City Council - Regular Meeting

Ready counselors, all right Hey folks, welcome to the Monday June 15th City Council capital budget workshop Jim, would you please call the roll?

I'm so Henry. Yeah, councillor goaler. Yeah, councillor Dom. Yeah vice chair champagne. Oh Councillor Schwan? Here. Councillor Gray? Here. Chair Palumbo?

Here. And let it be known, Vice Chair Champagne is on his way. He had some family obligation. He held up a little bit, but he will be here. As we could rise for the Pledge of Allegiance, I forget which side I... Councillor Gould, would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

Thank you, counselor. All right. The reason we're here, agenda item number four, City of Marco Island budget priorities, capital workshop. Casey?

Thank you, Council. I think we should have a pretty succinct and organized workshop this afternoon. Mostly we want to give you an opportunity to answer any questions you have as we're building the budget. And today we're just talking about capital. I want to introduce to you our budget manager who is here, Melissa Ingram. Hinton, and also our finance manager, Chase Calloway. Actually, Carol McDermott is out today due to jury duty. And our finance director, Marsha Solo, is also out today due to both a planned vacation but unfortunately also a death in the family. So Melissa and Chase have it for today. And Melissa is going to kick us off and then turn it over to the department heads to do their presentations.

Perfect. Thank you.

Good afternoon, council. Melissa Hinton, budget manager. today's conversation is going to be about our 2027 proposed capital initiative items currently what's been requested for the general fund is about 428 thousand dollars for building services we're looking at 225 thousand dollars water sewer we're asking for two million four hundred and fifty thousand All total for all funds, $3,103,000. With that, I'm going to go over briefly the items that's being requested, starting off with fleet and facilities. And if in your packet, this is your items that's listed under proposed capital initiative items. For fleet and facilities, these are in order of priority. Mackle Park tot lot resurfacing for $158,000. City Hall elevator modification, 165,000. Marco, Mackle Park, excuse me, bollard replacement, 45,000. PCP electrical box, 13,000. PD badge reader, 17,000. And PD parking lot paving for 30,000. These are indicated as being unfunded because currently at the moment we don't know what your thoughts are or what's your request or what you want to do with this. So we mark these as being unfunded and you can give us direction as to how you want to fund these if you want to fund them. We're going to also have a presentation by IT, a little overview of what some of their accomplishments have been and what they're looking for in the future. Fire is going to be presenting their request for a ladder truck replacement and fire engine replacement. Public Works is going to be given also an overview, as well as Dan's going to be given a presentation for his handicapped bathroom and front desk remodeling. And Water Sewers has... the South Water Treatment Plant, fiberglass pipe replacement, and odor control improvements, and advanced wastewater treatment plant improvements. So with that, I'm gonna turn this over to Joe for his presentation.

Joe, welcome. Good afternoon, Councilors. Joe Pirelli, Fleet Facilities Director. Quickly, we'll go over some of the capital projects that we've completed in FY26 so far. We replaced the annex roof. New fire alarm enunciator was installed at the PD. That's the alarm you kept hearing out in the front every time you walked out there. We replaced one air handler unit at the annex building. New drinking fountains were installed at Mackle Park and Winterberry. We replaced all the irrigation at Jane Hitler Park. Purchased and installed 17 new stone garbage cans to replace all the old metal ones that were starting to rust and look bad throughout all of our parks. Purchased and installed all new weather-resistant picnic tables to replace all the metal tables that were rusty and looking bad in our parks. Repaired water leak at the Fire Station 51 that everybody here knew about. and redid the shower bases that were bad. We installed new sensors and temperature control through the city council outside air unit and throughout all of the building to get better control of all the temperature here, which seems to really have helped. We removed and replaced the old air nasium at Mackle Park, and we removed the old racket center over at the, or the building over there at the racket center and replaced with green space. So for FY27, we are asking for $158,000 to replace the tot lot, which has been brought up here before. The edges of it are cracked, making it unsafe for the kids to play on, and that would be resurfacing of the entire lot. The city hall elevator, which most of you have been trapped in at one point or another, would be replaced with $165,000. And that would be bringing it all up to code, the electrical, the cooling in the room, and any code deficiencies that are already existing. 45,000 to replace the remaining bollards. I was able to replace $10,000 worth of bollards, and those lights are actually coming this week. So we'll end up putting those in this week, and we're going to do that in-house. And those are the 10 bollard lights that we were reported that are completely out and we just could not fix because they're in such bad shape. Oh, and I'm sorry, that would actually be the bar lights that are all the way around Mackle Park Pond and all the bike paths. We would do the VCP electrical box replacement. You can see here the bottom of it's completely corroded, letting in water, and we're having other problems with that, so we've been trying to make all the repairs to the electrical issues, and this would do that for $13,000. $17,000 would be to put badge access in another location at the PD that we are looking to do. And then purpose or for the PD parking lot seal coat that's just replacing reseal coating and striping and adding Parking blocks that are all deteriorated in the parking lot of the PD and part of that battery of the annex Is there any questions?

counselors light signs with questions All right, we'll start with council gray Thank you

The repairs at Station 51, what was the final bill on that? Did we come in under budget?

It was like $2,000 under budget. It was only a little bit.

Okay, so it's done, it's complete, check that box?

Yes.

Because I saw, and I don't want to drift, but I saw in the fire budget about $50,000 for Station 51. Okay. That's not you, though, I should ask.

It depends on what the line item was. I can't speak to it without knowing, but chief.

We'll save that for later. Sure. Does the enterprise car leasing project fall under your purview?

It's not through this capital. I believe it's debt services. Is that how we're doing it this year? Yeah.

No, I recognize, it was actually one question I had in the fire truck too, but if it's a capital lease, then you would normally reflect the asset on the books and show the amortization schedule. I don't want to dive into it, but we've been at the Enterprise Project for a year. What can we share with how that's going and its operating effectiveness, et cetera?

So at this point in time, we're still receiving vehicles from the first order. So we have not received all of them yet. We still probably have about... 12 vehicles 15 vehicles that still need to come in and uh i've actually asked them to give us uh you know an update on that so that i can do a presentation and i'll let you know when i can do that with like different like what we've actually saved so far with anything with you know maintenance and fuel charges and all that so i can give you a better picture of that

Thank you. But are those capital leases or operating leases? Do you know? Because I'm just trying to understand if we really essentially own the vehicle, and the interest carry is just a cost of service. So they are operating. Right now, yeah. Thank you. That's it.

Alan, do I need to acknowledge Vice Chair Champagne on the roll motion in a second, or just let the record show that he's please refuck the record that Vice Chair Champagne is here? All right. Councillor Henry, you're up next.

Thank you for putting all your efforts into this. One question I had about the tot lot, because you are very good at thinking outside the box. What I believe you're talking here is redoing the same thing. Is there other options, once again, other surfaces, other kind of materials, that would be a totally different idea for it, but something that would be able to withstand the weather better than what's already there?

So nothing's been investigated other than replacing it as is, but I can definitely go down that route and see if we can do a different subsurface and then do like a rubber coating over the top that would seal it and maybe make it last longer.

I would feel more comfortable with an idea. And then going back and looking at your list from last year, the blind replacement, did that happen or is it not a priority anymore?

So we were able to use some of the, for lack of a better term, the bucket funds that we have from FY26. So we wanted to get some of those out of the way rather than bring them to council and try to get them, you know, next year.

So it's taken care of?

Yeah, they're being taken care of.

Okay. What about the pavilion?

The pavilion is not being taken care of. I actually looked into a restoration company to have that repaired, and I think I can do that in-house, or not in-house, but within my budget.

Okay. And what about the Thor replacement?

That's in the – oh, sorry, that is being done this year with the funds that we have in that account already.

Okay, great. The VCP boxes, because that was on last year's list as well, is this something – and I think I asked this last year as well, but I'm going to ask again – will that also take care of all the power outlets to all of the locations?

This will not. That's a separate project.

Is that something in a monetary savings way, if you're doing one thing as a part of the scope of work, that you could incorporate that too? Absolutely. Two birds, one stone? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don't know how much more that would... If they're coming out for X amount of dollars, be able to...

I had a price at one time to do it, how Parks had liked us to do it, and I think it was about $8,000, so I can add that too.

I mean, that does make sense if you're... I mean, it doesn't make sense to piecemeal if you can get the whole project done at once. And then for... And I could be jumping in. Yeah, for the PD badge, for the police department's badge access. For $17,000, how many does that get you?

One. There's nothing there. So the reason it's so expensive, you're not just running the badge access. You have to actually cut the electronic strike into the frame of the door. OK, so it's for one. It's more invasive.

OK. And on the parking lot. Flooding is an issue. We've all walked through the water at 10 o'clock at night. Would that be fixed over on that side as well, or is this purely just to pave it

purely just paving and getting it up to standards.

So once again, would it make sense to be able to hook up to some, put an extra drain in or something like that if you're starting the product? What would something like that?

We can go down that route. We have drainage issues in the back, or I should say the San Carlos side of the police department that floods every time it rains. And I started looking into pricing on that, and it was quite expensive because of the fact that we have to have it redesigned. And you have to have a civil engineer come in and completely redo it. So that can go down that route, but it was much more expensive.

Does it make sense to spend good money on a bad situation rather than?

It's purely, well, it's not purely, but a good chunk of it is to also protect the pavement that's there so that it doesn't keep deteriorating. So at one point I'll have to do a complete resurface. So it's partially that as well. And we were trying to be fiscally responsible and not shoot for the moon.

It's putting lipstick on a puddle.

Truth.

Okay, that's all I had.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Schwab?

Yes, thank you, Joe, for your presentation and actually several of my questions you just answered. But I do want to thank you very much for refreshing what you did for the city in 2026, some very important things, the beach and other areas, and so greatly appreciate that with the Thor and the trash receptacles, et cetera. So thank you, Joe.

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor.

Councillor Goeller. Joe, thank you for the presentation. And uranasium looks fantastic. I've been looking at it. I have a question for you to pick up what Councillor Henry just asked about refurnishing that, repaving that basketball court for tuts. If we could do a better product, perhaps more durable for the for our weather. So you said – you have the – like last year, you found the weather-resistant picnic tables at Meckle Park, and they're fantastic. And actually, I have seen more than a couple of these boxes that you have – electrical boxes that you said that you are replacing at Veterans Community Park. And how old is our Veterans Community Park? It's not really that old. How old are those boxes?

Do you remember when, I think, 2017?

Yeah, so my question is, is there any way we can found more durable materials to, these things are really always exposed, and every time, as many we have, every time replaced. Just a thought. Sure. But everything else, thank you. It looks good.

And we've been doing other repairs. There's a lot of electrical issues that we've found throughout the parks because of the surge damage that we've gotten through the hurricanes. So we've been chipping away at all those electrical repairs.

Okay. Thank you, sir.

Joe, thank you for the presentation. Most of my questions were answered. The electric box was on my question, too, and I was just thinking something simple, like government's great at building things and horrible at maintaining them sometimes, not you personally, the whole system. Can't we just spray it with undercoating or something? That'll last for years to come. That'd be weather resistant. That was just my simple, pragmatic thought on that. I do agree that the air nasium is beautiful. When I first started here in this job, I would argue and I would say rollback was not perfect. It left some holes, and one of them was that air nasium for seven or eight years. I'm proud that you got it done. I'm proud to have been part of helping to get that done, especially for the kids in the community. I do want to focus in the $17,000 badge access. That just seems expensive to me. Can you break down what is the cost of the actual badge? swipe or the material versus the labor. Do you know the breakdown?

