Planning and Zoning Commission - workshop

All right, good evening, everybody. It's 5 o'clock. We're going to go ahead and get started. This is the City Council special meeting, August 20th, 2026 at 5 p.m. We'll call this meeting to order. City Attorney, do we have a quorum? Yes. In lieu of an invocation, we're going to have a moment of silence, please. Thank you very much. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. ALL RIGHT, GOOD EVENING, EVERYBODY. THIS IS OUR SECOND BUDGET WORKSHOP. I BELIEVE STAFF WAS GOING TO PRESENT AN UPDATE, AND I'M ASSUMING THAT'S KEVIN AND MS. JENNA, RIGHT? MR. TOM?

GOOD EVENING, MAYOR, VICE MAYOR, AND COUNCIL. AS YOU INDICATED JUST A MOMENT AGO, THIS IS THE SECOND BUDGET WORKSHOP AS I FOLLOW UP TO THE AUGUST 4TH WORKSHOP WHERE WE DID A LINE ITEM REVIEW OF THE BUDGET. I HAVE A SHORT PRESENTATION, JUST A FEW SLIDES, AND THEN WE'LL OPEN IT UP FOR COUNCIL DISCUSSION AND GUIDANCE AS YOU DESIRE. THE FIRST FEW SLIDES LOOK FAMILIAR. FOOTNOTES ON THE BUDGET. SO THIS FIRST ONE JUST SHOWS PROPERTY TAXES PER CAPITA, AND OBVIOUSLY THAT'S DIRECTLY RELATED TO THE ASSESSED VALUE PER PERSON. AND YOU CAN SEE THAT WE'RE WAY TOWARD THE LEFT, ABOUT $427 PER CAPITA IN PROPERTY TAXES ARE LEVIED, AND THE COUNTY IS LOWER, ABOUT 353. AND THEN WEST MELBOURNE, WHICH IS NOT A FULL-SERVICE COMMUNITY, IS EVEN LESS THAN THAT. Now the millage comparison, we are presenting this evening a balanced budget at the rollback. It is not a tax increase. And it is at 6.0812 mills, lowest in 18 years. And you can see that each year we seem to be progressing further to the left as far as millage. And now the cities in Ford County, we're among the lowest. WHERE WE STILL NEED SOME WORK IS OUR EMPLOYEES PER THOUSAND CITIZEN. EARLY ON IN THE PROCESS INDICATED THAT THE TIGER TEAM, WHICH CONSISTED OF EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP TEAM FOLKS, WAS LOOKING AT WAYS TO USE METRICS AND TO LOOK AT HOW WE CAN REDUCE OUR STAFFING. OVER THE PAST 20 YEARS, WE WENT FROM ABOUT 400 TO OVER 600 IN OUR FTE. As you know, personnel costs account for two-thirds of our overall operating budget. So we were very concerned about stemming the tide of increasing FTEs and actually doing a prudent way to start reducing them. So you can see that we're at about 11.7, tied with Melbourne. And the average is a little over 10. So we still have a ways to go. And we'll go over that in a little more detail in a few slides. Also take a look at some of our population peers. You can see that still we're a little bit on the high side, but actually not too far off the average. So, where are we now? As you know, we submitted the City Manager proposed budget back on July 28th, and that was based on the best revenue and expense projections that we had as of the end of July. Since that time, and taking into account some budget guidance from Council during the August 4th budget meeting, we came back with a rollback millage of 6.0812, which is the same rate as FY26 and can be advertised as not a tax increase. Again, it's the lowest in 18 years, and it's only the second time in 25 years that we were at or below rollback. Last time was in fiscal year 21, and the millage was 7.265, and that was during COVID. So how did we get to the rollback? Taking a look at the first line item there, ad valorem to rollback. So the city manager's proposed budget was submitted initially at 6.2 mills. and the rollback being at 6.0812. During the discussions, during the workshop, it was clear that there was a consensus from council that we wanted to be at rollback. So in order to do that, we had to lower the ad valorem to rollback and reduce the revenue side by $453,000. The second item there is the stormwater admin fee. AS YOU KNOW, ON THE 25TH OF AUGUST, COUNCIL WILL BE FACED WITH A DECISION AS TO WHAT LEVEL THE STORM WATER ASSESSMENT. we can lower the revenue to the storm or actually increase the revenue to the stormwater by reducing the admin fee by $223,000, which will leave more money for stormwater operating. And that is based on the highly likely assumption that I have that in staff has that you're not going to approve 100% increase in stormwater. I'm taking that as probably something a little bit less than that, but we'll see. So Sandy has a presentation ready to go on the 25th. That's going to present some other options at a lower rate and that will provide more money for stormwater operating. We also took a look at increasing some revenues projections, and we found out that we were a little too conservative in delinquencies and tax certs. So we increased that line item by $260,000. And also we underestimated the community development fees. So we're gonna increase that by 417. So revenues decreased by 677,000. AND THEY INCREASED BY 677,000, SO THE NET CHANGE IS ZERO. NOW, WE TOOK A LOOK AT THE EXPENSE SIDE, AND WE FOUND OUT THAT AFTER THE LINE ITEM REVIEW OF ALL THE DIFFERENT EXPENSES BY COUNCIL, WE FOUND THAT IT EQUATED TO ABOUT $265,000. SO WE MADE THOSE ADJUSTMENTS IN THE BUDGET, AND THE EXPENSES WERE REDUCED BY $265,000. AND THEN THE NON-DEPARTMENTALS UP IN PLANNING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, WE WERE ABLE TO REDUCE EXPENSES ANOTHER $35,000. SO THAT CHANGE IS $300,000 LESS THAN EXPENSES. SO THE BUDGET IS BALANCED, THAT ROLLBACK. THERE'S AN ADDITIONAL $300,000 AVAILABLE. NOW COUNCIL HAS A DECISION NOW, SEVERAL DIFFERENT OPTIONS. ONE, YOU CAN REDUCE THE MILLAGE A FURTHER .067 MILLS. WE'LL