City Commission - Regular Meeting

Uh, good afternoon. Call together this meeting of the budget workshop. Today is Tuesday, May 12th, and it is 3:00 p.m. Please stand and rise for the pledge of allegiance. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Commissioner Marriott here, Vice Mayor Robinson here, Commissioner Cy here, Commissioner Maldonado here, and Mayor Tate here.

We have a quorum. Thank you. Uh so I'm a little more adept at the uh at the commission meetings, but uh I see we've got a presentation to start out workshop uh for our revenue unodudited reserve preliminary capital projects improvement plan and priorities. Hi, how are you Devon?

Yes. Hi. Good afternoon, Mayor and Commission. Devin Schmidt. I'm the finance director for the record and I will be taking you through um quite a few um slides as it relates to um some of our revenue ideas that we've come up with. Um we'll talk through the preliminary capital projects improvements and plans and priorities. And um in between revenues and capital, I'll ask you guys to take an opportunity to help us rank and determine um what direction we need for staff to move forward on our revenue um generation ideas and where we should focus our efforts and then I'll take you through um the capital projects preliminary prioritization. So kicking off um we're going to walk through some revenue generation strategies. So, kind of setting the stage as why we're here. Um, looking at uh the total cost of the city and the total cost to run the city, our city manager is always asking that question, what does it look like? So, our infrastructure needs um are in the amount of 218 million over the next five years, which does um some of those projects predate the storms. We do have some advalorum changes and house bills that may eliminate at the worst case scenario around 4 million in advorum. And then we have a pretty aggressive capital improvement five-year need. And then we also, as the commission is aware, have some enterprise funds that are not operating like a business unit and sustaining revenues where they're requiring offsets and transfers from our general fund or our parking fund. So, as we walk through this presentation, at the end, we'll be looking for direction on where we should focus our efforts on our revenue generation strategies. So to kick off, this is a very high level um forecast for us. If we're looking at the next five years estimated revenues and expenses um looking at kind of our operating expenses there, we have that just running at a 3.3% when the last time I pulled CPI was we have

revenue growing around 3% and this is based on our 26 fiscal year um budget. our assumptions um would be looking at removing any of those other revenue sources um and any of the internal transfers between other funds. So this also does have a 25% reserve while we know today our our enterprise funds um do not all have a reserve policy but our general fund does. So we just wanted to kind of show what is that overall gap in funding that we're looking at um to date based on our forecast. So when we're looking at building out our capital projects and all of our budgetary figures, um we're trying to align with the commission in the sense that we're looking at our strategic plan um roadmap that we had put together with you all. As you can see um by the bar chart as well as the pie chart um our primary focus is on recovery, resiliency and sustainability followed by reliable infrastructure. So, we just wanted to provide um what categories these um projects track in as far as what we're looking for over the next five years. So, I wanted to share a little bit of context about how this revenue generation working group um came together. So, we launched in December and we had a couple meetings um that there's a lot of folks in this room. So, thank you for all your efforts um helping us come up with some ideas. Um we tried to leave really no stone left unturned. We looked at all what we could legally do, what we legally cannot do, what are some creative ideas that we could come up with. And so then after that we started looking at more of the analysis and some of the vetting. So um coming up with ideas where we have opportunities whether it's statutory um and then going through and doing a refinement and a prioritization which I'll take you through as we get later in the presentation. and then we're here today um for direction on where we

should continue um putting those efforts forward. So to set the stage um a little bit further, I wanted to give the commission just a reminder and an update kind of where we've come and where we've been at with our current revenue streams. And so looking at this basic pie chart here, you can see that um primarily we are um funded today through charges and services. This is looking at all of our enterprise funds and this does not have any of the pending fee study information in there. You'll also see that intergovernmental revenue in this budget is inflated and that was due to any of the reimbursements we would expect to receive through FEMA. So, as we bring forward our 27 budget, we'll be refining any of those FEMA funding revenues that we would expect to see. And then you can see here as well um that 23% is our advalorum taxes um which is a huge um revenue driver for the city. So as we're moving forward, we're looking at some of the impacts of our advalorum. Each of the different house bills that are um before the Senate and the committee today um would not allow us to reduce down any of our public safety efforts. And so it's important to note that looking at this pie chart, if we carve down and we look at our general fund departments and those services that are provided, um, we really can't look at any reductions to 31% of the total general fund budget. I won't spend too much time on walking through some of these um, potential bills, but I think it's important for the commission and the community to be aware of what the impacts could be. So looking at this, this is our current law um where we have our set millage rate um at at the tune of about 15.3 million for fiscal year 26. Um some of the legislation um that is

being proposed. So this is the biggest one. If it were to pass um the house um this would be about a $4.4 million reduction in our property taxes um year-over-year. So, it ends up being a pretty large um reduction to our taxes. This is House Bill 205, and this is a specific senior exemption. So, anyone that's over the age of 65, this would begin in 2027, and that's 2.7 million. This one is stalled at the legislative level. So, that one um is not moving through at this time, but we're still monitoring these. The next one that you'll see here is assessed um home value exemption of 25%. And so this one did not advance. So that's not one that we're continuing to look at. And then when we're looking at um the House Bill 209, what this would do is um offer an exemption for insured homes and this would be about $1.4 million in property tax revenue loss for the city. So we'll continue to monitor those. Um, right now we're tracking and expecting that those likely wouldn't take place for 2028. But since we are trying to consider a really a nice 5year or 10-year forecast, it's important for the commission to know that those could be impacting our city. So now I'm going to talk a little bit about some of our grants and our opportunities that we have received with um external funding. And so I'll take you through each kind of one of these four little bucket areas that we have here. So, we have received past um federal, state, and appropriations. So, we received $5 million for fire station 22 at Pasigril. And we also received $4.9 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds. That was a direct um distribution to the cities during the COVID pandemic. our current uh federal and state

appropriations. So our state appropriations for 2026 um that are request is 3 million for fire station 22. We have another 2 million requested for Pac Wastewater and Boca Drive reconstruction at 1.8 million. Looking at some of our federal appropriations, um these are some of the active for the following four projects for FEMA reimbursement. So, one is a citywide uh facility hardening um at 2 million, Pasigrow Way Seaw Wall improvements at 8 million, Gulf Winds Drive roadway reconstruction at 6 million, and 45th Avenue storm water pump station improvements at $6 million. So, we have um quite a few folks on staff that are working on looking at um what are our grant opportunities? And so, um, you can see here that with over the past 10 months, they've looked at 1,696 grants. We are eligible for 11 applications. Um, seven are currently awarded or active and one was awarded but not yet active. And so, we're and then we have five that we're tracking for the grant to open. So, some of the barriers that we see and why it says kind of in that big bold area of grant eligibility is only 1%. One is we can only use grants for um onetime capital. We can't use them to sustain our operating. So we can't really grant our way to make sure that we can keep the lights on as we're working through. But really 55% doesn't fit the current needs of the city. So they're e either airport grants, education grants, um 37% were not eligible because we don't meet some of the socioeconomic thresholds that are required or population limitations. and then 7% just simply doesn't match our current project timeline. So um those are some of the reasons why we're

showing um that information. So if we do look at a 5-year history of some of our grants that we have received um since 2021 we've received approximately 13.6 million in grants. Um I think it's important to note that the largest one of this is for the Gulf Boulevard undergrounding utilities at 7.9 million. Um and that's was a specific ask under the penny per podelis and that does sunset. Um so you can see here just over the years where we have been successful with some of our grants and what the composition of those look like. So moving into our next slide. Um these really lays out the grant dollars that were expended or plan to be expended based on our current or prior year budgets. And so the yellow box are agencies that we currently have grant agreements with. So you can see here the penny for penelis that I talked about and FEMA um FT Resilient Florida FDOT and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission as well as the state uh projects funds. So those are just some areas where we have been successful over the years in looking at some of those items. Um not exactly tied to revenue but tied to revenue in the sense that um we have been subsidizing our enterprise funds um at the tune of 12.5 million over the past five years. So this trend is really you know we're in a cycle of where we're doing break fix operations. we're maintaining assets, but we're not able to replace because of the cost. So, it's not necessarily strategic one for creating a reserve for our capital project needs. It's definitely not a government finance officers association best practice. And again, I've said it before and I'll keep saying it that those enterprise funds really need to operate like their own business unit and not require a subsidy. Right now, they're somewhat operating like a nonprofit, if you will.

So, looking at some of our revenue generation concepts, now that I've kind of set the stage of how we got here, I'll kick off with first our finance budget review um committee recommendations. And then I'm going to take you through each one of these and explain um a little bit more about what this looks like, what the impact is to staff, what our timeline is to implement, and our estimated revenues. So, the green boxes on there indicate an area where we should investigate further. So that was a kind of a pass with our finance budget review committee. The yellow um little cone there saying that's a lower priority of where staff should immediately um start looking at these. And then the do not pursue was uh finance budget review committee saying do not pursue. So the areas where they recommended we invest staff's time is fire assessment fees, our parking fee study optimization which we've implemented, the resiliency fund um fee, resident services fees, um the uh community redevelopment area tiff, our enterprise fund fee adjustments for reclaimed storm water and wastewater, our bonds and capital tools. So looking at specific projects and how could we bond for specific projects and then of course continuing forward with any grants um and working through those. The areas where they uh thought was a lower priority um would be the parking based street repair assessment and um some of the philanthrop phil sorry philanthropic foundation um roundup and then our public private partnerships. So, and the one that they recommended we did not pursue at all was um road tolls. So, I'll take you through each one of these different areas. So, the way the presentation um through the rest of this revenue is broken out is um kind of by bucket if you will. So, this first area we're going to focus on

is an assessments, fees, and the community redevelopment area. So, I won't spend too much time on that slide since we're going to dive into the details here. So looking at a fire assessment fee. So a fire assessment fee gives us the opportunity to allocate costs based on residential units, building sky size and square footage, risk and demand factors and then commercial eru and what is that square footage? So, what the process would look like if we were to proceed with doing a fire assessment is that we would need to um have a study to make sure that there's a nexus between the cost and the benefit. Um we would need to adopt a fire assessment ordinance that would define the fire service as being fund by said assessment. And we would look to exclude our EMS transport explicitly since we have a separate revenue um driver for that. We would have to make sure that those funds are limited really to fire readiness and protection only and then this is something for a collection purpose would be collected on the property tax bill as a advalorum assessment. So the timeline that staff believes this would take to implement is around 12 to 24 months. And this would be a new revenue offset for the cost of services from the general fund at approximately $2 to3 million per year only for fire. So if we move on to our next one, um this is looking at the feasibility and rationale around a parking based street assessment. So um St. P Beach requires an estimated about 10.5 million to reach our acceptable condition. Yet, our current revenues are falling short of that. The city sees roughly around 60,000 vehicle trips per day against only the 9,000 residents, meaning that visitors and non-residents use and drive significantly more um without that proportionality

contributing to the maintenance cost. So, um, you all received a presentation from one of our local colleges, um, and it provided some information about what this would look like, but essentially, um, what we would have is non-residential parking spaces where we would assess those properties that are receiving a special benefit and making sure that those costs are fairly aortionated to that benefit. So, those parking spaces would have to be on an aortionate basis. Um the timeline to implement since there would be a lot of staff research on this is 12 to 24 months and the current revenues we have right now is to be determined. Um we didn't have enough information to give you a good estimate on that particular one. So moving on to our community redevelopment area. Um uh this is a designated geographic zone where we're able to use tax increment financing or a tiff to capture any of the growth of the property tax revenues above a frozen baseear value and then we're able to redirect that into different improvements within that area. So St. Beach, as you know, currently does not have a CRA, but if we did have a CRA, it would be about 32% of the city's land area, um, which is a meaningful footprint and reflects where some of the greatest concentration of the aging infrastructure and economic activity is. So once established, the CRA funds can then be deployed into five different categories around capital infrastructure, mobility, um streets and sidewalks, drainage, transit, and we can use those um for grants or loans. We can also use them to retain any private investment. Um so it's an opportunity where um we could put that in place at that specific um time. Again, this one is looking at a 12 to 24 months um to implement and without the data again,

it's a little bit difficult for us to forecast what those revenues look like. So, moving on into u more of our pay for what you use or our fees for charges and services if we're looking at all of our enterprise funds. So, I'll take you through detail under each one of these different categories. So, first and foremost, I know there's a lot on this slide. Um, but we did work with um a consultant to conduct a fee study. They will come and give you a full presentation on this information. Um, we're working with them right now to make some refinements. Um, so, but we wanted you to have the information that we had and what kind of that first blush analysis is telling us. So, as you can see, um, on the reclaimed water sufficiency study, the system is not financially self- sustaining at our current rates. On a cost side, our operating expenses are running about 1.1 million um, this year and growing to 1.3 million by 2030. Um, we have a general fund loan repayment approximately 61,000, which we're carrying through 2039. We have capital investments at the tune of 3.5 million over the next fiveyear window um which is primarily 650,000 um per year for our lateral pipe replacements and our total revenue requirements are climbing from 1.8 million in fiscal year 26 to 2.1 by the end of 2030. So, um, the bottom line is really that our existing water reclaim revenues are insufficient to meet our projected requirements throughout the entire forecast period and without a rate adjustment or subsidies from either our general fund or our parking funds. Um, we cannot continue to stabilize the fund. Um, we also would have to look at deferring capital investments um or accept deteriorating infrastructure.