So I was kind of working with Jose on this, and you have the electrician, you have the electrical requirements that you have to have brought to it, and then the company will come and cut the strike into the door, hook all that up, and run the badge access. So I think we just took like a basic guess to that.

Do you know how far we're running electric? Look, I defend staff and your knowledge and ability to get things done. This just seems like an expensive number to me. to hook up a swipe code in a door. It seems like if you and I were DUI, I know we can't, we're not government, but if we were DUI, we'd cut a hole, put it in, run a line. thousand dollars worth of material.

I think the largest part of the cost is actually cutting the electronic strike into the frame, which does not exist right now. It's not running the actual badge access.

Is there any place to get, anybody come in with additional quotes or is this one of those areas where we've only had one or two people?

This was based off of an average of what we've spent on them in the past. So yeah, we'll go and get the quotes and then hopefully we come in under.

Okay, sounds like you did your due diligence and I appreciate the start to that and we'll talk about that again. Dr. Lucius, you're up.

Thank you. I just wanted to highlight two things. One is I remember last year Joe got some quotes to essentially redesign the PD back parking lot because of the drainage issues and it was somewhere around 200 or 250,000. So that would be a significant project if that's something that the council is interested in doing. This is more of just maintaining what we have and trying to at least keep it up so that it doesn't get worse. But more importantly, I want to provide some context for this list. So this is our only general fund list of capital requests at a total of $428,000. However, they're listed as unfunded because there is no funding source for these capital requests. As you may remember, when we did our revenue workshop, Melissa presented if you keep millage neutral, we're looking at an additional revenue of about $464,000. And if you recall, she also highlighted our anticipated expenses. We know our property and liability insurance is going up. We know our health insurance is going up. We know we have contractual wage obligations with police and fire and contractual pension contributions with police and fire. So just with those four alone, your $464,000 in additional revenue is eaten up. So there's no additional revenue for any new capital requests. So right now, these are kind of a wish list, things that we believe we need to do. We're not saying they're an emergency. We're not saying anything's going to fall down if we don't do them. But this is one of those things, or six of those things, that if we don't do them, they will get worse and become more expensive. So as we work through the budget, we're not asking you to make any decision today, but we are letting you know that... Doing anything additional in our budget both operating and capital would require either a millage increase Or using reserves or cutting from somewhere else now if the transportation bond passes in August that frees up some capital from our public works and capital improvement plan that we may be able to shift to parks. But other than that, these are completely unfunded at this time.

Casey, thank you.

Guys, any other questions for Joe? All right, Joe, thank you. Say welcome.

Good afternoon, City Council. Jose Duran, IT Director. Going over our FY27 capital budget. So for our current capital, we do not have any new initiatives. So our network equipment upgrades, this piece replaces approximately 75 switches with a seven to nine year refresh cycle. IT SAN off-site data storage recovery storage and backups that is equipment that's currently set up at our PD data center we're in discussions with Lee County EOC on staging that equipment at their category 5 rated flood elevated EOC on Ortiz Avenue in Lee County and I'll be presenting something on operating because there is a cost to that there's some lease program that they have AV equipment maintenance, this covers our Pantel Zoom camera and the AV control board for council chambers. Our PC refresh program, this is 245 PCs with a mix of laptops and desktops with a refresh cycle of four to five years. And then our Dell KVM, UPSs, racks, this is all to maintain the current operations at our Fire Station 50 data center. So going into more detail on the data center server upgrades capital, this was a three-year project. FY24 focused on our server hardware upgrades. This gave us redundant hardware. FY25 addressed the local storage needs. This moved us from mechanical drives, spinners, over to flash storage. So much, much faster on that end. FY26 addressed our cloud storage, cloud backups, and server replication to the cloud. So overall, this was a major project to make our city's technology a lot more reliable, better protected. We upgraded our server hardware, improved our local data storage, and added cloud storage and backup and replication. This overall strengthened the city's data, allowing us to quickly restore critical systems in the event of any kind of hardware failure, outage, or emergency. And this is reflected in our lower IT ticket counts over the past probably six months with our reports that we've been presenting. So capital comparison for FY26 and 27, total for FY27 is 153,240 versus FY26 at 401,240, a decrease of 248,000. And that's primarily due to the substantial completion of the city's data center server upgrades capital project that I spoke on earlier. And with that, also, there are some shared costs between these items. It's based on full-time employees, 54% on the general fund, building services at 10%, and 36% for water and sewer. So we're trying to split the cost of a lot of these upgrades and capital items evenly. And with that, I'll take any questions.

We're going to say thank you. Counselors, any light signs for questions? Counselor Gray, you're up first.

First, thank you for all you do. I am not a technology expert. Actually, I'm impaired. How do we make sure we're spending this money as prudently as we can? Is there any check and balance to how you let these contracts and

So we do get these quoted out by several vendors. We use SHI, CDWG, several vendors to kind of quote the equipment out. We also, as a team, the IT team, we get together and evaluate each of the proposals that are presented to us. So for that three-year project, We actually even moved vendors at one point, one, because of cost, and two, well, you know, things changed, hardware got better, and we actually did that in the middle of a project even.

Thank you. Great answer. So now I'll ask my trick question. The city website, I don't know if that technology falls under your governance, and how might you view the quality of our city website and whether we could be doing more to improve the quality of our website?

So I am involved on the city website to a degree. Congratulations. With that, there's always newer and better products. It's more of a cost a lot of times that we have to evaluate whether it's efficient to kind of move that route. But if there's something new, you know, you can always come to me and present and we can kind of look into it. But we do kind of evaluate vendors. We recently moved to a new vendor, I'd say about a year, year and a half ago, because of that. But, yeah, so our city website did go through a revamp about a year and a half ago.

So it's under review now. I don't have the skill set to tell you how I would retool it. I was just trying to determine how good we feel about what our offering is to the community right now and whether it could be better. But I think you're on a journey.

Yeah, and one other piece, and I think Joan will probably speak on it for the operating, we're looking into some ADA compliance pieces for the website to help folks in that realm. Thank you. I'm done. Thank you, Council.

Vice Chair Champagne?

Thank you for the presentation. By the way, are you involved in any local municipality consortium for buying power?

Not directly. We do use – there's two of them. I can't remember them off the top of my head. But there are two that we mainly use. And as far as consortiums, we do work with FLEGISA. So anything that they're involved in, we also piggyback off of.

How about an ad hoc kind of activity? to just brainstorm with other IT municipality leaders. Do you participate in any of those?

Yeah, so that's for LAGISA. Oh, okay. And we meet monthly, remotely, and then we meet twice yearly, physically.

Oh, very good. Is there a chance of ever informing the council as to how those meetings have gone?

I can definitely put that on the IT report that I provide monthly.

At least from my point of view, I'd like to hear what some of the concepts are that people are talking about. Sure. This doesn't directly involve your department because I think we're using outside software for AI. Is there a opportunity to even enhance the use of AI in the city government?

So I do have certain tools that we could use. There's AI receptionists. There's tools that will automatically reformat documents. Some we're already using. The AI receptionist, that's a new tool. I was kind of going to present that. But really, in the end, ultimately, it's up to managers and directors whether or not they want to go that route.

Yeah, I think it would be helpful again, only from my perspective, if we made all departments far more informed about the value of AI and also the danger. It's not just positive. There are some dangers involved. But nonetheless, I think we could substantially benefit from a cost point of view if we learn how to use it better. It seems to be much quicker. And as I've already admitted, you probably do have to provide some backup to double-check some of the information it produces. But even that might still make it worthwhile to use it more extensively. That's it for me. Great questions. Thank you. Councillor Schwan.

Yes, Jose, thank you for the presentation and also the answers and to the questions that were presented to you. And I just wanted to say a side note that I so appreciate your professionalism that you've shared with me when I have questions. And of all of your staff, they've been very helpful to my IT questions. So thank you.

I appreciate it.

Light science. Jose, thank you for the presentation. I'll take my turn. You know, we spend a lot of time talking about quality of life issues on the island. You see us pick up a whole noise. And these are important for the everyday living. We don't spend as much talking about hardening the island, king tides, those things, which I'll start to direct the conversation to. Cyber security. I I'm at a loss here because I can't speak your vernacular, but is there anything in this budget – you know we have some tax reform coming up. We're a very conservative community. We're going to be looking for funds either through taxation or savings. Is there anything you're not including here because you're afraid of the budgeting constrictions that we should have as a city?

Not on the capital side, but possibly on the operating. We have pushed out new tools, an AI training that we push out to employees for cybersecurity. That's a new feature we just pushed out, I'd say about two, three months ago, just more focusing on the new attacks that are coming that are based on AI. Another piece is our cybersecurity company that evaluates our data center 24-7. That's CrowdStrike. We've been renegotiating with them to add some AI tools on that front as well.

Very good. Thank you. Casey, I know we're going to be looking at the possibility of cuts or considering them or increases. I didn't see – are there any budget cuts planned for the technological department or –

I ask every department to cut 5% from their budget, and you'll see those cuts in their operating budgets.

Perfect. So we'll see that long before, as we're just very early on in this process. Okay. I look forward to seeing those and have the unfortunate decisions of weighing what's going to be expendable or not. With that, I have no other questions. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you.

Chief Byrne, welcome. Council good afternoon Chris Byrne fire rescue chief here to present the fire rescue department capital budget and A LITTLE BIT ABOUT OUR FISCAL YEAR 26 ACCOMPLISHMENTS. THIS PAST THURSDAY WE TOOK DELIVERY OF OUR HIGH WATER FIRE ENGINE THAT IN PART WAS FUNDED THROUGH A LEGISLATIVE PRIORITY AND AS YOU ARE AWARE THIS IS FOR US TO USE DURING OUR RESPONSE IN FLOODING EVENTS WHETHER THAT BE A STORM SURGE FLOOD OR A HEAVY RAIN TYPE OF STREET FLOODING INCIDENT. We also purchased Jaws of Life, which is an extrication hearse tool for this vehicle. And then if you recall last year, the laryngoscopes, they were not funded, but we did fortunately find a funding source through state EMS grant fees. So this year, probably historical, the Fire Rescue Department is not asking for any capital funds for FY27. However, I am presenting two commitments that I would need in FY27. So the first one, again, I brought this to you last year. This is the replacement of our ladder truck. The overall purchase price of this truck is $2.4 million. The current truck we have was purchased on a 10 year turn in lease. That turn in is coming up in FY28 which is why a decision needs to be made no later than October of this year. If we do not turn it in in FY28, the lease has a $250,000 balloon payment. And I really am trying to prevent putting city funds into that balloon payment and taking ownership of this vehicle. As you see, we're spending a significant amount in repairs, $90,000 this past fiscal year. But the most significant point to this problem is the apparatus out-of-service time. And then in 2025, the truck was out of service, 160 days for repairs, nearly half the year. And to date, when I wrote this, 37 days in 2026, but that's already up to 50 days. So in looking at this proposal, the annual lease payment is a rough estimate at $300,000 a year. We have available debt service funding from this current lease of the current truck. Typically, how the city's function would be, to apply that debt service to the next vehicle. And so we would apply that $101,585,000 debt service to the debt service on this new vehicle. However, there is a shortfall. So with a FY, within an October deadline, decision to order this vehicle, we would expect a FY28 delivery. And again, there's no funding requirements, no funding needed until the truck is delivered, which would be an FY28. The next replacement is a fire engine replacement that would be about 18 years old. I brought this in front of you last year also. This truck is suffering some latent problems due to storm surge corrosion that happened during Hurricane Irma. We continue to having significant electrical issues with this truck, and the body has some corrosion. In 2024, it required an engine rebuild of $50,000, and again, it's just getting, it's aging and has some of this prior damage to it. However, as was brought up with IT, we do have a procurement opportunity. The Greater Naples Fire Department went out for a bid on a large order of fire engines, and we're able to piggyback that bid which will reduce our delivery time from 36 months to 19 months, and we will achieve cost savings. If you recall last year, this funding request was for $1.2 million. So this is a $200,000 savings between doing it in this manner. We would estimate purchasing this through a 10-year capital lease. Annual payment would be around $84,000. We would use some of our existing capital funding for a down payment, and we currently will have some debt service funding available of $67,000 when we satisfy a lease of one of our other fire engines this summer in August. Again, no FY27 funding is necessary. We will just be bringing both these trucks to you in FY28 for a commitment to order. This is what our capital budget projects look like. Number one item there of $45,000 a year. That replaces eight sets of bunker gear per year. And then the fire station 5051 of 89,000 is a capital maintenance and capital improvement budget for each fire station. And beyond that, all of our vehicles at this point are acquired through leasing. And with that, I'll answer any questions.

