City Council - workshop

Thank you.

Council will not be voting on any issues at the workshop meeting. The Council also reserved the right to discuss additional items or delete items from the tentative agenda. We hopefully, and right now the thing on the agenda is the proposed fiscal year 2026-27 budget discussion. I'm asked that hopefully we can move through this thing pretty quick this morning. and do a luncheon real quick at 12 and try to be back here by 1, 1.15 or so. So at doing that time, I think it's been set up for you all to be served lunch at that time. Am I right? Yeah. We thank you for the opportunity as we gather here today to begin the budget workshop for the city of Claremont. Recognize that every decision we make affect the lives of our residents and we ask for your wisdom and guidance. As your words say in James 5 and 1, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God and it will be given to him. Lord, grant us wisdom, discernment, and unity as we carefully consider how to steward the resources entrusted to us. So, help us to listen with respect, lead with integrity, and make decisions that serve the best interests of our community today and for the future generation. Bless our city staff, bless our council, bless our first responders, and bless all the residents of the city of Cleveland. May we all continue to look to the Lord for wisdom and guidance in all the decisions we make for the betterment of the people here in the city of Cleveland.

Thank you Mr. Mayor. Just to give you a format, the plan is to finish today at 4 o'clock because there's going to be a planning and some meeting here in this room so the staff needs some time to set up here. So that's the plan. And then again, we'll gather again tomorrow at 9. Daniel Webster will be here at 8.30 for anybody that would like to meet him in the lobby here tomorrow morning to say goodbye to us before the end of his term. So he'd like to be here. He'll be discussing a grant with us as well. I want to make you aware July 21st there is a strong possibility we will not have a quorum want to make everybody aware that we're having some scheduling conflicts on july 21st okay okay all right so we could we couldn't change that day that's why we tried to change the book okay yeah i'm trying to squeeze it all in okay yeah just people traveling right now the budget you have in front of you uh the finance department staff as you know have worked many hours to give you a budget and present it to you. Lots of negotiating and trading, horse trading and changes, so we are eager for your off of our ad valorem and the things we have coming in for our income, but we would have to make some investments for the capital projects and different projects that would have to come out of our reserves. So we put this in front of you for you to tell us what you would like to have happen for our different projects. You've expressed an interest over this past year on many, many of these things we're presenting to you. We just want you that looks like so we're eager to get your input on that our current reserve and i'll go let scott get into these more with you but we're right around 24 million dollars we're projecting that we're going to have our rate of growth this year as of right now from the property appraiser's office looks like 10.6 to give you perspective last year we had growth of over 300 And that was a 10.9% growth. But to give you perspective, we actually had more growth this year. We saw growth of $392 million. So even though the percentage is lower, it's because we have a higher rate of value. But Claremont's continuing to grow. There's been annexations this past year. There's been lots of new growth that has taken place as well. Strong stable position financially, and I think with wise decisions will continue to be in that situation and a good stable position. So we're not looking with fear at this, but with optimism and hope. Continue to work diligently to look at all the cost savings we can make. This budget is not laying off any of our current employees, so we continue to be diligent to. look at other things that we can look at because we have a great work team here and we want to continue to make sure Claremont stays healthy and strong for many years to come with the we can do, even beyond the budget. We will continue to look for cost savings. That will be our goal continuously. It has since I've been here, and they continue to look at that. So even after this has been printed, we're still looking at options and opportunities. So thanks for letting me just open up with you to share a few things with you. And I will let Scott take it from here with his presentation. And the plan is to let the parks department then direct to share, and then they'll tag along with that trails with Jim Mayweather and then police is going to share and then fire and public services and then the other departments to follow as well so we'll see how quickly we can get through these with you but we hope that we've answered your questions as we go through this and if you have further questions please just let us know we'll do our research and due diligence between sessions or the next day so thanks again for the chance to share with you guys today we all your work you're doing in this. So I'm going to turn it over to you.

Thanks, Rick. I'm going to check. Hopefully this picks me up. Thank you, Rick. I'm going to give you about an eight to ten slide presentation, give you a 30,000 foot overview of the document before you. and where we are in the process, and talk a little bit in depth about what resources are available to the city council, both currently and in the future. Just a PSA for our crowd. The documents that the council had before them is also available on the city's website, the review of the finance department links. Kyle is bringing that up as we speak on the monitors here within the council chambers, including all the department presentations, which the director will give to you over the next couple of days. in the appendix section. IT limitations doesn't allow us to stream this, but I'm gonna be, over the next few moments, working off this, and then, of course, be glad to answer any questions you have. So first off, just to set the table, we're already in the process. Of course, as you know, we have workshops scheduled over the next two days. The one thing that we do absolutely need direction on from the city council coming out of these two meetings is direction on the maximum millage rate. As a reminder, this is the rate that we'll bring before you in the form of a resolution at the July 28th meeting. This represents the proposed millage rate that will be advertised by the Lake County property appraiser to all property owners in the city of Claremont. That rate will be, as the name states, the maximum rate. After passage and before we conclude this process in September, council will still retain the right to reduce that rate, but you'll be establishing at the July 28th council meeting what that maximum rate is, the duty direction on these two meetings. And the trend and budget hearings are already scheduled in September. A reminder, those are Thursday evening meetings on the 10th and the 24th, and that'll wrap up this process. All right. highlights about the proposed budget before you begin with the general fund on the surface you just look at total revenues over total expenditures it's presented to you at a deficit of 6.5 million dollars as you recall we recently passed a comprehensive budget policy within that policy we included a definition that how we define what a structurally balanced budget is And essentially it means taking out your non-recurring items on both the revenue and expense side. When you go through that exercise, we get that deficit down to approximately $1.5 million within a reasonable range given that we are conservative with revenue projections and given the status of our reserves, which I'll talk about in more detail here in a few moments. Another highlight of this proposal is the creation of the communications department, which was previously discussed at city council meeting. We have a full budget prepared for that, which the city manager's office will go through on their second of these workshops. And then finally at the end, I'm gonna talk more in depth about this, but as Rick said, we have a healthy fund balance reserve. We have a number of high profile projects and services that are in the current year budget, that for various reasons are still not ready to move forward with completely. So those are not included in this proposed budget for you, but we're gonna discuss a solution where if these are still priority projects for the council, how we can dedicate funds towards that for the point in time when they are ready to move forward with. In terms of revenues, as Rick said, double-digit growth again this year. This is actually the fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth, which is amazing. And I don't know that another city within the county could say that. One important thing to note here as it really is lost in all of the discussions and the news about the ballot initiative that's related to in November. is a change in how the state calculates what the maximum village rate is. And it's a pretty significant change. In prior years, anything above the rollback rate and up to a certain point higher than that, you could still pass with a simple majority vote. That has changed. Now effective this year is that anything above the rollback rate now requires a two-thirds vote of council. So partly out of that reason, So for instance, the current year, our millage rate is 4.59%. The rollback rate that we have already received from the Lake County property appraiser is 4.36. Partly out of concern for that new voting requirement on the maximum millage, the budget before you is presented at the rollback rate of 4.36. Now, if the council would so choose to adjust that rate, whether higher or lower, for a frame of reference, 0.1 in either direction. It's a change of approximately $700,000 in revenue to the City of Jungle Funds. On the enterprise side, we're in the new fiscal year. This will be the last of a five-year rate ordinance that was passed back in 2023. So the rate adjustments have already been established for the water and sewer funds. 3% increase on the water rates, 8% increase on the sewer rates, And then on the sanitation, the city a number of years ago established that it will follow the Florida Public Services Commission rate change. On sanitation, that'll be a 4.5% adjustment in the new year. I'm sure you can think of yourself, what is the status of the rate study? We are very close to concluding that process, and Stoney may be able to speak more in detail about that when we get to the public services portion.

Before we start, let me ask a question back on the last slide and make sure I understand this. Because you're saying now, even if we were to try to keep the millage rate the same as it is now, 4.59, we still have a two-third vote now with the change.

That is correct. Anything above the rollback rate requires a two-thirds vote. Yeah, that is a big change. In terms of personnel, and all the directors, when they present to you, we'll go into more detail. This is a summary of the requested new positions by the directors. In total, 17.5 positions at a total wages and benefit cost of $1.4 million. And you can see here how we have that split. Nine individuals with general fund impact of $612,000. And on the enterprise side, 8.5 at an impact of $831,000. In your department presentations, we've included a work chart and personnel counts, and again, the directors will be able to speak more specifically and in detail about those when we get to most of the sections. In terms of capital, in total, we presented a plan to you at $44.6 million, with a five-year projections out within the capital section. In college development, next slide, the way that is broken down, On the governmental side, $19.6 million in projects, and here's a listing of just some of the higher-profile projects that are included. Keep in mind, this 19.6 is not just general fund. About 6.8 of that is in general fund. My government activities, I'm also referring to the impact fee funds, Fund 320, those resources as well. As you see, we've included sidewalk, street resurfacing of 1.5, which I believe is the same amount we had in this current year. We've included Bishop Field and Fire Station 2 and 5 projects as well. And then on the enterprise side, $25 million worth of capital investments. We have rebudgeted for Hartwick Marsh. It's in the current year. did not begin that project, but we have a budgeted reclaimed storage of $4 million and sanitation plan for station of 3.1. These are just a few of the projects that are listed in the plan.

Scott, as we go through this process, can we somehow identify what are projects that were in the 26 budget that were not completed and therefore are moving forward in the 27 Because at that point, it seems to me, and I wonder if we all see it the same way, that if we're using any reserves that were created by not funding those projects in 26, it's not like we're increasing, we're not necessarily increasing the government as a whole, we're just moving that money forward into the fiscal year 27. In other words, I don't want a sense that we're punishing staff for not getting things done necessarily in a particular year. So at least if I could stay longer. So but I'd like the public to be aware that this is kind of a rollover project. Does this make sense?

Yeah, I think it does. But I think if we're going to do that, I think we have to identify where the initial funding came from. Because the initial funding may have been reserves. So if it was reserves and it's being rolled over as reserves, it's still starting from reserves. That's fair. And so I think that that's part of the conversation. If we want to have that, we should talk about where the initial funding came from as well.

Because I think one of the biggest challenges we're going to have is really how do we handle these unrestricted reserves? And the simpler that we can make that process, I think the better for us and also for the public who sees how we're handling that money. Because we do need to do something with it, whatever that is. And so it seems like some of these rollover projects might create a clear way for us to communicate that.

I think I asked you once. months ago to go ahead and look at all the projects that was not completed in 26 that we had budgeted for and so we can get a breakdown on that so I think I think you've already done that for us what she's asking so I asked for that a couple months ago there's not a simple paid adoption within your budget that would summarize that for you but we could easily produce it and we'll bring it to you

All right, good transition. The last section of the presentation is talking about the general fund and the unassigned fund balance. Again, these are, unassigned fund balance is a portion of the overall fund balance of any fund, which are, Discretionary dollars available to the city council to dedicate toward whatever services or projects that you see fit. And this has been much discussed topic over the years. And this slide gives you a 5 year history of the evolution of our reserve fund balance within the general fund. So if you follow it down, as City Manager alluded to, this is as of the conclusion of our most recent fiscal year, the total unassigned fund balance was $36.6 million. Now you do a calculation to back out what portion is required by policy to stay in reserves, our rainy day fund, if you will, our emergency fund, however you want to describe it, that brings our unassigned amount down to $23.8 million. This current year, we're projecting we're going to be pretty close to be right on balance on wealth and revenue and expenditure side. The actual results, obviously, is to be determined. But for purposes of our budget planning in this topic, we're going with this figure of $23.8 million.

Scott, what is the 25% of?

Of operating costs.

Well, I guess that's my question. If I notice me now, 25% is 12 million. Does that mean the operating cost? I thought when I went through the budget, we had a higher operating cost this coming year. Well, the budget hasn't been approved yet. Yeah. What about the other 25? Correct. And one of the other questions while I'm thinking about it is the fact that I anticipate we're going to probably end up with a lot of net services, which And I know I talked to you before about increasing 25% to 30%. We're ready to do that. When you go out and look at debt services, wouldn't that help us with better interest rates? Wouldn't we show a higher reserve?

Well, status of reserves is certainly a factor among many factors when rating agencies or banks review our financial position. Yeah, just add one-fifth of the $12 million. Another $2.5 million, $3 million. I'm just, you know, anything. but as I said in there, the status of our reserves is certainly a factor in their process. Typically in this, sorry to get off on a tangent, but typically the last true rating that the city of Claremont did for any type of issuance was nearly 20 years ago. Most issuances nowadays are in the form of private placements with banks. So for instance, when we did the 2024 issuance for the wastewater treatment plant, we had based bid on what that industry would be. We did not get a credit agency rating for that issuance. That's been pretty typical now.

So on that, because I share the same questions about what we should be willing. Can you define operating expenditures for me? And I'm looking at the fund summary where we have personnel operating capital debt, grants, and other. Is it personnel and operating?

It's personnel and operating, correct. Okay, then last slide. So question is, as Rick alluded to, what is to be done with that unassigned fund balance? As I said at the outset, we have three high-profile projects and services that are in the current year budgets. that are still in a state of not ready to move forward with, those being EMS transport, potential land purchases downtown, and the parking garage. So since we have not included those in the current year budget, what we are recommending the council is entertain the idea of through the passage of a resolution, make an adjustment on the city's balance sheet, move those funds whatever funds you determine are necessary, from an unassigned fund balance account into an assigned fund balance account. In other words, in layman's terms, making a statement via a resolution saying, we are going to save $6 million of this, or whatever it might be, $6 million of this unreserved fund balance for this specific purpose, or $5.3 million for this specific purpose, Therefore, whenever we get to the point in time to where those projects or services are ready, you've already got a nest egg, if you will, available and ready to dedicate towards them. These are three examples that I pulled for the presentation simply because they are in the current year budget and we're not moving forward with them as of yet, but we could take that approach with any type of project or any type of service that the council needs work. If, though, following this example, we were to follow that, and based on the projections within this initial proposed budget, that would reduce that unreserved fund balance down to $6.5 million. So you're closer to that 23%, excuse me, that 25% requirement within our policy. And you're making a public statement that we are reserving these resources for future use.

With regard to the resolution, and I know our city attorney's not here, so if we have to defer until he does get here, we can. Essentially, doing the resolution, my understanding is legally we can't tie the hands of a future council, but it is making a statement, essentially that while these 15 million, in your example, 15 rough million dollars there of fund balance, unreserved fund balance, we're going to reserve, quote unquote, it for these projects. But if a future council decided they wanted to use that for something else, what would be the mechanism by which that council would in the fund?

Well, I will certainly defer to Mr. Brown on that question.

My assumption is that that council would have to essentially undo the resolution and then allocate the funds. So it does have an extra little layer in there, but it really doesn't It reserves it, but it doesn't put it in a lockbox. If we're talking about that, if you remember back in 2000, and lock that away for just that project only and forever and perpetually.

Well, and what I like about it is we're communicating to the public what we see as viable projects, good projects, but we're not putting staff or even ourselves in a place where we're saying, we need to hurry up and do this right now. It's more, this is what we see for the future of our city, and this is what we deem appropriate. And frankly, we've talked about elections before, it allows the public to say we like that, we don't like that, we wanna make a change, we don't wanna make a change. And so I do like the idea of not having this carrying over us for another year. I consider it a priority from my perspective to address what are we doing with these funds, these public funds? And if it means we're setting it aside for the future, fine. I like the idea that there's some sort of resolution that we, I like that mechanism that staff came up with, is my point. But I do agree, I think it doesn't tie the hands, and we all know that going into it. It's just what we think is appropriate, and then the public can comment on it, I guess.

Just a quick question. On the 25% that's mandated, is that mandated in a lockbox type of thing, that we have to have that amount of money that can't be touched? Or can that be included and then refilled?

So the 25% is by internal policy. That is part within the unreserved category of the funding balance. We could very easily, based off that policy, move that into a assigned or reserved category. We haven't historically done that. And that's muddied the discussion around what the available fund balance is. So that is something we probably should be doing. But we have been very good about communicating that policy. That concludes my remarks. I'll be glad to answer any other questions that 30,000 of you have.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

So in our current year review, our gross revenues continue to increase. So we've been going up about $200,000 a year every year pretty consistently. We'll probably exceed that this year. You guys can look it up. We're through the first six months for about $160,000 in gross revenue above last year's first six months. Now, that doesn't mean we're gonna be 320,000 because our revenue is seasonal. We do bring in less money over the summer because we don't have shows Our signature events, our net revenue and signature events, has continued to improve. Corey and Heather have done a great job on getting sponsors for a lot of our programs. So a couple of our programs actually on the operational budget side actually did better than break even. So our Halloween event, Light Up, and the parade in Champion Forest all made money. Most of our events, again, are doing better. than they did the year before. The Jazz Festival, the first year we did, we were $69,000 expense over revenue, but we do think that over time we could get much closer to break even on that between increases in attendance, more sponsors, increases in ticket revenue. So we do feel good about that. There was a lot of great feedback on that. Our performing arts remain strong. are our rental revenues up $75,000 through the first six months of this fiscal year. Contracted program revenue is up. Program parking revenue is up. And then we could go . Keep going.

