Cra Agenda - Regular Meeting

Here. Business from the audience procedure. If you would like to address the board regarding an item not on tonight's agenda, please see Alexa for a speaker forum. We will hear those comments during the business from the audience. If you wish to speak on an agenda item, you'll have the opportunity when we reach that item. On the consent agenda, we do have a change from last month, a change to the minutes. The address stated on the agenda in the application for the design review application by Matt Griffin It was 254 Pomegranate Avenue, and the minutes have been updated to reflect the correct address of 248 Pomegranate Avenue. So I will entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda.

I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda.

I have a motion. Do I have a second? I have a motion and a second. Any comments or questions from the audience regarding the consent agenda? Any final comments or questions from the board?

Nellie, please call the roll.

yes yes yes yes all right on to our staff report miss baz was yes ma'am i do not have anything to add to the report unless there's any questions any questions all righty on to new business um let's go to our audit miss fowler would you please present the audit report good evening i'm julie fowler with clifton large

And in your packet, you have a PowerPoint presentation, which is a summary of the full financial statements. So we'll go through that tonight, and then I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. So up first, the disclosure slide. Just a reminder, what I'm presenting tonight is very summarized from your financial statements, and you should refer to that complete document when making financial decisions. So then on to the next slide. The scope of our audit included reporting on the CRA as we're going through that we do look at the internal controls we don't provide an opinion on the internal controls but if we were to identify an area where there's a weakness we would be required to report that to you we also are required by florida statute to perform certain procedures around your investment your compliance with investment of public fund statutes as well as there's about 20 on the various compliance with the statutes and then finally at the conclusion we issue a report to you as the group charged with governance that explains how the course of the audit went so in the next slide you'll see the summary of those reports on the financial statements we've issued an unmodified opinion and that means that it's a clean audit opinion you may think of it that way means that we believe that the financial statements are prepared and according they want to have. As far as the examination of your compliance with those statutes that I mentioned, we've also issued an unmodified opinion there. We believe you are in compliance with all of those requirements. Then on the internal control side, we did not identify any material weaknesses, no internal control deficiencies that you need to be aware of. So that's great news. And then finally, there is a management letter that we're required to issue based on the rules of the Auditor General. There was no noncompliance, financial condition concerns, nothing of those matters that you need to be concerned about. The next slide covers those governance communications that I mentioned. One thing that you should be aware of is that for the year we audited, you were required to implement one new accounting standard related to the way that accrued sick and vacation time is accounted for. Doesn't change the way you pay out. That's based off of the policies that you have established and approved at the city. But it changes some of the accounting for it. And so with the help of the city's finance department, we were able to implement that with no issues. There were no other unusual items, no new accounting policies, anything like that that you need to be aware of. So then if we continue on, I did want to just quickly hit the highlights of the financial results for the year. And we've got the five-year trend there. And just really focusing on the last three years, those are going to be the most comparable years. You see that in that kind of orangish bar, the revenue does continue to increase. It went up about $100. Then on the expenditure side, you'll notice that 2025 was back in what we'll call the normal range. 2024, you had those significant additional expenditures with all the projects that went on with HGTV. So 2025 is back more as a normal year for the CRA. So overall, you had an increase in the fund balance of about $540,000 a year. So you're in very good shape. One of those tests that we're required to perform is to make sure that any fund balance you're carrying fund balance that you're carrying forward so we do look at that and you are in compliance with that statute so that is the summary of the results of the audit and i'm happy to answer any questions you may have thank you thank you very much yeah

All righty, guys. Let's move on to our sign design review. Mr. Blackman, can you present the proposal for the signs?

Ms. Vasquez, does everybody have a copy of it? Yes, sir.

It's in their pockets.

Mine's out in the car. Thank you all for being here. CRA's been very pleasant to work with. This is our contractor, Drew Locker, who can also address things too. The sign that Regus HQ wanted was a logo sign that was seven feet wide and five feet tall that was backlit. And we didn't feel that that fit the architecture of the building, which, by the way, could be placed on the National Register if we ever wanted to do that. What you have in front of you is a much smaller blue metal sign that is, what are the dimensions?

It's only 24 inches.

Yeah, which will be mounted on the middle stucco band above the front door. It's pretty unobtrusive.

Did you say 24 inches?

The band is 36 and it comes out 64.

It's pretty small.

Yeah.

And it's not Regis anymore.

No, it's HQ, which is one of their brands.

Are they okay with... that size?

Have they approved that? We told them that the CRA would not approve a seven foot wide, five foot tall sign that did not fit the building architecturally. Physically, there was a challenge.

You have a round building, and putting a seven foot square sign on it really doesn't fit.

And it was too tall. It was two feet taller than any of the stucco bands. And the only brick areas that a sign like that could be put on would be one side or side or the other, either mango or pine or the back. And we just saw no need.

