Village Council - workshop

Okay.

Let's get started for the workshop.

The workshop's called to order at 5.30 p.m. Moment of meditation followed by a prayer. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please have roll call, please.

Mayor Nickerson. I'm here. Also present for the record, Janice Jacoby, Village Clerk, David Roseman, Village Manager, Harry Tubbofield, CFO, and Police Chief Mendez. Thank you very much. The attorney's running a little late. I'm approving the agenda.

Yeah, the attorney's on his way. CFO Taubenfeld. I'm approving the agenda. Let's go to the agenda items. CFO Taubenfeld, you will come up to the podium, please. Either podium or you can come up and sit at one of the desks. Yeah, you can do it from right there.

Can I sit here? Yeah. Good evening.

Also present for the record, Councilperson Winters.

Thank you.

Good evening. Harry Taubenfeld, Chief Financial Officer for the Village of El Portal. Today we are looking at and going to discuss initially our year-to-date numbers and budget, as well as looking at the forecast or proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year, FY26 and 27. Excuse me. But before we begin with what transpired this year, I think it's important for us to rehash and what transpired back last September when the previous budget was approved. Excuse me. So just to give everybody a little bit of history, prior to these... So initially when we... The way this cycles happens with the Miami-Dade property appraiser, typically in June of the current fiscal year, the village receives a estimate property tax appraisal value of the village. And those numbers are then used to calculate the real estate number that is then used for the budget and helps us to enable to obviously come up with a budget that the council eventually approves. So last year was what I consider an anomaly in all the years that I've been doing this. I've never seen it happen once, but it actually happened three times to the village over the course of the year, where the appraised value of the village was reduced, thereby reducing the actual ad valorem taxes that the village is allowed to budget and then actually ultimately is allowed to collect. So hopefully everybody could stay with me through this. And if there are any questions, I'll go ahead and answer them. So last year when the Village received their proposed millage rate, the proposed millage rate was approximately $412 million. That was the property value rate that was actually used for the approved budget. So please keep that in mind, because that number that was approved, at least the property, the ad valorem number that was approved was overstated and an erroneous number. And I say that because, as discussed previously, the... Are there printouts? There should be printouts. They were left by the piano. IF THEY'RE NOT THERE, YOU CAN ASK THE CLERK. I LEFT THE WHOLE STOCK BY THE PIANO.

I'LL DO IT. KEEP GOING. I'LL TAKE CARE OF IT.

ARE THOSE DONE? YES. OVER HERE, GUYS. SORRY. So the village received an estimated value of $412 million, not to bore everybody with all the accounting details, came up with a calculation of ad valorem rate of $3,378,000. Per Florida statute, the village can only adopt 95% of that, which was $3,202,000. Again, that's off the $412 million value number. Prior to that hearing, we received notification that there was an adjustment to that number, reducing that $411 million value to $390 million, thereby causing a reduction in the ad valarm revenue for the village. That net adjustment, as we'll discuss a little bit later, was $167,000. Each other way. So just to give everybody a reminder, last year, approved budget, $3.2 million of ad valorem real estate taxes that the village was supposed to collect. And with that assumption, the council, with those estimated surplus of approximately $300,000 that we were proposing and which was approved by the council. With that $167,000 adjustment and reduction of ad valorem taxes, that reduced obviously the revenue for the village, thereby also reducing the surplus from a little over $300,000 by $167,000. So in actuality, what should have happened last year at the second budget hearing was an approval of, based on the information at the time, was an approval of, bear with me one second, ad valorem taxes, 95% of $3,042,000 as opposed to the $3,202,000 that was approved. Fast forward to this year, now fast forward to 26-27. Again, we received a notification from the county, I'm sorry, yes, from the county, on the taxable value for the village, and the number that came back to us this year was $379 million. Again, another reduction. I'm sorry, $390 million. My apologies, $390 million. $390 million. I'm sorry, June 1st. A few weeks later, I believe it might have been a month later, in July, we received a final certification from the county. This happens every single year of the prior year so that they notify us what the actual final taxable value was for the village. And that number... final taxable value was 379 million. So to recap, we started last year assuming a $412 million taxable value. It was reduced two times, netting it down to 379 million. When you factor in the third reduction, Again, and this happened, and I'll explain in a second, which is I'll talk the numbers. That third reduction was an additional $87,000 of lost ad valorem revenue for the village. So again, going on that scenario before, again, this is not something that we know ahead of time. This is something that happens afterwards. I'm sure most residents know here, as a property owner, residents have the ability to go in front of a value, it's called the Value Adjustment Board, and appeal their property value. That was obviously done here at the Village, which caused that $11 million reduction from when we were notified last September of the reduction from 379, I get confused all the time, of the first reduction and now the second reduction, we were notified when they sent us the final certification from the prior year. So just to recap, and then outside of that reduction, the village initiated the first reduction of the millage rate. in many years from 8.3 to 8.2. That also reduced ad valorem of $41,000, which was obviously included already in the, I'm sorry, in the approved budget. But again, I just wanted to give everybody understanding that there was anywhere between a $250,000, at a minimum, a $250,000 reduction of ad valorem revenue associated with real estate property reduction On top of that, there was a $41,000 reduction of the lowering of the millage rate. But the point that I guess I want to make is going back to the original approved budget, and then I guess the reason why I'm pointing this out is because obviously everybody wants to know where we are as of today. The approved budget last year was a budget of $3.2 million of ad valorem. The final number was 2.954, which is roughly a $250,000 reduction. If you factor in the roughly $300,000 surplus that was approved, you're looking at realistically everything else remaining equal. We should have ended up with roughly a $50,000 surplus for the current year. I know it's a lot to digest. Any questions from the council?

No questions. OK, we'll do public comment at the end.

Got it. So now I want to point to the budget. Actually, the document that was presented in front of you, which encompasses the year to date numbers, as well as a proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year. I guess if we could start, if we go to, I guess, page four, which actually was page two on the bottom, which so it's budget summary uh... that gives us the summary of what's presented you for the upcoming fiscal year details behind it discuss obviously just want to give everybody general overview as where we stand uh... this year compared to last year i'm sorry i'm sorry summary basis and then let you know about last year uh... so what you see here is initially the initial approved uh... millage rate from 8.2 to 8.1. We factored in the estimated taxable value of $379 million this year, and through our calculation, less than 5%, you see the $3,074,000 number there for Advilarum. So, again, not to just throw you off-tangents, just to give you a general idea as to where we are year over year, AGAIN, $2,954,000 LAST YEAR IN ACTUALITY. NOW WE'RE PROPOSING $3,074,000. SO THERE'S ABOUT A ROUGHLY $120,000 INCREASE YEAR OVER YEAR ON THE ADVALERUM, ASSUMING NO REDUCTION IN MILLAGE RATE AND NO REDUCTION IN PROPERTY VALUE FROM NOW UNTIL WHEN WE GET NOTIFIED AGAIN NEXT YEAR, JUNE, JULY OF 27. So again, yeah, so what you just see here, summary is a balanced budget of $4,557,000. You're breaking out the general fund from the other various funds, which we'll discuss later. Just a couple of things to point out. You have the debt service fund, $34,000. That's the annual payment for the note that we still have with Synovus Bank. Sorry, David. Synovus Bank. So you see the money transferred. You look down to the bottom of the general fund. You see transfers out of $37,000. That $37,000 is money that you're transferring out of the general fund to support the parks and recs fund as well as the debt service fund of those two numbers to the $37,000. Yeah, okay. Next thing I guess we'll do is we'll go to the next page which is a detail, I guess a little bit more, I guess we'll call it the meat behind the bones of the document that we just saw as well as the year-to-date numbers for this year. Again, what you're looking at though, unfortunately, at least on the ad valorem number is what the council approved, right? So the council approved the 3,209,000. So in actuality, you see a shortfall. I look at it as a misnomer, right? Because based on everything we just discussed, We actually have a surplus, not a deficit, on that particular line item. Neither here nor there. The point I just want to point out to you is that even with the reduction in the ad valorem of $250,000, WHERE WE EXPECTED A $250,000 SHORTFALL IN REVENUE, WE'RE ONLY PROJECTING TO A $70,000 SHORTFALL IN REVENUE. SO AGAIN, IF I WANT TO TRY TO LOOK AT APPLES TO APPLES, generated a little bit more revenue this year than what we probably would we should have budgeted so which again is a good sign i think for for the uh for the village one thing i just want to note also what was added this year from last year this year's presentation from last year i know that was asked to try to put an estimate for the year-to-date numbers so we could try for the current year numbers so we could try to get a gauge as to where we are this year so that we could also get a better understanding as to where we think we're going to be next year Please understand this is a best-guess estimate. Things could change. Things change overnight, as I just laid out for you in the last 15, 20 minutes. But obviously a lot of effort goes into these numbers, and we try to come up with what we feel is best-case scenario at that particular time. So, again, as you can see here, the revenue number there, the requested number for the ad valorem is based off of the... the estimated taxable value and then just going down the line you'll see there are just different models again just trying to look at what transpired the prior year and try to give us a more accurate picture of what we think may happen the upcoming year and I guess I'll stick to the mantra like I say every single year try to get each individual line item as best as we can but I try to tend to look at things a little bit globally right if we could stay within the numbers great if we can exceed the numbers at least on the revenue side, even better. On the expense side, you want to stay within the department if we have to exceed the line item, but ideally we want to stay within the line item, within the department, and then within totality. I guess before I go ahead and continue, I guess the one thing that I think it's important for people to know also is that if they tally the numbers and they look through the numbers, they see the numbers, we are forecasting a... a surplus this year, sorry, a surplus this year in 2026. The estimated revenues, expected revenues for 2026 are coming in under what we're forecasting for revenue. So we are anticipating a surplus for the village. I will note that that would be the third surplus that the village has had in the last four years. So just take that for whatever that's worth. Again, so you see there, you have the ad valorem numbers, and then we're trying to match up the numbers as best we can. As far as the franchise, a lot of the stuff, some of this revenue comes from the state. Shared revenue comes from the state. Other areas, revenue comes from shared services. The garbage solid waste is the non-ad valorem that gets approved every year. Two big numbers that I point out as well as want to point out here is the judgment of fines and the miscellaneous revenue line item for the police. Those are the two different programs that the police department has. Judgment of fines are funds that the village receives as it relates to judgment of fines and the miscellaneous revenue is the The program that the chief has with his officers, I guess if you need, he can explain to you guys a little bit later. Any questions as it relates to revenue?

