City Council - Regular Meeting

Call the roll.

Mayor Fahad. Yes. Vice Mayor Llamas. Here. Yes. Councilman Dion. Here. Councilman Perez-Crespo. Here. There is a quorum present. And just for the record, Councilman Santin is not here.

OK. Thank you. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

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.

Thank you. You may be seated. WELCOME TO OUR CITY COUNCIL BUDGET WORKSHOP I WANT TO JUST THANK UH JC OUR CITY MANAGER UH AND ALL OF OUR STAFF BECAUSE I KNOW A LOT OF HARD WORK WENT INTO THIS BUDGET AND WE'VE ALL BEEN BRIEFED ON IT, BUT WE WOULD LIKE TO SEE YOUR PRESENTATION OF IT IN ITS FINAL, FINAL FORM. SO THANK YOU AGAIN FOR YOUR HARD WORK. SO TAKE IT AWAY, JC.

MAYOR, COUNCIL, I REALLY APPRECIATE THE OPPORTUNITY TO YET AGAIN PRESENT TO YOU ANOTHER BALANCED BUDGET. THIS YEAR WAS A LITTLE DIFFICULT BECAUSE OF THE, A LITTLE DIFFERENT BECAUSE OF THE PENDING AMENDMENT 3. um you know a lot of my colleagues throughout the county they're like what are you going to do you're going to increase the millage you're going to decrease what are you going to do get ready and i and i just took the stance i'm you know what i'm going to hold still and kind of like brace for impact if you will so we're keeping the millage rate the same that is the at least proposed here is keeping the millage rate the same um I know next year, if it does pass, there's going to be a significant amount of cutting and trimming, and this is going to be a very different discussion next year. I'd rather do it all holistically, you know, one time, than just maybe nip a little here, and then next year, who knows what happens. Anyway, so we'll go ahead and get started.

Basically, today we're going to go over the, is Santino? Yes.

okay so basically today we're just going to go over the budget highlights go over the revenue trends general departmental general fund departments the special revenue and enterprise funds future projects and then the overall outlook and at the end i have a small presentation as well regarding amendment three and what we can expect later on So this year, our assessed value was $1.996 billion. Our millage rate, as you know, we're keeping it at 6.81. And that generates $12,913,447. This budget does include a 3% COLA for general employees. It also includes the police contracts are expiring. but I'm working with them considering what is, what may happen in November, working with them on a one year extension so we can get at least past this year and then we'll see what happens next year. Their increase, an extension of the current contract is 4%, COLA. Overall, usually, like I said before, I always like to at least trim the millage rate a little bit every year. And you can see the downward trajectory for the past 10 years. It's been going down steady, trying to do our best at always cutting wherever possible, trimming wherever possible, and keeping the millage rate as low as possible. And you'll see this downward trend, which When you look at property values, that's an upward trend, right? You wanna see the opposite. One thing I will tell you about the taxable value is that I've seen it starting to level off, which is another concern of mine for next year. A couple of years ago it was around 10, last year it was eight, this year it's five. Our neighbors in Virginia Gardens had negative 5%. So it went down by 5%. Their rollback rate is higher than their existing millage rate, just so you know. So I'm afraid, I'm proceeding with caution. I'm worried that next year may be a little different story for us. So we'll get into the general fund departments. Start off with you guys, mayor and council. We still have all the full circle events, the donations to the Boys and Girls Scouts, the Optimist Club. That remains unchanged. The only difference here is basically I had a little money set aside this current year for any centennial celebrations that weren't covered by donations, just to have something. This is because I budgeted before donations started coming in, so I just needed something to kind of get us started. So that's not being budgeted next year. City clerk and passports, that's down 2.87%. Mainly there is we're gonna, at the passport office, we're making some staffing adjustments there, because we haven't been hitting the revenue marks, even though we're still trying to continue promoting it, and hopefully it picks up. But yeah, we're gonna have to, we're making some adjustments there. Then there's a public record software. We've been getting inundated with a lot of public records requests. I guess with the advent of AI, it's easier to submit. So we've been getting a large amount of them. This software helps us keep track of them, route them correctly, and fulfill them in a timely fashion. Under city manager, this one went up a bit. This one's 19.5. This was due to two personnel moves that I made. I promoted Omar, he's the new assistant city manager, and then the hiring of a new executive assistant for the office. Under human resources, this one went down 5.84%. Mainly, the biggest number there is we had a contractor, a consultant, do our class and comp study. That was for last year. This year we don't have that same expense. And apparently we did a lot of printing and binding for our employee handbook that we just updated. Under finance and professional services, these are actually budgetarily two different departments, although we're combining them. Under finance, that went up slightly because of our contract with our external auditors. their fees are scheduled to go up a little bit and then under professional services where we had procurement and also back in the day we had social media person there pio was there we are now we have we don't have a procurement person in-house anymore we now you guys approved the contract i think it was last meeting with a part-time contractor consultant to do our procurement and there you see the the reflection in the budget city attorney as i have spoken with each of you there's a proposed increase in their fees which you will be considering in a future meeting i have budgeted for it so it's reflecting here under planning um i have an increase a slight increase it's budgeted in there i still think we have a lot of zoning work to do along 36th Street to continue working on the 36th Street corridor and throughout the city, regardless of what happens in November, there's still a lot of cleaning up to do in our zoning code. As you know, Sylvia recently left CGA, and they're still looking for somebody to replace her. We have somebody temporarily, but I am taking this, and I've told you guys this, but I am taking this time to explore options. to see what's out there to make sure. But I still have to have it budgeted. Under police, the police is up 12.59%. There are, what is it, four or five retirements that are coming up?

Is it four or five?