And there's so there's going to be one. two-foot sign above the front entrance. Is that correct?

Correct. The middle band. The front entrance right now just has the numbers 228 on the lower band. This will go on the second band, the middle one.

And this would be consistent with HQ in an urban area. Like if you're in a city, this is what they would do. They would do monument signs next to the door where you don't have the frontage to put a huge sign. The backlit sign, the seven-foot sign, is what you would find in a strip mall.

So there will be more signage, just not on the building?

Not without your approval. No, this is all that's going to play. Okay.

Any comments?

I think it's great.

Like I said, it doesn't take away from the building, but it is kind of underwhelming. But again, I wouldn't want anything to take away from the beauty of the building.

yeah I think my concern isn't so much with the signage as just making sure that the Community knows that this place is open for business. You know it, while I know that a lot of work has been done to secure the building and to make sure that this building last a really long time from the exterior, it has been cleaned up, but it, we just need to make it look like it's. open.

Just completely understanding the building has been that way for so long. The things that still have to happen on the exterior. So the interior, just to kind of give an update, we've talked, but so this week we'll be getting mechanical final. Next week we'll be shooting for plumbing final, electrical final, the last week of the month. we'll be getting going for fire and building vinyl so the inside of the building and if anyone wants to come see it come take a look at it we just walked it it's carpeted it's it's very levels two and three are very close to being done as far as the exterior goes we have things the parking lot gets reseal code, it gets re-striped. We have parking lot lighting that has to go in, up lighting that has to go in. What happens is in the front of that building and why I think the HQ sign is appropriate for what it is. You have those big white bands and you have the 228, the second band, you'll have the HQ. All of the front of that building with the up light will all be lit. those that's how it will look from the outside those are the items that still have to get taken care of the outside we don't seal coat the parking lots to do those things till the absolute last truck has delivered furniture and all that stuff okay so i will say that the bank originally had a pylon sign approximately where our temporary for lease sign is

That's how they handled it back in the day without spoiling the architecture. I haven't looked at the city code for the future to see if that's a possibility at all. But we would come back to you if it was and if we wanted to do something. Here there's a sign code that I haven't looked at.

questions or comments I have one question Robert had discussed about the possibility of putting some tables in the front of the building where people could have lunch and things like that well at this point in time that's not contemplated it might be able to be done

You know, we went through the process of trying to have a restaurant, which 50 people, 50 firms declined because, to put it tactfully, they said that downtown Sebring was too sleepy. The traffic count on 17 was too low. They all wanted to be on 27. Our argument was, you'll be a demand driver. You will be where people come. They didn't, nobody took that. So then originally we went to Regas and said we'd like one side of the first floor to be a cafe, whatever. That did not come to fruition with a tenant either, and by that time, you had things going on that you folks have promoted in terms of restaurants and bars and cigar bar, et cetera, downtown. So we converted to all offices because there's not really any office space there.

My only question for that was because we were discussing about activity, knowing that the building's open. If you have the tables out there, which Robert has said, people can just go there and have their lunch, bring their lunch or whatever. They can sit at those tables because that's going to... provide more activity around the building to show that the building is in use. Agreed.

There's one flip side to that and that's homeless activity in that area.

Agreed on that.

Which has to do with our landscaping.

And also your seating. Also your seating. Yes. Any kind of benches or whatever. Okay, thank you.

I'll entertain a motion. Anybody have a motion?

I'll make a motion to approve the sign design as presented.

A motion. Do we have a second? I'll second the motion. Motion and a second. Nellie? Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. All right. We're still on the progress. Let's go to our landscape plan.

Please present landscape plan and I apologize that those of you who wanted Robert to be here I'm not even a reasonable facsimile Do you have questions on the landscape plan Our problems are again We don't want to shield homeless encampment. We already have that problem in the nooks between the staircase parts of the bank and the bank semicircle itself. Except during construction, they kind of tapered off. So the plannings that we designed were to be low. And the front wall is also very low, lower than I, every time I see it, I think it shrunk. So on the front, we'd like to do the traditional three-tier, you know, low, medium, and higher in front of the semicircular wall, which is not a large planting area. And then also planting around the flagpole, there are three areas there. And I apologize for my hand drawing. Not to scale drawing that was the best that we could do at the time now there the other Considerations are on the pine street side. There are one very large mature oak and a smaller one that kind of Is encompassed in that canopy so we've got the problem of shade also On the very corner there at Pine and Ridgeway, Bridgewood, there's a 1600 square foot area that they're at least temporarily working on for the signalization or resignalization of the intersection. So we don't want to go in there, but it's also shaded. And the actual installation of the landscaping will practically not be until after we have replaced a lot of broken concrete walkways around the building that the lifts from the painters and other construction have broken up. So that has to be done first. So this is our plan, but it may not be instituted day one.

