City Commission - workshop

One. Welcome to our workshop. It is Thursday, March 12 at 5PM. I would like to call this meeting to order. Meeting number 2026Dash0312WS.

As we begin, we kindly ask that all mobile devices be silenced. To ensure the best possible sound quality, please speak clearly and directly into the microphone, and remember to mute your microphone when you're not speaking. Should anyone experience difficulty hearing at any time, please raise your hand, and a hearing device will be provided to you. Thank you for your cooperation.

JULIE Okay. Thank you. Mr. Kavanaugh, would you please call the roll.

Commissioner Rydell. Here. Commissioner Welch.

Here.

Commissioner Brody. Here. Vice Mayor Wasserman.

Vice Mayor Wasserman is on the road and will be here shortly.

Thank you. Mayor Raley. Here. City manager Rose.

Here.

City attorney Parber.

Here. Okay. Thank you. This meeting is being conducted live with a physical quorum present. The material for today's meeting is available online at www.coconutcreek.gov, and the meeting is being broadcast live. We will now begin the strategic planning session for the fiscal year 2027 budget. City manager, Sheila Rose, will open the discussion.

Thank you, mayor and commission. First, let me start with an apology about the late distribution of the additional backup. The slide presentation that we're gonna go through this evening is here in hard copy, but The concerns related to the proposed legislation with property taxes and the impacts, at one point, it felt all consuming. I think we've moved from it being an all consuming problem to potentially being a reality and us needing to deal with it. The good news is, is we are in a very stable financial position, and it's a matter of planning and thinking about how we address whatever issue emerges from the legislation.

So, are continuing to follow it. We had hoped that we would know what the ballot language would be before tonight's meeting, but of course, we don't. So, we're going into this meeting, just as we did last year, to just talk about the high level strategy issues that we want you to be thinking about, and we want to let you know what we're thinking about as we prepare the 2027 budget. I have been very, very clear, and I feel like maybe a broken record with our staff, that this is not the year to be asking for new programs or additions to our services, that we are to be looking creatively at new revenue sources to be prepared. So, our mission now is just to make sure that this budget is setting us up for whatever alternative might come out of the legislative session.

So that's where we are. We're not going to do a deep dive into the 2027 budget. We're really hoping to talk more about some of our accomplishments over this year, some of the priorities so that we make sure we're all on the same page about focusing on our priorities. And, you know, clearly we have two identified priorities of finishing the new fire station and remodeling the police department, but there are also all sorts of other capital projects that we just want to get your feedback on. There are no votes tonight.

It's just a matter of making sure we're all talking about the priorities and you all expressing your desires so that when we prepare the budget, we're on the same page. So, with that, I'd ask I think Veronica is flipping through charts. Traditionally, we talk through the strategic plan. You all are very familiar with this. I'll just remind you that we did do sort of an updated strategic plan this year, so that it was more clearly aligned with the state priorities and language.

So, nothing new here, and we are continuing to focus our work to complete the initiatives of the Vision 2030 strategic plan. Now, traditionally, we talk about our budget process. You know, it starts now, started a couple of weeks ago with the staff preparing their portions of the budget, and it goes on through August, you know, where we'll have our all day workshop. So that's, you know, really where the rubber hits the road throughout, you know, we'll have, over the course of the summer, meetings with the public, meetings with you, meetings with the departments, so that the budget, when we get to that August meeting, we've addressed all of these issues. So, that's kind of the big picture issues.

Want to go on to the next one? But really, what we wanted to do tonight was focus the real meat of the discussion. And I'd like to have Peter Gay talk Peter Gay or Veronica talk a little bit about our current fiscal position, and give you a little comfort that we're certainly not Fort Lauderdale. If you've read the article in the paper about, you know, they're already in the hole, we are not. We're in good position, but we want to stay there. So, Veronica, if you could take it from there.

Thank you, Sheila. So, I'll get started with our current fiscal position. And the city continues to remain financially stable with strong reserves. We are maximizing resources and expanding grant funding to leverage local dollars. The fiscal year twenty seven budget will prioritize core services and carefully balance competing needs.

