Public - workshop

Hello. Welcome to the pre-budget workshop number four for July 9th at 1 p.m. We're going to start out with an opening prayer led by City Attorney Nevin Zimmerman, elder of First Presbyterian Church, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance led by Commissioner Jostry. Please rise.

Let's pray. Father, we just come to you and we pray for wisdom and the ability to make sound judgments by applying our knowledge, our experience, our insights. And we know that we are to emulate your work, emulate you. We know that Jesus Christ was the embodiment of your wisdom. We pray that we may be like him as we carry forward. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

All righty, please call the roll mayor branch president Commissioner Hughes here Commissioner Lucas present Commissioner Granger is not with us today and Commissioner Street here Thank you mayor. You have a quorum.

Thank you so much city manager. How is you are up?

Awesome. All right. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and commissioners. And as announced, welcome to the pre-budget workshop number four as we prepare to work on our budget for fiscal year 2027. Today's presentations are for the Departments of Logistics, Housing and Community Services, Development Services, and then Public Works, the non-general fund accounts inside of Public Works. At this time, we will turn it over to Mr. Sean Self, who is the Director of Logistics, to work through his presentation. Mr. Self?

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Before I get started here on the first slide, A lot of times people will ask me, what is logistics? What do you do? What all encompasses that? And so we'll go into that in some detail.

Is his mic on, Mr. Schwartz? It doesn't sound like it. It's not very loud. OK, good.

But just to give you an idea of what logistics is, let's look around the room. The streaming, that's logistics. The internet connection, that's logistics. The microphones you have in front of them, logistics. The furniture in this room supplied by logistics. Our team came in and refinished the brick wall, the nice backdrop we have behind us here, that's logistics. The electricity in the building, again, logistics. The furniture, the water, all the things that go into supporting all of our teams to be able to do the things they need to do. We are here for one reason and one reason only, and that's to help the city accomplish the goals that it's trying to do. And we want to be support to every other director and every other department in this room. And that's what we do. That's what we do. We're here to support everyone in the best ways that we possibly can. To give you a little bit more specifics on it, first slide, Chair. I put customer service on there because that's really what we're trying to do. We may do a lot of external customer service, but we do a lot of internal customer service as well. Logistics is comprised of seven call centers and six divisions. That's the logistics slash risk management group. information technology purchasing and warehouses signs and markings facility maintenance city hall and then the utility warehouse as well and and i put in the slide here and i'm not going to read it verbatim but really what i think of us is is the backbone of the city the central nervous system that you see behind you don't see because we're behind the scenes but we're here to support everything that you guys are trying to accomplish For logistics overall, for all of our call centers together, the proposed budget for 27 is $175,350 decrease from FY26. FY26 was $5,570,524. This year's proposed budget is $5,395,174. Next slide. First division I want to talk about is the purchasing division. It's tasked with managing procurement for all goods and services for the city. So far this year, and the year is far from done, we've done 33 solicitations advertised and 117 bids received. We produce, review, and evaluate contracts, process purchase orders, check requests, and P-card transactions. We secure quotes. solicit bids, track assets, and ensure policy and legal compliance. And that's what I want to stress very much here. I remember when I first started with the city, one of the examples, and it sounds kind of harsh, but it's true. We are here to make sure we do things the right way. We are here to make sure we're not investigated by anyone. We will not be on the news for something that my group does. Need to be careful saying those things, but that's, that's the commitment we have. Okay. And we're going to make sure that we are legally compliant. We're compliant with all FEMA regulations. We're going to make sure that we do things the right way. Um, and that should be a reflection from our group for the city as well. In support of our procurement needs, we solicit a vast array of contractors, suppliers, and service providers, including veteran, female, and minority-owned businesses. There are certain bids that require that, but we do that on all our bids. So we reach out whether the grant requires it or not. We have a whole list of solicitations that we go out. At one time, I know we were emailing as many as 20,000 vendors in the state of Florida every time we went out for a bid. Not all of them are willing to join in with us, but we want to put that out there. We want the opportunity for people to see what the city is doing. The purchasing division's budget for FY26 was $554,654. The proposed budget for FY27 is a slight 1.2% increase in that. Now one of the things that I've heard mentioned from the dais during these budget hearings, and it's something we've taken to heart in multiple departments, but this just happens to be one of them. The purchasing division has voluntarily decreased its staff by three members through attrition and consolidation of responsibilities. So from FY25, the actual payroll expense for purchasing has went from $481,000 to $424,000. Now, that's good on its own, and that's great that we saved some money in payroll. But the other part is, too, the purchasing division also has simultaneously reduced payroll expenditures while increasing individual wages for that group. Now we can't just wholesaling increased wages. That's not what that was. What this was was a consolidation of multiple jobs together into one job so that that job became a higher graded job doing more work than it was before. But at the same time, even though that individual may have increased in their pay grade, the city decreased and what they were paying for payroll for the entire division. Um, and so that for us, uh, you know, I think I scared my staff earlier this week because I emailed them on, I said, Hey, how many years have you been here at this point? The first one came back to me and said four years. Why? And I think they were afraid of where I was going with that, where I'm actually going with that is in this group. Just a sampling of that, we had two people at six years, two at four, two at three, one at two, one at 15. We've got some people on our facility maintenance staff that's been here 40 years and 30 years. Those are the kind of people we need and we need to retain. They have knowledge that we don't need to lose. And so we want to do the things we can do to help improve their standard of living, but at the same time also result a benefit to the city. And that's what we've been able to do with that. And so it helps stability of staff, reduce turnover. I'm sure that makes Vicki's life a little bit easier too, that we're not asking for a new employee every week. Um, right now, one of the things we're looking at for the future, we're currently assessing the feasibility of merging our two warehouses into a single facility. Um, we're looking at studying that and see what the possibilities are with that. Okay. Jerry. Next group I want to talk about is Risk Management Division. This team consists of a single risk manager compared to, for our neighboring locations, 16 members for Bay County, three for Destin and Pensacola, two for Panama City Beach and Lynn Haven. We process all claims related to property, general liability, auto, and are directly responsible for adding or removing any asset to and from our city's policy. We proactively engage with our agent and our carrier to evaluate coverage requirements on all assets while providing coverage requirements for bids. Right now, this week, it just happens to be the timing of it, we are reviewing our auto schedule, our property schedule, our inland marine schedule, looking for every single way to save money and to reduce the amount of expenditures we're paying on premiums. But at the same time, providing the right coverage for the city. It's not a matter of just taking things off the coverage. You take things off the coverage in order to ensure something else. For example, we have some inland marine things that are still on our schedule, but the values have fallen below the deductible. There's no reason for them to be on our policy anymore because there is no payout for that. So we review these. We review them every year, and that's what we're currently doing now. Hopefully in the next week or so we'll finish that up and get it to our agent. That's what helps us secure the next quote or bid, as you would say, for insurance services from PIDGET, and we do expect some savings with that. We submit detailed subrogation requests, audit reports, and evaluations of expenditures across all departments. Next page, please. We provide fire safety equipment, including first aid kits, fire extinguishers, AEDs, signage, and first alert systems in all city facilities while overseeing the audit of said materials to ensure readiness. And when we don't catch it, the fire department does. They come right behind us too, so they help us with that as well. The picture there that Jared provided for you is what we don't want to do. And so that's part of risk management is making sure that we do the right things and everything in that picture is wrong.

That is not me for the record. Thank you.

That's what we're looking for constantly. We co-host three safety committee meetings a month. to build proactive planning and prevention while reviewing our accidents to learn from those in the future. We have a room full of people and we're asking open-ended questions. What can we do better? What can we do differently? What can we do to avoid this happening in the future? And we've gotten some great feedback, a lot of times not from the department that it happens in. It's from another department or an employee or a team member who has worked somewhere else in the past and said, hey, this is what we did there. So that conversation is invaluable for us as far as improvements. We provide a deep dive into investigations of all claims related to property, general liability, or auto. We maintain storage tank certifications within the city. We document all safety concerns to minimize our city's exposure to risk. Next slide, please. Working in conjunction with our insurance agent and the HR risk management team, we've also been able to save close to $2 million in premiums over the course of the last three years. We've also analyzed where the actual risk costs were occurring on a granular level, so the premiums are reflective of where the actual dangers or risks are occurring. We've been able to reduce our experience writing for the city for the last three years. And this was achieved by education, reinforcement of policies, evaluations of processes. And in some cases, blunt conversations, um, a lot of blunt conversations so far in the current year, we've been able to save $23,000 on a single Marine policy. This is where hub is really valuable with us. They help us evaluate these things. And so this is one that again, we didn't need it. We took it off, saved 23,000 for this year. We expect a 10% decrease in property insurance rates next year. We will have... The MOK Center coming online this year, so there will be that additional premium. But overall, we expect a 10% decrease. We have developed a good enough relationship with Hub and with our carrier, Pidget, to be able to brag about the results that we've been able to accomplish over the last three years. And in turn, Hub also takes that back to Pidget and shows why we're a person that they want to do business with. I will tell you, our previous insurance carrier didn't want to do business with us. This is a totally different relationship, and we've worked hard to get that relationship. One thing of note, Governor DeSantis just vetoed the bill that would have raised sovereign immunity limits for municipalities. That's going to be key because there was a chance that general liability rates were going to go up. That may not come to come to pass now. Internal investigations of claims have saved us over $527,000 in the past year. In addition to those savings, we've been able to subrogate another $305,000 in claims. We were able to negotiate the premium for the new MLK center to not take effect this year at all. It won't take effect until October 1st. That's about an $80,000 savings. They are covered, but we did not have to pay for that. We encourage a discontinued, we encourage a continued disinvestment in properties that are sitting vacant or unused. If a lease proposal occurs, we ask that the insurance premiums be a part of that lease's responsibility. An example is For the vacant civic center, when it sat for about six years, we paid $500,000 in premiums over that time. And I know there were a lot of decisions going into what was going to happen with that. But any time we look at properties and stuff, If it's a vacant piece of land, it's covered general liability either way. But if we have an actual building or a property there, those conversations probably need to be had because there is an overhead there that costs us money. Risk management also is constantly evaluating vehicle usage, property and vehicle values, and asset allocations to find the most accurate coverage possible. Next slide, Jim. Information technology. IT is the operational and support hub for all technology-related goods, services, and security for the city. The team consists of seven staff members that support around 450 city employees. The ratio of IT support to city personnel is 65 to 1. Industry standards are around 40 to 1. We compared a few other municipalities and found the following that you see on the slide there. Leesburg, Lake City, Dunedin, Pensacola, and Northport were higher than all of those. I will tell you that the funding ratio, we are also at a higher level. Not in a good way, I'm sorry. The team supports over 300 laptops, desktops, and servers, 216 cell phones, 117 Verizon desk lines, 150 WOW landlines. We provide education, troubleshooting, and investigation of software and hardware issues, including a full-service IT support team with after-hours availability. We test, audit, and follow up on any vulnerabilities detected in the city security assessments. We provide ADA compliance of public documents. The majority of the costs in IT are driven by departmental requests. They're not really IT items per se. We're not going out and IT wants this item and that. It is, again, to support other departments, for example. The NISTSC security compliance is about $245,000, which is about 25% of our entire budget. Sunshine Law cost us about another $102,000. Departmental request about $442,000. So you're looking afterwards, there's not a whole lot that IT actually buys for IT's purposes. It's all to support everything that the city wants. And we're committed to doing that. FY26 budget for... IT was $1,815,000. FY27 is proposed at $1,850,000. That's a 2% increase. A little deceiving, though, in the sense that we have open position in there right now that has not been filled. There's going to be some savings with that that's actually going to exceed the increased amount there. We have had collaborative efforts with multiple departments resulting in software and service improvements including the RMT street maintenance software with Public Works. We've also created a public facing digital claims middle form for risk management. We have the ADA compliance online now as well on the website. We audit cell phones. All of our cell phones this past year were reduced by 30% and we identified and removed 75 unneeded analog lines for savings of around $17,000. We identified an underutilized New World module and removed it for a savings of $23,000. We solicited and evaluated multiple cybersecurity consultants, leading to enhanced protections and a savings of around $20,000 annually and better service. It wasn't just a savings, but we got better service for it. We have supported all multiple city departments, such as the one we're in now, as well as any of the commission meetings or after hours or at the county building. We video and streamed over 159 hours of YouTube programming this year. Okay, Jerry. Signs and marking division. I had to put the crosswalk, most famous crosswalk there is out there, Abbey Road. So the signs and marking team is led by a foreman and three sign specialists. The signs and marking division is responsible for maintaining the city's traffic control infrastructure, including regulatory signs, warning signs, street name signs, school zones, flashing beacons, and pedestrian crossing infrastructure. This is a lot based in safety. We're following the muni code to make sure that we're absolutely doing the things that need to be done to keep our citizens safe with that.