GET YOU TO ABOUT 6.01. I CAN'T GET BELOW 6.0, BUT 6.01. YOU CAN USE THAT $300,000, JUST PUT IT IN CONTINGENCY FOR CAPITAL PROJECTS. THAT WAS ALSO ONE OF THE ITEMS THAT YOU DISCUSSED AT THE BUDGET WORKSHOP THAT YOU NEEDED MORE MONEY FOR CAPITAL PROJECTS. OR YOU CAN USE SOME OF THAT MONEY TO THAT $300,000 TO BUY ANY OF THE ITEMS OFF THE UNFUNDED LIST. FOR EXAMPLE, ONE OF THE ITEMS IS $30,000 FOR A LOBBYIST. AT PREVIOUS COUNCIL MEETING, THE DIRECTION WAS TO GO AHEAD AND RENEW THE CONTRACT FOR FY27. HOWEVER, THAT MONEY WAS NOT IN THE BUDGET. NOW YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY BECAUSE WE HAVE FOUND ADDITIONAL FUNDING TO DIRECT STAFF TO PUT IT BACK IN THE BUDGET, AND THEN WE CAN WORK WITH LOBBYISTS TO RENEW THAT CONTRACT. SO THAT'S WHERE WE ARE. YOU HAVE SEVERAL DIFFERENT OPTIONS. CONTINGENCY, YOU CAN LOWER THE MILLAGE A TAD BIT MORE, NOT A LOT, OR YOU CAN PURCHASE OTHER ITEMS OFF THE UNFUNDED LIST. The next item there is utility rate proposals. Now the first two, the water sewer and the solid waste. We already had a presentation by the rate consultant and as part of the two public hearings in September, you'll be asked to adopt those rate increases. As I stated earlier, the stormwater assessment will be decided on August 25th and you'll have various options ranging from 13% to 50% to 100% or anything scalable in that range. AND THE MAX YOU CAN NOT EXCEED 100%. EARLIER TODAY I SENT YOU ANOTHER COPY OF THE TIGER TEAM REPORT WHICH I INITIALLY SENT OUT BACK IN THE END OF JULY AND IN THAT REPORT WE HAD INDICATED ONE OF THE OBJECTIVES GOING INTO 27 AND 28, AND IN LIGHT OF POTENTIALLY AMENDMENT 3 BEING PASSED, WHICH WILL SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE OUR ADVALORUM REVENUE, IS WE WERE LOOKING FOR CONTINUED OPPORTUNITIES TO HAVE EXPENSE REDUCTIONS, WHETHER IT BE BY OUTSOURCING, PRIVATIZING, OR EVEN FT REDUCTIONS USING A VERY PRUDENT AND METRIC-BASED SYSTEM. GUIDELINES WE GAVE TO THE TIGER TEAM IS THAT, YOU KNOW, FOR MANY YEARS THE CITY HAS ALWAYS BEEN TOUTING ITS EMPLOYEES AS ITS GREATEST ASSET. SO WE WANTED TO MAKE SURE ANY TIME THAT THERE WAS ANY SUGGESTION OF REDUCING AN FTE, THAT THERE WOULD BE NO VOLUNTARY, INVOLUNTARY LAYOFFS THAT WE WOULD DO THROUGH ATTRITION OR THROUGH FINDING IF A FUNCTION OR A STAFF OR AN FTE WAS RECOMMENDED FOR REDUCTION THAT THERE WOULD BE A PLACE FOR THAT PERSON OR PERSONS WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION OR IN WHATEVER WAS OUTSOURCED FUNCTION. SO WE DID A LISTING OF VARIOUS OPPORTUNITIES FOR EXPENSE REDUCTIONS. THE FIRST ONE ON THE LIST IS 911 DISPATCH. EARLIER THIS WEEK WE LEARNED THAT PALM BAY HAS FINALLY COME TO AN AGREEMENT WITH THE COUNTY AND THEY ARE NOW OUTSOURCING THEIR DISPATCH TO THE COUNTY, RESULTING IN A NUMBER OF FTE SAVINGS AND OTHER EXPENSE SAVINGS. AND I ALSO UNDERSTAND THAT CHEF IVY WAS ABLE TO FIND A HOME FOR EVERY ONE OF THE DISPATCHERS, SO THERE WAS NO INVOLUNTARY LAYOFFS. I'VE DIRECTED THE INTERIM CHIEF TO START NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE COUNTY TO SEE WHAT TYPE OF AN AGREEMENT WE COULD GET AND THEN BRING IT TO COUNCIL FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION. OBVIOUSLY, THE DECISION TO WHETHER OR NOT TO DO THIS EVENTUALLY WILL REST ENTIRELY WITH THE WITH CITY COUNCIL, BUT I WANTED TO GET AHEAD OF THAT IN THE EVENT THAT AMENDMENT 3 DOES PASS, THAT WE CAN GET THAT, AND THAT WOULD RESULT IN A CONSIDERABLE SAVINGS, UPWARDS OF 20 FTE, PROBABLY $2 MILLION PLUS IN SAVINGS, BUT WE WOULDN'T HAVE TO by really expensive Tyler Technologies CAD system, software savings, operational savings, and also FTE savings. Obviously, one of the provisions would be that every one of the dispatchers would be offered a job. Second thing is fire inspections. We are ready to, I thought we were gonna get it on this August 25th, AGENDA, HOWEVER, IT'S GOING TO BE ON SEPTEMBER 8th. WE ARE ENTERING INTO AN AGREEMENT WITH OVEDO, ACTUALLY PIGGYBACKING OFF OVEDO'S OUTSOURCING OF FIRE INSPECTIONS, AND WE'RE HOPING, AND WE HAVE FOUND PLACES FOR ALL THREE EMPLOYEES, AND WE'LL BE BRINGING THAT TO COUNCIL ON SEPTEMBER 8th FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION. OBVIOUSLY, IF YOU DECIDE NOT TO DO THE OUTSOURCING, WE WOULD JUST CONTINUE DOING INSPECTIONS AS WE'RE DOING NOW. SO THAT WOULD BE ANOTHER FOUR FTE SAVINGS. STREET SWEEPING, WE'VE ALREADY IMPLEMENTED TWO MEETINGS AGO. THAT'S A SAVINGS. OTHER ITEMS INCLUDE RIGHT-OF-WAY MAINTENANCE THAT WE'RE LOOKING AT, LABORATORY SERVICES, BACKFLIP PREVENTER TESTING, INSTRUCTING A CUSTOMER KIOSK, OUTSOURCING HR BENEFITS, PUBLIC SAFETY CONSULTING, AND OTHER ITEMS. ALSO, LAST COUNCIL MEETING, WE ENTER INTO AN AGREEMENT WITH ENTERPRISE TO TAKE A LOOK AT OUR FLEET SIZE. WE HAVE UPWARDS OF 400 VEHICLES IN THE FLEET, AND WE'RE LOOKING TO DOWNSIZE THAT AND GET MORE EFFICIENT IN OUR FLEET MANAGEMENT. SO THAT'S ALREADY BEEN IMPROVED. WE'RE ALREADY IN NEGOTIATIONS WITH ENTERPRISE TO TAKE A LOOK HOW WE CAN HAVE A LOWER NUMBER OF VEHICLES IN THE FLEET AT A LOWER COST. AND ALSO LOOKING AT, YOU KNOW, RIGHT-OF-WAY MAINTENANCE AND ALSO LIGHTING MAINTENANCE. SO THERE'S A NUMBER OF OPPORTUNITIES FOR INCREASING OR ACTUALLY REDUCING STAFFING AND ALSO EXPENSES. SO WE'RE LOOKING AT THAT VERY CLOSELY. AND WITH THAT, THAT'S ALL I HAVE AS FAR AS THIS BUDGET REVIEW. IT'S A LOT OF INFORMATION, BUT TURN IT OVER TO COUNCIL FOR PUBLIC COMMENT AND DISCUSSION AND GUIDANCE AS YOU DESIRE. Thank you very much, city manager.

