Commission - workshop

Okay. Six o'clock.

Uh, just want to confirm, um, commissioner Kelly and mayor Shelton. You're both on.

Yes. Yes.

Awesome. Uh, we'll go and get started. Um, thank you and welcome everybody. Um, we're doing the agenda review for the August 25th city commission meeting. Uh, my name is Andrew Mack. I'm the deputy city manager getting some feedback. Okay. Um, The city manager, Dan Duggar, is unavailable tonight, so I'll be running the meeting, but we got you taken care of. So we'll go ahead and get started. I'm going down the agenda. Announcements, we have the proclamation for Hunger Action Month, which will be a proclamation to Feeding South Florida. And we're going to have Allison, I'm sorry for the name, Balox, will be accepting that proclamation on behalf of Feeding South Florida. public audience. And then we have administrative community support funds. Thank you for all the commissioners who are donating to our nonprofits. I really appreciate that. Mayor Shelton's giving some money to Men of Vision and Purpose, $500. $500 to the Girl Scouts. Boynton High Cheerleaders, $500. Vice Mayor Turkin's giving money to the Purple Cobras, $400. east point literally 1500 and commissioner mccray is giving boynton beach cheerleaders a thousand and boynton beach high school cheerleaders a thousand i think that's pretty much most people's have exhausted their community support funds since we're coming to the end of the year so thank you guys for for keeping our non-profits in mind i can scroll down some tammy sammy can you let me know i think sorry andrew i think i have like

I think you sent me an email. I want to say I have like $225 or $250 left. Can you just shoot me a text or an email and just let me know so I can figure that out?

Andrew, I'll take that. What I'll do is, it's Alan. What I'll do is I'll reconcile the numbers. If I can get the numbers from everybody to get the checks cut, then I can reconcile those balances for you guys.

Yeah, Tammy has it. She'll do it. She'll get you that number. Perfect. Thank you. I saw some updates for it, so we should add that. No problem. And if you want, we can, you know, if you wanted to do something, we can add it at the meeting.

All right. Thank you.

Let's see. Next is the advisory board appointments. We have four openings. You have one on the historic preservation board, which is a nomination by Commissioner Cruz, a regular appointment. You have one for the library board, which is an appointment by the mayor. It's a regular appointment. And you have two on the senior board, one regular, which is the mayor's appointment, and one alternate for Commissioner Cruz. We do have that one item on the library board was tabled, so we'll need to untable that if that's the desire of the board. All right, moving on. 6A, I'm going to let Alan Lawson take this one and give the update.

Thank you, Andrew. Yes, right now, this is the update of where we are with the budget six months through the year. We are on track to meet our budget expectations. Please be mindful that we receive, you know, 90% of our revenue in the first part of the year. So we are right now tracking at 68 to 70% of our revenue being spent, which is the same target that we were same place, same time last year. So we are expecting that to be, there's nothing that we're seeing right now from a numbers perspective that would call out any access to the budget plan for 2025, 2026. There's a full breakdown with, there's full breakdown that's provided that if there's any questions to that, by all means, please reach out and I can walk you through any of the numbers, but we're in good position to close out the year.

Perfect. Thank you, Alan.

All right, move on to 6B. I'm going to have Matt Zeller, Deputy Chief Zeller.

Can you go over that item, please?

Yes, absolutely. So with our law enforcement trust fund, we had a fantastic year, and that is a contributed to the relationship that we have with our legal team. So we have actually taken in almost 600,000 by statute. We have to donate or expend 25% of that. So we have identified different programs that are more youth-based that support drug treatment programs, safe neighborhoods, school resource officers, and identified seven nonprofits that we could support in different amounts, $6,000 for Trinity. Pathway Prosperity was $6,000. Men of Vision, $6,000. Connected to Greatness, $6,000. Bulldogs, $6,000. Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, $3,000 each. In addition to supporting our PAL program for the next four years in the amounts of

76 000 for the first year and 40 000 for each additional year so fantastic uh work from the men and women point beach and glad we can get these funds back to the community thank you exciting to see that um i'm looking forward to seeing some of the uh outcomes of that money so thank you for that hard work um moving on we got 6c d e are just simply new fire rescue department emergency services mutual aid agreements for and those are going to be for a new 10-year term so the first one is with delray the second one item d is with with boca and the last one is with palm beach county those are just standard operating stuff that we have in place so that we can call on them and they can call on us for mutual aid if it's needed okay Going on to 7F, Danielle, and G, Danielle Whitefield, can you go over that one?

