Dunedin Community Redevelopment Agency Meeting - September 18, 2025
Dunedin Community Redevelopment Agency Meeting - September 18, 2025
The Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) held its regular meeting on September 18, 2025, at 4:30 PM in City Hall, 737 Louden Ave. Chair Maureen "Moe" Freaney presided. All CRA members were present. The meeting covered approval of minutes, annual audit, budget adoption and amendment, an advisory committee resolution, membership changes, committee and director reports, and extensive discussion on the parking garage procurement process and the Old City Hall Park project. All votes were unanimous.
Public Comments & Testimony
- No members of the public spoke during citizen input or on any agenda item.
Discussion Items
- 1.a. Draft Minutes (May 22, 2025): Staff noted a correction: the restroom budget for Old City Hall Park was $500,000, not $5,000 as written. Minutes were approved as amended unanimously.
- 1.b. Annual Independent Audit (FY2024): Finance Director Les Tyler and auditor Jeff Wolf (Forvis Mazars) presented a clean audit with unmodified opinion, no findings on internal controls, compliance with Florida statutes, and no management letter issues. Approved unanimously.
- 1.c. FY2026 Budget Resolution 25-02: Proposed CRA expenditures of $11,241,355 and revenues of $11,442,000, closely matching the prior year. The budget includes a millage rate of 4.1345 mills (Resolution 25-22) for the CRA and General Fund, to be finally adopted September 23, 2025. The CRA Advisory Committee had unanimously recommended adoption. Approved unanimously via roll call (5 ayes).
- 1.d. FY2025 Budget Amendment Resolution 25-03: A no-net-impact reclassification of expenses for the Skinner Boulevard project (electrical work on private property) from "Improvements Other Than Building" to "Contractual Services." Available reserves remain above the 15% target. Approved unanimously via roll call (5 ayes).
- 1.e. Resolution 25-04 (amending Resolution 92-1): Eliminated the requirement for one ex officio member from the Public Relations Advisory Action Committee (PRAAC) and one from the Downtown Dunedin Merchants Association (DDMA) on the CRA Advisory Committee, as those bodies no longer exist. Approved unanimously via roll call (5 ayes).
- 1.f. Advisory Committee Membership Recommendation: Moved Douglas Moat from alternate to a partial regular term ending March 1, 2026. Staff noted he had been overlooked during previous promotions and is an active resident since 2016. Members praised his suitability. Approved unanimously.
- 1.g. Advisory Committee Chair Report: Chair Alan McHale reported on two meetings (July and September). The committee received presentations on Main Street Exchange and El Taco restaurants, both seen as positive assets. A discussion on downtown food trucks resulted in a unanimous committee position: no restrictions on days/times, letting the market decide, provided trucks meet licensing and ordinances. A citizen raised concern about slow progress on the old City Hall site, but the committee did not share that view, citing many concurrent projects. Discussion followed on food truck conditional use approval (recently before the Board of Adjustment), golf cart crossings at Highland Avenue (pending FDOT approval), and the Rock House project (plans rejected due to parking not on private property).
- 1.h. Director's Report: Economic Development Specialist Carolyn Homer gave updates: Parking Garage RFQ submissions due October 8, 2025; Skinner Boulevard contractor (KCI) awaiting Duke Energy undergrounding — asphalt laid and road expected to open that evening; Old City Hall Park (renamed) bid opening September 26, bids due late October; Main Street Exchange portion to Architectural Review Committee October 7; Gateway project paused pending Skinner completion. Extensive discussion ensued on:
- Old City Hall Park: Construction likely starting January 2026 (height of tourist season), with 120-day schedule. Barriers to remain for six months until contractor moves on site. Restroom decision deferred: contractor will build foundation for prefab restroom; cost and final approval will come with contractor's bid. Concerns about staging and traffic flow led to proposal to convert Grant Street from one-way to two-way to improve safety — a traffic engineer recommended it, and diagrams will be reviewed with each member.
