Remarks by Gil Hernandez
106 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 4 of 5
- Play at 5:33:18
“Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to accept item number four as amended.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 5:33:56
“Mayor, I make a motion to approve item number seven. Or do we need to reconsider? Okay, I was on the prevailing side, so I make a motion to reconsider item number seven.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 5:34:31
“Okay. Mayor, I make a motion to approve item number seven. Oh, wait a minute. Sorry.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 5:34:41
“I move that the property tax rate be increased by adoption of the tax rate of .599774 per $100 evaluation, which is effectively a 50 cent tax increase in the tax rate.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 35:46
“Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Jeff, out of the plan, the CIP plan, 72% of it is paid for through revenue bonds. Yeah, that's correct. A lot of this is going to be done through utilities, borrowing money from the utility for utility projects. But there are some things that I wanted to ask that are separate from that. Like, for example, in the 2024 bond, we had $1.5 million set aside for trails for the south side kind of thing. Where is that in the CIP?”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 36:25
“Is it under streets? Is it under stormwater? Is it under parks? I'm pretty sure it's under streets. So I was looking under stormwater. Page 186. It's along the drainage channels, and then I thought, well, it's not there. Maybe it'd be under parks. But it's under streets. Which one is it?”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 37:00
“Well, I mean, it still falls under public works. It's just... Well, I mean, what we're talking about is along the drainage channels. So if I was confused where it was, you know, the general public's probably not going to know where it's at.”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 37:59
“Okay, so I'm looking at that page. It's it everything is done prior, but I don't think we've actually Construction this year. Are you gonna have it done by the end of September? Yeah, so that's encumbering money so it's just the encumbering money in the actual yeah, we're using some some of our IDIQ contracts and Okay, because, you know, if you look at it this way, it seems like it was done in the previous year, not this year, or this coming year where the actual construction is going to be. So the money, you've got it encumbered but not spent.”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 38:36
“Okay. The other question I have for you is, like in the water plan, you know, you have Sunrise Beach, the boat ramp. Yeah. That for – I think it's 1. – 1.1 million? Sounds about right. 1.2 million, excuse me. And I'm curious, you know, a lot of things that we talk about here is needs versus wants, right? Seems like to me that's very much a want, right? So can you please justify the expenditure?”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 39:35
“I don't know. For a project that costs $1.2 million, I don't know if we increase the rates or we get enough rates to account for that kind of expenditure.”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 40:07
“Okay. The warehouse... Camille, go ahead and answer. You want to answer the question.”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 40:57
“Okay. You have another project here, warehouse facility from ground storage tank that's going to cost, I guess, ultimately about $5 million. This is a storage tank that, I guess, was replaced by the elevated storage tank on Holly? On Holly Road, yes, sir. So you have the old ground... a storage tank that's sitting there.”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 41:45
“So just to be clear on the project, you're going to make this tank, you're going to leave the tank there, create some sort of opening and provide power, HVAC or whatever?”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 43:12
“Okay. Okay, so that's it. Jeff, another question. The seawall that's on the backside of the, in between the museums, It's not real clear as to which project that is.”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 43:40
“Because you have one that's E16319 that is flood wall upgrades to the science museum, but that doesn't look like the other. And then you have another one 27030 that looks like it's like a total seawall plan, but doesn't really specify. In the past, we used to have a project specifically for that section of the seawall.”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 44:26
“No, and it's part of their park kind of improvement for the area where the bridge was.”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 44:59
“Okay, can we kind of specify that in the CIP in terms of what that looks like? Because, I mean, it's not reflecting what we're doing. I mean, what we have, what I'm seeing here doesn't reflect any of that.”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 45:13
“No, no, I know, but it doesn't reflect what that project is. Oh, okay.”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 45:19
“The description isn't good. So if the situation with the port has changed, we're going to be combining some fundings and some efforts let's reflect that in the in the cip okay i mean just look at that on the same page uh with regards to that um i am a little concerned that you know a lot of this is debt spending from um you know i want to make sure we're scrubbing this to it's it's really the the NEEDS VERSUS THE WANTS ON SOME OF THESE, AND THERE'S PROBABLY SOME MORE EXAMPLES, BUT I'VE ONLY GOT LIKE 40 SECONDS LEFT. SO I'D LIKE TO TRY AND MAKE SURE THAT WE'RE DOING THIS. AND I'LL GET WITH YOU…”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 1:16:51
“Okay. Um, It is terrible to introduce these kind of things like a vacant building because, I mean, any time you put in something like this, there's a lot of issues you have with it, right? For example, the short-term rental registration fee that we do now doesn't cover the cost of the program, of the bureaucracy associated with it. so when you create something like this you have to hire somebody to manage it you have to have a program that to to run it you there's a whole set of cost to it that you're not accounting for through just putting a fee out there for this and then what constitute…”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 1:17:46
“And she can come up and answer it, but you're not talking about the bureaucracy and cost associated with doing a program like this. So it's not just revenue. You've got to have factor in cost.”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 1:17:59
“Okay. But this is not something we decide the week before we vote on a budget.”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 1:18:07
“Well, I know that because you tried to include it in the historical building.”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 1:18:44
“Okay, so I'm, you know, we can't nickel and dime people to death here with, and trying to figure out other ways to pay for stuff because we don't want to put on the mantle of like, oh, we didn't raise taxes. Okay, this whole thing about, you know, and we try to do it all the time, street user fee, you know, this fee here, that fee there, you know, and then we say we didn't raise taxes. Well, yeah, we did, just in a different manner. The community enrichment fee was just god awful. Okay, utility bills should be for utility bills. Shouldn't be for all kind of other stuff that we're trying to…”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026
- Play at 1:19:38
“Okay, when was the last time you did it?”
City Council · Aug 27, 2026