Yes, sir. Thank you, Andrew. So for 6F, this is going to be to approve an amendment with the collective bargaining agreement with the fire rescue. So this is going to be two different parts on this. The cell phone allowances, which citywide we're trying to get away from to save the city money. We're going to physical cell phones at a case-by-case basis. And then also altering the life insurance, which will increase the term life and the accidental death benefit for the fire rescue operators. So there's that one. And then you'll see that coming up on the Prudential. I believe it's in seven. So 6G, that's going to be also an amendment to the CBA with the Boynton Beach Police Department. And that's going to be, again, the life insurance is increasing for, the benefit is increasing for police officers, sergeants, and captains, actually at a $50,000 reduction to the city. And then we are going to be requiring them to do annual physicals. They were at a three-year physical, we're going to annual physicals, which is going to actually increase the utilization of CARE-ATC, and then hopefully reduce the long-term risks with that, so.

All right.

That's it.

Thank you. Thank you.

Item H and I are approval of a waiver of right of first refusal to purchase the property. These are two properties that got SHIP funding. They're asking them to be sold. We are recouping our initial outlay of cash through this, but we do not want to purchase the properties. We want to let them go back to the market. So that's simply just waiving that right to purchase so that we can collect our money and they can sell the property. Okay. Let's see. 7J is where we applied for a grant through the Lake Worth Lagoon Initiative. This is a program that Palm Beach County has in the amount of $749,000. And this money is going towards grant funding for the Sea Meadows South Gravity Sewer and Water Main Repair Project. That project's, I think, $7.5 million. We're trying to phase in this project and get as much grant money as we can to offset that capital cost. Thank you to Myrna and the utility staff. This is a great win for us. If we can get this, hopefully we do secure this grant and we can get that work started in Sea Meadows. Any questions on that?

Yeah, that would be awesome.

Yeah, I'm excited. Yeah, that would be great. And hopefully in the future we'll be able to get more of these grants for this type of work.

Yeah, no, I'm glad that we're making sure we're looking at all this Lake Worth Lagoon grant is one that I feel like it's kind of an outlier and not a lot of people know about it. And so I'm glad to see us applying for it and having this project move forward because it's super important to uh to those residents so um andrew real quick on the on the two before this um i wanted to ask but i was muted and i couldn't get to my mute button fast enough how many years are left on those um on those ship um contracts

I think one, let me pull up because I don't know for sure which one is which.

The 12 crossings, I think, was 20 years they've been in that. It was a 30-year term. Okay. Yeah. And I'm not sure on the other one. Let me pull that one up. That's another 30-year term. I'm not sure how long they were in that particular. RJ, do you know? I think RJ is on. You know how long they were in that property for the second one at Ware Road?

Yeah, for sure. Let me get to my paper here. So this property, this is R.J. Ramirez from the record. So this property were purchased with seasonal chip funds. So there was a 30-year argument I was mentioning. And on the first one, the 1295, bear with me because I have a bunch of paper over here. Just going to try to go through them here real quick. So on the 1295, that one was... purchase on there when they first come from the private load pages here. So I was 2010. So that's 2660 years, 14 years left. And there is no charity equity on this. So the equity was 80%, one to 10 years, but because it did more than 10 years, so there is zero charity equity on it. So And then the other one here, that one there is no share equity either. That was purchased at 170. It's being sold at 155. So the homeowner is just going to pay what is owed to the program there, pay back 24,700. And that one was executed on 2006. So that's 20 year on it, so 10 years less on that one, yeah. Yeah, thank you. So with this first refusal, at the time where this system was given to the homeowner was where the city had the right to purchase it back if the city wants to. Correct, yeah. Otherwise you sell back to an affordable price to anybody that wants to buy it. So at this point, the city doesn't have any intent to purchase the property back. So therefore, it's in the market. They have a contract with him to sell it. And what's going to happen with this fund is going to go back to the SHIP program to be utilized, you know, to assist other community members.

