Okay, we are going to call to order the April 24, 2025 budget finance and taxation committee to order. Could we do a roll call please? Curtis? Here. Tanoets? Here. Exanders? Gabbard? Here. Harding. Here. Okay, we have agenda in front of us. I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. All in favor. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. We've got minutes from April 10th, 2025. I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. All in favor. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay, we're going to rock and roll right into new business this morning. Our first agenda item is the FY 2025 grants report. We've got Aubrey Phillips joining us. I'll be turning it over to you. Thank you, good morning, council members. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Before we get into today's presentation, I did want to take a chance to introduce the last time I presented to you. We've welcome two new grants officers to the city. They've filled in for positions that were vacated last year. So Julie Patterson and Ethan Rogers are joining me here today and have been doing some tremendous work helping support departments on grants and making sure we had good data to share with you for today's presentation. Before we again get into the presentation, I'll remind everybody grants, as you all know, do a lot to help finance a broad range of public services. My theme last time I talked with you was grants or dynamic. I think our experience over the first two quarters of FY25 have reinforced that theme. And you'll see that coming up in today's presentation. So for the first two quarters of fiscal year 25, we have accepted $6.29 million in grants that's distributed across federal grants, which include federal state pass-throughs, state grant funds, as well as local and other funds. And we'll talk a little bit in the successive slides about how that has shifted from what we saw in the same period last fiscal year. And so as you can see, we've accepted the same number of grants, but the total value of the grants is significantly lower, about 83% lower than what we saw over the same period in fiscal year 24. When we looked into why that is, we saw a few things. One timing is a big consideration, as I shared with you previously. This is a picture of a snapshot in time. And so some of what you see here in this decrease, the two biggest drivers are federal and state pass-throughs, our federal grants and our state grants. And really there's a few stories happening here. One is that we are seeing that federal grants, the timing of them, so our ship and our home grants, just haven't come up for renewal this year yet. So that's just a matter of timing of when those grant agreements come forward for acceptance. The other story is we have some grants where we've been successful in prior years and the grantors have recommended that we complete those existing agreements and grant awards before reapplying for additional funds. So that's another part of the story. And then the third part of the story is where, for instance, in FY24, we saw a huge success with the resilient Florida program and our applications there while While we didn't get notice in this reporting period just after this reporting period closed earlier this month, we did get notice that the eight applications we had submitted for resilient Florida for FY25 were not awarded. So we have followed up with FDEP to request debriefs on each of those opportunities to better understand why we saw so much success in FY24 and didn't see that same success replicated in FY25. And we tell departments every time on every grant opportunity that we're not awarded, this is an opportunity to learn and improve those projects for next time. Here you can see that historical representation of both the number of grant awards in the line graph. Again, about 21 and this is your to date compared to complete fiscal years. So that does also as part of the story here. And then the dollar value of those awards shown in the bar graphs. So our FY25 grant award forecast. So these are grants that we have received notice that we've been awarded. So we were successful in our application. But after we get that award notice, there's a series of steps that each grant has to go to before it comes to you as City Council for Acceptance. So generally there's some back and forth with the grantor as we work through getting a grant agreement, and then we have to prepare a council memo and resolution, and then we bring forward that entire package to you for acceptance prior to fully executing that grant award. So again, these are grant awards that we have received notice that we've been successful in our application, but they just haven't made it completely through that process to come to you for acceptance. We have some that are still in that process from FY24 as well. We continue to follow up with departments that applied for these grants as well as the grantors to make sure that we are moving these grant awards through the process and getting them fully secured with completely executed grant agreements. And then there are also a number from FY23 that we are continuing to track. That again, we've been notified we were successful with our award, but we're working them, they're working their way through the process to get a fully executed grant agreement, so we can begin those projects and begin seeking reimbursement against the grants. And then we had a handful here that were technical assistance grant awards. So these often don't have a formal grant agreement in the same way that if funds are associated with the grant. So many of these have been in progress, have been completed, but they don't come to City Council for acceptance because they don't have a grant agreement that needs to be executed. There's no funds involved. This is often we're getting technical expertise that is helping us to improve our programs and operations. So long before a grant awards come to you all for acceptance, we have an internal process with a grants working group where we review every grant application that the city submits. That's making sure that we've planned appropriately for ongoing operating costs that may be associated that we have any matching funds appropriated in the budget and that we are having an opportunity as well to coordinate across departments. So oftentimes a grant that transportation applies for gets implemented by engineering and may be communicated by marketing. And so this gives us an opportunity at the very front end of the process to make sure all the players are at the table and we're coordinating throughout. So in the first two quarters of fiscal year 25 we reviewed 38 grants of those 22 were submitted. Three we did not ultimately submit an application for in one case that the opportunity was canceled prior to are being able to submit an application into others. There were timing considerations and just alignment with other priorities taking precedent. Of those 38 that we did review and submit 10 of those have been awarded to were not awarded and one is still in progress at the end of the reporting period which was March, the end of March of this year. So those grants review, the ones that we reviewed but did not ultimately pursued, here's a breakdown of those so that you can understand how we are, when we pursue an application but then ultimately decide not to apply. Again, two of those were for alignment. One was up here learning cohort for economic mobility through the Office of Equity and given other priorities. They decided to wait on applying for this and focus