Member Stoeckel, can you hold off until I get to public comment?

Yes.

Thank you. All right, petitions from the public. Wanda, are there any cards?

No. Stu, I think.

All right. Oh, sorry. I was just seeing if there was any filled in first.

No problem. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Stuart Buchanan. I am a resident of the City of Titusville. And what I'm going to talk to you about today touches on what your city manager just spoke of, which is your number of employees per CAPA. So what I'm here to ask you to consider in this fiscal year or in the upcoming fiscal year is that you turn over your community development block grant program under the county's administration. And I'll explain why. So CDBG funds come with a built-in percentage to pay for their administration, to pay for the city or county employees that are administering those federal dollars. Typically, the city and the county provides an office space and then use of fleet vehicles, right? If you're using general fund dollars to prop up your CDBG program, you're doing something wrong. If you're using general fund dollars to pay for the administration, you shouldn't be doing that. So several cities in Brevard County have turned over their CDBG dollars to the county. When you do this, the county is responsible for the administration. They file the reports. They do all of the bidding, as your staff could tell you, when you do a CDBG project with federal dollars, what's involved with spending those dollars. That also means you're no longer responsible for the health insurance, for the retirement benefits of those employees that you would have as city employees with those federal dollars, which you're going to have to pay out of pocket in the future. The last thing I want to explain is when a city turns their CDBG funds over to the county umbrella, you now have access to that much bigger pot of money. So I'm going to keep the math very simple. If a city, for example, gets a dollar a year and you have a large capital project that costs $5, you're never going to be able to pay for it. You're never going to be able to carry forward those $4 to reach the $5 that you need. When you fall under the county's umbrella, you can go and get that funding because they've got $30. You can actually get larger capital projects built for your community. That's all I have. Thank you for allowing me to speak. I think I've got 30 seconds left, 40 seconds. The last thing I'll mention is you all remember Scott Ellis, the clerk of court. And one of the things that he badgered the cities and the county on all the time When the years are good, don't lower your millage rate. This is when you need to build up your reserves, build up your fire and police pension fund. Buy those big capital, unflooded capital items. Do it now while the money's good. Mr. Ellis used to badger cities about this all the time because the market will change again. Thank you, Mayor and City Council, for allowing me to speak.

Thank you. Anybody else from the public that wanted to speak? Seeing none. All right. Member Stoeckle.

Yes. I just wanted to clarify the changes to the budget since our last workshop slide. So if I'm reading this correctly, if we lower our millage rate to roll back, that makes sense to me of a little over like $453,000. that we would lose an ad valorem. And then you're assuming that we're not going to raise stormwater, that you would need additional funds for that. The tax certs and the community development fees, from my understanding, this just means that we just estimated conservatively. So during mid-year, when you bring back and say, hey, we have 500,000, we may only have like 100,000 or not, or maybe there's nothing mid-year potentially. Is that correct?

That's correct. We assume a certain percentage that are delinquent and probably overestimated how much. Just to be safe. So we're covering some of that revenue.

Okay. And then where is this 300,000 coming from when it says department adjustment and non-department adjustment?

The department adjustments were made during the budget workshop. We went line item by line item.

So those are the things that we did? Right. Okay.

Those are savings that were harvested.

Okay. So you were able to kind of tweak the budget to allow for us to go to rollback. And then with our adjustments, you're saying that we can go lower than rollback if we want. We can put that towards stormwater. We can use it on the unfunded list. Okay.

As council desires.

Okay. And then I will say I really appreciate this opportunities for continued expense reductions. I feel like this would be something I kind of wish that we did in the past, and I would hope that moving forward this could be something that's continuously done. I think it helps with the public understanding what we're doing, that we're not just kind of like getting comfortable and just going with the flow. It shows that we're BEING A LOT MORE PROACTIVE. SO THIS IS SOMETHING I WANT TO SEE HAPPENING CONSISTENTLY. THIS WAS VERY BENEFICIAL TO HELP US. THANK YOU.

MEMBER MOSCOSO.

THANK YOU. I DO HAVE A QUESTION. YOU MENTIONED SOMETHING ABOUT YOU OVERESTIMATED THE DEVELOPMENT FEES. I think it's $400,000. Could you explain that a bit? And I was curious if that is going to be a reoccurring amount we would see in our budget or if this is just a one-time only.

That's revenues from development. So we... Initially, when Terry Butler did it, very conservative, projecting revenue for next fiscal year, we went ahead and actually took an average of the last few years and used that, and that provided us an additional $417,000, I believe.

Okay, and then I do have a question, and I'm sorry if we discussed this last time. I was looking at the solid waste stormwater. A lot of these things pull into our general fund, so solid waste, 1.85 million, stormwater, over 700,000, and so... My question for that is, why are we I mean, I know some of that is administrative and things like that, but why are we pulling in so much to our general fund? Because I mean, I would imagine we wouldn't we'd have to get that money in the general fund somehow. It's not, you know, but if we're looking at raising our rates, I mean, people are already paying that money. And so to move it into the general fund, I just have some questions about it.

We actually have a consultant that comes in every other year and does a study, and they actually determine the amounts for each one of those different funds to contribute for indirect and direct costs of support. Any additional information, I'm not sure.

Sure, would you like to answer that? I'm actually more concerned about, for example, the stormwater. So the $700,000, maybe Kevin or Sandy, you can answer that, that goes from the stormwater fees into our general account.

Yeah, so the Maximus study tries to allocate every function of the general fund outward facing and inward facing. So it's the cost of the buildings, the land, all the bills the city pays distributed out for those functions like finance, HR. that support the utilities and that's what the number came back. So part of the adjustment we made was to help the stormwater utilities was reducing that transfer to give them back some of that funding to buy their rates down essentially. But the rates are set by the consultant. I think we implemented a fraction of what's actually in the proposed consultant fees.

Would you happen to have for the past few years how much we put into the general fund from the stormwater fee?

Yeah, in actuals, it was $335,000. Let's see what year this is, sorry. In FY24 and 25, it was $449,000. Last year, this year, $704,000. Next year, $725,000. But then we proposed taking out $223,000 of that.

Is it going up because you're predicting the 100%?

No, it's not related to the rate that stormwater pays. It's related to the general fund budget.

Okay.

So as the budget grows, that grows with it. As the budget reduces, it reduces with it.

Okay.

But the rates of the fund in that particular, that's not a franchise fee. That's a transfer on an admin fee.

Okay.

Thank you.

Member Nelson.

Tom, I'm curious about Mr. Buchanan's proposal. Neighborhood Services does a great job, but we're spending a lot of money there to manage that CDBG money. Is that something that we could look at?

Certainly, we'll look at every opportunity to reduce expenses. As you know, the ad hoc committee for the Harry T. Moore Center reported out, and we are preparing an RFP to outsource the Harry T. Moore Center. That'll be out on the street. And also, as a side discussion, we did notice that CDBG funds are going down. every year and we're looking at staffing whether or not the staffing level should be also adjusted and how to accomplish that but certainly we'll look at every opportunity for cost savings keeping in mind that we want to you know we want to Minimize the impacts of people, people's livelihoods and jobs.

Understanding that, but do you have a feel for what potentially might save us?

I don't want to. I want to take a good look at it with staff and Brad and come up with recommendations for you.

Okay. Have we considered maybe changing the policy on take-home vehicles? Yes. I know that's a touching subject.

We have an ongoing audit. Again, it's part of the fleet management program, and our internal auditor has gotten some guidelines from staff. Myself and Kevin sat down with her, and she's going to do a very – comprehensive audit to determine how we can save money and still maintain operational readiness.

Thank you. I have to say I would like to see us save as much as possible and put it toward stormwater projects. Our flooding is horrible and anything we can do to stop that to me is a win. So I look at the budget and I go, where can we find money to do these projects? And I also will say I'm interested in maybe putting the lobbyists back in. Talked to him probably two weeks ago, and he really felt like the climate in Tallahassee was going to be different, and that hopefully he could give us some money for our projects, for Sandy's projects, where for that huge list, so I would like to see his put that back in.

Vice Mayor Cole.

