e e e e e e e e e e e they're not going to be they we of people all right good evening I think we'll get this started so we'll call this a special session to order all members of council are present uh we'll start with a public comment I got a list here so the first one I have up is Fred lson you could come to the podium sir there state your name and your address for the record uh and it is three minutes okay hey good more good good evening everybody my name is Fred Larson 10002 King Creek Court Ovito Florida I've been a resident of this community for almost 30 years lived at the same address that I just provided you and there's a reason for that there's a reason why a lot of us live here and that's the quality of life of this community I've traveled all over the world I've traveled all over the United States and I've asked people I say you ever heard of Ovito Florida and and about 60% of the time they say yes here it's a nice place I also ask have you ever heard of Castleberry Florida no Almont Springs what we have a reputation outside of our community as being a great place and as a result we got a lot of people moving in here I want to keep the quality of life High the um government I believe as a rule will spend all the money that citizens give it and when there's a need beyond that they borrow it and send us the bill so that's just a belief that I have about taxes and government I also believe that government has a responsibility to maintain the safety and quality of life in the community that it serves to that end fire and Emergency Services law enforcement clean water sewer and and uh flood mitigation and Parks and Recreation in that order are the primary purpose why local government exists as Citizens if we believe that quality of life is important then by all means we have to fund it this millage increase is a multiplier tied to the value of taxable real estate in our community so as the value of that real estate goes up the amount of Revenue uh generated goes up in the last decade the revenue for our community has doubled I'm not sure that the enhancements that we as citizens have enjoyed have doubled it's been good they've kept it good I'm happy so to this end I just say it's up to us to keep a close eye on how money gets spent that we're good stewards of that Revenue but at the same time if we're do if we're putting this extra money into getting the best possible law enforcement and fire and emergency services this community can get then by all means we have to have it because quality of life in a community is not guaranteed and I'll just close with one last thing I was recently in the once pristine Community city of Vancouver Canada and I was a Gass at what I saw so nothing's guaranteed our vigilance is what is required thank you everybody thank [Applause] you all right next up I have and I I apologize if I mispronounce it but is it Juliana Kaiser no thanks I pass I pass thank okay and then next up I have Chris I'd like to f as well until after all right uh ingred Bryant good evening mayor SLC good evening council members I'm here today because of the situation we're in and I have some Prof oh I need to tell you where I live 145 Shady o Clan o Florida I have some prophetic words that I want to share with you from am Jones he was the superintendent of our water department he was there when the city got potable water to supply our residents in 1968 before that we were all on private weals the reason I bring this to your attention is when Twin River subdivision was built he made this prediction we need to close the back door of oito before we run out of water he also said the system would not need attention in 50 years this is now on the horizon the growth has caused our infrastructure to need imminent consideration to keep our clean water supply this has to be done now please put the police station please do not put the police station on the November ballot sorry it is a debt we need to table until we get the water situation in check the expense will be substantial that will be added to our citizens but it is a must and I thank you for that thank you uh next up I have an Edward belli right so my name is Edward Bonelli I live at one4 hornbeam Street just up the road um I've own the house since it was new built back in 92 um been paying taxes for all that time so to I saw a blip on Facebook and next door neighbor about suddenly our water bills are going to double which seems crazy to suddenly have this happen to us um I feel like we you know the growth of a veto is is the cause of us needing this well why are we not hitting up the developers people that are growing the v a veto the way it is to take care of these bills so I'm not the smartest person in the room but I think there's got to be a better way thanks all right thank [Applause] you next up I have a Joe is it stop how you guys all doing tonight how you all doing tonight I'll make sure everybody's awake paying attention to me okay uh I live on uh South Lake Clair over here in Kings brige West and uh I'm in a firefighter since 1974 so I'm here to support our firefighting staff that we have here today um there's an acronym that we use in the fire Services called idlh idlh can everybody say that ID L it stands for immediately death or excuse me immediately dangerous to life and health these are the uh atmospheres that our firefighters work in at every day in in the situations that we have here in town the other thing I'd like you guys to do is I just for a sheer second everybody in the room close your eyes Just Close Your Eyes what do you see nothing exactly that's what these guys work in every time they go into a fire they can't see anything they have to work under adverse conditions under high heat possibility of structural collapse flashover all different types of uh hazards that they face each and every day they're also asked to do additional uh duties such as obviously the EMS uh fire suppression Medical Services confined space operations where guys are going down to demand holes uh hazardous material operations weapons of mass destruction Swift water rescue and high angle rescue and of course Auto extrication we have a lot of Auto extrication in town here now it seems like the to reduce uh some of our our budgetary requirements we're reducing the standards for some of the officers that are in charge of these incidents and as you see that the all the items that I listed off to you are extremely complex they keep getting more complex each and every day every threat that comes across our borders that that threat becomes a part of the fire fighter duties as well so by reducing the standards of the officers that are in charge okay excuse me and the the reason what I understand about that is that so that they can increase the number of acting officers per shift so that they can reduce overtime so let's go back a few months reduce overtime because the budget was way over right whatever happened to the $4.9 million that came up missing everybody seemed to forget about about that where is that so that's the basis for this Cuts because that form you know let me put it this way if I went to my if you went to your job tomorrow morning and we said oh we're going to have a town hall meeting we got bagels and and coffee in in the conference room and oh yeah by the way we're $4.9 million in the hole what what do you think what do you think going to be saying the next day will you want fries with that okay because that's where you're going to be working all right but never less uh so again why why are these budget cuts have to be put in place and it goes back to that $4.9 million that's missing so uh the thing you have to remember here is that I would challenge so that was the three minute timer so grab it up I'm I'm I'm I'm on it okay I don't think you close your eyes when I said close your eyes but nevertheless um I was watching might happen so uh nevertheless um the uh These Guys these firemen it's not what they do it's who they are they live to go to fires they're part of a a group of people that are unlike nobody else in this world they run into buildings that people like you run out of so they need to be compensated professionally that's all I got to say thank you on that was pretty good call right that is all the written requests we have for comment is there anybody in the audience that wishes to say anything all right see none I'm going to close public comment all right we are on to our first subject here FY 2024 budget July update Mr Cobb thank you deputy mayor uh tonight is we're bringing forward to you the July update of the 2425 budget uh this is based on all the work that we've been doing throughout the summer uh having our meetings with city council and it's based on the best information that we have currently uh tonight we wanted to provide this budget presentation first because it sort of explains the why for the next uh item which is why why we're here mostly which is to establish the tenative millage for FY 2425 for the truth and millage notice that will be going out in August and so we wanted to go over the budget first and then could you talk a little closer M thank you and to go over the budget first to then so that you will see the why regarding the resolution that we're here tonight then we also have a couple of discussion items for you with the uh Vision Vision zero plan and the in the utility rate study update uh Mr Boop M Jones M toor who I am uh most thankful for uh during uh budget season actually all year long uh but they have done a tremendous job uh putting the information together for you tonight so that you can see where we are uh with the budget currently I will tell you that we will have another work session in August we also have two public hearings in September one on September 5th and then one on September 16th and so the notice that will be going out in August will advise of those public hearings as well as the tenative millage I I will now turn it over to Mr Boop and let him walk you through the uh July budget update thank you Mr Cobb uh honorable mayor deputy mayor council members we we have prepared for you tonight A a small presentation just to provide as Mr Cobb said some additional background and context so one of the things one of the questions that we've asked over the last several months is what is our total combined millage rate history and what you can see is in 2019 we kind of reached a Peak at 18.7 Ms now the millage rate for the city of Ovito is comprised of uh the blue at the bottom is Ovito the red is seminal County and the green is seminal County schools and at the very top you can just barely see it it's St John's Water Management District of course the blue line across the very top represents the total millage rate so as I just said the the millage rate reached its peak in 2013 and has been declining you ever since until we get to the current fiscal year the current fiscal year encompasses the ask that we have before you tonight for the additional 6 millit rate next slide so some of the challenge that we challenges that we face every year is um we have we're kind of restricted if you will uh in fiscal year 2425 39% of the city's tax base qualifies for save our homes and and exemptions such as homestead exemption and over the past several years inflation as we all know has well exceeded the 3% cap on Save of our homes hence part of the problem I shouldn't say problem I should say challenge save our homes and exemptions has inhibited lessened our ability to keep Pace with inflation so we've looked at every single possible Revenue source that we can to try and keep Pace next slide so what this slide shows is the taxable value for the city of avito going back to 2005 but it also shows the increase in the exemptions over time uh to the current date currently uh again as we said in the previous slide is that the uh 39% of our tax basees is comprised of of save our homes and exemptions we don't have access to those funds excuse me those values to be able to generate revenues next slide so save our homes and exemptions the value of our save our homes and exemptions has grown by 97% since 2019 which is significant the total of save our homes and exemp iions in 2019 was 1.4 billion in 2024 it's one it's 2.7 billion an increase of 1.3 billion and this next slide illustrates that extremely well going back to 2019 this is approximately 1.3 million billion the 97% growth since 2019 and we're now at where are we at Kelly 2.7 billion in in exemption so it's grown significantly just in the last Last 5 Years it's part of our challenge next slide so the revenue loss is significant due to exemptions and save our homes per the seminal County property appraiser the average save our homes and property exemption you know per citizen or per homeowner is 153 almost $154,000 the loss Revenue that we've been able to derive just by looking at that 39% is a approximately $15 million so when we look at the next slide Bas that's what this illustrates now it's interesting I started the city back in 2012 and the lost Revenue was 2.7 million and we had genuine concerns back in 2012 can we fund the activities that take place in the general fund I remember and we've had this conversation before you know I've made my presentations to you during the uh Council meetings when when we present the annual report we basically had about $3 million in cash available then now I can't even imagine having $3 million in cash available now with all the climate impacts that we've had over the last several years which makes it absolutely critical that we maintain our current operations and current fund balances going from now on and going into the into the future but again what this slide illustrates is lost Revenue now will we need access to all that Revenue absolutely not but it certainly would help us balance the budget and uh solve some additional problems next slide so over the last um several months there have been Public Safety um could could we go back to that last slide real quickly just for everybody in the room just to make sure everybody realizes are you saying that because so many homes are owner occupied in OVO we are not collecting $15 million so if these were owned by investors instead of owner occupied we would be bringing in $155 million more is that correct that's correct all right thank you good point Thank You mayor so next SL next slide Public Safety salaries so we're currently in the process right now of negotiating you know bargaining unit wages for both police and fire and the target is for the next three years of the of the contract the goal is to make sure that when we get to the end of of the bargaining process that we are within the range of where we anticipate the market will be going for both police and firefighters not just in the next um next year but also at the end of the three years we want to make sure that we are competitive in the market and we're not far behind next slide so when we take a look at the firefighter starting salary comparisons what we see here is that this is the current okay we're at approximately $46,000 per year that we are below the average the average is 47,00 , almost $47,700 so there are outliers out there that are significantly higher but again we are below the current average and Mr boo if I could if Council if you'll think back three years ago when we approved the current contract that 4686 $ 46,8 we we had very good confidence that we would be in the market when we got to this point and so when we started looking at when we started the negotiation process that was one of the first things that jumped out at us is that the market shifted and we need to shift with it so that's one of the things that we we really recognize that one of the and it's even on police as well the police Market's shifting even more but I'll turn it back to Mr buo thank you Mr Cobb well is like like Mr cop said the same thing next slide is also happening to uh oh this is far farter sorry um this is where we think the market is heading uh during the negotiation process you'll see down here at the bottom I know it's very difficult to see but Longwood is currently in negotiations Orange County is currently in negotiations seminal county is in negotiations and of course