All right, good morning, everyone.

It's great to see everyone today.

It's August twenty-sixth, twenty twenty-six, and we're a little more than thirty days away from beginning a new fiscal year here in the city of Hollywood, fiscal year twenty twenty-seven.

And so today, of course, we are in session for a workshop on the fiscal year twenty-seven uh budget for both operating and capital improvement.

And so um great to see everyone back since the commission um had one less meeting uh in uh uh in this past month, or we'll have one less meeting, and so good to be back.

Good to see everyone.

I see the energy that everybody's ready to go, Ray Lynn.

And so we'll uh turn it over to you, our city manager for uh opening remarks and then the presentation.

Thank you.

Good morning, uh, mayor and members of the commission.

Uh, we are really pleased to be here this morning uh to present the operating uh budget workshop as well as our capital improvement workshop.

Um clearly, this is one of the most important uh functions of uh the commission as well as staff is to uh come up with a uh balanced budget proposal uh for the commission uh to consider.

Um, and it you know, takes countless hours of work uh throughout the year to get to this point.

Um, and so I really uh want to emphasize the careful considerations that have been given.

Um, particularly this year, in light of amendment three, which will be uh on voters' ballots, and it is something that could have a significant revenue impact on the city.

And while it wouldn't affect this upcoming fiscal year, it is something that we're very mindful about uh for planning for the future.

Uh it kind of could be a tale of two cities, if you will.

Uh our current resources and what we have now, we are uh approaching a billion, we are a billion-dollar city when you look at our proposed budget, and we uh have over the years been very good stewards of the tax dollar, and so we have uh built back up reserves.

We are a long way from the years of financial urgency.

We've had incredible amounts of capital investment taking place in our community, and so those things are very good.

On the other side, of course, future resources based on potential reductions could be a different scenario.

Um this year we're going to be talking not only about our operating budget of or this morning, we're gonna be talking not only about our operating budget, but also our uh capital improvement uh broad budget and program.

Um we have continued to have robust funding for projects, and you'll see that reflected in uh the proposals before you this morning.

Uh well, not as much as we've had sort of during the height of the Go bond allocation, as well as the ARPA funding that came in from the federal government.

We've had some very, very robust years from sort of general capital outlay.

We of course are going to be spending a lot of money through stormwater, water, and wastewater uh projects, and those are funded, of course, through that enterprise fund.

And we've had extensive workshops uh on those initiatives and what that looks like.

So that won't be the focus this morning of our general uh capital budget.

Um we do have one time, we always look at our capital budget as one time dollars, you know, to fund uh those non-recurring expenses.

So we have a decent amount of one-time fund balance, as well as we're able finally as we close out our Go bond projects to recognize the accrued interest for our Go bond, and that's creating an additional chunk of money that we will be presenting some recommendations on.

Um with that, I would really like to thank our deputy city manager Adam Reichbach and assistant city manager Jose Cortez, uh, who have been spearheading this effort along with the budget team uh led by Duncan Brown and Nisha Bajeri for their work on the operating budget and the CIP presentation that you're going to hear.

Adam.

Thank you, City.

Oh, thank you, City Manager.

Uh good morning, mayor, vice mayor, and commissioners, Adam Reishbach, Deputy City Manager.

My clicker.

Perfect.

All right.

So as the city manager mentioned, today we will be talking about where we stand with the proposed operating budget for fiscal year 2027 and where, and we'll be spending the balance of this presentation under Jose's uh speaking here about the capital budget that we have proposed for fiscal year 2027.

So as we go into the fiscal year 2027 budget development process, and this is something that we look at every year.

We are always cognizant of what economic forces, both at the macro and micro level that we are facing when it comes to how we assess what our revenue collection should be, and of course, how we translate that into our expenditures, because as you know, we are statutorily required to balance our budget every year.

Um obviously the the box in orange, as a city manager mentioned, is something that's certainly on our minds, and and obviously November 3rd will be past the start of this fiscal year and past the start of the adoption of the fiscal year 2027 budget.

And as the city manager mentioned, while this while the outcome of Amendment 3 does not directly impact fiscal year 2027, we are approaching the fiscal year 2027 with a great deal of caution.

So this is a slide that we've shown you before, but we just wanted to show it again.

Um this is our taxable value growth over the last um six years.

And as you can see here, um certainly within the last five years, we are starting to see that slowing and that and unfortunately that declining growth in taxable value.

It is worth mentioning that if we did not have new construction added to our taxable value this year, that uh 6.10% would actually be 3.3%.

So, in terms of our taxable value and for fiscal year 2027, which represented by tax year 2026, as of July 1, our total taxable value was 28.7 billion dollars, with all sectors seeing modest increases, with the exception of commercial, very a very modest decline.

Um but otherwise, all sectors are seeing an increase in our taxable value.

As I mentioned in our prior slide, uh driving our taxable value this year, uh, we can certainly thank new construction for that uh and and strong growth in that sector.

And as of July 1, our added new construction was about $408 million, which is actually the highest it's been in the past five years.

So in terms of our millage at the July 7th City Commission, I believe it was July 7th.

The commission set our maximum millage rate.

We are proposing a flat operating millage of 7.4293, with our increase in our taxable value, where we are able to decrease ever so slightly our debt service millage.

And our total proposed millage is 7.9368.

That is a total reduction of our millage from fiscal year 2026 of 0.0238.

So as city manager mentioned, we are officially, and at least in the proposed budget, a billion dollar city.

This of course represents all city funds, including the general fund, but also our enterprise funds, which is uh which includes, of course, our water and wastewater budget.

Terms of our general fund, the total proposed general fund budget is 437.7 million dollars.

As a reminder, uh property taxes represent the single largest revenue stream for the general fund at clocking in at just over 46%.