Commission - workshop

Somewhere in here. I want to see the trim.

Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for coming and joining us for today's budget workshop. Go ahead and call the reporter. 301.

Yes, sir. Before we get started, though, I'm going to need a quick two-minute conversation about the attorney for the next commission meeting. So you and I had talked about just not having an attorney until the agreement with Dunlap and Shipman was signed. However, if that doesn't happen, we will need an attorney there, and we need an attorney procedurally until that does happen in case there are any questions about the contract. So just looking for some guidance from the commission. The recommendation would be to have Hand Arendelle there to start the meeting. If the agreement is approved, we would take a recess and then Ms. Sinagra would take the place of Ms. Myers.

mean typically doesn't isn't what typically happens when you have a transition like that whoever the current city attorney is they just finish it out and then the next meeting the new attorney takes over because because that attorney is going to have to get prepared for the meeting so we could we would have to change the date until august 12th on the agreement that's why we're looking for some guidance here That's the way I think it should be done. I mean, that's just the easiest transition, but.

Well, our typical attorney's not even going to be available, so Rob Jackson won't be, so it'd have to be Andy Myers.

Mm-hmm.

What are y'all's thoughts, Sam, Judy?

I think what Commissioner Ward said, just the fact of the main reason we have an attorney is so they're prepared ahead of time to answer questions. It kind of makes you want to lean towards just change the date to the 12th or whatever and go from there.

Ms. Judy?

I see no point in using two as well. I'd just as soon start them on the 12th, period.

I agree. And then they're looking at a three-week transition, correct, in terms of handoff and behind the scenes?

I mean, if approved Tuesday, we would have a meeting, likely Wednesday morning, with Amy and Dunlap and Shipman to start the transition. I mean, it's going to take some time for sure.

But our main one... we'll be getting is already a municipal attorney. So I don't think she'd be thrown into the wolves right off the bat. 304.

Nope.

Go ahead.

So you have some changes to the language?

Yeah.

What are they?

They're on the agenda.

Okay, for next week? Mm-hmm. Okay. So this could drag out forever.

No, I don't think so, but okay. Well, I wasn't aware of proposed changes again, but we can, that being said, Pat, you're joining us. What we're discussing is whether or not to have Hand Arendelle just go ahead and cover the entire next meeting. And assuming we approve the final contract for Dunlap Shipment, have them start the following meeting.

Yeah.

All right. If there's going to be possible discussions and possible edits, that makes sense, Jennifer. Okay.

All right. He was very helpful and very friendly. All right.

All right, so with that being said, we'll get started with our budget workshop today. Good afternoon, everyone. Before we begin, though, just want to ensure everyone acknowledges and understands that nothing in this budget has been saved. I know that was a term that's been used a lot as we made budget cuts and looked at increasing the millage, but nothing is saved. Nothing in the general fund is protected from these reductions, and still at this point today, we are not solving the problem. We're delaying it. By 2034, when the disaster bond debt matures, the city will have operated at a bare bones level for so long the other needs will have deteriorated and we will be forced to spend years catching up, most likely by borrowing, to complete the majority of the projects which we have deferred. There are long-term strategic goals we have discussed, such as a leasing program to replace our fleet and keeping it up to date. That's not going to be accomplished. Constructing our multiuse fields and continuing to enhance public safety. We have reached the point where the city must decide what services to eliminate permanently, not temporarily, and what services it intends to continue to provide. If the expectation is to maintain everything we provide today, then we must significantly increase ad valorem revenue and add multiple non-ad valorem assessments or fees to cover the remaining expenses. You began that process the other night by setting the millage rate higher than normal. However, that still leaves a status quo in the budget. I also want to make it clear that given the current condition of the budget, if a sponsor does not come forward, this will be the first time that I can identify in 112 years that the City of Glen Haven will not hold a July 4th parade. And this is not a budget that moves us forward. It's not a budget that positions Lynn Haven as a premier city or anything to move forward in a positive direction. It's a budget that sustains only minimal services for residents. There's no frivolous spending, no extras, no events, and none of the feel-good items as commonly referred to. cutting staff is not a win cutting events is not a win and this is the moment of the this moment is the result of years without sufficient increases and without earlier reductions from a few years ago those decisions have now caught up with us and it's going to be the roughest budget we've probably ever had at least in the past 10 years but definitely want to thank staff for all the work on this it's not over and it's not going to be any easier especially after today So with that being said, we're going to start with our sanitation rates. I gave you all an Excel sheet to kind of look at the proposed rates for fiscal year 27. Here are what has them. We can put on the screen if there's any discussion that you all would like to do. I know some of you have had questions or comments about them. If you want to discuss publicly now amongst the commission, make recommendations. We can also model it on the screen if there's pricing that you all do not like. And if we can agree to something today, hopefully we can bring it to you all at the August 25th meeting, I believe it is, for approval.

Well, thank you for that very somber opening, City Manager. And before we move forward and dive right into the numbers and spreadsheets and all that good stuff, fellow commissioners, do you all have any kind of opening comments or thoughts you all want to share amongst the five of us and our fellow Linhabians that are here?

yeah just any general opening comments y'all want to share yeah I mean I'll just say that it is Chris Lightfoot is not wrong in the past three years this has been the most difficult budget for me without a doubt lost a lot of sleep over it spend a lot of time on it Budget season is never fun, but in terms of whenever you have to make hard decisions, but this one has been really rough So I appreciate everyone that's taking the time to whether your staff or citizens or a fellow commission thanks for all the work you put into it because Every little bit that's gone into this has helped tremendously because this has been pretty difficult Thank you for that any other Commissioner have any thoughts I want to share I

So this is one of the reasons why I was such an advocate to change the budget process before it was like probably around the second or third week of August is when we will get the budget, have one-on-one conversations and, You know, I brought it forward to change and didn't really go anywhere. And I'm glad that we started this a lot earlier than normal. And I think next year it will start even earlier. And that's why it's important to start these discussions earlier so that we can open ourselves to different options. So I think that's one of the crucial pieces of this.

Thank you for that. As the newest rookie on the commission, now six and a half months on board, this budget definitely coming in eyes wide open. The last two city managers made a lot of different financial decisions, some of which were good and some were really, really bad. And the city is now living with those repercussions. $18.8 million, give or take, over-executed. 7.1 on the city hall, 9.4 on the sports complex. A lot of rebuilding after Hurricane Michael, which was needed after a cap five, but we didn't build back to what we had. We built much bigger and much better. And those things were expensive. And right, wrong, or indifferent, that's where we're at today. So as we move forward with this, it is how do we address the budget with the debt we have now, with the income that we have for the city. And of course, almost hanging over us like the sword of Damocles is Amendment 3 and how that shakes out could potentially limit our normal city budget. have the lorem income by 40% negatively, 40 to 45, depending on estimates you look at. So the next five to six years are not gonna be fun, regardless of who sits in this dais, who the city manager is, who the governor is. It's going to be really, really a financial challenge. We're all here today, regardless of where you're sitting in this room, because you love Lynn Haven. And so as you watch us go through this and as we try to figure this out and do the best we can with the city's tax dollars and be good stewards for our fellow citizens and taxpayers, there are going to be no easy answers. So it is what it is at this point. And all we can be is honest, transparent, and fair about it and make it very clear as we struggle and as we go back and forth on issues and functions and what to keep and what to cut. We're all in the rowboat together. Rising tides lift and sink all boats at the same time. So it is what it is. Anything else before we get started? If not, city manager, it's all yours, sir.

Yes, sir. I would just like to ask the commission's feelings on the proposed sanitation rate increases. If there's anything you all would like to model or change, we can do it.

So I already talked to Chris about this a little bit via email, but I do think that... If it were me, I would like to raise the price of the two cans customers to offset some of the raises from the single can. Because, I mean, truly what we're paying for here is ultimately the staff time and the equipment to carry loads of garbage and sanitation products to where they need to go. And if you're really doubling up the amount of garbage you are bringing, I mean, we're looking at like a small percentage increase just to have a second can. So in my opinion... I would like to raise the two can price higher if we can to maybe offset the raise a little bit of the single can. Because I mean, we got 2,569, just raising that a little bit more would be easy to offset some of the price of the single can owners.

Commissioner Peer, are you saying like to 42.50 or to 45?

Okay, yeah, so like for example, see this proposed, like if you could raise the 40 a little bit higher to then make the 35 lower.

You're already jumping pretty significantly. Okay.

I decided when I looked at these just now, I'm giving back one of my garbage cans at home, and I'm giving back one of my garbage cans at the business. Because we don't even fill two. They've just been there, and I'm wasting a lot of money.