we are also in negotiations but at the end of the process once all these negotiations complete we expect the range to be significantly higher than what it currently is so we want to make sure that what we propose or where we settle is within the range of where these other uh agencies will be will be settling next slide so here's the police officer starting salary comparison again it's it's the same um when you take a look at the average here the average uh right now is 52,53 we're currently at $50,000 so we're a couple thousand below the average but you can see excuse me you can see that there are several agencies that that are above the line you know Winter Park uh St Cloud U CMI and so on and so forth so we want to make sure again that when we get to the other side of the negotiation process that we are within the market range not only again for next year but also at the end of the threeyear term so as to alleviate the situation that we're currently in like Mr cob said being behind in the marketplace at the end of the three-year contract next slide so the proposed police officer starting salary this is the information that we've been able to glean from other agencies the average salary has moved up to 54,2 um Eustace is currently in negotiations Mount Dora is currently in negotiations and some of some of these folks have already settled but as you can see our proposed starting is a little bit north of $56,000 which puts us above the average but again what we hope for is that it falls within the market range next slide so Public Safety pension what goes along with these salary increases well we've had a chance to um have these discussions with our actuary and he's done some Actuarial projections based upon the asks of the various different bargaining units and we have we're presenting this information to you on the next slide so when you take a look at at the fire City pension contribution right now in the current fiscal year it's 17.2% of the current salaries but the Actuarial changes excuse me yeah the Actuarial projection has changed in the future years it's gone from 17.2% in 2324 to to 27.5% in 2425 what's the reason for that change couple of things there's things going on in the pension plan that can only be actual determin forecast it correctly but in addition to that with the salary increases that that we are currently negotiating that's also going to have an impact so coming right out of the gate in the 2425 budget we have to put into the budget another 10% contribution from the city in order to properly fund the uh City's Fire pension plan and that's required by state law next Slide the same situation holds true for the City's uh police pension plan you're going from 14.52 to 18.39% so looking at General government uh minimum wage you know this has been a topic of discussion as you well know for the last several years we've had our challenges here we've had um at one point in time in 2122 the city had a 29% turnover rate 68% were due to voluntary resignations which means that people were voting with their feet they were finding more competitive better salaries better benefits elsewhere our minimum wage was $15 per hour our vacancy rate was 16% we would hire folks have them come in for two days and they would leave after two days on the job uh because they found a better salary elsewhere so in 22 23 uh after great discussions with each of you the uh minimum wage was raised from $15 per hour to1 1560 which is a 4% increase so in order to stay up with the market we' we've had to keep pay face with what's going on around us and what's also going on in Private Industry so last year in 2324 the minimum wage was raised from uh 1560 to 1592 which was a small 2% increase looking into 2425 again assessing what's going on around us in the market we're recommending a 5.5% increase to the minimum wage to take us from 1592 to 1680 and what you'll see on the on the following slide is that the the proposed minimum wage amongst local municipalities at 16.38% and everybody knows this but the labor force has changed people have become extremely mobile folks compare themselves to other their peers on apps right now Instagram and other methods or forms of communication and they leave very quickly um we've had actually we've had a for job abandonments here at the city so um those are some of the challenges that we face just on minimum wage Mr jump absolutely Council one of the things big challenges that we have is when we offer a job to someone the first question out of their mouth is can you pay me extra and I can go across the street to Starbucks and make $17 an hour I you know and that's been one of the things that we've noticed Through The Years uh we're losing people to retail and restaurant now you used to be they would go to other local governments but now we're seeing that not only going to the local governments but we're also competing with the private sector which is something new to us but that's usually the first thing they ask what the second thing the first thing they ask is can I get a higher wage and then the second thing they ask is when can I take vacation those are the first two things they ask and so this has been a challenge and one of the things and I I this and this applies with police and fire as well with our our this this presentation here with the general employees anytime you do something like this increasing your minimums okay increasing the minimum salary increasing the minimum wage it's like dropping a pebble in a pond the very first thing you see is the ripples going out through and so these things Ripple throughout the entire organization and so it's not just something where we can go in and say well we're just going to raise the minimum the minimum wage we're just going to raise the minimum salary we have to go and look at the entire organization because what we don't want to have happen is for the new people coming in to be making more than those who have been here one to two years that we've invested in that we have built up and trained for them to go leave some because that's happening and we don't want to have that those folks that have been here for two or three years to be more than those who have been here for five years and it just keeps going on and on and so that's one of the things that we've seen and and the budget does reflect it it reflects it in the police salaries the fire salaries also in the general fund the general fund and police salaries as well that by increasing these minimums we have also taken a look at the entire salary structure within the organization and that's what's reflected in the budget I'll give it back to Mr but yes he's right uh we we're now anytime we do a what we call conditional offer the very these are the very first things they're telling us well I can go across the street you know and uh so I'll turn it back over to Mr Bo yeah thank you Mr cob next slide so this slide shows uh what we currently know in regard to minimum wage structure uh the average is 1638 right now and we're at 159 we're currently at 1592 with the proposed 5.5% increase will be at 1680 well how does that measure against our peers when you go across the graph you'll see that the city of Sanford is 1686 so we would be slightly under the city of of of Sanford uh when you look at uh Lake Mary will be slightly below Lake Mary when you look at the city of Castlebury will be below below Castleberry and a poka a poka is way out there and so what we know too is that everybody is watching everybody else to determine where they need to land in regard to a minimum starting wage for General employees next slide so our operating expenditures you know I remember remember going back to the days of you know when we could just apply a 5% equation across the board for our our operating expenditures and that's just not true anymore when you look at this graph the very top the blue is chemicals the next line down is software the next component the gray is Insurance um and uh this right here is the cost of fuel and then of course um again the blue the blue is chemicals um the blue on the very bottom is utilities so you can see when you go across the chart you can see how these how these costs have shifted significant increase you know in Insurance again that's driven by the climate impacts that we've had over the last several years and property insurers trying to recoup you know their losses and um when you take a look at you know the software the software has increased significantly over the last couple of years because everybody is basically applying the marginal increases that they have to apply to the organizations to meet their salary needs uh when you take a look at um the fuel on the bottom you'll see that fuel has gone up significantly and you can also see where utilities has has grown somewhat at the very bottom of of the scale as well utilities is on the top oh utilities is on the top okay utilities is grown as well uh so on the bottom can see where the chemical cost of increase and for the general fund what that means is that uh we've had additional costs related to chemicals uh for fertilizers and also for um uh items like chlorine that go into our swimming swimming pools so right now the operational increase for 2425 when compared to 23 24 is approximately 133% so and the the costs are just escalating and we just don't have control over those those are outside of our control so next slide that's it so that's the end of our of our special Pro presentation again we just wanted to create some some background and some context for the discussions that we're going to be having tonight so if we can flip over to the budget model quickly please so one of the things that we were asked to do if we can you come over here Kelly and and set that up are you okay with that Mr cob I'm fine with that all right so one of the things that we were asked to do by each of you oh several weeks ago is we were asked what is the worst case scenario and once we determine what the worst case scenario is how can we resolve the equation so if we go back up and take a look I want to make sure that um we're set up correctly here so if we turn off no we're good okay so basically essentially we developed two scenarios one that includes this a short allocating the potential shortfall for all departments and another one without police and fire because we know police and fire is the priority of the community so if we just turn on the allocate the shortfall for all departments you can see that um we allocate the $1.6 million loss proportionally across all the Departments based on their budget the percentage of their budget to the whole um and what we see as a result of the equation is that some departments may be able to afford it some departments may not be so if we turn off the allocation shortfall to all departments into police and fire basically we see that the all allation has increased significantly uh over the the remaining departments now I can speak for finance when you take a look at Finance our operational budget is $115,000 so $667,000 of that operational budget is comprised of audit fees state required required by law we cannot cut those out of our budget so if we're going to take a $91,000 hit to the finance department basically we're talking about cutting Personnel uh quite frankly I can't even imagine operating our department uh with any less Personnel than what we currently have uh we we're working 20 we're working a lot okay so that problem won't only be resident in the finance department it will also be resident in other areas as well I can't even begin to see any type of cuts to Information Technology not with all the challenges that we we currently have and Mr kashai has done an incredibly outstanding job in guiding us to where uh we currently are and building of the department technologically so that's what would happen you know if we were to allocate the short fall across everybody but police and fire any additional comments Mr cob uh no you you've hit them all okay so if we turn that off um and one of the things that we have proposed to you um in previous discussions is millage rate increase so if we go up and turn on the additional millage basically go all the way to top Kelly please you know our millage rate is comprised of a number of different things the very top line 5.34 4 is our current millage rate every year you've given us or we've been granted authority to take the geobond millage rate savings and add it to the operational millage rate giv us a few extra dollars this year um those few extra dollars is $ 38,8 39 goes towards operations that can fund a new vehicle that can also fund some additional supplies that can fund something this year we're requesting um an increase in the millage rate of 60 okay when we add that to our operational millage rate of 5.35 40 our total millage rate will go go to 59540 Total operational millage rate let me restate that will go to 59540 when you add back in the go Bond millage rate for oo on the park the total millage goes to 6.07 5 um the 5.34 40 uh Mills generates 1.5 million 563 million in additional Revenue the transfer the go uh millage rate uh savings goes to third is 38 the additional millage uh increase uh adds another 2.3 million to the general fund budget for an overall uh uh increase in ad borm revenues of $3.9 million so from there where we would like to go if we can Kelly let's go to that that doesn't go back to that that doesn't those numbers don't add up correctly if if the millage re revenue is only 1.5 million and it's a 5344 Ms and the additional revenue is only 6 plus the 0.01 from the Geo savings it shouldn't be more than the millage Revenue that's the increase from last year to this year is that correct that's the increase so it's not the total yeah cuz I thought the same thing that's the difference from last year to this year what it's BR got it correct okay yeah I apologize this I did not explain that very well okay but if we go back one of the things that we always like to do uh I I Mr PA because you always ask us this question is where are we going to land at the end of this fiscal year so as you all know we took the ending balance from last year's annual financial report which was 16.9 million and we took the deposit out of fund balance basically the withdrawal from fund balance of18 $ 4,000 which we pledged to balance the budget last year and in addition to that this current fiscal year we amended the use of fund balance by $2.2 million for carry forwards uh additional projects that need to be done you know and things of that nature so just by the math what we're looking at is a projected ending balance this fiscal year of 14.5 million do we think we're going to actually incur those reductions right now it doesn't appear that we will it looks like we're going to have enough margin you know in the budget this fiscal year to offset these withdrawals from fund balance so what we're anticipating is either a slight increase or a slight decrease to the 16.9 million but nonetheless that positions us favorably well for going into the next fiscal Year's budget taking a look at we always compare ourselves to the gfoa best practices the 16.67% which is 6.3 million we meet that Target we also compare ourselves to our own policy balance Reserve which is 5.6 we are currently 38% above our 5.6 um internal policy so one of the things that we've been discussing as well over the last uh several weeks is and one of the things that the gfoa has been promulgating over the last several months is that we need need to take a another type of a look at how do we develop our fund balance and what we're seeing around the nation is that a lot of agencies a lot of entities are shifting away from this 16.7 and this 15% value because basically they're not measured against anything they're just values and so what we're seeing is more of a risk based or climate based approach uh models are currently being deved veled we don't have access to them yet but we do have access to some resources throughout our insurance carrier that we can gain some information from so what we're looking at doing you know over the next um year or so is finding a better way to measure what our real fund balance should be because you know