Next page, please.

And that's just got a list of a lot of the different signs that we put in and stuff and the places we do it. Next slide, please. FY26 budget was $597,680. FY27 is proposed at $531,874. That's an 11% reduction. During the year, signs and marking division was evaluated for efficiency and effectiveness. The evaluation led to structural core changes within the division. A decision was made to focus on our core responsibility, including street signage, street markings, and maintaining an accurate inventory of city signage. By doing that, we're gonna have a payroll cost savings at a minimum this year of $45,000. We also reduced the amount of time it took to replace a street sign from four hours to less than two. We eliminated the in-house manufacturing of signs, which amounted to about 40% to 60% of a team member's day. They were making the sign instead of putting the sign in the ground. We changed that. We've also resulted in a revenue of $25,000 for some obsolete equipment we auctioned and a reduction in $59,000 worth of material expenses. Next slide. Facility Maintenance Division staff focuses on supporting all city departments and city infrastructure. The last two years have seen a shift from simply doing maintenance to actively being involved in construction projects. The effectiveness of doing construction in-house can reach as high as 75% savings over contracting vendors to form the scope. Our team consists of electricians, HVAC techs, plumbing, carpentry, Pretty much anything you can think in the maintenance world. Again, the wall behind you was an example where we sanded the wall down and actually put a ceiling on ourselves internally. Some of the things we've done in the past year, electrical install at the Waterfront Park, Daffin Park Clubhouse, concession and restroom building remodels, Fire Station 1 electrical drywall and paint remodel. We've done 10 dumpster enclosures, roof replacements in mid-city concessions building, radio tower building, and multiple lift station buildings, including hardy board remodel, some office construction at City Hall and the Massalina complex, installed solar lighting at Bay Memorial Park, City Skate Park, Carl Gray Park, PC Marina, and temporarily for Harrison Avenue. We installed pergolas and pavilions at Henry Davis Park. We support events such as Mardi Gras 9-11 Memorial Oktoberfest. We remodeled Woods Field Concession Building inside and out, installed electrical for Hintz Park and McKenzie Park, and our next stop will be Truesdale, part of that project. Next page. FY26 budget was $1.152 million. FY27 is proposed at $1,180,881. Again, that shows a slight increase of 2.5%, which is, again, a little deceiving. We've had an electrician to position open the entire year. that I haven't been able to fill, which more than makes up for that. My hope is to fill it, but right now we're probably short three electricians, I think it is at this point. It's a very, very competitive field, and it's hard to attract people. So that number is if we were fully staffed, which we are not by any means, and I can't tell you in five years this particular division has ever been fully staffed. We've always been short some group. Next slide, please. Next slide is just emphasizing city hall, which is part of our responsibility as well. Next slide again. Sure. FY 26 budget for city hall was $803,146. FY 27 is proposed at $731,753. That represents an 8.9% reduction in the city hall budget. I know I scanned through that fairly quickly, because we got a lot of different divisions in our group. We do a lot of different things, but the main point I want to make from that is, again, we are here to support the city. We are here, your name plates in front of you now, that's something we do. We are here to support everything that the city needs, whether it be purchasing, whether it be maintenance support, whether it be IT infrastructure,

uh whether it be signage which we just did some public parking signs earlier this afternoon that's what we're here for we're here completely to support the city okay any questions from anyone yes i do sure okay so when you said that um in the it division which does a great job does it does pd have their own it PD has a staff, a smaller staff for IT. So potentially the numbers you gave us of other cities incorporate their staffing of all the, so when you say like information technology, I was wondering how many other departments have IT people? Those are the only two. Okay.

And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, three of PD? Is that correct? Yeah.

Why doesn't this IT department manage PD's IT? Has that ever been had a conversation?

We've had conversations about it. I know there's some CJIS requirements on their side that are a little bit different from ours and obviously a little bit more on the secure side. We do have some people that are CJIS certified. We have kicked it around, and we do team up and help each other on different things. We had a server issue here where we lost Internet for Disability for two days, was it? not too long ago, and their staff was part of over here helping us restore that. So we're flexing back and forth to help each other from time to time. We're just separate as far as who we report to at this point. Yeah, I don't know the right answer. And I don't either, honestly.

Fleet management. Usually a lot of times you see logistics managing fleets for an organization. Does each department manage their own fleet?

When you say manage fleet.

Oil changes, tires, what car?

Purchasing did a bid on behalf of Equipment Maintenance a couple years ago. Nissan here in town actually does oil changes. Basically any service that can't be done in-house here. can be sent to Nissan. There are contracted rates for those and they're very inexpensive compared to what you'd pay retail. So they're, they're a backup, but, um, and I can't speak a lot for equipment maintenance. That's I think it's going to be later today, but they handle the majority of the repairs, but there are some that get sent out to Nissan and stuff like that, but they notify each particular department and guys correct me if I'm wrong. They notify each particular department when it's time for an oil change or service on the vehicles and stuff. Yeah, I would wonder.

We do have an internal services fund for fleet and equipment maintenance that falls under public works.

Okay. Yes. We'll hear about that tonight. Yes, sir. So are you the fleet manager or Stacy?

No. Tim Lamb is our equipment maintenance manager.

Fleet manager, not equipment.

Well, it's vehicles and equipment.

So will we hear from Tim today? No.

You're going to hear from Stacy's presenting on their behalf.

When it comes to fleet, what I'm handling is the registration of them, the tracking of them, the insurance of them.

The asset control.

And if there's disposition, if there's an auction or something like that, we handle the life of the vehicle, not so much the actual repairs and stuff. Now, we also have GPS tracking in our logistics group so that we can track that information as well.

So, Sean, that's one question that I had was, you know recently we had a question that came up is like why do we have so many different kinds of vehicles like we've got nissan trucks we've got these kind of things is like there is there a standard format or is everybody just doing their own procurement on what kind of vehicle that they want to drive or do we have a standard issue you know city vehicle procurement method. When I say fleet, I'm not talking about equipment. I'm talking about specifically vehicles.

And I'm going to give you the short answer without knowing the origins of it. No, we don't. Um, I think part of that, my understanding is because I started in 21 was a lot of that grew from 2020 when there were shortages on what you could get. And there was situations where I know at that time, when I first started here in purchasing that we were just grabbing a vehicle in Jacksonville and driving to get it because you couldn't get another one. So I think that may have gotten a little skewed the fleet to the speak. I can't speak for equipment maintenance, but I would think if we consolidated all the same type of vehicle, they have the same type of parts and those kind of things would be helpful. But I can't say that there's an official policy that this is a Ford truck in this size that you get and not at this point.

But they all are purchasing off of state contracts. Yes.

to Sean's what Sean just pointed out is the exact reason why is these guys have got tire sets they've got things like that that they keep in standard equipment maintenance well if you have you know 15 different types of vehicles well that means they have to keep 15 different types apart so what I would like to say just so we communicate based upon what you've said so far what I can hear is maybe there's a way to combine IT services between the two as well as a standardized fleet approach would be something that I would be interested in seeing.

Well, certainly someone who's going, and all of our suggestions are all just going, hey, what about this? We don't know. We don't run those departments. But I'd love to see someone on staff who's going, you know what? We could share a car between departments. That's right.

It's all in charge of assigning. Each budget has a car to budget for. So do you assign a car to each department? Because we're budgeting for each department is budgeting for one, so I'm expecting them to be using it.

No, the request for vehicles come from the department themselves during the budget process. We help them secure the vehicle if they get it approved with the budget. We'll help them go out through purchasing. Not buying it.

I'm talking about we have a fleet of vehicles. Since you're in charge of making everything happen, do you say to Michael, you have two cars and two trucks, and Stacey, you have four, and your department has, that's assigned to the department. Because everybody's housing, they're budgeting for a truck. Okay? If they're not using it, there's no reason for that to be in their budget. Just to clarify.

If you're not assigning it. I don't control everything. And I should. That's not what I heard. And I should. To your point.

You just said everything up here and all around.

I didn't say cars. But I did do your insurance. But, no, part of that is, you know, one of the things Brandy and Jared and myself have been talking about just recently, like within the last 30 days, is looking at a vehicle usage policy. And part of that was based on we ran some GPS numbers to see how much the vehicles are being used and see when they're being used and stuff and what can we do a little bit differently. So there are processes starting to come to fruition. When did you find out? I'm sorry? When did you find out in that look? There's just – there were a lot of – I don't want to say a lot because we have – Quite a bit of vehicles. There were enough that weren't moving often enough that it made us wonder, is there a reason? Now, with that being said, you may have a specialty dump truck that gets used once every six months. It just may be. That may be the type of equipment. So you can't just look at the mileage and say that. But there are some in there that we probably look at and can say, if we're not using it more than this... Maybe we don't need it. Or maybe it's a case we bought a new vehicle, but we didn't dispose of the last vehicle, and so it's tending to sit. And so maybe that's something we talk about trying to move off the books.

Or how about a policy, if you're going to buy something, you have to dispose of it. That's what we're in the discussion about. Or how about we find the top five that we're not using, let's get rid of them tomorrow. Or rent them.

And it obviously depends on what the rental cost is.

I drive by Jinx and Fifth Street a lot, and those trucks don't move a lot. So there's about 50% of them are sitting, and the others are being used.

Yeah, and exactly what you're saying is exactly what Brandi and Jared and I are looking at right now.

And that's a quick, easy savings, and then assign trucks to departments that are budgeting for them. Otherwise, I'd like to see those departments take that out of their budget.

Well, and all of the vehicles are assigned to the department that purchased them. And I don't know if that matters as far as funding. Brandon, you can clarify if the department used certain funding to buy it.

There should be a fleet department that purchases everything and not assigned to the department.