I mean, mathematically, you're only paying an extra $4 for that second can. But you could theoretically be having double the garbage picked up.

Yes, pretty average private sector and public sector. It's about $5 to $7 difference if you add a second can. So we typically have been about $4 higher on the current rates, and the proposed was a $5 difference, but we are open to whatever the commission desires on that.

Does that make sense, though? You have more people that have one can than you do people that have two. So the people with that decide to stick with only one can and be responsible with how much trash that they're putting out, I feel like they should not be penalized because of people that have more trash than they need. I mean, I feel like personal responsibility should play a little bit of a role here. If you don't need two trash cans, you can always turn in the second trash can. I mean, you're talking about like a minuscule percentage raised to potentially double the amount of trash that we have to pick up.

Well, the monkey or the elephant in the room there is most folks that have two cans in a household are going to be families. You're typically going to have either mom and dad or two parents, but kids. And that's probably... I would be willing to bet out of that 25, 69, the vast majority of those are multi-generational families or parents with kids.

I can say I'm a parent with kids, and I've never once filled my trash can all the way to the top. Wait till they become teenagers.

Wait till they get older, especially during summer break.

Yours are little, dude. I'm telling you, it's a whole different thing once puberty hits.

But just for modeling purposes, we can change that to 45 there, and we could reduce that to 32, and you can see the difference. I mean, our revenue does go down overall if we do that, but again, that's what the commission is favorable of.

I agree, Pat. Sam, I appreciate where you're going with that, brother, but I think we should leave well enough alone there.

To me, it's no different than if you use more water, you pay more money. So why is it that the people that are using more trash get a severe discount just because?

Go ahead and raise the second can another $2. You're going to have a lot of people turning in cans, but...

One of the biggest battles I have fought as a commissioner was a garbage can. And I think Kiki and I dealt with it for two weeks. And it was a can. This lady had two cans. She was a senior. And she swears up and down she'd had them for 20 years at her same location, 20 years. And we just went by and picked it up. I don't know, I first thought she was upset because we just went and grabbed it and nobody told her, you know. But then I started going by this lady's house every day to see what the whole situation looked like because where she had the cans, they were quite open to everybody in the whole corner. And I think she had more than one person using that second trash can. A family member lived right next door, and I couldn't find a garbage can for them. So people get really funny about... You know, and I know it sounds... minor, but I'm serious. I will drop both my second cans at work and at home just to save that.

I never use my second can. I think I'm getting charged for that.

Yeah, you don't use cans behind your place.

No, no, we have a dumpster. We're in the commercial world, which is, which, you know, but... City Manager, didn't you explain to me that we were advised to raise the rate by $12 a couple years ago?

Yes, sir. At our last budget workshop, we talked about Stantec did the study in 2019 where it recommended doing a yard debris pickup charge of $12.88. on everyone's residential bill, that was never implemented. So the yard debris is just incorporated into this price. I mean, we could leave our rates the same and do an increase of $12.88, another line item on the bill, but instead of doing a yard debris pickup, it would make sense just to incorporate it into this pricing and increase the garbage there and leave the yard debris as it is.

One other thing before we get any further into this workshop today, fellow commissioners, if there's something you feel really, really strongly about, I'm going to ask y'all to share with the group. And, you know, we all have to be on board with this, especially with the new state law. To not only, well, to pass the budget is one thing, but to decide on millage rates and all, which is directly tied to all of this, we all have to be on the same page. So if there are things that you have major concerns about, please share them. If there are things that are just no-goes or must-haves, please share them. Let's be open and frank and transparent as we can here. And if it's something that you're kind of agnostic or indifferent with, that's okay too. But I encourage you all to please speak up when you get things that you feel very strongly about and feel like we should go in a certain path or do a certain thing.

I'll say this about sanitation because I've looked into this quite a bit over the years and I can't remember last year, I think a couple years ago I did a comparison of all the different cities and we were the cheapest out of all the cities in Bay County and I think it's one area we do pretty good at and one of the reasons we do good at it is one, the city picks up the trash for residential And the benefit to that is, because if you look at other areas, I think it was about three, four years ago, Panama City Beach had a special commission meeting just to talk about trash pickup. And one of the problems they were running into was the wear and tear on their roads. And so you gotta imagine over there, you got five, six different vendors that you choose from, because the city over there doesn't pick up trash. So every week they get two pickups. Most of the vendors pick up twice a week. So you're talking an extra 10 to 12 trips on secondary roads. So imagine you're in a subdivision, 10, 12 of those vehicles going through your neighborhood every single week. And those vehicles are very rough on the roads. And what they were running into was the road infrastructure wearing out a lot quicker because of that on top of all the tourism and all the other things that they're dealing with. So I think that's one thing that we do well with is since we only have one, the city only one picking up trash once a week. And I'm a proponent of that because if you pick up twice a week, then you're going to put more wear and tear on the roads and you're going to be talking about more overhead costs and that. But I'll do a comparison of all the other municipalities. Normally I do that beforehand, but I didn't do it for this one to kind of see where we're at. But I'm almost positive it will still end up being cheaper than the others. So I just want to throw that out there.

And Harold, if you could scroll down to the gray box there just for our conversation. So the fiscal year 2026 budget had a deficit of $487,000. With the proposed increases as they are, we would have a surplus of $463,000. We have had a deficit the past year. three years two years and that is because we've had to purchase vehicles and replace vehicles and equipment which we will continue to have to do in this budget that you all have before you today there's a new garbage truck and a new knuckle boom in there as well so if we don't increase the rates and we purchase those two vehicles we will still have a deficit in fiscal year 27 as well and a current surplus of 2.7 in sanitation i believe last time we looked In the reserve for sanitation, 2.7 million was what was left.

While she's looking at it, I'll also say the same thing with the commercial. Since we contracted out, only one vendor goes out and picks up all the trash. It's another benefit to help so that there's not as much wear and tear on roads.

And keep in mind, too, these proposed rates for the commercial increases are just for the ones with the cans. They're not for the ones with the dumpsters. Right. We can also look at that, but right now we're looking at the CAN service. That's a contract, isn't it? Yes, sir. We still collect revenue on that and pay the contract. Yes, sir.

Don't get crazy.

How long has it been since the garbage rates went up?

I've been here six years in September, and we haven't increased the entire time I've been here.

That's fine.

Bobby, do you remember when the last time garbage was increased?

Go through some setup here. Approximately $3.4 million in cash in the sanitation fund. As you are aware, the sanitation fund has no debt. However, it does have the leases on the garbage trucks, which are $8,500 a month. So that's the only real liability that they have.

Yes, the deficit was $487,000 for fiscal year 26, which would still likely have the same deficit for fiscal year 27 as well, because we're purchasing another knuckle boom and another garbage truck for the fiscal year 27, if we keep the rates the same.

It's almost exactly the same. The document that you have in front of you for 27 has a deficit of $487,696.86. Almost exactly the same. So you're talking a million dollars between the two years. And Sam, your $2 double-can increase generates about $62,000, it looks like.

Is that how we do this? We can present on the 25th two or three different scenarios, this being scenario one as we discussed today. Commissioner Peebles, I'll work with you on the two-can and the single-can difference as scenario two. And then if somebody else had another suggestion, we could throw scenario three in, but at least have those two to present at the 25th if everyone is in agreement with that for a discussion at that time to vote on an increase.

Anything else for the sanitation rates?

The document that was given to you, which clearly states it's for discussion only, as the city manager mentioned, nothing is finalized. Nothing has clearly will be voting on this at some point. But we as staff are still reviewing and still coming up with recommendations. And as the facts change, we change our position on different things. scenarios. What is included in here is a staff reduction of approximately 28 positions, many of which are vacant. There is an increase for the staff's participation for medical benefits. We have gone through The marketing budget is basically emptied. There's a few, I think there's $24,000 left in there for lighting this building at Christmas time and some software and not much else. We have kept the animal control in the budget. We have, I need to tell you that the revenues are not finalized yet. that the state tells me that they'll have their numbers in August. Last year they didn't have them finalized until early September. So the revenue numbers may change, will probably change, and I'll do my best job that I possibly can as soon as those numbers are available to update the worksheets that you have. Other than that, I'm happy to answer any and all questions

So I've met with several of you. Several of you had questions, comments, concerns. Don't know if you want to go through every department today or if there are specific questions people have we want to jump to first, but just kind of at the commission's direction of how you all want to proceed through this document.

What do you all think, team?

I think we need to go through department by department.

Me too.

I agree.

So we'll start with our legislative department, Department 511, which is you all. Overall, that is a 2% reduction from last year. And again, if there's anything that you all want to call out in each department, just stop me. And other than that, we'll keep rolling. Harold, do you have this document you could put on the screen?