This is an alternative scenario um that was proposed by the consultant. So the key adjustment in this reduction is approximately 700,000 in the 5-year capital um improvement plan. So the projects are phased in gradually. So that funding requirement ramps up more slowly. So through 2030, the system reaches that same overall funding level as a base scenario. Um it gets us to the same just destination just on a slower path. But the resulting rate increase under this scenario is 18.25% for four consecutive years from 2027 through 2030 representing a cumulative increase of approximately 95.5% over the period. So in dollar terms annual revenue gains grow from roughly 201,000 um in fiscal year 27 to 332,000 by fiscal year 2030. So or an additional revenue of about 1 million over the next four years. So that was an alternative that they had proposed for us. So storm water um this picture is even more complex than our reclaimed water because of the sheer scale of capital needs that we have in our storm water system. Our operating expenses run about 1.3 million in fiscal year 26 growing to about 1.6 by 2031. We do have an existing loan payment of 256,000 annually that pays off in 2030. This EIP is really the dominant story here with about 141 million in storm water related projects over the next five years. And the critical distinction is really how that's funded. So approximately 133 million is assumed to come out of the resiliency fund where we have right now 8.2 million that falls into our storm water fund directly. And of that 82 8.2 million, 3.6 million would be funded from our utility rates and 4.8 from any additional other options. So, um, even under this more favorable split, our total annual

revenue requirements range between 2.3 million and 2.8 million against our existing rate of revenues at 1.4. Um, so with that, um, what this is showing is what the percentage increases could be, um, if we were looking at trying to have a softer, um, increase over the storm water fund. What the next slide is showing um based on their study is this is more of a stress test really than a recommendation because this is showing that we would be um trying to fund our 141 million in capital um on this program alone. And so you can see there the very stark increases in the percentages that would need to occur for the cost to be sustainable and for us to accomplish all those capital needs. All right. So moving on to wastewater. So wastewater is our largest and most financially pressured of our three systems. Our operating expenses are at 7.3 million for 2026, rising to 8.7 million by 2030. We have some existing debt service of 1.2 2 million annually um dropping that um state revolving loan fund loan pays off later this year. So that is a positive. The 5-year CIP totals 58.4 4 million um which is a substantial program driver driven by some of our pump station rehabs or force main replacements. The collection system improvements and the funding mix is assuming approximately right now 23% from our grants, 18% from rates and reserves and the 59% um is looking at if there were to be additional debt or a state revolving loan. So, what we're looking at here um on this preliminary rate path is that it would be a 12%

increase for four consecutive years from fiscal year 27 to fiscal year 2030 and a cumulative increase of 57.4% generating an additional 4.4 million in annual revenue by 2030. So, that's the single largest um ask of the three systems um from the study of where we're currently at. So, as I mentioned before, we will be coming back to the commission with a very robust uh presentation from the consultant, but we did want you to have this as part of your full picture as we're talking about some of our revenue areas. So, our parking fee study, I'm not going to spend too much time on this since we've already worked to adopt this process. Um, but the positive here is with those changes, we are expecting plus or minus $2 million a year. And I have that at a less than two months to implement since we're um already in progress there. Resident services revenue. So within our resident services um this is also undergoing a fee study. Um so looking at um this timeline to implement it would be a three years phased as a recommendation from the um advisory board. Um but the total area of annual revenue increase and this is a very um conservative estimate would be around $66,657. And some of those major drivers would be the um after school camps, pool memberships, any of those ballroom rentals, pool umbrellas, beach weddings, and then special event permits. So um the the residency mix assumption is 70% non-resident and 30% resident. Um and then any demand assumptions there's no change in uh participation then our calculation is just reflecting pricing effects only.

All right. So moving on to um something that currently isn't in our revenue toolbox is a uh resiliency fee. Um, so what we were looking at is if the city adopted a $7 per eru, this fee could generate approximately $840,000 annually, which wouldn't close our entire storm water funding gap on its own, but it could provide a meaningful dedicated revenue that could help support our resiliency fund where we would have a dedicated revenue to that fund. Um what this looks like is um cities use these for flood mitigation, drainage improvements, any infrastructure. It would require an ordinance and a clear nexus to the fee. So we'd have to be able to show that there's community benefit. Um and we already have a separate fund set up for this, which is our resiliency fee. So that's one area for consideration. Um road tolls. This one we thought would probably be um around five years to implement. There's potential legal hurdles and challenges that require significant um legal research, road ownership with 75th Gulf Boulevard and Blind Pass since that's currently not a city asset. Um the cost of the road and the storm water maintenance and the replacement study. We'd have to do a comprehensive revenue study as to where the funds could be spent. negotiations of improvements um prior to the transfer of ownership. We'd have to look at our traffic signal cost. We'd have to develop emergency response for our road access and repair immediately following a disaster. Um we'd have to look at where the toll where the tolls go and identify any initial um cost of toll installation. And we'd have to have negotiation of multiple interlocal agreements. then we would need funding for an RFP at an estimated $300,000 to have this one move forward.

Okay, moving on into our philanthropic fundraising and contributions. Um so some of the ideas that we came up with is if we had a Roundup St. Pete um project. So if you go to Walgreens or Paradise Grill and you tap your card and you want to round up, we could have that as an option for us. um where people could round up. We could establish a government agency that is ran by residents um for fundraising and um you could look at you know we have the library existing with our friends um shuffle board or any recreation or parks property procurements or preservation. So that would be a 501c that's ran by our residents um and they could provide us with any uh donations if they were able to secure those. um looking at adopting a dune, parks, benches or seaw walls, pavilions or tree naming opportunities. This would be more of a cost offset. Um fire station 22 donations could be an opportunity. Any land donations and then um advertising on any city vehicles, building, parks, and billboards, which would require an amendment to the sign ordinance. I should note here too that the finance uh budget review committee liked all of the above ideas except for the advertising on any of our facilities. So the timeline for this one to implement would be unknown. Um we'd have to have a resident group that would be willing to run such an organization. And then um because these are more donations or expense offsets, the revenue is very unpredictable to forecast. So, and then some of our other options that are um more traditional ways of financing capital projects. So, there's bond financing revenue on non-advelor bonds for capital projects or also some of our public private partnerships um which is around

infrastructure, parks, recreation and housing. So, I'm going to take you through a little bit first kind of around what a capital assessment would look like. So, um, we could not do one general obligation bond for all of our capital. Um, it's too vague and we have to be able to again show that there's community benefit. We could do a general obligation bond for defined capital. That does require a referendum by the people and that's where we're pledging our adorum taxes to pay for debt. We could do a revenue bond for capital projects. If we had a revenue backing, say parking or any of our utility funds, we could um revenue back and there would be no referendum um required for that. We can't bond for operating expenses and we could do an a citywide infrastructure bond without taxes. But again, if that revenue is backed and we have it validated that there's community benefit. So, this is one of the areas where the presentation um was updated. Um there was an ask for us to be able to show an example of what it would look like if we were to say, "Okay, we're going to use our storm water funding and we're going to bond against that." So, what this is looking at is our current um projects that we have within um that are specifically tied to either storm water resiliency. So you can see some of those program totals, what our FY25 ask is, and then um looking at our current residents and our households. Um this gives us a couple different bond scenario options. And again, this is just demonstrative um purposes. So if we were to say we want a bond for $10 million, it would give you an estimated $746,000 of debt service that would be required.

Uh total 20-year cost is 14.4 million. The cost per household household per year would be about $170 or $14 per month. And you would have to have about a 25 to a 35% rate increase. If we were to look at kind of that middle tier, which would be a $35 million bond, um the annual debt service would be about 2.6 million. Um your total cost would be 52.2 2 million. Average cost per household each year would be $594. And then on a monthly basis, it'd be around $49. And then if you were to go with the most aggressive approach, that would be a $75 million bond. Annual debt service of about 5.5 million. Cost per household per year would be about $1,272 and um $106 per month. So with that, I'll just kind of show you just a little bit. This is just a different view. So you're able to see kind of what scenario A, B, and C looks at from an annual debt service and then from a monthly cost per household. Um again with some feasibility in here. And again, this is just for demonstrative um purposes so that you're able to understand what a bonding scenario could look like if we were to bond against any of our revenues. Um this is another option here if we were to say or if the commission um did recommend and we wanted to look at bonding against any of our um enterprise fee revenues. Um there are some options where we could potentially um have some FEMA offsets. We could have some Florida um Department of FT resilient grants in place. And then there's of course the state revolving loan funds which typically have a lower interest rate um and cities are able to take advantage of

those. So again just illustrative um for your consideration. This is just looking at if you were to go with that middle scenario um you'd have to we'd have to continue to authorize the rate study. Um we'd want to look at any of those grant applications. we'd have to engage bond council for any of this work which does um have a cost to it and we'd want to look at any evaluations for state revolving loan funds and then of course there would be a lot of uh public input and things of that nature. So um that just gives you a scenario if we were to bond against storm water for example. Um moving on to our public private partnerships. So or you can hear some of these time sometimes these are considered P3s if you hear that acronym. Um this gives us an alternative delivery model where the city's able to partner with a private entity to finance, design, build and operate and maintain a public asset. Um it shifts some of our combination costs for risk responsibility um of the city's balance sheet. And for a city of our size, the P3s that are probably most viable um is whether you have a revenue stream. So a commercial opportunity that might make a private investment attractive. So typically things around parking um marina operations, beachfront concessions. In some larger cities, they have been successful with utility infrastructure um moving to this model. Um but typically these are very project specific and the state of Florida does have um a mechanism within their state statutes for how we're able to um execute a public private partnership. So that's just another consideration. Okay. So, I've talked a lot about what we have researched and now I'm going to

