City Council - Regular Meeting

I can share mine. I forgot some too.

Well, good afternoon, everyone. The mayor said he's running a little behind, so I will be stepping in for him. Mr. Van Wagner, do we have any changes, anything that you want us to be aware of?

No, ma'am. We are good to go and ready for your discussion.

All right. Let me just go around. Is that all good? Sure. Okay. You want to start, Brian?

I don't know what is the plan from staff, I guess.

So the plaintiff's staff is just kind of listen to a few months ago. We did this little exercise where you guys all. Priorities up on a whiteboard and then. Ranked him, so this is how they laid out is what I put in front of you. And I noted it, there was some talk about looking at these priorities as we get. Ready to start the budget, drawing up the budget to see if anything has changed or any. anything is added, subtracted, or orders are changed or anything like that. So leaving it to council to discuss it.

If you're not ready, I can go with someone else. No, I'm not. Thank you. No worries.

Sure. Okay. I can usually talk on the spot. So I look at the priorities through a lens of We're working on our comprehensive plan, and our comprehensive plan has a certain number of elements to it. And so, you know, the item, complete the comprehensive plan, To me, almost everything on this list is actually part of the comprehensive plan. So I fear if we get into a approach with staff of these are our top priorities, what we're doing I think might be akin to treating the symptom rather than the problem, which is kind of getting ahead of ourselves in a way. And I almost felt like looking at, when we're looking at the comprehensive plan, maybe some of this, like when we look at walkability, street lights, golf cart paths, all of these relate to transportation. You know, and then when we look at library, that relates to education, which is one of the comprehensive plan elements. Safety, top 10 safest, EMS, six minute response time, even getting into street lights, like all of this is safety, water and sewer, right? You know, that's probably its own element. So I think they all relate in the context that we're working on the comprehensive plan right now. And So that's kind of what I keep coming back to. So for me as a council member, my two priorities I would say, top two if I had to narrow it down would be finish the comprehensive plan as soon as possible so that we can make clear decisions on a lot of these other questions. And then 2nd, reduce the knowledge. I think most of you know why I got here and how I got here and when I started this journey for me, we were at 4.21 for about 2 decades. So there's a number for us. I like having clear goals. So for me, those are the two things. And to the extent we need to talk about within the comprehensive plan, walkability, clearly three out of five of us, there's a majority vote there, that's important. So why is walkability important? And I think it would help for staff and the public to know why that's important. Is it important because The way I look at it, we want to be a safe place for families to raise their children. We want affordable housing where people can get to work and job and grocery without having to have a car. The golf carts relate to that. So I think all of that's consistent if the vision is we want to be a safe place to raise your family, to be born and to die, that you can do all of those things. You can do the whole dash right here in Claremont. I might be going too high level on this, but I feel like this is a visioning thing.

What is the timeline now for the comprehensive plan?

Great question. I was about to ask that myself.

Does anybody in the room know? Is it six months, three months?

It better not be six months.

I can speak a little to it. Well, the contract has it for that to wrap things up in November, but the process is going forward last week. with the members of the government departments within the city. And they were trying to nail down, for example, on the form-based code, a lot of the metrics that were used for the form-based code

You're saying November?

Well, that's when they're legally obligated to do it.

Is the November date a transmittal or adoption?

Alison, let me interrupt you.

No, no, no. The typical thing is that the consulting team, they don't know how the politics will be. Sometimes the politics in certain cities stretch out these things for a very long period of time. So they allow more time that's physically required for them to do their job on the contingency that there may be some bumps along the road.

Is the contractual completion requirement date the same for the zoning, the code part of it as well as the comp plan part of it? The only reason I ask is because the only reason i ask is because your comp plan is your base you know and everything after that including the code follows is straight jacketed by the comp plan so it's like that is the cart it's no it's the horse the comp plan is the horse and then the code is the cart so so related to that 12 of the 17 items on here all fall under the elements that the comprehensive plan will address right and so um

So for me, those are the two most important. And then I look at most of these other things and say, these are details underneath the bigger umbrella of a comprehensive plan. Brian I don't want to call you out my recollection is that the but maybe I'm recalling wrong was the first time buyers financial education for youth was that one of yours that was yours so is that education was it home affordability what was it all of the things what was the it falls under all of them but I can't remember exactly what I listed it as Could we say it's a, it would be consistent with creating a environment that makes it gives the children of Claremont as they become adults an opportunity to own a home. Okay, so family, the dash in the middle. You can be born and you can die and you can do everything in between. So I think that that fits under the comp, so we're 13 of these 17. So I don't know, as we approach this, what I've observed in the audience, when I was in the audience, was what I felt in my observation was that as we as a community have gone through the budget process in years past, it's kind of like, well, staff would do all this work to say, this is what we think the budget should be. But then it's hard, I think, as a council member to say, well, thanks for doing 100 hours of work. We want to start over, right? I just don't think that's fair, which is why I asked that we do this. And I want to make sure that we are being responsible with our responsibility to have a vision and to give staff parameters around the budget and that we can talk about policies. But this is vision and budgeting, so that's why I am glad that we're doing this. So to the extent individual projects need to be addressed, then I'm happy to do that today. It's probably a terrible way to start, but that's where I'm at. If it makes any sense.

But you're also saying a lot of these things are hinged on what the plan is going to come in November. So it could be leading us, we might have a discussion now about something, and it might not come to fruition if they come up with a different plan. I'm talking about specifics. Let's say we decide, OK, we'd like to have multimodal traffic down Montrose. Let's take out those parking spots and make things. So, I mean, if we try to make that decision today as a priority, it might not be a priority because it might be something else.

I'm glad you frame it like that because what I don't want to do is outsource our responsibility to the comprehensive planning team. So what I like about doing this and having this conversation is I will say to you I think it's a fantastic idea to create multimodal transportation opportunities because I'm coming from a mindset of I want Claremont to be a safe place for families and a good place for people to raise their families and I want to create affordable and I'm using the lowercase a I'm not looking I'm personally not advocating for a subsidized but I am looking for affordable housing solutions particularly for young people who are starting out and empty nesters who are downsizing from large homes i don't want people to feel like they have to leave our community to go climb in exactly so for me golf cart multimodal walking trails bike paths especially maybe a trail system that gets you to schools groceries work spaces recreational places so that you don't have to get in your car or maybe two parents one income you only need to have one car you know that type of situation so for me all of those things are consistent with what I see as the vision of creating a safe place for families and entrepreneurs I think small business is something I hear a lot from people in our community I hear a lot we don't want more big box stores we don't want You know, we don't want to be, you know, the Kroger situation caused a lot of awareness of the dangers of bringing in a big business who's not from here, for example. Having a big business that grew up here, the owners live here, is fantastic. We like that. So I think entrepreneurship, small business, these are all things that if we all agree, I think it helps drive the comprehensive plan and it makes some of these questions easier to answer. I thought...

that part of the point of this was to give staff direction for their budget though for figuring out items i mean not just comp plan vision but like so that no one's ambushed as they prepare for the budget items exactly and so i think that's kind of where what's supposed to be driving the conversation

That's fair. Thank you for keeping me on track. So I look and say we have transportation, safety, recreation. There are others, but those are kind of the categories that I think jump out at me. I like talking about water and sewer because I'm hearing a lot coming out of Tallahassee that we want to protect public safety in the conversation about potentially cutting property taxes. But my priority would be to protect our water and our sewer. So I would like to know if we're all on the same page on that. There was only one vote on that one, but I think that's probably the most important thing. I agree with you on that one.

We won't save drinking water in the long run.

Well, it would kill us all. Yeah, but we need water. Right? We need water. It may not be the sexiest thing that we do, but I think it's probably the most important. Is that something that we agree on? I agree with that.

Well, I think there's you know, we've talked about whether or not we want to see an emphasis placed on reclaimed and reuse water be a part of irrigation. And I would consider that to be a part of that category. And so if if it's a priority, I don't know where currently and maybe the city manager or department heads can can answer in public works about where where they're looking or where they've had conversations about reclaimed or reuse water. and what priorities are currently existing related to that and water and sewer to see if we're on that same path. Um, I thought that, that primarily, I think probably for me would have, would have been the approach I would have preferred is to hear kind of where they, where departments were heading to, to not necessarily say we approve, but to say you're on the right track. Here are some thoughts otherwise, or to say, nah, none of us are really interested in pursuing agenda X. Uh, so maybe that may not be a good idea to include that in the budget at this point.

to then get to that point where it's actually proposed well and I think that where I view this particular setting that we're in is we I thought we had all day originally and now we're down to a couple hours hours yeah and so if we went through each department doing even a ten minute presentation that takes up the whole two hours so so on the reclaimed reuse I'm glad you bring that up My feelings as it pertains to water are that water is a finite resource. I'm also mindful that we sit over the aquifer on the Lake Wales Ridge, and it's a very important section of the state, and I think we have an extraordinary duty to our fellow Floridians not to be haphazard with how we approach the natural water that's coming out of the earth and also how we waste it and I mean that not in the context of water waste so I love the idea of reclaimed reuse but I end up in the context of balancing You know, it is important to me that we cut the millage, so not that we just spend whatever, but we do have funds available if reclaim reuse was considered a top priority project, then perhaps that's something that we spend the funds that we have saved over time on because it would be a capital project versus an ongoing maintenance.

So do we want to figure out on this list here which ones we want to put as the top priority and go from there so then we can see what our department has, how that all works together as like Brian had suggested?

I don't mind that approach. I think that sounds like it could work. what we have up here yeah i mean are we still does everyone still feel the same way with the number how we scored it that was in february right yep so i see recreation transportation safety coming up the most often and then education Community engagement could be considered education, potentially, and so that's right there in there. So education comes up as well. So if we talk about transportation, safety, education, and then we get into kind of a health.

We have six-minute and EMS go together.

Exactly, yeah. Which is a safety, it goes into that category. So health and safety, if we look at, if we expand safety into health, but then that also health gets us into water and sewer. So somewhere in the health, So health and public safety, water, sewer. I mean, these are the fundamental roles of government, right? That's what we've just nailed down. And then we get into parks and recreation, transportation, and recreation, or well, yeah, I don't see anything else on here. So we have said that health,

recreation and transportation based on this list are the top priorities and i don't know if we want to include the millage in there or not well it's probably a good thing considering that's 70 i think 70 some percent of our budget is right police fire and public works so i i think that's always going to be our priority when that is the case can i may ask a question of maybe the city manager um Currently, as you're working with department heads, what is the plan in discussions of how you're presenting a budget? Are you presenting one budget and this is the budget that you're recommending council approval of? Are you presenting, this is a budget at this millage rate. This is a budget at this millage rate. This is a budget that prioritizes X or Y. That might help me kind of be able to provide some additional feedback going into planning for that July 8th and 9th, those workshops, those all day workshops.

your philosophy on the millage would be very helpful as a group. Because if it's one, Mr. Bain, from one end to the other, it makes it very, very difficult. So if I could get a philosophy, that would help Scott and I tremendously to know what you all are thinking out of the gate. So that would be the first thing I'd say. Last year, we did a real tedious time of going through every department. And we've been thinking that it's not perhaps the best way to do that. so finite and looking at it more in a higher level than a real super detailed in every single department because some of our bigger departments are going to be where you're going to want to spend the majority of your time looking at things yeah and i think i think for me it's beneficial to understand and know um for example staffing

Um, where we've grown our staff in, in what areas by, by what percentages, what does that look like for our budget and, and why, what is, how does that align with the priorities that we've established? because those things carry multi-year effects and not just a, let's go buy this item for this year and that may be an expense for this year. And I think that that would be helpful to understand some of those things. And also then too, what additional staffing might be being proposed and is it a net gain or is it a, a wash because we're reallocating resources within the organization so that we're not adding FTE overall. That's something that I think would be helpful to look at from that higher level perspective. And I agree, I don't need to necessarily say whether or not your particular department Supply budget is adequate or not. I don't I don't need to necessarily get to that detail. Uh, but I would like to know. Hey, it's a, it's a $0 increase or 0% increase overall. These are the top 3 or 4 areas that we've maybe if a budget, if a department has increased, these are the top 3 or 4 areas they have increased. here are the three or four areas that if there were any decreases from year over year, what they were and then why. What was that thought process of making that proposal to us to approve through that process? That helps, I think could help us guide the conversation of, okay, we don't get too tied into specific numbers, but we get tied into a picture of what is happening in that department or then all departments as a city budget.

Do you have any interest in staff approaching this from a zero-based budgeting perspective, where you're starting at zero?

I've always been a fan of, I can go multiple ways on this. I think there's one philosophy where you could say the city manager is the CEO, present your budget to the board and let that let the board you know work on that right um i also think that it could be beneficial to help the board the council understand that if you want to maintain a millage rate for example from the same millage rate as last year this is what a budget might look like and these would be the priorities If we were to entertain increasing a millage, this is what potentially would be done and why. If we decrease here, because I think doing that up front maybe eliminates some of the conversation later down the road where it's like, well, if we don't now do this, then we have to cut this. If we have those conversations up front and we can say, okay, I'm willing to accept a status quo millage rate because it fulfills these priorities, I'm not willing to entertain a lower millage rate because if it cuts this program, but I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to a lower millage rate if we could work that that would include different things. So I think having that conversation up front with multiple budget proposals, I know that's additional work and I don't wanna get into a create 10 budgets, but I do think, Overall, if you kind of knew, I think numbers and cents, dollars and cents wise, there's a way to know about, okay, for every X amount of dollars you spend, it's so much millage. And so if we have that philosophy going into it, we can kind of see what it would do overall if we made some alterations. I like that.

I was going to suggest that you took the word out. I like that. Yeah, I like that. Because I think it makes it more fair. We know, you know what I'm saying? Because like you said, we can have a list of 25 things we want, but if we have the millage too low, it's not going to fulfill those things. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, I don't think anybody up here, I'll speak for myself, I wouldn't sit here and say, I need you to bring me a budget that increases the millage. I don't have any evidence to say that we need a budget that increases millage. I also, on the reverse side of that, am not willing to say right now, today, bring me a budget and I'm going to only approve a budget that decreases the millage rate because I don't know what that budget looks like. And that's why I think having some ideas as to you know, philosophically, here's what we might propose if we did status quo, a decrease, and then here are the other wild cards if we punch in, pull out, move around, kind of move the puzzle pieces, and then we have that into the discussion picture of the budget.

Before I forget, I forgot, what is our millage rate right now? 4.59.

We cut it .29% last time, but it's 4.59.

4.59, okay.

And when we did the large increase back in 2022, we had been at 4.21 for 20 years as we had ongoing growth. We've annexed a great number of properties. So I believe we will see, let me just put this out there. I would like to see a budget at 4.21. I'm with you, Brian. I think seeing, I would like to see 4.21, whatever is the rollback, whatever is maintenance, Because we're going to see an extraordinary growth. There's no doubt about it. Property values have gone up, and we've annexed hundreds.

Yeah, but I think that could be an arguable point.

Well, let's do this. If we get the report, what is it, the DS-420 or whatever it's called, from the county, and we don't have an increase, I would agree with you. I think there's a further discussion that needs to be had.

