Commercial Ready when you are. I'll call this meeting of the budget Advisory Committee to order, roll call please. Chair Bergman here. Vice chair Hall here. Miss major is absent, Miss Hales is absent. And Miss Howard here. Thank you, the primary portion of our budget today is to review departmental budget presentations. And it looks like we start with planning and zoning. Good afternoon, everyone. Rene Vincent, planning and zoning director. And hold on. I got to move this chair. So, for brevity, I'll kind of focus in on the. Oh, before I get started, you do have a binder. I put in front of your, seat. That is a copy of the draft Comprehensive plan. So, the capital improvements element might be of interest to you as a budget committee member. So at your leisure, take a look at that. And if you have any questions, let let us know about the plan itself. We're very happy to finally have that coming across the finish line to be adopted soon, for my annual budget, we do have, some increases to our professional services that is largely tied to that plan that I have in front of you, I don't think it's included in that in the binder, but once the comprehensive plan is adopted, we have a very significant follow on work plan that comes out of that. Things like amendments to the Land Development Code, special planning studies and things of that nature. So that is what's really driving that, that particular increase, in the professional services budget, also included with that is our, we do, pay our stormwater consultant to review our site plans that come through for development review. We have started collecting a stormwater review fee. So we're right now we're we're we're averaging about collecting about 50% back from the developer on those review fees. So we'll continue to kind of monitor that. And if we need to raise that fee to help cover some of those stormwater review costs, in the future we will. We just got that in place at the beginning of this fiscal year, back in October, the other thing that you might see is there under the books, publications and subscriptions, a large increase there that is actually two software as a service programs that we've had for a couple of years. They used to show up under professional services before they've been moved down. One of those is the Connect Tarpon website, which is our public engagement site, and the other is our, clear point strategy, which manages a strategic plan for the city. So those are reflected in under the books, publications and subscriptions. And that's about $26,000 in and of itself, we do have an increase in our budget for travel, this year, although we haven't used any of our travel for the current year, I do have for light, I'll say credentialed, planners, all four of us have American ACP certifications, and we have to have continuing education credits to maintain those, those certifications. So going to conferences is one of the best way to get those hours logged, so and we do have some specific conferences that a couple of my members are interested in going to that haven't normally been on the list, which is the Congress for new Congress for New Urbanism conferences. So, that's kind of the high level of the increases in the budget, if I can answer any questions. Please let me know. No particular questions, but it sounds like just a high level. We've got this comprehensive plan, which was major, major effort. I know part of some of the meetings for that. So I know there was kind of a lot of stuff going into there. So it sounds like that's kind of driving the budget increases along with some travel and things. But yeah. And if necessary we've got some room to cut. I always, you know, you can always find some. Ron's at the ready. So to that end I'm just curious to know, like if somebody said you have to cut 10, where would you cut it from? Like, I would probably cut some, probably cut some of the travel and probably some of the professional services. I could do that pretty easily. The professional services that, you know, that's a some of that, you know, is. Estimating. So you know, hopefully we can do the lion's share of our work in house and not have to go out for consultants for certain things, but certain specific technical things. We have to. So, you know, if I needed to cut some of that professional services, that would be just fine. And based on last week, we're just looking for 1. So I just thought I just curious to know if it were ten, what would it be? Any other questions for planning and zoning, I don't think so. It sounds like we kind of got a high level plan, so maybe, just maybe just going back over this when do you expect the comprehensive plan to get approved? I know it's so. We are scheduled for the planning and Zoning Board public hearing on June 17th, and then the Board of Commissioners first reading, which is the transmittal hearing , public hearing will be scheduled for July. The second meeting in July. July the is it 16 or 18th or somewhere around there? Somewhere in there, somewhere in there. And then we will transmit, we have to transmit the plan to forward Pinellas, which is the countywide planning authority for review, and we have to submit it to there's a bunch of other reviewing agencies that goes to the state. And so then we wait. And if we don't get back any adverse comments or have to make a bunch of amendments for any reason, then, I mean, I'm anticipating that we'll have it adopted, hopefully , hopefully September. And then that's when the zoning stuff has to change. And then at some point, if there's any developments, that's when that'll start. When do you expect kind of the development stuff to happen, with respect to this, would that be years out? Like, I mean, when you say development stuff, like if there was any I remember we were talking about like, different housing projects or something or zoning things for different. So, so the work plan that that comes, you know, that's in the work plans online on Connect Tarpon if you really want to delve into it. So it's pretty extensive. So there's follow on. One of the things that's called for one we need to update our land development code to get it in step. That's the first thing that's that's really driving my budget, after that we have several areas that are identified as these transitional areas where we're going to have to do additional, like local, you know, small area planning efforts to really get a grip on what's going on in those areas, like north of the Anclote River and places where we already have conflict between the existing land use and zoning and what people really want to build. So those special planning studies will be coming over the next 2 to 3 years. One of the big ticket items is a Parks and Recreation master plan that needs to be developed, and that that will be between planning and, you know, public services and public works. So it will be a joint project, so there's a lot of planning efforts to come that will probably ahead of any like actual like. Yeah, exactly. So but when the plan goes into effect for outside developers, you know, applying to come in and build projects, it'll go into effect the day it's adopted and be applied to them. So okay. Okay. So in the coming years potentially. Absolutely. And you said we could read a summary page. Which page was that. Did you say in this in this comprehensive plan book or okay. Well, so at the very beginning, So we call attention to if you want a high level overview of kind of what the data and analysis, you know, data data and analysis indicated. Just read, you know, the first starting on page five. Okay. You know, seven, just the intro page, the intro page. And then you may be interested in the actual all the capital improvements element because that that pertains to the budget and capital improvements plan that that Ron, you know, has to do every year. And I believe that starts on page 75. So that might be of interest. Okay That sounds good. Does this, and I know, I know, we attended those workshops maybe just remind me, does this include kind of like the projection for the population? It does. You'll find that in that summary. So roundabout. What are what are you expecting over the next over the next 20 years, population increase of about 2600 people. Just kind of slow incremental growth. Hundred. Okay. Nothing earth shattering. Okay. Okay. That's helpful. At a very high level. We're in very good shape with our utility services for water, sewer and being able to provide projected population and employment growth for the service area for the next, even beyond the 20 year planning horizon. So okay, super, super. Thank you. That's all I had. Anything else? No, I'm just going to ask Ron the email with the attachment for the D. I only have the summary of the departments with the totals. I didn't get the details. What is the name of that document? I might I might have that email if you can. Somebody can FY 2020 oh oh. The summary. No, I just have summary two. I got summary I didn't get all of those details like that. Do you need this or no I have that okay. Let me see what you're talking about. This the breakdown, I think you were supposed to go to the website. Oh, I'm sorry I missed that. Okay, I can do that now, though, right? Yes, I can, under the public documents document. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Oh, I just want to. I can give you my book here. No, no, no, I can grab it real quick. I guess economic development is next. Hello. Thank you, Karen Lemons. The economic development budget is a pretty standard. There's one increase in there under operating supplies for computer replacement, the computer has been having issues, so it's recommended to replace the computer. So that's $2,200. That's really the only change to the economic development budget. Okay Any questions on economic development, no. Maybe. Maybe just high level. What are kind of some of the main things you're looking at this year to kind of impact, I guess, finance or budget with the city. I'm sure you've got people coming in you. I know you're meeting with businesses regularly, so yeah, we're working on a lot of infill projects. Yeah, there's not a lot of room for growth. So a lot of what we're doing is trying to market the buildings that are already here that are maybe not in such great shape that need redevelopment. Okay, there are some property purchases that the city is looking at that will have some impact. One is a spoil site north of the river and that would kind of be an efficiency project, as I understand, because like we might be paying for services and if we had that, then we might save a little bit on some of the services. Right? We've been leasing a site for several, several years, actually, since the first dredge that was done back in the, I think, the early 80s. Okay. So they're looking at right now doing due diligence to see if it would be worth just to purchase that. So we would have a, a site to use every time we do a dredge. And then staff is also looking at alternative ways of using it, because you dredge maybe once every 20 years or so. So we're looking at it's next to the R.O. plant. So it could be, you know, an additional water well there, it could be expansion of the plant. It could be public works yard expansion. So we're looking at ways of using that that would make the site feasible. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah You also cover you present the CRA. Yes I do that one next. Okay So with the cra the you will see the main change in that under again under operating supplies, there's an increase of 70,000 there. That is for the decorative light poles. We're going to be installing light poles along north Safford between orange and live oak. Okay, so believe it or not, there are no street lights. Once you pass Tarpon Tavern and we've talked to business owners and residents, and now we're getting businesses along that way with brighter days and stumpy's, and we're getting some apartments there and it's very, very dark. Yeah. So we're going to be installing 20 decorative light poles along that, along that area. That'll also help draw people when they look down the street. It looks really dark now. Yeah. It'll help to maybe bring them down the street a little bit further. Where are they being installed? Not on the trail. On the street part. Yeah, on the street. On on Safford Avenue. On both sides, I believe. Okay. And is there I know there's like warehouses. There might be. Is there space for if new businesses want to go there, would they have the opportunity or is it kind of like filled up over there along North Safford, well, there was a sponge, a limnos sponge building that was torn down. That's going to be an eight unit apartment building. Okay. There, that's under construction. Now, you can see the site as it has been, uprooted. I'm trying to think of what else? There's this there's warehousing along there next to brighter days. Hum and then farther down on live Oak and where the trail ends and Live Oak. There is also a site plan for a new townhome development. Oh, nice. Nice. That's in front of the development. That's there now on the river. I know the business owners will appreciate that just with the events. They always say that no one will go down to them because you can't see. And I don't blame them. And I know it's been a topic of conversation that they'll appreciate the use of those funds for that. And that's one of the linkages we've been trying to make between downtown and the docks, and looking at different ways that would be the best pedestrian way of having a nice walk. And that would be nice because it's got shade and it's the trail. But at night it's dark. And what are they looking to do that this coming budget year. That's nice. Nice Okay. Anything else for economic development. And CRA and that is CRA funds being used. Yes that that's the CRA funds. Yeah I just have one question. I'm looking at your CRA booklet. The quick facts, 227 acres, 600 tax parcels. Does that number of tax parcels fluctuate year over year, or is it kind of just like it would only fluctuate if things are taking off taken off the tax rolls. And there have not been many properties that have been taken off the tax rolls. Okay. So that's, that's a number of the actual parcels whether they're developed or not. Okay I think that's what I was wondering. It can be a vacant land are developed and is there there's not a lot of room I guess maybe to okay. Yeah. Just trying to get an idea. As the years to come, will we be having additional potential revenue sources for maybe increase increase in population or increase in business if there's new construction in the CRA, there isn't a lot of vacant land for new construction, but redevelopment of existing properties will help increase the tax revenues to good. That sounds like that. There's some of that plan. Thank you. No further questions for me. Do you have any? No I'm good. Thank you. All right. Thank you Karen. Thank you. Project administration is next. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I'm Bob robertson. I'm project administration department director. Hello Hi there, so real quick, by way of background, if you don't know what project admin is, we are an internal service department. We primarily handle technical services for in support of projects, city wide projects for all the departments we handle overseeing the design phases or construction phases or both of projects. We don't actually have any money for projects, we just spend everybody else's money. So that's what we do, my budget is mostly for my five and a half employees. I say half because we share a position, an admin position with public services, for, for those employees and the associated expenses, plus, we have a small amount of miscellaneous consulting money that we use for helping us do our jobs and, as for consulting services as needed, you'll see that this year's budget is about $100,000 less than last year's budget. I don't claim to be a budget hero for that. We just aren't buying two vehicles this year, so I don't. My money is back down to basically the same level, as it has been in previous years, that's really the overview and I'm happy to take any questions. Questions? I don't have any questions. I don't have any questions. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Okay. Procurement is next. I don't think Janine is here yet. Oh, yeah. It was just a little bit early. 