There's about five retirements coming up. The biggest cost there is their payouts for their accruals. That's budgeted here. The rentals and leases has gone up because instead of buying cars, we are now leasing them through enterprise. It helps cash flow, it helps us keep a fresher fleet, while at the same time spending about the same amount of money that we would for two cars, we ended up with 14 cars. So now that has shifted over from capital over to rentals and leases. The CPO office is now under the police department general fund budget, and it's not in the LETF anymore. We moved it from their former location. Now they're at the senior center. That was reflected here. And the crossing guards, in order to attract and retain some crossing guards, their pay rate was increased to $20 an hour. That's being funded through traffic citations. Code compliance, one of the changes I made this year is I moved code compliance to the police department. In doing so, Ulysses, who was overseeing them before, a part of his salary was being charged to code enforcement, but now that it's completely under the police department, his full salary now gets charged to the building department. So you see this reflected here. Under IT, it's a small reduction, just decreasing contractual services, different renegotiation of contracts that George has been doing, and operating supplies has decreased. Under recreation, overall, it's an increase of 2.82%. The biggest jump here is under aquatics. In aquatics, our lifeguards, our minimum wage is now This is the last year where we increased it a dollar to $15 an hour, which was mandated by the state or voted on. But this was the last year that we had to catch up. So that is reflected here. Tennis is a big decrease. We've completely taken that in-house. And Omar and his, well, Caitlin and her team are doing a great job. We don't hear, knock on wood, much from the tennis people. They go in there, they play uninterrupted. Same thing with pickleball. I mean, they may have some arguments amongst themselves, but that's nothing that we can do about that. Under public services public works. The overall budget is up 4.07 and this is just an increase in repairs and maintenance also tree trimming the repairs and maintenance are for older vehicles that we have. So they do require a significant amount of maintenance. Golfing Country Club, that one is up 19.59, but that's because we are looking to get a new lease with golf carts. We're gonna go from gas to electric. At the most recent golf tournament that we had, when you hear all those gas cars going on, it sounds like a bunch of lawnmowers going off. It doesn't really lead to a pleasant golfing experience. That's something that Kevin has been wanting to do for a while. I think it's lining up just right to do it. And then also, there's a debt service payment for the new golf course equipment that we have now. the tractors and everything to maintain the actual grounds. Under non-departmental and transfers, That's what we pay in debt service. We pay $1.142,901. And then the transfer that we make every year to the senior center this proposed year is $375,640. So senior services, senior center, even though they get a lot in grants, we still have to subsidize from general fund $375,640. under capital outlay, and this one, when I was talking to Councilman Santin earlier, he's like, why the difference, why the difference? It's not like we're not gonna do anything. I wanna point that out, and I have another slide in the future where I will show you a lot of things that are underway right now. But here, remember, last year we had police vehicles under here. Now that has now shifted over to repairs and maintenance, so that's not there anymore. The air conditioners that we had budgeted last year, those are no longer being not budgeted here. When we complete the AC work that should be completed in the next couple of months, then we're going to reevaluate and see when we come back to get another three or four approved. Another five, whatever we can afford. but I will come back to you at that time, and if needed, make a request for an appropriation out of reserves to do that. Also, see, we're putting some money into the CIP reserve, $15,000, and then this is the fourth year of the TASER program. Senior Services, as I mentioned earlier too, they had a budget decrease overall of 31.3%. And the reason there is our funding from LSP from the state was reduced by $400,000. It went from $750,000 down to $350,000. And then the Alliance for Aging funding is about $2 million over six years. LATF, that money's just being held there right now. We're not budgeting anything to it. So now that the CPO office is in general fund. The road and transportation, this is basically the CITT, if I'm not mistaken, correct? This is the CITT, what we get from the county. This is the half penny tax that we get for transit and transportation projects. This is where we fund a lot of our sidewalk repairs, a lot of our roadway repairs, but also our minibus gets, our shuttle gets funded out of this. is the building department fund um it has a small increase of 6.67 um this is basically salaries and there's an additional vehicle that is being budgeted in this upcoming budget year from building department fund this is not general fund um another important thing that i wanted to share with you is that i'm hoping that by the start of the next fiscal year We're going to be fully automated in our building department software, accepting permits online. They'll be getting reviewed online. And that's one of the reasons why we've been purchasing vehicles. These are for the inspectors so the inspectors can go in a city vehicle and do their inspections and not in a personal vehicle and maybe freak out a resident or somebody whose car is that. there this is a long time coming when i started here um it was a bit of a pet peeve of mine because the city a couple years prior to me arriving i purchased it the software and hadn't really like i say hadn't taken the porsche out of second or third gear and now we're we're doing that so i look forward to that soon A debt service fund, that's what we're proposing there. That's what we're paying. We have, let me see, a number of loans that we have. Senior center, we have the aquatic center that we're still paying. We're paying for the golf course equipment, the tractors and all that other heavy machinery. And there was, was there something else?

The course renovation.

And the course renovation, that's right.

i'm sorry the first or the one that first the first one to get paid off do you know which one the first one gets paid off how about like a like a 30 000 foot view like what's what's our trajectory on the debt service chris chris you have it there like just know your your opinion based on your experience like just is it are we expecting like uh what do you expect or what do you want how would you characterize the trajectory so you can get into the microphone on the smallest note

I mean, it's almost immaterial to the city's financials. But one of them ends in 2030. One of them ends out into 2040. And the new one with Kevin for the renovation is also out to 2040. So you're talking about four years on one, and the rest are you're looking at 14 years out. So you have a ways to go on the three most recent ones.

