City Council - workshop

Good morning and welcome to the June 8th, 2026 workshop of the Orlando City Council. Commissioners, we have two workshops today. We're going to begin with a workshop on the Pulse Memorial. Friday is going to mark 10 years since the Pulse tragedy. A decade has passed since the lives of 49 people were taken. Countless others forever impacted. We're continuing to send love and hope to the victims' families and survivors, first responders and medical professionals and all those impacted. And I'm proud that we continue to honor the 49 in many different ways that we'll mark this week. But one of them is the creation of a permanent memorial. And obviously, you know that we purchased the site a couple of years ago and had begun that process. And Heather is going to update us on that.

Thank you, Mayor Dyer. And good morning, commissioners. We're going to do a brief update on the Pulse Memorial. Is it on yet? It's on there to hit first. There we go, perfect. Okay, before we get started, I would like to start, okay, maybe not. Oh, here, let me try the clicker. I would like to start by taking a moment of silence to remember the 49 Angels. Commissioners, I'd like to note that the names on this slide is an effort of an undertaking as part of the memorial process. For the first time in the 10 years since the city team took it over, we have made contact with all 49 next of kin to be able to confirm how how they each want their angels names spelled and if they have a preferred nickname that they would prefer to have used and we have also asked them for a preferred photo of their choice and over half of them have provided those to us and so those photos will be used as part of the remembrance ceremony on friday and so there were some corrections to some names or some hyphenations or things like that and so we're very proud of the city's team the neighborhoods team and our staff at greenwood cemetery who helped to outreach to all 49 of the next of kin to help achieve that. And they're staying in contact with them throughout the memorial process to keep them updated and to continue to get additional information from them. So a little reminder of how we got here, because we do have two new commissioners since we've started this process. But in October of 2023, the city purchased the Pulse site with plans to build a permanent memorial. That was after hearing from family members who are concerned that the foundation was no longer planning to build the memorial on the Pulse site. in april of 2024 we began the memorial engagement process um and then and that was really selecting a pulse memorial advisory committee which we selected 18 people out of the 150 that applied to be on the committee almost all of them had a connection to pulse whether that was being an actual survivor a family member of a victim or they worked there attended there the one had some design expertise that we thought was important to the process So they held their first meeting in July and had meetings throughout the remainder of the year. One or two was canceled because of hurricanes. Since we live in Florida, that's always something that we have to deal with. And so in February of 2025 was the last time that I was here at Council, and we presented the conceptual design that the advisory committee had created. After that time, we went out for a design build RFP and selected Gomez and Borelli and partners as the city's design and construction partners. And then in September of 2025, council approved that agreement and we began the design work. As part of that design, we also began working on the building and we removed several of the artifacts that were left within the building, things like disco balls and chandeliers and posters, things that could help tell the story of what Pulse was before we took the building down. And then in mar was it march yeah in march we actually um took the building down and had our 30 design public meeting we committed throughout the process to have two public meetings at the 30 and then at the 60 we did the 60 design meeting just last month in may and um we plan to commence construction in september and so with that i will introduce the design team to talk more detail george barelli

Thank you, Heather. Good morning, Mayor. Good morning, commissioners. It's an honor to be here, and thank you. It's truly an honor to have been selected for this long-awaited, important project. My name is Jorge Borelli. I'm the principal president in charge of Borelli and Partners Architects. With me here today is Steve Gomez. Sorry. Steve Corot with Gomez Construction. They are our construction, our build partner. Dan Turbovich is a senior project manager and senior associate with our firm. He's the architect leading this team of 1,000. A lot of firms, you know, I won't go into every one, but two other key people on our team are out of New York. They're our exhibition and media design team. They are helping with the interpretive message for this memorial, and that is local projects, and they're represented by Nico Guillon and Amanda White. So this concept began with the committee. And the committee developed a Pulse Memorial Mission. Their concept echoed and reflected that mission, which you see in this document that was developed. And this is what the city used for the RFP. And it was called the Design Control Document. And you'll see the elements in the lower right-hand corner that include the Healing Garden, the Memorial Plaza, the Survivors Common, the Angel Ellipse. the private gathering area and the visitor pavilion. And we took this concept and we're bringing it to reality now in the design build process. This is our 60% complete presentation and we're on track to meet the deadline and get the memorial started for construction in September. More on that later in the presentation. So here's our current progress on the 60%. You can see all the elements are still represented with the Prism Tower Plaza on Orange and Esther Street. You see the large ellipse in the foreground of this picture, and those will be honoring the 49 Angels. Dan will touch a little bit more on that in a second. The visitor pavilion, you'll see kind of tucked into the existing trees to the left, to the west side of the image. And then to the probably north corner is peeking out of the existing trees. A tree line is the visitor pavilion. And in the central, you'll have the memorial plaza, fountain, reflecting pool, and obelisk. And Dan's going to jump into some more of the details of each of these elements so you can understand some of the design interpretation. Dan? Thank you.