We've strengthened our focus on grant funding with coordinated efforts under our new grants administrator to further leverage local tax dollars. And as we all know, potential tax reform uncertainty calls for a conservative approach to new spending this year. Each year, we face competing priorities from departmental requests and capital improvement projects, and these demands are further influenced by ongoing economic pressures such as inflation and tariffs, as well as pending legislative mandates that may place additional strain on city operations. Now, with that, Peter Gay will now provide an overview of various legislative mandates.

All right. We're we're sharing a mic, so I apologize. Good afternoon or good evening, everyone. So there's been a lot of talk about property taxes over the past several months, but I just wanted to remind everyone that, you know, over the last few years, we have already been hit with a lot of legislative changes and mandates. When you look at Live Local Act, you know, increased reporting requirements that we have to do, statutory limitations and procedures and how we increase fees and so forth, we have already went through all of that.

And when you look at the list for what's being considered right now, it's actually longer than what we've already gone through and more extensive. So, we're looking at property tax reform, which is huge. We're also following the changes with the doge for oversight and reporting requirements for the budget. We're also looking at restrictions or elimination of the local business tax as well as additional amendments to the Live Local Act and requirements for private providers and how we set those fees. And we're also looking at sovereign immunity changes, which will be huge for for any government agency.

So this slide right here, it's a pie chart. It basically shows the allocation of property taxes. So this really is a useful tool for US commissioners when you meet with residents, you know, when they talk about their property tax bill just to show them that all the funding does not come to the city of Coconut Creek. It's actually distributed between the county, the school board, and the city. We also have our special assessments on there for fire rescue services and solid waste.

But in terms of taxes and the tax bill, what Coconut Creek gets is really only about 29% of the total tax bill, so that's huge. We're basically right there with Broward County and the school board, and I did want to point out with this property tax reform, everyone is going to be affected on this pie chart with the exception of the school board, so. All right. And this slide, I know most of you have seen this already, and it's just to point out general fund revenues, how it's allocated. And as you can see from this chart, that property taxes is a large component of the funding that we receive in the general fund at approximately 44%.

So any changes to property tax through property tax reform is going to be significant for the city. And this one's a little hard to see from here, but it's just the breakdown of expenditures for the general fund. And it basically shows the money that we collect, how we spend it. And this chart is important to note that for public safety, and that's police and fire rescue, they account for approximately 51% of the operating expenditures for the general fund. And based on the new property tax reforms, we can adjust the budgets for down for police and for fire.

So that's gonna have a huge impact on how we fund all the other departments within the city. And then this chart here, I believe all of you have seen this before in some way, shape, or form, and it shows how we will be further constrained with the property tax reform. So, basically, we start with what our revenues are. We have to deduct our budgets for police and fire because we can't reduce those. And then we look at the impact of ad valorem revenue loss under the most recent bill that's moving forward, is two zero three.

And, that leaves us with about $28,200,000, and this essentially reduces our flexibility in how we fund our annual programs and and so forth because we can't reduce police and fire, and whatever we have left now, we have to redistribute that with less revenue amongst all the other departments. So essentially, it would be like a 36% reduction across all the other departments moving forward that we would have to make some adjustment to account for that revenue loss. All right. So I wanted to spend some time looking at options to mitigate the impacts. So this slide, we're starting off first with cost containment measures.

And we are developing an approach to do this in phases. Now, is preliminary. These are ideas that we're throwing out there. We haven't finalized anything for fiscal year 'twenty seven or 'twenty eight because that's in the future, but we just wanted to have that open discussion and start talking about some of the things that you might see as we move through the process if this reform is approved and what we'll have to do in terms of cost containment measures. So, phase one, which is actually the current fiscal year, we have reviewed and we are continuing to review and evaluate vacant positions prior to recruitment to determine operational needs.

We're also scrutinizing and looking at travel and training a little bit more, you know, cutting back where we can, making sure that we only approve travel that's necessary. And we are exploring all possible grant opportunities right now. Our grant administrator, Dan Nelson, has been doing a great job in that arena, you know, looking for grants, trying leverage grant funding for us, you know, especially more so with the potential for the change in property taxes. Phase two, which will start in fiscal year twenty seven, we would limit new initiatives and program expansions. So, if the possibility is there for a large reduction in revenues, we don't want to continue to expand programs and services, so we'd be looking to kind of contain that as much as possible.

