City Council - workshop

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our final day of our February winter workshop. Please call the roll.

Councilwoman Morgan? Yes, ma'am. Councilman Pickett?

Yes, ma'am.

Mayor Martin? Yes, ma'am. Councilman Bana?

He's not here yet. He's running a little bit late.

Vice mayor Karabala?

Hey, ma'am.

Thank you. Please stand for the pledge. Do we have anyone that would like to speak at public to be heard? Seeing no one, we'll close public to be heard. Okay. Good morning, Brad. Parks and Rec.

Good morning, Madam Mayor, City Council, Mr. Manager, City Staff and the viewing public. If you'll allow me just a brief second before I start with our high impact plan. Madam Mayor, you had asked a question on Wednesday about the Parks and Recreation Department's camera program security camera program. I was able to go back Wednesday evening and talk with staff and I'm very pleased to let you know as well as the rest of council that in fiscal year twenty twenty five-twenty twenty six just the year we're in now, we have plans for camera projects to begin at the C24 Canal Boat Ramp, Riverland Paseo and Sportsman's Park upgrade.

Now Sportsman's Park is one of our first camera systems many years ago, but it's due for an upgrade, so we plan on doing that. We've already completed this year alone, Lindgate Park, Sandhill Crane, Swan, McChesney and Whispering Pines. And then you had asked about Woodland Trails, that is being proposed as part of next year's budget. So pending city manager's approval moving forward and then ultimately the council approval as part of the budget process that project will be next.

That'd be great because that parks been around since 2017. So it's been a while. Great. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am. My pleasure. So getting into the high impact plan for the Parks and Recreation Department as a council heard on Wednesday when Zach gave his presentation, the Parks and Recreation Department has seven major construction projects going on currently either in construction or in the final stages of design. In addition to that, we have 21 other significant CIP projects for a total of 28 major projects totaling $79,000,000 So that's a significant investment into the Parks and Recreations infrastructure. In addition, we have over 30 smaller projects, which could include anything from replacing overhead netting to prepping the newly acquired Rosser Lakes Preserve property.

So we're quite busy in the things that we're doing. So to start with our HIP plan, our first and primary initiative is the implementation of our ten year master plan. If you'll remember our mid cycle revision, our plan was first approved in 2021. Our mid cycle revision to the plan was completed in late twenty twenty five and key initiatives of the plan are already being carried out, including the completion of the conservation trail south of Pioneer Park, which we've presented to you earlier this week that our grand opening is scheduled for March 4, so just in a couple of weeks. We're also expanding our trail network to the construction of Wilderness Trail that is an active project underway right now.

And Phase one of tradition in Torino Regional Parks continue. Our master planning of Sportsman's Park and the newly acquired school site we're moving forward with, it has been reviewed the RFP process to secure a land planning professional has been approved by RISC and is currently in review in the legal department. We also focus on the expansion of recreation programming. Our master plan update was associated with the simultaneous update to the recreation programming plan. The plan is used in the planning operation and review of new and existing recreation programming.

This fiscal year has seen the delivery of 22 new programs, including a young engineer STEM workshop and a musical education program for youth. In addition to that, five outdoor recreation programs were also developed. A core focus of the department and the master plan is the improvement of current facilities. This ensures that all guests can enjoy the highest quality park experience regardless of the specific facility they visit. The department is looking forward to Phase one improvements at OL Peacock Senior Park currently underway.

New playground installations and renovations including the one at Riverplace Park and utilizing new technologies such as OpenGov asset management. Of course,

the department also focuses on moving forward as a high performing government organization through its continued focus on CAPRA accreditation. The department has worked over the last five years to prepare for our first reaccreditation. I'm happy to report the department successfully submitted its application for reaccreditation this past January. This application included nearly 700 individual files for compliance evidence of compliance. Our CAPRA Commission review team is now beginning its review of our evidence of compliance and the department is looking forward to receiving its first reaccreditation in September 2026.

Per CAPRA requirements, our accreditation manager, Bobby Chenier, is also currently serving as a CAPRA mentor to a park and recreation agency in Oklahoma as they move through their first accreditation journey. This is significant to me personally because while we in this city for many years have reached out to other high performing agencies finding out what they do, visiting them, Chicago, Rock Hill, South Carolina, Texas, San Antonio, constantly going to other agencies, seeing how they perform, bringing back their good ideas and trying to implement them into our system. This is an example that tells me now other agencies around the country are coming to us to do that exact same thing. So I think that's something we can all be very proud of.

Absolutely.

And finally, I'd like to do a brief review of some very important numbers of our department for fiscal year twenty four-twenty five ending in September year. Our department's indoor facilities and outdoor parks attracted a total of 6,300,000 visits in fiscal year twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five alone, 6,300,000.

