City Commission Regular Meeting - workshop

Out on patrol, every shift is different, and situations can change quickly.

Any given day, you just never know what's going to happen because it's not a routine. It's not like you have, and I'm not trying to detract from what it is that you do, but I think it's similar in that you have a bit of a routine, you know, you have an agenda, and you have stuff that you put and set aside to work on, some long-term, some short-term. Ours is at the whim of life. We are at the mercy of the radio. Whatever situation arises, no two are ever the same. So we never know how busy it's going to be or how slow it's going to be.

At the time of 9-11, he was working as a police officer in New York.

It was that training and experience as a volunteer fireman that saved me from some serious harm on the days of, the day of and the time after 9-11. I learned real fast. I mean, within minutes, I was like, this is not a cop job. Right. Wow. This is definitely a firematic event. Yes. And then I just switch my hats, as I had indicated before in conversation. Whatever the situation that is presented before you, you rise to that level and you use what tools you have. to fix the situation.

I'm sure there's no textbook or training that could have truly prepared you for that type of an event, having three in one and the location. Indirectly.

Indirectly. The firematic training is very, very intensive, and they train you for all of that, but you never really anticipate all of that occurring all at the same time.

A large part of patrol work comes down to observation and situational awareness.

We're looking for the stuff that doesn't fit. We're not looking to our left or right anymore because we've just passed it. We're looking for the things that are way ahead of us. Beyond the pickup truck, we're looking further up to see what it is that's happening that is not normal behavior, the stuff that doesn't fit.

The focus is on keeping people safe and preventing problems before they escalate.

But for the average person, our desire is to make sure that you have the comfort and safety in knowing that the people around you are driving in the same manner or fashion as well. And we're just the guardians of that.

I'm alive.

Today is Wednesday, July 29th, 2026. It's 10 a.m. We're in the city chambers and I call the city commission budget workshop meeting to order. Commissioners present are Commissioner Duvall, Commissioner Stokes, Mayor Emmerich, Vice Mayor Langdon, and Commissioner Petro. There is a quorum present for this meeting. Also present are City Manager Fletcher, City Attorney Fuino, City Clerk Frost, Board Specialist Linder. We got Police Chief Garrison and Fire Chief Titus in the back. I am requesting that all commissioners, public participants, and staff maintain order and decorum throughout this meeting. City Commission Policy 2021-03 states that attendees shall refrain from engaging in personal attacks and boisterous, immaterial, inflammatory, obscene, profane, or disorderly conduct. Additionally, meeting attendees must refrain from obscene, profane, or disorderly conduct, including hand clapping, yelling, and similar demonstrations. all of which disturbs the peace and good order of the meeting. Thank you. I'm going to call on the Vice Mayor to lead us in the Pledge this morning.

Thank you, sir. 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, ma'am. Is that one?

Resident Northport, my fellow residents ponder this. The city manager recommended budget shows no substantial cuts to the city manager's department, yet I am aware there are demands for all departments to cut positions. Police positions not funded, but you have a 12-person communications division, six-person grants division, six-person social service division, 30-person technology division, and two assistant city managers. Make it make sense. Don't just talk the talk. Walk the walk. Yasin Rozani. Three findings from the July 29 proposed budget belong on the record before this Commission adopts the FY27 road and drainage assessment. The adopted methodology does not support this rate increase. The 2023 Stantec methodology established the only lawful basis for this assessment. It set a specific rate schedule, 25% in FY24, 15% in FY25, 15% in FY26, and 0% from FY27 through FY33. The commission can lower rates from what the methodology calls for, but raising them above it requires a new methodology study. There is no adopted methodology supporting a 5% increase for 27. the city's own budget confirms costs do not justify either salaries rose 1.9% versus 4% model healthcare insurance assumed. To rise 10% per year came in completely flat and total fund 107 operating spenders decreased 3.6% year over year. The methodology deliberately front-loaded increases so FY27 could hold at 0%. If the City wants to raise rates above that ceiling, it must first conduct a new methodology study that lawfully supports doing so. The real driver is fund balance depletion, and there is a better tool. Fund 107's balance dropped $17,375,251 in FY26 from capital spending, leaving the fund projected to fall $204,923 below required reserve levels by end of FY27. If capital projects are the driver, a one-time capital assessment under Florida Statute 197.36321G used by other Florida municipalities for exactly this purpose would recover those costs without permanently inflating the base operating rate. Raising rates while cutting services fails the special benefit standard. Florida law requires a special assessment reflect a special benefit to the property assessed. The July 29 budget raised the assessment 5% while cutting services by $2,222,500, moving reduced from six to four cycles. Equipment upgrades delayed. Proactive service eliminated. A property owner paying more for fewer services is not receiving a special benefit. There are subsidizing a fund balance shortfall. John Presbach. My name is John Pressbach, and I am speaking tonight as a concerned Northport property owner. I want to address a troubling development coming from our Natural Resources Department, specifically the recommendation made at the June 9th meeting to use eminent domain to seize 9.3 acres across 30 contiguous parcels from an unwilling owner for environmental conservation. A review of city records over the past 12 months shows eminent domain has historically been reserved strictly for necessary public construction easements, Using it to override private property rights for environmental land acquisition sets a dangerous precedent. While I want to thank Commissioners Petro and Stokes for voicing strong opposition to this idea, the fact that the City Administration allowed it to reach the dais is concerning. North Port residents should want a sensible balance between growth, natural preservation, and affordable tax rates. Achieving that requires common sense compromise, not government outreach. The Natural Resource Department should prioritize those ideas that benefit all parties involved. For instance, a go for tortoise relocation state legislation passed by Representative James Buchanan in 2022 allowed for tortoises to be relocated to nearby public and state conservation lands. I urge the Commission to direct the City Manager and Natural Resources Department to... Work with Florida Fish and Wildlife to implement this option locally. It will save property owners and developers thousands of dollars, keep housing more affordable, and protect wildlife without burdening taxpayers or infringing on property rights. We need practical environmental policies that respect private property, keep housing costs affordable, and have tax dollars spent wisely. Thank you for your time and leadership. In person, I have Valley Olander.

Good evening, good morning, I'm sorry. I am Wally Hollander, I come here in peace. I am not a criminal. Don't treat me like one. I have a dignity, I am instructing you, Emmerich, to respect it. Emmerich, I am instructing you to remove policeman off my back, tell him to move 90 degree over here, This is 26 time I am instructing you to do it. Florida Constitution can be changed five ways. Each way requires people votes. You change Constitution 26 times without people's vote. This is from Florida Constitution, describing that it is settled law that each of personal liberties enumerated in Declaration of Rights of the Florida Constitution is a fundamental right, which municipality cannot violate. Enrich. Since... Fletcher got here, city budget went up 85%, while population only 21%. The ratio is 400% in favor of financially supreme 1%. Commissioner's budget is now $755,000, which is $151,000 per commissioner. It is for $413 per day, including Saturday and Sunday. Enjoy it, right? Economic news. First six months of 2026, U.S. bankruptcy filing reached 310,000. Up 12% versus prior year. Small business under Chapter 11 is up 67%. Commercial up 14%. Traditional Chapter 11 is up 37%. Small business account for 44% of workforce in the United States also creates ownership. By April 2026, 6.9.2 million students loan borrowers were in default. Another 3 million are 90 delinquent. This is from Michael Hudson, an economist. A senior country, once financialized, can no longer build or produce anything itself, so it turns into cannibalism. It becomes a leather cancer on human society that what is at the heart of ruling oligarchs strategy, question mark. It applies here? Looks like no concern to 2027 budget.

