Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

April or excuse me, Wednesday, April 8th to order. Can we go roll call please? Commissioner Davis who is not present. Commissioner Dles here. Commissioner Birdong here. Mayor Prom Mercer here. And Mayor Yates here. Commissioner Davis is in route so we he should be here shortly. Um we'll do the normal invocation and pledge. We'll have a couple proclamations. We'll have the a presentation from Hart for Winter Haven uh on an item that was brought up during our retreat. Do you want to talk about that tonight or just roll into their

I just tell you I've got a meeting scheduled with them I believe for tomorrow um just to get some insights into to what they're looking at. um they'll make that present presentation to you all and it's on the agenda but it may be something that if there's action that the commission wishes to see on that that we bring that back as a formal action item. Um but we will know more come Monday once I have a chance to meet with them tomorrow. I want to give them time since last week to get their their thoughts together and their presentation. Okay. So, we wouldn't be able to make any action on their presentation.

You probably could because it's on the agenda, but there's not an action item per se associated with it at this point. Okay. Um and and I think until we hear what comes in their presentation, if there's an ask associated with that, I would would request perhaps some time to make sure that I can accommodate that ask in in whatever fashion it may be. Yeah, I think it's just in dealing obviously with I guess my thoughts would be, you know, in dealing with property, real estate, time is of the essence often. So that that was my concern and they may not have anything pulled together at for an action. So we just don't know but um correct

just nice to know the options. Well we always have the opportunity if it is an emergency or there's something you all find is you know exingention that you could wave that rule. Do we want to roll the um responsible government presentation to the end tonight? I would like to because one of the components within that if it's if it's agreeable to the commission um Katrina is going to give you an update on where things stand with grant aid and that's a that's the last item I have on the agenda is the uh for some guidance on that. We're not looking for that guidance tonight but I at least want to get you the information so going into Monday you have time to to contemplate that. Sounds good.

If we could do that then that would be great. Okay. want to roll through the consent agenda?

Certainly. And I'm going to call upon staff and give them an opportunity to present their items this evening. So, um, Andy Palmer, are you prepared to speak on the item with respect to equipment donation? Come on. He has that surprised look like he didn't know he was going to be on the spot tonight. Good evening. It's everybody. It's good to be here. Um this this item is as part of the Chino Leaks uh ballpark uh construction working with our partners at PK County. They have donated approximately $125,000 worth of really the best way to look at it is field accessories. And it's uh the portable mounds, LC screens, and several other items. And what that uh allows us to do, it allows us to help attract a lot of the tournaments that they help us recruit. And um with that said, we would have had to purchase those items if they did not provide those. So this agreement makes that donation whole. And so we would ask that you consider uh approval of this uh donation agreement.

So these are this is um like digital board sign boards. No, no, I'm sorry. These are uh LC screens and some uh batting turtles and portable mounds. Gotcha. And these are items that we've had and that were used during Rustmat as well as other tourn tournaments. Any questions? No. Thank you. Thank you, Andy.

Next one is uh Mr. Palmer as well. I want to thank him for his work to try and get this uh this process. This is actually one of two fact sheets uh that you're going to hear this evening. This is for the actual work to be done and then under ordinances we have a a budget amendment that supports this.

Good. Uh this item, the northwest parking which really serves aquatics and the theater and the kind of the west side going down by Ridge and and the theater. That parking lot is the only parking lot that between the Chandel Lakes phase 2, the ballpark uh facility and the fieldhouse that wasn't fully repaved. Some small sections of it were repaved as part of the aquatics renovation and as part of the DOT uh project, but they were really smaller patches. This we also have several potholes that form on that access road in and on the north side of the Routains pool during the summer. And this will this will actually provide a an even pavement and really help uh those potholes from not opening up as well as repaving. And that and then at that point the entire all of the pavement just about all the pavement in the uh on the whole site will have been repaved since the uh fieldhouse project. And we're doing this with it's about $299 $29,000 and we have about $99,000 in budget savings in the current contract. And we've identified three items of operational savings in our current budget. And we are working with uh we've worked with finance on a companion budget ordinance tonight as well to move those funds into the construction fund to fund this uh change order.

AJ, can you advance that one? I think we have an image there. So, mayor and commissioners, that area at the top that is in kind of a pinkish color is the area that we're speaking of. So, everything else around that entire site, Cletus Allen Boulevard, all of the parking uh associated with the fieldhouse with a new baseball complex, all of that is new. This is the the only remnant piece of 20 years or older that's in need of some significant enhancements to it. They they did save, as Andy mentioned, about $100,000 within our uh our existing contract with Rada and the change order that allowed us to do the brand new parking that is, I believe, now open. Um, and then there's enough savings within operations uh in parks and recreation to to carry the day on on fulfilling the cost associated with the overall change order. And it with Rada already being mobilized on site, it it saves us there as well without having to remobilize a new contractor.

Is the entire site now completed? The southwest parking is the grass is still growing in and we're doing some final touches on sod on the gray lawn area. The other the trail is open. The trail is not open yet, but it will be open within the next two weeks. And Commissioner Dawson, part of the reason for that trail to not have opened when we open the rest of the site is because of the amount of construction happening in there and just to make sure that we're keeping people as safe as possible. It looks exceptional uh coming over the bridge, you know, when you looking at it because it's greened up with the rain.

U Thank good really. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Andy. I don't see uh folks on the digitimation. So, I'll take this one. So, the next item, which is 10 C may recall, is Vance back there? Oh, Vance is here. Vance, you want to present on this one? I'm sorry. You're hiding in the back. How could you miss him? His size. Exactly. Exactly. I'm kind of skinny today. Uh mayor, commissioners, how you doing? All right.

Uh this is in addition to our uh Dart simulation uh system that we purchased last year. This is an upgrade. This is essentially going to turn into a uh a green room to where we can do live deescalation training. Uh and this is going to we're going to be able to also the fire department. There's a module for the fire department and any other city uh uh facility that use that where we engage with citizens. We can actually build a training around it. So this is live and interactive. It's not some canned system. So you can uh for example this system here we can actually have someone on a rooftop and do some deescalation training with them with this. This is goes along with our uh dart training for our firearms that we purchased that we talked about before. Um this system here is just a upgrade going towards more of our training that we're talking about as far as getting into um upgrading the technology when it comes to training. And mayor and commissioners, this item um is is we're able to fund this through our uh seized property. So those are dollars that are set aside and you can only use them for certain purposes. So the uh that account that we put those uh those dollars into has a little over 105,000 available within it. This addition to the DART system is about $21,355. So, it's not something that requires commission approval. We're bringing this just so you have an awareness of how we're enhancing our law enforcement training um and to keep you aware of it. So, this may be early to ask this question, but are we would this tie into

any sort of AI potential training and are we utilizing AI training yet? Not fully. uh partially with our uh taser training that uh we've demonstrated here uh about a year and a half ago or so. Um this eventually is going to turn into that. Uh this training is the the with AI technology and training it is moving at warp speed and uh we're catching up. This is like the first part of going in that direction because whenever you have a little green room you the possibilities is endless on what you can do with training. Like I said,

because I because I imagine right now training's it's still in a box essentially like okay this this scenario but it's boxed out, right? Correct. You throw AI into the mix now AI is thinking during the training. Yes. And giving you're never going to have the same scenario, the same word spoken, I would imagine once you elevate to that level.

Yes, sir. We we we're eventually going to get there. It's not there yet. I know um during the last uh police chief's meeting, I was talking to the uh gentleman that the salesman and this actual company and they were talking about AI is going to essentially be a component of it. All of our training with our devices like our tasers, uh the simulator training, all of it is going to eventually turn over to some type of AI format. So, and that's kind of scary within itself, but fortunately with this particular room here, um the training will be more fluid to where it won't be a AI can response. It's just going to be a natural human response because it's going to be a human uh a live person inside of that uh AI booth, inside of that booth, that green room booth. So, but it uses some a little bit of AI in the technology, but it's not driving it. if you understand what I'm saying there.

Um, next item is travel and training. This is just routine, but uh, we have the Florida City County Management Association's annual conference coming up in May 27th through the 30th. That will be held in Orlando. And this is the travel and training for myself, deputy city manager, and our public affairs and communications director. And I believe Katrina is actually presenting at that conference um on communication related matters. So this is again just a routine item. Next item uh MJ's going to present to you on the purchase of our new platform truck.