Yes, I'd like to see the lobbyist put back in because I was at a function Saturday night. He has contacts that we really need. It depends on who becomes governor, but I know his contacts with Congressman Haradopoulos are pretty good, so... I would support that also and what I would like to see on the CD BG grants is if if we do the most important thing, if we do transfer it to the county. How easy is it for X to us to access the funds that supposedly we own and how do we access the additional funds that Stu talked about? as far as if the project was $5 versus $1, was it easy to get that? I'm not asking those questions now. I'm saying that when you come back, those are the kinds of things I would be interested in.

Mayor Moscoso. If we decide to put the lobbyists back in, would that come to a vote?

I mean, everything's going to come to a vote. Okay.

And then with the CBDG, I'd like to get a little bit more information. I understand it could help us cut costs, but also we do give a little bit of our power up by doing that. And so just to the county. And so I would love to know, before we did that, how, like you're saying, how that all would work. How can we access those funds? So that's a good point member Nelson.

So I agree. I don't want to give her power up But the interesting thing was when I was reading through the manual policy for the CDBG It was talking about our ability to access larger amounts of money and for affordable housing. And I thought, hmm, that's interesting. So, it could be worth it to join with a bigger group and maybe get some affordable housing, maybe not, see what they could do.

Member Stokoe, did you have something else?

Yeah, as I'm going through this, the thing that I keep thinking of, how can we do more with less? And I appreciate what Stu said about Mr. Ellis and what he would say. The problem I have with that, and I get it, it's just knowing right now especially, and I think we should always do this, especially I try to cut taxes as much as possible. IT'S JUST FRUSTRATING WHEN I FEEL LIKE I DON'T HAVE ALL THE INFORMATION, WHICH IS KIND OF WHY I LIKE THAT WE HAVE THIS LIST NOW, BUT I FEEL LIKE WE HAVEN'T GOTTEN THAT IN THE PAST, WHICH MAKES IT, YOU NEED TO PASS THIS RATE OR ELSE PEOPLE ARE GOING TO GET LAID OFF OR ELSE. AND IT'S LIKE, NO, I KNOW THERE'S OTHER THINGS THAT WE CAN DO. SO THAT'S BEEN REALLY FRUSTRATING. AND THEN I THINK THE PROPERTY APPRAISER PUT OUT TODAY, LIKE, First-time homebuyer age is like 35 to 40 and so we have to adjust given the people right now if they we can't just keep building our reserves While people can't buy a home like it's just not right. So I Definitely want to do what we can to lower if we do anything Like member Nelson said we need to go toward infrastructure and floodings to make sure again We're not putting additional cost on people to fix their home. So It's just frustrating right now because I know it's a tight budget, but it's the public's money, and I wish the state and federal would kind of work with us as well, but yeah, it's just frustrating.

All right, and since there was a lot of different topics talked about, so I'll just kind of jump in here on the last one, which was neighborhood services. If we stopped operating that building, that's roughly $300,000 a year in savings. Is that correct? 300,000, I'm trying to remember the email. I believe so. Okay. And then that department cost 800 and some thousand to run, correct?

I'd have to verify that.

All right. So that's roughly 1.1 million. And to talk about the CDBG stuff, the issue you have with CDBG is you have one year to spend it. And if you're only getting 270, 290,000, you're not gonna be able to put it towards anything substantial, which is why we just keep getting repaving of roads. So by accessing a bigger pot of money, we can do a million dollar project in that one year. I mean, yes, we'd have to work with the county, but then the following three or four years, we wouldn't get any project. because that's how we access it. And then they put our funds in the bigger pot towards their other projects outside of our city. So that's kind of, I think, the thought process there. Well, again, we're not. about giving up control I think the idea of potentially taking 1.1 million and putting it into stormwater or whatever other project we have makes a lot of sense now I want to go back to 9-1-1 dispatch I know you guys were talking about the potential the maybe the should we but isn't it preempted by the state that we have to consolidate all that by a certain year by 2030 Okay, so it's already a done deal. We got it.

Has already done so. All the beachside police departments have in Palm Bay just this week. And I know Melbourne is also entering into discussions as well. So I think it's prudent that we start proactively negotiating with Sheriff.

Yes, because I'd rather do it while we can voluntarily do it and get a better rate than when we're forced to because that rate's probably going to be a little higher. Mr. T.J.?

So that statute's not finalized yet. It's still gonna be going through session, but the latest language is there's actually, they call it four buckets. Number four bucket does state that we can keep our 911 PST center, but we have to meet certain guidelines, which is radio interoperability, CAD interoperability. So there is an option to keep it. It does not mean we have to consolidate. So there's four options, and we're just kind of waiting to see how all that language goes up.

So we are just too big to fail basically is what you're saying. Like we were just big enough to, that we met all those standards where we didn't have to force the change, right? Correct.

Okay.

Now, how much does that take cost each year to run dispatch? Yeah. Give me one second. So the manager, do you know how much, uh, the city of Palm Bay is paying the sheriff to do that?

No, we are in the process of getting a copy of that agreement. It just happened this week.

Gotcha. No pressure, T.J.

It's going to be in the neighborhood of a little over $2 million, I believe, but I'm sure the chief will get a better estimate.

That's how much it currently costs us to run that division of the police department. So, you know, let's just call it $2 million for easy numbers. And I don't know how much the sheriff is going to charge us, but I would imagine it's less than that.

Well, hopefully it will be significantly less.

Did it have anything?

No, I was just looking at the combined salaries. I can give you a snapshot of that, but I mean, are the equipment in there alone, each console's north of $35,000 to $40,000 for the equipment on each station, and that might be a low number, and that's just the small ballpark, and then I think there's 11 total stations and consoles throughout there, so...

So, yeah, for those people here that weren't here at our last meeting, we're already going back to rollback. The question is, is what can we also trim to fund these these things? I mean, we have how many capital projects on this list totaling roughly 20 million dollars? know so there's a lot of need throughout the city and in terms of stormwater I guess my big confusion on the unfunded list is there's only one item for $100,000 for water quality projects but I'm assuming that's not all the needs Andy because we you know have that this was based off the budget book which is based off the hundred percent increase so if the hundred percent increase is not what

going to go with there will be much more on the unfunded and then there's even with a hundred percent increase like I've said in the past that just that doesn't fix the flooding problems that gets us a start on some of the designs on some of the issues so that that could be a very large number if you would like to look at I think I think for that full number when we get done with the stormwater master plan is we'll have that a better idea of what that full number is

So currently, after the changes that have been presented to us, you're going to end up with $223,985 additional in stormwater.

So on the 25th, I'll present the option with 100%. I'll show you a 50%. That shows an increased maintenance. But I'm also going to show you a 13%, which is current. level of service, it does get me the piece of equipment I need, and it gets me the inspections I need because we're using that $233,000 to buy down from the 18% increase that would be needed to fund our current level of service. So that does not give me any capital. That gives me a current level of service with the increased costs and the equipment I need to maintain the current level of service.

Can we hear from staff regarding the 911 dispatch? If we're trying to save money as a city, does this make sense to do? Or are we going to lose quality? Whoever knows about this, can somebody sell it to us or not sell it to us or give us pros and cons? Because I don't feel like I have enough information to make a decision.