on their existing activities. And then the assistance to firefighters grant, they were looking at a high water rescue vehicle application, but ultimately not pursuing the grant is allowing them to move forward with that acquisition more quickly and they've found alternative funding sources. Those that were canceled by the grantor we had FY 25 connect and protect. So this was a DOJ grant opportunity that was posted on grants.gov. It had come to the grants working group. The police department was planning to apply and then prior to submitting our application, we saw that that opportunity was removed from grants.gov and we weren't able to apply any longer that grant opportunity was canceled. Actually reviewed by the grants working group in FY 24, so it doesn't show up on this last slide we were looking at are the two brick opportunities that we did apply for earlier this month. We have an earlier application deadline because we apply through the Florida Department of Emergency Management for this FEMA funding. And after we submitted our applications to the Florida Department of Emergency Management, then FEMA decided to cancel this grant opportunity. We are repackaging both of those applications, just like with any grant that we're not awarded. We don't throw that work out. We take that work and look for other opportunities to reapply. So we are looking at hazard mitigation grant program for those two projects. Some other grant updates. So our state appropriation and congressional community project funding for FY 25 state appropriations request. We currently have five projects that have been requested. They're listed here. They're a total value of the request is 9.725 million. As you all are aware, this goes through the state budget process, so they'll go through committees and all of that process. So we will find out later this year and when I come back to you at the end of the fiscal year, we'll have an update on where each of these landed. And of course, David will keep you updated throughout the year at the layer updates. For the FY26 community project funding, so these are our Congressional and Directed funding requests. We have eight projects that were requested. Again, this data is as of the end of our reporting period, which was March 31st. I do believe the very doc at St. Pete Pier and all, if you'll have questions about that, David can update us, but there was a different entity that decided to pursue that proposal. So we swapped in a different proposal since we've provided this presentation to you all. But we had eight projects totaling 41.3 million that we have requested. Our FY25 community project funding request, these were not awarded as part of the continuing resolution. All of the FY25 community project funding request nationally were removed from the federal budget, so we're reapplying for those in FI, many of those in FI26. And then FI24, these award agreements are still in progress, but we were notified of that we had been awarded the San Cofa Affordable Housing Development Funding, Stormdrainage Improvement Funding and Funding for theNOC Davis Recreation Center. And those three projects equate to 10.5 million in grant funding. So I will open it up to you all now for questions, and I'm happy to share whatever I can. Many members, Council Member Gavard, did you still have a question? Yeah, I do. So I just want to kind of understand because we've been talking about this funding specifically for resiliency projects. And it's mentioned, I think it's the same projects, but I wanted just to get clarity. So in our state appropriation requests, we have the lift station resiliency of $2 million and the shoryakers resiliency of $3 million. Are those the same projects that we had also applied for brick funding trying to kind of create a menu of funding because our match on the infrastructure, the lift station hard, station hardening, was supposed to be four million, and on the shoreakers was supposed to be 6.5 million. So is this state funding part of the match that we were looking to have? And if so, then Tom, I guess this might be a CIP question for later. How are we going to come up with a large deficit? Because the federal request on the lift station was 13 million and on the backflow preventors for shurikers was 20.8 million. It's a huge, even if we get this two and three million dollars from the state for our portion of the match, there's still no way, unless we're moving large amounts of money around from other projects to be able to fill to make these projects happen. So are these the same? How is that all going to flow? There is overlap. So in just like with a development project, we look at a capital stack. So we may have grant funding from state appropriations, combine that with federal funding, and maybe even multiple federal sources combined with general fund revenues. So it's really about cobbling together a variety of funding sources to make a project whole. And sometimes over the course of time, the scope of those projects change based on the funding that's available. Okay. So that'll be a conversation we can continue at our cow later on today. And we do this, it's almost like active management of projects. So we're constantly plugging in, as Aubrey talked about, resources from other places. And what that effectively does, and I'll just make up a number. Let's say we've got a million dollars in storm water that the net operating income of storm water to fund a project. We get a $500,000 grant that effectively reduces our expense by 500. So that 500,000 stays in the storm water fund to be redeployed for other projects. So that's kind of how the, you know, so if potentially we get funding from other places for other projects, that may be able to free up dollars to backfill into these very expensive large projects. That's right. Okay. Because I mean, one of them is very specific to Shore Acres, Councilmember Harding's district, but I mean, the one that was for the lift stations, that's all over the city. I mean that's a city-wide resiliency project. So very concerned about how we fill that hole specifically, just because I think that, you know, especially with kind of the everyday rainy season and that kind of stuff, I mean those sort of projects that are city-wide, I think, you know, if we've got places we need to fill, we should certainly be looking at those. Yeah. Or all the puns intended. There's a lot of puns that go with resiliency work, so get used to them. And can we work really closely with Claude and Angela and the public works team because as your question can apply is the priorities are the priorities and so as funding becomes available or isn't available that doesn't change what our priority is. That just changes how we're funding those priorities. So speaking of other opportunities you mentioned the HMGP. Can you kind of explain that so that people understand that particular pot of funding and how that is different from brick funding? Yes. So brick funding is a nationally competitive grant. So the two applications that we had submitted would have been in a normal grant cycle competing against projects from all over the country. That differs from hazard mitigation grant program because hazard mitigation grant program, similar in some ways to the community development block grant disaster recovery funding, those are allocated by Congress to specific jurisdictions based on particular disaster declarations. So unlike brick, that's a national competition, CDBGDR, we got our $169 million allocation, hazard mitigation grant program, and I don't have the exact figures in front