The City Commission held a budget workshop on July 29, 2025, from 8:59 AM to 12:34 PM to review the proposed Fiscal Year 2025-2026 budget. Financial Administration Director Kelly Strickland led the presentation, covering enterprise funds, internal service funds, trust funds, debt service funds, and the 5-year Capital Improvement Program (CIP). Key themes included storm recovery costs, parking rate adjustments, new staffing requests, and setting the maximum millage for the upcoming fiscal year. No formal votes were taken; decisions were deferred to a special meeting later that day at 2:30 PM.
The city maintains strong bond ratings (Moody's Aa1, Fitch AA+). Total governmental debt outstanding will decrease from $86.2 million to $80.6 million in FY26. Proprietary debt (enterprise funds) will decrease from $85.3 million to $79.5 million. The millage for debt service is decreasing. (Minutes p.11; Transcript lines 1361-1440)
Total 5-year CIP (excluding utilities) is $207 million, with $42 million requested for FY25-26. Twelve new projects totaling $23 million were added, including $12.7 million for Hurricane Helene and Milton infrastructure repairs. Other projects include Cocoanut Avenue redesign ($3.8M), Hyde Park Street redesign ($1.4M), and elevator replacements at Palm Avenue and State Street garages ($750K each). The CIP was structured without relying on FEMA reimbursements; if received, a policy discussion on allocation will occur. Public Works Director Doug Jeffcoat explained the lengthy FEMA process, with an example from Hurricane Ian taking over a year for a simple project. For the current storms, permitting and validation are ongoing, and a 3-year timeline for full repairs was estimated. (Minutes p.12-15; Transcript lines 1441-1800)
Interim City Manager Bullock highlighted upcoming major projects: performing arts center planning, parking garage at Bay Park, Van Wezel protection, Bobby Jones clubhouse, first street properties, and police radio upgrades. The proposed operating millage rate is 3.2730 mills (up from 3.0000). A special meeting was scheduled for 2:30 PM to set the maximum millage rate. The total proposed budget is $303,529,505, a 0.70% decrease from the adopted 2024-25 budget. (Minutes p.15-16; Transcript lines 1801-1900)
Oh, the phone for the model is lovely. So there's a phone. All right. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the um Tuesday, July 29th, 2025 City Commission budget workshop. This is day two of our budget workshop, and um we're gonna be beginning with enterprise funds, correct? All right, take it away, Kelly. Thank you. For the record, my name is Kelly Strickland. I'm Director of Financial Administration. And the first thing I want to show you is our checklist. We finished the overview of the general fund. We finished the reserves uh review for general fund. Uh we finished the city manager recommendations, we finished the um department of general fund review, and we finished special revenues. So we're almost halfway through. Uh we welcome to start on the enterprise funds today. And before we get started on that, I want to just point you in your workbook to page 289 through 291. This is a summary of every enterprise fund that we have. And this if you want to know what the term enterprise means, that means that these are funds that report an activity for which a fee is charged to external users for either goods or services. So we have our utility system, we have our Bobby Jones golf course, our Van Wezel, our solid waste management, and then our parking funds. The first uh fund that we're gonna look at is the water and sewer utility system. And I would ask for the director to come down and we'll start that presentation. While they're they're talking, um, the water and sewer fund for accounting purposes, we divide it up into four different subfunds. Our revenue account, which is our general operating account for water and sewer, um, the renewal replacement and improvement, which is for paying our unusual and capital type cost, our general utility reserve account, which is where we keep a reserve based on our bond resolutions, and when it gets a little bit high, then we use that for our CIP program, and then we have the interest in sinking accounts, which that is for debt service. Uh we put in one year of principal and interest in each of those. Just to give you an overview of the water and sewer fund, it has a beginning fund balance of 42.3 million, revenues of 61.7, expenditures, anticipated expenditures of 55.5 million, and then an ending fund balance of 48.5 million. And I will turn it over to Vern to talk furthermore about the system. For the record, Vern Hall, Utilities Director, and with me is Mark Nicholas, our general manager for administrative services. This gives a basic description of our water projects and wastewater projects for the coming year. The typical stuff that you usually hear from us, um water main replacements, sewer main replacements, uh lateral lines, lift stations, manholes, um, treatment plant rehabilitation, the typical stuff that you do every day in a utility. And these are a breakdown of some of our current projects that you're all very familiar with because we've been up here multiple times with the SRF funding packages talking about the water treatment plant quality improvements, the US 41 water main project, which has started, the Verna water mine replacement, that's getting ready to start. Wastewater treatment plant headworks, that's actively it's about halfway done. South Osprey Force Main and Replacement, that's actively ongoing. Um then the water reclamation facility comprehensive improvements, also known as the Wastewater Plant Project, um that is getting ready to go out to bid. Vern, could you speak closer to the microphone or speak up on it? Yes, ma'am. Sorry. And then this is just a uh quick utility rate comparison. And as you can see, we're just about in the middle of the pack with some of the surrounding municipalities. Uh budget issue. Uh this is a application support administrator for our CitiWorks implementation. CityWorks is an asset maintenance program. And what it does is it will sit on top of our GIS system. The GIS system is a graphical information system. It's like a map. And what CityWorks will do when we bring up a layer on that map. It shows us, let's say, our distribution system piping. It has hydrants, valves, meters, all those things. With CitiWorks, what we'll be able to do is say click on that hydrant, and we can see the repair history and maintenance history on that hydrant. So that helps for asset maintenance.