Council Agenda - Regular Meeting

Could the Mayor lead us in the prayer and pledge?

Please bow with me. Lord, thank you once again for the wonderful city that we live in. Thank you for the staff that keeps it going smoothly and running like it does. We ask that you watch over them in these hot days and keep them cool. We also ask that you watch over our first responders as they protect our city and everybody here. We ask that you watch over the city council and help them make sound and right decisions. We do all we do in your name, Jesus Christ, amen.

Pledge of allegiance.

Thank you, Mary. Kathy, could you call the roll? Here. Here.

Here. Here.

Here. If anybody has anything that they want to talk about that is not on the agenda, there's a form that you can fill up up front, and you can just give that form to Clerk Haley. Later in the meeting, we'll get to you, and you can talk about anything that you want to. So moving on to Mary's report.

Actually, I have nothing to report tonight, but I would like to welcome Mr. Burt Harris, our legal counsel that's going to guide us through the next century, I hope. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, if I can live that long. He's got to take that tie off. I just told him he had to, so he hadn't done it yet. Welcome, Burt. Thanks for coming.

Thank you very much.

Oh, I did have something. I'm sorry. Thank you. Back in September, we had done a resolution for the Highlands County Fair Association. They're going after a $500,000 grant to be used for educational purposes. Basically, what it is is to air condition one of the buildings out there, do some improvements to the buildings, and open it up so more events can be handled for kids in grade school and high school. And they did not receive the grant last year, so they're reapplying, so... We have to update the resolution, which is 2026-19. If you have any questions, I'd love to have a motion.

I'll make a motion that we approve resolution number 2026-19 as presented. Second.

Motion second. Any other comments from the council, from the audience? Hearing none, it's Pat.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Anything else, Mr. Mayor?

No, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Ken. He's trying to speed the meeting up.

Yes, sir. Well, thank you for doing that. Moving over to the council members' comments, concerns, and liaison reports. Sir, with you, Josh?

None. Okay.

Roland? David? All right. And I have none. Moves us to the consent agenda. Any discussion on the consent agenda? No.

Make a motion that we approve the consent agenda as presented. Second. Second.

Motion, we've got a second. Any comments from the audience? Up here?

Kathy? Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. There is no old business, so moving on to 10A, new business with the Synergy Sports proposal. I'm going to ask Mr. Jason to come on up and give us a presentation. Talk to us about this.

Hey, good to see you guys again. Jason Boudry, Synergy Sports. All right, so just to set the stage and to refresh everybody's memory, we were here several months ago now and were asked by um so we were asked to take what we originally did conceptually for max long and to come back with more specifics do some more homework reach out to different community groups users and then get more detailed information on construction costs financing financials economic impact really to bring to council a more fulsome package and let you guys decide if renovating Max Long is something that y'all want to do. And so I'll go through this. You also have the summary report in your packets. That's a little bit more words and less pretty pictures. And so we'll go through this. Happy to answer any questions. But just to give some background too as we start, We as a firm, we are completely agnostic. So we were engaged by the city to bring our recommendations forward. And so we look at this from the lens of what's in the best interest of Sebring. And so as we go through this, that's kind of the vein that we approach this. And so again, this is just the background information. If City Council were to move forward with renovating MaxLong, is it financially viable? Does it bring more visitors? Does it bring more visitor spending? Does it provide a better place for local kids to play? What does it cost? How does it perform? And what are the results? That was kind of the task. And so we had eight deliverables that we worked through. They're listed here. We don't have to go into a lot of detail on each one. But we reached out to national organizers, the current event organization company, Airstream Ventures, that does a lot of stuff in the region, to get a more concrete plan of how What kinds of events, how many events, how many events would those, or how many participants and spectators would those events bring? With certainty, not just, oh yeah, that sounds like a great idea, we would love to come to Sebring. But with certainty, would you commit to bringing X number of events? And so that was deliverable number one. Based on that deliverable and then layering in some known and projected operating revenue potential expenses, we completed a more detailed financial model for operations. And that will go a little bit to an operating model that we'll talk about here in a minute. Economic impact, right, again, You've got the community piece, and then you've got the sports tourism piece, and so we did a better job of drilling down into what the economic impact could be for a renovated facility as compared to where it stands now. Put together some additional renderings. We've shown the site plan before, but just to get some perspectives, ground level view, we did that. We went out to a couple of national contractors and asked for cost estimates and were provided with guaranteed maximum pricing or not to exceed pricing, however you want to look at it. And so these are more than just pie in the sky or conceptual quotes. These are contractable budgets that would move forward with. So we take that as accurate as can be as we sit here today. We did look at financing and funding options for the renovation of the park. And then how do we implement all of that? And so we've got kind of a next steps and a process of where do we go from here, right? If you guys want to move forward. And so again, I'm not gonna read through all of this, but this gives you a really good idea, working with and through Airstream, which does a lot of the tournament organization for Highlands County and for Sebring, got commitments from these various tournament groups and organizers, the numbers of events that they would conceptually bring and how many teams each of those events would command. And this is kind of extrapolating data, but we then took these number of events and number of teams, assigned a visitor count to those, and that's what helps populate our economic impact assessment. And so, as you can see, we estimate about 30 weekends of sports tourism-based use. You know, given the first quarter of the year is not as conducive to things outside of the races, 30 events gives, you know, ample time for community use and allows for community use throughout the week, whether that's from Sebring Youth Baseball.

Are these... Mostly Friday to Sunday, Thursday to Sunday?

Usually Friday to Sunday is what we kind of benchmark it as. Now you will generally have, especially like now in the summer, you will have some week-long summer baseball tournaments, summer softball tournaments. But that's a small portion of your total year. And so most of these, they'll run either Saturday-Sunday or Friday-Saturday-Sunday.

how do you 500 lacrosse teams and so how does that work?