Brian, I'm sorry. Just a clarification. Sorry. In budgeting, parentheses typically means deficit. So are these all deficits?

I'm sorry. Those are net. So yes, the parentheses is a deficit.

Correct. OK. So if I'm reading this correctly, then National Night Out. Correct. The debt.

So the, thanks for, we'll go back to that. So National Night Out, two years ago, our net deficit was 2,140. OK. This year, our net deficit was 1,300. OK.

So the ones in the black then were actually the ones that were in the black. Correct. Thank you.

I just want to make sure I understood that correctly. Thank you. The ones in the black. made money on the operational side. Thank you. So projects completed. We resurfaced the pool. We resurfaced the basketball courts at Waterfront Park and Powell. We resurfaced the keeler shuffleboard court. And we replaced the shade fabric at the splash park. Projects in progress. The artificial turf shelter, which was just awarded, Hancock Park restroom in Yishang. That's impact fees that's paying for that. It's going a little slower than I hoped. The engineer, we're working on capacity. and the engineer was originally calculating capacity based on the parking lot, and the parking lot does not cover the capacity of the park, so that had to be redone, so that's what the, that's what the hold up on that, and Bishop Field, well, they're gonna start the committee on that. Project's on hold, so.

The engineer, so is restroom going,

near the quad, the new restroom going into the quad, and out of impact fees. The engineer is calculating capacity based on doing the lift station and all that kind of stuff. So the original numbers on whether a lift station was required was based on the parking lot. They estimated numbers using the park based on the parking lot, but the parking lot does not is not sufficient for that part being full. So it has to be recalculated. We know about projects on hold. So we talked about converting all of the fielding port lights to LED. We went through the RFP process. The RFP has been scored in conversations with the city manager. We're holding on that for budget reasons. A lump sum, if we paid a lump sum fee, final figure is not negotiated. So that is in Freddie would do that. But the lump sum would be around $2 million. Without it, this is around. And if we paid it out over time, depending upon how many years and what the lump sum was, it would be $200,000 to $400,000 a year based on, again, how many years and what the final total was. So if that is on hold for budget reasons, Victory Point Playground is also on hold for budget reasons. We're going to get to a little bit more of that in the second The property at the BW dealership is really honestly no progress has been made on that because I'm honestly not sure what we can do with that property. And City Hall stated that project was canceled a couple weeks ago. So, Brian, where is Meters in the Middle at? Meters in the Middle is still there. It's going. Meters in the Middle is still part of it. Is there a time frame where we have to utilize that money? I've spoken to Live Well about that. They just need to know when the money is going to be used for their reasons. So they're aware of that and they're waiting for the instruction. So the thing with the Live Well money is for the tiered seating and they are expecting the rest to be part of the project.

And Live Well, so you all know, to clarify on that, they have to spend 5% each year as a foundation. So what Brian's referring to, and he says for their own internal purposes, it's for them to manage their cash flows to make sure that they're hitting their 5%. So from what I gather in my conversations with representatives of Live Well, they don't necessarily, they're not necessarily saying you need to spend the money this year, but they are saying please tell us if you're not going to spend the money this year so that we can give that money away not that money, but give that amount away this year, and we'll put you on next year's docket. So they're just in good faith saying, keep us in the loop on what your plans are.

And are we getting penalized because we're not spending it so we can then go back to the well? We're not.

Oh, I don't know if the city's at all is getting penalized because the money's sitting there.

Well, not penalizing and beating money, but penalizing, you know, we want to get an additional amount. By us not utilizing it, does that give them a statement that, well, we don't need it? A year ago, and yet we're not moving on it. So can we move on that fortune?

That's honestly absurd.

have it incorporated into the overall plan or something, but at least show some good faith that we're getting something done instead of being like the government and just, you know, it's one step forward and five backwards. You know?

As Brian said, if I'm not mistaken, in July, we should be having a presentation from Powell with where we stand with everything, because engineering and everything, how we could, you know, I guess direction looking for direction from Austin which way to go from there and I'm thinking I was last told he uh hopefully when we have a council meeting so we're gonna go back to the 52-point playground for a second so the number one there's a number one on the bottom and number two on the top so I

I've reached out to several contractors that have piggybacked eligible contracts to build a playground. We have $250,000 budgeted in this year's budget. Again, this project is on hold. With port in place and due to grading, the area that was number one, which was my first choice, came back at about $500,000, and the area number two on top came back at a little over $400,000. So again, this is on hold. You know, Main Street was interested in funding a Victory Point playground. I know we did something similar with Kiwanis and an expansion of Felter, so if Council's interested in letting Main Street fund it, it certainly doesn't hurt my feelings.

Well, Brian, I hear it and I know people ask about playgrounds and that, but I

I sit here and I look and say we're going to put another break around right here in Victor Thorn when we got one that's going to pour them out right there to West Beach. Why don't we just extend that one a little bit?

I think the idea behind this is this one's much closer to the middle. I know that I've had conversations with different people from the public about how when you are downtown in a waterfront park and you're extending through the downtown area that when you have a five-year-old or a three-year-old going, walking that. So West Beach Park is a long walk when you're going past the boathouse. So that was the reason that we looked at Victory Point as an area for a playground, something that was substantial at Victory Point. So I didn't want, again, I was talking to the contractors and other staff was talking to the contractors something substantial. When the screen comes up, there's an example.

How does Council feel if it's in the budget for $250,000, if Main Street took over the bidding out, the responsibility for construction of this project, Are we comfortable with staff allocating some of those funds that we already have budgeted toward it to supplement or to give Main Street like a seed kind of grant, so to speak, so they can try to go get it matched somewhere? I like that idea. I do agree. And to answer your question, Tim, I've got three young children, and they're very active. And we go downtown a lot. We have a church downtown. So we go to the farmer's market every Sunday, and it's kind of their afternoon outing. and they never go to West Park. I mean, it's just too far, and you're going past so many houses and kind of open space, and it's just too far for the kids. If anything, if we go that direction, we tend to go to Hiawatha because it's a bigger park, and we can take the dog, and it's under the shade, and so it's just kind of, there's more likely to be people because it's a larger park, so I think having something in downtown, whether it's, There's maybe other sites in downtown. I know Main Street's looking to partner with us on the one on 12th and is it just Montrose? Montrose. And even that is kind of outside of kind of the downtown activity, I think. So wherever we put it in kind of the central downtown area, I could be supportive of that. I'd also support if we wanted to put that on the CRA board to maybe fund it through the CRA. I like that idea, too.

Well, yeah. I was going to ask about that, because I think this comes to a philosophical question of what is the overall parks plan? And I know that we've had fire do their five-year, police do theirs. I think parks is going to be coming, or we're going to have one. I think it might make sense to look at this from the bigger picture standpoint of what is the overarching plan for our neighborhood parks and what is the role in particular of within the CBD the Central Business District and the CRA in can we get the cra more involved and engaged with these projects and you know um i think i said out loud uh at a meeting that i had asked our city attorney about the composition of the cra right and um you know i i view this as an opportunity for them to really take ownership of what's happening within that redevelopment area And provide guidance in a kind of like in a P what P and Z does for developments. They could do for within the CRA provide that 1st level of review conversation. Recommendations, and then it comes to the council with all that information and then we have that final discussion there. Might might that be something we would want to. still do but also think about it from the standpoint of how does it fit into the overall plan for the parks um rather than you know spending 200 000 here when really it makes more sense if we've got west beach victory point the tot lot and then across the 12th um are we better served, you know, kind of pooling those resources to make sure that we're not overlapping and there might be some duplication we need to do just based off proximity because kids aren't, I don't want to, you know, we don't want kids necessarily walking miles to go to your toddler. But also to make sure that you know, we're providing good ample opportunity and capturing the place of it as well. So that if there's something unique about the place where the park is that could, okay, let's draw something here that this is where you go for that. In addition to some of the other traditional things. and then this is how west fits in or this is how the tot lot fits in this is how it meets in the middle yeah you know that uh finally takes off uh what how that fits in all these keoler uh uh and all these other different things and not to mention if we get the dehoyas properties eventually um there is that second piece that is off of osceola that i know people have talked about some sort of recreation or parks i just think that we could really be more comprehensive with it rather than just you know Throwing the money I I want to do something but I also want to make sure that we're doing it in a concentrated or collective way with a plan I Completely agree with everything they said Brian what I like To see is that we can move forward

with some sort of process. And maybe it's like a workshop in August where we could bring in the CRA members. We can call it a joint workshop so that it can be public. And then maybe invite in Main Street, invite in the recreation people that work with us something where we're yes maybe we break it into two parts where we're talking okay here's cra here's downtown which is part of the overall recreation plan the reason why i like august is because we need to make final decisions in september and so i'm thinking if we could set up something in august with the cra and community members stakeholders in the downtown area and then also the stakeholders who work with us I'm thinking everyone who's ever bought a ticket to the Performing Arts Center, like literally emailing out all these people to say, hey, we're having, we're bringing now the NRPA study. We want to talk about, we could address it in two parts. How do we handle the CRA moving forward? Do we want to break it out into a different composition than it is now? And then also the parks plan so that we can have final answers on the issue of parks and recreation when we come into the budget for 27 and maybe even, From that, I could see a group of people who are working on, and we kind of talked about the recreation committee. I could see a group of people working on what's our five-year plan for recreation, and we're going to hear about trails. I think that's going to end up being part of that conversation. How do we feel about something like that?

I think it's a great idea. I mean, I think, you know, we need to get somebody that can do like a physical... How do we know where all of these parts could be? I don't think any of us can know that, but we need to get somebody that does have that knowledge.

And to your point, Bill, about not wanting to be the government one step forward, five steps back, I resonate with that. I agree with you. And I think what I'm sensing from this group is the desire to make sure that when we're spending the taxpayer dollars, that we're doing it with wisdom and temperance. And that can be slower. I don't feel... like we're intentionally not moving forward with something, as much as we don't have the information that we need to be able to make a high-level decision, which is what we need to be making, so that the lower-level decisions are easier, and it's just us saying, oh yeah, that's consistent with the vision. Mr. Van Weiner, do we have a workshop in August? Is it already scheduled? Or is there anything on the agenda yet? Okay, so we have August 18th for a workshop. Do we want to call that as a joint CRA? How do we feel about that recreation and joint CRA workshop?

Yeah, I agree with that. And we can kind of get some ball rolling and have that conversation. I'd love to get our current CRA member input on composition of the CRA. Yeah, my opinion with workshops is that we can do those when the folks who are engaging, because it's not business, we're not actually voting on an item, that we could do that a little bit more flexibly. 10 o'clock.

Well, I will say, I don't mind that for the CRA, but I think if we start talking about the Parks and Recreation users, we may run into people who are used to doing their business at kind of five o'clock and later. Just because those are the people who run the leagues and they tend to do nighttime activities. So they do their work during the day. I'm sure if they're off, they'd be happy to come. But they tend to be people whose business runs from kind of five to 10 at night. What do we think about maybe starting at three? And that way the business owners can be here during business hours? And then 4-2? Yeah, that could take a little more time. So that way if the recreation starts around 4-30-ish, that gives them a chance to... 3 o'clock is good.

We're talking about the 21st of August?

The 18th of August.

Brian, I want you to keep in mind that Reed and I asked a question earlier about victory appointment. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but they specialize in parks and everything. And we went throughout the city at that time, and we looked at Victory Point, we looked at West Beach, we looked at several areas throughout the mountain for this park, and they settled on that one at West Beach. And that's how they're parking, they're getting there. They actually put it in there for the first three in charge. I was on the committee, on the staff and everything. I went through the city at the time. I went to Cahoon. They actually did that whole park in two days. Once they decided upon it, they came in, got the volunteers, Disney and everybody came in. So that's why I'm saying why don't we expand on that one rather than going back to Victory Point. I can't remember what it was about Victory Point they said wasn't built for a park.

Well, I think both are great locations, honestly. And that's why I like the idea of engaging with the community members. I think that's the kind of thing that we address in the workshop for sure. And are we comfortable with these three work for everyone? And then you said it's a two.

It is primary election day. I don't know if that is. Oh, it is. Yeah, August 18 is primary election day. I forgot about that. Yeah. We don't have one in the city, but there are items on the ballot that our residents will be voting on.

Well, then maybe more people will vote.

And I know that we've had P&Z meetings in the past on Election Day, because those fall on that first Tuesday of November, and typically P&Z meets on that first Tuesday. So we do have a history of doing that. But I throw that out there just for people's scheduled understanding that. We may run into some issues with people's availability depending on if they're working polls or when they vote.

So Valerie just told me that she's not going to be here that day. Yeah.

Oh, well, that's one. Can she participate remotely? No, I'm not working. Okay. Are there other dates in August?

The week before is council. It's council, yeah. Yeah. If we know we're going to do it right now, all we have are four first readings and a final nuisance abatement.

I mean, there's not that much on it right now. We're talking about 25th? 11th, sorry. I just want to note there is talk of a closed session on the 11th of August

That has been suggested by our city attorney.

If you're committed to it being done, I think we can.

I think we all should be committed to it being done, and I'm fine with that. If we want to do, what do we think about maybe doing that and having a parks workshop at 530 after the meeting? So we do two o'clock CRA, do our meeting. It doesn't look like it's gonna be Tara Noong, and we call it Parks Workshop at 5.30, so people in the public can come.

What do we think?

It's committing us to two and a half hours, but right now, like I said, the only things on the agenda are the first readings, and I think

That sounds fine. Why don't we have a little, some little update first. Next.

It's going to be a long day. Does that work for you? Yes, yes. The 11? Can you text Jenny and make sure she's available? Is she allowed to do that? That's fine. It's just Jenny.

Maybe staff. Maybe staff.

Maybe staff. And 530 is the park one?

Is that what we're asking?

Does that work for everyone? Do we have to call that as a joint meeting? And the closed session?

The closed session would be, I believe, around 2 or 2.30. Is that correct?

That's going to happen. On the 11th.

That's the 11th.

That's when the attorney's coming, so it matters that we give him the time, sir.

Mr. Watt. Yes, sir.

Well, we're just trying to figure out we've got what we're talking about is the overall parks plan, a desire to have maybe a five year plan so that we can make short term decisions that we know they're consistent with the five year plan, but also the CRA and how that plays into it and the possibility of changing the composition of the CRA board And so then the pressure of, obviously, we're in budgeting, so we want to have a final budget, and we want to be done with these kinds of decisions before the final budget comes around. So we're actually dealing with the issues of how to call the right meetings at the right times. We know one of our members is not here on the 18th, which is the workshop date. Could we do the closed session on the 18th? Is that a possibility? What if we do the closed session on the 18th, and we reserve it for the recreation meetings?

That's the only Tuesday that hasn't been verified with the outside council firm, but I can do that now while we're sitting here and seeing. That would be great.

Why don't we look at the Parks and Rec on the 18th? Or do we like trying to do it after?

I'd like to do it after.

Okay. It's still fresh. August 11th.

So preferred August 11th, 2 o'clock CRA, 3 o'clock Council, 530 Parks and Rec. workshop and then the 18th shade session, if it works.

If it works, yes. And what time would that be on the 18th? There you go.

I'm good any time.

OK. And it's on. Am I able to participate via phone? Oh, absolutely. Or a shade session? Yeah. OK. Because I'll be at a conference, but I'll take the call. Yes. OK. Mr. .

Is that 3? Yeah.

Yeah, that's fine.

Okay.

Could we just do that whole thing by teams? Do we have to do it in person? Yes.

You have to have a quorum in person. Sorry.

I'm jealous.

It's supported by a real source company.

I'm just being offended. Okay. I just thought it might make it easier for that attorney as well. Can he show up by teams?

Yes. Because we're looking at both. They could. They want to be here.

Is it the same attorney as last time?

It's Doug Noah, N-O-A-H. And I know that there's a second attorney they want to bring. I'm not sure who it is.

Oh, and then the question, when we do the CRI meeting, does it need to be a joint workshop? Does that matter since it's all the same five people? Normally we'd do a workshop and we'd all be there and the CRA board would be there, but since the CRA board is comprised of us plus two, do we need to have a workshop?