We're also going to prioritize discretionary initiative programs and projects, and then we're going to eliminate those strategically. So, I know in the memo that you received, which you have a copy of right now, it basically what we started to do, we went through all the different programs and functions that all the departments provide. And there are certain things that are mandatory. So regardless of what happens, we have to get that done. And then there are certain things that are discretionary.

So that list that we provided lists the discretionary items, and it's not to say we have made any decisions on how we're going to proceed with any of that, but it's just the first step for us to try to start to identify, if this tax reform does go through, what are some of the areas we can start looking at that are discretionary, and then start that discussion from there. We're also going to be looking at extending the useful life of our equipment, vehicles, and our facilities. We pride ourselves in having a recurring replacement schedule for these items because these are the assets we use to service our residents. We want to make sure that our police cars are replaced frequently and that our buildings are kept up to date. But with this reform, we may have to look at extending that a little bit based on funding requirements.

We're also going to only advance those essential capital projects, which, you know, Sheila alluded to. Our focus really is Fire Station one hundred thirteen and the renovations to the police department and anything that is needed that we have to move forward with with Main Street. We're not gonna we're looking to limit any kind of expansion of services at this time, and we're gonna continue to tighten the annual spending growth. So, as contracts come up for renewal, we're going to see if there's a way to renegotiate any kind of lower rates, if there's a way to adjust service levels, and so forth. So, we're not saying we're going to do all of these in fiscal year twenty seven, but we're just identifying the methods that if this is approved in December, we would have a list that we can start with.

And then at that point, we would, you know, when we balance the budget, we would balance it as we're moving forward as normal. We can reduce where we can, but if it is approved, then we would have to come back to the commission midyear in fiscal year twenty seven to see which one of those areas we're going to adjust as we move forward. And then fiscal year twenty eight, which is phase three, we would look be looking at everything I mentioned in the previous phases, as well as increasing reliance and fees and assessments where appropriate, implementing remaining operational adjustments that we identified in fiscal year twenty seven and might not have done yet, aligning staffing levels with the available resources that we have through attrition, and then we're going to be evaluating the use of contingencies and reserves to support us through the next few years. We do have developments that are going to come on, so we have to kind of balance that with, as new development comes to the tax roll and it brings additional revenue, how much of reserves we can use and so forth. So, it's probably going to be a combination of everything.

And then we're going to continue to tighten annual spending, and we'd have to be looking at pay for performance and cost of living adjustments throughout the city. And just kind of keep in mind that the personnel budget does make up about 70% of our operating budget. Next slide. On the other side, on the revenue side, these are some options that we are looking at also to kind of contain and address property tax reform. So we have begun evaluating high level revenue concepts that could be considered for future years.

This includes reviewing potential adjustments to the fire assessment beyond the normal 10% cap that we have. By ordinance right now, we can't go over 10%. But if this property tax reform was approved, we would have to take a step back and evaluate and look to see what adjustments could be made there. I just want to throw it out there that we are limited in how much we can adjust because we can only increase that fee to cover the cost of fire protection services. So, it's not going to completely fill the gap, but, you know, it could be an avenue for us to look at.

We would also be aligning the city service and user fees more closely with full cost recovery where appropriate. A lot of our programs, whether it's summer camp or athletic programs or classes and so forth, are somewhat subsidized by the general fund. So, basically, the participants are not paying the full cost to to provide that service. So, we would have to take a step back and start looking at what are those full costs, and and do we need to increase those so we can bridge, help bridge that gap with the property tax reform. Let's see.

And then we will also be negotiating a lease for the Butterfly Lot, looking at all all alternatives to utilize our city assets to generate some revenue for the city. Let's see. Additionally, there are other revenue sources that we can explore. You know, with Florida statutes and the state laws, we're limited by the type of revenues we can charge, but we would be looking at getting creative to see what other alternatives we can add. I know the police department did a lot of work.

