City Council - public_hearing

Thank you.

all the workshops to order and if we don't mind mr. Wagner will you offer us a prayer please sir sure father thank you for another day thank you for all our blessings I pray your blessing on our meeting today I pray you give us wisdom you lead us and guide us give our counsel and our staff wisdom today and every decision and all of our communication and I ask for your continued blessing on our city. Thank you for all you've done and all the things you'll continue to do. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Okay, that being said, I turn it over.

All right. Well, thank you. We, we got through our big departments yesterday and with the larger budget. So. Today, we'll continue to talk and hopefully finish with the rest of the departments today and I'd like to start with Nathan Norris, our economic development director. And recently, just so you all know, Nathan, Kurt and I spoke, and we felt like Nathan would be a good candidate to be our CRA director. So Nathan graciously accepted that role. So he's speaking in that role now too. And Kurt and I are very happy to have him coming along and being a support and leading that. So with that, I'll let Nathan go ahead and to direct us in this conversation for his department.

Great. So we're going from the biggest to the smallest.

I didn't say that.

So just looking at this past year, the broad focus has been on the big investments that the Council has made in the future of the community through the comprehensive plan and form-based code. We've worked with numerous folks on development issues and we've focused a lot of our time on what we're calling just internally the Claremont Business Plan. That's essentially what are we going to do coming out of this comp plan effort. We're sort of at a historic moment for Claremont, where we've grown from growing citrus to growing subdivisions, and we've got to sort of look, what is the next frontier for the community? And we've heard lots of things from the community. So most of the time has actually been spent listening to different leaders and citizens I think it's about sort of seeing where are the key issues that we need to address. Those issues, as you know, are the ones that you get complaints about on a regular basis. We've got traffic issues. We've got how we can get around. development controversies that arise on a regular basis. And then we have the issues of, OK, well, what is going to be the platform for creating prosperity going forward? So the specific initiatives have been listening to people, setting up interviews, doing the pre-Shred as well as now post-Shred outreach for the comp plan. form-based code. And there's other things on here, like Claremont creates a role where I'm merely facilitating private actors and improving our community. In that case, engaging the artist community to participate in our efforts. And we can go on and on about that. Next slide, please. So this is the personnel chart for the department. We had originally had an urban designer. And what we determined through what we did this year was that we could be more economically, fiscally responsible by essentially outsourcing the key things that we wanted to achieve with the urban design. So really, the part was just one for the 2027 project. Next slide, please. And so we're going to continue to focus on the things we've focused this past year. development and design center of the downtown master plan. So really the big thing, we know what a downtown master plan is. I wanted to be able to show what the development and design center is about. As it regards to specific initiatives, one of the most important ones that has already been started by a private group in town is the Greenways Network. As we try to deal with traffic, We focused on, well, how can we keep people from having to become traffic? And then how can we keep people from experiencing the trap? And one of the ways is just make it easier to get around without getting on 50 or 27. So that's what really the Greenways Network is, and we really appreciate Jim Mayworm's and we're making progress there. But the other elements are things that are really associated with comp plan, whether it's how to leverage the educational ecosystem that we have today. We're no longer in a world where it's just a public school model for how we grow entrepreneurs and workers for the future workforce. So getting involved with that is important. But really, I think the thing I do want to talk about that not everybody has seen is the development design center. Can we go to the next slide? And the basic idea is the development design center serves as a concierge essentially for good development you know one of the principal goals coming out of the all the planning that's been done this year is let's make it easier for developers to do what we really want to see or do good development but what we believe is good and one of the ways to get good development is to preempt bad development so the idea is to go and work with different landowners and developers with them as they come up with their concepts And so this is what the majority of our budget for outsourced services on design is all about is providing these design steps. Now, this is coming up with concepts for how they can develop their site, coming up with the schematic site plans, how the buildings might lay out, working on floor plans, doing elevations, and then creating the eye candy. The eye candy is something that you will be able to see so you can better understand it. It's photorealistic visualizations that are the eye candy that matter. In other words, It's not just artistry that gets people to believe the project's going to be better than it really is. It's actually coming up with a specific visualization that's realistic. Next slide. So we did one just for the buildings that are directly across from City Hall, across the street here. We said, OK, well, let's do an aerial here so we can show existing conditions. The next slide, please. It just shows what if we were able to put additional buildings on those sites in order to help create a sense of enclosure on our main street of Montrose, which is our most important street. Next slide, please. And so this was where we took a photo of what it looks like. And we said, well, what if we can show people what it could be? And then that could encourage the development to happen. So go to the next slide, please. So that's just what happens when you put the buildings all of a sudden. You can start to feel it. It feels more like a downtown as opposed to a suburban place where the park is just in front. You could add buildings here again. And then you go to the next stage, and you start talking. Next slide, please. You can start to see how you can provide shade. Next slide, please. Then you can make it fancier if you want to keep going. Just giving people options. These were called the Montrose twins by someone we know. And so we thought, well, what if they're just fraternal twins? And so we went and Next slide, please. And we can imagine different things. And then that becomes Claire and Monty, the two lawn chairs twins. But the idea is to give people ideas on how they can develop the property in a way that serves as an amenity or brings positive value to our existing residents. development we bring into the community, are we going to make it easier to develop places that bring value to existing residents? And that's an example where if we looked at a long-term evolution of the downtown right now, this block that we're on is where people stop walking as part of the downtown. And the reason is there's not a sense of enclosure. If we put this, all of a sudden, we might get something, a better redevelopment on the next corner. And that could really be something. We're also working with, like I said, owners right now through the comp plan and the downtown master plan on specific site plans. But next year, we'll also have issues that pop up. As you know, we have a lot of issues that pop up regularly. And people have said, well, what do we do about this? And that's essentially where my budget's focused, is where we can work through a continuing services agreement with the designers to come up with this information that makes it easier for our staff to deal with the development community, as well as the Planning and Zoning Commission and ultimately the council to make informed decisions about what the possibilities are. So next slide, please. This just shows we can do the floor plans. So it becomes even more real good. Next slide. And that's just a different story. Go to the next slide. And so that's that. There are no capital proposals for our department. The things that we need to get accomplished will be done through other departments. And this is just a summary of it. Now, this is a little skewed in the fact that we didn't have an economic development department, essentially, previously that was staffed. And so we had to borrow from different departments to get through this year. But ultimately, what we're proposing for this year is that $545,000, which reflects the personnel costs, plus the operating, which when you see the 339, 160,000 of that is directly for the design assistance that comes through the development and design center. The rest of it is miscellaneous construction. consulting fees for things that we're already paying. For example, we pay Wellness Way consulting fees every year. We pay for lobbying fees in Tallahassee. That's going through the economic development department. So that's why there's a difference between, technically, it's $285,000 in consulting fees that are in the department. $160,000 is for the design stuff. The other is for these other things that we're already obligating. Any questions?

I've got one question on personnel costs there. Is that for one or two people? That is for one. Six thousand? Okay.

So last year, this position or these positions were funded from the City Manager's Department.

Correct.

Can we if the fiscal year 26 budget showed what actually was either spent so that we had an actual report so that we can see apples to apples what was dedicated to this last year because I think we had I think our staffing personnel has actually gone down yes we had two now we have one right and then I don't hear a lot of exciting things from the people who live in Wellness Way about the service that they're getting from the consultant that they have who's been our economic development person in Wellness Way. So I'm questioning if the time comes to start cutting. I think that what you showed us as an example is... going to be more helpful, like if we think about that 7-11 application that came to us down in Wellness Way, I think the residents would have benefited, and I think the property owner would have benefited from us being able to say, hey, here's what could go on this corner, and to engage with the public to figure out the type of building they're looking for, because I think the real issue there wasn't I don't interpret the real issue being we're using cars, we're filling up a gas station. I think the real issue was I don't want my kids to be driving by a gas station. I don't want cars to be coming into my neighborhood. And so I think this is, again, we've asked for innovative solutions, and this is one. But I question if the money that we're currently spending on the Wellness Way consultant, which I believe is that 117 to 148 to 154, actually helping the community whereas at the same 100 if 160 is what we need for the development design center could that help with wellness way for example oh absolutely so i'm sure there's other issues involving the county but since we have this position we've added mr van wagner and mr mathis and i think they're both very competent and capable um so I'd like to be comparing apples to apples on what we did last year. And then I also remember us being in these meetings and having a conversation about the economic development director being an arm of this council, which is why we put it in the city managers department. So I'm questioning why we're creating another layer and separating this position from the city managers direct report.

And we can run you the numbers of what was spent last year. I think the position came on, I remember it was the beginning of the fiscal year or sometime into it. So when council authorized it, they didn't really give us a budget. They just said bring on an economic development. They didn't give us like the big operating budget. So we were absorbing those in the city manager's office. But we can get you what was actually spent on this position last year.

yeah i'd have to go back and look because i thought we put in the budget scott wasn't there a position for economic development director there was it last year there was but i'm saying that you gave us the position that he authorized the position but it wasn't like a whole life before it was just so we didn't fund it we did fund we did fund the position yes so we gave a position and funded it under the city manager's office correct yeah correct right so i'm questioning why we're creating a new department

The department was potential growth at one point. We because we had 2 people in the department. We had an urban designer as well. And so we thought that it would be a department of its own to create. ultimate growth over time but at this point we're not adding we're not we're not adding an additional one that was requested but we're urban designer is no longer with us and we're using that right now to help fund the consultants to help out with the design studio which i think is great i'm fine with consultants but i don't know if i'm not i don't think i'm asking the question right

the organizational chart originally had the economic development director reporting to the city manager in the city manager's office right now it's a department which changes the hierarchy and and i'm probably going to have the same question about the communications department that i'm seeing in the budget okay we originally said communications is our voice not staff's voice the voice of this council to communicate to the public which is why we wanted it directly under the city manager last year we might have changed our minds collectively i don't think i i don't know that i was ever a part of that conversation yeah the budget workshops So the idea then when we approved this original position and the communications was that those would be under the city manager because we direct the city manager.

Well, we just created the communications positions just this year. Yeah, well. That was not a last year decision.

The PIO was always there.

But the PIO was always there. That was not a position that was created last year.

But it was under the city manager. It was always under the city manager. Now it's being broken out to a new department.

Well, we don't have a PIO anymore. We're not proposing to have a PIO. I guess I hear what you're asking, but I take a different viewpoint in the sense that all directors report directly to the city manager. So whether that director is in the office or in their own office in the org chart, they still directly report to the city manager. It doesn't change how we interact because our interactions go directly through the city manager to the staff then the city manager to the staff so whether that's in the third floor office suite or somewhere else in the building i guess i don't see so help me understand if there's a concern why needs to be within the city manager office versus its own office why that piece of it is a concern if the reporting doesn't change either way well

Well, I don't think she's saying it has to be in the city manager's office, I think. That's what I was here for. Yeah. But we create new departments, see, rather than keeping the position undirectly. We don't need a department, another department head, is what she's saying. Okay. You eliminated the PIO department, but now you're committing the whole communication department.

Department, right.

So the concern isn't that it's... that it's not about where the reporting line is, because the reporting line isn't changing. It's a philosophical issue of creating a department, even though the position still directly reports to the city manager. Is that the answer? Okay.

And then related to that, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the org chart has some department heads reporting to the deputy city manager.

They're all reporting to the city manager.

Direct reports to you. Okay, so that takes care of that. But that becomes the wider we get spread with department, different departments and department budgets. It's kind of like the same issue that I brought up yesterday about the arts and recreation. Yeah, we've got some pieces of this function are in public works, some pieces are in arts and recreation, some are the historic village, and we don't know who's reporting to that. And it's like, I am concerned about the structure. So that's why, so there's kind of two questions I've had related to the department. One is the effectiveness of, if we're saying, Scott, can you tell me what the budget was last year that we spent on those two positions for economic development? It had to have been, what, $300,000.

So Allison, you feel like it's too many moving pieces.

Well, I feel like it's a lot of moving pieces. And so, yes, so there's the structural. And then on the budget side, if we were around $300,000 last year for personnel plus the operating, that's $454,000. So we're talking about $90,000 more. And I'm questioning if the existing consultant for Wellness Way... is appropriately being paid 154 or if we look back at the last several years could we keep the amount we've been spending the same by reducing the amount of time that that the wellness way consultant is working and leveraging the advantages of this development design center

Well, this council just approved the contract with the Wellness Way consultant. Yeah, but I don't think... You know what, now that you say that... We just approved it within the last three months or so.

Was it $154,000?

No, no.

No, I don't think it was that... Because we're not directly responsible for the consultant. We actually paid... We paid the county. We paid the county part of the money. And that thing was only like $30,000 or $40,000 or something like that.

That part is split. So what's the $154,000 for Wellness Way? Oh, is that also the lobbyists?

It's not just Wellness Way. Yeah, and don't hold me to it, but I think Dan and I were just saying, I think the Wellness Way amount was $75,000. And there's $35,000, if I'm not mistaken, for the lobbyists. $45,000.