whenever we have climate impact we go through those dollars very very quickly the blessing is that we we get re reimbursed from FEMA or we get reimbursed from insurance so even though fund balance decreases we get reimbursed for most of it but again we have to have the funds available to be able to meet the need should the need occur so any additional comments on that Mr C okay so do do you remember right off the top of your head roughly how much we spent in the give it two months after Hurricane I have to consult with our FEMA expert it's just an interesting statistic spent um approximately a million dollars for debris removal and another 400,000 for emergency protective Mees right after the hurricane okay we just pay for that right out the gate we just write the checks and then we worry about reimbursement later is that correct that is correct you're right Mary when you say later there are time there are certain things yes reimbursement from and the thing about it is is a lot of the reimbursements that come to the city don't come directly to us from FEMA they come to us through the State of Florida so you go through the FEMA process and you get your what they call obligation and then it goes to the state and the state put you through a very similar process in order to actually receive the funding and uh Mr door here is our lead on those things as well as our our Consultants who have been an immense help to us in working through those those processes um but we've we luckily for us we have received some FEMA reimbursement for some of the things mainly our protective measures work in the very first 72 hours work that we've gotten those things back and hopefully we will start to see um you know even the larger projects that we'll start seeing those dindle in you know over the next few years we still have a reimbursements that we're expecting back on the damage that was done some of the damage that was done to Riverside but in addition addition to that as you well know uh we have been working to get the proper cost estimates for the uh repairs toore storm water ponds and that'll take a few more years probably before we get those funds totally recovered from V because they're they're just very very particular so good question thank you so if we go back up to the top where where are we at for this fiscal year okay so as we just discussed uh we um are asking a 6% increase in the mill which in addition to the other other items will create a $3.9 million increase to uh ad velorum every year we forecast based on previous years Trends and things of that nature what's happening to our utility taxes and it looks like uh this year like other years that they will increase approximately 5% our business uh receipt taxes have pretty much plateaued and they haven't increased at all over the last few years in fact they've decreased slightly uh licenses permits and fees you know again based on Trends we're uh projecting almost a 2.6% increase what you see here in intergovernmental is a slight decrease some of that is because of our um half cent sales tax or Revenue sharing I can't remember which one but it's showing a deep decrease and that's something that we've talked about over the last several months is that at some point in time the economy is going to Plateau people are going to stop spending and uh I think we're starting to see that right now in these numbers we haven't received all the updates from the state yet but right now uh we are projecting a slight decrease to this number hopefully when we get the projections in from the state um uh will either eliminate this number or we'll have an increase we expect those numbers to come in sometime during the month of August but this this line right here is currently incomplete uh charges for services uh charges for services are projected to increase uh 8.88% other revenues are projected to increase 39.2 3% and that's primarily due to interest income as we all know uh interest rates have gone up significantly over the last 18 months and we've included a conservative guest estimate if you will uh in other revenues because we know that the feds are going to start reducing those revenues over time by how much and when it's very difficult for us to factor that in right now so when you take a look at this uh we're ending our total revenues at $41 million against last year 36 an increase in revenues about 4.5 million any questions okay going forward taking a look at expenses um um General government salaries and benefits this includes the 6% increase uh for General government employees the reason why this doesn't um equal 6% is because when we factor in the new B for the new budget year we have certain vacancies that are out there and when people are rehired for more for more tenured folks when they leave uh basically they come in at a lower rate so right now based upon our current payroll simulation model modules it looks like um we're projecting a 4.54% increase based upon using the 6% again Lower tenured employees coming in a less salary generating that lower increase um taking a look at this line right here this line is basically reduced significantly and that's because we we moov the AE contract which is the temporary contract that's used for Parks and Recreation personnel for their summer help from this line down to uh operating expenses we had to do that because it was skewing our calculations when we were trying to do our our filings for the IRS at the end of every quarter and the end of the year so this just helps us reconcile those those outstanding balances the uh police salaries benefits pension fire salaries benefits pension these include where we currently are at in in the in the negotiation process overtime uh is increased a little bit uh based upon uh the increases in salaries health insurance uh we are projecting a 4% increase in health insurance but again it comes out to 2.47% and the reason it comes out to 2.47% is because we've had changes in Personnel throughout the year and when we develop the budget we develop it based on folks coming in at employee only rates and not at family or other tiered rates so that's why it's a little bit lower than the 4% uh vehicle replacement purchases basically you know we're putting as much money as we possibly can into this program uh as you know we've been a little deficient here over the last several years um the ask this year for Replacements was about approximately $5 million this is what we can fund you know this current fiscal year vehicle replacement fund and Le of excuse me yeah leases this right here represents the outstanding leases that we currently you know have in in place and we're paying them down year over-year and so that's why you see that there's a decrease of $79,000 at least payments are falling off General Insurance um and with workers comp basically um we're projecting a 10% increase but again based on fluctuation ations within the values it pans out to roughly an 8% increase um in in the budget operating expenses uh includes this bump right here from the AE contract that we discussed a few moments ago uh reflects a 20% increase but when you remove the effect of this right here it's roughly a 133% increase and again please remember as was stated a few moments ago um normally our increases right around 5% so this reflects the inflation that has taken place uh within the operating expenses over the last uh last year we've gone through the budget and eliminated as many things as we possibly could could we've made reductions only to find that the reductions that were made within the budget were offset by other increases elsewhere within the operating expense line somewhat discouraging Capital expenses right now um we're putting in $500,000 in that line again it's not enough but that's what we can afford when we match up our Capital expenses our Capital expenses are one-time expenditures over time and so basically what we've done is we funded our Capital expenses with what we think our interest income is going to be for the next fiscal year right now uh as we current as it currently stands we're we're our uh uh budget buting a reserve of $350,000 for a contingency you know as I sit here right now knowing what we're going through right now in the 2324 with these impacts from our contracts and these impacts from maintenance and things breaking that have happened unexpectedly um this this may not be enough uh so but we won't know that until we go through uh the fiscal year what we're doing right now is reducing internal expenses elsewhere to cover a lot of the things that are currently currently breaking or need additional maintenance around the city so looking at that our total expenses come in right about 41.7 million um and there's a uh basically a net loss from uh expenditures revenues of $655,000 any questions about expenditures okay going down we we've worked to solve that that problem when you take a look at trans transfers in transfers out and we um transfers out for debt uh basically right now excuse me that combination yields a $742,000 contribution to fund balance was quite unexpected so what we propose that we do if we go back up is take this $742,000 and add it to Capital so so please remember the proposed millage rate is a three-year plan we don't want to have to come back next year and ask for an additional bump and we don't want to have to come back the following year and yet ask for another bump what this ask of the 6 bills does for us is it gives us a little bit of a increase this year uh for that we can plug into Capital expenses and you know we need to tackle those Capital expenses we need to get some of those projects out of the way some of those asks out of the way so that'll help us there but in the future years that goes away and the actual use of fund balance next year I believe is zero the following year it's about seven or eight maybe n n $900,000 but when we sit down and take a look at the budget with that kind of a change at the beginning of the budget process we view that as being manageable so hopefully when we get to the end of the third year uh the shortfall won't grow any more than that and we'll be able ble to uh mitigate that and find a solution to it at that time so that pretty much rounds up the budget if we go to the bottom and you know again we've already had this discussion but just to recap it really quickly you know based upon the math and the math only um we are projecting an ending fund balance for fiscal year uh 24 uh 25 of 14.5 million we're adding to that $742,000 and until we put that back into Capital once we put that back into Capital it goes away um and so we're projecting an ending fund balance right now of the same of 14.5 million um and again we meet 16.67 gfoa best practices and we also meet our own internal policy of 15% we exceed the required balance by 36.651021 balances the budget for the next fiscal year and makes the third year of the contract manageable and that's why we're asking for the 6 mils Mr Cobb any uh yes Council that was one thing I wanted to mention to you that we are this is something that we're doing this year we're actually putting the money in the budget to plan for the negotiations the end of our negotiations that we're doing and so we are we did take a look at all three years and to such that we wanted to make sure that in in the past we would have just said Council just adopt just adopt the budget and we'll we'll fix it later and that was one of the things that we noticed that when we started looking at the labor market and we started looking at where we were and where we needed to be we we felt like we needed to go ahead and get that money in there and we needed to get the money in for everything uh we wanted to avoid having to come back to you at mid year in March and say oh by the way we've got to do this drastic overhaul of our budget in order to implement the things that we've approved and so that's why we're recommending the 0.6 M Ms increase the other thing that I wanted to talk about to to just emphasize here our practice and it's it's something that we hold true to is that we don't use the fund balance for reoccurring costs when you talk about salaries and benefits and pensions retirement all those things are reoccurring costs we try to use when we use fund balance we try to use them for the one-offs because if you use them for the reoccurring cost they're going to be there again next year and so it just it just starts drawing down your your fund balance whereas with capital projects or one-time projects that we have such as studies things like that uh those things we can do that one year but then we can put that money back in the following year once it's done and so that's one of the things that we've done is that we we're this budget is based it's it's Market Market driven it's it's based on trying to make sure that we get the money in the budget now so that we can finish up uh we won't have to do a massive uh budget amendment once we once we're finished with our uh with our negotiations and we took a look at the three years the threeyear terms that's one of the things about our Union contracts is that state law says three years and we took a look at that to make sure that as we went through that three years we were able to stabilize this budget over that threeyear period And as Mr Bo said yes there's some challenges in the third year but they're manageable they're things that we see every year in January and you know that's the thing that we looked at uh we're recommending tonight you know that we this budget is balanced it's balanced at the 5.94 operating millage and we're recommending that this is the millage that we move forward with uh when we get down into the next item but we wanted to present this to you because we did want to explain why why what got us to these things we had challenges this year that we uh haven't seen in quite a while and we wanted to make sure and once again we didn't want to get to a point where three years from now we're not in the market anymore and that's something that's very very important to us we want to make sure that we are in the market because we want to pay those Market wages our strategic plan says that that we will keep our wages comparable and marketable with you know in the market and so that's one of the things that our strategic plan calls for and so that's what we've tried to do here both with not only with Public Safety but also with our general fund minimum wages as well so um that's I believe that's our presentation we're open that you may have quick question uh you you mentioned being prepared the next three years is the idea to collect enough in advance for it not to impact the budget so this some of these funds would be essentially set aside to make sure that we can cover our police and fire requirements going forward is that is that what I wouldn't say that they're set aside I would say that the revenue requirements generated by the increase in the millage rate over time will meet the need okay so potentially are because there's a whole lot of numbers floating around so I would expect from that scenario that our fund balance would increase by the end of this year so we had extra to drw down from next year and then it would be in year three where there may not be enough and we would have to dip into fund balance or or make other adjustments to be able to meet all of the promises that that may be made all right let me call your attention to this the millage rate generates an additional $742,000 over over and above our current um expenditures and transfers in and out Etc okay what we're asking for permission to do with this excess is to put it back into our Capital so that we can okay so that we can attack the capital need that we have here at the city we have woefully underfunded our capital Capital over the last several years the only thing that has saved us is the American Rescue plan act the arpa funds arpa funds was a gift to the city 10 million went to the utilities the other 10 mil 10 million went to solving the needs and uh other parts of the city primarily the general fund and and so on and so forth well that did not really cover the all the needs so we have to continue to be smart we have to continue to be wise