So look at USA lacrosse one event, um, with five, this look at that more as, as participants, like they have their, some of their national tryout events here. Um, so rather than 500 teams, it's one event of 500 kids looking to make a national or a regional team. Any other questions on that before I move forward? And so again, as we extrapolated that data, it extrapolated out into about 13,000 participants. Two and a half spectators per player is a benchmark industry number that we use. The younger the kid, the more people they bring with them. You've got eight-year-olds, ten-year-olds playing, and they're bringing mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, and the dog. As you get older, you'll have less spectators. That gives you roughly 50,000 spectators. new out-of-market visitors to Sebring as part of a renovation. So this now kind of moves into, we didn't include in this slide deck the actual financial model. It is in your packet, just to not... muddy this up with a bunch of individual numbers. But the way that it's projected is essentially year one of new operations is your break-even year. Maybe you're plus a little bit, maybe you're minus a little bit. After year one, you have some modest net income numbers. Mostly because Max Long is a known asset that's just getting a renovation. And so we're not going into a new market that's never had baseball before and really isn't on the map. So there's some precedent there with the fields that is easier to fill than if this was going to be a new market. And so after expenses, on average, the estimate is that it's going to produce net income of about $450,000 a year over the first 10-year period. Again, first year is probably break-even, maybe plus a little bit, maybe minus a little bit.

One question on that. Who secures the naming rights?

So we have... We can talk a little bit more about that a little bit later, but we reached out to national contractors for the general contracting side. We reached out to these national organizers, national finance companies, that'll get into the funding, and national naming rights, branding companies. Again, we don't do that, but we're gonna go find folks in the industry that do. And a group that we've worked with in the past generally has, and I asked for some clarification before submitting this, their actual naming rights sponsorships versus their projections is about 14.3% higher for their actuals than their projections. And so, again, these are people that... are out there. And so they would be the ones, typically those firms will work on a percentage, kind of a success fee. And so where you guys and the city have good relationships with local, local small businesses, local mid-sized businesses. These firms that are national have the relationships with those regional and super-regional and national businesses where they can say if XYZ Baseball is going to come here, they're going to bring X number of people. Rawlings or Gatorade or Bass Pro Shops may now be interested because they have those relationships. And so there are national firms that we've reached out to to get their estimates on what this would be. Tourism benefit. So again, kind of rolling this up into 10 years, about $35 million, $36 million of total economic impact. And then about $11 million over 10 years, so about a million dollars a year in new county and TDC tax revenue. And so obviously that helps bring other events through their grant process and helps support the sports tourism piece of what this whole development is about. So operations is something that, again, we have some thoughts on. Ultimately, again, it's our job to give you guys the information. But generally speaking, these facilities, if they're recreational facilities, then your local Parks and Rec are generally equipped to handle daily rentals and local youth baseball. When you start getting into sports tourism and organizing events and logistics, Our strong recommendation is to put this out to a national operator that can balance that community use and the sports tourism piece. And so to be clear, we're not saying or we're not suggesting that you just lease this out to a private operator to make all the money that they can make. Right, and so there are different models, but generally the model that works is essentially a contracted management company that manages this facility to city council's recommendations. And so if that means a certain amount of time is reserved for the public, then so be it. It's not a private model where local kids and local families don't have access. Part of this community balance is with the current local users. The YMCA is supportive of Max Long being renovated. Sebring Youth Baseball, the football organizations, other community partners. There is or there has been submitted by the county a letter that they would be willing to work with the city on additional time at the county sports complex for local users if it means moving this project forward. And so that's this coordination with local partners. And then the last bullet point here is really to, our recommendation is to take a look at the current pricing and operation structure of MaxLong. modernize it where it needs to be modernized, bring it more in line with market pricing, but still accommodate local users, have free and reduced cost use for certain user groups, but just to be more in line with what other tournament capable facilities are charging for rentals. This is a little bit of a reiteration of what I mentioned earlier. So about 30, 35 weekends per year are reserved for tournaments. First quarter, obviously, is held back for community use during the race season. Parks and Rec, the Y, Sebring Youth Baseball would remain a priority as far as use goes, especially during the week. And that kind of goes back to, Roland, your question on how long are these tournaments, right? And so generally the local use is Monday through Thursday. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, are generally seen as tournament weekends. But if you've got 22, 24 weekends left that you're not running tournaments, then you get some additional time for the community. We've shown this several times before, and so this is kind of a list of improvements. So the thing that we worked through originally in working with Dimitri and the YMCA is obviously their soccer field goes away. But in order to be a tournament-capable facility, there is not adequate parking as MaxLong currently stands. And so this was part of the reason for the county to offer additional YMCA use at the county sports complex if the YMCA was willing to be okay with paving over the soccer field from a use standpoint. I understand that it's the city's field anyway, but I know they do a lot of their programming on that field. Otherwise, we're looking at replacing the turf on the fields, replacing the batting cages, laying in soccer fields inside of some of the infields. You'll see that in a second. New lighting, a new playground, not taking away from the current playground that's there. adding temporary fencing where we need to, and creating two more championship fields on the right side that are currently not being used. And so this is a couple of just conceptual images. On the right is where the current gravel dirt block is, just to orient everybody with where we're talking about. You can see the pool in the foreground. This is as if you're looking off the roof of the YMCA. Again, new parking down one side, new concourses, batting cages, playground on the right. The old playground or the current playground is still on the left. And then this just shows conceptually these inlaid soccer fields. These are not full soccer fields. The fields aren't big enough to accommodate full soccer fields. But the bulk of YMCA after-school programming, the bulk of youth soccer is not played on full-size fields. When you need full-size fields, there's the county sports complex and other fields around the city. Any questions on any of these images? Again, they're conceptual at this point. They'll get refined probably several more times, but this gives a good visual. So from a construction standpoint, this is what I mentioned earlier, we reached out to a couple of different national firms, both that have Florida presence and both were very similar with guaranteed maximum pricing not to exceed $14 million. Both of them had about a million and a half dollars in contingency, which doesn't have to be used unless it needs to be used. And so I'm not going to read through everything on the right. You guys can take a look at it. Really just put that in there to show that this is really soup to nuts. This is everything from a contracting standpoint that would take MaxLong from where it is to this conceptual version of what we've been talking about. Similarly, reached out to a couple of different national finance companies. to provide a proposal for financing as part of either a public-private partnership or what's called a municipal leaseback, which we've kind of presented that concept several times. And so it would be about a million dollar a year annual lease payment. That payment is factored into the financial model that's in your packet and that was presented with the executive summary. There's no down payment. There's one year of deferred payments with the thought being it allows the complex to get up and going, start generating revenue without saddling it with a million dollar lease cost. On the financial model, we assumed the lease cost from the beginning, right, to be overly conservative. And from a budgeting standpoint, I would rather be conservative than assume the other way and be overly optimistic. There is a Florida statute that governs kind of what we're talking about. And so one of these next steps that we'll get to in a second is further working with legal counsel to work through this statute, whether it's a public private partnership, it's an RFP or an unsolicited proposal. And so we can, again, I'll answer any other questions after we get done about this. And so we have a projected first payment of September 2028. It will take about six months to get through the pre-construction phase, legal, compliance, all of that. And then it'll take six to 12 months to renovate all of the fields. And so this starts to get into that process. Again, there's probably 1,000 steps in each one of these numbered steps that we'll work through, but this gives kind of a general overview to city council of the next steps that have to be taken as we work through this Florida statute and either an RFP process or an unsolicited proposal process. We've completed phase two. The next two phases from an advisory standpoint, this mirrors some of the same work that we're doing with the county. pre-construction advisory and then construction advisory and so through pre-construction we synergy stays on again as the advisor and advocate for the city to help guide them you guys through this RFP process through the procurement process through you know bringing on different contractors, subcontractors, vendors. We continue to work on the financial model. We continue to work on securing these users, work with marketing, branding, and then work with those contractors on the value engineering piece of this.

