City Council - Regular Meeting

In the absence of the mayor, we're gonna get started anyway. I call this meeting to order. Can we have a roll call, please?

Mr. Engelke. Here. Mrs. Frank. Here. Mr. Howard.

Here.

Mr. Smith.

Here.

Mr. Weed.

Here.

Vice Mayor Bolt.

Here.

Mayor Pachota is not here.

Let's proceed with the pledge of allegiance which we'll have Mr. Weed start for us.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of

The United States Of America

Should we take a quick break waiting for the mayor or should we proceed? Never mind, here he comes. Good morning. We are Good morning.

I know you missed me. Okay. So if all that's good and we're ready, let's do 20 54. We will go ahead and bring up Finance Director, Seni.

Mayor Walsh, she is coming up. Can I say this about the agenda? I think it would be better, I don't think we can change it right now, but if we had the opportunity for audience participation before our discussion of the items, I know I received several letters from groups and they won't be able to speak until after we are done. And I don't know if it would be appropriate in the future to have an audience participation period before the new business and as well as afterwards?

I do think oftentimes the reason that is done that way is because a lot of the questions will be answered during that process. So they may not have anything to say after that because all of their questions have been answered. So that's typically why it follows that way, but your suggestions are definitely noted and not inappropriate. All right. Miss Senney, if you'd like to go ahead and get us started.

Good

morning, Linda Senney, Finance Director. I think James Klintz, City Manager, wanted some opening remarks first.

At your pleasure, Mayor.

By all means.

Great. Well, good morning, everyone. Just wanted to say thank you for being here and thank you for your commitment to this important step in our budget process. As you know, our annual CIP workshop today marks just about halfway through our budget process for FY '27. And it's a critical piece in the process for all of us as we work on our five year capitalization plan for the City Of Venice.

A little bit about how we got here. So every year, our department directors who are all here today to discuss and answer questions put together the initial draft of this CIP, which is assembled by finance. We then get together internally and go through every single project, many times removing or postponing projects as necessary. And this year, I think you will notice in the CIP that's presented to you, we've taken in a a especially conservative approach to our CIP this year and there's a few reasons for that. But I want to thank our department directors for all the hard work and efforts that they put into this draft that's before you.

Another important point is that this CIP is purely a draft. What's in front of you today, is still a long way from being approved next September here. So anything that you see that you want to give input on, change, modify, that is the purpose of our discussion today. While we do plan over a five year horizon and in a perfect situation, those projects move forward year by year. You will see some new projects in the proposal today.

And there's some reasons for that and we're happy to kind of go through that. There are always some things that are unforeseen. And then this year, we've also tried to take advantage of some outside funding opportunities. So there are some new projects that are tied directly to grant opportunities. And as we are entering some challenging and uncertain fiscal times, taking advantage of these outside funding opportunities is really critical.

So the proposal for CIPs that are in front of you today, think it's important to note, we did take a very conservative approach this year. And when you compare the overall CIP expenses this year, while still very notable at over $34,000,000 representing close to 20% of our budget, it is 30% decreased from this past fiscal year. And if you go back to fiscal year twenty five, we're actually 50% reduced. So that should just kind of help put into context what our approach has been on the staff side. The general fund even more so, based on your feedback at strategic planning, we have worked to move as many projects as we can out of the general fund and try to direct those towards other funding sources to give us maximum flexibility as we move into the budget.

So you'll see compared to last year, the general fund expenditures for CIP are down 37% and compared to FY '25, they're actually 84% lower. So I had to check my math a couple of times on that one, but 84% lower compared to FY 2025. So overall, we've taken that conservative approach this year very intentionally and I hope that's reflected in the proposal before you. We look forward to walking through these projects with you. All the directors are here to answer questions, so please do not hesitate to ask. And with that, I will turn it over to our Finance Director, Ms. Cinney. Thank you.

All right. Ms. Cinney, we're ready for you.

Okay. We're going to do it fund by fund and then with any questions, specific question, project questions, then we'll just call the department directors up if you have specific questions about the projects themselves. So as James said, this is fluid. If you see anything within the proposed budget that you don't want in there or you want some that we miss, maybe you as a council member have a project that you would like in there that we as staff didn't come forward with that, then this is your opportunity to talk about that and then we can add those in later. Because this is the CIP for over the five year period from fiscal twenty seven through '31.

But the fiscal twenty seven column is what becomes part of our budget when you are adopting the fiscal twenty seven budget. So the CIP becomes part of the proposed budget when we have the budget workshop in June. So we can still add items which I'll talk at the end that some have already been added since we printed this proposed budget for you. So if there's any projects you want, you want us to consider, then please bring those forward and then we can still add those at any point in time. And the budget is the CIP is by fund so you'll see we have the general fund and every so some pages may be in there more than once if there's two funding sources it's under each fund, the general fund and maybe once in sales tax fund or vice versa.

So you could see it like that also. And the CIP, the project worksheets, it includes the project description, the reason for the project, the anticipated cost and the anticipated funding that we will use for that project. And we try to make it easy by sorting it by color. So if it's appearing for the first time and has not been in the five year CIP, which happens that it wasn't in the five year last year, but all of a sudden it became a project. So we put those in red.

So then you can identify that as a new project. And if it's in blue, that just means it was in the CIP before, but the cost increased from when we had it in there before as one of the years. If it's in green, the cost decreased, and that's very minimal times that the cost decreased, but occasionally that does happen. And if it's in brown, the project moved up from when we had it in the CIP book last year, it might have moved up a year. And if it's in purple, that means we pushed the project back from where it was last year.

And then the pink is the debt service and the only debt service we have is for the fleet maintenance facility and for the fire station too. So when we do the budget, that actually is principal and interest and it's not a CIP, but we just put it in the CIP proposed part so that you don't forget or recall that we have to pay for that debt service for those two buildings. But it's under interest and principal when we make the payment, project. So from there we can start with the general fund. So some like you can see this heading that can never you can see it on your iPad, the heading.

So like the first one is marine rescue motors equipment electronic replacement which is for fiscal twenty eight. So that will not show up in the whole CIP shows up but only the fiscal twenty seven column is what will be in the fiscal twenty seven budget book when we do the budget for that fiscal year. So are there I mean, you want to go any questions on that one specifically since it's fiscal twenty eight and fiscal twenty nine? So I'll just go through each one and ask if there's questions. If not, I'll just move on to the next item.

The next one is replacing fire marine pumps for 50,000. That's not until fiscal twenty nine. The next several are fire ones, thermal imaging camera, replacing their drone equipment and replacing mobile data terminals and Lucas chest compressing devices and those are all also fiscal twenty nine. Then to replace their extraction equipment is fiscal twenty eight. And then to replace other Osage equipment is fiscal 31.

And air packs is, that's a bigger number, 550,000, that's fiscal thirty. So a new one is an example is on CPR mannequins and that's 60

Hold five on one second. Mr. Smith, did you have a question on the SCBA air packs? Me as well. So we'll start with you and then I'll go after you,

sir. You. I'd just like to know a little more about this from the Chief if we can and in particular why it jumped to the front of the line as a new entry and in the first year not working its way up.

And while he's walking down, I'll clarify that this isn't actually CPR mannequins. This is a full suite of advanced life support training mannequins that include catheterization, intubation, all that kind of stuff. Was I had to talk to the chief about this one because CPR manikins don't cost $65,000 So now I'll let him go ahead and talk about his item.

So on that note, should we change the heading of what the project title is?

Yes, please.

And what what did you say it should be?

I'll the chief tell you the title, but I I think it should be, you know, ALS training mannequins, I think is more appropriate because it's not for the general public. It's for our actual paramedics to to do advanced life support training, which is it requires a technology that's pretty expensive. So I think that's important to note because if they were just buying CPR mannequins for the public it would probably be in the hundreds of dollars, maybe young thousands of dollars.

Okay. So what the mayor said. Good morning. For the record, Frank Giddens, fire chief, city of Venice Fire and Rescue. Good morning, mayor, council, city manager. Thank you. Very well spoken by our mayor. So we can absolutely change the title. They they are mannequins, and we can perform CPR for on them. It is not for the public. This is intended for our paramedics and our EMTs. These these mannequins are computer operated and we use them. We have one now. It's just it's outdated. The software in it and it's it's just it's extended its life expectancy.

We only have one and what we use them for, again, is for training purposes. They're computer generated and we use them to put paramedics and EMTs in stressful situations. Essentially, mannequins, they blink, they sweat depending how well or how, not so well the student or the trainee is doing. We can make it do a vast surgical I mean, not surgical, I should say, they can do they can just do a lot of things that we can put them in situations that are better in a controlled environment than and so that they are prepared for when they're out on the streets.

Have we used them in other settings and other training or does every department have these on their own?

Absolutely. So and yes, we use them. We can't because they are $65,000 for this, we don't put them in in settings where they're going to be broke. So this is we can put them inside our our offices and our training rooms. Again, the the mindset is this particularly when we build Station 52. We will have a room specifically for these mannequins. We'll have a side room that has the computers in them and they are that's how they're operated but they're specifically for training our paramedics and our EMTs.

My question was, we had access to them in other settings where we go for training rather than own them ourselves? No, this

is something you want to have your own.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions on this item for the Chief? And I'll just say to kind of wrap it up, absolutely support the item. I think it's 100% necessary. I just wanted to clarify for the general public that it's not just a CPR mannequin but I'm glad that you guys are making sure that we have the equipment we need to do the job and I will say just from experience that these things take a beating when you do some training on them and replacing old equipment is very important. So I support it 100%.

And we'll get it. Like I say, it's replaced every five years. The one we have, we've had it for five years. So they treat it with much due respect, but it is something that it is necessary. And again, training is invaluable and it's something we want to have them prepared now.

My other question why it showed up as a brand new item in the first year, not fifth. So for the replacement that should show up five years down and move so that you sort of see it coming, right?

And we like I had mentioned, we only have the one. I would like for it to last longer, but it is starting. So this is the first time that we had to now replace it, so we're getting a little better idea of how long it'll last. And that's that's the reason why we're two we're asking for an adult, a child, and an infant one. Right now we only have the one, so we're having to put it in different scenarios multiple times. This will help us to I'm hopeful that we don't have to replace this in five years.

Great. Is that something we actually worked on in the Police Academy? Citizen So Police

we can use them and they have helped us in the past for just for more first responders, basic level skills. This is again, this allows us to do more advanced level ALS skills for our paramedics and our EMPs.

Right, thank you.

But absolutely, it can absolutely be used for cross training and we have.

One thing I will say since Mr. Smith brought up the note, we probably should go ahead and put an additional 65,004 in the 31 I would say 31 or 32 depending on where you want it to be. But if we're planning that out maybe we put it in there.

Every five years, yes. Okay.

We'll add it to fiscal thirty one and then I think based on your discussion we should add more of a description of what this is.

Yeah.

Add a more description to explain it more.

Gotcha.

Okay. Then the next one is, you might as well stay here Frank. It's for the station alerting software for the fire station which is for fiscal twenty eight and twenty nine. Are there any

point.

And

important important

I

I it's a a lot of money for software. I'm just kinda surprised we didn't see this coming. Just an explanation of how we got to this point which would be helpful.

Yes, sir. Through the the CAD system, it is starting to change, which is really beyond our control. The other surrounding municipalities, Sarasota County, Northport, they already have this integrated system in place. So Station 51 was already built before they decided to make this change and 53 as well. So we've already planned for 52 to have this system built in and we just have to keep it up to speed with the current station fifty one, fifty three.

In short, you know, this includes all the hardware, the software, and what it really does in short, it's it allows for faster emergency response times. It allows us to sync all of our alerting systems. It allows us to add additional systems such as mobile phones, every apparatus that we have, every engine, every ambulance, every command car that goes out has a cell phone signed to it. Right now, that system can't go to our phones, so now it'll allow that to go to the phones. It will also allow for different alerting systems.

