e e e e e e e e and we're going to call the order this regularly scheduled City Commission meeting of the city of St Pete Beach today is Tuesday May 28th 2024 it is 6:00 p.m. let's stand for the pledge of of Allegiance please I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the repic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all city clerk if you please do a roll call vice mayor Lorenzen here commissioner Marriott here commissioner Phils here commissioner Riki mayor patella here have a quum do we have any amendments to the agenda as proposed please I have one thing it's not really but on the minutes I misnumbered so there's two number sevens so I corrected the final form but it's not what's in the agenda so I just wanted to make that note that the numbering has changed since what's published mayor I do have one uh adjustment to the agenda I'd like to uh pull item 4C uh have a couple of questions that I did not get answers for so I'd like to pull that and bring it back at a later date okay and I always just wanted one item for discussion um for resiliency committee since the commission has talked about it a couple of times just to hopefully get some directions so just a quick discussion on that anyone else all right at the request of the chairman of the historic board um like to have a quick discussion about the next joint meeting with the historic board and then I would also like to have a short disc discussion on uh parking really the parking leaders okay may I please have a motion to approve the agenda as amended I make a motion to approve the agenda as published as amended I'm sorry as amended I second city clerk if you please do a roll call commissioner Marriott yes commissioner filtz yes commissioner is niiki yes vice mayor Lauren zern yes mayor patrilla yes motion carries thank you okay do we have any general audience comments Ken coab cosb if you please state your name and address for the record hi my name is Ken kpob I live on 45th Avenue St Pete Beach I'm also an employee of the city of St Pete Beach as an employee and also a resident I take great pride in living and working in the same city to where I spend my life I moved here five years ago after working 31 years in public utilities in the city of Columbus Ohio which is also where I resided because I took a lot of Pride and everything in that we were just here for a meeting prior to this for the pay study waiting another four months I find as ridiculous it needs to be pushed forward I know it makes much sense to do it when the budget is going to be done but there's ways to make adjustments for that the pay study was started three years ago it took two years just to get the company in here to get the questionnair by the time the city did all the questioning and surveying of those particular companies the guy did a very good presentation the presentation also shows where St Pete ranks I should say the city of St Pete Beach ranks within the comparison of about 25 other municipalities within the State of Florida we're falling below the 50 percentile of the Cities meaning there's half the cities are more than us paywise half the cities are less than us to me when you're talking percentiles and you're still at 50% % you're failing 60% is just getting by I understand there's budget concerns and so on with that the one thing I do like that they discussed or yourselves all discussed is that you're going to look at each individual job and job duties when you're doing that you're not going to take the 7.4 across the board and say this is how going to work because some of the people are already paid at the wages that are found within the study to be competitive the city there are certain areas that have a hard time with retention bringing new employees in isn't as hard because I've only been here for a little over two years the pay I started at and then transferred to a different position compared to somebody that came in and replaced me was almost a $10 an hour difference between those two so there's definitely some discrepancies on the way certain things have been done the pay study again I think is a great thing they're doing it's been in the works for three years waiting another four months I find to be just too long for the employees who are 10 12 19% below what comparative cities are I have a funny feeling with talking to other employees I know I'm done I'll leave it at that have a good evening thank you sir Deb shner good evening Deborah shner B gusa Isle in St b beach I had been away for a while and I will tell you that these types of um development issues are going on around the world as well as all of the United States one particular country they have large protests because the pristine areas of their Beach couldn't be destroyed by development they have people on a hunger strike and I will say that most islands that that I visited are having those issues with the tourists and some of the slogans and um I can't repeat here but anyway people had sent me information about um one of our attorneys who said our city is combative combative is aggressive eager to fight physical fights it what people do in war words like Bully and hate were thrashed around now at first I thought well maybe he was talking about the hotels because they've been a little tough on in many residents but I don't know that to be true or not but I think it's an inappropriate and unprofessional for our attorney to come forth with this plethora of words that was so negative and um I find our city and the people who come here especially always Pleasant do people get a little aggravated not combative do people maybe raise their voice at times not really I find most of the people who come to speak before you are here because they want to be heard not only listen to but they want to be heard as well and um I've been coming up here for 24 years and speaking and I would hope that perhaps an apology would be made um to the residents in St Pete Beach because I don't think we're combative or like military we're not eager to fight we're not bullies I don't feel hate towards anybody so I don't know who he was talking about regarding hate and um we have a great City we have a fabulous Beach great neighbors fabulous school love our library we have so much going for us here and I think most people know that not only do we live in Paradise we enjoy living in paradise and that far surpasses any other definition of who we are and I do really feel that saying people in the community are combative is very d Dangerous Grounds as your attorney that your tax payers pay for it was kind of somebody said to me it was a rant as they wrote me because they sent it to me when I was away and I was really really really quite surprised I don't know where it all came from and I I hope that that's not how everyone up on a Das feels thank you thank you any further audience comments thank you next we have item three the consent agenda can I please have a motion to approve I'll move to approve the consent agenda Second City Clerk if you please do a roll call commissioner filz yes commissioner Riki yes vice mayor Lorenzen yes commissioner Maria yes mayor patrilla yes motion carries thank you next we have item 4A the first of them to the inter of the manager employment agreement wait okay um it was discussed to that we should have some sort of a transition period is one of the issues the other issue is although I would certainly have not not held the commission to it the agreement that I have now requires a 60-day notice but as I told the City attorney that's not something that I would hold the city to in under any circumstance but what the this amendment does is uh officially gives that notice and uh but it also it extends uh my time with the city for 30 days for beyond the date that that Fran will start uh to give a transition time there I would uh I would certainly not be in City Hall that would be an awkward situation but I will be working remotely every day and if if she needs me to attend meetings in person I'll be glad to do that or Zoom meetings or however but for that 30 days I'd be basically still working for the city remotely um after that uh and I've given this I've told FR this more than once that I'll be still be there to answer calls even come down for a meeting if I need to at at no cost to the city um you know I'm I really want the transition to be smooth with with France and uh she and I have already been working together uh but this this Dum actually puts that 30 days in place thank you questions comments do we have any audience comments do we have a motion please I'll make a motion to approve the first addendum to the interim city manager employment agreement Second City Clerk if you please through a roll call commissioner commissioner Riki yes vice mayor Lorenzo yes commissioner Marriott yes commissioner Phils yes mayor patrill yes motion carries thank you thank you thank you way we do appreciate your willingness to stick around for a little while longer thank you um next we have item 4B International Association of firefighters pay plan evening Jennifer McMahon and Jim Kilpatrick fire chief uh what you have before you is a wage reopener for the um uh the fire Union for 2025 um we were a little ahead of time this because we fell so behind last year in getting this to you all so uh we met um back in March and um agreed upon a three % gross wage increase um and then a 3% um steps between the ladders three and a half% steps between the ladders I think in the workshop earlier we were talking about the inconsistencies between each step in the pay plan so part of this and the last discussions was to try to eliminate not only some of the pay plan categories to shorten that up a little bit which is very similar to what we're trying to do with our regular Union employees um in the city and then to um get them the 3% increase we did look at um neighboring cities when we went into these negotiations so Pasadena uh Treasure Island madira who are all if not increased quite a bit are shortly and Jim could speak to that so um either Jim or I can answer any questions you have for this am I correct that all of our Union employees fire fire department employees have already voted and approved this I believe this was unanimous okay thank you this is something that we're required to do as as a wage reopener in the initial contract with the Union correct this is the second wage reopener within the uh CBA collective bargaining agreement that we uh needed to do so questions comments good we have any audience comments yes I'll make a motion oh go ahead yeah go ahead I'll make a motion to authorize the execution of the international firefighters i a f 4966 article 24 pay plan wage reopener Second City Clerk if you please do a roll call commissioner res Niki yes vice mayor lorensen yes commissioner Marriott yes commissioner Philz yes mayor patella yes motion carries thank you thank you all okay next we have item 5A ordinances second and final reading and public hearing of ordinance 2023 one0 comprehensive planning valuation and appraisal report amendments city clerk thank you mayor an ordinance of the city of St Pete Beach Florida amending pursuant to sections 1 163 3184 and 163 3191 Florida Statutes the city of St Pete Beach Comprehensive plan element one yeah citizen input on community redevelopment element two future land use plan element element three Transportation plan element element four housing plan element element five infrastructure plan element element six Coastal and conservation element s Recreation and open space element 8 Capital Improvements element nine intergovernmental coordination and element 10 public school facilities striking Element 11 future land use maps and Rec relocating its amended cont content to element two future land use plan element in creating Element 11 private property rights element providing for codification conflict cability correction of scriveners eror construction publication and un effective date thank you city clerk good evening Commissioners my name is Nicole gasso and I'm a certified planner with kimle horn and we were contracted by the city to prepare this comprehensive plan Amendment which I will be presenting here tonight so um I will be joined by my colleague Philip Di Maria shortly um but I'll be going over with you what the purpose of this comprehensive Plan update is um the timeline of our scope and approach the contents of the adoption package which the commission did um vote to vote to transmit at the first public hearing back in October um and then of course the proposed planned Amendment overview and your next steps here tonight so um as you all I'm sure reviewed in your agenda packet the Florida Statutes require that municipalities complete an evaluation and Appraisal of their comprehensive plan at least once every seven years to review consistency in compliance with state requirements and then as well here in pellis County we have forward pelis countywide rules that we also have to maintain compliance with just like every other municipality here in the county so in the summer of 2023 the city completed its review of the comprehensive plan and it was determined that there were changes necessitated By changes in the state statutes as well as the countywide plan and countywide rules and so the city uh sent the letter to Florida commerce to notify that um changes to the comprehensive plan would be necessary and this amendment that we are presenting here tonight uh brings the city into compliance with those statutes and countywide rules changes it does not address density intensity height or other larger type of visionary uh types of initiatives that the city may want to take on in any future plan amendment that you would be free to initiate over your next seven-year planning cycle so just to quickly go over what our timeline was uh we were contracted by the city beginning in Spring of 2020 and we went through a a bit of a longer process to do that evaluation and appraisal and look at the elements um that would potentially need changes uh we came in front of the planning board and the commission for the first time in the fall of 21 and we went through a a series of the changes that um the the city clerk went through um in her listing and it wasn't until spring of 23 that we um that we started to prepare the data inventory and Analysis which I presented here uh back in April of of 23 to complement the changes that were necessitated by statutory requirements so as I mentioned the city transmitted its letter notifying the state that there were changes NE necessary to the comprehensive plan and we went forward with that process in August of 2023 the planning board sitting as the local planning agency made a recommendation to the commission to transmit the proposed plan Amendment finding it consistent with the changes in statutory requirements as well as internal consistency with the elements of the comprehensive plan that remained unchanged and in October of 23 the commission voted to transmit the proposed plan Amendment to the state land planning agency in doing so this initiated the state coordinated review process which is d uh governed by section um 163 of the Florida Statutes so when that process is initiated it's reviewing agencies around the state as well as forward panis are notified uh that the city has initiated a a plan Amendment and they review for consistency with their own rules and procedures so we received the objections recommend and comment report back from the state land planning agency in December of 23 and at that point in time the city had 100 180 days from the date of receipt to hold the second public hearing which we're holding here today um to vote whether to adopt the plan Amendment uh we did receive comments back from forward penis and the southwest Florida Water Management District which is really what we'll be going over with you today um those were the only comments we received back from the reviewing agencies that we had to address and make changes to the proposed amendment that originally came in front of commission in Fall of 23 so from there we prepared the adoption package and then we are are here today to uh where you all will vote whether to adopt adopt with changes or not adopt the proposed amendment package um I see that my colleague Philip Di Maria is here so um he may come up to speak at some point just so you all know just wanted to address that um so I'm going to quickly just go over what the um requirements of the adoption package are which are in your agenda packet tonight uh what what will be transmitted to the state if you all vote to do so are text changes to the comprehensive plan and strike through underlined format any future land use map amendments um any data and analyses deemed appropriate by the city as you recall the data inventory and anal analysis was already transmitted to the state in October so no additional data and analyses are required unless you all decide to do so um the executed ordinance adopting the plan Amendment the list of additional changes which I'll go over with you here tonight um that were not reviewed by Commission in the fall because they were a result of the orc report sent To Us by forward pelis in the southwest Florida Water Management District and then any findings that you all have here tonight that were not included in the ordinance but may provide the basis for your decision here today so to go over some of those um changes that are included in the proposed plan Amendment primarily what the proposed uh plan Amendment