Council - workshop

I'll download this later. I'm a little tall. Thank you for inviting me to talk to you today. I have... They told me I had five minutes. It's going to be a big challenge for me to talk in five minutes, but I'll do it. Right, so I wrote down what I want to say, because we have some important things happening. I met with Mayor Tyler and he mentioned, he said, you need to take this to the council and let them know what is happening and what we have for the future. So, the first thing I want to talk to you about is the Meals on Wheels. I just sent our request in July for $10,000. I was telling Mayor Tyler that we could ask for three or four times this amount and justify. We served this area with more than 22,000 meals only in the Florence area. They are asking for only $10,000. Ah, this program costs $225,000. It is totally financed by individuals, churches and companies in this area. We don't have federal funds. Sometimes this is a little misunderstood and people think that we are financed by the federal government. We are not. We totally depend on donations. The problem is that since Covid, these donations, especially individuals, have decreased. So we are at a point where we need to make a decision about cutting meals or not. And this is something I don't want to do. Currently, we provide six meals a week. I don't know about you, but I make meals three times a day, seven days a week. These people get a meal a day, six times a week. So, I want to expand to seven days a week, but to do that we need funds, but we need funds only to keep where we are today. So, one thing is that we are approaching our 50th anniversary. We started Meals on Wheels at Community Action in 1966. So, 50 years, we're going to have a celebration starting in October, and I want to invite each one of you personally. On October 9th you have, and I left an invitation there, we'll have more information soon about it, you'll see it on social media, in other places, but I want to invite you to come to our office and join us to celebrate the Mills on Wheels. And what I ask the community, the individuals, is that people donate 50 dollars for our 50 years of service. It's only one dollar per year that we provide meals. Currently, we provide, in the counties of Colbert, Lauderdale and Franklin, about 50,000 meals. Some years we spend on this, other years we stay below. So it's very important. But I wanted you to see that when we ask for 10,000 dollars, this is a very small part of what we spend in this area to provide these meals. These meals cost $4 each, which is a great price. Nikkei Kemoshi Prepa has been doing this for 40 years. And it's just because she wants to cover the costs that we managed to do it for $4. Three years ago, she had to increase from $3.30 to $4. These 70 cents represent 35 thousand dollars per year. That's where we face our problems. Donations decrease, expenses increase. I don't need to tell you what that means. It means that an account adjustment is coming. And it's close. I hope this in October allows us to overcome this situation. And if we can do that, in the month of October we will celebrate. In addition, Eva Graham, who works at Mills on Wheels, will celebrate her 51st year in our organization. It's amazing. So I want everyone to not only celebrate the Meals on Wheels, but also celebrate Eva Graham. Because she is a saint of a person. I don't know if any of you have met her, you know that. I also invite each one of you... I was talking to Mr. Bolin and he said, you should come to my office. I left the annual report for you. Take a look at it. If you have any questions, we carry out many programs. I'm talking about two today, but there are many others that we can talk about. Come to my office, sit down with me, let's discuss what we are doing at Community Action. We invested almost 4 million dollars back in the community during COVID. We invested 5 to 6 million back in the community through direct help. So I ask you to come talk to me. Another subject I want to talk about quickly, sorry for being talking so fast, I'm trying to pass on a lot of information. It's LIHAP. This is our public service assistance program. It's our biggest program. We spent about 1.8 million. And this program currently has a forecast to end on September 30. In previous years, they allowed us to transfer some funds to October, November and December. This year, ADECA decided that it wouldn't happen, that they would have a strict final deadline. What does that mean? Well, we have to spend all our money until September. We're on the right track to do that. I have about 75,000 left over for the rest of this month. This may seem a lot, but it's not. We spend about 55,000 a week. So let's consume our 1.8 million. This is important because you know. You know what happens if we don't spend the money. Next year they will reduce our allocation. Therefore, it is important that we spend it. But what does this mean for the community? From October 1st, I will not have public service assistance money until the new subvention agreement is signed. Usually, in the past years, this happened around mid-December. Now, that's when the governor will announce. That doesn't mean we have the funds. It usually takes a month. We usually start the LIHAP on February 1st. They expect to release it sooner. I don't have much confidence in that. I've been there for 10 years and they never released before December 15th. In fact, in about 5 of my 10 years they released after that and we arrived in February before we received it. Without the money from public services, just so you have an idea of ​​what it means, in the last 12 months we gave Florence Utilities $ 833,000. In the previous year, it was a little over a million. During COVID, it reached almost 1.4 million. It is vital for this area. It is vital for Florence and Tiris. I guarantee that they would not like this money to disappear, but in October I will have many people knocking on my door. They will probably call you and say, you know, the community action is not helping anyone. I can't help until I have the money. I am part of a consultative committee from the state of Alabama. In this committee we talked with ADECA about the problems we foresee. I hope the problems they have. The other community action is that they have just over a million dollars left in their LIHAP funds. I told them to send me a large part of it. You know, we can spend it here in October, November and December. They can't do that now. I hope there are problems so that we can relocate this, because in the next few years this will not be feasible. I have difficulty paying my team when I don't have funds to pay them. So, anyway, this is something I need your prayers for, so that ADECA and we can reach an agreement to get these funds faster, because being three months without assistance for public services will affect people who depended on it in the last six years. They will appear at my door in October, waiting to have their accounts paid and there will be no funds available. We will depend on the churches, we will depend on other organizations. We have some emergency funds available. And when I say a little, I'm talking about 10 to 15 thousand dollars. As I say to my team, this means that we are talking about that woman with two children who just left the hospital and had her light cut while she was there, and these are the people we will have to try to help. It's the worst case. So, anyway, this is something that will be a challenge until we get these funds. As I said, when you hear that we have the funds, that doesn't mean that we already received them. We'll have people knocking on our door when the governor announces, but we'll have to wait, but we'll have to wait. So anyway, I think my five minutes are over. I thank you all for listening. I don't know if you have questions or something like that, but thank you very much. There's another meeting to participate, so I'll have to go, but thank you very much for listening and please come to my office, okay?

