City Council - Regular Meeting

I was trying to be, you know, very, very gentle and subtle, you know, give everybody a little wake up. Well, good morning, staff, Bob. Nor Steve Carr. all right let's go ahead and get started we'll call the meeting to order and madam clerk if you'll do a roll call please okay mr engelke is not present mrs frank here mr howard here mr smith here mr weed here vice mayor bolt mayor pachota and i'm here so i will go ahead and ask everyone to stand and i will lead the pledge allegiance today

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right. We will start off with an introduction by the city manager. Mr. Clinch, I'll ask you to keep it under an hour and a half if you could.

No promises. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. It is our honor to be here with you to present the FY27 budget. I want to thank you all for your commitment and your support up to this point. We've been working on this draft budget since January, going through strategic planning, CIP, and then obviously all the work that's been done behind the scenes by our team to bring you this draft today. Want to say thank you to our staff there here in our finance staff who have worked countless hours over the past few months to put this budget draft together. It involved some really hard decisions this year examining every line item looking at every position and adjusting to our current financial environment. As we're all aware and we've been talking about since January it's going to be a very challenging year. We are operating in what is essentially a level revenue environment for property taxes while the costs to deliver service continue to rise. The only reason we are even level this year with property tax revenue is because we've had a 2.5% increase with new growth that has offset a 2.5% decrease in existing property values. So because of that, this budget reflects a very intentional and clear approach to scaling back, reducing positions where we can, and reducing our overall spending compared to last year. All while remaining focused on our service delivery, which is the single most important thing we do in local government. Across all of our funds, this budget totals approximately $161.5 million. which is a reduction from last year of about 7%. The general fund has been reduced by just over 9%, and we are eliminating eight positions across multiple departments. These are measured responsible decisions, in our opinion, that are consistent with our longstanding commitment at the city to fiscal discipline. But even with these challenges, this budget still makes some very meaningful progress. We'll be launching this coming year our first in-house fleet maintenance program, something we've talked about for a long time and laid out during strategic planning last year. This will provide higher quality service for our vehicles, longer lifespan for them, and overall long-term cost savings. After almost a decade of work, lot of it done by this council here we are stepping into our new County Parks interlocal agreement starting October 1st this year that's a big deal it's going to involve us taking over the operation and maintenance of seven more neighborhood parks as well as our local Venice Community Center Even with these significant services being added, we are going to accomplish it without adding any additional city staff and while continuing to deliver the high level of service that our residents expect. This budget includes a reduced but still very healthy capital improvement program. It's going to continue our ongoing commitment to invest strategically in our infrastructure and our equipment. This budget also allows us to close out what I believe has been a very successful and fun centennial celebration for our city. We have several more modest but community focused events planned through this next fiscal year. So while not directly impacting our budget this year, we do need to acknowledge and probably have some initial discussions on the property tax reform measures that are before us and before our citizens in November. As we're all aware, this measure could result in some significant general fund impacts to every city and county in the state, but especially to us being a smaller community. Our preliminary calculations show that when fully implemented, there would be reductions of our general fund by about $5.5 million, which is around 10%. And 10% may not seem like a lot of money, but when you run a lean small operation which we pride ourselves on running, 10% will be very impactful. We also have to think about the impacts to our county partners because we share a lot of services with them that our residents benefit from. So while we are certainly not panicking here, we are preparing. and if this measure passes there will be some very real impacts especially to our primary users of the general fund which is public safety and parks happy to answer any more questions on that today as appropriate but i want you all to know that after we get through this budget discussion over the next month our leadership team will be getting together and we're going to be working to clearly identify what that would look like for the city, a 10% reduction to our general fund, because it's our job to relay that accurately to the citizens on what that would entail. So that's gonna be our next step, and there's still a lot of work to be done, but that's something we will be doing. Obviously we won't know the outcome of the referendum before this budget gets approved, but I wanted to mention it today, because it's top of mind for all of us, and I think it speaks to the conservative approach to budgeting that we've taken this year. So for this year's budget discussion my primary message to our citizens and we've talked about it a lot on the on the staff level is that budgeting is really less about the dollars and cents and more about level of service. It's about who we want to be as the city of Venice and how we navigate that question over the next several years is really going to define what our city looks like into the future. Just like all of our budgets at home, when we reduce our resources, we reduce our capacity. And, you know, my position on reducing or raising level of service is either of those are perfectly acceptable policy decisions and discussions as long as we remain clear with the public and communicate what those really mean, what those impacts really mean. Budgeting is really not as mysterious as it seems sometimes to our citizens. It's really about the people who provide the services and the resources that allow them to do so. One other item that is top of mind this year is growth. And what we've seen and what we'll be talking about on Tuesday with the police staffing study is that growth can also be a threat to level of service. If we're not able to continue to keep our staffing in line with that growth, it can result in an erosion of our level of service. And that's something we'll be digging into more next week. So for me, level of service is probably the most important message that we're communicating this year to our citizens, and we'll continue to do that. This year, the budget that's in front of you As we committed to in January, we've worked to provide as much transparency as possible. We've provided you all with access to every detail in the budget to be able to really dig in and understand where all these resources are being allocated, why they're being allocated, and what programs they support. And of course, our entire team of department directors is here today as we walk through the budget. We look forward to answering any questions you have and implementing any changes that come out of the meeting. So overall, I hope my message hasn't come across as overly negative today, despite the uncertainties that are in front of us. This is still a very strong, very disciplined budget positions as well to keep our strategic goals moving forward next year, continue delivering great services to our community and to be successful through the next fiscal year. I want to thank you all again for your work not only today but leading up to today and just remind everybody we do have tomorrow on hold as needed and then we have July 8th penciled in if we do need an extra budget workshop day so if there's some additional items we need to discuss July 8th will be on the calendar for that. The changes that come out of these budget discussions, Linda Sene will work to incorporate those and then we will bring this budget back to you at your August meeting when you first come back from break. We'll go over all those budget changes and then the final budget will be approved in two readings in September. So our goal as we started this process in January is to make this budget something we can all be proud of and we look forward to making that possible today. I would open it up and welcome any initial questions you have for me, and then we can invite Linda up to get us started. Thank you.

Any questions for the city manager before we get started? Mr. Smith?

Yes, thank you for that, James. I don't think that was a negative message at all. I thought it was very positive and I appreciate that. When we met this spring,

I think we were discussing the governor's proposal to eliminate homestead property taxes.

And Ms. Senney had told us to be thinking that that could be $10 million a year. So I wanted to ask if you don't see this as there'd be no change this year or maybe $2.5 million decrease next year, and then the following year, down the road, $5.5 million in the budget. Is that correct?

That is correct.

And I wanted to know if Ms. Sunni's blood pressure is lower now, and that she's in good spirits as she takes on this big, big challenge. But I think you have to put that all in context, because even though we talk about Eventually, two years from now, we may have 10% less in the general fund impact. It's a much smaller percentage of our total budget. As you said, $161 million is our total revenues, and property taxes are just $28 million, well less than 20% of all of our revenues, and we'd be taking a 10% cut on that. of our revenues, and we still have all of our revenue sharing on the sales tax, our one-cent sales tax, our money from hotel taxes, from water and sewer fees, and trash collection fees, and ambulance fees, and building department fees, and all the other revenues actually are still there and increasing slightly. So the impact, I just don't want to, and I didn't hear from you and I appreciate it, it's not a hair on fire moment. It's a trim, it's a haircut. And we have to be, as a council, open to doing that. If the people vote to do it, our response should be, oh my God, we're gonna lose police and fire. We're not gonna lose any of that. We're going to make careful adjustments to try to make minimal impact while withstanding a small reduction. And small is really the point. When the governor was trying to eliminate property taxes in total, he said that since 2019, basically we had doubled our property tax collections statewide. And I went back and looked and that is the case here in Venice. We have tripled our property tax collections from $10 million to over $30 million since 2016. So it was $10.6 million in 2016. It was $31.4 million in 2025. And so what this statewide measure, if it passes, would require is that instead of having $20 million more a year than we had in 2016 we would only have 15 million more year than we had in 2016 so it it's doable it's manageable and again I appreciate that you didn't put it in that hair on fire context that this is going to destroy the city and I just see all the commentary out there it's in that scare mode and I wanted to be in a more responsible mode that this this would be a challenge This would result in some changes, but it's not going to devastate this city. It may have a greater impact on poorer cities and rural areas, but our city can withstand it because we've had such tremendous growth in our property tax revenues, in our assessed values, in our growth with new development. So again, thank you, and Ms. Senne, I hope Your blood pressure's down. Thank you.

Not to worry, there's extra firefighters in the room, so I think even if it goes up a little bit today, she'll be okay. All right, Ms. Sinney, if you want to come down and get us started, we can move to 26-0634.

All right, good morning, Mayor and Council.

So first of all, I wanna thank all the council for your support all the time for every time we have to come up here and present to you whether good or bad and that you support us every single day. I wanna thank all the directors and their staff for the work that they put into their budget. As James mentioned, this was a tough budget year as far as numbers and getting departments to trim. We had all our department meetings. They submit their budgets. We have our department meetings. We cut, and then we come back and we get the property value. June 1st, we got the property values, which I thought would be a little bit of increase, was not an increase. So we had to go back to the department and say, sorry, we have to cut some more. So we did that diligently this year like we do every year, and we ended up cutting quite a bit out of some of the departments for we had in the budget that we took out thinking that we might not need that and there's a few things when we get to the general fund that we took out that i have in at the end that council may choose to put those those items back in but there are some things that i mentioned specifically that we did take out so i just want to thank all the directors and their staff for working with us knowing um where we are with the budget and the property tax revenues that come in. And when James was talking about the property tax referendum that's going to be for the voters to vote in November, there's just one thing to keep in mind, that the legislature has not yet done the implementation bill. So if it does pass, then the legislature has to do an implementing bill, which would have the specifics and the details for the entities that we would have to follow. So just so you're aware of that, that there will be an implementation bill if that referendum would pass. So I'm just going to go overall for the city, what we did for the departments themselves and for the funds. There are two funds that we did close. One was a second occupational license tax, and that had to do with from Sarasota County, they closed their – they no longer do business – License taxes, so that we had gotten a few dollars from that, so we closed that fund. And another one that we closed was the police community fund, which was discussed at the last council meeting, because those dollars that we have will be transferred to the community fund, and that was all donated money. So all that money will be given over to the police charitable organization that they devised up. And then James mentioned we added one additional fund then, which is complete services operating in the maintenance fund. So that's a new fund, and so when you're looking at our general fund, you see $800,000 that we're transferring from the general fund to that fund to start that fund. And that's an estimate with Finance and Public Works working together, what we thought it would be to start that fund. So that's the $800,000. As far as rate increases, For the wastewater rates and the reclaimed water rates, those will increase 3% on October 1st, 2026. And that's in compliance with the ordinance that we currently do have for the water and sewer rates. And within that, we increased, that was the reclaimed rates is 3%. The water rates is 5.25, 2.25 of that is set aside in earmark for eventual relocation of the city's water treatment plant or upgrading whatever. When we get the feasibility study that will be presented to council, then there will be different options within that feasibility study. So we are starting to set money aside for that. And then that's the fourth year in the five-year rate plan. For the stormwater rates, the rates will decrease for the O&M from $8.55 to $6.03 per equivalent stormwater factor.

And that's the rate that we calculate each year to get a balanced budget for the stormwater and their projects.

The water quality rates, which is also within stormwater, remains constant at $2 per equivalent water quality factor per month. And that's to fund approximately $1 million in capital projects for stormwater. The solid waste recycling surcharge is expected to increase from 10 to 16%. And then the solid waste and recycling fees which is in accordance with the ordinance will increase 3% on October 1st, 2026. And the building department is currently going under a rate study. And in January, 2027 rents for the mobile home park will rise by 10%. And this is the beginning of a seven year period with scheduled annual increases of 10% for the mobile home park. And their airport is currently in the middle of a study for tea hangers and for the fuel flow wage rates. So they're currently studying those items. As far as personnel overall. In fiscal 27, the proposed budget introduces 3.5 FTEs, and that's for the new fleet services fund that we're starting. So that's a public works fleet services operating and maintenance fund, a working foreman, two mechanics, and a part-time mechanic apprentice. And these were the positions that were discussed at strategic planning when we talked about opening that. So those are the positions that were talked about at strategic planning. there are eight positions that will be eliminated in total there are two within the general fund a planner and an admin assistant in the building fund two plans examiners a permit technician and inspector and in the utilities fund two plant operators one in division 1203 and one in division 1204. And James mentioned our property values were pretty much stagnant, 0.07% property value increase over the year. We projected keeping the millage rate the same, 3.845 mils. And then that's the overall summary. And then for the fleet replacement program, that's a separate program. We can talk about that when we do fleet. So then I'm gonna go to the general fund folder.

Mayor, can I ask a question while she's pulling that out? Absolutely. Yep, okay. The eight employees that are being eliminated from the general fund, are those positions that are currently open that we're not filling? Or those positions that we're reassigning to another open position? Or those individuals just no longer employed at the city? Can you give us some context on that?

It's eight positions in total, two of those are the general fund. One is a planner that's currently vacant, and the other one is the admin assistant for historical resources. That employee retired, so James has chosen, that's a vacant, we're not going to fill that position. So we're removing both those two out of the total FTE.

Okay, and then those other six positions from those funds?

Four of them are from the building fund. and one is two of them are from the utilities fund the plant operators were also vacant for the utilities fund okay and same within the building fund they're currently vacant positions got it thank you so nobody has lost their job this way that's basically what your question is correct ma'am thank you yes So the last page in the city's wide, let's make this a little smaller. This is where you see the total positions. And then you can see by which department where we're showing the last four years, the actual of 24, 25, and the amended 26, and then the 27 proposed budget. And there's where you can see the positions for each department or the fund. And then we have the commentary, like if there's A, B, C, D, the next page will explain what's happened within those line items. So that's the total. So we went from 410.4 FTEs down to 405.9 in total for the city as a whole. And that's toward the end of the citywide folder, page 41. So any more questions on personnel? Citywide, okay. So then I'm gonna move into the general fund folder, the general fund tab. So this is a summary.

Hold on one second, Ms. Sonney. Mr. Weed?

