City Commission Regular Meeting - Special Meeting

Many people it takes to run everything.

It's how well all the departments work together and how well each of the departments know about other departments. So in the case of a big emergency, they already know what other departments are already supposed to do, and they all work together.

This is always a dance. There's always moving parts. There's always things that are that can impact a decision, whether it's state, local, federal, revenue. All these things come into play, and it's and it's just amazing with all these things that how how the city is impacted for the variety of things that can occur.

I feel more confident in the city in the way it operates. I don't see wet wasteful spending. I see a lot of proactive thinking way outside the box of what I thought a city does.

Well, I was already in love with Northport. I think everyone knows that. I got to meet the people who work here, their love for the community, how hard it is to run a whole city, the intricacies of it, and the why. It answers so many questions about the why things are done the way they're done. So it does, it empowers you to love where you live more and to get more involved.

And I think the important message here is the confidence that I really feel now of the people running each each of these departments. You know, they are running multimillion dollar businesses all separately, but coming together with tax dollars that that come through, And that is by far not an easy task.

Departments that we've been to seem to have improved with the growth in the city. So the mere fact that we've grown such a major amount, the department has grown, the staff has grown, the offerings have grown, and the need for involvement from the residents has also grown.

I think Parks and Rec really showed up and did an amazing job. They had a bunch of staff people. They kind of brought us around, had different speakers. I think they take the prize for the best overall display.

Places that I didn't think I would enjoy as much, like, didn't think I'd enjoy public works as much as I did. I loved it. And it seemed to me that there are the more questions that were asked.

The economic development council, I think that is just a again, it all points to live, work, and play within our community.

I think there's a lot of misunderstanding out there about really how these departments work, how the city really works. And I think by offering a class like this, you get such an exposure to so many different departments and meet so many different people. You can't help but wanna be a

part of it. If you plan on living here and living amongst the community and understanding the growth and understanding what we need, definitely join the North Court here.

You're gonna be Good afternoon. Today is Thursday, 05/07/2026. It's 1PM. We're in the city chambers, and I call the city commission special meeting to order. Commissioners present are commissioner Duval, commissioner Stokes, mayor Emerge, vice mayor Langdon, and commissioner Petro.

There is a quorum present for this meeting. Also present are city manager Fletcher, city attorney Fawino, city clerk Faust, board specialist Linder, police chief Garrison, and fire chief Titus are in the back. I am requesting that all commissioners, public participants, and staff maintain order and decorum throughout this meeting. City commission policy twenty twenty one dash zero three states that attendees shall refrain from engaging in personal attacks, boisterous, immaterial, inflammatory, obscene, profane, or disorderly conduct. Thank you. I'm gonna call on mister Doyle if he would lead us

in the pledge of allegiance today.

Thank you, sir. Gonna request a motion to approve the agenda. So moved.

Second.

I have a motion on the floor made by commissioner Stokes, seconded by vice mayor Langdon to approve the agenda. There's nothing to that. Please vote. That passes five to zero. Sitting clerk, public comment?

Mike Adams. Commissioners, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Michael, and I'm here as a resident who cares deeply about our parks and recreation department. Parks and recreation are not extras in our community. They are essential services that keep our residents healthy, safe, and connected.

Our parks, community centers, and programs give kids a positive place to go after school, support seniors with social and fitness opportunities, offer families affordable ways to be active together. These are the very things that make our city a place where people want to live, work, and invest. Budget cuts to parks and recreation may look like short term savings, but they create long term costs. When programs are reduced and facilities are deferred, we see increased wear on our infrastructure, fewer safe outlets for youth, and higher health and public safety costs over time. It is much more expensive to rebuild a weakened system later than it is to maintain a strong one now.

Our parks and recreation staff have shown they can do more with less, leveraging grants, partnerships, volunteers, and creative programming to stretch every dollar. Cutting their budget would now cutting their budget now would limit their ability to keep facilities safe, maintain fields, playgrounds, and provide the events and programs that hold our community together. I respectfully urge you to protect and when possible prioritize funding for parks and recreation. The choices you make in this budget will shape our quality of life for years to come, especially for our children and our seniors. Please view parks and recreation as the critical infrastructure for health, safety, economic vitality, and community pride.

Thank you for your time and for your service to our community. Robin Samicente. In reviewing all the presentations provided, my focus will be on parks and recreation. Given the current budget constraints, capital improvements needed, and the uncertainty of legislative actions, I propose that the city seriously consider the creation of a dependent recreation district according to chapter four eighteen of the Florida statutes. In doing this, it will help the city in providing the necessary and quality service that the Parks and Recreation Division currently provides and help to alleviate the continued strain on to the general fund.

It would be funded through non ad valorem assessments, user fees, subsidized through the general fund, revenue bond, and grants. I would hate to see services cut from their budget when there is another option that is available to a municipality. Thank you for con your consideration. Michelle Moore. I am a twenty one year resident of Northport, a graduate of Northport University, and a proud alumni of leadership Northport.

As a local small business owner, artist, and chamber of commerce member, I am commenting today on the critical importance of protecting the budgets for park re parks and recreation, social services, and communications. Regarding parks and recreation, as an artist and business owner, I see firsthand how our parks serve as the galleries and living rooms of our city. Our population has grown over 96,000, and the demand for health and wellness infrastructure has never been higher. Programs like the Northport Paint Posse provide community glue that attracts families and entrepreneurs. Quality parks are directly linked to higher property values.

Cutting this budget is a disinvestment in Northport brand. Regarding social services, these are the foundation of a stable economy. We cannot have a thriving community if our seniors and families in transition are left without a safety net. These services prevent the larger, more expensive social costs that occur when a city fails to support its own. Protecting this budget is a matter of fiscal responsibility. Regarding communications, transparency is the currency of a successful city. To cut this budget now, just as the city is making strides in engagement, will be a massive step backwards. You cannot grow a city efficiently if the lines of communications are weakened. Commissioners, I ask you to see these three departments not as expenses, but as essential services that allow our community to remain at home. Please do not cut these budgets.

Let's keep Northport moving forward, not sliding back. Thank you. Melissa Tanguay. As a concerned citizen, I respectfully respectfully ask the city commission to carefully reconsider any proposed budget cuts our communications and social services departments. These departments play a critical role in the safety, stability, and overall well-being of our community, especially during times of crisis, whether natural disasters or human caused emergencies.

In recent years, particularly following hurricane Ian, our community has experienced firsthand how essential clear communication and strong social support systems truly are. The communications department ensures residents receive timely accurate information regarding emergency response, public safety updates, road closures, recovery efforts, and available resources. Reducing funding in this area could significantly impact the city's ability to effectively communicate during emergencies, leading to confusion, delayed response, and increased risk to residents. Likewise, social services provides vital support to vulnerable members of our community, including seniors, families, individuals facing hardship, and those recovering from disaster related challenges. These services help maintain community morale, public welfare, and long term recovery.

Budget reductions could weaken the support system many residents rely on during difficult times. Strong communities are built not only through infrastructure, but through communication, preparedness, and compassion. I urge you to consider the long term impact these cuts may have on public safety, emergency response, community trust, and the overall resilience of our city before casting your vote. Thank you for your time and consideration. In person, I have Debbie Blackwell followed by Tim Doyle and Joan Morgan.

How in the world are you? It is good to see. It is a beautiful day in Northport. I am speaking, of course, on Warm Mineral Springs. The last time I was here, I was concerned about lollygagging.

The culture, conservation, community and commerce of Northport will all benefit from turning Warm Mineral Springs Park and the 60 Acres, the conservation easement, into a polished manicured eco resort that serves the public like a Conde Nast destination if you do the work. The Grasshopper and the Ant During the springtime, the grasshopper sang and floated around while the ant diligently prepared for bad weather. When the bad weather arrived, the ant was safe and sound and the grasshopper was left to deal with chaos. Looking to what could occur if property taxes vanished from the state, let us be confident to the firm establishment of the Springs Wellness Park. There are no shortcuts.

Do the work. Be prepared like the ant and get this moneymaker open like a star. Warm Mineral Springs is a moneymaker. It's open the back 60 acres, get a spa open and running and an amphitheater, concert, star parties, build a nature pavilion biking chicken hut or two. Get it started. Culture, conservation, community and commerce are all the baseline things on an eco resort, which it's already making money, it's already making a profit. Let's step forward and get this mess cleaned up. There are no shortcuts. Do the work. And put people before profits.

Conservation. Toronto and Texas don't care about the real Florida. So you don't have to say yes to everything that comes down the pike. Community healthy environments are integral for a healthy community. When I compare Northport to Charlotte, Port Charlotte, I see that we are very safe. We are just very healthy. We have beautiful parks and I don't want to lose that. The healthy environments create a sound population. Commerce, the money to make and maintain the gem is present. The money is there. Just maintain it. Don't give it away. Culture, the stories that that place can tell. It is amazing. I just love to read about the parks.

You give back to the Native Americans, the Spanish conquistadors, they found a fountain of youth there, right? And the archaeologists. You could have a murder dinner party there, you know, just with all the things that have happened there just with the archaeologists and the divers. Again, do the work. There are no shortcuts. Free the Parks and Recreation Department to do what they do best because they are dynamic. Thank you. Thank you.

I bought my 2¢. We might not be able to say that much longer in this country. So I guess I wanna kinda start off where I left off at the last meeting because it was corroborated that it was the county that was on that piece of paper. There was a nice young lady who spoke up here on behalf of the nonprofits and tried to explain the difference in nonprofits. I agree with that. I have done a lot of work with nonprofits, all different kinds. I've sponsored golf events. I don't play golf, but I would go anyway. I would give tickets to people. So I understand the difference.

I don't know how anybody can consider the county of Sarasota a nonprofit. Northport is incorporated. You're not a nonprofit if you're incorporated. So I would like to see anything that we give to the county charged at full price. If not, those are the type of people we should make money off. Remember, it's our money anyway. We'll send it to them. We're just getting it back in a different way. So I I would really look at because I don't know what they are using in town. I don't know what they're being charged.

I don't know what they're being charged for the rooms over here. I don't know. That's your department. But I think that there's no way in HE double hockey sticks that they are a nonprofit. I don't I don't see it. So if we have to make determinations on what nonprofits to help and we only have a limited number of resources, those resources should go to the nonprofits that need it the most, who have the little bit of a funding. Some nonprofits like the Boys and Girls Club, I've supported them. We've given them a ton of money. They were right. They they are in a different tier than some of the other ones.

And there's no way anybody could explain to me or I'll even accept that the county is a nonprofit. Do you donate money to the county? Has any of you ever donated money to the county? I wonder if anybody in this room ever donated money to the county. They probably had to pay a tax bill to send them money, and I don't think I would ever break up my checkbook to make a donation to the county. And the county, to me I've said this for years. And you go back, I've been coming to this room for a long time. Some of you know that. Some of you don't. This isn't the first time I brought up the county and not doing anything for us, but it's the truth.

So I would not describe the county as a nonprofit. I would like it removed as a nonprofit.

Thank you.

Hi, Joan Morgan. I agree with a lot of the things that were said today, but I know you all agree, you have to agree, that our parks are phenomenal. Yesterday, again, voila, a new beginning for the Pine Park. It's phenomenal. Our circle of honor is gonna be happening very, very soon.

None of us want to see the parks, and we have the best workers in park and recreation. And let me tell you something, if every couple months, their job is in jeopardy or they think they are going to be fired or they think they are going to be this or that or the other thing, guess what? There are other facilities that want them because we have got the best. So we really need to consider the fact that these people want some job security. They want You know, look at what they do.

I mean, there's no one now that can sit back and say the parks don't do it all. And social service is the same way. Take social services out of Northport, reduce social services in Northport, and God help us all. Okay? They do it.

They're magnificent, And we need them, and I know you're not against them, but we all have to work together to find that way. I don't care how it is, I don't care what it is, but we all need to find a way to make all of these services good for the people because that's what makes us a city. That's what makes us a community. That's what makes people want to stay here, live here, raise their kids here. We've come a long, long way, folks, and please, let's not slip back.

Thank you. I'm gonna move on to general business. Item 26Dash0700, discussion and possible action regarding the Parks and Recreation Department's details of service deliveries. City manager, this is your item. Thank you,

mister mayor. As I introduce this item, I first wanna start by saying that the commission did not ask for these particular items to be discussed today directly. There are things that I've heard from not only the commission but the public as well as it relates to some of the services that we provide that are not listed on the Doge list that I provided on March 13, but they're listed as enhanced services, not core services. If you remember, the Doge Lans, they look at the core services of public safety, which includes fire, rescue, and police, as well as public works and utilities. And so anything outside of that bucket is an enhanced service.

And hearing things from the public such as wanting a smaller government or, you know, wanting to reduce our budget, which is what we're doing this year, this year's budget exercise, I thought it was good to have these discussions to make sure that we're on the same page as we continue to develop those budgets, which has not been easy with what I've asked our leadership to do. But we do wanna acknowledge the real economic pressures that residents are feeling. We know that at grocery store, at the gas pump, or even on their tax bills, they feel what's going on in this county, the city, and this country, and they look to us for relief. So today, we're going to look at parks and recs through an outcomes lens and hopefully not a line item lens as we evaluate their service level delivery. It states in our road sports vision that an innovative, friendly, engaging, and sustainable community where residents, businesses, and visitors can flourish.

And I wanna emphasize that word flourish, not survive or get by. Flourish. And Parks and Rec is one of the primary delivery mechanisms for making sure that vision comes to life in our people's daily journeys. It also states in our Northport vision statement that we are to provide exceptional service to our entire community for the continuous enrichment of quality of life through transparency, engagement, and respect. Note the mission says exceptional service, not adequate, not minimal, or viable.

