[Music] ladies and gentlemen good evening or good morning I'm used to being saying good evening good morning uh it's good to see everybody here um I know you must be excited to be in a budget meeting so council members anything before we dive in okay Mr be all right good morning Mr Mayor members of City Council um so we're here to um uh go through the presentation for the first budget Workshop today's Workshop will be the first of two this week uh we're going to focus on the general fund today uh we might have some references to some capital projects but particularly uh the focus will be on general fund um on Thursday we'll be doing the uh Capital Improvement program as well as the utilities we got just waiting for it to come up on the screen there you go okay so whenever we put together a budget uh we always make sure that it hits certain Milestones uh this budget for fiscal year 25 first of all and most importantly meets the city council priorities uh it continues the wage and benefit competitiveness which is critical for our organization to stay in this Marketplace um we have programmed the budget to include um a fire a new fire Union contract um it also provides enhanced professional development strengthens our succession planning and seeks to enhance revenue streams which we'll talk about towards the end of the presentation uh it does not provide for an increase in overall City FTE however there will be a new position in some converted positions but overall the number will not change uh and particularly and probably most importantly it does not anticipate an increase in millage so let's talk about uh this past year so we've had a very successful year so far uh as you know we started out the year with a 4% Cola uh 2% performance incentive for General employees uh we were also able to upgrade our health insurance for the first time I think we're very competitive in the Tampa area we made strategic wage enhancements where needed for example if we had departments that were struggling in terms of recruitment or or retention uh we went in surgically and made changes uh and those things have really reaped of rewards for the for those particular departments we uh had the first year of our new contract with the police Union we added extra training uh including for the leadership team we implemented a paid parental Leaf policy which was Council priority we also thanks to the uh great idea of Carl langfeld our Leisure Services director we implemented a discount at after school and summer camp program for city employees which is a nice perk this past year we've also made significant improvements in our staffing process so this is one of those sort of people say would you believe uh moment so I'm not sure if the community would believe but we had several positions on our recruitment calendar that were open for years not months but years and since the arrival of Mr Nazario as the HR Director and his team and the work they've done we've managed to reduce our onboarding time by over 52% for our for our positions uh he has also had his team go to job fairs we're really sourcing Talent now we're doing a lot of creative things some of which will be discussed today um we find ourselves now in in the enviable position of having quality candidates in our pool whereas a couple years ago we were just struggling to find anybody so I think we're in in good stad most of our departments are fully staffed obviously there's some turnover here and there but compared to where we were where used to be our list of recruitments was probably a page and a half long and today you're probably looking at just you know less than a half dozen at any given point in terms of the uh fiscal year 25 now in the budget so there are several cost drivers to any any budget ours are primarily four so wage competitiveness as we mentioned that's a council priority um in order to do that you have to invest money like you have to invest way to make money in Ence that expression so um for us what this means in the 25 budget is that we are going to be seeing over a $1.1 million increase just for wages that includes wage increases program for General employees as well as for the police and the fire uh health insurance it's always a big number um in order to offer those those enviable benefits we have to pay for those we are budgeting a 12% increase for health insurance um we may hopefully our renewal will come in lower than 12% but right now that's an estimate that we're using until we get the concrete information from our insurance broker other insurance uh property insurance if Council recall last year after Hurricane e the Florida Market was basically just pummeled with either insurance companies leaving or insurance rates going up we were not exempt from that we saw a 60% increase in our property insurance last year this year we don't have the renewal number yet but we are programming 40% hopefully it will not be 40% but again we're trying to be as conservative as possible general liability insurance we already seeing those increases we're programming 25% there and in our auto insurance we have a program 10% increase in terms of supplies and services uh the average uh CPI uh CPI for for the Tampa area a couple months ago was about 4% and when when the budgets were submitted at the time so everyone put in more or less an average 4% across the board for supplies and services in terms of cost increases so you'll see that also on the other side of the Ledger you've got the revenue uh we are looking at three uh supporting revenue streams here so adorm tax base increase uh the property appraisers informed us preliminarily that we're seeing an increase of 6.1% which equates to about $1.1 million so now if you go back to the wage competitiveness competitiveness piece we had a $1.1 million just wage difference so that's going to be totally consumed by um well that will totally consume this this tax base increase basically interest income the interest rates are still fairly favorable to us uh we had a good year in terms of interest income this year we are programming an additional $500,000 budget to budget FY 24 budget fy2 um we know that recession the recession is probably coming at some point the interest rates will start to to come down I mean they are starting to come down but they they might progressively come down uh but we think $500,000 is a is a pretty good number to include there and then there's other Revenue these are all the other Myriad of revenues the city has and we're programming about a 2% increase across the board for those again trying to be conservative so that we we don't miss the mark one of the themes you'll hear throughout this presentation is efficiency uh we have talked about the council the mayor in particularly has talked about we're we're we're good and we're getting better uh we trying to get to that high performance level and to do that I think we really have to look critically at our organization and make sure that we're not pro you know where you can do things in two steps is great but don't have 10 steps for the same thing that you can do in two and so we're trying to get through those things so one of the things we found in the budget review process this year is that there were a number of departments that were doing a similar service for example they were providing Pest Service for their facility they were providing smoke alarm um U inspections fire extinguisher inspections Etc but they were all doing it independently hiring their own companies um paying for their own bills Etc so what we wanted to do is say well that's a common service that's provided across the organization it should be handle in one spot so we've centralized that in this budget under the Public Works facilities division um you may ask well I see savings how you know what are the savings then you probably won't see savings this year because we're transitioning everything over I think once with the public works facilities