Commission - Regular Meeting

but intends to join us soon.

So with that, if there's no other concerns or issues, we'll go ahead and get started.

Just say something real quick. The young lady here wanted me to said something earlier, and I just wanted to bring up that. Make sure when we talk, we talk directly in the mic so they can hear. Sometimes I have a hard time hearing. So if you could help us with that, appreciate it.

All right. With that, With that, we'll get started. This is a workshop, so no need to really gavel in or gavel out, or you're not taking any votes or anything, right? This is for information purposes only.

Yes, sir. So staff has been working to prepare our fiscal year twenty seven budget. We've made it through a good bit of the department, still have a few more to go. Hopefully we'll have all the departments finalized next week with at least the first round of budget discussions. Of course, we are in an extremely high deficit right now, which is why we want to have one of these workshops just about Everything we talked about several weeks back, I don't remember the date, has been included in the budget, excluding the turf fields and the rescue truck. But we have included things such as the multi-use fields at the sports park, four proposed new positions in fire, one in-house attorney position, one budget manager position, and one additional part-time seasonal sports and rec coordinator position. There are several vehicles in various departments in the budget. Mostly tonight we will talk about the general funds. We will talk a little bit about the enterprise funds, but a lot of the conversation needs to be on the budget deficit that the general fund faces. We are not currently proposing increases to water and sewer rates until we get the rate study done and we can actually have a factual information to present to the commission. It does not have to be done at the start of the fiscal year. So if Raftelis gets done in December, we can present to the commission in January, February, and we can discuss water and sewer rates at that time. Once we also discuss the future of the wastewater treatment plant and have a better understanding of where we're going to be with that. We will recommend this year a sanitation rate increase. We have not raised the sanitation rates in at least almost six years I've been here. I believe it was 2019 is the last time sanitation rates were increased. We have dipped into the sanitation reserves each year to either fund new trucks or new equipment. And so we do need to look at those rates, as you all talked about, Last fiscal year, the stormwater rate is supposed to increase this year as well. We will present the same increase that we talked about last year that you all discussed at that time, probably in either second meeting in June or first meeting in July for that.

What was that stormwater increase?

I don't recall offhand. We'll go through the stormwater budget tomorrow, but it's not as big of an increase as it has been last year. I believe it was around 5%, something like that. But with the recent news of the property tax proposals and it now making its way to the ballot in November, we definitely need to get through that election and see what's going to happen and where we're at. So we are pumping the brakes on some things. As I said, there will be There is currently four proposed positions in the fire department, but we will likely remove those for fiscal year 27 because it does not make any sense to include that in the budget for fiscal year 27 and then turn around and face extreme budget cuts due to ad valorem next year. If the property tax proposal passes, there's going to be some hard conversations to have between not only the Lynn Haven Commission, but commissions throughout the state. And we will definitely have to take an in-depth look at consolidation of services. And that could include police, fire, animal control, things throughout the county, just because the dynamic will change of how we bring in property tax. With that being said, unless you all have something else to add to that or questions, comments, concerns before, we will kind of start going through the general fund budget and taking a look at that. We will show you where we currently are right now with our deficit, and keep in mind that includes the almost $2.8 million deficit. debt service payment for the disaster bond. And we will look at what the millage rate would have to be if we were to include everything that we discussed several weeks back in our workshop.

Commissioners, are y'all rock and roll here? Y'all have any ups and downs, if you will? Hearing none. Ready to get started.

We're going to share the screen and take it over to her finance team. Ms. Marsh has got her screen shared there and can go through. You all can see where we're currently at. That right there, the surplus of the $6.7 million, that is the deficit we would be if we were to include everything in the budget that we talked about, like I mentioned tonight, with the debt service payment. That is where we were at right now with the millage set as it is at 4.05%.

So hold on. Let's look at this. So what column are we looking at here? We're looking at column J.

The red $6,697,000. That is the budget deficit as of today if we include everything that we talked about so far in the budget. And just for fun, let's goal-seek and show what that millage would be to make that a zero.

Below that negative $6.7 million, that $2.7 million.

That's the debt service payment for the disaster bond. Yes, sir.

All right. This is the number you would need to be able to balance the general fund budget with all the additions that city manager just told you about. $1.9647.

And let's head it off before we get it out there. Let's be realistic. That's not what we are proposing and that's not what we anticipate you all to tell us what to do or to vote on.

But you couldn't do that anyways, I think.

Right, but I'm saying we're not proposing we get there. We're just saying, hey, this is what it would have to be today.

What is the percentage state law will allow millage rate increase? It's like

Yeah, it varies. I think it depends on how much revenue. It's a percentage, if I remember right.

Percentage of growth, right?

Well, percentage of... That number there is not doable. No, I understand. Yeah, I don't know what the increase. I don't have that number in front of me. I'm sorry, Mayor.

No, what he's asking is what... Maximum we can increase. Right. And I know that's like a formula. I think it's like a percentage.

Prescribed by law. Correct. Based on like five years of growth and some kind of formula based on that. They do it for the fire assessment too.

It's up to 110% of the adjusted rollback rates.

So let me give you a few preambles here. The budget that we're going to be putting up on the screen for you is beyond preliminary. I have no revenue numbers from the state. Those will not come in until late August, early September. We're using fiscal 26's state revenue numbers. I have no numbers for medical benefits for staff. We're using existing medical rates for staff. I assume those will increase. I can't tell you by how much.

They will.

Liability insurance, that is a large portion of our budget. We've included a 10% increase on the liability insurance. That might be a little on the high side, but I'd rather... be pleasantly surprised when those numbers come in. We did include some money for the Evergreen study. We did have a phone call with them a couple of days ago. They gave us an idea of generally what we could expect to increase salaries by. We asked if we smoothed the increases over three years. And for the purposes of this evening, we applied that increase across the board. Of course, when the study comes in, it won't be an across the board increase for all staff, It will be based on what their recommendations, certain staff members would receive a larger increase than other staff members. That's the whole point of the study is to make sure that we line everybody up in their job descriptions. But for the purposes of tonight, we've added approximately a half million dollars to equal out what we think Evergreen is going to eventually come to us with. So again, this is beyond preliminary. What I'm looking for for you tonight, please, is to give us some guidance. What are your priorities? What should we continue to include and what can we remove? Clearly, we were going to have to remove things. We can't, I wouldn't imagine that we can remove the whole $6 million. If you would please do a goal seek and change that number there to the $2.7 million please. So what we're going to show you now is what the millage would need to be if we funded this budget but not the debt service payment. It needs to be negative. Yes. 6.3457. Now we get you this budget without the debt service payment. Again, that debt service payment continues till fiscal 33. And I'm not particularly comfortable with budgeting that way.

Can I ask a question about the debt service payment on the bond?

Yes, sir.

I know it's got a schedule to pay back. You said 2033. When we got the bond, was it intended to be paid back? Sometimes bonds can be after a fact, like the way we used it. And I was speaking to a gentleman who I think was the one involved with us getting the bond. And he said we might want to look at refinancing the bond, and it would be a lower payment over a longer time.

the option there is the option out there to refund the bond keep in mind it will cost several hundred thousand dollars to do to accomplish that but that is an option if the commission so desires that we could pursue to refund that and extend the payment term out which would of course lower the payments i would recommend tonight that we go through especially on the major increases that we've added to this budget such as the four fire personnel we remove those we we model it here live and let you see where it is and and go from there, unless the commission has other intentions or other desires they would like to see tonight.