Parks and Rec is not just meeting that standard. They are one of the most visible departments living in and exceeding it every single day. The adopted strategic plan vision plan includes a quality of life pillar that says protect and promote Northport's community wellness and its natural resources, recreational assets, cultural diversity, and heritage. Strategic priority two under that pillar calls for a robust active system of parks and recreation facilities, programs, events, and services that increase wellness and enrich life experience. What is being considered today is whether to pull back from a priority this commission has adopted, and that deserves careful deliberation and discussion for the board to decide what kind of park services the board would like to deliver.

I'm now gonna turn it over to our parks and recs director, Sandy Funheller, for a short presentation, and then I'll close-up afterwards.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you.

Thank you. For the record, Sandy Fenheller, Parks and Recreation Director. So we are going to go through our service delivery focusing on three areas: cost recovery, special events, and parks. The department supports and operates 30 park and facility sites with one additional site in development, which is the Circle Of Honor that will be opening towards the end of the month. This includes four core facilities, the Morgan Family Community Center, the George Mullen Activity Center, the North Port Aquatic Center, and Warm Mineral Springs Park.

Collectively, these core facilities serve more than 620,000 individuals annually. The park system spans over six fifty acres and offers a diverse mix of active and passive amenities that serve residents of all ages. The department is also proudly recognized as a nationally accredited agency, only one of two twenty two accredited agencies nationwide, representing less than 3% of parks and recreation organizations across the country. And that is important because it shows that our agency is operating, with the highest professional standards. It drives continuous improvement.

We are constantly reviewing those standards to make sure that we're not only meeting them, we're documenting it, we're showing that we're doing it. It strengthens accountability through an outside audit. It also attracts and retrain staff. We're going to go over the organizational evolution, performance metrics, cost recovery model and community benefit, our community benefit framework, special events and our park system and maintenance. So just to give a big picture of where we started and where we are today.

So in 2018, the department was established. It used to be a division under general services. And that was established encompassing recreation, park maintenance, aquatics and administration. The former property maintenance division was dissolved at that time and the operations were redistributed to Parks and Recreation and Public Works. Then in 2019, the North Port Aquatic Center opened, and then Atwater Splash Pad transitioned to Parks and Recreation, and that eliminated a $46,000 budget impact by coming under Parks and Recreation where we had staff capable of providing that maintenance and operation.

2021, the city assumed full responsibility for maintenance and operation of 19 sports fields and courts and two specialty parks following the expiration of the Sarasota County interlocal agreement. Reservation team and an athletic field crew were added to our team, to support that transition with a partial year cost of 62,000 and 350,500. 2022, our budget expanded to include almost $1,000,000 in recurring maintenance costs following that interlocal agreement expiration. Warm Mineral Springs Park closed ahead of Hurricane Ian that year and remained shut due to the storm damage. Commission directed termination of the Warm Mineral Springs Park site management agreement and expedited park reopening.

The Warm Mineral Springs Park site management agreement was terminated in March 2023, And then we reopened Warm Mineral Springs Park under Parks and Recreation in April 2023 under a hybrid staffing model. So what we're trying to show here is while our budget has increased every year, there have been major organizational changes that have been what pushed that to happen. Some performance metrics. Looking at the national, the industry medium, our cost recovery for the department, we're at 51.3%. The industry medium is 27.2.

Residence per total parks and facilities, 3,210 here in Northport and the median is 2,411. Acres of parkland per 1,000 residents, 5.3. Here in Northport, 10.2 is the median. FTEs per 10,000 residents were at 7.9. The median is 8.6.

Operating expenditures per capita, dollars 106.82 as compared to 103.13. And the revenue per capita, 31.5 for City Of Northport compared to $28.63 nationally. The cost recovery model and community benefit for Parks and Recreation, our model is designed to be a balance of financial sustainability with equitable community access. This approach ensures that the programs benefiting the entire community remain affordable or free, while services with higher individual benefit recover a greater share of their costs. According to NRPA agency performance review, the typical parks and recreation agency recovers a quarter of its operating expenditures from nontax revenue.

Again, as I had just mentioned, our cost recovery rate, not including free events, is 51.3%, nearly double the national average. This brings a reduced reliance on the general fund and it delivers high value at low taxpayer cost. Our cost recovery breakdown, recreation is at 34.05 and again, I believe we've mentioned this in previous presentations, recreation is where all of the citywide events live. Aquatics is at 56.82. And we look at that seasonally and want to point out that during our prime season in the summer, we're actually at 111.8%.

And then Warm Mineral Springs Park comes in at 148.97. Administration and park maintenance divisions do not generate direct revenue. They are support divisions and they are included in that overall department cost recovery. Our community benefit framework. We have them categorized into tiers, based on a balance of community versus individual benefit.

So tier one, that's mostly community benefit. Lower fees, higher subsidy. Then you go on up to tier two, more of a community benefit and a moderate subsidy. Next, balanced individual and community benefit, then considerable individual benefit, a higher cost recovery, and then mostly individual that has the highest cost recovery. And the reason we do this is to ensure fairness and affordability across demographics.

It supports a balance of mix and mix of free low cost, full cost recovery programs. It aligns with our CAPRA standards for service quality, and it guides our annual program review and fee adjustments. This is a graphic that shows you that community benefit framework. So at the bottom, mostly community benefit, things like parks, trails, playgrounds, signature events. Next level would be our youth league reservations, senior center rental, free community programs and events.

Above that is our youth and teen programs, our swim lessons, fee based community events and programs, moving up to adult leagues, rentals, fitness classes, camps and out of school care. And then at the top, mostly individual benefit for private swim lessons, Warmineral Springs Park admission, the water park admission, and any individual programs that we offer. Moving on to special events. We have about 33,000 annual attendees that come to the city of Northport for our events. There's 91% of park and recreation agencies that offer special events.

It's pretty common. And it's one of the top three ways that residents engage with parks. And it's a core driver of civic pride, tourism and resident connection. Our signature events, they are from 6,000 to 12,000 attendees generally. That's our Freedom Festival, our Poinsettia Parade and Festival, and our Trick or Treat at City Center. The funding model is primarily city funded. It's free admission, and we have sponsorships that offset expenses. We boost tourism and the local economy and city visibility. Free community events. Those are about 300 to 1,500 attendees.

That's like the egg hunt, Movies on the Green, Wolfstock. Funding model is city funded and in kind support. It's inclusive, accessible family programming, and it builds community. Then we have our fee based community events. Generally, 75 to 300 attendees, things like the Sweetheart Ball, Pumpkin Plunge, Swim with Santa funding model, its cost recovery through participant fees, and there's also sponsorships that will enhance that.

The cost recovery thank you. Cost recovery while expanding diverse offerings, and it supports financial sustainability and program variety. Then we have outreach events, 50 to 100 attendees. That's like Park Rx Day, Kids to Parks Day, and Go Green. The funding model is no to low cost. It's often tied to nationally recognized observance days. Thank you very much. And it's generally educational, health focused, and it reaches underserved populations. You guys are awesome.

So

special events. This is a breakdown of our signature events and our free events. What you don't see on here are fee based events because those are recovering their costs in full, all the direct costs. So when you look at our signature events, Freedom Festival, our attendance was just over 8,000. The direct cost, the direct expenses for that event, so not including any of the staff, 74,280.

The actual cost was 70,597. So that gives you a cost per attendee of $8.32 So I won't go through all of them, but we've broken this down for each of the signature events and the free events so that you can see that cost per attendee. The one that I will call out is our Concert in the Park series, where it is showing that the actual was $100 We were able to get a sponsor that paid for that Concert in the Park series. Otherwise, it would have been closer to that $3,900 cost. Park system, our parks, our foundational community infrastructure, we deliver measurable value and cost savings across public health and wellness, safety, environmental resilience, and economic impact.

According to research by Trust for Public Lands, every $1 invested in parks can yield up to $4 in economic benefits, including increased property values, public health savings, and environmental services like cleaner air, storm water capture, and urban cooling. Some of the key points under health. Free accessible spaces, reduced risk of chronic disease and obesity, lower long term health costs, well-being, inclusive for all ages. It builds trust and social connection, and it strengthens community. Safety.

It supports crime prevention. It provides positive alternatives to youth and reduces delinquency. When the kids are at our community centers and engaged in activities, they're not outside doing something else that they shouldn't be. Environmental resilience and stewardship, the tree canopy cooling and heat relief, storm water capture and flood reduction, and protected biodiversity. An economic impact, increased visitation, it boosts property values, and it supports tourism.

Public satisfaction and trust. According to the Center for Active Design, people who live near parks are more likely to be satisfied with their local government. In two dozen US communities, those living near popular public parks reported greater satisfaction with their parks and recreation department 2914% greater satisfaction with their police department and 13% greater satisfaction with their mayor. 90 of US adults consider parks and recreation an important local government service, and residents visit park and recreation facilities an average of 22 times per year. According to the Trust for Public Lands, parks can contribute to the strong stronger overall community morale and improve residents' perception of their local government, higher satisfaction with public services and leadership.

Park system snapshot, six fifty acres of parkland, like I mentioned before, 30 parks and facilities. That is broken down into three community parks, nine neighborhood parks, 13 special use facilities, one in development, which is the Circle of Honor, two greenways, one open space,

and two

conservation. We've had 850,000 visitors to our parks, 3,527 athletic field reservations, and 3,700 youth that we serve in our parks. Our park maintenance division maintains and prepares 20 athletic fields, supporting our sports leagues and community athletic programs. Our staff ensure that the fields are safe, aesthetically pleasing, and they are prepared for intensive use sports. Annual field improvements include new sod installation, aeration, top dressing, and verti cutting to protect player safety and field playability.

In addition to athletic fields, the division provides full maintenance for 30 park sites citywide. Responsibilities include playground safety inspections and repairs, irrigation system maintenance, landscaping and tree services, park amenity repairs and restroom cleaning. The division also conducts environmental water testing, administers the city's tribute program for memorial trees and benches, and maintains specialized amenities such as kayak launches and dog friendly areas. Although, as I mentioned before, the Park Maintenance Division does not generate direct revenue, Its work is essential to the department's overall revenue capacity. We have all of our youth athletic leads using the parks.

And we also have a youth and adult and then we have all different levels of private leagues that are using it. The level of service for park maintenance. I'm not going to go through all these, but the point of it was to let you know that we do have different levels of service for the different types of parks. And there are different modes. And it just kind of says what the frequency is and what the tasks are that we do there.

So if we were looking to do any reductions in level of service to the parks, that's what we would look at. And we could tell you what that impact was going to be, whether if we're visiting a park once a week or twice a week, what that reduction is, or if we're not going to mow as frequently or reduce the trash collection. Those are the kind of things we could look at and give you an idea of what the impact would be to the residents. And with that, I'm going to say thank you. We appreciate being able to share the value and the impact and the importance of the North Port Parks And Recreation Department.

High quality parks, programs and facilities are essential to supporting health and wellness, strengthening community connections and enhancing the quality of life for our residents. And we appreciate your continued support as we work to maintain and thoughtfully expand our park system. And with that, I will answer any questions. I have my team here of experts that can also help answer questions.

Thank you, director. But before they ask their questions, one more final piece for you, mister mayor. I do wanna point out that the Parks and Recs Department is exceeding their own city appointed KPIs. Also, the strategic plan includes a good government priority to have city departments attain state and national accreditation, which has been stated earlier that they have done one of only two twenty two agencies nationwide. We said achieving accreditation from the city has a strategic goal, and they've achieved it.

Reducing the department now sends a signal that our strategic commitments are negotiable when budget's tightened, which is not a good message. They are anchored to our organizational values, including innovation, the cost recovery model, customer service, 620,000 plus visit to four facilities, 850,000 park visits citywide. Accountability, the department tracks outcomes against national benchmarks and presents them transparently to this commission. Diversity, programs span all ages, income levels, and abilities, ensuring equitable access across the community. They also have a share of the general fund, which is modest.

It's but it's a strong contribution to why people choose to live, stay, and invest in Northport. In a city that reduces our parks programs while growing and signaling it, cannot keep pace with its own ambitions. There are some trade offs that I have sort of contemplated with the team, and it could require a broader conversation about outsourcing some of these current services that we have. Whether there are services that we provide, we know that when you do that, there's a risk to service quality, responsiveness, and community identity. But also, there are some of the events that we've talked about where the city has sort of absorbed them over the years and it might be time to consider do we stop doing certain events.

Some events as was mentioned, you could raise the fees for that would allow them to be more cost effective, but that could, you know, price out some of the working families in our city without a lot of network or private alternatives, which could sort of hurt our equity goals in our plan. And we've also talked about which we've done in our budget process is scaling back some of the maintenance, which could have consequences on safety or revenue capacity and community appeal that are hard to come back from. In this current year's budget, what we have done since the last time I spoke to you on March 13 is they have done an exercise where they have provided a budget request that has been reduced by $400,000. And that includes reductions to the d five program, the elimination of a couple of programs like the egg hunt, movies on the green, concert in the parks, and rock and roll rock and run and roll five k. Some of the other items have been reduced but still maintained as existing events, including the trick or treat center event, park amenities, field amenities, the Freedom Festival, court resurfacing, reduction of mulch, refresh of landscape beds, contracted trash removal reduction, staff and facility hours reduction, and part time staff reduction.

So they have completely exercised even though their budget is tight to do it. And I think that's what that was the direction we got from the board. And I think that amount that we they have reduced is very critical to us making that number. But overall, these items, they're like invisible threads that hold our community together, and they make people wanna stay here and invest here and raise families here. And sometimes a city can measure what it cost to maintain a park, but it's not easily to measure what it can cost if we lose one.