Right. So quality would be probably the first thing that we would lose. Okay. A lot of our current personnel in our comm center are local homegrown, so they know as soon as the call comes in, if they reference McDonald's and something, they know it's the McDonald's on the south end or just a normal name. They know exactly what the call is coming in and can usually kind of forecast how that call is going. The other part of quality, and I would say officer safety and security is when there's critical incidences. They know exactly where we are and they're able to tell us where to go while we're doing the emergency response or if there's active canine tracks going on or whatever it might be. They're constantly doing those services for us behind the scenes. So quality would, in my opinion, definitely take a hit.

Okay, what about response times? Do you feel that it's pretty equal? Would it potentially go down?

I will pull up some stats as far as, give me a second to pull up, Greg just sent me some stuff on 911 calls. I know we do lead in the standard of the timeframe to answer the call. I think the national average is to answer a 911 call in 15 seconds, if I'm not mistaken. And we are sitting under 10 seconds, and I believe 98% is within five seconds. So we, our agency, our PST leads the pack in that. second to none compared to anywhere else.

Okay. And then do you know if, if we were to go under the county, would they take into consideration area and try to like say, Hey, your, your area when you're on duty would be North end so they can get more familiar. So quality could improve or would that does not typically happen.

This, this is all is so new with the consolidation. I mean, we just had the beach side agencies move over and there was some hiccups and they had to take back over on the beach sides and now move back again. Uh, with Palm Bay just coming on, I'd be very interested to see how that works out and shakes out for them. And it'd be, if we ever did decide to do this, I would make the request that we are the last ones to go if we do. So everything can be worked out. So when we, if, and when we transitioned, it is very seamless.

And we know that that's, again, what I think is we need to be aware of our part of our job is to protect our citizens. And so, again, what's worth spending money on, what's not? I would want to feel confident in that.

Correct. And I believe the model is after Leon County and Collier. Leon County moved a consolidation dispatch in 2012 or 2013 after an unfortunate incident that involved three or four agencies responding to the same call. And that's the reason why the statute talks about radio interoperability and CAD interoperability so everybody can see where everybody's at. So because of that unfortunate incident, they consolidated and I believe they're the staple to probably follow and monitor and follow their procedures. So we currently have a contact up there that we want to take a trip up and spend a day or two up there to kind of look for ourselves. And then once we kind of have a better idea, that's when it would make sense to probably reach out to the sheriff's office and start exploring what options are out there and how are they envisioning this whole consolidation as well.

And that's what I would want to make an informed decision is what would be the potential cost savings and then what would be the potential risks. And then I feel like I could then make an informed decision on should we do it or should we not. I just, I would want all of that information.

Yes, we're just beginning to get into all that, but we'll definitely have a good comprehensive overview of it, pros and cons, risks, rewards, if you want to look at it that way, and we'll be able to give that back to you.

Okay, thank you.

Yes.

Thank you, Member Stockel, for jumping in. I'm just kidding. I know, I know. Well, what I was doing is, you know, Neighborhood Services wasn't on this list of the PowerPoints as opportunities for continued expense reduction. My goal is to figure out how much in each of these categories do you think we can potentially save? Because it's not just about this year, it's about planning out for next year. Because while we might be doing the environmental and feasibility for stormwater this year, next year comes the design, engineering, and all the other fun stuff that comes with it that's even more expensive. So trying to forecast out a few years of what potential cost-saving measures can happen even down the road. So City Manager, you mentioned outsourcing fire inspections. How much do you think that is anticipated to save us?

I turn to the chief on that. I know it's for FTE, and also in this case, the number of inspections will probably double and bring in more revenue. So I think it's going to be not only saving money, it's going to increase our revenues. But I'll leave the chief to give you a little more detail on that.

All right. So just to hit on the revenue side of it from the very beginning, so no particular order, but we're going to restructure our fees. Essentially, there is a fee associated with your first fire inspection that would stay the same. And then we just have to bring our second and third re inspection and even fourth re inspection fees up to what's current as opposed to a model that we've been using for. I don't know, predating me. So that's as far as that goes. But then just the cost of privatizing or outsourcing that, as opposed to paying the employees that we have right now, It's either going to be somewhere near a wash or that dollar amount could actually look at face value to be a little bit higher. But I do have a list here of a couple of things where you will see cost savings for sure. And I can go into detail on all of these if you'd like me to. We eliminate service delays with it, the total cost of an employee. So there there is a bigger cost than just the salaries, essentially. And there's liabilities that you take on as well with having your employees in house, the capacity to which we can do the calls. City manager comment on that accountability. Guaranteed staffing is another one. In other words, if an inspector takes time off, that's one of their benefits. They're allowed to use their leave time. However, inspections aren't getting done. So we wouldn't have that issue with a private company. Guaranteed staffing. So adaptability to seasons of high and low workload. So basically it's scalable to if we're at, you know, we have a lot of construction coming in right now. So there's a lot of pre plans for construction. We might not always be there, though. So do we need to ramp up inspections or we need to keep inspections at a heightened level in the future? And then we don't have as much new we don't have as much new building going on in the city. So we would have to just keep that scalable, which is easier to do with a private company. It's going to eliminate training costs. We're not training our employees. We pay to keep them certified. Again, a great example there is we send someone to a conference for several days. Not only are we paying for that to keep their certification up, but they're not here doing inspections either. And to put that in perspective, somewhere between 30 and 40 inspections occur in the course of a week. So if you take a few days off, that can get you behind pretty quick. Any questions so far on any of that? Nothing. Okay. I'm trying to think if there's anything I've left out. I can't really think of anything else. Vehicle costs? Yeah, there's a vehicle cost associated with that, too. And it's actually not just vehicle. It's hardware costs for using laptops, cell phones, all the fuel costs, all of that sort of thing. Because the company you contract with just provides all of that for them. We can give office space to them. We don't have to give office space to them. So another concern with that, too, is what happens to those employees that are currently our fire inspectors. And the goal, my personal goal, I know city managers express this, too, is we don't want to do layoffs. So we do have positions for them within the city, but also this company that we will be contracting with can absorb them as well.

So what do you think, like $100,000 a year in savings or increased revenue?

Excuse me?

I'm just trying to get a ballpark figure.

It's hard to put a dollar amount to it because we have to restructure those fees. I would say increase the revenue for sure. In other words, you have a business, you pay $50 for your first inspection. And we'll come out and we'll inspect it and something has to be corrected in that. So then we come out again, that's your first re-inspection. We don't charge anything for that. Many times there's a second re-inspection, which is your third trip out there. We don't charge anything for that. A lot of times there's even a fourth re-inspection. Nothing's charged for that. But the industry standard has increased costs associated with each one of those. So in other words, most places and the way this company suggests to structure as well is we'll do an inspection. That cost is $50, but you get a freebie because your first re-inspection is really their... You're the layperson. You don't know what you're supposed to do. You don't know where that fire alarm pole sticker is supposed to be on your wall. So we work with you, give you an opportunity to correct it. But then the fees start coming in after that because a lot of times that's not noncompliance. So that still doesn't give you a solid dollar amount. But I think more so than the dollar amount is when you look at the efficiency that now we're just round the clock busting out inspections. There's no training, no leave time, nothing like that getting in the way. And so it's an efficiency thing. And it's just important to note that there is an increased revenue to it that I can confirm that. But what that dollar amount is, is is. At this point, until we have those ordinances changed to reflect the fees associated with the reinspections, I can't put a dollar amount to it.

I appreciate that, Chief. You know, just looking at all the overhead costs, I mean, I would imagine it would have to be somewhere at least around $100,000 in savings, just kind of guessing. But I understand it's hard to quantify right now because we don't know what the actual volume will be. But I appreciate that.