Yeah, Mr. Rand. Before we move out of the overall city, I did have a question. Two questions, actually. On page five, general fund, budget proposed.

Page five in the citywide folder?

Yes, page five, the citywide information.

Yep.

It has the general fund split. Under expenditures, and I mentioned this last time, I mentioned it again, the third largest item is other, which bothers me. What is the makeup of that $11.2 million, and where would I find that in the information?

Oh, that other is a combination of Because for here we list the big departments, police, fire, EMS, public works, parks, planning. The other would be city manager's office, finance department, HR department, planning and zoning. It's all those combined together that make up the other.

Okay. As I requested last year and I'll request again as a formal request in the future, I would like to see that broke down. That is the third largest line on general fund expenditures. and it is just this is all there. You know we we list out 800,000 we look at 1.3, but we don't break down 11.2 million dollars and I will for a second year in a row protest that my second question is on page 6. I was surprised to see an 11% decrease. I paid 6 item 6 11% decrease in property and liability insurance premiums. I'm not seeing that in the market. What is our special circumstance that allows us to enjoy an 11% decrease?

That had to do with the premiums, and because when they did the original calculation, maybe Alan can explain that better than I could. I'll have Alan come up and explain that with the insurance broker.

All right.

Morning, Mayor and Council. For the record, Alan Bullock, the HR Director. And ancillary to my department is risk management, so we have property and liability insurance. We are subject to the world market, as is any other municipality. So although we have a local service with our insurance, It is dependent upon what's happening overall. So we've seen a little softening in the property market, so that has contributed to some of our savings. We exercise good risk management whenever possible, so our overall costs are being held relatively low. There's no real specific reason I could give you for the drop. We ask our agent every March to give us a projection, and this year the projection came in fairly favorably. So we just enjoy the benefit of that.

Okay, thank you. I just want to make sure that we weren't drastically increasing our risk or something like that in exchange for lower premiums. But if that is the case, then congratulations, job well done. Thank you.

Mayor, if I can just add, we also removed Wellfield Park completely from our property and liability insurance, had a lot of structures and a lot of liability there. Thank you.

Mr. Smith.

Thank you, Mayor. Senator I was noticing as I went through a decline in intergovernmental revenue and I associated that with we were getting a lot of FEMA money in the last two budgets you know and reimbursements for the hurricanes and our work on those. But I never did hear a closeout number. Do we still are we still seeking and expecting more money from FEMA in reimbursement for our expenses that we incurred on those hurricanes, and is that not reflected in here, or I see it sort of zeroing out.

Yeah, we're hoping to still get more money for Milton and Helene, but at this point we don't know the exact dollar amount. I don't have that dollar amount in here specifically. We don't record the revenue until we get those from FEMA because we have no idea what they are. We've had our expenses back then, but we don't record the revenue until we get it.

Okay, so that's what I saw was zero, but we hope to get some. What is it that we are asking? What's still outstanding that we're asking to get back, which might come in as a windfall? to this budget, this shows nothing?

Probably one to two million.

One to two million. We're hoping. Okay.

But that's not set in stone. That's why we don't put it in there. Because we can't really expect it. And they tell us, as you're aware, that they keep cutting back what FEMA's going to reimburse. They keep cutting back. So we don't put it in there expecting that we're going to get it.

I understand that. But when we show an $800,000 deficit in this budget as it's constructed, that might cover it all by itself.

But that $800,000 deficit that you see is specifically the transfer. So we call it a balanced budget because that $800,000 is specifically a transfer from the general fund to start the new fleet fund 506. So other than that, we consider a balanced budget. So that's what the $800,000 shortfall is specific for that. So when you look at the total general fund for fiscal 26, when we close off fiscal 26 year, our revenues will be higher than our expenses. So in other words, it's our beginning fund balance that will pay for that $800,000. Because we'll end up having more revenue than expenses by the end of September 30th of this fiscal year, and that'll be the amount that you see that'll be positive on our general fund. So we're saying that, we call that beginning reserves, so we're gonna be using beginning reserves to fund that $800,000 to start for fiscal 27's new fund. Does that make sense?

We expect it to get back, okay. And the two other areas that we will see more money than we show at the beginning, Are you said the airport was. Planning or looking at fuel fees and raising them yes they're working on that isn't shown in this budget the right to correct and then also planning department I think we have it on our coming. Council meeting. is looking at raising their fees, but that's not reflected here as revenue either, right?

Correct, correct.

So that's three sources of additional revenue that we don't see that we can hope to have.

But the airport is specific to the airport fund. Yes, yes.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, so when you're talking about rates and fees, they're specific to that fund. They don't come into the general fund. So airports will not come into the general fund. We're talking about utility rates that stays within the utility fund. Stormwater stays within stormwater.

Great, thank you. And Ms. Senney, that's the same for the increase in mobile home fees, right?

Correct, that would stay within the airport fund, correct. Yes.

Go ahead and continue.

Okay, so at the beginning of the general fund, we just have a summary table that shows the major changes from the fiscal 26 budget to the fiscal 27 budget. So as you can see, property taxes is small. Utility taxes will be increased in approximately $393,000. The next big one is investment incomes. I increased that one. Hopefully we'll get that to 690 additional thousand dollars. We're expecting Venice Peer Group, $200,000 more. Administrative charges, that's the indirect cost allocation. That's where the enterprise funds pay the general fund because we help and we support them, that's called the indirect cost allocation. And we have a firm that does that calculation every year to ensure that it's fair and equitable distribution. So that has increased from the enterprise funds coming into the general fund and then there's just other minor changes which $81,000. And then decreases within the general fund casualty insurance premium. Based on what they're estimating, that's a decrease of $243,000. Half-cent sales tax has been decreasing, so we estimate that to be decreased. And the planning fees, depending on what the outcome of theirs is, WCIND grant will be less than last year. The gas tax transfer was less, and then municipal public... The miscellaneous public works, that $25,000, that was for utility cuts. Our public works maintenance crew used to, when they would cut in the road for something with utilities, they would maintain and go fix that. And then we would charge the utilities, and that money would come into the general fund. Instead, it's an outside contractor that's doing that now, so we don't have that money coming into the general fund. An outside contractor that utilities is paying for it. Utilities always did pay for it, but then they used to pay the general fund. Instead, they're paying an outside contractor. So that's what that change is. So when you see the projected down on the bottom, the reduction in the fund balance of the $800,000. And then the changes in expenses. It's decreased from last year, and that's basically because we had the $5 million transfer to Sarasota County for Wellfield Park. Our estimated personnel costs will be increasing $1.5 million. The health insurance for departments, $90,000. Increase in the fleet rent, $123,000. Professional and outside services, $331,000. And that's a variety of departments that have that. And then $800,000 that I mentioned before.

Mr. Weed.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just going back to the revenues, I would like again to thank you. You listened to us last year and I appreciate that. The investment income, And this page and throughout the budget is now realistic numbers and they've always been underestimated and I think we have a much more realistic budget and I appreciate you listening and taking the heart and implementing the recommendations we made last year. So thank you.

And for when you mentioned earlier about the other expenditures, what makes up that, we know what that total is, so we can just email that out to everybody. On that one sheet you were talking about, Mr. Weed, we know what that is. We just don't have it identified in here, but we can email that out so everybody will know what makes up that other number.

I appreciate that. I was saying in the future it would be better if it was just included in that column so we don't have to pursue it. It's just such a big number hanging out there, and it raises questions, and I like clarity and transparency.

Okay. We'll do that. We'll email that out to everybody so you'll have that. So then the next pages are just explaining all the types of revenue sources that we do have. So this page is the property tax value change where the total taxable value change was $5.6 million. The majority of that was due to It went down for property value increase, but then it went up due to new construction. So then when you go to the next page, it's the bottom one. It's kind of hard to read because you can't fit this all on one page. If you look at the headings, so then the dollar change due to the property value increase was, we actually had a decrease in, when I say the dollar change, that's the revenue source. So the property taxes decreased $693 due to the decrease in values. But then it went up $700,000 due to a change in the new construction. So the net effect of that is $7,000. That's why we say property tax was really flat for the revenue side of it. Any questions on that table? It's hard to see. I can't see it all the time. So then here's the millage table that shows that we're keeping the millage rate the same at 3.845. And then the debt service mills, the 0.3451. That is the millage to pay the debt service on the public safety building. The transportation debt issue, those two are the debt issues we did in 2017. And there's one last one that was done in 2004. We're on our last payment for that one. So that's what the debt service millage is. So when someone gets their trim, their tax bill, City of Venice operating millage, that'll be 3.845. And then you'll see Venice debt millage, that's a 0.3451. So any questions on the millage rate? So this is the chart of the proposed general fund revenues. The sources and the percentage of them are ad valorem taxes is almost 52%. So that's a big percentage for the general fund, 52%.

Ms. Senney, can you back up one page there?

Mm-hm.

And looking at that millage rate, so in 21 we did the 0.66 because of the EMS. Yes. And currently we sit at 3.8450. So when I look at this, I just think it's important to highlight that with that change on the EMS mill, we're almost back to the 3.7 we were before that even happened. So I know there was a lot of, when I came into office, there was a lot of concern about us taking over EMS, and I think it's important to highlight that it's almost neutral. I mean, I think we're getting there, and I think that's incredibly impressive, and I applaud you guys in proving everyone right that this was the right thing to do. Ms. Frank.

Yes, since we're on this slide, I'd just like to point out for the public's consumption and refresher that there's a lot of talk statewide about the millage and bloat in municipalities' budgets. But you can see, even just looking back to, like you pointed out, Mayor, in 2023, the reduction in millage that we went down to 3.9041 mills in 2024, and then the further reduction. So I'd just like to point out the city's been proactive over the last four years in getting ahead of and like our city manager said, we have been operating a lean and small operation and that's been due to city staff being very conservative with their budgets and then also the council as policy makers setting a lower millage when appropriate, thank you.

And I'm just going to tag onto that. Maybe it's a reiteration, but the public in 2018 was still paying the 0.66 mill. They were just paying it to the county. Now they're paying it to the city, but the millage has still gone down in comparison. So again, I just want to highlight that that 0.66 was still being paid. It didn't reflect on ours because it was being paid to the county. Now it's being paid to us. So it reflects, but also that millage to date is currently only 0.2 higher. So we've saved 0.4 ish mill over the course of those years so I think that's just really important to highlight that.

Then I'll just add that when we changed the millage to 3.845, that was the rollback rate in 2026. And there was a question, what would the rollback rate be now? A rough calculation, because is 3.94 is what it would be. The rollback rate is actually a little higher because our values dropped. So the rollback rate now would be 9403 that's what the rollback rate because there I did have a question from somebody what the rollback rate would be so actually the rollback rate is higher than the 3.845 this year so to roll back we'd be increasing our millage correct correct so if you rolled back you'd actually be increasing the millage it's kind of an odd concept because it's called rolled back but the rollback rate means you get the same amount of revenue as you did the year before so it's slightly different these are all very important things for for us to be highlighting and discussing So we kept it at the 3.845. Any more questions on the millage? So this is the overall general fund revenues where you can, this is the same page that I show every quarter for the revenues and where we're at. So you can see for each line which revenue went up or down from the last year's adopted budget number. It's the difference between what we're proposing as the adopted this year and last year's adopted budget number. So any questions specifically in any one of these line items for revenues? Okay, so then when you come down to the bottom, I say the bottom because this is the blue section. So this is where I was talking about when we have our expected number there. We show it still being a negative and that's because we had for fiscal 26. that's showing that negative because that was the original budget including that five million but in essence by the time we're done with it we still should have a little bit more or carried over from fiscal 25 that what we use for the eight hundred thousand dollars that's what's called our beginning reserve number you see that the eight hundred thousand shows a negative but we'll be using beginning reserves to cover up and to pay for that eight hundred thousand dollars so in our so in our world we still call it a balanced budget because our revenues and expenses this year are equally So any questions on this sheet or how it works?

Mr. Weed?

So it's clear that $800,000 is a one-time hit, which is appropriate to come from reserves, not from operations. Correct, correct.

Thank you. Yes. And that's generally what reserves are used for, and we have that as part of our policy reserves, our one-time, like we did last year, the $5 million to Sarasota County, for either one-time or planning for big-type expenditures.

So you can see that we have reserves set aside for the seaboard area,

At $2.8 million is what we have left of that $3 million we originally set for that. So at some point in time, that money would be spent or you could increase it and say the seaboard, it might cost more than the $2.8 million. But those are things that are set aside for big things like that. That's what the reserves are generally one-time areas.

Ms. Frank and then Vice Mayor Bolt.

Thank you. For the well field in red, 15 million over 15 years, I understand that's projected to be park impact fees likely. Yeah. But then the 700,000 park impact fees and 300 from the general fund, can you help me understand why it's not all park impact fees while we're having to pull into the general fund there?

Oh, I just have that as a reserve just in case there's not enough park impact fees. Because there's a shortfall in the park impact fees of what we have to pay $15 million over 15 years because we have to pay a million. So if the county says we did not collect enough park impact fees, say they only collected $700,000 in one year, then we, the city, would have to give them the $300,000 for that year. Right now, it looks like it might be okay, but we just put that in there just in case it's not. Because if there is a shortfall, then the city would have to pay to get them a million dollars each year for 15 years.

That makes good sense. I'm just concerned that we were originally told that we would likely have the park impact fees in perpetuity to cover this commitment to Wellfield. however a 300 000 hit to our general fund every year is you know two more firefighters or another police officer you have to look at it's not it's not a hit i'm just reserving the 300 000 each year i'm just this it's the same 300 000 that we're reserving just in case we would have to pay for it right but it limits our ability to fund public safety yeah because it's no longer available in our general fund okay yeah

But it does look, you're correct, it does look like we'll have enough for that, but just in case there wouldn't, the city would have to pay. That would be considered an obligation that we would have to pay then, based on our contract.

Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you.