One of our goals, one of my goals is to keep the fire engines from going on as many medical calls as they do. So this will also what it does is we now have two rescues running out of Station 52. We have two rescues that are up and going now out of Station 51. And what that will allow them to do now is to increase our efficiency on response times by if I don't need the engine to go, it will specifically send an alert to the phone of the paramedic in charge on Rescue 51 instead of Engine 52 on the mall going. So it's an alerting system.

It helps reduce human errors. We have what's and I'm gonna throw out some different acronyms, what's called PSAP. So when you call 911, the dispatcher has to ask so many questions before they can start sending people and apparatuses to the location. This now cuts that down within seconds. So it will help increase our response times and it will help again reduce human error. And one of the things that's beneficial for the community as well, we anticipate coming up for our audit for our ISO rating this year, this will help with our ISO rating and hope to get a one.

Thank you. I have a follow-up question please.

Sure.

Why not? Is there a specific funding for this or is this just a general fund expenditure?

General fund, to the best of my knowledge, there's no grants for this.

Mr. Howard? Good morning, Chief. Good morning. So dispatch is actually at the county level, correct? So all the calls for police fire come out from a consolidated call center

Dispatch or controls all of Sarasota County including sheriff's office, Sarasota County, Venice Fire Police, Inglewood, Northport, everyone,

yes.

So this software, if I understood what you just said, which makes a lot of sense to me, it's almost a filtering system, right, to determine based on the call type what equipment you need to dispatch to the call? Correct. And even as specific as to the phone of the medic that's going to be on the box that's going to the call? Yes. That's new technology for me is pretty impressive. Thank you.

Mr. Engelke?

Thank you. I noticed this on a couple particularly with the software. If we go into the page where you have the description, I forget what page it is, but anyway. Page, okay perfect. One of those pages.

You go down to the operational savings. In many cases the operational savings is negligent or negligible. I would imagine based on what you just said about putting out fire trucks that we're doing right now in the event of a medical only. I would imagine that our operational savings would be a little bit more significant than decreasing slightly. I know it's hard to kind of quantify right now because we are talking two, three, four years out. But could that be a little bit more meaningful than maybe what we're looking Sure. At right

I've read we put slightly, significantly is a better word for this. We can use it, but I don't want to give any false pretense as well. It should absolutely help us become more efficient both from a financial standpoint over time as well as an operational that will be instantaneous. But even with right now with our current Station 52, you have old wiring trying to support new technology. This gets us to where we need to be. So absolutely, I can adjust that as well.

Vice Mayor Volt?

Yes, thank you Mr. Engelke. That's exactly what I was going to bring to light is the fact that the Chief mentioned early on that right now we send out an engine and an ambulance whereas with something like this we could avoid sending out two pieces of equipment, have the second one remain where it is for a different instant. But you also obviously fuel and other things along the way. So yes, I think this is not only important but there is an offset to it. Thank you.

And then Mr. Weed, your name is on the list again, was that your follow-up question?

Yes, sir. Okay.

All right. Nothing else on this item. We can continue on.

Okay. The next item was to replace the boat lift at VPD. Any questions on that one? So the next one after that is marine replacements for VPD. And that is to replace the Androids unit one year in fiscal twenty seven, the Boston Whaler in fiscal twenty eight and the Yellowfin in fiscal thirty.

Any questions on the boats? And there we we get trade in value because we trade in the boats, we get trade in value and we also get WC IND funding. So the city pays in the shortfall of what the WCIND funding is less the trade in.

That's exactly what I wanted to just highlight is that this isn't just general fund money. There's a WCIND grant that's involved in this process. Okay.

Any questions on the boats for BPD?

Mr. Engelke?

Yes, this is not specific to the boats, but in terms of overall grants, I think we're doing a really good job of getting grants. Is there a bottom line number where we can kind of demonstrate we have this amount of money and this amount of money is coming from grants. You may not have that right now.

Okay.

But in total to say, hey, we are doing what we can to get grants.

Okay, we can include that as a summary in the proposed budget when we're doing the when we include the proposed budget we'll do a summary of that.

Yes. And then one more question.

Go ahead.

And not for right now but maybe, and this may be more to the City Manager. What is our process and how do we determine grants and what's available and then what are we doing to really push the grants. And again, that doesn't need to be answered right now, but in terms of, hey, this is what we do, this is how we find the grants, this is what we have to do to once we find the grants to get the grants. So, to be more of an operational thing for another time, but grants came up.

Sure. And I'll just give you a brief response, but certainly warrants more follow-up on kind of what our process looks like. But the thing to highlight this year is we'll do a good job as we go through these CIP projects and let you know which ones are grant funded because it is important to your decision and discussion. But we did add another grants position this past year, and that was Demetra McBride, our new Stormwater Grants Manager. And that has helped.

Having only one grants coordinator in our entire city puts a lot of stress on that one position. So we've doubled our staffing in grants, which has opened up the door to a lot of new opportunities, which has led to some new projects, which you'll see today. But we do have a process to not only look through databases to see what grants are available, but then finance has a great procedure to make sure the grant is really, worth the squeeze because a lot of times unless the dollar amount is substantial enough, the tracking and regulations and cost of implementing the grant is more than the actual grant. So they have a process of vetting those to decide, yep, we think this is a good one that's eligible, we should go for it, and then that's when it will make its way into your budget. So happy to share more on that.

I think a summary would be really, really great because there's significant amount of grants that we go for every year. Thank you.

All right. Ms. Sennig?

Okay. Then after the Marine patrol replacement, then we have the women's locker room for the police building and that's in fiscal thirty one. But are there any questions on that now?

Mr. Smith? Yes, I'm sure we can justify it but I was interested if we could put some numbers to that, the increase in female officers over time.

Thank you. Chief Andy Leisnerring, Venice Police Department. So I don't have like the growth numbers exactly. Was just looking at, you know, where we are today, how many vacant lockers do we have, how many people do we need to hire, that sort of thing. Currently, have three vacant lockers in the locker room, in the women's locker room. We have a plan for fiscal twenty seven to add three more because we have some space. We have some day lockers that we can move around. So we're gonna use the space, existing space we have to the best of our ability, and that's why I pushed this off to the next five years because I think we can manage it. We may have to move it up, know, we'll have to see how it goes. Maybe we can still find room to add another one, that type of thing.

But when the building was built, we knew this would be a problem at some point. They're value engineering everything possible. I was in the room during the design phase, and this is one area where they said, well, we're gonna use these calculations to determine how many lockers we need, and I told them, well, are old calculations. There are more women going into law enforcement now than in the years past. And they said, that's what we have money for. So that's the way we built it.

It's like it's a national trend, so you just know that that's gonna be happening or how how what's the percentage of women in your force?

I don't have the exact percentage. I would say roughly 15% is current, but I think that's increasing. So I don't know if that's changed. Those could also be old numbers.

Ms. Frank?

Thank you. I can't remember the funding source. Mnucha, looks like this is coming out of the general fund. Are there police impact fees that could be utilized?

Moving. If they're not expanding the footprint, he's just moving some from we'll look at that when the time comes. If he expands the footprint, then we can use police impact fees. But if he's just making some from men to women, you're not expanding, then it's not expansion, then we can't use the impact piece.

We got We

So at the time, it'll be determined based on they design it, I should say. Okay.

I think that could be a possibility because we are looking at expansion of space Mhmm. So that we're not taking away from the men's locker rooms. We'd actually have to figure out more likely relocate a portion of our armory because that's what's behind the wall. And then we got to figure out, well then where does that go and where does that go. So there's a little more there's some more planning to it, but I think they could be eligible for those funds.

I mean just thinking big picture, if we have 500,000 extra in our general fund to allocate somewhere, I'd love to give you more police officers as opposed to more locker room space. I know they come hand in hand. So if there's anything we can do to utilize police impact fees for this to then save general fund dollars for potential more police personnel in the future, I'm

all We're for always looking for that opportunity as well. It's just again more of a placekeeper right now, so that the need is known. And then if we have to move it up a year or two. And of course, when it comes down to getting closer to actually spending, we're gonna look at every opportunity possible for funding.

We try to look at any funding prior other than general fund especially we consider it CIP.

Alright. Okay.

Amy. Thank you. Okay. So the next several are IT projects. So the next this first one is the citywide phone system life cycle and that's cited for fiscal twenty twenty eight. Any questions on the phone system?

Mr. Engelke? Or maybe

I jumped the gun a little bit but would be more of the HR management system. So I'll wait until you get down there.

You definitely jumped the gun.

I did, typical.

All right, nothing on this one, Ms. Cinney, you can continue.

Okay, then we have replaced the inbuilt camera system and that's a fiscal twenty twenty seven expense. Any questions on that? That one?

Nope.

Okay. And then HR management system. In fiscal twenty nineteen. Okay.

You're not going to push your button? I'm kidding. Go ahead.

Okay. Thank you. But anyway, alright thanks. This is very similar to the question I had regarding the software for the police and fire. We go down to the okay, so we're putting in a $100,000 in 2019 and then in 2019 and '30 it looks like it's another $142,000 of operating expenses.

If I remember right, when we talked about this couple of years ago or last year, it was right now we have manual time clocks and cards and all that type of thing, which was cumbersome and also expensive. So I guess my question is, given that, correct me if I'm wrong, and I might be in terms of, the cumbersome and expensive system we now have which is manual, This is now going to cost us $142,000 more. I would think that with the implementation of a new software program that should actually maybe reduce ongoing expenses. I'm not sure maybe I'm misreading the whole thing.

Well currently this is for new licenses and subscription fees when you implement the new system which currently we have that kind of a system. So we don't have those licenses that we're paying for. Correct Roger? Right. So currently we're not paid for licenses for the timekeeping where if we implement a system then we have to pay for the licenses going forward.

Follow-up? Yes, go ahead.

I just want to make sure. Okay, so will there be a savings and is that $142,000 net or can we maybe expect an increase? I understand the software acquisition, license and all that type of thing. What type of impact might that be on operations? Because my way of thinking is anytime we do a capital improvement, especially on something like this, we should be investing in the future to bring down future expenses, realizing that there's going to be increased expenses for efficiency but in terms of operational expenses.

All right, I'm going go ahead and let the City Manager speak.

Thank you, Mayor. I think what you're asking, Councilman, is would this software result in some reduced administrative costs once it's fully implemented? And the answer is yes. I think it's a little difficult to quantify, so I'll let Roger speak to that. But absolutely, the process that we use now for time cards, tracking employee information, sick time off, benefits, it's very manual, it's very cumbersome.

So there's certainly, once this program is implemented, will be administrative savings. The reason it's difficult to quantify that is typically that savings will result either in a deferred hire, right? A hire we don't have to make on the administrative side or you've taken this this time and reallocated it from an existing staff member to something that's more effective. So that that's where it gets a little tricky. But to your point, absolutely, there will be savings and perhaps we can quantify that on the sheet. I'll let Roger speak to that.

Yes. I didn't want to come up here prematurely. The amount of human error and human time loss across over 100 staff members is what we're going to fix with this project. So we're quantifying time maybe ten hours every two weeks or more across at least 50, if not 100 people from utilities to public works, supervisors, individuals and even in payroll department. So that's we could do that math, we did that math when we started looking at should we invest in this at all, so we can furnish that and it's at least this when you add up that human sunk cost, let alone the human errors in reading punch cards that have dirty fingerprints and you can't see the times and so that's where those costs like it will easily offset the 140,000,000 if you look at the human capital costs across the city.

Ms. Frank?

Yes, given that description of our current situation, if at all possible with the general fund, I'd love to see it happen earlier if we can go through that process. Mean at least '28, I don't speak for my colleagues but I see this as a top item to get us into where we need to be.

Certainly take that into consideration. I know that the pain is quite high in the city, it's a matter of having enough people to do this, do it quickly but well. We talk about velocity and quality, so it's that balance. We do it well sooner? That's something that we've talked a lot about. But I think you speak for a lot of city staff when you

say that. So that brings up more of a follow-up is why are we pushing this out to '29 versus doing it now? Is there a particular reason?