So Jason, real quick, so this isn't included in the 14 million. This is just like phase two. We're just adding you for you to phase three.

Yes and no. It is part of the 14 million. The city would have the option, and I can go back to a couple slides, if we need to either to contract this outside of, and it reduces that number, or just include it in the total finance cost, and it's just part of the project cost. It doesn't matter to us. And then we get into construction advisory. And so again, staying on through that six to 12 month construction period, working on some technology, working on the operations plan, helping the city with a staffing model or an outsourced model for operations. branding and marketing, putting the best surfaces and the best lighting and the best whatever in there in working with some of these contractors, not just the lowest priced turf or the lowest priced fencing or what have you. And so those are the next two phases. And when we get to the end of that phase four, this is ready to open. And at that point, there's an operator identified. They've been part of this process. The keys get handed over to them and everybody understands what's going on, how it's going to operate. There's agreements in place with the Y, with Sebring Youth Baseball, with the county. And so it's a much easier, seamless transition to start operating. And so, you know, again, in closing, and then I'll answer any questions. We view this as a financially viable project. Is it going to make a gazillion dollars? No. Is it going to be an amazing place for kids? Yes. Will it generate tourism dollars and spending and additional commercial development? Absolutely. With some of the questions around ad valorem taxes and the uncertainty there, having more commercial development and new investment in mixed use and places for people to eat and sleep and go have fun can certainly help with some of that uncertainty. So that's kind of where we are. I'll answer any questions, and then we can talk about kind of what the most immediate next steps are. Thank you, Jason. Thoughts?

So I got a few questions, maybe a couple statements. So the first one, and I called you earlier kind of asking about this, is the naming rights and the advertising and sponsorship lines. Do you have actual examples of where this has occurred to this level in a market size like ours that you could provide?

I can provide that as a follow-up. We just talked about it this morning. Okay. And so I reached out to one of these national partners. They gave me that statistic of their 14% higher. And so I've asked them to compare other markets that they've worked in similar to Sebring size to give me what data they can that's not protected.

Okay. I'd love to know specific ones if possible, just because that to me is... is the linchpin of the finances working, right? And the part that I don't know what I don't know, but the number freaks me out, right? One other question on the, and I feel like maybe we've talked about this before, so forgive me if I'm being redundant. Is turf replacement factored into this financial model?

In your packet, it is. On the slide deck, it's just kind of a summary. It's part of the reserves.

So the other expenses, maybe?

Yeah, other expenses is generally kind of a contingency. Oh, just your 10% reserves. And then we've got 10% reserves. So between other expenses and your reserves, by the time you get to year 10, you've got... 772,000 in reserves, and then you've got over two and two and three quarter million dollars in contingency that's been accumulated. Typically, you wouldn't take all of your fields offline at one time to replace turf. Turf replacement usually happens on the infields, right? Just practically speaking, you've got to get the most work. right you've got six players on the infield and three in the outfit and so the replacement cost of turf is about two hundred thousand dollars um you're not looking at per field and so you would stage those right three would get it this year three would get it next year three would get it the year after that um and so you've got those buckets most of this turf has 12 to 15 year warranties and 15 to 20 year life spans And so you've got the ability to accumulate quite a bit of reserve capital for those capital improvements before you're ever going to need to use it.

Okay. So talking about local use and what would potentially go away... So weekends, a lot of the weekends would be booked for tourism events. I know it's been mentioned maybe in our packet, maybe in some prior presentations, but probably some of the ad hoc use of the fields where a couple guys want to just go hit balls, that would pretty much go away under this model if we're trying to hit these financial projections, right?