Linda, we talk all the time about reserves, reserves, reserves, and people get a misunderstanding sometimes, and I think what you just said helps a lot. But we have a policy, as I recall, of having... some percentage or some number of working months as reserve

in the case of a real collapse can you remind me what that is yeah for the general fund is 25 okay 25 for the general fund um the utility fund is six months the reason they're six months instead of 25 we do six months for them is because the bond issues that they have and we have that within part of our bond covenants that we would plan a six-month reserve to ensure that our bond holders would always get paid so that's the only one that's six months the general fund is 25 i'm assuming that because we have that reserve as an example for utilities that that also gets us lower interest rates yes anytime you go to the bond market you get a lower interest rate than more reserves that you have and your capacity to be able to pay your debt service that's what they look at yes

Yeah, which is another thing that we should pay attention to from the millage rate.

Right, when we just did the bond issue for the fire station and the fleet solid waste facility, because we were AA plus rated, which is the highest we would get based on the size of us, we had a much lower interest rate than if we didn't have the reserves. They look at the reserves and our ability to pay.

Right, thank you.

Okay, so then here's the individual, this is just listing the departments. Each department on here, and then we have all the details within each department's budget that we can go over with any questions. This is a summary of each department versus each line. And then we did add, which I think you all had the opportunity to look at the details for every single line item. That is not included in the budget, but we did the, that you could present and look at that. We presented that to you. So from there, that's the general funds. I guess we can go into, I was gonna, after this, before we go into the departments, to go over the CIP changes that we have.

Ms. Senia, after you're done with the CIP piece, we're gonna take a ten minute break and then- Okay, that'd be great.

And keep in mind, this is a draft. This is the first draft of the budget. So any changes that we have, as James mentioned, I would come back in August to say these are the changes from the proposed budget to the adopted budget. So this is all fluid and it's a draft. So I'm gonna go over the changes that we had from when we had our CIP workshop back in early April, I guess it was. Okay, so here are the changes that we had. I'm just gonna go over those that are affecting fiscal 27, cuz we had some changes that are in the out years, but I'm just gonna go over what's affecting fiscal 27. For the playground equipment, this is when we went back to the departments when our property tax revenue came in flat and went to the departments and we have to cut more things. What things can we cut and push back? So we have playground equipment that was in public works as budget. So we removed that and took it out of fiscal 27 and put it into fiscal 28. That's the first line, the third line. So that was in the general fund. Within the one cent sales tax, the Venice Community Center, we added technical enhancements that was discussed in the CIP workshop. And the sound system, and we moved it up from fiscal 28 to 27. And then the fiscal 28 number, we changed, we replaced the generator with just the generator switch. So that was the difference on the, any questions on that? for that one. If anybody has any questions on this, that's the IP for the Venice community center. Okay. And then we added, um, a $450,000 transfer that we're ordering a fire truck so that when, uh, when we have to pay for it, that we have enough money to pay for the fire truck that's coming from the ones in sales tax went into the fleet fund. And then also remember when we had the CIP workshop, we included the debt service for the fire station. And I said that's really principal and interest payment, but we included it so that you could see the big dollars. So it's still in the budget, it's just not a CIP. It's showing under the one cent sales tax under debt service, the principal and interest payment. So it's just taken off of the sheet, but it's still in the budget, because we still have to make the payment. Then Heckscher Park and Triangle Inn, it was moved from the 301 Fund, we moved it to the Once and Sales Tax Fund for those two. And then the Public Works Building Mitigation, that is one that I talked about at the CIP and we had just found out about it right before the CIP that it was not included in the CIP but now it will be included. And it's an HMGP grant that we got for the public works building for them to do a generator and work on the roof and I think it was hurricane windows. So that's 75% grant funded and the rest will be one cent sales tax funded. So any questions on any of those projects within one cent sales tax? Okay. So now I'm on the Fund 301, the Heckscher Park we already talked about. The Triangle Inn, those two we moved into the ones in Silsex. Then Venetian Waterway Trail, we removed the trail top replacement. They had two items within that project. And so they removed just the trail top of that one. And that was $50,000 for that. then from other general government impact fees which is a capital projects for expansion we're adding a fleet services vehicle for the new fleet fund that we're starting fund 506 they need a vehicle so we're going to take it out of other government impact fees so that was not in the cip that will be in the proposed now any questions on that vehicle for the fleet maintenance services okay Here again, the solid waste facility.

Hold on one second, Mr. Vice Mayor.

Yeah, just a question. Obviously, we're going to start maintaining our own vehicles. And so obviously, I'm assuming this is a vehicle that would go out on the road if somebody breaks down. Something to that effect?

Yes, yes.

Okay, I see a lot of head shaking in the back. That's good.

Yes, it's for our mechanics to have a vehicle so that, excuse me, so they can go out and help if there's a vehicle that breaks down. So it's for our staff, our public works staff that's going to be running that shop.

Yeah, perfect.

Thank you. Mr. Weed?

I have a question. I saw the vehicle. I was just

i hope there was a comparison about using outside services as i guess we've been doing compared to our own vehicle was that analysis done to see if this was a good budget move to start providing these services ourselves um yes that was discussed during strategic planning um the fleet manager got up and talked about that during strategic planning to bring it in-house for efficiency and making sure that they only do what needs to be done with the vehicle let's say

No, I meant as far as adding wrecker service basically to our suite of services. I think we've always outsourced our wrecker service now right in our own wrecker.

Yes, correct.

Okay, as long as that analysis is done, that's my question. Thank you.

Mr. Clinch. Just to add, it's not a wrecker service, no towing that we're going to be doing. This is really kind of a mobile mechanic who can go out if somebody breaks down in the field, jump a battery, check simple things, and then we would still contract out for towing services.

Oh, yeah.

Then there is another change that we don't have on here, because it came about after we did these changes, so it's not included in here, but I'm going to talk about it, and Ricky or Ashley can come up and talk about it further. It has to do with the facility at Venice Beach, replacing the roof. We had a bigger dollar amount in there, so now they have a different way of doing the roof or doing a different project, which would be cost less. They can come up and explain it. So you don't see it in the sheet. It's not included in my changes. It was the Venice Beach Pavilion Roof. That was the name of the CIP sheet.

While we're waiting for Mr. Simpson, would changes like that be reflected if we use the July 8th meeting? Or would that still take you until August that you would need to make sure those changes are reflected in

I would still show within the August meeting.

Okay.

Yeah.

Go ahead, Mr. Simpson.

All right. Good morning, Mayor and Council. Ricky Simpson, Director of Public Works, for the record. So on this project, a couple years back, we did some hardening of that project to kind of shore it up. And since then, we've went through several hurricanes. We've went through Ian, Helene, and Milton, and it's stood strong. So Ashley and I kind of got together with James, and we talked about maybe... doing like a rehabilitation like rehabbing the building for now and kind of pushing this down the road to kind of save money just trying to forecast the temperature of what's going on right now so if we kind of went in with a refurbishing project for now to get us down the road maybe five years seven years that's that's what the intent of this would be so is there any questions on that project

Can you just talk numbers for us Ricky on what that would what it's budgeted at now what it would change to.

Right so it's we have a 50,000 in design currently and then I believe it's 500,000 and this would reduce it down to approximately 125,000 for that refurbishing project just to kind of push it down the road it's you know it's up to you all what you want to do.

Miss Frank.

and the recent accident that happened in that area we have the funds on hand to fix that i'm sure insurance plays a role but

Yes, it's very unfortunate for both parties involved. I'm glad that no one lost a life. But so yeah, that is being taken care of and working closely with our risk manager, Mr. Mr. Bullock. So that's going to be a turnkey project through our insurance company. Fortunately, there was no structural damage as far as like the actual header and stuff like that of the building structurally sound it's just you know, unfortunately the construction and the way that's constructed with the concrete louvers, I mean what where do you find that right so it's going there's going to be some some special applications involved to get that back, but I'm confident we'll get it done quickly.

Great thank you so much welcome.

Anything else from Council. Thank you Mister Simpson appreciate your time.

So is there, can I ask, is there a consensus to change that project? Because the amount would be different from 500,000 to, what did you say, 150? 150. From 500,000 to $150,000, and it's a change in the project, and the dollar amount would be different. If there's a consensus, then that becomes part of the change when I bring it back in August with your changes. If not, it'll stay at the $500,000 doing the whole roof.

Vice Mayor, you have a comment?

Yeah, I think I would just like to say that Obviously, this was looked at extensively, and it is a historical building that we wanted to make sure to take care of. But if Mr. Simpson tells us that he can do it and maintain it for $150,000 rather than $500,000 right now, I think that's the right thing to do. So I appreciate your work on that.

Any other comments or discussion from council? By a simple head nod, do I have a consensus to implement the change? Yeah, okay. All right, seems like we have a consensus.

Thank you. All right, thank you. Any more questions on this? Then the CIP for Flamingo Ditch. Which are the years out, but I was just gonna mention it. That we did add in there for fiscal 29, we added phase two. And in fiscal 31, we added phase three. So we did add more phases to the Flamingo Ditch project that were not originally in the CIP when we started it. But it's for the years out, it's not in fiscal 27. So any questions on the Flamingo Ditch project? And then there were changes within the fleet replacement fund that just had to do with timing and the cost of vehicles purchased and corrected. Some were in there more than once and some things, items changed, different vehicles. And so those just reflected basically on the out years. And then there was what we're taking out in fiscal 27 is some fleet replacement vehicles. Any questions on any of those changes? So here was the Venice Community Center CIP with the changes. I mentioned that we had made the changes, so this one added the sound system for $350,000 and technical enhancements for $250,000. And this is within the one cent sales tax fund. So this is the new CIP sheet for the community center.

My only comment on that is when you saw it on the master sheet, it reflected 600,000 and I think the only thing I saw on there as a comment was the generator switch. So it seems like it's not 600,000 for the switch, it's actually 600,000 for a lot of other things.

Well, originally the CIP sheet had like 1.3 or something for the whole generator and everything, so now it's decreased to 165 for just having the switch in there.

Okay. Maybe just when you make your edits, you could just look at the description on that one and update it a little bit so it doesn't reflect all of that money was related to it. It just looks like a generator switch is costing us $600,000. Got it.

Any more questions on this one or what we're adding to the community center? Okay. So here's the public works building that was for the impact windows, the roof replacement and the generator. This is the one that's 75% grant funded. This is a new CIP. And then this is the new vehicle for the fleet maintenance facility that we mentioned for 90,000 coming from the other general government impact fees.

And I'm I'm just going to highlight on that one again if we're if we're not looking to tow vehicles and provide a record service, we may want to change out the photo so it's not so misleading because it looks looks like a okay looks like a tow truck. Mister wheat.

On that, even on the description, it states bringing it back to the shop for repairs. I grew up riding shotgun on a wrecker. That's a wrecker.

Okay. So change the photo and change the description. Got it.

Yeah, if you just want to clarify for us.

Yeah, because the activity on the bottom says service and road call unit, but we'll change the description in there.

I think Ashley's going to come up and just Give us the final, what it's gonna be.

Hello everybody.

Good morning.

Ashley Castle, Assistant Director of Public Works for the record. It does have the ability to tow a light white fleet vehicle if needed, Chevy Equinox, something of that caliber, which is cheaper than outsourcing a service. So that is why you do see the tow package on the back of it, but the majority of its purpose is to serve on-road you know needed fleet vehicles but if we needed to tow a small vehicle we could and it is more cost effective to build the truck as you see it in that photo than it is just to get a fleet service vehicle okay any more questions does that clarify light towing included oh yeah thank you will ride-alongs be available no i'm sorry my dad ran records so you know

I've handled a lot of hooks and chains.

So are you okay with Ashley's photo? Yeah. I think we are now.

Okay.

Then there was a request we stuck in here for the CAP projects for the grant. To go out for the five years, how much was grant funded, or if it was a loan, WCND, Sarasota County, City of Venice. So we have the grand total, and then we have it by each fund and the project. This was not in the CIP, but this was a request. I think Mr. Weed asked for this information. So we did include this summary here.

Does this reflect appropriations we'd be expecting from this current year, well, the budget that's just being approved by the state?

That's for, yes, it should be included in here. Okay. Yes, yes. So any questions on that? It's by fund and then by the project.

So we just created this sheet for you.

So we'll be sure to include that next year in the original CIP then. Okay. A sheet like this. So any questions on that grant allocation?

I think you're good.

That's all for CIP.

Anything else on CIP, Mr. Weed?

I have a few questions. First of all, I can't help but notice, going back to page one, there have been some huge jumps in the revenue side of the capital improvement program, and I think you've explained that, but I was looking at those numbers, there have been some big jumps there. I do have just a couple items here I'd just like to bring up to look at. The first one, of course my little tab fell off, is West Blilock Park paving and this is the paving across the street from the new old Betsy and from the museum. The $300,000 I I understand that that would be nice to have I mean I live in the park I face the park. I have people parking for my house all the time which is not bothering at least but I'm just I'm seeing this more is a is a want the need and I'm just wondering there are current economic uncertainty. If the council would be comfortable with moving that back a couple years to we see a little better what's going on, you know to me that is a 2 or 3 safety personnel and. My my personal experience is parking there's not really an issue right now and I see it every day and I'm just thinking that's possibly something we could we could push back and put on hold for a couple years to see what the environment is and I still know how the rest of Council feels about that.

He's talking, I just pulled up the page, it's in fund, it's kind of in the middle of your screen if you can see the screen. It's the capital projects fund 302 which is funded with gas tax money. So this is gas tax money comes into fund 105 and then most of the majority of it gets transferred into the roads capital projects funds to be used for streets and roads and parking. And a small portion goes into the general fund for maintenance of some of the streets.

So I think it's important to highlight what that money could be used for and could not be used for as we're talking about pushing it out or saving it. Because if we can't employ people with it, that kind of goes to Mr. Weed's point of what we would be saving it for.

That's what I'm saying. This is for capital projects for streets and roads.

From the gas tax?

Yes, from gas taxes. It cannot be used to fund personnel.

Okay, thank you.

My other question, and I've just stated this before, I just want to be on record for it. I still have a problem with spending a half million dollars for a physical server in Sarasota as a backup server. I just think that's a huge amount of money to spend on yesterday's technology. And we can talk about that more when we get to the IT section if necessary, but I just wanted to state that up front.

So he's referring, I just pulled up the page now, Mr. Wheat is referring to the one that says IT server and data equipment for backup site, 521,700. Correct. So if we want to discuss it now would be a good time, because it's in the ones in sales tax funds. So when we get to IT, we'll be talking the general fund portion, not the capital project side of it. So if we have questions or want to talk about it now would be appropriate time to have Roger come up.