Right. So it'll stay within the SHIP program. This isn't going to be a market rate house. This will be another affordable for the life of the program, right?

Exactly. So what's happening is that these properties are being sold on the market at an affordable price, what is quote-unquote, according to Florida Housing, affordable price. So an affordable price, according to the Florida market, is $636,000. That's considered an affordable home, which is crazy. Well, nonetheless, this is within that range, and therefore it's being sold. So, yeah, so some of these ones, they have... So, like I mentioned, when the article case, we're not going to get into equity on adjusted payback.

Okay, perfect. Thank you.

No problem.

Can you go up a little bit? All right item K is just the approval of the commission meeting minutes from June 2nd and June 16th.

Was there any questions on those? Or did you want me to pull them up?

Okay, 7 a, I'm going to have Alana.

Erwin, go over. Alana, you on?

Hi. Yep, I am. Good evening, everybody. So this is just the approval for the commission to allow us to award the contract for the grant-funded vulnerability assessment project. We have selected the firm and have gone through negotiations and have come up with the agreement for the contract award. So once that's approved, we'll go ahead and move forward with the project.

Any questions on that project? All right. Thank you. Item 7B and C, I'm going to have Josh McDermott go over. Josh, you on?

Yep. Sorry. That was me. One sec. The first one for, hang on a second, Andrew.

I'm sorry.

That's secured in place.

The cured in place one, this is a resolution awarding the contract to Cobra Environmental for a lining project on Campanelli Boulevard, Gateway Boulevard, stormwater pipe rehabilitation project. The work we'll use, we're using a trenchless lining method to rehabilitate some of our stormwater pipes that were identified previously as needing rehabbed. So again, this is awarding the contract. The second one is for SCADA. This is the software we use for our lift stations and water treatment plants. It basically controls our equipment and processes. It's software we already have in place. The annual cost is just under $18,000, and it's for a three-year plus a two-year.

So any questions on those two?

Thank you, Josh.

Thanks.

All right. 7D, I'm going to have Dr. Calcutt go over.

Good evening, everyone. Poonam Calcutt, Utilities Director. What we are trying to do is we're trying to do some piggyback agreements on some of the services that we don't necessarily have the capability or the resources to do in-house. We've had some issues with our CCTV camera trucks for some time. So in the future, we'll be looking at buying those. These are expensive. equipment to buy. So what we've done is we've looked at piggybacking these contracts where we get the benefit of having a competitively bid solicitation. And we are able to bring in sometimes even prices lower than what was bid. And that allows us to move faster. We are doing not to exceed $75,000 per year. And so this will allow us to do some condition assessment on some of our gravity sewer mains because one of the things that we've been lacking is not having the data to be able to decide which the highest priority sewer mains or water mains to be replaced and repaired. So we've been going by based on what the staff knows, but this is going to give us real data. So that's what we're going to be doing with this project. So excited about getting some of this condition assessment going as we've talked about risk and condition assessment in the past. If there are any questions I can answer, this is going to be generally wherever we need to use these services that throughout the city we'll be able to use them.

Thank you, Poonam.

Sebeny, I'm going to have Salika Brown go over. This is for SAGES.

Good evening, everyone. As the city prepares to sunset Central Square, the current business tax operating system, Staff is proposing to integrate business tax administration into SagesGov, the city's current existing platform that we use to administer building, planning, and zoning, code enforcement, and other administrative functions. Moving business tax into SagesGov will consolidate these functions into a single platform, improve coordination and information sharing amongst departments, and provide a more streamlined system for administering business tax and certificate of use and occupancy. Staff is seeking an amendment to approve the current agreement with SagesGov to authorize an additional expenditure in an amount not to exceed 297,375. And approval of this amendment will allow the city to proceed with the necessary implementation and integration of business tax and certificate of use into the stages gov platform.

That's excellent. When will that take effect? When for next fiscal year?

