you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you It's 5.30 and time to start the 5.15 meeting. Sorry for the confusion. We'll get that squared away as the clock ticks and we'll do better. the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the and Madam City Clerk please call a roll. Mayor Cleveland. Here. Vice Mayor Pran. Here. Commissioner Martin. Here. Commissioner Martin. Here. Commissioner McGurk. Here. Commissioner Hartman. Here. Thank you. the . The . The . The first budget hearing and we're anxious to hear what the public has to say on the topic. There are any citizens who wish to speak. On the . Please come forward. You'll have three minutes. The light will come on on the green light will come on your name and address for the record please when the yellow light comes on You'll have one minute and then when the red light comes on you'll be done anyone for public participation Mayor before they start just as a matter of personal privilege, sir Could we have a moment of silence for in remembrance of today? It's a great idea. Give us a second, my dear and we'll continue. This is the 23rd anniversary of the 9-11 tragedy for those of you that are not aware. I can't imagine being American and unaware of that. And we have several firefighters, brothers of the cloth, and for those that aren't with us anymore, we send up cloth, and for those that aren't with us anymore, we send up our thoughts and prayers, moment of silence, please. Thank you very much. Okay. Now let's do public participation. Ma'am, please come forward, give us your name and your address for the record. And we're anxious to hear what you have to say. You have three minutes. Okay. I need this car. Come right up to that microphone. We want to be able to hear you and so the people at home. Okay. Karen Galino, 452 old mission road, New Sumerna Beach. We moved in about a year a little over a year ago and we just got a new tax bill for 2025 and it's gone up a thousand dollars. So I feel like it's there's a mistake there. And I would like to talk to somebody about it. To grievance it. Great. We'll take your name and address and someone from the city will be in touch. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, ma'am. Appreciate that. Thanks. Hello, Joe. Good evening, Mayor and commissioners. Just as you know I'm an engineering kind of a numbers guy and several observations. I noticed that there's an increase in staff over 10 people. Yet for some reason, well I hope that those are correctly positioned and assume that they are. But it's interesting that with an increase in staff, the budget went down. The second is that, per the presentation, we're the fourth lowest out of 12, out of 14 other municipalities in the nation Bay. That seems kind of strange having such a low mill rate, given that we have the greatest burden of all of those with all of the developments that are coming on board. Second points I would like to make, I want to borrow a couple of ideas from the Navy. One is called Conops, having to do with the developments on board and we heard a lively discussion last night. And that is that CONOPS is, we need to change the way that we do development both in the process that occurs in an talent or implementing them. Secondly, as situational awareness, we can't stand by, sign a contract, sit back and watch things happen without onsite monitoring. We need to know what's going on. That means people onsite. And we think that that's also a change. With that being said, looking forward to the next meeting. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Appreciate your comments. Anyone else for public participation? Oh Cindy. Cindy is act five, 12-year bond and thank you Randy for having us take that pause. Just a couple of requests that you may want to entertain or may not. I've asked the prior administration, so I'll try again. I think it would be illuminating, at least for the next public hearing, that part of the package include at least a five year, preferably a six year trend of flooding population against staff and against our salary and budget on our salary and benefit costs. I think that would be illuminating. I know, Mr. Mayor, we've had a conversation probably at Saturday morning market about the doubling of staff over a period of several years, but nowhere in relation to the growth in population. So I think that'd be easy said in numbers to pull, and so I would ask for that. A question if it comes up, I hope, as to what is included in the benefits column when we're looking at pages, I guess, it's slide numbers 8 and 9 in terms of the different positions. I think I figured out what the reclass positions were and that's what are on the significant salary increase page, but I think it would be who the city manager to identify what those 10, 10 and a half, 10 positions are that are not the reclass positions. And that would be it, that'd be really helpful. Thank you. Thank you man. Appreciate your comments. Anyone else for public participation? Seeing none public participation is now closed. Just a slight deviation from what is on your budget I think rather than have Shaliza talk and then we'll switch over to the Utility Commission. We'll just take the Utility Commission first and then Shaliza will have the rest of the floor with that objection. That's a I'd like to introduce CEO E from Chavez who will give us some highlights. This is the first reading. We'll have a we have the full budget and we'll have another Opportunity to have a full some discussion and a full briefing at the next meeting Upcoming so thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. second reading in public hearing will be September 24th, 2024. And we also should open the public hearing tonight. Oh, we will. Public hearing is open. We'll hear the briefing and then we'll open the public. OK. Thank you, Mayor and commissioners. Just to give you an update. So this is the first reading, of course. So we do our, every year we do a 10-year budget on capital and five-year own. So on the profit, I mean on the income statement, we're at 83.4 million in revenue and that's electric water reclaim. So continuing our services that we are providing. The expenses are slightly higher than the prior year budget. And that's only because what we've seen post-COVID materials and costs, chemicals in particular have gone up, but we've factored that in to our overall budget. And on our capital, just to switch, we're at 287.2 million for a 10 year budget. That's slightly higher than the year before, 10 year budget. And that has to do with a number of the initiatives that we're doing, AMI transmission loop, and none of these projects are just they just, everything costs more, but, and we've adjusted the timing in that sense. But once again, we always monitoring our costs, our capital expenditures, and our impact to our customers. So our goal is to always be the most cost efficient, utility, electric water, reclaim for our community, for the long term benefit of our customers. So that's our first reading. So if you had any questions. Any questions? Yes, ma'am. Do I understand you to say you have a, basically a rolling 10 year budget? Yes, on the capital side. Yep, every year we do that for the next the current year and then nine. Sobs good. Any other questions from any of my colleagues? You're good. Thank you. You're even appreciate that. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. Public hearing is now open. Are there any citizens who wish to speak on this matter? Please step forward and you'll be heard. Seeing none, public participation is now closed. Again, this is the first reading. We'll have another opportunity. Is there a motion to adopt ordinance 54-24 on the first reading? So moved. Motion. Second. Second, Madam City Clerk, please call the roll. Commissioner Harbman. Yes. Commissioner McGurk. Yes. Commissioner Markman. Yes. Vice Mayor Prin. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. And now our Assistant Finance Director, she leads a bowl. You have the floor, ma'am. Ranks just to hear your report. Good afternoon. Can you guys hear me? OK. Go. Yeah. Yeah. Good. That'll take me a little difficult, but... I'm going to put it on the top. Thank you. Okay. So for our tentative citywide millage we're proposing 4.6370 for operating for debt service 0.0895 to give us a total of 4.7265. Our rollback rate was 4.0813 which is 13.62% increase over the proposed. So for this year in total we're proposing 136 million, 917,000 and 60 dollars. So now a part of that 136 million includes 3.2 for capital equipment 29 million for capital outlay we have 10 and a half new positions which are the firefighter the whole new firefighter division and half a position in HR and Then the six reclust positions that are listed below Chili says we go do you want questions as we go or at the end. At the end. Thank you. Thank you. 3% overall salary increase unless it was specified which will come later on. 3.6% increase in health care costs for Florida health care and 7.8% increase for Blue Cross Blue Shield. We had some significant changes from August. Part of that, we are assessing 97% advalorem revenue, which gives us $29 million in advalorem revenue to the general fund, which gave us an increase of $651. We are also using part of General Fund Reserves to help offset some of our expenses. Part of that as well, we also took heat of what the commission had recommended and the departments went back in and, you know, allowed for what they thought would be helpful to this. And so they decreased some of their expenses. So as listed on there, we have City Commission Finance, IT, Leisure, Maintenance, Alps and