Village Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Good evening. At this point in time, I'd like to call the meeting to order. Vice Mayor Cantor.

Everyone please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic

under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Madam Clerk.

Council Member Birch.

Present.

Council Member Devaney.

Present.

Council Member Walensky. Here. Vice Mayor Cantor.

Present.

Mayor Charles.

Here. Short agenda at this point in time it's time for public comments if there are any Three minutes state your name address and please address the council Madam clerk are there any comments?

Yes From Jen chase The village council should prioritize governmental efficiencies and core services while responsibly managing the size and scope of government. We need the village to stop spending money like drunken sailors, hiring assistants and deputies in every department. When is Miami Shores going to post employee salary and benefit data for the residents to see how much the village is really spending? There is not enough detail in the budget package to determine actual salaries by employees. When will Miami Shores provide this to residents? This concludes the comments.

Next item.

5A, Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Workshop Presentation, provided by Village Manager Esmond K. Scott.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Good evening to my fellow charter officers and members. directors managers here and of course residents who were here with us this evening and of course those of you residents may be watching on the other side of technology good evening to you also want to welcome the folks from Kemper who are joining us via zoom and I just wanted to make some opening remarks this fiscal year has been rather hectic sprinting to the finish line has been very hectic or to thank you mayor and council for your understanding in terms of the budget books because we ran into some software issues but you know as we as we have we have not verbalized it much because there's a dollar there's a price tag that is attached to all of this but as it was as we were discussing to with the mayor only yesterday Amir we we thought about that what's the value of our time trying to fight technology there are other means out there but I just want to thank the efforts of everyone who was responsible for a budget bringing it forward I know the pace was hectic we achieved one thing well we achieved two things in this we were able to to deliver our audits on time there were three years when we were the third year know that that this new company has been with us from the in the last two years we're not able to do that and that was rather embarrassing for us this year we made an effort and I want to thank Marcy and her team and all the other managers were involved in the process because what we had this year other than other years was what we call a single audit so the auditors zoomed in on us on a certain area and this was a very very microscopic look in a certain area. And this was with our ARPA funds, just to make sure. I mean, for you to be looking at federal funds to see whether or not we're compliant, we appreciated that. We passed it with flying colors. But that was not, that was at the expense of interrupting the budget process, asking for this document, asking for that document from every single person. Delroy and Jorge and Miss Kealey, were just run ragged in terms of just making sure that the ARPA stuff was there. And so that overlapped with our budget process. And we wanted to get this done, but then we ran into those problems. But here we are today. I can proudly say this is the fruit of our labor. We have a balanced budget that we're bringing to you today. And I must say something, it's a balanced proposed budget. So we have sat with you individually, and we look forward to more sit-down sessions on this budget with every single one for those impromptu calls just to discuss things that you may want to discuss or maybe those more formalized where we've got this structured for you to come in at a certain time but I want to make sure that you're aware of that that it's a proposed budget and so we look forward to you just speaking with us and if we want to go line by line we welcome it because it's not just only it's for all of us because we're in this together and they're perfect they're imperfect human beings working on this side of the budget and so we look forward that we could come and collaborate and to bring a another budget or the same budget in a modified way you know in a final form to first reading so I just want to get those things out of the way and with that said let's go forward I'm clicking right I wanted to take some time just to talk about our accomplishments. But I'm going to go through these rather quickly, because I think you already know them. But at the same time, in government, sometimes you have to toot your horn. But enough tooting sometimes, because you're like, OK, get ahead of yourself already, all right? So across all departments, we had some technological upgrades. We expanded digital services, improved business processes. We implemented the compensation and classification study in this fiscal year. Thank you so much, Mayor and Council, for that, where benefits were enhanced. Yes, there's always going to be talk about whether or not we're being compensated properly, because despite a study, there's always going to be that scenario outside. But I'll tell you this much. from from my chair I can tell you that the offers that we have made those that have turned us down is not because of our salary that our salaries are so out of whack so just wanted to say that we had the adoption of the villages first person and recreation master plan that is no easy feat I've been through another process with the parts of a parks and recreation master plan and I think we all were pleased when framework came and delivered that parts of master plan The restoration of the YMCA after school program was another good hurrah for the village as a lot of parents didn't know where the kids were going to go for after school care but finally we were able to do that as a team to get that done. the I would say the stormwater master plan is septic to sewer master plan are pretty much done they're going through a peer review at this time and I would expect that in early part of only because this is well I am hopeful that probably we can deliver it in September I'm not sure but I'd love to say that we had a comment we have accomplished that in this fiscal year so we'll see but we're very close to finishing those two three big things most municipalities can't boast and after school not sorry most municipalities cannot boast about a Parks and Recreation master plan and a stormwater master plan and a septic to sewer master plan so mayor and council I must thank you for that we have we have done a lot and I'm telling you only because I've been around and I've seen these stay on people's wish lists for a very long time and of course there is our heightened vulnerability assessment the admin advancement at the shores estate septic to sewer project yes it's not without what happens at a construction site it's not without that but we have We have done a good job by launching, finishing, putting the main line in for the village's first residential septic to sewer master plan. Yes, it has been dusty. Yes, there have been brick pipes that are not owned by this municipality, but owned by another one where we have had pipes break in and having some utility issues there. we have had a completion of roadway resurfacing around we have done drainage and sidewalk improvements the expansion of the villages tree canopy is another thing where we went ahead I think we planted 82 3 82 3 not threes but trees two trees on this year and we must be our public works guys must be commended for continuing to improve the canopy of this I don't know if we have taken enough time to look at the cover of this budget book but this was deliberately chosen because when we look at who we are it can be it can be seen here there's all that green and that green canopy and if you look on the outskirts you see what the famous urban poet Bob Marley calls concrete jungle then there is the improvements to Bayfront Park we continue to do that and it is my wish and desire it's manager should not be saying these things on on the day as soon in public who is memorialized but I really want to get that thing done before the holidays I'm talking in terms of the park system some I'm actively working on that right now yes it's not going to look like the Versailles gardens when we're finished but we will it is my intent to have that done in time for the holidays there's been the advances of several important ordinances that strengthen neighborhood reservation and historic resources and we're talking specifically through the through the historic preservation board and through our planning and zoning department The police department invested in advanced officer training technologies, communications infrastructure, facility improvements, and operational enhancements. The library's improvement of collections and continuation of its oral history project. the hosting of the 2026 Citizens Academy, I think the third Citizens Academy, and what a success it was. Securing and management of a grand portfolio of approximately $30 million is no easy task to manage, and we've got to wrap all our hands around this but at the same time we must commend ourselves too often we forget the things that should be seen as accolades and should be lauded we have a thirty million dollar grant portfolio that's huge so thank you again just wanted to go a little bit through this in this budget what we will see here There's a limited commencement of new capital improvement projects. We scaled back. Delroy pushed. Jorge pushed. I scaled back. They pushed more. I scaled back. The suspension of addition of new positions. There are no new positions in this budget. If I recall well, there wasn't any in the last budget either. The department were charged with reducing their budget by 10%. Yes, Council Member Walensky, you're correct. We tried. There are some areas where it was easier said than done. I think the police and, you know, I don't want to call their names, but there are some departments that did it much better than others. For some, it just could not be avoided. Thank you. The endeavor is to better align various department fees with their use of staff resources. Well, of course, you know that is fresh in our minds because that came last night and we'll be bringing that back to council. in this project what you'll see projects in progress at Bayfront Park live in seawall improvement I want to see a little bit about that that probably is not known we that project has been picked up by two national conferences and they will be there be earmarked this project would be earmarked in those two national conferences as a banner project and I'm talking about nationwide Shores Estates septic to sewer conversion we mentioned that it will continue because there's still things to be done there the stormwater capital projects that go on 94th Street and the 3rd Street 104 and Northeast 99th roadway improvements stripe in speed signs and speed humps are being installed I will be installed on village-wide so we have made allowances mayor in this budget for things like speed signs and speed homes and traffic plans in progress also stormwater master plan we can wait for that to be delivered so we can go through to the fine fine-tooth comb as we always do here septic the sewer master plan And the Parks and Recreation Master Plan has also been completed. Now what do we do with it? And so in this upcoming budget, you'll see where dollars have been set aside to do something with that. And we'll speak further on that. The adaptation plan with the funding has been approved. The study to examine the effects of sea level rise, tidal flooding, we know much about the adaptation plan. And yes, we did get a grant on that as well, with an amount of $350,000. So these are some of the highlights that have been proposed in fiscal year 27. May I have a sheet so I could read from it? and if you I think at this time probably we could pass it out to me and counsel you so much thank you so much is a bill for the sake of time because we have gone through this already I just wanted to talk about this budget which is the budget we have this year is for 56 million 445 thousand last year's budget was 46 million nine hundred so there's an increase of nine million five hundred and fifteen over last year and this was not like we had last year we had a different kind of budget last year where we moved some dollars out of fund balances to do some projects we're not doing that this year the nine million dollars that we have in excess over last year is partly as a result of The Country Club, which came in at $8.5 million. So there was an infusion of $8.5 million into our budget. And, of course, with ad valorem taxes, our ad valorem taxes was over $1 million, $1,047,000 over last year. So if we do some quick math with what we were given as a result of property taxes, it was $1 million, and then $8.5 million because we took over the Country Club There's your 9.5 budget. When we look at the funds, there was a positive change in the general fund of $1.1 million. There was, and of course, remember, almost 1.1 was as a result of property taxes. The local option gas tax decreased by 155,000. The CITT, that is for the half a penny sales tax, that decreased by 367,000. The built-in fund was reduced also by 534,000. That was partially as a result of transfer to the internal service funds. The debt service decreased, as it should, by 773. capital projects increased by 354 thousand six hundred the stormwater decreased And that is as a result of reduction in capital projects for fiscal year 27. And that, despite having a 2.75% increase. And Mayor and Council, in terms of stormwater, we'll have to take a look at that because we have not done anything with our fees in recent times. So we need to do an assessment of stormwater fees in the upcoming year. The solid waste fund also decreased by 27,524. That also, despite a rate increase of 10% to solid waste. Remember last year, we showed you the solid waste fund and the new fees that we had. But we increased by 20% in the first year and then 10% for this year coming up. The wastewater fund increased by $877,000, and that's because there is a southeast septic to sewer project there with a cost of $725,000 from our standpoint. I have to thank this mayor and council when I had scrolled away some dollars in I think it may have been back in 24 we had asked that in fact council member Burch had asked at that time for us to put that to a direct thing it was enough that we had that we had money in contingency but what were we going to do with it and so we we earmarked it for a future septic the sewer project and so we our intent is that given that this is another project a septic the sewer project that's new that we could use the seven hundred and twenty five thousand of the million dollars that was there to do this project there are also some issues with the sewer wastewater area that we were speaking about in the upcoming year as a result of the the manner in which there's maintenance being done there now and and proper assessments so we'll speak a little further in upcoming year about that there's a risk fund that increased by one to the 99,000 IT decreased by 358 fleet increased by 318 thousand what's driving the fleet fund which is also an internal service fund is the fact that there are police vehicles out there that are very old and When you have an old fleet, what you have, you have increased cost in your mechanic area. So we're going to be buying, I think there's about seven police vehicles that are in this budget to be replaced. then of course there's a Gulf and Country Club for eight point five million dollars and very soon we'll hear from the Kemper forces to talk a little bit about that and you have already gotten that one sheet hand out with the green to follow along with them so hang tight guys In this budget, some of the fiscal year highlights in this budget, we already spoke about the increase of advertising taxes. A COLA of 3.5% has been put in this budget. it is remember this is a proposed budget we put I put it in usually that's a practice of managers since I've been here I have not done that I have asked for the mayor and council to decide on what that should be I don't want you to think that that this can be otherwise this is your budget to that I'm that I am proposing that I'm putting to you remember this is a budget you can look on and determine what it is that you want to do from the purposes to see where exactly we would land and not have dollars in in in contingency I did that and talk about contingency I don't think I have it there but we have seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in contingency there is there's also the three hundred and four thousand increase in CIP projects that I talked about before then there are some increases I health insurance increase 20% dental increase 2% so the 2% is not as alarming as that 20% but that 20% is all saying we're gonna push very hard because the quote we got back from our our wholesaler was that it was going to go up 34% So 34% is what's on the books right now. I think through some negotiations, we have seen something in the 20s, but we're still being optimistic that we can get it down to 20%. How we do that, we'll bring you more news on that because we... we'll have to look at the overall plan that we have maybe it doesn't need if there's ever such a thing like maybe it doesn't need to be that rich I mean what are what would we look at in terms of co-payments and things of that nature so we're still working on that to make sure how you know what does it look like with a 20% increase there's a 2.2 increase in FPL pension contribution increases eighty eight nine thirty five the country club PCM is revenue a loss of three hundred and eighty six thousand of course we're making up another way there's a transfer of that from the country club where we would have done 386 at last year from the country club we're making an a transfer from the country club this year for administrative services for $425,000, which approximates to about 5% of that. The Country Club is an enterprise fund, and in government, the general fund supports enterprise funds. As I often tell folks, the enterprise fund doesn't have its own its own CFO its own IT manager but there's a maintenance of effort in every enterprise fund and so traditionally in government and it's afforded by by law that you have a transfer from the general fund from the enterprise fund to the general fund again that's a reference the resolution was 2024 dot that's 40 for the for the million dollars that was put away in the general fund for in reserves rather for a future septic the sewer project then there is as it is right now a proposal so I'm not even though we are heavy in in negotiations that 72,000 was proffered as as a fee that would be paid by the company that we that we have chosen to pay us seventy two thousand dollars so I would just tell you that's the least that we're gonna be getting The state revenue sharing is expected to be published in August by the Department of Revenue. So we expect some adjustment in revenues from that area. When I speak about state revenue sharing, we're talking about things like communication taxes, cigarette taxes, liquor taxes, and sales taxes. We don't get those numbers until late in August. And so we have approximated it based upon patterns and last year, but we'll make the adjustments sometime after August. So when you see that in September, you should see some adjustments in the revenues there. And then there is the obligations as contracted with DCS. that this should have been done a last fiscal year it was not just based on the the the the intent of counsel it was not so this year we have done a full dive just based upon the conversations that we have and we're bringing it forward in this proposed budget as additional revenue based upon the obligations as contracted with doctors charter school this is a quick chart of it and what we see here is that we do have this right you all have this okay what we see here is that the the the the total estimated revenues are four hundred and seventy eight thousand three hundred and eighteen dollars for the year we have budgeted one something I think there's a total Marcia if you don't there's a there's an additional alright citizen of I'm sorry I'm sorry, I just temporarily blanked out here.

