And Madam Clerk, if we could get a roll call, please.

Mr.

Engelke?

Here.

Ms.

Frank.

Here.

Mr.

Howard?

Here.

Mr.

Smith.

Mr.

Weed.

Here.

Vice Mayor Bolt.

Mayor Pachota.

I am here and we will stand for the pledge led by Vice Mayor Bolt.

Pledge allegiance to the divide of the United States of America.

And to the republic for which it stands.

All right.

Madam Clerk, when you're ready, if you can read this ordinance by title only, please.

An ordinance of the City of Venice, Sarasota County, Florida adopting the final levying of ad valore and taxes for the city of Venice for fiscal year 2026 to 2027 and providing an effective date.

And then Madam Clerk, if you can make the taxing authority statement, please.

And then if you want to read the taxing authority statement.

The current operating millage rate set last year and on which the previous advalorant taxes were calculated as 3.9041 mills.

The rolled back, the rolled back millage is the rate that would be required to collect the same amount of money as last year using this year's valuation, which is 3.9261 mills.

We are now adding two additional traffic officers in the budget for next year, as well as the organizational structural changes in order to make our police department more effective in serving our community.

And I'm looking forward to next year taking that same systematic approach with our fire department.

Uh, we have budgeted for FY27 to do the fire staffing review, level of service review, and looking into opportunities to move fire service funding into a non-advalorum revenue source.

I think that is an approach that will be more transparent, more equitable to different property types, and most importantly, will provide some protection for our public safety funding moving forward.

A couple other notable things for FY27.

We're bringing our fleet maintenance light duty under uh city control, and we'll be bringing that in house next year.

We are finally implementing the new Sarasota County Park Center local agreement, which will result in seven neighborhood parks being taken over by our public works department, including the Venice Community Center.

Um lot of important infrastructure projects in the budget for next year.

I won't go into all those, but uh uh it is a very robust budget that we we all should be proud of.

Not going to dwell too much on our amendment three uncertainties for next year, but I want to make one really important point.

With a exceptionally lean and conservative budget this year, we're going to have some additional challenges next year if more cuts are warranted.

And what I mean by that is next year, if it's necessary to make additional cuts, we're going to be looking at staffing, and it's going to result in level of service discussions, right?

Uh, and I don't say that to sound any alarms here tonight, but I think it's important for transparency when we have this conversation again next year that no one's surprised on what we're what we're discussing.

And in fact, next year we will be required uh by the new state legislation to do a 10% budget reduction model.

So that will be part of this meeting next year.

So we'll really get to see what those reductions would look like when it comes to level of service.

We're running lean now, which is a great thing.

It's just gonna make our process a little more challenging next year.

At the same time, we are continuing to be a very healthy growing community, and we officially hit 30,887 residents this past year.

We broke the 30,000 mark, um, which is very notable, and um you know it leads to the question of how not only do we accommodate this growth, but how do we protect what made Venice so successful in the first place?

And that's something we'll be talking about throughout our next budget discussions.

Most importantly, tonight I want to say that even though there are a lot of uncertainties, a lot of challenges, we have a whole lot to be proud of here in the city of Venice, and I think that to me is the most important message uh for this next year and for our budget approval.

I can't remember a year in my history where we have done more celebrations and cut more ribbons than this past year, and that uh was not just all for show, that was projects getting delivered by this team and with support of this board.

So that's something that we we should all be uh very proud of, and this next year is going to be no different.

Um matter what the future holds, our team is committed as I know this board is to serving our community faithfully, delivering service, and whatever happens, we will deal with it as a team.

So thank you, City Council.

Thank you to our staff for all your hard work over the last eight months, and uh looking forward to starting another new fiscal year and open to any questions you have at this time.

Thank you.

Madam Clerk, do you have any written communication?

No.

All right, and do we have anybody signed up to speak?

We do not.

All right, I'll close the public hearing, and I'll entertain a motion, Mr.