Police all giving money back to help fund other items. We have an increase in the land lease for the sports complex due to a re-ovaluation of the property. It came in to $418,000. We've added the fire training materials, which was on the unfunded list. Police services non-moving violations. There's a company that we've contracted with to help with the services. This is to cover their fees. HR, there's that we're asking for additional funding for an external labor attorney of $150,000. Capital improvements, we had some decreases since staff also went back and reviewed their projects and got better estimates, better numbers. Washington Street went down to 2.7. Historic West Side went down to 3.7. Corbin Park went down to 6.8. Increases on the other hand. The police boat house now, it's pushed at 250,000. We've added the Pavilion of Pettis Park for 122, which is CVG funding. And I believe she's also going up for another grant. There's bathroom door of policemen at Clancy in Meir Esther Avenue for 35,000. We've added two motorcycles for the police. The fire alert system went up $8,000. Streets were adding two zero tone moors, Cesar lived, Cabada, Fort Passinger, golf course were adding a real mower. And then we come to the salaries. So I've tried to present it the way that has been asked before, separating salaries and incentives and benefits, et cetera. So benefits are inclusive of your health care, your long-term disability, short-term disability, anything that we have to pay for you as a staff member. Taxes are your taxes and then your pension, it's either police or fire or for regular employees, it's your ICMA or your mission square the incentives for both police and fires it's educational incentive that they do get additional funding based on the education or the courses that they take And I'm not going to go through the list and its entirety, but also the airport, their CPI index came back finally, and so they were able to increase their revenues on that one. And then we get into our property taxes. So this is last year versus what we're proposing for this year. We've gone up by .0225 which is .48% increase in total. We're sun setting the 2005 debt. The 2018 debt went down and of course the general operating millage increased by that point 222 that we were required to increase by. We've updated the property tax house. This is one of the slides that we've shown before. It's just slightly different but in total, New Sumerna Beach is only at 28% of the total for this median house property value. This one I know you guys like. So this is based on the other cities proposed. So right now we are number four at the 4.63. We moved up one place from last year. We were number three last year. And that's it for me. Questions? Absolutely. Questions from my colleagues, comments? Yeah, let's start. Mr. McGurk, anything from you, sir. Yeah, I've got a few questions. Thank you, Mayor. I know we moved up one from last year. We used to be the second, the second, the second lowest city with the Barry always being the lowest. Correct. the tone of be sure and Orman of the last few years have gone low. I brought this up previously. I don't expect you to have gotten this information, but I'm curious as to what created that, what about Orman Beach, which is a in some ways a relatively decent comparison to look at, what allowed them to drop down below us? I suspect but have not confirmed that it may have been a lot of the commercial growth that they have had. Is that something I will certainly look into it, but is there a that is what we're doing. I think that's what we're doing. I think that's what we're doing. I think that's what we're doing. I think that's what we're doing. I think that's what we're doing. I think that's what we're doing. I think that's what we're doing. I think that's what we're doing. I think that's what we're doing. I think that's what on the Volusia County website, property appraisers website, so we can look into it for you. Yeah, and I would ask because you probably have relationships with Orman Beach internal staff finance the department that you can probably get information that needs just kind of calling out of the blue. They may not want to respond to. But that's interesting and has a lot to do with them. I think the future direction of the city and the decisions, tough decisions we have to make going forward. We did raise our millage. We had to with the voter referendum two years ago, three years ago, in our second year of millage increase to cover the labor increases due to minimum wage and a few other things. I generally like where we are. We're a challenging city because we have a lot of expectations to meet quality of life and level of service that's new to us. Over the last 10 years or so, the request for quality of life and level of service and amenities has changed dramatically from the historic aspect of the city. But I always want to make sure where we're at with our sister cities that we can have a good comparison. So I appreciate that. With respect to increase of employees, I don't think that's been a surprise. I think we've had a couple, a number of different departments that needed to be staffed better. But I think the challenge is going to be going forward. How do we keep that balance with the revenue of the city, with the increased expenses, I think, you know, from the private sector, salaries and employee wages are through the roof and we're experiencing that ourselves. Going into the next couple of years, I'm not so optimistic on the economy. I think we made, we're starting to see some slowdowns in the economy and I don we're starting to see some slowdowns in the economy, and I don't think that has anything to do with being short-term. I think we've had an unprecedented number of growth quarters as countries have ever seen by far. And the concern going forward is, what's our budget going to look like going into the next few years? I have a lot of concern. I want to be able to maintain and hold on to as many poises we can. So I think it's going to be very important to make sure that we look forward and not just what it's looking like today or tomorrow. Thank you, Mayor. Sir, Commissioner Martin. Mayor, if I may, sir. Interject just a second. The increase in employees, the 10 specifically are firefighters that's for improved ambulatory services. Our expectation is that that business will pay for itself. So if you call the ambulance, you will pay for the ambulance, we'll file it on insurance, all those kind of things. The income derived will pay the salaries of those new personnel. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. Commissioner Murray, please. We now have three full time attorneys. appreciate that. Commissioner Murray, please. We now have three full time attorneys. Our legal fees are really substantial. And we've got three full time attorneys. And I know we pay 85,000 for a special magistrate. And now we need another 150 more for external, I understand, labor legal advice. And I'm sure there are other outside councils that we've hired this year and expect to make sure. It just seems, I have some concerns and others have expressed them to me. Why this city requires so much legal advice? For example, Deland has one attorney and they're a larger city than we are. So, there's some questions about that. Yeah, I'll be happy to respond to that. You know, my perspective here is we're not over staffed in legal services. We're a complex organization dealing with some very complex issues, HR issues, development related issues, you know, the issues keep coming and, you know, it's a very litigious time and we're certainly being hit with a number of legal claims that we have to deal with. Our attorney staff from my perspective is excellent. They're doing a great job. There are certain specialties, just like in healthcare. We've got a great legal team, but there are going to be instances when we need to bring in outside counsel to help us deal with specific issues. I understand the need for outside council. It's just that we have so many full time, more full time attorneys than other cities. So I mean like the land has one but they use a lot of outside council specifically for the reason you're talking about that specialty. So I'm just, I don't know whether the aggregate legal bill is less by having more full-time attorneys. May I respond? Sure. So, Dilan has outside council. So the level of service that's provided by having an internal attorney staff versus outside council is very different. So they're responding to commission inquiries, commission meetings, whereas we're available to staff every day, all day, and we're handling the commission as well. The labor attorney has always been separate from, I mean, just explain. No, I understand. I don't want to deal with just one. I understand the need for specialized outside attorneys for a number of things. I just want to make sure. OK, I just thought I would explain that labor council has always been separate. It's kind of part of HR. So it's not really considered. I mean, those issues are different. So again, it makes it difficult to see considered, I mean those issues are different so. Again, it makes it difficult to see the aggregate legal budget for the city and it's lovely that we have expertise but we seem to have a lot more expertise than other comparable cities. Just statement and a question, you know, and maybe we have a 333% additional fund requirement for the police boat house unless we tried. So I didn't quite understand how we went up from 75 to 250. Yeah, the assistant finance director can address that. I'm sorry? The assistant finance director can address