City Commission - workshop

Daniela. All right.

Good evening, everyone. We're going to start in a few minutes. We're just waiting for everyone to get in place, and then we'll begin our budget workshop. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, guys, we're going to get started with our roll call and then Pledge of Allegiance by the time we get to presentations. I'm sure everyone will be in place. So thank you, everyone, for joining us tonight for our workshop. And the time is now 6.04, and we're going to just do our roll call, Pledge of Allegiance, and then I'm sure everyone will be in place by that time, right? Okay, Madam Clerk.

Commissioner Chernoff. Here. Commissioner Jean. Here. Commissioner Smith. Present. Commissioner Smuckler.

Present.

Commissioner Hsu.

Here. Vice Mayor Florimon.

Here.

Mayor Joseph. Thank you.

All right, now our Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands,

Thank you. Through the Vice Mayor, which book will we be using, the larger one or the smaller one for tonight? Okay, thank you very much.

I need a copy of the smaller book.

Mr. Vice Mayor, do you want to let the deputy go ahead and get started?

The manager is coming through.

There he is.

My apologies, Commission, we was with the city attorney trying to put the final touches on the agenda. Could I have the first slide, please? Okay, so this is our first budget workshop, and I think this is a very important budget workshop, and I think this is a pivotal moment in the financial history of the city of North Miami Beach. I'm gonna do everything I can to make this as engaging and exciting as I possibly can, even though I know that budget workshops are not normally known for their liveliness. That having been said, I'll take the second slide. So you can't teach your own dog new tricks. All right, this first slide is the budget overview. So there are four things that I want to bring to the attention of the commission. We have two internal adverse issues and we have two external adverse issues. Internal issues are things that we caused or we created that we have to fix. External issues are things outside of the city that just happened that we have no control over. First, the current budget that we're in, fiscal year 25-26, operates at a $12 million deficit. That's very, very important because even without any external issues or any other problems or challenges, that is something that this administration had to create and had to work out of. The next thing is our administration of the ARPA funds. We received $21 million in ARPA funds, and a significant amount of that was not appropriately allocated by the law, and the US Treasury is demanding return of those funds. Those are internal issues, but we have two significant external issues that the city fought very, very hard to try to mitigate. One is House Bill 1451, which is utility out of area surcharge. This bill, as we all know, eliminates our ability to collect surcharges on our water customers that reside outside of the city. That revenue stream is approximately nine to $10 million, and we have to account for that impact. Next, we have the property tax ballot proposal that is on the bill this November. If it passes and hits that 60% rate, we're looking at a $2.3 million loss the first year and approximately a $3.4 million or so million loss the next year. So those are our four issues that we had to work through. Our $12 million deficit, the $5 million in ARPA funds, the $9 to $10 million loss from our surcharge elimination, and the potential $2 million, subsequently $3 million loss if this property tax ballot is approved. All right, next. See, I learned.

Through the vice mayor, can I ask a question?

Yes, ma'am.

On the ARPA funds, 21 million. Yes. Did we lose some of your, you're counting that in our deficit mindset. So is there some money there that we should say we were a lot of, okay, 21 million, however, we only got an 18 million and we're...

We're handling it like litigation. So we're doing everything we can so that we do not have to pay that money back. But in case we lose, we need to have that money readily available.

The whole 21 million?

No, it's just approximately 5 million. And there is approximately 5.

I'm just seeing how high the number is for the total debt.

Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Any other questions? Yes.

Through the vice mayor. How much did you say was the potential loss if the property tax bill passes?

Approximately $2 million the first year and $3 million the second year.

Oh, I put 2.3 and 4.3. Yes.

I have the exact numbers on a later slide. Yes, Commissioner.

Thank you so much. I know, you know, this is the second time a city manager starts a bad news. So I guess we could, I'm not sure if this is within the presentation, but can you backtrack with the 12 million? How did we get to that particular deficit? I'm not sure if that's something that you want to address in the second budget hearing or if it's in here, but also one of the questions that I usually start with is what is the carryover from this fiscal year into the next, if you can give us that number.

Yes, I will go through that, but since you brought that to the forefront, I want to tell you it's actually worse than $12 billion. because no vendor collects 100% of your bill, right? So when you're doing accounting, you usually put 95%. What you'll find is our previous CFO directed the finance department to, on the books, project that we were gonna collect 100% of our tax receipts, which, as you know, never happens. So that $12 million is actually approximately about $14 million loss, and we will walk you through that. Okay, and the carryover? We will walk you through that when we get to that slide. Okay, perfect. Yep, we can have an extensive conversation about it. And it's not that I want to start with bad news. I'm confident that this city will prevail. This is one, we have a finance department now, we have a budget administration, and we have been working tirelessly to make sure that this city will not only survive, but thrive. And I think that you'll be very excited about the numbers that we're gonna present to you tonight. Okay? Okay. So I'm gonna go back to slide number three, and perhaps this is some of the good news or tell you how we've done it. Our optimization efforts have been, it's five bullet points, but we've condensed them down to four, strategic workforce optimization. So since February, what we've been getting to do is looking at job positions that have duplicity, job positions that are six figures and higher, job positions that do not impact productivity or service that we provide to our residents. And we analyze those positions with administration and with our HR department to say, hey, is this a position that we can combine with another position that we can transfer to another department, or is this a position that we need to eliminate? And through that process, as we've combined several positions, we've transferred several employees, and some employees have taken up positions that have additional job responsibilities, so we've given them pay increases, but we've also eliminated 15 executive positions. And out of that 15 executive positions, the city will save $3.4 million annually. So that's step one. Step two is fleet rationalization. So as I've said many times in our commission meetings, we have one car for every two employees here in the city of North Montgomery Beach. That's a ridiculous number of vehicles for any city to maintain, particularly a city that's facing the financial challenges that we are. So one thing that we're looking at is where can we purchase vehicles and not have a monthly lease payment, and where can we eliminate vehicles? That's step two. That's an ongoing process. This budget reflects some of that, but we've just begun to do that, and there will be more savings to come. Step three is revenue generation. So we have to be creative about how we move forward knowing that our tax base is limited, our tax base is threatened, right? So one of the things that we're looking at is what are our revenue streams outside of tax dollars from several different departments that go to our general fund and also our enterprise funds like our water fund. That is a significant opportunity for us that could bring in additional six to $10 million annually and one of the things that we're working on. And then four is event management and fiscal stewardship. So we have looked at in compliance with the new state law, the DEI law, what events we can move forward and what events that we must eliminate. And we've, I believe we've saved $250,000 or $300,000 by implementing that law. Okay.

Great.

Slide four.

Through Vice Mayor. Yes. Can you repeat the third one, the revenue generation again, please?

Yes. Revenue generation is the city looking at or the administration looking at other opportunities to bring in money to the city outside of just collecting taxes, which is a traditional business model for cities. We have to get creative. We have to look at our enterprise funds. We like to look at our opportunity for water. with the amount of water that we have the capacity to generate, if we can sell that water to other cities, we could bring an additional $6 to $10 million, and that's something that we're looking to do. Slide four, city manager budget guidance to department heads. These are the directions that, and we have a department head meeting every two weeks where every leader in the city comes to the city manager's conference room and we have discussions about how are we going to move the city forward. In that direction, my very first meeting, I requested budget reductions from every single department. You'll see the fruition of those efforts. We had significant reductions with public works. We have significant reductions with public utilities. And while increasing the number of police officers that we have in the police department, we actually still were able to realize a $1.1 million in savings. Yes. Yes. Didn't want to take your thunder there, Chief, but kind of had to. Next, maintain service levels. So the most important thing is what does the cities do? We take tax dollars to provide services to our residents. So the most important thing there is to make sure that although we've cutting some positions, although we're combining some positions, although we're eliminating some of our heft, that the residents don't feel it. The residents don't see it. They still get the same amount and same level of service. And so that's why we didn't do the pink slip route, right? So traditionally CEOs, as you know, will, in situations like this, identify a group of positions to say, hey, these are all the positions, 100 positions or so we're going to eliminate. And on Friday, everybody in that category gets a pink slip. And if you survive, we'll see you on Monday. We have not executed it that way. We have been very strategic. We've been very methodical of looking at every single position. And to date, we've only eliminated 15 positions. But we were so careful about how we did that, we were able to realize $3 million in savings just from 15 positions being eliminated. So we're going to continue that path as it's been successful for us. Three, evaluate and analyze staffing needs to consider vacancies. Any vacancy that's been open for over a year, which is a general administrative policy, has been eliminated. Duplicative duties, we've talked about that already. Expanding service through efficiencies. Four, vehicle accountability. We're still in the process of doing that, as again, you're gonna see some of the savings in this budget from that, but we're just started initiating that point. So in progress, we have review and update, standard operating procedures, and executive performance evaluations. So we have contracted with a vendor that is producing, meeting with every department head and producing updated phenomenal, I just saw the first three departments, Standard operating procedures. Why am I excited about that? Why is it important? We have to have a foundation for the department heads and the administration to move forward, and that's not there. Our building licensing and permitting department standard operating procedure was last updated in 2003. Our finance department standard operating procedure was last updated in 2012. Building Licensing and Permitting, 2003. So in order for us to make, as an administration, as the leaders of this city to make demands of these department heads, we've got to have policies and processes in place where we all understand what's supposed to be happening there. So we can't hold them accountable if there's not an understanding of what should be happening. So we're very excited to get that underway. Next, a very, very important thing is to execute performance evaluations. I'm unfortunate to report that this year will be the first year in a very long number of years where every single employee of the City of North Miami Beach will get a performance evaluation. So what has happened traditionally is that when someone, a leader, a supervisor, a manager wants to get rid of someone, they give them a bad performance evaluation. Or if they want to promote someone and they want to have that documented, they'll give them a good performance evaluation, but that's not how performance evaluation is supposed to work. Performance evaluation should never be to terminate anybody. It should be, this is the standard of your job, and this is where you are. And if it's below, there should be a plan to help you get to where you're supposed to be. And if it's above, it should help you be able to achieve opportunities for merit increases. That's the purpose of performance evaluations. Identify your hard workers, identify your great workers, and help those that are underperforming. And when you just do them randomly, the way the city has been doing them, you lose the value. Where merit increases are becoming standard. Where am I getting my increase? It's a merit increase. So there should be some demonstration as to why you're getting a 1%, 2%, 3% that is documented. Documented to say this was the standard and this is where you were. And this is why this supervisor, this superintendent, this manager is recommending you for a 3% increase. Any questions? Yes.

Through the Vice Mayor, if I may. Thank you. Did your budget include review of the current contracts to see if the current contracts are where we want them to be? And if not, from vendors that we use? If not, when do they expire so that we can Does your budget have a page in about that, or does it include that?

That is actually an ongoing day-to-day procurement function. So we absolutely will be engaging with that function through our procurement division, yes.

I think that's important because we have heard that we have a vendor that's close to $50,000 when there was a vendor that was doing it for less than half. So we want to make sure whatever we're doing with those contracts, that could be a great revenue-saving technique.

Yes, ma'am.

Or it could be we better look for more money because the next contract will be much higher and we better be prepared.

Understood. Yes, ma'am. Absolutely. Great. Slide five, tonight's workshop provides insight as to where we are in the budget preparation process. So this will be general fund discussion. We're gonna have a few of the directors come up and do some presentations, and then we're gonna do the rest of the city on the next workshop. Departments included tonight are mainly in general fund. Next workshop will address all other funds and remaining general funds departments. Slide six. Commissioner Jean, you wanted to have a discussion about the fiscal 25-26 numbers, and here they are. Our recurring revenues came in at 75 million, for this year that we're in now, 75,773,072 cents. Whereas our recurring expenditures, those are the budget expenditures that we know that we have taken on for this year, come in at 87,986,000. That comes to a deficit of $12,213,739. And again, I want to take you, have you have a look at that number, $75 million. $75 million is a budget projection assuming that every homeowner, that every taxpayer paid their bill. on time, that's 100% collection, which generally for an accounting purposes never happens, so we usually budget it at a 95%. So as we go down, the appropriate fund balance of 12. Excuse me, Mr. Manager. Yes, sir.

The county sells tax certificates at when somebody doesn't pay their taxes.

Yes.

So we always get the money, don't we?

Eventually. But are we going to get it in this fiscal year?

They have two years not to pay. So if we don't get it for this year when he's counting it in the budget, it's going to affect this budget.

Yes. This assumes we get 100% collections in this year.

And what's the usual? If this is 100%... The standard would be how much?

Ninety-five percent.

So what's the number for the five percent? Well, let me just figure it out. It's 7,000. Okay, so it's about 3,700. So another. Yeah. Yeah.

So the next bullet point, bullet point number two, is the one that's really important. Funding ongoing operations with fund balance at this rate is unsustainable. So how can I say that in layman's terms for our residents as well? That means that at the beginning of fiscal year, September, excuse me, October 1st, 2025, we had $18 million in our reserve funds. come October 31st of this year, we'll have $5 million in our reserve fund. So if we were to adopt this exact same budget For the next upcoming year, which is common practice to do, so when you have a strong budget, we would be moving forward with a negative $7 million, not sustainable. So it was incumbent upon this administration to not only cover the $12 million deficit, but find a path forward for the $5 million in opera funds, find a path forward for the $9 to $10 million, in the surcharge revenue loss and find a path forward for the potential loss in homestead exemption taxes.

So let me just understand it through the Vice Mayor. This $12 million doesn't include all that?

Say again?

This $12 million deficit that's a possibility doesn't include that $9 million that?

No, ma'am. House Bill 1451 had not passed.

No, but the $9 million.

House Bill 1451 had not passed last year when you adopted this budget. So there was no way for that to be accounted for. Okay.

So we're in greater deficit than it says.

Well, good news is on the way.

Through Vice Mayor. Commissioner Smith, are you talking about the settlement that we had with Miami Gardens or no? Is that what you're talking about? Yes, I'm talking about the fact that... Not the 1451, but the settlement. He's talking about the settlement.

Oh, the $9 million.

Right.

Oh, so the $9 million was a bond. So we do cover our bond payment in that negative $12 million, yes.

Okay, well that... Even a bond is still a debt, but at least we're not looking at 20-something million. I'm just saying.

And when do those payments...

Commissioner, if I can try and respond to Commissioner Smith. Don't confuse the nine million, which was a lawsuit handled for the city by Mr. Shubin that was settled that had to do with previous issues as far as a previous iteration when the city had outsourced.

No, I know I'm just.

That's the 9 million bond. I know. So subsequent is what just passed in the last session which will restrict our ability going forward in the next fiscal year.

I understand both things because we might even get some of that 9 million back if they did not collect the money.

We believe some of it is going to come back. I've got a slide that's going to come back. Yes.

Okay, good. But no, what I was saying is I'm looking at the revenue now coming in. That was my question. What's the revenue? And I'm already depleting the number by 5% of property tax. So... And I want to see what else I have to do to make the number, the true number that's coming in.

Yes.

Okay, I've got it.