The one thing we can look and you know, obviously with what may or may not happen in November, one of the things that we will look at is see if it's advantageous to refinance so we can get a better, better rate, maybe lower overall payment, kind of free up some cash every year. But again, you know that all depends at that time what the rates are and what kind of deal we get from the banks. See if it's even advantageous. stormwater fund the stormwater fund we have we have a number of projects in the stormwater we just wrapped up east and oakwood that's a stormwater one we have forest and we have south drive south drive is stormwater right um those all have grant funding we're getting we're just wrapped up to east and oakwood and we're getting started soon on south drive so you'll see that one that'll come out of stormwater fund as well we also have a stormwater master plan that we're updating um we're just waiting we were waiting for our procurement officer to get started but that one has a 400 000 grant as well attached to that sanitation fund. This one is doing a lot better. I don't know if you remember that there was a deficit of like around $900,000 some years ago. It is now down to after our last audit is we've cut that down by 300,000. So now the deficit is around 600,000. And as we adjust the payments or the rates, that number continues to trickle down. We are exploring and Juan has shown me the dump trucks that we have, the ones that take the bulk trash out to the to the big landfill for the county, there's a big steep hill that you gotta climb. And our 20 plus year, 25 year old vehicles are struggling to get up that hill. And Juan doesn't even like going up there. He said that he doesn't feel safe. They don't have air conditioner. The floorboards are, you can almost see through them on some of them. So we're looking, exploring, purchasing new dump trucks. If we do that, we would obviously would be through a loan and then we'd have to adjust the sanitation rates next year accordingly. That's the cost of having your own garbage. So when I was mentioning earlier the capital fund, it didn't show a lot here. We have a number of projects that we have received grants for. South Drive is probably the first one that's going to kick off. That's a stormwater project. We received $2 million in state appropriation. Anything above that that's not covered by grant, we would have to come out of general fund, not general fund, but this one, stormwater fund, to pay the rest off. Same thing with the Forest Drive stormwater project. Whatever it doesn't cost, whatever it costs, and it's in excess of the $1 million grant, we got to pay for it. Oakwood Drive and Westward Drive, those we just literally got this last legislative session. I don't think you're going to see those taking any action other than maybe design or planning of those. Those aren't going to be under construction this year, I don't think. The Aquatic Center improvements, this is another one. I noticed a typo there, grant. It's missing the T. Omar and his team, actually when Omar was still the director, they applied for this grant. This is supposed to replace the shade structures with a nice shade structure around the pool area. The decking, the pool decking, and the marsh side of the pool is supposed to be already done with this. So this is a matching grant. So for every dollar we get in grants, we've got a match. This is general fund dollars. And then we have Canal Street improvements. Canal Street, as you know, we received half of it so far when they got word that their permit is now out of the county and back in our hands for 30 Canal Street. Once they get their permit, they would pay the rest of it. It's a total of $880,000. We're looking at using that money to making improvements along Canal Street and the parking improvements there. The enterprise funds, this one here is sanitation. You'll see what I'm talking about under fiscal year 2024-25, when you go all the way to the bottom, that ending net position, you see it at 607-091, which is better than it was the previous year at 982-220. I was asking why the 607 wasn't carried to the next one. My finance director was explaining to me that the last budget was, it showed what the last budget was, so he has to go budget to budget. I get it. I understand. But just know that this one is getting healthier. It's improving. And it's really important to note that. On the reverse here, we're going to have to look at part of the impact fees that we did. I also did a stormwater rate structure of study. I'm sorry. because we're looking at the actual stormwater rates. That hasn't been increased or adjusted in my time here. And I don't remember the last time that it was increased. But those are probably going to need to be adjusted because you're seeing with all the projects that we're doing and all the maintenance that we're doing on our stormwater fund, it's showing a negative in the future. So in a future meeting when the time comes, we'll have to adjust the rates. Listen, number one on our anticipation, what's going to happen at the state level? What's going to happen in that ballot in November? Your guess is as good as mine. The property values, I just got to continue monitoring it, see where they go. I feel like they're leveling off. If we see what happened to Virginia Gardens, if that's any indication, Yeah, although they did inform me. I was talking to Mayor Dino. They do have a hotel that's coming up, going to hit online next year. So they'll be better off. But yeah, it caught them by surprise. And then continue exploring all grant opportunities, whether federal or local. So we just got to do. And if you guys want me to stop there for a little bit, if you have any questions, I can jump into HR. This is only about four or five slides.

But I have a couple of questions before we move on to that. So can you just talk to us a little bit about, you know, what the increases are, like what are the top three or four things that were the increases, you know, that are, you know, I'm assuming it's payroll. Payroll.

In every organization, or in most organizations, personnel is your greatest cost. It really is. And we're no exception.

That's part of your operating budget, but it was responsible for most of the increases from year to year. Is that the only thing that you feel like increased, that you had to try to move things around in order to accommodate?

No, we did have those two retirements. That was a big one. Um, were there anything else, Chris? I can't drawing a blank now, but that's the biggest one.

I mean, I would say our debt.

Oh, the debt also increased because this past year it went up by almost 100,000, three, I'm sorry, 300,000. That is because of the golf course equipment, right? So that, that was the biggest increase there as well.

All right. And do you want to speak to our reserves so that the public

Yeah, that's always an important thing to do or reserves the percentage that we have or how much we have in reserve.

I mean, we're slightly above the 25% as of last year's audit.

So we're at the high end of the range where we're you know. Looking good as far as reserves. As far as we're concerned, but yeah, so. I'm looking at when some of these projects come up like we've been getting grants and a lot of these grants require matches. Some of them will have to dip into the savings account to fund those. Those are one offs. Those are good ones. They're not. We're not going to fund operations out of that.

How much of our reserves did we use for this fiscal year?

This current? I don't have that number. We'll figure it out. Well, that we'll see after when we do our audit, though. But there's been some adjustments. Because again, we'd like to hear. Go ahead.

I know we've used about $300,000 or $400,000 to wrap up the Oakwood project out of the approximate $7 million I had. So depending on the way the year shakes out for another year and a month and a half, we have to anticipate what else has to be closed out, transferred out. Does the senior center need more money for the next month and a half to balance that fund? We could be down just under 25% at the end of fiscal 26. That's what I'm anticipating, and I think we're about two percentage points, maybe two and a half above as of 2025. To the chair?

It might be too early, but I mean, it's something that we're facing in November, and I feel like it keeps coming up. After, let's say, it passes, what is the first year? I believe it's 150.