take you into um what is not allowed or revenue ideas or where we just simply don't have any local control. So under not allowed or no local control, this section is covering our revenue ideas that staff researched and pursued, but ultimately we cannot be implemented at a local level either because there's a state law that prohibits it or the authority rests with another government such as Penllis County. Um, so what we're looking at, we didn't want to dismiss really any of our creative ideas, but you can see here that we don't have an option to do our own municipal sales tax. We don't have an option to do our own food or alcohol tax. Um, we cannot stand alone aside from the county to do any municipal fuel taxes. Um there if there was a property tax fee where you move in and it's collected at escrow that's at a state level and we do not have the option there. Local vacation rentals or searchcharges registration um that's another area that we don't have the ability to um levy or receive any revenues from that particular area either. And then we looked at the tourist development tax which is commonly called a bed tax. That's our 1% that's uh collected on any short-term accommodations in Penllis County. In 2025, um for part of the year, we were just trying to show um how much revenue and how much St. Pete Beach contributed, which was a significant amount to that pool. But again, that allocation is at a state and county decision and how those funds flow um to us and is not any ability where we have an opportunity to create any of our own local revenues. And then finally, this isn't necessarily

a revenue offset, but um property assess clean energy or PACE is a private financing mechanism that allows our property owners to fund any hurricane mitigation and resilient improvements through a nonadvalorum assessment on their property tax bill. So, this would give um them the opportunity to do any um hardening or seaw wall repairs or anything of that nature. The obstacle that we have here at St. Pete Beach is that Penllis County in 2017 did an opt out ordinance which blocks all municipalities in the county from participating. So if that would require the county to reverse that action for us to be able to offer that to our residents. Okay. So moving on to our direction needed. I'll give you um a staff recommendation or a potential impact versus um investment in time and money from a a staff um perspective. So when we were looking at all of the different items that I've presented for you today, um we were thinking about it on the sense of an impact scale versus an effort scale. So, if we're looking in that top left quadrant, you can see that we have our fire assessment fee, parking, and bond financing at considered a 25. So, what we're saying there is that um we would expect that to be a low a lower staff effort um but it would have a very high transformative impact in revenues. On that right hand side quadrant, you can see that our enterprise fund fees and um toll roads community redevelopment area. Um those are all tracking over so toll roads at a 55. Um that would be saying that there would be a very large staff impact and effort to

do that. Um and on our enterprise fees funds you can see there that we're showing that we have a high significant effort but the funding um would also be very transformable impact. So this gives you kind of an idea where you can see where we believe the highest revenue generators are in that upper quadrant and it gives you the information around um how much impact in staff time it would take for us to proceed. Okay. So these are um just another way to look at some of our summary slides. So, um you can see that as we before I ask you guys to um give us some direction on where we should continue our efforts or answer any questions before you do that exercise. Um our fire assessment fees our timeline to implement is 12 to 24 months about 2 to3 million in uh revenue to offset our expenses. Our special assessments um this would be a six to 12 months uh to be determined on the revenue. Commercial parking 12 to 24 months revenue is to be determined and the community redevelopment area is a 12 to 24 months with the revenue to be determined. Looking at our enterprise fund fee adjustments, um this would be six to 12 months for us to implement. Um, we would be, these are based off of the slides that I showed you with the less aggressive um, fee increases, but the revenue reclaimed would be about 1 million over the five years. Storm water um,.24 million over the five years and wastewater at 4.3 million over the 5year period. Um, parking, we've already implemented that, so I'm going to skip. Resident services approximately on a

very conservative estimate would be um, three years phased in and $66,000. A resiliency fee would be about 6 to 12 months to implement with $840,000 in approximate revenue. Um, toll roads would be um, more than five years or around five years for us to implement. And again, uh just too many variables for us to appine on that. And our philanthropy and fundraising contributions. Again, um these we have listed as timeline to implement unknown and our revenue unknown predictable. Um and then bond financing that would be um specific to a particular project and we'd have to go through those different studies. So, if the commission um wanted us to pursue some of our larger storm water projects um then we would be able to give you a better um cost of what that would look like and how we would finance that. And then again, public private partnerships are really contingent upon a specific project. So before um can I answer any questions before we go into um some of your guys's ranking and and direction?

Commissioner Marriott. Thank you. Hey Devin. So um I have two questions for you about the um enterprise funds. Okay. And so the first one um is probably one I should know, but I just want to make sure I have it right in my head. In the storm water slide, it talked about 141 million in in needs. Um does that is is all are kind of all of the resiliency projects lumped into that storm water category? So does that include things like seaw walls and and those kinds of resiliency projects or is this just the storm water system?

Sure. So that's a um that's a good question. Right now the way we budgeted for fiscal year 26 is we had that $5.8 million that we said okay we can allocate it to these specific projects. Um, we worked with public services to determine what projects might fit within that resiliency category. Um, if we didn't have a dedicated revenue source for resiliency, whether that's transfers from the general fund or a dedicated source, those projects would need to go back into somewhere. Um, and so typically that I would recommend that it would be storm water where they would land.

Okay. Thank you. And then um in in your work with the uh uh consultants who are working on the rate increases, has there been any comparison or or even just generalization made about will these rate increases put us, you know, will that will that mean that people in St. Pete Beach are paying twice as much for these utilities as they are if they live in unincorporated Penllis County or neighboring cities or or or do we not know that yet? I mean does it does it you know like or do we have any information about that? You will in the comprehensive presentation they did some benchmarking. Okay. But we don't we don't have that yet. Okay.

We don't have their final report yet. She's extrapolating some of the information from their draft. Y but when we bring it forward we will show you that information. This analysis is the most basic of what are your needs? How much would you have to collect? Right. And the next layer you'll get is how does it compare to benchmarking um also there um tonight on your agenda is an item to expand it a little bit further to look at do we have the right rate structure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Um I I have a series of questions but I'm you know I'm just trying to particularly around the the Commissioner Mary, I kind of touched on some of the the wastewater or storm water, right, versus wastewater. Um, you know, you say you got uh you know, I'd like to understand that the distinction between the capital improvement projects that are storm water versus wastewater specifically. You mentioned that if we didn't um have the funding in in in all of the storm water, you would flow them into into wastewater. And I'm trying to understand the the the capacity that we have, the capital pieces that we have for wastewater. Let me say this is general, you're asking me to to comment on revenue sources and how we're going to make revenue, but I I personally generally don't think of my personal household that way. I don't go how do I get more money and then and then what I want to spend it on second. I'd rather us talk about what we want to spend it on and and go through the my understanding the second half of this would be about the pieces where we spend our money. make sure that we whittle those out because I think I want to make sure that we're spending our money in all the right places before we come back and like it feels like we're putting the cart before the hearse. We're saying we're saying how we gonna get more money and then later we'll tell you about how we want to spend it and where we want to spend our money and I'd rather reverse that and say how do we want to spend our money make sure we want to spend our money in all the right places. Maybe whittle off some of the 200 million by saying we don't want to spend money in those areas and then find out what the the the resulting revenue is that we need to generate accordingly. And so I'm I'm just a little at a loss to to figure out why we didn't start with here's the spending opportunities over the next, you know, year or five years or whatever it is and make sure that those are all still viable or valid and then figure out where we need to be raising money. So that's kind of maybe I'm I'm just at a loss in that sense and more commentary than than where we go from here. But, you know, one of the things I've been

I've been thinking about is is uh you know, an idea that I didn't hear here was uh was perhaps considering selling off some of our assets. Um, very specifically, I've had some conversations with some of our county commissioners as I've been kind of getting my understanding of how we fit inside with our neighbors up the beach communities as well as within the county. And one of the things that was suggested that we should contemplate is is um potentially what some of our our neighboring communities have done is is kind of sold their infrastructure visavv in this case sewage out back to the county. So we we uh we kind of work our own revenue streams and our own costs on sewage. And yet we can't do anything but spend any money that we make back on sewage. And so, you know, I'm I'm of the mindset that I'd like to contemplate uh selling off some of our assets and very specifically in this case our sewage asset. Uh and I know it's not been covered in this in this discussion, but again, for me, it would help me to understand, you know, we we start with a premise that we've got 200 million to spend over the next five years. I'd like to make sure that we vet that and make sure that that's accurate first because I'm not sure that that everything on that $200 million list is critical. Um I I know I you know for those of us that got the packet I've looked ahead. I know that there's some rankings and some some matrix. I think for me I' I'd prefer to start with that as my basis and say what do we really need to spend over the next 5 years, 10 years, next year and uh and then go all right what's our revenue shortage from there and how we're going to raise the revenue. That's generally how I would approach this. And I know we're starting with here's our revenue and how which ones do we want to pursue. I'm at a loss for how to how to answer that until I understand what we really need to to fund. And so, um, I'll just don't know that I need you to respond to it as much as say that it's it's, um, I'm gonna have a hard time telling you,

yes, this this revenue source I want to pursue and this one I don't when I don't really fully grasp um that that all 200 million that we're proposing is is critical and and dire, right? I'd rather we start with because I I assume if I'm reading the packet right, you're going to come to me after we talk about revenue, you say, "All right, here's our capital projects and here's where we're going to be looking to spend our money." And it just seems reverse to me. I'd rather talk about where we should spend our money and then find out what our shortfall is and then talk about revenue. Um, so I, you know, you asked all the questions. I didn't want to derail you starting off, but that's just my perspective on this, frankly. So

may or may offer maybe if we operated from the assumption today that we're not going to even even if there are some capital projects that this commission decides not to pursue you have a shortfall. Understood. So if we just operated from that just basic assumption if you have a shortfall on things that you know you need not that you just want so because these aren't projects that you know nice new shiny park or I understand that

then just policywise pro providing us direction on where you'd like to spend our energy on giving you more information behind those potential revenue venue sources. Not necessarily deciding tonight yes or no like we're definitely doing this. It's more staff we would like you to spend your energy in these areas because we know we're looking at a potential shortfall and so we're just planning understood

and tracking with you from that perspective. If I look at I'm not sure if it's slide it says page 26 of 96 or it's it's 23 is a is a superimposed on it. This feels like all of our kind of options just kind of laid out and I'm not sure if you can bring that back up please Devin. You know these feel like our options and yet I see I think it says 26. It's your slide 23 and then it says page 28 of 96 on my screen here and it's a matrix of here go that was it right there. Thank you. And so for me I you know and there's a lot of unknowns. There's a lot of TBDs on revenues and there's things that you know I I can't make decisions on like a lot of these say I you know we don't know uh you know the the revenue associated with it. Um, some of these are or we don't know exactly when we're going to be able to give you an answer on it because it's going to take, you know, multi-year staff time. And so I think for me, help me understand, you know, how do we how do we take these DBDs or unknowns and make them known because I think that helps us make a decision where you say, "Well, do you want to do a CRA?" And we go, "We don't know what revenue we're going to make off of a CRA." And I get I get I get the complexities. Don't don't read me wrong. I'm not saying I don't understand the complexities, but we're we're asked to say let's let's decide to do that or not or pursue it or not, I guess, to to city manager's request. And if it turns out that it's a you know, I I'd like to get a little more certainty to it and and maybe I I know that we can't pinpoint it, but if you told me it's I'm going I'm going to be extreme here, so on purpose. uh if you told me it it takes us uh two years worth of effort to pursue and we're going to make $500,000 off of it, that's a pretty easy one. But if we're going to make $10 million off of it, you know, maybe it's worth it. And so because we have some of these unknowns, I'm trying to figure out how can we how do we close

out these unknowns and make sure that make them known like what's the effort in in making these unknowns known understand the question? Okay, that one I think is sort of a direct question, please.

Yeah, no problem. So, I think um and correct me if I'm wrong, city manager, but uh the intent would be for us for the commission to say, "Yes, green light, please go investigate this further." And then we would track with you and say, "We've spent this much staff time trying to determine how much we can get out of a CRA, for example. Um, and this is what we're recommending. And if we spend the next 3 to six months working on that project and then came back and told you it's 500,000, then that's a different scenario like you're saying, if it's $10 million." And so that would be the intent today is just to determine how much more effort do you want us to put into researching these different revenue items. Not should we um bring you a resolution to increase the fees tomorrow or to implement with an ordinance tomorrow. Just should we continue with our staff efforts that we've done so far?