So we also might lose resident satisfaction, lower property values, and erosion of our public pride and trust in a place where people call home. Thanks for listening today, and we're happy to answer any questions you might have on the direction of how we continue to fill out parks and recs budget for this year.

Alright. Commissioners, but since you brought it up about outsourcing, how much is currently being outsourced at this time?

I think the question that you asked me earlier was what part of our facilities maintenance was done in house versus out out out house? And

No. Sure. So I

was asking about park maintenance.

I can answer we have seven sites that are currently outsourced for mowing. Those are Marius Kirk Marina, the Swales At Nuremore Park, Warmineral Springs, both interior and exterior and the environmental park. In house, we have 22 sites that staff are responsible for. And each year, as part of budget process, we look at that annual cost per acre. Outsourced mowing right now is costing on average about $7,470 annually per acre.

And in house, it's costing us $4,127 So in house right now is much less than outsourcing. We did not come forward with bringing any of those seven sites that are still outsourced in house. We understood that the direction was no new staff, so we did not propose that as an option.

But what was the total? You're giving me acreage. What's the total

that that

part of record

is paying in contracted?

I should have staff pull that up that number while we're talking.

I'd like to know that number. And because if it's a fair trade, then maybe a couple more employees rather than the contractual services. We're employing people and we're keeping it in house. It benefits other families out there as well.

The one thing I will say to that, while operationally, we absolutely would cost less for us to do it in house, There is that upfront capital cost that we would need to take care of, which, you know, the the individual is gonna need a vehicle, they're gonna need a trailer, they're gonna need a mower and a utility cart of the big ticket items and then, of course, all the different tools that they need. But, onboarding that one groundskeeper position fully loaded, with salary, benefits, and that initial equipment for a year is about 171,000.

And it would depend on what we have as inventory for equipment because equipment can be shared. You know, not everybody has to have their own personal mower, their own personal truck. They can combine services together. There is ways around that is what I am getting at for that.

Completely understand and that is what we are doing now. So it would require some upfront capital cost.

Question that I had was on the Poinsettia parade. You you said the budget was $47,002.50 and the actual was, 52,782. Now what do we get for sponsorships for those? I know we have two sponsors, but yet it was still over budget and we have sponsorships. So what what do the sponsors pay?

Well, under there's that just changed. You all just approved the new sponsorship policy, so the the sponsorship revenue will be increasing. But I believe annually, we've brought in about somewhere in the mid-thirty thousand dollars in cash contributions and probably double that in the in kind contributions. So we can provide a breakdown per event. I don't have it right here in front of me, but I'm sure staff can get that. Under the old sponsorship program, you're talking about a presenting sponsor was paying only $2,000 to have top billing for that event. Now, that'll be going up based on the direct cost of the event. We

I believe them to cover the whole cost,

I just wanted to know what the breakdown was. So it was $2,000 before for presenting. And now it'll shift. It could be $4,000 it could be $6,000 It depends on which event it is, the attendees that have come to it, the amount of expenses associated with it. We have a whole plan for that. And then we have different levels that will come in the tiers that are cash contributions as well.

And I know you had said that you're working on some of the smaller, events like the movies on the green, the ad con, Wolfstock, and stuff like that about possibly turning them back over to non profits or whatever. I'll let you work on that in the future to see what those numbers come out to. But if you're working on it, I'm not going to go on that. But I do have a question. What's the reduction to DeFi? What are you working on there?

Mean, that's

a very important

that operationally will impact the program. It's actually removing the one time costs, the startup costs that we have, which would be removed anyways. But we have also been able to use the opioid settlement funds to fund that program. So now instead of coming out of general fund, it is coming out of opioid settlement funds.

Okay. And that is fine. I just wanted to make sure that the services for D5 were not being reduced.

No, not at all. And to answer your question just on one of the events, the Poinsettia Parade and Festival last year, we brought in $7,000 in cash contributions and then, I'm not sure how much in kind, but we also had many services provided in kind.

Yeah. I'm I'm not looking at trying to downgrade any of our, you know, key events at all. I just wanted to have a breakdown on some of the numbers. And my last question, we have basketball leagues in the Morgan Center and Mullen Center. Do they pay for the use of the gymnasium for their leagues?

I'm sorry. I didn't hear the full question.

Basketball leagues at the Morgan And Mullen Center?

Do they

pay for the

The adult leagues that we run are full cost recovery.

Okay.

The youth basketball league, it has a special rate in the fee schedule that is highly discounted for that I'm

fine with that. I just wanted to make sure if it was adults, they can pay to play. That's all I'm saying. So I appreciate that.

Sure. And Cheryl Brenner, our business manager, has the answer to your question. Good afternoon, Commission. For the outsourced mowing, we are at $115,000 combined between Park Maintenance and Warm Mineral Springs annually. The For contractors. Right. Thank you.

That's all I wanted to know. You. All right. Commissioner Duvall.

Thank you, Mayor. Thanks for the update.

You mentioned

that we have 19 sports fieldscourts. Do we have a program? I know I travel around the country a little bit and especially on ballparks, football fields, soccer fields, baseball fields. We'll see signs from businesses advertising. Do we have a program to look for advertisers for any of our sports fields?

Currently, we do not do that. Historically, that has been something that the leagues, have done, and that's one of their main fundraisers to support, all the volunteer based leagues. So if we did start doing that, it would impact our our youth athletic leagues.

Okay. Also, you know, I liked what I heard when you said that the the concert in the park was paid for by somebody else, basically. And those you know, I went to that I went to one of those myself. And in the wintertime, you know, those it's a community event. People bring their own chairs, you know, show up and and to have a program like that, you know, I try and get it on some kind of a regular basis, you know, during the winter months.

In the summertime, when it's, you know, a 110% humidity and 95, people don't wanna sit out there. But I think that's an ex excellent program. And overall, thank you.

Thank you.

That's it.

Thank you, sir. Commissioner Petro.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for your presentation and all the work you guys do. Really appreciate that. I have a question on a sponsorship thing. On May 5, we had a resolution twenty twenty six dash r dash 10, and we voted on it.

And a motion was made by vice mayor Langton. And then under the general business, we had a motion that was made by the same by vice mayor to direct the Centimeters to explore to direct the city manager to explore event sponsorship opportunities and or sponsorship program to be brought back to the city commission for review. None of us caught it. We didn't catch it. But we do have a policy.

You all approved a policy, an amended policy that went into effect when the resolution was approved. That has been added to the city's website. And so the policy is the framework for the sponsorship program. And then we have the, what we call the, our slide deck, that presents each event and what the opportunities are and what the associated fee would be for that contribution to that event.

So that is correct. So that motion that under the general business 26 dash agenda item 26 dash six eleven, How what impact this would make? Or is it just gonna fall off? Because we already have a policy in place.

So I did talk to the city clerk about that, and I believe she was gonna bring back an item on the nineteenth.

Yes. It'll be on the May 19 agenda to rescind that motion. To To rescind the motion that was made to To cancel. City manager. Yes.

To cancel that. Yes. Mhmm. Okay. I guess none of us we we voted and then we we voted again to make a policy where we have a policy already. Maybe it's not well known policy because you're still working out the details.

The policy is posted. There was a policy already. And we just amended the policy based on the workshop. Think it was a workshop where we came in front of you and told you the things that we were looking to change, time frame, payment windows, and the benefits under each of the different levels.

And switching from two sponsors on the parade to one sponsor?

One event, one sponsor, yes.

Okay. Just wanted to kind of clarify what did we vote on, even though we voted on. But my question also on visitors, how did you track that number of 850,000 visitors? How did you track that?

Sure. So I'm gonna have Scott Jawlin come down. He's our accreditation coordinator. He's also responsible for all of our data and our metrics, and we have a software program that that we have that gives us

that information. He can give you a little more information.

Yes. So Scott Jawlin, accreditation ation coordinator. We have a contract with a company called City Data AI, and we utilize, cell phone ping, to visitors to our parks. So it's it's a common program. There's a lot of new companies that are doing that now, but it's, we're able to track and it's even be able to go back into history. But as far as people that have cell phones, where they came from, and we we track it that way, we get a report monthly on a dashboard. So, it's not exact. We know we don't have someone sitting in their county, but it's as close as we can pretty much get into the industry right now.

And how much do we pay for that service? Is it the annual contract? Or

We we can look it up.

Yeah.

It it's it's under I believe it's under a purchase order, not a contract. Yeah.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. And I know out of general fund, your budget is about how much would it would it be? 8,000,000.

In total, we're about 8 a little over 8,000,008

point In a percentage.

Percentage? I That

is 8.2 say 8%.

So that's fairly small, but yet you provide a lot of services to the city. And would you ask us, as far as the budget, what would you want us to do for the next year? As far as I know you said well, the city manager said cut that, cut the mowing. How would you approach that as far as cuts? Where would you concentrate your cuts?

So, we we did that exercise. We were asked to cut approximately, 400 and can't

and $4.18, I think.

$418,000 So what we tried to do is look at it with what can we cut that does not impact the core service that we provide. So things like uniforms, things like promotional items, some of our advertising, reduced that. We reduced some of the landscaping supplies. So where, the parks may have been remulched on a certain schedule, it might be less than that. Things that we probably will get, customer feedback that it doesn't look like it used to, but it's not reducing the level so drastically that we couldn't do our core services.

We also looked at some of our free events, the concert in the park, the movies on the green,

the Easter egg

hunt. Those are things that serve about 300 or so people, and we propose that those not be part of the budget. And then some slight reductions to signature events.

So commissioner, the list that I read when I said they had saved over $400,000 and submitted it, that was the meat of what they have submitted. Their entire list is like 30 to 40 items. It's

It's a

quite a lot. Data spike, thousand items.

SPEAKER That's why I've tried to summarize it in about 15 items to you guys.

SPEAKER And also, I would really wanna and this is me, of course, to look for efficiencies on mowing so we can use in house equipment and the people. I know we don't have to do much in the wintertime as much as we have to do in the summertime, yet I think we can save significantly by using in house. How would you approach that? How would you tackle that as far as I concur with the mayor of what he said. Not everybody has to have his her own mower.

Sure. Well, we we can certainly do that analysis. We're already sharing that equipment. So there there would be a a need for some outlay for capital equipment. It can't possibly be shared across 104 square miles and be an efficient process. So we could do that analysis. We can bring back what it would, what we would, need, how many we would need to hire to bring those seven sites in, and what the equipment would be, and what, when we would be able to recover that cost. We're happy to provide that analysis.

And also if you can get that number of how much we're paying for the tracking service of visitors and

So, Cheryl did just provide that. We pay $5,000 annually, and they, I believe it tracks 14, different park sites for us, and we can move those around if we need to, but it kinda creates a fence around that area. So it's only collecting the information within that park.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Yeah, Ms. Sandy, when you do do that analysis, when you're looking at equipment, also look at alternate equipment as well because even driving here, I've seen one of those huge batwing mowers, not a bush hog, but you guys, public works has them. We had bought them back in the day that'll cover three times the area of just a regular zero turn. So, you know, proper equipment for proper areas.

Absolutely. And you

may save some money on that as well too when you bring that back. Vice mayor.

Thank you, mayor. First, I really wanna say for all three of the organizations that we're looking at this afternoon, in my mind, it is never a question of quality of work or impact. For me, it's way more a situation of where our city is in its maturity curve and the fact that we have invested heavily in all three teams that we're looking at today. But Northport has not yet caught up in terms of its commercial development, which typically helps offset the costs of delivering these enhanced services. We'll use that language.

So I want to be really clear. In my mind, it is never a question of the value that these teams bring to our community. I'm blown away all the time, particularly with parts and rec, with the thoroughness and the quality with which you do your work. So I I just really wanted to say that. But we are not a wealthy community.

We don't have the level of commercial development we need to help offset the cost of these things, and that's the dilemma. I mean, I would love, love, love to drive a BMW. I drive a Kia Soul, because that's what my budget will allow. So that's the issue. It's never, in my mind, is it worth doing these things.

It's always a, how do we cover the costs of it? Because we're also facing an added dilemma. Our taxable value of our properties is decreasing. Now fortunately, with a lot of the development that's happening, it's sort of in the short term offsetting that. But I'm concerned if that trend continues, we might start seeing a crunch on the revenue side as well.

The other aspect of parks that I don't expect the other two teams to have is, as a community, we've made investments in some very expensive assets to both build and maintain. And I don't see those as part of the conversation. And it's, for me, the hidden cost of parks. If we look at one Mineral Springs, 1,000,001 half to buy it, dollars 13,000,000 to restore those buildings and improve the infrastructure, where is that showing up when we look at things? I mean, these things are expensive.

We're looking at, I think, about $5,000,000 to realign the pool. We have $120,000,000 in capital improvement programs that are currently unfunded. So these are the things that worry me, particularly in light of the fact that in the relatively short time that I've been a commissioner, we've torn down how many buildings, four buildings, because of deferred maintenance. We haven't maintained them properly. Why?

Because we didn't have the money. So this is all about, how do we figure out? I want to save everything we do in parks. It's valuable. I don't question that.

But parks is also very expensive to maintain and on a capital project as well. So that's sort of my input. Also, what I would suggest, if you haven't done it already and some of your models, it was without the staff costs. The city of Northport, all municipalities are service organizations heavily dependent on people, and that is a significant part of the cost. So part of the analysis, when we look at different programs and we're considering either cutting them or transitioning them to a nonprofit, if they wish to take it, and run It's not just how many people are served and what are the incremental costs, but it's also, what are the personnel costs to both plan and execute those?