Thanks, George. What we're looking at here is a view from Esther Street into the memorial proper itself. What was important to the design team was the degree of transparency, views, ventilation, and natural Florida sunshine. But you're also having an element symbolically looking back in time from this perspective. You're outside of the event in a tragic area, which will be defined by the memorial proper itself. And the ellipse itself is an important element that radiates and pulses from the actual generation of that tragic site. And I'll go into a little bit more detail on some of that, but we wanted to be able to sit down and showcase the visual appearance and the visual process that a typical visitor will actually experience, and particularly survivors and those of the family members. This is a view of the inner ring of the Angel Ellipse. What you'll see, it encompasses the entire site, the memorial area proper itself, just to the right. The signal element to a lot of this is that this is an area where family members and visitors can come to visit a particular angel. You'll note that there are name plates as well as national identity flags associated with that, as well as an alcove for actual gathering of individuals, family members, away from the main line of traffic throughout the site. The pillars themselves are color-coded. They are color-coded based on the entire range of the rainbow spectrum. circulating the site and then you'll if you notice subtly in the upper two panels is a photo interpretive cutouts of a ripple of the panelings themselves. The importance here is we wanted to showcase the notion of layering in depth of color presence as well as that notion of a memory ripple going throughout time and reinforce the notion of the ellipse doing just that. You'll see that in the hardscapes as well. This area here is within the private gathering area. It's located outside of the ellipse line, looking directly towards that back wall, which is actually the survivor's wall. It's an important area for us to identify those areas where you can have a sense of healing, a sense of retrospection beyond the tragedy itself. We have a specifically we're looking at investigating a series of quotes specifically would be original to that. But the interior of the private gathering, this is an area in which along the bench seating, just on that back area, that granite space, those are actual capsules for personal effects of the 49 angels. And so in a very symbolic way, this is the area in which you can come to be surrounded by those angels. It's a very it's a very solemn place. It's supposed to be introspective. contemplative, it's there to also promote healing because much of this tragedy occurred not only at the night of the event, but was prolonged with the lack of healing and the suffering and the trauma that resonated throughout our community. And we wanted to make sure that we provided a space where people can reflect and have a chance to heal. And that was a very important concept as we took on the documentation from the design control documents, is we wanted to provide those opportunities inherent with the design beyond physical elements, which I'll talk about in a minute. This is part of the Survivor's Common, again, outside of the Memorial Plaza itself. It's an area for light gathering, contemplative nature, to be in touch with natural elements, sunshine, and the environment. But in particular, we have a symbolic architectural reference of a tree for that. Of particular note, we're looking at utilizing an olive tree for all the symbolic elements for that the olive tree represents, longevity, resilience, forgiveness, peace, solitude, as well as being just a magnificent specimen. So we are looking at an age tree that is well developed for this particular area, and it's a fairly open common ground for people to gather, kind of sit, contemplate, but it provides an opportunity to detach yourself from a lot of the triggering events of the memorials themselves. Memorials themselves are not a passive element. They're an act of engagement, and sometimes you have to provide for that relief, otherwise it becomes overly daunting. We wanted to make sure that this memorial place was peaceful, respectful, and contemplative in nature, and we have to balance that with the elements of remembrance as well and the act of engagement. This is actually several components all at once. This is the Memorial Plaza. The most specific element that I'd like to highlight is the perimeter of the Memorial Plaza itself. It actually outlines the original nightclub, and it's done with rainbow banding. You can see a touch of it underneath the reflecting pool, but that colorization will actually go along the entire perimeter of the actual memorial itself, which actually encompasses the original building and the tragedy site. The reflecting pool, while having kind of artistic impressions of dance and movement and memory and that memory ripple, again, is location symbolically within the public gathering areas of the original building. So much of the community was gathered within that specific area. We wanted to make sure that we were representing that component very directly. It's bookend onto the right with a water feature with quotes in both English and Spanish for those who wanted to dance by our Daniel Foster, as well as the Pulse heartbeat logo. What you'll see below that is a listing of all the Angels' names. It is here that they are actually represented together as a group within that Pulse site. Whereas on the Angel Ellipse, they're actually represented individually. So inside the perimeter of the site, they're collective. Outside, they're individual. In the very background, we have what we call the obelisk. And that is the site of the SWAT breach wall that was the termination of the event. For many survivors, it is a point of terror. that they do not wish to remember. Others, it is a point of salvation that their life began anew. We know memorials are active engagement sites. This is probably one of the most challenging areas that we had to kind of develop and look at. We do it very straightforward with a very a stark feature, a very massive feature with the concrete, as well as representational of the anniversary date itself to acknowledge it. And then just to the right as you would pass by, that's the survivor's wall. That's the location I called attention to earlier. This is the... I'll go back to it. George wanted me to point out one of the challenges that we had was not just elemental. It's not physical features. It is human nature and human psychology to get attached to things and places that are not normal. They're not people, things you don't normally have a relationship with. It's the difference between what makes a house and a home different. For this particular site, the community on the whole, many members of our design team as well as the community have direct connections to this facility, our experiences, and it became a psychic warehouse of our memories and experiences during that time period. The removal of that can be immensely traumatizing. And that was a major obstacle and challenge that the DCD team had to overcome and kind of get agreement to by the family members. And we heard the city struggle with this. We saw how challenged this became. And we took a moment to pause to sit down and say, how do we address that? We know we need to move forward. We know we need to move past it. But how do we acknowledge this? emotional connection we have with space. And our approach was to actually salvage much of the elements as we could from the facility. So that an area of the dance floor of the original Pulse nightclub will be salvaged, and by dance floor I mean the concrete section, and will be placed and interred beneath the actual dance floor, tying that moment and place symbolically to that area so it's reused and gives life to it. Likewise, the breach wall itself has been salvaged in whole. And what we will be doing is instead of putting that on display, because it is stark, it is incredibly striking. And while evocative... It was too much. We wanted to make sure that we were taking a kinder, gentler approach to this trauma and reflect that. And that was part of the balancing act. So we'll be interning part of that, the breach wall itself in a hole at the location of the obelisk. We're bringing those two elements together. Likewise, we're taking much of the concrete of the existing facility and we're salvaging that and we're going to be utilizing it in part, not so much in the concrete mix, I don't want any confusion that we're mixing it in with the concrete, but we'll be adding it as elements to the concrete everywhere we have concrete or aggregate and we're going to be distributing that throughout the entire site so that the building itself while removed is reinterpreted back into the living embodiment in this entire memorial and that is is something you're not going to see we know it's there and with speaking with the family members and and survivors we think this this is able to transcend that loss and allows them to kind of let go move forward knowing uh as quote direct as as uh i was told by an individual they will always have a place to stay. My daughter will always have a place, and she can always be here. And so immensely moving. It was a very difficult decision, but not one you would see in renderings or boards. This is the southeast corner. This is the Prism Tower Plaza area. It's kind of a very communicative element to the Orange Avenue approach. We know that this is a signal component of it. We wanted to be able to have an element to marquee element as well as referential the original Pulse logo as part of a glowing element. One of the important elements of the Polk Memorial design is the fact that it's also a day and nighttime facility, so this entire column piece will be illuminated at night, as well as much of the remainder of the memorial itself. This is North View from Cayley Street looking at the visitor pavilion itself. Like what I said earlier, we wanted to have a strong day and night time connection to the facility. This is a 24 hour operational area. And what you're seeing in the corner there is very directly the original pulse sign. We intend to have the sign not only showcase as a living artifact, but actually renewed. And so at night that sign will be re-illuminated. And so we're incorporating kind of the elements of zoning and planning and public face with this element of being able to see and experience a facility even after its closure. The other strong element that we kind of interpreting is the rainbow color panel screening and while the everybody can see the coloring the intent is that we wanted to make a space that was inclusive safe and comfortable and the The language that was being used to describe it is that people often feel they want to be held and embraced. So in a very literal interpretation, those screens, the arms, actually do wrap around and kind of embrace the entire pavilion itself, the visitor pavilion. And that was very intentional. This is more the public face facing the actual exhibit or the memorial proper itself. And what we wanted to do was have a transparency between interior and exterior. Again, so that when you visit the site after hours, you're able to look into and see the vast majority of the visitor pavilion as well. The curb wall itself is a specific memorial feature. It's there to actually give acknowledgement to why we're here, what was the purpose of the memorial, and to be a message of hope. As you enter the facility itself, the first major public experience zone is going to be the simple timeline. And it is intentionally simplistic. The language is text only. There's no images associated with this. And it's narrative in journalistic prose. So it's very factual based, very subdued, with very limited but pointed emotional language. And so it allows the experience uh of to understand to walk past and through the the events of that evening uh and it start it reads from right to left as you go towards the actual exhibit and it's situated in a way in which if this was too evocative for individuals they could bypass it without it interrupting the flow it's not an absolutely essential but it's presented there and and it's a it's a It serves as a narrative standing for the actual facility itself. In the distance, you get a glimpse of what you'll see. Obviously, coming from another area outside, you'd be able to see it. But you do see the major elements linearly going through the facility itself. So there's an artistic data line going through the center of the facility. This is an alcove. It's a very prominent one just behind the radial curve of the exhibitory. This is the chance to actually give visitors an idea of what Pulse was like before the tragedy itself. historical framing. There are some general, some very light quotations. Obviously, this is the artifact collection zones between the posters, the entry doors, the grand chandelier, which we understand would have originally had been purchased from the Grand Moulin Rouge in Paris, France, and brought over specifically. So there's a lot of proscenium. That's a central major element. It is a massive chandelier, as well as other figurative elements and interpretive forms. So we have some of the textured walls that we had in the VA, please. And again, you did not have to actually visit Paul's nightclub to get a very good sense of what Paul's nightclub was like and how colorful and vibrant and larger than life that it was. The main visitor experience is centered upon a radius in which the oversized disco ball rotates. The intention here was to play with light. The notion of what a nightclub was and in particular how oversized in our minds and memories this nightclub actually was for what it served in the community. It also creates an experience in which the visitor is bathed in this light and experience as it gently rotates around that room. We all have a sense of what a disco ball light is, but it's a unique way to bring the idea of solemn remembrance, but a transcendental element in space and time. Within this area on the left is essentially the global and international response to the Pulse event and how the world stepped up and showed they cared and were in solidarity. There's a single line of text that kind of describes some of that in narrative form. On the right is the Orlando response. And its centered quote is, right now we're looking for Mayor Dyer's quote during that time period because it was characteristic of the Orlando experience, being Orlando strong and how we came together. And it set the tone so well for the time period that we felt it still resonated in a classic timeless manner that still rang true today. So we're utilizing that with a host of imageries. associated with that that we're still going through the curative process. This is the kind of the culminating element. And this is where we host the 49 angels. This is the area in which visitors are able to come in contact very directly with the angels individually in fairly large in size and format, as well as having family members and loved ones come back and specifically remember their angels as well. It's reserved intentionally. We did not want competing images. It was a desired effect to put more emphasis on the individuals and their absence and what's not there and that stripping of life. Again, while it's a visitor center and somewhat of an artistic impression of these events, We wanted it to be an area for gathering rather than a holistic approach to museum programming and design. And we wanted to make sure that we had the images of each of them by each of the 49 family members, as Heather recently said, that all 49 at this point have responded in providing imagery and contacts and names. And so we're seeing the progression on that as well. But again, this is kind of the culminating feature of when you actually get to see the actual angels themselves. Next steps coming up are kind of very historical amounts. Most of these we've already completed. The whole site has been kind of cleared. The building's been removed and cleaning. We've hit our mark for the 30, 60% design schedules, which are very accelerated. And then we have commencement of construction starting in September 26. Another way of saying that is we're going to permitting in mid-July. So literally in 30, 45 days, we are bringing this to actual permitting process. And we'll be moving forward. And we anticipate the completion date to be in the third quarter of 2027. We have every expectation we'll be able to achieve that.