That's amazing.

Lot of folks. Over 391,000 of those visits were to our various recreation centers including the Mid Florida Events Center, Minsky Gym and the Port St. Lucie Community Center. Over 165,000 of those visits were to the Botanical Gardens, which is evidence of our strong partnership that we maintain with the Friends of the Botanical Gardens. And these numbers are a testament to the hard work and dedication of our team and I want to thank them for their daily efforts to provide excellent and safe parks and facilities that enable our guests to learn, grow and serve every day.

And a very huge thank you to the City Council and our City Administration. With that, I'd like to turn the podium over to Mr. Keith Bradshaw, Saints Golf Course Administrator and he'll give you an update on his high performance plan as well as a brief update of the Saints.

Any questions for Brad before we move on to Keith? Thanks so much, Brad. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning.

Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members, City Manager. I'm going to start off with the Saints high impact plan here, a few slides on that without stealing too much of my thunder from my presentation. So basically with this, the Saints golf course continues to have the same strategy we've always had, provide the best, most enjoyable golf course to the community as possible, a safe fun place for everybody and a beautiful golf course to go with it. Along with that to provide advanced lesson programs for all of the adults and juniors that play there, have partnerships with different tournament structures, host a city golf championship in the fall timeframe and support Parks and Rec for certain fitness activities like Yoga on the Line on Saturdays that are happening right now. So let me jump down to the structure here.

So I don't want to take too much time on this because I'm fixing to tell you about these numbers in my presentation, but we had a great year last year. So let me jump over to my presentation now. So if I can walk through this, the Saints did very well last year. We've been doing well for several years now. And we had a banner year last year, one for the books.

And as a record year, we experienced heavy customer traffic, experiencing over 70,000 rounds for the golf course, making us probably the busiest, if one of the busiest golf courses on Treasure Coast. That's way that's a lot of golf grounds for one eighteen hole golf course, but we've never experienced that much traffic in one year. This helped the Saints achieve a total annual record revenues of over $2,700,000 including record total retail sales at $171,000 I mean range at $183,000 and a total retail sales at $171,000 and lastly our food and beverage at $107,000 So across the board almost every area we set new records across for the Saints. First time we've ever done this.

Awesome.

And I have to ask why everybody asked why. Why we've been so successful? I have to give all the credit to my Saints staff team. Okay? Because without them, we wouldn't be who we are.

I have to first say my my maintenance staff led by my superintendent, manager golf course maintenance, Mark Gersten, who manages the golf work, maintenance every day with his staff to do and they do an excellent job of keeping the course in great shape every single day. Second, my golf operations manager, head golf pro, David O'Kelly, and his staff team there in the pro shop who manages the Saints and the staff of the Saints to ensure that the best golf experience possible is provided to all of our guests. And third, a huge shout out to all of our volunteers. I mean I have a huge staff of volunteers and they provide such a great job at hospitality, customer service and they make the sense for what it is. I actually try to model our business model.

I used to work for Arnold Palmer Golf Management a year back and we ran the Disney courses. And I was I knew the GM up at the Magnolia And Palm Course there in Disney. And I love the way he had set it up because it's all about customer service. So I try to make our model similar in terms of how customers pull up in their car, how they get greeted, the hospitality, pick up your bags, how you doing today and all that in the way they introduced them in the pro shop. We try to model that.

And it's been very successful and the volunteers just do a fantastic job at it. A lot of other kudos go to I worked very well with the communications department with Sarah and her team. They've updated our website to really nice website. If nobody has looked at it lately, it's all brand new and it looks fantastic. And they helped me on social media as well.

And of course, Port St. Lucie has grown in number. So we've increased our market pool through the years and that's helped us a lot. But also the golf market, let's talk about the golf market because that's a lot of the variable here and why we were so successful. The number of kids that we see at the golf course now is we never used to see that.

Five years ago when I got here we never saw the youth that we are seeing today and we have a lot more women that play at the golf course too. So let me show you some slides here from the National Golf Foundation. This first one shows a graph for golf participation in nation since 2014. And it shows both a dark green bar you can see there, it shows total golf participation and it shows a dark green bar and a light green bar per year, where the dark green represents on course golfers, those who just play golf and the light green are those who considered practice golf or some venue of golf. Notice what happened in 2022.

The off course golfers surpassed the on course and it's been growing that way ever since. What does that mean? What drove that? Well, they believe it's probably things like Topgolf and all these fancy driving ranges, kind of moved. In fact, I was from Dallas, so I kind of watched a lot of what was the original founders of Topgolf did.