And when will we know what the rollback rate is in all those numbers?

It could be this month, or last year was July.

But Mark was new.

We've already reached out to Mark and asked him for it.

Yeah.

Is there like a statutory thing that they have to give us that information? It's July, isn't it? Is it July? Okay.

Is it like the first of July? No, soon enough. It's early in July, isn't it?

Yes. We're hoping it's soon.

Okay. Because that could help us to that point of thinking about things from a... current millage a rollback millage and then maybe some additional rollback from there it'd be good to know what those numbers would look like and not just be more abstract and say x when uh growth maybe exceeds our expectations or doesn't exceed our expectations and we're having to redo all of that already yeah i wish that gosh that really makes it problematic that that's july it is july 1 and then we have 35 days to announce it it was very

Yeah, that's problematic for budget process.

Do we have any idea from Mark's office if they're expecting an increase if we stay at the current millage? We may not have the rollback rate, but do they give us any indication on what our expected collections would be?

We haven't heard back from them yet. Okay. You put a call. We're waiting to hear. Okay.

So how do we feel about asking staff if you'll indulge me at a 4.21, a rollback and a current to start with? Because here's the reality. We have several million dollars sitting in our general fund reserves.

So we've reduced it from 4.59 to 4.21?

Yeah.

Didn't everybody work to that?

And I think Brian makes a good point about if you look at what's the lowest, I guess the question I'm asking really is what might be the lowest, I'm putting 4.21 out there, and what might be the highest, and then there's something in the middle. I do think a rollback is an important legal question of what might could be, and I think current is an important legal question of what might could be.

Yeah, I don't know that I'm tied to an idea of a specific number. I like the idea of current millage rollback rate, because those are talked about every year. Those two numbers are always talked about, regardless of what they are. because they they have significance right it's what we charged last year and what we would charge this year to capture the same amount of money and so regardless of what those numbers are they have meaning um and so um i outside of that though i to just pull a number And I understand where you're getting the number, so I'm not saying that you're making up the number. But to say, arbitrarily, I want to be at that number, I don't have a need to prioritize that from a council prioritization. I think that's an individual prioritization. If the city manager presents a budget to me that says, council i've delivered you a budget that meets the priorities that you've established at a 4.21 or 4.29 or what whatever the number i would much rather give the city manager that ability to do that knowing that we really are interested in not potentially exceeding from a philosophical standpoint where the millage rate was last year or potentially where the rollback rate would be this year based off of numbers. But I don't necessarily have a need to go with a specific number outside of those at this point.

And for clarification, because I don't know that we've ever talked about it, is one of the things that has substantially changed for Claremontians over the last six years has been the average cost of running our government per individual. And that number has doubled in the last six years. So inflation's gone up a certain amount and that is a real thing. But that's what I look at is say, okay, as I live here and I'm dealing with more traffic, there should be an efficiency in the growth that we have. So as a citizen, the cost per citizen, since we're growing, the benefit of the growth should at least correspond to the cost of the growth. And right now, the folks who have been here for a longer period of time are bearing the cost of the new development and the new construction in an increased per individual cost of living. And so that's where I'm coming from. So perhaps we could approach it like having staff look at, you know, what was the cost of living in 2021 so that we're getting post-COVID and we're not dealing with the huge inflation of COVID and how close can we get with the inflationary costs to the 2021 numbers, whatever that is.

And if it's not 4.21, it's not 4.21.

But that's really what's driving my desire to drive it back is that fact, that it's costing more for people who, when you talk to them, would say, well, I had quiet enjoyment of my city, and now I have to share it. Joe, don't get mad at me. I have to share it with all these new people, right? I can't see your face, so I can't tell. But we want to bring in new people, but collectively that should be a better financial arrangement for all of us, not costing more per person.

But the other side to that, though, is that stuff goes up. that's why i say looking at inflation so if you take that number and we look at what the inflation costs your food all of that that has nothing to do with the citizens that live here

But it's not double. And that's where I'm coming back and saying, you know, I'm just trying to make it so that we somewhat, I personally feel like we went sideways. And I'm bringing that to the table. I get that. And maybe it's irrational. It could be emotional. But I feel like we got sideways in 2022. And that's... Absolutely something that's important to me and. To your point, Brian, I mean, if if Rick can bring it back and it's, it's lower, I appreciate that. Um, that that sentiment, but I stood at the podium in 22 and as a citizen. Asked our council at the time to. please provide a budget that would show what those cuts would be to keep things as they were. And I was told by the city manager at the time, well, I serve at the pleasure of the council. And I asked those council members to please ask for that budget and they didn't. And so I'm putting myself back where I was as a citizen and saying, what would I want? And as a citizen, I just want to go through the exercise. And if it turns out that we're cutting too much, I mean, I have to live with that as a representative, but also I think it's something that I feel I owe to the people.

Yeah, I think that looking at it, I kind of keep using, going back to the analogy of like a puzzle, of putting things together and moving some things and hearing what a complete puzzle looks like or a picture, because that's what the puzzle puts together, right? A picture. of what uh you know utilize uh procurement for a department um this is what the procurement department picture looks like for the next fiscal year right um and these are this is why they propose that this is what goals it's going this budget is going to allow it to accomplish based off of guidance from city manager based off guidance from council um and Maybe there's some new things. Maybe there's some stuff that we haven't done before that Mr. Suarez says, hey, based off all these conversations, I think we should do this because it's gonna improve. It's gonna be a one-time upfront cost. We may say, great, keep it in there. but we also need to keep in line with kind of where we were numbers wise last year so are there other areas that we might be able to shift around or move around take this piece and move it here this piece over to here that would allow us to do that and still be at a level that's acceptable or if not then we have to then make that decision with that department we're good with what where it is and we know overall the running list of what's adding to the millage difference from last year to this year we may have to make some adjustments elsewhere to compensate for that and that's that bigger piece over here when you say that it makes me think okay staff's looking for direction which is the purpose of this meeting

I, one thing that I've thought several times as I sit up on the dais is, you know, it's 2026 and there's now this thing called AI that I'm never going to learn. I just want to put that out there. Don't say that. There is, you're right, I might have to teach my kids and then I'll have to learn. But there's all this new technology that in theory could automate many of our processes and that can sound for anyone who might panic that can sound like oh cut positions but I think we're growing so much that AI and technology has the potential to actually keep us from not as not having to cut positions but not necessarily having to add positions and so because we are growing and we are going to need we're 26 square miles with more downtowns coming. I mean, there's gonna be more to do.

To that point, I think, like for AI, if someone, we can utilize AI in a way that's not a frontline person, but a, I'm going on the website, how do I apply for a building? How do I, I'm pulling a tree out, what do I do in the city of Claremont? And it... synthesizes that data rather than having to call, talk to someone, get that information, get a call back. I think that's where we can right now today start to utilize some of that technology. But it's gonna be some upfront costs, right? But that's a great example of how we could utilize AI in our work that would improve communication which I think is one of the items, right? But also help our departments and maintain our staff so that they're not spending so much time doing those types of things and actually getting to work, to their job.

So I'm going to go out on a limb and say, because we're three months out, I know I'm overwhelmed with technology and AI, and so I'm going to put my junk on staff on this one. Can we maybe send the message today that, hey, we would love to see some tech solutions that help us be more efficient and that we would like to see that as part of the 27 budget?

I would definitely, as a philosophical approach to the budget, absolutely stress tech solutions and advancements.

Because that will help us keep the millage down.

Collaboration, even. If there's collaborative efforts that could be done in those solutions, too.

I like that. Also, one of the big issues has been, as I was going through this process with Scott last year, the cost of our healthcare for employees is one of our single most detrimental to a growing budget line items. In other words, if we don't get our medical cost per employee to stop growing as fast as it's growing, because it's in the 20 to 30% range on a normal year. We can't keep up with that with a mostly residential community. And even if we could keep up with it on a commercial front, it's going to be, we'd use all our money towards health costs.

I mean, if we reached out to like, you know, Florida cities to get,

Oh, you had a post. I can talk about it now because we're in a public forum. I love what you put on Facebook about the different options for health care. I would love to see in the 27 budget some solution that gives our employees and staff and frankly even our citizens, small business owners, some sort of solution that lowers costs for health care but also increases the care. the quality of the care so versus we have two hospitals here we have so many different health care providers because of our connection with the athletics there's like cutting edge stuff here in Claremont so if we could help organize that not only could our employees benefit from it but potentially small businesses in the community could benefit from it as well so do you think it's realistic that we're going to get something low with more benefits I do.

Can you speak to it?

You've been working on it.

I have diligently worked on it. I don't have the golden key yet, but I can promise you it's been a Something we've spent hours and hours and hours, HR, Scott, myself, we're looking at every option. We're talking to the hospitals. We're talking to vendors. We're doing all the due diligence, talking to our agents. I mean, I promise you it's a priority, and I just don't have the answers for you yet.

Health care is expensive. That's why I'm just, yeah.

And I think, gosh, that if that rises after the kind of the evaluation process, I think that would be an incredible example of a strategic directive and an expectation for the city manager moving into the next calendar year of saying, OK, this is a top priority is exploring the health care provided to our employees and what are our options not just current existing but also uh looking at new solutions or new ideas that might be available and bring that back to us by you know we put it we put a date in there right and You know, he's already got a jump start on it, if that's a goal that we put together in the process. We have that come back. And it may be, it may honestly be that they say, look, we have shaken every bush, right? And this is what we have available to us. This is just truly what we have available to us, given where we are right now. And we know that then, and we have to plan for that and we have to address that, but it may be okay. Council. We have some, hold onto your chairs, some ideas of like how we could be maybe a little radical or a little new innovative in this way that, okay, we're going to listen. We're going to talk about that, but I don't know how we, where I get a little uncomfortable saying for a priority for this budget is. The effect right now without engaging our personnel is I'm very concerned about. And I want to make sure that we have a process by which our represented and nonrepresented employees are engaged and involved in this conversation process.

That's appropriate.

We made some changes to our plan with our employees to actually lower things than they were going to be. And Nadine can speak. to what we're doing, but she's made every effort.

So last year we came to council in September and we requested to unbundle the health plan, if you recall, and we moved away from Cigna. We shopped the TPA and we moved to United. We separated the pharmacy benefit manager and we also separated the stop loss. So altogether we estimate an approximate $499,000 of savings with these changes. For this plan year, we were able to lower employee premiums by 1% and city premiums by 5%. So we were able to lower costs from that change. And we're continuing to look at ways to lower costs.

Because that was the one thing that, as I was going through it last year with Scott, it was like, we narrowed it down. We're like, of all the choices that all can be made, this is the thing that is growing so fast. What I don't want to do is not have health care. I don't want to pay, because we're still paying what those of us who don't have health insurance would say is a great amount of money. And so to pay that much money and not be able to get care, that's not good. That's not a good outcome either. It's not just about saving money. They need to be getting the care.

I was about to ask, so Nadine, with the change, how has the response been? Do the employees like the change that you have implemented with the health care?

There's been a little bit of noise, as with many things. We were Cigna since 2010, so it was a significant change moving away from Cigna. I think overall the change has gone well, the implementation has gone well. We have had employees come to us with concerns that we've handled individually on a case-by-case basis. But I did want to point out one thing is when we look at the cost of the plan over the last five years, the average increase has been 4%, which is much better than the national trend, which is around 10%. So our plan is being managed well and the plan is doing well.

um yes so this is a hold on to your chairs kind of statement that i'm going to make is i don't have insurance i've not had insurance most of my adult life and i pay we call it cash you know credit card check whatever the biggest fear that i have for myself and my family is an obviously an emergency situation There's no doubt about that. But on the day-to-day, the cost of insurance compared to me being able to choose my doctor, go where I want to go, get whatever service I want, go to whatever specialist I want, it's not even comparable. There's literally no comparison to what I pay on a year to what I would have paid for insurance. So my approach has always been, well, I'm self-insuring. But you're just putting that money away, and that takes extraordinary responsibility. But what would be helpful is if there was some sort of catastrophic plan that I could pay into. So I'm coming at this as someone who doesn't have insurance, but who feels very strongly that she has extraordinary health care. I can see any doctor I want. whenever i want i don't have those restrictions of well i'm not in this plan or i'm not in that plan or that doctor is not in my network i can shop it around i can do alternative medicine versus modern medicine and to me that's akin to what i would like for all residents in all Americans, but especially in our community, to be able to choose their care, what they need for them. And I'm not suggesting that we go to a cash basis, but I am saying there are completely, as I spoke to the CEO of AdventHealth and she's like, So you want to turn medical care on its head. And I said, well, yeah, I do. I think it's a broken system. So yeah, I do. And I think that Claremont is big enough, strong enough, healthy enough to be able to set a really interesting example. Yes, I would love to have council support to direct staff to look for innovative solutions in healthcare so that our employees have better care. My daughter's in the Claremont system. She had a torn rotator cuff and she couldn't get the care that I was able to pay for for her. It wasn't in the plan because it was not your typical treatment. And it was not even experimental, but it wasn't in the plan. And so I paid for it through my company cash system, and she got it, and it worked, and it was great. So I would love for our employees to be empowered to be able to make their own choices for their care. And for what we pay, I think, they should be able to.

And it's not a knock on you.

You're in the system that you're in. But I think that with Advent and Orlando Health right here, that there's a lot of things that could be done. And if we can direct staff to be innovative this year with technology, one, if we don't have to add a lot of new employees, that helps keep that cost down because we're not adding those employees with the health care, right? And then too, if we can approach the healthcare, like I said, I think it could be something that once that plan is in place for 400 employees, it creates an opportunity for small businesses. like mine, you know, we could tap into it. And that would encourage small businesses to want to be in Claremont because if you're in Claremont and you have access to this plan, it might mean the difference in you setting up shop in Lake County versus setting up shop in Claremont because you now have access to this new plan. And that goes back to who am I trying to serve? You know, families, kids with broken bones, and, you know, small businesses. How do we feel about that? Do we like that direction?

I think we need to investigate it and show, you know, In other words, it's like an alternate plan that's not the normal plan. It's not like United Healthcare. You probably heard about the Trump Rx plan. That's like a BBM type of thing where they have a thousand drug formulary. Every one is $5 a month. But if you fall out of that, then what do you do? That's the problem. I think we're going off on a real far tangent right now. I agree with you. I think there's something to investigate.

And I think that for me, moving into the next budget, to bring it back to next year's budget, if nationally it's a 10% on average, and we're still in that 4% range, I'm okay with that, given that that's an incredible feather in the cap that we can say based even off of working in the existing system. And then if we create that priority for the city manager to say, okay, as a as a as the leader of the city for our city employees and for our city. Right. what other alternative option might be available for a system that could be created that could work for these things that would be innovative and might turn some things on the head, but not diminish, rather improve service.

So I'm hearing that we're open to creative solutions as we're growing that would serve the citizens, even if they're not in the ordinary way we always do things.