So I want to make sure that we're looking at that as well, because it's a key part, I think, of the analysis. But this is a great presentation. I really love what Parks and Rec does. I want a community center out on Italy Ave in the worst way. I don't know how the heck we're going to pay for it. So we'll figure it out at some point. But I just really felt compelled to share that part of the equation that we didn't see here today. Thank you.

City manager, I see you chimed in.

Yes. Thank you, mister mayor. To the vice mayor's point, that CIP portion was not included on this day. My apologies. And what we'll do is I trying to find it real quick to see how much of the CIP was actually parks, but I can't find it. But what we'll do is we'll create a separate item like that for CIP so that we can talk about all of that CIP with the city at the same time so that you can have that full picture.

That would be great.

Thank you. Mister Stokes.

Thank you, mayor. I want to thank you, Sandy, for the presentation, the work that went into this. You know, I don't wish to be redundant. So I would accept to say that, you know, we have seven pillars in this city that hold this city up and provide essential and whether you wanna call them elective or enhanced services. And all of them are important.

All of them are important in order for this city to be a viable city, in order for it to be an attractive city, a city that people wanna live in. And so, you know, with that in mind, that we are in a world today where dollars matter, where while we've heard today from public comment and, you know, from those who are advocating for these three departments, how valuable they are. And there is no doubt they add value to our city. Okay? When you start to talk to people about how much are you willing to pay for them, then things start to get a little cloudy, a little bit shady, a little bit, well, can you pay how much more for this?

How much would this cost additionally out of my pocket? So when you look at what we as electeds have to do here and I do appreciate you bringing this meeting before us, Okay? Because there's been lots of conversation about these three areas of our, you know, services. And I would have to say that, you know, I do not believe it's our job to sit here and figure out where you should save money or where you shouldn't. You're the subject matter experts that can decide where we get the best bang for our buck, where making changes have the least impact on services and our public.

And I would leave that to you. I think that the direction this body gave staff as we did our first budget workshop was look at 5% cuts departmentally, find us close to $3,000,000 that could be allocated to support capital improvement projects in the city that are sorely needed without having to raise anybody's taxes or fees. That was the exercise. That was the goal. I believe I heard you sort of have done that.

There's $4.20 some odd thousand dollars worth of cuts in your proposed budget, which we haven't seen yet, but which are baked in. So I don't have a problem with that. You all are doing what it is we gave you direction to do. You know, I would challenge you all. We've I've heard people talk about how we could create efficiencies, how we could consolidate, how we could save a few bucks here, a few bucks there.

I would challenge you to find ways to make money, to find ways to take that aquatic center, Mineral Springs, some of the parks, and make money at them, make profit at them, actually run events, adult events, family events that make money to help defray cost. There's a lot we could do. We need to revisit the utilization of the aquatic center. I am 1,000 supportive of a municipal pool. I think the aquatic center is fantastic.

I said it before I ran for office, while I've been in office. I will continue to say it. For those who are not fortunate enough to have pools and jacuzzis in their backyards or in their communities, having this municipal facility is fantastic. And it is beautiful. I when my grandkids come, we take them there. But it loses three quarters of a million dollars a year in tax dollars, And it is growing that number. That that negative is growing every year. So I challenge you all, find a way to make money at it. If we have to pass some ordinances or resolutions to allow for certain amenities for adults, so be it. Let's do it.

Let's find ways. I can't imagine that there wouldn't be people across the city who would want to rent out that facility at certain times in the evenings or on weekends in the evenings to be able to run events or special events. There's things that go on around the park areas that we could do. I would continue to look and suggest you continue to look at what things our nonprofits and our private organizations out there might be able to pick up to help defray some cost. You go back five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty five years in the city, there really wasn't a lot of private support

for a

lot of our amenities. So the city filled some of those gaps. But there have been programs that have been run by nonprofits that have been absorbed by the city for a variety of reasons. And I I I won't need to really go into the reasons except that to the extent they cost us some money, there may be the opportunity to outsource some of them back to these outside groups. I think it's worthy of looking at them, reimagining these programs, and some of the events that go on.

You know, something as simple as, you know, I don't have any idea how many people actually use the g the the weight room, the gym itself at the Morgan Center. Okay? I I don't know how many people do at, you know, 20 a day, 50 a day, a thousand a day. I I don't have a clue. But I know that it costs us money, and that is prime space in the Morgan Center.

Yet for $15 a month, you can go to Planet Fitness. There are a plethora of facilities, private facilities that you can go to. I know that we do some day care work. Well, a new Boys and Girls Club is going to it's coming. I mean, it's already a year. YMCA is going to be built. Continuing to look at how we can partner with nonprofits and private groups to help move some of the financial burden of providing these services and amenities off the city's books. That's what I would encourage we do. It's a little here. It's a little there.

It's some of the consolidations. It's some of the efficiencies. All those things chipping away. The idea is as we grow as a city, we're going to have greater needs. And the costs in dollars go up, we have to continually be looking at how we can shave those dollars back.

Because while we always hear from those people who either strongly advocate or or strongly disagree with the things we do, there's a whole lot of people out there who get up every day and work very, very hard to try to raise their families, pay their bills. And they are seriously frustrated by the fact that every time they turn around, the costs are going up. Everything costs them more. We owe it to them to try to find ways to be as efficient as we can and and and not to empire build, not to grow our government if we can possibly find ways to continue to provide these services and amenities by outsourcing them, by by finding partners out there who wanna do them. And there are partners out there who wanna do some of this stuff, who feel that the city has absorbed some things.

So, you know, you all know what those are. You all know what we can work out. It's a mindset more than anything. We can no longer be a taxed and spend city. We can't be. We have to think about what it's going to cost us unless we want to ask everybody, are you willing to raise your military at 5% a year for the next five or ten years? And if everybody wanted to do that, that would be just great. But I venture to say, if we propose that, we will all of a sudden have a full house here meeting after meeting. People who are like, you wanna do what to me? I can't afford it.

We ask people in referendums to spend a few of their dollars on a variety of things and they all got shut down. People do not want to spend more of their dollars for government. Yet, you heard it today, don't touch parks. Don't touch social services. Don't touch communications. They're all valuable. They're all integral to our ability to deliver good government. And I agree. But there's a balance, and we should always be looking for ways to save and ways to to to add value to what we have. We have 30 incredible parks and rec areas. Let's find ways to make more money out

of them.

Let's find ways to bring in more revenue. I think that's a big way to help chip away at the increased costs that we continue to experience. Other than that, you guys do a great job. You know, how could anybody not be proud of parts and recs? People say, you want to stop development? You want to stop growth? You want to keep people out? When we offer as much as this city does, I think we better expect that for the next x amount of years, people are going to continue to want to come to this city because it's a great city to be in. So thank you very much for all you do, and thank you for working hard in finding this 420,000 because that's really what to me the ask was. So thanks again.

That's all I got, mayor.

City manager.

Thank you, mister mayor. Yes. Thank you, commissioner Stokes, regarding, you know, $400,000 because they did do what the exercise asked of them. We've given information to this board regarding the aquatic center and raising the prices to what a break even cost would be not even to make money. And this board has said that that price was too high. I don't have that number right in front of me. Are you is it the will of the board to go back and bring that back to you for discussion again about the the aquatic center?

Perhaps, Mike, just qualify what I say in case what I said didn't come out the way that was in my head. I'm not looking to raise the fees at the aquatic center. What I'm looking to do is utilize that facility more than it's being utilized. Find ways to make money. Find groups that want to utilize that space when it's off hours at night. If it means we have to pass some new ordinances and rules to do it, so be it. I mean, we should

get If we could just address that real quickly. Yes. Because I believe we are already utilizing the off hours, and rentals have been increasing there. So to say that there's time there that needs to be utilized that's idle, don't think that maybe is inaccurate.

For the

record, Devon Poulos, aquatics manager. So I've been at the aquatic center since we opened the doors, day one. We have a 7% increase in rentals, and we have rentals all the way from May 13 through May 27 every single day at the aquatic center. So a lot of factors go into play with this. We had a really cold winter, so our March and April water temperature, the water park is not heated, so that deterred a lot of rentals.

But when it is open, the the location is being rented. We we just approved two more rentals today, so that is occurring. Other items with programs, when we talk about that, is swimming lessons. So, the commission actually approved an agreement for three years with the Red Cross Centennial program that we are gonna be able to offer 200 kids a year swimming lessons for $5 and being reimbursed by the Red Cross. So that's 24,000 over the next three years that we'll get. So we're already exploring those options, you for those. I oversee both North Port Aquatic Center and Warm Mineral Springs, our name is out there a lot. So we do look into those items to increase that utilization. Thank you.

Appreciate that. That's perfect. And one other thing I'd want to say that I forgot to is one of the public commenters mentioned on a special district for parks and recs. I really do I don't know how my fellow commissioners feel, but I think that's a worthwhile investment in time and effort to look into. Because, again, it allows citizens

Yeah.

To weigh in on what it's costing them for the various services that this city offers. And if the citizens of this city are willing to pony up for enhanced services, I got no problem with it. What I have a problem with is five of us trying to decide to spend more of the taxpayer dollars without really understanding what the silent majority in this city wants to do. And that's the problem here. It's always the problem here. We only hear from those that support and oppose. We never hear from all the other people out there. So it's

a hard decision to make. I don't want to

see us do with less, but I also don't want to see us continue to reach into citizens' pockets and take more and more money out. Because at some point, they're not going to be able to stay here. And a lot of them have left. And a lot of them work in this city for this city government. If you go around and you ask employees in this city, there's a lot of you who don't live here. I wonder why. Thank you.

City manager.

Thank you, mister mayor. We did send a memo to the commission about the special district for parks and recs

a little while ago.

And I believe that that was going to be an option if the property tax Right. Goes through as one thing that we proposed as something to explore. I don't know how prevalent the special district is in Florida, but okay. I do remember correctly. It's not prevalent at all. And that was the problem. Us being first in the state to do a special district is not something I think we want to, be. But did you have anything to add to that before? Okay. You good?

No. The memo we need to resend it. But the memo laid out the process and what it would look like.

Right. And one other thing, Mr. Mayor, is the day the day care care conversation about what we do, we provide before and after school care at the Morgan Center, and the bit the extreme benefit of that service we provide is the proximity to the schools that they service which is the middle school and the high school. If we were to stop doing that, that would have a huge impact on the ability of those parents to let those children be out of their care until they went to school and came back. But if you would like us to explore something with that, we're happy to bring something back to the board.

Perhaps we might be able to find some outside group that might be willing to do it in that facility for us so we don't have to devote resources to it. I'm just saying that it's important that we reimagine everything we do, everything we do, because at some point in time, we may find it's a black or white issue. Right now, it's not black or white. Do it. Don't do it. Cut this service out. We're done. It's let's find ways to make it more efficient. Let's find ways to find other partners to help us do it. Who else can do it?

How else can we do it? Those are the things we have to continually be looking at doing. That's what citizens are looking for. They don't think we're efficient. They think we're sloppy. They think we're fat. They think we got all kinds of bloat in our budget. We don't. But there's always things you can do to be more proactive about how we spend our dollars and how we generate dollars. That's all I'm looking for. Never stop looking at it.

So just to add to the the care, the child care discussion, at the Morgan Center, that is really a, right now, a drop in situation for junior high and high school. And I believe that was one of the focus areas when they built the community center, was to have something for those kids some place that they could go in the morning and after school, so that they were doing something positive and not being out doing something else. There is no fee for that, and if they go through DeFi, that's also a waived fee for that. If you wanted to switch that, it would be a membership based to get into the community center. I don't recommend that.

Our summer camps, we do charge for. We have full cost recovery on our summer camp, and there's money that goes back to the general fund for it. We just expanded the summer camp, with the addition of the room at the Mullen Center. It's already full, and it has another wait list. And then we do have a budget proposal coming forward, with with this year's budget to start after school care. At the Mullen Center, we were approached by the school district that there is a highly unmet need for school aged childcare after school. So we put that program together, and again, that's a full cost recovery with money going back to the general fund.

I got a quick question on that, though, for the after school care at the Mullen Center. When you are in negotiations, would they be busing the children there and then the parents would pick them up?

Yeah, we discussed with the school district that we would have a staff member that would be on the bus that would come to the Mullen Center, and so we've worked that cost into the fee that we would charge to be able to do that. But there is a lot of kids that need that after school count.

I agree with you, and I just wanna

make

it as

Yeah.

Good as possible. Sorry about that, Commissioner Petro, but city manager had to butt in a couple times. How about the floor, sir.

Thank you. Not only city manager, Commission Stokes on and off. But I would say this about special district. That would be reaching into our citizens' pocket, creating a special district for the parks and rec, and I'm so against it. As far as, you know, we we've getting this tone that, you know, we're suffering and we don't have money and on and on and on and that we need to raise revenue, find more ways to make money.

The government is not in business to make money in every department or every division. So I do appreciate your work and what you do as far as parks and recs department. And some of it, it's it's a loss, but some of it is a cost recovery over a 100%. We saw it on one of the slides that it's where Mineral Springs is over a 128%. If I'm I have to go back to the slides, but correct me if I'm wrong. We're making money. Even though we bought the thing and it's part of our city, and that's what attracts people to the city. You know? And I've heard some, you know, some ideas floating. Maybe we should sell it.

Maybe we should outsource it. I think this is what the city is. Warm Mineral Springs is part of us, part of our city. And that brings me to a number of questions that I've kind of forgot to ask, but then I was gonna go in the second round. Where do we stand on those buildings to be updated as far as the construction, remodeling, whatever you wanna call it? Because we could not demolish that.