that. Okay. So the last time the number that was presented was for design only. This is for construction as well. Okay. So this is design plus construction. Thanks. And then on the salaries I just and this is probably for the next meeting. But you know which of the positions increased more than 3% last year? And what would be the percentage increase for these positions this year? Because I know some people got substantial increases last year and now they're getting a percentage increase on top of last year's increases. So these listed positions only got 3%. Each of the positions in here only received a 3% increase over last year? Correct. Okay, did everybody? Last year, your question was for last year. What did they receive last year? So last year they only received 3%, which was across the board. And so this year they're increasing, getting an increase over the 3%. Correct, that's what we're asking for. And how did you go? How did these people get selected to have the increase over 3%. Let me call on the- You know, it's not the entire staff of the city. No, it's not. And there are reasons for that. The HR director will respond. Good afternoon. Commissioner Martin, some of those were carryover from the previous year when we had made a request. As you know, we had looked at some of the department heads that were we were looking at increases for market. When I was working with previous city manager, college, Rashadat, he had brought up some other that he thought were not classed appropriately. Some of those reclases are included in there and then there's also some compression issues. So specifically I'll point out our police and our fire. Those position changes that we're asking for, it puts salary increases. Those are due to internal compression within the department. So because of negotiated rates and the salaries that are included and the extra things that some of the more subordinate people are able to create in their salaries with the amount of hours they have to work with the incentives they receive, the people who are included in this study that we gave you don't have that opportunity. So we're creating compression and we have people who are subordinate making a lot more than people who are higher level than them. So we were looking at compression also. So those are just a myriad of reasons why we have those. Okay, thank you and I think I just, Mr. Caporn, I discussed a hiring, a salary, job analysis, study that hopefully we'll be able to start this year so we get real clarity on every position. Absolutely. I think that's important. I've spoken extensively with Ms. Kidd about that. And I think we'll be coming back to you in a few months to talk more about that. But at this point, we're going to be dealing with these issues piecemeal, just like we are this year. And it's a painful process to go through. And I do think that if we look comprehensively at the city and pick out some comparatives, we'll be in a better position to know what we need to be paying. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Well, before you go, Heather, I just wanna camp there for a second. I think it, you know, each of us will bring up some of the same topics that rather than you have you go back and forth five times. I'm going to pile on to whatever Commissioner Martin had to say. Can you help us? And it may be in the literature you've previously provided. A couple things. One of the citizens brought up a trend analysis which I think is helpful for us to see five to seven years of time and what that represented as at the macro level and at the individual level. In other words, what's been the salary level for a police captain for the last five years, seven years, similarly for any of those others? And are I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry up with CPI. Or, hey, no, we were behind as a city from where our similar size, similar threat, similar challenge cities are. And so we had to get up on the step or fear of losing some of our best and brightest. Those type of things are really helpful for us. And so I think I'd like to see that before, you know, and maybe it's in there, maybe you've already provided, but I don't see it yet. And so I want to know, I certainly believe we have the most awesome staff and I want to make sure they're treated well. But I'm also responsible to the taxpayers, all of us in the city to make sure that we're not gilding the lily so to speak. That's where my brain was on that. And then is there a point that you could class us on how many of us is it taking to run the city of our size versus the city of a little bit larger, a little bit smaller around the county and around the state. That would be a helpful analysis for us to have. It just spells the rumors and the myths of we're fat, we're thick, we're over-bloded on our staffing. Mr. Calper's predecessor used to talk about our doldrum days from 2008 when the economy was down and we cut, cut, cut, and we were living in that for a lot longer than we needed to get back up onto a growing economy. Following the economic cycle, I think is important. So, stuff along that line, I don't know whether that's solely in your lane or Shaleza, solely in your lane. It's probably a combination, but it would give a more fulsome picture to all that read what the documents you produce. Okay. We can work on that together. Yeah. Ma'am, go ahead. Go ahead. Oh, no, I'm sorry. No, no, go ahead, finish up, please. Oh, no, I was just reminding when we talked about the budget going down from last year, generally speaking, we have projects through the years where we pull then from the general reserves, which is why the budget ends up growing through the years. So, the beginning budget of this year being lower than the ending budget of last year sort of leaves out those transfers. Right. And I think what I learned last time we went through this is there's an advance and retreat in the payback periods for when we get FEMA and the grants and what have you and so it appears like only count. Look at we we set a budget 110,000 last year and we wrote 139 but low and behold this year some of the repayment will come in and lower that expense. I have it right or a month up there. No you have it correct. All right. Good enough. Vice mayor. So I have it right or a mix. Messed up there. No, you have it correct. All right. Good evening. Vice mayor. So I love the spreadsheet you gave us on the comparisons to the other cities. I really appreciate I can tell you put a lot of time and thought in that. And that's what this board is looking for, because we love a lot of detail. I don't think you can give us too much detail. And the things that you put were thought provoking in that. And I just want to thank you for that. You actually commented about why we would consider a city with population not near us, but it's competitive because that's where we're losing staff to. And those are the kind of things that maybe some of the audience also citizens want to hear. And I needed to hear that too. Yeah, maybe we should put that a little more as an impact even though it's, let's say, to land, but it's still in Belucia County or, you know, Port Orange or whatever. And the population may not be the 30,000 like you might see in another city down south over north but those are the places that we're losing staff to. I like seeing the whole comp package because I think as we brought in Mr. Kappa we didn't just look at a salary we looked at the whole package we might be higher on benefits or lower on benefits, but as overall, we're attracting good people as a whole. And I think if we took that spreadsheet and maybe added a couple of columns like the mayor suggested by, okay, this person received a step up in pay because it was this far under whatever cities you're comparing to. I love seeing that because it wasn't just a couple pull out and give into us and not that that's you know what you've always done. It's just it gave us more to think ourselves in. And to know, did you make these adjustments all in one year from that spreadsheet to this? Did you just put them in, kind of tell us what your thought process was or Mr. Palpers? How did you get them from that to this? Are we taking that all at once? Are we doing it a little bit each year to get them up to where they should be? So thank you very much for those comments. I appreciate that. I would say that this year, because we have done, we did the compression in 22. We did pretty much a 3% across the board last year. There were a couple of reclases that we had but nothing significant that affected our budget greatly I think Shaleiza would agree. And so this year I think it took into account when we did do some of these increases and you see some of those that look like their large increases that does take into account the last few years. It takes that into account. It also one thing I didn't get pointed out in the information that I sent you was the increases that other cities have made, local cities have made in the past two years. For instance, Daytona has done seven percent two or three years in a row. Edgewater did five percent this past year and those are things that because of the way we contracted, we had our contracts that had a guarantee of 3% and our commission chose not to make any changes to that. We fall in a little bit behind. And so that's where we're seeing some of that catch up that you are seeing these large increases in one year. You're seeing things that the market has just changed. It's much harder to find a specific position. We all know that anytime we're talking about police, it's more difficult to get any level police officers to stay in their