of me, so please excuse me. But it's, we got Pinellas County as a whole community has an allocation of I believe it's 400 million for Haleen and Milton and then there's also an allocation for Debbie so that funding is allocated to Pinellas County as a whole community the application process is managed through the-wide local mitigation strategy working group that we participate on as well as our floodplain manager, our emergency manager, and public works. And so we are competing against other jurisdictions within Pinellas County for that allocation of funding. So those funds that are directly allocated, I think, and this is some of what you've heard, as we've talked about, concerns about risk to CBBGDR. Those directly allocated funds, I think are in a much safer position than funds are naturally competed for like brick. And what is the current funding cycle for that? Like when would we, because I know you're kind of repackaging them so that you can send them, you know, maybe to them, what is the timing for submittal? So we've just submitted our notice of intent for HMGP Debbie allocation. The deadline is coming up in the next month or two for the notice of intent for Halene and Milton. We've already notified the LMS working group that we plan to apply for these projects because part of what they're looking at is what is the demand and countywide for these funds and then the application deadline I believe is in June or July so we're actively working on those applications and repackaging and developing new applications for projects in addition to those two that we applied for break on. So potentially we could know before FY26 budget begins, October 1st, if we have the allocation of those dollars, do we know what their timeline if we submit in for a decision? Yeah. I do not know. I can take that as a follow-up item and look into it. Okay. This will be my first cycle going. timeline if we submit in for a decision. Yeah. Uh, I do not know. I can take that as a follow up item and look into it. Okay. It'll be my first cycle going through HMGP. So I don't know how quickly we will get award decision. Yeah. But we know that in this part of the discussion I've been having with public works in terms of like informing a rate study for public works utilities. We're not going to know a decision on HMGP and time for it to inform the rate study for public works utilities. We're not gonna know a decision on HMGP and time for it to inform the rate study for instance. So those are things that now we will know sooner rather than later how we ranked, how many applications came in to the local mitigation strategy working group, where our project scored in relation to other proposals. So we'll have some idea, but it won't be a sure thing, I think, in time for it to really inform this year's budget cycle. Okay. You mentioned on the slide, the FY25 state Pete Community Project funding updates with the list of ones that did not get awarded, the Fairy Doc, and that we substituted a different project for that. And I'll let David speak to this. And what's happening with the fairy doc? Yes. And if I could just go back real quickly to your questions about the resilience. So David Thompson, director of government affairs. The numbers and the projects look different at the state level versus the federal level. Because of the amount we can request at the state level versus the federal level and the timeliness in which we receive state funds versus federal funds. So generally, this year, the legislature didn't really want projects more than a billion dollars. I mean, Billion, excuse me, a million dollars. We push that, obviously. We could give them our whole form water, like there we go. Yeah, yeah. We obviously push that with our individual request. And you kind of see that in the number that's in the budget, but we'll continue to work with that. We also generally will know for sure at the state level that whether or not we have the funds by July 1st of the current year, and it's a very quick process to receive the funds from the state. At the federal level, we estimate from the point we submit it, it will be at least two years before we see the first funds, and then the cap at what we can ask for at the federal level is $10 million. When it comes to resiliency disaster mitigation efforts. So that's just why you'll see in the numbers, don't always look the same or why something is bigger in one account versus the other. Specifically to go to your question about the ferry dock. So we had a conversation with PSTA and Congresswoman Caster's office and the consensus was that it was actually more appropriate for PSTA to submit the request for the ferry dock and they will use a different account that we then we would have submitted for that's less competitive in as far as there's only one transit agency in in Pinellas County as opposed to so many nonprofits who would have wanted to use the account that we were looking at and And, oh, I just second piece of that. Oh, and then we substituted that with the, because we now had a fifth slot open up on the city's list, we substituted that for something that we had gotten consensus on last year, which was the water proofing project for the Mirror Lake community library. So just because we kind of, it was, I think Tuesday or so, that we got this call together and we knew that this is something that council and the community had agreed previously that it was supported above. All documentation was completed so we were able to turn that around by the deadline yesterday. Okay, great. Thank you. And then my last question that you said there were eight of resilient Florida grants that were not awarded and you're going to be going through a debrief on those. Could you just send a list of those projects to City Council so that we can see what those projects were? Okay, very good. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice Chair Hanowitz. Thank you, Chair. Aubrey, thank you for the update. I can imagine how difficult it is to do your job and your team to do their job with the environment right now in terms of grants. So really appreciate you trying to get us these extra dollars that we all need. I mean, it's interesting when you're with your grant award forecast, you have the Florida Commerce grant opportunity that deals with Hurricane Ian. That was three years ago. Yeah. So it just kind of shows you how long it takes to get this money. But I just want to ask real quickly, it's been touched upon, but I just want to just make sure it's on the record. So obviously there were community funding requests that were submitted, they were not accepted, and we're going to resubmit. There are a few projects that are on there, and we've discussed this, David. The Seek Resimondigation Bank, Wrestling Lake Water water quality improvements that are not there this time around. Just please let us know. These projects are ongoing, it's happening. It's just a matter of what you put in that you think you can get and I just want to make it clear. So. Yeah, I mean, actually some of the reason that we didn't submit these project is because they are ongoing. So as I said earlier, when you're dealing the federal government. It can it can genuinely take two years from the date we submitted to the point that we receive or start to receive the funds or get the grant agreement. So for some of these projects that we forecasted last year, because we've lost a year essentially, they no longer fit in that two year outlook window on which we plan the projects for. The departments might have already started on doing some of the work, which