40 were a little quicker. Yeah. Are you ready for me? We're ready. Okay. Good afternoon. Janine Lewis, procurement services director, so this is to present my FY 25 budget. And if you take a quick look, I'm not really asking for much more than they asked for. Last year, we had a little bit of an increase in some of our training and our, memberships, that we, we usually are part of, like the Naep, which the national procurement services for government, all those agencies, the prices have gone up. So we've asked for a little bit of increase there. And with that, I'll turn it over for questions. Any questions, no, I guess it's not. Oh, do you have one? No. Go ahead. It sounds like your budget's not changing too much, but I appreciate that you may have an impact on maybe other projects that the cities do. For example, if there's contracts, do they generally go through or any major purchases? They come through our office? Yes, they come through. And do you have like a you probably have some review process to try to get like best price. I guess we keep talking about how prices are going up and prices are going up. And it's like, I'm sure you've probably got your hands full trying to figure out like what might be best for different whatever's in your purview. We do. We do. So, recently, over the past couple of years, we, we try and, put more tools in our toolbox, so to speak. And what's the best way and the fastest and, expedient way to get things done, we use a lot of bidding. Okay, so with the bidding concept, we generally take, like, lowest bid, responsive, responsible, the next way is like an RFP, which is request for proposals. And again, it's that is not so much price, but based more on experience depending on what we're looking for. Sure, sure, and then some of the tools outside of that that we use, like the piggybacking and the cooperative contracts s that other. What is that? Okay I'll get there, so a cooperative is like a collaborative. It's us and other agencies, and we go in on a large contract so that, like, gives us like an economy of scale. Okay. The more that a vendor can sell out, the cheaper the price. So the cooperatives kind of benefit us in a few ways, especially if it's, we're part of the greater Tampa Co-op right now, that in particular is because it's localized and we tend to get better pricing in that situation because there's no, like, administrative fees to be a part of the co-op. That's so interesting. The piggybacking other agencies, because we're so small, there's only like technically three buyers. And I have one store's clerk. We use quite a few piggybacks because other agencies will go out for the same commodity we're buying, and they bid it out and get the price. I see. So their price is set and then we usually go off of their their pricing. And we can do our own terms and conditions if we choose. And they can offer that pricing or better, so that's an option as well. Those are some nice tools, definitely. I'm, I'm sure it's a lot, lot to look at. I imagine with that. So again, nothing further for me. Thank you for that background. That was helpful. No thank you, thank you. Well appreciate it. Thank you. Our next. She's on our way up. She's on her way up. Yeah, I gave her a call. While we're waiting, just a curious question. The dredge site. Where is that lease paid out of now? It's paid out of the penny fund. Penny fund? Yeah. And then, like, it's paid all the time. Even when we're not dredging. Or is it just when we're dredging? Well, there's a contract. Okay. I can't remember what exactly which month Bob would have known. You know what? When the last month is, I wouldn't want to, like, get into that one. It's something else, but I was just curious. I can look it up later. But while we were waiting, I thought, I'm going to find out. Find it out for you. I think it's September. Is it September? If they have the they have to refurbish it. They have spent got money from the county, 465,000 I think to refurbish it. And yet we're going to put it on the referendum in November to buy it. What we just spent the money refurbishing. Yeah. It's going to go under restoration again. Sorry to keep you waiting. That's all right. Oh no problem. We're we're we're early. You're rolling along. I would like to hand these out as kind of takeaways. I'm not going to say a lot today, but you may want to look at what air in Tarpon does in your in your spare time, I'm Jane Kniffen, HR director. I believe I've seen a couple of you. So you're going this is going to be a retread for you in the way of, in the way of, thank you. Back up, first of all, since we have a minimalistic budget, I'd like to spend a couple of minutes on our functions as we perform all the standard functions that most HR departments do. And in fact, we actually have a few more functions that in some cities are in other departments, one being risk management. We handle the work comp and the risk management entirely, another is, actually the mail processing and the reception is, is, is in HR as opposed to a standalone, because we're a small city. I'd like to cover some benefits because the city is, I've often heard us as middle of the road or in the lower part when it comes to, salaries and so on. But I can tell you that we're in the top, the top tier for our benefit program. We have health insurance that has a $250 single and $500, family deductible, which is almost unheard of anymore, some people, even some of the employers, some of our health care, companies that provide us with these plans, their deductibles are considerably more and are out of pocket. Expenses are only $2,500 single and 5000, family for the whole the whole plan year. So the most you could pay out of your pocket would be if you're single would be $2,500, which is a deal in today's market. We also provide dental insurance, group life and long term disability, and all of these are provided at no cost to the employee and at a reduced cost to the employee for dependents. We also provide IRS section 25 benefits, Fsas and Dependent Daycare, we have, pension plans, defined benefit for police and fire defined contribution for the general employees and we also have two deferred comp plans, one for the Iaff members and others. Another for the general employees and anybody else, including the police department. Excuse me. I walked up the stairs and I'm very much out of shape. We handle employee compensation. We make all the changes to salaries, we do the employee relations, which is why we consider ourselves heavy on the personal and personnel aspect, as opposed to something like, technology. We have technology, but we provide the personal touch that a lot of other departments are. They're driven by other factors. We are the interface with the employees . And it's this is a personal philosophy of mine, is that employers need to take care of their employees, especially in in our public service, since our employees are the ones that are out on the streets, they're the ones actually providing the service. So if you don't take care of your employees, how do you think they're going to take care of our residents, so that's I think it's that's an important thing that we sometimes forget that we're only as good as our weakest link. And hopefully that's not our employees. So we also do recruitment selection. We handle the policies for the city. We do the labor relations for contracts. We have we administer a number of voluntary employee benefits which employees can take, we provide them for the deductions, but they're actually paid by the employee. They're voluntary. They can select whatever they wish. We have accident. We have cancer protection. We have critical care. We have the hospital indemnity plan, we have short term disability. We have dependent life, and we have supplemental life. If you want to take out a lot more insurance than the city provides, we also have the Eyemed vision program, so that, in a nutshell, is what HR does, and as I said, there's not a lot in this budget that probably is suspect. We have a we are minimal, because as I say, we believe in human, human, human intelligence. That's what we do, so if you have any questions, I'd be glad to answer them, well, while your budget is small, I think you have a lot of influence over a very big part of the budget and the benefits, and so I would just be curious to know if there's a perception that