Harold, if you'd just put up my computer, please.

I have one, Chris. The very bottom line, 554,000 dues, publications, minus 650. What was that for?

For fiscal year 26?

For 27.

Well, there's nothing in 27 budgeted for it. It was spent in fiscal year 26.

Right, right. So what are we not doing there?

it was likely moved to the executive. If it was a Florida League of Cities membership or something, we're paying it out of the executive on the next budget.

I figured that was the case, because I thought we all pretty much fell under, like, the League of Cities.

We paid one membership, correct.

Right. I figured that would fall under you as the city manager versus us as the quote-unquote legislative. But I wanted to verify.

So next is the executive. Overall, this one has increased 33%. However, that is because we were anticipating the city clerk position passing. And if that does, we will have the city clerk and the procurement manager funded out of the executive department and no longer funded out of the finance department.

And what are you doing? Because reality is, assuming the voters approve the clerk for us as we're asking them to, we're likely taking a resource, a full-time position already, and adding the city clerk duties to it and some additive pay. It's not a whole new pay issue.

so what kind of number are you using for the clerk we utilized a direct image of myself so same annual salary same vehicle allowance just to have a number for the commission to work off of so when i sat down with mr lightfoot and went over the whole entire budget um the numbers they have in there are very conservative and i foresee them coming down for the city clerk

Yeah, that kind of makes me want to ask. Go ahead.

No, I'm sorry. I just said, and what were they?

It's a direct image of me. So $155,000 annually with a $500 a month car allowance is what's anticipated in here.

I don't see a car allowance in that at all. No, no, I see it on there. I just don't see a clerk needing that.

That's typical for a clerk to have a car allowance.

I was just going to say that this might be a time that we want to have that conversation. What do we foresee the clerk being? Is the clerk going to be a direct mirror of the city manager in terms of car allowance and all that kind of stuff? Or are we envisioning it being something different? Because that will help them budget in the future with things like car allowance and all that kind of stuff.

Fair point. I mean, the city manager gets this vehicle because he's got all these sites and locations to go to, right? The city clerk is going to be managing the finance team and the clerk directly here at City Hall.

Correct. And I say that after the 18th, when we know exactly what we're dealing with, we can come back to adjust this. But we're talking a few thousand bucks. That's not going to make a difference in our overall budget. I mean, but once we get there, we will finalize the number at the commission's direction of what they anticipate that contract looking like.

Okay, yeah, we can have that conversation.

For today, I've removed it.

Say that again.

For today, I have removed that car allowance.

Okay. All right. And then dues, publication, subscription, I see it jumped up from 26 to 27, same, that bottom line.

Yes, sir, I've got a note in here, too. We had also anticipated having a city attorney, an in-house city attorney out of this budget. So we had added some money for a membership that they would have. I think that is still left in there. I'm going to total up our memberships, and I think it can come back down to about $6,000.

Okay, yeah, so to be determined basically on that one.

One thing I kind of wanted to bring up is, it's more of like a general question, but I have it on my sheet to talk about here, is that with the training that we do, it might be something that we can look at if there's some trainings rather than sending multiple people to the training, it might be cheaper to pay for the one person to come down here.

We've generally removed all travel and training. We've just left in the bare bones of what the things that we know have to be accomplished. So travel and training was generally removed across the city.

Cool.

Anything else in the executive department?

No, sir. In the finance department, you've got a

27% reduction overall. Most of that is, like I said, moving the two positions from finance to the executive. So there's really a wash in those two, but it's just anticipation of the city clerk passing.

What about this 400% change in overtime general employees from two to 8,000? Second line.

Yes, we've got two employees in that department that make overtime. Ms. Roman, you want to talk about the overtime there?

Certainly. I have a new staff member who's doing a wonderful job of transferring documents in her area. It's taking a little longer, so I'm anticipating that she will need some overtime next year, but that should subside at the end of the year. I may be able to reduce that at mid-year.

Okay, so I want to make sure that... Everyone who's watching this understands when they see the executive and the finance, there's a reason why this one substantially goes down and the executive substantially goes up. So I don't want people to think that we're paying an extra $300,000 if we have a city clerk. And the way I foresee it, we're going to have the same amount of people, but some of them will have additional responsibilities, so it will go up a little bit.

Well, fair point. And Kiki, since you're the head bean counter here, what is your thoughts here? If we have a city clerk versus the city manager and they're peers, it's a tag team effectively is what that would be.

Yes, sir.

Would it not make sense to keep the clerk with the organization functions that he or she would manage versus embedding it into the executive? I mean, at the end of the day, the dollars are the same, right? It's just a matter of accounting for them in which?

The idea of the executive function is those employees who report directly to you. So if the city clerk passes, the city clerk would report to you. That's the idea of the executive department.

Because the city manager is a city clerk right now. Sure.

Difference between the two, I just did the calculation. The executive department is going up 279. The finance department is going down. It's a net of 44,000. That includes the increases to the staff that city manager just highlighted.

Okay.

So I know there's much conversation about the city clerk costing the city money. Yes, that's true, but it's nowhere near a full salary.

The anticipation is we're not creating a new full-time position. We're basically enhancing and existing. So the net will be what that person is making now that's ultimately selected and what they get approved by the commission to make as the clerk. That's the delta.

Correct. The $44,000, $44,536 is the difference.

However, for clarification, the city clerk will not be supervising the finance department. The finance department would still remain under the city manager. The assistant finance director and the accounts payable and payroll would remain under the city manager. The city clerk would not have supervisory responsibility for those because that's a city function.

And let's get through August 18th and then we will discuss the city clerk. But for numbers-wise, I don't want to hold us up on that today, but for numbers-wise, that's what we anticipate it being.

Then I see one more on the finance. I see the second half of the spreadsheet, third one down, auditing OPEB valuation. That jumps up 900%, but from 300 to 2,700 looks like just auditing expenses.

OPEB stands for Other Post-Employment Benefits. We're required to audit that as a separate audit every year. However, every other year, it's just a minimal review. It only costs us $300. On the actual review year, it costs $3,000. So that's the difference. You'll see $3,000, then $300, then $3,000, then $300. Gotcha. Okay. Makes sense.

That's just a large increase, hence the question.

But if you look at the historical data, that'll tell you it fluctuates between the timers.

25 is 3,000. Yeah. They do it every three years.

Yeah, that makes sense. I see it now. Thank you. We're at planning.

Planning, we've got an 11% increase overall, but most of that is just adjustments. We didn't have Ms. Grandpre in last year's budget until closer to the end after we hired her.

The only thing I don't see on here, Chris, and it may be somewhere else or it may be something that we have to add potentially to discuss, but overhauling, we had talked about with our recent zoning slash ULDC workshop.

We've got 30 grand in there to begin that process.

You have that under professional services other?

Yes, sir.

Okay.

The line above that, the $20,000, that is for if a developer submits a DO and we have a third-party engineer review it, that's a pass-through line item, but we still have to budget for it anyway.

So potentially $50,000 there and ultimately we... No, just $30,000.

Okay. The $20,000 is only used for development orders and reviews.

Tracking. That ultimately is expected to cost the city long-term somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 to 200K, right?

Depending on the in-depth of what the commission decides, yes, sir.

So this would effectively be a little bit of seed money?

Correct.

Okay.

Next one is our Public Works Administration. Overall, that's down 59%. We no longer fund any staff members out of that department. It's really just operational for the Public Works Administrative side.

517, which I believe is in your packet, is only for debt service for one bond. It's a 2016 sales tax bond. This is just a portion of that bond split between water, sewer, and general fund. This is the general fund's portion only. There's nothing we can do to change this number.

And it matures in 2027 according to our debt schedule, this one. In facility maintenance, you'll see a 123% increase. However, that number in the R&M buildings and grounds, the 211% increase, that is to complete the ADA bathroom improvements for the senior center, the service center, and animal shelter.

And the first on that second half, the 534,000.

Yes, sir.

That's the sewage plant manning contract, isn't it? No, sir.

That is for the RFP for our HVAC services throughout the city. Okay. This is facility maintenance.

So for the facility maintenance, what's the priorities this year, you think?

The ADA bathrooms, we need to get those completed. The design was done this fiscal year. The plans are ready to go. We will bid that out in October if this budget is approved. And then the RFP for the HVAC maintenance. Justin's had several issues over at the gym. I believe it was last weekend. They had another one, but doing an RFP for those so we can have a contract in place.

Good. I've been talking to some people, and I just had some people tell me that HVAC and roofs were kind of an issue. So I'm happy to hear that we're working on the HVAC.

Yes, sir.

How long have those bathrooms been noncompliant? Sir? How long have the bathrooms been noncompliant?