I do have one question. Sure. Just on the code enforcement revenue, am I understanding it correctly that we have received much more than we anticipated code enforcement?

Yes, that was one case.

Do we know why?

That happened to be one outstanding... David, do you want to answer that? Sure.

There were a couple of properties that we were able to turn around. They were... unfit for habitation, and the owners decided to sell it. And we were able to recoup some of those proceeds. There have been properties that have been outstanding, you know, collecting fines, and we were able to liquidate that.

Perfect. So those were just like the sale of blighted properties. Exactly. Okay. Got it. Thank you.

Thank you, David. Any other questions regarding revenue?

Okay.

Next few pages we have are the different expenses broken out by the various departments within the Village. The first one we see here is the Village Council. Nothing really stands out here. I guess you see what the projected year-to-date numbers is, and again, we're just projecting for the same numbers for next year. Any questions?

Do we have any idea of how much has been used and by whom out of the council discretionary fund?

Yeah, that would be the mayor, mostly. I'd have to check. I think that I believe, don't quote me on this, but I have to double check, but I believe... Council person Erbom, not Erbom, I'm sorry, Winters might have some expense dollars there as well, but I can get back to you exactly on that.

Okay, thank you so much. I appreciate that info.

Next page is administrative and finance. I guess just moving forward as we get to administrative and finance, as a rule of thumb, when looking at the village staff, assume a 5% increase. The assumption that was at least placed here was a 5% increase for all village staff. And then contracted services, depending on the provider, their increase has been included as well. So starting with the top, the executive salary, that would be the town manager, followed by the assistant, I guess, the title, I'm sorry. What's David's title? I'm sorry, the office administrator, followed by the office administrator. And then all the expenses that fall within the administrative and finance department. I will note, as it relates to the current year-to-date numbers, I guess, yes, we are projecting a surplus. The one number that sticks out is the vacation and sick pay. That was for the payout for the former village manager. When you factor in that, plus the payroll taxes, as well as the FRS benefits, it's pushing probably close to $30,000. So roughly $30,000 of that $41,000 surplus is related to that PTO payout for the former manager. Any questions?

One question on the legal retainer. I couldn't hear you, I'm sorry. One question on the, I'm so sorry. One question on the, it's hard to read and speak, but yes. One question on the legal retainer. I see that number. It looks like it's jumping significantly. Is it? And if so, why?

That was the number that was provided by the attorneys. I'll let him speak on behalf of that.

Okay, please. Thank you.

When I was returned to service with the Village in November of 2020, There was an amount that was being paid, which I accepted. We haven't had the retainer adjusted. It'll now be going on six years that there's been zero increase in it, so we kind of tried to average it over those. I'm not looking to recover for previous years, but everybody else has had some kind of increase, and we haven't had one in November. It'll be six years, so that's the reason.

Okay. And the service isn't changing in any way? It's not like we're getting an additional attorney or anything like that to cover?

Well, the demand has become significantly greater as we've had progressively more different development programs. occurring in the village, you know, it was set when it was mostly single family. There's frankly been a significant increase in the demand for services because of all the things that have been going on over the last three or four years. So more work is required now.

I definitely understand that. So on your end, when you're looking at it, there's just a significant amount of hours that are expended beyond what was usually contemplated in that contract.

Well, that, but also, like I said, it has not budged in almost six years. So while everybody has gotten some kind of cost of living, we haven't seen any of that. So I'm happy that, you know, we've been happy to provide the service, but it's now kind of, you know, a little bit out of balance, frankly.

Okay. Thank you for the supplemental info. I appreciate that.

Let me jump in here real quick, you guys. So everybody understands, so the workshop is not a meeting, right? So let me explain the workshop. So a workshop is exactly what it says is a workshop. So workshops don't have motions, doesn't have votes. Workshops doesn't need a quorum, which is why we started at 5.30. And workshops, we only have to be up here for a workshop. Workshops don't have motion to adjourn. They don't have motions to start the meeting. We could have done a workshop down there at the circular tables or whatever. That's how a workshop takes place. The way that, so what you're looking at here for the budget for a workshop, the way this all comes together is the manager with the department, so it's the manager, but then you have the three charter officers, right? You have the clerk, you have the attorney, and you have the manager. So they themselves will go to the CFO and they themselves will talk about their particular budgets and what they want. But also you have under the manager, you have the different departments, police, public safety, public works, and things like that. They'll go to the manager and say, look, this is what I want my budget to look like. We come here to the workshop, and it's just like the introduction. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's to work it. So any numbers that you see here in the workshop, there's nothing being voted through tonight. The first vote takes place at the first budget hearing. There's no votes tonight. There's nothing official tonight. It's not like that. It's exactly what it is as a workshop. Attorney Gill, if you want to add something.

Thank you, Mayor. And just for clarity, especially, well, for the public, but also for the members of the dais, this is actually a result of a new law. Workshops have been held, but now there's a law that says there has to be one that looks at if it's possible to consider some plan for significant reduction that doesn't affect the level of service. So we're required to hold this. But to emphasize, there are two public hearings. Both public hearings have been noticed. They're taking place on a schedule. And at those public hearings, the public is entitled to be heard on any matter related to the budget. And the council will vote at the first public hearing, to make any changes that they find should be necessary. They can consider anything discussed at this workshop, but the workshop does not reach conclusions. Thursday night, two days from now, is the first public hearing. I believe it's scheduled, Madam Clerk, what time? Thursday night? We'll confirm in a second. At that time, public can be heard. At that time, any motions to amend the temporary, what's called a tentative budget, can be considered. The council will vote then. And then we'll come back at a meeting on the 22nd, which is prior to the regular council meeting, and that's the final budget hearing. And again, any members of the public with any comment of any nature are heard at that time. and the council will look at whatever passes on first reading and consider whether they're satisfied with it or want some further amendment and you know at that time the final budget will be adopted and in both hearings the millage rate which was reduced again at the July meeting that also has to be considered for final approval so those two things happen at the first budget hearing Thursday night, and then they will be finalized on Tuesday. And again, I want to emphasize Any public comment, whatever it is, those are all taken, all listened to. This is really just an exercise that is now a mandatory thing because of a recent statute. And it's just really meant to take a look and inform the council as to what its options will be when you come back in two days.

Yeah, and just so we know, so I put public comment on there. We're gonna have public comment, because I'm an open person, and I'm allowing you guys to do that. I'm always trying to be transparent like that. But in the statute, under section B, toward the end, it says, the municipality shall post the exercise of the budget workshop on the website. And then it says, in electronically accessible form, can be available for the residents on the website. It says the budget workshop can be looked at as a reduction exercise and may occur at least 14 days before the final budget adoption. And then it says public comment on the budget workshop is optional. But I put it in there anyway. Just understand this is a workshop and it's not a hearing or a meeting.

Just moving along, next page we have is planning and zoning. The thought process this year is that we will not be using Plusservia with what's happening with the freeze and leaving everything else the same. Moving on to the Village Clerk. Again, assuming a 5% increase year over year. I do.

I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I just love your progress.

My apologies.

But I do have a question about the planning and zoning section. And it's more of just like a vibe check for the manager as far as Corradino Group's performance and whether or not, just generally what your thoughts are on the Corradino Group.

Will do. They are very qualified, they are well established in this county, and not only this municipality, in others. Of course, I'm at a disadvantage because I started only six months and a little bit, so I haven't had the opportunity to truly get into the meat of their work, particularly as it pertains to that project in the corner, the Hatter Church. and what they intend to do. So there are a number of things that are still being evaluated. They're kind of like standing still. They haven't given us much information as where they are in the process, but I really have nothing but a good working relationship. Okay.

So in your experience, you are generally satisfied with your limited knowledge on it. Exactly. Okay.

And for what it's worth, Vice Mayor, in my interaction with them, I find them, most importantly, very available. Whenever we've had something that we need to do, I find them very accessible and very accessible. responsive to any requests that we've made obviously as the manager says they're certainly highly qualified the question again is level of service and from my interaction with them they're they're accessible when we need them and to me that's that's a very important item as well all right thank you for that

One thing I forgot to point out that I will point out that what you see here is the actual total expense for the coordina group. There is some revenue that is offset by that. We do charge for planning and zoning review. So that's roughly about 25, 30,000. So that comes back to the village off the total expense.

Thank you so much. You have all the answers. I'll notate that.