Most of it is the personnel capacity from the projects that IT has going on. We have some big projects coming on. One of them is They're going to the cloud with the tracking system for building permits. We have to do Navaline Security which is the general ledger side of security. They're doing a project with that. They're moving the general ledger to the cloud. So all of those are processes, long processes, time wise commitments from the IT standpoint for them to do and then we're involved in the finance standpoint but

So it's not the cost issue, it's the It's more of that

personnel and the resources to get the projects implemented and to do them well. Like Roger said, want if you're gonna do a project like that, it's gonna be done well and you're there's a lot of thought to it and the timing and making sure that it's done correctly. Especially when we get to this side of the payroll part of it, we almost have to run two systems to make sure people are getting paid correctly. That's the biggest thing from an employee standpoint. So when we do the system and the time clocks and everything, the rate is HR is going to start with hiring in doing the hiring process within there and getting performance appraisals within the system.

Then after that is when we'll do the finance side, which is actually paying the people. But that's a much longer, harder process because we'll have to do duplicate to make sure people aren't getting paid correctly. Because most of the time, the first time you do it on test environment, people aren't paid correctly.

They won't.

So we're going to do it process twice, the old system plus the new system to ensure that employees are getting paid correctly.

So does this number include improvements on the finance side as well or are we going to see future numbers for the finance side to bring their software up to standard?

It's supposed to be included but I

think The it's a low payroll components are in here. Now the whole finance, our GL, a general ledger refresh, that's probably at least sixty months out, want to say fifty something months. That'll be a completely separate project for our ERP, our enterprise resource planning tools. This is really the day to day payroll, punch cards, clock in clock out, vacation requests, sick time, balance calculations, that's what this is all about.

And to get those hours into the general ledger system to process the payroll. That's the more time consuming the interface that has to happen with the system.

Okay. Thank you for that.

Ms. Rinkelke? Just a follow-up. Ms. Rinkelke really asked the question that I was going to ask, can we step it up a little bit and I understand the reasons and all that kind of stuff. But I just feel it's an important thing especially two things. One, we're going to be saving money. We may be that $142,000 maybe a lot less. And just to show it out, put in, well it's going to cost us $142,000 for additional software licenses. But we could be saving to use your example one employee over the whole period and that's significant.

So you could do the math on that. But I guess I just want to reiterate, if we can think about subject to your constraints of time and all that type of thing and quality and other projects, if we could think about moving that forward because that is a significant improvement in our process and again at the CIP I think this is where we should be looking at how can we improve our processes. If it's going to cost us a little bit of money to get there, so be it.

More questions on that part?

Vice Mayor Bolt?

Yes, just quickly, I talked to Roger yesterday and asked him the same sorts of questions. And as we go through this, I think you will see that IT has got a lot on their plate and so his answer to me, kind of went over my head when he said, we just don't have the people and the time and that's what it's coming down to is that, yeah, they'd love to move this too and get it put in place but the reality is that it takes people to implement all this stuff and we just we don't have it at this point. So as we go further into this and Roger is back up here explaining why this is pushed off and that's pushed off, just realize that it really comes down to we can't go out and hire 20 more people in order to implement all this stuff and we can't afford to bring people in to do it either. So there is a fine balance here that we have to work with so that we can keep moving forward on things that are extremely important but we can't bite off more than we can chew.

So hope that helps explain what Roger is trying to explain in more layman's terms.

Any more questions on that?

Mayor, I could. Roger, could you explain just the phased approach that we're looking at right now with the company and the vetting that's already kind of gone into this program? I think that might help counsel understand the approach we're taking to this project.

I think that, yes. This HR management system is the general term for it, has a number of components, which follow the life cycle of an employee from the candidacy and canvassing for employees to hiring to onboarding to then doing performance review and timekeeping all the way through retirement or when they depart us. It's a life cycle cradle to grave. So what we're doing now is the early parts of that life cycle, the hiring, recruiting, and in a tool set that we know will expand to capture time tracking and and all of that. So we do have a strategy and we're doing the smaller lighter weight components and setting the stage then do the bigger, more difficult things maybe in 2028 instead of 2029.

But that it's it's not like we're sitting on our laurels and not doing anything. That system, IT and HR working hand in hand to get those early stages and the base componentry installed this year in fact, this fiscal year. It's just a lot lighter weight than all of the payroll and accounting that needs to happen for the later phases. So I hope that gives I know that gives our staff some hope that we're making progress and not just waiting to start this whole thing three years from now. So thank you, James. That's the foreground of where we're going.

Okay.

Okay, then we'll go on to the next one. It's a citywide access control. Any questions on that for Roger? Okay. And then we have citywide network infrastructure, lifecycle plan. There again, Roger has a plan for that. Do you have any specific questions regarding that one? And then the next one is and this is one that you'll see three times in the book because it's under the building fund, the general fund and the storm water fund. And this is for to replace the land management system which is currently what is the track it system for the building department.

If I could make one comment about this one. In IT, talk about the cone of uncertainty, maybe that happens in all the industries, but I'll explain that the cone of uncertainty right before us, it's very it's pretty narrow, but as you get out five years, the cone opens way out, so uncertainty grows. So right now that's a number we have in there. We believe through inflation and maybe the consolidation of vendors into one major one, that price could change. That price is probably going to go up over time for that system.

There's kind of a gorilla that runs this permitting system in all of Southwest Florida. So that's a number and a placeholder we have in there with current understanding, current quotes, trying to take average cost of other cities that have done this from Northport to Bradenton and Longboat Key. I mean we're keeping our aperture pretty wide and City Of Sarasota is doing this right now. So I just want to mention that now, that that's a number of the placeholder we have, but the cone of uncertainty is five years out.

Okay. So next we'll go on to Park Project or there's one more here that's a fossil exhibit for historical resources, museum archives. That's in fiscal 'thirty one. Any questions on that?

I do have something on that. So for me, I just want to make sure that we're contingent upon the funding that we're going to receive and I believe is this going to be CLG funding? Is that where we're getting the money from? It says state grant, but I would assume

Yes, yes.

Okay. So this is in relation to us becoming a CLG and we'd be getting money for that. Okay.

Yes.

Okay. I'm going to go ahead and stop us there and we'll take a ten minute break and we'll come back at 09:55. Okay. We are back. Miss Ceni, if you can start us on to the next part, which I believe is other parks projects.

Yep. On the parks projects, the first one is Centennial Park to do ADA ramp upgrades at the gazebo and the roof replacement for the pump house in fiscal twenty eight. Any questions on that for Centennial Park?

I did have one thing. I just the numbers seemed pretty high for such small structures. So I mean I think I'm just going to walk away unhappy with the number but And Ricky, that's gonna be your response to tell me that's just the price of things, that's fine. I just I felt like it was worth a mention. Don't run. It's okay. I'm I'm just gonna talk until you get up here. It's no big deal.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. For the record, Ricky Simpson, Director of Public Works. So the question was the pricing on?

Yes. Are these just maybe estimates that are a little high? Or is this are you thinking these are the actuals? Because in my brain, are such small structures, I'm trying to wrap my head around those numbers and it just seems like they're high.

We have seen quite an increase with all of our projects. Know, we do quite a few of them throughout the city. For this ADA ramp upgrade, so this is actually going to be a conversion from wood to aluminum. It's gonna have the same visual, you know, that we have now, but it will actually be more presentable and longer lasting in the future because we're having issues. We just several years ago, we did a replacement with treated lumber, then tried to let it cure, and then the paint just does not adhere properly. We've had it we did it in house, we had it professionally done, and it just it gets looking terrible over time. So it will be an enhancement to that level.

And on the roof, is it the same roofing material that was used to redo the bathrooms? I know we had a a vendor, I I don't know if they donated it or how that worked, but are we doing a similar roofing material or is this just is just what we do?

That would be my goal for the pump house, for the children's fountain would be to mimic exactly what we have on the Centennial Park bathrooms.

Okay. Ms. Frank?

Yes, to tag along I was going to take the opportunity to pester my colleague Mr. Howard who helped get that roof donated to the city on the bathroom. So I'm hoping he can pull some favors again and maybe get a donation here as well.

You you give him also a cookie, mister Howard.

Mr. Cookie.

Just real quickly probably to satisfy some other questions. Okay, so we have a total of $75,000 If we were to go with the substandard treated lumber and a substandard non tile roof, would that number of 75 be significantly lower like by half or maybe 10% or 15%? It would

be lower but we would be back in the same boat that we're in today. It just doesn't the longevity

is not necessarily that we downgrade but it's really not that much more. It looks like $75,000 a lot of money but even if we're just to replace as is, we're not saving that much money. Correct.

Anyone else? Okay, we can move on to

The next one is, Chauncey Howard Park and that's for replacing the Boardwalk at fiscal twenty twenty one. Any questions on that one?

Nope. Okay.

Then we have the Fountain Park at that's fiscal twenty eight. Any questions on replacing the fountain? And here's playground equipment for fiscal twenty seven. Any questions on that to replace that at the trailhead? Okay. No questions? Then we have the decorative streetlights and that's consistently budget 50 per year for the decorative street lights. Comments or questions on that one?

Mister Howard?

So I know that the the street lights, don't we in public works like basically parts and pieces from other lights and those aren't like we go out and buy those, right? Or we purchase them new. I thought that Tony, if I remember his name correctly, would refurbish I guess is the right word I'm struggling for.

Yeah, that's correct. So if we do have a failing pole, we like to have a pole in stock to replace that. So when we take a pole down, we do make modifications to that pole and then we reutilize that back into our system. This is just to give us the parts and pieces that we need to continue to keep all of the street lights to the level that they're at.

They're great. I mean the street lights are just so tasteful and enhanced. Think the city as you drive down the street if you happen to look up, I'm just curious during a tour I saw Tony with a bin full of parts trying to put together this old street light. So thank you for that.

My pleasure.

And we'll go on to the next one which is Menace. Oh, great.

Mr. Weed.

A question on street, I had to see the same amount every year. Is there a reason that this is capital improvement and not just an ongoing budget expense to the public works?

Based on our dollar threshold of over $25,000

Thank you.

Anyone else? All right, we can go forward.

Okay. Then at Venice Municipal Beach is the exterior door replacement in fiscal twenty seven, boardwalk replacement in '28 and asphalt resurfacing in fiscal thirty.

Ms. Frank?

I don't frequent the restrooms down at Venice Beach but I did have a citizen ask me if there was plans to redo the restrooms. So I don't know their current, honestly don't know their current state down there but I was just wondering if you could educate me on that so I could respond to them.

Yes. So the restrooms are in fairly good condition. Okay. It's just the hardware that is starting to fail that was you know underwater at one point. And it just seems like once something's inundated with saltwater, no matter what you do it just continues to arose. So that's where we're getting the failure with the doors and the changing rooms as well.

Great. Thanks so much.

Anyone else? Alright. Then

we have Venice Mayaka Park which is for fiscal twenty nine and later. ADA ramp, interior framework replacement and asphalt resurfacing. Any questions on any of those? Brohard Park. And this is for parking lot resurfacing in fiscal twenty seven and exterior door replacement in fiscal thirty.

This might be the right time and Mr. Clinch if it's not, me know. But haven't we talked about some parking improvements in that area?

That's correct and that's budgeted in our current budget and is currently in design and permitting. It is a little bit behind schedule, just the permitting has taken longer than expected, but that is in process. And so this project is really to resurface the existing parking lots that are there. It took a lot of damage from the hurricanes in 2024.

Perfect. Thank you. Any other questions on this one? All right, we can move forward.

Chuck Ryder Park, which is out for fiscal thirty demolition.

Mr. Smith? There's quite a bit

of interest in the city takeover of Chuck Ryder Park. I wonder if you could talk to us about what the vision is for that park and what this is?

Absolutely, I would love to. So the vision is with the takeover of Wellfield Park as being a regional sports complex with Sarasota County, their goal is to actually be able to absorb the little league from Chuck Ryder Fields and then for us to eventually turn that into a passive park moving forward. Okay. And then this expense is envisioned for what? To basically take down the structures that are there and get a blank template to what we plan on doing in the future with that park.