Years. I'm not sure how long. There's been no construction since I've been here in the service center. The senior center was rebuilt as part of Hurricane Michael, but the bathrooms were not made ADA compliant at that time, so we need to do that now.

Like Commissioner Peoples, I'm glad to hear about the HVAC. I don't know how those poor folks in the animal shelter have made it through this summer, multiple summers without AC.

That HVAC, that's not in this budget. That's in the animal control budget. This is just for the service contract for the big buildings and the other buildings we have, the gym, the city hall, any of our other exteriors.

Copy. Still, can you imagine working all summer without AC around here? Fans can only do so much, so.

All right. So exactly what buildings are we renovating the bathrooms in? The senior center?

Senior center, service center, and the animal shelter.

Okay. And all these were done by facility maintenance?

The senior center was. I'm not sure about the service center.

Don't you have to submit plans to the state with ADA compliance?

Yes, sir.

Because that's a big deal when you're setting something up. So we dropped the ball on that when we designed it.

I'm not sure how they arrived at redoing the senior center without doing ADA bathrooms during that time.

Yeah, you know, you design a restaurant. Judy, you know this. You design a restaurant nowadays. You have a cook's line. You know, you think it's a galley-style kitchen or what. It needs to be ADA compliant on your line. You need to be able to turn a wheelchair around or, you know, you need to be able to support the ADA efforts, you know, when you're designing a kitchen.

Wow.

Yeah. I can't see how we didn't know to design that when we did this.

You're talking about the senior center.

Right, but we took on, we did it in-house. We did do it in-house, yes. But you still have to do things right.

So that is one of the reasons that some of the staff are no longer with us.

Yeah.

Next one is our administrative support, which is just our general here. This is also where our disaster bond, the money is now funded. It will be transferred to the 101 account, but it's originally budgeted in here.

What did you say, or who is in this administrative support category?

The grant writer and River's title, I can never recall.

River and Maria, they do our grants, N-P-I-O.

So there are two staff positions in this budget.

You see how much the election cost? It's pretty crazy, right? It cost us the city $32,000. And then when there's a runoff election, we've got to pay again.

Kiki, on the bottom of the very last line on the administrative support, 549010 bank charges. What is that?

The very last line.

549010 bank charges. Bank charges.

When customers go into the utility billing department to pay their bill, if they use a credit card, the bank charges the city credit card fees. I'm sure those who run restaurants understand that. Whenever a customer uses a bank card, there's a fee associated. that the city must absorb. We do charge a $3 transaction fee, however. On the revenue side, there's a $3 transaction fee. So if I go in to pay my water bill and I use my credit card, they add $3 hoping to recoup some of this.

So there's a $3 fee if you use a credit card to mail, well, not mail in, I guess. What if you used a credit card to call in your bill?

Same thing. They'll charge you $3? Anytime you use a credit card, there's a $3 fee. Okay, I'm going to stop doing that too.

If you use your bank, it's free, right?

Yes. And we don't use any independent person anymore as far as credit card company? We go directly to the bank and there's nobody in between. Is that what you're saying?

Well, there's the merchant services. Okay, and who is that? Well, it goes through... Hancock.

So it is directly through a bank and not an individual like we used to do. Individual. Yeah. Like, for example, when I first started, we used, I know Rodney Friend wanted, he had the business. It was his firm that had the city credit card business, merchant services. Oh, yeah.

Ronnie used to do that, or still does, probably. Yeah. He used to try to get us to do it. I couldn't do it because of franchise rules in the restaurant.

No, ma'am.

So there's no individual involved anymore?

No, ma'am. Absolutely not. Strictly Hancock?

Yes, ma'am. Thanks.

Yeah, especially if you bank with somebody, they'd like you to do their credit cards, too.

So this is kind of, it falls under administrative, but not necessarily this specific department. But just brought to mind, someone brought an idea to me yesterday that I think is pretty good, that we should probably start an initiative to reduce the amount of printing we're doing around the city. Because we know how much paper and ink cost. If I don't know if we can somehow get some way to find ways that we can, I don't know if it's something as simple as like maybe it could be that you request the agenda ahead of time if you want it by paper because we have it available on Civic Plus or if around the city if there's certain things that we can make more digital rather than printing because I mean we're going to the digital age. We have the tools now to make it to where we don't have to print as much.

The largest printing expense is the mailing of the utility bills. And that you'll see in a later budget. That's Arista that sends out. If you receive a printed bill at home, the city pays for the printing of that bill. You can sign up for automatic payment, and then you don't receive any paper. We don't pay Arista to send you a bill. It's far more economical for you and for the city. I would encourage everyone to sign up for auto pay.

On average, how much do you think it costs per bill to send out, to print?

A monthly bill I think is about $7,000.

What I'm getting at is we could incentivize people to switch to digital by giving them, even if it was a small discount. Do we already do that?

Or do we charge them?

Do the people that get digital bills?

We have to put it on the fee schedule. We do not charge extra to get a paper bill.

Yeah, no, no, no, the opposite. If you go digital, then you get a discount.

Given our circumstances, I would go the opposite direction.

But it would incentivize people to switch over, so it would be a savings to us.

Either way, correct. But we would need it in the fee schedule either way.

So, like, for example, if it costs 50 cents and we gave them a 20-cent discount, maybe 20 cents a month would save us 30 cents a month per bill and save them 20 cents. So it would be a net positive for both parties.

Perhaps. I don't know what additional staff time would be included.

Plus you'd have to include those that are already getting it digital.

Right.

So that's not in that $7,000.

Right. That's what I was asking per bill.

OK. Any other questions from administrative support?

No?

Moving on to the IT. We're down overall 14% in that budget. Had a few questions from commissioners on this one about the computer software support, just all the annual fees we have for different programs and different things is wrapped up in that computer network support and other contractual.

That first category, Chris, 531030, IT network services. That's about a three-quarter drop there. What's driving that line?

We've included Green Geeks and Ninja One. I believe Ninja One is the backup for the cell phones. Is that correct? So the text messages that the city employees receive on their city cell phones has to be recorded for public records. That's Ninja One. Harold, did I get that right? Thank you. And the help desk as well. So if I have problems with my computer at my desk, I send a ticket into the help desk and Harold or one of his staff comes and helps me and fixes my computer for me.

And do we, are we in any way obligated to the sheriff's department for any part of our IT? Are they at all connected to our IT? It's in the police department budget.

The police department budget? And which budget is that?

The police department.

Okay. And the company out of Tallahassee? I was given a $200,000 a year figure. ECR? I don't have the name yet. I was just told it was $200,000 a year for some sort of IT support.

Who said that?

I'll tell you later.

Who said it? So we have $201,000 in for computer software support. 130 of that is the Tyler Munis annual amount. Archive Social is $8,000. That's for Facebook, needs to be archived. Civic Plus Streaming, which is our new agenda package, that's $52,000. And then Harold, help me. Meraki? Meraki. That's $3,000. Okay.

The ECR you're referring to is in contractual, and it's budgeted at $158,000. Any other IT questions?

What is Meraki? Is Meraki when your internet goes down and it picks up? Is it like a backup modem?

Thank you.

So all told, the IT budget is going down $123,000. OK.

Thank you, ma'am. Next, we have our police department.

Overall, it's an 18% reduction. Next we have fire department. It's a 42% overall reduction. That number is a little skewed because we did have the HMGP project at $950,000. We had the legislative fire engine at $980,000. And then we had the rescue truck, which was out of impact fees. So it is a little skewed. The 42% reduction sounds extreme, but a lot of that was over $1 million in vehicle purchases.

It's $2,070,000 between those three items.

Well, my question then is how do we get this to look more realistic? Because I saw this and just about fell out of my chair when I first saw it, negative 42%, right, percent. I realize it's a couple of big ticket items, but police and fire, and I would even include animal control because those are your first responders. When a citizen calls help, fire, burglar, snake, whatever, Those are your frontline city responders. That's at the very core of what we do. So I saw 42%, and I went, holy cow, Batman.

So I think it's probably advantageous to compare the fiscal 27 budget to the actuals in fiscal 25. You'll see that they're almost the exact same number. And in fiscal 25, we did not have any of those large expenditures. There were not fire trucks, there were not rescue trucks. So it really is a more apples to apples comparison, fiscal 25 to fiscal 27.

So whereas we're looking at a potential negative 18%, or an 18% reduction for police, Without these couple of big-ticket fire expenditures, what are we looking at for our fire department?

It pretty much stays flat from fiscal year 25.

What about Station 2?

What about Station 2?

We only have two people that work there.

What can we do about increasing that?

Increase the ad valorem some more, create a non-ad valorem for fire services, generate some more revenue so that we can add more staffing.