So as we close that out, commissioners, to note that city staff have played a significant role in the development from EDV, Richard Forbes, Doug Metzger, Tim Johnson, Marty Hudson, and Donna in our office. They were part of the initial Pulse Memorial Advisory Committee and have continued supporting the effort. throughout the time including I should mention Jay Hood with Catalyst. He volunteered his services to create the conceptual design with Wayne and Baker Barrios and he continues to be a connection point to make sure as we have to make changes the conceptual design to make it actually constructible. that the intention of the committee is still throughout that design. And then, of course, Christie, who has been leading as our construction project manager and our facilities team has been extraordinary throughout this process, carefully removing the items, making sure they're packaged well so they can be restored again. And they were also very supportive throughout the site visits to make sure that the building was secure and safe for people to go through. So as we close out the memorial this week, we have started the 10-year remembrance events. Yesterday, Commissioner Sheehan, or not yesterday, Saturday, Commissioner Sheehan, Commissioner Chapin, and Commissioner Ortiz, I don't know who was the fastest, but they were all at our community rainbow run. Or who actually finished? I'm curious if everybody finished. Oh, okay. But we had more than 2,000 people come out for that run on Saturday, including there was 15 sponsors who helped make this event possible, including Orlando Health, who's been the presenting sponsor, and Hard Rock. who has consistently supported this event with the Love is Love Lounge inside of City Hall. We had approximately 50 families and survivors participate and more than 100 first responders. The Rainbow Run was created at the first year mark by students at UCF as a way to honor the 49 Angels. And so that is one element that the city has continued on when we took over the memorial process. Also this year, the prayer ribbons that have been out there every year will be in front of City Hall as well this week. And then we've added a new opportunity for reflection. The Created in Community Portraits of Pulse Art Exhibit will be installed on the first floor art gallery starting tomorrow. This exhibit features 49, they're paint by number works that were done by family members immediately after the tragedy. And so those will be redisplayed for the first time in many years in partnership with the History Center. And then our Pulse Remembrance Ceremony will be Friday at 5.30 at the First United Methodist Church. And we've expanded it this year in honor of the tenure. There will be some additional cultural performances. The Orlando Gay Choir will be there as usual. Our poet laureate, Kamara, is doing a special poem that she has written for the occasion. there will be a candle lighting ceremony as we read the 49 names and then our angels the angel action network that were there and multiple places right after will actually be part of the ceremony as well and so with that i guess here's the slide with all of those events in case you're interested and with that we'll take any questions thank you heather thank you team very well done uh commissioner sheehan

Thank you, Mayor. Well, first of all, I want to thank everyone who's been a part of this. I know this was a very sacred and important, you know, role that all of you took. And I appreciate the sensitivity and the way that you approached it and the way that you, because it's not always easy dealing with people who are dealing with grief. You know, it's a very difficult process. Everyone processes grief differently. And some people process grief with anger. And, you know, I understand that it was a difficult process to go through, but I think that the way that you took all of that and have put it together, and, you know, I have to also thank the city employees who, you know, who have been a part of this since day one, who I've been so proud of. Many left their desks to assist the families and worked at Camping World, and this has just been a city process, and actually from the beginning. So I just want to say thank you to everyone who's been, you know, a part of it. I really appreciate the fact that you dealt with the breach wall in a very sensitive way. It will still be there, but it won't be a macabre tourist attraction. That's what the concern was that, you know, that it would be, you know, a weird, you know, people died here. How are we going to handle that? I think you dealt with that in a very sensitive way. And the only, and I love the olive tree. Wow. That's just a really beautiful touch. I just had a question about the portraits. I just wanted to make sure, Heather, they were all finished because I was part of that process and we didn't finish them all. So are they now finished?

According to Flynn, they are not finished because they were intentionally not finished by some of the families. Oh, okay. And so they've been left in that.

condition so some are finished and some are not by as long as they're okay with that because I know I did one for a family who asked me to paint it but if that as long as they're okay with the process again I just want to make sure that if we're going to do the exhibit that we did it in a sensitive fashion so thank you for that and Their run was lovely, and I love how it brings everyone together, and what's always touching is to see the hand-lettered signs by children along the route, and that's what happened when that happened. When those streets were closed for almost a month, and the neighbors were very much inconvenienced, they embraced this, and their children put out hand-lettered signs about love, which was really very inspirational. Again, I just want to thank everyone and Mayor, you know, I mean, I'm glad that we got out of it. Let the family, you know, the politicians didn't need to do this. It needed to be a community thing. And I think it really shows that this was done in a way that really honors the families and involved them. So thank you.

Commissioner Burns.

All right. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Heather. And to the team, I'd just like to say that I appreciate the care and the intention and the trauma-informed approach that you all took to designing this memorial. My questions are more from an operational perspective. standpoint. And so I have 3 I just dropped so one is the operational control and oversight who will have the operational control and oversight. But also the ongoing cost of the operations have we you know looked at that and then determine where that that comes from and then the last one is just the availability of of of the of this memorial will it you know can it be rented out for birthdays and things like that it can be activated or will it just be with those activities be be a lot and then who will make those decisions of what types are events would be appropriate.