I really appreciate Nadine's diligence on this we're looking at things right now that we've not mentioned also so we'll keep going and I want to add the employees of the city were great with their openness to make a change because they recognize we're trying to have a more balanced budget. So I appreciated all the employees and their willingness to make a change this past year.

I just don't want it to be lost that when I say these things, I'm also looking for a better care. It's not just about the dollars. I don't hear you say get rid of it.

I don't hear that. I hear you say what options are out there.

Yeah, exactly.

all right so what do you want to approach next can we go to can we just talk a little bit about walkability and and golf cart paths multimodal I think where that may come into a philosophical conversation or direction for next year's budget is that if the consensus of the council is we want sidewalks for folks to be able to walk when they want to choose to walk and not have as many dead ends. Um, we want streets that we build new or repair to provide lanes for multimodal.

Yes.

maybe that's the priority that we put forward to Public Works and to the city manager that we would like to see whatever projects are coming forward to include those things.

I love that idea.

and or create a longer term plan, kind of like a capital plan that would expand or include those things moving forward yearly. I certainly would be in favor of moving in that direction with a philosophy, with walkability, sidewalks specifically and paths, multimodal paths on our roadways.

I think related to that is the issue of shade and also where are they going?

Where are people going? I was just about to say that because it's hot now. It's hot. We're a very spread out city.

It's going to get hotter. I believe this is 100% part of the comprehensive plan and identifying where would people be going. If all roads lead to Rome, okay. um what might be there along the way and and how might that work so i if that's probably for the comprehensive planning team is my guess nathan yeah probably so yeah does anybody have a problem with creating multimodal well you already by the way i mean you already have sidewalks mentioned eight times in your comp plan

And it says multimodal a bunch of times as well. It's a part of your comp plan. It's covered. So the issue is how are you doing it with your budget?

I was going to say, so I think what we're saying then is we need to say as a priority, okay, city manager, we want to see this as a priority with these budget lines that are associated with walkability and multimodal opportunities for this year and in future years, creating a plan to move forward with that.

We came up with a golf cart ordinance and everything, but we never came up with a plan where they're going to ride their golf carts. So, like you said, I mean, maybe we should make it a priority for all the new road investments. If there's a golf cart lane on that, you know, so this way they could utilize the golf cart. Because remember, I think the last discussion, there was only like 10 people because there's no place to take them. There's no golf cart parking. You know, it has to be like planned ahead.

Yeah. And the other thing is they only can... to drive them on certain roads because they don't .

Right, right. But in town, as the Lumberyard project gets completed more, it's going to be more people going into these. And you don't have to have all that traffic if people have golf carts. But they have to have a place to drive them, a place to park them.

Yep.

And you can't just- Same with bikes. Right. Same thing. If we have parking spots, maybe they have to do a thing where they take a single parking spot and make that into three golf cart spots.

What's true in the village is they have a parking ratio with the regulations.

We have to become, it's nice to pass an ordinance, but it's like, okay, you can have a plane, but there is no runway. So you can have it, have a good time with it. But we're not going to ever build the runway. So we have to do that.

And I think Winter Park, maybe it has a map on their city website that has all the streets that you can drive on a .

We can show the lanes that are available and have little in town little map. You go to Cheezer's, you get the map there of all the golf cart lanes.

think what i'm hearing is we're without question on board with the concept what we don't know is how to execute it and so i would like to see more of that come to us and maybe the public works presentation at the budget is how do we make this a reality yeah and i don't know that necessarily it's up to us specifically to execute it it's up to us to approve it and then let them all

Go forth.

So what do we need? And if Stoney wants to jump in, my understanding is until last year, we had really, we as a council, I'm taking credit for things I didn't do. I'll just put that out there. We had been kind of taking from public works for different department projects. And now we're not doing that anymore.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. So we've got a wild hare. What are you hearing and how does it feel today?

I think it's a great idea. The implementation is going to be tough, though. And that's where staff will need direction, myself, is how would you like to implement it? Looking at the map up here, we're talking about the west side of town. So you've got 60 foot rideways. So that only leaves you 16 to 18 foot behind curve after asphalt with 12 or 10 foot drive lanes. So to get that, we're going to go to one lane, one way traffic. To get all that in that right-of-way is a challenge.

So my knee-jerk reaction to the question, which probably isn't the right one, is in the comprehensive plan, DPZ had been looking at different areas where there would be potentially town centers or neighborhood centers. And it's kind of like the public transportation conversation. Doesn't do you any good to have a bus if you don't have a way to walk when you get off the bus, right? So if we look at where these town centers might be, I would suggest perhaps that the roads that lead to Rome, that each one of those be the Rome and we're stemming out And I think in a perfect world, ultimately connecting them all so that you can get around the whole city. I mean, there are people in this city who ride bikes for 100 miles at a time. I am not one of them, but I know they exist. And so there are people who are going to go, it's no big deal. I can drive down the wall this way. And I'm going, okay, have fun. I'm not that person, but I'll just stay close to my home. But I think it's a neat thing that we have.

I think that was innovative when you said one way. I mean, being from New York, You know, one way is a normal thing. You would know that, you know, 6th Avenue goes north-south, you know, so you would know. And maybe that's a way that we could become innovative then to produce the product that we want to get with multimodal, right?

I think through, I'm sorry.

I mean, people would be reactive in the beginning. You know, what do you mean there's only one? Well, yeah, you've got to go down much.

Well, but I think to... You know, I don't know.

That was a great thing you did.

Yeah, to that point, I mean, if Public Works, the expert, right, is saying to us, we can implement a plan in this quadrant that does this, but this is what we're working with, so this is what that plan would look like. And I think then present that to us, we have to hash it out, kind of talk about whether we like it, don't like it, get citizen and resident feedback, business feedback, and then ultimately we say, go forth or don't go forth. But and it may not look the same throughout the entire city because our city, you know, depending upon which quadrant you go to, the age of that quadrant really is very different in terms of when it developed. And so we might have more flexibilities in some areas that we don't and others that if we start with one area and that's our plan and we really say we're going to be a robust implementation of this and be a part of it, present to us what that would take and let's see where that sits with folks. And if it doesn't resonate, then we know. Or if it's just the, like you were saying, Council Member Peterson, about the initial kind of, but then it's like, okay, wait a second, let me think about this. I do want to ride my bike, so maybe that's not so bad. And then they kind of, you know, they adapt with it that way.

I'll give you, for instance, what we've done is, for sidewalks, is we took and looked at, we go through the school board. School board has where kids live, where they walk, where they don't walk. We took their, we took their information and we implemented getting the sidewalks to get the kids to school within that radius. So they have that safe travel. The next thing we did is how do we get people in the downtown? So we have that one area, you know, I'll just use East and Osceola. All right. There was not connectivity was not there. So we said, we've got to get people from here to here. So what would be nice is when they do the comp plan, is I know which areas have the big right of ways that you can use. Where do you want people to go to? Where are you trying to get them to? So that way we have the direction, we know what to look at when we're presenting to y'all, is this is what we're looking at and where we want people to go. Is it from downtown to the waterfront? Are we sending them all the way to the east side of town past 27? So we can look at all of that when we go through the exercise. But I'm sure that when DPZ does this, they'll know those areas for that walkability, the right-of-way widths, so they know how people can get point A to point B.

But let's make sure we're not assuming they know.

If they ask, I can tell. Agreed.

Yeah. So I think this is great. That was a great point, Brian. Thank you for bringing it up. Anything else on transportation that we feel? Freight lights in all sectors. I think that's probably part of just the traffic flow.

Just bring that up. What you see is our street light map. This is what we've created. This is not from Duke. It's not from Seco. You can see all the little green spots right there. Our light inventory is very good. Do we have some deficiencies in small places? Yes. But most of the deficiencies you're going to see are on state road, county roads mainly, private subdivisions that have nothing to do with the city in particular.

I see black unless they change the map on me.

Now you can see better. Thank you.

Yeah, so transportation. Thank you. You're welcome. I loved when you brought up the complete street. We did this seven years ago. Do you want to see it? Like, yes. Let's see more of that.

We've got East Avenue is going to get mill and overlaid. It's coming up in June after school's out. So what we've asked our consultant to do is look at how we can restripe it. So we can add those features, what you're talking about right now, if we're doing on-street parking, but how do we get a bike lane in there? Now, if I'm hearing we want to get a golf cart lane in there, we'll take a look at that, too, because we have a lot of asphalt there. We have the room and the right-of-way to do things there.

A legal question incoming. Can a golf cart drive on the road so long as the speed limit is within golf cart capabilities?

I mean, I think Yes. I mean, I'm not exactly sure what your question is. You're saying, can a golf cart drive on a road as long as it's within the golf cart? I mean, there's different type of golf cart carts. I thought it was 35. They can't go on a 50 mile an hour. No more than 35.

I'm not going 35 with my kids in the golf cart.

I mean, that's just. The golf cart goes 20, probably 25.

But I mean like on the road, like cars.

Posted road at 35 miles an hour in the law.

So you couldn't have a golf cart on 27? Oh, sure. Right. Well, I had a mom. I would hope you wouldn't do that, but you never know.

I was talking to a mom who lives on the east side of the historic district of downtown. So I think she's technically outside of the CRA, but she's before 27. Okay. And she was saying she would love to golf cart, but she feels like the cars driving on the road are going too fast and she wouldn't feel safe. in a golf cart so she's like I'm looking forward to doing it I just haven't and this is my fear and so I think that when we're doing this it's helpful to look maybe engage as many pregnant moms as you can in the conversation because they're actually the ones in our society that are going to be the most fearful of safety and and give you the honest feedback because even though we can say 35 maybe one of the things we should be considering is a lower speed limit where we're encouraging the golf carts you know so it's like on lake shore i remember years ago suddenly they put in you'll remember this sorry i'm throwing the bus they'll put in they put in stop sign and took the speed i think from 15 to 25 and I can't not believe the intention was to discourage bicyclists because it used to be that there were cyclists all over that road because the speed limit was low and there were no stop signs. So you would just get on your bike and ride. And I think it's a wonderful thing. And so if we have designated areas for this is a safe bike lane, this is a safe golf cart lane, and maybe that's published on an app somewhere that we know. I would love to see that kind of innovation come out of I don't want to go through this whole process of the comp plan and then not execute it. I think that that would be the worst thing for us to do. So looking at ways to actually implement it, to your point, funding it. And maybe that means we need a certain amount of money every year for the next five or ten years, but it can be part of our five to ten year plan and this is what it looks like. And then future council members know we don't have to reinvent this wheel. It's already been decided and it's done.

Yeah, because what I like about a plan that has numbers and ideas, I think the verbal helps sounds great. If something can be expedited, you have, you know, a year where there's funds to be able to expedite it. You could roll two years into one. You have a year where pandemic hits and things come to a screeching halt, you know what that means for the overall. But I think instructing staff or directing staff, the city manager to work with staff to come up with a plan that emphasizes walkability and multimodal is the right approach.

I have residents asking me, so I'm going to interject real quick. Is Lakeshore going to be done when East is done over summer? Yes. Okay. And the reason why we haven't done it yet is because we're waiting for school to get out.

Yes.

Got it. Thank you. Welcome. Anything else for Stoney? Oh, what do we need to know on water sewer?

What would you like to know?

What are big projects that we should be thinking about in the next five to 10 years?

We just closed on the property on the north side of town yesterday, which was great.

Wait, is that the one by the?

Old Highway 50.

By Verde Ridge?

Yep.

We did.

So that was, we got a million dollars through legislative priority to pay for that, which was great. That'll give us additional storage. for reuse reclaimed. We're looking, actually I've reached out to city of Orlando. So then we sent them a map of some land areas we're looking into on the south quarter near the wellness way. They're gonna take it to their next meeting and let us know.

Why is the city of Orlando involved?

Yes, they have majority of the property. Mr. Fumasi just gave me some other ideas down there with some other land we'll look into. Also, if that doesn't pan out, see how that works. The plan expansion is done and complete. We're modifying our consumption use permit right now. So we'll be in good shape with that. We've got our rate study going on for all of our different utilities currently. We have the master plan we're expecting to be back in around November. So water, sewer is in great shape.

Are we thinking there's a possibility that utility rates, the rate of service, not the investment piece of it, could go down?

We don't know. We'll know something next month on how it looks. We've got a meeting set up with them, and then we're going to sit down with the city manager and the deputy city manager and go through it so we can see what it looks like. You're welcome.

Anything else for Tony?

Nope. Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right. So we went over some finance, transportation, safety, and health. Do we want to do that one now? EMS, six minute response. Yes. Okay. That was emphatic. You want to take the lead?

Yes, I was just going to bring them up. Yeah, for AMS, yeah. Where are we at on that?

Do we want police and fire here, or just do you want to start with fire? Like are we approaching safety altogether? Oh, you brought more paperwork than I was expecting. We can go way higher level than that. She's like, I'm prepared. So, I'm glad that you want to talk about this. I'm going to put, you know, I'm going to put it out there that I think we need to really have a conversation about our. Commitment to I don't like the longevity of this conversation. I do think we need to be diligent. But there's conflicts with the county. And I want to get to a place where we can really. Be clear with staff. I'm not asking to make decisions today, but I am glad that we're talking about this.

I was at a leadership conference and I met with the council member over in Venice. Okay. And it's a similar situation there. He was telling me, I don't know, have you spoken to the fire chief there in Venice? Okay. And anyway, I have his number. I'll push it. Similar situation. Their county did not want to let it go. So they had to then, they hired a consultant and they pushed the issue. In the beginning, it cost them some money, like 1.5, 1.6. Five years later, they're breaking even. It's all the cost of personnel, the additional personnel, battalion chiefs, et cetera, et cetera. They have six ambulances there now that are doing fine. So, you know, I mean, to me, that's like, you know, there's a visual about somebody that, you know, sound like we're all by ourselves here and how are we going to do that? And, you know, but we have somebody that we can go to that actually had it done. and showing the positive at the end you know it was oh yeah of course it's 10 million dollars after five years yeah that would be a problem but if you're breaking even because even when they presented to us 20 comes from mtsu the other 80 is building and you know i'm familiar with it because i volunteered in there in new york so i mean it's billing in every aspect you know you got on an ambulance They put oxygen on you, $500. They give you an aspirin, they start a line on you. But I mean, it's not that they're cheating you, but it's part of the billing practice. And the person, the patient, doesn't see any of this. So it's invisible. It's not like, oh, sorry, you're going to have to wait here. We're not going to take care of you. We're going to take care of everybody. I think it's something that maybe we should look into, contact them. And somebody already invented the wheel. So we don't have to reinvent this wheel. Somebody already did it. And they had a five-year plan showing breaking even. Breaking even is a good thing to do. Not making a profit, but you're paying all your things off.

We decided last year to hold off on well to maintain our general reserve overage because of this conversation and the potential that it could cost and so i don't really want to do that again this year i want to be able in the budget process to address our general fund reserve overage whatever that means but not just keep holding it i don't believe in taxing people and not having a plan so i would like to see before we come to the final vote on this year's budget to have the ems plan in place including if there's if we decide to move forward with it that we're maintaining in reserves what we think we need to get through five years whatever it might be but then we know what else we have to work with on other projects because i do think that this is a very important project i mean it's about saving lives yes and i don't think it gets much other than water and sewer i don't think it gets much more important okay i think if i remember correctly at our was it our last workshop

We had the chief here. I believe that was, was that March or was that April?