addresses are statutory requirements for cities to adopt a private property statement of Rights into their comprehensive plan which is now would be Element 11 um of the comprehensive plan and then also the state adopted some risk of peril of flood requirements that needed to be addressed predominantly through the coastal and conservation element but also touches um the transportation and infrastructure elements as well so the text that you'll see here on the screen is the exact text that uh the Florida state statutes require of municipalities to adopt into their comprehensive plan um and is proposed to be Element 11 of the Plan update in terms of resiliency those risk of peril of flood requirements make some minor modifications to goals objectives and policies to address resiliency um as mentioned it affects these three elements listed on the screen but mostly in the coastal and conservation element and what these policies do is they would guide public and private investment to address sea level rise um such as some developer guidelines that meet those minimum statutory requirements and as well as other requirements such as for the city to um adopt a storm water drainage manual and watershed management master plan which I'm sure you all know the city has made a lot of progress on those goals objectives and policies already so this is really just you know addressing all of the progress that you all have already made on that front and then I mentioned that we here in pellis County have the forward penis countywide rules that we have to be in compliance with so the main changes and the countywide rules that the city needed to bring into to their comprehensive plan to be into compliance have to do with vision zero um some consistency with the countywide plan map as well as the umbrella future land use designation that all municipalities in the county are required to recognize in their future C future land use category um land use table so some of those Vision zero requirements are they're just meant to really prioritize multimodal uh safety and they um use language like the city will strive to to um you know minimize traffic related deaths by doing things such as prioritizing multimodal safety um following the Safe Streets pelis guidelines that forward penela puts out implementing education engineering and and best practices in planning and roadway design which again much of this is recognizing what you all have already done um such as working on the go Boulevard safety study and your downtown complete streets plan so much of this is really just to bring you into compliance and recognize the progress you've already made there were some other minor countywide plan requirements regarding vapor barriers and watering and irrigation restrictions um Coastal High Hazard area balancing criteria and again these were all just brought into the the minimum standard that the countywide rules sets forth for municipalities and forward panelas did review the proposed plan Amendment and they found that the proposed changes would bring you into compliance with all of these things so the one um change that occurred with the future land use categories is one we had to show how your existing future land use category designations fall in to the countywide plan map designations so again this doesn't change your future land use designations at all it doesn't change their densities intensities or any of their Associated standards all it does is show that your residential Urban category Falls within the countywide rlm residential low medium category and so it just shows that where you have residential Urban on your future land use map that's consistent with where residential low medium is on the countywide plan map and then the other change that did occur based on forward penis's comments is there's a requirement to recognize the permitted uses that are within these categories and again that doesn't change any of your permitted uses that you allow today it shows that consistency with what the countywide rule says um there were some additional changes to level of service that affected the infrastructure element um and again many of these things just recognize what the city was already doing such as work with the watershed management master plan um as well as the potential to look at Future planning activities such as a recreational master plan it doesn't commit you to doing that it just says that there's potential for that in the future um so as as noted there were a few future land use map amendments that really just um addressed consistency with the countywide plan map um as well as a a Scribbler error so we can delve into those if you'd like but they were included in your agenda packet and then finally just to summarize those comments that we received in the orc report again forward panelas asks us to add those permitted land uses and acreage limitations to be consistent with the county w rules and they also had a few minor comments on nomenclature that we made sure were just consistent um with the vocabulary that's used countywide pardon me and then Southwest Florida Water Management District's comments were very minored they just asked that we update our reference to the regional water supply plan from 2015 to 2020 so we made that change in the intergovernmental coordination element and so that brings us to next steps so the purpose of tonight's public hearing is for you all to vote whether to adopt adopt with changes or not adopt these proposed um amendments to the comprehensive plan and just so you know if adopted I'm sure the City attorney can elaborate on this as well um the city would have 10 working days to submit the adoption package at which point the state land planning agency has 45 days to let us know if you're in compliance or not and the determination will be based so on the orc report and whether um in that any objections or comments were raised which as I mentioned we addressed all of the comments that were raised so um we don't foresee you know any issues there um Philip and I are here to answer any questions you all have thank you for your time and attention comments questions do we have any audience comments yes mayor Deborah shner good evening Deborah shno basa aisle Drive in St P Beach I did have a question it indicated there that there was um Outreach and public comments I I didn't see it addressed with the exception of the first slide um and then again I guess using the word strive not must or should it leaves a lot of leeway for each City to determine how they're going to um do this and and I know this is pretty much done what every seven years to comply with the state mostly and some of the county rules and regulations that have changed and I know recently many of this state uh has changed many um issues and I made big changes so I don't know if that's going to be included now or that gets included in the next seven years but I really would like to know what the input of the public was on this thank you thank you maybe you can answer that question I'm going to just flip back to um the timeline really quickly so in terms of um public meetings that were held we did come in front of the planning board as well as the commission multiple uh several times since the project kickoff in June 2020 where we did receive public comment at that time but as I mentioned the purpose of this update was really to just bring the city into compliance with statutory requirements so you'll notice in your proposed uh plan Amendment package that the section currently in element one in the preface um that captures the the citizen public input remained largely unchanged in fact the only change was to Simply describe that that comment was referring to the last time the city did a more major update where um you know it was more of a visioning effort this effort was not intended to um really touch the the vision of the city really just to bring the city into statutory compliance so there there wasn't that larger visioning effort with um you know a series of longer public workshops that you would typically with that because we know that that's you know a goal of the city in in the future to undertake that larger effort thank you so for context um this was first brought to the commission I believe in October uh for the first uh for the first vote and first draft um which I voted in favor at that time I don't think I'll be able to support it today um I will repeat what I've said on a number of occasions with this particular firm um there appears to be a conflict of interest because since October they've taken on additional clients that may or may not be working um for against or an opposition to the city however it is the challenge I have is when we brought this to kimley Horn because we pointed out that it might be a conflict to work for the city and also work for developers specifically on a comprehensive plan right so you're helping the city and I understand this is just a reconciliation but at the same time you're adding verbiage and at this point I personally cannot trust the verbiage that you're putting in there to be in the best interest of the city because we've already put your personal interest your firm's interest ahead of the Cities already you made a decision to take initial clients which may be in conflict with the city we expressed this to you and your answer to us was well we don't think it's a conflict well the way it normally works is you go to the client and you say client do you perceive this to be a conflict if we take on this client and your client answer was yes we perceive this to be a conflict and so because of that I cannot give you my support because I cannot trust that what's in here is in our best interest when you've already put your firm's personal interest ahead of ours and so because of that I cannot support this the only way I could possibly support this is having a third party review their work mayor can I ask you um what verbage do you have conflict with since you know you you said verbage so which particular one just so that I know as I said the only way for me to even go through this is to have a third-party expert in planning go through this with an independent eye and say okay yes this makes sense this doesn't make sense this over here may not be making the changes that you want I don't know I simply without having an independent expert look at this I just simply can't trust it [Applause] I want to I want to be able to understand this so I want you know like is it through strikethroughs because I I need to know what was it last year because we need to come to compliance right what verbiage if it's verbiage or what was strikethrough or what was change that that we could see if there's a conflict the change is the conflict they didn't have the clients that they took on before oober I guess my question is to me we we brought up to them that there might be a conflict right they put their firm's interest ahead of ours took the additional work and said well you may feel you have a conflict good for you we don't feel that way so we're just going to go ahead and do it hourly and so I can't trust that what's in here is in our best interest would it be fruitful to go through what was the change you know like what was it that it isn't it isn't a specific verbiage change I can't trust any of the verbiage in here I have I have serious concerns with using this firm to do the comprehensive plan work for us and for other entities who may be working in opposition with the city mayor if I if I could um you know I know exactly what you're talking about because I remember the conversation we had about the conflict issue and in fact we've tried to make some changes to our solicitation and Contracting to try to make sure that that does happen that in fact contractors come to us and say I've been asked to be on this private project how do you you know that kind of conversation which I agree with you should have happened um there there have been that being said um Ford pelis has reviewed this um most importantly the state has reviewed it um your own planning staff has been involved um all the way along this um my office has as well and if I or any of us I imagine if we felt like there was something being done that was um not would be out of the norm I think we all would have said something um I'm not saying I'm not trying to change your mind on any votes or anything like that but I just want to assure you that from a legal point of view we have to do this you know we kind of every seven years under the statute we have to go through this as you said reconciliation type process um and and I really don't want to see the city be put in a situation where we're off our timeline and not submitting it but I you know I get I get your point your other the main point no again it's not a it's not the issue with do we have to do it yes we have to do it in fact it's probably passed through at this point yeah um I have a my issue is with the firm that's representing us I get it so I I hear you loud and clear in your uh your thoughts on that mayor um I concur with a lot of what the lawyer just said and I guess because I'm and I used to rewrite operations manuals or three inches thick with underline strike through and so I had the time to go through that entire document I know you're saying you can't find any particular fault with the document itself more with the author's uh the contractors for the document but having read through it it all stroke pretty much everything I saw was pretty boilerplate s state has to say this county has to say that Swift Mud has to say this so I don't see anything in the document that's controversial whatsoever I understand I understand your feelings on that but uh as a to me this was almost like a exercise and I don't know what the right phrase would be not penmanship but Str tring out this inserting that it's just there wasn't much meat in there so yeah that's that's what I saw as well I mean a lot of changing of things subsection a to I or uh changing wording of LDC to Land Development code is more that type of stuff uh for the record my name is Philip de Marie I'm a certified planner with kimley horn um I would like to direct you to page 788 of your 800 page packet um to The District 3 Commissioners a question of what has changed since the transmitt um there's a list of changes requested by the Department of Economic Opportunity we have a list of those changes and the substance of those changes um one other thing i' just like to mention and M completely understand where you're coming from and respect your your uh position and perspective um and also not trying to uh change your vote by any means but I would like to mention two uh both Nicole and I are certified planners American uh certified by the American Institute of certified planners and um our certification we go through a rigorous process and part of that is a code of ethics and compliance um and so I just want to assure you that either of us would lose our license or lose our certification if we were to do anything um below board if you will thank you and and also like from my understanding we are reviewing our comprehensive plan right this is what we're doing in the future so if there is a change um like you mentioned this doesn't include height density and the vision of what we've been talking as a city that's the next step that we're doing on that's not addressed in this this is basically for compliance that's accurate Ma I understand all of those things okay just so yeah yeah I just want to know if I'm missing something that that you have that's why I'm asking I'm I'm telling you what my issue is with the messenger okay I'm ready to make a motion mayor if the time is appropriate um make a motion to approve uh the final reading of ordinance 2033-tkv call vice mayor Loren approved I mean yes Excuse me yes commissioner Phils yes yes mayor petrola no motion carries 4 to one thank you next we have resolutions 6A resolution 2024 d02 transm of comprehensive plan amendments to the FL Department of Commerce a resolution of the city Commission of the city of St Pete Beach Florida approving the transmittal of comprehensive plan Amendment 23-01 to the Florida Department of Commerce following final adoption pursuant to section 16331 184 parent 2 and parent 4 Flor to statutes incorporating the conditions outlined here in and providing for correction of scriveners error and an effective date good evening um as the title stated this is just to transmit the previous amendments that were discussed there's no additional content in this resolution it's just a motion to to transmit those amendments thank you Brandon questions comments audience comments thank you uh I'll make a motion to approve resolution 2024 d02 I need you to say adopt resolution adopt okay you I will make a motion to adopt resolution 2024 d02 I second clar if you please do a roll call commissioner Marriott yes commissioner Phils yes commissioner is niiki yes vice mayor Lorenzen yes mayor patrilla no motion carries 4 to one thank you city clerk you're welcome next we have items for discussion 7A commissioner Riki um yes I wanted to bring up um because we've mentioned this a couple of times on resilienc in committee and we kind of had I think Matthew was sitting up here and I'm sure Andrew heard about um what what the commission can do if we were truly interested in having whether a committee um on resiliency because it's such a big topic I just had you know our town um District 3 meeting last week and obviously that was what we spoke about 