we have to continue to set aside funds for for our Capital otherwise at some point in time unfortunately we will end up in an even a worse position than we were in prior to receipt of the arpa funds so we're asking for that contribution to to Capital tonight Now setting money aside going forward no I I don't think that we are setting any funds aside going forward from the military I think we're meeting the need okay so I think it's well excuse me let me rephrase I think we believe based upon the modeling that we have done is that we are on a break even basis for next year and the following year like Mr Cobb said we will have a shortfall but the shortfall based on our previous experience should be manageable so that's the best way I can explain that makes sense we need to also keep in mind these you know if you scroll up and you see the police and the fire that's right we're still in negotiations with the police and fire this is the city's position the the the Union's position are still off from where we're at so that that F contribution to fund balance is could change dramatically by the time we get done with these these contract negotiations it's an excellent point Mr um and if you go back to your do you have your PowerPoint presentation still on your computer if you go back to the police and the fire um salaries um you when you go and you look at those that is just the minimum salary that doesn't take into account the full compensation package and the contribution to the pension plan and what they're receiving back from the pension plan when you put that up against these we're either below we're either at or below where the other agencies are so we need to make sure that we still maintain a comp competitive uh you know main maintain competition with these other agencies or we're going to still be in the same situation than we're in currently so we need to always focus on that and that you know that dollar amount that we're seeing for the you know contribution of fund balance or that we're going to put into Capital may go more into this as we get closer to a final agreement on the um with the police of fire so and that is that is important that we are still in negotiations right so we just need to to make sure that we we keep that in mind and so unfortunately you know the mayor and I and the rest of the council we always like to be done with those negotiations by the time we get into this budget period but we're not at that point and so we don't know what that number is going to be so that's why we're setting a tentative millage rate tonight as we draw closer and we set that final millage rate hopefully we'll be closer to to a um closer to agreement with with the the negotiations and be able to adjust the final millage rate um appropriately um but we have to set the tenative at a point because we're not going to be able to exceed that so we're we're being conservative with the tenative and possibly the final millage rate could could come down um when we get closer or the the fund balance contribution could could you know be able to buffer where we're at so we just have to take that in mind keep that in mind as well so but I appreciate all the hard work that you all put in on this um it you know I know it's not easy and each year but we do need to to make sure that this the city can go forward do you have your the budget presentation back up or the and because you is a future projection tab is that updated or is that so the so if you scroll down this is what we're looking at for for future years and those and those out you know the other fiscal years that what we're seeing for a withdrawal from the fund balance and this is with the the 6 millage increase all the way across the board correct so o you're fine you're fine so what we're looking at um it's it's best to see on this line right here we're looking at a projected um use of fund balance in 2627 of $863,000 um and again that's manageable but I have to tell you Mr poock you're scaring me by mentioning these other things and and the negotiations aren't final yet and you're absolutely right uh we have to make sure that we're not only well positioned to meet those additional asss that may come forward in the current fiscal year but also in in future projected years so but again right now this is manageable um as Mr Cobb said so well this is where we usually find ourselves every March or April when we present the budget to you uh so um as things mature and become more crystallized through throughout time you know we'll have better numbers but right now based upon our modeling that's what it looks like and Mr Bop if I could th that 8 163,000 and that 676 th000 Usef fund balance that is within our 3% budgetary standard that we utilize that we you know when we we have a we have a rule that we say we won't exceed 3% of Revenue Vue and so that's within that 3% now one thing as we as I stated earlier in practice we do not use it for reoccurring cost we when we bring use of fund balance we do it for onetime cost so that would be something that we would be looking at is if we did have this money in here to balance the budget we would be looking at using it for one-time cost and not for reoccurring to me the greatest part about this whole model is that Kelly if you could scroll down a little bit um is the line that says unfunded expenses uh that's my favorite line of all because it means we're meeting our needs and we're funding the things we need to find and so that that's something that I really like about what the model is telling us at this moment and and this is based on the best information we have as I said before we've got another work session coming in August we'll be have it refined even better but that's the thing that I've noticed is that was that unfunded expenses we were there there's not any and so uh that was something that we saw that was the best part about it as I said before trying to stabilize this budget over the term of the contracts trying to stabilize the budget so that we can go forward and and meet those needs uh I agree with the gentleman when he said you know we provide very good services and and this is how we can continue providing those Services uh if you saw the worst case scenario that would be a huge impact to our budgets to and a lot of those operating budgets as Mr boob said it would be you know 75% of his operating budget in the finance department the other departments are the same way when you look at our support what we call the support departments uh they're very small you know very small PE very small in size less than 10 people in most cases uh so when you talk to look start to look at cutting you know 50% of their budgets it it's it's uh a huge loss in in service and especially in our operating budgets too as well what I call the operations departments police fire Public Works Recreation each one of those have a key component of what we do in the fabric of this community and so in looking at the types of cuts that would be requireed and when you think about Public Works especially the general fun part of Public Works are streets and Fleet you know and so we need we need those people to maintain those Vehicles we have a wide variety of vehicles it's not just cars and trucks I mean wide variety when you talk about fire trucks and heavy duty vehicles and things like that um and you know our Fleet we only have I think it's either three or four people in Fleet and they can they take care of everything we we do even our equipment they take care of it so they're vitally important to us as well as all the other small departments but our when we look at you know obviously with police and fire that is that is a core service of this city and I will say this about recreation in Parks it once again it's a core service and I remember the push back we got when we went from three League Seasons to two League seasons and you know there was a lot of outcry about that but it was something we had to do in order to make the budget work that year uh Recreation our Recreation Department is a regional provider we it's not just for the city of oo it's for everybody around us because I said our County doesn't have those types of facilities in this area and and so our our recreation department does a lot for a lot of people uh one the worst days of my tenure here with the city was when Ian hit and took away the senior center they had worked so hard to transform Riverside Park into a senior center and then in hit two days before it was supposed to open you know and now we've been renovating it to put it back together so that we can you know get that finally up and operating so I mean that's the thing is that our rec department is part of the fabric of this community one of the things I thought about that was you know just sort of put you know something in your stomach was what would happen if we couldn't do summer camp a lot of residents in this city would have to start looking I mean their their daycare cost would just go up a lot and they wouldn't have the same type of quality programming and care that our staff provides to them and but those are the types of things that we would have to look at I you know when we looked at what would we be doing if we had to make cuts and police and fire well we can't cut our core Services we can't cut EMS we can't cut firefighting we can't cut the stuff we do in Patrol and investigations we'd have to start looking at our community involvement and what we're doing there and these are things that are you know the community involvement components of those two departments are very very important and so that's you know that's one of the things that we looked at and especially with this plan is that stabilizing this budget over the next three years so that we can address those needs and provide those services and so that's why we're recommending that that 0.6 millage increase and and our staffing level now are just getting back to what they were uh that's yes sir uh we're we're roughly around 330 employees and that's that's about where we were when when Co hit um uh just now actually it's about where we were when the Great Recession went through and you know we're just now getting we I think we last last count we had five vacancies we've got about 15 in process but we haven't really added a head headcount and and I mean an overall FTE headcount a long time it's been a while yes it's been a while since we've done that and I you know we obviously tried to real we wanted to build back police and fire we wanted to you know that was first build back Recreation build back Public Works those were the you know the the operational that's where we concentrated those things uh you know would love to be able to get we've gotten a few of the support departments back you know to where they they they're operating but even still because they're small departments they wear multiple hats and that's that's something that a lot of people do here in the city uh I often say it we're a lean operation and uh I had a lady call the other day and I answered the phone and they said um they started asking could I speak to Mr Cobb thinking that I was the assistant and I said I'm sorry ma'am I don't have an assistant you've got me and that was something that she was oh okay but that's something that it's more important that we have operational we meet those operational needs then for me to have an assistant and uh I was lucky at young age my mother taught me how to type so I I could do that but the thing is is that this as I said before this budget addresses those needs it stabilizes over the next three years and um so we're recommending that we we've balanced it utilizing the 0.6 increase to take us to the um 5.94 50 millage so and one last thing there was never $4.8 million missing from our budget I yeah I'm glad you brought that yeah that was there we've we've never been missing that kind of money I mean every penny is just about accounted for I mean you no not just about it every penny is accounted for there been no money missing from our from our funds I don't know where those those figures came from but that never been missing money I can tell you I've worked for the city for 28 years and I've been the city manager for 10 and that's the first time I've ever heard that to be honest and I know Mr Boop would not definitely would not be sleeping at night if that was something that happened just to add a level of insurance to that statement if that was the case the Auditors would have definitely brought that to council's attention and that would have been an aut comment any other questions comments okay I think we're ready to move on to the resolution okay so resolution number 4486 d24 establishing the 10 of the fiscal year 2024 25 millage rat and scheduling first budget public hearing Mr Cobb thank you is there any more backup that we could have no but de May there are some things that I do need to State uh on the record uh so that we do comply with the truth and millage uh statutes and that is the purpose of the setting the tenative millage tonight is for the truth and millage uh statutes so that the pr appraiser can send out the notice and include the tenative millage so I'll get this started and I'll move as quickly as I can uh this is a request for Council to establish the fiscal year 20242 tenative millage rates and schedule the first public hearing for the 20242 uh proposed budget for the purpose of the public notification in the Florida truth and millage statut it's called trim TR IM I I keep asking where's the r i want to know where the r is but it's truth and Mage the fiscal year 2425 proposed budg is balanced using the recommended tenative operating millage of 5.95 4 Mills and that's $5.95 4 per $11,000 of assess valuation The Debt Service for the 2003 General obligation bond issue will be set at a the tentative millage rate of 01210 Mills or 12.10 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation the total millage rate the operating millage rate of 5.94 plus the geobond millage rate of 01210 is 6.75 Mills the tenative Mill operating operating millage rate of 5.95 for Ms will result in 23,123 672 in Revenue to support the general fund this is an increase of 3,933 42 over the fiscal year 2324 24 adopted general fund budget setting the tentative millage tentative operating millage for the general fund at 5.95 4 Mills will result in a Citywide tax increase of 18.65% over the rolled back rate of 5.38 7 Mills that's that five the roll back rate is the millage where it's they call it Revenue neutral and so it's less than what our current operating millage rate is the maximum millage rate that the city can can adopt maximum tenanted millage rate that we can adopt stopt is 6.14 26 Mills and that requires uh that reflects the T maximum tenative millage that can be enacted and it requires a a vote of four affirmative votes per the trim statute now I will tell you that the 59450 recommended operating tenative millage also requires a four also requires four affirmative votes in order to enact uh the um resolution number 448 6-24 establishes a tenative millage operate a tenative operating millage rate of 5.95 four Mills and a tenative General obligation Bond debt millage rate of 0.120 Mills for a total millage rate of 6.75 Mills and schedules the first public hearing for the fiscal year 20242 proposed budget for Thursday September 5th 2024 at 6:30 p.m. in the council chambers of veto City Hall 400 Alexandria bull Ard Alo Florida 32765 it's recommended that city council adopt resolution number 4486 d24 in your staff report we did provide you with a recommended motion and that recommended motion covers all the bases that I just went over so that if you would uh use that motion to make if you would use that to make your motion as far as so that we can make sure that we comply with the truth in millage statute and that's all I have de very good all right this is a public comment part I do not have any written requests to for anybody to speak is there anybody the eyes that wishes to speak on the subject okay seeing none we will close public comment so what is the favor of council I make a motion to adopt resolution number 4486 d24 adopt in a tenative operating millage rate of 5954 Mills for fiscal