I'm going to I'll get into that now. I'll get into that. Give me a second. And if there are any other questions, I can jump into it. All right. So Amendment three, H.J.R. one F. This is the saving our homes from excessive property taxes. So if passed, you're the the rollback rate. I'm sorry. the homestead exemption for homesteaded properties will increase from the current rate, the current number of $50,000 in 2027, it'll go up to $150,000. And in 2028, it'll go up to $250,000. Every year after that, it will get adjusted for inflation. So it keeps creeping up as inflation goes up. It kind of keeps up. So let's see here. Oh, and the other the other big thing here is that for the non homesteaded assessment, like for businesses and apartments right now, the cap when you when an assessment is done is 10 percent. That's going down now to 5 percent. And then under what the state also did under this is they actually defined general fund, what you can use it. They've made it basically a restricted fund. And they put a definition there of what you can use the money for. It's a little silent on some things like recreation, senior services, but I've been told that it's kind of left a little vague. So that way the city council can decide to use funds on those type of things. So what, and these numbers are from the state, what can we expect? They did a five-year projection. For fiscal year 2027-28, it's a $2.2 million loss or reduction in revenue. 28-29, it goes up to $4.1 million. And 2930, 4.5, then it goes up to 5, and then it goes to 5.4. So what really concerns me is you have the first two years, you see that number, but then you see the effect of the inflation or the CPI index taking effect. And it seems like, according to these numbers, which I was told that they're pretty accurate. And again, that also depends on property values. I get that. um but it seems like it's gonna be anywhere between a 500 400 000 cut every year thereafter so that kind of worries me because you know how how can we progress how can we take a step forward if every year we're just chipping away four or five hundred thousand dollars um let's see here so these numbers these numbers i didn't come up with these numbers these were from the state Now, Miami Springs is 70% homesteaded, or 69.3%. We're number three of all municipalities with the highest rate of highest percentage of homesteaded properties. The Amendment 3, what it does, it really, I'm not going to say penalizes, But it really takes a toll on those that are heavily homesteaded, like Miami Springs has been by design. We were designed as a bedroom community and very proud of it and maintained for 100 years that way. People are proud to live here. They live here. And they are proud of that. Other cities around us, much different scenario here. I can tell you Doral, Aventura, their numbers are much less. Bell Harbor, Bay Harbor, their numbers are more on the non-homesteaded than they are on the homesteaded side. Because of the snowbirds, people have second homes, all that fun stuff. Plus, also, they have a lot of rentals and businesses. So for us, I mean, I believe it was one of our state legislators, they told you, right? They told you to your face saying, yeah, it's possible that a number of municipalities will cease to exist and Miami Springs may be big enough to survive. When you look at these numbers, I don't know for how long we can. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I'm being very blunt. The other challenge that we have, and actually, let me go to the next one here. The other challenge that we have is I have, well, I'll get to that later. I have another slide that says challenges. What the cuts will look like. workforce reductions. I'm going to have to, you know, with layoffs and privatization wherever possible, I'm going to have to explore all of that elimination. Once you once you lay off a number of people, then you're going to that's going to affect your events and your services. So that's going to probably take a hit as well. Anything that you know, everybody takes like the circle events that we have, you know, taken for granted because they're part of the fabric of the city, of the history of the city. But each of those cost a lot of money and police overtime and public works to get things ready. Because I can't man an event with the officers that are on duty because if there's a call or something that happens while the event is going on, I can't leave them, especially if it's a road closure. Because then you create a dangerous situation if the cops leave. A lot of our 5K, 10Ks that we have, they require police to close so cars stop. And yeah, so I can't have a police officer just leave, go tend to a call, and come back. So you have to fill it with off duties. or with overtime so that's I mean it's just a really tricky situation there under the city contracts like we do all the time with our new procurement person we've got to review everything see what what is needed what's not needed what we I mean not that it's not needed but if we can renegotiate a lot of things lower our cost And then we have a lot of facilities here. We have our golf course, we have our rec center, we have the aquatic center, we have the senior center. We're gonna probably have to, in order to control costs, which is basically the employees opening and closing, may have to limit the number of days that you're gonna see some of these facilities open. Miami Shores, for example, they close their pool down September or October once fall hits, They close and I don't think they open up until the end of spring or somewhere on after that. I'm not saying I want to do that. I think that is on the table. So where can we address public safety? Public safety.

Where does it fly? It doesn't fall under any of those, right?

Well, public safety is obviously the one of the last ones that you want to touch, right? You don't want to be, oh, you're going to defund the police. But everything that's on the table, it's going to get to a point where I can't cut anything else other than police. It's just the reality.

You're cutting everything else that's going to affect. It's going to affect everything.

It's going to affect everything. And when your police department is 40% of your overall budget, How is it not? How can you not cut something from there? I give everybody my word that would be like a last, I'm not going to sacrifice people's safety. Obviously, but it will come a time, especially when you see those numbers keep going up, keep going up. I'm going to be looking around, and I'm going to go, what else did we cut, you know?

There's no plan in place for funds for police, for public safety, in other words.

From the state? Yeah. No. Nothing like that.

So this is a defund the police?

It's defunding cities, every aspect of it. so um look i was at a conference recently and and in that discussion that's when the whole ballot language and the special session was going on and the florida league of cities was was hosting one of the sessions about this and one of the presenters they said it right it's like there is no incentive with this right there is no incentive to be a bedroom community there isn't I mean, you tell me. If the ones like our good friends in Medley, they are not even blinking an eye at this. They're like, what? They're making changes? Because they're not affected. They have no residential. They have very little homestead, if any. So they're not affected at all. And other of the cities that you see, like you have Doral, you have Aventura, you have Bell Harbor, Bay Harbor, they're lower on that list of the percentage of homestead to non-homesteaded. They're much lower on the homestead and higher on the non-homesteaded. Again, not every city is affected the same, unfortunately. So that's where my challenges lie. Well, I'll get to the challenge. That's the next slide, I promise you. What are the opportunities that we have to increase revenues, right, to kind of offset that? The biggest thing and the first thing, right, is to increase the non-homesteaded properties. We have to look at that ratio, right, the 70 to 30 that we have right now, 70 homesteaded, 30 non-homesteaded, and try to even that out. We're completely built out here, so the only way to do that is annexation. That's the only way. I've been told annexation's off the table, but I do think that we owe it to our residents and to to everyone here to at least ask the question again. Right. I haven't had an opportunity to do that. Mayor, I think maybe you and I, but I'm not going to put if you would like to, we can approach our commissioner. I know there's a moratorium on there, but I also know that the county is also struggling with this bill or with this amendment. They're also struggling. So I don't know if they're going to want to let go of some of their commercial tax base. But the question needs to be asked. And then obviously the other one is development. I know nobody wants to, you know, we don't want to hear it, but it is what it is. That's what it is. Development. And again, our charter there limits that. We increase user fees. You have recreation programs, summer camps. All the user fees are going to go up. special event permit fees to cover public works and police costs. You know, we've been for years, historically just giving away to the River City Festival, police and public work services. And even one time, I think we were paying them to put this on. And so they. How are you, Councilman? Good. You're right. Glad you made it. So we have. Yeah, we have to. We have to change that philosophy, right? So if River Cities comes in, hey, we can't we can't fund this stuff for you. We can't do that anymore. We don't have that luxury, if you will. The Golf and Country Club. We have a wonderful facility there. Obviously, we can talk about increasing the rates for golf. But that's all market base, right? That's all market. If we provide a good product, then we can start increasing. And we're chipping away at that. We're really trying to provide the best golf course out there, public course, for residents and non-residents alike. But then we also have the actual country club itself, that building. And I know some of you have talked to me. Is there any way that we can get a new building there and build something nice so we can really maximize profit with a nice banquet facility and maybe some amenities so we can make it a true country club feel? I would love to do that. We don't have the money to do that. I wouldn't use our reserves for that. It would completely wipe us out. I don't think there are a lot of grants for that. But what it would take is a public-private partnership. Our charter, if I'm not mistaken, Roger, our charter limits how long we could enter into an agreement there. Obviously, because I think in the past people were, you know, there was a fear that it was going to be sold and it was going to be turned into apartments or whatever. That's not what I'm talking about. That is not on the table. I'm just talking about the actual facility to make it a nice country club with good amenities that we can charge more rent, that we can make more money off of that. That's just one. Go ahead, Roger. I'm sorry.