I think it was April. Was it April?

Because I think we were originally going to have on an upcoming agenda authorization. To send the letter out. But through that conversation, we had a pretty lengthy, I think, list and compiled all kinds of data that we would like before we even get to that point. Exactly. Do we know, A, when we're getting that, and B, will we be voting on authorization to move forward prior to the budget process starting?

Do you want to answer his question?

So as far as the questions and some of the feedback and the information you guys requested from us in April, I spent about 60 hours over the past two and a half weeks putting together not only a PowerPoint to allow you to understand why we're doing this, and I just want to address you all. I have done this before. I come from South Florida. I came from a department that was taken over by the county and fought them tooth and nail transport back. It is very possible. I do not agree unfortunately with what you're saying where it's going to be a complete wash. I've never seen that in all my time and I've been around the service for 25 years. I would consider myself a subject matter expert. That being said, that doesn't mean that we will be self-sufficient in terms of our monies in-house. I know Mayor Murray made a comment the last meeting we were in here about people getting double charged. Unfortunately, we're being double charged already as a community. We pay for overage of 40% of the county's total income that they take in between MSDU monies and our repayment, we're the number one repayment in Lake County. We officially prop up the rest of the service. We are the economic engine that moves this boat. We only use less than 14% of the services, including the vast array of the county's resources that Chief Kilbury likes to tell us about. We don't use them as much as they use us. That being said, there are many different variables that we've come up with three or four in the past two weeks to show you different variables on that.

As far as you go, if you want, I can start answering the questions you guys had immediately.

We can go through that.

I don't want to put you on the spot to do that today. I wasn't expecting you to be prepared to do that today. Can I go back to my question?

Because I thought we were getting a report.

I have a report.

Okay, so my preference would be to have that report before we ever start talking about that report. Because I can't talk about a report and read it and listen at the same time.

I just think that you'll have questions on things that I'll be giving you that you won't understand often.

absolutely and i would hope that we would have a presentation on that to the council um for that but so it sounds like is that the packet of information we've requested so they're they have the information i would like to hear i didn't schedule this discussion until june

okay so and that's just a discussion to decide if you want to go and ask the county right if you want to do that or not but they they have gathered this data already for us when which meeting in june are you expecting the june first or second june 9th

I'm with Council Member Bain. I look forward to asking all the questions and seeing the whole presentation. And kudos to you for being ready today. That's fantastic. Have you seen the presentation? No.

I was going to say that would be my suggestion is that if council is okay, give us direction so we can get with the city manager, deputy city manager, and the city attorney present this and have that discussion.

It's all in-house. We haven't done anything yet. We're looking for some direction. Right. I think that's what we kind of said.

Give us these data points, information, et cetera. Is there something specific you're looking for?

Is it the times itself? Or are you looking for financials? Are you looking for everything?

Well, I would just go back to what was said, I guess, at the workshop. And I'm pretty sure there was an extensive bullet point list that was prepared for staff.

My understanding is it's completed, all that data that he asked.

So where I'm looking at this is there All signs point to this is a conflict with the county. That's as I understand it. My duty is to the citizens of Claremont. And so that's, but I want to make sure that if this is a conflict with the county, we have dotted all our I's, crossed all our T's, and then from the financial perspective, I'm concerned with, you said we never break even. Does that, so the county collects an MSTU. presumably that MSTU is the subsidy for not breaking even. When you say we won't break even, are you including the MSTU and the collections and then you still believe there would be overage?

No, the MSTU is not included in that. So like in a couple of the transport options where, like today, if you wanted to stay high level, kind of got like an option one where we're completely self-sufficient, we take over everything, we have our certificate of need, we're paying, we're contracting for dispatch, medical control. everything it's all us and everything that we have in the current partnership we have with the county goes away we're looking at a gross program cost of about 5.3 million dollars and that's across not just transport but there's also some sunk costs into that with our existing fire apparatus that that's gonna need. And with two units, starting with the two units, everything that we're proposing, the presented budget that you'll see this year, we're looking at bringing in about 1.6 in revenue, just off of what we would get on the transport and elections. And that's no MSTU. With the MSTU, so typically right now, the county is collecting about 2.9 million from the city residents it's a half mil we estimate we'll probably end up being able to keep around 2.2 of that being that the remainder that's going to go to the county to cover dispatch medical control medical supplies and some of those other ones so if you combine that right now the net program cost for a year one because there's capital and other expenditures, all in is 3.6. So 3.6 minus the 2.2, there's some sunk costs there. But the recurring annual cost, and this is where the MSTU plus collections and billing where it might break even, Our recurring annual cost all in is 2.1 per year. So if you have 2.1 plus 2.2, you can see where it's pretty close. And that's only with two units. Now it's going to scale. This is also estimating that our units are only running four calls per day. So with four transports per day, that's a very slow unit. These units are going to more than likely run six to ten calls a day. And then, you know, if we have, instead of two, we end up with six or seven, and those are all running, Four to six calls becomes the break-even point for an ambulance when we collect and we factor in the MSTU. It's going to take time. There will be upfront costs, and it's, you know, like Councilmember said, it's going to be five to six years before we realize and see that break-even point. Initially, right off the rip, what to think about is we're going to put this new service in place. We're going to get a discount of, you know, so we're going to put firefighters on an ambulance, put it in a service gap. for 50 to 75% discount.

Because we don't have to put firefighters in that space.

And all that money is the ROI stays in house as opposed to us essentially paying for other people.

Secondly, you're not going to have to send a truck out to the call too, right? That saves a lot of money.

It's going to depend on the nature of the call. For non-emergency calls, stuff to fix facilities, we would look at that. But if it's a true emergency, like a chest pain, a heart attack, we look at our effective response force and the number of staff we need to meet with NFPA and just national standards. We're going to send an engine and a rescue there. Now, the rescue may get there quicker. It's a more agile piece of equipment. And they can cancel the engine. Or once everything's done, they'll cancel the engine. The engine goes back in service. It's able to provide coverage, but something to think about as we go into the budget process is that we're proposing two units. Those two units require 15 staff. If we were to staff station six with a fire truck right away, when we look at the full-time equivalence of what we're going to staff, we're going to be requesting 18 personnel for that. So that's one truck, 18 personnel, firefighters, officers, engineers, all the equipment. we can put two ambulances in service for less than the cost of one fire truck and we can provide coverage to the fire station six area and then once the station two renovations are done that's where that other ambulance can locate as time progresses and as the budget process progresses and as our training requirements and all the things that are required to get this new program up and operating everything will fall into line

And I know one of your questions was, where are we going to put these ambulances? Because that seems to be one of the big going kerfuffles with the county is we don't have the space right now. What we built out is a timeline that shows you exactly where we are today with each station. each housing company, total number of firefighters in each, and then as it's moving due to construction, Station 2 being closed and moving over to temporary Station 2, then thus reopening Station 5, Station 6. Moving those units back out of Station 1, we had to reassign due to construction. It has all this in here, so it's very easy to see that we will have the space for them within possibly 60 days.

And does it include McKinnon Groves and Lincoln Park? Does this plan anticipate McKinnon Groves and Lincoln Park?

Not at this time. This is just for this next fiscal year. We can go and we can run models and provide those additional two spots. That would probably be the second year of that program of Rescue 3 and Rescue 4.

i'm very interested in the five-year period so it seems like that's a relevant period from what mr peterson heard but also leaving the next council with clear direction on so they don't necessarily feel like they have to make all these decisions and do all this work like it's it's already been decided so we know mckinnon is coming online we know miniola is moving out of lincoln park what will that do you know how do we want to handle that i'd like to see that those are addressed as well and like i said when you feel like you have it complete i really would like christian to get eyes on it to make sure that because we're anticipating an argument over this i just want to make sure legally we're looking at making sure we've checked all the boxes

So I'm going to suggest, after Christian looks at it, giving you all the data, and then we'll let them do a presentation the first time in June. And maybe the next meeting, if we want to move forward, we'll put in their vote on it. But that way, I think it's too much probably to digest in one setting.

Can I suggest that if we're going to do it at a council meeting, it be at the end of the council meeting so that we're not holding up the other council activities?

The presentation? Yes. Yeah, I'm okay. I'd be fine with the presentation at the end of the meeting.

Is that how you guys want me to do it? Schedule two different meetings like that?

Yeah, well, especially if we put it at the end.

Or a workshop, yeah. I mean, I think it was discussion.

Actually, to your point, maybe ask the city attorney, could we not have the regular council meeting adjourn and then go into a workshop just for the presentation that evening. You could. Either way. You have that flexibility. It's a horse apiece. It really doesn't matter if we do it at the end of the council meeting versus ‑‑ Horse apiece? Really? Yeah. Maybe it's that Upper Midwest thing. I've never heard it either, but I'm intrigued. Really? No one else has ever heard that? A horse apiece?

A horse apiece? Is that the same concept?

What is it? Oh, man, my family is going to give me so much grief over this.

It's the same either way?

It's a horse apiece.

Oh, I've never heard that. Is it related to actual horses?

I don't know what the origin is.

to me it is i mean i think the only thing about if you choose to notice it as a workshop of course is you're purposefully restraining yourselves on what you can do right you can't vote on it correct well i don't think yeah i i wouldn't want to vote on it based off what the city manager is kind of proposing as a plan i i like the idea of

having it at the night for the presentation whether it's at the end of the regular meeting or we adjourn and actually hold a workshop and then we at the second meeting in june have the actual item on the agenda is there any scenario i think it's a horse apiece is there but in case it's not is there any scenario where we might want to give direction that requires formal because i'm with you i would not just so you all know when we do this presentation i am going to want to let this simmer let the public see it yeah i'm going to want to ask questions i'm going to want to let it digest i'm probably going to follow up and ask more questions so shocker to everybody um so i don't see us i don't see me wanting to take a vote but is there any action that we might want to take that would require us to be in a meeting i think what we have to do is they have to present the letters to the lake county and that's what we have to

We have to vote on that. They can send a letter out. Sending a letter out isn't really, that's like step number one. Then if they reject it, then we'd have to litigate it, correct?

I mean, it's a decision, it's a policy decision that you can make. You don't have to litigate anything. No one's forcing us into a nuclear war, you know, but it's an option. I mean, it's something that the reason why the hearing is held is, you know, a city that's applying for the certificate presents the evidence, says this is why I need this. it is conceivable that everything on the record shows there's a need, there's nothing on the other side, so then you might have to take action. I mean, it's an option.

This is where I think maybe my preference of having the actual workshop, because we give consensus at workshop, having it done in a workshop format, presentation by cfd all the data what you've going over what you've given us answering questions providing additional data and details and then also even having the city attorney talk about okay on the next agenda there's going to be this resolution this is what this resolution is going to ask you to do this is the steps that if you approve it this is what it means if you vote it down this is what it means if it gets approved and it goes to the county and gets vote it down this is what it means like walk us through all those things so that we have a clear picture going into then that next meeting of this is what we're actually voting on this is the information that we have we've digested it now for another two weeks what are additional follow-up questions or information we might have for staff and then we actually take whatever action we take is there any workshop prior to the june meeting

We don't have one.

One thing we got to, I mean, how many calls do we get, let's say, per month? 4,000 or something like that? No, per month.

EMS or FHIR or both?

We're at 9,100 for the year.

The huge percentage is EMS. We're at 9,200 for the year, last year. And it fluctuates between 150 and 200 a week. It's about 82% EMS. Okay, so 82%.

It's a lot of EMS.

We're already taking EMS.

And what percentage of those require transfer?

Last year was about 5,000.

Do we not know what the average is?

I could find out in 10 seconds if I had access to my files. I just don't have them.

I like the idea of the workshop. I don't know if we need to, you know. In the meeting, I don't know, but I like the idea of you having your laptop.

So, so the transport, so we had about 5600 transports last year out of all of those calls. So. The numbers are there. And then again, you divide that by six ambulances. You're running into that three to four transport, maybe a little bit more, just depending on where that truck is per day. If we were completely self-sufficient, it's just going to take time to get there. Yeah. It's going to be a staged program no matter what. All right.

Well, thank you. You're welcome. I'm excited to see it. I know.

Can I ask you a philosophical question for the city manager? and maybe for the Chiefs, is the budget that you're planning to present for next year, including an EMS program? Is that kind of the expectation going into it? So we know that depending upon that vote, ultimately would be kind of, there'd still be some additional direction at that point, right? If it fails or passes, it gives you either... Assurance that yes still present or okay. We've got to rework that presentation at that point.

I just want to make sure now is a separate department department within our department. So we've got like the general fire department. We've got our fire inspections.

Now we've got the EMS transport. Uh, budget, so you'll see 3 different budgets presented 1 with general fire. That's where I was at. Yeah.

And I understand there's a little bit of bleed over depending on which direction we go.

Um, and and how independent we choose to be, or how much of a partnership we have with the county.

Yes, I can. So the safer grants from FEMA opened the application window opened yesterday. Notice of funding we have until the 22nd to apply. Also coinciding with that is the assistance of firefighters grant, which is the AFG grant. We're both successful last year in getting an AFG grant for some cancer prevention equipment and then the safer grant from fire station five our recommendation and we're seeking consensus i know it's kind of an off-topic thing is to apply for the safer grant this year for staffing for fire station six with 18 personnel and then use the afg grant as an opportunity we can use that to purchase a fire engine or ask for the purchase of a fire engine to essentially say hey let's fund these two things with all the projects we're working on with the rescues and getting them housed and everything else it looks like our funding is pretty tight um so it'd be our recommendation to see consensus to apply for those grants we wouldn't know we may or may not know before october 1 what the approval is for those is there any reason why you would not apply for that grant there is a financial commitment just like our other safer grant you know there is a match on the afg there's a 10 10 match for the fire truck so at a million three you know that's 130 000 commitment plus you know plus some of the equipment and then with the safer grant we're looking at 18 personnel so you've got that staffing number and that's 75 percent covered in years one and two so there's a 25 but that doesn't cover the training the uniforms the equipment so it'd pretty much be a rinse and repeat of what we did this year and then year three would be 50 and then after that you know that staffing that we're going to have to cover in perpetuity

But if you're doing it anyway, there's no reason not to apply for those grants.

Essentially, yes. Because we can not move forward.

We can not move forward. Like if something changes, circumstances change, we can always not accept. Like I said, we vote to accept. Yeah, we're not on that vote.

Right, yeah. Application, I always support application.

Apply for all the grants you can apply for. Yeah, that's my viewpoint. Yes. Get as much free money as you can get.

That's what we thought. That's what we just wanted to bring it up to you guys.

Oh, that's good. Any other thing else for fire?

Is there any other data points that you guys can take off top of your head since we're going to be adding some additional stuff before we do? Is there anything else that you guys would like to see?

I think there was so much that we covered in that that workshop. There was a pretty extensive bullet point list that that's been shared with chief for you guys.