No, for the asset, for the capital asset is assigned to the cost center that purchases the vehicle.

So the asset is purchased all under fleet, and that way we only have one thing to worry about budgeting. Because what y'all are doing is you're spreading that truck payment all over the place. No, we're not.

No, it has to be assigned to the department that is purchasing it so that we can analyze the cost of that department, because that purchase is part of the department cost.

If you spread it out into- Okay, so every department here buys a whole, every one of them.

If they need one, and that way we- I was going to say, yeah, not every single one, but- Not every department- Not every department has vehicles.

Okay. So how you would handle this in just typical corporate world, you have vehicles, you have some that sit for a long period of time. Rather than charging an entire vehicle department, go on a mileage basis. There's other ways to handle that other than having to sign an entire vehicle to a department that sits four days out of five days a week. um what what i'm seeing and this is just me from multiple years i'm seeing our leasing continue to increase as we've replaced our fleet and it's be and while you can drive by city hall at any point in time you can see a ton of vehicles just sitting there and so by combining into a fleet department what it allowed you to do is yeah it may not say purchasing division on the side of the vehicle it may just say city of panama city but any department can use that and you can build them based upon mileage so that you can track your mileage you guys have obviously got sophisticated gps so that you guys can do that. But most companies do not buy vehicles based upon departments. They base it upon how many vehicles do we need to go and do this many plumbing jobs? How many vehicles do we need that? And everyone is assigned, you check out a vehicle. The totality of the organization. The totality of the organization. And in leasing, that's very important because every time it sits, You're paying that monthly payment. You're paying that insurance payment. You're paying all of those things regardless of how many miles you put on the vehicle.

Yeah, the reality with any equipment at any organization is you don't want it sitting around a tire factory, a water bottle factory. You want that machine that's moving.

So frankly, we agree with you. and and that's what it sounds like how we get there is is i think there's going to be a certain there may be a certain number of vehicles like equipment maintenance not excuse me not equipment it's environmental services like garbage trucks is typically going to be the same driver right so there'll be a segment of them that are assigned to individual users like because they're using them all day long and then there'll be a segment that could be pool vehicles and that could help us lower the number down so we've got Sean has done a really good job with the Verizon system and the GPS tracking to be able to say, hey, these are the number of vehicles I'm seeing that could be eligible for that in these types of departments. And then we go through and kind of weed them out. And then the departments that need vehicles to be assigned to individual users, maybe we can grab some from those vehicles that aren't being used.

So your next probably biggest, if I put the city in categories of expenses, personnel's obviously number one, you spend more on people than you do anything else, which people are your most valuable resource. So I don't have an issue with that. Second may be buildings. And third is probably vehicles. Like that is, if we talk about the big numbers of what you're spending money on, that is probably millions of dollars every year and standardizing it, consolidating it into one purchasing spot and, and tracking it, assigning it out based upon usage rather than just department, we should see that number come down.

And just to clarify a little bit, for lack of better term, the white fleet you see, none of those are leased. Really, the only leasing happens in PD. So that's that's just something different to what you're seeing as you drive around. And I don't see all of the other accounts, and so I'm going to say this and I could be wrong, but I think insurance is probably up there in the top five because we're about $4 million a year. Of our cost. Now, that's for multiple different areas of insurance, not just one, not just vehicles or anything like that. You know, I think the vehicle policy will help reduce the number of vehicles we have, period, which also will help, you know, maintenance. It will help with all those things. And so I think you would see a decrease from that right off the bat as well. The only concern I would have from a department level, and I'm not the person doing that, but I could see you got to make sure you have enough vehicles if everything's needed at once, which tends to mean you're going to have at least a few too many, which is Not 100% efficient. And I can tell you from private service and public service, because I've had fleets that I had before. And you're right. In a private situation, I had 50 fleet vans that went out every single day. But it was all kind of the same thing, and they were interchangeable. Some of this equipment won't be interchangeable. Some of it may be. Some of it may be to where we can buy less expensive vehicles if they're not going off road or things like that. So there's different things to factor into that. But I'm sure that there's some ways to look at some of those things and consolidate. Again, I think we got a little off track in 2020 just because that was all that was available. But, you know, there are certain things.

I would err on the side of being, you mentioned having enough vehicles that if we just absolutely needed all of them.

At the same time. The opposite.

I would lean on the 80% rule because we all drive vehicles to get here. And worst case scenario is... Jonathan drives his awesome Ford Ranger to wherever he needs to. That's okay. But to plan on the most catastrophic issue to happen, that's actually the opposite. I would say go conservative and plan for daily and normal use as well.

I guess what I'm saying with that is You may have a peak situation and you need them. And what I mean by that is, yes, Jonathan can drive his. I can't ask facility maintenance to take their personal truck out to go do repairs. Oh, sure. Because we're in trouble then because we have insurance issues.

Under your plan for the worst, you can then. It's a special circumstance. That's what Alan's talking about. Don't plan for the worst because you don't want an employee to drive their own car because the probability of that happening is way less than any other thing happening, in my opinion.

I think what all you're hearing, Sean, is implementing the same type of system that exists in private and private market. The way that it's currently operating is not a normal way of, in private work, to implement a vehicle policy. And I think... I think what you're hearing today is I think you're hearing a majority support for creating some type of consolidated vehicle purchasing thing that reflects more along the lines of standardizing vehicles, putting it into some type of purchasing piece. You'll have a much easier time asking your commission for replacing vehicles when we can look and we can see the usage and demand and those things are at a high level. it'll be a lot easier for us to be able to justify and approve those expenses versus seeing, you know, every department with a bunch of vehicles and they're all different. And so you're like, well, why is this a Nissan? Why is that those kind of things? The other thing I would say, too, on that same thing, and if we want to continue talking vehicle, I don't want to switch the subject.

No, I have a question. On vehicles? Yes.

Okay, good.

So actually, it's a little bit broader than vehicles, but it's come up in this discussion of vehicles. What's the difference, having cited your experience in the private world and in government, what's the difference between operating as a government municipality, and operating as a private enterprise when it comes to, for instance, fleets?

Well, I think I'll go to my most recent one that I would mention, when we had 50 vans out on the street. If I didn't run but 48 of them, it's just a profit thing. I can look at it and say, for this particular day, I'm not going to run these two for whatever reasons. I need to take them in for maintenance or I don't have a driver available or those kind of things. And so I can figure that out in my profit and statement. I think with the city, what you do is you don't get something done. We're not going to spend any more money by running all the vehicles than we would maybe in fuel, okay? But what I don't, what the scenario I was mentioning was, if suddenly... we had to have certain types of equipment to get something done, whether it be a water main break or whatever it is. And I didn't have a vehicle available. Then you can see the effects of that. I can't, you know, it could be, you know, an SSO, whatever the, we could be in real trouble. And so I'm not saying you pad the numbers. That's not what I'm saying at all. But if you can't handle the peak, then you're going to have X number of employees. If that happens, And, again, each department is different that won't be able to go out and do their work. And so then what did we accomplish, if that makes sense? Now, I don't know how many times that scenario would happen, and each department is different. Some it's kind of a it hit the fan and I've got to be out there right now kind of thing. Some others may complain a little bit more. It may be a situation where you can stagger some shifts in some other groups and stuff. IT's vehicle, if you look at the usage, very, very low. But it's also the one that we put all of the equipment that you see in here, and we take it to remote sites to set up to do other meetings and things for you guys and stuff. So we need it, but do we need it every day? Not necessarily, but we do need it in case those things happen that we need to set up and stuff like that.

But another department could be using it while it's not being used by IT very low.

They can. I think the only thing you've got to look at, and this would take management to do that, is you've got to hold people accountable for how that vehicle comes back to you.

So do it. That's your job. You do that. If you're in charge of that truck and it comes back bad, that's your role.

I'm okay with that, but I want to amend the amount of money I just asked for. Well, thank you.

So, so Sean, I think, I think one of the things that you're alluding to is like in those emergency situation, pipe breaks, those kinds of things, you know, one of the things that had been very successful, both fire and PD is mutual aid agreements. I mean, we're not the only ones that have sewer lines. We're not the only ones that have water lines. And I think what you're. hearing now and the discussion is broadening is how do we work better together with our neighbors like there used to be a time if you need a cup of sugar you just walk next door to ask it for your neighbor and essentially that's what we're saying that kind of same mentality when it comes to governmental work Let's support each other. We don't have to everyone staff at 100% and everybody have a vehicle and everybody have these things because these emergencies happen. What we have to do is create agreements that we kind of know, hey, when we need something, we can rely on each other.

And I'm not opposed to that. I'll relay it back into the private industry. We had multiple vans on our fleet. So did our neighbor who was doing the same thing we were doing. There were times where we were short of vehicle and they would loan us a vehicle. However, they covered theirs first. And so we're not going to be the top priority all the time when we want to be. So that's just something to factor in. And if we can live with that, that's fine. Um, but you know, if they had one. They didn't need it. They would loan it to me. We had a good relationship. But if they needed them, I was out of luck.

That's just the way it was. That's just a natural thing. Well, I think to Commissioner Lucas' point, what's the difference between private market and government? Government's a monopoly. There is no competition. So we're not in competition with our neighbor. We're not in competition. if i wanted to ask another plumbing company to borrow their truck to go do a job they probably would say no if i was a plumber but in our case yes if there's if they're going through a similar emergency they don't have something of course they're going to say no they've got to take care of the citizens they represent first but in most cases we don't have to look at our relationship as adversarial we can look at it in a situation of we can we can share no i'm just going to put on my wrist cap for a minute there's just a lot of moving factors to work out with that because

We know who's driving our vehicle. And we face a lot of litigation as it is. I'm real uneasy about not knowing the history on the other person if I loan a vehicle to them. They may be great. I don't know. But there may be some logistical things we have to work out so that we're comfortable with those type of things. if they have an accident in our vehicle, we'll get sued. And so just, just things to think about. I mean, it's, it's, there's just a lot of different factors to it. Doesn't mean that it's a bad idea or anything like that. There's just a lot of different things to look at. Um, and they're going to look at the same way to us. I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Is why is just curious, why is signs and marking division not in public works?

That was something I changed when I was public works director. So it kind of broke into three different groups, things that are vertical, buildings and signs. That was facility maintenance. Things that were kind of on the ground is streets maintenance division, and the things under the ground was utilities. So it just became easier, like, okay, what is messed up? Okay, boom, this is the division to go to.

Why are signs not private? Why don't we have a sign department?

We did just pay for all the downtown signs to be installed by someone like a CRS company.

Why don't we use that in turn? Why do we do it?

Why do we have, why do we build signs?

He just reported that that was closed.

The, the, yeah, we don't make signs anymore. We, we, we purchased them and we put them out. The reason why the CRA contracted that out is like a lot of other projects that we have. If it's a massive project, I've got a team of three people. If you're willing to wait a year, can get it but if you need it before that we may pivot to a contractor and move and get that done quicker and so those decisions are made on every level whether it's construction or signs or whatever so who are we contracting with to make our signs we have different vendors we've purchased them from pre-made we can get them within 24 to 48 hours what was happening before is i had a staff that was spending 60 of their day Printing signs and sticking them on.

Different vendors, what I'm learning right here, that's a problem. One vendor can do as a sign company. Why do we have to have different vendors? They make triangle signs. They make square signs. They make metal signs. They make chloroplast signs.