Chief, thank you. Counselors, light signs for questions. Counselor Gray.

Thank you. The answer to Station 5051, I guess there's a split between maintenance and improvements. So there are some needed improvements at 50 and 51? Yes.

Yes, there have been. Joe and I have talked about some improvements. Right now, primarily to the apparatus bay floors, looking at an epoxy finish type of improvement. The concrete has a lot of concrete settles and cracks and that sort of thing. That's just one that comes to mind. The past year, we've done some apparatus bay improvements ceiling fans to help cool the trucks when they come back and cool the personnel, as well as Station 51 does not have that, so that's something we'd be looking at in the future. But this past year, every bit of this funding and more went into the water leak situation at Station 51.

I understand. Thank you for that perspective. So you've done a great job of explaining we are in a high-risk environment which eats your trucks. salt water, et cetera. I'm just curious, when you mentioned we had on the capital lease, if we bought the fire truck, which I am not recommending, I think your recommendations are excellent, shouldn't that have been in the budget or forecasted capital expenditures? Because that's sort of the completion of a lease deal. You don't have to really answer that now, but to me, we should look at a lease in its totality and understand that. And the one that really jumps out at me is a new fire truck, which I'm sure we're going to support. It's got about a $300,000 capital expenditure attached to that, if you look at it over a 10-year period. So the word lease is a difficult mathematical thing for me to sort. I don't see why we wouldn't want to include the expected annual CapEx piece of a 10-year lease as part of that capital expenditure budget going forward. That's all. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Henry.

Thank you, Christopher, and everybody for the great report. One question I have is on the ladder truck replacement. Last year you kind of had a forewarning and you brought that up and you asked for $164,000. This year you're asking for $198,000. Is there a reason?

The truck was $2.2 million last year and it's $2.4 million this year.

Okay. And then, once again, same questions I asked Joe. Last year, you answered about the Munker gear, the 45K. What about the medicine cabinet that you had asked for last year? Did that get acquired?

That was not funded.

I guess what I'm trying to feel, is it no longer on the wish list, or is it a want, not a need?

It is a wanted need. But we understand the fiscal situation at the moment.

And then the struts that were on the list for last year, are they no longer?

No, those have been acquired.

Okay. That's it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Counselor. Counselor Goehler.

Thank you for the presentation. I have two questions. One of them, what is the lifespan of these trucks?

The life expectancy? Yes. Our preference is 10 years for a ladder truck and 12 years for an engine.

So every 10 years we might need $1.2 million, $1.4 million, and by the time we'll be $2.5 million.

In doing it over 10 years, you're not hitting that point of your repair costs going up, yet you still have some resale value in the vehicle.

And how high do they keep the resale value?

Oh, that's just depending on the market.

And how well you maintain it as well. Correct. Yeah.

And how well it performs as far as out-of-service time and that sort of thing is what a potential buyer would be looking at.

Okay. When we leased these vehicles, did we lease them brand new?

Yes. That current ladder truck is leased.

So we leased it brand new, right?

Yes. Okay.

Can I ask you something out of the top of your head? How many times have you used this truck within the past 10 years?

When it's in service, it's used every day. It runs emergency calls every day.

We use it every single day, right? So we're getting our money's worth, right?

Yes, we would just like it to be available more often.

Yeah, we need it.

I don't know if we got our money's worth.

That was a funny answer. I think that's all I have. Yeah, at leasing and buying is just Okay, that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Council. Councilor Schwan?

Thank you, Chief, for the presentation. Just one follow-up question. In regards to the increase of the $200,000 from the latter price that you presented, it was at $2.2 million last year, and now for that delivery in 2028, it's looking at $2.4 million, a bump of $200,000. So if we would not have that delivery in 28 and if it was projected out farther, do you foresee that we're going to see these continual bumps 200,000 plus moving forward? Yes.

They've not stopped bumping since 2020. Thank you.

Chief, thank you for the presentation. I have some of the same questions and these are just practical in my mind but they might not be for you. I'm just looking at it as a layperson and you've heard me mention them before. So the ladder truck, I agree with Councillor Gouler, but here would be my question. How many times, if you could find out if you know, is it actually used as a ladder truck as opposed to going on every medical call to being prepared to go on the next ladder truck call?

Sure. I don't know if you know that or if you can get that to us at some point. Well, I can comment on one item. It doesn't go on all medical emergencies. It's actually the last in the line to go out for that. And while I don't know the number of times we've used it in a year period, I will tell you the incidence, very common, are construction accidents, where a construction worker gets injured at an elevated level and the only safe way to bring them down, especially if they have a head injury or spinal injury, is in a basket, which we use the ladder truck for. The other thing we use it for commonly is on our commercial buildings that often have rooftop air conditioning or rooftop mechanical items that will have a problem and we need to get up on the roof. And it's also the safest way to get firefighters on a roof.

Appreciate that answer. Clarifies a few things. We're taking the actual fire engine out then for the medical calls that's being prepared for another fire calls. Did I understand that properly as we've talked about this over time?

Yes, we do use the trucks that are available to run medical emergencies as those medical emergencies come in. Often, however, you will see a small what is called a squad, which is a two-person, really it's a pickup truck. You will see that, and that's often the first truck out on medical emergencies. And as I've shown you in prior presentations, we have challenges with overlapping concurrent calls or emergencies. Multiple emergencies occur at the same time.

And I do appreciate that, and I keep beating my head with that, that we don't have two full staffs that we have all those. That's why we have to work in this type of – MR. We could. MR. I also think of this from the standpoint of risk management, risk management. Do we leave the big fire truck? Do we get to the fastest truck to the medical call? Do we take a chance that we don't have as many fires as medical calls, and can we save more lives on the medical call side? I know I promised to get together with you, and I haven't yet, so I don't – you don't need any answers for all this right now. But I do think a station, a little substation on the south end of the island and maybe one even on the north, if we would be so bold as – if we have to talk about tax cuts and police departments, Station 51, how does that fit into everything? I'll get together. These are the questions I'm going to be asking. I don't want to limit you. I want to risk-manage for the best possibility to save lives on the island. In the perfect world, we give you every single thing we have, but the budget just doesn't allow for fully that.

Yeah, I'd be happy to meet with you.

Very good. Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Thank you, Chief. Thank you. Oh, sorry, Dr. Lucius, I see your light just popped on.

Yes, I just want to confirm with the fire chief that these requests have not been ordered yet, right? So we would want to put them on a future agenda for the council to give us to vote that we go ahead and order these units. Is that correct?

Correct. We would come forward. The ladder truck is the most timely, so that would be in October. We would come forward with the proposal and a copy of the lease agreement for your approval or for your considerations.

Okay. So unless there's any strong disagreement by the council, this is just a workshop, so we're not asking you to vote, but we will put these items on an agenda for you to actually vote on so that we can move forward either with ordering them or not ordering them. But it's something we have to do now, even though there's no fiscal impact until FY28.

Agreed, Casey. It's time sensitive, and the more we wait on these, the more they just keep going up. Thank you. Better we have it before us for some decision down the road. Councillor Gray, I see your light pop back on. Do you have a follow-up before we let Chief Byrne go?

Yeah, I just wanted to pay a compliment to the Chief. You've done an excellent job convincing me that you're trying to... walk the line between maintaining and repairing and deciding when we're at the end of the useful life of one of the trucks, and it is best to exit that truck from an economic value standpoint. So I completely agree with what's just been said here, but one of the things I value is people that are disciplined with maintenance and repair and then try and be mindful of the terminal value of that equipment and when to exit it, and you're doing that, and thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Chief.

Who we got? Is it Justin or not? Here we go. Justin, welcome.

