[0:07] Good evening, everybody, good evening. If we could please make our way to our seats so we can begin. Thank you very much.

[0:24] Welcome, welcome, everyone, to the town of Cutler Bay's budget hearing. Today is Tuesday, September 8, 2026.

[0:35] If Mr. Town Clerk, can you please take attendance. Council Member Lord. Yeah. Council Member Duncan. Here. Council Member Marra bears. Here.

[0:43] Mayor, Mayor Callahan, Mayor Mayor Bonn.

[0:46] We have a quorum.

[0:47] Thank you, Mr. Clerk.

[0:47] If you can please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

[0:53] I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which

[1:00] it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

[1:08] Now if you can please all remain standing, I do have a somber announcement.

[1:12] our mayor is unfortunately not here with us today.

[1:16] His father Ed Mierbott passed away this morning.

[1:19] So I would like for all of us standing to provide a moment

[1:23] of silence in his honor.

[1:38] Thank you all very much.

[1:44] Okay, so we're gonna go ahead and open up the floor

[1:48] for public comments before we get into our proclamation.

[1:51] If there's anybody in the public

[1:53] that would like to speak, please line up here.

[1:56] Mr. Clerk, do we have anybody in the queue?

[2:01] No, one in the queue.

[2:02] Okay. Thank you so much. Okay. So we're going to go ahead and move forward with our first item,

[2:09] which is a proclamation here. That's why a lot of you are here. I'll take a moment of personal

[2:14] privilege here and then I'll open it up to my fellow council. Here in the town of Cutler Bay,

[2:19] we've been incorporated for 20 years before that. We were of course Cutler Ridge and we've always

[2:24] been a community of service. We've always been a community of people that are supporting each other,

[2:30] whether it be through teachers, firefighters, police, first responders, and one of those

[2:37] individuals tragically gave his life in the line of duty on September 11, 1994, and that

[2:44] was Lieutenant Dewey Henry.

[2:47] And it was brought to my attention, and I met with Gil and some of the members here of

[2:53] the fire department of the fire union about his legacy and how you have the the Dewey scholarship

[3:02] the Dewey Henry scholarship and how that has provided so many immense opportunities for

[3:07] young individuals who have parents who have you know caregivers loved ones that that are

[3:13] in service and continue to kind of provide that type of support.

[3:18] And I thought to myself, what an amazing opportunity to honor and recognize the service and the legacy of the tenant Dewey Henry.

[3:28] He passed away, of course, September 11th, which is a date in and of itself in infamy.

[3:34] And unfortunately, because of that, it has a tendency to be overshadowed from time to time.

[3:38] But in the town of Color Bay, I wanted us to ensure that we will forever honor his legacy,

[3:47] his memory, and do so with his family and his brothers and sisters in the department.

[3:53] So that was really the onus for wanting to do this, really wanting to celebrate his life

[3:58] and his honor.

[3:59] And thank you all for coming out today to celebrate with us and to honor him as well.

[4:04] So I'll open them up to my fellow council members if they have anything.

[4:07] Council member lord.

[4:09] Thank you.

[4:10] Um, I was so pleased that we were actually going to do this proclamation today.

[4:16] One, it is the week of September 11th, which happens to be, unfortunately the day,

[4:21] Lieutenant Henry passed away and it's also the week that we have Patriots day and it's just a great

[4:30] time for us to finally recognize his service to us, right?

[4:37] In preparation for that, first I put out the invitation to everybody, please come, you

[4:43] know, please honor this gentleman who gave the ultimate sacrifice to our community.

[4:50] But I also remembered some statistics that I think are super important.

[4:55] I knew that we would have a lot of people here.

[4:57] So I went back and I pulled the annual report that Chief Gidala presented to us in February

[5:03] of this year.

[5:05] And I think it's important that we recognize how lucky Colour Bay is to have the fire

[5:10] individuals working in town that we have.

[5:13] One of the comments was that we have a response time that's below industry standards here in

[5:19] Colour Bay in the year prior to the report.

[5:23] there are 777 businesses that were inspected by the fire department. And that's significant

[5:28] because that's 177 businesses that our residents go to or maybe work at. And so I was really pleased

[5:37] to see that, but mostly I was in plea, please, because I recognize most of you from the community.

[5:44] And we have such a good partnership that in January of 2025, the fire department brought one of their

[5:52] trucks to color based senior high to do demonstrations so you know I'm highlighting here the amazing

[5:58] relationship that we have with the fire department largely because I'm the proud daughter of a

[6:04] first responder right my father was career military police there were many nights we didn't know

[6:10] if he was going to come home I was pleased and pleased to say he always did but our first responders

[6:15] most of you here, you guys are the backbone to our emergency services.

[6:21] Lieutenant Henry was the backbone to our emergency services.

[6:25] And for that, I want to thank you all for letting me take a few minutes of your time

[6:29] for allowing me to recognize Lieutenant Henry, but also to recognize you guys.

[6:33] So thank you.

[6:35] Thank you, Councilmember Lord.

[6:37] One point before we move on to Councilmember Ramirez, we do have our state representative

[6:42] and former firefighter Omar Blanco in the house.

[6:45] Thank you for attending.

[6:47] Council Member Mera's.

[6:48] Thank you.

[6:49] Thank you.

[6:50] Council Member Duncan.

[6:51] Let me just clarify real quick.

[6:54] Our representative hasn't retired yet.

[6:57] We're not going to, we're going to,

[6:58] not going to let it retire for a long time from the department and also from the

[7:02] house and appreciate you showing up and then being here and I always like talking to you.

[7:10] It's,

[7:13] I want to say, obviously the incident was, was horrible.

[7:16] But I do have to, I reached out to the crew, rain Rogers, Al Phillips, Shane Dawson, and Lieutenant

[7:26] Dewey Henry. Why didn't reach out to him? But I mean, in his honor. And never did get

[7:33] a response from Wayne. Al was supposed to be here. He got tied up in his travels. So he

[7:39] will not be here tonight. He did say that he would be able to make the thing tomorrow.

[7:46] So

[7:46] 34 for our firefighter reunion which I love and I can't wait to that but then I did get to speak

[7:53] to Shane Dawson and and I think it's important to recognize the crew okay because it affected

[8:00] the people that are there a lot but it also affected this department and it changed the way

[8:06] some sometimes how we do things and sometimes it's a bad accident that actually makes this more safe

[8:11] in the long run down the road.

[8:15] Dewey was a firefighter's firefighter, you know, I did not get a chance to ever work with

[8:20] him, but I did have a relationship with his daughter forever.

[8:26] I've known Celeste God back when I was handsome, which was way back decades ago, but Celeste

[8:33] and I have been family friends for a long time and I appreciate you actually taking the

[8:38] making the effort to get down here because I know it wasn't easy for you to do.

[8:42] She had some friends that had some medical issues that came up unexpectedly.

[8:46] So for her to be here was just a big, a big squeeze on my heart and I absolutely

[8:51] appreciate that. All the rest of you guys coming, you know I've worked with all of

[8:55] you guys. Every single one of Jason Richards was in my fire class, you know.

[8:59] I had to help him through. Not really. The guy scored a 98 or 99 on the

[9:05] exam, which nobody does, but the guy's awesome, so he's a second in charge.

[9:09] We'll mind me if I arrest him. Appreciate it. Steve Durin, always good to see you.

[9:13] Our photographer, Eric Goodman, the guy's everywhere. Love him to death, so all you guys

[9:19] are in my heart. You always will be, and anytime you need me, you know, I'm a phone call

[9:23] away. So let's get this ball rolling. Thank you. Please join me on down front, and we

[9:29] would like to invite the family up as well as the family up for the proclamation and we'll

[9:33] everybody out for pictures. Thank you.

[9:49] Come this way.

[9:51] Representative Blanco, would you like to come say a few words?

[9:57] I'm here.

[9:57] And then walk around.

[10:03] Thank you.

[10:05] You got it, buddy.

[10:07] Good evening, everyone.

[10:11] As Rick Ramirez said, Councilman Ramirez said,

[10:13] and thank you all for doing this.

[10:15] I think one of the things that are important in the fire services

[10:19] is remembering those that came before us and paved the way

[10:23] and made the job safe for all of us.

[10:26] You know, I got hired after Dewey's past, but you know, the one thing I remember was,

[10:34] I went around the fire stations, and I talked to the guys who had been on for many, many

[10:38] years, and they would always talk about the brotherhood, the sister of the fire service.

[10:43] And the example they used one time was when Dewey passed, he was building a home for his family.

[10:50] And the house was under construction for some time.

[10:55] And so let's, I got you here, but what was amazing is after he passed,

[11:02] the fire family came together and put his house together for his family.

