructuring, the elimination of the capital recovery component, the addition of the TDS fog, total nitrogen, total phosphorus is that
makes sense and that is the appropriate structure. So getting us right sized in how our our fees are charged and establishing our fees in concert with industry best practices and actual costs
that we incur. I think we're made whole in this. Um, I think the the incentivization of, you know, getting them to do more on their side really that comes down to good business practices and business decisions that they've got to make. But regardless of
whether or not they make those, we are made whole in our treatment of that. and and we are positioned well that if we have future industrial uh strength contributors come on board the system is in play to account for
that >> is is there sorry one one other question is there a cost to produce this every like so in >> certainly >> okay so how much is that do we know >> as far as to update this yeah
>> I mean basically I think our our fee for the study was like 45,000. >> Yeah. I mean, I I kind of don't want to look at this five years from now. I kind of want to look at it in two is just my is my thought. And we can have this discussion on Monday night. But I I
I I just think that five years none of us may be even even up here. >> Speak for yourself. >> I mean, I said maybe. I mean, I don't you know, I don't who who knows what what what's going to be here in five years. So,
>> I just I mean, five years seems like a long time. >> I I wouldn't get too gummed up on that. I think Mayor, your point is well taken that you all as the commission have the right to look at this as often as you want. >> Yeah. >> Um and so, you know, Mr. Mlen has
suggested what five years. Um, but you certainly if this majority you want to look at it more frequently, >> that's certainly well within your view. >> I don't want to jump ahead, but >> another item that's on your agenda. The
next presentation is on improvements to wastewater treatment plant three that we are expanding, enhancing, modernizing that plant that that can also result in operational savings on our
side yet your fees are in place. Yeah. >> So, you know, I think that those kind of go got to go hand in hand. >> Yeah. The taxpayers paying to modernize everything, but they >> Well, the rateayer, not the tax the rateayer. >> They're all taxpayers, but >> well, not I don't want to be
argumentative, but those that are outside the city limits are not. >> Mayor Pro Tim, did you have something else? >> Yes. Um, they have an individual permit, correct? That's written for the Okay. And, uh, if they exceed that permit,
>> um, then is there something that you know because what could happen is especially the capacity issue they can use up enough to take away a lot of the capacity of the system uh from other
users. So I'm just as long as you can control and monitor their permits so that they don't go over or anything or if they do there's some penalty there. the the permits that are issued if the
line can interject is a separate thing than this. >> Yeah. >> This this is correlated to that. >> Okay. >> To some degree. But >> they have like Okay. Right. >> That's good.
>> All right. I think we're good for tonight. >> Yeah. >> Thank you very much. Thank you, Jim. Um, all right. So, task order number three. >> So, I'm gonna Mark bring you back up for
this one. Um, let me get to it. Hang on. So, this is and this can get confusing. So, um, we have >> haven't been confused in a while.
There are a number of different projects involving Wharton Smith uh that we are engaged in in a number of different delivery methods. I want to make it clear that what we're talking about this evening is specific to what we've dubbed
the water resource facility at Pard Road. This is plant three, wastewater treatment plant three. In the task order that we've issued out to um Wharton Smith, we call this a progressive design build. So they are both the engineers
and designers of the project and they will be doing the construction work on it. It involves a number of different elements to include the decommissioning of plant 2 and converting that to a
booster uh type operation. It involves a connection from plant 2 to plant three, the modernization and upgrades to plant 3 to a 12 mill 12 MGD 12
>> initially a 12 MGD >> 12 MGD and expandable in the future out to 24 MGD. So they are we've done a number of task orders with them. And with that, I'll hand off to Mark and to our Wharton Smith folks to give us an update.
>> Um, good evening again. And, um, yeah, like T. Michael said, the um, about a year ago, March of uh, last year, we entered into aggressive design u agreement with Wharton Smith and their talented crew uh, team to um,
prepare us for the future and expansion of wastewater plant 3 to the water water resource facility. The initial task order. Um we had task order one that was issued right after the um the agreement was executed. Um did a lot of the
initial preliminary stuff uh gave us a feasibility study, gave us concept plans um to be to get us to the point to make decisions that brings us to today. Task order three uh will will start the hard
design work. Um it'll give us some pre-construction packages. It gives us 60% plans, 90% plans in in the upcoming uh uh permit process. Um we have the Wharton Smith team here um
with uh Anthony Baxley and um Kimmy Horn, design consultant with with Cara to tell us a little more about the project. >> Thank you. Uh my name is Anthony Baxley.