100% of the time um and we've mentioned it a few times here on commission but you know I want like a next step like what can we do how do we go about it what do you feel I hate to say feel think um but I you know I want to be able to take some kind of action and not just keep of kind of mentioning it and this is our only opportunity to talk about it so yeah I've uh I've mentioned before I think it's a good idea I guess I'd want some help brainstorming as to what their role would be you know how we'd how they would Implement things that type of thing maybe we can get some guidance from city manager City attorney on that do we have a one of the boards that's already responsible for this area like the planning board um because I mean that's essentially a it seems like that's what we're talking about is is putting together a plan right to address some of the issues that we have and then some of that falls into zoning and planning and that's true you know I think and then the reason I bring this up is just for context and for those who weren't around last year CU we had this exact same conversation when we were discussing reopening the comprehensive plan and somebody me proposed that we have a special committee for a comprehensive plan review and the comments were well we already have Board of adjustment planning board we already have a you know challenging time finding individuals who serve on those boards and now that um a lot of the big developments and projects are behind us um you know the planning board would have excess capacity to be able to deal with something like this again I agree with the sentiment and the general what of what you're saying absolutely it has to be done it's just a matter can we allocate resources that we already have at our disposal rather than creating one more committee one more board one more group of five individuals that we have to find and rather than taking a group of individuals that's already serving in that capacity you've already said yes I'm willing to participate and allow them at least the very at the very least give them a first stab at the issue right um I think that's a good suggestion because you know you can get too many committees this question we have 11 I think it' just be a matter of well plus all the other small ones yeah be a matter of redefining what are you know the the purpose of that committee and you could certainly add that to their to their list of things that are responsible for giving uh recommendations to the city so that's I think it's a great idea mayor the the legal Authority is there it's the the last part of the scope and Powers it does say perform such other duties as may be assigned by the city commission or required by ordinance so there's like a catchall there if you feel like the planning board is a good place to start you have legal authority to do that City major do you see anything in the future from the city staff perspective that would be a good fit for something like this well I think or help out I think we we would make that decision once we hear what comes out of that committee you know whether we need a staff position or a consultant position or a shared position or something like that I think once we see what what we want to try to do a plan and we'd have to make that decision well what do we need staff-wise to implement it I'm kind of going along with the mayor's thoughts on this one I think um I don't know if we need a whole another committee um because I I do have trouble filling some of the slots that we have already um so I think maybe the planning board is is a good place to have them take that into consideration or is this one that we are we're having a workshop with them as well with the planning board I know we have some like the historic board so is this something that we should do is be able to meet with them together so that we could say this is something that we want to add um because I think we said well what do you think um or you know qualifications is there some an added I mean I don't know what they I hate to say what they feel but what they think I think it's more a matter of providing them Direction saying here's as a commission this is what we'd like to do this is a project that we would like you to tackle over the next six months come back with a proposal right I think that also be something that um you know as we talk about you know the new city manager starting in less than two months here um you know as we talk with Fran about you know what are the priorities for the first six to 12 months you know if the commission feels that this would be one of those priorities that that'll be something that we can you know let the city manager say okay let's work together with the with the planning board allocate staff if necessary or find out if we do need to allocate but um so I think the first step is for us to give the planning board Direction says okay here's the scope of what we would like you to take a look at you know do what research you de necessary come back with a proposal and maybe at that point we can do a joint workshop with him I think the first step is just to give them some direction as to what to do or what to look into or how to approach this so I think what we need is more clarity from the commission as to what what do we want them to do and so where do we do that do we do that in a workshop do we do that at this meeting because this is just a discussion right so do we set time aside to talk about what's the direction we want you mentioned comprehensive plan so is that a direction we want them also to be reviewing especially that we're going to be doing this in the near future so is that a goal or objective of the planning board so my I guess my thing is where do we do this do we do it now I mean not now want to prepare for it but I'm saying where do we do it no I think we just put on the agenda for one of the upcoming commission meetings right whether it's a discussion item or an action item or however we want to do it yeah and you can also ask staff and all of us to like give Rec recommendations on possible ways because for me I know through you know the various organizations that I'm in some cities are further along in studying resiliency than other cities and some cities have uh gone ahead and done a lot more in their comprehensive plan with resiliency than other cities so maybe um you know collecting some of that information um maybe from Florida APA American Planning Association things like that there's lots of it would be it would be I think one thing would be nice to see what other cities are doing and and where where they're putting that at ad so we could come back to you with you know if you put it on an agenda we can come back to you with some potential um structure on and instructions on what to give to the planning board board because you really do want to Define what they do their scope yeah I agree 100% with that I mean I don't I don't think we're having to reinvent the wheel here because there are a lot of cities that have that have already started those processes and we can see which ones have been working which ones have have been a good way and there's a lot of information out there so as well as y'all could you know put your thoughts together is what's important to you uh in that area and we could come together and have it on an agenda for for a um either action or if we needed an action or discussion that's I think that's the way to go I would like that yeah I'd like to get even more specific on the topic I mean you know what are we talking about we're talking about specific neighborhoods floating on St Pete Beach I mean overall the city I mean that it's I mean the more obviously you talk to more residents outside of like say my neighborhood it's there's other areas that have gotten worse District right every at a different degree but um you got a plan for it right it's almost like you know we hear Public Works talk about when when you PVE a road what you know it's by whatever the number is or who's who's who's at the priority right or we got a plan for it I I don't want to give the answers you know but we need to start planning how do we address it Citywide um we're all on the Barrier Island right so some are affected a little bit more on Storms um you know but they we've got a plan for it well and I think it it it seems like there's some some benefit to going about planning and and and imp and then implementation in a very coordinated fashion when you start talking about things like raising seaw walls and flood prevention um that you know doing peace meal projects scattered around the city is not necessarily the most efficient way to go about it and so having having some method to be able to to you know create a process for how to do things in a in a more orchestrated fashion that might be more beneficial and um potentially more cost effective is probably well worth doing and so I think that's in in my mind anyway that would be kind of the direction we would be looking and and I agree that um the planning board is probably the a good place to start I I think uh like commissioner Lorenzen said you know finding more people to sit on another board and and all of that would could be prohibitively difficult um and so I think if we can if we can start there and then I think it's something we all need to keep in mind going into budget season as well you know because um certainly where where we put money determines our priorities so absolutely okay okay so we can put this on the agenda for one the upcoming meetings yes sir thank you mayor I did get a comment card and I always ask you guys if you want to take it on discussion items it's up to you a comment on this subject I'm always happy to hear if everyone else is in agreement yes yes Kathy Gara if you please St name and address for the record Kathy ghaw dances our neighborhood um I really appreciate that you're having the conversation and that you're exploring the options I don't know if about all of you I know we all live here so it does feel like a little bit of Groundhog Day though I I guess because I think you all can listen to your same meeting in June of 2023 I haven't even lived here that long but you made motions to move forward on getting things out to homeowners around the seaw wall so I'm all for not getting another committee but I don't know where there's accountability to actually Implement things and um if there's some type of oversight because I think every year you all put a great budget and approve it there's La laundry lists of things see while Rehabilitation you know some of these things are happening but um I don't know where or how we can put real teeth into actioning these out I think we hear we're under staffed under resourced to do even what it is we're putting it on paper but I guess I'd just say how do you enlist people who have a passion for this who maybe have capabilities to work on this maybe they're excellent program managers on this don't have the city's uh talent but maybe there's a way to tap into things that could allow us to move this from a conversation to action differently whether you call it a committee or a task team or something I appreciate you saying six months because all I can think because I do sit on a board that we can't even talk to each other unless of course then you call another meeting which I think also becomes difficult so I just ask that we put this as a In a Different Light because it's probably the place you have most of your money um set sitting there but probably not getting spent and um uh it's impacting us pretty severely now thank you thank you all right next we have item 7B um I had the conversation with the chairman of the historic preservation board and this is a request from the chairman and the chairman alone since he obviously can't talk to the other board members um and so I will just simply convey the conversation that we had uh he's he is my appointee so um but he was also appointed by the previous mayor um so that should tell you of my thoughts on his qualifications um his request was that we postpone the joint um the join Workshop that we had uh scheduled was it scheduled or we just it was not scheduled I just put out the dates and then I was going to do that and he called me like oh yeah his um his request was that we wait until after the August elections uh to schedule that meeting so that he has full confidence um that whoever will be making the decision will be around for for a while so I thought I would convey that um I'm in agreement with him um but it's not a one person decision I don't have any problem with that I think it's totally fine I mean after the August elections those people will potentially only be there for six more months right because those seats get elected again next march but but if the um if if if that's what I mean I I don't have any problem with it at all and his other concern was again don't take any offense to it commissioner renen but you will be out for most of the summer and he wanted to have a full commission that was and again I I don't necessarily disagree with that sentiment no offense taken but we hadn't scheduled it right so there's no no we had discussed scheduling it and we did the poll thing and so yes I was like I'll pause until this anyway I figured that would convey that message so if we're in agreement then we'll schedule sometime after yeah I'll wait until the new there morning yeah and then I'll put out a new doodle poll to every cool sounds good all right next item 7 c um in Jennifer you still here yes um do you remember when we I think we updated the um uh the parking meter ordinance in September I believe it was it was right about budget season so September or October and one of the discussions that we had then is because we did a um you know not in significant raise uh to the parking meters at the allly rate um and then I've also had a few conversations with some of the business owners particularly off of bless you uh particularly off of eth um in passive grill um so the conversation at the time so there's it's it's two-part conversation one is um can we set some can we get a report on what the revenue numbers have looked like for the last 6 months now that we've had the full six months especially through the height of season um to see if there has been an impact in you know are we are we having lower capacity higher capacity are we are we seeing a drop off in the number of cars or just a 100% capacity the the feeling the feeling and I'm using feelings because I don't have data but the feeling that I'm have when I go down the passer go is quite frequently and the feeling and what I'm hearing from the residents is that it really hasn't abated much so that the congestion and traffic uh with the car circling around on the weekends it really hasn't gotten any better um so one of the conversations that we had last year at at that rate increase was well let's review it uh six months time and then you know if we're not seeing any any decrease in the number of users um do we propose another rate increase right uh and then the second component to that business is the conversation with the business owners in especially again off of eth and on P pass gr way um their concern was since all of passor Grill is we charge the same so we charge an hourly rate which is different on the weekends and holidays and it's also different where we charge a daily rate on certain on special days right holidays holidays yeah and their concern was that they're losing potential customers because the meters that are close to e charge that 25 or $30 rate whatever it is so they may only come I think 15th might be impacted or a ninth might be impacted as well by that um and so they they felt that you know maybe there're maybe we should look at make an adjustment um I know we had a lot of data last time about whether we charge hourly or daily rate you know what the numbers look like um but the business owner specifically asked if we could maybe relook at that for those couple of blocks um because if somebody's coming in to go shopping it doesn't make sense for to pay 25 bucks in parking for half an hour an hour um we can provide those numbers I will probably have a section that's focusing on occupancy because at full because we lost a lot of metered spaces with the seaw wall construction and passag Grill certainly so our Revenue will have been impacted by that so we'll have to come up with the right number so it really shows I think the occupancy and when it's full um and then um the we weekend numbers I mean we're are it's I've talked with a lot of the businesses there too just because of the construction and the meters that were taken away and we try to work through some of those issues with them um so it's um a juggling act for sure and I hear the same things it's a little crazy down there I think it's difficult cars are parking in spaces that are not spaces I think we saw a car parked in passag gril park on the grass um in the middle of the park so um there needs to be better um um yellow paint to where you can't park and things of that nature I think our enforcement's doing a good job um we did add additional ones when we did increase that hourly if you remember correctly and they just work the weekends and I think that has shot up a number of our tickets so I think that also I want to include so it doesn't look like we're not doing the enforcement so we can put that all together um if not by the 11th we can provide it on the 25th's meeting if that's okay to give us time to put