Yes. I think easier for me to say is is here's the ones that I I don't think we should be pursuing but not necessarily the ones that I think will bear fruit in the long run for us. Is that a fair statement of of what you're asking for us? Yeah. Okay. Because I will tell you before I would decide on any of these as a as a decision on on my part of of the behalf of the city, I would I would need a lot more information on some of these certainly. But if you're asking me should we continue pursuing to gather that information that's easier for me to

Yeah. I think it's we are more at the philosophical level right now. So for example, I'll use the uh bonding was this was the public conversation at finance committee and we had one commission com committee member that philosophically is against um taking on debt.

So that's some of the things you're wrestling with right now. Are you just is your value system just philosophically against ever issuing debt or no there are times we need to issue debt and there might be an appropriate project and we would like you to pursue that. But if five of you said we never want to have any debt in the city as city manager I would be taking that off the table and saying we got to figure this out without debt. If that it does it does that's kind of the level I'm asking today is okay where do your philosophical values sit and helping us so we don't spend all this effort and then say well I was never going to never going to Yep. Got it. That makes sense to me. Okay. Okay.

Thank you. Um, okay. With that, I think my questions are good. Thank you.

So, please help us with what guidance you're looking for. You're looking for some direction, right? I think we have a few more questions. I have questions. Okay. Oh, I'm sorry. I missed that. I apologize. Commissioner, can we go back to the fire assessment fee, please? Um, I'm sorry. I apologize. I don't have my readers with me, so everything's a little slower and a little bit more difficult for me. If they're 250s or greater, I could probably use that 1.5. I'll still be enlarging this. Quick question on this. I'm just a few of them I have questions on. I'd like to go through them real quick. Um, is this for fire assessment fee? Is this for new or existing? Existing existing existing okay so it's all properties

I'm sorry so is your question is it for current properties or correct or new properties it would be for any property in the city so it be thank you okay just want to make sure current level service

okay current level of service all properties and that uh includes uh residential units as well so everybody okay just wanted to make sure Okay. And um under the next one which is the um parking base as far as have we looked at anything as far as PSTA assessment on the street wear. I'm sorry. PSTA assessment on the street wear. Oh, we did not. I'm not sure if that's included in

because we didn't ask for the I mean I would say specifically Sunrunner. We were as a city against having the Sunrunner and that was kind of forced upon us. Is there anything we can do on that assessment? I'm making a note of it.

Okay. um CRA uh we've already done our our study so we've already been moving along on this one. Have we gotten any feedback from Penllis County because they're ultimately have to approve this how how is that look on from Penllis County if we can get an update please? We'll have Director Canary come up. She's leading that project.

Hello Laura Canary, community development director. So, we received the comments back from county staff and we're working through those now. Um, candidly, as we said it in the very beginning, this was going to be a heavy lift. So, some of the comments back in the county staff's u mind is is intended to strengthen our case for a CRA. So, we're responding to all of those comments, but we're doing it in a memo format. We're not taking an amended F back to you all. But so the next thing that you'll see is basically the memo that we're providing back to the county and we'll be highlighting how we addressed each of their comments and then the next step will be to really start with those one-on- ons with the county commission.

Okay. I just I bring that up because I kind of heard through the grapevine that it wasn't looking promising that Penelis County wasn't looking for giving back much of what they they're getting. There's been a lot of talk countywide, especially with uh the city of Largo went forward a couple weeks ago to request a tiff for one of their districts and the hearing did not go. It wasn't very favorable for the city. So, I think that that has a lot to do with what we've been hearing. Okay. So, that's So, nothing really has changed though. Nothing's changed, but we should we've invested this we've invested so much so far. It wouldn't I mean, it would behoove us to continue even if it's a no. I mean, in my opinion, so I'm sorry, say that again.

I would say we've we've invested a lot so far into the CRA as far as spending monies on doing the uh study and continuing to this point with at a at a memo phase, I guess it is, or uh reply phase. Yes, at this at this point it's pretty much internal staff as well as leadership and administration working with the county before we were to take any major steps moving forward on the actual plan. We'll have we'll see the writing on the wall because the next step would be to basically get the delegation of authority through the county. And in that discussion is when we'll we'll be able to make the necessary steps to say, hey, maybe it makes sense to pivot. The other thing is is that um as we've said all along that even if for some reason we don't end up moving forward with the traditional CRA tiff district as it's structured traditionally and historically we still have some maybe other options. We've identified this area the need is there. Um so it gives us some really good data and metrics to use to really go about other funding you know um um opportunities as well as potentially through an interlocal with the county. we can, you know, what they're looking at with Largo, they've asked them to come back with a request under the 50%. So, they haven't said no, but they've said that they really don't feel comfortable with the 50% contribution. So, um, so yes, I I think that's a long way of answering that this work isn't for for nothing at the end of the day. I think at the end of the day, it'll still give us a tool that we'll be able to use to help leverage and layer funding for the projects needed in the area. Um so would you say the heavy lift on this is mostly done because we have the we have uh the study behind us the uh finding of necessity behind us.

I think the heavy lift lifting is happening is about to begin

is is beginning. Okay. Thank you Laura. Um I see everything saw that coming. uh reclaim storm water and uh wastewater all are high ticket items that uh we're looking um have um the re uh resident services revenues um they seem really low as far as the fees what we're generating there I mean that's basically it's one salary so I $66,000. That's like one person salary. So, how are we staffed over there? Are we looking to staff more people? Are we fully staffed? Where are we at? Because if we're only getting $66,000 for for for revenue generating there in that area, I I would I I would think we're very low.

Yeah, we are still going through our um our fee study and we'll be presenting that information to you all. And it actually may be uh 66,000 was pretty low when we predicted this prior to going through what was uh our recommendation through our fee study. So we'll have a new proposal once we get to that point. Um but yeah, we are fully staffed right now. So we we just lost one uh position, but we should be able to go ahead and fill it. So if that's what you're asking me. And then I think to clarify, this is the additional revenue on top of what you're already collecting. Yeah, this is additional on top of of what we're already collecting. what's already budgeted.

So there's increases in the service increase. Okay. It's just it's just a very to me a very low figure in the scheme of things. We we think that the projection will actually be a little bit higher once we uh finalize that fee study and go through that whole process and everything, but we wanted to give a conservative estimate for this. When will that fee study be done? Um the fee study is done and we're actually taking it to commission here probably at the beginning of June. I believe it's going to be on either the beginning or the middle of June. That will be before our next workshop. Uh June 9th is our And then when's the isn't it June 14th? I think it's June 14th that we're taking it to you. Okay. Thank you, Mandy. You're welcome.

Toll roads. Um I see that as an overwhelming no, but I do have questions. Has anybody spoken with um Sarasota Stickney Point Road? I believe we're sticking Point Road. Who's actually doing the research here on this one? We haven't done any research.

Okay. Because I I do know that the state sold one of their roads uh to Sarasota and Sarasota turned it into a toll road. And the only reason I bring this up is just to see, you know, learning from other people's whether they be mistakes or they they be advantages. Where are they at? How's it working out? That sort of thing. I I would like to see some data on that at least. I We're looking at a very big nut to cover and I'd hate to see this fall on the residents because what we're talking about here is it's falling on the residents basically with assessments honest to be honest. Um the philanthropy just seems like such a small item. I may not we couldn't even get something really done for the Mary Pier or the shuff I'm sorry shuffle board. Um I mean it's great if it happens it happens but it's something that I just don't know if it's it it's you know community reach out but it it's I don't think a lot of time needs to be spent on that. Um, and um, can you give me Sorry, I wrote something and I cannot read my own writing. And of course, I can't blow that up. Your glasses. Thank you. Um, uh, let's see. I I can tell you from the roundup, the roundup at the register, I'd rather do a donation box at the front of city hall. I mean, I'm just so tired of every time I go to any place, literally any place. I don't mind rounding up, but it's just absolutely everywhere. Um, so

if we can get donations, great. Um, give me some examples of other cities that have done advertising on city vehicles, buildings, parks, and billboards. Don't know if we have any local ones. Um, a lot of times it would be on more of their transit system, which we don't have in St. Pete Beach. And so, um, it was just an idea that we had thought about if that would give us any sort of revenue generating opportunities or not. Okay. Um I was hoping there might be something. We were looking at another city and they had some great ideas, but um so I would say no on that one. Hondas. Um so let's see. And for

actually I was just in somewhere near Tampa Bay Rays and their public safety vehicles have Tampa Bay Rays on them. Okay. So, that was one example I've actually seen. Um, I think this group was this was the end of day tired ideas, but we did think about freebie. Who is making advertising money on a But that's on our that's on our transportation side. Exactly. So, we're not talking about it here. So, I'd like to leave that off because that's fine. We We are not married to any of these ideas. We were just trying to be as creative as possible. Can we trademark St. P beach.

I will write that as an idea and charge a fee for using it. I'm just trying to think outside of the box that's not going to that's not going to again fall on the residents with a huge increase. Um, so it looks like of the bond items, the three that we can do, at least two of them, well, one has to be referendum and the other two have to be revenue backed with something. And whether that be as an assessment itself or it be we we we don't what else would we have?

We could put it against um our parking revenues. So that would be an option where it's not adversely impacting residents. Um but that's about our only one that we can put it against and that's a relatively small number in the scheme of things. Well, with our projected increase of the 2 million, if the commission said we want to take that 2 million and we want you to pick a project, one of the larger ones like we referenced here, I think would that fall into our reclaimed

or it could fall into any of it could fall into any of them and you could say we want to utilize that as a dedicated um revenue backing option for the city. So that is a that's a positive that isn't impacting residents not allowed. Can we go to 51? I'm going to say page 51, slide 48. Business fees are allowed. Correct.

Which one are you looking at? I'm sorry. Uh, local vacation rental search charges or registration. Registration fees are allowed. Business fees are allowed. Correct. Yes. So, have we looked into short-term rental uh business fees applications? Um, have uh short-term rentals have to register and pay a registration or a business fee to operate as a business in the city? So, this was an area where Ralph helped us. I don't know if you can help us out on this one.

That's likely preempted. Uh, I imagine that's what uh Ralph was discussing with you all. Um there's a lot of legislations um legislation regarding uh short-term rentals that kind of freezes where we are um already on that. That's something I I would personally need to look in further um with more detail on what kind of business fee you were looking to charge. Yeah, I would look I would I would look towards that because I know is even if you own a triplex out here, you have to get a business license to operate that. And I'm not sure why as a short-term rental, which you were operating a business that you would not need to have a business license to do so.

So that's what I would be looking for as a fee and potentially looking at those fees to see if those fees need to be increased. So I I'm looking at at that side of it, not as a sir tax, not as a you know, how many times or you know based on how much they generate or anything like that, just simply a business tax on operate a business license. getting a business license and how much that would how much we could do on that. Okay, that's something we can look into further. Um, that's something I'm actually already researching. So, I'll add that because I believe our we've had a extreme growth in our uh short-term rentals here. So, that might um help.

Can we charge a registration fee for something that's not allowed though? I mean, like you're allowed to do short-term rentals here. A few. Yeah, in some places. But I mean the the the huge increase that we've seen in short-term rentals has mostly been in ones that are getting drugged in front of the magistrate to make them stop. So I don't think we can charge them a registration fee and then tell them they can't do it.

And there should be a huge fine for doing that. And the thing is that we need to have people register their short-term rentals and that should be an ordinance to have have registration of short-term rentals within the city so that we can track it. I think that's I think that's all the questions I have for now. Thank you. Thanks. You're welcome. You're welcome. Uh Commissioner Cy.