I'm with Wharton Smith. I'm the senior pre-construction manager. Been involved in the project since the beginning. Um already did a very great introduction, an overview of where we're at today. So, as was said, we are looking at the expansion of plan three specifically in
this task order. Um and this is really the the major design task um of this project. There will be others associated with plan two as described getting those flows to plant three but this is to harden your existing facility um improve it
modernize the treatment of that facility and expand its capacity. Um I'm going to turn it over to Cara with Kimley Horn. Kimley Horn is part of our team. They are the lead design engineer. Uh our team does consist of multiple firms. Um,
but they are the lead and Cara is the program manager overseeing all of these task orders from the design perspective. >> Cara, Cara, before you take off, I just want to point out, you know, in my budget presentation, I talked about
major investments in your utility operations, proprietary business operations. This is one of those major investments to harden a facility that was constructed in the early 1970s and has been online for 50 years and
reaching capacity. Um, so hence, you know, this it's it's unfortunately we're having long presentations on an agenda review night, but I think it's important because all this stuff you can see does tie together. Thank you. >> Yeah. Thank you. As Anthony mentioned,
my name is Cara Elliot with Kimley Horn. And as we've touched on already a little bit today, wanted to start off with a quick program overview. Um, just to make sure that we all have some alignment with our ultimately our 50-year planning
goals. So um one of those initial goals is to consolidate the wastewater flows to the pollard road site which will enable us to decommission wastewater treatment plant number two. Ultimately,
we will need to increase the capacity of the treatment plant at the Pard Road site from seven and a half to initially 12. And then ultimately, we're planning for a 24 MGD buildout to support the growth of the city long term.
Um we also have plans to ensure that we continue to produce reliable high quality effluent water um to ultimately align with the overall one water vision.
So as discussed we've been well underway working on task order one and task order two. Task order one focused on the program planning efforts and included some critical decision makingaking. So we completed a condition assessment of
both wastewater treatment plant number two and wastewater treatment plant number three which helped inform the best way to continue to make use of this infrastructure while we expand the capacity at plant three and again
ultimately decommission plant two. This included a route alternatives analysis looking at several different routes through the city to reroute and consolidate the wastewater flows. And we also had some initial design work
to make some interim improvements to solve some of the more immediate issues with a filter improvement at treatment plant number three and a filter plant or a filter improvement at treatment plant two as well as some associated electrical work.
As part of the initial task one planning effort, we completed a alternatives evaluation that considered several different treatment technologies and in partnership with the city and operations staff, we um narrowed down some of the
preferred options and ultimately completed a net present worth evaluation looking at the capital costs and the long-term the 20-year operational costs. costs associated with the selected alternative.
From that, we paired the findings from that evaluation with the findings from our condition assessment to develop a phased plan that takes the most advantage of the existing infrastructure,
helping to defer some capital costs for the future while also making sure that we are set up to continue to provide reliable wastewater treatment service in the near term. So what you have on your screen here is an overview of the site
plan that is defined in task order number three. The green boxes more to the right side of the screen that are outside of the existing um treatment plant fence is all new infrastructure.
That new infrastructure includes a new headworks, um, new bioolids processing tanks and a membrane filtration system. We do plan to continue to use the existing biological process tanks with some
improvements to the tankage and the mechanical equipment so that we can increase both the reliability and the capacity of the system. We have planned, as you can see, um, on
this graphic, for the ultimate 24 or MGD buildout. So, we're making sure that we're leaving space not only for future tankage, but considering the constructibility of that tankage as well in partnership with Wharton Smith.
Zooming back out a little bit, this is a a timeline overview. Here we are in 2026. We are well underway with task order one and have plans to get that wrapped up this year with the completion of the construction related to the interim
improvements being completed next year. Um, we have task order two well underway that focuses on the improvements at wastewater treatment plant number two. And today we're looking forward to getting going on the larger design and
construction effort associated with the water resource facility at Pard Road um and the wastewater treatment plan number three improvements. So with that, thank you very much for your time and I would be happy to answer any questions. Yes, ma'am.
>> Um, in looking at this, are you going to build um capacity to 12 and then expand that capacity again at another later date? >> That's correct. >> And if you would go back a slide, it kind of looked like you had ribs. Do you have ribs on it?