So where's the rest of it?

So Gray-Robinson is included with that for $50,000. We have an interlocal agreement for $70,000. That $35,000 of that is reimbursed back from the county.

From the county. Yeah, that's the one we just approved to give the county, and it's 35. And then Wade-Robertson, 50, but it's not all dedicated to just wellness way. It's for the whole city.

And the other thing we were just talking about, there's always been an economic development. they've had that for years but we just put it in my budget previously but they've had that separate they were just telling me so that that's work so it's not all years ago

Um, but then still on your personnel, you, so you eliminate the urban designer. Does you steal your personnel? Uh, she here still saying it's 2 people.

Do you have an agreement with the continued services when there's a project for design? That's my understanding how we're doing that.

No, the mayor's looking, I believe, at the documents.

That's why I asked how much was it. The personnel cost the 206 for one or two people because I heard him say it's just him and no longer an urban designer with his sheet showing. He's still got urban designers to people. Right? We just updated that. That's a mistake.

Oh, okay. Yeah, I was gonna say, I think that page 95 should be. The urban designer should be eliminated. Yeah. And, um, it basically is a reduction of 1 for the for the city.

Well, and we didn't.

So, Council Member Strange, you just asked me what I was looking at here. I had made a request, I think, I think everybody got this. It was a list of everybody in every department and where they're at salary-wise and when they were hired. And the Economic Development Director and the Urban Designer were both hired back in October of 2025. and we had $250,000 in the salaries for that, but that does not include benefits.

Okay, so now it's 156.

And now it's 156. So it is a reduction from where this document from HR and finance.

Reduction in salary and reduction in personnel.

Yeah, it's a reduction. It sounds like the FTE elimination was fairly recent, maybe post or kind of during printing. So really, page 95, we just need to reduce the FTE from two to one.

Okay, so last year for economic development, then to compare apples to apples, we spent $479. And the request is to go to $545. That's the... Am I now preparing a full stack?

I think so. Without looking at all that data, I think it's roughly kind of in line with the other increases we're seeing for the most part in other departments.

Okay. Okay. I think my questions are answered.

I can say one more thing. There have been various expenses that have been covered by other departments this year, simply because there was no budget for a pencil or anything else. So we're still in general ballpark. I see. OK. I think there may do.

Yeah. And I think there has to be some deference or should be some deference on us as the council, whether it's a new person within city manager's office or a new department that that first year or two, we're going to have some of that maybe fuzziness that we may not have as an established department like police or fire that have been in existence for quite some time.

No, I agree.

I just felt like I didn't have the comparison. No, I agree. The comparison really isn't there because it wasn't technically funded last fiscal year. It was funded not as an individual department, but it was funded elsewhere. We just didn't see that here. I have a question with regard to kind of the Design Center and economic development as a whole. And I know, Mr. Norris, you have some really unique background, given your experience in working with governments, but also through education and through the military service. There's conversation out there where communities have economic development directors and departments. They have community development directors and departments. And then there are some that join them and say that this is our office of economic and community development, or this is our director of community and economic development. Philosophically, do you have a thought on that? Is there a difference between those two verbiages, community development and economic development?

There can be. It depends upon what you view is the purposes of economic development. It's generally fairly fuzzy. But in the economic development world, you know, most of the focus is on big game hunting of how can we bring in an out-of-town corporation to our town. There's also workforce development efforts that fall under economic development. And then they'll say, we want to, you know, we want to go ahead and retain our best and our brightest. And so those are, and essentially LEAD does that locally and trying to look at those three different directions. For how I've sort of set out the academic development department here is to be very, very focused on how we can, as you've heard me talk about, achieve our goal. And our goal that we've heard people support is this idea of creating a place where our children and our grandchildren can stay and prosper. Most economic developers don't even think of a goal. They just get rewarded by how much capital investment is made and how many jobs are done. And it's just a numbers game. But a more thoughtful approach from my perspective is, no, let's look at the long-term scenario. And in our case, just going through this comprehensive plan this year, we've seen something that's pretty important, which is we called it the frozen asset map. And essentially, it was saying, look, after we stopped the citrus industry mostly, we switched to real estate development. And we're running out of land. And the land that we've developed Fully now we're at 80 over 80 percent of the land in Claremont is not easily redevelopment going into the future Whereas it was only 12 percent when we started back in the mid 90s And so that means that from an economic development standpoint if we want to prosper we've got to be thinking about what is our next thing and And our next thing, as we've talked about, is our opportunity to create both a diversified and independent economy. Independent in that right now we know Lake County, what, 70%? Over 70% of people who live in Lake County actually don't even work in Lake County. That's not super promising for our future if we're always going to say, yeah, we'll just be a bedroom community. Not that there's anything wrong with it. It just can't be sustained through us. So the question is, what do we switch to? We've had those conversations about, well, actually, we should shift to one that we have more control where we have more people working locally. And that actually would also potentially decrease traffic, which is a complaint. But then we've got to figure out what our focus is. And as you all have heard, a lot of people have embraced this wellness concept that we've been calling healthy living as a focus for an economy, which nationally we can compete very well on that platform. So the idea is how do we grow those entrepreneurs? And right now we have a huge advantage compared to the rest of the United States in how we educate our children. we have more freedom in florida than we do uh than they they do in most states it's at the forefront i i was at a conference just a couple of weeks ago where they were simply amazed at the amount of things that can be done educationally here and so that becomes part of the discussion so that that would normally be a community development concept as well as how we grow but actually in our core when we look at if our goals to create the place where kids and grandkids can stay and prosper. Our two main things are how we grow to maintain our quality of life, which is right now, we're in a very desirable place. Everybody wants to go to Claremont, right? But the second thing is how do we grow that local economy that's diversified and more independent than what we've been in the past? And I think that... That's the most important thing that can be done is facilitate all the things that fall into supporting that. That to me is the economic development that Claremont needs moving forward to be effective. Not whether or not we get the latest company that comes here. Not saying that that's not important, but that's being handled by other entities or the idea that we need assistance for people who are starting businesses. We already have resources in this region that are tackling that.

Thank you for that. I have one more question for you and then maybe one for the city manager and I don't mean this to be a I guess a direct question but I don't know how to ask this question without being direct I guess when when we at the end of October in October 25 we the city decided to hire a director and an urban designer at some point in the last 15-16 months we've now said okay we don't need that urban designer we're doing a consultant is that as a is that a is that a decision that was made based off of an assessment of the last 18 months 16 months or is that simply a staffing change and this is the path of least resistance at the moment that we go because i don't want to do something that's short-sighted And that's the premise of why I'm asking that question, because I understand the need to outsource when it's appropriate, but I also understand the need to be able to have the staff to be able to you know, really kind of manage and guide that performance. And so I want to make sure we're doing the right thing. And I guess I need a little bit more to understand the decision of the change, of course, especially since it's relatively recent that we just were going the other route.

Right. The route we're going now is, from my perspective, and first of all, it's just been, what, eight months? Not 18. I just wanted to be clear.

Oh, yeah, that's right. I jumped a year. Sorry, you're right. Because time's flown by. I was a criminal justice major, not a math major.

Okay, that's fine. No disrespect, Chief WG. And no, it was largely a personnel issue. As you may remember, Rob Fox was the other person that was in the urban design department. and his focus was to get things up and running. He was great at all that. It was a huge disappointment for me that he had to move on, that he had personal issues that arose. And I felt once he left that there were existing staff members in the city government that could take on some of the things that he was doing but the more critical role was actually creating the specific eye candy that i talked about before which was being done essentially um uh things you know similar to what dpz was doing And so the idea behind outsourcing that was that actually that the key person would be the most cost effective and the best at doing it would not be in a position to move to Claremont. He can stay where he is doing what he's doing on an essentially on a computer and he can visit here regularly. But to be here 24 seven wasn't a possibility. And if we went with a different direction, we wouldn't be able to get those people doing the work for us understood as cheaply under so it could change a thing if that resource became unavailable in the future it could be where it could be helpful to have somebody full-time physically here but right now we can't come up with another way to get delivered as much work as we can get through just outsourcing

thank you and my final question i i think maybe direct to the city manager and you tell me if someone else should answer um what is our relationship and role as as we whether it's a separate department as being proposed or it's housed within city manager's office and not its own department um what is our relationship with lead and lake 100 And what are we expending?

financially with those organizations that either complements and or Might be done might be able to be done differently within Great question There there's a lot of discussion around these things Right now not just with our city, but collectively sure so I would say when it comes to LEED, they're working on a lot of things. I have a lot of conversations with Rene, and we're waiting for them to get some traction. And I would say the county would probably say something similar that they have made a large investment.

Right, right.

And we're kind of more on the coattails with our investment is very minimal. So we haven't seen... Anything that I'm aware of right now, that's a direct result of lead yet.

Not as a direct result. We've had them come with people to us to look at different sites, but for whatever reason, it didn't work out. But we haven't seen a direct impact yet.

I'll add to this, because I can't do it private. So I'll have to do it in public. uh i had meetings with lead representatives when i first got elected and specifically said what do we as a city need to pay to you in order to have you send us i don't remember the number but it was like 10 Small businesses with four or more employees making a hundred thousand or more each month, right? Let's put numbers that are measurable, but I'm looking for small businesses That raise our average household income to over a hundred thousand because that was our conversation last year So it must have been after the budget yet Because I knew we were talking about that last year and I'll tell you they just looked at me like i was speaking green i mean i don't know how else to say it it was well we're raising up the ones we have which is good but otherwise well what big ones do you want i said i don't want any big ones i just want little ones i mean if you count a big one as 20 employees 50 employees fine but i don't want a kroger i don't want an amazon i want Personally, I'm looking, if you want my support, I'm looking for small businesses. And I said, who's in your roll of debts? What do you have? And I said, and how, and they said we're paying 5,000 a year. Is that something?

He's looking up the amount. It's very low.

And I said, look, for that much money, I get it. Like you can't have someone dedicated to what I'm asking for 5,000 a year, but what number would you need? So I can bring this to council because we're talking about economic development, right? And we were just not even in the same book of attracting small businesses. Retaining, yes. Attracting, no. And so... That's for you.

So $2,500 a year. Oh, that's for me.

Yeah, whole year? But then I question, what's the point of even doing that? I mean, it's still $2,500. So, I mean, and they'll watch this, and they'll say what they say, and that's fine. But I think that there's been a, and I've been publicly critical about it, so i'll just do it here is the county originally was supposed to be outsourcing its economic development department and the model they were using was the ocala model i don't remember what it was called you might remember but it was the ocala model and so the idea was we were taking county money that we were spending on economic development taking that money and creating a consultant relationship like we're talking about doing for the development design center but then the county reformed its economic development department, which I think has about a million dollar budget now. So instead of us spending half a million as a county, we're spending 1.5. So I think that when we start talking about the structure and where I'm questioning the structure and concerned about the structure, I feel like there is just kind of a relationship

a structure there not the relation the people are great but the structure does not support what we're talking about here and having small businesses yeah and i i i get there may be a piece of this that because of the size of claremont and the needs of claremont that that lead is not going to pun intended, I guess, lead in that effort for us specifically. But there is value in being a part of it. And if that's a nominal, I'm not minimizing $2,500, because I think all of us, if we have $2,500 in our hand, we'd say that's a lot of money. But in the bigger picture, what we're doing to still be a part of it, to support it. And if we do get some opportunity through there, whether it's conversation, experience, et cetera. Do we have a, are we involved with Lake 100 in that same way as well?

I would say that that's more, I mean, Dan just went through Lake 100. Leadership Lake. He just went through Leadership Lake. Very good.

Was there a chance to be, you would think I would know the answer to the question I'm about to ask, and I do not. I just want you to know that. Is there, are cities involved in like 100,000?

I don't know, that's what I'm asking. I don't know that we're in that. I didn't think so. Well, but yeah, I think it's a leadership. I thought you were referring to leadership. No, I'm sorry. Yeah, I was just making sure. And then with regard to the LEED, where does that, does that come from economic development, that 2,500? Yes. Okay.

Good questions.

