Town Council - public_hearing

I'm waiting for the light to turn on. Good afternoon, everyone. We're going to call this meeting to order. Today is Wednesday, September 9th, 2026. It is 5.01 p.m. All council members are present with the exception of Councilor McLean, who's on excused absence, the town manager, deputy town manager, town clerk, and town attorney. If you'll please rise for the invocation followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. Well, it's on here to say it, so maybe repeat the first one.

That was a good one. As we gather today in service to Fort Myers Beach, please let us pause in gratitude for this community, its residents, businesses, and all who visit our shores. May we lead with integrity and make decisions that support our continued rebuilding and reflect our commitment to fiscal responsibility. May our efforts strengthen the foundation of our town and honor the resilience that defines us. Amen.

THAT BRINGS US TO THE APPROVAL OF THE FINAL AGENDA. THERE'S ONE SMALL CHANGE. WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A PRESENTATION FROM OUR ACCOUNTING STAFF. WE'LL ALSO HAVE AFTER THAT PRESENTATION THERE WILL BE DISCUSSION AND THERE WILL BE PUBLIC COMMENT ALOUD ALSO. IS THERE ANY OBJECTION TO THAT CHANGE IN THE FINAL AGENDA?

Move to approve as amended.

Second. All right. Got a motion by Councillor McLean. Councillor King and seconded by Vice Mayor Safford. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, that motion carries unanimously. We'll do public comment first. No, never mind. You guys are here. We'll do that first. Let's do your discussion. Then we'll go to public comment.

I wanted to. It's okay, Mr. Mayor. I'm sorry, Carolyn and Tracy. I wanted to start with just kind of some opening comments and a scene setter, if you will. So good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of council, everyone who's joining us tonight. I appreciate your attendance. Thank you for being here for this evening's public hearing of the town's proposed budget for fiscal year 2627. This is a truth in millage or trim hearing required under Florida law. And tonight, council will consider three separate resolutions. First, the tentative operating millage rate. Second, the proposed budget itself. And third, the proposed fee schedule. I'll walk you through the overall picture and then hand things over for detailed numbers. I want to start by being direct with all of you of what this budget is and is. It is a disciplined, values-driven plan that makes a series of deliberate trade-offs to move this town forward without overreaching. It is not a budget that claims to solve every financial challenge facing us, and it is not built around any one single item. It reflects what this council and our residents have been telling us for some time now, and I want to speak directly to that, because I think it matters more than any single number I could provide on a slide. You told us to sharpen our pencils and find real cuts and efficiencies before asking anyone to pay more. I believe we did that. We're recommending a freeze to 8.08 positions across several departments, community development, mount house, Bay Oaks recreation, public works, and our mooring field operations. That'll save us just under $600,000. We've reduced our transfer into the emergency fund by nearly 990,000. Sorry, Carolyn, don't do that. 90,000, and we're not asking for more funding for new studies to emergency reserve replenishment or bridge loan repayment this cycle. As a result of that discipline and tough choices, we're recommending a millage rate of 1.0655, well below our 1.34 ceiling, and still among the lowest rates of any municipality in our region. You also told us you wanted less burden falling on our residents' property taxes and potentially more of it coming from visitors who use our facilities. We've done that too. Parking facilities revenue, we have proposals of increasing that. It's our second largest revenue after ad valorem. Behind only the property taxes themselves, we're asking parking permit and violation revenue increases. We're bringing in new short-term rental fees. And all of this will total approximately over $400,000 combined. None of this comes out of our residence tax bill. And I want to speak directly to staffing because I take that responsibility very personally. I look at whether our staffing matches the actual demand of this organization, and I do that continuously, not just once a year during budget time. This year that meant freezing nine positions where the workload didn't justify keeping those positions fully funded. It also meant adding staff where demand is real and growing. Potentially we are prepared in this budget to add staff for Bayoaks Pool when it comes online later this year. To add staff in TDC beach maintenance and in building services to address the permit and planning challenges that we have with a building back on our island. funded by fees that those areas generate, not by the general fund. Over the last decade, general fund's share of our total town staffing has fallen by nearly 87% to under 68%. That's not an accident. That's a result of asking every year which of these positions is sized to the actual work in front of it. And I'll be honest, that work isn't finished. Some of the fee increases we're recommending tonight are what get us to the $299,900 gap you see in front of you right now. Without them, this budget would show a larger shortfall than that. But even with those increases, we're not fully balanced. And more revenue or further reductions are still needed to close the remaining gap. Beyond closing tonight's gap, there's a further list of things I want funded that this budget does not yet provide for. It does not provide for an increase in our transfers to the emergency fund. It does not include a plan to repay the bridge loan. It does not include matching funds for state and federal appropriations or public assistance grants that could bring in additional resources to the town. It does not fund a canal dredging study, and it does not fund additional staff in several areas I hear about from this community on a regular basis, such as short-term rental code compliance, neighborhood service rangers, environmental management, permitting, and planning. These are all things that I want to budget for and deliver on. Doing so on top of fully closing tonight's gap will require more revenue than what's in front of you tonight. Additional fee increases or further reductions are still on the table, and that will be your decision. I also want to be transparent about something else tonight because I think it matters as much as any numbers that we'll talk about. Balancing the budget isn't only about staff reductions, millage rates, and fees. There are other levers available to this organization, and I want the council and this community to understand a few services we currently fund that are not revenue neutral meaning what we spend on them and what we bring in from them are not the same by design. Programs like Bay Oaks Recreational Campus, the Mound House operations are services that this town chooses to subsidize because we believe they matter to this community, not because they pay for themselves. I think it's important that tradeoffs are visible tonight rather than bury them in line items, because as we build future budgets, those remain deliberate choices this organization has to keep making with eyes open, not decisions we make by default. Every one of our choices traces back to the values this organization has committed to, accountability, preservation, resiliency, stewardship, mutual respect, and transparency. You'll hear those threads throughout tonight's presentation because they're not slogans. They're the logic behind the numbers. I want to flag in the interest of the same transparency that small numbers of the figures in tonight's materials are still being finalized. The team will discuss those as we go through. And with that framing in mind, I'm ready to hand it over, very ready, I know they're ready, to Carolyn Lumila, our interim finance director, and Tracy Kohler, our deputy town manager.

Well, before we move on, You can say yes or just curious if you want to, in case anybody's wondering why Jeffrey isn't here. I don't know if you want to do that.

I won't. Jeffrey had a medical issue that makes him unavailable to be with us tonight, but I would like to just highlight that we wouldn't be here tonight. ready as we are. And I think all the directors, all managers, everybody would agree that we're here because of all the hard work that Jeffrey did. Jeffrey's fine. I spoke to him today. He's eager to get back. But doctor's orders are keeping him away right now. But we are lucky to have him. Thank you for asking. And he'll be back with us soon. But I have full confidence in the team to carry things forward. Tracy.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Allers, Vice Mayor Safford, Councilors, Town Manager McKinney, Town Attorney Stuperich, and audience members here in person and online. For the record, my name is Tracy Kohler, and I serve as the Deputy Town Manager for the town. Tonight we will provide an overview of the proposed FY27 budget. We will review decisions already made to reduce costs and the remaining policy choices before council. Our goal is to present the budget clearly and transparently. We want council and the public to see not only the numbers, but also the service levels, priorities, and commitments those numbers represent. But before we get to the numbers, I want to say a word about how a municipal budget is built. It does not work the same way a business plan works. A company builds its budget from the top line. We grow revenue, hold costs down, measure success by the difference between the two. In a business, revenue is the objective. A town has no such objective. There is no margin to grow. We estimate revenue early because we must know the size of the gap. But we do not allow that revenue estimate to determine the service level. Departments budget what services cost. The $299,900 gap in front of you is the distance between available revenue and the actual cost of providing those services. The gap remains because we did not quietly trim services simply to make the numbers fit. It begins with the services our community and our council determine the town should provide. Once those service levels are established, we determine what they cost. We staff departments appropriately to deliver them. Only then do we arrive at the revenue required to fund them. And not every dollar in this budget represents a new choice this year. Certain costs are commitments made in prior years, including debt service, grant match requirements, emergency fund transfers, and recovery costs already incurred. These are not new proposals. They are existing commitments that effectively come off the top. Therefore, the millage rate council will consider is not a revenue target. It is the mathematical result of prior commitments plus current service decisions. If council desires a different number, the conversation is not simply about the rate moving forward. The conversation becomes which services change. At the recommended rate, as I mentioned, the budget remains $299,900 short. Balancing this budget has involved several potential adjustments. Staff have already completed six of those seven actions, including frozen positions, reclassified positions, millage rate adjustments, pool-related decisions, cost controls, and other balancing measures. The remaining choice is now before council. Increase fees, make additional cuts, or use some combination of the two. It is important to note that staff have already identified more than $600,000 in non-staffing reductions and frozen positions. And Ms. Carolyn will talk about those in slides 21 through 23 tonight. A FEW MONTHS AGO, COUNCIL ADOPTED A COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGIC PLAN, INCLUDING OUR VISION AND MISSION STATEMENTS. EVERY NUMBER IN THIS BUDGET TRACKS BACK TO SOMETHING COUNCIL HAS ALREADY SAID THE TOWN STANDS FOR. THE BUDGET IS THEREFORE NOT SIMPLY A FINANCIAL DOCUMENT. IT IS ALSO A REFLECTION OF THE PRIORITIES AND THE DIRECTION ESTABLISHED THROUGH THE STRATEGIC PLAN. WITHIN THE STRATEGIC PLAN, COUNCIL ALSO ESTABLISHED SIX CORE VALUES THAT TOWN MANAGER MENTIONED PREVIOUSLY. I WANT TO HIGHLIGHT A COUPLE OF THOSE THAT MOST DIRECTLY RELATE TO THIS BUDGET. THROUGHOUT THIS PROCESS, STAFF HAD TO RECONCILE THOSE VALUES WITH DIFFICULT FINANCIAL CHOICES. FOR EXAMPLE, CORE VALUE OF ACCOUNTABILITY. EVERY POSITION BEING FROZEN IS IDENTIFIED. THE FINANCIAL IMPACT IS QUANTIFIED. THE CORRESPONDING SERVICE IS DISCLOSED. core value preservation. The budget shows the full $500,000 plus cost of reopening the pool. We did not simply net that cost against savings in order to make the figure appear smaller. These values guided our work and they provide the framework behind the FY27 budget before you tonight. WITH THAT FOUNDATION IN PLACE, I WILL NOW TURN THE PRESENTATION OVER TO CAROLYN LOMOLA, OUR ACTING FINANCE DIRECTOR, WHO WILL WALK COUNCIL AND THE MEMBERS OF THE AUDIENCE THROUGH THE FINANCIAL DETAILS OF THE PROPOSED FY27 BUDGET.

THANK YOU, DR. KOHLER. GOOD EVENING, MAYOR, MEMBERS OF COUNCIL. I'M CAROLYN LOMOLA, THE ACTING FINANCE DIRECTOR FOR THE TOWN. Dr. Kohler has given you the shape of this budget and the values behind it. I'm going to give you the numbers, what the budget does, what the millage rate is, and what the fee schedule changes. Before I start, I want to say where this work came from, because it isn't from me. The analysis in front of you is prepared by Jeffrey Newman, our assistant finance director, working with the department directors and staff across every department of this town. Jeffrey built the department level detail, the object code analysis, and the fun projections you'll see tonight. And each director defended their own numbers line by line before anything reached this presentation. Every figure I show you can be traced to a department and to a person who stands behind it. I'll walk you through about 50 slides covering the budget, the millage rate, and the fee schedule. Behind those is an appendix organized by department and by fund. Every department's staffing, expenses, and its fee changes in detail along with each of the town's funds. If you have a question about any department tonight, tell me and I'll turn to it. So where the budget stands. We're on slide seven. Before the detail, here's the whole budget in six lines. This budget is close to being balanced. It brings the pool back. It depends on additional cuts or fee increases to get the rest of the way. Revenue looks flat, and I want to explain why, because flat is truly misleading. Ad Valorem is up $516,701. Parking is up $307,960. Public service tax, state communications and other sources add more. That is $989,527 of growth. But the bridge loan transfer falls $948,955 short and interest earnings fall $135,000. What this means is we're taking in less from the loan than we did in the prior year. So nearly a million dollars of revenue growth is not funding anything new. It's replacing money that's going away. Expenditures grow $417,509 or 3.3%. Reopening Bay Oaks pool alone is $515,941. So the single largest thing we are doing costs more than the entire net increase. The difference was absorbed by reductions elsewhere. The recommended rate in this presentation is 1.0655, not the 1.34 ceiling Council set in July. And 1.0655 only gets the town near balanced, not to a healthy reserve position. Measuring government. So the next two pages show every general fund department, what it costs, what revenue is recorded against it, and how many people it takes. Before you read the revenue coverage column, one caution. Revenue is only shown where it's recorded. It's not where it's earned. Finance, for example, shows 772% coverage. That's not because finance earns seven times its cost. It's the property tax that's booked in finance. Emergency services shows 295%. That's parking, not enforcement. And a zero is not a failing grade. Legal, human resources, and the town manager have no fee to charge and were never expected to show revenue. Should I go to the next one? Okay, one too far. The rows worth your attention are in the middle, the departments that do charge for what they do. Code enforcement covers 78% of its cost, mooring operation 65, community development 41, and Bay Oaks recreation 14. Bay Oaks pool is at 12%. Those percentages are pricing decisions and they are when the council can actually change. Next is expenditures by category. So this is the top 15 object codes. You can see here from the top down, I can't see them because it's too far away. Now my computer doesn't like me. One moment. Okay. There it is. All right. So you can see from the top down, regular wages, life and health, insurance, that's property and casualty, landscaping, and you can read the rest down to the bottom. Aha. That's 12.

