City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, everyone. We are officially calling our budget workshop for fiscal year 2025-2026 to order. The time is now 2.14 p.m. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

All right. I will now turn it over to our city manager's office for the budget presentation.

Mr. Castaneda, can you identify what area is the CDD part in this?

Just to confirm, Doral does not get any of those non ad valorem assessments?

Thank you, Madam City Manager. So what we're going to do now is everyone's had an opportunity to meet with staff independently. We have our line item budget. We have the summary budget, which is also available to the public online and attached to the agenda. So everyone hopefully came prepared for questions and proposals if need be. This is our time to make suggestions. We can vote on it by consensus. However, the city attorney feels it's best in the administration to be able to act. that when we come for our first reading we can take an action and then second reading take an action i do not w

I have had had preliminary discussions with staff, with the administration, city manager's office, and our CFO about this and where we could find the funds and its impact. The first proposal is the Doral Golden Hearts Supporting Our Senior Community Grant. This is a targeted grant program providing direct financial support to Doral's most vulnerable senior residents, addressing the gap left behind by the county's program, which has been reduced or at this point suspended from what I understand because of their large budget cuts. So the county used to provide senior homestead exemption resident

All right. So I will now go ahead and open it up to any comments or questions regarding the proposed budget.

All right. Just to explain this process real quick, and maybe IT can put up the presentation with the timeline. I think it was the first slide of the manager's report. So for those who haven't been doing this too long, or maybe this is new, we get the budget. I think we got the budget. When was this? When was it that this was submitted? Submitted proposed budget? July 31st. We received the budget. Again, we started this back in strategic planning. Since then, I'm pretty sure the manager's office, even before then, put out emails about the budget and meetings that have taken place. I've had at

I received responses to several things. I didn't ask for them, but I received several responses because to my understanding, our code provides that when a special request is made, so if things are not the way normally presented and staff has to do additional work, then responses are shared with everyone. I received several responses. I actually have them all printed here that could be discussed. And then I believe there's also public records requests that can take place.

Madam City Manager, I have a quick question. Are the city attorney's invoices available on Munis?

They're all available. They can be pulled up on Munis? Yes, Mayor. Did each one of our assistants receive training on Munis for these purposes? Did the Vice Mayor's assistant, legislative analyst, attend that meeting? Part of the meeting, yes, Mayor. The part where we talked about the Munis training? Okay. These invoices can be pulled up by each individual office since how far back?

No one is denying anybody's request. I'm making it a point because it's unfair to sit here and make these comments when the true picture is not painted. They're unreasonable requests when if that's something that's important for you doing your job, you have a legislative analyst who can go in there and do that. But to put that onus on our staff who is providing a service to the community and doing work is really unfair. So that's the truth. And secondly, You say that the mayor's office has four assistants. I do not have four assistants. I have one chief of staff and there's a person who does t

I do. I have a few comments from the discussion just that arise in the situation. So just to clarify for our residents, public record requests are answered based on the public records that exist. If a format needs to be created, then public records are going to take longer to create. So it's not that this record already automatically exists. The data is there, but you're asking for it to be formatted in a specific way. Our staff is not here to, at a whim, provide that information without moving around the work that they have to do. So it's going to take a little bit of time. It's not that the

Thank you. All right. Any questions on items from the budget, things you want to add, delete, recommendations? If I may? Yes, Councilwoman Cabrera.

All right. Anything else? Yes. Councillor Empinero.