Okay, so that $478,000, the reason why on your previous page we had, I think, what, $278,000 or two-something. So it's minus the $180,000 that we currently have.

Back on track. Okay, got it. It's $228,316, which is a difference. Of course, we'll have a conversation about that and determine how that can be realized. Okay, there's a lot of talk about millage. There's also a lot of talk about the rollback rates, what the current rate is. So just want to touch on that a little bit. This chart has withstood the test of times. It was from 2023, but it adequately lays out how taxes are calculated on a 7.8 mils and what the total property taxes are and how it's paid. So it has withstood the time, the test of time, and that gives a good layout. what it demonstrates is that that not everything is you know when you're assessed that there's just so much dollars that go elsewhere you know necessarily with us so then we talk about the rollback rate and some people confuse a rollback rate with just a deliberate cut in your your in your millage like a millage rate decrease it's slightly different millage rate decreases when you say okay I want this millage to be decreased by a tenth of a mil that's just a decrease like that however the rollback rate is slightly different almost the same with slightly different the rollback rate is the millage rate that would generate the same amount of property tax revenue from the existing properties from the previous year so what you do is that you look at the previous year and you compare it with the revenue of And then you come up with a millage rate that is a little lower. So we went ahead and we looked on the Miami-Dade property appraiser website. And July 1, 2026, this is what they had. They said, based on the average home value of $532,853, Using the rollback millage rate of 7.3492 mills would result in an annual decrease of approximately $240.21 in ad valorem taxes for the average homeowner. So rolling it back, the village, each resident would get about $240. forty dollars and twenty one cents just in terms of property tax decrease we're gonna move on to some department highlights when I'm all through these rather quickly and I wanted to start with the mayor and councils budget under the village charter you owe me to read this I'm doing good I'm reading I'm fine okay Okay. Order the village charter and code of ordinances. The village council is responsible for establishing local laws and policies through ordinances and resolutions, providing leadership and setting the village's strategic direction, guiding village administration through policy direction and oversight, adopting the annual budget, setting the tax rate, approving the tax roll, and appropriating funds. appointing and setting the compensation of the village manager village clerk and village attorney and appointed members to village boards and committees if we look at the mayor and councils budget in 26 it was ninety two thousand six fifty five it has gone up by seven point eight percent seven thousand two hundred and fifty for this year the significant changes arch are attributable to The inauguration reception appropriation increased in fiscal year in terms of due to the scheduled 2027 municipal election and inauguration in April. The village clerk's office. Madam Clerk, do you want to take this one? Yes. And I'm rolling a little bit off the screen, but it says the clerk is appointed by the village council.

Yes. roles and function of the village clerk the village clerk is the official record keeper and a vital link between the public elected officials supporting transparency accountability compliance with Florida law the village clerk maintains custody of all official records and minister public records requests through compliance with chapter 119 supervised municipal elections and qualifying prepares council agendas in minutes oversees legislative documentation and codification, boarding committee appointments, and promotes legislative transparency and compliance. The clerk is appointed by the village council. In terms of significant changes in the village clerk's office's budget, there is an increase due to the FY27 or April 2027 Village Council election and a contingency for a special election if needed. There is also an allocation for the U.S. Department of Justice's ADA digital accessibility requirement where all municipalities must meet this deadline by April of 2027.

Thank you, ma'am, for that. The village manager's office. The village manager is the chief executive officer of the village. He has oversight over administrative, operational, and managerial functions, leadership, guidance, mentorship. The village manager's budget decreased by $38,000. for this risk earlier the decrease is attributable to a reduction in other contractual services one of the biggest ones some here in council just so you're aware that it's no longer there is a reduction in the the economic development piece that we had in there for like 25,000 that I took it out this year and of course there's increases in cola and health insurance so that despite that there's a decrease of 30,000 and now we come to our folks from from the country club I know they they prepared this I don't know if they can read it so what I'll do for them is that I'll read it and main council there they're virtual so I don't know if probably you'd want to handle them separately and not wait through all of this and maybe here hear from them get to ask them some questions if it if it pleases the council I think probably that to be good because they're in various stages of of travel.

No one will be able to question that?

Yes, they're on Zoom. So if you want to, can you bring them up, Madam Chair? Oh, they're seeing a PowerPoint. Okay, good. So let us rip. So who wants to read? Do you guys want to read or you want me to read?

If you can hear me okay, I can proceed.

Okay, go ahead. That's Matt Lindley. Matt's the vice president of Kemper.

kemper sports and uh thank you uh everybody for the opportunity um so just a kind of uh responsibilities of kemper sports and myself and chris uh flagger who is the interim general manager of the property it's we've got oversight of uh all aspects of the uh of the club from food and beverage to golf uh golf operations to maintenance to banquets um And part of that is making sure that we're maintaining and looking after the total club assets. We're responsible for all the financial planning and execution of those plans throughout the fiscal year. Part of this is when we came in was to use a similar operating model to what has been there in the past, but basically enhance in all areas to improve on the overall experience for golfers and residents. And the last big piece of this is keeping constant communication with guest residents and obviously with the city council and mayor's office too, of everything that's going on at the club. And of course, we report to the village manager. So you see our budget there and part of what went into this budget is we use what information that we did have from PCM upon their departure. And so some of it's based on historicals and some of it's based on our time there and are using some of our benchmarking from other daily fee facilities across the country. with similar revenue streams that guided us in developing the budget. Part of it is redoing the banquet packages and restaurant menu, making changes to the daily fee rates to be more in line with the other clubs in the market, with specific attention being paid to minimal increase in rates both membership and green fee rates to village residents. Enhance the golf shop with a broader mix of vendors, different types of merchandise, which has been well received so far. New website is in place and greater emphasis in pushing people to book online. And a point-of-sale system that will be going into the restaurant as soon as we get the necessary infrastructure in place that will streamline our operations in the restaurant.

Okay. If you could hold one second. I know we've got a budget here that we passed. I'm talking this sheet. So mayor and council. One second. I don't know. We've had a chance to look at this.

Yes. I've got some questions. Yes.

They're ready.

They're ready?

Yes. And also, we also have Steve Brennan on the call as well.

Okay. My first question would be in this sense. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yeah. My first question would be we have, of course, no history from you all since you're just starting. You have projected income of $8.5 million. I spoke with PCM relative to the year 25 and 24. They did 8 million in 25, and they did 7 million 8 in 24. I realize there's inflation. How comfortable are you with the 8 million 5 in income? And the reason I'm asking that is we've got a million dollars and then the $460,000, but that money is going to have to carry the cost of the bond to redo our golf course. I wonder how much, if you all have had a chance to look at that and what you think that that might cost us to do. And my biggest concern is We haven't been able to get an answer from South Florida Water Management. What is your position if two years down the road they come in and want to start their project, which they told us a week or 10 days ago would take five years to put in their pumping station? What is our contingency to deal with that possibility?

Well, that's a mouthful. What I will tell you about the budget is when we started looking at the market and where the Miami Shores was priced, we thought that there was an opportunity for price increases. So, we take the revenue side of a budget very, very seriously because that drives everything. So, the activity level is already very high there. So we're going to see the increases in just higher average daily rate in golf rounds, a small increase in food and beverage, both on the banquet side and in the a la carte, and then lastly, small increases in membership fees. So we feel comfortable that that revenue is achievable.

