All right, good evening, everyone. We are now recording and thank you for joining us for tonight's meeting. The purpose of tonight's meeting, you can see, is to sort of go over the budget process, give some background, the budget, or strategic plan, and go through some of the challenges and opportunities for the upcoming fiscal year and make sure you know all the different opportunities you have as we go through that process for public comment and input. For tonight we do have a section for comments and questions that will be at the end. So please make sure you raise your hand to provide notice that you'd like to interact. My name is Andrew Thompson. I'm the city's assistant city manager and former finance director. I'm also joined tonight by Ray Rivera Rivera, the newly minted Finance Director, and she'll be running the show in terms of the Zoom and making sure we're calling on people and immuting your minds. All right, well, I think we'll get started. I see a fair number of the attendees here. So we're going through some of the key elements of the budget going over as high level background on how the city budget is work. What's required by state law and city charter that will go into some detail on the most important, great assessments that are adopted as part of the budget. And then we will go through that development process. We'll touch briefly on the strategic plan. Talk a little bit about the fiscal year 2026 and what we know now. And then we'll end with that Q&A. I'm going to turn off my camera just so I can get a better view of the PowerPoint. So all cities in Florida are of course governed by statute. And so state law is the prime determinant of the budget process And then there are some variances that are required in our city charter. All variances allowed under state law. Essentially though, there is no city in Florida that can adopt a budget or tax rates without public hearings, which are required. And the city's budget must be balanced. There is no debt spending for operations, there's no federal government. We have to balance revenues and expenditures. So the budget is a planning document, a fiscal plan, if you will, for one period of one year. It sets the staffing levels, determines the services, tax and assessment rates, the defines or capital projects and initiatives. And that fiscal year runs from October 1st to September 30th. The budget takes quite a long time to prepare, there's a lot of information, there are well over 5,000 lines in that document. So the city management and concert with all the department directors and input, they prepare a recommended budget and that submitted to the city commission for consideration. One of the things that is very different in terms of the public sector versus the private is that local governments have a different basis of accounting. We're governed by the governmental accounting standards board. There's different requirements under state law. And one of those is we're required to use something called fund accounting, which is much, much less common in the private sector. Essentially a fund is, represents a specific set of activities. And those activities, expenditures, they all have specific revenue sources that are associated with them. So, we have a water and sewer fund during a water and sewer customer for Oakland Park. You pay your utility bill. It goes directly into this fund and it is used to pay water and zero expenses. And so fund accounting's intention is to make it easier to identify how money is being spent and what that money is being collected for. The funds are just like the city budget as a whole, they have to be balanced. And so there's a few things just to note about that is that we have two types of funds, governmental, which does all the regular stuff of city business, and then enterprise funds, which are run like a business. So I won't go through every single fund. My apologies looks like there was a error here in the PowerPoint, but your largest fund is the General Fund. It's about half the city's total budget of 166 million. Then we have smaller governmental funds, some which are supported by transfers from the General Fund, and that includes your special revenue funds, your largest is the CRA, your community redevelopment agency, your GFCIP, that's your governmental funds, capital improvement program. That is where all of your infrastructure projects are accounted for. And then we have three with SARS next to them, which are enterprise funds, or water and sewer fund, or solid waste fund or storm water fund. Those three are enterprise funds. So each of those sets its own rates and is self-supporting and they are not subsidized by property tax. So it's going to look more detail about the general fund. This is where a lot of those traditional municipal services are housed. It's where your police department is. You're by a rescue, you're building department parks, the library, your public works, maintenance and streets. So again, this must be balanced. So you can see that public safety is about 47% of the entire general fund budget. The ESO is about 26% of the budget. Fire rescue is about 21%. Everything else takes up a much smaller share. You can even see this category called general government, which would be like the clerk's office, the managers, finance, HR, IT, and those smaller supporting services. And then if you go to the right, you'll see the General Fund Revenants. And there are two which are notable. They're ad fallorum, which is your property tax, and then your fire assessment. These are the only two major rates that are set by city commission as part of the budget process. And those together constitute about 52% of all general fund revenues. There are around 200 distinct general fund revenue accounts. They are not all made equally. So in addition to having to balance the total budget, the general fund, there are limitations on how certain revenues can be used. So you see there's a category called other taxes. Well that includes things such as the state sales tax, which we can use for any purpose, but it also includes things like the local optional gas tax, which we can only use to pay for street related work. Likewise, any grant who receive are limited to their purposes. So there are a lot of limits on what we can match. Charges for services, permits and fees, particularly building permits. We can only spend what we collect there to support our enforcement of the Florida Building Code in the processing of the permits themselves. That's not a source of revenue that we could use to subsidize our parks or help pay for solid waste trucks. So trying to mash those up is always a challenge to make sure that we're doing everything is we're legally required to do. And this is a process that's checked every year. We have an annual audit. We have a bill of health from an external auditor. Any findings are reported to the commission and tall HACI. So I mentioned rates that are set as part of the budget process. The most prominent are property taxes. And those are taxes that are levied on all real properties in the city. According