City Commission - Special Meeting

Alright. Good evening. At this time, we're gonna go ahead and get started with a special commission meeting from Monday, 05/18/2026. If I can please have the city clerk call the roll.

Commissioner Caldwell, Commissioner Harriet, Commissioner Howington, Commissioner Novick?

Here.

Commissioner Santiago? Here. Vice mayor Villa Vasquez? Present. Mayor Villa.

Here. Alright. At this time, I'm gonna ask commissioner Harriet to, please do the pledge and invocation.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, liberty and justice for all.

Alright. If everybody will bow their heads. Heavenly father, we thank you for today, Lord. We thank you for this opportunity to represent our neighbors and to provide and and carry out your will, Lord. We ask that you keep everybody in need and and their needs, and we ask that you keep our first responders safe, Lord. We we ask you to watch over those that aren't here with us today, and we ask that you, get everybody home safe. Amen. Okay.

This time, we're gonna go through, presentations, awards, and reports. I'm gonna ask if the city commission can meet me at the floor so we can do the superstar student awards.

Her first student is Gabriel Marrero, Deltona Elementary or excuse me, Deltona Lakes. Emiliano Perez Angelo Rodriguez. Everly Carroll. They're not in order. Everly Carroll.

Shandel Daniels. Cash Hoffman. Hadley Bryant. Maria Victoria Villalobos, Andrea Burgos Munoz. Helena Gonzalez.

Dayami Garcia Can I get public works department to come to the front, please? Oh, there.

Alright. Alright. I'm gonna ask the commissioners if they can get in front of public works. Front of public works. Vice mayor, I'm gonna go in front of public works. Oh, okay. They're even taller than me. Alright. Commissioner Santiago is gonna be reading a proclamation for public works.

Thank you, mayor. What an honor to be standing right here in front of all of you. It it truly is a pleasure and an honor, and and I appreciate everything you do. With that said, I'm just gonna read the proclamation for today. Whereas public works professionals focus on infrastructure, facilities, and services that are of vital importance of to sustainable and resilient communities and to public health, high quality of life, and well-being of the people of Deltona, Florida.

And whereas these infrastructure, facilities, and services could not be provided without the dedicated efforts of public works professionals who are engineers, managers, and employees at all levels of government and the private sector who are responsible for rebuilding, improving, and protecting our nation's transportation, water supply, water treatment, and solid waste systems, public buildings, and other structures and facilities essential for our citizens. And whereas it is in the public interest for the citizens, civic leaders, and children in Deltona, Florida to gain knowledge of and maintain an ongoing interest and understanding of the importance of public works and public works programs in their respective communities. And whereas the year 2026 marks the sixty sixth annual National Public Works Works Week sponsored by the American Public Works Association. Now, therefore, we, the mayor and the city commission of Deltona, Florida, do hereby proclaim May 17 through the twenty third twenty twenty six as National Public Works Week in the city of Deltona and urge all citizens to join with representatives of the American Public Work Association and government agencies in activities, events, and ceremonies design designed to pay tribute to our public works professionals, engineers, and managers, and employees, and to recognize the substantial contributions they make to protecting our national health, safety, and advancing quality of life for all.

Thank you.

All right. This time we're gonna go into, section five action items. A, request for recognitions. Is there any public comment on section five a? None? Seeing that the board is not lit up, can we please go for a vote? With the iPads. Okay. Can I get a motion? Commissioner Santiago.

I make a motion to approve action item five a and five b.

Can I Commissioner Novick?

Second.

We got a motion by commissioner Santiago, second by commissioner Novick. Do it verbal. We have to do verbal as a special commission.

Commissioner Harriet? Yes. Commissioner Novick?

Yes.

Commissioner Santiago? Yes. Vice Mayor Villa Vasquez? Yes. Mayor Villa?

No. Motion passes. Three to one. Got it. Alright. Next is section five b as in boy. Request for presentations before the city commission. Is there any public comment on section five b as in boy?

Her motion was for both, mayor.

The this is not a consent agenda item, though.