Mr. Navarro, why don't you come on down, and if there's any questions, we'll go ahead and get that teed up.

Good morning. For the record, Roger Navarro, IT Director, City of Venice. We spoke about it once before. It's an insurance policy, so I'd leave it to the business to make the decision if it's worth making that investment. Right now, all the servers that are not in the cloud, which we're moving a lot to the cloud, the things that can't be moved to the cloud in the next two to three years, are running on a single point of failure at our data center. If we were to go down hard, we would be offline, our financial system, Laserfish, all of our records management system would be offline for up to two weeks. If the business is okay with that, then I'd say forego the insurance payment of this hardware. It would be the last time this hardware would be purchased. It would last five to six years, by which time we'll be fully moved off of products either moving to the cloud or fully moved off the part of another vendor that can do these things in the cloud. So that's what that that hardware is for.

I understand from previous conversations come from wrong. We're looked at as a hard line up to Sarasota and this would be an I believe the Sarasota data center.

That's right so we would have to pay for any host or hosting is very very very low cost but this is for the hardware that would sit in that in that hardened a center.

Okay, and I'm just wondering if it wouldn't be wiser to have that data stored as that same backup security on the cloud, so as soon as the cloud was accessible, it could be brought back and utilized, or would that still result in a two-week delay?

If we had a cloud solution to do this, we would be paying ongoing for the cloud. I think it would add up to more than $500,000 over a five-year period. We can investigate that, but we would have to secure down that cloud storage and those cloud systems. And then it would be a subscription fee that we would be committed to. But we can do kind of a cost-benefit analysis there.

That wouldn't be too much trouble. I think that would be good information for the council to have. But, you know, not a huge project, but, you know, it's a lot of dollars. Let's make sure we spend it wisely. Absolutely. Thank you.

All right. Anything else on CIP?

So is there consensus to keep that in the once in sales tax budget for now?

I think that we would want to see those numbers. Okay. So I don't think that there's any change other than bringing back some more information next time we can hear it. Okay. All right. Anything else? All right. Then with that, before we continue forward, I'm going to say that we're going to take a 14-minute break. We will come back at 25 after. And just to give everybody kind of an idea of where we're going with the schedule, we'll probably break for lunch around 1130, 1145, and then continue this at 1 o'clock as long as needed. And if we need tomorrow, we'll have that discussion towards the end of today. So back at 1025. You know that you can one time just here we're back.

And we can move on to the general fund departments will start with the fire department. The fire department and then the EMS division so it's 1101 and 1103 any specific questions for the fire department or any of the line items.

We're missing one now. I just wasn't sure if your blood pressure is going to be okay minus one firefighter or not, but I guess we're okay.

Any questions for fire?

Mr. Smith? Hit your microphone, sir.

I do have questions. I was going to ask the chief. Come on down.

Let's do it. That's what we're here for.

Good morning, Mayor.

Good morning, Council. For the record, this is Fire Chief Frank Giddens.

Chief, you know, the mayor had referenced, you know, when we increased property taxes and took over .66 mils from the county, added it to our property tax rate. as we took on EMS. And I am a huge fan of our EMS service. I think the public is. It's wonderful service. It's got a better response time. Everything is good about this service. Okay, so I start with that. But, and probably defensively, this is a budget EMS that's increased 78% in three years. And, you know, we've added paramedics and shifts

and ambulances and all of that.

And I asked you earlier today how many calls there are out of our 9,000 total calls for the fire and EMS, and I think you told me 7,000. Is that right?

Say that again, I'm sorry.

Did you tell me that you have 7,000 calls a year?

No, we run, roughly we're around 9,000 calls a year. 83% of those are EMS calls, but total is 9,000.

Right, but so EMS alone, I was doing the 83%.

Is that something like 7,000? That'll work, yes.

Okay. And I was noting that our, as a percentage of our jobs, our property tax levy. EMS alone, by my calculation, is 16% of that. And I think it can fund itself more. I think that if we had a $200 increase in our ambulance transport fee, that would generate $1.4 million more a year. That by itself is more than half of what we're talking about losing in general fund revenue from a $100,000 increase in homestead exemptions. I wanted you to talk, if you would, about it. I understand we set our rates looking at what other people are doing, but I think everybody's going to be looking at increasing those rates in the environment of higher homestead exemptions, challenging budgets, And I wondered if you could talk a little bit about our rates versus other people's rates and whether we have the ability to increase, not next year, this year, the transport fees to give some relief to the budget.

Sure so our our fees and even I think it was the last year Council we voted to make our fees conducive to the consumer price index so that what that does is based on the CP eyes allows for us to incrementally increase or fluctuate with our transport fees are fees are relatively the same as with our surrounding partners in Sarasota County Northport Longboat Key including us and right now it's every October when those that CPI comes out that's exactly what we adopt so do we have the ability to raise or lower based on our needs or council decision yes we can. But that's something that you know something that again, it's I believe it's in our city attorney could help me on this into its it's a it's an adopted ordinance right now. So that's something that we would have to go in front of Council, but is it something that we can adjust yes.

I love having CPI index on any fees in the whole city so that's good, but that's separate from increasing the base of those fees and We're not really in competition with those other people. Somebody's not gonna call the Northport Ambulance Service to come up and serve them here. It's a monopoly in that sense.

Are there other departments that charge more than we charge? Sure, so again within our area, we try to remain consistent with Sarasota County, Northport, Longboat Key, but if you go to the East Coast, if you go North Tampa, Pinellas, Pasco, some of them, they do have higher transport fees than we do, yes.

I'm going to pause everyone there real quick, Mr. City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to add to the discussion here. Great conversation to be talking about what are our other revenue opportunities, which is I think what Council Member Smith is alluding to here. I think that We really, in my opinion, need to wrap our head around what the deficit's gonna be before we actually start taking those steps. But fire does give us some unique opportunities, which really starts with some studies. And I think that's the most important thing to kind of reiterate today, whether we are going to be raising the transport fees or looking into a fire assessment fee, which is a commonly used fee across the state. It starts with a study so that whatever we're charging can be tied directly to the cost of those services. and not done just as a revenue generation tool. EMS cannot be used as a revenue generation tool, but we can fund those services through several different mechanisms. So that would be my recommendation.

If I may, Mayor, just in response to that, we're not using it as a revenue to fund other things. I mean, this is costing us more than we're charging. And even a $200 increase in the fee wouldn't come anywhere near covering the total cost of EMS service in this city. So my point is this. I don't think we have to wait until other people raise their fees for us to raise our EMS fee. It's not a huge impact on people. It obviously is on the economy. Most of those fees are paid by insurance, and we have a great collection rate for that reason, because it's not trying to collect it from an individual in most cases. And it just seems, again, I'm looking at this number, 78 percent increase in the three years that's shown in this budget. I went back four years. That's 120 percent increase in the cost of this service over the last four years. And it seems like we need to make an adjustment in what we charge. And when you're telling me Tampa, Pinellas County, other places are charging more, we need to recognize this in this environment as a real opportunity. If it takes a study first, again, I don't want a study that tells me what Northport's charging. I want a study that tells what our cost is and what we could charge, even a $200 fee would only make up about a third of the deficit in terms of what that department relies on in property taxes to supplement the fees that they charge. I came up with that number. There's nothing magical about that number, but it was a real number so that people could hear it and see it's not the end of the world. Anyway, I do hope we can go down that road. WHEREVER WE DO. AND I DON'T WANT US TO WAIT UNTIL NEXT YEAR'S BUDGET. WE COULD BE DOING IT THIS YEAR. IT WOULD HELP PUT US IN A BETTER POSITION FOR NEXT YEAR.

AND COUNCILMAN SMITH, I'D LIKE TO ADD, TOO, THAT WE ARE ALWAYS ACTIVELY LOOKING AT AND MAKING SURE THAT OUR FEES ARE, ONE, ARE JUSTIFIED, AND TWO, THAT THEY ARE COMPETITIVE. We are currently working with finance in in even our study for our fire EMS impact fee so that's something that we're working with a consultant through now and that's something that we're always aggressively looking at but again to be able to justify everything that we do we want to make sure that you know our fees are competitive. I can also say that you know with even with our millage rate in the beginning when Sarasota County was running rescues out of our our stations, I think the million now we can assume the military here, but our transport fees, I think the county was only collecting around 1.3 to 1.5 million so where we're at now our transport fees are I think a little over 3 million. So it's it's it's done its job it's doing well, but again are I never want anyone to ever. assume or think that public safety is intended to make money that's not what our job is our job is to um ensure that our citizens have an enhanced level of service and that's ensuring that there's a paramedic on every engine every rescue so that just within nine you know when 911 is called in the city of venice we can assure that advanced life support skills are rendered to our residents so that's always been our goal well please just don't misunderstand me i'm not trying to turn it into a revenue

I'm trying to shrink the dependency on property taxes that that service has. And what I just suggested was one-third. Sure. Cutting one-third into the deficit, not fully funding it and then making money. Absolutely.

No, I understand. That's all I'm saying. And that's where city manager was talking. We are... actively working and looking at ensuring that everything we do is justified and that our fees are competitive.

And also keep in mind that there's lots of times the fire department and our EMS may respond to a call, but we don't charge a service. We only charge the EMS if we transport them. It's called an EMS transport fee. So the fee is only charged if we transport the patient.

Mrs. Frank?

Thank you have two quick things on page one. Do we have four or five rescues?

So currently right now we have, and I have our logistics chief here so he can come up and clarify, but right now we have four that are frontline in-service running. We have two running out of station 52, we have one running out of station 51, and one running out of station 53. So a total of four running right now. Our goal is to add a second rescue running here off the island. So what we're seeing is our numbers, right now we're barely sustaining our call volume. So what we want to do is make sure that we have the amount, the correct amount of frontline running rescues, and then we have to have two in reserve. So a total right now we have, I believe, our six or seven, seven, seven rescues, four frontline, three are our reserves.

Great. It's on page one. It says this includes four Princey's, five rescues. So I just wasn't sure which one was accurate.

Part of strategic planning was to add that fifth rescue frontline. We're just trying to get the staffing. We can fix that.

And then on page 14 under fire, I just want to follow the. Expenditure schedule correctly, make sure I understood on ending fund balance, I guess expected ending fund balance fiscal year 2026. You drop down 1.164793. You see where I'm talking? Yes, this is for the fire impact. Yes. So those are expected ending fund balance. But then you jump to proposed budget that we're looking at now, 2027, and it's over 2 million. Why is that different? I thought ending expected fund balance would then match starting for the new year.

I'm trying to catch up where you're at.

I know where you're at, you're correct. So we must have an error in our formula there. You're correct, that 1.1 has to go over there. We'll have to double check that. Okay, great, thank you. But the reason it does show a negative is because we ordered the truck but we won't pay, the cash won't go out the door until fiscal 29.

Okay, but likely for 2027 it will be that 1.164, not the 2 million. Yes, thank you for pointing that out.

No problem. Mr. Weed?

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, just looking at the page 14, I see that the error is actually in that blue section there, because you shouldn't be getting fund balance of negative $2 million.

That all carries down to disaster.

Anyway, my actual question was on page 12, professional services. I see a jump from $280,000 to $352,000. It says medical, director, physical. I mean, that's a huge $71,000 jump. What is the the backup of that? What's happened there?

Sure. You're looking at the I'm sorry, 31 account professional services. Yeah.

Page 12. Uh, yeah. 3100 professional services. I see a jump from 280,500. Yes, just 352, even though we've only spent $93,000 so far this year.

So for professional services, yes, it does include our medical director, which every EMT, every paramedic has to work under his license, and that contract is up. It also includes our physicals. And for all the new hires that we've had on, they have to go through their physicals. One of the biggest things that you're going to see and you do see is for the monthly billing services. So we had a billing company that we are now moving to a different company. And there was that transition period where we have to essential we have to have both companies working for us at the same time in order to process and extrapolate the 9,000 calls to come over so you're going to see so next year you it will it will drop. But this is a one time is a lifetime thing we had to bring on 2 companies we have our existing billing company. We're switching to a new billing company that will do a lot more for us and hopefully increase our collection rate as well and our billing processing and there's just that transition period where we had to onboard both both companies at the same time.

Okay, and this wouldn't be something that would be a one time that would come out of the reserves rather than operating budget.

I mean we really not because it's still considered an operating expense.

Okay. All right. Thank you very much. As you see, huge jump, huge number. Thank you for letting me know about the duplication of services. And by the way, they get the bills out really quick. I know that from personal experience. But yeah, good job.

Mr. Howard?

That's pretty funny. Did you pay it?

Yes, I did.

Good morning, Chief. Good morning. So you and I had a conversation, I don't know, probably three years ago, and the question was basically BLS transports. And I noticed we have vans now, not the fully equipped ALS units. And I was kind of piggybacking on what Mr. Smith was talking about. Every transport that we don't have a vehicle available for, we lose those transport fees to SRQ, right? So they pick up and they bill for that?

Yes, I mean, we could lose them to, we have mutual and automatic aid agreements, so yes, if we don't have the resources available or they're tied up on another call, Sarasota County will come in, and if they get the transport, they get the transport.

So how many of those units do we have running?

How many, I'm sorry?

Like the basic transport units?

So all of our units are BLS and ALS. So if they're ALS units, they cover all the BLS units. So equivalently, so we have four running right now.

But we don't have just, let me rephrase the question. We don't have a van that we just purely provide transportation services.

No, no. All our rescues are transporting vehicles. But we don't have one that's just specific for transports only.

Is that an option?

It is I mean would include adding more staff and another vehicle where I think the bang for your buck is to have a less providing rescue that can do both BLS skills a lot of skills and if the need for transport is there then absolutely a lot of our calls it could be you know with our demographics, for example, you know a fall. in certain demographics doesn't necessarily need a transport. But with our again, our demographics, sometimes a fall is more than that. It can turn into a trauma. So I think having the ability to transport when needed, as opposed to if you just had a vehicle that did not have transport capabilities, that will kind of put you in a pinch.

So how much of the 83% EMS calls is our payment, private versus insurance? Or is there such a thing as a patient pay? Or does insurance now cover all the transport fees?