Thank you. Martin's getting up to correct presentation on the board. So good afternoon, Council. Justin Martin, Public Works Director. And for the Public Works FY27 capital budget, we only have four items, and none of those are new initiatives. We'll go ahead and start here. So some of the FY26 capital projects that either we're working on or have completed this year, everybody knows about the North Collier, North Barfield Intersection Improvements Project. That has a completion date of the end of September, but we're actually ahead of schedule. We should be able to open that intersection up in the July as you've noticed they've already repaved Collier Boulevard today they're working on milling Barfield Drive and they should be finishing up the paving on that the middle of this week there's still some work to be done on the traffic signals above and the cabinets and so all of that will be done over the next month or so so we're well ahead of schedule there Sandhill Street shared path is it's exactly that it's a continuation of the of the 8-foot wide shared pathway on Sandhill Street from Leland going all the way to Winterberry and it connects to the Calusa Park trail that's on Winterberry so we're putting in a crosswalk there with a flashing beacon to cross the Winterberry that's moving along well and it's also had a schedule The Sand Dollar Spit restoration, that's every year we have some restoration that we need to do there. That was completed prior to the sea turtle nesting season. The South Collier Boulevard exfiltration swales, that project's complete, and that one goes from Huron all the way to the end of Collier Court. The annual paving, Fruitland Avenue, Neal Barway, Tripoli Court, Antilles Court, Hartley Street, Admiralty Court, Hunt Court, Strawberry Court, Marquesas Court, and Wells Court was all done with some really good... bid pricing so we actually had some money left over in the the existing allocated funds for for paving so I'll be coming to you this evening with a change order to add to that contract so we can get more streets paved this year and so we'll be discussing that tonight the canal aeration pilot we started taking surface water quality samples and testing two weeks ago and today we started up the compressors on that so that is in the works and that goes through this summer through when the the the the canal water is the warmest and so by the end of September we'll have enough information on that with the water sampling and testing to be able to come up with a recommendation of whether to continue this pilot in future years or not. So Peru Sea Grape Swallow Bike Lanes, also known as the Collier Alternate Bike Lanes, that project is ongoing. That's on schedule right now. The good news is we're doing it during summer and a lot of the residents are not around. It's a lot of disruption, but it's going to be a beautiful project when it's done, similar to Landmark Street. Pavement manhole bump and dip repairs, that's complete. That was to address some of these worst manhole bumps where the pavement settled around where we did the septic to sewer project. the public works facility at Southwater treatment plant that's currently out to bid that was previously allocated in fiscal 24 so the bids open on June the 25th and I'll be coming to you for contract award in July on the July 20th Council agenda mm-hmm traffic signal control replacements That's at all the other intersections throughout the island. These are to modernize the traffic signal controls, which have been in place since 2005. They're eight generations behind. And so that project will be ongoing this summer, and we'll get all those controllers replaced. The North Barfield and South Heathwood crosswalks, the actual hard infrastructure has been put in. We just need to finish up the actual crosswalk striping, and that will be completed over the next month. And we have the new citywide landscape maintenance contract, which started in October, and that's ongoing. And the new contractor seems to be doing fine on that. So here's just some of the projects that we're doing in FY26. The picture on the right, that's right along Winterberry Drive, some of the rooms that we had to put in for that eight-foot-wide shared path. This is the intersection project that we talked about. This is getting close to completion, about another month or so. annual paving these are all the streets that we got paved plus in addition to this we were able to pave with the existing contract not with the change water swallow avenue so that when the bike lanes are added you you'll have nice new pavement all along swallow avenue that that um that street gets a lot of traffic from pedestrians and bicyclists and people who lived out in that area This is the canaleration project. This is between Dan River Court and Hollyhock and that canal. And as I mentioned, that's ongoing. We'll have data for that later this year. So here are the four projects that Public Works is proposing for FY27. It's four. First one is street resurfacing. Given the limited funds, we're asking only for a million dollars this year. If you look further on where you see FY 29, 30, 31, that is that 1.68 million is what it takes to actually keep up on a 10-year paving cycle. The $7,200,000 in FY28 is the catch-up paving, but that's not FY27, that's FY28. So if the bond comes through, then that's when we'll be looking at doing that. The bike lanes and shared paths construction, that is actually allocated for the, excuse me, Bald Eagle Drive bike lanes between San Marco and Collier Boulevard to widen that and put in some bike lanes along there. So that's $1.5 million for that. The bridge replacement, that $2.5 million that you see on there, that's actually for the Caxambas Court Bridge, which DOT is finishing up the design on that, and they're going out to bid. this year and so in the fall we need to have the funds in place to be able to go out to bid they won't go out to bid unless we actually sign the funding agreement which will be coming to you in July 6th And so just to give you a heads up on that project, the city's component that we need to fund is 4.5 million. We already have 2 million in previous allocations for the West Winterberry Bridge. So this is what we would need to add in order to be able to replace that bridge, the remainder of it, will be funded not only by DOT, but federal highway grants that we were told would be applied to that. So that's why instead of having to fund $7.5 million, we only need to fund $4.5. And then the citywide drainage improvements project, this is every year where we have repairs between the lots. If you recall, some months ago I had to come back here for some additional funding because we didn't fund the full amount last year. And we know that we spend about this much every year, and we had to get approval to get money from the unrestricted reserves in order to fund it for the remainder of the fiscal year. So to fully fund it is $1.3 million. So adding all of that up, we're at $6.3 million total for FY27. Again, that's just in these four highlighted areas. This is just what we're planning to do in FY27. Some of these we've talked about, the Caxambas Bridge, the bike lanes, the annual paving, drainage outfall replacements, those are the repairs, and then the Swallow Avenue exfiltration swales. These last three are previously funded, so it's not anything that we're asking for now, but it's things that we're going to be working on in FY27. South Barfield flood remediation. You may recall a couple of years ago, all the flooding that we had on South Barfield, we're going to be adding some more outfalls. And that's going to be a phased project over years. This is just the first phase of it. Public Works facility construction, that will start after contract award this summer. some of you have already been to the public works facility know that we're in the old 1980s school trailers that are really just at the very end of their lives or beyond their lifespan so those are the things that are be under construction this fiscal year future unfunded capital projects so this is FY 28 and beyond the catch-up paving as I mentioned earlier The Goldenrod Bridge replacement, Blackmoor Court, Sandhill Street, and South Seas Court Bridge rehab totaled $1.5 million there, and that's slated for FY30. Collier Boulevard East Elkhem intersection improvements. So similar to what we did with the Barfield Collier, We need to do that with the East Elkhem Circle Collier intersection. That intersection is deficient. However, I've listed here fiscal 30 because that is – that's not imminent where we need to do it next year and we're going to try and get some grant funds for that to lessen some of this amount so median landscaping is another one that's something that you you all know we haven't done any median uh restoration of the collier boulevard median since after hurricane ian It keeps getting pushed off year after year. So that is identified here as an unfunded for fiscal year 30 and 31. Tidal flushing and canal interconnects. As it says there, it's $5 million. We're not to bid. And we had $2 million funded, $1 million in bid. Half of that is in grant funds and half of that is in previously allocated funds. So we need another $2 million for that. And the last request that we did for legislative appropriation was not successful, so that's something to be determined if we're going to be moving forward with that. Thank you. And that concludes my presentation. I'll take any questions you might have.

Justin, thank you. All right. This time, Councilor Dome, you're up first.

Justin, thank you very much. As you know, we work together on the bike pass, shared use pass, very dear to heart to me. The job you're doing on the Peru, sea scrape and swallow, fabulous. As you know, that was pretty much a bare-knuckle fight for us at the BPAC MPO to get the extra funding. But as I look at it, it's going great. Traffic signals. One of the biggest complaints we always hear, especially this time of year with light traffic, I hear the term smart traffic lights. Is there such a thing where it senses besides the pressure plates in the ground, you know, to see sitting at an intersection for basically, let's say, Elkham and Collier for two minutes or three minutes because the lights aren't changing this time of year and there's no traffic. Is there any such thing that can be?

Yeah, that primarily what you're referring to is based on how old the equipment is right now. So the way that our traffic signals work right now is they're vehicle detection cameras. And over time, they've been in since I mentioned since 2005. So here we are 21 years later. And the lenses on that get scratched up. They get faded. They get clouded over time. And they don't detect the vehicles. And then they also are subject to the sun's rays in the afternoons where it just throws it off. So all of that is part of what we're going to be doing this summer. So by the end of the year, we'll have all new vehicle detection cameras, traffic signal controllers, preemption devices. Everything that controls the traffic signals at the intersections will be replaced this year. And that's what I went over earlier. That's already gone out to bid. It's funded. And we're just waiting on the contractor to establish a schedule for that based on their lead time of acquiring the materials. Thanks.

One clarification of what I was referring to with the bare-knuckle fight at the BPAC at the MPL. When we first did out the Swallow project there in Seagrave, it was like $2.5 million. And according, because of COVID, it almost doubled. And we didn't have the funding. And to our luck, one of their communities in Collier didn't have their project ready. The money was available. But our counterparts from Immokalee, who hate Marco Island, It really was. It was a totally ridiculous battle, but finally Al Musco and I were able to wear them all down and get the additional funding for us to get this project going. It's going to be wonderful. Thank you.

We appreciate your efforts, Counselor. Vice Chair Champagne.

Yeah, nice presentation. Very good, as a matter of fact. What do we call the piping... That's been breaking down, and we had to use extra funds. We took some money out of the budget this year, and lo and behold, those are the pipes that broke down. And usually, what is it?

The stormwater outfall pipes.

How come that's not in here?

Well, it is. That's actually, let me go back. I'll show you exactly where that is. That is in... If you look at the last highlighted thing, there's the citywide drainage improvements, that $1.3 million.

Oh, that's what that means?

Yeah. So how that number, how we come up with that number is, on average, we have about 10 repairs a year at each around $130,000. So it averages two. So 10 repairs, $130,000, that's $1.3 million. So that's what that is. And that's under the capital replacements is what that is.

Now, does inflation not hit that category?

Yeah, some years it's more, some years it's less, and every project is different, depending on the pipe size, on the length of it, if you have to replace any inlets. So it could vary from 49,000 for one job to 148,000 for one job, but it averages out to what you see here.

Now I hear as I go around the city and talk to people, people are concerned that we're not working on hardening the city towards tropical storm surges or hurricane surges. Is that correct? We're not doing anything on hardening the city?

Well, the fact of the matter is that there is not much that you can do about surges. We are a barrier island. When the sea level comes up over tops all of the sea walls, Even if you were to raise every single seawall, if you did that, what you would do is then retain the water and the flooding on the island. You wouldn't let it drain off. The only thing that you could do to actually counteract that is raise everything. And so if you're talking about raising all the finish floor of the homes and the streets, we actually talked with the Corps of Engineers when they came down and did their coastal storm risk management study, which they spent millions on and nothing ever happened from that, about raising everything. That was one of the options. But it's just... It's not economically feasible to do that. So there's not really much that we can do about storm surge itself.

How about shifting gears a bit here and concentrating on the quality of watering canals, which if you listen to the general public and some people in attendance at council meetings today, we have polluted water and it's primarily at the moment being created by muck in the canal and yet I don't see anyone making any effort to determine how to correct the muck in the canal and we are being somewhat pressured to approve AWT which does not correct the muck in the canal which when you put clean water in the canal seems to me would only spoil it because the muck is still flowing around in there. So does that fall on your bailiwick? Are you supposed to look into cleaning the muck?

Yes, and if you'll recall, that is included as one of the action items in the nutrient source evaluation report that was commissioned by the city back then. There was like 10 different action items on there that a lot of those got incorporated into our alternate water quality plan, the 4E plan, as it's known. There's been lots of discussions, water quality workshops, presentations, WAC discussions, and initially with that nutrient source evaluation report, the one number they threw out in there was 189 million dollars and everybody discounted at that time i subsequent to that presented an option of uh of of pumping of dredging muck and pumping it to a facility that we have off the island which is the old rapid infiltration basins at the southern end of fiddler's creek And at that time, I presented it as a $30 million project to be able to do that because the biggest cost in dredging and muck removal is the hauling and transportation because you have to dispose of it somewhere. So if you have to take it, in this case, it was to Clewiston. It was the closest place that you could take it to. So that was the lion's share of that $189 million. pumping it to that facility that we had reduced that by $150 million. But at that time, it wasn't considered. Subsequent to that, we had, as you know, the group that came in here and presented their public-private partnership. Yeah, exactly. So that was the last time that that was discussed. And then after that, there's been some discussions at the Waterways Advisory Committee where they're talking about encapsulating some of the muck, not necessarily dredging it, doing some different types of treatments, but they're still in discussions about that. But, yeah, it is one of the primary things that could be done in the waterways in order to eliminate the nutrients there because a lot of those are embedded. And if you look at that nutrient source evaluation report, 70% of it is embedded. And that would need to be removed. Removing it is not a – as you know, is not a – cheap option is very expensive there's ways of doing it we've just liberated on that but it's just funding it so that's one of the things and then there's ten other things on there which is recirculation that's where the title flushing comes from there's the canal aeration which we talked about here earlier there's other things AWT is one component and as I mentioned there's about 10 action items that make up the the plan for water quality improvement yeah as I've said multiple times I'm a believer that AWT is going to be ultimately required

clean the canals where fish come back and see grass grows on the bottom of the canals but I do not believe and I think even got the advocates to admit that it is nuts AWT is not a silver bullet it is not itself going to clean those canals it is going to contribute to the clinic cleanliness but I won't completely clean them we need to do something with the muck my my concern when I say that is you've just mentioned removing or controlling or mitigating the impact of the muck is going to be expensive my question is Not to you today. My question is to the entire community. How much are you willing to pay to clean the canals? And until we know that, I'm not sure we should approve any part of it because if you approved AWT and you don't approve the muck or the aeration or any other thing that benefits the canals, down the road you're only going to have to spend more because the The AWT water in and of itself won't clean those canals. Do you agree with my statement? That's my statement.