to the assessed value is determined by the Broward County Property Appraisers Office. So we have a tax base, a sort of service, says the bedrock for this. And our property tax base is about 5.8 billion as of last January. We'll find out in June what the preliminary number is now. And so that property tax base, the commission sets a millage rate against. And the millage rate essentially boils down to how many mills, which is $1 tax obligation for every $1,000 assessed value. And I will not make us go through math on a dreary day, but it's important to know there are two different millage levies set by the commission. The first is your operating millage. That's the property tax that goes to pay for regular operations in the city. It helps pay for the police, helps pay for parks. At the 31 or some million dollars you saw in revenue on the other slide. And then there's a different military than not every city levies and that's our debt service miller. This was approved by voters over two thirds many years ago. This was your general obligation bonds. So when the voters approved those, that created the legal ability and obligation. When we issued debt to service that to make the principal understand by always setting that debt service mileage to pay for that. So our fiscal year 25-off re-emailage is about 5.7 miles, so it generates about $31.5 million, and it has been consistently reduced over the past 11 years. We've had 10 reductions during that period of time, which is a decrease of about 0.67 ml. And then the debt service-melage is much smaller because it only goes to pay for the principal and interest of our bonds. So it's 0.55 miles or so, generates about 3 million. And every time the property tax base expands, that will continue to go down. Because our debt service level is constant. We'll repaying about 3 million dollars a year until the bonds are fully mature and paid off. So that's something that though the Commission sets the rate, we are obligated to adopt as part of our bond rating. I said I won't make you do math, but many of you will receive a trim notice and you'll see on that notice that there's a lot of different ways they're accounting for the value of your property. And just so everyone knows how that plays out and how it determines what your taxes are for the cities. They have a just value. That's the market value. They base on their own calculations and somewhat the sales of similar properties. And then there's what's called the assessed or save our home value. And this is something from the changes that were made decades ago at this point to the Florida Constitution and create that save our homes. And save our homes essentially limits the growth and the taxable value of a property every year to at most 3% or the change in the consumer price index, whichever is lower. So this means that if you move to Florida and maintain the same house, even if the value of the property increases 10% a year in terms of the market value, your taxable value can only increase, or your assessed value can only increase by about 3% maximum a year. So that assessed value, you then reduce the home state exemption, which is up to 50,000, and that determines your taxable value. You divide that by 1,000, because you're going 1,000 equals $1,000 in taxable value, and then you multiply that by the mill of trade. I won't go through that process but one thing I do want to point out is you probably have seen that not every taxing authority ends up with the same tax full value. You pay more to the school board because you only get one twenty five thousand000 home so exemption. We are not the only entity that you see on the tax bill. Far from it, we're only about 30%. So the County Commission adopts a debt service marriage and an operating marriage for our public schools as a local levy, a state levy, and then its own debt service. And then there's a variety of smaller special districts, the water management, and the navigation, the children's service council, and the hospital district. So we're less than a third of that tax rate. Just some of the things on SAVE our homes is that it's not the only option available. It's also not the only savings that you might be able to avail yourself of. Nearly everyone who is in an owner occupied house does have the ability to manage the home to exemption, but there are many other exemptions under state law. For example, traditional loan concedures, deployed military, granny flat, store properties, and over 60% of the residential properties in city are homesteaded. One thing I'll also note if you're a business owner or own some non-residential property in city, you'll see that that 3% stable homes is not applied. The cap becomes 10% for those properties. And just so you can see over a short period of time how important that save our homes is, if we look at that average single family home back in 2020, you'll see that at that time its taxable value of 130,000, its market value is 268. Flash forward to 2025, you'll see the market value is about 465,000, but its taxable value is only about 154,000. So about $24,000 more and taxable value, whereas you have almost $200,000 more market value. And so if that save our homes did not apply to that property, it would be paying almost $2,700 in taxes. So the city is opposed to with the save our homes, $883. So some significant savings built in under Florida law. The other thing you'll see on your tax bill are your non-advalor and special assessments. Those are not taxes. They're not based on the value of a property. They're based on the value of the services received. And these special assessments can only be extended on those discrete service activities. So your fire assessment, which is the largest assessment, and it generates almost $11 million, the residential rate, and 3.82. And just up top of my head, a neighboring Tamarack is 4.20, RGAD is 300, Auto Hill is 6.96, and I think Weston's up in the 700. So a lot of variants in those rates. Residential rates are flat, whereas non-residential have different charges based on the property class and the square footage. And we do, as a city, have an exemption for properties that are owned by nonprofits, and also properties that are homesteaded. And we're receiving a full tax exemption due to disability, senior, or veteran staff. And that was a local policy decision. Then our second assessment is our residential solid waste that generates 3.7 million. It's about 340 per residential unit. And it still remains a very competitive rate. It's only about $40 more than what the rate was 13 years ago or so. And for commercial structures and multi-family does old times or utility billing. And then finally, we have our stormwater assessment that generates about 4.7 million. Now, it's based on a calculation of $125 per equivalent residential unit or E.R.U. And so that means that there's one domicile on the property. It's one charge of 125. If it's a duplex, it's the same property folio. There will be two charges of 125. For non-residential properties, they look at the square footage of the impermeable