[11:08] That is the magic of what, you know, this job entails and puts together,

[11:13] is the ability for us at our very most difficult time for all of us to come together

[11:17] and to be there for one another, and I would go around and telling this story to

[11:22] stations to people about why it's important that we stick together, why we support

[11:25] work together, and one day I'm happened to be at station 52, where Celeste worked

[11:31] for many years, and I'm telling the story as Celeste is kind of sitting to my side

[11:36] and I panned over and I go, wait, Celeste, yes, of course you know this story better

[11:40] than anybody else. And she says, Omar, that story is absolutely true. She goes,

[11:46] but the real magic behind that story was they got the house done in a week.

[11:53] Am I right? You remember that? Yeah and so you know there's what I get

[11:59] chills before the funeral, right?

[12:05] Absolutely. Before I lay them to rest and all that

[12:07] else I'm sure you want to say but I just want to say it's such an honor and thank

[12:10] you Gil and everyone here the local and the department for remembering Dewey.

[12:18] I

[12:18] very special Rick I appreciate you doing this here in the in the the town of

[12:22] color bay and everyone PJ thank you and Susie but thank you so much thank

[12:28] you for everybody who took the time to be here and God bless you Celeste and

[12:31] your beautiful family will always have doing our hearts thank you thank you okay

[12:39] so now I'll go ahead and read the proclamation that was signed by our Mayor

[12:42] Mayor Bond whereas the town of color bay honors with pride America's fallen

[12:48] fire heroes and believes it is important to preserve the memory of those who have given

[12:52] their lives in service to others.

[12:55] And whereas, on September 11th, 1994, Lieutenant Dewey F. Henry made the ultimate sacrifice

[13:01] while courageously battling a warehouse fire in South-Dade.

[13:05] And whereas, Lieutenant Henry's death is a solemn reminder of the extraordinary courage, dedication,

[13:12] and selflessness demonstrated by firefighters and emergency responders who routinely place

[13:17] their own lives at risk to protect our community. And, whereas, Lieutenant Henry served the

[13:24] Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue Department for over 30 years and was stationed at Station

[13:28] 34 in Cutler Bay. And, whereas, many described him as a man's man, always ready to help, always

[13:36] keeping his men safe, always serving with honor and distinction, and always demonstrating

[13:42] and unwavering commitment to his duties.

[13:44] And whereas, Lieutenant Henry was a superman to his family,

[13:49] his firefighters, and his community,

[13:51] and shall be remembered for his courage,

[13:54] selflessness, and commitment to protecting the lives of others.

[13:57] And whereas, Lieutenant Henry is memorialized

[14:01] at the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial

[14:03] in Emmett'sburg, Maryland,

[14:05] and at the IAFF Fallen Fighters Memorial

[14:07] in Colorado Springs, Colorado,

[14:09] as well as locally at Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Station 34 in Cudder Bay, Florida,

[14:15] where a memorial was built by his fellow firefighters and,

[14:19] whereas, Lieutenant Henry's legacy lives on through the

[14:23] Dade County Association of Firefighters Charities incorporating,

[14:26] who provides the Lieutenant-Duey Henry Memorial Scholarship

[14:30] to assist the children of Metro-Dade firefighters

[14:33] local 14-03 charity members, and,

[14:35] Whereas, the town recognizes the profound sacrifice made by Lieutenant Henry, and extends

[14:42] its deepest respect and gratitude to his family, fellow fighter fighters, colleagues,

[14:47] and all who continue to honor his memory.

[14:50] Now therefore, be it resolved that our Mayor Tim Mirbat, Mayor of the town of Cutler Bay,

[14:56] by virtue of the authority vested in Him and on the

[15:00] Name the week of September 7th, 2026. Lieutenant Dewey Henry Weak. Thank you.

[20:31] Okay.

[20:35] Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, if we can, one last thing, one last thing before we move on to our actual budget hearing, as soon as they take the picture here, we'll have Mrs. Dewey Henry provide a few remarks.

[20:59] I prepared this but I just, actually, everything in the plop curation, it says everything there,

[21:08] so.

[21:11] Okay.

[21:12] Here goes.

[21:15] Okay.

[21:16] I'm just going to say, you know, good evening, everyone.

[21:19] I want to begin by thanking all of you for being here tonight and continuing to remember

[21:24] and honor my dad, Dewey Henry.

[21:27] My dad was a fireman's firefighter, and he dedicated his life to serving others.

[21:33] His ultimate, he ultimately gave his life while fighting a warehouse fire, and losing him

[21:39] was something that changed our family forever.

[21:43] And there is not a day that goes by that we do not carry his memory with us.

[21:48] I became a firefighter in fallad in his footsteps, becoming a firefighter gave me a way to

[21:54] personally honor him and continue the legacy that he left behind.

[21:59] One of the hardest things about Dad is knowing that he didn't get to come home that day.

[22:06] But something important came from his sacrifice which has taught firefighters of valuable lessons

[22:12] of the dangers of entering a burning building, how important it is to make sure that the building

[22:19] is safe before upon entering the entry. His death wasn't in vain. Others learned from

[22:28] what happened to him, and those lessons have helped to make the fire service safer. This

[22:34] is something our family is very proud of. I have been retired now for seven years, so

[22:41] standing here tonight and seeing that my dad is still remembered after all these years

[22:45] means more to my family and to me than any words that I can really put together.

[22:51] One of the things that means so much to my family is the Dui Henry Scholarship,

[22:56] knowing that his name continues to help students go to college and pursue their dreams

[23:02] and is an incredible tribute to the kind of legacy he left behind.

[23:08] It is a comfort to know that his sacrifice has not been forgotten,

[23:13] not just by our family but by the community and the firefighters who continue to learn his story.

[23:23] Thank you for not forever forgetting Lieutenant Dewey Henry, our dad.

[23:39] I thought you said you missed another part.

[23:45] Thank

[24:12] you all very much. That was very very touching, very moving and thank you for being able to

[24:18] to join us this evening in honoring the legacy of Lieutenant Dewey Henry.

[24:23] With that being said, we will go ahead and proceed with our scheduled budget hearing.

[24:28] If you don't have to stay for that, of course, this is...

[24:30] So, thank you all very much, please get home safely.

[24:38] Thank you, guys.

[24:39] Stay safe.

[25:08] Okay.

[25:09] Thank you all.

[25:09] We're going to go ahead and proceed with our public hearing on the budget.

[25:16] So for that, I would like to request our town clerk to please read the titles of resolutions 11 a and 11 b together item

[25:27] 11 a

[25:28] A resolution of the mayor and the town council of the town of Ketler Bay, Florida adopting the proposed milled rate of the town of Ketler Bay for the fiscal year commencing October 1st, 2026 through September 30th, 2027, and pursuant to section 200.065 Florida statutes and providing for an effective date.

[25:47] 11-V. A resolution of the mayor in the town council of the town of Kentler Bay, Florida adopting the tentative operating a capital outlay budget for the fiscal year commencing October 1st, 2026 through September 30th, 2027.

[25:59] and pursuant to section 200.065 Florida statutes authorizing the town manager to make expenditures

[26:06] consistent therewith and authorizing the town manager to make certain budget amendments

[26:10] within an apartment provided that the total amount of the appropriations is not changed

[26:14] and provided for effective date.

[26:16] Okay.

[26:17] Thank you very much.

[26:18] Is Robert on the line?

[26:21] I would like if we can.

[26:22] If he's on the line, let's have Robert read the proposed trim statement, please.

[26:28] Okay, the proposed milled rate of the town of Clevver Bay from fiscal year 2026-27 of $2.9143

[26:37] mills per $1,000 of assessed property value within the town of Clevver Bay is 10% greater than

[26:43] the rollback rate of $2.6494 mills per $1,000 of assessed property value. Addvalorm taxes are

[26:52] are being increased primarily to provide for operating expenditures required to maintain

[26:57] current levels of resident services, including police services, reflecting the increases

[27:03] in those costs due to current economic conditions and inflationary trends that are anticipated

[27:08] to continue in the upcoming fiscal year and for police services, reflecting negotiated union

[27:14] contract costs. Additionally, provision is being made for anticipated election costs, including

[27:21] for any runoff and or special elections and for increased debt service costs related to

[27:27] financing for the Legacy Park project.

[27:32] Thank you very much. I'd like to take this moment to

[27:35] open up for a public hearing for both 11 a and 11 b. There's anybody in the audience or online

[27:41] that would like to comment on either 11 a or 11 b now would be the time please.

[27:49] Okay Mauricio,

[27:50] Town Clerk do we have anybody in the queue? There's no one in the queue. Thank you very much.