Carolyn, before you skip over that, I think it's important to reiterate what you just said between life and health and insurance, how those two are different. Some people may think that they are the same when it comes to, can you just repeat what you said just in case some other people didn't hear it?

Life and health is life insurance and medical dental insurance. It's the health insurance that the employees receive. Property and casualty is labeled just as insurance and it's completely different.

Thank you.

You're welcome. So going on to slide 12, there's five categories of expenditures. Personnel is up 4.7% or $305,867. That's the rebuilding of every wage line of the actual roster as of late August with cost of living and step increases built in across 15 departments and the Mound House wages moving in from the Tourist Development Council Fund. They are not funding Mound House this year. Operating is up 3.1%. Transfers out are down 7.6%, which is the reduced emergency fund transfer. Capital outlay is down 2.3%. Contingency shows 37.6% and I want to address that before anyone asks. It's $94,202 on a small base. We rebuilt contingency to GFOA standard reserve levels and it includes 45,000 for an anticipated pay study adjustment. It is not new program spending. General fund revenues, these are revenues by source. Ad valorem tax, that is the navy blue bucket. It's also the biggest. Parking facilities is at 2.1 million. That's the second largest in blue. Public service tax, prior year carryover, transfer in from the bridge loan, those all keep going on the wheel in a clockwise manner.

Carolyn, before you go on, the prior year carryover, can you speak to specifically what that $782,598 was for and why that number is so big?

It is the prior year carryover. I can get you specific information on that and send it to you in an email, the council.

Okay. Well, I think we know what it is, but I just thought you would know to be able to let everybody else know. If I'm not mistaken, I believe that carryover ties directly to the Estero Boulevard landscaping that we received from the county a couple years ago.

Yes, it does, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.

I did not have that information handy. Thank you.

I have a question. I thought we had gotten rid of the STR fees for workforce housing.

I thought we'd stopped that. We will. It's still in the budget. So that was a revenue from the last year. It's carryover. So we're not going to be identifying it going forward like that for that specific purpose because we found out that... Everything within the short-term rental fund, the fees have to then go towards short-term rental supporting activities. So what I'm proposing to use that money for is an additional code officer that would focus on short-term rental. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

So the general fund revenue by source has seven sources. Add Valorum rises 11.2% to 5,000,000 1 45 0 6 3. Excuse me. Parking rises 17.1% to 2.1 1 0 2,000,110,000. That's now the second largest general fund revenue source after property tax. And it matters that it is not a tax on the residents. Now look at the fifth bar. The bridge loan transfer falls 60.1% from $1,577,985 to $629,030. That single bar is the reason revenue is flat. And interest income falls 24.5%. from $550,000 to $415,000 because we lowered the budget to be conservative given borrowed money and outstanding grant reimbursements.

So, Carolyn, just before you move on, that bridge loan transfer, again, to go further in detail, that 60% decrease is laid out per the contract of the bridge loan, correct? Correct. It wasn't just because we're taking out less money.

Right.

It's because the contract says that's the most we could take out.

That is correct. Proposed position changes. Staffing reduction. So we're looking at 8.08 full-time equivalents that are frozen in this budget. All of them are vacant. No one is being laid off. The savings are $597,686. Every position is named on this page with its department and its dollar value. Because a freeze with a service consequent should be disclosed and not absorbed quietly.

Yeah, I agree with Carolyn on that, if I can, Carolyn, because it's important to point out that these were difficult recommendations of the directors and HR to make because they know that each one of these means less recreation programs, you know, potentially a little bit slower enforcement of some of our ordinances and codes and support, a little bit potentially slower enforcement. permitting and planning review. So just to make sure everybody understands that. But we understood, and how I look at it is these are, we're going, HR and I had a discussion. We're gonna keep these positions as needs. We're just not gonna fund them if this is what the council decides. But as we go through this, mind you, I see they'll go through a little bit later kind of like a menu, as we've been talking about, a worksheet that shows different options. Potentially, if a counselor wanted to pull one of these back into the funded area and we wanted to trade off with a cut from somewhere else, we can have that discussion. Thanks.

Thank you, Will. The positions that you mentioned also, there are two community development positions, a planner and a zoning tech for $168,636 together. That means slower permitting and zoning review. A public works street maintenance position, a neighborhood services ranger at .33 of an FTE, A marine operator, two Bay Oaks Recreation Center positions, a supervisor and an aide. That's less recreation supervision and fewer programs. And two mound house positions, the education program coordinator and the environmental educator. So where are we adding staffing? This page shows where staffing increases. Bay Oaks Pool is 4.44 for the reopening. The TDC Beach Maintenance is 4.11. Building Services is 3.95. Short-term rental is 1.75. And smaller additions across town administration, public works, beach management, stormwater, and others. I want to be clear about what this page is. and what it's not. It shows increases only, it does not show decreases because those are on the previous page and in the fund details. The net change across all funds is a plus 7.67. On slide 18, this is 11 years of staffing and it answers the question about growth better than any single year can. Total full-time equivalents went from 67.5 back in fiscal year 2017 to 103.67 proposed for fiscal year 27. That's 53% growth, excuse me, and it sounds like a lot.

Carolyn, sorry to interrupt. Can we go back one slide for a second? Yes. On the previous slide, you talked about the cuts and the direct impact to the $597,000, but on the next slide, you had where we're adding staff, but there were no dollar amounts aside to that, or what was going to be transferred from the general fund hit, so to speak, to maybe the water fund or the short-term rental fees. Can we touch on that or is that going to be later?

We're going to get to that. We'll get to that. Yeah, we're going to get to that coming up shortly as far as where we're using different funds to pay for different duties, the work associated. They have some slides to talk to that directly. And when it comes to the, you know, how much you're right about we showed the the dollar amount on one slide and not on this one. It's gonna be by fund later on as Carolyn talked about.

Okay. We have it in the detail.

Okay, perfect, thank you.

Okay, so look at where the FTEs are. Fund 10, the general fund, the part funded by your property taxes went from 58.5 to 70.11.

Carolyn, I think you need to move the slide one more. Oh, thank you. Perfect. Appreciate it.

I've got two sets going. That's okay. Okay. That's under 12 positions in 11 years. The growth is in building services, TDC beach maintenance, stormwater and water. Those are funded by permit fees, tourist development dollars and utility rates, not by the millage. So here is a look at where the FTEs are falling and how much. The spike in fiscal year 23-24 to 114.75 is building services at 24 positions during post-Ian permit surge. It came back down as the surge passed. That's the system working as intended. Proposed expense reductions, non-staffing.

Sorry, Caroline. Sorry to keep interrupting, but go back. You skimmed through that. So just look at the difference between 25 and 26. It looks like, although it did go up, the two funds would be the building fund and the water fund that had the increase.

Correct.

Not the general fund or stormwater or the TDC fund. Well, a little bit in the TDC fund, I guess you should say.

Fund 10, which is the general fund, remains pretty flat from 25 to 27.

I appreciate you pausing on that, Mr. Mayor, because Carolyn mentioned it, but it's important to note, and I want to give all the credit where the credit's due, our Human Resources Department working with the directors and finance to specifically identify where we can do that legally, where we can do it by policy, and where it mattered most for paying for those duties where the work is being done. And in some cases, that means an entire position might be funded by tourism development funds. And in other cases, it might mean that an employee working in community development, some of their work can be funded by the building fund. The rest of it has to be funded by the general fund. But we did that everywhere we possibly could to save

where from the general fund where possible thank you and it also puts the true cost where it belongs correct you turn your mic on correct and it also shows the true cost where it belongs so you know what does this service cost us or what does this it does it does help us track the true cost of those services yes counselor link thank you very much okay moving on to expense reductions that aren't in staffing

So we have 44 line items totaling $601,862. And they're all listed. So council can see that nothing is hidden. I'm not going to read 44 lines, but I will name the largest. The sheriff services is down 95,000. A grant match was eliminated at 88,575. That was a matching commitment for a grant that is not being renewed. The emergency fund transfer reduced by $88,574. Studies and agreements eliminated at $87,005. Technological services, $42,000. Accounting services, $31,000. Legal services and short term rentals, $26,000. And it continues, there are three pages. down to get on the bottom right-hand corner, that is your total, the 601-862. It runs all the way down to items of a few hundred dollars, uniforms, business meals, office supplies, subscriptions. That's what a real reduction exercise looks like.

Carolyn, before you move on, Will, can you just touch on the first line item, which is the reduction in the share of services, and explain why that number looks the way it looks?

Yeah, I will, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. And I'd like to, before that, just say that this was a direct response to the fair challenge that we received from our community and from our counselors that before you ask us to pay more, go back and look at your own books and see where you can cut. where you can reduce, and in addition to the staffing that we've talked about and some of the other things coming, I wanted to be very clear with those line items where we did that. The first one looks concerning on its face. What we found was we had last year, I think, overestimated the funds that we would need to have set aside to pay for additional Lee County Sheriff's Office support. when needed. So for special events like 4th of July or big events like that here on the beach, sometimes above and beyond if we need additional support from Lee County Sheriff's Office we have to pay above to get those overtime hours and those extra services. So we had over budgeted that. I was very comfortable based on what we actually spent last year that I could cut that number back in the budget for this year. And there's going through, I mean, I think a lot of people might look at that and say, yeah, absolutely. Why did you have so much money for studies? What studies, you know, and stuff? Well, you know, those are some important things that we do bring to council on occasion. uh... to uh... help them with their decision making when it comes to some things like uh... the strategic plans or uh... you know uh... when metro forecasting would come in and give very good detailed briefings on what we can forecast the growth for the island to be it's not that those programs won't be available to us in the future we're cutting back on the number we're setting aside for that and if i need anything above and beyond that i can come and if i can justify it to council we can uh... we can move some funds back in to do that uh... but Travel and per diem are other stuff that you go through. I felt very comfortable that we could cut back on some of those budgeted numbers that we had. Not that we're not still going to need some of those funds, but not as much as we had.

Thank you. The real takeaway from these last two sections is this non-staffing reduction, all 44 lines for a total of $601,862. You combine that with the frozen positions, $597,686. That's a total of nearly $1.2 million in removed cost before a single dollar of new revenue was requested. So I think that's an important fact. Let's talk about millage. So here we are. The rollback rate is 0.9687 mils. The proposed operating millage is 1.0655 mills. It's a 9.99% above the rollback rate. That percentage is what state law characterizes as the increase in property taxes. The ad valorem revenue above the rollback rate is required for these specific purposes, reopening the Bay Oaks pool, funding mandatory increases in workers' compensation, it rose $105,756 town wide on a rate and experience modifier change. Absorbing the mound house, we moved it into the general fund as the TDC funding for it ended. And maintaining the $500,000 transfer to our emergency fund and $581,380 to debt service. One procedural matter council needs before you deliberate at 9.99% above rolled back. This rates above the majority vote maximum and just below the two thirds maximum. It requires four or five votes measured on the full membership for votes, whether or not all five members are present. Oops. Here's the rate distribution of the property tax bill. You can see Lee County is a large chunk at 27.99. If you add the two public schools together, it's almost 28%, I'm sorry, 39.22%. The fire control district is 20.53%. Those three are roughly 88% of your property tax bill. I'm not saying that to deflect. I'm saying it because a resident looking at their tax bill has no way to know which part of it this council controls. And you can see us in turquoise. We're just that little triangle off to the side about just under 8%. Okay, historical look back taxable values. Taxable value was 4.47 billion before Hurricane Ian. After Ian, it fell to 2.58 billion. The town lost more than 40% of its tax base in a single year. It's now 5.03 billion. That recovery is why this budget looks the way it does. About 53 million of this year's increase in taxable value is due to new construction. Revenue from a property that did not exist last year is not money taken from an existing taxpayer, and that's an important distinction when we talk about the rate increase. Looking back at our millage rates, the rate has moved from .7530 in fiscal year 15 to 1.0294 today. I want to be straightforward that it has risen. What that chart does not show is that the tax base collapsed and recovered underneath it.

Carolyn, before we move on, I think it's important, this graph, for people that maybe weren't paying attention and don't understand why it went from .87 in fiscal year 18-19 to 0.95 in fiscal year 19-20. IF PEOPLE REMEMBER THAT WERE PAYING ATTENTION, THAT WAS WHEN THE COUNCIL AT THE TIME DECIDED TO TAKE ON A $10 MILLION CAPITAL LOAN AND THE DEBT SERVICE FOR THAT IS WHAT THE INCREASE OF THE .87 TO .95 WAS. from 0.95 to 0.99, that was obviously the year that the hurricane hit and we had the budget meeting just before we had come into an agreement about a sterile lighting to work with the county where the county was going to fund it and that was the increase to then pay back the difference between the crosswalks and everything. So those two increases since 2018-19, that's the historical knowledge in case anybody cares or is wondering what those increases went for back in the day.

I think that's very important, thank you. So millage rate options. There are three options, and I want to be precise about what these numbers are. The budget is short $299,900 at every rate. These figures are that deficit plus the revenue given up. At the recommended 1.0655, the gap is $299,900, closed by fee increases or additional cuts. At 1.0294, holding our current rate, the gap is 474,219. At the rollback rate of .9687, the gap is $767,326. Enclosing that could mean eliminating the Bay Oaks pool, which is $455,941, and finding another 311,000 on top of it.

Yeah, I think you got ahead of your slide there.

You explained it very well, then, Carolyn, I think.