So we did get the initial guaranteed maximum price from the construction manager at risk. It was in excess of the funds that we have. And part of the reason for that is we've used quite a bit of that project money for other things. One was the P3 that we went through. There were quite a few substantial costs associated with the P3 that came out of that project.

We've broken that all down, but we are trying to identify, exactly where that additional funding can come from. We're trying to keep that, so that it can come forward by the end of June because we are 100% plans. We are ready to go. It's just a matter of that funding gap.

Okay. Where do we stand on the conservation easement?

That's coming back on the nineteenth. We have revised the general terms document. That would be kind of the framework for creating a conservation easement. So we'll bring that back on the nineteenth. If you all agree to the general terms in concept, we'll work with the city attorney's office to create the conservation easement, which would then come back to commission.

We have found we've identified funding, both through the grant that Natural Resources was able to secure for the invasive removal, and also the Gulf Coast Community Foundation has committed money towards that as well as part of the conservation easement. Great. So that and then we'll have the parcel maps. Because there was some discussion about, the amount of acreage that should be, retained outside of the conservation easement. So we'll have two options that we'll bring forward for a commission consideration.

Okay. So we're making progress on conservation easement. I'm glad to hear that. And also about, you know, going back, and I wanna finish with this. I encountered on our website under the documents and financial annual comprehensive financial reports.

And the latest I could get was page 25, which is revenue and expense. The latest I could get was twenty twenty four. And the the net position change, unless it's a typo, twenty twenty four, win profit, if you wanna call it profit. I I really don't wanna say profit because we, as government, we shouldn't be in the profit driven model. But we certainly have to operate fiscally responsibly.

And changing that position is $43,000,000. So going back to special district, I don't think we should proceed that route because it would be part of the taxes that would be levying on the people. Whether they use parks or not, they will be paying. And this is just the quality of life. They should be left alone.

The numbers don't lie, so we are in profit. And, also, I do believe that impact fee for parks and recreational is the highest percentage or highest amount. Correct me if I'm wrong. It's it's higher than other departments. So we have offset.

Yeah. I'm not sure compared to other departments, but we do have that impact fee study that that is coming back up, that they're working on right now. But, the impact fees can't be used, as you know, for operations, only for a project that increases capacity.

Yes. And all the additional parks. And thank you for your presentation again. I really value your input, all of you. You.

City clerk, public comment. Tim Doyle.

I support the parks. I think the parks should be there, and I think we should continue on. A couple comments, though. They're doing movies in the park. I got a suggestion. There's this old movie made back in the '50s. It's a black and white movie, and it's a love story. It's called nineteen eighty four. We should have it in the park to teach the kids. And I don't know if they made a new one. I'm talking to one from the fifties with the black and white.

Okay.

The one thing I did notice on here is I don't know if they're doing yard sales this year, but on the from what I see on here, the yard sales have pretty good attendance. It brought in money and didn't cost anything unless they left it out. And that could be something they could do in several parks because you charge for the tables, I guess, when people come. So I figured that's how they get the revenue. So I don't know if they stopped the community yard sales or not, but looking at this, I would keep doing them, especially if it brought in revenue. The pools. We are in Florida. At the end of my street, there's a canal. In my neighborhood, people have pools, and they are not fenced in. I was a kid once.

We need to do swimming lessons for the kids in this community. Whatever you do with the parks and rec, we gotta make sure that every single person in this community has access to swimming lessons. If you wanna charge more from people outside the community, I have no problem with that. But the people in this community, for public safety and the lives of the children, we should have swimming lessons. Because even if a mother tries to teach a kid to swim, might not do it correctly.

That's public safety to me besides park and rec. So whatever you guys decide to do, I want you to make sure that the swimming lessons don't go anywhere. My brother was run over and killed by a cop.

He

ran into the street after a ball. Wasn't playing at a park. We have to have parks for kids. That's why I don't like trucks on my street. That's why I live on a street like I am. That's not a cut through street because I know it can happen. Parks save lives. Swimming lessons save lives. It's not just about what you guys think it's about, and that's all I'm gonna say.

Thank you. That's all there.

That's it. I know we're looking at motions and stuff, but in the discussions that we've had, I don't think there's any direction. I think you all are working on everything, and we'll hear more at budget time. So I think you all have done a very good job in this presentation and making us aware of where you're going, where we've been, and what doing. So I don't I don't see any need for this board to give you direction.

And mister mayor, the thing that I heard that we'll follow back up with, we will, that we said and like you just said, this will be a continuing discussion throughout the budget as we the numbers become more clear. But the conversation today was very helpful to hear from all of you as we work on some of these things. So we're not waiting till the first week of June losing essentially thirty days from now as we keep going forward in the process. So we appreciate the feedback.

No. And I appreciate that. They heard what we're willing to give up or downsize or whatever. So that that gives them a little bit of energy to look at their budget once again. So I think they've got plenty of direction.

Thank you, mister mayor.

No problem. Alright. We're gonna take a ten minute break. We've been here for an hour and a half, and then we'll come back and do the next two.

Surprised.

This technology being used at its best.

Oh, yeah. Now our rotations.

Moving on to item B26Dash0701, discussion and possible action regarding the communications divisions, details of service delivery. City manager, this is your item.

Thank you, mister mayor. First, I wanna open my saying that we understand that the commission is scrutinizing every line of the budget, and that's what we need to do and that's the right thing to do in this environment. But the scrutiny of the communications budget requires some context, and that's what we want to provide today. The question is not whether communication costs money. The question is whether the city gets more value from this investment than it would from any alternative.

And the data answers that clearly with a yes. So we ask that the commission evaluate this division the way a well run organization would on outcomes, on return on investment, and on if it were reduced or eliminated, what would the consequences be. Their division is anchored to our city's vision and mission statements for the North Support's vision. It says an innovative, friendly, engaging, and sustainable community where residents, businesses, and visitors can flourish. Every word of that vision statement depends on communication.

Engaging requires outreach. Friendly requires a voice. Sustainable requires trust, and you cannot build a flourishing community in silence. Our mission statement says to provide exceptional service for our entire community for the continuous enrichment of quality of life throughout through transparency, engagement, and respect. Three of those five words in that mission statement, transparency, engagement, and respect, the literal job description of the communications division. This is not a support function. It's a mission delivery function. It is connected to our organizational values. The city values of integrity call for maintaining public trust through honest, transparent, and respectful behavior. And communications is the primary mechanism for delivery on that promise every single day.

As it relates to customer service, the team handles 23,000 annual calls and greets 4,000 in person visitors monthly. They are literally the front door of the city government. Innovation, the vision has built in house capabilities and multimedia production, drones, cinematography, podcast creation, and other avenues that allow the city to use them without outsourcing entirely. Diversity through Northport University, Newcomer Day, HOA outreach, and school visits. They touch every corner of our community, not just the ones who attend our meetings.

The city's strategic plan includes a good government priority to have departments attain state and national credit accreditation, and communication has done that, which they're gonna speak on. And the division has also earned state, national, and international recognition and awards, which we're very proud of from our staff as well. So I'll turn

it over to

the communications manager, Mr. Jason Bartmould, to walk us through the presentation. And then I'll wrap up after he finishes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, city manager. Good afternoon, commissioners. It's my pleasure to be here and talk to you about the communications team. As you know, we are a strategic centralized team and we're gonna talk a lot about that model today. But it is our job to strengthen public trust, and I know that's something that's very important to all of you, and we do that through strong communications.

We also protect the city's reputation, and we ensure consistent and accurate communication across city departments. We serve all those city departments, and we try to help them achieve their goals through the work that we do. A little bit about what we're gonna talk about today. Again, we're gonna take you through the history of, our previous decentralized model of communications versus the centralized model that we have today and how we got here. We'll dive into the roles and responsibilities of our team.

Despite some popular misconceptions, there are not just 11 or 12 of us posting on Facebook all day. We do other things as well to serve the city, and we're gonna talk in-depth about that. We'll talk about the benefits that our model provides to the city and to our residents. I will take some time to brag on some of our accomplishments as the city manager alluded to that we're very proud of, and provide some information about the value that we do provide, not only in terms of trust and engagement and and meeting our goals, but also fiscal, you know, value that we actually provide in real dollars. And then talk a little bit about the future and what challenges are ahead for us as a communications team.

So a little bit of history. I joined the city in August 2022. And at that time, we were in the middle of the fiscal year 2022 budget. So that you can see that there on the left that while the communications team itself in name and on our org chart was relatively small at that time, we had a number of positions and people across the departments in the city who were providing some level of communications or customer service support. And all those people and positions have now transitioned into our current communications team.

So you can see on the right there, we have still the communications manager, the public information manager, but some of the positions previously that served specific departments and were embedded within those departments under the title of a community outreach coordinator, they were essentially, a unicorn, that rare person that could do everything or was asked to do everything, whether it's providing graphics or social media or outreach or community engagement or design or all the various things that we now provide holistically across the organization. So we transitioned those positions. And over the past few years, we've redesigned those job titles and made them more specific to focus on very specific areas of expertise that we now provide to all city departments. That also includes the customer service team in the customer care call center, city manager mentioned, the front desk to the to the city here at city hall. Those team members previously reported to development services a couple years ago.

They now report to communications. In that time, development services did add one FTE in twenty twenty three, one additional customer service rep to staff customer care call center. We've, reallocated and reclassified a vacant position to create the marketing and engagement manager position back in 2023 as well. The only position in FTE that communications has added in the time I've been here was the community engagement coordinator That was in fiscal year twenty twenty four, and that was to meet the very specific needs of our community outreach and engagement, the high level of engagement and the number of, town halls and outreach events that the city was doing. There was a need for that position, And there was also a goal of the city commissions to create a citizen's academy.

And that position, we will talk more in-depth about it, but that position oversees our Northport University, which has been tremendously successful. So, again, if you look back at 2022, some of the, challenges that we had with our communications were the messaging was disjointed across the city departments because we were working in those silos and didn't have a consistent, cohesive, coordinated message and unified voice as a city. There was inconsistency in how our branding was done as a city, and we've done a lot of work, as you know, to, enhance our brand and refresh our brand. There was inefficiency with duplication of efforts, with multiple people doing multiple things across the city. Not all the departments were getting the same level of support.

So while some departments did have a designated person, others did not, and they were not seeing the same level of benefit from communications that they do currently. The customer care call center was still in its infancy in 2022. They had, just redesigned the physical space to create the call center at the front desk, and we're reevaluating the processes of how that team would provide customer service to the city. There was a lack of clear reporting and cohesive direction with multiple people working in different departments, reporting to multiple departments, And we really had a lack of subject matter expertise and specialization compared to what we do have now. We now have experts who specialize in these different areas of communications and provide that high level of professional service to all the departments here at the So we'll go into the roles and responsibilities and how we are utilizing the the centralized team that we have.

We'll start with the communications manager in PIO. That's me. I have the pleasure of leading this team and the great privilege of overseeing our city's strategic communications, our media relations. And it's my job and our job to protect the city's reputation. It's really what communications does.

I also serve as the lead public information officer during emergencies. And as you know, through the hurricanes we've experienced in the last few years, that is a critical function of our communications team, and we all support the city during those times when we're activated, in response to an emergency. Some of the other roles we have on the team, the public information manager, that's Madison Ingalls, who you may know. She develops and coordinates our city's public information strategies and it's essentially her job to tell the city's story and to inform and educate the public. We do that through a variety of ways.

Some of the stats you'll see sprinkled throughout here, one of those that we're very proud of is the number of news releases and advisories that we've produced, the amount of proactive outreach that we've done to local media to help tell our story, and and that is a supervisory role on our team. The other supervisor is the marketing engagement manager position. That's Katia Sutherland. She develops and coordinates all of our marketing and community engagement initiatives. It's her job to showcase our city, to build our brand, and strengthen the relationships we have in the community.

That's also a supervisory role. And together, these two team members and our entire team, we've accomplished over 387 project tasks. Those are all the different deliverables that we design and create and produce for the city departments to help them meet their needs. Our city's team also includes a design brand specialist, miss Kelly DeCastro. Kelly provides her technical and creative expertise to all the city departments.

She produces materials, everything from newsletters to brochures to presentations, flyers, videos, and graphic product graphic production. She's very busy. She also has overseen and led our brand refresh project, which you're all aware of, and we're very excited to unveil the new brand official officially next month. It's been a huge undertaking by Kelly and the rest of the team. But it's her job to establish and maintain consistent brand store, brand standards and how we are representing our city across all the work that we do. We also have a social media and digital content coordinator. That's Ivy Young. She implements our digital communication strategy. So it's her job to compel create compelling social media and website content. Not only on social media, but she manages the website.

You can see there there are over 900 pages on the website, which we have redesigned in the last few years and refreshed. But it's her job to make sure that that content is up to date, make sure it's accessible for ADA purposes. That's a huge task that she's been taking on, in the last few months to meet federal guidelines. But it's her job to oversee and work with all the city departments to make sure all of their content, meets the quality standards and is optimized for accessibility and for reach and for engagement. As you know, social media and the website are two primary ways that our residents interact with us and get their information from us.

So we take that job very seriously. We also have a multimedia specialist, Cody Denarski. His his job to highlight our city programs, initiatives, and events. He does that through high quality professional photography and videography, everything from creating news packages, public service announcements, the commercials, the, all the videos that you see during the commission meetings. Those are all created for social media, for our website.

He does internal training videos, live broadcasting, cinematography with drones. He does our podcasting. You can see all the, accomplishments that he's had there of how busy he is. We're very proud of Cody and the work that he's done. Just today, he, received the gold award, which we're gonna be bringing to you at the next recognition meeting from the Hermes Creative Awards, which is an international marketing competition where we compete against five Fortune 500 companies and major brands.