[27:53] Is there any comments from any member of the council on 11 a or 11 b general comment council

[28:00] board. Thank you. I want to make this comment now so I don't interrupt the flow of our

[28:07] budget conversation. We did receive an unfortunate news that the Florida Recreation Development

[28:14] Assistance Program or FERTAP did not give us the grant for the two playgrounds that we

[28:20] were asking for. And not to take the thunder away from staff or our town manager, but I understand

[28:29] that we will be using the interest money from our ARPA funds, which was also a grant to make up

[28:36] the difference from the grant we didn't get from FERPA. And I just want to say thank you to our

[28:43] town manager and our staff and our parks department for pushing forward on these playgrounds. They are

[28:48] We're near and dear to my heart and there's two of them and these playgrounds will be making safe spaces for children of all abilities to play together and grow together.

[29:01] And I just I don't want to take your thunder about the news, but and I know that you'll go into it a little bit deeper when we're doing the budget, but I just wanted to thank parks and staff.

[29:12] Thank you, council member lord.

[29:14] Councilmember Ramirez, do you have anything or okay? Fantastic. Thank you. So in the

[29:19] the interest of timing, I know that we've gone through the budget multiple times here. Would you

[29:24] like Mr. Town Manager to provide an abbreviated presentation as to what the budget is, what's

[29:32] changing, so on and so forth? Sure. And thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Duncan and Councilman

[29:38] former Lord and Councilor Mayor and also for, you know, again, our thoughts and prayers

[29:42] are with Mayor Mirbotton, his family. Actually, last week, I performed the budget briefing

[29:48] with the mayor, and also vice mayor, you know, had a had a

[30:00] So, I think we've had the visioning, the two workshops, and leading up to this, it's four times that we have individually sat and looked at at these costs. So, Councilmember Nucka, yeah, I mean, I have a 110 slide PowerPoint presentation, but I will provide the abbreviated version on on those, and I might have to indulge the clerk, maybe we could skip some slides. But if we go ahead and put it on screen, provide you a quick recap. I think it's important because what I try to do with the

[30:29] town staff and the residents of Calvés. If nobody attends other budget workshop this is your first

[30:36] time. We want to provide that quick briefing and detail. So thank you. So as we mentioned today,

[30:42] it's the first budget hearing. And I think this is important where we had the first budget workshop.

[30:48] We started this journey back in June, June 17th. And even on that one there, we had the budget vision.

[30:53] We discussed a lot of our priorities. And we actually had residents of the honest. But we also had

[30:57] another 244 views online. Our second budget workshop was held on July

[31:03] the 30th. We had residents again in the audience and as well as we had another 57

[31:09] views. And then we had our third budget workshop. It just feels like it was just

[31:13] yesterday, right? August the 25th, where we introduced all the funds we had over

[31:17] 53 views. Our budget hearings we adopted a resolution 2643. We set the date

[31:24] Obviously today the second budget hearing will be September 22nd. Those are state mandated.

[31:30] Location six o'clock and yes, we do apologize. We had that proclamation. So thank you,

[31:35] Councilman Duncan, for providing the comments up front, you know. That's why I think sometimes

[31:39] we get so consumed with presentation. I want to disenfranchise anybody who might want to leave and I know

[31:44] Mauricio, Tom Clerk, we have some folks online as well. So if you see somebody raise your hand,

[31:48] just a lot of snow and we'll go through there.

[31:52] So we promote our budget workshop to our e-notifications.

[31:55] We have the Color Bay newspaper, the two center pages.

[31:57] We posted our town a website.

[31:59] We have two electronic message boards,

[32:01] one on Caribbean and one on seven,

[32:03] Marlon Roto color, and soon to be,

[32:05] Franjoe and Gulf Stream.

[32:07] And then we also have, we call it open mic,

[32:10] where I have an open form with the community

[32:12] regarding what's going on in town,

[32:14] but also the upcoming budget.

[32:16] We had that at Eastridge on June 25th, Mercedes-Benz on August 7th and Cutler Bay High on August

[32:23] 10th and in fact one there that's going to be tomorrow, it's going to be I'm going to

[32:27] matter Bay Academy and briefing all their teachers as well.

[32:33] Finance and transparency portal,

[32:35] as you've been following us, we have it, it's on our web page, you could look at all different

[32:40] expenditures that we have, that's what it looks like there. Quarter reports, we have our finance

[32:47] Director, we've heard from his Robert, but I mean, yes, is our finance director, been

[32:52] with us since the beginning.

[32:53] We have actually both started the same day.

[32:55] So he provides four times a year, a quarterly report, a war we are kind of give just snaps

[33:00] out of the fiscal year budget.

[33:02] And then also you could look at the latest report on our YouTube channel.

[33:06] One of the things we're very proud of is the government finance officers, GFOA Excellence

[33:11] Award, 18 consecutive years, 18 consecutive years, and the budget presentation award, which

[33:17] which is we have over seven consecutive years and then we will restart again in 2027.

[33:25] So what they would do in 20 and Resolution 2643, we set the ceiling.

[33:30] The ceiling is the maximum rate that we wanted to create based on the rollback rate which

[33:36] is 2.9143 per thousand assess value.

[33:41] We call that the ceiling rate.

[33:43] Our current rate is 2.8332.

[33:47] The resolution sets the hearing dates today and the 22nd and the times.

[33:53] Very proud of we are still the 9th lowest, 9th lowest municipality.

[33:59] I know it's a hard graft to read there, but we're very proud of that.

[34:02] The 9th lowest there because when you start looking at cities ahead of us, you've got Pynchrist

[34:05] Palmino Bay, Miami Lakes, Bell Harbor, Evan Turra, Durral, Sonny Ailes, when I have my open

[34:11] mic night meetings with residents and think about your house in one of those locations, right?

[34:16] So we're providing that great value. Our property values have gone up 6%. And you can see as we

[34:23] started recovering from back in the 2006, 2010 time, you see the property values going up.

[34:29] Very proud of our fund balance reserve savings accounts, whatever you'd like to call that there.

[34:34] We have a healthy 27.7 million dollars. We know there's going to be some hits there for the solar mediation that we talked about during the budget workshops.

[34:43] Most importantly, I think this is something that we like talking about the Truth and Millage notice, a trim notice they were mailed up by the property appraiser on August 24th.

[34:52] Setting the ceiling rate advertising, the ceiling rate, this is as the add 2.9143, announcing the meeting dates as we mentioned.

[35:00] During our budget workshops, town staff was committed to keep the military at the current

[35:08] level.

[35:09] 2.8332.

[35:10] We're going to talk about that shortly there.

[35:14] Trim notice, I think a lot of times you will say, man, we're paying over $6,000 to

[35:19] cut the baton.

[35:20] No, it's really on this one here, this is an actual one that we have there.

[35:24] We blocked out the addresses there.

[35:27] You can see here the taxes to cut the base for an $85 out of a total of over $6,000.

[35:33] This particular one is in the house of Bay Shore because you can see that has a CDD all the way down the bottom and over $2,000.

[35:40] But people confuse that as it's like it's coming to the town.

[35:44] This serves as an advertisement, as I mentioned today, $9.8 to September 8.

[35:49] and Town of Cutler Bay Stormwater Utility.

[35:51] As you recall, we put it as a unified method of billing

[35:54] to $90, in fact, it was actually a 10% discount

[35:58] because if you pay your taxable before,

[36:00] you're not paying the $90.

[36:01] Before when it was on your water bill,

[36:03] you had to pay the $90.

[36:04] So there is a 10% savings there.

[36:07] So what I'd like to do is this little exercise

[36:09] where we said, okay, here's last year's property value

[36:11] for this homeowner was $161,000.

[36:16] Current military rate of 2.8332,

[36:18] Townacolabay would have received $257,

[36:22] I'm sorry, $457.

[36:26] Current taxable value, property increased

[36:28] from 166 to 161 to 166,

[36:33] the ceiling military that we said was 2.91,

[36:36] that homeowner, if we stayed with the ceiling,

[36:39] would have increased property taxes

[36:41] to the Townacolabay of $27.80.

[36:45] What we're going to be proposing is keeping it the same military as we have right now, creating a new ceiling,

[36:52] where same homeowner, $166,000 assess value, and then at the current rate of 2.8332,

[37:00] that homeowner will have an increase of $14.28 from their previous year's tax bill.

[37:06] So it's $14.28.

[37:10] Any questions so far?

[37:12] I'm going to go through these really quickly.

[37:14] The first budget workshop I think was the visiting workshop was done on June 17th.

[37:20] We announced about the hearings, the impact of the Legacy Park.

[37:23] We talked about the project, the projected deficit that's something that we want to, you

[37:27] know, we talked about the cost of living COLA and the fiscal year key projects.

[37:33] As we know, the sole remediation project for Legacy Park was $12.8 million.

