Village Council - workshop

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All right, we're going to call to order this meeting of the Wellington Village Council for agenda review for September 17th. Mr. Barnes.

All right, we'll get started right along with the agenda. As presentations and proclamations go, we have a couple of them. We have the Girl Scouts from Troop 24241 and 201A3 for their bronze award project. We'll be recognizing them. They'll be joining us. And the other presentation is also public hearing, which is the second public hearing to adopt the FY2627 military and annual budget. And Ms. Crickle will have her corresponding presentations for those that we normally would do on Tuesday, unless anybody's got any questions this evening that we can answer. Nope. all right so then moving along to the consent agenda first item of course if you have any comments on the minutes uh just get those to the village clerk's office and it will make sure to correct or adjust to modify anything that's needed next item is authorization to renew existing agreement for general liability property casualty and workers comp insurance and also approve the final adjusted premium for fy 26 and this quickly can take us through it come on up hey

So we're bringing forward our proposal for workers' compensation property casualty insurance for the next fiscal year beginning October the 1st. And our insurance agent of record represented by Rami is here to go over that with us.

Absolutely. So good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council. Rami Mitchell, Senior Consultant with the Gehring Group. We are the agent of record for the Property and Casualty Program, as Tanya said. I recognize that for the majority of you, you may not have seen our format before. So I do want to kind of just give a little bit of a summary of where we were last year so that we can kind of prepare for this year. Last year, we did take the entire program, the package, out to bid. And we ended up, through those negotiations, solidifying the renewal at about a 20% reduction from the year prior. So we retained coverage with the Florida Municipal Insurance Trust, who currently provides the property, casualty, and workers' compensation lines. With that market bid process and formalizing a renewal contract with the FMIT, we did take a two-year kind of rate hold. So when you see these numbers represented here, it's mostly just an adjustment based off of what they call exposure changes. So things like asset changes, if you've endorsed assets onto the policy in the middle of the term and now we're renewing here, if you've had payroll adjustments that you expect for FY27, as well as your workers' compensation. So your experience modification factor does change annually, and so those things are all taken into account when the renewal is processed, when we're in a rate scenario. So they're just looking at those adjustments. um you did have a few properties a couple of properties endorsed onto the policy that did end up increasing your total insured value i do have it represented in both the current and the renewal because some of those endorsements for premium were captured into the current program which is why we're seeking um that part two of this agenda item um actually i guess it's no it is part two to adjust the annual premium for FY26. And that is basically the reason why there were two, I think the aquatic center and another storage unit, I believe, that was endorsed onto the policy for the property. And then, of course, you will have equipment and other automobile vehicle changes throughout the year. But the majority of that adjustment is as a result of those property endorsements. So when you look at our sheet, and I realize you probably do have our evaluation sheet, and I do want to make sure that we kind of understand the layout because, again, I recognize that some of you may not have been here in years prior. So what we typically do is we capture the current program design, so deductibles, limits. maybe other components that we may want to highlight for you, as well as the premium on the left-hand side of the sheet. And then on the right-hand side of the sheet, you will see the renewal. We will highlight any benefit or exposure changes that are an enhancement in blue and others in red. So you'll see that your auto physical damage total insured value did increase. So that's part of the adjustment for that line. You'll see that your payrolls also increased, as well as your experience modification factor. So those are all the components that are used or utilized to rate the renewal premium just for exposure changes based on existing kind of per unit cost basis. So overall, the FMIT proposal for the renewal in that second year of two is a total of 1.197 million or about a 4% increase over current just as a result of some of those exposure changes. so with that i will open it up to questions that you may or may not have for me as the insurance kind of tech person here i thought the payroll went down for 2027 now

No, bringing on the new aquatic center did not reduce payroll.

This is actually, I mean, we put this out to bid last year. And we've been using FMIT for a long time because they've always been the most competitive and the best deal we've been getting. I'm glad this is only a 4% bump. I mean, that's refreshing because I've seen what insurance does everywhere else in my life. And to only bump 4% with, you know,

what we have covered is is a pretty decent deal and we know it's a good price because we put it out but forbid last year so we're not we we're not behind on that and just to kind of give you a little perspective too i went back and looked at a little bit of history so fiscal year 24 so we're going back a few years now that total program premium was 1.28 million so we're still under that which is shocking and great yes

Any other questions? Yes, I have a question. Sorry, go ahead.