No, the insurance pays the majority of it, the primary. If not, then the supplemental billing is to the patient. So sometimes the insurance pays a part of it, and sometimes the patient pays a part of it.

The majority of our residents were fortunate in this I think again are are believe our collection rate is it I know it's the highest all around I think it's a 7578% close to 80% which is unusual for EMS that high of a collection rate.

Thank you. All right the board is clear any other questions. Looks like we're good thank you.

We'll put on to the police budget.

Chief if you want to come down. Any questions for the police chief. We'll start with Mrs. Frank.

Oh, I think it's just another typo. On page 13 of police, the bottom right, increase difference, it's not over fiscal year 24 budget, right? If you drop down, see up top it's revenue expenditures. I think it's just a typo. Great job, Chief. Yeah, glad I could help.

You must run a pretty good budget if all we have is typos to comment on.

I'm glad you're finding those, though, because that's like...

I think we're headed for a big conversation with the study that was done on staffing and all that at future meetings. I won't try to... preempt that. But let me just ask a couple other very small questions. First, thank you for the Police Academy. What a wonderful thing that is. And I get such great feedback from the people that participate in it.

Yeah, thank you for that feedback. It's very important to us to get our information out there as far as what we do and share that with the community. Thank you.

Okay, and thank you for your continued pursuit and success at accreditation in every department.

Yes, that's also very important to us.

That's important to me. And lastly, in the presentation here, a minor point, you say that police completed the expansion of bike controls, bike patrols, and I wanted you to just tell us about that because I know there was some disappointment in the community a little while back that that sort of had fallen off. So can you talk about bike patrols separate from all the staffing studies.

Sure I mean realistically it's just an addition of some e-bikes to our fleet of bikes. So we took some of our standard bikes we switched them over to electrical bikes to allow our officers to basically patrol more on them when able. Typically they're used more for special events than anything right now because it's as staffing allows type of work so as we'll be talking about next week it's not often that staffing allows for them to get out there but we will at least want to have the tools available to them when they can to go out and ride especially when the summer months when it's hot out they're able to actually get around leave from the police department and ride to any of our community neighborhoods downtown with ease and patrol that way.

You give them e-bikes, maybe more officers will want to be like patrol. Maybe you can keep up with the speed on the legacy trail.

Yeah, we want to do all that, yes.

We haven't had our first high-speed electric bike chase, have we? Not yet. All right. We'll look forward to that. Thank you, Chief.

You're welcome. Mrs. Frank.

Okay, one more question, just because I think it would be of significant interest to our residents. The designating elder crimes detective is now, was no in 26, but now is pending in 27. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Yeah, so that's a position that was created a couple years ago. We added a fifth general case detective, which was primarily going to be focused on elder crime. We have been unable to fill that due to staffing needs at our patrol level. So that's sitting there waiting for somebody to fill that role. It's just that we've had some pressure on responding to basic calls for service, and so we have yet to fill that position. It's an important position to us. We've talked a lot about elder crime in this community. Cryptocurrency is up and coming. We've lost, our citizens have lost millions of dollars in that area. So we're trying to focus on that as much as possible. And again, that probably will be another point that we touch on Tuesday.

Very helpful context for our residents to understand. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Vice Mayor.

Thank you. I commend you for this. I'll put that out there first, but I think it's something that we need to talk about and you need to explain for the public. The additional $65,700 for Salvation Army beds for our community outreach program.

Yes.

I think, you know, we keep hearing about these things and we keep doing a better job, but it keeps costing us more because we don't have any place to go, you know, in the county. County jail is overcrowded, halfway houses are overcrowded. Can you just talk about that just a little bit for us?

Yeah, so the expense is really an expense we've been able to defer for the past couple of years. Fortunately, we've had the assistance from Gulf Coast Community Foundation, Suncoast Partnership, and Homelessness over the past two years have funded those beds for us. A couple years ago, all the other municipalities, the county took on that expense. We did not have a line item at the time, so we approached those nonprofits for assistance, and they've provided us those grants. Those grants have now ended, so we had to find a way to fund space at the Salvation Army. So when our navigators or officers encounter people that are homeless, we have some options for them. Otherwise, we'd have no option as far as temporary housing. So we were able to identify, in this case, the opioid settlement fund money to fund that this year, so it's not general fund money. And we'll see how long that lasts. So hopefully we can maybe get another year out of it, if possible, before we have to switch it over to general fund. But those are ongoing costs. If we want to be able to respond to homelessness and have an option to resolve it.

I give you a lot of credit because a lot of things change year to year to year. We see more and more of that. In order to take care of the community, you've got to do stuff like this. We appreciate it.

Just as a point of reference, this is to fund four beds. So far, our stats show we've been filling four beds about 90 percent of the time.

And that expense is on page 12. I see some of you flipping your pages. It's on page 12, the Oikud Fund 118. Thank you. It's like on the bottom of the expenses. It's at $85,700. $65,700 of that number is for Salvation Army beds.

I don't have anybody else, but I do have kind of a comment I want to make, and Ms. Senney, feel free to be blatantly honest with me, but I've kind of in my mind paused what I want to discuss on police waiting for our discussion on Tuesday. So one thing that I'm kind of looking forward to, and I know it puts extra burden on you, but When we come back together on July 8th, is there any chance that we could see whatever we decide on Tuesday reflected in a budget for the 8th so that we can actually, if there's any more meat and potatoes discussion to have, that we could do that?

Your time when he presents on the 23rd to come back to light with the numbers.

Right, yeah, OK because that's because mentally I don't I don't want to put the cart before the horse I'm trying to hold off until we get through that discussion on Tuesday and then I'd like to to have an opportunity for the whole Council to look at this one more time and then in August we can have that that last review so to speak, yeah, OK. Because I know there's a lot to unpack and we've been working on packing for a long time and and there and with public safety budgets being very personnel-oriented, I mean, that's gonna be a huge factor in our planning now and in the future. Absolutely, thank you. Okay. Any other questions for the Chief? All right, thank you, sir, appreciate your time. Thank you. Moving on to planning and zoning, anything for planning and zoning?

Next is planning and zoning. And historical resources also under planning and zoning. So we'll discuss that one at the same time.

I'm going to give everybody a minute just to see if there's anything. All right, so we'll go ahead and bring Roger Clark down. And I've got Mr. Smith to start. And then, Mr. Smith, if you could, when you go to ask your question, just tell us if this is going to be historical related or planning, just so I can flip to the right page or we can flip to the right page.

Oh, my goodness.

This is not historical related.

Okay. I was excited to see mentioned in your portion of the budget that we're 25% of the way there to getting a swing bridge.

and uh said this year you know to get to 40 of the way what what does that really mean i mean how what progress have we made on that and and you know what what comes next in general and the seaboard master plan you're asking sure sure sure for the record roger clark planning and zoning director um we uh obviously we had the initial work that was done by the consultant where we adopted uh city council adopted the overall master plan for the seaboard area And during the last, I would say about six months, we've been also working with the same consultants to develop the technical plan for the first phase. of the seaboard area, which is basically limited to, for the most part, the property that is owned by the city, owned and controlled by the city. So we've been working on that. There's going to be a presentation from the consultants at your meeting on July 14th So you'll be able to see how that plan is coming about. As far as the percentage that we're showing there, that really just relates to certainly not any construction activity. It really relates to how far we are along with the plan itself. This one was more ground level planning, looking at our codes to see if we need to make changes, parceling out the land that results from the new road that you're aware of, John Nolan Street that we've been calling it. and also the improvements to seaboard as well. So that more relates to how far along we are getting with the plan. As far as the actual construction, you talk about the marina that was shown, the swing bridge, those kind of activities. We have met with the state, the Corps of Engineers. We've spoken with them just to kind of get a general idea as to whether there are any serious red flags regarding that and there were not it was just really a preliminary discussion with them obviously there would be significant permitting that will be required obviously to put that marina in there the swing bridge is a different story I think that one will be a little more difficult it does interfere with navigation so it could be a little more concerned about that but we have spoken with the Corps Didn't throw any red flags down, so we're optimistic about those items in the master plan hopefully could be achieved at some point.

Wow, great. I love that report. And WCIND is already all 100% on board.

They actually were the ones that suggested it. So, yeah, we're appreciative of their support.

So we're down the road on that. And then you say you expect to complete the Parks Master Plan this year. Tell us about that.

Initially, yes, we were hoping to finish that this year. It's probably gonna go into the first portion of next year. We pushed out the public outreach portion a little bit to try and grab some of the season. The timing was difficult on this to really get the high season public response. So we pushed the public outreach down the road. It's gonna be August through October. to catch some of the early season. And I don't think that's, I don't have an issue with that, and neither did the other staff, because I brought the entire staff in on this project, because we're really concerned about what the permanent residents say, because they're here year round. Obviously if there are folks that are adamant about needing to provide outreach, there will be a survey that's gonna be online, so they will be able to participate as well. But it did push the finishing date out a little bit.

And we're using the Citizen Advisory Board in lieu of what used to be a Parks Advisory Board?

We are. Their first meeting is actually gonna be, I believe, August 19th, is the first meeting before the Citizen Advisory Board, followed by Planning Commission and City Council. We increased the number of meetings that would be typical. in something like this, public meetings in front of the boards. So you will see them multiple times, but CAB will have actually an extra meeting with them.

All right. And one more question if I can, Mayor.

I just want to say something on the topic you just brought up. I was going to save it for Tuesday, but just so you are aware, we did have a discussion with CAB yesterday to start preparing and reading the old master plan to make sure that as we move forward, they're prepared for what's coming their way. So we kind of preparing them to prep for it, knowing that it's on the horizon. Great. Thank you.

And the last one I wanted to ask you about, you're right that the Affordable Housing Initiative and Opportunity They were 50% of the way there and hope to get to 75, 70% this year. Can you talk about that, what that is and where we are, where we've got to get to?

Looking at providing incentives, but it can be difficult. There's inclusionary zoning, which we've looked at, which means that any development that comes in has to provide a certain percentage of affordable housing. The contrast to that is that the developer also has to be fully restored as well for whatever they may not be able to collect because of the affordable housing they're doing. So that's something we've looked at. We haven't really pursued that at this point. Obviously we did adopt a whole section on affordable housing, I believe it was last year, to have some codes in there to certainly make it fair. uh for everyone and also we have the density bonus process that that is in place which is an incentive for developers and we have had the opportunity fortunately to work with some affordable housing projects as we speak today we do have family promise has come to planning commission and been approved for some affordable housing over in the substation road area we also have been working with the housing authority at your direction on potential expansion of that area when that fire station is relocated. So we are working with them and we continue to look for incentives to affordable housing. Unfortunately in the city of Venice the land values are significant and it can be difficult in the city of Venice to find areas to do that.

Will any request for proposals in the seaboard area have as an element of it? providing some affordable housing.

If somebody proposed something in there, we certainly would entertain it. Whether it will be or not, I know that's been an area that's been identified in the past as maybe an opportunity for that. I think the land values are going to be such that it will, especially in that area, because it's going to be a new area, a unique area, hopefully. I anticipate that the land value is going to be such that it might be very difficult to have affordable housing in there.

Thank you. any other questions from council thank you mr clark thank you we can go ahead planning and zoning are there any questions then on historical resources i don't see any Go ahead, Mr. Smith.

I'd love to hear from our Historical Resources Director what he thought of this idea of pushing back the pavilion repairs.

Good morning. Historical Resources Manager for the City of Venice. I would say that if there's a change in plan for what is going to be happening with the Venice Beach Pavilion roof, being that it's on the local register, as long as they're following the Secretary of the Interior's guidelines with any kind of rehabilitation work that they're going to be doing, whether it's for short-term or long-term, then there should not be an issue with it.

Thank you.

Anything else? Okay, then we can go ahead and Mr. Weed.

Just a quick question. What is a wrap-up cake?

I'm sorry?

On page two, halfway down, and maybe the city manager can...

and that fiscal year 27 centennial wrap-up cake oh yes so as uh for the wrap-up closing event for our centennial celebration um so in may of 2027 will be the 100th anniversary of the town of venice becoming the city of venice so that will be our official closing out event for our 18-month centennial celebration uh and the plan i know it just says cake and that sounds like a lot of cake for five thousand dollars um but the plan is to have a basically a birthday cake celebration and party in centennial park uh so that to kind of close out the event so that's not just a whole bunch of cake it's going to be all the logistics that go behind it as well that the city will need for holding an event in centennial park

Thank you very much for that clarification.

And just for clarity, you know, Mr. City Manager or Harry, this comes from the original amount that was allotted by the council, correct?

That's correct.

Yeah. I get it. I totally get it. It's a fair question. Fair question.

It's going to be a dang fine cake.

All right. Anything else for historical resources? Okay. We will go on to information technology. Anything for IT? I'm not seeing anything. I will give you a minute. Even bigger when you look at the online version. Good OK then let's move on to human resources any questions on human resources. OK so we'll bring down Mister Bullock wall Council flips to their human resources section. We don't get the opportunity very often to see Mister Bullock so it's twice today this is fantastic. My pleasure to be here, sir. I think it's good that we don't get to see you very often. If we're out of Human Resources Office, we're doing okay.

I do get that quite a lot.

All right, we'll start with Mr. Smith.

Thank you, Mayor. First, congratulations on being one of the very few departments showing that you're asking for less in this budget than a year ago. At first I said, well that's of course because last year we had four union contracts, we had some outside legal expenses, but I looked and it's actually lower than it was the year before that when we didn't have that.

So whatever you're doing in that regard, congratulations.

Thank you. In helping us deal with a tough budget. I also want to compliment you. I love this Bob Graham-inspired workdays that you do. I hope you continue that.

Yeah, very popular program. As you say, well, as the mayor mentioned, sometimes I'm not a welcome figure. So to have generated some goodwill by working alongside the employees goes a long way. Tomorrow morning I'm going to be out at Fire Station 53. with one of the shifts for half the morning, and then I asked Stacey McKenzie from utilities to organize the hottest, dirtiest, and heaviest work she possibly could for me next week. So I'm looking forward to that.

What is that?

I don't know yet.

I mean, there's a whole show on dirty jobs. You mean we got some of those here?