positions for a longer amount of time. So those are all those things that get compounded together. They're sometimes difficult for me to put into a spreadsheet. I really liked Mr. Calper's suggestion this year that we do the memo that we sent you all because it allowed me that to be able to give you guys more information so that you had those details and you could look at some of that stuff and I could give you the information and the professional opinion that the mayor asked for at the last meeting that we could give you that information of why we're looking at those things. It was really beneficial and coming from a corporate background and not government. We would identified the market differences and where we had to do step-ups and we've been trying to catch up ever since a minimum wage, you know, was the increase because everybody has to be stepped up. But one of the things that we did and I don't know if government does this or not, but we actually adjusted, as divided it into three years and got them to where they should be, and so to take them to hit all in one year. But I don't know if that's, you know, we always behind doing it that way, or we better to rip the banding off and just do it. And I guess my next question, I like taking care of the people we have before we start higher more. It's like maintenance. Take care of what you have before you start building new buildings and expanding. Make sure we can retain because there's a huge price in training. And I don't want the turnover all the time. And I think a lot of our turnover this year was just a lot of different reasons. And I think it's going to settle down now. We have a new city manager. We have a lot of opportunities to grow and take care of what we do have. And then assess with the new manager what are our needs? Let him go in and identify jobs if there's some job sharing that can be done or internships that can be done. But it's always nice to have a fresh set of eyes and we don't get into those weeds. We're not your managers, he is. And so we're going to rely on him this year. I don't like to do a lot of huge changes, brought off when he's new to this until he gets a fill of what the staff issues are and he's new. He needs to know all those things. But I'm very positive in looking at this. And I guess my next question is if we take care of the ones that you guys are, I have a dign identified that's really needs address now. How many do we have that hasn't been addressed this year that's going to be coming? That'd be nice to know for next year. Like, you know, I would like to see, okay, this is our liability with what's coming for next year. You know, you've identified this could be a potential problem. We don't want to lose those as well. I think that that's really difficult to say at this time and I think, you know, like Kevin said, he and I have talked extensively about a salary study. I think that will be extremely beneficial for us. We've tried to do that in my office and look at that. We don't have some of the analytic bull tools that I would need to be able to do it. So we're doing it on a very rudimentary level. But even looking at that and the information that we're able to pull, our pay grades, this is where I find it difficult. Our pay grades look like they're all within the same ranges of the other cities in our local, in at least in our local area. But when we look at actual salaries of our people because we've not been keeping up with those same increases that other locations have, that's where we're falling behind. And that's where I think a salary study will look at that. I think also we did compression and we did a great thing for our employees when we did that in 22. But it also think the amount of the compression because we're trying to stay in a budget that works for you all that works for our public. Staying in that, I don't think at that time we did quite as much of a compression need as we needed to. So I think over the course of the last couple years a lot of the reclases that you've seen, a lot of the changes that have come, have come because our people are still frustrated to feel like their longevity is not being appreciated. And I think that that's something when we do our salary study that needs to come out also. Thank you. Welcome. I follow up on the salary study I hear commissioner Martin often talking about the entire cost of a person on the staff. Is the intent of the salary to evaluate just salary across other places, or might it be the case where the salary was lower, but if you end of the, at the end of the addition of the benefit packages, we're actually superior to a competitor. Is that, when we do our, an RFP for our salary study, we can set those parameters. So if we want to look at just salary, we can look at just salary. If we want to look at total compensation, we can look at total compensation. Including vacation. Well, holidays vacation. Like your spreadsheet had holidays vacation. Yeah. Yeah, and we can put a dollar in. It just feels like a more fulsome recognition and understanding. It is exactly what, if we were, if a candidate comes to our town, evaluates leaving where they are to coming to here to say, hey, it wasn't the same salary, but look at all these other things, I want that. And so they make that decision. That doesn't come free that costs us at the end of the day. Absolutely. So, I'd like to. And if I may, what I'd like to put onto that also is that the way our economy is today, especially at certain levels of our employees, unfortunately the benefits are great. And looking at total compensation is absolutely something we should do. But I think what we run into sometimes too is we have an employee who's making $16 an hour and they don't care what their benefits are today. They care what their salary is and that's really difficult when we're looking at a big picture of the entire city and Commissioner Martin. I totally appreciate the total compensation. It is absolutely there. The hard part is our economy today is making it difficult on both sides of that issue. I have a question that would not apply to the minimum wage. Obviously the lower end of the wage scale but what I've noticed is a growing trend I'll call it of the under 40 to say I will take less salary because I want more personal time. Absolutely. So that is where the days off, time off, agreed if you're just trying to figure out how the dinner tonight that's not in the equation. But it gets into the equation fairly early in the game, I think. I completely agree with you. And along with that, I think one of the things that we would have to look at if we're going to look at making some of those adjustments where I can look at a total compensation package instead where like you said there may be one group who says I would take this salary that you're advertising but I would like this extra time. I'm not sure that our policies and procedures allow us to look at some of those things. And then as that person is here longer than five years down the road, they have that extra time and they forgot. So now they want more money. So it's just trying to make that even and make sure that those things don't get missed if we're looking at different employment packages for people. Well, we could get creative and say you can have ex-amount of salary or an extra day or something like that. There's a creativity because there are people who want the money, but there are people who want this work-life balance and want more time off. So there may be a way to put a dollar figure on it and let employees choose. The hard part there is that I think the way we do our government accounting, I think it will become very difficult and we will create a lot of issues for our finance department. That's my worry and so trying to work with that team also, how we would document that, how we've keep track of it, how we make those changes as we go forward and it's out there and it's a possibility it's how do we make that actually work and that would be the difficult part that then finance would be tasked with that. But I mean if we let it sort of gestate for a year this time next year we may have an answer. How's that? Yeah, absolutely. We could look into those things and see where we could go with them. It would be great to be that agile. I like that agility. I see it's shoelies of sweating over there because I know it's a nightmare. Well the problem also comes in. It creates more of a liability on our books. Plus you also have certain departments where if somebody's out you have to have this other person in place and then you have over time so it's more money that's being spent. Although they may get a cheaper salary and they get the day but overall I'm going to be end up spending more probably. Well as I said it could gestate but my concern is as we want more as we want younger employees, we may be forced into finding a way to make it work. I am certainly not saying let's all wake up tomorrow and do this, but if we think about it and look at it and ask others about it over say a year, there's a chance at this time next year we may be able to say this is something we can do. We may be included as part of the RFP for the salary starting. I think that would be great. And I think too we'll have to be careful with our contracts that we have. We do have the two union contracts that we deal with. So we'll have to be careful about how we affect those. And that may be where it's one of those benefits that starts with one group only something of that nature. It's things that we can definitely look at. I bet any year we can come through a lot of things and hopefully this time next year we may have some