But it's important for people to be able to see it.

But let people see it for a little bit.

Yeah, it's hard doing two clickers. There we go. Sorry, moving back. There you go.

Can you just reiterate, Carolyn, what you said, now that people can actually see what you're – they can correlate with what you're saying to what they can see?

We're talking about the gap between the revenue that we have and the expenditures that we need to run the services that we provide. The gap at the proposed rate, that 1.0655 on the bottom, the gap is 299,900 that we keep mentioning. If we stay at our current rate, the 1.0294, the gap is $474,219. And if we go to rollback, the .9687, the gap is all the way up to $706,326. Anything else we'd like to cover on that one? Okay, a millage rate comparison. Slide 32, two comparisons. The first is our neighbors. Of 10 municipalities in the region, Fort Myers Beach has the third lowest rate. Above only Bonita Springs and Estero. And of the five that are raising rates at all this year, ours is the smallest increase, plus .0361 mills against Fort Myers at plus 8112. The next slide is most similar to us. It's also more useful, and I want to explain why these particular towns, every one of them contracts law enforcement from a county sheriff and sits inside an independent fire district. None of their millage rates fund police or fire, and neither does ours. Comparing our rate to a city that runs its own police department would compare two numbers that buy completely different things. Okay. Proposed changes. Ah, the general fund budget without fee increases or additional cuts. Every department, revenue against expense with the net. Revenue, there's more slides, there we go. Sorry, there we go. Revenue of $12 million, $920,664, but expenses of $13,220,564. That difference is the $299,900 that we keep talking about. Nothing is netted or grouped to make that number look smaller.

Carolyn, before you move on, sorry to keep interrupting, but I think it's important to talk about these slides as we go through it. If you just look at the Bay Oaks, when you talked about 60,000, how did staff generate that number? I mean, the pool obviously hasn't been open in years. How are you generating that 60,000? What are you basing that number on?

Carolyn, can you go back one slide on your screen? So there you go.

That's based off of proposed fees and an estimate based on where we think we'll be with people using that service.

Based on current fees associated with the pool and what you estimate?

Yes, correct.

And then is that for all of them, all of the revenues that you have in here?

Yes, that is correct.

The proposed fees.

Based on previous year's fees or current year's fees. That was a good question. Thank you for asking that.

Good question.

What is the addition? The town clerk one for $606,573, what is that? It went from revenues to expenses. What got put into that bucket that made that difference?

Where are you at, town clerk?

I'm on page 36. Yeah, town clerk. It's town clerk. There's zero revenue, obviously, and then the expenses are at $606,573.

No, the town clerk is in a revenue-generating department. So if you look, let me go back a slide.

I see what you did. I see what you did. Yeah. Okay.

So finance in this instance, well, there it goes. Finance is getting all of the ad valorem tax revenue. And so instead of sharing it among all the departments and trying to allocate, we've recorded revenue where it sits and not necessarily spreading it out or allocating it against groups. There are certain, I mentioned earlier, there are certain departments that aren't meant to, legal,

uh... hr town clerk and others that are they don't generate i have a question uh... so there was a settlement agreement that brought in or will bring in a hundred fifty thousand is that going to code enforcement or where is that gonna show up you'd have to be a little more specific there was a settlement agreement of a foreclosure that had been pending and we recently settled it. I think last year we settled a foreclosure case for almost $700,000. So that is revenue that legal does bring in, but is that then allocated to code enforcement? How is that allocated? Likely to code enforcement where it was generated. Okay, but as a result of legal services? Yes.

Right, but we're not trying to allocate back to the person or persons who may have helped bring that money in. OK.

I think you're just trying to say that you're... No, I think everybody understands what you were trying to do.

I got you, Nancy. Well, I get that, but I mean...

I want in on this conversation, too.

It looks like, you know, this budget has not been discussed with me, so... And Amy wants to know how she can get charged for public records.

Right. Okay.

Okay. Any other questions on these slides?

I will have to say I never in my life thought I would hear chuckling at a budget hearing.

I like this. This is nice. Okay. We're going to move on to staff recommendations then. So we have seven strategies. Six of them are things that the staff have already done. They are freezing 8.08 vacant positions for the 597,686. opening the pool as budgeted, reclassifying positions to non-general fund offset by fees within those funds, reducing the emergency fund transfer from $588,574 to $500,000. We're funding no new studies, no emergency fund replenishment, no reserves, and no bridge loan repayment on this cycle. The bolded one is the one the council does. We can adopt the 1.0655 millage rate. And the last one is the ask. Make additional cuts or increase fees to close the $299,900 gap. Carolyn, if I can just add something.

emphasis to a couple of things the it's uh fund no new studies not fund we currently have in the budget a five hundred thousand dollar transfer uh you know addition to the emergency fund so it wouldn't be more than that um and uh it going into our emergency fund and our reserves and we wouldn't and she's right we wouldn't be paying anything right now or setting aside any money right now for the pending bridge loan repayment uh know and i just like to say again and i've mentioned it to all of you and i mentioned it to others i a 1.0655 will get us to this and i can operate with that i would like to be able to put more money into our reserve fund i would like to plan to start repainting that bridge loan because there's no guarantee that we'll that'll be forgiven the bridge won't be forgiven um i would Really like to have some of those staff positions back so that I can provide services that I believe many in our community want and deserve. So I believe higher than a 1.0655 is warranted. But I can operate within what people are telling me, I think. And, uh, with this rate, but we're, as we'll go through, uh, that, that deficit remains, there's some difficult decisions remaining. One of the decisions could be a little bit higher on that millage rate. I know that's probably not in the cards, but, uh, it's, it's difficult, but there could be other things that such as fee increases or additional cuts, uh, which we're getting ready to go into.

Okay.

I think I want to clarify that a little bit. I don't think you misspoke, Will, but I think even at the 1.0655, from what you just said, you couldn't operate because you'd still be at a $300,000, $299,900. You're right, Mr. Mayor, so clarify.

With... additional decisions from council to close that gap i could because you're right we can't you know come to the second come to the second budget hearing we have to be balanced you know that's that's state requirement and i wouldn't want to do it any other way but uh so thank you for that clarifying question so i guess my question would be and i think i know the answer but i still want to ask it if if you if you're proposing the 1.0655

plus additional cuts or increased fees, why wouldn't you have started at what you would have needed to have the balanced budget and then work from there? I understand why you did it. It's a fair question.

I think because we have a pretty good some good proposals and ideas that we'll bring forth tonight to try and... For decisions for us to make? We'll make recommendations so you can make decisions, and I think that we'll land in a much better place. But I think that that's somewhere that I believe is acceptable.

Okay. Okay. So this is the general fund budget. It's fund number 10. We have several pages, three pages, oh, excuse me. Yes, three pages of changes by object code. This is reference detail, the 25 largest changes by object code with the driver for each. The net effect is plus $322,229. And I'm not anticipating walking through this unless the council wants to. That's a lot of detail.

I'd like a few minutes, though, Carolyn. Absolutely. Just for us to look through these and see if we have any questions for you right now.

So basically what I'm seeing is the stuff in green is what you covered before as far as part of that $601,000 budget cut that staff had made. And then the stuff in the red is the increases in certain areas, whether it's work compensation, electricity.

Yes.

Did you get through it?

I did, thank you. Okay. Okay. So why this budget and why this rate? Five things and then I'm finished talking about the budget. I promise. First, we cut before we asked. $601,862 in non-staffing reductions. and $597,686 in frozen positions, $1.2 million removed before a single dollar of new revenue is requested. Second, the budget funds the service level this council set. It reopens the pool. It absorbs the mound house as the TDC funding ends. And it keeps storm recovery moving. And it still comes in $299,900 short. Third, the rate is the result, not the target. The 1.0655, the town is 7.93% of the tax bill. Fourth, it's the smallest increase in the region. Third lowest rate of 10 municipalities and the smallest increase of any raising at all. And fifth, rolling back would cost $767,326 and tonight sets the ceiling. Council can come down at the final hearing. It cannot go up. Any questions? When you're ready I'll move on to the proposed fee schedule. Go ahead. All right. What is changing? 99 fee lines change. Everything else in the schedule carries forward at its current rate. This is adopted separately under Resolution 2026-183 after the millage and the budget. Building permits are, excuse me, I'm not where I'm supposed to be. 45 town-wide fees. What is changing? Yep. And then we move on to townwide fees. These are the line items that are changing.

Carolyn, could you go back to the fee schedule? What is changing? I think that's important to summarize that.

Absolutely.

Thank you. Right there. Perfect. I'd like everyone to hear that.

So those are the 99 V lines. Yep. Sounds like cats be lines, townwide fees. There are 24 changes in parking fines. There are three changes. The Bay Oaks rec center. There are 18 changes. Bay Oaks pool, 20 building permits. There are 17 changes. Mostly reductions on that one. And Mound House and Newton Park, there are 17 changes. There's new Mound House membership tiers. Newton Park Pavilion moves to tiered pricing. And go through the individual groups. These are the town-wide fees.

And Carolyn, do these fees, are these the increased, just the increased fees and not all the fees? Yes. This is just the potential changes? That's correct.

Only the ones that are changing or recommended to change.

Okay. So we don't need to worry about highlighting or?

No. No, these are the 99 in total.

Well, I think just for the sake of time, it might be a good idea to have the discussion before you move on on some of these, whether we do it now or we do it later. Yes, please. We're going to be having that discussion.

So we can do that.

Um, you know, just look through this and, you know, based on what we've heard, the biggest ones obviously have been the parking, at least in the emails I've received. The biggest concerns I've seen in the last 24 hours have been the change to the parking.

I would concur there as well.

The mooring field, what's the difference? The $5 to the one pump-out free in 24 hours.

We're just showing it on here. It's a change because we changed how we're showing it on here. We're mandated to not charge more than $5 by our grant that we received for the mooring field, so we're showing it on the fee schedule. It wasn't on there before.

So it is a change, but it's not.

So it's a change, but we're not asking for an increase to the pump-out fee.

And then the annual rate, that is the parking pass that all residents have access to, correct?

Correct. All residents park anywhere on the island, parking pass.

And then did you want to talk about what else that potential change would mean as far as stickers and how many stickers you could have or not have or?

Right now, there's no limit, as long as it's a registered vehicle, a vehicle registered in your name. Sorry, it took me a while to get there. With no limit for residents. I don't suspect that we'd have very many that would be, you know, over two to three vehicles, but I know there's some, are you saying, um, you're not saying one per car, not saying 65 per car.

Are you saying if you have three cars?

No. Yeah. I'm saying her sticker per sticker per car. Gotcha. Going from 50 to 65 is a recommendation.

I agree. I thought I over-donated last year.

Thanks.

I'm calling Yazo back.

Thanks. Nothing else to say but thanks. All right, go ahead. Stop me if you want to have a discussion about her, if it gives you heartburn. Parking bags per bag. What's a bag?

A bag is so, you know, you want to rent a parking space for four hours. Oh, got it. It's a term like that. The bag dates back to parking meters.

When you put the lunch bag over it.

You put a bag over it, you know, if you rented it for a certain amount of time. So it's just that would, you know, if somebody wanted to for a special event or for anything like that, they could rent parking spaces. That's what we charge them. We charge 20. We're proposing 25. Okay.

And then obviously the next one is probably the one that has the most contention, at least in the emails that I've received, is going from the $5 per hour... to the seven sash slicks or seven hours for premium, six hours for non?

It does. You're right, and rightly so. Right now, we're $5 an hour across the island. What we're offering here are different options Council can choose, and from upping that to $7 an hour, which would bring in an additional over $1 million proposed in potential revenue, more of a tiered model like some other similar communities, say Key West and some others do, where certain higher interest areas are a higher rate and then the other areas on the island are a lower rate. Or even just going to a $1 per hour increase would likely generate the $500,000 in additional revenue for us next year. So or a $6 in the high zone and $5 in the rest of the zones would generate just under $400,000 in potential revenue for us next year. So I wanted to have all of those numbers out for the council so they could see all the difference. I understand impacts, but from what we see in parking, in the usage of our parking, especially during the high seasons, we can safely feel very confident in those proposed numbers.

Well, would you have considered or did you consider anywhere in this proposal seasonal rates so that when there are more people here, maybe it's higher, maybe it gets more people to be on a shuttle and come over, but maybe a lower rate so we can keep people coming to our businesses in the off season and not be

We don't have that in our current worksheet, but that's easy to do. We could definitely do that. We know those peak times pretty predictably. And we can factor that in. It's a little bit more difficult to do when it comes to how we... But we work with our vendors that help us manage the parking thing for that. I'm confident. So we'll take a look at that one. Did we ever do that before?

Do any of you remember if we did that, had lower rates in the off season to try to promote more visitors to restaurants?

We used to waive parking in September.

I remember some of that. There would be some free parking days.

Yeah, council would make a decision to make it free for residents or something, but that was before the parking pass or that covered all. I got you.

That did, yeah.

Yeah, I would think we should really look at the Key West model. I mean, it's basic economics. I mean, when there's a surge in demand and there's a priority on where you park, you pay more. It's just like going to a football game. You know, if it's a credit concert, parking's $20. If it's Stones are playing, it's $100. And if you want to park next to the stadium, it's $150. So, I mean, Key West does it. You know, a lot of, in season, there are a lot of people that stay up in Cape Coral, Fort Myers, they come down for the day. I think we're getting most of the emails from the citizens that are upset about it, but Again, if there's a surge in demand, you should charge a premium.

And try to entice the seasonal rate? Is that what you're suggesting?

Well, the QS model...

or the annual parking, I should say.