Yeah, so we had this conversation earlier. The way that I think is smart to approach it is weekends are reserved for sports tourism. Now, that being said, here we are July 21st. If there's no tournament scheduled for this weekend, there's no reason you and your kids can't go out and hit a baseball. Or if there's not, you put some guardrails on that to say, if there's not a sports tourism event uh... event within 30 days of X, then it reverts to local use. So while 30 is kind of the benchmarked number, if it's 24, if it's 32, we say that that's kind of the, because nobody is gonna host a tournament on Tuesday morning, right? Other than maybe some, right? But if we reserve those for sports tourism on the weekends, but still have it available should nothing be scheduled, A baseball tournament that's going to have 60 or 70 teams, they're not going to call you today saying, I want to hold a tournament this weekend. It's going to be a month out, two months, three months, four months, a year out that they're going to be looking to do this. From an operational standpoint, we'll be able to get a pretty good idea of what the utilization is for 2027 pretty quickly. But you would want to try to keep as many of those weekends free or allow some of these users to book further out than maybe the community would. Because a lot of these national organizations are going to want some certainty on, I want to hold a tournament there the first weekend of August for the next three years.

So, yeah, that all makes sense. I guess what I'm trying to get at is I've never – I have no experience with a field that's privately operated like this. My oldest kid is three. I haven't gotten there yet. He has my athletic ability, too. We might never get there. But I just want to make sure that, you know, if we go through this process that suddenly the – The fields wouldn't just be closed if someone wants to go out and hit some balls with their kid, you know, without having to pay some high fee or something like that.

And that's a great concern, and it's something we talked about earlier, Casey and I did. There's a difference in operating models where, as a city, you're not leasing Max Long to a private group to run, right? You're contracting with them. to run it the way you want it run. Does that make sense? So you get to set the rules. And you're paying them to be the operator. And versus if you were just going to lease me all of MaxLong. Say, Jason, you handle all of it. We don't want to deal with it anymore. Great. Doors are locked. Nobody's coming in unless you're paying. That's a completely different model. Under that model, I'm paying you, and then if I make a gazillion dollars, good for me. This is a contracted management company that operates it to the city's pleasure.

makes sense so jason on that note too what does that practically look like from your experience with that model what's the responsibility for city staff and who's managing what who where's the communication do you see an additional liaison for city staff working directly with the management company is that less work or is it basically completely hands-off where's the balance yep and so the balance is and again we had this conversation earlier with the county sports complex

is the management company will take on whatever the city doesn't want to do. So that could be operations. It could be operations plus facility management. Do you guys not want to cut the grass out there anymore? Fine. That could be part of the scope of work that the management company has to take on if they're going to sign on. There's a cost associated with that, but there's a cost associated with it if the city were going to continue cutting the grass too. And so they can take off your plate whatever extent that you want them to. Operationally, you likely will want them to take most of the operations, if not all the operations, off of the city's plate. And there's mechanisms, there's technology where the public can still reserve fields. There's a schedule online that says the fields are open, the fields are closed. And so from the standpoint of liaison, then usually what happens is there's a monthly or a quarterly get together if you will right because they're going to want to true up the books you know hey we brought in this amount we paid this amount here's where we are and so either somebody from parks and rec is that person uh we can continue to be that that you know advocate advisor be that role for the city um tdc probably has some role in that and so a lot of times we'll see kind of a conquer by committee, if you will, where we don't want the city to necessarily have to staff up by another person just to outsource the operations of the sports center or the sports complex. And so a lot of times that can be handled through a combined effort of somebody at Parks and Rec, somebody on TDC, us. If one of you guys has a personal interest in diamonds, that's fine.

Like you said, too, it's whatever we want to put on the management company. So typically, is the management company dealing with the books and all that? Or is that ran through the city with an enterprise fund that would allow the management company to create?

You would typically create an enterprise fund. It would have its own code. Because remember, if I'm a tournament organizer, I'm not going to pay the management company to bring my tournament to MaxLong. I'm going to go through some technology platform, some booking system, to say I want to book all of MaxLong for the first weekend in August, and here's my checklist. I have to have a proof of insurance. I have to do these things. And so a lot of those issues can be solved through technology rather than just more and more people trying to do the same thing. And so the manager really becomes kind of the logistics person, who's going to unlock the gates, who's going to change the toilet paper, who's going to cut the grass, who's going to make sure that the portable mounds are in place. And so it's that coordinator level person that the manager, the operator, will hire. And it will typically be somebody local or somebody that they'll put on site here. And then part of their role and responsibilities and what they get paid for is if you say, we don't want to cut the grass anymore. Well, then they're going to build in money for landscape. They're going to build in money for, you know, some of those people that they need. They're going to build in money for occasional services like parking attendance for people to collect gate revenue or, you know, whatever the case may be.

So on that note, too, when we're looking at the million dollar payment, So what I don't want to end up with is a million dollar plus, now it's another quarter million or another half a million because of all the additional add-on services.

So that's accounted for in the management fee, in the pro forma, in the financial model. And so those fees are already built into the budget.

So I guess with what's built into the budget, at what level of service add-on is that?

it's typically not facility management it's not cutting the grass it's not uh you know you're gonna have altered fields so you're still gonna have grass around the outside you know so it's not gonna include some of those things but anything operationally it would is there a at what point do you typically know in the life cycle of of this project spinning up when naming rights are secured So the process would start at the point that city council says, yeah, we want to move forward. Because now we've got a viable project that we can go reach out to firms, we can put out an RFP. But this project's moving forward. Anytime before right now, it's just a great idea. But at the point that city council, I, we approve this project to move forward, then we can put those puzzle pieces in place, again, through an RFP or just through introductions, that once there's a timeline and we've got a general outline, those national firms will go out and start securing those naming rights. Now, will you get money in before it's actually open? Maybe, maybe not.