Do you want the CRA to be a part of this? And then notice it as it joins?

Workshop. Or should we make it a meeting?

Do you want to make decisions? If you want to take action, then it's got to be a meeting. If you just want to discuss it, then it's a meeting.

and then we formulate the decision and then notice that we're actually making the decision.

And who would make a decision on the composition of the CRA? Is that the council or the CRA?

It's a good question. It's the council. It's the council.

So joint workshop. Tracy, did you catch all that? All right.

It all did tax cut.

I have a question. It's literally like Easter eggs. You find the good ones? You find the easy ones? All right. All right, Brian.

All right, so this is just a rendering of an example, just to swing back of what $400,000 to $500,000 of a playground equipment with a board in place would get. So it's not a final design of anything. It's just an idea of what that is.

Do we have a way to publish this in the moms groups or can you publish it so I can share it in the moms groups on Facebook and whatnot?

Yeah, it's in the... This is just online? Yeah, it's part of the packet. Not requesting any additional staff in the new fiscal year.

Are we filling the position that was being vacant?

So we're... It's there. We classified it a little bit to Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Manager. We're holding it until after the November election. And if the measure fails, the property tax measure fails, we'll fill it at that time. If it passes, we'll release us.

So I was going to ask, of the 33 FTE that you currently have, how many are vacant?

I have an administrative assistant who will be noticed as of beginning of next month and that position will be held and will be picked up by other staff until November and one of the So as of next month, two and a half are held. OK. Thank you.

I might be grabbing a stump. And if I am, I apologize to everybody in advance. Has there been any conversation with the police chief about community? I'm so sorry. What are they called? Chief? Community what? Oh, yeah. CSOs.

Community service officer.

Thank you. I want to use the right name. Community service officer, which are different but have similarity in their public-facing function with Parks Rangers. And to me, there seems to be a potential for efficiency if there was only one group of people that had public-facing functions. And I don't know how to do it. I'm not telling you how to do it. Have you two chatted is my real question.

Just briefly mentioned, but I think we're on the page right now, that the arrangers serve an essential function that is different than what that position is. So when we get to closing parks and managing that aspect of making sure restrooms are maintained

in that conversation about it is anyone else interested in seeing kind of a comparison of what those two positions do or am i on an island i'm talking about i don't know if we suppose you know sometimes we could be micromanaging that's true yeah but i'm thinking if we're funding positions in the budget like one of the questions is for another cso and so although we're not Requesting more positions in parks and rec. We are requesting more positions on the CSO side. And so for me to understand the request And I want to be able to put my judgment on it wonder it's but if I'm out of line, I'm out of line I don't think I think we need to leave this.

Yes, so with the police department and not try to mix that with parks and lakes But I did have a question on personnel, though, because maybe I'm not reading this right or nothing, but when I looked through your budget on page 111, you said arts and recreation personnel, you actually reduced

three divisions doesn't change the doesn't because we're going to combine um the performing arts division with the art with the arts division to that's how we're going forward doesn't change the numbers but we went through i went through with my staff and with human resources on where the most logical place is for positions to be budgeted there were certain positions that were Places that didn't make as much sense. And I don't know, you know, just a matter of historically, like we had Rangers and, you know, certain times we had Rangers budgeted out of the arts division, which they had really no business being there. I'm not sure how they got there. I think they were kind of spread throughout the divisions.

some of what happened well the office manager was in the arc and moved that position to 572 to the parks and recreation division that was it it's not really a it's a shift it's not a change yeah but i'm looking at last year you were saying you had 12.5 people let's give them the odds of record this year you were looking only looking for 10 10 and a half so you're reducing it too but i also see a proposed increase in personnel cost of 131 000 if we reduce

If you look on page 117 of the workbooks, on the ox and crab, you've got personnel costs.

Last year it was only $896, but then in 27 you asked for $1.27, which is $131,000 increase, but then when I look at your personnel, shot on page 121, 26, you had 12 and a half people, and then in 27, you're asking for 10 and a half. So that's two people reduction, but 131. So where is the first one most coming from?

of all departments. There's actually three variables that drive increases in personnel costs beyond staffing changes. One is we do include a presumed increase in health insurance. And in this case this year, And in the case of vacancies or new positions, we make the presumption that that position will be filled by a person who elects to choose the most expensive option. So it's a conservative budgeting approach. Second variable, of course, are pension contributions, which is at a fixed rate but is driven by changes in salary levels. Then the third level, our third variable, is we do have a mid-year anticipated adjustment in salaries based off the annual merit reviews. We presume that at the highest level as authorized by the city manager. Of course, based on the individual reviews, that actual percentage could be slightly lower, but we do budget it at the highest level possible.

Well, and Tim, if you look at page 120 and 121, you can see 2.5 increase in parks and rec 0.5 decrease in special events, so now we're in that too, and if you come to Arts and Recreation Center, you see 12.5 to 10.5, so it's two reductions, so I see the shift, but when you ask that question, what stands out to me, and tell me if I'm reading this wrong, or if I'm thinking about it wrong, because maybe I'm thinking about it wrong, but it seems to me that all of the swim and lifeguard related positions I hate to shit on you. I'm sorry. I hate to shit on you. But it seems like they would be more appropriately allocated under the Arts and Recreation Center versus Parks and Rec. And if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But it seems like that's where they live. I do.

So, yeah. Well, if you go back, like I said, I guess what I'm looking at is you're right and you got the Arts and Rec. If you look at everything I would, looking at that as well, I would think, I thought about the same thing, why aren't lifeguards under Arts and Rec? However, you know, I think about it, because we also have Waterfront Park, and I think we used to provide water, we used to anyway, I don't know if we still provide lifeguards down here or not.

We don't have So, yes, and I thought about that too. I was, I'm thinking about the ARC as kind of two separate entities, meaning the gym and the pool is Parks and Recreation and the rest of it is the ARC. That's how I was thinking of it. That's why they're here.

I can accept that, but then again, I can still go back and I'd like to say, when I look on page 121, we have the Arts and Recreation arts and recs personnel and action personnel, you're asking for 10 and a half, reducing it by two. Then again, I go back to 117, where you have so-called the budget part. And Mr. Scott, I hear that because down at the bottom of 117, I see there are one, two, I guess, account one two three zero zero group insurance i see the increase 158 000 life insurance thank you but still that's not that's going to be a 45 000 increase in health insurance you're still looking at uh well if you take the 45 and you're still looking at almost 90 90 And I'm just trying to figure out why that due to pay raises or what.

Could that be like the vacancy factor? Do you factor that in and that's what that increase is? In the event, let's say there is a vacancy with two personnel, but you want a budget for full capacity. Is that correct?

In this particular case, I believe that is true. As I said a moment ago, when you exists, we conservatively budget for those vacancies. For instance, to put numbers to this, currently our family insurance coverage, and Nadine probably hates that I'm about to put out a number that I don't know exactly, but I believe the family health insurance total cost is in the upper 20s. budget for those scenarios.

That's just what we pay. That's not what the employees are paying.

That's the total cost, actually.

So the employees are paying a portion of that? Correct.

However, whoever fills that position may elect only to take the employee portion and not the help, the full family portion, which is a significantly lower cost. So that is just a budgeting philosophical approach that we take to be conservative.

But you say health insurance, you budgeted at 7%, right? That's correct.

We're anticipating a 7%.

7%. We don't know. I know one year we did 7%, 8%, and it came in at 27%, about 15% a couple years ago. Right.

And that is one of the difficult challenges we have in our budgeting is that we don't know that number until after the budget process is completed. So we're making an educated guess based off of the data we have year to date. This year was even a little bit more difficult to forecast given that we transitioned to a new health insurance provider. But we are confident, as we said here today, in that 7% projection.

Yeah, and I think I read somewhere when you use 7%, but that was across all the departments, right? But still, I'm just, I hear what you're saying about you getting budgeted for allocation, but I'm still looking at page 121 where you have your personnel and you actually eliminate two positions.

But I don't think they've eliminated them. They've shifted it. They took two out from somewhere else and put two in someplace else. Is that the simplistic way to say it?

Let's shift that cost again to somewhere else as well. Okay. Okay. Because when I sit back and I look at what you had last year, like in 25, with the 12 and a half people, you only had 896,000.

Yeah, he's right. I see what you see. If you look at page 117, it's the Arts and Rec Center. And if you compare it to page 121, you can see it is the Arts and Rec Center, the Division of Parks and Recreation, is showing a loss of two staff And when we look at that, okay, well, part of it could easily be we're reducing part-time attendance. Part-time staff member would make significantly less than the position that we're adding, which is the manager position. But I thought we had, okay, so we had a maintenance manager. That's the one that got shifted to the recreation and tourism manager. So that should be the same pay. I see what you see. So if we look at... Let's look at Parks and Rec, which has the increase on page 112. I think he's right, gentlemen, that we just don't have the match in the allocation on the employees because we've shown two personnel increases on page 120 for Parks and Rec, but if we look at the proposed budget on page 112, we see a net change

I think you've convinced me with the gym is a pool. I see you now. Thank you. Can we consider, I'll tell you the name of that building, because everybody calls it something different.

If we can get on the same page with the departments, What I'm hearing you say is what we're calling the Arts and Recreation Center on page 117, those expenses are a combination of the building itself and the operations of the performing arts center.

And I'm sorry, I don't have the, I'm not looking at 117 to know what you're seeing.

So my question, and this is probably as much for Scott as anything else, because I want to Without scaring anybody, I just want to have a clear picture of what are we spending on performing arts versus what are we spending on recreation? And right now, unless I'm mistaken, performing arts is bearing the apparent financial burden of the entire building, which recreation, i.e. the pool and the gym, are benefiting. So if there's a financial function, Scott, of being able to allocate the gym and the pool expenses under Parks and Recreation, in other words, Scott's page 112 and 113, and then allocate the Performing Arts Center, and then we need to figure out how the rentals play into that. Are those parks and rec? Are they performing arts? That way we can understand what we're spending on performing arts versus arts and rec versus the community center. Because this building does all of those things, but there are operating expenses associated with each one of those functions. They share the benefit of one building, which is the gate. But I want to make sure when I'm seeing a budget for parks and rec, I'm able to distinguish this service that we're providing to the public, what each individual service costs, with the wisdom that they all share one building, and so we may be getting efficiencies in one place that have inefficiencies in others, but then we can actually be comparing what is Parks and Rec, what is performing arts, what is rental facility. Because we kind of have a city center and a performing arts center and a recreation center in one place, but they have operations associated with them. So I'm trying to make sure that's clear. And the naming keeps me confused and off balance. I'm seeking clarity. Not today. It might take a ton.

without consolidating the two divisions. There was no reason for us to object from an accounting or finance perspective. Now, if it's the will of the council for us to re-divide that, we can quickly and easily do that.

Well, I see it as a management function, and I understand your perspective completely, and I see what you're saying, and it makes sense what you're saying. Brian, maybe you can, and again, I don't expect you to have it today. It's just, I would like to get some clarity on it. Because, and I'll speak, and Mr. Baines, we're talking about a five-year plan for Parks and Rec. There's an amount of money that's allocated that the taxpayers pay for one building. One building. But that building serves a lot of different purposes. And so I think we need to be able to make informed and fully transparent and biased decisions as we move forward with a five-year plan on what that one building is providing what we like, what we could do better, what we could do different, and to explore all the options for the taxpayers. I wanna scare people listening. I just wanna have all the information and to have it be clear. And right now I don't, it doesn't feel clear. And it could be that I've just done so much. But I accept that as a possibility. Is what I'm saying making sense to you?

It does make sense. I do think when you dig into the budget, there are items that are specific to performing arts

I'm assuming special events is more or less performing arts, right?

So 574 is special events. It's not performing arts. Performing arts is part of 575. Performing arts have been its own division of 579, and we enrolled those expenses into 575 to be part of the arts division. Now, part of this, I will tell you that in I've been in multiple municipalities and had some budgets that were larger than this that were just one division, just one budget. And I've also been in other cities where it was four divisions. So, you know, I was trying to group the ARC as much as possible to say, okay, this is how much the ARC costs us. The buildings.

and all the things that happen in it.

Yes, but you're correct in that I did separate out the lifeguards and the part-time attendants back there who were saying, okay, give me your five bucks to go use the pool.

Scott, is there a way for us to create a building budget that has sub-accounts in it for box and rack versus rental versus performing arts? Is that another way to eat this elephant?

I believe we can accomplish that through our project coding system. And we do a lot. There are examples, particularly in public services, where we do some accounting and budgeting based off location. It's a very similar concept.

That's what I'm thinking. Because we do have the traditional recreation services, but then we have this unique thing of the formats. And then we also have a rental facility. And so those are... distinguishable in the world of recreation. The other things, and this is probably more for Scott, what I would like to see before the final vote is on the recreation side, the revenues as well as the expenses. Because we saw them in the report, which was great, but they're not in our packet. So the packet only includes expenses. But I think there are revenues associated. is going to show a high expense, but then there's a revenue that puts us in the black. So being able to see it.

And I think the revenue is part of what's available online, correct, Scott? So I know that there was, because I looked at this online, the online version

And there is a section near the bottom of the page, cultural and recreational totals. Got it. You can see the boat ramp fees, your CPAC tickets, the items that were being discussed.

And there's like $750,000 there, and then there's another area where there's rental fees and other stuff that's already on the room.

I think that's what they're means. They said, well, those could be rental fees for the city center, for example. I'm not even criticizing as much as I'm trying to figure out how we want to break this down to make it easy to follow.

Well, I understand what you're saying because that was one of the problems I had. Well, I guess I knew it was there, but I just couldn't remember because when I started I went from front to back. And I got back there and I had to keep flipping back and forth. Okay, to try to look at revenues, the expenses and everything. So I think, I'm hoping what you're saying is in the future, we put everything, the revenues for each department there with the expenses. Yes. Instead of us having to go back and forth.

So we are able to run off the report on all our revenue. So we have charges for cultural, charges for services, performing arts center which is our tickets, light up revenue, jazz festival revenue, rents, victory point revenue, splash park revenue, what we get from the rowing facility, facility fees from the performing arts, curing building revenue, pool revenue, gym revenue, field revenue, highlander building, waterfront park, park pavilions, the camp out. So all this stuff is clear on this document.

You know what? For my purposes and my request, if it's Well, if you could print that off, I'll just put it in my book. If you can have it printed, she'll just put it in there, and I'm good for this year, because then I can see it. And then for you, Brian, if there's things that, let me get clarity, is everything under what's listed as Arts and Recreation Center related to the building when it comes to expenses? In other words, Roof maintenance, cleaning, everything, whether it's the gym or the pool, all of that under the center.

Correct.

The building-related expenses all in under the center.

Correct. So not all personalities, but all the expenses.

The cooperating and facility expenses.

I have to check on that. I believe the pool is under the authority. I want to go back and look. I believe the pool is under the authority.

So that's just what I'm trying to get clarity on. I can break it down and run it by you and make sure I'm reading it right. Okay. I find it to be hard to follow. But I think for this, I don't know if I necessarily, if it's easy to print the revenues for every department, I think it's good to have. Yes. For me, the ones that don't make revenue, you know, zero, I guess. But for this one, it is interesting to know what the revenues are that match the expenses. Because I think it can be misleading when you just look at the expenses.

And that's why I'm going to... At the beginning of the presentation, that's why I pulled up the net revenue on the events. That's great.

Yeah, but then like I say, Scott, I know you had to accept it because I looked at revenue right off the bat when I looked into the budget and everything. Of course, then I get back and I see all this fence, and I'm trying to go back and forth and figure out all this. And then I look at personnel costs. I'm really curious to see in that arts and recreation, when I see that big of an increase in reducing,

So I think it's just an administrative function.

Yeah, when you go back, if you go back and look where he saved two people over to the parks and recs, you have a reduction I went by and I looked at insurance. I see the increase in insurance. I FIC and FICA and all that. I see all that broken down as well, but just personnel costs right off the bat. Seems a little high when you get rid of two. And I'm like, can we be paying you guys this much It's good. Oh, the other thing I did want to question is back on your capital expenses, capital budget. Oh, you're not there yet? I'm sorry.

I volunteer. Oh, okay. So proposed highlights. So $75,000 has been in public services for quarters. That was moved over into parks and recreation. There's $65,000 in originally for a five-year strategic plan. It could be a master plan. Shane did send me something this morning on... Council's direction on where they want to go, where you guys want to go with that. I added, Place Your AI is not a sole source, so there are other softwares that do similar stuff, but I added money for Place Your AI so that we can figure out how many people were really at July 4th. I mean, there was a lot of people there, but how many people were really there, Place Your AI will help us know that.