[37:37] We secured over $6.5 million of American rescue plant ARPA grant funds. That is a grant.

[37:44] And then we utilized the remaining $6.3 from the town unrestricted reserve fund-balanced savings accounts

[37:52] as adopted via Resolution 2504. We're total $12.8 million for the solar remediation.

[38:00] But we also created a brownfield, the voluntary cleanup tax credit, DCTCs and other acronym.

[38:07] where we've had it since the VCTs of 2021, and we have received total eligible cost,

[38:14] all the eligible expenses there for soil sampling, some legal fees, and the inspection services,

[38:22] and the hauling away, and bringing it in the new dirt, and the tax credits received.

[38:26] So what you'll see there in the eligible amount, for example, if I use 2021,

[38:29] One, we submitted a $58,000 with FTP approved.

[38:34] You get half of that current year as an issue, as a tax credit, as literally a certificate.

[38:41] But we know that the remaining 50% of that, of that $29,000, you'll receive that at the

[38:49] end.

[38:49] So when you look at this line here, we know that we have eligible credits of 1.5 million.

[38:54] what we received so far that we have sold and you've seen those at the last

[38:59] council meeting we sold it to two publics at 90 cents on a dollar seven hundred

[39:03] two three thousand dollars. So we know that we have a total of two point two

[39:08] million which is at one point five and the seven hundred two thousand combined

[39:10] that we know that we're going to recoup. If you go back a second ago we showed six

[39:15] point three million dollars from our fund balance. This two point two is going

[39:20] go back to replenish that, replenish that. So that's where it's going back to when we received

[39:26] those facts credits. But we also know that we had, and something we spoke about during the budget

[39:31] workshop, um, um, a sort of, uh, solar mediation cost, unrestrict reserves of 4.1 million dollars

[39:39] because of the timing of it, right? Because it is our fiscal year is different. So we know, and our

[39:45] projected deficit for 2627 pending the audit is 988,000.

[39:51] It could have been as high as six million.

[39:53] So we have actually turned it around that's something I think during one of the budget

[39:57] visiting sessions, Councilwoman Lorde, you know, did the math there for us there.

[40:01] I'm not going to do it all over again, and people could watch that on the video, but at the

[40:05] same time, if it wasn't for the solar mediation, if we extracted that from our project, we would

[40:09] have been in the plus 3.2 million dollars.

[40:13] And that's something we, you know, discussed during the first budget visiting workshop.

[40:17] The COLA. We have that, how you calculate the COLA, we have 2.6% and it's approximately

[40:25] $123,000. We have that resolution that we adopted and here, I want to put this statement

[40:30] very clear and we'll have some more as in the final adopted budget. We're on June 17th

[40:35] during the first budget visiting. We discussed the COLA, the deficit, and the resolution

[40:41] that adopted this 2583 does provide the council an out, where if it's because of a plan,

[40:49] use of unrestricted funds, fund-balanced reserves, we know that we were going to Legacy Park.

[40:54] Once we adopted that resolution to commit $6.3 million to Legacy Park, and then also

[41:00] Blue Pairing Park, that's going to be coming as well. So I just want to make sure that it opens

[41:05] to the public that this is, we had a discussion, the council unanimously voted to just go ahead and

[41:08] proceed with with the colo because we know that that was just that extraordinary event that we had there.

[41:15] Key initiatives that we discussed in the budget workshop,

[41:18] visioning was general government part of recreation department, public works department,

[41:21] any questions for it. I'm going to try to be brief with the recaps. All right, but most importantly,

[41:27] in the first budget visioning, we have what we call save our homes excessive property taxes that we

[41:32] talked about. What's that mean? If approved, it'll go in effect January 1, 2027.

[41:39] It provides an additional $150,000 homestead exemption, and in 2027, $250,000 exemption.

[41:48] We talked about it during the first budget visioning workshop, but I want to get to the clip notes.

[41:54] What's our impact?

[41:56] The proposed additional $150,000 homestead exemption based on the 10,294 homes that we have there be impacted.

[42:05] This is right and I want to make sure that we identify the source of four legal cities.

[42:11] Reduction for us will be two, for the town will be $2.5 million.

[42:17] $2.5 million are almost 22% reduction of what we totally collect of $11.6 million.

[42:30] Also, we have local government spending bill known as a local financial transparency and accountability act.

[42:37] That's already in effect. It's going to go into effect 2027.

[42:40] What are the effects required to budget be posted online?

[42:43] Not a problem requires quarterly employee compensation.

[42:46] We do that already in our budget, but we can handle that.

[42:50] Requires an additional annual cutting exercise, which results in posted online with 10% reduction.

[42:55] 10% reduction for the town is about $30 million budget, $3 million.

[43:00] So you say with that little close, how close that gap is, $2.5 million.

[43:02] $3 million.

[43:04] Update how long the budget information must remain posted online.

[43:08] It requires counties to provide at least five days notice before budget amendment hearings.

[43:13] We do that already.

[43:15] What we did in the first budget vision session, we literally drew down into each one of these in details.

[43:21] I'm not going to bore you with all this. This is just an example of what we did in each one.

[43:27] Employee compensation. This is a new requirement.

[43:30] all the little different bullets, currently in our budget books, very transparent.

[43:36] Here's where we provide, you know, position the salary, the code of the merit.

[43:40] So we do that.

[43:41] We've got to modify it a little bit, and we just have to update it.

[43:46] The calendar,

[43:49] the ones in red are the ones that will have to, you know, do some new items

[43:53] to put the green.

[43:56] We already do.

[43:57] So, you know, again, it's something that for us, it's not a big issue because we are so

[44:01] transparent with our budget process requires a budget annual budget cutting

[44:06] exercise 10% reduction for

[44:12] us this was a snapshot you know of 2526 budget is

[44:16] a 30 million dollar budget 10% 30 million dollars and then there it kind of

[44:21] shows you there right there for the budget exercise just

[44:27] a little recap we are

[44:30] avalorum taxes accounts for approximately 39% of our total revenues so

[44:36] So unlike some other cities that it might be wholly dependent, we at least have some other

[44:40] revenue streams that come in 2.5 dollar, it will be a hit.

[44:46] And here you see it graphically in a chart, 39% Abel or in taxes.

[45:01] We also have the estimated military for departments. This is already part of our charter. We do that already. It shows the residents what each department costs as a result as a military. And you can see our police services accounts for almost 1.2, almost 1.3 mils, you know, for the police department. Summary 30 million using the town's fiscal current year, sorry, 2526, about 10%. The town would need to identify

[45:31] by $33 million, now compared to the fiscal year impact of $150,000, we know that the

[45:42] extra is will be $2.5 million, but we know that the 10% exercise from the state will

[45:46] be $3 million.

[45:47] So we're close there.

[45:52] This one's self is found to update how long the budget information was remained and posted

[45:55] online.

[45:57] We'll create a new widget, as I call it, right, as I said, right, rug, okay, widget, okay.

[46:02] And we're going to have all posted there, you know, again, it's all there and we'll just, you know, upload everything there and adopt a budget book.

[46:11] And then also here, this requires, you know, at least five day notes, we already do that already with our notices.

[46:17] You know, budget amendment hearings, you see that when we have it transparent that here's just a good example when we do the budget amendment at the end of the year that Robert Parrish for us, the finance director.

[46:26] and normally done in the month of May, Councilman he's advertised, again, website eNews, community

[46:31] newspapers, agenda summary, it has a managed memo explaining it the resolution and the exhibit A

[46:37] and you know folks who see it online posted online exactly what we're seeing here on the screen.

[46:42] Any questions so far? Yes, ma'am. It's really quick. So seeing as the proposed

[46:50] Those tax reform number is 2.5 million and in the House bill 1329 budget cutting exercise is 3 million.

[47:00] When do we start that exercise? Is there any reason why we need to wait until January? Can we maybe start looking at those numbers in October?

[47:07] Get ahead of amendment 3 in case that passes?

[47:10] My

[47:15] first reaction would be yes because I think we could probably use that as a good education process of what the impacts will be and it provides you the real sense of a definition of an exercise.

[47:31] It's going to be some hard decisions that will be made, but at least the residents and the council and our staff will know exactly what that is going to look like.