She made a motion for five a and five b. Was her motion.

Yeah. Mayor, the motion was for items both five a and five b because they are ministerial in nature. Is appropriate that you all can approve them as Got it. A

Thank you. Alright, so then we're going to section five c as in Charlie. Is there any public comment in section c? Alright. Commissioner Nabek, you're on the board.

I'm sorry.

Alright. Is there at this time, I want to just say the motion. My apologies. I got it. Commit. John, go ahead. You have to turn on your microphone.

Good evening, mayor, commission. How are you doing this evening? So tonight is the kickoff of our first budget workshop for the fiscal year twenty six, twenty seven.

Can you talk closer to the microphone, please?

Apologize. Mayor commission, this is the first presentation for our fiscal year twenty six twenty seven budget workshops. First thing that I just wanna kinda point out to you is we placed a binder on your dais there. If you open it, you'll see that I actually put an entire copy of this evening's presentation. On the left pocket, I wanna point out just for all future reference is the calendar for this year's scheduled workshops.

I'd like to just point out that originally, when I stood before y'all back in February, this was scheduled to be a workshop for this evening, and we changed it to a special meeting to accommodate the presentations that were done this evening. So that's there. Then every item that all the boards, all eight sections are all tabbed within your binder for your reference as you might have notes when you go to meet with Doc, Robin, and I over the next couple of weeks. So you'll also see there's a lot of people in here. Normally, see me with Kiong and Tory sitting in a corner as we go through this.

So I'd just like to point out that there are representatives of every department and most divisions. So I'm just gonna I'm just gonna say all their first names. So, you know, you've seen our emails back and forth, over time, but I'm just gonna point everyone out. You have Matt from planning, Freshta from planning, Tony from streets, Nick from finance, Sebastian from Parks, Audrey from finance, Sean from Parks, Chief Cousins Fire, Keon Finance, Paula Finance, Pam HR, Rob IT, Cindy Finance, Joanne, finance, Adam, fire, Eddie from Fleet, Tom from, Fleet Public Works, Joseph from Stormwater, Steve from Stormwater, Phyllis from Public Works, Audrey from finance, my father, Glenn, from Public Works, Jim from, utilities, and Tory from Finance, and, of course, our deputies from the law, sheriff's office over there. So, anyway, we've all put together, this little thing tonight.

As I said to the mayor previously, number one, I was skeptical at first about this, but I just wanna say upfront, skeptical. However, with all of us working together these past two weeks, normally we get all of this, we put it together, and then we come back to the commissioners, nope. We don't believe we have the funding for this, so we have to take things off the table. With all of us working together over the past two weeks, putting these boards and everything together, we've actually, I believe, come up with a better product. So for the CIP capital outlay section of the workshops, I think this is absolutely a great idea.

So with that, I'm gonna start. And whereas normally I would go through 29 slides, I'm actually gonna go through less than 10. So I'm gonna come to a stopping point after slide five. We're gonna break for for up to sixty minutes. You're gonna have we're gonna tell you where to go, which table to go to first, and then you're gonna have seven minutes to speak with everybody about what's on their table.

Then after seven minutes, the timer will go off, and then you're just gonna move clockwise through the building. When that completes, then we will roughly have eleven minutes remaining for the hour. At that time, all the public that's in here will have an opportunity to themselves speak to anyone and everyone at the tables. We just ask politely, mayor, that while you're given that opportunity, the public might be standing behind you listening, but that's your time with the those individuals at the table. So I would just ask the public to please give the mayor and the commission those the that first forty nine minutes so that y'all get that one on one, and then they have that opportunity afterwards.

And then after this evening's meeting, mayor, we will stay an extra few minutes. So if there's any additional questions that the public might have, we'll be more than happy to, answer those questions for them. So with that, this evening's workshop is about the capital improvement plan. You'll hear us commonly just refer that to CIP, capital outlay, and service enhancements. K.