Thank you. Moving on to general business, item A, 26-0966. City Manager, this is your item, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good morning and good morning to all the commissioners. Today we are going through the next process of our budget for fiscal year 27. This has been a little bit longer process than usual. We started a little bit earlier and we had a lot of things that we had to do and wanted to accomplish in this budget. And I want to first thank the finance team under Director Kukarenko's leadership. They have done a great job of getting us here and staying with us through some turbulent times, so to speak, as we gather information and make some choices and some exercises that were not always easy to do. But the end goal and end game is always to make sure that we present a budget that reflects all the complexity of the things of our city and the different areas that need concern and how do we keep growing and growing responsibly in a city of our size and our trajectory. We start by offering the commissioners strategic pillars, and one of the things we've talked about lately as we get into the fall, depending on the outcome of the tax reform for the state, is our pillars might need to be condensed or revised, depending on what happens, and that will allow you to better be able to then manage what those implications will be for your budget going forward, if that so happens. But as of now, all the seven pillars are still there and still accounted for, and that's what we use to make your budget is your pillars and your priorities, and we try to make sure that the funds that you want allocated to those priorities are attached in the document that you see. The fiscal year process, 27, as you see at our beginning, the last time we met was in June 10th through the 11th, and since then, we've received questions. We've had one-on-ones, I believe, with each of you to get any more of your questions in-depth answered so that we can provide the best conversation for today. We believe we've captured all of those, and as you have questions as we go through, Mr. Mayor, feel free to stop me, and we'll talk about whatever questions you or the Board may have, but we'll just keep going unless otherwise noted. So the direction from the June 2026 workshop was for public safety. We restored the funding for seven vacant police positions, and we also added funding for the seven new firefighter rescue positions. We did that, and we were still able to come within the numbers that we wanted to, save the money that we wanted to for debt service, as well as add money back to the general fund. Through Public Works, we restored what you requested, which was the yard waste services, as well as the bulk pick up services. The proposed key factors for our budget year are our taxable value growth of 5.67%. We were the highest in the county. A lot of that is due to the new construction that we are experiencing that others around us are not experiencing. Being one of the fastest growing cities does have its pros and cons, and one of the pros is our taxable value. Cons, of course, would be traffic and environmental protection and other challenges that you have to do to make sure that you grow responsibly. Our city health insurance rates were flat from the fiscal year 26-27. I believe that's the first year that's happened since I've been here. So that is something that we definitely want to be grateful for as well. The funding methodology change for IT infrastructure replacement, road and drainage district assessment rate revisions, the public works facility funding deferral, as well as the updated fire district tax rule. When you look at and think about how did we save the money that we saved this year, in years past, we've always shown you what money we left out of the budget that we needed as part of the argument that we were doing the best that we could while moving forward. Well, this year, since last year, we did not produce the $3 million savings that was asked for without affecting our staff. We took the 5% out as a reduction exercise, which helped us get to the area of where we needed to be and then of course all of those were not taken for five percent because that reduction would have led to us having to lay off people we used a combination of this reduction as well as money that we would add to the general fund to make the balance of what we needed for for the debt service that we were challenged to do in this budget now when we were challenged to do that budget amount for the debt service which is approximately 2.7 million dollars we did not have the tax reform as a major discussion so knowing that now we said this and i think that we all need to keep saying this because there's misinformation that says that we're going to just still keep plowing ahead as if that's not there. That money is not being spent. It is up to the commission to decide if and when that will be spent, if and when the court does validate that particular pathway. And if it doesn't, then you'll have that money within your fund balance to help you if tax reform does pass. And we've already started to begin saving, which is a little bit faster than some others around us. When you look at the changes from the workshop from June, you're looking at the general fund having a net change of $322,000 for the drainage, $1.6 million. Some of the other higher ones are solid waste district. You see utility revenue at $2.2 million for a total net change of $2.788 million from June. When you dig down a little deeper into some of the actual departments, you will see some of the departments listed, but note our administration and management. You see city manager at 31,000, development services. They went up by $250,000. Fire and rescue, $870,000. Police department, public works and water and sewer utilities round and round as well. These were all changes that we discussed, but they were impactful based on how we needed to shore up the budget to get us to the point that you are today. And then of course, this will lead us into the conversation of adopting the budget to readings in September. So total general fund budget, fiscal year 26, the year that Wayne adopted, 97.4 million. Fiscal year 27, recommended was 99.2 million. And the one that we're proposing now is 98.9 million. And those three different numbers are very close to each other, which is something you don't normally see in a year just based on growth and the activity that we have. But we are doing and have done things that have made that number a little bit more stable based on the current environment that we're in. When you look at the general fund and what was audited from last year, and as a reminder, we are audited every single year for those who should know that that isn't a third party independent audit that validates and looks for findings that affect how we operate the government financially. And it proves that we are in good standing based on those reports and our audits come back clean. And so we're very proud of that. The projected fund balance as of September will be $26.6 million, and that includes, well, you add $4.2 million of the manager's proposed budget as a return, which totals $30 million, would be there for next year, ending of September 30th of 2027. And that is a very strong number. You see and you can recognize that we have the 20%, which is the commission policy mandated 20%, which is $19.7 million. And then on top of that, we have an additional 10% that we carve out for anything above and beyond that that we might need for almost $10 million itself. So the projected fund balance over under that is the $1.2 million, which goes back to my point of the $3 million that you would have approximately, it's even more than that, but for the debt service and the amount of money that would be there. The projected percentage of that over the fund balance reserve for September of 27 would be approximately 1.25%. General fund changes since the recommended budget. On this slide, you will be able to take note of the reduction of a senior telecom, a vacant position not in the field, a budget reduction of community engagement and recruiting specialist vacancy, A budget reduction of a police officer for special ops, not to be filled until funded. Vacant patrol position, vacant investigation position. Six firefighter EMS activity, center six and 10 proposed is zero and crossing guard moved from patrol division to special ops zero as well. Then our health insurance rates remaining flat, 893,000, and the reallocation of IT equipment was $540,348. This next slide continues some of the revenue changes in that same category since recommended. In June, the ad valorem taxes $1,044,000, local communication service tax of $106,590, as well as electrical fees and sales tax revenue, the half cent surtax, local impact, the school resource officer, as well as solid waste judgments and return to fund balance of $1.5 million. This is how your general fund breaks down by pillar. Of course, the biggest pillar we've talked about and emphasized is safe community, which includes our fire and police. They comprise over 50% of the general fund budget, and then you're followed by other departments such as general governance and our quality of life, our infrastructure, a little bit of economic development, and a little bit of disaster recovery. Conversation was a big thing that we talked about this year. We wanted to make sure that you knew and the public knew that we are well aware of the issues that everyone is facing. And I know affordability seems to be the biggest thing that people lean their hat on, but to understand that The people who work for this city are facing those same affordability challenges and yet we still were able to make sure that we participated in the reductions that the city needs to make sure that everyone plays a part in how we can be more fiscally responsible going forward. The non-union employees, which makes up approximately 500 positions, last year in our compensation structure, we had a 1.5% COLA, we had a 1% minimum wage adjustment, and then there was a three to four merit increase based on individual performance. This year, that was scaled back to a 1.5 for a COLA increase and a 1.5% across the board, totaling 3%, which is a reduction, and there is an impact for those savings. The total budget, all funding impact was $1.1 million, and the general fund impact was $700,000. That is our way of making sure that you know, and I believe that when you look at the jurisdictions around us, you never want to be the jurisdiction that puts a freeze on salaries because that will make you a target for those not wanting to come to your jurisdiction. And the one thing that we can say about our staff since we've been here, we have built a quality team, and I'm very proud of all the people that we have working for us, and we want to keep them, and we need to show them that they are appreciated in some way, and this is outside of our union contracts, which are, you know, the PBA, as you can see right there that follows the FIRE, as well as the AFME employees who are under contract through their unions. So their contract rates, their rates are stipulated in their contracts and adjusted accordingly. The one that we had the most control over, we did a good job of reducing it down to show you how we were physically conservative. Some things I've talked about publicly already reducing in our budget and our policies are looking at how we use our overtime. And that's not to say that our overtime is being misused, but we need to establish clear and consistent guidelines for use, as well as clear and consistent guidelines for take-home vehicles, which will help promote operational efficiency, fiscal responsibility, and accountability. and the responsible use of public resources while supporting those effective service delivery departments. The overtime, you know, whether it's being approved for overtime that's more than contractual and not necessarily discretionary, always should be looked at just to make sure that it is in proper alignment with the need. And that's just something I don't think we've done in a deep dive since I've been here, but just want to do it to give people that sense of comfort that what we are using for overtime is the right thing. There is that balance. I think we've all talked about of having overtime versus adding new people. It's a balance. It's more probably art than science. But, you know, it depends on the needs that we have. There could be an emergency that could spike up overtime at any reason for any day. And then there's contractual overtime where we're supposed to be, and we are at those places on regular scheduled times, and we provide those services accordingly. Take-home vehicle policy is one that I talked about, but I want to be very careful about it just because we know that there are many people in our organization who use take-home vehicles, and they do provide a value and a benefit, and others around us are providing that same value and benefit. And again, if we take away something that we show as a benefit and others do not, then that again puts a target on our people. And that's not the goal of the exercise. The goal of the exercise is to make sure that the vehicles, they're being used exactly the way that we want them to, and there's not a cost-saving exercise or a cost-saving point in there that we could all look at and have a conversation about. So I applaud those people who are using them now, but we just want to do an evaluation to make sure that we optimize over time and that we look at the take-home costs and benefits of our vehicles and understand that there is a service delivery that they provide with them. There's a moral impact, excuse me, a morale impact that goes along with that as well. It is a very nuanced situation, which is probably why no one has sort of done a deep dive into it right now. But we want to do it, and I want to do it carefully, and I want to make sure that everyone's participating in the process. Controlled hiring, we did not put a hiring freeze on. We called it controlled hiring because we wanted to better look at and maintain the tracking of all vacant positions. You're in a position where the city, and I'm gonna talk about, I think I'm gonna talk about fire at a different, I meant police at a different point. But you're looking at a city where you're growing and the natural tendency for growth in a community is to keep staffing at a certain level to be in alignment with that growth. And we've shown in other graphs and documents that our staffing is in alignment with the city size that we have, but that does not mean that we cannot do better. And what we have done and what we have obligated ourselves to is to review each and every single vacancy as it becomes open. THE BENEFIT OF THAT IS MAKING SURE THAT THE SERVICE DELIVERY THAT IS BEING PROVIDED, WHERE IS THAT LEVEL AND WHERE IS THAT LINE IF YOU DON'T FILL THIS POSITION? If you were managing a team and we are managing a team, the natural tendency when someone retires or moves on is to say, well, I need to fill that position because that's the work that they were doing. Well, we're taking a little bit deeper than that and we're trying to make sure that the vacancy is needed and not just from a city manager's point of view, but for a leadership team point of view and sitting down with the department leadership point of view. We're really trying to get out ahead of what may happen with the tax reform and if tax reform doesn't happen, then we'll be a little leaner. And we'll talk about how to handle that from then. And if it does happen, we'll be prepared to get us to go on that $8.8 million journey and $14 million journey that will happen in the upcoming years to come. The administrative transfer, we've talked a lot about this, and this is the administrative cost pool, which provides administrative services to support all departments. This cost sharing model is not new, but we've gone into it more in detail in this year than in years past, but programs or divisions that support the overall operations of the city, they're jointly used by two or more divisions, but cannot be directly attributed to any single cost objective. That's why it is cost shared, and the accumulation of these centralized activity costs are allocated to the benefiting functions. When you look at the percentages under the city department's pay for the services rendered at agreed percentages, you will see it hasn't changed much from 12.9 to 14.8 in 2027. It does have an impact on our general fund, but we believe it is and continues to be the best way to properly allocate and make sure that the fair services that are provided are allocated accurately across multiple departments within the city. When you look at some budgets with minimal or no changes from the recommended budget back in June, you see a lot of our good governance, our city commission, attorney and clerk and manager and comms and social services and finance. These had not very many changes from our last conversation. The City Commission budget, it was adopted as 735,000 in 2026. The recommended budget from June was 755, and now we're proposing your budget as $750,000. The 5,356 savings was due to insurance rates. The city attorney's budget, pretty stable at $2.06 million in 2026. Fiscal year 27 was nearly $2.2 million, and fiscal year 27 is nearly $2.2 million as well. They had an $18,000 savings due to insurance rate also. City Clerk, self-proclaimed best budget in the building. She had a fiscal year 26, $951,000 value compared to what we have in fiscal year 27. In June, it was 972, and now it's 962, and that is due to the change of 9,566 in insurance rates also. City Manager budget, fiscal year 26, 2.08. Fiscal year 27, 2.04. Fiscal year 27 today is 2.044, also a small amount of insurance savings, as mentioned with others. Comms division, 1.3 million for fiscal year 26 that we're in. The original proposal that you saw in June was 1.38 and now 1.35 are the numbers for us to consider. The trend of numbers being so close, again, attributes back to how when we started with a flat budget and keeping those revenue, I mean, those expense numbers flat and the difficulty in doing that with salary increases and the price of material and things going up is always a challenge. So I do not want to minimize the exercise that staff did to keep these numbers where they are and our finance team for holding our hands and getting us there. The emergency management total budget and new budget that's been pulled out and is near our office fiscal year 26 was $524,000. Fiscal year 27 in June was $515,000. Fiscal year 27 that you see today is $507,000. The impacts of our emergency management team are, first of all, the budget proposal of adding one training and exercise coordinator, increasing the budget by $29,060, affected the general fund for a July 27 start date to support the opening of the EOC. The estimated ongoing cost beginning in fiscal year 28 will be $112,000. The position will lead citywide emergency management training, ensure NIMS and FEMA compliance coordinated through the integrated preparedness plan and conduct compliant exercises to strengthen emergency preparedness. There's some impacts if it is limited or unfunded, I should say, and that limits the city's ability to expand our in-house emergency management training and to conduct comprehensive multi-department exercises. We continue to rely on off-site FEMA training will increase our travel costs and staff away from daily operations while limiting opportunities to improve interdepartmental coordination. We do believe that as we know right now FEMA is operating as it has in the past and what we've relied on and by I say relied on I mean we've gotten back some money in a timely manner. I guess it depends on what you call timely to who you're talking to. Finance and value, obviously it's not very timely because it takes multiple years, but we still get it and we still got it. We don't know that that will always be the case. So while that may change, we don't have any information today that will tell you that it is changing for sure. The EOC not funded. We did request a million dollars that almost made it to the finish line with the governor, but it was taken out of it. We will have to figure that out because it does fund the furniture technology and equipment and other needs for the EOC. And with the EOC expected to open in July of 2027, We do not want it to open without the tools that it needs to function in the case of an intended emergency. So without this funding, the city's ability to coordinate disaster response and protect the community during major incidents could be reduced, and that's not something we want to do. So we have some work to do in that area. We've talked to you about social services. We've talked to you about what they provide, the value that they provide. We've talked about some different formats and different models, whether it was transitional housing. We've talked about making sure that we talk to the county when we have our in-person joint meeting with them to go over what the county receives from a social services standpoint from their contracted services that they provide out. This is going to be an area that we keep sort of evaluating with Our manager, Carillo, and her team, they are small but mighty. Their budget this year was $745,000. Their recommended next year was $753,000 in June, and it remained almost the same till we get here today of $753,000 as well. Deductions, looking at social services, the budget decrease ultimately was by $7,000. The reduction impacted the ability to provide last-minute or last resort financial assistance to individuals experiencing housing crisis and to residents at risk of being homeless. We have talked about the people who are experiencing homelessness in our community, it is still there, still a challenge. We could do something like some other models that we showed you a month or so ago, I think it was in June, and that could be helpful, or we could keep doing the services that we do and provide them that way, but there's opportunities there for this division to make sure that we're meeting the needs, not only of the Commission, but the community as well. The consequences of reducing our services and social services. It's just reduced the ability to assist the vulnerable residents, including some of our veterans and seniors and those experiencing homelessness and people with disabilities who face urgent or one-time crisis and do not qualify other assistance programs. That's the value of the services they provide. We can also limit emergency support for needs such as temporary lodging, transportation, or other assistance, and we could be increasing the risk that short-term crises escalate into homelessness. So all these programs are designed to help those who are in need and making sure that if and when they need some help at the very last resort, we do provide that. It is not something you always see, and it's definitely not something you always hear about, but it's something that provides a value to the city. and reducing those services and the programs. And we talk about the MP squared and the children's closet and the youth scholarship program, the baby shower and the preschool and the back to school events and the home for holiday initiatives. All of those are valuable programs to the community. Some of them you can't measure, but you can definitely measure what we spend in it. But there's an impact that comes back for people knowing that this place that they live cares about them as much as they care about us. So I'll stop there on social services. I think I made the point. And we'll go to finance. And finance is a little bit more structured as far as what they do and how many people they have. When you look at their budget, it's a lot of personnel. They have very little operating expense, as you can imagine. So the total of their fiscal year 26 budget submitted was $3.2 million. Fiscal year 27 in June was $3.2 as well. And now we're still looking at fiscal year 27 today at 3.2. That is some awesome consistency. Human Resources, they are, I think they're fully staffed now. I think they're fully staffed now, which might be the first time in a long time. They've had a lot happen in the two-year window, so we're very happy for that. But they have done a great job of managing our continuing growing staff. So their fiscal year budget was $27.7 in fiscal year 26, and fiscal year 27 in June was $30. million point six and then the thirty point six was still there approximately for what you're looking at for your budget today. They do have fund balances and human resources, and they have a self-insurance risk fund, assess insurance for medical fund, employee benefits fund. As you can see that these projected fund balances as of 9-30-26 will be 1.1 for the self-insurance, 5.8 for medical, and $190,000 for the employee benefits. The proposed budget of these fund balances affect them accordingly by $79,000, $2.6 million, and $151,000, leading to the final balances that we project in these funds for the upcoming year of September 30th of 2027, $1.1 million, excuse me, for insurance risk, $3.1 for insurance medical, and $39,000 for the employee benefits. The non-departmental total budget fund, $2.1 million was the adopted rate from last year. 2.1 was submitted in June, and 2.1 continues to today. So the budgets with material changes from our recommended budget and proposals or reductions or impacts, these are the ones that had some movement, IT, police, parks and recs, parks and maintenance, Warrant Middle Springs, aquatic center fire rescue, code enforcement, planning and zoning, and facility maintenance, road and drainage, solid waste and fleet maintenance, management and utilities, some of our bigger departments. When you look at IT, they have a funding methodology change and reallocation of direct cost for virtual infrastructure replacement project. There's also the estimated need for the transfer of $866,000 to the R&R fund. They reduced capital expenditures in the general fund by over $900,000. The impact of this shows that they actually had a fiscal year adopted budget of $6.2 million. We submitted a $7.5 million recommendation in June, and now it's actually $5.7 million today. Police Department. They had a increase of $1.6 million or 3.89% from their fiscal year 26 adopted budget, an increase of $841,000 approximately for the restoration of the police positions that we talked about, and a $336,000 saving from insurance rates. The fiscal year adopted for this year was 42.2 million. The recommended in June was 43.4, and now you're looking at 43.9. This budget deserves just more conversation because we're talking about some of the proposed changes. And the police department has done extremely well with what I have not put in their budget for the past two years, and I'm getting concerned that we're getting to a point of their positions and not sort of keeping track with our population and where we're going. And I know that even though they are not protected under the pending property tax reform, we have to be able to acknowledge their situation. The reason why we haven't