tarpon Springs as a city isn't a top tier employer overall, but the benefits are very top tier. Do employees appreciate that? Oh, I let me rephrase that. Do potential candidates really value that as much as everybody like is there an overarching value placed on that? Because I feel like if there was, maybe you wouldn't have that difference of, like the perception versus the reality of the benefit situation, right, we, we, we try to tell people and in our recruitment process that we do provide a very comprehensive benefit package. A lot of people are if they're young, the demographic they always point out is the single young male who really doesn't care if he has health insurance because he's young and healthy and doesn't need it. He's interested in the money, but as you get older, you get a family. You're your viewpoint changes and your needs change, and I think we on our website, we list all of our benefits, we try to tell employees they know what the city is paying for, right now the city is paying almost $900 a month for each and every full time employee. That's a lot of money, and it really hits home when they go on a leave and it becomes an extended leave for which it's not covered. Under FMLA, and they have to pay their portion of the benefits. That's when they realize just how much those benefits are worth. But on the whole, I think employees understand that we have one of the best benefits in Pinellas County, we try to make that well known, during our recruitment and also in the onboarding, because we go over all the things, ahead of the benefit, entitlement. Have you ever done any surveys or anything to find out what people really value more in terms of if this then that? Like I've done this experiment, I have a lot of young men who work in my manufacturing facility and they we just had a conversation. Would you rather have, you know, $3 an hour more or air conditioning? Because we don't have an air conditioning shop. We have very great fans, but no air conditioning. Prior to that, we used to have the conversation of like, this is like we lay it out, this is what it costs. Like. And do we do surveys to say do you is that where you'd prefer we spend the money on you? Like because deferred compensation. That means when you're old that means much later, not now. And in this economy, people. So we have to do that or else we will lose people for $2 an hour or somewhere else or whatever. So we're trying to make sure we kind of walk that line. And while I appreciate your philosophy, I'm just making sure that the philosophies of the people are being heard. Yes, that that that is something we've done in the past, but not recently, it as a municipality, we tend to have people that come to us because of the benefit program, because the government has always been known for, good benefits and job security, which may the benefit portion is probably still true. I'm not sure about the job security anymore. Anywhere, but it wouldn't hurt for us to do another survey. I just, I would just like to like to. Last week when I shared some thoughts about the general kind of state government is known for job security and good benefits and all of that. It's also known for inefficiency and other things like, so just kind of maybe finding that better balance. And I think it does start with HR. I can tell you I've been here 24.5 years in this position, and I can tell you that our employees, I don't like to call us a lean and mean city, but we do not have a lot of fat, our employees are out there. A lot of departments are understaffed. A lot of departments. Right That's that doesn't mean lean and mean that that means something else. Like Right. That you shouldn't. I mean, I don't foresee that you should be understaffed. That doesn't make me feel good that we're cutting. I don't want to cut the budget that way. I think there's a lot better ways to find the budget. Absolutely We're we. When I say lean and mean, I mean that, people aren't they don't have a lot of spare time on their hands, they, I believe for a small organization that has to wear many hats that are our employees are what I call a competitive, competitively efficient, you I know, and let me give you an example of some misconceptions that that have happened over the years, we got a call one time. It was after it was in the afternoon, and, and the citizen complained because three of our guys were sitting on a bench and not doing anything. Well, what? They didn't realize what they were doing. Hurricane cleanup. And they had they had been working since 7:00 that morning, picking up debris, cleaning up, you know, and they had they had just sat down because they were exhausted. So. And yeah, I don't think anybody thinks that's the. No. I don't yeah. I don't think it's a matter of that like that for sure, that's just somebody looking for something to complain about probably. But And we have those. Yeah. And well and you know, so that's, you know, but even, you know, you have good folks and you know, then that's not a problem. And I don't want to imply that I think because I don't think that's where you find I don't think any of this lays with the people who work on the streets of Tarpon Springs. Let's put it that way. That's true. True, so if anyone has any questions about our budget, we're always looking for ways to improve, ways to increase our efficiency, I'd really love to hear back if there is anything done with investigation of what the people who work for the city appreciate and value of their jobs and would like more of if you pursue that and you said you've done in the past, but if you do that again, I would I wouldn't mind being pulled in the loop just because I'm very interested. Yes, we could do that, and I think some over the years, I think some of the, the, wants and needs have, migrate did in other words, it's a much different world. Yes exactly. And it's a we have multi generations, but we do have a lot of the new generation coming in. And I can tell you they think very differently than somebody my age. I'm not and I'm not saying that in a negative way. I'm just saying it's different and it's a whole new perspective on, on on work and life in general. So. Any questions? No, no thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you. All right. Thank you Jane. Building development. Hello. Hello, I'm Dave Gilson, building development director. Probably already know, but I'll try to recap effectively. We're the building department, we also do the majority of Ptac business tax receipts, we coordinate it almost on a daily basis with probably half of the other departments in the city in some manner. Either we support them or they support us. There's traffic going back and forth almost every day with about half of the departments, so get into the dollars and cents, lines 11 through 25. That's all employment related. I don't believe there's much to be said about that. There's not much I can do about it, for sure, Ron handles most of that, and, it's presumed that he does a very good job. So we'll just go with that, down below that, 31 to 55. So they're there most of the stuff on here I believe would just be, you know, fall under inflationary type things if you want to speak to them. We obviously can, one thing that we were able to do, line 31, professional services, that's effectively what is referred to as private provider services. When we're understaffed, we have to we have to provide services. So there's a cottage industry out there that's no longer cottage is quite a large industry now of, private inspectors. We have to hire them to fill the voids, as you see the previous years, it was utilized quite a bit. I have a different mentality. I'd rather work harder, faster and later. And as you can see, this year to date, we've used zero. But we have to have that money available because sometimes people go on FMLA. We've had a recently we had an inspector, you know, move on. So we just have to have that. But we were able to reduce that by $8,000 because I can't imagine we're going to use $20,000, you know, or 20 previously, 28,000, the other line item that kind of went up, it would bring attention is, line item 54. That includes our software, our permitting software. When we initially got it prior to my being here, that was paid for