Thank you mayor. I just want to make a couple of comments. Starting with comments about why the budget has increased in the past years. This is the seventh time that I sit through a budget discussion as part of the City of Doral. Four as a staff, three as a council member. And the first thing that I want to say to Mr. Casa Mayor and your team, Sol, great job. I mean, you guys keep exceeding the rendevara very high. So congratulations. Thank you for your time, dedication. And as it has been mentioned, you know, these require a lot of time and hours to put these together. So I did my homework an

39 in 21, 2022. Now 49. We need more people out there. We need more people taking care of our streets. More people making sure that everything is clean, nice, and neat. And it is right now. And it has been for years. They do a great job. They need more people in there. So it is normal that when it's like me saying, what was the population in 2021? What's the population in 2025? Same thing. So to make those comparisons and try to project and say it out there that we're just increasing the budget and spending the money that way, whatever we want, is very responsible because you have to look at t

So the fact that we're being able to offer $700,000 to increase community programming for seniors and special needs, we should be proud of that. Let me keep going on. The fact that we're expanding more cultural programming, something that we have never done in the city, $326,000 towards cultural events and programming. No other city in Miami-Dade County can say that. You're talking about a million dollar just between seniors' special needs and art and culture. no cost to the residents when it comes to park improvements 2.4 plus 2.5 million dollars in park improvement when you add that up is ab

I'm sorry, yes. Draw seats. Since you're talking about a competition, maybe you want to make it like a first place, second place, and third place. And that would be amicable in increasing that budget to, to make it more attractive and more competitive if we have at least first place, second place and third place. And also I would like to suggest that instead of business operating for the last six months to make it a 12 months or a year lease.

Also looking for private funding to be able to increase that amount.

That will be great. And other than that, I think that those are two programs will certainly make a relief. I'm glad that you're moving forward the emergency hardship grant. something that i by the way didn't happen when during the covet i know you try the rest of the council didn't approve funding uh approved funding uh helping businesses back then so i'm glad that we're creating this and when it comes to the seniors you know i'm all on board when it comes to the seniors so the 200 grand is more than than 50 a year uh that has been proposed. So those are my comments.

Thank you, Councilman. So I'm going to do a couple of things very quickly. I have comments to answer some of his questions. Well, I would like to do my presentation.

So first, a couple of things. All of our city directors are here and present. And so I'm going to go ahead and ask for some of my questioning and have them come up and and answer if finance feels that they are not prepared to answer it directly. I also want to make a comment that that is exactly what strategic planning was. Every department presented, correct? And I'm sorry you couldn't join us, Councilwoman Cabral. I sent my excuse. Yeah, so you weren't there for that, but we spent an entire day of listening to each department director come up and tell us what they need. And their vision for

I think it helps when you open up the book and follow along. Yeah, I'm doing that. Yeah, some of us are not.

So that's the large significant increase from previous years. Obviously, also the increases of COLA over the years make up for some of the increases that we've seen year over year in public affairs. Is there any other significant costs in public affairs? Have any more positions been added this year in public affairs? Okay. And is there any other significant changes?

I believe last year there was, and maybe Maggie can come and help with this, but do believe last year there was one position created or two positions created in public affairs? Okay, the year before that, which was the marketing? And the sponsorship coordinator's position is to what's the what is the why? What is the reason?

Perfect. Okay. And Maggie, I'm sorry. So this year, is there any additional increase? I know that one of our strategic goals is communication. It's one of our biggest ones because one of the complaints we get is that people don't know They don't hear about events, they find out later. So we strive to continue to improve on that. And one of our strategic goals was to enhance communication. Can you give me a couple of examples of what we're doing to enhance that communication and new implementations that are budgeted for this year that could affect the budget?

Yes. And also, I believe that we added, and it wasn't this year, but we also are doing more. We started doing mail again. homes, the draw.

Okay. And anything else significantly that you feel has been increased or has a significant change or that we are pushing for? I think we also, I asked you about ads. We're going to start doing ads to push City events and so people get more information.

Okay, so that's what's reflected in your budget. Anybody have any questions on that? Maggie's up here. Yes, I think Sol has a.

Okay. Great. Thank you, Maggie. All right. Another department that I believe was discussed, and I want to point out that in this budget, Again, I'm going to say it again. Our operating is 98 million. Plus there's also 3 million that is capital outlay within each department, which is like computers and things like that. And then there's our OPEC fund, which is 400,000. And then the rest, the additional 15 million is capital improvements, like, you know, which was outlined in the presentation. the police building, the garage we're looking to build, the retail to generate revenue. So I think we n

I'm sorry, 140 new employees in parks? Around Central Park. Oh, wow. That's right. It's open now.