Oh yeah, we got some messy stuff. Working in lift stations or something, I suppose.

Ooh, okay, very good. Anyway, you do so much, and I just wanted to thank you. Coming in with a budget actually showing a decrease, and doing the self-insurance, that's why we had you up here before as well. And then I also love that you revisit every new employee three months into their tenure for a personal interview on how that's going. That is so important.

I do, and they very much appreciate that. They're kind of surprised that I actually do it. I might always tell them at the start, but then they're like, oh, well, you actually did that. Thank you.

All right, thank you Sir for your work.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. A couple items. Page 8, insurance. I'm seeing a 40, almost a 44% increase. Is that just, I mean, Before we heard that the insurance went down, now we're hearing this particular one is up by a substantial amount.

That's different funds. This is the health insurance. That other one was the property and liability insurance. I fully understand that. Okay.

When I see a huge decrease, a huge increase, I've not seen 45% increases in the market, and I'm just kind of curious what our special circumstances are that have such a huge increase, not healthy, but huge.

Yeah, thank you. I made some notes on that particular page. We meet with our broker on health insurance on a regular basis, and of course we're trying to control our costs as best we can. A major function of what drives this cost is the number of employees and the number of dependents associated with those employees. as well as high cost claims. We see more of a move to pharmaceutical costs, so as companies develop more proprietary and more expensive specialist drugs, people are being kept alive for longer and some of those cases can be thousands and many thousands of dollars per month. Those are the cost drivers, and we do try to, as I say, keep those down as much as possible. The other thing is our recent history. I mean, some years we kind of get lucky. Other years we have some fairly catastrophic high-cost claims. So we saw a fairly major increase going into this fiscal year of the reinsurance costs. It was up substantially, and that's a reflection of some recent high-cost claims that we've suffered from.

The other item was in the supplemental information that were provided. The city manager sent over the budget level report. And this to me is not a big dollar. I just would like an explanation because I just don't know. Promotional activities, loyalty program, president's program awards, sick leave incentive program for appropriate attendance. Could you just give us a Reader's Digest review of Of these programs, I just, I'm ignorant of them.

Happy to do that. So one of the programs that we have is the loyalty program or the milestone program, as we kind of call it internally. What that does is effectively rewards employees for longevity. So at the five-year milestone, we'll get a payroll addition of $250. 10 years is $500, 15 is $750, and so on, all the way up to 40 years, which would be $2,000. In addition to that, they get a certificate and they get a choice of either a traditional service pin or some kind of a gift like Amazon or a public gift card. So that's just a way of rewarding our employees for sticking through hard times with us and having been around for a long time. The other program that we have is...

I was going to say, as a note, that one just started in fiscal 26. This loyalty program just started fiscal 26. We didn't have it prior to that.

This is a recent one. The other one that we're looking at is the President's Program, which is a reward for merit. So if somebody does something that's above and beyond, they can get either $20, $50, or $100, essentially as close as we can get to a cash award. That is a smaller overall number. So we try to, within our capabilities, reward for longevity, but also for merit on a separate basis.

Okay, and then my last one, I was just curious, Stephanie Renewal for Notary. Yeah, Stephanie.

It's a weird line. All right, well, Stephanie is our administrative support in HR, but she also serves as a notary, which is pretty handy a lot of the times. So I think every other year we budget $200 for notary services, but I don't think there's anything budgeted for this year. Just going back to the promotional for second and for me, I think the other thing that goes into that is $4,000 for the year for it's a new hire orientation that's very popular. We hire a bus and a driver. We stop off at Sharky's for lunch. which is routinely a real pinnacle of the day. People love it. We see all of the on-island city facilities in the morning, all the off-island city facilities in the afternoon. That's run by me and Lorraine Anderson from city manager's office, and for that relatively small expenditure, we see a really big impact with our new employees. They love it.

Thank you very much. Very informational.

Mr. Smith?

Thank you, Mayor. Alan, we received a... Council received a memo from Mr. Rodriguez, the new head of the union for AFSCME, and detailing all the discussions with you about wages this year. What can you talk about that?

Well, thank you. So you were kind enough to give me the heads up during the break that the council had actually received this memo. I did not get that. So I got it from Kelly just shortly after the break. So thank you for that. Basically, what he's saying is just a kind of recap of what is in the public record as regards to Ashley negotiations. We've had one session with them. They requested a step increase, which is a three and a half percent base pay increase for most people. as well as an adjustment of 4.5% to the grade step table. So that combined would essentially give them an 8% base pay increase. And he's highlighting something that James Clint said in his email to our employees that says, which I've not verified, but I think it's correct. This proposal, the tax reform proposal, will have no direct impact on the upcoming budget year FY27. So he's trying to make the point essentially that because we don't anticipate any direct effect on this current fiscal or the coming fiscal year, that we should just stick with the traditional model of step increase plus an upward adjustment to the grade step table. We are in the early stages. We've had one session. Our initial opening offer to them was a 2% one-time payment, nothing else, no adjustment to the grade step table, no step increase. That was not popularly received at the table, and so you're going to see every attempt from them to try to get what they can, which is completely appropriate. That's what they do. We have a unique situation there in as much as we have the opportunity to speak to you in private, so the next executive session is scheduled for July 14th. We'll be discussing the AFSCME situation along with the others, which is FOP officers and sergeants-lieutenants. That's really a bit of forum for us to discuss our strategy, but what Dennis has told you is, I believe, factually correct. Thank you.

Mr. City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor. Just to clarify, my intention with the email we sent out to our staff was to let them know what was happening with property reform, what we know at this point in time. And while I did make the point that there's not going to be direct impacts to our FY27 budget, as I said today, it is top of mind, and any recurring expense, especially salaries, is going to potentially be impacted in the future. Thank you. Just wanted to clarify that.

Mr. Weed?

I failed to turn off my button. My apologies. Okay.

Anyone else? Okay. With that, let's see if we can move a little bit further along here. Anything for the city attorney? Okay. Then I don't need to call her up because she's already here. So we will go ahead and move to the city attorney portion in our book. And we'll start with Mr. Smith when he's ready. Unless anyone has anything else and we can let somebody else go before Mr. Smith. Anything from anyone else? Okay, we'll just wait. No problem.

I saw... When I was looking at the increase in departments, the increase in city attorney fees actually was among the highest increases we've had. I think it was 28% over the three-year period. And I understand that each year different things factor in there. But in thinking about where there can be savings, when things get tight, and I just want to talk about them now, are there services that you provide in your base fees that we could possibly forego? For example, I know you're at all of our meetings. I'm looking in the wrong direction. I was looking over there. and at planning department meetings and I think you say the magistrates meetings and others and you're at the beck and call of the council, et cetera. But are there things that some people don't employ their city attorney to? For example, could we, if we were trying to save money and working with you on a contract, could we have you only attending quasi-judicial meetings rather than all of the routine meetings or having some lesser person than our illustrious city attorney attending routine matters. Are there ways we can save some money here

Sure. So I heard you say a 28% number. I don't know where that comes from. I don't know if Linda has that calculation, but to your question itself. So currently the only meetings that the city attorney office attends as far as boards is of course city council and our boards that do have quasi-judicial. So for instance, we do not attend the citizen advisory board because again they don't have quasi-judicial we do attend the hapb because they have a quasi-judicial function planning commission of course and special magistrate since our city attorney our assistant city attorney actually helps staff prosecute those cases now that we have an independent party that's serving in that role So when I look at, I know this is not necessarily in my budget, but I do look at the overall expenditures of attorney services for the city. That is where I think we have abilities to, not necessarily everything is in our control. If someone sues the city or we have a personnel matter, of course we have to respond. But if you look at over the overall costs, even of my non-retainer amount or attorney services for the city combined it's it's like a roller coaster there's high years there's low years it's thoroughly dependent on litigation that we've either brought ourselves or that we're responding to in defense so in my perspective the city does a very good job of staying out of litigation and we do get involved in litigation um being reasonable when we find an opportunity to settle it. So always something I have in mind. I think it's always something we have our special counsel, whether they're special counsel we have just on ongoing retainer, like with our HR department, or special counsel we hire for a litigation matter in particular, always making sure we keep an eye on the bottom line. Really going into your question about the retainer amount, I think that doesn't increase every year. It did not increase at all last year. There's been years we haven't increased it. Often it's increased less than CPI. And so that goes into not only just the conglomeration of Now you have four attorneys that are consistently doing work for the city without changing the retainer amount beyond CPI or something less. And that covers all of our costs, our insurance, my office here in Venice. It's a all encompassing amount. And so I don't know that there's a way to reduce that figure without just I'm being realistic, but again, to me, the thing to keep our eye on is the hourly work, whether it's my own hourly work or that of outside counsel, and a lot of that's just special project and litigation related, which is often, if not, again, my friend Alan Bullock, who's no longer here, HR related, then it's whether we choose to engage in litigation.

Okay, thank you. My math may have been off, but it shows 383,000 in 2024 and 447,843 this year. So there is a significant increase there. And that's, of course, not all, as I think you're alluding to, all of our legal expenses. As we talked about, Mr. Bullock, he has an attorney that works with him on contracts. Do you have a number for the total legal expenses for the city when you take in, I guess the airport uses its own attorney. Almost every enterprise fund has a legal consultant, is that correct?

Yeah, I might have to rotate over to where Linda is to share this. This came out of her department, so they're very helpful every year in providing this.

I have it, Kelly, I can help you.

And so this actually reflects what I was saying. And there's been, there was a decrease when you look at the full fiscal years from 23, 24, we did have, that was when our litigation was ongoing with Neil communities. When you see that litigation basically wrapping up last fiscal year, um, drives a substantial decrease in the overall picture. And I have historical figures going back all the way to when my firm first started representing the city that came out of the, uh, uh, finance department back to 14, 15. And you'll, again, that's where I was referencing, it's like a roller coaster. If there's litigation going on, the number overall is high, then it drops down and it goes up and down and I couldn't even plot it out. I don't think you would see, even if you did a regression line, maybe it's slightly high, but it's all over the place. It's really dependent on what happens to be going on that fiscal year. Currently we have no significant litigation, which is good.

We have that Flamingo Ditch case.

That's insurance is covering that. So, I mean, yes, we may have a portion of that at some point, but it's not directly hitting our books right now.

Okay.

Thank you. Anything else with the attorney? I'll just say thank you for all the work that you do, Kelly. I really appreciate having you here. Let's move on to City Council and City Clerk. Anything for City Council, City Clerk? Seeing none, hearing none, we will move on to City Manager. Anything for city manager? Miss Frank.

I just wanted to say that having access to the detail digitally in advance of the workshop for the first time this year was extremely helpful. I was able to dig in on some questions I had specifically on the city manager's budget and so all my questions were answered by being able to see that detail in advance of the workshop. So just thank you again for setting that up for us this year.

And that's okay? Just to confirm, for next year, we didn't print it because it was just more pages, so are you okay getting it the way you got it this year and not having it printed? Okay.

Yeah.

I just wanted to confirm that. Thank you.

I would personally say after having done this now seven years that this is the most transparent. I mean, like, it's been incredibly accessible. All the department heads have always been very accessible, but I haven't had to bother as many people this year to get information. And I'm sure you guys appreciate that just as much as I appreciate, you know.

We always had those details. We just didn't print them because it's a lot of pages.

Right. No, and, you know, it gives us the tools we need. And then if we have questions, we can always call or stop by. So this process has been pretty good over the years.

Okay. Thank you.

All right, I'll just, before we close out on city manager, I'll say again, just like I always like to bring up, thank you again for when we negotiated your salary for keeping it economical and making that part of it easy. All right. Thank you, Mayor. Absolutely. I like to just point that out so that everyone knows that we probably kept some money back from you. All right, let's go on to finance. Anything for finance? While we're waiting for that, I'll just say, Linda, I do want to go on record saying that I know that just like Mr. Bullock is not always the favorite, they see you coming with the financial hatchet, and I know you're not very popular sometimes, but I do appreciate how lean you keep things and how aggressive you are with making sure that we have a good budget in front of us. And to Ms. Frank's point, thank you again for all of the resources you provided us this year. It's been very helpful. Mr. Wheat?

Yeah, I shared this privately with Ms. Sunny, but I just want to say publicly that I'm very, very impressed You know, I'm the new kid in the block, walked into this fresh last year, had lots of questions. She spent a great amount of time, very generously, me getting up to speed. And the recommendations that were given by the council last year have been adopted. There's been a lot of changes, and I'm astounded. I'm not used to seeing that in business, that these issues are really taken to heart and have been complied with, and I appreciate that, and I appreciate all the work and attentiveness to it.

It's a whole finance team.

So really, Ritana is the reason that everything went so well this year?

Ritana is the reason you got those details, so I'll thank Ritana.

Good job, Ritana. All right, we'll move on to engineering. Mr. Smith. Are we on finance?

Engineering, then also within engineering is the stormwater fund. So we'll do engineering, the general fund first, then stormwater.

Are you still on finance, Mr. Smith?

I am. Actually, at the same time, I was going to ask a question of Ms. Senne, about the very next thing that's up, which is stormwater. It's a related question. First, thank you for all the work you do and for this wonderful book and all of the materials you've given us that give us the chance to study. I really do appreciate what you do. What I wanted to ask, we talk about the stormwater as an enterprise fund, and We had the challenge with them on, can we do some of this? And it's not if we want, we don't have enough money to do all of what we want. We have to pick what we can do. And as a result, we put things out to 27, 29, 31. And I understand, Mr. Kramer can only spend what Mr. Kramer has. But my question for finance is, are we able to put money in there? I mean, reserve funds or general funds into the stormwater fund to give him more to work with,

Actually, it would be stormwater fees. That would have to come into the enterprise fund. We don't take general fund money and put it into an enterprise fund, but the enterprise funds do pay the general fund for the indirect service cost allocation. So that's a line item where the stormwater is paying the general fund for services that general fund people provide for the stormwater fund. So if we want to have more revenue coming into the stormwater fund, then we'd have to increase our stormwater fees.

That's the only way. In other words, we can't gift them money.

Well, I suppose council could choose to do that, but I would not recommend taking general fund dollars and putting it into stormwater. Instead, you would want to increase the stormwater fees.