Yeah, so that kind of brings it to the forefront. We need to start discussing that, you know, maybe potentially doing a non-advalon for fire and police and safety, but also at the same time, if we did that, we'd need to lower the millage rate. You know what I'm saying? You wouldn't want to just, in my opinion at least, since the fire and the police and safety... are the core things that cost us money in the budget. You could have a non-advisor to cover those to make sure those are always funded almost like an enterprise fund. But if we did that, the goal would be to lower the millage rate because the millage rate's probably gonna lower anyways with, but it is a way to ensure that we have those core services we need.

But we don't even know what we're doing with that since we agreed to look at the consolidation of services. Now, I'm not saying one way or the other, but I don't have all the data and facts on it. So, obviously, I haven't made a decision on it yet, but I think we need to look at that first.

Oh, yeah, we definitely need to look at everything. That's why I'm just saying we need to, maybe that's a tool we have in our tool shed as a possible way forward.

And I've added that. I don't know if you all have had a chance to look at the agenda yet for next Tuesday, but I've added that as an agenda item for clarification on the resolution you all approved a few meetings back. There was a 5-0 vote for me to look at consolidation of services and the way we can save in the general fund. However, it seems to be a 180 from some, so I'm not getting a lot of cooperation from other agencies because we don't seem to have everyone on board. So I'm going to ask Tuesday for clarification on that and if everyone's still on the same page, we'll likely bring back specific resolutions of direction.

Okay. Sam, all I'll say is I hear you. I will tell you philosophically, non-advalorums are not a healthy way to look at a long-term operational sustainment. Philosophically, I think that's just the wrong way to go. However, if Amendment 3 passes, that really becomes the only tool left in our toolkit as a municipality to ensure we fund our core services of police, fire, rescue kind of stuff. What happens with Amendment 3 will really make that path more clear. But this isn't a Lynn Haven or a Bay County thing. This is Florida-wide.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, of course, the Amendment 3 would kind of show us what we need to do anyways. But the way I see it is with things like fire, safety, police, the reason that most people have... Most people that are very anti-property tax, the reason they don't like property tax is because they don't know where that money is going. Because it just goes into a general fund, and then whoever owns that general fund has the ability to spend that on whatever they want. If you have money to a specific area, it's only allowed to be spent on that specific area, and that makes people, when they spend money, more comfortable. In general, people are more supportive of paying a water bill because they know it's paying for their water, versus if we were to take, let's just say theoretically you were to take the water bill out and put it into the general fund, which you can't do legally, and there's a reason why. Let's say philosophically you could, then you would just raise the millage rate and then people would be even more mad because they'd say, well, why is my millage rate going up? And then you'd have to explain, well, we've got to cover the water. When you have it on a water bill, you know exactly where that's going. And that's why enterprise funds are so important. This would just be a way... Of course, I really wouldn't support it if... The non-avalorum amendment doesn't pass either, though, because we need to have guardrails in place for non-avalorum first before we'd ever consider this. There has to be guardrails. But it's just something to consider because it's just an option. I think the more options we have now, the better.

And I'll refresh your memory. Our best estimate should Amendment 3 pass is it's another $1.6 million reduction in fiscal 28. So that again, $1.6 million reduction in fiscal 28. So this is just step one of three, possibly five-year reduction in revenues.

So our current debt service schedule, paying 2.8, 3 million a year, give or take, it's going to take us to the end of 2034 to just break even with the debt we have now. And that's without Amendment 3 passing. Amendment 3 passes and we have a significant cut.

It's going to get worse.

Yes. It makes things worse. Best case scenario now, we really hunker down physical discipline so tight we squeak budget-wise. It's still going to take us six years to dig out of this.

That's where we're at.

All right. All right, next we have code enforcement. Overall, it's a 41% reduction.

And is this, I noticed in the salaries, the top line, 5-1-2000, are you going from two positions to one there? Is that what's driving that?

Yes, sir. All right.

Protective inspections, that's your building inspector?

Yes, sir. Is it not? Overall, it has an 18% reduction.

Any questions?

All right.

The next one is HR. It has a 13% reduction overall.

So going from two full-time HR employees to one in the top line, 5-1-2000. I did have in the first two lines on the second half of that page, 531002 and 531081, legal fees, labor attorney and professional services other.

So the first $20,000 would be for Kayla, who you met the other day, and her associates. That's our labor attorney's firm. And then the $20,000 for professional services, we have public works director for the headhunter. I'm not sure why that's still in there.

Say that again, Kiki? Yeah, that should have been removed.

Yeah, that probably could come out.

So the second strike. Now, for the labor attorney.

This also includes Kildare. Kildare is the way that we advertise for open positions and find new staff members.

How much is that? I think it's somewhere about $19,876, I think it was. I remember that number.

I'm impressed.

It's probably not that, but it's definitely that.

So circle back to the labor attorney here for a second. So my understanding is Dunlap and Shipman will have that capability. They said they couldn't handle Social Security specific issues, but they did have HR attorneys.

Which makes sense for us. If they can't handle one item, we should keep the $20,000 in here in case it's a one-off.

Yeah, I'm just asking the question because I was like, well, do we need a labor attorney when our new one-price-fits-all law firm can provide that?

That's only 44 hours. Ma'am? That's only 44 hours of an attorney's billable rate.

I know it's a great selling point, but I've never met a 100% capable law firm that can do everything that you need them to do.

Yeah, they'll hash it out at some point.

Okay. Okay. So that's what we're here for, to ask questions.

And we can remove it later on if we find that we're not using it.

Kiki, for whatever reason, ma'am, I can barely hear you. You sound like Charlie Brown's teacher. Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. Is that better? Yes, ma'am. All right. And then going on down HR here, I see line 551000. $5,000 for office supplies for an office of one. And then there was a special events supplies, two below that, 552006 for 15K.

The special events is the wellness program that's fully reimbursable through our insurance.

Okay. Okay.

There's an associated revenue with that as well. They cut us a check based on our performance with the medical benefits. So if we have a lower amount of claims each year, they send us more money to do events and encourage our staff with healthy lifestyle changes.

Like the health fair?

Yes, sir.

That was awesome, by the way.

Oh, good. I'm glad you liked it.

I really enjoyed it.

And I guess the office supplies, that's pretty much everything. We'll be doing a lot of in-processing and stuff, but that's all your paperwork-related support.

And so that you know citywide, computers, laptops, printers, that sort of thing, we call those office supplies. Okay. So if you see a large number in office supplies, it could include laptops or desktops.

Okay, thank you for that.

Is this workers' comp just because this is the first workers' comp? I mean, sorry, unemployment compensation. Is it just because this is the first time in three years we've had to pay that out? Like, why is that line item there?

Because of the expectation of cutting positions. Oh, got it.

The expectation? Cutting positions.

Oh.

Any other HR questions?

Mueller, Bueller? Next, you've got the Bayou Park and Preserve.

It's down 18%. Keep in mind that one does not affect the general fund yet, even though it's coming.

I think we've got about, what, four years left on that grant?

I think so, yeah. 31 is what I want to say. It is fully refundable. It is part of general fund, however. It's part of general fund, but it's fully reimbursable.

Right. That's good to know. But it's either years or the money runs out first, whichever comes first, right? Correct.

And I've said this to you in the past, I'll say it again. We have a huge potential maintenance bill coming due. It's a beautiful facility. It's constructed with materials that have a limited lifespan. All that cedar out there, which is absolutely gorgeous, is going to have to be replaced at some point. So that's coming.

It's going to be a big deal.

Hopefully before the grunt runs out.

It's a really pretty place if you're out there at sunrise. It's beautiful.

It's gorgeous.

Sunset too.

But it will end up being very expensive.

For what it's worth, that tied for first place in the government day for favorite park.

What was the other one?

I think it may have been Sheffield, which was actually different than the adults voting. The adults, I think, picked.

I think Channel 13's been putting a camera on it in the mornings lately, and it really looks good.

Next, we've got the utility billing.

It's down overall 6%. However, none of the staff is funded through the general fund out of utility billing anymore. They're now spread out over the enterprise funds.

We started that last fiscal year.

Next we have the Streets Department.

Overall, it is down 49%. Again, though, that is another one that's a little skewed by the reduction because this year we had the Minnesota Avenue CDBG sidewalk grant of $1.3 million. So that $1.3 million reduction is almost the entire grant. It's another one to look at. Well, it's hard to look at fiscal year 25 in that one as well because we had grant funding for the past few years, but it has not reduced as near as what it seems to be on paper.

Between those handful of items, that's $1.4 million in non-reoccurring costs. So generally speaking, this is a flat budget for the Streets Department.