Yeah, I've always said that it's going to take a comprehensive approach. There's not just one item that will take care of the problem. It has to be a comprehensive approach, including remediation of what's already there and then prevention of any further nutrients getting into the system. that's all spelled out in our 4e plan it's spelled out in the nutrient source evaluation report we know what needs to be done the problem is funding it and fighting the funds to do it yeah i have a bunch of light signs on and this is going to be something we're talking about my last question actually it's going to be a comment we do a whole lot of talking about cleaning the canals and have for many years

Up until this council, we finally got AWT going. Until we get the other portions of cleaning canals going, we're kidding ourselves. AWT implemented will end up being unsatisfactory to people who will still see algae blooms to some degree in some canals. And we need to find a way to avoid that from occurring. I really think we need to clean those canals as quickly as we can. But I don't see a game plan yet. And I think we need a game plan.

Thank you. Councillor Henry.

Thank you, Justin. Excellent presentation, and I think Everything you put out here just goes to show people need to vote to make sure this bond goes through because it gives us the opportunity to stop piecemealing, being able to do things as a whole. So that was just my little sidekick there. But the one question I had is on Saturday morning, we had a lot of rain Friday night. Saturday morning, because the bike paths do look fabulous. Amber and Peru were completely underwater. Were they underwater because everything was dug up, too much rain, or are we having an issue with the way the roads are compared with the addition of the paths?

Yeah. And as you mentioned, it's under construction right now. So the soil that was there before that would convey the water is disrupted by all the construction right now. And at each one of those inlets, we have to provide what are best management practices, meaning the silt fences around the inlets. And when you do that, you're filtering the water so that you don't have all that dirt from the construction because you have raw earth there from the excavation, that would normally go into the inlet and right into the canal. You can't do that. So they have these filters around the inlets. And what the filters do is just like a coffee filter. It filters out the sediment, but it takes a long time for that to drain through there. When you have a rainstorm, it builds up.

Yes, Saturday morning, that whole intersection behind JCMI was completely underwater. And I'd hate to think how much work they might have done on Thursday and Friday that was completely defeated by laying anything out. I mean, it's weather. Everything looks great. The path's going great. I think they're all a huge asset to our city. But I did notice that on Saturday morning, and that was one of those. If we'd had a really big tarp.

Yeah, it's a trade-off. When you have construction in the summer, you're going to have the rains and you've got the local flooding issues. If you postpone that until season, then you're going to have, you know, all the disruptions to everybody who lives here and their homes during season. So it's a trade-off.

Exactly. I don't know if you got a chance to see it, but, yeah, it was pretty bad. But thank you very much. You're welcome.

Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Goehler.

Thank you so much, Justin. You are a busy man, your entire team and our work. I just want to make one comment on Consul Champagne's comment about AW2. Mr. Champagne, you are absolutely right. We – this is a – we have to have multi-pronged project, but AW2 is to stop the pollution. That is the most important part. We have to stop the pollution, and at some point we've got to start cleaning up. Aeration pilot, you said it's going to end, it's ended already, right? And you are going to?

No, it just started. It just started.

Yeah, I'm sorry. And you said it will end at September timeframe?

At the end of September, October, depends on the water temperatures, but yeah, we're looking around the end of September.

Yeah, how often are you going to test the waters?

There's three days a week, twice a day. So that's being done by a service that we, a lab that we've contracted with.

The new lab, correct?

It's separate. Yeah, that's project-specific water quality testing, which is not the same lab that we use for our monthly and quarterly testing.

So it's a different company.

It's a different company.

Okay, thank you. And you will be doing it. Okay, another thing I would like to, I was so excited when I said that. First, I was very concerned about the change order I was telling you earlier. Then I saw what a good change order there is. I met with – I was speaking to Casey. Great job. Thank you, sir. Thank you. And another thing I want to say, thank you for putting this stormwater pipeline replacement in $1.3 million. Casey and I had – Dr. Lucia and I had a long discussion. When we removed the $650,000 from the budget, then we had to – and thank you, you've been very – Actually, you did not remove it. They did. But this time, you put it back in there. So thank you for that. But everything else looks good. And Barfield is already looking great. And you are doing it, opening in July. So I have nothing else. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you.

Thank you, Counselor.

Counselor Gray. Thank you. Justin, you're blessed by having a wonderfully challenging job.

I love my job.

A couple questions that come out. On the stormwater replacement, and I think you probably dialed in a good estimate, 10 replacements a year, we don't really know where the fail points are. Do we know how many miles of potential future stormwater? Or is this your just best prognostication? This is not a cheap shot. It's the other way. that a million three a year probably addresses the repairs as we anticipate them servicing. We couldn't get bit with a bigger number after a storm.

It's always possible. You could have a seawall failure where a seawall total collapse. Okay. And that gets complicated because the seawalls are the responsibility of the property owners adjacent to where that is. But yeah, it could get complicated by that. But when you have something like that, if it's associated with a tropical storm or hurricane, Then you start looking also at FEMA reimbursements for something like that. But this is just the run-of-the-mill average every year. We know we have these old corrugated metal pipes that rust that have been in there for 50 years now. And you have a sinkhole starting to form between the homes. It's a city pipe. We have to replace it. So this is pretty much what it is. And there are so many of these that were put in by Deltona. I mean, everybody in this room will retire and will still be doing them.

That's encouraging. I get to retire. Swales, I've heard over and over in terms of hardening our defenses that the swale management is important as the stormwater management. And so you've budgeted swales at a certain level. Should we be doing more sooner, particularly when I hear flooded streets, et cetera? Are we going after it as fast as we can?

Yeah, I think you may be referring to the exfiltration swales. Those are not flood management swales. Those are actually a grant that we got in order to do some percolation, which is part of the water quality. You mentioned the comprehensive approach. That's one of the components of it. And that's for water to percolate through the bottom of the swales into the ground rather than just running off and going into the canals.

Got it. Is there anything else we can be doing to harden against Mother Nature?

As I mentioned earlier, the really only thing that you can do on a coastal barrier island like this where you're going to have storm surge, the storm surge, the only way to combat it is to raise everything.

Okay. Got it. Thank you. Street sweeper. It's here as a lease, so it's hard to really calculate the dollar amount. I think it was $300,000 over a certain period. I've heard some people question its effectiveness. And what I mean by that, some people actually follow the street sweeper, say it actually grabs grass out of the median or on the sides and then ends up being part of it have we proven up the effectiveness of the street sweeper to justify its existence just because it's under the 4e concept i don't have the greatest confidence that everything under 4e is the right approach can you confirm the value of that street sweeper going forward

Yeah I could tell you that twice a month we get a pile that's about as big as this room that we take to the landfill and I could tell you if you stand next to that pile you were saying what is that smell all that smell is decaying organics the decaying organics which would have normally ended up in the canals are now going to the landfill. So that is a reduction in nutrients going into the canal. So yes, the street sweeper is effective, and we didn't used to do that before, and now that we do it, we see exactly what it is doing in preventing those organics from going into the canals.

Okay, so it's proved its worth. Absolutely. Larger question. There's a terrible amount of debate which frustrates me on the whole water strategy issue, Do you have all the accurate scientific assessment and guidance to make our best informed decisions on the most cost effective basis?

For what specifically?

Well, I hear about muck. I hear about fertilizer in the canals. I worry about yard waste in the canals. We're all interested in being financially disciplined. I heard that SEAC had to come at us the way they did because they need to bring in the equipment. do the whole thing and run a big thing. They couldn't do it in a piecemeal, smaller way. I am not convinced that we've done a comprehensive enough scientific assessment of where and when and how we should put our efforts best used. And I do have one other question. Muck under boat docks.

think that would be owned by the property owner and so it would be their responsibility to address the muck under their property yeah and they actually do get permits from the building department to dredge underneath of their boat docks when it gets to a level where it's interfering with the mooring of their in the docking of their boats and that is as you mentioned the homeowners responsibility to do that and I would defer to the building department to be able to tell you how many of those we get per year. But, yes, that is part of it also. But you mentioned that there hasn't been anything done to determine what would be the most effective way or what needs to be done.

Well, I would argue that… Or the hierarchy as well.

the nutrient source evaluation study that the city paid several hundred thousand dollars for lists those ten action items as I mentioned that are in there and it does indicate what would what would make the most impact and it's we've all discussed this time after time the dredging the AWT the exfiltration swales, which are called bioremediation swales in the report, the raising of the inlets. The only thing, to understand water quality, I don't know how long you wanna go into this conversation, but I can talk to you hours about it.

Not an extremely long workshop, so let's keep it to the highlights.

All right. So, yeah, I would just point you to that nutrient source evaluation study, which identified all the things, where the nutrients are coming from, and what's the remediation that we could do. The only question is how much each one of those costs. And we've looked at several of those, one being AWT. You've got that coming before you. The other one was the muck removal, the aeration. We know what that costs, and we know if that's going to be effective based on this pilot program. Yeah, that's the study that was done.

One last question. The canals, it's part of our stormwater management system?

Just like the Gulf of America is part of our stormwater management system. It's the receiving waters is what it is.

I'm trying to understand. A number of residents don't live on the canals. And the question ultimately is whatever work you're going to do in those canals, they might say, you know, I'm paying for something that the people on the canals benefit from, but I don't. I was trying to affirm that it's our stormwater system, and so whatever strategies we take are really for the benefit of the entire community.

We need to separate water quality from stormwater management. Stormwater management deals with flooding. Water quality deals with the quality of the water in the canals. Water quality is what you're hearing about, well, I don't live on a canal, so why should I pay to remediate the canal? Stormwater management, everybody is affected by local flooding. And so the way that our system works is on any given cul-de-sac, you have the roadway, you've got swales, And then every so many lots, you have an inlet with an outfall pipe that takes the roadway drainage and directs it to the canals. That's how the water management system works here. We don't have the luxury of like Collier County to be able to have all this real estate and they can put in stormwater detention ponds. The closest thing we have to that is the Mackle Park Lake. That does serve the surrounding residential around it, but that's limited and that's just one location. So the only place that we have in order to do our water quality are the roadside swales. And that's why we have the exfiltration swale projects. That's why we're talking about raising the side slots on those. And that's fertilizer management is another component of that because these roadside swales are sodded. And those sodded swales get fertilized. And so those are nutrients going into the system that's actually discharging into the canals.

Thank you. Sorry, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it, Counsel.

Good questions.

Counselor Schwan. Thank you, Justin. I have no questions. They've all been asked. But I do want to thank you for one other thing. About a month ago, you gave me a tour of the public works facility, and that was such an eye-opener. I had never been over there before, and it was great to meet your team that has rigged up their AC inside the trailer, but also to meet the street sweeper, the man who runs that up and down our streets. So it was such a great day, and thank you for making that possible, and look forward to your presentation later this summer.