that I think 25th would be great okay yeah no problem and if I might add I think we also made some concessions uh for the same property or business owners to put in like they could block off a certain amount of spots on 9th Avenue to help them out I don't know if that's still in force but so yeah well and we're we've got a couple things that we're working through that so um we're trying to work with everybody the businesses down there I know it's very difficult and then they're very concerned about the renourishment that's going to be happening in the impact closing part of the beach down and do we close the parking in front of the area of the beach that's closed which we did the last project that the county did so those still are questions that we need to work through so great okay thank you Jennifer yeah I think maybe after the summer I think one of the things I'll probably bring to the commission for discussion is just that I think in general we need a maybe a a review of a Citywide parking because it it's not just an issue in passer Grill it's it's an issue in district one it's it's an issue on 46 it's an issue in almost every every District if you're an up in park where it's street parking and it's just a free-for-all on the weekends like Jennifer said people will just park anywhere You've Got Mail not being delivered to some people because they're mailboxes are blocked I see it with my neighbors who are closer and on 59th you know driving through there yesterday and everywhere I mean it was just curbs there was no hydrants nobody was paying attention to anything so I think one of the things that it's going to be I think a large project would be just a Citywide review of you know whether we have permit parking residence parking parking meters and so on I think that would be uh something worthwhile tackling especially as we're looking at increased capacity with you know 4500 units being built just on either side of bay you know bridge I think we're just going to see a an increase in in the weekend traffing that we'll happen so I think for the sanity of our residents we'll need to tackle these issues soon yeah I think that's a good idea and that's what I was actually going to bring up um you know some of the streets in in my district and I've noticed in District 3 as well um just with it seems like a double-edged sword of the streets that have no parking signs I've heard complaints from residents of their guest visiting their house getting tickets which i' spoke with Jennifer about and there's a solution on that um but then also on streets like 59th there's no parking there's some no parking signs like in the front of the neighborhoods but not in the back so people are gas visiting the beach are now going all the way in the back of the neighborhood to park but you know we don't want that mistaken for people who are visiting residents homes um so yeah I think that's a good idea all right next we have H staff reports city clerk yes so we're having the joint workshop with the beach stewardship committee and you all next Tuesday the June 4th at 1:00 in the chambers I did have a request about public comment it is an hour and a half um meeting and we don't I don't Advocate and we're not typically taking live comment for workshops and you all are aware of that but I did tell the person that I would ask and I brought forward um a copy of what we did for the joint workshop with the planning board and how I put information out to the public of how they could submit written comments and by a certain time frame like it was 24 hours for this instance it was 24 hours before the meeting so I said to them I would ask if you guys want to do that again um also for this specific meeting I created a PR a public records request number in our portal so it's searchable to include all prior public comments for all of the meetings since this began and then any non-staff presentations because staff presentations are going to be available in the agenda packets or you know you can watch the video and see it so I didn't put those in there but I will also put that on the agenda that I will be publishing tomorrow so I just really need to know from you about public comment please I think if we stay consistent that'll be great okay I'll do the same that's the I mean that's fine if we receive emails or voicemails or anything else yeah and certainly yeah okay I'll put that on the agenda like I did last time then I mean if we had noticed sooner then we could have changed the time allow for more time but since we have a limited amount of time in the so far I haven't been to a single Beach meeting that hasn't run over time yeah well we can dream right we can set goals and strive for them thank you you're welcome and then the last thing I have is I handed out this to you all it's um black and white copy it's from the Florida League of cities they sent me a booklet about their government city government week in the last few years since I've been here we we've like known last minute so it's takes some time to put forward um any type of activity or uh public you know enticement so I took the liberty of making a copy of a few things that I thought were doable and I wanted to know if you all wanted me to work with um the city manager's office to kind of do something like the first thing was a community outreach they did uh city of Longwood did a a bingo game then they only spent 160 bucks and then oop sorry and then the other thing I thought was pretty cool was an essay contest that they did at their local school for kids they wrote like if you were mayor for a day what would that look like like I think it was fifth graders and they got um first second and third got like candy and a gift card which I thought was kind of cute and they came to a commission meeting and were recognized so those were just a couple of things that I felt were pretty feasible and low staff time involvement and low cost if you want to tell me your thoughts on that I would appreciate it yes I don't think we've all had a chance to read through it yet since we just got it can we get back to in the 11th yes how about you tell me on the fourth how about in in in general I absolutely agree with the sentiment okay but I and and I think these what you're talking about are just very low impact you know and and high reward yes uh ideas so generally yes absolutely okay well I'll expect your feedback on June 11th I'm gonna hold you to it all right okay that's all I have I think it's a good idea city manager yes uh we do need to schedule a budget Workshop um I would like to do it the second week of June we do have a regular meeting on June the 11th but uh I was looking at either Wednesday the 12th or Thursday the 13th of June um like a 400 PM meeting if possible so question on that Wayne this is this would just be part one per se it would depend on how late you all want to work that night but but I uh I would think this would be part one yes sir uh typically uh I don't I I don't think we could get through the entire budget especially with questions that I'm sure you all will have uh you know in the time that we would want to spend but you know I would like to plan on spending uh you know a good amount of time on on that first meeting because because we we do need some uh some direction from the commission on priorities and we want to show the commission where we are we'll have some bottom line numbers at that point as far as where we think we're ending up uh whether we're you know we need to talk about adalum or or any other Enterprise fund Revenue changes so uh I would like to you know schedule or at least plan on three or four hours at meeting uh and we could uh you know we could stop at any time obviously but it will take more than that one meeting yes sir but it's important that we we get it done in this timeline u in order to get all the adjustments we need to be made uh we'll be getting uh our assessment role or the estimated tax role from the from the county on July 1 so we don't want to wait till then we want to have pretty much everything done as far as a preliminary so then we can make adjustments then once we know what those numbers will be so if the 12th or 13th works for everyone I'd like to do one of those days yeah i' I'd be in favor of doing U multiple meetings of a shorter term and when I say shorter I mean 3 4 hours as opposed to you know 1 8 10 12 hour meeting yeah I mean there's a lot of commissions that like to try to get it over with and they'll meet at 8:00 on a Saturday and go till 8:00 you know but but that's that's very difficult on everyone so I would I would think uh you know I think I would think we could get probably the direction we need at this point in 3 or four hours so that's why I was thinking you know one of those days meeting at 4:00 would would would give us a direction we need at that point in time so I have a heart stop at 6:00 p.m. on the 12th so it be maximum two hours um about I don't on the 13th I don't have any so does the 13th work for everyone I got the easiest schedule yes for me okay 13 so roughly we would say from like 4: to 8:00 yeah I would say yeah 4 to 8 that'd be a good good uh starting point yes sir do is it necessary to do one on Wednesday for two hours or you think just start with the 14th I think or start with the 13th just do the 13th start at 4 on the 13th and then we'll see where we are at at at that point and we will need to schedule another at some point but I think we can get what we need at that point in in that three or four hours okay okay so 4 4 pm on June the 13th yes great thank you thank you on that uh the only other thing I have and mayor you and I talked about is uh is speaking with Fran uh she's very excited about being here she and I actually started uh two or three days after y'all made a decision to hire her she and I set up a uh a a standing weekly meeting uh on over the phone uh where we we talk at least once a week but and we've been swapping other other information I've I've been sending her documents that she's interested in looking at right now she gets all of our agendas for all of our meetings already uh but like I said she and I talk every week about uh issues that we know or we've known we've been going through any new issues that are coming up uh so we're uh you know she's very uh you she she really wants to get involved as quickly as possible so those are those are good meetings I'm having with her every week to keep her updated so we can she can hit the ground running when she gets here thank you Wayne yes sir City attorney nothing will report thank you District 4 I'm sorry I was thinking about something else uh so I appreciate city manager moving item for cack um to another date because I think we got a little bit of homework to do on that one for sure um I'd like to in advance pass Kudos the city staff we have big day tomorrow uh 9:00 a.m. is The Big C uh breakfast we Barrier Island government Council I sit in on that for the mayor but that's our turn to host that over at the community center so they got to get that ready and and then get it ready at 9:00 I'm sorry at 6 p.m. tomorrow for the uh the boat ramp Town Hall so big day tomorrow for the staff appreciate the uh all the work you're doing on that that's all I have mayor thank you sir District three I just wanted to thank the staff for the district town hall meeting last week for putting that together um and for all the residents who participated um at that meeting and also I was able to go to the um tourism week event um that that I had the opportunity to be with staff also at a table which was kind of nice because we don't always get the opportunity to just kind of enjoy a little afternoon and um and I wanted to thank the chamber also for hosting the event but um to thank the staff again for for the time thank you distri too yeah um I wanted to also thank Wayne and City staff regarding the uh con consent item c um regarding three polls um that were negatively impacting um two businesses in my district and one outside my district and district one um so thanks for getting that taken care of um and then yesterday I attended the Memorial Day event uh at American Legion Post 305 it was uh impactful reflection personally and uh would encourage others to go to that in in the future thank you district one um so I had the opportunity to go to the beach a few days over the holiday weekend and uh though it was quite busy um and certainly there were a lot of cars and the parking lots were full and lots of people looking for parking um it seemed like it was also just a a really nice weekend at the beach for a lot of people and um I was at the beach late yesterday evening after Sunset and I think it was probably not even much of a mess left over and people seem to really be behaving themselves all weekend and so um I think it was a fantastic holiday weekend at the beach and now we get it back to ourselves for a little while right so uh so that's all I have to say y yeah that was in in in great part you know thanks to the sheriff um I know we we I've had a few conversations with him and they've really done an excellent job over the last few holiday weekends um nothing like just a having a nice show of presence yeah right um haven't seen the usual issues on Golf Boulevard besides traffic um but just having the sheriff out there having the Cruisers out there just being visible and present uh I certainly contribute a lot to uh just keeping things nice and calm so I certainly appreciate their efforts on that all right thank you everyone for coming we are adjourned for --------- e e e e e let's call the order the city commission Workshop meeting for the city of St Pete Beach today is Tuesday May 28th 2024 it is 400 p.m. let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I PL Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all city clerk if you please do a roll call vice mayor Lorenzen here commissioner Marriott here commissioner Philz here commissioner Riki mayor patrill here we have a quum thank you who's up first afternoon Jennifer McMahon um just kind of give a little background on to where we are where we've come and where we why we're here today um probably about three years ago um is when we started this process when we had discussions about it and it was put into the budget for FY 23 um so um in FY 23 we put it out to bid um we had a committee of um um staff that reviewed those bids um we selected paypoint um from those bids and then we and going back into dates our kickoff with the supervisors and staff started in July of 2023 so we're about a year into where we've done questionnaires and surveys and and really involving uh Rick from paypoint who is here today um just flew in just got in in the nick of time Nick so he can can put this together but he's going to go through what the process was that they went through and what he would recommend um for us moving forward for you all to consider so with that I'm just going to introduce Rick Campbell from paypoint to take it over thank you Jennifer good afternoon everybody and uh thank you for inviting me down um and hopefully I can manage the PowerPoint here well enough um it's my intention for this to be if you don't mind just stating your name oh for the record for the record uh my name is Dr Rick Campbell with payo HR thank you sir um is for this to be informative um pretty much everything that I'm going to be talking to you the same was communicated to um the employees at the beginning of the process as was mentioned and also the supervisors so at the end of the day you know all parties are have the same set of facts to make Intelligent Decisions on it there's no part of this process that's been hidden or biased in any fashion um because this is just fact driven and that's part of the value of having an you know independent third party um to run this kind of process so the project approach um effectively we use three yard sticks to figure out what Fair pay is one of the yard sticks that we use is we look at the external market so communities that are principally socioeconomically similar to St Pete Beach um with wherever possible you know a concentration you know if you will uh in pelis County because that is you know a competitor uh for labor and that's one yarn stick we use a second yarn stick that we use is org structure to make sure sure that you have the levels one twos and threes of and there are several here at the city uh in the right order because some places it goes the opposite direction 3 2 1 and typically you the higher up um you know there's additional skills involved and so you want to preserve that kind of org structure and then the third yard stick that we use is we look at knowledge skills and abilities um and creating a hierarchy based on that so that you can compare you know Finance to parks and wck to you know to and and the like um across the organization now the reason why we go through the process of having three yard sticks versus just relying on the external Market um is based on personal experience so we had a client paypoint did one of our earliest clients um that had over 100 parks in their city which for this it was college town so that helps explains the why um but it was a crazy high number when we did an external Market survey you know parks and wck typically fell about here for example but where they fit in the orc structure was up here and the knowledge skills and ability that they were requiring of the employees was also up here so fair pay wasn't necessarily what everybody else was doing it what