Thanks to Councilman Salem for a fantastic eight years for all you've done for your community and your city.

It's been I think you've had a a market effect, positive effect on the city and its citizens.

Let's talk about your parties.

Okay.

Well, thank you for those for those comments.

I appreciate it.

Um don't have it is my eighth year, and uh to me the eighth year is more to complete some things that I'm I'm involved with, and uh two very important passion projects for me are the clubhouse at Blue Cypress golf course.

Okay.

As you probably know because I've talked about it three thousand times.

We have added the three holes out there.

Yep.

And it the golf course is now twelve holes.

Uh it's been uh very popular, it's been a great thing for the course.

They thanked me.

They they were very skeptical, but now that it's out there and people are playing it, they're they're very supportive.

Um the next component to that is a clubhouse that uh will be a uh a joint venture so to speak of the city and JU.

And uh uh I've seen a design of it, and uh Daryl Joseph, who is has become a dear friend over the years, is uh is meeting with J U and we hope to get construction uh moving in this year to get that completed and uh um that will be the clubhouse for the JU golf team as well as a venue for golfers uh to uh have lunch, check in, kind of a regular clubhouse for a city facility like that.

So um I'd like to get that moving, if not completed at least.

Is that a CIP item?

Uh, we own it.

It's already it was approved during that uh $50 million a dollar thing that I think you were involved in that Randy White chair.

Yeah, got it.

Okay.

Um the second one that's uh a passion project that's very similar to that is JP Small.

Okay.

Um we we are investing ten million dollars in JP Small.

I don't know if you've been out there.

I have and you've seen the the field and all those things and the new lighting and uh all those things are already in place.

The the last major uh component of that is the Hall of Fame uh that will be built out outside the left field wall.

Okay.

And uh I've seen designs of that, and uh um it will clearly be a museum, and uh there's uh we're having discussions with uh the old owner uh Peter Braken because he's got a collection as well.

We want definitely want uh a bunch of uh African-American par uh paraphernalia from from the Negro League and all that stuff in there as well.

And so I'm hopeful that that will be ongoing and and at least construction started as far along as we can, because I really believe that that could be a a tourist attraction for people coming off I-95.

For sure.

And where that Hall of Fame is going is at one of those three corners that is kind of that the heart of Durkeyville.

That's exactly right.

And it's pretty run down now, but it has so much opportunity for improvement.

I I you and I share the same thoughts.

Yeah.

So getting those two as far along as I can in the next year are very important.

Fantastic.

And uh it's it's a lot of it is me working with Daryl.

I mean, and Daryl is uh as excited about them as I am.

Okay.

Um a few cleanup things as I committed to you is to is to complete Doge uh uh in June.

Yep.

We have a a meeting Tuesday, which will complete the health care analysis with some recommendations on rates and such.

Um that uh I I hope the administration is paying attention and will uh take under consideration.

Um I think beyond uh as uh as our good friend Councilman Laden has said, health care, the completion grants and and the garbage fee.

Well, we've solved the garbage fee issue.

Yeah, uh we've gone a long way with completion grants.

And the health care component.

Um last year is you might remember it was $21 million dollars that we had to supplement it with.

Plus we had to add five million to the reserve fund.

Yep.

And uh we we need to begin getting out of that.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So um we'll have some recommendations.

Fantastic.

And uh, and then the the special committee on JEA, uh our last major interview is in two weeks.

Yeah.

Um and I think we our surveys about ready to go out.

Okay.

I I I've heard your comments about that component of it.

Yep.

Um I think we can forward, as I've always said, it's it's not our job to uh act upon that information.

It's our job to get it to the board and let the board review it and determine what they think they should do.

Agreed.

Very nice.

So um we should have all that to them, and they're not too it it may roll into July, but we'll forward that stuff to them whenever it's available.

Great.

Sounds good to me.

And then the capacity issue needs to continue.

It needs to continue.

Yeah, for sure.

And uh and get that resolved, and then again, take it to the board.

Yep.

Let them decide if if they want to collect it all, if they want to draw a line in the sand and say we're gonna collect after this date or whatever it is, um to them.

Needs to be fixed.

Needs to be fixed.

Yeah.

Very good.

Thank you.

Noted.

Okay.

Um in terms of uh uh the rest of my time next year, as you know, I'm I'm very interested in the budget process and we'll um you've got to decide on all your committees and stuff, but I'll be monitoring involved in the budget process in some form or another.

Yeah, because that's that's that's what my interest is.

What you like to do.

Yes.

And uh I think this one's a very challenging budget.

For sure.

And uh we need to get all hands on deck for this one because I think it's uh um depending on what happens in November, that kind of thing.

And then um, Mr.

President elect, as I said to Kevin Carico a year ago, um I want your year to be successful.

