We have a quorum. Yes. You do. Okay, we're going to start. Today's with old business, last meeting, we had a discussion regarding a motion to increase the unassigned fund balance. And we had a discussion because we thought everyone seemed to recall having one back in February. So I went back and looked at the YouTube video. We did indeed have a motion in February and another motion last month, I don't think we need to leave it simply as a motion at this point. I think we need to have also a suggestion of how to implement that motion. In addition to which we also need to look at when we want to submit this recommendation. When do we want to do that separately, or do we want to wait and see if there's any other motions we make or recommendations we make during the budget discussion? So I set I went back and looked at a presentation. Ron made two years ago, specifically on the unfunded balances and my personal preference would have been to have an annual budget line in there where we would go in and increase the dollars in that to be 25% of the expenses for the previous year. However, when we do budgets, we're not going to have that number yet. We're we're a number of months before the end of this fiscal year. So he had outlined in that presentation a number of options in terms of increasing it by a number of 200,000 a year because if I recall, you said expenses go up about a million a year, so 20% would be 200,000. He also had in there a 300,000 option. And then something with an alternate year thing. So if we're going to increase this to 250,000, my idea would be that we have an annual line item in the budget to increase that unrestricted fund balance by $250,000 a year. Comments suggestions? Yeah, I like the laddered approach rather than just all one. Now I've gone through Ron's presentation for today, so I think going from 20 to 25 and one year, 1 or 1 year is going to be a little bit aggressive live. So, I like the idea of laddering it, but I also want to kind of discuss this more after during Ron's presentation, because he's got part of that in there. Okay Okay. I was going to I don't know if I could interject, but I was that's why I was just going to those slides there and stuff. I updated some updated some slides on the on the general fund expenditures and on unassigned fund balance. I know there's a lot of numbers and stuff up here, but up top is a, you know, the total expenditures for 20, 20, 21, 22 and 23, the actual expenditures and then the increase, the percentage increase and then the budget for 24 and 25. And then off to the right in green is just the average increase over those six years. And the percentage down below that is the fund balance minimum at the 20% cap based on those expenditures, and below that I threw in, okay. If the fund balance minimum was 25% over on the far right, we'd be up at 8,860,000. The unassigned fund balance, you know, currently. Well, that 1234. Fifth line down. Unassigned fund balance in 2021 was 8.5 million. Then in 2021, 8.7 72. Then it went down to 8,668,000. And then in 2023, where we just finished off and closed out that year, 8,667,007, 51 and trying to project out 2024, I basically just took the average of the previous years, because you can see we've hovered right around eight point between 8.5, up to eight point almost 8.8 million, so that was the unassigned fund balance. And the percentage is below that starting out back in 2020, we were at 32. And then going down to last year we closed out. We're at 26. And then below that in the sort of grayish bar is the amount that we're over to the fund balance minimum, I'm trying to see if there's anything else relevant down there. And I wanted to say in this current year budget, I did save off some money. You know, you mentioned the 200,000 250,000. And, I do have in this current year budget, 366,000 saved off and I don't want to say saved off. It's a line item, expenditure line item in the budget. It's general fund non-departmental. It's called a 0.99 non-operating account. And if we were going to fund it every year, that's where I would put that amount. And we do have money in there. The 366,821 and it's described as reserve for fund balance, the next slide, I went ahead and projected out, going 26 through 2030. I based it on the average expenditures. We had 1.7 million. You know, it might be more than that, but I use the average and see what based on that, what is the total expenditure is going to increase over from 26 to 2030. And what the fund balance minimum would be at the 20. And then if we kept the fund balance minimum at the same amount, the 8 million, 8,673,800 for what the percentage is right below that, you know, getting out to as you can see, highlighted in yellow, I think you asked me last year, last month, when would we go over them under the minimum. And that, you know, we're close to it in 2029. And then we are in 2030 based on these numbers and expenditures, I had one more slide just to tell you that there is some other reserve money. If there was something that happened that we needed some money, city manager and I discussed it a few years ago that, you know, when I started a finance director a few years ago, ten, 11 years ago, I started having especially public works come up. Air conditioning breaking. They need equipment. So I said, Mark, I really can we reserve off some money? So we called it. The auditor said a good description is management designation. So back in 2015, I started a little reserve in the general fund for management designations. And as you can see, we started in 2015, when I closed out September 30th, 2023, there are 632,000. In it. You know, as I say, the intent was for a replacement replace vehicles equipment that break down. I know Tom just came up yesterday and says he had a dump truck that broke down. They're trying to figure out if they got to buy a new one or replace the engine, usually 2 or 3 times a year. There's AC replacements that weren't expected that they need. Otherwise people are going to get hot and sweat in their offices. So that's not good. But so, and then we did want a couple of years ago for public safety. And I started this because we a few, about 5 or 6 years ago, we started we pay the pension contribution for police and fire lump sum. We used to pay it weekly and talk with the actuary a few years ago, said Ron. You can, you can if you want to make a lump sum payment at the beginning of the year, you can save some money. And I calculated back then it was about $80,000 a year by going ahead and making the lump sum payment in October, which between the two of them, right now it's about 1.5 million, we save some money, you know, about 80,000 a year on that. So the reason I've got the public, that's how that public safety one started one year, we didn't have enough in it, and we had to send another 45,000. But that's been the only time. So but I've still tried to keep the money out there. I know last year we used it for, they needed some new flooring in the, in the public safety building. There's been other equipment, this year we were thinking about the high water vehicle, and I know the chief has some other repairs and maintenance, some of his bathrooms out there, and that building's getting, I think, 25 years old. So it's starting to get some maintenance, so I left we left that one out there too. So I was basically trying to show this to say, you know, besides the unassigned unassigned fund balance, there is another little pot of money. If somebody says, hey, we need some money. You know, at the end of September 30th, 2023, we had 947,000 there, which is 3. So I just wanted to just so you know, there is some other money there. We've been saying if we didn't have this, that money would be if Mark didn't want to put it there, we would fold that into the unassigned fund balance. But it's been good because I appreciate it, because I know when they're coming up looking for money and repairs emergencies. We've got this money to fall back on. So I just thought I'd show you those three sides. And if it helps in your analysis, this decision making of unassigned fund balance, my biggest concern and I we did approve at least we made a recommendation to increase it 25. That 8.8 million that's been sitting there for years. It's purchasing power is not 8.8 million right now because of the inflationary right. So that number doesn't really mean a lot. That's why I think we need to increase it. Yeah, I think just part of something might be good to mention that I was thinking about in general, was that I, having sat here for maybe a little over a year or so , I sense a lot like we do a lot of things, like very much the same, a lot of like it's just very the same, you know, it's this amount of increases and, and all of that. And in the past four years when we've had some of these decreases in the assigned fund balance, we've also had all the Arpa funds that have been used for a lot of big projects, and a lot of these numbers, and you're going to tell me bullets from this fund and that fund, and then you're going to explain it away. And I get that because it's a lot to take in. But, we've had all this extra money from the Arpa funds. And yet at the same time, we've kind of I feel like it's allowed for some scope creep to happen, maybe. And then so our fund is lower, we've got all these projects done. So maybe we've gotten way ahead on projects and that's great. But you're kind of description here shows that this dwindling supply of that overage with just those increases. And I'm kind of concerned like are are we deluding ourselves that that's what the increases will be when that we need out of our main money, when we don't have the other funds? Is that something that. Yeah, I was going to talk about the separate funds, but you know, but like I said, the Arpa was all obligated to certain projects that the board approved, and it helped out greatly with those projects. You know, I do agree that, you know, that at some point, you know, the fund balance needs to be a certain amount. If we said like 200,000, because