Thank you, and we always welcome any counselor who would want to tour the facilities to just reach out, and we'll make that happen. Thank you. Dr. Luce, do you want to go before or after me?

If I could, I just want to point out a couple important things. Justin, if you could put up, it was the same slide that you had up, which has your CIP with the street resurfacing and the bridge. Okay. So, council, I want you to just take a look at this, because if you see the public works total, it's 6.3 million. Now, on a typical year, we transfer about 2.5 to 3 million to our capital budget, and that is for all departments. And now Justin, because he is eager and ambitious and doing an amazing job, wants $6.3 million. And obviously we don't have $6.3 million to transfer from our operating budget to our capital budget. So at the most, we would transfer, like I said, maybe $3 million, and that usually supports every department. The reason I'm saying this is because THIS IS BASICALLY AN IMPOSSIBLE ACHIEVEMENT WHAT YOU HAVE ON THE SCREEN. BUT VERY NECESSARY. SO IF THE BOND PASSES, THEN THE STREET RESURFACING MILLION DOLLARS, WE HAVE THROUGH THE BOND. THE BRIDGE REPLACEMENT, THE 2.5, WE WOULD HAVE THROUGH THE BOND. Now, the bike lanes, the $1.5 million is not part of the bond, and the council would have to decide how much of that you want to fund in your FY27 capital budget. Obviously, we would recommend funding the $1.3 million because we tried to cut that last year and we got ourselves in a pickle. So we don't want to cut that again. So actually, if the bond passes, we're looking at a definite 1.3, and then you can decide about the bike lanes. If the bond doesn't pass, We have to come up with $2.5 million if you agree to replace the Caxambas Bridge. And that decision to replace the Caxambas Bridge is going to come to you next month. As Justin said, FDOT has sent us a contract for that replacement, and we have to sign that contract if we want to receive the FDOT funds and the federal funds. So that will be a decision you have to make at a regular city council meeting in July. If you make that decision to say, yes, we want to do this, and then let's say the bond doesn't pass, you're still on the hook for $4.5 million. We already have $2 million in our bridge project fund, but you would still need $2.5 million. My recommendation would be that you transfer funds. It's about $2 million from the tide leveling project. to the caxambas bridge Whether or not you want to do tide leveling I don't know that's something you'll need to decide but tide leveling is a five million dollar project and we only have two million sitting there so Then we would still be short of that 4.5 that we need but obviously we could get close to it and I think we would be able to work that out as we as we build our budget But I'm saying all this to you because Justin, you can see all the work he's doing. And for any resident who is skeptical about local government or skeptical about what are we doing with all their tax dollars, I just hope they watch this presentation and see everything that we've accomplished. And not just Public Works, but all of our departments. Everything we've accomplished just so far this year, let alone what we're planning for for 27. But I also want to be realistic that what you have on the screen and what Justin's just presented to you is really not possible unless the bond passes. And like I said, if it does, we get some wiggle room. If it doesn't, then we'll make adjustments accordingly. But I want to have that very open and honest discussion with you. Thank you.

Casey, we can't give you consensus. Do you want any direction on this tide leveling? I'm going to speak about this another time.

I think at another time is fine. At this time, it's just information.

I could speak for myself. I just want to follow up on a few things you said. And that was well stated and just a great presentation. You know, we're going to hear, especially during campaign season, how the city was irresponsible. No, the city did exactly what it promised and the councilors did exactly what they campaigned on. keeping taxes low, returning money back to the citizens, and having a bond referendum for major infrastructure. How many times have we spoken about it in my four years here? Everything was Justin. Correct me if I'm wrong, when we come to these bridges, there are going to be a bond referendum, correct? That was our plan.

Yeah, that was the plan.

So we were keeping to that plan. Casey, I'll just answer for you. I think I voted against the tide leveling. I might have been the only one to remember just because AWT seemed like the first step. So when that comes up, I'll certainly offer my opinion on that. Justin, a couple things in your list and just some statements and one question. Drainage, more of a statement. We've received some complaints about it today, nowadays in modern Marco, but if you were here 20, 30 years ago, it was atrocious. What you've done is nothing short of incredible. for an island where I think some of our land actually sits under sea level on small spots. So kudos to you on that. It's never going to be perfect. We're a barrier island that fights off the ocean. If I remember correctly, the Army Corps of Engineers almost said, we're throwing our hands up to a degree. There's only so much we could harden because you have so many openings on this island. And you are correct. Raising properties, maybe we need to talk about how high we built Teardowns, new homes, maybe they're going to need a few steps, which people don't like. Maybe they have to be on pilings, and you push the dirt up, and now you don't have steps, but it sits a little higher. That'll all be things to be spoken about another time, but I think that's the direction we're going to have to go in future conversations. Thank you. I didn't make it to the building ceremony, but I appreciate you mentioning me. That was one of the first things I ever did was tour that building, and I was proud that I was able to help convince my co-counselors, who were all veterans, and I was the rookie, And to get, I think it was a 7-0 vote to actually take action on that. Those trailers were atrocious, and your whole team deserves it. So I thank you for mentioning me, but thank you for taking care of this for them. The intersection. If you were here long enough, you remember the conversations when we started on the intersection where we don't want to run into next season. So we sacrificed some of this season. We got a little heat for traffic being backed up. But we didn't know with... geopolitical challenges, with supply chain challenges, with a bunch of things, how long this might take. So this entire project was designed not to encumber next season. Great job. I mean, incredible job, especially being ahead of schedule. Last thing I'll tie in, I'm not going to get too deep into advanced wastewater treatment. We had a plan, the 4E plan. Previous council chose to stick to it. I do remember the aeration vote. It was the craziest thing I've ever took participation in. I think it was Councillor Roller, Councillor Buona, myself, and Councillor Irwin voting in favor, and it was Graffoni, Foley, and Brucknitz against. We never had that dynamic in a vote. It just seemed like we were doing our job and trying to figure things out. When you remodel your house, it doesn't happen overnight. So advanced wastewater treatment is not going to cure everything overnight. But this is what the citizens said. This is the place to start. Don't have sellers remorse council. We were told to start here. We voted to start here. This is where we start. The rest of it will fall in place based on what the citizens are willing to accept or not. But it's great that we're off to a good start. Justin, the only question I have, in case he hasn't answered, is what's in this that we're not accepting? What part of the budget, if you had your wish list, would you like to add to this? But it seems like it's all right here. Is there anything major we're missing here? Be bold. I'm asking you if you need anything else.

There's so many things that you could add to it. And just that one item that the vice chair mentioned, the muck removal for the water quality is a huge issue. huge expense but it's not something that I would say you know if it's on my top three of things needed everything that Public Works does is infrastructure related so we're talking about stormwater management flooding roadway resurfacing traffic signal improvements and and those You can't just fund one time and be done with it. It's going to be on a continuous basis, and you have to do some of these things, you know, in a phased type of process over years. There's, I mentioned earlier, some of the unfunded projects that's on here. Let me see. Let me go back to that. Since you asked the question, there's, you know, the catch-up paving, the golden rod bridge replacement. All these things are coming up. bridge rehabilitations intersection improvements median landscaping there's the title flushing so those are things that are not funded that you know our potential future funding needs but I could give you a list of 100 things.

I appreciate it. Let me ask from a different – I understand we're going to deal with the bridges, with the bond. Our roads are wavy, but they don't seem to be unsafe to me. They're inconvenient, and they certainly should be done. The things we're talking about here, even AWT certainly needs to be done, but it's not going to affect our lives right now today. Is there any major safety items we are neglecting here in this presentation?

I wouldn't say neglecting here, but things that we need to plan for, and that's flooding, roads, intersections, and we are addressing a lot of that right now. The other items, water quality, those are things that we know about, but it's not a safety item.

That's why I want to ask, as we move forward, I want to make sure all the citizens' safety needs are taken care of first. Everything else on the want list is important.

It has a hierarchy. Since you mentioned that, the project that we have this summer, which is the intersection controller project, includes pedestrian safety improvements where we're adding lighted signs of yield to pedestrian signs. We're changing the programming of I can't tell you, I've seen at least a half a dozen times witness myself at a traffic light where pedestrians start crossing the road and then a turning car almost hits them. And so that's what this project is going to address. It's something called lead pedestrian interval programming. We can't do that right now, but with the new controllers we can do that. We can give the pedestrians a head start. to get out into the intersection to be visible so that when a car turns they see them and then they continue on their way and that's proven to reduce fatalities by as much as 40% nationwide.

That is tremendous and I could tell you I experience this every day when I walk from my shop to the bank, get a few steps in and I cross Bald Eagle and Collier right by the beach shop and And when the turn signal light goes off, cars can still make the turn while you're crossing in the crosswalk. I know to look at it now. I know to be vigilant. But if you're visiting or a guest or maybe you don't pay attention. So I do appreciate that answer. That's what I was looking for. I know you've had that in the works. I think everybody's done a great job today. And you always continue to do a great job. I see no other light signs. And thank you so much for the presentation.

And we have two more. Dan Smith with the building department and then Jeff Poteet for water and sewer.

Very good.

Dan, welcome. Hello. Daniel Smith, Director of Community Affairs. I guarantee mine's not going to be as long or as exciting as Justin's, but all the same. You want to squeeze AWT into this somehow? Not at all. But I will make it a little bit entertaining. If you think a restroom is entertaining. All I'm really asking for, and this is something that's been held over from the previous year. As you know, the annex building, aged annex building had a remodel partially on the first floor, and that was for public works. And then just recently in the past year and a half, utilities has remodeled the second floor. Well, we've been kind of left behind, and we would like to kind of bring our facilities up to snuff. The building was built in 1981. And just to give you some idea, MTV did their first broadcast in 1981. Blockbuster opened their first store. IBM Personal Computer was first put on the market. And Harvest and Gold and Almond were the most popular colors for your kitchen. So that gives you an idea exactly what our building services have to deal with.

I was still in middle school.

So it's mostly for mica and paneling and things of those colors and especially the front desk area. We would like to bring that up to snuff in here. We'd like to open this up because we're limited to room. Right now we only have enough room for two people with workstations. We'd like to make it larger so we can put five workstations out there. a little more modern in the back room we have one of our employees in a closet and we also have one of our employees in the same room as our large-scale scanner and you know how warm that gets after a while so we need to especially if we're going to keep good employees staying here and wanting to work here I think we needed the environment a little bit better and right here is where The door is going to be, because in the rear is where a handicapped restroom, we really don't have those facilities, and those are going to be required to close out the permit for the annex building. So I put a funding level of $225,000, and it's going to be coming out of the building reserve fund, which I have $3.5 million. This is an enterprise fund, and thank you for approving the increase in permits. That money goes for the enterprise fund, that goes for salaries, and it goes for our facilities. So this is nothing that's going to be out of tax dollars. It's going to be out of our permits. And funding is available. So I'm here for any questions.

Thank you so much for the presentation. Councillor Gray, you're up first.

Thank you. You used a trigger word. Perfect. First, thank you for your presentation. Thank you for all you do. Is there a new law that's effective on July 1 that permits or projects under $7,500 do not need a permit? I was trying to understand if there's something coming. Is that going to reduce our income or reduce your workload? Am I off base?

