We'll draw a line down the middle.

Okay, guys.

Good morning.

I'd like to call this um city Sarasota Commission workshop to order.

Um I turned off my silence my cell phone before I came in, so I'm gonna ask that everyone else silence their phones.

We've got very important discussion today.

And um Commissioner Alpert is joining us via Zoom.

Is that the product we're using?

Yes.

And I will turn it over to City Manager Carrie Fryling for opening remarks.

So this morning, my pleasure to present the proposed fiscal year twenty twenty-six, twenty twenty-seven budget for the city of Sarasota.

This budget represents more than six months of dedicated work by our staff, guided by the leadership of our two former interim city managers under the commitment of employees across the organization.

It also reflects the policy direction and difficult decisions made by this commission over the past year to restore the city's financial position following the extraordinary costs associated with the 2024 hurricane season.

Although I recently joined the city, I have spent the past few weeks working closely with our finance team and each department director to review this budget in detail.

I am confident reflects sound financial stewardship, aligns with the Commission's priorities and policy set, and positions the city to remain financially strong while continuing to deliver high quality services our residents expect.

The city is in a significantly stronger financial position than it was a year ago.

Through the Commissioner's leadership and the hard work of our employees, we have rebuilt our fund balances, strengthen our financial resilience, and are better prepared to respond to future challenges that we may face.

As the Commission is aware, the proposed budget must be adopted before the end of September, well in advance of the November vote on the proposed constitutional amendment three.

While our focus today is on adopting a balanced and physically responsible budget for next year, we must also responsibly prepare for the uncertainty that can result if the amendment is approved.

Accordingly, we are moving forward on two parallel paths.

First is the budget before you today, a balanced budget that continues to strengthen the city's financial foundation while maintaining the level of service our residents and businesses have come to expect.

The second is evaluating the potential long-term financial impacts of the proposed amendment three, and developing thoughtful response strategies should the measure be ultimately approved.

These efforts are centered on three areas identifying opportunities to reduce costs, while minimizing negative impacts to essential services, evaluating revenue options that could help sustain current service levels, and improving organizational efficiency and business processes to deliver services that are effectively and lower long-term cost.

The work is being approached deliberately and strategically.

Our objective is not across the board reductions, but targeted, data-driven recommendations that protect core services and position the city for long-term financial sustainability.

Simply put, our approach is to use a scapel, not a sledgehammer, as we approach November.

These analysis and recommendations will be presented to the Commission separately at a future workshop separate from the deli budget adoption process, allowing each discussion to receive the attention and thoughtful deliberation that they both deserve.

Today's presentation is about the proposed fiscal year 26-27 budget, a budget that reflects fiscal discipline, strengthen the city's financial foundation, and continues our commitment to providing exceptional public services to the city community.

With that, I will turn it over to Finance Director Kelly Strickland to begin the budget presentation.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Kelly Strickland.

I'm Director of Financial Administration.

And with me I have Tyler Harris.

He is the budget manager for finance.

And today we are going to go through potentially the citywide portion of our budget, and then we're going to narrow down into the departments of the general fund.

So to start out with, you're going to see, we're going to talk about the city budget, where were we last year, where are we now?

We're going to have a discussion on our revenues, a discussion on our expenditures, the legislative priorities, and then we're going to go into each individual general fund department.

Where were we last year?

This slide provides a snapshot of major challenges the city faced last year and how they shaped our financial position going into fiscal year 26-27.

We dealt with multiple hurricanes and significant significant recovery needs.

Those storms created uncertainty and delayed federal reimbursements, which strained our ability to plan and fund normal operations.

Rising non-discretionary expenses, such as pension contributions, retirement obligations, and insurance added further to the pressure.

These costs increased automatically and are outside of the department's control.

To manage the financial impact, we suspended our equipment replacement program and we reduced funding across several internal allocations.

These measures were temporary but necessary to stabilize the general fund.

We also had to postpone the employee cost of living adjustment, underscoring how tight the fiscal environment was at the time.

The millage was increased from 3.000 to 3.2730, which helped support essential needs and maintain service levels despite the challenges.

Overall, the last year required difficult decisions and careful prioritization, all aimed at protecting core services while navigating significant internal pressures.

For recap, how did we get where we are today?

Last year's financial challenges were driven largely by three major storms: Debbie, Helene, and Milton, which created about 50 million in cost with 16 million directly impacting our general fund.

As a result, our unassigned fund balance dropped to 10.9%, well below the city's 17 to 25% reserve.

Through discipline budgeting and early reimbursement process, the fund balance was being brought back within the policy range.

We're expecting that at the end of this fiscal year we will have a fund unreserved fund balance of 17.1%.

Our FEMA reimbursements and insurance proceeds totaling potentially $11.7 million were key to that improvement.

So we did receive that.

Looking ahead, potential property tax reform could reduce revenues in the future years, making continued reserve rebuilding even more important.

Overall, this slide shows how the storm impacts, the recovery efforts, and the policy pressures have shaped our current financial position.

Our goals and objectives for the current fiscal year 2025-26.

Last year, our primary focus had been fiscal stability and rebuilding our reserves.

We began year one of the three-year plan to restore the general fund reserve levels back to the 17 to 25% policy target.

We maintained service levels throughout the year, even while departments were asked to operate with tighter budgets.

To manage the workforce related cost pressures, we postponed the employee colour and the benefit adjustments while still absorbing unavoidable increases in pension, health insurance, fleet, and self-insurance costs.

We continued advancing long-term stability efforts, including multi-year revenue and rate strategies and monitoring decline revenue declining revenue sources to identify early corrective actions.

We supported essential capital and infrastructure priorities, especially hurricane-related repairs that needed attention despite constrained resources.

And finally, we reaffirmed our public safety commitment, ensuring that the police and the fire operations remain fully funded even as we balance the rising non-discretionary cost.

Lastly, we established the solid waste debrief reserve.

That was a request from last year.

And in the event of a new hurricane, we have a reserve established that we can use for the immediate use for cleanup.

This is the city's total proposed budget, and you'll see the current budget, fiscal year 25 and 2526, and then the proposed budget for 2627.

As you can see, this budget has an overall increase of 18.7 million.

The major changes include, and you I really stress that you look at each individual fund type was the general fund.

The general fund increased 4.4 million.

This is primarily due to the COLAS and the non-discretionary costs that we have.

The special revenue increases or decreased $2.3 million.

That's spending of restricted funding sources, such as the major decrease was in tourist development for Leto Beach project and erosion.

These are completed projects.

We had no new debt, so that was pretty much a stable expenditure there.

This is primarily an increase in the water and sewer fund for planned spending on capital improvements.

And then you see the internal service fund.

The internal service funds are the funds that fund the city, such as the fleet services, which is the garage, or our self-insurance fund, or our information technology fund, our equipment replacement.

We have an increase of $2.9 million there.

That is primarily due to the insurance coverage increase that we have in our self-insurance funds.

And then the trust funds.

We have OPEB and the defined contribution.

We have $195,000 decrease due to medical, dental and insurance expense claims.

They're slightly lower because the retirees are switching from our plan to a separate insurance plan where at that point we just pay the premiums as opposed to their actual medical cost.

We are proposing a budget with 832 full-time positions for fiscal year 27.

This is an increase of five positions.

Each added position reflects a higher level of service for the community, part-time temps, and contract positions that are not included in the chart.

On page 95 of your workbook, there is a list, a summary of all funds section that will list out each position in each fund so you can see that that information.

An actuarial report is done for each of these pension plans to determine the amount of our annual required contribution.

And I want to just point out a little bit the general fund employee pension had a decrease of 239,000.

It is a closed plan, it is 81.6% funded.

The police officer pension had an increase of 221,000.

It is an open plan and it is 91% funded.

The firefighters pension plan had a $371,000 increase.

It is a closed plan and 89.2% funded.

The OPEB, the other post-employment benefits had an increase of $939,000.

This is for pre 1993 employees, and it is 86.7% funded.

And then if you'll recall in 2009, the city moved to the Florida retirement system.

The increase of contribution were required is 1.7 million.

This is an open plan and it is a statewide plan.

The budget issues that are proposed in the city for fiscal year 26-27.

And I will point out that this is a citywide slide.

The total budget issues will be discussed in detail in each prospective fund or department discussion.

There are three additional positions that are proposed for the general fund.

If approved, the redevelopment position, redevelopment project specialist position would be partially supported by the CRA in the amount of 57,000.

So you see on the slide that the cost to the general fund is 27 or 28,000.

The neighborhood grants in the amount of 40,000 has been identified as a budget issue.

And as we enter into two year two of our three-year plan to restore our fund balance and reserves, this item is presented to the commission for our funding decision.

The general fund budget issue impact is 251,000.

Also adds an administrative positions to both the downtown improvement district and the building fund.

These funds operate independently from the general fund and have their own dedicated revenue sources.

During the special meeting, the city tomorrow afternoon, the city commission will be asked to advance each of these issues to be included in the public hearings to adopt for fiscal year 26-27.

I do want to note that until we know the results of the property tax reform vote in November, the general fund positions will not be filled.

Excuse me.

Now I'm going to move the discussion specifically to the general fund budget.

The general fund is the main operating fund used to account for and report all financial resources that are not accounting for or reporting in other funds.

The budgeted revenues of 114 million are higher than the budgeted expenditures of 113 million.

By one point, the difference is 1.1 million due to the three-year plan to replenish the fund balance.

This chart represents the actual percent of unassigned fund balance to expenditures for the past 10 years.

The two lines represent the Governmental Finance Officers Association recommendation that we have 17 to 25% or two to three months of operations in case for unforeseen disasters.

In response to the severe drop in fund balance in fiscal year 25, the city adopted a budget in fiscal year 26 that increased revenues over expenditures for a three-year plan of restoring the fund balance back to the required policy level of 17 to 25.

As a coastal city, it's very important to make sure that we have sufficient reserves for potential storm damage.

However, we should also be sensitive to the objectives of the policy guidelines, which the city commission has adopted to have at least two to three months or 17 to 25 percent of fund balance to expenditures.

This is also a recommendation of the government officers finance association.

The city has a revenue stabilization policy.

Withdrawals from the revenue stabilization funding can only be considered if the general funds recurring revenues decline at least 3% below our budget projections in the current year.

And also only one third of the revenue can be recovered within the state by using the revenue stabilization funding during any one fiscal year.

No more than 25% of the revenue stabilization funding fund balance can be withdrawn per year, and use of the revenue stabilization funding must be approved by the City Commission.

I just want to point out that this fund has $3.8 million in it.

So when I give you the numbers of we are projecting we're going to be at 17.1% at the end of this year, we do not include the revenue stabilization fund.

That is on top of it.

So our fund balance we're projecting to grow from 17.6 million to 19 million.

Our revenues and expenditures are rising slightly with an ending fund balance of 1.1 million, and our reserves are increasing to 20.1 million, improving our ratio from 17.1 up to 17.8, which is within the city's policy.

With it included, the beginning reserves rise to 19, and then the ending reserves are at 23.

This boost our reserve fund balance from 17 to 21.2, placing us solidly within our policy range.

Potential ways to replenish the NSID fund balance reserves, and I use the word fund balance simultaneously with reserves, so they they are one and the same.

First of all, our reserves can be rebuilt by reducing our operating costs, but that may affect the service levels, so any reductions must be carefully considered.

But that may affect the service levels, so any reductions must be carefully considered.

Secondly, we can increase revenues through several options: adjusting the millage rate, raising fees for services, exploring special assessments, or identifying other revenue opportunities.

Third, FEMA reimbursements will play a major role.

We've received 9.8 million so far.

The total storm-related costs are much higher, so continued reimbursements are essential to restore storing our reserves.

The overall takeaway, we are utilizing a multi-prong, multi-year approach using expenditure controls, revenue enhancements, and federal and state reimbursements to rebuild our reserves to policy levels.

We have a layered strategy to manage these reserves.

When a disaster hits, we're a full we're deploying our reserves.

And now we have the solid waste debris removal that we can use for our cleanup right off the bat, and it doesn't affect our general fund.

Short term, we can file for FEMA claims, we can await approximately 75% federal reimbursement and possibly another 12.5 state reimbursement.

Medium term, we apply for grants for our recovery projects.

Long term, we make budget adjustments to restore our reserves to the policy levels.

We have budget amendments and cuts.

We can reduce and delay non-critical capital projects.

We can have a hiring freeze to reduce expenditures.

We can redirect revenues temporarily to replenish our reserves.

We have insurance proceeds, we have interfund borrowing, and as you remember the slide I showed where we have our general fund, we have special revenue, we have our enterprise funds, and we have other funds where that are restricted for specific sources, but if it meets that source, potentially we have a source there.

We can do short-term borrowing, and we can increase our revenues.

We'll spend less than budgeted, we'll build reserves through surpluses, and we'll make targeted contributions, including potential advalorm adjustments if needed.

We'll also delay or reprioritize projects to free the capacity for reserve rebuilding.

The goal is to hit the policy-driven fund balance targets consistently.

This is a long-term approach, and it demonstrates to Moody's and Fitch that we're committed to maintaining healthy reserves, supporting strong bond ratings, and lower borrowing cost.

Remember, our reserve policy calls for a 17 to 25 percent, roughly two to three months of operations, plus the revenue stabilization fund of 3.8 million gives us an added protection against revenue dips.

Strong liquidity and sound financial policies.

Both Moody's and Fitch assigned to us the second highest possible rating, reflecting strong fiscal management.

General obligation bonds are backed by the city's full faith and credit and require voter approval.

Special revenue bonds are backed by specific non-advalon revenues and do not require voter approval.

Maintaining these ratings help ensure the lower borrowing cost and support long-term financial stability.

This slide outlines our three-year plan to rebuild our reserves in a responsible phased way.

Year one, focus on storm reimbursements, a millage increase, reviewing fees, and tightening our operating budgets check.

Year two emphasizes stabilizing revenues, restarting equipment replacement funding, and preparing for possible legislative changes.

Year three including includes implementing new revenue sources and depending on voter action, just adjusting non-core services.

Overall, this is a deliberate multi-year strategy designed to study restore reserves while maintaining essential services.

And now we're going to get into the numbers of the general fund a little bit.

And for this presentation, I'm talking about the general fund as a whole.

Later, we'll have a presentation by departments.

Looking ahead to fiscal year 2627, the general fund revenues are projected to increase about 2.1 million versus the current FY26 budget.

Advalorum continues to be a primary driver with an estimated 3.37 increase at the 3.2730 operating millage.

We are also honoring dedicated increments such as $3.4 million to the Bay TIFF and $698,000 to the Newtown CRA, reflecting our commitments to those communities.

The communication service tax, half cent sales tax, and other miscellaneous revenues are experiencing the decline in revenue generation, while interest earning projections remain conservative, no budgeting for unrealized gains or losses.

Interfund transfers increased with the transfer of 102 for the CRO CRA over site, a million from the gas tax for street lighting, 1 million from the solid waste for past hurricane debris cleanup, and 919,000 from the development applications to recover the development application process cost.

Bottom line, the modest growth discipline assumptions, and continued support for dedicated TIFF and CRA obligations.

The city's taxable property values continue to rise, reaching a record $20.2 billion for fiscal year 2027, which sets the stage for the next slide where we look at how the rate of growth has changed year after year.

This chart shows how the rate of property value growth has slowed compared to previous years.

And I will note that everything is above zero, so for the past 10 years, we haven't had a decrease in property values, only an increase.

After several years of strong increases, 17.85, 13.16, 9.7, and 6.3, the most recent growth is 3.13%.

Property values are still rising, but at a much more modest pace, with which affects our future revenue growth.

The slowing trend is important as we plan ahead, especially for long-term revenue stability.

Note that tax year is January 1st through December 31st of the previous year as property tax revenues are collected in arrears.

For example, fiscal year 27 receives property tax revenues for a tax year of $1126.

What is a meal?

A mill is a unit used to calculate property taxes.

A mill is simply $1 of tax for every thousand dollar taxable value.

To calculate taxes, divide the property's taxable value by $1,000, then multiply by the millage rate.

Using the six slides example, a $300,000 taxable value at 3.2730 meals results in $981.90 in annual property tax.

Decreased to $3.00 and then increased to $3.2730 last year.

The proposed fiscal year 26-27 budget maintains the same 3.2730 operating millage.

Overall, this reflects a long period of stability with changes made only when necessary to support essential services and budget needs.1305 due to the use of the rollback rate for debt service.

The debt service millage continues to decline slightly, now at 1.0.1305 due to the use of the rollback rate for debt service, and it will continue to unless we issue more general obligation debt continually to go down until it's paid.

Combined the total city millage for fiscal year 2627 is 3.4035, reflecting the overall rate stability for taxpayers.

This slide shows how each dollar of the property tax is distributed across the various taxing authorities.

The largest share is about 43 cents, which goes to the school board.

Roughly 27 cents goes to Sarasota County.

22 cents of every property tax dollar comes to the city of Sarasota to fund our city services.

The remaining eight cents goes to other taxing authorities.

This breakdown helps show why changes in the city millage rate affect only a small portion of the residents' overall property tax bill.

This is a helpful when discussing the taxpayer impact and overlapping jurisdictions.

This slide represents the principal general fund revenues that are independent of advalorum taxation.

These revenues provide essential diversification and enhance the fiscal resilience.

Franchise fees represent compensation from utilities for the use of our public right-of-and and remain a dependable and significant revenue source.

The utility excise tax applied to electricity, gas, and related services offers consistent annual performance due to its broad and stable base.

The communications service tax applies to telecommunications and cable services while experiencing gradual decline statewide continues to contribute meaningfully to the general fund operations.

The half cent sales tax constitute the largest component of the state shared revenues and tracks closely with countywide economic activity, thereby supporting core governmental functions.

Lastly, state shared revenues from sales and fuel tax provide steady formula-driven support aligned with the statutory distributions.