I would say that's a good conservative estimate, probably north of that, though.

Thank you. So I saw on our agenda for next week the renewal contract for JB's Lawn Care. So I'm assuming we're not going to go with eliminating the state road right-of-way maintenance, right? That's not one of the cost-cutting measures we're doing?

That's right. They have agreed to hold their rates constant for another year. Again, that's something that we'll be looking at as far as for FY28 what to do as far as the savings. But that's going to be on the agenda from the 25th.

Okay, and if we outsource the water and sewer laboratory services, how much would that save us?

So I looked currently, A few years ago, we combined that with water rec, so I don't have an exact number for 2027, but in 2024, the last year it was by itself, the operating was about a million dollars. There's seven people in that division. We would need to keep some. We're going through the effort of how many we need to keep because there are some day-to-day stuff that needs to be done for the plants. There is also a capital need coming up for the lab. It's been kind of pushed off because we have other priority capital needs, but at some point, if we keep everything we're doing at the lab, there will be a capital need. to do that. So I would estimate, you know, at least $800,000 probably for the year.

And that's year over year, correct?

Yeah. It's a lot of personnel.

Thank you.

Kevin might have something to add.

Just a note, that's in the water sewer utility, so that's not transferable to another fund that has to fund water sewer operations.

Okay.

And we still have a lot of capital need there.

Yeah, I just want to make sure as we're talking that the color of money these utility funds can't go to each other.

All right, I'll write it as green for utility. And then what about water backflow preventer testing?

So that right now, we pay for ourselves. There's a lot of municipalities that make the property owners, they're responsible for that. So that's something that we need to look into and see the cost. It would be a cost to the consumer at that point. So we're still in the middle of research of what that does to the businesses.

And how many municipalities outsource that and it's on the commercial industry? Kevin can answer.

the bulk of them, technically we do outsource that to a private company now, but we pay that bill. So when we go to replace a backflow that's actually servicing the private business, we're paying the bill, they're not fully paying that bill. So other cities allow the private companies who own and operate that backflow preventer, they simply report to the city that it meets the standard of the city. So all the cost of repair, all the cost of operation of that backflow falls upon the business owner, not of the utility as a whole. So OUC, TOHO, none of them operate their own backflow preventer systems.

And how much is that costing us?

Us? Yeah, because we're paying the bill.

Just to put into context, a lot of these we don't have firm numbers on.

These are not items that are... Getting a general idea. You know, just trying to understand. $200,000, I would guess. That's in the water utility, correct? Yep. All righty. I kind of got through half of them, but I think as, you know, the conversation unfolds, I think there's still some work that can be done that we can, you know... find ways to save money to put towards these capital projects. I mean, there's at least a million here in water, and I'm looking at some of the water projects that are on the to-do list, upwards of 12 million. I know some of them are capital and they might be financed, but there still needs to be money available to help pay for that financing year over year, and especially roughly a million dollars a year can be outsourced. So just on that alone. And then I did have a question about the revenue So in your presentation you estimated or re estimated about averages with community development I Understand looking at the averages, but with the new state law change that goes into effect on January 1st How can you accurately predict that the revenue is going to be there?

No, we did reduce that average for that one to be you know, I think 25% below their five-year average and to try to account for the fact they're gonna have some losses in revenue, both from economic downturns plus the change in the methodology for permitting fees.

Gotcha. And then in the Tiger Team report, it said that we were 29 FTEs basically above our ceiling. So how do we equate for that difference and what we're doing to try to get more in line with our level of service versus our need in terms of our overhead?

Yeah, so we set that that methodology is the same as the CFO's methodology. It took 2020 as the base year increased by population. So in that case, we did outpace the growth and staffing overall. There's a second part of that chart that is the gray area staffing, which is the non-critical staffing of your police fire streets maintenance. They fall below that line of the same period. So we were looking at the focus on the primary, the critical staffing of the police fire departments. and the water plant operators, those that are deemed to be core services, and the remaining services that have fallen below the line for that same growth period. And we're prospectively moving forward trying to adjust staffing to come down to meet that population line.

Because that was the big question I had the last meeting. It seemed like, you know, just looking at that fees year over year from, you know, three fiscal years, we jumped by like 40 employees. And I don't think we gained proportionally that many people. And I know things are going to go up and more services needed. So I was just wondering what the plan was to try to get fall in line. From what I'm hearing is it's just not hiring, right?

There is currently a hiring freeze in place, correct.

Okay. So, yeah, I think there's definitely some opportunities to save some money and redirect to stormwater. I think neighborhood services is definitely the low-hanging fruit there. Hopefully we can evaluate some of these other things as the fiscal year moves on so that we can have year two, year three, year four capital projects in the hopper and they – If you looked at the budget, there was like 300,000 that we could either move to reserves or move into stormwater. I think at the very least, we need to move 220,000 of that into stormwater. personally would like to see the another the other three hundred thousand fifty be spent on the splash pad on the unfunded list because I think we We are spending a lot on capital, but I think people also want to see some some nice things every once in a while But again, I'll defer to the board thirty thousand on lobbying services and the 220 remaining to go to stormwater for this next fiscal year, but that's kind of my recommendations as we Kind of move forward and I think we would even have more money to play with if we outsource neighborhood services at the very least the building is going to give us another $300,000 a year to to play with to put into stormwater.

I would like to request what you would want the 220,000 in stormwater to go to capital or.

You have a lot of PD&Es and assessments and things you've got to get started, correct? Yes. And so if you had the extra $220,000, you could do how many starts of projects? You know, like two or three?

Two. Two and a half.

I hope these studies and environmental assessments get lesser than $100,000 per, but I'm assuming they're not. So, Member Moscoso?

Thank you. I have a lot of different thoughts. I do think that the CBDG grant does roll over. I'm not 100% sure, but I feel like we did have like a big, chunk that we were trying to do projects with. I know that you mentioned neighborhood services is low hanging fruit, but I think we need to make sure we humanize this a bit. These are real people, real jobs, real services, and I know we're looking to cut, but I'm really proud of our team that we've gone back to roll back and we're not raising taxes. And so I just want to be really careful before we make Any big decisions, and I think we will get more information, but I just think we need to humanize this a bit because of the employees who work so hard and who have given years of their lives to serve our city. And then the only other thing I think with the FTEs, I don't feel like we're comparing apples to apples. And I think we need to do that. So that would be something I would like to see like a city our size compared to. another city to see how many public works, you know, because we're looking at these like gray areas, not essential, but it's really hard to say we've got 590 FTEs and, you know, another city has this, but I really want to see apples to apples on that one. And then I do have a question with the right-of-way maintenance. If we did give that back to the state, do they have a schedule of when they would come out and actually mow the grass or is it...

I think it's on a quarterly basis. We do it basically weekly.

Is that correct?

Okay.

Yeah, we're weekly in the summer, biweekly in the winter. The state has no mandate to do it any more than three times, four times a year.

And that only includes cutting grass. Does it include anything with sidewalks?

Yeah, they would have to keep the sidewalks clear, how they do that, what method they would use, that would be. US-1 outside the city is FDOT maintained up by TPD. The county turned that back to the state. So those are the cutting durations that you would see if we stopped doing city maintenance.

Also includes street sweeping on the state roads. Can you say that again? It also includes the street sweeping on the state roads. That's part of the contract.