surface. So for every 1,500 square feet or so, there's that $125 charge. So all three of these assessments are included as part of the recommended budget. All of them go through their own separate adoption process for various public hearings. And all of them are required to be based on the value of the services that are being rendered. The budget development process has many public meetings. We started back in January for fiscal year 26 when the strategic plan was adopted by the city commission. Then from January to May, we work diligently and still are working on the development of that draft document. This is always a challenge because we don't always know what's going to happen with state legislation. We don't get the property tax base. And there's a lot of other macroeconomic changes, particularly this year, that have taken place that have required us to shuffle things through with departments, and make some changes with the best information we have available. Every June, we have a presentation of our draft capital improvement program that outlines the status of current capital projects plans for future ones. In July, the recommended budget is presented to the commission and the first public hearings curve. We'd be adopting the preliminary assessment and millage rates. Those are then sent to the Property of Craitors office. And they in August send out their trim, the troop and millage notices. And those notices include all of the tax rates and assessment rates set by Open Park and other governments. And they show what the rates were for the current year, what the proposed rates are for next year, and what that differential will be for your property if they're vast. And also very importantly, those notices include the dates and times for the various hearings in September. So the first hearings in September are always attended to budget hearings. And at that time, the milled rate is adopted again. And it is sent out noticed in the paper and other places. There's always a special meeting, do the court and state law. It's just on the special assessments, each of those gets its own notice and its own public hearing. And then we have a final adoption of the budget, which has the hearings on the milled rate budget. That's also when we adopt our five-year CRP. There are any changes to the city's fiscal policies. Sogway strates are being changed by ordinance, all by the dress and September. And then the process starts all over again. More of the documents I referred to earlier is the Strategic Plan. This is sort of the long-term guidance for city operations. You know, the initially created back in 2017, it was revised after a few public workshops in 2013, and then again, most recently in 2022, it really does set that mission, efficient and those specific strategic performance areas. And the most recent revisions, the environmental stewardship and sustainability performance area was added. And so these strategic performance areas, they guide the development of various strategic initiatives and other plans and those coalesce in the business plan for any given budget year. But it's also part of just the general tenor of looking at different policies and how departments prioritize their budget requests. Another major document is our capital improvement program for our current fiscal year. The CIP is about 38.4 million. We've had an over 900 percent increase from 2020 on the scale of the CIP and we also have been pretty successful at grant funding with over $25 million in grants for this fiscal year. The various initiatives that were part of the fiscal year 25 budget that are still underway. Many are small, there's over 190 of them. Got 8.5 million, but some of these things include the new Westside and Scent of Program and the QCT area, our continuity of operations and emergency management plan updates, Jacoco mural restoration, online or either bifome payments or utility bills, various capital assets for the fire department, and then also just maintaining all of our special events, various outreach efforts, including the new Key Vocal and Park Beautiful Program. Well, enough of talking about fiscal year 25. We're talking about fiscal year 26. And we are still pretty early on in the process. But it is also shaping up to be a pretty challenging year. A lot of this is up in the air, the state has not actually adopted a budget. There were federal budget proposals. You might have seen over the weekend in this morning's paper, which is pretty significant. But we still continue to exist in a period of high inflation for goods and services. We still have our regular construction, inflation, supply chain challenges, but we also have the new one with the impact of tariffs on the pricing of goods and construction materials. And we're already starting to see that with many vendors putting qualifications out there that they really can't guarantee a price or there might be a pair of adjustment. Interest rates this time last year, we were pretty hopeful because most economists think the thing that they were going to be multiple interest rate reductions, they still remain elevated. And I know there's a lot of tension. The Federal Reserve about what the best thing to do is, as we deal with some of these pretty large global economic challenges. Also because of these changes in the stock market, we have an increase in our public safety and just general pension costs. Pension contributions are largely determined by the prior fiscal years, performance of portfolios. So as of last September it was the 30th was not the strongest end. So we see that we have increased costs for our legacy public safety pension program anywhere from one to two million dollars. The state also set the FRS rates. We are a Florida retirement system participant. And those rates have gone up, particularly for public safety. Then just last Friday we received our preliminary letter from BSO with only contract for police services outlining their proposed budget for next fiscal year. And that includes a $1.9 million increase. And one of the major challenges of that is that it's almost entirely related to personnel costs. We are one of, I believe, 13 cities, the contract with the Sheriff's Office for Police Services. Others also contract out for fire. But all districts and just general BSO officers who don't work for district, they are under the same eGIS contractually. They have many different labor unions and so when they negotiate those contracts, those costs are passed on to the districts and Broward County. And so we have an advise that they recently completed a compensation study that found for their need to recruit and retain that they needed to do adjustments to their compensation over a two-year period. So you can see that in those details that just the cost of wages, not even benefits, going out about a million dollars or 10 percent. This is a very sizable increase in the ESO, the bear proposing. As always, we will work with them to see what options are available. And here locally in Oakland Park, we have three unions, our Federation of Public Employees, which