was appropriate for the organization now that's again a relatively simplistic you know explanation but having you know at the end of the day you know multiple different measures or yard sticks and that they if they say the same things or similar things gives you higher degree of confidence in in the results and so that's the process that we went through and again this was communicated uh to employees as well this is exactly what I just went through um so I will skip through that now the first part that first yard stick was the external Market um asking similar communities what do they pay for the same work um again we started with communities in pelis county and then you know just based on the number of possible candidates if you will we then you know expanded it to be Statewide um so you can look at that list uh one thing that I'm strongly recommend uh for this body to consider is the list of communities that chose to respond to the survey uh and then where you feel it is appropriate relative to that group you know where you'd want to place you know the city so for example if you were at the and and part of well I could talk you know math all day long as as strange as that may sound um you know I try to make it so that it's relatable um so when I say the 20th percentile for example if you have 10 organizations two will pay less than that amount and eight pay more that's what a 20th percentile means a 70th percentile if you have 10 organizations three will pay more than the dollar Mount seven less all right that's as highest level of math as that I'm intending to present not trying to and pardon my French you know dumb it down or anything but it really should be that simple so that everybody can you know understand it um because when you go out and you know looking for jobs you know you'll be asking the question or how much do this person pay or this organization pay and then you just go down a scale so it should be uh presented at least at the final analysis you know something that understandable for everyone now when I typically start this process for most communities they ask me to start off with wanting to be right in the middle for for good or bad um and then to let them know what the physical ramifications of that and then based on budget priorities um and what's affordable make you know again Intelligent Decisions you know based on that um but again backing up again one of the things um I strongly recommend is look at this list of respondents and you know making decisions on where you want to be or or think is appropriate for St Pete Beach based on that um I can happy you know I've gone through the list myself and I have my opinion um but maybe save that for at the end so I'm not you know any trying to colorize color the rest of the presentation any now as I mentioned three yard stick third one is knowledge skills and ability and this is where I um was fortunate enough to come to the city and present to uh the different employee groups um you know and ask them quite frankly to tell me about their jobs we did not rely on job descriptions to inform because as you all well know that there can be a lag between what's on a job description versus what people have to do day in day out um so it's better to get that information directly from the people that are doing the work um this also has the added benefit but it is a added benefit not the primary purpose um of having employee Buy in you know this wasn't done in a vacuum or by some consultant from somewhere else this information came directly from employees telling us what they do um so all those kinds of things were taking into consideration um we mentioned to them at the time this wasn't you know a blank check um there was a checks and balance as part of this process we had supervisors were look at a copy of what employees responses were and weigh in on the same job titles that they supervised they didn't get to change it they didn't get to mark it out at the end of the day I looked at what the employees said and I looked at what the supervisor said and did a comparison and in the years that I've been doing this you know 99.9% of the time they are very very similar there's differences um and that's that's to be understood um but nothing typically radically different that was the process so we asked employees to tell us about what they did so that we weren't relying again on either job descriptions or even worse job titles to come up with what Fair pay looked like now this is unfortunately part of the math um one of the things that you know my value in a lot of ways to paypoint is um correlating all the data so what you have on that xaxis there or the horizontal axis is that knowledge skills and ability ranking which we call the compensable factor score um and on the vertical axis there is what the 50th percentile or the middle of the market and you can see that they correlate really really well that's a good thing um for a couple reasons it again gives you a higher degree of confidence that what the market is saying and the knowledge skills and ability that you're requiring that they are in tune in general uh it's also value in particularly going forward um in that when the city has new job titles um and as part of this process um you did have a several new job titles as as things went along originally U I guess before most of your time you had an HR administrator now you have an HR Director they are not the same jobs um and so as part of this process you know we went through the through it and See Saw what what was an HR director and how well that correlated so it made sense for brand new positions um it also makes an awful lot of sense for when you're trying to evaluate a job that taken on additional responsibilities whether it's because and that's can happen for a lot of reasons typically because of staffing issues or challenges um that the work needs to get done um and when somebody takes on that role on a permanent or basis you know how do you pay you know them fairly for that additional responsibilities well you can go through the same kind of rubric if you will and figure out is this a substantial different differentiation from what they're currently doing um and relative to how everyone else in the city um the knowledge skills and abilities are required there and does that warrant a grade change for example so you're doing it in an analytical fashion based on the results of the study it's not personal opinions that I think this person should be moved up a two grades just because I like them it's based on facts um not only Market facts but also again the knowledge skills and ability that the employees and supervisors participated in um so that's a a good thing now where you're at um one of the caveats I'm going to just start off with is kind of trying to explain that little that table there for an average and that's what all these are you can arrive at an average in lots of different ways so if you have an average of zero for example you could have all the job titles pretty close to zero and that will average out to zero pretty straightforward but you could also have half 10% below and half 10% above and then when you averaged them that would equal zero so bear that in mind when you're looking at these numbers now the reason for presenting this um typically typically is am asked at all the time number one to give us a big picture on how the city is doing um that's part one of it part two is as was mentioned all this data was gathered you know a little while ago during a transition and I'll I'll just leave it at that that's not necessarily a good or bad thing it's just a a fact so most of the calcul ations are based on the time all the data was collected and time has passed so that's why you'll also see on there you know what is the you what the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the um Consumer Price Index or inflation has been in the area over the past 12 months so that's why that 3.7% number is up there um because of the time lag um this is actually for the area and I've worked in full disclosure for um Largo several times um and over the past couple years and have gone through the process where you've and you've all experienced very very high uh inflation numbers and low um unemployment so I understand the challenges um they have since Co done three studies now and they completed this last go around in April so when we we looked at their data this was on their previous pay scale so things have changed for other organizations I know for example Largo has and I know other communities have as well so again another thing to bear in mind um So based on that middle of the market with this with this the comparison that's being made there and that's 50th percentile meaning half the organization's paying more half paying less that's what that means you are overall 7% behind as of October of you know last year and here it's pushing June um so how to you know take that in account will be one things I I talk about here momentarily um that's where you are overall um so there's one group that is you see is above market and again these are averages um you can have one job title that's above and all the other ones close to zero and you know that can um present perhaps a a false statement so just to bear that in mind now where I recommend effectively people to start looking at is the meat of the uh report where you see the tables and tables of what the market looks like for every job title where it shows what the 20th percentile to the 80th by job title um what it looks like because that's the way the the study was done every job is a separate Market if you will what you see on the screen now is the list of job titles that are substantially below Market that means more than 10 it could mean 15% or even more you know out of alignment um this is just a general bucket um it's across departments no one Department necessarily more so than another um and from top to bottom that's the the nature of it um second group here are the job titles that are maybe say just below market so 5 to 10% and again you're faced with the same kind of scenario from you know top to bottom and across the organization nothing striking you know one group more so than than another and in general that is a positive statement there are exceptions certainly um but you know you don't have a systemic problem overall in my judgment where one department has been so highly favored um and everybody else has just been taking a backseat again there going to be certain job titles where that is that may be true but overall nothing systemic now onto recommendations um and there's a typo on this and I apologize that shouldn't be 40% it should say 60 um um part of our the recommendations um was to essentially update the salary scale um starting off with a minimum wage effectively of $15 an hour and that is in a lot of ways really hard sometimes to bring in somebody at that kind of level um just because of the competition the number of job titles that that impact you will see and mostly it's seasonal employees here um it's not the predominantly the full-time staff they are at a much higher level um but it's anchoring it on something um is is the is the point on what where you're having to compete for labor um part of the also recommendations was to make the spread from Min to maximum consistent you know across the board and to be close to what other organizations in the area so you can have a much easier comparison of um our Market comparison um that's what it overall looks like um now this is intended to be top level because I know it's you know a lot of ways the first time some of these things you've heard um but you will also I believe have received is the report um that has you just pages and pages of numbers and that's intended to be that way um and then also spreadsheets that look at things on a more granular level um you will notice on the spreadsheets there's no names though it doesn't it's not too hard you can probably figure out some of them um my process and the way I work is I don't know everyone that's a good thing these are about the job titles responsibilities of the job jobs um and so everything is treated in a lot of ways in a in a vacuum um I've made plenty of recommendations where whether it's I'll pick a county is administrator is well above market and you know that's my the boss paying the paycheck those are just facts um one of the things that I did communicate to employees at the beginning um for what they should expect in terms of results um and it bear worth repeating here that there are a group of job titles that are paid below market and they were identified there's another group that are paid right in alignment and that's not a bad statement that means you've been paid fairly all along and then there's a third group of job titles that are paid better here at the city than other places I told them then and um saying it again that's a value proposition that does not mean overpaid uh certain job titles whether because of the market and trying what was required to attract the position um it was necessary um it go also goes back to my parks and wreck example before you know if the organization values it really highly what other organizations are doing so be it um that also should be taken in consideration um but in the spreadsheets that you were given you were given effectively several of the snapshots that were produced based on the 40 pages of tables in the the main word document um so we looked at the 50th 55th 60th 55th 70th and just extracted them out um and there are cost implications certainly for choosing it um whichever um Market level essentially that you want to be at um the values that you see is based or will be based on um salary only it doesn't include overtime or benefits or anything like that it's just comparison one of the things that we did separately is a benefit study that um is being in the review process now but in summary um in terms of uh how much benefits cost the city relative to Total compensation um not radically different than other communities in the area so that's a good statement that is a typical statement um so having it separated between salary and benefits makes sense in this case um so it's easy to concentrate just on the salary portion um now backing up on what I had started off with you know um this is you know for your consideration on what makes sense to you when I independently go down that list of cities I can very easily based on socioeconomic factors housing price and um household income and unemployment rate and population I can see looking at the list of people who responded you know I could say that St Pete Beach is in the top third top quarter but you know that's just you know doesn't take into consideration all the things that you do have to um one thing you know particularly the folks behind me and you know who listen to or hear this later um need to take into consideration is that you know these we're all taxpayers here and then there are certain priorities and what is financially possible um Lots has to go into that that final analysis um but the positive you know in terms of this whole project is again employees were were part of it they had their voice heard um so that we knew exactly what people were are doing on a day and day out basis that was taken into consideration um the market data is there um and does represent a snapshot in time but one thing to also take into consideration that there has been a time lapse so you may want to consider you know a additional kind of cost of living kind of adjustment um and I provided you what you know the Bureau of Labor Statistics that is as of March of this year and that's the most recent one they they've published um and with that I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have I have thank you very much [Music] um just so that we're on the same page with acronyms and other things like that so we see in your reports population meeting house so as we look at the comparables by comparison I mean the other cities that are in Florida they may or may not be like us but they decided to respond right um so one of the things am I missing it or we've got population median income Etc does any of this say what their City budget is we do not look at budget the process for selecting comparators M and typically it makes this one cut and you'll see closer to the back last page of that section additional localities right those additional ones were based on input from the different department heads well who are you losing employees to all right so it can include a clear water are you similar to clear water in a lot of ways no all right but are you losing people to Clear Water you know more than just one or two the answer is yes well that's a comparator even if they are a lot of ways radically different um our approach on a first first cut independent basis is to effective we we draw a circle um around our client and look at all the communities in that area and say are they and to eliminate the ones that are radically different um but they're just not fair um whether on the high side being um whether say the housing price is much much higher and there are communities like that that um in that sample um or ones that are much much poorer um we're trying to get rid of the extremes um for a simple reason if you had a group of 10 respondents and all are far wealthier than St Pete Beach okay that's fine you can make a comparison but where is should St Pete Beach be at the 20th percentile 10 what makes the most sense