So some of the most of the operational things we're still working through at a high level. We are making sure that the decisions we make in the design are low maintenance and so that there's we're having minimal costs for ongoing operations. It's envisioned that it will be, you know, maybe part time or minimally staffed. I think when the building or when the memorial opens, it'll need additional staffing and then probably pare down over time. So some of those we're still finalizing, you know, we're kind of building the memorial as we go. So We're kind of finalizing some of those. As far as events, the idea is not to rent it out to the general public for types of events. However, that family gathering area that's on the side was created because families do have events there. So we know one family, they like to put up a Christmas tree every year for their angel. We know some like to come for birthday parties. So they'll be able to use that family gathering space for those types of activities. And then we can follow up with you as we continue working through all the operational elements. FJ is kind of leading that effort more on the operational side, but we'll keep you updated on all of those. But the idea is that this will be more passive and hopefully to keep operations minimal.

Yeah, and I think we we also have to I imagine based on these renderings that it would be a beautiful memorial and I'm thinking 1015 20 years down the line that we wanted to be as beautiful as it is on day one.

There's a lot of discussion that we have related to materials that are used types of trees so that how they you know the leaves fall off of them and the concern around some of those and so we spent a lot of time. working through some of those details. I should also say as far as the memorial being opened, it's envisioned that the outside space will be accessible 24-7 because we know, I mean, a lot of people go there at night given that the shooting happens late at night. The visitor pavilion will have hours, you know, more nine to five, something like that, where it will be closed in the evening, but the memorial will be open.

And as far as security, because I think that should be a big piece in ensuring that that asset is protected and individuals who attend there are protected.

Yes. And we've had OPD involved throughout looking at septet design principles and those kinds of things as well.

So thank you very much. Great job team.

Okay. Thank you very much. Great job. Now we'll move on to some really fun stuff. Commissioner Ortiz, hold on team, one sec. Heather.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to keep you guys, I just had a quick question, it's about parking. Nobody has talked about parking. Whether we have accessibility for this.

So the parking off of Cayley, where you saw the visitor pavilion, is anticipated to be the handicap accessible parking with additional spaces then required, given that we know several survivors were injured and have those types of injuries. Correct me if I'm wrong, Doug, and there's actually no planning things. And then we envision using Esther Street for parking as today for the remainder of that.

OK, thank you.

so uh we had scheduled this Okay, the second workshop we had scheduled as a legislative update primarily for the session that concluded the first week of May, but turns out to be extremely timely given the fact that the legislature has had a couple of special sessions. The one that concluded last week related to an initiative that'll be on the ballot in November related to local government property taxes. So Kyle Sheppard, our legislative affairs director, is here to update us on both subjects. Kyle?

Sure. Good morning, Mayor. Good morning, Commissioners. Kyle Sheppard here to give you your annual legislative update and your annual reminder that I'm just a messenger. Please do not blame me for anything that I have to report here. Sadly, this report every year often is to deliver some bad news about our relationship between our state legislature and local governments throughout the state of Florida. Maybe it's getting a little bit better, but as you'll see, there's things we have to think through. Every year when the legislature meets, we have dozens and dozens of bills that impact what we do here at the city and counties as well. Your staff is spending a lot of time. We're still spending a lot of time going through those bills, trying to understand how to operationalize all these new mandates that the legislature has given us. Understand that just within the next 20 or 30 minutes, I can't go through all those bills. We'll pick out 10 or 12 of the more interesting ones, but there are going to be questions probably we can't answer yet because we're still going through bills. You're represented by a team in Tallahassee, including myself and a very talented group of folks from the Gray Robinson Law Firm, also the Pittman Law Group based out of Tallahassee, and the Southern Group. They work hard for you all session and have been working through special sessions over the last few weeks. And as the mayor said, one special session just concluded last week, so they've been on the clock a lot for you over the past six months. Quick overview of the session. Session is supposed to be 60 days and it's supposed to be once per year. This year we had interim committee weeks where a lot of the business of the legislature starts. That was last fall and into the winter. The regular session this year was early because this is an election year. So it was in January through about the middle of March. The legislature is supposed to adopt a budget. In fact, it's the only thing they have to do each year. They're supposed to adopt a budget during regular session. They did not do that again this year and had to hold a special session. There have been three special sessions since regular session. The first one on redistricting, and the governor also called that to consider regulations of AI and some issues related to medical freedom. There was no legislation on AI or medical freedom. And instead, the legislature simply redrew the congressional districts for all of the congressional districts around the state of Florida. The second one was adoption of the budget, which the state finally did. They had to do it by July 1, and they did that. And then last week, we'll talk about this here in a minute. There was a special session. over two days, just two days, that adopted a proposal to go on the ballot in November. This year, there were over 1,900 bills filed, almost that many amendments to bills filed, almost 3,000 separate votes in the legislature. There were a total of over 15,000 discrete legislative actions taken. Your team is watching every one of those for intended and unintended consequences to the city of Orlando. Ultimately, there were 237 bills passed by the legislature. That does not account for the special sessions. We tracked this year about 418 bills through the process. And of those, about 60 or 61 of them that passed have some impact on what we do here at the city of Orlando. And those might be major ramifications or small things. You see here sort of the trend over the years of how much the legislature has done. Remember that drop off back in 2022 or whatever just has to do with the way the legislature counts their bills as opposed to them being less productive. At the beginning of this legislative session, the bill filed were pretty low and we were looking at a pretty unproductive legislative session.

Excuse me, sir. Your slides are not showing on the screen.

