City Council - public_hearing

Oh, 5 o'clock. I'm late. Sorry everyone.

Good evening. Welcome to this special meeting of the municipal council of Jacksonville Beach. For our first budgetary audience, I declare the session open. Ms. La Greffière, the ball is nominal.

Councilor Golding. Present. Councilor Horn. Councilor Johnson.

Present.

Councilor Sutton.

Present.

Councilor Wagner.

Present.

Councilor Waters.

Present.

Mayor Hoffman. Present. Merci. Nous commencerons par une présentation de notre directrice financière et de son équipe, puis nous ouvrirons l'audience publique. Notons pour le compte-rendu que le conseiller Orr nous a rejoint.

Bonsoir, Monsieur le maire et chers conseillers. Ashley Gossett, directrice. Voici la première des deux audiences publiques requises pour adopter notre taux de millième et notre budget. The proposed MIEM rate and the provisional budget submitted to your examination are the result of several months of hard work from the city staff and the council. I would like to take a few minutes to review some key points of the budgetary workshops. First of all, our budgetary calendar. I remind you that our process begins in January when we report our treasury flows with the results of the previous year.

Then in the spring, we present our budget projects to the Council on the basis of our internal discussions to ensure that we are all in phase.

In July, we publish our proposed budget and launch our budget workshops. The strong points of our budget are that there is no change in the thousandth rate. It is 3.5%. Our total budget for all funds in 2027 is 253 million dollars. Le budget de notre fonds général est de 35,4 millions de dollars et la Ville maintient son statut sans dette. Ce graphique budgétaire global que nous appelons Tous Fonds 2 montre que nous sommes 2% au-dessus de l'année en cours. Cela permet à la Ville de continuer à fournir les services que nos citoyens et nos clients attendent. I would like to point out that electricity costs represent 27% of the global budget, or $68 million. And for our expenses per fund, you can see that the electric fund represents 41% of our total budget. This graph represents the distribution between all the other funds. Comme je l'ai dit, nous maintenons notre taux de millième de l'année en cours à 3,57. Ce sera la dixième année que nous maintenons ce taux bien en dessous de la moyenne nationale de 4,43. Voici mon graphique préféré. L'endroit où vont nos impôts fonciers. Je tiens à souligner que la valeur évaluée de la maison individuelle médiane à Jacksonville Beach est de 341,00 dollars. This means that this house will pay around $5,500 in taxes next year, of which $166 will go back to Jacksonville Beach. This actually comes back to $3.19 per day or $97 per month. Thus, for our general fund, it is $7.3 million more than the current year's budget and $57.4 million of our revenues come from financial taxes. Our expenses in the general fund, as you can see, are largely dictated by public safety. Together, the police and firefighters represent 53% of all expenses. This graph shows the history of 10 years of general fund expenses per department. I would like to point out that exercise 2018 to 2025 are real figures and that 2026 and 2027 are budgeted figures. Il y a beaucoup de facteurs ces dix dernières années que je souhaite souligner pour les comparaisons. D'abord, nous avons externalisé nos services d'incendie en 2019.

C'est pourquoi vous voyez cette baisse suivie d'une augmentation progressive.

Nous avons modifié notre plan pour la police et ajouté quatre agences supplémentaires. Nous avons également adopté le plan directeur des parcs et repris les services de sauvetage les dimanches et jours fériés. Je terminerai donc avec ce graphique. Je pense qu'il est important de noter la comparaison entre les revenus des taxes foncières et nos services de sécurité public. Surtout si l'on regarde les premières années après la récession, nos revenus fonciers ne couvraient même pas la sécurité publique. Et ces dernières années, vous pouvez voir que nous dépendons du retour du district de Taïf de Southend. We represent 15%, or $1 million per year, and we ended up counting on it in the general fund. We have here the managers of all services, as well as our budget team, and we will be happy to answer all your questions on the budget. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Gossy. We will proceed with the opening of the public hearing. I have not received any request for comment. Does anyone in the audience wish to express themselves for or against the budget? Very well, no one is manifesting, we are going to... In fact, I should have probably read my statement first. Please be patient. The first point to discuss is the proposed thousandth rate. The budget for the city of Jacksonville Beach was prepared with a rate of 3.547 thousandths. The adjusted rate is 3.979 thousandths. The proposed thousandth rate of 3.947 thousandths is 6.2%. Higher than the adjusted rate? The second point to discuss is the provisional operating budget. The provisional operating budget for exercise 2026 to 2027 is 253,072,077,483. Are there any comments from the public? In the absence of comments, the public audience is closed. May I have the first motion? I propose the adoption of the tax rate proposed by 3,047 for exercise 2026-2027.