Well, there was something that, and it was something you approved, and I brought that up during my presentation for the increase in building permits, that private providers will get a discount if you have an inspection by a private provider. There's a discount that's available, and that's what we had to put in our resolution. And that's going to be starting July. As far as some of the other questions you have, just let me know, and I can look into exactly what. There is some other legislation out there. You just have to let me know, and I'll be able to answer those. I don't have that information right now.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Counselor. Vice Chair Champagne?

If you got approval on this capital, what's the timeline? When would it start? When would it end?

Well, we have the plans already. Joe Pernelli, who's the facilities director, he's going to have to go out to bid on what projects that these are. And there's a couple different ways we can do it. quotes you hate we have providers that have that we've through purchasing we have multiple different contractors preferred contractors there's a couple different ways we're gonna do it and that's really going to be up to Joe because he's gonna be the project manager for this and would we try to get contractors who are local We follow whatever the laws and codes are. I don't know if we have a certain policy, and we follow that policy.

I guess it's dependent upon which local contractors put their name in to bid.

That's correct. The bidding process is open to all. We can't force them to put in, and we can't go out and solicit them directly.

It would make our job easier if they were local. The last project I had, they had to come from Punta Gorda.

No kidding. All right, no further questions. Thank you, Councilor Henry.

Do you have the blueprints from when this building was built? Yes. So you're fully aware of when you start digging up the floor of any things you might encounter?

That's correct.

So in your 225, do you have discretionary funds for things you might encounter? We think so. Okay.

I added a few, a little bit in there. We got numbers that were around $200,000, so I added a little bit more there just so in case we run into something.

Okay. And I have to say, turning rooms into bathrooms is what I did for a living. So don't diminish it. It was very good to me. So that's all I have. Thank you.

Dan, thank you for the presentation. I couldn't agree with you more. When we talk about Department of Public Works and the deplorable conditions they were working under, it took that much for council to open their eyes and make some change. It shouldn't take that much for this or for the police department or some of our staff needs. We all go in and we sit down with Casey for our meeting in a week and we see the air conditioning conditions there and the portable units. It shouldn't have to be that. We need to be better stewards of that. Our staff, they watch us. They watch our meetings. They watch us spend how many meetings on pickleball. But this should be a no-brainer, and we should start focusing on this a little better because you're right. If we don't, people will not come to work here.

Well, thank you. I appreciate it.

I'm behind you and all the staff, and I appreciate you bringing this forward and being the only thing you brought forward.

Well, my plan is this is the first phase. We don't have portables that we can stand, so I'd like to remodel everything in phases so we don't have to remove anybody.

Very good. Well, appreciate that and appreciate you sticking up for your staff and your team. Thank you. Appreciate it.

And next is Jeff Poteet, who is online.

Jeff, you out there? Good afternoon, counsel. Can you hear me?

Absolutely. Welcome aboard.

Very good. I want to thank the city manager for allowing me to present remotely and your indulgence in doing that. Of course. so i'm pleased to present the water and sewer five-year capital improvement program this plan is an outlook we're looking ahead to make sure we continue to protect the infrastructure we rely on every day maintain reliable service and invest wisely in the systems that support our residents businesses and visitors The projects included in the program were developed through a careful review of our system needs, asset conditions, regulatory requirements, and long-term operational priorities. While other improvements really are for resiliency, efficiency, and our ability to meet our future demands. Previous slide first. Because he kind of jumped ahead. Can you go back? Because I'm not quite ready for any of this. And it should go automatically. And I'm not going to mention all of the accomplishments we've done over the last year. The list would be pretty long. But I will mention Jeff's top five. So we'll go to the next slide. I don't see it coming.

Are we missing one, Jeff? Or if not, we'll work with what we have. I don't see the slide. This is the first one of our presentation.

Yeah. So over the past year, we delivered 3.8 billion gallons of potable water, treated 840 million gallons of wastewater, and supplied 667 million gallons of reclaimed water. We completed the North Marco water main improvement project. We rehabilitated the south plants odor control system. Yeah, this was supposed to go automatic. I'm not sure why it's not. And we installed more than 8,500 advanced water meters. But the project that I'm most proud of, I guess you're going to have to, yeah, there we go. Go one more. And the project that I'm most proud of is actually an emergency repair. Our staff reached out to the fire department. The fire department had a piece of equipment that one of our staff thought could help push together the pipe that we needed to repair. And the fire department responded. So kudos to Chief Burns and his team. And really, I think this is how government's supposed to work by different departments working together to accomplish the goals of the community. So I really do appreciate that. Next slide, please. The water and sewer capital improvement program is organized into two sections. The first 17 items are the programmed improvements and items 18 on down are the large capital equipment purchases. Can you hit enter? I guess it's not running automatic. I'm not sure why. And you can hit enter one more time. While the spreadsheet serves as a roadmap for future capital needs and supports our long-term planning, it's important to note that the only funding formally requested is shown in fiscal year 2027. Next slide, please. So the first 17 items in the five-year capital program represent programmed improvements, recurring annual funding requests dedicated to maintaining and preserving the water and sewer department's existing assets. This section covers needs such as membrane replacement, meter replacement, water main improvements, all of which are essential to sustaining our core infrastructure and service reliability. Next slide, please. So we have a couple of projects that were partially funded in this year, and construction funding is being requested. So the first project here is the source water facility, which is located on a 205-acre site approximately nine miles north of Marco Island. This facility has two lakes that operate in series and are connected by two 16-inch corrugated steel pipes installed in the 1980s. Last year, City Council approved funding for the design of the replacement of this interconnect. This funding request is for the construction of the replacement system. Completing this project will ensure continued transfer of water between the lakes maintain the reliability of our source water supply, and protect a critical component of the city's drinking water infrastructure. Next slide, please. This project is tied to the FDOT's planned replacement of the Caxambas Court Bridge, which is currently in design as part of the bridge replacement. The existing pipes, the water and sewer utilities that are attached to the bridge must also be replaced. Next slide, please. This project focuses on the critical components of our south water treatment plant, raw water delivery system. The existing fiberglass piping is approaching the end of its useful life. Replacing these pipes will proactively help with maintaining reliable plant operations and reduce the risk of unexpected failures that could impact our water supply and water production. Next slide, please. This project addresses the odor concerns at the Reclaimed Water Production Facility, a consultant's evaluation identified deficiencies in the existing odor control system, and proposed improvements will enhance odor treatment and help reduce impacts to the nearby residents and businesses. Next slide, please. This project represents the next step in the city's transition to advance wastewater treatment at the Reclaimed Water Production Facility, following council's direction to proceed with planning and implementation. This funding request will support the design phase, laying the foundation for future upgrades and continued regulatory compliance. And next slide, please.

Councilor's light signs. Jeff, first of all, thank you for the presentation. Light signs for questions. Councilor Henry, you are up.

Jeff, thank you for the thoroughness in this presentation. Everything was done great. I just have a question. You had done a presentation for us about finding new water sources. And in reading your spreadsheet, I was trying to determine, is that the renewal and replacement water, or is that the well maintenance? It's not the well maintenance.

It's the well maintenance.

It's the well maintenance. Is that looking for new locations?

Correct. Okay. It's... A couple of different things. One is that funding is used to refurbish our existing wells. And two, there's two areas. I think there's another line item later on in 28 or 29 for the drilling of a new well. But we would use those funds as well as any new money.

Okay. Yeah, because I knew you had done it as two separate presentations, and I wasn't sure where that was allocated. No, that was great. Thank you very much.

Very good. Councilor Gray. Thank you. Mr. Poteet, I love asking you questions. Thank you for all you do. First, the RR&I budget that you presented, very detailed, greatly appreciated. Have we been doing this historically or is this a new practice that we've embarked upon?

We've been doing it since about 2010 when I took over the leadership.

Okay. It's very thorough. The million dollars for AWT doesn't have much of a breakdown and a million dollars of cost. I'm always worried about our checks and balance, internal controls. How are you spending a million dollars in the next 12 months on AWT?

Yeah, so this would be to fund our design. Our design is going to be roughly between $750 and $1.5 million for, how do I put it, reasons for us to negotiate. I think putting a larger number in, I can't fall back on, well, we're looking at funding that surpasses the need and those that bid on the project kind of go well what am I missing in my design and therefore they throw extra money in there so I'd rather start with a smaller number And if that number is not large enough, I would come back to council and say, you know, this is the design cost and go from there. Ask for additional funding. Okay. But so that $1 million is for the design of the AWT. If you recall, I said it was, if it's a $10 million project, it's going to be about $150,000. If it's, you know, $700,000, it's going to be less. Or 7 million, I'm sorry.

Thank you. We did have a recent approval for a bump in the chemical costs. I don't remember which one, so I don't want to go back into that. I do notice driving past Isle of Capri and maybe Goodlands that there are some pockets of what I would call odors. And I see you've been on an odor control journey here in the chemicals fund. In this budget, are we identifying all the chemical costs accurately?

We're not identifying any chemical costs in this budget. This is a capital budget, not our operating budget. You will see that when we present our budget.

Okay. So... I'll just go to the punch line. So you're looking at how we can address all the odor risks that are in evidence on the greater island-wide area through the budget in 27?

Well, this budget's looking only at the Reclaimed Water Production Facility treatment plant. This is not addressing anything outside of the gates.

okay so i i think without putting either of us on the spot there's maybe more work to do if we want to completely mitigate the odors at isle of capri or maybe towards goodwin or some of these other places and isn't that a chemical treatment process it could be absolutely you you could either treat it right at the station or further down in the system using peroxide or or other other chemicals

But I haven't had any odor complaints called in to us regarding those areas that you're speaking of. Okay.

I'll learn to call in in the future.

Yeah. And so it's really hard for us to attack an odor complaint if we don't know about it. So there are solutions that we can do, low-cost solutions that we can do at the stations themselves if that's where the odors are emanating from.

Thank you very much. One last question. Councillor Gray, can I just stay on the odors for one second? Because I want to talk about that also. Casey, you also want to jump in on that?

Well, I thought Jeff could provide more specifics about what he plans to spend $950,000 on. So what exactly is the project? Where exactly is the project location? What's the time frame? What outcomes do we expect? And how this project came about. So maybe it will answer some additional questions if he could get into some of the specifics about this odor control project.

Sure. So the genesis of this came from odor complaints. And so when we investigated it, because sometimes these complaints, you can smell it outside of the treatment plant, but in the plant itself, you don't notice them at all. But it did turn out that our headworks odor control unit was passing gas, so to speak, and that uh this project would address that area specifically and basically what this will do is currently we have a biological odor unit that scrubs the the odors from the headworks area and uh because it's a biological process during peak demands these uh uh the bugs that that that uh that eat the gases, so to speak, they can't make up that difference in their normal food service and these peak demands. And so what this will do will take any gases that pass through there. And it will, lack of a better term, polish the endings of those air flows. And so this is specifically at the treatment plant, and it is estimated to be about a $950,000 project.

Councilor Gray, before you go on to your last question, if I could jump in for a second. Jeff, I remember Rose Court, 2003, 4, 5. You couldn't give property away there because there was an odor from the plant. I think you've done a great job curing that over time. It's really made a difference. However, I have never had any complaints for the Goodland or Isles of Good Prey. I'm not saying they don't exist, but that never seemed to be focused on by the community. It was always our main facility. Either way, I do appreciate you bringing us up to speed on that. Councillor Gray?

