The Hollywood City Commission convened on June 26, 2025, for a workshop to review the proposed FY 2026 Operating Budget and Capital Improvement Plan (CIP). Staff presented a combined operating and capital budget overview, emphasizing public safety, community services, and infrastructure. No formal votes were taken, but the commission discussed taxable value trends, millage rates, capital projects, impact fees, and resident priorities.
All right, good morning, everyone. Today is June twenty sixth, twenty twenty-five. We are here for a workshop here at City Hall. We've got all of our city commissioners here and myself. It's great to see the uh executive management staff here. Everybody takes a uh obviously plays a big role into implementing uh the city's annual budget uh direction and its policy priorities. And so at this point, it is a pleasure to uh offer an opportunity for the city manager to uh open with the remarks uh regarding the fiscal year 2026 uh operating and capital budgets. Uh I did speak with the city manager right before the meeting and uh members of the body. It uh uh is our feeling that we would present the 2026 budget uh item uh for the operating budget, then we'll have a discussion feedback opportunity, and then after that, we'll get into a capital improvement plan and have uh comments and discussion about the capital improvement plans uh after that segment. So, city manager. Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor and Commissioners, and to all the members of the public and staff in attendance and watching out there. Um as the mayor indicated, uh, we're in a workshop session today. Uh typically we do these workshops in the past. Well, we've done them different ways. Sometimes we've done them separately, sometimes we've done them combined. This year we're doing them combined. So this truly is um one of the more important meetings that we hold throughout the year because we're scheduled for 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. today. Um, and if it does carry through the lunch hour like that, we'll have some food brought in to you at 12 so we can keep on going there. But it is it is an important session, so it is a workshop session, so no formal decisions are required today, but there'll be plenty of time for questions and discussion. And we when we put them together uh combined like this, think of it as two big beautiful budgets together, and we can we can present them in that fashion there for you. So you get the you I'm I'm just gonna keep on moving. Um you can you can see the relationship sometimes and the interconnects between the operating and the uh the capital budgets, and um as always, so things are still malleable at this point. Um they uh they they haven't been firmed up and they won't be firmed up until we till we get into the latter part of the fall. But the staff has been spending the last several months uh as we do throughout the city and all the offices and departments um putting together their recommendations, doing their analysis for where they are now uh and where they need to be next year and in the future beyond, looking at what's worked, what hasn't worked, what we need more of, what we need less of, where we need to provide more emphasis um and and fine-tune how we go forward. So you'll see an emphasis here on uh public safety um and community um uh service and uh and service delivery in general, and then a look to the future as the city celebrates its its hundredth year anniversary and looks to start the second century. Um as always, there's there's uh a great deal of flexibility left at this point, too. And uh and we do all that um by lowering the overall millage rate slightly, keeping the operating millage uh flat as recommended right now, and actually decreasing some of the debt service costs. So we're happy to present that as well. And with that, I will turn it over to Adam for the first part on uh on some of the uh operating, and then we'll we'll proceed after that as the mayor mentioned to capital. Okay, good morning. Adam Reichbeck, Assistant City Manager. So uh as the city manager referenced this morning, we're gonna provide you with a pretty comprehensive review of where we stand with the FY2026 proposed budget. And then first including um looking at our operating budget, and then we'll go switch over to the city's capital program. So as we approach this year's budget, uh we have been very cognizant of the economic conditions that we're all facing. We continue to contend with inflation and tariffs, which are reflective of the cost escalations and the increases associated on our ongoing contracts across all departments, and we continue to experience a volatile domestic uh economy by way of how the stock market and the uh labor market has been um running in the past uh several months. And this, of course, is an influence by both domestic and international conflicts that we are currently witnessing and experiencing. So we wanted to highlight this trend specifically as it relates to taxable value growth. You will see in the next uh several slides that we are very fortunate to see a citywide taxable value of 27.3 billion dollars based on the June 1st taxable value report. However, I would be remiss if I did not illustrate the reality of the trend that we are seeing. Since the high of 11.56% in fiscal year 2023, we have experienced three straight years of decline in our taxable value growth. This weighs extremely heavy as we go into this budget development process because it is a worrying trend that we will have to contend with as it relates to our ability to take on additional recurring expenditures. I also want to point out that the 7.37% growth was bolstered by a $310 million increase in our taxable value, and that's by way of new construction. And we'll touch on that in greater detail in a couple of slides. But I think it's important to point out that without that new growth, our taxable value would have been 6.15%. Lastly, I think it's worth mentioning as well that this is the first year that we are seeing the impact of the CPI growth on the second homestead exemption. So as you may recall, back in 2024, Florida's voters approved a measure in which we would see a CPI growth on the second homestead exemption. Uh the uh the applic uh on those properties that are that the second homestead exemption is applicable, and that's an amount up to 3% per year. And so while that number right now and the impact to the city of Hollywood is roughly $140,000 of net revenue that has been lost as a result of that, that number will continue to grow as that 3% is a compounding effect.