So realizing those numbers are kind of skewed a little bit because of those big projects. Chris, do you feel like you can still, when we have potholes, I mean the major, I almost want to call them sinkholes, but they're little, you know, the holes that open up and they kind of have to be patched and responded to promptly. to prevent major safety accidents. Do you feel like you'll still have the emergency repair capabilities we need?

It's the bare minimum. As I stated at the beginning, this budget is the bare minimum. I understand that. Will we be able to respond? Yes. Will we be able to make huge repairs without coming to the commission for a budget amendment?

No. Exactly. You'll be coming to us and we'll have to create a project and we'll have to do a budget adjustment, right? Right. Yes. If something occurs. Yes, sir. Murphy's Law.

What I'm talking.

Let's be clear. There is no contingency money in any of these budgets. There is no fluff, as we have referred to it in the past. These are as bare bones as we can possibly come up with.

I understand. But what I see is, especially in the newer 10-, 15-, 20-year-old neighborhoods around here, a lot of basketball-sized potholes will just show up, right? Literally overnight are part of the rental contracts.

We have the same money in this fiscal year, fiscal year 27, as we have in the past to make that happen.

Yeah, okay. Copy. That's what I asked. Thank you.

Next you have fleet management. It's a 1% reduction overall. However, we still do have a $125,000 line item in that budget to build an awning over our fuel pumps. They are exposed to the elements. We've had several issues of watering in tanks, especially our diesel trucks. I hope that Captain Grogan attests to having to get fuel in police vehicles in the middle of the night or the fire chief having to get fuel up in fire department. It's pouring down rain and you've got to walk all the way over and put your information in, go back. Our fuel software system is exposed to the elements. The tanks are exposed to the elements. If you're fueling up a tank in the back of a truck and it's pouring down rain, you're getting water in it. It's been needing to be covered for a while.

Makes sense, but is the awning rated, wind rated?

Yes, sir, it will be.

You got huge potential for lifting with those awnings. So you don't want to put an awning out there and then like a little bit of a storm takes it away. Just if you're going to spend the money, make it. Yes, sir. Make it right.

Next you have economic development. This budget shows an 88% increase. However, that is a $3.7 million grant for the Florida Ohio Avenue project that you all approved last meeting. We have adjusted Mr. Janke accordingly. He's going to be funding a little more this year out of CRA. And we have eliminated some of the programs that we have been paying for, such as the EDA and I can't remember the other one. eliminated some of that so that budget has came down overall aside from the grant. Next up you've got sports and rec. It's at an overall 15% reduction in that.

If I may, I just want, since Justin is here, thanks for answering all the questions for me. I also wanted to say that, like, I have asked a ton of questions on the sports department, and I just wanted to say publicly the reason I'm doing that is because I care about it. and i want to keep it and i know that sports is a quality of life object and so when we're looking at budget system a budget season that's one of the first things that people are looking at so i'm trying to help make it be as efficient as possible so we can justify keeping it for as long as we possibly can so I hope that it came across that way with asking all those questions. I'm trying to figure out a way that I can help the sports staff be able to continue to have as many jobs as possible and being as efficient as possible so that we can continue to have the best sports program in all of Bay County, if not Northwest Florida. One thing that I brought up to Chris and Justin, I think both of them are on board. If not, I'm sorry. You can tell me I'm wrong. You guys remember when Lynn Haven Raiders came up here and they pay like a yearly contract, basically? I'm thinking it would make sense that we start doing that for all non-Lynn Haven Raiders. City of Glen Haven, like the local government, City of Glen Haven sports entities. So in today's world, select ball, travel ball, whether that's basketball, softball, baseball, is very, very prevalent. And they use our fields all the time. And this isn't assumptions. This is fact that they find loopholes to use our fields. And there's nothing wrong with them using our fields. They should be able to use our fields. But the one issue is that they're charging... their players to be on that team and then they're coming to our facilities and using our stuff for free. And that's where I have an issue with it. So one way we can help staff keep an oversight over that to make sure that it's fair for everybody is that we should start doing the contracts with those teams like we do with Lone Haven Raiders. That way, they just pay a one-time fee up front, whether that's by season or by year. And that way, all they have to do is make sure that they do their, the teams, all they do is they make sure they schedule like they're supposed to. And that way staff doesn't have to walk around and make sure that they've actually paid to do these private lessons or whether that's the batting cages, private lessons at the batting cages, whether that's practicing without ever paying to use that $35 to $75 an hour fee. If we have a flat fee up front, we get our money. It's money in hand. It will be less than... what they would pay probably if they actually paid per hour. That way they pay their fee, they can use our fields, they'd still have to schedule, but that way we get our money to help the fields and staff that it takes to run those fields and courts ahead of time, and that way the staff doesn't have to feel like they're sneaking around to make sure that people are legally using stuff properly. They know the coaches, they know that those coaches have paid their yearly due. And that way it would also guarantee us some money up front.

Commissioner, you have mentioned several times that you're interested in public-private partnerships. Mr. Ward and I, over the last several years, have discussed the possibility of a 501c3 as a booster organization for the sports department. That is not something the city could do, but if we had an engaged resident who was willing to go through that process, that is one way we could secure funding for the sports department.

Excellent. Great idea.

All right, next we have our Parks and Grounds Department. It has an overall reduction of 14%. Again, no capital or no vehicle purchases in any of these, including parks.

So when I was going over the budget with Mr. Lightfoot, one of the things I discussed with him was the one on the bottom on the first page says Tree City for $45,100. That is for our tree giveaway. It's not something we get reimbursed for. However, we get, what do you call that? We're known as a tree city. Recognition. Recognition, but there's no benefit that comes with that, and you have to spend, what was that, $2 and something?

$2.05 per resident. Okay.

My recommendation is to do away with it. I know it's not going to be popular and people are not going to like it, but we're at that point. Now, if we were to get some money back, like let's say half of it or some other benefit to it, I would rethink it, but that's just the way I feel.

Let me ask you this. What is the number one deterrent of stormwater? trees so we need as many trees as possible in our community to suck up all that water so to me i feel like that's a good investment and how long is it going to take for that tree to grow and then you know i think if it's less time than zero trees

I think if we put it off one year and tried to save money to do a 4th of July parade so we don't miss out on 112 consecutive years, that shows more character to our town than if we skip one year of trees, we're getting halfway there on 4th of July parade.

Or another option that we discussed was just like with our events,

We get a sponsor, a donor wants to do it, we'd be more than happy for them to do it. But, you know, we shouldn't be up here cutting aid to the citizens in a way or quality of life in a way just because we're in this position.

Maybe we can add that to the website for the sponsors and donors for the events. For trees. Right.

So I asked y'all, if y'all have a silver bullet or something you're very passionate for or against, please speak up. Because we're all going to have at least one, right? Sam's already had his. But when you have it, speak up. And that's not a bad one, Jamie. I agree with you.

Yeah, I mean, and I'll say I'm not going to die in the hill with the trees. I get where you're coming from. I just wanted to point it out that, like, it's not as simple as a $45,000 loss. It will save us money over time. But Pat made a good point. I mean, it was $45,000 that is coming out of that department that could potentially be used for something that people would rather have. I mean, it makes sense. We need to figure out from the public what's more important to them.

And we all, after Hurricane Michael, I mean, we all cleaned our properties, our yards. Many of us paid out of pocket and planted trees. And those trees are five, six times what they were when we planted them in 19 and 20. So they'll continue to grow. But if you're dependent on the city to give you a couple of trees to be your only harbor savings, that's kind of a problem.

So simply for discussion purposes, I've removed it for now.

All right.

So you're saying we don't get any grant money or anything for those trees?

No.

Man, that was not what I was told in the past.

Me either.

It's a good to do. Yeah, I'm just saying.

Being a tree city, I did some research last night, does give you the opportunity to get grants. However, to my knowledge, we've never received a grant based on being a tree city USA grant. next we have the communications and marketing this is the budget that all of our events were paid out of as you can see it's at a 94 reduction there are no events in there we have to put christmas decorations up around city hall at christmas we have and some internal event funding for our employees we have some website redesign and the dues publications and subscription

And lastly in the general fund is the Animal Control Department.

As you can see, we're at a 13% reduction on that. You all are aware we got the memo from Mr. Schubert with Bay County that at this time they are not going to give us a number for the Animal Control consolidation.

So the first line, 512,000 salaries. This looks like you're keeping two and cutting one. Is that correct?

Undecided currently. We may go back depending on what the overtime statistics are. We have anticipated transferring one employee to stormwater, but we haven't made that decision yet.