yeah so i just want to confirm mr manager there is a charter limitation that prohibits leases beyond five years without a vote of the city electors but that's leases yeah leases so five years is what you can what you can do um and then the other option is increase the millage rate we have a cap of 10 mils and if we were to

to do nothing right no cuts and we just want to raise the millage rate we're going to keep everything the same in the first year alone i think we have to raise it to about eight eight and change the second year would go up to nine right am i wrong am i around nine and you're at ten your your limits ten so What you're going to see next year is probably a combination of a lot of cuts. I see the comments online, right? They're going to have to trim the fat. There's a lot of meat and bone in these cuts. I mean it. We're going to have to tighten your belt. I make the joke, we don't have legs for the pants to wear a belt. It really is a challenging time, for sure, in my 25-year career. And we had something not as drastic back in 2007, When they did some other changes to this one, they were focusing on the millage rate. But even then, you took your hit and then you kind of rebalanced and restored. But this one, just every year, it seems like it, at least according to the numbers, it looks like it's gonna hit us every year after that. It's really, really challenging. And so the challenges I have right when dealing with this and being your manager here is you have the fact that not all cities are the same. Right. You have other cities all around us that are not, you know, blinking an eye at this. For us, it's really going to affect us disproportionately because of our ratio of homestead to non homestead properties. I have, like as I mentioned earlier, I have an expiring, two expiring collective bargaining agreements. I got to renegotiate with them. Other cities have vacancies. Other cities can, you know, I need to make sure I can keep a team together. And it's, this is, when I tell you it just keeps me up at night, this does. The goal is to obviously, in your layoffs, is to retain your high performing employees and give them more to do. and some of your, you know, obviously the underperforming or, you know, retain your high-level employees, your high-performing ones. Employee morale, how do I manage that? How do you keep going when this is looming? It's a real challenge. And like I said before, when you're facing a cut every year, a cut every year, how do I maintain our facilities? How do I maintain our streets? How do I maintain our buildings from dilapidating or from getting in bad condition? And so how do I keep the city moving forward? And I usually have a slide that says thank you, but.

Just to be crystal clear to everybody, you know, watching from home, we're not totally abreast of what's going on. What happens when a city doesn't do anything, hits year six, maxes out at ten?

Worst case scenario, I'm sure you've read the articles. What happens is cities will go out of business, will unincorporate, dissolve. Whether or not the counties would take them back, there's a lot of question marks left. There's still a lot of question marks. I don't know. But if a city cannot operate, I don't have an answer for that.

so i'd like to chime in so thank you for presenting up for us i mean i think everybody staff i know that we're not the only municipality now i will agree with you that this disproportionately affects us because we are a bedroom community if you rank all 34 municipalities in miami-dade county you said we're number three and it's because we have 70 percent homestead exemption because we're proud to be a bedroom community and unfortunately that means we're DISPROPORTIONATELY AFFECTED BUT EVERY UH MUNICIPALITY IS AFFECTED BECAUSE IT'S IT'S TARGETING WHAT FUNDS MUNICIPALITIES CORRECT UH SO I IN TALKING WITH IT WE'VE BEEN SEEING THIS COMING UM AND THIS WAS DONE IN A IN A SESSION a little later into the summer. And the sense that I get from reading the tea leaves and speaking to our representatives and paying attention to what people, so the governor himself, Is said that he's not really campaigning for it and I think that property tax relief is important. I think that it's necessary. I think that new residents that buy into Miami Springs and are paying a hefty price are paying a larger or carrying a larger burden of the the property taxes that are providing the same services as somebody who's been here a long time and so there a solution is necessary, but This amendment that we're all going to vote on November 3rd is in my opinion not the answer and the sense that I get from talking to and reading about and listening to the legislators is that They feel like they'd like another shot at this as a matter of fact They've told us that if this doesn't pass and it needs 60% in order to pass This is a proposal. I give them credit for coming up with a proposal, right? It's not an edict. It's not a mandate It is for us to decide and while it seems tempting to think like wow this is it means I'm going to pay less the consequences down the line and And I think that more and more municipalities are realizing this and this does affect everybody. And you mentioned there, right, like part of the challenge, you got expiring collective bargaining agreements. You know how this affects law enforcement is when their collective bargaining agreement is up and now the city is dealing with all these cuts. What are they gonna negotiate for?

To that point, It's not that I cut, right? I can spare the cuts from the police department, but I'm not going to go in there and give them raises every year and make that even worse. So what happens is, what do they do? There's openings in other cities and then all of a sudden,

just so I just I want to be clear at least from my point of view we all pay property taxes right but I feel like this is a very onerous way to try to provide property tax relief I think that there's a a better way to do it a more surgical way to do it we've already it's been signaled to us by legislators that if this doesn't pass they will be coming back you know state government has been you know really cracking down on municipalities uh in in in recent years and uh and we've been You know, there are municipalities that are in far more wasteful and, you know, throughout the state because this is throughout the state. I don't know what rural communities in the state are going to do.

I've heard counties are going to disappear.

