City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, let's call this budget wrap-up workshop to order. Madam Clerk, if we could do a roll call, please.

Mr. Engelke.

I'm here by Zoom.

Mrs. Frank. Here. Mr. Howard is unable to attend. Mr. Smith. Here. Mr. Weed.

Here.

Vice Mayor Bolt. Here. Mayor Picciotta.

Here. And we will stand for the pledge. I'll go ahead and lead it this morning.

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 before we jump into 26-0672 i will let the city manager go ahead and kick us off with kind of where we're heading how we're heading there

Thank you mayor fairly light agenda today, but we do have our directors here and of course our finance director if there are any other remaining questions related to the building and eventual approval of our FY 27 budget we welcome those today. We will be giving you an update on the I T question that came up in our last budget workshop. I will be talking about a couple of projects that were removed from the budget during our process just to be sure everyone's comfortable with that. We'll have an opportunity for any additional questions from Council and finally we'll end with the discussion on the millage rate that's going to be set at the July 14th meeting and we want to talk just briefly about the new legislation that was approved by the state related to the millage. With that, I'll just remind everyone at the July 14th meeting, we were able to reschedule the continuation of the police staffing study, so we will have the consultants there that afternoon so we can continue that conversation. Certainly happy to talk about it a little bit today, but we will have a full presentation available on the 14th. So with that, thank you for your time today and look forward to answering any remaining questions that you have. Thank you.

All right, so if IT would like to come up, And Miss Senia, of course, you could sit there the whole time if you want to. Slap his hand if he says something you don't like.

Good morning, Mr. Mayor, Council. Roger Navarro, IT Director for the record. So the topic was the CIP project and budget item, $500,000. I think it's important to know where we've been, to know where we're going, so I'm going to go back to when we set that in the budget. It was a few years ago, not three years ago. We had implemented a very robust server and storage system, which we are still operating. It's highly redundant. It's internally very supportable. It's something that Northport and other cities are moving to, actually. We went there a few years earlier. They're moving to that now. And that's what we operate with today. We had three years ago budgeted for, let's call it a backup redundant infrastructure, thinking in two or three years we would have put a bunch of cybersecurity protections in place, a lot of things, we had a lot of fish to fry, and that two or three years later, which is 2027, we'd be ready to do this redundant site. So that's how we came about this. The internally redundant system we run right now, again, is highly fault tolerant. Thank goodness it's been that way and it should continue being that way. What this particular project was to do is buy insurance if something catastrophic were to happen to the building our highly redundant system is in today. So if something catastrophic, a hurricane would rip it apart or a massive fire or something to that effect. I don't know what the odds of those things happening, they seem pretty low, but if somebody were able to predict what the odds of those things were and that were to fail, we would be hit by a two to three week outage. The city wouldn't be able to produce permits electronically. Dispatch could be impacted. We'd probably go to radio dispatch. Our records management systems would be offline two to three weeks if something like that catastrophic were to happen. today and without this project. We'd go to manual processes. We've had things happen before with connectivity where we have to go to a plan B. That plan B would have to be enacted for two to three weeks if this catastrophic thing were to happen. I think another really important revelation that's happened over the last two weeks, thank you, Mr. Weed, for posing the question, can we look at the cloud? So we did two things. We looked at what those cloud options were. What if we could just restore into the cloud? And by the way, what does what we quoted three years ago cost today? And both of those came back as shocking numbers, mostly because of this AI race and everybody's after data center space, power, and memory. So both things have escalated considerably. So what we thought was gonna be 500,000, today is 750,000. It's a 50% increase for the plan that we had, the hardware plan to purchase a Redund site. The cloud option for it, because everybody is fighting for cloud space, is over a million dollars for five years. We started peeling back on our potential, like what if we bought used computers? And I thought, what are we doing here? so what i'm here to say other than where we've been and kind of where we are right now is in the future what should we do if if i could make the decision for this entire business which i think you don't want me to i think this is a very big business that that a lot of people have to look at the risk for um i would say if those responsible for making the risk decision are okay with a two to three week outage which is low odds but if that's an okay risk to buy, we forego this project for a year or two. The memory should come down. The race for AI data centers should soften as data centers go into space, as they go into orbit. Also, the risk will be reduced because we're continuously moving these systems to the cloud. Our permitting system, we're in the process of moving to the cloud right now. Our finance system, we will have moved to the cloud in the next 18 months or so. So not only may the cost come down, but also our risk profile is gonna shrink as we get more and more things offsite. So I'll leave it there for any questions about history today or the future. I just don't wanna be the one alone to make the risk decision on behalf of the city that we're okay with two to three weeks, should this really, really rare thing happen. I'll open to any questions.