I'm not not talking about the annual park. I'm just talking about just, you know, we we talk about raising it a dollar, but I think you could raise it to two or three dollars and in search search times in February, March, when it's high demand, people are going to pay it. The amount of revenue is incredible.

Yeah. And for every resident, if you look at the annual parking permit, depending on how often you come, that's going to save you a lot of money for those who come quite often.

The other thing, too, is the annual parking fee for off-island. I mean, Sanibel does it, and they sell out in what? Two weeks.

I don't remember exactly how long it was, Bill. What is that? Say that again. I don't know exactly how long they sell, but we know that they do sell out every year. I think last year they had 150 match. They may be upping that number this year. But we're looking at going higher than that. But we've heard – I've heard – from off-island folks, some just off-island, still in the same zip code, but off-island, that really do come here frequently. And I've heard from others who are maybe not property owners on the island, but they do come here for extended periods of time, or off and on, that have asked if there was a pass for them. So we listened. Staff came up with this idea. We'll also have almost like a lottery approach for some non-resident parking passes. We'll set a cap, sell those, and then they can also expend it. Again, talking with other communities who do this, it doesn't take away from the revenue that we'll get from the normal turnover. It's negligible, they assured us. I would like, if I can before I go back to assure, that everybody... and everybody listening and the counselors, if you make decisions for us with some of these what I call levers, some of these different levers we pull, and it's more than the $299,000 deficit that there is, my, as the town manager, the things that I talked about that I would like to fund beyond that is where that additional money will be placed. first and foremost designated to. It would be to, you know, unless it has to go specifically to a fund. Some of them are within a certain program where they can only be used to support that program. If it's general fund dollars, then it would be for our emergency reserves, for our loan repayments, for our grant matching, things which I think are very, very important.

Getting back to the parking, The complete picture is we also heard from some businesses in the Times Square area that have concerns about the increase. My concern is when do we reach the tipping point? I'm not sure we know that. I drove by 7-Eleven today. Gas was $4.19. I haven't seen that since I don't remember when. So that concerns me. The thing that I think could be a plus is we don't have to revisit this just yearly. We can reassess on an ongoing basis and I think that would, if we decide to move that direction, I think that would be a smart way to go.

Thank you, Councillor King. That's an excellent point. With our fees, I can bring fee changes or councillors can bring fee changes anytime throughout the year. It's just we have to go through a couple of different hearings before they would go into effect. But it doesn't have to be just now. It's just we do it at this time because it is part of balancing the budget exercise.

Does that mean they can only go down or could they go up? They can move in either direction at any time in the year.

The only caveat I would say is that whenever there are fees, we can't have it characterized as an improper tax, so it does have to be related to the actual cost of the program that it's funding. Okay.

My two cents on this parking thing, and I'm a fan of having off-island passes as well. I've heard just as much as the town staff has heard about people who come down here four, five, six, seven times a year and would be willing to spend a certain amount of money to have a non-resident pass, if you will, similar to what we have. What that cap is and what that dollar amount is, we can certainly have that discussion. The Key West... Model to me, I'm not a huge fan of, quite honestly, simply because anyone that's ever gotten an Uber after a concert or whatever, you have the option. of going on and seeing, oh my god, it's surge pricing. Now instead of $17, I'm going to have to pay $57 to get home. And you know that, and you can make a decision. With this, there's nothing that we have in place. If you go to the Key West model, I could go to an app or I could go somewhere and say, OK, it's normally $5 or $6 or $7. But because you're having ROAR offshore, now it's going to be $10 an hour or $7 or $8. So people may come down here without having no way of knowing what they're going to pay before they get here. I would be more inclined to, if we're going to... I was probably, again, the only one on the council. We went from $3 to $5 an hour, and you thought the sky was falling. You heard from the same businesses. You heard from the same people. And the same conversation happened when we talked about getting rid of everybody remembers the two-hour limit. You could only park for two hours. And then you had to keep the cars moving. The businesses and the town staff at the time were very upset about it and said, we can't do this. Well, the council made the decision. The sky didn't fall. When we went from three to five... People were not happy about it, but the sky didn't fall. Now, I'm not saying seven is the answer. I'm not saying six is the answer. But of the levers that you've proposed on this sheet that people have not seen yet in our discussions, that, to me, is a lever that, one, doesn't have a direct impact on residents. You could argue, sure, it might have an impact on businesses. That maybe won't come down here. They have an option now when they come down. They can go to a private lot, and they can spend $20. Those people go from $20 to $40 to park. Some go even higher, and they make a choice. Either I'm only going to be here for two hours, and I completely understand the argument about paying if I'm coming down for four hours. If it's $7, I'm going to have to pay $28 before I even go have a meal. But at least they would know before they came. And maybe this person won't come, but maybe this person would. But the Key West model, if I don't know what I'm going to pay because all of a sudden the island's busy, And then it could be $6 here, it could be $5 if I just drive around. To me, you're enticing people to drive around and look for the cheapest rate. I don't know that that's what we would want to do personally. I think set a flat fee, keep it the same, or increase it. We can have that discussion. The fluctuating surge thing, and I get your point, Vice Mayor Scott, when you're talking about concerts, but we don't have a device in place currently that allows you to be able to see what that surge rate is before you come down here. I know when I go to a concert or I know when I go I'm going to be paying an absorbent amount to park in that same spot because you just know that. But having waste in a way could cost $8 an hour, but if I just drive down the street a little bit further and go to Newton Park, I can save $3 an hour. Okay, now that lot's full, and I'm going to turn around and try to drive back north. To me, it creates, at least if it's a flat fee, you know what it is before you come. People are not going to be happy if we decide to increase it, and I completely get it. But I think it's something we should at least consider or at least narrow down to what, if we're talking about increasing it, what that would be. And do we want to, what's the majority want to do? Do we want to go on a fluctuating scale? Do you want to go on a surge scale?

Or seasonal?

How do you set that? I think what we're seeing in season, since the first time I moved here until now, the season we saw before the storm, they were kind of blending together. There was a summer season and a winter season. Back when I first moved here, you could roll a bowling ball down Estero Boulevard in September. Now it's busy. A lot has changed. So when you start getting into season rates, what determines season? Do you go by just the normal stuff, Easter to... Thanksgiving to Easter and you set the rates. To me, I think we have enough confusion when it comes to parking on the island with what lots of town owns, what's the county. We don't even know what the county is going to charge for their lot. They've always been historically lower. My hope is that they would come to meet whatever it is we decide we're going to do so that when people come, they know exactly what they're going to pay and they can make the decision to come or not come. That's my two cents. I'll kind of get down off my soapbox a little bit. But at least you're going to know. Sometimes you just got to rip the Band-Aid off if there's going to be a Band-Aid and figure it out. I mean, this is the first hearing. We can have a discussion and ultimately make the decision at the next one. But to me, I would be in support of increasing that hourly rate to whatever that rate is, whether it's $6 or $7, but keeping it as a flat rate versus a sliding scale or a surge rate.

I it's something I want to think about more and talk to others and unfortunately we don't have to make that decision tonight, but I understand what you're saying as well.

If we're in the discussion on parking and parking fees, there's one thing, too, that we have talked about is right now proposing an increase to our parking ticket fees. Right now it's $100. with a $77 if you pay within 14 days? Within 30 days, yeah, early. So what we're proposing is increasing, really going benchmarking with surrounding communities, a parking ticket fee to $150 with a 14-day pay $100. So that, again, would put us at benchmark across normal parking ticket fees right now. And if really, Council, just for context and context, If you just do the non-resident passes, the parking ticket increase in fees, and the resident annual parking fees increases, we've made up the deficit with those three fee changes. So if you, those three things, and I mean, I know I'm kind of showing my cards early, but I want it to be, I want to be very transparent about it. Our proposed, our projected numbers with 500 non-resident passes, parking ticket increase to $150 per violation, and annual permit for residents from 50 to 65 would more than make up for our deficit.

Thank you. Yes. The charging stations would be, again, before the storm. There was talk about putting a couple in at key locations. The town was talking about, obviously, that contract is null and void. And I don't want to speak for Will and the team, but I'm guessing that the... The charging stations is for electric vehicles that a third party vendor would maybe operate.

Concession based. We really don't know what that potential revenue may be because, like you said, there was efforts before the storm in town hall, some town parking. I think it was town hall with some charging stations in there. and the town would get a percentage of the revenue from those. That's how those concessionaires generally work. They pay for the installation. They pay for the maintenance. That's obviously been on hold for some time. We would need to enter into new negotiations with new vendors. And just so you know, too, I did the homework. I talked with our floodplain manager. In her community, they're already talking about and they do – there are – vendors that can install these in special flood hazard areas that are compliant and no issues it's just a matter of finding one to do business with so that's not one that i'm ready right now to say that this is what i propose to the council that's kind of something that i would bring in the future well you started to speak to um a reduced rate if someone paid their parking

ticket within a certain amount of time. And what were you thinking the difference would be? That it would be cheaper than whatever it is or that it would go up the longer you waited?

Well, I think, I don't know what it goes up the longer. I don't know what the penalty is. Phil might be able to talk about the penalty as if it goes longer than the payment date. But we have a standard practice now, and a lot of communities do it, that if you pay early within a certain amount of time, right now it's $30, 30 days for us, but we're proposing reducing that to 14.

Right, it's on slide 47.

what's that on slide 47. okay thank you carolyn 47. so yeah just to promote early payment they factored that into their projections

I was in a community once for years, and there were a lot of parking tickets, and the town hall had a drive-up spot with a metal box. Ellen's got one of these in her old neighborhood. And if you paid it within 24 hours, it was like $5 less. Very few people did, but some did. They just stuck it in the box, drove through, and they were collecting it. So sometimes they're making it easy to drop in.

And I think it's important that the proposed changes that you're suggesting to these rates are consistent with other barrier islands.

We benchmarked everywhere possible we benchmarked across similar around our surrounding counties and similar communities, barrier islands, beach communities, and so forth.

Well, I appreciate you showing your cards, using your terminology when it comes to some of these things and how it would, if not eliminate, potentially a little bit more than eliminate the almost $300,000 deficit that you're talking about. But what it doesn't do, and I think the hard discussions that have to happen, is that doesn't prepare us for the future. It doesn't prepare us for the obligations that we have out there, the bridge loan. God forbid another storm, reserve funds. It's leaving the next council in a very, very bad position if we don't start to take action to take care of our own backyard. And I know nobody likes to hear that, and I certainly don't like to say it, But we didn't choose the cards we were dealt. And if we don't start taking and applying what we can apply with the least amount of pressure on our residents and our visitors as possible, we're, in my opinion, doing a disservice to the council that's going to follow this one and the council that's going to follow that. Because the bridge loan will come due at one point. There's no guarantees. And hope is not a strategy. You hear Will say it all the time. So we need to have these hard conversations. TAKE WHATEVER DARTS ARE THROWN AT US BECAUSE OF IT, BUT WE DIDN'T DEAL THE HURRICANE IAN CARD THAT WAS DEALT TO US. WE'VE DONE A GOOD JOB OF FINDING FUNDS TO OPERATE, BUT THOSE NOTES ARE GOING TO COME DUE. AND UNLESS WE START LOOKING AND TALKING ABOUT SOME OF THESE THINGS, AND I THINK STAFF DID A GREAT JOB IN TAKING DIRECTION AND SAYING, LISTEN, YOU LOOK AT EVERY SINGLE LEVER AND LET THE COUNCIL FIGURE IT OUT, BECAUSE AT THE END OF THE DAY, THE FIVE OF US SITTING UP HERE, we answer to you. You tell us what you want to do, we make a decision, and we live and die with those decisions. It shouldn't be on staff, but they, I think, have done a great job in proposing, here's what we can do, tell us what you want to do, and we'll have to operate how we have to operate. But again, operating and preparing are two different things, and I think we need to have conversations about the preparing. The first one is this parking. I mean, I think at least going into the next conversation or the next budget hearing, we should let the public know here's what we're talking about doing. One, it allows them to weeks to be able to say, hey, I love it, I hate it, here's what we think. You can adjust from there. But two, it allows staff to say, okay, now I understand which direction they're going. You can narrow that budget down as to what available or not available or where we're going to have to cut or not cut so that at the next budget hearing, We can either continue to cut or continue to raise fees or a combination of all three of the things that have been proposed so far. So I'll just go out and say it. Just because we're going to go through this and in the sake of time so we don't have to redo it again later, I would be OK with continuing with the discussion to the next meeting at the $7 per hour as a flat rate, not having not having a sliding scale, not doing anything. I'm okay with what you're proposing so far with the increased amount to the fines, especially the littering one. It doesn't get any conversation, but that goes from 50 to 250. To me, I think that's a good one, especially for a barrier island. I don't have any heartburn, and I have not heard from any people on the increase from the 50 to $65 for the parking fee to be able to continue to park anywhere that is a town parking. And I'm not opposed to whatever the number is for the off-island, non-resident parking passes, whatever that number is. I'm not opposed to having that discussion either. So I think it's important to at least give some direction to our staff on those things. Whether you agree or not agree, the majority is going to rule and we'll move forward. Do you have any problems with that, Rebecca?

Yeah, well, not that I have a problem. I just would like to go through the rest of the presentation. So we may have some great levers ahead that we don't know of. So I'm going to make a note, and we come back to that parking.

I just thought it was easier to discuss it as we were going. Not saying it's going to stay there.

There might be something really good four slides down.

It might be. Yeah, there you go. All right. Sorry, Carolyn, we're getting off on tangents.

No, you're fine. So we're ending discussion on slide 45. Yes. Slide 46, is there anything that we want to talk about, whether it's beach access, rentals, stormwater review, meeting room rentals?