if we don't, at some point when it does get close to that minimum, we're going to have to put it in the fund balance policy designates if within two years you need to bring it back up to the million, up to the minimum, but probably do it during those two years, those expenditures are still going to go up. So you're going to have to keep increasing that minimum. So you know, my thought is, yes, there needs to be a designated amount that goes into the reserve for fund balance. If it's like 1, you know, but a certain amount, so I just want to make sure I understand the first slide that you showed. And I'm going to summarize it, and I just want to make sure I'm capturing it correctly. So you're basically showing expenses and unassigned fund balance from 2020 to 2025, which is six years. And there's an increase in expenses. And each year the unassigned fund balance requirement is that it's 20% of expenses. Is that right? Correct Okay. So like keep going on this trend. At some point there's going to be a need for action. And we want to sort of get to it earlier than than it just sort of hits on the next slide the need for action. But if we kept with that same amount of unassigned fund balance in 2029, were were there, okay, we're really close. And was the question you're asking that is the expenses due to these projects. No no no no no I'm saying that I foresee that we don't need to worry like worry about the fund balance as well as there's just a lot of status quo that seems to happen with how these budgets are approved. Like, it just feels like it's, a lot of people, which I know it's a good thing that a lot of people have been here for a long time, and it just it feels like autopilot and maybe not in the best way sometimes. And so I think maybe there's also a need to look at maybe how some things are done on a fully different level to make sure those expenses don't continue to creep. It's just this expected rate rather than only focusing on getting that fund balance where it where it needs to be, I see I feel like there's not often a lot of attention on the just that just alternatives. Yeah Right. Yeah. Like the, I just keep calling it scope creep because in my world of engineers, that's what we call it. But I'd have to look that up and see what scope creep it's like. Just this, it's like we, we expect it's going to grow this much. And so it does, because we have this void that we fill with expenses. Instead of thinking through some things that we might do not radically different, but maybe radically different on some fronts and how things are looked at. And I just, I just sense that, like last year, I think during the same period I don't want to say frustrated, but I did feel a sense of like in it, like just a lot of the way that things were treated, felt. And I know it's because it's municipal and it's municipalities are just run a little different than corporate and all of that. But it felt maybe stale. On how things are looked at and I thought, just, is there some opportunity before we leap into this season of going through all of the people and the 3, the 3, the 3, I'm trying to think of how I could liven it up so it's not so stale, but I mean, it's financing, okay. But we do and it's just how it feels like that. But I could be totally wrong because I only get just that high, high level view, I know there is one thing. I went back and, you know, looked at expenses and, you know, taxable values went up 14% two years ago, 11 point something this year, which was provided more money. But what also happened over the last five years, we've had 23, almost 24 new full time positions in the general fund. 12 in the last year. Those 24 positions, you know, really even even the just the last two years for 12, that's like almost 800, $900,000 worth of recurring expenses. If you go back to the whole 23, I think it was 23 positions over the last five years. It's like 1.6 million of recurring expenses so far. The city manager and I have talked about no new positions in this budget. Knowing that we're seeing I'm seeing sales tax revenues there below where we budgeted this year, and they're not coming in quite as what they did the last couple of years. So the new positions, you know, is and I don't have any vacancies. It used to be like, you know, in the general fund, I might have seven, eight, nine vacant positions. I I guess people are happy here. There. Nobody's leaving that much except for my department, you know? So I got so I don't know. And I know some of the things that have been said in prior years where things like that, we had to we had struggled with getting people because of a lack of remote opportunity and things of that nature. Like there were just all these things that were adding to the expenses and, and I know there's certain reasons probably do with security and it why people can't maybe work remote in most positions, but are there other ways that could just change the way things are done instead of it? Just that standard way of things? It maybe not. You talked about maybe the work and within those departments and how they're processed it. Yeah. In terms of when people have asked for headcount increases or why they need folks, or are there ways to be efficient in other ways? I just maybe it's looked at very deeply. I don't get that sense of it just from the way these budgets are presented with the department analyzing the workload and the amount of staffing that they have and yeah. Yeah what I recall from the positions that because in the last meeting you had indicated the expenses had a lot to do with, the, the personnel budget and we had added those positions for I want to say it was like due to the advance in technology or whatever the case may be. And green, I think, was one. There seemed to be several reasons that it made sense to add those, but I guess to the point is, can we also look at the expenses in addition to, to just discussing the unassigned fund balance minimum, but we may still need to take a look at it, but definitely it's a good point. Yeah. I just feel like, you know, what you think is going to grow. You can say no and you can say, we have to figure out how to do it smarter and better and preserve that. And I think that even if we make the recommendation to add to the fund balance, this budget seems to get so far down field before that's ever really considered that it almost every year I feel like, well, that ship sailed before it ever got going or something like before we ever really talked about it and so it just leaves me wondering why I'm sitting here sometimes because I don't know how impactful it really is. Well, if we recommend the growth, though, in the unassigned balance fund, that's going to force looking at other things, because we're going to have to set aside an amount every year to grow the fund balance. So it's going to force having to look at cost. I don't know that. I guess that's my force. Well, you know, I don't know how much it's going to force that to happen. Meaning will it we make that recommendation and I don't know how seriously it's considered if we're heard. Well, if the recommendation goes in, then we put caveats with it of how that has to be achieved. Mandate it what it makes sense to do a sensitivity analysis like if we increase it 2, 1, 2, 3, so they can have some options to look at. Do you think that might help the just looking at Ron's numbers right now, I'm inclined to say if we want to get it to 25, increase it 1% a year over the next five years with the mandate that X whatever to get us to that number, we have to set aside that much money each year to grow it. So you're saying go a staggered thing rather than a flat rate each year? Yeah, well, that might be just probably going to be require more calculations. But just looks like we're going to run into being at the 20% and within the next five years, five, six years, if we do nothing. Yes. If we do nothing. So and like you said, if we just hover at this 8.6 million, that's our buying power is gone. It's gone. Well it's decreased. It's not gone but it's decreased . So we could recommend doing something. How much is 1. How much is 250,000 a percentage wise of the expenditures of the. Yeah, yeah. Of the expenditures or do we have that honestly. Well it depends on what year you're looking at. But 250,000 is because in the last presentation he said expenses are growing about a million a year. So 25% of that would be 250,000. Okay okay. Okay This slide says they're growing 1,000,007 on average. That's been the average for the last six years. And I can see one year is 1.6. And it went down to 731,000. And then back up to 1.6. 