uh manager has had a chance to get a year under under his belt where now he has contracts with you know one vendor for this and one vendor for that service then I think next year you'll see those savings but right now it's just in terms of efficiency where we want to go um we're also looking at um in terms of our procurement process trying to make that not only efficient but also safer for the organization in terms of liability uh we don't have a procurement officer as you know so when we have vendors the hundreds of vendors we do have we need to vet those vendors and make sure that their insurances registrations licenses Etc are all up to date um that's a lot of work uh typically a procurement staff would would do that uh because we don't have that one of the things we are proposing in this budget is actually acquiring software that allows us to do that where the vendors will need to register using the software the software then has a guarantee basically that provides US legal protection so that in case something happens we can say no you you either you were vetted um so that that's that's included in in this budget as well um and another thing we're also doing here is we're combining some positions in the in the current proposed budget to provide a broader breath of control so rather create new positions where just okay we're going to add to the FD scale what we've looked at critically is trying to figure out how can we make better use of our existing resources so you're going to see that in terms of some of the changes we are proposing and those are included on this particular slide so let's walk through through these so um the first one is we have a great Deputy City attorney Mr Mueller I'm not sure if he's actually in the room he's not um and Mr Mueller has been part-time budgeted part-time and we are proposing uh to make the deputy City attor position a full full-time position which I think is needed in this organization there is plenty of work I'm sure the City attorney can testify to that uh and I think we take we we take advantage of the legal services here quite regularly I know I do and all the department directors do too so making that a little bit more robust for us will help the city move forward the second position we're looking to to uh to change is is to convert the marketing assistant so in the executive department in the marketing division uh Mary Bates is the current incumbent in that position uh she's done great work the team is really clicking right now and we'd like to move that position to fulltime in HR uh we talked about a few minutes ago some of the great improvements we're seeing in terms of our HR functions well that's Testament to the hard work that's going on in in that department uh we feel we can do a lot more in terms of more again working in terms of job creation job fairs uh recruitments if we convert our current HR admin assistant to a full-time position we are also in CD in Community Development we are looking to do a a change we have an existing position and admin assistant position uh who in that the incumbent there uh Marissa Robinson has been uh great and does a lot of great work for the city and we're trying to find ways to more effectively address issues for when applications are submitted having somebody coordinate those applications between the different divisions and different departments to make sure that we are less likely to for errors to happen and for delays to happen so we're proposing to con convert that position to a plans coordinator uh Marissa would still do admin assistant functions but she would have this extra added role to her daily duties uh in facilities we in public works I should say we're also proposing to convert the facilities manager to a deputy director of Public Works SL facilities manager um we talked about succession planning it's again it's something that for an organization to make sure that we we have all the people in line if something happens to the person that's at the top somebody else can step in um also it provides us an Avenue for people to kind you know grow into the organization so that this makes sense for us uh again it it's it's taking advantage of of the people we have in place the great people we have in place in organization the last one is proposed to convert the HR Director Mr Nazario to an assistant city managerdirect of HR along that same theme there is one new position that is being pro proposed in the budget and that is an accountant three uh in the finance department Jim and Jennifer and Jamie and in the entire team they do an outstanding job uh but they're working like 50 60 hours a week I mean you see them all the time here they're on weekends I'm getting emails in the middle of the night uh there's a lot of work on their plate and a lot of work that really should be addressed at the at the sort of Frontline level uh but because we're we're staffed so thin in that department that's not a we're not able to do that so they end up doing a lot of the reconciliations things like that that an accountant might do so we are proposing to address that by creating an account three position uh there would be no increase to the C these overall FTE because during the year there are some FTE that we actually strategically stop funding uh which council is aware of and so because of that our overall count will not change grant writing so this is a this is something that I struggled with for for quite some time uh the council has mentioned this in both Council priority setting sessions that I've been at since I've been with a city um we looked at this uh right now it's not something that I'm recommending at to the council and my logic is that in police and fire for example they do standing job securing grants for their for their departments in fact they do such a great job that they've actually started to teach other department heads how to find grants so that that's great it's like you know train the trainer kind of thing um so I think they're they're doing pretty well and I think they're being helpful to the rest of the organization we also use a a service that's provided to us by the state called eus uh it's a grant searching software we actually have a license here in the city and what we'd like to do is actually move that license over to our grants coordinator so our grants coordinator is not a grants writer so I don't want to mislead anybody into thinking that but what they do is they work on the back end basically they're reporting tracking invoices and things like that but we are thinking that we're we like to provide them with more training get them to use this software to the point that they might be able to make more use of of grant writing skills for the for this organization as a whole in addition one of the the ideas they came to us actually vice mayor AEL had this idea what if we provided Grant rating as a as a class in terms of some of the education we're doing training for the organization bringing in somebody who could talk about this is some Grant rating skills 101 and do that across the board so we're looking at that as well in the budget along the lines of training uh we are uh very focused on enhancing our professional development opportunities for our staff uh one of the ideas I think the mayor may have had actually was the creation of an employee Leadership Academy so this is an opportunity for you to cultivate a cohort or multiple cohorts of of people within your organization you look at you recruit either Frontline to mid-level employees identify the people who are sort of the go-getters and you you bring them to a into a cohort where on a regular basis maybe it's once a month or once every couple of weeks you take them out of their typical work duties you go to other departments they have other departments function you provide them training for example on the budgeting process or other things that are more 30,000 foot level um observations than things that they