The City of Dunedin Commission held a workshop on November 4, 2025, at 9:00 AM in City Hall. The meeting covered three major topics: the City's Risk Management Program, updates on tidal/stormwater mitigation in the North Douglas and Baywood Shores neighborhoods, and an overview of the proposed Pinellas County Regional Resource Recovery Facility (RRRF). The meeting included presentations from city staff and consultants, commission discussion, and public comment. The workshop adjourned at 12:31 PM.
Morning everyone. And welcome to the November 4th, 2025 City Commission workshop, calling the meeting to order, and I'm we'll start by having the Pledge of Allegiance led by Jen, our city attorney. And to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God. Indivisible for liberty and justice for now we're gonna sing the two anthems, United States and Canada. Wow. We haven't met for two weeks, and in two weeks all we've done is Toronto Blue Jays. So uh who anybody here at the watch party? The other night? Yeah. Anybody? I did. Oh, that was tough. That was tough, but we love our Blue Jays. Um, we're gonna go ahead and we have no presentations. So we're gonna do uh citizen input. So does anyone in the audience have anything that is not in the agenda they wish to come forward and talk about? Okay, seeing no one, I'll close uh citizen input. We'll go to workshop items and let me see. Um can it get more fascinating than going from baseball to 61 page audit reports on risk management programs. I mean, you know, but but that's the job, right, guys? That's the job. All right, so we're gonna turn it over to uh Teresa, I guess, to start this off. Good morning, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commission, Teresa Smalling, Director of HR and Risk Management and the City's risk manager. Uh you may remember yeah at a budget workshop, there were questions about the city's insurance and risk management program. So with uh city direction, I have invited our consultants from the Garing Group, which is a risk strategies company and now also part of the Brown and Brown team. Uh they are the city's current uh broker of record and also serves as our risk management consultant. Before I turn it over to them, I just wanted to make a few comments. Uh with having a consulting firm in on the risk management side is very valuable to our department and to the city because we are HR and risk management is a small department. We have two uh two members of staff that actually work on the risk management side of the house. And as um we have seen last year, especially with our storms, there are besides the day-to-day workers' comp um insurance claims, there are a number of complicated insurance and risk management issues that I as even with all my years of experience do not have the um comfort level of risk management experience. So that is why the city does have uh consulting firm and the Garing Group, which has been with us, I think since 2007-ish. Um they have um proven themselves over and over. Uh with us today is uh Ray Carter. Uh he is the our senior senior consultant. He is our day-to-day risk management um consultant, and he is a former risk management for Manatee County. Uh so he helps with the more serious issues, claims. Um he works with uh the third-party administrator that helps with workers' comp and liability claims, as well as the city city attorney's office and also city manager. Uh so I also want to introduce Rami, who's our senior consultant and risk services team lead. She helps with the annual renewal, she helps with uh helping me to uh navigate contract the insurance language in in some of the contracts that the city has and um they uh they are a wealth of information. So without further ado, I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to them. They have a brief presentation and then they'll take any questions. Sorry, just trying to get the slides here right. Um so I'll go ahead and start out because I think we want to leave maybe more of it to to Ray to talk some around the risk management strategy and the consulting piece. So I'm gonna tackle a few of these um team members who are dedicated to the city. Garing group basically establishes a team for each one of our clients, and these individuals are at Teresa and her team's disposal for any um you know service matter. As the risk services consultant to the city, essentially my job is to help make sure that we are properly and adequately either procuring insurance or assisting Ray in their process with risk transfer. So, what that means is you know, myself as Rami, the consultant, I look at all of the coverages that the city has today. We determine based on you know forward thinking, potential new additions to the city in terms of operations or offerings to the public and determine you know what potential coverage may be appropriate to help hedge some of the risk that may be associated with those activities. Um my job is to oversee the account executive that's assigned to the city as well, and that account executive is essentially the individual that uh Teresa and Sherry work with aggregating whatever data is needed to procure renew or market programs.