Good afternoon.

My name is Beth Daniels.

I'm the president of the Clearwater Arts Alliance.

Sorry to be so informal today.

You can tell I was going to go golfing, right?

That didn't work

out.

Anyway, we always try to update the public art and design board with what we're doing at the Alliance.

We certainly would like to invite y'all, and we'll leave you some of these.

Thank you.

Hi

everybody, Betsy Adler with the Clearwater Arts Alliance.

I wanted to show you guys you might remember that we did have sculptures until yesterday in the rain when they got deinstalled.

Um so there were three sculptures on the four and five and six hundred block of Cleveland Street.

Um those have just been taken down yesterday.

Um and you all are the first to see the ones that will be going up next week on Tuesday.

So we have two returning sculptors.

We have Donald Janella, who is bringing us MOA, and then we have Mantum Yore by Robin Morgan.

Um then a new sculptor, Delphine by Lee Bell.

Um the project was previously funded by the Clearwater Redevelopment Agency.

Um and we did a survey at the end towards the end of the project and wanted to see what everyone thought of it.

And everyone said, please more local artists.

They were all local to begin with.

Um Sarasota was the farthest they were away.

So we do have lots of local artists.

These are um Sarasota, Sarasota, and St.

Petersburg this time.

So these will be up for the next 18 months since Tuesday.

Um and please come out and check them out when you see um Cleveland Street next.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any more citizens to be heard.

All right.

Uh

finance department presentation.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Uh good afternoon, uh, Chair members of the board.

I'm Hunter Carlson.

I'm with the city's Office of Management and Budget.

I'm excited to be here today to provide you all with a presentation on the city's fiscal year 2027 budget, which was just approved last month.

So I have a few quick slides to uh give you all some key highlights of the budget, and at the end, I'll be more than happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Pleased to be joined today by assistant city manager Dan Slaughter as well.

So between the two of us, we'll be able to hopefully answer all y'all's questions.

So, as required by state law, our fiscal year 2027 budget remains a balanced budget across the organization.

The only increase in staffing was as a result of the addition of nine full-time fire medics, which was negotiated as part of our most recent collective bargaining agreement with the city's fire union.

Our primary focus this upcoming year will be the continued alignment of our city's work plan, which provides for the execution of existing operating and capital projects that are approved within the budget, as well as our maintaining our employee pay structure, which is currently at the 75th percentile as approved by city council.

So as we look ahead to some of our key initiatives in the upcoming year, we're pleased to continue advancement of what we're calling our downtown urban renaissance, which includes several key redevelopment projects, including the construction of both the new Ballard Hotel as well as the Osceola apartments on the bluff directly adjacent to Coachman Park.

Furthermore, as some of you may know, Pennells County continues to advance a call for development to solicit interest for 17 county properties as part of their transition to a central government campus in mid-county.

Several key street renovation projects are either upcoming or already underway and designed to improve pedestrian and vehicular traffic while also making improvements to utility infrastructure throughout the downtown urban core.

Some examples of these are the Fort Harrison Street Project as well as Osceola Street roadway improvements.

So speaking of utility projects, we're also excited to highlight improvements to both our water and sewer infrastructure that remains underway, such as our planned facility consolidation project for wastewater, as well as automated meter reading meter reading for our portable water system.

So that's the system that automatically reports your usage, helps our homeowners with detecting leaks, etc.

And lastly, I'll highlight that the city continues to prepare for possible changes to our budget in the upcoming years.

As you all may know, upcoming property tax reform is on the general ballot next month, and as staff, our role remains committed to forecasting any potential impacts and preparation of what that ultimate outcome could be.

And I'll just say as a disclaimer, our role remains strictly education-based.

We're not allowed either by state law or city policy to influence that outcome or give advice on either side of the issue.

So across all funds, the city's fiscal year 2027 budget totals just over 800 million and is further broken down by fund rate on the slide.

And to provide you all with a brief overview of how millage works is the rate at which property taxes are calculated, where one mill equals one dollar for every thousand dollars of taxable property value.

Taxable property value is your assessed property value that calculates that's calculated by the Pinellas County property appraiser, minus any exemptions that may be applicable to your specific property.