Thank you, sir.

Good afternoon. Thank you for letting me participate today. I want to give you a brief update about the UN and what is happening. Autumn is in full swing, the students have returned, so we have a lot of things happening on campus and we are excited about everything that is happening. And of course, we have something this weekend called the American Football Game on campus, which we know will be a great event. We are excited about it. But quickly, I really want to give you some numbers and show you where we are now as an institution. We won't know the final numbers of real enrollment. We won't know the final numbers of enrollment until probably mid or end of October. That's when our census ends, when everyone is registered at all times, in all different types of classes, Therefore, we do not yet have the final number of enrollments, but we hope to be oscillating around the same number as last year, in the autumn of 25, it will be something between 10.6 and 10.7 thousand. About 10,600 students. In the world of current higher education, keeping the numbers is something good. That's why we are excited and happy with our situation in terms of enrollments. I also think, and many of you must have heard President Kitts say, that we know where we do our best and where we are as an institution. This range of 10 to 12 thousand students is the ideal point for UNA. So, again, we are in a good position. But, when analyzing the enrollments, one of the most promising things we saw is what we call new Calouros. And this is the new Calouros group. Again, we are still waiting for the official numbers, but with the data we already have, we have overcome what is basically the largest group of new heaters in the last 10 years in the institution. This is another good sign for the vitality of the institution, showing that students are choosing the UNA, enjoying the UNA, staying and enjoying the time around here. Looking at this group of heaters and our retention rate, which is the rate we observed, that is, from heaters to the second year, we are close to 75%, which is abnormally high for a regional institution. Again, we are very proud of that. You know, we are about 10 points above what is seen in the main universities. So we are very excited when we observe the new heat wave and our continuously high retention rate. Very excited about it. But some things about the numbers. Uh, let me tell you, housing is strong. We have more than 2,000 students living in accommodation on campus now. Basically, this is equivalent to an occupation rate of about 91%, considering all our dormitories and apartments affiliated with the university. So we are with about 91%, with more than 2,000 students living only in campus residences. We had the Day of Offerings of the Brotherhood yesterday. The recruitment of the Brotherhood, just for you to know, in fact, it was the largest group of recruitment of Brotherhoods, the largest group of promises in the history of the UN. And we think that, probably, when the fraternities are over, we will have more than 1,000 students participating in Greek life on campus, participating on campus. So again, very strong numbers with which we are excited. Or some updates about construction. Lagrange Hall, if anyone is asking, we hope Lagrange Hall opens in the spring. We are already receiving descriptions now from students who want to move to that new dormitory in Folha. It will be open in the spring. And then engineering, the engineering building that we plan to build, we hope to start the works in the next few months. So you will start to see the construction. On Circular Road, more or less below the Science Building, is where the plan for that building is now. Pine Street, the main thing I want to say to this council, the mayor and all the officials who work for the city is thank you. The results of what we see in Pine Street are simply amazing. We couldn't be happier, we couldn't be more enthusiastic with the other changes that will come around. We're talking about sidewalks, lighting, but you know, maybe other potential financing that can also increase safety and beauty. I think that, in fact, all that corridor of Pine Street will be something that this city and the council can really be proud of. So, again, just thank you for all your work. Thank you for your assistance. It is very appreciated. Finally, just to talk a little about what is happening this weekend. We have a busy week ahead. We have a lot going on in the next three days of the week. Thursday and Friday will start with the presence of curators in the city for our council meetings starting on Thursday afternoon and going until Friday, usually near lunchtime. Friday night we will have our celebration of the Shine On Gold campaign. This is the 500 million dollar capital campaign that we ended earlier, at the beginning of the fall. This celebration starts on Friday, I think at 18h30, for a kind of community celebration of that campaign. We're excited about it. So, of course, on Saturday night, we'll end the weekend with the inaugural game at Bank of Independence Stadium. So, I think there's a lot of information out there. I didn't want to bring, you know, this and that and that and that and that. There's a lot of information available on various sites, alliance.com, bank, independent, stadium.com, that will really address a lot about parking, game day activities and the logistics of how the game day will work. Please, if you have any questions, let me know about it. But, finally, I'll end with three cool things that will happen on Friday for the game, that I thought would be fun for you and the community to know. We'll have a flyover during the national anthem in the game, NOR. In the break, there will be a drone show together with the band Marching Pride and their presentation, and of course, we'll have another celebration after the game with our wonderful partners from TNT Fireworks, and with that, This is my general update. I will answer any questions if anyone has. Or Alliance. Hey Jay, a question I'm receiving about the tickets. The game is already out of stock and people can still buy at the ticket office. It's expected that people buy tickets like this. But it's not sold out yet. We're waiting for the maximum amount. So my recommendation would be to guarantee online tickets and not to trust just to arrive on the day of the game and try to buy one. And well, I think it's better to prevent than to remedy. It may be that there are tickets available, you know, to buy on the day of the game when you get there, but I can't... But I talked to our athletic director, Josh Looney, this morning, getting some of the department's updates, and he said he's waiting 100% for the tickets to run out. So it could be a risk.