Okay. All right, next slide. So I have a slide for, remember we have two internal challenges, which is our current deficit, which we've just talked about, and our ARPA funds. And we have two external challenges, which is legislation. House Bill 1451 and the proposed property tax exemption. We do have a slide on each one of those that kind of breaks it down and walks the Commission through that process. So we'll start with ARPA. You can read each line of the slide, but basically what it says here is that we received $21.6 million for specific permissible uses. That's important. ARPA funds are distributed by federal law through the U.S. Treasury that are for specific permissible uses. Now, if it is determined that the monies were not utilized permissibly, and that means allocated in an appropriate time and in an appropriate manner, the US Treasury can demand that they be returned. Now, after his budget analysis, the former CFO determined that $3 million, based on what he was able to see, was not appropriately allocated. by our opera administrator at the time, our former interim assistant city manager. Now, he did report those findings to the Treasury, and the city attorney and I then received an email from the U.S. Treasury demanding the immediate return of those funds. And of course, I had to let them know as the current city manager, I ain't got it. So we didn't have those monies to return to them. However, what we did do is engage ARPA consultants under the leadership of our assistant city manager, Andrew Plotkin, to determine how can we find a way forward. with a team of the finance department and several department heads, what we decided is there is a permissible use to allocate monies towards salaries. So we resubmitted our ARPA documentation to say that we utilize those funds for a permissible use of salaries. Now, there is also another finding that we have to be authentic about. While the previous CFO determined that the inappropriate allocation of opera funds was $3 million, after we did our forensic analysis, we determined that that number is actually 4.8 million. So we are looking to have the U.S. Treasury approve the utilization of $4.8 million towards salaries to forego having to return those monies. If that doesn't work, I'll turn it over to the city attorney for litigation so we can find that money.

Would that go towards the $12 million deficit?

No, the $12 million is this year. No, it's the other year. Yeah, the year that we're in now. This is for the next year. Now, our next challenge is an external challenge. And the city fought long and hard against, for several years, we prevailed the last year, but then came up short this year with preventing Florida House Bill 1451. And what 1451 does is it says any water customer that lives outside of the city of North Miami Beach, we can no longer hit them with the surcharge. Surcharge conversation has been something going on for over a decade. Cities say they charge them because it costs us, it costs me, it costs the city manager, it costs the city additional funds for me to send employees outside of the city to maintain our water infrastructure. So I should be able to recoup those costs. However, some cities have pushed back legally on that premise saying, well, then why are you putting it in the general fund? Why are you collecting it this way? How come you're not showing those against expenses for your water infrastructure? And so it's been a bit of a legal quagmire. But we believe that we may have a solution that we would like to explore for House Bill 1451. The language of the law actually says in that last bullet point, House Bill 1451 permits up to a 25% rate differential for out-of-area utility customers. So we are seeking some clarification on that. We'll look to work with our city attorney, our legal counsel, to determine definition of rate differential. So... whether we call it a water surcharge or a rate differential, I am looking to continue to collect those funds from the City of Miami governments and others.

Sorry, through the vice mayor, if I may. So I received a phone call about two weeks ago that there was some PFAS money waiting for us and no one was answering emails, $3 million. Actually, the legal department is what I was told. Are we getting the $3 million and where does that go into the budget?

Yes. When I was notified, I believe that those they were reaching out to the city attorney. The appropriate city attorneys have signed off on those before, but I believe the appropriate execution in the city manager's office. I immediately executed the documents and we were wired to $3 million and it goes to our water and sewer fund.

Okay.

Yes.

Okay.

Through vice mayor. I was going, I think I issued a resolution back when we got, it's part of 17 million. I think the big bulk of it, I put it in the reserves for the water department, for the water fund, put it in their reserves. So I believe that the other three should also go to the reserves for water. I'm just making.

We can effectuate that.

Yeah, could you effectuate?

I have some flexibility in that fund that allows us to be able to do that, absolutely.

Great, thank you.

Yes, ma'am. Okay, moving to the next slide. The property tax ballot proposal. No matter how you come down on this, there are two numbers on this slide. Whatever your opinion is, Commissioner Smith, those exact numbers are. For the fiscal year 28, if passed, we'll be looking at a loss of $2.6 million. And in fiscal year 29, if passed, This bill passes at 60% or greater. We're looking at a loss of $3.9 million. Any questions about that? It's pretty self-explanatory. Well, I think there are some things for the residents to consider. What this property tax use does, and I think it's important for residents to make informed decisions when they're going to the ballot box. Public safety, law enforcement, emergency medical services, fire, which are provided by our county, those funds will be impacted. Education in public schools, those funds will be impacted. Financing, refinancing infrastructure projects, such as putting a cable underground or improving our water and sewer, those funds will be impacted. Financing and refinancing natural resource projects, such as our water utilities. Those funds will be impacted. Employee retirement benefits obligations. Absolutely, those funds will be impacted. Operations and administration of expenses directly related to managing approved local services. That's everything from our library to our parks. Residents need to know those funds will be impacted. All right? Slide 10, property tax ballot proposal, exactly what those numbers look like. I won't belabor the point, it just kind of breaks down of how we got to the $2.64 million for fiscal year 28 and the $3.9 million for fiscal year 29. All right, slide 11, total city budget overview. Now, this is where we get to the fun stuff. We have been very creative, we've been working very hard, and I wanna bring your attention to some numbers. So for the fiscal year adopted, Our total funding is projected at $209,774,731. That is projected to go down by $30 million with a proposal of $180,743,567 for our funding. How have we addressed that? So we're looking at a total deficit of $30 million here. Everyone see that number? $29,031,164. That's the total deficit that we have to address in this budget. And how do we get there? Well, we created magic. We created magic. I called on Dr. Strange. Andy knows the Scarlet Witch. We employed their services, and we have our expenditures here below. So for this current fiscal year, we are spending $244,949.273. That's across all funds, which leaves a total deficit of $35,174,542. So, what our fiscal conservation plan does for this fiscal year 2027 is we have reduced our expenditures, our projected expenditures, to $192,406,005, which leaves us with a total, WHICH LEAVES US WITH A TOTAL OVERAGE OF 23. THIS LAST NUMBER IN THE BOTTOM RIGHT-HAND CORNER, WE'RE GOING FROM A $35 MILLION DEFICIT TO A $23,512,104 SURPLUS. LET ME STEP YOU RIGHT THERE. LET'S WALK THROUGH IT.

So I appreciate all the hard work that you've put into this and your team. Yes. But we've done this before, right? And so the good thing about having that experience is we've seen budgets go from the only word that I can use is placebo crisis to... being balanced and making sure that once we sign off on it, it's where it needs to be, right? So the reason you're in this position is because you should be able to deliver a budget like this to us. So you're doing exactly what this team believed that you can do, right? So that's a good thing. That's a plus. You know, we had the League of Cities conference last week, and there was a conversation about budgets, right? And in listening to the conversation, I remember we had this when our previous city manager... When our previous city manager... was doing his first budget, I think we had some of the same conversation as well, is that... When your departments come to you, they come to you with the wish list, right? Yes, yes. They want the bells and whistles. And you know what? It's because they want to deliver the best possible service to the residents, right? So, you know, that's to be expected. But we go from the bells and whistles and the wish lists to what's really needed. And then once we hit that, bare minimum of what it takes to keep the doors open, then we can start adding on to that, you know, to to maybe get a park or maybe get, you know, a splash pad like we just had the ribbon cutting the other day and things of that sort. So so this budget exercise, you know, is is is one that is is a is a routine exercise. Right. So what I want to know is because you talked about magic. Right. I want you to really go into these numbers. Absolutely. And tell us how do you how do you come up with that twenty three thousand surplus when for the last two months I've been hearing about budget crisis. Right. And so, you know, is it a discovery? You know, is it I will be happy. Are we you see what I'm trying to say? So are we doing what we normally do every year before we get to this number? Number two. You know, I see a huge, when we look at the page 11 capital going from FY26, $54,156,651 to capital going down to $23,114,487, right? That is more than the $23,512 that you're seeing as a surplus. So I want you to address that as well. Absolutely. Because I'm trying to figure out when it comes to capital, Are there certain capital expenditures that are considered recurring? Is that even a possibility, number one? Number two, how much capital did we... that we complete? How many capital projects did we complete that are no longer affecting our budget? And FY27, that's helping you to get to that 23 million surplus as well. So for now, those are the two questions that I have that hopefully you can address.

Okay, so I respectfully, I understand that you feel that you've been through this exercise before, but I want to be clear that these are not placebo challenges that the city's facing. The ARPA challenge is real. House Bill 1451 is real. And those are not situations that you faced before. Those are not challenges that a previous city manager of the city of North My Beach has had to address before. We've walked through those. We've discussed those. We've looked at those numbers. We've had slides dedicated to each four of those challenges. Now, if we look at the expenditures to go line by line, if we start with the first expenditure, which is compensation, current level compensation for this fiscal year is $74,435,927. We're reducing our compensation expenditure to $67,405,892, which saves us $7 million. Next line, operating expenses. We're spending this year $61,229,522. We are reducing our operating expenses by $58,932,543, which saves us $2,296.97, so now our savings are up to $9 million. And yes, to answer your question, there are some capital expenditures. I would not say that they're recurring, but there are budget line items that are recurring. For example, as you can tell, there's a lot of capital expenditures that we're pausing on, correct? um to say hey we're going to do this maybe next year but we're not going to try to get all of these projects done this year but there are certain expenditures line items that you're going to see in a future slide under public works we have to have we have to have 400 000 set aside for sidewalks right we have to have that um so when a sidewalk cracks when a sidewalk needs damage the public works director will have the monies there to go out and send his crew to fix it So I do consider those recurring expenses, even though they're not technically recurring, they're going to be new, that budget line item you should expect to see every single year when you have a budget. Now, some of our other projects that are wish list projects, like we want to put a new roof, over on the public works operating building. That's going to be a significant expenditure that perhaps when we're in a better financial position, we can take on. It's not something that has to happen in the next coming year. That, as you said, when the public works director comes, he says, oh, I need a new roof. These buildings need to be refurbished. We need new furniture, new office furniture. For example, the customer service staff. Apparently they haven't had new furniture in a long time, so they've been promised new furniture, but perhaps that's something that we can look at and pause. So those are the type of capital expenditures where you're going to see that drop. This current year for capital, we're spending $54,156,651. For our next fiscal year, this budget spends $23,114,487. That's a savings of $31,042,164, which brings our total savings with those three line items alone to approximately 40 million. Yes, sir. So out of that 54 million,

How many of those projects were actually completed out of that 54 million that was adopted for FY26? Do we have that number?

I don't have the number for this presentation, but we can certainly get that information for you by the next budget workshop. And we can actually have a slide that we can walk through each project. You get why I'm asking that question?

You understand what I'm saying? Because if it's budgeted at 54, but let's say we completed a good chunk of those, right? And then FY27, we come with a lower number. Well, it would make sense that we have a lower number because we completed quite a bit of the project. So we completed a significant amount of it. So for me, there's the gross conversation and then there's the net conversation.

Yes, I think that if we allowed every request that came from our public works department to move forward, you would see another 54 million. That's your question, right? Because what we didn't do, we didn't replace the roofs on our building. None of the roofs on our building were being replaced. What we didn't do was refurbish Littman Theater. That would be a significant expenditure. So just those two alone, we're probably talking about $20 to $25 million. And so even if we were to add those two line items to this, we'd be back almost up to $54 million. So this was a selection of projects that we're going to pause moving forward on that... If we had the money, absolutely, I would undertake.

And the reason I'm asking is because we have to, I think one of the issues that we've had just over the past number of years is the budget process. We usually, as a commission, jump on the bus as it's moving, right? And usually it's already... 70% of the way there, right? And so, you know, I think it's very important for my colleagues to know, hey, look, this was what was accomplished last year from what we originally budgeted. This is what we're moving over to this year. But these are also the projects that we're saying as an administration that we're going to put a pause on so that if Commissioner Smith walks down You know, you know, whatever street it is. And she's wondering why this didn't happen. Well, this is the priorities that you voted on.

Yes.

Or so, you know what I'm saying?

So when we break down public works expenditures, which has its own department and CIP has its own slides, you'll see those numbers there.

OK, thank you.

Yes, sir.

I have a quick question. Yes. Did you say we did or did not refurbish Littman Theater?

We did not.

Did not.

Did not. Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Any questions on this very, very important slide?

Any additional questions? Now that you said it's very, very important, I feel like I didn't ask enough questions. So I'll open it up also for my colleagues to ask questions on this as well. Yes.

Okay, through the Vice Mayor, if I can. Thank you. So I'm looking at compensation, the executives you changed. I'm looking at operating expenses, what you said about the cars. I'm looking at the capital take a pause. I'm looking at the debt service increasing that we got the additional bond. So as far as contingencies goes, that's money that's there for whoever needs it. And I see that you're trying to reduce that. It might be the best idea ever. And... transferring out but what i want to say is the way the budget has always been very easy on a difficult thing for me to be able to handle for the public because that's what i'm here for is the public What is it that we cannot change? We have $100. 85% of it has to be paid. Yes. We have to pay for the pensions. We have to pay for the insurance, what were obligation, employees, et cetera. And you, as a commission, have 15% left to decide how do you want to use it. And that is the bottom line. Correct. Because the things that cannot be changed cannot be changed. When you project what the loss will be in the future, we don't know what the values of the houses are going to be in the future. So that can change also. Even though it's on the basic beginning of your taxes that you get the compensation, what are your taxes? As I see the prices going up and up and up. So i i like the guidelines of this very it's it's really printed out very explainable but the bottom line is when you get to the page to what we have left those are the important conversations that take time between the commission because everybody has their wants their needs their wish list everybody has that there what are you putting in for my board that i'm handling who's going to handle the next after the election the next important boards that do have a lot of activity so i think that i think this is something we really should be explained but the concentration should go to what do we have left

Yes, absolutely. And that is coming. So we have several workshops planned where we first want to lay out the framework, right? And I can understand the frustration when you have a city manager saying, hey, we have to tighten our buckles here, which limits the flexibility of that 15% or less of what you can do. And that's not the intent. The intent is to create pockets so that the so that the commission has some flexibility, and we want to have that conversation with you about how we're gonna realize these numbers. So we're still gonna have a one-to-one conversation. After we lay this all out for you, we still wanna have a one-to-one conversation about what your priorities are, what you like to see. Do you wanna see more affordable housing? Do you wanna see senior housing? How can we spur that? And I also want to have conversations about how we can be creative to get those priorities completed. Like for example, my previous city, we put forward $800 million in affordable housing projects without a single penny coming from the city. There are ways to get some of your priorities accomplished that gives us flexibility with our budget, right? Same thing with senior housing. Clear demand, developers out there wanna do it. There's wait lists. If we have the land to accomplish those tasks, we should not be undertaking expenditures out of our capital coffers, right? And so we do wanna have those conversations with you.

I think now's a good time to interject something that I've said to you personally, and I think the public needs to hear it. You know, as the vice mayor said, the expectation of the board when they voted you in was for you to clean up the finances. And you are appearing, quite frankly, to do just that. Unfortunately, the public and maybe some of the employees are very disheartened because you're doing what you were elected to do, what you were voted to do. Not elected, what you were voted to do. And I think if we didn't have this, we would have been in a real hole. A real hole. So we're going to have to have an open mind to hear how you're doing it.

Yes.