Okay. Okay. Rest of the question?

So the rest of the question, I don't know that I'm prepared to answer all those questions. I think there's a lot more conversations that need to take place. I think the start of it is putting a budget on the table that demonstrates the ability for the club to generate generate profits for the village. And as it relates to all those other questions, I think those are conversations that will include more people than certainly me to solve. Okay.

Mr. Manager, on Mr. Burch's question, can we just update the public on where we're at with the district from our last meeting?

I haven't heard anything yet from the district. I did put in a call, but I have not gotten a response as yet. I'll continue, and as soon as I hear something, then, of course, as usual, I'll update the council. But I've not heard anything. We were out there... Probably what, about? A month ago. Yeah, I think it was about a week after the New York Knicks parade. Good way to remember the date. But we were out there. They took core samples, and also we had the Army Corps of Engineers, Ryan to be specific, who was out there and really to hear from us. I think we represented ourselves well. the medium comes to represented itself well in terms of the questions that were asked the question posed and to reiterate our our 25-point objection to this project so they heard it also since you asked the question for their timeline is and it increased from our original meetings with them from four to five years for the shovel in the ground to the end of their project

But there's a lot of buts and ifs with that. And in one of the meetings where it was the first meeting that we all had individually, if you looked at the go back to your golf, that golf proposal that they proposed, and you look at where the pump station is sitting and then you see the orange part. If you look on that, there's also his construction area, which was that blue line. That blue line that he's talking about, their opinion is it wouldn't interfere with our golf business the redesign as you do this and they have their construction area what they want and their intent is to work with us that when we're in renovation which the average time for If we do it at the right time and construction's right, there's no weather delays. It's about the closure of the course and redesign of it is about 18 months. And that is what they want to coordinate with us to do the seawall portion of it or the construction part of it where we're actually under construction. But all of that is on, those are all unknowns. We're not even to that point though.

One of the things that's scary is that they have their latest

Rendition of what they proposed to do they brought a map and then when we asked to look at it They wouldn't show it to us I think that I think the map that was in question that they brought that day is the one if you go to the Army Corps of Engineers application or where they it's on the website under that or it's a public records request, but for the one that I saw that the same thing is is the one after their After we let them on the course to do their core sample to move their design further along, that's the new design. And that's the one that came out in, was that, manager, was that, it was April, right? It was the one where they, we let them on the course in August and it took them from August of 25 to April of 26, right, to come to whatever 66% design of what they're at.

Right, right.

They're still not at 100.

No, they're not. Right, so. Or I should say, Mayor, if they are. They haven't told us that they are.

That's correct. I mean, but as far as, I mean, we can ask, I think we can ask Kemper or we can ask Mr. Brennan. It's where the course is at itself and also the clubhouse. I think people are aware that we have an older building. But it's more so discussions I've had with them is the timelines for and how far we can push this course and put these rounds through. Matt, how many rounds are expected for this calendar year? And it should match up, I think, with last year?

Yeah, it's within just a handful. Yeah, so it's 58,000.

And that's what we're expecting in the course condition that it is right now from coming out of summer and then going into the season for 26 into 27, correct? Yes, sir, that's correct. All right. But the capital improvements, they put in the capital improvements that they're anticipating in this budget. There's the aging. We have two pumps on the property, first for irrigation?

TODD BANDUCCI- That's correct.

TODD BANDUCCI- Right. And in this capital budget, the pumps are scheduled? Well, my question is, is it possible, if it does and we have to do it, that when we do the pumps, it would be the pump that would go on the new main line if we have to do the pumps this year. Would that be correct?

That would be absolutely correct. In that budget, we have included a lot of repair and maintenance funds that we may or may not use. And assuming that and seeing the deterioration of the infrastructure in both the building and the golf course, we've got that in there, assuming that we're going to see some of that from the deferred maintenance. Now, as we move forward, if we have a an HVAC failure or an irrigation pump failure, then at that point we'll come to the city manager and then ultimately to the council about, okay, it needs to be replaced. Is this something that we can not only replace now, but can we use it and take this on to the next iteration of the golf course. So those are the conversations that we'll have. So it'll be kind of a fluid moving thing and we'll repair when we can and reduce or minimize the capital expenditures until we have a better understanding of the golf course scope and clubhouse scope.

Also for clarification, can you just tell the public the lease that we have on the carts and then what we're also trying to do with timing

renovation is probably the end of that lease because you don't want to be in a cart lease um while you're doing renovation correct that's correct and we've got an option to um to the to roll out of the lease it's uh it terms in uh july actually of 2028 but we can move out of that lease as early as july of 2020 uh 2027. thank you

One more question. What was your opinion on the sewer system there for the clubhouse and the course? What was your opinion of it, and did you anticipate any plans to address that?

The sewer system? No. I had not looked into that at all.

Well, as you know, the course is low. There's four septic tanks there, and at least two of those are very marginal at the moment.

And I know PCM gave us extensive instructions on those, on how to maintain them, how to stay on top of them, so we can potentially avoid or eliminate any potential problems. So from that aspect, yeah, we're going to do our best to maintain them.

Yeah, and I would just add that I think that, In my mind, with a line more of when the clubhouse renovation or build happens, you'd want to coordinate moving off of septic into sewer. That's the logical time.

More discussions on that. That, by the way, was Steve Brennan. Yes.

We've been told that the county is going to extend the main up Biscayne Boulevard, but they're talking about five years from now.

Also, the area is going to be, like I brought up before, the area is going to be part of that Biscayne Canal Action Area also. So there's other, the county is working on things, and the district's working on projects, and we're working on projects, so. think the window for and what I've articulated to residents and members is this two-year time we have a two-year window to but it's start today to to get financing and figure out what we're doing but there's a basically two seasons of golf and the conditions that it is and that's that's also knock on wood and hopefully mother nature is very kind to us so we inherited I mean this is our asset it's And everybody now can see there's transparency now to what the asset is. It's an enterprise fund. And we will take care of this. Matt Kemper is joining us and going to help out with that. Hopefully the manager and I and each one of you will have meetings coming up to brainstorm the timeline for this. But I'll also say from this day as for with the district being they want to be partners with us. It's with what's happening with HJR 203, what's happening with their budget, coordination of two government entities to have something happen at the same time is difficult. It's hard enough for one government to figure out what the timeline is. With that said, we just have to keep moving forward with taking care of our business and that it is at its life's end for any any gulf facility and that's on the side of just the regular maintenance which would have been greens tea boxes and bunkers we have to do the infrastructure part of that which is two main ones which is the irrigation system and we could look at it and also the cart path which is capital improvement and then also look into even with the irrigation system

maybe putting a pump on the east side of it also so that right now how it is it's it's limited on in our golf superintendents doing outstanding job on this but that's also part of the crop capital improvement that I couldn't agree with you more but the point is we have the million dollars and we're looking for that basically to pay our bond and so you know I'm just trying to see if we can sweep through this particular part right now to do the capital stuff we have to do and still be able to make our, you know, borrow the money and make our bond payments. We're looking here at $1.5 million. You know, with the projects that you're talking about, that's not going to go real far.

But the one thing is with this figure, and this is on historical or based, everybody has the same numbers. I have the same numbers. I think you were provided the same numbers from PCM and this budget here. these are these fees and this this structure is based on the conditions of the course that it is right now go back to your NGF thing you're also looking at a 20% increase on it and then it's a discussion when we do go to bond council is what's the length of the loan for for it and in my personal opinion because a golf course always has to be renovated about every 13 years we should look into what we could borrow for 15 years and work on this, and the other thing is I understand that this is an enterprise fund. I understand the government traditionally has those fees, which is that $425,000, or the rent that we got from PCM, which was $390,000 or around that approximately. On the highest, I think it was $386,000 was the highest we ever got. But with that said, that went into the general fund, and obviously the village used that money. But moving forward, one of the things that we didn't do and we're in this predicament that we're in right now is there was no that maintenance the reserve for future use that you reserve for future uses that then in the future for and then mostly and also getting when their clubhouse is renovated it's the same thing that that fund is for both it would be then eight years down the road doing the greens again tee boxes and all that plus the regular maintenance and wear and tear on a building with HVAC like you said plumbing electrical and all the rest that comes to it that's the mistake the village has made over the past I'd say 15 years or so we haven't we haven't or 20 well since the 93 agreement and we're sitting with an aged facility I was happy that the numbers that we had and campers here and then did this budget timely that we can all see that the numbers that we had and the numbers that we have kind of match up they're not exactly

even but the increase is good to say is there mr. Valensky do you have any questions yeah we thank you mr. mayor we haven't made any changes to the operating hours of the restaurant or bar since Kemper has taken over have we that is correct And are there any plans in the future to do so?

The current model that we have is the hours of operation remain consistent. Forever? For this budget cycle.

I'm talking about, you know, further out than just this budget.

Look, we're going to adjust to and accommodate the needs of the guests, the members and residents of the club. And if that means we need to open up more hours and provide different services, then we're going to adjust to it. That's how we're going to be successful.

Okay. All right. I mean, I'm not trying to put a lot of pressure on this. We're still getting, you know. getting our feet wet here and comfortable, but I would like to see in the future some plans to maybe expand over there, because the Gulf, as we've discussed in the past, the Gulf is booked pretty solid. And we could raise fees and generate more revenue through that, but there's only so much you could raise fees, whereas we have a bar and a restaurant there that is is closed most of the time. So I feel like that's where there's a lot of opportunity to increase the revenue. Now, I'm not pushing for that to happen immediately because I'd like you guys to spend some time running it the way that it is currently so we can have a real good comparison of what was going on in the past and now. But still, I would like us to be a little, you know, thinking ambitiously in the future about generating more revenue over there, and I feel like the food and beverage is where there's the most opportunity. So that's all I have to say about that.

Through the chair, I have a quick question just for the benefit of the public. We're deploying 8,503,000, and we expect to get an equal amount of revenue, and then we are – Transferring out to the general fund and reserving for future use is about 1.4 million So would that count as the villages profit?

It's up there me yes No, you I think husband of Amy say you're transferring out 1.4 no for 400,000 to the general fund and then reserving 1 million in the in the And the enterprise fund? Correct. Sorry.

I heard something else. Well, technically the government can't make a profit. We're running a business. So it's, yes, that's the windfall for revenue there for operating. And then the more efficiencies that are found in each one of these or increases in, let's say it's the driving range or like Mr. Valensky said with F&B or more banquets are booked there, then yeah, that figure would go up. And then we'll use that, we'll use it for the reserve for future use and then if you go look in your budget book for stormwater and or for solid waste and I think it's stormwater we those enterprise funds the village is always traditionally taken I think one of them is 10% this one's five and a half and I think the other ones two and a quarter right and we are only for maintenance they're different this one's different because it's a transfer to the the general fund but the other ones are administrative and they're actually taken out of the business or the operation of the business for solid waste.