And so we're very proud to see Cody's work recognized. But he supports all the city departments, with creating the visuals and the audio and and the photography that he does to, showcase and highlight all the work that the city does. And we also have the community engagement coordinator. You all know Jane Akins, who I mentioned already. It's her job to oversee our community engagement strategy.

She builds relationships with our citizens, our businesses, our community partners. Not only does she oversee Northport University, which is, I'm very proud to say, nationally recognized as one of the leading programs of its kind in the country. We expanded to the NPU teen edition recently. We just had the graduation of that program in its second year, and it's very successful. But in addition to all that, she arranges arranges and facilitates all of our town halls, all of our community input meetings, our budget input meeting.

We hope to see you at next week on on May 12. She's at our newcomer days, at our school visits, and all the presentations. She runs our HOA meetings on a monthly basis with all the neighborhood representatives. So you can see there the number of hours that she's committed and we as a city have committed to engaging with our residents in person and events. And then I mentioned already the customer care call center.

Skyler, Jesse, Amanda, and Donna, they are the powerful team that sits at the front desk and meets, those thousands of monthly visitors that come in to city hall, but also takes over 23,000 calls annually from them. They serve as our front door. They greet visitors. They greet them, in person, on the phone, on through on social media, digitally, through email. It's their job to resolve customer issues, address their concerns, and provide information to them, which is critical, and it's a part why it makes sense for them to be part of our communications team.

We work together to make sure we get the best information to our residents every day. So, again, what are the benefits of being in a centralized communications team in the current model that we're under, that we have instituted here? First and foremost, it's about enhancing public tran trust and transparency. We do that through timely and accurate information that we provide to the residents about the decisions that they make and the and the things that impact them every day. We provide consistent messaging, again, across all city departments working in a centralized way.

We help them achieve their goals, but we also speak as one voice as a city, and we unify the city's brand, as we interact with the the community. It's our job to build and protect the city's reputation. We show how we we shape how Northport is perceived not only by the residents who live here, but the people who want to live here or want to come live here, those that wanna work here or be employed by the city, businesses that wanna open in the city, and those that wanna invest in our community. We engage the community, and that's not just pushing out one way information, but we allow opportunities for them to provide two way feedback to us and engage with us so that you all as leaders and as decision makers can make better decisions based on the sentiment and the feedback that we get from the community. And last but probably most important, we communicate during a crisis.

You know how important it is that we address misinformation, especially when we're in times of disaster or emergencies, the rumors that we see on social media, and providing the life saving information before and after disaster. That is a critical role that we all train for. We take very seriously. We're gonna be doing our hurricane exercise next year, next month to make sure we're, prepared for the upcoming hurricane season. Some of our accomplishments, we just got back from the Florida Municipal Communicators Association conference, where we achieved the certificate of excellence for the fourth straight year for 2026.

That is our state accreditation. It's the first program and only program of its kind for communications professionals at the state level, and we're very proud to say that we've earned that certificate each four years that the program has been in existence. We are one of only 18 cities and counties in Florida to achieve that honor. It validates that we are keeping up with the best practices in local government, that we are using all the tools and resources and technology out there to effectively communicate with our residents. I've mentioned some of the state, national, and now international awards that we're very proud to have received that recognize the work that our team does, whether it's in marketing communications, community engagement.

Some of our accomplishments, in the last few years, we've re redesigned the Citi's brand, again, which will launch on June 18. So you're all invited, and you'll be getting an invitation soon for the unveiling of the new Citi brand. That was a huge undertaking for us to reimagine and refresh the Citi's brand and how we are represented in the community. We've developed Northport University in the last few years. We I know we have some of our graduates here, and you've met a lot of them and been part of the events and the alumni network that we have now created with over 85 graduates.

Those people are advocates for the community. They have learned about what it takes to run a city and learn our operations, and now they are out in the community, amplifying our message, helping educate their friends and neighbors about what the city does and how city government works and the value that we provide to the residents. It is a feeder network for our advisory boards and now for our commission candidates, for our elected officials who have gone through the program now and may someday sit where you sit. We've created the first citywide email newsletter, which we didn't have previously. So, again, a critical way that we reach people in today's day and age.

Every every month, twice a month, we send out a newsletter that, reaches them with our news and information. We've created a city annual report for the first time in the last few years. And, again, we've supported the emergency operations center through multiple activations starting with Hurricane Ian a month after I started here, was a great experience. But we have provided that information through multiple disasters to help provide a lifeline for people, whether it's through our joint information center where we put out information court in a coordinated way or through the emergency call center, which is not only our team, but customer service and other staff from different departments who come together to staff that call center to provide a lifeline for people when they need information. So when we talk about some of the value provided, there's different ways we can look at it.

But to start, in the industry, we talk about earned media. So, these aren't paid sources, but ways that we are proactively getting our story out there through existing media and traditional media. There's a value to that. We've done some estimations and some analysis. And if you look at the, value of having a story on the front page of the newspaper or having a story thirty seconds or a minute appear on the local TV news, there is a value to that, the equivalent of what it would cost to advertise.

And we limited this strictly to the proactive media pitches that we've done. We're on the news a lot. Sometimes it's for good reasons, sometimes it's not. But we spend a lot of time and effort as a team to proactively get our message and our story out there about the programs, about the initiatives that we have. And if you limit it to just to that, we've provided more than 1,400,000 in value, in earned media value from the the media stories that we've had appear in our local and regional media outlets.

There's also owned media. So those are the outlets that you own as an organization and you use to push out information. There's a value to that. So the city website, we average about a 150,000 visits per month to the website. The equivalent of that, if you were to, in the private industry, create a website and try to drive traffic to it, there's a value of about almost $37,000 to having that kind of audience and reach to get your message out and get your information out to people.

I mentioned email newsletters. And if you add up the thousands of subscribers that we have, the 3,100,000 impressions that we get and the engagement that we get from people opening those emails and clicking on them, you would pay almost $95,000 in the private industry to build an email subscription list like that and to reach people with your information and to get that kind of engagement through your marketing and your communications. And then social media, mentioned it's a huge driver of traffic and ways that people stay connected with us and stay informed through the different pages that we have, almost 377,000 social media followers. There's a value of over $75,000 if you were to try to cultivate that kind of audience in a private, industry to, have an audience that you can reach through social media. And then we also went ahead and looked at what would it cost to outsource the level of service and the amount of work that our team does?

So some of these estimates here, if you look at design and branding, if you were to take the amount of work that Kelly and our team does to create the kind of flyers and graphics and signage and all the design needs and to also do a rebranding, not in house, but out outsource it to a private company, you'd be looking at a cost of over $400,000 annually. To do the kind of community engagement that our team does, to bring in an outside firm to run workshops or town halls for us or to provide that service or run an academy and, engage with the community, you'd be looking at $364,000 a year to to pay for that same service. To do the kind of multimedia production that our team does, to have someone come and staff and shoot photos at events and to create videos and the amount of work that our team does, you'd be looking at a cost of, again, over $450,000. To have someone manage your social media in the private industry and to run your website and do that content, we could outsource that to a private company. It would cost us $230,000 a year to to produce that kind of content and do that kind of work for us.

To have on retainer, some small communities, some other communities do this when there's a crisis or an emergency. They have a PIO. They have a a private firm on retainer that handles their crisis communications, that handles their press, that creates news releases for them on their behalf and provides content, handles their media relations, you're looking at a cost of over a half $1,000,000 to have that level of service from a private firm. And then customer service, if we were to outsource, if we were to have a team of people on the phone working in another state or another country and providing customer service for us, we'd be spending $427,000 a year for the same level that our team provides here to the city. You add that up, it's over $2,400,000 a year in value, or in cost that we would be spending for those services.

That is far beyond what the fiscal year budget, for '26, you can see, is 1,300,000. That includes our personnel and our operating costs. 90% of our costs are personnel, so we have a very small operating budget. But you can see the costs would far exceed that if we were to outsource the value that we provide as a as a team. So lastly, looking ahead, some of the challenges and the things that we are dealing with and trying to prepare for as our city grows, and and it's growing rapidly.

But these communication space is also growing. So when it comes to the use of AI for our customer service, that is something we're exploring as a way that AI can enhance what we do as a team and provide more efficiencies for our staff and also provide a higher level of customer service to our residents that they expect. We are dealing with a decline of traditional media. We're very lucky to still have a local newspaper and to still have regional local TV news stations, but their power and their reach is dwindling. They are dealing with financial challenges like they haven't seen before, and they are stretched more thin than ever.

So the reporters that come to cover us are very stretched thin across the entire community and covering other things. The TV news stations are consolidating and closing shop. So there are less traditional media options out there in the days of just sending out a press release to the news and expecting them to tell your story are probably over. They are still valued partners, and it's still a big part of what we do, but it's not the only way that people are getting their news. Media is fragmented into smaller groups and channels, so you know that people are getting their information from a variety of sources. Some are good. Some are not as good. But they're doing it through social media. They're doing it through podcasts. They're doing it through short form video on YouTube or TikTok or whatever platforms might be out there.

And these platforms are constantly evolving. So it's our job as a team to stay ahead of those trends and to make sure that we're reaching people wherever they want to be reached and wherever we can get our message out to them in multiple ways. And with all those different platforms and the evolution comes the increase in misinformation, and you know that they are using tools like AI to create deep fakes, and people are sowing distrust through these ways of, putting out misinformation or disinformation. It is a constant battle for us to constantly try to educate and keep the residents informed. We could we could spend all day doing social media, but it's not the only thing we do.

But it is a primary way that we try to inform and educate people, and try to reach them, and we have to do a lot of work as a team to stay ahead of that. So that's all for me. I'll turn it back over to the city manager. I wanna thank you for your support. As we continue to grow, we know that the importance of communications is just gonna grow with it. And so it's our job to help you, meet your vision to connect the citizens of Northport and keep them informed and engaged. So thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, mister Barlow. And also before I start, let me thank him and his team for the presentation of all three of these different areas and how they pulled them together for your viewing. It's very well laid out, very good with the data as well as the dialogue. But as he said, you know, before 2022, they were a fragmented, inconsistent division that we intentionally moved away from and the benefits of what they have done has been tremendous. You know, we're a growing city that if we reduce our communication capacity at this moment while the landscape is becoming more complex, we could be making a critical mistake that we want to avoid.

If residents cannot find accurate information from us, they will find inaccurate information from somewhere else. And the vacuum does not stay empty. It fills with rumor, misinformation, and eroding trust in local government. This division did take part in the 5% reduction exercise, and they had to go into staffing in order to achieve it. And that was not an uncommon practice for a division or an area that was small and did only had a certain amount of operational expenses that was more personnel based, is most of our our areas.

This division is 1.37% of the general fund, costing about $1,300,000. And I have not heard any person say that we over communicate or our customer service has done too well. Those are two categories by nature that everyone always says needs improvements because of how typical they are, whether they're in the communications division or anywhere else. The only people I've I've heard say that we communicate too much are the people who don't like what we have to say. And in that case, that means our messaging is working and our efforts are hitting them because we are damaging their efforts to cause misinformation. So I'm gonna stop right there, mister Merritt. I'll turn it over to you for any questions or comments that you may have for myself or mister Farlow.

Yeah. Can you go back to your first page Yes, sir. That you started with?

Next one?

Next one maybe. No. Up. Backwards. Backwards. Down. I wanted to give Jesse and Amanda some more screen time.

They love the limelight, so they appreciate that.

Well, no, she's not in the picture. Oh, she is down here. But I've seen Amanda and Jesse because they're truly the front lines downstairs when people come in. And they're our first engagement with citizens. And your whole division is awesome. I mean, all of your workers. I just wanted to highlight them and pick on them for a minute. But with this division, it is very valuable to the city, especially when Ian came through. And I just fall back to that. And you guys coordinated with John Rawlings and our local radio show.

And you guys were on the spot, like, twenty four hours a day as we kept going. And that was invaluable to the citizens. And, you know, I couldn't appreciate that anymore. I was the mayor at the time. And when I would come in, John would be like, oh, I need some sugar. And he'd be like, yes, I know. Take a break. But you all put in the effort. And it was for the care of the citizens. And that we cannot disregard. And Jerome, he brought this up a little bit too. Citizens, they scream for transparency. That's what you put out there. You give whatever we got going on in factual status. If we didn't have you all, then we'd have to believe everything we read on Facebook.

So, I mean, how devastating would that be? So I appreciate everything that you all do, and I stand behind your whole division 100%. And thank you and everybody out there for everything that you do, even Madison.

Thank you very much.

Vice mayor?

Thank you, mayor. I'm just going to tell a little story. When I got here in 2014, you really didn't hear much about Northport in the media or on the news, and whatever I read wasn't good. The very first article I saw was about a very poor gentleman, certainly mentally challenged, who was arrested by the Northport police running down Sumter Boulevard naked. So that was the kind of coverage that this city got.

Inadvertently, we allowed the media outlets to define who we were. And that has so fundamentally changed if we fast forward to 2026. And as you know, I had a career in marketing and marketing communications. And I know in some areas, people think it's fluff. But the impact that you and your team and this sort of centralized strategy, the impact you have had on this community is significant.

Again, in the first couple of years I was here, if I went outside the city and had a chat with people, and they'd say, oh, where do you live? And I'd say, The noses would wrinkle and the eyebrows would go up, and they'd say, Northport? What are you doing there? Now when I have those conversations, it's like, wow, things are really happening in Northport. That kind of change is invaluable.

The pride of place, people wanting to live here can't calculate it. And I will challenge one thing you said, Mr. Bartolome. You said that your overarching message is to protect the city's reputation. I give you and your team credit for rebuilding this city's reputation.