Thank you very much. I thank you. I thank you. I have item 11-G. Is it approval of an invoice for the arbitration group? It's the group that prepares the annual report on arbitration of PBA titles. Any questions? Thank you. Boss.

Good afternoon. I have an item. It's a... procuration. And it's asking for a resolution regarding a vehicle from the police department that was declared a total loss as a result of an accident caused by a driver held by the Alfa. We just need the procuration to be able to receive the payment. The amount we will receive is 30,581.70 dollars. Any questions? All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. I only have one item today, 11 Bermas. It is a maintenance agreement between the Aldotte and the city of Florence for a traffic light in Cloverdale Road and John Coffey Drive. Therefore, it is an already signaled crossing. They are only adding a new road and some new signs. Any questions about that? Thank you.

Good afternoon, I have 11T, which is an invoice from Complete Ice and Refrigeration Service in the amount of 1,039.08 dollars, referring to the installation of one of the washing machines in the main laundry room that had created a leak and was throwing water in the dryer next door. They managed to fix it and it worked again, except that now we have problems with the dryer that we are waiting for repair, but anyway, that's it. Any questions? Thank you. We have a public hearing tonight, item 9A, referring to the proposal for the zoning of approximately 19 acres in 263 Scott Park Road and the adjacent lot to the northwest, which has no address. The gate appears on 12A. The Planning Commission analyzed this case in July and unanimously recommends its zoning. I think there are a few things to highlight, and I will do this if it seems appropriate during the public hearing, that these lots were already zoned as single-family residential buildings and will continue to be. Therefore, the difference is that the minimum size of the lot is a little smaller. It means that even if they weren't zoning, they could still build houses. For those who can be against the houses. Any questions? I have only one question. I was there and I noticed in that area, in the diagonal or whatever you want to call it, there are some duplexes. Yes. This is not from the city. Correct. This is from the county. Exactly. And then, the part of the county is zoned for multifamily there. The county has no zoning. They don't have zoning. There are only three counties in the state of Alabama that have zoning throughout the territory and Lauderdale is not one of them. So, in that area, the county could allow more multifamily buildings, but within the zoning of the city, we are only doing unifamily,

Thank you. Any more parts? Cut.