Yeah, I mean, I get that we really want to cut as much as possible, but also we do need to offer quality services to our resident as much as we possibly can in this current climate.

I can tell you that years ago, we did have the state do it, and we found that the level of service was unacceptable. which is why we turned it over to privatization. So it's a trade-off. You save money, but then the level of service goes down. It's what council wants and the citizens expect.

I'm sorry. And then also, like, FPL, we talked about that with the lights, and I just was reminded yesterday. I don't know if a lightning... No, it was...

There's a fuse on the FPL side that was broke earlier this week. They fixed it yesterday, and then we think it got hit by lightning again yesterday. Yeah. So it'll take them a few more days, probably not until the beginning of next week to fix it.

I realize our town really struggles with a four-way stop. I was there. I was struggling. Thank you.

So, Council Member Moschetto, yeah... I WAS GOING THROUGH THE LIST OF THEIR PROPOSED OPPORTUNITIES FOR EXPENSE REDUCTION AND WHAT I SAID WAS I SEE THAT THE CONTRACT IS ON OUR AGENDA FOR TUESDAY SO I'M ASSUMING THAT IS NOT HAPPENING. THAT WAS JUST CLARIFYING THAT'S NOT ONE OF THE THINGS THAT WE WERE DISCUSSING AS WE MOVE FORWARD BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY WE PROBABLY WOULDN'T GET THE LEVEL OF SERVICE. IT'S A DELICATE BALANCE.

Yeah, I just want to circle back to 911 because I think that's a very important service that we provide. And I'm not asking the questions, but what I'm doing is saying what my concerns would be. So when the presentation comes back, these things will be included. I guess the first question is, do the people that work in our 911 dispatch, if we turn this over, will those people move over to the sheriff's department?

That would be a requirement of any negotiations. I, again, want to emphasize in no uncertain terms that I wouldn't ever offer involuntary layoffs. It's not in my DNA.

The second one would be, would we still stay in our little cocoon in that, you don't have to answer because I'm sure you don't have all these answers yet, but will our What do we have, 11 dispatchers? How many? I think closer to 20, I believe. 20, okay. I guess my question is, will they stay in their own cocoon and only answer for us? Will they be answering services throughout the county? Operational decisions, I believe, to the chief. Yeah, well, I'm not asking the question. I'm asking it because I would like to hear it when the presentation comes back. And because my concern is like the chief alluded to, our dispatchers are very familiar with our city. They're very familiar with our officers. and safety is of utmost to our citizens, and we want to make sure that we're providing the best service And, you know, sometimes if it ain't broke, you don't need to fix it. But I guess we need to do those comparisons. And then back to the right of way with the privatization of, you know, cutting the grass and stuff. I would be very concerned about us putting that outhouse rather than in-house because... We're the ones going to get the calls, and if we're not in charge of it, it's kind of hard for us to pressure whoever is doing it to do it. So those are my concerns, and I'm just saying when they come back, these questions can be answered.

Member Stockel.

Yes, a few thoughts. If we do start to have these conversations, which we are, about quality of services being in jeopardy, we will need that as council to know to make that informed decision. So rather than just saying it's council's decision, which it is, we need to make sure we have all the appropriate information, not just say we're going to cut a department and then it Hurts our citizens and nobody told us that it would do that. So we would need staff to tell us exactly what would be happening.

And a lot of this is really contingent upon what happens in November with amendment 3. Yeah, if memory 3 doesn't pass. Then we have a little breathing room to do more in depth analysis and recommendations of council. If amendment 3. passes and we're looking at an FY28 reduction of over $5 million, then there's going to be trade-offs. You're not going to be able to provide the same level of service, and you're going to have to determine whether or not outsourcing dispatch and losing a little bit of service is going to be worth the $2 million or plus that you can save. So obviously, we have to start doing our homework now, and then we'll see what happens in November with Amendment 3.

Yeah, and I see part of that, at least from what I see within the circles, is the people that are for Amendment 3 are very frustrated because they don't see where their current tax dollars are being spent. And so I think we have opportunities for us to share with the citizens, these are the quality services that you're getting because of your tax dollars. So I think there's room there. Another point regarding making sure we humanize what's happening here. I think we are, as was mentioned, we are on a hiring freeze. We're not talking about layoffs, but I think it's good to kind of take a pause and figure out what we're doing. Also, with that, though, that's why I keep waiting for the consultant, because alongside that, there could be potential opportunities where there's people that are dragging the organization down or it's hurting other employees. So we really need to get a pulse on the health of the city from all departments standpoint to see how we can make sure we're providing quality services, and we're being good stewards of those funds. So that's what I'm waiting on for that consultant. What I'm hearing also is we want to make sure, and this is kind of where I'm at, we are including a COLA for the employees. We're going to roll back. We have an additional $300,000 that we can allocate toward the lobbyists. I think that's the only thing I heard from this unfunded list, and stormwater projects, and then we need to still decide on, are we doing the 6% increase to water and sewer, 8% to solid waste, and I don't think we're doing 100% on stormwater. So we need to decide those rates and then say, look from this list and as we're hearing, there are revenues that are coming in But again, I think part of my frustration is, rather than, how it's presented to us, I guess, is it's, hey, if you want to fund these infrastructure stormwater projects, you need to raise it to 100%, rather than, hey, if you want to fund these stormwater projects, you can raise it to 50%, and then we can make these cuts to these other departments, because that's what I'd rather. but it's presented in a way that I either have to raise 100% or people could potentially flood. And so I don't have a lot of options. So how I'm looking at it is I don't wanna raise it that much and I want to fund infrastructure projects for stormwater. But I like what we're doing with fire inspections. I like what we did with the fleet maintenance through enterprise. I like those projects because I think then we're being a good steward. We're also providing quality services. That's kind of like the sweet spot for me. So that's kind of how I'm looking at this.

That's my piece. Thank you, Member. Just real quick, I want to touch on something. When I said low-hanging fruit about neighborhood services, I was talking about the building, not the people. Now, the building is costing us $300,000 a year to run. I think that's a pretty easy no-brainer to not continue to run that building and turn it over back to the community, as we discussed at our last meeting. Because if we took that savings and rolled it into more stormwater projects, now that gives us $520,000 this year for Miss Sandy to get some more projects rolling. Because unfortunately, we're just not at the point right now for any capital construction projects. We've got to get these YOU KNOW, STUDIES AND ENVIRONMENTAL THINGS OUT OF THE WAY FIRST BEFORE WE CAN KEEP ROLLING ON. BUT THEN AS THE IDEA GOT PRESENTED TONIGHT OF, YOU KNOW, COMINGLING CDBG FUNDS WITH THE COUNTY, WHICH IS SOMETHING I HAD NEVER CONSIDERED REALLY BEFORE, BUT THAT WOULD OBVIOUSLY PRESENT ADDITIONAL SAVINGS IF THAT WERE TO HAPPEN. BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY, I THINK WE CAN ALL AGREE THAT RUNNING THAT BUILDING IS JUST COSTING US TOO MUCH MONEY. MEMBER NELSON.

I was just going to say, with the 9-11 dispatch, I love having it at the police department. However, I spent a fair amount of time at the sheriff's office and dispatch for different reasons. And I will say, a lot of the people in dispatch are Titusville residents. So I don't feel totally... upset by that idea, but I would like to see the price and sort of compare it because my druthers would be to have the TPT.