2023 was a year where we had where we had to do an accounting entry for 1.3, almost 1.3 million for subscriptions, and still really don't know what it's going to end up being this year for 2024. But then going into 25, we're increasing the budget to, you know, almost 2.2 million. So do you think it would make sense for our recommendation to be we recommend you to do X increase 1% per year. Or we recommend an increase. And you have options. You could do half a percent or 1. Here's what it looks like. If you do either option, what do you think that would make sense? Or would it like overcomplicate it? The recommendation that might overcomplicate it? Would you like to know what some other cities are doing? Or. Sure Okay, well, Clearwater is at 8, Dunedin's at 17. And that's what our government finance officers recommends is two months worth at seven, 17, I guess we're we're at 20. Saint Pete is at 20. Largo had something where they have a minimum of 10, but they got a target of 20. And I've been trying to run to see what I know, what you're all going trying to think of this. I'm going. Well, maybe we should have a 20% minimum, a target of 25. But then, you know, if we're getting closer to 25% trying to figure out what's the mechanism, okay, we need to make sure we're not getting under that 25. Is it 1? Is it $200,000? I almost felt, you know, almost felt like, you know, a percentage, like 1, you know, then if $35 million budget, that's 350,000. So I kept on coming back to 1. But then but then again, it's like, okay, if we're trying to balance, you know, the, the general fund budget, we got health insurance increases, we got the pension contribution trying to weigh all that in. But plus now okay, we've got to factor in another 350,000 into the budget. Just trying to balance all those. And depending on what sort of pay increase they want to provide for the employees, if it's 3, which is in the budget now, or I know I think the city manager would like to give 5. So that's another couple of hundred thousand dollars to give the 5% in the general fund. So it's trying to get balance this all out, all out with the expenses. We won't know the health insurance until it's usually August. Health insurance and property insurance. And hopefully it goes down, from the 10% we've got budgeted. But so a lot of factors out there, you're thinking another option, instead of raising the minimum, is changing the policy to say, the minimum. And then a target. Is that kind of what you're. Yeah. Leaving it at 20% is fine. If we did that I would want to I would want though a mandate that x percent of annual expenditures has to be put aside. I think that's what you the balance at some point either that you're going to hit, you know, in year, year 2029, all of a sudden they're going to be forced to within. You've got to put money in there. And you know, you either try to head it off as you're trying to do here and put something in the mixture that balances is increasing and not staying at our 8.6 million. I like that idea that I'm well, we're talking this through is kind of bringing us around to the 20% is adequate is it is above government the your government organization's recommendations even but I'm so conservative I, I like it there. But we need to see this grow from this 8.6 is just getting stagnant. And I guess the way to do that is just to for our recommendation to be 1% of the budgeted expenditures, half have to be set aside, and we need to see it rolling into this fund with a target of 25. Or would that over complicate, yeah, I wouldn't even say a target of 20. I think by doing this, we'll avoid going below that 20% in the out years. Hopefully That circles back to forcing us to put some money aside and in doing so, that might force some reexamination of cost. And where can we reduce? Because, you know, in my experience, budgeting, you do get lackadaisical and you just roll over. Well, I spent that last year. So I'm gonna spend it this year. And you, you lose sight of thinking, am I really going to need that? And you were talking about the departments, and that's when you meet with the departments. They're starting May 23rd and May 30th, you know, going through their line items and maybe even saying, okay, if they're if they're budgeting 50,000, but they only spent 10,000 a year before the. Okay, why do you need this increase? Is there something within those departments. And you can ask them about their procedures and yeah, and I will because I want to know more about the I don't know how those how those decisions are made. Yeah. In general, I don't want to get in the weeds of how everybody does their jobs. But when I said that about the it feels like autopilot and a little stale, I meant that like I don't know if there's any drive for spending less. I think there's a drive to spend more because then you get your budget and then how do we get out of that loop, especially in light of like there are a lot of different ways to make sure we have plenty of money. And I am worried that that 4% increase is not adequate and that there there could be some other increases. You know, that come, you know, that's one thing. I shouldn't say it, but we got the property tax increases 14, 11. I go now I think about was that good or bad. We just spent more money because we had more money. That's exactly what I'm saying. We spend more money because we have more money and it just doesn't. We can't let that build and earn interest and then do projects when we don't have Arpa funds like other things, kind of in the future, and I think, I'm sorry, but I just don't know if that's how budgets work because I'm relative new here for 18 months or whatever. So do we want to modify our recommendation or wait until we're done with the budget discussion before we readdress it here? We could probably always come back to it as we have the meetings and, well, so are you talking about making multiple recommendations or would you make all like one budget season recommendation? I don't know how that goes either. Well, two years ago we did that. We had three recommendations come out during the budget process. Last year we only had one. So it just depends on how the conversation one, two, three you would do them separate. Not like as a presentation of all three. You can do it. We did it as a two years ago as a presentation of all three. Are they considered along the way or is it all at once like if we presented something now, is it considered now or do they hold on? I don't know how that would work in terms of the City Commission's agenda, how they're if you make a recommendation then yeah, well then it would have to be brought because the investment policy is a resolution and it would have to be brought before the board with a resolution. And the changes that we're putting into it. If we made this recommendation, now that we leave the unassigned fund balance at 20, but that we want, you know, x percent per year set aside into the unassigned fund balance, you'd have to go back right, right now and rework your budget. Right? Correct Yeah. So that's why I think this this particular recommendation we need to do sooner rather than later so that it can be factored in. And then the rationale for, for making this recommendation is because in 2029, we would blow through that minimum if we don't take action today. Yeah. Yeah. If we keep it at the 8.6, 8.7 million. Yes. In 2029, we're we're bumping up to that minimum. So if we made a recommendation that 1% of the budgeted expenses is what we say has to go into the unassigned balance that we're looking at, 354,000 for fiscal 25 budget. You'd have to find. Correct. What's your reaction to that, Ron, like in terms of that number, do you think that would be? I go back in the office, I bang my head against the I mean, like, is it a massive lift or is it doable, well, you know, we're early on in the budget process right now. You know, it's just from now until August, we find out the health insurance rates. You know, if I can take a little bit out of the pension contributions because I just got the fire one for the pension contributions that we have to, and we still have 198,000 $180,000 credit that I can use to reduce our pension contribution. We've put in too much. We've got a credit on both the police and fire pension. So there's other variables out there the health insurance, property insurance. When we finally know what those come in, if they come in less, I might say, hey, we've got the money now to put in for the reserve for the unassigned fund balance. So there's still a lot of factors going on between now and when we get the budget. Hopefully completed towards end of August and the property tax could swing a lot that in tomorrow. Yeah I'm we budgeted 5. That's an and tomorrow I'm going to the meeting with the property appraiser. He gives us a pretty close to what Tarpon Springs taxable value increase will be. You know, we budget 5. I'm hoping came in at 6. How much of a swing would revenue be ? $136,000. All right, well, we're part of the way there. I guess the only thing I'm thinking is, I, I'm I'm in agreement, definitely on this proposal. I would hate for them to be like. Oh, well, 1% is too much, so just forget it, right, so I don't know if there's a way to say we'd like to do something, assuming that the expenses increase on the track that they've been increasing since 2020, then it does make sense to do a 1. But if and I think as long as I've been involved in as far back as you've shown us slides, it's kind of expenditures do just increase incrementally every year. There's never really been like a decrease year that I that I recall. So with that trend line sort of up into the right, then it sort of does make sense to do the one. But maybe in the recommendation we, we can explain it to say the rationale is to plan ahead for 2029. And, you know, please consider other options as opposed to just, you know, not agreeing to it. I was just thinking myself while we're talking. Sorry to interrupt you there, but, you know, we're doing it. We're talking as part of its percentage of expenditures. And I was thinking, what if we did a percentage of the unassigned fund balance? I'm just my top of my head just thinking just now, just, you know, just to make sure what we're wanting to do is increase the unassigned fund balance, whether it's a percentage of the expenditures. And I would just think, well, can we do a percentage of the unassigned fund balance and say, it's got to increase a certain percentage amount, but just I'm just throwing that out there. But can we see what the projection looks like if we do the 1, what do we have that anywhere. Like if we did if let's say they passed that resolution to do the 1, what does the fund balance look like if we do that based on those? Well, if you do it as far as a 1% of expenditures, are you talking $350,000 this year? So when you say that, you add that to the fund balance and then year over year, if we did 1, like so, where did that put us? I can't do that math. Well, you're close to like 9 million. If you do the 350,000, you're just a tad over 9 million instead of the 8,673,000, so that's where we want to be. Yeah So when you say you have to go back and rework the budget because I've never done a budget like you do, are you saying that then you would tell different departments that they have to rework theirs? I say rework it. We just we just don't know what the final expenditures are going to be. You know what? Health insurance, property insurance, what they're going to come in, what's a property tax value is going to come in at? There's a lot of unknowns for you, right? Yes. And if there is some if you're going through the departments budgets and you see some expenditures, maybe there's some that you can get and say, hey, can you are we able to cut 10,000 out of here and 10,000 out of here? So And I mean, even I mean, and this is you know, I'm not saying this, but I mean, like the high water vehicle, you know, I mean, I know that that's not a cheap thing. And, you know, I mean, and how often are we going to use it? And, I mean, are those things that can be looked at? Well, we've already bought the high water, I know, but I'm just using it as an example. We did it like because that was one of my things last year, to be honest. And I live back where we needed the highway. You know, I don't I didn't live in the trailer area, but where they needed it. Yeah, I mean, we bought that. It was like 260,000. We split it between the penny fund and the general fund. That's 260,000. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're just talking about 1% just this year. No, no, every year. Every every year. So that's what I was saying about the projection of what would the balance be if year over year we do the 1, it would be more than 9 million. Oh yeah. You know, so I wanted to see what we would end up at here. After that, you might be up at 9.4 million. The year after that, you might be up to, you know, almost 9.8 million. So yeah, between 300 and 50, 400,000 450,000. Yeah So I'm just curious, is that something that we have the right to bring up? What I just said, I know that that's already done. But when we see these budgets come through, is it okay if we turn around and say, do we really need that? How often would it be used? Can you rethink that? You're looking at me like, I just want an answer to. My blank stare. Well, at that time and I know when you mean as far as validating the purchase of the high water vehicle, it's something that we can question and ask. Yeah well, at that time. Pardon? I know I was in the EOC and they had no at that time and they had no vehicle to go out to rescue those people. And that's probably a bad example. Let's pick another one. I know they have boats that could let's see. I can't remember one of the ones last year, but I know we could find one, but so let's just say that's debatable. I agree, high water vehicles definitely not very debatable, but something else. Let's say that something that is wrong. I think that yes, absolutely. We can talk. So in the past years doing the budget advisory, we've had board members question us on a lot of things in the past. They've done that. They've come up and said, hey, I looked in your budget and you have this. Can you explain this what this is? So I think that's you can do that. I mean, that you're going through our budgets to tell us what we're submitting is valid or not. I don't see any reason you can't. Well, and as far as capital to balance it right now, a good portion of the capital is not in the budget. I've had to take it out, but some of it I go through, I go, I can okay, it looks like AC replacements, maintenance stuff. That's part of that maintenance reserve. I talked about management designation reserve I would use that for. But a lot of the capital sum has been taken out, be it to be able to balance the general fund budget, the only thing, the only capital in there is stuff that has a funding source. If it's donations, a cemetery, perpetual care tree bank, those are the capital items that have a funding source to pay for it, community centers grant for $100,000, some improvements. They've got a grant. It has been approved yet to pay for those improvements. Getting money from other sources . Okay. So I think, I definitely think, yeah, it definitely would be good to raise it during the next sessions. But for this particular point, because we're trying to just take a decision today, 1% seems to make sense. But then I pause when I look at the management designation fund that you earmarked, because you've got about 600,000 in there as of September 23rd. So given that you that you have that management designation fund, which, which can be utilized for kind of unexpected things, I wonder if it would make sense to do, like maybe a recommendation of half or half a percent, given that some of this money is made up in the management designation. However I'll go with the group. Just just kind of throwing it out there. But I want to make be clear. So is that money separate in the budget or is that just earmarked in a different account so you can access it more easily? The management designation, it's a separate reserve. It's not in the budget right now unless there's some items I want to use that money for. But it's a separate reserve in our general fund balance sheet, if that's okay. So it's not in so is our that money is not being used in the budget if that's what okay. Currently So the it's out there to access if needed. But what's the requirement to access it. Is there any policy on. No it's a per the auditors. You can have a certain unrestricted. It's a it's a sign. It's the category is called a sign fund balance. And it's a management has a ability to do that. I get with Mark and say can we do this. And we went ahead and we set aside this money management designation, which is mostly for maintenance reserve items, AC stuff replaced vehicles, a break and so are those. So where did that come from then? What? Where did it come from? If it's not in the budget, where did it come from to grow? Really it was excess money. When it started a few years ago, I was able to put some money, you know, like when the budget process went on. I'm working on the budget and all of a sudden maybe somebody towards the August when we're getting late in the budget process, health insurance came in less than expected. Okay, I put this money aside into the management designation. So that's how it sort of built up towards the end of the budget process. We're also oh, we got some extra money. I've stuck it in there. So then when we see the report, let's say it is for air conditioning. And you've used it for somebody when they present their expenses for the year and what their budget last year and their expenses this year, that money that was paid out of that fund is in their expenditures, is for what their department spent. Well, most of the stuff for the for these items, it's stuff that's not budgeted. It's stuff that comes up. If Tom comes to my doorway and says, you know, the AC just broke in the building department, we need some money for it, then I'll go, okay, I'll go into this money and put it into the budget by a budget resolution document. But then when we're looking at last year's expenses, is that in there? Yes. I mean, it'll be in the actuals. Yes. Okay. It's in that. Yeah. Thank you. So do we want to make a recommendation now or we want him to finish his budget presentation and we readdress this. Let's go through the presentation and then we'll we'll make the recommendation at the end of the presentation. After we've digested the rest of your budget presentation. As you know well, the departments have entered the request. Finances done, the payroll calculation. We've done the revenue projections. All the funds have been balanced. General fund balance is balanced with no use of the unrestricted reserves for the ninth straight year. That would be if we had to use that unassigned fund balance in balancing the fund revenue projections. We go back about 3 or 4 years on the historicals, the current year to date we look at and any other economic factors that come up, property taxes. We've budgeted a 5% increase in the taxable values. The millage rate is still at the 5.37, which has been for 1011 years now. Water and sewer fees. It's already approved at a 3.75% increase on October 1st. I don't know if you remember, but there was a 9.9% increase that that got approved December 1st of this last December, sanitation fees per the contract. It adjusts every March 31st. It's but a maximum 3% stormwater fees . It goes up 50% $0.50 per every equivalent stormwater unit, pay increases. A police and fire are per their union contracts. We funded 3% for general employees. There's no new positions in the budget, police and fire pension contribution for those pensions. As per the actuary health insurance. We've, you know, estimated a 10% increase along with property liability insurance, worker's comp. All we've estimated 10% increases. The 10% has seemed to work some some years I go maybe it's 15% for this one, but 10% seems to work. It seems like sometimes one of some of them come in higher, some lower, but they always seem to balance out. So 10% is been my working number here for that, getting into the budget, the total city budget, the five largest funds highlighted in yellow. The budget as it currently sits is 85 million. It's a eight. 8,719,000 over the previous year, 11.41. The general fund budget is 35,440,000, an increase of 2.1 million 6.57, water and sewer fund 26 million. 