Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

advisory committee and I'd like to thank those that are in the audience we don't have as many as the last place I attended was the audit advisory committee and there were just all kinds but we are we are thrilled to have just so you know we're thrilled to have the three of them out there so thank you for attending thank you Okay, Brian is here and we're ready to go. How about a call to order?

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Here. Let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And before we go to the approval of the agenda, I think Matt would like to be on Zoom and If you hear us, Matt, we're thrilled to have you.

Yes, I'm here. Thank you.

OK. So do we have to vote on that, or do we just say he's breathing, and we're breathing, and we're all together? OK?

I think we have to say it's okay for him now.

Is it all right with everyone if Matt attends a meeting by Zoom? Yes. Terrific. Okay. Can I have a motion if you all approve of today's agenda? Can I have a motion to approve the agenda?

I'll make a motion.

And a second?

Second.

And all of those in favor? Aye. Okay. Now we're to the minutes, and I know that John has something he'd like to discuss before we approve the minutes.

Yes, during section six on the minutes, in the meeting when Zach Lombardo was giving his presentation, I did have a conversation with him about my lack of confidence in some of the data that was provided. And that doesn't seem to have made it into the verbiage of the minutes.

OK. Do we do something about that? Or how do we go about getting that inserted into the minutes?

I know – Claire is actually away on vacation right now, but she could rewatch that portion of the video and take a look for some changes that could be made. So she'll bring that back to the next meeting.

Okay. So we'll insert that, John, for the next meeting. Claire will take care of that. Thank you. Okay. And other than that, can I hear a motion to approve of the minutes of last month's meeting?

Well, shouldn't we defer to next month? Yeah, I think we'll do that. Okay, so all right.

All right, let's defer it. Okay. Moving along, old business. Is there anything we – do we want to do the staff communication under old business, or do we want to go to – we can move to new business? I don't know if we have – I don't know if – If we want to discuss the fence, the racket fence under old business or new business, how do you want to do that? Our staff communication, where do you want to put it?

Sorry, do we have the fence on the agenda? Yes, we do. Okay. We have Joe. Joe can speak on it.

So are we looking for an update on the fence? Yeah. Okay, so the e-noise panels are set to be shipped on July 29th, and they should take about two weeks, they're thinking, for us to get them. As soon as they arrive, we'll start working on putting them up. The facilities team will, and that will probably take us a couple of weeks to do. It's quite a bit to do, and we have to work around all the people playing, so... And then the interior fence that was approved in another council, the POs were issued for the fence and for the sound panels, but we are waiting on shop drawings for the fence so that I can order the new panels. So until that happens, I can't order the panels, but the PO has been issued. So I'm working with all the contractors, and we're still just getting those shop drawings.

If you were going to make... just a wild guess. When do you think the whole thing would be finished that we would be listening to see how they're doing?

Well I think the perimeter one should be done fairly soon it's the interior one that I just don't really have a guess on because I don't know how long it's gonna take to get these shop drawings but once we do get them and I send them out to Enoy's they usually send us a verification drawing we sign off on it and then they're ordered and it's within you know eight weeks we usually we can see them being shipped Okay so we're thinking we'll be well into the newest racquetball season

they'll all be there we'll have a true test of how it goes okay so we'll all Also what about the fence for the show court at the back of the show court that fence what do we know about that They're looking at August what was the day that we said August 29th I sent it to you I can't remember was it I think you said August 11th but we did yeah we do have flyers out at the rocket center to inform everyone

Yep. So once that's up, that'll be that exterior one around the new grass area so that we can then at some point have the gate to keep out people before hours and after hours.

That's part of it. It'll be included in that stretch. So the gate will be included in that, and that'll be all boxed in and secure then.

Yep. So when we lock up at night, the stadium court will be locked up as well.

Yep.

Thank you.

We are making progress, girls and boys. It's happening. Okay.

It's like a glacier, but it's moving.

Yeah. Kind of hurt, but you're true Okay Yeah, Joe, thank you.

We appreciate everything you're doing Okay, we could go back to staff communications. I apologize when that's okay asking I was looking up something so for staff communications I'll start with first does anybody have any questions in regards to the report that I submitted?