And the 2,500, when the LEED first came on, we looked at all that. prior administration, we looked at it and at the time, kind of like what Mr. Strange was saying, what's the benefit for us? And we couldn't see much benefit, but out of the goodness and to say, hey, we're going to support you some ways. That's where the $2,500, we gave them the bare minimum because the cost they were asking us for at the time to be a real part of it was kind of extra. And we decided not to go in the late $100 as well. I hear you, Mr. North, talking about economic development and trying to bring employment here, but at the same time, I'm hearing you saying we're out of land, which I've been saying for a long time. We're out of land, so we're trying to talk about bringing employment here, where we're going to bring the employment. We have, other than the small businesses and everything, which I hear you say trying to get a small business in here that's paying $100,000. Wow, I would like to see that too. That's going to be kind of tough. And I'm always saying one of the biggest things for employment, though, you get two real sources of employment that I think people could actually make a living here in Columbia. That's your hospital and your post office. Other than that, most of it is small business. That's one of the reasons I was disappointed with what happened in the Wilderness Way area. because I always looked at that as being a great opportunity for industrial to bring in jobs and everything, but they decided to put a housing down in there, so now with all the land gone, where can we bring in employment, businesses that's going to pay anything that we can keep people here from off the street? I would love to see a lot more jobs here. One of my goals when I came back is to try to figure out a place we can keep people here. Kids go off and get degrees and come back and stay at home or whatever. But the situation we're in and no environment, they got to work outside the city. You're saying 80%, I'm saying we're over 90% developed. I mean, I can't go north, I can't go east, west, the only place we go is south and we're right up against the line at the south end. So where is the opportunity to bring businesses in that's going to pay any kind of money?

And when I was mentioning the 80%, those are the lands that can't be redeveloped, let's say, along on orders. In fact, we had the conversation this past week about 50 and 12th Street. We've got a corner that's almost six acres. We're meeting with those folks about what can be done there. But that would be an opportunity where that's not frozen in amber that is actually something that can be redeveloped and provide uh something that we have under supply for i was talking to david colby at the chamber the other day says you know we have small businesses that want to be in the you know in claremont and they just don't have many good options he says that's what i'd love to be able to see on that corner is let's get some space for for the small businesses that can be here well even then that uh of course that piece of property it was

every rezone that wasn't going in there. So when we try to rezone it back to industrial, we caught a lot of trouble on that. And it always was rezone. industrial because it used to be a steel mill, a steel factory. Council of Steel used to sit on that and it was one of the better paying jobs in Claremont back in my youth day. Anyway, I knew a lot of people worked there and it supported a lot of families in here. But even that piece, that's one reason I had no problem coming back to industrial and hopefully we can get there, but some of the people down there are not going to be happy with that.

business and everything sitting around at home of course back in the days when uh steel was there you didn't have all the homes around there so so now you have that challenge as well and there is a strong need as as someone who works in real estate professionally i will tell you i don't do the commercial side but i hear a lot about it and there is a strong strong need for small business commercial opportunity even incubator type of opportunities for people to get up and running And I think that's, you know, as we were sitting here talking about our future, I don't I almost hesitate to say this out loud because I'm afraid someone's going to go trademark it. Christian, if you're listening, go trademark this for us. The small business capital of the world, small business capital of the country, Claremont.

I like that.

But that tells everybody what our—there's no question what that means. Right. It's specific enough, but it's creative enough to provide an opportunity for people to explore and to innovate. And I think we have to be willing to admit that we don't have all the answers or know everything because this is changing so rapidly that if we've learned anything from the recessions of our past is that to try to do the exact same thing that we did. That Einstein quote, definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. We're going to see that. And so how can we do things differently? How can we be kind of maybe pie in the sky and unrealistic with with a, I don't know, a culinary arts incubator program that ties in with Rollins, that has a program, that ties in with Disney, that ties in with Universal, it's Wellness Way, it's close to that area, 192 and 27. I don't know what that means. But goodness gracious, I know there's people out there that can run with that and work with that maybe. And I don't want to tie too much about budget because I think it doesn't necessarily affect the budget for fiscal year twenty seven, but it's more of a philosophical. And maybe this is a great conversation for us to have as a council as we set goals for the city manager in the evaluation process. Maybe the goal, one of the goals for next year is to come up with this economic development plan roundtable maybe we take a more active role in the next 18 months to be engaged in conversation and make this a priority i like that idea you know what you said and i'm excited you got my blood just rushing i didn't have any coffee this morning so it's really good is groveland had something that they called the strategic

I think that's what it was called. And it was a group of leaders in business. So they were all small business owners who worked with the council as Groveland was doing its strategic plans. This was five, six years ago, I think it was. It was impressive. And so when you're talking about Lake 100, you've got me thinking between what we saw with Groveland, what we saw with Lake 100, know what we see with like 100 where we when we're getting these business owners because what i hear people say is well i don't want to run for council i can't put in that much time and i'm going okay but we still need your brain like as a community we need the brains and the creative thinking of what do we have in claremont you can't move into claremont for less than three hundred thousand dollars If you want an estate home, you're talking $500,000, $600,000. This is not an average salary. These are people who are C-suite executives. These are people who know how to make money. There are people who know how to manage money. And what are we doing? We're shipping them out every day to go work somewhere else. Think about that. We already have them here. What if we open up the door for them to communicate with us? Hey, I have an idea. Hey. What if we did this? Because I think right now there's this general sense of the public of, well, I've hired my electeds, they're in charge. Okay, there's only five of us. And so when we have 22,000 units now in our we were 16,000 when I ran two years ago, we had 16,000. Now we have 22,000. I mean, that's crazy. There are people in there that can make this city better. So if there's, I love the direction that you're talking about small business capital of the world. I think that when you talk about evaluation and direction of the city manager who's running the back door, ironically, right now. But I think if we could come up with a measure where we're saying, what has been the community interaction? What are we hearing from the community? One of the things that came up in the consultant for the communications, she showed me a survey that they can do where you kind of get keywords or something. Something where you're getting that feedback. And then it makes our job so much easier because we just know What direction do the people want us to go? So yes, you got me excited. I love it.

Well, yeah. And I don't want to, again, I don't want to detract too much from the budget hearing where we are today, but I think, I think that there's a lot that we should be focusing on in this area. And I know, Mr. Dorris, you know, you didn't mean anything by where the small, you know, we went through the biggest now we're starting with the smallest, but I think that the dollar amount spent here means nothing in relation to the level of importance and significance in the direction of our community. and i mean that sincerely um and i think that that there's you know i'm willing to kind of move forward with uh the budget and and have some conversations at the council level of whether we want to you know obviously fund everything but i've heard your priorities i heard why you're proposing what you're proposing um but i think that this is a conversation that has to be uh A regular thing if we're going to be serious about it.

I agree with your assessment about Rob Fox not being here. I don't think you're crazy. I think he's just trying to save us money.

Yeah, no, that's fine.

But I think your observation is well taken. So we may be back here. And I think it's a good thing if we're back here saying he's got so much going on, you need some more administrative support.

So we want to attract small business owners who live in risk and chaos. I think we should expect a little bit of risk and chaos. in that area. Although I don't necessarily like it in the other areas. I think that if that's who we're going to deal with, it's like I said when we adopted the Choice of Champions brand. I stood right there at that dais and said, if you're going to do this, you better be serious about it because the people you're attracting are not people who are going to tolerate mediocrity. If you're gonna say we're the choice of champions and you're saying champions are welcome here, you're gonna get champions. So if we're saying small business owners are gonna be welcome here, we need to be ready for people with great ideas to inundate us and expect us to take action on those ideas. And I'm willing to do that. I'm willing to put the structures in place that we need to do that.

Public comment. As Mr. Norris was saying, this design studio is kind of the first step of that. We have a lot of underutilized land that we can redevelop and make it something that it does attract the small businesses, but it doesn't attract all of that. So his design center is actually working towards that goal to get there.

Claire and Monty being a perfect example. Yes, ma'am. Come on up, you guys. Yeah, well, people on YouTube want to hear you.

I mean, this gets me excited as a small business owner trying to do something unique here. Just yes, yes, yes, yes, yes to all the things. And then also as an advocate for downtown, like the development and design center, I think people, they just get stuck. They don't know a lot of times what good development looks like. So they default to what is the easiest or the cheapest or whatever, and we miss opportunities. So I'm really excited about that. And then also just want to address, I think it's a misconception that small business means low income. Sometimes it does. And for sure in the beginning it does. But that's not equivalent. Just putting that out there too. Thank you.

Mr. City Manager, the CRA, now that Mr. Norris is the CRA Director, do we have to approve a CRA budget here and when will we get that and how's that process? I think I know, but I'm also asking for the public.

Typically, it's been approved in September. But my desire is to bring something in front of you in August and talk through it during our time together, which we haven't done. Normally we just give you a budget, but I'd like to workshop as a little bit with you guys. All right.

So that's forthcoming.

That's what I would like to do. Okay. Yeah.

So you adopt it at the same time as the general fund?

Well, typically it's in September. But I want to give you a workshop.

Good morning mayor and council members, uh, planning and development services department. Um, do you want Sean? No, I'm sorry. I don't have there. All right. Yeah. For some highlights of the year, we have been busy annexing over 561 acres property and we have some more set this year to go yet. We'll see some projects coming forward active projects currently in the process. As, you know, we're going to form based code. The company is a plan in the downtown master plan. We also cover code enforcement as well, which they have received over $73,000 in fines and liens over the past year. Keep in mind, the goal is not a monetary goal there. Our goal is to get compliance by verbal communication with the other side, if you will. We have nine full-time employees. Part of them are planning side, part of them are code enforcement side as well.

And looks like I'm sorry, I don't do we have this presentation. I don't I don't see it anywhere in here. Oh, you don't.

This will help us immensely when we're working on projects. The efficiency part will greatly help if the project's through quicker as well.

Are the economic development people now in these economic development positions?

Those were an old turn that way. They were our, they were what we had for economic development. And honestly, they were doing a lot more planning. Then economic development, just because the workload. Um, so the title could possibly change on them. From planning. Yeah, sure.

So we have five planners. Are any of them planners?

Four of them, including myself, four.

So what are they planning?

All the development comes in. They work with the code, implement the code to their plan, what's supposed to come in. And obviously you see us here.

So like variance application, site plan application.

Well, that term planning kind of throws you off because they're not really planning. Makes your mind go to a different thing. And the economic planning and economic development, of course, we just talked about Mr. Norris being the economic development. Right. All the time, they always ran out of their office because we didn't per se have that position.

That's right.

Separate, so you can't like combine all those things. I think, I don't know, when did Mr. Hicks leave here?

Who? Mr. Hicks. Jim Hicks. Oh, goodness.

Yeah. Yeah, because I think that was his primary job. Okay, but he'd been gone so many years, so they kind of combined everything into this office. And the public knows something.

Yeah, I don't know where to go.

It doesn't exist. Yes. It's an old carryover. It is. Um. Uh, we proposing no capital projects this year. The department and then obviously the summary is before you. There's still a bit left over to pay for the comprehensive plan part. That's why you see that $700,000 there. It's really a carryover.

So the actual on six will be lower when we look at the actuals. And then we've got the carryover.

Correct.

And what happened in 2017?

Yeah, we did. Yes, we did have a vacancy for a while.

All right.

That's it, Meg. I like that. Thank you. Short and sweet. Yes. Kiss. Keep it short and sweet. Yes.

So the city engineer, we actually don't feel that position now because I thought I saw something in procurement going by and asking for it. Yes, we're working on that now. So the procurement actions that we took to have engineers on hand. So, we feel the position that we still need all that through procurement correct?

So we have the city engineer that was a, that was a position that was in public services that was doing the plan review stuff. Okay. We moved it over under under planning because. We want public services to really focus on projects and infrastructure and stuff like that in the development review side. In the planning, so. We reclassified 1 of their vacant positions to the city engineer. We have had it advertised for about 2 months, a month or 2 now at least. We haven't had a whole lot of luck with candidates yet, but that's why we still have the continuing services. Because even if we bring a city engineer on board. there's so many specialties in engineering that you're still going to need someone that might be a stormwater expert or a...

So I just, I don't know, we did the procurement action and asked them to have what, four or five engineers.

And we need them now until we get our own engineers.

For now, yeah, but that's what I'm asking. Do that and go away for...

It will minimize. It won't necessarily go away because we're looking for a civil engineer. But if there may be a really specific stormwater review that we need assistance on, we'll have them on standby. But it will be minimized quite a bit once we get one on board.

All right. Kurt.

Yes.

Up here it says that the operating goes from $2.29 million to $717 million. Why is that?

That's the bulk of the comp plan. Oh, okay. Yeah, we still have a little bit left to pay. That's why it's 700. After that, it'll go down to closer to 25. Okay. Fiscal year 25 numbers.

I had him go next because Mr. Norris and him were working back and forth. Yeah. Okay. Nathan's the one overseeing everything with DPZ for the code and the comp plan. Okay. Yes.

And that was what I asked. The seventh sentence is left over. So the actuals in 26 will be...

I think we got 717, but I think you still have some operator. Oh, yeah, yeah Right right about two.

I think it would be something between two and three. Correct.

That's right. Okay. It's actually operating at what real is

May I ask just one question? It's not specific budget, but we're talking about it. Can you give us some definitive, as much as possible, when we will see in front of P&Z and Council, form-based code and comp plan?

dates we have a uh probably a three-hour meeting tomorrow with them to get that update for you um Sounds like within, say, two months away. But let me get that number for you.

Does that sound right? We've been seeing preliminary drafts of different sections of it. So we've been reviewing them and sending them back comments. And tomorrow's the three-hour.

And it's still just the Northwest Quadrant right now for the floor-based?