There's that. What do you have in front of you? But if you have questions about it, let me know. remember that drop off in the number of bills filed was just up to doing with the way the legislature counts the bills they adopt this session looked like it was going to be pretty slow which is usually going to be a good thing for us about midway through this session the legislature gave up on trying to adopt a budget during the regular session and that was kind of trouble for us because remember what your pastor used to say about idle hands and the devil's workshop That's true for us. And they were able to direct a lot of legislative energy towards bills. And so they caught back up during the session. So let's go through about 10 or 12 of the more interesting ones. You remember for years now, the legislature has talked about changing sovereign immunity laws. So as you know, as a local government and as the state agency here in Florida, you have sovereign immunity. So the government has a cap on how much you can sue the government for for many types of personal injury claims. That cap for years and years was $200,000 per person, so per plaintiff, and $300,000 per incident. So if you had an incident that harmed a group of individuals, all of them together could only sue the government for up to $300,000. That's been the same caps here in Florida since 2008 or 2009 or so. And the legislature has been talking about raising those. In their minds, it was to catch up with the effects of inflation. There were some legislators that believe there shouldn't be sovereign immunity caps at all, that plaintiffs should be allowed to recover whatever their damages are. There are a few states that do that. And that would be a real cost to taxpayers. Ultimately, while this has been going on for a number of years, this year the proposal was to raise those caps to about a million dollars, maybe something a little less. By the end of session, we beat that back to them going up, but not going up nearly as much. So it is now $350,000 per person and half a million dollars per incident. On the other side of the scale, we got some relief as a small change. This is a 100-page bill. There's a lot in it. But the pre-suit notice period for when a plaintiff has to notify a local government about a lawsuit has been shortened, as has the statute of limitations. So that's a good thing. Next bill, SB 382 on micromobility devices. There's been a lot of concern about the safety of micromobility devices. That's like electric scooters, electric bikes, The legislature has been tinkering with these laws over the last few years. Ultimately, what they decided to do here is to create a task force that will look at new laws going forward and how we address the safety concerns related to micro mobility devices. So this is sort of a watch this space. Whenever you have a task force like this, that's a dead giveaway that we're looking at legislation on this topic next year or the year after. The one substantive change, there's really two. Law enforcement needs to report safety incidences related to micro mobility devices. And there was a cap put on the speed limit allowed for electric bicycles on shared pathways and sidewalks. That speed limit is 10 miles per hour. But it only applies when the person operating that device is within 50 feet of a pedestrian. know that may may change in the future but that's what it is for now there were a lot of bills this session on growth management and land use and each of the bills we're going to go over three here they're easy to get confused there's lots in them and so i can just sort of hit some of the highlights real quick in this bill 399 this is was frankly already the law it was in case law but It's now in statutory law that our permit and application fees have to be equal to the amount of cost actually imposed on the government for processing those fees. In other words, local government can't use permit fees as a way to sort of subsidize other functions of the local government. There were some provisions in here related to how large destination resorts process certain variances and special exceptions. You might think that that might apply to some land uses here in town, but this is specifically geared towards a project and an issue in South Florida. which is kind of a lesson that we have in a lot of these bills. A lot of these bills are sort of grab bags of grievances on very specific projects somewhere. So when you actually read the provision, they often are narrowly tailored to just that situation and often don't apply. So when you read some of these, you might think, yikes, that's an issue. When you actually read the provision in the bill, you find that it has very narrow application. And this is one of those provisions here. The one thing that is in here that is kind of a big deal and your staff is going to have to work through over the next six to eight months is the legislature wanted local governments to quit denying land development applications that comply with your land development code regulations, so your development standards and your use tables, and complies with everything in the comprehensive plan, But it's denied based on something called compatibility. Just it doesn't feel right. It doesn't fit with the neighborhood. Here, what the legislature is saying is that's too amorphous, that's too ambiguous. Put some meat on the bones. What does incompatible mean? And so cities around the state are going to have to come up with some standards, some more concrete standards for what compatibility means. And those will have to be adopted. On top of that, there will have to be something in your land development code that says, hey, if you're not meeting community compatibility, if you're not meeting the neighborhood feel, whatever that is, there has to be mitigation efforts offered to a builder. Could landscaping help, for example? Would a landscaping buffer that is enhanced help? So those things will have to be written down in the code. another thing in this bill is the state and it's actually in another bill as well worded slightly differently but off-site manufactured homes so home single-family homes that are built say in a warehouse cannot be discriminated against in your land development code so if you allow single-family home and say the r1 district you have to allow these homes in an r1 district as well you can still apply sensible architectural standards and so on but You can't say just because it was built off-site as opposed to being on-site that it is forbidden. The next bill, 803, on building permits and inspections. Just the quick takeaway here is the legislature continues to try to make it easier for applicants to use private providers for both plans review and for inspection services. There was a series of complaints that some local governments in other parts of the state were making it tricky and difficult for applicants to use private providers, and this was largely an effort to deal with that. The other thing that's sort of a takeaway out of this bill is that For years, local governments had their own residential and commercial building application form. Now the Florida Building Commission has been instructed to come up with a common application form for both commercial and residential property. The trick here is going to be getting that uniform form integrated into our system here, our review system. That form hasn't been produced yet, but we'll watch that process and make sure it's done in a way that is sensible. Local land planning and development, HB927. The big takeaway from this bill is the legislature is thinking about taking this private provider idea, this system that we use for building permits, and to apply it to land development applications. Here, what they've done is they've created a system where planners, private planners, can be used for certain processes and applications on the land development side. When it was written, it was very narrowly tailored to a very small set of administrative reviews of site plans. And on top of that, it wasn't the review of the actual plans. It was simply a review of whether the plans were complete as applied. So it is an incredibly narrow set of circumstances. But the takeaway here is that I suspect the legislature has put this in the statute and will expand it going forward. So we're going to have to watch that very carefully to make sure that Like with all these preemption bills, as much of the decision-making authority remains here with you as the democratically elected officials of our constituents. Here's an unfortunate bill I have to report to you, and you all heard about this, SB 1134, official actions of local governments. This bill, just sort of the top line headline, forbids local governments from funding, promoting, or taking any official action on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The takeaway here was that the state legislature wanted to ban DEI programs, DEI offices, DEI officials. This bill doesn't go into effect until January 1st, but that is banned statewide. Jody and I have spent a lot of time reading this bill, and it is an incredibly difficult bill to understand. If you read it 10 times, you'll come up with 11 different interpretations of it. It's very difficult to understand what its ramifications are. You'll have to spend some time with the city attorney understanding exactly how this will get operationalized. I will tell you this. There was an interpretation of this bill early on that really concerned some people about our ownership and our promotion of the Pulse Memorial. And we worked with the bill sponsors. As awful as this bill is in terms of Home Rule power, the bill sponsor added a provision in there that exempted out any national memorial. And so we were able to get a provision in there that relieves us of any concern related to that. But again, going forward, we're going to have to spend some time. It doesn't go into effect until January 1st. Another preemption bill that was unfortunate on the sustainability side. This bill prohibits any local policy or fee that is used to implement a net zero greenhouse gas policy. This bill was really concerning early on. A lot of these bills start out really bad and just turn out bad. And this is an example of that. Originally, this bill was written in a way where we couldn't have had any carbon reduction goals, policies, objectives at all to reduce carbon, the use of carbon in our environment, in our economy. The way the definition of greenhouse gas policy is in the bill now, it's just that you can't have a net zero policy. So if you think about that, if our goal is to reduce carbon by 99%, that's not net zero. So it's not as bad as it started out to be. But net zero policy is banned in the state of Florida. Local government finances, HB 1329. A couple takeaways here. There's some kind of administrative changes to the way we post our budget and when we post it and how we post it and how long we keep it up on the city's website. Local governments now will have to post salaries publicly. They're already public, but our salaries will have to be posted. The state has been doing that for state agencies for many years. They've now imposed that on local governments. Jose will tell you more about this and his team later, but The local governments now have to undergo an exercise during the budget season of pretending to take a 10% cut to everything at the city and showing how that would work if that was a decision of the city council. You don't have to make cuts, but you have to go through that reduction exercise as part of your budget season going forward. The Live Local Act, the legislature continues to tweak little things in the Live Local Act. The kind of takeaways here, there were some local governments that were maybe getting a little cute with development standards as a way of denying some live local projects, not an issue here. So there have been some changes to development standards in the Live Local Act. There was a small change to the opt out for the tax exemption for affordable multifamily. So you remember that there's a tax exemption, an ad valorem