This evening, we're gonna go over the parameters, the capital improvements, capital outlay, enhancement request, and we're gonna brief briefly talk about city fees and special assessments. If you didn't get copies public, we did put copies of everything on the back table. I apologize for that. The parameters is everything that you're seeing this evening are preliminary. We've taken best guess.

We know that we roughly have $2,000,000 annually available for stormwater. We know that we roughly have $3,000,000 available from local option gas tax to go towards street resurfacing, sidewalk infill and any roadway improvements. So we know some of the basis. We also know that a lot of our projects are dependent on interagency revenues. We won't know what those revenues are until June to mid to late July.

Everything is subject to a rate and fee study. The rates are approved by you by resolution, and we have some fee studies that will be coming back in the late July, early I'm sorry, late June, early July time frame that when we go to do our workshop mid July, we'll have a lot

of those

finalized. And as always, things are also contingent on the operating millage that you approve, first with the maximum millage that you set in July and then the final millage rate that you set at the two workshops in September. And then there's also some projects that we're talking about that are contingent on financing. I'm gonna briefly talk to you about some items over here regarding stormwater as well as some of our major fleet replacements as well as some ways to fund transportation and fireplace our fire station replacement or remodels. So there some financing conversations that need to occur during this workshop cycle.

Terms of no, capital outlay. It's spending to acquire capital assets, vehicle and equipment. It's worth more than $5,000 and has a life expectancy greater than a year. CIP, it's to improve our community, roads, facilities or infrastructure. Those are typically things that you don't see. They're under the ground or they're in an area of the city that no one ever sees other than Jim, Glenn, and Phyllis. You have operations and maintenance. I need to fix the fire engine or I need to fix a vac on truck. That's o and m. That's maintenance.

R and R, renewal and replacement, you know, we even look, you know, rehab certain equipment. You know, do we replace an AC or do we replace a motor? We went to the granular level. Is Eddie back here in Fleet? We had a request because of our policy says that trailers are gonna be replaced after ten years.

But then we went to the fire department and say, hey. This trailer's kept under storage. We only use it maybe once or twice a year because it's something that we it's it has specialized equipment in it. So Eddie and them went actually went there and looked at it and said, hey. Instead of spending $15,000 on a trailer, can we just put some new axles and maybe a wrap on it for a couple of thousand dollars and that extends the life of it.

That was recognized, so we moved money from a replacement to just a renewal. And enhancements, we have two types of enhancements. We have enhancement it would be a program or service that we don't currently provide that we're wanting to implement, or it could be a level of service. At the last, commission meeting, you approved the midyear budget, which added two new code enforcement officers. That was an enhancement to an existing service.

So those are the the five key things that we need to remember as we go through the workshop. And as always, I know you have always heard me say this before, the budget process is fluid. It will change meeting the meeting, workshop to workshop. I will say something today, but I will come back and say, commissioner Santiago, this has changed since the last meeting and here's why. So remember, as we go through this, if something major changed, we will have a crosswalk that's that shows what changed from this meeting to that meeting so that we're never trying to, as they say, pull wool over you.

K? Okay. So at this point in time, we're gonna start our our tabletop breakout section sessions. Okay? So as we you know, I can read this off if you would like, but we have general construction projects, which is commissioner Novick. That would be back here. Parks prod projects, commissioner Santiago is over here. Transportation mayor over here. Water and sewer over there. Storm water in the center.

Capital outlay fleet in the back. And, as soon as y'all step down here, I'm actually gonna put the board up for enhancements. I guess stated, there will be someone from every department and division to answer any and all questions that y'all might have for anything that's presented this evening. So with that said, mayor, we will go into our breakouts and reconvene. John?

Yes, sir. For those that get done quicker than the seven minutes, we can that way we can give residents a few extra minutes at the end as well.

Absolutely. Yes, sir. And if at the end of the day, y'all are done in thirty minutes, we would then, at that point in time, give the public ten minutes. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Vice mayor Harriet? Oh, yep. Everyone knows they're gonna grab them.

Yep. Yep.

One minute One minute.

Alright. Time to switch. Commissioner Nabe, Commissioner Santiago. Switch. Alright.