So, Commissioner Perna, to your point about, it's called refunding. A bond is refunded rather than refinanced, but it's the same principle. There would be additional costs, as the city manager just told you. In the long run, it's like you refinancing your house. If you can't make the payment now, you may be forced to refinance. But in the long run, it's not to your benefit to extend your mortgage, right? Because over the life of the mortgage, you are paying substantially more money. It's the exact same thing with the bond. So in my professional opinion, that's our last course of event. I would recommend exhausting every other possibility and then that be the very last recommendation i would ever make to you would be to refund the bond because in the long run it will cost the city a lot more money okay so um as city manager mentioned there are several things that are easily removed uh one is a million dollar Investment in the multi-use fields out at the sports complex. Another are the additional salaries in the fire department. We've already taken out the rescue track. There are additional staff members as well. We have budgeted for an in-staff attorney along with additional money for a consulting attorney.

And keep in mind, the in-house attorney is approximately $240,000 annually. That's the salary plus benefits, the cost of doing business to have that person here. That does not include any staff for that person. That also includes money in the budget to have a contract with an attorney because they will not be able to do it all. So that is... It is very cost prohibitive currently to have an in-house attorney. But again, we can model anything tonight.

It also includes a Westfall subscription that would be required. Westlaw, excuse me.

We'll talk about that. But $240,000, what kind of baseline salary? That's based on $155,000 annual salary plus the benefits package.

$90,000.

Yes, sir.

I'm not an attorney, sir.

All right. What would you like to do first?

Aren't we a sunshine and rainbows tonight? Man, tough crowd. Well, Kiki, this is your drive in this budgetary train discussion at this point.

Well, I'm all about the easy stuff, but city manager and I have a philosophical difference about the multi-use fields. I believe that's the first thing to go. He does not agree with me.

The first thing that should go is the four fire personnel. We do not need to add to our fire budget this fiscal year with the property tax discussion. If we add the four personnel to fire right now, we haven't even looked at adding the proposed police employees that you all discussed at the workshop, but adding that many employees right now to the general fund is not financially feasible.

How much would ballpark for those four salaries?

Harold, would you take the screen down, please? Okay, go ahead. Harold, I need, thank you. We're going to be looking at salary information here, so I don't want it up on the screen. Just zeros in the annual columns. Or for the purposes of this discussion, just highlight the four rows and hit delete. There you go. And then go back.

There you go.

Okay, Harold, we can put it back up now, please.

Just to clarify tonight, we're looking at a whole bunch of gators close to the boat, budgetary speaking. You're looking for commission inputs on the overarching... I'm speaking right into it. I'm sorry.

I'm not going to do this right here.

Oh, yay. So tonight you're looking for overarching, broad... inputs from the commission on our biggest priorities. What your goals are for the city.

Tonight we're looking for what the numbers are going to be and to make sure we lay the groundwork that if that's the road we continue on until September, the commission is going to have to vote to increase the millage. If the commission has no appetite to increase the millage, we kind of need to know now in this stage of the game so that we can go back to the drawing board and make some significant cuts and see if it's even doable to do last year we made budget cuts at the very last minute to not increase the millage we didn't save money in the budget we delayed projects we currently have vehicles wise, we have 23 vehicles in the fleet with over 100,000 miles. We have 21 of those are pre 2015 vehicles. So every year when we say, Hey, we need to take things out of the budget tip vehicles is one of the first things that goes. So we just kick it down the road a little further. Um, we need, we need some direction from the commission on where they're going to be with the millage. So

So let's have that conversation, frankly. I'm a firm proponent, and I know my teammates here on the dias are as well, including the one dialing in for Truth in Advertising. So let's have that discussion. Let's give our inputs and our priorities and what our biggest rocks are, our must-pay bills, our top priorities, what those are. We kind of mentioned them in the last budget workshop, but let's reemphasize them. Let's talk about them. And then... We'll adjust accordingly to you guys. We can go through the different parts and pieces of the budget where you want us to say cut or no cut. And then we'll ultimately end up with a decision there as a team with what we're proposing, giving y'all guidance to do. Y'all... Y'all want to kind of go down the dais and talk about your biggest priorities and top focus, or do you have any particular inputs you'd like to publicly share with the team and the crowd? Yes, ma'am. Sure.

I know that you're getting in better shape with the police department. As far as having the right amount of officers on duty now, I believe, is the last thing I heard. And that's a great thing. I couldn't hear. You really can't hear when you follow me. People go in and out and get a word that you're there. But has anybody mentioned, are we short on the fire department employees?

As in, do we have vacancies currently?

Right.

I believe we have one vacancy right now in the fire department.

Now it's just going to clarify that commissioner tender so this would be not the one vacancy you have this would be a net for additional entry-level firefighter that is correct one of the 3 firefighters one inspector.

And that is what the chief presented to you all of the workshop.

You hear that commissioner tender.

No, something about a chief in a workshop. That's all I got.

What the chief presented us in the previous workshop. It's three brand new entry-level firefighters and one inspector.

And those have been removed, and we're at 6,004,000 deficit.

Thank you for that, Commissioner Tender. Commissioner Peebles, I saw you getting ready to say something.

I feel like whenever we get to the budget season, I'm kind of the downer. But my appetite is always going to be not raising the millage. So I'm never going to vote yes on raising the millage. So as far as priorities... I think number one for me is infrastructure because we have so many people moving into Bay County, Inland Haven. We've got to make sure that infrastructure is our top priority because we've got to make sure we can handle the growth or the growth that's already happened. You know, how many times have we had pipes bust over the past few years and emergency funds having to go in and fix stuff like that quite a bit? And so obviously I love, uh, supporting the sports department too. I realized that, um, sports and rec is a luxury more than it is a need, but it is a very high on the quality of life aspect of our city. And so, uh, those are the two things that are my biggest priorities. I'm just, I was just putting my thoughts out there. So, you know, where I'm at.

Thank you, sir. Commissioner Pernod, do you want to, this is, um,

I mean this is a projection for the 27 budget right that the 6 the 6 million dollar deficit. These are the this includes projects that were that were we have planned.

So water, sewer, stormwater. Okay. There are projects in there, yes, sir, but that does not affect that $6 million there. The $6 million is the general fund. So the general fund.

So where are we going to find the $6 million? What's your biggest idea for cutting?

So if you keep in mind last year when we cut the budget, we were flat, but we had to dip into our reserves to make the debt service payment. If we do not raise the millage this year, we will dip into that reserve again to make the millage payment, which is around $15.8 million that we have minus the almost $2.8 million.

And at the last minute, you found some insurance money or something that helped with the budget, correct? Correct.

We adjusted our insurance allocations to the enterprise funds to help with the general fund, but we still had to dip into reserves to make our debt service payment.

The 2026 budget that we are currently in right now, what we're working with now, we will have to reduce the reserves by the $2.8 million. So by September 30th, we will have available money of approximately $13 million. That's it in general fund at the end of the year.

Will the general fund increase this year? Your revenue? We don't have the revenue numbers yet. We are anticipating a slight increase, but not a $6 million increase. And if...

If the homestead goes away or the cuts are made through the state, the property tax, are they including, isn't there supposed to be a fund?

So, yes, from the information we're getting right now, there will be a trust fund set up by the state. The state will divvy out the money to the counties, which will divvy out to the cities. We will be at the state's mercy on the amount we get. So... There will be, like I said, in-depth conversations of consolidation of services, especially with emergency personnel throughout the state of Florida, not just Bay County, but throughout the state of Florida, if property tax is eliminated like it's projected.

You have any particular priorities?

What are the priorities? I mean, where do you cut the budget? Where do you find $6 million?

So we could go through, we could cut out the million dollars multi-use field. We could cut out the personnel cost, the four firefighters, the in-house attorney. If the clerk position passes, there's a slight budget impact on that with a couple of increases to accommodate that. If you all go with the finance, a treasurer clerk, as well as adding a position for a budget manager on the city manager side of the house. we could go through and we would have to eliminate most of the vehicles aside from the enterprise funds and delay those purchases another year. And, again, we still would not break even to zero with a millage rate of 4.05.