Good evening, mayor and city commissioners. So as the city manager mentioned, this is a purchase of a platform truck or maybe a bucket truck. You might have heard it referred to it as. This is the type of truck we use when we're doing work on highway lighting and traffic signals, but also things like uh hanging banners throughout the community. This particular truck we can also use for things like um if a pedestrian signal, for instance, is broken at an intersection from a car accident, we can use this to help lift that into place. Or a traffic signal cabinet, we can use that to help lift this. So, it actually acts as a little bit of like a crane as well. Uh so we're this our current truck uh is from 2012 and has reached the end of its life and is uh scheduled for replacement. Uh so we have about the total purchase price for the new truck is $261,144. Um we have a total of 196,491 included in the budget. So that is a combination of what was set aside through capital depletion as well as some money that was budgeted to close the gap we knew we had um due to some additional price increases. U some additional funding was needed. So we're able to pull about $64,652 out of some savings within the traffic operations budget. Uh and some of that comes from Mike Campbell, our streets drainage superintendent, was able to work with DOT and get some cabinets from them. That's something we planned to purchase this year and we were able to actually get some from DOT and those are about 18,000 a piece I think Mike. So we have some cost savings there. So we're able to reallocate that money uh to close the funding gap and get this equipment replaced.

Okay. Thank you. No one's asked if they can go up in the in the basket. It doesn't get you as high as the fire truck does. True. That's the one to go up in. True. But it's not as scary either. True. Um, for the record, uh, Commissioner Davis has has joined us. Welcome. Um, with that, we'll move into resolution 11A, uh, R26-12. Mr. Lavy,

mayor, commissioners, this is the acceptance of, uh, roadway, pedestrian, and utility improvements for Lake Ruby uh, Drive West. Um so um consistent with a planned unit development ordinance for the development of property out there, the developer did construct roadway improvements um from Eloise Loop Road/Tompson Nursery Road southward about 1300 ft. Um and then they also constructed um a pedestrian trail from the end of that roadway uh traversing west to Kenny Road 653 um across from Chain of Lakes Elementary School. So this is the uh all that work has been inspected. It's been completed. Um this is the acceptance uh of those improvements with this resolution. So a couple pictures we've included for you. This is the roadway. This is looking north uh on the new road back towards Thompson Nursery Road. the the larger um structure you see to the left of the road is going to be the back side of I think it's a 7-Eleven that's out there. Yes, sir.

Um and some storage units that have been built. If you go back one, AJ um the other direction if you can. One more.

I'm trying to get to the trail. So this trail, this is where um West Lake Ruby Drive West, formerly known as Lake Drive. That was just an open grass corridor. Um the plans didn't call for them to construct a road through there because of some of the conflicts with where that comes out. It was to be a pedestrian corridor. So you can see that's the trail goes all the way down to 653. If you'll advance for me, AJ. Um, again, this is where that trail comes back in to the southern terminus of the new roadway constructed and where that that water truck sits. Uh, that would be the entry into that subdivision if and when or that housing project when it gets developed on the kind of souththeast side of uh, Lake Hart a little further. And that just kind of gives you a general idea of where we're talking about. Are we going to have some signage out there for no motor vehicles, no dirt bikes, four-wheelers, anything like that?

I'll have to look into that. I can tell you that having been a resident who backed up to that property for 20 some odd years, um, when it was unimproved, there was a tremendous amount of of uh golf carts and four-wheelers and dirt bikes and the like through there. That's why I mentioned it. Um, I think with the way the trail extends through there, that's limited some of that opportunity. Um, I think that that's a uh, as much as a uh, a signage issue as it is a continuous monitoring and responding. Um, we used to have a lot more of that out in that area overall and back into Villimar and the like. Um, a lot of that has calmed down, but I know that we still on occasion get calls for that. Uh Eric, if you take the next item regarding Willbrook.

Yes, sir. Um so this is an item that uh is no longer in your pure purview, but still is in your p per purview a little bit. Um as you recall, uh the acceptance of uh or the release of performance bonds and acceptance of improvements and dedications in favor of the city. That's administrative now, part of the platting process. Um, however, this was started uh back in December of 2024. Therefore, we're finishing it up um through the traditional process. Um this is the release of subdivision performance bond and again confirming acceptance of uh improvements for um this would be Willoughbrook phase 2. Um they developed it in two phases. On September 10th, 2025, the city commission approved a resolution to accept the the improvements associated with phase one um and released uh accepted a reduced performance bond um to cover phase two. Um phase two is now complete. They have been inspected. Um and so this is the release of that performance bond and the acceptance of the improvements in phase two. We're accepting the water, wastewater, and reuse utilities. Um we are not responsible for maintaining the drainage infrastructure or the internal road rights of ways. They're private.

And the the only roadway there now is the community's roadway or is that part of the Willowbrook Roadway? So the very southern part of the road. This is a an old aerial if I can get there. Thank I don't know what it did. There we go. The This is the connection to um MLK. This part is public. Um it's part of the Willoughbook Road and and it's in public right away. When you get to the entrance of the subdivision, which is approximately right here, all of the internal roads are private.

So the what the rest of Willoughbrook Road would need to be constructed from this point traveling north. So is that gated? Is it gated? I don't believe it's gated. I think it has a barrier to prevent traffic through there and it's not there's no improvement to it. So you if you were to go out there, you'll see how you get into the Willoughbrook subdivision,

but if you were to continue, I guess be eastbound, uh you you really can't get through there. If you're on a dirt bike or a four-wheeler, you might, but um I I think there's a barrier that may be installed there. Last time I was out there, I believe seeing something Because what what you're seeing on there is the Tico right away or Duke right away, I'm sorry. And I think they have that fenced actually off until you get to the canal essentially and then it then you definitely can't go unless unless you're going really fast ramp. Gotcha. Which is not advised.

The the federal or the grant requests we put in go from the this where that road ends now to where the road to the north ends and closes the gap in between. Gotcha. Any other questions? All right, we've got some first readings to look at on Monday. So, uh, first one up, 026-10.

Yes, sir. This is a request to reszone two parcels from commercial highway C3 to mixed use, uh, MX zoning district. The petitioner proposes to construct a duplex on a vacant parcel. Um, the second parcel subject to this request currently has a single family home on it. Um this the reszoning from C3 to MX would bring that existing single family home uh into compliance as a permitted use. Right now it is um a non-conforming single family home. Um this did go to the planning commission. Uh no members of the public spoke and they recommended approval of this request. Um and staff does recommend approval. This is generally due east of Longhorn Steakhouse. Um, so between Avenue G and and Avenue K there close to where Steve Lock Hart has his real estate offices. Um, again, it it's been commercial for a number of years since the comp plan amendments uh I believe back in 2000 time frame. So, it's and the ability to really develop anything in there in compliance with the um the uh C3 zoning given the size of the lots and when you factor in having to do storm water and parking and all the improvements necessary with commercial, it would be prohibitive to to make it happen. I mean, as Eric said, you have a a conforming a non-conforming single family on there. um that creates problems if if people were if somebody was looking to acquire that property and needed to mortgage it, that creates all kinds of problems. So, getting into the MX uh creates an opportunity on the vacant land and and cleans up the existing structure at the same time.

Questions? I think we're good. 2613, this is the item. And CJ, you want to tackle this? This pertains back to the uh that parking issue at Chain Lakes.

Yeah, if I knew Allan Andy was going to write such a great fact sheet, I would have let him write the ordinance, but um this is the ordinance to the budget amendment uh for the Northwest parking to lot to mill and resurface. Um the budget amendment will transfer 110,000 from the general fund over to the construction fund. Um the transfer result of savings in parks and grounds 30,000 aquatics 40,000 and fieldhouse 40,000. So 100,000 110,000 will be transferred over to the um construction fund and um staff recommends the city commission approve ordinance of 2613.

Okay, I think we're good on that. Um, so we've got the city manager report. So, do you want to tackle that one now or?

Yeah. Well, here's what I'd like to do if it's okay with with you, mayor and commissioners, is um, we've got three items that we want to share with you on some cool things that are happening in responsible government, and we'll close it out with the items specific to grant aid. Um, but my hope is for Monday evening after you hear the information tonight, you've got a few days to uh to, you know, give that some thought that on Monday, you'd be able to give us direction on how you want to proceed with level of funding and any any guidance otherwise on grant aid so we can get that to the committee. Um, but I don't want to steal Katrina's thunder on on sharing that information, but that's that's what will happen on Monday with that. So, if you're okay, we can go straight into the strategic pillar review and and kick it off. Um, AJ, is that one queued up for us?