And where they came from.

Yes. We had a lot of people from out of town. Yeah. The Christmas Tree and Sips and Salsa have been in the CRA budget. They have been moved out of CRA into general funds. And you just talked about Performing Arts and ARC in the same division. So capital proposal, Hancock Park, field five. So we have the four together. Field five fences at a distance that serves nobody, which is it's too short for slow pitch and too deep for fast pitch. So we're going to relocate that and bring that in so that that's the same distance as the other four fields. That would also, there is a- Is there anarchy on that? Why would there be a key over that?

Don't the guys use it?

No. They play at Felter.

Oh, really?

They play at Felter. Felter has 300. They don't use that at all. They only use Hancock Park one year when there's something going on at Felter in that field. It was before my time. But the fence is too shallow.

Can we make it deeper?

If we made it deeper, we'd have to relocate the light poles that are in the outfield. That's a much bigger expense. So we've had a temporary fence up for years. There's a temporary fence sitting there, and then land not doing anything. We actually had a plan that was reduced when we talked about cutting back on some of our projects. At Park Pow, there's $40,000 for irrigation renovation design because that irrigation is as old as I am. Based on what we heard a few weeks ago from Southlake Lint League, I did ask the awarded vendor for Felter Park to give us a price on what it would cost just to turf on the four infields. At Powell, it was $1.3 million. There's nothing in the budget for that, but I'm just noting it. So I'm not proposing that we do it. I'm just saying if we wanted to turf the infields at Powell, that's what it would cost.

Well, that would be one of my questions because here you only had the 40,000 you weren't sure anything else and I was curious because we need to do something in the infields. I can say a couple weeks ago and like I said way back in March when I was out there, I requested some work be done, but those fields are very unsafe for our kids out there right now, the condition of them. And we need to be doing something. So if we Maybe not do them all. Maybe I would like to see if we can put it in the budget to do one or two, but we got four fields out there.

And the soccer field and the, are you counting the toddler field?

The T-ball field?

Yeah, T-ball.

And all in, that artificial turf is just for the four medium fields, so the larger field and the three little league fields.

Can you get with, We really do serve a lot of Southlake County.

It's not just Claremont. So that is, yeah, that is when we talk about the fields that Little League's using, it is primarily used by Little League. There's very little other usage. They do have It is a large amount of people that are not Claremont residents. This is something I think potentially Lake County IST funding and if South Lake Little D helped request that, I think that's something that would be, there could be some funding towards that.

But like I said, when I was out here in March, excuse me, I went on the fields and I conditioned the fields. They were very unsafe, the pitching miles. I found boxes in a hole, and it's just very unsafe.

Does that include the temporary, or the, I call them temporary metals for baseball, but we have turkey, or the rolling metals.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I know you're talking about the temporary metals. The temporary mounds are not done, so they wouldn't get moved in New York. But I know exactly the truth.

Did the gentleman give us a quote for Bishop? I know that was part of the conversation.

No, I did not talk to him about what it would cost to do Bishop. I just got a similar quote.

I think Liverpool would be very interested in engaging on this one and having a conversation. And I don't know what the county's position is on funding, but I hear they don't have money. So Liverpool might be the one to do it.

Yeah, but we need to I would like to see something like that we can't go back but something Astro Terry's right thing to go right now with just some kind of maintenance and everything to get them in condition I know the fall season getting ready to start in September is August

until they're just wrapping up now and then they're off for like a month and that's it and then they're August and November again so there's not a lot of downtime on those fields.

They have a spring and fall season so it's August they don't start again but then they start in March as well so I'm trying to get that work done. So

Air conditioning, there's 21 conditioning units at the arc. So they're all almost got 20 of them were put in or manufactured and put it in 2015. One of them is actually 2013. This one is this one that we're going to start repairs on it. And so we're going to need to, this is going to be something that's going to be pretty much an every year thing that we're going to be replacing units now going forward. So police replaces cars, we're going to have to replace units at the org. And then a small dance floor replacement that was kind of beat up. So it's a very minor number. Bishop Field, we've talked about the committee and then meet in the middle of the Veterans First Responding Memorial.

Um, The stage, the main stage, they need to have some attention to it. Yeah, but I had screws and everything. As I stopped my tour, I almost tripped on screws coming up out of the floor when I was up there for Memorial Day. Okay.

All right, I'll make sure that they don't get that.

It needs some attention up there.

I know they just painted it. I'll make sure they're checking all the screws. And... That's the budget. We actually spent less on FY25 at the end of the year than we did on FY24, and we'll see what FY26 looks like in a few months. And that is that.

Oh, Jen. I'm going to move my stuff.

Morning everybody Just to give you a quick update sidewalks bike paths connect ability City staff is heard the council Frequently mention their desire for a more connectable community via multimodal opportunities So we're looking at existing projects to try to do what we can to provide opportunities. Additionally, staff is working with a private Facebook group who are a bunch of cycling advocates with us and come up with some connectable plans based off of some of the work that DPZ has done. They're actually very valuable and very informative with city staff and giving us a lot of good opportunities and ideas. The group is chaired by Valerie Shute. Lots of numbers, lots of engagement. I believe the hope is that they will provide opportunities in areas potentially smaller projects where we can develop further connectability we have a lot of existing opportunities in the city but there's always gap points To that end, in the infrastructure budget, which we'll get to in public services, we've increased the budget for sidewalks and connectability modestly, $200,000 additional to begin some seed money, to begin some potential projects.

Any questions?

I think I saw in the good sidewalks you had 500, so you're saying you increased it to 200, so that's- My original, yeah, my original discussion was based off of our master sidewalk plan. So we were at, I believe, 375. So we spent, we have $75,000 that we teamly budget for designing new sidewalk areas where there's difficult grades for the engineering firm. We had $200,000, which was an increase to And then the additional $200,000 can be applied to sidewalks or any connect ability projects. My anticipation is some of these projects will be fairly major require engineering to accomplish. Some of them will be rather simplistic that, you know, with. we're gonna work with the group and take recommendations from them. They're the users, so I'd like to tailor what our efforts are to what they come up with.

Well, I know in your budget, I hate to get there because you're naive, but you had just an avenue in there. Yes, sir. I'm assuming that's when That's been designed.

We are budgeting for construction next year. And that construction budget is $100,000.

And we still haven't got the design from Prince Edwards to Drew Avenue for Old Long Pitch Street as well? Next year. Next year. Okay.

And we have some response too.

And I know I got a lot of People come and thank me for the ones, for what we did on East Avenue, connection to East Avenue and Minnehaha, but we still got a lot to do on Minnehaha, West Minnehaha. There are a lot of spots. But I think what I'd probably run into on Minnehaha, I think some of the neighbors don't want you to do the sidewalk, right?

So far, in the areas that we've worked, we haven't run across that, but historically, we have met with people and suggested and been essentially run on the top, pitchforks and torches and all. So we anticipate that. Really, before we invest any real funding, we do hand out flyers and request people feedback. You know, what if we put a sidewalk in what you think your front yard is, which is actually City Lightway? How would you feel about that? It's never been here for fully five years. Now we're going to put a sidewalk in. You know, if we've got some strong emotions, we can sidestep that and move to a different spot because we have plenty of spots. Someday we'll have to deal with it.

Especially in this area, Seminole Street and all that field street. We've accomplished quite a bit in-house.

Now we're running into a spot where there's a lot more obstructions and obstacles, but some of that's going to be necessary to deal with to make those final connections to give a complete system so people can actually walk.

Well, I was grateful because when I left 4th of July Fireworks on Wednesday and on Saturday night, came up 3rd and I came down Osceola because I couldn't get out to East Avenue. I was so backed up. And I saw a lot of people walking down the sidewalk over here on Osceola that we put in last year. I know we call headaches a lot, but we got it done. So I say thank God for sidewalks and people not walking down the street and all that. Well, if the council provides the funding, we'll do our darndest to spend it. Well, you say it's on the book for this year, this one, I don't know. I have no neighborhood objections yet, but if there is one. Well, I know my sister's over there on the distance, and she came to me and told me she don't want the sidewalk on her side of the street. I said, well, I think we're going to put the sidewalk, whether it's on your side or the other side, it's coming.

I appreciate your participation.

I mean, we had so many kids, elementary kids, walking to the school on Rehacol Academy, walking down Miller Road, and the traffic was speeding over there, and that had become around a... become a main thoroughfare because a lot of people use it as shortcuts there when they come to the Marie Cole Academy, they'll come up pit street, cut through all through the neighborhoods.

Well, and it connects the Northwest and the Northeast because it's the only way to cross 27 without crossing 50 and 27. It's an important connector. I fully support the effort of Mr. Mayweather. I love that it's being driven by the public. A lot of these a lot of these ladies and gentlemen are doing as i understand it um you call them audits walking audits walking and biking audits so they're literally going into the neighborhoods and connecting the parks connecting to schools how do i get there would i feel comfortable with my child riding their bike to get there and to be and i think it's great i love it i want to support it to that end i think this is probably for the city manager deputy city manager I think something that could support us so that it's not entirely on the taxpayers would be if there was maybe a fund at the Community Foundation. I mean, that's why it exists, you know? If we could help identify if someone needs to, I don't know how the process works, but if there was a fund, then we could notify, we could notify business owners, Philanthropists and the community that they could donate to that fund and maybe match what we're putting in because I think that there's a lot of grants for trails and sidewalks and safe access to schools So I think that if we are investing which I fully support I would like to see a mechanism by which the private sector could invest and and also we now have a grant writer that we're applying for grants because everything we put in becomes matched to something else and then you can take that and you can match to something else and you can multiply your money to the larger grant organizations if you start by matching small. So I want you to be aggressive with this, that's how I feel, but I'd like you to be aggressive also in the seeking out of grants and not forgetting the private sector in this because I think there's a lot of people in our community to be willing to say, I'll throw some money into that pot to help kids have a safe way to go back to school, to help single moms, to help have access to jobs. I think there's a lot of people who would support that if they knew how to do it.

Yes, and by having it housed at a foundation rather than in a city account, you you I think entice or increase the opportunity for people to leave and dedicate funding after they pass their estates they can allocate some funds for those accounts to be utilized and then that way they are I think there's a terminology used in the industry where it's It's earmarked, essentially, where it can only be used specifically for certain things. And communities do that. My previous community that I served had that at the foundation. And that's how people, if someone felt very passionate about parks, rather than give to the city coffers, they could give to the foundation and then the foundation through their board could determine how best to utilize those funds to enhance the community. Oftentimes it was through the city, but there were occasions where it wasn't. Maybe through the Little League Foundation or whatever else, something at another private entity. But I think that's a great way to entice that and also show that the city is looking to partner with folks, and it does take that partnership to do that. I agree.

I think that this is too big for us as a government, but I don't think it's too big for us as the people.

Keep in mind, in a lot of the areas we're concerned with, like Minnehaha, Chestnut Street, another one I really caught my eye on Saturday night when I was coming to Quebec. I had a homecoming. I just went around the world and came home and come on Chestnut. They caught my eye that they didn't have any sidewalks over there as well. But back in the days when they built these communities, sidewalks wasn't a thing. That's correct. Now we're talking about more walkability, so sidewalk is a thing.

It is fairly limited.

Oh, CDBG?

Yeah. Yeah. We've outpriced ourselves, so there's not too many places we can move progress now. stone water treatment and upgrade blocks from over there from field street from highway 50 back down many high but it's designed currently it's in design yes good thank you we include sidewalks along there i think i heard you say it yes absolutely okay

Yes, sir, I do just have 1. Bigger picture question for. Staff Brian and Mr. Foreman city manager city attorney. With with regard to recent legislation that was passed at the state level, and some of our special events, what. what are we looking at for planning for next year and how any of that legislation may affect the the dollars we're allocating for some of our special events specifically related to the to the dei initiatives or as the governor puts it the anti-dei well with that regard to that legislation specifically i'm not actually aware of anything

that would run afoul of that legislation.

Okay, that's what I'm asking is that I think that there's public conversation relative to whether or not municipalities can continue to promote or plan or allocate funds for events that fall into those categories that I want to make sure that we are looking at so that we can justify and be able to bolster and say we do want to invest in these because of the impact that they have on our community and the celebration that it brings. I just want to make sure that that's part of the conversation.

The way I interpret the legislation is that it doesn't prohibit different backgrounds. The way I interpret the legislation is it would prevent us from allocating funds or sponsoring events that might have the effect of It's some kind of, by way of inclusion, excluding. So, for example, by adding special weight to a different type of person for a job, if that makes sense. Sure. Or giving preference based on weights or just because we want to include underrepresented groups for use in a park or something like that. But to the best of my knowledge, I don't think we have anything like that.

So special events, from your understanding, are not in that same category?

Not if it's undertaken as a matter of course, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely.

I support them. I just want to make sure.

Oh, yeah. Well, that's why I don't have concerns. And I've talked to city management about that.

Great. Okay. Thank you. That was the only bigger question I had.

Well, I know, I saw you send a, I saw a message where you said the Simpson-Sausler and Juneteenth were okay. I remember doing a discussion up in Tallahassee. Simpson-Sausler was one of them real areas that they, I thought they were targeted, okay, in the discussion up in Tallahassee. So when you sent that email saying, I saw what you said, hey, they can continue the Simpson-Sausler on the globe.

I am zero, though. I am zero. I mean, I personally, I think that that... misconstrues the legislation. I mean, sips and salsa. I mean, listen, if something like sips and salsa is subject to it, we're all in trouble.

Yeah, well, and I guess that was the concern of when we were in Tallahassee doing the discussion. Sips and salsa specifically came up in the discussion up in Tallahassee.

And, you know, I am aware of that, Mayor, but I think that that was a part of the conversation about maybe the more extreme interpretations of it. And I I don't anticipate it because I just can't. It's my opinion, for better or for worse, that it doesn't apply to substance use.

Well, I would be happy to just send a message saying it won't affect substance use. It's certainly not Juneteenth. That's fine with me. There's no way. That's a great event. I hope so. That was fun. I was just surprised when you sent it out saying it didn't affect what I know in Tallahassee.

I just wanted to historic village was under parks and rec and I thought we also did a grant maybe to the CRA historic village is historic village has not been a budget that I've been involved in who does that well the services from maintenance point of view have My only real question is, and maybe this is for the city manager or the CRA director, is do we also do a grant? I thought we also did a grant for the historic village. Is that not accurate? Do we remember? Is this a conversation for happy? If we can, I just am curious. Or if this is the only thing that we have now. Like I said, it's probably a CRA issue.

I guess the question then, it is in our parks and rec section of the budget. So if it's not Mr. Foreman, who oversees the budget? The 573? Yeah. OK. All right. That's what I want to make sure.

Well, and maybe, so one thing that took me a while to get used to, and I'll just speak it to everybody, is our parks and recreation is actually split between the two parks and recreation department and public services.

And so I think that's a bigger conversation we should probably have at some point about whether or not that's the best way to move forward. Yeah.

And so, so that is, Do you want to do it during public services or another day?

I don't know that it affects how we budget this year, but I think it's probably a good conversation for us to have in preparation for next cycle to be able to say whether or not these funds should be separated like that or it should be done differently. Yeah, I agree with you on that.

Another day. Mr. Mayor, might we take a brief break?

Well, it would be 7 o'clock. I was hoping I could go for 30 more minutes because we haven't done 11.30 break so much. Okay. If I need to leave at 11.30 or so, be somewhere about 12 and hopefully back in about 1, 1.15. Okay.

Do you mind if I step out briefly? I think I can hear the speakers.

Okay. I was going to ask that question. Can we get your presentation in the next 30 minutes or so?

Good morning, everyone. John Grayson, police chief. I also have my members of command staff help assist in any answering the questions you guys may have. Our current year in review, we received our reaccreditation in June for the eighth consecutive time. That was a unanimous vote. We began crisis intervention training for the entire agency, but that is that's a training program designed to help law enforcement engage more effectively with people who are experiencing mental health issues. So that is a agency wide initiative that started this year. Thank you. Council for the last year. You gave us the body camera. Program with Axon, which included the train simulator and the translation capabilities. The translation capabilities came online July 1st, so that is a welcome asset. We also started the e-bike patrols on the trail in the downtown area. There were a lot of requests for that. I promise, as manpower got to the levels it should be at, we'd be able to do that. During the summer, we have two officers out there. We have Officer Diaz and Officer Harris out patrolling the trail in the downtown area, city managers, positive comments about the bike patrols. We've added new community engagement events. I'm not going to go through all of them. I'll give just a couple. We have pop schools with cops coming up. We have the teen police academy coming up. And then we did hoops with cops this year where we went out into the community instead of just having one centralized location. So next Thursday, we're at Felter Park. And then we completed the strategic point and that implementation and then the bottom one is an exciting one. The acquisition of 48 Meridian barriers. Those are the vehicle born attack barriers. Those were given to us through a partnership with FDLE and the Florida Department of Emergency Management. So that's, we got six trailers full of those barriers. That's a $1.5 million acquisition that the taxpayers have been paying.

