The Broward County Commission held a budget workshop on August 27, 2024, to discuss the FY25 budget recommendations for four major areas: Tourist Development Tax (TDT), Transportation Capital, Transportation Surtax, and General Capital. County Administrator Monica Cepero, budget staff, and tourism officials presented revenue forecasts, program expenditures, and capital needs. The meeting also included a consensus on the Sheriff's Office budget and a brief discussion on state park development.
Good morning. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Madam Mayor. Good morning. Morning, Mayor. Morning, everyone. Glad everyone is here this morning, except Tim is on the line, I believe. I don't know if he's on yet. Can we check and see if Tim Ryan, if Commissioner Ryan's on? Yeah, please. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So we are at uh have an uh four-point agenda here for the budget workshop today. I mean, we're going to uh begin with uh tourist development taxes. Uh and that would be our uh former commissioner Stacey Ritter. Well, first we'll we'll let you're gonna applaud for the uh for the administrator first. Thank you. Thank you, and good morning start. Yeah, all kick us off. Um make up for another commissioner who might not physically be present. It's only for Tim Ryan. He's not here, so um, so so good morning uh and thank you. So uh we are here to talk about uh rounding the corner with our budget workshops. Um we have four major topics that we'll be um did you need that we'll be covering today. We're gonna start off with uh the tourist development tax, and you'll get to see um you know where we've been, where we're where we are today and where we're going, and and the plan um on on how to um what to do with the revenues and the forecasting there. Then we're gonna switch over to transportation capital, um, then the surtax program and and with general capital program. We'll make this as painless as possible. Um the necessary evil here, but I will tell you that um you know it was um you know uh uh uh an exercise in playing um making the puzzle pieces put um put them all together. We've got a lot of uh ambitious goals, as you know, um in the coming year, and and we're trying to make it all work within the the limited resources and and seeing where the revenues are going and and how to make it all happen. So we'll we'll start off with uh the TDT conversation, and um Elijah Anderson is gonna kick it off, and then um Stacy's gonna um uh tag team in this presentation as well. Thank you. Morning, Commissioners. Good morning, Mayor. Uh like uh County Administrator Monica Spiro said, my name's Elijah Anderson. I'm a program manager with the Office of Management Budget. Today we'll be talking about the county administrator's FY25 tourist development tax program recommendations. But first, we will have a tourism overview provided by President and CEO Stacy Ritter. Thank you, Commissioner Gallar. My biggest, my second biggest fan, I think. Thank you. Um morning, Commissioners, Mayor, Vice Mayor, thank you. Uh we always we always love this part of our year because we get to come and spread sunshine, happiness, and beach weather. So um, I think you'll find that that's true with the information we're gonna provide today. So slide one is um hotel occupancy for fiscal years 23, 24, and 25. Um, you can see that the curve is pretty much the same as it um this is this is our yearly curve and and always has been our yearly curve with the exception of 2020, which we all remember fondly. Um hotel occupancy is relatively stable in fiscal year 24 as compared to fiscal year 23. In terms of limited revenue group growth, hotels tend to cut rates to maintain occupancy, and that's what we're seeing in FY24. Um, it's a real balancing act with most with the hotel properties. Do we keep our rates high and our occupancy low, or do we increase our occupancy and lower our rates?