City Commission - workshop

ALL START? ALL RIGHT. HELLO, EVERYONE, AND WELCOME TO THE CITY SOUTH MIAMI BUDGET WORKSHOP. IT IS TUESDAY, JULY 21ST AT 4 P.M. ON THE DOT. NO, I'M JUST KIDDING. MADAM CITY CLERK, CAN WE CALL TO ORDER? OR, SORRY, CALL THE ROLL?

THANK YOU VERY MUCH. IF THE COMMISSION DOESN'T MIND, I'D LIKE TO MOVE ITEM C UP TO THE TOP SO THAT THE BUDGET AND FINANCE COMMITTEE CAN GIVE THEIR REPORT AND GET OUT OF HERE IF THEY'VE GOT SOMEWHERE TO BE. ALL RIGHT. IS REPRESENTATIVE FROM OKAY, GREAT. COME ON UP, PLEASE.

Any questions from the Commission? I do. You're recognized.

Thanks, Chase. I really appreciate everything you and the Budget and Finance Committee have done. I've been part of that committee. I know how it goes. It's a lot of work and you guys put a lot of time and effort, so I appreciate that. I know this year's budget is a little bit in a question mark due to the impeding tax reductions. We don't know what's going to happen yet. We don't know whether voters are going to go with it, but we've started to look at that. I think that one of the things that most of us did when we first came on board was that we knew we wanted to redevelop and get a lot of

Oh, that's perfectly fair. We're pretty close to that point right now, so we might have to schedule that pretty quickly. Just good to know. No, I think that's all I have, Mr. Rivera. I appreciate your time, and thank you for all you do for the city.

Again, like Commissioner Kaya said, thank you for everything you guys do. I'm sure it's not easy. I just wanted to mention one thing. I tend to agree with the board's advice on the underlying. I actually made the, when the CEO was here, I asked him, what if we did our own maintenance? Because my main question was, if they do a graffiti, let's say on one of the columns, how long are we going to be waiting to get that cleaned up? But they weren't very, so what I'm advising to you is their response was basically not very open to that. But it would save us a lot of money.

It's funny that you and I, of course, are stuck on the underline. I agree with you. It's a complete voluntary thing. The thing nobody ever says out loud is, do you get shamed when you say you don't want to be part of it? Because everybody else is doing their part well. I don't really care what everybody else is doing. I agree with you guys and what you wrote here. Like, hey, we need to scale this back. It's so much money. And when you think, like you said, we take it over, OK. If we take it over, what does it cost us?

then does it become, OK, we're not going to take it over? Because I can understand that's not what they want. OK, then that's what we're willing to pay. So I think that for us, that's going to be a very robust discussion. And I find it very interesting you guys landed, I think, where most of us have landed. So I appreciate you guys. I know that this is probably the most unsexy. of the committees, but probably one of the most necessary. Thank you, guys.

Thank you. And yes, I just also wanted to take the opportunity to thank you and the board, particularly you. You've been very diligent at our CIP workshops. You gave a great review. I think a lot of people up here are in line with you and the topics that you discussed. Obviously, transportation, the building of Dante Fussell, things like that are all things that have been on our mind, and we've been trying to find creative solutions. If situations change from a revenue perspective, we're going to have to get even more creative. So we definitely appreciate all the feedback that you have here. A

We may not have the money for the bat signal this year, but maybe, yeah. Sorry, yeah.

Thank you. Thank you very much. No problem.

And we'll go ahead and move on to item B, which is the proposed budget.

So Alfredo, we have already, by authorized resolution, the public's benefit trust funds. We have the GOB capital funds and debt service fund that's being allocated today. So that's three. The building permit and automated, these are proposed for right now?

You know I'm not going to let that slide go without asking you this. Are there items that the police department asked for that we are not funding for this fiscal year? And if so, can we just get a little bit of a highlight on those and the reasoning?

Is that a necessary position that we're just holding on? Or is it something that is an aspirational thing? Is that a police officer that we need that we're not getting on the street because we don't have the funds? Or is it something like, is it a want or a need?