I want to know the new barrier, the red barrier, is that so? Those are the red barriers.

The 4th of July celebration was the first time that they were deployed. We see them all the time when we had our events. First Saturdays, Christmas, all those events. Next slide, please. Here's a breakdown of the police department. I'm going to use my work, but it's a little bit easier for you to see. We currently have four captains. They are all given their assignments. Captain Strickland oversees our patrol. division, which is the largest division within the police department. Captain Draper oversees sports services, which has criminal investigations, street crimes, traffic, and then our criminal intelligence unit, as well as evidence. Captain Corbett has our professional standards and legal services, so he oversees all our IA, the accreditation processes, our records division, And then any grants that we receive, we have that. We bring in a significant amount of grants and funds, so he's responsible for all of those reporting. And then the administrative services, Captain is Captain Sayre. He oversees community services, school resource officer program, the training division, and then recruiting.

Where are these on the chart?

This is a very small breakdown. I can give you this. We're seeking two additional police officers. These will be field personnel. Most likely, these will be K-9 officers. I believe we can get the K-9s through seizure funds or grants. And then the reason for the K-9 request is right now we have one K-9 officer, so when he's out, sick, vacation, whatever the circumstance is, we have zero K-9s available. And at the mercy of Brooklyn, Lake County, Oakland, and our garden, which have expanded response times. We can't expand traffic stops longer than they're supposed to be, so 5, 10, 15 minutes at most. And then you're looking at if we suspect there's narcotics in the vehicle, we're not able to do that. When you look at criminal apprehensions, a delay in the time leaves our personnel out there unnecessarily. We are able to use drones, but at some point, I think we have put it on video, a person vetted into a bush area or something like that, the canine is the preferred method to try and get that person out. The one community service officer, that person would be assigned to our criminal investigations division. We have seen a significant increase in the number of frauds that we see throughout the city. So this person would be responsible to assist with some lower-level crimes that our current detectives are assigned. They would assist in writing subpoenas to the banks. To get bank records, they would also be able to assist in writing preservation letters for evidence, such as off of social media platforms and different things like that. So they would be a valuable asset in the CID division. I say CID because our detectives, they receive certain benefits through the collective bargaining agreement. This would be a cost savings for us instead of me having to put another detective inside of the division. This is a civilian position within there that creates us some flexibility and they can take some of their case load on. I'm gonna have Captain Corvette come up and talk about the records specialist. I think you'll also hear Tracy talked about the significant increase in public records and then he'll describe what we've seen on the police department side. I will say the axon redaction is much better than what we have with the utility. However, we've only had that program for six months. So our personnel are getting trained up on that and working through the body cam request as quickly as possible. Then I'll have Captain Kovac go over the components in detail.

Thank you. Good morning. city and the police department have seen massive increases in public records requests. Looking at 2022 through year-to-date 2026, the police department's portion of the overall public records request has increased from 30.7% to 61.5% of all city public records requests going to the police department. And the numbers themselves have jumped up substantially. In 2022, the total city public records requests were 566. Year to date this year, they are 1392. The police department's portion of that going in 2022 from 174. 200 856 this year to date alone. That is a 146% increase for the city, but a 392% increase for the police department. And the requests are becoming more and more complex. Many of those are coming from presumed YouTubers who want body cam video, that body cam video being subject to redactions and other kinds of things, taking a longer amount of time as well, not simple requests for someone's report, which would be much easier and quicker. for the city, 1,670 of those would be police departments. So at these rates, the police department handles 61.5% of all city public records requests. They're more complex than the average request. The police department receives 3.7 times as many requests as the next busiest agency, and more requests than the next seven highest-growing departments combined. The police department has already processed 69 more requests than it handled during all of 2025, despite being only halfway through the year. So at these rates, our record sale is becoming overwhelmed, and therefore each request is taking longer. I believe this has also put more strain on the city clerk's office, so we hope to alleviate that by asking for this additional one person.

and then finally you see the community i apologize finally you see the communications coordinator said share with other departments we were going to put in for one and then it was brought up that we would share this position with parks and rec the fire department and then split the the cost of the salary amongst the three departments i think all three departments have agreed to that it makes sense for us Capital proposals, the biggest one right now you'll see is the replacement vehicles. In the years past, you've seen requests of eight, nine, 10 vehicles. Eventually that catches up. We're at the point where it started to catch up. We have some stats that we can share when it comes to police vehicles. I think that we have found some creative ways to fund the replacement of some of these vehicles so that it's not all coming out of the general fund. Purchase of new vehicles, if new personnel are approved, that would come out of impact fees. Purchase of an armored vehicle, we would potentially be able to use impact fees. We're also seeking out a grant. The UASI grant is the one we're eyeballing right now. We haven't had much success with that grant in the past. However, the current armored vehicle we have, or some people call it the tank or the rescue vehicle, that we have is 20 years old. The maintenance costs are rising. The AC is not reliable for our personnel. So I can probably limp it along for another year or two, but at some point we're going to have to replace that vehicle. And then the remodeling of an area to create additional offices and storage closets. But this is an expansion of our records division. We were able to get most of our files digitized. So now we're able to take out all these roll-in cabinets. So what that would look like is a storage place for our traffic viewing. Right now they have their stuff stored inside a room that's really allotted for two supervisors. That would create future space for our traffic unit to expand. We house an IT person within the police department, so this would give us a more suitable office space for the IT person. And then eventually the second office would be a community service officer supervisor, but that is more in the future. So we're looking at how can we more effectively utilize the space within the building at this point.

I don't think right now is the time to look at expanding HQ. I think we have some really good ideas down in station 5 with the proposed

Annexation or future annexations, maybe it's look at station 5's joint public safety building. Maybe maybe we need a larger footprint down there. We're looking at that. I think once we finish the building off in the boat ramps over at Waterfront Park, that will provide us a space on the west side of town. And then we look at what happens on the east side of town. I think the way to move forward is to look for ways to where we can get substations and still have presence in that area. I don't think expanding HQ right now is the way to go. That's just my opinion sitting here today. Let's see. I see what other projects that are being discussed right now brings to fruition and then we can definitely have more when we have the conversation.

Well, substation, I agree, substation would probably be the best way

I think right now with what Olympus is proposing it's sufficient. I think for future conversations of proposed annexations or future annexations that may be in the works, it would be wise to ensure that we have the ability to possibly expand that building if necessary.

I think so, you did use it.

This is one of those projects that will probably carry over into the 2027 budget funded through impact fees by both fire and community. It's looking at two boat docks, one for the fire boat, one for the police boat. And then that old house or building from Bell Ceramics that's left there, we're looking at turning that into office space that could be used as an insane command post, also storage space for FDs should they have to use like a water rescue station. to what their mission for that is. But that's the program.

But also, there can be also office space for the EBAC patrols on the trail as well.

Correct. EBACs will be stored there in the Marine Unit during any coming weather. I will give you this I will keep you brief. A brief mileage overview is we have 21 vehicles that have exceeded the 100,000 mile mark. We have six vehicles over 90,000 miles. 17 vehicles have crossed the 80,000 mile mark. And then in total, 44 vehicles have surpassed the 80,000 mile mark, which means they're probably gonna hit that 90,000 or above mark in the upcoming year. The 80,000 mark is generally recognized as a point which maintenance costs and reliability concerns begin to increase. We work with the barn to identify vehicles that need to be surplussed. They give us recommendations on the vehicles that need to be surplussed, and then we move forward from there. Replacing 18 vehicles a year puts us on a path to replace the entire fleet over the course of seven years.

I think that's the life expectancy we put on the vehicle, seven years. He's saying you're looking at mileage and not years. I think that's what we would, the plan we had, we would replace them every seven years.

We were looking at mileage, and then we started looking at years. I would say this. The vehicles vary. If it's assigned to a patrol squad, and they're out there driving every day, those vehicles are going to get worn out a little bit faster. If it's an administrative squad, or let's say a detective, my car, it's not going to accrue those same miles that a patrol vehicle is. I think by identifying a number of vehicles, to replace. That number could be lower some years based on when administrative vehicles were purchased and when patrol vehicles were purchased, but I don't think it would ever exceed that number of 18. I think we're going to hover right around that 15, 16, 17, 18 mark on the interface.

So maybe we need to go back and look at the replacement at miles rather than years, whatever you feel comfortable with, or whatever public service or maintenance say is due.

Well, it sounds like for Correct me if I'm wrong, Chief. It sounds like for planning purposes, patrol vehicles probably should be planned on every five years, whereas administrative vehicles should probably be on a seven-year cycle. And then you have the outliers. But I thought we adopted a policy on this, did we not? I'm remembering what you said, seven years. Did we do a policy on this?

It's about 90,000 is when we started looking at it. 100,000, they should be replaced. 90,000 were looking at replacements, 100,000 they should be.

I think we had adopted the prior, we had adopted part of the first ordinance, we were saying every seven years we would do a replacement. I think we calculated that what we had at the time, we would replace anywhere from seven to 10 vehicles a year. I can go back and look.

I do not remember a policy on the years. I do remember a policy on the mileage, but I can go back and look.

I think what we based everything on, but maybe what we need to go back and look at, mileage. What's the average mileage of a patrol, I like to say, it's kind of hard to estimate. It can vary based on their own assignment, based on a number of factors. Five years on patrol, as Ms. Green said, maybe five years on patrol and the rest of them seven years, I don't know.

Well, it seems like it would be like when you get your oil changed, you know, 4,000 miles or every six months, right? So if we say... whatever the mileage is, or five years, whichever comes first. Mr. Law, do you have, or who handles the preparation of police policy? Is it someone internal to you, or do you do it?

Internal.

Internal? Yes. So, I mean, I think that including that with our budget process to make sure we update that policy, is that a resolution? How do we do that? Or no, we just adopt a policy.

I want to kind of, What exactly are you proposing?

Well, we have an employee handbook that we've approved, and it's the whole book.

Personnel policy.

So I don't remember if we've approved police policies since I've been on council. Have we done it? No, we have.

Well, you have, actually, in a way. You do approve the CPA. I mean, we approve the market. And that does have a lot of policies in it.

But that would mostly pertain to the union policy. We had the policy discussion around the Axiom cameras. There was policy discussion around, we need to have a policy around public records requests. I mean, do these policies, are they written and do they exist? Yes. So that's what I'm saying. I don't think I've seen... Mostly, yes.

I'll just make one quibble, and that's on the public records. The way I view it, just from the city attorney's perch, is, first of all, everything you've heard is accurate. The city is overwhelmed by them. But I think we're still working out some of the procedures and how we respond to some of them, because it is a an interplay between the police department and the clerk's office and my office, frankly. And sometimes it's subpoenas. It's not even just public records requests. We're getting subpoenas from all these personal injury cases and things like that that we also have to deal with. So that is going to require some policy oversight from you at some point.

Well, and that's, you know, we have a $22 million budget. I mean, so we're losing $22 million of the public's money. And I just want to be sure that we are being responsible with our duty to the public in approving $22 million of public spend and making sure there's corresponding policies that protect our officers and the public.

I hear what you're saying, but we're needing that kind of photographic work. I don't know how in depth they are and what it's costing, the time it's costing, what it's costing to do the research and everything else. And I guess one of the things we need the public to understand is the fact that they shoot up the cost of things, you know, on these public records.

Yeah, and I'm not limiting it to the public records.

And I understand the policy. We need to have a policy there in place to how we're going to handle this, but wow.

I think that's, if we can address the public records requests independently, are we okay with that? Because... I'm specifically referring to overarching policy. Handbook, manual, that is our police department. Government itself, publicly, our mission group, identifying your plan, incorporating that, and just how do the policies support the vision so that the budget supports the vision and the policies as well. I mean, they go hand in hand, and I feel like that's one area that you've done the plan, so it's good, you've got a budget, and so policies are the third piece of that stool.

I always thought we already had all that policy in place but this with this addition to all these public record requests we need to really readdress that issue because there are policies out there on how to It varies based on the body. Redacting body camera is the most tedious task that they do and it varies. I'll give you some basic examples.

maybe it'll give you a better understanding. Let's say it's a traffic stop and there's two officers. The traffic stop lasts 15 minutes. It's a simple citation. It's just a normal engagement. There's very little to redact. The computer screens, driver's license information, stuff like that will get redacted. The rest of it's going out. Now, if you were in a more in-depth call, we'll use the Homicide Helpline where you have 20-plus officers with body camera footage. You have interviews. You have all that. The request is for every body camera video available. You are looking at hours of video that has to be reviewed and adapted. And then there's particular laws to all of it when it comes to the inside of a residence, when it comes to... It's very intricate in how it has to be done. Mr. Law and Tracy, we do the best we can with the public register to make sure that we perform the laws to the best of our abilities. If there's exemptions that exist, then we cite the exemptions. But it varies based on what it is. So you can see if it's a single camera, it's very easy. When you're talking multiple cameras, it becomes a little bit more tedious.

as it goes on 20 minutes with two cameras turns into 40 minutes of having to look at the camera and make the reductions and just so you know i mean public records requests are one of the things that keep city attorneys up at night because it's one of the ways that you know if we do do something wrong could expose us to attorneys so there's a private cause of action for that so that's why we really are trying not to take chances with it both in terms of personnel and policy

I know. What is the cause of it? There's a massive increase this year compared to last. Is this like a cyclone thing, or is this, are we constantly going up on these public information? YouTubers. But the YouTubers were around last year. Yeah, but there's more. Is that going to be going up over the last couple of years? It's not like a litigation type of request, like a motor vehicle accident trying to ascertain a fault. But this is just for knowledge. There's knowledge and views.

Everybody who wants to see what the police are doing, if you're going to catch views, that's how you do it. Whether it's a good video or a bad video, we're probably going to paint small enforcement.

They're going to get views based on their releasing of the videos. People want to see it. I know you were like my home camera. If something happened to me, the first thing they do is come ask me. I go back and look sometimes. I spend hours. Just like this weekend, I've been going back and reviewing some footage and some things happening. I've spent about six hours so far and still haven't gotten all the way through it yet.

One of the policies they had before, was it last year, where they said they wanted to be able to access your ring? Well, they have a... Allow that to happen?

No, we cannot access your camera, your Ring camera. But if we provide it to you? If you provide us the information on how to contact you, then we can email you, and then you would edit that Ring camera to the request that we had.

But if we provide it to you, it becomes a public record?

Right. The video?

If I send my Ring camera video to the police department, it becomes a public record, discoverable by anybody. Not necessarily.

I mean, there are still exemptions that would apply even on something like that. It may not necessarily be, it would be a public record, but it may not be distributable.

But most of your requests are mostly for body cameras though, right?

Body cameras, case reports, the normal stuff, like you had mentioned, there's some traffic pressure reports, case reports, people who are involved in those cases. A lot of our body camera requests are from out of state individuals.

So part of the issue that I see is we have so much information now. We have so much data as a society. Because we have, and I'm not knocking them, but because we have public records laws that make that data public, we now have to have personnel, humans, to go through the data in order to produce it when requested. And then when you add to it the curiosity. So I imagine the original intent of the public record law is to make sure that the public is protected from the police. It's the Second Amendment. These things exist for a very good reason. But then when it's used for entertainment, is where now we're paying for people to be entertained. And that seems inconsistent with the purpose of the law. So I'm not going to battle the law here today. We're not legislatures in Tallahassee. But I am curious, Mr. Law, Tracy, does your microphone, can you hear me in case? How are jurisdictions around, let's just say the state of Florida, but I would open it up to the entire country. How are jurisdictions handling these public records requests? without simply adding a million dollars to their budget for personnel, because that's the trajectory that we're on when we start adding. You have one person with the volume that you're talking about. They're doing 10 records requests a day. If each one takes six hours, that's 60 hours a day.

Well, it's a consequence of the law. Look, I mean, we... We are the tail being wagged by the dog. The law exists. It's a state law. It really wasn't. I mean, in terms of the, let me just say, in the origin of the law, I'm not really sure it really had to do with the police. deals and things like that, documents. But I think one of the things that can be done and that has already been done here, you already have it, is a resolution with a policy for people making those requests to put a deposit down for the amount of time. We have to make a good faith estimate of the time in terms of staff that it'll cost. down before we do anything, or $2,000 or $20,000, given the scope of the request. So that is one of the main safeguards that we have. We don't just get 10 requests and then run off and start doing them necessarily.