by Covid funds, by the fed. Now we're paying for it. And that line item is approximately half of what it cost. We share that with P and Z because we're the we use it the bulk of the time, although probably 3 or 4 other department s intermingle in it, but not enough to actually probably pay for anything. And so it's not a new software. It's like just Covid. The fed paid for it before and we're paying for it now. Yes. Okay. We had it I believe we've had it for three years. Starting January 1st, we literally drew a line in the sand and we're only using that up until then, there was a learning curve for the customers and for our staff. And, we just drew a line in the sand, and the learning curve is over. So now we were able to although it doesn't reflect on here, we were able to trim off some other software that was under utilized. And being replaced by this. And this is bringing up much more efficiency to the building department. That's great. That's great. Any other questions, the books and publications. I'm assuming you've got some stuff that's aging out or something. That's the line item, 54. Yeah, that's the one with the, electronic, review. Okay. That's the one I was thinking that's the major. I remember the name of it. And then, and you have to renew every single year the books. Right. Or something. It's got to be. There are some that are every single year. Yeah, but the code books, what we the bulk of what we use is every three years we just purchase those because this was the renewal cycle. Okay. And those things are expensive. Yeah. Because we have we have to buy them I guess we don't have to, but we do. We buy them in paper form and electronic form. Any other questions? Nope. And then if there's no questions on that, the other one we have is, is tree right? Which I don't know if that's next on the. Yeah. Next on the list. Go ahead, the tree fund is effectively captured funds. They can't be used any place else. Yeah as a matter of fact, a lot of times we have difficulty finding ways to use them because there's a lot of rules associated with it. So, I think the only major item on here is the increase of 115,000 that I believe. And Ron, can, you know, correct me if I'm incorrect is through a grant we got from the fed. That's correct . Okay. So that's, I don't want to say it's money that's given to us by others. It's not tax money. Right. Am I reading this? Right. So we had the survey and we're going to be intending to plant more trees this year. Is that am I reading that right? I brought Shannon in. She is our arborist. Okay. She's going to be able to speak to that much more. Okay Okay. In depth than I would know. Yeah Just definitely curious there, but. Yeah. Hi I'm Shannon Brewer, the municipal arborist. So currently we have a grant that's going underway from the Inflation Reduction Act. We are inventorying with four interns who actually start tomorrow, all the street trees in the census area that's basically bordered by Tarpon Avenue, Pinellas Avenue, Klosterman and it does go across to the south of, Keystone Avenue over there to the lake, as part of that, we will go back into that area and trim up to actually have to do a minimum of $100,000 worth of trimming. It's called limb up for safety. It's going to elevate the roadway to over 16ft for vehicles and safety equipment. Right now we have a lot of areas that are below that. And there's been damage to fire trucks and things of that nature. The other grant is the $15,000. It's a 5050 match. It's creation of the Urban Forestry Master plan that is actually phase two of the three year grant. Okay. The first one was the inventory of the CRA, Historic and Greektown districts, since that was never been done before, that was a bordered area, definable boundaries. So I use that as a you know, first time run through to see what we can do. And then actually use those same principles into this inflation reduction Act. That's great, as year three comes along, that is where the $15,000 match. So it'll be $30,000 worth of trees. Go back into the areas that we have already inventoried. So that's where we'll do massive planting planting to go with that, I do have goals, but that would actually be on the 2026. But the 15,000, which is a 5050 match, is for the consultant to help me write that master plan efficiently, effectively and to today's current lenses and A13 standards. That's great. Was the grant like hard to get or was it. It sounds like I mean you sounds like you're all over it. Was it? I never did one before. And my first two that I ever wrote, I got. That's amazing. That's amazing. You know, little girly scream way to go. So thank you. Any other questions? Tree. Tree questions. Relationships I don't think so. No, no thank you. Thank you. And that's why I brought Shannon. Any other questions? Not for me. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Cultural. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Diane Wood, cultural and civic services director, and I brought with me. I wanted to introduce Brandon Groch. He's our marketing operations manager. And Megan McIntyre, she's our department administrator. So they're my backup singers. And if you'll permit, the indulgence for a minute, I'd like to, Brandon, to just kind of give you a quick overview of where we are this season and, and some of the things that we've been doing. Is that okay? Yeah yeah. Hello, everybody. My name is Brandon Groch. Like Diane said, I'm the marketing operations manager for Tarpon Arts, Diane asked me just to give a brief overview of our programing and some of our performance initiatives that we're doing this year and going into next year. So this was kind of a banner year for us. We had over 60 performances. 22 of them were sold out. 12 here in the Performing Arts Center, another eight at the Cultural Center, and then our Christopher Steele events as well at the Heritage Museum. So we have had sold out shows in the past, but not to this quantity and scale. So we're really proud of what we've been doing. Every year in January, we do a survey of our 8000 patrons on our mailing list to kind of get a feel for what they're liking, what they, you know, would like to see us do more of or maybe less of and that's kind of what guides us. So going into next year, we took that information and doubled down on a lot of the types of programing that was working. Some of that's classic rock tribute bands. A lot of the shows that we do here, but also while keeping a lot of our community initiatives like community theater, our Flip flop opera program, and some of our speaker series, which was formerly called Knowledge and Nibbles, which will now be called Tarpon Talks next year at the Heritage Museum. So I have a couple numbers that I like to share with you about our programing financials. So, last season we did have ten sold out shows at the PAC. And when we did this meeting, at this time last year, we had about 5000 tickets sold, this year we had 12 sold out shows at the PAC, plus eight at the Cultural Center and the two at the Heritage Museum, and we're already over 6000 tickets sold. So at the same time of the year, we're about 1000 tickets ahead. And that just kind of speaks to how well we're doing this year. Our final gross ticket sales for last season, which is a combination of the end of the previous fiscal year and then the next fiscal year because our season starts, in August, basically, even though the fiscal year ends, our starts in October, we ended last year with 213,000 total in ticket sales this year with three, packed shows and another six cultural center shows left. We're already over 200,000 in ticket sales, so we're on track to beat that by a significant amount. So we're also very proud of that. That's awesome. Awesome awesome awesome. And then next year, for the 2425 season, we currently have 21 shows confirmed at the Performing Arts center, 27 shows confirmed at the cultural center , and then five Tarpon talks presentations confirmed at the Heritage Museum. So we're hoping to continue our success and kind of double down again on the things that are working and, hopefully continue to, climb in our gross ticket sales and continue to provide a great experience to our patrons. Thank you. Thank you. Amazing Also, I wanted to mention, I