Well, I think we have to talk about the personal watercraft vendor license.

Okay.

As happened before, I guess I'd like some understanding. I see you went from $397.84 to $400, and then... Now in here, so it's going to continue to increase 3% annually, which was agreed upon previously. So you're just essentially looking to increase this year by less than $2.16 for that?

That's the proposal. And if I can, I'd just like to get some notes prepared for this for discussion. As I looked at the history of this and previous proposals, and our current market you know as i see it for more than a decade two categories of commercial activity in the town beach vendor licensing and short-term rental registration we'll get to that too have paid fees that haven't kept pace with the value of what they're licensing the costing of administering them or comparable coastal communities that charge for the same activity For example, a beach vendor for furniture currently pays $127.31 a year to operate a business on our public beach. I suspect, you know, a little bit of research I did, that's less than a visitor would pay for two chairs in a single week. A short-term rental right now, $300 flat fee, regardless of what size that short-term rental is, how many, you know, rooms it rents. Neither of these numbers reflects current reality to me, and both have simply been left in place year after year. I know the short-term rental one we just increased most recently, so that wouldn't be the case for that, but for the others it is. So I want to be clear, you know, what these fees increases would be for and what they're not would be for. This is not a recharge of any state and federal regulation. I've heard some people talk about, well, we already have to pay FWC, FDF, and so forth. Those fees remain exactly what they are, to my knowledge. Vendors continue to meet them. The base license fee would cover administrations, licensing, and enforcement, consistent with our current code requirements. The per unit and revenue share components are a separate matter. They reflect the value and scale of a commercial use of a public asset. This is for the rental companies, the beach rental companies. The value and scale of a commercial use of a public asset, which is the town beach. The same way a larger commercial footprint pays for the use of public space than a smaller one, regardless of what the footprint costs to inspect. And the per unit fee is calculated once a year on each vendor's declared peak season inventory. And that's one recommendation, the per unit fee. As I looked at communities all across Florida, up the East Coast and others who have similar types of businesses that operates on their beast, there's a variety of different ways. There is a flat fee. For example, one community up on the Panhandle had a model similar to what I proposed in this fee schedule recommendation, which was a licensing fee and then per unit, per chair, per umbrella annually that they added on top of that fee. That was in place for a little while and then that went away and now they just went and they raised their one-time fee to nearly $800 for those businesses. The other Communities think they did the same thing in Miami Beach others up in another state north of us went to a revenue sharing type of agreement for with these businesses where they pay a one-time fee and then there's a revenue share with the town so I believe our current fees, especially for the beach furniture one, are too low. We should at least have these companies pay the same thing that we charge short-term rental companies to operate business on the beach and then normalize them against our fees. What we're asking or what they are charged for now would be no different than what they're charged for. you know, the administration licensing enforcement. We're talking about specific things as the the impact to our beach, our dunes, our habitat protection, environmental reasons and so forth. So I just wanted to start with that because I know there's going to be a lot of discussion.

I appreciate the work you and the staff, Will, did in getting this together, but I guess I'll just go on record and say I'm not in favor or a fan of charging per chair, charging short-term rentals per room. I mean, if we're going to potentially pull some of these other levers when it comes to visitors and businesses, I don't know that I'd be comfortable. I mean, I don't have an issue with the 3% annually. That's been agreed upon already. I don't have an issue with the small increase you're proposing from the 397 to the 400 and even the beach vendor. I think one thing that hasn't been discussed that should is other businesses should have to pay to do the same thing that these vendors are. Golf cart rental businesses, bike rentals, things like that should have to pay the same, in my opinion. As some, whether you're a short-term rental, you've got to pay a fee. If you're operating a beach vendor, you've got to pay a fee. Golf carts and bikes shouldn't be any different, in my opinion. But I'm not in favor of charging the per-room rate. I mean, we can go to $400 for the short-term rental. I don't think we had Kevin here earlier who was not opposed to that increase.

He said $350.

Kid Coral's $350. Yeah, he said $350 to $400, at least in an in an email to me, he said that, but, uh, but the a hundred dollars a room, I mean, you're going to have, you're going to have, you're going to have two bedrooms, three dens, a six room house that has five dens.

And then I know exactly what they have.

Yeah.

We know what they have to submit your inspection certificates. We know exactly how many rooms the fire department has verified.

That house has again, this be similar to, um, when you're renting a property, you know, the cleaning fee is not the same because. It costs more to have a three bedroom and the cleaning fee goes up.

I guess this is a question for Will. Does it cost more if I've got a five bedroom house administratively than it does if I have a two bedroom house to manage that short term rental application?

I would say that the increase in the number of guests could directly impact and does directly impact the directly impacts this beach. So the services, the beach, you know, the services we provide to maintain our beaches, maintain our infrastructure.

Or how many calls, perhaps. Potentially how many calls for service.

Thank you, Rebecca, Councillor Link. Potentially how many calls for service that our code officers have to respond to. So I would say as you increase the number of guests, those services increase as well.

you know i think and again i think i could see if you increase it just use three fifty four hundred whatever it is you know that money then can directly go back to that that frozen position that you're talking about when it comes to neighborhood services ended you could use that funny too specifically have a person that their job is to respond to code enforcement it would be would have to go to that or something you know within that or a portion of if they were uh... you know

A ranger, a portion of their, you know, if it was for short-term rental versus beach, yes.

And I think that's important clarification. And the people that I've talked to about this particular proposed increase Not one of them, to me, said that they had a problem with it as long as they knew it was going directly towards code enforcement and it wasn't going into a general fund to be spent on something else that maybe doesn't have a direct correlation on the business that they're in. And it can't, but I think it's important for people to know.

It's important to point out. Exactly. It can't, especially when it comes to short-term rental. so forth. But yeah, I don't disagree, Mr. Mayor. I think I heard Kevin when he came in. I think he brought some good points. I do believe that we're in the short-term rental now. I do believe there's room to increase it. $400 was our proposal. If Council wants to stick with the $400 or scale us back to $350, understand that would be the guidance. I think that our Other commercial activities like the beach furniture rental and the personal watercraft and parasailing should be also at the same. I don't see why there's a difference, why we charge a different rate for a beach furniture rental company as far as a licensing fee versus the other beach activity rental companies. I think we should bring that one up on par with the others.

What about for short-term rentals, 300, three rooms in the last 400, four rooms or more?

Can you guys keep track of that?

Yes.

Like I said, we can keep track of that.

Right now, these four or five-bedroom houses, I know how much they make. They can handle $100, but some of the smaller... You know, one-bedroom condos and a monthly condo, you're charging them the same amount of money that another individual or company could make five times the money on. If you charge everybody $400, it's not fair for the smaller condos.

Weren't you saying $100 a room? It's fair.

I'm just saying keep it $300 for three and under, and then $400 for anything four and above.

Just throwing it out there. Yeah, but I mean, if you're going to use that level of thinking, why wouldn't you apply that then? Or are you suggesting that you apply that to beach rentals? If I'm a beach rental company that has 200 beach chairs, should I pay more than a company that has the same license but only carries 100 chairs because their property's smaller? Should I pay more because I have more chairs? I mean, if you're going to apply that logic, do you want to apply it that way? I need to look at the beach chair thing.

I just need some more information on it. What are we really, how much more money are we actually going to get?

Well, but I know it's about getting money. It's about the cost of administratively.

Or the administration of our beach guys that are out there. Do they do anything? I mean, are our... beach patrol folks doing anything more or less.

The beach vendors contention is if you have a bad actor, get rid of them.

And that was the discussion we had previously when the rates had hadn't changed for 25 years. And probably don't remember back then staff was recommending a 1200% increase. overnight and of course they're like wait a minute and they agreed upon this three percent increase year over year which which seemed to be a level ground for everybody because you know what you're going to be dealing with every year and you can plan accordingly um but again starting to to go down the rabbit hole of and with beach and i mean to scott's point if you're doing something wrong i mean cleaning up i mean do we do anything like when they pull all their their chairs in

do we rake it or maintain it or sweep it? Is there anything that we're doing or they're maintaining their own?

Well, if they don't, then our environmental staff gets out there and they can... We have our normal codes and ordinances that they have to maintain their space like anybody else. And for the most part, they're good. They're good stewards of our thing. And we already have the, like I said, the... Our systems in place to hold them accountable when they don't one thing we don't have which you know I was we can bring back and I can send details and we can bring back is and I was asked this by some of the vendors like You alluded to is when I hold the bad actors accountable. Why make us all you know pay more or whatever Well, I think that we need to you know, just more normalize the fees but I agree with We do have, and Phil and his team sent me some of the data as far as violations over this past year for some of these businesses, the beach ones specifically. And what I'd like to do potentially is institute a better point system, a tracking system, so that we internally keep a record by business of their violations so that when they come in for their annual renewal, we can have that conversation with them or council maybe can decide not to renew that. It's part of the proposal that we'll bring back with some more clarity.

It comes with some of these vendor businesses, whether it's parasailing. They're very heavily regulated from the state. Golf carts, I can tell you, you're heavily regulated by the state on what you have to do as far as insurance. it's not the town's job to regulate those things, but it is the town's job to make sure that they're following through with what they are doing. Again, the per chair, per umbrella, I mean, it doesn't make sense to me, but I'm not opposed to the flat fee. And I understand your point, Scott, when it comes to short-term rentals, but even a one-bedroom condo in season, an extra $100, we're talking potentially two nights a year, OF 365 DAYS A YEAR. I MEAN, IF YOU WERE TO ADD THEIR COST OF WHAT THEY EARN OVER THE YEAR EVEN ON A ONE-BEDROOM CONDO THAT DOES AIRBNB VERSUS $100, what's that overall percentage similar to what we were talking earlier about the $150,000? I mean, yes, is it an increased fee? But again, if that fee can go to enforcement of the neighbor of this one bedroom condo who's calling because they've got 10 people and they're partying until 11 o'clock versus the one or two people they're supposed to have, now we have the funds there that have to go specifically to allowing code enforcement officers to go and deal with what residents are trying to deal with because they live next door to a short-term rental. To me, I'm not opposed to having that discussion of going to 400, but I am not in favor of talking about the additional room charge per bedroom.

Mayor, I'm with you too. I agree that we did in the past agree to the 3% annual on the licenses. I'm okay with that because that's a promise made, a promise kept. I do have issues with the umbrellas, the chairs, those kind of things. Town Manager, I guess I would ask you to just sit down with those vendors. And discuss this with them get their side of the story because you know Again, I'm hearing the bad actors are not being taken addressed that might bring in some revenue that way and Are these in line with what is actually costing us to do business? The concern I also have is about the beach raking permit. I know it's only 25 to 50 dollars, but We're talking. What is what is the thought process behind that increase I?

It hasn't been, it's really to bring it in line with, but I'll come back to you with specific, but it's to bring it in line with, you know, more in the times. It hasn't been raised in a while.

So does that mean a vendor who is allowed to rake?

Correct.

And how many do we have? Do we have any idea?

I believe we have two.

A handful or?

I think it's two at the moment, but I'll get back to you on that.

I guess my concern is we're talking private property here now. I realize that the state mandates these things, but we're still talking about people's private property.

We also have a responsibility to maintain the beaches, and if they're going to be on them raking, we have environmental responsibilities as well.

Yeah, I understand that, but I don't hear that. I know in the past properties have been fined for not doing what they're doing. I'm not hearing that is an issue.

I understand.

Believe me, I know my condo paid a fine before I got there, so...

Okay. Vehicle on the beach permit.

Well, and again, Will, I just want to make sure it doesn't get lost in translation. I think in the next budget hearing, I'd like you to add the golf cart companies, the golf cart rental companies, e-bike rentals.

Yes, sir, we will.

Because they should not be excluded.

Oh, okay. Currently six beach raking vendors. Six?

Now, since we're on the beach raking thing, they have to carry a permit, right, also with, I would assume, the state? Correct, yeah. To be able to do that?

They do.

Do we know what those permits run?

I don't know.

Any clue? No.

Yeah. I don't know if Chad knows what the, Chad, what does a beach raking operator have to pay like FWC or the state?

So it's free. It's a field permit from FDEP. FWC will review it. If it's a tilling permit down south, that was a triple seal permit that we did have to pay for as a local sponsor, but it's separate from

Can you speak to the history of the town's charge for the beach raking, the $25?

So it was $25 per property. So we probably only have like a half dozen or so rakers. One raker does the vast majority of the beachfront properties, and it's 25 feet regardless of any kind of shoreline frontage consideration or anything, just $25 per property.

What did we base that $25 on? What were we trying to recoup the cost for the town? Do you know?

No, I mean, it's just been that way since 2019 when I got here, and it's still that way.

Okay, so we'll get back to you with more details on that, Councillor Kane.

Thank you.

Anything else on that before we have Carolyn continue on? Councillor Kane? I'm good, thank you. Scott?

Good. Good.

That went better than I expected.

We've already covered the parking slide on number 47. Bay Oaks Recreation Center. Mr. Mayor, do you want to have a discussion on these as we go through?

Just to be clear, Carolyn and Will, this presentation will be available to the public after this for review? Yes.

Between now and the next hearing. Absolutely. It will be available after tonight's hearing right away, and you'll have it for the entire time until next. And then we'll get the adjusted one out as well. Thank you.

It's rather large, so it might take a little bit to get it up there, but we'll get it up there as soon as possible. Yeah.

Do we have any, like, abundance of thumb drives around? We could just put them on something. People want to come in and grab them.

It's very large.

It is a very large, high megabyte file, so we'll have to figure out how to get it out to you.