I remember reading the article when they first came out, they said we realized that we build a product for market we didn't even know existed with Topgolf. And Drive Shack, Big Shots are two companies that kind of mimic them. And then you have also a lot of other parts of the market like fancy putt putt ranges like Pop Stroke here in tradition. There's lots of that across the country invented by Tiger Woods. You also got the inline hitting space, the virtual hitting like Boogie Bay over in Gatlin Boulevard.

That one's packed till 11:30 at night because people are hitting into a net, into a screen playing virtual games, virtual courses. They're doing online playing with other people virtually around the country. That is what's part of that, but it also grows the green line, the dark green line. So more people who practice and play venues like that end up playing golf as well. So and it also explains a little bit of why the Saints driving range has done so well.

I'll get to that in just a minute. Here's another marketing slide from National Golf Foundation. Let me know it's busy, but this is really relative to how the states performed rounds increases or decreases across the country. Let me focus your attention to the red states that's where golf grew at least two percent plus rounds year over year from 2024 to 2025. But mostly focus focus here on the Southeast, South Atlantis area where we are, where rounds grew from 24%, 25% to almost nine plus percent.

So it's a huge growth. Where Florida continues to be the leader in golf courses across the nation. Last I saw was around twelve seventy courses in Florida. And it's also still considered to be the number one leisure activity in the state. A recent report from National Golf Foundation reports that in 2025, it was another record year for golf climbing to an all time high in rounds played last year.

And last year being the sixth consecutive year in a row where Americans played more than 500,000,000 rounds nationally. So golf continues to be huge and a growing sport in the country. Here's some placer.ai data from our own placer.ai. Is since October 24 to last month or through this month. It shows that we've had 92,000 visitors to the saints.

What's interesting about this is notice that 34% of my traffic comes from West Of The Turnpike. You know, when I first saw this, I'm going, I was surprised about that. That's interesting. So next, as part of that Place AI data, it shows that our median age is around 46.6, 47 years old. Now you can see with this graph on the different age demographics, The dark blue is represented for the Saints visitation of the 92,000 visitors.

The light gray bars are what placer.ai considers similar business venues around the state. So and how we compare to it. It's very interesting how our our age demographics follow pretty much around the state other than the older section. Well, let me say one more thing about this slide. I already mentioned that we have a lot more younger traffic and a lot more women.

So you can see from here how it's balanced out. We never used to see that before. In fact our weekend traffic sees a lot more of that. We used to have our traffic used to be the deadest parts of our week. I mean in fact prior clubs that I was at, had Florida courses and we were actually lowering the green fee rates on the weekend just to try to get more traffic because the weekends were dead. It was all about retirement people playing in the weekday. The Saints doesn't have a slowdown day anymore. Every day is busy. This month alone we're averaging over two fifty rounds a day. So we're just busting at the seams.

So let's talk about some of the financials about all of that. The first slide I want to talk about is something that I developed for myself a while back because we kept doing so well since the 2021. We kept breaking monthly records month after month. So I went back and made the report for myself. I said, let me just start checking off the boxes of every month that we're breaking a monthly record.

Now what that means is in this gray box here, I mean this light tan box with a check mark. That's a month where we've never hit that level of revenue in that month. Okay. And I ended up doing it all the way to last month. We've only missed other than the drainage project during 2023. We've only missed three months where we didn't break a monthly record. Two heavy rain months in 2022 and Hurricane Milton October 2024. Just I've never had a success story like this in any of my career. This is unbelievable. And the next part of that is you can see we've 2025 last year we broke every month.

In fact the year we're currently in October, November, December and January we've already set major milestones for these months. So we're having a banner year this year. Now let me see how that leads in to the financials. Year over year here's what the same total revenues look like. Starting in fiscal year twenty fifteen, sixteen you can see we kind of averaged around $1,500,000 of revenue per year.

Starting in 2021, we started changing that. And we grew to we had a slowdown in 2023 because the drainage project kind of came back. So for last year we broke a record. We've never made $2,700,000 at $70,000 around before. Just a fantastic story.

Now let me talk about the driving range. As I like to call it the reimagined driving range, okay? During 2023, during the downtime of the construction project we were doing, we took advantage of the timing and we recontoured the driving range. We kind of added extra insulation, extra drainage, resoded lots of the driving range and we rebuilt this area here, rebuilt the actual heating surface all the way out to here with new sod and everything. And then in May 23 I added the Astroturf in, concrete pad with hitting Astroturf area.

And then the following year September 24 we were able to finish the installation of the covered awning you see here. Very good project for that. Let me show you how the financials came out. So here's the year over year annual revenues for the driving range. You can see all the way until 2021 we were pretty much averaging toward $40,000 $50,000 a year is all we were ever doing on the driving range.

We started increasing a little bit in 2021. And then by the time we added the Astroturf in, we jumped the revenue at the end of fiscal year twenty twenty three-twenty twenty four to $114,000 So basically a 76% increase. In twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five after the installation of the awning, jumped at another 61% to $183,000 last year, a record revenue for the range. So thus tripling the range business in probably two years with what we've done. We're doing so well this year.