Mr. Weed. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Roger on based on previous got to see on the clarification uses a 2 to 3 week outage as you not discuss this is not actually a data loss the data is protected it is off site it's just not instantly available if we lose the hardware.

That's a great point, Mr. Reed, yes. So the data that we will have created up to the point of the failure will be safe. We may lose 12 hours because of the backup schedule, and that's pretty common in a business. We'd have to recreate six to 12 hours of data, maybe up to 24. But yeah, we don't lose all of our history, we don't lose all of our services forever. It's just we can't operate for that time. Why two to three weeks? We'd have to get on the phone, order equipment, insurance would kick in, be for that equipment in labor but we'd we'd have to get a bunch of things in order and then yes or we restore the data restore the systems and bring the city back online.

I'll be a couple more questions. I'm saying the system would be located in Sarasota and what is the connectivity of the 2 systems.

The connectivity is a private fiber connectivity that we have between us and Sarasota County. So we have underground fiber connectivity.

There's a proprietary connection.

It is by proprietary owned by the city in Sarasota County, yes, it's not a public on activity that's not going to rely on Comcast or something like that. That's right, it's it's privately owned called dark fiber.

And the 3rd question what of all what is the expected life of the $750,000 servers. Gap JP says about 5 years.

So that's that's what we would run the current of the structure running it has a 5 year or 2 can extend it to 6 years that the current of the structure that right now so you can stretch up to 6 years.

And then my my last question across the last question. Have we looked at an option to protect. I would say to me that the highest priority is not ability to get the records, but the life safety issues. Is there a smaller option that would give us this. connectivity this continued service for the fire department. The rescues police department that type of thing.

Yes, there there's a wave and I've talked to my team about this putting in a kind of a very small but but power system that can keep that connectivity flowing between us in the county. I just I wouldn't want that to be assumed that we could then use that to extend all services that sometimes what follows like well if you have that can you just everything else like now that would be but yes.

Thank you very much. Vice Mayor Bolt.

Good morning, Roger. How are you? Good morning, sir. Quick question. You refer to the hardware equipment as being here, right?

It's not here at City Hall. It's on the mainland. It's a few miles inland. Okay. In a very strong building with generator and that sort of thing. Okay.

That's really what I was trying to get to. It's not actually here. So in the event of a Major hurricane you know we don't have to worry about this building because we are so close to the water. But it's inland a little bit yes, Sir okay is that the only thing in that building or that.

Other there are other city operations in that.

Thank you that's all I needed.

Anyone else. Okay. So I would assume we need to give some guidance here as to what we want you to do. So I'll listen to a consensus from council on where they want to direct IT to go with this. If we want them to postpone this project and give it some time or what. Sir?

So I think what I'm hearing here is that we are slowly moving things to the cloud and cost basis for right now is pretty high. So if we were to put this off for a year and take a good look hard look at it for next year. Number one, the cost might come down but number 2, we may have more and more in the cloud where this is less important so we say yes, it's right there that's right, OK, Mister city manager.

Thank you, Mayor. Roger summarized everything great. I just want to add two quick points. Number one, this is an insurance risk decision for us. Important to acknowledge we're not carrying this insurance today, right? So this is not something we have in place today. We have the redundant server system that's in a hardened building, and there have not been any issues related to it. And I think that does factor into the decision. And our staff's recommendation, as long as you all are comfortable with the risk that's been explained, is that we do wait a year and focus our efforts on moving these other servers to the cloud so that we can kind of whittle away at that risk between now and in a year. And then in a year we'll take another look at the systems that are remaining and see what that cost is gonna be and reevaluate the decision. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, I want to thank Councilmember Weed for his work on this and bringing it to our attention. I also want to thank the IT Director and our City Manager for giving us other options that let us find a compromise in there going forward. And I'd like to hear a little more from Mr. Weed now that you've heard all this on what you think we should do.