can i ask a favor sure before you implement the landscape can i take a look at that final plan but you oh oh if we redo it sure yes happy happy to you're the pro well semi okay but yeah i would really like to see it and what what's the time frame on the landscaping portion of it

Well, if it wasn't for the concrete, some of which is broken up around the center of the flagpole and other areas and the uplighting, by the way, there are a lot of broken lenses on the uplight and the parking lot light. So hopefully, hopefully during the month of August. The other thing about, we tried to get as much kind of xeriscape as possible because there's no irrigation on site. And there's enough underground utility things going on there that we didn't really want to try to irrigate that.

If you use landscape plant, all natives, that's going to do it. You have to water them the first 30 days, and then you should be fine. Exactly. That's the plan. Good.

And your shift will be Monday.

real quick just to talk to you about duration and kind of scope of work and how this works so what happens is we go in the sidewalks that we're talking about to replace there's a couple in the back and they they're just transitional to the parking lot we pour those first we then do the striping and their seal coating of the parking lot we then wait for this what do you what you were speaking of these two there's two directional bores that go across Ridgewood, and then the other one goes past Pine. And those are going to be directional bores. So they're going to come into that intersection in the corner on our property and disturb about a 1,600-square-foot area as they do their directional bores. So we're going to let them get that. Did they give us a date on that? We approved and said, yes, you can come do it as quickly as possible. So as soon as that work is done, we would then transition into the landscape portion of it. after that's done as soon as it's done just because we're going to go in there and do stuff and they're going to they're going to tear it up with all the equipment so but it's it that's kind of the phasing of sidewalks with and when we do the sidewalks we'll also be doing the up the parking lot lighting and then the seal coating then the striping last thing is landscaping just to make it look so i i think i think you're right on line with saying by august that would be in and done and They politely ask you, can we, but they're going to come no matter what. If we say yes or no, they're still coming. So that was it. But that's kind of the sequence that things would happen.

Thank you. And then, sorry, I shouldn't have let you sit down. You were also talking other timelines as well, as far as, because I think our deadline is July 31st. Yeah, it's the 31st. So how are we looking on that?

We're looking good on that. We went through, like I said, we're starting mechanical final, hopefully this week. Plumbing should be on Monday or Tuesday. So by the end of the month, we should have that. The only issue that we have still outstanding there is the elevator that everybody's aware of that we're working on. In working with Greg Griffith, he will give us a CO on the ground floor so they can open and do what they need. We're right now working with the elevator modernization company and state elevator inspector on a solution to the elevator right now. So we had a little workshop here with Greg and kind of went through what was going on with that. And so we'll have an answer soon. But we've already, like I said, we'll have the ground floor be ready to occupy. And the whole building will be finished. It's not like we're not finished. Levels two and three are basically done. The only thing that happens in there, we have to put outlets and light switches in there. And levels two and three are done.

We're planning on opening the ground floor only.

In the beginning. The whole building will be complete.

Right. But if we don't have a full building that's in use, then Do we have a CO at that point?

Yes. Greg, you have a TCO on that portion of the bilk.

Greg, can you help on this? I just want to make sure I'm understanding correctly.

So condition of the permit issuance was that the building be ADA accessible. We provided the guidance that we received as a city when we looked at it. And the developer to this point has not provided a mechanism to provide ADA accessibility to floors two and three. I cannot without proper direction, in other words, state or federal interaction stating that the building is allowed to be not ADA accessible on floors two and three, issue a certificate of occupancy for the building. The best I can do is offer a TCO or temporary certificate of occupancy, but that will be limited to floor one until such time as accessibility is provided for the balance of the floors.

Can you explain the process of the TCO, how long that lasts, what that looks like?

TCOs are issued on 30-day. We typically issue them on 30-day intervals, and it provides for common use of the building so long as the necessary life safety and ADA elements are in place of those specific areas. Construction can continue on floors two and three as needed, but it's not allowed to be open to the general public for use.

Okay. Thank you. And in our meetings with Greg, he's given us the mechanisms of what we need. right now to get an acceptable solution. The architect has a different opinion as to the building official, as to me, as to everybody else. So their opinion is no, this is single tenant. It gets very involved into it. But Greg's been great to work with going through it. So we're going to get a solution to it. It's just trying to get the state elevator people here is not the easiest thing. So that's the process that we're working through. Okay.

All right. Thank you. All right. Back to our landscape. Do we have a motion? I'll entertain a motion on the landscape plan.

I have a motion to approve the landscape plan.

I have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. Motion and second. Nellie?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. All right, onto old business. We have no old business. Do we have any business from the audience? Business from the audience. Any board member remarks?