That's important to me.

It was important to me when I was president to have people rally behind me and help me.

Yeah, and I say the same thing to you.

Uh this year I served on three committees.

I heard some bills three times.

Well, it was something he asked me to do, so I did it, but it got a little tiresome hearing the same bills three times.

Yes.

They were off in there.

And uh what whatever else you need or want from me, um, I want to help you.

Fantastic.

Get across the finish line.

For you to have a successful year because I know you're gonna put the time into it, and uh you're already doing it, which is what I did.

You're already working on things, and that's the way.

If you're gonna have a successful year, you've got to start in June, maybe June.

You can't wait till July.

No, you're exactly right.

So that's that's all I have to say.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And um, yeah, I think you've kind of read the tea leaves on what the future holds.

I think the November referendum is gonna clarify things for us and the clarity comes with we know what we have to do.

We have to take a real tough look at that budget.

Every single detail.

Um there's gonna be a lot of uh scrutiny of that budget, and um perhaps one of the compromises is we don't know what's gonna be decided in November, so we do what we can to focus all of our spend on the core and make sure we got spend on the core and everything else to some degree has to be cut back, and maybe it goes below the line in case the referendum fails, and we do have money to support those initiatives, and then we have a special meeting in December to release some of that, almost in a way that happened during your presidency uh when we had that 25 million, which we had a special meeting in December to release that.

Right.

Well, I remember it well, yeah.

So that becomes kind of the model for what we might have to do in this one, um, so to speak.

So uh Well, I think clearly we have to take some amount of money out of that budget.

Oh yeah.

Whether it's fifty million, a hundred million, whatever it is, and get it out.

It would be irresponsible of us not to, because the new the next council president is likely to face with the extension of the homestead from fifty to a hundred and fifty, a two hundred million dollar bogey.

And then the one after that with the extension up to two hundred and fifty K for the homestead is gonna face a three hundred million dollar bogey.

Well, I feel an obligation to to do what I can this year, anticipating it's gonna pass.

Yeah.

And then if it doesn't pass, then uh you know, we can then revisit revisit what we've already cut or put below the line however you want to agree how you know that's really and I think that's probably a good way to handle it.

Yeah I think it might be the only way to handle it.

It would be irresponsible not to oh no you've got to take it out of the budget in my mind.

Yeah what what dollar amount I think we can debate exactly but I think 50 would be the minimum yeah agreed that that you need to pull out.

Yeah.

Um and I think it can be done.

Yeah it's tough but it can be done.

You know we we took uh uh through those two percent yeah which we ended up being about three point eight million yeah and the only department that's come forward was the inspector general yeah right exactly so um noted so whether you you go up to five percent or something like that yeah I think that's worth considering it's actually it's definitely a strategy yeah so um with that I you know you'd hate to stop downtown development because you don't have the the money so you've got to start thinking about creative ways to fund those projects.

I heard your comments yeah on First Coast Connect and yeah um the one that uh that everyone's talking about is the public's right and that being a catalyst for everything else but it's uh twenty eight million if I recall correctly exactly and that's a lot of money yeah it's a lot of money and I agree it would be transformational for the downtown it's a matter of do we have the money to support it and that's a that's a tough call.

And they'll tell you that it'll be a catalyst for everything around it'll pay for itself I think we need to have that debate to figure that out.

Yeah.

Agreed and there have to be more funding options than just what is constituted the debate so far completion grants low interest loans prep grants there's got to be other ideas for funding some of those well someone suggested at me that we we treat some of these loans like a mortgage a low interest mortgage where if we give them uh uh ten million dollars over twenty years they pay five hundred thousand back each year plus a little bit of interest yeah right a is as an example um I don't if that works for developers right but that's it's an idea or there's ideas to that there's a equity you can take an equity stake in the development or something like that but that that doesn't help what the problem is right now is availability of cash.

Because as you know when we started budgeting the completion grants there's a lot of red in the five year plan in the schedule B three and um we've cleared up a lot of that red as you mentioned earlier in this meeting um but we're about to get you know our knees cut off with revenue coming in and that means we don't have the the cash for things outside of the core um which is how it should be designed and you can't use reserve funds for things like completion grants because reserve funds are what we use to maintain the core to pay for the police to pay for the firefighters to pay for trash pickup or the hurricane or hurricanes or parks you know if we are running out of money we that's what reserves were intended for and um they're not intended for new projects like this.

So we've got to find alternative revenue sources I hear you so those are my thoughts.

Noted it'd be an interesting year.

We're all here to help you.

Thank you I appreciate that and congrats again on approaching your final year and the amazing impact you've had on our city well I appreciate that very nice connect.

Alright and with that we are adjourned.

All right