Were were you Should we question or worry that you maybe didn't have as many kids at camp this year as before? What's the reason for that, do you think?

actually so we had a staff meeting and trying to find out exactly what so we do have a waiting list for our stellar camp which is sixth grade through eighth grade so what we're thinking is we're kind of in that transition we have more kids in our youngest group which is we call it the yellow group and And we try to do a max of just 20 there because they need a lot of hands-on supervision. So we have a lot in that group, and then we have a lot from sixth grade to eighth grade. And where we're low is more of the third graders, the fifth graders. So we're hoping that next year we'll have a higher amount in third to fifth grade and we'll get back onto cycle. We're not 100% sure, but that's kind of what we're thinking happened this year.

Sounds good. Did you want to talk about the increase in cost? I know we talked about it at a board meeting, but did you want to tell us about how much we're going to be charging for the farmer's market and why we're kind of raising the fees a little bit?

so that was just approved it went in front of City Council yesterday and Natasha is actually here today and she works very closely with me with the farmers market and We also communicate with other market managers in Southwest, Florida and the consensus we try to do we We try to work together. And a lot of them were already doing increases because the overhead costs are rising for all of us. So that's one of the reasons why we wanted to do an increase. And then a main thing that we did differently is we were the only farmers market that did not have a difference in cost from craft vendors versus food, produce. So that we did a little differently. We actually have a different cost for craft vendors, and it's because we have a smaller section for crafts, and this hopefully will – it's consistent with other farmers' markets. We're all fairly consistent with each other now.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions? All right. Let's move on to new business, and I know the two of our members.

I do have one other thing on here. Under staff communication, so one of the things that we're requesting, and that's one of the reasons why I hesitated a little bit earlier, Joe just came to me right before the meeting, and we're requesting use of funds from the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee for that's currently in your budget right now you have seven thousand nine hundred dollars and ninety two cents available And what we would like to do is we would, number one, I would like to purchase a new AED for the Racket Center. And this would be an additional AED. And we got an estimate about $1,700 that we'll need for it. And my reasoning for wanting this is we are adding more fencing. We're adding more of the sound barriers, which we don't know yet, but I'm kind of thinking the airflow is going to be a little bit less. I'd like to be on the side of caution of having an additional AED. We have one that's inside. I want to do another one you know, in the gate area down, like, closer to where the tennis courts are, in between the tennis courts and the pickleball, I want to add another one in that area. So I would like permission to use funds from PRAC for that. and then uh for joe and he can talk about it a little bit more but there are some of our pickleball courts that do need resurfacing some of them you know it could end up being a safety concern so he would like to use the additional funds and put that towards that the funds that i'm looking for would be out of the capital bucket from the the main pickleball project that's still existing So I'm looking operational, he's looking... Yeah, for the capital.

Mine's going to be way more than what's left in the PRAC budget.

Yeah, I couldn't imagine you could resurface.

No. So, yeah, I guess my request would be is that you would go to council and request that facilities comes with a budget number for resurfacing all eight courts. Do you know how much that would cost, or do you... We're working on getting an updated cost at this time, but I don't have one right yet.

And then once you get that, do you make the request or Samantha or how do we make the request?

So I believe you need to go to council and request for them to have us do that. And then once we do that, then I can go and ask them for the funds.

Okay. We'll do it. Joe, it would be safe to assume that I'm involved in a couple condo associations. So I think that we just did one tennis court and did this. And in the range of $25,000, is that?

I'm thinking it's a little bit larger than that.

But this is two, right? Eight. Yeah, but it's two tennis court sizes.

It's tennis. Oh, he's correct.

It's the size of two tennis courts. It's the footprint of two tennis courts, square footage-wise. So it's probably in the neighborhood of 50,000 or plus or minus. Plus. Yeah.

Was it your last estimate, like 84 to 86?

Yeah, it was closer to 100, yeah.

I also think it's a good idea because as much as the members of that club want to expand, the reality is it isn't going to happen in the next year and those courts are bad.

I was going to ask that. As a city made the decision that they're going to maintain versus allow expansion and upgrade? I just don't want money wasted to fix something and then they go in and bulldoze it when they go in.

Right now what they're doing is that It's in a trial period so once we get the sound Barriers up and then there's going to be a trial period to see how it's working with the current nine courts that we have and After that, that's when, if it's approved, the next process would be for the fundraising and the potential expansion. But that's not going to happen for a while because they need to go through the trial period, which they're going to want to go through season. Okay.

And that's up to us. I mean, that's what we discussed at our last meeting here was that there was not going to be any expansion until this was... Again, I was... That falls in our court.