You're not going to even scratch the surface on $6 million? That's correct.

And, again...

And even if you raise the millage by two points or one point, let's say, you're not going to make it up. That's correct.

So what we'll do is just change it to 6.05.

Um, in just a general question, do you foresee other municipalities? Like if the property tax thing it's voted in, do you think there's going to be a mad, a mad rush for everyone to raise their millage rates?

There will be a mad rush of something, yes, sir. I would imagine that if you try to raise your millage rate too much, that the state will do as they did in the past year or two and run the doge.

And they'll cut your... And then you will not see... That's right. Good money from the trust fund.

What they will do in turn, I'm assuming, again, I don't know this, is they will then hold the trust fund. And if a city raises their millage rate too much, they will say, well, we're not going to give you this much of the trust fund. You raised your millage rate. So I would imagine that the control would be in the state's hands.

Delicate balance.

So if it does pass in November... It will go into effect at the state at the beginning of their fiscal year, which is June 1, which means our fiscal year starts September 30th. So should it pass in November, it will not affect the city until a fiscal 28 budget. We have a little time to plan. or that reduction and currently we're assuming that reduction will be somewhere between a million 6 and 2.3 million. Over and above what we're talking about right now.

Commissioner Perna, thank you for that commissioner work, I want to give you an opportunity as well and then I'll caboose with what your biggest priorities are and still what you want to focus on as we kick off this budget discussion.

I think we need to come to the realization that everything's on the table. Everything. And we need to get out of our comfort zone and think, you know, if we think that the military is going to stay the same, it's not possible. We've kicked this can down the road so many times. I know it's uncomfortable, but we have to do what's right. And if that means we've got to cut some positions, we'll cut some positions. But no matter how many positions you cut, it's not going to put a dent in that 6.6. So that's my feeling.

So I had her change the millage at it. I added two points to the millage. We're now at 6.05. We've taken out the firefighters, and we're still $3 million in the hole.

And that's a huge increase in the millage that's going to send that layer.

So I'll be the caboose here. I agree with Commissioner Warrick and, for the most part, Commissioner Peebles and Commissioner Tender as well. Everything's got to be on the table. We all have our priorities and focus. My utmost priority is for our first responders, particularly the police. They've had three positions, three uniformed officer positions cut that they shouldn't have. They actually got cannibalized the last couple of years to fund salaries.

So we will, salary discussion, we will wait until the evergreen is back. But I will tell you in the preliminary, that is not a hot topic in that department.

Okay, Harold, you can put it up.

Well, that's my top priority is for our first responders, particularly the cops who are in a deficit, who have been made tremendous. But everything is obviously on the table. We're going to have to make some uncomfortable collective team decisions here. We will try to do the very utmost best we can to work with y'all and support the core essential priorities we have. To Commissioner Wark's point, this is going to be tough. There's going to be some significant belt tightening, and it's not going to be fun. We're going to do it with you.

So this budget that you have in front of you now shows no change in the police department. We still have 48 staff members. That does include all support staff, and the only change is the promotion for Captain Blatelock. So exactly the same staffing level that they have this year. No reductions in the police department. I'm not sure what you were referring to, Mayor.

That was a decision that was made about two years ago by a former chief to make personnel changes happen. But it is, until we can run consistently, fully staffed, it doesn't make sense at the moment to add staff right now.

I disagree. They're about to fill their last three vacant positions. But anyway, that's a point we don't need to spar about right now. I'm just telling you what my priority is. First responders, and of the first responders, it's the first responders, because they have gotten the least amount of love and resourcing over the last several years. They've actually gone down compared to any of the other departments. So I'd like to...

Can we pull up the police department budget, please?

So let's see if we can put this in the screen so the audience can see it. Can you move it to the right?

We had this discussion and the police chief and Kiki kind of sparred a little bit about what percentage was more accurate and the baseline or the whole compared to the other departmental going up. Yeah. Either number you picked, it was still a net lower.

So absolutely not saying that our police department budget isn't lower compared to others. What I am saying is the police department budget has increased. The entire city budget has increased as well, but our revenues are, have not increased the past few years.

Just telling you, I asked the other commissioners to give their priority. I'm giving you mine.

And that's what this discussion is for. So I'm trying to make it so the audience doesn't see the numbers in the bars. This is a little skewed. Do you see the bold numbers at the bottom of the columns?

Yeah.

So in 24, those are the personnel numbers, the dollar amounts for personnel. In 24, 3,000,009. In 25, 3,000,008. The actuals for 26 were 2,000,002. That was a year of, sorry, that's half a year, approximately half a year. The budget for this year is $4 million, and with the increase that I discussed, the evergreen study, I've smoothed it over the entire city, give us to $4.3 million. So it may not work out to be exactly that number because, again, my estimate was give everybody an even increase. all the staff members in this room would get the same increase. And that's not what they will eventually recommend. It was just they gave me a dollar amount, and I just put it in evenly for everyone. So this may shake out a little bit different. But as you can see, we're growing every year for the budget for personnel. Please, if you go down to the bottom, please. All right, so that's their total budget. It's very bottom one in the bold with the blue background. 24 was $4,009,000. 25 was $5,002,000. We're halfway through 26. They're spent $2,007,000 with a budget of $4,009,000. And this budget that you have in front of you has $5,004,000. So it is increasing every year.

The amount of the percentage is the discussion point there. And thank you for that. And one other tidbit on this. City Manager, to your point, was it Calloway that merged or was it Parker that merged? Calloway that merged with the Bay County Sheriff's and did away with their department? I'm not a fan of that concept, but I realize as this happens across the state, there may be more and more of those consolidations happening across Florida.

And keep in mind too, Mayor, that just for the conversation, no one think we're doing this today, but if we were to do that, if we were to do away with our police department and become under the sheriff's office, that's not a 5.4 million dollar savings for the city we would still pay the sheriff's office so don't want the residents to think that we're going to save 5.4 million dollars we still have to pay the sheriff's office for doing that and we don't know what that number would be it would would it be less than 5.4 more than likely yes but we don't we would not say 5.4 million immediately

My understanding, too, is that the dollar per officer that you get is higher when you do it that way. Like, the amount of dollars that you'd spend versus the amount of officers you'd get supporting. Let's just use some easy math. Just simple math. If we were spending $5 per officer... When we could have 20 officers, you'd spend $10 per officer with the county, so you wouldn't be getting as many officers.

Yes, sir. I've seen the study like that. Yeah, it's more per person but less coverage is basically how it shakes out to be.

Basically, the services that you would get would not be as quality as what we get now.

Our response time is two to three minutes right now, and it would likely go to 12 to 14 minutes very easily.

Not a fan of that at all.

I do think there are some ways, some creative ways. I haven't even discussed with the chief yet, but if we get down that road with the property tax, I think there are some creative ways to save with the police department still keeping police personnel as city staff. But that's a talk down the road once we see how property tax shakes out.

This is certainly going to be a brave new world budgetary-wise.

We are facing tough decisions. That is correct.

Just for the record, you're not allowed to retire anytime soon. I'm just telling you. Just giving you a fair warning. We love you. We're going to make you stay around for a while.

So just to kind of generate some of the conversation, I would say let's remove the in-house attorney. Let's remove the multi-use fields.

Harold, would you take a screen down, please?

We need to actually see who all applies. We have to legal applications before we shoot that down.

Well, budgetary-wise, that's almost doubling the legal fee budget by having both, projecting it out because we don't know what it would be. We had one applicant for in-house, and the rest of it is due on the 11th. So we will get many more than one applicant for that portion.

I understand, but shall we make a decision as a team?

Well, we're not saying to cut it. We're to model.

Okay, Harold, you can put it back up now, please.