Support. We have a motion and a support. Are there any discussions? Mr. Wawers.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I am delighted with your return. I hope you are well. Director Gossitt, thank you for your hard work.

We are really lucky to have you at the service of our community.

I just had two questions. This one just came to mind. Speaking of firefighters, because it was before I arrived at the council, but I knew some of them. Did you mean that the savings made were only temporary and that our costs came back to where they were before we had control over them?

I don't know if I would put it that way. We made a savings of about $1 million a year, according to the externalization. But the contract contains a CPI indexer, which explains the increase you see from year to year. However, if we had not externalized the fire service, we would have undergone the same inflationary and wage pressures that would have increased costs.

Thank you for clarifying this. And please excuse me for not understanding this earlier, but since our revenues have increased by 7%, or about 25 million dollars, and we still spend about 78 million more than what we perceive, does this come from a specific reserve fund?

The budget proposed for 2027 provides for the use of about $7 million of reserves from several funds. This does not come from a single source, but the General Fund is prepared as a balanced budget, which means that our revenues equal our expenses. The use of the reserves comes largely from our business funds, the electricity fund and the water and sanitation fund, because we had planned projects for which we had saved the previous years and that we plan to carry out in 2026. I would add that we have projects for 2026 that will be...

Votre expertise est inégalée. Merci infiniment.

D'autres questions ou commentaires du Conseil? Madame la Secrétaire, faites-le.

Conseiller Golding. Conseiller Horn. Conseiller Johnson. Conseiller Sutton. Conseiller Wagner. Conseiller Waters. Mayor Hoffman. La motion est adoptée. Deuxième point.

Je propose l'adoption du budget de fonctionnement provisoire pour l'exercice 2026-2027 à hauteur de 253, 753, 714, 80, 80. Just a quick word for all the service managers in the audience, I would like to thank you for your budgetary responsibility and for maintaining our city without debt. I know that this causes a lot of pressure and for my part, I appreciate your hard work throughout these years.

Thank you, Emma. Share this opinion. Thank you, Ashley, to your team and to all the service leaders for your leadership and your thoughtful and tireless work on this budget. I know that it's not just a few auditions and that what we're seeing is only the emerging part of the iceberg, especially with Amendment 3 taking shape. J'apprécie vraiment la diligence de chacun, y compris de mes collègues ici présents, pour leur participation active à ce processus en posant des questions, mais aussi en comprenant qu'il y a beaucoup plus de travail en coulisses pour gérer une ville que ce que nous voyons aujourd'hui. J'espère donc que les choses avanceront et que nous pourrons continuer à travailler de cette manière. Even if we had a rise following a reduction in the rate of imposition, I think that before that, we had spent several years without increasing this rate. I therefore think that we have proven a great budgetary responsibility as a city, and this is due to the work of the people in this room and those who were there before you, to be honest. Thank you for that.

M. Wagner.

Of course, I associate myself with his comments. You have done a great job and we really appreciate it. The comments I would like to share are a little different.

It's in a slightly different context, but one of the things I want to make sure I do in the future, especially by looking at the favorite page of our financial director, isn't it?

And in the context. where we could have a change in the tax rate, whether this year, next year, or the one after, something will end up happening. I would also say that in my opinion, there is probably a fairly solid point of view among the people I spoke to in our community, according to which the distribution of the way we spend our tax rates does not correspond to what they expect, is not it? And it's not from Earthworks. It's the process, and we have to pay what we have to pay to the county, to the city.

But I really think

that we must begin to change or start a dialogue with the Lille. Especially in view of the imbalance and at least concerning the programs we benefit from. To give an example, last night, all the programs for SANS ABRIS stopped. There are a lot of programs for which we send funds from the other side of this river without any return. And I challenge us here, not there, here. I think we have to start changing our expectations and placing the bar higher. in the coming years, especially in the face of budgetary pressures, to ensure that we spend our money well. I know, by the way, what I just said, there is only one limitation. I know it's a bit ambitious, but I really think that we must at least start the dialogues and make it known that we are not satisfied with the relationship between what we pay. Voilà, merci. Je m'arrête là.

Merci, Monsieur Wagner. D'autres questions ou commentaires? Madame la Secrétaire, faites la paix. Conseiller Horn. Conseiller Janssen. Conseiller Sutton. Conseiller Wagner. Conseiller Wowers. Conseiller Golding. Mère Hochmann. La motion est adoptée. Nous aurons notre seconde réunion, notre seconde approbation le 21 septembre.

21 septembre. À 17h30. À 17h30. Merci.

Seeing that there are no other points in the order of the day, may I have a motion to raise the session?

I propose to raise the session.