I try. Thanks. Next department we have is the clerk. Again, assuming a 5% increase year over year. One thing I guess I'll point out as far as what the request is, we're planning for a second election with all the, I guess, with the added i guess with the volume of additional of candidates sorry thanks for the candidates for the upcoming election uh the thought process is that we may need a runoff so we're forecasting expense for a potential runoff if needed and with that comes additional advertisement expense as well so those are the two major things that we're factoring in as it relates to the clerk department The next department we have is Public Affairs. Pretty much keeping the same. Just a note this year, two major events was the July 4th and the grand opening of the park. Just also note that we did receive sponsorship, roughly about $25,000 for the grand opening of the park. So again, that's recorded on the revenue line item. What you see here is just the total actual expense. So the expense is offset by the revenue that was collected. Next line department we have is the police department. Looking at it here, I guess we'll start with the current year. Number does look as higher than what's anticipated. Two things to note, a few things to note when factoring it in. Over time, it was a result of the lighting project that we had here in the village. I think it was earlier this year. There was a lot of man hours that we used when I believe FPL was here. So that was a major cost for that. Off-duty policy, that changes every single year. I guess for some reason we can't get it right, but that's just money in, money out. Just how the off-duty program that the village has with its officers changes. I can leave for the chief to explain that if needed. Vacation and sick pay, some of that is actual, some of it's actual vacation and sick for the officers, but I do believe we had one payout of one officer, which represents, I think, probably almost half of what you see there. Officer that left us said that represents some of that, so that's why the current year number is a little bit high. maintenance vehicles looking at projected $25,000 surplus that's as a result unfortunately of a vehicle accident that we had but again that's office also offset by revenue unfortunately the vehicle was totaled but we did receive insurance proceeds for it to offset that loss that's recorded on the on the revenue side, so you don't see that here. Gasoline, unfortunately, with the new vehicles, and I guess not to get political, but the war, I think obviously everybody knows what the price of gas has gone up, so that's been unforeseen, so that obviously caused that. And then the machinery equipment are the actual vehicles. We had an opportunity to bring in, the plan was initially to bring the vehicles, later in the year, we had an opportunity to bring them in earlier, so we brought them in earlier. But again, that's offset by the revenue that the police department has been bringing in. Just as a reminder, revenue, as discussed previously in multiple meetings, revenue that the police brings in gets allocated to the police department. So what you see here pretty much is money coming in and money coming out. That's pretty much what you see here on the proposed side. As money, I'm sorry, on the proposed side, money may be coming out. We're still waiting on the insurance number from FMIT, so that number is subject to change. Last year, we got lucky. There really wasn't much of an increase. I'm expecting an increase. So that's budgeted for that. So hopefully we'll know that before Thursday. Great. If not, hopefully we'll know that before the second hearing. But what you see here is, I guess, the proposed budget for the police department.

about really quick to the um you don't have to go back and just say this really quickly i'm just going to ask you a question so public affairs it was budgeted 20 000 shows you to date 23 000. how much did i put into that how much i'm sorry how much did i put into that the public affairs how much did i put into that when you say put into it as far as revenue revenue uh 25 000. thank you very much budgeted 20 000 shows you today 23 i put in 25. you can go back to the police

Can I get a clarification on that? You mean that you fundraised 25?

fundraising person. Okay.

And how much was the actual event? Do you know? What was the total cost on it?

So that's all the multiple events. That's like the Santa train.

I'm particularly interested in one. I'm sorry. My question was not specific enough. How much was the 4th of July event? Do you know?

The 4th of July event? The 4th of July. I can get you those numbers, but the 4th of July was minimal. Minimal? Yeah, it was minimal. Okay.

Thank you.

okay moving on I'll take that note Oh public yes yes so public affairs budget 20 year-to-date 23 and I put in 25,000

Moving on to the code department, that factors in the two officers that we have in the code department. Increase in health insurances, last year we had staffed one employee, now we're staffed with two, so it's just we're assuming carrying the cost for two employees instead of one, as it relates to the insurance. Moving on to public works. What you have here are mostly our contracted services. Garbage solid waste is the garbage collection. Engineering is CAP. They're actually working on vulnerability studies, so we're anticipating some expense for that. So that's listed there. And then you just have, I guess, other expenses. The reason why you see the huge reduction in this particular department is just going back to, I guess, where I initially started. I was talking about a $300,000 surplus. It was sitting right there in that contingency line item, $302,000. When you look at this year, the number is zero. So what you're looking at here is truly a balanced budget. Again, with no surplus. That pretty much ends the general fund as it relates to all the various expenses to the general fund. To summarize, if you want, if you go back to the summary page, you'll see that the budget summary, which I guess was page four, I guess a couple of things I wanted to point out, which I guess I mis-highlighted before, was one, we're actually projecting the expenses to be 5% less this year than last year. Again, it's also factoring in the millage rate of 8.1 instead of 8.2. That was a reduction of about $40,000 to $45,000 of ad valorem revenue. And then what you see here is a balanced general fund budget, $4,557,000 of revenue against the $4,557,000 in expenses. The next pages in the presentation that you see here are the art would be the other funds that the village has first one being the building build building is in neutral, right? So pretty much all the revenue coming in, the revenue coming out mirrors it. What you see there is every year the number, it's a hard number to project because it's really hard to know what to expect as far as what's to be built and what those costs are going to be. So we try to get that number as close as possible, but it's a hard number to project. to pinpoint. Moving on to the next one is the transportation fund. This is monies that we strictly funds that we receive from the state of Florida. Occasionally we'll receive money from the county. These are gas tax, these monies are mainly to go to fix roads and streets here at the village. We also allocate part of the public works director's salary to this department as well for the balanced budget. Moving on to the CITT. FUND, WHAT YOU SEE HERE AGAIN IS WHAT WAS BUDGETED FOR THIS YEAR, WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED, WHERE WE ESTIMATE THE NUMBERS TO BE. THE MAJOR DEFICIT REALLY IS THE CHANGE ORDER, WHICH I DON'T THINK ANY, WHICH NONE OF US ANTICIPATED, WHICH WAS ROUGHLY $167,000. MOVING FORWARD TO, I GUESS AT BUDGET TIME LAST YEAR, I SHOULD SAY. The expectation for upcoming this year is to bring in $133,000 and to refill the coffers for the CITT fund. uh... next one uh... fun we have a stormwater fun how much activity as you can see this year uh... it's not expecting much again uh... for next year moving on to the next page we have parks and recs uh... parks and recs the current year is uh... some of the expenses associated with the uh... top like that mostly uh... associated the top of next door those funds are those expenses are covered by the uh... the uh... trust that we have which is through the uh... the um public trust that we had from the uh what agreement with us i'm sorry the uh was my turn of thought the um mayor help me out here for a second the agreement that we had with the that we signed a couple years ago the the barrington uh the barrington brothers the public trust yes what about it what's the name of it the funds i'm sorry the development agreement sorry the development agreement funds are thank you the development agreement funds are are used to cover the green space of the village So those funds are being used to cover the cost of the expenses associated with the parks throughout the village. So that's what you see there. The next page you see is the debt service fund. As I mentioned to you previously, that is the Synovus loan that the village has with Synovus Bank. The balance at the end of September 26 is roughly about 60, somewhere between $65,000 and $68,000 is what the numbers should probably be. So about two years left on the loan.

That concludes my presentation. Any questions? I just wanted to say a couple things really quick. With this being said, with the workshop for the budget, there's a couple things, there's a few things I just wanted to bring up really quickly, and then I'll open it up to the rest of the council. So going into the first budget hearing, and especially going into the second budget hearing, there's a couple things I want to just kind of consider. And the first one I know is gonna be really controversial, but sometimes I think there's certain things that we just at least need to discuss, even if they don't go through in the very end. I think the first thing is, and I've said it already, I've said it to a couple of members on the staff, or a few members on the staff already, I've kind of brought it up to them. I think that we should maybe try to consider going into the next budget year freezing salaries I know that. I know that, and I try to avoid affecting morale, and I try to avoid, and I know that there's also complications when it comes to contracts. I know that also. But I just think that where everything is at, not only here municipally, but also countywide and statewide, and what's possibly coming down the pipe, I think that's something that we should consider. I also think that With that, I think that, and understand, I think a lot of people think that the council controls a lot of different things, but the council doesn't control when it comes to administration. So the council cannot tell the manager who to hire, who to fire, the council cannot tell the manager what policy decisions to make. The council cannot tell the manager what contracts to sign, what contracts to end. That's all up to the manager. So I think the first thing people need to understand is that, which is perfect, I think because, so I always look at it like two sides. I look at it as like you have like the council or like the position as mayor, and that's kind of like the side that gets put out there for the public. But all the power really lies with the manager. The manager has the majority of the control over everything in the village. Being that said, I think that we can ask the manager, but we can't force the manager to do anything. But we should probably also look at the contracts of everything that we have for our vendors and for things like that. We should look at that. I think lastly, I think that what we need to probably think about with Albert's budget being so small, it seems like every year we have so many different needs that are never fully completed because of all the different needs. We try to chip away at every different need that we have. I think that we should, my opinion, I think we should find a priority and focus on that particular priority and put all the resources and everything into that particular priority. That's what I think we should do. That's just my suggestion and the way I feel about things. I think because if we focus on one particular priority, then we put everything behind that, we can at least knock that priority out. so that it's not all these different things that lag year after year after year after year so that's kind of what i think for those three things um i just think we should kind of consider moving forward as a council council person winters or vice mayor martin you have you can talk first

Well, first of all, thank you so much for an informative budget presentation. I appreciate it. I had some supplemental questions coming into it, and I think you did a good job of kind of giving me the information to allow me to ground myself in what my positions are going to be. I have just a general overarching question. We do know what's coming down the pipe with Amendment 3 and all of these things. Are there any concrete... points that you would like to guide us to consider when we're thinking about how to possibly shore up any surplus that we have, or to think about any alternative revenue sources, just in case the paradigm within which we exist right now significantly changes. Do you have anything off the top of your head that you would suggest, or the manager as well? That would be a question for you.