I don't think there's a lot of different ways with putting the finance, the department head, and the staff together. I don't think the flexibility of there are a lot of ways, but we need to do what we need to do to at least get back to level. We don't have to be up here the first year, but we've got to get back to level before we really go into trouble.

So, Commissioner Smith, to your point. You know, we voted on legislation. Maybe the city attorney could remind me of that legislation where. In the budget, we have to have a certain percentage. Remember that conversation under Mario about the percentage that we have to have a 20% number, right? Do you remember that?

That's for reserves. That's right.

That might have been before I started. No. I don't recall.

We have that legislation. We incorporate it in our budget administration.

Absolutely. So the trajectory that we've been going, like for a number of years, we've been heading in the trajectory of, we need to tighten up, you know what I mean? And we need to reduce, right? So I think that it's something that we're very much open to if we know where we're headed. You see what I'm saying? Yes, I do. Because I don't think the community or anybody would mind if we pause on something so that we can move forward in other areas or that we slow down so we can speed up, right? Correct.

And Commissioner, as to the prior reso and its effect, when you adopted something that you were on a trajectory at that time, when unanticipated things like ARPA or the state legislation that are external, as the manager identified, when those come forward, If that interrupts your trying to reach a particular goal, but you're still continuing in the direction, I would say to you that the 20%, I don't recall the specifics, but that's a goal, but when you have unexpected financial shocks that you are required to address, uh that doesn't mean you stop moving in the direction but it may adjust the timing and specificity so it's not binding in that sense okay but you have a copy mr manager right yes can you reshare that with uh with the absolutely and in fact i'll restate uh the numbers that you're seeing here those were our targets based off of that legislation

And in fact, I reviewed that policy. The budget administrator, Mr. Bob Benetton, reviewed that policy. And our new CFO, Avril Smith, we all reviewed that policy to know that, hey, we've got to hit 20 percent. Now, the challenge is you can have a policy, but if you don't follow it, then you don't get the benefit. So in this current year, we did not set aside 20 percent. and our reserves of $5 million. We're going to be left with $5 million in our reserve come September 30. Obviously, that's not 20%. But we are looking. We did create a budget with a fund balance over $23,512,104 was to hit that 20% target.

Which, Vice Mayor, if you recall, there was a conversation, a lengthy conversation about that last time, but it wasn't done. The performance was we need the money so we can stay in the black and not go in the red. That was the conversation of the follow-up. But now we have somebody that's coming in and changing the expenditures to meet the budget. And that's a big difference. But the public has to be made aware.

Yes, ma'am.

That these things were to reach a goal, a necessity goal.

Thank you.

Commissioner Jean.

Yes. So to that point, the question that I have, in addition to the policy for the reserve amount, I think there was also a policy that as it relates to projects that we wouldn't be able to move money Let's say a project wasn't done, that there would be some sort of rollover. It had to be funded. So that was kind of part of my question about the carryover. So if we have a $12 million deficit from the actual fiscal year, not speaking about the debts and everything else, that means everything was done? You see the logic that I'm going at with that?

I think so.

Meaning? usually they give us a list of all the projects, and if they have multiple years to be completed, 26, 27, 28, a certain allocation is there for every year. So if the project was not done, usually it's carried over to the next year, and those funds, since they were already encumbered within our approval, carry over. So I guess that's where it's kind of cloudy, because if we're not sure what actually was executed, how do you get a deficit? Like, is it overspending? Is it, you see where I'm going?

Yeah, I want to answer. I want to answer. Okay. I want to answer because, but let me make sure I'm clear the concern. I think I can, let me restate the concern and you tell me if I'm on the right path. Is savings being realized by transferring capital improvement projects, incomplete capital improvement projects forward? Is that the question? Yes.

Yes, to some degree. Absolutely. So for example, if we have a $12 billion deficit within a fiscal year, without talking about debts or loss of revenue, where does that stem from? Does that stem from overspending? Does that stem from projects being more expensive than we anticipated? I guess those would be the questions to kind of help us understand how do you have $12 million deficit within a full year outside of lawsuits and everything else that would... Yep.

Can I get the screen back up?

There we go. Excellent.

Okay. Yes, I'm going to move it because I believe we have... Slide on that. All right. I think I'm going to have to, I'll have to jump ahead significantly to get to that. And I think it would make more sense to get there organically. So if I can move forward, we will have that discussion.

I think that's important because that gives us a clearer snapshot of what happened this year. Was it projects? Was it lawsuits? Was it, you know, how did we get to 12 million deficit within this fiscal year when all the projects were not actually encumbered?

You know, that's the question I would... Are you comfortable with the manager responding at that time? Okay. And before you move on, manager, that $20 million loan, can you just go over that again, please? Which portion? $20 million loan in FY26.

$20 million loan? Loan proceeds.

Oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you for... Okay, I just wanted to make sure I was clear on where that was coming from. Okay.

And Mr. Manager, I do want to say one thing. When you talked about all the funds not being received from taxes, I get that. Yes. That if you did your budget with certain expectations, but you didn't reach those, then obviously you're going to be at a deficit But nevertheless, we've had positive carryovers throughout the other years. So since I've been here, we've always had a carryover. So it's either someone doesn't know how to subtract, or I'm not sure what's happening. But for the last six years, there's always been some sort of carryover. So I'm not sure... You know, who didn't pay their taxes this year? How did we get to such a discrepancy? Not discrepancy, but how did we get to such a gap there?

Yes. So we can drill down on this year's expenditures as far as you want, because now we're going from what is adopted by this commission and what is actual. So we can report as a public record every single expenditure and every single project that was complete or incomplete, and we'll be happy to do that for you.

Okay? Mr. Vice Mayor.

Yes, Commissioner Chernow.

The question I have is the building fund. Are we tapping into that somehow or another?

No, we're not. In fact, we just had a conversation with the CFO today about the establishment of the building fund. So that is something that's a priority of hers that she's moving forward on in this budget, yes.

Yeah, because when you started saying the roof on the building across the street that they're in, maybe that...

Yes, so she shared that with, absolutely, but she shared that with me, but what I didn't share with her, that I'll share with the commission and we'll have a conversation with her, is again, being creative. There are projects out there that I would like for us to review called efficiency contracts. that looks at projection of savings by optimization of procurement services and then utilizing those savings to fund building improvements. So there are lots of companies out there that do that. I've had some conversations, the procurement director and I, chief procurement officer and I have had conversations with one vendor. That is an opportunity we're looking at. And that even actually helps us if the CFO has established a building fund There are going to be some future payments that may have to pay before we actually realize those savings. So those two things will work hand in hand.

Can I piggyback on that? What's the amount that the building fund is at right now? Because I know last year there was some confusion with salaries and we actually approved a slew of different items for the building fund, like educational programs. And there was a, because we had a surplus within that division that we had to get rid of per the state. And also there was talks about

Oh, you mean the building fund, the enterprise fund?

The enterprise fund, yes. I know we were trying to shave down from that, and there was a promise for salaries, and then legally that was not supposed to happen, and then there were programs that we were supposed to do. So all those things were, you know, we approved those things last year, but I don't think we saw any of that happen, nor do we have a pulse on where that fund is right now since there's a surplus. I think it was a $16 million? It's $9 million. No, it was, we reduced it. It was higher and then we've been shaving down from that.

So it's currently at 9 million. It's currently at nine million, so you're correct. Some of those things that were approved have not been executed on, and then some of them shouldn't have been executed on, as you identified, such as salaries. Obviously, if we're going to do salary improvements for anyone, what I have directed the building director to do is to move forward with the HR department to complete what is called a pay plan. A pay plan is where we hire a vendor. It's usually for an entire city, but here we're gonna do it for this department because they do have a surplus to analyze salaries and say, hey, this is where the market is and this is where your department is. Once that pay plan is complete, we now have the authority to improve those increases by an exact, precise, scientifically derived number. And we do plan to do that. So, yes.

So I'm going to throw a wish list item that I think Commissioner Smucker has made reference to in the past. When residents come and get a permit and they have to pay an amount, if we have a surplus, we need to develop a fund that can help a resident. Maybe they have a financial hardship and they can get some kind of waiver or voucher. I think that's something we all may want to see.

So that is something that we all want to see, including administration. However, it's not going to be significant enough for us to get the numbers down to where we need them to be, unfortunately, because previous administration utilized those funds to purchase a building. which is not a permissible use. So now we have to take those funds and maintain that building and have it utilized. The city is not in a position to buy it back, so we have to have it utilized for building services. And then I hope that we will have some monies left over once we have legally addressed that matter to do exactly what you're saying, Commissioner Zahn. That's the plan.

Just a random, can it be sold? You said it's only for building purposes.

That would exacerbate the problem because if we sell it, if the building department sells it, the proceeds from that money have to go back into the fund that we're trying to get decreased to a legal level.

Okay.

We sell it for $3 million. Now we have a $12 million problem instead of a $9 million problem.

I got you. I understand. Okay. And another thing I was going to say is I'm looking at the order of the presentation. Yes. And... You know, at least just from from my glance, a lot of the huge departments that I want to do a deep dove in are towards the end of the presentation. So, you know, I don't know if my colleagues want to chime in on this. I'd like to see like the library a little bit sooner. I'd like to see our. Commissioner Smuckler said she wants to see PD Police Department.

Police Department is first. Pardon me? I believe the Police Department is first.

No, what I'm seeing is I see the charter officers. Oh, okay. So you want to skip the charter? Yeah, then I see finance, human resource, and IT. You know what I'm saying? I want to see the Police Department, library. Public Works is under... is under... The next meeting. No, no, no, I'm saying is that a specific presentation? Correct. So I'd like to see that soon as well, because you're talking about fleet, you're talking about certain cuts that perhaps may be coming from these departments, right? And these are the departments that really interface a lot with our residents. I hate to leave it until towards the end.

So we're not doing that tonight. Public Works will not be tonight. What are you doing tonight? We're doing the ones that you named we're doing. Well, we can skip American Commission. We can skip city attorney. We can skip city manager. We can skip all of the charter officers, city clerk's office. And then we go right into the police department, the library. What else? Parks and Recs, and I believe Library, Housing and Economic Development Department.

Okay. Yes. Thank you.

Yes, sir. So what I'll do is I'll complete the management portion of it, and then I'll take direction from the commission of what you want to see tonight.

OK, that works. And I mean, you understand why we're having this fluid conversation, you know, and I'm assuming that at some point we each will have our opportunities to meet with you individually one on one so that we can and your team, too, so that we can kind of go over it a little bit. Absolutely. Thank you.

Because this advertised, Madam Clerk, the assistant, was this advertised for a certain time from six to a certain deadline or no? Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Okay.

As a matter of law, though, Commissioner, once you've advertised that you're going to be beginning it, there's no way to guarantee, unless it's like for a public presentation, there's no way to guarantee when you're going to be finished. The presumption is once you start, you will continue until you conclude. I mean, there are exceptions because you have an ordinance that says you conclude at midnight if you're having a regular commission meeting, and that has to be extended. But for purposes of a workshop, the failure to specify an end time, or even if you say presumed adjournment time, you're permitted to continue your discussion until somebody moves to adjourn.

Let's hear your question. In our calendar, it says six to nine.

Six to nine. I asked the question for the public. I want the public to be able to hear the budget meetings and especially to hear what the manager's been working on and what the commission discussion will be. And... You know, I just don't think the public should have to step to 1112 o'clock at night to go with the budget and presentations on the budget from departments can be quite on 30. So we've limited that so what what and you know the input of the commission so I'm going to just thank everybody. Yeah.

Excuse me, on the city's website, on the social media, it just says 6 p.m. It doesn't have an end time.

Okay, right. But to your point, Commissioner Smith, we have limited. We saw previously where there was, the city had had every single director present their department. We are not gonna be doing that. We have limited to five presentations. So, which those are presentations that we believe that you're going to have questions and want to have discussions on, like public works, like you said. And then, that doesn't mean we're not going to address those other departments. I'm going to go through those. And if you have a specific question that I'm unable to answer, we do have the department heads here and we can call them up. Okay? All right, going now to slide 12. This is an important conversation because our most important resources are human resources. As a municipality, we are a service industry, correct? So we have to look at our numbers. So for this fiscal year 26 adopted budget, we have a total funding of 521 full-time employees. Now, I can only report to you from your adopted budget what your full-time employees are. There is just a number, excuse me, a budget allocation for part-time employees. So, previous to this year, the city did not report its numbers for part-time employees. That's going to see why you see not applicable in that column that says part-time employees. Moving forward, we are going to track our part-time employees by percentage of FTEs, right? So for the proposed budget for fiscal year 2027, we're going to be moving from 338.25 part-time employees to 312. full-time employees, and 122 part-time employees. From our enterprise fund, that's our solid waste, that's our public utilities, that's stormwater, we're moving from 137.5 full-time employees to 135, a reduction of two, full-time employees, and we're reporting seven part-time employees. Again, we don't have the numbers to compare those two since it was reported as just a lump sum amount. Internal services is 39.5 employees. We're reducing that to 38 employees with reporting of two part-time employees. Other, which is other miscellaneous tasks that are not allocated by those departments, will be 5.75. Sometimes these are city manager, consultant, special... special administrator to the city manager or different services like that, assistant to the chief, special assistant to the chief, 5.75 to a reduction of five. So our total full-time employees for this year is 521, which will be a reduction of about 30 employees to 490 employees and a reported number of 131 part-time employees, right? So it's an overall reduction of 31 full-time employees. A lot of those will be elimination by vacancies and actually not positions, right? Any questions?

Yes. Through the Vice Mayor. I recall last year it was 200 plus part-time employees. And my question is if it wasn't in the budget, like you couldn't extract that from the payroll or?

What we have, so... See, what we have, it obviously was budgeted, right? We have a budgeted account for part-time employees, but it wasn't tracked by FTEs. So was that a .75 employee? Was that a .5 employees? So we're not able to say what the number of heads are, but we can tell you what the amount is. Moving forward, we will be reporting what the actual number of heads are, as we've done here.

Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

i know you mentioned through the vice mayor that there was a phase two of cutting positions uh i know you said the numbers reflective of vacancies is there going to be another dozen or less folks are going to basically positions eliminated is that another phase that you foresee happening and if so when will that take effect

Yes, so right now we've eliminated approximately 15 positions, and we anticipate eliminating a total of 31 positions. Some of those, as I stated, the majority of those will be vacancies, but some of those are likely to be current positions, yes.

Those individuals will no longer work here as of, what, October 1st?

Well, we don't have a timeline for that. As I said, we're not doing the pink slip method. And some of those, their position may be eliminated, but they may still have a job and a workplace here and another position here in the city of North Miami Beach.

I think that's something that the employees may want to be... I think Commissioner Smith kind of alluded to that earlier, that if there is some sort of layoffs happening that folks have noticed, because in this economy, you know, getting something two weeks, a week before is a little tough. So I'm hoping that, because if they're not included in the budget, there might be a merger of positions, right? Yes. However, if they're actually, folks are going to be terminated, They should get more of a notice. They should get more of a notice because if you're saying it's vacancies and also merger, there's still going to be someone that's not in it.

That's how I see it. Maybe it's... No, no. Let's have that conversation because I thought I addressed that conversation, but I can address it again. There's generally only two ways to do it. What you're saying is the pink slip method. No, no, no.