So, we had a I think a a great retreat or momentum session last week and certainly you heard a lot about what's happening in responsible government. Our intent with these pillar updates is to share with you some of the things that may not necessarily be outlined as a specific objective or strategy within the pillar itself or the strategic plan, but that that really lend themselves to what we're trying to do. This past year you you heard the past few months you've heard some comments from individuals about our procurement procedures and we have launched a new uh platform for how we go about procurement that I think has made this a lot easier for folks and I think it has also certainly expanded our reach and has yielded greater interest in the projects that we have. So Bethany Owen, our procurement officer, is going to give us an update on that. And then the other two items Katrina will speak to this evening. One is on the ADA title 2 web and mobile accessibility rule. This is a significant one and I don't know um perhaps uh Commissioner Davis may be aware of this within how it affects the school district. I don't know if that's a topic of conversation there or Commissioner Mercer within the municipality that she works with, but this is a a big deal. Um, and given the size of our community, our compliance deadline is what the 24th or 22nd

24th of April. Um, and we've been doing a lot of of work in that regard to make sure that we are we're ahead of the game and complying with the law. And then, as I said, an update on the the grant um status. So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Bethany to talk a little bit about OpenGV. Thank you, sir.

All right. Good evening, Mayor and Commissioners. As you may recall from past presentations in front of you, I have talked about that upcoming switch to our new platform. I am happy to say that we are live on OpenGV now and very successfully. So, we are a couple months early um due to some issues with our previous platform. So, we're very excited to have this going tonight. I would like to go over just a few highlight a few of the major benefits that we are experiencing with the new platform. The first being an as T mentioned an expanded vendor reach. Um, also the ease of use to both our external vendors as well as our internal staff and some additional vendor analytics that have been giving us some great insight into some of these solicitations. And finally, the accessibility of a library of bids that we can utilize also AI creation for those solicitations. All right. So, let's start off with the expanded vendor reach. You can see clearly on this map of the state of Florida, there are a lot of municipalities uh and county governments that are currently on open gov. Within PT County itself, the city of Lakeland is on open gov and I believe that this is their third or fourth year on open gov. And I know in speaking with my colleagues there, they have indicated that they have been very successful with it. They're very happy. Uh, also the city of BTO is kind of in the same position we are. I believe that they are in the process of rolling out their open gov system. And then of course there's the Lakeland area mass transit district that is also on open gov as well. Now, what that means for us here at the city of

Winterhaven, that means that we now have a larger pool of potential biders. Where we have been seeing one, two, three, potentially four bid responses to our solicitations, we are now seeing upward of 8 to 12 bid responses. And that is phenomenal. It's like nothing I've seen in my five years of doing this. um it should also equate to better competitive pricing as well. So that's all very good information. Um moving on to the ease of use of the platform. Uh this is for both our external vendors and our internal users. So to demonstrate I would like to start from the supplier perspective going from the city website. Um suppliers can easily locate the link to our open gov platform merely by scrolling to the bottom of this main page of the city website and underneath quick links you'll see that bid postings. When they click on this they're going to enter the city of Winter Haven's open gov platform. You can see very easily. It's it's super easy. It's very evident. We've got four solicitations open. On the left hand side of the screen, you do see a green button that allows them to click on that and immediately subscribe to be notified of Winterhaven postings that fit parameters that they're in search of, whether that be custodial bids, construction, design builds, etc. Very simple, very easy to get into. Let's start by clicking on the neighborhood service center modernization. This is an exciting new project that we posted just two weeks ago. Um, now as a vendor, what I'm going to see on this main page is an overview of the project, giving me just some brief details to see if I want to

dig deeper on this. You'll also see the applicable deadlines for question submitts for the um response to actually submit your bid and then our bid opening as well. So up toward the top you'll see there are underneath that green tab there's that is where they are able to actually click on and begin the process of uploading their bid response they can RSVP for anything like a site visit or any of our pre-proposal meetings or pre-bid meetings all at the top there across the middle band there you see they can download their project documents they can look at the agenda and public notifications ations and this new feature that has been just amazing, the question and answer. They can click on this tab and see all questions and the answers that have been posted. This particular bid has not yet had a question answered. But if I were as a vendor curious to know something about the project, all I have to do is click on that blue banner there and ask my question. It's going to submit an email notice to procurement staff. If it is something that we can answer, we're going to post that answer immediately. If it is something that is too project specific and we don't have the exact details, we can then forward that out to our user department to respond to. It comes back to us. We can proof it, make sure all is well before we release it. So, we find that we're getting Q&A out there to people much quicker than the old-fashioned method of trying to figure out who the project manager is to issue an email to them for us to create a formal agenda to be then posted online. Much much simpler, very quick.

If I could just talk to that for a second, Beth. So those that may have been with us or or looked at bids in the past, I know Commissioner Mercer, you probably recall from when you were on staff, used to be if we had a bid out and there was questions, people had a deadline to submit their questions and let's say that deadline's in two weeks and I submit a question today, my answer is not going to come back for likely two weeks because we would have to get all the questions, get all the answers, build a Q&A addendum, an actual document, and post it back out. The way it works now is that when their question is asked, we'll answer it as quickly as we can and it's a basically a living document here. So, as questions get answered, it's going to post into that Q&A section and you're going to see every question that everybody else has asked up to this point. And again, you're not waiting to the last minute to get answers to then go back and and you know, finish out your bid or your your proposal. So, it's it's like a real time running uh summary of questions that come in. It just the communication piece and the the the way that the staff's able to expedite that is significant for those that are wanting to bid. If you're talking about a bid on a major project and the questions are highly technical that could alter the cost of a material or a methodology and you get that sooner, you have more time to to really get your bid accurate.

Thank you. You're absolutely correct. And what we have noticed internally is this has taken off of our plate that creation of that agenda. Also, when we do hold up posting the agenda, then suddenly we're pushing up against a bid opening deadline and we have to make the decision on the fly. Do we go ahead and extend this bid deadline because the information that we just provided is quite significant causing the bidder to have to go back to the drawing board essentially. So then we're in the predicament of issuing bid extensions and it just gets very very difficult. So having these answers right at our fingertips uh has been tremendous. It also will it submits to us the name of the vendor asking the question but when we post the response all of that information is redacted out of it and it's strictly a basic question with no reference to the individual asking for it. All in all, our vendors have been very pleased with Open Gov. And I know when I have talked to vendors when they call in and ask the question of how do I get on your list? Uh, well, there isn't a list exactly. Just go on to our website. We're on Open Gov. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm familiar with OpenGV. Matter of fact, I'm I'm on with them with the city of Lakeland. So, yeah, sure. No problem at all. They don't even want to hear anymore from me. Just stop talking. I'm good with that. So, I'm good with that. So, um, moving over to the staff perspective. So, this is the staff side. This is what staff is going to see. And you can see it's very similar to what um our vendors see. Um, there is, if you will go to the neighborhood service center, let's take a look at that one again.

It's got the same information, the agenda, notifications, Q&A, um, all of that. And then there's a new tab there called vendor analytics that has given us a great deal of insight. Um, on this tab, vendor statistics, this bid posted just two weeks ago and in two weeks it's been viewed 464 times. That is just far and beyond what we were seeing with past Marcel and of course you know paper bids and things they weren't online. So 464 views in a matter of only two weeks. We still have four weeks left on this bid. That number should grow by a huge amount I expect. Underneath here you can see that there are 28 followers. Those are people that have indicated I'm interested in this. I want to know what's happening with this. They get notifications of the Q&A. Anything that pops up there, they get automatic notification. Um, if we post anything new, I posted a site visit recently um to this very same solicitation that actually was decided upon after this bid went out. So, those people will receive notification that they can come to the site and visit it. So, that's all very helpful as well. There have been 54 individuals that have downloaded the bid documents off of this website and there are two people that have hit that green button that you remember from the top that begins the process of them putting in their bid response. So we have two people at least right off the bat that are interested in bidding on this. So that's all great information. Now, speaking of the followers, if we click on that second tab over, we can drill down a little bit deeper and find out some more information relative to the people that are following this. This list of 28

individual firms will tell us who's out there that's interested in this bid. It will give us their contact information. And out to the far right side, you can see if they've provided the information, it will tell us that they are a prime bidder or a subcontractor. Just information that can be of interest and helpful. Now, the thing we're most excited about is this notified tab. When we click on this, this will tell us that when we posted this bid on Wednesday, March 25th, this automatically sent out email notifications to 3,818 firms and individuals that are signed up to receive notification of this type of a bid. That's just amazing to me, especially when we look back to the issues we were having with our previous provider where it wasn't even quite clear if the emails were going out, causing us to leap onto this system sooner. So, this is phenomenal. Great reach. Underneath the email log, we can drill down a little deeper and see what time that email went out on what date, to what email address, to what firm, and did it successfully hit its target. You can see it delivers or it is not delivered. It was kicked back. If we see something like this, we can reach out to this firm and ask them to update their system. We can send them an email letting them know about that. And then finally, the classification pro uh report that provides a breakdown of all of those 3,800 emails that went out as to the the individuals and whether they are registered um as certified with various agencies