would typically do and in doing that you've now created this F this future leader you know and and so if we have enough of that I think we'll be better poised as the organization as we go forward when we have turnover you have people are ready to take over and they're trained and they can be supervisors and managers whereas before that wasn't the case so we're very much looking forward to that this budget also includes a funding again of the leadership team Retreat that was a a great educational session that we had this past year so so we'd like to keep that going um our tuition reimbursement program we have several people who do take advantage of it uh what we found is when people turn in their receipts for reimbursement the educational costs far exceed the reimbursement I mean there there's cost inflation is dramatic in education so we'd like to enhance that right now it's $2,000 per employee per year we'd like to enhance that to $3,000 per employee and then the final thing is something I think we're some of us are very excited about which is this notion of having a paid student internship program this was a council priority as well and um we've struggled with figuring out how do we fund this one of the things you'll hear today a little bit and you'll definitely hear on Thursday is we are drawing down an unassigned fund balance uh not necessarily to balance the budget per se we're not it's not that for that reason but we have unassigned fund balance um it's it's there provides us usable dollars for one-time items right so this we we thought why don't we use some unassigned fund balance Revenue here to create a pilot program um we're not impacting the millage rate that way and if it the program turns out to be successful we think we can probably fund about five paid internships throughout the year based on the amount of money we budgeted for this then if it's successful we next year we can look at it and determine okay how do we do this moving forward um so we're again very excited about this in terms of of pay for the because that's that's usually one of the critical questions so what we are proposing for fy2 for General employees is a 4% cost of living adjustment that would go into effect October 1 we are also recommending to uh continue the 2% performance evaluation incentive that's on their employee anniversary and uh as I mentioned earlier whenever if there's areas we find there might be some discrepancies some issues with recruitment or retention we'll also program in some strategic changes uh throughout the year we will also contemplate the second year of the of the Police contract is is included in the budget again as well as the uh the new contract for fire one of the questions we typically will get as well is you know how do we what are we funding in terms of economic development organizations I know that's important for any any organization that wants to be active um and see development and tax based growth Etc we really have to have a seed at the table this is the funding that's in the fy2 budget right now so you see the Temple Terrace Uptown chamber there's $5,000 there plus there's a chamber leadership and Innovation program which is basically the model that I highlighted for the employee Leadership Academy it's a similar model but it's the based on the community where they take you around to different different uh concerns every month in the greater Temple Terrace area uh the city is being requested to be a sponsor and to program a participant so this $4,500 includes $3,000 for an actual member of the city organization to participate in that first leadership class they're planning to kick that off next August of not this August August of 25 um you want to pause for a second tell them about the executive steering committee that we work that we're involved in this sure so the in creating this Pro these programs require a significant amount of planning uh because if you think about it these are highlevel dayong sessions where you going from one business to another to a government setting Etc you're bringing people from you know CEOs mayors Etc from all across the region so it it takes a lot of there's a lot of strategic thinking that's involved so Debbie Prescott the CEO of the of the Temple Terrace Uptown chamber convened a steering committee when the mayor and myself participate on that steering committee and we are going to take the next year basically to map out these sessions uh for this program with the goal again being next year then they'd have the first class we would provide a student to that class and I would expect if the council would be okay with it that as the program is successful every year we would fund at least one student okay uh the next item is uh so soaring City we this the city council in the past had funded $10,000 for soaring city saring city is apparently no longer an entity or will no longer be an entity shortly from what we understand in light of that we've taken out to $10,000 from the budget uh but there was a recommendation made to incl include $5,000 though for what we're calling strategic business opportunity if something comes up during the year that's Economic Development based uh that the council feels strongly about you know we have $5,000 here that we could we could be a sponsor for example so it's really open-ended so it's again gives you that flexibility if you would like to do something um at some point depending on what's what's identified uh the Tampa Bay EDC our Economic Development Council Partners the city council the city has had a curring membership a $10,000 level membership we've also included that here and then we are members of the Tampa Bay Regional planning Council and that's about $4,300 these are just the economic development organizations I don't want to Mis legionary thinking that these are all the organizations that he belongs to I mean we we're still funding like the junior Women's Club and things like that but I just wanted to sort of focus just on economic development here for the purposes of this slide when we were at the council gold setting session one of the conversation points was about our tree canopy and making sure that our tree canopy was well protected um but that we realized there were certain issues with that tree canopy you know there's there's SE if you go in certain neighborhoods particularly my neighborhood you'll find lots of dead or dying trees um there's not really a great plan to address that there's some reticence on the part of Staff also because you know nobody wants to touch the trees necessarily but some of the trees think we all know to have a healthy canopy you need to get rid of some of the bad trees so you let the other trees flourish and you replant new trees so the conversation went along the lines of trying to find an urban forestry plan first to have that laid out a model and a strategy to do that we are programming $25,000 from the tree fund not from the general fund to allow us to commission an urb forestry plan we're also programming dollars from the tree fund to allow us to do some maintenance again now saying okay let's try and get rid of those dead or dying trees particularly if they're safety hazards uh making better use of our internal resources where we where we can and of course we're continue to replant trees um our city Arbor Joe Ferris does a great job in running that tree program and having trees put in where where possible where people are manable to it we also have other Council priorities in terms of community initiatives that we've included in the fy2 budget uh we are continuing the $10,000 contribution level for public art uh we have also included $60,000 for the Centennial Celebration this $60,000 is being funded from unassigned fund balance uh and it's being added to the $40,000 that the committee already has so they 100,000 that they've requested for the Centennial Celebration We are continuing to fund the volunteer board appreciation dinner