They actually identified the alarm registration and the false alarm registration process that could potentially generate some additional revenues for us with limited cost to go along with that. And we are going to be flushing out the details and creating a program modification that would come before the commission for approval in the proposed budget when we meet on that budget in August. And we're also looking at the possibility of charging convenience fees for credit cards. Right now, we pay, I think, over $200,000 in credit card fees. You see it a lot of places are are doing that now because the fees are so steep, and we do have individuals that when they have all the travel cards, they get the benefits of the points, so they utilize it more.

But, of course, that comes with a higher interest rate for us as the city to accept that credit card payment. So we're we're trying to explore everything we can to to to move forward. And then more broadly, we're also gonna continue to look at outsourcing and privatizing where it's operational and financially financially feasible and opportunities to maximize, again, the city's assets. We also have to consider general obligation bonds where possible, and any other special assessments for capital projects. For the most part, other than the really large projects, we have been able to get by to fund it on a pay as you go basis, but that strategy might need to be reevaluated as we move forward.

And, of course, as a last resort, we could evaluate adjustments to the millage rate for the non homestead properties if this tax reform goes through, recognizing that we do have some statutory limitations there and the potential impact that this would have on businesses if we were to do this. So at this stage, these are just concepts that are being shared at a very high level to support our proactive planning, and we will be seeking input from the commission regarding policy direction before we develop any formal recommendations that were listed here. All right. So this slide is just some potential areas of service level adjustments. I'm not going to go through all of these.

You know, you could look at those. If you have questions, let me know. But rather, it's intended to provide examples of the program services and operational areas that may be reviewed if property tax reform is enacted. These represents potential areas where service level adjustments could be considered, along with, you know, other discretionary programs that we have on the list we provided to you. For example, we may have to look at the frequency of the landscape maintenance and pressure cleaning services that we provide.

And those adjustments, again, we would accumulate all of that to come up with the revenue gap that we have, and then come back to the commission midyear in fiscal year twenty seven to see how much of that we can start to accumulate. Because if it is approved when it goes to the voters, we know it's not effective until fiscal year twenty eight, but we don't want to wait until then to start making these adjustments. So, that's why we are being proactive and we're planning for that as that comes. And any savings we have, let's say we did balance the budget as if we're moving forward the way we are right now with these service levels. If it's approved come January, then we would have to put a pause on these things and make adjustments, and any savings we get would fall out to our fund balance or a savings account that we can use to help with the future years.

All right. So we're going to move on to long term planning. This we go over this every year, and it's just a reminder that we are proactive in our and strategic in our planning. We do have a capital improvement program that makes sure we're investing in our infrastructures, that is our five year plan that we approve every year. And we also have a ten year projection that Veronica will go over momentarily. We also have our Parks and Recreation Master Plan, as well as the Main Street development, and we do have recommendations from our vulnerability assessment and from the regional solid waste system that we have to keep in mind. These are all things that we will have to fund and we may have to pivot with based on, you know, how things progress throughout the year.

With this slide, I'd like to highlight the importance of our ten year capital improvement program as a key component of our long term planning. While we traditionally include a five year capital improvement plan in our annual budget, looking ahead to the next ten years allows us to better anticipate and prepare for the city's future needs. As you can see from this slide, we are projecting a total of $322,000,000 in capital costs over the next decade. Of that amount, 224,400,000.0 will need to be funded through the general fund, including the Main Street Civic space and parking garage. Our primary focus in the ten year plan is on the next three years, ensuring that near term priorities are addressed.

However, it's important to note that nonrecurring capital projects beyond fiscal year twenty twenty nine are still to be determined as we continue refining our long term strategy. This ten year outlook helps to stay helps us to stay proactive, ensuring we allocate resources effectively and maintain a sustainable financial strategy for the city's future growth. As shown on this slide, approximately 40,200,000.0 of the ten year capital improvement program is allocated to the Parks and Recreation Master Plan. This slide provides a high level overview of completed, ongoing, and funded projects, as well as planned improvements for the coming years. Currently, we are at completion with the improvements at Donaldson And Sunshine Drive, and we advertise the bid package for the construction of phase one of Oak Trails Park and have begun mobilization for the construction of phase one of Lakeside Park.