We can take the PDF off.

Make it available.

I think if we compress a PDF version, we should be much better. I'll let the experts compress. Yep.

Compress. Yep. All the colors. Ask Ben.

We'll get it up there tomorrow sometime. Yeah. Okay. I don't have anything to do tomorrow.

Does anybody have any Bay Oaks discussion on any of these proposed changes? There's nothing overly glaring that sticks out, I don't. I guess the question I would have is, I know we'll get to the pool discussion, but if a pool ever comes back, would the annual membership include the pool, or would that be a separate membership based on the fee schedule?

I'll have Neil step up and start taking some direct questions. But in my understanding, I think it'd be a pool membership. Well, I'll let Neil answer that. So the expert.

Hi, Neil Mathis, Parks Work Manager for the record. So we haven't had a combined membership previously when the pool was open prior to Ian. It's definitely something that we could consider. It's not something we have currently in the fee schedule that we've been working on.

Okay, well, I mean, I don't know if there's a need for it or not. I'm just curious if there was something available. I take it that it's always been a separate membership.

Yeah, they've always been separate memberships.

Okay. Any other questions?

No. I do. What is a FOB? Is it this thing?

Yeah, that's the FOB system for the Bay Area Extract Center.

So a replacement fee, it doesn't look like there would be any charge for a resident, but $15 for a non-resident, is that what I'm seeing, correct?

You're looking at, let's see, daily fees.

It says FOB replacement fee, membership slash service.

I was looking specifically, so 49, oh, you're looking at the fee schedule, FOB replacement fee. Did you lose your FOB?

Yeah, that's a new thing. I mean, we haven't really charged.

Mine is in my pocket a lot. It's pretty beaten up.

We haven't charged that in the past, and, of course, you can always give us your information when you get there, and we can still log you in. But we do have, you know, there is a fee for those, so that's another way to try to recoup some revenue.

Now, if we're going to keyless entry, and I can see. That would require more staff.

That would require more staff.

And insurance.

Thank you.

It doesn't sound like there's a lot of continue on. Now we're going to the pool.

Going back to the pool.

So might you point out that, you know, the fees where we say current, that's what it was, right, Neil? Before it closed?

correct all the current rates are are from the last time we were open was the 2021-22 fiscal year so we're four years so that's what you're looking at not just one year removed four years removed

We do have new items on the pool since it reflects the reopening. There's a new three month and weekly membership tier that did not exist and a $2 capital recovery fee on every ticket with $30 inside each membership. Part of the price goes back toward the asset.

THIS IS SOMETHING THAT'S ACTUALLY FAIRLY COMMON WITH MANY OF THE OTHER INFRASTRUCTURE LIKE THIS THROUGHOUT THE AREA, SO IT'S A BENCHMARKING TOOL, GREAT IDEA BY JEFFREY, IN MY OPINION. THAT MONEY SPECIFICALLY WOULD BE HERE MARKED, YOU KNOW, FOR GOING RIGHT BACK INTO KEEPING THOSE, YOU KNOW, FOR INFRASTRUCTURE IMPROVEMENTS.

AND THAT $30 IS CONTAINED IN THAT PROPOSED FEE OR IS THAT ON TOP OF THE FEE?

THAT'S WITHIN THE FEE.

WITHIN THE FEE, OKAY.

Yeah, a portion of that goes back into the capital recovery. It's not additions. Yeah.

It's split.

Can that be used for maintenance or just capital?

Maintenance. Maintenance, infrastructure, capital.

All right. Bay Oak's pool continued.

We also just, I don't know if you see it, but for the dailies, there's also a capital recovery fee that we've included on there for $2. I believe it's, so that will be, because we have a lot of, you know, folks that come in that just want to pay a daily fee, so we'll actually recoup that in the daily fees as well, not just the memberships.

All right. Thanks, Neil.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments on the Bay Oaks Pool? Mound House? So Mound House is proposing four new membership tiers above the existing individual and family levels. We have contributor at $250, patron at $500, benefactor at $1,000, and corporate at $2,000 and up, plus special event parking at $150 an hour for 26 spots.

Is that all the spots? I don't even know how many spots between the overflow lot and the... Go ahead, Karina, you can step up to the... Karina Brites, museum manager for the record.

And yes, 26 spots at the overflow parking lot at 216.

Okay. So it does cover the spots by the mound house and the overflow, or just the overflow? Just the overflow. Just the overflow, okay.

AND SHE'S ASKING IF IT WAS THE 26 SPOTS THAT WERE COVERED.

OKAY.

AND THAT'S JUST THE OVERFLOW PARKING?

YES, THAT'S CORRECT.

OKAY. ANY QUESTIONS BEFORE SHE... NO?

THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

ALL RIGHT, NEWTON PARK. Newton Park moves a pavilion from a flat $200 an hour to a tiered rate, $250 for the first two hours, then $75 with a lower rate for nonprofits. Admission tours and weddings are unchanged.

And this is assuming that Newton park is going to be completed in the next fiscal year. Yes. So these may or may not mean anything if it's not completed.

It may be 2028, but okay. Yes.

Okay. Okay. Building permits, these are mostly reductions. I want to say that plainly because it's the opposite of what our people are expecting. Roof permits fall from 550 to 500, carport garage from 710 to 400, demolition 485 to 400, driveways from 650 to 400, fences 485 to 300, pools 875 to 425. State law Florida statute 553.80 as amended by House Bill 803 requires building fees to relate to the cost of providing permitting and inspection services and prohibits using them to subsidize the general fund.

So we're not doing it out of the kindness of our heart.

No.

But I would like to commend Georgina and her staff for working with finance to come to those numbers to identify exactly what the staff cost is and right-size that with the fee because that's what the charge was from the state, and they worked very hard to do that.

Well, this has kind of been over. I mean, there's some substantial decreases here if you were to add up all the permits over a year. Right. RESIDENTS ARE GOING TO BE, AND BUSINESSES WILL SAVE BASED ON THEIR, I MEAN, THERE'S... THAT'S A GOOD THING. I KNOW, BUT THERE'S NO REALLY METRIC IN HERE ON HOW MUCH THE BUILDING PERMITS WOULD SAVE BASED ON LAST YEAR'S BUILDING PERMITS. IT WOULD BE NICE TO KNOW THAT. WE CAN... JUST FOR DISCUSSION PURPOSES, I MEAN, IT'S... WE CAN WORK ON THAT.

RIGHT. I DON'T HAVE THAT IN MY SCHEDULE.

WE CAN WORK ON THAT.

OKAY. ALL RIGHT. Moving on. There's a few more.

Now, there you go with Windows.

I think we got it.

Okay.

Probably not going to get a lot of argument about decreases.

I didn't think so. We had to present them.

Okay.

All right. My presentation is complete. We can chat more if you have any questions.

Does anyone have any more questions before we go to public comment on the people who have been waiting a long time to get to some public comment?

I have questions, but I can wait.

YEAH, LET'S GET THE PUBLIC'S BEEN CUT ENOUGH TO BE HERE FOR TWO HOURS.

DO YOU HAVE ANYBODY SIGNED UP FOR THIS?

ELLEN? I DO. I HAVE A COUPLE SIGNED UP. FIRST UP IS CATHY TURNER. IS SHE STILL HERE? YEP, SHE'S BACK HERE HIDING IN THERE.

CATHY TURNER, FULL-TIME PRESIDENT. I'M A HOMESTEADED PROPERTY OWNER. Thank you for the opportunity to change this around so we could actually provide comments before you got through the presentations. So just a couple notes. I guess I'm sad that there's no canal dredging again. And I understand why. But understand that our property rates are a little higher living on a canal. And even today, can't get the boat out of the canal. So there was conversation about the property values that we were the third lowest in our millage rate. But what you didn't describe it or compare it to was the property values. We're the third highest property value in Lake County. So that's sort of like a little misnomer to align it in that manner. Bay Oaks and the pool. We had a beach walk conversation regarding the pool. They had meets, swim meets at the Bay Oaks in the past. So something to look at whether you could actually use that and that could be a big revenue generator. Bay Oaks is not a problem with cost. It's a problem with accessibility. The hours don't work for the population, especially those who are working. Nothing on Saturday and Sundays. Closing at early hours and not opening up early in the morning. So you're going to have to figure out that model to really attract people, because otherwise we're off and on the island so often. It's not part of our regimen. It would be interesting to understand why the TDC is no longer funding the Mound House. I know that was mentioned. I just don't know why. Parking passes. In some of these cases, it would be nice if you could think of alternatives when you're raising fees. An example is the parking pass. We've got two great legs. We've got bicycles. I can tell you the distance from my front door all over the island. But sometimes we're not able to walk or take a bike. Lighting in certain places is abysmal. I look like a miner with a light on my helmet along with the lights on the bike. So we have two cars. I'm never going to drive two cars. So perhaps you could have a ticket that would be for two cars. And then you're giving something back for increasing that. On short-term resident, have you ever considered whether the fees are based on whether it's a monthly rental or a weekly rental? Because your code enforcement probably has more issues with the delineation where we have monthly renters who are monthly rental zones that they're renting like weeklies, et cetera, et cetera. Thank you, Kathy.

You'll have more opportunity with the other. In the public hearings, you'll have another chance for public comment.

OK, I'm good. OK.

Thank you. Who else you got? Bob Barton.

Good evening. I'm a 12-year resident on the island, having bought down here. First, I'd like to commend the organization for what they've done. I ran a $2 billion budget in my career when I was working. These are not fun. And we did an awful lot of bottom-up budgeting, so I know the work that's involved here, and I know it's not easy. And to bring those numbers down the way you did, I think people should recognize the work that has been done on that to date. But I still think there's opportunity. You know, I kind of look at those budget numbers, and I think about raising my children. And when I raised my children, there was this wonderful conversation we constantly had, the difference between a want and a need. And it went through the entire time that I raised these kids. And residents don't want taxes raised, but they want everything done. And that's just not a reality. And people have to be disappointed. When I look at these numbers, it just sticks out like a sore thumb over the pool. No one's had it for four years. There's a lot of unknowns relative to what's going to be done with this. I would highly encourage the town to slow the project down for another year. take 2027 to revisit it take some of the ideas that were raised about how can we generate fee income to add eight hundred thousand dollars of expenses on a net basis without any revenue coming in to offset that is a massive burden on top of the community when we're already in a deficit and i honestly just don't think that should be taken on The other point is the Mount House. I mean, I look at public parks. I look at what states do and opportunities. Maybe this needs to be moved into a 503C for the Mount House. And then you could have people making tax donations to help fund this as an opportunity. It just seems without the money that's coming in, That's an awful large expense for the town to be taking on. And it's just got to be recouped. I mean, you just have to look at revenue when you're talking about amenities and say, what can I bring in as revenue to offset some of the expenses? I'm not questioning what the expenses are, but you've got to find a way to offset it. You can't just have it. I do assume that what happened earlier today with those new property approvals, there'll be new revenue streams that'll be factored into the budget that will help some of these because there'll be new properties and opportunity. And the last thing I just want to mention is kind of a pet peeve of mine, and that's enforcement on code. You know, I know there's a business person here who runs a parking lot illegally. He had a massive fine. It was reduced by the town once. My understanding, it's over $500,000 again, and the town's not collecting that. That's $500,000 of money that helps fund a budget shortfall. And if they're not going to do that, then let's just stop investing the time to generate fines that aren't going to be collected. Okay? Thank you.

Thank you.

Patrick Vanass, is he still back there?

No, he left.

Okay, that's all I have signed up for. Yep.

Tom, come on.

Tom Brady, Madison Court.

Sorry, I thought Ellen was going to get up and speak.

First of all, Will and team, excellent job. Head and shoulders above any presentation that's been made on the budget in the past. I'm sure I've got complaints about details, but it is so much better than it's ever been before, and the work shows. You did mention about code enforcement. I probably misunderstood, but I think you said maybe in the past it wasn't fully funded. Hopefully in the future budgets it is 100 percent funded, but maybe it's a point of clarification. You did not mention some of the project work that was going on, like the transformational IT project for finance and for the business as a whole. I'd be concerned if those projects weren't funded in 2027 because they are transformed transformational. They will resort in cost savings over time, I believe. And they will benefit all the residents in the community. So I'd like to make sure that, or I think the residents would like to know, that those projects haven't been cut in your efforts to cut costs. The school data, we're doing a lot of work on figuring out whether we can afford a school or not. I'm not saying pay for the school, but the work to find out whether we can do the school, whether we can afford the school. If we need to bring those consultants in, you mentioned no consultants, but if we need that to complete that project, I think we ought to know whether we've got everything in there that we can to make sure that that school investigation is funded. As long as the fees are benchmarked, I think that's really important. On the parking fees, I've heard a lot that Sanibel charges significantly less. Marco Island, I think if you could show some of the data about other parking fees and the fact that they have been benchmarked, that would go a long way. The resident parking, I think it's great. I use it all the time, but it probably keeps me off my bicycle some. You might want to think, yeah, particularly my, well, anyway, keeps me off my bicycle with the urging of my spouse. So I use my car a lot more than I ever did before, and I think in season, Maybe I shouldn't do that. My concern is I'm taking a spot that could be a revenue generator for the town, and I could be on my bicycle if it weren't so easy for me to park down there. So when this parking thing first came out for the residents and free parking or paid parking, it was phenomenal. But in season, I don't want to take revenue away from the town. And there are apps that could manage this. Park Nav will tell you how many open spots are in the town. There are IT solutions that could make the parking problem as a whole more manageable and inform the public about every single open spot on the island. Thanks.