answers. We may not, but it's worth trying. We would have at least looked at it. Thanks. Yes. Yes, Madam. Just one second. I'll get to you. The city manager, might you have Kevin through your bass experience Have you seen it always work this way or have you seen any of the features that we're teasing up here? Be effective in any other places you've been well You know, I think that every local government is having To reevaluate what they're doing so a lot of what I've been seeing lately has more to do with quality of life the time off. Probably more than that is flex schedules. Working 10 hour days, 4, 10 hour days, or nine and a half hour days having Friday afternoon off that kind of thing is really becoming more important to people. You know, it's just different lifestyles that people have today. So, you know, traditionally that kind of flex schedule has been difficult for local government to respond to. I think we're doing a much better job today with that. And so, you know, all of that, as you're saying, you know, the person is looking at a job, they're looking at the whole package, salary probably being the most important thing, but time off, and, you know, just the quality of the workforce and the work environment, that certainly all comes into play. And so I think we've just got to continue to look at best practices that are happening out there and evaluate what that means for us as an organization. There are certain things that we can do and can't do. I don't think you want us to shut down our building department on a Friday afternoon so that they can work for 10 hour days. We're probably going to continue to offer that service at least five days a week. That's just the way it is. But other areas we can be more flexible with. Thank you, sir. I'm done with. Good. Okay. Mr. I have one more question for finance. You want to do it? Sure. Okay. Just to page five remind me the decreases was that money from each of those budgets that were over budgeted from last year? Is that where that came from? Correct. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Commissioner Hartman. Can you explain that one again? Yeah we can go into a little bit more detail if you would like us to on those line items. So Lisa. So some of it were line items that were suggested. Some of it came from the department themselves because they went back in, re-evaluated what they had and what their needs were and gave dollar amounts. So for example, the $5,000 for the commission that was from the Promotions account for finance that came from our other contractual services for PD some of it came from their electric utilities account. IT was the iPads. You guys said you didn't want iPads next year so he gave up the $11,000. And these are services it was mostly their operating accounts that they gave up here there a 2000 or a thousand dollars here and there to add up to it. After after after our finishes we'll go back and read anything else from you all yours. Okay, thanks. On that same page, page five, the police service fees for non-moving violations. That's what we're going to pay a vendor to provide to... Right. So we basically need to increase the money we've paid Duncan solutions. But that's why I can explain that is we pay between 250 and 350 a parking ticket, but because we wrote so many more parking tickets 1100 a month or collecting significant more revenues, so I have to increase the expenses to cover that small percentage rate. Okay. Just doesn't show the revenue. But that also ends up on the revenue side. Correct. The revenue is way higher. Okay. But where are we on the unpaid parking tickets from two or three years ago? We were almost two million. Right. So there's one. I was just texting Jack that right now. So he's going to have numbers to meet by tomorrow. He's seeing a significant increase in collections. I just can't quote the numbers. Okay. And that's just coming into the general fund then. Correct. But it doesn't necessarily come into this budget. No so it might come into 24 it may come into 25 it just depends on when we receive the money. But it's shown as a revenue. Correct. Correct. I'm page 6. I have some concerns over the decreases in storm water projects. I mean, we heard it again last night. You know, we've had tons of emails on storm water issues over and over for the last year and a half, two years. And here we are decreasing projects. Is there an explanation? Do you want to take that one? Yeah. Ron. So it's a function of a couple of things. Updating the estimates of the cost of the projects and then evaluating how much, since these are multi-year projects, we budget the monies over several years. So these increases are how much we're only budgeting this year for those projects. There's monies being encumbered so the total project is actually higher than what these budgeted amounts for. So what we're saying is what we anticipate on the historic west side. We anticipated going into this year that we were gonna have to budget $3.9 million to complete that project this year. But based on estimates, based on what we've spent, based on what we have previously budgeted in Comberd, we're carrying those over. So we had roughly about $200,000 on that project that we're carrying over that we didn't spend. So therefore, we only have to budget additional 3.7 as opposed to 3.9. But my concern there is that I've never seen a stormwater project come in under budget. There's always change orders. No, this isn't the total price of the project. Right, yeah. This is the amount of money that we have to budget this year to complete, in this case, historic west side, a $5.5 million project. Okay, so what this number is reflecting is the new monies we're budgeting for this year to complete the total $5.5 million project. So based on expenditures, based on what we previously budgeted, the amount of new money we have to budget is less than what we originally anticipated when we started the budget process. But we haven't gone out for bid for any of these projects. We haven't lowered the cost of the project. The project is higher now than what it was when we started. So, okay, so we had $5.5 million project. Let's say in this case, we budgeted for this fiscal year, let me get the math right, just start, let's say that's 4 million instead of 3.9 to make the math work easy. So in this case, we had budgeted say 4 million and this fiscal year where now we had budgeted 1.5, excuse me, yes 1.5 for the total of 5.5. But based on this year, we're not spending $200,000 that we thought we were going to spend out of the 1.5 we budgeted this fiscal year. So we're carrying over $200,000 more from this year into next year. So therefore new money going into the project is less this year. So if you, okay, so the point is we had 1.5 budgeted, we spent 1.3. So we got $200,000 that we're carrying over in an incongruence to this project moving forward. Had we spent that 200 to 39 would have been a true number. But since we're carrying over the $200,000, we now only have to budget 3, 7 and new money. The project is still the same. If this is just how much money we are budgeting for a total project at 5. I understand all that, but the utilities commission just sat here and told you that all of their costs have gone up significantly in the last two to three years on projects. And if we don't put enough money aside now for projects, I'm afraid that when we do go out for bid and we get a contract for the storm run on the side, we're going to come up short $7,800,000. This number was we updated all of the project estimates before we started the budget process. The original historic westside estimate when we first started the project was in the $3 million or $2 million range. So prior to the budget process, I had staff update the estimates on all that. So if you look back on your historical document, you're gonna see a much lower price for the historic West Side project. Right, now the current estimate, based on where we're at in the design phase of that project, is 5.5 million. Now yes, we're gonna establish a policy that we're gonna do constant re-estimates of these projects when we get 30 percent design, 50 percent design, 100 percent design. So yes, I agree with your concept, but based on the information that we have right now, this is a 5.5 million project, we're carrying over $200,000 more from this fiscal year into that than we anticipated. So the amount of new money we're throwing into the project is $200,000 less than what we anticipated at the beginning of the budget process. And both of these are projects that we started four years ago and we haven't even have the final design done yet. Yes sir. So it'll be no one another eight years before we get them built. All right, it doesn't have to do with the speed of the project and if so Faster seems better to me Especially when you talk about during stormwater drainage. I agree. Yes, sir What what's the magic to make it faster? The magic and making it faster is ensuring that we keep hold our consultants to task, getting cooperation from all of the parties involved, both partners in projects and regulatory agencies. So that sounds the same as the private sector. Yeah, right. What the puzzle together at the same time? Who owns, do we need a, you know, storm waters, is the thing, do we need a storm water person? That's what they do. I mean, you got David, you got, you know, you have a storm water people that are slaying a lot of dragons. That's a big one around town. Well, that's the function of our capital projects manager is to, as I tell them when I hire them is to ride herd on our staff, external consultants and other partners in projects to keep