Correct.

And then comp plan?

We've had one review with them on one of the drafts. So I think they're going to go about the same time, at least fall for both.

Yeah.

Yeah. We're probably thinking somewhere in September, October.

Okay. All right. Do you want to add anything to that?

I just want to make sure for timing purposes. Yes. For timing purposes.

You know, it's actually the second week of November when everything's due. We're trying to speed things up on the form-based code for the Northwest Quadrant. The thing that we're trying to do right now is get the form-based code in a position where it can be overlaid. not a full replacement, but an overlay as a starter code. The reason is because we want to pursue user-friendly graphics, and user-friendly graphics take a long time to produce, whereas coming up with the rules doesn't take forever. So the expectation is that we would come forward in August with the rules that would be subject to an overlay so that we could have our development community choose to use that code instead of the existing code.

Gotcha.

And then later, once we get the user friendliness down, then we can add to it

as far as a draft that would be shared with people or commented on because my expectations were more in the beginning of September and I think this is probably more for the city manager and the deputy city manager is that with regard to the form based code and comprehensive plan measures, because of the depth of them and the breadth of them, I would like to request that we not get the draft on the Wednesday before the meeting. I mean, I say that kind of tongue in cheek a little bit because even some bigger projects we do end up getting the document. Right and they could be 50 pages and it's the way, you know, the yellow pages is a council member. Peterson was saying earlier. We're joking. You know, we get the other pages the Wednesday before the meeting, and there's an expectation to vote. And so I think, given the seriousness of that, I really am. I'm going to. Put a plea out there to make sure we get this with a couple of weeks of digestible time before we vote on.

Right? And if we can get a workshop in, in between that, that would be okay with that too. Yes, that would be great.

I'd recommend consider sitting with Nathan too. Yeah. Personally. Yeah. Yeah. And make yourself available to anybody who wants to.

Absolutely. We don't want to come up with a draft you haven't seen. Right.

Yeah, I echo that in that I don't want all of you to work three weeks' worth of time. And then we just say, we don't like it. Yeah, exactly. We can give you feedback at the midway point. Yes.

100%. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. I made an assumption. I'm sorry, but Sean McNulty of our building official. I wasn't sure if we were going straight to building or not.

Sorry.

I mean, you're overseeing, so. Yeah, I do not have any slides, but overall, there is a reduction in the Department of the... Yeah, for building services, which is kind of like the community.

Please forgive me. Do I have a tab for this?

I don't think we have one. No.

I don't think there was slides.

No, there wasn't in there. There's slides, but no slideshow. But I think this is it. Page 45.

It's under a special revenue fund because it's all funded by the building fund.

129. 129. There we go. I do have a tab. You should definitely have a tab. I've seen the tab before. 129.

129 in our book, yeah. Okay, thank you.

The revenues are even better, so we can see the revenues too. I love it.

Our revenues are strong. This year we're pretty constantly going to see a good reduction in some of our operating expenses being through some efficiencies, we're going to use less contracted services. So that's where you need that bulk of that reduction is what you're seeing.

I am admittedly ignorant to much of your department. So please understand I'm coming this way. Can you tell me and the public, what your department does for the team? Can you describe your function?

The building services primarily is the vertical construction. After all the planning and the zoning and the site review has been all hashed out, then now all the buildings come out of the ground, that vertical construction where the Florida building code kicks in. Through permit application, plan review, inspections, and then the final processing, end up issuing a CO or some sort of a completion.

Yeah, as your building comes out of the ground, some have inspectors that go out throughout that building process to make sure that It's being built correctly. Right, that's important. That's important.

That's an important part, yeah. On the commercial side, we work closely with the fire department. They also have reviewers and inspectors themselves, and we work together.

Inspectors at different phases throughout the project. Correct. Correct.

Typically, how long would it take for a building, just a generic building, let's say, through your whole process? Don't hiccup, just say, just generally. Our process?

Yeah. I put my goal, our goals, the department's goals, is we try and get a residential building permit out in less than seven days, which exceeds statutory requirements. And then on the commercial side, right now we're shooting for

20 days but looking on reducing that as well wow trying to work on some inefficiencies thank you you talked about building but also if i'm not mistaken you're also responsible inspection and permitting for renovations that you do another correct people correct any alterations additions

We're actually one of the fastest permitting in all of Central Florida. We get things out very quickly here, extremely efficient. That's wonderful. Thank you for that. And we got to the point where businesses and big, like the and all these big builders were all going private provider. Now they're asking to come back to us, which is a big revenue generator for us because if they go private provider, we have to reduce the permit fees by half or depending on which part of the provider. So this is actually not only because we've gotten it a lot more efficient, and user friendly that we are getting the developers coming back to us saying, now we want to go through you because you're easier to go through than our own private providers.

You would believe some of the stories we get from other jurisdictions, how long it takes the review process. It's really hard, really.

We're the senior champions, your champions.

Hey. We got our standard permitting department. I get compliments on it all the time from different contractors and developers and everything saying how simple and easy it was to go through with it. It wasn't always that way years ago, as you can recall, Mr. Van Wagner. Years ago, it used to be one of the worst. They've come a long way.

Sean has been very intentional, so you'll know, to talk about how we can make things go faster so we're more customer service oriented on the commercial and the residential side. and continues to look at that. So I give a lot of props to him and his team. We don't talk about it, but I want you to know they're very intentional. about it and that's to work with all departments public services fire all the different groups we're trying to figure out how do we get more efficient right and continue to move forward and i'm very pleased with where we're at where we're going with that so thank you for all you're doing with that thank you so this might relate mr norris i know you're working so i'm giving you a heads up i might ask a question that you might need to answer but this also might be for scott

So two questions. One relates to if our goal as a council through this comprehensive planning process is to identify places that are available for redevelopment or new development that are intentionally planned out and that they're people friendly. We've got economic development, a new development design center concept. We've got planning and zoning, and we've got building services. Where are the pressure points in the process that cause what I call the donuts, which is a concrete building surrounded by asphalt that is not walker-friendly, human-friendly? Where do we get the good design Every developer I've talked to says, well, I want to do a great project, but your code makes me do a bad project. But then I see PUDs, which means, no, you can do whatever you want in a PUD. So I don't understand how do we leverage what the three of you are working on to effectuate a quick result of good development that is people friendly. What system and process needs to be in place to achieve that result? And then my second question, Scott, might be for you, is I'm looking for a little bit of education on This enterprise fund balance this year, we're starting at 3.9 million. We're basically spending what we're bringing in. So I commend you on that. That's good. But philosophically, should we be carrying $4 million in a fund balance, an enterprise fund, or might there be a better use of those funds, whether it relates to achieving the goal number one or perhaps lowering our fees? to achieve goal number one, or some other method to achieve goal number one. So the goal is what I've stated. And so I'm trying to understand how this all works together.

So I can answer both of those questions. The second one is that this enterprise fund, the state says that all money received by this has to be spent on enforcing the building code. So you can't just move it around to different departments or move it around in different ways that aren't enforcing the building code. So they're very, very particular about that. With the first one, the first question.

Go back to that. So are we carrying too much of a fund right now?

You're allowed to carry a certain percentage over. But if you do it continually, kind of like a personal thing, you'll get audited. Yeah. And then they'll say you've got a couple options. You either lower your rates or you give the money back to the developers that you overcharged. So we're very careful about making sure that we're not taking in too much or we're spending it appropriately.

Should we be lowering the rates? I only see 27, so I don't know how far back this fund history goes.

I think that's something we can look at.

Is it a long history of hanging out at $4 million? Has it recently spiked? I'm just wondering if there's maybe something here to explore. Carrying 4 million might be the right number, but it might be high, it might be low. I don't know.

We're looking at different ways to do that.

Just to add to that, part of the reason we're trying to go for an engineer, we need to use these monies to help expedite the process in the building department. So that's why we're bringing in some of these key staff. So we're actually using these resources to benefit the community. That's why we're expanding these services.

Got it.

So question number one, you actually answered it yourself by saying it's the code. The code is the problem. And we have a code that makes it. It's a very generic code that's been frankensteined over the years by different amendments. And so what we're trying to do with this new form-based code is we're trying to put it to where it does encourage the good development, telling the developers where we want the parking in a perfect code, in my opinion. We make PUDs the absolute exception to the rule. Make the rules how we want them. Tell them if you follow the rules, you're going to get by very quickly. You may not even have to go to council with P&Z if you follow the rules. If you don't want to follow the rules, then you go through P&Z and council and all that stuff, and that's through the PUD. But PUDs should be the last resort, not the easy way out to do whatever you want.

So we're getting... And with the overlay... with the overlay we said we're going to see that before the fall right and then the fall will be the pretty pictures yeah the overlay is going to get going to set it up so we can start doing it great and start getting people the technical people ready is what we're doing yeah i might not be one of them but one of the things i liked i want to say this to to the rest of the council um in a conversation i had with mr norris about the development design center it speaks to what you just said so i thought of it is if someone comes to us and they've gone to the development design center and they say, well, I want to do this thing, we now have staff able to say, well, here's what we suggest that they do that would be consistent with the code. And we have eye candy to look at as well of what could be done so that we can compare it to what the developer is bringing us and say, well, we'd like to stick to our code or we'd like to give you the variance or the change. And so I think that will be very helpful to us making decisions.

If I could piggyback, it's so important that the five of you and the staff is in sync because if we're making suggestions to the design center, we have to know what you want. Because it will be so demoralizing for the developers if we're bringing them through a process.

And staff. Yeah.

So we just got to make sure we really work closely together. But it could make life so much easier for people to build and do things if we're together in what we're doing.

And I've had some planning and zoning people say, and I use the word as well, and then I heard you use it, so I want to set a better example, when we talk about good development. I think we might want to say desired development. Because good for us might not be good for us. So that which we desire might be a, there might be other words that are better.

I like desired. Desired.

That's a good answer. That was all I had. Thank you for answering.

Um, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Okay. Sorry. I pulled this out because I saved these 2 articles. I wanted to ask about, um. House Bill 803. And House Bill 1389 talking about, uh, permit processes and timelines and so forth. Do we anticipate needing to make any changes in this next fiscal year to accommodate? And is that built in since these just went into effect?

All the turnaround times and all the requirements, we already exceed what those new requirements are. Fantastic. And we have a couple of vacant positions in inspections and plan review. Those are kind of like on the horizon, like what Dan is saying. If we get additional... additional workload coming from the Pultes and the Linares of the world. I feel we have sufficient vacancies to cover that work and maintain those steps toward the requirements. Love to hear that.

Thank you. We've come a long way. Those bills speak to the fact that cities and municipalities have been going for how long? We've been doing pretty good.

I just want to make sure it's important to ask now because we're in the budget process and I know they just went into effect in July.

If we got all of the work that Dan was just

explain it yeah next year i might be asking oh sure and that's fair that's that's a that's a fair statement so uh you probably have the permits to pay for it right exactly because mr van wagen before kurt goes it's okay and i'm sorry i'm throwing this at you can you give me a i need i need some uh i think it's 741 pitt street uh along the retention pond there I know back behind that house, they came in, somebody came in talking about developing back there before, and I thought we disapproved all that, and I see them clearing out. Can you?

Is this the one without, it doesn't have direct access to the road? Is that what you're referring to?

Okay. But I see them, they cut down a lot of trees, and I see them. It looked like they were putting a foundation back there. I don't remember coming back to the couch. Can you check on that?

Sure, sure, sure.

i'm just curious how they got through all that when they came to council before and they got disapproved but now that's unless their whole issue is they needed access unless someone gave them some access well i know the owners of the house here next to them that were fighting against it they telling me they didn't okay they tried to figure out what's going on as well Anybody need a break? Do we need a 5 or 10 minutes? I'll just take a break.

Sorry. Is that good? Is that good?

I can't hold it any longer, sorry.

You started it for us.

It's making sound like 10.35, but that's all right.

That sounds good, yeah.

you Thank you.

Procurement. Procurement. Oh, okay. Procurement. You ready, Faith? Ready? We can go back.

Come on back.

We can go ahead and get started.

And we have procurement.

Hey, how are you?

Good to see you. That was a good one.

Oh, that's lame.

That is so healthy.

I'm so proud of you. Yes, lame. I wanted the donut cookie so bad.

You know colanders don't count for a bunch of things.

Oh, and you ate it. You got the apple. It's like holiday. I bought one piece. They must have, I don't know if they acquired it, but this is one piece. It's like one piece.

It's like one piece.

So, which today is, is it budget? Yeah, it's the budget.

All the numbers. Yeah.

Well, because I like that.

I have, I have my record that is here and it's another house and haven't had one in a week and months and months.

That's that's my little thing. Yeah.

But Gopher, you're eating an apple.

I used to do only black coffee.

But I was practicing because I would have only five cents of coffee a day.

That's some goodies over there.