Oh, thank you. Thank you for the great work. Um, so I kind of agree with the mayor about understanding the why. If you're going to raise fees, it has to be clear in everyone's mind the why behind it. So, um I see that we have our our budget for what we think we need to spend, but do we really understand that those uh which things do have to be spent? Like I think anybody that I've talked to over the last 6 months is willing to pay almost whatever it takes to for their um sewage to leave the island if that's what it takes. So, but that's the why that we would have to tell them. So, if we were just going to stick with wastewater, I think we need to understand why and exactly what we have to have over for next year. and then it's probably time to have that five or 10year plan if not comprehensively but at least for that specific thing. So instead of trying to put together an entire 10-year plan, maybe it'll actually just get put together by the things that we need for next year because I don't think we can really um talk about what we're going to do next year without that longer term plan. And if we're going to do a bond, uh, then, you know, we'll have the repayment of that over a long period of time anyway. So, that all needs to be thought out. Um, but if the why is there, then any of these things would be buyins if they're

actually required in order to solve specific problems. So we might need to stop back up a step and talk about exactly what has to be done next year from uh the staff's perspective. And so I would say I would classify that under philosophically the why like your philosophy might actually change uh depending on the circumstances you're in. And then um the other thing that I've been wanting to have a feel for is the order of magnitude of the different options. And I see it looks like you've refined that on this um and given us the chart. Uh see if I can find that page again where the priorities are. I think we were up around 23, weren't we? Where it showed the amounts per Yeah. looking at your finance budget. That's uh page 23 on mine.

Is this the chart you're referring to? Uh that is it. Okay. So on the list, I see the fire assessment fee is is really high at 3 million a year. So it just seems like well that would be a good solution compared to um some of the ones that are so low. if we're trying to figure out how to how to spend time. But if you were going to add the fee on, you would need to justify that specific fee or the why behind that fee, I guess, specifically. Do we can we speak to that like right now

for the fire assessment fee specifically? like we need that because so what that um would do is it would offset the cost um for our fire services that we currently have um and we would have to go through a study process where they're ensuring and get making a recommendation for us um which would come back to this commission that would say here's the amount that you would look to assess um and I don't know if Adam has the idea whether It's different for residential and commercial. I believe it is.

Well, L. So, what I think I'm you're telling me is the why on that one is that because we're funding it now from the general fund and you want it to be self sufficient. Is that is that is that correct?

Yes, that's correct. Adam Poyer, uh, assistant city manager. Um, yes. So, the fire assessment feed right now, communities all over Florida are looking at different ways to fund necessary operations, right? because there's a lot of pending legislation at the state level. So, uh, several of our communities here in Penllis County have, uh, started the process to initiate a fire assessment fee. Currently, your EMS fees all come through a different funding source, and fire assessment fees can't, uh, be used for EMS anyway. So, that's kind of off the table. So, um, this option is on the table to basically save that general fund money, use the fire assessment fee to fund your fire service, and those ERUs. The important thing to understand about the ERUS is um it's both residential and commercial. So from a residential perspective, if you look across the state uh some of the communities that have fire assessment fees in place like Fort Lauderdale, you know, obviously you have one price for residential and then commercial are typically based on square footage. So usually they're you know some communities look at that as as the larger um higher usage of of emergency services are paying a higher cost if that makes sense. But yes, to answer your question directly, um it's looking to not have to utilize general fund money to fund your fire department.

So there's sort of two W's in this case. Like there's the why Phil the the finance uh to have your finances in order. Uh why like we're not going to fund it through the general fund, but then there's the why at the actual specific use. So you know, why do we need the three million per year? So we would in that particular case we would have to justify why do we need the 3 million. That

that's absolutely correct. So part of that part of before you can uh initiate any type of assessment you have to prove the need for that assessment. So that that's why that study is so important for this and you would have to do that on a regular basis to basically justify the rate that you're charging your residents and your commercial property owners. Okay. And so using this one as an example, we were saying that what was the timeline for a study for this particular one. I believe we had it at 24 months to from start to implementation is is about a 24-month process. We do have a we do have a proposal on on what it would cost to do a study, but there are a lot of steps that you have to do legislatively before you can uh move forward with something like this.

So this could be part of a 10-year scheme, but it's not going to help us for next year's budget at all. It would not help us with next year's budget concern.

All right, I'm going to keep moving along then. Thank you. Um, so the order of magnitude options. Um, so in other words, how much of the problem would that solve for us? Each each individual option like whatever the why is that we're trying to solve for, that's the problem. And then what percentage of that problem would this option solve? That's what I'm really wanting to have a very clear picture of. And maybe part of what we're struggling with though is actual the actual why. And then um and then so we might need to talk about that some more. Um as far as bonds go, I think you don't want to have to do a bond unless you have to. And once again, that just plops us right back down to the why. So I think there's hundreds of cities all over the state and the world that reached the point to where they have to have a bond because they're the the infrastructure has reached the end of its life. So it's got to be redone. So that kind of brings me to where the why for our city. Where are we actually in our city with say the the wastewater? So, we have a study going on that's not going to be done until fall that tells us, as I understand it, the state of our wastewater lines. So, I I guess um we might need to understand the how much we really need for that in order to be able to make a good decision on how much we need for the fees to go up. Like, do we have to replace all the pipes? Do we need to just repair a few? Do we have to reline everything? And when will we have any information about that?

So, I I feel like maybe there might be some value in Camden. Yeah. Coming up for about five minutes to tell you how he came up with this $218 million number because the city has spent thousands of dollars studying the infrastructure and he spent several months culminating all of those studies to bring you this number.

That's great. So, we just want to make sure what we're talking about and and I see the um 141 number there. And so, I want to understand what we need for next year and um how that plays out over time, but I still don't understand the study that we're doing right now that's not done. I I'd like to speak to that. if Camden could talk about what we're seeing so far in the cameras uh in all of the wastewater lines and what it looks like we need to spend.

Sure. Uh thank you for the record uh public service director Camden Mills. Um so that as you mentioned that project will be completed later this fall. So that's when we'll have you know the prioritized report with with cost estimates and we can strategize based on that. So what's in the capital plan now proposed could very well change you know once we get that new data. Um what's proposed now is is just our best estimate based on the data that is available to us currently. Um so the last time a study of of that magnitude was done was about 2017. So we're using data from from that study that we know was work that wasn't you know completed um between now and then. So we're we're using estimates from that as well as projecting out um historically what have we spent on repairs. Um so projected out kind of what what that would look like. Um so what's what's in there right now is is our best estimate of what we know. Um but that information could be changed as we complete these televising and inspection reports and then we have a you know a new deliverable of what our long-term prioritization should be. So, you feel like the number could go higher based on the study we're doing now if they find additional things that need to be done?

It it could go higher. It could it could go lower. Yeah. So, you've sort of given us an average like your estimate of what you think it's going to say based on the repairs that you're having to do over the last year, couple of years. Correct. Yeah. the repairs that we've done over the last few years coupled with, you know, the known improvements that we we already did know about from from the prior study. And Camden, maybe could you give an overview of the studies that the city's completed that brought you to the conclusion under storm water and resiliency? What is driving that $140 million? Sure. Sure. So, that's that's a good point here. So, it's not just wastewater, it's

Yes. Yeah. As it as it relates to storm water, too. So the the city had a a storm water master plan, drainage master plan that was done back in 1993. So that's one of the older dated studies that we have that established um level of service throughout the city and it also identified 25 different um priority areas. Um that study was revisited um back in 2012 and at that time that was when they looked at you know well a lot of these projects weren't getting done. How do we create a funding mechanism um to realize those projects? So that's when the city uh created the storm water utility fee and that was supposed to be the mechanism that that funded some of those projects. Um from the time frame of about 2012 up to about um 2017 kind of time frame we were working through those prioritized projects in in that drainage master plan. And then about the 2020 time frame it looked like we kind of came to a head where we said hey you know we're constructing these projects per our storm water master plan. we're not quite seeing the the benefits that we are hoping for. Rather than a conventional, you know, storm water master plan where we're just addressing the rainfall, let's look at a more water threats approach where we're looking at um, you know, the elevated tide, future sea level rise, uh, more intense storms. So, that's when the city's um, strategy on planning for storm water resiliency improvements changed in that 2020 uh, time frame up to 2023. We did a series of of water threats analysis which really looked at of all of those water threats, groundwater, tidal water, and rainwater um coming from you. And so a lot of those um storm water resiliency type projects that you'll see. So you'll have the Donsar and Bokea area resiliency. Um you have the Northwest area, the Northeast area, and then the Passagril and Vina area. Those are four distinct different geographical areas of the city where they were looking at long-term resiliency improvements. So what is shown in that storm water plan

for those projects is what is what was reflected back in those older studies?

Well, city manager, do you think there's more that you would you were asking him to provide or is he covered everything that you think we need to hear right now relative to the question? I I think he covered both systems pretty well. Just a high level of how we got here, right? How we got there, where we are right now and what has to be done next year to so that'll be like we are not going to fail,

right? So today is a mix of shortterm and long-term fiscal planning. I'd say 80% of today is long-term fiscal planning. You it will not show up in your fiscal year 27 budget revenue discussion. the most likely revenue opportunity you have will be the fee studies that we're bringing forward through resident basically operating wastewater reclaimed and storm water. So those presentations will be coming parallel to your adoption of the budget and so the only decision you'll be making around actual revenue considerations of any more than you currently are collecting will be around those four fee studies that are coming forward. The rest of today is really a longer term how do we solve for five to 10 years out and then after this presentation which I just want to let you know from a time perspective we could continue this into the regular meeting if that's the desire of the commission to talk about the capital um you will be providing us direction on priorities because that's with the money that is available not considering any new revenue what will your capital budget look like next year. So, you're going to give us the first input and then Camden will come back with a presentation based on your input.

Yeah. So, um, of course, our our what we think money needs to be spent on is definitely a function of how dire the situation is and the impact it's going to have on the functionality of the city. Um, I'll just move on for now then. Thank you, Kevin. And then I had I think just one other thing. We were talking about the uh the bed tax and how we can't get any of the bed tax. So, I guess I have the question. Have we uh our lobbyists spent time with the county relative to bed tax? And then I know I heard there are different allocations in other counties, but in Penllis County, we have a set allocation where the bed tax goes and how it's traditionally used. But, you know, we've had these hundredyear hurricanes now. So, it just makes me wonder whether it's a good time to consider whether this million a month traditionally that we've put out, which is um down to 775 if I saw that correctly for our city. We're just we're below St. Petersburg now, but just barely. and um where Clearwater is the biggest contributor to that and and now uh St. Petersburg and then we're just behind them. But uh that's a that's a lot of money that leaves the city. So I guess I would wonder if we could compare what other counties do relative to bed tax and if our lobbyists could help us with that.

Great question, Adam. Adam Poy, assistant manager. So, um, you're 100% right. It's it's a huge revenue source. So, just in very general terms, the state regulates TDC money and then each county can regulate it even further. Uh, our county is fairly restrictive on the on on how we use TDC funds. Um, it breaks up, I believe, 60% to marketing and then it breaks up to large events and capital uh items. But those are uh very very specific on what you could actually use those for. Um we've been trying for years uh to to come up with projects that we could bring those dollars back into our community um to to no success to be honest with you. Um as far as our lobbyists, so uh the two lobbyists that we have right now on staff are at the federal level and at the state level. So we don't have a lobbyist specifically under contract to to to talk with the county officials. From my perspective, um certainly it's all about relationships and and probably the local leaders, speaking with the local leaders and and trying to uh make some movement uh on on how the county breaks up those those TDC funds. I'll tell you the state has, to your point, exactly what you're saying based on all the things that have happened in our state. The state has loosened uh the ability to use TDC uh funding for other projects. The county has not uh kind of changed their their mindset on it. maybe a little bit, but but not enough to to benefit us as St. Pete Beach. So, and yes, we are below St. Pete right now, but we're we're we're steadily climbing back to the number two spot, which is where we have been historically, and I believe we'll we'll we'll get back to that point here pretty soon.