When was the last time that we had a hike on this? I'm sorry? When was the last time that this was increased?

Like a premium increase? You did have a couple in the last two years prior to the market bid. But other than that we've and because that's kind of our cycle We typically take this out to bid every three years and what we end up finding is that when we do the market quotation We'll see some savings. There are also some things happening in the market just with respect to where property premiums are Versus liability premiums and some of the trend and claims that we're seeing so those will fluctuate year over year Generally speaking, the liability market is usually trend-wise somewhere around 10%. The property market actually has been pretty good since probably back in 2023 when we had some significant adjustments to the rating bases. So I don't know if that answered the question.

You may remember we had, I think we had a three-year lock-in. We rolled off of that before we went out last year. And that was a saving grace after COVID when prices escalated so dramatically. Correct. We had locked-in rates for three years. And a lot of places in Florida saw... shocking changes in their insurance premium, and we were protected from that because we had chosen a three-year lock-in. So that was very fortunate, and they helped us greatly with that. So, again, you're seeing the effect of the kind of two years with this resulting from the bid from that. And to bring on the new aquatic center, you know what that cost was. We feel good this was not more than that.

Mr. Levin, do you have a question? Thank you. Had there been no additional endorsements and no additional inclusions, is there any way to estimate apples for apples, what would be the rate? Not a 4% increase, but instead it would have been a certain figure?

um maybe maybe not like i said you did have the adjustment to payroll and ema which is always going to affect the workers compensation line if we didn't have some of the other adjustments i mean really those that's the workers compensation is the line that that adjusted the most at this renewal based on exposures um otherwise it would have been the auto premium so i would you know maybe estimate that we might have been one to two percent over you know current if we hadn't had some of those adjustments to exposure um but but really it is largely based on the workers compensation that is the one that's happening the largest adjustment just based on the modification factor having increased and having additional facilities additional services required additional staff and that's how we got to where we are um partially somewhat yep some partially so the auto is mitchell you're welcome

Yeah, the auto policy increase, is that because of more cars and trucks and things of that nature? Or is it mostly because just autos going up across the board for everybody? Well, no.

You had a rate hold, actually. So that adjustment in what was previously scheduled at the $7.3 million. And so FMIT, I can back this up a little bit, too, because this will help explain it. If you have endorsements during the year for your auto policy with FMIT, they don't charge premium unless that asset is more than $100,000. So you could have brought on $10,000, $30,000, $40,000 vehicles that wouldn't have been assessed at that point in time. They're now being assessed. I got it. So the difference there is about a 12.6% increase in the asset value under the auto schedule, which is what's contributing to that line increase.

Understood.

Thank you. Any other questions? Once again, thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you. Nice to meet you all.

Nice to meet you as well. Thank you.

brings us our next item which is authorization renew an existing contract for annual asphalt milling resurfacing and seal coating village-wide this is an existing agreement we have we have mr flaherty here if we have any specific questions but generally ranger construction provides those services and uh pursuant to what we've got programmed for the next fiscal year we've identified the projects that you see there on the agenda item as to where we plan on coming in um to mill and overlay those different locations in the different neighborhoods and some of the thoroughfares in the village. The increase that was allowed pursuant to the agreement ends up being an impact of around $70,000 throughout the entire annual milling and resurfacing program.

And to be clear, these projects will come to us as they're getting ready to be done?

No, these won't come. We're putting them all right now? Okay. No, these are, we've identified the projects. And if there's anything that's not on here that exceeds the threshold for a purchase order, then it would come back to you. And if you note, a lot of these projects, it's the typical process. We go through, we go in, repair the swales, do the sidewalks, and then come in and mill an overday as the last item in the resurfacing program. Okay. any questions on the scope or the cost or the plan none moving on d all right brings us to the next item which is authorization to renew an existing contract with multiple vendors for annual drainage infrastructure and cleaning and repair services and together with mr flaherty mr zembrowski here if we have any detailed questions but basically this is a lot of the work that we do with the existing drainage system that is maintained by the village in acme including um the inspections that we do and then the actual cleaning and inspection services and ultimately where you've seen the actual uh pretty extensive operation where we go in and reline uh those uh areas that need uh relining as far as the drainage source system uh adding I think we've heard Mr Wagner Mr Rheinswald say that that relining ends up adding upwards of a thank you uh to that existing pipe we generally don't like to go in unless there's a real necessity to dig anything up and basically this extends the life of those drainage lines any questions seeing none thank you all right brings us to the next item which is authorization to award a sole source contract for the purchase delivery and service of flight pumps this is a utility item as pants can take us through it