And I'm sure that we have. So this is kind of a stupid question, but have we looked at what we're doing with overtime versus adding positions? Because I get it. We can't fully staff, so we have to do overtime. So it's kind of like, I got a toothache. The dentist is closed. Have we looked at saying, hey, ideally, so that we wouldn't have all this overtime and this kind of like restriction in being able to do the things we want to do? And I'm making up a number, so whatever. If we say we have 50 officers and 54 would be the sweet spot of where we could get things done, is that what we're working

When we're talking about stormwater drain improvements and what have you, what is our responsibility and what is the county's responsibility and what is the state's responsibility? Because it seems like, to me, as a person who doesn't maybe know how it all works is, OK, well, I pay water and sewer, so why wouldn't water and sewer fix whatever the drainage problem is? And I pay the county, and I pay the state. I see it in my taxes, blah, blah, blah. So who's responsible for fixing things when they're broken? Because when we start talking to the residents about this type of thing, they're going

So like dummy situation, there's, I don't know how do you say it, where the water goes down.

So that's in the corner of my house. That backs up, and it's all broken. And who's responsible for fixing that tube that goes from that thing at the corner of my house to the canal where the water throws out?

Got you. Okay. So then the short answer is if it's in the city, chances are we're responsible for it. If it's part of some big monster thing, it's probably somebody else. Okay.

so if you go back to one slide it wasn't crystal clear that you are making a recommendation moving forward with the uh with the storm water allocation of the revenue through our current taxes or are we going to kind of move back into utilities which i happen to be a fan of so i just wanted to see if you were providing recommendation here today or not really yet

If I can add to that too, doing the storm study, storm drain study really gives us the opportunity to go get more grants as well. So that's, I mean, you need to have the study in place to make sure we can go do that. So that will also help all the funding that we're hopefully going to get here in the future and give us the ability to get grants so we can do more with it.

Thank you very much. Does anyone have any more questions for our CFO? No? OK, great. Thank you. So without any questions, we'll move to the presentation by the city manager, item D.

And I know there were some questions asked, but is there a desire, anyone in the commission, to have an open discussion now or just kind of take it all in and we'll save it for the next meeting? Let's hear it from Commissioner Benich.

OK. When we're talking about the full-time employee positions that we essentially want slash need but aren't able to fill now. I think there was five of them. Do we have them on a most needed? Do we have it on a number scale or something that if we find the funds, here's where we're hitting first, here's where we're hitting second, that type of thing?

Was it the, oh, shoot, code? Code enforcement?

OK. And then for you guys, there's just three things that I want us to have in mind The underlying budget I think is way too high. I think we need to look at that extremely critically. Mobility, the VIA program, what have you, I am a huge fan of having people pay for that simply because I don't want it coming out of our general fund. I don't want us not having the grant money come in be something that we cover. I think those things exist. And if we can tap into what the county is doing, whatever, then it's a burden we don't have to necessarily carry. And then I had this conversation with Chip.

Thank you. Any other discussion items from the commission? What was the last thing you said?

I love that. I worked at the Coral Gables Youth Center, and we had a director. And that lady was a fire breathing dragon. And there was no fooling around there, because that lady would not have it. And I think that we would benefit from that. But notwithstanding, all the other things are important too.

By the way, I agree with you. One of the things that we spoke about when we approved our legislation was to approve the $300,000 for the first year. We had never really contributed to the underline at all. Most of the cities and counties and municipalities had, not us, right? And I think what we all agree is that let's try it one time for a year to see how it goes. If it doesn't go the way that we want it, it takes 10 days to put down some vandalism or trees are being knocked down and not put up. Let's try it first and see what happens. We all agree, by the way. I think we all agree. I think w

And just for the public record here, this is our first reading of the capital operating budget, right? So we're going to have another couple readings and workshops before we approve it, correct? Correct. Can you remind us on the schedule again?

I mean, there's a lot of little questions that I have, but, you know, I'll go back with pencil and go back and start getting all the questions answered. I mean, we've been doing that. I know CIP was more of what we focused on, but I appreciate where we are right now. Thank you.

Great. Commissioner Rodriguez? I'm good. All right. OK. Well, I guess I'll just close it up thanking all the departments for their hard work. I know this is a very difficult time of year, physically and even emotionally. I know how passionate you are about the work that you do and the projects you put in. Not every item gets approved, and that's a challenge. But we'll all work up here. to make sure that everything that we can do this year, and if things get messy, we'll get creative, just to be a team with you and make sure that everything goes through. So we definitely appreciate all of your