Yes, that's our that's our goal. Hopefully we'll get started soon and then we will. get through this current renewal season that typically ends October 1st. I would say the end of October, we'll start receiving all of the delinquencies, but it'll kind of fall off. We're at the peak right now because we're in renewal season. So hopefully we'll start that process. So by next fiscal year, next renewal season, which is July 1st, we should be ready to go in the new software.

Excellent. Thank you, Seliga. Any other questions on that? Okay.

Nope.

Item 7F, we simply have an increase here to our current agreement with Comcast Cable. There's some increases in there, but one of the biggest increases in there was we're standing up what is called an esports lab at Carolyn Sim Center. We had to upgrade the internet there to accommodate the use of the gaming systems there that we're providing for the esports lab. I'm truly excited about this effort and the esports lab that's coming there. Definitely would love to have you guys out. We're currently in the process of renovating that space, getting new gaming chairs, new tables, new computers, new TVs. It's going to be really state-of-the-art area, and it's going to be pretty awesome. And that's what this is for, for Comcast. We'll bring you back some more discussion on the eSports Lab. And then obviously we hope to have a ribbon cutting for that actual space with the recreation staff and the commission.

All right, any questions on that item?

And 7G is simply purchasing two bypass pumps. They are part of our annual replacement cycle, and we're buying pumps for master pump stations, 801 and 316. for an amount not to exceed $150,000 through Thompson Pump and Manufacturing.

Okay. Any questions?

All right. 7H. You're going to be seeing a few of these coming in the future here. So as a part of our agreement with KCO, they have some services that are on an as-needed basis or kind of additional services. We have, you know, multiple departments that are using some of these contracts. So Beautification and Streets had money budgeted in their account to do some tree trimming. They utilized this contract, which we didn't anticipate they would use. So we're having to increase the cost expenditure on this line item by, I think it's $84,000. And then we're also increasing the additional services by $20,000 so that we have enough money to finish out the year. And I'll mention it now that, you know, like I said, this is one of these that's coming. The procurement department with Andrew R has done some pretty cool things with automation. They automated a review of all of our open POs against all the invoicing. And actually, it automated emails that went out all to our vendors, notifying them that they had, you know, dates to get these invoices in. So we're seeing a lot more of the invoicing getting closed out. So we will have some things that are going to be coming back to you guys for invoices that may have slipped through the cracks or whatnot. But this process is seem to help us close out the year. So I'm not anticipating this going forward from this year, but you will see several others of these that come through. It's been very good because we've had quite a few vendors reach out, and we've had a lot of problems at the end of the year trying to close out POs. This has really sped up this process for us, and I'm excited that we've started this kind of venture here.

Any questions on that item?

Are we using – I would be shocked if you said no, but that's an AI-based – that's being generated –

We're using Claude code, and Andrew's doing some pretty amazing things with Claude, and we're automating. He's even created some searchable database or connected them to, for instance, all of our ordinances and resolutions. I don't know if you guys have ever tried to search through our database through Laserfish, but using AI and Claude is a little bit easier to do and identify. We've done some really good things. We do anticipate doing an update to you guys in the future here. Probably won't be in September, but maybe in October, bringing some of the automation things that they're working on. Gail and Andrew and Charles are working on a presentation, so I'm excited to bring that to you guys probably in October and kind of highlight some of the things that they're doing and some of the great automation that we're working on with the AI.

Yeah, no, I think it's great. I've had lots of conversations with Alan and Andrew about, um, you know, finance and procurement and utilizing AI to our benefit. So, um, I'm always excited to hear those presentations and how we're making everyone's lives a little bit easier and more efficient. And I think that that's key is that this isn't replacing people. It's just making us work more efficiently and not missing, um, you know, not missing key things and, you know, like getting paid or paying invoices. So I think, you know, it's important that we continue to grow with this technology. So thank you.

Thank you. All right. Seven, I and Jay, I'm going to have Danielle Whitefield also go over those as well.

You got it. Thank you. So for 7i, we are recommending the continuing of services with Aetna, our current insurance carrier. We went out to a competitive RFP process to try to get the lowest rates available, which we did at a nominal cost. Aetna came in at the best value, and this is going to keep the benefits the same for the employees, and it's going to be no additional cost to the employees.

Excellent.

That's it for that one. You want me to move on to, let's see, I think I have the next one you said, Jay.