Well, the CFO and I have been talking about this. It's been a very, very difficult process because we keep trying to read the dealings of what's gonna happen in Tallahassee and which way the wind is gonna blow come the next few weeks. Elections is gonna be very interesting. I'm sorry. Sometimes I'm afraid to project a little too well.

Right, it's like all or nothing with these mics. Exactly.

So we are... We are preparing, we have been looking at, as the Mayor just mentioned, which are the kinds of priorities that we should be working on. We are trying to also support some of those efforts with the possibility of grants. We have been trying to encourage and to increase our search for additional dollars for those particular priorities that we know that we need. to look at. We have a lot of streets that need to be repaved. We also have the septic tank to sewer line, super major project that has been standing still basically quite a few years, so that will be something that we should consider to see how else we can support that implementation. I think it's going to be a great impact to the commercial.

Infrastructure is already approved, except the sewer village-wide, which we need to focus on. getting funding for the hookups, which is expensive. You're talking about, and we spoke about that, you're talking about thousands of dollars per household for the hookup. The thing that right now we're discussing with them is we're trying to figure out if once the infrastructure is laid down, if the hookup is going to be something that is forced upon at that particular time. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not, we're trying to make sure that it's not. Thank you.

Yeah, there are lots of moving parts to those things, and something that is difficult to forecast, not knowing exactly what the situation is going to look like.

Certainly, I don't envy your position, but I do think that now is the time for us to really look at ways in which we can tighten our spending. And in addition to that, I support that effort to look at grant funding and at least explore alternative revenue sources. At the end of the day, if everything stays the same, the only thing we do is have additional revenue. But I do think that we do need to, yes, go through the process of planning, but also not do it in a silo and realize that there might be a changing climate. out there that might directly impact what we're doing in this room. So just kind of putting that, it sounds like it's already on the radar and you're already thinking along those levels, but for us to also, when we're kind of going through, I know this is our workshop, but when we're actually going through the meat of this thing to think about that with those lenses on. That's my comment.

Absolutely. Councilperson Wentz.

I have a few questions, Mr. Manager. Have we found a new code enforcement officer yet?

Yes, we have been moving as swiftly as we possibly can. For some of you who may not know, we lost our code enforcement. Officer, Stephen actually lives far away from here, and it was quite a challenge for him to be able to take care of his family. He lives with elderly members in his family, and he really needed to be closer to home, and that's the reason why he left us. It was also... I like to think that he may have been a little concerned with exactly what was going to happen because he's part of the conversations and we have been talking about that we may need to look at salaries and depending on exactly what the forecast will be. So I would not be surprised if he took those things that have not been solved or decided as of yet to add to his decision to leave for something more convenient to his situation. But we were very fortunate. We have basically we're pretty certain that we will be having a new code enforcement officer coming to work in Probably as early as Monday. So we are just waiting for the final clearance, her background resolution, and we'll have that person in place pretty soon.

Will that new person be using the current code officer adopted budget amount, or was it negotiated different than what's here?

Basically, what we have in the budget will remain the same. So she was able, we were able to get someone for a very modest salary. And this will be five days a week, 40 hours a week? Yes.

Okay. Last year, we talked about a text messaging service that the council voted on a few years ago. Is that one of the line items somewhere inside of this? Yeah, that's going to be in public affairs. Are we planning on implementing it? Did we spend the money from it again?

No, what do you mean spend the money?

Well, last year they spent the money for text messaging service. We don't have them still, so.

Yeah, no, but that would be coming out of public affairs. Are they going to implement it this week? That would be new fiscal year. It doesn't kick in until October 1st.

CFO, so what I understand at the very beginning when you're speaking, we originally were going to have a $412 million village value and after the three reductions is now 379 million. Is that correct?

So that is correct. Last year's certified final value of last year was 379. The estimate for this year is 390.

But last year was 379.

Final, yes.

So that was a $33 million reduction from what was expected, is that correct? 412 down to 379? Correct.

Correct.

And when we lowered the village millage rate by .1 twice, each one of those .1s was approximately $40,000. 41. That is correct. $41,000. So we've lost $33 million through reassessing homes?

No, no, no, no, no, no. So you have the property value amount, but that's not the amount that we get in the budget. It's different. We all get $33 million in the budget. you have to adjust that so it's the math calculations you have to do you have to divide by um 1 000 and then you have to multiply multiply by the millage rate millage rate so it's 412 million divided by a thousand so it's still property expensive and reduced yeah it's reduced yeah but it's not 33 million um but you also mentioned the the expenses are expected to reduce by five percent this year off the last year correct total total expenses year over year

That's for all funds.

Madam Clerk, what amount is expected for runoff pricing?

I started pricing it because we're definitely looking like we are gonna have a runoff they said they haven't given me the finished amount because we were running a runoff on our own which means that we are not running like we are right now which is piggybacking from so we have to do our own advertisement we have to do everything on our own and it's expected from fifteen to twenty thousand use about seventeen to twenty yeah which is another topic, obviously not for today, but that has to be spoken about. The runoff will, presented for us, would be two weeks after the the election and we need to be talking about that soon because the Department of Election will not have it certified by then. So we can't sign off an uncertified election and have a runoff for us or we're gonna have to move that. Just something for you guys to have in your radar.

Where was that line item for the possible runoff? The one that's for elections.

to the bottom I think it is municipal election so it's the 15 that we have to like the one that we paid for piggyback plus like 20 for our

So we're, but for the request of 2027, we have 30,000. Is that going to be enough?

Yeah, because the CFO kind of calculated. Depending how it goes, then I can work with the advertisement and stuff like that for my advertisement budget.

We could be five to seven under on that. Okay. For the FPL lighting expenses that we spend with the overtime with the police, was there any outside sources that could pay for parts of that? FPL?

Yeah, so when FPL was shutting down the streets, the police came in to not assist FPL, but to assist the traffic that was going down like the inner streets. So, I mean, it was more for our residents. I don't know I mean, we can speak to FPL, because it's their fault we have to use the inter-traffic, but it's, I mean, it's work that they were doing. So, if you guys remember, that's when they would shut down like 87th Street, and so like that, people had to go down 88th Street, 89th Street over here, and so we had to, and it was dangerous because, you know, especially like 88th Street, those are really small streets, really thin streets. So we had to use the police officers so that people wouldn't be speeding up and down those streets, those inner streets like that. So the short answer is no, but we can reach out.

I think this is my last question to the residents. I'd love to hear what they're saying and want to say. Mr. Manager, a few months ago, we talked about getting some RFQs for looking at the Sherwood Forest roads and doing those repairs. Did we receive anything? Do you remember any of the numbers off your head as I'm looking at the budget? Nothing similar or close?

We're just happy that we are getting those things with enough time to be able to evaluate it. But again, we wanted to make sure that we had a good handle on our expenditure for this year, for what's going to be coming next year. Depending on, again, there is a lot of fluidity with regards to what's going to be the amount of money that we're going to be working with. So once we have that, then we will be able to come before you and based on what we have received and what the priorities are, then we'll be able to, I'll be able to recommend what should be, what could be moving forward, the expenditures to those items that we want to spend money on.

So for some of these public work line items, especially the road repairs, it would be nice to know some of the RFQs before we actually vote on it. So maybe Thursday you can bring some with you.

Can we at least let me have next week to be able to handle that?

How many meetings do we have to vote on it?

We have the last meeting is the 22nd of September at 630.

Okay, we'll do that. Is that okay? Okay.

I wasn't planning on it, but.

I don't need exacts, I just want to know according to where we're sitting at the budget here, where we feel comfortable.

I'll be able to review and I will be able to. Thank you. On Thursday, I'll be able to tell you how soon we'll be able to bring that to you.

Thank you.

Also present for the record, Councilperson Erbaum and Vice Mayor Martin. All right, so what we're gonna do right now, you all, we're gonna open it up to the public. As I said, this is a workshop, so it's a little bit different, but we are gonna stick to the three minutes. And moving forward, just with any type of public meeting, workshop, public town hall, public hearing, we're gonna stick to those three minutes. We're gonna stick to the rules from now on. for also if everybody knows you have the one time up for those of you who want to come up more than once the way that works is that works where if there is a group madam clerk you can jump in on this also because we found out about this if there's a group of that wants to speak, so for example, if you ever see the meetings at the county or city of Miami, if you ever see meetings at Aventura or meetings where there's like a hot button issue, they'll have a designated speaker out of the group, whether it's a union or whatever it is, that designated speaker, that speaker is the one that will take the minutes away from other members in that group. And it's up to five, right, I believe, or something like that. So that's what we're doing, and that's how we're running it, by the rules. All right, you guys, come up, name and address for the record, and the floor is yours for three minutes. Yeah, and so what we're gonna do is, yeah, just come up right here, and with your suggestions that you're gonna give for the budget, we'll take those down, and then at the hearing on Thursday, we'll go through all the suggestions for the budget to implement those. We have to vote, because we're not voting tonight.

Okay, sounds good. Is this on? Okay. Joni Gomes, 269 Northwest 86th Street. I have two questions in regards to the police department. One is, have we looked into how much it would cost to get body cams? I think that would be important to have. Anybody?