I will tell you when I sat with the administration, I raised a flag on how many positions were being added. However, I heard our directors when they said, and I complained about it a bit, you know, that I felt it took a really long time to onboard people and get employees, you know, in the process. And so I heard the rest of our directors saying, you want us to provide service, we need to have the capacity. And so I think that, and I asked at my meeting, and I was told that since 2022 personnel in police and parks has increased 27%, that's significant. And obviously your department is the one

You're welcome. All right, another area that was significantly increased, according to the mention, is information technology. And to my understanding, in this budget, two positions are being added to information technology, IT. Hi, Gladys. Happy birthday today, by the way. Thank you. It was put incorrectly in my thing, so we're going to sing to you later. Thank you. Okay, so you do have an increase in, you have two positions that are being requested here. Can you tell me those two positions? What's your why? Why are you asking for these two positions?

Okay, so your department was also impacted by the opening of Doral Central Park, and it's reflected here. Any other significant changes, programs, or that you have planned for implementation this year?

All right. Thank you. Okay. Okay. General government. Now if we want to cover a little bit of general government, I think the biggest change in general government or increase in general government and if you compare from the year that was compared earlier of 2022-23 to this year's proposed I think the biggest increases there have been insurance, right? Sol, Fernando.

I have a comment on this. Yes, go ahead. Thank you. So in the earlier more abridged presentation, there was a circle that had the difference between what the liability is increase now between, hold on, I think it was, I just have so many notes here. Anyways, it was like 2 million or so, right? And that encompassed three areas of liability, which was our park, I think it was our cars.

And if we roll back our millage rate, what is our loss projected?

So it sounds like we would be at a negative if we do a rollback amount. I'm just doing some math here.

Okay. We'd have to cut because you have to have a balance. So you would have to find, so what we need is, if that's the case, we need to find where to cut. So we're going through that now.

So we'll move on to police, because I think this is one of the most impactful changes. I'm looking at the 2022-2023 fiscal year. It was actual, which means what it closed at was $29,407,000. To my understanding, in that year, there was, in an effort to reduce and roll back the rate at that time, an election year, There was 20 positions frozen, I believe, in police. Yes, I'm seeing nodding heads. Somebody come up and confirm this, please. Thanks.

And I believe that there was a question about vacancies asked. I did not print that out. information, but I believe there was vacancies, but it's really trainees that we have in, they're not really vacancies because we expect our 17 trainees to fill those positions. Right. We hold the position and when they graduate, they fill those positions.

And again, that's why you see that the actual may be different than the adopted because some of those positions are funded, may not actually be expended. This year, I know we're adding the police parks unit. So we're adding positions there that requires vehicles. And when you add these positions, it's not just the body and the officer, unless you want to put them on a scooter or a bike in that case. So you have to have all the equipment and everything that goes with it. I don't know if the chief wants to come and address this or anybody else, but is there any other significant changes in your

Okay. All right. And then the capital improvement, which is for the building that we're looking at building, because obviously you need to vacate the public works. Public works has grown. They need their facility back for vehicles and everything. So we're looking at building this. police building, which was part of our strategic plan, and the land that we have from the state, that capital is not reflected here, but there is a large capital improvement that we are looking at putting in. Is it reflected here? No, right?

Here's the thing that is hard to explain with that. The capital improvement is still funded from general fund. So I questioned this when I saw it in our budget, because I said the 15 million looks duplicated in our budget when you look at the full 174. And the reason for that is because for accounting purposes, to pull the 15 million out of general fund and transfer it into the CIP fund. You have to show it twice, but it's actually, and so I asked, so I said, could we general hypothetically fund capital improvement projects from general fund? Your answer. So it was.