added more people to their actual departments, and they do have needs, and we're going to talk about some of those, We're still waiting on getting some of the trailers to get on site so that we can have some space to put new people. We are trying to make sure that we monitor their police data points and statistics to make sure that we don't slip into an area of having more people in harm's way than not. They are doing an extremely good job at what they have. It's just not sustainable. And then you might say, well, let's add a million dollars to their people right now, here and today. Well, then that puts us in the position of adding more people, and then we get questioned or having to worry about where you're going to put them because you're already busting at the seams. And while these people are not just sitting in offices every day, there is a combination of some administrator versus those who will be out in the field. But the... bigger issue which i'm sure you know where i'm going is the space that they have in the space that they don't have that is going to be a concern whether we're talking about evidence being stored properly to make sure that we do things properly or we're talking about you know an actual police headquarters uh fort myers just approved the headquarters for 145 million dollars Their stated population is 104,000 people compared to our nearly 100,000 people. And I think when we were originally talking about ours, they were saying that theirs was going to be like 70 or 80 million dollars. And our chief and deputy chief were thinking that was going to not be right. And now, of course, they are correct when you see them accepting it. But it is it's. It's a need. It is not going away. And we thank you for putting that in the conversation of the $2.8 million of borrowing that we were thinking about. But knowing that that most likely will not be borrowed at this time, the police situation still seems to be a challenge that we have to face. And when you look at this slide, this slide will tell you the positions that they need. Look at that, 35 additional positions for fiscal year 27. We're just not keeping up with that. And you might say, well, what are you trying to keep up with? You might remember that we've had several studies, I think two since I've been here, that talked about the growth of the city and how that you needed to keep the growth of the police staff on that same level. I know that we see every day the value and the work that the officers are putting into the city, but they also have to be put into the same budget machine that everyone else is put into and figuring out, well, how do we keep those levels the same? If property tax reform happens and public safety is not protected, that does not mean we're going to reduce public safety in order to meet that mark. It just means public safety will continue not to grow at a level that we needed to in order to maintain the levels and service that we want for the citizens that we have. That's where sort of the challenge comes in. But you can see some of these positions that they need for. The four patrol officers are approximately $900,000. Two CSOs, approximately $350,000. Sergeant, $260,000, the digital specialist. One of these positions, I think it might be the retention specialist, is one that I believe we've gotten put on notice from the city clerk as a records concern because of the volume that they get in the redaction and what they have to do, and that might be bumping against a legal benchmark as well, and we do not want to be accused of not providing public records based on our staffing ability. So police is very complex. But I will say that Chief Garrison and Deputy Chief Morales are always looking at this, always concerned, always trying to make sure that we do the right thing. But fixing them overall is a bigger challenge. And I just want to make sure that we don't wait too late. to give them the attention they need. The total amount of fiscal year 27 budget impacts of the CPSN positions is $1.9 million. So it is truly a good number. Police Department fund balances, they have the forfeiture fund, they have the education fund, they have the speed zone camera fund, and the law enforcement impact funds. By this year end of 9-30-26, we expect those funds to have a $52,000, $48,000, and $2.5 million balances, respectfully. And then at the end of fiscal year 27, we believe that those values will increase to 52.4, which stay the same. then increased $42,000 for police education, $1 million for speed camera fund, and law enforcement impact fees of nearly $4 million. Parks and Recs, their total budget for fiscal year 27 decreased seven mil, decreased to $7 million, which was a 37.32% drop from the prior year. So notable changes were an increase of $350,000 for the Dallas-White Park That's why Park boat launch, which I believe was damaged during Hurricane Ian, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, so that was, if you think about it, that was almost four years ago. I mean, that was a long time ago. And $112,000 for the IT infrastructure project and $92,000 in savings. So their fiscal year adopted budget was $18.8 million. Fiscal year 27 in June was 11.3. And now they're looking at a proposal of 11.7. So that is a $7 million decrease, which is 37.32%. And that is amazing. And their fund balances, when you look at their fund balances, hold on one second. Okay, yep, sorry. Fund balances, two fund balances to note from, Warm Middle Springs. When you look at Warm Middle Springs and their projected fund balance this year is going to be $298,000. The $4 million that was used there was for the renovations and improvements that are going on right now so that was a great way to use that money and look at the year money from that we're going to get this year it looks to be back up at the 1.3 million dollar mark and of course some of that can be used to make sure that now that the new renovations that are done can be ongoing and improved we just don't want it to be in the same condition that it was after the few years that it was once we inherited it once we got it back from the county and then started to manage it on our own Parks impact fees, a very strong number of $16 million as of last year. At the end of this year, we think it'll be $12 million. And then from the use and activity of next year, we think it'll end back up higher, near $15.7 million. The event reductions, we talked about this and some of the impacts, you know, some of the reduction of the Freedom Festival and the Ponzetta Parade and the festival, freedom, festival and parade, contracted services, the description, we did reduce some of the entertainment and attractions, the inflatables, live band and sound services. The impact of those on the fiscal year 27 budget was reducing the recreation division operating budget by $25,000. If we're unable to find local performers, which we're gonna try to do with community partners, then those who are willing to provide those services that I just mentioned at no cost, then we'll have to miss those attractions or services in this upcoming year. The events that were eliminated, when we talk about that, $10,650, we're talking about movies on the greens, concerts in the parks, and the annual Easter egg extravaganza. And once again, this will lead to a reduction in, may lead to a reduction in community engagement and maybe some negative public sentiment. The operating hours and reductions, so reducing morning operating hours at the Morgan Center and closing the Mullen Center on Saturdays for an overall reduction of 20 operating hours per week to support the reclassification of a full-time recreation attendant to part-time. That will reduce the budget by $14,000. REDUCING ACCESS TO THE FITNESS CENTER AND YOUTH CENTER AS WELL AS REDUCED WEEKEND FACILITY RENTAL AVAILABILITY AND RESTROOM ACCESSIBILITY FOR OTHER ATHLETIC LEAGUE PARTICIPANT AND PLAYGROUND USERS COULD BE HARMFUL IN THE LONG TERM AS WELL. The aquatic center, the reduction in hours for that venue, a two-hour reduction in extended summer operating hours on Friday evenings. This should reduce personnel by $15,000, offset by a loss of revenue of nearly $3,000 for a savings of a reduction of approximately $12,000. Again, reducing for savings of 52 hours a week in staff time and for your lifeguards, front desk and support personnel would be required to pull that off. But as you can see, we're trying to make sure that we touch all bases as we look for reductions that we can live with while keeping and maintaining the core impact of the priorities that you want as a board. Parks maintenance proposed reductions. We're looking at a reduction of $35,000 for field maintenance and repairs and replacement of amenities such as player benches, bleachers, soccer goals, nets, and baseball field components. If approved, it may impact league play if fields and amenities are not as well repaired as in the past. Potential revenue loss as a result of the cancellation of field reservations due to changed field positions, conditions, I'm sorry, and a lack of funding to complete needed repairs by, created by unsafe conditions. So it's, there's a balance between what we're providing now essentially and what we're going to try to provide and we talked about it I think during the the CPSM conversation with police, you know, do you want the Cadillac model, the Camry model? We're trying to figure out the right model that we can still provide a high level of service and get it done without sort of keeping it the same levels that we are currently at. the elimination of park amenity replacements. We're talking about the aging or damaged equipment, including benches and picnic tables and trash cans. That is a $50,000 reductions. And if also approved, there is also just the consequences of making sure that you have to keep a better eye on safety hazards so no one gets hurt and making sure that the people who experience the park still have a very positive experience. The reduction of landscape and embed mulching and tree trimming removal, that's $30,000 that came out of their budget. Now we have to do an extra, put an extra eye on unsafe conditions made by hazardous trees. And the elimination of outdoor court resurfacing of $30,000, it means that we are, it was, it comes from the repair and resurfacing of outdoor sports courts. that might lead to more widening of minor cracks and water seepage into the court base, which is not good for the long term. Mr. Mayor, do you want me to pause here and ask any questions, or would you like me to keep on my... I don't see anybody in the queue at this point right now. Okay. All right, let's keep it going. So War Memorial Springs, here are the reductions that we discussed about them. So there's $9,400 in some of their landscape supplies and tree maintenance. The description of that is that we will reduce those services, landscape supplies, and the elimination of funding for invasive vegetation and palm tree maintenance. And that may just result in invasive species growth and palm tree overgrowth that has a negative impact on park aesthetics and some of the visitor experience we want to keep very high. The reduction of operating equipment is for funding for replacement equipment and operating supplies, including lounge chairs, picnic tables, umbrellas. But going through the rehab that they're going through, I think Warren Middle Springs is going to have a different experience altogether. And we actually look very forward to that, as we said this week during the head off event. The Parks and Rec after school program, which is a very good program that we believe is going to have a great impact on our city. So it increases the budget by nearly $46,000. But it establishes a city owned and operated. after-school program to address the documented need for after-care services in Northport, which we know that those services are not heavily provided, and we are looked at as a desert for providing those. But we're gonna provide a safe and structured environment with homework assistance, character development, STEM, arts and crafts, and art and recreation. It'll have two new part-time people to operate the program, and we estimate a revenue of $69,375, with $45,900 operating expenses, Therefore, that program will have a net revenue of $23,475. If we do not fund this, the city may not help meet the documented demand for after-school care identified by Sarasota County Schools, our community needs assessment, and resident surveys. The working families will have fewer affordable aftercare options for school-age children, and we will miss out on an opportunity to provide a self- supporting program that enhances youth development and community services. So I'm very excited about that one and I think the Parks and Rec team deserves a extra level of kudos for finding a program that makes revenue in a time where we're searching for places to cut. Fire Rescue, their budget actually increased by $4.1 million or 9.75% for fiscal year 26. And that was to add back the positions that we talked about that they need. We do have fire stations that are opening pretty soon and being prepared to service those in need. is extremely important. I don't have to go over how important that is, but keeping up with their employees is how we do that, and that's why their budget went from $42.5 million in fiscal year 26 adopted versus 45.6, which you saw in June, and 46.3, which you are seeing today. Changes in their budget increased the budget by $540,000. This was split 50-50 of the six firefighters that we just talked about. And that ensures the reliable emergency response coverage for current and future residents. And we also had a budget proposal for the fire prevention inspector and plans examiner that increased the district budget by $96,080. And that ensures timely plans are reviewed and inspected. It also supports responsible development that protects public safety. And it enhances operational continuity, succession planning, and customer service. The fire rescue proposed reduction, the reduction for overtime, which is available funding to support the contractual addition and paid time off of overtime. The budget impact, it reduces overtime by $647,000. That is a very good stretch goal for our fire department and our chief. I would like to say that he is stepping out to try to meet that mark and we will help him every step of the way. I applaud him for trying that $321,000 impact to the general fund as we try to make it work. But again, we know that we'll have to watch it and give him what he needs to make sure that he's successful and how he disperses his overtime capabilities. The fire budget look and outlook, so growth continues even though growth projections have softened slightly. Lower property tax, lower property values are keeping the housing market active and if property tax reform passes, growth could accelerate further by people coming into our city as our community grows. So the emergency call volume will continue to rise and the need for future fire stations and staffing would be there as well. The fiscal year 27 budget was balanced using several one-time reductions that can't be repeated in affecting service level. So this means from fiscal year 28, from a higher baseline, making additional reductions increasingly difficult without impacting emergency services. The fire rescue fund is funded through both the general fund and the fire district. And while the fire district remains financially stable, the general fund has not kept pace with current and future public demands. So a comprehensive review of the fire district funding methodology is planned for fiscal year 28, and that will be extremely helpful. If the property tax reform passes, general fund revenues will decline, placing additional pressure on city services and increasing the importance of reviewing how fire rescue is funded. Recruitment and retention remain one of their biggest challenges. Regional agencies continue to outpace the City of Northport in salaries and benefits. For example, Sarasota County paramedic differential starts at $20,000, while the City of Northport starts at $13,500, and it takes nine years for one of our paramedics to reach that same $20,000 level. That is not good. More than 60% of our department is directly affected and Sarasota also pays the full paramedic differential to allow all officer positions while we do not. Englewood Fire also now offers a higher starting salary for paramedics despite providing a less comprehensive service model than our fire-based EMS system. As we prepare for labor negotiations next year, we must remain competitive. We are already experiencing attrition, increasing vacancies, and cannot afford to be a stepping stone agency. And we always say that we don't wanna train people up to leave. That is not something we wanna be known for. It is not healthy for our fire environment. So continued investment in staffing is essential to support growth, staff future stations, and maintain emergency response and fire prevention services. At a state level, there continues to be discussion around additional local government funding reforms, including future limits on millage assessments and impact fees, reinforcing the need for a sustainable long-term funding strategy. Fire Rescue Fund balances. As you can see, they have fire district, fire impact fees, and R&R for fire. The projected balances at the end of this fiscal year to be 8.9, 5.1 approximately, and 7.8 respectively. And once we get to the fiscal year 27, you can see that there is a fund balance, there's a reserve amount of 4.4. There is a 10% of economic uncertainty on top of that, leaving a fund balance reserve amount to the positive of $3.4 million or 15.3% increase. Development Services, their budget decreased by $1.3 million, or approximately 7.28% from the fiscal year 26 adopted. Some of the notable changes were $200,000 for document retention services, $204,000 for the IT infrastructure project, and 154 savings due to insurance rates. Their fiscal year 26 adopted amount of their budget was $18.6 million. Their budget for fiscal year 27 that we showed you in June was $17 million. And their proposed today is approximately $3 million in front of you. code enforcement, and planning and zoning. So, budget proposal for reduction in other contracted services. This is gonna reduce the hazardous tree and grass abatement program by $75,000 or 25%. It will affect our capacity to remove unresolved code violations and prioritize only the highest risk cases for their services. There's also a budget proposal for consultants and surveyors, and this is going to increase the budget by $455,000, to expand the consultant and surveying services, providing the technical expertise, surveying capacity needed to maintain project schedules and support timely project delivery. We don't fund this. We'll have a failure to adjust and may result in schedule slippage, increased long-term costs, and potential impacts to project delivery commitments. There's also one up there, 3277. That is for activity center six and 10 infrastructure master plan. We increased the budget by that 350 to prepare an infrastructure master plan for activity center six and 10. This plan will go hand in hand and coincide with what we did in front of you last week. The plan will identify infrastructure need, prioritize improvements, strengthen coordination between FDOT on the eight 78 to 75 Yorkshire and Raintree Exchange and establish a framework for future capital investments to support planned growth and economic development. Not funding that proposal may delay the coordinated infrastructure planning, reduce coordination with FDOT, and limit economic development opportunities and increase the risk of higher future infrastructure costs in activity centers six and 10. Public Works, so Public Works total budget showed an increase of $18.6 million, or 20%, and it was highlighted by, well, excuse me, first of all, the proposed budget of 27 decreased by $500,000. That was one of our adjustments that we made, but the net reduction reflects the following. We're looking at $1.5 million reduction for Public Works Facility Project, $273,000 savings due to insurance rates. We restored $595,000 for the yard waste. We restored $387,000 for the bulk pickup, as well as the infrastructure project for $235,000. And then there was also $150,000 in capital machinery and equipment. So when you look at this budget from the fiscal year 26 adopted number, it was $92.6 million. The fiscal year recommended in front of you in June was $111.8 million, and now we're proposing $111.3 million total. Rodent drainage, rodent drainage assessment. We reduced the proposed rodent and drainage district assessment that you adopted not to exceed from 15% to 5%. We actually deferred $1.5 million in funding for public works facility phase two and project to support the fiscal year 28 to support reduced assessment increase. And we also reduced the fiscal year 27 road and drainage district assessment revenue by approximately $1.9 million. And the methodology kickoff, which I think we've talked about in the past, and we made all of you aware, and we've included some stakeholders who have made comments to us, will kick off in 2027. Some of the road and drainage reductions that are of note, it decreased the budget by $662,000. The service level reductions include core services, decreasing the city-wide mowing frequency and reducing chemical applications used for roadside and right-of-way weed control. I feel like these are some of the things that we talked about in the very early beginning of our budget processes of ways of our departments could cut down on things, and now you're seeing them actually come out to fruition. Some of the consequences of doing these actions are reducing mowing frequency from six times to four times a year and limiting chemical weed control application along right-of-ways and drainage areas, and accept the lower aesthetic maintenance standards, higher grass and the right-of-way to maintain fiscal stability. We also decreased the budget by $1.3 million in this service level impacts to the equipment and vehicle capital purchases that provide support services to the stormwater and traffic systems throughout the city. And the consequences are just maintaining compliance with applicable standards through continued use and upkeep of existing equipment. Replacement delays may limit upgrade, but will not compromise required regulatory or safety obligations. And also decreasing the budget by $187,000 for this district involves scaling back or eliminating non-core services, including archeological services, soil sampling, surveying, mulching, the rodeo event, operating supplies, and street sign replacement. We continue to meet the minimum regulatory and safety standards through reduced service, though reduced services may limit proactive compliance activities, assessments, and enhancements typically supported by some of these specialized services. When you look at our fund balances, fund balances for the road and drainage district, the transportation impact fees, and R&R for road and drainage, you will see that as of this year, we projected $15 million, $17.6 million, and $2.4 million balance respectively. And at the end of next year, we expect those fund balances to be approximately $11 million, $22 million, and $2.2 million, respectively. And the amount of overage that you would see from the 20% policy obligated versus the 10% of economic uncertainty is a negative 0.54%, which is very good for this voting, which is a very up and down kind of fund balance. more so than others. Solid waste fund balances, as you can see, this year we project in the solid waste district, 12.1 million solid waste impact fees, 17.6, and the R&R for solid waste of 1.8. Final year we project for fiscal year 27, you're looking at 10.5 million, 22.2 million, and 1.9 million respectively. And same scenario with the 20% and 10% taken care of, you will see an approximate 3.9% increase or a $1.2 million increase for solid waste. Go Frankie. Solid waste new positions and equipment. When you look at this, we did have a couple of budget proposals. So the two solid waste equipment operator one, we're adding two solid waste operated positions, increasing the budget by $137,000. These positions, they will expand garbage and recycling. collection capacity to support continued growth in the city through our residents in accordance with the division's staffing methodology, and they are fully funded by the Solid Waste District. If we don't fund them, then the division's ability to meet growing service demands will be reduced, resulting in slower response times, increased overtime costs, and potential impacts to public health, safety, and customer service. We also have a proposal for capital machinery and equipment, and this would increase the R&R budget by $546,000, replacing critical vehicles and equipment identified through fleet condition assessments and the fiscal year 26 solid waste methodology study. This investment will improve fleet reliability, reduce downtime, and ensure sufficient dependable solid waste collection services for residents. If we don't do this, we'll have aging vehicles and equipment, which could lead to increased breakdowns and higher maintenance and overtime costs, more service disruptions, and reduced reliability of solid waste collection services. Fleet had a parts and service reduction. We reduced the reducing fleet budget by $559,000 through targeted reductions in fleet maintenance services. This is where we look at and we've heard from multiple people internally and externally look at the life and expected value of your equipment and just make sure you stretch as long as you can basically and making sure that you don't put services to be compromised and definitely not safety to be compromised. But that reduction was targeted and prioritized repairs that support some of our vehicle reliability and life safety and essential services while deferring non-emergency repairs and non-critical preventative maintenance to achieve the operational savings. Deferred maintenance always could increase costs in the future. It could extend vehicle downtime. It could reduce fleet availability, and it could impact the timely service on some non-critical city services. The fleet fund balances, as of this year, end of 9-30-26, we expect the balance to be $1.2 million and the R&R to be $953 million. For the end of fiscal year 27 next year, we expect fleet management to be $1.4 million and the R&R to be $832,000. The utilities department budget, so the fiscal year 27 decreased by $3.7 million or 5.18% from the adopted of 26. They had $146,000, $140,000, excuse me, of savings due to insurance rates. And they also had $2.3 million reduction due to the fiscal 6 appropriation of grant funding received for the neighborhood expansion project. So when you look at utilities department budget, it was fiscal year 26, $69 million. You saw in June an amount of $67.7 million. And as you see today, it is $65.5 million. And Mr. Mayor, that is the end of that presentation. And we are happy to answer any questions or clarify any information that will satisfy you and the board.