We're not voting on anything official tonight to keep in the budget. I'm just trying to show it as a model.

405, please. Okay, we've taken out the multi-use fields. We've taken out the in-house attorney. We've taken out the additional firefighters. We have left the millage at 4.05 and we're still at a deficit of 5 million three.

Is that with or without, did you say the multi-use fields came out? So what's next on the job?

So bad news about taking out the in-house attorney is we're probably going to have to add money for the outside attorney. So if you would go to 512, please.

We also have a pretty substantial project, the $80,000 in the rails-to-trails crossings. That is not doing all of them. I believe that was two of those. It's $20,000 per light times two per intersection, so that gets us two intersections for the rails-to-trails. Pretty substantial there. One was at 389 and one was at Mosley Drive. Like I said, we have several vehicles in the general fund that would likely have to be cut.

all right i pumped up the money for the um out of house interning the contractual attorney i'm sorry what did you just say i was staring at your spreadsheet we've added additional funds for the attorney but we have removed the in-house attorney So if we contract with the firm, it will be more expensive. I've had to add some money for that.

Which is a possibility. We did have a single applicant for an in-house attorney. We still have to look at that. We have the contract. Actually, you have two contracts, right? We have a labor attorney and then we have a general law attorney. You've added money to that. Okay, what's next? Are you looking for inputs or guidance here or what?

We are.

In terms of what?

Do, as far as millage rate, do... Do we want to exclude any new vehicle purchases in the general fund? Do we want to look at a hiring freeze for all vacant positions in fiscal year 27 and excluding those from being funded? Are we looking at cutting maintenance in the street departments? Are we looking at any other particular cuts that the Commission has in mind? Again, no matter what we cut right there, the millage is still going to have to be increased to prevent us from going into the reserves.

So I'm not going to try to speak for any of the rest of the commission here, but I kind of feel like we're kind of... like a cat on a hot tin roof here. I mean, your department heads, if you were to say, okay, we need to do a 10% cut, I think the department heads would have a much better idea of where they could absorb a 10% cut across the board, right?

Yes, we're not asking you all to go through line item and make the cut. We're asking what cut do you want? Do you want to increase the millage to only include the $2.8 million debt service payment? Or does the commission going to tell staff we are not raising the millage at all this year and we're going to have a $2.8 million deficit again?

I already said what I said, but it's going to have to go up.

I mean... So, could we do the set the millage rate at whatever it would be to be zero with just the debt service payment as the only increase?

Right now, yes.

It's 605, right?

Yes, ma'am. I just wanted to bring this up.

I thought a while back, and I could be wrong, but I thought it was a while back that we were told we were going to get a spreadsheet of all the salaries of all the employees. You know, with what the top dog is getting paid and what the others are getting paid. I think we need to see that, too, to see if we're even being, are we losing employees to other cities?

That is what the salary study will show once it is completed.

All right, so with the cuts that we've done thus far, if we continue in 27 with what we've done in 26 and show a deficit of just the debt service payment to be able to balance that budget, your millage would have to be 5.6304.

And that is not increasing anything from fiscal year 26? No.

From a current mills rate of 4.05.

Correct.

So... And again, I don't have revenue numbers from the state, and I don't have medical benefit numbers, which I assume will increase. They typically do every year. Not monumentally, but there will be some sort of increase. Now, the other topic I brought up to city manager, which no one has an appetite for, but could possibly help us, is switching to a four-day work week. And that doesn't mean four tens. That means four eights, which means that staff as myself would take actually a salary reduction. But salaries are a large part of the general fund. And it puts more burden on the staff members because what we do, by definition, we would still have to do that work. We would just have fewer hours to do the same amount of work. So from a morale point of view, that's on the bottom of the list of possibilities.

I think we have to have all options on the table. I am a... Not in the world, straight shooting conservative. And I am not a fan of tax increases whatsoever. There also has to be a point of reality here. Prices have gone up exponentially. Fuel has gone up exponentially. Medical has gone up exponentially. You either cut your intake or you cut your burn rate. That's one of the two, right? Or a combination of the two. Now, we are constrained to begin with, per state law, on how much we can up the millage, even under the most legit and leanest of budget circumstances. So this is definitely playing with knives, and you have to be on the razor's edge. And whatever we do, we need to be as transparent as humanly possible. We need to be as factual as humanly possible. And whether you're a Johnny Beshear or a Corey Langford sitting here watching this in the audience, or you're somebody watching online, They need to be able to have a very clear idea of what we're looking at and what we're juggling and what we're trying to do most right honorable transparent thing we can hear set a budget to keep the city operating with the highest priorities of keeping our utilities go in our citizens safe in terms of police and fire. And everything else is secondary to those core triage services.

So the other option, another option, in fiscal 26, we focused on reducing the marketing budget. Of course, not everyone was happy with that, but I think we've settled down into a reality that that was the correct thing to do. In my mind, the next budget to look at would be sports and records. It is not an essential service. It is a quality of life. It absolutely adds to the quality of life in Lynn Haven. It is not an essential service.

Yeah, I mean, that's true. I don't know if this is the time or place to talk about it, but we definitely at a minimum need to relook at the fee schedule for sports and rec because then looking at what the county charges, what Panama City and other places charge. And even though we have the best, we charge the least on a lot of things. Specifically, one of the things that I've noticed is that it's not just Lynn Haven citizens that utilize our sports and rec. So We've got to find a way that if we've got people that are not paying taxes to our city to use our services, they need to be making up the difference. I mean, they can't make it up 100% because sports and rec will always be a service. It's not a revenue generating type thing. But, for example, I think right now it costs $35 to rent a field. In today's travel ball world, you could charge $300 to rent a field and it'd still get rented. You know what I'm saying? So, like, we got to look at things like that. Maybe it could be something as simple as if we set a schedule. For our rec ball teams and they get Tuesdays and Thursdays and then the sport, the staff schedules, the practices for the coaches, there's going to be coaches that are going to be upset about that. But the reality is, is it costs a lot of money to to run all that stuff and then anything outside of that. you need to charge a pretty large amount to rent the field. Because what I've seen, and it's not the staff's fault, it's because it's impossible to track it really, is that you're going to have coaches that are using them being a rec ball coach But then reserving the field for their rec ball team and then bringing in a travel ball team and using the field. And that's not the staff's fault. There's no way they can track that. I mean, there might be, but that's going to be a tremendous amount of man hours to figure that out. So we got to find a way that. We prevent that from happening because we can't offset. Like I said, we're not going to fund the whole thing, but we need to find ways to better offset the cost because there's definitely ways to do it. It's not going to get our millage rate down by a ton, and there's no way to forecast exactly what those funds will be. it's very difficult to forecast what someone might rent. But we definitely need to look at that fee schedule, a hard, long look at that, because it's in need for some updates, especially with people that are not citizens of Loonhaven.

Kiki, I will say one other thing. I am not a fan at all. I appreciate you're literally cutting past muscle into bone to do your employees down to 32 hours a week. Any Leadership 101, any org management course will tell you that your employees are your greatest resource. to actually put them in a job insecurity type phase where they're now struggling to pay their bills and having to free age in or, you know, whatever. I agree with you.

It's a terrible idea, but I have to at least express that from a numeric point of view, that's an option.

Understood. Everything can be on the table, but some things should not be. realistically be on the table and I would say that's one of them I would say we cut 10% of our workforce before we cut every employee down quarter of their hours right so there there's a certain amount of continuity and fairness that needs to be put in place here and I just want to go ahead and say that publicly for the record.