I expect us to grow additional 23% maybe to hit 225% is kind of my target right now. Next, the retail business at the Saints. Year over year we've done pretty well on that, mostly because one of my head golf pros Ray Rash, a lifetime PJ member does a great job at retail, always making sure that we are fully stocked with the right kind of material and retail business merchandise of hats, gloves, shirts, even shoes, clubs. He does a fantastic job on that and really good margins as well. We changed it.

We started growing a little bit with some changes in 2021. We've been growing it ever since. We hit a record last year at $170,000 Barely beat last year because it actually was a good year too, but he does a fantastic job. Now on to the Saints Pub. The restaurant at the Saints has had some interesting years in the past. As you can see, we weren't doing a lot. Now this revenue here represents our commission based revenue based on the relationship we have with the concessionaire there. So on 2021, we brought in a new concessionaire under a new agreement. We boomed it the next year 2022. So we really shot it up over what it used to be.

And a slowdown in 2023 because of the construction project, but we've been growing it back ever since. And this last year we had a record $107,000 which once again is our commission base. So that means he did really well. And that's what I have as an update. We did a fantastic job this last year. We're doing really well. I expect us to continue doing well. And so thank you. Is there any questions?

Any questions? No. No. It is great news. I remember we had a workshop several years ago. It was during the COVID time and we were at Mid Florida, right? And we weren't doing so well. And we said there were improvements that want to be made. And we said, show us you could turn it around, right? And so now we are here full circle.

So thank you very much for that. We made a remarkable turnaround with the Saints. I know everyone loves it and the numbers prove it. So thank you very much for your leadership and to your team because we do have one of the very best golf courses I would say in the entire state of Florida. Thank you so much for that.

You. Madam Mayor, just I really need to point out is the investment that the council made into that golf course also has made a tremendous difference to be able to operate it the way it does operate. Absolutely. Especially having the different components in the drainage system that was there for many many years that prevent the golfers from getting out to the golf course. To me that investment this team has made onto the golf course has been tremendous. Absolutely.

Right. Thank you.

And I'm going to DP for the grant. Hold

on, Jolene. Dave, go ahead.

Keith, the driving range, I think you did a remarkable job out there. But do you have any thoughts on enhancing the experience there? Because basically right now, just walk out there and smack golf balls.

At the driving range? Yes. Yes. I'd never envisioned it to be a Topgolf venue, okay? Like Martin County has their selfish sands, which is a double decker with monitor screens and couches around. I didn't envision us to be at that level. But there are a lot of things I still would like to do at the driving range that can increase the revenue even more, especially our lessons programs. Mean, still would like to do an advanced teaching center out there. I can put it at the end of the range. You saw the picture.

I've kind of built it out for that as kind of a long range plan, so that we could actually bring some of the heating base inside, the simulation thing that I mentioned and go to that. We also could possibly light it up at night. That's where people hit range balls more than anything is at night.

That's where I was going. And so you're limited right now to to to the daylight hours and and people at work don't get it to have that same experience unless they come on a weekend. You're right. You're right.

Lighted driving range would not be like it used to be. Really today's world and technology, it would be all about focused LED lighting. So with the awning the way it's set up, built it to where it could support electrical hookup, okay. And we could put the focused LED lighting on the hitting area under the awning and it wouldn't be invasive to the neighborhood or nothing like that. And then when they hit balls, so they go out there and play and of course that that would bring a better component to my food and beverage because they you'd have them for hot dogs, hamburgers, you know, all that and and other drinks to support all that and up to the evening.

But the other thing is once they hit a ball, how do they see it? And so Brad and I went down to Park down at the West Palm Beach and that par three course and their driving range has the focus LED lighting in the ground. So it's actually in the ground that people can't hit it and it shoots up with focus LED so it doesn't flood like it's not like a baseball field where it's you have a glow. So you just see the ball flight you see. And so you don't really see it outside of that.

So that's something I've been looking at. And that would be a whole new I'd have to change my operations. I got to keep the pro shot open till probably 10:00 at night because you got to support that business. So it's something for me to look at and I have looked at options there. The other one is tracer technology. I had it on my plan. We have some budget money for that this year. The technology has changed so much I never implemented it this year on purpose because the the Citizens Advisory Committee made it gave me a good question one day when I was presenting to him. He says, how do you I said, would you do that, Keith, it was your course? I says, it is my course.

I treat this as I own this course, this is my money I'm spending and money I'm making for my course. So that's how I treat it, know it's not, but just to make you aware. So with that in mind, I'm cautious of when I really spend money for things I don't need to just because I haven't budgeted. I'm looking at there's so much new technology on that tracer technology today. I'm changing my mind and I'm looking at what's really best. So that's another venue for as ball tracer, the driving range at night, advanced teaching center, all that.