We're not responding right now, we're just taking down your questions.

Okay, well once you're able to respond, I'd like to also know what happened with this car accident where the police car was involved. We were told it was totaled, so whose fault was it? Which police officer was involved? I'd like to know more details about that. That's it for now.

Thank you. Next, name and address. Next up, public comment.

Alexandra Bassa, 120 Northwest 86th Street. My only question is why was this budget just posted today? Most people are just working, coming back from work. I don't see a lot of people who can make it to this meeting. Nonetheless, have time to review this. So pretend for us to have questions on something like this when we were promised many times to have the budget posted in our doors. Like for the next Friday, for the next Friday. And to have this posted a couple of days, a couple of hours before, it just shows where we are with this council. I mean, it's just disrespectful. It's always the same thing. That's all I have to say.

Next up. Name and address for the records.

Hi, Edna Edelman, 301 Northeast, 88th Street. I just have a couple of questions. Given that the 2026 budget assumptions didn't actually pan out, what are the assumptions that are behind the 2027 budget? How do you come up with it? And also, I mean, We've talked about Amendment 3. Ms. Martin brought it up. Any of the assumptions being given to that projection. Mayor, you've mentioned focusing on a priority, but it seems to me that every year that I'm here, we talk about the same priority, fixing our streets, and that priority just passes us by every year. The other two questions that I have are what's behind the 8% increase in the police budget for next year? And also, I understand that you haven't gotten raises, but it seems to me that a 25% raise for the legal retainer is a bit excessive. The last question that I have is the 2026 budget came in, you received significantly less money, 241,000 less than projected. And I'm wondering if there's actually a pattern. Is there a financial outlook that gives you the ability to tell year after year what it is that you're going to get from Miami-Dade, or is it always a surprise? Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, good evening, everyone. Good to see everyone. I know this is a workshop, so I don't even know why this is directly in front. It's kind of funny. So I'm here, I'm Thomas Pulliam, 205 Northeast 86th Street. I'm here because I want El Portal to be financially healthy and transparent. I think everyone in this room has that same shared belief and idea from the dais to everyone in the audience and watching online tonight. There's a lot of really scary things in this budget, especially when you're not looking at it within the full context of where the village has been year over year for a period of time, and also where we're going into the future. So that being said, first up, I want to draw direct attention that tonight's budget includes a hidden 4% property tax hike for our residents. The village summary claims spending is down 5%, but our main operating budget is actually going up by a few thousand dollars. This is because we did not move to the rollback rate for the millage. We set it at 8.1, which is still giving our coffers property tax increase. And I know on my trim notice, I'm paying more to Village of El Portal this year. I'm sure everyone in this room is. So my question regarding that is simple. Why are we raising taxes on our residents when we are bleeding money behind the scenes? Our overall, per the audit that was done, September 2025, our total unassigned fund revenue is negative $455,000. So even with this budget, if we have a surplus of 70,000 this year, we're still in the hole over $380,000, guys. This isn't like a boon or good news, what we're seeing in this paperwork here. Moving on, page 12, the police aspect. Page 12 of this draft budget shows exactly where that money is going. Sorry, page 12 is actually the permitting building budget. So we have a contract, 100% pass-through to our contractor, CAP government. that we've had for over four and a half years now. So while the Village has projected $425,000 in revenue, goes directly to them, you can see that they've already received over $500,000 this year, which is significantly over what was even anticipated for that amount. And that money could be repurposed in other ways, including lowering permit fees for residents. I know myself, I fully renovated my house since the village has been doing a 100% pass-through to this contractor. We could be seeing so much more development from actual residents in our community if we were smarter with the money and not just handed it over to corporate private interests. May I continue? No? 20 more seconds. Just wrap it up. OK, we have over $21 million in commercial projects projected coming into the village. That includes Skatebird and Cavista that already happened. So when you look at the previous contract with CAP government, the village would have retained approximately $7 million. that is not accounted for because again that's being 100 pass through to them um so that is one point i want to bring up there's several line items in here as well i would like to address but um i will yield my time thank you thank you very much mr

Daniel Rojas, 60 Northeast 86th Street. I wish I was better prepared. I wish I had better questions, but this budget was not made available to us until two hours, like other members have said. Quick things, being it that it looks like we have a fluctuating revenue situation for the village in the next year, it seems like this budget is just simply rolling over what we've been doing every year. I'd like to propose some reviews to city contracts. For one, I think 25% for retainer for the lawyers seems a little high. I know we also are rolling over the contracts for, as our neighbor just said, for the CAP government. All this should be reviewed and reassessed. Quick questions regarding what was presented. So it looks like the CIT construction was overspent by 92,000 plus. What is the balance in the CITT reserve? That would be a good question for me to answer. And then our police budget is about 51% of our, it's about 51%, sorry, got some over here. of our budget and it's just not clear where it goes. We've got expenses for vehicles that exceeds last year, but I thought last year is when we were replacing some vehicles. Are we replacing vehicles again this year? Those are some of the equipment questions. I will always question the decision to let them take their cars home. That increases our insurance, that increases our gas, that increases a whole bunch of expenses that would probably go better in their salaries. That's just my opinion. And then stormwater and the general fund. Is there any type of resiliency planning being budgeted in here? I have a belief that our budgets will reflect our values and our concerns for the coming years. And I don't really see any type of planning for that, considering that next year might be the busiest hurricane season in history. We kind of need to get ready for that.

Thank you. Thank you.

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Kirby J. Altidore. I reside in 197 Northwest 88th Street, Miami, Florida, 33150. I have a background in finance, MBA from the Wharton School. So leveraging my background and looking at this assessment, Factoring strategically in where the village is, there's a couple concerns. We seem like we have, we're not thinking about the position of the village strategically. One, if you think about the legal expense, it's increasing. If you look at other firms now, they're going back and asking their legal expense to be reduced because of AI leverage. These are conversations we should be having.

Next.

If I factor in the millage rate, we have the third highest millage rate of any municipality in Miami-Dade County. That doesn't make sense to me. That's something that we need to talk about and actually do some more research about it. Why is our millage rate higher compared to other places like Miami Shores? Biscayne Park is higher than us. Now if you go back and you look at our police force, that's 50% of our revenue that's being incurred. Now if you break down it for average spending per resident, that's a little bit over $1,000. And if you compare that to Miami Shores, they're spending about $700 per resident. I think there's some barometers that we need to look at. We're seeing increasing costs. We're not looking at our peers and assessing it and addressing the bottlenecks. As the previous person reported, all we're doing is rolling over expenses. There are some levers that we can pull, and it doesn't seem like we're taking that into consideration. Thank you for my time.

Thank you.

Good evening, I'm Denise White, 173 Northwest 88th Street, since I was 12 years old. Hi, everybody. I hope everybody's good. I haven't seen everybody for a long time. There's a lot of numbers on here, right? This budget thing, there's a lot of numbers on here. I'm hoping to hear from my CFO and my city manager tonight because I think sometimes in the budget hearing, there's a lot of other people speaking. And since I've been running, because I say I'm going to be a candidate, since I've been running, I've been looking at the El Portal charter, and it says that you in charge, sir, right? It says that you in charge, and then this guy, he knows a lot about the budget, right? And I know they bring him up toward the end when we all get rowdy and stuff like that, but I'm hoping tonight I hear a little bit from you as to why so many numbers. There's just so many numbers on here, right? Right. I'm not going to worry about a nitpick on whether what we've done so far, because that's past. Right? We're going to move forward into the future. The last time we had a budget... That was three minutes?

I was like, damn, that was quick. I'm not even ready.

Oh, I hurt my back cleaning something yesterday. So I was at the chiropractor. I think he fixed something, but it don't feel like it. But what you call it? Yes, I'm not going to nitpick on what's going to happen. I know we have a deficit. People keep telling me we don't, but I know we got a little deficit. We got to clear that up. So if you could talk to me about that, Mr. City Manager, I would appreciate you. And, yes, if we could hear more from the guys who handled the money, I would appreciate that too. Yes? Appreciate the counsel for counseling today. And you guys have a great evening. I'm going to be back here listening and commenting when it gets hot. Okay? Thanks.

Good evening, Mayor. Good evening, Council. Good evening, Board. My name is Ian McKenzie, 8950 Northeast 4th Avenue. On June 22nd, I put a Freedom of Information request in for a copy of this year's budget, year-to-date actual expenditures, and where we stood. Today, I finally get a glimpse into this after never receiving one word from it. We were told we would get it, but never occurred. So I'm a little bit disappointed and there needs to be some improvement on that in the future. I have one question about the debt service that we owe money on from this for I guess the hurricane it goes back to some hurricane payments or something that we owe money still on from years ago I guess we're paying it down but if we are running a true positive surplus then maybe we should consider paying that off as soon as possible and therefore our also ratings would go up in the event we do need to borrow in the future for other projects or other hurricanes. We're still halfway through the season yet and thank God we haven't had anything but I just want to put that out there and thank you very much.

Anyone else?