Right. And I just want to make sure we're going to go and maintain that I just don't want that to be wasted.

And second to that, the current existing footprint of these two would not be affected by any future pieces. So these are going to stay in that same footprint. So... I think, seeing what I've seen over there, certainly this is a wise move. I think the other thing is that I think it's an olive branch out to the existing members who are going to be paying double what they used to pay, that there is some money being invested back into the facility prior to us generating the new funds from the increase in fees. And this can be a first step forward to a much larger uh... thing that is going to need to happen over there because uh... certainly there's plenty of dollars that are needed to to bring that facility back into uh... Well, pristine isn't even the right word, but it's a long ways from where it needs to be. So, you know, if we can get the courts in a better condition, we take care of the noise with the eight that are there. I'm for this, and I'd be happy to make a motion to go to city council and ask for these funds to be redirected from that fund. Joe, can you...

Real quick, though, before you do go on that, just so that way we don't get it confused, could we get, if you guys agree, could we get consensus for me to use funds out of the operational budget to purchase an additional AED for the Rocket Center?

Can I hear a motion to purchase an AED?

I move to approve the purchase.

Okay, in a second. Okay, all those in favor of purchasing?

I have a clarification on this. So we have $7,000 some odd dollars, correct? This is going to take $1,700. That leaves $5,500 and some odd dollars. Not a lot, but what happens to that $5,500 at the end of the year? It disappears from us, correct, if we do not use it?

Right, but most likely I will be coming to you for another suggestion.

Well, that was my question, because certainly we have plenty of other needs over there, and I think that whether it's there or Mackle Park or many of our other places, I think we need to not find ways to spend it in ways we don't need to, but there are plenty of places that we need to improve things, from small things to large things, whether it's park benches or shade structures or whatever. So as long as you come back with a plan in order to use this, I would just hate to see us lose this because we get very little money to begin with.

We can count on Samantha spending every last penny. So it's not a problem. We'll take care of that.

In regards to that, in regards to the pickleball, if you're going to redo the courts, because I don't foresee us being, in reality, in Marco Island years, So in Marco Island years, I don't foresee them even if we say the sound is great And then they have to put their plans forward again, right? We're not fast-tracking them City Council isn't hasn't decided to fast-track them once the sound is approved my next question is they had talked about removing those lights because the court footprint is so small that there have been a number of incidents of people breaking their body on the lights and at that point if you're going to resurface should the lights come out?

Well, I'll answer that one. That's something that we're not going to be doing anything with the lights at this time. We're going to be doing a trial period in regards to the hours of the facility. And the trial period is going to be that starting in, again, this is just a trial, starting October 1st, the new hours of the Racket Center are going to be 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Thank you. So how was that decided? Sorry. I'm just curious because there's still a number of people on the island that work. And so that takes away evening clarity. Is it going to be every day of the week?

Monday through Friday. And then it's open 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the weekends like it currently is.

It feels unfair that the – well, I'm not a member there anymore, so let me just say that. So I'm not speaking for myself. But it feels like the dues got raised and they're going to have shorter hours. I think you're going to have a –

lot of people coming to meetings we've we're tasked with multiple things we're tasked with working with the residents in regards to the noise issues so that's one of the reasons why we're trying to do it the as everybody saw during the operational budget and you know that there are some big decisions that are going to be voted on which means that budget-wise we're gonna be pretty tight tighter than what we already are which were pretty tight so we're gonna have to be creative when it comes to staffing and operation you know and programming and all of that so that's another reason you know why we're looking to do it we're busier during the morning so we need more staff during that time so this is a trial period we're gonna see and you know staff we're just doing the best that we can thank you if I could Samantha I share that concern I know what it's like to work on the island and get out of work five or six o'clock and not be able to use amenities and please just for background for the future whatever

Wouldn't it be possible to have maybe one night, two nights a week where hours are extended and maybe some adjustment in the morning?

Anything's possible. Right now, we just need to do a trial. We need to see what it looks like, how it's working. We're open to have the conversation, but we have multiple people with, or thousands of people, honestly, with opinions, and the only way we're actually going to get somewhere is if we actually start trying things out and seeing how that works.

Out of curiosity, do we have any data from the barcode scanner from last year with usage from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. from call it October through April?