to the tune of about $1,500 it's a great event started last year I think it was vice mayor Able's suggestion um and uh it's a great opportunity to again thank people for the service that they've done to our community one area that I'd like to focus on now is the the building fund so last year uh we created a building fund which was a statutory requirement just to identify Revenue coming in from building permit applications for example and costs to Monitor and regulate that building permit function uh when we created this I think Jim and I both understood that there would probably be a deficit uh with that building fund and in fact that's what's happened this upcoming year we're programming an $882,000 uh general fund subsidy to the building fund and we don't want to continue the subsidy obviously if this there's a structure says you have to have a building fund we'd like it to be reasonably balanced so in in looking at this critically one of the conversation points that came up was the the notion that we haven't upgraded our fees or changed our fees in over 20 years and in over 20 years I'm sure every other municipality around this has probably changed their building permit fees so we need to take a critical look at that uh under Florida statue as I understand it you cannot just go ahead and change your building fees you have to actually commission a study first so we are proposing to commission a study to the cost of about $25,000 from unassigned fund balance uh once the stud is completed we would bring those recommendations to the council uh based on experience in the past and also since we haven't upgraded the fees in so long I would imagine some of the recommendations may be pretty dramatic so we'll probably have to have some sort of a phased or moderated approach to doing that but it needs to be looked at so that we don't again fall so far behind that we are not doing ourselves a service so getting out to the end of just sort of conclusion here so the total general fund budget as programmed as of today for fy2 is$ 37,8 37,76131 4,74 Budget to budget that's exclusive of that $4.5 million estate award we we received for the EOC uh this budget also still allows us to contribute a small amount about $56,000 to the unassigned fund balance which I think is a good practice if we can should continue to make those contributions um moving forward now this final slide is really an opportunity for just to plant a seed with the council in terms of what future budgets um the capital process so the capital process today is uh when we do capital projects you'll see this on Thursday we'll have the hearing and the meeting I should say we'll go through it this is public setting we're recording this right now so the public will be able to see it and we'll talk about the budget for each Capital project in July we come back we do it again more refined once we have more detail and in September we'll have a public hearing on on that Capital those capital projects as part of the budget and then what happens here is that once we go out to bid for those projects we will we come back again uh and bring those to City council's attention again so this there's an Essence four four opportunities for the public to to see what's going on with that Capital program some communities um have moved away from from that process and what they typically will do is once you've gone through the budget process and you've had all these hearings and these public meetings it's understood that the public knows what's going to happen and as long as the project when it's bid doesn't go over budget for example then it doesn't come back for a fourth time it just it it's just put into place and that saves some time because you don't have to do the notice and wait to come to city council but I understand it is a difference and a change of approach so just putting it out there as a as a discussion item at this point another thing I'd like the council to consider is currently we have a 20% Target for our unassigned fund balance ratio to the operating budget uh as Council knows if you read the audit we far exceeded that unassigned fund balance ratio and in fact that is part of the reason why on Thursday you'll see we have a dramatic use of unassigned fund balance for Capital to draw that number down um even as you'll see Thursday even in drawing that number down we're still going to be fairly robust in terms of unassigned fund balance so what I'd like to do is propose that we set 25% as the new floor for unassigned fund balance I think that's a nice conservative approach provides us some protection should we have natural disasters hurricanes things like that that require cash um and also offers us the ability moving forward to address some of our future capital projects uh we know we have we have several that are coming up that are going to be large ticket items if we can fund some of those costs from unassigned fund balance and not entirely have to go into the bond market for example or or the bank loan Market um it would be more economical for the city and with that I'll take any questions so can we start by going back to this the slide was one of the earlier slides where you talked about transitioning some of the positions we talked about the deputy City attorney that slide there we go so okay Council I just taking a hunch that there might be some questions or discussion about some of this I don't know if there is or not council member Fernandez um could we just do a really brief overview of the process that the Departments go through as they're preparing their budget just how they how they consider what their needs are going to be for the upcoming year so I I don't know if every single department does it exactly the same way but I think the majority of them do so they they look at typically look at where they are so we if you see the budget documents you have in your in your possession you'll see that there is a fy2 24 budget column there is a year end estimate that they have to put in there's a request an fi25 request and then there's a column that says CM 2.0 which is the city manager's final budget number that's coming before you this evening in most cases it's the same as the request in some cases it might not be where I might have made changes to what the department requested but typically what they'll do is they'll look at do they have their is their personnel where they feel it needs to be and if it isn't they'll make requests for either new staff or reconfiguration of of Staff which leads us to some of these items that we have before you here this evening this this morning I should say um they'll look at costs that they know that they can you know identify already look hey this cost for this for these dues and memberships we know it's going up by 5% or 10% whatever so they put that in there in other cases as I mentioned earlier they'll apply an inflation factor for you know the vast number of supplies for example if you see the the fire department budget there's line after line after line of line of different supplies for different activities that they do so they've applied more of a just an across theboard inflation number um we we have critical conversations when we go at the meeting with the with the city manager and the finance director when the department directors come in they have to defend it budget so we go through it line by line um we ask things like okay well you you're asking for money for next year for this but you haven't even spent the money for this year that you have already for it so why why don't you look to invest it now versus waiting to you know to put it on the next year's budget so those are the kinds of conversations we have so there are changes that are made throughout that process that may not even be reflected here if we can already address it in the current budget um and uh and sometimes the department directors you know their requests are are met sometimes they're not you'll