Okay. But then there will be additional expenses for whatever it is we're going to do with it if it's an exercise trail or if it's playground So or anything might we be putting some money in there in fiscal year thirty one?

Absolutely. Yes. So it all kind of depends on the goal is three years that that's when Chuck Ryder should start transitioning into another location. James, you might have more information on that. But after that, once that's taken care of, then that's when we would proceed with more design.

One of the benefits of getting the interlocal completed is we have certainty now on most of our parks. Chuck Rider is an exception, where we still don't have total certainty on what that future park is going look like. As Mr. Simpson just explained, our hope would be everything transitions to Well Field, we got a clean slate to do visioning and planning to decide what that future park is going to be. That is still not totally decided because the county needs to finish their conceptual design work on Wellfield and make sure everything is going to fit where they have some limited space out there and a lot of competing needs.

So we were a little hesitant to start funding new park expenses in the CIP until we know for certain that Chuck Ryder is going to become a new park project. There still is a possibility that we're going to have to accommodate, the existing uses there for an extended period of time or that the county may try to relocate those to a different facility. So with these uncertainties, we said, let's put in there some funding for demolition, assuming that we're going to take over and then we will have to revisit the future park planning.

I had some specific thoughts on this one and the reason that I assumed that we hadn't had more in there is because of the parks master planning process. So I would assume that we're going to get a lot of information that will kind of give us that ability to plan further out from the park's master plan.

That's a great point as well. Yep, I think the county decisions are going to change that park and then our future needs that are identified through master planning will also help identify what we want to do out there.

Mayor, can I ask?

Go ahead, Mr. The

Little League situation you're indicating is unresolved and I think in the past, I've been told, maybe by Mr. Simpson, that we don't have the equipment to maintain ball fields. So what are we thinking there? I mean, it's not a certainty that if we keep the ball fields there, we don't relocate them to the Well Field, is the county gonna continue to maintain the ball field? So that that's all to be determined. I think that the hope and the goal of the county, and we're all

on the same page here, is to accommodate Little League at Well Field. But until that conceptual design is completed, we can't say with certainty that everything is going to fit there. The county runs regional facilities throughout the entire county. So they have other options. So that's kind of plan A. But plan B would be, let's see if they can accommodate Little League at another location, another park that they own nearby, perhaps Bypass Park or one of these other locations. So that's kind of Plan B. And Plan C, which is very unlikely, but I think we still need to talk about it is if John

with next

then Okay, let's move forward. Okay, I so the next one is at Heckscher Park, Sports Lighting And Landscaping Enhancement.

Vice Mayor Bolt? Just a quick question. The $175,000 for sports lighting, is that new lighting or is that just replacement lighting?

That's new lighting.

Yes, okay. That's what

I thought.

Thank you.

Anyone else? Mr. Engelke?

On the new lighting, where? I thought it was pretty well

lit already. Yes. So we do have sports lighting that surrounds the park itself. It's very aged and we're having an issue now. I say weird, it's actually Ashley Castle is the one that kind of deals with sports lighting, finding replacement parts. So the new lights would be LED which are way better.

So it's really not new new, it's just new and improved existing type of thing. Okay, thanks.

Anyone else? Okay, we can move forward.

Okay. And that was all the general fund items. So then we'll go into any more questions on the general fund ones? Okay. Then we can go into the $0 sales tax. And the first one we have under $01 sales tax is rescue unit equipment replacements and that's under fire departments, EMS. Any questions on that? Okay. The next one is replacing the GPS, which is in fiscal twenty twenty eight. And that's a GPS tracking system that we currently have and it's due to be replaced in fiscal twenty twenty eight.

And then this one, we had this in there for several years, so now is the year to spend $1,000,000 for emergency response radio systems. So this has been in for like five years. So it's moved up to its appropriate location at this time is million dollars for that.

Engelke?

If you

recall, I think it was this last year or the year before we replaced all the police radios. So this is part of that whole project and this is the fire radios.

Mr. Engelke? Real quickly, dollars 1,000,000, we've kind of saved up for that.

Yes, so this is in the one since sales tax funding. Yes, I had to set that aside for this knowing we were having it.

Okay, so we're not really finding the money where we have the money, we're just taking it out to save as account. Okay, thanks.

So any questions on that radio? Okay, then this is life packs for EMS upgrading 13 of their life packs for $804,000 Any questions on that one? Okay. Then here's an IT one, server and storage infrastructure. This is the lifecycle replacement for that and that's budgeted for fiscal twenty twenty eight. That's for IT.

Mr. Weed?

Yes, do have some questions for the IT Director if we could. Roger, come up.

Good morning. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Reed.

I do have questions. We're looking at replacing the servers and using on-site servers on today's IT world. Have we considered cloud sourcing that rather than keeping the physical servers? And the second question is, it's a

real pretty picture here, but where are our servers, our local servers actually located at? So two things, we are making an aggressive move to the cloud like Ms. Sunny mentioned earlier, our finance system for instance, we're moving to the cloud. Editorial note, that was a $75,000 capital improvement project this year, which we are foregoing. So $20.26 dollars 75,000 freed up from the general fund, we're not spending it, we're moving that system to the cloud.

So that's one example of things we're doing. This is to replace the server infrastructure for the systems that we cannot move to the cloud yet, either because of timing or the vendor doesn't have that solution yet, nor can we do it in the next twelve months. So that's what this componentry is for, is to replace the hardware that's going to be out of support next year. And about I 'm going say eighteen months, a year and a half out or so. So that's what this is for.

Now the location of our data center, rather not say that here publicly on a recorded public meeting, I can talk to all of you either separately or together as a group where that is. It's far from the shore, it's miles away from the shore, it's inland in a secure facility that has a power generation, diesel tanks and that sort of infrastructure. It's on a second story in a hardened building. But I can give you the exact location after if that's okay.

No, that's fine. And my other question is what is the expected life of this $05,000,000 of equipment?

I'd say this is the last time we buy this life cycle. It runs five years. So what we like to do is pre negotiate that five year contract that we're locked into support. So after three years, they don't like to spike us with another year or two support. So we like doing that. It's pretty standard in the industry. So five years at that time, unless something has gone catastrophically wrong with the cloud and the Internet world, we will be off of on-site systems.

Yes, sir. Anyone else?

Roger, let's see for the next one. The next one is also IT, it's a server and data equipment for the backup site. Any questions on that for Roger?

Mr. Weed? It's me again. Again, another question on the location of this. I mean as far as a backup, I would question why we are using a local backup. I mean in the IT world, Sarasota is certainly still local, still subject to all the threats that would affect Venice. It not have we considered moving it to an out of state location for that backup using duplicate fiber for redundancy on our access?

We have these capital projects are quite expensive, but they're what I call the tip of the iceberg, the operational cost balloon over time. So this sort of capital outlay we'd have to have if it were somewhere else in another state. This happens to be an extremely hardened building with a good neighbor of ours that we trust, Sarasota County, where they keep all their EOC equipment. So it's far enough geographically in an extremely hardened building where we'd pay like $2,000 a year to host, which is unheard of. It'd probably be $5 to $6,000 a month to host.

So that's where we've landed, a trusted very trusted partner in a very hardened location that's far enough geographically. I mean if we had earthquakes and stuff, it might not be far enough, but it is far enough for storm type damage in this facility. And we've done it to save the ongoing costs. So we did think about maybe Arizona, Colorado, some places that are really, really diverse, but just the operational cost balloon and its insurance, it's how much we pay for insurance for the value we get. So we had considered that. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Anyone else? Okay.

Okay. So the next one also is to replace and renew the cyber security firewall protection. That's an IT project. Any questions on that one?

Mr. Vice Mayor? Just quickly Roger, this is more than a band aid I hope.

A lot of the other projects we do, we do on behalf of the city because other people use the service. This is an IT project, it's truly an IT project. We're in charge of making sure that people can't get into our systems. The system we have right now is about six years old that does the service. So I hope, yes, I would see this as a mandate our safety.

No, I agree. Thank you.

Anyone else? Okay.

K. And then the next one is a high water brush truck and and a forklift. They're two different items for the fire department.

So I do have something on this and then mister Smith has something as well.

And I was gonna make a comment on this one. We're hoping to get grant funding. FEMA had approached us to do grant funding for the jetty other than we would have to do the project right away. It's one of those, and we're not ready to do the Jetty product project. So we're going to approach them and do alternative projects asking if they'll give us funding for alternative besides the Jetty because we're not ready to do the Jetty. And this is one of those that we're including in that is this high water rescue brush truck hoping that FEMA will help fund this then instead of the jetty part. So this is part of what we're calling an alternative project. And we've approached FEMA. We're just waiting for the response back to say yes, they'll help us fund this.

All right. So we'll start with Mr. Smith and then I'll go after him.

Okay. Well that's great. I'm glad that we're looking at getting grant funding. Was the division of forestry not willing to continue to provide us with this kind of equipment? Our

current one is from the division of forestry.

Right, but that's what mean. Said no, we're not playing the game anymore.

Good morning again, good afternoon. So the two brush trucks, high water rescue trucks, they're hybrids that we have right now have both been donated by Forestry. One is around 30 to 40 years old, the other one is roughly the same. They don't give us anything new. We're always happy to have them, but they're just not in the state necessarily of operational readiness, if you will.

So this allows us get something will serve both purposes and it is a newer model and it will help us with higher water rescues, it will also serve as a brush truck, like we're saying if we're fortunate enough to get the grant, that's great. But this is something where we can't always rely on forestry to give us one, it's just based on what they can get their hands on that has always been used.

Thank you.

And if they do authorize it for the grant, it's 75% federal, 12.5% state and then our local share is 12.5% of the total.

So for me regardless of grant funding, think that we absolutely need to move forward on the high water brush truck. Whether it's grant funded or not, I think that's a necessity. Having seen our equipment and especially given these past storms, I think that the apparatus that the Chief has selected is very suitable for the needs that we have in our city. The one thing I do want to comment on is the forklift. I definitely want that to be only if we get grant funding for it, but I do have some questions and it's not about the specific capital item, it's more about how many of these we have around the city, the training that goes into forklift operator training, what our current standard obviously this brings on some additional operational cost to make sure that people get the proper training and that people get certified to operate this equipment.

So I think aside from saying that that one I want to be contingent on grant funding, I do have some questions and maybe it's more of a holistic question for the city manager as it relates to just how many we have across the city and if we can't share these other forklifts until we assess what our real need is going to be once Station 2 is actually built and we're operational.

So I will invite our Public Works Director down to talk about the training side of forklift use, but, we do have forklifts throughout the city. We have them at public works. We have them at our solid waste facility. We have them at utilities, probably, you know, water plant and wastewater plant. So we do have them throughout the city, And certainly, is something we could share to some degree.

It really comes down to what the demand is going to be at the new EOC storage. If it's if they're taking deliveries on a weekly basis, it will get cumbersome operationally to shuttle forklifts around. If they're getting deliveries once a month and the delivery driver has a forklift on the truck, that's a different story. So we might have to see what that demand looks like.

So I'll definitely listen to public works with some answers to those questions, but I would say it sounds like there's some unknowns here, so pushing this out a year if we don't get the grant funding would be okay. If we do get the grant funding, then fine, but I'd be curious to hear from I guess fleet or whomever that wants to tell me about what our current usage is and how many we have and all that kind of stuff.

While he's coming up, just I'm comfortable with pushing it out a year as well, again, pending if we get the grant then we can get it now. This will be stationed hopefully permanently at some point at the new Station 52, specifically in the EOC facility behind the station. And as our City Manager mentioned, it will be used to move heavy pallets of emergency management resources around. How often we get them delivered, it's just kind of unknown right now, but it will definitely be a resource that we are going to have to have at that station especially during hurricanes. How many we have? I'm not sure yet.