Madam Clerk.

Mr. Engelke has his hand up for whenever you can get him in the mix.

All right. Mr. Engelke.

OK. Hey, thanks. Nice presentation. I guess I have to follow Mr. Bolt's suggestion or comments regarding removing stuff to the cloud. Maybe we could accelerate to the cloud. I think spending $750,000, even with a five- or six-year gap pay return next year could be a little cheaper. I guess my feeling would be let's see if we can postpone this, take the risk, two or three weeks, very low probability, and then reevaluate next year when there's additional information.

Mr. Weed?

I think Mister mayor thank you Mister Smith for kind words. I also in favor of postponing in fact I think this is probably maybe not even next year but something that we should be look at in a recurring basis because the as well know the technology is moving in leaps and bounds. Next year may be time to do it maybe not 2 years, you know we don't know what the future will hold with the options will change too. But I agree this is a it's a very very low risk. The probability of it occurring is low, and the exposure, if it does happen, that's one of the things I was very reassured by IT, that we're not losing data, it's just a time delay. If we were at the risk of losing the data, this would be a different discussion. But we do have off-site backups we can recover from. It's just a time delay on getting that. So I'm very much in favor of tabling this, and But look at not only discussion next year, but probably as a annual budget discussion.

So I feel pretty good in saying Mister city manager that you have a consensus from the Council to postpone this at least for a year, but but it sounds like more like we want to reevaluate it in the future and and see if it's even necessary after that so you feel comfortable with that as consensus then that's what will give you.

That sounds great okay proceed, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Navarro. Appreciate your time. We'll move on to items removed from the general fund budget. Mr. Clinch, is that going to be you or Ms. Senney?

Ms. Senney will come up and present this for us.

Fantastic.

good morning mayor and council when we did our budget I meant to bring this up at the budget workshop and I neglected to I stated at the beginning but then I forgot to bring it up at the end There were two bigger items that we had removed from the general fund budget. One was professional services for Seaboard Master Plan. We removed $50,000 from there. And also we removed the playground equipment for the Vabby Trailhead. So these were two options that we as city manager and staff chose to remove those out of the budget. So this is just for discussion if city council wanted to put these back into the general fund budget or leave them out as we have them out. So we just kind of need consensus. We currently do not have them in the budget. So it's City Council's discretion if you want to add those back in.

Mr. Weed?

Yeah, I just wondered if we could get an explanation, description of the playground item there. Actually, for both things. What are the reasonings? What has happened in the environment that has caused these to be removed? I'm just curious of the back story.

Public Works Director Rickey will come up and speak to that.

While we wait Mister city manager.

Thank you Mister mayor. Mister Simpson can explain about the playground itself but I want to give a little bit more context when we discovered that the existing home values and drop to a percent we had to go in and cut about $800,000 or so from our draft budget so most of those cuts occurred on the operating side of things which are not in front of you today to reconsider that they were Linda, you know went to work and took those out of the operating budget so we could have a balanced budget. These were the 2 project related items that could be added back in from reserves only because they're one time expenses so that's where the why these 2 are in front of you today, thank you Mister Simpson.

Hit the hit the button. There you go.

Good morning. Mayor counsel Ricky Simpson for the record director of public works so that the playground at the the North Trail had It is at no danger to the public or children. It's still in fairly good shape, but it's dated. And it was my plan to upgrade that park to kind of bring it a little bit more up to standard and kind of dress it up a little bit. At this time, it would be, you know, it's a decision that we made between finance and the city manager's office to maybe push that down the road as it's not, you know, something that is in dire need at this time.

I think you in the the seaboard that is still a delay in the development or was the production for the seaboard.

That was part of the seaboard master plan study we have put in an additional $50,000 for the seaboard master plan study so we we we move that out for fiscal 27. That was it would be for Roger to continue the study $50,000 with the ultimate consultant that he has been using.