I understand. So the sports and rec department we were able to cut $75,000 We are still spending a million four. There is some revenue, as Commissioner Peoples mentioned, there is revenue that comes in. It's nothing close to a million four. We are constrained with the facilities that we have. Mr. Ward has done a remarkable job with the department. I don't want him to feel that I don't support him 100% because he has done an amazing job with the department. This is a quality of life issue. It's not a safety issue. People need to know that when they pick up the phone and call 911 that they're going to get a response. While we would love to have beautiful football fields and multi-use fields and a rec center and all those fabulous things, right now is not the time for Lynn Haven to be focused on those.

I know we have, don't we have some land out in Southport?

Yes, sir. Any idea how much that's worth? Yes, sir. We appraised it. I can pull up the appraisals right now.

I think it was $600,000. It's owned by the sewer department. That doesn't help anybody. If we sold that property, the money would go to the sewer department. It does not go to the general fund. I would not recommend selling that property.

All right. We don't have anything else besides that.

No, sir. Back when Mr. Schubert was the city manager, Mr. Jackson was probably here during that time, but I think Mr. Schubert went through and actually surplused a ton of city property that they had at that time and got that off the books. So we are very lean on our property that the city owns.

There is a cola here, we can tinker with the cola. The CPI for the nation today is 3.81. We have included that for existing staff. Harold, would you take the screen down please? All right, Harold. That's no COLA.

What are we looking at here? That's no COLA, but everything else is still in there? Or is this no COLA without the multi-use fuel?

I'm taking things away. I haven't put anything back in yet.

So that was about...

$400,000 maybe? $300,000?

It looked like $300,000, give or take.

It does still include what Evergreen told us we needed to increase by. We can take that out.

Which is roughly how much?

Half a million.

For the whole city. That includes all the enterprise funds. Do you want me to do that next? Harold, please take the screen now. All right here. It's no increases that's no salary study. It's no color.

This does not include vehicles correct.

No, so there are still some vehicle purchases in there. But you're looking at, for the general fund, maybe $175,000. We've got two Ford Mavericks in the facilities department. We have a vehicle, I believe, in the parks department or animal control.

All right. This is facility maintenance. Can you read the note on the $60,000?

That's two Ford Mavericks there.

Go ahead and take those out, Andrea. Where were the other vehicles? Where were the other vehicles?

We had originally some in either Parks or Animal Control. We may have already removed the one in Animal Control.

Look at 573. Oh, well, we have some things here in the Parks Department we could look at. Go down to the bottom, please. We've got a sunshade at King Griffin. We've got a swing set at Porter. And we've got the pavilion at Kinsol. That's $80,000.

Is that pavilion, if we took, that's replacing this wash pad? Yes, sir.

That is what we talked about in several of the workshops, where it would go. And keep in mind, too, that's something that we've gotten a lot of feedback from residents requesting. We just got an email on it.

Yeah, we did. I hate to bring this up, but... Leave them in there for now. Yeah. James Rogers Park?

Yes, sir.

Does that come out of the general fund?

It comes out of the disaster fund, which will affect the general fund, yes, sir.

So if we were to cut that... That's in fiscal year 26.

It's not in 27.

It is not in this budget.

No, sir.

But that would cause more funds to be available for next fiscal year, right?

No, sir. Just to reserve what we're dipping into.

But, I mean, that money has to go somewhere, so it's got to move forward to the next fiscal year.

Well, it's in fiscal year 26's budget.

Right. But if we don't do that, right, and we don't spend that money, what is it, about $1.1, $1.2 million?

It's $1.1 million in the budget. We don't think the bids will come in at that. But, yes, it would unencumber it, but it's not going to give you any more money for next year, no, sir.

It would put it in the reserves though?

Right. We already pulled from the reserves. So we're not, we had to pull from the reserves to make the debt service payment. So we're not, if we don't do the project, we're not adding back to the reserves.

We'll just take less out of the reserves. If you don't do the project.

Right. That's what I mean. Something has to go up.

We will take less money out of the reserves.

By 1.1 million?

Yes. Right. 26. We haven't included this in James Rogers in 27. Right.

So it's not going to affect anything when you look. Are you saying if you don't do James Rogers, you could use the $1.1 million towards the debt service payment and have a little bit more in reserves? Right. I mean, yeah, you would have a little bit more in reserves. Okay.

So theoretically, just theoretically here, Let's say the millage rate didn't increase. We'd have to pull from the reserves to cover stuff. The amount we pulled from the reserve would be less if we didn't do James Rogers.

Correct. No matter what, if the millage rate does not increase, we're pulling from the reserves.

So in the Air Force, when you had a arbitrary cut, like whatever the percentage is across the board, you could rally your department heads and your subject matter experts and you go, okay, we have to cut 10%, 30%, 10%, 25%. I understand we need to give you some type of big picture overarching Yeah, we'll look at the millage rate increasing, but we're not going to like it. But we could probably at least consider it versus hell no, we got to make the 4.05 work, come hell or high water and make it work. That could drive two very different budget cut numbers. But how much of those cut drills have y'all done? Is that what you anticipate kicking off with once we give you commission inputs?

Yes, sir. If you all give the direction that you have no appetite for increasing the millage, then we will go back to the budget and say, We're reprioritizing internally. We're cutting vehicles. We're cutting pavilions, potentially have to cut positions, whatever it takes to get the number that you all have given us.

Realistically, even if we were to say, okay, we might be able to stomach, I don't know, a 4.05 to a 5.0 millage rate, right? That would give you a certain amount of playing room, wiggle room, budgetary speaking, right? Yeah. But that's still going to drive significant cuts just to be able to balance the budget.

Oh, yes, sir. So what we've laid out before, we have significant cuts to go back to get done.

Because this is still the overarching number we're working with on column J there. That's still the budget that y'all briefed us on six, seven weeks ago, right? That was... Everything that was needed was brought forward basically on a wish list.

That was what we started at around, was it 6.8 million deficit, 6.9 million? As you can see, we've cut it down to three tonight.

Well, now we've upped the millage to five. With the millage at five, we'd have a deficit of just over $3 million.

Is that with all the stuff that you took out already?

I haven't put anything back in. There's no COLA. There's no additional fire personnel. There's no city attorney. There's no multi-use field. I haven't put anything back in.

There's no salary study increases.

And your millage is at 5%. and you still have a deficit of larger than the debt service payment.

Could you go to the marketing budget, please? The marketing budget is one that we have not done for fiscal year 27. However, we've carried over. Ms. Marsh has copied 26 into 27's column. But if you recall, we cut out last year, as Ms. Roman alluded to earlier, the trunk-or-treat, the Easter egg hunt. We cut down on our concert series, and we've cut down on staff in that department. And you can see where we would be if we kept everything status quo today. That is something, too, that the commission, if you wanted to look at, we want to do away with concerts altogether unless it's 100% sponsorship paid. Do we want to do away with the July 4th festivities? I mean, I don't think anyone wants that, but is that something that you all would entertain?

It's a half billion dollars, give or take.

Yes, sir. It's quite expensive to do those events.

Half of it is in salaries.

Ma'am? What'd you say?

Half of it is in salaries. Okay. Go down to the bottom again, please.

I mean I've always been a proponent that they should be sponsored. I mean, we have, we have people that are willing to sponsor these things. The hard part though, is that by going fully sponsored, you're probably going to have a few years gap that you're going to lose the events and then you'll lose the momentum of the events. And then you get the, and people that want to sponsor an event need to know that the event is going to be successful or they're not going to pay for the sponsorship. So there's gotta be, a fair balance, but I want to continue to trend towards being more sponsor-led because the sponsors will show up. The hard part is finding staff or us or whoever other citizens, if they want to help out our, uh, community services board or planning commission and get involved. Um, but we have to promote that we're accepting from, uh, donations for it to work. But, um, I mean, especially like concerts in the park, they're amazing. People love them. They show up. I mean like, well, Thompson's, uh, guaranteed to have a L I mean, uh, Sheffield pool. So with that, with knowing that people are going to sponsor that, like if you have the right, you know, talent coming in or whatever, um, there's other things we can do to bring in money too, but, um, I mean, we talked about it with the naming of the fields and things like that. I mean, let's just do some math, right? If you did a one-year contract for $20,000 per field, that's a huge part of your marketing budget right there. We've got to figure out how to do that. I mean, we're going on the right track. We've done the policies for it. Now we've got to put in the legwork to get the sponsors to come in. But as far as events go, they, in my opinion, should be largely funded by sponsor money, not city money. The city's donation is that they are providing the space. And then if people want to show up and people want to sponsor it, then it'll happen.