Just the promise of money is what I'm looking for there. Okay. So just a comment for the rest of council. I'm generally on board with this as a concept. Assuming that Jason brings us some concrete examples of naming rights and sponsorship dollars in a market of our size where it works. If those come through in any respectable percentage of what is budgeted, this works. And for the benefit of the public, right now we're starting not from zero, but from what it costs us to run this facility as it stands, which is around $700,000 a year. So reducing that number in any way while also bringing in a higher quality field for our residents I think is a good deal. I just want to make sure that we can actually get there, that the numbers work out. The worst case scenario of this, if you pull naming rights and all of the advertising and sponsorship, then we're in trouble. We have a nicer field, but we're paying for it too. So that's my only real concern. hold back i guess and the other thing that has been maybe mentioned by our finance department is understanding um how this would affect the city's ability to borrow capital in the future and i don't think we know the answers to that yet i don't know if you have any insight into that at all jason but yeah it will depend and that's kind of part of that next process part

I said, well, let's get past this and then we can figure all that stuff out. A couple of other things I'll mention real quick on the financials, what you mentioned. So, you know, if you and I'm just looking here, I was looking at year six just because it was the page that I was on. But, you know, by year six. And I can go back and do some rough math, but even if you took out advertising and sponsorships and naming rights, you're still losing less than you're losing now. So that's one point. And the second point, I don't want to speak for TDC, but that this becomes more of a tourism-generating asset. What's not reflected in these financial models is any... either backstop that tdc would be willing to provide subsidy etc because you're generating sports tourism dollars through this now versus just a community asset so my my kind of assumption on the tdc portion is that the tdc would effectively be subsidizing this by paying the user fees of the tournaments that they bring in a lot of time okay i kind of doubt if especially if it has to be approved by the county and you know their own budget issues that we're going to get more of a formal backstop than that um but even that being said right and that's where you get these these these revenue numbers on the on the fields is if you going back to one of these slides about modernizing the pricing structure right where now very little revenues being generated out there, just because it is, right? It is what it is. But when a national organization will pay $15,000, $20,000 per weekend to rent a certain number of fields, if TDC pays that as a grant, well, then you're at least getting that revenue, right, as a city, rather than just waiving fees. And so part of that is not...

So for the rest of Council. I generally think it's a good idea, I think that it has promised to be very helpful for our budget, while also giving us better facility for our residents, I would I wouldn't want to have the information on the naming rights before we move forward with something personally.

I agree with Josh. I think one clarification too, or because I asked Jared to pull the numbers today. So looking from the 2015 to 2016, all the way to the 24, 25 amended budget, 11 year on average, $503,000, and the five-year average, the last five years, has been about $601,000. So it's a little bit less, but I didn't realize it was that much, to be honest, to what the investment is. Somebody said this once, and I think it really sticks. lack of change so this is a definitely a big step for the city but going into some uncertainty with ad valorem I think this is a an investment that we should be willing to take and not looking to make money but 600,000 back in the general fund is going to do a lot for the city. I think this is a great opportunity. Naming rights though, and a few of those other things, I think if we move forward with this, if we could potentially, I don't know what you all think, I would personally like to maybe go on site to a few of these other facilities that are similar or send staff to see what it I'm in favor of it. They never scare me a little bit, but the upside is really good for the city. I know that means changes for the public, that it's not going to be what it used to be, but this is going to be a better, more improved facility, hopefully bringing a lot more people. and generally a better game. I'm thankful for the county for offering to move over YMCA and soccer and a lot of these other things to the county facility. I would feel a lot better if the county wanted to backstop some of it, but like Josh says, and I don't disagree at all, I don't think that that's necessarily a possibility outside of TDC with the funding mechanisms that you just brought up. I'm in favor of it if we can do some more due diligence as we move forward with it.

I've got a follow-up question to what Josh was asking about when it comes to local use. So on weekends, the Y would not have any soccer games scheduled for there, correct?

I hate to sound political, but it depends. It depends on the operating agreement, right? And so it depends on the agreement between the city and the county. Conceptually, and I may be off here, but as we were looking to redo the county sports complex, they were going to have six new soccer fields, let's say. Again, I may be off by one or two. The agreement between the city and the county could say, hey, city of Sebring, you're welcome to use these fields Monday through Thursday. four to eight, whatever. And you can always use one field every weekend. If that's what's in the operating agreement, then that's what's in the joint use agreement, then that's what it is.

One field at the maximum complex.

I'm just saying, hypothetically, it's whatever you put into it. It could be you can use all the fields once a month, and then you can use one field the other three weekends a month. There's no right or wrong. It's, you know, hey, Dimitri, what do you need? How much of this can be done during the week? How much of this do you need to have on the weekend? How does that play in with sports tourism at the county sports complex? Because if you take all of their new fields offline because the Y's use them or Sebring youth baseball. then they're in the same position. Now they don't have fields to use for sports tourism. And so it's just this balancing act of balancing community use at each individual facility, but then at the combined facilities at the same time, if that makes sense. So again, there's not a right or a wrong. It's just working in partnership with the county and with Demetri and with Sebring Youth Baseball to say who needs what and when, and you guys can't take everything because then the numbers don't work, and we can't pay for this, and then nobody gets anything.

And is the county going to charge the Y for use of the soccer fields on their facility?

I don't think that's the way that it's been presented. But then TDC also has fee waivers, and I know Board of County Commissioners does do that sometimes.

It seems like it could potentially, if we don't have soccer fields here and we don't have access to soccer fields at the county, then the Y soccer program, which is pretty significant, goes away.