We are all done. If we can allow the residents now. Mister McKinney.

Okay. At this time, the public is invited to go to any of the tables that they would like to go check out. And for mayor and commission, we will reconvene at 08:00.

Thank you.

Mayor.

Alright. If the commission can please join me up on the dais. Mister McKinney, you wanna turn on your mic? Do you need to turn no. You're fine.

Out now.

Have that to you tomorrow. Hey. We'll have that to you tomorrow.

Okay.

Thank you.

You're done. Right? Click on the thing.

Yes,

sir. So, mayor, first off, I made a foo paw this evening, and I'm supposed to apologize. I called Amber by her wrong name, so I would like to apologize to Amber for referring to to her as Audrey. It was her mother that baked all these cookies that I was passing out. So thank you, Amber.

She stole my pen, so I I was getting back at her. So in conclusion, mayor, commissioners, I hope this evening, the last hour has been beneficial. Again, I can sit here and talk to y'all all day, but you got to speak to the experts. They're the ones who always inform me of what to say. So, from this stage, you know, I know that we had input from various members of the commission.

We'll be sending this to our grant writers, so that, you know, we can look at possible grants because now that the departments have told us the things that they need, it helps us to look for, other funding sources. So this evening, you were provided with an overview of almost $35,000,000 in capital improvements. Some of those capital improvements, we have the cash on hand. Others of those improvements, we're looking to fund fund through debt issuance. That's something that's gonna be talked to y'all in the June and July workshop.

Is it to be paid by impact fees, fire assessment fees? Is it to pay potentially by a general obligation bond or a bank loan? So all of those things are gonna be coming back to you over the next, few months. We have 6,350,000 in capital replacement. We have $617,000 in enhancements.

So these are all the things that as we go through this, we look at the available revenue from operating is those can we afford it? As I've said to you before, there were a couple of positions that were on that enhancements. You never wanna be able to use prior year carry forward, you know you know, fund balance. You can you only wanna add people if you can and fund it from your ongoing revenue stream. It's not bad it's not good business to fund it from prior year fund balance.

We have CIP requests of this year, just in general fund, of over $1,000,000 parks, 4,000,000 transportation, 5,500,000, water wastewater utility, 6,500,000, and storm water, just under 18,000,000 for the next two years. We've we've provided to you an outlay over the next three to four years of what to do for fire stations and even potentially a new police substation that that is all on the five year CIP plan that's in your book today. So these are all things that we're gonna have to be looking at in the coming months. If this this comes to fruition, how do we pay for it? I'm gonna quickly go through a couple of updates on fee studies.

K? As a reminder, as we go through this, you just recently passed resolution twenty twenty six dash 24. That included the next four years of increases for water wastewater that was, you know, went through all the workshops, etcetera. So those fees are already built into the process so that when we go through talking about operating funds, etcetera, that that's already funded and part of the water rate study that y'all approved. At the June workshop, we're gonna be coming back, and we're gonna be talking about the fire assessment fees.

We met with the consultant, Beneesh, this past week, the chief deputy city manager and I, to go through the possible sources and or, I'm sorry, possible, scenarios. You know, staff is going to be recommending an operate a a fee that handles operations, capital outlay, and the future CIP that the department's requesting. We're also looking at miscellaneous fire fees. So if you go to a fire assessment model, you now need to look at the other fees that are collected. You know, do you look to collect fees that when we go on I four and we have transients going through the city and there's an accident, should it be the citizens of Deltona that's paying for it, or we we charge and send a bill to the insurance companies?

If you have that fee in place, that is a very legitimate bill fee. So, again, as you're going to a fire assessment model, you have to look at all the fees the fire department, can generate to be on not self sufficient, but as close to self sufficient as possible. The only fee that we cannot put in a fire assessment or some of these fees is the transport fees. So when we transport, the insurance companies are already being billed for that. Impact fees.