year 20242 which results in a city-wide tax increase of 18.65% above the roll back rate of 5.38 s Mills adopting a tenative General obligation Bond millage rate of 0.121 Mills for fiscal year 20242 adopting a tenative total millage rate of 6.07 five Ms and scheduling the first public hearing for September 5th 2024 at 6:30 p.m. OVO City Hall 400 Alexandria Boulevard OVO Florida 32765 all right we have a motion and a second any discussion council member PA council member Brit sorry the first gentleman that spoke uh had his belief that government spend every dime they get that's true that's what we're doing here we're going to spend every dime we get but that's why this is important we're we're identifying our needs and that's all we're asking for just happens to be this year we're going uh Happ to have a little bump up but I will tell you that uh I went back to when I first moved here in 1990 and looked at our millage rates there were times when our total millage rate was over 20 Ms uh right now I think we're below 16 we're like like around 15 if this passes and I even if every other uh organization at adds to the military I don't think we're going to be above 17 at the most uh probably under 16 so it's it's not uh going to be that much of an impact the folks I feel sorry for are the folks that just moved here because save our homes doesn't do them any good right they have to pay the full uh appraised value uh on their property uh and as it goes along the they uh their assess value can only go up 3% a year I think that's correct right uh I've been here 35 years uh my uh billage uh Bill my tax bill has gone up $400 since uh 2008 when I put my addition on so that's $40 a month $30 a month over 15 years uh it's not that much uh if you've got save our homes I'm not exactly sure why save our homes is the way it is but uh it seems to help the folks that have been here a while and it requires the folks that have move here from out of state to to pay to get in it's just the way it is um I think it's about commercial versus residential if if we lived in Altamont very small City a very small population with with a very large commercial base we might not be sitting here um we're 80% residential 20% commercial that that hurts us and I hear people complaining about apartments but apartments are commercial and they those commercial entities pay full price they don't have a save our home so we we've identified some areas in the city where we want to build some density whether it's apartments or or commercial retail or whatever to help us uh balance that that equation so that's that's another thing um I think that's about all I got for now it's uh nobody likes to pay taxes including me um but we're doing the best we can and I think we've done a good job on on explaining what what our needs are thank you very much Jerry staff Kelly Council woman tuer make sure I'm on yeah good so well I want to thank everybody for coming out here um I think my job here is to be fully transparent with citizens when we have problems come up and our job is to make the best decision we can with that information that we have so we can keep operating at this level of service that our citizens expect and that they frankly deserve so I want to talk about the level of service we have in ovido and we had citizens come up here and agree we have a great level of service and I agree with that um I know we're not perfect but I want us I want to kind of remind everybody where we're at here and and yes I know we're talking about a tax increase and none of us like to ever do that and I hope we Whittle it down a little bit but right now if we do what we're talking about our military overall with County and fire Services we fall right into the middle of the pack of the Seven Cities in sual County so we're talking Winter Springs Altamont Lake Mary a lot of those places like council member Britain said have commercial value in them but we have a couple differences I want to point out we have clean water not every city on that list does and some of them have higher tax rates than us we had the largest storm a 500-year storm and our utilities were way over capacity and we did not dump sewage into the ground these are these are Big deals and it's because we have robust systems and we're trying to make sure we maintain what we have and we also have a large percent of Green Space way more than almost every other city in this County so I want to make sure we know we do have have a high level of service and we are citizen oriented and I personally am very conscious in any decision that involves tax increases and I know we all out are but I also want to say we saw this problem coming we came two years ago with a fire tax district and we said hey this is a problem we want to make sure we can keep our fire and our police officers in house and it's and it's a problem as far as we need money and we had citizens come out in force and say don't do it with the fire tax District because that affects homeowners so I'm here to say we listened this does not affect homesteaded Property Owners because you have sa homes um there is no solution here to do nothing we have to pay our First Responders our police and our fire and personally I will always vote to make sure our infrastructure and level of service remains as we expect it that's all I have great Madam mayor uh we do have a great level of service and we have a lot of things that people want and there's a lot of things people need and I think there is some disagreement between even us up here and and definitely with with residents about what is a need versus a want so while I do see the need to raise the tax rate to an extent in looking at the three-year projection I see the wisdom in that first off but also from a policy perspective I see it as avoiding a conversation that could be very difficult and pushing it down the road um when the fire district came up before we got pretty close to potentially funding it so we currently have a funding mechanism that will allow us to have a separate fund for our fire our fire department I would like to see that discussion happen sooner rather than later and I think um going for the higher rate makes it easier for us not to have that difficult conversation with the public again so that's kind of where I'm leaning on that and then there's just a lot of other things going on with potential rate changes and an ask for a new police department that that makes me think it's even more important to reinitiate the conversation about the fire district so that's that's where I stand but I I do appreciate how transparent uh like Miss tuer said this this process has been tremendously transparent and look at all the people here thank you for coming out and for speaking up and sharing a a grand diversity of opinion um you a lot of you have reached out to me directly I've seen your your comments on on social media and uh this is the kind of input we need because these are really complex decisions and at the end of the day we all live here we all enjoy the quality of life we already have and nobody wants to really change it but it may be time to have some really complicated discussions about how do we appropriately and and this goes to Mr Britain's point he mentioned the yeah and I'll use the word it's it's inequitable for for people who moved here a long time ago to pay less in property taxes than the The Neighbor Next Door who pays you it's an identical house and they pay you know three four five sometimes six times as much just as a a the reality of Florida law and there's nothing that we can do to change that but we can shift some of these the this income that is is truly necessary we can shift it from a millage based thing to something that is fee based and it's a discussion that I do hope we will have soon and I just wanted to make one more comment with this increase and we know a lot of it is going to police and fire in those increases and wages we still operate our fire department at a lower rate than the county does yes and that is so important after doing this increase like I said we're we're in the middle of the pack for overall mill rate and we still operate at a more efficient rate than the fire department so I just want to stress that we are really operating they are really operating this city as well as they can with the money we have and it goes further than a lot of the cities around here very good so again I want to thank Mr Boop Mr Jones noria the guys did a great job on this thank you I know it's a it's a lot of work that happens every year um and again that's one of our responsibilities is to have a balanced budget and approve a balanced budget so you did a lot of good work on it I think a lot of good comments have already been said here I think you know as we talk about police and fire we we got to have a competitive wage structure for these folks in order to retain them and to recruit them um I think we I know a lot of them personally I think we have a great uh Fire Department in Police Department here and uh definitely want to keep them here so it was a very tough decision obviously to take that millage increase but it has to be done we can't keep kicking the can down the road um we had to do something so with that we have a motion in a second we shall take a vote all those in favor say I I I opposed I all right 41 all right next up we have Vision zero action plan all right actually Deputy Mayor can we take a little break so that we could uh change out and hook up hook up the the metr plan and get them into the projector all right sounds good thank you e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e you got everybody ke is going into the audience I guess to sit in the chairs okay so we have Vision zero action plan so cob is there a background to it or a little bit deputy mayor uh this is a an initiative of metrop plan Orlando and I don't know if you'll recall they've been doing some citizen engagement activities throughout the city and this in zero is a program to address safety and and they've they've been putting together uh metrop plan along with their Consultants VHB uh putting together a an action plan to address uh safety and and to at uh basically along our thars and at our intersections and so they're they putting it they're here tonight to give you an update on their findings uh we have with us miss La balk from metrop plan and Miss Megan F Ferguson from HDR and they're going to walk you through the action plan that they've been working on and based on the findings that through their research and through their citizen engagement and uh also must also introduce Mr Paul urang our engineering manager in public works he's been the lead staff member uh for this project and so I'll turn it over to miss Ferguson and let them present to you the uh Vision zero action plan great all right well thank you for that lovely introduction my name is Laura balk with metrop plan Orlando I'm the manager of project development we're so thankful to be here this afternoon or this evening at this point um to talk about the safety action plan that we've been working with Paul and other staff from throughout the city um for the city of oo so I'm going to kick us off provide a little bit of context um about what we're doing so this Safety Action Plan is being developed as part of a larger Regional effort that's being overseen by metrop plan Orlando that's being funded with a $3.8 million grant that we won from fhwa through the safe streets and roads for all program with that Grant we have um funded the development of a regional Safety Action Plan that covers the three County region that you see here um as well as developing local action plans for each of the counties and every city within the three County region except for the city of Orlando which had an existing cfd action plan that they're updating now um we really feel like this meets the the moment that we're in in terms of an additional focus on safety I know that we always focus on safety but as we started digging into the numbers um we looked at crashes from 2018 through 2022 as a sort of our evaluation period for this study um and within that time frame we were seeing that five people were involved in fatal crashes on our roadways within the region uh 35 people involved in serious injury crashes throughout the region um and so we just felt like there's more of a focus that's needed at this point on safety and we're we're moving forward to doing that um a little bit about the the safe system approach this is a a data driven approach to planning for safety on the roadways that uh at the heart of it says that each of the five elements that are highlighted on this slide have a role in helping us reduce crashes on our roadways and helping us get to zero this is a bit of a a departure from sort of traditional approaches to safety that focus more on individual responsibility on what the driver or The Pedestrian or the bicyclist may have done wrong in a crash and with the safe system approach it doesn't get rid of that individual responsibility that's still there but it puts forward the idea that all of us have a role in making our road safer if we can uh design our roadways to be safe safer to encourage safer speeds if we can get messaging and education out to our roadway users about how to be safer bicyclists or drivers or pedestrians if we can work with our automakers to keep adding those safety elements to our our vehicles um if we can improve our postc crash care to clear out crashes more quickly and um reduce the number of secondary crashes all of that helps us get to our goal of zero fatal and serious injury crashes on our roadways um and this slide shows the the Fatal and serious injury crashes within the city of Ovito um I will say that you are among the lower total number of of traffic deaths and serious injuries but of course um even one is too many so on this particular slide uh the pink um circles show where the traffic deaths occurred and then the oranges uh show where there were serious and fatal injuries um and I'm going to turn it over to Megan who's going to talk a little bit about the analysis and Outreach that we did to really try and focus on where those critical spots were to focus on safety here in the city yep thanks Lauren and just want to thank everyone for having us here tonight it's really an honor to present on traffic safety uh before we got too far into the data we went ahead and hosted a handful of public Outreach events and the purpose of these was to share information about Vision zero as well as ask for feedback on areas where residents may feel unsafe or may have area for improvement uh one of the first we held was right here in Chambers so we really appreciated that opportunity and followed up since April with a handful of other events a couple you see on the bottom of the slide here uh one more was hosted at the Ovito mall to focus on our teen and and younger drivers and some of the things we heard from people in the community was just general support for the project a lot of people were excited and agreed on the goal of zero uh we heard some challenges on reaching Vision zero which would be distracted driving and getting some lighting on the roadways so looking forward to addressing that in the plan itself and all said and done sitting here today we've hosted 23 total events across the county took that data to then form What's called the high Injury Network or you might see a reference other places as hn and this just highlights the roadways that have the disproportionate number of deadly and serious injury crashes uh you'll see two colors on the map the pink is any Road in the city could be a city a county or State Road and the green is City roads only and when we initially did this it kind of surprised us that we had a couple of the residential roads like sanctuary and Roosevelt just off of Reed popup uh but I think it speaks so what Laura had mentioned earlier that there are really only four deadly or Serious injury crashes in the city which occurred between our analysis period of 2018 to 2022 uh so those ended up popping up since they were our vulnerable users either a bicyclist or a motorcyclist a little bit more on the data unfortunately both deadly