5.5 million over the previous year. Sanitation fund, almost $8 million budget, about the same as a previous year. A little bit less, penny fund, 4.4 million. Last year. 4 million. Golf course fund 2.2 million, the previous year at 1.9 million. As I stated, we got the percentage increases for each fund. And then in the gray shaded bars is the general fund is mostly pay increases, insurance estimate increases, and operating cost increases is causing that increase. Beckett bridge 4 million for utilities. This has been ongoing for, five, six, seven years. The county is supposed to replace Beckett Bridge. The city is supposed to pay for the replacement of the water and sewer lines that are underneath the bridge. Five, six years ago, we used to budget 800,000 for this project, for replacing these utility lines. Now we're hearing it's four. I'm rounding it up to 4 million. That's 3,925,000. I mean that's all the city's capital expense. Usually for a year on the water and sewer fund, I sent an email to Bob and he forwarded to the county because I told them I just said, I believe this is an undue burden on the city to have to come up with this money to pay for these utilities. They forwarded it to Budget Department. They're looking into, I said I would rather them pay for it. They did go out for a grant. They got turned down. The county did the first time. They're reapplying for another grant to do the bridge. I said, can we make payments? Because otherwise, right now we've got a finance at $4 million, which it's not appealing to me. I just don't like that we have to be enforced like one vendor or was there. It's a county. The county is a county bridge. They're going to place it. Oh, this the county would charge. Okay. Sorry The county is going to replace the bridge. And when they replaced our utility lines are hooked to the bottom of the bridge. They're telling the city you got to pay for replacing your utility lines. Now it's up to almost $4 million to replace them. So just the parts for the lines, just the water and sewer line bridge. I don't know how many millions of dollars that's going to cost to replace, but so sort of a sore subject with me. I just don't have to come up with $4 million to pay for that. Sanitation fund. I reduced it a little bit. I'm like I say, it's early in the budget process. I'm seeing less, roll off activity within the fund, so that's why I reduced it. But I might need to bring it up some. But I think I'm seeing some improvement in the revenues there and the expenses. Capital project fund allocation, I just wanted to point out the main one there is we got 2.2 million for the replacement of Fire Station 70. That's the last installment. We've been trying to save money over the last three years. That will bring us up to the 6.2 million that we estimate we need. It hasn't gone out for bid yet to replace that fire station. We've got the money in the penny. We've got 720,000 in the general fund from the cell tower, lease. And the county contributes about 9.9. 5% of the costs. So that's the funding we have for the fire station 70, which is supposed to go out to bid soon. And hopefully they would start. It would go out to bid and get approved. I think we're thinking the first week or two of October and then start constructing after that. For that replacing fire Station 70. But golf course, the increase of they've got a new cart lease. Increasing about 50,000 a year to lease these carts. But from what the Howard said out there, their, their new lithium battery carts are better on electricity maintenance free, not maintenance free, but less maintenance, more efficient. I guess all the carts are going to this. So they had this is the standard for everybody. It's about $50,000 more for the cart lease. I think it's bringing it up to about 116,000 a year. And then they're looking at the design for a new clubhouse. So they've got budgeted 325,000 to design a new clubhouse. That'll help bring in revenues likely for the. I would hope so because you're still going to do the, you know, the event hall on top or something. I think they talked about that. Yeah. Okay. Just getting into the revenues. And this is the total city, I highlighted 38 million. That's a charges for services. That's the largest revenue source in the city charged for services. The bulk of that is water and sewer funds. Stormwater sanitation, well, charges for services. And the graph on the bottom there, it's 45, almost 40, 46% of the total city revenues. And over on the right, in the gray telling, the explanation for the increases taxes is property taxes and utility taxes, permits and fees decrease in budget for impact fees. And this sort of leads me into what I'm seeing this year so far is I might have mentioned last meeting, but, impact fees were only at like 25, 30% of budget, building permit fees are down, roll off activity. I've sort of combined all that and I go, I think there's less construction activity in the city right now, but you know, it only takes one big development to all of a sudden bring those impact fees up or over budget. So that could change, the community center grant Hunter thousand for the improvements there, one of to point out the big change from the charges for services of fiscal year 24 in the in the budget in 24 for water and sewer. We didn't have in the 9.9% increase yet. That was something that went to the board and in October and got approved, and that was a 9.9% increase on the rates for water and sewer. So that's what made that big $4 million difference in the charges for services, fines and forfeitures. I, I can never know what the budget for this. Sometimes one year can be 200,000, the next year 30,000. So I decrease the budget for the code fines, interest earnings have gone up a rate of return increase, and then down below I've got loan proceeds. If we've got a finance this Beckett bridge, which I hope we don't, the reserves went down because we're not using any reserves in the water and sewer fund to balance it. And then the bottom on internal services is an increase in the fleet and risk management costs. On the other side, for expenditures for the total city, the biggest, expense is personnel services, which is 43. And off on the right there is the explanations why, you know, insurance increases pay cost of operations. The Beckett Bridge again, debt went down because one of the chief's fire trucks got paid off the ladder truck, and after that, Greektown initiative was in fiscal year 24 and just the interfund transfers, they changed because they're based on 8% of charges for services. And then the interest rate change on the utility deposit interest, getting into the general fund, you know, the change went up 2.2 million 184,000, 6.57, mostly due to pay increases, insurances, pension and operating cost increases, the revenues of the general fund, just highlighted that the taxes are the highest one at 19.6 million, like as mentioned before, the big is increase is due to property and utility taxes. And taxes make up 55.5. I don't know if I need to go down the gray shaded bar. If you want me to read all this stuff, but, I always like to show the ten largest revenues. Of course, property tax. What we've got budget. The 5. That's a 681,000 highlighted in yellow. And then going down to utility tax, franchise fee, half cent sales tax, EMS fees, state revenue sharing, communication service tax, utility tax, water building permit fees and fire fees. Those are the ten largest revenues of the general fund, which account for about 1.4 million of the revenues needed in the General fund account. Those those ten account for 8,080% of the revenues of the general fund. I, I always bring this this slide back up. Everybody always liked to see it. This is what makes up the property tax revenues. It's the millage rate which in the top left graph is at 5.37. It stayed that way since 2011. At the 5.37. It was at 5.45. And then it made little. It went down to 5.42. And then I mean I'm sorry, 5.45, 5.45, then 5.42 and then 5.37 over on the right is a taxable values. As you can see, back from 2007 and then took the big dip to the lowest year we had was 2013. And then increasing back up to our estimate at 2025. Of the 2.9 million billion. Sorry. And then down at the bottom when you take the millage rate times the taxable value, you've got the revenues for the general fund going into what we've got budgeted this year is a 14,508,000. The expenditures of the general fund, the biggest one is, personnel services at 73, going up 1.4 million. And again, it's because of pay insurance, retirement benefits and then operating as the operating cost increases. And then the community center mentioned again for capital, the Greektown initiative, and the grants and Aids and the fund down the bottom on their fund balance reserve. That's where the 366,000 is budgeted this year, which was planned to go in increase the unassigned fund balance at 366,000. I guess we don't need to go over these ones. These are the unassigned fund balance ones. And did that one, I thought I'd throw these graphs in here. Just the general fund expenditures over the last six years. You know, the total expenditures for personnel, the increase, the percentage increase. There's the average over those six years, 1.2 million. So the personnel expenditures average of 5.7. Increase operating expenditures. Again, the expenditures for the last six years increase and the percentage increase with a with an average now of 8.1% over those six years. I thought I'd get out of the general fund, go into CRA fund just to you probably already know this. It was created in 2001, goes for 30 years. The area that it covers in the base year, the taxable value was a 41,037,900. Anything over that amount goes into the CRA. This is a calculation of the money that goes into the CRA for fiscal year 25. You know, on the left you've got the city portion and the green on the right you got in yellow, you've got the county portion coming down to the calculation of the amount over the base year, which we tak times the millage rate, which gives us the 500,378 for the city portion and the 448,000 that we build the county. And they write us a check and send us that amount. Water and sewer fund again went up the and mostly due to Beckett Bridge. The $4 million utilities. The rate increase for October one is a 3.75, the main revenues of the water and sewer fund, water sales at 12.1 million. Sewer sales 8.3. Reclaimed sales at 509,000, for a total of almost 21 million. And again, the rate change is going to be the 3.75. And we'll probably be doing another rate study about this time next year to look at the rates and the revenues and the expenses. Water and sewer fund revenues, of course. The main one is charges for services highlighted in yellow. The 21 million, almost 22 million. And they make up 83% of the of the revenues, expenses of the water and sewer fund is of course, the highest one is the personnel at 7.7 million. And then the big increase for the operating, which is at Beckett Bridge, hanging out there at 4 