[47:43] that's going to look like. So it'll put a lot of additional work and effort by us, but

[47:50] I think that it'll be good because we kid, like we always do, you know, videotape

[47:56] our meetings, and that could be, hey, these are the facts. I know a lot of different cities

[48:01] are doing their own different campaigns, but I think for us, let's use that exercise

[48:07] as our campaign. As I mentioned before, the 10% exercise, three million, the $150,000 increase to

[48:16] the property exemption is 2.5. We're right there. So we'll accept that as a challenge because I

[48:23] think that we could probably provide additional information by then. But there's going to be some

[48:30] tough decisions that people will see. And those are the facts. Not what could happen. This what will

[48:35] will happen. How about that, right? Is that what will happen here? And there's going

[48:39] to be some some tough decisions that we could talk about collectively in October before

[48:43] folks get the education part before they go and vote on that. At least what happens

[48:48] in color. Right. And thank you for that. I think it's a really great idea because part

[48:52] of it is educating on what may or may not be taken away, unfortunately. And also we set

[49:00] the bar very high with everything we do. So let's get ahead of it and be prepared and

[49:06] and let our residents have a fuller understanding of amendment three.

[49:11] We will work closely with a finance director and I know there's just some other things

[49:16] we've been talking about in terms of some investment policies that we're you know talk about later in

[49:20] our September 16th meeting but but nothing's going to change by doing October versus January. How

[49:26] about that. So my as well, you know, get that, you know,

[49:32] well,

[49:33] thank you for that. My question is, I know that we have a healthy

[49:37] fund balance because of our fiscal responsibility and, you know,

[49:42] thank you to you and the staff and, you know, over the years,

[49:44] continue to rise at rise. What is your estimate on the amount that's

[49:51] kind of set aside that's uncovered that you prepared that we're

[49:57] Preparing for in the coming year because I know that we have some projects and stuff that is going to eat up some of that so I want the residents to be aware that this isn't just sitting there for us to write a check, you know, we have money that's set aside for certain projects.

[50:12] You must be looking at my notes for my segue here.

[50:15] Because I think it's very important, if you recall, several months ago, Mayor Mirabot requested that we develop an investment strategy.

[50:28] But I think more importantly, and I know Councilman Lowell, we've spoken about this before, doing some of my previous open mics almost like a year ago, we made a couple of decisions.

[50:39] Right, important decision. I think it's important to talk about this.

[50:41] It's important. It's just one. We made a decision of going what we call option three for legacy park municipal complex, 49.9 million dollars.

[50:49] We know that we have a bond for 37 million.

[50:54] Four million of that was already for what I call it, the planning, you know, the permitting one, what have you, right?

[51:00] We have not drawn down on the bond proceeds yet.

[51:05] So we've been absorbing some of that 4 million from our fund balance so that we could go ahead

[51:11] and reimburse us when the bond is drawn down.

[51:15] While waiting to draw down that bond, a couple of things have happened, right, interest rates

[51:19] have fallen.

[51:20] Property balance has gone up, so not going to be very lucky, right.

[51:25] In between that, the council, we presented the council for what we call the gap financing

[51:31] with TD bank that we were able to negotiate with our financial advisor in our town attorney's office

[51:37] that we have very favorable 20 year, 4.16% interest, no prepay penalty.

[51:45] So now we have enough money on here on this side to build the $49.9 million complex.

[51:54] And I cringe because we never accounted for that $12.8 million for short mediation.

[51:58] right? None of us did. We understand that. But we want to make sure that we had a no further action

[52:04] claim. Could we have gone a little bit cheaper? Sure, but then you would have restrictions on

[52:10] that property forever, literally like putting a liner on the piece of property. And also certain,

[52:14] how do I find out that tree root doesn't go through it? Right? So we said we're going to go ahead

[52:20] and go down seven feet and bring in seven feet of dirt. That's what we have right now. So

[52:25] So that was done with remediation project, the 6.5 million dollars from ARPA and the 6.3

[52:30] from savings that we know at least 2.2 for now is being reimbursed from the voluntary

[52:36] income tax credits.

[52:37] So we know that our goal is to hopefully get that program to reimbursed as much as we can.

[52:41] We apply for the EPA grant.

[52:43] We spent a lot of time and effort and money on that, but we did not get it.

[52:46] We did not get that grant, but the very competitive grant now I understand why, right?

[52:50] All right, so now that we have secured the funding to build the legacy parking

[52:57] minister complex, we go back to, you know, where Miribu was talking about in terms of our

[53:02] investment strategy, right? Because now we have that 27 million. We know it's going to take a

[53:05] couple hits because of the solar mediation. What we're doing now, and we're actually working

[53:10] on this right now with our financial advisor and Robert Adario, finance director and our town council,

[53:17] So, sorry, Tony's office is developing that investment strategy because you got to have

[53:23] that balance.

[53:24] We have a strong double A2 bond rating.

[53:28] You don't want to go below a certain threshold.

[53:30] We also know, and it's part of a budget presentation, that we have a 17% minimum for our

[53:36] fund balance.

[53:38] Well, that's 17% equates almost like, and you'll see it in the report, almost like 4.5.

[53:43] We have 27.

[53:44] So we want to make sure that right now, literally, they're working overnight to try to get something for first reading for September 16th meeting.

[53:53] So kind of like stay tuned because we want to make sure that what our financial advisor, we know what is that?

[53:58] What is that ultimate amount?

[54:01] Well, we know 17% the coverage 4.5.

[54:04] Okay, well, we have plenty above that.

[54:06] But then what is the savings account that Moody's in Wall Street is going to tell you that you must have as a financial stability?

[54:13] That's the reason why we went all the way back to our get fit plan, right?

[54:17] Many of you were on the council for the get fit plan.

[54:19] That was a get flip plan, but I call it a brave plan.

[54:23] Get fit to stop depending on our fund balance, raising the military, you know, that's not

[54:29] a very popular group.

[54:30] But now we're seeing the benefits of that with the property balance going up.

[54:34] Now like in 2006, the property balance went down.

[54:39] So it's a long explanation that I think that we're going to develop that strategy so that

[54:44] we know what is the minimum we should not go below for the bond rating. Anything above that,

[54:50] what the mayor has proposed and we'll have to get discussed out of the public council together,

[54:55] is that delta above that, what to invest in it. And there was three categories that the mayor

[55:02] was proposing. It was for environmental cleanup, capital improvements, and you're going to get me on

[55:10] there wasn't. But there was another one on Robert, if you could help me with that one and try

[55:14] to remember. Let me discuss land acquisition. Land acquisition. Yes, land acquisition. Correct.

[55:20] Those are the three. Because I remember the famous line that I make any more land, right? Those three.

[55:24] And we have proven what we've done with that capital improvement. You see that, right? You see in

[55:29] land acquisition, biggest property owner on our color road, over 28 acres and soil remediation.

[55:34] You've seen that unfortunately. You know, we're going to see that as well in venture parks. So

[55:37] So it's a long space, but I think it's very important because that is the foundation.

[55:41] We're now at that point to say, what is our investment strategy?

[55:46] So now we could then increase revenues on our interest income as well without going below

[55:53] threshold and increasing, maintaining our double a to bond rating, possibly getting a triple

[55:59] a bond rating.

[56:00] That's your credit score that will pay off at the end before we draw down the bond.

[56:05] Because once we draw down that bond that's it's going to be in tax bill

[56:09] So we've been waiting for that to make sure and right now we've been kind of like surviving with those funds

[56:14] That in order to draw down you're going to see that coming up pretty soon

[56:17] We've already approved what we call guarantee master in price number one for $12.8 million for the termination

[56:23] We approved a GMP number two, which is the second work order for all the underground utilities approximately $11.8 million

[56:30] That's what you see going on right now and the third one you're going to see coming up here

[56:34] hopefully in September or late October is the vertical building portion of it and then that

[56:41] will be the guarantee maximum price for that project. So I know it's a long answer but I think

[56:46] it was important to kind of walk through the process there.

[56:50] Okay, great, thank you. So the second

[56:53] budget workshop recap we discussed again with House Bill but we also introduced how to read the

[56:59] budget books and worksheets. I think it's very important for the public to understand how to read

[57:03] the budget book and the work sheets.

[57:05] The milled rate ceiling discussion,

[57:07] the trim notice explains and the co-occal aces again,

[57:10] and then we preview the stormwater utility funds.

[57:13] And I'm not gonna bore you with this.

[57:15] You've seen this before, the resolution set in the hearing dates.

[57:18] The trim notice, we've gone through this exercise.

[57:21] We're proposing, at least for this actual property,

[57:27] an extra $14.28 increase.

[57:30] We're still the ninth lowest.

[57:35] So you can see the theme there, even if you missed our first budget vision, we want to go back and recap that in our second as well as a third.

[57:46] 2.91 will create a surplus 3.1 million, 3.1 million, town staff recommending 2.8332.

[57:54] It will reduce at 3.1 by $352,000, we still providing a budget of 2.8 million dollars surplus.