So to answer some of the questions, Travis Hout, Superintendent of Fleet and Solid Waste. So part of the problem with driving a forklift on the road, they're just not made for roads. They don't have suspensions on them. So they're not something that you just up and down the road. Also in this building or the storage facility, you're going to have racking where you need to get stuff up and down. So that was the reason why we put the request in for a forklift. They're just something you just don't transport. The weight of them also, you don't really think about the counterweight on them, but most forklifts are in the 8,000 pounds to 10,000 pounds range. So it's not like you throw it on a lawn mowing trailer. There's a significant amount of weight.

Once the building is up, we would definitely evaluate what size forklift we need. The pricing that we put in there was for the same similar type to what we already use. Obviously if we're not going up 20 feet in the air, we can get we can definitely trim that based on what the actual needs are. I think we probably have about six forklifts in the city overall. They're all used, you know, we get everything from pallets of water, manhole covers, curb stops, asphalt, shingles, concrete.

They are readily used, used a lot. So it's one of those things but there again to put them on the road and drive it between public works and the fire department, just it wouldn't be great on the roads, it wouldn't be great on the equipment.

I'd like to add too, this will also be used not just during emergency management times. We have part of our training, we have an extrication, a car that is brought for extrication. We use that probably at least once a month. We use the fork lift and right now we currently rely on fleet to come over to take the car off the trailer and then once we're done, put it back on the trailer. So it will also be used for other things other than emergency management.

Thank you, Chief. So Mr. Howe, back to you. The training that's involved, So what is our current city standard on the credentials that the individuals inside the city need in order to operate forklifts?

We currently do not have any policies on training on forklifts. It's only used by heavy equipment operators, people that understand the dangers of heavy equipment, but we do not have a formal licensing for that. That's something that we definitely are going to look into and we've had internal conversations on it, but there's no requirements on it right now.

Okay. So yes, I've said my piece on that one as far as grant funding, fine. But if not, I think we should push it out a year so that we can assess our needs. Anyone else? Okay.

And just keep in mind that my comments are not related to the brush high water rescue vehicle at all. Think that is a necessity and if we don't have the grant funding for it, think we should find the money for it absolutely 100%. All right, take us forward.

Okay. The next one is we're still within the 1¢ sales tax fund. So the next one is ADA improvements and that's under engineering. Any questions on ADA improvements

as

part of their adopted transition plans for ADA?

Mr. Smith? Yes, thank you. Obviously, am in favor of ADA compliance and improvements, but I'd like to know what these are and where we're lacking and what we're doing because it's every year a significant amount of money.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. For the record, John Kramer, City Engineer. We have an ADA transition plan that's been completed and evaluated city facilities and ADA deficiencies. For fiscal 2027, we would like to focus on the cultural campus and different deficiencies within that area.

Okay. We're showing funding every year. So I mean are we just that far out of compliance with the ADA?

It is a moving target. The ADA and PROWAG standards also change over time. So something that is in compliance now may not be in compliance tomorrow.

Okay. So we don't really specific items in mind with those future year funding, but we're just thinking there might be.

We do have the transition plan does evaluate our current deficiencies and out of those we identify which ones we want to focus on each fiscal year.

Thank you.

Mr. Engelke?

Thank you. So the ADA requirements, let's say federal or state imposition, is that Federal, yes. Okay. And so in total if we have 150 times five, seven fifty rounding, you've identified that many projects or an aggregation of cost to that and now you're just spreading it out over. We could be required to do it all in one or two years but you're using a more reasonable estimate of over five years and I realize the target will change, is that correct? That's correct.

Anyone else? Mr. Howard?

I think still on the same topic, but the crosswalks we have on Venice Avenue and they're censored so the no light starts flashing when a pedestrian starts to cross the street. I brought this up a couple of years ago when Ms. Wheaton was still with us. Depending on the speed of the pedestrian, sometimes they are a step or two into the traffic before those lights go off because the sensors are so close to the road rather than being set back so it senses the person prior to stepping into the street. Is that something that we could look at or explore what we could do to trigger those lights sooner?

That's something we can look at. I don't think that would fall within the scope of the ADA improvements Understand. Certainly something we can look at to improve. The lighted crosswalks are great when they work. They're maintenance intensive and sometimes if the maintenance is not up, they'll flash when no one's there or flash when not flash when someone's there. But yes, it's something we can look at.

Okay. Thank you.

Anyone else? Okay. We'll move forward.

Okay. So the next one is transferring into the beach renourishment fund. And this is part of the beach renourishment that the army corps is doing. And they're gonna be funding the majority of that, but there are a portion that probably the city might still have to fund. So we wait until they're done with the project and they tell us what we have to fund. And my understanding is they go to a certain point and if it's anything after that then the city is responsible for paying. Is that correct?

That's correct. In addition, there's turtle monitoring and physical monitoring that the city has to perform. So the construction for this event is being funded by the core up to their budget.

Okay. Then the next one is bike facilities that's also under engineering. Dollars 25,000 for design and construction of bikes at for this year for fiscal twenty seven is for Heckscher Park And Avenue Deparquet?

Deparquet, yes. Installation of a bike corral as recommended by our bicycle and pedestrian coordinator.

So I do have a question on this one. Reading the description, it talks about our current level and that we strive to improve. Have we received any numbers on what it's going to take to bring us to that gold status?

We have not. Every improvement we make certainly helps. I'm not sure, I haven't seen a total budget for what would be required. Okay.

Anyone else? Okay.

And the next one is just the debt service for the fire station. So this is the one that I talked about. So you can see that we're going to be paying the debt service but it's not really a CIP. It will be under principal and interest when we do the budget. That's what you could see what our debt service is over the next five years.

And then this one is for city hall for public works, major replacement for under the facility condition assessment for this is the last of the roofing needed for city hall and that's fiscal twenty seven and then exterior painting in fiscal thirty. So any questions on that one for public public works? Nope. Okay. Then this one is Fire Station 3 generator replacement in fiscal twenty eight.

And this is another one that we're gonna request part of that alternative project for FEMA to help us fund this generator for our Fire Station 3. Any questions on that? No? And the Venice Community Center. This is budgeted for part of it is fiscal twenty seven for landscaping enhancements, HVAC air handlers and this is the last of that. We are phasing that over a period of time, so per year, this is the last year for that funding. And then for pavement and walkways for fiscal twenty twenty seven.

So I do have something on this one. So I noticed that we're looking at replacement of generator and tanks. My issue is I don't understand why we need a generator at this facility if we've already told the public that it's not going to be used for a storm shelter. Maybe we could talk about a transfer switch and a portable generator, but at the tune of a million dollars I don't understand why we why we would need to do that.

Okay. For the record, Ricky Simpson, Director of Public Works. And that's a great question, Mayor. That is a hefty price tag for a generator. However, I do feel it's very important outside of utilizing that like we have tried in the past as a shelter.

We basically we're going through a new vendor now with the Adventist Community Center. We're trying to do a lot of upgrades. We have had to utilize it immediately after storms for mPODs and different things like that. This is a plug and play ready to go. It does take staff time and hours to make sure that we can get a generator there, making sure the generator is running. There's a lot of effort that you have to go in putting in a transfer switch in. I also want to think about you know, when we walked these new vendors through for the VCC, they all saw that it was a generated building, right? So if power went down, they looked at that and was like, oh, that's a nice amenity. Especially if they're having an event with 300, 400 people and they do lose power. You know, it's an immediate switch.

Know, it kicks on, everything's functioning. A wedding, concerts, know, I think that that would directly impact, you know, the vendor and the community by it. I mean how often will that happen? I can't say. But I do know that we've had quite a few lightning strikes on that building over the years. So I would be for this, my opinion, it's already in place and I wouldn't look at it in the future as you know for shelter reasons, but for the public.

What would the cost difference be if we did a transfer switch and a portable generator?

That would be a great question for Mr. Halt, but I'll try to answer it.

No, it's okay. If he wants to come up, we can wait. I don't want to make you guess. Just if we know the answer, great. If we don't

We do not.

I'm anticipating one tenth the cost is kind of what I'm thinking. So that's what I kind of want to see if I'm in the right ballpark or not.

Again, Travis Hout, Superintendent, Fleet and Solid Waste. So a transfer switch would probably be about $50,000 put the transfer switch in a portable generator, would probably and I'm just guesstimating on this probably be in the $300,000 range.

But

then the issue is getting fuel to that generator. You would have to put a fuel tank in which that could cost several $100,000 or you would have to get some kind of a transfer trailer system method to get fuel to it because just a trailer generators maybe six to ten hours of run time. So then you would have to figure out how you're going to transfer the fuel. So could you save money doing that? Probably in the long run but you know, mean there's factors of getting the equipment there, hooking it up, know, so

think from our perspective, we just as a council need to decide the necessity if if it's not going to be used for immediate emergency needs like our fire stations and our police stations. That's where I think a physical generator in place makes a lot more sense versus this is now going to turn into more of an entertainment venue. You know, yes, it might be used for FEMA and stuff like that but I mean to the tune of a million dollars, it just seems like we could save some money. I've got three people that want to talk so I'm going to Everybody stay where you're at and let's go to Ms. Frank first.

Thank you. I agree with my colleague, the mayor's comments, concerns related to the generator. I know it's not scheduled for '27. So potentially we could put a hold on that until the city finalizes who's going be operating that facility and really get a better handle on the overall scope of uses that's going to be happening moving forward with that facility since it's no longer going to be operated by Sarasota County. I did want to propose since we're talking about $01 sales tax funding, additional $250,000 of what I'll call overall technology improvements to the community center and it's coming from a place of I spoke with some of the super users who have historically utilized the community center and then also users who'd like to use it moving forward.

And some of and I know staff has done this work really well. They've identified the sound system needs to be replaced. Some of the super users I spoke with also noted that the projector and cameras could be replaced that way when the community center host conferences, a speaker series, right now it's one fixed camera, you're not able to zoom in or project screens throughout the facility. So that's about a $25,000 improvement. They also suggested movable lights and an enhanced lighting board as well as a roller flexible LED panel wall.

So all of those together would come in under $250,000 and I'd just like my colleagues to consider using 1¢ sales tax money because we're hoping to see the community center improve its use and I think these capital investments to the building will help attract the renters that we hope whatever provider is going to be overseeing that we'll be able

to secure for the city.

Mr. Engelking? Okay, thanks.

Didn't really think about this but I would like to see if we can pursue the upgrades on some of the, things that will make it more rentable and more usable. Getting back to the generator and so forth, is there a generator in there right now?

Yes, there is.

Okay. So we do have that and you're talking about really a value judgment at this point. It'd be nice to have just like it would be nice to have $250,000 of electronic equipment which I am in favor for. But in terms of going in and we may be down for a little bit, has there been, okay, you talked about like if we have a concert or an event and that event or concert is cancelled because there's lightning strike, we don't have backup power. Have we looked at a cost benefit equation on that?

In other words, if it's costing us $1,000,000 how much could we potentially lose putting probabilities around, you don't have to answer it right now, but how much could we potentially lose each year and the probability could we lose $50,000 could we lose 100,000 Is it a 10% probability or a 90% probability? So when we're looking to my way of thinking in capital budgeting which is this is what this is, capital budgeting exercise, I'm looking at the cost benefit just like on the HR and the technology, we're going to be saving some money here. We could be saving some money but we have to look at are we be spending $1,000,000 be nice to have but we're only going be potentially at risk for $50,000 a year and you put that out, that's a twenty year payback, that's a long payback. So those are just some of the things I don't need an answer right now but I'd like to maybe consider that in our discussion.

Mr. Weed?

Thank you. Discussing the generator, I'm not too terribly concerned with having blackouts during events. It doesn't seem like a million dollar justification. My question concerned, I know after the storm that that community center is used as the hub for recovery efforts, after our storms that was occupied for quite some time by the National Guard. When the National Guard arrives, do they arrive with their own generators that could be hooked up to our transfer switch or are they relying on our existing generator to make the facility habitable and usable for them and for their recovery efforts?