would then make it ineligible for the federal fund. So we had to replace them with projects that better match when we expect to receive the funds. Absolutely are ongoing. Great. That's it. Well, thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. Council member fixaners. Thank you. I have a quick question in it. Explained. First of all, thank you. Good morning. I'm so sorry. You explained how if a grant was not accepted or not awarded, we look at other ways to fund them. So I was looking at when is waiting too long or long enough. For example, the law enforcement, AED equipment, there's an expiration date on that. Those things have to happen within a certain time, front frame. So I don't see a follow-through of that particular request in the slide that we're providing. So did we decide that we're going to just try to finance those? And is this the law enforcement aid? Yes. So one to kind of address the broader question in the same way as Councilwoman Gavards question about, you know, the priority of projects. don't let the grant funding dictate when projects get built, right? Projects are needed when they're needed in the same way that the Seagrass Medigation Project was ready to move forward, so we're not pursuing congressional project funding for that because it's just not a fit. We don't want grant funding to dictate our project schedules, We want the communities priorities to dictate those. I'll let David speak more specifically to the law enforcement AED replacement. Yes, and that's so that is an ongoing request. So we will know by July 1st if we are going to receive the funds or technically May 10th. But by July 1st we will know whether or not we're going to receive the funds. if we don't, then we take it from there and work with Chief Holloway and his team on how to fund that project in its absence. Okay, so you prioritize it in a way that it's not in a repetitive cycle of grant requests. Right. Right. Okay. Thank you so much for that. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Committee Minimum is any other question? Council member Harding. Thank you, Chair. Much bigger picture. For those of us who are new and anyone watching, we give us a sense of the department itself. How do we rate compared to cities of our size? Are we bigger? Are we smaller? Are we staff better? Are we staff worse? Just to give a scope of your comments. I have to be honest, I have not done a peer analysis to look at how we compared other localities more globally. Although I came from Pinellas County Government and I can tell you that our team is about the size if not smaller than what the county has and the grants that flow through us and our scope of responsibilities is larger. The team, and you know, when you hear department director, it's easy to think of like a public works that has hundreds if not thousands of employees. It's myself, Jolie, and Ethan is the whole grants department. Now we work closely with vendors who help us with grant writing because that's a one-time big push and we often need very specific technical expertise. So that allows us to make sure that we can provide competitive applications without having to have the cost of having that technical expertise in-house on an ongoing basis. And then of course we also work very closely with the operating departments who are the ones that apply for and own these grants as well as finance and budget. So we've partners so much with other departments that really help us to do what we do. So what you've seen here today is not just a reflection of the three of us. It is really a citywide effort. And I might add, if I could, Mr. Chair, the evolution of our grants operation over the last three or four years has been very significant. I mean, we used to have one person working within the budget department as a division within the budget department. Over the last couple of years, council has supported increasing staffing. And then earlier this year, we see this as such a high priority and working with, not only the grants that we're reporting on here, but the CDBGDR that we wanted to create a specific department for grants, strategic initiatives and grants. So I mean, I think thanks to the support of council and creative thinking by the folks that we have in-house now on the team, I think we're right sized for the moment. There's always gonna be pushes and pulls on staffing just because as you can see and as everybody understands, grants are really complicated. Getting them is one thing, but then the life cycle of a grant and touches so many different departments. So our teams are stretched a lot. And so investing here on the front end and allowing more interaction between origination and support for implementing and delivering on the grant is delivering benefit already. But there are going to be pressures as we move forward in various departments as we continue to grow the grants, the compliance is going be a challenge. But thank you to Council for, there's a support and investment in the grants operation. And quite frankly, that's what I was wondering about. Some parts of us are pretty easy. We get to 10 minutes in building collections. We need another person, we are another person, we get down to five minutes. We don't get all the trash picked up. We had another route, another driver. But to your point, you and I have talked about this, the growth of this team. I wouldn't know where to find the sweet spot of. If you had 10 people available to you, does that create a you know, a better pool of money for the city to work with? And so I was just wondering about how you, how do you write size something like this? One of the things that we're actively working on right now, and it's in part in response to the community development, Black Grant disaster recovery funding, the sunrise, St. Pete funding, is we know that we need to be thinking proactively about the capacity to manage those funds over the long term because we don't want to be having to return any of those funds due to compliance issues. But also now that we've got Jolian Ethan in their roles and getting them settled, it's giving us an opportunity as well as they're getting familiar with grants to review our existing grant compliance grant processes and that will also tell us more about where do we need additional support for departments that may not always be adding more bodies. We just released an RFP for grant management software that we're getting quotes on now because we recognize that it's also about having the right tools for the job and that departments have tools that can help support them in meeting all those compliance requirements because we want we want sanitation to be experts and pick it up trash recycling they don't part of their day job is not being experts and grant compliance that's where we come in to help backfill and make sure that we're staying compliant with all of those requirements across the organization. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Arborgivens. Thank you so much Chair. I appreciate it. Thank you, Aubrey, for this presentation. Thank you, David. I appreciate it. Thank you, Tom. I want to talk for a moment. You just mentioned something. Grant Management software. So I was so excited to be at the National Legal Cities Conference and to learn about all the the different tools and resources that they have at our disposal of the city to tap into these resources, right? So can you talk a little... legal cities conference and to learn about all the different tools and resources that they have at our disposal of the city to tap into these resources, right? So can you talk a little bit about those management tools? Because I'm thinking about like grant finder. I see all the time, you know, federal grants that are on there and I'm wondering how do you decide which grants were going to apply for? And how does that decision go about? Excellent question. So there's a little bit of two fold there. One in terms of how we've decided what grants to apply for, we meet twice a year with every administration on a grant strategy meeting and a big part of that discussion is looking at what grants we currently have in process that we're applying for, that we're looking to apply for. But another part of that conversation is what are the needs that they have for funding? And that, along with what comes out of the budgeting process, where we know that department's identified needs that we can't always fund through our regular budget, become what our team uses as the basis for setting up and looking for grant funding opportunities. I will say, and I want to echo Tom's appreciation for Council for the support of the Grand Division. And there's really been a real resourcefulness in the team up to this point. So it It is using things like available resources like grants.gov. There's a number of grant aggregators that are available out there free that we're using to look for grant opportunities today. The challenges is that we have to do that manually. It's going to a site looking for those search terms. So some of the tools like what you mentioned would allow us to set up, okay, we know that, for instance, the golf courses have expressed to us a need to replace some of their golf carts that folks who have mobility limitations used to be able to participate in our golf courses. Well, we can set that up as a search, and so as grant opportunities come around, we automatically would get alerted and can start working immediately with the department instead of having a manual process of, okay, now's the time of the month where we go in and check for grant opportunities. Likewise, on the backend compliance piece, there's a lot that technology tools can help with in terms of setting up alerts when quarterly reports are due and what's required for those reports and take a lot of what's been a very manual process or the departments have made Excel or SharePoint lists work to serve those needs in the near term. I think there's solutions out there that can help us be much more efficient with those processes and reduce duplicate entry, make sure things are tying out to our accounting system and reduce the level of effort needed to get the same return on investment or more. All about improving efficiency, work smart, not hard, right? That's my language. The goal is, one last question, you talk about competing with other municipalities in the region for some of these grants. What gives us that competitive edge? What's going to allow us to stand out from other cities? Is it neat? Is it time? Is it the amount of money? So it really, if I had to summarize it in one word, it would be our ability to collaborate. Both across city departments but with community partners, we know that increasingly over the last several years that's something that funders at all level in every sector are looking for is have you built coalitions, are you leveraging other funding sources? And I think the focus that city administration and council have had on building and maintaining good partnerships in the broader community is critical to how we compete. On an individual grant basis and this is part of what our team helps with, you know departments are carrying the heaviest part of the load when we apply for a grant because they know their project best, they know their business best. Well, we can come in and often help with on grant applications is making sure that that application and how we're talking about the project and how we're framing it and what data and evidence we're bringing to bear in that application reflect what that particular funders priorities are. That's part of why when we have changes in administration, it can really create some challenges to navigate because you may have applied with one administration that are one set of funding priorities and the end things that they were prioritizing, and then a new administration comes in with a difference set of priorities. And that's fine in their prerogative, but that's the opportunity for us and why we're so proactive in keeping in touch with our federal grant tours, our state grant tours, is that as those priorities change, we want to make sure that we can be responsive to that and maintain that competitive edge. Information, thank you, Aubrey. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Marie's from me. Just to follow up on the ads, which you're saying, the, so that's obviously that all the competitive pieces of the grant and Aubrey's being very humble. So I will say this from my perspective, having worked on the other side, working with locate or municipalities, is that we're absolutely punching above our weight when it comes to our applications. You can look at, as council has invested the amount that we were requesting and receiving in FY 23 up to the numbers that you see now, that's a reflection of our ability to turn around grants faster to look at more projects and our team knows what those things, what we're looking for proactively. The process is about doing it twice a year of having that strategic meeting, not just bringing everybody together at one meeting. We've also had the privilege of administration and council being very much on the same page, and has made our more competitive. The fact that you also the time to go to Tallahassee and Washington DC for grants that are a bit more subjective, having the branding and the communication with our legislators and the department heads helps us. One of the things that we did struggle with during the Biden administration is when they were looking at the broader, how are they allocating these funds, Tampa kept getting grants. And in their mind, it was Tampa Bay, so we gave one to Tampa. It's fine. The efforts that you all put in to make sure that has understood that, you know, when, that there is a difference between St. Pete and Tampa, even though they're on Tampa Bay and showing, for example, example the FEMA administrator that New York City is as far from you know Hoboken or Hoboken as Tampa is from St. Pete and you would never treat them as the same entity when allocating grant funds. That's the kind of efforts that we've also been able to do that help distinguish it when it comes to those different things and data analysis. That's the other thing. One of the things that we've been able to do particularly when it comes to transportation is we've gotten the support to do good data analysis. We can show our high-entry corridors on our city as when it comes to transportation. And for so many of the master plans, like you all were just talking earlier about the Center for the Arts, having that already done when we go to apply for grant puts us a step ahead ahead from there. So I just wanted to add that as some of that context. I appreciate it. Thank you. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. Looking ahead or looking at what you're working on now, not just what's been reported. Things have been a little bit bumpy and I really appreciate the work that I know you and the team have been doing to try to keep up with what's what's what's happening and what's changing. Just recently on April 1st there was an announcement from USDA OT sort of restarting the Safe Streets and Roads for All funding those grants. And now, this latest one, where these are due on June 26, it totals $982 million, which is good. So far, like up until this point, Safe Streets and Roads for All has allocated 2.9 billion in federal funding to over 1,600 different communities. So it's a very popular newer program. And St. Petersburg has had to ride the roller coaster on grants that we were awarded. And then there was a stall. So I was wondering with this new notice of ending opportunity and what we already had in the works, is that still in the works? And what are we going to what are we asking for in this next round? So that had that we've been having internal conversations about the safe streets for all. It hasn't yet come to the grants working group. So I have more would have more details when that does about what specifically we're applying for in the dollar amount. But the situation you described is very accurate and we are working with departments to then look at the actual notice of funding opportunity and what's being prioritized. Again, to make sure that we're putting forward an application that can be competitive. And with the changes to terms and conditions around grants, I know, I mean, I know most of what I know is from transportation related grants, so I'm thinking about that and being involved with National League of Cities and them helping to interpret what's coming out. You know when it comes to transportation projects and that grant funding we're trying to find what they're looking for. You know and we know that safety is still a top priority. We also know that they're looking at how this helps families, you know, and focusing, giving more weight to areas that give families a high priority. See how I found a way to put it? So, you know, just like, so, so things like that. I keep telling everyone, we can meet the same goal. You just have to, we just have to change. I mean, just like with anything else. Yeah. When there's a change, you pivot anything that you're applying for. If you're applying for a job, what's going to be your cover letter? Probably not the same thing for every job, right? Exactly. So, that's kind of how this is. Yep. And one of the things that we've been working on, particularly over the last couple of months, is we've developed an initial risk assessment for all of our existing grant awards So both those that we've just been notified of and those that have been accepted and we have a grant agreement in place Seeing you know some of the notices that have come out and this is gonna have to be something that we're continually updating it We actually just updated it this morning based on news they came out yesterday in regards to some Department of Justice grants. So that is helping us to assess risk on all of those grant awards so that we know that you know we have 88 active grant awards that we manage as a city. Reviewing 88 grant agreements is going to take a lot of time and so we're using that risk assessment to make sure that we're prioritizing those that are most at risk of having funding being threatened where we can prioritize review of those grant agreements and talking with our grantor about what they may change as they may need to see to make sure those funds remain with the city of St. Petersburg and serving the purpose that they're intended to serve. Great, great. Well, I don't know about you, but I was thrilled to see that this did come back up for Safe Streets. And at a time when I think we're all getting really tired of having all the wrong headlines regarding pedestrian safety here and we have a lot of improvements to make. So I'm hoping to see a really strong showing for these grant applications and hopefully we'll still be able to get the funding that had been awarded and work through that agreement so that we can get that funding too. Absolutely, right. Thank you, thank you, Chair. Thank you. Aubrey, I just have one question, but before I go there, I know there are in our backup, we have more slides about grant awards accepted in FY25 quarter and pending determinations, I think.. Are we going to go through those or is that just backup? That's just backup. Okay so then my one question is on the backup. Okay. And it has to do with the forward panelist transportation alternatives, the FY25 Q1 grant submissions pending award, 9th sidewalks. I'm just curious to where on ninth avenue that is. I will have to follow up with transportation for that. Otherwise, that was my simple question and I appreciate all my colleagues and their questions, but I want to keep moving because we've got one more item and some of us have to go over to the Holocaust Museum and read names during lunch and I'm sure people would like to eat as well. And so, Aubrey, thank you so much for the presentation. David, thanks for jumping in. I wanted to make sure we talked about where we were on that side. But you and your team, thank you for all the work. It's phenomenal to see what's been happening. And I did just have one general update. My team let me know that HMGP application for Hurricane Debbie is May 21st and for Helene and Milton is July 25th May 31st May 21st for Debbie and July 25th for Helene and Milton. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you all. OK, we're going to move into our second item today, and that's the FY 2024 external audit for the community redevelopment agency report in presentation. And we're joined by Eric Langans, our chief financial officer, and our audit partner Lauren Stroke from Cherry Becker. Welcome, welcome. Yeah. Thank you, welcome. All right, good morning. Thank you for taking time. I'm Eric Langans, the CFO, and I, like I mentioned, like you mentioned, we have Lauren Stroke, our audit partner with Sherry Becker. We presented the city's audited financial statements last month and here we're to present the community redevelopment agency of the city of St. Petersburg, Florida's audited financial statements. So a separate read gave you some time to look at this separate from the city's financial statements. We're gonna start with a presentation from Lauren and then we can go through any questions and look at the backup document. You have any questions? Good morning, council. My name is Lauren Stroke. I served as the audit partner. I'm very excited to be here talking to you today. I know a couple of you have heard me present. I promise I'm a better auditor than a presenter, but the good news is that I go fast. So we'll move right through this. Okay. So this is just a quick agenda. on your print plenty good present. Oh, I appreciate you. This is just a quick agenda of the types of items that we're going to cover. But we'll. Okay, so this is just a quick agenda but- Or in your print, plenty of good present. Oh, I appreciate you. This is just a quick agenda of the types of items that we're gonna cover, but we'll just jump right into it. Thank you. All right, this is the client service team. So again, I'm Lauren Stroke. I served as your engagement partner. We had Dan Gotterrey, who did a second review. and my industry is referred to as a cold review. So after my team comes in and does all of our work, here are views of all of the work and judgments that we had along the way. We. review and my industry is referred to as a cold review. So after my team comes in and does all of our work, here are views of all of the work and judgments that we had along the way. We also have Steve Siegel, who sits in the Tampa office as our firm's technical director. We did not have to use him on this engagement, but he is there if we were to ever need him. To want a