[58:00] plus. In anticipation, footnote, in anticipation, we know that storm is coming. The storm that's coming

[58:06] is going to be that budget cutting exercise. And if the property bills are there, if not worst case,

[58:11] then we have a good healthy year to start reimbursing ourselves for some of those sort of mediation

[58:17] and property acquisitions. Again, we had to take out some loans. When we did the get fit plan,

[58:23] we had to rebundle as I call it, some of our loans to acquire those lands. That's where we're

[58:28] able to acquire those pieces of property that we were able to. By the way, without imminent

[58:33] domain to willing sellers, so thank you to sellers. All right, so we have the financial impacts.

[58:38] Again, this was a big one here because now we're completing the blue herring park. It's a reduction

[58:43] of two million dollars. Yes, the pool closure. We had the pool closure as we talked about. We had

[58:50] reduction salaries there, reduction in utility bills. Town Sheriff's Department went up

[58:55] But 7%, which is $925,000, increases the retirement, health insurance, and collective bargaining.

[59:04] But since then, I could tell you that I've met with my colleagues from the managers

[59:09] from Minilakes and Palmano Bay.

[59:12] As soon as we've finished all the budget hearings, we're going to, you know, meet collectively

[59:15] with the sheriff's office to start discussing some of the overhead charges that we have.

[59:20] I mean, so you know, the way that it works with all three cities and the fun fact with

[59:25] the largest, you know, the biggest customer I call it, right?

[59:27] We're $14 million, um, with 55 officers is the, we, uh, we pay the actual payroll.

[59:35] There's no markup on that.

[59:36] It's just a lot of the items, other items are overhead.

[59:38] So we want to make sure there's some kind of cap because this year was 7%, but I want

[59:42] to make sure there's no surprise.

[59:43] Maybe it's next year could be nine, 10.

[59:45] What's the, what, what's the percent?

[59:47] Discuss the type of cap.

[59:48] So collectively, we've had that, we have that discussion and we're going to

[59:51] the next upcoming year. I call it on blue sky.

[1:00:00] And you've seen this before. I think this is important that $250,000 homes to property exemption, if it goes in effect, you don't have a $5 million impact, $5 million impact, because again, you know, and what that tells you here, and what that tells you, and I think I said that during our first budget, a workshop, one of the workshops was we can see that a lot of folks stay here. You could only increase your property values up to three percent, save our homes. So you can see a lot of folks are in fact, I mean, we have over 10,000

[1:00:29] and homes, we got 19,000 in a couple of A, 10,000.

[1:00:33] You can see that those folks, I could just say,

[1:00:35] just by looking at those numbers,

[1:00:36] nobody leaves.

[1:00:37] They've been here for years.

[1:00:43] The requirements for House Bill 1329 that we talked about,

[1:00:46] we again, we spoke about it at our budget workshop.

[1:00:51] We talked about, again, the deficit,

[1:00:54] but here, we started introducing some

[1:00:55] of the pending revenues that we have, right?

[1:00:57] So some of the pending revenues that we have

[1:00:58] is various grants that land sale, voluntary cleanup

[1:01:01] tax credit, but we also have some

[1:01:03] a sole remediation expenses on restricted fund balance, legacy park and blue hurry park the two parks

[1:01:08] that we're cleaning up. So pending revenues, right? What are we waiting, you know, for the checks

[1:01:13] command? We have the Florida Community Trust $1.5 million. It has not come in yet. Everything's been

[1:01:18] approved, such as a matter of routing it. Coulser is reserved. This one we're in further negotiations with

[1:01:25] the county. We know that that's going to approximately be the price, but now we know we have to do some

[1:01:31] remediation of some of that soil there. So we know there's, you know, in terms of land purchases

[1:01:36] or land reimbursement sales, it's $3.3 million. Legacy Park. We know we have the Legacy Park

[1:01:43] soil remediation and also Blurring Park. But again, it's something that's being cleaned up. Both of them are

[1:01:50] RBCTCs, $12.8 million. The

[1:01:55] funding source. This chart looks familiar.

[1:02:01] Again, we know we're going to

[1:02:03] And in 26, we're going to apply for the max, which is another million dollars as well.

[1:02:10] And as you recall, another move that we did, and thank you to our town attorney's office

[1:02:15] and our outside council, Michael Goldstein, where we created our own BizRath, where now we

[1:02:22] kind of broke away from public and we created our own brown field before we're kind of like

[1:02:26] almost like a subrecipient, by breaking away, you get an extra 25% bonus at the end.

[1:02:32] So that that's something that we're finalizing, we just got all the approval from Durham and the application is literally up in FDEP for formal adoption.

[1:02:43] Blue Herring Park, we know is an expense of total $3.6 million.

[1:02:51] Again, it's from our unrestricted fund reserve.

[1:02:57] Blue Herring Park, just last year, we were able to capture all of our expenses, which is $802,000.

[1:03:06] And we received tax credits of 401 and if we were called during the last

[1:03:10] council meeting, this is the one that we're actually even negotiating the open

[1:03:12] market to try to even get even a little bit higher rate on return instead of

[1:03:16] $0.90, possibly 92 to $0.93. That's something you're gonna see coming up in October.

[1:03:23] And this is what it actually looks like. It's voluntary clean science, a piece of

[1:03:25] paper. But for us, it's cash.

[1:03:31] We also talked about how to read our budget book, the

[1:03:34] executive summary, the number of years that we have historical years all the way back to 24,

[1:03:40] 25, 25, 26, the actual projection, the proposed military at the ceiling, 2.941, any council changes,

[1:03:50] the proposed budget, and also changed between budget workshops. A lot of numbers are very busy,

[1:03:58] but I like breaking down when people could understand it. We have a little number code there,

[1:04:02] the letter codes that talks about the different, what those numbers mean, and again the projected

[1:04:09] budget surplus there at the 2.93.

[1:04:15] Spoke about the different departments.

[1:04:18] The budget works.

[1:04:19] It's literally what this, what you see on the screen is what our department has used.

[1:04:24] So you have what we have as I was like to say.

[1:04:28] Again, each staff member is broken down by previous years.

[1:04:31] manage requests, merit, cola, salary, any question for it?

[1:04:38] Getting close, getting close.

[1:04:40] Third budget workshop, third budget workshop, we talked about the budget changes

[1:04:43] between the second and the first.

[1:04:46] We introduced now the special revenue fund.

[1:04:48] These are non-avlorium revenues that we have in departments that we have.

[1:04:56] So we also made the changes.

[1:04:58] There was only one change between the second and the third,

[1:05:01] which was in the public works department because we received a grant for $105,000 and with our match

[1:05:08] for US one verification and you'll see that coming through the council through the regular process

[1:05:12] there. But then we also introduced a special revenue fund.

[1:05:18] Similar, again, you see the revenues

[1:05:21] that come in,

[1:05:25] the expenditures and you'll see across, I don't know if we have the arrows there,

[1:05:29] there you have the arrows there for the Actuals again in 2024 so you have a lot of historical data

[1:05:32] there.

[1:05:36] We broke down each one by, like say, children's trust, environmental funds, CITT,

[1:05:43] transit funds. We broke down each department during that budget workshop. And again, providing

[1:05:50] the history. The coastal bridge preserve introduced the two acres that we keep talking about, right?

[1:05:57] That we were doing there. In fact, right now, what we're negotiating now with my many county

[1:06:01] term for the folks who are watching or folks who are in the audience, if you see that

[1:06:04] little sliver, where it says, my many county ill potential parts are always the northern

[1:06:08] part there.

[1:06:09] See there's like a little pathway there.

[1:06:11] So we're negotiating now the easement there.

[1:06:15] So if it's favorable condition to sell it to my many county ill program, we want to make

[1:06:21] sure that we secure that connection there because there's been a lot of work by the community

[1:06:25] there.

[1:06:25] And you can see it kind of like they're really light of the path that's been being created

[1:06:30] they're on the South Florida water management district line. So we want to make sure that we secure

[1:06:34] that during the business deal up front versus chasing down later. And I mentioned there that these

[1:06:42] are the items here. This is the item there to your to your left. It's a southern part there and

[1:06:47] closer cutler. Okay. And what you see there in yellow are the items that have high levels of

[1:06:52] arsenic. We knew that behind the property. And now we now we know how deep how much we have to go.

[1:06:59] this one here on that first acre there we know we've got to go all the way to the water table

[1:07:02] but in the other good news is for section 2, 3 and 4 you only have to go down six inches

[1:07:10] but if you see sections 3 and 4 there they overlap but the red line were proposing a cell

[1:07:18] to my money account of eels so we have to clean that up first so and again this one's this one's

[1:07:23] got to be similar to what we did with the veteran park. It doesn't qualify them for a brown

[1:07:30] field, but we will chase down the FTP now for the brown field grant. Like similar, we

[1:07:36] do it in veterans park. And I'm giving you a little preview. You've seen this graph before.