like the state um DOT etc. You can see here for instance US DOT certified for DBE there were 62 firms of the 3818 that are certified 1.62%. So this could probably come into play if you have a solicitation that has some funding and there are some requirements that you meet a certain you know have you reached 3% of DBE etc. So that information is all great there. And finally, the most beneficial feature of all in my opinion um would be the available library of project documents. So you can see here in in this system, our staff is going to be going into the system and beginning creation of their solicitation. Oftent times we don't have the ability to write a scope. We're not sure how to start, where to start. We can hit this library button and it is going to search all open gov solicitations across the United States. That amounts to almost 55,000 solicitations. So when I put in here that I'm looking for design build services, it will pull up all the design build bids in open gov, allowing the user to pull in that solicitation and then work on tweaking it to fit our specific needs here for the city of Winterhaven. Now that alone is going to take just tremendous stress off of our staff for having to come up with their own specifications and their scope of work. And of course, it's going to also reduce the amount of time that we spend creating those solicitations. So that personally to me is just the most exciting feature of this entire platform. Also within this tab you see right next

to that is the use AI button. So this button allows us to put in plumbing services and generate a scope of plumbing service work. And then we can of course and we would need to tweak that to fit what we're looking for. Plumbing services for a particular location, plumbing services on an annual contract basis, etc. In closing, I would like to reiterate how very excited we are to have this additional tool in our toolbox. uh we find that it is offering us more vendors, a userfriendly interface, measurable statistics, and most importantly, in my book, a virtual library at our fingertips. So, we're very excited to have it to be up and running on it. I appreciate your time this evening. And with that, I will turn it over to Katrina.

As Katrina's coming up, you know, I just want to go back on the on the open gov. So, you've heard that term a lot, open gov. That's the That's the budgeting and transparency tools we're using in finance. This is another module that they have. So, we're getting that synergy of same software, you know, consistency across the board. Um, some of those things that that Bethany pointed out, our ability to to get that communication out to interested bidders, that sharpens pencils. Um, and to be able to document through the system, yes, communication was sent. Um, when you have vendors that say, I I didn't know anything about this. I'm in your system. I don't know what's going on with it. You know, we've got a we've got a documented record there of emails sent, emails received or rejected, and if so, why. It just takes a lot of the the guessing out of the process. Um, and I think that one of the things that I expect to see with the with the new legislation that pertains to financial transparency that we talked about last week of having to publish your budgets online in a searchable format. We did that last year. We started that process. Many governments are going to have not done that yet and they're going to have to comply with it. And there's a handful of vendors out there that that can help with that. Open Gov is probably by far the largest. I think you're going to see more municipalities and counties going to that is the means to comply with the financial transparency legislation. that in turn will expose them to this procurement module and you'll see more people signing on to that and that just even further broadens the field of reach when it comes to solicitations.

So I think there's a a tremendous windfall yet to come in addition to what we're already seeing with it. So this platform is up and running. This is live. What you just saw was was live from our website. Okay. So, are you ready for some questions on open gov now or do you want Katrina to present it first? We'll take questions certainly on open go. Okay. Questions?

Yeah. Um, can we go back to that was it the classification page that had all the different characteristics. Yeah. Are so are we asking folks to give us this information? So when they subscribe, they have the opportunity to input any certifications that they do have. Okay. Why would we need to know if someone is LGBTQ plus?

We don't need to know that. that's built in within the options within the open gov platform itself. Remember, this is a nationwide program. There are certain things that certainly would not be applicable to us in Winterhaven or allowed within the state of Florida, but it's it's something that they can certainly note within that. Where we come in probably more so is in the US DOT certified DBE. If you're using federal dollars on road projects, there can be certain requirements or thresholds that they want you to meet with DBE. And that is

and I I understand that if um are we able to turn off any of these, let's say that when we figure out the state DEI law and it's we're not supposed to be doing some of this. Are we able to turn that off or is this going to expose us to the state? So, that's a question that I don't have an answer for you now, but I will certainly get back to you on it. Um, my assumption would be whatever they input into their subscription would naturally be contained within that information. Whether or not we have the ability to disregard or disconnect from that, I I don't honestly. This is um we are currently still in training on this but we had to go live to get it up and running since the other platform was not. So I don't have all of the answers but sir I will

sure certainly look into that.

Commissioner Davis I would I would say that you know this is this is vendor profile information that they're inputting. um where it comes into play on our side would be if you had requirements for such things. You you can see what you have there. Mo and and the only requirement that I'm aware of that comes into play for us is on that certified DBE with typically with um federal department of transportation dollars that come in um uh small and disabled uh or disadvantaged businesses, minority owned businesses. A lot of that stuff at one time was part of bid documents and part of requirements. Uh there would be points awarded for that. that that hasn't been the case in quite some time. Um, but I think this is more reflective of what they how they register within Open Gov as a vendor because in other states and in other jurisdictions there may be requirements or preferences for that.

So, so I don't think it puts us in violation because it's not a determining factor in our award of bid. Right. Well, now I as a as a way of making sure we're not accused of looking at that information when we make our decisions. Um perhaps uh the multiple mult uh municipalities in Florida that use open gov can approach open gov and say can you please give us a Florida version of this or a Florida friendly version of this that would just make us blind to all that information. So then there's no even semblance that we are looking for specific characteristics when we start awarding procure procurements. That's just my my suggestion. We do have a meeting tomorrow with them and I will certainly ask them that. It's very good question.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Perth Mercer. Yes. Um I'm going down the list. I uh notice a lot of these the minority business women uh these minority businesses when you're putting out your bids for grants they require you to publish and and give them the numbers that you and I think in Florida we're moving away from that. So that's that's all that's my my concern and and uh you know I you know I don't think it's any surprise that I actually support that Florida's moving away from that. But I I want to make sure that we're not opening ourselves up to any accusation that we are looking for specific uh characteristics when we're looking at any of our bids. Understood. Couple questions. Um

Yes, sir. So, just I think I got it, but what's is there a cap to size of project that this would be utilized for? Like if you're doing a $20 million recreation center, would this go would that go into open guts to everything's going to go in there. Matter of fact, we currently have approximately a $30 million project in the system. No, there are no caps. Okay, cool. Um, does the system rank once you get, you know, 3 10 applications, whatever. Is it helping you in that ranking process that we use or or are you having to do that externally?

So, interestingly enough, uh on two different levels, if you are looking at a solicitation that is based upon the award would be based upon the lowest cost. This system will allow us to have people input the dollar value of their bid. When we open the vault, the dollar values are all can be read off if need be in a um in a public bid opening and then the system actually will rank and create a bid tabulation sheet and tell us who the lowest bid is. In a situation such as this one being a request for qualifications, it's a qualifications base. There is no dollar value to it. Um, we will be able to go into this system and instead of having our evaluation team as you have sat as a liaison and evaluation teams, that evaluation team will not have to submit forms that I have created and sent them and made them fillable and calculatable and us read all of those aloud. They will be scoring within the system and the system will create that record. We still have yet to figure out, okay, how do we meet the um public requirements for a public meeting to announce these things when we have everything in a system? We typically come into a public meeting and read off of our score sheet. So, do we come into a public meeting and read off of the computer? Those are things that we are in the process of figuring out. But it will rank in both of those situations, whether that be very obvious low value, low dollar bill, um, low dollar bid being the award winner or a request for qualifications. So, it will be doing that.

And so, are we still factoring in the location of the provider? So, maybe someone in Winter Haven gets a leg up of somebody that's in Jacksonville. So within in an RFQ situation where you are awarding points for their local effect on the economy or being within the uh Winter Haven service area. So what will happen will be I as an evaluator will go into the system and evaluate whether or not they are in and meet those qualifications and I will apply my view of what their point point system should be. So that will then calculate all of those things. It will still be manually input by the individual who is evaluating that solicitation response. So

can I can I tag on two things with you mayor there Bethany? The um compliance the determination of responsive bidder. You know that they've checked all the boxes that makes them a um what we designate as a responsive bidder. bonds or other thing insurance or whatever else they have to provide. Do you have to evaluate that now still or does is that an uploaded piece within the an ITB?

So I believe that the answer is twofold yes and no. Um so the system will it asks them have you submitted your bond? Yes. And then there's a spot for you to upload your bond. Okay. um is it you? But we will likely still have to look at that bond and then declare that it is responsive because it has met the financial stability of a an eight and that it has policyholder surplus of an amount exceeding. So we will still manually look into those things to my understanding but again we're still in that process but yes they do submit.