They're taken, yeah, they're transferred over to the general fund, so like from the building fund and from the solid waste fund. If we operated a wastewater fund or anything, it would be the same thing. Those funds that can generate revenue for themselves, usually there's a transfer to general fund because of its larger maintenance effort in the in the enterprise funds

But yes, for the public, that's on their sheet, and when they speak, yes, that is it.

And since we're on that, Mr. Mayor, if I may, because we have discussed this in our one-on-ones, I just wanted to make sure that it's said here on the podium so everyone can hear that we have an accountant that we have placed in here to help in the reconciliation and also a portion of my budget as well. It's been paid out of here.

Are there any more questions for Kemper or Mr. Brennan or the manager or even me?

Mr. Mayor, before they go, if the council doesn't have any other questions, I mean, I just want to say that to everyone that this was a hard... just rushing to get this done this I know we a lot of us were just waiting do we have a liquor license or don't we have a liquor license everything and we lived on that on that brink but I think that transition relatively speaking has gone smooth and there's a whole lot of noise around it and if there is noise around this transition it's only because they're always noise around changes and transitions and But this one that I'm talking about, from a managerial effort, yes, there's still things that we have to iron out, get tuned out, but I can tell you that it's going in the right direction.

I'd also like to take this time to thank Kemper Sports and also Mr. Brennan for the timely of putting this budget together that they started on June 1st and they got us a budget this quick. Thank you.

I'd also like to thank you all. I think you did a tremendous job at Mother's Day. I think you did a tremendous job at Father's Day. I've heard nothing but positive things from residents as far as the facilities and service at the club, so you're certainly off to a good start.

Yeah, they did well also on the 4th of July USA Soccer Watch Day and all the other initiatives that they have done.

I will... As you all know, I'm not a golfer, but I have been asking, and I've been getting nothing but positive feedback so far. So I will concur with that and thank everybody.

Manager?

did a great job but I particularly want to thank the mayor because he put a lot of effort into this and unlike all those other people he only gets paid one dollar for it we owe him a lot of gratitude and I don't think he'll probably never get the credit he deserves for that he did a great job thank you thank you I also I mean what we've

why we're sending up attitudes to everybody I want to thank you as well because I remember requesting two times to have a special meeting just so that we could extend the start date of this contract and you all were here to just support us with that so thank you as well okay we're almost there um Parks and Recreation, the roles and function. It coordinates the cultural and recreational programs for village residents, directs, plans, develops, and implements athletic, aquatic, recreation, and leisure programs and special events for the community. maintains facilities, including aquatic center, community center, field house, tennis, pickleball course, tennis course, country club, basketball course, tot lot, passive parks, other recreational amenities, including equipment that, as we speak, has gone down, and we're waiting to see what we're going to do about it. So Angie, you want to take this away, please? Just hear my voice.

So yeah, so our Recreation Administration budget is $556,321, but in that is $84,000 for framework for their proposal to continue moving to the bond question, hopefully, if we get there. The proposal is for them to survey the community and then work toward educating the public on the Parks Master Plan and what we want to go to bond issue for, if that's what the village wants. And the question that they want to get out to the community is, what amount would they tolerate? Is it $50 million? Is it $60 million? Is it $40 million? And then we can kind of work backwards. Since we have put that number in, though, we have asked framework to rework the proposal to take out the survey and hopefully get it done this budget year. and then that number would be amended. So that's why there's an increase in the administration budget, plus, I believe, insurance and... Insurance and COLA. Insurance and COLA. In athletics, we basically stayed the same. If expenses go up, it's because we're trying to increase programming. But what's not shown on here is the revenue side. So even if it looks like my budget went up, our revenue should increase on the other side. The community center, I couldn't take out any maintenance fees because all of our facilities are aging. So we have to be prepared for things, too. go down, especially in aquatics like today. We're down the chillers on the competition pool. So I'm waiting to get an estimate for that. And that may have to go into next year's capital projects. And then tennis is our original tennis courts, which we are still $10,000 for the pros, sorry, the contractual fee from the tennis pro. And then we moved our CIP capital funds out of parks into the public works budget, or into its own fund. I'm sorry, not really public works. It's its own fund. And then our health insurance increase. Do you have any questions for me?

With the framework working with us, the timeline, I think from what I've heard from the residents is that they would like, the first one was the request to get it for the midterm of election in November to get it on the ballot, and I just don't think that's The second one would be then our special election in April. And the first step would be that survey. And the survey that we do is for the Parks Master Plan total is what the scope of the survey will be.

The survey will ask what they want to put into the bond question. Do they even want to go out for a bond? And what would be the priorities that they want to see in that? And what is the dollar amount that they will tolerate?

And if we get a negative on that, what that's up to you that's up to you well then we then the other just if we get a negative then we're obviously the other stuff you're budgeting for wouldn't happen correct correct so this is our we're trying to get this we'll look for monies this year so we could get it because the residents are pushing for this because I think madam clerk the the language would have to be or us worth less trying to pass this it would have to be by January to get it on April

Yes.

So everybody's on the same page here.

We would need an approved resolution no later than the second meeting in January and that's like pushing it.

That would be pushing. So let's not do that one. Let's do how about we try the last meeting before the holidays in December because I know how this village works. How about that one as our drop dead.

Right. Because we would have to notify the supervisor of elections office. It's like a formal informal heads up that we will we there's they may there may be a potential election and then we would need the actual resolution signed by council no later than January in that sense but then you're working back from that point

Angie, if you could get back to us for the length, I definitely think that the survey has to be done and probably after the summer is over, so it would be September. Correct. But how long would it take them and then crunch the numbers and then get back to us, do you think?

He wanted to – if they could get the survey done, that's – he said October would be pushing it. So I'm assuming that we'll start working on the survey in September to get the bond question written by January. Right.

Yes. Well, December. Let's stick to the December thing.

I'll work on December.

Because otherwise if we have a can to kick and there's a road, we're going to do that.

I agree. I will speak with him.

Okay.

Thank you. Mr. Mayor, I know you had said you talked about negatives. Not negatives. No, if it comes back with certain negatives, remember that they have like a menu of the different Yeah, the offerings. So some may be positive, some may be negative. We probably should get a good feel for that. Framework is a full service firm like that.

We'll get good data back from it. We'll move forward with it. I just want the public to know the timeline, the realistic timeline for this. And it's important to residents that have spoken to me and met with me about this so ever since we've passed this it's let's get this done and I know that it's running concurrent with with the golf and that's a big thing to do but to me they're two separate tracks same train two different tracks we're through this Dorney for the time yes but thank you thank you Francis

Good evening, everyone. My name is Frances Walsh, and I am the library supervisor. I'm here in place of Michelle Brown, the library director. Our roles and function, the library focuses on enriching the lives of our residents with offerings that focus on education, the arts, and culture. We provide engaging opportunities for literacy and lifelong learning through impactful programming. We provide access to a wide variety of informational resources in a variety of formats and access options. We engage in community partnerships that support the library's mission as stated in the functions above. And we serve as stewards of the village archives in addition to working to restore and preserve the library's historic physical structure. Our library this year, I mean, sorry, our budget this year has gone up, however, that is primarily due to the bulk Excuse me one second. Oh Yes, okay, so our budget has gone up however most of this has been due to an increase in personnel costs and these costs are due to the 20% proposed health insurance increase and the cola adjustment of 3.5% we have had a Let me give you the exact number. In our operating expenses, we have had a decrease of $33,525. While the library's budget did increase, the bulk of facility-related maintenance expenses will be absorbed by Public Works. The library will be able to maintain its high level of service and programming with a focus on intentional meaningful programming that supports and encourages literacy, lifelong learning, and connection. And that's pretty much it. I don't know if there are any questions regarding our budget. No? OK. Well, thank you so much.

Thank you. Finance?

Good evening, everyone. The finance and the non-departmental. I love the non-departmental in my group because mainly we're the one who have the oversight for that department. So the functions of the finance department were responsible for the security of all village funds. Included in the functions of these departments are annual budget preparation, payroll processing, debt service, cash management, general ledger management, and accounts payable, and the annual financial statements, which include the audit. For the non-departmental, this is a department in government that has a catch-all for all general funds. If something doesn't belong in the department, it goes in here. So this group's accounts that represent administrative costs or services of the general fund, that affects multiple departments. includes the general fund contingency count, lies in this division, and also the cost allocation, which are the contributions to the various funds, like internal service funds, and IT fund. And the pension costs are also in here. Okay, so our department went down by 20,000, and that's mainly attributed to... Contractual agreement that we had in the past we had like temporary service to assist us because the village was behind like three years in the audit so we reduced that and also May I just interrupt?

You said we were behind by three years. We weren't we were for three years We were slow in getting our audit out Just for those listening at home. I just want to be correct. I Behind four or three years, not behind two years. That's right, exactly.

But there's a partial offset of health insurance increasing and the non-departmental also decreased due to the allocations. of the general fund to the various other funds like the IT, the risk management. As their budget goes down, also the transfer goes down because we have to allocate less money to those funds if their budget decreases. So basically that's what it was. Any questions? Thank you.

Thank you.

Patent and zoning.

So the roles and functions of the Planning and Zoning Department is to promote and regulate orderly and sustainable development and redevelopment through professional planning and zoning services conforms with the comprehensive plan the village code federal state and county regulations guides it also guides and coordinates activities relating to preservation growth and improvement of the building environment through the community these are expected changes and increases again there are more reviews and more demand for that department I've done in trying to keep expenses as low as possible this is where we're at for the upcoming year upcoming fiscal year and these increases are due to the consultant services for the water supply plan updates that are an every five years that the villages to conduct this this project and so they will be working on that as well as some other things that have already been planned that include the ear project as well there's a 20% increase in health insurance as we all know and the Eccola adjustments thank you I'm sorry you left up to their will not mine

Okay. No questions.

Okay. The bill in front is.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, council members, Mr. Manager. The roles and functions of the building by the minister are enforced, applicable, federal, state, county. and municipal building codes, laws, and regulations, review permit application, construction documents, and supporting documents for compliance with those requirements, perform inspections to verify compliance with approved plans, applicable codes, and permit requirements, issue permits, certificates, and enforce actions in accordance with the applicable laws and regulations, protect the public health, safety, and welfare through the administration of the Village Building Regulation Programs. Building fund As as you see over here on this table that is being provided to you there is a change And in the in the budget from 2026 to 2027 a Approximately twenty two point seventy six percent is due in large part to the decrease in attribute to the reduction in the required cost of allocated for administrative support, the increase of health insurance, the COLA, updates to the building department fee scales. So we're in the process of updating the building department fee scale to comply with the requirements of House Bill 803. I'm not sure if you're fully aware of those requirements, but it has basically change or is forcing us to change the way that we allocate fees for building permits. So I'm in the process right now of working on modifying the fiscal year, and I hope to have it before your first meeting in September, hopefully. There's a lot of changes coming with it, so look forward to that. The revised fee scale is intended to ensure that the village permitting and inspection fees are consistent with the current statutory requirements while supporting the continued delivery of building department services. And that's where it is. Thank you.