Yeah, I have that. And that these are the two that answer those specific questions. But again, if you guys have if anybody in this room has more questions or a point to bring up or a thought that she Castle and I have not thought of,

please send them over because we would love to to be able to answer everything fully one time so we have a good basis of information for you all so the thoughts that i have related to this are let's make sure as we're going through this especially because you've already done the work that police knows what you're doing public works knows what you're doing economic development knows what you're doing or what you're looking at because where the new town centers might end up might influence your statement or you know maybe we could include a police substation with some of the new fire stations and you know let's just make sure that we're not operating in silos i guess is the only thing i would say once you feel like you have a plan Great. Education is the next item.

Oh, wait.

Are we going to talk with PD?

Oh, do we want to? Are they safety?

I mean, they're here.

I didn't see them. I thought they were coming up. Sorry. That was a joke. It was a bad one. Thank you for reminding me.

Good afternoon.

Are we open to the start question? Oh, yeah.

Everybody ready? I'm sorry.

Yeah. I'm looking at my list. You're good. um i'm curious as to staffing uh with police and fire uh growing maturing city where what is the philosophy going into this budget cycle of staffing not only for sworn but also now that that council has authorized the start of a of a of a more robust non-sworn uh through the cso program community service officer program what are we looking at potentially philosophically moving into the

I could tell you today, right now, we sit with four sworn vacancies. We have 13 applications for the CSO program as we sit today. What I'm looking at next year is two additional police officers, one additional CSO, and then two professional staff, so a communications coordinator and additional records specialist.

That's my staffing request for next year.

I think when I went through the presentation at the last council meeting, I kind of went over the math kind of quickly. It was about a 1,600 resident increase per year over those five years. So in my mind, two police officers per 1,000, a CSO makes up the 600. That's the philosophy I use towards that.

How do you request that we approach any unfilled positions at the end of the year, recognizing that it takes time to bring on someone new?

I don't anticipate us going into October with any unfilled. I think we'll be okay.

That will be new.

That would be really nice. We had it for two months, and then it happened. But I think we have a really good shot at filling them. We have plenty of time to fill them. We filled multiple cadet positions, handed out multiple conditional officers this week. We'll be handing out conditional officers again next week. So I think filling the sworn positions would be good. You kind of have to remember, too, a lot of people move in the summer. So I'm anticipating some people may have prior law enforcement experience from some not so friendly law enforcement states. We'll relocate to the state of Florida and we have a good shot at getting some talent in that way.

That was easy.

I mentioned it in the last but so that I'm with council when we talked about the additional staffing I had asked chief to make sure he's coordinating with the fire department so that we're getting substations where they wherever they need to be you know that kind of thing make sure that we're aware of what the potential town centers might be and again not operating a silo but you Where can they get it? Apparently we need to keep Public Works in the loop on what our plans are because they find money.

Yes.

He's Daddy Warbucks. Daddy Warbucks.

I don't know if he heard that. Oh, he heard it. Great. Is there anything else you anticipate needing from us or requesting from us?

We've been able to secure a lot of grant money this year, so you're not going to see a lot of capital requests coming in through the budget this year. You're going to see us trying to do some of those projects through the grant funding. We're looking for creative solutions to get . I do have one question for you all, and that's the Drona's First Responder Program. I don't need an answer today, but it's just something that we need to be thinking about. The drone as first responder program is a program where bases can be set up on different city locations, where if a call for service came in, let's say a robbery at a location, the drone would be deployed from that base.

It would be able to be, the goal is to have the drone on scene within 90 seconds, and that would be able to feed into the officer's old data terminal or their laptop.

So that's something that's on the horizon. Agencies are starting to use it. UC St.

Cloud, Orlando just made a big investment into it.

Something in the future to consider. It is pricey. It's not something that I'm looking at implementing in 2027, but it is something that we're looking at 28, 29.

Are they armed? They're not. They're not. Great question, Christian.

They're not armed. But it's just something that I would like counsel to do.

Like tasers on them or anything?

No tasers. It's simply an eye in the sky for when the officers are responding. It gives them some situational awareness.

Are they going to be AI controlled or human controlled?

They can be both. They can be deployed by GPS or someone can fly it from the police department. but deployed by GPS includes a person saying go to this location the data the data is it put into the drone and the drone was then it's connected to our cat or a computer-aided dispatch so we'd know that the GPS coordinates to go to so it's not it's not recording in in flight it's not recording people sunbathing it's not doing that it's flying directly to the location

giving the officers as they respond a bird's eye view of what's going on.

It can also be used for brush fires, things like that. It's just a matter of how you want to use it within the city, if we want to use it within the city.

What is the number one crime in Claremont right now?

Number one crime? Right now I would have to say it's either a battery, we've had a lot of fights recently, or a burglary. Auto burglary.

Are these at residences, burglaries, or mostly commercial?

Motor vehicles. Unlocked motor vehicles is our number one issue all the time. If people lock their doors, I could get to the top ten safe cities really quick.

Are the batteries domestic or...

or not all of the above all of the domestic there was a fight yesterday at Osceola and Pitt after school fights individuals fighting Osceola was another one that we had every time I'd be interested in learning more about what the patterns might be and then maybe there's something

Like the drone program, I don't know how the drone program, it's unclear to me how that would help us with burglaries and batteries. I would like to be thinking about ways and tools that we can use to reduce our most frequent crimes as well as our most damaging crimes, whatever those are.

Well, I mean, if there's a burglary, you might get eyes on whoever the person is. I mean, isn't that the point?

Is that a facial recognition connected to it? No. There's no facial recognition. I'm not even going to breach facial recognition. We're not there yet.

It would help you all in the sense of somebody's broken into, say, business A, and you can see if they're still there and you need to send people there, correct, or what's happening, right? Correct.

A drone would help with that. You'll be able to see and then establish maybe you need more of a response or less of a response as well.

Let me run you through, I'll run you through an example and then maybe you'll help. So let's say there's a burglary at a a medical marijuana dispensary in town and the front door smashed but it comes into us as an alarm only glass break alarm let's say we had the drone program to where it would deploy to these glass break alarms

gets there and the officer is able to see that the glass is broken.

That would necessitate a bigger response because then you're talking about a perimeter, you're talking about possible canine on scene, you're talking about a minimum of six people with the supervisor on scene. If the suspects are still within the building, then we call them out, we do that. If they take off on foot, now you're talking about an expanded perimeter. So you're talking maybe more from four people, maybe we're just trying to keep a small one, so now maybe it's eight people and we're locking down multiple blocks. So the drone would be able to assist. So let's say they took off on foot and they were wearing blue shirt, blue pants. the officers would be able to see that, and if they saw somebody walking or running in that area in blue shirt, blue pants, that gives them reasonable suspicion to stop that person and conduct their investigation. That's a very basic use of

I need to clarify, my goal would be to reduce the crime, not necessarily, I mean, we need to catch, but I'm also concerned with how do we prevent the crime, because you went 100% of fights, you don't get in, right? So if we can figure out what is causing some of our recurring crimes, when I'm looking for the patterns, I'm looking at what kind of other tools might we be able to empower you or other departments with to prevent crime from ever happening in the first place so that's around that's perfect we do that both sides of it any other questions thank you are you bringing forward any um

programs that we've talked about, like bike patrol, e-bike. I know you rolled out the new bike. What kinds of things might we expect to see in the budget reference to those?

E-bike patrol will be built in. We haven't been at full staff in a long time. So as we get up to full staff, you're going to see more of these programs that we had in the past. come back to fruition. So with four openings, we're probably pretty close to being able to roll out full-time bike patrols and that. We're probably a couple months away from that. Other programs right now in the budget, I'm not looking at rolling out any other programs where we're at. We're looking at expanding what we have once the vacancies are filled. So that would look like more detectives, more traffic officers, nighttime traffic officers, nighttime detectives, things like that.

I believe at one point I maybe heard you talk about Is it mobile data crime? Real-time intelligence. Real-time intelligence, yes.

That's a couple years out.

Okay. I know it was something that was talked about at one point as a future item. We're not quite there yet on that. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

last that i see is recreation or no education education well i would like to bring up to council to consider the possibility of encouraging or directing staff to encourage alternative education opportunities in claremont besides just relying on the lake county school board for education solutions There's now a step up in the state. There's private schools, charter schools, micro schools, homeschooling, places for people to go to educate their kids. A lot of that relates to development design. I'm not necessarily asking for us to run an educational program but I am wondering how the council feels about prioritizing alternative education opportunities as part perhaps this goes towards the comprehensive planning team to consider how that could be implemented i'm more interested in having a library it's well and that's related to education right so i i would suggest i would suggest that every segment of the city whether it's quarters or five or it's eight or whatever it is have a library i think every person should have easy access to a library that would be in my mind one of those places that all the trails all the roads lead to you know part of that community center in those areas so i'm 100 for libraries

yeah i i have apprehension to us as a council advocating for something that potentially could be direct conflict with our one of our partnering governing bodies. And I think it gets us dabbling into something that I'm not sure that we need to get involved with as a city council, since we have a school board. And I think we could advocate for our school board representative for our district to perhaps invite that person and the superintendent here to a meeting to talk about exploring alternatives and opportunities. rather than us take on that initiative to do that.

I think that's consistent with what I was asking for. That would be in line with it. It's just what we can do or if there's anything we can do to encourage alternative education opportunities for our residents. I don't know if you were here, Brian, but we had the representatives from the school board come last year. I was out there. Yeah. And I knew you came to all the meetings, so I wasn't sure if you were at them. And I just saw the plan. what i heard from them was the plan to move such a big body it moves slow and and we've got schools that are so far apart that creating walkable so if we talk about walkability and being family friendly and small business friendly you know People need to have access to education. They need to have access to food. They need to have access to recreation. They need to have access to their government. And so to me, one of the things that's missing, library is great. I mean, that could be an easy way to do it because there's a lot of education that can be done in library. so i like your idea of bringing out our school board rep maybe as a workshop but ways that we can support educational choice for the residents of claremont so could we direct the staff to see about funding a library how much is the cost where we can put it at

yeah i think there's some partnership opportunity there with the county i know they have a role there uh with with what we currently have and i know there's some conversations about the college i think you know expanding and and utilizing that building for the college not necessarily for a community library and so i think we need to get a better footing for where that actually is what that how that stands what kind of funding would continue from a different level and then what the city involvement would be. So I think that kind of workshop would be incredibly helpful. Because it would have a budget impact.

Yes.

We're in ongoing conversations. I mean, the mayor has been with me, too, about the library. He's just not found the right spot. Haven't found the right location. But we are actively looking. And the county's ready, but they've got a limited budget, too.

Okay.

County is still looking, and they're ready to go. But in the past week, the city has always contributed money to the library and everything. In the last few years, we haven't been contributing money. So as a matter of fact, the big thing now is just find a location for the library, trying to find a location.

Can y'all make that a good priority? It's been a priority for the last couple of months. How big does it have? 20,000 square feet right now. They're looking for about 20,000 square feet.

That's what the current one is. Basically, we have no library pretty much as it is right now. The one at the school is basically being shut down. Except for, I think, on Saturday, the children's library is completely gone, I think.

What about the Keeler Center?

It hasn't been good for a while.

What about the Keeler Center? Yeah. I mean, that's kind of a great size for a small library.

It's not big enough. It wouldn't be big enough. Could we use it temporarily until we find out? I guess you don't want to do that.

Well, I guess the point is direct staff to find something. I'm not going to be in support of a massive 20,000 square foot library. I'll say that. I don't want people to have to drive to the library to get an education. For me, smaller libraries, multiple of them throughout the city, is what I would get on board with. So if there were places like the Keillor Center, kind of in each quadrant, down on Wellness Way, smaller, they don't have to be that small, but I don't think we need to have massive buildings in order to educate our children.

I think it would be more effective if you have one large thing to take like it's an elephant, take it one time and bite at it because you're talking about five different places and whatnot in this area and whatnot. I think that makes it harder probably because then you've got to have computers, you've got to have books, you've got to have staff. That's more money as I see it versus having one place because Claremont has had one library for years and years and people drove there. I mean, you have to drive. that's part being here in the south is hot everything isn't walkable and I think going to a library would be a feasible place to have to drive to and then eventually what you're saying to get to the communities that would be wonderful but with budget constraints and reality I think we probably do one spot

Well, like we could look at the Performing Arts Center as a location right now to put in a smaller library without having to overwhelm it. I think that having four places that are 4,000 square feet or 3,000 square feet is just as difficult or easy to manage as one place with 20,000 square feet, with the only real difference being, on one hand, people, depending on where it's located, have to drive 10 to 20 minutes, and on the other hand, everybody's 2 to 10 minutes. I'm also thinking of staffing.

Yes.

And you start talking about all the different locations, you start talking about staffing and all this, and it's much easier to manage one location than it is all these several. Besides, if you look at the Keeler Center, what you're going to do with it, you put the library in there, that's pretty much knocking out your seniors' use. If you start putting the library in there, it's Keeler Center would be, I don't think, a good location for a library. It's too small, first of all. And then it's already designated as the senior center. So you put the library in there where the seniors want it. I think what we've always had is, as Myra said, we've always had one library located in the city. I think in a good location. That's why I think our conversation with this county has been to try to get it up in the central part of what I consider more or less central part of housing up near the school in that area. Somewhere we can find something up in that area, which is more centralized for everybody growing police size. That's where most of the residents are living, up in that area. that were most likely almost high school students and college students is up in that area. So I think something up in that area would be fantastic and more convenient and walkable for a lot of the high school students and everything. don't have many many high school students and a lot of kids and everything in this area down in the downtown area i know we looked at using the old police department and we kind of ruled that out because it was going to be too much work uh just the place is in such bad shape it was going to be too much work uh renovation they didn't want to put money

i think councilmember meyers brought up directing staff or giving staff kind of a philosophical i keep going back to that approach of hey we'd like to see a uh an emphasis on what might what would it take to allocate resources and and funds to a library system whether that's a community we start whether it's community a start with a community and build out to neighborhoods or it's all neighborhoods but present us something guide us through that and and give us something to to tackle and actually vote on staff has already been working on that

For months, I mean, I remember I brought up library months ago, almost a year ago, and of course ever since then we've been kind of behind the scenes trying to do all this here. That's wonderful. And it has really come down to, it's almost a must now because it's basically the library as Lake Sumter is going away. Yeah. Pretty much gone. The big thing is... I don't think we have any problem helping the county fund it. We've always done it in the past. Figure out some kind of way to help the county fund it. It's just the biggest problem right now is finding a location to build it. I suggested to them the old Bacog building. Oh, that would be good. Well, by the time they went to look at that, somebody else had already put something else in there. I thought it would have been a great location, the old Bacog.

Because that's not too far from the old Dix. Oh, the old Dix. What about the old Dix?

I think there's somebody there, too.

Somebody's in there, and I thought the old Dix was just... I went to this strange... I thought that would just be...

Oh, it might be, yeah. Location-wise, if we're going to do some location, it's like that. Oh, that's pretty good.