I think it's something that should be considered given the revenue that one aspect of that golf course is producing.

Yes. And it'd be probably another 20%, 30% increase in business just keeping it open at night.

You. Jolene, Yes. Go ahead.

Thanks. I really appreciate your you sharing your ownership and how you take ownership over what you've been charged with and that's a fantastic attitude and I'm just grateful that we have members on our team, Mr. City Manager that take that ownership over the responsibility that you've given them and have succeeded. And so you've done a

great

job. I continue to look forward to future years and how you're going to grow this program even further. And when we continue to talk about affordability, I look at the placer.ai information and I look at how many people in this area are coming to the scenes. And I don't know a lot about golf, but I do know that when it's privatized, you have to pay very large memberships sometimes. There's a higher rate to come in and play.

And even though I don't play, those that do play share with me how it does help their mental health. We were having a conversation of mental health and being able to go out and do a sport of some kind. And I've always felt government shouldn't be in this kind of a business. But if you're breaking even and you're about to actually go over and it's making money on its own, it's very hard to argue that it doesn't provide number one a benefit to the community and then more importantly isn't causing a burden. And so I'm so grateful that you've actually been able to do that because for many years I spent on the council I mean Brad knows this considering doing it a municipal golf course.

And if it's going to continue to drain funding from the general fund, is it something that we just eventually dispose of? And I never wanted to really do that, but numbers are numbers and budget is budget. And so I truly appreciate what you've done. I do think in the future as we move forward and you and I have talked about this, Keith, I think we all need to think about some of the aspects that can be approved outside of just the driving range. The ballroom, the restaurant, the interior, it was built a while ago.

And those items really, if we're going to have a robust offering and then more importantly, a robust economic opportunity of growth for this program, We need to think about that and how is that going to factor into the CIP in the future. As well as I think it'd be really cool. I'm going set a goal because I know you're going to hit it. I think it'd be very interesting if you could get so profitable in the sense of going over your revenues that you'd be able to save like 50% of what the cost would be for fixing and redoing that particular building that really needs to be done. I think that would be it's a challenge, but I think it'd be a great story to tell the public if you're able to do it because municipal golf courses are not profitable.

That's the other story we've got to tell across the state and to our leaders. And this is one that will be and looks like it currently is. So that's exciting. And just let us know how we can support you further. Thank you.

So I would agree with that in terms of yes, the improvements in the driving range are great, but we do need to look holistically at the entire course into what we can do. The building is a little bit dated. We know that and so it's important to be able to keep that up as well. And so I really looking at especially with the revenues if there's funding to make enhancements or make updates and changes. I'd love to hear what those are going forward, because I remember going back to that workshop and we said, show us you can improve the revenue, show us that you're in the black and then that's when we'll consider all these updates.

So and you've been again very successful with that and that's exactly what we want to see happen, right, because you want to keep reinvesting into the course.

Okay. Thank you.

Steph, go ahead.

Kudos because I the few years ago, it was to the point that was like, maybe we need to get rid of this golf course because it seemed like it was a big hole and there was nothing but money born into this hole and going somewhere. I also wanted to give a shout out to Bern and his team Yes. Because that restaurant did it was kind of like, yeah, it wasn't the best, but he has really brought it to the next level. The teamwork, I've been to several events there, I go to several luncheons there a month and it's consistent and I think he's done a great job.

I agree with you. Just to expand on that a little bit when we brought in Byrne under in 2021 and established the relationship with him and did the contract. I said, Bern, I want you to know your number one priority is that you're here to support my golfers. Okay. Everybody before that was there. The golfers were invading their business. Byrne has supported me a 100% on that, and that's why we've done so well. And we work together as a team. He is helping my golfers. 30% of the business comes out of the to go window. So it's fantastic, and he's done a great job. Appreciate what you said.

Yeah.

So

I echo those comments, Steph, but he does a great job. His whole team does and yeah, it's been great to have him as a partner for sure.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you very much. All right. Council, does anyone want to see any other high impact plans from any departments before we go on to our ordinance? Yeah. Are we good? Alright. So we have second reading of ordinance for naturally PSL community trust. Madam Clark, can you read the ordinance?

An ordinance of the city of Port St. Lucie, Florida amending title three administration chapter 32 departments, boards and commissions of the ordinances of the city of Port St. Lucie, Florida by specifically adding Article 15 Naturally PSL Community Trust providing for conflict, providing for severability and providing an effective date.

Thank you. I just saw Kate, where did she go? Sorry. You have something to present to us?

We do. If you would like to hear it now or I don't know. Asking, yes.