Well, hopefully we can get through. We're going to be breaking for lunch about, I think as David told me, lunch will be served about 12 o'clock. We've got about an hour and 20 minutes. All right, yes, ma'am.

Hi, yes, Ramsey Jimenez. I'm procurement manager. I'll make this short and simple. So for our current year review, we've earned our Achievement of Excellence. In 2025, we've applied for the 26th, just haven't gotten those results. In 26, we also revised our procurement procedures and our P-card procedures. As part of our P-Card program, we earned a rebate of $30,436. Through our Fuel Card program, we got a rebate, we saved $14,685. And as of June 17th, we have issued 108 solicitations and we manage 350 contracts. So this is our current organizational chart. Keeping the same, no new positions. We also have no capital proposals. Nothing new, everything pretty similar. Same with operating costs. Oh, we had a vacancy for a short period of time, and then we filled that towards the end of the fiscal year.

And you still get the two positions that you're not filling?

Correct. The four that we have, we're keeping. No new positions. No new positions.

I was going to say, it's been at 4 FTE since, at least from here, 2023. Yes.

Are you working with Mr. Mathis on software solutions? Yeah, it's part of it.

So the audit committee is primarily headed by Zane and Wayne. But all the departments are being brought in.

And do we, do you see from your position of procurement anything that can keep in mind, I guess, like my response, if anyone wants to chime in on it, how the software can better inform and engage Especially local businesses on opportunities to keep those dollars that we're spending here in our community. Do you see anything? I know we talked about it in public meetings, but we've never talked about it. So is there any insight you can give us on?

Yeah, currently we use open go as our solicitation platform and they have a lot of resources. um to connect with vendors they have ai sources they have local they kind of go through google so we make sure that we're using all of those sources that they have embedded in the software sometimes we work with the chamber as well to get information send out emails we also post some of our solicitations um specifically on facebook or any other social media and also on the website as well has the website been updated since

Lately the last two or three months.

So our website is live. So as we're posting things on the open solicitations, it's processing those live. So if you went right now, you could see what's live. Things that open would be processed out of there. Same with contracts as well.

I did a post to encourage people to and I thought it was really easy because I went to the website. That's why I asked it was made because I don't remember seeing that before. So I thought that was good if I missed it before I missed it.

But now when we talked about the software audit, we talked about the three one one center and everything that we wanted to main. Softwares and open cup is one of them because they procurement uses and budget uses them. There's several departments. That use whether it's a few departments that use it, but they have a bigger capacity to do more stuff. So we're glad that they're on open up already because that's. And their own system is actually very easy to use.

We've been on, we just went to OpenGov about two years, two or three years ago.

Yep. Procurement, we've been on it since 2022. I know the budget is a little bit newer, but we've been on it for a few years.

Yeah, well, I know we did procurement and then we come back and tried to get, well, budget finally got there. And I like it a lot better since we went to OpenGov. It seems a little small.

It's user-friendly and it's free for all vendors. They do not have to pay.

additional modules that we're looking at permitting modules and things like that that they can open go their model is that 40% of their profits go back into R&D and developing new modules with new government solutions so it's going to be a good company we talked about software you open up software now we're going to wait to IT come in here because I know all the departments has all these softwares and everything and my curiosity is

Are you individually going through doing your own software? Why don't we all consolidate under IT and maybe get a better rate on all this stuff? The more modules you buy, the cheaper it gets.

With IT, IT is the license.

Has the license for all the other departments and everything? Yeah, I believe so.

And just about everything, yes. Wayne's taking his head, so yeah. Okay. Great.

Yours was so easy, we didn't even want to talk about it. Thank you. We're talking about IT. Thank you.

You're going to make everyone think it's easy now.

All right. Do you want to stay there or come down here? Okay. Stay down here. And procurement, as we talked to them about getting more active with letting the community know what we're doing for bidding. So they've been very active trying to make more people aware. So there's an effort.

Good morning. Good morning.

Hi, Tracy Howell, city clerk, and I've asked Caitlin Wilson, our records administrator, to join us this morning to answer any questions you may have specific to public records. Our current year review, the clerk's office has disposed of 1,007 cubic feet of records that have met retention in 2025. That brings us to a total of 14,725 cubic feet of paper records since 2008 that has met retention. We've also continued to expand our digital records management with 464,000 records scanned into Laserfish, our records repository, bringing a total of 3.5 million total images stored in Laserfish. Again, that's our records repository for long-term and permanent records. We also significantly managed the growth in our service demands. We've seen a 25% increase in lien requests, a 40% increase in cemetery sales, and a 102% increase in public records requests since October 1 of 2025. Operational improvements include integrating LaserFish with JustVoya, JustVoya is our public records software, to streamline records requests, implementing AI-powered redaction of protected driver's license numbers, transitioning candidate campaign filings to the web-based EasyVote application, as well as updated our records request portal to include frequently requested public records requests to the search area. The clerk's office has 60 to 10 employees. No additional employees are requested. Proposed highlights for the upcoming fiscal year include replacement of laptops for the department, upgrade to LaserFish Cloud. This secures long-term pricing before the deadline of December 31, 2026. and proactively transitioning from an onsite system that will be obsolete by year 2029. The cloud platform provides enhanced security, automatic upgrades, AI power indexing, and improved disaster recovery. We're also enhancing our GIST FOIA by implementing a pay-first functionality for lean requests to automate billing and expedite processing, tier two support for dedicated assistance with AI redaction, workflows, and form enhancements, improve public records request forms with dynamic fields to capture complete information up front and reduce processing delays as well as an automated workflow that routes the police department request directly to the pb with department specific tracking numbers this improving this will improve efficiency as they are the highest volume of requests that we receive in the city is for the police department And this is the fiscal summary. Any questions?

Yes, we talked about software and challenges with public records. I know you've heard it all. Can you comment creative solutions, things we might be thinking about, things we might be mentally preparing for. Where do you see kind of public records management FOIA requests going in the future, and how do we mitigate that cost for the consumers?

I know that Caitlin has done some research. Would you like to speak to that?

As she mentioned on the proposal for adding updates to just FOIA, we are separate. being the highest volume that we receive and those will then be routed directly to the police department automatically something else that we are planning to incorporate is the dynamic fields on the actual request form when someone goes to our website And it will have drop down options of things that if they're asking for meeting minutes, those are available publicly already, and it will redirect them to our website. So. It will eliminate hopefully eliminate some of the requests that. Can be answered already. It's already publicly available. And. it another thing that they're going to do is a lot of times we get requests for the fire department and we they're asking for incident reports that contain medical information so right now we have to reach back out to the requester pause the request get clarification from them like hipaa information some sort of signed release and that on the front end we'll go ahead and ask them for that and have them provide that fill that out so hopefully it doesn't hold up public record requests in the future um we i did some training with just foia and some some independent research and i was able to figure out how to get the driver's licenses automatically redacted some of them are still missed so it does still require us to review it but There's other elements like social security numbers and things like that that can also be automatically redacted, but that would be part of what our updates would include because they have a specialist support team that would be included with our upgrade that would help us incorporate more AI into our redactions to help us speed the process up a little bit.

Do you feel confident in this technology and the AI that it's going to

be accurate or do you have concerns about it? It will be as accurate as it can be. One example that I've given is the last form of driver's license or the last form of social or last form of phone number. That's something that we would have to find and redact ourselves because that's not something that AI would pick up. And if it did pick it up, it could try and redact it as a social, even though it's a phone number. So that would be something that we would have to look for ourselves. But outside of that,

i'm confident i'm excited about it and i love this foyer so i like the emotion it lets me know you did a very good job of being stone faced more or less what do we think would be the cost of the foyer upgrades

what i really want to know is is it less than or equal to a salary and how might it save us it's less than a salary um i believe it's approximately six thousand okay which is minor do you think that these can save a salary position by doing these upgrades is it that much work that it time that it can save or not really over time like over a year Possibly, I don't, because we still have to go in and review. It's not automatically redacted. It still requires human review.

Still have to put eyes on it to make sure it's doing what it's supposed to be doing.

Right. Because what it does now with the driver's licenses is it will kind of put a gray box on it. So that way you can still see what it's detecting. But I have to go in and finalize it like to authorize that. Yes, that's correct. So then I finalize it. Move it through the process.

Just make it easier and quicker for you to be able to highlight and get to it.

Right, I can go right to that page where that box is at and see if that's what is supposed to be redacted or not. Versus before it would be line by line by line.

So it's kind of like DocuSign where it says come here next. That's a good example.

Save a lot of time.

I'm glad you're excited. I am too. I'm excited. Are those updates in here?

They are included in the budget. Okay. Laser fish and just for you.

Okay. Just a couple of questions of me. It's more of that cemetery. You say 40% increase in the sales of cemetery plot. Even when we put up, we changed the rule that you have to be a Claremont resident now in order to buy a cemetery plot and all.

and we still up 40%? Is that because people buying and trying to preserve now because they think we're running out of land?

Of course, the other part of that, I know we purchased the lots and we converted the two lots that we, homes that we purchased, tore down and added more territory over there. So how much, how many years we looking at?

So currently we have approximately 375 new ground spaces left. That does not include the fourth edition.

Okay.

The fourth edition, is the two properties that was purchased about two years ago on East Avenue. With those two properties, that would bring in approximately 700 more in-ground spaces. So we're looking at probably selling out in the next, I would say, eight years, seven, eight years. That's total.

Should we consider buying land, maybe?

Yes. My next question. There has been discussion about that, and then we had a Previous, we had, I don't know if it was one to two years ago, the council did not want to move forward with purchasing additional land. But it's on our radar because we will be selling out in the next seven years. Sounds like we need to.

We bought the two, as you say, we bought the two lots there on East Avenue next to Bishopfield. and we converted, we totaled our homes down and we made most, but there's two more homes sitting there that we kind of like went to the owners of those also and said, if you decided to sell them, give us first choice because we're looking at that as well. And I know it's another piece of property that we've been trying to acre of land that's behind the homes on the other side of the cemetery over there behind the church and the homes they're off of uh what's that anderson my understanding is that those owners do not want to stop well we we we've been asking them about it for a while and all but I happened to see the owner a couple months ago. She was here for a funeral, and I spoke with her, and she said maybe give her a talk. I know before we'd been negotiating with the mother, and the mother didn't really want to talk with us, but I actually saw the owner that was here a couple months ago, so we may have a chance to keep talking.

Do they pay for the cost of the purchase and maintenance of the land?

I don't believe that it covers the cost. We are currently evaluating what other cities charge and we are looking at possibly bringing back a resolution for the increase. We're doing our research now.

And I don't know how cemeteries function. I've never done that. But I'd be interested in knowing. It seems like from a policy perspective, if the people, I think it's good for a city to have a place for its residents to be buried. So I'd start with that. But again, you're dedicating land to an individual at some point. And so how does that... how does that pay for itself if not everybody can be there you know because then other people are paying for someone else's plot so philosophically questioning things like that and then i also question is it better to have a cemetery be bigger Or is it better to have, because we're spread out so much, might we look at land along this way? Might we look at land on the east side of town so people can be very close to where their home, closer to where their actual home is? Is that something? And then have, I mean, I see cemeteries as like parks. you have to be quiet in them, but I think they tend to be peaceful and quiet. And usually they have trees and they're nice to walk in. And so I see them that way. So I don't know if they should be close to what commerce? Should they be close to open space? I don't know enough about cemeteries. I do know, and I'm saying I'm interested in learning more if there's, a conversation about it? And those are some of the questions that I would have.

Yeah, I would love to in the next year calendar year in preparation for fiscal year 28 have a workshop about because a lot of communities have decided they just can't be in the cemetery business as a city as a municipality because it isn't the highest and best use of the land or um you know in declining resources it's just not something that they can they can help sustain and so either it has to be fully sustainable right meaning those the fees have to The revenues have to match the expenditures so that it's paid for itself. And and like you said, at some point you do run out of the space. And so then it becomes a do you add new ones? Do you build? Do you build mausoleums up so that you have more space? It becomes obviously a sensitive subject, but it's also a realistic subject because it is a cost and it is an expenditure. And I think as far as I remember, we really, the previous councils outside of kind of the budget cycle and the occasional resolution to adjust fees really hasn't had a philosophical conversation about should the city of Claremont be in the cemetery business, or is that something that's better served through the churches and private sector? And so, yeah, I would support a workshop at some point, end of this calendar year, beginning of next calendar year, in preparation for the next fiscal year.

Your previous council did have had that conversation, Brian. We considered getting out of it business after we purchased the land, the last. Yeah, the last land, yeah. We said, okay, we'll fill up there and we can't find land. We get out of the business of cemetery business and everything. And eventually, we're not going, it's not going to ever pay for itself, I don't think. A cemetery would never pay for itself because they try to maintain it and keep it open. We only pay another small amount, for example. Back in 2006, I bought 12 plots at $300 a plot. Okay, $3,600 now. Have that been used up? Because they're still being maintained out there. I know we've raised the price because we have more people coming in. That's another reason we changed the policy. We have more people coming in from the outside. Outside the city, Orlando, Winter Garden, we're buying plots here because it was so much cheaper. You go to Woodland over there, it's about $8,000 or so for a plot. And I think we only charge, what, about $1,500 still?