City Manager, if I remember correctly, the fields at the sports complex are already named. Is that correct?

The baseball fields are, yes.

You already have names.

You charging people for those names?

No, they were assigned names years ago.

Years ago.

Are they named after people or after a business? People. People. All right. So you can still do that. So let's use Cangreff and Park, for example. They have David Herndon Field. It could be David Herndon Field presented by Publix. You're still having David Herndon Field, but it's presented by a sponsor. There's ways to do it. They do it all over the nation.

Mayor? Yes, ma'am.

I just want to voice my opinion here. Sure. I agree. I agree with Commissioner Peoples that some of these things, they think that it would work if a local business wanted to sponsor. All the advertisement we put up looking at everything from the city, it would just be shifted to the person or the company that's paying for it. to get that advertisement out for them rather than for us. I think that would work. The other thing I want to say is I also agree with him on the sports part. We have got to start charging people that don't even live in Lynn Haven and teams. We need to start charging them for that. We're just letting them come and play for free. And I think it makes for bad blood, you know? So I agree with that also. I think we need to start charging for what we're giving them and letting them have. And I'm only saying this because I'm going to hang up after this because I can't hear about every third word. And so none of this makes any sense to me. But I do also want to just add at this meeting that in 2017, within a month after I was elected, I went and sat down with Tommy Ford. It was Tommy Ford, I know. And I said, or maybe it was the second time I spoke, and I said, I want to talk to you about you taking over the Lynn Haven Police Department. How would that work if the Sheriff's Department took care of our city? His first reaction was his mouth dropped open. He said, please don't ever tell anybody we have this conversation because they will all become very nervous. I said, okay. And I said, wouldn't you just hire all of the Lynn Hagan police officers? And they worked for Bay County Sheriff's Department. He said, well, we would have to hire quite a few to give you the coverage that you need. But he was very adamant about don't even mention this. Don't even go there. But our only reason I went to him was because that was so logical to me. But I also agree with you, Mayor. Our police coverage has got to be exemplary. I think our police department is so important. It makes people feel safe. And you know, nobody ever thinks they're going to have a house burned down, and they do. I get that. But more and more in today's world, people worry about, gosh, if somebody's walking through my backyard, how long will it take the police to get here? So I think the police should be the priority. And the last thing I'm going to say is I still would like to see that spreadsheet of every single employee in the city of Lynn Haven and how much they make an hour. And let's see where that can get spread out. If we have things that no other city has, I hate to use the word, or anything like that, but if we offer a lot more than you can get living in Callaway or somewhere else, then I think people are willing to pay exposure. They don't want to get robbed, but you always want to at least get what you're paying for. So anyway, I'm going to leave you all because I can't really hear anything anyway, but I voiced my opinion.

Thank you, ma'am. Thank you.

So I would say that no one plays in our recreation leagues for free, no matter where they're from. But also, if you all want to talk about charging people, we have tons of non-London Haven residents that use our splash pad. Charging a fee for the splash pad would be a place to start as well. That is something that we offer for free. It costs us money for the staff to man it. It costs us money to operate it. We've had numerous claims over the years, so charging a fee for the splash pad would be a place to start as well.

How hard would it be to just implement like you go down to City Hall, get a wristband or something like that for his? I've had conversations with people in this in the past, and I'm glad you brought it up because I don't think we should charge the Lynn Haven citizens because their taxes paid to build it. But if it's someone coming from... I mean, we've had it to where people have driven up with buses from kids from two cities over, taking up the entire splash pad.

Yeah, so I would more recommend that we do an armband for Lynn Haven residents and an armband for non-Lynn Haven residents and still charge the Lynn Haven residents. It can be minimal, you know, a $20 annual pass or whatever. But if not, you're going to have... Aunt Kathy come up with 15 kids and friends that, oh, yeah, everybody's in Haven because here's my ID. And you're not going to really be able to keep track of it without the buying an annual pass or a weekend pass or however we wanted to do it.

There's also additional staff required to do anything like that. Currently, we have younger employees who monitor for safety primarily. Now we're having to give them cash or credit card machines, or there would be additional responsibilities for those staff members.

Can you... bring up all the special events and what they are and how much, how much do we pay for all those?

Okay. Uh, Dylan. So these are the costs of hard goods, things that we have to purchase. This does not factor in staff time or any overhead or anything of that nature. Can you make a column?

About $81,000. In purchasing goods? Yes. Yes.

Yeah, good, good. There you go. So now you should be able to read the labels a little easier. As you can see, we have significantly cut these from last year. You heard me talk about the July 4th event. July 4th and Christmas, there's a significant amount of overtime for the police and the fire department. Those dollars are not included here. Those are charged to the actual departments. I have no way of telling you off the top of my head exactly what the overtime costs are for the events. So again, these numbers are we have to go out and buy candy or decorations or rent exhibits or that sort of thing. Fireworks, the fireworks are above. I believe we cut that down to $35,000 this year. Is that true?

We did, yes.

And I think how we did that was just to cut the time involved. Is that correct? That's correct. So instead of 25 minutes, it's going to be 20 minutes or something like that. But again, these are just hard costs. No staff time.

I mean, an option is, I know it wouldn't be popular, but to spend all events until unless someone wants to sponsor them. But I don't, I'm not saying we shouldn't look at this, but I just, is it really going to be a whole lot of money? I think the bigger expense is probably the employees.

Yes. Staff is the single biggest expense you have. And again, we've already taken out the COLA and the preliminary number I was given by Evergreen, that's all gone. So all staff would be making the same amount of money next year that they're making this year in this budget right now.

So we've talked about at least two different courses of action or COAs here. Leaving the millage rate as it is at 4.05. We've thrown out a theoretical 5.0 mills. So there's one change nothing, steeper budget cuts. There's one... raise the millage rate slightly. Are you looking for a third course of action or those two?

I think we have to do a number of different things. I think we have to do a little bit of everything.

I'm just talking big rocks, the basic planning factors, because if you keep a 4.05 mill rate, you're probably looking at much more of a 30% cut.

Now we're at 4.7.

Versus if you do a 5.0 cut or a mill rate of 5, you're probably looking at maybe not 30, but you're looking at a 20 or 25% cut for budget.

5 gets you 3 million deficit.

And we have to bridge that gap, right? So it's a cut fat, then cut selective muscle, and try not to cut bone is what we're looking at.

I'm just glad that we're having this conversation now as opposed to what we did in the past where we would wait until mid to late August to have these conversations.

Agreed.

I wish we did this when I first started because it makes a big difference having these discussions now.

Absolutely.

We have to be the adults in the room and this is not going to be fun and it's not going to be popular. We have to be fair and we have to be honorable and we have to be transparent about it.

Agreed.

So I would say that after tonight's discussion, we will go back. Unless you all tell us otherwise in the next few minutes, we will anticipate that the commission will entertain a millage rate increase to at least get us a smaller deficit than where we're at right now. We will go back through the budget. We will continue cuts. We will present that again. We will ask for another workshop to discuss publicly with all of you.