wanted to, you know, thank the Budget Review Committee and the Board of Commissioners for, you know, granting us the funds to do the renovations that our venues. And, you know, this past fiscal year, because we've been able to transform the Heritage Museum and the Cultural Center has a brand new theater. And also we've done some really nice spruce ups at the Safford House. So that money has really gone a long way to, you know, kind of showcase our venues. And we're very, very proud of them and take good care of them, also, in just the time that we opened the Christopher Steele exhibit, we have ten original over there now, which is phenomenal, just from February 20th, when we first opened it, we've had over 1100 visitors come specifically to see that exhibit. Wow. So, you know, of course, you know, we have a $5, admission fee. So you know, our donations from the admission fees have gone up quite significantly, too, which is great, but I'm very proud of the fact that we're reaching such a broad audience, like, there's about about a quarter of those people are our Tarpon residents, so they're very proud , you know, of the museum as well. And then there's a lot of people from regional, you know, around the state in Florida. But a lot of foreign visitors, too. So, you know, we're really getting the word out. Wow. With the city marketing, where this is not cultural, but, we're also going to have an actual article on Tarpon Springs in Southern Living magazine, a national magazine that's coming in the August issue. Wow. So we're really, you know, doing great as a city. And, you know, we're awesome. It's awesome. So I'm very, very excited about that, I also have like a highlight sheet that I would give you all at the end of our presentation today. But, what questions do you have for us? There has to be a show business word for, like when you let the him go first with all that great. Is that her? Yeah. The open, the opening act. Yeah. There you go. Exactly. Warming up the crowd. I told you about their backup singers. So changes to your budget is a small increases just for furniture, paint, nothing. It sounds like you don't have any major projects planned. This year. Am I reading that right? No. I think we're just going to kind of enhance the projects that we already have. You know, on base and, you know, as, as, Brandon said, we've got a really stellar new season plan that we're going to announce in August. And so, it's just, you know, kind of maintenance things. The only thing that we've been seeing is, that, you know, the cost of the, the talent that we bring in to Tarpon Springs has been going up significantly. So they're some of our our increases have been like in some travel because we go to a conference, you know, and those costs have increased, but also the cost of the entertainment too. And we really try to keep our ticket sales because of our demographics, you know, at a certain level. So, you know, we're hoping with our donations and sponsorships for things like that, we could, you know, make things, you know, work. Yes. And I guess if the talent. So it's not that that the talent is increasing their price, but maybe the talent you're maybe going up a we are you know, we're we're constantly trying to, you know, because that's kind of like our personal challenge is we want to bring the best entertainment to Tarpon Springs as we can. But you know, we also have limitations with, you know, the, the size of our venue as well. But you know, hence the, the, you know, number of sold out shows that we've been doing, you know, kind of thing. I'd love to have another 100 seats in the performing arts center. Yeah I'm just saying. Do you think you could build them really? I mean, often, not always, but often. The balcony here that used to be here, right ? Oh, sure. I don't think we had a balcony in the performing arts center. No, we go big. Right. But somebody lied to me. I thought this used to be. Let's just cut some holes. But. But I think we could. We could fit some more seats down there. You know, it's like we might have to push the, you know, the board of commissioners, dais back. But, you know, that could happen. You know, I can I can dream, I can dream. Take the seats smaller. No. Oh, gosh. Airplanes do. Yeah That we would have a mutiny on our hands. No. This is wonderful . So it sounds like the secret sauce. I mean, obviously, you and your team are the secret sauce, but maybe, it sounds like you're really engaged with your customers. You're hearing what they want, you're addressing what they want, and then you've got the increase of talent. So, yeah, it all sounds very nice. Thank you. Amazing work. Yeah. We're really I have a really great team and they're everybody's really dedicated. And with four venues and the number of shows we put on at our different venues, you know, with a small, you know, five, five full time people and then three part time, you know, ticket sales representatives that, you know, it can be a challenge sometimes to keep them open, you know, on the weekends and things like that. But, you know, that's when our shows are. So we're kind of engaged, you know, there too. So and we have, you know, you know, a great production team and Mike and Mark, so, you know, it's like it's all kumbaya work together. Well good good good. Any other questions I can have answer for you? I guess I have one for you, Ron, on the breakdown of the departments. You get it. Do you have library listed under this? Is that separate? Yes, I actually the library I when Ron called me he says, you know you need to get here now. I let Carrie know, but I don't know if she got the information just because we're ahead of schedule. Yeah, yeah. So I did let her know. So hopefully she'll I was like, let me talk a little bit more. So but she should be here. I'm sorry. No problem, no problem. Just curious is the jitney under cultural anything. No no no, it's not the historical society. I believe. Yes. And that's just. If we were talking, I just wanted to, like, where's. What's up with that? Yeah, I was thinking about it. But please, if you have not been over to the Heritage Museum to see our new exhibit, please come over. You know, anytime. We'd love to show that to you, crystal and Kevin Starkey did an amazing, high quality, it's like a 35 minute documentary, and it kind of talks about how Christopher Christopher stills painting strategy and all the details and everything, but it's a beautiful piece about the city of Tarpon Springs as well. So we love showing that to, you know, all of our visitors and everything. So now, were you going to do a musical act with your backup singers as well? Right. We take intermission. We like intermission. I do a killer Johnny Angel. Okay, let's do it. That's true. Mr. chairman, we have a comment, a public comment on this item. Okay sure. And it's really. You got my brain going here thinking about this talk. Tarpon. Okay, we got an arts committee, and we have a sustainability committee. So these talk sessions reach out to our committee and see if they can bring in different types of artists, whether it's literary artists or sculpture artists, to come and give lectures. Same thing with the sustainability. Get people from Eckerd College. There's a guy who does research for gopher tortoises. He does goes out to Weeden Island. They got this special machine you can go to, Saint Pete College, USF, the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. I'm sure you could work out arrangements to have these different people come. And I'm sure they would be willing to share their knowledge and it it's a way to expand. I think the cultural outreach. And one last thing, I would also, if you go to the Heritage Center now, there's a beautiful exhibit of the history of the ancient, the Native Americans that were here and that would be another area through the historical heritage. You know, I know the heritage kind of focuses more on buildings, but my focus also get them look more at cultural heritage. But here's another avenue where we've got resources that we can bring in various new ideas and knowledge and shared knowledge that, you know, help. Thank you. Thank you. Actually, we just, at the cultural center, they had the historical society society did one of their tarpon