And the second question is our local preference provision on cost That is a percentage based upon total dollar value. If you are a Winter Haven based entity, second low bid within so many percentage points of that cost and you can match that cost that still becomes a manual review on behalf of the procurement office. So I would say potentially yes. However, there are different um factors that they are putting into our templates and that could be something that we could ask them to put into a template u where it would automatically check for a location and calculate that percentage. I would I would say probably immediately we'll probably be checking that ourselves and we always do that. Um and we can then take the bid tabulation sheet that it has created and override it essentially and say that this one meets the local preference ordinance um which which essentially means that if CJ bids and she's from out of town and she's the low bid but I'm the second low bid and I'm inside Winter Haven. Well, if I'm within a certain percent of her low bid, I can agree to match her low bid and be the winner. So, we manually check that and award in those situations, make the contact with that individual and say, are you willing to do this? And then change the bid tabulation sheet. So, for the moment, I would say it's doable. I would like to see if it's possible we can have that in the system. and and I I share that because I don't know if you all are familiar that that's part of our procurement manual that that

allows for that. However, there are certain programs that you know projects that we may take on that have state or federal dollars that have a strict prohibition against any type of local preference. Usually federal money will not allow that. So

yeah, I think um in my experience of building or having to build programs like this, you can always do it. It's an extra module. It's an extra cost. Yeah, we can do that, but but I think having that ability would save staff the liability of of potentially making a mistake on on those percentage calculations. It's not that staff is I'm sure everybody but you get it. I mean that way the computer, you know, is is firing that out. So I think that that could be valuable if that could be built in there.

But I'm super happy that we're going to continue to monitor that um going forward. Do you think that this brings in more seasoned providers or do you think this brings in more newbies or a mixture? Obviously, it's going to bring in a mixture of both, but where do you think it

So, with the simplicity of it, I don't see it as an impediment to someone who is not maybe technically savvy or is a small business, is local. Um, I don't think it's going to keep them out of it. But by expanding our reach into other areas like I have mentioned in the past, the city of Orlando, Orange County, they're all on open gov as well. So those people, large firms there could be willing to come to this area. So, we will potentially get a lot more large firms, but I don't see it as something that is to be of a concern where we're not or we're going to inhibit small firms and we also work with them very closely. We we've even had one of our local custodians come into the office and we sat with him and his telephone and taught him how to photograph his filled out bid form and upload it in his system. We're always readily available to them and and definitely want to have the small businesses. I don't think it's going to do particularly one or the other though, sir.

Okay. Since this is relatively new, could we get an update six months from now? Sure. On just like I I like in that update just how things are going, progressing if we could get, you know, a percentage of local to non-local applications as what that looks like. And then also on the winners, you know, local versus non-local percentages. I think it' be be cool to um neat to look at, you know, six months from now of using the system. Um can we make this presentation to the CRAAS to the Florenceville CRA and downtown CRA? Whatever you wish.

I just like to get the knowledge into their hands as well as they're out and about in their in the communities. I think that would be

I think that uh not to interrupt your mayor, but I think you know one of the things we're trying to do more of is these how-to videos. Remember we talked about that last week that to be able to uh put this out through um you know a Tik Tok reel, an Instagram reel, a Facebook reel, whatever you know the the preferred medium is and push that through our social media. That's a huge benefit. I think also um as we go out to meet in procurement events with the county and others, you know, we're able to walk people through this. I think taking it to the chamber and they're, you know, that's where a lot of our local businesses are um having awareness. It's it's trying to communicate out the ease of this and again we talked about that uh procurement preview. you this becomes a part of that. Here's the projects that are coming up. Oh, you're interested in these. This is how you go about doing it and walk them through it. But we can we can certainly um bring this forward to the to the CRA advisory committee so they have an awareness of it in short order.

I think a chamber lunchon would be awesome. Probably bring in a lot of small businesses and to see what that looks like. So that'd be great. Um any other questions? One more question. How does this relate with the Seymar process? Would people if if we were to uh do a Seymar, would they still have to go through this process as well?

Yeah. So, when you do a Seymar, Commissioner Davis, the um you're doing you're doing two you're doing two bids, two RFQS typically. one is for the um the professional services so engineer architect whatever the the project is and then you're doing a separate RFQ solicitation on the semar the construction manager at risk and those two are awarded separately and then they work side by side in that process so everything whether you're buying um uh pumps for lift stations that are a simple ITB an invitation to bid you're doing a uh a request for proposals of tell us how you would uh deliver a very specific project. An RF an ITB is just cost. An RFP is typically your process and cost combined. An RFQ is strictly qualifications. So all of those everything we would do would flow right through the same platform. And and that's the beauty of it. everything we've done to this date, whatever platform we've been on, if it's been the historic paper approach or through MCEL um or any of those types of other solicitation procurement platforms, we use it for everything we do.

So, if I'm hearing you correctly, this could increase the transparency so that Oh, absolutely.

folks in the public can better see the process and uh that might help with any suggestions that we're hiding anything. Got it. Um, Heather, can you go back to to the Q&A page? Well, actually, um, yeah, go back to the vendor side of this. I'm I just want to point something out. Look at the top of this if you would. You can see you've got the release date, you've got the due date, you've got when it was posted, you've got the time remaining. You know, there's there's a ton of information in here, and it's so easy to navigate in the process of uploading your stuff. It's I don't want to say it's it's foolproof because, you know, I'm a fool and I can pretty much screw up anything from time to time, but it it takes a lot of the guesswork out of it and and the transparency again of here's all here's when it advertised, here's when it closed, here's who it reached, here's who the emails went to, all that. One of the questions I had with staff was, you know, people that are in open gov um as a vendor may see solicitations. If if I just want to see what's in Florida, maybe I want to see what's in the southeast United States, maybe I want to see the entire country. If I'm dealing in something that's very specific, let's say it's in the aviation field, you know, uh let's say it's in rail, there's a good one, because there's not a whole lot of rail companies out there. I may be willing to travel states away to do that and I want to see those bids, but I'm a general contractor and I just want to do stuff that's within a 200 mile radius of where I am. I don't want to see what's in Georgia. I want I don't want to see what's in Alabama. We have vendors that come to us from out of state. uh the folks that do our um our uh slip lining program for our sewer system

situ in situ form I think they're out of Alabama or Kentucky or some place they're a national company that specializes in that no one really local that does that

water tower painting you know pretty unique stuff so it gives us gives us good reach on that but there's a ton of transparency within One of the features that um our vendors are always interested in is can I get a list of the plan holders? They want to see what their competition is. And so you can see on this page out to the far right followers so they can see exactly who is interested in this bid along with them. So another transparency thing. Thank you. Great.

Thank you. Good evening. All right. So, ADA title 2 web and mobile accessibility rule. Um, this is a rule from the Department of Justice that came out in 2024 and we are rapidly approaching our deadline for compliance. Um the basically just like ADA rules um ensure that our public spaces are accessible to everyone, this is about ensuring our digital spaces that we manage are also equally accessible to everyone. So the ADA web and mobile accessibility rule, this applies to our websites, our mobile apps, our web portals, our social media, your live streamed meetings, um anything we post digitally that our citizens may interact with. So the new legal requirements are that we need to meet the web content accessibility guidelines version 2.1 level AA. That is the technical standard. Don't worry about that. We We've got it. It's printed on my desk if you want to see it. It's about this thick. Um, but we have some really great tools that help us scan websites and scan content and let us know exactly where we fall in compliance with that. We are a municipality of over 50,000, which means our um effective date or our deadline is April 24th, 2026. Smaller municipalities have until April 26 of 2027. So, our deadline is coming up. So what have we done so far? We have scanned our entire website with those tools that will tell us exactly where we stand in the technical world. Are we meeting 2.0, 2.1 A, AA or AAA? Tells us right where we are and what we need to do to remediate it. Um we have been working on that for about the last six