- Parking Garage Procurement: A lengthy discussion clarified the design-build process. An RFQ (not RFP) seeks qualifications from joint venture teams. An evaluation committee will rank the top three firms, which will be presented to the CRA for a go/no-go selection. The selected team will then design to 90% and provide a Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP). Members raised concerns about not knowing the price upfront and the risk of being locked into one firm. City Attorney Jen Cowan explained that if a reasonable GMP cannot be reached, the CRA can reject and move to the second-ranked firm. Examples from other city projects were cited.
Key Outcomes
- All eight agenda items (1.a through 1.h) were approved unanimously. Votes: Items 1.c, 1.d, and 1.e passed via roll call (5 ayes each); others by voice vote.
- The CRA adopted the FY2026 budget and FY2025 budget amendment.
- The advisory committee composition was updated, and ex officio requirements were removed.
- The advisory committee’s recommendation for food trucks (no restrictions) was noted; the City Manager reported that the Board of Adjustment had approved a conditional use for food trucks with staff-recommended Thursday–Sunday hours.
- Staff will proceed with design-build procurement for the parking garage, presenting ranked firms for selection.
- Old City Hall Park construction is set for early 2026; the restroom decision will come with the contractor’s bid.
- The meeting adjourned at 5:27 PM.
Meeting Transcript
Good afternoon. Welcome to September eighteenth, twenty twenty-five community redevelopment agency meeting. I'd like to call this meeting to order. Carolyn, you're in the seat today, so the hot seat. So okay. Um, before we start, uh, time for citizen input. Is there anyone in the audience that wishes to speak on a topic that is not on the agenda? Okay. Seeing no one, I will close citizen input, and we'll move to uh business. Uh, and that'll be draft minutes from the May 2nd, 2025 community redevelopment agency. And I think there's some changes that Carolyn might have before I ask the rest of you. Just page two, Bob had mentioned the old City Hall Park, the budget for the restrooms, it's five hundred thousand, and the minutes say five thousand, which I'd love for that to be correct. I would too. But yeah, okay. All right, and are there any other um changes to the minutes or corrections? Okay, seeing none, um, can I have a motion to approve the minutes? So moved. Second. Okay, motion and second, and uh all in favor. Aye, any opposed? Okay, motion passes unanimously. Okay, then we'll go to community redevelopment agency annual independent audit on the staff presentation. So I'll ask uh Jeff with actually less with Jeff to come forward. Good afternoon, uh, mayor of Vice Mayor Commissioners, uh Less tire, the finance director. I'd like to just make a few general comments, and I'll turn it over to Jeff, our uh our auditor. This is our twenty-four uh redevelopment agency audit uh for the city. Uh, just want to mention that uh back in twenty twenty there was uh federal statute, statute one six three three eight seven that required that each each CRA fund have a separate audit. So we're following that guideline since then. Uh the attached uh audit is in your in your staffing today for the twenty-four audit out, and Jeff Wolf, a partner with the firm is with us, and I'll turn it over to Jeff to go over the highlights. Okay, Jeff. Thank you. Good uh good afternoon. Good to see everybody again. Um I will be pretty brief because you may or may not be aware. Um, these financial information is already included in your ACFAR, but um, as last mentioned, uh uh state requirement now requires standalone audit and standalone financial statements. But really, this audit is really about compliance, not so much the the financial numbers. It's it's really about is the revenue the TIFF being calculated correctly and deposited timely to the bank. Then ultimately, are those uh expenses allowed under your your policies and your your um CRA plans. That's really what it's about. It's about compliance, and you'll see as I go through the reports. I really won't touch on the financial information that um this was a clean audit, and there's really no compliance issues with with the city of CRA. So, first is our um independent R's report, and that's on page one of the financial statements. Um this is a report on whether those financial statements are materially correct. Um and again, you had an unmodified opinion, so that is the highest level of assurance you can receive that the financial information is correct. Um our next report is our internal report uh uh report on internal control over financial reporting and compliance. Now we don't test internal controls to render an opinion. However, we do test controls as part of our audit just to um you know modify our audit plan if necessary. If we saw any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in those controls, we would comment in this letter. But um, as you can see, this is a a clean report, no findings, no issues noted. Um our next report is really the probably the most significant one, the independent accounts report, and this is really on compliance on as it relates to Florida statutes for investments and more importantly, compliance on the laws that govern um CRAs.
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