Collectively, these revenues strengthen the city's financial structure by reducing dependence on property taxes and ensuring diversified funding for essential services.

Franchise fees are paid by the utility providers, such as electric and gas companies for the use of the city's public right-of-way.

In return for the operating within the city limits, these providers remit a percentage of their revenues back to us.

This revenue helps support general government operations.

You'll see in this chart that the franchise fee revenues have generally increased over time with an occasional fluctuation tied to utility consumption trends, rate changes, and overall economic activity.

These fees remain one of our more predictable non-advalorum revenues, and the slide also notes two specific components.

First, the FPL franchise fee, which is set at 6% under a 30-year agreement effective since 2010, and second, the payment in lieu of franchise fee calculation used for the water and sewer operations.

It takes net revenues after the operations and debt service and applies a 6% rate to generate a payment in lieu of franchise fees.

On this slide, we're looking at one of the city's long-standing and stable revenue sources, the electric water and bottled gas excise tax.

The city levies a 10% excise tax on several types of utility services.

This includes electricity, metered gas, bottled gas, fuel oil, and even water services.

Because these are essential household and commercial utilities.

When you look at the chart, you can see that the excise tax collections have shown consistent growth over time, reflecting both normal increases in utility usage and periodic rate adjustments by providers.

It's also worth noting that the revenues from FPL, the city's own utilities, and local propane and bottled gas vendors all contribute to this category.

Here's a quick overview of the communication service tax.

Our local rate is 5.92% combined with the state's 7.44%, gives Sarasota a total rate of 13.36%.

This tax applies to phone, cable, internet, and other communication services.

Revenues have stayed fairly steady over the years.

The growth has slowed as people shift away from the traditional cable and landline services.

It's important to note that the local communication service tax rates are frozen until 2031.

So we should expect this revenue source to remain relatively flat.

Overall, it continues to be a stable contributor to the general fund, but not a major growth area.

On this slide, we're looking at the half cent sales tax, which is our most important, one of our most important state shared revenue sources.

This tax is not the same as the penny sales tax used for infrastructure projects.

Instead, the half-cent sales tax come from state shared revenue that is distributed back to the counties and municipalities based on population and local economic activity.

What makes this revenue significant is its stability.

It consistently generates the largest amount of state shared revenue for local governments.

When the countywide retail spending is strong, this line tends to perform well and helps support core city programs.

As the chart shows, revenues have grown over time, though with some normal year-to-year fluctuations.

These numbers track closely with overall economic conditions.

So things like tourism, consumer confidence, and retail performance all play a role.

Overall, the half cent sales tax provides dependable support to the general fund, and it plays a key role in reducing pressure on property taxes while still helping us maintain essential services.

On this slide, we're looking at the city's steady and predictable revenue source, state revenue sharing.

State revenue sharing is made up primarily of two components: sales tax and motor fuel tax.

These revenues are collected by the state and then distributed to the local governments based on statutory formulas, including population and other apportionment factors.

When we look at this chart, you'll see both the components have remained consistent over the years with sales tax showing gradual growth and motor fuel tax holding fairly steady.

That stability is important because these funds help support general operations and reduce your reliance on property taxes.

We're going to start talking about the general fund expenditures.

What is included in our general fund proposed budget?

Previously I mentioned we have three new positions, one that is partially funded by the CRA.

We have cost of living increases for non-bargaining employees.

We have step increases for eligible employees.

And then also we have operating costs that we need to maintain the current levels of service.

Non-discretionary costs are costs that are not within the department director's control.

Often operating cuts are overshadowed by these fixed substance costs.

Earlier in the year when we did the budget kickoff, we spoke with each we give instructions to each director.

And we talked about our personnel, and we said if we're able to give COLAS this year, in order to do that, you need to go and you need to cut your operating budget.

And they did.

The departments did a fantastic job of that.

But there are some costs, and that's what this slide is that because we're statutorily held to make these payments.

They were unable to hit here.

But as we'll see as we get further along, you'll see where the operating costs have gone down significantly.

The total increase in our non-discretionary cost is $3.8 million.

The city's contribution for health insurance citywide is $11.3 million.

Our pension plans, we we expressed that before, and as you'll see on this, the total increase in our pension costs for general fund is $2.1 million.

Our property and our self-insured liability insurance increase $389,000, and our internal service fund allocations also increase $995,000.

I will remind you that in the previous last year, we cut our internal service fund allocations where we could.

Thank you.

How does the proposed general fund budget address year two of our fund balance restoration?

First, the operating budget is down $455,000 from last year.

This decrease reflects the commitment of the directors to find savings to help cover the increases in other categories.

Despite the task to reduce costs, service levels are unchanged.

We're maintaining the programs and response times to residents as expected.

To absorb the personnel and other non-discretionary increases, we tightened the operating line items and essentially eliminated eliminated general fund capital for the year.

On payroll, increases include for fiscal year 20, include fiscal year 26 budget amendments that we did for the bargaining units that are carried forward.

And also we've included a COLA for the non-bargaining in fiscal year 27.

We've also eliminated a one-time transfer of 500,000 to the self-insurance fund.6 million compared to fiscal year 2025-26.

The percentage change column highlights how each department adjusts its budget in response to the citywide direction provided during the February budget kickoff meeting.

At that time, departments were instructed to reduce their operating costs in order to help fund employee compensation adjustments.

This overall increase reflects several other key cost drivers, including the 3% cost of living adjustment for non-bargaining employees, along with mandated increases for pension contributions, property insurance, self-insurance needs tied to future legal obligations, and the reinstatement of the general fund fleet allocation.

Departments, the total budget again, is $113 million, and you can see how each department contributes to the overall spending.

One key point is that the police department represents the largest share, about 48% of the total general fund budget.

The remaining expenditures are spread across essential functions such as parks and rec, public works, administrative services, and other core operations.

Overall, this slide helps illustrate where our resources are allocated and the ongoing commitment to public safety, city services, and operational support.

The finance related ones are House Bill 1329, governmental accountability, House Bill 7031 E taxation, HJR-1F, property taxes, and CS slash HB 967, which requires local governments to accept electronic payments.

And I didn't put the effective date for the first three because I've got some more discussion on those, but the last one the effective date to accept electronic payments is January 1st.

I can tell you that the city is almost there on that.

There are a few areas such as in finance and I believe special events that aren't yet taking credit card payments, but we're we're getting there for the House Bill 1329 governmental accountability.

This one is specific, I feel like to finance.

We will have to make sure that our budget is posted.

Our tentative, our adopted tentative, and our final budgets must be posted online in a searchable download, downloaded format, and our budget must remain available for five years.

We have enhanced disclosure content, and we must include narrative analysis, revenue and expenditure summaries, organizational charts, capital projects, debt and reserve information.

The financial data that we put on our website must be searchable and filterable and graphically displayed.

We have to do a budget reduction exercise, which we will do next year at the workshop.

Mandatory workshop identifying 10% budget cuts without impairing essential services, and this must be posted at least 14 days prior to adoption.

We have to do employee compensation reporting.

This is quarterly posting of employee names, titles, and salaries in a downloadable format.

Impact fee standards are included, and then there are additional provisions that we have to do.

But again, I as I mentioned this one is one that is very much in the finance world that we will be working on.

This is effective January 1st, 2027.

House Bill 7031E taxation.

This provides for various sales tax holidays.

It requires a unanimous vote for dependent new dependent special districts to levy a property tax if they don't have a property tax in a prior year.

The limit it limits property tax assessments for various things such as agricultural land packing houses, mobile home parks, property owners with specific military deployments, and this is effective immediately.

HJR-1F property taxes.

This is for new and expanded homestead exemptions.

If it's voted is approved, 150 extra exemption.

Currently, everybody has a $50,000 exemption, it'll be 200.

And then the following year it'll be another 250,000.

After that, the increases will be whatever the CPI is.

To get this exemption, there's a residency requirement of five years.

The uses for property tax, which include public safety, education schools, infrastructure, natural resource and flood control projects, issuing and repaying local bonds, retirement benefits for local government employees and operations and administration.

Changes from 10% to 5% annually.

This is ongoing.

You're gonna see in the CIP program where we have a project that is specific to this.

Armands and Leto Key Underground Utilities, that is moving forward.

Last week you approved the contract to do the study for the district on that, and also the debt to borrow for that.

McCowan Towers parking garage is moving forward depending on debt issuance and a revenue study.

The Bobby Jones Golf Course Clubhouse is moving forward pending a debt issuance.

And I would point out that the use of repayment of that debt will be the penny four.

The Babe Cart Phase 3 is to be determined, and it's subject to county approval.

The Sarasota Performing Arts Center is paused, the downtown master plan study is paused, the water transit is paused, the affordable workforce housing initiative is paused, and various neighborhood lighting districts we're exploring at this point.

The police radio upgrade.0043 mills.

And if you go on down, we have two special districts.

We have the Golden Gate Streetscape special district.

One is it's operating, and that remains the same at 0.6148, and their debt service has decreased to 0.497, or it has a decrease of 0.922.

And then the downtown improvement district is two mills.

And that is the end of the first part of this presentation.

Have any questions?

And I see Commissioner Aherncotch is first on the button.

Yes.

Thank you very much.

That was really comprehensive.

Um so I really appreciate that.

I do have some questions.

First, the um reserve policy, we talk about it being between 17 and uh 25 percent.

Uh is this something the city should consider changing?

Raising it at some point in time, not right now, obviously, but at some point in time, you know, we never imagined having three hurricanes in one summer uh with also a major event.

Um we are a coastal city and we try very hard to keep it high up there, but um is it something we should you think we should change eventually uh to raise that?

It is something that we need to keep an eye on and to look at.

I would say right now I'm trying to get into the policy range, so let's do that.

But every year, you know, in the past years we've been between 28 and 32 percent, and part of my feel is that we are a coastal city.

We saw that firsthand with Melton and Helene.

It it is definitely something that we need to keep our eyes on because we what do we have in the future?

But again, right now we're trying to rebuild it up there.

So I bring this up because the struggle having been on the commissioner, Commissioner Alpert and I have been on the commission with Commissioner Bitti as well for a while where when we were high up there, um some folks were coming to us saying it's too high.

You're you could be using those funds elsewhere to increase our level of service.

Look at you hoarding this money.

And we took the hits and said, you know what, we're a coastal city, and we should be keeping this money because you just never know.

And thank goodness we did because we had it.

Um, in 24.

But maybe we should consider raising it so that um it's a reminder that you know it's it's wise to keep it up there.

It it's a fine line because you could get criticized to have too much, but you know, we saw we we were were criticized, and then we were hit with three hurricanes right in a row.

Right.

And so the thing is is the policy is 17 to 25.

My suggestion is maybe we should consider raising it to above since we were at 30, um, almost 32 at one point in time.

Um that was where the criticism is is why is it why are you keeping it above 25?

And we continually had that discussion, like we want to keep it above that because of the risk, and and I like I say, thank goodness we did, because we did get hit with those three hurricanes and we were able to do what we needed to do to keep our community as safe as we could.

So my suggestion is maybe consider readdressing that policy to what is more realistic in our future.

So that we are we we sort of let the community know we are behaving responsibly.

It's not that we're hoarding the dollars.

Yes, if I could respond to that as well.

I think it is appropriate to have more than what we currently have.

I think what um Director Sticklin is saying um saying is that we gotta balance all these competing needs, and we have a lot of the trains off the track coming at us for November, we don't know.

But the other thing I just want to point out is is that we do have the collection fee as well now that we didn't have in place.

True, yeah.

And um we've already started that collection fee, I believe it's in place now.

And so the good thing is if they've we are hit with additional storms, we're gonna draw from that fund first for debris removal and making sure that we're able to get out there and emerge, you know, uh and respond in immediately.

And so that's gonna help this as well.

True.

Yeah.

And so I think it's something we certainly should work at look at maybe during next year's budget discussion to see if you guys want to vote and actual amending that fund policy.

But I think we do have a couple other um fallback provisions in the event we are hit with a storm between now and then, which hopefully we won't be.

Well, thank you.

I just uh, you know, sometimes um the commission memory is it can be short when people cycle on and off the commission and they wouldn't remember when we were up there taking those hits and just a thought that maybe the policy should level should be raised whenever we get to that point when we're able to do something like that.

Um on page 20 of your presentation, uh year three, um, the first item implement new sources for revenue.

What what what does that reference?

Well, one of the things we did was we raised the mileage.

That was one thing.

But if we you know for the future, it's additional fees for the services that we provide, potentially special assessments for specific services.

Like can you just give me some examples?

Well, we're doing the undergrounding for St.

Armand's bid, and we're doing a study to determine what the assessment would be for that to pay for that.

So stormwater or lighting districts, um parks and red, you know, whatever the function is.

I see.

Okay.

Thank you.

That answers that question.

Um, page 45 of your presentation.

Um I think what it was under number three, you were talking about mandatory budget reduction exercise 10% uh has to be cut from the budget without impairing essential services, is what you said.

What is defined as essential services at this point in time?

Do you want to answer that, Jennifer?

I don't think those are defined in the bill as of yet, and it's not a mandatory cut of 10 percent.

We have to go through the um the um exercise of finding a 10 percent reduction.

So it's not a mandatory cut in the budget.

Right, right, right, but uh a mandatory budget reduction exercise, right.

Okay, without and so um what are the guidelines that we are giving our departments to say that's essential and that is not?

We haven't done that yet because that goes in place next year.

Okay, but we will do that once we get additional clarification from the state and what they define as essential services.

Will we get additional clarification from the state?

We will do what we are asked to do or what we defined.

It's their dictionary for that.

Okay, 47.

Um, so HJR-1F is also amendment three, correct?

Right.

And part of that it's my understanding that part of that is also a major piece of this is that there has to be a schedule of the state legislature that is put into the Constitution to eliminate property taxes altogether.

Um that's not in this piece here.

It's part of the ballot language.

It is part of the ballot language, but it's a um it again, it's not mandatory language that it has to be reduced completely.

And so we're gonna have to wait until if this gets passed, there will be an operational bill that gets passed along with it that'll um like an implementing bill.

Exactly.

That'll tell you how you that'll that'll give a little bit more direction.

So we just don't have answers to all of that right now.

Okay.

Because that was my understanding that that's the real sledgehammer of this was the eventual elimination of property taxes, which will go into the constitution, which will require 60 percent to undo should anybody ever want to undo it.

Right, but there's nothing in the current bill that basically says by X date property taxes have to be completely eliminated.

So we don't want to make any assumptions or any guesses on to how that looks or what the requirements are gonna be for any government to do that.

So we're gonna have to wait until we get either more direction from the legislation if that's in the implementation of bill.

So we don't want to make any assumptions for that.

But you are right, that is something that is big language in the bill everybody keeps forgetting to talk about, is that they do talk about a complete elimination.

Right.

Okay, and then that also uh limits the spending on with some vague language like essential services, core services, and things like that about what those are as well, what we can spend the dollars in the remaining years on with that vague language.

Do we know when an implementing bill will be issued?

It would probably be after the um the election.

We've been told potentially the governor would call the special session after the election to discuss that, but again, we don't have any firm direction with that.

Okay.

Thank you.

And then my last one is on page 50.

Um for the last one, the um police and radio upgrade, uh, which we must have in place by 2030.

Um it's my understanding that we got a federal appropriation for that of 4.22.

4.2 million.

4.2 million.

Yep, we asked um, so Congressman Stuby agreed to sponsor that bill in the federal budget.

It has passed all the subcommittees, so it is currently in the budget.

It has to still go through the House and the Senate, um, and then the governor or the um governors, the president's approval for that.

So we won't know until all of that is complete if we get it.

Um it can still be line item vetoed, but it has passed all the subcommittees, and that would be a 4.2 million, um, and we would potentially then get that um for next fiscal year.

And is that that is it's the I think the estimated cost total is 4.5 million, right?

That I'm not sure.

It's close to that.

Okay.

And we will make up the point three.

Yes.

So there is a um a required match for the appropriation.

And do we have that accounted for?

We don't currently.

It's part of our CIP and it's an out year, so it's only three years away.

So maybe not forget about that.

So when you when you get to the CIP, we do have these on the list, and you'll see some that are undetermined in funding.

So we only adopt one year of that five-year CIP.

And those all have funding sources.

So as we get to the out years, we will have to assign a funding source.

Okay, so we need to cross our fingers that it passes, and we need to find 0.25.

Um and it's matching.

It's it's required.

Is it 0.25, or could we get another appropriation or grant for that?

Well, we'll have to wait until so what happens is when we get the appropriation approved, then the federal government sends us a grant agreement that lays out the requirements for that appropriation.

So again, I don't want to say anything until we get that grant agreement on exactly what that language is gonna be.

Okay, okay, because 0.25 doesn't sound like a lot, but those are real dollars.

So, okay.

Those are my questions for the moment.

Thank you very much.

It was really, really good.

Very comprehensive.

Thank you.

Uh Vice Mayor.

Thank you.

Um, Mr.

Clint, thank you for making all those millions of dollars that sort of jump together into one pot and are very difficult for us to understand.

Thank you for making it a little bit easier for us.

Good job.

Um I also want to say kudos to all to administration and you for planning the three-year plan to recoup our reserves to the commission for passing that, and to staff for implementing it.

We're not done, but we're on our way, and that's a good thing.

So I have several questions.

They're on the old pages.

I'm sorry, I'm gonna try to find the new page.

But I think it's page 16.

Potential ways to replenish unassigned fund balance reserves.

Most of the numbers stayed the same.

So that's the page I'm referring to.

So you indicate three ways in which we can replenish fund balances.

And I'm wondering if there's anything we can do, the city can do to encourage FEMA to reimburse more of our funds.

Is there anything at the city level that can be done to get those FEMA funds?

I don't think so.

I think we're on their timeline.

So we have our emergency management officer.

She has, you know, we what we do is we have all of our records that we need.

We submit things in a timely manner.