The queue is open if anybody wants to ask some questions.

Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Just a couple of comments. First, I do want to compliment finance. It occurred to me after my one-on-one with you when you explained the reallocation of the cost of the virtual servers across all the organizations that I didn't give you a pat on the back for that. And I was really very impressed. with that work, particularly in light of the fact that our general fund could very well be under extreme stress next fiscal year. very, very common in large organizations for those assets that really exist to support the entire operations of the city, so finance, IT, HR, that the cost of those things be allocated across the entire organization. It might seem strange to folks that aren't used to that, but very, very common in large organizations and we should be prepared for that. A comment slash concern back on slide seven, city manager. Okay. The reduction in general R&R. I know I've talked about this before and I'm really concerned in are not maintaining our buildings appropriately. In my tenure as a city commissioner, I think we have torn down five or six buildings with another one or two on the block. And the more we neglect the maintenance of what we have, the more we lose those assets. to the value of the community. So I, for one, I'm very, very concerned in reducing that budget. And I would like to see it, well, let me ask first, I'd like to see it restored, but can someone explain what won't get done this year since we've cut that by almost $900,000?

So that specific cut is related to the IT project. We did not cut the 500, yeah, so that's specific.

Excellent. That's the one, right. Okay, okay, good, thank you. I'm feeling much better about that. That's pretty much all I have. We had a really good conversation during our one-on-one. I do want to give everyone a pat on the back for the cuts that we've seen. I don't like a lot of them. But I appreciate that we had to get our costs more in line this year. And I think next year is going to be a really, really difficult conversation. I won't win any popularity contests for what I'm about to say, but I have been a proponent for small millage rate increases as we move forward. And for the most part, if we do have to adjust to severe reductions in our general fund next year. I personally am gonna wanna see a lot of that in cuts, not in cost reallocation. But I would expect our millage rate to start increasing if those things happen, if that passes in November.