I would not be able to speak on the deployment of the military and where they would place generators and what size. Is there a possibility or potential that they would have that equipment and be able to deploy it there? Yes. But you don't know the magnitude of the storm and what they're going to deem as their priority. So I would not be able to speak on that.

Is that so I mean I know when they showed up, they showed up with fuel trucks that were permanently or temporarily permanently stationed there for their uses. Just, to me it would be worth asking the question of the National Guard when they come down to use that facility and we hope to God that they never have to again. Would they be able to bring their own generating equipment that could be hooked up to our transfer switch to make it usable. Because I would hate to lose the availability of that facility for recovery purposes due to a generator. But if they're able to bring that in themselves with their own fuel supply, that would give me pause on spending $1,000,000 for a generator.

Yes. Again, I understand the question. And all we could do is say, we have a transfer switch, here's the type of cabling that would take to operate it as well as the requirement on how many kilowatts are required, what size machine would be needed to operate that and then that would be a military question to where there again, how they're going to deploy and what they do to try to figure out what the Army is going to do, that would be way out of my purview. I wouldn't know. And there again, it would depend on the impact where we're at in relationship to everything. So all we can do is provide them the information of here's what you would need to connect to the building.

So I'm going to jump in real quick if I can. So somebody who has twenty five years in disaster response experience, can tell you when I'm setting up a hospital, I bring all of my own equipment including generators so that we can run and air condition our hospitals. FEMA has the same capabilities, We also have the ability to request from the EOC resources that we need. So if we know the National Guard wants to set up and they don't come with their own infrastructure, we can request that through the EOC and say we need a 75 kilowatt generator dropped off at this location and that's part of the state resource system and all of that kind of stuff. So having said that, mean there's many ways if it's a true federal or state response, there's resources all over this state and all over this country that I don't think we need to spend $1,000,000 to put a generator that will get used once in a lifetime.

That said, I will yield to the city manager and to the fire chief if they want to comment on those particulars because they are our experts but I've done it for twenty five years and we don't depend on the city of Venice to come help you. We'll come help you with all of our equipment.

Thank you for your input on that. That makes it very clear to me and takes that $1,000,000 off my list

of priorities. Glad we could have that discussion because workshops, this is exactly what it's for so that we can also talk to each other since sunshine precludes us from doing that elsewhere. Mr. Clinch?

Thank you. The mayor is exactly right. You know, when the National Guard does come, they're pretty self sustainable. They bring everything that they need. The value to them of the community center is really the parking lot and the central location, they can set up everything that they need. And the restrooms, they'll come use restrooms and that kind of thing. I will add, it's important to have some historical context here. When we renovated the community center with referendum twenty five years ago or so, it was at that point designated as a shelter. So that was really the original intent of the generator. Well, things have changed a lot since then.

We have different standards now through the state of Florida on what qualifies as a shelter. So it is no longer designated as a shelter. The value to us, in addition to the parking lot, in my opinion, is it is a long term recovery center. And that is extremely valuable because people know where it is, it's centrally located, there's parking. So you can expect after a storm, God forbid, we have another storm this season or in the future, it will be a long term recovery center for people.

FEMA doesn't typically set up a long term recovery center within the first week. So you can feel pretty confident that FPL is going to restore power back to that community center if we didn't have a generator there. So I'm comfortable either way, just speaking professionally. But I do want to make sure we have consensus on this before we move forward. So I'll wait for that when you're ready.

So my proposal to the council would be reducing that number. And the transfer switch idea, I think this is incredibly important right now because as we are getting a new vendor, Mr. Simpson made a very valid point of we need to give them the expectation of what's going to be there. So I think that we to be very clear. So putting in a transfer switch so that a generator could be hooked up to the building, I'm all for them spending the estimated $50,000 so that, that capability is there. But I don't think we need to put in a fixed generator and if that's part of the venue services they want to provide, then they can handle the capital cost behind that personally. That's my opinion. Ms. Frank?

I don't speak for whatever vendor is going to take it over, but they'd probably be happy not to have the ongoing maintenance cost of servicing the generator that's there. So my ask of my colleagues would be instead of the $1,000,000 for the generator in fiscal twenty twenty eight to instead put those additional technological improvements that I mentioned in that spot instead.

Mr. Ingleke? I

concur with Ms. Frank on that.

Anyone else? So then just by a simple nod, do we have a consensus on those adjustments? Okay. All right.

I just have one question on those adjustments. Do you want those technical improvements when we come back for the budget workshop, do you want the technical improvements in fiscal twenty seven or '28 that Ms. Frank was referring to? Because we can add them to either year. I'm not sure if you meant them to be in fiscal twenty seven or fiscal twenty eight.

Yes, I'd love to see them in 'twenty seven because 'twenty seven, okay.

Only comment to it is that if we're doing sound system replacement in 'twenty eight, I would think that those tech upgrades would probably be best done altogether. So whether it's '27 or '28 doesn't matter as much to me but I think you'd probably get a better comprehensive package if you said we want all of this done at one time.

Yes, for sure.

Yes. So we'll change that and add that to fiscal twenty twenty seven and remove the million during fiscal twenty twenty eight. But so did we say for fiscal twenty twenty eight we want to keep transfer switch in there though for fiscal twenty twenty eight instead of that or just remove that whole generator million period?

My proposal was for a transfer switch at the tune of $50,000 but it's not a requirement on my end, it's just I think that set yourself up for success and I know they can calculate them the kilowatt that you would require so that way at least we could tell them what size generator they would need to power the current facility.

Okay. So the transfer switch is the switch and they bring the generator and plug it in? Okay.

Okay. Any other questions on that from finance or public works? Okay.

Okay. That was a good discussion. So the next one is resilient citywide fiber optic loop and that is an IT and that's for fiscal twenty twenty nine and fiscal year '30. Any questions for Roger on that?

I don't see any. Oh, have a question? Mr. Weed does, sorry.

Thank you. My only question is putting it off till '29. I just don't know if that is a more critical dean that needs to be met earlier than that.

Roger Navarro, Director of IT for the record. Mr. Reid, we have we do have a backup plan, let's say, before having this fiber. It's quite expensive. We have to turn it on. We'd have to pay month to month. But we do have, I'm going to say, kind of a rip cord if we needed to pull it if our fiber did get cut. Right now we have just one single strand of fiber. If it got cut somewhere, depending on where it got cut, a large portion of the city could be offline. But again, we have a vendor that we can pull that for.

It would just start burning money quite quickly. So it's not like we're at ultimate risk with no backup plan between now and 2019. We do have other capital projects like there's a bottleneck in terms of staffing. I don't know if we'd be able to execute that any sooner.

Thank you.

Yes, sir. Anyone else? Thank you, sir.

Okay. So the next project is for the building in '28, 2930. Window replacement, floor, and roof replacements. Any questions on that for the building? Okay.

And this one is the Venice Municipal Beach Pavilion roof and that's slated for fiscal twenty seven. We've had that in the CIP for the last several years also so now is the time for that. Any questions on that roof and construction of that? Okay. Venice Municipal Beach, this is for exterior door replacements and boardwalk replacement in fiscal twenty eight and asphalt resurfacing in this is the one that we already had when we were talking in fiscal twenty one.

I mean, general fund. So it's done here twice. Okay. So we're done with the ones in sales tax. So that brings us forward to and the one that the small one, I mean, the one that's in there for the building fund, that's already the land management that we already talked about.

So the next is the triangle in for and that's under the general capital projects, fund three zero one. And that's for exterior stair replacement and the stucco replacement in fiscal twenty seven and then the flat roof portion in fiscal twenty eight. So any questions on that one for the triangle end? Okay. Then we get to Brohard Park and this is also in the general capital projects fund and it's for the parking lot resurfacing in fiscal twenty seven and then door replacement in fiscal thirty.

Okay. So Hygold Park and that one is for restrooms and the pavilion at Hygold Park. Venetian Waterway Trail. This is trail top replacement and the boardwalk replacement. And this is part of us taking over that trail with the parks in a local agreement. So any questions on that?

Miss Spring?

Just confirming the boardwalk for this project is the one that's adjacent to the car dealership and what type of materials, is it wood going back down or?

So yes, this is the raised elevated boardwalk connector by the Buick dealership and it should be a composite moving forward. Awesome.

Thank you

so much.

Mr. Engelke?

Thanks. The goal is fifty-fifty cost share with for example who? It's a grant fund. I'm just curious where I'm very interested in these grants because to me that could be a a it is a significant source of funding for the the city and where would that one come from for example? It's in the box.

This is the the parks. What is that one called? It's it's the state parks fund that they're starting to fund parks again. I forgot the name of the funding from the state, but it's for parks. Recreational trails.

All right.

Well that's a good thing. That's good and I encourage

So part

of it is state funding, it's for recreational trails.

Pursue as much as we can.

Madam Clerk, you can reorder me and we'll go with Mr. Weed next.

Thank you. This question comes directly from a citizen. It was noted that several of the distance indicators on the trail are missing or have been removed as part of repair and as an avid walker she is concerned and questions if they will be replaced and if so a timeframe.

So that's a great question. So miss Cassel and myself actually have a meeting with the manager of the trail system for Sarasota County and we will bring that to their attention. So they're right now trying to bring everything up to speed for the takeover. So I'll be able to get you an answer within the next two weeks on that.

Thank you very

much. My pleasure.

So one thing I wanted to bring up was with this this new responsibility is if we could and might need the police chief for some of this too is if we could make any enhancements as far as surveillance security, call boxes, those kinds of things. I don't know what the call volume is as far as law enforcement medical requests, but as you guys are having these discussions, I didn't know if this is something that we could start planning towards if we want to make those enhancements. But just a suggestion, not a requirement. So I don't know if you have anything you want to say or if the chief wants to come down and if you guys have anything on response times and calls and any complaints that you guys are receiving. I know I've seen traffic over the years of you know, it'd be nice to have the ability to call the police from a call box or something like that.

So I don't have any statistics. I wasn't prepared for that specific question. However Good.

I'm glad that I threw you. Yeah. Exactly. Anyway, go ahead.

I can say just generally speaking, I have requested that any projects, whether it be this trail or other parks related improvements that we do consider cameras, call boxes would be great for those areas that are of high use. I mean, we know those areas of our our high use and difficult to find people. We do get 911 calls on those trails, and it's hard to really identify where they are. So that would be an improvement. So I ask that just in general for any citywide infrastructure improvement that we consider additional cameras and those types of features.

So I guess that's my only ask. Now that we're kind of in agreement on that, if we could just look into that so that it could end up on the CIP, I think that, that would be a good use of funds. So any other questions or comments on this particular item? Okay. I think we're on to Heckscher Park next.

Yes. Heckscher Park and that's for this is a repeat, the same one that we had before because now we're in the three zero one projects.

And and I'm gonna real quick, I know miss Castle, I think she was walking up last time. Is there something you wanted to add for our knowledge or No.

It's about the recreational program information.

Okay.

Okay. Now we're into the Streets Capital Project Fund and for engineering road restoration 1,200,000.0 in fiscal twenty eight. Any questions on that for John Kramer? Okay. West Bay Lock Park is for additional paved parking, angled parking around the park there. Any questions on that one?

Mr. Weep?

I just ask that we honor old Betsy by spelling her name properly.

We do have a misspelling. Oh,

yes. Bestie. She our bestie just so we're on the same page. She is our bestie. Oh, boy.

Spell check didn't catch that, I guess. Thanks for pointing that out.

Oh, you're welcome.

Is there any questions on the dollar amount or anything for that additional pipe parking? Okay. So then this, the next one is for the repairing the South Jetty reconstruction. So we're gonna put this into the beach fund because we've been transferring money from the ones in sales tax into the beach fund. So Humphreys Park and all that is along the beach so we can use that for this funding. This is a guess at this point in time of what we think it would have cost thinking design in fiscal twenty eight with construction starting in fiscal twenty nine. But that all depends on the Army Corps of Engineer when they do the timing of what they're gonna do down at the jetty determines when we would do our part of the project. So we put it in there so you can see that we're gonna use the beach renourishment funding for that big project when that does happen.