We do our side of it, and then we're based, it's whatever their timeline is or when they have the money to send it to us.

But if we if we keep good records and we do our portion of it, that's going to make it a lot better for us.

Okay.

Thank you.

If I could answer that too, I'm just kind of picking back off of what Director Umsat.

Um we have Rachel Ingall who has been with us not quite a year.

She is our EOC manager.

Um and she's actually going to be presenting at your commission meeting next week about all the work she's been doing in-house to really kind of reinvent and update our EOC processes.

Um the nice thing about having Rachel on staff is that she came from FEMA, um, and so she really has some really good relationships built with the folks at FEMA, and she's also the one who's helping us manage our reimbursements and what the statuses are of those programs.

And I think that um having someone like that who can now um work on behalf of the city and have those relationships rebuilt with FEMA will help us over time.

That sounds very good.

Yeah.

And then another category on that page is increased revenues.

Um you list four options there.

And it seems to me that that's an area where we might want uh a commission workshop or commission discussion on how to prioritize those areas within that category.

Uh not a question, just a comment.

Um now going on to page what might be page 22, forecasts for general revenue, general fund revenue.

That's it.

So if you look in the on the left under the description column, second from the bottom is other funding, other financing sources.

And if you follow that all the way to the far right, percentage change column, it's 80.37% percentage change.

That's a huge percentage to me.

Could you explain that a little bit?

Absolutely.

So one of the things in this budget that we haven't had in prior budgets is the Solid Waste Fund is transferring a million dollars in it's to help us to recover some of the debris costs that we had initially with our hurricanes.

So that's it just it's a little dollar amount to start with, and then anything of it is almost doubled with that amount.

Another uh transfer in in there is from the development applications uh fund and the development applications according to the land code.

Um we're supposed to raise revenues enough to cover for the cost of the applications.

Part of that is for the building service fund, and part of it is the general fund.

Last year, I believe our transfer was only like 600,000.

This year it's 900.

So there's a $300,000 increase right there.

Gotcha.

Thank you.

Um I'm almost done.

Uh moving on to pi what might be page 25.

Annual percentage change in assessed valuable value, taxable value by tax year.

Right.

Um you see that one year where there's the huge jump.

Could you explain that a little bit?

No.

No.

Um new buildings come online.

Um, I'm sorry, I can't.

But could anybody explain that?

Well, new construction is basically the answer.

Okay.

I'm even thinking it's to some extent it's a recovery from the pandemic where the economy took a hit during the pandemic and then it rebounded in 2022.

Okay, since nobody seems to know, I'll take both of those answers.

And then the I can talk to the property appraiser and offline send you a response on that.

Okay, that'd be great.

Okay.

And then the final question is uh related to Commissioner Ahern Koch's question about increasing the reserve range.

Um I wonder if there are any other reserves account reserve account funds.

I'm sorry.

Are there any other reserve funds like the solid waste fund that we established that we should consider initiating that would be require a deep dive, you know, into the department level, uh which departments took a hit in addition to solid waste, but I think it's worth something worth discussing at the department level.

Those are all my questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Ms.

Griggs, is Commissioner Alpert wanted to weigh in?

Um she hasn't said anything, but I will I would say ask her.

Commissioner Alpert?

I have no questions, thank you.

Okay.

Commissioner Batti, anything?

I I did have uh a couple, and some of them are along the uh expanding on what uh Commissioner A.

Hern Kotch and the Vice Mayor mentioned.

Um I'm gonna turn to slide um 16.

And it's going back to the question of FEMA reimbursements.

When we did the budget for this year with the effort to increase our fund balance, it was with the assumption that we wouldn't see anything from FEMA, so that if we did see something from FEMA, we'd be in better shape.

So I and I know you said that we recovered our fund balance to some extent greater than you anticipated, and I'm wondering first of all if that was attributed to that 9.8 million from FEMA.

Some of it wasn't also from insurance proceeds that we received.

That helped tremendously.

Um I do not book at the end of the fiscal year an accounts receivable from FEMA because I don't know when it's going to come.

So you are totally correct in saying this budget is not based on anticipation, only actual of what we've received.

Okay.

And this 9.8 was all or most of it from 2024 storms or from prior storms.

Oh, it's it's mostly from the 2024.

Okay.

Okay.

And and how much would you speculate we might still see from FEMA for 2024 storms?

I don't have a number for that.

Well, how how much have we asked them for?

Well, I we we have 50 million in in problems in in damage.

Um they will reimburse anywhere from 75 to sometimes 100% of that.

Um we said 16 million of it was the general fund.

Um I would like to receive a little bit more.

We've got 9.8, so a little bit more would be helpful, but the rest of it, if we get it, it'll be a reimbursement to our capital program.

Where we had to go and move things from other projects, postpone them in order to do the repairs needed.

And those are not general fund related, they're other funds.

Okay.

That that clarifies it.

So we'll talk about that tomorrow because I understand that the delay in some of those repairs is we were waiting for FEMA to look it over and approve it, and we couldn't even make repairs until that happened.

That's correct.

Okay.

And those are different funding sources like penny sales tax specifically that we were using for those.

Thank you.

Okay.

And then on the slide 17, the layered strategy to manage reserves.

That we just implemented.

How much of that?

How much would be even available if we had a storm this year?

Well, we hope they'll wait till next year.

And assuming that they do, when we get to the solid waste budget, we have are building up uh 1.8 million in there that we expect for it to have.

Um there when you set the reserve up, it was a five-year plan to get it to five million.

So we do not have that cushion now.

We and we will only probably have a million next year.

That's correct.

Because if you recall that that starts August 1st, that we're collecting it, so it'll take a while.

Um and then page 25.

Um I you know again with the total numbers of increase.

I'm looking, I'm thinking this is a citywide total, which would be a combination of all the individual properties, some of which could have increased in value and some of which could have decreased in value, plus the additional properties that came online the end of by the end of the previous year, right?

So it's not saying everybody's property value increased.

Right.

Okay.

Okay.

Just just wanted to make sure that there, you know, just in case there are people out there saying, oh, my property value did not increase 3.13%.

So then going to uh 41, maybe.

Okay, 40%.

Um with the last bullet, the um offset the personnel and this non-discretionary cost increases by reducing operating costs and essentially eliminating capital costs.

What's the long-term effect of essentially eliminating capital costs?

I think that's a very good question.

I'm glad you pointed it out.

So we have an equipment replacement fund that's an internal service fund that we'll talk about later.

Um every department that has equipment, they they put like a lease payment into that, like a savings account.

If if uh planning buys a vehicle, then you think a vehicle lasts five years.

So every five years they take one-fifth of the money for that vehicle and they put it in this equipment replacement.

So their savings account is over there.

Um we really don't want our departments to buy one-time equipment from the general fund.

We'd rather that you plan for it.

Now occasionally that just doesn't work out, and then we we budget a capital item.

And when I when you look at this and you see capital, I'm not talking about anything that's our on our CIP, anything 50,000 and over.

These are usually equipment like a bomb suit or a truck or a tractor.

Well, tractor may go on the CIV, but um, it's it's big equipment.

And then one of the things if last year what we did is we cut that lease payment, that's what I'll call it.

Um we cut that lease payment in half because we we knew our fund balance was hit dramatically from the storms.

This year, um the ideal thing would be to replace that to put it right back in there at 100 percent.

However, we're still in year two of a three-year plan to increase our fund balance.

So what we did is department by department, they have an ownership in the equipment replacement fund.

We looked at what their balance was there and determined, can we still continue to cut your your lease payment or do you need to build it up?

And I can tell you there were some departments like the police.

They had a sufficient ballots over here.

If they lose a bomb seat this year, they do have money.

It may not be on their five or ten year plan to spend it at that point, but they do have it available.

Um one of the departments that we found was parks and rack.

They had such a low balance in their equipment replacement that we did keep their funding, their lease payment up there because we don't want them to have to run out and not be able to have the equipment they need to use.

So it was very much on an individual basis that we evaluated how much of the payment into that equipment replacement fund is.

So can I presume that either each year you will go through the individual department process or at some point when the overall situation changes, you might say, okay, we can go back to our previous way of operating.

Yes.

Okay.

Definitely.

So you you're gonna continue to look at that.

So then I what got to slide number 41 and the list of the departments and the cost centers, and I was wondering from this, how does this list track with what the state defined as core services that you delineated on slide 20?

Um I'm gonna confess the the one that jumps out on me that might not be a core service is special events.

But I'm wondering what other red light, you know, red flags there might be on that list.

Yeah, that's actually a really good question, and we're still waiting for some additional guidance.

Um hopefully we will get as this um proposition goes forward.

Um if you read the ballot language that was approved when they voted on it, um it talks about core services such as police and public works.

There's other um words that you don't see anywhere listed.

You don't see the words parks, you don't see the word recreation, you don't see the word economic development, you don't see the words of special events, you don't see the things that a lot of things that um all local governments in the state of Florida do to promote um quality of life and the things that our residents thinks are important and and the reason why they choose to live in the community they choose to.

Um and so that is something that we've worked very closely with with our lobbyists when they were talking about the language.

Um, as we get further into having this um more solidified, there's a lot of challenges out there that they're going through the courts too.

We're hoping to get additional clarification.

There was some wording that was um um added at the very end, right before the state took the vote on it, and uh Ms.

Jorgensen can speak to that.

But there was some vague language that was added that said basically, without having the language in front of me, it said in any other thing that the elected officials may consider to be you know important, essential.

Um that was like a kind of that's like a catch-off phrase, right?

As pretty vague.

Um and so we've gotten, you know, varying um dependent in opinions on what that means.

Right now, our our um our we're moving forward saying that it's really what you as the elected officials of the community and the residents of Sarasota determine to be necessary as part of a core service, because it does fluctuate from one community to the next, but it's considered core.

Um but again I'm sure that there'll be continued conversation up to when this is ready to the ballots are ready to be printed to maybe have some more additional direct um resolution.

Thank you.

I'm taking a personal privilege to interpret natural resources as including parks.

Um anything else.

Yeah, on page 46 with the the taxation bill, uh item number two uh bullet two requires a unanimous vote for dependent special districts.

By whom is this unanimous vote?

Would that be the local commission?

Would that be the tax special district resident voters?

What's what's the unanimous vote required?

It's it's the board of the district, so um in our situation it would be you.

Okay.

Um okay, and and I'm wondering what the undergrounding would not be including included in that.

That's already happened.

They haven't voted on it yet.

They still need to vote on it.

But okay, they have to that's a special assessment.

Okay.

Um, and I'm pretty sure.

Oh, yeah, the major projects on page uh, I guess it's forty-nine and fifty.

The pauses are the pauses waiting for the results of the November vote, and after we see what happens with that uh amendment, then we can reevaluate whether we read.

Yeah, um, depending on the outcome of the referendum.

We'll come back before the commission and have that future conversation.

Okay, um, based on the vote, you know, what happens on these projects, which ones to go forward, which one's don't, and the implications of that long term.

Okay.

Thank you very much, and thank you for a very thorough presentation.

And I see Commissioner Aher and Kotch has a few more questions.

No, just na I just wanted to make a statement about the item that you had said on page 41.

Um about uh parks and rec.

I think that they would qualify as infrastructure.

Um for me.

So I just want to be careful that we don't sit up here and try to interpret it when when we when we have to get into that, I think we'll definitely look to our um city attorney's office and the experts in the field to help us interpret that.

But we can definitely ensure you that when we get to that point, when we get more instruction, if this passes, um, that we'll definitely work on what we'll legally be able to do at that point and um go forward from there.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Any other questions from the commissioners?

It is ten twenty-eight.

Uh perhaps this is a good time to take a twelve minute break to get us back here at ten forty.

Perfect.

Okay.

Thank you, everyone.

Welcome back.

We are back in session to the uh July twenty-seventh City of Sarasota budget workshop day one.

Um, and we are going to resume with Kelly Strickland, Director of Financial Administration.

Well, good morning, and welcome back.

I am going to turn over this presentation to Tyler H Harris.

And with each department, we will ask the department head to come down.

Tyler Harris, budget manager of City of Sarasota.

Um, as Kelly said, now that we've seen the general fund overview and the big picture of the general fund, now we're going to spend some time going over the individual budgets that make up the general fund.

We're going to go through the city departments one by one.

That initial page will be a more of a higher level summary page, and then the following pages from there will get into more progressive detail depending on the size of the and the structure of the department.

We'll depend, we'll determine the number of pages that follow it.

And as Kelly said, as we go through the departments, we'll have the each director come down and they can add any specific information or answer any questions that you may have.

With that being said, we'll go ahead and start with our first department, which is City Commission.

Which is on page begins on page 113.

So this department has a 1.33 FTE.

You'll notice that the personnel costs increase slightly due to salary increases in FRS contribution increases.

No questions.

Where the five of us show up.

So I'll address that.

I think that was asked last week.

Your professional development is budgeted on the bottom of page 114.

You'll see 30,000 there, and there's uh budgeted 6,000 for each commissioner for travel and training.

Yeah, mayor, if you're requiring why you're not listed as full-time equivalent positions, um, it's because you're not technically defined as employees.

Nor full-time.

I'm just wondering where the expense of us shows up in the budget.

Yeah.

Is in personnel services?

Correct.

So our salaries are in personnel services, and our personal development, professional development conferences training is on page 114.

And you are considered part-time, so we wouldn't be in the full-time equivalent.

Right, right.

But I I was looking for the dollars.

Yeah.

We also did.

We also um at my request I added the um $50,000 for strategic planning for next year because we are in need of doing some strategic long-range planning for the district, uh, not the city overall.

So is that's on page one four.

Page 114.

Special services.

Special services, yes.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

And that's it.

That was my question.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Moving right along.

The next department we'll look at is on page 116.

And that is the city manager's office.

This department includes 5.33 FTE.

It includes the city manager, deputy city manager, independent police advisory coordinator, uh, an admin assistant, and uh a marketing marketing and outreach coordinator.

Um the personnel increase, you'll see that that big jump right there, uh, is primarily moving the deputy city manager position out of SPD where it was previously located, and now it is in the city manager's office.

And so the that was the by far the large portion of the reason why this uh budget increased 48.2%.

Umperating increase just slightly.

Oh, I had a question.

Any questions on the city manager?

No questions.

Uh Commissioner Aaron Kach.

Yeah, can you explain that to me again?

Because I have here city manager's office at the bottom.

Sorry, this light is reflecting on my page, kind of funny.

Um the uh expenses personnel services from 1.27 to 1.6 increasing, and then I have at the bottom full-time position 7.33 to 8.33, but you said it just went out.

So it's going from SPD fully back into the city's budget.

Correct.

All right.

And then on the next page, City Manager's office.

5.33.

Yes, so so that first page on page 115, that's the city manager's office as a whole.

So that includes like communications.

Um that's why it's a little different.

The page 116 is isolating just the city.

Just that department.

Okay.

And where would I where would I know that from reading this?

Where would that explain that to me?

Um up at the top of page 115, it's it's kind of small up there.

It says division, city managers.

So that that's how you know it's encompassing everything.

Um if I'm understanding your question correctly.

Yes, division and then program.

Got it.

All right, that's the words.

Division and program.

Got it.

Thank you.

Yep.

That's it.

That's it.

Um yes, that was it.

That was my question.

The next department is communications.

That would be on the very next page.

And this is a program of the city main office city manager's office.

Page 117.

Uh this budget uh has three FTE positions.

Um primarily the only increase was just personnel cost due to uh the cost of living adjustment and any step, any employees that were eligible for step increases.

Yes, I had a question.

Okay.

Um my question was on um the page 118.

The reduction, the expenses in redu uh relocation and moving costs from 35 to 8,000.

Yes, uh, that was for um as part of the new city manager's relocation costs.

Um we budgeted at the time.

Um we figured that we had two months in the fiscal year 27 to pay for the housing portion of that.

So we budgeted two months of that.

That's what the 8,000 is.

The 33 was previously all the expenditures.

Okay.

But those were in the current year.

Okay.

And then the next budget it'll be dash.

Yes.

I mean the following year it'll be a dash.

Yes, correct.

Correct.

Okay.

Okay.

Moving right along.

The next department is governmental affairs beginning on uh page one nineteen.

Uh this would this group or division, sorry, uh includes purchasing and grants.

And sorry, what?

Oh, department.

Um the governmental affairs office also oversees special events, but that is not included in in this page.

That we will see that separately.

Umly there are 10.34 positions in governmental affairs.

There is a budget issue you will see for uh a full-time position.

If approved, it would bring it to 11.34.

Um that is built into that 12 percent uh personnel line, you can see at the top.

Operating expenditures increased 11.8% for an overall budget increase of 12.8 percent.

I have a question.

Commissioner here in cotch?

Um yeah, thank you.

Um Ms.

Jorgensen can probably answer this question for me.

So um I'm just wondering about um the departments under the government affairs being you know, special events and purchasing and things like that.

Um from an organizational standpoint, does it make sense to have purchasing and special projects?

Uh I see grants being part of governmental affairs, but the others, uh how does that make organizational sense?

Can you help me understand that?

Um special events and purchasing probably isn't traditionally departments that would roll up to a governmental affairs.

Um however, when I first came here, that was the way that the the um department was structured.

And so we've kept it that way just to keep consistency.

Um with the new with me taking over the new position of of department or deputy city manager, we did keep governmental affairs under that.

Um and to keep the the team together, I think we're gonna keep that for this upcoming year, and then obviously look in the future to see if there are other departments that make more sense for those, but I think for right now it works.

Okay.

Okay.

Um yeah, it just does it, it did just didn't make sense to me organizationally.

Yeah.

Um and the one position is that that's for a governmental affairs person or no, that posit the position we're hiring for is for procurement.

Procurement.

Okay.

So it is for a senior buyer role.

Um we have it's actually to allow us to hire an assistant general manager role.

So we have an assistant general manager head count that is in the budget, but it is being filled currently with a senior buyer position.

