Everyone, welcome.

Today is December 10th, 2024.

We are here for a workshop meeting of the Hollywood City Commission here at City Hall.

On our agenda today is a presentation by Adam Reichbach.

He's our assistant city manager and Joseph Salzburg, who is a shareholder with Gray Robinson regarding the 2025 state legislative priorities.

And we do have a quorum here, Mr.

Manager.

So well, let's take it away.

Good afternoon, Adam Reichback, Assistant City Manager.

Every year leading up to the legislative session, we present to the city commission a set of priority statements that we wish for you to adopt and that we give that information over to our lobbyists as well as to our local delegation so they understand what issues the city would like to for the state to address on our behalf.

Of note, we'll be formally requesting adoption of these priorities at our January 15th Commission meeting.

So as 2025 is a non-election year, the legislative session is set to begin in March and it does run until May.

Committee weeks are upon us.

I know the Senate committee weeks have started, I believe, uh this week and the House soon thereafter.

And then the first day of the 60 day legislative session, like I mentioned, is March 4th and will close on May 2nd.

So we have a newly elected uh senator representing West Hollywood.

That's Barbara Sharif.

Um that is west of 441.

Senator Pizzo, um, who is serves now as the Senate uh minority leader represents the balance of the city east of 441.

In the House of Representatives, Representative Marie Woodson represents Hollywood west of Dixie Road, Dixie Highway and south of Sheridan, and Representative Hillary Cassell represents Hollywood north of Sheridan and east of Dixie.

I do want to take this opportunity to recognize some individuals that we have here in the audience.

We have Joanne Alvarez, who's representing Senator Pizzo's office, uh, and then we have excuse me, Stelly Picasso and Connie Furs representing Representative Castell's office.

Uh and of course, with Gray Robinson, who is our lobbying firm.

Um, we have David Allen as well as uh Joseph Salzburg.

So before you today is a sample of some of the major state legislative priorities for the city.

Um these were included sent to you via email as well as included uh as part of your uh as part of the seat here today.

Um some of those issues certainly are affordable housing, um, the condominium assessment.

Um I do want to thank Senator Pizzo for his leadership as part of last week's condominium milestone recertification seminar.

This is certainly a hop button issue for us.

Um, cybersecurity, economic development funding opportunities.

Um, most of these issues and home rule preservation is sort of like that catch all, but certainly it's one of those areas where we are certainly looking to continue to fight for our home rule and the ability for us to regulate accordingly.

Um historic structural preservation of local regulations, uh Live Local Act continues to be an issue that we need to keep uh our eye on, property insurance rates, uh, resiliency measures, separate to sewer.

And I wanted to let uh the commission know that we've actually now had uh two meetings, one of them with representative Woodson, and then another one with both uh representative Castell and with Senator Pizzo to discuss the issues that we face with septic of sewer.

Um, certainly our delegation completely understands the concerns that we and we left that meeting um with a commitment to further explore reforming legislation to provide for greater flexibility in funding at both the local and state level.

So thank uh our our state representative and and um state representatives and our senator for really taking this issue by the horns.

They fully understand our concerns, and they're working hopefully as part of the 2025 legislative session to get something done in that regard.

Additionally, we have some priority funding.

We will be submitting um and getting to our lobbyists uh hopefully by the end of this week.

Two state appropriation requests.

One of them is in the utility realm, it's a stormwater project that's adjacent to Rotary Park, where we were looking for shovel ready projects, and that is one that does meet that uh that requirement.

The total um budget for that project is a little upwards of about a million dollars, and we'll be requesting about a half a million or around there, and then also an adult daycare center at Oak Lake Park is a project that we're looking at as well, looking to provide uh seek funding for some startup costs as well as some capital build-out costs associated with that community center.

We also have three grants that we are pending state legislative action on.

One of them is for our concert series at Arts Park, the Hammerstein House Restoration Project, as well as another grant for Sunset Park.

Um, and then additionally, every year we've been very successful with the help of our lobbying team to secure our our funding uh for programming at the Fred Littman Center for our senior programming.

And with that, I will turn it over to uh Joseph and David, who will definitely be able to provide some additional feedback and what they're hearing up in Tallahassee, and of course, any discussion you would like to have on this issue.

Thank you, Adam.

Good afternoon.

What he said.

No, I I think Adam pretty much summed up most of it.

Joseph Salz are with Gray Robinson.

It's good to see everybody again and David Allen.

Jason Ungar is in Tallahassee because it is a Senate committee week this week.

The House had their first committee week last week.

For all intents and purposes, we will be off to the races the second week of January, up there half of January, three out of four weeks in February, all of March, all of April.

We have per per usual done a bunch of spade work at uh Adam's direction.

We've had meetings with staff, we've had meetings with the elected officials.

We have uh counseled, shot down projects, you know, brought forward projects, and that's all necessary so that we're in the proper posture um to just put the city of Hollywood as successful as possible.

And you have seen that in the years that we have been successful in the appropriations or the grant process, it it happens well in advance.

Um with regard to this year, um, as as an incoming house, well, I guess he's not incoming, he's now the House Appropriations Chairman told me monopoly money is over.

And um, I said, Well, you know, I I could have taken some more monopoly money for my cities down south, but um listen, there there was uh there was an influx of of federal dollars, obviously, you know, from uh the post-COVID dollars, a lot of that filtered through the state, and we were gangbusters with tax revenue.