[1:07:41] We bought the park. We know it was contaminated, but we stopped the development there.

[1:07:52] High

[1:07:53] two feet,

[1:07:57] approximate cost of being aware from $75,000 to $85,000 according to our consultant,

[1:08:01] but staff was awarded a FDEP grant for a non-brown field, which is great, up to $150,000.

[1:08:08] What this does is that, in fact, we've been in contact with them.

[1:08:12] So since our last meeting, customer not gonna ask that question, we did a nice subtle nudge.

[1:08:18] They said we apologize, we've been overwhelmed, we do have assigned a project manager from

[1:08:25] the EP and we're going to be having a kickoff meeting here pretty soon. So they did acknowledge that

[1:08:31] and we said okay great thank you because we're going to come with another application. Also we

[1:08:35] talked about our cutler bay locals and again from our local option get sorry from our PTP money

[1:08:42] they will receive. We have almost 4.2 thousand riders in 42 hundred riders a month. Metro Connect,

[1:08:50] In fact, this one we're certainly monitoring at the county level because there's been some conversation at the county BCC there, both myself, Alfredo, public works director and

[1:09:02] engineers have met with my many county transit because my many county transit that's the that's our contractor, then they use Metro Connect.

[1:09:11] So if they do something to that program, we're monitoring that program and both myself, the town attorney's office, we're monitoring that because we want to make sure this is a very successful program

[1:09:20] to the town. In fact, Mayor Cava on several occasions said how we are the model. And even

[1:09:26] if now that the metric connect charges up $3.75 per ride, if you're going from a non-transit

[1:09:33] hub, if you're going to a transit hub in the company, which is usually the major destinations,

[1:09:38] it's $1.50, but then you get $1.50, because we the town through our PTP pay that fee.

[1:09:45] 3.4 thousand riders a month. So you almost have almost 8,000 riders a month that

[1:09:52] movement. And what we saw there is that once we introduce Metro Connect, the circular bus numbers

[1:09:59] didn't go down. So it tells you to have a stable amount of folks that are doing that, but then you

[1:10:03] also have Metro Connect that is moving some folks around as well. Cranjaro Project, as you know,

[1:10:10] that is a joint participation agreement, another acronym, JPA, that's moving along. I think it's in

[1:10:23] the last one we did in July, so we're really on schedule, but it's amazing here, and

[1:10:30] just want to take a second. Only seven rain delays.

[1:10:37] Yeah, so only seven rain delays have been

[1:10:41] requested by the contracts from 2014 when we started this journey. That's amazing. So Kudos to

[1:10:47] Alfredo and his team, and the folks from Kimberly Horn, they meet every two, is that thing,

[1:10:52] right? Yeah. Every two weeks they meet every two weeks and as you know they

[1:10:56] provide a briefing to the council every month just like we do Lakes Park and

[1:11:00] then soon to be Marlon Road. Marlon Road. So this one here very interesting

[1:11:06] another project is a county-owned road it was part of our master plan we did a

[1:11:11] great job securing state appropriations $520,000 you don't thank you I know that

[1:11:17] Representative Blanca was here, but also Senator Kalatu. That was in 2022. Oh, we secured $520,000 and then also we secured another $545,000 for an FDOT attack grant.

[1:11:31] So 1.1 over a million dollars for the design, totally funded by grants.

[1:11:38] But then we did one up, then we started going after some of the construction phase.

[1:11:43] The Federal Propage 4.4, and thank you, Congressman Salazar, we secured that money, FDOT

[1:11:51] TAP grant, and we also recently landed another grant for the county initiative grant funded

[1:12:00] through FDOT of 4.1 million, but that one requires a match of the town for 4.1 million.

[1:12:05] So right now we have over $13.6 million secured, opinion of probable cause, $24 million, the town secured over $13.6 million, the funding gaps 10.4 million, that's our ask with the county.

[1:12:21] That's our ask where we're in active negotiations with the county as well.

[1:12:28] Southwest 212 Street, another major quarter there, I call it the 4 lane to

[1:12:33] nowhere. If you know that street back there, do we have their 212 and 90 second

[1:12:40] avenue, as I always jokingly say all the time, the folks that do the donuts on

[1:12:44] the intersection are designing my traffic circles. So that's where exactly what the

[1:12:48] traffic circle is going to be. And then there also is going to be a protected

[1:12:52] bike lane there as well. That's what it was really great about that quarter and

[1:12:57] and thank you to the TPO,

[1:12:59] Liam McLean, her staff,

[1:13:00] because we actually met with them

[1:13:01] and did a peer review and they love the project

[1:13:03] and enough that we were awarded a $1.5 million grant.

[1:13:08] You know, as well.

[1:13:09] And that's gonna be the back edges

[1:13:10] to our legacy park as well.

[1:13:14] American Rescue Plan, we call it before it's our ARPA.

[1:13:17] We're very proud of when we receive the $21 million.

[1:13:19] $10 million was a general services

[1:13:22] and $11 million was a water call improvement.

[1:13:25] I think it's very important here for me to stop

[1:13:26] and say every penny that we spent, including the interest earned on the ARPA funds has come

[1:13:35] before this council and has been reviewed by a town attorney. So we treat that very seriously.

[1:13:41] We report every quarter to the federal government. And I think, I mean, to the point that you'll see

[1:13:48] later, a little preview, Councilwoman Lorde, possibly some new playground agreements are going to be

[1:13:53] through the ARPA interest. I call it a grant. Money that a grant that received that we put

[1:13:59] in the bank that we're getting money on the grant that we're going to use the interest to do

[1:14:02] something else with it. And I'll say that three times. So, American Rescue Plan,

[1:14:09] 11 million dollars. Each one of these projects was approved by a town council. This is Bell Air.

[1:14:14] We tried doing it. It's a nice, you know, quick graphic. It was $988,000. It was completed on time

[1:14:21] and under budget.

[1:14:26] Oops.

[1:14:28] Likes by the base subbasin, these are the subbasins, the storm drain some basins.

[1:14:32] This one here we secured $4.7 million.

[1:14:36] We also received some FDEP money and some CGP grant money of a million dollars and other

[1:14:42] federal appropriation that we received there for it to be developed again.

[1:14:47] something that was designed by Arpa and the construction by others. Not

[1:14:55] Abelorm,

[1:14:59] Caramble of Art.

[1:15:00] This one here is a little bit interesting. We received 4.5, 4 million dollars from the EP. The contract came in, the award came in a little bit lower. We're trying to figure out how to use the rest if we can use the rest. The design was done by ARPA. The grant construction was from FTP. This one, the bid came in very, very aggressive. That's on the construction right now. If you live in the target bay, thank you for your patience.

[1:15:25] and then also a 207 then it says SS 87 Avenue, so it's supposed to be 85th Avenue there.

[1:15:33] And that one we received 500,000 dollars from a state appropriation

[1:15:38] and estimated pretty much 3.4 of the rest are going to be from PTP funds. So I apologize there

[1:15:43] it should be south with 85th Avenue, not 87th Avenue.

[1:15:48] Legacy Park, 16 acres, we know the programming

[1:15:51] the 4 and 12. Some milestones that we talked about there, 49.9 million dollars. We are now in the

[1:16:00] building permit stage and hopefully here within the next week we should begin all the permits.

[1:16:05] I want to say all the permits not only from the town but also from all different ages,

[1:16:08] the county, fire, etc.

[1:16:13] A lot of work being done out there right now. We're bringing up all the dirt

[1:16:16] now for the elevation of the building. As you know, that is going to be our command center. So it's

[1:16:21] going to be three feet above FEMA's required.

[1:16:24] So you see a lot of trucks going there.

[1:16:27] You see the truck wash station there.

[1:16:29] Then we also have the software update

[1:16:31] that we're working on behind the scenes for our Eden

[1:16:37] system that's going to have everybody enterprise asset

[1:16:40] management.

[1:16:41] You're going to have accounting and a partial recreation

[1:16:43] everybody's going to be integrated.

[1:16:45] Most importantly, it was $807,000 a project that

[1:16:49] was funded also through ARPA funds. That $10 million that was non-water quality improvements,

[1:16:55] that was done through that portion there. Then we also, in that budget, workshop introduced

[1:17:03] stormwater utility. It's its own enterprise fund.

[1:17:09] Kind of self-expansion with stormwater does,

[1:17:11] but you see it out there a lot of times. You see us matching funds through PTP or stormwater fees.

[1:17:19] any questions?

[1:17:24] So here we are for tonight's meeting, right? Again, the trim notice, it was

[1:17:30] advertised today. You've seen this before. What town staff is proposing is to further reduce

[1:17:39] the ceiling from 2.9143 to 2.8332.