million. Third largest fund is a sanitation fund at almost 8 million, the contract increase is a maximum of 3. I'm still monitoring this fund. I want to keep looking at it every month. But this is the fund with the roll off charges. They're down. I think I'm seeing that start to increase now. The debris removal has been a change, too, between the. They've been cleaning up the yard waste facility out there and we've had more expenses. So we we've also had to change the rates on the on the yard waste debris. I think I talk about this more in this slide where we show the what we're paying the contractor. I'm sorry, this is the revenues for that. I think it's a next slide after that. But these are the revenues for the sanitation, sanitation revenues, recycling, tipping fees with the 3, like I say, it's based on the CPI or the maximum 3% for the rate increase. And down below, I talk about it used to be you went you dumped it. The yard waste facility, it cost 50 bucks a ton to dump their. And we paid $20 a ton to have it removed. So it's like a 2.4 times that. As far as the profit on that. But, the vendor didn't want vendor didn't wanted more money. So they came back and we lowest we got them to a $64 a ton. But now we're only we had to increase the cost. But the cost now the dump is $90 a ton. I think Thomas thought we've seen less people using it now. But he thinks about that too. He's thinking that there's some other sites that might be closing down, and they might end up some of the customers might have left, and they might be coming back because these other sites have are closing down from what you hear. But that's why I just want to watch those, yeah. Watch the price. Because if we're losing people that that's not good either. But. Well, we did like he's on top of that. Well, we didn't want to do it. You know, if we did it at the same ratio as what we originally had, we'd be charging like 150 bucks a ton. And he goes, well, we're going to lose people if we do that. So we settled on the 90 bucks a ton. Okay It's a part of the contract for the waste. Like where the where you take the large roll offs are over across from the yard waste where you can take anything and you just pay to dump it. I had heard, is that an unlimited amount of haul offs by waste management, like in the contract, where they just come and constantly rotate that? Or do we pay per? I'd have to find that out from Tom. I can get back with you on that. Said something about the, the fees on some of that going up. And I was thinking that I thought I thought that in their contract for that specific place, it was like an like they just they agreed to just handle that 100% in the contract. But I can't remember. I would like to know the answer to that. Okay. I can find out. I can find out for you. I think I might have asked him about it already, and this is what we're budgeting for. The expense for the contractor that we're paying waste management. A 4.9 million for solid waste for 800,000 for recycling. And the yard waste for 383,000, which is a different contract. It's not waste management. Sanitation fund. This is just showing you the main revenues charges for services. Almost 8 million. That's 99% of the budget expenses in the sanitation fund. I just highlighted, of course, is the operating. That's where we're paying the contractors almost 6.5 million, operating as 82% of the of the budget, fifth largest fund golf course at 2.2 million. It finished last year for the first time. It had a positive fund balance of 311,000. Howard has talked about reevaluating and the rates and maybe increasing them a little. The new golf cart lease for five years at an annual amount of 116,000, increase of 49,000 over the previous years lease, he said. But due to the cost, you know, that has gone up since the using the lithium batteries, which are newer, more efficient, cleaner, cheaper on electricity and less maintenance. So then just to mention the design for the new clubhouse and the budget at 325,000. A golf course, expenditures highlighted in yellow, the 1.2 million. That's mostly the ground maintenance and the cart lease, stormwater fund, almost just a little under $2.2 million budget. The rate's going to be 10.65 next year, the rates were approved for. Ten years, but fiscal year 2025 is the last year. So we'll probably be doing another revenue sufficiency study, next year. Some capital in the stormwater fund is annual pipelining. And the pump replacement. And again, the stormwater fund, the 2.1 million is charges for services, 99% of the budget, expenditures. The highest amount is a personnel 801,000, which is 37% of the budget. I just wanted to point out some capital in the budget so far. The of course, the Beckett Bridge at 3.9 million. The utilities, raw water wells 866,000 wastewater treatment plant, a variation of the basin, 400,000 police vehicles, 500,000. The final reserve for the fire station 72.2 million Motorola radio system for police 480,000. They're also looking for a microwave system for dispatch for 430,000 annual street paving, 150,000 brick Street and road reconstruction, 150,000 sidewalk improvements, 100,000 for a total of 9.2 million. And just to get on to the timetable for the budget process, meetings with the departments, they'll be on May 23rd and May 30th. The budget public hearing will be on June 11th. That's where the public can come in and give their recommendations on the budget, July 1st, we'll get the certified values from the tax from the property appraiser. July ninth will be the first budget workshop with the board. On July 16th, we'll bring an item to the board that we were required to tell the county. What's our proposed millage rate? And the counties we signed that at that board meeting on the 16th to say if they probably keep it at the 5.37 maximum second budget workshop on July 30th, third budget workshop, if necessary, August 8th, and then the public hearings will be on September 4th and September 18th. As I said, for the meeting dates with the departments on May 23rd and May 30th. I just thought I'd bring up a little bit more information on the public hearing. This was the actual when it went out for vote, and the question was, you know, shall the city conduct a public hearing before June 30th of each budget cycle? And as you can see, it passed by 88. And the timeline on just the other day, May 14th, a survey went out on social media, I think Facebook and everywhere else with the questions. Two questions I say on June 11th there will be a budget public hearing. We'll talk about the results of the survey, and the public can come up and talk on what they're looking for at that meeting, this is just showing the where the first up top is a link for the for the working copy of the budget as it currently is. And down below it says how to get. If you got to go on to the city website, go under the documents. The document library and you can find the budget there also. And also you can find the connect Tarpon Springs site where you can go in and do the survey. And you click on that link. This is a question. Fiscal year 25 budget Survey number one is please provide your ideas and priorities for the City of Tarpon Springs. Fiscal year 25 budget. And then the second one is just to tell your relationship to the Tarpon to Tarpon Springs. Are you a resident business owner or visitor or community organization? And with that, I'm done. Back to the two dates for the department meetings. Do we know the breakdown of the departments at this stage? Yes When will we get those? So I can send them to you? I would, because I don't like to wait till the night before to have to review them. Okay Do you want me to send it to you electronically? That'll be fine. Okay. I was going to say get chained to make copies. If you want, you can do it electronically. Any further questions on his presentation? I have a couple. So first, you in the in the estimates that you provided for moving forward, like the pro forma, you had it like 4, but it looks like the increase for this year in the general fund is 6.57. So is there like just something that you're not including in that 4% on your projections, you're looking at I'm looking at the high level 2025 proposed budget, general fund 35 million 2024 approved versus. 2025 proposed. No. Oh, well, that's there too. That's a small that's another version of the same information. So that's 6.57% that you have there, right. That's for pay increases, insurance and operating costs at 6.57, 24 to 25 is what you're like. What we did actual 24 to well the budget was in 24. And then compared to the budget request so far for 25. So a 6.5% increase. But then on your projections you use like a 4.1. And so is there something left out of that number to get to 4.1 for the projections or where's the 4.1? I'm sorry I'm I'm getting there. I'm sorry 4.8. You used 4.8, 4.6, 4.4 for your percentage increase estimate. Which slide was that or the one that we talked about first out of order okay. That's on the unassigned unassigned fund balance. Yeah. The unassigned fund balance. When you did your projections for that you had an estimate every year of a percentage increase of 4.8 to 4 point, using the average over the last five years, I think. Yeah, I was using the average it you know, it could be more for those expenses right. No I just we see a definite trend to it being much more than like it had been. So I was just kind of pointing I just was curious about that. And then also on the management designation, while I really definitely understand why you want that and why you have that, from 2022 to 2023, it increased almost 400,000. In that portion. And we're asking for 1, which, as you said, roughly 350,000. So that doesn't feel like a stretch to me given that. Right. Like I'm trying to follow you here. Okay. So sorry. We're worried about asking for 1% to add to the unassigned fund 350,000. Right, $350,000. But I'm noticing in the general this management designation went up 300 where extra stuff goes right. That hasn't been budgeted, like when there's extra money versus the budget