crashes involve distracted driving and and I'll share the flip side of that detail is that there were no alcohol or drug related ksis or killed or severely injured crashes here in the city about half of those deadli or Serious injury crashes happened outside of daylight and this includes Dawn or dusk a lot of those were in the 6 to 900 p.m. hours when people are traveling to and from work and the most common crash types were left turns or pedestrian crashes and another note there is two of the three pedestrian crashes did happen on 426 so we think it's really great timing with the project going in add of talking to people in the community and amongst ourselves with the data uh we worked pretty closely with City staff uh do want to thank Paul again for facilitating some of the meetings and getting just valuable insight to the city and some direction as we move forward with the action plan uh big question is how do we actually get to zero uh going to be a combination L talked about the safe system approach of engineering countermeasures some of which you see on this screen here right now and non-engineering counter measures so it just showed a flavor of what these engineering counter measures could be these are from the Federal Highway Administration there's about 28 of them shown and these have seen success in small cities and big cities and urban and rural areas uh so a couple I'll call out is lighting and adding sidewalks as proven safety counter measures uh then we have our equally important non-engineering counter measures our enforcement and education opportunities getting into the action plan uh the bottom right photo is a screenshot of what you'll see in the plan itself don't not going to go through each uh action here today but wanted to show AIT of what it's going to look like uh they're organized around the safe system elements and you'll have an action a description a recommended start year and also responsible parties uh there are about 18 to 22 actions currently in the plan so we recognize that not all of them are likely to start next year they really could be anytime over the next five years uh trying to be sensitive to match some of these actions to staff and Financial Resources we know time and money are finite and we want to use them as effective as possible last thing I'll note was some of the recommended actions as we did look at other City initiatives uh the Strategic plan we looked at the 10-year and the 2045 Mobility plan and tried to sync up efforts of what you're already doing and here's a flavor of those 22 actions just I'll touch on each an example for each of the safe system elements uh for safe a rows we have formalizing a safety policy for for any resurfacing projects to include uh safety counter measures piloting quick build Lane repurposing projects and this is an example we saw alfaya was Boulevard road diet was in your Mobility plan so it could be an opportunity to streamline that project safer speeds installing additional speed feedback signs which have shown to have some success uh launching a vision zero Outreach campaign and this would build upon the city's uh web page that's already posted with some Vision zero information getting to safer Vehicles looking at some new safety systems that could be coming out in the Horizon uh there is some federal legislation looking at automated emergency braking in 2029 or newer Vehicles so when you're looking at rep purchasing fleet vehicles seeing if they could sync up with that timing and safer postc crash care promoting CPR to the general public uh before EMS or professionals arrive if they intermediate services that someone next to a crash or a family member could provide it's part of the safe system approach also in the plan you'll see some of these what we're calling prioritized projects and we know these are unfunded needs right now uh every one of those H roadways will have an Associated project or suggested countermeasures and we do not there's some Nuance to this uh since the data was based on 2018 to 2022 we have Broadway up there under construction we have 434 South of Mitchell hammock which is going to be undergoing a resurfacing uh so we're just noting this as additional opportunities for continued monitoring and possible integration for future measures if they're needed on those same city roads Mitchell hammock west of 434 and a couple residential roads another example of what you'll see in the plan we have one of those H segments with the aerial on the right the crash types that happen overlay on top of it and the bottom right has those potential Solutions anything with the blue check is one of those proven safety counter measures uh like segment lighting another example for uh State Road 434 again we're noting these as coordination opportunities uh with fdot uh the Safety Office does sit on the seminal County steering committee as well as a regional Vision zero task force so I know they're looking forward to integrating some of our findings and with that I'll kick it back to Paul to talk about uh the resolution and year for Zero thanks Megan so basically it's sort of like where do we go from here so we we talked about some different percentage of reductions and what made sense to us is to look at a 5% reduction per year and Target the year 2045 as where we re that meet that that net zero um deadly and serious injury crashes so from here what are our next steps so one thing we would like to do is to come back at a future council meeting and have a resolution where we formally adopt our vision zero plan um we'll adopt the action plan um we'll need to move forward with our first year actions and be able to track our PR progress and then also look for some opportunities um with the federal government either with planning or implementation grants so with that that that concludes our presentation we'd be happy to answer any questions so what what direction you need from us tonight we actually don't need anything from you tonight this is really just information for you we will come back at a later date with with a resolution I did have one question so on one of your slides you let's see what slide number it is hold on 13 if we can go back to there real quick yeah so on there I'm I'm big on bicycle Lanes being safe and we all know putting them right next to active traffic is not safe because if you fall for any reason you're falling into a car you got no chance right so I've been up here many times where I'm like anytime we put in a bike lane it should be out next to the sidewalk it's the same amount of room you have the space for it and it's safe and this is saying that that is a safer method method of doing that as well as putting in buffered but it's also referring to Our Land Development code and the reason I wanted to bring some attention there is because our Land Development code right now is being updated so I'm just want to make sure that even if we're waiting to implement this that these changes to make our bike line safety or anything that should be put into our LGC code comes ASAP because they are updating that right now and rather being amendment I want to incorporate it now versus later if that makes sense as long as it doesn't delay yeah don't delay our LDC code but I I want to make sure we get some of these if there's things we can throw in there that are simple fixes that make our road safer for Citizens let's do it now instead of later y toly noted thank you quick question on the graphs there was a green thing over by on Sanctuary Drive is that from the entrance to getting into the middle school is that is that an accurate guess on my end of what that represents that's that's where that road goes okay that that to me seems like yeah that's what I'm I'm figuring I didn't know if it went a little bit past or maybe not quite to it but uh if that really is a place that's got known conflict school's about to start if there are any any small changes we could make to that that are we can figure out how to how to do right away I I'd be grateful for your ideas on that yeah they and HR has some ideas they presented to us and we definitely take a look at those all right thank you any other comments M or questions thank you for coming out for this this is cool you I love that it's City specific thank you all just you know everybody that was here earlier was waiting for this I was all right next up Utility Systems and storm War rate change they got a hook up hook up [Laughter] do I'll grab one please I'm good thanks not bad not too bad thought it' be a little you're smart wearing a sport cut I should have done that today the sport cut fre is it cold yeah yeah it's not just me right no it's cold I see I like I am I had a jacket on top didn't know it was we were talking about the mils there I was shaking that's yeah I'm always cold so I didn't know it was abnormally cold oh it's abnormally cold today probably because I had so many people most of I thought the what oh the--a I I saw the snacks in there W they do have the snacks oh so they're not they're not doing no I'm okay you want to go ahead and get started sure that sounds good so introduction or we just diving right in uh well Council the this is an update the city has the city's been working with our uh our advisers at w and financial to do an update for our water sewer reclaim and storm water uh utilities an update a rate study and they've been pouring over mountains of data from the city uh both uh Financial as well as our Capital programs and they're here tonight to give you an update on on their their research so far uh we're not we do I believe we have uh two methodologies to review with you and I think we will be asking for direction on which methodology you would like to go forward with so that they can finalize uh the rate study uh Miss Tara Hollis is here with us tonight as well as Mr Jeff McGarvey and Miss Hollis will be doing the presentation I do believe that Mr Wyatt has a uh part in this as well so I'll turn it over to miss Hollis and let her give the presentation thank you everybody hear me okay okay good evening my name is Tara Hollis as you mentioned I'm with um willan Financial Services uh so we looked at we're doing we did both a storm water rate study and then a water and sewer reclaimed water rate study so I'm going to start with the information that we have on uh the storm water rate study and then move into the the water sewer uh just kind of to give you an agenda for each each section uh we're going to look at Key objectives some of the data sources that were reviewed and used um our general assumptions that the two rate scenarios that that they talked about and when the and the results of those scenarios and then really our next steps and any questions that you have and then obviously I'm good if you want to ask questions at any point throughout so our key objectives when we're doing a rate study for the storm water rate study we look at identifiying the total revenue requirements we have to figure out how much you need to recover through your rates uh that's made up of things such as operating and maintenance expenses um any Debt Service payments and debt service coverage requirements that you would have uh planned capital expenditure so that's your CIP um we also looked at vehicle and Equipment Replacements uh to make sure that you're setting enough aside so that you can do those Replacements um in a timely manner and then any reserve requirements so that's both for your unrestricted reserves which fund and your you know some of your om andm expenses Etc as well as uh other specific required reserves any Debt Service reserves um you know looking at a vehicle replacement Reserve or capital reserve fund so those are the different things that we look at um when we're looking at establishing what your requirements are so what the rates need to meet um we want to understand what the financial projections are under the existing rates so we then look and see are your existing rates adequate if they're not adequate what do we need to do from there uh and then we develop the projected rate adjustments some of the data sources that we look at we obviously look at your audited financial information we want to look historical see if there are any Trends um as well as your budgeted information so we looked at both the 2024 and the proposed 2025 budget uh Tera could we just take a second so that we can get your presentation up onto the TVs just one second sure sorry thank you didn't even notice it wasn't there yeah I was I was it missing from YouTube I think so maybe you want me need to go back or um we'll see pull your your uh City Clark saw me texting the IT director and this one you need the pull here we go right hey now pull it out put it back in again one more time pull it out once more get those lines again you the lines appeared this afternoon when we were going through the dry runs and Patrick did something and they went away so I like the flowers that's way better than utility rate hikes all right yeah you just duplicated the scen I think it's not exted any that's better than not being up there at all there's a reverse button at the top top left reverse top that little or close it and reopen it what are you talking checking I'm not seeing what I thought I was see this es just go back in presentation see what happens we lost the tvot okay there we always EAS so like I mentioned we think I was to budgeted financial information as well from 24 and 25 um obviously want to incorporate your ex any existing service uh and then looking at your Capital Improvement plan both you're adopted and then we also sat down on the storm water and really went through all the the improvements going to so we come to some of just the general assumptions uh when we're doing our study is um so we build a model we take your budget line item by line item um all of the expenditures are escalated to account for customer growth those type of items so we use you know certain factors just go by inflation some would go up by customer growth certain things like um Insurance expenses go up a little higher rate than typically General inflation would go so we do that no we can hear you all right I forgot that he turned it off I'm sorry so we do that U we do that so that we can make sure that we have when we're building the pro fora that each line item we look at how it's going to potentially change over the the proforma period that we're looking at um we have an annual operating reserves Target uh So currently we're looking at um you don't have a a Target technically for your storm water system would be for your other systems you do have 120 days of cash on hand to cover operating expenses so what we we're looking at in here is building that cash Reserve up um so that we can at the end of by the end of the period have a minimum of of 120 days cash on hand um we look at also because in your water and sewer you do have transfers um for Renewal Replacements and vehicle replacement fund um you're you we not doing at the high as high of a level for the vehicle replacement fund here um and you had very minimal uh and then none for Renewal replacement so we're also looking at potentially setting aside for both the vehicle replacement fund and a renewal replacement fund um so that you can start having those Capital reserves to meet these needs again it's not going to all be set up day one we're looking at over the the proforma period uh bringing that in and starting to establish those funds uh and then just just like we mentioned really for storm water you have about 355,000 as your starting balance for all of your reserve that's pretty much everything that you have set aside currently for storm water so this is I'll turn over to Bobby for a minute this is um the capital Improvement plan he's going to show you kind of where improvements are needed and then we're going to talk about the level of those improvements May and Council good evening um I don't I don't know if you've um maybe I don't know if you've seen this graphic before um something um I decided to do this year was try and put our Capital plan in a graphic where you could see it kind of spread out throughout the city so this is all the projects that are in our CIP are represented