That's not what I'm saying.

Well, let me walk you through it to show you why that's what you're saying. Before you do, I

I just want to be clear. Okay. Based on what you said, if there's a number of positions, some of them are vacancies that probably were vacant for a long time. I heard you. Yes, ma'am. And then the others may be you're merging. So my question to you is, is there a group of people who will not be accounted for in this budget?

That are identified, that are in positions now?

Yes.

The answer is no. Okay. Okay? Okay. The answer to that is no.

So you're saying that behind this number, there are no names attached at this point? They're vacancies. So all of them are vacancies?

No, there have been 15 positions that are eliminated. That you've already taken care of? Yes, and then there's another, say, 15 or 16 vacancies, yes.

Okay. Okay, so there's what already happened and there's what? Correct. Okay, moving forward.

Correct. All right. Correct. And that's why, but I want to be clear, that's because we're not doing the pink slip method where we say, hey, we're going to go through our budget and we want to eliminate these 100 positions. Now I know who you are. Now I can give you however much advance notice that the commission would like to see or whatever payments that we can pull out. But that's not how we're doing it. We, well, I have to, I'll take ownership of that. I would rather use a surgical scalpel rather than a machete. That means it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of effort, it's a lot of work for our HR department and for my administration, but we look at every single position individually. What is the impact? Then we look at every single person, what is the impact? And the most important thing is to provide the preservation of the services. What this budget does and what we've done so far and what I hope that the residents feel and what you see is no impact to our services. No impact to our services whatsoever. And that can only be achieved by doing it this meticulous methodical way.

I appreciate not knowing who they are.

Through the Vice Mayor, my question is once you start with the evaluations, there may be some other elimination of some of the employees because the evaluation they had to step up and they just didn't want, whatever the reason was, whatever. So at that point, will you evaluate whether that position needs to be replaced or that position may be eliminated because this is an ongoing process, it's not just in a budget.

Correct, yes ma'am. That's my question. Yes ma'am. And I'm looking at it holistically to your point. If we look at this numbers on this slide, on slide 12, can I get the screen back up please? This fiscal year we have probably about 650 employees here. for a population of about 45,000.

It doubled in 18 years.

Okay, so let's look at what that number means. Aventura, just north of us, has the exact same similar population, and they go to a more outsourced model, so it's not comparing apples to oranges, but their employee staff is 200. So we're three times whatever tour is. But if we look just to our south, which is the city of North Miami, they are not on an outsourced model and they have only 400 employees with 20,000 more residents to serve. They are serving 20,000 more residents than the city of North Miami Beach with 200 less employees.

Mr. Manager. Yes. How many of those employees are in our water plant? And have we compared the size of North Miami's water plant?

Yes, I've heard that argument before. So that is something we're looking at. Our current water, and from all of our enterprise funds, we're only looking at 135 employees. Okay, 135 there. Yes, and I believe they're at or near those same numbers. As far as how many employees they have in their water plant? In their enterprise funds, yes. Yes. Now, I believe Theresa might make some adjustments with the current budget because they're purchasing water right now. But then she's going to have to, once they're positioned to produce their own water, she's going to have to pull those numbers right back up.

Okay. Thank you. Yes. Yes, sir.

So the pain point is that there is a strong argument that we're overstaffed, that we could be more efficient, that we could do more with less, or that we could do things better. And so rather than, again, take a machete and say, hey, we're going to whack 200 positions, we're looking to see how many positions we can actually preserve or how many positions you can actually do better, which is why sometimes, and I've been getting this with a couple of my bosses here, is, oh, we're supposed to be, you're supposed to be doing all these job eliminations, but I'm seeing all these people get raises, right? Well, when we restructure their positions, if we eliminate a vacancy and that job is being taken on by somebody else, absolutely we're going to compensate them more. So you will be, that's why it's very complex. So you will be seeing some pay raises. You will be seeing some increases as we begin to go through that process because we're not taking on the whole pink slip method. We're actually looking at positions and preserving what we can and creating opportunities for those of us, for those of staff that remain. Okay, slide number 13. Just to kind of drill down of the conversation that we have, our fiscal year 26 adopted budget, which we're in now. We've seen those revenues numbers, total funding of 75 are proposed. We're looking at $79 million, which will be an overage of $4 million. Our expenditures for this current fiscal year, $87 million. We want to drop that down to $74 million, which will be a savings of $13 million. which is gonna result in a 25% reserve target of 21.9 million for the current fiscal year and 18 million for our proposed budget. Okay, any questions? All right, I'll move on. Same thing, just breaking down further, our general fund revenue. As you can see, the bulk of our revenue comes from our ad valorem taxes, which is about $34 million. Now, one thing I do want you to notice here is the minimal increase from fiscal year 26 to fiscal year 27. This year we brought in $34 million. Next year we're flat. We're only bringing in $34 million. That is a city that is not growing. And if a city is not growing, it's dying. So that shows a lack of community development, a lack of development in our city. And if one of the things that's important to all of us is to provide tax relief to our residents. How do we do that? We do that through development. If we have significant development projects that are coming up in the city of North Miami Beach, that positions the city to do a reduction in millage rate, which is something that we all want, something that every member of their supports. So that is why it's so important that we move forward with some of these community development projects so that we get additional revenue money in so that we can provide tax relief to our homesteads, which is what, which is, the goal of the property tax exemption is anyway. They're looking to do what they believe cities are not doing or can't do. We can do it, and we should be doing it, and that's how we can do it. If you look at, compared to other cities, not every city has a large percentage of development. Doral did not have a large percentage of development because they're fully developed. That city place brings in hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue. If we had a city place here on some of our lands, we wouldn't need to do additional development. We have something, we would have something here that's bringing in money to our coffers that allows you a lot more flexibility, that allows an opportunity for a millage rate reduction, right? So I think that's gonna be one of the goals of the administration is to push forward on development, continue to put pressure on community development department, to get the comprehensive plan update, to get authorization from the state so we can move forward on adoption of the SB Live Local Act and get some of these development projects pushed forward. Yes, sir.

You know, I'm going to say something. I do. Because we've been, as a city, we've gone through that exercise, right? Honestly, I don't think if we as a municipality don't have a stake or we don't put up our own assets or infrastructure or land, is basically what I'm trying to say, to get this done, I don't see how it happens. And right now you have particular parcels that are being discussed now, so we won't talk about it, one of them, but then there's another parcel that is another opportunity. And I'm hoping that... the administration could communicate it to the residents properly so they can understand the importance of that, right? Yes. While still maintaining the nostalgic feel of what North Miami Beach is, that we have to also move forward. Number two, there's several buildings that have come online recently. You have the... On Biscayne and 160... What is that building called? Celeste. Is that Celeste? Yes. That's one and two. Right. The second building was just stopped off. Yes. The first building, I think, has been operating for at least two years. Yes. And then now you have Nexo. That's pretty much done. Can you talk about how long it takes for those average loan dollars to start reflecting in our budget? How does that work? Yes. Approximately 24 months. Approximately 24 months. Do we right now have a projection or can we get a projection of what that might look like in the next two years? Yes, we're working on that. Absolutely. Thank you. Yes.

And through the vice mayor, I just want to tell you, I see other cities, and we have a perfect opportunity here where parcels are being put together. And that comes, again, with our zoning and our requirements. We have to work with developers and responsible development. That's the key. because there's certain streets that will allow development and there's certain streets that shouldn't have development. So we, I agree that that's a good revenue source. I also agree that the big thing is tightening everywhere that you have, good start, but like you say, there's an awful lot of expense that needs to be looked at and the necessity of it. A wishlist is one thing, necessity is another.

Absolutely. And we're having that conversation with our department heads every two weeks. We certainly are. And I think there are three departments that I think are demonstrative of their overall goal that we have, which is reduction of expenses but maintaining the same level of services. Right after, I believe that Commissioner Floremont said he wants to see the police department. As soon as I'm done with the the bone structure of this conversation, we'll bring up the police department. And I really want you to take a hard look at that. There was a reduction in expenses in the police department of over $1 million annually, but we increased the number of officers by 11. And that's what we're doing. So we're actually going to make the city of North Miami Beach more safe at a savings of $1 million. And so that's the type of activity that we're looking to take in every single department. We're gonna be doing more with less, right?

Mr. Rice, may I have two questions? Yes. Did we look at, I know some of the departments may speak about this, rental fees and how much were generated. I know some of these services, like for example, rental fees from parks, collection fees from the library, they might be very small. And we talk about not necessarily being in the revenue-making business, but do we have tallies on how much those rentals are? I was surprised to see the numbers for the swimming. And I'm curious to see where our rental numbers as it relates to other cities, should we be increasing those for outsiders, things of that nature. And also one of the items that I had a wish to see was the POS system in the theater, because we rent out the theater year round, but we don't have any concession there, anything of that nature. And that was something that I was, you know, went for for legislation about, but I never saw how we can implement that. Correct. Because if we're renting it for $15,000, we could make another $2,000 in concession. So I think I would love to see the rental numbers in your next presentation, if they're not individually in the departments, to see from the collection fees, what have they been able to collect?

Absolutely, I think that's a wonderful idea, one that you and I have discussed before, and certainly that we're something we're going to continue to look at and get funded.

And if you could give us a total amount of rental for the theater for the year.

Okay, so I will request, if it's not already there, when Parks and Recs comes up to do their presentation, that they provide you with those numbers. Okay. All right. Thanks. All right. Finishing up slide 14, we discussed the ad valorem taxes being flat, water and sewer charge actually dropped. Now, one of the things Commissioner Zahn said is she wants to review compared to, she wants basically a market, what's called a market analysis. What are we charging and how is it compared to other cities? So I can give you a flat answer on that. I think we're doing well. I think we're doing well in parks. I think we have some challenges in the library. But the real funds are, and is the conversation that we need to have, is our other enterprise funds. So it is recommended that cities adopt rates or rate studies ever so often. Hopefully, generally not in election year. where we look at our rates and what the market requires that we should be charging and actually to cover our expenses. For most of our enterprise funds, that's our solid waste, that's our water and sewer, that's our general utilities funds, we have not done rate studies on average within the last seven years. So we all, commission and management, can anticipate what that's gonna look like as I push that down to after November, right? So we need to also be creative about how we provide relief to adopting a legislative function that you have to do or is recommended that you do. So one of the things that we're looking at doing is that we're going after overcharges. So the Miami-Dade County overcharged the city of North Miami Beach by about a million dollars for our water. So that's relief. We can utilize that money to provide relief back to our residents, particularly since we know that this rate study, once implemented, is going to increase their water bill on average by about $4 to $6. $4 to $6 may not sound like a lot, but it impacts real people with real budgetary constraints. And so what we'd like to do is have a conversation with the commission as pairing the passage of that legislation with that relief so it's not felt so strongly by the residents by something that you legislatively must do. So those are the kind of conversations we have, but to answer just generally what Commissioner John asked, where are we? We're substandard. We're not meeting the market. We're not actually covering. I think our stormwater fund brings in, expends, spends a million dollars more annually than it brings in. it's operating at a deficit. Some of our other funds are similarly, because our rate studies weren't completed to say, hey, this is how much it costs for you to operate in this, how much you should be charging, right? So that is an uncomfortable but necessary conversation that we have to have, but it's also, I think we can be creative about how we implement it and provide relief to the residents. Half-cents tax, that brought in about $4.4 million. Proposed for next year is 4.2. Let me see if there's anything else more significant here. red light camera fines anticipated to drop. The thing about red light cameras is that as you are aware, once people know they're theirs, that revenue drop, which is the whole purpose of it. Red light cameras are not supposed to be necessarily revenue generating operations. They're supposed to create public safety zones. And when we see those revenues drop that way, that means the red light cameras are doing what we want them to do. All right. Any questions on this one? Yes.

When you're talking about the proposed, okay, so FY26 adopted, is that the actual or is just the budget that was adopted?

That was the budget that was adopted.

Okay. Yes. Do we have the actual number?

Well, we can get the actual numbers, but it's going to be far short because we're not into the year. Right. Yes. So we can get your actual numbers, but it's not going to be-

Is that from you counting from January? I mean, like, you know, the the tax exemption year, you're going off the full full tax without the exemption considering like that it would be voted on. Right. The increase in the exemption. Yes, yes, okay, so you're doing that all right my other question is the half-cent sales tax historically I've always noticed that it's always increased And I notice here that it's decreasing is there Reason do we think that like you know was it because of FIFA or we need to explore that?

We need to explore that but I'm going to give a general answer That's not going to be a scientific answer, but it's a general administrative answer cities Yes

So we, the state of Florida no longer charges sales tax and rental, on commercial rental.

All commercial rentals, correct.

So... That sales tax went down.

Okay.

Oh, so that's the reason why this, you're assuming?

I'm assuming.

Oh, okay. It's been about a year now, more or less.

Was the projection given by the county on this half cent sales tax?

Yes, that does come from the county, so we can get a confirmation for you from the budget administration.

Okay. Yeah, I think it's good because that's double taxation right there. All right.

We don't want that.

The other question is also communication service tax. Like these ones that go down, usually taxes historically always go up.

Well, you've seen that across the table. And so I was gonna answer before Commissioner Smuckler provided some more scientific answers that generally speaking, cities that are not growing are dying. If you're not growing, you're gonna see less foot traffic. If you're seeing less foot traffic, you're gonna have less sales, right? So it's all related, it's all impacted. We have to, one of the things that we're doing, bringing forward through legislation that you passed is the, as the North Miami Beach NMB Bites program. That is a whole month of advertising and a whole month where we're going to increase the foot traffic that is coming into the city of North Miami Beach so that we can increase this tax revenue, right?

Yes. Can you just enlighten us a little bit about that? Because from what I see on Instagram, I'm not quite clear on how the program even works. Okay. Maybe you can save that for a different time.

I can give you a quick synopsis, right? So we patterned it off of the, first it's legislation that passed, that you voted on and that we passed. So we patterned it off of the Miami Spice program, but we're not charging our restaurants. So we have our housing economic development team going out to restaurants that we've identified with our BTRs through that department to say, hey, we want to promote you for our centennial. So let's advertise our centennial. Let's promote our centennial. These are the agreed upon prices for lunch and for dinner. If you agree to these prices, we'll put your menus up so that so that patrons can. Inside and outside the city, know that you're having these special rates and that will come to your restaurants and promote your business. And we're really going to be pushing that for people to come outside the city because a lot of our residents know where some of these great eateries are, but people outside the city may not know that these great eateries are there. And so this is an opportunity for them to get exposure, to increase foot traffic, and to have some residual foot traffic. Because we all know if we find a great spot that we love to eat, we're going to continue to patronize that. And since restaurants are some of our strongest BTRs, we want to establish those restaurants here in the city of North Milwaukee Beach so we can maintain that revenue.

So, through the Vice Mayor, maybe for next year, the Economic Development Department can encourage our restaurants to participate in the many spice menu that also bring in more for just like we only have one restaurant which is Morton's and Morton's is not a restaurant that's the train accessible to yes, everyone of our residents. So if we can encourage through the economic department, if they can reach out to the rest. I don't know how it works, but if they can call.

Yes, we did look at that. The pushback that we got is that Miami Space charges and we're not charging.