alternatively if you picked much poorer place places right You' be at the 90th percent or the top one well how high do you go so we're just trying to really in the process eliminate the extreme outliers and then based on who responds again say who what makes most sense but why we're not using averages throughout intentionally um because you can pick a super wealthy place and I I'll just pick one that's not on the study like bokeh for example it would be night and day difference I used an average that can skew the values much higher um or you know comparably pick someone much poor and do the do the opposite um and that's again not Our intention um by dividing it into making it the statement into percentiles you don't have any problems with averages if you have the Boko that's way up here that doesn't change where you're at that's just one respondent um so that's why I I suggested um look at the list of respondents and what makes most sense to you on where you want to position you know the city as an idea um so you can get rid of the ones that are you for whatever reason that you think that are much much different so be it and then position yourself accordingly and and then it looks like from your report one of the Departments that seems based on this report that comes across as consistently under let's call it underpaid based on this sure this report is based of October 23 MH the fire department received a significant pay raise across the board um November January there's multiple meetings on that does this take to account that the pay increase or does it not so what we did was the comparison was the same set of data you know where St Pete Beach was versus in all the other communities it's a snapshot in time but salaries were adjusted you hired additional people and some people you know left yes that was taken into consideration so in terms of dollar calculations of things one of the columns you'll see on the spreadsheet will'll say 2023 salary and then two columns over it will be 2024 and which page is that um it is on the spreadsheet and it'll say it says 23 rate and then right next to it says 24 rate and you have a page on that or it's we've got 74 pages so yeah it's on the top row of all of them um yeah but there's five or six yeah there's a lot of pages yeah should be on the first one at the very least yeah 76 I think so the point is that that pay adjustment for fire in all employees is taken in consideration in terms of if you've already moved them up 2third of the way that they need to go then the Delta would be the remaining third you'll have to simplify it for me okay if the fire department if there was an individual this is going down to the individual level sure got a $10 you know pay increase and as a result of the study our recommendations they were $12.50 out the the net calculation was like they need to move $2.50 not another 12250 okay my question is your report has October as a date correct the the contract change was effective several months after that correct which you would not have had that data obviously in October correct so are these numbers based on the data in October or based on October what the actual salaries look like today six months later how far out the fire department was or any other Department job title was based on October data okay all right I know for example that Largo made changes to their salaries and they are comparator in April that's had nothing to do with this it's all October is the is is the Baseline there has been changes with lots of communities in in that time frame um that is kind of the what most of this report looks like in here so you know you're we have to make decisions based on this data right based on this data it says that the fire department on average is underpaid by let's say 7% they got 11% increase in January whatever it was so that would say that so now now we would say we're actually above the average and based on the decisions that were made at that contract at that time actually based on the data we have from a different report just this data just for the fire department right again I'm not saying they're underpaid overpaid whichever we're simply trying to understand what the data says so that we know what decisions need to be made and if this data is you know we've had and the reason I'm you know signaling out the fire department in particular is because of a large chunk of your report deals with that department yes uh what you're saying is is correct right it was a snapshot in time of in October and adjustments have been made if the adjustment had been made on their 2024 salary um that was taken in consideration in terms of the fysical impact of adjustments so if as a result independently if this would have been i' been here in October or November um and the recommendation was for a individual firefighter to move $12.50 at the time okay that would have been the recommendation um but if you had moved them subsequently $10 is part of this independent you know study okay that's fine that means they're only $2.50 low that adjustment that you've made subsequently has been taken in consideration for the budget recommendations I think the other thing you've got to keep in mind also that the other cities comparable cities have also made adjustments since then you know so yeah we we may have given a particular area like the fire an increase but the other cities were comparing to they've also gone through that type of thing also so you just have to keep that in mind too thank you questions comments I have questions um when you did that survey um you showed a a a slide Li of um I guess the questions and it was one page is it more than just one page or are there other Pages 11 pages of questions and those questions does it ask um the different cities who participated the experience and degree of the person um and the salary they were making right so um the external Market survey that we s out that is was just a spreadsheet it includes the job title and then a summary of the responsibilities of the position um typically it does include minimum requirements not only in education but years of experience um it's typically how it's done um and then what the employees and supervisors here provided that's the uh 11 page PDF kind of document um questions that we asked there is um education minimum education required for the position um and then also two different ways of looking at experience not only uh total number but also the number that you needed in the preceding job title the specific example um is a police Lieutenant um and it says you know you may need to be as a certified sworn officer for eight years in order to apply for the job and then three years essentially as a sergeant and then if you do that with all the different job titles in a police department you can kind of figure out an org structure in part lots of job titles work that way way it helps us to understand in part particularly because you do have a lot of ones and twos and threes um here at the city to know have a better understanding of the that kind of ranking because we do have some one twos and threes but we also have some that don't have one twos and threes correct you know like you could have a finance director um who' be beginning straight out of college right versus someone who has 15 years experience and has a a PhD you know in in in or an engineer er um engine city engineer jobs could be different um in one city in the city of St Petersburg versus the city of of ours St Pete Beach or Denon or Clearwater because they might be managing 123 projects versus maybe two and but then they're managing at a certain level of money you know on Capital Improvement projects or whatever may be so how do how are we able to compare what could be apples and oranges I'm I would like to know like how that was done here and how we truly are comparing positions when some of our positions um might not be managing the same responsibilities as some other location because maybe a lot of our work is done we do a lot of contractual work right a lot of our work is not done here so it's supervised and and a lot of the the physical work if you want to call it physical or it could be intellectual but um is done contractually so how how can we compare right and that's part of the reason for having mult multiple yard sticks um because there are exactly what you're saying at the larger municipalities you may have you know a director that you know has a small army exactly to your point versus the same position here that they may be the one person you know is doing it all and in that case one of the things that we're um in part relying on when when you're putting out this external survey um is that you're trying to do comparable organizations so while Largo was a respondent they are much larger I mean and I can speak to them all day long because I've done their study for them um well they may be at the much higher end of the market at the end of the day because the responsibilities are much higher so be it you could also on that list there's much smaller places or that have even fewer responsibilities than at St Pete Beach they may be on the lower end um that's why you're trying to pick in part in places that are roughly similar knowing full well there's some on the higher end and on the lower end is maybe the best way of putting it but that's only one measure you have two other measures and it what makes the most sense for you know St Pete Beach so you know if we go back to kind of the your Finance director um position that you were mentioning it um yeah the responsibilities are going to be different here than at a larger organization uh does that mean that that position would be all right we we'll pick pick Miami days since they're not even remotely on this you know that most likely Position will be paid more than the city manager here well that does that make sense for St Pete Beach no it does not it's got to fit in the organization that's the organization chart kind of um criteria or yard stick and then what knowledge skills and abilities are being required for the position so a city engineer for some smaller communities for example that where much of the work is contracted out and I'm you know an engineer by training um one place may require a PE license and one may not right those are those are those are different that will come out in the knowledge skills and abilities being required that they would fall lower according accordingly um so having those multiple ways of measuring things um the intention is Right does this make sense or St Pete Beach you know because it's not trying to take particular job titles in a in a in a complete vacuum because because that does not work um it's got to work for the organization as a whole at the beginning you asked um you know like basically us to discuss and determine what those yard sticks were and that of you would you you'd have your opinion as well as to what to use but in this thing saying that I could see why we would have to use yard sticks one yard stick for one position versus a yard stick for another position um because like the city engineer let's just as an example you know what our city engineer might be doing might not be comparable to the one in Clearwater or the one in St Petersburg or the one in Miami um so in that case do we should our yard sticks be specific to the job and the city that's comparable to to us or to the position you know like why would we compare our finance director to Miami like you said all that's already been done mm so all the data has been pieces of data been correlated together that matches St Pete Beach right so okay that comes about at the end in terms of the grade structure all right what makes you know sense for the positions um and it's tying in what the market is paying for positions it's tying in the knowledge skills and ab that's tying in the org structure um so that it makes sense and it's a you know Collective ho um one two the since everything does line up really well for the cases where job titles for a multitude of reasons but traditionally when things change in the position you have a way of well let's look at it again and it can be easily you know done in case all right this position should be up higher or you know or whatever the case may be you have a way with all the pieces looked at what makes sense for for the city as a whole Could you um elaborate on that a little bit on the um on this table 32 the proposed salary schedule that has the grades um 1 through 20 the the those that that that splitting up of job titles into those grades 1 through 20 is that a standard grades 1 through 20 that you use for for for all of the salary studies you do for all different kinds of cities or do you do you base that off of what already exists in St P Beach do you try to divide it into equal numbers of people for each of those grades or how do you how do how do those sure get created part of it one of the things I said for the spread between the minimum maximum I looked at what all the other job titles and the thousands of responses you know in my giant spreadsheet um what is the average and it was 50 some odd percent is one I think it was on one of the slides so that's set the spread because that made sense you know that's how you're competing for labor um and then otherwise um just so that the distance or the ladders between grades for it to be constant um you know as sometimes and this did Ha does happen or the the current salary scales you have an A's and things like that where um grades kind of were shoehorned in to make it all work at the time um to make it more consistent you know since we're going through the process it makes sense to do so um that's part of it the other part is so that particularly you because you do have the different levels to have a wellknown right if I get this additional certification what does it mean in dollars sense to me if I know I'm going from a Grade Three to a grade four I know 7 and half% that's the benefit for me doing so um currently you with the existing salary scale you can't make that statement um and in terms of anchoring the whole process um you can select a lot of different values for that um 15 you could say is arbitrary and you can say it's the you know Walmart you know gas station number um it's just for a while now many organizations have kind of the default has that as the default um how many job titles that impact here at the city it's mostly seasonal right that's the only ones that are falling really in that first grade everybody else is at a higher level so from that that great first one is is degree arbitrary but the rest is based on just what I explained sure and so so that so that that bottom one that that that $15 an hour being kind of the deao minimum wage kind of anchors that whole process um but then be because this is all based on other the responses of other cities and the the current pay structure and and knowledge and abilities there's no external correlation it's not like you could say well a a a level 13 is equivalent to being a nurse in a hospital or a level set there's no external comparison is that correct to it is part of the selection of the grades in the next table over one of the things that we did and it'll change depends on where you want to be at so if you're at the 50th percentile that this particular position may be at a grade 10 if you're at the 70th percentile it may be a grade 12 okay you know it will move along with that so that is one of the things that we go through with all the different pieces of information saying what do the numbers suggest um is it a foolproof system and I will be the first one to say absolutely not you know there are going to be exceptions where part can be a value statement that all right this one should be a great hire make it work and make sense in the organization that can happen um it can go both directions and I'll make the easiest one as part of this process when the project first started you add an HR administrator which is a lower position um now you have an HR director which is a much higher position okay that you have to figure in not only as part of the process okay excuse me Rick correct me if I'm wrong but I think that actually ties in with commissioner Riz Nikki's question about you know the the skills that somebody needs and where they fall in because I think that you know a just pick a number a position number 21 uh who goes in that position has a lot to do with the skills whereas in another city it might be at a 26 or a 19 and that's why we go through that process to see exactly what they're doing and it it could that's what I think that's one of at least in my experience with them one of the most one of the biggest problems is you don't want to compare a let's just say a maintenance worker two over there to a maintenance work or two here because they may be completely different jobs so it might end up being a a a 21 or it might be a 25 but that's why all that comes together sure is that correct that is absolutely correct and it's also in addition you know what makes the most sense for St Pete Beach you know because it may be right 18 or 27 fits in your organization right and it's independent of what anybody else is doing that's just just the V it's a that comes more of the value proposition thank you and and all that's taken to the best of everyone's ability on the project teams you know to to come up with this were um shortfalls or uh positions we have trouble filling was that taken into account and maybe recommendations on a Boost so part of that