You're not gonna trump what I wanna say, are you?

No. No. Just wanted to

You go first and then I'll go

after you guys. Okay. Perfect. I just wanted to be very specific for anyone listening. This money is to repair Humphreys Park. So this is not the jetty itself. Right. This would be so that we are ready and funded to hit the ground running as soon as the corps comes in and secures the perimeter. Thank you.

All I was going to say is that we're going give an update at the next council meeting but we did recently go out with our entire delegation and Congressman Stubbe's team get everyone's eyes on the projects and get letters of support for future funding and we were very successful. So that will come up at the next council meeting. But I did want to highlight that, that we have been very attentive and aggressive towards this, not specific to Humphreys Park but the entire project jetties and all. Anything Ms. Frank?

Yes, might be too early to discuss the details, but I just want to make sure the $4,300,000 is comprehensive to obviously put pavement back down and also secure restrooms at that part. Is there anything else substantial just so I can get my head around what would be included in that 4.3 besides parking and restrooms? Anything else?

Not really sure at this point what the design is going to look like. I mean I would like to have it better, build back better, right? So at this point, will it be mobile restrooms, something that we can hook and pull in case a storm is coming? I think that would be ideal. You know, a couple nice concrete slabs, make sure we, you know, for possible food vendors that way they can come and go as well. If we have a storm coming, they could hook up and protect their asset. And then of course getting, you know, what what the design looks like from the Army Corps with sidewalks and our park benches. I've been going to the other coast looking at other jetty systems to kind of get ideas.

And a

lot of the design templates that I'm seeing are from the late 90s and it's you know leaps and bounds above what we have out there currently. So it kind of depends on what I'm sure we'll go with some sort of design architect when we do the design of that park.

Great. Anyone else?

Know you're Ready

to go to the next one?

Go ahead.

Okay. The next one is a drone for a first responder. This is a new project that hadn't been in before. So we put it to fiscal twenty eight. So if you have any want any discussion on that, it could be the chiefs or Kyle Hartley. That's expert. What I'm

What I was nodding my head at is the chief poised and ready behind you. Because he he knows I've got some some statements questions, all that kind of stuff.

I thought for sure there'd be no questions on

this.

Right, of course. So I don't know the best way to approach this one because you and I have already spoken at length about it. So if you want to give a presentation on it, you could. But I could just ask my specific questions and we could dialogue this out. But you know, I think we know some of my thoughts were, can we do this in incremental versus buying three drones at one time?

Could we do it at one? Do we need to do this right now or could we push it out a little bit because of the technology? One of the things I really want to say that came from from this specifically is I've had discussions with the sheriff, I've had discussions with you, with our fire chief about many on council may not realize we we consolidated our dispatch some years ago that at the time was going be a cost savings, but there are things you lose in that process and some of the things that we're doing here in our great city, the various programs PD is running, think we're calling them Sentinel, Is that what the I call them Sentinels, but they they I think they have a different term.

That's I like that.

The social work programs? Guardians. That's right. Guardians. So anyway, we've got the Guardian program, we've got this this new possibility of the drone program which I'm really excited about, but there's components that involve deployment and flight and FAA certifications and all these different things that initially my thought was maybe we should deconsolidate dispatch and go back to having our own dispatch that could control these special programs that we run.

But in these discussions, what I realized is that there may still be a possibility for not deconsolidating, but maybe a particular operational position that would handle those special programs inside of the police department to make sure that the right people are being notified and getting the calls when they need them and that they're flying these drones so that we're not taxing the the current resources we have inside the city because it's a public safety function. There's a possibility that these individuals could be, subject to going to court because of things that they see and and things that they're doing. So so I had some concerns about, well, what kind of background checks are these individuals gonna have because of the, sensitive things that they're going to be handling. So I've had a lot of discussions behind the scenes. So I wanted to give the Chief the opportunity to kind of if he just wants to give everyone a comprehensive presentation on this, it might be better.

Yes. I just want to be careful, make sure that everybody is up to speed. Like you said, you and I have spoken at length. I don't know what everyone else's knowledge is on a drone first responder program. So I think it could be beneficial if you all agree just to give you a little overview of that program first, and then we can get into some of those questions that you had.

And of course, assistant chief fire chief Kyle Hartley is here because he's one of our pilots of our current drone system. He's been instrumental in moving forward with these programs and has a lot of the tech side that I don't have. So But to begin, this would be a public safety program. So there would be public safety oversight to address some of what you were discussing there. And the priority would be public safety operations.

That's currently what we're doing now with our drone program. We've seen it benefit though beyond public safety, so I think that should also be mentioned. It just shows the value of these systems that it can be used for utilities when it's inspecting equipment, things like that. And we've seen even just this week the value of a drone system as we have it today. We just had the homicide case Monday morning.

We're able to bring a drone out there and map that crime scene very thoroughly and very well in a way that we could not do without that system. And then matter of weeks ago, we had the sheriff's department hazardous device unit assist us with a bomb threat, and they bring out their robots to, you know, explore the suspicious device, but they have small cameras and so their visibility is very limited. They actually have to bring out sometimes three robots just to look at one device. And so in this case, we're able to bring one of our city owned drones into the field, deploy it, and that probably, you know, can't say how much that decreased the time of resolving the matter and opening up the business that was closed and evacuated because of this, but it did greatly increase the speed of determining whether this suspicious device was dangerous. So the value is there.

Moving on to a drone first responder program where you have docking systems deployed throughout the city so that the drone can deploy on its own to coordinates as you send it off to a call for service, decreases the time. Currently, we have to manually carry and collect the drones, bring them out to the field, which just takes time. So it's doable, it's working for us now, but we're looking into the future with this DFR program. Just, again talks about some of the advantages. It gives us that situational awareness, gives us the ability to make safer, better decisions.

There's improved safety for first responders, you know, on the police side, there could be a call for service involving a person with a weapon. This drone could arrive and determine if that's the case. Oftentimes those types of calls are not factually correct. Maybe it's a person holding an umbrella, we've had those before. And so instead of sending all of our available officers, we could send a couple and along with this drone to, you know, initiate the scene.

On the fire side, you can have a hazardous material situation where you can get oversight and view and keep personnel back at a safer distance. So those are just some examples of the value of these systems. I do like to mention though that especially since we have a staffing study going on, is not a substitute for staffing. This is an enhancement. It is a force multiplier in a way because, you know, we can have eyes on the scene, like I said, you know, maybe keep an officer assigned to the island.

Maybe they don't have to leave because we can go see what's going on versus, again, a lot of calls we have to send more people than necessary because we don't know what's happening. If we know what's happening, we can reduce that. So it's an enhancement. And let me turn it over to Kyle here just to kind of go a little more into what we're doing today and then where this can take us.

Good morning, counsel. Again, Kyle Hartley, Assistant Fire Chief, City Events Fire Rescue. So just to kind of give you an overview, currently how we're operating our drone program in the city. We have seven pilots that are signed off to fly any of the drones and specifically the drones we're using are manufactured by a company called Skydio. It's a government only used drone, so it's not open to the general public.

And the platform itself, the drone itself is called an X10. So again we have seven pilots in the city right now that are trained to fly those that drone specifically. We have two in possession in the city right now and we're all cross trained to fly it. It doesn't matter whose department really owns that drone, we use it together. Skydio has three deployment methods for drones.

The simplest easiest one is called patrol led deployment. So as chief mentioned, that's pretty much having a drone in a in a box in the back of a patrol car or in the back of a fire engine. And when it arrives on scene, the crews open it up and then they fly it using a controller there on scene. Obviously, that's not the best, method. One, we have to we lose time getting to the scene and then the operator is in the mix of what's going on.

So he's not only having to to, worry about the drone in the air, but he is having all those external feedback being there on the incident scene itself. We right now are working towards the patrol at DFR. So again, that DFR stands for drone as first responder. And so that's kind of a mix to where the drone is in vehicles, crews arrive on scene, they open the drone up, and then a remote pilot, in other words, someone sitting behind a desk with a computer flies the drone via cell signal. And so that alleviates or eliminates external pressure to the pilot where all he's worried about now is gathering intelligence and flying the drone correctly.

The FAA likes that. So, that's where we're at right now. As as chief has brought up our real goal and really where Skydio is really pushing the market and pushing the FAA to go is this dock based DFR solution. So what that means is the drones live in a dock in specified locations. For us in the city just preliminary studies actually where the public safety campus, in other words where VPD headquarters is and where the new Fire Station 2 is.

That's the central area in the city where we would have the greatest benefit of having a dock based solution. And so that dock will live in that area and once that dock excuse me, the drones are based in that dock, they can fly in most weather. Obviously when a thunderstorm or during hurricanes, they're not going be able to deploy. But light rain and normal weather conditions that drone is sitting in that dock ready to go at a moment's notice. Once a call comes through to CAD, the CAD is in other words dispatch, it is linked to dispatch

drone and within twenty seconds it is in the

air and flying to and that location. The key thing with that is currently the FAA requires a pilot to send the drone. Now they're really pushing for that to be completely autonomous. When I say that is a robot in the sky and it is doing everything by itself. Right now though a pilot is required to push a button and then that drone automatically goes up and goes to those GPS coordinates.

The advantage with this is obviously the speed. Skydio gave Us numbers based off of the past five years of BPD's response. And let me make sure I find that for you. So if we did one dock over the last five years, it would be able to respond to roughly 115,000 calls over the last five years that drone based out of one location have been able to respond. But the key thing is just with one dock roughly 28% of those calls the drone would be on scene in under three minutes.

That is almost a 50% decrease in response time. Now it's not an officer on scene, it's not a firefighter on scene, but it is that situational awareness for the crews when they arrive on scene. So as chief had mentioned, they have a report of suspect holding a weapon. Now there's a drone above the head and the officers know, is he holding an assault rifle? Is he holding a pistol?

Or is he holding an umbrella? So that's kind of it gives our officers and our firefighters. This drone makes it sends us live stream to any any device available. So we can send it to a phone or to a computer. So those responding crews can look at their phone and really know what is going on before they get there on scene and aren't really walking into a trap or walking into the unknown.

They have a good understanding of what's going on. Another thing is as Skydio recommends more than one dock and why would that be? Well first off, multiple calls come in at once. These drones now you can have two drones going to the same call at this or to different calls at the same time. Also battery life, the drone is only about a forty minute battery lifespan.

So that drone, if two docks are based at the same place, when one drone's battery starts to deplete, it automatically will launch the another drone to take its place and the other one will return and start charging. And so they can sit there and jump back and forth and keep oversight over the incident. And the biggest thing is by having multiple drones it actually drops increases the amount of response. So for their study if we did three docs at VPD headquarters, approximately 66% of those 115,000 calls over the last five years, a drone would be on scene in under three minutes. And so you see that is a great enhancement to our response abilities.

And that's a really quick way of describing that dock based solution and obviously any questions you have, I'm all for it.

Mr. Engelke?

Thanks. I think the concept of the drones is an excellent concept. It is cutting edge and just with like many things we should be doing, we should be as cutting edge as financially possible. $600,000, how many is that the three drones or or what is that? It sounds like a lot of money. What are we getting for $600,000 specifically in terms of hardware, software, whatever it might be? Mhmm.

So this is a the way Skydio does this, it's a package deal. So currently how we we have it, we just we we bought the drone, the hardware and the software is really what's the pricey part of this entire package. So the dock solution is a it's a you either have it or you don't. There's no piecemeal to it. So one dock, I'll back up.

So the way they advertise this package is you must do a five year plan for the doc solution. Reason they're doing that is all maintenance repairs if a dock breaks, if a drone crashes, they just replace it. They take care of everything. So it's a five year pretty much you pay once, there's no other cost to the program moving forward. Now to your question, the annual cost for one dock and drone, in other words the entire package for one dock comes out to $1.40 $101,923 per year per drone and dock.