So since you brought it up, in that same tax reform proposal with the reduction of revenue, they also give you the option or they state the option of using the rollback rate, which is slightly higher than our current rate.

Right, 10% above that.

And then increasing that every year. So they do give you a way to get some of it back. It's not all of it. But as I've said, there needs to be a combination of expense. Reduction. Right, and as well as revenue review. So it goes both ways, but that is also included in the same tax reform bill.

I also find it interesting, something else just occurred to me. And this has to do with, okay, slide 48, the fire budget outlook and considerations. I find it interesting that Englewood is managing to pay their firefighters and EMT at a higher rate than we are. And I'd love to better understand how they're able to do that. I know it's very hard to isolate one thing and sort of figure it out. Clearly, they're spending less in other areas. to be able to do that. I'm not surprised by the county paying more, but I am surprised when I see a small community like Englewood.

If the chief were here, I think he would say. Yes, sir.

Go ahead, Chief. Magically appeared.

I'm just going to say if I'm right, though. Didn't they negotiate their contract after we did ours, and now we're up, and then we're probably going to pass them? That might be it.

for the Fire Rescue District. So although I don't have their budget and how they put it together in front of me, I believe their contract was resolved after ours. As you know, they're not a transport agency, but they are also, they're funded 100% through non-advalorum assessments. So with what they have, they won't be impacted with what's coming up. But I don't think that was a consideration when they did this. So when they saw their contract, obviously for them to provide ALS service off of their fire apparatus, which is what they're doing, and to back up the rescues in their area, both for Charlotte County and Sarasota County, for them to get to recruit and retain paramedics, they need to be competitive. So they looked at where, they're not quite to Sarasota, but they're over where we are. So, which... It's probably an appropriate number about where they are because they don't provide transport service. It is a different level of service, but it makes it difficult for us on the recruitment level.

Okay, thank you.

Absolutely. Commissioner Duvall.

Thank you, Mayor. I have to start at the top and ask the question. On slide, or page 19, it's talking about city commission total budget, and it shows an increase from the 26th budget to the city manager proposed budget of $17,033. That comes out to, divided by five commissioners, comes out to $3,406 each. What is that increase due to?

I think the only increases in the commissions was salary. I think that's the only impact that commission had in their increases.

Just a comment here. I would suggest that City Commission lead from the top and get rid of that $17,000 in pay raises for this year. And if we have to, move on to page 26, which is social services. And there's some cuts there. Actually, on 27, it describes some of the cuts. There's $7,200 cut that's reducing emergency support for vulnerable residents. It increases the risk of homelessness and instability, and it reduces the community policing's ability to assess residents in crisis. Maybe we could shift that $17,000 over to social services. That's just a suggestion for my fellow commissioners. As far as other comments, on page 47, it talks about fire overtime reductions. And I'm wondering, you know, how will that affect our service, like, you know, where they are to give us those insurance ratings that we have. Are we gonna cut there and end up paying more in the long run under insurance costs? I'm not sure if I'm making myself clear here on what I'm getting at.

Scott Titus from the Fire Rescue District. So in response to your question, there are several things that we took into consideration when we reduced that number. As you know, annually, one of the discussions we have is we do carry a little extra balance of overtime because for if we have an active fire season or if we have an active storm season because obviously, even though we have money in reserves, If we go over that amount, typically we can do a budget amendment sometime in that year and adjust it, but it changes that outlook we have for the future and then it's kind of, It puts us behind and start over. So we've tried to leave a little bit of a cushion there if we have an active storm season and things like that. We also budget contractually. Our personnel are able to sell back a portion of their overtime. We created a portion of their vacation time. And we created that incentive to, you know, some people want to have time off. Some people would have a little bit more money. It's one of the things that we did in the contract. And we did that to incentivize people when you look at some of the surrounding departments in the areas where they have some of their work schedule, although it's not the same amount of time, that's why we created that. We did a five year look at what we have spent over the last five years, and although we haven't had a huge storm season, huge fire season in the past five years, we took it that, and that's what we reduced it by based upon that five year look and that average. With that being said, if we had an active storm season, if 100% of our personnel sold back the time that they're eligible to do, we would be in a position where we had to do a budget amendment. But we felt like based upon the previous five years in consideration of what we were looking at with the city budget and working with the finance team and the other departments that that's how

My second comment has already been partially addressed by the Englewood Fire Department being able to pay more. I noticed in the presentation, it talked about the regional pay gaps are worsening. I guess I have to ask, What is regional? Are we talking southeast United States? Are we talking the state of Florida or southwest Florida?

So anytime we do a full analysis, so when we go into contractual times, we look at a number of different things. So one, we take a regional look. So we look at the competitive market that's right in our area. And then we look at... statewide, then we look at departments that are similar sized, similar makeup, although we are somewhat unique, but you try and come as close as you can when you look at those things. So when we talk about regional comparison right now, that would be the departments that border our area or within Sarasota County, Manatee County, Charlotte County. And so this kind of tri-county area, particularly in Sarasota, that pay gap with Englewood is a little bit, but again, they're a lower We're a different level of service than we are. They don't offer transport services. Our big gap right now, and we've tried to stay competitive. We understand that our financial makeup, our demographics are different than Sarasota, but we've tried to stay competitive with them, because certainly when they're hiring every 10 weeks for personnel, that draws from the market, and so it makes it difficult. Currently, we're carrying eight vacancies right now, and that's a lot for us. That's unusual, and that number's increasing.

All right, thank you. Moving on to maintenance on page 59. If I can get myself there. 59, we were just talking about deferred maintenance. And... I saw some of the terms parts and maintenance now. Keeping a smaller supply of parts. You know, maybe you can save some money there just deferring maintenance. You know, we have a problem with our buildings in this city, you know, that haven't been, you know, we've deferred maintenance and now, you know, the buildings are in such repair that we can't afford to fix them or we need new buildings. Maintenance is just an important, you know, I'd be very careful making cuts to maintenance. That's it for me. Thank you.

Vice Mayor.

Just quick in response to Commissioner Duval. Whenever I see deferred maintenance, I kind of get really concerned. And we're doing a couple of things with our fleet. We're trying to hang on to them longer. And then we're deferring maintenance on them. So I think at some point that becomes a recipe for... serious service impacts. And I don't know how to reallocate, but I would really like to see not deferring a lot of that maintenance. Again, pushing our vehicles out and deferring maintenance just seems to fly in the face of each other. So I agree with Commissioner Duvall's concerns.

Commissioner Petro.

So a question related to page 59. What are we talking about as far as deferred maintenance increases, repair costs? What are we foregoing if we're going to go with this proposed amount?

It didn't say specifics. It didn't say specifics.

Good morning. Jeff Speak, Public Works Director. So this deferred maintenance, this money came out of a lot of different pools. It came out of some training pools. It came out of parts, some of the other lines that we have. So it's not just a plan to defer maintenance on equipment overall. it was a reduction across the board and even in some administrative sides, which potentially can defer the maintenance as you take those pieces and parts away from there. But it's not a singular, we're not saying we're gonna stop doing oil changes or we're gonna stop rotating tires or changing tires at a certain point. It's just affecting the entire fleet operation. So there's not a specific maintenance item that this is deferring.

Okay, thank you. And I'm sure I'm not gonna win the popularity contest. But first I would like to address the question that was addressed to me last time we had a budget workshop and it was what would I cut because I was not really fascinated by the reduction of the reduction of what was proposed to cut. But before that I want to commend the finance team for the hard work to identify potential cuts or savings. and those were done in coordination with the department heads obviously and so the finance team can do so much. They can only do so much based on the information that they were provided as far as what they were told and the recommendations of those people in charge. Really good job what you guys did. Having said that, the overall 5% citywide reduction goal was not fully met. Health insurance rates remained flat, which would be about $2.5 million in savings. And taxable values, that brought another $1 million, I think. that was 5.7 increase in taxable values as opposed to 3% that was originally projected. And that brought additional revenue of over $3.5 million to the budget. And yet, that additional revenue that we had, or will have, I'm sorry, we could not maintain 5% cut all across. And just as a test, or maybe as a, and I have more things to say, but as a test, how serious this commission and how serious we are as a city, I would like to make, I would like to ask for a consensus. And that is, to unfund one proposed position outlined in the budget proposal 3584, and that is on page 67 of our big book. And from what I'm seeing, this position is not even filled. It's just a proposal to have that position.

What position are you referring to, sir?

What's the name of the roll? Oh.

That's filled right now? Is it being filled or?

This position is actually not a vacant position. Oh, it's not? And we have not identified a specific position, but we had to go through the exercise to get the 5%. In order for the finance department to get to the 5%, we would actually have to cut a position.

So let me remind you, the 5% exercise was the top of the scale. That included field positions, which we could not get to that in the expenses that we received. But it sounds like what you're saying is we received money in ad valorem and we received the benefit of the health being flat, so why didn't we include that money in savings as well? Because that's where you were going, right? Which we kind of thought someone would go there, and that wasn't the exercise of what we do. This budget has a thousand different line items, and some of them go up and some of them go down. But the overall exercise to me that we had the money saved so that we could actually pay for any debt service, keep our employees, and also pay them in a way that would allow us to retain them, that was the exercise. Not keeping everything that was saved and just cutting everything that we wanted to cut. That wasn't how we balanced the budget.

Fair statement. I guess I will stop as far as the consensus, as far as cutting out. But at the same time, in one of your slides, there was, one of the slides was mentioning cutting training. And just next page, we have, which is a not substantial savings fund, budget proposal 3508. It's only 10,000.

$10,420, so we're saying we're cutting training and we're not cutting, so I'm kind of... Well, we cut a lot of training in this budget because we had to separate what was critical for certifications and licenses versus other training that we need to keep our professional development going in the right direction. What ideally you want to do, my ideal goal is every single employee in this city needs some level of training annually because they deserve it and that's what the budget should propose. What we're looking at now is scaling that back to only in-state necessary. This out-of-state, it really has to be justified, but in-state, how many people are going? And I'm looking for, we have like spreadsheets of the entire department to show that one person is not going 10 times and one person is going like one time. There's a fairness there as well. So you might see some ups and downs. And some of that's depending on the staffing that they have and the qualifications related to the job they perform.

Can I also add, Commissioner, the budget proposal 3506 that was actually approved for finance does have training and a lot of other line items that got reduced. And that actually got approved. So we had two separate budget proposals. One was a budget proposal of training reduction that the city manager would not recommend because basically a finance department will not get trained. And then budget proposal 3506 does have some training that we could live without.

I was talking about that too, but I was talking about 3508.

Yes, I just wanted to point out that some training did actually get cut.

Okay, because you said 3506.

Yes, and that's 3506 includes other training line items.

Okay. I was specifically talking about 3508. That actually got cut. Okay. So now the question, where would I cut? And that is my answer was that the question was addressed to me publicly. So I would like to respond to that question. And not affecting personnel reduction, some ideas of areas where I would have proposed cost savings. And I have shared some of those ideas with the city manager's office on my one-on-one with them and finance team as well. And I'm glad that you are talking about those and taking a look at those ideas of where can we cut down the line or down the road. I just wanted to say them publicly because I will ask that question publicly. So I would, and these are just ideas. I'm not getting into weeds of telling you what to do exactly and how to do it, but it's worth mentioning them and maybe taking a look and talk about those publicly. as far as what would be concrete steps taking those into consideration. And a couple of them, I wrote it down, re-evaluate take-home vehicles policy all across. And I know you're looking into that, and we've talked about it on my one-on-one with you, so I'm glad that it's being Looked into rotation vehicles. It's similar to previously what I mentioned just now and that would be. Probably a service personnel, like a police when they come. So, right now, we probably have 1 vehicle for each police officer. So, when the police office, and this is just an example, I'm not singling out or. No offense, but as a suggestion or as a policy overall evaluation is when a police officer comes to the end of his shift, the other police officer comes starting his shift, so the share of vehicles, so it would not be personal vehicle just for that officer, for example. So, rotation of vehicles, city advertising, marketing strategies and how can we cut there? For example, I drive daily on I 75. Avoiding price Boulevard, even to the city hall. So. I-75 billboard near exit 179 that advertises our city. I do not know who advertises. Is it the city initiative or how much we pay for that? But that area we can look specifically if we can cut. If you have the answer how much we're paying for that billboard, that would be nice. but I'm not sure. I can only guesstimate how much. But it's not substantial in terms of the.