Greg Steer, 120 Northwest 86th Street. I just want to reiterate what Ian McKenzie just brought up about the whole process here. This happened last year. This is like a bum rush. Why are we doing everything last minute? We've been talking about the budget for weeks. I brought it up at several of the last couple of council meetings asking why we don't have any up-to-date information. And now all this stuff was just posted on the website. We were promised that we were gonna get an update delivered to our door by the mayor himself with a flyer. All I got were campaign flyers, not just one, but three. Nothing about the budget. And you guys expect us to sift through all this data in five minutes? We just walked in the door. And you're gonna vote on this in two days? I mean, this is absurd. This is another example of ready, fire, aim. I do have some specific questions, like the ad valorem deficit. When did we find out that the ad valorem taxes were going to be $250,000 less than expected? Why is there a 25% increase in legal fees? What happened? Taxes are paid in November of 2025 through March of 2026. So why is that a surprise all of a sudden that there's a deficit in the tax revenue? What happened to Placerbia? They just disappeared. So many questions, not enough time for decent answers. There's got to be a better way. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council. I appreciate that we indeed have a budget workshop. Like some of the other people said, I wish it had a little bit more of a cushion between things. But one question that I'd love to hear in the future answered is, Considering that we have this deficit, has there been any impact from delayed vendor payments? Have there been any insurance claims that we have or have not filed that we could? Much of that was discussed when people brought up the cost overruns that were due to mistakes and lack of actual engineering plans for the roundabout that now is on Northwest 91st Street. So in addition to that, the Covista building, there was talk last fall of, I believe the CEO of that company was asking for a reduction and exemption from the county. What has been the impact of that, if any? I'm not sure if it went through or not. And so I'm wondering, I guess the general umbrella is, where have we lost opportunity revenue, specifically regarding Craig Smith Architects and the Roundabout, specifically regarding the water drainage situation here on Northeast 4th Avenue Road, and any other spots that you guys might know about. Thank you very much for your time. Appreciate it.

Thank you. No, we have just one time up, Ms. Baza.

I'm sorry, it's important. We have a special assessment coming, and I don't have any information of what the special assessment is going to be for A. And B, Y is just like a 15-minute space discussion. It's scheduled for 6.30, and the meeting, the second hearing is for 6.45. So I think a special assessment would be something that would need a little bit more space. What did you say?

Anybody else?

Yeah. Good evening. My name is Warner Dreher, 486 Northeast 87th Street. So I'm just going to try to help you out. I'm looking here at the admin and finance page number five. We have a grant writer, an expense of $25,000. Can we perhaps, I know the mayor, he always gets us all the grant writers. So can we look to see whether this expense is really necessary? Especially maybe we can get some money there, right? On the clerks, we have books and publications. Maybe if you could explain a little bit more about that, that would be great. Then I'm looking at the public works. I see an increase on the contractual salaries from $81,000 to $102,000, about 25%. If you guys could explain a little bit more into why such an increase into that item. And also I'm looking here at the repair, I'm sorry, at the contractual services for the lawn maintenance of $100,000. I'm not sure if maybe now you're here, we can look maybe into looking into seeing if we could get a better pricing for that. I understand we have the tot lot and the other area in Sherwood Forest. So just giving out here some ideas. Maybe we could save some money, right? And then try to understand why we have $70,000 in repairs for the village hall, right? Regular maintenance, maybe that would be a good idea. See, maybe we could get some extra money there. Just giving out a couple hints there.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, you're welcome.

Anyone else good in welfare? Okay, going once, going twice. All right, closing good and welfare. Okay, back over here to the workshop. So there's a couple things that I'll go through very quickly. There's gonna be some things that we save for the vote on Thursday, but I do wanna get clarification on some things. Madam Manager, when did you send the budget out? I mean, Madam Clerk, Madam Clerk, when did you send the budget out?

I sent it out, I think it was Thursday.

Yeah, I got mine then also.

Yes, I did. I sent it on Thursday.

Yeah. Did you send it again today via email?

No, I didn't resend it today.

So how did people get it today then?

I'm not sure. They're talking about that it's on the website, but it should have been the same day. I don't control the website. I send it out to the webmaster the same day I send it out.

Yeah, I got it Thursday also. No, I got it Friday.

Saturday for the first hearing.

I got it Friday. When we're talking about sending it out, we're talking about the email blast list, is that right? Yeah, we're talking about the email blast list. That's when I got it. so that's when i got it that's when i got it also as far as the uh miss gomes the body cameras um we'll get i just have to find out about that with the police department i don't have the answer to that about body cameras um because you have to see how much they are and uh you know that happened with that as far as the that's something chief could speak to today you know i don't think he has information but as far as the police car accident i don't know um what was what happened with the car was it a total loss did insurance cover it the insurance covered it insurance they covered the total loss the yeah the yeah the question the question was actually more involved like is there a process where people could find that information on the incidents i understand

Not just that one specific incident.

I understand, I understand. You guys wait. So the insurance covered it, was it a total loss?

Yes, it was.

And the officer who got in an accident, are they still with us? No, they're not. No, they're not? Okay, all right, go ahead. So the question is, where would a resident be able to go? We'll get to that next. So as far as the transparency of what happens with the vehicles, the government vehicles, whether it's police car, code enforcement, the public works truck, when situations with those vehicles happen, or just the general information on those vehicles, we need to see, Mr. Manager, we have to get that information up if it's not up already. I'm assuming it's not up already. I'm going to get what we can get. I was having a hard time hearing. General information about the government vehicles. We need to find a way to get that information either up on the website or get that information available, allowed to be available. Now everything that happens within the village can be received by public records requests. But as far as As far as chief. No, you're good.

You're good, you're good. Can we do?

Yeah, yeah, it can be from there. If you guys wanna do, if you guys really quickly, Sergeant Gutierrez, if you guys wanna take a picture of it, take a couple photos of it, and maybe we can send it to Officer Rodriguez so we can get it posted. Okay? But we'll get that. Ms. Gomes, I see where you're going with the transparency, and we'll get that. We'll get that, okay.

Yes, he is.

All right, so let's do this. Let's get some photos. Let's get some photos. Yeah, and we'll put it on the social media for the village also. And also, go outside with Sergeant Gutierrez. All right. I don't know where the manager went. All right, you guys. All right. This past CFO, this past Friday, this past Friday, actually, let me start with this. Attorney Geller, when you sent your request in to the CFO, when was that?

I think about 10 days ago when I was being put together. As I said, just to comment on it, every other contractor employees has received generally 5%. We have been flat for going on six years. By the way, it's also the absolute number is a very low number compared to every other city, and the total impact, it's like minimal impact on the budget. It's a very small, absolute number, because it starts so low.

So Attorney Geller sent his information in for his budget on August 28th. It was August 28th. CFO Taubenfeld There was recently a meeting that took place still regarding the budget this past Friday, correct? That is correct, sir. Okay, so you had numbers that were coming in up till this, being updated up till this past Friday.

That is correct.

Yeah. Therefore, for everyone coming at me, When you're saying that, as you're correct, the budget packet that started going out yesterday at some houses, the budget packet with all the information and why it was not released earlier, there was a meeting, I wasn't included in that meeting, updating budget numbers Friday. Now, I could have put out the wrong budget numbers, Or I could have waited for the final update. When it comes to, a couple things were brought up about the raise, Attorney Geller's raise. As I said earlier when we first started, this is a workshop. Everything in here is not being voted on tonight. Even at the first budget hearing, when things are voted on, that's not the final vote. Up until September 22nd, at 6.45 p.m., I think it is, things can be changed. And like I explained to you guys, the process, unless the department gave it to the manager, the individuals gave it directly to the CFO. So it's not like it came to the council and we said, hey, that's a great idea, that's a great number, put it into the budget. It wasn't like that. When it comes to the police budget 8% increase, answering both of these questions at the same time, you guys. So the police budget 8% increase, I don't know if the chief wants to talk about that or if you, CFO Taubenfeld or the manager wanna talk about that. And also while you're answering that, the police budget does have an 8% increase and why. And also with the, Ms. Edelman also spoke about the patterns so the 2026 pattern but i remember at the very beginning cfo thomas you might want to touch on this again you said this was an anomaly in a in a one-time anomaly that wasn't year to year to year so it was just that particular year and so if you want to touch quickly on those two things first the police the police budget eight percent increase why is the police budget have an eight percent increase

The one thing I will just say to the 8% increase is that there's revenue to support the 8% increase. If you go to the general revenue, mostly the increase is coming from the vehicles. And the gas, which the chief has suggested to take the excess funds from the miscellaneous revenue to offset the excess gas. I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that if you go to the general fund revenue line number and you look at what was budgeted, we had judgment and fines at 75,000 and miscellaneous revenue at 100,000. We're projected to close to $300,000 this year. And then next year we're projected to do $272,000. So you have $272,000 of revenue that gets exclusively used for the police department. So now if you wanna just go offset and see where that goes to the police department. If you go to the police department page which is page nine, you have vehicles at $160,000, I'm sorry, machinery equipment at $160,000, which is the vehicles, the gasoline surplus of $40,000, incremental increase from 96 to 140, so that's a $40,000 is gonna go against that revenue, and then we're also saying the maintenance of the vehicles of 40,000. So you got roughly $240,000 of expense sitting in this budget being offset by roughly $270,000 in revenue. I don't know, anything else you want to add to that? Oh, tasers too, sorry. Does that answer your question?

No. yeah I'm gonna let you ask your question remember you guys that there's a hearing in two days also for any questions that you want to get out you can also email any one of the council members or the clerk Remember, no votes to there's no vote tonight. So anything that you want to find out, you can still find out before Thursday, right? Or you can ask the question on Thursday, right? And anything that's final is not final to September 22. That's when the final vote takes place.

Quick question, Chief, to the residents question regarding body cams. Has there been any look into equipping the department with body cams? You have to come to the microphone. The purpose of the question is to find out if there's a ballpark estimate of what it might cost.