And so we are creating a senior buyer head count so we can move that position into the appropriate role, which allows us then to hire for the assistant general manager role for procurement.

And who's the head of of the government affairs now?

Jennifer Jorgensen.

And so Jennifer Jorgensen is doing two big roles.

Yes.

And that will continue.

That will continue until we know the results of the referendum.

So November 4th, we we can have a new discussion about this?

Potentially.

Okay.

And that would require a budget amendment if Jennifer Jorgensen is relieved of that second department head role.

No, her her the her um all position is currently vacant but funded.

We're just not filling it.

Okay.

Okay.

But it is funded.

It is, yes.

It's frozen.

Okay.

Frozen.

Is the word we're using.

Okay.

I have a general question.

Um I don't remember your terminology for say where each individual department pays uh into IT and building services.

What was what was that fund?

What was that called?

It's cost allocation.

It's cost allocation.

Cost allocation.

So I'm wondering if the line items below personnel services for government governmental affairs are all cost allocation.

No.

The cost allocation for information services and fleet services you'll find in the unclassified division department of this budget.

They're not individually permit.

It's just one line out of it.

Okay.

So we'll get there when we talk about the unclassified.

The unclassified is like doesn't have a home.

So then I'm I'm just generally wondering what are contractual services, utilities, maintenance and repairs in governmental affairs.

Sorry.

I can't imagine what the needs are in those line items.

So I can answer the contractual services.

So purchasing, mainly those lie in the purchasing department.

And that is to allow us to hire consultants or experts if we do, for example, a solicitation.

That might be have a requirement that our senior buyers or our buyers don't have.

Or if we have too much request for solicitations that we don't have, because we don't have a very large staff for our procurement.

So we do keep a small budget in consulting services for those type of events.

Okay.

And uh utility maintenance room and repairs?

Maintenance and and repairs.

It's mainly like uh computer software maintenance.

Yeah, I was gonna say, is that the computer and software maintenance, the 4600.

Okay.

So we have um procurement has a software called OpenGov.

That's where we do all of our solicitations on.

That is the new software that we have um just purchased last fiscal year.

These are the annual um uh fees that we have to pay the the um.

So that goes against uh procurement as opposed to against IT.

It does, yes.

We pay for those out of our budget.

Yep, any software annual license.

Okay.

License, that's the okay.

That clarifies it.

Thanks.

Uh move on.

I think we can move on.

The next department we have is human resources.

That begins on page 127.

This department has 11 FTE currently.

Uh this department also has one budget issue.

And if it approved if it is approved, uh it's for a position, so it would bring it to 12 FTE.

Uh the revenues you will see here are uh transfers from the self-insurance insurance fund to offset the departmental budget for the work they do managing those funds.

Um you'll see that the personnel uh line decrease there.

Uh that was due to um the previous director being uh in the general pension plan and when uh that person left uh the pension cost is greater is much greater than a replacement position, so that's why it's going down.

Uh and then just the various operating costs that were decreased for an overall budget decrease of 11.8%.

No questions?

I have no questions.

No questions.

Thanks for the walk down.

Next department is development services, beginning on page 135.

This department also includes code compliance.

You'll see revenues slightly increased by 6.5%.

You'll notice also that personnel decreased five over 5%.

This is due to the shifting of personnel from development services over to building services.

So just a shifting of allocation for those personnel.

So this current currently they have 22.45 FTEs.

10.95 of those are in development services and 11.5 are in code.

The various operating decreases are contractual services, maintenance and repairs.

Commissioner Herncott.

Yes.

Can you just talk to me about the switching of the personnel from development services to building services and what the logic is behind that?

Yes, there was a house bill that was passed last year in last session that allowed for us to use some of the building fund for planning and zoning tasks, sorry, that are associated directly with a building permit.

So we were able to put some of those salaries, a percentage of the salaries of our zoning and development review planners to the building fund.

So it's paid out of the building fund then.

A percentage, yes.

Right.

Okay.

And so that's it's classified as three, almost three people.

Is that what that is?

Yes.

Almost three people.

Yes.

Okay.

And yeah, that's that's huge.

That's correct.

But yes, really various employees, and it's just a percentage of each employee.

And it added up to about three.

That's huge.

Yes.

Yes, we were very happy about that.

Okay.

Um and then code enforcement.

Um I ask this every year.

Do we have enough code enforcement employees?

Does code enforcement need more?

I believe we have enough code um enforcement officers.

However, we do not have enough admin support to keep up with the complaints that we get and setting it for special hearing and special magistrate hearings.

Um that is something that we are looking at as far as kind of trying to revive and reform a little bit the complaint process and our uh notice of violation process.

Um I did want to mention too, because it is under code compliance, our vacation rental expansion to downtown neighborhood is going to come back to you in August.

And during that time, we are anticipating and requesting an additional administrative person that will help with the vacation rental program and also um with the code enforcement part of it.

So should that be part of this budget or is it, or will it be a budget adjustment?

It'll be a budget adjustment.

Okay.

Um and then I wanted to ask under the operations it says um certified code compliance inspectors conduct systematic inspections of properties.

How does that work?

Well, there's several under the code of code compliance um division.

We have our foreclosure division, which also um does site inspections to make sure that the that foreclosed properties are being maintained.

Um complaints, you know, we do go and visit sites.

Um we have to be to be able to go inside, we have to um have the owner um allow us to go inside.

Um so we have that kind of inspection.

We do a lot of proactive inspections where we drive around and whatever we can see from the exterior is what we can address unless we get um admission inside.

Um thank you for responding about the need more admin um question.

Um I think that's the first time that's been said out loud, so I thank you for that.

That's it for the moment.

Okay, moving on.

Thank you.

The next department we'll talk about is facilities management beginning on page 143.

This department currently has 11 FTE.

You'll notice the decrease of one from the 26 budget, and that is from moving one position to the engineering division.

The revenues are transfers from the solid waste and water water and sewer funds to cover eligible expenditures for servicing those divisions.

And then other than that, uh the operating just kind of increased slightly.

Any questions?

Overall budget decrease of eight per 8.6%.

Commissioner Aaron Kotch.

Yeah, same question.

Um why the move?

Uh Vern Hall, facilities director.

Um we first looked at moving facilities into the utility group.

Um the decision was based on uh they were an operational group, and it made more sense for them to be in an operational type department.

But that position primarily handles the CIP for facilities.

And it made more sense when Nick and I were sitting down and discussing what what made sense.

It made sense to move that position over into public works to be part of their CIP group so that that position could assist in CIP as well as handle the CIP functions for facilities.

So it was just a uh a better general fit for the functions of that position to belong in a CIP oriented group.

Okay.

And then the um is the the decrease there in expenses that's directly due to that position?

Yes, it is.

Okay.

Because I did circle several of them and just curious why they were decreasing.

Yay, but all right.

That's it, thank you.

I just have to ask, do you have everything you need with facilities?

We feel it every day.

So I'm sure you do.

Um, like anything, you you have to take it and you have to operate it and you have to figure it out, and that's we're in that figuring it out stage and determining what's going to be best for facilities, what's the best way to function, what additional resources we may need.

But we've got this budget year that we'll get through and we'll figure all of those things out when it's time to do next year's budget.

Then we may have some other things that we need to discuss.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Anything else?

That's it.

No, well, thank you for coming up.

Mayor, could I say sorry?

Oh, this is not a question for you.

Um I just want to say for the record that I had 44 questions that I asked before the meeting.

Okay.

The next department is financial administration, beginning on page 146.

This department has 16.2 FTEs.

You'll notice uh a slight change from FY26, and this is um another personnel shift.

We have shifted uh half of a position to be funded by the utility billing department for work that is done for that department.

Um the personnel increase is just due to the COLA and steps that are for eligible employees, and operating decreased slightly for an overall budget increase of 0.5%.

Anything?

Not for me.

I have a question.

Um so previously we talked about uh the state requiring us to do provide electronic payment modes.

Um that won't impact you in any way, needing additional staff.

Uh how is that working for you making that change?

I don't think we're gonna need additional staff for it.

What we do is we take our current vendor contracts and look at like we already accept electronic payments.

We're just gonna expand it.

So wherever you see the um maintenance and repair line, you had brought that up, Mayor.

Um, is our annual contract on our software?

There may be an increase there because of um additional uh software that we have at annual maintenance cost on.

Thank you.

Okay.

Yes.

Edit?

Okay, thank you.

Moving right along.

Next department is city auditor and clerk, beginning on page 151.

Um pension plans, clerk activities, election special projects, audit, records management, public broadcasting, and domestic partnership registry.

It has 20 FTE.

You'll notice that uh the personnel increase just due to the COLA and steps for eligible employees, and the operating uh budget remained basically flat for an overall budget increase of 2.6 percent.

Commissioner Aherncot.

Just one question on this one.

Um the um contractual services.

Uh curious what what that is.

Um that could primarily is Granic is um.

Oh, it's Granicus.

A lot of um a lot of our stuff comes from Granicus.

Um most of our platforms are from there.

Um we also use that for example, our audit.

We have to do uh peer review and a peer audit.

So we have somebody come out from the outside that comes and audit our audit group.

So we have to pay for that.

That is a fee that we have to pay for as well.

These are all just consultant fees that come from the outside.

Also, can another contractual services that we budget for if we have to have an off-cycle election.

Never know what may happen to any of you all.

Either you decide you want to leave us, somebody could possibly pass away.

You don't know.

So we have to budget for that and be prepared for it because we have to pay for that out of pocket because it will be an out off-cycle election, and we have to pay for poll workers, have to pay for everything.

Okay.

Um and um granicus.

Um is that the best that the city should be using?

I mean they'll get us started on that.

Let's say, hey, I opened a can of the way.

No, no, no, we get it.

They are probably the monopoly of on this platform.

I think every municipality uses some version of it.

Yes, and they know that.

So their prices have gone up.

And they will continue to probably go.

My 33 years in local government, every community I have worked in has granted.

So if you're looking for a new side hustle, figure out how to compete with yeah, I would agree with that.

Is there another option?

I is no, no, not that they not at the level of services and modules and software they can provide, unfortunately.

No.

No, they have the monopoly and they know that and they can charge what they want, unfortunately.

And then prices have increased dramatically as well.

Okay, so let's do a shout out now for her competitive uh software.

And then yeah.

There's a market for it.

Yeah, yeah, everything.

So it is the three people that are listening, go for it.

Vice Mayor.

I do have a question.

Um, I forget the name of it now, but is there any cost to the city for the technology and paper shredding, shred stock?

No, shredding.

And the garbage men.

We uh we do budget for paying them.

Uh-huh.

We also budget for you know the truck.

Um we take the we put that aside every year as we have funding for that.

We take that out of our budget.

Um, because we do believe that's a benefit for the city, the benefit for the public.

I've heard so many positive comments from people who've utilize that service.

So we do budget for that because we like to provide that to the community.

So that is a part of our budget.

We do budget for that.

Okay.

So moving right along.

All right.

Next department is the city attorney, beginning on page 162.

This budget includes uh the flat fee of 1.75 million is followed by um a separate line item for outside count council that is monitored by the city attorney of 154,500.

Uh, there's also a following following this page, there's a a deep more detailed page which will show you how legal expenses are broken down by fund.

Um you'll see that we just gave them a flat increase of three percent on their operating budget.

Okay, any questions?

Any questions?

None from me.

Okay, I guess we can well um I I I'm wondering, Commissioner Albert, is she going to weigh in at some point if she wants to interrupt with a question?

Yeah, and and uh she's pretty all it's been good about it.

She'll just kind of unmute and chime in, but you know, even if you just want to say, hey, you have anything.

Okay.

So I will I will wait to hear from you, Commissioner Alfred, when you have questions.

Um, I'll speak up.

Yeah, okay, good.

Thank you.

Okay.

So that's I guess we can move on to the next topic.

Next department is planning, beginning on page 165.

Planning includes sustainability and resilience and economic development in these in this budget.

This budget uh is presented with 12.3 FTE.

You'll notice the slight change from the FY26 budget of 12.5.

That is due to the um historic senior planner uh being shifted.2 um to a different department.

Building fund.

Building funds building services fund, sorry.

Lost my place.

Um I will point out uh so the revenues are um primarily from water and sewer and solid waste to fund the sustainability and resilience uh to offset those expenditures.

Um I do want to point out that a correction will need to be made um following this workshop in those revenues.

They will need to be increased by 20,220 to reflect a transfer from the CRA to cover the cost of the FTEs that uh are gonna be um working for the CRA.

You'll see that in a budget issue in the next slide.

Just wanted to point out that a correction will be coming on that line item.

And where would would we see that on page 165 someplace?

Uh no.

So that's the error that's the same.

So when we come to you uh tomorrow night to the city special city commission, we'll show you what the changes are, but that that one will change the amount.

It's a revenue to the general fund of 2020, 20,000, and it's an expense to the CRA.

Thank you.

And you'll point that out to us.

Okay.

Definitely.

Commissioner Aaron Koch.

Yes.

Um can you explain the point two to the building services fund?

The I'll answer that.

Um the amount of time uh that that staff person is is utilizing in permit reviews.

Um that was the that was the amount that was able to be applied to the building services fund as part of the permit review.

Um this was a way for us to save money in the general fund.

So it's a transfer.

So we went through and we looked at that position to determine what amount what what percentage of time does that position utilize in reviewing building plans and building permits, and we were able to make that transfer to alleviate again pressure on the general fund by f by having it paid out of our our building revenue.

And my question is only 0.2.

For right now, yes.

We'd like it to be more.

We'll continue to assess it, certainly.

I mean, it seems logical to me that it would be more than 0.2.

We can we can take a look at that and Susan actually took a uh Susan Dodd, Steve Cooper for the record planning directly.

Susan Dodd took a uh deep dive into that and she figured out that about 20 percent of her time is is on reviewing permits.

Okay.

Okay.

Um and then is Citizen Citizens Academy budgeted for in here somewhere.

It is not.

I thought we were gonna have one in February.

This is new to the city manager.

Yeah, I this is a first I've heard of this.

So it it is not in our current budget.

Because it was in last year's budget.

I think it's the cost of it, it's just absorbed within each department.

There's it there isn't a special line item for it.

Okay, but it is going forward.

That is certainly up to the commission.

Well, um we will let me put that down.

I have it on my note and I'll report back next tomorrow.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um then the comprehensive plan amendments five for 27.

Do we know what those are?

Or is it just uh like a line item?

Estimated, but estimated generic.

Okay.

Um those are my questions.

So there will be a number of them though related to that uh update of the various chapters within the conference of plan, as you know, we just had the meeting last week on the governmental coordination chapter, so a lot of that will relate to those updates.

Okay, because I thought there were five coming forward in the next couple months, and then I guess those are just like line item planned earmarked for the next slide.

Yeah, you can yeah, you will have some that were we're doing this year, some will spoil over the next year, and I think actually there are a few that will be probably even into the to the following year.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Uh moving right along.

Um may I ask Mayor?

Sure, sure.

Um on page 168 neighborhood grants, that's part of planning, isn't it?

And at what point will we be discussing the budget issue related to neighborhood grants?

Right now?

Right now.

Ah.

So speak to us a little bit about that, please.

Okay.

Um, you know, as you know, in in the beginning, um uh we were to look at uh every possible uh you know, we're looking for the meeting the 10 percent cut requirement for the for the department.

Um as you know, we are primarily personnel and not much more than that.

Uh so um we just identify those items that um were not personnel related that could be part of that 10 percent.

Uh that was one of them uh and that has been incorporated uh in the city's budget up today.

And so comment from me to you and anybody else who is listening.

I've been involved at the neighborhood level for many years.

And the neighborhood grant program is very clearly to me one way that neighborhoods connect to this big entity that uh Carrie Frying manages.

And it really brings the city to the people, and I would be very disappointed if the city uh did away with the neighborhood grant program.

If Commissioner Haran Gotcha, did you want to make a comment on that?

Oh yes, sure.

Um uh I I also am in huge support of the neighborhood grants.

Um it's a minimal amount that they get, but it's very impactful for uh beautification, for community outreach, for involvement.

I mean, it's just it's invaluable.

I was going to add beyond the specifically named community building grant, just in general, the neighborhood grants build community.

And if you look at the individuals who are running for city commissioner, they really got their start as a result of the neighborhoods being built and community being built and getting people involved in our city government.

So we would be losing a very important pipeline if we did away with the neighborhood grants.

So uh Batti, did you want to say something?

Yes, but thank you, Mayor.

Um is is this because of uh, you know, I had a meeting with a uh couple of people that are extremely involved in uh you know the neighborhoods and uh neighborhood grants, and one of the things that they mention um was about the county and their neighborhood grant.

Is this have anything to do with that?

And how much they give?

They they they give a significant amount in terms of neighborhood grants, do they?

I I I don't know.

I don't have an answer for that.

Okay.

They're not related.

No, no.

So so the neighborhood grant that that the county gives is a bigger amount.

Yeah, okay.

So is the county bigger?

Yeah, yeah.

No, I was just wondering, you know, so is it just in the unincorporated part of Sarasota or all of Tarasota?

Okay.

Different criteria.

May I comment?

Um City of Sarasota neighborhoods are allowed and encouraged to apply for county grants.

Um they're a little bit more rigorous in terms of the application process.

And well, they should be because there's a bigger amount of money.

Okay.

I just asked that question because it was opposed to me like during a meeting.

I can add something to that as well.

When I applied for it for my neighborhood long time ago, we had to do a whole entire day's training with the county.

It was from 9 to 5.

And then once you did the training and you sort of like pass their test, then you were allowed to apply for the grant.

They are very were, at least at the time, so it was a long time ago.

Very rigorous about getting your um your quotes and who they were from and it was a big deal.

It was more money, but it was also a major investment in the neighborhood's time.

Okay.

I'm glad I asked that question because you know getting this type of uh information.