Jason Bartel on Communications Manager. There is zero cost to the city. We have an existing agreement through a developer for that billboard. It was used for many years with our old logo and branding and our team reignited that conversation and looked into that. And we are allowed to update it twice a year at no cost.

But as far as maintaining the spot for advertising, we don't pay at all? We do not. Oh, that's interesting. And that's nice.

It is.

I'm glad to hear that. I was not aware of the agreement, and if there's agreement, like you said, it's very beneficial to the city. Next one, fleet of our public works, building department, administrative vehicles. And I remember Commissioner Duvall was saying about Fort Maverick, he enjoys saving gas alone on that vehicle, and that's a substantial savings in gas, but where I'm going at is, you know, Fort Maverick, and I looked it up specifically, it's, and again, I'm saying this because I was asked, so I'm not trying to get into operational, but these are just some ideas, and fleet is such a big expense for the city. Ford memory cost $27,000 versus Ford F-150 XL, $40,000. That is immediate savings of almost $13,000 per vehicle. I'm not sure how many vehicles we have administratively, but although both comparison, both vehicles have back seats, so that's if you, obviously, I'm, okay, go ahead.

If I heard you correctly, you want us to look at Ford Maverick because the Commissioner Duvall drives one?

No, no.

Which is what we pray for from a car that we need?

If I misspoke, I apologize. I said that Commissioner Duvall was referring to his Ford Maverick and how he actually said it in the budget talks that it's a good way of looking into that. I don't recall exactly how he said it. My idea is not because he drives Ford Maverick, the city should look into that. My idea is to reduce the line of administrative vehicles from... You guys want me to answer? vehicles from F-150.

Ken Rapun, fleet manager. So there's a couple things with that. So when we have any vehicles that go off-road, and I use the building inspector's division in some of the code enforcement, we had problems in the past with those vehicles getting stuck. We weren't buying two-wheel drive. Well, we weren't buying four-wheel drive vehicles. We were buying two-wheel drive vehicles. Ford Maverick in specific only comes in an all-wheel drive and a rear-wheel drive. They do not offer the four-wheel drive. That is something we did look at. but that was in this case for our code inspectors, things of that nature. We did not go that route. Additionally, fleet management does not own any of the assets in the city. Each department owns their assets. We just manage and maintain them. So when the department comes to us with a recommendation of what type of vehicle they would like, we can advise, but ultimately it's up to them on what vehicles they purchase.

I would just say, The trucks and the vehicles are based on the specifications of what the needs are for the department. I don't want to sound like they're just buying higher priced vehicles because a truck is a truck is a truck. It's just because of what they need them for.

Yeah, I understand that. What I was saying, and I was not targeting, first of all, this is just a suggestion. Again, I'm replying this to the question because it was asked of me, where would I save? And this is just ideas of where, what I would save. Second of all, I did not try to single out specific departments such as fleet. I was talking all across the board as a city. So a lot of our vehicles are administrative vehicles and not all of them, I'm sure not all of them required four by four. But that's just a suggestion and discussion of something. that later can be looked into it. So I appreciate your response and your response as a city manager that based on the needs, I've seen a lot of cases where there could be a smaller vehicle instead of 4x4 administratively. A lot of our, most of our roads are paved and new construction sites, the vehicle stands on the asphalt anyways. But this is, you know,

that going through the process when I worked for the city. You have government contracts and bids out there to where that F-150 might actually be cheaper than buying the Maverick because you're buying multiple vehicles here and there and they are Little bit more versatile out there in the field. Yeah You got to go off road to it's there. So you got to look at that aspect of it, too That's just part of it.

Absolutely I knew that too that you know, there's a big bit that involves number of vehicles that is greater than Than usual, you know you get a discount Go ahead.

Commissioner, Julianna Bellia, Deputy City Manager. We do have some Ford Mavericks in both Parks and Recreation for administrative positions as well as Utilities Department.

Okay. And next one, same type of idea, but for the police force. And we've talked about that. And also, you know, Chevy Tahoe that costs $60,000 versus Ford Explorer that costs $38,000. comparable to Dutch Durango. just an idea of $22,000 savings per vehicle, and I'm not sure how many we have those. Next, the area where I would cut is overtime, and that was mentioned by the city manager today. Statutory, contractual versus expressionary. I think we ought to look into more detail, in more detail on overtime policies, because that is, And I don't want to sound like a bad guy, but we have to do something, especially when the tax report will be passed. So, you know, these are might be. Ideas that might be very. Useful to look into it next 1 is as a board, we talked about freezing our salaries and as I mentioned mentioned before we are the lowest paid. city employees, public officials. I'm not sure where the $17,000 increase in salary is coming. I don't think I've got any since last year. It's public information, so each commissioner earns about $66,000 per year. For me, this is my primary income. I don't have secondary income, not even to that extent, not even half to that extent. So I really depend on that. But maybe the city clerk can tell us where the increase came from. as asked by Commissioner Duvall of $17,000. I'm not sure because I don't want the public to know that, to public perceive that we're getting another raise. I'm not sure what the $17,000 is coming from.

Finance will be able to answer that for you.

It would be nice, but it's not a reality. I don't think we're getting any raise for years to come.

Actually, not true. In the ordinance that got approved, you have the same increase as employees. Yes, CPI.

So $17,000?

No, and then on top of that, there's FRS increases, and when you increase the salary, then all of the benefits or employer costs get increased.

So from 2026, 2025 to 2026, Where is that 17,000? From 2026 to 2027? Yeah.

Yeah, so it's 1.5% CPI increase. Does it equate to $17,000? So salaries is 10 and FRS is 7. Say that again?

So the salaries increase is about 10,000 and the FRS increase is about 7. Okay. Okay. Next one, and this is just an idea for 10% exercise that we're gonna have to have on January 2027, starting January 2027, that free salaries for high level administrative positions. That's a good one because, you know, we don't wanna, affect the lower earners in our city because they depend so much on that income specifically, but high-level positions where people make over $100,000. Maybe, maybe we can take a look into that and be proactive in that regard. And I see the city manager wants to say something.

Because everyone may not know what Commissioner Petro is referring to, but the state has mandated that in fiscal year, starting in January 27, that we provide a budget that shows a 10% reduction. And that's not us, Northport, I mean, that's statewide. So you have to perform the exercise, and I think you have to post it publicly, if I'm not mistaken, right? So that exercise that you're referring to, you're not talking about freezing high-level positions, you're talking about cutting high-level positions. We couldn't get to 5% without cutting positions. 10% is going to look a lot different than 5%. And it will not be able to save without employees being impacted, high level positions. So you have to decide and reduce the amount of high level positions And you're going to have to just deal with it. But there's no way to get to 10%. There's no way to get to 10% without cutting high-level positions.

So maybe we can start with freezing salaries if, you know, the actual stop, because that is an exercise you're referring to. Right. On an annual basis, we have to provide by the state statute. Right. How long? So, having said all that, I think I did answer your question, City Manager, that, you know, where would I cut? So I've listed my, and it's not an exhaustive list, obviously. I can email you more stuff, but this is just more or less areas where we can start looking. But having said all that, And just a point to make, as it relates to reclassification of positions, for the next year, I would like to see the dollar amount associated with that change, if we can have that. And Irina is not, knowing that I was... You understand what I'm saying? So, and last thing I'll conclude, in anticipation of tax reform and how it might affect the city finances specifically, I would like to appeal to my board members, my fellow commissioners, to request a meeting workshop in early December to discuss strategies based on the result of the tax reform. If it doesn't pass, well, we can always cancel that meeting. But if it passes, we'll need that time to prepare for the unknown. And if we can schedule that meeting in early December, that would be nice because if we wait until that, the reform, November, the time flies, so we might not be able to do it in December, then January comes, we have so many things in January, and then another budget process, so can we do that?

So you will have new board members after this election, one way or the other. You will need to have your regular retreat in early December with your consultant to go over the new composition of the board, as well as the priorities of the board, which will then go back into changing, as I mentioned earlier, reevaluation of your pillars, and then the tax reform will also be a topic of that same conversation.

It would be nice if we can have, besides that, something dedicated for discussion purposes. I guess the retreat is more targeted to guidance and more of a formation of the board, because we only have one member new, at least one new member.

It's both. You can't say how you want to make a drastic cut, such as the tax reform, without telling us what you want to do and change about what you are giving us direction to provide. You have seven pillars right now and a lot of priorities. I don't know how many they are. But you're going to have to whittle that down. Things will have to change. So you have to have that to understand where you want the tax reform impacts to be. You can't just say, well, just cut $8 million out of the budget, you know, because it passed. Where do you want the city to look differently? And then we have to go out and execute that. Well, we have 1,000 staff members. I want it to be 800 staff members. Well, what are we going to do with the pillars? Well, now there's seven, maybe there's five pillars. We're talking about a drastic change to meet that mark. So it is going to be important that you all talk publicly about what's more important and what's less important. And I hate it when people say that you're picking winners and losers, but you're going to have to make some choices where some things that we do now are not as important as we will be able to do without that amount of revenue.

Sure, and I understand your logic, and the retreat itself, without looming tax reform, will take place anyways, and we have those annually dedicated for that, but having this new new thing if it passes we'll need more time so maybe additional meeting or workshop as a suggestion I'm not trying to but if we schedule it besides or next to the retreat or maybe right after or maybe incorporate we'll have more time but if we don't maybe we you know it's better be proactive than reactive just a suggestion I would really want to have that discussion separately or part of the retreat as it relates to the tax reform specifically. Because we all know that's gonna affect us in great extent. I'm done, Mayor.

Thank you. Commissioner Stokes.

Thank you, Mayor. First, just to address that, you know, Commissioner Petro's concerns and, you know, they're valid if and when this tax reform passes. You know, we will be forced to imagine a whole new world. But we will have some time, because just the voters approving tax reform doesn't change tax reform. The state legislature is going to spend the next at least full session, if not two years worth, trying to figure out what kind of legislation to enact to actually put this tax reform in place. And that may well create some new pathways to funding that local governments, you know, have been asking for already. And, you know, who knows, maybe there'll be a special taxing district for public safety, which would solve a myriad of problems and take some precedence. You know, my guess is that our concerns and needs here at the local level in Northport are not terribly different than they'll be everywhere across this state. Every municipality and county government will be screaming and yelling about how they're going to make ends meet. And it's all going to come down again to the folks public safety, which is which is that prime pillar that gets impacted by by the general fund. Move on back to this, this meeting, I have a handful of questions that I'll just do my own due diligence on to determine why certain things went up and down. I apologize for not having done that. So popped out as we went through these slides, but. You know, I just want to make a general statement, you know, to balance the budget. Where, for the most part, most of the department costs stayed pretty much flat minor ups and downs, but I think it's, it's worthwhile to take a minute to pause and reflect on how challenging that was in light of the growth that this city is experiencing. You know, people say, oh, you know, city keeps growing revenues keep coming and, you know. We just keep spending more money. Well, this is this budget's pretty good indication that, you know, we were able to tighten our belt. And meet the challenge, um, you know, and there are explanations as to why certain things went up and certain things went down. Um, so there's really just 1, 1 area that that I've got concerns with that. You know, I've raised in my 1 on ones and despite the fact that we're. You know, going ahead and fill in 7 positions for the police department that were vacant and that instead of totally cutting out of our budget, we're going to fund. I have great reservations over our inability to fund needs. Now, maybe we don't need 40 or 50 new officers, but boy, we sure need a half a dozen a dozen more. If. If and when property tax reform takes place, it's going to put even a greater pressure. It is the 1 department in our city that is 100% funded. By the general fund, we're just going to be that much further behind the egg wall as far as I'm concerned. So, you know, I don't know how we do it at this point. It's not my job, nor, and it's way above my pay grade to tell you how to do it. But if you could find a half a dozen more positions. in the pd to fill i mean these are needs we're going to have to fill them sooner or later one way or the other if there's a way to find how to do this by moving dollars around from other areas you know if you ask me if you don't have a safe city you don't have anything nobody's going to want to go to the parks nobody's want to go live here nobody's going to want to come and do business here if you don't have a safe city and we have become so accustomed to being safe Every year, our public surveys say infrastructure is more important than public safety. Remarkable. Why? Because we're so safe. Wait till we're not so safe. And if you don't think it can happen, it happens all over this country. Over the course of decades, when public safety needs aren't addressed. So. That's all I'm going to say on it between now and when we pass the finish line in this budget, I would find some way, even if it involved. Nicking the, uh, you know, uh, the, um, uh, fund balances to make up some of these dollars that we're, we need to do. Um. I just think we're making a big mistake here and we're going to pay for it in the future. And, you know, not saying anybody's not doing anything right. I'm just saying that budget pressures being what they are. There's 1 area of this city government that is 1st and foremost in my mind that's public safety. And I don't think we're doing it justice on this budget in. Every other respect, I think this is a killer budget. What you all have been able to do is kind of an amazing task and probably prepare us all for what might be coming next year, which will make this pale by comparison. So, again, kudos to everybody who's worked hard. I hope. You can find some dollars to point towards public safety. And that's about it for me.