There's hundreds of vendors. Right. Our commitment to you is that we're going to find the ones that give us the best price and the fastest turnaround.

I'd rather the commitment to me be I'm going to be local, I'm going to be fast, and I'm going to use one person because I'm going to have a contracted price, and they're going to guarantee me the low price. And do I have to send that out for bid?

No.

No? Okay, good. So what I'd like for you to do, and if you don't know the sign companies in town, I'll give them to you. Oh, we do. Okay. I'd like for you to go to them and get the lowest price for all the signs that you bid and see what that contract looks like.

How realistic is that?

I think you could say that about anything we buy. And so, again, my commitment is that we are going to make sure we have those signs as low a price as we can get on hand if needed. And so we're looking at companies anywhere that can do that for us. And I would love to have a local company if they can do it. That's fine. But I'm not going to put all of our apples in one basket with one company. One of the other reasons why we have a sign shop is because we get a call from PD at 2 a.m. because someone just ran over a stop sign, and we respond and put it in the ground. A vendor's not going to do that. We do it. And the reason why is it's a safety issue.

Okay, let me reframe it this way. I want you to go to every sign shop in Panama City or in Bay County and get a quote from me so it's not all in one basket. And let's try to start local, okay? And let's not come back with, I can't do it that way. That's a directive. Please.

Well, no, I'm not saying I can't do it that way. What I'm saying is we are...

But so far you've given me every time I've asked. Now, twice you've said I'm going to push my iPhone.

No, what I'm telling you is the purchasing policy and what we do, and we do it for all products the same way. So I'm not sure why I'm going to every single vendor for this one if I wouldn't do that for every part we carry. I'm not saying it's a bad idea to go to them. That's not what I'm saying at all. But what I'm saying is I could expand that to every part of anything we buy. And we do buy from local people with signage and specialty signs and stuff like that. We use several different ones.

I think mine is we have a lot of vendors. A lot of vendors turns into a lot of money, okay? Because I can go right now. We can walk down over here to the sign shop right down the road, and we can probably get a pretty good price on whatever sign that you need to get a price on. And I can say... All right, now you can make us 15 of these. We can have them stocked by tomorrow. Yeah, we sure can. He does it for me right now. So I know he can do it. My point is, why are we not trying to do that? And we're looking all over the, lots of local vendors. You can get it done at 2 o'clock in the morning because you know what types of signs are getting run over by cars at 2 o'clock in the morning. You can have those on hand.

And we have them on hand. What I'm saying is you have to have a person to go out at 2 a.m. and put them in the ground.

That's fine. But that sign shop's not going to do that. That sign shop employee's going to do that. That works for us. Having the sign on hand is what I'm talking about. But the reason I ask about privatization is we don't need the sign shop, in my opinion. I'm just looking for shops that we... Cost centers, y'all call them? That's when we can move into the street department, I think, that Jonathan was talking about. So that's a way that we can bring in local, save money, get a guaranteed price, and that saves money to me, and it's right there.

That's all I'm asking. So I think what you're hearing, too, is a willingness of, you mentioned, just broadly, it's so hard being up here, because when you talk about department, it's like, we're not trying to shame anybody's department. But what we're trying to explain is a willingness that you can come back to us and say, OK, well, we're going to reduce the cost of this thing. And you might not get the sign installed within 20 minutes of it being knocked down. We might have to wait 12 hours. Is that acceptable? And then we take the heat for that level of service to the customer. So we go, it is our fault now that particular signs that get hit on wrecks we no longer can replace them in 20 minutes we have to wait 24 hours and that's on this we take the heat for that budget cut but we do want to hear those conversations that we do want to support local vendors and we do want to do things fast but we also need to understand what the trade-off is that is that a higher cost to a department or can we reduce can we reduce the speed of the service that we're providing to save some money well mayor with with what sean presented and great presentation by the way

His call centers went up with a directive to cut back. So what I'm looking for are cuts, and I'm not hearing that. And so what I'm looking for are give me numbers that I can see that are going down. The fleet is one of them. The sign shop is one of them. One thing you said about keeping things in-house, you said you can save up to 75%. Is there a metric that you're comparing that to that I can look at?

I can pull data together for you.

So you said also if that truck doesn't move, we just don't get something done. But if that truck does move, we have cost of fuel. Not true. When the cost of that employee, whether that truck moves or doesn't move, that cost of that employee, unfortunately, when it's given to me, is not the full cost that I'm looking for. You'll calculate it when you're calculating a debt service, but when I'm looking for the overall cost, unfortunately, lately, it's not been giving me that way. That truck moves with gas or it stays still. Does the employee still cost the city the same amount of money? My assumption is yes. Yes, sir. So I don't know how much I make a day. It's not a lot, but it's not worth what you go for. But I don't know how much I make a day. But I can promise you, it is not whatever the salary part of that is. It's also the benefits, the retirement, all that goes into it. You know that as well as I do. That truck sitting there, that's what it cost me that day for it to sit there. okay if it goes that employee now cost me fuel it cost me insurance sitting there insurance has cost me right now i'm just sitting there i want to know what it costs in that truck to sit there and move okay with the employee in it versus out of does that make sense it does i'm not sure how we break that down for you well i don't know if i make 30 something thousand dollars a year all in divide that out But it's not.

Commissioner.

I'm going to pick on.

What you would be asking us is to analyze every single pay grade of every employee that drives a vehicle. Okay. That would be literally hours worth of analyzation and breakdown. It would not honestly be worth the staff resources to try to do that. A generalized estimation would be a lot better.

Okay. Let me back it up then. Let's stay with just the fleet over here in the parking lot. Let's not do the trucks, the garbage trucks and all that. Does that help? Because not everybody's going to drive those trucks sitting over there. And the answer is no, I'm not going to take that for an answer. If we have to examine every person that drives, I need to know.

Maybe what also needs to be taken into consideration is how many vehicles actually sit versus how many are consistently moving. Most of our departments that have vehicles are vehicles that are in consistent use. We do not have departments that just have willy-nilly vehicles.

Then why do 50% sit over there every day most of the time not moving?

I don't know where you're speaking of, but we have a fleet just at PD of almost 150 vehicles. We're not talking about PD.

We're talking about sitting across the street from the backside of City Hall.

Those move during the day.

We can do that. And the times that they should be moving is during the day.

And they're not. And one of the things that might be helpful to what Robbie's asking for is, You know, regardless of where someone works in the organization, HR supports whoever they are. So their HR costs are over that employee. Same thing with supervision. Essentially, the city manager's salary is divided over every employee in the entire organization. So maybe we could just come up with a calculation that is the average cost of an employee at the city and utilize that as a benchmark for what we're talking about now. And at least you would be able to see, hey, look, you as an organization, this is what you spend per employee.

does that sound like a reasonable approach so help me understand what you're asking for the employee not just the salary but the additional costs associated with that yeah so you would be asking me to calculate the entire overhead for an employee

What I would say is taking all payroll into account, all benefits, all departments everywhere, and extrapolating that out by dividing by 500 and whatever amount of employees, and you come out with an hourly rate associated with employees across the board.

And how would you use that hourly rate?

And to what Robbie is asking is... I'm trying to figure out what it costs us for that truck to sit there. If a deployee... There can be times that it's going to be more of that if it's a department head that's driving a vehicle.

How many vehicles are we talking about?

That's the issue. The vehicles that are sitting... The vehicles that are sitting at City Hall, the ones that we're talking about are outliers and are home fleet. And I think if we could have the time to come back with a report later, I think we can clearly explain that. And if we need more analysis after that, we can certainly do that. But the cost of a vehicle to sit, like let's say it's a code enforcement vehicle if they've got a hearing that day they're prepping for that hearing all day so those vehicles may may sit for quite a while that specific day but then when they're not when they're getting when they're in between hearings they're out there in the field working unless they're here for a staff meeting so it's it's getting the some of those seven days a week they're out correct so it's getting those vehicles like It's a combination of a lot of factors, not including just risk, insurance, and all those other things. But we have, at the beginning of this fiscal year, told all of our non-essential, I'm sorry, that's not correct, our non-FD and PD employees. that there's no more take-home vehicles like if you're on call at utilities like you've got to come to the shop clock in get your keys and then you go and that saved us quite a bit of insurance as well so those employees that aren't eight to five monday through friday some of those vehicles sit at our shops now because we don't allow them to take them home anymore And that's reduced our accident exposure in the off hours. So there's a lot of factors driving that.

So if I'm understanding it, we want to understand the cost of vehicles.

That's one thing. Well, I think how I would ask the question I think might allude to how many vehicles do we have as a city? It taught across every department, including PD. PD's got 150. So let's say every one of them.

Between probably around 175 on this side, not PD.

Including PD is around 325 vehicles.

And that doesn't include the fire department either, right? No, that does include the fire department.

It does? Okay. So that's facility maintenance, that's trash, that's everything. Right. Okay. All right. So you've got 500-something employees and you've got 300-something vehicles. There's obviously, you know, that seems excessive. It seems excessive.

I mean, you're closer to 600 employees, but that seems excessive. A lot of those vehicles are on the road every day. What employees did you say? 600.

were closer to 600 employees commissioner hughes just a point of clarification because i want to make sure this is understood every single division did not reduce but the overall department did by 176 000 and that's because there were some cases that we could absorb a harder hit than others in particular i'll use i.t for example and i think it was a small one or one or two percent increase A lot of their stuff is contracted that comes in, and the first thing is we want a 10% renewal fee on top of it. We say no, and we keep negotiating with them down, and even if we can do multiple years to get them down, at best, the best case scenario a lot of times we get to 3%, maybe 5%. So some of those are costs we can't just slash, so we took it upon ourselves to look at other divisions within our group and see if we couldn't cut harder there. that's why you'll see some that are one percent increase two percent but then you'll see others that are eleven percent decrease eight point nine percent decrease we felt like we could absorb it and keep the services that you guys expect and and still do that and so that's why you see the overall number for me is is what i'm looking at the 176 000 that's the important part to me because if we

if we couldn't do that then that i wouldn't be able to meet the services and requirements that that's on us for the city okay so go ahead i was just going to say so what i'm hearing is a concern about the number of vehicles that we have what the real cost of operating those vehicles are when and then how much idle time or outliers do we have and so That's what we want to know. And then where could we save money by slimming the fleet?

And I will tell you, when the conversation first came up and I brought it to Brandi and Jared talking about vehicle usage and what could we do and some things like that, I had run a mileage report at that point. There were about 20 vehicles that concerned me out of all of them. And that's why we started with that, and that's why we started having that conversation. That's why we started looking at that.

So two things, Sean. You said that you're short on staff since you've been here. Compared to what?

To what we budgeted for.

So what you were asked to budget for, but compared to what? You don't know if you need more or not.