Yeah, I don't think you know the the two people that uh mentioned it to me and know that process or what have you and how you know rigorous it is and still like that, but it was back in my day.

Yeah, yeah.

Because I don't think they're kind of comparing it to, you know, the the city neighborhood grants or whatever, and uh um and it not being as arduous as as that or whatever.

So but that but thank you for that information though.

Thank you.

Umce we were talking about budget issues for the um uh planning department.

Should we also talk about uh the redevelopment project specialists?

Is that yes, that's next.

Uh oh, is that different department?

Did I mess my page just on?

No, that's planning.

You're correct.

Ian, I think um we could certainly talk about that now, but that's part of an overall restructuring program for economic development.

Uh we we could wait until we get to economic development to cover exactly all the changes we're proposing.

So I recommend that.

Okay, great.

Sounds good.

Can we move along then?

Sure.

Okay.

Thank you.

I was just gonna say, where are you going?

Yeah, so it's wondering.

I get a different agenda, I guess.

This is uh starting on page 176.

This is housing community development, um, just the general fund portion.

Uh the general fund portion is just to cover administrative costs that cannot be directly applied to the administration of federal grants.

Um pretty pretty self-explanatory here.

Um we're just decreasing uh the amount of um FTE that the general fund is covering.

And so the budget is decreasing by 65 percent.

I I'm wondering what is 0.06 FT fees?

It's just a portion of of a salary.

Um and I can tell you there'll be a deeper dive into this discussion as we get to the grant funds, OHCD grants.

But this is just like a part of a person.

And again, it is for costs that cannot be applied specifically to a grant.

They're outside their work that the commission asks us to do outside of those grants.

Okay, thank you.

Just tiny number there.

What is it, an hour a week?

Cindy M.

Schaff, General Manager of the Office of Housing and Community Development.

And this is actually based on timesheets.

We keep very detailed time sheets.

So any time that staff is working on a land use restriction agreement or especially the affordable housing initiatives projects, environmental reviews for different departments, all of that is tracked in our timesheet, and that's how we calculated the specific event.

Thank you.

Uh any other questions?

No?

So keep going.

Okay.

Um next we will move on to special events.

Um this is beginning on page 178.

This department is overseen by the govern governmental affairs department, and it has four FTEs.

Um you'll notice that the personnel increase uh slightly just due to salary and cola increases, step increases.

Um and then the operating budget remained pretty much flat, went down a tiny bit for an overall budget increase of 5.2 percent.

Any questions?

And one really quick update.

So special events does do electronic payments, so we are compliant with the legislative for the electronic payments.

So they do do credit cards just to give a quick update.

And and the fees are passed along to the person using the credit card, correct?

Not at this moment.

Oh, so we're absorbing the absorbing the fees from what we understand.

Yeah.

That's another area that we're looking at for cost savings.

And you know, we recently did an ordinance change to the utility, so we could pass it along.

Um our parking fees were passing along.

Portion of our building fees were passing along.

So we're just we're taking the area one chunk at a time to to switch it around so that we do not absorb the fees.

Mayor, um and that is becoming common practice.

Yes, anywhere you use your credit card or a lot of places you see a three percent service fee will be added.

Um you always have the option to pay cash or check.

So is there an option to do an electronic fund transfer?

I in certain in utilities, yes.

Uh it depends on what the function is.

Okay.

Because I'm even imagining that say with special events, some of those fees get up there.

So, you know, I'm wondering if if it's over a certain amount whether you know an electronic fund transfer would be accepted.

We do allow ACH for special events as well.

And then there's no fee?

It shouldn't be, right?

I mean, is there a cost to us to accept?

There is a little bit of a cost, but it's something we would absorb anyway.

All banking has a fee.

Right.

I mean, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

That's right.

I did have one tiny question.

Okay.

Um just in the operations in the description there when it talked about special events.

It lists Sarasota's farmers market, Newtown, farmers market, embracing our differences in Sarasota Military Academy.

Um we manage the um usage agreement for the military accounting for the parking uh over near the West Coast uh theater right now at law across the country.

Okay, so we transferred the usage agreements over to special events about two years ago, I think.

They were in um facilities actually prior to that.

So the special events team manages all of the usage agreements, and that falls under the usage agreement.

Okay.

Thank you.

I learned something new.

So moving along, was that it that was my question?

Along.

Thank you.

Next, we're going to be discussing unclassified administration.

This is on begins on page 181.

Uh this department, you could call it, uh, is not really department.

It is uh our cost center that we use to account for certain expenditures that are not really part of anybody's department.

Um health and life insurance for retirees, IT services, uh, miscellaneous property insurance are some examples.

Um probably the most notable change in this um budget is the central garage services.

You'll notice that it increased uh $700,000, 702%.

And uh that is due to last year we dramatically cut the allocation for those services to save money in the general fund, and now we are restoring that to its more traditional level.

Any questions?

Commissioner Herc is still on the board.

Yes, I have a question.

Okay.

Um my page 181.

Um it has personnel services expense.

Uh in 26 was 200,000 and 27 is 700 and 60.

It's OPEB expenses.

Our OPE contribution went up, I think.

Yes, it did.

One about 900,000?

That's where that is.

That's not 900,000, though.

Uh it looks like it went up 600,000 actually.

Isn't this the first line on the um spread sheet in front of us?

Um I don't know, between there and here.

When I I'm I said 900, and that's a citywide, it went up.

But the general fund portion of it is the different is the 600 that you see there.

I I this is new to me when I'm looking at here in front of me.

I just have I'm looking at what's on my book.

Um you're asking about the 209 to the 760.

Yes.

Yeah, so the primary driver of that is the OPEB expenditures going up, and then um that's also where we put our hiring delay attrition savings, and that was adjusted as well, so that offsets it.

Okay.

Those are the only things you're going to see there is basically OPEB, retiree, the retiree insurance that we pay, and then our hiring delay or attrition savings.

Okay.

And then on that same page, there's under contractual services in 2025, it has 14 million.

That would be from the hurricane.

Got it.

Okay, thank you.

Anything?

Okay.

Thank you.

Move right along.

Next we'll be talking about the Sarasota Police Department.

Beginning on page 184.

The police department consists of five separate cost centers.

They have 189 sworn positions and 63 civilian positions.

Notice that the top line, the revenue line is decreasing.

This is primarily due to a decrease in red light camera revenues and speed camera revenues.

Personnel increase increased due to salary increases, cost of living, step increases.

And then operating expenditures increase just slightly.

And capital, there are no capital proposed for this year for an overall budget increase of 5.3%.

Any questions?

Commissioner Harry Kach.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

The page of my book, I don't know what you have in front of you.

186.

Burglar alarm permits going down.

What is that due to?

Chief Rex Rochester, Cercil police partners Ben speak to that.

It's more than likely just the amount of alarms that we're receiving, but maybe Ben knows more than that.

Yeah, good morning.

Ben Billingsley, Finance Manager, Sarasota Police Department.

We just look at the trends year over year on renewal fees and the annual permit uh renewals or new new permits that issued throughout the city.

Okay.

So it's just a trend and we're sort of following that trend and estimating from that trend.

Yes, sir.

Would that have anything to do with the ring cameras that are maybe preventing people from?

I I can't speak to that.

I I don't know if maybe owners of homes and businesses are finding a different way of using systems due to technology.

Right.

Do you need a permit for a ring camera?

No, right?

No.

No.

Not for a ring camera, but if you have an alarm in the city, you are supposed to have it right.

Just inside the facility, right?

You have to make sure.

Okay, got it.

And then I noticed on page 187.

Um the total expenses go down significantly.

Can you speak to what that is?

It's on my 187.

So that's for the uh cost center for office of the chief of police?

Yes.

Uh primary driver for that is is just the payroll side of things.

So when you look at payroll services, um it's down about 421,000.

Okay.

And that is probably from the previous deputy city manager moving it from this department up into the city manager.

Oh, that's what that's from.

Yes.

Yes.

Cost savings.

Okay.

Um then in the patrol division.

Um my page 188.

Um the judgments, fines, and forfeitures was 145 and now it's 360.

Yes, so that's gonna be primarily from our traffic unit.

Um we're on pace right now to do about a little over 450,000 for this year.

Uh so we've increased that that estimate.

Okay.

And what is that based on?

Umactivity.

Okay.

Um.

And then if you could speak to the red light camera.

Um decrease.

Absolutely.

So the implementation of the red light camera was uh never an attempt to make money.

It was actually an attempt to educate the public.

And it's doing exactly what we wanted it to do.

It's going down, which is telling us that people are violating that less, which means that they're aware that they need to slow down on a yellow light for the red light and stop.

At the end of the day, it's saving lives.

And then the speeding in school zones.

Same thing, same impact.

You know, we saw approximately a 50% decrease in the majority of the areas for speed cameras.

Again, it's bringing attention to people that are going to school to slow down, that we have children in the area, and if you choose not to, then you'll receive a citation in the mail.

So we've we've seen the decline and we're really excited about it because it's doing its job.

It's also allowing us to take traffic officers and put them in the neighborhoods around the schools so that they can enforce those laws, those stop signs, and allow us to put them again at the major intersections.

So really it's a force multiplier for us, and we can see that the trend is going the way that we had hoped.

And so if people are trying to avoid some of those speeding cameras and they're speeding through the neighborhoods, we are able to use those resources from humans, put them in the neighborhood to help with neighborhood speeding.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, thank you.

And what is the percentage decrease in the school zones and the red light cameras?

Um I can speak to the school zones.

It's about 50 over a 50 percent drop in most of the areas.

Uh but I don't know the percentage on the red light cameras.

Um we do have uh an additional seven that we had just put in.

We have an additional three that are going line, they're just waiting some type of permitting.

Okay.

So we'll again analyze those trends and make those changes accordingly.

Okay.

Um I think you know, we um hear from folks, they're super unhappy when they get those.

Um but you know, if it's doing its job, then that's what we we need the data to be sure that what we're doing is the right thing.

So thank you for providing that.

Um I'll let somebody else go because I got to sort through my other questions here.

So I would just comment, yes, we hear from people who don't like it when they get the red light camera.

Some commissioners can say, yeah, I didn't like it when I got one either.

Are you are you admitting to something?

No, I'm not.

I I could also say to you that the ones that that do call us upset, the majority of the time they become ambassadors for the program because a lot of it is just education, and we do our best through leveraging our social media platforms.

But it's great when they call in, they see the quality of people that we hire, they explain the law to them that it's a state law that we're following, and we we generally win them over after that.

So, Chief, do you think that um um the GPS programs people have in their vehicles that alerts them?

Red light camera head, that has is having an impact as well.

I think that has an impact as well, but I think that the majority of the people that live in the area do not use their GPS when they're going to the store that they know that's eight blocks away or 1.2 miles away.

So it doesn't help them in those those cases, but I have been going places myself where it's a little out of my norm, and I've punched it in, and you're right.

But I also know that school's out for the summer, so I'm like, oh okay.

But yes, the technology is could potentially be reducing the amount of people that are getting speed camera tickets.

Um along those lines, um and you have one more.

Two more.

Okay.

Did you want to?

No, no, no.

Okay, go.

Um, obviously the program is successful in that it's not that we wanted the revenue, we wanted the safety for our citizens.

Um now with the school zone speed cameras during non-school hours, people are learning just because it's not school hours doesn't mean that you can ignore the regular speed limit.

Um but so naturally, as people are learning this lesson, the uh revenues from uh fines is going down, and I see also on judgments, fines, and forfeitures, uh it didn't come anywhere near well the FY 2026 budget, we are dropping it down for FY 2027.

So I'm assuming we're set we're also experiencing few lower revenue from fines and forfeitures.

So you're doing, and the department is doing such a great job, you don't want anybody to say, oh, let's stop paying for all these things that are enabling you to be doing such a great job.

Have you started giving thought to revenue sources or other ways of paying for these great tools that you have?

Yeah, we have we do every day.

We uh added an additional person that is trained up on how to get grants.

So those are conversations I have with this person, maybe every other day.

We talk about the various grants that are available either at the uh state level or the federal level, and we work great with the deputy city manager, uh Ms.

Jorgens, and she does a fantastic job keeping us up to speed on everything.

And we also do philanthropy.

I mean, we do meet people that do come forward and want to have a conversation, want to know how they can help us.

And that's the worst thing that you can ask me, because I will ask, I will tell you how you can help us.

And we've been very lucky again with the real-time operations center.

We had a philanthropist that has made a massive donation to keep that running that technology.

And we know that the real-time operations center with the talented officers that we have are solving crimes in real time that we would never solve in the past ever.

So does philanthropy show up in the documentation.

It does.

Um when we come to you with a budget amendment for contributions and we have another side of it is the expense.

So it's as we get it.

We'll we'll come to you with a budget amendment.

Because the thing about a budget, you can you can receive all the money in the world you want, that's fine, but you can't overspend what is in the budget.

So if you want to spend the money that you get, then we have to come to you with a budget amendment to increase that expenditure.

Well, I I was just hoping to see maybe philanthropy in the actuals from previous years.

And and it's a it is uh miscellaneous revenue contributions and sponsorships.

Um I actually see one right now on page 198 under support services division.

Okay.

So you can see that in 25 there was a $13,000.

26 there was 35,000.

Um year to date this year, we've received 37 in that specific box.

Okay.

But we don't we don't budget to get it.

Right, right.

No, but but to recognize that this is a source of revenue actual.

So that's anything we receive, we have to either can if it's cash, we have to you know recognize it as a contribution if it's um like a building or if it's a truck or something, it's contributed capital.

So it is an accounting uh recognition.

Okay.

Great.

Thank you, and thank you.

Thank you.

Thank the department.

Thank you, ma'am.

Just a couple couple more.

On page 194 under revenue, it says charges for services.

Um service charge law enforcement officer, law enforcement services.

What is that?

That's the citywide towing contract.

Uh a towing contract.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

Okay.

Um and then on page 198 under expenses.

Um I noticed uniforms, is that right?

Yeah, uniforms and other allowances in 206 was 43,200, and now it's dropping to 4,000.

Do you see that item?

I think that's the same.

Under per under personnel services.

Yeah, I'm not sure the personnel side of things.

I don't know if this is where it is, but if you look over into other supplies and expenses, there's that uniform of the next page 199.

There's a uniform purchase, uh PO inventory in there 39,000.

So on the 540 ledger line, other supplies and expenses under that spend category uniform purchases, PD inventory issues.

Uh those are uniforms that we purchase for for the department for the individuals.

On the personnel side of things, I believe what you're referring to is the actual allowance or the size then that that's received.

Uh-huh.

Um that part uh we don't budget for those specifically at the police department.

I think that comes through through uh HR finance.

So I can't speak on that decrease, but we do budget under the supplies and expenses for uniforms.

Okay.

Um and then last item, last question is um on that page 199 under capital outlay.

Um, there's nothing in 2027.

What is that?

What why?

That was the direction to the department to cut.

Um these would be one-time purchases, and what we try to do instead of having to buy it on the the winging of prayer from year to year is we try to save for it in the equipment replacement.

Okay, because aren't small numbers.

No.

Capital by definition is supposed to be non-reoccurring.

So we wouldn't want them to continuously put here when they're making a contribution into the equipment replacement fund.

And would that cover things like PC software and things?

That's probably in their repairs and maintenance.

Uh would be their software maintenance agreements.

Okay.

So this is sort of just a temporary thing.

Correct.

It was we were told to hold the line, so we held the line.

They did.

Okie doke.

Okay.

Um if I could just answer the question you had about the under the 500 series.

That was probably the deputy city manager as well.

That's why it went down because he also had the opportunity to get uniforms.

Okay.

Okay.

Any other questions?

And we can move along.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks.

All right.

The next department we'll look at is parks and recreation, beginning on page 205.

This department has 72 full-time employees.

Um you'll notice the revenues increase slightly by 7.3%.

Uh personnel increased 1.4% operating uh state relatively flat, just barely increasing just a little over 0.1%.

And capital line stayed flat at 21,000 for an overall budget increase of 0.9%.

Any questions?

I I have questions, but let somebody go to some of the questions.

Okay.

Any questions?

Um not yet.

Okay, I can ask then.

Um page uh the admin.

Um personnel services.

It's pretty flat, so no increase in salaries or anything there.

Jerry Fogel Parks and Recreation.

Uh no, no increases as far as uh personnel goes.

We do have the colour in there, but you'll notice that it the person some of the personal expenditures might be due to the um less overtime budgeted, possibly, or part-time work possibly.

So you wouldn't see it in the FTE numbers, but the dollar amounts would change if it's and then on the lead of each page 210, uh, in the description under operations, it says on the I don't know, six line one, two, three, four, fifth line down.

Life guard services are provided.

Are those provided by the county or does the city fund those?

For the Leto Beach pool, the city does.

The city does the okay.

But the lifeguards on the beach are by the county.

Yes, it is.

Okay, so those are the lifeguards by the pool.

All right, thank you.

It's a little confused on that.

Um then on Robert L.

Taylor 211, ask this question every year.

Ever plan on opening on Sundays.

We could consider it, but right now for the Robert L.

Taylor facility, the numbers just don't really justify the use, the opening up on Sunday because of the use of it on Saturdays.

Uh it's not a something that's heavily utilized.

They come in really uh open from eight to one.

Right.

And it's mainly just fitness.

Uh so they come in early in the morning, hit their fitness, and they're out.

Would there be a way to open just for fitness then on Sundays?

Right now, I wouldn't recommend that.

Okay.

I just don't think it justifies.

I don't think it would justify having staff in and using utilities and everything to have a handful of people come in to work out.

Okay.

Do we know the breakdown between city residents who use it and uh everyone else?

Yeah, we do not.

I mean, we can probably go in and we may be able to pull some numbers.

Yeah, and and see what we could do.

But keep in mind we're switching software, recreation software, so um it may not collect all the information you're looking for.

Okay, and do we give a discount to city residents versus county residents for for membership?