Yeah, but if we can do that also and next year, if it helps our restaurants, it helps us as well.

Yes, absolutely. We'll encourage that. Do you know how much Miami Spice charges? We do have those numbers. I don't have them memorized, but I can get those numbers to you as we had a meeting with the greater Miami chamber to cover their numbers. Yes.

Because maybe that's something we can look at taking an active participation in with our with our restaurants as well. Yes. Allow them to participate.

Yes. I love that idea. And I think they would love that idea, too.

THROUGH THE VICE MAYOR ACTUALLY WE HAVE BEEN WORKING WITH GMCVB WHICH IS THE GREATER MIAMI CONVENTION AND VISITOR BUREAU AND WE HAVE ADDED RESTAURANTS IN CITY OF NORTH MIAMI BEACH TO THEIR LIST SIGNIFICANTLY BUT THEY HAVE A CERTAIN PRICE THRESHOLD LIKE THE MEALS HAVE TO COST A CERTAIN AMOUNT IN ORDER TO MAKE IT WORTH THEIR WHILE INCLUDING THE FEES THAT THEY HAVE TO PAY GMCVB. So that's why we created the NMB Bites, so that our smaller restaurants, mom and pops, can actually afford to join some kind of network that allows people to come in and taste their food. So this is the reason why we created NMB Bites. And it's in the celebration of the centennial. It's in the period of time that, you know, this month of October. So we want the foot traffic to come here in our celebration, so on and so forth. And it doesn't cost them anything. The thing is, they get to package together a nice little you know like a taste test of all their best dishes so that way it comes in a package like lunch is a certain price dinner's a certain price so you know you go there and you purchase this and it's all you know it's all inclusive and people get to taste their best items and then you know if they choose to continue and stay and eat more then wonderful So that's a best way to save money because we can still get on GMCVB's website for October because that's not when they're promoting Miami Spice. And as a courtesy, we are a member, and so they would promote our restaurants there too. We have various different channels if you want to share with any of the restaurants. I know you're a restaurant guru, Vice Mayor.

More like a foodie.

Yeah, there you go. All the restaurants in the city, I know you know them, so if you can get them to participate, we will have their restaurants advertised on our freebie apps, our Prokel apps and all that. That would actually help them get more recognition and get them to maybe do some more sales. Now, I'd like to reclaim my time on asking. OK, thank you. So back to that solid waste franchise fee. I'm wondering why that dropped so much. I know that we also don't. I mean, along with stormwater, we don't collect enough. And inside a solid waste, we are, I think, two million dollars worth. Under?

Yes.

Right? Yes. So, can you help explain why the franchise fee is going down?

So, if it be the will of the commission, we can actually create a spreadsheet that explains why each one of these numbers have dropped.

Oh, great.

Absolutely. So, we will do that for you.

Thank you, thank you.

Absolutely, okay? Okay, moving over to slide 15. This is just a valuation of the property taxes. So in 2017, we brought in $2.3 billion, and by 2026, that number has jumped up to $5.7 billion property valuation, right, for the city, for all of the structures and land value in the city of, North Miami Beach. That is an actual rate of 5.4%. We're expecting a 5.4% increase, which would be a $6 billion tax rate, right? Going on to slide 16, what that tax base valuation actually looks like. Again, taxable valuation, X new construction, which we've had very, we had very, very little new construction for this fiscal year. The projected amount, I believe, was just $33 million, which was horrifically low. We had for 2024, 4.7. 2025, 5 million. 2026, 5.6 million. uh 2027 6 million as you can anticipate considering that we didn't have new construction this is just the increase in the property values with a flat millage rate of 6.1 percent um I'm going to side with the Commission and the residents on this millage rate conversation to demonstrate to you all and to our residents that we understand. So even when the millage rate doesn't increase, that doesn't mean that the tax bill of our residents do not increase. As their property values increase, Even when the millage rate stays the same they're going to see an increase or you're not in your heads since your residents I'll say you all will see a increase in your property taxes. There is one solution for this that I believe every city should be implementing. As your property taxes increase you decrease your millage rate so that the property tax bill stays flat. So one of our goals is to position ourselves financially so the commission can provide that relief to the residents, if you so choose. And so we're not in a position to do that. One second. Yes.

Did the residents just hear the manager propose to drop the tax rate?

Mm-hmm.

I want to make that clear.

Yes. Yes, absolutely. Thank you for that, Commissioner Truff. It's a very, very important conversation because sometimes managers, I'm guilty, say, oh, okay, I kept the millage rate the same. I kept the millage rate at the same rate. We did increase. but then residents still are upset because they're looking at the actual number. Well, wait a minute, I paid $2,000 last year and I'm paying $2,300 this year. So I don't care that you kept the millage rate the same. My property tax has increased. So one of the tools that I believe that the commission should be able to implement is a decrease every year, a small decrease every year, so that the property tax bill that you get at your house does not increase. So if we increase by, you see that increase that we're expecting? Our property tax is 5.6%. is increased to six million, right? Excuse me, 5.6 billion to six billion. That means there is a $400 million increase in property taxes. That means that if we probably were able to, if we were positioned right now to afford a millage rate decrease, what we should have in here is probably a decrease to six or 5.9. so that as the property tax, so they can feel the benefit, you as property owners can feel the benefit of your property taxes and of your property values increases but not get hit with an additional bill. So that's a goal that the administration has that we wanna implement and I think that this, well I know that this bill, excuse me, this budget We'll get us there. This commission will be in a position next year to say, hey, we want to reduce the millage rate to provide some tax relief to our residents.

But we can do more than that. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And have some reserves and have some contingency. And as Commissioner Chernoff said, do more than that.

Mr. Manager? Yes. I just wanted to say I found an email from August of last year where I inquired from the former CFO about that commercial property tax. So I'm going to forward it to you. Yes. And if any of the commissioners want to see it, then they can ask you for it.

Okay. Thank you.

Before you go on, Mr. Manager, I made a couple notes while I was in the other room.

Yes.

And the biggest note in reference to the expenditures, revenue, and what we're receiving is communication. If we don't communicate to the public, economic development is working on the whole thing about the food, about the restaurants, and promoting them so that they not only stay viable, but they don't move out of North Miami Beach. Yes. So economic development is working on that right now. As far as the raising of water, maybe having to raise the water bill, communication, communication, communication.

Yes, ma'am.

I was in Washington Park this week, and the residents' big concern is why did their water bill jump so high? Well, the truth is it jumped so high because of the county.

Yes.

Increased drastically. Drastically, yes. They have to be made aware because they're not looking at who raised the bill.

Yes.

What they're looking at is their bill raised in North Miami Beach owns the water plant. So communication, communication, and maybe in the next letter that goes out and the bill that goes out, a note should be added so that we can... make sure the public whether they read it or not somebody on the block might read it and tell their neighbor we need to make sure that they know that because if there's an increase they think they're going to say you did it again yes absolutely they have to know that this big increase came from the county

100% correct, Commissioner, and we will execute that in the next water bill.

And as far as the taxes going down, wouldn't that be wonderful? And I have to tell you, I've been watching what do the other cities charge. There are some cities that are in a wonderful position with a lot of revenue, Sunny Isles, you know, Golden Beach. Aventura, of course. But we're not that city until we get there. We have the possibility of getting there because we have new projects we voted on. But in the meantime, let's make sure that what we do charge is spent wisely. That's the key right now until we can get to where we need to go. Those were the few notes I made on that page. So thank you very much.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you for that feedback. All right. Okay, so I'm gonna move to slide 17, which is a general fund department overview. This is basically the overview of all the departments. And again, there are three departments, two departments I really want you to take note of. And that is the police department, and the Public Works Department. If you look at the Police Department, the adopted budget operates at $32 million, $32.3 million, and the fiscal year 27 proposed budget that is presented to you today reduces the police budget to $31.1 million, which is a $1.17 million, but we increased our police force by 11 police officers. So that was a vigorous exercise done by our police department looking at some of their software licenses and fees. There was a significant amount of savings found by reducing some of the software that we were paying licensing fees for on a monthly basis and an annual basis. One of the programs by itself was over $100,000, and it was a program that was rarely used. So that was a determination to eliminate there. The other program which, and we're going to have extensive, and we'll have an opportunity for you to have that discussion with the police chief tonight in his presentation. In the next meeting, we're going to have a public works presentation where you'll see a $2.8 million drop in expenditures So just those two departments alone, we were able to realize nearly $4 million in savings. And of course, with our non-departmental transfers out, which is at the total discretion of the city manager's office, we were able to reduce that by $9.3 million. And some of those were by non-recurring expenses like we had significant, I think we had almost nearly a million dollars in lobbying fees that the commission had budget for and we spent that were now not necessary to carry those forward.

Through the Vice Mayor, maybe somebody already asked, these two departments here, actually three, the commission, is being dropped by half. Is that because the employees, the aides are going someplace else?

Yes, so that's really just a booking transfer. From my perspective, to be in compliance with the charter, the charter is very clear that the city commission only has three employees. which are the charter officers, the city manager, the city attorney, and the city clerk's office. So all other, you know, some cities such as the city of Apalaca, city of Miami Gardens, puts the legislative aides under the clerk's office. Here we put the legislative aides under the city manager's office. But that's only that change. So it's not actually a reduction in the budget, it's just a transfer from one department to the other.

And that's the increase in your department?

Correct.

And in reference to the attorney, they need another new hire?

No, we had, we've been under budgeting the city attorney office. So we're having to do, this year we're having to do significant transfers and as you say, find the money. So in order to alleviate that danger, we just increased the city attorney budget so we know that that money's there if it needs to be spent.

Okay, and the last one or two that I just want to quickly discuss because code compliance, I think, was necessity. But communications, I think, is a necessity. But could we use it? Could we make it work?

So, yes. So what you're seeing with communications is a department now that represents what our total expenditure annually is on communications. Do we need to spend $1.35 million annually on communications staff? I do not believe so. So we're definitely going to be looking at that. Some of those positions that have been transferred to that department are actually vacant and are already subject to elimination.

But I would have less communication if it wasn't going to be accurate. I don't like to turn on Channel 77 and see something that was finished two days before. So if it's going to be accurate, then I'm worth putting a lot of money because that's today. That's the future. The future and communication is important, but it has to be done. It has to be accurate. And that's something I'm definitely not seeing. Okay, this is about the budget. It's not about correcting things. Community development. I think community development is what everybody's been saying. The vice mayor, the commissioners, what we've been saying is, Without somebody working on it, really working, the people that have no people, that's community develop. Who you know and who you can put together. And these developers, these builders, these people that own the property, they have a relationship with them. Believe it or not, I was also at Eden Isles this week, and one of the residents voting there said a developer bought 25 units in her building. Wow. We're talking Eden Isles. Wow. Because there's many, many buildings in Eden Isles. I don't know about the other buildings, but that's a big wow that somebody's going in the direction. And we need to, Tall Trees has contacted me. There's quite a few very valuable pieces of property in North Miami Beach that has to have somebody work the $471,923 increase. They have?

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you. I want to make sure that was on record.

Thank you. And Rick?

sorry through the vice mayor so i'm looking at the numbers here and why is it that the one with the well the second most um decreases in salary is the police department i thought i thought we were up in police

We are, I just announced that we just decreased their expenses by $1 million, but we added 11 new police officers. And they were able to do that reduction by some of the expenses such as subscription fees, like for there was a subscription fee digital service that the police department was paying six figures for. Yes. All right, got it.

I want a question. Does the police, does that also include the grant that they got, or did we exhaust that grant already?

If you're talking about the CAP grant, I'm not sure how the police department moved forward with that, but the police will be doing its own presentation after this general presentation. Yes.

All right, are we done with this page?

I believe so. I was waiting to... All righty.

I can't wait to brag. Communications are improved.

Okay. We can talk about Channel 77 if you want. That's like the most underutilized resource that we have. But yeah, we can get into that at another time. But I definitely think that's important. So to my colleagues, I know we had spoken about going a little bit in a different order. So are we saying we're going to call the police department up first? Is that okay with everyone? All right, Mr. Manager?

All right, I'll ask the police chief to come up and get his presentation.

Thank you.

Good evening, Vice Mayor. Give me one second. Thank you. There's no way to skip all the way through?

Phyllis, do you want mine? Phyllis, you can have mine if you want.

All right, good evening, Vice Mayor, commissioners, city manager, all those in attendance and the residents. Thank you for allowing this opportunity to present here tonight on this very brief presentation. On behalf of the men and women of the police department, I want to thank you for your continued support throughout the years and currently through this budget process. Just wanted to say thank you on their behalf. So as you know, The mission of the North Miami Beach Police Department is to protect life and property, prevent crime, and serve our diverse community with professionalism, integrity, transparency, and compassion. We are committed to building trust, fostering open communication, and working in partnership with our residents to enhance public safety and improve the quality of life for all. So, so far this year there's been significant reduction in crime and also highlighting the works of our police officers so far this year. Total crime reduction so far is 17%. In the next slide I'll explain, I'll break those down. But so far officers have responded to over 87,000 calls for service, have issued 7,846 traffic citations, conducted over 7,000 traffic stops, and have made over 1,200 arrests so far this year. Our detective bureau alone has conducted and made 220 arrests, 127 of those being felonies, 93 being misdemeanors. We have several officers that are dedicated to the DEA, and those officers alone have seized $3.5 million in illegally obtained currency while also operating the operations of narco-terrorism organizations. As you know, we have a very good cold case unit. This year, they've been able to solve two cold case murders. Kudos to them. Great work by all our detectives. And then, lastly, our tactical investigations unit. They've been able to serve, so far this year, 15 search warrants, seized six firearms, had 32 felony arrests, and seized over $10,000 in U.S. currency. Going to the crime, as you can see, it's broken down. Like I mentioned before, we've had a 17% reduction in crime. These are the categories that have been most significant. Non-residential burglaries, those are businesses. We've been able to reduce it by 52%. Strong-arm robberies by 45%. Robberies by 43%. Residential burglaries by 36%. Armed robberies also by 36%. Vehicle burglaries by 24%. And vehicle thefts by 11%. I think the data speaks for itself. The data officer is doing an incredible job. Also, some of the accomplishments broken down by divisions so far this year. Our administrative division has conducted department-wide training. As the manager mentioned, we've been able to onboard 11 new officers. We've conducted new radio trainings that we received the last year through Motorola. Our Community Affairs Bureau, we're very big into the community, giving back, having special programs for our Explorers program and our PAL program. We've been able to graduate five Academy graduates through our Explorer program. Three of those graduates have actually entered into the Armed Forces because of the guidance and the tutelage by our officers, and two have been able to enter college this year. So that's a big deal for us. Like I mentioned earlier, our Investigations Unit, all their felony arrests, misdemeanor arrests, their search warrants, all their seizures, and our operations division also with amount of call for services and enforcement actions throughout the year. Some of our goals is obviously one of the big focus this year and next year is to develop our real-time crime center. That is still in the works. We have some grants that are available to us, and we're working with our procurement team to make that a reality. We do have $500,000 of that allotted to us through CIP. We're currently waiting for just over a million dollars in a federal grant to receive those money so that we can move forward with that real-time crime center.