Okay, so is that a delay or is that just choosing not to pursue the study?

That's a delay, pushing it off to fiscal 28.

Okay, thank you very much.

And if I may just to add on the delay is on the master planning side only public works still has budgeted to demolish the existing buildings and to do the environmental remediation that's required so not a delay to the physical changes that are coming there. A delay in the master planning process.

Any other questions. Mister Smith.

The show you I think maybe it's later on this. agenda here but you indicated that as of July 1 we have a higher number on assessed value and the anticipated revenues that almost offset these things is that what the thought is and putting them back on the council's table

Yes, there will be higher revenue than what I originally projected in the proposed budget because our property values came in a little higher. July 1 values are higher than the June 1 values when the property appraiser gave us to that. So the additional revenue is like $114,000. But that's not really related to this. This is kind of if you want to do these two projects or not. But that could cover part of this, but I wouldn't take that into consideration whether you want to do these projects or not.

Okay, but we can take into consideration, you're telling us we have additional funds more than what you had originally reported to us.

That's correct.

And we could assign those funds to these projects if that was our choice. Correct. Thank you.

Mr. Engelke?

Thank you. We're heading into an area or a time of decreased revenues, although we did go up by $114,000 or $100,000 plus based on revised. But I think we really need to be a little bit more conservative here, and I do like the idea. Well, I don't really like the idea of postponing studies and or playgrounds, but I think we need to be a little bit more prudent. in terms of our resources and just being aware of that. So I guess my position would be more to postpone rather than have them become part of the budget.

Mr. Vice Mayor.

Thank you. I'll throw my opinion out there. Number one, we are taking over the parks. without adding in any additional people. And so to add another project to Public Works this year probably is not the right thing to do. Especially since you're telling us that there really is, there's no danger involved, this was just simply a matter of upgrade, which I commend you for, you're always looking to upgrade. So again, I think this one needs to be put off for a year until we get our feet underneath this and get a little better understanding of where we're going with our revenues. And then as far as the well, it is a bad betrayal head. There's a lot of work to be done there yet and they being the liaison the baby they are the first ones to admit that they've got a lot of work to do and so delaying this really to me doesn't doesn't hurt anything.

Then I would say, based on my assessment, we have a good consensus to postpone both of these and not add them back into the budget unless I hear anybody object. Okay, so I think you have consensus from council to go ahead and continue forward with not putting these back onto the budget for this cycle. All right. We'll move on to 26-0674, additional budget questions and discussion. I have one particular item in this particular area. Mr. Clinch, did you have an introduction for this item?

No, Mayor.

Okay. So as it was just kind of identified, we have a slight variation in what the numbers were projected from June to July. And I do have a recommendation for the council, based on what we just went through and what we're about to go through on July 14th, reference the study that was done in the police department side of the house. I think we need to be doing the same thing on the fire department side of the house, and I think that this needs to be a comprehensive review of not just our staffing, but but how we're doing things as a whole, how we can work more efficiently together between police and fire. Maybe it's sharing resources, maybe it's looking at our current fee structure. I want to first commend city staff on all of the hype right now with the tax situation. I appreciate the fact that nobody's got their hair on fire. That's been like the biggest thing that I'm proud of is that we're not overreacting. We've done a fantastic job to the point that even our rollback rate has become a roll-up rate. So I think we're doing great things, and I appreciate everyone for continuing forward as if the world is not collapsing around us. So I'd like to continue that by looking at how we're doing things on the fire department side, doing a staffing study there, assessing our fee structures, all that kind of stuff, and I think that The funds that were identified would be a good place for us to focus that money to make sure that we do things in sync so that we're looking at both police and fire public safety comprehensively. You know and I know it's going to take some time so I'd like to get that started this budget cycle. Mister vice mayor.

I don't necessarily disagree with that by any means because I think it is something that needs to be done but. I kind of lean to the other side a little bit in so much as that any any general fund money that we have access to to roll it to the police department to get us. An additional person or 2 because we are so far behind so you know I understand that this study could potentially. Lower the number of people that are expected because we get the police and the fire to work together on things rather than beat each other up all. but I kind of lean towards putting the money towards another officer. Thank you.