Right. And in talking with the county administrator, and I don't remember, Casey, the verbiage of that letter, but the county was more than open to working with the city to find common ground to house the YMCA? Yeah. Again, the YMCA is currently using one field at Max Long to take that to four fields at the county sports complex, maybe a bridge too far. But the county has said that they're open to accommodating.

I mean, there's four playing fields on that one field. Right. Yeah.

I will say the Y is already running soccer programs at the county sports complex. My son did last season, and we never stepped foot on Max Long. Everything was at the county sports complex.

But they are using Max Long, though. I mean, it's packed, you know, every Saturday. So also, this is sort of just for kind of clarification, I guess. So there's a group that plays Ultimate Frisbee on the weekend there. So they would lose access to that kind of as well if you've got regularly scheduled games. It's one small group, but I just want to make sure that they would not really be able to have regular access to play out there, right?

So do they play on a full field? Do they play at the perimeter? Yeah. So, and again, I won't go back there, but in some of the fields, in the larger fields at max long, the plan is to put four soccer field line fields in the outfields. They won't be 330 feet. They won't be 110 yards long. Right. And so maybe there's accommodations there for Ultimate Frisbee, but again, that goes into the conversation with the county of here's our user groups right now, how can we accommodate them in some hybrid fashion of Maybe the Y, some of their smaller kids that are out at MaxLong now stay at MaxLong and they go on one of these outfield turf fields. Because, yes, there are four fields on a regular-sized soccer field, and each of those four fields is the same size as what's going to be out at MaxLong in the outfield anyway. So we're trying to multiply some of the sports fields without having to go build new ones.

And how does, in the event that we did utilize some of those outfields for some of the youth soccer, how does that impact the usage of that turf? Is that going to accelerate the decline of it? Is it going to require it to be redone more often?

Hypothetically, yes, but practically it's not going to make that much. You're not going to play... eight hours a day, five days a week of soccer in the outfield. If you have four games on a weekend, that's not going to long-term affect the useful life.

Nothing's probably going to damage it more than the sun.

That's a good point. Or the three outfielders standing in the exact same place.

Right. And my last question is just, so the races, I realize, are a big part of our area in that first quarter, but the people who are coming for these tournaments I don't think are race fans.

We don't have hotel capacity.

So because of that, we can't even compete with that?

We have people staying in Orlando that drive down for races.

I think if we had the same conversation in five years, I think, again, Max Long, County Sports Complex, some of the other things that are on the horizon, maybe there's more hotel capacity at that point.

Well, that's what I'm thinking is that if you up it to where the capacity is a bigger issue, there's less supply, then that would be more encouraging for hotels because that's the thing we battle the most is traffic count. And if we start limiting the traffic count to our own, then we're not encouraging any more hotel development to come in when we obviously could use it. Right, right.

No, I think that's a good point. And again, I think there's probably a place for, again, at some point city council says, yes, we want to do this. You've got 12 to 18 months, right, before new max long is operation. And so economic development could start laying the groundwork and putting out some breadcrumbs of, hey, hotel developers, are you interested? If they are, great. Then you can start scheduling in early March, in late February, and kind of backing into meeting that new hotel capacity. And if you find there's not interest right now and they want to kind of wait and see, then you keep doing what you're doing. until you've got a proven model that would justify more hotel rooms.

Thank you. On the hotel note, too, if the county moves forward with their facility, do you know what we're going to be at with capacity? Are we going to be pretty close if there's two tournaments going on?

Yeah, no, I think that's a good point. And so, yes, I mean, I think if you use the races as your benchmark, then the combination of a baseball tournament at Max Long and a soccer tournament at the County Sports Complex is probably gonna get you near that same level of utilization from a hotel room standpoint. And generally what we find is the city's going to maximize their inventory to some level. You'll always have some spillo, right? You'll have people going other places to stay or they're driving back home or doing whatever, right? So you're not going to get 100% capture rate, but you're going to maximize whatever your inventory is. And then it's just managing the experience. Because after only so many times of bringing my kid to a baseball tournament and then having to drive an hour and a half to a hotel, I'm just not going to come back at some point. And so that's kind of the balancing act from a hotel standpoint, that economic development can start putting out feelers to hotel developers in strategic locations. strategically, if you put a hotel in proximity to the new Max Long or the County Sports Complex, if that ever happens, then that's going to, 35 weekends out of the year, that's going to be full. Because they're only going to have 100 rooms. And you're going to have 1,000 players at some of these larger tournaments. And so that's some of the development incentive that economic development If some of these projects are.

I talked to a couple of baseball. Board members active people. And they all had the same rates, same question that you did. You know, I brought up the fact that, you know, you're proposing 30 ish. Weekends out of the year and I said, is it worth. those 30 weekends to get this and they all agreed that it would be more beneficial to have that than miss out on those couple of weekends. So they're not going to want to play out there every single weekend, right? So it would be a fraction of that 30 where it would be inconvenient. But in the grand scheme of things, it's definitely a benefit to the whole area, not even just the city. Obviously the issue is always gonna be funding. If we can make the naming rights work and find the money, absolutely. How many facilities of this size in a community of this size would you say you develop successfully?

The majority of ones that we're currently consulting on, which is 30, 35, are in smaller, mid-sized communities. Big communities, big cities, I don't know for what reason, but politics probably is a lot harder. But there's more of an interest by smaller communities to... be the catalyst, right, for sports to be the catalyst for bringing in tourism and some of this stuff. Historically, between, again, right, we stay on as, we're a consultant, right, so we're not building these projects. And so of past projects we've consulted on and brought in, you know, either contractors or trades to renovate turf, I would say probably six, are in a seabring size of community and have any been unsuccessful meaning that five years down the road they said oh man this ain't gonna work so only i i say this sort of tongue-in-cheek only when they don't listen to us right when they say well we can do this better we can you know you guys recommended six fields well if six is good But we try to stay very conservative in how we model this stuff. And we're not just making numbers up. We're going to contractors and saying, how much does this cost? And we're going to these event organizers, and we're going to operators and saying, what can you bring in to this size of city in this geographic location? So Josh, I'll get you those numbers. And then Harrison, you asked about some onsite visits, where there are naming rights in place for just where there's an outside operator, so you can see how that model works.