these projects moving at a faster pace. Just a quick one. Does this come from the stormwater fund? That would be mine. Sorry. So Washington Street is from the line of credit. Historic West Side and Corbin Park are ARPA and we are going for another grant to cover those. I've seen that written down. Am I apologized for asking you again. I'm sorry, Rainy, we jumped in your time. You're fine. Go ahead. I understand the increase in the boat house. Is that all coming out of impact fees? Okay. On page seven under the capital equipment, we went from a $60,000 real mower to a $98,000 real mower. David. So for the real mower itself, it was a combination of the type of real mower itself, it was a combination of The type of real mower that we're getting and also the price has gone up because that 60 Thousand price was initially the 23 model and when we initially put it in the budget the 24 models weren't out yet and now We're gonna look at the 25 model That's essentially the going rate for the real moors that we need out there 38,000 dollar increase. Yeah, we're seeing that on our fleet across a lot of our fleet unfortunately I'm in the wrong business. Yeah Okay That's good On this significant changes in the salaries page 8, I understand there's several of these that have incentives on there and those incentives are educational incentives from this date. Correct. But we also get that money as a revenue source. Some of it is. Some of it is, yes. Okay. Because there's a couple that are like really out of whack. Like the fire training officer is getting almost 8 grand, but the deputy fire chief gets nothing and the fire chief only gets $4,300. So now it also depends on what they are actually, how do I want to say it, if they have a degree, if whatever other certifications that they actually went out and attained, that's also a part of that dollar amount and how much they are able to earn. Okay. Yeah, those are part of what we carry over from the union contracts that when those people promote out, that's one of the things that we have historically always carried over as they move up through the ranks so that they don't lose that. So it's a combination of the education pay that I know you're talking about that gives, I've always called it a pass through. We pay it out but we get reimbursed by the state and that comes in as a revenue that comes in. The other are contractual where they have, for instance, fire has three different levels that they can earn based on if they have a certain degree or certificate, if they have other certificates that they've earned. Police has their set up in the same way where they have, if you have an associate's degree and something, if you have a bachelor's degree, if you move on to a master's and then years of service, it's set up through that and so it's different for everybody. Yeah, you and I can have a conversation about that when we get into the contract negotiations. Yes. OK. So, on page 11 with the airport, lease revenue, that seems like a tremendous, along with the sports complex. That seems like a tremendous increase in projected cost, lease cost for that. This lease revenue is their revenue. So it's for their tea hangers. This is what the increase they're going to be charging their tenants for the sports complex. So the airport is going to be the revenue side of it. Correct. Okay. So this is the airport is going to be the revenue side of it. Correct. Okay. Now this is separate from the sports complex. What happened with the sports complex was a re-evaluation of the property and that significantly increased or required to do it, I believe, every five years. Okay. And is there a specific time of the year and what you're required to do that? I mean, it would have been nicer to have known that back in July or something. They were in the process of doing it and hadn't gotten back a final number at that point in time. So we estimated as best as we could and then went from there. Okay. We just came there for a second. This is FAA land, right? Correct. And we rent it from the FAA and we've tried in the past to buy it. Correct. It's never going to be used for anything, but what we want to do use for. What is the technique and can't we beat that somehow? I mean, the police department's on there. So many so much land that we've got and just hate the fact that we rent it. It'll never be used by the FAA. Is it somehow weedled into their budget? That's a cottage industry for them. That is part of their revenues. That's a revenue stream that they depend on because they own that land. Correct. And. They being the airport. In this case, so. Yeah, but it's not going out of it. So for us, it's not really a cash transaction. It's just, it's a, a journal entry to say. So it goes out of one pocket into the other? Correct. It's not really paid to the feds? No, it's not. We keep it locally. The problem is going to the airport, it then becomes a restricted fund for only airport purposes. Okay, that makes me feel a little bit better. We're not paying the feds for that, but it's going out of one of our pockets into the other and now we can improve our airport with the funds that are there. Correct. That's why they give you a 75% grant as opposed to a 50 or 30s because they know we're doing that. Okay. So the only other thing on page 12, I know you have this millage rate set here, but at our July meeting or August meeting, we actually set it at 4.88. That was the maximum millage. So instruction was to keep at the 4.6 based on what the I guess the feel was from the commission not to raise it to the 4.8 and build our budget to that. So I mean if the commission agrees and we want to increase it we still have that ability. There is no shortage of asks. I know. You guys can spend it. I know. And after the meeting last night it seems like the majority of the residents would rather pay higher taxes than have new business come to town and offset those taxes. So. That's what I got out of. That was it, 32,000 people last night. Page 14 where we do the study of the cities. Correct. I think what is helpful for this, because I know that Daytona Be Shores, only probably 5% of their avalorm tax has exemptions. So, you know, whereas in New Samarta Beach, we probably are at 60 or 70% have our exemptions. So your total dollar amount that we receive. So, I mean, if we really want to get into that, you'd really want to see what total tax dollars receive per household, you know, and would have a better comparison, but that's too much for you guys to work. But I mean, when I was looking at this, this is one of the things that kind of hit me strange, because they tend to be sure they only have three or four percent of their people that are actually exempt because they're all conducts We do we have that actual statistic of homesteaded properties in town what percentage of our residential properties are homesteaded? I would think that that would be a Yeah, I would have to check the property of Pursor's Office. I don't remember seeing one specifically showing home study. It just feels like that would be a readily available statistic. It is. I've called it. I called last year and asked for it. And you got it right away. You can get that. Yeah. I want to, it's a surprisingly low number for what I thought we would have here. Well then if we're going to compare it and say, you know, it's a price. Yeah, so I mean like they're 4.5 probably brings in a whole lot more cash dollars than our 4.8. But the mayor is suggesting that we also have a low number of homes that it was in two places. So rather than speculating we should be able to know right? Yeah Yeah, and then you're looking for commission of heartman is what's the per capita taxable value of each of these communities? Yes, that's what you want. Yeah, I don't really want to know and I I think we're on the bottom half of the list. I'm good with that If you want to get a good idea of the difference between our non-Humston properties and the benefit from it, just look at Newsom on the Edgewater at the milling rate. That'll give you a good idea of the benefit we're receiving from that. I think that I want to tell you I am really proud of myself being a BU today. Ask what percentage was probable. Who would you want this one? Noters to the top. Oh, the NSBU today asked me what percentage is residential of our property taxes. And I said 80-ish and I'm 83. Thank you. That's all the questions, Heather. Thanks. Thank you for all those. Just a couple. This has been great that we've been able to pile on and assist each other without worrying about the protocol. I like that. Back to the legal staff question comparison. Carrie, can you offer maybe you're in touch with your colleague. You know what they're outsourcing, what they're insourcing, how many cases they got compared to how many you got. Can you help us through so that we don't leave here today thing? And why are we in such, are we in legal trouble or how do we compare? So this isn't, I didn't look at these numbers today, but we are the smallest legal office in Boulish County. Orman Beach has three attorneys, and they have at least two support staff, possibly three. Port Orange has three attorneys. They have three or four support staff. We have three attorneys. We have one support staff who does half the time handling our trip and falls. The other attorneys also have labor council. The crazy, or not the crazy thing, but the thing we have to remember is that no matter the size of the city We're dealing with the same number of departments the same type of issues so you know in Daytona where they have seven attorneys and Five support staff they focus on one individual thing so one of them just does land use one of them just does police legal We're taking our three and stretching them out over all these different departments. So I'm dismayed by the portrayal that has been made tonight. So and as far as my mind goes, coming from Daytona to here, it's a harder job here than it is in Daytona. You get to focus on one thing. You have all the same resources and coming here where we cover all the departments. That's all I need to say tonight. It just could ask. I think the question was the aggregate legal cost, right? In other words, we may not need as many outside resources because we have staff here. So if we went through the, just trying to understand the aggregate between roughly comparable areas. So the, so the Delan case, I looked at a, Delan's attorney is not a staff attorney. He works for a private firm and he's on a retainer. I had a similar situation in Eustace where our city attorney was a contract attorney. So while we only show one city attorney at any one time, there's multiple staff members from that person's firm working on cases for the city. And I can guarantee that that attorney is not available to them. Correct. 