Well, I'll make this one easy for you. Sam had his trash cans and Jamie has his trees. My silver bullet's going to be the third animal control. They're already a three-man marching band. They have the smallest operational responding team 24-7. We have. They have one of the smallest budgets. You take one of those three away, that's a 33% hard cut. And those guys, or those two guys and that lady with some volunteers make miracles happen every day. That's the one thing I'm going to say. That's a hard no for me.

Harold, I need you to take my screen down, please.

Say that again, all I heard was womp, womp, womp.

She's talking to Harold.

Hey, so while we're waiting on that, Brian actually thought of this, and I thought it was a pretty good idea. So we have it in our ordinance that you're supposed to register your animals, certain animals, right? Of course, we're never going to, I will never support people knocking on your door telling you you need to pay for your pets. What I would say is if we as a city, maybe through marketing or whatever, is promote that, hey, we would love for you to follow this and pay the registration fee for your animals because it goes directly towards, if we find your animal, it funds animal control so that we can get it back to you as fast as possible. Because it's a direct amount of money that's going directly to fund the animal control so that they can use that money to get your pet back to you as fast as they possibly can.

And if people are so passionate about wanting to keep our Lynnhaven Animal Control, will everybody who has a pet needs to pony up and pay their registration fee so we can sustain the animal control?

Copy. One way to incentivize that, it won't be popular, but one thing you could do is, of course, like I said, I would never support knocking door to door to ask people, hey, do you have a pet? Hey, have you registered them? I feel like that's kind of anti-American. But one thing we could do is if we need to further incentivize it in a negative way would be if we get your pet, and we find out it's yours, the impounding fee will be higher because you did not register your animal like you were supposed to.

Are you talking microchip or something, the additive registration with the city?

Yeah, so the way the ordinance reads, if you're supposed to, if you have certain animals, you're supposed to register them with the city. I would venture to say that most people do not because they probably don't know it exists because we don't really enforce it. Because it's kind of crazy to walk into someone's yard and be like, hey, I see you have a dog. Did you register it with the city? Because that's kind of crazy, right?

It's an annual fee.

But yeah, there's like an annual $6 or $10 fee that you're supposed to register your animals to help fund animal control so that they can take care of your animal and get it back to you.

If everybody paid the fee, the extra person's salary would be covered easily.

I thought when we went over the schedule fee, I think it was a couple years ago or something, I thought we had already increased that fee for non-registered animals. I can't remember.

You can increase the fee, but we've got to get people over there paying.

Yeah, I was more talking about specifically the impound fee if your animal is not registered. That's what I'm saying. I think we did increase that. Okay, my bad, my bad. I can't remember, but I think we did. Such a random or one-off there.

And just to clarify, part of this is, and I've said this since I joined the commission, I see animal control as really a first responder. They are certainly the junior partner in our city first responder. But if you're a little old man or lady and you have a snake in your house or you have a rabid raccoon, which we've had recently, you have some massive problem. dog in your yard attacking your dog or your cats or whatever and you're asking for help in response uh... not everything is bad guys right sometimes it's bad animals and so i view them as part of that front wave city first responder force to keep our protect life and and property here so i think they're just so small i really think we gotta figure out a way to to keep that very very small three person team Whole and functional. And I'm willing to help do it, but I'm telling you, that's my silver bullet.

I'm sorry.

No, that's it.

So I put that staff member back in. And now we're at $361,000 for the animal control. That does include the HVAC system that you were asking about earlier, Mayor.

That does include the HVAC.

It does, $35,000 for the HVAC.

That's a 2% increase.

How much was the HVAC in total? $35,000.

And then it's got, in R&M buildings and grounds, $50,000 for renovations.

Yeah, that facility's in rough shape, and they have no HVAC. They haven't had HVAC. I don't know how they get three of these Florida summers without it. Fans only do so much, but... Yeah, we were going to do the HVAC whether we had two or three people there, correct? So it's still, the facility will still be maintained and upgraded and added HVAC whether it's a two or three person band.

If that's the intent to keep animal control, then we have $85,000 in there to make some renovations.

I think it's one of the most honorable things we can do as a city. Thank you for that.

And for clarification, of the three employees, two are the only ones that can respond to animal issues. They're the full officers.

Okay. If that's something we need to look at for the third, we can, but understood. All right. Any other questions for animal control?

That's the end of General Fund.

Kiki, when we move on to CRA, could you do...

I was going to show them where we ended up on General Fund. Did you want to go on to the other departments first?

Yeah, we'll go over those first. But calculate out what two additional firefighter EMTs would cost per shift. Just want to illustrate something.

OK, that'll take me a moment. So what you've done so far, which was only a few adjustments, with the amount that we could approve with a 4-1 vote right now, we would be in a deficit of $386,000. If you went up to what you agreed on at the last meeting, we'd have a surplus of 126, which I know for sure is not gonna buy six firefighters.

No. That $126,000, that's... Yes, it technically would get us in the green, but realistically, when we have things break, that's basically, that might not even keep us at zero budget neutral when we have things break and emergency repairs and responses through the year, right?

So, correct. With zero capital in the general fund, that is zero vehicle replacement in the general fund, and that is still staff cuts in the general fund.

As the new guy, six and a half months into this, I completely understand the aversion to not raising the millage rate. The millage rate hasn't been raised in what, three or four years? uh... expenses have gone up significantly operating costs have gone up expense extensively the city operated this past year at a deficit of almost three million dollars can't do that and stay physically solvent right so yeah this this is it is what it is at this point we just can't continue doing what we've done and expect different results

That's what a 4-1 vote would look like, 386,000 deficit. That's assuming four of you can agree at 4.35.

One other thing I've learned is we cannot dip below. We keep talking about the 12 million we have in reserves, but in reality, 10 million of that is completely fenced off and spoken for. We have to maintain that as a municipality for storm and emergency responses and all of that just to be eligible for the federal government to come in and provide matching and support for us, right?

The state requires that all cities have three months' worth of operating money. They recommend that coastal cities have six months' worth of operating money. Lynn Haven, that's $10 million. I think we've learned that lesson, haven't we, with Hurricane Michael? That we need those monies available. God forbid some catastrophic event happens again. So you're right. At the end of 26, I forecast it will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 million. And then we have these debt payments every year. And the revenue reduction that will most, in my opinion, will most likely pass in November.

So my point in bringing that up is to say we don't really have $12 million in reserve. Ten of that is fenced off with a barbed wire fence around it. So we're really at $2 million, realistically.

Yes.

Yeah. All right.

All right.

So moving on to the CRA, overall the CRA is down 36%. We have removed some of the programs for economic development, but we had some sidewalks on this one, and it had some grants assistance as well. The 10th Street stormwater improvements wasn't included in the original CDBG construction, so we're going to do that in fiscal year 27, as well as continuing the sidewalk masterpiece that was put together.

I just have a general question of the CRA. It's always in my, what I've been told and had the assumption is that we as the city, do we pay any of our general fund into to be able to have a CRA or does all that money come from the county? All of our CRA budget, where does that come from?

No, it comes from the county and from the city.

Okay, how much of the CRA budget are we paying from our city budget?

Probably about 40%, or no, about 60%. I don't know if Ben. Ben, you're welcome to come up.

Subject matter expert here.

Any member off the top of your head?

600,000 from the TIF. Yeah, so overall revenue, I think I'm estimating about a million dollars. For the next fiscal year, around 400,000 should come from the city.

I've got 540 at the 4.35, which is the 401 vote. I've got $548,000 coming from the city to the CRA, 710 from Bay County to the CRA, grand total of a million two.

that number changes as well when you change the millage.

That comes from the general fund or what fund does that money come from?

I'm sorry.

It comes from the property taxes? Yeah. Okay.

Thank you, Ben. Ben, thank you. Hey, y'all know Ben is wearing another hat? As well as EDA and CRA, he is the new, he's gonna be the new president of the Lynnhaven Rotary Club. Yes, sirree. Congrats. You've done it before. No, never president? I've seen you run the meetings. Total stud.

Next, we've got our water department. That does have a 17% increase. However, we have several water projects for the year, as well as finishing up the AMI meter install project. And we are still working on, as I said a few months ago, we will not be bringing any utility rate increases right now until the rate study is complete and we have an accurate representation instead of doing one rate increase now and then doing it again in a few months once we get the results. I'm not going to say anything about the rating because you don't know.

No, sir, we don't know.

It's a fictitious area right now that they're going to do the rates study on. Same thing with the sewer department. We have a 2% increase, several projects on the books for next fiscal year as well.

Going back to water for just a minute, Chris, I don't see a particular line. I'm sure it's just blended into everything, but the city's reclaimed water system.

That's in sewer.

Okay.

Harold, you can put it back up again.