Coleman, once again, returned as your senior manager and then you had Carly and Chase and rounding out the team. So the most important slide, the results of the audit, we have completed our audit and that issued our opinion dated March 25th of this year. We issued an unmodified opinion on your financial statements. What that means is a clean opinion. It's the only type of opinion you want and it's the highest level of assurance that we can provide you as your external auditor. We also followed government auditing standards and we'll go into that in just a couple of slides to complete your report. We issued a no comment letter under chapter 10.55. Overalls of the auditor general of the state of Florida, which is again a clean or good opinion. And I'm not a fight opinion on your compliance with investment policies and the CRA requirements examination that's done again through chapter 10.550 roles of the auditor general. So professional practices do require that I communicate to you any sort of corrected or uncorrected misstatement and what that means is after management provides us with the trial balance. If we as the auditor have to say, hey, the following entries really need to be made in order to bring this in accordance with GAP or generally accepted accounting principles, that would be an audit adjustment. An uncorrected misstatement is the exact same thing except management chooses not to make it. We're pleased to report that we did not have any of those. I promised you a circle back around to that Government Auditing Standards report. So the Government Auditing Standards that we follow do require us to kind of take a deep dive into internal controls that you have over your financial reporting. We don't actually opine on those internal controls, but if we become aware of a material weakness or a significant deficiency as we complete our work, we would be required to both include that in our report and communicate that to you. And I'm pleased to report that we did not have either of those on this engagement. So clean opinions for everything. If you're like me and you just really like financial statements or you're all curious about the significant accounting policies that management has chosen. Look to foot note one of your financial statements because that discusses all of the treatments. There were no new standards to impact your financial statements in the current year. As part of our audit, we do a lot with related party relationships and transactions just to ensure that they're all properly recorded and disclosed in the financial statements During our testing we did not know any related party transactions or relationships So we're not previously to disclose to us by management Obviously you have a lot of related party work transactions with the city, but all are appropriately accounted for and disclosed. Significant or unusual transactions really comes down to anything that would be outside of the normal course of business for the agency. And so for purposes of that, as for your 2024 year, you did not have any significant or unusual transactions within the CRA. The financial statements are not all just hard numbers. Inherently, there's a lot of management and judgment and estimate that goes into creating that. And that's just to comply with GAP, or generally accepted accounting principles. As you can imagine, as the external auditor, we spend a lot of time getting an understanding of any of those significant estimates. And so some of the significant ones that we've discovered during our audit are listed there. That would be the allowance for your doubtful accounts, the fair value of investments, and the estimate of the long term liability. We looked at all of these and found them to be reasonable in relation to the financials as a whole. As far as your financial statements to exposures are concerned, we found them all to be neutral, consistent and clear. As your independent auditor is very important that we retain our independence, we do not perform any non attest functions for the CRA, non attest just means non audit. If we were to ever do so, we would ensure that we have to save guards in place as required by our standards to retain our independence. And we are not aware of any relationship, either in fact or in appearance that would hinder our independence with the CRA. Just some quick other required communications, we did not have any difficulties with management in performing our audit. Every time we had a question, they made sure we got an answer and any time we need support, they made sure we got it. We also did not have any disagreements with management as at least any sort of accounting treatment. I did not have to involve others outside of my engagement team in order to complete this engagement. We did receive management representation letters that stated the same day of the report. And that just basically says that everything that management either told us or provided to us during the course of the audit was true to the best of their knowledge and belief. We are not aware of any situation where our management consulted with others for accounting treatment. That would only be relevant if management said the entire reason why we're doing it this way is because ABC firm said do it this way. We just want to make sure that we got the same information, hopefully reached the conclusion. Every year we go through a process of client retention that's required by our standards for each and every client that we have. There is nothing during the course of retaining the CRA as a client that I need to disclose to you, which is a good thing. As of this state of this presentation, we are not aware of any fraud or illegal acts. We do not specifically audit for fraud, but we have a heightened sense of awareness and professionally skeptical as we complete our audit. We work different procedures in, including testing journal entries, discussions with management and through those, through our organization of their knowledge of any fraud or illegal acts. Nothing was brought to our attention during any of those conversations. There are no evancer conditions that indicate a substantial doubt about the CRA's ability to continue as a going concern. Just some quick other matters. I do want to mention that the financial statements you have include a lot of information that go beyond the basic financials. So the opinions that I all talked about earlier cover the basic financials. The required supplementary information is going to include your MDNA For that, we do limited procedures including ensuring every time it talks about something that should tie back to the audited financial statements that it does. But in addition to that, you have a lot of other information or other supplementary information in the book in front of you. And that is to comply with a lot of state requirements. It is not audited by us. And so our opinion does reflect that. These are just some upcoming financial reporting changes. Management is quite aware of them. We're working with them to ensure that anything that needs to be recognized in your FY25 financial statements will be. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have over the audit. I realize that I went fast. Committee members, any questions? Vice Chair Hanwitz. Thank you, and thank you so much for your presentation. I know it's very clear. Actually, my questions aren't for you. I want to find out. So in the notes to financial statements, I don't recall why is the downtown redevelopment district report as general fund versus South St. Pete C. R. A. B. Harbor in town west as special revenue funds? You pick one. I'm sorry. You just pick one. You just decide. Yeah. So I'm just curious why that was. I know specific reason. One of this has to be called the general fund. It's funny. I have conversations with other local governments and Florida setting up all throughout audit season. They're like, which ones are general fund? We just pick one. I'm like, yeah. Oh. So we have a lot of discussions because the CRI audits are a special type of audit. And everybody has a lot of interesting funds and structures going on. So yeah, that's the consensus among us. Financial structures across the state of Florida. You pick one of your funds and that's where you kind of go. It's the older one. So we just kind of went with that one and when we set this up in 2020. Yes. Okay. So. And that's where you kind of go. It's the older one. So we just kind of went with that one and when we set this up in 2020. Yes. Okay. So it doesn't make a difference. There's not a significance to it. Okay. These are obviously as of September 30th, 2024. What are the current balances right now? They would have grown by investment earnings as of now. We haven't done the transfers yet in for property taxes for 25. Not revenue has not hit yet, so it would just be some expenditures. I think- Were there any? I'm just curious. The CIA would be the only one with a lot of expenditures during the year. They would have a couple million. I know we spent two million on the, no that was already moved to the edge. They would just have a couple projects going on and then any debt payments related to public service tax would be out of the general fund slash downtown. Yeah. So most of the expenditures are South St. Pete's theory. Other balances are pretty much where they are. Pretty much where they are with just investment earnings and then when we do the transfers and receipts from the county. Okay. The tip for revenues. In terms of the in town west city redevelopment district, obviously that one had a large withdrawal for $8 million for the 400 parking spaces at Orange Station. Yes. That was a big one. Is that's the one in town west city? I get them confused because there's two of them. So the balance now is 5 million or is that right after the 8 million? Right? So we the 8 million for the orange station was out of in town west and so that balance is drawing down so that's at 1.3 million. 1.3 million. I share what page are you on? I'm sorry, I'm page 20. That's what I'm working on. 42? Oh, I was on 21 too. I'm on 42 looking at the T. Yeah, yeah. Right, so it showed 5.6 and we were just talking about where the balance is worse, so that's why I was wondering. So that's at 1.3. So the page 42 is... Well, that's the other one. That's in town. Right. This is in town West City redevelopment district. Right. Which is where the 8 million came from. In town West City on page 34. So page 42 is in town city. So that's- If you page 41 is in town west, the tradition, I don't know, the normal one. Right, so one that ended in 2020 with county. So, in town west on page 41 is the old city in county. Right. And the contributions that county ended in 2020. So 2021 to 2032, money is going to be growing into in-town west city. So they are, we're using up the available balance in in-town west for these projects. That's why you see the 8 million for Orange Station coming out of page 41. And then we have point three million. The age 21 is the easiest page to use 21. It's by far the easiest page. Yeah, I was trying to figure out. I was very confused because they cook out the eight million. And in the notes it says it came from in-town West City redevelopment, but then they have different names and I was trying to figure that out. So we're using the in-town West balance first. So that's dwindling down with a appropriated project out of there. and then we'll have the in town west city only contributions from now through 2032 to spend. Okay, so basically it drew down from that 5.6 million that's on page 40. No, the 5.6 million is page 22. I wish these would have fit on one page. Okay. Oh my gosh, okay, there you go. go. We need to work with our software to get these on one page. That's what, OK. Because I'm actually looking at the financial statement in the back. Not the budget for a contractual. Not the budget. OK. So at the end of the day, what is the balance there? For both of those, we will be about 7 million. 7, that's where I was getting at. Okay, so you have the 5.5 plus the 1.3. Okay. So we're at... I think that's some interest earnings this year, thankfully. Okay. A little bit. Okay. How much more will have but... Okay. And Tom, are there any... What are the plans for in-town West? and are there any projects I didn't see anything? So in town West, that's where the very back supplemental is interesting. Right. Is the focus of this is the in town west plan. So it starts on page 83. Right. And what projects are appropriated and what's happening in the future. So there is a large amount of projects appropriated. What's next to work on? I see a lot of the street escaping going out. I don't know if you have more to input to that, but that's what I see happening. We have a lot on the private development in here, but it's the orange station, the edge district budgets so the bomb avenue improvements are going. That area, right. And the Grand Central Seemed to be what's the the focus right now. Okay. I just want some clarification on that and in terms of the projections That are here in the downtown redevelopment district. I was looking at the numbers It looks like based on the projections we had before these numbers are higher. So like 2023 to 2024, there were projections that were made for that year that we were receiving in terms of money where it was projected at 6.3 million. This is page 59. It's not in there, but 6.3 million, we got 7 million from the county and in terms of revenues for the city portion, we were projecting 8.6 and we got 9.4, does that sound about right Tom? So it was higher than our projections that we had. Yeah, and typically, you know, we're conservative when we do forecasts of future growth and, you know And let's just talk about the in town, the big tiff district. If you look over the history, it bumps around. Certainly there were three or four years where we saw negative growth. You see the up and down. But the number that we assumed when we were talking about the gas plant redevelopment, very conservative estimate, and we didn't update that estimate with the actual collections for 25. Right. I just wanted to make sure I had my numbers right. Okay, that's all I had. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Committee members, any other questions? Lauren, thank you as always. Thank you. appreciate all the work that you chair. Thank you committee members any other questions? Lauren, thank you as always very much appreciate all the work that you do and All it does for me is continuously shows me what a fantastic team we have And so Erica, thank you for continuing to lead and Tom same to you It makes these discussions significantly easier. So thank you for that. Okay, we've got upcoming meetings on May 8th and May 29th. We'll do second quarter financial reports and the public utility revenue bonds on May 8th. And a discussion on adding Woodlawn park courts to the WIHWAG project, discussion regarding potential childcare benefit for City of St. Pete employees, and the annual review of the city's investment policies. Yeah, on May 29th. If there's nothing else for the good of the order, BFNT is adjourned. Thank you everybody. Thank you.