15 minutes before the meeting answering six or seven different emails. So the level of service you get is very different when you have an outside firm versus in-house staff. I appreciate that a lot. Can you pine about the caseload comparison from the city to city based on your interaction with your colleagues? We all for Port Orange, Ormond and New Sumerna Beach. We have insurance council That's the same they handle the trip and falls Daytona Beach is self-insured so they handle Some of their cases in house which we do as well. We handle our petitions for RIT, any of the written documents, the evictions, we're handling that in house. They also have outside council in Daytona Beach. They have outside council for their homeless issues, their panhandling issues. You know, when they have major issues they're using outside counsel. I appreciate that. Thank you, ma'am. Back to the Washington Street project, maybe Ron. Yes. We often talk about if the longer you wait, the more expensive you get, you know, the COVID supply chain, all that stuff. Help me again. Price of Washington Street's not going down. It's just our pace of activity is slow. Correct. Okay. Because that's a big number to go from four million down to two seven, so I just. The four to two million is not a reflection of the cost of the project. It's a reflection on how much new money we have to budget to fund that project. These are budget numbers, not project numbers. There's a difference. God, thank you for that. And I liked your, the answers there are CIP manager and we've had three in the last year or so so love to have some stability there. We have Mr. Kobe is coming back with us on the 30th of this month. You could chase them away. That'd be great. Yes sir. Thank you. So the last is a philosophical one. I've heard my predecessor opine about it and it's where do we want to be on that slide 14 if you're looking. Where's the right place for Newsomurna Beach? You heard a resident tonight and you heard Joe come up and say, hey, with all of our challenges, how the heck in the world can this city, which has a significantly different stormwater challenges, parking, growth, blah, blah, blah, infrastructure. How in the world can we be third or fourth from the top of the league? And for the level of service we get, we pay in the right price. I come from a, both in my government career and in my corporate career, a rate per unit was always an important measure. So as a taxpayer, what does it cost me for every head, a conglomerate of what each person on the city staff costs per taxpayer. What are we getting of value there and how do we compare that to the other of our competition? I view the other cities as the competition and so are we more efficient therefore we're executing better or we less efficient so that's a fun I think it's a meaningful comparison on an efficiency level. So, more philosophical for the city manager and the budget director of a rate per service or rate per resident of how much goodness we're getting. On a comparative level, what's the right place for a, we all decided we're going to live here. We didn't, we didn't decide we'd live in Orange City or Port Orange and look at their rates. I mean, it implies to me that we're getting a huge bonus. I don't live in either of those places and they're paying a whole lot more than we're paying. So are we delivering the services that our client tell one is to and are we giving them a value? Where should we be in terms of a quality product and quality of life? So I don't know the exact answer to that. I don't think that it's important that we answer that tonight. But for the benefit of the residents watching and those that would be concerned, the room's nearly empty here tonight. This is a big deal and our constituency is not on the doorstep saying, hey, what the heck are you doing with all our money? So that's an indicator to me of goodness. By the same token, I like the fact that we're in the number four spot, and I enjoyed it when we were on the number two spot, but I don't know, but I'm a neophyte. I don't know that that's goodness. I like low government, I like mean and lean, but our clientele demands, we've been a cheap and cheerful town for decades, a blue collar town for a while. That is changing over time. And now we have people in their retirement ages with premiums that they're willing to pay for premium services and they're demanding premium services. City manager, that's your Bailey Wick to make sure that that keeps going in the direction it is. I applaud you for doing, I couldn't do it. And so I don't know if that's a floating number or what the rest of you feel about where we should be. Pretty proud of where it is right now. And as long as the residents don't pour in here and say you're wasting my tax dollars at the same time feel like they're getting the services they want. I think it's a recognition of overall goodness. Any reattacks, any re-follow ups by any of my colleagues? One, two, yes ma'am. Oh, just while we're trying to get projects finished that is languished. Any chance we could get the 2017 hazard mitigation grant program finalize this upcoming year? I don't know the answer to that question on the top of my head. We're certainly checking to it for you. Well, I think it's because we've got three other projects for ideally and in Nicole that are coming along and we haven't finished the 2017 one yet. So it kind of nice to get that buttoned up. And just one other comment, and I do understand that there's a high level of affluent retirees in town. But there's also a pretty substantial group of people on fixed incomes. And so I think we have to be sensitive to the fact that some people need money on their table for food more than they need money in some of our many beautiful activities. So there has to be a sensitivity to both. I'll say that the cost of government is similar to the cost of what we see in our hospitality industry, the predominant industry in New Sumerna. Many of my colleagues in contacts out there are struggling to keep their talent, track new talent, and man up their restaurants and hotels and shops. And as you mentioned before, the low end of the spectrum of the pay scale folks, they're not signing up for the 401K, they're not signing up from the health fair benefits. They just want all the money they can get at the low end. So I co-sit. benefits they just want all the money they can get at the low end. The psychosis. Yeah, and I also meant the retirees. Do you have an awful lot of pictures? I understand retirees. Yeah, I understand that. I understand that. So the costs, their costs, we see that, you know, if I see a 13% increase for our government here, you go out and any of our shops or eateries or hotels in town, their rates are up significantly because their costs are up. And if we offered not any one more service here but kept every service exactly the same, we're going to see a 10% increase a year in the cost of doing the same thing. So that's why I kind of heart bond. It's the processes that we do inside. If we do it the same way we've done it since the 1940s and 50s, we're never going to change what it costs to do that. That's why Mr. Calper is here to say I'm an examin' how we do business. It's not what it is we do, but how we do it. And if there's a better way and more efficient way that we jump on that bandwagon and not try to reduce our heads. But when somebody retires, consider not replacing one for one. That's the only way you can get ahead. Commissioner McGurk. I think you may just want to finish up by saying, and you've heard this from me a lot, the historic aspect of this town where we've come from a blue collar working class town where we didn't tax anything, but you didn't get anything. And that has been changing over the past 10 or 15 years. And what Heather said, she hit the nail on the head that if we don't, we know, we'll bite the bullet after a long period of time of not keeping up with our competitors. And then we'll kind of pat ourselves on the back and be like, whoa, that was tough. We increased our competitors. And then we'll kind of pat ourselves on the back of the air. We're like, whoa, that was tough. You know, we increased our salaries. We did a salary increase. And we've done that before. And then, you know, what we do when it comes time for the tip of every budget every year, we cruise in there with, you know, a 2% 2 and a half percent. So we don't keep up with what other cities are doing. So we get back in the same problem