I don't see the line item for public records requests on the revenue side to correspond to the number of peoples that we're dealing with, which probably would be a question if we're following that policy. I'm not trying to point the numbers, the math's not mapping on that, which means our policy may not be sufficient enough to support the needs of the citizens. Now, I want to state, if it's a citizen asking for information about the government, as far as I'm concerned, give it to them for free. That's my position on the subject. When we start getting outside of the citizens of Claremont or someone who's not involved in a lawsuit, I mean, now, to me, This is starting to become a business. And if it's a business, then they should be paying the cost of running the business.

I really want to address that point, because I think all things being equal, in a world that doesn't have costs, you can do what you just said, get the information for free. The problem is, if someone comes in with a request that takes two people spending two weeks to gather all the information, you're using taxpayer money from everybody else to subsidize one person's request for information. And that could be worth tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. How is that, I mean, how is that a good use of taxpayer money when it's you, me, and everyone else paying for one person making 100 requests that totally consumes the time of the entire department? I'm, it's not necessarily a strong person either. This is actually what they're dealing with. There are, you know, tons of YouTube, it's not even just YouTube, it's just the requests have gone up. Technology, ChatGPT has democratized this process, which I actually think is a good thing. I mean, it does increase transparency, but it also increases the work on the department. So that's why you have to have the people making the requests at least bear some of the cost because of that. For the good faith, and I don't want to waste y'all's time with it, that's the economics line.

It may deter, and then the other thing is what creates a problem is it help them deter, but also you have to be more specific. If somebody requests it so wildly,

But when you make a request you don't know what is out there and you want to capture it all and not have it to be You don't want to be a hod when you're making a request So that's why the law requires that if it is vague and unspecific we need to ask for clarification That's also something the reason why I bring this up and why I asked if we could treat it separately, which I appreciate a student is and maybe this will be addressed in the subscriptions update for later, is it seems to me if we keep doing things the way that we've been doing them, it's just going to become overly burdensome. This is not policing. What we're talking about right now has nothing to do with why all these gentlemen and ladies went into this police profession. I mean, this is not policing. This is administrative entirely, bless you for doing it, because the paperwork you deal with, I couldn't do it. That being said, I think it behooves us as a council and also a people to embrace in many ways that this is where we're at and find a technology solution that helps minimize the number of personnel. Because this is not going to get better. This process is not going to get better. You have the toughest challenge, I think, because we're dealing with public records associated with police in this context. But it's going to come up in the clerk's office as well. We need to make sure that we're not curtailing the law, that we're complying with the law. But I truly believe there is some way using technology, some way using systems, some way using structure and how we do business to make public records easier to process. And it's not going to be the way we've always done it. And I'm not going to come up with a solution.

We have been looking at softwares for the past several months, and there's some redacting softwares that just aren't always as accurate as you want them to be. So we can continue to keep looking at different technologies.

And it could change six months from now. It might be a solution.

because I'm quite sure the police department has special stipulation on him and what can be given, what needs to be done, and everything else. So if they work together, if they work together and come up with some policies for us, it's kind of a doctor. Okay, that would be a great thing. Mr. Bain, do you have any input?

I do have a question about the impact fee fund. I don't know if this is just for you, Chief, and it's FIRE as well. But when I'm looking at the impact fee numbers for the fiscal year as being proposed, Police and fire are down 16% and 14% respective, but rec is up 18%. So I'm just curious if our growth rate is basically the same as previous years, why do we have a significant decrease in police and fire impact fees but not rec impact fees?

Mr. Bain, your question in regards to the revenue growth?

Yes, on like page three is what I'm looking at specifically.

I tell you what, Mr. Scott, maybe it's a good time for me to go ahead and take a break and go check that out, and then when you answer that, I'm going to be coming back after lunch. I think Debbie had lunch back there. I'm going to suggest, I'm going to think one of the reasons is that because basically we've collected a lot of the recreation impact fees, I mean fire impact fees. a couple of years ago, over $3 million in firing type things.

But my understanding is fiscal year 27 is what we're going to collect in fiscal year 27. Is that correct?

So this is the fund itself growing. Think of it like a savings account. So it's growing and being spent at the same time. So it's showing you the net. But your question is still in play.

Actually, is it the net, though? Because I'm reading this as the revenue for police impact fee 150. The revenue in fiscal year 27 is $641. not the net balance.

My initial response, and I'll have to verify this during the break, but my initial response is there are different calculation methods for police and fire versus parks. Parks is more of a flat structure, whereas there's a lot of variables based on square footage for police and fire impact fee calculations. But again, I'd like to verify that during break.

Okay, that's what yeah, and and that looks consistent with previous years where, where rec was hired. But this is my 1st opportunity at this table asking that that question about, you know, why the number is so different for police and fire as compared to. Um, direct.

And can you point us to where the fund balances are, Scott? I'm sorry, I know they're in there.

Page number one.

I know that I saw them. Page what?

The very first page.

There we go.

Yeah.

And I have other questions, but I'll save it for after lunch, if we're still going to discuss. Is this working?

That's fine.

Thank you. Thank you. you you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you Thank you. you you Thank you. you Thank you.

Discussions from this morning. First off, when we left off, a question was asked about the calculation on impact fees. Had a discussion with the manager over in the building service, and they confirmed that I was partially correct. First off, commercial properties only applies to the calculation for PV and fire department. It does not apply to fire.

And then you said, wait a minute, PV and fire department, but not parks. Parks, OK.

Yes, for commercial properties. On the residential side, it obviously does apply to all three units. However, the calculation is different. On the parks calculation, it's based on the number of bedrooms. On the fire and police side, it's based off square footage of the facility. So all those variables factor into why you can see differences in projections and actual collections between the three. Second update for you is I had a quick conversation with Attorney Waugh. The question was posed by Councilmember Bain about whether or not a resolution to assign fund balance Would tie the hands of future councils, of course the answer that is no They would just simply take a updated resolution by a future council not necessarily to reverse These previous action, but just rather to update the action and then third item Question was taken was made by council member strange about a lack of any budget line item associated with record requests. We are tracking that. Unfortunately, through an administrative error, it's not showing in the proposed budget because it was an account created this year. We will rectify that and include it in your updated documents following all the workshops. To give you an idea, based off year-to-date collections, the budgeted number will be roughly $10,000. So we are tracking it. Sorry for the error. but it will be an increase of $10,000 in anticipated general fund revenue production. That concludes my updates.

Thank you. All right. We'll be back with four weeks in prior. I'll be done before anybody else. Four weeks, brother.

We had a member of the public during the break bring up some suggestions on how to hold public records requests. I don't know if you are open to that. If we give a couple minutes to speak.

Is there going to be public comment here at the end, beginning, and middle?

If you all want public comment, you can have public comments.

to speak if you want to. Yes.

It's a workshop, and I always feel like workshop is the whole idea behind workshop, to hear from as many people as possible. Want to say three minutes? Well, as always, three minutes. Okay. It's open. Okay. Three minutes for public comment at this time. On the PD?

Yeah.

Okay.

Danny Page Claremont. I actually want to just briefly touch on the items that the police department have brought up. I'll just lend some information or suggestions in no particular order. They're running a communications coordinator position. I was under the impression that a PIO should cover that. I do not understand why we need a separate one for that. I'm thinking the PIO can come out across the board There are all departments. The CSO position, I find that a strange title. I used to be a community service officer in another state for 10 years, and what they're wanting to utilize that title for doesn't really correlate with what a CSO does. And I was just wondering if maybe we could turn that into like a volunteer program, where a volunteer comes in and maybe takes that over and does that. It's not a difficult job to have somebody do, or even a part-time to make it more cost-effective. The armored vehicle situation, do they have any documentation where they can show that we're gonna actually use that armored vehicle in this situation, or do we even need to replace it? I've heard the public kind of giggle at it to begin with, why do we even have this, they call the tank. Have we ever utilized it, and if we have, how many times? And I think that's something that you should be looking at. for cost, being that they want to replace it. I think it's ridiculous in my personal opinion. They're talking about remodeling the department. I know he didn't say he wanted to add on per se. How many captains do we have? He mentioned there's several. How big are the offices? I've never been back in there as far as the captain's office. If an office is big enough, can we just put two captains in an office just to help alleviate with the expanding even a little bit or anything like that. I mean, the bigger precincts and bigger cities, there's a big room where they were getting shoved in there separate than cheap, right? And then replacement vehicles, I didn't know, I didn't hear anybody really ask, they're specifically saying 18. Are those collectively marked units and administrative units? And if they're both, which one? Like nine, an admin one, admin and nine? marketing is which one because it and I've always had an issue with take home vehicles for our administration because I I know for a fact because I've had people reach out to me that some of these people are utilizing these take home vehicles that specifically admin for personal use which puts you where in terror on these vehicles and ultimately the taxpayers have to pay for I'm not really understanding and they live in especially they live within if they don't live within the Claremont jurisdiction, why they would even be allowed to take our vehicles out of jurisdiction. That also puts more wear and tear. They do have their own vehicles. So that's real questionable for me as a taxpayer. And lastly, the records. I talked to Tracy, and I do understand that she's going to have that on her budget tomorrow in regard to software programs or redactions for these public records, which is real helpful. who does public records there in her office is really intelligent on these things and has developed her own program that she's developing. So I guess that's going to have to wait until tomorrow to really get into the logistics of that, discuss that. But just from my own solution with that, well, first of all, I just wanted to state, just to preface, we talked about the entertainment reasons for these body-worn camera footage. It's not really for entertainment. I know some of these auditors that have a ton of followers. I do talk to them. I know them, and I know why they do it. Is it ultimately going to be entertainment? Sure. But first and foremost, it's to show the corruption that is within police departments, not just obviously in Claremont, but across the United States generally. And so I just think, just to look at it from a point of, how we fix things, or actually, how did we get here? Corbett talked about how they've gone up substantially, all these requests, and it's for YouTube. But how did we get here? We got here because there's questionable things that our law enforcement are doing. They're very questionable things. And that's why people are requesting bodyboard camera footage. It's not just for fun. It's because there's an issue why they're even requesting it. And so I had suggested, as a solution, I just want to get that out of the way. Because if they were more honest and did their jobs properly, we would have less body-worn camera footage requests. But for a solution for that, other than what she's going to be presenting tomorrow with the clerk's office, is to take a controversial issue like we had that murder. They're innately going to know that people are going to want to request that body-worn camera footage. So if we can just nip that butt right off the front end and go, OK, we know a ton of people are going to be wanting this. Let's go ahead and just get that on the FOIA system ahead of time. and then have it open to the public to go to. And they don't even have to bother the clerk's office, the PD, for that body-worn camera footage because it's already been viewed, redacted, and up there for the public because they know it's coming. They know that influx of people wanting to see what happened with that homicide is coming. So I think that's another way that we could offset the just piling on of public records and get that out there already online. And there are a few body-worn camera footage. I think Tracy probably knew about that. body-worn camera footage that's already on FOIA just out there that had been requested a ton of times, so that's just out there for anybody. And it's already done and ready to go. So I think that would help alleviate some of it as well. So that's all I have to say. But tomorrow I'm going to send it in because I know Caitlin has a really good idea of the software program.

Thank you.

Anyone else? Anyone else? Did you want to address any of that? Well, if I'm going to take on the replacement vehicle, the replacement vehicle, we said 18, I think most of the things you mentioned gave you a number of how many miles, what some have, and this and that gave the number to come up to 18. Right, correct. It was all based on miles. And as far as take-home vehicles, Well, I'm not mistaken and be limited to how far they can be able to stay. They have to stay within 70 miles. Thank you for the policy. That's correct. Yeah. 40 miles, 30 miles. Yeah, 40, 40, 40, 40, 40. Okay.

All right.

Is there some audit?

We're going to see what?

and I don't think that's appropriate.

If they are using it for primary use, that would be outside of the policy. And yes, we would be able to, excuse me.

Do you have a policy to audit that, though? What they're doing as far as like, is there a need to handle that thing? It's just kind of out there, but you don't know.

Many of the units have GPS on them, so we'd be able to.

Is there an audit trail?

No, there isn't. There is no audit trail. And when they fuel up, doesn't it have to put in the mileage and all that, too?

Say again, I'm sorry. When they refuel, do they require to put in mileage every time they fuel up?

That's correct.

But nobody's checking it.

And the other thing, I think when we started this take-home vehicle, I think we were also responsible for having to pay the insurance on it.

There is no insurance rider for the...

We move the insurance right here. Correct.

Many of them, like Geico and State Farm, provide insurance on them at no additional cost. There are some costs. All right.

That's all I have. If you can go ahead and look at all of this. I think I saw something about PIO. CSO and armored vehicle. I can say for a fact that I know it's been used a few times. Like at the murder, you mentioned it was used at the murder. A couple other incidents they had it out. And when you do serve once, like the two you served out in my neighborhood a couple weeks ago, I think you'll use it again as well.

Correct. It does get used for that. I would have I'd much rather just get the numbers, be able to say, hey, this is how many times we've used it each year. Obviously, it's used as an ambulance during hurricane response and stuff like that.

Well, I know in late April, when the hurricane, when Milton came through and we flooded out down at, thank you, sir, down at Ember Lake, we used it to get a lot of people out of the flood areas as well, which came in handy. We had a ground that could do that, so it was a good reward.

Thank you, sir. And Chief, that was something I was going to add, that we do use the armored vehicles as a rapid response during a time when the apparatus and ambulances are unable to respond. We currently have five in the county, one of those being Claremont's armored vehicle. And during Milton, we had a period of about six hours where the fire trucks and ambulances couldn't respond, and that was a very busy unit in our area. Another one was just heart attacks and some other patients that were able to

The transport vehicle?

We utilize it as it. We put a couple paramedics on there with one of their officers to drive it. And if the patient was bad enough and they could get them stabilized, they put them in the vehicle and take them to the hospital.

How do we do that without a COPCM?

They made an exception based on the circumstances, and it was done through county EM in cooperation with the county.

So if we have rapid response vehicles, there are circumstances where we could use them without having a COP signal?

They do have to be extra. There has to be something, you know, particularly like a storm event or something like that. Normally, they have to be, we have to have a license, you know, any other time. Correct. Yeah. 35 miles an hour is the limit for normal emergency vehicles. There's a high profile and there's dangers that are out there. These vehicles are, last I saw wind ratings was like 220 miles an hour for impact and other things. So it does keep the occupants safe out there. Yeah.

Do we know what they can sustain?

The armor? That's the 220 for impact rating.

220 miles per hour? Correct.

That was the spec from, I believe when we looked at the AMRAP and the Bearcats, that was the manufacturer's specification for impact rating. They're basically military vehicles.

And there's five in the county right now?

There is, between us and the sheriff's office, so that's what we have in the hill.

Are we the only one in South Lake?

I believe so.

Thank you.

You're in the hot seat now, sir.

Yeah, I was just waiting.

All right, you're in charge.

We can get started, sir.

Okay. Good afternoon, council. I just wanted to start off by saying thank you for having the opportunity to be part of this conversation. It's not something that's always been available to directors, and I think I speak for my fellow directors, and it is appreciated that they'll become a part of this, as well as some of the things that we have going on in the departments, and to have that opportunity for us to do that. So I just want to say thank you. So to start with, we're gonna go over a little bit of what we've done for the past year or so. Last year, we ran approximately 85 incidents, and we're seeing that number grow by about 7 to 8% a year, so we're on track this year to run 9,000 calls. But so kind of what really put it in perspective for me was, you know, looking back at department, going back to our 2000 census, we had about 9000 people in Claremont. And that was the time, you know, probably a couple of calls a day. With that, we're also maintaining our ISO classification, protection classification one, which is the best in the industry. And the other thing we have to do on an ongoing basis is we have to maintain our accredited status. We get evaluated in detail every five years, but we do have to submit a compliance report to show that we are working on all the things that we're supposed to be working. That's how we conduct business and we will be actually going to review cycle next year. So we're here for that. We identified service gaps and we've created the models on how we see we can fix some of those things. We've shared that with council. So the heat maps where we should, we had specific areas of our jurisdiction for having deficiencies and response times. One of those we're working to address, hopefully later this week, is the station now on its way. Everything looks to be on track that we could have crews in there as soon as Friday. So we'll just stay in touch with Protegra for their Sanpio department, see where they're at on their COs. As soon as the COs happen, we will have a truck down there. The truck is in service, the crews are ready. We're just waiting for that sort of fit lock and see if we can move in and start providing service. So if council is not aware, we had some challenges with the temporary site down there. It was supposed to be completed back in March. Due to delays that are beyond our control, the property has not been made available for our general contractor to start doing any sill design or anything else. We're still waiting on information from Olympus, which is where we started. So we had some conversations with the safety apartments working with the Tegra, and we have started to deal with them for us to have six months of free rent and one of their carriage houses. So when the crews go down there, we're gonna be moving into two one-bedroom apartments. So it's a little bit of shifting, but it's taking care of the challenge that the apartments had and it's getting us a presence down in the area where we know what we need to have, you know, the service of the building for the community. So we're excited about that.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Just to just yeah, they're one vendors. It's actually a carriage house. It's kind of an ideal setup for us. We get the entire building Downstairs, there's four single car garages. So that'll be good for like storing marker gear, but exercise equipment other things and then on the second floor that's where the that's where the apartments the way that the guys has got it set up is that one side will be used for like cooking and dining and the other relaxation area and then the crews will be able to sleep in the bedrooms and

And do you have a price worked out for after six months?