Yeah, and just for discussion purposes, I would say that it was pretty well defined and identified last meeting that we could at least start with two positions on the police side, and I was going to save this for the 14th because we're going to get into a much bigger discussion about it, but if we're already pulling units from their specialty units to cover patrol and minimum manning, I think that identifies a problem that we need to resolve, and I assume... Mister city manager will have that discussion on Tuesday, but I think that on Tuesday we need to be prepared with as much information as possible. So giving staff the direction now to bring back numbers What an order. An assessment would look like what that includes you know how comprehensive it would be I think that having all of that information on Tuesday if possible would be the best way to have our discussion to maximize our time Tuesday afternoon because we'll be looking at everything not just. two positions or just that staffing study. So I think it's important that we kind of take a 30,000 foot view and at least have staff prepared to give us information next Tuesday.

So this is very helpful so that we're prepared to say we're happy to bring you some numbers of that meeting that include not only police starting salary, but there's also training equipment costs will give you the whole package on what a new police officer would will cost that ready for you on Tuesday. And I would just you know from the staff perspective. While no one is panicking, I think planning is the smartest thing we can be doing right now. So we would fully support if it is your desire to pursue some fire studies next year. And it starts with getting it in the budget so that we're able to do that. It does take some time. And fire is... very different than police because they collect revenue and there's fees associated with it so it's a similar study in the sense that we'll be looking at the efficiency of the operation the span of control the organizational structure but you're also going to have the financial side as well which which police is a little simpler when it comes to the finances so so both of those certainly would have staff support and we'd be willing to bring back some actual numbers on the 14th

And then I believe, Mr. Engelke, you have something you'd like to say?

Yes, thank you. I think I heard two different things. One would be to figure out what it will take to get a new police officer or two up and running. You know, the costs on that with training and equipment and so forth. And then the other one would be a study similar to what we just did for the police on the fireplace. I think we all know where that's going to lead to additional resources, additional staffing for the fire. What I am questioning is, and maybe through the city manager, what would be the cost of that study? And we have $100,000 plus to kind of play with, which if I were to allocate it out of my own pocketbook, I think I'd rather spend the money on the police right now and then move forward sometime during the year, maybe as things go on, to get a better comprehensive study on the fire department. Thanks.

Kevin, we couldn't hear the first part of what you said, but, um, just to clarify the direction I'm trying to give staff right now is to be prepared on next Tuesday, um, for the bigger discussion. Uh, we're not looking, I'm not looking to make any decisions today as to where to allocate the $100,000 or whatever that number may be. I'm just identifying that it would be really nice to have staff prepared to give us more information than just police on next Tuesday.

We may be on the same page here, Mr. Meyer. Approximately the cost of the study and not ready to say yes or no on Tuesday, but be prepared to really talk about the cost of a new police officer training equipment and so forth. Fire, how much is it going to cost for a study at that point?

Anyone else? Mr. Smith, I don't know what you did, but it was probably the most ingenious tech thing that's happened up here at the dais, so thank you for making his volume better. All right, with that, then I guess, Mr. City Manager, do you feel you have good direction?

I do. We will bring back the costs for bringing the police on board, including everything, benefits, salary, training, equipment. And we will bring back a preliminary estimate for fire staffing and fee study.

Okay. Any other additional budget questions, discussion? Mr. Smith?

If we're about to adjourn, the city manager had said he was going to have some discussion. No, we're not.

We've got one more item on there, millage rate discussion. Okay.

I was wanting the city manager's discussion of the changes in the truth in millage law. I think they're significant and of note as we go forward. Thank you.

Yeah, I just want to clarify, any additional budget questions or discussion in general? So if there's any of that, let's do that now before we move on to millage rate discussion. Madam Clerk, do I have any hands up?

No.

No OK then I will move on to the last item on the agenda which is to 6 dash 0, 6, 7, 5, and that is military discussion and I'll go ahead and let city manager kick this one off.