$1,400 for residents, and we do not sell in-ground to non-residents.

Right. See, and everything. So we're still pretty low, and so some people that live in unincorporated come out, they get a little upset when they can't buy a plot. Okay, because they're not actually residents, and especially at these rates. I've sent them to Goldman and everywhere else to buy plots. No, no. I think our city clerk

I went to a conference recently and when I said I was from Claremont, the person stopped me at the break, sorry to embarrass you, but they said, your city clerk is the best. The state of Florida everybody knows your city clerk yes and so what about i say that because you're due that credit you are but i also you're not a cemetery expert and we work closely with the public services department well but even then like there are people who go to school to to run funeral homes and work in this business and so How do we know that what we're doing is in that industry standard even right now? And I think that's where that workshop might be able to partner with some experts in the industry. We should do it in Halloween. Oh, no. I mean, we could do that.

We could decorate chambers and everything.

But I also get a lot of compliments on how great our cemeteries and I've heard that too and that's I was shocked when I moved here Claremont still had one and it was like it wasn't just one that we maintained we were actively operating and yes when the council approved the two extra lots. And I'm like, wow, this is something that really is an investment that this community has decided to make for its residents. And I think that that speaks, that says something. And if it really is something that is that the residents are speaking and saying, we wanna continue this, we don't want it to end. that I think we have to start thinking about what we do for the future moving forward.

You're right with finding space. I mean, heck, Arlington Cemetery is running out of space. You know what I'm saying? I think what we should really do is get a consultant.

Like you were saying, we're trying to invent something we don't really acknowledge. But there's probably people that this is what they do for a living. And they probably think, I don't know, if you go on top, How do you, you know, I don't know. It's kind of like, it's kind of uncomfortable talking about, sure. But I mean, I imagine, you know, a hundred years is there, you know, there's probably rules and regulations when you could, you know, go attack, you know, multiple monuments closer together, et cetera, et cetera. But like you said, maybe do a workshop, hire a consultant to come in and give us some direction and then we can go from there.

Only two things are guaranteed.

That's funny because it goes to a conversation that the chief and I were just having back there about I was once told I should be a lawyer

I just wanted some clarity how many years we're looking at and should we have this conversation again.

We should.

Do we want to stay in this business? I know I think Last year, before last, Groveland was looking at trying to turn their cemeteries over to one of the churches over there and everything.

It gets to be expensive after a while. Do we know if Groveland had any consultants come in and talk to them? Maybe they could launch a video or something they've already done. But yes, I support. If you don't want to do it at Halloween, fine. No, we don't want to do it at another time of the year.

I do have two non-cemetery. One is I continually get asked about the software that we use to publish our agendas. I know that there is a notification system that's built in there somehow, but I don't know what it would take for us to implement and if that would have any budget budgetary. And where I'm asking is for the rest of the council, when the clerk's office posts an agenda, a person can, like when I first moved here, I signed up to get these notifications, but they're not turned on, I don't think, or they're not active. And so, occasionally and I did that for Mineola as well and occasionally I'll get like the random email from the city of Mineola saying this agenda has been posted and it's not consistent so I don't know what they do but I don't think we have ever done that as a community as a city Okay, and I just didn't know if there would be budget implications with that, if we have to, if that's a purchase we have to get from that software.

I will look further into it, and then I can get back to you.

Because I do think it would be helpful for our community, for folks who want to sign up for PNC agendas or city council agendas, that they get that email saying it's live, it's here. Or, you know, I don't know what kind of software options are in there. But I ask, because I'm more concerned about right now, are there budget implications of that?

On that note, there's this. So I like that. And to go further, if we could have an app for our citizens for the city of Claremont, it could be that the app might sync with, hey, or maybe our social media platform that the consultant was saying. you know, I forget it's called social or something, whatever that, you know, is there a way that our current system speaks to?

Mike Claremont.

Yeah, Mike Claremont. Yeah, Mike Claremont. Might speak to the app, but might not speak. I mean, it would be amazing if I had an app that's like, oh, new minutes were dropped. If I wanted the notification.

Well, I thought there was because I get some, I have some residents telling me sometimes they get notification that the agenda been posted. Really? Yeah. I know you all send it to us. I get it from Nicole all the time.

Well, yeah, that's the council notification. It's not an automatic thing. And I don't want to add work. That's not what I'm asking you. But if we have to buy the add-on, I'd be interested to know what that cost would be if it's there, that then a citizen could go in, put their name and email, and they just get added to the database. And every time that category that they've signed up for gets updated, boom, they get the email. The other item, and I know we've talked about this before, but it's budget and I want to talk about it from the numbers perspective too, is how we do our public notices. Um, and, um, you know, I've had some numbers run based off of 2025. And if we right now, we do all of our public notifications in the daily commercial. Um, and our surrounding communities, um. groveland miniola montverde uh the other south lake communities do everything through the the claremont sun um now i know the claremont sun is weekly versus daily commercials daily uh but they have figured out ways to make this work and and i i had some numbers run based off of just may 2025 invoice which was one of our higher invoices for 2025. And we spent almost $7,000 on the daily commercial for our public notices in May of 25. If we'd have done those same notifications in the Claremont Sun, we would have spent $5,000. That's a 30% savings. So if each month we could save on average 30%, based off 2025 numbers, that's actually about $13,000 that we could save. by just going through the claremont sun which we could which now i the so there's a numbers issue there's also a a distribution issue daily commercial is a subscription-based leesburg newspaper that does really very little claremont reporting south lake reporting um the the sun does more south lake And their distribution is about 20-some thousand people that get the Claremont Sun, either electronically or in print, versus a few thousand in the daily commercial. So from a transparency standpoint too, I think we have some opportunities to save some money. We have some opportunities to do better distribution. That money actually stays local. So Gannett owns the daily commercial. That goes back to Gannett. The Claremont Sun is Florida owned. It stays in Central Florida. And we've already seen some benefits with our Claremont page that we have. And then obviously we would join our other South Lake communities like Groveland, Mineola, Montverde. And we would still have the opportunity. I would never want to hamstring our clerk's office that if something came up where we couldn't meet the, I know it's a little bit more of extended deadline for Claremont Sun, Then put it in the commercial. Put it in the Orlando Sentinel. That's what Mineola and Montverde and Groveland does now with theirs. If they have something that they can't, they call up the Claremont Sun and they can't meet it, they can't meet that deadline, they just put it in the Claremont Sun.

And that's our ordinance.

We say where it goes. So we can control that. We can have a one-off. But I know in the past we've had some concerns about the timing. I've been looking lately at our agendas and when the clerk's office, because in the back, I don't know if you noticed, but the last page of a packet of an agenda item that gets noticed, it says when it was actually put out there. I've been looking out and we can meet those guidelines pretty regularly if we allow the clerk and primarily planning department are the two big departments um i know there's others but if we give them enough heads up notice that we want to implement this that they just have to rework some procedures and processes and so i brought it up because i i think if we're looking for ways to improve other areas but also not just add money to the budget but also be more transparent and be more informative, this might be an opportunity for us to really look at. And so I bring it up. I welcome feedback. I know it will be a change, but yeah.

So we did look into this. We looked into it. We've looked at it twice over the last few years. The city requires 14 days notice prior to a public hearing, which is more than what the state requires. The state requires 10. The city requires 14. Is that an ordinance or a resolution?

That's our ordinance, yes.

Because of the 14 days in our Council meets on Tuesdays, we have to advertise on a Monday or a Tuesday. And my understanding with the Sun is their weekly is on a Wednesday or Thursday.

So we'd have to do the Wednesday before.

Which would mean basically three weeks prior to. And a lot of times we do not get the ads from departments until that last minute, especially when we are pushing forward ordinances that are being written just before a meeting, let's say the week before. it would be difficult for us to meet that deadline.

But is that based off of when you're getting the information from the departments?

It varies. Well, but she's still saying they publish on Wednesday. They publish on Wednesday. They publish on Wednesday. Yeah. So in order to make it better, we're publishing then 20 days prior to public hearing.

We don't always have that information. So it will potentially slow us down, especially initially. until we would adapt to a new process of okay we need to be ready three weeks in advance versus two or we say we have to have a philosophical conversation of is the 10 day the state requirement does that meet our needs versus the 14 days that we currently have in our ordinance because that's something we control we've we a previous council has said 14 versus 10. I don't know if they're 10 or 14, and they meet on Mondays and Tuesdays as well. They're making it work, it's just we have to figure out the system that makes it work for us. I don't want to do this today. I think it would be unfair for uh the city clerk's office and our departments that have these public notices to say we need to do this today right then that's why i bring it up in the budget process because budget takes effect in october if we had time to put in place if we need to make changes in our ordinances to make this happen this gives everybody that leeway some time and we still have the one-off option i would never want to change the you know, tie the hands that a one-off couldn't be done in the daily commercial or couldn't be done in the...

If you stop doing that, then you've got to bring the cost to eat.

Well, but it needs to be a true one-off, I think. It needs to be that true one-off, not we just didn't plan ahead.

I don't know if the cost savings is worth it. I mean... It's not that huge amount of savings here. And I mean, like Tracy had said, you know, we've had the discussion multiple times before. And for some reason, it doesn't work out for us.

Right. And we also sent them a number of ads to do a comparison. And we did not see a significant savings. I know in several, it was maybe a $5 to $10 savings. But it's not.

This is a side-by-side I'm happy to share with the council and with you, Tracy, as well.

Even if it doesn't save any money, I think you make points that are consistent with what we've been talking about. If we want to support small business, if we want to support local business, I do think you're speaking to me on that level. I think the other issues that relate here are to your point, at some point a decision was made that two weeks notice is the appropriate amount of notice. If we go with the statutory notice, there could be a perception that we're trying to disengage the public because we're going to 10 days instead of 14 days. From a practical perspective, are we really talking about a Wednesday instead of a Tuesday publication? So even though we're compliant with the 10 days, is it really 13 instead of 14? And so again, it might be, it might be an inconsequential issue there and then there's also i've heard christian tell us at least 10 times we can talk about whatever business we want at these meetings and so as long as we notice a meeting i don't think the agenda has to be perfect well these are the actual statutory public notifications like for an ordinance that you have to do that's what these yeah i'm not talking about like a public notice for the actual meeting i'm talking about yeah

Yeah, so we would have to do these, whether they're Sunner or commercial or Sentinel or whatever.

What's interesting to me is that in 2026, we're spending $7,000 a week on publication.

No, that was a month. That's a month, right? That one's a month. But that's what state law requires. State law requires a paper publication.

You know, I'm going to digress. I started practicing law in 2005, and we still had to use fax machines. Like, I actually know how to use a fact machine. Most people my age don't even know what I'm talking about.

I think we should do a word.

I think the question becomes, do we want to direct the city manager? Because to an extent, you did this to me yesterday, so here's your message. So to an extent, we're telling the city manager what to do. However, I think that if we were to say we have a desire to work with local business, now we have a legal issue potentially that's been brought up. But if we're directing the city manager that we want to work with local business whenever we can, we want to reach the people whenever we can you make a valid point i think even if it costs the same or a little more i think the point is valid and then there's the technology the technical like can we and then if it comes back on us are we willing to change our ordinance our policy whatever it is to say we want to be compliant with florida law or we want to be compliant I think if we go to 3 weeks, that would not be good because we just applauded our building services for being quick on doing permits and we would be slowing down. We'd be extending a week for every development, which sometimes happens monthly. Because of the way that our meetings run. So I think that. That would not, I would not choose to go longer. I don't think that would be wise. I could get to the 10 day statutory if we needed to. I'm not dying in any of these cells, but I think sending the message to the city manager, we want to work with local business and we want to reach the people and engage the people. And if that happens to be Claremont Sun, and you can figure out a way to make it work. I think that's fantastic.

Yeah, there it is. There's a financial, but for me, even if given the choice of. getting it to 22,000 people versus a couple thousand people and it costs the same and it's local, I'm going to 22,000 all day, every day. And it's a budget item because it does affect our budget. So that's why I asked about it here.

Well, I heard Mr. Peterson say it's not much of a cost of saving. To me, it is a big saving because, as you say, we are reaching 1,000 people or so with the commercial where we're reaching 22,000. Cost-wise and everything. How many people read the newspaper? We're just on it today. And I'm surprised you owe us 22,000. When I was a news leader and I used to have to process them papers, well I was doing almost 60,000 papers a week for the Sun years ago. And when I retired, I think I was doing about 33,000 papers a week.

My understanding is it's like 20-something now, 22, I think.

Because I think they used to also have paper for, what was it, it's very... Mount Dora, I used to go to Mount Dora Mall and do growth and everything, but I stopped processing the Mount Dora and we brought it down to about 33,000 copies.