would come in B you know where there's shortfalls it can be monetarily driven you know that's that's part of it um particularly um in certain job titles and it just varies over time which ones are the ones that are most in demand um sometimes that's the way it works I'm old enough where um it folks used to be the guys with the five and a quarter floppy disc and coming by your desk and plugging in and they were valued at a certain level and then you know now you don't necessarily always see them and their Network something or another and they're at a much higher level so it can fluctuate and I'm speaking over the course of decades um but it also can be you know what the market is you know driving for certain positions um many communities have Challenge and have had challenges for a couple years now uh for anybody with a CDL license for example um particularly when there's a housing boom um and you know I'm going to and low unemployment I'm going to go work with a private contractor unless they have a family and want the benefits and they might say you know public sector makes a lot of sense if it it varies um during Co I've did stud studies where uh you basically couldn't pay somebody to work in a nursing home um being exposed to that for the pay that was appropriate just previously um PID just dramatically Chang change it's es and flows um you have to be careful your employers have to be careful that sometimes just throwing more money at it doesn't solve the problem because if you do it I can bet you you know everybody else in the area will will know it and you know you're just chasing your tail um it's a balancing act and for some hardto fill positions you know it's it's a challenge um in but one thing to not do is to always necessarily hire somebody um and mess up kind of the internal Equity relative to all your other employees um because when you do that now you're going to cause you can cause morale problems part of the process was for you know a substantial number of the job titles you know we were asking other communities what are they paying the ranges so for the most part it should capture that um but when you hire new new folks well now you have a a more Market range in which to do that it's not an easy answer I I know I think the the question if I if I can read your mind here go ahead is we have a particular challenge hiring in uh in permitting um that whole area yep part of the external factor is third party vendors who are gobbling up all the people that would normally work in the public sector right and is that where you were going with it believe it is yeah yeah and so you know what can we do there because the amount of money that we're spending on on third party vendors big if I may say so is obscene yep I understand and I would rather give it to individuals but at the same time I do understand what you're saying about okay if we start paying 250 for a job that used to pay 7590 yes we're going to get a lot of applicants we're going to be able to hire the best people immediately but the next thing you know Largo is going to be right behind them the third party vendor is going to be right behind them so what is your recommendation looking at that specific area so this this goes back to again my parks and wreck example it's valuation statement you know if based on need in this case that you're valuing that permitting person or job titles more so be it you know you you make it Concrete where you're doing X for this reason it's a market reason um the recommendation is for that series you know from bottom to top or wherever you need to to move um together and increase the the grade structure so if they are at a grade five as part of the recommendation what the market is paying for it move them to a six if that is necessary so where are we versus where is the market that is for you to decide at the end of the day what what's the data telling you like what what are we paying Vis A what the market so this is what you all have for the permit technicians here or whatever other job title you see what the 20th percentile pays for the position that meaning again 10 organizations if that's what you're comparing against two pay less eight pay more than that number so are we at 80th or are we at 20th percentile where are we it it has it for each and every job title okay so where so you'll see it that the easiest math number that and I will I think going back to one slide overall the overall average was 7.4% but that's we've got some that are maybe 10 or 12 15% I think can you right so I will go with the permit technician one and I'm just throwing it out there it's not trying to highlight one title over any other ones right Wayne does that Wayne does that fit into the general category individuals that we're having a hard time acquiring at the moment no they're they're the ones on the upper end they may be 10 12 15 which which department is it that we're having a hard time hiring for right now department is our building department biggest challenge let's look at specifically more building department building department all right so we'll look at the and again the what I'm talking about will be applies for every job title these would be specifically inspections you know building inspectors um we can't hire building inspectors we can't hire building officials you those are our biggest challenge right now all right so we will look at just cuz I like the name fog inspector you know fat oil and grease you know that's it may be dinner me but that's okay um currently you know on the existing salary scale the middle of that pay range is $34. 63 they're grade 121 all right I can look at the range the the 20th percentile pays $31.68 again that means 10 organizations eight pay more than that 3168 and two pay less where you're at is I'll just go down the scale between 30 and 35% that's where you're currently are for that job title so we're in the upper range no you're near the bottom I'm just 20th is at the bottom I understand so you are paying 3463 the 30th percentile is 3383 and the 40th percentile is 3645 so 60 5% of them are paying more than us correct okay right you see for each job title what the you know all those dollar amounts are and where they are for each job title um but where you want to be at in terms of the market you know do you want to be at the 50th or do you want to be at the 60th or the 70th Rick I think says the dollar range is with I think that probably this brings us into the discussion on how to implement it uh you know we we talked earlier about overall we're like 7.4% but if you just did an overall 7.4% that really doesn't get a lot of positions where they ought to be so I think if I'm and you're correct let me miss misspeak here but I think your recommendation would be to adjust each individual position according to the market so some positions may have a very minor adjustment while other positions such as the ones we need may have a 10 or 12% and that the way we would implement it would be not just an overall increase but it would be a byos based on the data that we have Market is that correct that is correct so the fog inspector in particular if the comparison and I'm just looking at the table you want it to be at the middle that would say you're 10.7% below market so that's more than the s so that would be if if that's was your strategic objective to be in the middle that's how much it would cost to get them there in the middle um dollars and cents wise in this case it it is cheaper to move all the individual job titles as they need to versus across the board uh we did the math um the project team and it comes out a little bit less expensive to do it that way but independent of the from my perspective the cost um it's certain job titles are really out of alignment and whether move them to where they need to be I mean that's just the way you know I think um but yes maybe I'm the only one maybe I'm missing something here I'm kind of a bottom line guy so your recommendation is to move all 20 grades up 7.5 is that what I'm reading here no that's just the distance between the different grades is 7 and a half% so so what's the actual recommendation you're making so the recommendation is in terms of job titles um if you want to be at the middle that 50th percentile of the market what you'll have in the pup report is the grades for all the different job titles and the percentage changes come about on the spreadsheets right so you have it by individual we got to go to that okay so it's it's by IND idual at the end of the day because that's what you individual position right would be I mean one you know one uh position might get a might get the seven one might get a two one might get a 12 depending on where that position so it wouldn't be just a same percentage across the board all right so we have to go to the colored spreadsheet to kind of get to the bottom line of what if you want to see what each position would how each position would change you need to go to that spreadsheet yes sir you could do that in the spreadsheet because that is one mechanism for doing so um but you can also see this simpler summary um I guess it's on Table 19 through 23 or thereabouts summarizing all for you this is the group that are most out of alignment the group are that are a little bit out of alignment the group and then the third group is ones that are right where they should be and then you know so on um so that's summary table um but the hardcore numbers are you know for For Better or Worse is the 40 pages by each individual job titles um because there are all individual markets so if we were to move everybody to roughly that 50% you know all of all of these adjustments at the at the at the bottom of that CU I don't see any totals anywhere corre what is what is the increase in total salary is paid what is the impact on the city's budget based on my estimate and I will cave you had it's an estimate because I'm sure since the last time I did the estimate there's people have come and gone and everything else um about 250,000 about um if you were to make a um independently if you were a that's moving by job titles all right that does not take into account any kind of uh overall cost of living adjustment again this was done with October data and that CPI number um I'll have to go back and find the sheet tells you the number 3.7 we go with the man he he know knows it so that would be something also to consider so it be more than the that 250 approximate number if you were to make a uniform you know everybody moving the same amount um we calculated it to be around the $300,000 dollar amount so ended up being cheaper um doesn't always happen that way um in this case it did I think one of the main questions is where do you want to be do you want to be at the 50th percentile or do you want to be at 55 or do you 60 you know that's of course that has implications on the cost when you move 5 or 10% but I think that's a question the commission needs to decide where do you want to be in the marketplace uh I know that a couple of recent ones Largo recently did theirs they they went to the 50% toes where Largo went to on the other hand if I may add but their Market is different it is so it is that is an apples and oranges comparison for that they compared it and I did it so I Know It full 100% um different group for you it's the list of respons and where you want to be relative to that that's easiest way of doing it and I Believe Clearwater did one a few months ago and I think they went to 65 or 75 they they they went somewhere we will never compete with with clear water or the county or you know or St Petersburg so not sure to really need to worry about that one but but that's that's one of the big questions is you know where do we want to be and the number that Rick just gave you the 250,000 estimate was I think being at the 50 50 percentile but I would strongly agree with the other statement that Rick said that since you know all this data is basically a year old from when you started you know and everybody else's you know there should be a a cost of living increase also connected that would that would really get us keep us in that 50 or maybe 55 you know if you do that so at a minimum I think that's where we should be and can I just I just want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly that that um like when we were talking about having a hard time finding building officials or specific departments that that we would first decide okay we want to be at the 50 or the 55% level across the board and then if we wanted uh you know if we felt like a specific Department needed to be more incentivized to find employees we would just move that department or the those positions to a different grade we could do that absolutely the other thing that we have the ability to do in in a position is we don't have to start somebody at the starting salary when we're you know that's why we have the range in there and that's why you look at at what somebody's uh uh how much uh you know how much they've done in the past or you know what kind of credentials they bring with them their experience so you know our our PR now allows us to bring somebody in somewhere in that range based on their abilities so that way we you know we're a little bit more competitive also one thing I would recommend that you not do is to say for Department X you want to be at 60 and Department y well we don't care this much and let's make them at 10 or or something like that yeah that's bad that just SS morale issues and honestly it's better to take the whole study and throw it away you know because that's the worst outcome on on in doing one of these studies treat everybody the same you know if you have to make grade changes for multitude of reasons do so um but to be you know transparent and to the best of your ability you know treat everybody the same and and and fairly and then how much does the um the uh the housing price or the mean housing price you know in the very beginning you have some you know population and and you know various economic statistics how much does that fall into the the equation of comparative to other places the only purpose of that first analysis of who is a fair comparator um that's the only place that's ever used okay and it's again intended only to weed out the extremes um but all that was vetted by the the project team you know at the at at the beginning and that's why um if I can probably find the page number for you relatively quickly there at the beginning of the study you know department heads were asked and so that's where St Petersburg was included as a list of comparator I would not normally do so because independently they're just crazy bigger you know they're not the same but if you lost a lot of employees to it or a normal competitor for labor you can make the argument that it makes sense um so there is a list including the county and Largo um clear waters also was pulled for that purpose again so be it and you had a rationale for it and completely clearly communicated to you and to employees so it's everybody's again it's a transparent process now you may say we are not like clear water and okay they may be at the very top end of the pay scale okay we're not using averages so it doesn't skew the results in any kind of negative fashion they were considered now having said that there are many job titles I'm going to bet money on that St Pete Beach pays better than Clear Water maybe not at the executive level but there's plent of other job titles where that's going to be a reasonable competitor for labor you have to go Department by Department you know and individual chob titles and um you know that's why the process is what it is okay what's the lowest um hourly rate we offer or we pay anybody right now full-time not seasonal trying to decipher it on the spreadsheet here current L rates minimum hour is our minimum that is the minimum current okay Reas I asked that I heard you say we can't compare panel's County because I know they just went to $18 and they're already up to like1 1890 but uh thank you that's a bud discussion yeah of course the bottom line one of the bottom line things here is what can the city afford to do you that's and I think that's why you need to you know not only where you want to be in the market but you know what can the city afford is there any restriction from us like if proposals come in front of us and we all kind of go H I'd rather put that money toward Personnel could we cross money lines that way I don't exactly follow your for example let's say in a week you came to us with a proposal it'll do x amount of money for a project this fiscal year and we all kind of went I don't really see that as a need right now but I think we we can increase pay levels to but that'll be one of our first discussions with our next budget Workshop first real budget Workshop is you know if if we get some direction tonight on of course yall can't vote this Workshop if we get some direction on what we're thinking then we'll we'll have numbers so when we get into our budget Workshop we can show you what our bottom line is on those funds and if we see well that puts us in a deficit then we can go back and look and say well we don't have to do this this year you know if you want to put the money into Personnel then you don't have to do this project let me better frame a question in the federal government there's certain monies that cannot cross lines you just can't do it you know it's it's congressionally mandated blah blah blah um so we can do that internally