tax exemption for certain affordable housing projects that are built. You could opt out, which this body decided to do based on the availability of affordable housing in your metropolitan area. The change is that you have to be able to show that you have adequate affordable housing under the Schoenberg Housing Study, not in the last year, but over the last three years. The other thing in here is the zoning categories that you can do a live local project on has been expanded to not just encourage religious sites, but it's now required. You also can use the Live Local Act on municipally owned property. But interestingly, you're not required to sell the municipal property for affordable housing uses. Here's a bill, an infill redevelopment bill, that makes it easier to build and develop property that is environmentally contaminated in urban areas. This bill actually doesn't apply to Orange County. It applies to the big three counties in South Florida. But I bring it up just to say that this will probably, in the future be expanded to other parts of the state. The gist of it is if you have an environmentally contaminated piece of property that's in an urban area that you can go through administrative approvals and you are entitled to a development density and intensity that is kind of an average of the density and intensity of the properties surrounding that property. Okay? The legislature continues to be concerned about utility services that are provided by a municipality but are provided outside of municipal boundaries. In the legislature's mind, those customers don't have the same access to political sort of redress of their grievances since they don't vote for the city council that is providing those services. A lot of this stems from a series of disputes in South Florida over a city that has a lot of facilities in another city but charges the other city residents much more for utility services. The takeaway from this is that going forward, whenever there's a change in the boundaries of our utility services, they're provided outside of our city boundaries. Those agreements have to be in writing, and we have to hold a public hearing to describe our services to those new customers. We also have to provide an annual hearing to non-city residents to give you feedback about those services. Right now, statute allows cities to charge extraterritorial customers a surcharge for the wastewater and water service. This will phase that out over time and say that you can not charge out of city residents any more than in city residents. There's a few other things here. This is one of those things to watch going forward. Okay, so that was sort of the big stuff. There's other stuff out there, but here's some of the key bills that failed. We mention these because these are our success stories usually, but also ones that may come back next year. There was, again, an effort to do away with the local business tax or to cap the local business tax. major source of general revenue to to your general fund So that was that was fought back There was a bill called the blue ribbon projects bill that would have allowed in essence very large developers With lots of land to bypass local approvals for large-scale developments Maybe we don't have the land for that here in the city of Orlando But you got to watch these sorts of things that bill was Was was beat back? proposed changes to the uses allowable uses of tourist development tax also failed. Ideas on that will probably come back as well the next legislative session. There was a bill that would have made substantial rewrites to the public records act and this was a real concerning bill because of the amount of time and effort and cost associated with filling public records request in this bill would have made a lot of those things worse not better. Quick look ahead. Next legislative session is in its normal time of March and April. Issues next year. Before we actually get to next legislative session, as we'll talk about here in a minute about the property tax reform proposal, if there is a positive vote, if the voters of Florida approve a property tax amendment in the November ballot, there will likely be an implementing special legislation in late November or early December this year. Next legislative session, you can see kind of the issues that I think we're going to have to contend with. But the big two, I think there is an effort underway to make a substantial rewrite of the open meetings and public records law. The city attorney's office is engaged in the drafting of some of those ideas to make sure that they... don't work against us and work for us. One of the upsides, I think, is that the incoming Speaker of the House is a city attorney, actually, in another part of the state. And I think he probably sort of understands some of the challenges associated with operationalizing the public records laws. But the other big thing I think we're going to see next year is the possibility of a substantial rewrite of the Community Planning Act, so our old Growth Management Act. There's an effort underway now to start thinking about a redraft of that, and we're engaged in that and working on it. So those would be the two big things, open meetings laws, Public Records Act, and the Growth Management Act. Incidentally, next year, just by chance, every 20 years under the Florida Constitution, there is something called the Florida Taxation and Budget Reform Commission. That actually is sitting next year. Whatever happens with property taxes at the ballot in November, that commission can put new amendments on the ballot. And so it's going to be interesting to watch that and see what comes out of it. If nothing is passed on the ballot in November, maybe this body comes in with a different idea. So something we're going to have to watch. OK, let's go on to talk about the property tax reform proposal. There was a special session last week. Throughout this legislative session, we carefully followed a bunch of proposals to make substantial changes to property taxes here in Florida. And just for the folks at home and everyone, you all know this, but property taxes are the single largest and most important source of general revenue fund for cities throughout the state of Florida. And so this is a big deal. Last year, the governor said he thought property taxes had gone up too high or had grown too much. He largely wasn't referring to the millage rate, which for many of us cities, including ours, has not gone up at all in a very, very, very, very long time. His concern was the assessed value of property being the other part of the equation, something that you don't control, the economy controls, but it resulted in increased revenue to cities, which in his mind was not a good thing. The House passed a number of measures during the regular session. The Senate passed nothing to get on the ballot. The House and the Senate have to agree on a joint resolution and pass it by a three fifths majority. So it's a super majority threshold and actually a joint resolution doesn't have to be approved by the governor. The governor doesn't approve it or veto it. It's just done by the House and the Senate. House passed something during the session, Senate nothing. We come back to a regular session last week. The proposal by the governor was revealed a few days before the general session or for the special session. So we had to jump into action very quickly. unfortunately the legislature after only a couple days of consideration passed two measures one which will put something on the ballot our legislative delegation voted against it Orange County delegation they understood the ramifications and we did what we thought was the right thing other parts of the state it passed and so it'll be on the ballot so what does it say There is currently a $50,000 exemption on homestead properties from ad valorem taxes. This proposal would change that from $50,000 for non-school levies, so levies by special districts, counties, and cities, up to $150,000. And that would occur beginning in 2027. So not this tax year. We don't worry about it now that you may in consultation with Jose and staff need to start thinking ahead and planning ahead. That would apply starting to tax assessments on January 1st, the year 2027. Yes, ma'am. 2027. A year later, that assessment. And again, it's just on homestead properties would go up to $250,000. And by the way, it's on the first $250,000, and it's on the first $150,000. It is not parsed out over different parts of the value. It's the first $150,000, first $250,000 of value. Then there is something in the proposal that says, and the legislature is going to come up with a procedure, a uniform procedure statewide that would have cities and counties eliminate the remaining value of all homestead properties. So from 250 to an infinite amount, a total exemption will have to be phased in in some unknown procedure to be decided upon by the legislature. So in other words, if your home is worth a million dollars, you get a $250,000 exemption in 2028, the legislature is gonna come up and invent some way in which local governments will have to go to a full homestead exemption. We don't know what that means. The legislature would be given the power to decide that by general law, which we think would occur during that special session that I just described for you. So you'll have to watch that space on what that means. Now, on top of all that, if you are a new resident to Florida, you don't get the benefit of that $150,000, $250,000, and then eventual full homestead exemption. If you're new to Florida after some date this year, December 31st, 2026, you move here next year, you get the old $50,000 exemption for five years. Okay, so you're paying sort of under the old tax system for five years. The theory there being you're new here, you ought to chip in a little bit before getting the full homestead exemption. And then finally, for non-homestead properties, so that includes rental, multifamily, commercial, Right now, there's a cap on how much assessments can go up each year. So as the assessment of your property goes up, it was always capped at 10% per year. It's now capped at 5%. The idea that the state had there was to make it more difficult to move the tax burden from homesteaded properties over to non-homestead properties. though keep in mind you still have control over the millage rate so you still could under the system have effectively a tax shift from homestead property owners to non-homestead property owners if you still need to come up with the revenue necessary to pay for all the services that that we provide finally there's a limit in this proposal on what you could spend ad valorem property taxes on okay We're still digesting exactly what this means, but ad valorem taxes can only be used on the following things. Please fire all the stuff that you think of. The last provision says, and anything else not prohibited by law. So in other words, this may not mean much, but what it does allow the legislature in the future to come in and say, hey, you can no longer spend taxes, ad valorem taxes, on this thing, whatever it is. So that's a change as well. Originally, this list was very limited. It was limited to police, fire, and a little bit of infrastructure. And the legislature added to it. And we were thankful for that, at least. So what happens next? This measure doesn't go into effect unless it's approved by 60% of the voters in November. It would go into effect if it is approved by the voters on January 1. And as I said, we kind of expect, if it does pass, a special session to implement it. You might have two questions. One is, what does this mean for us in terms of future revenue collections? We're going into the budget season. Jose and his team have been thinking this through and have been thoughtful and deliberate in their analysis of how this might impact us in the future. And they'll be prepared as we move into the budget season to advise you on the impacts of this. Mayor, that's your legislative update for the year. And if there are any questions, I'll be happy to try to try to answer them.