represents primarily public work staff. Apps may, the American Federation of State County and municipal employees, which represents clerical with administrative workers. And then we have IAF, our firefighters union. All three of their contracts expire on September 30th. So those were having negotiations beginning soon, but there's our question marks, because depending on how negotiations proceed and the contracts adopted by the commission, what we've reached agreement on with the unions, that could have a significant impact on the budget. One thing I'm sure everyone's been made aware of is that there have been major changes in the federal government. Many grant programs that many agencies, organizations and governments have relied on have been placed on hold or possibly canceled. So we have fewer opportunities for grants funding through the federal government and also through the state government. Very often we're a sub-recipient of a federal funding through the state. So this is something that even the federal budget proposal I was reading about you know proving the community development block grant which is something that cities and counties have relied on for more than 50 years. There are a lot of question marks about how we can rely or not rely on federal funding, but it certainly does present a major challenge to our CIP. Then we also have some additional burdens from the newly created state-level department of governmental efficiency, just the extremely onerous and undefined data requests for all the activity done by our city and others. We're still working with the Florida League of Cities to fully understand what they're asking for, but we do have seen a major uptick in compliance reporting that requires a lot of staff hours. And then finally, we have a challenging situation with the legislature and the governor, and that there is a concerted effort for property tax reforms. You can see there that traditionally, last week, they formed a select committee for relief for homeowners and some of these changes. They've been proposed very so much that it's the elimination of property tax, higher sales tax to compensate for that. it's lowering the change and the save our homes from 3% to something lower as the max cap, but it is a very challenging environment particularly for long term planning. The other changes such as sunsetting CRAs earlier, various state programs, and even just the surtax scaling those back. So we certainly are seeing more erosion of home rule, particularly with what always previously have been locally determined rates, particularly for property tax. It's not all doom and gloom. We were very fortunate when we issued the bonds in 2020 and 2022. I would secure Andrews rates very low, low 3% effectively. We have seen major private development throughout the city. So three Oakland, West and many others. And those have added substantially to the tax rolls. I think the number of value of new construction last year that was for fiscal year 25 with about 260 million, which is substantial. And even though there has been a pretty significant dip in housing values on a slowdown in the housing market, we're still anticipating that they'll continue to be expansion of the city's property tax base. It still is a very hot market here in South Florida even if things are cooling off. And these assessment roles are ultimately based on where things stood on January 1st for the property appraisal. So even if there's a threat of economic slowdown, it probably will take a little while for that to trickle down to the property tax growth and power accounting. As we go through those issues and other ones that might arise, I do want to go through some of these key dates and I will note that these are tentative. They could be subject to change. We are not allowed to schedule our meetings for these, and so is the CIP, when it conflicts the school board or Broward County. So that is a change to the schedule. It's occurred in some prior years, I hope not this year, but we will have our CIP presentation in June. And then for July 16th, the recommended budget and tax and assessment rates will be presented to the commission. I will also be available online prior to that. But those preliminary rates will be adopted at that time and are transmitted to the property appraisal for your term notices in August. Then Monday, September 8th, we'll have our first tentative millage rate and tentative annual budget hearings. You'll see Mondays of Wednesday because based on the school board and the county schedule, we are already preempted on that Wednesday of that week. Likewise, we have our special assessment hearings being held on a Monday, also at 6 p.m. rather than 6.30 due to those courts of state law about when we can hold meetings. We are going to be that Friday prior to this Monday or this Monday, we decided Monday was the best. Then we go back, I hope to irregularly scheduled meetings for Wednesday, September 17th, will do the final adoption of the milled rate and the budgets in the associated document. And I see time now is a little bit past 6.30 so it's a little more long-winded than I hope to be. But this is now the point where there are questions and I see Pamela raised her hand. We can go through those. I'll try to keep the questions or comments to about two minutes. We do have a fair number of attendees. We want to make sure everyone has an opportunity to ask questions. So I'm going to unmute Pamela. So Pamela. Hello. Good evening. I have a question concerning summer lakes. My question to you Andrew, is there any possible way? And this is just me asking the question that we can have our surrounding wall higher because I do you know how you get these alerts on your phone if you have security that somebody has you know jumped the wall across you across your property. That's sort of a complicated one to answer very specific. The bit I do know about that wall is that when the development was approved, it was a rather odd arrangement where the city is responsible for the external elevation of it and regular painting and powerwashing but the actual wall structure itself is private property on the interior side so that's something that I be hesitant to really answer right now I definitively but I know that has been a challenge just with general maintenance concerns, but I'll certainly make note of that. This is the best time to ask those sort of questions. Okay, that's one of my concerns because it's getting a little scary out here. Understandable. All right, Pamela I wrote that down somewhere like wall. And I'll have that the part of the conversation. Okay. Do you have any other questions or comments, Ms. Ngan? I would love to get out traffic common devices on 44th street. I know that that's something that we've been looking into. We have a grant that we're applying for. I know there's there's some different thoughts for different neighborhoods there on 44th about what the right solution is. I know that we are trying to work with the county and for the grant program to see what we can do something. We hear loud and