So, I hope that I don't know if that answer Yeah, it did. It did. Yeah. Commissioner Maldonado.

U Thank you. So, I I will just say uh philosophically that I'm not in favor of a uh toll road concept. I think that it's not the right time for the city to take on a huge bite of maintenance and care for a roadway that traditionally has been maintained by the uh the county. Just want to talk about the uh general obligation fund for a second. I know that director Mills also participated or at least attended this Panelis County initiative uh to seek a go bond for $600 million. I don't know if anyone else attended that. It was very informative. I thought that they did a great job of explaining it, but I just wanted to say that ultimately even if we unanimously pursue a go bond, it's up to the residents. And that's one of the beauties of of this type of thing is that we can think it's great, but ultimately the people get to decide. Um, and I just wanted to kind of go back and maybe we're looking at this differently from our experience and our perspectives. But under this balanced budget, which is uh called a balanced budget, but it really is, you know, on the reliance of grants, our reserves, and general fund transfers, we're barely able to cover the operating expenses and our existing debt. So to your point, Mr. Mayor and Commissioner Kazy, you know, we're not in a position to sufficiently project or fund capital improvements in the system. So as these things come up, as we need to pivot and make directional changes to cover unexpected expenses, I think that I'm very comfortable with our ability as a city to address those issues as they come up. It's very hard to sit here and ask Director Mills to tell us exactly when, how much, and where things are going to come up. It's the same thing in our own residences. We open up a uh a small line of pipe to try to line it or to put in a flood valve or something and

then we realize that it's a much major uh or or costly uh expense that we had not projected for. That is subject to happen with the city. Uh so therefore I'm cautious of pushing too much on defining exact requirements. I will also say that it's a very strategic approach from what I understand. Correct me if I'm wrong that we're looking at these needs, you know, 218 $133 million as a long-term need for the city. It was previously described as a deficit. I was never comfortable with that. I will say that this is a, you know, bite as we need, move as we need um goal and that it will be adjusted. It's a moving scale. So, I'd like to keep this very philosophical in terms of the direction that we provide to staff and and I do appreciate your your questions of trying to get down into the weeds and things like that, but I think that it's impossible to project things that we just don't know about. So, thank you.

Sorry, Commissioner Marott.

One one couple of last questions. Um I uh f first a comment. Um, Commissioner Robinson mentioned that on some of the assessments or the the fee increases, um, concerns about it falling um, mostly on the backs of the residents, and I understand that concern. I did want to point out though that that a lot of these things being based on ERUS, which are equivalent residential units. And so what that means is that the biggest house in the city is still one ERU. Um and and my commercial building for instance that 6,000 square feet is three erus. 3.3 erus. So um so those things that are based on erus you could argue fall significantly heavier on commercial properties than they do on residents because because we pay for more erus per square footage significantly. Um and so so I think that at the end of the day what it means is that the the the costs are pretty evenly shared amongst the community. Um and then my only other question which may be a question for Devon or maybe for the city manager or maybe for Camden, I'm not sure. But when we when we talk about um when we talk about bond financing, I'm I'm assuming the advantage of that is either as Commissioner Causy says, we have failures that need to be fixed immediately and we don't have the money or we're assuming that if we fix things now in with with money we get now in today's dollars, we're going to pay less than if we do the project over time or do it later, right? And so so the the benefit the or the the presumed benefit would be that that it's going to cost us less because we're doing it with today dollars even though we're paying it off over time. And so my question is do do we have the capacity? You know, does it are are we really would we really be able to complete some of these really big projects in a timely

enough fashion with bond financing to make the math work in our favor versus doing them over time based on our capacity to actually do the work? That would be a Camden potentially.

Let me try and then if you don't like my answer, I can have a one of of Camden or Devon helped me out. So, so your your an your question is multironged. So, yes, depending on interest rates. So, that's something you're tracking on financing and you saw a lot of uh government type construction when interest rates were super low. people were building libraries and all the things that maybe that the I wouldn't say nice to have but it's not critical failure of a health and safety issue. Um so yes we if we were to look at that right now we are in a position where some things might be at critical failure. Some of our neighborhoods are flooded on a daily basis. I would say that's probably close to to a failure point, not only for the residents, but the roads and the storm drain systems. And so that would be a reason you would want to watch interest rates because you're going to if you can get a low interest rate, you're definitely going to save money over time. And then because of inflation on cost of construction, since the pandemic, we have not seen any relief on year-over-year double-digit increases in construction. So, that would be my simple answer. Um, if you'd like more detail, Camden could probably dive into it a little more.

No, that that's all really good information. I guess the only piece that that's missing there is is is do we have the capacity to to to get the work to to to realize the savings in in by by doing a project up front and and saving over because of the cost of inflation. Do we have the cap the capacity to actually do the work in time to save?

We would still need to prioritize. I don't think, you know, we're we're too small to take on if you if you all just waved your magic wand and said, "Here's city manager. Here's $213 million." You know, we're not a city the size of Clear Water or St. Pete that can pivot that quickly with the level of teams and engineers and design teams. So, no matter what, we need to phase this then over time.

Okay. Um and and no matter what, regardless of the phasing, unless we're going to phase it in over 30 years, but even 10 years, we would need some capacity, whether it's through contractors or engineers on staff to help us get us through that level of construction would be necessary. Now, that's already built into the cost of these projects.

Okay? So, you know, even in our cost allocation, you're seeing us charge staff to your capital program because that's where the money is at. That's where they're spending their time. And so, that the same thing would happen. And many of these projects are multi-year projects. So, one of the benefits is engineers like exciting projects. So you can typically hire an engineer and you know the way career progression goes now they spend three or five years at a city they do a great project and they go to the next city to do the next great project. So it's it's been feasible to you're not hiring a 20-year you know lifetime city engineer to come in and do a project necessarily. We know that capital turns over just like just like permitting it es and flows and they're used to that in the marketplace. So, that was a long answer, but

no, that that's helpful. It's all doable and feasible, but I could tell you I couldn't handle 213 million in bonded money tomorrow and get all this done for you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Robinson.

Um, I did want to make a comment too as far as with the sewer system because there are concerns on the subrias line um and it's its end of life which is approaching quite quick. Um, and did want to say in in regards to Penllis County selling our sewer system to Penllis County back in and Camden, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but we haven't really done any maintenance on our sewer system unless there's it's been breakage. I mean, we haven't been lining them up until now when we were talking about it. Correct. We we have done some work but not at the rate that's recommended in our um asset management plans.

Just because I know in 2017 Panelis County offered to buy Treasure Island's sewer system for 3.8 million and St. Pete Beach tried to do the same and they were told that we had to pay Penllis County 10 million because of the because of the condition that our sewer system is in. Mhm. And that was proven by the surveys as well that the the studies that were done and and the surveys that were done on our sewer system. So, it would be a long time before we could ever sell ours um without having to pay to sell it. I mean, we'd have to pay to get rid of it.

Yeah, I think that's a safe assumption. Yeah. So, um, my understanding was, uh, Cam, correct me if I'm wrong, uh, back when we had the comp plan come into, uh, into existence, we did some work in the in the large resort district because the infrastructure was significantly insufficient to uh, to grow into that comp plan. And I think there was a moratorum that was placed and through that we did a significant amount of infrastructure work in that area. Is that correct or am I mistaken?

That's correct. And all all of the projects outlined in in that plan were completed. Um the major one was the the force main um replacement along Gul boulevard.

And so for me I you know I think I'm looking at the rest of this packet and I realize we've only got about halfway through it, right? So, for me, I will feel much more armed and ready, per se, uh, once we've gotten through that list of capital projects because I see they're all ranked in a matrix of, you know, one to I don't have a high number here, but you've got your your green, yellow, red, orange kind of matrix here. And for me, that's that's kind of the staffer. That's whomever saying these are the high priority critical items are the are the I assume the the green ones are the ones that are the highest priority and the reds are the lowest priority if I kind of working on what I see here. Uh but I think for me I' I'd love to see us get through that uh so that we can understand because I think there's some things that we can whittle out of there potentially and I realize we're not going to get to zero. Don't get me wrong, I understand that. Uh, but you know, I'd like us to see where we get to on on the comment of of would we have to pay theoretically to give the county our sewage system, we might. But if we don't have to pay 80 million in infrastructure costs and we pay 10 million to give them give them that and they can help us with the other side, I'm I'm intrigued by that. So, you know, I'm I I want to get through the costs

side of this before I can really say that I understand what decisions we need to make cuz I So, Mayor, would you are you suggesting maybe we pause here, move to capital, and then circle back for our kind of voting exercise or alignment with the finance committee? Yes or no? For me, I think that would help because then I understand because I what what I'm suggesting that we're doing in the capital discussion is we're saying that doesn't seem to be as critical as some of the other things and we're trying to discuss what is urgent for this next budgeting cycle as well as short-term to commissioner C's perspective

and I think some of these things have already been deemed for the matrix to be a lower priority item and and I just tick them off and say all right 213's now down to 210 because we took that one item off right and we just keep whittling down and then we finally come back and say here's what we really think we got to get done over the next year, over the next two years, 5 years, 10 years, and be able to make some more decisions on where the revenue comes from in that sense. All right. So, let's shift gears to capital. I don't know who who which one of you are taking the lead. Okay.

Well, definitely need help from Camden, so don't go far, please. And I assume, city manager, you want to get through the presentation before we stop and ask questions. Okay. I'll do my best. I'm going to um skip past this section that's talking about our midyear adjustments since that's on your regular um agenda this evening. So, I'll skip past that section and we can talk about that one later. Okay. So, as we're diving into this preliminary capital improvement plan, um this is walking the the commission through our initial plan. Um, so instead of just presenting what we would consider a wish list of projects, we structured this around the priority matrix that both the finance budget review committee approved and the commission. Um, so that's looking at scoring each project against the 10 criteria. So that the ranking generally affects um risk, community impact, and operational need. Um, so I'll take you just kind of quick refresher. Um this is the 10 areas around um the matrix and so each project is really evaluated against these 10 criteria. Um the core formula is really the likelihood of failure multiplied by the consequence of failure. Meaning if a project scores higher um the project scores higher if the asset is most likely to fail and the failure would cause significant harm. So, um, what we've done here is we've also added, um, an additional weighted, uh, number for anything that might have any grant funding or for a project that can be bundled with other work to reduce

any costs or disruptions to our residents. Um, so, as we're looking at that, I just wanted to um, refresh you on what some of these weights are. So we're waiting health and safety and regulatory mandate as our highest areas um followed by asset condition risk recovery and resiliency bundling and coordination and then you have some lower factors um that are looking around um more life cycle onm funding level restrictions project readiness um and then if there's a community prosperity element or some economic growth so um as you're looking through our project rankings Um, what's before you this evening is all 84 projects. We do not intend to budget for all of those. As you'll see as I carry through this presentation, your 27 budgets in some cases are in the negative. And so what we're showing you is here's the entire capital list that we have provided today. Um, what we would use um is direction from the commission as well as going back as staff and looking at our green areas that must proceed um possible to proceed. and then we would look to either consider to defer um some of those more orange or red categories. Um so to level set um just a little bit I know we've talked quite a bit about revenues at this point um but what I'm showing here for our fiscal year um 27 uh it would be a total uh revenue of uh 34 million 259. This isn't our general fund. The reason why I wanted to show you this today that has our revenues and our expenditures is that um I am showing our other uses that category 90 other uses as an opportunity where um after we've added a 3% to our general fund assuming our adalorum um stays the same