We did not actually go for a ballpark estimate because the grant had to cover not only the equipment itself, had to cover the storage of the equipment. And then you need a body to be able to edit and manage all that footage. The city of Miami has two lieutenants, I believe. several supervisors, and I don't know how many employees that do that. Obviously, they're much bigger. Everybody who gets a traffic ticket, more or less, wants our body cam footage. So that means that we're gonna accrue a large amount of debt with regard to that. Everybody thought it was the body cam itself, no. It's not only the body cam, it's the storage. and then the follow-up with regard to the editing and the managing of the footage. Do you have a dollar number? I never got a dollar number because it was outrageous. We couldn't afford it, so we couldn't go for the grant. We didn't qualify for that grant.

All right, you guys. Thank you, Chief.

Major? I can address the... I can address Mr. Dreher's question for the books and publication, if you're not there when you get there.

Yeah, I'm on my way down to that. Thank you very much, appreciate it. When it comes to the audit, CFO Taubenfeld, when you speak about the audit, there's a lot going around about the audit, and can you speak about Miami-Dade County, state of Florida, and the correction? The typo.

um we as part of the requirement um once we receive the audit one of the requirements are we have to do as part of the villages submit that audit report and financial statements to the auditor general of the state of florida upon review of the audit they discovered two typos that both the auditors and myself missed So that audit was then corrected. It was just to reflect two dates. No numbers were affected. It was just to correct two dates on a footnote. I don't think it was anything major, but anyway, it was corrected, and the report was then submitted to the state of Florida.

Did that not affect the loss that people were talking about in the audit?

No, it didn't affect the loss at all.

We have the, I spoke about the contract renegotiations and the restructuring that I feel should take place. The CITT reserve balance, there's not a balance for the CITT funds. And explain how much comes in every year for CITT.

I don't have, actually. The CITT fund balance is actually negative. Don't know the exact dollar amount. I can get you that. The village receives roughly $130,000 a year. from citt um eighty percent gets used towards uh transportation twenty percent gets used towards transit um we the roundabout decision i believe was made uh with the assumption of using uh the citt funds at the time not expecting the The change order, unfortunately the change order put that transportation portion of the CITT fund in a negative balance. So the thought process for the upcoming year is to cover the necessary expenses, which are the street light maintenance, roughly about $30,000, $35,000, and any remaining balance go to offset the deficit in the transportation balance of the reserve.

All right, thank you very much. When it comes to Mr. Ramos, the thing about flooding, so in the budget package that I started sending out yesterday, on the second page, in the top paragraph, it says, for the upcoming fiscal year, I believe the village should identify at least one major project and commit to addressing it fully and effectively. Weather priority is flood mitigation, and so that's the first thing that I mentioned in that. And like I said, that started to go out yesterday because the final updated budget meeting was Friday, but it's here. So eventually all you guys will get it by tomorrow or the next day. But it does say that in there as one of those. And that kind of answers your response to also one of the things you brought up, Ms. Edelman, which is every year we hear the priorities, priorities, but my point is that I was trying to say earlier is that in my opinion, we mention everything, so it's always too much. And so this little thing, we might have money to do a little bit of this, and then we might have something to do something over here, and something to do something over here. I think that what we should do this year, I think that, or this upcoming budget fiscal year, I think we should focus on one thing and knock that one out for the first time, which we've never focused like that before. So that's my suggestion when it comes to that. Okay, so as far as Mr. Altidore, I spoke about Attorney Geller and how this is a workshop and all these numbers are not being voted on yet. And things can be adjusted up until the final budget hearing. When it comes to millage rate, so the reason why, and you mentioned Biscayne Park is higher, right? And the reason why our millage rate is so high and the reason why other millage rates are so low is because they have the business So the money comes in from the business and that's what, when you have business money coming in or commercial money coming in, that's what makes up the money that you would have to raise the taxes for. It's paid for through the commercial taxes. And so that's the reason why. And that is why, as you mentioned, Biscayne Park is higher because Biscayne Park doesn't even have any room to grow or have a commercial corridor. So if you look at the commercial corridors or those who have high commercial taxes or high commercial businesses, they'll have the lowest taxes because that makes up for it. When it comes to, so we talked about the budget being posted today and then the budget being disappeared. Attorney Geller pay. When it comes to CFO Taubenfeld, the VA board, the Value Assessment Board, when did we get the final update for that? Wasn't it, how long ago was that? Was it like a month or so ago or something like that?

I can get you the exact date, but it was definitely during budget season. I want to say it was the end of June. I might even be in the end of July, but I'll get you the date. Give me one second.

Yeah, so when it comes to the question about when do we know exactly when all the deductions come in, that's the final deduction that comes in is that value assessment board, and we just got it at the end of June. for this current fiscal year, right? So we're almost at the end of this current fiscal year. So I just showed you how slow, you know, Miami-Dade County and the other entities are. The thing about, so we'll get you your answers, Mr. Alvarez, about the delayed vendor payments, if there are any insurance claims, revenue loss, and stuff like that. We'll have to get that information.

There aren't any, and there haven't been.

They're not any, which one, all three? None to my knowledge. So we're talking about delayed vendor payments, insurance claims, or any revenue loss because of anything else?

None to my knowledge.

Okay. Grant Ryder, I share your... grant writer, the clerk. I shared that also for the grant writer, Mr. Dreyer, Council President Dreyer. When it comes to public works, we'll get to the clerk in a second, when it comes to public works, the contractual salaries, the increase, was that simply CFO Tomifel? Was that the request you got from public works from?

We added a part-time position to the staff. For public works? For public works. Maintenance. It's really maintenance. Oh, the maintenance. Yeah. It falls under there. To answer your question regarding the VIA board and the final taxable value, we received that on June the 30th. June 30th. Okay.

Thank you very much. We definitely should look at the lawn maintenance if it's that much or it being that much. And, Clerk Jacoby, if you want to just talk about the books and publications.

the books and publication when I started here was $10,000 that's to keep municode so the past two years they raised everybody's except ours because I told them that I wasn't really satisfied with their service and I wanted to look it over and stuff like that so they did not raise ours so we're the only ones that did not get a raise everybody else is paying a lot more for the municode thank you very much anyone else from the council

I'm going to answer some of those questions and respond.

I do want to address some of these questions. Mr. Manager, I've sent you a few emails over the last year about the lawn maintenance, one of them being the Indian Barrel Mount. I haven't received any response on those. I've actually had to cut the lawn myself three times now with a weed wracker. And I've requested that our lawn service go out there to actually maintain it, but I've received no response.

Let me jump in real quick, though, Councilperson Winters, but wasn't that because the individuals that live around the shore force, I mean, to catch the Native American Mound, it was being cut regularly, but they didn't want it cut, they wanted it to grow, correct?

So the way it actually happened was that the previous manager was told that the lawn was being cut all the way into the dirt and they were digging into our Indian mound with their lawn mowers and we asked her a few times to have them raise that and they did not. So we finally asked them to stop cutting it because we had nothing but a ball of dirt. After that we were able to fix the sprinkler system and now we have green grass on there. So since I said I would like to see that we start it up again, I had requested that. I haven't had any response yet but I don't mind walking around there with a weed eater, but I would definitely think that if we're spending this much money on lawn maintenance, that we could get someone to do it properly.

Yeah, no, we should definitely get them back out there. I just think that maybe that was the confusion, because I remember they were asked to stop at one particular point. The residents wanted them to stop cutting the, to catch them out. My bad, go ahead.

All right. I have a few other questions. There was really a lot of great stuff said today. Attorney Geller, One of the residents mentioned AI. Does your firm utilize this tool?

There may be somebody in my firm who does. I generally do not. I don't find that it would be tremendously appropriate for what we're doing. We draft resolutions and ordinances upon request. It's pretty... individualized for what the requests are and then we have you know a number of things that come in we have regular requests about everything from expenditures public records requests these are not repetitive tasks that, in my view, particularly lend themselves to AI. I also have, frankly, some concerns having seen mistakes made by relying on artificial intelligence where they don't have context or they report things that are not in accord with Florida law. So for the nature of what we do, I don't find it particularly useful. If you're doing something like insurance defense that's repetitive tasks that are the same documents over and over, it's probably more appropriate. And I would assume some people in my firm who do that kind of work are relying on it. But typically for what we do, it does not seem to me to be a particularly good fit nor reliable.

So I'm not suggesting that we rely on it, but I'm listening from the audience here, our neighbors, that the legal fees are going up and generally you don't use AI. It might actually help out and maybe help bring those fees down a little bit if we had some extra help from it.

As I said, that's probably a true statement for things where AI is doing repetitive tasks. That does not seem, at least to me, to be particularly adaptable for the things that we're asked to do. I'm asked questions by staff, by council members and staff that require my individualized response based on my knowledge of the law and experience, and I don't think those are the kinds of things where I think it does not appear to me that AI would be particularly suitable. Like I said, if you're doing insurance defense work where it's the same pleading over and over and over again, that may be more applicable.

I'd like to address a few other things. Mr. Manager, the council requested... after the roundabout situation that we look into the errors insurance and investigate that. Would you tell us how that is going?