We do not.

Okay.

Maybe that's something to think about in the future.

And then on page 221.

Horticulture fees.

I think they're projected to go up.

And I was curious what the horticulture fees are.

That's plant materials.

And we're actually, you know, I'll double check that, but we should have adjusted it to uh lessen that a little bit because uh we're we're gonna look at doing something a little differently.

Instead of doing annuals as much, we're going to be looking at doing uh like perennials uh and natives because you don't need to uh really replace them as often.

You don't need to mulch them as often uh and things of that nature, so it's a less of a cost for the city.

Now, yeah, obviously you get to refresh every year and it's beautiful, and and and so our residents really like that, but if it we're looking at cost savings, uh those are our real cost savings.

Okay.

Yeah, no, I stand corrected there.

It did go down $3,000, $2,500.

But um okay.

Um then streets, streets and highway maintenance on page 223.

That's uh that's the next step.

That's the next one.

Sorry.

Sorry, I'm jumping around.

That's it.

That's that's all I have.

Great job, thank you.

Did you have to for our infrastructure department?

Thank you.

Um I look at pages one parks maintenance and another non-park maintenance.

Would you talk generally about the difference between that and and they're both your responsibility, right?

Correct, Vice Mayor.

So when we I think this really came about when we became a district, uh we kind of had to separate the two entities out and what non-parks are, uh it's everything really almost outside of parks.

So you have the the medians, the streetscapes, the riderways, the roundabouts, cemeteries, vacant lots, uh, even properties such as you walk around this building, you see all the beautiful landscape around this building, those are non-parks uh items that we maintain.

Um and then of course parks are what they are uh it's all of our parks throughout the city.

Right.

Thank you for that.

So most people don't know that parks and recreation is responsible for the medians and the landscaping around City Hall.

This, my question has nothing to do with the dollars and cents of it.

But people are all frequently uh concerned about the lack of trimming and whatever, and they would just contact, fill out a click to fix or what for that?

Correct, just click to fix.

Just uh, you know, come through our work order system and we if it's a safety issue, we address it as quickly as possible.

Uh and if it's something that just you know aesthetically needs to be done, then obviously we'll put in the queue to get to it.

But that's that or they could reach out to parks and recreation directly too.

Absolutely.

And same is true for non-park maintenance issues?

Correct.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

I just want to add that for accounting purposes, we do keep parks and recs separated from non-park maintenance.

And you'll see in this in the general fund, you'll see a line item for parks and rec and you'll see a line item for nonpark.

And personnel are hired for one or the other, and they don't mix.

And they're allocated like a percentage is here or percentage isn't in that one.

But but for determining the cost of parks and rec and determining the cost of our medians and nonpark maintenance, we keep them separated.

Good and Vice Mayor, we have 17 for nonparks and 34 for parks.

And of course, we utilize them to do a variety of of both because it's efficient.

It is.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

Uh I I have a question, um, Mayor.

Thanks.

Mayor Alf.

Commissioner.

Well, I kind of yeah.

Um Jerry, I thought we did at one point do a calculation of how many county residents uh used RL Taylor as opposed to city residents.

Yeah, I think maybe that might have been a few years ago.

Do you recall that?

Uh I do recall that.

That was definitely years and years ago.

I I don't think we would have that information.

Uh the current.

Yeah.

Yeah, because I think we were trying to get some funding from the county for RL Taylor.

And as it showed that a majority of people using it were from the county, correct?

Good memory, Commissioner.

You are correct.

I believe so.

I believe so.

Okay.

Thank you.

That's all I have.

Okay.

I'm going back to page 221, the horticultural fees for the non-park maintenance.

And obviously there's a balancing act between the type of planting that you put in medians and you know, the stripes right of way strips, and the expense of maintaining them.

So like if it's tall native grasses and palms, you need to maintain them more often.

So I'm hoping that you will continue to look at that balance and see, gee, maybe if we put a different type of plant in these locations, the maintenance cost will go down.

Absolutely, Mayor.

That's that's what we've been looking at.

Not only that, uh I have uh one of my uh team members found a product that actually slows down the growth of the plant material.

So which is amazing because it not only so I what what happened is you know the old Bradenton median uh that's really a foot wide.

So you have one foot in, one foot on the road, and it's just super dangerous, one way both uh sides.

So I I'm just concerned about my team, so I'm like, can we figure something out right here?

And so uh he researched and found a product that actually slows down the growth.

So we're using those on our medians uh and in some of the parks also, while we figure out the different kind of landscape uh we like to put in uh to to lessen the the maintenance.

Okay.

Just to drop a hint, I drove past somebody's lawn the other day, and they had planted the entire lawn with perennial peanut.

Low ground cover, beautiful yellow flowers.

So, you know, you might even look at ground native ground covers.

Yeah, we use that a lot too.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Anything else on parks and rec?

Uh yeah, I just had one question.

Um there been discussion about uh the interlocal agreement between us and the county.

Um no uh the brief discussion, Commissioner we had uh was uh so the county obviously has an interlocal with the city to maintain Leto Beach and North Leto Beach.

Um that's the only property, city properties that they currently maintain and operate.

Uh I did have a conversation with the county pertaining to you know everything that's going on with the referendum.

If indeed they're looking to continues that uh uh extended, basically it it uh terminates uh uh 2028 of September, I believe.

And so I asked if it would be renewed.

Uh they are interested in renewing it uh because it's a regional amenity.

Okay.

Uh but that was the last conversation I had uh several months ago.

Okay, okay.

Thank you, sir.

Um I can speak to that as well, Commissioner.

Um I have had some initial conversations with the county administrator about what their plans are for parks and versus our plans, and so that is something we're gonna continue to have dialogue on.

And actually, we have a joint commission meeting with the county coming up in September.

I anticipate that parks and rec will be one of those agenda items that you will discuss jointly as a board.

Uh excellent, excellent.

Thank you both.

I appreciate it.

Mayor, can I make one comment?

Just just um so you're aware we we started using a uh software tracking system uh for usage in our parks.

And so for the last three years, and this doesn't include Leto Beast, North Leto, uh the parks that are closed the last couple of years and and others, but we have 56 parks that we actually have our tracking.

And the last three years, there's 24 million visits uh for your city parks.

So I I think you know that uh goes into saying that the the residents and visitors and tourists, everybody loves the city park, so wanted to share that with you.

Thank you, thank you.

I'm looking at the clock, and I see we have three more departments to go through for the general funds.

So if it's all right with you, shall we go through them, finish the general fund before we break for lunch?

Good.

Great.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

The next department we'll look at is streets and highways, beginning on page 222.

This department has 28.33 full-time employees.

You'll notice that um revenue decreased slightly, uh 2.4 percent.

The personnel cost uh decreased as well.

That is mainly due to a decrease, a little bit of decrease in overtime and uniform other allowances, but the main driver of that is employees that were part of the general pension plan uh coming out of that leaving or transferring out of that department.

Um and then the department was able to reduce their operating expenditures as well by 3.5 percent, and again, there's no capital uh proposed for this budget, so an overall budget decrease of 1.8 percent.

Any questions?

Um I I had Commissioner Heronka.

Yes, on page uh 223.

Um the full-time position goes down.

Did you already answer that question?

I mean, sorry, it goes up.

I did not answer that question.

My guess would be that it just that's a part of their program, so it just probably moved to a different program within their within the division.

So I'll give you comia, city engineer.

Uh yeah, the total does not change.

So it's just moving between.

Uh okay, but uh in this streets and highways it goes up.

Overall streets and highways.

So there's other divisions that are listed there, like street sweeping, uh-huh.

Uh infrastructure maintenance as well as traffic control, street lights.

Um the total FTE still remains the same.

They're just moving within that same division.

I don't know, that just if it goes up one place, doesn't it have to go down somewhere else?

It does, yes.

Where does it go down then?

We can take a look at that.

It might be a misprint, possibly.

I uh I I wonder if it is because the actual has 2.7.

So compared to the case.

Yeah, we'll take I'll take a look at that.

Okay, thank you.

Um the street sweeping has nothing to do with sidewalk washing, correct?

Correct.

Correct.

Clarify that question.

Um that's it for me for the moment.

Okay, uh Vice Mayor.

Um yes, my question has to do with sidewalk cleaning and sweeping and alleys.

Where is that in the budget?

If it's not with street sweeping.

That is actually under our infrastructure maintenance division under maintenance and repairs, and then a portion of sidewalk cleaning also comes out of the gas tax fund.

Okay.

Thank you.

Introduce yourself.

Sorry.

Lisa Harper, Department Finance Manager for Public Works.

Thank you.

Um I just have, which sounds like probably a dumb question.

I'm looking at uh 226 with traffic control and street lights, and looking down at uh expense utilities.

Is that FPL and electrical?

That is all of FPL's budget.

That's a big number.

I just want to make sure that you understand the gas tax, which is a special revenue fine, has the large transfer to cover those costs.

Oh, okay.

Okay, uh, Commissioner A.

Did you no?

Okay, Commissioner Vice Mayor.

No.

So we can move along.

Thank you very much.

The next department is engineering on page 229.

Uh you'll notice that the FTE went up by one from 18.43 to 19.43.

That was uh the position that we discussed earlier from the facilities management being transferred over to engineering.

Um other than that, the revenues increased slightly.

Uh personnel went up due to COLA and step increases, operating decreased 14 percent, and again, no capital for an overall budget increase of 2.3 percent.

Questions?

No, that was my question.

Okay, thank you.

And next one.

Move on along.

Homeless response.

Next department is homelessness response on page 234.

This department has three full-time positions.

It is also I wanted to point out on page 235, we have a breakdown of the various uh initiatives and other expenditures provided for you.

Let's see, the personnel went up 3% and operating went up 7% for an overall budget increase of 5.7%.

Any questions?

I have a question.

Commissioner A.

Yes, thank you.

Shelley Lagarski homelessness response coordinator.

It is going to depend on the need and what clients want to actually be put in bed.

We can't control it's client choice.

Right.

So when we're doing outreach, if they choose not to go into a bed, there's nothing we can do about it.

Right.

But if we're paying for 40 beds or however many there are 25, 25 beds.

If we're paying for 25 beds, ideally we want 25 beds to be filled.

Otherwise, we should reduce.

I know it ebbs and flows, but ideally, if you're paying for that, that's what you would like to see correct.

People take advantage of that opportunity and not be on the sidewalk and to be in a bed.

Correct.

And in the program.

How do we get to that number higher?

So we have been increasing our outreach efforts.

Again, there's just there are outside factors that are coming into play.

Clients don't want to go into a bed because of their inability to work with a salvation army.

Only people with if someone has a ban from the salvation army, they can only go in under criminal diversion.

Right.

If someone's trespassed, they can't go into the salvation army.

So there are extenuating factors that prevent us from putting everybody we encounter in outreach into a bed.

Okay.

But we are increasing efforts.

I I thought we increased the number of beds availability.

Didn't we do that recently?

I thought we had something with the last three years.

Didn't we have something with the Salvation Army recently that we increased something?

The only thing I did was increase the budget for beds because the budget had not increased on their end for years.

They increased it from 40 to 45 dollars a bed last year, and I am just anticipating another increase, but not bed increase.

Okay, so that's being correct.

The number is being reduced then?

No, the number is gonna stay the same, but I'm anticipating a $5 a day increase in the beds, which would bump it up to $50 a day.

And so the budget amount though is staying the same.

The budget amount increased for bed.

I don't see that here.

On page 235.

Lodging out of doors.

Yeah.

So it went from the Oh, it's lodging out of doors.

I was looking at above it the salvation army bed number.

That salvation army number is shared with the CRA.

They also have a charge, and it's for street cleanup.

Street team cleanup.

Oh, that's so the salvation army number is not for the beds, it's for the street cleanup.

Right.

Oh, the street team.

The lodging team beds.

Okay.

And then it's the lodging out of doors is for the beds for the okay, correct.

I did not um that's salvation army.

Okay.

Maybe we could clarify that for next year or something, or maybe I people won't remember that.

Okay, thank you.

That's those are my questions.

Thank you for everything you do.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor.

So based on that conversation, I have a question.

Uh if somebody comes in from another agency who has no beds left, and we have empty beds.

Can we negotiate and let that person use one of our empty beds?

Yes, we do that with county hot.

Um county hot, obviously, because they have a larger territory, they tend to have more people coming into beds.

So when they are at capacity, we will allow them to use our beds.

Great.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Commissioner Batti.

Uh yes.

Uh thank you.

How are you doing?

Um question I have is are we receiving or are you receiving still receiving people from other municipalities?

Yes, that's not going to change.

Okay.

Yeah, because you know.

I mean, is there anything that we can do?

I mean, is that because we have all the services in this area or whatever?

So the only way uh that you're gonna see a change in that is if services would open up in other communities.

So if I know there has been talk of a shelter um going down in the Northport area.

I mean, that's been talk for years.

I don't know if that's ever going to happen.

But because all of the services are here, that's why everyone comes here.

So the only way that's ever going to change if services open up in other areas.

And employment is here.

Public transportation is here.

So it's really hard to house people outside of the area or get people to be anywhere other than the city.

Yeah, because I mean, you know, I remember when I first came on the commission, you know, that that was a situation as well.

Um, one of the issues that I have is the fact that you know, all of these services are pretty much concentrated in in my district, you know, or whatever.

And you're talking about with them what how many block radius, you know, of one another.

You know, and we're trying to accommodate for pretty much all the homeless, you know, you know, in this area from from where from here to where, would you say?

So it's gonna be all of Sarasota pretty much all of Sarasota County.

And then you even have a lot of overlap with Manatee.

So we do see a lot because Manatee is changing their structure with homeless services, so we do see a lot of people coming in from Manatee County as well.

Yeah, because I you know I I can even remember situations, you know, and you may remember this as well, Commissioner Kach, when we were here, people coming from Naples and whatnot.

I mean, you're you're gonna have that because of well, veteran services, they can go anywhere.

Yeah, well, they were actually sending them putting them over on a bus and and so on.

And you know, what can we do like at the state level to to ensure that these other municipalities do their fair share in terms of taking care of our homeless population as well, providing some degree or level of services.

You can't just depend on us to do all of that.

So that's an education piece.

So I know um all of the agencies that work within the community in rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing, you know, part of our goal is to educate people.

Um I mean, I'm talking to people on the phone on a regular basis that are saying, hey, I'm in New Jersey and I want to come to Florida, I don't have a job, I'm I'm gonna be homeless.

You know, I do my best to encourage them not to do that because services, they're not gonna prioritize for services.

So at the end of the day, if someone understands that if they're coming here from another area and they are wanting to, they need the help, they're unfortunately they're not going to prioritize for any type of funding to help stabilize them.

So the best thing, one thing that we do like to offer people if they do end up coming down here and it doesn't work out for them.

If they do have family or friends that we can reunite them with, that ultimately is a goal that we have, and that's why I have the homeward bound funds, because people become homeless because their social structure either they never had one or it gets destroyed.

So if we talk to family and they want to take their um that individual back and they're willing to let them stay with them, reconnecting them with family or friends is absolutely something we want to do because they're not you're just gonna end up becoming chronically homeless on the streets of Sarasota if you come here from another area, because you're just not gonna prioritize.

Yeah, and is it true that uh that you know the homeless have a season just like everybody else or whatever in terms of they come here doing it?

Yes, there are people that come here to get out of the weather up north and then go back.

So you've seen a decrease, you know, since it's gotten more.

Yes, yes.

Okay.

I I just wanted to ask a question that's related to uh what Commissioner Bettee was asking about.

Um maybe going in the opposite direction.

I know that the remnant church has a day program.

They pick people up from downtown Sarasota in their little van, take them down to remnant church for the day, and then the van brings them back.

I was wondering if Remnant Church also has a van that goes south, you know, and takes people to Northport.

No.

And and potentially is that something that can be negotiated with them if they've got folks that are coming to Remnant Church for the day that want to go south instead of north.

Well, if we encounter folks that do want to go south, we work, we have partners that we work with to get those folks down south.

So um, it doesn't have to necessarily be solely uh Tammies to make that happen.

We connect with the Salvation Army, they have funding for bus tickets, and if it's if it's an appointment because they did just open up a really great uh behavioral health center down in Northport.

So even our officers will transport clients down there if they're wanting to go uh have service down there.

So we do have ways to transport.

So that are you talking, are you referring to Wednesday night that's happening in happening at Selby Library?

No, I mean right here in Officer.

Streets of Paradise Streets of Paradise here.

I don't know what that is.

I mean, I just see cars pulling up in there.

And then all the homeless going there, you know, and they're feeding them out of it out of the trunk of the car, and it's like about three or four cars that you know, what's it every weekend?

I've not seen it.

Pretty much.

I mean, when I've come down here on uh Saturday, Sunday, I'll send them over there or whatever.

I wasn't sure whether you know that was something that we had anything to do with.

Also, Friday morning too.

Yeah, and they're in there pretty much right over in in the adjacent parking lot, right?

Right, across from the uh behind the bus.

The bus on second on second.

I didn't see Friday morning.

I mean, we always do outreach on Fridays, so I have not seen that happening on Friday morning.

Yeah.

Um, we we are having an issue on Wednesdays, but I have PD involved in that issue.

I because it's been an ongoing issue.

So but I can I can speak with Streets of Paradise.

We have a great working relationship.

Okay.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you for your work.

Well, Madam Mayor, just I don't know if I got your name for the record, so we can have it for the record.

Shelley Legarski.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

So that concludes our questions, and I see that concludes the general fund fortune.

Do you uh Miss Strickland or um Miss Fryling want to make a statement of any sort before we break for lunch?

Just to a reminder that we will just start on the special revenue funds.

I think it the general fund went a little bit faster than we thought.

So after lunch, we'll start on special revenue.

Okay.

Okay, and I see uh let's see, Apple time is 1219.

Shall we break until one thirty?