all right so the utility we operate 108 sewage lift stations we have a total of 222 grinder pumps in those stations so every year as part of routine maintenance we replace a certain amount of those pumps and we do a certain amount of repair so this is a request for xylem which is our primary pump manufacturer that we use they have a system We're requesting up to $200,000 under this contract. This is budgeted in the operating budget. We do get a 10% discount out of this contract, which is nice. This is down a little bit from last year. We had budgeted $250,000 last year. We're doing $200,000 this year just to replace pumps. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer.

And this is to replace them on an as-needed basis? This is an as-needed basis.

If we don't need it, we don't spend it.

Okay. Questions? Nope. Can they give us a 10% discount?

I think that's off their list pricing, so I think the list pricing is what it is. And so, I mean, I'm sure it's more of a tool on their part, but I think we get 15. So it just keeps them. We find the contract for this particular vendor is much better than, like, quoting them individually. Great.

Next item.

This is the next item, which is authorization to renew CrowdStrike cybersecurity services with CDW using a source well contract. And let's go ahead and take us through it.

This, of course, is for IT. Mr. Sillman couldn't make it today. But this is for our basic cybersecurity protection with CrowdStrike. This is a renewal part of the annual budget process.

And we all know how important this is. 100%. Before Skynet comes in and takes over Wellington. Any questions? No. Thank you.

That brings us to our public hearing items. And as Mr. Stillings comes up to the table, the first item is Resolution 202645, which is the Wellington Village, also known as K-Park, conditional use item, which is for building height.

So I'll just give you a preview. This will be a quasi-judicial hearing. So you'll have the applicant here to make their presentation. But just to give you a preview, it's the four buildings that are to the right with the circles on them. The two in yellow were previously approved for greater heights. And you can see so the purple and the yellow are going from 42 to 48. And then the fuchsia and red are going to 37 and 39. I'll give you a little zoomed-in view so you can see. I just want to show you that these are all at the southern end of the property, closer to the Life Church, so away from Stribling. And so they'll be in next week to give you all the details as to why. Just clarify for me, because there's six buildings here, which two were... the two in yellow uh yellow boxes to the left were previously approved at those heights and the the four to the right are new requests okay was there like what was the reason for the request design building changes or building design changes and this was passed by pzab last night it was approved by pzab last night and also recommended for approval by arb at their last meeting what was the vote by pzab five zero okay All right.

And we'll get a presentation in more detail tomorrow. Is the applicant coming or just is this a staff show?

This is applicant.

Okay. Tuesday. Tuesday. Tuesday. Well, usually tomorrow.

Almost tomorrow.

I know. I don't like Thursday gender reviews. It throws me off. It throws me off. It does. It does. All right. Any other questions for Mr. Stillings today? Nope. Save him until Tuesday.

He's not going anywhere. We have the next item, which is the regular agenda item resolution number 202636, which is the fee waiver request for affordable housing projects at 16651 Van Gogh and 16651 Velasquez.