But that would be great to have, because we would be leading education.

Well, there's other partnership opportunities, too. Well, if there could be maybe like an indoor recreation partner that would join with it. That would be awesome. Pick a ball and books.

You can have an extensive learning center for little kids, you know what I'm saying? Like some of the bigger cities have done with their libraries. I've seen some major ones that are done fabulously.

Incubator opportunities for all kinds of business. We'll keep looking.

Hopefully they'll keep looking. Actually, I was If you haven't been in Mount Verde lately, Mount Verde just did a new library and community, I guess you can call it, library and town hall and everything. If you haven't been over there to see that, I would love to see us, if we had the property and funding to do something like that with the Mount Verde. Is this Mount Verde?

Yeah, Mount Verde.

They got a very nice little library. guess it's the town hall moving town hall in there and often a little office space and everything over there but it's very nice over there if you get a chance to go over there and change that it was done in partnership with the county as well if i'm not mistaken yeah we want to do community center that goes under it for recreation there's a big picture yeah recreation

I know that, I think, if I'm not mistaken, DPZ had a meeting in Lincoln Park about, one of the topics was about community center. I know there's been lots of discussions at various levels about you know should there first of all should there be a community center where the community center would be located um do we want a community center i certainly would be of the of the mindset of yes um it's just a matter of what and where and i don't know how i'm not i don't proclaim to have the idea of how we get to that spot of deciding that you know in terms of what that looks like or where that looks like but i do think you know at some point with some of these bigger topic things like this that either we need to say yes we're committing to it and we allocate the funds to to study it to build to present it to to then move it forward to staff it whatever um or we say it's not on our radar and you know we're going to move on hopefully maybe someone in the private sector would work on it because i just think that pushing it on it doesn't do our residents any good especially the people who are committed to wanting to see it done I think they might not be happy if that's the decision we made, but at least they know a decision. I think we just need to start making some of these bigger decisions. And without a plan of what it would look like and supporting it, it's kind of hard to say whether or not we're going to do it.

Yeah, because my concern with the community center is the funding of it because we do need it. I believe that, but it's the operating budget for that. I know I benefit from a community center growing up, so I'm a strong supporter of them. They just don't make money. Because they're not intended to make money. Because it's service. That's the thing. How much money would we, how much would it cost for us to build one? How much would it cost to operate one? I think that would help me in knowing, yes, we should pursue this, or it's just, like you said, private sector. Because I know for me, I had a youth center growing up, but it was military. It was on Air Force bases and stuff. I'm a strong proponent because it helped me and my brother, but again, funding.

I think philosophically one thing that might help us ideologically is do we as a council generally believe that bigger is better or do we generally believe that smaller is better? Because I have heard different philosophical approaches to some of the things we've talked about today. I'm a believer that smaller is better. So one thing that I find to be interesting is how many people live and around the Keillor Center who have never been to it and don't even know what it is. And I think that that, actually is demonstrative of the fact that community centers and recreation are best suited, and this is where I go to libraries, I think that they're best suited close to the people they're intended to serve. Because just crossing East Avenue, many of the folks in Lincoln Park aren't either using Keeler Center, which is a community center, where they're not even aware that it's there. I spoke to some people who live in the Yacht Club who didn't even know it was there. And so here we have a community center, and the residents who are within biking distance of it don't even know that it's there. And so I think that's interesting. Without putting judgment on it, I do believe that having amenities close to the citizens is helpful. one of the and i bring that up in the context of the community center because an argument could be made that the parks and recreation or performing arts center is our claremont community center but i don't think it is i think it's it's its own thing and it's and it's unique i don't think it serves all of the young people I grew up going to the, we called it the boys club back there, and now it's boys and girls club, but I, like you, I grew up in a, I was able to have access to a center where I could go and be with kids, and my mom worked, and, you know, that was, it was great, and I was able to ride my bike there from school. So that's why, to me, the school locations are important. The library locations are important. I think a community center, and we're talking about in Lincoln Park, I'm guessing, we're talking about that one.

I think that's where it's been talked about the most up to this point anyway.

Yeah. I think there's a great opportunity to build a community center. And what people will it serve is always kind of one of the questions when you talk about any recreational facility. yeah and early conversations that i heard around it related to well anyone can use it um and i'm not i i don't think that that is a good approach yeah to a true community center i think it should be built for the people in the community your neighborhood has a community center calling you out because you're on council your neighborhood has a community center and it's for the neighborhood right and it's good size but it's not the size of the performing arts center right so figuring out who we're serving what are we serving i think it's great we have the mckinney park property um i actually spoke to some of the representatives at the school board about the property that they own south of mckinney park generally the feeling i got was if we wanted to be able to use maybe 100 200 feet on the on the bloxham avenue side of that for a new park that would be an option And so I tend to not take the approach with recreation that one location is good. I tend to take the approach that having multiple options within walking or biking distance is better for the community members than having one place that you must go, this is your only option. So creating additional playground spaces, creating additional walk with nature places. Again, do we believe that bigger is better or do we believe that smaller is better? And I think that will help us guide these conversations if we really look at it because i would suggest we probably can't have both massive and a number of small ones because the number of small add up to the cost of one big one usually whatever that one big one might be unless you go into the private sector so i would like to see us have a conversation like that because I'll say my perspective is generally smaller is better, people being within five minutes. And I think with the way development's gone, I'll say a golf cart works five minutes, a bike, to your point that it's hot. Most people, if you're just walking five minutes or if you're biking five minutes, you're a golf cart, you start getting beyond that and it's like, I'm getting in my car, I'm not doing this anymore because it's too much. But if we want to create opportunities for people to be active and in nature.

I guess because my viewpoint is a little different because I'm used to where you only had one and you drove and you rode your bike and you had to walk 20 minutes to get to it. And the way our city is set up, you have to drive. And when it hits a certain time, which is, I would say now, you don't wanna walk, it's too hot. But I get your point of wanting to have more access to it, but I don't think it should just be the requirement only. Somebody's gonna have to drive regardless. So we have it at a central location or whatnot. I just keep thinking of funding, because if you have multiple, then that's multiple, okay, well, who's gonna pay for that? Who's gonna staff it, you know what I'm saying? Because I remember mine, sometimes it was just one person that worked there, you know what I'm saying? Because they were deployed or whatnot, you know what I'm saying? So reality, it's kind of like, that's nice to have small ones, but I think we start with one, possibly, and see how much that would cost. for the operation as well as the building of it to see if it's even feasible to have multiple locations because I don't know if that's really feasible financially in the days that we are in. Just saying.

What's our current partnership with Boys and Girls Club at the Arts and Rec Center?

Brian can speak to that.

Yeah. And what I mean by that, in terms of what's our partnership, what is it? But also, including in that is financial. Yes. What kind of financial and or staffing is included in the partnership?

We have a rental contract with them. They're paying around $875 a month. $1,000.

We're paying $1,000 a month right now.

And it's 3% increase every year. It was a 10-year contract. but they just have that space. We might do some, if something from a maintenance perspective needs to be addressed, we address it, but they run their own program in their own space. Okay, okay.

Boys and Girls Club, they do their own staffing, they do all that, but we basically pay them $1,000, I think, with the new contract we did a couple years ago, a 3% increase every year on the contract. I think when we first started, we did $500 a year, $500. and then we start increasing it with the space. We'd like to I would like to see and I think the boys and girls club would like to come out of that building back go back to what Mr. Strange was just saying that's considered the community center but however due to the location nobody can get to it okay and the number for the boys and girls club is really down because parents can't even afford to take their kids there now because of the location and all and then go back to Lincoln Park that's why they're conversation came around Lincoln Park and the community center in New Yorkers. We build it, we can move the Boys and Girls Club in there and it's more feasible and walkability for the kids because studies show a few years ago, I don't think, I don't know what the study is now because it's been about 10, 12 years since we did the study, but 65%, 65, 75% of our kids at the time live within a two mile radius of the Lincoln Park area.

Of the Boys and Girls Club kids?

When we were doing the Boys and Girls Club. Originally we were trying to put the Boys and Girls Club at Clemmout Middle School, but the principal or administrator would not let us go in there. So that's why we ended up at the CPAC. Once we got CPAC, we were able to move them in there and give them a permanent home. I think in the first four years we had the Boys and Girls Club, we moved it five times. Okay. We started out over on Mohawk. We went down. We was at a couple of the different churches. I think we was at the Presbyterian Church. We was at, what's that, Living Hope and all. And, of course, we finally got in there when we took over. We got in the CPAC when we finally purchased that and went in there. And we used to have over 300 kids a day going to that Boys and Girls Club when it first started, of course. It was new, and we had the cost, and it was... really reasonable and the cost of living wasn't so bad at the time when we first did it. So parents were really using a lot. With the cost of living and everything going up now, I'm finding we have a lot of locky kids, kids going home in the evening and night because the parents just can't afford and the kids can't get there. So that was the big idea behind the Boys and Girls. a new community center down in the Lincoln Park area, which we looked at the 10 acres back there that he talked about doing a little local project with the city. That's what we was preparing to try to purchase that 10 acres back there to put the Boys and Girls Club back in the back end, which already complement McKinney Park. You already got McKinney Park and all these things there. community center all we had to do was really put a building in wouldn't have to worry about extra fields and all that because you already had that existed what if we did like a 30-year lease with the boys and girls club would they build a center on that property in mckinney well well first of all you don't want to build it on mckinney why we don't want to tear up mckinney park i mean if you how you gonna you put a field uh building on McKinney Park, then you're taking away fields and everything else that's highly utilized right now. It's very highly utilized, McKinney. The fields up there. So that's one of the big fights. I know the people that's trying to do the Boys and Girls Club, we kind of, because that's what they want to do is tear up the field up there and put buildings in there. But if you do that, you're talking about parking, you're squeezing in parking, and you're taking away a lot of space that kids are utilizing right now for recreation, softball, football, all these kind of different activities. I know we need more fields. Brian can probably speak to that as well. One of the questions in the last meeting I had with him is, Can they find somewhere else? No, that's why they there because it is it's nowhere else now I gave my I gave the last the group that's working with I gave my option that you all may not know about But right behind O'Reilly's on Highland Avenue and O'Reilly's We own about three acres. I think it's a little less than three acres. The city owned that. That's where old Water Tower used to be for the city years ago when I grew up. But that's still our property. So I looked at it as, hey, that's an option. We can put a community center in there as well. I think so, anyway. We wouldn't end up tearing up McKinney Park. It's still walkable. It's accessible. And the other thing is it's very accessible. Even you got the bus route on Highway 50 that can stop there and kids can walk. Of course, you got a bus stop there. And I think it's one right there across the street. What's that? Old Mickey Blackburn's building. There's a bus stop there. It's another one at Winn-Dixon. So you got walkability even off a bus stop. I think that's me. I think it's a great location.

Why hasn't that come? I've never heard that.

Well, it's something I threw out there at the group. When was the last meeting we had with them, mister? Probably about three weeks ago. Three weeks ago. I gave them that option, and of course, they kind of frowned upon that, but I'm like...

The Boys and Girls Club didn't like that?

Well, the group that's really working to try to do the community center. And another reason I like the community center, and I've been pushing the community center for years, for 10 years or so, I've been talking about a community center, goes back to your education portion because we're not, the city isn't responsible for education, okay? That's not our job. We have the school board to do that. But in the meantime, if we have a community center, we can go in there and we can offer little classes, like have somebody come in and do GED classes or specialized classes and everything. And I know Ms. Myers talked about it. See, I did this kind of thing. This is what I read. I read community centers. I did these kind of things for the Air Force. And we had to offer these things for our service members. And that was pretty much my job. uh... community centers and when you start talking about all these different locations you go back again now i got one over here i got staff this and i got another one i got a staff there and you gotta have programs in both of them your cost goes up tremendous so when you got one central location you're better off

But we're seeing this play out that we have one central location, and because we're so big, it's not serving the community that it needs to serve.

Right, well, it's not in the best of locations.

I wouldn't say it's the central location of its highest use kids, if we're talking about Boys and Girls Club. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, it's just not in the location of its highest use of the population.

But, like, the people in Wilmots Way probably aren't going to come to Lincoln Park. I mean, there's probably a need for a community. That's what I'm saying is... When I look at it, what is the square footage that the Boys and Girls Club is using now at the CPAC? Give or take, I'm not looking for an exact. 2,000 square feet, 1,000 square feet?

No, it's more than that. It's about a quarter of the building, so I'm going to say 8,000. That's a random number.

Yeah, we would love to get them out of the Boys and Girls Club and give it back to the city so the city can do a little bit more with it as well. But keep in mind, they also have the pool up there. They also have the basketball court, see? And when you start talking about a community center, you need the basketball court, volleyball court, all these things. Definitely need a court. And of course, you can have room in there for the Boys and Girls Club and all these extra rooms that you can do. some education, specialized education training and everything, which I don't think is any problem.

But having some craft rooms and stuff. Yeah, right. And then a court where they can all...

So should we just direct staff to look and see how much... I'm sure you're already looking, right? Do we own that real estate? For a year and a half. A year and a half.

Do we own the real estate he just described? I didn't know we owned that. Yes.

It's three acres. I think it's a little less than three acres. It's not going to fit everything we're talking about. no it's not going to fit everything because you can put you can put a two-story building and that's why i said in the past we looked at at least having about 10 acres or five acres

i guess we just can we just do a smaller one then where you just have a smaller gym you have a like a craft room a billiards room and then a little mini kitchen i'm thinking about what i had it was not big you could do a three-story and they did a whole lot in there a gym on the top or a gym on the bottom and the classrooms on the second and third you don't have to we left the discussion okay mayor he suggested this to his credit yeah they're going to have a community meeting okay and then

He said, well, let the presidents decide what they want to do. And I respected you for doing that, Mr. Mayor. He has his opinion. And he told the ladies. That's what the residents want at McKinney. We'll do it. So I don't know, Mr. Mayor, if they put that meeting together.

Well, they haven't put it together yet because I live in the community. But basically what it boils down to is, like I said, they want to tear up McKinney Park and take the whole upper level McKinney Park, all the grassy area, and put buildings in there and make a community center. So you have no play areas, no softball fields, no really other than what you have down below with the pavilion and the basketball court. And I'm not for that, and most of the people I talk with in the community, they don't wanna see that happen either, okay? Because you're taking to where is all the kids that's utilizing that for softball practice, football practice, where are those kids gonna go, okay?

Well, DPZ did a design for that in McKinney Park, and they basically, if you broke it up into three sections, where you've got the front section with the playground and the gazebo, The suggestion was to put the building in the center and then maintain the softball. So it's quite big. And if you don't spread it out.

Everything's centered around the upper portion again. I'm just saying there could be a different design.

I think you're right. I think they need an outdoor play space. You need an indoor play space. You need classrooms. I like the idea. I think your point about the bus stop is really good. I like, what is the name of that street?

Well, that was another reason I was looking at it. We looked at the 10 acres there behind McKinney Park with all the pine trees, if we could have gotten hope to that. We even tried to purchase the eight acres, I guess it was, where the Volkswagen dealership We're looking at that as well. And we do have two now.