Okay. Thank you. All right. Anything else for engineering? Including stormwater. Okay.

OK there's no questions on the engineering that's general fund and we can go to the stormwater fund and that's a separate enterprise fund.

This is a real quick do we have questions on that I'm just looking to see if there's any council members with questions on it. Well they they they will be but I'm actually going to break us for lunch and then we'll come back and pick up with stormwater so we'll come back at. This is 50 minutes enough for everybody. Or do you want an hour and a half? Or an hour and 20? Hour and 20?

Hour and 20 or 50?

Okay. Let's go ahead and be back at 1245 and we'll pick up from there. So 1245.

Okay here back.

This one to do or you're standing up. Boy we're going to do the stormwater portion next. Council members have any questions about stormwater feel free to flip to that section in your book and your buttons. I know who's speaking Mister Smith you can start us off. Thank you.

I hope you saw Mr. Kramer. I was trying to get you some more money. I appreciate the sentiment.

So you can do more.

I appreciated that you said you have an active stormwater construction and maintenance crew and your capabilities have increased with the purchase of vacuum truck, pipe inspection truck, and a slope mower. That sounds like great news. Was that slope mower at work in Deertown Gully just in the last A few weeks?

Right now Deer Town Gully is maintained by Sarasota County, so I'm not aware of what they perform there, but it's likely that they, that would be an application for a soap mower.

Okay, because I saw they did just mow a whole big section of Deer Town Gully. Can you talk about that, Deer Town Gully versus Curry Creek in this discussion we've been having of who's going to be in charge of these things?

Sure, gladly. And for the record, John Kramer, city engineer. City stormwater staff has an ongoing discussion with county stormwater staff regarding transfer of right-of-way that would include Deer Town Gully and Curry Creek. You may recall that Curry Creek has a patchwork of maintenance entities and the county agrees it would be beneficial if one entity were to take over all of that maintenance. So the current plan is to transfer Curry Creek right of way and maintenance responsibility to the county and exchange city would take deer town goalie and actually perform a higher level of maintenance service there and there is the portion of Curry Creek that runs through sawgrass that. City believes Sawgrass is responsible for maintaining. Sawgrass has recently approached us with some legal information where they believe that they may not be the appropriate maintenance entity and probably defer to city attorney, but we're evaluating that.

Any kind of timeframe on when we might resolve that issue?

I'd like to defer to the city attorney if I may.

So yes, as Sawgrass's attorney reached out to me, we had a conversation. I've been speaking with staff. So we have a couple different options. We're not prepared to talk about those today, but depending on the direction we take, if it's a voluntary, we're able to come up with a mutually agreeable resolution, then that can happen rather quickly. If that's not something we're able to do, then we might be looking at a declaratory judgment action to determine who's responsible for what, and that'll just take probably less than a year.

Okay, thank you. I'm looking at page six, the statistical sheet that you give us in the stormwater section, and I'm just noticing all those zero growth, negative numbers on decline in revenues in virtually every area.

Is that just a function of slower growth in the city?

Why are we seeing such steep declines in each of those revenue areas?

This rate is based on, to get to that rate is based on the operating budget and to have enough operating budget to fund for the stormwater. That's one of the rates that's used to fund for the operations.

Right, but we're showing 25% decreases everywhere from a year ago, right?

It's because, well, because the operations and their capital projects aren't, they haven't done some of the capital projects that were in the budget, so they were pushed off. So then we didn't have to, the rate went down, as I mentioned earlier at the beginning, the rate decreased because we don't charge more than what the expenses are gonna be. So the rate decreased based on their expenses and if you see their expenses are going down.

Mm-hm.

Because we had 4.8 million budget and now it's 3.9 million budgeted. So based on how their ordinance or their resolution is written for their rates, it's based on what we expect the costs are. That's how their rate is developed each year.

Mr. City Manager.

Thank you. I just wanted to add to this topic. So one of the challenges with having stormwater and engineering living in the same department is there are always competing priorities with their time. And I thought it might be helpful, John, if you could speak a little bit to our plan for bringing in some stormwater consulting support next year, where that's at in the budget, and why we're doing that. Thank you.

Sure. In our proposed fiscal year 27 budget, we've allocated $150,000 for capital project management services. That would be securing the services of one of our engineering consultants to help us manage the bidding and construction of capital projects. I appreciated the offer of additional resources earlier, and funding is always a concern. Right now it's staff time that is our limiting factor. So by getting a consultant employee to help us with these capital projects, we'll be able to get more of them out the door.

Thank you for that. I noticed on page 4 you say comprehensive analysis of stormwater system, show that in the 2025, and we say we're implementing the plan recommendations in 26 and 27. Can you talk about that?

Sure. We recently completed an update to the stormwater management plan And that helped us prioritize hotspots within the city as well as projects to maintain our level of service. So what we are using that document for is to, we're implementing the recommendations and programming those into our CIP.

Okay. There was some mention in here of outfall number nine and work there and upgrading number 10. Can you tell me about those?

Sure. These are two of our beach outfalls. And Outfall 10 is located by the pier, Sharky's parking lot. And the county recently went in and did some exotic removal. There's a wetland there. So we would like to enhance that. Outfall 9 is located a little north of that by Golden Beach residences and they have some concerns there and we'd like to see if there's something we can do that's an older system that was designed for a lower level of service. So we'd like to see if we could improve the performance there.

Thank you. And then my last question is the famous flamingo ditch. And when we asked for certain work could be done in this current year. It's not. It's all projected to be done in the, or the first phase is projected to be done in this coming fiscal year. Is that correct? And what exactly will we be accomplishing in fiscal year 27?

The CIP project is for phase one is programmed for fiscal year 27. That's when the funds for design construction will be available. I know that there is a desire to advance that project, so in this fiscal year, we are performing some preliminary activities. That Flamingo Drive lot that we're going to excavate is actually a county enclave, so our planning and zoning friends are helping us out, processing an annexation, comprehensive plan amendment, and rezone petition for that. So that's underway, as well as I've been working with CPE, Coastal Protection Engineering, the firm that performed the Flamingo Ditch Study, to develop the scope of services for this phase one project so that we can hit the ground running once our funding is available.

Okay. And then this monitoring system you're going to put in the ditch, is that assumed to be a reality?

That's included in the project. So really, we would excavate the lot and install the system there. We really don't have any right of way or any other location to install the system until we excavate that lot.

All right, thank you for all those updates.

Mr. Weed?

Thank you, and Mr. Smith asked most of the questions I had. I was asked by a citizen what, when we're excavating that lot, What the final result will look like how will that appear is it going to be landscape decided on the upper side I sure them under Mister clinches guidance, I'm sure be beautiful, but I just like to hear what your opinion is about me is guessing on what that appearance of that neighborhood area will be when it is all escalated and dug out.

sure our goal with this phase one is to maximize the excavation and the amount of storage that we're creating so for someone an observer looking from the road or jason house it should just look like an extension of the ditch itself we're not sure yet if will have vertical wall sides, which would allow you to excavate more or if they'd be steadily slope down, we may be able to add a bench or some little park amenity, but we really need to get as much storage out of that as we can to make the improvement as effective as possible.

Any other questions. Okay, we will move on to public works and fleet. Any questions for public works fleet?

The public works. Yeah, we'll start with the fleet replacement program.

Any questions on this one from any council members? Okay, so we'll go ahead and bring those folks down. And then council members when you're ready to ask questions, just push your button. So I know who's in line to speak. All right we'll start with Mister Smith when you're ready.

Thank you happy to start us off. Thank you for your reports here and thank you for that beautiful new park in northeast Venice that is spectacular. I couldn't be happier. And I love the statistics you gave us here that seems so important and responsible on how quickly you expect your staff to always respond Tree issues within one day, park maintenance issue within seven days, et cetera. Those are great metrics that you have there. And my experience is that you do respond in those time frames. I see you give yourself 100% scores. Yes, sir. But I don't know of any violations of that, so I congratulate you on that. Thank you. And I mean it. I know on a couple times when I have mentioned something, your response, was immediate but but for anybody in the city. It's the same so thank you for that.

I wanted to ask.

I know it's yet to come before us is the contract for running the community center. Yes, so we can talk about that at our meeting when that's that's there but with this taking on of the additional parks and all the change that that's meaning for your department, I was happy to hear the city manager say there was no increase in your staff. And are we, I know we are going to contract out some work on the Civic Center. Are there other, are we contracting out some of this other work? And if so, where and what?

Yes, absolutely. For the record, Ricky Simpson, Director of Public Works. So, you know, this, this started, I started preparation for this a couple of years ago. Um, that was, you know, part due to the schedule change, you know, within public works, excuse me, which was very controversial. However, it gives me full staff and availability five days a week in hopes that it would assist me with taking on these additional parks that are coming up in October. I'm still confident that we're going to be able to maintain the level of service that we provide today. However, there will be contractual services on certain aspects of the new park systems that we will be taking back from the county. One being the Venetian Waterway Trail. That is a large area of mowing that basically runs from the North Trailhead all the way down towards Caspersons. That will be contracted work by a contractor to do the mowing, edging, and weeding on that. And then the facilities cleaning, so the restroom facilities will be contracted out as well. Everything else I plan on maintaining in-house with city staff.

Okay, and are those costs of those contracts reflected in this budget?

yes um he's under the parks budget i thought we were going to sleep but he's in parks budget so it's in the public works folder page it's page 15. it's right in the middle where it's other contractual services and it's under the new interlocal agreement okay and then can can you uh tell us how things are working out after we had that impasse

over to change and shifts. Is there any update on that at all?

As far as the staff?

Yeah.

Everything is working phenomenally. The morale is, if not higher than ever. You always have a couple that aren't pleased with the outcome, but for the most part, we're still producing. People enjoy coming into work. We have a good time. We do our best. I think that the reducing hours in a day and the heat has helped them. 7 to 3.30 is a complete different schedule than a 10-hour day. It gives them more time in the evenings with their family. I've gotten a lot of really positive reports back from the schedule change.

That's great. Yes, sir. I think of your old police building, current new building is new, but we have some major work to be done there?

There are some items that need to be addressed. We do not have all impact glass windows throughout that facility, and that does house our T-fit team for storm preparation. So we have our full teams. That's where they report and stay until the winds recede to where they can go out and do their job. That's a large portion of it. Also, a generator for that facility. That generator failed. during Helena Milton, one of the two, we lost that generator. So we definitely need a generator for that facility. And then the roofing enhancements to take away the clay tile, which we've had a lot of issues with over, you know, in the past, and replacing that with a metal barrel tile that has a higher win rating.

Okay.

And that was the CIP sheet that we added since the CIP workshop that he's referring to.

Okay. Thank you, Lynn. And thank you for doing more with the same look my pleasure.

Mister weed.

The public works park recreation. A 14 of the people 14. It's an explanation I got to ask a line down or 3rd line down fiscal year, 27 minutes full beach exterior door $45,000 is that the pavilion all the exterior doors or what we're looking at there. On the screen right in front of us third line down $45,000.

So what I'm thinking that is is the the restroom facility doors for the changing rooms and the other doors throughout that facility they've all weathered a lot of storms um and they run between eight and twelve thousand dollars a piece to come to replace the entire threshold and the entire door i'm gonna look back to this castle correct yes that's what that's for so they're they're currently failing

Okay, so all the pedestrian exterior doors at the Beach Pavilion are being replaced.

Correct. One's failing a little bit more than normal, and it was hit with a vehicle a week or so ago. Okay. So, yeah. But yes, that's what that's for.

Thank you very much.

My pleasure.

Any other questions?

Okay.

Thank you very much for your time, sir, appreciate it. Thank you. We will move on to, what was there anything, did we do solid waste? Anything for solid waste since he's up here?

Is there any questions on his new fund that we're starting, the fleet service fund? Fleet. 506 fund, that's the new fund that we're starting. Any questions on that one? That would probably be the last one there.

Nothing on fleet? Anything on solid waste? No fleet, no solid waste. All right. Oh. Go ahead, Ms. Frank. Mrs. Frank.

It's OK. We just.

It's like an auctioneer or something. Please, go ahead.

With solid waste, with the recent schedule change, are you hearing great feedback on that from staff and residents alike, just since that was a recent update?

Actually, very little, which is a great thing. Travis and his team did a fantastic job getting that out to the community, making sure everyone was aware of what was going on. I think he was at the farmer's market, he was at the hurricane expo, which made a huge impact to the community. So I think it was well received.

Wonderful, thanks so much. My pleasure.

As a voter and consumer, I'll go ahead and tell you, I thought you guys did fantastic. I had somebody chase down my wife and ask her where they could put a sign so that we could let everybody know. And she helped him to the clubhouse, and it was all good stuff. I've heard nothing but great things from my neighbors, and I've been very pleased as a consumer. I like, tell your guys I do really like when I wave and they wave back and smile. Absolutely. All right, anything else for Mr. Simpson before we let him move on? All right, then I will move on to the building department next. Thank you, Mr. Simpson. Thank you. Hit your buttons because you guys are still on my screen. Thanks. Nope, nope, don't do that. Any questions? Getting punchy, it's after lunch. Any questions for building department? Okay, so we'll go ahead and bring Mr. Applegate down. We got a half wave, so I know we're gonna have a question or five for you. I feel like we saw you a lot for a period of time, and now we haven't seen you very much, which is a good thing, and I hope we don't see you very much over the next six months. Understood. We'll start with Mr. Smith.

Thank you, Mayor, and yes. Thank you that you're out of the firing line now, right? It's temporary, but yes, thank you. Temporary. But you are in the firing line in this budget. When we talked about the cuts in staff, which... or to be commended that we've identified positions that can be eliminated. And you had indicated to me a couple of years ago that you could see that coming. Can you, just for public education, can you explain why you can take a hit of four people in your department and still provide all the services that you need to provide?

Sure. Derrick Applegate, the building official for the City of Venice. my industry's changing right now. We're going to a more focused budget, so we don't do value-based budgeting like we used to. So it's more of a, we're in line with what the private sector provides for services. And so we had a surplus of stuff. We don't need right now so those inspectors show some of the stuff that we outsource we don't we're not going to bring back it is not efficient to do those type of businesses anymore. So where we pride ourselves in doing the the exceptional level of services on the inspection side the inspections and plan review in the administration side being very efficient in doing plan reviews so we've taken what was a 3 or 4 person position in hired a a single discipline person or a multidiscipline person to provide that service as opposed to for that we were doing in the past.

