City Council - Regular Meeting
About this meeting
- Government Body
- City Council
- Meeting Type
- City Council
- Location
- Groveland, FL
- Meeting Date
- February 19, 2026
Video will appear here as soon as Groveland City Council posts it — usually within a day of the meeting
Thursday, February 19, 2026
3 items on the agenda.
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Discussion only; no materials.
Utilities Overview & Budget for FY25/26
This memorandum is to serve as an overview of the information to be presented as part of the February 19 monthly workshop of City Council. The workshop presentation will provide a status report of the Utilities Division in terms of operations, planning and engineering, construction projects, and management of the enterprise. As the City nears the mid-year point of the FY 2026 Budget, adjustments are needed to the Utilities Enterprise Fund portion of the budget to address changes in financial, operational, and management strategies. The FY 26 Utilities Enterprise Fund was adopted conservatively based on financial realities and constraints. The budget did not include funding for all needs. For this ongoing reason, a priority list is maintained of all unfunded needs. As funding becomes available, the priority list is utilized to inform budgetary decisions. In addition to the unfunded priorities, new needs arise driven by factors such as changes in compliance requirements or unanticipated circumstances. The workshop presentation will focus on recommended changes to the budget requiring an amendment by the City Council. Helping to prompt the City's ability to amend the budget for previously unfunded needs was a clarification on how a capital wastewater project could be funded. When the FY 26 Budget was adopted, under the operational fund was listed the Sunshine WWTF RAS Improvements project, funded at an amount of $1,082,160. The project would result in the construction of an upgrade to the wastewater treatment system needed to handle the ongoing growth in wastewater flows to the northern Sunshine facility. That one major line item consumed much of the operations portion of the Utilities Enterprise Fund leaving very little funding remaining for other operational priorities. Utilities management worked with the city attorney on the issuance of a legal opinion that determined the upgrade to the Sunshine facility was driven by growth of the utilities system as the upgrade would not have been needed if not for the growth in wastewater flows attributed to new development. This legal opinion thus supported the use of wastewater impact fees for construction of the capital project. This legal determination has resulted in a recommendation to amend the current budget to move the project from the operations fund to the wastewater impact fee fund and to utilize the freed operations funds to address a series of unfunded or underfunded priorities. Attached to this memorandum is project and financial information pertaining to the evolving needs of Utilities Enterprise Fund. The Utilities team along with Finance have collaborated on needed changes to the adopted budget to enable the City to continue to improve the performance of the utilities systems. This memo provides an overview. More details will be presented at the workshop. Highlights of the attached information are summarized as follows: Ongoing list of unfunded priorities including Operations & Management Needs, Planning & Engineering Needs, Construction Projects. The listing of unfunded needs is provided to illustrate the ongoing efforts to track the next critical items to be added to the budget as financial conditions allow. Staff will provide a recommendation of the operational items that can be moved into FY 26 Utilities Enterprise Fund as a result of an amendment to fund the Sunshine WWTP RAZ Improvements project with available sewer impact fees. Projects from FY 2025 that should be included in FY 2026: SR 19 Trinity Lakes Sewer Force Main Construction, Green Valley Lift Station Reimbursement. These items illustrate capital projects budgeted in the previous fiscal year. The projects have continued into FY 2026 thus requiring a budget amendment to carry forward any unexpended funds and to utilize wastewater impact fees as needed to add to the projects to provide full budget authorization. Management/Personnel – Create Needed Financial Position to Focus on the Utilities Enterprise: Utilities Business Manager position (draft job description attached). Request is to amend the current budget to add a position under the department director to coordinate all things financial pertaining to the Utilities Enterprise Fund. The position would work closely with Finance to ensure internal financial management is evolving as the City and utilities systems grow. Selected candidate would have a finance background and would address comprehensive as well as day-to-day coordination of the business aspects of Utilities. The above items will be presented in greater detail at the February 19 workshop. Based on feedback and direction from the City Council, a budget amendment ordinance is to be presented for Council consideration in March. No changes are proposed to the Woodard & Curran Operations and Management (O&M) Budget for contracted services, which is a major line item of the operations fund. Woodard & Curran are performing within the adopted contract budget, which includes the phasing of six additional positions in a continued effort to reach adequate staffing levels.
Future Workshop Planning
Discussion only; no materials.