Remarks by Jonathan Groth
96 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 4
- Play at 0:59
“Sorry, what did you say? Huh? I see 601. Oh. I thought I was going nuts. All right, good evening, everyone. Let's call to order our first budget workshop for our budget season. Madam Clerk, could you do the roll call for us, please? Okay. Okay. We'll skip the roll call. Thank you, Madam Clerk. All right. So we'll open our workshop this evening with public comment. I know we have a few folks here. Does anyone like to give public comment in? Oh, it's a workshop. Any public comment? No, no. Any on Zoom? Do we have anyone on Zoom? No? Okay, no public comment. We'll close public comment at this…”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 2:45
“18th, yep. At 6 p.m. Okay. All right. Well, then, if there's nothing from anyone else, I guess I'll turn it over to you to get us started. Okay.”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 8:02
“Just very quickly, remind me, we set our cap at 9.3, correct?”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 8:12
“So he beat me when I questioned, because I know in years past during this exercise, we've asked ourselves, in theory, if we so choose to try to lower the millage, what do we have to cut out of this in order to get down to 9.2?”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 8:30
“Just wanted to know what the benchmark was.”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 8:46
“Not saying I'm advocating for it. Just was curious as to the mechanism by which we would get there.”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 32:14
“Chief, thank you very much. Any questions? I'm going to take a look.”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 33:13
“Thanks very much, Chief. So I think, you know, what we'll do is we'll kind of comb through the line items, section 12 through 64 and see if there's any questions on them. So you would just hang tight with us for just a moment. Good. What?”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 33:47
“Congratulations are in order again, Chief and Captain and the whole department for the award and the excellent service you provided to Biscayne Park as reflected in the awards that you've been receiving. Thank you very much. I'm sure we'll be talking about it again next Tuesday. Um, so, you know, I, I just, is there anything else before we, uh, launch into the discussion, Al? No? Okay. Um, so, uh, just kind of at the outset, you know, I know obviously that there's, you know, we're talking about a 7% increase for the department, but what I'd note is just in running the numbers, 95% of that…”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 36:02
“PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Yeah. So I did have one question about in this is just based on maybe my own inability to recall chief about the about the accreditation section. Just jam on down to that. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, That's a section line item 58 and that includes that the that software that PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Our DMS. Thank you. Yeah, um, Since I know when you first came aboard with us, we kind of put accreditation on the back burner for the time being. But this was an element, I guess, that lives in this section of the budget that we continue to use for the benefit of the department,…”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 38:14
“Is that separate from, or is that in conjunction with the part of the report where you provide us where we're adjusting licenses to reflect the actual number of folks that are using them?”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 38:39
“So all those providers are on notice that you're coming for them?”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 39:03
“So that was, sorry, I apologize. I don't mean to interrupt you. And that was actually the second part of the question is, do you foresee us even being able to approach that again?”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 39:23
“You know better than me, so that's the authority on the position. And then I did have one other question for you, Chief, not really questioning amounts, but just kind of a general question about the line items. In the full-time salaries in Section 12, the comment that you made earlier about hiring a new officer, is that the open position there that we see?”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 40:15
“Great. Well, it really covers everything that I had, Chief, because as I mentioned already, the vast, vast majority of the increase, which is pretty nominal to begin with, is coming from required areas. Yeah, they're compulsory.”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 40:37
“You know, actually, that brings to mind one more question. Sorry, I promise I'll let you go. But I saw that the insurance, the insurance for the autos didn't increase. Was that before or was that after we had brought the two new motorcycles aboard?”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 41:04
“Are there any other questions from the rest of the commission on the police budget?”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 57:57
“Doreen, thank you. Do we have any questions for Doreen on the code budget?”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 1:00:45
“Thank you. On that last point. Thanks, Paul. Having had those two folks that departed, which now we see the reduction in those line items for that person no longer being there. Does that impact your department to the point now where you're seeing a decrease in your operational like day to day? You know, are you going to are you going to be experiencing any difficulty by losing that the services of those folks?”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 1:01:56
“I agree. But my, my, I guess my concern lies with this, you know, continuing the budget where you're at and I'm not trying to throw rent monkey wrenches in any in all the hard work that you and the manager have done. But if you're, if what you're saying is that Because I know in the past we've talked a little bit about having the equipment with you out in the field so you can better manage and not have to run back and do that, which that seems to be still sufficient.”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 1:03:48
“Understood. So that was kind of the second part of the question I was going to ask you was having lost some personnel and kind of stretching a little bit further to be able to kind of cover that and now adding a weekend seems to be a little in opposite.”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 1:04:37
“Have you seen, and I'm just kind of thinking on the spot now, have you seen, or Al, you know, if you've seen it either, any other opportunities for CAP or for building with that overlap that you have to kind of take, maybe trade off in some of those duties or for them to continue help on? I don't know, and we haven't been into the building department just yet, so I don't know exactly where we're at dollar to dollar for them. But I want to open a can of wine for you.”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 1:06:27
“Well, look, I'm not trying to, like I said, I don't want to go down the rabbit hole with everyone on that issue. I mean, I trust your judgment. I trust Al's judgment on the department. If what you're telling us is the budget that's being proposed, that the reduction is sufficient, then you can operate at this level without compromising what you do and what your department does. I'm satisfied with that. You know, just numbers, I think, you know, looking high level at the numbers, same way that I did when we were talking about the police department. Um, you know, you have a slight increase in…”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 1:08:28
“I think that's it, Doreen. Listen, thank you so much for the hard work and everything to date and for the upcoming fiscal and your hard work and putting together a lean budget for us again this year.”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 1:08:39
“Thank you. All right, so that covers our first, I think those are the two, only two presentations we had set for today, right, Al?”
Village Commission · Aug 4, 2026