if we need to we try budget well best budget practices we should stay in funds or general fund should not subsidize our utility or or Enterprise funds we should not do that you know we each each fund needs to stand on its own so we should not be moving money from the general fund in in uh to cover Personnel costs over in sewer for example each fund needs to stand on its own okay and that'd be part of the budget process okay thank you Wayne have you had discussions with all your directors at this point to discuss individual departments and what true Staffing is needed like for building permit inspector for example you know are we losing people because we we're not able to have as many because we need more um or even like imp planning planners or and I mentioned Engineers you know and when you compare different cities you know some manage like just Capital Improvement projects some just do storm water you know some you know at what point do your does your Department's discussing you know we need to have more that's a discussion that's one of the first discussions when we start our budget process each year is is is Staffing uh because that has obviously a big impact on the overall budget so uh what we request each department to do and I sit down with each department at the beginning of the budget process okay what you're Staffing do you need more people in next year's budget or not and they'll you know if they think they need somebody they'll give us that justification they'll show that that FTE or whatever they need in that position and we do the same thing with all every line item in the budget yeah we do have that discussion early on because it it helps I mean when I think of retention you know like why one person would choose one city over another well a lot could do well if I go to this city I don't I'm not as stretched my I feel better less stress I can't I can get paid more and maybe I get paid less but the stress level is is lower so you know is that kind of like the discussion you know like I mean I'm an educator you know I know in schools we talk that way if I go to this school that's going to require more than if I end up at the other school you know like well sure I mean that's always a part of someone's discussion you know what's the work environment somewhere else absolutely uh I think probably a bigger decision is can I make more money is the commute less you know those things but certainly that you know what what am I involved in that's always a part of it right all right everybody wants to get paid more think it's thing but I don't I don't know the whole structure operationally I mean I always look at operations that's my that was my background like what do we need to operate effectively and stress nothing stress free but where are we struggling you know and then because at least for me personally that would let me know do I want to be in the 50% now or should we be at the 40 or the 30 to allow us to hire more in a department you know because I don't know what our overall budget is yet I know we haven't got into budget workshops it's hard for me to say what percentile do I want to be in when I don't know the needs of each department well think if we're below the 50 percentile the the biggest problem we're running into is somebody can make more money somewhere else you know that's the biggest issue there you know so so I think we need to be obviously at least at 50 percentile on something like this and um but it's um you know I think I think Rick and his his people have done a good job especially all the time they spent in trying to not just compare job titles and compare job duties uh with with where the market is because that's that's important you know we can't just say well an like you said an engineer there and an engineer here might be totally different job so I think I think Rick's done a great job in in getting people positions where they should be uh you know you know obviously you're always going to have to tweak these things as you move because because everything has changed uh it's changing rapidly since Co as far as where the demand is what you have to pay you know one of the going back to one of the qu questions that the rich had was you know and I I think it was you this one of the how did we end up where we are well you know we the commission has given raises usually I think every October but they have not adjusted or pay scale so people are getting a raise a cost of living or maybe a merit at some point in time but but our pay scales have not changed so they're still living within that old pay scale that might be I don't know how old you know several years several years old so that's one of the reasons we've gotten into this situation because the the pay scale hasn't changed and the job titles are there but in a lot of cases the duties have changed and that hasn't been looked at you know so I think this obviously said it's not going to be perfect no pay study is ever perfect as much as you'd like for it to be but uh you know I feel pretty comfortable with with where We've Ended up here as far as I know we've all spent a lot of time in trying to get things where that we think they should be so I you know I feel pretty comfortable that that that if we implemented it not with a just an across theboard race for I think we would still be have trouble recruiting and retaining but I think we if we implemented it according to Rick's recommendation of do it by position you know make that change by position and then uh also do a some sort of a cost of living to adjust for being a year old I think we would probably be in pretty good shape within the market should benefits also be taken into consider I know you're not doing that but um we did oh you did so is that part of this too are we compar comparable as things um is a independent kind of study that Karen my better 2third relative to her expertise and she's very similar to Jill in this instance um looked at not only on a more granular level which I cannot speak to but for me it always pulls down to the big picture numbers and the biggest one is the percentage of benefit compared to Total compensation how does you know St P Beach stack up to everyone else and from my understanding it's pretty similar um now you can go really deep into the weeds and look at copays and and stuff like that and sometimes that's really not for the individual it's obviously beneficial but that's almost a separate question but for this kind of exercise it's big picture dollar items um it's a that very similar so for clarity what are you looking for from the Commissioners right now because I'm kind of not sure where we're at well I think there's two or three questions one is where we want to be in the market do we want to be at the 50 percentile do we want to be at 60 that that's one of the questions uh the other question is what method we use and that's what I talked about a minute ago rather than doing just a straight across the board percentage to do it by position you could do it either way uh strongly I strongly recommend not doing just a percentage across the board because you're still going to end up with a lot of disparity between positions uh and then then the third question is when do you want to implement it you know uh at what point in time of course we'll have to bring this back on a regular agenda item for your approval but you know my uh my recommendation would be we're so far into this fiscal year and and by the time we would get it back onto an agenda it makes sense to to do it at the beginning of the new fiscal year to would be the implementation schedule on it but uh those are really the questions that the other the big questions perfect that's what I was looking for yeah I I think to just share my thoughts um you know talking about what what's the problem we're trying to solve which sounds like it's hiring and retention is a big part of it um and you I think pay increas is not the sole answer but I think it's a piece of the pie um I think there's some other things as well I think we're all optimistic about the new city manager we have coming in that's why we picked her you know so I think there's things like that just when you're thinking about it there's different pieces of the pie to to help solve that problem well there we at the point where we can start throwing out percentiles and things and well I mean we just we just we just spit ball in tonight right because we'll have to come back we can't make any decisions tonight but I think what Wayne is looking for is just kind of a general consensus and direction as to what uh where we want to go and I I do agree with you know looking at it from a individual position Department standpoint I think one of the other challenges I do have with that is just in the things that I've seen for example we had without naming specific individuals but we had a situation last year for example for a buck 25 we lost somebody who' been with the city for a long time and we couldn't make that happen to me I think so one of the things I would like to look at is having some kind of ability whether we call it a cushion or something that allows the city manager the or the individual department head to make those you know on the spot adjustments as necessary so that we're not in a situation where we lose somebody's been with us for five years because we lost them to the county for about 25 that that was a ridiculous situation and those things so as we're looking at what do we fix you know what are we trying to achieve I think I'd also like to see something that we build into that with with some kind of ability to make adjustments so whether we build a you know five three four 5% cushion into it and I think that's that's a a a different situation from adopting what we're looking at here that becomes part of our PR Personnel rules and regulation to where it gives us that ability which we're we're working on that also but I agree with you 100% that wouldn't it be what you had mentioned earlier like you would have the ability to move to another level right like if based off your skills or you know like maybe in that situation you would have been the level 12 not the level 10 because yeah I don't know could well I mean that was a situation where just the the pay scale across the county had changed and we hadn't done this study before and we didn't have a mechanism in place correct short of coming to the commission for a special approval for each individual employee which nobody wants to be put in that position we say hi I'm John I like a race please right I mean it's but we shouldn't have to put individuals in that position either um so I you know I think some there where that gets us in that 50 to 55% range seems Seems to make sense um but then also with you know looking at individual departments were again I'm not I'm simply singling the the permitting inspector guys just cuz that's it seems where we have an issue we do need to have the flexibility to go to 65 70% if a Department warrants it because we may be at 50% and not be able to hire anyone even at 50% well and I agree with Rick I don't think you want to have different percentiles for different positions but we we may want to look at those one more time before before we bring it to yall for approval that they may should go to a different grade possibly is correct that would and it's it's not again it's not the the difference is the market has changed in that particular area in the last two to three to 5 years it's it's changed significantly it's just not what it was to take your floppy desk it guy example that's just not where we are today right corre and so if we in those cases you know I can take off my you know businessman's hat you know under normal economic circumstances you know a pay study that should work for five to six years shouldn't hire me or anybody else in that time frame in general now I did mention Largo's hired me three times in the past couple years just because things did change that much under extraordinary circumstances and then there can be individual titles that move up and down and you can look at it piece by piece right they're no longer dealing with the floppy disc now they're at three and a three and a half um so be it you know you can do things on an individual job title without upsetting the entire you know apple cart to move them to a higher grade because their responsibilities have changed and you can have the employee be part of the process um in terms of reten attention and people employees may be throwing things at me after I say this but it's just a fact um you could pay somebody extremely well but if the work culture is not good they're not going to stay um you can also if you can't afford to pay people as well as you'd like but it's a good work environment people don't leave it's not always just about dollars now ideally you pay people fairly and you have a good work culture so they're both pieces um I don't know the circumstances relative to the dollar 25 guy it could be giving I know there there could be you know lots of different examples the only thing you can control really um at least at this part of the process is trying to be as fairly as what makes the most sense and then communicate you know why you did what you did and the employees were part of the process so with the numbers you gave us earlier just remind me um 50% not across the board but based on individual positions brings us how much additional for the budget that was independent of any kind of cost of living approximately 250 okay and if we went to let's say 55 I don't know it off the top of my head I can get you the numbers for all the different percentiles that are calculated okay so right now we are at 43 you are at different numbers per each individual idual job title as we went through that fog inspector you were in the 30s um other ones you're paying better than the market they may be in the 70s for that job title the the goal is all right not necessarily to bring that one that's higher down because typically when you do so they'll go see you later let time kind of bring them into adjustment it's the ones that you're this has been said several times that are you're having difficulty attracting new on or retaining the existing ones because they know they're 10 15 20% below and you know I can look down the list and yeah there are a bunch like that um and to address those do you have a rough guesstimate um I can get it to you here after sit down for a little bit because I have all my I'm just you know is is it you know I think it'd be important to know if we go from you know from where we are to 50 okay it's 250 more if we go to 55 is it 25 more is it 250 more right it's right and I I think one thing that I can help you all out with that is uh at the regular meeting tonight I'm going to try to schedule a budget Workshop because uh and at that workshop I'll have a pretty good idea of our bottom lines on general fund as well as our Enterprise funds on where we are and you know at that point we we can build in if say the 50 percentile and and even the cost we can build those numbers in and you can see what the bottom line is on the budget if if we've got a problem then we can either do like like Rich suggested we can look at cutting other things or we could look at dropping from 50 to 40 or if we have some money then you may want to go to the 55 or 60 but you know you don't need to make that decision tonight I don't think uh we'll we can we'll be bringing those estimates to you on our bottom line budgets before this comes to you for adoption do you have what you need right now or uh as far as everybody feels like the the method of each individual position that's that's a big one everybody feels comfortable with that and then that's good and and Implement implementation wise doing it with our our fiscal year October one uh and we we can start out at the 50% percentile then I think that gives us what we need to plug in some numbers then when we get to the budget Workshop see how that affects your bottom line and then we'll be coming back after that for adoption perfect thank you so we'll so we'll have options as to the 50 the 55 60 we'll build our budget based on the 50 at this point and then when you see the bottom line if you want to go and we'll have we'll know how much more it's going to cost you to go to 55 or 60 perfect if you here's all the spreadsheets for the numbers that you asked I have the approximate number for 50 237 55 it is 373 60th is 519 65th is 637 70th percentile is 806 okay could you repeat the 50th again please 237 237 237 at the budget meeting 373 519 637 the 70th percenti is 806 so roughly 140 for each additional Five Points each on it works out that way but it's not how it's calculated because some titles didn't move at all as so yeah um I think we have what we need to prepared for the next meeting okay um conceptually considering the size of St Pete and the dollars um having done this a lot for similar size organizations across the country and you know in the area they're actually small numbers but you know it's got to work in the budget with everything else so that speaks well to you know the leadership in the in the room and it this doesn't affect my P check in any way so I can just easily make a blanket statement like that um because I do this when there has been as much change um sometimes when doing these you know for this size organization it's Millions so that is a positive statement okay all right any further questions anyone else okay in that case we are Jed thank you