And we remain committed to investing in parks and recreation projects with future funding dependent on competing priorities, availability of financial resources, and potential property tax reform.

So let me just jump in there and just add that what you see below the green line are projects that we hope to fund. But when you turn to the next slide, I think that's where I think from a strategy perspective, this is where our focus is in making sure we will have the funds to complete these two projects before we move on to some of these other capital projects. Sorry.

It's okay. Similar to last year, our two major capital priorities include Fire Station 113 and the police department improvements. Additionally, as you may recall, we are planning to issue debt to cover these two major upcoming projects. A status update for Fire Station one hundred thirteen is that the CMAR contract was approved and awarded, and the PO has been received. For police department improvements, the RFP is scheduled to go out this summer. The debt repayment for these projects will be funded with seminal proceeds and the general fund. As such, property tax reform will also play a role in securing funding for debt repayment for these capital priorities.

And I just wanted to add one thing here with the property tax reform. So we did, in 2025, increase the millage rate to account for revenues to fund these capital projects, but that was based on our taxable value. So, if this property tax reform goes through, it is going to decrease the base, and then we'd be getting less revenue from that perspective. So, when we had increased the millage rate, we were going to get about a 2,600,000.0 per year, And if property tax reform goes through, it's going to reduce it by about a million, where we would be getting 1.6. So this is going to be a large equation also of how we balance everything in the general fund as we move forward.

So, that brings us to the Main Street slide, and we are not prepared at this time to discuss entirely our thoughts about the Main Street project. We actually met just today with Lennar at a very positive meeting about them coming in, beginning work. Many of my concerns related to private providers have been dispelled, thank goodness, because we did have and have a pretty clear partnership agreement with them for construction of infrastructure and the civic node, as well as potentially the parking garage. But the parking garage is clearly something that we're going to have to study whether we have or will have the funds available to fund that debt, recognizing that our two top priorities are police and fire. So staff's busy working on this.

It has been a little slow coming together and understanding whether you know, we don't know what's going to happen with the bill, but we may need to be rethinking the construction of this parking structure at this time. So,

I I just gotta I wanna interject, and I appreciate I appreciate you guys. I appreciate all the work. I think it's really important to say legislative session ends tomorrow. The senate has not taken this up and has said they're not taking up property tax reform. Okay?

So if the governor even calls for a special session, which he has only for the purpose of congressional redistricting, They haven't reached a budget even, let alone taking up legislation to get there. So I'll say the same thing I said when we started talking about the, you know, the nonprofits and special programming. Why on earth are we doing this now and not in a month? I said, I'm happy to have a very good strategic planning discussion in terms of what we're going do and what we're going to prioritize, but I think wasting discussion and breath on something that this may just be, hopefully, for everyone's sake, you know, preparing for the plan, but as opposed to belaboring ninety minutes of the, you know, the house is burning, let's run out of it, I'm just wondering why this isn't a conversation we're doing at the April, and why we're doing this now when there's so much indecision.

And we keep hoping, you know, it's like herding cats to get everybody together in a room to have these kind of conversations. We are just being proactive, being prepared, thinking through the issues. It is premature for us to have these conversations. We're just being prepared.

I I I get it, but I I think you're gonna meet I I assume you're gonna hear things from my colleagues today that we we may take thoughts, positions on things that we don't need to right now.

And and we

agree And, with candidly, I you you gave us a package of three or four different prioritizations that's gonna directly impact employees of the city, that's gonna directly impact the people's future planning. And if any of us weigh into that, I've I've learned this lesson. Right? We it's not appropriate it's not appropriate to do right now. So I'm I'm gonna just say to my colleagues and say to you, I don't wanna talk about prioritizing things right now. I don't think it's appropriate. I think this meeting should come back in at at the April where we know what happened in special session. I'm happy to finish it. You guys put in a lot of work to the slides and everything. I just think we if any of us really speak to some level, and this is my opinion, you I think you could do it.

It really puts us it it kinda locks a direction in. And I just I I don't I don't see that now because there's now there's gonna be a headline, property tax reform hits, and Coconut Creek's raising it to 10 mills because you put it in a slide.