So the answer to that is no, we don't with our old recreation system. The good news is we just were in the process of implementing a brand new recreation system where we're going to be able to get much clearer data. so and that's gonna start we go live with our new recreation system on September 29th so it won't help us with the six to nine but we already staff wise we already have a good idea of who uses the facility from I'm from six from 6 p.m. to 8 there are a couple of groups that we are a little that we are concerned with and we're going to be talking to them about how we can move their activities a little bit earlier and And then if there's some things where they only do a couple of times throughout the season, then we can do that more as a special event, and we can open that. That's a special occurrence, and we can stay open on those particular evenings.

Yeah, I would concur and probably agree that we've got people who are going to be now paying more with less hours, and I would concur. I also can sympathize with the conversation about budgets and everything else. But I would hope that we could revisit this, because with the new funds coming in from people who are paying to be members, that we could find a way to staff 10 hours a week from 6 to 8. Because I would share that concern.

It's definitely a concern, but we're also trying to hear from those that live nearby, and we're trying to work best with everybody as best as we can. And people are on a regular basis, a daily basis, telling us how important having the facility right next to them is affecting their quality of life. So it's a really tough position, and we're just trying to come up with something. Again, this is not set in stone. It's not going to be something, you know, we don't know how this is going to turn out. We need to do a trial for it.

Well, I think we haven't given the fence around it an opportunity. You know, we're closing it off legitimately. Right. and we haven't had the noise barriers up to do that. I'm fairly confident after what I heard when I went up north and experienced that, that this conversation is going to improve from a noise perspective in a relatively dramatic way. It's not 100% guaranteed, but my ears heard one thing and heard another thing when I was on the other side of that fence. So I'm pretty confident that the noise situation is going to improve. But I do take a look at it as a consumer and say, jeez, I'm going to pay more for this and have less access. And for those who do work on the island, whether they're teaching or doing who knows what else on the island, you don't want to cut off their opportunity either. So I think, although I listened to a lot of the budget conversations over the last few days and hours, and I listened last night as long as I could with some as bad audio, but I think we have to to really clearly think, do we want to cut service to these folks in a way that makes this amenity of the island no longer an amenity of the island? And I think that's a fair conversation to be had.

It's just testing for now. And you've got to forget, people have kids, and that's dinner time. When you're sitting down for dinner, you don't want that going on in the background all night long. You have kids. You've got to put them to bed. I mean, so everyone's got to have a relaxing time. evening also.

But that'd be fine.

I know. But all this testing has to go through. Yeah, all that stuff's going up. But the big thing here is money. They've got to have the staff there. If they're going to have it open, there's got to be somebody there being paid a salary. Somebody's got to lock it up when it's done. So I think it's all a monetary move from what I've seen.

Right. But we, as a financial disposition for that facility, raised the fees by $180 a unit. we gave them the capability to add 50 additional members. So you're talking about $10,000 just on 50 new members, actually 15, almost $20,000 just on new members, that 50 additional. And then you add up $180 times 200. If we can't find enough in the budget from that to accommodate 10 hours a week, we've got bigger challenges.

Well, that's a great question, too. We haven't gotten that money yet, I take it. It hasn't started yet? Oh, yeah, it already started. Did it already start?

It's already started, but it's not for all. And that's why you have to give us a good year, because we already had a good amount of people that had already renewed at the old rate. So we have to wait until they're ready for the renewal again. And also think about, we weren't in the green before this. We were still in the red before this.

The money's not there yet.

Yeah. And even when we do get the money, I don't see it as we're going to just automatically have this great amount of extra funds to be able to do all the wonderful renovations and everything and keep everything all up. We really need to take a little time and see how all this goes. So we are going to do this. We brought it up. It has been approved to do this as a trial. If the sound barriers turn out that that's working and the neighbors are all good and we have that communication, then a trial is a trial. It doesn't mean that it's set in stone.

Let's say that for the moment, We will not have pickleball from 6 to 8 PM. But once we have the new sound barriers and we see how it works, then that's the time to bring it back and discuss it and say, are we ready? We open the courts and maybe we won't reopen them five nights a week Maybe we'll do it on Monday and Thursday But we've got to give it a chance and we've got to say to the people that live nearby. It's your turn and We will then move on after we have our new sound barriers and we give them a test and we've all and then maybe by then after everyone's paid their hundred and

their extra money then we'll move on from there but for right now this is how it is so I would like I just like to add I play at the Y now and we have five or six courts full every night and those people are there I leave at 8 and they're they're all still playing so the need on the island is there in the evening okay

So hopefully we will be able to make everybody happy in the next six months. But for right now, the council has approved it, and it's a done deal, my friends. Now, let's move on to new business. And Beth, you had something you wanted to bring up.