or grows by a small percentage that would be the amount that we have left over to transfer over and share over to our capital projects funds. So that line item there where you see 19.5 million in 2026 8.1 million um 8.4 um this also keeps us balanced at our operating um policy level where we have our 35% that would be needed in the event we had an emergency or a um storm. So I did want to make note of that. Um what the city manager has direct us is to have operating show at a very small 3%age growth and then anything above and beyond that we divert to capital. So we're continuing with that um process with no new revenue sources in there. So within our general fund um you can see here that we have most of our major capital investments are going into our capital projects funds um which is where that's appropriate but where we have some items is uh the fire investment uh which is reflective of any safety equipment life cycle replacements and communication upgrades and then we have a library allocation to keep our physical collection current. Um so these are modest but operationally important um assets. So moving on to our capital fund summary. So you can see here even with um me creating that same transfer that was under other um sources is now our other uses is now showing up under other sources. Um this is not showing or any assumptions around any grants um for our capital projects. And so you can see with the projects that we have outlined today in our general fund, um, we would start going into that negative environment of our fund balance. Obviously, we would never bring a budget forward to this commission that is not balanced. We're just trying to show you the capital

needs as we move forward and give you the holistic pictures of revenues, expenditures, and how that impacts our bottom line. So looking at some of our projects and in each one of your packets you got a description of all of the projects. Um so this is just our our summaries but you can see here um that we are requesting um we do have some greens listed on our capital projects fund and one of those is our um June walkover replacements. We also have um our fisherman's pier park rehabilitation at the tune of 1.5 million and our fishing peers rehabilitation um at 300,000. Um so those are some projects that you can see listed here that um did rank high on our matrix. Devin, can you just go back just for clarity to so maybe you already understand this so I just want to point it out though while she's only highlighting the green you have yellow reds that have money in those line items.

Okay. I just wanted to make sure you're tracking with her. Theoretically something like foot shower and drainage improvements which is red has money associated with it and that's part of the 213 I assume at some point. Correct. Correct. I just wanted to clarify. Thank you. Thank you for that.

Okay. Um, moving on. So, some of our highlights in here. Um, you can see our large one is fire station 22 replacement. Um, we also have Pasigril Way seaw wall replacements. um facility building repairs, public services building improvements, and then we also have our Gulf Boulevard utility undergrounding project. Um we have Bokeh Siega rehabilitation. We have our um Gulf Boulevard utility undergrounding and rehabilitation. And then we also have a hurricane damage rightway as well as roadway rehabilitation. Um so you can see that those are some of the priority projects um that we're showing for uh the capital fund for 27 that ranked in that green category. So moving on to our resiliency fund as we mentioned in that revenue picture um you can see that we have about 8.7 million in ask um for capital projects uh based on that we don't have a revenue source for this fund. Um that's where we're showing how we would end up into that negative fund balance position. Um with these projects, we have quite a few that are um pretty critical. So our community center wall replacement, we do have a a grant for that specific one. Um our Don Cesar Bokeh Siega area resiliency adaptation, North Region Resiliency Adaptation, Northwest Region Resiliency Adaptation. Um all of those are scoring in the green area um and uh for prioritization for 27. So in our parking fund, this would be an area where we could receive some um where we could utilize some of this

funding for balancing. So you'll see on our um forecasting as we had talked about we're expecting to receive about additional two million in revenues in 2027 based on the changes that we made to our parking fees. And so with that um you have a very positive ending fund balance of 5.4 million. Um we could utilize that to offset the cost for any of our other funds. And you can see that this uh parking fund continues to grow with its low costs um and its uh high revenue earning capabilities. So this is a a positive area where we could utilize some of that funding um as we move forward. So moving on to our reclaim or I'm sorry reclaimed moving on to our reclaimed water fund. Um again you can see here that um as we had talked about with the fee study that in 2027 we would start going into the negative as a result of completing capital projects. Um this is a fund where we can um barely break even just doing our regular operations. And so you can see here that we have some green kind of yellow shaded as it relates to our lateral service pipe replacements and our pigport installs and our uh water pipe pegging. All right, moving on to our storm water fund. Again, similar situation here where our um revenues are not sufficient to cover our capital expenditures and we have a request of about 1,25,000 for fiscal year 27. So, looking at what some of those projects are, we have two that are listed as green and one of those is our storm drainage manual as well as our storm water system cleaning

and inspection which carries over um each one of those years as well. Moving on to our wastewater fund. Um, again, I'm sorry I'm not trying to sound like a broken record, but again, we are showing that we're going into the negative here, um, as a result of the capital needs that are, um, dire in each one of these funds. So, um, even with our modest revenue projections, and again, this has none of the fee study information in it. This is just status quo. Um, you can see we would start going into the negative in 2027. This fund in particular has a lot of our highest ranked. So you can see there our number one project sits in there um for our wastewater asset management updates. We also have wastewater collection system improvements, force main one and force main 17. We have our wastewater pumps uh lift station assessment uh lift station pumps overhauls and uh lift station rehabilitation as well as our wastewater control data acquisition conversion. So a lot of green within this fund um and even some that are uh trending towards that yellow green color in our rankings. So with that that takes us through our capital projects. um questions, discussion. We'll probably need Camden up here to answer any of the technical questions you might have from the description of the projects. This is our first look at this. We since we have our five workshops, um we would take any feedback that we received from you today. Um and then we'll start working towards bringing you a balanced budget. Um so, of course, we're not going to bring you with those negatives, but just wanted to show the full picture of what we are working with here.

looking for questions to come up, but I'm all good. So, let me let me just uh since there's no other questions coming out, I do have my own questions. So, help me understand the the ranking the the I understand the criteria. I get it. The red, yellow, green. Who ranked these projects? Is it staff that ranked them? Is it uh you know who ranked the projects and um when was the last ranking done please? Yes. So for public services um Camden I don't know if anybody on your team helped you if it was all you or Yeah. Excuse me.

Okay. And then if I'm correct, uh, you know, your your your green ones when they become green, yellow, and red, right? Uh, the green ones are usually what you would recommend is the the highest priority things that we should be getting on first. Correct. Correct. Mhm. Okay. And then not only are they colorcoded, but then you've also gone and, if you will, forced rank them inside of their color coding. So in the end, if you've got, I think you said 82 projects, I should see a number one through 82. all the way through and they should vary with the ones being green and the yellows being, you know, in the 20s and then presumably at some point I got a bunch of red ones at the end. Is that correct?

That's correct. The only area where you're going to see some confliction is where some of the projects um like the resiliency fund is a good example of this where the projects, let me get right back over there, all ranked at a weighted 65. Um, so those are all going to come through with a number 14 in in the priority. Understood. Okay, fair enough. Got it. Um, so you have some ties in there.

So the staff has already kind of indicated it's almost like you're ask the staff has done kind of what you're asking us to do, which is to to decide which of these are the are the critical ones that we should be focused on because of either end of life or actually if we go back to those same criteria, the same criteria that you've ranked these on. uh let's see uh health and safety regulatory mandate asset condition and risk those are the things that the staff used to rank these things and in the end if I'm if I'm hearing correctly the staff has already kind of gone through these capital projects and essentially provided for the commission's benefit their recommendation on a ranking and not only that but a green being you should get on to this quickly and a red being you could consider deferring that and I don't want to put words in your mouth but It's already kind of been done what's being asked of this commission. Uh and and our our question is I'll ask this of of my fellow commissioners. Do we really feel like we need to do everything that's on this list, red, yellow, and green, or or can we find a strike point? I mean, I in my head, I'm thinking again, I like to think take things back to my home. You know, I've got lots of projects I'd love to do at my house. Uh but I've got so much money coming in and I know that I can't do everything. So I prioritize those projects and I decide which ones are most important to me and I and mentally I'll do a similar exercise. It's what's being done here. How how how you know is it is it a safety issue in my home? You know uh is it regulatory to meet codes of the city? Am I you know what what's the condition of the asset? Am I risk all the way down to you know is it ready to go tomorrow and and those kind of things. So I think many of us naturally do this in our own home and we don't get to do everything that we want to do every year. And so, you know, I in my head, what I would do is I' I'd find a strike point. I'd say, you know, and I'm not saying we can just do this right now as a simple exercise, but, you know, for me, I would say if I'm looking back at your scaling and exactly what's on the screen right here, we've got we've got some things that are green, which you're telling us we should be doing those

quickly. And you've got things in yellow which are kind of in between, and you've got things in red, which you're kind of suggesting to us we can defer. And so, I might ask, has the staff done a an analysis to take this entire list Strike out anything greater than 60, for example. Uh, which which is where you're telling me consider to defer. Strike out everything greater than 60 and then tell me what that 23 number is now sitting at and I assume it's considerably lower than that. Right. And and has the staff done anything like this to kind of just take this draw a strike line and say how much does it cost to get me all of the greens and the yellows or how much take it to cost me to get all the greens. And uh and then I would also add, you know, because this is a 2027 budgeting exercise, I'd like to know which of those that made the cut of green and yellow are are due in 2027. And that to me would indicate the kind of money we we would be recommended by staff to raise to make sure we cover the the big pieces in 2027. I also understand that some of these projects are multi-year projects and so once we start them, we should continue on with them. Um, so I I'm just trying to suggest that that when I I I very specifically, city manager, to your point, you drew out, you know, red and green color coding, and I noticed there was a footwash in there. I don't know that that would be the highest priority. It happened to be red. I'm glad to see that, you know, but I think we could go without without that footwash for another another year if it were me, and it were my home, right? So, um, so I'm trying to find a way to to not assume that we have to do all of this, right? and staff has already given us some recommendations on criticality therein and so again I guess my direct question is have we done any analysis that says we understand the total thing is 213 have we done a strike of where you're telling me considered defer which is effectively your oranges and your reds have you stricken that out and tell me

what that what that new piece is right

we have we have not done that could be our next iteration if that's the the direction that you all wanted us to take and we could bring that back um as part of our next workshop on the 9th and give you that information. Um I would definitely defer to to Camden and the city manager, but I think at some point everything on the list probably does need to be done at at some point based on infrastructure. So, um I think you know we could absolutely do that if that's the direction the commission wants us to take this evening. I mean, for me, I think I think um again, I think I think not all of these are critical. That's what we're kind of hearing. I'd like to understand what's critical. Uh I'd like to understand, my understanding is that we've you've already acknowledged that we've got we're pursuing some grants on certain some of these projects. And so, if those projects are being pursued by grants, I don't want to strike them now if we have the potential of getting a grant for them. So, I'd be looking at grant money. Those projects that are tied to grants, I wouldn't want to strike those in initially, right? And I would assume if they're tied to grants, they're usually a little more critical and they might fall in the green kind of area anyways. But either way, I' I'd be looking where we're pursuing grants. Let's not strike those, right? Um I do still think that we should contemplate uh whether we can sell our sewage or or talk about a sale of an asset and sewage comes to mind and I'd like to understand what the the total piece of that work to the city from its uh from its capital improvement perspective is. Um, and then I know there's some other pieces, you know, I I I think of I don't know, is the mayor of Pier on here for example? Is the mayor of Pier one of the pieces? Right. It is. So, so, you know, can we tie in I I I can I can tell you this. I know that there's uh some work and and I know Miss Canary, I know you're familiar with it as well. There's some there's some ideas in the county to uh to kind of extend the the water taxi