I have two items on the agenda. 11C addends our current contract with PipeSuite. This is a public awareness effort to reach our Spanish-speaking population. It is a requirement. And so, we reached an agreement with PipeSuite. There is a single installation fee of US$ 2,200. This covers us during the current year and the beginning of the end of the contract. They are S183 and S33, $30 per month added. Look what we already paid them. You can see the numbers. Originally it was 4,141, C7 and will go to 4,009 at the end of the year. Any questions about that? And then the 11G. It is a contract with Hawk Corporation. It is in the value of US, the S4 lives at $600. It's for maintenance, calibration, repairs and certification of all our devices. Of bench in Cypress Creek and Wilson Lake, specifically our spectrophotometer and our turbidimeters. A question about that. This is just an annual renewal of this service contract. I'm doing notes.

I'm doing notes. I'll be able to soletrar these notes.

I can soletrar, it's more difficult to pronounce. Spectrophotometer. One of the budgetary funds. Correct. That's correct. Any other questions? Thank you all.

Thank you. That's it.

I have two items on the agenda, 11K and 11LL. The first is a bill from Hendrix Glass Service, referring to the installation of the new exit door next to the city hall exit when we implement security. That way we don't need to have two safe entrances. Any questions about that? The next is Kraus & Sons, referring to a water leak in the municipal auditorium that we fixed. Any questions about that?

Good afternoon.

I have three items today. They are R, S and U. I will address R and S together, basically describing them. Both are part of the guarantee of some of our equipment. The item R should say SCBA, not SQRA. There is a typo error, but it is SCBA, which is the respiratory device that the firefighters use on their backs, in addition to our traction equipment. The hydraulic tools, the MINSE, both require annual tests to ensure that the guarantees are validated and things like that. All these are emergency verbs. Any questions about any of them? So, item 1 is a repair in a bay door. The garage door at the fire station 3. Well, we had a component failure in the middle of the night and we had to call someone to fix it. Thank you. Mr. Jordan. So I had several items, many of them were bills. Any questions about any particular item. Thank you all.

I just want to say that I had the opportunity to visit the pier. This weekend, on the last Sunday. It's beautiful over there, it's wonderful. Really very good.

So thank you all.

I am happy that people are using and coming back to fishing.

Thank you for saying that. I will also add that I had some friends who were there on Monday, on the day of work, and they were very excited. They said everything was great. Everything like electricity, everything, all the new modules or whatever you call it. They praised the reform a lot. Thank you all for saying that. Thank you. Did you do the interview today? No, I left it for... Mr. Williams. There again. I have three items, all under 13A. In fact, all three items are alcoholic beverages, as the mayor pointed out at the last meeting. And the first is a license request for alcoholic beverages from Roundabout Replay LLC. It's at 418 South Royal, here in the city. and it is for retail of beer and table wine at the place. You must remember that we approved a fliperama in the entertainment and recreation section. So, is this the requirement? The second item B is a license for alcoholic beverages from Brinker Restaurant Corporation, Florence, operating as Chili's Grill and Bar on 370 Cox Creek Parkway, for a license for retailing of drinks distilled in restaurant. This is the successor to the owner, the corporation of this franchise, Chili's. Therefore, it is a change of title. And then the last item C is a license for alcoholic beverages for the Fuji Buffet in Florence, which is their name, operating as Fuji Buffet 121 Cox Creek Parkway South. There are some doors of Academy Sports, you know the place. And it's for beer retail at the place and table wine at the retail at the place.

Thank you very much. The next U, we have some vacancies and reconditions in councils arriving. First, the nomination for two chairs. The mandate expires on the 20th. I am, as a representative of the council, Mr. McMolding, for a re-nomination.

I would like to nominate Mac McMullen. And back.

Okay. We have a... Proceed. We have a motion for Mr. Mac McMullen by Mr. Spence, seconded by Mr. Hendrix. We don't need to do that. Okay.

Very well. In fact, I would like to nominate Caterina Simons for reconduction as well.

Very well. Is there any more? Now we need to vote. Or is it just...

I just asked to vote.

Okay. Mr. Malden, recondition. Simulos again. Okay. You noticed this sketch. We don't have a historical preservation committee. In fact, we have two that resigned. Two resignations in this one. And then, also in the beauty council, we have a vacancy for a resignation in that one. In the history. All those two inscriptions were one of each.

That you sent us.

The inscriptions you sent us were for a historical U, and the embellishments you just sent us. I thought I saw that that email said to give up. Yes. Okay, I got it. We just received it, so I looked at it hastily, trying to get it. So we have a vacancy for the Historical Preservation Commission and also for an embellishment council. We have those two resignation requests, and if you want to solve them now, or prefer to wait until the next meeting. Let's do it here. I agree.