Through the Chair, if I may. Can you just, I know you said you're in the middle of working on it. Can you just maybe give us, like, what's your impression?

currently of how this is going to affect the finances of the building department going forward I don't think it's going to affect the finances of the building department because at the end of the day based on the state requirements and And the way the building departments are operating, what we have to make sure is that the means and method that we use to be able to calculate those fees provide us with sufficient funds to be able to cover the expense associated with the building department. If you take a look at our history in the department in general, you're going to be able to see that the fees that we collect are the fees that are used to provide that service. And that's basically what it is. I'm not expecting a change on that since.

All right. I know a lot of people are very excited about there being, you know, a cap or a ceiling where anything below that value, you're not going to be able to get a print. But there's a lot of stipulations in fine print there that I don't think people are aware of, like about it applying to, you know, many things. It doesn't apply to many things. Correct. Like plumbing and electrical and a bunch of others.

Well, so perhaps you're talking about a new language that was added to the statute where it sort of exempts some of the permits. And the problem with that exemption is that it exempts it as long as it doesn't meet certain criterias. And it talks about electrical, mechanical, plumbing, structural. So actually when you take a look at it, there's very, very few things within the building code that do not apply to it. So maybe a roof repair, maybe they would get away with that. If you're doing a tile inside the property which is not a structural, then you don't need it. There's tile floors that you may need it because if you have an existing wood substrate and you're going to put in ceramic tiles or marble or something on top of it, then we have to make sure that the existing wood members are going to support that additional load that you're going to have so it becomes structural in nature. So those are the things that we have to take a look at before we can approve an exemption on it.

In your tenure here, have you ever had a reduction this large?

Not this large, no.

But you've had reductions in the past?

We have had a few, yes.

But not 22%? No. Yeah. Malcolm? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Public Works? Mr. Gariboy?

All right. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor, Councilman, Madam Attorney, Village Clerk, and of course, staff members and residents. And the Village Manager, of course. So I don't see the purpose in our role of Public Works, but I'll just say, as I sat there, I was wondering, what do we do? Public Works. And in summary, we handle from a pin to an anchor. From ensuring that your trash is picked up to ensuring that Yami sits in a nice chair. That's what we do. So Public Works does so much. In fact, we have 11 different divisions. And for this year, Mr. Manager, we were able to achieve reduction in seven of them.

Thank you, sir.

So our overall budget, you're just looking at, of course, four of the divisions. Our overall budget for 2026 was about $18 million. This year, just about $90 million, which means that we're just a million dollar over, which is just about 5%. And as a number of the departments mentioned, that 5% is really coming from the fact that we absorb a number of the responsibilities from the other divisions, departments, in order to increase our facility, our ability to manage a facility. And so that increased about $1.4 million, which really the increases are coming from merely our taking over the responsibility from the other departments. So the facility department has really bloomed or blossomed into a really full department. We were trying not to manage our facilities much, much better than was done before. In fact, there was not really a facility department. When I came on, that's one of the things that the manager charged me with to make sure that this department grew. And so we brought in two new staff members, and the department is doing much better. In fact, we're currently doing renovation in the village hall currently. And the work that we have been able to achieve through the staff members, just using staff members, is phenomenal. And the more that we have saved just by using the staff members in-house. So that's positive. Can we move to the next slide? Yes, sir. And of course, LOGT, whilst they are not specifically a division, we do have staff members that are paid under these subventions that we get from government. But we were able to achieve reductions in those. The manager mentioned the fleet. There is an increase in fleet. And he mentioned as well that we are purchasing six vehicles for the police. But there are actually seven vehicles. We are also replacing one of those Green trucks, as you see, we're driving our own. So that's going to be replaced. There are actually seven vehicles that we're purchasing for this year on the fleet. And finally, our stormwater, solid waste, wastewater. We did a number of projects in stormwater that we're proud of. One of them is the Eighth Avenue Drainage Project. We also did a 96th Street milling and resurfacing. But interestingly, As with a lot of road projects, typically when you do road projects, they would include some drainage. So we discovered that there was some drainage impacts on 96th Street as we did the milling and resurfacing. So that actually became a milling and resurfacing and drainage impact project as well. So because we did those projects, And we also started, we have started some drainage projects this year by allocating funds. For example, Belvedere and 94th Street, and we're doing the design on those. So we're able to kind of reduce the number of projects we are going to be doing for fiscal year 27, hence the reduction. Solid waste as well, notwithstanding the fact that there has been an increase in fees, we're able to achieve some reduction in solid waste. wastewater this is a huge concern for us and imagine spoken about it before and that is apart from the septic to sewer projects that we are handling we also manage and maintain the entire commercial built all the septic systems sorry the sewer system on the commercial bill there are 20 25 stations there and I'm not too sure what was the notion or the the mindset at that time but I would imagine whether the the council are the village members that decided for the village the managers would not have imagined that this year at this present moment that the maintainer's responsibility would have been humongous. We are paying upward of $7,000 to $10,000 sometimes a month just to maintain the sewer system. It has become a huge burden. And so I've asked the manager for us to look at it more carefully. But it is one of the reasons why we have such a huge increase.

Yes. if I may we're going to be speaking a little bit more on this council in subsequent meetings and just to tell you how we're going to be approaching it because we already have a plan through the chair if I may

Is that maintenance different because it is mostly commercial use on that or in other words would it be a similar maintenance for a project like in the Shores Estates on the sewer system or is this a different thing entirely because of the fact that it's commercial with like grease traps and stuff like that?

Well, it's not because it's commercial, because you have pump stations. In Shores Estates, you can have a pump station. The fortunate thing about Shores Estates is that donation project. It's not our maintenance. We're going to donate. North Miami is going to be their responsibility, so we need to worry about that. That's good. But the real reason is that, well, several reasons. The pumps that were placed in line when the project went on stream in 2016 were some vacuum pumps. Those vacuum pumps are not ideal to handle the type of sewage load because of solids in it. So we have had to be moving in the direction of changing out those pumps to grinder pumps, true grinder pumps. That's one. But in addition to that, the system, it's aged. So as it gets older, then the system breaks down and the maintenance responsibility is heavier. And in addition to that, we have to meet compliance requirements from the county of having what we call a telemetry system, which means that we're able to stay remotely and get signals from those systems. Well, when they were initially put in place, a lot of the stations never had those telemetry systems. So now we have to be putting those in place. Some of those systems as well are just coming on stream, which means that they were there, the pumps were there, but they were never used because the businesses were never operating. And now, in fact, just recently we tried to bring one on stream. Well, those two pumps that were there sitting down in water were never used, and so it took us quite a heavy lift to get those going and so on. So it's a major, major thing that we need to look at. So, any other questions?

Through the Chair. So, essentially, the increase in wastewater is attributable to, like, a capital expenditure rather than an ongoing maintenance cost to get new pumps and telemetry?

Yes, yes, capital expenditure. Okay. And, of course, and I might have mentioned this as well, is that apart from the maintenance, we do have $725,000 that is included in this for the southeastern shores septic to sewer project by way of the 877.

Elroy, one question I have, though. These grinder pumps are for each building there for whatever that business is. Do the grinder pumps then belong to the village, or do they belong to the individual businesses that they're draining?

They belong to the individual business. The only thing we do is maintain it. We have an agreement with each business owner. Well, not the business owner, but the property owner. Because, of course, there are several businesses. Like, for example, you have Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks. You have several businesses there. And you have the one single pump station that manages those. But they own them. We are just maintaining them.

So we have to maintain them are they do they in turn reimburse you for maintaining them?

Or we're providing free sewage for those areas Yes, we think that's the next meeting So the maintenance there was an agreement that was put into place for the maintenance of the downtown septic system when it was put in place and What the property owners are charged on an annual basis is for our maintenance agreement that we have for the company, plus two pump-outs per year. But since then, the system has gotten out of warranty, and as Mr. Peters has said, there's additional costs for each property dependent on what the maintenance issue is, and we have not been charging them back. We intend to do that for the last two years to recoup some of the costs because, obviously, that is not part of the agreement is for the village to be paying for any repairs to those private systems. So we will be recovering some of that money and going forward as those pieces and different maintenance items arise, we will be billing them as they occur. It's just in the transition of everybody and Mr. Peters coming on and trying to figure it out, we realized that was occurring so we will rectify that issue.

And so then how is that in other words normally you get a water bill and a percentage of that water bill based on what that water bill is you get charged a sewer charge once a sewer system is installed by whoever is providing the service. So are these business owners In other words, these grinder pumps are just creating low pressure to push this ultimately to a pumping station and a main to go to Miami-Dade water and sewer. Is the village also paying that bill, or are the business owners paying it? Who is actually paying for accepting the surge?

I'm not sure because that's a Miami-Dade water and sewer issue, and we don't have control over that billing portion. And I've never seen, obviously, one of the businesses' water bill. What they're charged for from the village as a non-advalorum tax is for the maintenance that includes two pump-outs. And there is a fee schedule. There was a study done, and I forgot the year. I apologize. And we're on a 10-year plan, but that's another study we'll be updating because obviously it was done before COVID, again, all of our studies. And so they are a little bit behind based on current costs. And the projections, you know, at the time were fine if COVID didn't happen. So that's going to be updated as well in this coming fiscal year.

But you wouldn't know if the village was paying Miami-Dade Water and Sewer a sewerage bill.

Correct. There's no water function for the village as far as we know. Ah, that's how you get out of it. Right? We don't have any water lines here except for this building. and i guess but there's a water line into each one of those businesses and they will in turn have a water meter correct they should be paying their own surge bill that's interesting so it's something that we're still researching as to why the village accepted that responsibility and how we can work with the county to possibly do an mou to transfer that like we have been conveying all the other systems in the future like for north miami but also southeastern shore is coming the intent is to convey the system once it's completed So we are working on that, rest assured, and that will be coming before you once we figure out, as Mr. Scott has said, the true path that we need to take.

Right, including things like, Mayor and Council, like who really should maintain the fire departments. And Rhino's us, but it belongs to Miami-Dade County. So those are the kind of things that are happening. What are we maintaining at the fire department? They're pumps.

Because they're on 2nd Avenue as part of the system, yes.

It sounds like a discussion of possible action coming soon to a council near us. Yes, definitely. Ding, ding, ding, ding.

Some angry emails when people get a two-year bill.

Well, you know, the city got sold a bill of goods. The grinder pumps are cheaper to put in because you don't have to bury them. You don't have to bury the lines. And so it looks wonderful in the beginning, but we were never really told how fragile they are. I mean, most, you know, it We sure got to quit paying for it or else get out of it.

And that's the course of what we're trying to correct. Obviously, we've been trying to fix some of the past items that have been inherited and to find a path that alleviates some of those cost burdens.

I feel like this council is playing musical chairs with the last chair all the time.