see that you actually you you have that in your backup so you can see hey I've asked for other positions and the manager didn't include them in the budget so that's generally the process if there's a specific no no I just wanted for for people that are watching or will watch just the just a brief overview of how it works so that they know how much consideration has gone in on the staff side and your and to make sure that the budget is filling the goals that that we have as a council in a city but also very fiscally responsible that's it yeah there's a lot of work that goes into the budget so I I have to give credit to all the department directors and and their staffs um because before they even get to us they've already spent hours upon hours putting it together and then obviously Jim and his team they they've worked for weeks on this to this point we start this process in was it March Here Yeah March and uh really get into it in April right I would like to add one point to that question is it's really important that we always try to look at the year end estimates because what we budgeted for 24 may not always there may be changes that happen during the year and so we don't just want to focus on last year's budget no although it's helpful we have to look at the year in estimate it might be under it might be over we might have to make we try to make adjustments accordingly to the most current information and and one of the things that I've made clear when I've met I've met with all the Departments we had Town Hall meetings back in April with all the all the different departments and I made clear to all the all the city team members you know one of the overriding goals that we have is to be prudent with the with the public dollars um we try to make sure that the millage rate stays we don't want to increase the millage rate uh where obviously there might be a point at some in a future where that may be necessary but where we can we try to our best not to do that because we recognize that you know our residents have a lot of costs already so if we can keep that down that's that's our goal council members can we go back to the Ft she correct um D Jerk it looks like it's going it's technically going up I would think I mean we're we're adding a quarter here and a quarter there and and uh so where where are we taking away that we're you know what are we what are we doing away with in order to maintain the the whose Department's getting I guess for lack of a better word you know who's not getting what they were looking for whe whether it be l next year's uh allotment or or or or proposal so in terms of the of the FTE number so we made some changes this past year for example in dispatch we had an FTE in dispatch that um we had this community had budgeted for for years and years and years and had never once been filled um I think it was aspirational that they would have I think it was 13 dispatchers and they never ever got to that point so we looked at that and we're making other changes in dispatch and we decided you know we're not going to we're not going to need that position so we lost that FTE for example so that's one place where we gained some savings and that was fine because again we had never filled it um and grounds and public works also through attrition we've we've had an opening Jason looking at efficiencies there now we have the street side we have grounds he's trying to figure out is there an economy of scale so we have an FTE there as well that again we didn't we decided not to fill so those are the kind of things those are where we picked up FTE Savings in terms of requests for this year in the budget those are outlined in your backup so the actual request so we had several for example in Community Development that were asked for that we didn't we didn't fill um you know strategically there's there's rationals for for all of that uh we are we're looking at want to make sure that our departments before we add people I want to make sure that we understand fully is there a better way to do the business that we're doing first and so that's the approach we took the overall dollar value for these FTE changes and so forth any idea what that was a net net back I'm everybody's looking back sorry j in the back row they're stuck I mean the bottom line I a calculation and get back with you we need we need to have you guys come up to the microphone I'll save her the trip cuz I know what she's going to say if you if you would let us um we'll we'll we'll provide that to you right now we don't have the sum of what you're looking for the net net that you that you're looking for but we can get that to you between now and Thursdays next yeah because the the number of FTE doesn't have any equation in and in the overall millage rate in the budget itself I mean it's it's nice but if we know what the actual net dollars are that are impacting the budget that uh you know that that's that's a number we can work with or yes or no and yeah or whatever so I think that that's an important concept for that one it right but but that excuse me that but that increase in dollars is also included in the 1.1 or 1.2 number whatever that was I forgot the different points yes yes no I realize that I realize okay thank you okay council members now so I I do have a question so the tuition actually probably a couple of them the tuition reimbursement program are we which I'm in favor of it um it had gone away and it was kind of my initiative to bring it back a few years ago so I'm I'm happy to hear that it's being used and that it's being used to the point where we need to expand and I'm that that was our goal so my question is are we just changing the individual funding parameters like for okay you you're eligible to get more money per year or or or is it necessary to increase the amount of money that we're putting into that program allog together are we just changing the internal Dynamics or are we increasing the funding a little of both we're just increasing the funding by about $1,000 so that we're so we can basically we are proposing to increase the opportunity for each employee to get rather than $2,000 to get $3,000 um we anticipate that we might have about seven people who take advantage of it during the year so that's why we're we're get $20,000 in the budget we're increasing it to 21,000 to just allow us to have an even $3,000 per person that's those are the changes we're we're looking at do you feel like it's sufficient I mean do we have people that are not able to access this because we don't have the funding or are we able to no as far as I know we've never turned anybody away it's just the dollar amount that you've been reimbursing is high you would like it to be a little higher therefore because the dollar amount would be higher based on the number of people applying that's why we would need to increase the correct balance okay correct yeah we're trying to you if we can provide a little bit more of a financial incentives it might help people obviously get through their program faster and get the value back to the organization also would be another incentive for people to consider we we've tried Council recalls um we had more money in this in this budget I think we had $35,000 in this line at and we reduced it to 20 last year because we didn't have a whole lot of folks taking advantage of it uh we I think we've seen a little bit of an uptick this year Tony and his team they're continuing to Market this as one of the the package of benefits that we offer I think at some point if we get more demand then we'll come back to council and say Hey you know maybe we need to add some extra dollars so that we can provide 10 people with with reimbursements or 15 or whatever that number might be but right now I'm pretty comfortable with where we are okay so I I just a comment really not really a question per se but I for anybody who's watching I don't know if anybody watches budget meetings or not but if