on this map and there's there's this is the storm water one um there's over 70 and it's projected over a 10-year period um it is a mixture of conveyance projects best management projects storm water Pond projects flood control projects Creek river improvements um our yearly pipelining which we have to do it's like uh almost like Road resurfacing at we're at a point now where we have to line pipes every year if we don't we're going to fall behind there's going to be leaks and depressions and po holes and anyway and also Basin studies are included in our C CIP from now on and just to give you just a just a real quick um some projects um some highlights uh Allendale drainage improvements will Lake Circle drainage improvements Mission Road drainage improvements uh Lake Trum nutrient reduction uh Alay Woods Pond 90 retrofit U flood forecasting for the big and little econ and Sweetwater Creek restoration master plan um so we've got a lot going on in storm water um there's a number of uh currently active projects that reflect in the CIP but aren't theoretically added new but they show up because they're currently funded but there are several dozen projects going forward projected over the 10e period so and with that I will hand it back to terara thank you so like I mentioned he showed you kind of where all these projects are in those 70 projects um what we're Al now looking at is over the 10-year period you're looking at approximately $43 million those have been escalated for inflation so that's taking today and bringing them forward but $43 million um of CIP needs so that's both major projects as well as um your vehicle and Equipment Replacements so I mean you can see the vehicle and equipment at the top capital projects are the darker blue at the bottom so as I mentioned we need to come up with what your Revenue requirements are so we can determine if the rat current rates are adequate or if there are any adjustments that are needed so what this slide does is take it shows your onm your debt service The Debt Service component um other items which includes those transfers you have some transfers repayments of um loan I think to the the general fund is in there uh those are transfers including setting aside some for um putting into those Reserve funds and starting to to establish those Reserve funds making sure we have some contingencies you know you do we still look at putting in your budget minor contingencies on your on andm expenses uh to make sure that your revenues are adequate uh and then like we mentioned the the capital projects and the vehicles and equipment so that takes that schedule we had prior um the one thing that just to note is there is a project that's currently in your 2024 because we're starting here with 2024 in your 2024 CIP that is supposed to be um reimbursed from FEMA so that has been taken out of these requirements so that's where you'll see the slight difference between the the slide before okay so currently for storm water you have set up that you do a minimum of 2% per year uh so we're going to start that with our as our base of showing if we looked at putting a 2% per year adjustment into revenues uh what what does that mean um you can see you're already when we're looking at trying to fund the CIP were already negative um so your your revenues are less than your expenses uh and they continue again this is looking at if we were trying to fund the whole CIP the way that it's laid out your whole Capital Improvement plan the way it's laid out uh so you can see the 2% is a minimal adjustment to rates which is shown at the bottom uh but revenues pretty much you're are you're in the whole you only have 355,000 reserves to start this year so doing those 2% moving forward is not going to be sufficient to be able to do that Capital program um and then like I said you can see on the bottom you don't have any days cash on hand it's negative but we do want to look at comparing to make sure that we're looking at meeting those that was one of the targets that we had looked at is trying to meet a minimum of 12 120 days at the end of the projection period or no later than the end so we had been we've been asked to look at two basic paths or scenarios really one is if we're going to do everything in and fund it all pay as you go so no new debt nothing else what does that mean what are the implications on rates and then a second scenario is looking at potentially using debt uh to help fund the CIP and move the CIP along and continue again both of these are looking at doing the CIP at the same time so it's the current plan we're not trying to shift projects out 10 15 years we're both looking at the same plan uh for both of these uh they're now we're looking at one over over all scenario when we're looking at debt financing but there's ultimately other scenarios what we want to look at again if we use debt versus not using debt what does that mean uh when we're doing the no debt uh we're going to adjust the rates just in time so as soon as you need the money you know if you're going to need the money that coming year you're going to increase the rates uh by whatever percentage that would mean um above the 2% and then with the the debt financing we're looking at a combination potentially of short-term debt um so that we can tie this into a potential issuance with the water and sewer system uh because they're going to have the need and one of the scenarios for debt in that time you know that time frame a couple years out but so that you can get started on these projects immediately we're looking at a combination of a shortterm that would then be refinanced and and refunded and included into that long-term debt that would come on in a couple years from now so the first is the no debt what is what type of a rate adjustment is that going to to require um the rate revenues is your your current revenues the you know the rate starting in 2024 um the other line the net fiscal requirements matches up with what we've seen previously on the previous slides uh so you can see in order to meet the financial requirements of doing pay as you go and doing no debt you would require next year almost 120 8% rate increase so you'd be going from $149 uh to $269 um in order to keep up with again the the projects that would be the following year you would need another 15.7% which would bring you up to $30.3 per month that is per residence or and for commercial that's per ERC so their erc's are based on a certain um square footage of impervious area so theirs would be a multiple of that uh you can see like we mentioned we're looking at we're trying to build in um at least we were looking to move up by 30 starting with 30 days cash on hand 45 um obviously with this scenario once we hit that we're enough that we're more than the 120 days cash minimum cash on hand um so you can see and then what we do then for the remainder of the period is like I mentioned you have a minimum of a 2% per year uh so we just at that point that 2% % per year thereafter would be sufficient and that as at the end of the 10-year period you would be looking at a monthly rate um of $34 I'm going to say that's 81 C how that breaks down just so in case anybody wants to know is into the different components um so you can see like we mentioned you're going to start at $26.99 um obviously in there the majority of all of these is your Capital plan um $43 million plan that's approximately four to you know four a little over $4 million a year um so that's the big portion and component of your rate for every year um the omm expenses is one of the uh next largest portions um you have some minor Debt Service that you're paying off currently in the storm water uh and then your your vehicle and equipment and then basically what's on the top is what you're starting to put into r reserves so that green at the top would be what you're able to add to reserves uh with that rate and with those rates and that rate this rate plan so the second scenario that we mentioned is looking at it taking on debt to fund a portion of the CIP uh so that again we want to look at what that's going to what implication that would have to the rates um as I mentioned we'd look at combining that potential with taking out additional Water and Sewer debt in the 20 2026 2027 time frame um so you would look at first taking out some short-term debt uh we'd look at and and that would be potentially um looking that debt to be either a draw down so you're taking either a line of credit um again we're not financial advisor so I can't tell you how what you would take out but that's what we're looking at um based on talking to your financial advisor is some type of short-term borrowing whether it's a line of credit Bond anticipation notes uh but that you would take that out and draw that down and we'd pay interest on that interest only on that for those first couple of years um as those projects are going on and the screen just went out now all the screens went out don't worry about it just keep going okay are you okay with it not being on those or okay so that looks at so that first couple years we'd look at taking out approximately 9 and a half million in capital to pay for 9 and a half million in capital projects in your CIP um then you'd look at refunding and refinancing that into long-term debt as well as taking out an additional 8 million to continue to pay for that CIP so that we can try to still phase in these rate adjustments um and you look at that point right now that what we've been given is looking at principal and interest payments 5% annual interest rate a 30-year term uh and then the remaining CIP for for 20 fiscal year 2029 through 2033 would be paid with your excess with the the rates so then you would be converting to a payo um option so you can see here where the rates would be the on the left side of each bar is the darker color is what what's coming from rates the green portion would be how much of your funding is coming from debt to pay those Capital needs um so in this scenario we would look at you would look at potentially implementing a 20% rate adjustment next year uh so that would take you from 1149 a month to um 1379 a month continuing that 20% rate adjustment the following year so taking you to 1655 uh and then 15% uh for the next three years and then 10% thereafter um through the end of this period the 10-year period um again you would look at we we're showing you a 10-year period but you typically go back and look every 5 years and make any do a true up at that point and see what adjustments you would really need yeah because we don't need 336 days of cash on hand in 20 203 now mind you this is all of your reserves so it's a combination of your unrestricted and restricted reserves correct but yes you could look at and and under this plan sorry and and under this plan we also can start right at the beginning of fiscal year 2025 because we can get the we can we can uh you know use the borrowing and start working on those projects under the other the pay you go plan we would have to collect it all the way over 2025 before we could really start working on those and that that's correct right yes so it would yes you would have so where there's a year delay potential slight delay in the timing because you're having to collect the the 12 5% increase rate but yes you would yeah I think your cash flow would be slightly $13 is much more palatable than the 20 something dollars this is just a similar graph showing you where the money there's a couple of years obviously that we're having to take and use some reserves um as you start converting from no more debt and using pgo um but this again is similar to that showing where your each component of the rate is broken down into um so you can see in the beginning we're starting to take on debt so you know we don't really have the capital plan in there because it's not getting paid only the debt portion is getting paid in the rate then you can see as we move to 2029 and on uh a larger P portion coming in for Capital projects cuz that's as you start the pay go or pay as you go so this is showing those two rate paths just showing you where they would start obviously they both start now at 11:49 um if we're doing no debt that's the Blue Line the the just in time um so we would have higher you'd have higher rates uh they kind of cross out at the end um where you're working in and phasing your rates in under the the debt one but as you do get further out you potentially you're pay I mean you are borrowing so you're paying back at a you know a slightly higher because you had to borrow and pay interest um where we look at and typically using debt is some of these long-term projects like this that are benefiting multiple benefit people for multiple years um that's one way that and when you use debt that you're able to spread those costs out but you do have the interest component that would would come in there so you need us to give direction on this right so yes that's really what we're looking for I don't know if you want to see where you are with yeah I mean I think I think we and these still have I mean we're still we can still refine these this was one debt um option looking at with your financial advisor but they would they still need to refine these numbers and look at the best plan to help minimize the rates as much as as possible so yeah similar to to to what Mr poock was saying I think it'd be scenario to for myself um I agree with that too but I just I have some I want to back up a second here so at our last Workshop meeting uh mayor floated were we ready to talk about the rate studies because it looks like if we did it now it'd be this crazy increase and four out of five of us said no because staff was not ready and we said we were going to do I was told we were going to do one-on-one meetings go over some options ref find the number MERS see if we can make it lower and in that meeting I expressed I don't want to make a decision on this until we can do as much as we can to lower the rates and talk through it and go through scenarios so I know the only reason it's on the agenda tonight is because that was not listened to and the mayor brought it back up tonight and she even floated hey I want to go throw this on Facebook and at that meeting we said it's not ready um I don't believe I have said this before in other meetings I am totally against putting opinions on Facebook that are not true and not in line with the rest of council and I think there's a lot of people here tonight that are out here because they're worried and they're angry that we might increase their rates by something crazy that was just never going to happen um so I just want to make that known that I'm not on board with operating that way I'm we we were so clear about it it was even floated should we do this and I think we had full consensus super consensus to not do that not miss informed residents that we were going to quadruple their rates I don't think anybody's on board with that and then we also had Mr Po come back with this debt plan that looks like a way better option I am very interested in seeing more details about this but as far as making a final decision I I don't agree how this was sprung on residents in an improper way we have media who has come out and reported what the mayor has put on Facebook that is simply false um you know she just said transparency is huge and I am a very transparent person which is why at the last meeting when we said should we bring this up and staff said we're not ready yet I said Not until we're ready should we bring this to Residents so we can get the best rate possible um and I know our staff gave up their weekend time to get this done in time because that was not the plan so I just want to express that I don't agree with that but as far as what we're doing here I I do see there's way better options than the one that fearmongers something we never would have done and that's that's just what I want to say about that well that's a tremendously big accusation that I have posted of I I think the word was a false opinion there's no such thing as a false opinion there are false facts andent a false direction that the city was going to take not a false opinion there was no opinion stated