Oh, I know because I know what you guys expect of us. And so the question then becomes, can we do it? Yes. But how long will it take to do it? I want to be able to provide. And Brandy picks at me sometimes because I get impatient and she says, it's just because that's who you are. I want to know it's because I want to get stuff done. And if you give me something that needs done, I want to do it as quick as possible. What I understand, what I came to understand in 10 years of previous government experiences that You can't do it all in one year, but you'll be surprised over the course of 10 years how much you can get accomplished. So there's sometimes that I want to get things done as soon as they're on my plate. Staffing issues prevent that sometimes. For example, the biggest hit we have right now at Facility of Maintenance, we're short three electricians. Electricians aren't just somebody you can just put in that place and just say, go out there. It doesn't work that way. And so then we have to pivot to a contractor, and then that costs more money. And so we're really...

trying to do those things internally because we want to save the city money but we also want to be able to react and do it immediately if that makes sense it i know nothing about it i'm a third grade level person they do a great job okay i'm looking at cost so i've thrown out just people around town um do you have my tea department yes Do you have, what programs do y'all use? And they'd say Microsoft. I said, man, how much do you pay for it? We pay $175,000 for Microsoft. We pay $45,000 for Teams. And that's a concern for me. Y'all said that home is a necessary $300,000 expense. $150,000. About $150,000. $75,000. $75,000 and $75,000. I'm concerned that these IT numbers are high because of software. I didn't understand when you said that they take care of sunshine law, I guess.

There were certain requirements with the sunshine law that we have to adhere to, and so there's things we have to have in place to adhere to those laws.

Okay.

Meaning how you put information out there from us? How we archive text messages and all those type of things. Okay. We have to have those. Fair enough. So I'm concerned about that our IT...

has gone up, but we're not. So you call Microsoft and say, I need a break, and they're like, go pound sand. All right, thank you, I need something. But nobody has agreed with me that $175,000 is a good number. That's the first thing, and I'll let him answer in a second. We'll go back to cars real quick. The reason I'm asking so much about the fleet over there, how many people in here can get a car allowance? You want to raise your hand? Raise them up, please. Hi. Hi. These are all people in here. I'm going to drive my car. I don't need a car allowance. The fleet's sitting over there. We can all drive that if we need to go somewhere. There's a savings across the board, but now we've got trucks. If we're going to need all these trucks, let's start talking about how we all participate and we're going to use something that we have to have. Why don't we all use it? Why does upper staff use it as well as the lower staff? Is there a reason for that?

Well, I can only comment for my particular department because I'm not in charge of all vehicles for the city. In my particular department, the vehicles we have are matched to the staff that we have, and they are moving all day long. Okay. But, again, that's just my department. I can't speak for everyone else.

So you're saying that if you needed a car, you couldn't go get one right now. You'd have to use yours. Me personally? You personally, yes, sir.

No, we have a logistics vehicle that we use for a logistics maintenance person. If we have to go to the post office, if we have to go investigate claims so that those people, which are some of our, like our risk manager, doesn't have to turn in mileage, they can go use that vehicle. What I'm saying is my staff that uses vehicles on a daily basis, they're in them all day long, doing work all day long.

For the record, the post office is right there. Oh, and we've walked into it. We don't need to drive there.

We've walked into it. Okay, I was about to say. But also, we're also talking about ladies sometimes that are carrying three or four bins.

Okay, all right.

To answer your question about the Microsoft cost, that's a cost per user license that just adds up over time. We're talking for our G3 license, which is your standard Microsoft Word, Outlook, Excel, Teams, is $251 per user. multiply that by 350 users, it gets big quick. Is that per year? Per year. That's annual cost. We try and save money. Any individuals that don't need Word and Excel and all these other products, they just get an email license. So your G2 license is $46 per year. Significant savings there.

Does everyone get email addresses?

We all get email addresses. Every city employee gets an email address. That cost was an increase over last year. We weren't doing that last year. That was about $13,000 a year increase.

I guess it's how we distribute newsletters and internal things.

For open enrollment purposes, we'd like to do our direct deposits that way, W-2s, W-4s, all of that. We'd like to go that way, and they need the email addresses for that.

We've got another piece of software called PowerDMS. It's a document management system. It'll allow us to automate a lot of our trainings and internal memos, and it creates a responsibility pathway so supervisors get a notification if their employee hasn't done a specific training by a certain deadline or if they haven't acknowledged the receipt of a new policy. So there's a lot of things that are done in paper that are carried around the city right now that this would automate and hopefully gain some efficiencies as well. I see. And every person has to have an email address for those types of things.

We pay for licenses every year. Would you say that we are efficient, above average or below average, in all the software and all how we operate? Can we become more efficient or are we running pretty good right now? And if we can become more efficient, what would you suggest that we do with IT? And there's no wrong answer here. You're not going to get in trouble for being truthful.

Sir, there's always room for improvement. We do have to have a few overage licenses because when somebody quits, retires, wins the lottery, whatever the case may be, we have to hang on to those emails for a little while for records. Their supervisor may need access, stuff like that. So there's a buffer there. I'm trying to reduce that actively. We audit. anywhere and everywhere we can to reduce and save money. I talk to Panama City Beach IT Director regularly to bounce ideas off of them and see how they're saving money, what we can do that they're doing, and vice versa. Their cost for Microsoft is about the same as ours.

And to me, one of the most important departments in the entire building is yours. Because The bad guys, if they would do good with what they try to come in and do bad with, they can change the world. In my world, the bad guys go get in, and this is why you can't use Gmail, I would imagine. They break in, it's pretty easy, and they change one letter on a wire, okay? Three weeks ago, $227,000 went to Never Never Land. It was from one title company to Never Never Land. It got wired out, okay? It happens. So I get that's how important y'all are. You need to make sure that we keep the bad guys away. But technology moves so fast it becomes inefficient at the same time. Okay, I get that. So my expectation for you is that it's okay for you to go to Sean and say, yo, dude, we need to do this and we need to get rid of this because this is better. And, yes, it's going to cost a little bit more, but the efficiency that I'm going to get. And that's what I'm looking for.

and i'll tell you that some of the things that they currently do for example what i mentioned about cyber security consultant we were able to shave twenty thousand dollars off of that by switching companies and getting better service and not just the savings we got a much better service we've also been able to again trim the the amounts that we're paying on each month on a cell phone line and it's all due to that conversations with those vendors and finding those ways to save them And at the same time, while we were able to reduce by 30% the cost each month of cell phone bills, we were able to also get newer phones with satellite capabilities. So if we have Michael again, we can all talk to one another. We will reach each other because it's at a level that we can use satellite phones. So it's, you're going to be here with us.

It shows up on the thing? No, the thing on your phone that shows up satellite.

It'll be satellite, yeah. And so it is a matter of saving money, but sometimes it's a matter of saving money and expanding our capabilities. We've implemented to where we have Starlink systems on standby that cost us nothing unless we activate them, but we can pop them up at different locations in the city, again, if a disaster happens. That was my next question.

We spend money on Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast. Those are all Internet providers. But that's not what they all do for us. Okay, that was my question.

Our main internet provider is WOW. Verizon, we're using them for mobile connections, your cell phones, hotspots. We do have some landlines through them that are hybrid.

Who's our land company with?

With Verizon and WOW.

We have two different landline companies. Correct.

Because within City Hall, we were able to save money per landline because we're consolidated here. But outside of City Hall, if you don't have more than 10 phones in a building, Verizon was a cheaper option.

And they won't let us piggyback on coming out of this building and going to others when we have this many?

It's a matter of the infrastructure because they have to have a core switch. That core switch costs money. Right. So we're paying, I think it's $25 to $30 a month per switch.

I bet they'd run the trunk line and the switch for you if we gave them all of our business.

They have to have the switch at each building is the problem.

Sir, I worked for WOW for a decade, and he's right. It's a matter of the physical installation. It's each address which requires a phone. So that's why it's cheaper here because we've got more people in this building. But for instance, like at Fire Station 1, there's like three landlines. It would cost me just as much to set up service here as it would at Fire Station 1, and that's why Fire Station 1 now has some Verizon landlines.

commissioner two things one thing i want to mention too is we are also actively right now in this building even though we're with wow and we're getting a good deal with while we're going through and anyone who has a cell phone and does not need that landline we are getting rid of the landlines to save even more money that's why you can go straight and go straight because for example for mine i have my desk forwarded to my cell phone anyway so i don't really need the desk phone you can just go to mine so that's one of the things he's got a couple other things

not just the wow lines we're doing that with the verizon lines as well any land line that's sitting there if you have a phone a cell phone why do you need both and we're just checking with the directors that's their discretion yeah my question my question on these was just you know can we not do we're just the receptionist and each i mean we've got like five or six maybe ten receptionists in city hall that they can have a landline and everybody else just goes to their cell phone because i think

It depends on if they have a cell phone or not, sir. Not everybody has one, but there is a good savings that can be added, and that's what we're looking at.

Is it cheaper for us to give? I don't have a city cell phone. I don't need one. I don't want one under this scenario that I'm going to ask. Is it cheaper to, if Janice didn't want hers, give her $10 a month extra on her cell bill and be done with having extra cell phones for everybody?

One of the things you give up is not having the continuity of a city phone number where the system now goes, I just quit the city. It doesn't ring back to the city.

It makes it difficult for public records requests, too, when we frequently get records requests for cell phone text messages and things like that. If you have a city phone, it's easy to just... they can pull it right off.

Well, I have two phone numbers, one a city number and one an east number.

Yeah, I have two numbers on this phone right here.

That's another thing that we can do. Yeah, it's just a willingness to explore all options and we're trusting everyone's doing that.

And I want to say an activity. We're going to ask a lot up here, and I'd like for you all to think in terms of, don't give me the answer of why it has to be that way. Just because it's been that way forever does not mean it has to stay that way. As a matter of fact, it's probably not going to stay that way. And so we have to get real serious about having an open conversation, and I'm going to say it again. Everybody in this room should hurt first before everybody else there hurts first. And that's the public, that's the employees, and that's anybody else that's not a manager. If we can't lead by example, then we don't need these physicians, okay? That's 100% how I believe. And so what I'm going to ask you to do is when we're asking questions, please don't start with, well, here's why it's got to be that way.

We would discuss the tradeoffs of decisions.

I would love to know why you see it differently, okay? And here's another way to approach it. Just not your way is the only way that works. Can we all agree to that? Because I left out here with a really bad taste in my mouth the other day because of that very reason. And I want to make sure that I express that's not your fault. That's just the way it is. And I'm the one that's trying to blow it up. I get it. But not in the sense of trying to take everything away. I feel like I'm trying to pry too much and I'm not. I'm trying to understand. And to understand involves asking a lot of questions and getting in areas that y'all don't talk about most of the time. I'm learning that. It's real interesting, real fast. So when I say that to you, Sean, there's nothing bad about what you're doing wrong. I'm asking you to look at it a different way to give me an answer of why that truck sitting there is okay. In your mind. It's not okay with me, and somebody gave me an answer. Jared just said it. They're not planning on going to a code enforcement meeting. They're driving. If not, all right, that makes sense. But that's code enforcement. There's a whole lot of departments in here that aren't using those cars, and they're sitting there. I'm using that just as an example. Does that make sense? I need to get that off my chest. I'm sorry.

Awesome. I have a hard stop before 3 o'clock. I did not realize this meeting was supposed to go to 5, and we are down a commissioner. Do we want to keep going with departments, or do we want to go one more and then reschedule, or what would you like to do?

We could probably get development services and then reschedule.

We don't have to have a quorum. We're not voting on anything. So, I mean, unless you just would like to be.

I think each one of them are taking a little longer than we are.

So it might not be a bad idea to have number five.