And so better practices would, And that's why we have triple bond rating and our audits. It all goes back to those things. That is a policy decision to take that fund, transfer it out, put it into CIP and earmark it so that it's basically, they're identified, separated funds from our general fund. Correct. But that has to show that debit out and in. And that's why you see it twice, basically reflected in there.

Okay. I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you, chief. Anything else you want to add about your budget or a need here for us to make a better decision?

Thank you. I also want to just point out, I'm going to hand it to you right now. I also just want to point out, we were made aware of this also during their presentation, is that FRS is up to 30 what percent now? 35.19%. 35.19%.

Correct. So 35... No, we know, we know, but it affects the budget. So we have to account for that. And we're currently in negotiations for the collective bargaining. Madam City Manager, you had a comment.

Okay. Thank you. All right. I'm going to move on to code compliance very quickly. We're running on time. So I believe in code compliance, significant change this year is the additional position you're asking, which if you could please, Edgar, tell us a little bit about that position because I asked. And I really grilled administration this year about positions being added in certain places, but this one seems very justified.

Okay, perfect. Is there any other significant, and I'm looking at the budget for your office right now, and really the bulk of your budget is personnel, which is what your department is. They're out on the road enforcing our code and making sure the city stays compliant.

Okay. All right. Anything else you would like to add? Thank you very much. All right. I'm going to go into Parks and Recreation. I'm going to skip Public Works because I think that one's pretty self-explanatory. I believe there's one position being added there. Which two? Two positions? You want to address those real quick too? I think that's the only significant change there because most of those capital funds are from transportation and stormwater.

Okay. So the department will kind of be divided into two areas, infrastructure and construction, and the other one more transportation, mobility, and All right. And then parks and recreation, I think, is the other big change. Obviously, the large increase here is that we now have Central Park 100% operational.

And therefore there is a lot of operational costs. I think we saw in the presentation that it could be up to $9 million that really impacts Central Park and that's encompassing all different departments that support Central Park. Is there any other major changes? And I know obviously we're doing a lot of capital improvements in parks as well too, not just the parking garage we're looking at in Central Park and retail to generate revenue, but also we're replacing the playgrounds in two of the parks. So, can you just highlight a little bit of the major changes and improvements that we have to pa

So I know that there are a couple of positions being requested in this department as well. And I did have the discussion with the administration, I did have a concern with the park ranger because we are investing into the police parks unit. I felt that it was duplicative to invest into another park ranger. I shared my comments with the administration and I'd like to see a reevaluation of what we're actually using those positions for to make sure they're supporting the needs of the service in the park and the maintenance. What we did What I noticed, and I made many complaints about this, was th

Okay. All right. Perfect. Any other comments that you want to point out on your budget?

Okay, perfect. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Aaron. All right. Those are really the bulk of the departments and the services that are provided. And I think the reflection of the changes, while we have to say that they are increases, they're really the cost of operating in the city. Obviously, just like everything else, there is a cost of operation and it does increase in everything. As you saw, services, programming, they all reflect an increase. I think that this was a very thoughtfully prepared budget understanding the situation we're in, also meeting the needs of the community and the grow

Perfect. I think we have consensus to add to that. Is there any other requests to be added to the budget at this time or to be reduced?

to administration, to our city manager, deputy city manager, assistant city manager. In my meeting, all my suggestions were discussed. So I felt that it was a very fruitful meeting when I would meet with you. And I want to thank our mayor for her leadership. I don't know if everyone in the public knows, but her trade is accounting. So she really did an excellent job breaking this down so we can understand a lot of what goes into making a budget. And to our staff, I know this wasn't like the rapid fire that the chief does with his officers. That's a little fun. You guys really killed it. I mean

Thank you. Any other comments? All right. If there are no additional comments, then I think everybody has their direction. Madam Clerk, we need an adjournment. Motion to adjourn the... Yes, motion to adjourn our budget workshop. We have an in the shade session that we're a little bit behind for so on paper side. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you. We'll see you back here at six o'clock.