months. A couple members of my team have gone through every single photo on the website to make sure alt text is there. Um, we've gone through every single page. We've also been scanning all thirdparty URLs and apps. So, just because we contract with somebody to provide a web portal, so a good example is our water department customer portal, we are still responsible as the government entity to make sure that meets the requirements. So, we have been scanning all of those and working with those thirdparty vendors if needed um to make the updates. Most of them are already compliant because most of them primarily serve governments. So, they've already built this way. Um, the ones that do need some updates, we are actively working with them on that. PDFs is a big part of this rule. Making ADA accessible PDFs can be difficult, especially with old documents. We have gone through and removed non-compliant PDFs and are systematically working through to update those so we can get them back up on the website for citizens. Technically, anything created before the deadline is grandfathered in and it's anything created after that. Our goal is to just have everything that's out there and used regularly compliant regardless of creation date. So, that is what we're working toward now. Again, work that's continuing. The PDF is really the big lift today. Um, we are also updating some of our social. So, you'll see some of the ways that we post content on social media may adjust slightly. So, for example, um the way that we post road closures now uses a solid red line for where the road is closed and a solid yellow line for the detour. Under the new rules, you cannot use color alone to um convey information. So, we're changing that solid yellow line to a dotted yellow line, which meets the rule. So, some simple tweaks that we're making across the board um to make that happen. You will also see us add live closed

captioning to live streams. So, we're vetting some tools right now that use basically use AI to put that closed captioning on. We are required to do that like for your commission meetings. Anything we live stream and any pre-recorded videos we post, whether that's for marketing, for how-to videos, anything like that, we'll have closed captioning moving forward. We've also been working on staff training. So, training our staff um to make sure that they know what to look for. So even if every single person that's gone through training doesn't know how to remediate it, if they know what to look for, they can bring that to my team and we can help them fix it. I've been leading those trainings. We've had staff from all the different departments attend. We started those on March 25th. The final scheduled session is tomorrow. I've probably had easily over a hundred different staff come through those trainings. So making sure that we anyone that touches our content, anyone that creates content that may be posted um can be helpful in ensuring we stay we get compliant and stay compliant. So that's it with ADA. Do we you want to do questions on that before we jump to grant aid?

This is a this is a huge lift. Um, when you think about all the stuff that goes out through digital platforms now and everything that's on the website and you've got to comply, uh, it's exciting to know that we're as far along as we are. I just reviewed some, um, some of our videos that we post out that highlight employees in the field and the new ones have closed captioning, you know, built into it. Um, she talked about alt text, alternate text. when we have photo images that are out there, you can't just post a picture. You have to have something that describes what's in that picture. Now, there's a there's a whole lot to this uh to ensure compliance. I mentioned in our in our session last week that, you know, several years back around 2017 time frame when a lot of the ADA uh laws were were amended specific to websites, a lot of communities pulled their websites down because there was so much static data on there that wasn't compliant and it was it was a kind of a crisis. How do we how do we deal with this? And fortunately cleaned up a lot of websites. this is the second coming of that that a lot of agencies that post static information and PDFs and and other things are going to have to go back and revamp a lot of that going forward. So happy to say that we are with Katrina's expertise and that of her staff in compliance and we're quickly approaching it and we'll be there before that deadline

and we've also provided at Katrina's request master addendum contract language to you last week. Yes sir. um that hopefully we can help mold or meld into the process as we identify vendors and contractors and

Yep. So, I'm I'm working with all our departments to make sure we've identified all of our vendors that provide thirdparty portals or digital content to us so that we can go back and add that addendum to contracts. Interestingly enough, a lot of the heavy lift that's been done on this and will continue to be done on it, you will not see because it's coding in the background um that allows accessibility tools to be able to to read and access um content. So, for example, the PowerPoint slide you're looking at today, I know AJ went through and added all text to every image in this so that when it's uploaded with your minutes, screen readers can read it and that alt text is in place. So there's a lot of you may go to our website tonight and say I don't see anything different. It's because a lot of it's in the background coding that allows accessibility tools to read the information.

What what do we have for in place for commission meetings or or are we going to have to generate new tools for commission meetings? So if someone is hearing impaired that wants to attend a meeting or what?

So the closed captioning will help with the hearing impaired, right? So, we'll help them pull that up and be able to kind of look at it live with the closed captioning. Um, I've also been working with it to see if any of those tools that'll put it on our live stream will put it on these screens as well. Um, we've also been exploring some other tools, not so much ADA related, um, that will do live um, translation for folks in the room, so they can put an earbud in and it'll do it audibly or they can read it on their phone. Um Kevin and I were testing one not too long ago back and forth with he would speak in Spanish and I'd watch it come up for me in English. There's some cool apps that can help us do that. So, we're continuing to explore those options as well.

And mayor, if you if you have an agenda, if you look at the second page uh following the adjournment, uh there's a standard text that appears on all of your agendas and about halfway through it speaks to in accordance with the ADA, Florida statutes, etc. persons with disabilities needing special accommodations should contact the clerk's office. Um, and it gives time frame for that. And if we had somebody that um was hearing impaired and uh needed the um the assistance of a signer, that's why that's in there so that we can can secure that to to provide that. We've also been working on some granus portal updates um that will incorporate some additional ADA um tools as well. I don't think you'll see a whole lot different on your side as a user of our digital media um or as a participant in our digital media other than the closed captioning will probably be the most obvious. Um because you're not using the accessibility tools that someone with a disability would. Uh but you know, if you go to our website today, there is um there's an accessibility option on there. AJ, do we still have the website up or did it get closed out? It's a it's a a small icon on there that allows um where is it?

The little blue in the bottom right. Little blue man. So, if you click on that, it allows you with our website today to do different things that for if you're if you have a a a visual disability that you can um you can make adjustments to that in font and spacing and color schemes that make it more accommodating for your use. But there's also readers and other tools that uh people utilize that the new um compliance will ensure that we were able to uh be accessed through those.

All right, so we will switch to grant and aid. Um Charlie is bringing you all a spreadsheet of all of our grant need applicants from this year for your information. On the screen you see a chart that dates all the way back to fiscal year 13. Um this walks you through just kind of wanted to visually show you how the program has changed and grown over the years. So in 2013 we had or 2012 we had 15 applicants. 12 of them were awarded and $65,000 were granted out. Fast forward to 2526, we had 76 applicants, 44 were awarded and just shy of 350,000. So, just wanted to open with that so you can see how the program has changed. Looking at this year's timeline, we actually did four grant and a training sessions this year. So, we usually do three. All three of them filled up. So we added a fourth one to make sure that everybody had an opportunity to come at those four training sessions. In total we had 97 unique organizations attend training. That equated to 118 individuals. The application was then opened March 2nd to 13th. And during that application window we received 57 applications this year. So, a little bit of why I think that number is lower than last year's. Two new requirements were put into place. One was that um organizations had to be in operation and serving Winter Haven residents for at least two years to be eligible to apply. So, those organizations that had been created in order to apply or were brand new or were maybe Lakelandbased saying they would create a Winter Haven program if they got funding were no longer eligible. had to have that pre-existing track record of serving Winter Haven residents. The

other um one was an update to the reporting. So instead of them just telling us how much they had spent, we're now asking that they both provide receipts or an accounting report to show that proof of funds expenditures and get their reports notorized. Um and so I think we had some that did not return because of that new requirement. So, we had 57 applications come in. A little bit of the breakdown of that. Again, that's just another comparison to historical data. Less than last year, more than two years ago. Um, and then with funding, they're right at requesting just at $600,000. How that breaks down by applicant type. So, you have your six legacy applicants. Um, those guys haven't changed over the last five years. It's the same six. We had 29 returning and we had 22 new applicants. Um the most number of applicants were applying in youth education area. We define that as programs outside of the typical school day. So after school, summer camps, tutoring, things of that nature. Second highest category was food security followed by health care and housing. looking at the exact same data, but instead of by number of applicants, looking at it by how much they applied for. Your six legacy applicants applied for 145,000. That's the same as last year. Your returning applicants um just shy of 353,000 and the new applicants just over 104,000. Again, the highest category being that education outside the traditional school day at 251,000, followed by food security, 126, and then housing at 92,000. This year, we did ask them to self-identify into one of those categories. We've not done that in the

past, but the committee tends to try to group them into those categories to make funding decisions. So we've asked the applicants to sort of pick their category and self-identify in this year. Okay. So the next phase of the process is a completeness and compliance review. This is done um by my staff in my office. They go through a checklist that's looking at a handful of things. So did they fill out the entire application? We're not reading it for content. We're just looking to make sure the information is there. Did they submit a complete budget sheet? Did they turn in their annual report with Sunbiz, so we know that they are a valid business or organization in the state of Florida? Did they turn in their IRS determination letter, so we know they're a legitimate nonprofit? Um, and did they submit a W9 to us? And does all of that match? So, is it all for the same organization? That's what they're checking. At the end of that window, 18 of the 57 came in correct. came incorrect.