Anyone else like to speak a public comment? All right. Seeing none, we'll close that public comment. So it'll take us to our first public hearing. And I'm going to I have written down Nancy, so please correct me in the title if I'm wrong. The numbers that Caroline said as you were going along as far as rollback percentages, so please correct me if I'm incorrect. This is a public hearing for the announcement and adoption of a tentative operating ad valorem millage rate for fiscal year 2026 to 2027. The resolution title will be read following a PowerPoint presentation, which we already did. So this is a resolution of the town council of the town of Fort Myers Beach adopting a tentative operating ad valorem millage rate for the town of Fort Myers Beach, Florida for fiscal year 2026 and 2027, commencing October 1st, 2026 and ending September 3rd, 2027 for the purpose of providing sufficient funds for the operating general fund. Announcing the percentage increase of the tentative ad valerum millage rate over the rollback rate of 0.9687, which is 9.99% greater than the rollback rate of, oh wait, I read it backwards, didn't I? See, I wrote it down wrong. So it's the same number. So I'll start that one. Announcing that the percentage of increase of the tentative ad valerum millage rate over the rollback rate of 0.9687, which is 9.99% greater than the rollback rate of 0.9687. Scheduling the second and final public hearing for Wednesday, September 23rd, 2026 at 5.01 p.m. to adopt the final operating ad valerum millage rate for fiscal year 2026, 2027, and providing for an effective date. Did I get all that right?

I'm not, I don't think so, Mayor. First of all, I know you said September 30th rather than September 3rd. Is that correct?

I said September 30th, yes.

Okay. And then can you help with those numbers?

The number is 1.0655. I got them backwards. Yes. Greater than the rate of .95. Yeah.

I wrote them backwards.

So can you rephrase and announce again just that part?

Just that part, yes. Okay. So this is announcing the percentage increase of the tentative ad valerum millage rate over the rollback rate of 1.0655, which is 9.99% greater then the rollback rate of 0.9687, scheduling the second and final public hearing for Wednesday, September 23rd, 2026, at 5.01 p.m. to adopt the final operating ad valorem millage rate for fiscal year 2026-2027, providing an effective date. Is that better? Okay. Now, my question is, in the past... We've had to table this and go on to another one, but because we've had this discussion, can we now then just discuss the millage rate?

Yes, you may discuss the millage rate, and then we'll take public comment. Okay. And then should that number change, you would reread the resolution.

All right. Discussion. Rebecca, you want to start? Or would you like me?

I'm still gathering my thoughts. Okay.

Then we'll start over there.

Thank you.

Councilor King.

Mm-hmm.

Well, I don't know if this is the place to ask my questions that I had or not. First off, where are we ending this fiscal year of 2026?

Ending.

Well, don't we have an ending? What is the amount? Did we meet budget? Did we go over? Did we go under? You can't project? It's September.

I can project. Thank you. I'm sure we will meet or be under our budget. I don't have the 2026 or fiscal year 26 budget information with me.

Okay. Going over your what was called a Menu, I've got under strategic priorities, $550,000 conversion to FRS. What is FRS?

That is a pension fund.

Can you say that on the record?

Sorry, it's Florida Retirement System.

And I'll let Tracy speak to that and why we included it in there.

So currently the town's retirement system is not the Florida retirement system. It's a separate. And Shelby could speak to what it is. If we move to the FRS, which is a very common retirement system plan, like Lee County Public Schools, like other municipalities, it is a more expensive plan, but it is one that is highly touted after in terms of recruitment. because you get a lot of transfers from people who are in FRS who want to work in a municipality that is also an FRS retirement system plan. That's probably the best way that I can explain it.

So we're moving what we have into this then?

That's one of the options.

Is that the 550 or this is what it's going to cost us to move?

It would cost us in addition. Am I correct in that, Carolyn? I believe so, yes. Yes. It's a proposal. It's one of the menu options.

But in my opinion, the others are higher than that in priority order.

Do you have this available to put up so people can see it?

Yeah, I think that would be great. Just so that everybody understands what we're talking about.

Eric, can you put up the Excel spreadsheet?

Yes, he does.

Yep, the future plan.

And when people get to see this, what Councillor King was referring to is underneath the strategic priorities, and that would be assuming there was funds to put into those strategic priorities? Is that a safe assumption?

That is correct. Okay.

So when folks can see these documents tomorrow, this is an Excel spreadsheet that says future planning V7, correct? That's what we're looking at now. And we're looking at strategic priorities.

Okay, thank you for that explanation. Moving on to the column where it says additional cost control actions. $214,215 for elimination of performance-based pay and seniority pay. Is that just for a year? Is that what we're talking about here?

That would be for one year. So those three in that column, we'll talk about all of them, is what the town would save if... We were directed to eliminate performance-based pay for this fiscal year, to eliminate a COLA increase for this fiscal year. And the pay plan study adjustment, those are funds that we're budgeted in for when we do, when HR does their, excuse me, their, we have new software coming on this year called True Comp to help ensure that our positions are within a range that we want them to be to make ourselves most competitive with. A lot of it, but basically you'd have money in order to make pay adjustments to keep our positions competitive. So those are three additional options. Thank you for asking because we didn't talk about them in the hearing themselves.

But the $45,000 is the cost of the study?

It's not the cost of the study. It's money budgeted for expected to plan for changes in positions, to forecast it. The software is $10,000 a year. the TruCom software.

I guess I'm not following how we get 45,000 there.

Well, it was, that's what HR

The software costs $10,000.

The software costs $10,000. The $45,000 is in case, as they do their TrueComp studies, say we have a position now that is vacant. They're looking to hire someone in that position. They do the TrueComp to true it up. Shelby, am I getting it right? Shelby can probably dial us in a little bit better. Okay.

Shelby Arman, HR journalist for the record. So pre-Ian, we did not have a pay plan. It was a step plan. So we brought in Evergreen and got a pay plan in place. Since then, we need to go out to market, and that's why we are with True Comp, so we can update that pay plan. So that additional amount is for us to adjust the pay plan and be in the market for our employees.

I'm sorry, you're talking to $35,000 then? Yes. Thank you. Also, it was my suggestion at one of these meetings that town council for a year go ahead and forego their salaries for one year. I guess there's a dollar pay in there just to cover whatever for insurance benefits. Thank you. It's late and I'm early. But that's my suggestion. That's easy to do. I'm rotating off, but I have given up my pay in the past. To me, I'll quote somebody that I've quoted last year as well. I consider myself a soul man and a soul fan. And being willing to donate the taxpayers' money is not the same as being willing to put your own money where your mouth is. So that's why I suggested that. And it's just something to consider. Last month when we were talking, I urged us to do a 10% budget reduction exercise because that's going to be mandated next year by the state. Did we do that?

Sorry, I don't know if I can put a number at it if what we did was 10%, but we did do a significant budget reduction exercise over the past few weeks. I agree with you. As I discussed, we've been planning on doing something like that for next year. We will include that mandated, obviously, budget exercise open in a public meeting, 10% budget reduction exercise as required. I feel very confident, based on what we've done this past year, that we'll be able to do that. And it'll be a great exercise.

Okay, would you say then that what we saw today in this slide presentation is the reduction, not necessarily the 10%, but the exercise that you had everyone go through?

I would. It would be a little bit different structure when we do it next year because it will be in one public hearing, but we'll come in prepared to discuss publicly like we did today, but it won't be in a vote. It will be an exercise, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

That's what they called it, yeah. Okay, thank you. The hiring freeze is interesting to me because I kind of suggested something like that last year and it seemed like I got some pushback, so I'm wondering why this year instead of in previous years, why a hiring freeze?

Yeah, I can't remember exactly which. I know that we did not fund some of the positions last year. I can't remember off the top of my head all of them, but I felt that this year I had a better view on, a better handle on what the impacts of that would be for these specific positions. I could, you know, and with the director's help, specifically say that we'd be able to – in doing that, I would be able to – tell you, demonstrate what the reductions in services would be or effect on operations. I didn't feel as comfortable with that last time. So that's the main difference.

Okay. Thank you. But you did say there were some carryovers. Is that just a year? Was that two years that we've carried these forward?

Vacancies? Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure. Which were carryovers specifically? Yeah, but if I did say that, I'll get back to you with an answer on that.

Because I'm just wondering, are we actually then saving money by doing that when positions weren't filled anyway?

I'll have to get back to you on exactly which ones before I can even answer that, I think.

Okay. And I guess I'll just close with this because I'm not sure where to go and when I can bring it up, so I'll do it now since I have the floor. In early March, we talked about turning 2525 Estero Boulevard into a parking lot. The price of that was supposed to have been $138,053.13. As of last month, the total had risen to $218,279.65, if I can read my writing correctly. That's an overrun of $80,225 and maybe $226.52. That can still go up again, correct?

Yes, it can. Yes, it could still go up.

I guess I'm disappointed it's taken us six months and we're still not anywhere near where we should be on this. I'm not sure how much longer it's going to take us. According to the property appraiser for Lee County, that property has a market value of $6.9 million, and that's down from $10.4 million last year. I think it would behoove us in this situation when we're asking people to make sacrifices that we look at all options on the table and then we put that property up for sale. And I think it's just imperative that we do that. I don't know why we continue to hold on to it. I mean, I've in the past always thought it should be for sale, get it back on the tax rolls. I did believe that we could have generated some income, but it's now six months later, and we're not any closer than what we were, and we're spending more money on that. So I'm hoping we'll consider that, and I'll make a motion for that if I have to. But I know what the result will be. But I'll go ahead and make that motion that we sell that property at 2525 Estero Boulevard.

I'll tell you what, Councillor King, I will second it for discussion. Sure. Just because I think it's important to have a discussion. I certainly agree with your sentiment as far as tax rolls, things of that nature. As you know, the town has two properties over there. So you talk about the value of that property. In listening to the conversation that the fire chief had recently about his budget and the property that they have that's excess property behind their current building, his explanation was very clear, and I agree with him. When we originally looked at doing the property swap, those properties were valued at $12.1 million. You just said now that property is valued at $6 million. To me, I think if you ask anybody that invests in the market, to sell on a downslide does not make a lot of sense. Now, does it continue to go down? I don't know. Who do you sell it to? Do you sell it to someone that then comes in with a live local act and builds whatever they want to build there? We still don't know where that goes. So there's a lot of unanswered questions, but I completely understand your sentiment. and why you want to do it, but I still stand with I don't think it makes sense to get rid of an asset that I think everybody understands if you sell it, who do you sell it to? There's a possibility you can't control what they build there. based on the Live Local Act and now you're putting a neighborhood in a position that they've told us repeatedly they don't want to be in. They don't want a building that is being used outside of what they think should be used on their canal. So to me it opens up a lot of risk as much as it would potentially give a short-term reward to assuming that it would sell. and assuming that it would go back on the tax roll. The fire department could buy it, and now it's still not on the tax roll. So to me, again, I completely understand where you're going with it. I just think there's too many unknowns to pull that lever, especially with it being valued at half of what it was valued at just two years ago, to me would be a mistake.

You can't you can't do John, you can't do a budget on a property for sale. I understand where you're coming. I understand your frustration. First couple of things you said, I mean, we're we're dumping money and not getting anything in return for it. But I, I think at this point, Echoing what the mayor said. Well, number one, you can't do a budget for 27 or 28 based on the property being for sale. That's not what I asked. I know, but down market, I don't know, again, who's going to buy it. I don't think the town should give up an asset that they could eventually use that property to swap for something else that may turn into a park. I think there's other ways to, as we're going through this spreadsheet, there's other avenues for full revenue. That's my opinion.

Thank you. I just think what I'm hearing is it's an asset but it's an asset that keeps losing money and how much longer do we want to hang on to it that it's going to continue to lose money?

It needs to become whatever it's going to become. It needs to generate some revenue. But it's not happening. It needs to happen.

What it's costing us real dollars in $218,000, it's cost us to not generate anything yet. Fair point.

Councillor Link, any discussion?

No, I would never sell it in a down market. Just against my nature. You've got to turn your mic.

I'm on.

I need to actually sit up and speak into it. It would be a no for me to sell it. I understand as well your sentiment, John, and I agree with it. That would be a last resort for me. I think it's got too much other potential for us.

I'm ready to call the question, Mayor.

Okay, we've got a motion by Councillor King, seconded by Mayor Allers. Councillor King? Aye. I'm a no. Vice Mayor Safford?

No.

And Councillor Link? No. The motion fails three to one with Councillor McLean being absent, excuse the absence. Anything else, Councillor King?

I'm good, thank you.

Scott?

I have a question, I have a couple questions for you. I hope you can answer these, and if you can't answer them, I'd sure like an answer in two weeks. Number one, what exactly is our emergency fund number? Where are we sitting for our emergency fund? 2.1 million. 2.1. Do we have any other reserves?

As far as?

Do we have any other reserves? No, we do not. Okay. I've got just a basic question. Is there a way that we can have a reserve account and then an emergency fund account where the emergency fund doesn't get touched for any reason? It's not bouncing back from the general fund. where we actually have some reserves. And I think piggybacking on what his question was, if we end up with some reserves left, if we have stuff left over from last year, where does it go?

If we have stuff?

Well, if we have money left over, where's it going?

It can go back to fund the emergency fund. It can be used to pay down debt.

Okay.

Right now we're not paying off the new debt in fiscal year 27. We're pushing it back to 28.

So that's kind of where I'm going. If we have a reserve account and an emergency fund account, wouldn't that be cleaner accounting-wise? I believe so. Okay. So what would it take for us to – to get that in place? Would that be an ordinance? Would that be a resolution? Would that be something you'd?