clear that even if everyone doesn't agree on the exact solution but there's an issue that should be addressed and we are trying to secure funding for that. Yes and also you know my issue I've sent several emails about the turning signals on 31st Avenue off of 44th Street going north and south. That would definitely be, I mean, I know they've done several surveys and this and that, but in reality with the volume of traffic that, you know, that's on 44th Street people cutting through coming up to 31st, that would be a great help if we can get those turning signals on Northwest 31st Avenue and 44th Street going north and south. Just been you know, I know that's that's a county issue, but we need to really push that. Oh no, I understand I live right around that area, so I certainly experienced that. All right. Well, thank you, Ms. Jenkins. Thank you. Andrew. Appreciate it. Anytime you have a good night. Stay strong. Okay. Thank you. All right. I believe the second hand I saw go up was Wallace Peterson. I think you should be able to unmute your line now. Hello, can you hear me? Loud and clear, how are you? I'm fine. Thanks, Andrew, for the presentation. I learn something new every time. I have a couple general questions and then I have a couple of specific things. sort of like Pamela just asked, why is the May meeting not public? The one about the service programs, business plans, that kind of thing. Why is that one not a public meeting as opposed to the other ones? That's not really a meeting, it's more of a statement of general activity. Okay. Okay. So this is the different departments. You might see in some years public presentations to commission last year we had one on the fire assessment either May or June. So when there's something that's a broader policy not sort of a nuts and bolts thing with the departments that's typically brought to commission so they're they're aware, and the public is aware, we can get that input like we did on the fire system the prior year. We have one coming up, should be in June on the water and sewer fund, some of the rates there. But mostly that's just housework. Okay, great. As far as BSO goes, how many officers do we have? How many dedicated officers do we have? I know we have our captain and our lieutenant's, but I mean how many BSO personnel do we have dedicated to Oakland Park? That 1.9 million increase sounds really big. So I'm just I mean yeah I just to put them perspective or our current budget with them is 20.6 million. So they're proposing it go up to 22.5 million. So that is a very large increase. 9.5%. We have 99 people at our PSO. 99 personnel slots. Right. Yeah, I know they're not on upstairs. 88 of them are sworn positions. And then the remaining 11 are non-sworn like a community service aid, your crime analysts, investigative aid. Now, I included the BSO information information that it was literally hot off the presses from last Friday. They included an additional deputy. We've asked if they'd break out what that cost would be. In general, I'd say that additional deputy would probably be about $200,000 worth of that increase. So that is something that we just want to know what the cost of that could be. We understand that there's been increased for police services. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So that 1.9 includes adding a deputy? Correct. Okay. Okay. Well that makes a little more sense. And have we ever thought some of us oldsters that have been here a long time. Remember when we had just like we have our own fire, we had our own police force. And I'm wondering have we ever done in recent years as these BSO costs seem to be ballooning. explore the possibility of going back to doing it ourselves. Is that ever come up? Has there been an exploration of that? I think it's something that is a common question. I can tell you from experience, normally, to have it through a transition, you need a specialty firm, someone like a well-danned, that does the sort of consulting. Those documents usually take $200 to $300,000, at least it had like four or five years ago. One of the major issues with trying to change from having your police services provided by another entity to enhance is that it requires a significant outlay of capital. Because BSO is a contractor, we don't own the police cars. We don't own any of the equipment. And we wouldn't have the ability to just bring people over from BSO to create a new department. So you very seldom see cities leave once they contract it out. A few cities I know have switched from say BSO to another city that's neighboring them. I think Southwest Ranches might have switched to Davey. One of the challenges that they have. Go ahead, go ahead, no, no, go ahead, finish, finish. It's one of the challenges BSO has and it was leading their compensation study was just the recruitment and retention. Right. So for us to reconsider on department, you would very likely need to take out a significant amount of debt. Just to start purchasing it, it would take years. And you would also have to bring up staffing to that appropriate level. You'd still need to contract that with BSO for many years until you reached a point where you could function. I believe once it's West Park, one of the smaller cities in Broward will recently tried to constitute their own police force and it has not gone very easily. Yeah, gotcha. I'm not saying it's a legal or logistical impossibility, but it would be a very costly endeavor. And I know most cities that have looked into it, that ramping up of the cost is a major issue. But then also the scale now that's necessary. You know, right now our body-worn camera program, that's just aligned to BSO budget. If we were on police force, we'd now have to- We gotta buy that. I think the part. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we could have. And so, not just for placing those 99 positions from our district, you'd also be increasing your number in HR. Sure, no, I get it. I get it. So it's just. It's a good question though. Yeah, and I will tell you, Water hell was in the first BSO contract cities. They also left in the 90s. Right. Well, it doesn't sound like this year would be a year to explore that anyway with things, the uncertainty and you know, anyway, but it's something to keep in mind maybe down the road. What is Keep Oakland Park beautiful program? I'm not familiar with it. I'm happy to have Molly Fert, our sustainability coordinator, reach out to you to get more details but essentially it was City of Ocum Park joining the Keep America Beautiful. Okay, okay. So it provides a framework for us to do certain activities that also allows us to seek some funding through that organization to help with beautification and sustainability projects but Molly Molly's been doing a very good job of clearing out and whatnot. Oh yeah. Okay, that's good to know. Yeah, I'll talk to her about it next time I see her. And then I have my little things kind of for our specific area. I know and you guys have heard this from us for years and years and years and Pamela brought up Maybe traffic calming on 