Came incorrect. Only 18 were correct. This is after training that walks them through step by step, including screenshots of exactly how to do everything that is sent to them. So, for the next two weeks, my staff and I have been working with those applicants to help them correct the mistakes and kind of chase down the missing documentation. What kind what kind of mistakes For example, it ranges. Um, the most common that you see

incomplete budgets. So, we give them a very simple spreadsheet with two columns that they have to fill out of their project budget. Those come in incomplete or imbalanced. The expenses don't match the revenue. Um, quite often those supporting documents don't match each other. So, the addresses aren't the same. The organizations are off. One of the most common ones is we ask them to go to the state of Florida website and download their annual report because then it has the stamp from the state of Florida so we know they're a valid organization. We get screenshots of the website instead of the report. The other one that's very very common is instead of the IRS letter that names that shows that they're a nonprofit, we get um the paper that you take to Staples to not pay tax on your copy paper. And we give all these examples in training because they are the most common mistakes

and we're still seeing them happen again. I think a lot of our organizations are sending whoever's available to training to check the box and then that person never touches the application and somebody else completes the application. I mentioned that in training too and ask them all to please if you're the one here review it before it's submitted. Um, several of them didn't hadn't turned in their reporting yet or it wasn't notorized. So, it they're they're kind of across the board of those five things that we check off.

And Commissioner Dawson, you the trainings that we do, that's a about an hour and a half long training we put the folks through on those four dates. Um, the links to every website that they need to go to to get the information. We walk through it. We we show specifically what's to be provided. Um and and I I do think Katrina is right. It's you know person A from an organization attended the training because it's mandatory you attend training because we want we don't want have to spend a lot of time correcting and fixing um applications and we don't want somebody to get denied because of a you know something small that they could have corrected. So we added in that sufficiency review two years ago or a year ago um because of that very concern. um but then somebody else does does the the submitt and the information didn't get communicated internally with that. That's why we do the sufficiency review. We we take the time to um to review all those because we don't want someone I mean we're we're trying to to hold hands as much as we possibly can to help people be successful. Be real easy to just say you know 57 received only 18 were complete. Those are the only 18 we're going to get. Um, I think that that at the end of the day would create a lot of heartache for for you all. Uh, as those folks um would would certainly lobby you for forgiveness in that. Um, and we don't want to put you in that situation. We don't want to put them in that situation. So, we help them as much as we can, but as Katrina will tell you, the deadline for the corrections is quickly approaching. They have to make the corrections on their own. We don't do it for them.

Yeah. And that's, you know, that is commendable. I uh I think that you go above and beyond uh with regards to that. However, it is a grant and the expectations that uh you know you have to meet the necessary requirements. So I don't you know the handholding and and and is great and and it's wonderful to help people through that process but you know it's kind of like uh I know when I was teaching in in the uh college and I told the students I'm not going to apologize for this being a college expected to do the work and so uh I think with training and with all that we're doing uh like I said again it's commendable and it's helpful uh but people got to take this serious enough that they're really concerned about it. So, I don't know how again I think your process is is very helpful and and you'll be commended for what you do and uh but I think you've got it. These are grown people we're dealing with children and I and again I've never dealt with the process but I you know I know that you guys you don't complicate it or try to make it more difficult and the whole idea is to make this easy and accessible. If anything, I think we've made it easier over the last few years. Um, the other thing that we offer as staff is during that application window, I always have a staff member available to help folks submit their application. So, we did have one that came in this year and sat with my staff and they walked them through submitting it. Um, and we had three or four others that took us up on an early review of their budget and things to make sure that they were compliant, but that was maybe five organizations took advantage of that during the application window as well. I do have

Yeah. 18. How many you expect that to go up to? I do have good news. So, the corrections are due by Friday of this week. When I put these slides together last week, just before the strategic momentum session, we were up to 34 that were good to go with 23 still awaiting corrections. As of 5:00 p.m. today, we have five still awaiting corrections. Um, all of them have received at least three emails from my staff and um a phone call where we have connected with a human this week. So hopefully those five get it in in the next 48 hours so that we can bring all 57 forward for consideration. I don't know that we've ever tried so hard to give away money.

Yeah.

So that so I'm just sitting here thinking like in my daily business, you know, small business lending, I mean, we see the same thing, right? So, the problem that you run into is, you know, well, if this person can't fill out a personal financial statement, does that mean they can't do their business? And the answer to that question is no. They know how to run and operate their business. They just aren't good on the the details side. Likewise, I think you're the same thing is aligned here. These folks know how to facilitate what you know is needed by by whomever they serve. It's frustrating on our end. I totally get that. It's taxpayers money, but it doesn't diminish, I think, how how the funds can be used to help the community. So,

we help them through it. I appreciate y'all helping them through it because at the end of the day, we want to make sure the money is going to the right spot and being used properly and this is part of that process. Um, so I'll just say thank you and I will pass it on to the team. I mean, I just can't imagine us as a commission trying to do it like we used to. Well, the next steps to hopefully make that easier for you. One second. Yeah, there you have a question. Yeah, just real quick. I'm just looking at this chart. Um the amount requested are these

do they do folks typically request like $20,000 and only get awarded 5,000 or did they request 5,000 last year and this year they want 15,000 more. Are we seeing I mean I I I understand that they might ask for a little bit more, but some of these are pretty significant increases. Is that normal and then we just give what we can or are they just there is there a reason why they think they're going to get more money this year? Yes and no.

Um so the first year that someone applies with us, they're only eligible to request up to 5,000. So all those in blue on your sheet are firsttime applicants. You're a first-time applicant if you don't currently have a grant with us. So even if you had a grant with us three years ago, you haven't had anything last few years, you're you're at that 5,000 max. some of what you're seeing um that maybe were awarded 2500 last year and have requested 20,000 this year. They may have been a first-time applicant last year. We did ask them in draining if they were going to do a big jump like that instead of kind of considering slow incremental increases that they explain that thoroughly in the application so that you and the committee can take that into consideration of how are you going to scale that big that fast, right? Um, again, staff doesn't review the applications for that level of validity, so I can't answer that. But we will be providing the commission with a copy of applications if you want them. We leave that in the conference room in there for you. Um, but that's probably the jump you're seeing is people that were first-time applicants last year were awarded less. None of them got 5,000. They all got average of 2500 to 3500. As a returning applicant, they're now eligible for up to 20. Some choose to incrementally increase, some choose to jump straight to 20, and then the committee makes the decisions from there.

That that's helpful. Thank you.

Yep. And and Commissioner Davis, the reason we have that 5,000 threshold on that first time, we we want to get a little track record with you. We want to, you know, rather than than go whole hog all the way in. Let's let's see how the the dollars are being used and then that gives us some um some proven success and then they can scale it up. But as Katrina mentioned the based on the number of applicants that we have and the dollars available, you know, the the committee's direction from the commission over the past few years has been try to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. So you're giving out these kind of small micro grants in a lot of cases. We also ask them and direct them to in the completion of their application. If you're not awarded the full amount, what are you going to do different? you know, if you're asking for 10,000 and you only get five, what's your strategy for being successful in that regard? Because, you know, we don't know at the time how much money we'll have to work with or how many applications we're going to be dealing with.

All right. So, next two steps, the grant and aid application review committee will receive their binders next week. So after that completion um correction window is done they then will meet on May 5th and May 15th. All of the applicants are invited to attend those meetings. Um, we have at the committee's request this year put in a new regulation that we did include in training and we will be sending out via email when we send out the meeting dates reminders to them that as they come in they can sign in with their organization and they have to designate a single spokesperson. So if the application committee has pending questions as they get to their applicant, the chairman, Mr. Santiago can call that designated spokesperson up to answer questions. If nobody from their organization comes, then nobody can answer questions on their behalf. And that's just to help those meetings run a little bit smoother and make sure that those providing information are an official representative from the organization. And then um staff will work with the committee, create a final report of their recommendations, and we plan to bring that to you at your second meeting in May. So, commissioners and I just to kind of finish out on the grant aid and certainly Commissioner Bzong, you remember the days of how we used to do this process when um it was done by the commission in a meeting and uh Joy Townsen would be up at the front with a flip chart trying to keep a tally of how much money was left as we doled out grants to folks. Uh this is an extremely efficient process. You've got a great committee. Um they uh they have spent a lot of time getting prepared for this. They'll get their binders. They'll review these applications. They will on

their own accord go and meet with agencies that they haven't met before. They want to know who who they're they're making recommendations on behalf of and and they're to be commended for that. Um, we're going to, you know, we we we recognize the value these programs bring to our community. They are, as I tell them all the time, uh, we don't have to do all things and we cannot do all things in local government, but we certainly play a key role in making sure all things get done. Um, the easiest example of that is we're not in the food ministry business, but that's essential in our community. So, how do we help those that are filling that need? Um, and so going into Monday, the direction that that I'm hoping to get from you is you have your six what we call legacy agencies, Boys and Girls Club, Girls, Inc., Meals on Wheels, um, the Public Education Partnership, which now files under the uh, Learning Resource Center, um,

the Haley Center and Neighborhood Service Center, and the neighborhood service center. So those six you have have historically funded at what they're they're you continue their funding at the thresholds that they've been at. So we're going to ask you for do is that your preference again and then based upon what we've budgeted you know this current year um I'm looking to CJ and Katrina. I think it's $342,000 thereabout.