This is a really big thing. And I applaud the effort. It is a proposal. It is a proposal that will be extremely onerous. And it's not even done, I don't wanna say that it's not nuanced, but they're very, very drastic changes. And I think that everybody, you spoke about annexation, right? That was a way to, outside of development, try to increase your tax base to offset the fact that we like to be a bedroom community. But to your point, our attempts at annexation, the county really is going to have to do some cutting with this, and it wouldn't be wise for them to give away their income producing, revenue producing properties as part of an annexation. And to be quite honest with you, those of you that have been keeping score the last 20 years, the people in the annexed areas that we were trying to annex didn't really want to be annexed because their millage rate would have gone far more than if had they been annexed by somebody else or just left alone as unincorporated. So I really feel like we're limited in terms of how like you can only cut so much and then you know the tempting effect of like paying less in taxes if it means that you know the because i get letters every time like hey why are you you know why why are you cutting this at the senior center why are you doing that like people want their services and we've become accustomed to that and and i think that uh more and more people are going to realize that as we get closer to november 3rd again i the sense i get from legislators is that they want a second crack at this and they will come up with something better and i trust that they will but this ain't it as far as i'm concerned

Yeah, I I do want to echo what you just said. I I agree 100% something needs to be done. I just my wife and I just bought a house last year, so we're on the higher end of the tax bill in the neighborhood. So I I completely understand and it's. NOT FAIR, BUT IT'S NOT FAIR BECAUSE OF, YOU KNOW, TRYING TO FIX IT THROUGHOUT THE YEARS, OH, WE'RE GOING TO TRY TO FIX IT, TRY TO FIX IT, AND IT'S JUST BEEN SHIFTING TO EITHER THE LATER HOME BUYERS OR NON-RESIDENTIAL OR NON-HOMESTEADED, SO IT'S ALL BEEN A TAX SHIFT, AND I FEAR THAT THIS IS GOING TO BE THE SAME THING.

I BELIEVE THAT AT THE LAST MINUTE IT WAS It was done hastily to, not because they weren't well-intentioned, but because we were up against it, because it was gonna be, the goal was to get something for November. Again, that is the proposal that they came up with, but it doesn't mean that it's the only proposal, and it doesn't mean that we can't have a better proposal that achieves property tax relief. But this is going to be incredibly, INCREDIBLY IMPACTFUL AND BURDENSOME FOR ALL MUNICIPALITIES AND PARTICULARLY THOSE THAT ARE BEDROOM COMMUNITIES LIKE OURS. SO YEAH, I APPRECIATE YOUR CONCERN AND WE HOPE THAT I THINK THAT PEOPLE WILL FIND THAT MORE AND MORE PEOPLE WILL START TO HEAR. THIS IS GOING TO AFFECT the entire state this isn't just going to affect the bedroom communities this is affecting everybody and it's going to you know it's going to affect public safety it's going to affect services it's going to affect a great great deal uh and i'm hoping that uh that word gets out so that they could bring us something uh a little more reasonable

Through the chair? Yes, sir. Could you address, because I think that there's some mixed messaging going on, and the state speaks about the $65 billion reserve, I believe, right, that we have. MORE MONEY THAN WE SHOULD IN THE IN THE STATE AND NEXT YEAR IS GOING TO BE 80 BILLION DOLLARS OF THE SURPLUS OR THE STATE SURPLUS YEAH CAN YOU SPEAK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THAT BECAUSE MAYBE I I KNOW ABOUT AS MUCH AS YOU I READ THE ARTICLE TODAY THAT THEIR FORECASTERS ARE THEY'RE THE SAME THE SAME GROUP THAT I think the mix messaging is, you know, since they speak about a surplus for the state, that has nothing to do with the way that we fund our police, the way we pick up our garbage, the way, you know, so the question is, With such a great surplus, why are we worried about how are we going to pay for our stuff? Why is the state putting us in this situation? I think it's really sad that we live in a time, in a great town, we're selling properties here for $2.5 million, and we're concerned about how we're going to pick up the garbage, how we're going to pay for our police. Personally, Miami Springs is my home. And in my house, I can't hire people to come to my house and expect them to work for a quarter of the budget. That makes no sense whatsoever. Super grateful to all you guys, to the city employees and all the departments for putting in the effort and working hard, especially in this time. We have educated people with a lot of experience working their butts off on a daily basis. here in the city, and you guys are coming into work with this concern of what's going to happen next year, what's going to happen tomorrow. I do promise you guys that we're working very hard to figure stuff out, and thank you for doing that. There's definitely a more responsible way to do this. Senior citizens need to cut their own fixed incomes. They could go that route. There's so many other ways they could go about this. It kind of feels like we're being targeted.

Yeah, I can tell you, I don't want you to think that we're just kind of like taking this wait and see. No, my team and I are constantly exploring new ways, already coming up with what we want to do in case this does happen. But yeah, it's a lot. It's going to be a lot.

And the funding public safety is unacceptable. Unacceptable. Yeah.

And so, yeah, Miami Springs, if it does pass, I fear that it's going to look and feel a lot different in the future, which is one of the things that has just absolutely marveled at is the sense of community that you have here, that we have here, that all the events that we have It just doesn't happen for nothing, right? It doesn't happen for free.

It's not even that, because you've already mentioned a couple times, Councilman, defunding the police. It's the way we're at ground zero, right? We're not allowed to annex. There's a moratorium. We have a certain way of life that we want in our city. If we were in Golden Beach, they don't you know, raise the millage rate as much as you need to, that's the cost of living in Golda Beach, right? But that's not us. And we're a small municipality and it's not about defunding, if we can't, If these kinds of cuts would seriously make it, you know, it would put us in risk of not being able to have a city, right? And if that's the case, then who's police going to protect and serve, right? Then we'll have the county's police. And that'll save plenty of money, but I don't believe that that's what our residents want, right? So of all people, I think that a lot of people are gonna come out against this, but of all people, I believe that the residents of the City of Miamis Springs and the voters in particular, uh this we we have to send a message that they got to go back to the drawing board and and and come up with something that's a little more surgical uh because it's not it's not feasible thank you for making the correction mayor um if this doesn't go through is there something we could do as a municipality to help cut taxes uh for a resident maybe like the the senior citizen

One one. Yeah, there's there are things that we can do. As a matter of fact, I believe Councilman Santine and I had even talked about about doing something for senior citizens and even supporting legislation in the state for that for senior citizen relief. But there's other things that we can do here internally. I think you've seen Hialeah do something similar to that. We can explore all those options as well if it if it doesn't pass. But As the mayor said, and I've been told many times, if this doesn't happen, we're just coming back. So we'll see, and hopefully it'll be a more balanced approach.

Through to the chairman to see if we go back the largest. Let's see if I got this right the largest citywide spending is personal services correct.

Remind us again what is personal services for personally personal services right personnel employees. Those are those are your employees your personnel.

Okay, so if we're looking at, are we looking at hiring freezes? Are we looking at reducing the cost of living expenses? I mean, is that on the table? Are you limiting departments? I mean, is that possible? No, just a regular budget. I'm just talking about the regular budget, not the doomsday scenario that we've been talking about, which could happen.