Yeah, I have a couple of things. First of all, A couple of years ago, we gave mosquito traps out of Mackle Park. Is that something we're going to revisit that homeowners could come and get, or are we doing that? I haven't seen that advertised.

It's not something that Mackle Park did. It was another company that brought them to Mackle Park, and we were one of the places that they can come and pick it up.

So the Collier County keeps talking about mosquito fish. Is that something we could do? Like, my husband walks our dog at Lee Plummer and he comes home, like, eaten alive. Is that where we could possibly get mosquito fish from Collier County and put them in that pond? I don't have an answer for that. I'm not sure. And then the last thing I wanted to bring up is that – sorry, it's pickleball – Dr. Lucius, city manager, said that she wanted to institute a reservation system for the Pickleball Center like they have at Pelican Bay. And if we're having money fund issues that isn't free first of all and second of all one of my best friends plays at pelican bay and she laughed when i told her because she said there's nobody there policing when you come or when you go yes your card won't get you in but 30 minutes before your scheduled time but nobody checks to make sure you're leaving so before we waste a lot of money on it i would like to have better oversight or research on that system before we spend money on that instead of putting somebody at the courts, one person.

So the good news is right now we have no intention of purchasing anything additional. We have the new recreation software, which is called ActiveNet, which does have a scheduling system. So we're just learning this. It's just being implemented right now once staff gets trained on it.

Essentially put all the different projects and then on each one of the projects we can write a story so working with Tim and that's group write a story about the racket Center and what they would like to do there and Money that's gonna be needed to be raised and things like that the same for obviously for Mackle Park We've got a lot of things whether it's the drainage whether it's the the slides and swings and the dog park and The list goes on over there Ultimately, I just wanted to make everybody here aware that I'm hoping to have this completed so that it could be live as a real website here in the next six weeks. Initially, I'm just going to use photos that I have on my phone. I attempted to try and get some higher quality photos from people who've taken photos around the island, but that has proven to be its own set of challenges. I've got enough to make it look Markle Island enough-ish. My designer was able to create some turtles and some owls on there to make it more Markle Island-ish. But at some point, I'm just gonna ask for help probably from each of you to help fill in potentially some content for each one of these projects. But then ultimately, myself and I think a member Matt Heineke, he and I have kind of asked to do some of the Mackle Park stuff. But we're gonna need people to help move these balls forward because obviously we've all sat and listened to the budget meetings. We've sat and listened to people talk about trying to get us some money here for the parks, and it seems like that's going to be an impossibility. So what we need to do next is take action ourselves and move this forward. So I'm hoping that by the end of August, my company and my team will have what I believe to be good enough to go live. And then from there, anyone who else wants to come forward with a park project, can submit one to us we can put it up on the site and at that point we can hopefully work through the parks foundation to collect funds that will fall into each one of those specific buckets while we get people throughout the community engaged in whatever project for the parks that they would like so with that i'm happy to answer any questions or um have you talked to is it tom hornsby that does all those aerial videos with the drone I don't know if he was the gentleman, but I did reach out to a couple people on the island. Some of them have a for-profit need of their photos. Some of them I'm happy to pay for, whatever. We'll sort that out. But the reality here is good enough to get something live is going to be good enough. And a picture coming over the bridge to be our hero image of Marco Island was probably going to be good enough. And then we'll get some photos of each individual park or projects And we'll put those up as good enough to get started and then from there You know the softball guys. They're working already kind of behind the scenes I haven't reached out to time yet to show him this but I'd like to create a story from the guys over there About the softball field what they would like done. I need to sit down with Samantha talk about what we need and in totality at Mackel and then certainly we had the Owl Park project that we talked about we've got some people interested in assisting on that and then any of the other projects and get them all listed out and then hopefully engage people in the community and help us raise the funds needed But, I mean, you're talking probably, I don't know, $7, $8, $9, $10 million in totality here. I mean, that's the reality of this. Yes, it is. Right? I mean, the Racket Center is millions. Mackle Park is millions. And Winterberry Park is probably millions. And we've got good people in this community, but we need some people to help step up and lead the charge here. And hopefully this will be the first step towards that. So any other questions?