service, right? And so if they extend theoretically, right now it goes between downtown Tampa and St. Pete Pier. There's some discussion going on about potentially bringing that water taxi further perhaps on the St. Pete Beach. Maybe Mary Pier theoretically, and I'm not suggesting it is, but maybe that's a great stopping point for that taxi and it would bring tourism to the area and maybe we could have some conversations about TDT money to help us kind of refurbish that pier. Right. So, I'm looking for areas between grants selling off sewage potentially TDT if we can tie into some of these tourism areas. Um whether the CRA comes to fruition, right? All of these things are things that that that in the end they cost us time and they cost us effort, but they don't cost the residents and the business owners money yet, right? And if we can find out all those issues, we strike this we strike point. We say we're only going to do the green things over the next few years. we'll do the yellow ones in the subsequent years and the red ones we'll get to in you know five years five six and seven wherever that is right and then we we kind of revisit the whole thing so we're not looking at the entire 213 million we're looking at pieces of it and what do we think are the critical pieces and and more specifically to this exercise what are the pieces that are coming in 2027 that we need to figure out how we're going to cover and so when we finished the revenue portion and I said you know it's kind of hard for me to tell you until you tell me what we really This is what I'm talking about. I don't think all these reds and oranges are are need to be done in the next year or two. I haven't looked at them specifically individually. I've gone through the list, but I haven't studied the ranking and say, is it really a red? Should it be a red? Presumably, uh that's how I would approach this as a general, you know, personally I would approach this. And I'd like us to to to exhaust that as we consider what revenue options

we we we'd want to pursue because again I I think just to restate it grants selling off some of our assets. Do we have some tourism development tax we can go? Is the CRA still viable? We've we've forced rank this list and we find out what's really critical. Then we start talking about you know where we need to uh you know talk bonds or or assessments or things like that. And so these are other areas to grab money before we start talking about how we're going to get the residents to and businesses to pay for these things. And I think there there's some viability in some of these things that I'm alluding to. So uh the general comments that's I'm just telling you how I would approach this. And so I would like to see I guess my ask would be can we uh draw a strike line uh rank these you know green green to orange green to red and uh and then draw a strike line because if I'm looking at the slide 69 right in front of us you know if it's orange and red you're already considering us to defer it anyways. So draw me that strike line and tell me what it is above that. Do the same between green and yellow. So between uh you know 33 and 37. which is our highest likely to proceed and possible to proceed. Draw me another strike line so I understand to get the greens it's going to cost us I'm going to make a number up here. Get the greens it's going to cost us $58 million over the next 5 years. To get the greens and yellows it's going to be $78 million over the next 5 years. And to get all of them it's it's and I know those aren't the right numbers. I'm just suggesting to you that that would help at least me personally start to make a decision on the criticality of these and the prioritization of them and how we're going to fund them. I would also like to see that again tied in with which of those are we're already pursuing grants. You know, which ones could we potentially sell off, which ones are TDT kind of PSTA kind of uh tourism development kind of work and and attack it all this way. So, sorry that was a lot of lot of lot of uh items, but uh if you understand me, that's right. Kind of

really like to see us get to. That's helpful feedback. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Sorry I jumped in first. Commissioner Cy.

Thanks, Mayor Tate. I think that's a great point you make and uh speaking about drilling in just a little bit on this wastewater fund. Um, it's one of the largest of the expenses it seems like with 12 million of revenue and 14 outflow. So, I guess a question would be, could we find out how long it would actually take to pursue switching this to the county? And if we were to do that, would it actually eliminate the wastewater fund completely or would we still I guess that would all be negotiated? We have some examples of that being done that we could take a look at because that would make a huge difference. And would that even be practical to think about for next year? Would that be something that we would be talking about for for 2028 or 2029 or would it um parking? I saw the number 5 million there. And then um undergrounding we were looking at about a 4 million outlay. So just comparing some of these numbers, we're looking at a 12 million 14 million outlay for wastewater, a 5 million in for parking, four out for undergrounding the next section of Gulf Boulevard. So I keep thinking I guess uh about the relative weights of these things

like I would wonder if we we've got to decide whether we want to underground for example. So if we didn't spend 4 million to underground what would we spend that four million on? Those are your decisions to make. And and where is it along this process that we will be doing that? Is that right now or is that the second workshop or third?

So it's a mix because the underground project is such a large number. You're going to be um seeing a separate presentation on June 14th to get direction so that we can make that decision. Okay, thank you.

Overall capital based on the feedback we're getting today, we'll make um variations of the presentation and get answers to your questions and um each time you see us, it we'll be closer to uh recommending what projects will be funded in what year. I really like the uh idea about the pier being a tourist activity. So, that sounds like a it would be a great opportunity for the county to help with that project. Is a who is it that would be looking into that? So the um the capital project portion of so they they do them in in subsequent years. So capital projects are up this year. So um Laura did reach out to the um visit St. Pete Clearwater to find out the time frame. Online it just says generically spring summer is is when you're able to apply for those uh funds. So, um certainly it's something we'll and we've been working on this continuously to be quite honest with you, but um for that specific project, um we'll we'll we'll look to to push that forward and see how far we can get it. It's it's a challenge just uh I like to manage expectations and uh we we've been working pretty hard on the TDC money and uh haven't been successful yet, but certainly we can uh move forward with that and like I said, Laura's been she's been going to all the meetings lately and uh you know, we'll certainly pursue it. So, Laura Canary, community development director. And I just want to add there's a dollar to dollar match for the VSPC project. So something just to be mindful

of and I believe it cannot exceed 70% of the total project cost, whatever that amount ends up being. Thank you.

I think that's it for my questions for right now then. Commissioner Marian.

Thank you. Thanks, Devin. Um I I I I appreciate the ranking that um that's been done this year. I I think that's a um a really big step towards making this a lot clearer um and a lot more transparent about um you know, how we should be looking at these capital projects. And I know uh several meetings ago we had discussed this ranking idea and if this was a good way to go and I think I think it's working out quite well. Um I do agree with the mayor that I think it would be helpful to see the numbers broken down by by those you know rough category you know those three categories of ranking um and and and see where the numbers fall. I I think at a at a casual glance I feel like a lot of the reds are the least expensive ones. So, but but it would be good to see those numbers totaled for sure. Um and uh uh and and I absolutely agree that we should be exploring, you know, as Commissioner Kazy said, the you know, the wastewater fund is one that has a lot of big losses accumulating over time. Um, I think it's definitely worth pursuing what can be done with that system if if if we can offload it to an agency that has more economies of scale and more capacity to to do those things, even if it costs us a little bit of money upfront compared to the, you know, whatever that is, 20, however many million dollars of losses that is over um over time. That's uh I think that's something that's that's absolutely worth looking at. Um and and may result in better service for our residents as well. So I I think that's definitely something worth pursuing. Um and then I did want to clarify something on the uh on the income end um when we were talking about the general fund and I think you said you were accounting for a 3% increase or was that a 3% increase in expenses?

It's 3% for both.

3% for both. Okay. And so so what we're not what we're not taking into account there because we don't know I think is is two things on the on the income side of things that I just want to make sure we all keep in mind. And one of those is we're not accounting for a some portion of that advalorum tax revenue that we get potentially going away depending on what happens over the next six months or so. Um so that's that's one possibility on the negative side. The other thing that we're not accounting for on the positive side is we're not we're also not in this budgeting exercise accounting for any increase in advorum taxes from properties changing hands, properties going from a very low assessed value to resetting at at the sale price assessed value. We're not accounting for any difference in advorum tax based on properties changing hands that may be non-h homesteaded were before they were homesteaded. And we're also not accounting for any potential increase in advorum taxes for projects that are either planned or under construction or have been approved that will add to the advalorum tax base. The the Corey Landings, the Myiramar that's under construction. Any of those none of those have been taken into into account there either. Is that correct?

That's correct. And I think you're making a really good point when you're looking at this general fund. if you take out that total other uses that we're deferring over to capital. Um we are very fortunate that we have a very stable general fund. Um that's not normally usually the case in cities. I I've never had the luxury of having a nice balanced general fund. So that's positive. And as we're thinking about any of those revenues, I mean the commission has the opportunity I mean it's a puzzle to say if these are going to change this way then does advalorum go down? you know, so that it's a full-encompassing picture when you're looking at the revenue side of things, but I think that was a really um good call out that you had.

Okay. Thanks. and and uh um and we also um it would be helpful for me and it may be in here somewhere just not clear enough for me to notice um that if we if our enterprise funds if we are able to over some period of time raise the fees so that those enterprise funds are self- sustaining. How does that change the overall picture of our capital fund where there's money that has been coming from the general fund to to shore up those enterprise funds? If all of a sudden that batch of money is available for capital projects, what does the whole pro what does the whole picture look like then? We could have that for you for next time. All right. Thank you,

Commissioner Cy.

Yeah, I would just I think that's great. Um, Commissioner Marriott, thank you for that. And as far as for next time, I'm wondering if we were to plan on um the self sustaining um for each of the enterprise funds. And so, specifically estimating something for parking and the uh wastewater the fees. So, if we were to uh see what the fees would do and have some way to compare that, if we started doing those and if we could do those for 2027. And then another question I had is we just mentioned the new developments and what kind of extra tax money we would get from say we just took Myar and Corey Landings as an example. when those would actually be available to us uh from a tax standpoint. Would that be for 2027 or or would that be 2028

for the property tax value? I mean, I think that would be when the construction is complete. um you would be looking at some transportation or park impact fee funds um initially and some building and permitting fees revenues, but as far as the property taxes um there would be some on the land, but for the true assessed value it would be when they're completed construction. So those wouldn't be for next year for certain. Okay. Is Mar not planned for to be finished next year at all? They're hoping for December of 20 27 I 26 26 right. So we would get some from them theoretically

typically and our finance director is going to be super conservative on revenue projections on purpose unless we have a project done. We try not to balance your budget on projecting a hotel or a major development opening. Um, but we'll have it. For example, we're working on some long-term forecasting for revenue. Um, those are things we would start plugging in. If we were in that ca in that position right now, we would plug it in in 28. Say this is how your revenue is going to grow based on the development that's happening. Understood. And in conservatively, I I get that, but we may see some in 27 is what you're telling me. But conservatively, we were saying 28. Yes.

Understood. And then if extra revenue comes in, that's where you see through the audit where you would end the budget year better because we don't spend that money unless we come back and ask you to allocate extra revenue. Is it worth going through the red items uh line by line right now to decide whether we feel like those are good ideas or is that going to be a next time type thing? I guess I'm asking asking uh what your opinion is on that.

Um I think it if we present it um for what you all have proposed, I think it'll be cleaner to be able to see it with your greens, your yellows, and your reds a lot easier um in those categories. So it's not mingled right now by fund as it is. I think that might be an easier um palatable practice for you. To be clear for me, I I know I made that suggestion. I would like to see it in total and then the 2027 impact like here's reds in total are you know 35 million 27 is is 10 million right yes okay

and I I just want to clarify are we at a point where if you go back to the finance committee's recommendation on exploration of new revenue are we at at a point where the commission would like to weigh in on as to whether or not they're aligned with that recommendation or do you want me to continue this discussion in the next um budget workshop where we could get some direction because some of these are a heavier lift than others. So, I just want to be clear if I'm working on them or not. My perspective is um um again it's it's harder for me to say without uh knowing the revenue impacts and and the effort involved in some of these specifically as I alluded to with understanding what our what I would suggest our real 2027 goal is. Um you know I would prefer to defer but I also understand that you've got work to do and and I don't want to keep you from it. So my inclination is to say, can we can we defer it until we till I understand the greens, yellows, and reds and those costs and the 2027 impacts and then how we're going to make the money. That'd be my preference. But if you feel like the city's going to

Please. Yeah, I that's fine. I we we essentially would not start any new work in areas we haven't started between now and June 9th, which is perfectly fine. But continue what you're doing. Continue the work in the space we're in between now and June 9th, which is rapidly approaching. Okay. Thank you. any make sure I'm looking around. Make sure there's no concerns with that. Okay, great. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate all the feedback and look forward to coming back to you all. Thank you. Thank you very much. Meeting adjourns.