Okay, questions for Kyle, Commissioner Rosen, Commissioner Sheehan.

I want to thank you, Kyle, and the entire team for your advocacy in Tallahassee, providing a great update and keeping us informed. So I do have a couple of questions. When does, because it wasn't in the presentation, when do the compatibility rules that we need to have begin? Because I think Jason has a lot of work to do.

He's got a little bit of time that was January 1st.

OK when does the standard permit be scheduled going to affect I need to be done because I think Tim Johnson and permitting has some work to do. supposed to ask questions i know off the top of my head i i'll have to check and get back to you on that okay and then the last one um so there are still some contaminated so while you mentioned south florida was a focus on the contaminated sites we do have a lot of contaminated still in paramore and holden heights and so i want to make sure that we keep an eye on what that means for us here locally um as we talk about redevelopment i mean i have one literally in my backyard that we're looking at. So I just want to make sure we're keeping eye that while it's there, no one like what does that look like for us here in Orlando? Because it is still a legislative policy. Yep.

Understood.

That's it. Thank you.

Mr. Sheehan.

Thanks Mayor, and I'm very concerned about DEI because we've got the Dragon Parade, Martin Luther King Parade, all those kinds of things that we fund at the city. And whether that's going to be our ability to fund those initiatives is going to be impacted. I did notice though that under affordable housing, the legislature said that they broadened non-discrimination protections. Is there a way for us to call it non-discrimination protections instead of DEI? Because they're broadening non-discrimination protections. So how can they broaden non-discrimination protections and say that we can't?

That broadening of the non-discrimination protections is in the housing context. Yeah. Good question. We need to sit and digest that a little bit. By the way, there was already something in state law that forbid local governments from discriminating against affordable housing. It was written in a way that was not as clear as it should have been. It also was confusing who had the right of action to bring against the local government if they were discriminating against affordable housing. This provision cleared that up, but it's really not... Substantively different than what was already in the law.

But what I'm saying is if they can use that language, why can't we okay? And and I think that you know that all of the festivals and things that we put on Martin Luther King Parade You know Veterans Day all of that are our events of significant economic impact so if we reclassify them as a as an event of significant economic impact. What are they going to say now that we can't do events of significant economic impact? Are they going to go after that now? So I think that's a good way to deal with it. Kyle, when we dealt with property tax reform, which is basically cutting our budgets, we actually had a tool where people could see what their actual city tax was. And I think part of the problem is people pay their taxes to their mortgage. They see a large number. They don't understand that most of that is school tax, that the city portion is de minimis when you look at your tax bill. And it's frustrating to me that insurance is what everybody's complaining about, not property. I pay a heck of a lot more insurance every month than I ever have in property taxes. It's actually kind of ridiculous. But can people look up what their actual, we can have some kind of a tool, people can look up what their actual city you know taxes are and then have something that talks about what services how what is the impact of this cut so you're gonna you might you know you might save $800 a year but you could potential but the cost of the city is how many millions of dollars and what were the potential impacts and cuts be I think, you know, we need to talk about, we need to educate people on what these cuts mean, you know, because they're just, oh, I hate paying property tax. Don't we, none of us like paying property taxes, but we all like being able to get on the road without having their cars falling into a pothole. We all like, you know, the services, the streetlights, the things that people take for granted that they don't understand we pay for. And that we need to do a better job of just explaining to people, you know, from the time that they leave their car, in the morning the number of city services that they are interacting with so that they understand what's really at stake. Because it's easy to hate government until you, and people, I remember the last time, Mayor, that they did the really draconian tax cut on us. And we had to stop the mowing, the courtesy mowing that we used to do. And one of the guys that used to always send me these mean things about how we're wasting their tax dollars was very upset because we stopped his courtesy mowing on the right-of-way behind his house. So I think people need to understand the kinds of things that are going to get cut as part of this. And we still don't do courtesy mowing now. So I think that, again, these are things that people need to understand that this is a potential loss if they vote for this, and that we're not wasting their money, and that we have kept the millage rate consistent. I think this is more for everybody. We need to do some education so that we at least try to fight back against some of this stuff because they say that we're wasteful because we did hot yoga even though the yoga classes are required as part of our wellness program to reduce our insurance costs by 25%. This is the stuff that I hate that they do to us. They take a very small thing and blow it up and don't show the whole picture. Anyway, I appreciate your work. I don't know how you go to Tallahassee, Kyle. I mean, I used to work for state government. I left state government because I got sick of them cutting my budget every year. I came to local government, and here I am having to deal with them cutting our budgets every year. So, you know, I don't know how you do it. Thank you for the work that you do. I know you've got a lot more gray hair than you had when you came here, and I know why.

And less of it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Rose.

So I did have a question. Commissioner Sheehan mentioned DEI. Isn't it anti-discriminatory if we don't support all activities happening in our community?

That's a good question, Commissioner. There are some exceptions in this bill that allow local government to continue following state and federal anti-discrimination laws. So state and federal anti-discrimination laws have not been overturned.

Another question. So I know legally we are not allowed to expand funds to educate for or against a bill. I'm requesting communications to come up with standard something similar to what Commissioner Sheehan started but if communications can come up with some standard language that we can start now to say what our city tax dollars go to so that we can educate the community that way, maybe do a couple of videos that show like, hey, this is the things that city, because I know legally we can't expend it, but if we're just educating on what our property taxes currently go to, that would be great. That way none of us get in trouble, we have standard, We know what comes from legal and communications for us to all like break that because I know we do budget. Jose and his team only have like here's your dollar house broken down. But then if we take that dollar and go a little bit further that we were all educating city of Orlando residents against the miss information that's going to start because the ads are going to come before we blink because it just got approved on Friday, but I want us to educate our residents on where our dollars to go.

Mayor, if I may. Commissioner, you raise a really good point, which is when it comes to measures that are on a ballot, there are some constraints, some limits on what local governments can do in their official capacity. Outside your official capacity, when you're on your personal time, you can say and do as you please. But there are limits on what we can do in our official capacity. There has been some changes to those rules just in the last few years, but you're absolutely right. And the city attorney's office will need to guide you on what the clear lines are and sort of where the where the gray is and how to avoid avoid trouble. Yep.

Commissioner Keene and Commissioner Ortiz.