Chief. Yes, Vice Mayor. So I know Commissioner Jeon had mentioned something about grants and the Chief just brought that up. Can you talk about how many grants you've been utilizing, where you are with the grants at this point and what we're looking like moving forward?

So if there's a specific grant that I think you mentioned the COPS grant. Commissioner Jeon. Commissioner Jeon. It was a COPS grant. So the COPS grant originally was brought forward by City Manager Diaz a few years back, and we did apply for that COPS grant. We were awarded eight officers off of that COPS grant. However, because we were such in a deficit in officers at the time, upon taking over the agency back in October 2024, we were about 93 officers and we were budgeted for 107. Through the Mayor and Commission, they allowed us to conduct an aggressive recruiting drive, actually added money to our recruitment budget, and because of that, we were able to now hire more officers. The caveat to that was you cannot, at the time, you weren't able to use the COPS grant until you were fully budgeted. That's why we weren't able to use it. However, we were able to speak to the grant coordinator and recently, I would say three or four months ago, they said we were able to use the COPS grant since we were trending upwards to filling our budget, but by that time we were already in year two of the grant and now that's a significant cost to the city and looking at the financial outlook and all the things that are on the horizon, we decided it's not a good time to do that because of the matching, it's a matching grant.

Can you break down that? Can you break down that number?

Sure.

So significant cost to the city. Is it a, so it's a matching grant.

It's a matching grant. So it was going to be about a million dollars. Um, the first year we were responsible for matching 25%, the second year, 50% and the third year, 75%. So if we were going to enter the grant now gear two, we'd be about 50%. And because of the reduction in budgets across the city, we felt it wasn't something we're able to do at this time.

Okay, so basically what you're saying for FY27, right? That's what we're talking about? Correct. If you were to join the program now, the number would be 500,000?

More or less.

Okay. And then you mentioned also new officers. So, I mean, I haven't looked at, I haven't refreshed my memory on the previous fiscal year's budget, but can you talk about those numbers? So are these positions that we've seen year over year, or are they additional positions that we're adding now?

So, yeah, so if I answer your question. So we've always budgeted for 107 officers. We've always been significantly short because of retirements, you know, compensation packages, people leaving or whatnot. that 107 number has always been in our budget year after year we just have never been able to obtain it luckily fortunately because of our recruitment team and our staff we've been able to now get close to that number and pretty much achieve that number of 107. because i remember even back in 2018 if i'm not mistaken somewhere around that time that conversation was a significant conversation about making sure that we were fully meeting that 107 or was it 104 at that time i forget but It's fluctuated throughout the years, but it's teetered between.

But at some point it reached 107.

Correct. And now you're saying we're at that 107. Yeah, so as the manager mentioned, we've onboarded 11 officers this fiscal year, and yesterday probably we were able to graduate 11 more officers, and we'll be swarming those 11 officers in next week, so for a total of 22 officers, which will bring us at the 107. Oh, 105, actually. Okay. Okay. And then what about the other two spots? The other two, we've just opened it up. The manager has allowed us to open up those two positions, and we are currently hiring for those.

Okay, Mr. Assistant City Manager?

No, I just want to thank the police chief and administration and you all because this is a huge accomplishment to achieve the number of officers that the police department is currently swearing in. Next week?

Next week.

Next week. You know, thanks to you all's dedication to the police department, obviously to the community. This is a big deal because, like you said, Commissioner, you've been talking, you've had this conversation about police officers for many, many, many years. Kudos, here we are today where the police chief is announcing that he's hitting his number for the first time in a lot of years.

Thank you. I know you, but I keep wanting to say Andy, but thank you ACM. Do it. Commissioner Smuckler has a question.

All right. You said that the COPS grant that the city would have to put in 500,000, did I understand that right?

Yes, Commissioner, it's a matching grant. So we were a lot, we were awarded eight officers, and the total for those eight officers was roughly just north of a million dollars. And for each year, year one, it's a matching 25%, then the next year 50, and the third year 75%.

So is that money in the budget?

Currently, no.

If Mr. Manager come back, wherever you are, we need to put it back in the budget.

Yeah, what are you saying? If we put it in the budget through the vice mayor, it would have to be 500,000? We'd have to put 500 next year? Is the manager, correct.

Is the manager here? So we are currently at our budget target office of 107. The COPS grant was an additional supplement to those officers.

matching grant B. Next year, it'll be another 500 that they would match.

The subsequent year.

But the following year, they would only give us 25% and we'd have to put in 75. So year one is approximately $136,000. Year two is $284,000.

And year three would be $426,000. And how much will they put in? The other half. No, not in year three. In year three, they're only putting 25%.

What he's saying is you've got to look at the total number.

It's just north of a million dollars.

It's a matching grant. So although the number is different every year, when you look at the total number, it's the city's coming in for half and the grant is coming in for half, right? Correct. Thank you, Chief.

I'd just like to say for the record that all of the police positions are fully funded.

Right, but we don't have that $500,000.

All of the police positions that are agreed to are fully funded. All the money that is needed to pay those officers is in the budget.

All right, but the grant is for more officers.

You want more officers?

What is this grant going to get us?

The grant essentially allows us to hire, that grant was able to hire eight more officers in addition to the 107.

Okay, I'll take it. Oh, oh.

This has been the goal of the police department for I believe nearly a decade to hit the number of eight of 107. And I believe what Commissioner Smuckler is proposing that we hire an additional eight.

But how many will be retiring in the next two or three years?

Probably five to seven, I would think.

How much would it be to add the eight more? That's the thing. If they're only giving us a half, like it's 25,000, you said? 2,500? 25? 25%. 250, right? Yeah. So, but how much would it cost to add the seven? You see what I'm saying? Might cost a million to add the seven. Correct. So if they're not giving us a total for the entire. Correct.

Since we've already met. And as positions become vacants, we will be, for officers, we will be filling those vacancies. So it's not like the 107 will go down because someone retired.

But when those officers retire or leave, it'll go down and with the COPS grant, they're paying for part of it as opposed to not doing the COPS grant and just paying it.

But that assumes that you have the other 75% in your budget and we don't. So we have to find, so if they're gonna, if the additional eight costs a million dollars and they're gonna give us $250,000, we have to find $750,000 from somewhere.

So to the Chief's point, Ken, through the Vice Mayor, Ken, you're not sure if we can still get it based on the increase that we just got, meaning the additional officers that you just added to the fleet, would we be able to still get the grant for, That increase?

So that grant itself has expired. So we'd have to essentially apply for a new grant and hope to get it. But other than that, I mean, we understand that there's, you know, financial burdens right now.

Through the Vice Mayor, I happen to agree the more police officers, the safer, the better. I mean, you can't have enough. But... The one thing about hiring, if we hire and take the number up to 115, they don't continue to pay salaries and benefits. That would be every budget coming down the road, you would have to allow for that extra. And what would that take away from services when you went for public works and decreased it by 2 million? We need to have public works out in the street fixing the potholes and doing what needs to be done. So, you know, the budget is every department. I think it sounds wonderful, just like going to Publix for the BOGO. I hate to say it. That's what it is. Guilty as charged. But then you end up buying... two things that you would only use half of one. So we have to be careful because it's going to be in the following year after year after year budget. Now there may come a need as new development comes in that your number, your goal isn't 107, your goal is 115, 112. Then we have no choice but to fit it in the budget because you're the one that sees your need. But I think to look for another means right now when we've reached our goal and that one expired, I think we maybe should put that on a shelf until we see what kind of revenue we have coming in and what kind of need.

To continue this conversation, we're talking about buildings coming online, right? So we're talking about additional revenue sources through development is one of the things the city manager mentioned, right? We're talking about Celeste One, the second building coming online, Nexo, these buildings are some four or 500 unit buildings. So the number is significant, right? That we have to project that the 107 that we've been fighting for for the last eight years, are based on our needs eight years ago, right? And that our needs five years from now may not be the same. So are we putting our,

A POLICE DEPARTMENT IN A POSITION WHERE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW THEY'LL BE UNDERSTAFFED RIGHT SO THAT'S THAT PEOPLE WILL BE RETIRING SO I SAY NO NOT ONLY ABOUT RETIREMENT I WELL I SAY NO TO THAT AND HERE'S WHY I SAY NO TO THAT BECAUSE THE NUMBERS DON'T SPEAK TO THAT WE HAVE THE LOWEST CRIME RATE THAT THE CITY HAS SEEN IN ALMOST NEARLY A DECADE AND HE JUST WENT THROUGH THOSE NUMBERS FOR YOU WASHINGTON PARK. One of the most crime riddled communities in the city is now the safest community in the city of North Miami Beach. That makes a strong argument that we are matching the services that are needed. Now, to be fiscally responsible, yes, we do have more buildings coming online and we'll get more revenue from that. So I would submit to the commission that once we have additional revenue from these new needs, then that's when we increase. That's when we spend. But I don't recommend that we spend it before we get it.

Well, I'm just gonna say that I've been here for eight years and a few buildings have come up in the eight years that I've been here, maybe two, and I actually don't see what benefits those buildings have done to the city. I don't see anything, that are for the police department. I don't see more employees for the police department. I don't see more for Parks and Rec. I don't see more for the library. I don't know what all these two or three buildings that have come up have actually done for us. I'm just gonna say that because I think it's true. Yeah, there's more tax revenue and stuff, but I just don't see what benefits it really has brought to the community.

Well, to your point, Commissioner Smuggler, The manager was saying that those revenues take a 24-month turnaround to come in, which is fine, but I'm thinking that the grant will help us to reach that 24-month mark, so that way, by the time those revenues come in, we can be able to address any issues that you were referencing, Commissioner Smith, with the additional revenues. But this is just one topic out of a longer presentation. So I wanna put a little pause on this right now. We'll get back to it. But I want you to think about that, Mr. Manager, this amount of money that we don't wanna leave on the table. because of matching funds I just want you to give that some thought so when we come back to it you can elaborate or we can decide to discuss it further at a different time but but I think that's super important because this budget is next year's budget And it is the year after that's budget. We have to do this one with those in mind. Obviously, you know that. So.

I would request that the police chief be involved in that conversation and that decision. Of course. Because it's his guidance that determines, do we need more? Are we sufficient? And where would the money come from?

Because then we say we went from a deficit, a structural deficit. Is that probably the term you would use? Structural deficit, right? That was Mario's term?

Okay. What's a structural deficit?

And I still have two more questions. Okay. Yeah.

So we went from that to a $23.5 million deficit. Positive is what you said. So Commissioner Smuckler.

Okay, so I also want to know, do we have enough officers for one, public safety, and two, public services?

The answer is yes. Public safety is not affected in any way. The residents can feel safe knowing that. As the manager mentioned, the crime stats speak for themselves. It's do more with less. However, we do have to take into account for burnout, officers being injured, officers not making our programs through training. And these are conversations that the manager and I have had, and he's been supporting that the whole way. So this is just forecasting. And we talk about wish lists. Yes, we're at 107 now, and that's great. This is an accomplishment that we've been trying to get to for many, many years. The additional officers for the COPS grant is a wish list item. Having those additional officers will provide better services for the residents, allow our specialty units to get more full. Just to put in perspective, when I started here in 2006, we were at 120 officers. We've been running with 90-ish officers for many, many years. So getting to where we're at now is amazing. I was also in the detective bureau for many, many years. We were at 14 detectives. We're currently, I think, seven or eight now. So it's- Great. It's cutting, you know, but we're building back slowly and stronger. And again, the COPS grant is a wishlist item. I remember that. Oh, sorry, Commissioner.

No, it's okay.

Okay, I remember that. This was probably, when did we go from that 120 number down? Was that somewhere around 2011?

Correct, the 17 officers got laid off.

Of course, it was for a long time, and I've always wanted to go back to 120, but the thing is, look at the outcome of what we're doing. Everything's coming down. Washington Park is the safest place to live in North Miami Beach. I mean, with less people, they're doing more and better. So the goal is still there always to build up the police department. But I think we also have to remember to balance this.

Well, you know, morale is a big part of this conversation as well. You may want to do more with less, but you're burdening the people that you have. And when we're talking about $500,000, that is a significant number. But if that's something that we want to address, we can address it. We can address it.

And where are we for new hires? Where are we on the chart salary-wise? Like how competitive are we?

We're pretty competitive. Again, through the mayor commission, the city manager's office, we're, I would say, I don't know, top five in Miami-Dade County, correct me if I'm wrong. Top 10, sorry, top 10. But we have come a long way, you know, so we're able to retain a lot of our officers right now. We have lost some to larger agencies in the last couple of years, but overall we've been able to retain them and compete with other agencies.

And where, Mr. Manager, we had, I think you were not in office. I mean, not our manager, but we had discussed about bringing FRS to the employees and to the police department, not to interfere with the pensions that you guys have now, don't we? Are we anywhere on that? Because that's a big recruiting factor.

Yes, that is actually, we just had a meeting recently. Was it... Yeah, we submitted it last week. We actually had a meeting on that to push that forward. We're looking at getting a study and an analysis executed so that we have some numbers to work with to see how we, what's the timeframe for that, a timeline for that, and what would be the budgetary needs for that. There is one thing I do wanna correct for the record. The numbers that you are seeing as far as the results and the reduction in crime was accomplished with 90 officers.

It was a slow crime year.

So, so we, these numbers don't include up to 107, which is the addition of 17 more officers. So with the increase of 17 total more officers, we expect to see even greater numbers, greater reductions. But what you're seeing, which we're, what the chief is announcing to you is with the number of 90 officers, what we're going to have next year is 107.

Right, but it was 90 burnt out, overworked officers, and that's not fair. Say again? You're not gonna win.

Oh, no, I'm not trying to win. I just want to be clear. I just want to be clear on the record.

Speaking of that, Mr. Manager, you said it was with 90 offices. Did that affect overtime? Oh, yes. Can we have that conversation, Commissioner Smuckler? What did overtime look like with those 90 offers? Because at that point, you're paying time and a half. A disaster. Okay, so what did that account for? It was about $4 million.

It was just over $2 million was in our budget for overtime.

Yeah, 1.9. Okay, so it was $2 million in overtime.

Okay, so $2 million in overtime.

100 police officers, no, not that many.

You see what I'm saying? It's like, okay, well, we did this with 90, but we had $2 million in overtime, but we don't want to spend 500,000. But we have 2 million in overtime.

No, no, no. That was the discussion that the chief and I have that if we spend this money, if we spend this money on additional officers, we will not be having this overtime. So that's what we did. And that's what we did. We take that money in this budget and we don't have a budget line item for $2 million in overtime anymore.

But if it be the will of the commission, additional. I'm sorry. I mean, sorry to cut you off. Explain that again. I'm not keeping up with what you're saying. OK, you're saying that you address the overtime issue. Correct. In what way?

So you had 90 officers, right, budgeted. And then you also had two million dollars in overtime budgeted. We are increasing that number from 90 to 107. So that's 17 additional officers, but we dramatically decrease the overtime budget line item. So there's not gonna be an expectation that we're still gonna spend $2 million in overtime now that we have 17 additional bodies on the ground.

So help me understand this. The fiscal year 26, How many officers did you operate with fully on fiscal year 26? Because you said the 11 is part of the 107, right?

So, yes, 11 is coming on board for the next fiscal year. We've already hired, I believe, was it?

22 as of next week.