Any questions on I? Okay, go ahead.

Okay, so we're seven, Jay. Yes, ma'am.

Daniel, just reach out to me offline. I just have some questions that are not important for the general, just stuff I wanted to ask you.

Yep, absolutely. I will give you a call. You're welcome. And then so the next one, 7J, that's going to be for the approval of the award for the RFP for Prudential Life Insurance. That is, again, we went out to competitive bid. We had two different insurance carriers before for this. We consolidated to one, and we did so with increasing benefits to the population. All life insurance went up for the employees and at a lower cost to the city, actually. So that is that. If you have any questions.

Amy, can you move up the screen a little bit? All right. Perfect.

7K. This is related to our communications tower. Really excited to see this one get completed. Our other tower is old and very glad that we won't be going through another hurricane season with that one. Or at least this will be our last one. So this is just buying or purchasing the remaining equipment. that goes with the radio tower. This is also where we're using our appropriations from the federal government here or from Lois Franco's office, a million dollars that we got. So this is just the purchase of that and installation of those equipment at the tower.

Any questions on that item? All right. 7L, I'll let Alan go. You go for that one.

Yes. Through the budgetary process, actually, we've had some good news here, and with actually the help of, I'm going to give kudos to Chief Bruder, we had acquired $9 million worth of assets for fire. And in that, we looked at ways to create creative financing. So one of the things that we've been looking at is changing the cash strategy for the city and how that means from a cash management perspective. And in that, we were able to secure leasing for those items that essentially finances those particular assets over seven years, seven to 10 years. And By getting the $9 million back, even though there's interest costs associated with the lease, I'm able to offset that with the investment policies that we have in place now for the city. So essentially, I'm able to create time and money and invest that money over time in a positive aspect and essentially push the payments equal to that. We still own the assets at the end of the lease, which we really want to do going forward. This also helped us create some of our budget closings to not draw off the general fund for the plan of 2026-2027. So pretty excited about this cash strategy policy going forward for the city. Any questions?

One thing I would mention here, Alan, is this is also going to help us with when our fleet purchases, and then you have these big capital purchases through fleet that makes your budgets balloon and and ebb and flow, this is going to keep that more stable and more predictable.

You are correct. No, you are correct. I forgot to mention that on my notes, right? So it creates a real predictable budget, creates a predictable timeline as far as the cash flow is for the city. All of a sudden, I've got to find $9 million to write a check for assets that show up. and this now doesn't have to happen anymore so by utilizing uh ncl which is which is a national leasing company for um we use the piggyback uh for municipalities across across the the country so again this has been a great find and kudos to uh to chief bruder for helping us assist and really kind of creating this discovery thank you alan any questions on that item

Yeah, Alan, are we looking at kind of looking at other departments as far as fleet and whether we can switch, you know, other vehicles or other, you know, of our fleet over to leases as opposed to, you know, these giant purchases? I mean, even on a small level thinking admin vehicles and things that can be, you know, either, you know, longer term leases, but that we, you know, because we know that don't live i mean even as for purchase they don't outlive a lease term usually and so i'm just wondering if we're looking at you know more city-wide what can be um what's you know financially you know beneficial to us to lease as opposed to um purchase

Great call out for maintenance. It is beneficial to the city to lease right now with the interest rates that are. We're securing these low interest rates right now. We need to utilize that, especially when we're getting on the backside, keeping that cash and getting interest that almost offsets that amount. So yes, that's what we will cover that at the budgetary. But yes, we have shifted all of next year, all those assets. that will be acquired to go to leases. Everything. Utilities, fire. Working with PD because they have a couple interesting things as far as the buildup of these vehicles creates a little more complication. So I am working with Chief DiGiulio's team and Jason to make sure that we do it the right way for PD because it is a complex. But listen, 90% of the vehicles will be covered going forward with this new cash strategy?

Yeah. I mean, you know, thinking, you know, long-term, you know, leases as opposed to, you know, purchases that then we sell and we don't end up getting that asset. You know, we don't, we never recoup what, you know, we, the value. So.

No, I agree. We're there. Yeah.