[1:17:49] You've seen this before. The 2.9143 surplus of 3.1 million

[1:17:54] dollars,

[1:17:57] town staff is ours proposing 2.8332, further reduce it to, sorry, 2.85021.

[1:18:07] Now that is, that is the military at that point. We also talked about how to read the

[1:18:14] budget book. I'll go through this really quickly. Again, the budget book is posted on our website

[1:18:19] but there's also some hard copies there in the back for folks in the audience.

[1:18:26] The budget

[1:18:27] The book now is a little bit more complete than you've seen before, right?

[1:18:29] Because now it has a lot more tabs that has our investment, sorry, our fund balance

[1:18:37] reserve policy certification that both myself and Robert do at 17%.

[1:18:44] It also talks about the Millage Cost per Department.

[1:18:47] You've seen that before, individual worksheets by department.

[1:18:52] This is the fund balance reserve policy there.

[1:18:55] If you can see the fine print there.

[1:18:56] it would mean the 17% equates to $4.4 million or well above that. But again we want to make sure

[1:19:03] we secure the general obligation bond rating and then also the cost per department as per the

[1:19:12] charter. And then this one here introduced the same amount of years that we have in the past

[1:19:17] proposed. This looks familiar but now here we have significant changes from the proposed to the

[1:19:24] adopted budget, and then significant changes from our workshop meetings there as well, broken

[1:19:29] down by department, by worksheet.

[1:19:36] Again, this is at the 2.9143. This just gives you a snapshot

[1:19:41] of this department and it provides you the significant changes from fiscal year. So if you're

[1:19:46] going to change it from July 30th, second budget workshop and the third budget workshop. So we kind

[1:19:51] of tell you the journey there.

[1:19:55] Detailed descriptions of salaries in each department.

[1:20:00] detailed budget worksheets. What you have is what we use at the department heads. It shows you

[1:20:06] last year and the current year. And this is just the new worksheet that you have in the budget book

[1:20:14] there. Now, a post playground. So as we mentioned before, we had the unfortunate news that FDEP

[1:20:24] He heard that grant was not, program was not funded, you know, as we very well know is

[1:20:29] one of the Beatles.

[1:20:32] So this was discussed around July 15th, 2026 council meeting for the Saga Bay Park.

[1:20:40] But we also wanted to talk about Vellar Park tonight too, because if you know Vellar Park

[1:20:44] that park hasn't had a playground for several years.

[1:20:46] It was also both of these but removed based on safety inspections.

[1:20:53] We're proposing the inclusive playground.

[1:20:56] These are actual renderings that our parks department has gathered from the contractor.

[1:21:05] Okay.

[1:21:07] Belair playground.

[1:21:14] Proposed cost.

[1:21:16] Saga Bay playground.

[1:21:17] 351,000 is from a contract from source well.

[1:21:20] And you'll see that.

[1:21:21] If approved, we'll have that in our October council meeting.

[1:21:24] The Belair park.

[1:21:26] $183,000.

[1:21:29] So you're looking at a total cost of $550,000.

[1:21:34] We'll propose funding sources.

[1:21:36] Again, $300,000 from town general fund.

[1:21:41] $250,000 from the American Rescue Plan Act.

[1:21:45] But you will see if total is $550,000.

[1:21:52] The $200,000 that we currently budgeted this year was not utilized

[1:21:57] because that was going to be our match, the furtap.

[1:21:59] So really what we're doing is bringing that over

[1:22:02] to the next budget year, increasing it,

[1:22:07] and then using the American Rescue Plan ARPA interest

[1:22:11] proceeds as that match.

[1:22:14] And I wanted to take advantage and do both playgrounds

[1:22:16] at the same time.

[1:22:17] We were able to negotiate some discounts

[1:22:20] with the contractor, because it's

[1:22:24] going to be to play about the same time.

[1:22:28] So when we spoke about this this afternoon, we said we were going to use 330,000 ARPA

[1:22:39] interest and then pull out 220 of general fund reserves.

[1:22:44] And that's how I reflect with the numbers.

[1:22:47] Perfect.

[1:22:47] Even better.

[1:22:48] Even better than more use of the American Rescue Plan because I know we have some more pending

[1:22:54] money there.

[1:22:54] So so Robert, what is that that number now? What do you have there instead of 315 for the total? Yep

[1:23:01] 330 for arpa interest and

[1:23:04] 220 coming out of general fund reserves

[1:23:07] Perfect. All right, Rod you got that so we'll update it. Okay. Perfect. Even better even better use. Thanks Robert

[1:23:17] So with with that council members, I think

[1:23:21] The first

[1:23:22] Action could be and if we could have maybe Mauricio show the resolution

[1:23:26] Do we have the resolution caption for the the military?

[1:23:30] I think the first course of action would be if there's any questions on council or from

[1:23:35] the audience or and then we could go through the military first sending a new ceiling and

[1:23:42] then moving to the budget.

[1:23:44] Thank you.

[1:23:44] Thank you Mr. Tom Andrew.

[1:23:45] Do we have any any questions or comments from the audience at this time?

[1:23:50] Do we have anybody in the queue?

[1:23:52] No one in the queue.

[1:23:54] Okay fantastic.

[1:23:54] Thank you very much.

[1:23:55] Okay, so the first thing I'd like to do is I'm sorry. Yes, go ahead, Mr. Chair. I just want to clarify that

[1:24:02] You have opened the floor twice for public hearing on the budget on both correct trim and on the

[1:24:11] Budget itself and no one has commented, but that was those were the public hearing perfect. Thank you, sir

[1:24:19] I would like to request a motion from one of the council members

[1:24:24] I'll make a motion to keep the current military of 2.8332 lowering the ceiling rate.

[1:24:30] Yes, I'd like to make the motion to lower the ceiling of the military to the existing

[1:24:34] rate of 2.8332.

[1:24:36] Thank you.

[1:24:37] We have a burst.

[1:24:37] Thank you very much.

[1:24:40] Mr. Finance Director, can you please read the updated trim statement using the military of

[1:24:45] 2.8332?

[1:24:49] I'm not going to read the statement.

[1:24:50] and I'm going to read Section 2 of the actual Rozo.

[1:24:53] That'll read, Section 2 will now read that the town's

[1:24:58] proposed millage rate for the fiscal year commencing October 1, 2026

[1:25:03] through September 30, 2027 is here by fixed at the rate of 2.8332

[1:25:11] mills for $1,000 of assessed property value within the town,

[1:25:16] which is 6.94% greater than the rollback rate of 2.6494 mils per $1,000 of a

[1:25:25] assessed property value. Thank you, Mr. Finance Director. Mr. Townquart, can you

[1:25:31] please take a roll call vote to

[1:25:37] approve Councilmember Lord? Yes. Councilmember

[1:25:42] Duncan? Yes. Councilmember Marins? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you very much. Now

[1:25:48] Now moving on to 11B, so we have this playground discussion as far as perhaps having an amendment

[1:25:56] to the budget itself, as we discussed where we would have $220,000 from the town's general

[1:26:02] fund and utilize $330,000 from the town's ARPA interest, are we in agreement that should

[1:26:10] be amended, that's something that we're in agreement with, or does anybody have any comments

[1:26:15] concerns?

[1:26:18] Okay, fantastic. Okay, so we are in agreement on that. Mr. Finance Director,

[1:26:22] can you please provide the new or revised budget total with the proposed amendment?

[1:26:27] Okay, so just to confirm for the playground equipment, the total is $550,000 of which we're

[1:26:35] we're going to use $330,000 of ARPA interest, income monies,

[1:26:40] and $220,000 coming out of General Fund reserves.

[1:26:46] Correct.

[1:26:47] OK.

[1:26:49] So for the budget resolution, the fill in the blank

[1:26:54] is the total budget amount, total expenditures.

[1:26:59] and that number is 120,278,530 dollars.

[1:27:13] Okay.

[1:27:14] Thank you very much.

[1:27:15] I'm looking for a motion to approve 11b,

[1:27:18] the tentative budget with the Discussed Amendment.

[1:27:21] I'm looking for a second.

[1:27:23] A second.

[1:27:23] Thank you very much.

[1:27:24] Mr. John Clerk, can we please have a roll call vote?

[1:27:27] Council Member Duncan?

[1:27:28] Yes.

[1:27:29] Council Member Mirrors?

[1:27:30] Yes.

[1:27:30] Council Member Lorde.

[1:27:31] Yes.

[1:27:31] motion passes. Thank you very much. And with that being said that is our first

[1:27:37] budget hearing and we will move on and update everything for our second budget

[1:27:41] hearing later on this month. Thank you all for attending. This meeting now

[1:27:45] is adjourned.

Town Council Budget Hearing - With Virtual

Transcript