Yeah, we have two, exactly. Right, so we have two. I mean, you could put soccer fields there. You could put a soccer field where the school board is. I mean, again, you could spread it out so it doesn't have to all be in one place.

We can make it work.

Where I'm going to get to yes on community centers and the like is if they are cost-effective to build, but also that we have a public-private partnership. That's where I think the point you make about staffing and it's a valid point. Oh, that one is 1.7? Oh, that is pretty small. But it's worth looking at.

It's very small, and the reason I threw that out there, Adam, because they're looking at The portion up there at McKinney Park, if they were to take McKinney Park, you're looking at about the same amount of space, about two acres or so, two or three acres, because I think whole McKinney Park is just under five acres. So that's why I'm saying if you feel like you can build that, hey, well, let's put it over here on this piece as well. Let's look at this piece. Now, it's another thing I'm looking at and reconsidered was up on... Just up off the Pitt Street along Blotsom. Right now I think there's two five acres tracks there. I think we got a proposal to put something in there. They still waiting to come back. The one right behind the apartment complex. We looked at trying to purchase those acres a couple of old plots as well a couple years back to try to put the boys, put it in there.

That's kind of out of the way. I like the other two locations.

Well, yeah.

Can you all look into that one, the location that he was talking about earlier?

I think I pretty much let him know that we want to keep an eye on the live local. that live local project, if it's fall through right now, because I don't know where it's going, okay? And if not, let's look at trying to purchase that acre.

But that's outside of our, I mean, that's a private, if the Boys and Girls Club wants to buy land and build something, that's on them. What we're talking about is a community-funded community center.

Well, that's what I'm saying. We, when I say we, that was the city, not the Boys and Girls Club. The city was looking to purchase the 10 acres behind McKinney Park, not the Boys and Girls Club, okay? We're actively looking.

We're working. communication and engagement strategies.

Can I just ask, Brian, the same question, I guess, for Mr. Foreman. Any bigger ticket, newer items, innovation, whatever, that you might be bringing forward in the next budget?

I mean, the big ticket items, the really big ticket items are Bishop Field, which we just talked about last week, and Meet in the Middle. Those are the really big ticket items. Okay. There'll be some other moderate things. Okay. Okay.

On the subject of meat in the middle, can I get support to look at an alternative drawing for the meat in the middle?

The direct staff to get something. I'm a different person altogether?

Jeff does it, I don't know about me. The things that have really worn on me with that project are the amount of concrete involved in it, the tearing out of the trees that are there. And I continue to hear from the community, they want the pier, they want the pier, they want the original old pier back. And I think there's probably a scenario where we can still have the tiered seating area, we can still have a veterans memorial. The specifics I would look for is to do the tiered seating area where the trail comes up and have the Veterans Memorial on the waterfront rather than up above where people's backs are to it. Instead, have it to where memorial is on the waterfront so when you sit in the tiered area you're looking at the flags with the lake behind you it could allow us to maintain the grassy area with the trees maybe extend the trees and line it down so you have a shaded space and and i think that it's potentially a more affordable alternative that we could just fund and get the pier back and have this really great seating area with a beautiful memorial and the veterans feel heard and received and we're not spending $10 million. And in the comprehensive plan with ABA, they were talking about how we have a mile linear park. And if you imagine, we could maybe let the cycling be more of something that's incorporated into the whole mile instead of trying to shove everything in one place. And then as you're coming up the trail, you would see this memorial with the flags and it would just be the entrance to downtown. You know, we're talking $10 million, and I just kind of think maybe having another option that if I could get your support to direct staff, I would like to do that. That sounds pretty good.

I think he's already doing the second option. I don't know. What phase are we up to?

I have no idea. We've done two different options, and I think we voted on the design and everything, one of the options at the last council memo that was approved. On engineering. And the cost isn't going to be $10 million, okay? It's going to be less than $9 million right now. Last estimate I get, and I'm expecting the cost to even go down even less than that. And the funding is available already. I'm hearing, yeah, they want the pier back, and they definitely want the pier back, but also they put the slips on the pier as well. That's been a big requirement, and people have been asking for that for years, okay? Even before I was .

Well, I'm hearing the pier, but not a lot of support for slips. Yeah, I'm hearing the pier.

Well, we had a vote. I mean, the council had a vote in October.

But the vote was to move forward with engineering so we could make an informed decision.

And to put it out to bid and to then bring it back so that we can vote on it. And that was the directive that I think Council Member Peterson made that motion. And I know that there was some conversation after that about, did you actually fund it? No, it was the, I went back, I've watched, watch that meeting multiple times to try to clear up that confusion on that. And I believe it was to move forward with a plan at the reduced input footprint and cost so that it could then go to design, go out for bid, come back to council so it could get an up or down vote and there could be a decision. I look at this as very similar to the conversations related to Fire Station two. Not all of us may be happy with where we are But we have to move forward at some point. And either we vote it up or down, but this constant redo, redo, we're not going anywhere. We're not actually doing anything. And it's going to be another year before we get to this point again if we ask for another whole redesign in architectural rendering. And I just can't support that. I want to see what they bring forward based off what council approved. and decide whether or not we move forward with it that would be my preference if we're going to do something else I would I would I guess argue that that needs to be done through a resolution because we approved this process through a resolution that it wouldn't be just something we would just consensus give here that it would have to be through a formal resolution to alter that path because that was a council decision

just to let you know, it's not stopped. It's moving forward. It's going through permitting. Drawings are continuing. So my suggestion, if you considered something, would not to stall or stop anything. Because it's been too long. And you keep moving. And if you consider something else, that's you guys' decision, but it's moving forward. I signed a check for St. John's Water Management the other day.

Everything's moving forward. Thanks, John. Permitting and all that is moving forward based upon. But before Brian left, I wanted to go back to one of the things you said about e-bikes and everything. Can you comment on the email you got for the e-bikes and the lesson?

Oh, yeah. Deborah Hodge reached out about doing a program related to education and e-bikes and the trail and the new laws that are coming out in July. And I'm working on setting up a meeting with her and PD and Kurt.

She came to me a couple months ago. Well, we had been talking a couple months back, and she told me she wanted to work. I asked, well, the county has agreed to go ahead and have her work on our program. And of course, she got the program. I asked her to go to Brian and work with Brian in the PD department so we can get some education on that thing. Because we need to do something about these e-bikes, especially on our trails and everything. So he's working on setting up. Hopefully in the next, I'm hoping to get done before the 1st of July because I think the new logo will in effect the 1st of July. But I don't know where, I know I just saw the email the day where you all was communicating. But I wanted to, get that out there since Council Member Vang mentioned e-bikes earlier. So they would know where we're at on that. It's working. I think you're ready to go, Brian. Yeah, I'm, I'm here if you put you on the spot. Thank you.

I think Mr. Mr. Van Wagner say everything moving forward. And the last I got is the, in June, they will be coming.

I think Mr. Powell is coming to us to present us with engineering and drawing and everything for us to continue to move forward. And once that, depending upon what we do at council meeting, whether it goes out for bid from there.

So we vote to take it out? Is that the process we're doing? I think that's what I was told we were doing.

Because all we approved was engineering. Yeah. Okay. That's what I want to make sure. Yeah.

So it's coming back in June?

as i get it okay or whatever yeah okay last conversation i had with mr paul he said he's looking to bring it in in june bring it to us in june so i'm not sure our next one was communication and engagement strategies for citizen participation oh okay

For me to sit in the middle, it's going out for engineering drawings. Do I need to bring that to the council to get permission to get a bid, or can I bid it?

Once he's going to bring the drawings, the engineering, everything, come back to us in June. And if we approve that, then it goes back to Freddie for bids and all, is where I was told it's at right now.

just to be clear the only drawings that we've looked at are do we want to do the land and the water or do we just want to do the water or just the land we actually haven't seen a second concept for the park itself we've seen several different concepts for the park okay over the years we've we've we had two or three different concepts that went on and i think this guy the council last

Last time we really bid on a concept, we had two options. Okay.

With the water or not with the water?

Well, with the water.

That's not an option. That's just more of one.

With the option. But we bid on, I think we had one or two options. We bid on the second. I think the council decided on the second option, number two. and we sent him back to do the engineering and everything on that.

On the Corps of Engineers, that was the lengthy thing.

Right. And, of course, even after that, we went back and made a couple of adjustments to that option as well. And I think that's what he's presently working on. We'll see where he comes from.

I've never seen a second option. so if the council doesn't want to support an alternative then i'll continue to be the sole no vote i guess but i don't think that the concrete and ripping out all the trees and you know we we already have concrete that we have a hard time keeping up with now this is going to be the showcase piece we're just adding more concrete So I just think it's, I know that it's exhausting that it's been several years, but even when this started, it never came to the public for a whiteboard for revisioning. It was just something that was done and brought to the public, and significantly it's not changed since four years ago. It looks almost exactly the same. I was just asking for something alternative where you don't have your back to the Veterans Memorial, which did get added later. Okay.

COMMUNICATION AND ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR CITIZEN PARTICIPATION.

WHERE ARE WE WITH THE FUNDING THAT WE DID WITH THE ENTITY THAT WE HIRED? I'M BLANKING ON THE NAME NOW. TRUE NORTH. WHERE ARE WE WITH THAT PROCESS AND HOW WILL THAT AFFECT OUR BUDGET?

proposals this year they they should be coming back to council probably in june for a recommendation probably the second meeting of june i think they wrapped up all their stakeholder talks or interviews and i think their plan is to come back late in the second meeting in june to talk to you guys okay and that would potentially have budget potentially yeah okay yeah i don't know what their recommendation is going to be but It could be anywhere from more staff, more consulting, I don't know, or stay the course.

And then we have Parks and Nature within five minutes of all citizens. I feel like we've talked about that, right? Then first-time buyers, home, financial education for youth. That's something I would like for us, if there's some type of way to help our young people to get home ownership in our city.

Like with that I would like to see one of the things that I'm not sure I think I mentioned in the mr. Van Wagner before I would like to see the city get into some kind of scholarship program scholarships

for home ownership, college, for college?

Not home ownership, I'm talking educational scholarship. We're talking about youth and you're talking about financial education. I'm talking about overall education. College? Yeah, college and everything. I think we need to maybe look at trying to fund some type of scholarship.

Isn't it something the Chamber does, Vinnie?

Well, that's what Pig on the Pond is.

Yeah, that's what Pig on the Pond is. That's Pig on the Pond. They separate our entities. I think the city needs to look at doing some more. I don't think we can ever have too many scholarships out there for the people.

Well, I would like to have one for our first-time homebuyers, for our young people who have...

Mayor, I thought you said you didn't think the city should be involved in education.

Offering scholarships, not trying to teach them. It's trying to help our young folks get ahead.

I'm not suggesting the city have a teaching curriculum or program. I'm suggesting that we create avenues to make it easier for alternative educational providers to come to the city, whatever that might mean. But I think that we already subsidized Pig on the Pond. We just approved their 2027 and their actual platform is scholarships. So I just, I think philosophically too, it would be nice if we could have an agreement on do we believe the government can do these things better or do we believe the private sector should be doing things that in my mind the government's job is clean water, roads, public safety. And after that, I have a hard time supporting government running programming. And philosophically, it might just be that we are on different pages. It's just like community centers. I'd like to see a public-private partnership. The Boise Postal wants to come and do a long-term lease on a facility that we build. I'm very interested in that. The library, there's a library organization that wants to come. I'm all for that. But when it comes to choosing between lowering the millage or funding more government staff and employees, I'm going to choose lowering the millage unless it's related to water, sewer, police, fire. And I think we kind of bump against that philosophical difference sometimes. So just for me, it's philosophical. It's not individual project oriented. It's more who should be doing a thing so i love that pig on the pond is here i think it's great if we want to add additional funding to support pig on the pond i'm cool with it i think that's wonderful i don't think we should be competing with them

There are some models out there, Council Member Myers, of communities that do different type of home buyer, whether it's grants or loans or forgivable loans, those types of things. I know that as... time has evolved they've changed but there are some out there and i i think that um our city size and larger is typically where you would find something like that if we did that i also think that in some cities where they have like a department of community development okay versus economic development, but it's either a joint office or there's a focus on community development and looking at things like community development block grants and different type of housing initiatives, neighborhood associations, those types of things that perhaps maybe that's something that, again, kind of going back to the healthcare idea, maybe that's something that we talk about as a strategic priority if we agree for the city manager through that evaluation process to kind of look at and say are okay outside of the service that we currently do are there any new things like a health care like a housing initiative program or community development if you want to kind of put it under that umbrella that we might want to do that could benefit our residents and and have that conversation um i don't know how i don't know if we would be able to create something like that for this budget you know what i mean i'm trying to think of what i know about those programs like how we would do that right now without the infrastructure in city hall to try to like drive that you're right and usually right or even if we could just give the information for them to like connect them with the people who actually do that you know what i'm saying possibly for things like that do you have a house regulations yeah yeah are you all familiar with ready set orange no i'm not i if not i encourage you to google ready set orange it's a program that orange county does and they basically have um like multiple iterations of ADUs or small housing that if you build one of these, it's an expedited process. And, you know, it goes a lot quicker, a lot smoother. There's a lot less hoops to go through because they don't have to review as much. There's things like that that we could do that I think maybe we might have some resources available for us currently that we wouldn't need to add some additional things that could encourage some of that small, affordable housing things, but that could also at the same time work to try to improve homeowner homeownership and access to homeownership.

Groveland has the same thing.

And so I think maybe there's those are some ways that we could look at, you know, maybe we need to maybe we want to encourage a future examination of community development from that lens and looking at how that would work within the city.

We already have some ordinance on the book for ADUs and everything that encourage, try to encourage them. Yeah, and this one even goes a step further. Take advantage.

No, this one even goes a step further and says, basically, if you choose one of these five plans, you're basically... And yeah, take a look at it. Ready, set, orange.

It's a really interesting program that they're doing.

You know, we could model Groveland, like I said, like you said, Groveland also has something out there like that. So discouraging for them. It is. Fountain in East Lake.

I did put that down.

Well, I think that was one of the things that somebody selected, but we just had that presentation.

I put that in there because that's been one of the requests that's been asked for me for years because Eastlake is down off of Pitt Street, and they always had a problem with what they always throw with algae in the lake and everything, so they always found in there with getting rid of the algae problem around the algae blooms. They've done some cleaning up on the lake. It's pretty clean right now and did a lot of work.

Who's responsible for that lake?

We are. Well, I don't think they... We take care of the laying around it, the shores and everything else, the lake and all that. And we actually, the city actually paid to have it, have a little work done on it cleaned up.

Is Mr. Merriweather still back there? He did leave, yeah.

Oh, okay. Yeah, we've done some work in the past.

So if there was like algae bloom, like a huge algae bloom in there or something, who would be responsible for addressing that? Is it the state? I don't know, that's what I'm asking. Who actually owns, quote unquote, East Lake?

Last time we went through, I went to Public Works. You want to come up, Stoney? Oh, Stoney is here. That's an interesting question. I've never thought about that. They coordinated just like they do with Lake Mineola. Same thing with Lake Mineola.