JUST IN GENERAL. WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING, FOR EXAMPLE, WE HAD A PROCUREMENT PERSON HERE, DON'T NECESSARILY NEED A PROCUREMENT, AND I THINK WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO DO IS SEE IF WITH PART-TIME, ESPECIALLY FOR THE BIG PROCUREMENTS, BECAUSE IN-HOUSE THE STAFF CAN HANDLE SOME OF THE SMALLER PROCUREMENT, WE'RE TRYING, WE'RE NOT REPLACING THAT PERSON, WE'RE BRINGING IN A PART-TIME CONSULTANT TO DO IT FOR US.

THAT'S COST SAVINGS.

IT'S COST SAVINGS. AND I'M TAKING THAT APPROACH. WE JUST RECENTLY LOST And again, I'm not very sensitive to this, but we've lost two key members of my team. We lost you-know-who to you-know-where, and then we did lose Juan in the clerk's office recently as well. We're not replacing Juan. We're kind of making do with what we have. Now, we have it in the budget just in case that we need it, but we're not filling it right now. That'll be for next year to ultimately cut. So wherever possible, we're not replacing.

And where else do you think we could look at cuts on staff or reductions?

I don't want to share that without. But it's a possibility. Yes. Yes, it is.

I understand you want to retain, there has to be retention of talent.

That is correct.

If the other cities are suffering, I don't know where they're going to go unless they go to a larger municipality. But yeah, I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you.

To chair. I think a good practice will be and we we've done all the exercises you guys have done exercises on what if you know with the cuts and what we do. You know we maybe we should also look into if this doesn't go through. You know what we could you know give back to our residents to some and maybe even work with other municipalities to get a bigger picture out there or even the county right.

That's yeah, it's a good idea. It's a good idea. I just I want you to know that even if this doesn't pass. There's already things that we've been talking about internal. Efficiencies that we saw that we can we can absolutely do and we will be doing those regardless what happens in November.

They're coming back with another tax relief proposal.

Yeah, so it's not we're just going to stay ahead of it and and really everything is on that everything is on the table.

I SPOKE TO ONE OF THE CANDIDATES AND FOR GOVERNOR AND NOT TO MENTION ANY NAMES OR ANY I DON'T WANT TO GET INTO THAT BUT THE WAY HE PUT IT WAS YOU KNOW THIS IS A ONE SIZE FIT ALL. PROPOSAL AND IT SHOULD BE MORE. CUSTOMIZED TO THE DIFFERENT MUNICIPALITIES AND THEIR NEEDS.

The chair would we we're talking about scenarios this is mean we would have to go to Tallahassee should this thing pass in November year after year asking them for funding.

That was one of the original discussions that they're going to have some part of money that

we can go up there hat in hand but that that wasn't part of it but that's not part of this amendment that's not there is no fund there is nothing that we can go up and ask to no there isn't any other through the chair um i also just want to mention uh my office obviously white serota has has been instrumental in at least getting the ballot question on the property tax reform rewritten it was found to be basically political advertising so at least it's fair now So that doesn't you know that does change about language doesn't affect the actual right, but right just the ballot language It's more fair. It's more transparent. It's actually up front, but as part of that of course my team in the Municipal Division That's me Chad Heidi everyone in the Municipal Division of Weiser Rota has been looking at various revenue sources that could be available and They're not always the best, you know, ways to do things necessarily when compared to like a property tax reform, just ad valorem revenues. But we are looking at other methods as well without having to go to Tallahassee that may be able to at least cushion some of these things. So just keep that on the radar that my firm is absolutely being proactive in looking for potential solutions in the future. Thank you, Roger.

And my concern with that is, you know, what does that do to morale with you guys? I want to have the best people working in Miami Springs, the best police, city managers, city clerks, you know. Why would the best want to work with us or, you know, anyone, any small municipality that's going through the same?

yeah that that that's going to be the challenge right that will be the challenge but we'll deal with it as um we'll have to roll with the punches as they say any other comments i'm glad you made it honestly

Because at the end of the day, forget all the talk about the future. How we stand today, and we're going to move forward to get better. So my main concern, obviously, is just understanding a lot of our operations costs, what's recurring, what's a one-time charge, what's being deferred for next year, and seeing how we can sustain those levels that are... I went through that whole thing now. Yeah. Yeah. If this wasn't on the horizon, I wouldn't be worried. Obviously, you know, our...

Our tax base is limited by design, as far as development and all that stuff, but I wouldn't be as worried as I am right now. Obviously, when you see other cities and their massive development, but that changes the character of the community. but if if this wasn't on the horizon this this amendment i really wouldn't be worried i i would you know we'd just be focusing on providing the best services looking at where we can cut and save because every year i've since i've been here i've tried to lower the millage rate and that that's my that's my mission everybody gets mad at me oh why'd you lower it this year i it's just my personal belief of mine it's a personal belief of mine if i can cut i will cut This thing looming has really, Put a cloud over. JC, you, I'm sorry.

I was going to say that over the last two, three years, the state, you know, whatever the Office of Accountability that, you know, was, we were, municipalities have been asked to like, right, yeah, I mean, if that's the brand name of it, but We've been having to submit reports about municipalities have been questioned about their millage rate and whether it's been going up. Our budgets have been, for the last couple of years, scrutinized. uh and it's great right in some ways because they have found municipalities that you know that have had to great point find efficiencies but do you just speak to that since it seems like it that's a great point because to the state's defense right in the state's defense you know there are cities that have been found to what are you spending this money on or in counties right

If you're a junkie like me, right? And I was watching I ended up watching the Senate hearing and the Senate discussion when they voted on and the House discussion. If you watch the Senate discussion, they were very Miami heavy. And some of their criticisms in particular, I'm not going to say who it was, but it was pretty heavy. You know, there were attacks, basically. But some of the things that they point out, you're like, yeah, I get it. I understand why. That's why you guys are talking about this. Unfortunately, it's like they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. So not every municipality, and I would say most municipalities are doing it well for their city, for their citizens, right, for their residents. It's the way their residents want their city to be, you know, the services and the facilities that they want. So yeah, to your point, I mean, there are some examples that they were giving that yeah, it left your head scratching like okay, geez, that shouldn't have happened. I don't know how that, who thought about that, but it's crazy.

The state has been scrutinizing the municipalities more.