I have a second reading, so I didn't realize, I apologize for that.

Yes, we did not give the presentation at the first reading. It was Okay. So that's why we

thought we might want go a motion.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of council, city manager, the city team. This is really an exciting moment for the entire city team consideration in of the adoption of the ordinance to support the natural PSL land bank and community trust. Just to remind everyone, this began really with listening to our residents, your vision to put residents first in all that you do. The twenty twenty three Citizens Summit residents ranked access to natural areas and preserves as their top priority, and you allowed us and supported us in pursuing a citywide innovation project to accomplish that.

As a result, we worked with the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins, the Bloomberg Harbor City Leadership Initiative and the Center for Public Impact on an innovation project that engaged over 1,000 residents who generated over 1,000 ideas in solutions to this. And an innovation team with department representatives from throughout the city came up with a portfolio of ideas and some of these ideas we're going to be putting in motion today as well as celebrating at the Rosser Lakes Press Conference later this morning. We have been again looking at this because we've had such an influx of new residents. Residents have seen that of the total developable land per city land use and zoning 72% has been developed and we're growing faster than our green spaces, which is the reason why we looked at this land bank as one of our portfolio of ideas. We want to increase residents access to parks, trails, natural preserves and recreational green spaces and public spaces through land acquisition, enhance resiliency through stormwater management, education and green infrastructure and improving the quality of environmental sensitive lands, wildlife habitats and connectivity and improving the quality of life of residents and neighborhoods.

And I'm going to bring up Nikki Zen, who's really been leading the design of the NaturallyPSL Community Trust, which will be this historic formation, this nonprofit to help bring revenues into the city to acquire more land and take care of our green spaces and places. And I want to acknowledge Ms. Sen, who has been an incredible asset to our team. She came to us from the Bloomberg Harvard City Fellow Program. Her fellowship has been completely been funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, and we are so grateful for their support.

And we couldn't ask for a more extraordinary team member. Nikki's background in landscape architecture and just her ability to create meaningful civic design through this process has really been able us to take these ideas and put them into action. And she's been just done an extraordinary job and I'll let you share more about her work.

Good morning, Nikki. Yes, we've been very blessed to have Nikki on our Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Kate. Good morning, city council, city manager and the city leadership. I'm excited to be here today to share more about the next chapter of the commitment of NaturallyPSL. And obviously, behind this presentation, there are so much so many people in city departments that have been lantering giving us the support and the help that we need to get here, including city city attorney Rich, Steven from finance office, Sarah and her whole team, Megan from KPSLB, Zach from Parks and Recreation, and the list goes on and on and truly was a team effort.

So yes, as Kate has introduced, and I would speak a little bit more about the Naturally PSL Community Trust and to support a lot of the goals that we have mentioned through Naturally PSL Land Bank. We are proposing here today is the NaturallyPSL Community Trust, which is directly addressing to the biggest challenge of it all, which is funding. So as a five zero one c three nonprofit partner, the trust will serve as a fundraising arm to leverage both public and private funding, allowing us to maximize the public benefits on city land through donations and in kind contributions, which allows private citizens and groups to help bridge the funding gap of this land acquisition. And some of the key benefits of this approach, the potential to attract more philanthropic donations and to also expand the grant opportunities that can be eligible to us, also to make room for more resident led fundraising and neighborhood scale, similar to friends or group for specific parts. And here on this slide, I would like to expand a little further on how the trust can support the city in achieving land banks goal, both through transparency and collaboration.

So let's say if a private citizen or group would like to contribute to the city on acquiring certain works green spaces or building a trail, the donations will be received by the trust and transferred to specific city revenue funds based on the donor's choice. And the city staff will incorporate these funds into project plans, which will then be brought back to the city council for the final review and approval, just like most of the project in our budget plan. And at its very first establishment, the trust will support three major areas, land acquisitions, park, trails and amenities and trees. And the trust will provide a way essentially for the resident to say, I'd like to help the city to acquire the land across my home to keep it green or I would like to help plant more trees in my neighborhood. And it also can help support youth actions and environmental stewardship and the addition of amenities like trails in existing green spaces that might not have the regular city budget support.

The trust could provide a massive opportunity to optimize our existing land and properties, including fourteen sixty acres of lakes and ponds, 46 city parks and almost 200 acres of city owned natural preserve that currently don't have access for public. And more importantly, we are to keep residents at the center of everything we do and to turn spaces into places through community actions. For example, the image on the left here shows the project we're collaborating through Love U Block program and Public Works urban beautification team and over 35 volunteers to turn an underutilized portion of the canal bank into a space with benches, tree, free little library and a holiday garden. We have also started to approach vacant lots and neighborhood differently, initiating small improvements to help improve invasive plants from these overgrown lots and taking every opportunity to engage with the residents every step of the way to develop stewardship around these green spaces. More importantly, their additional funding will be able to expand the inventory of protected land for our future residents.