that we have now. So I mean, it feels like it was just the last year that we did a salary study to determine, I know, it's been four years, but we struggled with that. And then on top of that, we had the voter referendum that made us increase the millage rate to keep up with some of the salaries. The key to what she said was, where do we want to keep, and community, the demands from the people, and of course, Lisa, as you say, we have a lot of very affluent people who moved in here, but we still have people and fixed incomes. And that, to me, is the challenge going forward over the next few years at this commission. We need to try to figure out how we're going to navigate those challenges. Thank you, Mayor. Any other follow-ups? Yes, ma'am. So I'm going to feed for thought because of last night in a couple of the comments, people want to pay more taxes. I disagree with that because I don't think last night was a representation of 32,000 people here. And here's our problem. If you go to page 13 and you look at the market value of the homes that we have, it's $477,000. Our employees can't even afford to live at New Smyrna, a lot of them drive. So that is a huge problem. Some of the people that speak up say hey lay it on me I don't want growth I'll pay the taxes all day long to keep people out of here. A good thriving city is the mixture of all ages. We don't want this to only be a tourist town where they're gonna live if we don't start forward thinking and do this, they can see me dirty letters all they want. And I got a few of them today for approving during park last night. I care about jobs. I care about our children and our grandchildren. And right now, we don't have that in this community. And it's only going to get worse. If you have to pay high taxes on a $477,000 house, it is tough. One of the couples that was here tonight that had the $1,000 increase, I can tell them right now why, because about the house a year ago, the people that owned it before didn't pay the amount of money that they paid. Well, that jumps and that 3% is gone once that happens. We're going to price ourselves totally out of being able to afford a home here. In the story we don't have affordable housing, we need it. We need places for our teachers and our own employees to be able to work and live in the same place. We don't have that. So as we go forward, we didn't approve a PUD or MDA last night. Commissioner Martin has said this, we need to look at what goes into that city. If they're going to walk into that area and not have to drive, they've got to be able to work in and for to live there. And I've preached that we've got to have places that they can live and I've told that we've got to have places that they can live. And I've told that to Glenn's torch. I know you have told that, but this is something we can't cater to only people that can afford high taxes. We've got to keep them low because our tax base is so high. I just compared us to the other coast on, because I buy properties. And I was looking in there about a hundred thousand dollars less in certain areas on beach towns on the other coast. Well we don't have that luxury here. $477,000 half a million to buy a home here. I mean that is what we got to think at and we've got to consider 32,000 people, not just the people that show up in this room. We got voted on. I was voted and elected in this job because I represent economic development. I lick for jobs and stuff. I lick that those people pit me in this position to help balance our budget. Keep it lean. Go for it. Offer services that we can, but we're're not going to cater to the people that scream the loudest. It's got to be a nice balance and that's how we need to do this board up here. And I think we're doing a great job event. We need to continue looking and questioning all these things and how we go forward. Thank you, man. Appreciate it. Come in to any others. Just to come in on behalf of the commission. So, Lisa, congratulations and thank you for the hard work. I know what you've been through. I know a fraction of what you've been through. I don't know what you've been through and I know you've had you had a boss then you lost a boss then you had a boss and now you're the boss. So appreciate how that's gone. All right thank you very much. There's a resolution 6024 the consideration of adoption of this resolution which if adopted would adopt the tentative News Immunal Operating Military this is the first reading there'll be a second reading. Madam City Attorney if you'll read the resolution 6024 by Title Only please. Resolution number 6024 resolution of the city of New Smyrna Beach, Florida, tentatively determining the mountain, fixing the rate of taxation and making the annual property add Valorant Levy in the amount of 4.6 370 mills per $1,000 of non-exempt assessed value for general fund operations of the city for fiscal year beginning October 1, 2024 through September 30,, 2025. Scheduling a public hearing for Final Levy of Abel arm taxes and providing an effective date. Thank you, ma'am. Is there a motion to adopt 60-24? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? Anybody else? Madam City Clerk, please call the roll. Commissioner Martin? Yes. Vice Mayor Green the roll. Commissioner Martin. Yes. Vice Mayor Green. Yes. Commissioner Hartman. No. Commissioner McGurk. Yes. Mayor Cleveland. No. Motion carries. All right. And now there's a motion 61-2040 consider the adoption of a tentative Newsomera INS for 2018 maximum of milled rate. Madam City Attorney, if you'll read 61-24 by title only please. Resolution number 61-24. Resolution of the City of Newsomera and Beach Florida tentatively determining the mountain fixing the rate of taxation and making the annual property avalarm levy in the amount of .0.990 mills per $1,000 of non-exempt assess value for the INS 2018 voted debt service for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025. Scheduling a public hearing for final levy of avalarm taxes and providing an effective date. Thank you, ma'am. Is there a motion to approve 61-24 on the payback for the INS? So moved. Second. Motion to second. Madam City clerk, will you call the roll, please. Commissioner McGurk. Yes. Commissioner Harvman. Yes. Vice Mayor Perine. Yes. Commissioner Martin. Yes. Mayor Cleveland. Yes. Thank you. And now resolution 6224 considering the adoption of resolution which if adopted would adopt the tentative News and Murder rate budget for a physical year 2425. Madam City Attorney if you'll read 6224 by title only. Resolution number 6224 resolution of the City of News and Murder Beach, Florida tentatively adopting the budget for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2024. Scheduling public hearing date for final budget adoption and providing for an effective date. Is there a motion to adopt 6224? So moved. You had a motion? Second. And a second. You got a second by this right Carrie this will come again. Yeah Both of these come again. Yes, perfect. Thank you Madam City clerk. Please call the roll Commissioner McGurk. Yes, Commissioner Martin It's an interesting problem I'm going to go to the next floor. It's an interesting problem. No. Vice mayor for the. Commissioner Hartman. No. Mayor Cleveland. Yes. Thank you. And now resolution 6324, which is the stormwater assessment of $8,667 per month, the equivalency of $104 annually to be advertised as part of the trim notice as non-evil or tax special assessment. Madam City Attorney, if you'll read 6324 by title only, please. Resolution number 6324. Resolution of the City of Newsburn of each Florida, adopting the stormwater non-evilorm special assessment role, specifying the unit of measurement, certifying the role of Belucia County, providing for conflicting resolutions and providing for an effective date. Is there a motion for 6,324? So moved. Sorry. Second. Any discussion? Does this reflect the increase that you were after? No. No, this is not. No, this is not. And I would dearly hope. Thank you for bringing it up. But next year we would have it at least $10 because we know we're not beginning to collect the money we need for our store-modern issues. So I, you know, what is it? We're paying eight and what did I think, POM Coast is paying something like 28 a month. So some place between eight and 28, there may be a reasonable amount. $10, $12 a month. I've got it. For that. Wouldn't that be that good? We see that for next year maybe? Whatever we have to do to make that happen. Can I go to the ordinance? Go to the government. Well, I could, I believe I was told that we need an ordinance to increase the store water rate. Yes, and it's possible there may need to be a study that accompanies it. Yeah, so it's something that has to be requested now for next year as I understand it. Is that correct? It would need an ordinance revision. Yeah, so can't can't make it happen tonight. Very good. Any other discussion? Madam City Court, please call the roll. Commissioner Hartman. Yes. Commissioner Martin. Yes. Vice Mayor Prane. Yes. Commissioner McGurk. Yes. Mayor Cleveland. Yes. Thank you very much. And is there any follow-up comments from the media my colleagues? Yes. Here's a much better. Anything close out? You had a lot. OK, good enough. Mr. McGurk. Yeah, there's some no votes. I didn't hear any complaints or problems about the budget. So I certainly like to hear some for second reading if there's going to be more no votes on second reading. Very good. Commissioner Martin, anything? Commissioner Hartman, anything? I'm good, thank you. Okay, very good. Again, thank you staff for the contribution. Thank you to Bartman, heads for being present. We are adjourned.