I just want to let y'all know it's at the end of this presentation, but we do have a proposed budget that we have to get together and present to you guys, and we would like to do that prior to you setting the millage July 28th. So the further we kick this out, the less time we have to put together a proposed budget. We would need feedback from you all, and

in order to do that so i mean i i think everyone's seeing i mean i plan on us giving you guys some pretty definitive feedback at least i plan on and i was going to send y'all something like y'all did i wanted to wait till after this and i was planning on doing that and i told alan that i'd like to

It's okay with y'all. We make recommendations of what we would like to do after we hear all these things so that we can all talk about it. I don't know if that's a process. I don't know how it will operate. Y'all have been here before.

I think given the situation that we're in currently, I do think that we need to be direct on what the expectation is on the overall budget number so that they know exactly what they're shooting for as far as in their proposals. Because, Sean, this is based upon what percentage cut?

This is just based on what percentage we felt like our groups in each individual division in logistics could actively cut and still do the services that you guys require.

If we went to the $4.5 million cut model, he would have to cut more. It's about $300,000 more.

Gotcha. I thought that we had asked for at least 2.4 million model cut.

So this is included in your $2 million model? Yes. This one is.

Didn't we ask for that? That's what Sean showed you today is the 2.4, I think it is.

So 4% is what should come out of his overall budget.

I thought we asked for both.

I thought we asked for both.

Y'all have asked for both, and y'all also asked to hear from the departments on what they do and any of their unmet needs. So I think our departments were conflicted on what to present, to be honest. Some presented. are are presenting with the four and a half million dollar cut some are the two million some are here's what i need to to do what you expect of me next year um until we get clear consists of consensus on

where we're going next year then we can finalize the budgets and present something to you guys so you did hang on you did present the four and a half that was in the one big night when i went through that whole presentation yeah we've done the four and a half previously and again it's about a three hundred thousand dollar difference than what i presented today so the department presentations uh commissioner hughes i believe you wanted to hear directly from the department yes what what they would cut without having the senior management make more cuts exactly so that's what you presented today

Mine would fit within that $2 million.

Correct. And then prior to that, we got the cuts.

Correct. Budget workshop number two is when we presented what $4.5 million in cuts would look like from all the departments.

No, ma'am, you didn't.

From the general fund, yes. That's what we presented in budget workshop number two.

That's right. You just cut the wrong stuff. Okay.

But I do have to ask my colleagues, how do we think we can get the $4.5 million, Commissioner Street, I know you've looked at it, how can we get that without touching any personnel? When personnel is, what, 70% of the entire budget?

Yeah, so my thought is... one one today even in our conversation with with sean's department which you guys do a fantastic job sean so i mean this is like your stellar department you guys have found savings every single year this is no this is no different um the the point in making the cut further than what you have to is because we do not have reserves we have no we have no safety net that's one

Are your varying opinions, and you've said we have money we can access in the event of an emergency, even though it's not in the pot call reserve, so we're not broke?

And so far we've not presented a, no one's presented the actual bringing over environmental services and designated for reserves. It's still sitting environmental services. So until someone shows that.

Sir, I think the money, and correct me if I'm wrong, I don't want to speak for you. I think it's also the insurance proceeds as well.

Yes, because that's what I've been told. In the event of an emergency, we can access those funds. They're just sitting in a different pot.

and why are they sitting in a different pot yeah and that that that's my point is like present a budget that accomplishes that and then we can have that conversation so but the point is not in making the cuts the point is that and and what we get to in this conversation and it doesn't matter what department what what it matters is like there is a tendency to go to cut things that necessarily we're not wanting to cut but there's a protection on things that necessarily like I don't really care how many landlines there are in the city. I want to know that somebody's phone gets answered. If that's a cell phone, whether that's a landline, I don't care. Like Microsoft Office, whether somebody has Excel, whether they don't, I'm ambivalent to it. But what I do care about is I do care about how many officers that we have. I care about, like, there's things that were presented in the four and a half that was, hey, we're going to cut these things, but there's still a lot from what I'm sensing through the department presentation of things that, like, If I had to pick and it was my house and I was trying to pick what matters, I'd definitely be picking officers before I'd be picking Microsoft Office.

I think the conversation that I was hoping we would have would be discussing the trade-offs of potential reductions of revenue and budget. I probably have 20 people that do marketing for me and they'll come back to me really stressed out and they'll say, we have so much stuff to do. You've given us so much things to do. And I'll say, okay, my job is to tell you the top three priorities, but you should always, if you ever ran out of things to work on, that's when you worry about your job. Even with the signs, I'm going to pick on the signs. That is a trade-off of saying, hey, well, we can't do a sign as quickly, so we reduce the service. But you need to communicate that to us of, hey, here's the trade-off of us reducing our budget. We're not going to be able to do everything that you want. I mean, one of the things I passed to Mr. Zimmerman in February, I said, I want to research the power lines and the cables, but I don't know what you have on your table. But I'd love to see it done in the next 120 days. communicate to me where this is in the stack so I'm not piling up more work than you can handle and blow the budget but I'm also not waiting two years for the information so part of that is communicating to us the level of priorities that we have and then us deciding what are the priorities and so yeah I know that the things that we're throwing you now you're like I think maybe I wasn't clear on a couple things because like for the sign shop when we when we reassessed it this past three months

There's a position eliminated. There's two other positions we're probably not going to fill at this point. Those were the things we were looking. What can we do to get the core stuff done? And the frilly stuff just is going to have to wait. And the other thing about the stop sign, the only concern about time on those kind of things is it's safety. If there's not a stop sign, someone gets injured or something like that.

And I'm picking on the sign department. That's just a little tiny. The frustrating part up here is when we get paraded as sacred calves, you want to take all these people, officers off the streets. And we're like, no, we don't. We want to get rid of all airlines. We want to get. We're in some cars that are sitting over here. We're not trying to get rid of all these people. And then every suggestion is a dead end. We're like, we can't do that. And you're like, well, we're not trying to.

I'm not trying to reduce public safety. I guess on my end, what I worry about is if I have to go to that extra $300,000. Sure. all of those cost savings that i just mentioned to you i might not have the manpower to dig as deep and do those things we've had an outside vendor offer to do it before but they wanted half of the savings sure i want to do it in-house and save you that money and also use them for other things so i worry if i if i don't have the ability to go deep and we were on email today yeah and so those kind of things take a long time and a lot of investigation but but it does hit the bottom line for the city. So it is a trade off. But my fear is the trade off then would cost us more in another way. That makes sense.

So this is what we're kind of setting up to ahead here. I'm just gonna say I'd like to meet with you. So so um what you just said um why I'm a proponent of making as deep a cuts as we can because it gives us the flexibility to backfill. So if I'm presented with a budget that has us cutting 16 officers, well, guess what? Like the $300,000, Sean, I love you to death, I love what you guys do, but I'm gonna fund public safety first. And the same thing goes with anybody. and i i think that's the piece where it's like we only have so many tools in our tool chest of we can we can be presented a budget that we're obviously we all support we all are happy with these cuts or maybe we're not happy with them but we can at least support these cuts and these are in the areas that we can support Or what I've seen happen previously is we go back to budgeting on 92% of revenue and we go back and budget on less revenue so that we have the ability to be flexible and backfill where these tension points are and we can get you guys the resources that you need. We're budgeted at the statutory maximum right now in this budget. Right now we are under-reserved and we see a monthly report every single month that shares that. That puts our employees at risk. and i am not willing to go and budget more beyond what we have without solutions and so but i am willing to say this is me that when there's a need i want to have margin that we can fulfill that need And that's what this exercise is about.

And I'm asking personally here, and they may want to know as well, but just do we have a budget number, not to say we couldn't exceed that, but a reserve number we would like to get to? Yes. What is that number?

It's based on policy. It's 16.7%. My expectation is not that's fulfilled in year one. My expectation is that we have a plan. And I've said this, I think multiple of us have, a five-year plan, a three-year plan. So what you guys are probably solving for is a balanced budget. That's what you guys are solving for. Why? Because you're required to by statute to do that. In my realm, as I'm looking at public works, I'm saying, well, we've got to have money to do capital projects once we're done with all this stuff. We've got to have money that we can go replace park equipment when it's broken. We've got tennis courts that need to be done. We've got reserves that are under. We've got so and so forth. It's not just about the balanced budget number. It's about the balance and the true priorities that we need to focus on as a city. And so so I don't think things are doom and gloom. But I do think that there's uncomfortability. And then you take next year when we're required to do a 10% cut, at least in presentation, how would you guys think through that differently next year? When it's going to be statutorily required, you have to present us with a 10% cut. What does that look like? Because this process and what we're doing right now I think is going to be common local government. We have to do this every year. would you expound on the 10 cut yeah yes so the so the governor signed into a law that requires every municipality every year to show what a 10 cut would do to your budget and so we're required to present that we're required to make it publicly noticed well it's in work too so the work that we're doing right now as a matter of fact i Kudos to the conversation that happened the last week, made the Wall Street Journal. This is commonplace for local government now to find a way to get more with less. And Florida happens to be the state that's now not just saying,

hey we want you to have a conversation they're requiring a conversation and being up here you know robbie's trying his hardest to point out like hey maybe we have one copier per floor and and we just seem silly up here but we're trying our best to just be like hey we're trying to help you guys i think that's what it kind of feels like like it may think like it's adversarial

But it goes into some of our conversation at First Bridge Workshop. Sure, let's say we all agreed to raise taxes. Well, guess what? Every one of our citizens is going to vote to reduce their taxes on a ballot amendment that is going to require that and probably replace all of us. As well. With people who want to burn the place down. With people that are going to be like, let's cut everything by 15% this year.

And this organization is very complicated. I feel like what they're trying to do is get a lot of government privatized now. Maybe. There's some big expenses that we carry, that all governments carry, that I think they're trying to privatize is what they're trying to do.

But in fairness to everyone in this room, What we have not been clear on as a commission is what budget number we're asking you to do. That's one of the things is why I said, hey, next week when we meet, we need to give you guys clear direction on this is your goal. No more moving based upon projections or whatever those things like we need to give you an actual defined goal. Otherwise, you guys are just presenting us stuff and I don't think that's fair. Now, more money's there, things end up better, economy grows, whatever happens, we can always backfill. But we can't really, well, we could, but it would be very painful to cut after a budget is adopted.

Commissioner? What would be incredibly helpful for us, especially in my job where I'm trying to calculate all of this, is not a number. What we need is priority for which departments you would like to see less cut from and priority where you would like to see more cut from. Because you can say 4.5 million and we can get to that number, but it's going to involve heavy public safety cuts because public safety is such a large part of our budget. So what we really would love is the direction of what do you see that we're doing that you think we could do less of, whereas also what do you see that we're doing that you want to continue as a service? Great question.

I would like for you to think about every department is your house. And every dollar turns into 10 and 10 turns into 100.

I think you guys are getting that. You don't need to start with thousands. I think it's a great question, Samantha. But I feel like that's exactly what I'm saying when I'm saying, hey, don't really care about Microsoft Office. Hey, don't really care about lines. Don't really care. I feel like that's what works. Now, if there's something else that needs to be communicated, I'm I mean, I think I've found myself pretty willing to say pretty much anything at this point.