Just looking at ways. And then are we also looking at different ways to extend, you know, lives of vehicles, like keeping them, you know, a little bit longer as opposed to, replacing vehicles just because we want something that's newer and better?

No, yeah.

So working with Dave right now, we're going through a couple of things is looking at the vehicles from a different perspective on the maintenance side and start. You can do a formulation that kind of creates, you know, what's good, what's, you know, there's a way that you do mathematically, statistically speaking, to actually identify the vehicles that need to turn over. Right. So I'm working with Dave right now to kind of create that, that math strategy that I've used in prior lives and transportation, certainly on tractor trailer side, it's the same math, right? So we're looking at ways to really identify what vehicles need to go, what vehicles need to say and keep, keep deployed.

Yeah. And I know, I mean, it's like a juggling act, you know, you're, you're on the fence as far as, you know, we're, we're going to hit, you know, expensive maintenance. is it is it now or can we put it off for another you know year and get a little bit more life out of these vehicles that we're spending so much money you know especially on the PD side that we're spending so much money you know equipping them and and all that to see them you know stay on the road a little bit longer and so okay great I'm glad that's in the works I I look forward to hearing uh more on uh fleet updates yes Commissioner thank you all right moving on 7M um this is

kind of a legacy project that's been going on for a while. This is the renewal of the beach plant up there, our septic system. This project has lingered a little bit. So as a part of that, we have a permit there for that actual beach plant. And based on the length of the project and just some of the delays that we've had there, our permit's about to expire. So we're having the consultant here just make sure that they do the renewal while we're finalizing the project. We're hopefully in the process of filing the project, completing the project. The grant, I think, is almost closed out or has been closed out. And this project should be coming to close here very soon. 7N, these are just our annual renewals. The first one is for Waterfield, Florida staffing, which is our school crossing guard. for an annual estimated expenditure of $475,470. I will note that that's up a little bit from our previous contracts. If you remember, we were having a lot of problems hiring school crossing guards. So they did raise the per hour rates for some of our guards so that we can make sure that we're filling those, you know, very important positions. So I think that's a great move forward. And then the other renewal is for Sunset SOD, Odom SOD, Mullings Engineering Services. This is our SOD co-op. Actually, this co-op is one that the city has done that a lot of different agencies use. So this renewal, and we're estimating our annual expenditure about $150,000 on that one. Moving on, we don't have any public hearing items, nothing under city managed reports. We do have a discussion item that was added from the last meeting or that was on future agenda. We had committed to put this on as a discussion of the formation of a task force to review the land development regulations. That was requested by Vice Mayor Turkin a while back. So we had targeted this meeting to put it on. And then the two future, I'll go over the future agenda items. Discussion on Girl Scout Park parcel for September 8th and discussion on Gulfview Harbor parcel on September 8th. I will mention that on September 8th, we do have the City Commission meeting, which is our first budget hearing starting at 6. And then we have a CRA meeting that's going to take place right after that because they're on the same day. We may want to think about either moving this meeting up to the 25th or maybe pushing it back to the 16th. I think this may make that meeting a little bit longer, but you guys can talk about that maybe on the 25th to see if that's something you guys want to do. Because I think if we do hear this item on the 8th, it could make that meeting quite a bit longer with all the interest in the neighborhood that's going to want to get there to speak. So we may want to think about that or at least discuss that at the meeting on the 25th to maybe shift it to the 16th because I know we kind of agreed to it at the last meeting to go on the 8th. Then the other two items were the procurement policies for point system on disabled veterans. I know there's seen some emails and discussion on that. So hopefully we'll have a date for that coming back soon. And then discussion on reduced permitting costs for senior citizens. I don't have any direction on that one. So Definitely, maybe if we could talk about that one on the 25th too, or at least ask or set a date, that would be great. Other than that, I don't have any other items. Mayor or Commissioner Kelley, do you have any items for us or anything that you want to discuss?

I don't. No. Okay.

Well, with that, that's... the end of our agenda review. I thank everyone for attending, and we look forward to seeing you guys next week on Tuesday.

Thank you, everyone. All right.

See you guys soon. Thanks.

Take care, everyone.

Be safe.

Bye, you too. It's raining out there.