Since 2025 alone, we had approximately acquired two seventy three acres of land, and that's roughly providing one acre of future green space for every 1,000 residents in the city. In this slide, I'd like to introduce the management structure of this incorporation, which will be vested in the Board of Directors. And to ensure the community driven oversight and align with the city's overall strategic plan, The Board will consist of at least five members. Crucially, at least three must be St. Lucie County residents who are not employed by the city.

The role of the Director will be to solicit contributions and accept contributions on behalf of the corporations. The immediate priorities for the trust include accelerating land acquisitions by, for example, by leveraging the NaturallyPSL brand and river cutting events to really tell the city's story,

in

in position the and performances by committing annual reporting and quarterly presentation to this council. And where we are now is February 26, a milestone for the ordinance reading. And following this, we'll move forward with following with the state, appointing the Board and eventually releasing our first annual report. And in your attachment, you will see a communications plan for this trust as well. And therefore, the staff recommends the approval of the Ordinance 20 six-seventeen which give us the permission to move forward with filing for natural PSL community trust as a 501c3 entity to support our cities naturally PSL green spaces and places initiatives.

And thank you and I'll be happy to take any questions.

Thank you so much for the presentation. I know we've been talking about this for a really long time. So it's so great that we're finally here. I remember conversations with Brad many, many years ago about especially when we've gone on-site visits to different places and seeing how other cities have been able to develop their park system and their land banking system and their green space system. So again, it's so great that we're finally here. Counsel, do we have any questions? No? Go ahead.

I want thank you for all your hard work. I just want to say that you know, there's there's always a lot of want as far as from the public to conserve as much land as possible. And it's always a reminder of the history of the city, is all of our land is entitled pretty much. And this was a GDC community with entitled lots. Later on, the annexation was also entitled, meaning those have property rights attached.

And as much as we all in this council and past councils, I'm sure wanted to protect green space, You can't save something that you don't own. And so unfortunately, that's the way it goes. I mean, I would love I think we've all said that we would love to put a moratorium on things sometimes. We would love to be able to preserve more green space. We do what we can in our developer agreements by having them include parks and giving parkland, school land, those kind of things.

This is going to be the way for us to hopefully either have land donated to us as well as give the ability for the city to purchase on behalf of the residents additional land for preservation. And so I just want to make sure we tell the story a little bit, and that's why this is so important and this trust is going to be so important to the residents that are here today, but for years and years to come. So thank you.

Thank you. All right. So and in keeping with that, what are next steps in terms of building this board and what does that look like Kate?

Absolutely. So we are working of course with finance to file the necessary paperwork and then we'll be working to you'll be appointing the board members to it as well. So we'll be giving that to you as we get everything established. All right, great.

All right, so we have motion and a second, correct? Do we have a motion?

Motion to approve ordinance 20 six-seventeen.

Second. Second.

Any final discussion? Great work. Thank you very much, Nikki. Appreciate very it very much.

Much.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries.

Exciting.

We get to celebrate later with our press conference for Rosser Lakes Preserve. Very exciting to be able to go out there and see that property.

May I mention speaking of Rosser Lakes Preserve, we do have an update from staff and we have been working on, we applied for a Florida Community Trust grant. The purchase price that you spent on Rosser Lakes, we could actually use retroactively after you purchased it to see if we could receive some reimbursement back to fund some amenities, walking trails, pavilions to make it more, amenable. But we did check with our parks and recreation department, and we are able to open it very at a very you know, it's very basic. There are really no amenities, but within two weeks. Correct, miss Seaburger? So I just wanted to let you know that's something you're we're celebrating the acquisition, but you're able to very quickly open it up to the public with lots of signage because, like I said, it's very basic, very natural. Mhmm. So I just wanted to bring the see, mister City Manager, if there's any comments or

Yeah. Madam Mayor, just and vice mayor council. Lane purchase is very strategic to the city and the overall life of the city. So I just want to give you an example of what land purchases really truly is and what the city has done previously. And a lot of times you know people may criticize, oh why did you buy that piece of property?

Why did you buy this piece of property? But let me just give you an example. Back in twenty ten, twenty eleven during the recession, the city embarked in purchasing a piece of property that most people thought that we were crazy doing what we did at that time. We spent roughly $22,000,000 at that time to purchase 5,100 acres. Today that property is worth $510,000,000 $510,000,000 and that is an asset of the city.

Right.