they do um this is very intentional what we're doing with the budget it's this is not a whacka mole kind of thing we don't this is very intentional and it's it's very intentionally heavy on the investment that we make in human capital in in our employees and the employee development there's a lot of leadership opportunities in here there's succession planning there's building in some opportunities we're right sizing some of our departments bringing in good talent developing that Talent with the goal that people will come here and stay here for their career care like many of you are um but to provide that high quality and that high performing organization which is what we're trying to get to so this is the the property tax increase that we got from the Valu the valuation going up 1.1 it was all eaten up by salary increases and and those kinds of things so it's it's um stuff is cheap people are expensive and and human capital good human Capital doesn't come for free particularly in this market in this region everybody wants to come to Florida and most of those people want to come to the Tampa Bay Region so Talent here is particularly expensive and and to be competitive and and to draw good talent away from all the other opportunities that people have Tampa Hillsburg County the people that work for USF Ma I mean there's a lot of good opportunity here and to to maintain that competitiveness we have to really up our game which we've done and um so I think this is good I like what you've done with the transitioning of the FTE and moving some of those we've talked about that I think those are good opportunities I also think that positions us to increase our efficiency and Effectiveness in the future um we talk about Sterling Council the the governor Sterling award we talk about things like that this is this is getting us to where we need to be I think so um I don't have any calms with what you I mean I we can nickel and Diamond I I think 25k for a building fee study seems a little high to me I don't know you know what I don't know how many things they're going to be looking at but in in the big scheme of things that's not you know we could haggle over 100 bucks here and there that doesn't get us anywhere so okay yeah yes okay a couple other things um I don't want to get too deep into the weeds and somebody this but um going back to the overall PR going back to the overall budget process I my experience has been often where say well last year's budget was X so this year's budget's going to be this and to Jim's point you can't do that because there's changes that happen throughout the year so you you're TR your budget transition goes from where am I ending up this year what do I need for next year so I I I don't ever look at what the old budget was however having said that I do have one question what intergovernmental and the revenue options uh can you define that in about 30 words or less what we're considering for that case in point the budget last year was 9 something million and the actual is 4 billion and I just was curious as to I mean does this have to do with the with the grants or yes okay all right that's well the the big hit is the 4.5 million okay for the EOC that was in the budget both as an expenditure um and as a revenue so they washed out but it will show the bottom line expenditure and the bottom line revenue higher than what we are this year because we don't have a big number like that the other thing was uh we did use some about half a million for in arpa money that we recognize both revenue and expense for the new police CAD system okay so most of the intergovernmental is um is Grants and and that sort of thing it also includes uh State shared revenues where they pass on down certain uh taxes and different revenues that the state collects that they pass on down a percentage to the city okay that's what I thought it was I just wanted for clarification okay um strategic business opportunity the AKA suring City previously sering City everybody knows how I felt about that to begin with so that's that's no no great loss what's that going to be that's almost like a little bit of a black hole can we Define that a little better I I can speak to that if you want that was and that's a good thing for us to talk about so thank you for bringing that up that was my suggestion um and I don't know I don't know if we'll spend a dime of that money or not but because soaring city is not going to exist I don't know if somebody else is going to step up and like a chamber going to somebody else going to say let's have a temple tourist business expo or let's do this I don't know if that opportunity is going to come up or not but if it did come up and they says hey can the city Buy into this and be a silver sponsor or whatever we wouldn't have anything in the budget to do that and so actually if you recall we budgeted 10,000 for shoring City but we didn't give it all to them we gave it to them in sponsorships and we sponsored I think it was five grand for the business expo so we didn't spend the other five grand we still have no I realize that I real this would just keep that money available if somebody came up and said we're going to have a you know some kind of business expo or we're going to have some kind of I I don't know what it would be but we'd have the ability to be part of that we need to maintain our place at whatever table come now if you if you want to cut that I mean I just thought it would be smart to have that ability if it came up we got we have the fun I think I just call it Economic Development well you got an EDC there that's I would confuse it but I I I the language of it is is I just want to make sure we're on the same page that it's kind of just sort of a placeholder at this point so the table SE opens up at a table we can be there if necessary that's that's what it is I don't care what we call whatever it works for everybody I don't doesn't matter to me no that's fine that's fine I just thought it'd be smart just a better definition that's also make sure we're at the same page with it uh regarding the tree catery um I think merth had something oh I'm sorry it'sing City if you so I know we got an email about this but but I don't recall was there a timeline for when it's going to be dissolved it's just kind of hypothetically going to be dissolved yeah I don't have anything from Sor City directly I learned this from USF um so I don't know so conceivably if it was that entity that put on a business expo or something like that that five grand that's in the budget could conceivably go toward that if we wanted to good okay that's all I'm sorry Gil go ah no they still have never supplied they have not supplied the the the tax returns that I had asked documentation documentation where the money's going so you know we're just paying somebody else's salary with that which I've always objected to um the tree canopy uh program um who where public property or residential or what would this cover so the the tree canopy well the study itself depending on how how they do it it would probably look at the entire tree canopy of the city so from an aerial perspective it would probably be private trees and public trees to get an understanding like the lar that the lar yeah mayor has mentioned before but strategically any kind of strategy steps I think would be oriented more towards our public properties our rights of way our park properties Etc figure out like hey as the city what should we be doing with our own inventory of trees okay um and I think it will all also complement the work we've already done in terms of our replanting program and things like that which helps the our residence also our that's the where ordinance is written or Rewritten when we we we last changed it so I if we we had to modify that it something needs to be you need to be aware of it so that we can do it you know in the proper proper am okay good now that's a question um the uh unassigned fund balance