after all. I just wonder, could that be used to help with the. Yeah. So while I see it's been up and down and whatever, what have you, but, just I'm just saying like that's gone up a lot . Right. Well, and that's, I don't know if this, but that I did on the bottom here, this slide we do have in this year's budget 366,000 to put in the fund balance reserve on the very bottom of this slide, we do have then this is where you would if you tell us to put in 1% a year. This is a spot where I've got it in the budget to fund, help, fund, fund, balance. I'm not sure if that helps explain it. I'm just I'm looking for, like, some corroborating evidence to help justify why they it shouldn't be seen as such a hard decision to say. We want to add that to the unassigned fund balance. Right. Like, clearly we often have some extra. Yeah, I understand it won't go here, but I kind of like while I'm glad to have that, I kind of want, you know, like, if you, if you ever said, oh, I'm going to take that back to the mall. So then you spend that same $100 three times because it's, like off to the side and you're like, oh, that's extra. I don't want that to happen with that. You know, like you can kind of think, well, we don't have to put that in the budget if that happens, we've got that money right. You know, like that feels possible. Yeah. And a lot of times as we're we're talking about the budget, but sometimes as we're going through the year, you know, right now I'm seeing some revenues down a little bit. But I never know really towards the end of the year, how does it how does the general fund actually end up with the actuals and stuff. And that's why I think sometimes it comes in over budget. Okay, okay. We got extra money. We can go ahead and fund unassigned fund balance and increase it. I don't know if what you're saying if maybe next year okay, maybe we don't put as much learning because like because on the one hand it's like great. Okay. We've kind of not that we're like we're double dipping on the savings, which is awesome. So we've got a little more than we think we have, you know, which is good. But then on the other hand, like you want to be as close to exact as you can. Yeah. Right So you mean like, maybe if we didn't put as much into the management designation a little these other reserves maybe put that money into the unassigned fund balance, and I'm at least opening up the conversation to if, if the commission like I was surprised that last year when we did have a lot of money, there wasn't the decision made to put more like, I think we made that recommendation and it wasn't two years ago. It wasn't observed. Okay two years ago. So I've been here longer than I thought. That wasn't really taken into consideration the way I thought maybe it would, considering we were pretty flush that year. And then last year we had a lot of increase in costs, and there were a lot of things like fuel was up and interest rates are up, and all these things are happening. And so I'm just kind of saying if there's anything we can add to the conversation to help them decide that this 1% isn't a big ask, I think would just be helpful or maybe not. I don't know how they make that decision, you know? And I don't know if it's something if it's something, the board goes the budget advisory board goes to the budget meeting and it has gets time there to, you know, bring up the topic and say, you know, we think this is important, that we have 1, you know, put into the unassigned fund balance on an annual basis. Okay. Yeah. Like would one of us go and kind of present present the recommendation, maybe give rationale and background. You might do that and you might say we recommend also if the millage rate that we, we maintain it at 5.37, you know, there's. Any other questions on the proposed budget presentation? I got one question. Just just remind me, so the departments put the budgets together, they submit it to you. And that's a one year budget. They give you. You put it in the software, magic happens. And then we get the reports. Is that how it works? That's how it works. Okay, cool. And we put this working copy ones on the website under the document library. Yeah. Yeah. Shane's feverishly working on the executive summary we call it. So he's almost got that done. Yeah. The executive executive summary is always been very helpful. That's the one you submit for the budget award. Budget award? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Any other questions? Let's move on to the next topic on there, which was millage rate. Was covering that. That's 5.37 currently. Now the last two years we've made recommendations to maintain that. Do we want to do so again. Yes okay. We have someone to make that recommendation a motion I make a motion that we keep the millage rate the same. Second we have a roll call. Please, miss Howard. Yes, yes, Miss Major. Yes Vice chair Hall. Yes, yes. Okay, now let's go back to our original conversation. In terms of the motion on the unrestricted fund balance, what kind of motion do we want to make at this stage? I like the option of, 1% of annual expenditures set aside to increase the fund balance annually, leaving it at 20, not the 25 we recommended. The last time. Yes. Okay, so I just want to make sure I heard. Right. Or so you're saying 20% is stays the minimum. But then we mandate the 1. Is that is that what you said? Okay. What 20% is the minimum minimum. So no change to the minimum. Just no just mandate that they are funds set aside to grow the unassigned fund balance annually. For how many years are you thinking? I'm saying five years. Five years? 1% for five years, chairman, could I ask a question? Are you open for any public comments on the millage rate? Yes. Or are you're on the you're on the unassigned fund balance. We're on the we can go back. We can go back to the millage rate. Oh no I think it's on unassigned fund balance. Okay. I'm sorry I'm all mixed up here. Okay. If you allow public comment on agenda item. My name is John Koulianos, 1020 Peninsula Avenue. You know, I'm going to go I'm going to go back to, what miss Howard first started trying to articulate, and you were actually right on target. You know, the, the problem with government. So your problem is you work in, like, the private sector and, and you make, like, a lot of rational decisions and, and, and, and in government, you know, it seems and it's frustrating, because I come from the same world, you do and we work off of, government. It's you know, what'd you spend last year? And now it's an increase of that. Right? It's never taken a plain piece of paper and saying, okay, departments, what do you need? Like what's it take to run your department? But it's no, here's what I spent last year. I want this much more. And here's what I'm asking for. So the efficiencies, you know, are aren't there? And the questions you're asking and the diving, you're where you want to dive into is exactly where you should be going. Is asking about, you know, what do we need, and you know, the so it's like again, it's but it's hard it's hard to go to plain paper budgeting versus, you know, building off I always called it building off of prior year budget, but if you want to go there, do it. Like, don't be afraid to ask those questions. And the, you know, this and I don't know how you can make these decisions. Like, you can't make these decisions in a vacuum. So I would say all these choices you're making, whether it's the millage rate, whether it's this, increasing unassigned fund balance, those should all be tentative decisions. Because once this whole thing comes together, you know, you might see that that doesn't work, or it might, but you don't know. There's no way you know it now because you haven't seen the whole picture. Because we got other things. You know, the commission at the last meeting approved, you know, pursuing, buying that prop that stamps property for 5.5 million. I don't think that's in this budget, and then if the $4 million for the bridge is required, there's now we're right around we're getting near 10 million. So and to go fund that, it's going to be at probably on a ten year note. There's a million bucks. So then that might have alter your decision on whether you want to increase that unassigned fund balance by and then that's another what, 300 or so thousand dollars you have to come up with. So I think the, you know, when you go through this process, I would all these all these decisions should be tentative decisions until you bring the whole picture together , I think that would be that would be the smartest thing, and I'd, so that that's, can I, can I just to I mean, I know you have the public comment overall public comment, but since I'm here, can I just go ahead? Keep keep talking. Okay, so, you know, I, I was on the planning and zoning board prior to going on the board of Commissioners, and we had that. We had a frustration. I know I was at one of your last meetings. I think I missed one of them, but the meeting I attended, I, I sensed a certain frustration. There was somebody some of you were vocalizing, you know, we do this and what's the point? Nobody listens to us. Right. And I had that same feeling when I was on the planning and zoning. You know, we, you know, we on on everything even, you know, Anclote harbors and traffic and you make points and then they you go to the board of commissioners, and they didn't even address any of them and didn't even talk about us, like, as if we were invisible, like, oh, yeah, you know, you know, Renee would put up there, you know, planning and Zoning board voted ex, you know, 7 to 0 and blah, blah, blah, blah, and, and. Okay. Thanks. And then then, you know, the smart guys are going to make all the decisions. And, you know, it's like when it's funny when you become a commissioner, it's like a staying in a holiday Inn Express. You know, you just become like a genius, you know, for all subject matters. So no, so what I, what I had proposed when I was on the planning because I got so frustrated after that anklet harbors thing, that we