So when people criticize why we do what we do, why we purchased the Roster Lakes, why we did a swap with the county, why we invested into Sportsman's Park, why we bought the St. Lucie County Tax Building, why we bought the Peacock Building, these purchases are going to put us twenty, twenty five years ahead. And think about if we didn't make those purchases, where would the staff be, where will our employees be housed if we didn't make those purchases. So those were some of the strategic purchase that the city has done and I think it has made a tremendous difference today into the future.

Absolutely, many of us appear and all of us in the room and even in the public have some understanding on how real estate works, right? And what is real estate about location, location, location and many, many times you only get one chance at it, right, because as Vice Mayor said, you have to wait till the land is for sale in order to be able to acquire it. And so we've made great strides at that over the years, I'm really proud of what we've done and listening to our citizens about saving as much space or acquiring as much space we possibly can for green space, land that is undeveloped that doesn't have entitlements already that were given out years ago that we can't control or we can't manage the growth for. So we have made great strides and we're doing it why? We're doing it because our residents told us that's what they want.

We started this by asking the question a few years ago on our annual community survey. And we got that mandate from our residents a few years ago and it takes time. And again, the land has to be available for sale. And we've been able to capitalize on that and yes these are assets absolutely assets and they are assets for our public to be able to enjoy. And I love the fact that we're able to we were able to purchase Rosser Lakes because if we all remember back in history, there was a time where that property should have came to the city of Port St.

Lucie, right, through tax deed, and it didn't happen. I'm not going to go back in time for all the reasons for that, but now we have this opportunity again. And we got very lucky because you don't get a second shot at it very often. So really grateful for it. I know our residents appreciate it and I know we have more work to do and we're going to continue to do that.

And I think you know I think council made the right decision when basically told the developers we don't want more houses.

That's

right. And really did you didn't really give them an option of saying, well you can have 25 houses, you said no more houses and really they came back to us and say let's negotiate a land purchase.

And look at the other properties that we are able to acquire from the school district. We did the tour. We saw where those locations were. They were right smack dab in the middle of all residential and we know we didn't want more residential and you certainly didn't want to put commercial or office or anything right smack in the middle of those neighborhood. So it made perfect sense to be able to acquire those parcels also for green space. So we've done a great job and I know we're going to continue. Yes.

No, go ahead and finish. Know I thought you were done. I was going to say I was like, think one of the people I think we probably all know on this board, he said to me, he goes, everyone always writes Port St. Lucie off. Everyone thinks the story is written. You had the downturn in the economy, and that's it. Port St. Lucie's done. The Civic Center parcel, look, it went under. That's done. Southern Grove went down. Look, that's done. The Medical Corridor, that failed. That's done. And I mean, we've seen time and time again that people count Port St.

Luciao, and it comes back, and it comes back stronger and roaring. And to me, this is the beginning of land conservation. And it's going to be the desire of the residents, first of all. Because just because, let's say, every piece of green space is done and is taken doesn't mean more cannot be made. I've seen cities actively say that block is for sale.

We don't want more housing or we don't want more whatever. And it's been revitalized, brought back, added trees, made green space in some communities. That's not my decision. That's their decision. But this can serve to even grow land conservation if the city and its residents so desire in the future. Having more land, more nature isn't done. It's really up to us. And we can, when we want to, reverse what history has given us if we so choose to, just like we've done with many other things before. And so Port St. Lucie's not down and out. We're on a rise, we're coming up. Absolutely.

Thank you. All right. We're at the end of our workshop. Closing discussion? Steph got anything? Well, thank you everyone so much. Thank you, Jesus, entire team. It's been a great workshop. We discuss a lot. We really have a really robust conversation and I'm really proud of it and so grateful for everyone here, grateful for our entire team because it takes us all working together in order to make Port St.

Lucie the best it can be. And just keep doing everything you're doing because like Jolene said, we're on the rise and we're going to keep climbing as high as we possibly can for our residents and for our entire organization. So thank you all very much.

As technology advances, scammers have figured out multiple ways to use it against us. Scammers target consumers searching for company contact information online by purchasing fraudulent ads that look legitimate. When individuals click these ads or call the displayed numbers, they are unknowingly connected with scammers and share personal information. Victims often only realize they have been scammed weeks later. To protect yourself from online search scams, follow these tips.

One, always use the phone number on your FPL bill instead of searching for contact information online. Two, check the URL for misspellings or extra characters. Three, look for the padlock icon, which indicates a secure connection.

It happens more than you would think because scams are getting more elaborate. It can be difficult to tell what is a scam. These scammers know how to confuse you and take your information.

Scammers are aggressively targeting utility company customers across Florida using sophisticated tactics to pocket quick cash, and it can happen to anyone.

At Florida Power and Light Company, we don't ever want one of our customers to become a victim of a scam. That's why it's so important that you follow these tips to best protect yourself.

If you receive a suspicious call and they say it is FPL asking you to pay

some