Thank you mayor. We wanted to just have a discussion make sure everyone was comfortable we will be setting the millage rate at the July 14th meeting. There is a new legislation that was recently passed Senate bill or F that does include some new restrictions on how we notice and change that millage rate. Carla did you want to provide some details on that new legislation for us.

Hi, council members. Pleasure to be here on behalf of Attorney Fernandez. And so, yes, regarding the new Senate bill that passed it changes a little bit of how the calculations are done for the rollback. And so just to go over briefly what the threshold is and so that everybody's on the same page. So if the rollback rate is higher between 100 to 110%, you need a two-thirds vote. If it's higher than 110%, you need a unanimous vote of the board. Again, calculation is looking a little different and a little bit of different notice requirements. However, because of the situation that the council's in this year, we do not think that it will be applicable because as you see in the numbers, the rollback rate is actually higher than the proposed rate. And so you wouldn't need the two-thirds vote. It would just be a simple majority. And as there is the numbers for you to need the two-thirds vote, you would need to do the 4.3 military that is in your package. On top of that, one of the things that I do wanna notice the board is, once you do set the millage rate, and right now your proposed is 3.8450, because that is lower than the rollback rate, once you do set that in place, it is harder to go back and do your rollback, but usually it's easier to go to your rollback rate because it is lower, but in this situation, your rollback rate is higher, so you can, once you set it, you can go higher, but there is a cumbersome notice requirement that needs to be done. It's always easier to go lower. I just wanna make sure that everybody is on notice about that. But that is all that I have, unless you have any additional questions.

I do have a comment. So when on July 14th meeting, that's when you set the maximum millage rate. We bring forward the memo on July 14th meeting. That's the maximum rate you can set. So in September hearings in September, you can decrease it from that number, but you cannot increase it from the July 14th number.

So for clarity, you're saying whatever number we set on July 14th can't go higher than that. You can only go lower.

Correct. And right now it's set at 3.845, which is the maximum millage. The majority is 3.9261, which that's the rollback rate.

Any questions, comments, concerns for staff, attorney, finance director, city manager, each other? He's Mr. Engelke.

And this is kind of fun operating remotely. Not really. But it looks like off the exhibit, the increase of property taxes, if we're to go to 3.9261, which requires a majority vote, It would be additional revenue of $114,000. Am I reading that correctly? And that would be a simple majority or is that a super majority?

No, okay, right now we're at the 3.845 mils. That's what our proposed budget is at, at the 3.845 mils. If you go to the rollback mil of 3.9261, that's an additional $596,000 because you're going from $28,844 higher than $28,248. Budget at 95%. So if you went- I can't hear anything anymore. Did we lose you? 9261. That's an additional $586,000 than what we currently have in the proposed budget.

I'm sorry, Linda, not to interrupt, but we lost you somewhere right after the start of your discussion.

Okay.

So if you can kind of start over again, please.

I'll start over. The top number, the 3.8450, that's the number that we used, the millage rate we used for the proposed budget that was in your budget binder you received. Then if you go to the rollback rate, which is 3.9261, the proposed taxes at the 95% is $28,844. So that would be an additional $596,000 of revenue going from 3.921 to 3.845.

You're saying thousand, do you mean million?

I meant property tax revenues. The difference between those two numbers is the additional property tax revenue that comes in. Okay. $596,000 additional property tax revenue.

Okay.

What that means to a homeowner though is, because the rollback rate generates the same revenue as the year before. So for a homeowner, you're paying the same taxes as you would the prior year.

I can't see if I have any hands up. So I heard Ms. Frank at one point. She couldn't hear Ms. Senny, but we got that fixed.

I think she was just indicating that she couldn't hear that it had cut out. But I don't see any hands up. Okay. Check that. I do have a hand up now.

Okay. Mr. Engelke.

Thank you again. Okay. So if I get this understanding, on July 14th, we could go 3.9261 or somewhere in between 3.845 and 3.9261. And then in September, we cannot go, if we go 3.845, we cannot go any higher than 3.845. So if we go 3.845 in July, We are restricting our ability to further massage the budget and maybe keep the tax revenue per house the same at 3.9261. So again, my recommendation to consider would be let's go in with a little higher so we have some cushion. And if we have to in September, then we can go down because we're kind of told I think we cannot go up easily.