So the applicant or the requester will be here next week to give you more or answer more questions regarding their development and their financing. So I can go over just some of the details of the request and our numbers. um so this is uh these are two live local projects um and this the um the um the statutes 163 31 801 does allow municipalities to waive impact fees and it does not require those fees to be offset so this is something that is permitted So these are the project locations. Again, to refresh your memory, these are roughly five-acre sites, 106 units per project, 100% affordable. They're serving 80% AMI or less. And according to the county's recent approval of housing bond funds as well as county waiver or credits to impact fees. They list $102,000 for a family of four as the highest threshold of that AMI. The distribution of the project is roughly 63 two-bedroom, two-bath and 43 three-bedroom, three-bath, as I mentioned just this week. the county approved housing bond funds to go towards the financing of the project as well as some of their credit towards the county impact fees. And I'll go into those details in a second. So the few waivers that are being requested are fall into three buckets. The first is a park and civic land dedication requirement or option that we have for residential projects. And that is The projects are required to either give us land or pay us an in-lieu fee based upon the ratio of 10 acres per thousand residents generated by the project for parks and one acre per thousand generated for civic. and so uh recommendation is is to waive that option in this case as the project locations are on county roads or adjacent to county state roads and the roads within the community are private and the parks within the area are our county parks there are also recent dedications at other projects to the west at artistry lakes and arden for additional county civic sites so didn't see the need for that dedication second bucket is the impact fees which comes at building permit stage for multimodal and Parks and Recreation and those are based upon the either the unit on numbers or the square footage of the projects and the rates that have been established by code those those fees are being requested to be waived and They also requested to waive the public facilities impact fee, but that's one we're not recommending to be waived. And then the third bucket is the building permit and inspection fees for both developments to be waived as a part of this request. So for the village, the total impact fee and in lieu would equate to roughly $844,000. As I mentioned, we are recommending to waive all but the public facilities fees for the project to support the affordable housing contribution to the community. This is the county's impact fees. So you can see their total impact fees are about as high as our full collection. The county has a system that they take the earned interest from their impact fee funds and every year allot that to... offset um impact fees for affordable housing projects and they allocate that based upon the different zones and so you can see for roads um they are getting about 57 percent uh towards their total cost so what's in um gold is what's required what's in orange is what is being offset by the county funds. And so you can see it's only for roads, parks, public buildings. They're still on the hook for fire, library, and schools. I have some more information on the county process if you'd like to get a little more granular with that. So again, the recommendation from our staff is to waive all but the public facilities impact fee. And again, I've got some more detailed information if you want to get more granular with it.

So can you go back to the slide that described the three different? Okay. What's your reasoning for number three? You went over one and two, but what's your reasoning for number three?

Number three is the building department has a pretty healthy building fund in reserve. We also have a fairly healthy or have had a fairly healthy annual revenue of building permit fees throughout the years. We're also in the process of having to reevaluate those fees as required by florida statute we can starting january 1 we can no longer apply the fee based upon the construction value it has to be based upon our actual effort and so that could significantly reduce the fees that we collect from this project when it comes in at that time and so it um it was when what project comes in when these projects come in for building permit

So the estimated number that Mr. Sillings referenced as far as what would be the waiver if we chose to approve, if council chose to approve the waiver of the building permit and inspection fees would be probably substantially less than what's projected given that by January we're going to have to reduce our fee schedule for building permits and inspection fees because of the state statute that was passed in the last session where you're no longer able to utilize the project value.

I I personally think that we should just leave the fees as they are and then whatever happens with the state statutes then we adjust accordingly, you know versus I don't understand this new rock of charity are they going to make money on this these 2 projects.

I mean, they're a housing developer like any other.

I don't believe they're, you know, we had to look at it. New Rock is not, I mean, they're, I think, a regular housing developer that does workforce and affordable housing. The other property, which we're not looking at this evening, but that we had referenced and presented to council previously, I think they were operating as a 501c3, but New Rock is not.

I mean, I could see it as a 501c3 helping out and doing some things here and there, but If it's a company that's going to make money, although it's for an incredible goal, incredible idea for workforce housing, I don't dispute that. But if they're going to make money, why are we waiving our fees? is my thought process, especially since we're not.

The logic behind that is because they're building affordable. If they build market rate, they make a lot more money by making affordable housing, which is needed in the community. They are making far less profit than they would if they charged it at regular rates. And under live local, you only have to do 40% affordable, right? Just live local. And they're doing 100% affordable. So they're doing more than they have to do to make these affordable units. And in order to help them make these projects successful, they're asking for us to waive some portion of our fee. Some of them don't fully apply to the project the way it's going to be built out. The counties waived a significant portion of their fees to encourage affordable housing development in the county. And this is the first affordable housing project we've had in Wellington, right? I don't think we've had one before. And it's in New Wellington in addition. So I'm in favor. I don't know what the right number mix is. I'm confused by the math in the in the item versus because you have a number 3, a million dollars. I don't see a million dollars anywhere in the numbers that I had.

