City Commission - workshop

All right, let's call this meeting to order. Jeremy, would you mind doing the pledge for us?

Please stand and face the flag. 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.

Joshua Jackson, would you mind doing the invocation?

I'd be delighted. Let's pray. Lord Almighty, thank you for the people that are here for everything that they do to make this city possible. the residents, the commission, the city staff and the chance to do life together. This is incredible. I am truly delighted to be here. I pray that the time we spend tonight going through the expertize, the insight that has been brought together by the city staff, their wisdom, their experience, that we would be wise in how we take it and how we consider it in the decisions we make, that this would be a opportunity to improve Cocoa Beach, to improve the liv

I'm so thankful for our commission and our staff, how well we get along. how respectful we are to one another, and thank you for everybody out there too that comes, and I thank you for your dedication and your respect as well. I'm gonna take a public comment right now. This is from Kathy Dillon, if you wouldn't mind. And we don't really have a public comment section, but I want to hear what you have to say. And when it comes to the budget, if you want to say something, please raise your hand, and I want to hear what you have to say. Go ahead, Kathy. Hi. I am Kathy Dillon, and this is Diane Wil

Is there any other public comments? Yeah. Go ahead, Janice.

I love that I can actually call on you by name and actually I don't have to look at a paper. I think that's what's so awesome about a small community like this. I don't know if you want to rebuttal to any of that, Hannah, but this is something that obviously we've kind of looked into in the past a little bit as well, but It's not an easy task. Any other public comment? All right. Let's get into it. New business. Considerations for fiscal year 2027 budget. Staff Representative Hannah Juman, Finance Director Wes Mullins, City Manager.

Can I ask a question on that real quick? Of course. The funds, charges for services, So 2024, we had like a huge, huge charge, 1.8 million. And then the 2026 is about half of that. Why is there a difference there?

So basically, you're going to have in mind all year that we've got to try to fund this stuff for 2028. So that'll give you a lot of time to think about solutions for that as well, I suppose? Or planning for the future?

So is it possible we can try to get Jason to get into the paving program, like try to get us funds for that as well this year?

So a question on the paving. I know that's a critical thing. There's a couple ways I think when Hannah and I were talking about it. We're going to debt finance it. There's a comprehensive plan in place of how we do the roads, whether it's each year or we do it all in one year. And we talked about potentially putting in a provision for debt financing. It would have no impact on reserves. Does it make sense to do it now up front or just doing a budget amendment mid-year if we decide that it makes sense to do a portion of that project in 28 and just debt finance it?

My concern is if it comes back and says, hey, let's do it all in one year, do we have a lever we can pull to make adjustment?

It sounds like it's not finance-constrained, though. It's assessment-constrained. So even if we had the money, we wouldn't be able to pull the trade. Is that what I'm hearing? We want to do this comprehensive plan. That was kind of where I was going. Does it make sense to put a provision in 2027 so if it comes back and says, hey, let's do partial paving, Because I agree there's going to be a $4 million ramp up. If it's debt financed, it's going to just be the couple hundred thousand.

So if we want to do that comprehensive plan for paving and the financing piece of it, it doesn't sound like we can. Are you suggesting that we finance? Of course.

If that entire $4 million pushes to 28, is that at risk? Like if we just accomplished the design in 27, can we still get the full $4 million in 28? Or we have to spend some of that in 28?

OK. And City Manager, we're comfortable we can resource that, because that's a hard stop, right? So now we've got to have the design completed, out for bid by the end of 27. Yeah. And awarded. I just want to make sure that it's low risk.

The Sunset Bridge Repairs, isn't that an FDOT road?

Does it make sense to put a construction cost estimate of some sort in out years for the rec center? And there's $200,000 for design. I don't want to just shelve that if we're going to go forward with that. It's not critical, but let's get it on the roadmap is my suggestion.

majority of them did they get jobs working for the county the comm center folks had that opportunity yes yes they had that opportunity all right and we didn't we didn't fire anybody they just either left and we didn't fill the positions there were a couple positions that were no longer needed that had people in them yeah okay all right thank you guys you guys uh hannah um the whole your whole staff everybody um wes you you've done something here that i think shows the commission and the residents that We gave you the liberty to go with the higher number, and you guys have come back with a roll

I agree. Mr. Mayor, what you guys are doing is remarkable. And I think we did. We put in the top level at the 6.1499. And to have you guys come back and confidently present what you're presenting is impressive. I think KP's right. We're looking ahead at tough times. You hand a voting base money back and hearing different numbers on what's going to end up in November, but suspect that next year is going to be tough. And I think, Commissioner Tumulti, you're right. It's not going to get easier. So thank you guys for being thoughtful. This was a tough year anyway. We came into it in a tough spot

After September, we could baseline this with $0 in 27 and then at any time.

One comment on the Commissioner Tolte. I agree. I'm not trying to just cut services, but to level set, one mill is like $3.2 million. So one total mill. So we've got to be careful. Unfortunately, we have to make tough decisions in terms of priority, right? We can't millage our way into funding all these projects, because it would be raising two, three, four points. Does that make sense? I mean, it's a thing of we literally need to prioritize these.

Thank you. Janice, you raise your hand if you want to come up. Yeah, come on up. Step on up.

Thank you, Jess. All right, if we've got no other public comments, I'm going to close up shop here. We're adjourned.