It has been scrutinizing municipalities from Jacksonville all the way down. And you see some reports, especially when the governor started his, and literally it's called DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, they were sending out Questionnaires, you need to fill this out and turn it in within two days. Tell me about your financing. We had to.

I remember we were getting them.

And sending them back. And then they would follow up questions. You send them back. And if you were good, you wouldn't hear anything. If you were bad, you would hear something.

And everybody would hear about it.

Everybody would hear about it in the report. Right.

That's great. And I'm all about checks and balances. I think it's important. One thing that, you know, and going back to the balance, the budget is one thing we can't argue is how we've cut, you know, we've cut all over in as many places as possible. And I appreciate you still trying to find ways to use what we do have and looking forward to continue to make the community better. But they shouldn't punish all of us because a couple of bad apples or maybe more.

I would welcome anybody to come down, talk to us, take you around where we spend money. Because I think back then, when that whole thing was happening, they were taking exception to some of the programs, some of the things that cities were spending money on. It was becoming a very political discussion. And they were talking about things, purchases or expenditures of ideology. Miami Springs doesn't have that. We don't. I guess we give money to the Boy Scouts every now and then. We give money to the Rotary. We partner up with our civic groups.

So $34 million operating budget.

Yes.

Can you go back to the slide that showed what the percentage decreases would be over the first three years of the rollout?

Oh, this one right here? That one.

You're talking about, like, you know what the percentage of our operating budget that is to take that, like, how do you expect, you know, it's not like we're this, you know, bloated bureaucracy that's, you know.

Our general fund budget, just so you know, is $13 million. So if we subtract, you know, $5 million out of 13, And the police is... How can you do that? How much of the percentage of police... WE ARE POLICE IS 40 PERCENT OF THAT I THROUGH THE CHAIR JC YOU STARTED YOUR PRESENTATION ABOUT THE ASSESSED PROPERTY VALUES SO FORGET AMENDMENT THREE YOU HAD A CONCERN ABOUT YOU YOU SAID SOMETHING THAT YOU THOUGHT OR YOU SAW THAT IT WAS PLATEAUING IT SEEMS LIKE PROPERTY VALUES ARE PLATEAUING ACTUALLY COUNCILMAN SANTIN MIGHT BE ABLE TO HE'S YOU KNOW HE'S AN APPRAISER SO UM BUT IT LOOKS LIKE IT'S IT'S LEVELING OFF IN FROM WHAT I'VE BEEN ABLE TO SEE to the point that, like I said, our neighbors, Virginia Gardens, they went down 5%. Instead of a regular increase, they're negative 5%. That's what he told me. But his rollback rate was higher than the existing, so it was like a roll forward, a roll up rate, just to get back to even.

Yeah, but if you talk to Spencer, if you talk to anybody, nobody here feels like they're on easy street.

No, no, no. He's not. Absolutely not.

I had a conversation with him the other day, and he's... Everybody's panicking about this. A lot of people are panicking.

Too much. Go ahead. No, let me, for your benefit, I'll go. No, I've got capital, some capital projects up here that we are currently working on. All right. Just so you know that what was budgeted last year, in capital, one of the biggest shifts in capital. We had police vehicles, two police vehicles at $114,000, or I think it was $140,000. But since we went to Enterprise and we're leasing our vehicles now, that is no longer a capital item. It is now under rentals and leases. um what else did we have we had the air conditioning at the at the rec center we're just getting we haven't even started yet we just awarded that that's five air conditioning five air conditioners if we when we move once we get those up and running and we see how we are we continue on to the next couple and we'll see how we are and i'll come to you guys at that moment and say hey i want a budget appropriate a budget amendment to do these um x amount whatever the number is of air conditioners so we can keep doing it i don't see any deferred maintenance here i'm just if i if if there's something that needs to come up i will come to you guys a lot of them are stormwater so they'll come out of the stormwater uh reserves um and some of them they may not be ready for this fiscal year Because up there, you have the Westward Drive roadway and Oakwood. Those haven't even begun design or anything. We just literally were negotiating. The state is giving us the contract now. We have to bring it to you guys to execute. And then we've got to go through planning and design, all that fun stuff. So for next fiscal year, that's not even going to be there.

That's something that we

Our stormwater fees, no, as part of our impact fee study, which is another thing that we're doing and we're taking action on, we're gonna have impact fees hopefully at the next meeting. But as part of that, I also commissioned a rate study. So that rate study, you're gonna use that for next year to determine what we have to set the rate at. Because right now, when I was going over the budget, it was showing that the rates needed to be adjusted. AND I DON'T KNOW WHEN THE LAST TIME THEY WERE ADJUSTED. ALL RIGHT.

ANY OTHER COMMENTS?

ALL RIGHT. SO OUR NEXT, SAY IT AGAIN. I JUST WANT TO SAY, WORKING FOR THE CITY OF MIAMI SPRINGS HAS BEEN, OR IS, I DON'T WANT TO MAKE SOME, IS THE GREATEST HONOR THAT I'VE HAD IN MY PROFESSIONAL CAREER. THIS IS THE BEST CITY BY FAR. AND I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE. AND I TOLD MARIA MITCHELL WHEN I SAID I WANT TO PROTECT THIS CITY, I WANT TO KEEP IT MIAMI SPRINGS. And I promise you that I'm going to continue to do that every step of the way. I just wish the state wasn't playing offense against me. But it is what it is. We'll deal with it. Roll with the punches.

We'll try to get the word out to voters so that we can take another crack at it.

okay so if there's no other comments tell us next steps then we'll be voting to approve this budget yeah the next step are the two budget hearings that we have um they are in september number 14th and 24th 28th they coincide with our commission meetings our council meetings so first thing we'll do is budget hearing and then we'll move on to the council meeting because the budget hearings do we have to make the announcement of when they are um do we have to announce them

We did that at the millage setting in July, but we are constantly up. Perfect.

So yeah, the budget hearings, they are time and date specific. So if you say seven o'clock, you do it at seven o'clock.

And when the mailers go out, the property tax information, property tax card is going to include all of the hearing date information. And before second hearing on the budget and millage, of course, there will be a separate ad as well.

All right. Well, thank you to you and your staff. Thank you, Chris. I know that you did a lot behind the scenes to make this happen. So yeah, thank you again. And so this City Council budget workshop is adjourned at 7.21. Thank you.

Thank you.