Thank you very much. Member Stovall?

Okay, so I guess I don't know if we're wrapping up, but I feel like We go to rollback, we do the 300,000 towards stormwater in the lobbyists.

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Okay, are you...

Hold on, hold on. There was only $300,000 total that was just kind of there. Correct. There was already $220,000 being moved from the general... Well, not being taken out of stormwater to the general, but they just left it in stormwater. Okay. So stormwater's going to get a $220,000 bump, but that's really just to keep her at a lower increase, right? And that just gets you your same maintenance... And this new state requirement to inspect 20% of the system, right? And your machine?

Mm-hmm.

Okay, so I nailed that.

And that gives a 13% increase, which I think is $1.74 a month to this precedent.

And yeah, what is the rate increase with how we have it right now? It's not 100%. What is it at?

You said 12. Well, if you're going with the lowest option, the current level of maintenance with what the mayor just said, it is $1.74 a month. I have that.

I mean, get the percentage if we have that.

13%.

So instead of 100% that we sent out to everybody, it would be a 13% increase in stormwater. Okay.

13%.

And that includes no capital. Anything additional you give me we could put towards but I guess what I was going with that is as we're discussing This could be an ongoing conversation as we save and do these projects throughout the year We can say oh we just saved 200,000 here. Let's move that to stormwater just because we can't make some of these decisions now

Right. So the timing is going to be critical. Some of these items that we're looking at won't be able to be realized by the first of October. But as the year progresses, we can make these changes, freeing up more money for more capital projects in conjunction with the stormwater master plan identifying project costs for stormwater.

So, you know, again, there's that little extra money they're getting to basically kind of keep it at the same level of service. We had about $300,000 of extra money that was in what they cut or what we cut basically at our last meeting. So if you took $220,000 of that to put towards more stormwater beginnings of projects, $50,000 for the splash pad and $30,000 for the lobbyists, and then I think the goal would be to not run the neighborhood services building, if you want me to call it the Harry T. Moore Center, I will, but the Harry T. Moore Center, and then get out of paying that 300 grand a year in overhead.

And that RFP will be going out in September, and we should hopefully identify some potential nonprofits that would be willing to take over the entire building and also provide services, hopefully.

Because I think, you know, at least how I feel is all that money and savings for the Harry T. Morrison Center should just go right into whatever Sandy needs it for, for stormwater. Member Stoeckel?

Yeah, I was wondering if we're getting to an agreement here.

If you're good with that, I'm good with that.

Yes, yes. And then, as we said, I think we should keep this list. I think that it would be nice to get updates, whether it's monthly, quarterly, just of things that we're figuring out, best practices from research, things that we're doing to lead the way to try to continue. Because, again, even if Amendment 3 doesn't pass this time, something will happen next year when the committee meets.

Absolutely. It's my intent to keep you well informed and we have a fantastic assistant city manager with his engineering background. This is second nature to him.

All right. Um, real quick, we, we, we address projects in stormwater. I want to kind of go back to water and sewer because, you know, The rates keep going up, but our capital projects keep going up too, I think at a more expeditious rate. And I think if we really looked at outsourcing lab services and backflow preventer, because personally, I mean, I came from a place where all, if you're a commercial entity, you paid for your own backflow inspection. Like, I don't know why we're paying for that for the commercial businesses as constituents. So I think that is a no-brainer, in my opinion, of the lab services. They might want to do a little bit more digging on that. But if we can save 800,000 there, now we have a million dollars to put towards a water and sewer capital project. The one that stands out to me, and I'm not Sandy or Kevin where I know which one is the most important. I see they're ranked here by how much they cost. But to me, the Osprey plant overflow storage sounds like a big deal. I mean, it sounds like a really important thing to not have overflow sewage go out.

We still did fund some of that project. We split that in half to reduce, to get down to the 6%. So we will begin starting to look at what we can do to figure that out. So it's not a completely dead project at this point.

And just to help Sandy, that would be overflow of reclaimed water, not sewage.

Correct.

So finished water, not sewage.

Same stuff you put on your yard.

Not as critical, but when I see overflow prevention at Osprey, my antennas went up of like, this is probably a big deal, guys. But we still have four log and switch gears and all kinds of force mains that need to be replaced. So I think the more we can save on lab services and backflow would be a smart idea.

Yeah, we can start looking into that. It'll take me a while to figure it all out, but we will begin.

Member Moscoso.

Sorry, and then is there anything that you were requesting for equipment-wise that you would need to help us keep up the maintenance of the ditches?

It is funded. What I need is funded at the 13%. Okay. Perfect. Thank you.

Member Stoeckel.

Are you proposing not raise to 6% and 8% and just hope that we can, throughout the year, do some cost savings and not have to rate increase? Or what are you thinking? Or we do it this year and maybe next year we don't raise it?

Honestly, just with time value of money and how a dollar today is not worth a dollar tomorrow, I think we're going to be hard-pressed not to raise rates just ever. I mean, the cost of these capital projects just keep going up exponentially. I think we probably need to continue on the 6% for this year. But at the same time, the money that we're saving go directly into these capital projects to buy that down and hopefully – The consultant doesn't come back next year and tell us it's going to be 10%. Yeah. So you just never know what state preemption is going to come down the line from DEP or St. John's. And every time they make a new rule, it costs us like a million bucks. Yeah. So I want to make sure that we're preemptively putting some money towards some capital projects.

Yeah. Okay.

All righty. Does anybody else have any other discussions they want to have? No? All right. So we're all in a consensus that we're not going to operate the Harry T. Moore Center and whatever money gets saved out of there, go to help fund the stormwater, look at outsourcing lab services and the backflow preventer. We're just not going to pay for it for commercial. 220K of the 300 that we had available go into stormwater projects, 50 for the splash pad, 30 for lobbyists. Member Moscoso?

I'm not in favor of the lobbyists, but I think I'm going to be outvoted.

Okay.

Yeah, I would really like to see. I know Jason has a lot of connections, and I think what happened this year was not indicative of his performance. But I know that a few other cities are also being extremely careful If we're trying to cut FTEs, that's $30,000 a year. I mean, that is somebody who, that's somebody in our public works, to be honest. That's a job that we could have in the city. So I would almost like to just say not have it for this year and see how it goes with the new governor, and then perhaps pick it back up next year. I think that we're all, you guys are extremely involved in Tallahassee, and you also have those connections. And we also know, I mean, it's great to have him, but I think... I think we can do some of that work ourselves. So it's nothing personal against him. It's just when I compare $30,000 to perhaps having someone working in the city in public works, it's a lot of money.

Yeah, I wish $30,000 got us a FT in Public Works. Unfortunately, that's just not the case with benefits, overhead, pension, all those things. So, you know, we've got to make a strategic small investment to make sure that we can hopefully get some of these bigger capital projects to the finish line. Unfortunately, we as a city just didn't really have a whole lot of great projects just sitting on the shelf, and that's a culture that we are changing going forward. Right, guys? Yes, we're going to have projects on the shelf ready to go so we can fight for them. All right, thank you very much. Unless anybody has anything else, this concludes our discussion. No, there's no official action that can be taken. We'll just get into our first budget. Are you guys going to print new books for us?

No, there'll be an adopted one. We'll make changes to the digital.

We're not going to be printing new books until we adopt it. Yes, if you can, send that out to us as soon as you can. I know it'll probably take some time, but until then, we're adjourned.