Well, it might be interesting to have conversations business. That's the benefit of small business.

I don't think they don't change it. You can ask. You can ask. We might be surprised.

And staff's happy to look at the options. And I'm going to put you on the spot, Tracy, and I apologize. But I believe a couple years ago, there was a statute passed that said we can now advertise them on the website as long as we post them in a published newspaper once a year.

It has to be on a county website. Oh, it's a county website? Oh, a It has to be on the county website, not the city. Call our legislature. And there would still be an additional cost. There would still be a cost.

To publish it on our website?

On the county website. It's got to be on the county.

It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense.

I thought it was the city's fault. It does if you run the conversation of part of the reason. the potential referendums out there is to consolidate power and make county governments more powerful than the municipal and local governments.

And that same law is what opened up for the Sun to be able to advertise because when they passed all that, then the local newspapers started wanting to

This is stimulating the conversation about process and reaching the people. And if there's something that we can go to the legislature and say, hey, it's 2026. We want to be able to publish it on our website. Can social media work?

Can an email newsletter work? are there ways that we can because now you're talking how much do we spend on publications a year are we pushing six figures oh yes yeah wow that right there is hey if the legislature is going to say you need to take your budget and we want you to cut your budget well we need to be able to comply exactly the way people live today in 2020 not to take away from those of you who still read the newspaper but the 21st century digital the digital age yes you're saying that exactly what's the word you use as we mature as we mature put on our legislative initiatives next year because that's a six-figure impact.

That's good. Seriously. It's an easy one for them to change. Yeah, they could change that very easily. And cities. Redline it.

In the meantime, Mr. Bain, if we changed it to 10 days, that would help us to be able to work better with the sun because we've sincerely looked at this and found it difficult over and over because we would rather work locally if possible.

Well, the 14 and 10 days, well, 10 days we have to because state, but the 14 is our resolution on it, so we can change that.

What if we made it 13?

I mean, why don't we go to 10, which is the state requirement? I don't know. I don't know. Halloween 13. She just wants to get in the cemetery.

That's all. No. I'll have that conversation.

No, I mean, why not? Do we need her for anything else?

No, you can go. Sorry. I got my three. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Tracy. Thank you.

Thank you. All right.

That's a lucky number.

13.

Okay. Well, maybe we do one more. Yes. HR HR HR.

Yeah.

Let me get up my book.

Alright, so human resources were a staff of seven. And we supported 528 positions and 471 active employees in the last fiscal year. We assisted in recruiting and onboarding 92 hires to since 10 125, which is a 25% increase during that period. We've assisted multiple departments with reorganizations, and we successfully implemented a new medical and dental administrator, as well as a pharmacy benefit manager.

And you just filled an important position, as I understand. Yes. How long was that, Vecam?

Since March of 2025. Wow. And that was like a director position, or assistant director, right? What position was it? HR and benefits manager.

Yay, I'm happy to hear that you have that filled. Me too. Fantastic.

You say benefits manager? Of course, I thought, looking at this, I thought that was already filled. I see we changed the coordinator, added a coordinator this year, but we eliminated the benefits coordinator, but the benefits and risk coordinator were eliminated. Eliminated.

No, we have the same number of FTE. I've changed the job title of the benefits coordinator to benefits and risk coordinator, changing the job duties a little bit. And the wellness and safety coordinator has always been part of the HR team.

So the benefit coordinator no longer exists.

It is now a benefits and risk coordinator.

Well, I see both of them here, but I guess that's all the thought about both of them are listening here. I was saying you change one and the other, but we can eliminate the benefits coordinator. Okay.

And what's the difference? What's the additional responsibility? What does risk mean?

Risk management is a grant title that involves all of the city's claims, the property and liability claims, auto claims, workers' comp, that sort of thing. So this particular position will be assisting coordinating the risk claims. Thank you. So part of the city's HR function involves, of course, the traditional HR things, recruitment, comp and class, compensation and classification, employee and labor relations, but it also includes risk management, benefits management, and wellness programs. So the city's HR's budget, overall budget, is showing a 9.8% increase. which is approximately $78,000. The majority of that, about 87% of that increase is in personnel costs.

You all have any questions for me?

My understanding is you're still working on some benefit-related and insurance-related quotes for us to finalize the budget?

Yes, so the city's health plan is on a calendar year basis. It runs 1-1 through 12-31. So right now we've got five months worth of claims data. If you recall, we unbundled everything. And so we have a separate pharmacy benefit manager, separate TPA. And so we've got five months of data right now. And we are shopping the stock loss. and they prefer to have more claims data in order to give a firm quote. So we expect to see that in August. And we typically will come back to council in September for more solid numbers. So that will be the plan to come back to you then. Okay.

What was the insurance last year? What did the actual figure come out, the insurance increase last year?

I can't remember. As far as claims or total expenditures, which one?

Cost, insurance increase, cost increase.

Health insurance, general liability, disability, which one? All of them? For calendar year 2025, we had a 9% increase in total expenditures.

for insurance, but we built this budget on a 7%.

We built this budget on a 7%, yes.

So we anticipating insurance costs to go down and not up?

We are anticipating a 7% increase will be sufficient for this budget year. So when we get firm numbers from stop-loss in August, we'll have a more firm idea of what we can anticipate. So as far as claims are concerned, that we're anticipating a 7%.

I'm just saying we built this budget with an anticipated 7% increase in cost. With ASHA, we ended up with a 9% increase. So why didn't we build it a reduced 9%? Because the cost of the insurance right now, I don't think it's going to go anywhere. be going down too much. So I think we've been more realistic on the 9%, even maybe a 10%. Because I remember one year we built it, looked at about, we were talking about a 10% increase, and it came in 15, 16, so it kind of was a haywire.

It's a good point. We're estimating a 7% right now. It is purely an estimate. I looked at it myself, and our plan is performing well. It's been performing better than expected. And while our plan is small and the numbers do fluctuate every year, I anticipate that if it does come in higher, our reserves are good enough that we can support anything higher. And if our projections come in much higher than 7% come August, September when we present to council, I imagine that in the finance department, we can make a slight adjustment to the budget.

Slight adjustment.

I guess that's why, but me, when I was looking for a budget, I like doing things when it comes to this, I'd rather estimate high rather than not enough and everything, so I'd rather be able to overestimate rather than underestimate when it comes to insurance and things like that, because we have to make an adjustment at the end if we underestimate these things.

Well, let me give you some numbers before you get too committed to that. Scott, last year we talked about the total cost of health insurance. And some of it's split between the enterprise funds, as I recall, and the general fund. Correct. Yeah. And my recollection was last year we budgeted about $8.5 million in insurance. Does that sound right? It does. And ultimately, I'll be asking you what we're budgeting this year. Is would there be a reason why the 50% point of the year, our insurance would be is there a potential that the insurance actual numbers for 2026 for the last half of the year would be different or inconsistent with the insurance numbers for the first half of the year.

Certainly could be for a couple reasons one is claims history, which is very difficult to predict obviously but secondly would be dependent upon the level of Vacancies that exist and when we talk about conservative conservative budgeting practices Health insurance is probably the area that that is most prevalent and because we are so conservative with our budgeting approach on in terms of how we apply anticipated increases in premiums towards proposed new positions and vacancies. which is a long-winded way of saying we may be overly conservative with those projections.

Well, and the reason why I ask is because when I look at the first half of the year, almost every department's line item for group insurance, life insurance, disability, and workers' comp will at least the first three, we're under 40% at the midway point through the year. So if we are operating conservatively and we're at 20%, we're operating at 80% of what we budgeted on an almost $10 million budget, that's several million dollars. We're not talking about 100,000, we're talking about millions. And when 1.1 mil is $700,000, if we're off on our estimates by 10%, that's 0.1 mil. So I'm interested in the actual numbers.

I'm hearing you say you need more time. I have prepared something I can share if you guys are interested. I think this is the single most important one. Dan, could you pause the video? OK. One note I was going to make as part of that conversation was that we anticipate adding on 11, if you recall, we hired 15 firefighters. So we anticipate adding on 11 new firefighters come August 1st onto the insurance plan. So while right now through May, as we projected, we're looking good, our plan is performing well, it's such a wild card come August. That is part of what we have to anticipate. is adding a lot more lives to the plan. So if I can walk you through this for a moment. These numbers come from a report that we have to file with the state every single year. The Florida statutes require us to hire an actuary to file this report. So these numbers come straight from there. And just briefly, I can tell you, so you know our plan is self-funded, meaning The city pays directly for the claims. We hire a separate TPA that adjudicates claims and pays that for us. And then we also hire a stop loss company so that we're only assuming the risk up to 200,000 per member. So the benefit of that, and this is part of why I wanted to show this to you, the benefit of that is in any given year, if our claims perform better than what was projected, we We keep the extra. We don't have another company that's holding on to that profit. So as you can see here, with every year at the top, I'm showing you revenues. Then I'll show you claims, the next line. And you can see the claims are up and down. For 21, the claims went up 8%. For 22, the claims went down 5%. then back up 10%, down 2%, with last year being at 6%. So they are up and down, and part of that reason is because we're a smaller plan. The five-year average, as I mentioned last time we met, was only a 3.5% change in claims, which is better than national numbers. And then as far as total expenditures, the five-year average was a 4% change. So when we look at the ending cash i've got it highlighted there for you in green and just below it, it says target ending cash of 33% so whenever the Florida. The state of Florida is looking at our plan to ensure that we'll be able to continue being self self funded they're looking at making sure that our reserves are at 33% of claims and so. That's the target number that we want to be at. So if you look at the next green line that's labeled ending cash percent of claims, that tells you where we're at. So if we start with calendar year 2020, we were below that target. We were even more below that target in 21. But then in calendar year 22, we did receive some additional funding from council. We had to go back to council to receive money. A lot of that was ARCA funding. So then in calendar year 23, you see that we are now at 62% and our plan has continued to perform better than we have projected. And so when we when we set those contribution levels, we set them based upon what that claims projection is, which is coming from the stop loss insurance underwriters. And we're performing better than that thanks to employees who are doing well and healthy managing the claims with us. So you can see by calendar year 2025, and that's based on actuals, our reserves are at 116%. So we're doing well with our plan and their reserves. So what I had recommended to Rick and Scott is to consider giving a one month premium holiday, which means we will not charge deductions for one month. That's two pay periods, which equates to about $475,000. And by doing so, we can reduce the reserve a little bit.

Let me follow up and tie that to Councilmember Strange's comment about the relationship to millage. All of this data that Nadine just walked you through relates to the self-insurance fund itself. And one of the primary funding sources to this is the employer contributions, which come from the general fund. So, while we may while mayor, we are projecting our, um, insurance increase to be 7%. Um, what we've done as Nadine just explained is that inner fund transfer that covers the employer's portion from the general fund. We budgeted at 6.2%. in an effort to reduce this fund balance and reduce costs within the general fund.

Is that in the budget right now?

That is in the budget, yes. And we didn't want to get more aggressive than a 0.8 lower than the claim anticipate costs in insurance just out of concern and conservatism for what claim history might do. But it is a due diligence effort to reduce the impact on the general fund and try to start utilizing this fund balance in the health insurance fund.

So how much does, for a family, how much are employees paying each month for their family policy?

I don't have it memorized. We have two different plans. One plan, maybe $300. The next plan, maybe $200. That is such a rounded number. And that is not per month. I apologize.

That is per paycheck.

So $600.

And how much does the city pay for a paycheck?

or what do we pay for? However is the easiest way for you to answer it.

Between 600 and 700. I'm not sure. I wish I had my laptop. Per paycheck?

Per paycheck?

That was per paycheck. I do have the number that we spend per year. On average, the city spends $17,500 per year. So we have core tiers for employee, employee and spouse, employee and child, and family coverage.

So all of that is . So if we're spending $17,000 per year and then the employees are roughly half that, they're also paying roughly half that? I don't have that number. Well, if they're roughly $300 per paycheck, then they're... So they're paying another $7,800, give or take.

The split is generally 85% city, 15% employees. Yes. On the bigger picture.

Actually, employees really pay a little bit more than the city.

Employees don't pay more than the city.

Well, not, I mean, 80, is it 80-20 or 85-15?

85 city, 15 employees.

85, okay, and not 80-20? No.

Okay.

What I'm looking at here in claims under 26 is 6 million. So what is that? Through June?

No, that is the budgeted number.

The whole budget.

So through May, we're about 3.7 million through end of May.

3.7 million. So we're about 50% of budget. We're not over budget.

We're under budget by almost 20% this year to date.

Well, what she just told me, we've got 50% of what she budgeted. Oh, year to date?

Yes. So we're in July, so we're eight months in.

That's through the end of May, and we're at 3.7 million.

The 3 million is five months. Right, you say May, right? Yes. That's five months. And your budget at six May is 6.5. You had 3.7, you said?

3.7.