I did not include that in the information that was provided. I only included what was in the estimate for the land dedication and the impact fees.

Right, because you gave us four different potential fees in the item, which was the multimodal fee, the parks and rec fee, the parks and civil land fee, and then the public facility fee, which is $944,000 roughly, of which you're recommending we waive about the 840 of it. And then in addition to that, there's building inspection fees, which were not part of what we're talking about here, right? I mean, we're talking about it on here, but it wasn't in the backup item.

The amount was not in the backup item, but it is part of the resolution.

Right. Which is why I was confused because I couldn't put a number to that when I saw that was in here, but it didn't match up with the item.

Right. And I only provided an estimate here based upon our current rates. As mentioned, those are going to change in the future. And so we're still in the process of evaluating what those should be. So I couldn't tell you what the difference will be, but it will be substantially less than what is the current estimate being.

Right, because we have to use a different process come January on how we calculate that.

Because right now, it's basically 2% of the project value. In this case, development costs are $51 million, so it would be 2% of that. We have to go off of what our actual expense is. And so we would not spend $1 million reviewing and inspecting this project. Right, I would hope not. It's inefficient. Right.

Yeah, I don't know what the right number is, but I do agree we should come up with some sort of partial waiver for the amount they want. I don't know if it's the right number, but we can talk about it.

So that's why I wanted to give you the percentages that the county reduced, and so that might be a consideration to either... Can you get us a PowerPoint so we can have a copy of that?

I don't know how to copy that.

Because we are setting a precedent at this point, right? If we're allowing developers, if we're waiving fees for developers to build things, whether it's live local or not, right?

And so that's the thing I want to be conscious of. Well, no, I wouldn't waive anything on a market rate project, but on affordable, and it's 100% versus 40% too. So if someone wants to live local and do 40%, they're not getting a deduction that they would get if they were doing 100%.

Yeah, but that's their choice, whether they're doing 40% or 100%. Correct. And we would adjust based upon what they're building.

only example we could really find that had any specific numbers was palm beach gardens which as you can see on the screen they for impact fees they grant an up to 250 per fiscal year but no more and then for billing permit fees not to exceed 100 000 per project as again as another consideration of how to approach it okay and the applicants here on tuesday They will be okay, they'll be they'll be able to ask more questions about their financing and project structure.

And just to close for my comments and for for very concerned about a minute 3 and not want to lower millage rates and that stuff not knowing what financial impacts we're going to foresee. I still don't think we're should we should be waving anything at this point if we're not just for a call out the residents to save money where we let developers save money. The questions.

All right. Thanks, Tim.

Thank you.

Jim, what else you got?

That concludes our agenda.

Oh, that's nice. Good. I like it.

Can I make a report from you?

I have nothing for this evening. Just calling. Anything else? Anyone else? Comments, questions, thoughts?

I got a comment, question regarding our board, our boards that we have, PZAB, ARB, things of that nature. If any of you guys served on those boards, I'm sure you took it seriously where you showed up and you tried to make your schedule fit those things, just like we do for our council seats. And I think it's a very important job. The people that we picked should feel that responsibility. And I'm noticing people, even myself, that I've picked are not showing up or flat out lying, saying I'm here taking care of this person, my ailing mother, but instead they're posting pictures with their daughter in New York instead. I have a issue with that so if I don't know if we have a rule or whatever to replace people that are not upholding their end of the deal whenever we appoint people but I think that's a discussion we do track attendance and any one of us that appointed our own person can remove them for whatever reason we want pleasure

Our people, our individuals each serve at our own pleasure. I can remove my person, you can remove your person. And that large person takes a vote of three to remove that large person. The same way they got on there.

We do have attendance requirements in our code and we do track it. Many times people have excused absences and if it's excused then it's noted. If it's unexcused after a certain number of unexcused absences, that person is automatically removed.

What determines whether an absence is excused or unexcused?

I don't have the code in front of me, and I haven't looked at it. But I think medical, family emergency, those types of things would be an excused absence.

OK.

their volunteer positions they are but we we look to them to show up we looked at them to to guide us as well if it's one of your people remove them and if it's one of the at-large people you should bring it up so we can discuss it okay so we're naming names well no at the meeting okay all right we can do that i'm happy to all right cool anything else we're adjourned thanks all right