I think whatever is closest to what you're proposing for us. Naming rights would be helpful.

Mr. Mayor, do you have any thoughts?

I think, I mean, I think we really have to work with the county as to how we balance this out. If we're both gonna have that same competing thing. I think also what we need to do is you said there's 35 projects out there. How much of those are gonna be competition? And if you have 35 come at one time, how are you gonna spread all the teams out to the different, you know?

Yeah. So on that, I mean, we work nationally, right? So, uh, You know, we've had this conversation before, right? Whoever does this first wins concept. So when we first started working with Sebring, I can say there's no other city or community in Florida that would be competition from the consulting work that we're doing. We have a big project that we're working on in Flagler County, but it's 20 soccer fields and a stadium.

Are you proposing a facility like this within 100 miles of here?

No. Okay. Right, because if a city within 100 miles of here were to say, hey, Synergy, we want to do a feasibility study on a baseball complex, the first competitor that we're going to present to them is, hey, Sebring's doing the same thing, and they're two years ahead of you. So you may want to think twice about that. Because it doesn't do us any good to say yes to everybody, and then they're not successful to your point. And so we would have them pivot to soccer or swimming or whatever the competitive mix would allow as an opportunity. Because part of our original feasibility study, we plotted on a map, on a heat map, where your competitors were. And that's where we landed on either renovate MaxLock or expand it to the point where you are the biggest fish in Florida. Anything other than that, you're just going to cannibalize somebody else's customers and they're going to cannibalize yours.

Where is the closest competitor? Auburndale?

Yeah, I can. I mean, I can. I'm just curious. I don't know. Bumba is a big competitor. Do you know of any within three hours?

Yeah, I've been to that one.

And the majority are grass, right? The majority are grass. I think boomboos turf. But, you know, again, from a playability standpoint and from a reservation standpoint, if I'm one of these big organizers and I know I'm not going to get rained out in Sebring, but there's a good chance I'm going to get rained out on any given weekend in the summer in Bradenton, I'm going to go to Sebring because as an organizer, I get paid when teams register. So I want to hold that term. And so having turf gives you a competitive advantage that other places don't. All right, any other questions? Sorry, I took a lot of time, but I think it's good. I'll follow up with... naming rights on-site visits and then mayor i can work with casey in the county on uh at least something more concrete uh send us all the naming rights stuff don't send it to me okay if you can't send it to all of council all right great thank you guys so much thank you jason um any questions here before we open up to the public all right

It's more a matter of curiosity. We know who you are, but do you state the name for the record for anybody who doesn't know who you are?

Christopher Tuffley, for the record. The one thing that hasn't been mentioned, and that's why I'm curious, is when we say turf and when we say grass, is there going to be any irrigation? Do we need any water for these fields, or is it artificial water?

would imagine there would be irrigation for any landscaping on the outside areas but the fields do not require irrigation so that would be included in in the blah blah blah it's a it's a turnkey for the construction portion includes all of those features needed but yeah you don't you don't need irrigation on the turf itself well you don't no it's artificial oh that's what i wanted to find out thank you artificial turf now i've got it thanks thank you anybody else wish to speak about this

So, Scott, what are you looking for? Are you looking for any kind of motion or guidance?

I'd like to just revisit once we get some of that.

Yeah, once we get his stuff back, then we'll get it back on the agenda.

Okay.

And I guess just Jason, Casey, this is a long time coming. We've been talking about this. I feel like next time I can do the presentation for you. But thank you for all the work and the effort you put into it. It means a lot. Looking forward to seeing what comes next.

We're on the five-yard line.

All right, so moving on over to 10B, going over the audited financial statements. It's really... favorite part of the year, favorite time of the year, favorite every page.

Council, the audited financial statements have been issued, you should have a copy in your packet. And Julie is here to CLA to present an overview.