I want to say it's like $3,600 a month. For the whole thing? For the whole thing. And we get used to the clubhouse, so we can finally get another facility there. There's probably going to be some grumble that they want to stay in the apartments.

We might be changing the industry.

And operating out of apartments, the engines and the apparatus don't be stored there as well, kept there as well.

That's where it's going to be operating on. Just looking at the number of taller buildings that are down in that area, we found they were getting better coverage. Also, the station two, the crews there, that's becoming one of our busier stations. And I'd rather put the mileage on a million-dollar engine than a two-and-a-half-million-dollar ladder. So that's one of the decisions. It's going to make good operational sense. It's going to make good fiscal sense to put that truck down there. So one of the other things that we've worked on that we're all familiar with is the EMS Transport Feasibility Study. and see if we see an application to present to Lake County. Scott talked a little bit earlier about the resolution for the budget. One of the things that we're recommending is the budget for the EMS transport, that be included in that resolution so that that money is earmarked and available when we get into the transport. At the same time, it's not taking up space in our general, kind of like we did last year. So staffing and leadership, we received a safer grant that allowed us to hire 15 additional firefighters. That is ongoing right now. We, to date, have completed two firefighter orientations. We're gearing up to do a third one. Probably won't happen until January. We currently have five open positions that we need to get filled, so we'll be looking any of the changes that come about. We promoted our three battalion chiefs and we placed Battalion 103 in service. That has been a game changer for us. I can tell you that when we had a whole fire activity over the Fourth of July weekend, that was just immensely helpful. We had, you know, literally we had four fires happen within about an hour and a half of each other. And it was, we had one fire here in Claremont where there were no Claremont units on it because we were all dedicated to restructuring fires. That was, you know, later that evening. We had a structure fire happen in Claremont at the same time. All the units from Claremont were dedicated to other fires that were going on at that point. In Claremont? In Claremont. So we had Grumlin, Mideola, and Lake County come into that fire. And I believe it was Chief Hoey that was down the road from the street. So he went down there and took command of the scene. So for a period of time, he was the only Claremont firefighter that was on that fire scene. That's how busy that Saturday got.

And they were pulled outside Claremont for other fires.

They were outside Claremont. Like one of them was at the prison. It was a little of both.

We had fires in Claremont. We had fires just on the periphery of Claremont.

I think most of our unit was in prison, right?

We did, yes. We did have some in the prison.

Prison. Yeah. They found a correction.

The Correctional Institute. Up by the winery.

The Correctional Institute. They counted. It was hit by lightning on Saturday as well. So you had that one, you had another one, and then you had one here. You had about three going at the same time on Saturday.

Did we get help from our surrounding departments? We did. And all of those?

Many all the roads on the L.A. County. It worked out. We had good coverage. It took more to clear them off during that time period to cover some of our faults. We have one later that evening where the crews actually saved a woman that was trapped inside of the house. That one very quickly became a very complex fire, but from the report that I got on that fire, they probably were down to seconds before that lady would not have been a viable victim. From what I heard, she was literally in the only spot in the room that was not on fire. The crews went in there and were able to grab her, get her out. She was taken to the hospital with smoke inhalation injuries. But aside from that, it looked like she'd make it recover. So that was one of those cases where we had a true save.

Well, I apologize. I think the chief yesterday was bad-mouthed because I think at the opinion ceremony, I may have mentioned that we hadn't had a house fire structure fire in so long due to y'all. to work out advanced and doing things in the community

We are able to respond so quickly that we literally will get the fire out and under control without, you know, really before the rest of the units get on scene. Case in point, one of the fires that we did have on Saturday was somebody was discarding fireworks into a trash can inside the garage. The trash can caught on fire. Our crews were able to get there and put the can out, so it was confined to the can. It didn't spread to the garage or any other part of the house. We see that a lot with our responses. So, uh, and, uh, we, we completed a promotional processes, uh, for getting the fire station 5 open was actually, uh, right now we're going through another promotional process. Uh, what happens? We, we exhausted our 10, our engineers list. So we're having to repost those so that we can fill the remaining positions. When promoted the battalions up that created some vacancies and tenants and. are still trying to get the folks who need to do it. So it's kind of created some challenges with us. We've been working through human resources. We had to overhire on firefighters. We had to have firefighters fill everything. Promotions took place. So a few challenges there we're working out as far as how we make that work with an HR system. But they've been a good partner with us forward and just making sure that we have all these people there that we're going to hire. So it's a little non traditional. Typically, if we have like a lieutenant position become vacant, then we have to fill that position before we can go and hire a replacement. In this case, because of the number of positions we've been looking at, I'm sure that the city manager's office said it was going to create roughly about a half a million dollars in additional overtime expense. So that's why we started doing this non-conventional method of hiring and bringing additional personnel on. We've got four firefighters who we're supposed to have right now, but most of the promotions take place, all the numbers go back to them.

Thank you for your foresight.

So our facilities, apparatus, and infrastructure, we are placing Station 5 in service, and we are just about wrapped up with the temporary fire station. The date that we have set for that is July 27th to have that available for crews to move in. We're down to getting the water line hooked up to the building, and we need to get the sprinkler system installed that we have to have in there. So as soon as those things are done, we'll be ready to move in. doesn't meet that deadline, and that will allow us to stay on track with the demolition on Station 2 so we get that part of the project going. So delivery of a new pumper and a new aerial apparatus. The pumper went online at Engine 102 last week, and the aerial is still in the process of being updated. We're looking at about three or four weeks before we'll have that road ready, and that will be going down to Station 5 as a permanent aerial development. And we transitioned to 5-inch supply hose. That's in progress now. The new trucks that are coming in are coming in with 5-inch. And the rest of them, we are swapping them out. So to kind of let you know what the background on that is, we traditionally have carried 4-inch supply hose. You can get 1,000 gallons using the 4-inch and a 3-inch supplement line for about 600 feet by going with the 5-inch. We're going to increase that distance to 2,000 feet, and in shorter distances, we'll be able to fully use the hydrant system that we have. We've got a lot of hydrants that will easily provide 2,000 gallons a minute or more. And it'll allow us, when we finally do have a large commercial fire or something equivalent to that that will happen, we will be able to tap into the large system that we have and be able to do a lot more than what we can with the forage that we carry today. And it's also standardized everywhere else in Lake County. All the other departments are carrying 5-inch, so that's going to make us a little more Okay, we advanced the fire station to renovation, planning and design. That's ongoing. Like I shared, we did the 27th of the month, but we should be on track with that as far as demolition. And they're estimating about 10 months to get that building to completion where we can move back into it. And we constructed a new training structure that's currently being constructed. It's a T prop over at the training center. some training in one of the props. We also completed the classroom upstairs, the locker rooms for personnel to change in, and we turned the old base for these to work on the trucks into a fitness area for the firefighters to work out. And we are beginning construction on the utility building out there. It's affectionately referred to as the pink building. It's where they used to have the storage and a few other things there. So that's gonna be like an instructor's prep area, one of the endowments. We had it evaluated. We found out there was no asbestos in the building, so that dramatically reduced the cost of us being able to do it. And we've got a contractor currently starting work on that. So over the last year, we were awarded both an AMG and a SACRE grant. The AFG grant is, that's going to be one of our safety initiatives. That's where we're going to be putting the direct source capture systems on the trucks to take out a lot of the carcinogenic materials out of the exhaust, not exposing our car to understeer, either on the stations or on scenes. And we discussed the SAFER grant earlier. We do have applications in now for an AFG and SAFER for next year. And those applications, if awarded to us, will go towards the firefighters and the equipment needed for station six. And this past year, we implemented a new records management system. The timing on that really worked out. This year, they went from the NIRV system over to the NARA system, which is the Federal The older software that we were under was behind the ball as far as getting their system ready to make that change over there. And the system that we changed to was being packed as far as being ready. And that just made that transition over a lot more seamless. And we're seeing a lot of other things that are helping with that. We're getting ready to roll out. to make sure that we're not replacing our people writing the reports, but we're giving them assistance with getting them written correctly. So it's been a huge help with having a new system. And we acquired a second SCBA cascade system. That's where we fill the air walls, the firefighters big proponent of when you're talking about things that are critical for that type of work. One is, you know, two is one and one is none. And this will be helpful with us having it over at the training facility. It'll make it easier when we're doing drills for utilizing the air packs and also give us a backup if one of those systems is down. And we also are working to expand our firefighter cancer reduction initiatives. We started a new personal protection equipment cleaning system. It's utilizing liquid CO2 to clean the marker gear. It's a technology that I saw a few years ago. And one of the gaps that we've noticed is that there's a requirement out there that our gear has to be inspected and serviced at least once a year. And part of this cleaning, that inspection and service takes place, so any repairs need to be done at the same time. But one thing that was really interesting with this cleaning technology is that it will remove things that the standard cleaning mechanism will not do. There's one of the cases that the vendor shared with me where they had a set of gear. They had been on some kind of fire. The gear got exposed to some type of chemical. It stained the gear of dark, almost a grayish-black color. and washed twice with the traditional extractors, and they still had the staining on the gear. They put it through the CO2 cleaning, and it looked almost like a new set that came out, and it pulled out. It looked like black sludge that they took out of the machine. It was at least a quart of that stuff came out of that one set of gear with that cleaning system. One of the things that's been really interesting about it is that technology not only does it remove all the contaminants, but any of the free PFAS materials that are in the gear, it'll pull that out of the gear. So it's something that's, you know, we're looking at it as something that's really going to help keep our firefighters protected. So we're doing that once a year for each set of gear, and we're just utilizing the normal extraction for the other times. Or if we have a set that gets a couple years ago, we had an incident where it got exposed to diesel fuel. We had to throw the gear away, so we have something like that. We can set it there to see if they can't get it back to the surface of the stadium. And we're in the process of replacing aging staff and sport vehicles. We've just got rid of our Impala. We've had the same process, and we've got a number of other vehicles that have just been too costly to keep around. High mileage vehicles, some of them have had access to 150,000 miles on a road that are 12 to 14 years old. So that's one of the other things we'll see in the upcoming budget.

Gee, we didn't ever set you up on a replacement schedule on your vehicles. I thought we did it as well with

We haven't, for the fire apparatus, we have not fully built that out for our staff vehicles. That's something that we're in process of doing. We're going around surveying the fleet that we've got, you know, just some of the changes that we've had and kind of, you know, through some of the new, you know, breakles into things like, you know, adding the second battalion. We had a vehicle that was the backup for the battalion vehicle, but now that we have the second battalion, now we need another backup for the battalion. So little things like that we have to adjust. But yes, we are working on that. That's one of the things that we want to do is that anything, you know, not just vehicles, but generators and other things, we want to map those out. Make sure that we're assessing those on an annual basis to determine the conditions so that we can map out when we might think that we need to replace those things. So this is our current organizational chart. We are currently up to 116 full-time equivalents. 96 of those are personnel in the field, and the other 20, that's made up of administration, prevention, training, EMS, all the functions that keep the person in the field doing all the great work that they do out there. So in the proposed budget, we are asking for one administrative position, that's an administrative assistant. This is in response to some conversations that we've had better coordination with the increased workload that's coming through the ministry. So, some highlights we have the three and a half million for fire station, two renovations, including the health of the station, technology, infrastructure, safety improvements. That's in our current budget. Another thing we're looking to do is to complete the design and engineering for fire station five. That's the one that will be on scope road, the permanent facility. We're looking at a three-bay station design to support up to 10 people, multiple apparatus, and we're also looking to include a substation for PD so that they have space, as well as having a community meeting space that could also be utilized for firefighter training. So station six, that's the property up on old Highway 50. We are looking at a design that's gonna include a, I call it a temporary building, but it's a little more robust than a temporary building. And looking at the technology, station setup requirements, everything that we're gonna need, and that's gonna allow us to do that today. It's a fairly attractive price point. All in, we're looking at a little less than a million dollars to get that station opened up. And then we're going to be continuing with development on our public safety training facility. We're looking at adding additional props, logistics storage facilities, additional site improvements, infrastructure upgrades, and different equipment for training. And we're also having a couple more conversations with the police department to ensure that we've got coordination. There's a lot of stuff that we use for training that the PD can use as well. So one of the things we're looking to do is master to see out there over the coming years as we develop the facility.

Is that station five? Or the training facility? Training facility. Is there any, I'm sorry, I bring this up during the police and I don't mean to speak for the chief. In some conversations I have with the chief and deputy chief, there's a request for, or a desire that if we had some sort of substation, some sort of place for the police on the west side of town, that might be helpful. And have these conversations come up with you relative to that facility? at all? Is there any opportunity to support?

There's definitely opportunity. I don't know that we've had that specific conversation, but we've got plenty of room out there.

Not a line. Sorry, gentlemen. But I think that came up somewhere. I don't know what you need.

Yeah, we were talking about that. Yeah.

Just a chance to, I don't know.

Yeah, that is a possibility. Are we still looking at a training facility out there for them?

Yes, yeah, we had a meeting with them last week where we kind of went through all the possibilities of what could be out there And you know a substation is something that you know, I mean that that's it.

That's a very easy Well, I know earlier we talked about the Waterfront like the building down there trying to make a little station out of it Well, it's talking to people that we report when you do the boat ramp or the fire It's another building that we talked about maybe using that as a office space as well down on the waterfront that waterfront

Well, and there's a local charter school that has expressed an interest. They have a city that they work with down south where they built a 6-12 school for students who envision they might initially be police officers or firefighters. So students come in, they're either on the blue track or the red track. The property that showed me struck me because it looked just like our west park it looked almost like it was almost like they took the property that we have there for the training and they were showing it to me and so i thought that could be something that we might be interested in you know allowing in the future um to help support also the recruitment of our resources we got our cadets right

Well, beach cadets and everything, I don't know about fire. Yeah, we have a junior cadet program.

It was course fun, stuff like that. It would work with them. I don't know if anything's come from that, but I shared the information with staff. But it seemed fun.

That's a great idea, though. We're keeping all options open. We've even had conversations with Lake Tech to see if we could somehow be like an extension of what we're doing down here in South Lake County. I've talked with Director Thomas that just throwing out a concept that I know that they're doing in a high school EMT program. And we were having a discussion that we got where we were able to do minimum standards at that facility. That we potentially could take some of those students and run them through that they would get certified as firefighters. So those are all ideas that we're talking about. So it's gonna take some time to develop the facility over there. But whatever direction we go, we're keeping everything open and we're looking to do whatever is gonna be in the best interest of the city and the community.

I like the idea that young people in Claremont might say, hey, I wanna be a firefighter. I might wanna be a police officer. And as we continue to improve the benefits and the environment for our police officers and firefighters, why not? Keep those babies close to their mom.

We're already doing a little bit of that. We've had two junior cadets already that we're actually sponsoring, putting them through the academy. It's still a scholarship we have with the Guans and the Tony Conti Foundation. He does EMTs and the Kiwanis does the firefighters and what we did is I got both groups together and we had conversations that why don't we just split it so that you know when we do that I just send the emails out and you know they basically say okay we'll sponsor that candidate and then they send money directly to the schools so the recipients get to go and you know they have it 100% they

if there's anything you need from us on the protocol plan.