And the value that has had in supporting our growth, particularly our commercial growth, I would like to know from mister Meerman how he looks at your team, because you so help our economic development efforts by making us look current and sharp and coordinated. And we know what we're doing, and we're doing wonderful things. So I just wanted to give you credit for that, because really, in a very short period of time, you have totally rebuilt the city's reputation. And I, for one, really appreciate that. Two other little stories.

I'm sure all of my fellow commissioners will agree with me when I say, usually, when we hear from residents of the city, it's a complaint. Something's not going well, whatever. I have to say, in the past several months, from an unsolicited feedback, bumping into a neighbor when I'm walking, bumping into a neighbor when I'm at Publix, The two things I hear are, wow, I came into city hall, and those ladies this is usually how they say it those ladies at the front desk, wow, they welcomed me. I came in feeling kind of cranky, and they welcomed me, and they helped me get to the right place. And it was such a positive experience.

And and the other unsolicited feedback I get routinely is Northport University. In fact, it was last year, three folks in the city were recognized for something. And Jane Atkins was one of them. And I made a comment. And I neglected to give Jane a kudos.

I got two phone calls. I was reamed out because I neglected you. So I hope this shout out is helping to correct that just a little bit. So, you know, I I just I don't think people truly appreciate the impact that a well designed, talented, forward thinking communications team can do for a company or for a city. It is, in my mind, invaluable.

But I will say the same thing I said to Parks and Rec, and I'll say to social services when they come up. And I think Commissioner Phil kind of emphasized this. We need to rethink what we do. And if there are things we are doing that consume a lot of staff time that maybe just aren't getting the play or the results that we're looking for, we have to really not us, you need to really understand that and be diligent in really honing what we're doing and making sure that we're really focusing on those things that have the most beneficial impact for the folks who live here and also for the folks in businesses who might think about coming here. So thank you for everything you do.

I think you do a great job.

Thank you.

And one other thing, too. I mean, there is no way that I could ever be that employee that replies to Bigfoot. I mean, ask my wife, I would be fired day one. Commissioner DeVault.

Thank you, Mayor. First of all, thank you. Secondly, thank you to all of you people in this position. Number one, it was great to hear you put some names to some of these people and their positions because I see them. Now in my own defense, there's 900 of you and one of me.

But I can't tell you how many times, you know, when I walk through the door, I can always count on seeing that blonde lady right here. She'll wave at me. The first, I don't know, at least the first year of my being here, anywhere I went, I ran into didn't know her name, and I gave her I gave her my name, you know, smiling. You know? It was at a planting of the tree for the greenest citizen that somebody said, hey,

that's Gene.

And I am going to work on that. I am going to get that list of all the people in the division and what their names are. Secondly, I didn't even know we had HOA meetings. I want to be at the next one. Somebody send me an email, tell me when that is.

Third, emergencies. And I don't know how this can be accomplished. You know, you mentioned, you know, that, for the emergency operations center, you have some functions. But, you know, this is kind of out of your out of your control. But, you know, during the end, Verizon was gone.

You know, Xfinity was gone. But whatever people can come up with as ideas on how to get emergency information to people, The preparedness, you know, all the different you know, the podcast and the different different information things, you know, those those are wonderful. I'm really I'm so glad I got the chance to be here for you to list list all these things. And, again, thank you all.

Thank you, sir.

City Clerk? Public comment. I'm sorry. Oh, let's be a little bit quicker.

Sorry about that.

Mayor, we apologize. Commissioner Stokes, you go right ahead, sir.

You very much. Great presentation. I mean, your department in its entirety is incredibly professional. I've said it all along. Matter and no matter how much we try to communicate and be transparent, there will be those that want more. And we will endeavor to give them more because that is what we do. So kudos all the way around. Your budget is minimal. I mean, for what you do, you squeeze every buck out as far as I'm concerned. I I know it's at least double if if we were to hire and outsource this stuff.

So I appreciate it. And and the service is invaluable to this city. You're meeting your 5% discount off a budget, you'll find a way to squeeze that out. I know it's labor intensive, so I I feel the pain. But we appreciate your contribution to it. And it's wonderful to hear everybody's support for our communications department and its value it brings to the city. It is the reason why I voted for it to be a department, not a division. But, you know, I just thought I'd bring that up again.

Thank you for that.

Who's counting? Thank you

for you do because you do give us a great look and there are those out there who would love to give us a black eye every chance they get and I appreciate personally appreciate everything you do to make us look good and to message. So thank you very, very much.

Commissioner Petro.

Thank you, mayor. Just wanna say thank you for all you guys do. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. And commissioner DeVall.

Yes. Thank you, mayor. I forgot one thing. Okay? On social media, you know, so many times I will read on social media, someone puts out a statement, and then there is so much false information put out. And so many times I wanna get out here and say, hey. Wait a minute. This is what's real. But I don't have enough hours in the day. And if I make one comment, then there's gonna be 500 rebuts.

And I okay. I can't get into that. But if you guys could concentrate on any time that you see a piece of false information of just not an argument, but just get the statement out of what is the true

Is that including or excluding the city manager? What's that? They're including or excluding the city manager.

I thought we would have to double their budget. We did a few

more steps.

I Thank actually would like to see this enhanced. And how I would like to to see enhanced, I have called Rick Scott's office you, and asked for money for this town, and that money should go to that department. And it's for air raid sirens. Now what the air raid sirens does a couple of things. If we ever do get struck by drones or missiles, it can warn us. If a Somali is coming, you can have a different tone for the tsunami. If you have a hurricane, you can have a different tone for a hurricane. If there's a wildfire, you can have a different tone for a wildfire. This is a multi use system. If there's a, you know, all kinds of things you could use this for.

And they usually have battery backup. So if your electricity goes out or something like that, they'll have a little solar panel, and the thing will still go off. So if you're missing the internet and you're missing this stuff, you will hear that air raid siren. So I hope that Rick Scott I hope he's listening. He said, I called his office and told him I would be talking today about this.

So hopefully, he's listening. And then that $1,500,000,000,000 budget he wants to spend on the military will send some money to this lovely department to help enhance their ability to communicate with me, who does not carry their phone all the time, who does not go on a computer. So Rick Scott, we need the money. They need the money. Let's enhance the project, and let's get going.

Alright. Couple other things on this topic. I don't know if you guys seen on the news, but New Mexico, Facebook might be pulling out of New Mexico and Instagram and all those things because they passed finally passed some laws that match the United States constitution that they can't do certain things. And they will not adapt to the laws, so they're going to pull out of the state entirely. I don't know how it's going to affect this apartment. So I'm just bringing that up. You might have to look into things on that. That's not a dig on them. That's just reality. Now, crisis management.

I've had to deal with crisis management that they're talking about. One of our restaurants in Boston one time, some guy got out of jail. He showed up at one of our restaurants, put a rat inside his food, called Fox News, called an ambulance. He was taken out of the place in an ambulance, a Fox News in Boston, broadcasted all over the there's a I'm not going to say the business ring. There's a brat in the bird. Never happened. Sales dropped 80%. People lost hours. It took us months to get the reputation back. That's what they're doing, trying to get your reputation back.

It's a hard job. And once something goes out, they need resources. Keep it going. That's all I'll say.

Maria?

Hello, everybody. Hello, dear mayor and dear commissioners. I'm Marina Reczitsky and I'm one of the quiet portion of what I believe you mentioned today. It probably will be only time for me to appear here. Yesterday, I sent commissioners an email about Falun Dafa. The Falun Dafa Day is upcoming. Some of you may have heard about Falun Dafa, some may not. But we are here, practitioners of Falun Dafa. I'm actually in Northport for a little over a year, but it's a lot of different, I mean, practitioners here staying for longer, already practicing in parks. It's a quiet meditation.

We have five exercises, four of them standing, one is a sitting medication. And also, it's a philosophy. It's a truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. This is what we are practicing. It's absolutely free.

We all volunteers. You can go on the website and anybody can start practicing in your own house, in a park, anywhere. So today I already approached a city director and I will be meeting with Shelby and hopefully we will be doing free class and we are keep doing it in the parks anyway. But this is just to introduce, maybe we can introduce it to the city employee, to the educators. I am educator myself.

I was in IT for thirty years. I love all of my professions, all my hats what I wear. And I really would like to share what I love. It's what educator is, right? Yes, so I believe it will be very beneficial for city employee, first responders and educators.

Because it's how we are, then we can share. And I do want to thank you for that atmosphere because this atmosphere, and I really know what atmosphere is, you are guys doing great. Feeling being in Florida now, I feel different. I feel American on a different level, being American for thirty four years. I'm from Ukraine originally. So, I don't think I need to say more. And yeah, this yeah, just a few flyers for you to take a look at. Thank you very much for everything. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Elaine Emmerich.

Hi, everyone. There might be some additional opportunities for the communications team to, maybe add to what they're doing. In addition to sending a press release with photos, the Sun newspaper has briefs. And those go in anytime that space is available. They also have a go section which would they could advertise for free events like the parade or the Santa plunge.

The Englewood Review will take big Northport events and put them in because they want their community to go have fun in our community. Also, the city of Northport is a chamber member. But I did a quick look and there is nothing under job postings. The city could use the chamber's website to add jobs, to add advisory board, vacancies, and upcoming activities for the city. Another thing is that the city now has a youth advisory board.

Those kids could probably work with the communications team in a way that brings magic to some of the videos that are being done because it gives that, you know, 15 year old aspect to it. Plus, it is a neat way to promote community engagement with the kids. It is a way for them to also get community service hours. Also, in the city of Venice, what they do is their communications person, she allows advertising of community events like the Sharks Tooth Festival, which is not run by the city. I am in a great big downtown contingent.

And they put them on the city's Facebook and sometimes on the website because it's all economic development. It's all partnerships with the nonprofits. And we do have a program that will help do that, but it's always like, you know, 10 pages of paperwork. If there's a way to streamline that and that the nonprofits can, you know, say, hey, we have a Pet Expo coming up. We have, different events coming up. That would be wonderful because we know they're not just going to our event. They're stopping for gas. They're stopping at a restaurant. And it's just a neat way that we can cross promote each other, work together. Thank you.

Thank you.

Alright.

Moving on to item C twenty six dash zero seven zero two, discussion and possible action regarding the social services division's details of service delivery. City manager, this is your item.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And the last of our three topics today that commission will be hearing, social services may be the one where the stakes of getting the decision wrong are most personal and most immediate. Talking about real customers, customers real residents, whether they're seniors, families, children who have possibly nowhere else to go. So this is not a conversation about whether the city should solve every social problem.

It's more of a conversation about whether we should remain the last line of support when every other door has been closed on someone already. And more importantly, before we get into detail, the direct financial assistance this division provides does not come from the general fund. So there is no taxpayer burden for the dollars that go directly to the residents. What the general fund supports is the staff and the infrastructure that makes it all work. They are also aligned with our vision of an innovative, friendly, engaging, and sustainable community where residents, businesses, and visitors flourish.

The word flourish is aspirational, but flourishing is not possible for a family that cannot pay rent, a senior who cannot navigate a 35 mile trip to the DCF office, or a child going to school without proper clothing. Social services are what makes the vision reasonable for our most vulnerable residents. As it relates to our mission to provide exceptional service to our entire community for the continuous enrichment of quality of life through transparency, engagement, and respect, The word entire community, worst entire community, stand out. Our mission is not to serve residents who are already stable and self sufficient. It is to serve everyone.

And this division exists precisely to make the word entire mean something. They are also connected to our quality of life strategic pillar. One of its core priorities is to encourage access to health care, social, and emotional well-being for all ages. And this division is the primary city mechanism for delivering on that priority. They are also connected to our organizational values, but I will turn it over now to our social services manager, Janet Carrillo, to lead us through the presentation. Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. Janet Carrillo, Social Services Manager for the Record. Always a pleasure to come speak with you. First off, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to provide an overview of the Social Services Division. Today's presentation is intended to highlight the division's role within the city of Northport, the services we provide to residents and the ways we collaborate with community partners to strengthen and address community gaps.

Our approach is not intended to replace or duplicate the work of local nonprofits and partner agencies, but rather to support, complement, and help connect residents to available community resources and services. So before we get into specific programs and services, I wanted to begin with a brief synopsis of the Social Services Division, its history, purpose, and impact within the city. Since 1980, when I was born by the way, the division has served as a central hub for community support, resource navigation and short term financial assistance for residents experiencing hardships. Our division was created to fill critical service gaps because resources were limited or unavailable in our area. In our presentation, we'll walk through our core functions, partnerships, community impact facilities and the different ways residents access services through our division.

So shortly coming on after coming on board, I was asked to revise the division's mission statement to better reflect the work and services we provide today, particularly around accessibility, resource navigation, and community support. Our mission today still reflects exactly that, to ensure the availability, awareness, accessibility of programs and resources in the community and to assist families and individuals while improving their overall quality of life. As you can see, our division is currently part of the city manager's office and we currently report to City Manager Fletcher. City manager Fletcher, just wanted to say thank you for your guidance, your support. Since you've been my supervisor for four years, I've appreciated the partnership, so thank you.

Our team is small but mighty. I always say that. Together, our six person team serves a community of more than 96,000 residents while managing direct services, partnerships, facilities, community events and daily operations. Right now, I'd like to take a moment to highlight each of my staff members and their tenure here. Erin Elsenheimer is our business operations coordinator.

She's been with the city for eight years. Carol Estrada is our program administrator. She's been with the city for three. Minerva Ortiz Jimenez, is our client services specialist, She has been with the city for two. LeMadi Rodriguez is our client services specialist, two and she has been with the city for five years and then we have Nicole Benadell, Staff Assistant three and she has been with the city for two years and of course yours truly, ten years.