That's not true.

I agree it's not true, but that's the narrative. That's not true. What's not true?

Your turn.

Okay. That's my position. So

I do have to say there have been residents that came up to me and said, oh, they've eliminated property tax. They were already thinking that the property taxes are eliminated, so I'd have to straighten them out. But what I'm concerned, of course, any conversation is fine. And it's the more information we have, the better. Of course, I don't think we're gonna make any decisions tonight.

No. No decisions, Jennifer.

So what I am concerned about as well, and which I don't know, and I'm sure the brilliant minds have addressed this, is that prices are going up. Have we built that into our estimated costs? Because prices are escalating at an extremely volatile rate. So have we taken that

into Yes, so,

you know, like Sheila said, we're very early in the process to look at fiscal year 'twenty seven. So as part of our process, we do look at cost escalations. We look at increases in contracts and so forth. So when we come back in August with the proposed balanced budget, we would have factored all of that in.

Actually, I'm really concerned about the construction costs and roadways. Yeah. Mayor?

Sandy? Do want to speak? Go ahead, Sandy. Just a quick comment.

I appreciate your comments, Commissioner Reidel, but I feel like not that I'm a believer in Doge, because it was mandated, but I feel like we're just taking a real honest look at where we are. And I don't believe that it's sending a message that we're reducing. I think it's a message that we're being responsible in the revenues that we know we're going to have and prepared for what may or may not occur for the future. And I just, to your point, I don't believe that it's too much information. I believe all of us need to be very much informed, each one of us board members, if we're planning to make a policy going forward, regardless of what the revenue is or isn't.

I think it just makes us better representatives for the city in order to make those decisions. So I appreciate the work.

And it might you know, it is good information as you share with your constituents. You know, if there is it certainly is good information.

Oh, go ahead. All right. So, just for this one, just where we are, we've already funded the utility infrastructures for Main Street and the design for Village Green Park in the parking garage, and we expect the balance that we have to pay for Village Green Park and Lakeside Park to come up in fiscal year twenty seven, and then the garage, parking garage for a future date. So this, I know there have been a lot of talk about, you know, gloom and doom, but this is kind of like the bright spot for us right here, which is the main street development. So this is going to help us by generating some revenues, whether it's through permit fees or impact fees, and it will also provide housing opportunity for the residents of the city of Coconut Creek, so we are very excited about this.

I'm not going to go through the accomplishments because you know where we are today, but next steps basically is focused on implementing and long term planning. We'll be preparing an RFP for the design of Village Green, Lakeside Park, the parking garage. We're also finalizing the funding strategies for our parking garage and how we're gonna address that. We will also be entering into a project specific interlocal agreement for column road improvements and evaluating any potential amendments that we might need to the developer agreement, you know, as things change, as we move forward with with different participants in in the whole deal for Main Street. So together, all of these help position Main Street for continued thoughtful progress that supports both economic development and community focused amenities.

So so this is kind of the bright spot to look forward to. It will add to the tax base, and we can kinda leverage some of that as we move forward. Alright. And really quickly, I just wanted to go over the city owned properties, which which can also be viewed as a bright spot. Just a reminder, in the Main Street area, we do have four parcels that are available, which are shown on this map.

Parcel 1 is where our temporary fire station is right now. Once we move that over, then we'd have that available. We do have Block 13, which is right by the village Green Park, Block 14, which is a portion of where Fire Station 113 is gonna be, and then the Butterfly Lot. So this presents an opportunity for us here at the city in terms of public private partnerships as well as outright sales of these parcels. So, you know, this this is kinda like a bright spot for us to have as we move forward in in what we decide to do. So when I talked about city assets earlier and leveraging those, this is an example of that. Okay.

We are also working on several other capital projects that were already funded in previous years. The canine training area is approximately 60% complete. Sable Pines Park replacement program, the project has just received the approval to proceed after it was paused pending some rebranding considerations. Police station improvements for the kennel, the design and the construction documents are due at the March. The fleet building rehabilitation has project design at 90% complete.