how much is in there right now just it's a little over 18 million okay okay all right that's good and I am in full support with a 25% threshold I that makes very good business sense very good accounting sense uh I'm I'm totally in favor of that and um if I could read my own writing oh succession planning before you leave that if I move so while we're on that 25% goal that's set by ordinance is it not I don't think so yes I think we have an ordinance set up it's either a policy orance well whichever whichever version it is we would we bring that to you okay so is there there any reason why we couldn't have some discussion about that now or does that need to be an agenda item at a council meeting or no you could you can have the discussion now all right so what do you I mean if it's just policy and we don't have to worry about at an ordinance right now I'm totally in favor of the 25% no matter how it happens I'm just saying I could say tell you right now yes to the 25% policy and you are and I am I have a question okay yes um didn't you say that there's some sort of um standard coming into play about it even being higher than that maybe in the 35% range so um there's a gby the general Accounting Standards Board um governs public Financial um operations if you will uh Municipal Financial operations and every year they come out with a different number iteration of a recommendation uh like gby 45 gasby whatever the number is and usually that means means as an administrator what that means for me is like it's just going to cost us more money to to do business unfortunately um he probably disagree I'm sure if I more time yeah more time more money but it's for a good reason but it sometimes it gets into a lot of accounting minutia so as far as I know and and Jennifer or Jim can correct me I don't think there's been an actual gasby numbered directive yet on this issue but there has been conversation at a recent um uh government Finance officers conference which was dealt here in Orlando that our staff attended where it appears that the discussion is now going towards making 35% s of the suggested unassigned fund balance ratio 35% would be a big number there are a lot of communities that are going to struggle to hit 35% um I'm not suggesting that here I mean obviously if we get a directive and we'd have to move in that direction that that's a different conversation I think we definitely should take steps to move us to be a little bit more conservative and have that that floor be a little bit more robust at 25% knowing that we are again even today where we are obviously today we're beyond that and even with the changes we're recommending in particularly Thursday I still think we're going to be beyond the 25% at the end of the day um at some point that might change and I think you want to have that floor so you know as a directive like we don't want to go below that point so follow-up question um in the past we were shooting for 20% and now we're talking about moving that threshold to 25% which I totally support but you said we exceeded the 20% um threshold and by how far did did we exceed that today close to 50 today we are uh probably in the upper 40% wow right that's why that's what the balance was hard yeah potentially depending on how you measure it the the when we did the audit um the auditor measured and he included a lot of uh reserves that we wouldn't necessarily account for in unassigned fund balance so so that number was a little higher than we we thought it should be um but we we believe we're probably in the upper 40% right now and this the the the project s that and the expenditures we're going to suggest to you on Thursday will drop that into a more reasonable number yeah that was that was my comment is we might be there now but we won't be there for very long because we want to build this Riverfront Park we're doing a study for the police station I think is some of that money's coming out of there so we have money out of that to slated to be spent but the general funds are 30 39 38 million general fund proposed budget with other side fund balance of 18 18 million just do the long division you know that put you about work fact PR going to B um and then my last comment then I'll shut up is succession planning I think it's important critical I've always been in favor of growing our own leadership um we know who we deal with staff does a fantastic job with growing their people and uh it's I I it's it's a lot you know what you're dealing with and and we know who the people are we know we we know what we've got so um I believe the succession planning is is is a very wise move and and Endor it and support it wholeheartedly I'll sh so I want to go back to the 25% question because we didn't land the plane do do we want to do that I I mean I think everybody wants okay so we we will I don't know what establishes that but whatever it is we'll we'll start that start the process of uh yeah as long as I let me put a caveat on that at least I think I can put Let Me from my opinion anyway as long as we can still continue to fund the things that we want to I I don't want this 25% now to say well there goes the riverfront park because we can't fund it anymore because that takes us down below 25% do you see what I'm saying if if there's a then there's another discussion to be had so okay um I think I don't think you're going to run the risk of that with the budget we're going to present to you on Thursday I think we're going to be a just I'm using the example you brought up the riverfront park we are proposing to fund pretty much the entirety or nearly the entirety of what we project that Park will cost out of unassigned fund balance and some other in Tiff dollars and things like that so we we'll be fine I don't think anything we're we're going to bring to you is going to cause you to get down below below 25% okay um however having said that I think if the council if you are going to impose 25% that should be a sort of a hard and fast rule I mean that's going to be like your floor you need to be comfortable with that because the purpose of having that is is so that you you you you remember that you don't want to go below it because if you have issues with um like I said if there's a storm or some other issue you want to have those have those dollars um it's still a Target so I said har you but I think we need to be careful I think I'd want our team to consider it as like we don't want to go below it like we're going to do everything possible stay at 25 or above um it Council has that Liberty even you know I got to check if it's in an ordinance we'd have to really take a closer look if it's just a policy obviously then you have more flexibility um but I think it's important to have it as as sort of your bench mark like this is what we this is what we want to do um no I agree and that's why I want to make sure that we know what we're asking because I I I think anyway at least in my perspective we have I don't know how everybody else feels but there are some projects that are big projects that I think are investments in our future like this green space the the parks down there along the riverfront the the study for the police station these are investments in our future and we've committed to doing these things we have a funding source to do it what I wouldn't want to do is say well we we said 25% well now we've just lost because you're right it should be a hard fast thing well if we spend that money now we're only going to be at 22 so we can't do that anymore so I if if that's going to put us in that position I think we need to have a discussion about do you want to do 25% now or do you want to wait a year or do I mean how because it should be a hard floor and I just don't want to jeopardize some of the things that we are going to use that money for now that make sense it does and I don't like I said I don't think you're that risk okay um I I would at some point you you probably will