I am extremely proud of my team. Their ability to remain adaptable, resident focused and service driven in a high demand environment is, in my opinion, amazing because I wouldn't be able to do this job without them. So I wanna give them a shout out. So now let's talk about, key functions and services, kind of like, our core services. So I always say if you were to ask me, like, what's your elevator speech?

I I I kind of, touch base on these six core functions. So let's talk about financial assistance to help with rent, mortgage, and utilities. This is our bread and butter. This is what we do on the daily, how we service our clients on the daily. So we currently submit one of the highest volumes of applications to our funding agencies while also remaining one of the only local providers offering in person appointments so residents do not have to travel outside of Northport for assistance.

For our community resource liaison, I pride myself on this and my staff does as well because we often receive conflicts and unconventional requests. So we pride ourselves in helping residents navigate challenges by identifying solutions and then connecting them to appropriate resources. We get calls such as human trafficking, life after incarceration, potential scams to our senior populations and everything in between of assistance or I'm getting kicked out and I need help. Our Skills for Life workshops, these workshops are designed to support career development, life skills, personal growth for teens, adults and seniors within our community. We partner with local banking institutions, nonprofits and businesses.

Our Community Clothing Closet began as a partnership with our local Kiwanis Club and was later fully absorbed by the division after the organization lost its location following Hurricane Ian. We do continue to refer to them and vice versa. Our MP Square program was created to help bridge gaps by supporting local nonprofit agencies and assisting them in their mission. Agencies apply for a mission support item up to $2,000 So DCF, I really want to touch on DCF because this is taking the majority of our time and our service to our community. So in early twenty nineteen, DCF informed us that they were closing their Northport location along with some surrounding offices.

They informed us that they were closing because a lot of their in person visits were just ID, verifications or supplemental documents, that they had to upload documents. So they said, you know, oh, everybody can do it in a digital format and they can fax their IDs or fax their forms. Okay? So, at that time, we were a self-service, partner site where clients could come in, they would use the desktop in our lobby and they would do it themselves, self serve. So when the DCF office closed in May, we applied to become a full service site to allow us to do more than that because what we had noticed is that our elderly population, some don't own smartphones, some don't know how to navigate the website, some don't know how to upload the documents, so they need someone to do that for them.

They need an actual physical person to help them navigate the application, upload the documents, and show the verification. So we changed it and we applied to be a full service site and we were approved. We brought that before you. You guys approved it and now we've been functioning as a full service site. So I can assure you that only 1% of our DCF clients come in for the ID verification and upload uploading of documents.

Everyone else that comes in is application assistance, application themselves, or, a case inquiry. So they want to know what's happening with their case. They want to know what document they missed. They want to know what can they do to get their case approved. So I really wanna say we serve Northport residents by improving access to services that may not otherwise be available.

Where services already exist, we adjust. Where gaps occur, we step in. So on our direct services and administrative support, our division operates through a two part service model, half of it being direct services and the other half being administrative support. So just to give you a little bit of information on what we do on the daily, in fiscal year twenty four-twenty five, our client services specialist provided direct services for financial assistance. They prescreened eight seventeen clients, completed two zero two financial applications.

Out of those clients helped, the average moving cost is $4,021.72 The average monthly rent for those financial assistance, clients is $1,723.29 On the other side, the administrative support in fiscal year twenty four twenty five, they provided 8,874 I'm sorry, 8,784 information requests. They provided support to our family service and community education center tenants, responsible for the procurement and the budget development and they serve two fifty two children through the Children's Community Clothing Closet Program. So really, we exist for a few reasons. The digital only systems exclude vulnerable populations, so either you have to be tech savvy or have a smartphone and we have noticed that a lot of our clients do not have either of those items. The local in person services are limited or nonexistent.

Agencies have either lost their locations due to natural disasters or others have a longer process to get the financial assistance to our residents slower than what we do. The state offices have been reduced or centralized. You know, closure of state offices within Northport have created this and then the nonprofits cannot absorb all intake or navigation functions. It really does take all of us. It's not you do this and we do this.

It those two lanes always intertwine, and we'll speak on that in in some upcoming slides. So as city manager Fletcher touched on this, this is my favorite slide to talk about because a lot of people don't understand that the funding that goes directly to our residents does not come from us. It comes from external sources such as the United Way of South Sarasota County, Community Foundation of Sarasota County, Season of Sharing, a lot of people know it as SOS, and our Saint Vincent de Paul, funding. Through these partnerships, we have expended $172,609.18 As city manager Fletcher mentioned, direct assistance does not come from the general fund and there is no taxpayer burden. So let's dive into our community events.

Most of you know that we, have a few community events throughout the year. Our community events are about filling gaps, not duplicating services. Our community baby shower and preschool expo, we fill gaps in early childhood access by connecting new and expecting parents to critical resources. We leverage donations and partners with our local Kiwanis Club of Northport to provide essential items. The division serves as central coordinator ensuring equitable access and outreach.

Our back to school resource fair, now the supply squad, focuses on students with identified needs through school based partnerships, addresses unmet needs that impact attendance, confidence and performance, reduces stigmas by normalizing support through coordinated school outreach. I really want to touch on this because we reevaluated and redesigned this event to reduce duplication of services and to be fiscally responsible. And that's something that we do when we when we look at our division. We see what type of impact does it have and if there is a duplication in the community because if there is, then we don't need to be doing that. Then we need to allow those individuals to do that and either remove that funding or revise that funding to better meet the need.

For our Home for the Holidays, we support vulnerable families and seniors during high need holiday season, direct connection model, so we have direct donor to family. That reduces administrative burden and increases impact. And then our partnership driven approach ensures no duplication of services and supports our nonprofits. The Family Service Center opened in 2008. The FSC houses the Social Services Division along with 10 community agencies and provides a one stop location where residents connect with local nonprofits, government agencies, and essential community resources.

The FSC is a bridge for residents to access nonprofit and state, resources. I really like to highlight that we do have a really diverse group at the FSC. If you notice, we serve kids through, the Sarasota County WIC program. We serve teens through Big Brothers Big Sisters. We serve the health and mental health aspects with Center Place Health, Empath, Spark, and then we serve as well as, seniors and families and individuals.

So this is a very diverse group. We host monthly interagency meetings every month at the FSC and this is where we connect our agencies with other agencies amongst ourselves as well. But it's a great way to highlight our nonprofits and certain agencies that are providing services to Northport residents. So the Community Education Center, operating since the 1970s, the CEC currently houses a senior and Awaken Church outreach centers. I really like this slide because it has a graph on the impact that Awaken Church has on Northport residents.

So remember when I talked about their lane and our lane and how they intertwine? This is a perfect example of that. The building is our building. It's a public facility, but it houses Awaken Church that, since October 2025 to March 2026, has served 80,253 households with food insecurity. So I wanted to highlight that to show you that it takes both

of us.

Accessing services, just to recap on that, the closest DCF office is located 35 miles away as City Manager Fletcher mentioned. So anyone that actually wants to see a person and talk to a DCF employee would have to drive 35 miles. We are the only location in Northport that actually can do the case inquiries, help you apply for the application and fax all the documents that you may need. The closest in person financial assistance agency is approximately 10 miles away and that would be like our Venice I'm sorry, Salvation Army or Laurel Nokomis Agency to apply for financial assistance. Our limited public transportation options further restrict access to services.

In person support remains essential for clients navigating complex systems and applications, as I've mentioned before, especially with our elderly population or our population that does not have digital access. Just some quick stats. Seventeen percent of clients are seniors, twenty eight percent of clients are unable to travel outside of the city of Northport for services, and 36% of clients meet CDBG income guidelines, which is low to moderate income. And with that, I'd like to thank you, my team and I thank you, for the opportunity to share the value, impact, and strategic importance of Northport Social Services Division. As our city continues to grow, providing support, resources, and access is essential and remains critical to strengthening stability, promoting self sufficiency, and enhancing the quality of life for our residents.

We appreciate your continued support as we work to connect individuals and families with the assistance they need and to serve our community with compassion and care. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Mhmm. Two points, mister mayor. As you consider, the the main one is I think we all think of how the county model helps the city of Northport as it relates to money that funnels down to South County. We have not been able to get an accurate amount of that figure, but we do believe it exists. But we can't get it from the county. So we're gonna keep trying because we believe that if they're giving money to the nonprofits and the nonprofits are distributing it, then they should go tell us how much money is coming to the city of Northport. I think that's a compliance issue. I don't think it should be hard to find, but yet we've had a very hard time of getting it.

And then the most recent information we did get because they completed it because, miss Carrillo asked for it just doesn't seem to give us reliable information to pass along to you. And the other part of what they do, of course, are the events that they provide. And if there's any feedback on those events as they've evolved under the social services umbrella, then we're happy to discuss those as well. So thank you, mister.

Do you think you would have that information come budget talks possibly? I mean I mean, you could say no, we still haven't gotten it by then. But I mean, you will continue to work on it and possibly bring it back during budget talks.

I think my plan is to elevate it outside of Janet's hands because she tried as hard as she can, and I'm gonna try to get that. If it exists, there's no way it should not exist. That's my point. Right. It has to exist somewhere. But yes, I'll to answer your question, yes,

I'll keep trying.

Alright. Commissioners, anything? Because we gotta keep it brief. We got another meeting coming up in a few minutes. And if we do have anything going on that you have in-depth questions on, we can also do that at budget meetings or throughout your one on ones with the city manager. And you can request Janet to be there as well if you have very pertinent questions. Other than that, I think you did a fabulous job with your presentation. I don't think everybody knew everything that you do and what you have accomplished going forward. This breakdown sort of explained a lot of the things that you do do and what you do to help our citizens, which is our concern as well. So

Mister mayor? Oh, I'm sorry. Just one more thing back to dig back on what you just said. One of the goals for all three of these presentations is also to give you the information so that we can defend publicly when people ask those questions. Now you have it sort of condensed in presentable format so that they can understand what you just said. Okay. Vice Mayer.

One thank you, mayor. One very quick question and it is a little bit off topic. What's the condition of your building? Which one? The physical condition of the building.

Which one? The family service center or the community education center? I consider that the FSC to be in good condition. Might

have to have more of a facility.

So speak, a public works director to speak on that, but, it was built in 2008. It has received repairs as necessary and applicable, and we've made some improvements. Public works has made some improvements, as far as, you know, new carpet, new painting, and getting it up to date. Mhmm.

Great. Thank you for that. And thank you for the presentation. And, mayor, I was one of those. I was not aware of everything

Correct.

That you did, so I really appreciate that.

You're very welcome. Alright.

City clerk, public comment.

I guess I wanna publicly thank Vincent DePaul for donating the money to the citizens of this town. I had dealings with them up north, and they are a good organization. So it's good to see them down here too. I will tell you, to make this quick, that their services may soon have an uptick in clients because of the problems in the economy. So whatever you guys do, they need to stay where they are. And I thank the nonprop the other nonprofits for giving the money.

Anyone else? All right.

Before you turn, can I is it possible for me to have the floor for one minute?

Go ahead.

All right. This is one of the reasons why I personally find it a problem to have meetings like this in in advance of an already scheduled meeting. Okay? I appreciate that everybody's concerned about their own personal time. But the reality is that this conversation didn't get fully vetted. And this one department, you know, nobody really had a chance to weigh in on. So, you know, I would appreciate the future if we schedule these meetings at a different time or on a different day so that they don't run into another or a prescheduled meeting where a lot of people are coming.

So I thank you, mayor. City manager?

Yes. Talking. Commissioner Stokes, we had three hours before this meeting. We're happy to bring this item back for discussion, so if you wanna have it publicly. But three hours is enough time for us to make progress on topics, and I think we did that today.

Alright. So general public comment.

Send what?

Today in the mail, I got another flyer for the Internet company that my tax is paid for. I don't know why I keep getting mail from a company that I don't wanna do business with that Greg Stubbe and Rick Scott funded to be in this town and won't help the funding of anything else in town, like the police station, like the rec department, like this past department. So I'm calling on these people in congress and the senate to help the city out publicly. I told them on the phone I would do this. I don't know if they contacted you guys at all on any of these issues we have or any of the funding, but if they hadn't, then they're not doing their job.

They might not wanna talk to me. Hey. I'm good with that. You guys are the bosses in town. But I also think you guys should pick up the phone and call them and try to solicit some funds for some of these things we're trying to do. And again, I'm going back to the rec department. Some of that's not only, you know, mental, physical health. It's actually public safety, like the swimming and the parks. It takes the kids off the streets. It takes the kids from the woods drinking and smoking behind the thing.

It helps the police department. So a lot of this stuff isn't just the way you guys or people present it. They don't see the other issues on. And I know when I was a kid, some of my best memories were at the Park And Rec. You know, a lot of people in their lives have memories that they fall back on, they can look at, and feel good about.

A lot of them are even when you're a kid, and that's because you don't have the stress of an adult. You don't have all the other things you have to deal with. And some of the best memories of people are in their childhood, And we've got to make that possible. If they have good memories out of their childhood and they grow up right, they're going to have a better adult life, and they'll do a better job with their kids and anybody else they come in contact with. So I'm in full support of the park and rec department. I don't think it should be cut. And, you know, whatever happens with the taxes happens. There's nothing we can do. There's other thing these politicians can do to bring money to this town. They don't have to send it to the Ukraine.

They don't have to send it to the Middle East. They don't have to send it to Europe. They don't have to send it to South Africa. They can send this here. And that's what we gotta do. We gotta keep the money in this country and get our politicians to keep the money in this country and stop spending it overseas. And I'll leave it at that.

That's all I need.

Thank you. It's 358. I adjourn this meeting.

We have evolved to having our