And I've yet to see a budgetary meeting where there's another city or county where the elected officials go, you cut and this and your percentage of that. That's typically not how that happens. It typically happens to the staff bringing recommendations of what they do because we have no purview into these departments and we have no authority and we don't know how to run them. And so I think that is poor leadership from the city manager's office of that approach, and it should be coming from this office to us of their recommendations. I'm in favor of what Josh is pushing. I think the exercise of 4.5 is good, and I want to see those tradeoffs. And I think there should be, and what Robbie is pointing out, is a real effort on us trying our best up here as elected officials to say, hey, we don't want to fire people, but we do need to reduce some services and we need to have some tradeoffs. We need to have hard discussions of those things because, yes, we have lots of things to work on, but the taxpayers are demanding this of us.

I'll give you some examples. Take out all travel, all car allowances, and renew education and prioritize that. We spend $250,000 a year right now is budgeted for travel and $100,000 a year in car allowances. There's $350,000.

That doesn't sound like a lot of money. To me, each department says, hey, we can do virtual passes to conferences and watch the sessions.

We can add up all the special pay. That's what it comes up to. Well, guess what? That doesn't even tell you what it is, but every dollar counts. There's a start right there towards $4.5 million. That's not what y'all want to hear, but that's what the reality is. You want to really hurt somebody's feelings, roll back salaries. We haven't gotten there yet. That's the step before you get rid of people. That's what we're trying to avoid. But like Alan said, we can only suggest so much until you say, all right, we've got to hear it. Samantha says we've got to hear it. You're going to hear it on Tuesday, I guess. We can't take action here, but we can certainly give on Tuesday, here's a list of things.

And I think to Robbie's point, this is a really complex organization. We have a CNG station, and everything we point out, people up here, we go, what about this thing?

Oh, we have to have that.

And we're like, well, other cities don't have a CNG. And so we just start picking on departments because we're like, what about this? And so this is a very complex organization for a size city that we are. We are in the complexity of like Pensacola, which is like four times the revenue. We don't have the personnel to do all these things. And so we just have things that we suspect should be removed and planned. And we just get dead in rows every time we suggest something. So we, again, are relying on this staff to scrutinize themselves internally and bring back us recommendations. That's what I'm going to keep saying the same thing over and over again.

Yeah, I mean, you do go from a priority perspective, and what I saw in the first $4.5 million cut was a lot of public safety, and You know, am I willing to extend the lifespan of a vehicle? Sure. Like, I mean, I think that's a way that PD could tighten up. Am I willing to let go of officers that could put our people at risk in public safety? No, I'm not. So I'd like... that's kind of how i view it is is look like there's a lot of other things i would do before that i'd be looking at the entire team and saying hey guys we can't do any coal arrays this year because we got to make sure that we keep everybody safe like i and i think i think the 600 employees that live in the city would understand that you know um but anyway i i do agree with alan's sentiment of i feel like this could be a better process but i also give a lot of grace from the standpoint of we're probably the what the pain that we're going through this year is what most every other municipalities probably go through next year but hopefully by that point in time we've come up with a better process for us to work through with this um than what we've gotten this year you're doing you guys are doing something for the fools the first time we're doing something for the first time we just need to find a way to to get it a little cleaner than what it is and i'd like to see apples to apples

from the department. Some departments have given us their presentation with A, B, C. Others may have given us a presentation with D and B and F and how they get to the numbers. If we had the same approach from every department of how we get to the numbers. There is an appetite for the $4.5 million cut at this time, which I do not share. I would say let's cut for two and let's continue this strategic process and not wait until another December, January and start it all over again. We can't get there in one year, but we need to get there. Hearing the sentiment that compared to Pensacola or compared to another city, uh, we are way, you know, we have a budget that's too much for the city that we serve. Let's explore that. Let's really hear from our departments, uh, what it is that we do and why we do it. I know in the three years that I've been on the commission, We have had increases, but I also know as a property owner, as an individual, as a taxpayer, everything in my life has gone up. And so the same is true for the city as well. And yes, some of what we're reacting to now, I think is from the past in the city. but I also think the foreboding property tax vote in November. So we're caught between what happened that we don't want to happen again and, ooh, what could happen. We just need right now to be realistic about what it is that we can cut and where those cuts will hurt. At what point do we have to look at rollback or public safety? Can we cut $4.5 million and not touch public safety? I'm not advocating for that. These are the questions that we're trying to get clear answers to. And I think we have a staff of professionals working for the city who work hard, who care for the city, who can give us that. Yes, we've given you conflicting directions, but as we move toward the finish line, It is important that we look at this not as a hard stop and it's over, because it isn't. We need a process to continue it. At the same time, we've started the dialogue. It's been opened up about collaborative services. Again, that's not a 30-, 60-day solution. that's going to take time to go through and to look at. So these are the best of times and these are the worst of times, but we'll get there. And I appreciate the attention that everyone has given to the challenges that are in front of us.

And I have to run. I've got to zip out of here.

It's not 3 o'clock.

I have to be somewhere at 3 o'clock. My bad. Keep going. I will watch the video.

Does that leave me doing it?

I guess so.

So I guess we're going to do development services, and then we'll kind of call it.

If everyone's available Monday afternoon, I think we could reconvene Monday afternoon.

I have no life. We got Chevron. We got Chevron.

We could work with them on that. I just know that.

I've already got people lined up.

But I just know we've got to do this ahead of the meeting on Tuesday, or the commission meeting Tuesday.

What do we got to do?

Just kind of give everyone, because Commissioner, as he mentioned, has an item on there. Well, I mean, I don't know that we have to go through.

Yeah, I don't know that it has to be.

I thought it was your expectation.

Well, I do point on trying to give you guys some further instruction. We can find another time. All right, Mr. Fuller. Ready?

Yes, sir. All right. Are you ready? Are you ready?

After that? No. Well, hopefully you all got it all out. That's good. Yeah, my presentation, that was a good presentation, Sean. It was. After seeing his presentation, mine feels woefully inaccurate. Inadequate. Hold on, hold on. Inadequate. It's accurate. We'll crack a few jokes just to lighten the mood. Yeah. So you want to go to the next slide? And I guess I'm... My department has the fortune of having a lot of face time with this commission, so I feel like y'all know about a lot of what we do, and even some of the commissioners come up to my office and spend time up there to find out what we do. So a lot of this might seem repetitive, but just a quick overview. Four divisions make up development services, planning and zoning, building services, code compliance, and disaster recovery or flood point management. We have 20 people in our department. That includes a planning manager, senior planner, a planner two, And a planner one, which is a vacant position right now. Planning tech one and a planning tech two. Then on the building services, we have a chief building official, which is also vacant right now. We have two permit techs and an admin assistant. Then on the code compliance, we have a senior code compliance inspector. We have six other inspectors and two admin assistants. And then to get to 20, we have a disaster recovery or floodplain manager, Jennifer Aldrich. You're jumping ahead, man. Sorry. I feel like based on staffing levels now, I think for the first time we're at where we should be in order to handle the workload that comes in and being able to timely respond to things. I'll give you an example in just a second. I used to frequently get complaints about, oh, we're taking too long to review this DO, or we're not calling this person back in a timely manner. I do not get those complaints at all anymore. Well, there's some outliers. I agree with you. It used to be a routine thing that I would get those calls, and today I don't get them as much. So planning and zoning administers the unified land development code response to state growth management requirements responsible for supporting the planning board, the technical review committee and architectural review board. Although we haven't had an architectural review or meeting in quite a while, but we are the we are the staff of that board as well. And then we process and review annexations, comp plan amendments, rezonings, variances, conditional use permits, development orders and certificate set acceptance and I mean there's a whole host of land use applications that we process and review and the chart on there I know it's kind of hard to see represents the the number of development orders we issue monthly and over the past year and a half the average Monthly issuance of DOs is about 71 development orders per month. And again, like I said, I think y'all probably get to see a lot of this work being done. It seems like almost every commission meeting, there's some sort of planning-related item on the agenda, whether it's the rezoning or an annexation or an abandonment. Y'all get to see us in action. Next slide. Code Compliance Division. And it enforces the municipal code of ordinances, especially those related to nuisances. Enforces the Land Development Code and Florida Building Code. Investigates properties which are not maintained or fall into disrepair and or deteriorate. The aim is to prevent blight, which can devalue neighborhoods. Our primary goal is voluntary compliance, although there is a prescribed code enforcement process that we follow in order to achieve compliance, and that's done through magistrates.

Do you have a number on what it costs to run a code enforcement? Code meaning, code office, code meaning. My dad, my dad presides over it.

Oh, oh. On average, and this is just a rough, rough average, I would say it's a couple thousand dollars.

And that includes Donald and you and the attorneys. Because it's become this big ordeal. It's not just people sitting up there. When I was on code enforcement, it was you as a code officer or code person, the code officer, the lawyer, and the code board, not all the other ancillary people that sit by.

that we can save money and still accomplish the same goal yeah i just thought that yeah that number did not include the it and all that that's done that's just a real rough okay um the chart here represents the number of new cases we open each month um right now based based on uh last year and a half, we open about 50 cases a month. And that big spike there, that was last summer, and you can kind of see this summer's creeping up. It's common to have more code enforcement cases in the summertime because of high grass and weeds tend to grow over the summer months or warmer months, especially when it rains. So there are just, there's a lot of a lot of those types of cases that we we open and try to try to get resolved pretty quick. Um, like I said, the primary goal is voluntary compliance. We're these days. There's a trend um that um there's a trend that's been occurring since Hurricane Michael uh that we're abatement of nuisances or abatement of properties is becoming more done more so by the property owners than the city. The city did a lot of abatement right after the hurricane and that trend has slowly been going back to the homeowners taking care of what they need to.

What does that mean for the citizen?

So that means that When we budget, every year we budget a certain amount of money to abate property. This next year, we could budget a little bit less, and that's one of my strategies for saving money.

Very good, thank you.

Next slide. Building services. So it administers the Florida Building Code, permits and specs, new construction, mechanical, electrical, roofing, plumbing, and other types of new construction. The services were brought in-house in 2025. We do have a supplemental building services contract with Wheel Dan Engineering that was done after going through the whole RFQ process. On average, we issue about 176 permits a month. And we conduct about 450 inspections a month.

And how will the third-party provider law, new law, you're having to budget differently for that this year?

That's going to impact our budget, yes. Okay, how so? We're probably not going to collect as much in permanent revenue.

Okay. So that means we've got to take some expense now from somewhere.