I just want to add another aspect of our responsibility and that is we handle compliance for all these pumps so we are supposed to submit to the county run times which says that these pumps are running so whenever these pumps go down we are given the compliance notices. So eventually the village can also get fined for not complying. So that's another part of it that is pretty heavy for us. So that just had a little more weight to our responsibility and our need to look at it more carefully. Wow.

And if you recall, yesterday the auditors had said something about Java. I just want to say I'm a big fan of the facilities maintenance. I think that's a great idea.

People don't understand hiring or contracting out for stuff is obviously a big headache. Having the ability have in-house staff that can tackle little projects and repairs and it is you know you want to expand that you got my support projects from

We actually moved several projects from Angie's budget because we're going to pitch those that they were in capital. We've cut those costs in more than a half by pitching them.

I think the more we can do in-house, the better. It's awesome. So I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you.

good evening everyone so the roles and functions of the police department the Miami Shores Police Department is committed to delivering effective accountable and community focused public safety services that align with the strategic priorities of our village while maintaining our accreditation standing our mission is to build trust foster meaningful community partnerships and and maintain public order through fair and consistent law enforcement. We prioritize transparency, professionalism, and collaboration to ensure a high return on investment in public safety by reducing crime and enhancing quality of life for all residents. The department remains a vital pillar in sustaining the health, vibrancy, and resilience of community, and I'll add that we strive to be there every day for our residents and our business owners. One of the things I'd like to highlight is that we did in fact make significant reductions in a lot of our categories and reduced a lot of the areas for our expenditures by $54,000. Some of the significant changes on the increases are some virtual reality training, tasers, Axon body cameras, new versions. You know, the virtual reality training allows us to keep our officers in-house for some of the training. We're doing a very long overdue dispatch remodel, and the roof replacement is in progress as well. And we, as like all the other departments, have an increase in health insurance as well.

A question with the body cams with Axiom. We're doing new cars. Is it bundled that the car and body cam are this contract with Axiom?

So they are not. The car dash cams are on a separate contract as the body cams and the tasers.

What's your opinion? If the officers have a body camera and this is a small department, are the dash cams as important or, I mean, is this bundled together? I mean, we're doing new cars and it might be a cost savings if we don't do the dash cams for the cars.

So it's as important as the first incident that happens where the dash cam may have caught something that becomes significant. So could we do without them? We certainly could. There are departments that don't have them. Are they an added benefit to capture something that may help us with an investigation, help us with a complaint? They are.

There's a cost associated with it.

There is a cost, and there will be a cost savings if we don't do them with the new cores moving forward. But we would still have to, well, unless we eliminated the program entirely, we would still have to maintain the ones that are already there. Right.

But it's per vehicle, though, isn't it?

It is per vehicle, yes.

All right. I mean, before September, if you could AB that, what it would be? Because the fleet is being switched out and then just say.

Absolutely. I can tell you what the per car reduction would be. Thank you. Thank you.

Through the Chair, when it comes to that kind of stuff, adding another camera is that I understand the cost of the hardware, but the more significant cost, I think, in the long term is the data management, right, dealing with all the – Software data management storage, yes. Is – and how is the data – is that like a bundle for like X amount of cameras, or is it by how much data? How is that charged?

No, the data is unlimited, but it is per camera, so to speak.

So adding another camera does increase the cost of whatever the data costs are? Yes. Not just the hardware of adding another camera? Yes, correct. Gotcha.

Thank you. Chief, one question, and this really isn't mine, but this is from many, several residents. How does our village police force compare to other cities here in metropolitan Dade County? relative to the number of higher officers in the force for the size of the force. The complaint has been that we are not mine, but I'm asking a question for residents that have asked me that. I don't really know what those numbers are, but the complaint was that we have more sergeants and more lieutenants and et cetera for the size of force compared to the average police force. Can you address that, please?

Yes. So we don't have lieutenants. That position doesn't exist. The sergeants that we have, I will tell you that we could probably use a couple of more because on some of the shifts we actually have acting supervisors as opposed to sergeants. It's always better to have actual sergeants, people that are trained, that are designated officially as supervisors. And for the command staff, I will tell you that we are right where we should be there are departments that are smaller than us that have equal or more and of course you're always going to find a department that maybe has less but you have to remember that when you don't have the right amount of people it becomes an overload of work and everything might not get done as efficiently as it could my with the amount of staff we have now I have a good comfort level that we're with the supervisory staff where we should be

That gives me an answer. Thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Thank you.

good evening everybody council here my spare first Sabalinsky mr. manager good evening thank you for everything and Let me start with the information technology department. We do support everything related to technology. Cyber security, the application that we have, disaster recovery.

We are currently in a phase of trying to

reorganize the technology that we have, the village has. Currently we're still moving some of the technology to cloud to be able to provide disaster recovery capabilities. We have also doing hardware refresh across the world and everything, security cameras, On the cybersecurity side, we have software that has to be replaced. We have to upgrade systems. And let me just move to the next slide. Oh, there you go. just trying to keep it short. I can extend, but I don't want to go and extend too much. The current IT budget, we were able to find some items that we can push down to other years and some other ones that we, honestly, we cannot work on them right now because we need more staff and more monies at the end of the day. So we just plan on those to push them down to doing positive in the next years. That's why you see the decrease. There is also some other negotiations that have happened on the back end. We are constantly fighting the department against the cost increase on technology. It's not easy. We have a few of the vendors that we get posed for critical system that we have that have increased prices by 25% or more, or they do like a 15% increase, but they're doing it three times during the year. One of those examples that we have right now is the phone system. So it's been really hard to keep up with that, but we've been able to find or negotiate some of these costs and to just try to keep it down. I'm going to try to keep it short. Any questions?

So one of the questions or one of the sections was emergency communication in the budget. And I am wondering why are what your opinion is as far as the Starlink system. Those antennas are like, they were, I don't know what it is today, they were $105. And that allows your cell phone to access that with an emergency and a loss of the normal phone communications. And if you put one at the police station and one here, at the school and wherever you felt they needed to be but i mean for a thousand dollars you can put ten of them in and your phone becomes you can receive calls give calls where does that fit into your uh but the starling system not for the phone to communicate to starling it has to be one of the latest models of the phone not you can connect to the wi-fi

Well, they're Wi-Fi calls. Yes. And we're getting, for this year, we have a Starlink system being ordered right now.

You do?

Yes, and it's for testing purposes. Because what happened with Starlink is that you have different models. We are evaluating. We got a call for the police department for the cars to install Starlink systems on them, and the price of those devices is different. You have an enhanced version, and the whole package is about, $2700 I think it is 900 and close to $1,000 is just a package that you get but there is a caveat on the other isn't a small footprint of that the plan for the police department will be a two terabyte unlimited plan and they don't care about the overage any of the other plans is two terabytes, and they cut you off at two terabytes, and the price per gigabyte is substantial, and you go on that rather quickly. That's one of the things that we are evaluating to use as a backup on the internet connections,

I have one of those on my boat, and you can watch movies, make phone local, they appear to be local phone calls, back and forth. Yes. It's been a great system, and I think, well, I have the, as you said, the mobile.

They give you three, because they have the Enhance, that's the one that gives you speeds up to or more than a gigabit speed download and upload. The next one, that's the one that we're getting right now for testing purposes, is the Pro something. I forgot the name of that one. Just bear with me. But that one is about 400 megabits per second. I'm too technical on that. But the speed on those, depending on what device you get, it increases.

They've just gone to 5G now.

Yes, that's another thing. But yes, we're getting one here right now. That is, it comes with a mounting bracket and also has the box to keep it, to have it mobile. We want to test it out and make sure it works and see how it goes. Any other questions?

Thank you, yes Thank you Because of this today Mr. Mayor, Mr. Chair, as Mike comes forward, there's one presentation that's not in this, but we're making some copies so we can do it. I apologize. Human resources.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, Vice Mayor, Mr. Manager, colleagues, my name is Mike Ortak, your Code of Compliance Manager, and everybody's favorite department. Our roles and functions, the Code Compliance Department is tasked with code compliance and enforcement, investigate and resolve code and ordinance violations through education, voluntary compliance, and customer service, public education and communication, promoting voluntary compliance and strong community relationships, program oversight, property maintenance program, nuisance abatement, sign and zoning compliance, floodplain management, and parking compliance. interdepartmental collaboration working with public works police finance the building department and planning a zoning to support community-wide improvements and maintain the villages community rating system and floodplain management standards Thank you. So there has been a 22% increase, and that's due to a rate study, COLA increase, overtime, travel expenses, office supplies, books, publications, subscriptions, and membership. operating expenditures have been offsetted by rises in postage training and consultant support, and our total budget grew by 27.8% overall, driven by personnel-related increases, primarily due to software, which is the backbone of our system. Thank you.

Mike, one question. Yes, sir. which I'm sure you've been asked many times. And so a resident gets a complaint on their roof that the roof is dirty and you give them a notice of that. And then the resident comes out and says, well, what about that guy's roof and what about this guy's roof? So how does that – how is that – initiated in the first place in other words the initial person that you or a person with you would go to I'm just doing this for the public sure so what what how do you pick that first house as opposed to several others that might be in thank you for the question possible so so code compliance enforcement

So an officer goes out and he sees a dirty roof. What he or she should do is to site every dirty roof in the area in a perfect world. When you have staff restraints, which we had previously, we have been on a reactive mode of enforcement, just going basically after complaints. And to tell you, those complaints have risen over the years in my office. My career here has a lot. And so we recently hired an amazing officer. And now we can split the shores like we used to do. And so now we're doing enforcement like we were trained to do. And that is to cite every violation. If it's an overgrown property, then we get all the overgrown properties in the area. I hate to use the term sweeps, but we do that to enforce in a more uniform way. To answer your question.

Thank you. You're welcome, sir. Mike, year over year, how many citations did you compare, like 2026 to 25?

actually from 20 to 25 it they they've they've decreased due to the fact that we just had one officer but they have increased now with our new officer since the new office oh yes yes and then how many the the ones the chronic one or the ones the repeat offender or do we have a lot on the books or how are we is this on the council the manager

But some of the properties, just even in my neighborhood, they're just – I know that they get fined or there's a citation there, but it just is a running parking meter essentially.

Yes, sir. Repeat offender, as you mentioned. The Shores has changed over the years, and I say that by the owners, by the new property owners that are mostly LLCs. And those are the more chronic violators. And we find that illegal construction has been the most common violation lately.

And that new officer works over the weekend? No. No? But we're working on that. Okay.

Yeah. We want to get him fully trained, which I'm going to say he's almost there, so we can have full coverage Monday through Sunday like we used to.

Okay.

Thank you.

You're welcome, sir.

Thank you, Mike.