Today, Jordan, Mark, the fire chief, and I, we met with Rafael Tilis today for better part of all day to go through where we were. As we stated when we y'all approved that study this past year, we told you that we would be bringing that back to you in the June time frame. So we had that initial meeting of where we are. We have a couple of items that need to be updated, and we're going to be bringing to you at the June meeting, ordinance for your, review and hopeful approval. And that will take care of parks, transportation, fire, law enforcement, and the general, municipal, impact fee.

K? Special assessments. So currently, stormwater has a $190 per year assessment. Their proposal is to go to $210 next year. That's what went out in the mailing last year, and that's what's on target.

So one of the things that, the stormwater crew over here showed you is a bunch of, projects that are that are direly needed today and can't wait till tomorrow. So one of the things that we're gonna be talking about in the the upcoming workshop is do we want to look at potentially issuing a bank loan to do ten years worth of projects today while the fee you know, the cost to do it is this much today, and by the time we get to it seven, eight years from now, that cost has gone up 50%. So that's something that, Glenn, myself, Robin, and Doc will be talking to each of you individually. Solid waste. We're currently at $235 per year.

We received last week alone the cost from the county for landfill tipping fees is going up 7.98%. So that's what our known is. And, again, at the, June workshop, because that's an assessment, I'll be bringing to you contractually what we can increase waste pro by plus the county tipping fee. Street lighting, we haven't gotten all the fees in yet from Duke and FPL, but we can probably assume at least a minimum of 5% increase across the board for the street lighting assessments. Lake McGarrity, they're at a stable platform right now.

As you know, we reduced it, this past year from 90 down to 30. We'll probably be no less than $30 for that assessment going on this year. And again, on the fire assessment fee, we're looking at a model that will fund both operating capital and CIP for the next five years. Pretty much covered this already, but again, that we're on the the CIP section. That would be to pay for the new and remodel fire stations, apparatus, and and equipment so we can buy administrative vehicles, engines, towers, brush trucks, etcetera.

You just cannot buy any transport capable units from fire assessment. It also be that if they look to to issue, to pay for the station remodels and new station, if that what comes out in the study, then that also is, legal, legally able to be paid for by, a fire assessment. And it would also pay for all salary and benefits of all personnel, excluding any EMS. So impact fees. So I already alluded to this, but I'm gonna just kinda sum it up and the city attorney's here and can help big time on this as well.

So currently, in the state, they have house bill thirteen twenty nine. They're looking to drastically change impact fees again on what an extraordinary circumstance when you can implement, how much you can, raise an impact fee, etcetera. Used to be if you had an extraordinary circumstance, if the fee went from a $100 to $200, you can now implement it no big deal. Then it got changed that if it wasn't an extraordinary, but it went up by more than 50%, you had to phase it in over over a four year period. Now they're looking to that they if the fee goes up by more than 50%, then you're you're capped at 50 I said that wrong.

If it's looking to go up more than 51%, they're now capping it at 50% max. So if you're if the recommended fee was to go from a 100 to $200, then they would the state's looking to limit it to being able to go up no more than $50 to $1.50. So in speaking to the Rafael Tillis, our city attorney, we wanna bring that to you in the June time frame. We're gonna look to we're required to hold two public workshops. We're looking to hold the workshop the morning of June 8 and the afternoon of June 15 so that we offer two because they're public workshops so that, we can, you know, bring make it available to the public in an AM session and then a PM session so that we would do the first reading for the impact fees on Monday, June 15, and the second reading on Monday, June 22.

That would be so that we could get this the impact fees approved prior to June 30 when they're looking to make changes to how impact fees are implemented come July 1. So that would just be that, mayor, we would need to look to set a special meeting for Monday, June 22. K? With that, I will rest. We took all of your questions, mayor, commission, down.

We will put all those together on a list, provide those to the city manager. We'll go through them. Overwhelmingly, we heard from numerous individuals what are other potential funding sources, where, alternate locations of things, where are things scheduled to be put, etcetera. So we will have all of that and put that out there as a FAQ. We'll post it on our budget workshop as well as provide that to each of you individually. Okay. Thank you, mayor.

Thank you. Alright. City manager comments? None? Alright. Paiding is adjourned.