>> We do not. >> Um, when I in the far right and where it's vacant, but it's above the greens, some of that it kind of looked like ribs. Those are um oxidation basins. Okay. Yes. >> So, mayor and commissioners um again
this is in my opinion and I think certainly in in my my career, past, present, and whatever it may be in the future for Winter Haven. Um the largest
probably project we will undertake this the water resource facility because is a combination of what comes from plant two, an expansion and enhancement of plant three and other elements within um
the Pard Road area, regional storm ponds and the like. You know, this is a several hundred,000 project when it's all said and done as we've communicated on multiple occasions. Um this is this work the design work is
is significant. This is a 27.78 million dollar uh project to to do the design and get everything to that point of getting to a GMP that I would anticipate that's probably in the I'm
going to spitball it here and please correct me if the team thinks otherwise. It's probably in a a 10 to 12% cost, maybe even a little bit under that of what the total construction cost of the projects will be. Um, but it is a it's a
significant one. Hence it being under new business. I don't take those investments lightly. But this is long-term um you know the the wastewater treatment plan uh capacity for this community of
present day 62,000 future you know upwards of 100,000 people um to get it to 12 MGD to handle the capacity of plant two and three as they exist today as well as additional growth and the
expandability to that 24 MGD. So just want I want to be abundantly clear on that. And again, these are costs that are when your rate study was done by Rafelis in 2024. They're looking at a a
capital investment program and anticipating what those costs are so that your rates are set to accommodate. And that's why we went up as much as we did in percentages on wastewater because we knew we were going to have such an investment there.
The hope is and the expectation is when this project is complete, no less than 50 years, hopefully 75 years before the city has to do um you know further expansion or enhancement. Certainly these things they they endure
wear and tear and they they will degrade just because of the volatility of waste water overall. But um this is one of those decisions that we make under this administration and this commission that really has impact for
generations yet to come. So, just want to point that out. >> Yeah. So, no matter what, we're all gone by the time this needs to be replaced. Except for MJ. >> All right. Um I don't have any questions.
>> I told you you were going to get a degree in wastewater this evening. So, just what I always wanted. Thank you. >> I've been to Gainesville enough. I know about wastewater. >> Thank you to the work Smith and Kimley Horn team. Thank you, Mark. Um
I I may be the only person that appreciates that statement, but I do appreciate probably are the last item. Um I do and I I want to just kind of preface this that Mr. Murphy I think needs to give some direction on another matter for Monday. But the final item
13B is that item I mentioned during my budget presentation that on Monday evening you have to set your tenative millage rate and your um first meeting date. So we we already have on there the resolution to change that meeting date to September 15th from the 14th. And uh
our recommendation is that you set the mil tenative millage rate at uh the existing rate of 6.5900 mills. Once that is set, it cannot be increased without uh significant processes that you would have to go
through. I don't anticipate any need uh that you're going to have to increase that. I think it's it's it's fair to say that to set it at that. Um if for some reason the commission uh made a decision to lower it, you certainly can always do that. Um I would caution and just in
light of not knowing what the future holds with your your revenues um in light of amendment three, but that's what the final item that you'll consider Monday evening. And those notices, Christopher, I believe they go out August 4th. We have to have it
everything on not only the the g or the yeah the general fund but also on the CRAAS have to be transmitted on the appropriate form so that those tax notices can be sent out. >> Yes, we'll have to certify the DR420 by August 4th.