Oh, wait. Hang on. Hang on, Mike. I think a couple key things in terms of people's understanding of what it is that you do and the scope of what you do. You Maybe that's changed with more staff, but I don't think it has. You're basically responding to complaints. Yes, sir. You don't have the time to go and actually just be doing patrols and out. I'm asking because this is a concern of residents of enforcing uniformly. People feel like, oh, I'm getting picked on or this one's getting picked on. Sure. You don't have time to pick on anybody. You're just responding to complaints, and it's a good day if you can get to all those complaints. So I think people need to be aware of that. You don't have time to just be out looking to harass people or pick on them individually or whatever. Now, if you're going to a complaint and you see something on the way or next door or another thing going on, of course you're going to do what you have to do also. But we would love to apply uniformly all over the village, and hopefully we'll get there someday, but that's the reality of what it is that you're doing. The other thing, too, I'm sure my colleagues get this also, I know I do, is... How come we're letting these houses just sit and deteriorating? Why don't we do something about it? People need to understand that these people are not committing felonies by letting their house deteriorate. It's not a criminal thing. We're limited in what we could do. We could apply fines. And as the mayor says, you can find some houses that have a giant stack just building up on their door there. That's the limit of what we can do. The process runs its course. Eventually, you know, the system, you know, it'll never work as fast as we would all like. It's just another limitation on you. You're doing a great job. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Walensky. I actually, I wouldn't mind having ride-alongs to show, you know, like police have ride-alongs. We have two officers, and yet we're still reactive enforcement when when I when I first started here was 22 years ago the shores was a very different place it was we had time to practically go and and be that officer where I can go and cite just rooftops just dirty inoperable vehicles I The illegal construction wasn't as rampant as it is now. I rarely have a chance to go out on the road. And when I do, you mentioned me going to do an inspection and then see violations on the way. I have to drive with blinders on these days. And I write down what I saw. And I just told my officers, here, go do that. Go do that. We would love to have that luxury of choosing an area and saying, OK, we're going to do complete enforcement by the book, everything, all at once. And we can't do that because we're just getting swamped with complaints. And it's unfortunate, but there's a lot of neighbor conflict. So I pride myself in conversations. So when I do that, I somehow mend the gap. And I explain why I'm there, why code is there, and why the village looks like it does. And it's actually a collaboration, not just of myself. It's my colleagues present before you. It's a job. We're not that small. We're not that small. Just come ride with us.

Okay. I might do that, actually. I think you made a fantastic point, though, because I could just tell you that I get a lot of people, e-mails reaching out to me with situations where I'm like, well, you know, did you talk to the neighbor? And a lot of times the answer is no. And I feel like not just code enforcement but also the police department, Sometimes residents want to use you guys as a mediator between a neighbor when a simple conversation sometimes would suffice.

We can tell when it becomes a tit-for-tat. Again, we try to man the gap. We do have cameras now. thank you mr. manager for that because a lot of oftentimes unfortunately when they complain about our department it's more of a one-sided conversation and when I understand what the the complaint was about it's it's apples and oranges it never happened that way so now with the cameras it keeps everyone honest it helps me I I'd rather not approach someone with a camera because I know people don't like to be in a camera I get it you know but in my line of work it almost seems like yeah I get it nobody likes the code officer on their doorstep it's rough but what I try to do is is leave it with an you know I want to say I want to change the definition of what quote what people think code is that that's that's that's my that's my target

You're not here to pick on people. You're here to help us maintain the beautiful village we have.

I'm here long enough on a daily basis, so it's really almost like my home. And I've made a lot of friends. I've been to many funerals, unfortunately. But I also make friends, believe it or not.

Mike, one more question. Do you feel that the board backs you up? Do you feel that because, again, it's our responsibility to put those people on it. Are they

are they doing what needs to be done great question we have a great board we've had we have mostly veteran board members but we also have new members as well and we thank them for volunteering They do back us up. Well, it's the code. We enforce the code and they have to back us up because they represent the ordinances. Unfortunately, and I hate to say this on the diets, but a lot of folks that come here to mitigate fines and to talk about their violations, their story is not accurate. It's not accurate. And unfortunately, the board, they listen. And I know the actual story because I was there. And then when they're up here and they come and they They put on a good show, sir, and they do. And a lot of times these folks, they're up here while the violation existed for years, and they come up with a story. I hate to say it like that. And, yeah, the liens are astronomical, but they walk out of here with a slap on the wrist after all the work that we did, after the violations that the neighbors have to put up with. you know but the board is just here to listen to them and when they come you know when they listen to a story like you know they were on the Titanic you know what I mean and they make an offer of I don't know $100 with a lien of over $100,000 we're not here to make money that's not what we do we're here to enforce the code But again, the board just listens to the story, and it's up to seven board members to come up with a vote. And unfortunately, again, I say that they walk out of here with a slap on the wrist. Before, it wasn't like that. Before, somehow, people didn't want to come to the board because they knew that we had a board that was pretty strong. And it's not that they wanted to... I don't know, to punish the person, but it's almost like, hey, if we speed, you know, we're going to get a $200 ticket. I don't know, it's like, I don't get speeding tickets. But it's almost like the, what's that saying? The punishment doesn't fit the crime? So, but we have a good crew. We have a great staff. I have a lot of faith in our leadership. It's a great town. And, you know, like I said, it's almost my second home. And I'm here to defend it.

Well, I wanted to hear that so that our council could hear it. It's imperative that we perhaps question these applicants more when the vacancies come up there on that particular board. because I've heard that I've been to some of those meetings I'm sure you all have too and the reductions I think are read sometimes are ridiculous I mean it was a I remember one house it was a hundred and twenty thousand and fines and they took twenty you know it's a All right, whatever. Thank you very much.

Mike, I do have one more question. With that said, for budgetary reasons or just even citations and work for employees, is we have software that tracks all this, and just like you have the cases closed and then the reduction, do you have a report you can run with that, or we're not there yet, or we don't have that?

We're working right now with our software. There are some changes and some updates, and there's a few – There's a few things that we need to look at, but we have reports that we can give you.

That would be good for all of us. I mean, any council, new council coming in is just how many houses. And you said if they're businesses and they're LLCs and they've got liens on them or the ones where they do go to code, I mean, it would be a good thing for moving forward, especially... Again, I'll lean into HJR 203. If it passes, this is another thing where we should be shored up in this budgetary thing to track what the code compliance dollars are. And we should be able to have it on a sheet and all the residents should be able to see it. We should ask the clerk for it or whatever to know. Who's in compliance and who isn't? And I'm more carrot than I am stick, but it also, you just can't come in here and then do that because it's just people's property value. I have one of the LLCs in my neighborhood and I think you've cut the lawn a couple times and then you bill them, right?

yes yeah well yeah and after five consecutive visits from Public Works they're on a continuous basis we don't even have to go inspect anymore Public Works automatically goes out there and the only way that we stop that you know maintaining their property is that they give us a letter that they're gonna they're gonna resume maintenance on but each one of those is billed yes sir yeah it's a special assessment me yeah go ahead does the board have the ability to reduce

those fees also? No. Okay, so if you actually do work and you send a bill for that, that's outside of the board's... That's outside, yes, sir.

And I did want to mention also that you have homes that sit for years... Running by the running fine and yeah to the public that looked bad or whatever and then here comes an LLC You know which did which did not? Commit the original violation and the board is more lenient with with them because they weren't the original violator But you see but does that money when it is collected go back to Public Works?

For that's the labor that was done or how are we where's the money? I'll find it goes back to the general. Yeah. Okay.

I do want to say this I it says code also has quite a few in-person visitors to village hall and a lot of time is spent at the front counter assisting people thank you thank you thank you very much I had said that I did not

I said I didn't add any personnel to this year's budget, but I want to correct the record because, of course, and I said probably not last year as well, but remember last year we added a code officer. So as you were speaking, I remember that, and that is your initiative. Thank you.

Mr. Amesiyame.

I'll get you. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members, Madam Attorney, Madam Clerk, Mr. Manager. the human resources department, and risk management. I'm gonna elaborate on that in a second. So what we do is we are pretty much involved with everything personnel. And what this does is benefits, compensation, classification, anything that has to do with policy, compliance, labor relations, training, development, and most recent, the entire risk management. I've got to say that in the past years, from what I understand, risk management was not being handled in the HR. You didn't have an HR director or a department that was fully functional. We took that division last year with a fiscal year. And while everybody has an idea of what entails in the HR component, I want you guys to understand the risk management. Because it's not just... injuries of our employees for workers' comp. This entails, when you buy a car, making sure that they are insured. When a car gets involved in an accident, it's reporting the accident and following it all the way through to when it gets serviced. If anyone has any injury in the village, it ends up being part of our response, filing the claim, following up with it. So the risk management component of it is very involved. We have taken the time to review and confirm our assets. We review vehicle schedules. We make sure that all of them are insured, that they actually exist, and so on. So I want you guys to understand the risk management part of it. And it is why the human resources budget is going up a little bit. And I'll tell you why. I have an amazing support HR clerk. She is primarily being trained or has taken ownership of the risk management part of the process. She currently works part-time up to 25 hours. In this budget, I am requesting to maximize the capability of our part-time hours to 29 hours so that we could further provide better service as it pertains to both HR and risk management. In addition to that, part of the reason for the increase in the HR department is that I had to increase the line that had to do with physicals and pre-employment physicals. This year we came across a situation that the collective bargaining agreement included a mandate to have every officer to go through an annual physical. I'm not necessarily saying that that will be the case next year because we are currently in negotiations. So that might completely be not a factor, but I still have to budget for it because we don't necessarily have an agreement yet. We just started negotiations. And yes, I got my chair, but now I need my final cabinets. Behind you is our storage room where we host the majority of our personnel files. They have been here forever, and we have numerous files that are in boxes. That is not the proper way to maintain files, so I am also part of that 48,000 is that I need to buy filing cabinets that Public Works will happily assist if approved. So that's what that is, aside from the insurance component of the increase and the COLA that's incorporated. There wasn't much that the HR department could reduce because everything is personnel related, which we couldn't reduce, like physicals, backgrounds, and stuff. So there was really nothing that we could reduce from that. As far as the risk management budget, As you can see, it's going up. We actually have a contingency in there of 300,000. That's to be determined. So when you guys see this budget again, it may actually be not on the increase, but it might be on the decrease. We just included that amount in there. Following the current market trends, we are expected to get a property insurance, for the property insurance, a decrease. But we're looking for an increase on the general liability automobile and worker's comp. So again, that contingency that's there is to address a real emergency if something were to happen next year. This year we had a situation which, again, we handled, but it's always good to have contingency and risk because you never know what could occur. Whether that amount is going to be $300,000 or less is to be determined, but it's currently in the budget, and that is why it's triggering the change in addition to the insurance anticipated increase. That is it. Any questions?

Thank you.

Thank you.

So that concludes it.

I just, for my two cents, Esmond, would like to say I think this is the best program that you've put on since I've been on the board. And I think it was very explanatory. I think it was very well presented. And I don't think it could have been any better. So thank you.