get there um but right now in the short to medium term I think you'd be okay okay yes I don't know if we need to wait a year to make that decision I'd like to wait till Thursday at lunch after we're done with the the capital talk so oh until we make the decision about the 25 yeah I mean I support that a lot but your concerns will know more after capital okay well I don't know that that's not a thir decision but you're to your point yeah I think we have consensus that we'd all like to adjust the I don't know what the right time for to make that move is whether it's now or whether it's after the budget is I don't know the appropriate time you'll have to help us with that but I obviously we have cons ensus that we all would like to adjust the amount I think the point is once once it's made we're held to that number yes okay and if we VI if we violate or deviate from that number to the negative um it's going to be an audit item and then the whole world's going to know it so I mean there there are not tradeoffs but there are uh U checks and balances to to what happens with that and it just comes back to uh uh prudent management of of the fund I'm I'm I'm totally uh comfortable with with uh the way things are going and and the direction that they're moving in so that's the only reason I brought that out anything else K yes um I just have a couple of things for the required retirement contributions H when do we have those from the actuary right now or we giving it our best estimate so um there's obviously the police and the fire pension those uh the actuary determines at a year ahead a year and a half ahead so yes we have exactly the amount that they have determine that we need to pay in fiscal year 25 and those numbers are plugged into this budget okay so that's not going to change for this budget nope okay so that was one question and then I I see I know that we're funded for a lot of the projects that we want to do or for maybe some some activities like tree cam canopy uh program but will we still be looking for maybe grants or other funding sources even though theoretically we do have the budget established and I know we'll talk about the capital Thursday but uh would we still be looking that grants or other funding sources might help replace what we are going to be spending so we don't actually have to spend it out of our tax dollars yes caros may want to speak to this but we uh actually talked about the the tree study or the um what was it called the urban forestry plan is possibly seeking a grant for that we do have the a tree money we can use if if we can't get a grant uh and I know the police and the fire department are always working on seeking grants so just because we have all this unassigned fund Ballance we're not like we're not giving up uh seeking for uh grant funding where applicable wouldn't that that eus project also will give you an opportunity for Grant come up every day and so what we you know you do a budget now that grants are going be available you know could be tomorrow and the E cice I think it's called isn't it it's will help identify that you know uh Leisure Services does a fantastic job with with you know scratching for Grants or so forth I just I just wanted the for the discussion for people who might be watching later to see that just because we are funded for projects that have been proposed that City staff is still looking to see if there are other funding sources that could help supplement or um replace what we might be spending out of City funds that doesn't mean that we're we're staff is not still Lial so absolutely that's it for me councilman I have no questions I have a comment go ahead are we done with questions okay it's a blurry line it is a blurry budget meetings are a little blurrier than it's a workshop I just wanted to say uh thank you to the staff I know we're all going to feel the same way uh the backup information that was provided to us was excellent thank you very much uh the your presentation today was uh concise uh answer to questions we were you presented us a budget that takes care of our employees both with salaries and insurance increases in Insurance uh we're we're even with the expenditure of uh F un assigned fund balance we're still adding to that we're not changing the millage it's a lot of hard work that you and your staff have done thank you department head so thank you that's all I wanted to say it's a good budget and you know budgets a road map we may deviate a little off of it but it's a good road map thank you I'll like go that thank you I I think it's again I wish all 27,000 people were sitting here cuz I don't know who's watching but I I think it's important for the public to understand a few things and one is you know most people don't know this level of detail about their City's budget I mean who who does not too many people follow that the Casual Observer says well the property tax valuation went up so you have all this additional Revenue coming in so that makes up for the higher costs of every thing but as we can see that's not entirely true because the the property ta evaluation the valuation went up $1.1 Million worth of Revenue which was totally absorbed by an increase in wages so that money went away just because of wages which is fine the point I'm getting at is all the other expenses for everything we buy gas cars diesel I mean all the stuff that we buy tires we're paying the same thing that the consumer that that our residents are paying so all of those increases are not made up by the increase in property valuation those are hard costs that have gone up and we've done I think an admirable job of finding efficiencies internally so that we save enough money through those efficiencies to kind of absorb those increases but we can't do that year after year after year I mean at some point we're going to have things as lean as they can be I mean there's no there's not going to be anything there's there'll always be small things to tweak but we'll have these inefficiencies all fixed and now what and now the we talked about the pavement you know used to be $60 and now it's $212 or whatever well those are real that's real money and so at some point you know I don't know what the economy is going to do exactly but at some point here we're not we're going to have to find new Revenue coming in in order to keep this thing moving um so I think the public needs to be aware of that and I'm not sure I mean we're not increasing the millage now but um at some point we're going to have to have new sources of revenue to keep this thing going on the track that we're trying to go on so I would like to Echo with we councilman Chambers had said but to the staff and to to the finance to to you Carlos um and I I remember early budgets in my tenure where you spent half the time figuring out where we how we got to last year's number than then and and moving forward and not not having the opportunity to really discuss and peel back the onion on what we want to do for the next year so I just you know excellent presentation very good uh detail and we can trust the numbers and that hasn't always been the case so thank you to all the department heads and all the staff and everybody that that contributed to this because it's a I've been doing budgets for 35 years and this is a good one this is easy to work with thank you you remember the 3in binders that oh my God that you got three minutes before the meeting started if you if then yes no and and well how did you get from here to there doesn't make sense and I know even before I was on Council I was helping Finance back then so it's and it made even less sense after you asked the question right got the answer it made less sense yep yep those are the good old days this is this is so much better to work with thank you yep people are laughing are the ones that were here they know what talk the new folks they don't they don't get it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]