So again for that five year lifespan, it's just over $709,000 for one dock. If we did the three dock solution per year, it is $425,769 So as you said, it's not a fiscally cheap thing to run. Skydio did give us many, many different layouts of how we could do the dock based solutions throughout the city. Again ideally is six docks. We know that that's obviously it's up to your discretion as counsel.

But just to get this going and the program going, again we just pretty much give you the information that each dock system again is going to touch that $141,000 really $142,000 per year.

Okay,

you. The $142,000 rounded, dollars 140 whatever, that's in addition to the $600,000

No, so this $600 was before this we have this meeting on Friday due to tariffs this number has changed on over literally over a couple of weeks. So this 600,000 was that is that five year for one dock is basically what that came down to. So again one dock now after Friday 709,616 would be a five year for one dock located there.

So you're recommending one or three docs on this on the increased cost and if we're recommending three, it's going to be a lot more than 600. Can we maybe defer a couple of them if you're recommending three, can we defer a couple in the future years and while we learn the technology and it could be some Most

likely what would happen, I mean one reason why we're putting it in fiscal twenty twenty eight instead of 2027, which I think start to go into the mayor's question, is that we do have these things to sort out and we do have to negotiate with the company and finalize some of these numbers, figure out what number of docking stations we want to start with, understanding what are the plus and minuses. So an example would be even if you go with three docking systems, and there's question of do you want them all in one location or do you want to spread them out in different sites in the city, and there's advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. Another thing that we're looking at is what else do we need with this system because there's other software that we might need as we're coordinating with other agencies such as the sheriff's office. It's gonna take some time to work through that. Currently, captain Hill and lieutenant Adams is at a conference right now studying this and learning more and more.

They're learn it's about AI and drone systems, and he he actually sent me a message while I'm sitting here just, preparing for this. He just said there's just a lot to unpack, and things are changing dramatically over the next year. So one example he was talking about with the FAA allowing for the autonomous drone systems. That technology exists. They just need FAA approval.

They're working on that now. If that gets approved, that decreases the number of pilots we need. That changes our approach as well. So because things are developing so quickly and we want to make sure we make the right choice in number of docking stations and this type of system that we purchase, understanding that it's a big dollar amount and it's taxpayers' money, we want to have that time to select the best option to fine tune this presentation and say, not just say, you know, maybe we need six, maybe we can start with one, maybe we can do it with three. We want to come back and say, this is what we recommend and this is why.

So we're not quite there yet because this is evolving. This DFR program really has only been out for a year. We see the appeal to it, City Of Sarasota is moving forward, City Of North Ports moving forward, the county is looking at it not as closely as we are right now. So it's one of those technologies that will happen. It's like when we got the laptop and the patrol cars, it's just a matter of the timing and how we implement it and then the final cost. So I think we can fine tune that. That's why we're looking at 28 instead of 20

Ms. Frank?

Yes, not to drone on, but it's police impact fee money, which is obviously a very narrow use. So if that's how you want to spend the police impact fee money that's coming in, it makes good sense to me and I do feel like we have enough buffer and timing for you guys to fine tune the details and bring it back next year with CIP with exactly the hard cost and vendor tweaks and all of that. So great job being ahead of the curve.

Yeah. And that's why we identified those funds because of the restricted use. And also I don't want to take away from our ability of hiring more officers. And so I have to balance all that when I present this to you. So thank you.

That was actually a good point that I was going make was just that you still have this study coming up and we're going to find out what your staffing needs are and stuff through this consultant but impact fee money is different than what we would spend on personnel. So when do you think we'll be able to have a better fine tuned number and should we stick with '28 or should we even go as far out as '29? Is there any thoughts on as this is evolving, you know, and continued cost too. So we're just talking about the initial start up here, Mhmm. But what what are we gonna do to fund this as time goes on?

Can we use that police impact fee money to continue this? Like, how I see you shaking your head, but I I wanna I wanna make sure I see I'm

not shaking my head in agreement of you.

Behind you, she's shaking your head.

The finance director is behind me shaking her head.

But no, I just I wanna make sure that we transparently have that discussion so that everyone understands Correct. Where we would be as far as the future maintenance of the program. And and obviously the technology is gonna get better, the prices are gonna come down, mean it's gonna be more competitive but I think we need to have all those discussions so that we're very clear on I'm absolutely ecstatic and super behind this. I just wanna make sure we do this the right way.

And before Oh, go ahead.

It's a good source for the police impact fee money for the initial outlay of the capital, but the maintenance going after that would be general fund.

Okay. Yeah.

Again, that's just another reason why we're looking at '28. I believe that is sufficient time to answer all those questions. I mean personally, seeing the value of it, I'd love to say we could do it in 2017. It's just not realistic to be able to do it thoughtfully and properly. But I think we can in 2018.

Okay. Anyone else on council? Okay. Thank you for that information. All right. Then with that, I'd like to go ahead and take a ten minute break and come back at 11:40. Yeah. I got a plan. Alright. I kind of.

So I want to bring up to my colleagues real quick. We are gonna you know, we've got a few more pages of this to go, so we're we're gonna be here for, you know, an extended period of time. We have twenty minutes until I wanna break for lunch. So my thought is if the council is okay with it, if there's any members of the audience that are here and may have time requirements, they need to be somewhere this afternoon, maybe they weren't planning on being here all day with us, letting them come up and at least speak their five minutes so that way they have that opportunity. Is that okay with my colleagues? Okay. Alright, so Madam Clerk, if you would, I'm going to let folks come up and speak and we'll make sure they have the opportunity. If you have anybody signed up.

We have six people signed up.

Okay. And

the first

speaker is Brett Spangler, does not appear to be here.

Okay. And that's okay. We'll come back to it later.

Okay. The next speaker is Madeline Zubik. You cannot participate online. You can watch the meeting online but you can't participate So Ms. Zubik will have five minutes.

Okay. Good morning and welcome.

Good morning mayor and council members. My name is Madeline Zubik and I live full time in Gulf Shores on the island. I spoke here at the last council meeting a few weeks ago. I spoke on the proposal for the pipeline running from Flamingo Ditch and Golden Beach to Deer Town Golly in Gulf Shores. That same day I received a phone call from John Kramer who is the engineer for the city of Venice.

We spoke twice on the phone about the proposal and he assured me that it wasn't in the grant. I have it documented that he said the city is not pursuing the pipeline at this time and that the issue of this pipeline is not in any of the grants that are being submitted. I hope that in the future when there is an issue that affects our communities notified through either our subdivision boards or through a representative that may live in our neighborhood. We are now awake and are watching very closely the decisions the city is making. Which brings me to the issue of the airport.

I respectfully demand as a homeowner that that has a house close to the airport and Gulf Shores, a longevity study of the environmental impact and hazards from the excessive jets at the airport. Let me repeat that again because I kind of messed up. I respectfully demand as a homeowner that has a house close to the airport in Gulf Shores, a longevity study of the environmental impact and hazards from the excessive jets at the airport. Dirtown Gully is the most polluted waterway on the island and this waterway begins at the airport. I believe the chemical aviation contamination into this waterway is coming mainly from the airport.

We also don't want an increase in planes and jets flying over our houses and polluting us and the environment, spraying us with cancer causing particulates. If the city decides to move forward with expansion of the airport with the new firehouse and other measures, homeowners are ready to file complaints with the state of Florida and hold protests at the airport. This could be just the beginning of our efforts to stop the environmental impacts in our neighborhoods. Who's benefiting from the airport? Who?

I feel the more important question is why is money superseding safety? The city already has lawsuits pending from Golden Beach residents for their alleged mismanagement of issues that affected the safety of residents there. Many Gulf Shore neighbors are starting to feel that the city isn't looking out for our safety from expansion of the airport and this is sure to impact our health and environment. Maybe this is the time to move the airport off the island for all concerned. LOL. Thank you for your time and attention.

Thank you for your comments. Madam Clerk next speaker.

The next speaker is Tanya.

Okay, we'll move on to the next one.

Okay, Tracy Kehoe.

Good morning and welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me. I just want to say on behalf of the residents living adjacent to the Venice Airport, we respectfully request or requesting a vegetative buffer and earthen burn project along with water quality testing to help mitigate the impacts of airport operations around our neighborhood. This request is made in the spirit of community collaboration to allow the airport and nearby residential areas to coexist safely and comfortably. Residents have experienced prolonged jet engine run ups and associated noise, noticeable jet exhaust fumes, toxic fumes, and we're really concerned about the storm water runoff from the airport property entering the Deer Town Gully. We're particularly concerned about the health effects of the jets exhaust particulates.

Fine particles from jet engines including ultra fine particles and soot can travel several miles. At the citizens advisory panel, a doctor said it can travel six miles. The whole I think the island is 4.5 miles. So it's not just the Gulf Shores and Golden Beach that affects that are affected by these toxic chemicals, it's the whole island. And it can affect respiratory health and cardiovascular health over time.

Storm water runoff from airport surfaces can carry toxic particles into the neighborhood gullies contributing to algae growth while harmful algae events such as red tide have multiple causes, jet particular deposition can create conditions where it blooms and impact nearby waterways. We are respectfully requesting, like I said, a vegetative buffer and berm installation along airport road or wherever is feasible to help block and mitigate the fumes and the toxic jet particles traveling. We'd like to have water quality testing done for fuel residue and hydrocarbons and jet particular deposition and nutrients that contribute to algae growth. Like I said, we have the most polluted gully on the island, that's what we keep hearing. And actually, we should test all the gullies on the island for lead and petroleum and these toxic chemicals.

So I greatly appreciate your attention to that matter. I'm also requesting funds to be invested to beautify Circus Airport, Circus Bridge area with palm trees. You all have done an outstanding job with beautifying Venice Avenue and you know, the the north side when you come on, but if you come on the bridge from Circus Bridge, it's such a discrepancy in terms of beautification. It's almost like you're not on the same island, it's just such to me, just such a discrepancy. And I feel like Venice is getting local and national accolades for the beautification but I would love to see the creativity and the resources put into that end of the island because when you come again on Circus Bridge, if you really just look around, it's just not aesthetically beautiful.

And I think that we could make it beautiful or we could and so I'd like to ask that you devote time and resources to beautifying that area. I also just wanna say in that spirit, the neighbors are vehemently against moving light industrial businesses from the seaboard to the airport. I don't know if that's still on the table, but that to me absolutely makes no sense to take light industrial businesses off the island, put them on the island, on the most beautiful, you know, beautiful intercoastal waterway which beautifies Casperstone Beach, you know, which corners Casperstone Beach, the most beautiful beach, why on earth would we put light industrial there? It just makes no sense. I would love to see beautiful For the non aviation designated areas, we'd love to keep the golf course, but if for some reason the golf course doesn't stay, couldn't there be a beautiful village with coffee shops restaurants and just more, you know, just something more beautiful and more welcoming, just like we have on Venice Avenue.

Lastly, I want to thank you again for hiring David Servello. He has been he and Nick have been Nick Dumas have been absolutely they've done an excellent job keeping us informed. They have been very communicative, very open to our ideas. I guess my time is up.

Thank you

for But I just your wanted to thank you for that. You.

You for

all you guys do too. I know you work very hard for us. Thank you.

Next speaker?

Chris Davis.

Chris Davis. I assume five minutes.

We'll come back to him.

Okay, hello, City Council Mayor.

Morning and welcome.

My name is Chris Davis. I have been a resident in Venice since 1990 and I've owned since '93 I believe, January. I want to relate to you because you might not have been here at that time. But in 02/2010, when we were doing the last airport study, citizens came forward and asked during the planning process to look at the environmental impacts of the airport. At that time, the concerns were dismissed.

I don't believe there was anything done regarding review of the environmental impacts. And specifically they said particulate matter was showing up on roofs and driveways. This particulate matter does affect the environment and as previously said, it doesn't stay right there in Gulf Shores. It's Golden Beach, it's all over the island. And I think people would probably recognize it as this small very fine soot that they find on their roofs and their cars and their driveways.