So would the rest of the commission be amenable to basically giving Kiki as our head number cruncher here three COAs, courses of action, if you will. So COA A would be the status quo, 4.05 mils, and what kind of cuts that would entail. A slight mill rate, perhaps say 4.55, so a half a mill raise. And then a COSC would be like a 4.05. That's still well south of the Bay County.

of 5.63 but it's basically a status quo a small raise and a heftier one mil raise okay so just so that you're aware all of those things that we've taken out haven't put anything back in everything is gone no increases for staff no multi-use fields no city attorney no additional firefighters To apply the same logic next year that we use this year, meaning that we pay for everything except the debt service, you're going to have to be at 5.186.

But this still counts for most of the wish list.

No, sir. She removed all of that sitting here.

The entire wish list is gone.

All the big ticket items are gone. There's little things in there still, but all the big dollar, singular dollar value things are gone.

copy but there are still a fair number of wish list items no sir not a fair number maybe 200 grand at the most okay across the entire city general fund yes sir general fund okay So again, that's muscle. That would be the fat, right? That would be the nice to have. And then you're going to have the core essential stuff. We're very quickly going to run out of fat, budgetary speaking wise. And then it's strategic cutting of muscle and doing our best not to cut the bone, right? So other than the three COAs, no increase, a small increase, a one mil increase, would that give you enough of a... Three options to work and play with, to come back and propose various ways to actually bridge this 2.769 mil gap.

The only other way that you're going to bridge that after you have a few wish list items of the few vehicles, the pavilion, the next thing would be staff cuts.

So I think what he's getting at is, if you look at this sheet right here, even with a 5.1866 proposed millage rate to that amount, and cutting out the firefighters, the multi-use field, all that stuff, we still would have to take $2.7 million out of our reserves just to balance our budget. That's correct.

That is correct.

We could probably get that number down with vehicles and a few other capital purchases, maybe tightening the belt on operating supplies and expendable equipment here and there. We could probably get that number to 2.5 right now. Then the remaining 2.5, if you wanted to break even, would be staff cuts.

Well, I would turn off a pavilion before I'd cut staff.

the pavilion is $50,000. That's what I'm saying. I'm saying once we cut the pavilion, the vehicles and everything, we could probably get us down to about two, five deficit.

But again, there is no increase in here. There's no cola. There's no salary study. There's no increase to medical benefits.

liability insurance i think what we need is we need the well me i prefer electronically um not this obviously but the like how we normally have the budget that you present something like that to show all the amounts that way we can all review it and then sit down with the city manager and You possibly yourself.

I can give you whatever you like. Would you like what we started the evening with, with the $6 million deficit?

I would say yes. Yes, please.

We can get that too. One thing I want to do is we have a handful of our regulars here, and I want to be courteous to y'all. I'd like to open the floor to y'all. If y'all have any thoughts or comments that y'all would like to add, y'all are not the Johnny or Jane come-latelys. So if y'all have got some words of wisdom that y'all have, we'll be glad to open the floor. Johnny, and then I saw you, Corey. Yes, sir.

First of all, my audience, the city says the first priority is all.

The base of it, Johnny.

Thank you. Okay. So life safety is the first thing. The fire and the police. The city's got to provide for that. So that's got to be priority one. The second priority is water, sewer, garbage. That's an enterprise fund. You're not discussing that here tonight. So we're not worried about that. Stormwater should be, in my opinion, probably the third priority. And then the debt service. You've got to cover the debt service. And then parks and rec is a quality of life. Unfortunately falls toward the bottom of those priorities for me. I think that's where my priorities are. I did want to say a little bit about the millage rate. My house last year was assessed at $233,000. My total tax bill was about $3,000, but of that $3,000, only $820 went to Lynn Haven. The rest went to the county, to the schools, etc. If you increase the millage rate by 20%, my taxes will go up a hundred and sixty four dollars a year that's not going to kill me i know people are on fixed incomes and everything but when you look at the millage rate the part that goes to lynn haven is not as great as people think you're going to see from just lynn haven so i want you to be aware of that i don't as a lynn haven resident i don't want to give up the three minute response time for a hundred sixty four dollars a year i just don't want to do it That doesn't include appreciation and increasing value in my property, but I understand how that works. The 2026 budget had $1.8 million in it for economic development. Was that covered by grants that we just re-spent, or is that straight out of our pocket?

One moment, please.

So while she looks that up, a good bit of that was the grant. You had the Ford Avenue, Ohio design in there. You had the Tennessee Avenue sidewalk. So not all $1.8 million of that was out of the general fund. A portion of it was, but a good bit of it was grant funded. Right.

So my follow-on question is what do we get for what we put into that that's not coming in for grants? What is our benefit to the city? I know There's some economic development that's necessary, but just how much we do, to me, that's one place we might want to look at that. I don't know what's in the budget this year for economic development.

Would you like me to answer? Okay. Fiscal 26, the economic development budget is $1.9 million, of which 1.2 is the Tennessee Avenue, which FDOT is paying for, and $625,000 was the CDBG money for the Florida and Ohio Avenues.

Okay, so most of it was covered by grants. Correct.

The lion's share of it, 1.7 plus.

What about 2027? What's the economic development budget?

We've got $3.7 million in there, also grant funded for the Florida and Ohio Avenue. If you take that number out, please. The rest is $95,301. Okay.

The last thing is the infrastructure surtax that we get in every year. I know we use it for legislative paving and what have you. Have we considered using that as part of using it for, like, streets? I know we've got a pretty good-sized budget for our street department.

Yes. How does that work out? Yes, we use it in the street, but we can't use it to fund the salaries and stuff like that.

Right, right. Okay, okay. Well, those are my first review of this. I hadn't seen all the numbers, but it would be nice. Like, y'all are going to get to see all the different line items. Thank you.

Yes, sir. Mr. Langford. Good evening. Good evening.

First of all, thank you for giving us an opportunity to speak. It was kind of frustrating sitting back there watching. It's like, man, why don't you ask this? Why don't you ask that? The numbers that you had up there, does it include the 2.7 coming from the enterprise over to the general fund or not?

The indirect allocation?

Yes, sir. It does include the indirect allocation. It does include that. Yes, sir.

Okay. That was my biggest question. Okay. It's probably not going to be popular, but here's what I would do. I would say let's go back to last year's budget and let's start there. Before we add anything else, let's start cutting from last year's budget. And then I want a list of all of the stuff that you want to add as to how we got to 2020. not up on the screen anymore, 26 mil, I think is what it was. So we were at 24 mil last year, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, proposing 26 mil this year. Year before last, we were at 21.1 mil. And this kind of leads me into my next question. So, you know, I watched the strategic meeting, I had to turn it off. I mean, I used to, when I was a kid, we got a big thick book every year from Sears and it was called the Wish Book. Y'all probably remember that. And I'd go through there and circle things and fold pages over. That's what I wanted from Santa Claus. All right, that's what it kind of sounded like to me. But I understand there's things that we need, okay? But when we're looking at numbers this large, You're going to have to start from where we were last year before you add anything. And there's going to be some things you have to add. Health insurance is going to go up, okay? We don't have any control over that, all right? So the things that you can't control are going to increase. But before you start adding those increases, Now start cutting from last year's budget. Start cutting that muscle that you're talking about from last year's budget, okay? And then you look at a list of these are all the things that we would like to have. And in that list is that 3% COLA increase, okay? All of those things that you all removed, that's where the list. So instead of adding all of that stuff in and now you guys are trying to figure out, man, how do we cut things out? Let's start from scratch and add things too, okay? So that's what I would suggest maybe thinking about. And this is going to come into play later on when the avalorum stops. And I know that's probably easier said than done. This is just an idea. All right. Just a redneck. All right. But when the millage, when the Avalorum stops, because it's going to, Florida voters are going to vote this. We're going to lose about 2.3 mil, Ms. Kiki said. Might as well go ahead and lean forward and say 2.5 mil. So 2.5 mil minus our current budget that we're in right now. Let's go back from the previous budgetary years. All right, so we'll just call it even $3 million. So if we're on our $24 million budget right now, let's subtract $3 million from that, which is $21 million. All right, what fiscal year did we have a $21 million budget? Let's start there, and then we're going to play this exercise, what I just explained to you for this next fiscal year. We're going to have to play that exercise over again. Just a heads up with that. Thanks.