Okay, we're on recess till one thirty.

Thank you, everyone.

Welcome back to the um budget workshop City of Sarasota for fiscal year twenty six twenty seven.

Hope everybody had a good lunch as we are about to start with a new fund, and I will turn the mic over to Ms.

Strickland, who is director of the city's financial administration.

Well, good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for coming back after this morning.

So this morning we did a citywide overview.

We also went through the general fund and we were able to go through each department and program of the city of the general fund.

This afternoon we're gonna focus on the special revenue funds and then maybe the debt service funds uh pending time.

I'm gonna switch to my PowerPoint.

There we go.

So special revenue funds.

Start on page 39.

That's where the um the purple tab is the section for the special revenue funds.

These are funds that are used to account for and report the proceeds of specific revenue sources that are restricted or committed to expenditures for special purposes.

And if you turn the page one page to 240, you'll see the proposed budgets for each of these funds, and we're gonna go through we I have a slide for each one of these funds, and it's page 240 to 243.

There are gonna be some funds such as the penny sales tax, the multimodal transportation impact fee, the uh five cent local option fuel tax, and tourist development tax.

I'm gonna postpone that discussion until we do the CIP because there's specifically funding sources in the CIP.

Can you just point us out again which ones they were you said?

Okay, so if you start on page 240, uh it's the penny sales tax, which is on page 241, the multimodal transportation impact fee is also on 241.

The five cent local option fuel tax is on 242, and the tourist development fund is on 242.

Okay, so we're gonna review the remaining.

There's 15 special revenue funds.

Um I have a slide for each one.

The first one we're gonna start with in order is the Bay Tax Financing Trust Fund, and that starts on page two fifty two forty five.

The Bay TIFF was established by City Ordinance 20-5341 and the county ordinance 2020-056.

The base year is tax year 2019 with a value of $850 million.

The Bay TIFF is a 30-year TIF and will sunset on 1231, 2049.

The assessed value for the TIFF is 2,039,492,000.

This is a 2.07% increase from the prior year.

The city's portion of the tax revenue generated from this TIFF district at the millage rate of 3.0440 mills is two three million four hundred and thirty eight thousand three hundred and five.

So the Bay Advilorum revenues are calculated using the lower of 3.0892 or the county's millage rate of 3.0470, or the city's millage rate of 3.2730 per the ordinance.

This year we're at 3.0470.

The county's current millage is the lowest.

The county has exercised their right per their ordinance, which is referenced within the interlocal agreement to only contribute their portion of the current debt service, plus an additional 282,000 toward phase three for the Bay Park plan.

So in looking at the budget on the slide, you can see that the beginning fund balance is $6.2 million.

Uh the amount that the city is contributing is $1.5 million, and I can tell you that $1.5 million is the half of the principal and interest for the debt that we incurred for phase two.

The county is also contributing that plus a little bit extra $282,000 towards phase three at $1.8.

That'll give us total revenues of $3.3 million.

Um transfer to debt service, and again, that is the debt that we have for phase two for the Bay Park.

And that leaves us with an ending fund balance of $6.4 million.

Do I have any questions on the Bay Tax Increment Financing Trust?

Commissioners?

Anything?

I'm I don't.

Okay.

I'm I'm wondering, are you gonna cover the cities being separately?

Yes.

Okay.

They are two separate trust funds.

So to answer your question, Mayor, the next fund that we're gonna look at is the City Bay Tax Increment Financing Trust Fund, and it's on page 247.

City Bay TIFF was established by City Ordinance 24-5543, which amended City Ordinance 20-5341.

This fund accounts for the difference of the calculated Bay TIFF and the amount required to be deposited into the Bay TIFF fund.

The city's portion of tax revenue generated from this TIFF district at 3.0470 MILLs is 3.4 million.

The Bay Advalorum revenues are calculated again using the lower of 3.0892 or the county's millage rate of 3.0470, or the city's millage rate of 3.2730.

We are using the county's 3.0470.

What you see in the um on the slide, this fund has a beginning fund balance of 2 million 90,000.

The city difference of what we need to pay for uh debt service for phase two, and the remainder uh we have in this fund is one point nine 1.9 million and that increases our fund balance to 3.9 million now is there any questions?

I I do have a question.

I was gonna ask it for the previous slide, and I think my question really relates to the previous slide.

You referred to the base year when you mentioned the TIFF.

Would you explain a little bit what the base year is and what it means?

Okay, when the county and the city came together and decided they wanted to establish the Bay Park district, uh tax increment financing district, the base year is the year that that ordinance was agreed upon.

Um thousand nineteen was the base year.

Everything, the value, as long as it is at least the base, it goes to the city, our revenues do the avalarum generated from it.

Anything as the district grows, then that difference goes into these trust funds.

When you say as the district grows, do you mean when additional properties?

When the assessment values go up.

And that could include new buildings, that could include a current building that the value has just gone up, just the assessed values and hold.

Okay.

So when the assessed values are over the 850 million base, then that the revenue from that amount above goes into the city Bay TIFF and the Bay TIFF.

Thank you.

That's what I want an explanation on.

Anything?

I I I just have a quick question.

When we have fund balances like this that in the case of the city's tax and trust, that we don't have an immediate use identified.

Are they of those funds available to be borrowed but but from by other departments when the need arises, or even if we had a storm and needed the funds for cleanup, would these funds be borrowable?

These funds have to be spent within that district.

As far as them being borrowable, I think I would have to get a legal opinion on that.

I don't know if we could take them out of the trust fund that was set up.

But they as long as for the city bay portion TIFF, this this uh 3.9 that we have, um we can use it however we choose within that district.

Okay.

Thank you.

Anything else?

Okay, so moving right along.

Um I'm gonna interrupt again.

Mayor, if you don't mind.

Um Kelly, you just said that we can use it for whatever we want in that district.

I don't think that's true, but I'm glad you said that.

This the Bay TIFF that was originally um formed for the purpose of the park and and whatever goes with it, um, has to have an agreement of the city, the county, and the Bay Park Conservancy.

Anything that's in the city bay TIF, we as a city can decide how we want to spend it.

So um, Commissioner Alpert, actually, the ordinance just restricts the use even in the city TIF.

It can only be used for the Bay Park, the performing arts center, or multimodal um improvements within the Bay District.

So it's not anything, it's within those three items, um, is what it can be used for within the TIFF district.

Okay, that's a that's exactly what I thought.

Thank you.

Caitlin go on.

Yeah.

Okay.

Our next slide is Golden Gate Streetscape, and it's on page 249.

The Golden Gate Streetscape Special District operating budget is supported by millage as requested by the residents.

This millage is the maintenance and upkeep for landscaping and streetscaping within their district.

The assessed value of Golden Gate on July 1st was 540 million.

This is a 14.32% increase from the prior year.

The Golden Gate assesses a millage for operating and debt service, and as we'll present later during the debt service section of the budget presentation, the operating millage of 0.6148 mills has not changed from the previous year.

The city commission is the governing board for the Golden Gate District.

Um their beginning fund balance is 353,000.

The anticipated revenues from their millage of point one of 0.6148 is 319,000.

They have expenditures proposed of 304,000, which gives them an ending fund balance of 368,000.

Questions?

I have questions.

Um the city commission is also the board for the CRA.

And every now and then uh we uh uh adjourn a city commission meeting and meet as the CRA board.

We never do that for the Golden Gate Streetscape Board.

The CRA is set up as a dependent district.

Uh the Golden Gate is an independent district, and that is why.

So we never will have to meet the board.

The Golden Gate people, uh, the homeowners, they meet, they tell us what expenses, what expanded uh streetscape they want, and then they you know ask me what what millage will get us enough money to do this, and that's the millage that I present to you.

Thank you.

I I was wondering about the debt at what point will that end, and do you anticipate either sunsetting the district or making uh significant change to the millage?

I I think that's gonna be a legal question as far as what happens to the operating.

Um I think I know the debt when it's repaid, and I when we'll get to that.

Okay.

I know it right off the top of my head.

But when the debt is defees, then you know that's a decision that will have to be made.

Yeah, we can talk, but you're gonna have options there for sure.

Okay, thank you.

Moving right along?

Okay.

The next special revenue fund is a downtown improvement district.

Uh, this is also an independent district.

The assessed value of the downtown improvement district on July 1st is 539 million.

This is a 5.56% increase from the prior year.

The millage for the DID is two meals.

The DID, um, I said it was independent, it's a dependent taxing authority with a governing board that is appointed by the city commission.

This fund has a special has a budget issue to add an admin specialist position at the cost of 74,000.

And I will tell you that uh they did have a half of a half of a person in there that they replaced with this request for a full-time admin specialist.

Anytime we add um FTE to the table of org, we have to come to the city commission.

Part-time not some, we don't have to come to you for that, but when it's a full-time.

So by changing um the makeup from a part-time to full-time, that's why you're being presented this as a budget issue.

The there is a loan in the DID to repay the CRA for some streetscape work, and that fiscal year 27 is the 14th year of the 15-year loan.

So it's almost paid off.

The beginning fund balance was 726,000.

They anticipate revenues of a million.

And then various expenses totaling 1.3, leaving them with an ending fund balance of 429.

And I'll turn it over to Steve if you want to talk some more about.

Yeah, this is probably a good time to discuss our thoughts as far as restructuring the economic development office.

Back when Wayne Appleby was here, we sat down and we looked at a couple different alternatives and came up with the one that's part of the budget that's before you today.

And what's what's interesting about this is that we've uh we're proposing to restructure the economic development office and go from three positions to five positions with little or no impact on the budget at all.

The Office of Economic Development has pretty much been in the maintenance reactive mode, and we really want to turn this economic development office into a very proactive office.

And so the and this is one part of it, this did position.

Um the also the the manager of economic development and real estate, that position stays the same, and we have a we have a new um well, Adidra Green Larkins is coming in from St.

Pete to take the role of uh heading up our economic development and real estate office.

We're really very excited about her.

She will be starting August 5th.

Um as part of this restructuring, um, we also, as mentioned previously, uh redevelopment project specialist that was uh brought up earlier in the planning budget.

Uh that will be funded 33 percent from the general fund, 67 percent from the CRA, which we'll be dealing with a little bit later.

The redevelopment administrator position, 50 percent general fund, 50 percent CRA, and then a real estate and operations administrator position, uh, which is really taking on a new life here at the city.

Uh just really just a lot of work um in that area.

That would be 50 percent general fund, 50 percent of the least revenues, which are part of the general fund, but we would we would tap into that fund since there's a direct relationship there.

So I just wanted to kind of go over that with you.

We're creating we're going from three to five positions.

Um we're securing, we're proposing funding from the CRA for the DID.

Um, and so I just want to cover that at this time.

Question?

Oh, she can go ahead.

That's sorry.

Okay, you're so are you saying that the administer uh administrative position you were just talking about is the administrative specialist position that we have in this um presentation by Ms.

Drickland.

Correct, correct.

The yeah, the DID administrative specialist.

Okay.

So explain that one position a little bit further, the justification and rationale for it.

Okay.

Yeah, the DID administrative specialist um uh will be um providing administrative coordination support for the DID.

It will be preparing DID meeting minutes for the chair, agendas, schedules, and meeting notices, um, provide ministrative support for the maintenance cloniness, landscaping, lighting and safety service activities, monitoring and tracking the DID budget, uh being the administrative point of contact of downtown property owners, businesses, and residents.

Uh we'll be coordinating a board communications meeting meetings and outreach efforts that provide support of branding, marketing, and activities directed by the DID board, uh provide administrative support for capital improvement, placemaking and streetscape projects, and be part of the team that's really assisting in having a more proactive economic development office.

And are you saying that's uh one FTE?

That's the one FTE in the DID administrative specialist position.

It's usually it's uh Julie Ryan for the record.

It's utilizing the its taking the half position, using that salary base, putting it into a grade level that's equal to that, but making it a full-time position, so it's not an impact to the DID's budget, but it is giving them a greater level of support and allowing a single individual to focus 100 percent of the time on the downtown building the relationships.

Do you remember the DID recently adopted their strategic plan?

Part of that was part of the state legislation that they have a lot more administrative work.

They have to work towards their goals, objectives, and initiatives, so that would allow this full-time person to be more proactive to do those initiatives and all of the other um programs that the DID wants to initiate in a full-time position opposed to a half a position.

Okay.

And so you've done an analysis and you have data that shows that the work you just mentioned requires a full-time person to do that?

Yes.

Yes, thank you.

Um page 252.

Um the main street ski streetscape um loan repayment.

Those are that's for the planning, correct?

That was done um approximately 15 years ago on Lower Main.

Um that was for the streetscape um plantings irrigation that they put on on Lower Main.

Okay.

And then the citywide trolley.

Um I know there have been some discussions about the DID and their contribution to that.

It it goes down, I believe, there a little bit.

Correct.

Um what it what are their um thoughts about uh not contributing at all to the trolley?

Um they are still mixed as far as um they do believe that it is a benefit.

Um you will see the reduction from previous years, um, 50 to 35 based upon uh the presentation that was made to City Commission when the trolley went to uh the county.

Um they looked at those figures and what the benefits would be to the city, and that is why they reduced from 50 to 35.

Um I will say it's the first year that they came to the decision themselves without um you know saying that you know they were contributing the 50.

Um so they were positive because they do believe it's a benefit.

Um would they eventually like to see that number get lower as the cost of the trolley gets lower and lower?

Probably that trend could probably be there until the trolley could be self-sufficient.

Um will the cost of the trolley get lower and lower?

I don't know.

But that is the hope as far as the DID goes.

I'm not so sure it will.

No, I know.

Um, and then the uh can you explain what happened with the flower box, the flower baskets going away, and then the plan streetscape um place making incentives, what that's going to look like and how that works, those two numbers.

Yes.

So you will see 255,000 has been slated for streetscape and placemaking initiatives.

Um right after uh the budget is finalized, the board will start to have um their first workshop to discuss what that will look like.

Um they are um trying to be cautious of what will happen with Main Street and the timing of that so that they're not wasting dollars.

Um but if we know Main Street is going to be put off long term, then they will invest more money in Main Street.

Um that will probably be their their focus with some streetscaping, they already have a project in to replace all of the tree lights that you see.

We just recently did Five Points Park, and now we're making our way through the rest of the downtown.

Um they have another project to redo all of the lampposts, um, repainting all of those in the downtown and obviously the plantings um would be the next stage in that.

Okay, and I see that they've increased the um sidewalk and alley cleaning from 66 to 79.

Yeah, that happens to be a new area.

Um we previously did not have a lot of merchants on pineapple, um, but there happens to be a lot more merchants that are on there, and they had previously been excluded from the city's um sidewalk cleaning schedule.

So the DID has put in for that, as well as they as you know the city does not have a level of service for alleyway cleanings.

The JID has also included the four alleyway cleanings.

Okay, and there's 75,000 for 1400 block uh revitalization.

Um and I'm just curious uh what what about the discussion about uh I know it's always about the sidewalk cleaning and it's um not more where they would like it, it's just more in general.

Well what is the discussion about more in general?

Are they looking to the city to provide an a higher level of service for sidewalk cleaning?

They would, um, but they are obviously realistic of of what is happening, and um they recognize that the 1400 block of Main Street does have the most um condensed area of restaurants and bars, um, and do you know that that is the most problem ish area in um in their view?

So that is why they put that allocation in there, um, whether it is for additional um sidewalk cleanings and or they discuss possibly on the weekends having patrolled officers to be in that area um you know during late night hours to just there have been issues um that they've seen.

Um so again, it's another project that they have to really work through and decide where and how they're going to spend those dollars.

Okay, okay.

Um Ms.

Fryling, where would that come in our discussion today about potentially having a discussion of increasing the sidewalk cleaning for downtown for that area?

Um you could put it on an issue that we can bring back.

I would at least like a discussion of it.

It's consistent year after year after year after year, and I know they're trying to work within their budget to do it, but if the city could increase our services to them, that would really I think take a lot of sting off of a lot of things.

Um may I okay.

Um I had a question about the special services on page 253.

Um it's if my eyes are working right, 512,000 from 200, is that correct?

What line is that?

Uh it's SC3401 under contractual services.

That is this probably um it's a combination of some of these programs that are service contracts.

Of the stuff I just talked about on the left?

Yes.

Okay.

Okay, I didn't do the math on that.

Yes.

If I had, maybe I would have realized that.

Right, right.

Like, I guess if I had added that up, I would have realized maybe that that's what that is.

Um that's it for me.

Thank you.

Okay.

I excuse me, I was wondering.

I'm looking at the um expenses far exceed the revenues, two budgets in a row.

And I'm concerned about the sustainability of that.

Anyway I I can talk to you about that.

So two mills each year has been the downtown district's revenue for forever.

The best place to look is on page two 251.

Okay.

Or also I can give you the slide too.

So we are starting, it it everything, all of those revenues stay in this fund.

So the fund balance, the ending fund balance, you don't want it to be too high because they're charging too much, and you don't want it to be too low because you want enough to do the programs and initiatives in there.

And if you take a look at this one page that I pointed you to, 251, you can see the actual column.

That was the actual for fiscal year 25.

Um, the budget, the next column for fiscal year 26.

We budgeted it to be a pretty low fund balance.

The reason you would say um expenditures over revenues would be to spin down some of the fund balance.

You want the fund balance to stay in a sweet spot.

Okay.

Not too much, not too little.

Okay, so in your opinion, they're gonna be in that sweet spot.

Yes, and the when we would start worrying is when they're really low, um, and then they're spending too much, or if they were really high also, um, and in past years they have been high, and we say, look, you've got too much money.

What are you why are you collecting this much if you're not spending it?

So it's very good that they stay, you know, they're gonna end up uh at 429,000, so that's a good balance for them.

So that's a good balance for them.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Yes, I do.

Regarding sidewalk and alley cleaning.

Has anyone ever had conversation with a professional who could tell us whether or not the sidewalks and alleys are stained rather than dirty?