Yeah, and if I could. Is this a website for the foundation to promote throughout the community for solicitation of funds?

So it's going to be gifted to the foundation, right, so that the foundation can have a site up and that funds can be activated. There's going to be a variety of things that need to happen behind the scenes here yet on what way can we process funds, whether it's credit cards, Can we connect with people who want to do through their donor-advised funds? So there's going to be a variety of those conversations that are going to have to happen yet, but if you don't get started, you don't get started. So we'll tackle those one at a time here.

It sounds wonderful, and thanks for your time. Any others?

No? Good?

We kind of... That was great. For those of us who... don't listen to all the meetings and know everything that's going on here on Marco Island. Our funding is slowly dribbling out the door. And Parks and Rec is kind of the last guy in the line. So we have to be first on the chopping block. And we know we have to be realistic enough to know that the things that we had hoped for and that we had planned are basically not happening. and I guess kind of we have to step up and the seven of us have to be the leaders in doing it ourselves and one of the places that we can raise funds is called the parks foundation rennie champaign is now the chairman of the parks foundation and we are hoping that he will have meetings and we can begin and there is some money in there and hopefully with our guidance and leadership we can get it taken care of there could be some money for parks and rec if Do we call it the referendum? I don't know. Let's call it the referendum. It's $23 million. And the last little drivel in the line goes to Parks and Rec. After everything else is done, we're in there too. So that is something for us. But we had hoped... to redo the playground at Mackle Park. Matt has worked very hard. We need new fields. And the money's not there. And we have to get out there. And it's like, you know, us against the world. So I'm hoping that this is the beginning. And I thank you for getting it started. And we will now go from here. And I am... We do have... some members of the council if any of you would have anything to say we'd love to hear your voice oh come on this is our lucky day come on up because i proposed something yesterday first of all kevin dome i'm the temporary

city council member took over for Eric Brechnitz and I'm done in November I'm not running for re-election so I'm not afraid of what I'm gonna tell you people and everybody else on this island here we go at the budget workshop yesterday I started asking questions about the spending cap and the mill rate our spending cap was a bargain that had to be struck in 96 when we became a city otherwise they never got the votes Our mill rate has been in an eight-year decline for rollback. We're getting kicked in the fanny twice. And you wonder why there's no money on this island. I've been here 26 years. I came here. I looked all throughout Florida because I knew I was going to live in Florida someday. And I said, this is really the perfect island. It offers everything. I like the keys for diving, but it was a little rugged back then, and my wife wouldn't go for it. So there was a compromise. That hasn't changed. No, no, no. And that's not a bad thing. So you're not the only committee or board. Everybody says the same thing. We need funding. So how do we do this? And what I proposed yesterday, I thought I was gonna get crucified, but I said, let's explore getting rid of the spending cap and raising the mill rate, whatever we can do legally. And I put it to the city manager and said, let's work this out. To my surprise, devil tell ya, the majority of the people said, it's running champagne. Government is business. He's a businessman. You can't budget year to year. It doesn't work. We have to look way out. Now, we're pretty in sad shape right now, but if we start working at the grassroots level, every committee tell us, you know, city council members, let's get this thing done. Let's get these restraints off us. I can understand why we did it as a new city. Maybe people didn't trust who was going to be spending the money. But everything is so transparent now. It's hard, not impossible, hard to be abusing the funds. We're all going to be watching that. So I listen to this. One thing, an AED, oh, my God, we should not be begging money for an AED. One of my friend's sons dropped over on the court a couple years ago, a young man in his 40s. Thank God they brought him back because of an AED. We shouldn't be scraping to get this kind of stuff. You know, the 12 months, we're robbing Peter to pay Paul. Our policies were set 30 years ago. We're a 30-year-old city, bigger than 1996, rough numbers. And it's time to evolve. With time to grow, we don't evolve, we die. And why did it all move to this island in the first place? It's a beautiful island. It offered everything we wanted. When I came here, I was a big tennis player. A little too old for tennis now. But still, it had the beaches. It had everything we wanted. I'm a former chairman of the ad hoc bike committee here on the island. I've been on the two committees at the MPO, both transportation, the bicycle, pedestrian, and the citizen's advisory. I see what can be done and I'm just saying that if we can get a grassroots movement starting with every committee, every board, and you start talking to your friends and you say, now you're going to get a lot of, I won't say a lot of pushback, but you'll get pushback. You know, there's going to be people that don't trust government. Well, I don't blame them, but I think this is where we start and we look not for next year, We look five years on it. I know Public Works has to do this. They have five, 10, 15-year plans on the sewers, the streets, everything else. Trouble is, how do you plan for that when you don't know what kind of money is coming in? And like you said, Ms. Siegel, we are scraping, every scraping. It's embarrassing to me. I agree. So all I'm asking is talk amongst yourselves. I'm not looking for an answer today, but I'm going to approach every single committee and board, and I'm going to keep bringing it up to city council meetings. Rennie Champagne was with me 100% yesterday, and maybe saw one head, maybe two shaped, but that's expected because we do have those curmudgeons, that 1% curmudgeon on the island. and they know what I'm talking about. So that's my whole thing. Let's start working together. I won't say it's a mistake, what they did 30 years ago, but we need to improve. We need to evolve and get the city back on track.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Amen. Okay.