Right now it's working, but if anything comes up, we'd have to approach it. So, on our twenty, twenty seven budget, the. For the EMS transport, we have compartmentalize that off the side. And like I said earlier, the request is, is that the funds for that get dedicated through resolution and not included in the general fund budget. But for that program, you get the 1st, 2 ambulances operational. We would be looking at 15 firefighters and EMS training that help make that that division fully functional. That is what is included in there in terms of personnel and budget. The next item says we have two MTE requests. We have reduced that down to just the administrative assistant. There's some change coming with the marketing coordinator. We had a meeting with the police chief and the parks director yesterday, and it looks like that's something that can kind of fill that's doing all of our fire safety education is overwhelmed um but whether it's to the point where we need another person to help or not kind of the question so we've decided to pause on the arrest request for another fire life safety educator and we'll see how this marketing position works out it looks like about 25 percent of their time can be the rest of the fire departments i think that'll that'll satisfy the immediate need and uh we can just see where we're at and get As we talked about earlier, we're looking to replace aging vehicles and marine units. The bigger boat, that was a request we had in there. We are pushing that out a year and working with the city manager. There's still a life left in the boat that we've got, even though it's really not the best boat for us. It's not a critical need to have that place this year.

We've had a couple water events this year. more than I think usual. What was your experience with our equipment? And I remember when the rowing events happened, there were a couple incidents where boats were crossing the rowing line. Was your team involved? Maybe I should have thought to ask that.

We generally, anytime there's a big event out there, like they're having road championships or any of that kind of thing, we'll have our fire boat out there for the ones that kind of happen spontaneously, like if there's just people down at the boating accident or a drowning incident at the beach or something like that. The other program that we have in place to assist with that is our Circus Board Rescue Program, and that's where we have about 80% of our firefighters in the field are certified, so basically as technical rescuers for doing, you know, water rescue. So that's not just, you know, swimming after the victim. They're trying to do grid searches. We have these small handheld devices that are basically a handheld sonar where they can look out to 100 feet underwater, which is immensely helpful with the tannins we have in our lakes. And we've seen the success of that program just immediately. We had one where, unfortunately, we weren't able to save the life of the individual. We did get a heartbeat back. There was no brain activity, so there was an opportunity for closure with the family. He had a brother that was serving in the military over in Germany. He was able to fly back, but his brother was still medically alive. And then there was a continuation of life when the family did.

So we've also seen a lot of instances where that program has resulted in saving victims.

So we have found that that's probably the best way we get our truck there. We've already got the rescuers on board. They can immediately go in and do their work. They've got the training to be able to go subsurface, to go down to the bottom to find the victim. They know how to do searches. We've got the equipment to help them look. And we have found that to be a highly effective way of doing what we need to do.

Do you have the equipment that you need? Or you said the boat's not perfect. What's the status quo?

The boat, we're looking to get something that's a little more tuned to what we need to do. And, you know, talking to the city manager, I mean, that's something we can, you know, we can wait a year on that. The one we have, I mean, it will serve the basic purpose. You know, some of the challenges we have is that when the water levels do rise, we cannot get a bridge. So we're kind of stuck in, you know, Lake Mineola. We can't go to the other links without watching it from another program and another location. There's a number of other things where that just wasn't the best vote for us to buy. It's a good watercraft. It's just not the best one suited for a renewable link.

Is there a chance to resell it? There is.

Chief, do you want to speak on that? I know you've done a lot of work on it.

I appreciate pushing it off. I appreciate the impact on the budget. But if there's a way to get a better suited apparatus, and we have a perfectly good one, might a swap be possible?

Yeah, that was about a $300,000 purse. That was one of the reasons we were looking at the amount.

to the 300th floor, a new boat to replace the one we have. She had a point on it. It's a new bar boat. It's too high. We just can't use that boat on the bridge as a plan.

I don't know if you've ever seen the old war boats. It's like a landing craft. D-Day, and the whole front comes down. So that's what this boat basically is. So it can go down in the water. And you can just bring people in. Our current boat has tuna doors on the side.

So you really have to manipulate people around so if they have a spinal injury or something, If we have to be careful, it's just not easy.

And the boat that we're also purchasing, for both of what we're purchasing, we'll also have fire time to get the boat to travel currently at this time.

Are we seeing any sort of, I know we recently implemented the different fees for the boat ramp. How are we seeing on the revenue side of that, and might some portion of our boat ramp fees go towards the purchase of a vehicle like this?

Well, you're not making that much, but I don't know. Well, Scott, I think one time before we asked that question, I don't think the fees could be used. Can we use the fees to go towards purchase of the boat?

That's unique to other people.

Off the top of my head, Mayor, I do not know. I have to look at the ordinance. The revenues are strong. I'm trying to find the number now, but my recollection is in the range of $80,000 per year.

So that was before we raised some of our other areas, right? We have the new revenues, the new fees this year.

Yeah, we do. When did we last raise the rates? It was just in effect a few months ago.

Well, I know that's what we used to collect, but with the new feeds, I'm not sure where we got to go.

We just implemented them, and I know some people come to me and say, hey, don't use this boat ramp anymore.

I'd be glad to look at the ordinance, see if it outlines use of fees, but along these same lines, we do bill quarterly Lake County for some reimbursements related to police and fire department voting activity. So we do get some reimbursements from them. You could certainly remark those funds for them.

Yeah. How often are you called to go to Lake Louisa, for example, right now? Is that inflatable?

One of our other big initiatives that we got is focusing on our firefighters' health and safety cancer prevention initiatives. We've talked about a few of those already. The diesel exhaust capture systems that we're looking to put on the trucks. That will largely be offset by FEMA funding. We're just having to go through a few steps to make sure that we've got the approval to buy the equipment we want to buy. It's been a little challenging with some of the shutdowns. We've tried to get coordination with our FEMA reps, which during normal times can be challenging. Some of the other things we're looking at is the decontamination that we talked about. We've got some additional equipment we're looking to get types of things looking at different respiratory protection systems for i know we're looking at a different type for our prevention staff you know understanding when they go out for a fire investigation uh there's we still have to be concerned about ball castings you know with a structure so rather than giving them the air packs which are very costly we're looking at something that's a little bit easier for them where it also gives them a lot of protection And then we're looking at replacing some of our thermal imagers. Some of those are getting into life and need to be replaced. And then we'll talk about the bubble gear cleaning and inspection programs. We're also, another program is maintaining our operational readiness through staffing, recruitment, orientation, academies. We're also incorporating that into our standard of cover planning. That's something that next year we're looking to bring in a team to do a train-the-trainer with our staff to effectively train them on how to write into the standard of cover. And then now, once that's done, then the folks we have will be able to train the next generation that comes up. So that's kind of the thing that will get us going with that. And then modernizing our technology and our workforce development initiatives. Some of the stuff that we're looking at, like the recruiting, that's something we're finding we're having to get very creative. One of the things that we did recently, we actually went out to an academy and I had the division chief of training go out there and gave him the authority to make job offers on the spot. And we literally hired five people that were in fire school. And it's kind of interesting because everybody else kind of calls it the same thing. the time that class graduated, every single person in that class had it. It's already on payroll with a part of somewhere in Lake County. So there's more jobs out there right now than there are candidates. So we're having to get creative. That kind of goes back to the thing we're talking about, looking into the high schools, trying to find people, especially, and I love developing local talent. There's a much higher likelihood that they're going to stay here for careers. and maintain that building full and so on. We're having to get creatives. We're continually revamping what we're doing and trying to find new ways to go out there and attract and recruit people into the department. Kind of looking over the upcoming fiscal years for 2027, one of the big projects we have is our Station 2 renovation and expansion. Another big one we've got in the 27 budget is the Fire Station 6 build. Then we have the Fire Station 3 design services. So we don't actually want to do any work. We just want to go out and do the planning to figure out what do we need to do there. When we started looking at the number of projects we had going, one was going to be costly and the other thing was just with the volume of keeping up with all these projects. We felt that was better back in the 28 budget to take a look at. So this will allow us to go and take a look at the facility. We know one of the big issues we have there is we still have all the workout gear on the bay floor, and we do want to get that into a clean space. So we'll figure out what that solution looks like, get a number that we can put to it, and bring that back next year. One thing that's already been talked about a little bit in twenty seven is we do have the fire department was department renovation. Right now we have that as a fifty fifty split. We really don't have need of the building. He's looking at. But there's also been some conversation that maybe parks comes into that conversation since they've got the folks that the Rangers go along the trail there. That might be a that might be a location for them as well. But we would like to see this go forward. I can tell you that since they came here in 2019, we have been talking about boat houses, boat docks, and everything else. I would just like to see us make a decision and make a commitment to either go forward with it or say, no, we're not doing the project. It's been on our radar. right location you know it's right there at the ramp um you know if we actually have to launch for a rescue uh that is that that would be that that would be the best option for us and we literally can take the truck we can park it right there where the village is at you can just pick the crews they go out they hop on the boat they drop in the water and they're out that would be the quickest way to launch that boat for a rescue if we have something going on in the middle of the way something on the west side of the way to be closer include your training section Well, you have to think that if it's an emergency, they're likely going to be coming out of station one, which is over fifth street. So, I mean, they could be over there at the training facility, but that's probably what only happened if there's actually a training activity going Yeah, it needs a lot of work, but yeah, I mean it's a good location and you know that, you know, we've identified that that would be the optimal way to do it to, you know, launch rescue if we had to.

Well, I agree. I mean, if we had to store it on the water there, whether we have to haul it down there to try to launch it in the water, take more time and everything.

of the two docks that we just approved funding for? Is that?

Well, the two docks we approved funding for is the little dock. Well, this is a whole separate dock down here. Well, now the building is different from the dock anyway. That we just approved down there. We just approved the one off of 2nd Street and the one off of 3rd Street.

Yeah, it was up there too.

which is what we say off of 3rd Street. When you first come down 3rd Street, you had a dock there. And then you had one off of 2nd Street, if you're ready to come down 2nd Street, go straight. And this little boat house, the little house has always been there. People have been trying to get us to, for years, ask the council that they can turn it into a rental house. I think we've been talking for years about turning it into a boat dock.

I'm just wondering if the two that we're already building can't be just expanded with a slightly larger footprint. I'm just saying we're already putting two piers in.

Well, the one that we've been placing, a lot of residents utilize this.

I think it could be designed. I'm not suggesting it would be designed so residents couldn't use it. I'm just thinking, I know driving piers is very expensive and it takes time and all those things for a system. If we just change the design of something that we have, that might be more efficient. Just putting ideas out there.

Yeah, I mean, I'm just trying to get a picture in my head. I want to go out there and take a look at it because part of what I look at, too, is, you know, how easy is the truck going to be able to access it? You know, because we're in a fire truck, there's going to be a place to park without obstructing streets or anything else. And we have that on the boat ramp. I'm not saying it doesn't exist in the other locations. We just need to put eyes on it.

When I was going to the pier, she referred me to you. You're moving close and you're more in line with the residents. People swimming and everything. Yeah, well, I mean, I have no problem with that. I know when Chief was up here, he mentioned it as well. And of course, like I say, taking the house, we talked about doing a lot of things with the house, and if you're going to take it, and again, go back and use it as a substation as well.

So looking out to fiscal year 28, that's where we're looking to start doing the planning for our Fire Station 4 facility. That's another one where we have a number of issues there. We have not only the exercise equipment in the Bay Forum, but we also have the bunker gear store out there. That one makes sense to push that out because they're probably going to need to have a talk with the county since it's a shared facility and their folks are out there as well and see how that's going to look and who's going to pay And then station, in fiscal year 29, that's when we're looking at doing the planning for the renovation on station one. We know that's gonna be a pretty extensive project. We're not only looking at doing the site for the firefighters. We've been able, at that station at least, we've been able to get the exercise equipment off the bay floor. But we still, excuse me, we still have refrigerators around the bay floors. We still have proper gear that's not being stored properly. And then we're also looking to basically redo the admin, get rid of all the partitions, and completely remap the space there. The way it's set up right now, it's not very efficient for doing the work we need to do as far as running it for targets. We'd like to see that space get maximized so that we're getting better use of it.

When was the last renovation of Station 1?

I don't think it's ever been renovated. Aside from being added onto, I don't think we've ever actually done a renovation at her.

When was it built?

We added something to it, but I don't think... Yeah, the admin was added. Initially, admin worked out of the site where the crews are now.

When was that?

When they opened in 99. Where the administration is today is a completely new building that was added in 2010. 08 or 09, the admin was in it.

And when was the rebuild? That was about 20 years ago.

It wasn't a rebuild.

It was the first permanent fire station. Station one, yeah.

No, station three. Come on.

Yeah. Chief Logan, please.

Station three hasn't been removed at all, has it?

Station three, no, ma'am, other than the ACs. And then there was...

remodeled for mold issues with the ACs. And that happens every couple years.

That was 2005, wasn't it?

We've had it done a couple times now.

No, the building itself.

Oh, the building? The building was done after 2005. I want to say it's closer to 2010. Oh, I thought it was 2007.

It might have been 2007.

I remember Station 3, the formal that we were in was just after I got hired. It was 2007.

We meet first build station one we didn't have much laying there so we had to acquire some old land That was before me I can tell you all the people we got

And for purposes of, you know, looking at having six stations, when McKinnon Grove comes at seven, you know, seven stations, if the stations are each lasting 15, 20 years before any renovation, I mean, we're looking at realistically now, we've been talking about vehicles, but now we're talking about building renovation on a cycle that we need to be paying attention to. So, I mean, that's something I would suggest moving forward, we start maybe allocating One of the things that struck me when we made the change to the plan for Fire Station 2 was because there was debt service in the budget, there's a million dollars in the budget for debt service. Well, if we just continue to put a million dollars in the budget each year to go towards capital, then as we need it, we don't have to do the bond and debt service. We can just pay it. and fund it. So it's something for us to, I think, be thinking about because as we're looking at this and going, oh, yeah, it's 20 years, 20 years. They're all pushing that 20-year plan.

And some of that, too, when we're designing the stations, we can plan for the future a little bit and avoid that big-ticket item.

I'm sure they thought we were planning for the future back then, too.

I was referring more to, like now we're more aware of not having equipment on the floor, aware of the effects of the carcinogens, all of those things. Those are things that we were aware of.

as a society 30 years ago.

Of course, we've taken care of a lot of that stuff and there's still more to be done.

We're going into our capital proposals. I'll go through this quickly here. We've talked a lot about the firefighter health and safety. That's going to be one of the big things that you're going to see in there. The training facility and equipment, we do have some money in there to take that to the next step. Technology rescue and water rescue equipment, we've got things in there to expand those programs. Thermal imaging replacement program, that's one of our programs we've had in place for a few years that we need to take care of this year. Reserve one of seven, this is our last reserve trucker we're outfitting. That was another thing that I started changing several years ago. Our reserve trucks had no equipment on them. So we had to take a unit out of service. We were spending one, two hours to move equipment from one truck to another truck. When that truck's out of service, it can't go on a call until it gets all the equipment on the other apparatus and they had to turn around and do it all over again with the other direction. So we were losing a lot of productive time. We had units unavailable for calls. And we also found that when we got into disaster situations, if we had a need to put additional units in service, we couldn't put those in service because they didn't have the equipment available for calls. So we, for a while now, have been putting, we've been equipping our oldest trucks, the ones in the reserves. Now that's the older items that would be on those trucks, not the newer stuff. New stuff stays on the new trucks. But now when they swap out, it's a matter of grabbing a radio, their computer, some of the medical equipment, they put it on the truck, and it's a 10 to 15 minute process. So it makes it a lot easier. So this will be our last reserve that gets outfitted. And then what we'll do going forward is we'll buy new trucks with new equipment, and then we'll just eventually phase stuff out as it goes out of the fleet.

How many do we have in reserve?

We have four reserve trucks right now. So you typically want to see, you want to have about half the number of frontline trucks you want to have as reserves. I'm not sure if it's on this page. And Fire Station 2, that's another one of the big projects. The other big ones we got here is that we talked about the direct source capture system, heavy rush truck that is on work. You'll see that item being carried over into the next budget year. And one thing that's new that's in there, it's a little bit of a price tag, it's about $160,000. This is a reserve specialty apparatus, basically for our heavy rescue. What we're finding is when that truck has to go out of service, will not fit on any of the reserves. When you put the firefighting equipment on there that's needed, you don't have room for all the rescue equipment. So what we're proposing, now a brand new heavy rescue is gonna run probably about two and a quarter million. So what we're looking to do, think of a used beer truck. So literally, it's got all the storage space. We won't have fire suppression on there as far as pumping water, but we can put all the rescue equipment on there. And we can keep the services that that unit delivers in service when it has to go out of service, if that makes sense. So that's just a low-cost way of having something that can back up our heavy rescue when it has to go out for service to where we can keep the equipment and the capabilities available.

So you still need an engine or a tower for the water suppression?

Well, we have reserve letters.

But you've got that specialty equipment as well?

Yeah.

Is there a chance that it's probably price-wise better to do what you're saying? But is there a chance we could find a heavy somewhere that's been used?