and I was very clear to show both extremes and to State multiple times that it could be one extreme it could be the other it could be something in between and that this is something we wanted input on before we got so far along that the five of us without having any input had gotten so far along in a particular direction that we could not adjust to meet the expectations and the hopes of our residents so I am glad that people have come out and have given their input uh because a lot of people are not as afraid of a $26 a month bill as I anticipated and I think that's important information for us to have and I hope that people will continue to not be afraid to express their thoughts um because I for one do want to know before it is too late and I don't want a big brother or big sister anybody in this town I want to treat everybody like an adult who may be able to handle $26 per eru or whatever I guess it's not not necessarily that yeah it shifts around potentially um because when you explain to them and you look at the graph that was not produced by me but it is produced by the people we hired to do math and show us what the long-term projections are uh could you flip back to that real quickly so I just posted the the comparison and you see that the slope settles out and we can expect the slope to probably increase kind of like that beyond the 20 2033 Mark and on the blue line the pay as you go that that will be savings and over time people will pay less I think we owe it to our residents to say that out loud and say hey this is an option is it an attend option or should we borrow before we go and make it impossible to to pay as we go so that is that's mat sense and I hope that we will listen to people and the the problem with this is this is a 10-year plan I mean how many people actually live in their I mean we all have but a lot of people don't live in their place for for that long period of time and so they they pay this all this money up front for this infrastructure that is has a useful life over many many years and it's not like when they move out they get that back so you want this does not favor transient residents that is true you're transient you're out a lot but this this to me you you're more paying as you go for the the amount of use that you use on that asset that's why you do this debt this this debt plan like that that's the whole difference in government using debt than a private individual using debt for their for their personal needs because you've got that asset that you can get a value for on this one the individual citizens have you know they pay all this money up front but they don't get any value back for that asset if they do leave you know because of work even or anything else so that's why you use the debt to levelize these rates so that you don't have 120 something perc rate impact in your first year so I mean I know you and I share different opinions on that but you know I I think that this is much a much more fair approach to Residents because they're actually paying for the use on the asset that they're they're they're utilizing and and that's a discussion that I'm glad we're having tonight and I think it's one that needs to be said out loud and not just brushed over where we have it and we don't involve the community and H and and explaining that uh because when people look at it there you look at the slopes and and you think well maybe I want to do that because I'm going to stay here the rest of my life uh so it it's a y'all know how I am I'm a processed person and I just want to make sure that all the choices are out there and that we don't try to siphon information to the public and leave out an important part of you know we could pay as we go hey there's what it looks like okay so I'd like to offer Wan's thoughts on this if that's okay we we wouldn't recommend the big increase we would recommend debt usage for long life assets bricks and mor we would be recommending prudent use of debt because what happens is you you end up making the one or two years you're trying to get to a pay as you go system in one year which is not equitable right if you already had that cash laying around then absolutely you avoid the debt because it's cheaper and you can you can pay as you go from that point for but you're not there you're scking in the storm water you're trying to build to that so yes I think that's a great goal to have to be pay as you go only but you're to get there all at one year two years is not something we would recommend we we would say prudent use of debt in this Cas is particularly to get Bobby what he needs to get the projects going quickly we understand these are critical projects have to get done uh so to wait until you have pays you go would take that long you know so um unless you want to try and accomplish it in one year which again is not a scenario we would recommend but you guys are the owners of the system we'll do what you tell us to again we're just running scenarios for you we've not recommended a path uh I also want to say the the water sewer is the same story I get the sense that you guys have heard enough M really all we're looking for tonight is debt or no debt that's all we're looking for and if you say let's run the debt scenario well get with your fa we're going to get the right we cannot provide you those numbers by law so we have to get that from your fa he'll give us the debt numbers we'll run real scenarios for you and come back with this is what it looks like I'm for debt yeah I'm for debt you know just it just makes more sense yes absolutely I'm kind of in between I I think if I remember our water rates include debt inside because you have a big project coming in in in a couple years you simply don't have the cash for yeah but our current rates are paying for the debt servicing the debt for the water plant or the sewer plant correct yep so that's kind of where I am with this let's not uh if we're going to take on debt have it included in the rate so we're not jacking around the rates every every year well and and and I don't know we haven't shared this part of our part of our analys this is an historical analysis your debt to asset ratio is not out of whack you guys are okay you're managing your debt effectively we see a lot higher debt to asset ratios in the some of the clients we work with so you have prudently used debt and this may be a case where it's on the water sewer side because you have a big a big project coming in a couple years and you simply don't have the cash it makes sense to use some debt I'm all for the pay as you go but when you have the cash if you don't have the cash there has to be another solution when we bought the sewer plan I think it was was it a referendum Brian uh yes sir that it would be rolled into the debt would be rolled into the the rates that's what we've done ever since that's what we've done yeah well what what is the path forward like what would it look like to eventually get to a place where we can save up and have the money to do the things we need to because if it's a matter of doing a 15-year loan versus a 30-year loan I think somewhere in the middle of debt and no debt is probably yeah that that's the feedback I'm getting is that people would prefer not to be in debt but also well this one's not so bad but the water one when you flip over to that I mean that is that's untenable it really I don't know how that could be done by the average household so what is the path so it we again we can only run scenario that I'm sorry I have to keep saying that we're not byas you can do like the the general thing like would a 15E loan in general probably do it is that the way do it that's a debt management philosophy if I don't want long-term debt then let's run it at short-term debt or get some early payoff scenario and I can pay it off as quick as I can in the meantime I'm accumulating the cash I need to from that point forward be pay to go again that's Direction you would give us can you can you go back to the the slide that that shows the the raid over time again um the this way or the um or this one here is that's showing the the the debt one keep sorry is that the that's the one yeah see but if you look at the reserves I mean our reserves are are getting larger so you know we pay off the um you know we we we pay off the debt over time but we we are building those reserves that we can use and you know for the future to to do some of those capital projects and we won't have to take that out from that point forward they are cash funded projects right and if you want to pay the debt off early that then that is allowed through your your debt instrument then that is an option for well that's not what we're doing tonight we're just giving direction we Cann build a scenario we can only so the direct really you just want to understand debt or no debt Deb or no debt all sounds like it's debt yeah it's debt okay and and it's the same I don't we don't need to look at Water and Sewer if if that is the path you want to go we'll coordinate with with Jerry and his team and with your fa and we'll build those scenarios and then you got something to look at right give you a point we just don't have that money you don't have the cash no so and we do need to get that that well and and honestly a lot of water utilities in the state are are facing this lower lower aquafer situation and having to come up with with that as well so that's it's not something that is Ovito specific this is a Statewide issue that we're facing this is this is National we we work with small and large across this the CIP is driving everybody's financials right now so it is a it is a predominant issue the storm water you're not the only one facing there's several some people are just discover STM we we started the storm water Fund in the '90s early 90s and I think we were the first ones who ever did that that I remember around in this area anyway one of them yeah so we're in my opinion we're a little bit ahead of the curve because we've been maintaining a a pretty resilient system ever since then now we just got to upgrade it and and strengthen it because of the the new uh I think that that's it situation we're in now that's it council member Britain is that we've been able to do functional maintenance and that's all that we've been able to do we haven't been able to do some of the things I know that council member tuer has mentioned and one of the things that uh Mr White said doing those basing studies every year so we can create those action plans to see how we can Harden the system and some of the things that we're doing right now in the Sweetwater Creek uh Corridor uh to try to make to harden that you start the process yeah if you look at the the graphic Bobby showed it looks like the north Northeast Northwest Quadrant is where we those are the older neighborhoods that didn't have anything so yeah I can see that and I can see us needing to to look into that but um maybe this is the way to go with it you know the biggest thing that when I first saw the chars the biggest thing I saw was that we can't keep doing what we're doing now right uh on either the storm water utility or the uh the Water and Sewer utilities we we've got to do something different if we're going to be able to accomplish this CIP over the next 10 years if we're going to be able to accomplish uh getting down into the lower aquifer good news is our water PL we can convert it we don't have to tear it down and rebuild it we can just convert it and that's one of the things that you know years ago when we built the water plant it was you know it was a it was ahead of its time and and so it can be converted to take on when you go into the low aquifer and I'm getting into the engineering side of things now that Mr White's going to smack me um but when you get into that lower aquifer the water quality is not there not what we're drawing out now and so we do have to convert the plant so that we can bring in systems that can still maintain that water quality as as council member tiger said we got clean water and maintain that water quality while drawing that deeper deeper water from from the ground and and so I mean that's one of the things that is vitally important that uh years ago when the plant was built they built it to look to that future that it could be converted to bring in these other process processes to con to address that lower Quality Water if we ever had down to it so that's the good news it's still costly don't get me wrong it's still a lot of money but uh it is and I hope I said that correctly um but it you know that's but it's something that we need to do especially uh in going toward the future and in looking at the goals that we want to accomplish by 2045 uh those are these are things that we need to be doing both in the water and sewer side and uh so that's one of the things why we're planning for all this stuff so one of the things that again just to to confirm you you nobody in our our one-on ones had any comments or arguments over the revenue requirements everybody agreed that that CIP was correct and it needed to be done in the time it's been laid out right so really the only left well there may there may be it's just funding how what's the best way to fund it so that's really all we needed from you folks tonight was yes we we're interested at least in introducing the debt notion okay Council if I may real fast I asked Tara to go ahead and just just so you see it this is the utility CIP um put to a graphic just so you see the concentration of projects are at our water plant and at our Wastewater Plant especially the water plant you know what we're planning on doing we're going to go after uh 2 MGD ask for from St John's uh from our lower Florida in aquafer and all the requirements um that are going to be um that are going to come from that uh as far as getting water from the Floridan how we're going to treat it how we're going to get it there and how we're going to disseminate it to the residents so I had a question on this because uh we were talking about it the other day when we were looking at the map number four the U the Force main into uh liveo is it because it's too small is it breaking down uh it yeah Yes actually there's there's so we inherited the force Ms from utilities corporate when we when we purchased the system back in 2010 so that Force main along with the one on 419 and the one on Lockwood Road we have concerns about as far as integrity and we've had leaks uh I think two or three leaks in live o alone we've had two leaks three leaks actually on the section of 419 so our CIP does include replacement of these three Force Mains and that's that's separate from our plans and those are you know Integrity questions I mean those those Force main should be replaced because that's that's raw sewer in those lines and when they leak that's what's going 100% agree I'm I'm glad it's getting done and they aren't cheap to replace I'll tell you that right now no you can't just process it out there and put it back in the spring well we can always build another plant so I I don't know if you mentioned this but the the test Wells have we where are we at with digging those the first uh lower florid and well which is being paid for by arpa money is in design right now it will bid in September okay or if not sooner okay cool okay thank you m okay so let me just make sure I've got my direction correctly uh you want us to go forward with the study uh looking at the financing option in all in each of the Enterprise funds and that's what we'll bring back we'll refine the numbers and we'll bring those back yes okay that's what we'll do all right anything else actually mayor I have nothing else all right I have one thing uh wondering if anybody might might entertain making a motion to reconsider putting the uh public safety building on the ballot in November all right just thought I'd bring it up I think he goes out to the voters and make a decision and if it doesn't go we'll try again but bringing that up though uh we do need to set up a informational meetings like we did before right yeah Mr Mr Kelly and um Miss McDonald are already working on those types of things okay all right very good we are adjourned thank you thank you Jeff