>> That's all we got for tonight. Commissioners, anything else? >> Mr. Mayor, Commissioner, may I make a few comment that you you all have a special meeting on Monday at 5:00 just before the regular meeting at 6 and that
is a special meeting to conduct a denovo hearing which means a brand new hearing um to consider a uh application uh for a largescale drinking establishment that was denied by the planning commission
after a duly noticed public hearing and pursuant to our land development code it allows applicants in this case I believe it's Mr. Aniset the opportunity to uh if they are feel agrieved of the order at the planning commission level to ask for
you all as the city commission to consider this a new that's denovo means you know it's a Latin phrase um and starting from the beginning. But the uh
it is a quasi judicial proceeding which means you all as you as you have when you adopt zoning ordinances and other types of ordinances but mostly zoning ordinances you all sit as the judges in making a determination on someone's
interests and rights as it relates to a specific piece of property. In this case it is Mr. Aniset's request to have a large-scale drinking establishment on a specific piece of property within the city of Winter Haven. To that extent,
and I've discussed this with you before, um I would encourage you not to have any outside the meeting. What we refer to again a Latin term is exparte communications. What does that mean? Meanwhile, if people try to, the applicant, for example, wants to talk to
you, communicate with you prior to the hearing on Monday at 5:00, I would suggest that you politely say that you would prefer not to speak about these matters until the hearing. Please come to the hearing and tell me what it is you want me to know. And and
the reason for that is we don't want you to become biased or have any of the due process rights of the applicant tainted by things that are said outside of the duly noticed public hearing because the
applicant out of a fairness concept should be given the opportunity to, you know, question or present information perhaps that would contravene or that would be supplementary to or would answer other concerns. So, we want to
have a full and robust fair due hearing for this applicant. I believe that you that will happen. Um the staff has provided a report. Uh you have been provided information uh in the agenda. Um and certainly I would come to the
meeting with an open mind and the willingness to make a decision only after you've heard all of the information and facts that will be presented at the hearing. At that hearing uh we will be swearing in anyone who wishes to provide information
testimony to you. This is not a court proceeding or judicial court proceeding. So we do not follow the rule the strict rules of evidence. um you know so it's a little more casual in that regard or more informal but there are some basic
modicum of procedures that we have to adhere to um and that is uh what we are going to be doing on Monday um I don't know we have noticed that meeting in the same manner as the planning commission meeting was noticed which meant that notices of the meeting were mailed to
everyone I believe within 500 ft of the location of the uh of the property where the proposed large scale drinking establishment application is is cited. It was also advertised in the newspaper and I believe the property was posted. So that's a lot more notice than we
normally give for your meetings. Um that's fine. That's again required by our code. Uh and so anyone uh I would folks that came to the planning commission meeting may come here. Um Mr. Mayor, uh I think as we have discussed
um we will probably put in time limits um you know on the applicant and then of course we have the five minute time limit for the public that wish to speak. So those will all still apply um and it will be a proceeding that and I'm not sure have we had a denovo hearing in
front of this commission before um >> I I know we have with Commissioner Bird. I >> think Chad I think Commissioner Davis probably the only one that hasn't Okay. >> Yeah. Before we had it in Albertson's parking lot or something. >> Yes. Yes. >> I think we've had a couple.
>> We've had a couple. So, this this will be similar to that to the extent that you're familiar with with those proceedings. Um, and I'm here to, you know, help you all guide you as best you can, but it's ultimately your decision based on the information and evidence that you'll hear. Um, ultimately
there'll be an order, a written order prepared that I'll take care of doing. Um, and we'll uh we'll make sure that the proceeding is conducted in accordance with our code and to afford the applicant the the due process that
any applicant would be entitled to. >> Okay. Thank you. Just have a two quick questions. One, you mentioned exparte communications. Would that also I assume include include any other interested parties, constituents, maybe people that live in that area um trying to talk to
us? We probably should not have those conversations either. >> Correct. >> Outside of this hearing. >> Yes, sir. Commissioner Davis. And I also to the extent you have had those, I would disclose them >> um prior to taking a vote or prior to the consideration to the applicant so
they know, you know, Mr. Mrs. Jones approached me and we talked about this or we said this um so that the applicant has an opportunity to rebuck that information. But yes, that would be applicable to to that as well. The only the only that would not be applicable
would be if you're talking with me, of course, your lawyer or with staff um as it relates to those things, the the professional staff. But yes, to the extent you have had communications that you know that pertain to this matter, I would ask that you disclose those at the
public meeting prior to taking any vote. >> Okay. Then the second question, you will be able to answer questions during the hearing as far as what kind of standard we're applying. What uh you you mentioned we're quasi judicial. So I may have some questions then as to what exactly our parameters are for making a
decision >> at the time. Okay. >> The the standard just so we're clear will be um that this is um this would be reviewed I believe on a petition for rid of certari standard >> um which would yeah I'll be prepared to
to address the standard of review. >> A lot of Latin terms I got to brush up. You've learned about wastewater. Now you'll learn more about Latin. Um but anyway, thank you. >> Could be.
>> Yeah, thank you. That's all I have. >> Good. >> Yes, I'm good. Thank you. All right, we'll adjourn.