Pedestrian lighting is in the initial planning stages with FPL. Recreation complex building rehabilitation, the design was completed, and they're still working through some final tweaks. Lakeside Park improvements, the notice to proceed was issued March 2, and the contractor has just begun work. Oak Trails Park is scheduled to be advertised on March 15. Government Center Courtyard is in the early stages of design, but the initial design concept was approved.

The city commission audiovisual improvements are under we're finalizing an agreement, and the work should should begin tentatively by June. Advanced metering infrastructure, the contract is still being finalized and is anticipated to go before commission in the next couple of months. Lakewood East re surfacing, the PO was issued. Subsurface work will begin soon, and then resurfacing will follow. And Winston Park Crosswalk, the PO has been issued for the design phase, and design should start shortly.

Thank you. So I wanted to go through just briefly a highlight of a few additional capital projects that are slated for fiscal year twenty seven that may need to be addressed. So we do have the government center. We had planned some commission chamber improvements focusing on maintaining functionality and making targeted upgrades like seating, technology, lighting, and other minor facility enhancements.

And just to clarify, the technology piece is going forward. This line item specifically related to replacing the chairs and the carpeting and things like that.

And that's about 500,000. Last year, due to competing priorities, we also pushed off the improvements to the Vinkemulder neighborhood to fiscal year 'twenty seven, and it includes the smaller scale improvements identified through the overlay study, including the pedestrian safety enhancements, landscaping, and signage. And that's about 275,000. And we also continue to move forward with a redundant fiber optic ring project, which is essential to strengthen our system reliability and support connectivity with the future Fire Station one hundred thirteen. So we're happy to say that we did get approval for appropriations for over $1,000,000 for this project, so we're just waiting for the next steps now for us to move forward with that.

So at this time, I know we've gone over a lot. We've discussed potential phases of things we would do in case there are any property tax changes, But we're not making any decisions today. We're just sharing that, so we keep that in the back of our minds. And if things progress, then we would move forward and come back with recommendations and a plan. But we haven't received any additional capital requests from the commission or from any of our residents. So I wanted just to pause here briefly to see if there are any capital items that you would like staff to reconsider in our capital improvement plan, in particular the ones that I just talked about for fiscal year twenty seven.

I mean, I'll say the same thing again. Don't see how we could even have that conversation because there's programming that I would love to see that I would be foolish to suggest in this moment. And vice versa, there's a prioritization of these things that if this comes to be that I have strong feelings on, but I don't believe it's the appropriate time to share. Thank you.

I would keep things as they are, as presented, until we get any new information to direct us to prioritize differently, or push forward differently.

I'll wait till the baby's born before we make decisions on naming. How about that?

All right. Okay.

I said I'm going to wait till the baby's born before we name it. How about

Okay. All right. I agree. Thank you. Thank you.

And then, just a quick summary of some of the deferred capital improvement projects that we have that we have deferred over the past few years just because of competing priorities. We do have several parks and rec master plan items, including phase two of Lakeside Park and Oak Trails Park phase two, amongst some other ones that we have kind of pushed back because, again, our priority is Fire Station 113 and the PD improvements. We do have the Vinke Moeller Utilities improvements. That is contingent on special assessment and grant funding. And then, the complete overall of the commission chambers and renovations, which is estimated at 2,000,000 that we have deferred to a future date until we complete some of our capital items.

All right. And I did want to spend a little time just talking about the fiscal year twenty six budget requests for non capital items. So, we did have the priority access for residents for the rides at the Butterfly Festival, so I heard that that was a huge success. I think we collected almost $10,000 in fees for the bands, and we spent just around the same, you know, but we did get feedback that the residents were happy and appreciative of that because they could, you know, utilize the rides, and lines weren't, yeah, as long. We are moving forward with the pilot. Yeah. And with the rain, we did get news from our insurance Female provider that we will be

getting back $25,000 for that through insurance, so that's good news

Thank Female All right. For the composting program, we started the pilot commercial program, and we're working through finalizing the multi family program. I know with the multi family, initially, we said it was contingent on grant funding, so we're just kind of working through that and seeing how we can move that forward. We expanded the BHAP initiatives. We're we're funded the fencing at Lyons Creek Middle School, but we're only going to do that if it's absolutely necessary.