We hired, so yes, we began hiring, the moment I hit the ground, we began hiring police officers.

Okay, so before you started, what was the, do you know what the number was? It was 90.

It was in the mid-90s, lower 90s, it fluctuated.

Okay, so it was the mid-90s.

Yeah.

Okay. And since you got on board, it's been what, how many months, six months? Six months. Six months. Six months. And we've hired, how many have we hired since then?

Total fiscal year 11. Well, next week will be 22.

Okay, so you're saying between the 90 and now, but I'm saying in the last six months.

The last six months, probably six, seven.

Six, okay. So the six that we hired cannot be considered in the fiscal year that started in October, right?

And they're not. We're doing 11 additional on top of the six.

No, what I'm saying is as far as overtime, if we had $2 million in overtime, Fiscal year started in October. Okay. The numbers that you're referencing started when you arrived up until now. Okay. So how much overtime did we have prior to your administration? You see what I'm trying to say?

From October 1st until February 1st. Correct. So you want the finance department to calculate a number of overtime spent from October 1st to what date?

To the day you started, for instance, right? So I can see, because I want to see how much overtime was accounted for in that time period. Because you're quoting the 90, we did all of this with 90, we did it all with 90. And then you're saying that we hired more so that we can get rid of the overtime. Correct. But I want to see what the actual beta is. is between when you were here and over time. I think I understand where you're going.

Yes, I think I understand where you're going. For me, and I think from a county standpoint, there's not a hard date, right? So I didn't say to the chief, the day that this body hits the ground, I want to see this reduction in overtime.

Or the day the police officer joins the force.

Correct. The day this year, those boots hit the ground. I want to see what we have.

I know you're I know you're a military man.

OK, you're right. So, yeah, let me say it the more correct way. The day those police officers started. So the but we have to have a projection in a budget about what the expectation is. Right. So the conversation was that there was. or at least the expectation was not that we would see an immediate reduction in overtime, right? Those officers have to be trained. They have to go to FTO. There's a period of time before they're actually available to him to deploy, right? Correct. So we want to provide that time. I did not do any reductions for that reason. I did not do any budget amendments or reduction or even have an expectation. I had a hope. but not an expectation that he would be able to immediately reduce the budget. But we did have a conversation that once you hit this magic number that you've been trying to hit for a long period of time, that you will be able to reduce that over time. That's the goal and the target.

Can you take us there in some way, shape or form? You know, I know you have our deputy city manager here who has a wealth of wealth of knowledge and you have a finance team. Can you take us through that at some point throughout this process so we can see that over time?

OK. And also remember that we didn't really add 11 police officers. We filled 11 vacant positions.

That's why I was asking, was it a year over year versus new positions? So I agree. I agree 100 percent. And you've only gone through like two bullet points. So Commissioner Smith, do you have something?

I just want to say that over time, you can't eliminate it anyway, because we don't know what's coming down that whole year. There may be, God forbid, something where we need those officers. So there has to still be money in the police department to budget in case, just in case. Maybe it doesn't be $2 million, maybe $1 million. But you can't stop... A robbery, or I don't know, a chase, or however you want to say it, you have to finish it. And if it requires overtime, it requires overtime.

But Commissioner, I think the overtime conversation is not about, at least from my seat, it's not about whether or not an officer has the ability to do overtime.

No, I got what you're looking for.

It's not about whether or not they respond to a call and they have to stay an extra hour or two.

No, I agree with your... Absolutely. We're going to have a determination of the money. I absolutely agree with that.

It's about, honestly, when those engines are revving up and down 163rd Street, okay, and everyone can hear it, right? It's about how long does it take? Before somebody responds to that, right?

I hear them from my house. Well, now I feel we're getting into the chief's territory. He's the one that knows when overtime is a necessity and overtime is a little bit of a luxury. No, we're not telling him when overtime.

We can't just have less officers and say, oh, it's okay, we'll do less officers and have them do overtime because then we're taxing them.

I'm in total agreement. You don't have to explain it to me. I'm just saying even if you have more officers, even if you have 120, there will be times when overtime is required. We're not telling the chief what to do.

OK, we that's that's definitely not our role. But what we're saying is these are the numbers. The manager just said we had over two million dollars or just that two million dollars in overtime. That's a budgetary issue. Right. That's not about when the chief says who can work, when they can work or what they can do. It's a budgetary issue. Right. So that's an issue we can address and we can say, hey, what does that mean exactly? Does the overtime mean that our officers are overworked? Right. Does it mean that if we add officers, are people going to, you know, have less opportunity for overtime? Will that create an adverse morale effect? Right. For officers that may not mind working the overtime. You know, these are things that I want to know. Right. Because from my perspective, what I'm seeing is. We don't want to it's not about micromanaging a commissioner. It's about a budget where this is the process, because what will happen is we'll end up sitting here not talking about these things. And then like we do at the end of the at the end of every budget cycle, we argue over five hundred dollars in someone's contingency. We argue over whose faces can go on flyers. OK, and we miss out on over two hundred million dollars that we're going to vote yes or no on. So that's really what this is about. And we're getting better over time. Because we've done this enough times that it's okay that we have this type of a conversation. So that's what I want to know. And I want to know about succession planning, right? Because we have a chief that wouldn't be as good as he is, with all due respect. without the information and knowledge and history that he has with this department. There we go, the institutional knowledge. We have a DC with institutional knowledge. We have a leadership team with institutional knowledge, right? And so the morale on this team has been like never before. And we want to continue to see that happen, right? So we don't want to go back in the reverse, right? So that's really what that $2 million conversation, overtime conversation, and having enough officers in that grant is about. So that's why I want to address it, so that if I'm going to push for something, I know fully why We're doing it. Or if I'm going to ride with what you're saying, that I understand that in another couple of years, it's not going to create an issue that, you know, we have to deal with.

So I have a question to Commissioner Jean. Thank you. To that point, I'm trying to get clarity just real quick. So you're basically saying that the increase of in officers lower the overtime. Is that what we're trying to zero in on?

We expect that the increase in officers will decrease the overtime in the upcoming fiscal year budget, yes.

And do we place a cap on overtime? Would that be something that's obviously to the chief's discretion, but... If we're adding more officers, we're assuming that we won't need as much over time. That's correct. Okay. My question is for Powell. What's the line item for them this year?

I believe it's 75,000. 75,000.

Definitely would love to see that increase in one way or another. So Mr. Manager, that's one of my wishlist items to see some, it could be an incremental, but something of some sort. All right, so I think now we'll let... We'll get a consensus with... We just allowed you to get through... Increase, it could be 5,000, it could be whatever you can find. Did you want a consensus on this?

Absolutely.

Oh, I don't know if... We can't vote on anything, but that's a wish list of mine.

Okay, so I mean, I think everyone's heard you, so we can advocate for that if we choose when we're about to vote. Chief, you can continue to your next bullet point.

All right, so some of the, like I mentioned earlier, some of the requests that we'd like to, by hiring these officers, we'd like to increase our motor unit to three. We currently have two. As we all know, traffic is one of the biggest complaints in the city, so we'd like to add at least one other motorman to that position. Also increase our community affairs bureau. We have one retired detective retiring in December, so we'd add another one in that unit, community policing detectives. I'm sorry, the crime prevention supervisor and the crime prevention specialist. We'd like to eventually get some officers in there. And then add four police divers to our dive unit. Those are internal transfers. It's not like we're hiring new officers for that. And then one other thing is adding a patrol boat that's better suited for Snake Creek Canal. As you all know, we already have our main police boat that we got earlier this year, but this is specifically for Snake Creek Canal to enforce the no wake zones. And as far as the budget, the staffing, there's a correction on the full-time. It's going to be 143 for FY26 adopted. Proposed for fiscal year 27 is going to also be 143. And it's going to remain zero. That's a correction on the slide. We weren't able to make the change. So for full-time staffing for 26 is 143. Proposed for 27 is going to be 143. And the over-under is going to be zero. And then where you see FY27 for part-time, where it says 11, that's gonna be zero. So for compensation, we talked about earlier for currently this budget year, we're at 29,596,044. Proposed is 27,205,609 with a reduction of 2,309,435. And for operating expenses, currently $2,766,690. And FY proposed 27 is $2,665,947, reduction of $100,743. Now what we did was we included in our budget this year CIP for our vehicles for purchasing. We included the budget $1.3 million. So for total reduction in the budget, as the manager mentioned earlier, $1,173,178.

Chief, to the Vice Mayor, I was going to ask, you said part-time, is that correct? No, that's not correct.

It's zero. Zero for everything? Zero part-time, zero for everything, correct.

Okay, got it.

So we're going to, let's kind of, you had something else?

Okay, go ahead. Are you looking at budgeting anything for a real-time crime center?

Yes. Is that part of 1.3? No. CIP, we have 500,000 already allotted for real-time crime center and a federal grant, just over a million dollars.

Awesome. Okay, great.

And we're looking for all the opportunities as well through grants.

Question through the manager. So we got a million for the crime center and we are also budgeting 500,000 for it as well?

Correct.

Can you speak a little bit to the functionality of that?

Sure. So to outfit the real-time crime center obviously is very expensive. The drones are loaned. You're looking at almost close to $500,000 just in drones because these are special drones that self-deploy with the officer, typically arrive before the officer even gets there, and giving us real-time information. Then to outfit the entire building, the room that's being selected, you have to have state-of-the-art equipment for all that, and you have to have new software.

hardware and all that so it's it can get very expensive thank you no uh is that it commissioner jean for now um we're gonna go to uh commissioner turnoff and then if you commissioner sue have something else we'll go back okay great job thank you so much appreciate you coming forward and having more officers and less money good job thank you is that it wait commissioner turnoff that's it okay compliment him too okay commissioner sue go ahead

No, what I'm very impressed with is the results. I mean, whatever expenditure it is, right? You guys made it happen with the amount of people you had, whether it's 107, whether it's 90, I don't care, right? And then you did it in your budget, you did it with that amount of guys you had, and you reduced crime. The results is the most important, and I trust whatever you decide from now, it's like, go for it. As long as you deliver the results that you do, I'm good. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Commissioner Jean?

Is there any update on the accreditation process?

Yes. We can have a conversation offline more in depth. However, to tell you it's looking like it's going to be next year where we're going to go forward for reaccreditation.

Do we have anyone in the budget currently that's overseeing that process?

We do. We have a full-time accreditation manager. She's amazing. And we also have a part-time accreditation that comes in. Thank you. Contracted, I'm sorry. Commissioner Smith.

I just want to say not only thank you, we see it. I'm a resident. I see it as a resident. And I think the one thing that I see that is so pertinent to the budget being good is the morale. this police department has been one of the best and i just say repeat what others have said keep it up we appreciate it and we're here for whatever you need if it changes during the year that doesn't mean there can't be adjustments so i just am very appreciative thank you so much thank you so much commissioner if you're not safe you don't want to leave you don't want to leave your home Safety first. Safety first. Don't forget to come to my meetings.

September 3rd. Commissioner Smukler.

I don't want to take any more time, but thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you to the police department. I always say it at the end of my commission report, thank you for making sure that our families, our visitors, our residents, our businesses, everybody, that we're safe, that we can come home safe every night. Thank you.

Thank you. Listen, I am super proud of this team, you know, and as I'm sitting here, I'm watching those who have come up from Police Explorer, like who are, okay, that's a huge deal, you know, to see that and to see, you know, the investment that our police department makes in our youth that today is serving our community, that can speak the language that our residents speak, that understand the socioeconomic demographics that we have here, that really can connect with our people, right? So when we're looking at that budget, I ask that we look at it holistically, and that if there's a way, Mr. Manager, for us to meet Those desires that we have up here that we that we look for a way to make that happen, right? It doesn't have to be adverse, right? It doesn't have to be to be that at all because You know, they're not just you know, it's not They are boots on the ground we get that part to a degree but It's every stop. It's every conversation. It's every kid at shop with a cop. It's every pal a participant it's It's our Christmas parades. It's, you know, our community police officers. It's all of that. You know what I mean? It's neighborhood crime watch. It's a kid that has a dream to become a police officer that can come to North Miami Beach and say, hey, look, I think I'll be OK here and I can make a career out of it. That's what this is about. So especially this department, especially this department. That's what we got to do. Thank you.

Appreciate you, Chief. Again, thank you so much for your time. I have to thank my staff, the supervisors on our team. Without them, this wouldn't come true. And we wouldn't be able to be where we're at because of them without them. And when your employees feel valued and appreciated, they will run through walls for you. And that's how we are right now. So thank you. Thank you.

Who's next, Mr. Manager?

I'd like to bring the library up to do a presentation. Oh, let me introduce as promised. So we have a new library director. She has been with our library for some time as third in command. She was in the department for several years. She's very familiar with our library services as she's been there. She's very familiar with our residents. She's been instrumental in moving several projects forward. I am happy to introduce to you, she has a master's in library services, and I'm happy to introduce you to our new director, Anne Myers.

And thank you, manager. Mr. Manager, you forgot to say she has a beautiful singing voice.

A beautiful singing voice.

She sings really pretty.

I probably won't be deploying that tonight, but thank you. And thank you, Commissioner, City Manager, and all the members of the public here tonight for letting me come and talk about the library. My favorite thing to talk about. Going to jump right into it. So our library's overall goals this year align with the city's mission. We want to serve the community. We want to improve our community access to services. We want to provide quality programming. And we want to make sure that we seek to increase not just our external partnerships with organizations throughout the city and the county, but also our internal partnerships with other departments of the city. And we want to develop those services while reducing our overall operating costs. I'm gonna give a quick overview of what the library does. We serve the public in eight key core areas. The first one is providing books and materials and digital content. That is a lot of things. That's everything from walk in and get a book from me to using databases to find information, to seeing digitized newspapers, to being able to access streaming content, live tutoring assistance, whatever you might need. We also provide direct and active customer service to the community. That is a huge, huge part of what we do. Our community knows they can walk in any time, talk to somebody who is knowledgeable, who can help them with whatever issue they have. If it's, how do I talk to my elected official? How do I get food stamps? How do I find information to study for this new degree I want to get? That's what we're there for.

We also provide specialty services to various segments of the population that need them.