It was 347761. 347,000 is what we had allocated last year to fund out the agencies. um what what's that number for this year coming so that when the committee meets they actually have a a running calculation is there giving out dollars as they're awarding grants um tenatively I say because they don't finalize it until they've they've gone through everything but as they're drawing down on those available dollars they're able to track that and give you something that that complies with what your expectations are. So, if you would just give that some pondering uh over the weekend and um hopefully we can get some guidance from you on Monday evening and that's the the purpose of that item, Mr. Mayor, under my liaison is just asking for that guidance so I can pass that along to the committee.

Good deal. I have some questions and I remember last year that there were certain agencies

Commissioner Mercer, would you mind just pulling your microphone down so we can hear you a little clearer? Sorry. Um I remember last year there were certain agencies or entities that we um uh were not giving to. So that was um foundations with kind of robust established funding from other sources um so that we could focus on those that might need it more. And we also um did not give to schools last year. So I think you have one foundation and one school that applied this year. The rest did not return. But if you look under the new, you've got Pulk State College Foundation and Cypress Junction Monastery. Those are the only two applicants this year that fall into those two categories. So I'm sure the committee would appreciate guidance on that as well.

Okay. Um and looking at some of the areas of service, um are they uh in I know they have to be in the city. Are they in just are they more concentrated in certain areas or do they provide services uh to everyone? I think that runs the gamut. Some of them are in very specific demographics or geographical areas. Some of them are more citywide. Some of them are for a specific age group. They're kind of all over the board. There's a good mix though. Okay.

I don't know that there's any that are geographically limited. I think that um I'm not familiar with any that are just to a specific uh geographic area, but they may ultimately serve more within a specific geographic area based upon where they exist, right?

But like Meals on Wheels is probably one of the best examples that um they are they they cover the entire actually well beyond the city limits of Winter Haven. Um but in comparison to what their costs are, their their request is relatively small. Um but that's going to a demographic, an age group or a disability um qualifier for you know for their program. I was thinking more along the um areas like let's say you you're in the southeast and when I think of the southeast I think of the the rental section that we have in in some of the streets that are more rental than homes but still have kids you know um that probably need some afterchool things too or some and yet they may not be to provide to them and and they won't have transportation to get other places if they're far stretched out.

Yeah. The, you know, if you think about Boys and Girls Club or Girls, Inc. is programs that are that are a lot within the that youth education enrichment. Um, you know, those are programs that provide transportation from area schools. Um, you have folks from throughout the community that are traveling to northwest Winter Haven to avail themselves of those services. um within the public education partnership that's targeting, you know, early childhood. Um I know that their draw is, you know, they're housed on on Avenue R in one of our facilities, but their draw uh is from a number of different schools in the area. So, I think it it just it really varies.

You've got some that hit all the public schools in the area, too. So, like Kids Pack is all the public schools or some of the traveling food service programs as well. I have a question. Go ahead. So, the requests right now is at 601,000. That's correct. Yes, sir.

Okay. What I and maybe it was in the chart. I was looking at at these. I would like to if you could pull out the ones that requested the same amount if you could if you could sort of I'd like to see the ones that did not request an increase that just requested to stay the same. Right. in in essence so that we would then see if we gave them what we gave them last year, how does that affect this 601833 total,

right? Because not everyone that was awarded last year applied this year, too. But yes, I can Yeah, but I'm just saying that apply because I was just looking at it quickly and some of them went up over 100%. I mean, you know, so yes. So, if we maintain funding levels for our legacy and our returning applicants, how much is that is what you're asking? I think you have that right now, Commissioner. So, if you look at, for example, look in the yellow section, the first one, Angels of of Destiny. They were awarded 5,000 last year and they requested 20,000 this year. I'm saying I see it, but I would like to know what that total

what the total is. Okay. Yes, I I can run a quick formula on this after the meeting and we can provide that. Yeah. So, that that would be the the the one thing that I would I'd like to to have then and I don't know um because we got to come up with how much money we would like to possibly fund and need to base it on something in my opinion.

Yes, sir. I can get that number too. I have just one other question. Some of these uh proposals that went up by a whole lot is that's explained in their proposal. I have not read them all word for word. Um but we certainly said in training if you were going to make a big jump like that, please explain this how you can scale that quickly and what the intent of that is. I can certainly provide those proposals to you all though. Okay. But weren't they weren't they capped they they were cap like the first application they're capped at 5,000

and then they go and that could that's probably what and then they're eligible for up to 20 but some of them the following year up to 20 they could apply for. Yes. We just asked them to to tell us. Yeah. But that's what I'm saying. That's probably what caused a lot of the jobs was they were especially some of them that we probably gave 2500, right? Yeah. The question I have the monastery school I thought weren't they the ones that applied last year that we said no.

So we had multiple schools apply last year and we had multiple foundations apply last year and the commission gave the committee direction that we support our public schools through other means. Um, and we support our foundations obviously through other means or they've got other robust forms of funding that they're stable through. So, we did not consider them. Um, of all those foundations and schools that applied last year that were that were kind of pulled out. Um, only one school came back and one foundation came back this year. Um, because in training, we didn't have direction from you yet if we should continue that sort of set aside of schools and foundations.

I don't know how we could. I mean, we've set the precedent of no schools and no foundations. So, you would have schools and foundations saying, "Oh, well, I thought you said no and we didn't get to apply." So, I don't I I mean, if we're okay to give that direction tonight, I still would moni the schools and foundations, we need to keep out if everybody's in agreeance to that. It would impact Pulk State College Foundation and Cypress Junction Monastery. And I'll go through it again to make sure I'm not missing any, but I believe those are the only two. You're done. We're done. I mean, it you're opening Pandora's box because you've already said we've already said no. Yeah, we have already said

yes, I agree with that. We just can't I just don't So with with your consensus, we can just keep that as ongoing. Well, confirm that. We have confirmed pre a preview if that's what you want to call it of coming attractions. Um assuming y'all don't change your mind. Um could be that. Yeah. The only the only other thing that I and we can talk about this Monday night, but it's just the legacy agencies. That's still I mean I don't think we've ever I'm trying to remember. Have we given them less than what they asked for? I'm sure we probably did at some point, but One time we cut them all. We cut everybody in half

way way back in the recession and then it took several years to get them get back close to what they're getting now. In the last 5 years, the only one that used to be higher was the Haley Center. They were at 33 at one point. Yeah. I would just I still would stand by having a you know dedicated budget for legacy so that that doesn't take away from the other applicants. I I mean that's still my thought, but we can have that discussion Monday night. But

and Mayor, if I if I could just add to that, I want to make sure that Commissioner Davis is is fully up to speed on on why those were in there as such. And years ago, if you saw in that early chart going back 2013, and actually if you go back even farther than that, those were the only agencies that the city funded. Um and so you can see from uh 2013 until 2018 we were what 10 to to 12 agencies that were funded in that during that time frame. Um and in 2018 we began opening that up to new applications. That's when we started changing the process of how we would go about that. So, those are agencies that historically the city commission felt um were were contributing to our overall mission. A lot of the stuff dealing with youth. Um Haley Center came in uh doesn't go back nearly as far because it hasn't been around in our in our immediate area is quite as long, but neighborhood service center that was always a uh since its creation in the early 90s uh late 80s has been something the city contributed to. Boys and Girls Club, Girls, Inc., PEP, when it came on, the city was a key um facilitator and partner in the in the creation of that. And uh Meals on Wheels is one that's come on probably more so within the past 15 years. Everybody else, it's on a new application kind of thing. So, I just want to give you that that background for your benefit. So even if you had a dedicated budget specifically for the legacies, you wouldn't have to necessarily give that full amount. You could still reduce that in these discussions. I just I just think I mean traditionally just it's just taking away from

you know the other agencies that are out there with you know missions of their own that directly impact the citizens of Winter Haven. We talk more about it Monday night. Well, that's everything we have for you on these items. These are, like I said, three pretty big pieces, but I think they're they're very impactful to how we do business and how our community gets served. So, with that, that concludes our presentation. Okay, that concludes our agenda. Unless anybody else has anything this evening.