tales, recently, you know, at the museum too. But and we do, like, are always looking for new speakers. So please give me any of your ideas. I would love to get them. Thank you. Thank you. The sustainability series. We did a sustainability series like a one when, Tommy and them were did the program. They explained it, but what I'm talking is actually having maybe guest speakers come in speaking about specific topics of either environment or, you know, there's a whole thing we could, Doctor Robertson did it about living seashores, and we're working on trying to rebuild the Wickham Bayou and some of the bayous. So just more educational stuff about living seizures, just various. Yeah Items of that's a great idea that affects , you know, affects us. Yes, sir. Thank you. Is there anything else? No, not under not under the direct line. We want to proceed with yours. And then when Kerry gets here, we can do the library. I was thinking, okay, let's go ahead and proceed with yours. Ron Well, I've got the finance department on page 14, and I'm sorry it's not going to be as exciting as cultural and all their shows and all that stuff, you know. We'll bring singers next time. Yes Yeah. I'll get the staff to come over and try to sing. Okay. We'll work on that. I'm never going to hear the end of calling it stale. Am I? But the finance department, we do everything finance related, accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll, investments, debt and all the financial reporting. Of course, the budget document, the audit reports every year, like I say, our budget is pretty dry. I think there's not much to it and stuff, you know, we still have a couple vacant positions. Still looking for some. I over the last year. And I got to say, I'm very fortunate. I've got a very good staff back there. And I think sometimes what you find out is when some people leave, I've got other people that have learned more duties. And, you know, I've got, you know, Shane over here, he's taken on a lot more responsibilities. I in fact, I got to be careful not to give them too much and overload them and stuff, but Shane was promoted from wonderful. He was promoted from budget analyst to accounting manager. You know, if I didn't have him and the staff back in the back room, I might have gone nuts by now. But more so. But but all the ladies in the back room have all helped out and stuff with the work, you know, until we're getting trying to get some positions filled, Shane's old position, we're going to do some interviews next week. So we're we're gradually getting into the department filled up and, as far as the expenditures in the budget, I don't know if there's anything, you know, besides everybody else, we budgeted the 3% increase for salaries. As you know, the health insurance and all that was a 10% increase. I just trying to go down some of my expenditures. You know, I have money budgeted for travel. It's. You don't see much this year, but I just went to the conferences last weekend and got back Tuesday. So you'll there'll be some more expense there. But there's really not much else there besides the plain office expenditures. And we try to make sure we cut back where we can on some of these expenditures. I don't know if you have any questions on the finance department there, but why do you think you're having a hard time finding filling your spots? I wish I had that answer, but I have offered it to a 3 or 4 people. Some wanted more money than we could pay and stuff like above the salary range, and they just, some people, there was a couple that didn't offered it to him, didn't call back. So I thought that was sort of strange. But So yeah, it's just we're trying to find, you know, an assistant finance director, but also trying to look for somebody to succeed myself, too. So I'm not sure if I'm retiring in a year or two years, but trying to find somebody to. Did you say ten years to ten years? Oh geez. I don't know if I could just. Yeah. But, you know, it's I don't know if sometimes you get an ad out there too long, but I, you know, I re-advertise a couple months ago but really haven't gotten much of it. It goes back on the market. Everybody wants to know what's wrong with it. Yeah. And then we did. We've done LinkedIn to and I know Sarah Turner weeds through some of the you know before giving them to me. But just not getting that many. But I've heard a lot of people are leaving. The accounting profession in general just aren't. It's just it's like our accountants are hurting for people. Like, it's just that that segment of finance is struggling a little bit. The more like the not the sexy investment side. It's more of the like admin work side of things. Yeah. And I don't know, I like I go I went to my conference and I think a lot of people I don't know if they're just not moving around, they're staying in their positions, you know, at the other cities, you know, they're they're happy where they're at. And so we'll find somebody sometime here. But . If you're all done with the finance, I can go to utility billing utility billing. Let's see what page was that. That was a page. 246, utility billing. That's the staff in the office downstairs. There's four ladies that work in the office. We have a new manager that started about two months ago. Christine, looking forward to getting her going and training her in on the utilities. She had some utility experience in the past. She actually worked in finance for about five years. But in, as an accounting technician. But before that, she was a manager up in New York, under utilities. So we're excited to get her there. I've got a good staff down there too, with some with some years of experience, 15, 16 years of experience with one person. So knock on wood, I hate to say, as soon as I say I've got a good full staff, all of a sudden somebody leaves. But we've got a good staff down there. As far as the budget, I don't see any. We budget 5000 for temporary help just in case we need it. So far we haven't needed it this year, so I don't know if there's any other questions on, utility billing. I know they do a great job. I really do believe that they, in terms of alerting you and your and helping you when your bill is too much, just they've just been really my daughter had a big problem and it was like so easy. Like how they handled and even just letting her know, hey, you might have a problem. Well, yeah, we probably promote the, you know, the customers are important. The customer service, you know, they all got a good temperament as far as working. And they try to try to help people, even myself. I, you know, try to make sure I try to help people listen to their problems and see where we can go and help you with what your issue is. But so that's a utility billing staff. If you're ready, I can go on to meter readers. Go ahead. We've got three meter readers down. I know we had meter readers, I really didn't. Well, their meter technicians, I'm sorry, or technicians or whatever they used to be. Meter reader. Luckily, I've never gotten a ticket, I guess. So I'm I'm a rule follower, but I just didn't. I've never seen them. I just didn't even know we had those. They they won't ticket you. I thought you said give you a ticket. They're talking about the water meters. Oh no. I'm in parking my brains on parking. Been using too much water for giving you. You can park for free in Tarpon. This is my guilt coming. Because the other night in front of Oishi, I parked in the 15 minute parking for an hour. And the whole time was worried sick. I was going to get a ticket. But you know, again, I've got a full staff, very, very fortunate here. Three guys and working in the in the meter readers, technicians. Excuse me, we've gone to the new cloud software with the help of it, getting that going. But now they used to carry these big meter reader. They go out to get the readings, but now they're doing everything. It's off a smartphone, they go out, they just drive down the road now, not all the meters are connected to the automated read system. I think the city is about 75% on this system. So but they drive down, they and now they have this transceiver, trans receiver box in their trucks that help them pull up the readings. So as they're driving by, they can capture the readings on these routes. But