Well, thank you so much. For those who knew what this was like to do this, this is probably the most hectic one I've ever done. But there is two items that we need to just talk about a little bit. I'M GOING TO TURN IT OVER TO YOU, COUNCILOR. AND ONE IS JUST SOME THINGS THAT WILL GUIDE OUR 2027 BUDGET. THE BIGGEST ITEM, OF COURSE, IS PROFIT AND TAXES. WE WILL BEGIN CONVERSATIONS WITH SENIOR STAFF THROUGHOUT AUGUST BECAUSE WE'LL BE LOOKING AT DIFFERENT SCENARIOS JUST TO GET OURSELVES IN A STATE OF READINESS FOR OCTOBER 1ST OF 2027, IN THE EVENT THAT IT PASSES. But we've been through a lot. I mean, for those of us who have been in government, this one is going to be extremely impactful. But I always say, we do hard. We do difficult. We just can't do impossible. So if it's hard and difficult, we welcome the opportunity to see how best we can . sorry I won't start from the top again so that's it and in addition to that when we have we also this year coming up this fiscal year coming up you have to talk about bonds when we talk about bonds we're talking about the community center we're talking about the golf and country club and also we're talking about the 9900 building what is it that we do with these properties I probably should have titled it bonds and and referendum then the other big item that we have in this fiscal year facing what we know may become a possibility negotiating a FOP contract is going to be is going to be critical in this time so those are the the main highlights of the things coming up that

Bring us together to discuss with with that said and the property tax portion of this residents are asking and The madam attorney might help me with this is what what are we capable as the village to inform? The ballot HJR 203 for are we allowed a one pager? For this one what we just are working on with the 20 the 26-27 budget and then just show if this passes, this is what this budget looks like, are we allowed to do that? Or do we hold a workshop? Do we bring in nonpartisan bodies like the Realtors Group or maybe League of Women Voters just to do a presentation? Are we allowed to do that?

So we're allowed to share general information about the ballot question, the bill, the effects of it for our village. What we can't do is advocate one way or the other. So it just has to be informational purposes only. and that's what the village has done so far in terms of like the newsletter and outreach in that regard just informing residents of what it is as far as the the presentations and such let me let me consider it internally to kind of give you some guidance on the parameters around it because I know our best intentions would be to just make it informative but then I think you'd still kind of run that risk of advocacy depending on who's presenting or who becomes a little more zealous about the issue. So I just think that I'll give you some parameters as to what that might look like if you did want to do something in person, opposed to just some type of communication via mailing or something in that sort. But because we already have a newsletter and we're not extending additional funds that you know, solely for that purpose. It's just incorporating what we already do. It's fine. So to go and schedule a meeting around it, let me just vet that out a little bit.

But a one-page infographic.

Which is what I believe we've done already.

And I think we should continue to do it until the cows come home.

Right.

Okay.

And then if the other, in that newsletter also, the ones, I think it's going to go, just out there for general public, League of Women Voters, or the real estate PAC that's in Dade County. If we're allowed to put the link on our newsletter, can we do that? let me let me just get clarification because they're kind of residents are coming to us and asking and there's other municipalities that have done things and one of them that's in social media or whatever is Gainesville so it's it's already out there and it's like why aren't you done it you know and this is important most people know and most newspaper articles have been written at it we're not the tip of the spear for municipalities but it's very impactful to us there's just a new publication I think they went to the village north of us but I get weekly requests on this so I just since we're in budget season I think it's it's timely and I hope that all the residents are aware because I do run into residents and some of them do say well it looks good to me so I think we'll see up to the sheriff

That discussion, that applies to like the council speaking officially and using council resources or village resources, but that has no bearing on us as individuals and we can go out and advocate for whatever we want, right? Yeah, and your individual capacity not on behalf of right the village councilman Valenski, but not councilman Valenski I'm speaking on behalf of the village. I'm speaking for myself in my shirt.

No if we're not in our shirt Resident Valenski and just so you all I'm sure I know you all are where our law firm is in the process I will actively fallen suit to challenge the ballot language. And so there is, I guess the plaintiff in that matter is an organization that anyone can join, right? Any resident, if they were to want to be a part of that lawsuit, could do so. And it's something that our firm has done pro bono to actively at least challenge the ballot language. there's resources that our firm also has in that regard to if anyone ever wanted to get educated the chair I got two quick things one I asked for

$2,500 to be put in the Sustainability and Resiliency Committee budget so that we can pay for things like shirts, banners, awareness, etc. We haven't had a budget previous and most of my committee members are paying for those things out of their own pocket because they think it's important and so I've asked that to be put into the budget. As previously discussed as well, we're going to try to roll out a composting initiative pilot program for the village here. I've also asked that we put some dollars into that as well. We are pursuing a grant to see if we were getting more information right now to see if we qualify and whether our criteria applies. Obviously we will pursue that first before spending taxpayer dollars on it. But I think as we've previously discussed, you know, it's an important thing and we want to continue to be on the forefront of a greener tomorrow. And so I've asked for those dollars to be put into the budget as well.

And that sounds like a great idea. Hopefully, by the time we get the next meeting in September, we can nail down some actual numbers and companies.

We will be. We're working on it. So do I have everyone's support for those two items? Yes, you do. Or any questions about those two items from any council members?

I'd like to discuss the budget thing more.

I and whether or not it would be better to just pay for things that are requested rather than assigning a budget because then we might be putting ourselves on a slippery slope well we also decided that if the dollars are not spent from that budget it will return to the general fund so it's not just a are you talking about sustainability or you're talking about I'm talking about all the committees all the committees I'm saying every committee is gonna want a budget I'm just saying, not that I think our committee is better than any other committees, but at the end of the day, we are doing a lot of exciting things right now. As you know, I brought a lot of interesting things to the board here that we're working on, and like I said, Because my committee members are paying out of their pocket for these items, out of the generosity of their heart for our community, I feel like we should allot some dollars. And if we don't spend those dollars, and obviously if they're not things that are to be approved under the scope of what we're trying to do, then those dollars will come back to the general fund. So it's not like they'll just be... out there floating or roll over to the next year per se.

One thing I'd like to see, I'm sorry Jesse go ahead. One thing I'd like to see considered for the budget by all of you before our September meeting, of course, is the school. The school gets money from two areas. It gets money from a capital amount that they're given per year, and it gets money per student from the Department of Education. Now, the village in the past has, the school's only paid $180,000 And it is in their contract that that's supposed to go up 3% every year, which has not occurred. And certainly... That's the law. That's the contract. And it should go up that. But in addition to that, this year, we're also beginning to charge for dump. And if I'm wrong, Esmond, correct me. Sure, sir. But we're going to be charging for dumpster fees. And the police charge that was $75,000 has now been raised significantly. And it's not that I don't think any of those things are correct. It's just doing all of them in one year at this point when they don't have that money set aside. They had 800 and something thousand, 36,000 I think in their capital. improvement budget, but they've already allocated that to buy computers for the kids and to get a closing gate for the front of the school and etc. I would hope that we could maybe ease into that a little slower than a quarter of a million in one in one year but your but I don't disagree with what you're doing as far as your basic idea that you know but that's going to require a change in their budgeting which their budget is already out and a change in how they use the funds that they receive and that's fine that I'm sure that that's the fair thing to do it's just we haven't been doing it and we're doing an awful lot of it at one time.

I just want to say through the chair, I had a conversation already with head of school and the board chair about all of those items, and we're going to be coming to sit down with Esmond to discuss all of that here in the coming week or two. So it's already on my radar as someone who's kind of the liaison over there.

Well, I'll miss that meeting if it's in a week or two, but I'll love to hear what happened.

We will report back, and that's a good point made there.

Okay, that sounds good.

to the chair I just want to thank the manager and the staff for all the hard work that they did and putting on this budget workshop and preparing a proposed budget and we will be adopting our budget in September and I walk in the community to give their input and their opinions on the nature of our budget I would also like to thank the staff

Seems like a good product we have here. I would encourage, as my colleague said, I would encourage residents to dig into this and ask any questions that you might have. I know it's a little intimidating, certainly a lot to digest here, and it's a little complicated. But don't be afraid of it. And I've certainly been taking a lot of notes. And remember, this was just our first meeting, our first look at it. We have much more coming. But I just want to say with this changes to the taxes that I think we should probably assume are coming, whether we want them to or not, I think we need to plan for it. And in light of that, what are the conversations that we're having here? There's municipalities that are close to our scale, that are mostly residential. The discussions they're having right now are whether or not they're going to exist, quite a few of those municipalities. You didn't hear that tonight. What you heard tonight was we're talking about how we're going to do this bond for a new rec facility. Maybe we need to slow down on all these capital improvement projects. That's the kind of discussions you're hearing. think we should be very proud of ourselves not to say that we don't need to scrutinize this and but I just hope everybody appreciates that the just the conversations that are happening here are on a world away from some of the conversations that are happening in other municipalities and my colleagues for getting us here

I agree with you Thank you, I'm Samir if I may again, I'm so I know I say that a lot Was there a cordon? I'm sorry, but I you know, I heard um, I

I heard two councilmen on the end talk about this, about the budget. I really, really mean it when I say if there are residents who are looking at this budget and have ideas or don't have certain understanding or have something to share with us that we don't have, set up some time. Come to my office. I welcome each and every resident to come to my office. As I said before, we're... Be careful. Be careful how much you wish for it. bring, remember, it has to be gluten-free donuts, okay? But I welcome all, because I think that's, I mean, the conversation, the dialogue has to go on. I'd rather deal with some real hard questions and conversations and be able to answer them or to adjust or to amend rather than to hear the rumors that are out there and I just want to bring something else up to you that I think effective January 1st there will be legislation that asks us to post names and salaries and everything out there and we welcome those opportunities too because we're in government and we have to be transparent

Yeah, other municipalities do it. I mean, I think if the residents were following when we did the compensation and classification study, it's there. Yes. So in any municipality, it's not going to have the employee's name on it. It'll just have what the title is and how many positions we have and how many we filled or how many are empty. I think there's a misnomer that they want to know. Employee X is what's that? It's just categories anyway when we do this. And it's there. It's in our public record right now for if somebody requests it. And moving forward with back to what's before us. This exercise of doing the proposed 2027, but it's also we're running a shadow one that we, if the vote goes through, it takes place on January 1st, which affects this budget. So it's not that we didn't go through, yeah, I think.

Not January 1st. Isn't it? No, no. The tax year begins January 1st, but it's not going to affect us until October 1st of 2020.

The law will go into effect. They're putting the law into effect this year. But my point to bring that up was originally it was going to be... It was going to be over five years and they changed the language so that that love they voters vote for it It goes effect January 1st 2027. That's my point to it Right, it's clear 20, right That's I mean, but that's why we prep this budget, but it's it's also the exercise that was done with the 10% it's it's under the even though the county said our our appraisal went up we were also telling staff this is coming it's that didn't say hey do this budget and get a balanced budget it was like the exercise is what does this look like if we have to cut so and if it does go through that's what the exercise is going to be even harder so and then the following year even harder than that yeah that's what's coming Well, for some of us, we won't be here. All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Move to adjourn. Second. All in favor, aye. Thank you.