One of the few things that I have encountered that has made it not an easy process to get to the bottom of it. I'm sorry. We have a number of things that have been left kind of like in limbo, for lack of a better adjective. I have looked into exactly how is it that we got to this point where clearly not the best process was utilized to identify how much this project was going to cost. I'm not complaining. I asked for the responsibility and for the job to come in and affect whatever changes needed to be affected. But it's difficult to kind of like fix something while trying to implement a number of other things and then have not quite all of the resources or the history to be able to understand exactly what has happened and how we have gotten to this point. To be honest, this is not something that, because it was something that has already taken place in the previous administration, I didn't see a quick path to solve it positively. I didn't think that it was going to be the kind of time and resource investment that was going to give us any kind of positive outcome. outcome to invest time into trying to figure out how we can access some of those dollars that have been not properly appropriated in the deployment of that project. So there were a number of other things that I was trying to address mostly when it comes to the implementation of the last aspect of that project, dealing with FPL. There were three property owners running that project, people who have complained about the lighting being too intense. There have been a number of things that we have tried to address that have been still not properly finished as it pertains to that particular project. So yes, there have been things that I have failed to complete, but it's not because there have been the opportunity to actually go back and see exactly what has happened and how this happened. I don't like to sit at a situation and say, well, this is before my time, and therefore it's taking time and energy from what I'm doing now to try to solve something that should have never happened. So if we're looking for why this something has not been addressed, it's just because lack of time and resources, to be very honest. This takes time and it takes quite a bit of attention and research as to how things happen and it just kind of like blew by everyone's eyes and nothing was done with it. I am the last one to join the party, but now I find myself trying to fix things that were not properly done when the opportunity was there to do it properly. So I'm not exonerating myself of responsibility, but I'm just willing to say sometimes I find myself leaving here at 9, 10 o'clock at night. Because during the day, I am continuously tackling things that come to me. Requests for information, things that really have no bearing on my job. I am still having to let go of the things that I have to do and attend to it. That's my explanation.

But the council requested you look into this. There were errors in the numbers. They were admitted on the record. And filing a claim is basically contact the insurance company, let them send out an adjuster and make their own first step. We haven't gotten to that yet, but it's been quite a while. This could be a big amount in our budget that can be saved because it was spent and it wasn't expected. I think that we should take that first step, and you were asked by the council to start looking into this.

Yeah, but that was not the only thing that I'm dealing with with that particular project. There are three property owners that have been impacted by that project that FBO has been not helping us deal with this as the way that we should have been dealing with. So this will be the project of many, many different outcomes, different. So I wish this would have been the only thing that I had to do with.

Is there maybe a date of return, like a final date of return we can give, or you can ask the manager what he feels comfortable with maybe so we can move on?

We could do that when we're allowed to make motions, but this is just a request.

I mean, just in this conversation, maybe you can ask him, like, hey, management manager's there, just from you to him, not from the council. Okay.

Do you think that there is a date that you can give us that you can make the requests for the insurance company and then let them respond to us with their own adjuster?

I'd like to be able to proffer you a date, and I'll do so on Thursday. That way I'll be sure that this will not fall between the, that this will be handled shortly. Thank you.

I do want to state, for the record, I received the budget to my personal email on Friday, not my council email. So it did show up to that email. But I know we've talked about in the past that there have been some delays and lags in emails going out.

Yeah. Former council person Dreyer, he pointed out he got it on Thursday at 4 something. So he did get it on Thursday.

All right. Thank you.

Are we opening it up to the rest of the council? Okay.

Oh wait, no, no, no. No, no, no, no.

Definitely finish. Yeah, finish, go through.

Mr. McKenzie mentioned about paying off the debt that we've had from I think Kerrick and Irma. We did mention that last year as well. What was the council's response to that last year?

I mean, there wasn't an official response. What you said was that we look into it to see if that's where we wanted to go. So this comes down to on Thursday, and then of course on the 22nd, which is the most important meeting, but on Thursday, that's part of priorities, right? So that's part of what's in there, what you want to prioritize. Because remember, with the budget and with these line items, everyone, you can move around what you want to move around and adjust what you want to adjust, right? And so that's where it comes into play. Vice Mayor Martin.

Mine is going to be short and sweet. I did want to say thank you to the manager and thank you to our finance director. If you guys missed it or came in a little bit later, they did give a very thorough exploration of the budget. And the manager did do an amazing job of answering some of the supplemental questions that we had. I do want to emphasize that this is still a conversation. The questions that I asked today were just questions that I had and the paradigm that I'm seeking to kind of continue the conversation with the staff about where I fall on those questions. I think now is a great time for you guys to continue engaging with the council members to talk about those line items that you think could be very impactful. The ones that you suggested, great. Having concrete suggestions as to where we can cut that budget. would be something that's helpful to us. Some of the conversations that we have had today and exchanges we've had have been very helpful in me kind of thinking along the lines of different things or ways that we can approach things. I do have questions about that legal retainer, and I see that some of you have questions as well. Nothing that we discuss tonight is a final. This is all a beginning of the conversation and a final discussion. A determination will occur on September 22nd. I hear you that you would have liked more time to digest this. I would have liked more time too. The great thing is we can digest it and come back again in a couple days and talk about it some more and then come back again after we've had additional information and talk about it some more and hopefully get to a really good product that we are all very proud of and that we've all put the effort into crafting this thing. So just in a broad sense, I do want to say thank you to staff. I want to say thank you to the members of the audience, those that are running, those that are not running. I appreciate your engagement and I look forward to seeing you in a couple days.

Thank you very much, Madam Vice Mayor. Council President Urbana.

So in past years in budgets, it is always a matter of pulling teeth to cut back on any specific line item this year seems like it will be no different but that's fine it should be it should be a bit of a abrasively argumentative process to establish which line items should be cut by how much and that's how you would get to the quality of product that vice mayor martin was referencing I do want to say that in the past year, it has been exceptionally frustrating to not have reviewed the budget, as was essentially explicitly discussed as we passed last year's budget. And in the past year, perhaps going back a little further, because I do want to remind people that I motion to have the Barrington brothers pay the village three and a half million dollars. Nobody remembers that. I motion to have the Barrington brothers give the village three and a half million dollars, which was a conservative estimate, which I outlined in that process. I did not get a second. Nobody seconded it to even put it to a vote or discussion. Now, three and a half million versus the 700,000 we got sounds like maybe a greedy grab from a second generation hippie, right? But understand something. I outlined very clearly that in the lifetime cycle of that building, 20 years, all right, it's probably going to last longer, but assuming 20 years of service from the building at mostly full occupancy, I calculated two-thirds of one year, just under two-thirds. It was like 63%. It was not 66%. of one year's revenue from strictly rents that they were projected to be generating over that period of time, not even accounting for increase in rents over the same period of time. Stagnant rent, 20 years. I propose two thirds of one year's operating to mitigate any that would be required for the canal or the seawall because we did not understand the impacts of what was gonna happen. Now that project is tied up in litigation. We will see what legally will be determined will be the course for that project. But I just want to express that We continue to operate without a plan. Things are very exciting in the village of El Portal right now. Not just because we're fighting white supremacists who are trying to take home rule away from everybody in the state. The elimination of property taxes is going to lead to county governors. That's where it's headed. Small and medium cities will go bankrupt. What's gonna happen? Control's gonna get turned over to the governor. Yay, feudalism, hooray. So I just wanna remind everybody that not only did I propose the Barrington Brothers pay us a modest, conservative fee of three and a half million dollars. Nobody seconded the motion. I am also the reason that we are not paying the council $330,000 this year or next year or the year after that.

You guys would not have gotten that amount. No one actually made it to that point.

It was passed.

They had a lot of stipulations and no one reached those stipulations to receive that money.

It took me three, I'll answer, I'll answer. It took me three meetings to reverse that in the sunshine. It took me three meetings to reverse it in the sunshine as someone who voted no. That's what I accomplished last year. And understand that that happened before.

You're talking about for the budget increase?

Salary increase.

Salary, okay, so there were two people that said no.

Correct. Okay, all right, just wanted to clarify. Right, but after it passed, I could have complained about it and still collected the check. Took me three meetings to get it reversed before the first checks got cut. There are opportunities here. there are opportunities here. Anyone who tells you there's not opportunities in El Portal, I would recommend you try and figure out then why is there already one developer lined up, a second developer lined up, and whoever is going to take their place after they fall to the side, perhaps, hopefully, maybe, but there are absolutely people who believe in the opportunity of el portal i promise you that there are opportunities here and i don't believe i think that there's been a consistent discussion from residents over the past couple years that el portal is not valuing itself And I second and echo that. And as we discuss these things, you know, Labor Day weekend was this past weekend. So I don't know if people understand the true history of where the 40-hour work week came from or the invention of the weekend for the human race, but that was fought with blood by laborers fighting the National Guard and private militias. That was thousands of people being murdered for trying to stop children from working barefoot in factories. That was less than 100 years ago. So I have a hard time with automatic raises and things like this. I do believe that 3% inflation should be accounted for for most positions. But looking at stagnation of wages, I have a hard time signing on to blanket raises. So there are issues here. The police department. I personally, as I've said repeatedly, have had a mixed past with police departments in the past. I have found that if you want your police department to be on the up and up and operate on the level, you have to compensate that police department. Once the compensation benefits drop to a certain level, envelopes of cash start showing up. All right, that's how it happens. You don't give the opportunity. We have a phenomenal police department. We have a phenomenal police department with excellent leadership. So while there might be cuts to be made in there, I don't see massive cuts as being long-term beneficial to the efficiency and productivity of the police department. say these things because as we have established we're not voting on anything tonight i just want you to understand where my thought process is as i look at this budget thank you very much all right you guys we don't necessarily need a motion to adjourn but um i'll just take a motion

I move to adjourn the meeting.

We will have a second. All right, so the budget workshop for fiscal year 2026, 2027, Tuesday, September 8th, 2026 is adjourned at 7.45 p.m.