what about the meters that aren't they still have to get out for them. We're trying to aggressively try to get the rest of these done. Are they sort of isolated in one area of the city or that doesn't? There's no different blocks. Yeah. But, trying to get those done. I've been working with with Tommy and the water department to try to make sure we can try to get all these, you know, get them all with the new Amr system and, other than that, I'm looking at their budget. Last year, they bought a vehicle. That's why it went down in capital. Last year, they got a new vehicle, other than that, I'm nothing too much else exciting in that budget, but if you got any questions. Any questions? No And we will give you any tickets or anything, but when you said meter, it's seriously because of that, that night I was I was so I was like, oh God, I'm getting in so much trouble. We could start and maybe that's something the funding. So there's our 1. Downtown. All right. Thanks, Ron. Okay, we're ready for library. Going through everything quickly today. Yes, we are, well, I'm Carrie Rob Kelvis, library director and, to begin, I just wanted to mention how our library budget is a little bit different than some of the other city budgets we have inter departmental allocations for, other departments that provide services to library like public works, human resources, IT, etc. and these inter-departmental allocations help us to show the true cost of running a library, which also helps us to get credit on the Pinellas Public Library Cooperative, funding formula, because every year the co-op receives money from the county collected from tax taxes from unincorporated county, and they divided among the different member libraries of which we are one. And it depends primarily on your local support dollars. So the city depending on how much the city provides, our library has an opportunity to, if it spends more, we have an opportunity to get more back. For example, this year we got over $300,000 from the county. So when you see our total budget, it's over a million. But some of the county funds are using to help fund that. So, that's, about our departmental allocation. Also, I wanted to mention we have the Library Memorial count, which is primarily, receive from donations from the friends of the library. We do also get individual donations, like a book memorial or we sell bricks commemorative bricks, things like that. But the bulk of it comes from the friends of the library. And this organization every year gives us a, annual donation. December this year, they told me they felt comfortable that it would be 20,000, if not more. So that's what our budget is, derived from here in the library memorial account. And that goes to spun a fund, special enhancements such as our summer reading programs, our special collection items like our musical instruments, those sort of things. And that funds those funds come from the French used bookstore that they have in the library, where used books are sold and all those proceeds come back to the library at the end of the year. And also the friends have some investments, so the money comes from that as well, but other than those that are, we're a little different than some of the other, departments, this year's budget is very similar to last year's budget, the other big thing we have going on is our library renovation project. We've been at our current lemon Street location for 27 years now, and we did, recently get a $500,000 grant from the state, which involves matching funds, 100,000 from the donations and then 400,000 from the impact fees that project is underway now. We are working with project administration and other city departments, but it probably won't go out to bid. And the construction probably won't start until later in the year. So some of it's encumbered in this fiscal year. And then depending on how things play out, some of it, the rest might be carried over into fiscal year 2025. Are you did you did, maybe I misheard. Are you moving locations or are you. No, no, it's the same. It's the same location. We are just, doing renovations there. We're remodeling and doing a little expansion there. Nice, nice. So when you say different, like the inter departmental allocation, that would be like finance doesn't have to allocate their portion of air or let's say like whoever fixes the AC or whatever, but you do because it helps your numbers. Exactly. Because that's the true cost of running the like. Yes, because we wouldn't be able to run it if they didn't fix the AC and the air. Okay, I got you. Exactly. So it just kind of then that beefs up your budget to the reality rather than it being the city subsidizes it a little bit. Correct. For the purpose of that Pinellas County, I got it, yes. Any other questions? I don't have any. No. It sounds like the large increase, the main increases you have, other than the additional library resources, is the IT maintenance ? Oh, yeah. Actually, we are, working together with it. They're going to be taking a much bigger role at managing the library systems. They're helping us update our computers and our networks and, so there's going to be a lot more to come, potentially even to we have a vacant position that might be involved with converting to an IT position. And so. Oh, within your. Yes. So yeah. So it provides a lot of support and then even more so lately. So yeah, because you have you have quite a few computers and they're used if I'm not mistaken, like yes we have, obviously the staff computers, we have public computers in our adult services, our, our teen room, our youth services for people who don't have their own devices to be able to come and use internet access. Do you have like a small makerspace as well, or is that a we will that is part of the renovation project. I knew it was. Maybe I'll learn that in Citizens Academy and it just kind of stuck. Yeah. Because I yeah, that's one of the enhancements that are coming. Nice That'll be nice when that project gets. Yes. We're really looking forward to that. I don't have any more questions. I don't either. Thank you, thank you. Okay. Thank. Okay. Before we move into public comments, I want to go back to something we discussed last week in terms of the motions we made and the best time to present them. You were going to talk with city manager and try to get some feedback on when we should be narrowing in on that. As far as presenting your options, I would say the best meeting would be the July 9th meeting. The first budget workshop. Okay We have to talk to you about that one because I may not be available that day. Oh, well, I think I think, are you available? I said I am, yes, available. I'll get back with you after I confirm that as long as I just, I just I just needed a date so I can plan because I'm pretty sure I'm day or evening. This evening, I'll start at 630 and the main auditorium down there. Okay. We'll get that worked out okay. And that's a is that a Tuesday? Yes, it's a Tuesday. Okay okay. So okay I'll continue with the agenda. Any other public comments board and staff comments? I just wanted to mention, I met with the property appraiser. I think I was telling you last week on the on the taxable value, we budgeted 5. And he said it's still an estimate, but we're looking at, it might be just a little below 8.5% as the taxable value increase, even if it's like 8, that's an additional 3. That's about another about I'm sorry. That's no that's good news. That should help. I know I was I was a little surprised even at that. A double take. I had to go check with him. I'd go check it. So that's a that's about another 400,000 in revenues for the general fund. He still works on it, especially the tangible portion of it. The official estimate comes out June 1st. Right. And that'll get us a little bit closer. And then the certified values on July 1st. So that was good to hear that. It looks like we're heading over 8% good okay. Obviously the next meeting is next week to go over the remaining departments. Yes Any other future agenda items besides working on the budget? It's enough for me. Okay So I say we adjourn this meeting at 313. Thank you. Treats and stuff. Today Some good guys. I have to step it up. Step it up here. Yeah, we forgot our goodie bag, so. Yeah That's M&Ms.