Can I ask a question? Yes. I wasn't at the budget meetings, but is there a budget for the increase in the city millage rate to assist with the extra money needed, or are we dealing with no increase so we're still dealing with the same amount?

This was conversation one of a few more that will happen, and I think this is a few months from coming to total fruition. Is that accurate?

Perfect. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. Can I get this on the screen for you?

Martin, could you put the screen up for him? Thank you. I think he'll zoom it out a little bit.

Yeah, you got it.

Let's go year 16. Our mill rate was 2.046. Right now we're at 1.267. That makes no sense. Double eight years ago. Kevin can you talk in the microphone please you can see the little blue line the curved line that was our property values dropping you know with the o8 crash everything else happens but you look at the mill rate eight years ago almost doubled was now we paid it Nobody complained. Well, probably somebody complained. I mean, raise your hands. Who likes paying taxes? Come on. But we have to. We understand why. It's why we moved here. And I just wanted to see that. We did it already. We're not looking to go crazy on this immediately, but... Why don't we just step back eight years to fiscal year 2016 and use that mill rate of two? And it's something we can talk about. I'm not a lawyer. I don't know what the legalities of this is, but I thought let's start talking about it.

I can tell you you're going to be a hot topic on Nextdoor in about 15 minutes. Oh, thank you.

I don't read it, and I know I'm already not real popular on that one. And that's okay.

It'll be 20 minutes, you'll be Facebook famous. That's okay.

I've got thick skin. I can take it.

I hope so.

So I just wanted you to see that.

Thank you. But there's one other thing. Oh, dear.

Even though you can't spend it because of the cap, if we were to raise it to the 2.046 if you were to raise it to the 2.046 which is eight years ago this is the number here that you'd have in excess money in the city but of course with the cap rate we can't spend it wow am i crazy or stupid or whatever that doesn't make sense at all So I just wanted you to see that.

Thank you.

Thank you. Think about it.

We'd like to join your team. It's good. OK. Thank you so much. Thank you. Is there anybody else from the council who cares to speak? No. How about in our audience, is there anyone who cares to have public comments now? OK, I think we are about finished for today. But our next meeting was.

Is that OK?

Yeah. No, my friend is giving me the thumbs up. Our next meeting was to be or is to be August 18 now indeed that is Election Day But I'm sure by August 18th. We'll all have voted for everyone. We'd love before then but as There is a new I guess it's a rule that Casey has said that the committee's are hope to meet nine meetings a year as opposed to 12. we as a committee at this point have only missed one month so as there is not too much on our agenda for next month i'm hoping that we will We'll know by September if the referendum has passed. We'll know if we truly have nothing, or if indeed we have a little something. No, the referendum's in August. Yeah. So we may know that there is some money coming to us. But if not, we'll know a lot more in September than we will know in our August meeting. Thus, I have spoken to Samantha. And if it is OK with you, we will not meet in August, but we will meet the third Tuesday in September at 3.30. Are there any who oppose? Missing the meeting in August. I know it's truly a good time for all of us But maybe we'll skip one month and we'll meet so let's we'll skip August We'll all get together in September. And if you'd like to have dinner one night before that we can't talk about the Parks and Rec but we could do that so do I hear a motion to adjourn this meeting I

I'll make a motion.

A second?

Seconded.

OK. We'll see you the third Tuesday in September. And thank you.