Thank you, Mayor. Great presentation, Kyle. I had here before I went up to Tallahassee, so I understand. So my question has to do with parks and recreation and i'm looking at our director sitting in the back there it's like the third largest uh budget item i think after public safety right you're saying that that last bullet then is where that would fall into is that my understanding and it wasn't there before they made a last minute deal

That's exactly right. So early in the governor's proposal, the only thing that you could use – and by the way, this is confusing. This was just a limitation on what you could use the remaining ad valorem property taxes on. It didn't impact other sources of general fund. But that's still an issue because you're right, it is a large expense of any city. And we were very concerned about parks and recreation because there was lots of talk in Tallahassee about – saving, preserving the expenses associated with public safety. No quibble there at all, but if you don't protect these other things that are important, you have problems. The ultimate proposal that came out doesn't say anything about preserving any particular expenditure at a certain level, like public safety.

So that was going to be my follow-up. That's been taken out.

That's been taken out, yes, sir.

Not that we would do that, but we could say we could cut police and fire by 50%.

Well, there was already a state statute in effect that said that you couldn't cut state public safety funding. The concern was that they were going to go further in some way in this proposal. What this list says is that here's the only things you can use ad valorem property taxes on. But that last bullet that says unless anything else is not prohibited by law, that protects what you're spending money on now. Now, what we have to do in the future is protect those things so the legislature doesn't come back and say, here are new things that we want to prohibit you from spending ad valorem property taxes on.

And we spend more on public safety, police, and fire than we collect in property taxes. Yep. Okay, Commissioner Ortiz.

Thank you, Mayor. You were talking about some of these legislations that are being played on up in Tallahassee that they emerged from the southern part of the state. Maybe we should start a magistrate that would evaluate these proposals to determine if these are more local issues instead of umbrella issues for the state. Have they ever thought of that?

Commissioner, I have heard the idea of trying to tackle some of these discrete problems with local bills rather than with general law because you capture all the other sort of actors, good actors, cities in the state, because of a dispute in very one specific dispute somewhere else. It's a home rule concept. I've heard that discussion before.

It's a home rule concept. Anyhow, let me get to property taxes, which is the main subject here. Did the legislature ever discuss how are we supposed to supplement those monies we're going to lose by property taxes?

I'm sure it depends on which legislator you ask. I mean, there was an idea out there by some legislators.

Maybe so is in record. This is a time for me to ask you, what percentage of the legislators over there have ever worked at the local government?

I don't know. There's some, but not the majority of them.

All right, I'm gonna see when the debacle, you know, this is what's gonna happen. Eventually they're gonna have to increase sales taxes because it's the only way we will be able to supplement some of this. And I don't care what they say. I would like to also ask, has anybody done a study of the difference, the delta, in terms of the insurance increase compared to the alleged delta in property taxes increase?

I have, Commissioner. I've lived in my current home for six years, so my property tax has gone up less than 18% because it's capped at three, and my property insurance has gone up 150%.

Can we do, our finance team, can we do something of this nature so we can talk to people? Because we're gonna have to go out, and of course, not at the government expense, but we're gonna have to explain to our communities what's happening here, because most of our people do not understand. They see property tax going away, and they think, oh, this is great, this is great. They don't realize what this is happening, what this is doing. This is not a tax cut. This is a tax shift. On the same token, let's see. DO WE HAVE ANY OF OUR MEMBERS, OF OUR DELEGATE MEMBERS FROM THE CENTRAL FLORIDA MAKING ANY AMENDMENTS ON THIS? TRYING TO PROPOSE ANY AMENDMENTS TO THIS PROPERTY TAX?

YES, SIR. THERE WAS EFFORTS, BUT NONE OF THEM WERE SUCCESSFUL.

REALLY? YOU MENTIONED THAT NINE VOTED FOR IT AND FIVE DIDN'T.

It was the other way around. In our delegation, nine voted against this measure. Exactly, exactly. And five voted for it. I think there was one member that was absent, if I recall correctly. Okay. By the way, we might have had, I don't know this for certain, we may have had the only legislative delegation in the state where a majority voted against the measure.

Good. good that's just good um let's see something else so so i'm really concerned because people don't realize i'm going to make this announcement and i come from a from a country that saw something like that you know they almost you can have a home of a i don't know if it's still the case i believe it's still the case of over 300 000 the assessment and you don't pay any taxes which puts a huge burden, I mean on the property tax, which puts a huge burden on the sales tax. So they increased sales taxes to 11.5, Puerto Rico. Which considered to what we're going to have to do here is nothing. But the other concern that people are not looking at, and they should be aware of, is this is going to create an underground economy. Because people are going to start going, pay me cash. I don't want to, you know, so we don't have to deal with the sales taxes. In addition to the impact this is going to have in our tourism. because can you imagine whatever sales tax we increase to in addition to the TDT that we may want, people are gonna say, the heck with Orlando, let's go to, now Texas is building Disney and everything. Everybody else is gonna go somewhere else. It's gonna put a huge burden into our economy here locally. And these people, I don't know what mind, what are they thinking of here? I don't know if it's just people from rural areas. I don't know what's going on. Who's thinking about making this cut without really thinking about the impact this is going to have? Forget about the big cities. The small cities that have no money coming in, no revenue coming in whatsoever, what's going to happen to all of them? And I'm surprised that 2,270 legislators, local elected officials, are not being listened to compared to only 160 of them in Tallahassee. I don't know what's going on here in this world. But thank you for the work that you guys are doing, and let's see if we can sit down and coordinate something to start making sure that people do understand what's going on here. Thank you.

Commissioner Ortiz, you bring up a pretty good point. Financially, we will continue to exist as a city, probably not offer a lot of the quality of life things that we've been used to presenting as a city. There are, however, cities that are not going to be able to continue to exist, and maybe some counties. AND I THINK I SAW SOMETHING THAT AND I THINK I SAW SOMETHING THAT THE FISCALLY CONSTRAINED COUNTIES THE FISCALLY CONSTRAINED COUNTIES THE FISCALLY CONSTRAINED COUNTIES ARE GOING TO GO FROM SOMETHING ARE GOING TO GO FROM SOMETHING ARE GOING TO GO FROM SOMETHING LIKE 27 TO 40 IF THIS PASSES IN LIKE 27 TO 40 IF THIS PASSES IN LIKE 27 TO 40 IF THIS PASSES IN NOVEMBER. NOVEMBER. NOVEMBER. OKAY. OKAY. OKAY.

COMMISSIONER ROSE, ONE MORE COMMISSIONER ROSE, ONE MORE COMMISSIONER ROSE, ONE MORE TIME? TIME? Special assessments that are levied locally in municipalities, those are done by county. So for example, Miami has food and beverage tax, et cetera. Those are done by county administrators, correct? And what's the process look like? Because I'm assuming that's probably the way, unfortunately, we'll end up having to go to subsidize paying for government things is going to like Miami. I think there are like 10% if you buy something.

Any additional tax has to be authorized by the legislature.

Right.

Okay.

There's two things there. There's like the sales tax that you just mentioned that has to be authorized by the state legislature. You mentioned assessments. That is done by home rule power, but there are a lot of constraints on what you can use that for. So, you know, you've got to spend some time with the city attorney and sort of think about this going forward on what's available. My fear is that you know, some cities start to move towards assessments rather than ad valorem taxes for things. And the legislature does something on home rule assessments as well that is restrictive.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Kyle. And that will complete our workshop. So we'll stand adjourned. And we will convene our agenda review meeting.