It's actually the health department. They set the rules. They do the testing, yes. They do the testing, do the state, say that's who did it. So they will give the warnings about no swimming and all that good stuff.

So coordinated through Tony, and I think last time we had to clean up Lake Mineola.

Yeah, we've done some work on the lake. We discharged in there through stormwater for that lake. So the aeration may help that.

When was the last time we had a fountain there?

Never had one.

Oh, we've never had one? OK. So Center Lake we had one.

Yes. Center Lake, we put gravity in there some years ago. And it made a tremendous difference.

So we think that using that logic, it might help.

Yeah. What does something like that cost?

I think we budgeted under $70,000. Yeah, you got to get the power there. You got to get it across the street, into the lake, tie into the power by the lift station that's adjacent to it.

Are there any community groups that might find this to be important enough to them to help fund it?

I have no idea.

The XYZ ABC fountain at Eastlake.

And the thing is, the lake, and I'll throw this in there, trying to really keep the lake looking good and beautifying. Some people still fish in the lake. Still a lot of fishing in there. But actually, to me, it got some historical value. But whether you all realize it or not, years ago, that's where the people in Lincoln Park used to have to swim. They used to have to swim in there before they stopped us from swimming in there and made us come over to what is now West Beach.

They had to swim in there?

That's where we would swim at, yeah.

They weren't allowed to swim at West Beach?

Well, during that time coming up, West Beach was created for us because we weren't allowed to swim at what is waterfront now used to be called JC Beach. They had that, but we couldn't swim there. We used to swim in East Lake. Lincoln Park, most of us were swimming in East Lake. They held our summer program there at East Lake. And all at once, for some reason, They said health issues and everything, and they kicked us out of there and moved us over to West Beach. That's why it used to be called Black Beach. That's why it was called Black Beach at the time, because that's where we all swim. We still weren't authorized to swim over here.

Crystal Lake was used back...

Crystal Lake was more or less considered a private lake. Most of the homeowners down along the lake shore here were pretty much... and um every once in a while we would try to slip in there but we would get run and chased off you know so but yeah uh so it has a little historic value and that's one of the reasons they they would like to see it it keep looking good because like i said we used to have to swim in there you know that's where we swim at i learned to swim in that lake They took me out there and threw me in and said, swim or drown. So I guess I'm still here. I learned to swim.

But that's it.

And I've even had some requests to put a path all the way around the lake, but I don't think that'll ever happen either. The path would never happen because I think the owners up on the north side of the lake, I think they got ownership all the way down to the lakefront. I'm not sure. anything so i'm just doing the past but a lot of people want to see a pass and instead of them walking the sidewalk all the way up east and it'll be able to walk around the lake we'll see

i wanted to bring up one more thing before we leave because i think we got everything on here right for you all to consider um and it's for us as a council um i wanted to bring up for us to have a pay increase i looked at i kept in a log of the hours that i've kept over the last several months and divided it by what we make now and it comes to about 10 bucks an hour

You make that much an hour? I don't think I make... Mr. Wong, go back and go ahead. If I'm not mistaken, I hear what you're saying that I've had a lot of people that have come to me and say, we need a pay increase. I've even had people come to council and say, hey, we need to be in more. But I think it's in our charter how pay is structured and everything, and it has to go to the people for an increase, I think.

I don't believe so.

I don't know if it's in our charter. I'm looking, I'm looking.

It does talk about what you... I don't think we authorize to vote ourselves.

Well, we can't vote for ourselves, but I think legally we could vote it for future councils.

Well, here's what it says in section seven of the charter. The council may determine the compensation of council men by ordinance. But no ordinance increasing such compensation shall become effective until the day of commencement of the terms of councilmen elected at the next election. Councilmen shall receive their actual and necessary expenses incurred in the performance of their duties. So you can pass it by ordinance, but it'll only be effective.

We can't, like I said, we can't vote ourselves a pay increase. That's basically what it boils down to.

Did you have data? I'm sorry. I did. We're still going there. Do you have data as to what other entities or municipalities are doing? I do.

Or Alward County, Margate City, their population is 60,000. Their council member salary is 45,000. Winter Haven is 12,000. Sarasota is 44,000. Bonita Springs is 19,000. Ocoee is $4,000. Fort Pierce is $32,000. Coral Gables is $38,000. Titusville is $12,000. The land is $11,000. And Ormond Beach is $14,000. And ours is $8,500.

Is that a year? Mm-hmm. And Groveland, the one for the last study I really was involved with, Groveland was probably the highest paying council around here in Lake County. At one point, well, when we was only getting $300 and $400, okay, Groland was getting $1,500 and $1,200, way back when. And we just went from $300 and $400 in 2019, Mr. Warren. Is that when that new order went in? We got the pay increase in 2019? Oh, I don't know. I think it's set up there, but... In 2014, we were still doing three. The council was doing 300. Mayor was getting 400. And that was one of my initiatives. Well, one of the initiatives, I talked to the incoming mayor about trying to get the pay increase. Because I thought it was getting too little money. And besides, I wanted to try it. I thought an increase in pay would maybe get people interested in the wall to run. and everything and I think it finally went through in 2018 or 2019 I think it finally went to where we are now and of course each year with the new pay scale we get an increase each year because I think when it first went into effect City Council member was getting $600 a month and the mayor was getting $700, but it increased a little bit now, so where we are now. So you can, as he said, you can make a motion and do it or look at an increase, but you won't see the benefit of it. You can't do it until the prior council, okay, we can't vote ourselves, my understanding, we can't vote ourselves an increase.

well i guess i mean when i'm reading this i mean it won't be effective until the date of commencement of the terms of councilmen elected at the next regular election it seems to me that it should be november but if it was just going to be that why wouldn't it just say until the date

I think it has to, in my understanding, because that's why they passed everything and it didn't go in effect until 2019 is because it had to wait the cycle of everybody that was on the council at the time.

I mean, that's what I'm wondering. That's what I'm wondering, but it doesn't... Let me just, I'll look at that. It's a little tricky, but yeah.

Yeah. Cause they, they, they put it in and it got passed, but it didn't come affected in 2019 cause at 2019, uh, mayor act was still here who, who actually brought it all forward and the other councilman was still here. But I think at that point, everybody had psyched up.

It seems reasonable. That seems like a common sense thing, but I'm wondering if the words actually say it. I'm wondering if it really means November, or December, as it may be. But I'll look into it briefly.

I just feel like all the work we put in should be paid more and for future council members it's a lot of work for a small I call it a stipend I don't really see it as a salary and we want to be able to attract more people to come because you know our day will come when we're no longer on here and I want us to have people who want to come and be able to put the time in but what we paid I just yeah I mean, you make more money with flipping a burger.

And I think this is... Well, when I was looking at that way back in 2012, 2013, and I looked at Groveland at $1,500 to $1,200, and they was only meeting... They wasn't doing workshops. They would meet twice a month. I'd say, wow, what a great part-time job. $600 to meet twice a month. Okay, for a couple hours, okay. And they were always having every election. They would have plenty of people fighting for the position, so... That's why I kind of like say, hey, maybe we increase hours. We was at $300 and $400 for years.

I don't look at it as a job, and I don't honestly want elected officials who see it as a job. I see it as service and volunteerism for the community. I worry that if people look at it like it's a way to make money, that it will be something they either feel like they have to get more involved in the day to day, which we shouldn't be doing as council members, or it would attract people who are doing it for the money. And I just, I would be, as I said last year, I mean, if we didn't get paid anything, I would consider that appropriate. But I worry about the policy of taking the approach that people who serve on city council, I'm a voice of the people and it's service and it's vision, policy, budget, and that's what we're supposed to be doing. And so if we're finding ourselves spending an exorbitant amount of time

it means there's a dysfunction somewhere and i think that we should be working on reducing the amount of hours that are necessary rather than trying to increase the pay to attract other people who are adding dysfunction to government i think you know it is at this level you know if you go to the next level up let's say lake county level then you know and then it's you know everybody's getting paid way more money but then you know like you think of uh of orlando mayor Buddy Dwyer, right? That's his full-time job. That is a full-time job.

I can understand why.

Money attracts, you know, like if you want to get a good CEO, you're going to have to pay a good CEO.

Is a good CEO going to work for $44,000? I mean, that's what I'm saying.

I mean, I can see both sides.

I understand what you're saying. I don't want to just pay all this money and get people to do this with you at the same time. Nobody... don't come out here and really do this, just one of the conversations I get into is the fact that you don't get paid enough for me to do this. You know, I don't get paid, ain't no way you can, you know, what you going through. And for me, Here's the other thing. I deal with it. I get, yeah, I make $100 with that. It used to be $100 more than the council member, but guess what? I spend a lot of money every month because it's a lot of people expect me to be here, there, and everywhere. As a matter of fact, I just got a thing the other night wanting me to be at a function, $300 ticket. Okay. OK. I get these kind of invites all the time. And a lot of times I feel like, as the mayor, I need to show up. And no, I don't go to the city and ask the city to pay for a lot of this stuff. I pay for a lot of these functions myself. So I spend a tremendous amount of money on functions and all this here. Sometimes I do get invited. They would pay for the ticket and everything for me to come if they really want me to be there. And I'd be like, oh, I can't. And they may give me a ticket to pay for my fee and all. But there's a lot of these things that I make. I think I'm up to about $750 a month. And some months I spend almost $2,000 just going to events and doing things.

If it's city business, you should get reimbursed. And I don't mind reimbursements. I'm not worried about that. It's just... creating an environment where people feel like they should have a job as a visionary in your neighborhood. I just don't think that that's good.

Well, that's some people like me. I mean, I did a lot of work in the community, and I still do work in the community without getting paid. Before I was on the council, I was doing I put in a lot of work with the police department out there doing things and running around and never got any conversation. But that means, just like now, I go to a lot of things. I pay for it out of my pocket. I don't ask the city for reimbursement for a lot of it. OK, but it get to be very expensive sometimes. And I can understand where you're staying. She said she could get $10 an hour. And I think I put in a lot more hours than that. I don't think I make $10 an hour.

You probably don't. No, exactly. I just think that you should be proud. I'm not saying that you do it to get rich. Of course not. I'm just saying I think we should be paid more because $600 for all that is required of us in this position, I just don't think it covers. I don't think it's adequate. And again, we want to be able to attract people. who want to come here, who have a heart, because is it fair for someone who wants to serve, but they're in a position where $600 is not feasible for them because they have a family that they're providing for, and now they're taking time away from their family, from their full-time job to come here? I don't think so.

What number do you have in mind?

2,000.

The councilman for a month? Mm-hmm. Wow. Okay. Like I say, some months, I've seen months where I, you know, I keep a log and kind of spend that much money, but not just, you know, for council, but when I go to different activities and different events and everything. Wow. I wasn't looking for that kind of increase.

Good. Could we, on that note, could we just ask for those numbers of what is the current annual that we put aside in the budget at current pay, and what would then be a projected, if that's the number, just so that people know what that means for the budget. I think that's what this session is for. Not to say we approve it or not, but to say this is information that we're seeking to consider in the budget.

And I do think, um, in reading it, I've come to the conclusion, I think it starts for every, after every election. So in other words, let's hypothetically say we've got three positions up in this election. I think it starts right after that election for those three people, for the two who are remaining. I think it would start exactly.

I couldn't, I can't support it to jump to 2000, but, uh, I can probably go to a thousand. 1,700 or 1,200 or whatever.

And I don't think that we, anyone here said that they'd support or not support any item that we've talked about. I think this is just to give some guidance and philosophical and direction for information, inclusion. Right. And we talk about it. I mean, there's lots of things we could talk about that with relation to that. You know, I know that there's like, you talked about, Council Member Strange, about reimbursements for things. I know that there's funds available for that, but it's not real clear to me how that actually, what are those funds actually meant for? And is it per person or is it a pool? And once it's gone, it's gone. And we haven't really talked to, you know, that could be, that could spur that conversation to talk a little bit more about that kind of council pot, if you will, piece of the puzzle and how that works and how that fits. You know what I'd like to say?

It's up to you all, like, just like, like yesterday I had to go up to Leesburg. I make these trips to Leesbury, I make them to Barry's on official business, but I don't even file travel vouchers for them. And sometimes the other day, I'm like, man, gas is getting expensive. I need to start buying gas vouchers. But I do a lot of these trips and things like this back and forth. I can support an increase, but I don't think I can go to $2,000.

I can't see a $2,000 in everything.

So that's a little steep. And we are the largest city. And the other thing I look at, we're the largest city in Lake County. And we're probably the lowest paid council members in Lake County.

i just maintain that our role is to establish the vision or the direct line from the citizens the citizens pay the taxes um i'm not comfortable with an increase i don't think that i don't think we want to be attracting people where the money impacts them i have i have citizens coming to me all the time and telling we don't get paid enough and they i mean like i said i'll have him come to counsel me and try to tell if we need an increase and everything There's no, no, the amount of money it would take for people with the backgrounds that we have to come in and consult for somebody, I mean, it's far more than what we get paid. But we're not consultants, and we're not employees. We're not, we don't work for the government, we work for the people. And the people are paying the taxes. So I just think that that's where I stand on it. Same place I stood last year, and I know we're not saying what we would support or not, but to me, this isn't a budget thing and I'm fully uncomfortable even with the idea of it. And so it's. I can't.

Anything else?

Yeah, I would like to add something while we're talking about paying for things like I talk with the Lake County attorney yesterday and she had brought up the fact that now we have a lot of the land around Excalibur to see if we were open to taking over Excalibur.

What do you mean we got a lot of land around Excalibur? We're not.

Okay. I'm open to it if they fund Hancock. I'm interested why she, because I thought we resolved this. We had a conversation with the assistant county attorney and Stoney and myself earlier this week or last week. Oh, really? Yeah. This looks like an end around to me.

I mean, what land is it around Excalibur that we have?

I'll let you go. I mean, I'm just.

Hey, let's take Excalibur if they'll fund and build Hancock by 2027. Yeah. What's their proposal?

I'm just saying.

Their proposal is just for us to take over maintenance and ownership of it.

Why? Why did you say that?

She just said it's built to city standards, and they asked if we'd take it over.

Because they don't want to have to pay for the lighting and everything we're going to put out there eventually. Hopefully. They said they would still pay for that.

Huh? They said they were still paying for the light.

Well, for now, yeah. Well, they've got their hand tied up right now to pay for the lighting that we're putting out there. I told her I would ask.

Let me just tell you what the substance of our conversation was. The Assistant County Attorney requested that I attend a meeting with Stoney and staff in order to discuss whether or not it was already covered under, we have an agreement, I think, regarding maintenance of certain roads so if we annex or get you know enough over 50 percent of the adjacent properties come into the city then we've agreed already to take it but um and and their position has been that that threshold has been met actually by excalibur staff disagrees. And so we went through the map and showed, now it doesn't, I mean, you as a policy matter can determine that you can choose as a matter of your grace to take it, but under the terms of the agreement, we don't think the threshold's been met.