So within five months, you're almost basically, it's a little over 50% of budget.

That's not, I don't believe that's including stop loss reimbursements.

I heard you say you're doing real good on claims. Claims kind of because you think people are healthy. Is it that or because of the change of insurance? Our insurance, a lot of them are not going to the doctors now because of something I'm saying they came up with.

For that much money, we should go to the doctor every month. For that much money, you can go to the doctor every month.

No, well, also the, what you call it?

All that we changed was the actual network. We moved from Cigna to United. We didn't change a single benefit.

I think there's a lot of work to be done, because I'm looking at the six-month point, and the only department that's over 50% at the six-month mark was fleet, at least according to the reports that we received.

And everybody else was at 40% or less, give or take, maybe 42. The way that we handle the contributions, which I believe is what you're looking at, we set the contributions, and those don't change per pay period. So that stays flat.

I'm sure they do.

And the report that you're looking at, I don't know when it was printed.

Report generated June 4th, 2026, for the period ending the end of April as the six-month mark of the year.

Was that for calendar year? No.

Six months April is October to the end of April.

To seven months. The data I've given you is calendar year, just because it's easier to handle.

Because insurance is calendar year. It's not fiscal year.

I'm not sure if the report you're looking at is reflecting fiscal year.

It's through March 31, 2026, at the 50% mark of the year, according to the report we were given. Folks, we can look at this however we want. For $250 a month, every one of our employees can go to a local doctor, their whole family, and get all their primary care appointments taken care of for $250 a month. They can get all their prescriptions called in. They can get all their orders for MRI.

That's 250 per patient.

No, per month for the whole family.

She's talking about something different.

I'm talking about, so when we look at how much of our resources are going to this plan that requires insurance, that requires copay, which requires a system that restricts who you can go see, yes, we need to be concerned about catastrophic situations. I get that. But right now, if you go to a doctor on our current plan, you have to pay a fee on top of the monthly payment that you're paying for your insurance that presumably is giving you care. And it's not. So, I mean, for $300 per paycheck, that could be $300 a month. that our employees could pay for their whole family to go get whatever care they want at a local doctor's office.

I don't think so.

And then we get a catastrophic. You can. What doctor are you going to? Call Blue Bear Wellness right now. You can.

It's a primary provider.

We can say it doesn't exist, but I know for a fact it exists. I can get you quotes right now. And that's so this is to me, it's asking the citizens to pay $10 million for a risk plan instead of paying We want to talk about what happens if the constitutional amendment takes place. The answer is in this. It's in changing the experience that every employee that we have in this city, 471 souls and their families can have a healthy lifestyle, healthy living, access to doctors, the doctor of their choice when they want. And we have seven providers in Claremont right now that provide this service outside of an insurance plan.

But what happens when I, as I said, what happens if I have cancer?

What happens if I have a heart attack? That's what you pay for catastrophic insurance.

Out of pocket for the employee. Well, you could pay that. But I hear what you're saying, but I think In order for me to adequately be able to assess what you're saying compared to what's here is I need a chart.

I agree with you completely. I've been asking for it for a year.

Of left to right in that way. But I also think that you have to consider something that isn't going to be able to be concrete in this. And that is, this is a benefit that is provided that makes working here an equitable, reasonable, attractive thing. I understand the dollars and cents of it, but I think we have to be careful about how we talk about the dollars and cents of it, given that I don't think it's as black and white.

And I'm frustrated because we had this conversation last year And I'm sitting here today and saying the same exact thing that I saw last year. So I'm frustrated. So I'm speaking my frustration that it's been a year and I provided connections and people so that I'm not doing it because I can't and I shouldn't.

Just to communicate, we followed every path that I believe was given to us. And I will continue to do that, but it's not a lack of effort or diligence at all. I promise you that. We have talked to everybody I know to talk to. We'll keep it up.

Did we go to the chamber and ask them to connect us with local medical providers to see if anybody might be interested in helping us come up with a solution to this?

You had shared this on Facebook. We got a number of resources that were given to us from that. And unfortunately, none of those leads came back in a manner that we felt was appropriate.

a good option it wasn't that we didn't have tax reduction so we better figure something out i mean please give me the lead where i can get 250 dollars a month I will be happy to do that.

She gave me the lead, and I've given that to Nadine, and we will diligently pursue and look into that. I promise you, this is a big deal. We're listening. We just haven't found the right combination to make this work yet, but we did save money last year.

I'm just trying to give our employees a better quality of life that saves them money and saves the citizens money, and I know there's solutions out there. And if I have to do it, it's not in my scope as a council member to do it. It's not appropriate for me to do it. This is a staff issue, not for me as council.

Well, it sounds like they've been doing it and you just don't like the answer.

The answer is do the same thing we've always done. This is the same system that we've had in place for however many years, this self-insurance system. And when you're talking to people that are doing insurance, you're going to get an insurance answer. When you go to a surgeon, when you're a hammer, everything's a nail. You have to look at other options. And right now it's just insurance and insurance is diametrically opposed to giving the patient care. Insurance companies don't make money if they pay for patients to go to the doctor. They don't make money if they pay for patients to get blood work. They don't make money if they negotiate a lower price. They do it for themselves, but they don't do it for For the, for the person receiving the care catastrophic totally different conversation. That's the gamble. I get that. I'm talking about regular care and then insurance became a way for people to have access to their doctor. It changed the entire system. And that's why we have people who have long-term issues, health issues that stack up and get worse because they're not going to the doctor at the first sign of something.

It sounds like you're talking about a philosophical viewpoint on when health care system went for profit, that's when all of this happened. And it's not being changed.

I mean, it's always been for profit. No, it has not.

It was not. 1964 is when they changed it to be for profit. for profit it was not for profit insurance that's what yes yeah so doctors um it's um that's something we cannot change on that on that level or whatnot but what we can do is make sure that our employee that our employees and their families have the best care what we have to work with and i think it's kind of unreasonable to expect them to find what you're looking for, because it doesn't sound like it's cost-effective.

I'll put a package together and bring it to you. How about that?

Sounds good.

Do I have permission to do that, or am I going to be accused of overstocking?

Let me ask you this, Ms. Stain. If you're paying $250 for a family, how much is it going to cost them for the cattle?

That's what we should be looking at. If we were to provide catastrophic policies, which aren't gonna be $17,000 a year. If we provide a catastrophic policy, I mean, we have enough, there's so much money in this conversation, you could create an endowment fund that If people pay more than $5,000 a year, you write the check. I mean, there are so many ways to handle this with the amount of money that we're talking about that we have at our disposal that, yes, it's different than everybody gets insurance. I get that. But when we're talking about what was I corrected at the workshop? Oh, we only went up 4%, but we're talking about 7%. So when you have a cost of living that goes up 3% to 4% a year, if this one line item consistently 7% to 9%, this is how we don't have money. So if we're going to add employees at market rate by, mind you, I mean, we're paying our employees a salary that's competitive with the private sector. You said yourself, where are you going to get a small business that's paying $100,000? Look how many of our employees are making $100,000. And then you add 33% in benefits. That's way more than the private sector. And they still can't choose where they're going. But when you're dealing with the stuff that you make choices about, that market exists. And it's way different today than it was 10 years ago. You've got doctors that are fed up with the insurance system altogether, that they're getting out of it. And they're starting small practices, small town doctor. And when you have something, you want to have a relationship with your doctor. I know who you're calling. I mean it's a it's a better quality of service and care and it's way more affordable than having insurance. And my point is simple. We expect this constitutional amendment will pass. That's what we're talking about. And all I'm saying is I'm a year into saying this is a primary. This this is the thing that changes our finances, our finances and our budget. This could be two to four million dollars. It's huge. And if we don't.

i'm i said what i said i'm frustrated because i started this a year ago and if i have to do it i'll do it strange i i hear your frustration i have heard your frustration we um we we the first step that we made was to separate these three you know to unbundle um at the point um where you've expressed your frustration that that those were that was already in the works because of the way that this is structured a lot of times that doesn't happen as quickly as you're desiring. I've already engaged with our consultant. We're exploring different options. Rick gave me the contact information for this one, which we'll reach out to. And we're also exploring other options. We've got the hospitals engaged and we're discussing with them. So I just want you to know that your request has not been ignored. We are exploring other options.

I mean, it can be ignored. It's just, there's gonna be a real issue next year when the budget rolls around. So, that's all.

We're not gonna ignore this request. We in Good Faith, we've talked to Salt Lake, we've talked to Advent, we've talked to, I forget the other gentleman, Vince, what company he is. We are actively pursuing not just insurance, but medical related people too. Nobody has given us the secret code, but that doesn't mean we've stopped or given up. I'm optimistic and we'll take the lead you provided. I promise you, we're a bloodhound. We're not giving up on this. We will fight through it. So I hear your frustration, but I want you to hear, I don't know that that's a fair characterization of the situation because it's not just calling our independent agent and saying, hey, you know, this is where we're tracking. We're going into the woods. We're going hunting. We're looking for deer. We're looking for everything. Sincerely, we are doing that. And she's now got help in her department. She's been doing two jobs for a year and a half. And I applaud her for that. And We're going for it. I want you to know we're going for it. Don't give up on us yet. We will figure something out. With prayer and diligence, I think anything is possible.

I think what you're trying to talk about is an independent system where we would contract with local physicians for a plan. Is that what you're talking about? You call it the Claremont Care Plan. Just like just in healthcare.

Well, we're already self-insured.

Right. So we would then, soon as we would say, okay, we're going to give you X amount of dollars if you take our member. And then for that amount of money that we give you, then you would have a zero copay, $10 copay, whatever the copay is. And you'd go to multiple doctors. That would be a local plan. And then you would go catastrophic would be outside of that.

Probably is what I imagine. Yeah, I mean...

But you have to have a benefit manager that would have to go out and coordinate. This isn't something we could do as council. That would have to be there.

I'm looking for the $250 a month for my family because it'll save me thousands of dollars.

I know, we don't pay that. I think you'll be getting some calls, Mr. Mayor. There are plenty of businesses who would love to support

We have two minutes. Any other questions for HR? No, thank you, Nadine. Thank you. Go ahead.

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

Yeah.

All right, well, welcome back. Hopefully everybody enjoyed their food. so this is the new department that you guys great graciously helped us with so new department that was authorized by council back just a couple weeks ago in june 23rd and two of the four positions as you'll see in the org chart two of the four positions are reclassifications okay from existing positions in there so we go to the next one So this is the proposed communications department. We've got the communication engagement director, which will be monies utilized by the PIO department. The existing PIO is going away, so that money is going to take care of the communication. The digital content and multimedia manager is also a reclassification of another position and a community engagement coordinator would be new. I'm sorry, not the content manager. The 311 center supervisor is a reclassification. from a vacant position that we no longer need. So two of the four positions are reclassified. The other two are the new ones. So four total. We're moving the 311 center under the communications department because that makes sense that it's part of the overall message of the city. Next slide. No capital proposals in this department. And This is kind of the financial slide on it. It's pretty much all personnel. There's operating costs. It's a lot of that is. We've got well, I'll just leave it for questions before I explain it all in detail.

If there's anything like the software package that we talked about earlier, you know, sending email that and gleaning information on the responses. Correct and get good data.

Yeah. And that was, as you recall, when you had the presentation from true North, they recommended certain softwares that would make these positions successful. And what you're talking about is called flash, though. That's the one where you send out the insight. So that one's in here. The other softwares that they recommended are all part of this operating budget. So that's what makes up the majority operating budget, other than some of these things like having their computers and the system needed to do the job.

So I am, just want to make sure that we're being complete again. I had seen an advertisement go out for the media person, but the listed budget was 84 to 104,000, which looked to me like that would be the director position. And then I'm seeing 203,000 for four people. And so I'm just confused how we're getting to 203,000 And if we made a mistake, and if we made a mistake, that's fine. But did we properly advertise and are we getting people and are we getting qualified people?

So we advertise the director position and in 4 days we had 52 applicants. The, the 1 that you saw has been advertised for just under a week and we've got 55 applicants so far. So we are getting a lot of. A lot of interest in it. I am screening him, Zane is screening him, Lori, the consultant from True North is in the interviews, so she's helping us pick out the people.

But if we have a, this position, digital content multimedia manager, it was a manager, but it was listed at 84 to 104,000.

Correct.

So how are we going to be at 203,000 if that person's not even the number one person?

So the number one, if you recall the one-on-ones with Lori, she recommended that the director be somewhere around $120,000, this manager be around $85,000 to $90,000, and the last one be, I think she said it was like $65,000, somewhere like that. The third position... but that's 265. right the third position we can wait on we're not in a hurry to hire that one right now i think no not the digital content the uh community coordinator i think is what it's called something about yeah are we getting the exact title yeah that one i think we can probably wait mid-year to see if we even need it so but what about the 311 center supervisor the 311 centers are reclassifications so that one's already paid for from an existing position

But shouldn't all those positions be in the budget? So they're funded?