I'm sorry, were we, I was calculating something else. Where did you want me to, sewer?

That's where we're at. Like I said, sewer department has a 2% increase, several projects for next year, and some equipment purchases.

So I generally get questions about the indirect allocation. If I might explain that again, each year I calculate 10% of the general fund That is allocated between the four utilities based on the size of their budget. I don't just cut it into quarters. So if the sewer department is twice as much money as the water department or vice versa, they pay twice as much. You understand? So the budget that you have in front of you right now has $2,414,000 of indirect costs. That's charged to the utilities. and apply it as a revenue to the general fund. The theory behind indirect allocation is it pays a part of my salary, it pays a part of the city manager's salary, it pays for the HR department, you get the idea. If the utilities were a stand-alone entity, they would need to hire an HR department, a finance department, a chief executive. They don't need to do that because they have us. So they pay a small percentage of our overhead.

It's like a G&A expense.

Sure, sure. I commonly refer to it as overhead.

It's about what, 10%?

It's 10% of the general fund budget, which in this document is $2.4 million. Okay. So on the sewer line item, you see the $877,000. That's what I just described. Yeah. Okay. In the...

We would run restaurants, multiple restaurants, and some of them would run in the red, but they had line items where they were pulling revenue from the restaurant, but it was to pay salaries at the home office. Nice. So they were generating positive income, but because the way the P&Ls were set up, it was a fair payment from each unit. Rob and Peter to pay Paul. Kind of, yeah.

Next, you have the sanitation budget, which we've discussed earlier this meeting. It's pretty much flat for the year, and we really need to talk about the rate increases of the 25th meeting to see how our deficit would be and dipping into reserves for that.

Did you jump, Chris? Did I go with the stormwater?

You did. Sorry.

Stormwater overall, that's another skewed one.

It's down 55%. However, there was a lot of grant funds. The entire 10th Street project was out of the stormwater. We've got the HMGP Wyoming that you all approved a few meetings ago. That project is getting ready to go out to bid now.

But most of the construction will be out of fiscal year 27.

And then one vehicle purchase in that one as well. And that is not able to do any of our capital outlay stormwater projects that are as part of the master plan that aren't grant funded. Even with a proposed 3% increase for the non-advalorum, we still do not have the funds to do any of those projects.

So let me ask you about that then. Let's assume for a second that the non-advalorum gets approved, it gets the minimum three votes to live another day. So you have the non-avalorum income that comes in to fund the salaries of the crew you have. What, if we don't have funding for them to go out and do big projects, which is what I just heard you say, I believe.

They don't do the big projects anyway. They're just doing the maintenance.

Okay. So what, how would they be game, So maybe I misunderstood then. So they would still be able to do... What they do today.

The big project is what we bid out for construction.

So what do they generally do? Ditch cleaning?

Ditch cleaning, culvert replacement, mowing.

They would continue status quo, essentially.

That's what this budget shows, status quo. Okay. Like I said, sanitation's flat. Then we have our enterprise impact fees. And most of those are just transfers this year to the reserves.

Timing-wise, I know this is kind of a separate issue, but When do you anticipate at this point seeing the study for potential sewage plant?

The rate study?

Well, no, not the rate study. The actual relocation options and what we... That's the rate study.

Okay. I would say we would have something by the end of the year to present, hopefully sooner.

So budgetarily, when do you see the rubber starting to hit the road on that? This time next year?

If we get the rate numbers by the end of the year, hopefully at the beginning of the year, you know, if it's to relocate and become a wholesale customer of Bay County, hopefully both commissions have made that decision at the beginning of the year. If it's to expand our plant, we already have a design going. It would be direction for the commission to unpause that design that's currently paused and continue on with it.

Okay. Thank you. All right.

Any other questions for the enterprise funds? We still have the surtax. Probably circle back on that and we'll get with Bobby and we might adjust some of our surtax projects. But is there anything that the commission has any questions on for the enterprise funds?

I'm looking here at the very back. So you've got enterprise impact fees, disaster recovery expenditures, COVID expenditures.

We have a small balance of about $32,000 that was sent to the city. And I can't remember if it was from the county or the state during COVID. I just put that money in there just sort of as a placeholder in case something comes up again. But we have the money in the bank to spend if we need it.

Is this specifically your mark for some kind of public health crisis or something?

Yes. Yes. It can only be spent on cleaning supplies and masks and anything.

Okay. Thank you. That's just kind of unusual to see.

Yeah. It's just a placeholder.

Yeah.

Knock on wood.

All right. So the city manager asked me to calculate an additional six firefighters using an average salary that would be $425,000.

So I asked for that number because we've talked about several different things up here today with whether it be, you know, adding staffing for the fire station two to be able to get that or animal controls, you know, important in keeping that or adding to the police. So that is decisions that we have to look at as, you know, do we want to If we reduce another department such as animal control, that would save approximately $200,000 and cover half of the additional firefighters that we need to staff station two fully. Other than that, we would have to continue to increase ad valorms or come up with a non-advalorm to fund it. Everybody has, you know, what's most important to them. But as a whole, we need everyone to decide what is the most important so that we can budget that way, whether it's this year or for next year, depending on what Amendment 3 does. But just the additional four firefighters, and that's the bare minimum. That's not any rank or anything. That's the bare minimum of an additional $400,000 that would be needed to add two firefighters.

That's just salaries. That's just salaries, so it wouldn't include uniforms or equipment or anything that additional staff needs in the fire department.

Does that include benefits or just salaries?

No, it's salaries and benefits, but not equipment or uniforms. Fire chief could discuss that far better than I can.

But I bring that up as kind of a prequel to Tuesday night's discussion about the resolution of where we're at and where the staff will need clarification on what the commission wants us to do to move forward. Because the resolution that was passed does not seem to be the thoughts that we have today.

Have we any clue as to what the state revenues are going to be?

No, sir.

That's what she said at the beginning. We're running on last year's. We don't have the new revenues yet.

And timeline on when you think we'll receive them?

This is the site that I go to to get the revenue numbers from the state. And as you can see, all those expected August of 26. And again, last year, the last of them wasn't published until early September. So as soon as those fill in, I will be updating the revenues. But it's not going to be for another couple of weeks, I would imagine.

Just to kind of question procedurally, if you don't mind at the end, I've got some more general questions that have come through my head through these past two hours or so. So I just wanted to say if we could please have some time for that.

Sure. So we are done with our presentation.

The next item on the agenda was commission comments, so.

Oh, yeah, silly me. I saw that on the agenda. My bad. So go for it, Sam. So I just wanted to reiterate, if we do the safety non-advalon, if we decide to go that way, the goal would be to also lower the millage rate, whether three passes or not. Next thing, I did not realize we were paying 40% of the CRA. I thought it was much less than that. So my question is, I don't know, since Ben is here, what has the CRA brought us in terms of the purpose of the CRA? I know that we've offered incentive programs, which is my favorite thing about the CRA, is the incentive to bring in businesses, but have we seen positive impacts of bringing in businesses, bringing in new taxable value or new jobs or anything?

purposes to increase the CRA's taxable value. And if you take a look at the annual report of the CRA over the last couple of years, I always stated how much the taxable value of all the properties in the CRA increased over a year. So you have seen the investment that we made and then also the revenue or the benefit that you get out of this. So from my perspective, I would say, yes, it does make sense to invest that money in the CRA because essentially you're increasing the taxable value.

Wow, you said that way better than how I asked it, so thank you.

Amendment 3 is going to affect that. What's that? Amendment 3 is going to affect that drastically, correct?

Yes. So shooting from the hip, I would say that that budget will be cut in half at least if it passes. CRA budget will be cut in half.

I don't know what the latitude of the CRA is. And we're definitely, you know, we're not doing any events or anything. But does the CRA have the ability to help with any of that? If we did like one major event like the Fourth of July parade, Short answer is no.

The CRA, as per Florida statute, is not allowed to finance any shortfall of a city budget.

Understood.

And in general, You can spend CRA dollars on projects, on activities that are listed in the CRA plan. If you take a look at the budget and the different projects that I'm suggesting that we should focus on throughout the year, I always refer to the CRA plan page number where you can find justification why this project would qualify as an allowable expense.

What would happen to the CRA funds if we eliminated it?

It would fall back to the county and the city.

Those funds would go back into it?

Yes.

Thank you.

the funds that would go back to the county. You're not talking about on our economic development expenditures. I'm looking at our amended 26 budget. It was $1.997 million. And for next year, of course, we got a big grant. You're talking about the big grant, the $3.7 million.

Correct.

Would go back.

No, you're in the economic development budget.

I'm a CRA.

OK. And that grant is from the CDBG through the Department of Commerce.