Because if they're stained and you try to clean them, they'll still be stained.

And so what about that?

Cleaning won't help.

Stained sidewalks and alleys.

That that specific issue actually came up as one of the parking garage issues in the in the stairway.

And sometimes that that is the case.

But there is times that no matter how much you pressure wash it and clean it, it's still going to have that appearance.

And then if that's the case, some communities choose certain areas where they paint that in the park sections.

Did you want Mr.

Patel to come down and address that?

If he can add to the conversation about sidewalks being dirty or stained and what to do about them?

Certainly.

So while you're waiting on him to come down, Tyler just told me that we did increase the funding in the general fund, $28,000 for additional sidewalk cleaning, and in here $18,000.

So that was a question.

If they're stained, say that one more time.

We added $28,000 in the general fund for sidewalk cleaning, and we also added $18,000 in the DID for sidewalk cleaning.

But if they're stained, additional money for cleaning won't help.

So what do we do to determine if we're wasting money cleaning when the sidewalks are stained, not dirty.

It looks like Mr.

Patel would like to respond.

I would love for him to respond.

Nick Patel, uh Director of Public Works for the record.

So Vice Mayor, um Yes, we do have quite a bit of sidewalk that are stained.

Um even with the uh the olive trees, they do st they do produce fruit that stain the sidewalk.

So um and including sometimes sidewalk cafes, we do have grease, you know, sometimes on on the on the pavement.

So those are hard to remove.

Essentially, you know, we just document and um we do the best we can for for cleaning.

Um one thing I want to kind of mention how often we do cleaning.

So the DID does six times um a year, and we do six times the public works does six times a year.

And as uh uh Ms.

Strickland stated that um we did add additional money in our budget to do six times a year to do palm as well as uh lemon, because the DID requested that from us, and the DID is also gonna be doing six times a year to uh clean palm and lemon on top of what pineapple or palm?

I thought it was pineapple, is it?

Is it I think it's that whole that whole area?

Yeah.

I'll go back and check.

I think it's pineapple.

Okay, so so the addition is that 1,195 square feet that's additional.

Correct.

Okay.

Okay.

So that's it's an addition, it's not more often cleaning, it's just more feet of cleaning.

And then the staining to address is just there's not much we can do unless if we try to grind it or remove the entire sidewalk panel, that's the only way to really clean some of these areas.

That that's why some of the alleyways, there's a lot of restaurants that that have grease traps and and that aspect, so there's a lot of staining specifically on the alleys as well.

So even after a pressure wash, it may appear that it may be dirty, but it's a staining tied to some of the grease and stains out there.

So Mr.

Patel, do you have any knowledge about painting sidewalks and alleys?

Do some cities do that?

So um there is there's options to do that.

Um and it's it's actually it's it's a primer on a concrete.

Um you can we can actually put it on there.

That's something certainly we can look at if that's what the commission would like us to do.

So Ms.

Fryling, at what point could we direct staff to have conversation about that?

Right now?

Okay.

So I mean not for this year's budget, but wait a minute.

Gather information and make a decision about whether it's a value to us.

I I was even wondering if if on the street as opposed to on the alleys, there's some sort of a chemical solution that for the uh staining that could be used once a year or whatever just to make a dent on the staining on the you know main street and pineapple palm, which everyone but you know, not the alleys, but on the street where we've got visitors and residents walking.

Um here, we we can certainly look into that.

Um one thing I do want to address is that we can look at those options, however, brick.

Um not sure if there's a simple solution for bricks because um painting bricks and it doesn't match.

So but we can certainly look at concrete sidewalk specifically and alleys to see what we can do to um enhance it.

I don't want to call paint um whatever.

Or rather uh it's more of primer on top of the concrete and and that that will provide uh some that that would cover up some of the stains.

So I'm asking to give staff direction to look into this.

Um is there any objection to that?

I j I just wanted to add that um I think one of the main issues with the businesses is not necessarily the staining, which you know that's a whole different thing.

It's the um it's the cleaning of them after there have been um people enjoying themselves at the late night hours and um without going into any detail, you can picture what I mean.

So I think it's the immediate cleaning of them that's the major issue and the smells that go along with that.

Got the picture?

Yeah, I mean too much information.

Yeah, actually I'm it's surprised because I'm aware of some cities where it's the shopkeepers' responsibility to clean the street in front of their shop every day if necessary.

I was gonna you know suggest that.

Is there any type of like ordinance or whatever to um direct you know staff to you know speak to the property owners or shopkeepers or what have you to clean out in front of their their shops in the immediate area or what have you.

I mean, because you're talking about what uh once a month if you're doing it if we're doing it you know six times and then the DID is doing it six times.

This is it this that's once a month, you know.

That's only twelve times a year that we're actually cleaning the sidewalks.

And you know, for Sarasota, you know, we should be way beyond beyond that in terms of how we maintain our sidewalks and the upkeep of our city and its cleanliness or whatever.

So I mean I I don't have an issue even when it comes to to having uh the shopkeepers clean out in front of their shops.

I mean, I think that would kind of you know free up some money in the budget as well if they took care of it, you know, then as opposed to us when I I mean what what does it take for them to go out and just sort of pressure wash for like 15 minutes right out in front of the.

I I can't I can't answer to what is on a current ordinance, but if I were to assume, and I don't like assuming, um but best based on my previous life is typically the business, just like any property owner is responsible for what's happening outside in the right away.

And so I'm assuming our code does the same thing, having not read it in the short term year I've been here.

Um there's an obligation the business owner to keep the front of it.

I mean, we used to have snow.

They have to go out and shovel the snow.

We don't have a lot of that.

You know, I know thank gosh, we don't have snow.

But um there is an obligation the businesses to keep their the in front of their business safe, tidy, clean.

But I know they go out, you know, you see a lot of them go out there with uh with a leaf blower and and blow it, but to actually like you know um clean the the sidewalks and you know and pressure wash it for like 10, 15 minutes or whatever, and you know, just become a part of their side work, I would think.

So I'd like to get back to my original question.

It seems like we have two sidewalk alley dirtiness issues.

One is a daily issue where you need to go out in front of your store and check to see who did what out there while you were gone, and the other is the staining rather than the dirt, the dirtiness.

And the other is the staining rather than the dirt, the dirtiness.

And there are two separate issues to me.

And I since I brought up the staining versus dirt issue, I'd like to confirm that we there is no objection to having staff look into that before we wind down the other part of it.

Let's just be careful we're not giving direction.

Technically, we should not be given direction, but we can just say, would you maybe think about it?

Yeah, so I hear I hear what you're saying, and we will follow up.

Yeah, thank you very much.

On both sides, both issues?

Yes.

Okay.

Um I just want to add one more thing.

Um one thing I forgot to add is that we also do four times a year, sidewalk cafe cleaning.

And it's just around the sidewalk cafes.

And that's a fee that we already collect from the permit.

Um so on top of the once a month cleaning.

There's also um four times a year uh sidewalk cafe cleaning just around the sidewalk cafes.

Thank you.

And the dig does educate each property and business owner of their responsibilities.

Thank you.

So are we finished with our questions on the dude?

Yes.

Okay, thank you all.

Our next slide is on building services, and this can be found on page 256.

Section 553.8 Florida statute provides the guidelines for this special revenue fund.

The fees collected must be used solely for the carrying out the city's responsibilities and enforcing the Florida Building Code.

Per House Bill 447, the building code, carryover of excess of the average of the past four years of budget is prohibited.

It cannot exceed 6.6.

This fund is a little bit exceeding that.

The beginning fund balance is 15.5.

The revenues anticipated are 10.8 million.

The expenditures total 9.3 million, and the ending fund balance is 17.1 million.

Do we have a question there?

Thank you.

Would you speak to the request for an administrative assistant?

Yes, certainly.

Lucia Panico, Director of Development Services.

This would be a position, um, an administrative assistant position mainly to the building official and the deputy building official doing mainly secretarial work such as um scheduling meetings, answering phone calls, um, doing the administrative work for the um permitting and the um building divisions.

Currently we don't have any, we don't have a position like that, and um it's really highly needed.

Do the building official and deputy building official currently do that work themselves?

Yes.

Takes away time from serving the public, from doing inspections, plan reviews, helping um anyone that comes into our office.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Okay, thank you.

Our next special revenue fund is the development application system, and this can be found on page 263.

Article 4-102 of the land development code directs the city to establish a schedule of fees and charges for matters pertaining to development review.

The transfer to the general fund and the restricted fund balance represent this mandate.

Uh, one of the questions you asked me earlier, Vice Mayor, in the general fund was why were the transfers into the general fund higher?

And part of it is the uh this fund right here.

We are transferring 900,000 this year in fiscal year uh 27, and I think it was 600,000 in the previous year.

Any questions about this fund?

Okay.

I do.

Did you say yes?

Yes.

Okay.

Um would that be on page 265?

At the very bottom.

263 and 265.

Uh yes, ma'am.

At the very bottom there.

Okay.

That was my question.

Intergovernmental transfers.

Yep.

Okay.

Any other questions on development application system?

Hearing none.

Moving along.

The next slide deals with the out the Office of Housing and Community Development.

This are this is grants.

This is SHIP Home and CDBG.

And there are 2.94 full-time employees in this fund with an additional 0.06 counted for in the general fund.

We discussed earlier today.

And that is because there are administrative costs that cannot be charged directly to these grants.

And I'll turn it over to Mr.

Cover and Ms.

Inchoff.

Are there any Cindy Mshaw, General Manager, Office of Housing and Community Development?

Are there any questions that I can answer?

We recently had you approve the final consolidated plan and annual action plan, and that really is where our budget is coming before you for approval.

Questions?

With the revenues, are those definite grants that we're expecting, or those estimated?

They're definite grants that we're expecting.

389,190 for C D B G, and then we have 150,000 plus or minus for home, and then the ship.

Okay, so they're for sure.

That's good.

Thank you.

Any other?

Well, I guess we can move along.

Thank you.

The next fund that we have is the gas tax fund, and that can be found on page 274.

And this is a fund that used we used to have it in the CIP section because these funds could be used for funding our infrastructure.

However, the gas taxes have not been increasing.

If anything, they're staying steady or decreasing.

So the most what you're going to find here are operating expenditures, which are allowed by the gas tax uh Florida statute.

And the biggest thing is the transfer to the general fund, which is for the street lights and for the uh transportation planner, a portion of it, and uh uh traffic light signal person.

So the beginning balance started out at 263,000.

We're anticipating revenues of 1.7 million, uh total expenditures of 1.7, so we'll end up at 221,957.

Any questions here?

None from no thank you.

Okay, our next fund is the community redevelopment agency.

This can be found on page 279.

Um I would ask you to refer to page 280 for the detail of the programs within this fund.

The beginning fund balance is 969,000.

The revenues anticipated are 835.

What that is is the uh tax increment of from their base share.

Their base share was in 2017, so anything above whatever that base is they receive as a TIFF.

And also they're in the next to last year of uh repayment of a loan for the from the DID.

Their total expenditures are 1.4 million, and their ending fund balance is 399,840.

And before I turn it over to Mr.

Cover, I do want to talk about the assessed values.

So the city's assessed values are 20 billion.

The new town CRASS value is 368 million.

The new town uh values went up 6.58%, and as I mentioned, their base year was 2017.

Their uh value was 143 million at that time, so they've improved they've went up a lot, 368 million since then.

Um just to recap the definition of tax increment financing is anything that is over the base year goes into the TIFF district or the CRA, and this will sunset in 2004.

Wait, no, 2004?

2047.

I read my numbers wrong, I'm sorry.

Okay.

It's a two and a four, okay.

2047.

Travel back.

Sometime, some days.

And I guess this is a question for Ms.

Jorgensen.

Is there any danger of the state legislature terminating the CRA sooner than 2047?

So Kelly's going back in time, and you're asking me to go to the forward in time.

I don't the CRA obviously has been brought up each year to have them eliminate the CRA, the state legislature.

So we anticipate that it'll come back the next um legislative session, but we don't know what they're going to vote on.

Always a possibility.

It's always a possibility.

It hasn't passed in the last couple of years, but it's always a possibility.

Thank you.

I just want to remind you the Newtown CRA was formed in 2008.

And the base year at that time was really high.

And then the economy dropped, and we didn't earn any TIFF revenues for years.

And in 2017, it was voted on to reset the base.

And they've been earning revenue ever since then.

But there was a time there where we had the TIFF, but it didn't earn anything because the assessed values kept going below the base.

So when we set the base, it was $143 million.

Yeah.

And now we're at $368.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Any other questions?

I have questions.

Yeah, so my question is about the on page 280.

The CRA contributes to the Salvation Army.

Can you just explain to me what that is about?

Roshal Kalant, Business Relations Coordinator for the record.

And what we heard earlier from Ms.

Legarski was that some of the money that is collected for the cleanup through the Salvation Army comes from the CRA.

So 40,000 comes from the CRA budget annually to support that.

And the intent is that it covers those those services within the Newtown area within the district.

Okay, so not the beds at the Salvation.

The street cleaning.

The street.

Correct.

Okay, right.

Got it.

Okay.

That's making a sense to me now.

Again, I keep saying seeing Salvation Army, I'm thinking physically the Salvation Army and not the street teams.

Thank you.

And then the MLK commercial corridor redevelopment initiative, the amount goes down significantly.

Can you explain that one to me as well?

Yes.

The amount the funding amount will still actually be actually be increased.

It's going to be at a million dollars.

Last fiscal year was at $900,000.

So the amount that you're seeing in your budget is the amount that's being added to what's being carried forward.

I see.

I see.

Okay.

Those are my questions.

Thank you.

And I was just going to say something else, maybe if I may um just so everyone's aware as well, because a lot of people would know that the mayor mentioned about the CRA being under threat constantly by the state.

So I don't think a lot of people, particularly in Newtown, are aware of that.

And we'd like to add to also for the numbers.

We have to make a correction and we'll we'll make this correction obvious on our tomorrow night in our special meeting, but we're gonna um where I told you we were gonna increase the revenues in the general fund, we're gonna increase the expenditures in this fund and what that is toward the uh position that is shared with the general fund and the CRA.

And rather than put the position in the CRA, we just have a transfer from the CRA to the general fund.

So the position is in the general fund.

It's one of the the budget issues that you were presented.

Anything on yes.

Um I noticed in your um expenditures section CRA.

Two programs I'd like you to address just briefly.

One is the homeowner title clearance program, and the other is the home front new town grant.

Please.

Salute.

The homeowner title clearance program is to assist business, excuse me, residents in Newtown with clearing up their titles to ownership of their homes.

Historically, a lot of the homes we've seen have been passed down generationally but informally, and so there are no there's no formal paperwork on file, which becomes a burden or hurdle for the residents to qualify for repair program repair programs, even the Sarasota Alliance for Historic Preservation.

Recently, the Newtown CRA funded a grant towards that organization to assist rehabilitation with some of the historic homes in Newtown, but you have to prove or demonstrate that you have ownership of the home.

Unfortunately, in the time that I've been on staff, we haven't had any anyone come forward to take advantage of that.

However, the CRA continues to fund the program.

What we found is that there have been some challenges to overcome distrust in the community.

There's there people in the in the community who might benefit from the program are rather fearful that by going through this, there might be some hiccup in the paperwork and they might actually end up losing their homes.

And so we have tried to address that by canvassing the community and having the coordinator who is Ms.

Carolyn Mason, a former commissioner, and she has been she's now the coordinator of the program and she's gone out door to door.

She's very well known in the community and she's gone out.

And trusted and trusted, well known and trusted, exactly.

And trying to educate about the program and to encourage the neighborhood and the community to take advantage of it.

But it's still a work in progress.

Well, I was gonna encourage you to market it, but I think a trusted, well-known face is a really good way to market a program like this.

Could you talk to us briefly about the home front new town grant?

Yes.

The CRA put into its budget funding to assist homeowners with painting their residence as well as the potential to put in a solar panel.

The grant is allowed allows up to $4,000 per single family home and $7,000 up for two-story home.

And within that budget, you can have the home painted, and if there's additional funding available from your grant, you can also have a solar lamp post installed.

And how do you mark market that program to let people know that it's available to them?

You may recall that about two years ago the CRA recently launched a communications program, and so they have hired a marketing agency, and in the last year they've launched a newsletter as well as social media channels.

And so what the CRA marketing agency is currently doing is building case studies for the different programs and highlighting the successes of those programs.

And so on deck is the home front beautification program.

But prior to that, even launching what we have done as staff is we developed some signs and we put them out.

So when the contractor goes out to the different homes, the sign is put up out in front of that home.

Would you like your home painted?

You may qualify for free.

Call this number.

Oh, I've seen one of those signs out, yes.

So the contractor takes those to each site.

Uh-huh.

Thank you for that information.

Okay.

Anything el Yeah.

I was just going to add, uh Mayor, you know, to miss the launch um point about one of the challenges in Newtown, even on the business corridor, is uh cloud on titles or what have you and whatnot.

Um why you know it it adds to the depression in the area.

Why not in to in to her point?

Uh one of the the um biggest impediments and um contentions up there is is just fear and whatnot and you know when you're passing down you know properties to to the younger generation that a lot of times have no clue, you know, as to what it takes to to maintain a property or even you know research the title or anything like that in the cloud to just sit, you know, sit in there.

Um it makes it extremely challenging for them to even participate in in any of these things or what have you in in these programs or grants.

So just wanted to get that out there.

And I I'd like to clarify for the record, I won don't want to misrepresent the home front, the title clearance program is actually in support of Minnesota Legal AIDS efforts to help with title clearance, and so the CRA uh has allotted a budget to support the paperwork and that part of it for the residents in Newtown.

But it's a Minnesota legal aid program.

And and and also Mrs.

Uh Mrs.

Mason or former Mayor Mason uh works for legal aid as well, so that's how she's able to assist with this.