So that's generally it up to the board whatever you all decide, but yes, once you do set it is a lot easier to go down than it is to go up because that is the maximum again there might be some exceptions, but the law makes a very very cumbersome to go up so it is generally you go down for whatever the maximum.

Thank you mayor and I Understand what we're being told here is to have any flexibility through September that we need to consider something higher as a possibility than what has been brought to us and I want to say that I'm not opposed to that up to the point of the rollback rate and I just have to remind this Council that last year. For the first time in 15 years, we achieved the rollback rate. And a lot of people don't know what that means. That means that the budget grew only by the amount of new construction revenue that we got. We didn't increase any burden on existing property owners.

And we took in additional money from new construction and increased our budget by that amount.

Certainly, One other time in 15 years, we rolled back the millage rate, but not by so much that we could claim we got the rollback rate. We increased taxes on the average property owner 14 of the last 15 years. So if we want to set a slightly higher rate now or next Tuesday, but still within the rollback rate, then I think that that's reasonable. I can't say enough to commend our city manager, our city finance director, our city department heads, that they found a way to prepare and recommend an austere budget. One that we can be proud of at a time when the governor and the legislature's criticizing us in cities and counties across the state. for taking and taxing too much and spending too much. We've been given a budget that actually reduces the number of city employees, that actually reduces the taxes on existing property owners. They're doing this in a time when we have had a tremendous increase in the number of employees. In 2016, we had 301. In 2026, we had 410.

This budget comes in at 406.

That's commendable. Let's not, well, let's be careful not to undo the city manager's good work. Certainly there's room there if we have to add two police. And if we can do that, taking advantage of this additional money with the July estimates, if we can do that with the taking advantage of... these small amounts of money that we're finding with our budget review, and we can do all of that and still be at or below the rollback rate, then I certainly can support that. What I cannot support, and I'm glad that the new law requires a supermajority, is anything that would contemplate raising taxes this year. Thank you.

Mr. Wheat?

Thank you, Mister Mayor. Generally, I'm opposed to raising to the 3.9261 unless we see that as giving us an option for unforeseen circumstances. That being said, come September, I'm going to be fighting hard for that 3.845. I really think that we need to fight hard to keep this budget as as close as it is I think there's been a lot of work there done there to achieve that I want to make sure we don't pass that aside or all mistakenly see this is some kind of free money. So I understand building the hedge in to allow us later to reduce but in case of emergency or unforeseen circumstances to a slight increase, but I want to make sure that that is the the intent and the information that is passed on to the city's administration that we are pursuing that lower budget. This is just a safety net for us.

Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you.

Just a point of record, basically what I'm hearing is 3.9261 keeps the taxation exactly the same for all of us homeowners.

And that's because the property values decreased.

Right. So my only comment to Mr. Weed's position is simply that if we look at this budget, they've done a great job of shaving things, but we also have some areas where we're cutting into reserves. And so without having to raise taxes and raise a burden on our citizens, we could certainly go to that place and not have to use as much out of reserves. Just a thought.

And he ends up medical.

I would just say I think the city's done a fantastic job over the past few years and I think that we can make this work with the current millage and I think that it will be a good discussion on Tuesday. But I don't I don't I don't think we need to undo all the hard work that we've been doing so I would I would still say that working within what we're currently sitting at is is the way that I would go. I don't know if that gives you the direction you need for Tuesday, but we'll be having that discussion and making that final decision on Tuesday and I'm sure they'll be a lot more to mill around with some of the new information that you guys are going to be bringing us so.

Well, the memo will be stated with the rates that are on here and then at that point council can change it. Okay. If you choose to change it.

All right. Anything else for this topic? All right, then Madam Clerk, do I have anybody signed up to speak?

Yes, we have one speaker.

Okay. Who's my speaker and how much time do they have?

Excuse me, I see that Rachel just raised her hand. Do you want to take her comment first?

I definitely want to take Ms. Frank's hand raise. So Ms. Frank, go ahead.