Thank you, Penny. Good evening. I'm going to be presenting a very summarized version of the financial statements tonight. I'm happy to answer any The next slide is our disclaimer slide. Just to remind you, this is summarized information extracted from the city's audited financial statements, and you should refer to that complete document when making financial decisions. So onto the next slide, we have the scope of the procedures that we performed this year. So the primary purpose of the audit is always to express an opinion on whether the financial statements are prepared under generally accepted accounting principles. under government auditing standards, which is a higher set of standards. And those standards require that if we identify any deficiencies in the internal control structure, that we report those to you. We also have to issue certain information to you at the conclusion of the audit that explains how the audit process went, something that's kind of new for this year the city hasn't had what we call a single audit in several years that's a compliance audit specific to grants and based off the level of state grant expenditures for the year you were required to have that compliance audit this year and then finally we report on your investment with public funds So up next, we have a summary of the results of those procedures. And we issue a lot of reports. I'm sure you have read those and memorized them. They're very exciting. But up first, we have the opinion on the financial statements, and that's an unmodified opinion or a clean audit opinion. So that means we believe the numbers are materially correct. When we look at the compliance with the state grants, we actually issue an opinion on whether we believe you have complied with the material compliance requirements, and that's also an unmodified opinion. So that's great news. Our opinion on your compliance with investment of public funds is also unmodified. So all great news there. When we look at the areas where there might be improvement in the internal control structure, we did not have any findings or recommendations that rise to the level that they would need to be reported under the auditing standards. When we looked at the compliance, however, we noted one area that we consider an exception to the grant reporting, and that was just timeliness. within 20 days just due to administrative processes they didn't quite make it to the state within 20 days so since we brought this up during the course of the audit staff has already put procedures into place to make sure that does that going forward they are submitted within the required time period so overall a very clean audit city staff should be very proud Up next, we have a summary of those required governance communications. The most important item here for you to know about is there was a new accounting standard adopted this year related to the way compensated absences It does not change the way city staff earn time or the way it's paid out upon their termination of employment. It just changes the way that we have to account for it. So it was a very heavy lift on the part of staff to come up with all of the information needed for this, but it was successfully implemented. We didn't have any difficulties during the course of the audit. City staff is always very cooperative and helpful as we go through and request lots of information to complete this process. So next, I just wanted to hit, I want to go forward two slides, some very summarized financial information. And the first starts with the general fund. And this is a trend of the last five years, revenues, expenditures, and the changes in the fund balances. So if you look at that trend, you can see that generally revenue continues to increase. This year, it wasn't any one significant area that increased, but increases in taxes, your intergovernmental revenue all of those continue to trend up on the expenditure side we're seeing across the board you know continued increases in personnel related costs health care pension benefits salaries all of those things as we're all aware continue to increase the most significant We had some significant purchases and improvements that were made that caused that increase. So overall, when we look at the difference between revenue and expenditures, the general fund fund balance did decrease about $843,000 for the year. So on the next slide, where does that leave your general fund fund balance? You're in total at about 10%. And that's made up of various components based on what it can be used for. The two biggest portions are what we call assigned. So that means it's not restricted by law for a specific purpose, but it's something that's already set aside for a purpose. In this case, it's about $2.5 million that's for cemetery care, and it was already planned to be used in your 2026 fiscal year. in what's called unassigned, so that's really what's up to the discretion of the council to use. Now keep in mind, this was as of September 30, 2025, so you're already a large portion through your 2026 budget thinking about the following year, so just want to keep that in perspective. You don't just have all this money sitting in the bank waiting for you to spend. Then when we look at the next slide, the city does have a policy that you'll maintain at least three months of your regular expenditures in your unassigned fund balance. And the yellow bar there is what would be required to keep your minimum policy. And the blue is what's in excess. So it just illustrates that you have a very healthy fund balance. So the city's in excellent financial condition at this point in time. Up next, we have a summary of the Water and Wastewater Fund over the last few years. Revenue does continue to increase. However, this year, the largest increase was really due to capital grants that you received. This goes back to some of the big projects expenses in the fund are going up. We're seeing this consistently with the governments we work with, the cost of maintaining chemicals and supplies and repairs, all of those things that go into enterprise funds continue to increase. Overall, the fund did have an increase in net position, so very healthy net position left in the wastewater fund. And finally, the solid waste fund, your revenue did decrease a little bit, but this is related to transfers. The recurring charges for services did increase a slight bit, while your expenses did go up a little bit for the same reasons I mentioned on the utility fund. Overall, this fund stays about flat when we look at the change in net position for the year. So that is the conclusion of my report, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. Go ahead, Roland. Any questions from the audience? I should have left some questions for today. I can answer all nine later. I'm just going to rate the city.

John Griffin's question is, how do you rate the city on a scale? 1 to 10.

My least favorite question. Are we doing a scale of 10 or a scale of 5?

Let's do 10. Sounds better, I hope.

I'll go with a solid 9. Overall, the city is in very good shape.

I think this is one of the times we really highlight, thank you for everything that you all do. No one really knows about it until this time of year, and really can recognize and point it out to the public that this doesn't just happen overnight, and we've seen a lot of cities who don't do it as good as Seabury does. So really grateful and thankful for everybody, the admin and finance team. I think we've got one of the best cities, and it shows tonight, so thank you all. With Penny, do you have anything to add? No. All right, well, if there's no questions, no comments, I'm looking to entertain a motion.

I move to approve the audited financial statements for fiscal year ended September 30th, 2025 as presented. Second.

I have a motion and a second. Comments? Are you sure? You don't want to talk about audited financials? No. Okay. Kathy, can you call the roll?

Mission.

Yes.

By now. Yes. Stewart. Yes. Haverick.

Yes. Kathy, I don't see any slips, so unless there's anybody that wants to talk about something that's not on the agenda, we'll move along to Mr. Harris.

Not a thing. Going into the ordinance.

Yep, going over to 12A.

Want me to read the ordinance by title?

That would be great.

Ordinance number 1575, an ordinance annexing approximately four acres of land located in Van Villa subdivision lying in the southwest corner of Section four Township 35 South range 29 East Highlands County, Florida, into the city of Sebring, Florida, and establishing an effective date.

Talk about this before we go over to looking at approving this.

I move to approve ordinance 1575 on second and final reading as presented.

Second. Motion. Got a second. Any additional comments here? Comments from the audience?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Harris. Moving over to Scott's time. Can you give us a project report?

Yes, sir. The changes to the project report are relocation of public works utilities, $500,000 appropriation designated in the budget by legislature would be due by the governor. Under the purchase of 126 West Center, future city hall, legislature appropriated and governor approved $1 million towards renovation and hardening of the building. And an update on the Illinois Pond, we staff is coordinating with FWSC on an agreement. And we're also reaching out to some contacts that are being provided to us.

Are there any time constraints associated with that million dollars?

Yes. So, yes, there are. I believe, if I remember correctly, is it June 2028? Right? June 2028.

Shouldn't have any problems there. June of 28.

June of 2028. Yes.

Any other questions for Scott?

No.

Okay.

Moving over to 14A. Canceling this group meeting and building. so moved second motion got a second any comments from council audience yes yes yes yes that is it we are adjourned thank you