All right. Yeah, thank you all very much. It's great. I've already talked with the city manager quite a few times about, and it's not about this budget, it's about in the future and it's about restructuring. And basically, we're going to have to look at, or y'all are going to have to look at consolidation of services and getting those services into areas out of the general fund and into district funds. To where it benefits the city, this, that, and the other, and working on that, because I seen where on 1 of the slides where parks and rec was going to have to cut out. You know, trees, removals, this, that, and the other within their parks. Well, if public works or property maintenance has a tree crew, then maybe they take care of that in. Working together. We are a city. We, we work together, you know, and revisiting some of the old paths that we took back in the day. Might need to come back to life again as we move forward, because you can consolidate those services and it's just not in trees. It could be broader than that. So. I give you all kudos. You did a great job and. I'll thank you very much on that. Now, on this next one, I think we'll take a little lunch. Are you going to need, how long do you think the next one's going to take for the discussion?

What time is it?

It's noon-ish.

Oh, half an hour? Half an hour?

We'll do a half hour for lunch and then come back and finish up.

A public comment as well.

Oh, okay. Well, I wanted to get it going, so, okay. Public comment? Okay.

John Kresbach. Good morning, Commissioners. My name is John Kresbach, and I'm speaking today regarding the Environmental Resources Advisory Board. Currently, the Board is considering attaching arbitrary financial costs to environmental changes on private property and passing those expenses on to developers. This approach will dramatically harm new residential and commercial development in Northport. by driving up costs. At its core, this potential overreach happens because of a lack of balanced representation. This board is staffed almost exclusively by single focused individuals with zero representation from the residents, builders, or business owners who bear the financial impact. When a board looks through only one lens, You get one side of policies. A true cost-benefit analysis must weigh environmental impact against economic impact. Without opposing viewpoints, common sense compromise gets lost. Every unvoted administrative cost imposed by overregulation acts as an unaffordable tax. It adds no value, delays projects, and drives builders to neighboring cities. When growth stalls, that tax burden falls squarely on existing Northport residents. I urge the Commission to take two actions, require balanced representation, Restructure advisory boards, so effective property owners and business interests have a seat at the table and mandate dual cost benefit analysis. Ensure every environmental proposal is paired with an economic impact assessment focused on affordability. Let's keep Northport balanced and affordable. Thank you for your time.

All right, we'll come back at 1235.

Thank you, Northport Police Department. I want to thank you for having me today. Kelly from Dispatch, she was awesome. Officer Andahar, he was great. What I learned today was that... Thank you, sir. This is discussion of possible direction regarding the fiscal year 27 electric utility tax fee reduction. We do have a short PowerPoint that we want to go through with you.

There it is. Thank you.

So the background here states that Florida statute section 166.231 does give the city the authority to levy a tax on the purchase of electricity within the city at a rate not to exceed 10%, which our rate has sort of gone up over the course of time. February 4th in 91, it was 2% as established. 98, 2% was reaffirmed. October of 21, it was raised up to 6%. October of 23, 6% went to 10%. In January of this year, the commission discussed reducing that rate to offset F- for the power and light rate increases, and the goal there was to say that if their rates went up, we want it to be revenue neutral. So, on March 30th, oh, I'm sorry. Sorry, on March 13th of this year, we talked about two reduction options for the revenue neutral rate of 6%. And June, in our last time we spoke to you at our budget meeting, we talked about the fiscal year 27 recommended budget proposal for the revenue option of reducing our general fund revenue by $501,155. So that was the impact that we had to navigate through as we continue to reach our target goal. The revenue neutral approach, as we look at it, this shows you what it is for this year. It's actually going from 10% to a 9.4%. And if you look at how we projected over the future, you see a gradual decrease, which we believe was the intention of this board, to say that that revenue rate was at 10%, which was the maximum, and we wanted to continue to see it go down because we had raised it in order to actually balance our budget the last few years as the past previously stated. So as you can see, for the fiscal year of 27, the revenue loss will be $501,000. In fiscal year 28, $751,000. and fiscal year 29, $895,000. So when you do look at how we plan to balance our budget based on whatever challenges we have ahead, this is a revenue that we found to use that we are moving in the opposite direction as long as we understand that that's what we're doing and we're okay with the rationale, we will continue in that particular direction. So the implementation timeline of this levy must be adopted by ordinance, two readings, and the effective date must be subsequent to January 1st, April 1st, July 1st, or October 1st, and the city shall notify the Department of Revenue at least 120 days before the effective date. So that's how we would propose the earliest estimated effective date for our tax reduction would be April 1st of 2027. Option one, we could keep the budget proposal in approved status to be included in the fiscal year 2027 tentative budget scheduled for your meetings in September of this year. The pros for that are we continue progress towards a tax reduction. An eventual tax reduction would directly lower the electricity bills helping households manage their living costs and their increased living costs, and making local businesses more competitive. It would also show signs of fiscal responsiveness, especially in times of inflation and rising energy prices. The cons is, as I stated, it decreases your revenue, and we know that less revenue reduces unrestricted funds for the general fund, which carries police, fire, good governance, parks, and other departments. Your option two is to deny the budget proposal 3570 and do not include it in the fiscal 27 budget for your meeting for September. This would align with proactive financial planning while the property tax reform proposal is pending voter approval and it lowers the burden on city programs such as general fund dollars, including general good governance, police, fire parks, and others. The con of it is we would not lower the electricity bill or help households and businesses manage it, increasing costs. Number three on page seven is to make the budget proposal 3570 contingent upon the outcome of the statewide property tax reform scheduled for November. If it passes, the city would not proceed with the perceived reduction to the current 10% electric public service tax. If it fails, then the city will proceed with... the tax and reduce the electrical public service tax from 10% to 9.4%. The pros of this, it allows the city to evaluate the fiscal impacts of the property tax reform before implementing an additional tax reduction, preserving financial flexibility and supporting a more informed budget decision. The con is it delays potential tax relief for residents and businesses and postpones any reduction in electricity costs and creates temporary uncertainty until the statewide referendum Results are known. And that is the end of that conversation, Mr. Mayor. We're happy to get some direction on how you would like to go on this important tax topic.

Well, I don't see anybody in the queue right now, but I would like to put out a consensus real quick that asks the commissioners if we would move forward with option one as planned before and what we've discussed earlier. Got two in the queue now. or do we wanna move on with the consensus for option one?

Personally, I'd like to hear what everybody has to say. Okay.

And Commissioner Petro, you're in the queue.

Thank you, Mayor. Question on slide three, revenue neutral. If we look at 2027, are you taking into account the anticipated growth and more revenue coming in? And if yes, how? And if no, the lost revenues, in my opinion, is incorrect because there would be more houses being built, especially with more development that is going on. So is that estimated annual revenue to the city? Does it include the anticipated growth or no?

So we work with FPL on their estimates. They provide that information to us and based on their estimates, this was put together. So they do estimate growth, but I think it's more conservative.

Okay, so it was nothing on our side as a city. It was more of them presenting the anticipated growth.

Yes, we asked for the information based on their estimates. What do they expect the City of Northboard would bring in in revenues and then we calculated the rate to the city and what that would look like when we apply the reduction to stay revenue neutral.

So in short, it does take into account the growth or anticipated growth?

Yes, and I would say it does, based on what they provided. But it looks like it's more conservative.

Another question I have on page two, or slide two. The change from six to 10, the jump between 2021 to 2023, The timeframe, and I'm sure it was before you for sure, Irina, but maybe Julia or the city manager can tell us, what was the reasoning to have that jump of 4%?

To balance the budget.

To balance the budget. That's a big hike.

It's a big hike in increase. It's not a huge hike in revenue. When you're trying not to raise your millage rates, which we haven't done for seven years, you're gonna try to find other revenue sources that you are legally allowed to take advantage of in order to get there. This was one of them.

I was hearing the commission voted on it.

Okay, that's all. Thank you.

Commissioner Duvall. Thank you, Mayor. I looked up... I've got a sheet here from the U.S. Energy Administration. They say that the average Florida household consumes 1,200 kilowatt hours a month. It just so happens that my last bill was 1,206 kilowatt hours. It's just serendipity. Based on what we charge right now, I paid the city $24.53. Now that includes $9.75 for the franchise fee and $14.78 for the 10% tax. That total came to $24.53. Multiply that by 12, that comes to $294.36. That our citizens are seeing that it's a tax. And a lot of people don't even notice things. Now I also looked at, some figures. And I have a sheet here from the 2025 budget. And the 2025 budget says that the utility service tax revenues, that 10%, was $3,905,713 actual in 2023. This year's proposed budget says that 2023 actual was $4,193,302. That doesn't match. Also, the proposed, this is from our proposed general fund revenue budget proposal for this year, is predicting the 2027 rate to revenue to be $7,496,740. When the actual 2025 was $8,181,089. In other words, it was larger last year than it's predicted to be this year. And FPL had a rate increase this year. So actually it should be more. Plus there's more houses, I presume, in Northport this year than there were last year. So I kind of question the numbers here. And it comes down to, I'm going to kind of quote the vice mayor here from our meeting before lunch, where she mentioned millage rate increases. This is a tax that falls on, you look at a household of someone who doesn't make that much money, and $294 a year is a chunk of change. we talk about affordable housing, okay? While being able to heat your house, cool your house, all those other little bills that come in, you know, pay your light bill, that's part of affordable housing. I understand we are in uncharted territory here with What's going to happen in November? But I'd still like to look at this rate and. I just see 5.9%. Franchise fee 10% tax. On something that the city does not produce. I'd like to see it go back down at least in the future, do it gradual. 9%, 8%, 7, 6, over a period of four years to get it down to what people pay for tax on it, an average sale of something when they buy it in a store. That's my opinion. Thanks. Mr. Mayor.

Commissioner Stokes. Go ahead, sir. The taxes that the commissioner is referring to, are those all the taxes that we control in the 10% that we're talking about here? It's all included in those taxes, right?

The 5.9% is the franchise fee. That is the city that we receive and the public utility tax.

is ours as well. And were these questions that you raised to us in your one-on-one last week that we talked to you about to answer your questions so we could have a good answer for you today?

You know, these are numbers I'm coming up with, you know, that just, I personally would rather see it go to 9%. Okay. It's possible rather than 9.44 based on the fact that You know, we made more last year than you're predicting for this year, and we're going to have more houses, and the rate did go up, so you're going to get more on that.

Yeah, and I understand you didn't leave with a question for us. We would love to have given you a more intelligent answer today based on your numbers that you mentioned, had we known about it before today. So, thank you, sir.

I just don't know what you're looking at. It might be just that it's not audited. Maybe it was preliminary numbers.

I just don't know what you're looking at.

You know, I can give you these. These are right out of our budget books. That's okay.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Okay.

Is that it, sir? Yes, sir.

Commissioner Stokes?