Some of our key ones are senior health initiatives. We have senior health programs every single day, first thing in the morning. We also do early literacy for children, and we have a very robust New Americans program, and that includes things like citizenship classes, passport processing, voter registration, making sure that our residents can be part of the civic life of the city they live in. We also provide continuing education and enrichment programming, which is, if you ask my staff, that's all they do every day, all day long. That's everything from we're doing story times for children to we're doing tax planning for seniors. We're providing English classes. We're providing citizenship assistance. We have programs, multiple programs, every day that we are open, and they are taught by knowledgeable library professionals as well as our community partners. We also provide access to technology, which is a huge part of things for our community. A lot of our community members may not have a computer they can access at home, or they may not have a new enough computer that they can get their homework done, so they come to us. Maybe they have a phone that doesn't have service, but they can come to us for Wi-Fi. They can come to us to access online resources. And they can do that in a safe place where they have knowledgeable professionals who will help teach them how to do it if they don't know how. We also provide outreach and community services. And we do those inside of our building, but we do them all throughout the community, which is a huge part of us as well. We visit schools. We have librarians do career days. We visit senior centers to invite our seniors to come in and work with us. And we make sure that we're getting out to people who might not be able to access our services otherwise. That is why we have a bookmobile, something that we're hoping to ramp up this year. We also provide a clean, functional community third space. There are not a lot of third spaces left in public life right now where you can go to do whatever it is you need to do without needing to pay money to be there. The library has that available for everyone. You can study, you can tutor, you can spend time with your friends, and that is a really important part of community building. And finally, We provide youth services all day long, every single day. We are doing early literacy training, teaching toddlers how to start reading. We are doing after school programs to keep our teens active and learning even when they're not in the classroom. And we are doing ongoing education for adults as well. Our adults are the biggest part of our English classes because that's an ongoing community need. and we support the very robust homeschooling and tutoring community in our city where we have people who want to do their education at home and they don't have the resources of a school system, they have us. I think those library services speak for themselves. We have had over for the last year, we had over 687,000 visits. That's not just to our brick and mortar actual building, but also to our online portals, to our websites, to the services that we offer digitally. And we had over 122,000 participants in our events and programs last year. Our goals this year are all about sustaining those services and seeking innovative ways to expand what we can do with them without expanding our budget. We're aware of the financial situation in the city and we are a department that does not bring in a lot of revenue. So we're seeking to contribute by making sure that we don't expand what we're spending right now. We are looking to sustain our established investments in our collections, which you'll see in a minute I'm not lowering in this budget, and providing a consistent and ongoing roster of programming, which maintains our existing community partnerships with organizations like the Children's Trust, like the For a Bright Future Foundation, like the State Library of Florida. And we are completing our in-progress capital projects in the library, but we are not adding any new ones this year. Excuse me. Excuse me one second. Yes.

Can you talk to the STEM program? Is that going to continue?

Yes, the STEM after school program is going on right now. This is a program that we do for after school Monday through Thursday for our teens. We have a cohort of 35 students this year who are signed up and actively attending as of Monday this week. They are receiving robotics training from the Augmented Intelligence Academy. They're also receiving professional quality video editing training through the For a Bright Future Foundation Lab. And in a partnership conversation I just had with the Museum of Contemporary Art this week, hopefully we're having some folks come in to do hands-on digital and modern art with them as well.

Thank you.

Absolutely. We're also expecting that we will have some anticipated increases in our external costs this year. We know our postage is going up, which makes a difference to our passport processing office, as we do send in passport applications for the folks using that office. We also know that our utility bills are going to go up. And we had a significant shift in our industry last year, where one of the three big book suppliers actually declared bankruptcy, and it was our supplier. We pivoted to a new supplier, which was great, but that has resulted in some increasing price in that marketplace as it's a much smaller overall marketplace now. There are fewer options to go to. So recognizing all of that, our goal here is maintaining our KPIs from last year. We want to see those numbers stay the same. I want to see as many people come in and use these resources as we had last year. I want to see us provide just as many books and provide just as many people programming. I am going to highlight a few significant budget reductions here. I'm sure you'll have questions about others. As you can see on this, we have ceased our practice in the past of leasing books. For those unaware, that's something you would do with a book supplier in order to get new bestsellers in the hands of patrons really quickly. They would send us everything new that came out this month. We'd get it out to a couple of patrons. They'd read them five times, and we'd send them back. And they would do that at a reduced cost as compared to us actually purchasing the book. now when we had that supplier go down the new suppliers that stepped in do offer leasing offers opportunities but those leasing opportunities are not really cost effective anymore compared to actually purchasing the item so we're going to go ahead and drop that completely out of our budget we will no longer do leasing and we will commit to purchasing items so that they can continue to be used in the community over and over again We can also see we've got a reduction of just under $18,000 in our books and memberships budget. That is because this year we conducted an internal audit of our digital offerings. We looked at our usage statistics. How many people are using these? What demographics are using them? What formats are they using them in? And do we have redundancies? And we did identify several areas where we had redundancies. A couple of vendors are essentially providing the same access to the same information. So we can slim that down by dropping one of them, which we're doing. And a few places where we went, look, the community is letting us know with their usage, they're just not using this one very much. So we're gonna go ahead and take that out of our budget and move those funds elsewhere so that we can continue to provide things that they are using. The bulk of our reduction this year, you'll see it on the right side of this slide, that's in our machinery and equipment budget. That number is a little over $157,000. Those were one-time machinery and equipment updates or responses to issues where we had breakdowns in materials that we don't anticipate recurring. So some examples would be our archival scanner needed servicing that turned out to be more expensive than we expected it to be. We completed that, or our shelving replacement project, which is still in progress but should be finished within the next couple of months. So that is the large majority of what we actually dropped out of our operating budget, because thankfully, we don't expect those things to happen again. So that is a place where we can slim that budget down without any of our community members actually feeling impact from it. Here's the quick overview of the upcoming budget. You can see we are recognizing the current financial situation in the city. We are reducing that budget from last year's peak of $2.74 million to an effective but conservative $2.05 million this year. That's a reduction of just over $689,000. Basically, we're lowering costs department-wide, but we are maintaining a reasonable personnel budget because that's our highest priority. If we don't have the people to help the people coming in, libraries are a people business. You need to come in and be able to work with people who can support you, so that's the majority of our budgeted information here. We've dropped mostly operating expenses that either we don't anticipate recurring or that weren't cost effective and could be slimmed down without anybody noticing. And our goal here is that exactly, that our community members don't notice that we reduced anything at all because they're getting exactly the same quality programming they were already getting. So finally, I would call what the library is doing this year being in maintenance mode, which is a good thing. Our goals are set to keep our established baselines consistent. We're going to have the same amount of materials available. We will have the same programming available. We will be open. We're still looking to improve for the future. Among other things, we're focusing on investing in our staff members. The one pain point that we don't have addressed right now is that we're not open as many hours as we would like to be. We don't have weekend hours right now, and as compared to our peer libraries in the area, that is a deficit that we'd like to address, and that's purely a staffing issue. Those staff positions we need for that are budgeted and are in this budget, so they do not represent us increasing anything. We just need to actually get through our hiring process, and we're working on that right now with the city manager's office, with HR. And we are working on alternative funding streams. I have a couple of feelers out to grants right now. We're hoping that we can get some of those so that we can expand some things this year without it having to impact our existing budget. We're talking to the state library right now about a grant of maybe about $25,000. And we're also talking to the For a Bright Future Foundation who provided our digital media lab They're discussing maybe giving us a financial technology lab that they would largely finance. So those are some projects coming up that we're pivoting out to. What can we bring in that won't impact our budget but that can still bring new things to the library and to the community it's serving? And what ways can we reach out through the rest of the community We're scaling back some of our programming, so what we're gonna do instead is partner with our Parks and Recreation Department, with our new communications department, so that we've got librarians out in the community seeing people, letting them know about the resources available to them, but not relying on them coming necessarily foot traffic directly to us. And as always, our mission statement is the same. We want to inspire and educate and push our community to excel. And we do that through books and speakers and performances and films and all the educational, entrepreneurial, and cultural program that is provided by our staff and our partners so that our community can continue to increase in well-being. And I really appreciate your time, everybody.

All right. Man, that was a really good presentation. Yeah.

Thank you very much. Yeah.

It was so good, I don't think she got any sleep. But just a little joke, but I like that. Effective yet conservative, right? Yeah, so we're gonna start with Commissioner Chernoff, go ahead.

Congratulations, beautiful job. The only question I have is on the proposed budget. The full time was 17 and 26 and now it's 10. What happened there?

Yes, so some positions actually moved to other departments. We previously had a division that was dedicated to marketing and outreach and a lot of that burden has actually been taken on by our wonderful new communications department. So a few of our positions actually moved to communications. So they're no longer here but they're still in the city and they're still serving us collectively. um one of our positions was also grant funded um that when we are talking to the children's trust to see if we can get that one back in so if it does that won't impact this budget but it will still represent someone who is there to serve thank you commissioner

Okay, we'll come back to Commissioner Hsu. Commissioner Jeon.

Thank you. That was a great presentation. Congratulations. I have a few questions about the bookmobile. I know I had found a grant. It was a one-time $3,000 grant. Wanted to see if we can look into that one, if it's a renewable one. I know we had gotten it, and also, did the bookmobile ever get its license plate?

I believe we do have a license plate. I certainly hope so. We've been driving it places.

No, we were driving it without, and that's why.

Hey, Commissioner Jean.

It's live, it's live, it's live. No, but no, what we were doing is parking it at city facilities, not driving it, but parking it at different city. So how would you park it without driving it? That's the magic that he was talking about.

We towed it there. Oh, I love that, Angie. That's a good one. He said we towed it to the different city.

The bookmobile does have plates. It does live at Fleet for security purposes, but we are driving it out to events so that it can be used to reach out to the community.

We talked about last budget cycle, a tour, that it would be able to go from different neighborhoods and have like... working hours in different neighborhoods, but I know that the limitation there was that we didn't have a staff member committed to the mobile. Is that the same situation that we have this time around?

That's correct. I'm actually down a couple of positions this year even as compared to last year. A few people resigned. I believe I lost four part-timers this year and I have two open full-time positions. Now, as I said, they're in the budget. We can rehire. But until we do that, that's the same pain point. We'd like to expand our hours and we'd like that bookmobile out on a regular route. We just need to get the personnel to do it.

So what was the number for the amount of people this time around, the foot traffic? The foot traffic.

Oh, foot traffic. Sorry.

I know you mentioned it.

So I gave you a combined one. Digital and foot traffic. That was 687,000 visits. So that's every time someone walked in the building, every time somebody went to our website, every time somebody used a digital thing, checked out a digital book, looked at a database, that number.

A couple more things. The Literacy Fair, how much is budgeted for that one?

Let me pull that line item out, because I have that separate.

In the meantime, the restrooms, are that part of CIP this year? Yes, yes. Okay, so that's not included in her budget? No, CIP. That's design, that's construction, which part is it? 100% done. Okay. Yes. All right. And then the question also, have we thought about a cafe? I know the North Miami Library had a cafe at one point. They had a vendor that came and did everything but got a percentage of the sales. That's a thought that I would want to put out there. And also, what's concerning to me is that you're being conservative, I'm looking at you, Mr. Manager. We're being conservative, but the traffic is going to stay increasing. So when you have limited staff there, it's still a red flag, me listening to it, because I'm like, if you're going to have increased amount of folks there coming through, but the staff is a little bit more constrained, I want to see how that's going to play out throughout the year. All right.

Well, let me address that again. We're overstaffed. Oh, we're overstaffed. So let's I mean, let's go through the numbers. We have approximately 600 staff, right, to serve 40,000 residents. Our sister city that has the same kind of budget model that we do, unlike Aventura, they have 60,000 residents and 400 staff. So they're serving 20,000 more residents with 200 less staff.

so no i get it but i'm saying in the context of the library then those numbers are not a broad stroke because they have such an influx of people coming to it so there's they still have more foot traffic than let's say the police station people coming there directly right so you know i i just that's a thought for me because i'm thinking you you have less staff at the library but still a high number of people coming through it So that's just, and another question is, once upon a time we had ours during their peak, your peak season, we had like five months where we were open on Sundays and Saturdays and Sundays. Give us some numbers in that. What would it look like for us to have, because we used to have, like this was probably like 10 or 15 years ago. We used to have Sundays for about four or five months or Saturdays as well.

so what i've requested is for weekend hours so the library will be open on the weekend so as she stated those uh bodies are already in the budget she just hasn't had the opportunity to hire for them yet and as soon as those bodies will be uh as soon as those bodies are budgeted and those positions are filled we will expand our library hours over the weekend yes

And to answer your question about the literacy fair, my literacy programs and celebrations budget for this year is budgeted at $14,000. That probably won't be all entirely the literacy fair, but that is the largest one that we do. So that'll be the one that we focus on.

So Mr. Manager, I also want 500,000 for them. I want that too. All right, so if we're overstaffed, is it possible that not just anybody can work at a library, but maybe we can, instead of having to let some of our employees go, that we can move them to the library? She's looking for employees. You're saying we're overstaffed.

No, she's hiring employees.

Right. She's hiring employees. But you're saying the city itself is overstaffed. So maybe from within.

We absolutely would love for any of the employees, all employees to look at those vacancies. And that's an opportunity. And we do push that out. And actually some positions we actually open only for current employees. So that is that is something we're looking to do.

I mean, it's a little bit more specialized to work at a library, but maybe with a little bit of training, it can happen.

Some of these positions are mandatory master's degree positions, but not all of them. So there are definitely some opportunities there. And also, what's going on with the Media Lab? The Media Lab is still active. It's part of our after school program. The instructor who is certified and then usually works with 4 Bright Future is actually in the process of moving to a new department right now, but he is still teaching classes. So that's one of the places where I need to rehire a position, get that person trained and certified so they can continue on with that program. But right now we're basically time sharing that employee with Parks to make sure that we don't have an interruption in that service.

Okay. And have you taken a tour of the Media Lab?

Yes, I have. I was trying to keep up with Commissioner Smith when she provided me a tour of the Media Lab. Luckily, I had my running shoes on that day, so I got to experience it.

That's my baby.

Yes, yes, yes.

All right, thank you.

For the record, I believe that you were the one that secured the vendor to provide the support for the Media Lab. Yes.

Thank you. You did a great job. Thank you. We're very grateful.

Commissioner Hsu, did you want to say something now? So I appreciate you, what you have done already in the couple weeks. We had a personal experience where we're trying to continue our relationship with MOCA, which has been extremely beneficiary for our children and the youth. have art programs available to them and to all of us that live in North Miami Beach that we get discounts to some of their wonderful, wonderful exhibits. But it concerns me that you're reducing operating expenses. The one thing that I really see of all the things that are different between the library and North Miami Beach itself is the fact that no matter what You do, whether it's Peruvian month, whether it's Haitian month, whether it's whatever the occasion, Christmas, Halloween. The amount of people that attend is usually standing room. It's crazy. Whereas North Miami Beach, we're lucky if we pull in people. It's just crazy. I don't want to diminish the performances. Some of them charge. The magician charges. The country singer charges. And those are some of the most enjoyable of all the programs for the children and the adults. I don't want to see the operating expenses diminishing one thing. And that's quite a number, 162,000. So I may have to make a request to my fellow commissioners that we make sure those operating expenses are decreased by maybe 62,000, 100,000 goes back to the library. With the manager smiling, and he's smiling in agreement, I'm sure.

Well, what I'd like to see is direction. It's not just I want to see $100,000 go to the library. It's going to be $100,000 coming from to go to the library because it's not like we're going to create the money, right? So we need direction on where to pull the money from.

Well, we're going to, as you look through and see where we have to...

The commission salary.

I found the money. You know, it's funny how people question the salary of the commissioners. But, you know, if you really watched us behind the scenes, you'd be less likely to, I didn't even know when I ran for office that we got compensated. But the longer I'm in office, the more I see it takes away from so much else. I just want to say, The direction will be maybe from the employees that you see are we're consolidating and not going to have 600 employees. We're going to bring it to a number that you see that you can have the highest quality of maintenance of a city and yet do it with the right amount of employees. The money can come, and the direction for what the money's gonna be used for is simple, not to diminish the programs.