And overall, there's a reduction in the building services budget this year as well. Okay. Or will be. Next slide. Floodplain management and disaster recovery. Overseas disaster grants from CDBGDR, FEMA Public Assistance, HMGP. I mean, we... Y'all know that we've gotten a substantial amount of the city has gotten a substantial amount of money through those disaster assistant grants over the past couple years and Jennifer Aldridge does an excellent job of trying to administer and manage those funds and for us she also reviews and obtains flood maps known as flood insurance rate maps or firms and elevation certificates for the city she administers the community rating system program for floodplain management which that that's a system or program that the higher rating we get results in a lower, uh, flood insurance premium for city residents. Uh, and then, um, she, she, uh, reviews and permits, uh, or issues floodplain permits. Uh, next slide. So some of the priorities for, um, this upcoming year, um, update to the comp plan, which the goal is to have that done actually in this fiscal year. That's the hope. And then transportation mobility project list, the list of projects we've talked about in order to justify the ultimate collection of transportation impact fee. Um, continued, but less of code enforcement abatement. Again, that, that, that trend is heading more towards owner abatement, which is a good thing. Um, means we won't see as much of a impact to that, that service, uh, if we budget less, um, um, Continue a supplemental building services contract with Will Dan and overseeing that contract. Development review and permitting process improvements. I mean, I feel like we've come a long way over the past year in the whole development review process. I still do think that there's continual improvement that we need to make, and we will do so over the coming year until we get it perfect. But it is much improved from from what it used to be staff training and education is also important you know the biggest expense in my department is is the employees and and making sure that that they're they're trained up and they they're required to have highly technical knowledge and um so making sure that that they're each receives the the necessary training is is important I put on here new software. We currently use a software called Cloud Permit. It's getting the job done. It's not perfect. I do think we can do better in terms of software. But if that's something we need to wait on to another fiscal year because we need to tighten our belts, then we can do so. I do kind of cringe at the fact of having to roll out a new software to our residents, especially after all the time and effort we spent getting them used to cloud. But I do think there are better options out there than cloud permit. We are currently working on a stormwater ordinance aimed at the MLK Boulevard corridor, which should be heading in y'all's direction soon here. And then I know the other priority that's on our list is a historic preservation ordinance. said overall our budget budget I'm proposing is is lower than in the previous fiscal year and and I think we can save money in terms of funds used for code enforcement abatement we we have also we can also save money by by not pursuing the new software. I'd like to, but if we need to wait on that.

So when you say new software, upgrading from cloud for a minute?

Yes.

Willman, I know that's a company.

Yes.

It's a half a million dollars.

Yes.

And they do what for us? They supplement what we need?

Yes.

Can you hire me for a supplemental half a million?

Right.

I mean, seriously. That's for supplement. That's my problem.

That would be a conflict, Robbie.

Yeah, that's why I'm looking at you. My point is that's a lot of money for part-time, for supplement.

And it's based on the number of permits and inspections that are done each month?

So they're doing those in lieu of our building inspector?

We don't have a building inspector.

When we have one, we don't have that person.

Yes.

So how much does it cost us to hire a building inspector when we fail?

Well, the trick is to hire one that wants to... Our experience, and we're seeing this right now by trying to recruit a new chief building official, is those with the certification, they want to stay in the private sector and earn more money.

I bet they do.

They don't want to come over here and maybe get a... I mean...

What's the salary we're offering right now?

For the chief building official, it was like around $100,000. And they can make a lot more than that by staying in the private sector. So that's the challenge we're facing.

Fewer headaches.

Yeah, that's right.

Okay. So it's costing us a half a million dollars a year to get inspections done but we can hire somebody for two hundred thousand dollars and might entice them and save three and get the same benefit right yeah i think so okay but do we have to that that would reduce our permit piece is that my understanding um

I'm sorry. Would that reduce our permit fees? If we did. Yeah. So like savings in your department specifically, isn't it regulated by statute? So if you end up having savings, you got to reduce your fees. That's right. It doesn't really change anything budgetarily. It just means, are we, are we spending more than what we're, we're doing in permit fees? Okay. So if we find ways of savings, just making it cheaper to develop, we're making it cheaper for exactly.

Right. Michael, I thought when the Will Dan RFP went out, it's supplemental services not just for the CBO that we're using right now, but it's also for inspectors, and it allows us to be flexible if we've got a high demand period and if we've got a low demand period. So if we don't have a slew of development coming in, we're spending less. But if we've got a ton of development coming in, we're spending more because the demand's there. So it allows us to be more nimble.

Okay, so put them on continuing contract rather than making a $500,000 price.

When they're sitting there idle and we don't need them in the high time, it's costing them money. It already does what you're describing.

It's billable hours, sir. It's not a flat contract.

They don't automatically get to $500,000.

Okay, but the RFP was up to $500,000?

No.

Where's $500,000 come from?

That's just based on our trend and usage that we are budgeting.

So how much should we pay in this year?

I think it was closer to $400,000. I think we budgeted $500,000 just to be conservative or careful.

If you look at their monthly permits issued, like on the low months, like July of 25, you're paying a lower amount than you are on October of 25. It's demand-based. So you said it was by number of permits they issued, correct? Yes. And number of inspections.

None of the inspections done. So if you went to zero, you're not going to spend anything.

So I really don't need a chief building official if I've got that.

Do what?

I don't really need a chief building official if I've got this. Right? I'm paying for inspections, permitting fees, all that's happening out of this contract. Well, you have a chief building official. But I don't need to go hire another one is what I'm saying because we've already got them for half a million dollars.

You're paying a lot more for the service. Thank you.

So I really need one and get rid of these guys.

yeah this was meant to be supplemental the idea was to come in house completely over the over time but we were scaling so you know first we started with one permit tech well now we have two permit techs and we have one admin assistant we thought about we might need more than admin support because of the number of public records requests we get for this team So, I mean, the idea was to scale in time with the demand. We have not hired any inspectors yet, though.

Explain the public record request. Why is this team getting an exorbitant amount of public record requests?

A ton.

I'll tell you why. When it goes out for RFP, when they knew a... um let's say that i'm bringing an unsolicited offer okay that's a public document we put it out for two weeks and say um all right you might want to come in they can do it they can do a public records request and bam get that it's related to the permits though all all day long we're getting public records requests for copies of permits and sometimes it's you know we have to go into epci system which is people curious i'm guessing no they're like sometimes

I think it's part of the closing process. Gotcha. Okay, that makes sense.

So it's a municipal lien search is what they're doing. They're looking at open permits, expired permits. And so that's not a public records request. I guess it is in the eyes of the government. But they're just looking at are there any permits open on that site. And if there are, they can't close until that's done.

Is that your entire team doing that, Michael?

Right now we have one admin assistant with support from the permit techs help out too.

Could it be like something that we look to combine with clerk responsibilities? That's right.

We're in the process of implementing a new software to help us with public records that should help streamline it some, especially for these duplicative requests that we answered. it would automatically be in the system and could send to them. But then again, we have one admin assistant in the clerk's office that's handling public records, the boards, the agendas. So we're limited capacity there as well.

Do you need your desk phone? No, you can give it away. Take it, please.

It's all day. Okay.

I think what my only question to you, so like out of everything that is not covered by permit fees and the work that your team does for specifically development, how much is left of your department budget beyond that? And I know planners aren't part of that, like those kinds of things. Like what are you asking for? That's ultimately compensated through permit fees. And what are you asking for? That's not compensated by some other revenue source.

i didn't understand that question i don't think i mean it's i think it's the the code enforcement piece um he's asking for what what your revenues that you bring in yeah yeah that well because it doesn't cover the entire expense of your department so what what were you going to be cutting from and i think it'd be helpful but it will cover the 500 000 it will cover the right all of the buildings the whole building services

cost center is being funded with building services revenue and when you guys present the budget do you guys show us that in general yes and building services will show you the revenue and then in the cost center you'll see the expenses so you'll have a projected revenue yes for that specific category so when we see your bottom line number it's offset by that revenue Well, the revenues in the general revenues and the expenses on the expense side.

I just want to understand how it was.

But in code compliance, and as you all are aware, that we do the nuisance assessments, but they lag. The timing lags. So we do that annually where we submit those nuisance assessments, and then they're on the property tax bill. But that could be for costs that the city incurred last fiscal year. You see what I'm saying? So there's a lag in that revenue recovery.

We had this conversation, Nevin and I did, the other day. There's some that we hang out there for years at a time. There needs to be some type of standardized formula, like 60 days, 90 days. otherwise we're just giving an interest-free loan to somebody so we need to kind of tighten that up to where there's some type of standard if they've got a lien we go through that because right now we're going through the posted abatement and it's going on the tax rolls definitely doesn't need to carry over year for year um because that just that doesn't help anybody yeah so And we're not talking about a lot of money. I think it was when we pulled it at, I don't know, $100,000 or something like that. For the next year.

It has definitely gone down. After the hurricane, it was up there, though. I think it was over a million. Yes, we were. So we were, in the general fund, we were budgeting to spend abatement money of like a million dollars, and then the following year we would budget the revenue to receive it back. So it just, there's a timing difference.

So let me say this. You were talking about what to cut. Education is very important, especially in your department. People have gotten used to cloud permit outside of City Hall. I think we stay there. And hear this across the board. Education is very important. Don't cut your education. I'm going to prioritize that. I've got an idea for prioritizing it, but I want you all to have it. So when you're thinking about what you were talking about, other areas, don't play in that area. I'd like for you to think about other areas, please. And unlike the rest of the departments here, When people come to town, they're looking for three people, the mayor, the city manager, and the land planner. And that department, from a public-facing side, is very, very important because we want them to come back to City Hall, okay? And y'all are doing a really good job of wanting to come back. That means you're giving good customer service. That means you're giving them right answers. My phone calls to that department and whatnot have slowed down, almost nonexistent. So that has nothing to say about any other department being less than. That is just how the order of operation works. And I just want to commend everybody in your department for making sure that the public feels good and wants to come back again.

Thank you. So just keep that up. We've been really trying hard to do that.

Mr. Fuller, is the city growing? Yes. And describe that growth. Is it manageable? Is it profitable? Describe this growth of the city of Panama City. I wouldn't say it's profitable.

For the city? For the city. I mean, as the city grows, as things develop, property taxes go up. We get more revenue from property taxes, but I don't steal it. the cost associated with that growth roads utilities all that is added cost to us and unless we find other ways to pay for that cost just property taxes it's not going to cover

And your department is responsible for the growth within the geography of Panama City proper and North Panama City. And what I'm understanding from this conversation as well as from my experience in this role is that you have increased customer service, decreased problems, and have streamlined the growth process such that it is not the pain that it once was. So thank you. Thank you.

I echo those comments. I think you've done a fantastic job, Michael, under your leadership. You talked about software. I'm kind of with you on that one. Like, it doesn't sound very exciting. So there's an aspect of it that might be monetarily, but there's also an aspect of we have to go and retrain everybody. And it's just now gotten to the point where I'm like, I don't get phone calls every five seconds. So I appreciate the iteration, but it might be that, you know, movement that like... 80% effort that might only get us like five more percent in satisfaction, at least for this year.

The users on the outside have figured it out. So as much as it was hard for you all to learn it,

yeah y'all know it yeah so it's all coming together so i think that's a good idea to let's let's keep that going for right now at least yeah and i remember what it was like with before cloud permit and it is light years better light years better yeah um but i do say like i want to know more about the software so that we know kind of like hey like if we end up in a spot where we need to make that investment to just improve it that much more that we that we can okay yeah we'll do All right, any other questions? All right, any other comments? It's a workshop. That's it.

Yeah.

Well, we'll find clearly Monday doesn't work. I'll find some time in the next week or two to finish it back up. I'll check with everyone's schedule and everything. I've got a couple of ideas, but I just need to check on a couple of things.

Okay. All right. Well, thank you everybody for being here. Thank you. Departments for your patience, your ever your long suffering as I would call it. And, um, and we, uh, we'll see everybody soon.

It's 5 o'clock somewhere.

Do we need to vote to dismiss or are we good?

Just say adjourned.

Adjourned. Adjourned.