Okay, I appreciate all that. You also indicated something to me about a change in state law that let developers inspect their own work, something like that?

So that's the private providers, and that's what we're in competition. I don't want to say competition. That's where the industry is changing a bit. So private providers or developers can choose to hire those services out to somebody other than the municipalities.

And that's happening?

It is actively happening every single day.

and since they're done privately we don't need to have our own building inspectors to do that work that work is then

Communicated to you we see it through the intake process so during this the initial submission of the applications they give us what's called a notice to building official and they they identify who's going to perform those services throughout that process. And then they report their inspections back to us and we monitor that and then at the end of the process we get involved in prior to the CEO we we do a what's called a certificate of completion they give it to us We checked to make sure that all the boxes are checked, and then we issued the CEO based on the information that's provided to us. But we are much removed from that process than we were in the past, yes.

And that's happening everywhere?

In the state of Florida it is, yes. In the state of Florida?

Okay, thank you for that update. Yes, sir.

Any other questions or concerns for the building official? okay thank you mr applegate appreciate your time thank you we will move on to uh airport uh mr dumas if you'll come up and i'll just remind council again we have a presentation on tuesday about airport as well so i know we'll be getting more information on some of that mr mayor mr dumas is out on medical okay so we'll be filling in between linda and i on his questions fantastic then any questions about airport Mr. Smith.

First, I want to thank Mr. Dumas, even if he's not here, for some very detailed responses in writing to letters that we've been receiving from community groups. The tone of them was very positive and the depth of them was very deep. Basically, I've heard good responses to those responses to the community. Can you talk about that?

absolutely so um mr dumas is probably listening right now so i'm sure he's receiving your praise uh but he is uh actively still working remotely and uh you know maybe when he's bored he's he's spending extra time responding which is a good thing but i've been encouraging him you know there's so much misinformation out there right now about the future of the airport and what the what a master plan does and doesn't do anything we can do to respond directly from the director of the airport to get the clear honest answers to people that's what we're doing um we'll cover a lot of ground on tuesday it's a i'll apologize in advance because it's a very long presentation um but we're gonna have a couple different presenters so hope we'll try to space it out uh but that is our goal is really to just get the the clear honest information out to folks and uh nick is is definitely helping us with that

Okay, and then again, if it's better, wait till Tuesday, that's okay with me, but I noted that we show revenues from fuel fees going down, and I didn't understand that because we are raising the fees.

We're told the traffic is up, and it didn't make any sense to me.

24 is 53K, 25 is 64, and then this year, 50,000. despite those other 2 things that would indicate to me the number should be up.

Sure you want to start Linda don't take it from there.

My my understanding of that it's going up other than less people are filling at the airport. I think there's because there's charging a higher premium I guess. So let's people are actually filling at our airport that I think had in the past.

More people flying in the fewer of them fueling up.

Correct that's my understanding. Maybe James can add or... One thing I'll add on the...

Okay.

One thing to add on the fuel flowage, so I don't want to dive too far into our presentation on Tuesday, but we were instructed to go meet with the FBO. They are the fuel provider on the airport, and so there's a fuel flowage fee that is paid as a pass-through cost through those transactions that comes into the airport fund. We did speak with the FBO about increasing that fee, and that is something that we are actively working towards. So we'll bring back some more information on Tuesday on that, but that would reflect, is not currently reflected and would change these numbers. Okay.

And then one more question for me. On airport page two, our goals, noise mitigation efforts, we say fiscal year 26, 95%, and fiscal year 27, 100% to review and respond to complaints within one business day. I was praising the parks and recreation and public works for how my experience is that they're successful at doing that, responding to everything in a very timely fashion. But this seemed didn't seem to mesh with my understanding of our performance and ability to do that on noise complaints and I remember being told that we had like a black hole where they were the complaints weren't getting to us or weren't being accessed in that the performance would have been far far far less than this that's a complaint that we keep hearing from the that group the neighbors. So can you talk about that is that just a wishful thinking that we're 100% responding within a day to every noise complaint.

Well that's that's the goal for next year and I will say we are currently in transition in that position the position that you all added over a year ago for the community outreach manager at the airport, you know I think overall we can all look at that as a huge success we went from almost very limited response to noise issues to someone who is dedicated to receiving the information, verifying what actually occurred, following up with the resident, and the goal being following up with the pilot as well if there was an infraction or a violation that occurred. So I've heard the same concerns that we could be even more responsive. I certainly understand that and I'm sure there's probably some truth to that. But we are, today's actually the last day of our current outreach manager. They're in the hiring process right now, and we'll be, you know, we'll have a short period without someone in the role for a period of time, but then we'll be bringing in a new individual, starting with them, hitting the ground running, and sharing a lot of the perspectives from the community of what they're hoping to see out of this position.

All right. And one last question, if I may. Can you talk about This major default down there where we are on that with a tenant.

Sure sure so we we sent out a letter to them through our city attorney's office. A couple weeks ago now. identifying and notifying them of the multiple defaults on that lease. They have since reached back out to us and we are having conversations. Certainly they're going to appeal some of our claims and we'll be sitting down with them to see what they have to say before deciding what our next point of action's gonna be.

Have they already missed the deadline we gave them to get current? Yes.

You want to add anything to that?

sure so what they the deadline well honestly i haven't looked it up because it's based on when they would have received the letter so it was right around they sent us a written response i would say within the time frame that the letter required and we've i've had conversations with their attorney um so we've mutually agreed with the city manager's office that we would have a sit down face-to-face meeting with them in the very near future before we make a formal decision on whether that contract is terminated or if there's sufficient grounds to carry forward with them in some revised format addressing past due amounts and other obligations of the lease that haven't been met to date.

Are we inclined to be lenient I mean you said you had 10 days to pay $500,000 or you are no longer a lessee of the airport we inclined to give them some break on that they've already gone 10 days and they haven't paid.

So I'll let our city manager respond to, but I would say, and I'll share with the letter. They responded, they responded with a letter that delay needed a number of grounds for reasons for the, um, they, they disagree with us. That's there. There is a default based on a number of different things that have happened in the past. So not saying that's right or wrong, but I think the big picture of what we're talking about is where do we go from here? Is this something that would potentially end up in litigation if we formally do the termination? Or again, is there, we need to have a sit down discussion with them before we make a final determination.

When I say no to your question, it's because the terms we put in our letter to them for curing they did not meet so that make that clear. But we just received their letter yesterday so we need to make sure we analyze it internally understand what they are proposing before we make a final decision.

Thank you for that. My questions are some more informational for the supplemental information provided by the city manager on the airport. one this educational to the airport and versus the property. They actually maintain Maxine bear Park, the moment for maximum report for 500. Do you have an answer that one when the for the mobile home market that would you Maxine Barrett.

The Maxine bear partners.

There's a line out of a $4,500 in the airport budget for more Maxine bear Park, I mean it's probably part of the airport property, but I was one clarification of that was the airport taking care of that or is that parks taking care of that i think it's i think it's the airport that takes care of that it's not the park employees it's the airport the airport employees airport has field employees okay and then um i was surprised or interested uh apparently for the mobile home park we pay uh property taxes to the county of 130 000 yes a year And then my third line, just because I'm aware of the facilities over there, HVAC, we've got a $65,000 budget, and that's for maintaining the AC units at the airport, not for replacement, correct?

Correct, it's to maintain them.

Does that also cover periodic replacement? Does that stay out of the outside of CIP, or does that go into the CIP?

Generally, it'll be in the CIP if they're replacing the whole air conditioning, but when they're just maintaining it, it goes under operating.

All right, thank you.

Okay, anything else on airport? Mr. Smith.

Just one more, and I think I'm mixing with our presentation we're going to get Tuesday. It's hard not to address it when it's right there in front of you. But I think it was in that report, which I read, that there was discussion that the FAA and the state, they're not going to help us fund improvements in the looks of airport Avenue burns fences anything that would satisfy those neighbors.

So I'm assuming there's nothing in this budget.

That would cover that but I am kind of interested in whether we might be add something to this budget. What we're done to pay for that out of airport funds even without our usual golden goose giving us 90% of whatever we spend down there. So we do have still millions in the airport reserve.

So we are going to talk about this on Tuesday, but I'm happy to chat about it now. There are some great project ideas that have come out of the master plan engagement with the community. These weren't our ideas. They came from the community. We are actively listening. We're not just going through these community engagement processes to check the box. We're doing it because we welcome any constructive ideas to be better neighbors at the airport. And some of those ideas were landscaping and strategically placed noise walls along Airport Avenue. Great idea. I had a long conversation with our master plan consultant about it after the last meeting. It's something that they are looking into and going to come back to us with some more detailed recommendations on where those could go and what the cost would be. So I think the first step is and this is really going to be my message on Tuesday. We have to use the master plan process. That's why it is here. So if there are things we want, the community wants, that's your avenue to get them completed, right? There's going to be things in the master plan that are not necessarily what the community wants because they're what we need when it comes to safety and operations of the airport. That's gonna be part of the plan too. So make sure these good ideas also get into the plan congruently so that we can get those completed. FAA and FDOT are not going to fund some of these more, what they view as discretionary improvements. But that doesn't mean they're bad ideas, right? These are great ideas. And it starts with us getting our fiscal plan in order at the airport where we generate enough revenue where we can do some of these discretionary projects we're really not there yet and that's what uh mr dumas has been focused on when he's looking at uh the the rental rates at the mobile home park the tea hangers We're going to be talking about potential landing fees, these other revenue sources that can help us to have some capacity to do these more discretionary projects that are good projects that the neighbors want, but are really not aeronautical in nature. So it's a long way of saying great idea, great project. My recommendation is let's get our financial plan put together first. Let's lean on the master plan consultants to include these recommendations for us. And then when we can pay for it, let's do them.

Thank you for that. I look forward to more conversation on Tuesday.

We're going to bring sleeping bags, Mayor?

That agenda looks incredibly long for Tuesday.

I think we're going to have a lot of fun. I'm really excited for Tuesday. I think it's going to be very productive.

Excitement. We're having fun. All right. Thank you.

We're going to talk about a few of my favorite things. Police is on the list. We're going to be... Talking about a few of my favorite things. Yeah. Um, okay. So with that airport is concluding. So we'll move on to utilities. Any questions for utilities? Bring in the cake. All right. Let's uh, we want the cake now. I thought we were going to wait until next year. It's a $5,000 K at $5,000. You're right. We could do cake every day. Uh, Mr. Vargas getting punchy. It's one 30. It's after lunch. All right. As utilities is getting set up, if you want to push your buttons so I know who wants to talk. Whoa, we got two. Mr. Smith, you're up first, sir. All right.

I'm just fast on the button always, huh? Good to see you, sir. And thank you for your service. I hope we throw you a giant party. I'm so grateful for the work you've done. I'm so grateful for the redundancy that you've built in. You know, I toured nuclear power plants, and they are the best example of having a redundant protection on anything, so that if a system fails, there's a backup, and nothing leaks into the environment. And you've done that for us in at least two places with under the highway, under the, or across the waterway. I think that those are just huge, because we were talking earlier with, we'd be out for a couple of weeks if IT failed, and we'd be out of service if one of those, it would take weeks to fix one of those problems. So congratulations on that. Thank you. Let me ask you just two questions I have. And the first one is, You sort of indicate we got to replace every darn pipe in the whole city because they're how old.

Well, it depends on the location of the island we're talking about. late 50s maybe, and we have eight phases, and we have completed almost seven of them.

I just wanted to know, how far are we along on your goal that you had for us of replacing all the pipes that need to be replaced because they're more than 50 or 75 years old?

Outside of the island, we have a couple of areas that we need to work on. Eastgate being one of them. We will be doing phase three of replacement. The Bay Indies Motorhome Park is another area of concern. But other than that, the island remains the main concern. We have done a lot of work. We are adding sewer, not only water, but sewer replacement or improvements. And we are again on phase seven of eight. And what we need to do is go back to phases one through four because back then we did not replace all the pipe. We replaced the pipes from the back easements to the front. but there's some old pipe that needs to be replaced. So we would be doing that or somebody else will be doing that. Right. And there's a plan in place to do it all.

Correct. Okay. And then the last thing I wanted to ask you about is, uh, I'm proud of our reclaimed water program and, uh, I know you're still expanding it. Talk to us about where we are in that and what's left to be done. Is there more to be done?

That's a great question. We are working now on the master plan. And the master plan is going to identify what we need to do. We would like to extend the system as much as possible. And as far as funding, I think we have a million dollars per year for the next five years.

Okay. And then I want to give you a chance to talk about your favorite project. replacement water plant. Give us your final thoughts on that before you leave us.

Yeah, so we are conducting a feasibility study. First of all, we have to complete the master plan, which is probably 90% completed. And we expect to have the feasibility study presented to this council early next year. We're looking at five different options. One of them is to improve the current location of the water plant. The second option would be to relocate and build a brand new facility. Options three and four is purchase water from Sarasota County or the Peace River. And option five would be the construction of a seawater desalination plant. We hope that the new director can bring a recommendation to this council.

So we got room on Tuesday to add that, Mayor?

You seem just as excited as I am.

Thank you. Thank you, sir. You're welcome, sir.

Ms. Frank, you only clicked on and off a couple times, so I'm just curious.

Mr. Smith, in his line of questioning, covered what I was going to ask. Wonderful. So he did an excellent job on my behalf. Love when we do that.

All right, anything else on utilities? Mr. Vargas, I'll just let you know, you know, I'm definitely going to still call you when I don't like the taste of the water or something like that. So just, you know, don't get rid of your phone just yet, okay?

My number is 1-800-DON'T-CALL-ME.

And that's on the record. Just kidding.

Just kidding. You can call us any time.

I want to get Mr. Vargas to tell us what's in that jug he carries around with him and drinks from all day long.

Is it city water? Whatever it is, it keeps him young.

You told me once what it was. I loved it.

Yeah, for the record, I don't drink bottled water. I drink city or Venice drinking water.

So are we going to send you with a supply for your retirement?

Yeah, I already run a pipe all the way to my house.