Yeah. I mean, there is no doubt that, you know, saving anybody a couple hundred dollars a year matters to some people. You know, it's... certainly, you know, real for people. But, you know, I mean, city manager made a point, which is, you know, this is all part of process of balancing a budget. And the reality is that You know, for a city that's held its military for 7 years, we're always as a city struggle to find ways to balance our budget and find revenue sources that we can take advantage of to balance that budget without cutting services and amenities. Happy about or comfortable with so, you know, and I see is going forward, you know, if and when this tax reform passes, it's going to be such a such a major impact to how we envision everything. We do from the setting of our pillars right on down through all the priorities. So, you know, I kind of like option 3 here because. tax reform doesn't pass, great. I'm all for doing this and staying revenue neutral and winding this number down to something that's comfortable and put some money back in people's pockets. I'm all for that. But if tax reform passes, the reality is we're gonna, this city as well as every other city and county governments in the state is going to be scrambling to find ways to basically cover the cost of basic services and amenities that people are going to demand. And nobody, I don't believe anybody has a clue how impactful that's going to be yet. And luckily, we'll have a year at least for the state legislature to figure out what ends up before we actually know what we're dealing with here. So I'm kind of leaning towards option three, and that gives us some flexibility and we just see what happens in November. Thanks, Mayor, that's all I got.

Mr. Petro.

Thank you, Mayor. What I was concerned with, with the FPL rate increase being implemented in January 1st, 2027, because we're taxing people on the amount and that is 10%, on top of 10% tax, we also charge people franchise fee of five point whatever, almost 6%, so that's almost 16%. But what we failed to acknowledge in our discussion, at least Commissioner Duval, I think he was trying to say, with implementation of FPL increase rates, we can get more money regardless because we're charging by percentage. So it is safe to say that at least 9% will be matching their rate increase, but we don't lose any dollar income as far as reducing the rate because they're gonna increase their rates. That means automatically the revenue for the city is gonna be increased. So what Commissioner Duval was trying to say, let's do it nine at least because we're still gonna be getting the same amount of money. I don't know the exact math. I forgot my cheat sheet where I did it before when we had the discussion. So I'll be very... comfortable doing nine percent as well because we as a city we're not losing because we're gonna recoup that money by via FPL raising their rates not to mention that we're charging franchise fee as well and that brings me to the to the next question if there's a state stature allowing us to what percentage we can charge franchise fee on utility. Is there such thing as a cap of franchise fee? Because franchise fee is different and that's what we're collecting as well, in addition to 10% that we're collecting as a city.

Is there a statute which limits the amount that you could collect on the franchise fee? Is that your question? Yes. None at all. Okay. It's just a cap on the tax. Okay.

So again, to recoup, because the, or rephrase my statement, because the rates are going to go up, and they did go up a little bit, but they're going to go up even further in 2027. We're going to get automatic rates, not rates, but we're going to get automatic raise in our revenue. So to have said that, I think it's conservatively speaking at least 9%. I think it was even more than 9% going, maybe eight or, but I'm comfortable doing what Commissioner LaValle's proposing and to do 9%, not 9.4. Thank you, Mayor.

Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. Now I'm confused because I remember really clearly when we discussed this back in 2023 that going up to 10% was the maximum allowed by state statute. Can we get some clarity on that?

Yes.

For public utility tax, that is correct. It's up to 10%. But the franchise fee is a different fee.

That's a different fee.

You're talking about a different fee. You were talking about the franchise fee, yes. He was talking about the franchise fee.

I was speaking about, okay, both banks. The franchise fee is... I have the floor, sir.

Thank you. Mayor, I did have the floor. So I'm inclined to throw my chips in with Commissioner Stokes. We are on a cliff. facing the restructuring of our taxes. I fully understand that in the court of public opinion, cost cutting wins us more kudos than increasing fees or costs or taxes. I get it. But we're running a city, a $350 million budget with just shy of 1,000 employees. And we owe the residents and the businesses located in this city to continue to deliver a high level of service. And there needs to be a balance between cost cutting and revenue. And I sense a real reluctance among some members of this commission to not wrap your head around revenue. We are going to have to find, if the property tax changes go into place, we are going to have to grapple with revenue. And that's going to mean more taxes in some shape or form that we're going to have to decide to impose on the residents and businesses in this city. So we all need to get over that and wrap our heads around that. So I'll get off my soapbox. I want to wait, making any changes until after November, and we know what's happening, and I'm getting sort of a... No, that's for me.

Well, I was just going to say, what we presented to you, the revenue neutral approach, is what the direction was that we were given to make sure that we lowered it. And the new number of something lower than that has not been provided to us. And Commissioner Petro's franchise fee was not a part of that conversation. Did you mention that to us when we met with you last week during your one-on-one so we could see what the NOLS numbers would look like? and bring back what the revenue reduction would be so we could talk about how to offset that through a different means?

You're asking a question? Yeah, did you talk about that to us when we met with you last week? Franchise fee was not part of any of our discussions, but we all, and I assume.

No, I mean our discussions. Your discussion that we met with you to ask if you had any concerns before we got to today so that we could have done some research to help provide helpful information to the conversation.

Franchise fee was never brought up, but it was assumed that we all know that each customer or each taxpayer is paying 10% plus franchise fee of 5.6, I believe. That's what Citi collects. So our discussion when we first were discussing this was lowering the tax, not franchise fee.

Which we're talking about today.

Yes.

And just to... My point is, whenever you thought of talking about it, had you shared that with us, then we could have done some number crunching to figure out what the value of that is to say how little or more it is to reduce to go from what we're doing to what you are proposing.

But you're... No, you did crunch. We're not talking about franchise fee. We just brought it up for awareness that there's also a franchise fee that the city is collecting. And we're not trying to do anything with that right now as we speak. Okay. So, if we go with 9, we're not losing anything as far as the revenue. So I. Kindly agree to disagree. Because if the rates are going up, well, 1st of all, it takes a year to be implemented if I'm not. Mistaken correct.

It will be effective April 1st if the Commission right now gives us concessions to move forward.

That will be approved today. But you made a statement that 9% is not costing us any more or less. How are you arriving at that?

Simply because the FPL is going to increase day rate.

Right.

So automatically the city is going to get more money automatically.

Right.

So to have said that, it would be prudent and very... responsibly to save our citizens from them paying on top of what the FPL is increasing. not to increase our rate because automatically we, as a city, we're going to get more money.

So we lowered it. So we lowered it.

To offset that increase. But it's not quite to that extent. I don't know if you matched the FPL rates.

So FPL provided with those estimates. They estimated a growth to the city for fiscal year 2027 of 6.7%. That's with rate increases because we specifically asked what are our projected revenues for the next three years.

And they gave us the information that 9.4% would be our new rate to stay at revenue neutral per the slide. Are you saying that their numbers are not correct?

Well, did you take into account another rate increase? They're going to do it in 2027?

They provided the increases. They know what their increases are going to look like, so they do projections. We received their revenue information that we as the city are driving from Northport customers that they are receiving in revenues. And then we estimated what that would look like at 10%. And then what would that look like to do revenue neutral?

This is what we were told to do.

I guess we have to come to a consensus of what we want to do. So I'm open for any discussions, but I'm not willing to do nothing. because if we miss today, then we're gonna have to wait who knows how long.

Is that it? Yes. All right, nobody else is in the queue. This is my take on this. I wanted to go with option one because that's where the numbers have already been concise and put together and All the pertinent information is in option 1. By doing, I don't agree with option 3 because I don't want to be like dangling the carrot on or even intimidating people on their votes for the November referendum. It's like, well, if you vote yes, we're not going to save you any money. We talked up here in great length on reducing this, reducing it and saving money for the citizens. By going with option 1, I believe Commissioner Duvall said it's like 200 and something dollars. At least that's a savings this year. Next year's budget, y'all are going to have to go through this whole process again because if you bring it, let's say with Commissioner Petro or Commissioner Duvall's suggestion, I'm bringing it down to nine. You may be bringing it back to 10 next year because you don't know what the numbers are going to be regardless moving forward. So it's a start. You bring it down to the 9.4. You give the citizens a savings. And whatever the elections and the votes are this fall, you're going to realize that, but at least. The savings are there. They're in place. We have moved forward. Like I said, I'm not in favor of option three. I'm in favor of option one. Let's move forward. Let's do what we said we were going to do. We talked about it and now we're trying to change it right at the final stages of this. It's great to have the discussions, but The discussions are really going to come next year after the election. This is what we said we wanted to do this year. This is what the numbers came out to. Mine is I'm with option one. That's all I got. If anybody wants to whip up some consensuses, we can go with that. I did put out a consensus. Let's try with this. Let's see what we got a consensus for option one. Commissioner Duvall.

In light of the option, you know, the possibility that I might get nothing, then I would go with option one. Getting something is better than nothing.

Commissioner Stokes.

Yeah, we can always deal with next year, next year. Okay, I'm good with one, too. I like to see people save a couple hundred bucks, even if it's for one year. I think it's, you know, it shows a sign that we're trying to help, so I'm okay with it. $12 a year. I'm a yes.

Vice Mayor?

You convince me, Mayor. I'm a yes.

And Commissioner Petro? I'm a yes. All right. We have a consensus, a unanimous consensus on option one. Do we have any public comment? City Clerk? All right now city manager, I have one last question before I move on to adjourn this. I do believe this whole commission noticed a very large sea of purple throughout the gallery. Totally worth it. Were you all trying to. put us in a hypnotic state. I mean, was everybody just praying that we would get through this today with no problems? Because, I mean, it was, I mean, even though she's in purple, but I mean, she's always in purple. I mean, she feels within the land of purple now, so she's happy.

Sir, this is your final budget meeting of this style for the eight years that you have been up there. We appreciate you. We will miss you, and we hope that you've enjoyed these budget conversations as much as we have. But I didn't get to memo I don't have purple on. You were supposed to wear it all the time anyway.

I thought everybody was just agreeing with Frankie about some time. It works for him. But no, I thank you for that. I think I teared up a little bit, but thank you. You're welcome, sir.

Mayor, before you wrap it up, when we dealt with agenda item 26-0966, like there was no, when we wrapped that up, we jumped right to lunch and didn't talk about would anybody be interested in making any kind of consensus. I don't know if that would be appropriate at this time since we moved on from that item, but is that something we can still entertain since we're

Did we need any?

Well, I was going to make one.

Okay.

Well, then can we go back to revisit that item right now at this point?

Yeah.

Okay, we're going to revisit item 26-0966.

You know, I would just like to hear what each of my fellow Commissioners have to say. I would make a consensus that we direct City Manager to find the funds without raising any fees anywhere, anyhow, anyway, but by reallocation of dollars, finding another six positions for the Police Department.

Do we know what the cost of that is, Mr. Stokes? Cost? The stock. Mike, are you pulling that from where we removed it? I just don't, I'm not looking at it right now.

No, I'm not talking about the seven that, you know.

No, no, six.

I'm talking another half a dozen positions.

I think he's adding to your numbers, so instead of adding seven, you're gonna now add 13.

Right, it's probably less than six, between two and three million dollars if I had to estimate a number based on what the seven costs.

So it's probably a million dollars if we cut half of it. It looks like we got 13 on our schedule from CPSM for almost two million dollars, so if he's asking for six, it's about a million dollars.

A little over a million dollars. If it came from fund balance, I don't care. I just think we're making a big mistake not putting a little money, more money into this department. We didn't do anything last year. We didn't do anything in this year's budget. And with tax reform, we're going to be facing even a bigger challenge going forward. And the population continues to grow. And as I say, we are a safe city now. until we're not, and once we're not, then everybody will want to know how the hell we got here. So that's why I'm curious to hear exactly what my fellow commissioners have to say on this matter, see if there's a consensus or not.

You got my vote. Did you have anything to add to that, city manager?

No, sir. If it's the will of the board, we will make the adjustment.

Okay. Commissioner Duvall, you said yes?

Yes, sir.

Commissioner Stokes, I am assuming you're a yes? Absolutely. I'm a yes. Vice-Mayor?

I'm a yes, understanding it's not going to be an easy slam dunk to hire 13 qualified officers for the City of Northport. So I would anticipate they would be somewhat staggered through the year anyway, and perhaps it wouldn't be quite the budget impact we think it could be. So having said that, I'm a yes.

Mr. Petro? Yes. And just so you know, I'm available after November. If any of us have to coincide with my expertise, just say it.

You're the visible gun out on the streets of Northport.

Thank you.

City Clerk, any final public comment?

We're going to be talking about the AED and how to use it.

All right, so I'm going to show you what to do if you find someone who's unresponsive. First thing we're going to do is we're going to tap on them. Hey, can you hear me? If they don't respond, I'm going to look to see if they're breathing normally. If they're not breathing normally, I'm going to say, hey, call 911 and go see if you can find an AED, and then I'm going to start CPR.