44th 21st Avenue has 50% higher traffic volume than 44th the last traffic study and we have A car a minute goes by at highway speeds over 45 miles an hour and we have since the roadway project We have a truck route now between Oakland Park and 39 That's how they cut over to get to the cold storage facility on 31st Avenue. And we've talked about this before we we are getting some improvements these are through the county we did not get these through the city but one crosswalk is not going to slow down people coming over the bridge especially southbound going 50 miles an hour and we need traffic calming. And the way we get traffic calming is that the city takes over the 1.72 miles of road. We already own the park. It's private property, either side. We own the landscaping and the medians as it is. So I would really like us to continue to work in that direction. If not, then I really need the CITICS hope expect that the city will work with the county to add another raised crosswalk, like they're doing sort of closer to Oakland Park Boulevard near the park, one up closer to where the bridge is. So that's an important thing. And then just a couple other little things when I was at the Sam Pine Preserve, the signs are awful. I mean, they're falling down, they're unreadable. And I know a lot of things like that. We work on through grants. But this is a broader thing. And I think I talked about it last year too. I think our park maintenance needs to be part of the budget. I think in veterans park, for example, the playground surface is really dangerous at this point. And we didn't get the grant for it it so that we still need to fix it, you know. The cameras in the park, I mean, BSO was out here, boy, oh boy, they did a sweep the end of last week and this weekend. And there's, I mean, today we picked up, they're not, they weren't out there this morning and I picked up a, you know, a vodka bottle and a little baggy and some Popeye's trash. We used to have park rangers and then when we got rid of those when there was the economic downturn, we got security cameras that were monitored. They have fallen into disrepair, they don't work, most of them and I don't think they're monitored and we have an increasing crime problem. And it's an example of something we used to have that we don't have anymore. It's a way our quality of life has actually declined rather than been maintained. So at the very least security cameras, and I know the vice mayor brought up the idea of bringing back park rangers, that was really helpful. I mean, I used to walk my kids up to Royal Palm in the mornings and Veterans Park when they were little, little more than you got, you guys. And we knew the park rangers and they knew us and it really deterred a lot of problems because there was somebody coming around all the time. And then one other thing, I'll get one more thing. Two more things. One is we had two trees. We've had to fight to get the trees south of the bridge. We, there were 100 trees planted north of the bridge in 2022 and this side of the avenue got cut from the project and it took three more years of fighting to just get 16 trees put in, which is great. They're doing well, but there were two trees between the bus shelter and the Lady Lake Trail in the swale on the west side of the road that were taken out before the roadway project. They were diseased and they never got replaced. And we're going on like eight years now of asking for just those two trees to be replaced. Again, it's a thing we did have that we lost that hasn't been maintained. We're not asking for something new or something better. We're asking for just maintaining what we already had. So we need two more trees and that there's a bunch of people that are legally parked there and then pull out into the road Kind of as people are coming over the bridge that would solve that problem So if you get those true trees back and one last thing north was 36th Street was part of the Sirtex Paving project last year And it got cut at the 11th hour And we had a section of the road cave in last year near the storm drain and it's been patched But I would like to see 36th Street get the paving that it was due to get last year and then got cut from. So those are the, those are a little detail stuff. And if you want, I can send, I can follow up with an email or we can chat to. Oh, I always want to call me. I think, you know, which ones are policy decisions that I really can't. No pine on, whereas some of these definitely have a venue coming up. As you mentioned, the park rangers we had. decisions that I really can't open on whereas some of these definitely have a venue coming up as you mentioned the park rangers we had two full-time two park time I think we look 2009 or 11 those positions were eliminated yeah I think that's not it yeah there is that discussion item that the by player has, it will be a venue for discussing that. The trees, I'm 36th Street, I will definitely follow up with public works just to see the status. Okay, yeah, and I'll just... I'll shoot you, Nimaler, give you a call just to remind you about those things, but yeah, and we got to figure out something with 21st Avenue we really do. I mean it's it's it's it's really dangerous and it's not just us calling to complain because it's entertaining. It really is it really is dangerous for us. So my last question how many people are on the meeting and are there any of our elected officials on the meeting? The total count of meeting has changed over time. Okay. So I think some people have decided that my monotone wasn't as exciting. No, you are you are you are scintillating Andrew. It's not you. I see a leaven with how I have my screen. I can't tell you exactly who's on. But if they're on, then census was not noticed as a meeting where they would be engaging dialogue. I do not believe the whole part take. I did see... I guess any other questions? Nope. That's it. Pink Sandler. All right, well, thank you, Ms. Peterson. I really appreciate it. Anytime. And then, Ray, I think the next. Or mayor, go back in. Yeah, you're right. And I'm unable to unmute. I'm using. For some reason. Good evening, can you hear me? Yes. How are you doing this evening? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. How are you doing? Very well. Thank you, Mr. Thompson. I'd like to begin with expressing my gratitude to you personally, as a beacon of trust for the NIS and professionalism in the great city of Oakland Park. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the work you do and the way you conduct yourself while you're doing it. Well, thank you. And I have a two-part question. It's really the same question, and if you'll allow me to express it in two different ways, could I ask you to please elaborate for public consumption, how in years and the multiple years that we've enjoyed a double digit property value property market value increases? How a millage reduction is not the same as a tax increase. Slash part B of the same question. I guess what I'm asking you to do for public consumption is compare and contrast the definition of a millage reduction with a millage rollback. I have a question. I have a question. I have a question. I have a question. I have a question. I have a question. I have a question. I have a question. I have a question. I have a question. I have a question. I have a question. I have a question. I will try my best to make it clear for for everyone because I get where you're getting it but both of them are in their room with you for many years going through the budgets. So every state has different ways they do property tax. Florida made various reforms and changes to their system as part of the truth and knowledge. And part of that was the concept of a rolled back rate. And essentially, how that works is that, and you'll see this, it shows in in your trim notice there's a line there it says if the municipality rolled is right back lowered its millivere so that it only receive property tax that the egg is pretty much exact same amount of did for the current fiscal year. So let's say fiscal year 25, we were getting $31 million in property tax, we go to the fiscal year 36 budget. I'm sorry fiscal year 26 budget. The rollback rate, whatever that might be, would be set to generate the same $30 million. So by default, the rollback rate presumes sort of saying constant with your property tax revenue. And there are some exceptions to that. New construction, for example, that doesn't count against it. Now the issue is everything always costs more every year with inflation. So that is very rare for jurisdictions to grow back to the rollback rate. But that is sort of the baseline that you'll see when we're in the public hearings and it can get confusing because we're saying we're reducing the military, but we're increasing taxes by 7% over the rollback rate. Because the total value of all the property taxes being collected is higher. Because that military being proposed is greater than the rollback rate. So even if we had ten reductions in the military over the past 11 years, there weren't any years where we went to that road back rate. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you explaining it that way because I do think that sometimes that graph is misleading. I've personally run a lot of interference and received countless inquiries over the years. There's a graph that is frequently shown about the regular reductions in milledrate, but what I think a lot of folks don't immediately understand is that when the property appraisers assesses our property values with double digit increases. It's still as you just said, a pretty significant tax increase. And I would like to call attention to the fact that you also pointed out, I think the number was 250 or 260 million dollars and increased properties contributing to add the law and the VIA, Oak Tree, Oakland, oakland bliss and what have you isn't that correct. Yeah, approximately. And lastly, just to put a button on my on the aim of my comments this evening is, you know, not too long ago, we we hovered just below $100 million a year annual budget, which has since grown to, I'm pretty sure the number is $166 million a year annual budget. And as you explained to him, and we all know in our own businesses and management of our homes and families, things do get more expensive every year. But that's a tremendous and significant annual budget increase for the city to manage. And I guess I would just like to be on the record as expressing my concern for how that's going to pan out to our senior citizens, our citizens, our citizens on what we call fixed income, and even though there are carve outs for some of those individuals, I think we're gonna have to collectively learn to do more with less. And that's subjective on my part, but thank you for listening. Thank you for the comments and it has always been a concern. And I think we got great service from BSO to be an excellent partner, but fiscal year 21, their entire budget was $16.6 million. Disglue your 26. They're proposing 22.5. There are major increases. And I think one of the challenges we see is that our home rule authority is constantly eroded. So our ability to sort of navigate much more challenging than it was even 10 years ago. We've tried very hard to keep personnel levels very constant. We've added new positions in our building and permitting department primarily, because those are offset by the permit revenues and are needed for development. But it is a challenge. This is the first year we've even asked for what would the cost be of an additional deputy because all of the requests for that. But we do see those recurring costs going up. And we'll say that since we are in the middle of building our second century, a lot of those dollars you see are for capital projects. So our CIP is worth over 30 million is part of that 160 odd million. So there will be ups and downs for that because at this point we have completed some of our largest construction projects that we're still included at that time. But it is a major challenge seeing that these recurring expenses, many like the pension ones that are outside of our control, we're just having to navigate those, but we are trying to make sure that we do not grow our expenditures in a way that's not sustainable. Because there are a lot of questions about the future of the economy, and the last thing you want to do is over promise, we'll put ourselves into a situation where we can't provide those services, residents and businesses rely on. Yes, sir. If I may just take one more brief moment to respond to that, collectively, individually. I agree with you. I'm a 40-year resident of the of the Great City of Oakley Park and I do follow the process closely. I am also a business woman. I do understand the differences between governmental bodies and private businesses, but you mentioned a couple of key things and obviously public safety is one of our top priorities, but we don't get to control what what Bradrat Sheriff's Office requests. We don't always get to know if there are any elected officials on this call or not. You know we don't always get to know how the collective bargaining I'm not pointing my fingers at anybody in particular but we do as you mentioned have several collective bargaining units in the city and once they are those negotiations take place the Me Too clause kicks and essentially everybody in the city and once they are those negotiations take place, the Me Too clause kicks in and essentially everybody in the city whether they're a union or non-classified, those dollars and those accumulative dollars add up very, very quickly. And I don't know how many statistically speaking, I don't know how many of our of our the census from the census that how many of our constituents and taxpayers in the city of Oklahoma Park received such generous benefits. benefits. It may be time to have a look at that when the collective bargaining negotiations begin. It was painful back in 0809 when we had the former city manager had to pair down from approximately 280 some odd employees to a much significantly lower number all at once. It was painful. And with consideration