Thank you. I believe Linda just answered my question. So what will be in front of us on Tuesday is the current millage. This potential additional adjustment and cushion is not what's, I mean, we're going to talk about it more on Tuesday, but that's not what will be proposed. Is that correct?

Correct. The memo will have what's proposed at the 3.845, and it'll list what the additional would be if council would choose to do that.

Okay, awesome. That gives us some time to think about it as well. Thank you so much. You're welcome.

Now on to my audience participation.

Our speaker is Steve Carr, Gar's only speaker.

Five minutes.

Five minutes.

I only say that because I know you're a city resident, so.

okay good morning mr. Marion city councilors my name is Steve Karm the chairperson of the central Venice coalition and I'm here today to just follow up on some information that we sent a few days ago regarding the maintenance of the section of Curry Creek that flows through the sawgrass residential community Today, spending my time looking back at the material that we just sent was mainly a timeline of the actions that were taking place since the beginning of looking at this issue, which the first meeting of that was back in March of 2024. That meeting was called Uh, after some flooding from the storm, uh, mostly around the Pinebrook road area where Curry Creek, uh, crosses under, uh, at that March meeting was, uh, Spencer Anderson from the county, Kathleen Whedon from the city and myself, rich clap and the Susan Heisen from, uh, sawgrass. And at that, um, a meeting with two clear positions, one from the county. that based on the plat that they had reviewed of sawgrass the the responsibility of maintenance was was assigned to the sawgrass hoa the city's position at the time from kathleen leaden was that the city could not go in and use public funds to address issues of private property and we're specifically again talking about the section of curry creek that runs through sawgrass So, since that point and up to today, we believe we've provided documentation and information that has addressed both of those issues. And to that end, starting with the sawgrass plats, we did take some time to review the plats. There are actually six of them in total. And as part of that review, we noticed the discrepancy between the public and private dedication statements on the second page of the first plat. The discrepancy was between the private and the public statements that were listed by the developer of that plat. And in the private statement, it indicated that tracks 1, W1 through W10 are the responsibility of Sawgrass HOA. And that W stood for water. All the water ponds and ditches in Sawgrass internally would be their responsibility to maintain. curry creek the section was listed as w5 and w6 included in those in those one through ten tracks on that first plat the public statement on that same page indicated that public drainage easements were the responsibility of the city of venice or the maintenance of of of anything with the public drainage easement designation So when we took a close look at those statements, it was clear that Curry Creek was labeled in the plat, I believe it's page nine, that it is a public drainage easement and a public maintenance easement. And again, that page was submitted in your material that was sent a couple days ago. So the discrepancy there was that on the one hand, Curry Creek, in the recorded in the on the page 2 was listed as is with the W once to W 10 as being private and then a few pages later it was listed as public drainage and public maintenance easement so it for up for us it was clear that it can't be both. Uh, we then look further into the, into the plats and notice the Blackburn canal, which is also flows. A section of Blackburn canal also flows through, um, sawgrass community was labeled exactly the same as Curry Creek drainage, the public drainage easement and public maintenance easement. And the city of Venice does maintain that section of Blackburn canal. So at that point, realizing that both Curry Creek, both sections, Curry Creek and Blackburn Canal were labeled the same, it was reasonable on our part to conclude that an error occurred in the recording of the private statement on that page two, the first page of the plat. So in our opinion, Curry Creek, the W five and W six, which is what it's labeled, should not have been included in the W tracks in that private statement. They should have been taken out from the one through 10 tracks and placed into the public statement. So we believe it should have been listed and should have been treated the same as a Blackburn canal. So that addressed the plant issue. We certainly wish that the county would have looked more further at that, but we do see that as a discrepancy there. in terms of the public funds um we do refer to the floodplain management plan um which util which indicates utilizing public funds for private for projects on private property where benefits to the community exceed the cost is allowed and that in itself indicates that it is possible for the city to do projects on private property thank you thank you mr carr appreciate your comments

Madam clerk any other speakers know OK. Mister Smith you have a point of order. I would suggest putting on the agenda for the next meeting that would be in. August. OK with that then we are adjourned.