The last question was, all the new water meters are now installed. And my guess is... Not all of them. So how much... Two questions, you can probably field them both at the same time, maybe three. When will we be at end of job on the water meter installations? And what was the ultimate drawdown of the capital lease attendant to that whole project? Because we originally had, I think, projected about $15 million, but I'm not positive. And then as a result of the water meter replacements, I got the sense that our run rate water bill collections are running maybe $800,000 favorable for the full year of 26th. So if you want to speak or comment on any of those, please feel free to.

Well, I'm not really prepared to comment on the amount of revenues that have increased, other than that I do know that there is an increase. Go back in time, and we look at what I presented last year. We did mention that we anticipated about a $2 million annual increase, and that was guaranteed by the firm. I can't think of their names off the top of my head. So we had a guaranteed revenue increase of about $2 million. I think we're going to surpass that. And so I can get those, you know, a little more accurate numbers. We have about 85% of the meters installed now. The project was scheduled to go through September, but I think we'll be finished well before that.

TODD BANDUCCI- And did we draw down the full amount of the capital lease?

TODD BANDUCCI- I don't know. There was some contingency built into that. And we have not drawn down much on the contingency. But I can get that answer as well. I'll put that in my next departmental report.

Thank you, and I really appreciate the quality of your departmental reports. I am done, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Council.

Vice Chair Champagne.

Yeah, good presentation, Jeff. I'm going to focus on the three wells that you recently closed or terminated, and there was a member of the community who stood up in a public meeting and suggested that perhaps we were facing material hardship down the road if we didn't replace these wells, which I don't think anyone would disagree. So my question is, are you creating sufficient numbers of new freshwater wells to avoid that problem down the road?

So we have sufficient water at this time. Now these wells that we, so we started off with, I don't know, maybe 10 wells and then we expanded knowing that we were going to lose some along the way and we expanded all the way up to 21 wells. Now we're right now meeting our demand, but we are, also looking at the future where we're going to drill more wells. So while we're not by any means in an emergency situation, we are looking proactively at where we can get more water and where that water source is better than There's certain areas where the groundwater is a higher quality and you have to treat less, so we're looking at those areas.

And my understanding as you do that is the lands that you'd be looking at for new wells are not within Markle Island territory. Is that correct?

And if so... Well, yeah, at first they are, but at some point we're going to have to look at off-island sources.

And... Do you have any assurance that those off-island locations for freshwater wells are going to be available to us? And if so, what's the approximate cost of leasing those?

So these wells are brackish water. So our treatment plant on the island for the groundwater source is a brackish water. And so I don't think we're going to have an issue. It's going to be the cost of running lines further and further away from Marco Island. And so... that's really what your drivers are and then it becomes as these wells get less it's a water quality diminishes in our existing wells do we then go to more of a saltwater membrane than what we currently have and what that basically means is higher cost of producing water

Perhaps before the end of this fiscal year, you could make a presentation to the council to bring us up to speed on some of those issues and some of your thinking.

Absolutely. Yeah, we did one not that long ago, four or five months ago with Jacobs Engineering, and I will put it on the website. on the calendar to do an update as well because, yeah, these are interesting topics. So you need to be well-versed in.

Yeah. I just want to address them before. the issue gets a little out of hand. But thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you, Vice Chair. Councillor Schwartz?

Thank you. And Jeff, thank you for the presentation today. I just have one follow-up question, and this has to do with the meters. You stated that once all the new meters get in, we're looking at possibly an increase in $2 million. And just to clarify for the viewing audience, that would be because of the old meters were under reading. Is that correct?

That is correct. Yeah, we're not making up anything out of thin air. The existing meters are mechanical meters, and as mechanical meters age, they slow, and therefore you do not get an accurate reading of usage. And so these new meters will make up for that.

Thank you, Jeff, for that clarification for the viewers. That's it.

Thank you, Counselor. Jeff, I wasn't going to bring this up, but you probably know as a department head and the counselors, this job is on your mind 24-7. It never goes away. So I think about, I don't know if you know this number, can we break down, do we have any idea how much water we use for irrigation versus actual quality of life needs, like drinking and showering?

Well, we use about 9.1 million gallons on an annual average for all needs, all potable water needs, and about 60% of that is irrigation.

So we have a fail-safe if we ever had a, I'm not saying we're going to, but look at cisterns or collecting some of this water or treating our less important landscaping, if it ever came to that. I hope it never does, but I just want that number, and that's kind of what I thought it might be. One last thing, since we're making pretty good time, can you go back to your presentation by any chance? uh martin can martin can you go back to that presentation i'm looking for the slide that says uh southwest florida lake interconnect improvement design i think it's about seven or eight slides in if it's easier that's actually i think it says number uh 37 38 of 43. jeff i'm just going to poke a little fun but congratulations look at that rock and look at that shadow you found the loch ness monster maybe we could maybe we could monetize this for the city

Yeah, that's an old piece of infrastructure, but yeah. I couldn't resist.

Last thing I'll say is thank you for the implementation of AWT. You took a lot of heat over the years, but it was never your decision to do it or not. You followed the direction of council and staff, though, so once you make those decisions, it's your job to implement it, you and Casey and the rest of the team, and I think you've been off to a great start. So thank you so much.

You're welcome, and we should have more on that next month with the RFQ. Very good.

We look forward to talking to you on that, and thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Gray, do you have one last thing before we let Jeff go? No, Jeff can run for the hills. I had a couple overarching questions for our city manager, and I didn't know where that fits into the agenda.

Okay. Do we have... Do we have anybody signed up for public comment? I thought we might have one.

There are no registered speakers.

Before I turn that over to you, council, let me just point out, for the newer councilors or anybody, I'm literally the one with the most experience here now, and I've only been here not even a full term. Guys, this is the most important thing you do all year, public safety and budgeting, and budgeting is tied directly to public safety. Yet shark fishing had them out the door into the next room, lined up, and here we had one person and then we have none. Don't be distracted and don't let yourself be fooled by the quality of life issues we face here are important. Pickleball, shark fishing, these noise, kids in the pool, these are all important. But they pale in comparison to funding the community, police, fire, responders, Department of Public Works, water facilities, just as important as first responders. Spend your time with KC and the staff on this. Spend as much time as you need. They will bring you up to speed. I still get together with them to be brought up to speed because there's things I'm still learning. The most important thing you'll do in your job here. Councillor Gray, please.

Thank you. Dr. Lucius, we tagged the emergency fund for about $600,000 for the required stormwater repairs. I tried to look through the guiding document that says what our required minimum emergency fund is. I think we pegged it at 25% of the budget. So when I look at capital investments, it seems to me, particularly with Mother Nature getting more ornery, not less, how are we replacing that money as part of this funding? Because we drew down below, I think, our expected level. So that was one of my questions. Wouldn't that be part of our primary capital, return of capital to that fund for 27?

So yes, the city's policy is 25% of your operating budget should be in emergency reserves. And yes, we did tap into that at about 600,000 for the storm drain pipes. If you want to replenish that $600,000, that will be part of your operating budget workshop. We can discuss that and where those funds would come from. That's not really considered capital. At least for the city, capital has a very specific definition in terms of an asset that lasts more than one year and costs over $5,000. So that's the definition that we use for capital when we're talking about building a capital budget.

I probably have to improve my language, but since we drew down $600,000 for capital repairs and replacement, I interpret that as usage of capital. We can fillet the terminology as we see fit. A couple other questions. Am I correct if this bond does not get approved and we are going to do CAC's AMBUS bridge, because it is pressing. We could go to the market and float a bond as a decision by this council at that time to meet that obligation. I don't want to put undue fear in the decision process for the community. We do have an alternative way to meet these funding needs. Is that correct?

Yes, you do.

Okay, thank you. There seems to be a run rate, and I'm drifting into the budgeting process, forgive me, but since LCEC keeps showing up with about $85,000 in rebate funds each year, it seems to be the non-recurring recurring. Where does those monies go, and can they help this conversation?

This year that refund was specific to the water and sewer department. So they are the largest users of electricity among City users so that rebate went to Jeff's department Not the general fund It was sad I agree Thank You councillor councillor Henry

Chair Flumba, I have to reiterate to you the sadness. Everybody has an opinion, but no one's here.

I say it every year.

You do. And I remember before I even thought of running for office and was watching these things from home and you would say that, I was just like, you know, I know there are people out there, but this is so important to our city. I have one thing. I have another income idea. Is that something you would like me to float by you now since we're looking for capital? Or is that something I should say for this evening?

I've had a number of them that are still undiscussed. Well, let's give you your last go around quickly.

If not, we'll continue.

Real quick, it was something that I've discussed with Dr. Lucius. Joe's done a little research. Electric vehicle chargers. For chargers, and this is just preliminary numbers, upfront cost would be somewhere around $90,000. My idea is that you would put them at Veterans Park. The $90,000 includes five years of network software and maintenance support. Return on investment, low end is 14 a year, high end is 45 a year. There's so much information to dig into. But the return on investment would be two to three years, and after that it would be an additional, say, $45,000. a year of income to the city in my research there's level 2 chargers which are the slower ones the high speed chargers have a greater roi but they are much more expensive to install i have reached out to lcec they don't provide but there's things that can work out if this is something people are interested in i will gladly do more research but i just figured i'd pop it as an idea If it's something presently for EV chargers, there are only two at the JW and they're at the Marriott Crystal Shores. There are three Tesla chargers. One is at the JW, one is at the Hilton, and one is at the Ocean Beach Resort.

I've had people reach out to me about this issue, too. The security guard at the museum. The museum, right. The historical museum. And I've had several other people reach out to me, too. So I would say if you're willing to do some more looking at that, Councillor Henry, if the other councillors agree to that, too, since you've started the process. But it would be up to you if there's consensus, of course.

I was going to suggest the white paper. Not only is this a possible source of funding, but it's also a source of service to the community. Can anybody be opposed for Councillor Henry bringing a white paper to us on this at the regular council meeting? All right, Councillor, I think you have.

It was the one thing, and I keep coming up with ideas. I think the thing we have realized is there are no home runs for money. But we're going to have to hit a lot of singles. If we hit a lot of singles, hey, guess what? You round the bases and you can hit a home run, get a point. So I will definitely dig deeper into this as long as everybody's consensus.

And we'll get you on the agenda.

We've got to spend to get some, and we have to look at alternatives.

I think it would be wise to suggest multiple options for location. Because location is going to end up being the bigger issue. People are going to say, wait a minute, now cars are going to be sitting there for how long?

And exactly, and I think I didn't realize because I do not have an electric vehicle, is if you park your car there and you use the electric and then you get charged for as long as your car sits there. Oh, great. So say you charge it and go food shopping or do a bunch of things, and if it's their long-adventure charge, and you are being charged.

Well, you've got some work ahead of you. We could have private-public. We could have different locations. Guys, I'm going to say one final thought, and I want to keep you. My first few years going through this, we had a great staff, previous city manager staff, but the dynamics were not the same. We had rolled right back. It was a different presentation. It was much quicker. And just for that reason, this particular staff, Casey, your staff, you've done an unbelievable job in the detail you give us, the direction, how you break it down, and then tie it together for us so we can understand where we're going. I could just tell you we didn't have to have this privilege for a while. This is a welcomed meeting for me, and I greatly appreciate it. So kudos to you and the whole staff. So thank you.

Guys, you know what I need now? Item 6, adjournment.

Can I get a motion?

Motion to adjourn.

We are adjourned. See you at 530. All right.

You're such a sweet star.