in mind for the protection of our health and prosperity, I would rather we focus a little bit more on the conservative side. And again, please don't take this personally. I'm saying this to get it off my chest and I hope this meeting is going to be posted in a public forum and whether or not maybe any of our elected officials that will be making these policy decisions and are you know your your boss the city manager what kind of recommendations will be forthcoming and I'm done thank you very much for hearing me out. Thank you former mayor Vecchian and yes this will be posted it's been recorded so anything anyone to share tonight will be part of the record and I certainly have been taking notes this whole time and I will convey those to our elected officials as part of the budget process and a lot of you have shared your concerns. I will not say too much about collective bargaining because I am on the city's negotiating team, but I will say that I've always found myself for a decade now in the interesting position of being at the bargaining table, but then also having my phone number on all the tax bills. And I certainly try to approach it. My capacity is even handed as can and always government should act conservatively on a fiscal basis, because we never want to put anyone to livelihood at risk. So we don't generous the compliment professionals, but you are duly noted in that capacity. Thank you again, Mr. Thompson, and take good care. Thank you very much. Right. We don't have anyone else's hand being raised. Oh, I'm sorry, we have Mr. Peterson. All right, Mr. Peterson. Mr. Thompson, thank you so much for your presentation. I really appreciate it's always good to get a view on how some of the interals of the city operate. I had one question you guys slide about. Headwinds and for that we're facing, how are those going to affect a big project that I know is on a lot of people in the city's mind, how's that going to affect the horizon project and the sky building and Other renovations to currently taking place in the downtown district For the sky building that very near completion so in terms of the city's components of it But those are not major concerns for the upcoming budget year. Horizon is also in a similar boat where we have a development agreement. We just met today to talk about lighting for the Horizon Project. They're very much on board. I don't see any of this. Some of the broader macroeconomic trends. Being a headwind to that project. It's a very important site, particularly at that commuter rail. Actually, Broward County came down here last week to film a little segment for a transit show. It'll be airing in July. Transit employees can't quite prop name, but primarily on the strength of this location and the importance of it as part of that larger multimodal network. In terms of the construction projects that are under the city's purview, we can be very grateful that some of the largest ones have already been awarded. There are, of course, challenges about just not knowing what construction inflation is going to be like and how state and federal grants for many of these construction projects will be handled in the future. So all I can really say, Mr. Peter, as time is it, we are still moving forward to the best of our ability, but in an environment with fewer grant opportunities and higher construction costs, we'll have to be able to be flexible like we've been before. We have been successful in various changes to construction like with our public works facility, we've worked on that. But for a lot of the other projects in the CIP that are not related to vertical construction, things like our stormwater improvement master plan, those are all still proceeding. Very few of those grants are endangered at this time. We're still going through it with the state revolving loan fund. So, you know, there will be plenty of construction going on on the city side. What does have to make sure we're using all of our funds to the best of our ability? All right. That's it. Thank you. I appreciate again, appreciate your time. I appreciate the effort that you put into preparing this. I know it's a lot of work for relatively few charts. You've shown that I know there's a lot behind it. Thank you again. Oh, we're happy to be here and then. Ready to be anyone else? Yeah, we have JR Matt here. But before we have knowledge in Mandarin, I would like to request if Ms. Peterson and former mayor Sarah Gimbeckin, if you don't mind lowering down your hand. For some reason, I'm having technical issues here and I'm not able to lower it here. Okay, thank you so much. So we have the next question from JR Matt here, Andrew. All right. So I think you should be unmuted now. Can you? Hi there. My name is JR, Mateo. Hi there. I own a land. Can you hear me? I guess you're just on. Okay. I own a land and orange growth and we have some flooding issues in that area and I was wondering is there if there is any funds available at the end of the fiscal year that you guys are trying to get rid of if you guys can do something about the flooding with that fund. Just. Yeah. You know, it's not sort of commitment that I personally could make, but now you said you weren't born to grow. Yeah, it's on 20 actually the it's 20 29th Street 29th, Paris, sorry.. What I will do because we have your contact information as part of the registration. All of our public work staff reach out to you. We did recently the Commission approved a stormwater master plan and it does have many many projects throughout the city. This might be one of those. It might not have been incorporated in the plan, but it's certainly something we can look into if there are drain adissues. There will have them repel to you. Please do because I plan on building a of family soon around and that land and the... It's going to be an issue if it's flooded where if I have workers coming in or contractors or whoever's coming in and they're not able to get in because it's flooded because of rain. Understood. Okay. All right, thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right. I do not believe there are any more hands. Yeah, I can give them all. I'll give them all. I'll give them all. I'll give them all. Well, I'll put my contact information up here. Thank you, everyone, for joining us tonight. And, uh, I hope it wasn't so gloomy. But I really do appreciate getting the opportunity to talk to people every year. I think this was a camera, whether they're four or fifth, but it has been a great addition and I do appreciate the questions and the comments because you'll see if you watch the budget hearings, we don't get a lot of feedback. So I do appreciate you all taking time out of your days to provide that. If there are any questions or concerns you have, maybe a public venue wasn't the way you wanted to discuss it. Just reach out to me. My number is 954-630-4302. My email is Andrew T. at openparkfl.gov. And with that, I will stop the recording and the webinar. So thank you again everyone. And I hope to hear from you as we go through the budget process. Have a good night. you