We also funded some road improvements at the Lions Creek Middle School that we're looking for the school board to to do all of the work, and we'll contribute to our share there. And, we are also still working through the school zone safety enforcement program. And, again, we haven't received any non capital requests at this time, and I understand, I believe it's the same, that we would wait until we know more information on that. And then, have some items on hold because we don't have all the information we need or the funding to move forward with, which is public transportation enhancement and the micro transit program, as well as new recycling drop off locations. We're going to wait a little bit for that.

Staff will also be scheduling a workshop to talk more about solid waste and recycling in more details in April, so that information will come forward at a future date. All right. So before we close, I just wanted to briefly provide an overview of our current rates and how they're evaluated each year. So the first one is our millage rate that's determined annually by the city commission. We do have fire assessment rates also, but single family, multifamily, mobile homes, and then commercial.

That is determined annually also based on the cost to provide services, and it can be increased up to 10% based on our current ordinance. Solid waste collection and disposal is also determined annually. We do anticipate a contract renewal with Republic Services, which we will be presenting at the workshop, which we have scheduled on April 9, I believe.

It's the twenty third.

It's the twenty third. Okay. All right. We are looking at an increase there because we are bringing back in recycling, and we're also making some other enhancements. The final numbers the numbers aren't officially final yet because, of course, that has to come to the commission for approval, but we're looking at approximately an increase to $400 for the year, to include all of those services.

But, again, we'll discuss that in more details at the workshop at a future date. Water and wastewater rate increases, you know, if you recall last year, we had changed our ordinance where that goes up by the greater of two and a half percent CPI or the blended Broward County rates. So the higher of those three is actually the blended Broward County rates at 3.5. So we're looking to roll that out June 1. And we continue to monitor the requirements for PFAS and how it affects the rates with Broward County.

Right now, our rates does not include any allocations for PFAS, but we're going to be working closely with county moving forward in how we approach that. But as far as fiscal year twenty six, the increase is going to be 3.5% that we would be recommending. And then, the storm water rate is the last rate we wanted to talk about, and that increase is based on CPI on an annual basis. So with that, I did want to talk a little bit about So I think we'll

go on with the same philosophy as it relates to the donations. We had hoped we would hear what was happening with property taxes, so we deferred this conversation until this meeting. Clearly, we have not gotten that information. But we have had some interesting conversations with the Community Foundation of Broward, and we'd like to have them and they'd offer to make a presentation at our April 9 meeting. We were quite intrigued with what they had to say, so we'd like to continue that discussion to the April 9 meeting.

Okay. All right. And so before we close, do know that there's a lot of unknowns out there, and we're going to wait to get more information. But we just wanted to have this session so we know how to move forward because we're starting the planning process and working with the department. So we will continue as normal, and then once we get more information, we'll regroup from there. So thank you so much.

Thank you so much. The effort, the work, the finished product was great. Thank you so much for that. Yes, and I think Sandy Yes, Sandy, go ahead.

Just to piggyback on that, I mean, one of the documents that you did send out that I thought was very much an moment for all the departments was the discretionary programs. Mean, it's quite a lineup. Yeah. Anyway, I'll just leave it at that. It's very, extensive.

Yeah. All right.

And we are doing you know, we are doing a financial analysis of many of those programs to determine whether there is whether we've got the attendance to warrant the expense. All right.

That would take an in-depth study. Thank you. Yeah. Look forward to seeing the numbers on that on the programs. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Any questions? Go ahead, John.

I do really appreciate you guys doing this. I know in the time of uncertainty you're putting numbers up in kind of the best guesstimation you could possibly give us. So I do appreciate all the effort. I sat here quietly because I kind of knew that we weren't going make any comments, because I knew I didn't have any comments at this point. But I do appreciate all the work and effort that's gone in from the entire staff. So it's not unheard. We are not ignoring it. We understand that everybody put good numbers in here. I just think, like everybody else, it's a little premature to do anything else. But I certainly appreciate everything you guys have done to get us to this point. So thank All

right. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, one and all. Do I have a motion to adjourn?

Motion to adjourn.

Thank you. Meeting adjourned. Thank you.

You.