had vote we made a decision that on all major items that we would vote to send a representative to the meetings to make our case, not just leave it up to Renee, because that's really not Renee's job. It's not her job to, to advocate for the planning and Zoning Board. She works for the Planning and Zoning department. So it's a it's different. So I, I, you know, encourage you guys to dig and ask the hard questions, make the tough decisions and then come and advocate for it. And don't let yourself not be heard, because you I think you guys are going to be do you guys have a better chance and have more time to do the real digging and make the difference in the budget when by the time we get it, our, you know, we have less meetings than you do, less time to go, as detailed as you do. So I just wanted to make that comment that don't I understand exactly where you're coming from and I don't you're on the right track. But it's hard, you know, and who the heck would want to be mayor with with all this budget? I mean, that whoever was mayor the last two years, man, they had it made with all those Arpa funds and 11% increases in values and all that. Yeah So anyways, thank you for, thank you for all you do. And I appreciate it. And I felt really bad when I heard that comment, especially from my, my friend Susan Hales. About not being heard. And I felt bad about that. So I just want to let you know, I heard you, so thank you. Okay, back to our conversation on the unrestricted funds. So you're saying 1% annually for five years now, that 1. Is that going to be last year's expenditures? Because we don't know what this year's expenditures are going to be. I thought about that during our conversation. I think it would have to be just so you'd have a number that you're working with. Okay. Any conversation on her suggestion? No. Just curious. Like if anybody would be available to present it. Yeah, because that's what he just said. I mean, would you. Yeah. Well, if we know when it's going to be on the agenda, I could probably do that. And if you can't, I can, depending again, when it is. Would that be something for like maybe the first budget workshop if you want it that way. If we got the motions out there I could do that. Yeah. I could talk to the city manager and find out, you know what meeting might be the best. Okay. Okay Did you want to put that in the form of a motion? Susan? Yes, I make a motion that we recommend 1% of the prior fiscal year's budgeted expenditures be set aside in a line item to increase the unassigned fund balance for the next five years. Do we have a second? I'll second any further discussion. Do we have a roll call, please? Miss Howard? Yes. Yes, Miss Major. Yes yes yes. Okay. Any further public comments, board and staff comments? Just one thing real quick. Sorry. I just want to say that one of the things, the reason why it's hard is that if you can just share before anybody comes in here, this is my opinion, is that I don't want them to think in five minutes. I don't know how they do their job. That's why I hate to question it. Like, you know how to do your job and I don't, and I'm not here, so that's why I'm sensitive to questioning some things, because I don't want it to come across like I'm saying, you know, like that's not a necessary thing when I really just am asking to be educated. I just it feels wrong. Whenever they only have such limited time. And I'm, you know, I'm asking questions when I really don't even know what their job is necessarily. And so if you could just share that before, because I do want to ask some questions and just feel like, not that I'm not questioning how they do their job or what they do, do you want to know a little bit more of their job and what? No, I don't, I just want them to know just I'm just making that statement that if anybody comes in here and I'm asking a lot of those questions, I don't want it to be insensitive to the fact that I know if I were them on that side of the podium, I would be like, who are you to ask me those things? Well, you know, I probably, you know, I'm thinking from just like the commissioner said, I'm doing this budget, same thing every year. And so but from your side, I'm trying to figure out, you know, this might be all, you know, trying to understand what we're doing, the whole process from beginning to end. So I trying to put myself in your all's shoes that I think, I think over the years, Mark has always told all the department heads to make sure you are prepared and make sure you know what's in your budget, so you may get questioned on certain items in your budget. So, some of us, you know, especially with our bigger budgets, the police and fire, particularly you might see us bring some of our staff in, you know, because like, my executive assistant helps put the budget together. We have budget meetings before we submit it. So we I bring them in just in case. I don't remember the exact detail of why something is in there. So I might return to them and say, you know, what was this for? Again, just a reminder. So I don't think there's a problem. I think everybody's prepared to say, you know, you know, why are you buying so many pencils? You know, I mean, things like that. I think we're ready for that or try to be ready for that. And I think what you see us give is a brief synopsis of what's the big items are and why things are happening. But if you want to ask more questions, I mean, I think we all come in kind of prepared for that. So I wouldn't take it as you're trying to do my job, I would just say, okay, she wants to know. I mean, that's what you're here for is to tell us what you think. Well, a lot of times in budgets, value judgments have to be made, and we may not understand what the value judgment was unless we ask the question. Thank you, one other report we're getting ready for you is I think you've all liked it where we showed that each department, the actual from like 2023, the budget 24. In a summary, total and off to the far right. Just to give you a little synopsis on why it's increasing. Yeah. The comments, those are helpful. Those the comments. Yeah. The detailed comments, yeah. Those were we're still checking and reviewing it. We'll get that to you before the first meeting. Yeah. That'll help. So we can take yeah, take a look and it'll say like 50,000 increase for such and such education or. Yeah, contract or. Yeah it'll it'll often say that. And then I remember that department's actually also included, you know, like if they had any efficiency projects, investments this year that might help us save in later years. I recall hearing that sometimes as well. So maybe we'll get some of that as well. Any other further board and staff comments? I do have a quick question. He just said that they were considering buying that land for five point whatever. I'm trying to understand how this works. Why is that not going through the budget, it's still going to go before the voters. It's not approved yet. So what they're doing right now, any purchase over 350,000 of land needs to go before the voters. So they still get in the referendum item ready for the November 5th election. But so our recommendation could be made to purchase it without any thought to the budget. The voters could vote to buy it without or not. Right. But we always seem to think it's going to go well. I don't I always am concerned that they don't understand that that's removing that from our tax base too. And that means we have less budget or you know, so you're talking like, could the board here make a recommendation on the land, just like the board of Commissioners did at the other meeting? They go forward, they thought was an important piece of land. We need to pursue it. We're getting estimates on from the appraisers right now, to get to see what the value comes up to it to see, you know, is a 5.5 million a reasonable price? Get the referendum question ready for the November 5th election. And if it's approved, I've already gotten our financial adviser and our bond counsel on financing for the purchase of that. Did they indicate the rationale, like, I mean, is it are we going to build something there or what any particular plans or. Well, they well that's the that's been the dumping ground. I say dumping ground for when they dredge out the Anclote River where they pump the about every ten years. Right. Renting it about $700,000. They've paid the rent that land over the last five years. So they figured it. Does that save us that rent? Yes, we would own it. It's kind of an efficiency as well. They're looking at it as a piece of land that's hard to find. They know. They know in ten years. Plus they're going to have to dredge, dredge the river again. Okay. So it's a perfect site because it has a runoff for water that goes back to the river. It's the only piece out there that's works for what they want. It's a large enough piece that they're also looking for the ability to future build another water storage tank on that piece of property, and maybe oil sites too. So it's kind of a multi purpose piece of property for the future of the city. So if they do have to dredge they have a spot already. They don't have to go like Ron saying rent a piece of property and there's not much over there for that. So they save and rent. And then the additional pieces you're talking about may potentially use for other items. Yes Revenue. Okay. We talked about so far back I almost forgot about that. I didn't know it was this. I didn't know it was called the stamps property. Yeah. And, not even every ten years, but they've talked about, you know, dredging the bayous and stuff. So maybe that would be a spot to have the dredge material put there also. Okay Interesting. Yeah. So it's I mean, that rationale seems to be be good for the future. Thank you. Any other comments, the next meeting we already know is next week, May 23rd for go start going through the departments, any future agenda items other than budget. Then I'll adjourn this meeting at 328. All right. That was a good meeting. Let's do it again next week. That's right