Regarding her wishes, I don't see a problem in waiting.

Right, we'll deal with that at the next council meeting. Besides, we just received... Each council member should have a copy. If you didn't have the opportunity to see it in your email, Seamus Grove just brought us a copy of it. It's a resolution. Of course, I think we need to discuss this now, what the council decides, if they want to add or whatever we want to do. But it is a resolution that we have just received to authorize and approve a request to the Regional Commission of the Palaces for ARC funds. This is for... Sorry, I just received it too. is for the replacement of sewage and the extension of the water network. This came from Mr... Mr. Sack. This is Musgrove. You can come here and explain this much better than me. We just received this.

So this is new to me today too. Or not today, but in the afternoon of yesterday. But basically, and I linked it in the email, not in what I delivered to you, but in the email I sent. I linked the preliminary report of engineering that gives an idea of, well, it doesn't give an idea It shows where the work would be, but it's all in the vicinity of... I'm pointing in the wrong direction. It's all in the vicinity of where the Hotel Reverb proposal is. So, the approximate cost is 900 thousand and a little, between 900 thousand and 1 million. The maximum value of an ARC subsidy, as far as I understand, is 1 million. and the applicant has to pay half as a counterpart. So it would be a $500,000 subsidy if this amount was granted. It would be a subsidy of $500,000 and $500,000 of city counterparty. Because the city, although the hotel developer has requested this, is actually the city that requests the subsidy, because only government entities can request it. and in an email that the mayor and I, it's a chain of people from DECA, not DECA, a NAIC, some people from NAICOG and so on. He, Mr. Sacks, declared that he would pay the city's counterpart So that the city doesn't have any expense, if the subvention is granted. But of course, with that, we don't have any kind of agreement signed with him at the moment, or something like that.

So... Dór, I have two questions. When, when, when does it have to be? I, I... For the subvention, when does it expire? What is the schedule?

Say it's at the end of the month, mayor. At the end of the month. They need to deliver. Ma'am.

And you just said that we have nothing signed by writing.

Well, we don't have any kind of contract, guarantee, credit card or something like that. Mr. Sack just said in an email today that he would cover the expenses. We didn't have time to negotiate an agreement or something like that, because it's literally... I finished this resolution about five minutes before sending it to you today, so... So, yes, we have to have this agreement established before we can vote on it, obviously. What I recommend to the council is that if we get this agreement, we can call a special meeting before the end of the month to help with the deadline. But speaking for myself, I can't vote for half a million dollars for which we would be responsible, you know? If Mr. Stack was abducted by aliens and we couldn't get his signature, we would be in trouble. We would be in trouble. So... But that would be my recommendation.

And I agree with that. I wouldn't like to put the city at risk of $500,000 without anything written, signed, sealed or delivered. We would need that. And I wouldn't have problems with so much that we get four council members for a specially called meeting.

We would have to have four. Correct. So yes, I can work on... There are several ways for the city to guarantee funding to secure...

These.

Well, in the past, I mean, a very similar example would be the Agricultural Authority, when they wanted the sewage to be extended to their property on Highway 72, I can't remember the exact cost, but they got a subsidy. And the subsidy funding paid part of that. And the city was paying the rest in advance, because it's a main management line. So the city, it's a city line, so the city agreed to build, as long as the agricultural authority paid the difference between the value of the subsidy and the cost, which the agricultural authority was perfectly willing to do. And the way we established this is, we signed an agreement by which they could do one of three things. They could buy a fiancée that would guarantee the value, or they could provide a credit card that would guarantee the value. Or they could create a guarantee fund and put the money there. And that's what the authorities ended up doing, because they had cash money. But if they didn't have money, they could have bought a fiancée or a credit card. Anyway, that. This is the easiest way to do it, because it guarantees payment. If the funds are not available when it's time to pay the employers, And another similar example is when, in planning, when we approve a loting, when the council does this, but when the planning commission approves a loting, often the incorporator needs to present a fee to ensure that the public improvements, such as drainage, sewage, water and others, be concluded. If the incorporator gives up, there is a bail for the city to withdraw the funds and conclude the improvements. Therefore, it is a fairly standard practice to do something like that. But these are the ones to have a bail, a credit card or a guarantee fund are the three best ways, in my opinion, to do this, or the easiest. So anyway, this is something that we can certainly discuss with Mr. Saia.

Very well, we will let you have this discussion, so we will wait until we hear from you. All the best for the council.

Thank you.

Thank you. Anything else that needs to be presented to the council? Is it done without him? Well, let's take a break. We'll be back at 7 o'clock.