Thank you. Good input. Ms. Michelle, come on up. Good evening.

I have the budget from last year, so I'm kind of working off of that. If you're going to be in the whole $6.4 million right now, the way things stand, I would also like y'all to talk about the $4.3 million for the debt service. So really, you're almost $11 million in the hole. Am I saying that correctly? I'm not sure. So if you take the 6.4 that you started with,

The general budget being in the hall. That included the debt service payment. It did include the debt. Yes, ma'am. Okay.

Don't make the whole bigger than you have to. Don't make the whole bigger than you have to.

Yeah, well, it's hard to follow this without something to look at. Yes, ma'am. That answered that question. That was really my own question.

Michelle, that's why I made the comment, ma'am, about I feel like we're kind of like cats on a hot tin roof because we're basically kind of shooting a little blind here. It's like, okay, well, what do you want?

I understand. I understand how the budget thing works, but this part of it is, you know, you've got to cut some of the general funds or increase taxes. And I'm like, Johnny, I would rather you increase my millage rate so that I can have a flushing toilet and someone at my house within two minutes to put my mother in an ambulance or whatever needs to be done. And those are my priorities.

Yes, ma'am.

I don't even care about potholes in the roads.

So I did like Mr. Langford's proposal of let's get creative and let's actually look in the rearview mirror a little bit at our last couple years' budgets and look at where those gaps increased and just do a strategic analysis.

So some of that, though, is skewed with either grant funding or additional work. Like in that $20-something million he mentioned, you have the Bayou Preserve Park. That's 100% grant funded. You have the Fort Ohio Avenue project. You have the 10th Street project. You have the sidewalk projects.

Fair. I'm not saying that's a perfect solution, but I think to Mr. Langford's point is that gives us another point of reference, right, budgetary-wise. And as we're literally going to be trying to decide which finger to cut off to keep the rest of the hand going here, let's strategically look at that and look at where we were to his point, you know, $3, $4 million annual budget ago.

So just so that you know, the budget that I brought to you on March 10th, I believe, that was $24 million and change, right? After all of the cuts that we have done together as a group tonight, we're at $26,200. It's only a $2 million difference between fiscal 26 and the proposed fiscal 27 with all of those things removed.

And some of that might have been we got more grants this year than last year. I don't know if that's true.

There was a lot more grant money last year.

And some of your core costing factors were more, right? Your health insurance is more.

We all know what fuel is doing, right? We struggled with what to budget for fuel. There's no way in the world in fiscal 27 we're going to spend the same amount of money for fuel.

And we're literally trying to nail Jell-O to the wall at this point.

I would like to add too, you know, we hear a lot of the wish list items. It's not staff's wish list items. That is what either residents or the commission, your constituents have brought to us and said, you know, we want to do this park or we want a sidewalk added down the street or we want more leagues or we want more stuff. It's not... Stuff that staff is benefiting from as far as making their day and making their nights easier. It is typically more work on staff. So it's not stuff that they're sitting around coming up with. It is stuff that the residents have requested or we've got to replace, repair, and more stuff that the commission has requested.

Well, we are kind of the proverbial, if you take this and you boil it down metaphorically to a family issue, budget where mom and dad sitting at the table and the checkbook only gets this much in a month and gas is jumped up a time and a half and homeowners insurance is up and groceries are up and all that so you literally have a fixed amount so where's your priority what's going to get cut what's going to get scaled back right you are absolutely 100 correct

The one difference with being a municipality is you can change the revenue number. You can change the millage. When you're at home at your dining room table coming up with your monthly budget, generally speaking, as an employee, I can't change my revenue number. You as an elected body can.

Yes, sir. Come on up.

So speaking of revenue, so I know that we're looking strictly at ad valorem taxes. I would like to make the assumption that our income from ad valorem next year will increase if you leave the millage rate the same. I don't know what it increased from 25 to 26. Is that number included in there? I think you said you were going on the old revenue numbers.

We got a preliminary taxable value from the property assessor's office. So, yes, the taxable value has gone up a bit. At 4.05, keeping the mills right the same, it goes up about $200,000. Okay.

And that little bit, $200,000, is it rolled into these numbers already, into the deficit already? Okay. That was my question.

It's already included.

How much money did we bring in just from millage last year.

7.2.

Commission are y'all OK with these 3 courses of action at this point I a static a half a male and a male increase for running the numbers.

Yeah options are good was.

What document do you want from us? You said you would like a document. What document would you like from us?

The one we started with tonight without the cuts.

You know where it's got the list of all your revenues and all your expenditures by departments and all that? I think that's what we need to do is just all of us scrub it, sit down with the city manager or the finance director and ask questions and look at options.

All right, we started the evening off at 6.3, something like that.

Something like that.

We will produce that document and get that to you.

Do we have any other regulars that want to speak tonight from the audience? Are you all good? Appreciate you all being here with us. I know this is kind of painful sausage making to watch, but it is what it is. Any other questions from the commission for Kiki or the city manager or our legal beagle? Anybody? Bueller, Bueller? Most of y'all are old enough to know that. City manager, you got anything, sir?

No, sir. Appreciate y'all's time tonight.

Mayor, if I can just say one thing. There was some discussion about how high you could go. And it requires, if it's a one 10% increase or higher, it requires four fifths, basically four of the five. Anything higher than one 10% has got to require a unanimous vote of the commission. But you can go up to 10 mils.

You can increase up to 10 mils?

10 mils is the constitutional max. Yes. But anything above 110% of what your previous rate is rollback rate requires a unanimous vote of the commission.

If you look at the I'm trying to remember when it comes out probably in August or so you have that sheet you have to fill out from the state that's got all those numbers in that you know what I'm talking about is that normally August or September?

We do that in September.

September. So if you look at like September of last year and the agenda, there's a sheet in there and it kind of explains what you just said, but it actually has like specific numbers associated with it.

It should also be noted that he said the rollback rate. So our rollback rate is probably going to be more like 3.7 mils. Because it's what it would cost in today's money to fund. I might be saying this backwards. Can you explain that? You can explain it better.

So the rollback rate does get very confusing. What the rollback rate means is the rate, the millage the city would assess to collect the exact same amount of dollars. Right. So as your property values go up, your millage rate goes down because of the multiplication.

Yeah, but it's like if inflation didn't exist, basically.

If you wanted to collect the exact same amount of dollars. That's what the rollback rate does.

Right, exactly. Yeah, right. Yeah, right.

That's correct. So city attorney, Rob, what I am, did I understand you right when you said 110% of the current mail of the rollback, the rollback, rollback rate. So you're not saying like 110% of 4.05 would be 4.455, right? That's not what you're saying.

No, whatever the rollback rate is, and that'll be determined based on the numbers that we get when we get closer to the budget.

Gotcha.

It's 110% of that number.

The costing factor for an equitable or equal amount of funding. Exactly, yes. Gotcha, gotcha, okay.

Yeah, like I said, if you go look at, I think it's last September or August when Kiki puts that sheet in there, it's got all the forms she's got to fill out to the state. And it's got numbers and everything and explains all that in there.

The state considers a tax increase anything higher than the rollback rate, even though a lot of people don't consider it because your millage isn't changing.

All right. Commissioners, do y'all have any parting shots before we wrap up? If not, thank y'all, everybody, for your time tonight. Have a good night.

Thank you.