That would be an ANSI question.

I have to look into that, but I think that generally we don't create the funds.

Did you just create that?

That's completely within my and the finance director's authority. I believe. I know Nancy will do some work. I don't know. I plan on doing that.

I don't think we create by ordinance. I think that that's part of the accounting. No, we could just do a separate account. Yes.

And I think Jeffrey's leaning that way in discussions we've had, because I think that's confusing. We've had this conversation many times. I think that cleans up a lot of things. There's the true emergency, and then there's reserves. And in that, reserves could be cash flow for us for grants or all kinds of other things. When we start saying the emergency fund is reduced, it frees you up.

It just seems cleaner.

Yep.

that we have reserves and that those reserves can be used for studies. Those reserves can be used for grant matching. Those reserves can be used. I don't want to go down this path of we're using reserves to maintain stuff, but It's different than an emergency. That's scary that we only have $2 million in emergency reserves. I know we went through a massive hurricane and all that, but we've got to build that up.

So a lot of that funding was set out and used to fund grants that are reimbursable. Right. And so it's sitting out there waiting for reimbursements to come back in. Okay. It's not gone. It's not gone. Okay. It's just we've spent it on things so that we could get construction started, and now we're waiting on the reimbursement from either FEMA or action.

Right, but that should be coming out of reserves, right, not general fund?

Or emergency. It's the emergency fund.

Okay. I think that was where the confusion was last year because we were talking about it like it was one big emergency fund and where did all the money go? Well, it went as cash flow to front things we're going to eventually get back. So that started to get me digging and saying where did it go when it didn't go anywhere. It was utilized as it was intended. But we were calling them both emergency. And so when you'd say emergency fund, it was like, which emergency fund? So I think in talking to Jeffrey, and it was even some of Joe before he left, was talking about splitting that. So when you're talking emergency, you're really talking emergency versus reserves that are for grants. Some of it may be encumbered. You can't use it. But there may be other stuff, like you said. As things arise, we can use it for a study or for whatever. This makes more sense. That does make more sense.

I think it just reinforces what you just said reinforces exactly what I think the Vice Mayor has been trying to say and what Carolyn is saying is that the money didn't go away.

But it led to misunderstanding.

You have to pay and some of that money will be coming back as it gets reimbursed. to your point, Scott, 2.1 million is not a ton of money. You don't happen to know what that number would be. Assuming we didn't spend any more money on improvements to be reimbursed, what would that number from 2.1 go up to if we were to get reimbursed all the money we've put out so far? I mean, if you don't have it.

I don't have that in front of me.

The next one would be interesting to know what that number would be, what it would increase from. I'm assuming it would increase from 2.1 to a different number. It would be nice to know what that delta would be, assuming everything was to go the way it should go and get reimbursed, what that number would be.

I have that note.

Thank you. Okay. That's all I have. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you.

Still give you a minute to think? No, no.

Do you want to go ahead? No, it doesn't matter.

What I want to do is real quick just go through this, because people are looking at this probably spreadsheet at home and not understanding what exactly they're looking at. And Will, please correct me if I'm wrong, because I have seen this before. We've talked about it. I just want people to basically understand what it looks like. So if you could pull it up so people at home can see it while we're talking. If anybody has any objection to that.

Maybe if it can be zoomed into.

Well, I didn't know if they could see it at home or not. But if they can, great. If they can't. So on the top left-hand side where it says millage reduction, that number over there, and basically what you're seeing in green, again, Will, correct me if I'm wrong, is just highlights of if the council were to make decisions, what that difference would be. so the two point two two ninety nine nine hundred that you're seeing in the calculator assuming the one point zero six five five was passed we'd still be short that correct that would then take you over to the right hand side and you would have to look at the additional cost control cuts on the right and that whole column is potential or if you look below that the general fund revenue options that is an option to increase either those are both categories to help balance the budget. Correct. And based on staff's recommendations, these are the best ways you can do it.

We believe so.

Correct. So now if you look down where it says to restore cuts on the left-hand side on the bottom, that $601,000 is what Carolyn referred to earlier as the cuts that the town staff has put in place. That's included in that $299,900. Okay. Yes. Deficit. So that 601 is already included in that. So we really have to focus on this right-hand side of the spreadsheet. What in there makes sense to be able to at least at bare minimum, again assuming 1.0655 is the past millage rate, what are we going to do over there to get that $300,000 deficit to zero? So people at home that are watching, they can understand. Because when I first looked at this, it was a lot of numbers, didn't make a lot of sense. And I'm just assuming that in the green, these were discussions through probably councilor meetings, things that potentially could be done to change that number.

Is that a fair statement, Will?

Yes. OK. So if you look at everything on the right that's highlighted in green, both cuts and additions, and you go back over to the difference of the cost control reserve revenue options that says now one point eight seven eight million that's the number based on the numbers on the right hand side correct if they were adopted that we would have subtracting those numbers would leave you a surplus then essentially of one point two million dollars is that correct that is correct okay if you took them all of those options now again just assuming that things that are in green take us to this difference of one point two million one it's got us out of out of the deficit it's balanced the budget now it opens up some of those strategic priorities and or to restore frozen positions that the staff has talked about and the highlighted ones under frozen positions i believe those would be highlighted because at least in my opinion these are some of the things that i hear most about from concerned residents when it comes to we need to do stuff community planner community zoning we know the faster you get things out the faster you get capital improvement projects done or whether it's a residential home whether it's a commercial project like ones that were approved today that would help speed up that process and then you look at the neighborhood the neighborhood uh enforcement, that could be something that would be used potentially for a short-term rental.

Weeds.

Weeds, whatever. Those are potentials that could come back and be funded outside of that $1.2 million that would then leave the emergency fund or reserve increase that that money could then go into. If you have a reserve fund and an emergency fund, They can go into whichever or both or a combination of both to allow to prepare, if you will, for the future.

It would give me options to invest in those areas, yes.

Okay, and I just wanted to put that out there because people are probably wondering, what does the green mean? What does all that mean? And I just wanted to try to give a synopsis of what I assume all of this means. just so that people, when we're discussing it, they understand what it, hopefully I didn't confuse anybody. So that I just wanted to put that out there before you went on to your, thank you.

I love it. I think that's great for those at home are watching. I can see a few things that. that I'm very comfortable with, and I would like to talk about them with my peers here. And one is the merchant credit card fee recovery under the general fund revenue options. So $107,950. Am I right to believe that we have not been passing on credit card fees that we all are so used to paying? When I pay a bill online, it says if you want to pay this convenience, there's going to be a $3 charge or whatever.

You are correct.

This one seems like a no-brainer, and why we wouldn't have done that before, I don't know, but that's an easy question. an easy give.

I mean, every other business out there pretty much passes on that same fee. All governments do it.

Yeah, exactly. So I don't have any problem with that one. Is there anything you'd like to add about that specific thing, Caroline?

No, I think that your sentiment is correct. We absolutely should pass that through.

Yeah, that one's like, thank goodness that one was, that's what happens when you look at every line. You find things. So I like that one. I also like the $150,000 for non-resident parking passes. If we go up to maybe 150 of them to let people who are in the 33931, who are basically our neighbors and friends, that's an easy. I mean, right there, we're almost closing the gap. While we're on that, do you mind if I just jump in and ask? Yes, please do.

Because I didn't ask it earlier on the permit fees. With our resident parking pass, do you have to be a resident or can you be a property owner whose car is registered? So say I have a four-bedroom house that I rent out on Airbnb, but I own the house and I keep my car here to use it outside. I only use it. I don't, you know. Are non, quote unquote, non-residents, but property owners allowed to have a residence permit? Not currently.

You have to prove residency on the address. Yeah, you have a bill with your address on it. A utility bill or something like that proving you're a resident here.

But again, if I'm a, if I'm a homeowner, I property owner and I own the house and I could show you that, but I don't. Yeah.

I mean, if they, if they can demonstrate residency here on the island, then yes, I assume they just curious would be eligible to buy our current standards. Yes, they would be eligible. Okay. Sorry.

I just want to know.

Sorry. I misunderstood you. Yeah.

So those ones seem like no brainers to me. Um, Let's see. Modification of beach rental rates. That one wasn't much. So I'm looking at the big ones. Short-term rental. Is that $50,000, Carolyn? Can you tell me, is that at the $400 rate?

That's at the increase.

Or is that the $100 per room? I mean, there was a lot of discussion about. Or a combination of both. Yeah. I'm going to have to look up my. But I'm going to make a mark there because. Um, the 50,000 for the mountain house parking. I mean, right now we aren't charging for those 28 spots. And when we're saying that if you're a museum visitor, you would go in and, you know, you'd get your free hours. So I'm not sure why we wouldn't consider that. I mean, some of these are money. I think we've been leaving on the table, whether we needed to close the gap or not. I'm not sure what others think, but. And that doesn't even get us to increasing parkings. Thoughts on some of those? Five minutes. Do we have to agree on these items before we vote today?

No, not today. No, just discussion. I got you. But those numbers are important because that's what determines this top left-hand side of the spreadsheet, right?

I just didn't know if we had to all agree on which items we were going to select today.

No, so today we're... So for the next two weeks, we're going to get a lot of feedback from residents, from business owners. People have to digest these numbers and look at them.

I agree. If I may, we do have a couple public hearings tonight. And the first one that we are really focused on right now is the millage rate. However, the questions that Councillor Link is raising will go to the budget, which is your second one, and that would be directing the town manager to make those changes so that when it comes back to you for your final, those changes would be reflected.

So we need to decide before we go on to the next one, essentially that, again, looking back at that spreadsheet, that that $299,900, that is at the proposed staff recommendation of .1065. Are we okay with that?

1.065. What did I say?

I'm sorry, 1.065. Yeah, that's a big difference.

I do the same thing.

That zero is very important in this discussion, right? Exactly. Or do you want to increase it to try to bring that down? Or I mean, that's essentially what we just got to decide here before we go on to the next one.

So OK. Yeah. So I'm stepping to I'm stepping ahead.

So we've just We've discussed this a lot. It should be opened up. Does anybody want to discuss it anymore before we get public comment? We can always bring it back for more discussion.

I just wanted to add to your question earlier. The short-term rental, the application fee was $300. The proposed fee included the $100 per bedroom.

Okay. So if we were looking at the $50,000, we'd be agreeing to the $100 per. Correct. So we might have to tweak that later.

Yes. You may give me different guidance later when we talk about that.

Okay.

Okay. All right. We'll open this first public hearing up for public comment. Anyone out there want to speak in public comment? All right. Seeing none, public comment. We'll bring it back to council for discussion or motion or suggestion.

And a vote.

And a vote, obviously, right? You know, for me, nobody ever likes increasing taxes, but, you know, if the staff thinks that they can do it at the 1.0655, obviously that's a far difference between the initial proposal that you put out there, which we thank you for, by the way, because we didn't get any feedback on that, being sarcastic. So, you know, we've still got some work to do, even at that, to succumb that $300,000 over the next... DISCUSSION AT THE PUBLIC HEARINGS WE'VE GOT TODAY AND THEN OBVIOUSLY IN TWO WEEKS, SO THAT'S KIND OF WHERE I'M AT. REBECCA?

I'M THERE, TOO. I'M COMFORTABLE WITH THE 10655, BUT I'M LOOKING AT THESE REVENUE OPTIONS, AND I THINK WE CAN ADD SOME MORE TO THE BUDGET.

I'll make a motion that we adopt the 1.0655 millage rate for fiscal year 27.

I'll second that, Vice Mayor. And just for clarification, that is as stated in the resolution, that that would be 9.99 greater than the rollback rate?

9.99%, correct. Correct. 9.99%. Than the rollback rate of .9687?

Right. That's correct. Yay. Thank you.

all right discussion i think it's just i think it's important to say that this is a not to exceed it doesn't necessarily mean that that couldn't come down it can come down it just can't go up from it can't go up from this remember last year we we did this and we're like oh yeah yeah exactly so we got to make we got to be sure that this is our this is our ceiling Any other discussion? Go ahead.

Mayor, can you just emphasize to the public when the final public hearing would be held?

Yes, the final public hearing would be held on September 23, 2026 at 5.01 p.m. Thank you. Anything else you'd like to discuss? No. Councillor King.

Yeah. I'll just let author Larry Niven speak for me when he said, hopeless causes are the only ones worth fighting for. The fight for the taxpayer is the most hopeless of them all, and I can't support it.

Okay. We've got a motion and a second. Vice Mayor Stafford?

Aye.

I'm an eye as well concert King. So because there's four, how does that work?

I think we, we went through this. It's the majority at this point. Okay.

So the motion would carry three to one with comes from a claim being absent.

Correct.

Okay. THAT TAKES US TO THE SECOND PUBLIC HEARING, WHICH IS RESOLUTION 26-182, FISCAL YEAR 27 PROPOSED BUDGET. THIS IS A PUBLIC HEARING FOR THE ADOPTION OF A PROPOSED BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 26-27, 2026-27, A RESOLUTION OF THE TOWN COUNCIL OF THE TOWN OF FORT MYERS BEACH ADOPTING THE PROPOSED BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2026-2027, commencing October 1st, 2026 and ending on September 30th, 2027, setting the second and final budget adoption public hearing for Wednesday, September 23rd, 2026 at 5.01 p.m. and providing for an effective date. So here, I think, is where you can go, Councilor Link, if you'd like to go through some of these options and say what you're in favor of, not in favor of. Those are the fees. Huh? These are all fees. Some are fees.

Right, there's some fees, but... So I'll tell you right now, so, and again, we're going to hear from folks, right?

Yeah.